PREFACE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
HORRIBLE LONDON.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER I.
I
commence, with the first of these chapters, a book of travel. An
author and an artist have gone hand-in-hand into many a far-off
region of the earth, and the result has been a volume eagerly studied
by the stay-at-home public, anxious to know something of the world in
which they live. In these pages I propose to record the result of a
journey into a region which lies at our own doors—into a dark
continent that is within easy walking distance of the General Post
Office. This continent will, I hope, be found as interesting as any
of those newly-explored lands which engage the attention of the Royal
Geographical Society—the wild races who inhabit it will, I trust,
gain public sympathy as easily as those savage tribes for whose
benefit the Missionary Societies never cease to appeal for funds.I
have no shipwrecks, no battles, no moving adventures by flood and
field, to record. Such perils as I and my fellow-traveller have
encountered on our journey are not of the order which lend themselves
to stirring narrative. It is unpleasant to be mistaken, in
underground cellars where the vilest outcasts hide from the light of
day, for detectives in search of their prey—it is dangerous to
breathe for some hours at a stretch an atmosphere charged with
infection and poisoned with indescribable effluvia—it is hazardous
to be hemmed in down a blind alley by a crowd of roughs who have had
hereditarily transmitted to them the maxim of John Leech, that
half-bricks were specially designed for the benefit of 'strangers;'
but these are not adventures of the heroic order, and they will not
be dwelt upon lovingly after the manner of travellers who go farther
afield.My
task is perhaps too serious a one even for the light tone of these
remarks. No man who has seen 'How the Poor Live' can return from the
journey with aught but an aching heart. No man who recognises how
serious is the social problem which lies before us can approach its
consideration in any but the gravest mood. Let me, then, briefly
place before the reader the serious purpose of these pages, and then
I will ask him to set out with me on the journey and judge for
himself whether there is no remedy for much that he will see. He will
have to encounter misery that some good people think it best to leave
undiscovered. He will be brought face to face with that dark side of
life which the wearers of rose-coloured spectacles turn away from on
principle. The worship of the beautiful is an excellent thing, but he
who digs down deep in the mire to find the soul of goodness in things
evil is a better man and a better Christian than he who shudders at
the ugly and the unclean, and kicks it from his path, that it may not
come between the wind and his nobility.But
let not the reader be alarmed, and imagine that I am about to take
advantage of his good-nature in order to plunge him neck-high into a
mud bath. He may be pained before we part company, but he shall not
be disgusted. He may occasionally feel a choking in his throat, but
he shall smile now and again. Among the poor there is humour as well
as pathos, there is food for laughter as well as for tears, and the
rays of God's sunshine lose their way now and again, and bring light
and gladness into the vilest of the London slums.His
Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, in his speech at the opening of
the Royal College of Music some years ago, said: 'The time has come
when class can no longer stand aloof from class, and that man does
his duty best who works most earnestly in bridging over the gulf
between different classes which it is the tendency of increased
wealth and increased civilization to widen.' It is to increased
wealth and to increased civilization that we owe the wide gulf which
to-day separates well-to-do citizens from the masses. It is the
increased wealth of this mighty city which has driven the poor back
inch by inch, until we find them to-day herding together, packed like
herrings in a barrel, neglected and despised, and left to endure
wrongs and hardships which, if they were related of a far-off savage
tribe, would cause Exeter Hall to shudder till its bricks fell down.
