‘Homes of the London Poor’ is both a personal recollection and a social study by Octavia Hill. When Hill began her work, the model dwelling movement had been in existence for twenty years, royal and select committees had sat to examine the problems of urban well-being, and the first of many tranches of legislation aimed at improving working class housing had been passed. From Hill’s point of view these had all failed the poorest members of the working class, the unskilled labourers. She found that their landlords routinely ignored their obligations towards their tenants, and that the tenants were too ignorant and oppressed to better themselves. She tried to find new homes for her charges, but there was a severe shortage of available property, and Hill decided that her only solution was to become a landlord herself. In consequence of her diligent work and prudent management, by 1874 she had 15 housing schemes with around 3, 000 tenants. Hill’s system was based on closely managing not only the buildings but the tenants. She maintained close personal contact with all her tenants, and was strongly opposed to impersonal bureaucratic organizations and to governmental intervention in housing.
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Octavia Hill (1838-1912) was an English social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the 19th century. She was opposed to municipal provision of housing, believing it to be bureaucratic and impersonal. Another of Hill’s concerns was the availability of open spaces for poor people. She campaigned against development on existing suburban woodlands, and helped to save London’s Hampstead Heath and Parliament Hill Fields from being built on. She was one of the three founders of the National Trust, set up to preserve places of historic interest or natural beauty for the enjoyment of the British public. Hill was also a founder member of the Charity Organization Society (now the charity Family Action) which organized charitable grants and pioneered a home-visiting service that formed the basis for modern social work. She was a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws in 1905.
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