An old people’s home opened in Hackney Wick where one of the new residents told the Gazette: “We have never known comfort like it”.

AE Samuels, chairman of the LCC which opened Eastway Park for 79 infirm elderly people, said some of the pensioners came from “homes of squalor, and always from loneliness”. At the home they found friendship, warmth and comfort, he claimed, “It was “only right and dignified” for local authorities to step in when old people had no one to look after them.

Mayor of Hackney, Cllr A Heath, stressed people couldn’t plan their life properly unless they could look forward to old age in the knowledge they would be cared for. Residents paid £2 a week or more according to their means. One resident, Emma Box, 72. previously lived with her married daughter in a pre-fab which they were told to vacate, and the offer of a new council flat wasn’t open to her. Luckily she found her new home “simply wonderful”.