It is the increased civilization of this marvellous age which has
made life a victory only for the strong, the gifted, and the
specially blest, and left the weak, the poor, and the ignorant to
work out in their proper persons the theory of the survival of the
fittest to its bitter end.There
are not wanting signs that the 'one-roomed helot' and his brood are
about to receive a little scientific attention. They have become
natural curiosities, and to this fact they may owe the honour in
store for them, of dividing public attention with the Zenanas, the
Aborigines, and the South Sea Islanders. The long-promised era of
domestic legislation is said to be at hand, and prophets with
powerful telescopes declare they can see the first faint signs of its
dawn upon the political horizon. When that era has come within the
range of the naked eye, it is probable that the Homes of the Poor
will be one of its burning questions, and the strong arm of the law
may be extended protectingly, even at the risk of showing the
shortness of its sleeve, as far as the humble toilers who at the
present moment suffer only its penalties and enjoy none of its
advantages.That
there are remedies for the great evil which lies like a cankerworm in
the heart of this fair city is certain. What those remedies are you
will be better able to judge when you have seen the condition of the
disease for which Dr. State is to be called in. Dr. State, alas! is
as slow to put in an appearance as his parish
confrère when the
patient in need of his services is poor and friendless.Forgive
me this little discourse by the way. It has at any rate filled up the
time as we walk along to the outskirts of the land through which we
are to travel for a few weeks together. And now, turning out of the
busy street alive with the roar of commerce, and where the great
marts and warehouses tower stories high, and where Dives adds daily
to his wealth, we turn up a narrow court, and find ourselves at once
in the slum where Lazarus lays his head—even as he did in the
sacred story—at the very gates of the mighty millionaire.We
walk along a narrow dirty passage, which would effectually have
stopped the Claimant had he come to this neighbourhood in search of
witnesses, and at the end we find ourselves in what we should call a
back-yard, but which, in the language of the neighbourhood, is a
square. The square is full of refuse; heaps of dust and decaying
vegetable matter lie about here and there, under the windows and in
front of the doors of the squalid tumble-down houses. The windows
above and below are broken and patched; the roofs of these
two-storied 'eligible residences' look as though Lord Alcester had
been having some preliminary practice with his guns here before he
set sail for Alexandria. All these places are let out in single rooms
at prices varying from 2s. 6d to 4s. a week. We can see a good deal
of the inside through the cracks and crevices and broken panes, but
if we knock at the door we shall get a view of the inhabitants.If
you knew more of these Alsatias, you would be rather astonished that
there was a door to knock at. Most of the houses are open day and
night, and knockers and bells are things unknown. Here, however, the
former luxuries exist; so we will not disdain them.Knock,
knock!Hey,
presto! what a change of scene! Sleepy Hollow has come to life. Every
door flies open, and there is a cluster of human beings on the
threshold. Heads of matted hair and faces that haven't seen soap for
months come out of the broken windows above.Our
knock has alarmed the neighbourhood. Who are we? The police? No. Who
are we? Now they recognise one of our number—our guide—with a
growl. He and we with him can pass without let or hindrance where it
would be dangerous for a policeman to go. We are supposed to be on
business connected with the School Board, and we are armed with a
password which the worst of these outcasts have grown at last sulkily
to acknowledge.This
is a very respectable place, and we have taken it first to break the
ground gently for an artist who has not hitherto studied 'character'
on ground where I have had many wanderings.To
the particular door attacked there comes a poor woman, white and thin
and sickly-looking; in her arms she carries a girl of eight or nine
with a diseased spine; behind her, clutching at her scanty dress, are
two or three other children. We put a statistical question, say a
kind word to the little ones, and ask to see the room.What
a room! The poor woman apologizes for its condition, but the helpless
child, always needing her care, and the other little ones to look
after, and times being bad, etc. Poor creature, if she had ten pair
of hands instead of one pair always full, she could not keep this
room clean. The walls are damp and crumbling, the ceiling is black
and peeling off, showing the laths above, the floor is rotten and
broken away in places, and the wind and the rain sweep in through
gaps that seem everywhere. The woman, her husband, and her six
children live, eat, and sleep in this one room, and for this they pay
three shillings a week. It is quite as much as they can afford. There
has been no breakfast yet, and there won't be any till the husband
(who has been out to try and get a job) comes in and reports
progress. As to complaining of the dilapidated, filthy condition of
the room, they know better. If they don't like it they can go. There
are dozens of families who will jump at the accommodation, and the
landlord is well aware of the fact.Some
landlords do repair their tenants' rooms. Why, cert'nly. Here is a
sketch of one and of the repairs we saw the same day. Rent, 4s. a
week; condition indescribable. But notice the repairs: a bit of a
box-lid nailed across a hole in the wall big enough for a man's head
to go through, a nail knocked into a window-frame beneath which still
comes in a little fresh air, and a strip of new paper on a corner of
the wall. You can't see the new paper because it is not up. The lady
of the rooms holds it in her hand. The rent collector has just left
it for her to put up herself. Its value, at a rough guess, is
threepence. This landlord
has executed
repairs. Items: one piece of a broken soap-box, one yard and a half
of paper, and one nail.
