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During the 1890s depression, Carlton began to deteriorate, both physically and in reputation.2 Miss Smart, who taught at Princes Hill in the 1930s, remembers being warned by her mother about gangs armed with chains, who were rumoured to be roaming the streets of Carlton in the early years of the 20th century. The first official study of substandard housing in Melbourne was undertaken by the 1913 Joint Parliamentary Select Committee, which reported that cheap rental cottages were crowded into the back yards of existing Carlton houses, and branded areas of Carlton as ‘slums’. In the 1910s, the Webb Government boosted immigration, accentuating the housing shortage and causing further overcrowding and dilapidation. In 1937, the Victorian Housing Commission began its campaign continued intermittently until the 1960s to reclaim and redevelop the ‘slum’ areas of Carlton and North Carlton. In the 1940s, the Prest Survey found that 87.9 per cent of all accommodation in the City of Melbourne was occupied by tenants.3
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