Model dwellings company

[2] The movement picked up pace again after the Act, which granted local authorities the right to clear slum dwellings, however the entrepreneurial focus of the companies was restricted by an inability to make a competitive return and the intervention of large-scale municipal housing.

[3] Although the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes (SICLC) had the Prince Consort as its first president and contributed to the Great Exhibition of 1851,[4] their block dwellings, in particular, were subject to criticism.

[1] The Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes (MAIDIC) was formed in 1841, earlier than the SICLC, but spent several years acquiring capital to begin its building projects.

[1] This was outlined in the company's resolution: That an association be formed for the purpose of providing the labouring man with an increase of the comforts and conveniences of life, with full return to the capitalist.

[7] The largest MDC working in central London was the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company (IIDC), founded by Sir Sydney Waterlow in 1863, which housed around 30,000 individuals by 1900.

By 1900, the Artizans' Company provided dwellings for 42,000 people in over 6,400 residences[5] The EEDC was founded in 1882 by a committee from the parish of St Jude, Whitechapel, headed by Canon Samuel Barnett.

They built large residences across Spitalfields and Whitechapel, later branching out towards Hackney and South London, with a remit to provide (although not exclusively) for destitute Jews in the East End.

Other buildings were erected by individuals, such as Hugh Jackson's New Court, in Camden Town, London, and Sir James Gowans' Rosebank Cottages in Edinburgh.

One of the most significant private inputs into the provision of working class housing was Columbia Square in Bethnal Green, a block estate completed in 1857.

[1] The MDC movement was strongly supported by individuals like Lord Shaftesbury,[14] who was president of the Artizan's Company for some time, for providing a plan to "completely alter for the better the domiciliary habits of the people of the metropolis".

The first, adopted by free market economists, asserts that the financial success of some of these companies shows that they could have been a significant help to the poor, if their operation was not interrupted by the arrival of social housing in the form of London County Council estates.

[17][18] Others argue that the failure of MDCs to meet the needs of the very poorest demonstrates that they were a stepping stone towards the inevitable necessity of state intervention to solve the housing crisis.