And for these repairs he has raised the rent of the room threepence a
week.We
are not in the square now, but in a long dirty street, full of
lodging-houses from end to end, a perfect human warren, where every
door stands open night and day—a state of things that shall be
described and illustrated a little later on when we come to the
''appy dossers.' In this street, close to the repaired residence, we
select at hazard an open doorway and plunge into it. We pass along a
greasy, grimy passage, and turn a corner to ascend the stairs. Round
the corner it is dark. There is no staircase light, and we can hardly
distinguish in the gloom where we are going. A stumble causes us to
strike a light.That
stumble was a lucky one. The staircase we were ascending, and which
men and women and little children go up and down day after day and
night after night, is a wonderful affair. The handrail is broken
away, the stairs themselves are going—a heavy boot has been clean
through one of them already, and it would need very little, one would
think, for the whole lot to give way and fall with a crash. A sketch,
taken at the time, by the light of successive vestas, fails to give
the grim horror of that awful staircase. The surroundings, the ruin,
the decay, and the dirt, could not be reproduced.We
are anxious to see what kind of people get safely up and down this
staircase, and as we ascend we knock accidentally up against
something; it is a door and a landing. The door is opened, and as the
light is thrown on to where we stand we give an involuntary
exclamation of horror; the door opens right on to the corner stair.
The woman who comes out would, if she stepped incautiously, fall six
feet, and nothing could save her. It is a tidy room this, for the
neighbourhood. A good hardworking woman has kept her home neat, even
in such surroundings. The rent is four and sixpence a week, and the
family living in it numbers eight souls; their total earnings are
twelve shillings. A hard lot, one would fancy; but in comparison to
what we have to encounter presently it certainly is not. Asked about
the stairs, the woman says, 'It is a little ockard-like for the
young'uns a-goin' up and down to school now the Board make'em wear
boots; but they don't often hurt themselves.' Minus the boots, the
children had got used to the ascent and descent, I suppose, and were
as much at home on the crazy staircase as a chamois on a precipice.
Excelsior is our
motto on this staircase. No maiden with blue eyes comes out to
mention avalanches, but the woman herself suggests 'it's werry bad
higher up.' We are as heedless of the warning as Longfellow's
headstrong banner-bearer, for we go on.It
is 'werry bad' higher up, so bad that we begin to light some more
matches and look round to see how we are to get down. But as we
continue to ascend the darkness grows less and less. We go a step at
a time, slowly and circumspectly, up, up to the light, and at last
our heads are suddenly above a floor and looking straight into a
room.We
have reached the attic, and in that attic we see a picture which will
be engraven on our memory for many a month to come.The
attic is almost bare; in a broken fireplace are some smouldering
embers; a log of wood lies in front like a fender. There is a broken
chair trying to steady itself against a wall black with the dirt of
ages. In one corner, on a shelf, is a battered saucepan and a piece
of dry bread. On the scrap of mantel still remaining embedded in the
wall is a rag; on a bit of cord hung across the room are more
rags—garments of some sort, possibly; a broken flower-pot props
open a crazy window-frame, possibly to let the smoke out, or
in—looking at the chimney-pots below, it is difficult to say which;
and at one side of the room is a sack of Heaven knows what—it is a
dirty, filthy sack, greasy and black and evil-looking. I could not
guess what was in it if I tried, but what was on it was a little
child—a neglected, ragged, grimed, and bare-legged little baby-girl
of four. There she sat, in the bare, squalid room, perched on the
sack, erect, motionless, expressionless, on duty.She
was 'a little sentinel,' left to guard a baby that lay asleep on the
bare boards behind her, its head on its arm, the ragged remains of
what had been a shawl flung over its legs.That
baby needed a sentinel to guard it, indeed. Had it crawled a foot or
two, it would have fallen head-foremost into that unprotected,
yawning abyss of blackness below. In case of some such proceeding on
its part, the child of four had been left 'on guard.'The
furniture of the attic, whatever it was like, had been seized the
week before for rent. The little sentinel's papa—this we unearthed
of the 'deputy' of the house later on—was a militiaman, and away;
the little sentinel's mamma was gone out on 'a arrand,' which, if it
was anything like her usual 'arrands,' the deputy below informed us,
would bring her home about dark, very much the worse for it. Think of
that little child keeping guard on that dirty sack for six or eight
hours at a stretch—think of her utter loneliness in that bare,
desolate room, every childish impulse checked, left with orders 'not
to move, or I'll kill yer,' and sitting there often till night and
darkness came on, hungry, thirsty, and tired herself, but faithful to
her trust to the last minute of the drunken mother's absence! 'Bless
yer! I've known that young'un sit there eight 'our at a stretch. I've
seen her there of a mornin' when I've come up to see if I could git
the rint, and I've seen her there when I've come agin at night,' says
the deputy. 'Lor, that ain't nothing—that ain't.'Nothing!
