We do not say the condition of their homes, for how can those places be
called homes, compared with which the lair of a wild beast would be a
comfortable and healthy spot? Few who will read these pages have any
conception of what these pestilential human rookeries are, where tens of
thousands are crowded together amidst horrors which call to mind what we
have heard of the middle passage of the slave ship. To get into them you
have to penetrate courts reeking with poisonous and malodorous gases
arising from accumulations of sewage and refuse scattered in all
directions and often flowing beneath your feet; courts, many of them
which the sun never penetrates, which are never visited by a breath of
fresh air, and which rarely know the virtues of a drop of cleansing
water. You have to ascend rotten staircases, which threaten to give way
beneath every step, and which, in some places, have already broken
down, leaving gaps that imperil the limbs and lives of the unwary. You
have to grope your way along dark and filthy passages swarming with
vermin. Then, if you are not driven back by the intolerable stench, you
may gain admittance to the dens in which these thousands of beings who
belong, as much as you, to the race for whom Christ died, herd together.
Have you pitied the poor creatures who sleep under railway arches, in
carts or casks, or under any shelter which they can find in the open
air? You will see that they are to be envied in comparison with those
whose lot it is to seek refuge here. Eight feet square--that is about
the average size of very many of these rooms. Walls and ceiling are
black with the accretions of filth which have gathered upon them through
long years of neglect. It is exuding through cracks in the boards
overhead; it is running down the walls; it is everywhere. What goes by
the name of a window is half of it stuffed with rags or covered by
boards to keep out wind and rain; the rest is so begrimed and obscured
that scarcely can light enter or anything be seen outside. Should you
have ascended to the attic, where at least some approach to fresh air
might be expected to enter from open or broken window, you look out upon
the roofs and ledges of lower tenements, and discover that the sickly
air which finds its way into the room has to pass over the putrefying
carcases of dead cats or birds, or viler abominations still. The
buildings are in such miserable repair as to suggest the thought that if
the wind could only reach them they would soon be toppling about the
heads of their occupants. As to furniture--you may perchance discover a
broken chair, the tottering relics of an old bedstead, or the mere
fragment of a table; but more commonly you will find rude substitutes
for these things in the shape of rough boards resting upon bricks, an
old hamper or box turned upside down, or more frequently still, nothing
but rubbish and rags.
Every room in these rotten and reeking tenements houses a family, often
two. In one cellar a sanitary inspector reports finding a father,
mother, three children and four pigs! In another room a missionary found
a man ill with small pox, his wife just recovering from her eighth
confinement, and the children running about half naked and covered with
dirt. Here are seven people living in one underground kitchen, and a
little dead child lying in the same room. Elsewhere is a poor widow, her
three children, and a child who had been dead thirteen days. Her
husband, who was a cabman, had shortly before committed suicide. Here
lives a widow and her six children, including one daughter of 29,
another of 21, and a son of 27. Another apartment contains father,
mother and six children, two of whom are ill with scarlet fever. In
another nine brothers and sisters, from 29 years of age downwards, live,
eat and sleep together. Here is a mother who turns her children into the
street in the early evening because she lets her room for immoral
purposes until long after midnight, when the poor little wretches creep
back again if they have not found some miserable shelter elsewhere.
Where there are beds they are simply heaps of dirty rags, shavings or
straw, but for the most part these miserable beings huddle together upon
the filthy boards. The tenant of this room is a widow, who herself
occupies the only bed, and lets the floor to a married couple for 2s.
6d. per week. In many cases matters are made worse by the unhealthy
occupations followed by those who dwell in these habitations. Here you
are choked as you enter by the air laden with particles of the
superfluous fur pulled from the skins of rabbits, rats, dogs and other
animals in their preparation for the furrier. Here the smell of paste
and of drying match-boxes, mingling with other sickly odours, overpowers
you; or it may be the fragrance of stale fish or vegetables, not sold on
the previous day, and kept in the room overnight. Even when it is
possible to do so the people seldom open their windows, but if they did
it is questionable whether much would be gained, for the external air is
scarcely less heavily charged with poison than the atmosphere within.
Wretched as these rooms are they are beyond the means of many who wander
about all day, picking up a living as they can, and then take refuge at
night in one of the common lodging-houses that abound. These are often
the resorts of thieves and vagabonds of the lowest types, and some are
kept by receivers of stolen goods. In the kitchen men and women may be
seen cooking their food, washing their clothes, or lolling about smoking
and gambling. In the sleeping room are long rows of beds on each side,
sometimes 60 or 80 in one room. In many cases both sexes are allowed to
herd together without any attempt to preserve the commonest decency.
But there is a lower depth still. Hundreds cannot even scrape together
the two-pence required to secure them the privilege of herding in those
sweltering common sleeping rooms, and so they huddle together upon the
stairs and landings, where it is no uncommon thing to find six or eight
in the early morning.
That people condemned to exist under such conditions take to drink and
fall into sin is surely a matter for little surprise. We may rather say,
as does one recent and reliable explorer, that they are "entitled to
credit for not being twenty times more depraved than they are." One of
the saddest results of this over-crowding is the inevitable association
of honest people with criminals. Often is the family of an honest
working man compelled to take refuge in a thieves' kitchen; in the
houses where they live their rooms are frequently side by side, and
continual contact with the very worst of those who have come out of our
gaols is a matter of necessity. There can be no question that numbers of
habitual criminals would never have become such, had they not by force
of circumstances been packed together in these slums with those who were
hardened in crime. Who can wonder that every evil flourishes in such
hotbeds of vice and disease? Who can wonder that little children taken
from these hovels to the hospital cry, when they are well, through dread
of being sent back to their former misery? Who can wonder that young
girls wander off into a life of immorality, which promises release from
such conditions? Who can wonder that the public-house is "the Elysian
field of the tired toiler?"