well dressed. Something, however, must be done to colour up the scene,
and make the appeal for money touching, unsuspected, and successful.
Just before the time to which I allude, a missionary from Sierra Leone
had visited the larger towns of the district in question, while the
inhabitants of the surrounding hamlets had been left in ignorance of
the ‘progress of missions in Africa and the East.’ George and his
comrades thought it would be no great harm at once to enlighten and
fleece this scattered and anxious population. The plan was laid in a
town of some size and facility. They ‘raised the wind’ to an extent
adequate to some alteration of their appearances, and got bills printed
to set forth the merits of the cause. The principal actor was Jew Jim,
a converted Israelite, with ‘reverend’ before his name, and half the
letters of the alphabet behind it. He had been in all the islands of
the South Sea, on the coast of Africa, all over Hindostan, and half
over the universe; and after assuring the villagers of Torryburn that
he had carried the Gospel to various dark and _uninhabited_ parts of
the earth, he introduced Russia Bob (an Irishman who had, however, been
in Russia) as his worthy and self-denying colleague, and Chelsea George
as the first-fruits of their ministry--as one who had left houses
and land, wife and children, and taken a long and hazardous voyage
to show Christians in England that their sable brethren, children of
one common Parent, were beginning to cast their idols to the moles
and to the bats. Earnest was the gaze and breathless the expectation
with which the poor deluded colliers of Torry-burn listened to this
harangue; and as argument always gains by illustration, the orator
pulled out a tremendous black doll, bought for a ‘flag’ (fourpence) of
a retired rag-merchant, and dressed up in Oriental style. This, Jew
Jim assured the audience, was an idol brought from Murat in Hindostan.
He presented it to Chelsea George for his worship and embraces. The
convert indignantly repelled the insinuation, pushed the idol from him,
spat in its face, and cut as many capers as a dancing-bear. The trio at
this stage of the performances began ‘puckering’ (talking privately) to
each other in murdered French, dashed with a little Irish; after which,
the missionaries said that their convert (who had only a few words of
English) would now profess his faith. All was attention as Chelsea
George came forward. He stroked his beard, put his hand in his breast
to keep down his dickey, and turning his eyes upwards, said: ‘I believe
in Desus Tist--dlory to ’is ’oly Name!’
“This elicited some loud ‘amens’ from an assemblage of nearly 1,000
persons, and catching the favourable opportunity, a ‘school of pals,’
appointed for the purpose, went round and made the collection. Out of
the abundance of their credulity and piety the populace contributed
sixteen pounds! The whole scene was enacted out of doors, and presented
to a stranger very pleasing impressions. I was present on the
occasion, but was not then aware of the dodge. One verse of a hymn,
and the blessing pronounced, was the signal for separation. A little
shaking of hands concluded the exhibition, and ‘every man went into his
own house.’
“The missionary party and their ‘pals’ took the train to Manchester,
and as none of them were teetotallers, the proceeds of their imposition
did not last long. They were just putting on their considering caps,
for the contrivance of another dodge, when a gentleman in blue clothes
came into the tap-room, and informed Jew Jem that he was ‘wanted.’
It appears that ‘Jem’ had come out of prison a day or two before his
comrades, and being ‘hard up,’ had ill-used a lady, taken her purse,
and appropriated its contents. Inquiries, at first useless, had now
proved successful--the ‘missionary’ stood his trial, and got an
‘appointment’ on Norfolk Island. Russia Bob took the cholera and died,
and ‘George the convert’ was once more left alone to try his hand at
something else.”
OF THE LOW LODGING-HOUSES OF LONDON.
The patterers, as a class, usually frequent the low lodging-houses. I
shall therefore now proceed to give some further information touching
the abodes of these people--reminding the reader that I am treating of
patterers in general, and not of any particular order, as the “paper
workers.”
In applying the epithet “low” to these places, I do but adopt the
word commonly applied, either in consequence of the small charge for
lodging, or from the character of their frequenters. To some of these
domiciles, however, as will be shown, the epithet, in an opprobrious
sense, is unsuited.
An intelligent man, familiar for some years with some low lodging-house
life, specified the quarters where those abodes are to be found, and
divided them into the following districts, the correctness of which I
caused to be ascertained.
_Drury-lane District._ Here the low lodging-houses are to be
found principally in the Coal-yard, Charles-street, King-street,
Parker-street, Short’s-gardens, Great and Little Wyld-streets,
Wyld-court, Lincoln-court, Newton-street, Star-court.
