From The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, March 1908

HOWARTH, EDWARD G. and MONA WILSON. West Ham: A Study in Social and Industrial Problems. (London, J. M. Dent), 1907.

This volume constitutes the first report on the work undertaken by the Outer London Inquiry Committee, and its object is ‘to trace the development and exhibit the present industrial conditions of an extra-metropolitan area’. The facts which are dealt with fall naturally into three groups–housing, employment and wages, and local government. In connection with each of these West Ham has a certain notoriety. Its extraordinarily rapid and unorganised growth, by which the population increased from 63,000 in 1871 to 129,000 in 1881, 205,000 in 1891, and 267,000 in 1901, led to speculative building of a kind which must be remarkable even in the annals of such enterprises. Anyone who is interested in the effect which unbridled individualism and laissez-faire in such matters may have on the development of a community should turn to the account given in this volume of the doings of swarms of small builders, working with little or no capital for immediate profits, and unhindered by bye-laws or by an ordered scheme of development. In the matter of employment, also, West Ham has contrived to contain within its boundaries numerous examples of two of the worst features of the industrial system–casual labour, such as docks create, for the men, supplemented by sweated home-work on the part of the women.