Marx was just as shocked by the overcrowding apparent in Hartford as he was by the similar conditions in Gamlingay.
He wrote: "Fourteen cottages, each with one bedroom, were visited. In one were a married couple, three grown-up sons, one grown-up daughter, four children; in another, three adults, six children. One of these rooms, in which eight people slept, was 12 feet 10 inches long, 12 feet 2 inches broad, 6 feet 9 inches high: the average, without making any deduction for projections into the apartment, gave about 130 cubic feet per head. In the fourteen sleeping rooms were 34 adults and 33 children."
The map below shows the village of Hartford as it was in 1886. Much overcrowding existed in the houses on Sapley Road, in the north of the village; the accompanying census extract shows some of the people who were living there in 1861.
|
Hartford in 1886, as mapped by the Ordnance Survey
|
|
|
A page from the 1861 census of Hartford. (Document reference: RG9/974/14A)
|