_Gray’s-inn Lane._ Fox-court, Charlotte-buildings, Spread Eagle-court,
Portpool-lane, Bell-court, Baldwin’s-gardens, Pheasant-court,
Union-buildings, Laystall-street, Cromer-street, Fulwood’s-rents (High
Holborn).
_Chancery-lane._ Church-passage, and the Liberty of the Rolls.
_Bloomsbury._ George-street, Church-lane, Queen-street, Seven-dials,
Puckeridge-street (commonly called the Holy Land).
_Saffron-hill and Clerkenwell._ Peter-street, Cow-cross,
Turnmill-street, Upper and Lower White-cross-street, St. Helen’s-place,
Playhouse-yard, Chequer-alley, Field-lane, Great Saffron-hill.
_Westminster._ Old and New Pye-streets, Ann-street, Orchard-street,
Perkins’s-rents, Rochester-row.
_Lambeth._ Lambeth-walk, New-cut.
_Marylebone._ York-court, East-street.
_St. Pancras._ Brooke-street.
_Paddington._ Chapel-street, Union-court.
_Shoreditch._ Baker’s-rents, Cooper’s-gardens.
_Islington._ Angel-yard.
_Whitechapel, Spitalfields, &c._ George-yard, Thrawl-street, Flower
and Dean-street, Wentworth-street, Keate-street, Rosemary-lane,
Glasshouse-yard, St. George’s-street, Lambeth-street, Whitechapel,
High-street.
_Borough._ Mint-street, Old Kent-street, Long-lane, Bermondsey.
_Stratford._ High-street.
_Limehouse._ Hold (commonly called Hole).
_Deptford._ Mill-lane, Church-street, Gifford-street.
There are other localities, (as in Mile-end, Ratcliffe-highway,
Shadwell, Wapping, and Lisson-grove,) where low lodging-houses are
to be found; but the places I have specified may be considered the
_districts_ of these hotels for the poor. The worst places, both as
regards filth and immorality, are in St. Giles’s and Wentworth-street,
Whitechapel. The best are in Orchard-street, Westminster (the thieves
having left it in consequence of the recent alterations and gone to New
Pye-street), and in the Mint, Borough. In the last-mentioned district,
indeed, some of the proprietors of the lodging-houses have provided
considerable libraries for the use of the inmates. In the White Horse,
Mint-street, for instance, there is a collection of 500 volumes, on
all subjects, bought recently, and having been the contents of a
circulating library, advertised for sale in the _Weekly Dispatch_.
Of lodging-houses for “travellers” the largest is known as the Farm
House, in the Mint: it stands away from any thoroughfare, and lying
low is not seen until the visitor stands in the yard. Tradition rumour
states that the house was at one time Queen Anne’s, and was previously
Cardinal Wolsey’s. It was probably some official residence. In this
lodging-house are forty rooms, 200 beds (single and double), and
accommodation for 200 persons. It contains three kitchens,--of which
the largest, at once kitchen and sitting-room, holds 400 people, for
whose uses in cooking there are two large fire-places. The other two
kitchens are used only on Sundays; when one is a preaching-room, in
which missionaries from Surrey Chapel (the Rev. James Sherman’s),
or some minister or gentleman of the neighbourhood, officiates. The
other is a reading-room, supplied with a few newspapers and other
periodicals; and thus, I was told, the religious and irreligious need
not clash. For the supply of these papers each person pays 1_d._
every Sunday morning; and as the sum so collected is more than is
required for the expenses of the reading-room, the surplus is devoted
to the help of the members in sickness, under the management of the
proprietor of the lodging-house, who appears to possess the full
confidence of his inmates. The larger kitchen is detached from the
sleeping apartments, so that the lodgers are not annoyed with the odour
of the cooking of fish and other food consumed by the poor; for in
lodging-houses every sojourner is his own cook. The meal in most demand
is tea, usually with a herring, or a piece of bacon.
The yard attached to the Farm House, in Mint-street, covers an acre
and a half; in it is a washing-house, built recently, the yard itself
being devoted to the drying of the clothes--washed by the customers
of the establishment. At the entrance to this yard is a kind of
porter’s lodge, in which reside the porter and his wife who act as
the “deputies” of the lodging-house. This place has been commended
in sanitary reports, for its cleanliness, good order, and care for
decency, and for a proper division of the sexes. On Sundays there is no
charge for lodging to known customers; but this is a general practice
among the low lodging-houses of London.