It is one of the saddest pictures I have seen for many a day. Poor
little baby-sentinel!—left with a human life in its sole charge at
four—neglected and overlooked: what will its girl-life be, when it
grows old enough to think? I should like some of the little ones
whose every wish is gratified, who have but to whimper to have, and
who live surrounded by loving, smiling faces, and tendered by gentle
hands, to see the little child in the bare garret sitting sentinel
over the sleeping baby on the floor, and budging never an inch
throughout the weary day from the place that her mother had bidden
her stay in.With
our minds full of this pathetic picture of child-life in the 'Homes
of the Poor,' we descend the crazy staircase, and get out into as
much light as can find its way down these narrow alleys.Outside
we see a portly gentleman with a big gold chain across his capacious
form, and an air of wealth and good living all over him. He is the
owner of a whole block of property such as this, and he waxes rich on
his rents. Strange as it may seem, these one-roomed outcasts are the
best paying tenants in London. They pay so much for so little, and
almost fight to get it. That they should be left to be thus exploited
is a disgrace to the Legislature, which is never tired of protecting
the oppressed of 'all races that on earth do dwell,' except those of
that particular race who have the honour to be free-born Englishmen.
CHAPTER II.
As I glance over the notes I have jotted down
during my journey through Outcasts' Land, the delicacy of the task
I have undertaken comes home to me more forcibly than ever. The
housing of the poor and the remedy for the existing state of things
are matters I have so much at heart, that I fear lest I should not
make ample use of the golden opportunities here afforded me of
ventilating the subject. On the other hand, I hesitate to repel the
reader, and, unfortunately, the best illustrations of the evils of
overcrowding are repulsive to a degree.
Perhaps if I hint at a few of
the very bad cases, it will be sufficient. Men and women of the
world will be able to supply the details and draw the correct
deductions; and it is, after all, only men and women of the world
whose practical sympathy is likely to be enlisted by a revelation
of the truth about the poor of great cities.
Come with me down this court,
where at eleven o'clock in the morning a dead silence reigns. Every
house is tenanted, but the blinds of the windows are down and the
doors are shut. Blinds and doors! Yes, these luxuries are visible
here. This is an aristocratic street, and the rents are paid
regularly. There is no grinding poverty, no starvation here, and no
large families to drag at the bread-winner. There is hardly any
child-life here at all, for the men are thieves and highway cheats,
and the women are of the class which has furnished the companions
of such men from the earliest annals of roguedom.
The colony sleeps though the
sun is high. The day with them is the idle time, and they reap
their harvest in the hours of darkness. Later in the day, towards
two o'clock, there will be signs of life; oaths and shouts will
issue from the now silent rooms, and there will be fierce wrangles
and fights over the division of ill-gotten gains. The spirit of
murder hovers over this spot, for life is held of little account.
There is a Bill Sikes and Nancy in scores of these tenements, and
the brutal blow is ever the accompaniment of the brutal
oath.
These people, remember, rub
elbows with the honest labouring poor; their lives are no mystery
to the boys and girls in the neighbourhood; the little girls often
fetch Nancy's gin, and stand in a gaping crowd while Nancy and Bill
exchange compliments on the doorstep, drawn from the well of Saxon,
impure and utterly defiled. The little boys look up half with awe
and half with admiration at the burly Sikes with his flash style,
and delight in gossip concerning his talents as a 'crib-cracker,'
and his adventures as a pickpocket: The poor—the honest poor—have
been driven by the working of the Artizans' Dwellings Acts, and the
clearance of rookery after rookery, to come and herd with thieves
and wantons, to bring up their children in the last Alsatias, where
lawlessness and violence still reign supreme.