In contrast to this house I could cite many instances, but I need do
no more in this place than refer to the statements, which I shall
proceed to give; some of these were collected in the course of a
former inquiry, and are here given because the same state of things
prevails now. I was told by a trustworthy man that not long ago he
was compelled to sleep in one of the lowest (as regards cheapness) of
the lodging-houses. All was dilapidation, filth, and noisomeness. In
the morning he drew, for purposes of ablution, a basinfull of water
from a pailfull kept in the room. In the water were floating alive, or
apparently alive, bugs and lice, which my informant was convinced had
fallen from the ceiling, shaken off by the tread of some one walking in
the rickety apartments above!
“Ah, sir,” said another man with whom I conversed on the subject,
“if you had lived in the lodging-houses, you would say what a vast
difference a penny made,--it’s often all in all. It’s 4_d._ in the Mint
House you’ve been asking me about; you’ve sleep and comfort there, and
I’ve seen people kneel down and say their prayers afore they went to
bed. Not so many, though. Two or three in a week at nights, perhaps.
And it’s wholesome and sweet enough there, and large separate beds;
but in other places there’s nothing to smell or feel but bugs. When
daylight comes in the summer--and it’s often either as hot as hell
or as cold as icicles in those places; but in summer, as soon as its
light, if you turn down the coverlet, you’ll see them a-going it like
Cheapside when it’s throngest.” The poor man seemed to shudder at the
recollection.
One informant counted for me 180 of these low lodging-houses; and it
is reasonable to say that there are, in London, at least 200 of them.
The average number of beds in each was computed for me, by persons
cognizant of such matters, from long and often woful experience, at 52
single or 24 double beds, where the house might be confined to single
men or single women lodgers, or to married or pretendedly married
couples, or to both classes. In either case, we may calculate the
number that can be, and generally are, accommodated at 50 per house;
for children usually sleep with their parents, and 50 may be the lowest
computation. We have thus no fewer than 10,000 persons domiciled, more
or less permanently, in the low lodging-houses of London--a number more
than doubling the population of many a parliamentary borough.
The proprietors of these lodging-houses mostly have been, I am assured,
vagrants, or, to use the civiller and commoner word, “travellers”
themselves, and therefore sojourners, on all necessary occasions, in
such places. In four cases out of five I believe this to be the case.
The proprietors have raised capital sufficient to start with, sometimes
by gambling at races, sometimes by what I have often, and very vaguely,
heard described as a “run of luck;” and sometimes, I am assured, by the
proceeds of direct robbery. A few of the proprietors may be classed as
capitalists. One of them, who has a country house in Hampstead, has
six lodging-houses in or about Thrawl-street, Whitechapel. He looks
in at each house every Saturday, and calls his deputies--for he has
a deputy in each house--to account; he often institutes a stringent
check. He gives a poor fellow money to go and lodge in one of his
houses, and report the number present. Sometimes the person so sent
meets with the laconic repulse--“Full;” and woe to the deputy if his
return do not evince this fulness. Perhaps one in every fifteen of the
low lodging-houses in town is also a beer-shop. Very commonly so in the
country.
To “start” a low lodging-house is not a very costly matter. Furniture
which will not be saleable in the ordinary course of auction, or of
any traffic, is bought by a lodging-house “starter.” A man possessed
of some money, who took an interest in a bricklayer, purchased for
20_l._, when the Small Pox Hospital, by King’s-cross, was pulled down,
a sufficiency of furniture for _four_ lodging-houses, in which he
“started” the man in question. None others would buy this furniture,
from a dread of infection.
It was the same at Marlborough-house, Peckham, after the cholera had
broken out there. The furniture was sold to a lodging-house keeper, at
9_d._ each article. “Big and little, sir,” I was told; “a penny pot and
a bedstead--all the same; each 9_d._ Nobody else would buy.”
To about three-fourths of the low lodging-houses of London, are
“deputies.” These are the conductors or managers of the establishment,
and are men or women (and not unfrequently a married, or proclaimed
a married couple), and about in equal proportion. These deputies are
paid from 7_s._ to 15_s._ a week each, according to the extent of
their supervision; their lodging always, and sometimes their board,
being at the cost of “the master.” According to the character of the
lodging-house, the deputies are civil and decent, or roguish and
insolent. Their duty is not only that of general superintendence, but
in some of the houses of a nocturnal inspection of the sleeping-rooms;
the deputy’s business generally keeping him up all night. At the
better-conducted houses strangers are not admitted after twelve at
night; in others, there is no limitation as to hours.
The rent of the low lodging-houses varies, I am informed, from 8_s._ to
20_s._ a week, the payment being for the most part weekly; the taxes
and rates being of course additional. It is rarely that the landlord,
or his agent, can be induced to expend any money in repairs,--the wear
and tear of the floors, &c., from the congregating together of so many
human beings being excessive: this expenditure in consequence falls
upon the tenant.
Some of the lodging-houses present no appearance differing from that
of ordinary houses; except, perhaps, that their exterior is dirtier.
Some of the older houses have long flat windows on the ground-floor,
in which there is rather more paper, or other substitutes, than glass.
“The windows there, sir,” remarked one man, “are not to let the light
in, but to keep the cold out.”
In the abodes in question there seems to have become tacitly
established an arrangement as to what character of lodgers shall
resort thither; the thieves, the prostitutes, and the better class of
street-sellers or traders, usually resorting to the houses where they
will meet the same class of persons. The patterers reside chiefly in
Westminster and Whitechapel.
Some of the lodging-houses are of the worst class of low brothels, and
some may even be described as brothels for children.
On many of the houses is a rude sign, “Lodgings for Travellers, 3_d._
a night. Boiling water always ready,” or the same intimation may be
painted on a window-shutter, where a shutter is in existence. A few of
the better order of these housekeepers post up small bills, inviting
the attention of “travellers,” by laudations of the cleanliness, good
beds, abundant water, and “gas all night,” to be met with. The same
parties also give address-cards to travellers, who can recommend one
another.
The beds are of flock, and as regards the mere washing of the rug,
sheet, and blanket, which constitute the bed-furniture, are in
better order than they were a few years back; for the visitations of
the cholera alarmed even the reckless class of vagrants, and those
whose avocations relate to vagrants. In perhaps a tenth of the low
lodging-houses of London, a family may have a room to themselves, with
the use of the kitchen, at so much a week--generally 2_s._ 6_d._ for a
couple without family, and 3_s._ 6_d._ where there are children. To let
out “beds” by the night is however the general rule.
The illustration presented this week is of a place in Fox-court,
Gray’s-inn-lane, long notorious as a “thieves’ house,” but now far
less frequented. On the visit, a few months back, of an informant
(who declined staying there), a number of boys were lying on the
floor gambling with marbles and halfpennies, and indulging in savage
or unmeaning blasphemy. One of the lads jumped up, and murmuring
something that it wouldn’t do to be idle any longer, induced a woman
to let him have a halfpenny for “a stall;” that is, as a pretext with
which to enter a shop for the purpose of stealing, the display of the
coin forming an excuse for his entrance. On the same occasion a man
walked into “the kitchen,” and coolly pulled from underneath the back
of his smock-frock a large flat piece of bacon, for which he wanted a
customer. It would be sold at a fourth of its value.
I am assured that the average takings of lodging-house keepers may
be estimated at 17_s._ 6_d._ a night, not to say 20_s._; but I adopt
the lower calculation. This gives a weekly payment by the struggling
poor, the knavish, and the outcast, of 1,000 guineas weekly, or
52,000 guineas in the year. Besides the rent and taxes, the principal
expenditure of the lodging-house proprietors is for coals and gas. In
some of the better houses, blacking, brushes, and razors are supplied,
without charge, to the lodgers: also pen and ink, soap, and, almost
always, a newspaper. For the meals of the frequenters salt is supplied
gratuitously, and sometimes, but far less frequently, pepper also;
never vinegar or mustard. Sometimes a halfpenny is charged for the
use of a razor and the necessary shaving apparatus. In one house in
Kent-street, the following distich adorns the mantel-piece:
“To save a journey up the town,
A razor lent here for a _brown_:
But if you think the price too high,
I beg you won’t the razor try.”
In some places a charge of a halfpenny is made for hot water, but that
is very rarely the case. Strong drink is admitted at almost any hour in
the majority of the houses, and the deputy is generally ready to bring
it; but little is consumed in the houses, those addicted to the use or
abuse of intoxicating liquors preferring the tap-room or the beer-shop.
OF THE FILTH, DISHONESTY, AND IMMORALITY OF LOW LODGING-HOUSES.
In my former and my present inquiries, I received many statements
on this subject. Some details, given by coarse men and boys in the
grossest language, are too gross to be more than alluded to, but the
full truth must be manifested, if not detailed. It was remarked when
my prior account appeared, that the records of gross profligacy on
the part of some of the most licentious of the rich (such as the late
Marquis of Hertford and other worthies of the same depraved habits)
were equalled, or nearly equalled, by the account of the orgies of
the lowest lodging-houses. Sin, in any rank of life, shows the same
features.
And first, as to the want of cleanliness, comfort, and decency: “Why,
sir,” said one man, who had filled a commercial situation of no little
importance, but had, through intemperance, been reduced to utter
want, “I myself have slept in the top room of a house not far from
Drury-lane, and you could study the stars, if you were so minded,
through the holes left by the slates having been blown off the roof.