The constant association of the
poor and the criminal class has deadened in the former nearly all
sense of right and wrong. In the words of one of them, 'they can't
afford to be particular about their choice of neighbours.' I was
but the other day in a room in this district occupied by a widow
woman, her daughters of seventeen and sixteen, her sons of fourteen
and thirteen, and two younger children. Her wretched apartment was
on the street level, and behind it was the common yard of the
tenement. In this yard the previous night a drunken sailor had been
desperately maltreated, and left for dead. I asked the woman if she
had not heard the noise, and why she didn't interfere. 'Heard it?'
was the reply; 'well, we ain't deaf, but they're a rum lot in this
here house, and we're used to rows. There ain't a night passes as
there ain't a fight in the passage or a drunken row; but why should
I interfere?'Taint no business of mine.' As a matter of fact, this
woman, her grown-up daughters, and her boys must have lain in that
room night after night, hearing the most obscene language, having a
perfect knowledge of the proceedings of the vilest and most
depraved of profligate men and women forced upon them, hearing
cries of murder and the sound of blows, knowing that almost every
crime in the Decalogue was being committed in that awful back yard
on which that broken casement looked, and yet not one of them had
ever dreamed of stirring hand or foot. They were saturated with the
spirit of the place, and though they were respectable people
themselves, they saw nothing criminal in the behaviour of their
neighbours.
For this room, with its
advantages, the widow paid four and sixpence a week; the walls were
mildewed and streaming with damp; the boards as you trod upon them
made the slushing noise of a plank spread across a mud puddle in a
brickfield; foul within and foul without, these people paid the
rent of it gladly, and perhaps thanked God for the luck of having
it. Rooms for the poor earning precarious livelihoods are too hard
to get and too much in demand now for a widow woman to give up one
just because of the trifling inconvenience of overhearing a few
outrages and murders.
One word more on this shady
subject and we will get out into the light again. I have spoken of
the familiarity of the children of the poor with all manner of
wickedness and crime. Of all the evils arising from this one-room
system there is perhaps none greater than the utter destruction of
innocence in the young. A moment's thought will enable the reader
to appreciate the evils of it. But if it is bad in the case of a
respectable family, how much more terrible is it when the children
are familiarized with actual immorality!
Wait outside while we knock at
this door.
Knock, knock!—No
answer!
Knock, knock, knock!
A child's voice answers, 'What
is it?'
We give the answer—the answer
which has been our 'open, sesame' everywhere—and after a pause a
woman opens a door a little and asks us to wait a moment. Presently
we are admitted. A woman pleasing looking and with a certain
refinement in her features holds the door open for us. She has
evidently made a hurried toilet and put on an ulster over her night
attire. She has also put a brass chain and locket round her neck.
There is a little rouge left on her cheeks and a little of the
burnt hairpin colour left under her eyes from overnight. At the
table having their breakfast are two neat and clean little girls of
seven and eight.
They rise and curtsey as we
enter. We ask them a few questions, and they answer
intelligently—they are at the Board School and are making admirable
progress—charming children, interesting and well-behaved in every
way. They have a perfect knowledge of good and evil—one of them has
taken a Scripture prize—and yet these two charming and intelligent
little girls live in that room night and day with their mother, and
this is the den to which she snares her dissolute prey.
I would gladly have passed over
this scene in silence, but it is one part of the question which
directly bears on the theory of State interference. It is by
shutting our eyes to evils that we allow them to continue
unreformed so long. I maintain that such cases as these are fit
ones for legislative protection. The State should have the power of
rescuing its future citizens from such surroundings, and the law
which protects young children from physical hurt should also be so
framed as to shield them from moral destruction.
The worst effect of the present
system of Packing the Poor is the moral destruction of the next
generation.
Whatever it costs us to remedy
the disease we shall gain in decreased crime and wickedness. It is
better even that the ratepayers should bear a portion of the
burthen of new homes for the respectable poor than that they should
have to pay twice as much in the long-run for prisons, lunatic
asylums, and workhouses.
Enough for the present of the
criminal classes. Let us see some of the poor people who earn an
honest living—well, 'living,' perhaps, is hardly the word—let us
say, who can earn enough to pay their rent and keep body and soul
together.
Here is a quaint scene, to
begin with. When we open the door we start back half choked. The
air is full of floating fluff, and some of it gets into our mouths
and half chokes us. When we've coughed and wheezed a little we look
about us and gradually take in the situation.
The room is about eight feet
square. Seated on the floor is a white fairy—a dark-eyed girl who
looks as though she had stepped straight off a twelfth cake. Her
hair is powdered all overa la
Pompadour, and the effect isbizarre. Seated beside her is an older
woman, and she is white and twelfth-cakey too. Alas! their
occupation is prosaic to a degree. They are simply pulling
rabbit-skins—that is to say, they are pulling away all the loose
fluff and down and preparing the skins for the furriers, who will
use them for cheap goods, dye them into imitations of rarer skins,
and practise up [...]