It was a fine summer’s night, and the openings in the roof were then
rather an advantage, for they admitted air, and the room wasn’t so foul
as it might have been without them. I never went there again, but you
may judge what thoughts went through a man’s mind--a man who had seen
prosperous days--as he lay in a place like that, without being able to
sleep, watching the sky.”
The same man told me (and I received abundant corroboration of his
statement, besides that incidental mention of the subject occurs
elsewhere), that he had scraped together a handful of bugs from the
bed-clothes, and crushed them under a candlestick, and had done that
many a time, when he could only resort to the lowest places. He had
slept in rooms so crammed with sleepers--he believed there were 30
where 12 would have been a proper number--that their breaths in the
dead of night and in the unventilated chamber, rose (I use his own
words) “in one foul, choking steam of stench.” This was the case most
frequently a day or two prior to Greenwich Fair or Epsom Races, when
the congregation of the wandering classes, who are the supporters of
the low lodging-houses, was the thickest. It was not only that two
or even three persons jammed themselves into a bed not too large for
one full-sized man; but between the beds--and their partition one
from another admitted little more than the passage of a lodger--were
placed shakes-down, or temporary accommodation for nightly slumber.
In the better lodging-houses the shake-downs are small palliasses or
mattresses; in the worst, they are bundles of rags of any kind; but
loose straw is used only in the country for shake-downs. One informant
saw a traveller, who had arrived late, eye his shake-down in one of the
worst houses with anything but a pleased expression of countenance; and
a surly deputy, observing this, told the customer he had his choice,
“which,” the deputy added, “it’s not all men as has, or I shouldn’t
have been waiting here on you. But you has your choice, I tell
you;--sleep there on that shake-down, or turn out and be d----; that’s
fair.” At some of the busiest periods, numbers sleep on the kitchen
floor, all huddled together, men and women (when indecencies are common
enough), and without bedding or anything but their scanty clothes to
soften the hardness of the stone or brick floor. A penny is saved to
the lodger by this means. More than 200 have been accommodated in this
way in a large house. The Irish, at harvest-time, very often resort to
this mode of passing the night.
I heard from several parties, of the surprise, and even fear or horror,
with which a decent mechanic--more especially if he were accompanied by
his wife--regarded one of these foul dens, when destitution had driven
him there for the first time in his life. Sometimes such a man was seen
to leave the place abruptly, though perhaps he had pre-paid his last
halfpenny for the refreshment of a night’s repose. Sometimes he was
seized with sickness. I heard also from some educated persons who had
“seen better days,” of the disgust with themselves and with the world,
which they felt on first entering such places. “And I have some reason
to believe,” said one man, “that a person, once well off, who has sunk
into the very depths of poverty, often makes his first appearance in
one of the worst of those places. Perhaps it is because he keeps away
from them as long as he can, and then, in a sort of desperation fit,
goes into the cheapest he meets with; or if he knows it’s a vile place,
he very likely says to himself--I did--‘I may as well know the worst at
once.’”
Another man who had moved in good society, said, when asked about
his resorting to a low lodging-house: “When a man’s lost caste in
society, he may as well go the whole hog, bristles and all, and a low
lodging-house is the entire pig.”
Notwithstanding many abominations, I am assured that the lodgers, in
even the worst of these habitations, for the most part sleep soundly.
But they have, in all probability, been out in the open air the whole
of the day, and all of them may go to their couches, after having
walked, perhaps, many miles, exceedingly fatigued, and some of them
half-drunk. “Why, in course, sir,” said a “traveller,” whom I spoke
to on this subject, “if you is in a country town or village, where
there’s only one lodging-house, perhaps, and that a bad one--an old
hand can always suit his-self in London--you _must_ get half-drunk, or
your money for your bed is wasted. There’s so much rest owing to you,
after a hard day; and bugs and bad air’ll prevent its being paid, if
you don’t lay in some stock of beer, or liquor of some sort, to sleep
on. It’s a duty you owes yourself; but, if you haven’t the browns,
why, then, in course, you can’t pay it.” I have before remarked, and,
indeed, have given instances, of the odd and sometimes original manner
in which an intelligent patterer, for example, will express himself.
The information I obtained in the course of this inquiry into the
condition of low lodging-houses, afforded a most ample corroboration
of the truth of a remark I have more than once found it necessary to
make before--that persons of the vagrant class will sacrifice almost
anything for warmth, not to say heat. Otherwise, to sleep, or even sit,
in some of the apartments of these establishments would be intolerable.