HOUSING
How does a working man’s wife bring up a family on 20s. a week? Assuming
that there are four children, and that it costs 4s. a week to feed a
child, there would be but 4s. left on which to feed both parents, and
nothing at all for coal, gas, clothes, insurance, soap, or rent. Four
shillings is the amount allowed the foster-mother for food in the case
of a child boarded out by some Boards of Guardians; therefore it would
seem to be a justifiable figure to reckon upon. But for a woman with 20s.
a week to spend it is evidently ridiculously high. If the calculation
were to be made upon half this sum, would it be possible? The food for
the children in that case would amount to 8s. To allow the same amount
to each parent as to each child would not be an extravagance, and we
should on that basis arrive at the sum of 12s. a week for the food of
six people. That would leave 8s. for all other expenses. But rent alone
may come to 6s. or 7s., and how could the woman on 20s. a week manage
with 1s., or perhaps 2s., for coal, gas, insurance, clothes, cleaning
materials, and thrift?
The usual answer to a question of this kind is that the poor are very
extravagant. It is no answer. It does not fit the question. But what
matter if only it saves people from thinking? Another answer sometimes
given is that everything in districts where people are poor is cheaper,
because the people are poor, than it would be in districts where people
are rich. Now, is that so? If it were, it might in some degree help to
solve the problem.
To take the item of rent:—a single room in Lambeth, 15 feet by 12 feet,
upstairs, with two windows—a good room—costs a poor man 4s. a week. A
house containing eighteen rooms in South Kensington, for rent, rates, and
taxes, may cost a rich man £250 a year. If the rich man were to pay 4s.
a week for every 20 square yards of his floor space, he would pay, not
£250 a year, but £285. If he were to pay 4s. a week for the same amount
of cubic space for which the Lambeth man is paying his 4s., he would pay,
not £250 a year, but £500. Added to which he gets an elaborate system
of water laid on (hot and cold), baths, waste pipes and sinks from top
to bottom of the house. He also gets an amount of coal-cellarage which
enables him to buy his coal cheap, and he gets good air and light and
space round his house, so that he can keep his doctor’s bills down. He
certainly has a better bargain for his £250 a year than the poor man has
for his 4s. a week. Therefore it is not true to say that a family can be
brought up on 20s. a week in Lambeth because a poor man can make a better
bargain over his rent than can a rich man. As a matter of fact, we see
that he actually pays more per cubic foot of space than the rich man does.
A comparison might be made in something like the following way:
A middle-class well-to-do man with income of £2,000 might pay
in rent, rates, and taxes, £250—a proportion of his income
which is equal to _one-eighth_.
A middle-class comfortable man, with income of £500 might pay
in rent, rates, and taxes, £85—a proportion of his income which
is equal to about _one-sixth_.
A poor man with 24s. a week, or £62 8s. a year, might pay
in rent, rates, and taxes, 8s. a week, or £20 16s. a year—a
proportion of his income which is equal to _one-third_.
If the man with £2,000 a year paid one-third of his income in rent,
rates, and taxes, he would pay £666 a year, while the man with £500 a
year would pay £166, and they would both be better able to afford these
sums than the poor man is able to afford his £20 16s. Allowing that each
of them has a wife and four children to maintain, there would at least
be enough left in both families to give sufficient nourishment to every
member. Fewer servants might be kept, there might be less travelling,
plainer clothes, and less saving, but enough to eat there would be. But
the poor man, having no expenditure other than food which can be cut
down, is obliged, in order to pay one-third of his income in rent, to cut
down food.
The chief item in every poor budget is rent, and on the whole and roughly
speaking it is safe to say that a family with three or more children is
likely to be spending between 7s. and 8s. a week on rent alone. Why do
they spend so much when, as we see, it must mean cutting down such a
primary necessary as food?
To find the answer to this question, an analysis was made of the
conditions of thirty-one families with three or more children who
happened to come within the scope of the investigation. The analysis
took the form of a comparison of the death-rate in those families as
related to the number of children in each, the household allowance of
each, and the amount paid in rent by each. Household allowance was chosen
rather than wage, as being necessarily in closer touch with household
expenditure than is the actual wage, from which a varying amount of
pocket-money for the man is generally taken.
Amount paid in rent was chosen rather than number of rooms, because
low rent, though often meaning fewer rooms, may quite as likely mean
basement rooms, or unusually small rooms, or rooms in a very old cottage
below the level of an alley-way. One good upstairs room may cost as
much as a couple of dark and damp basement rooms, and, though that one
room may mean horrible overcrowding for a family of five or six persons,
it may nevertheless be a wiser and healthier home than the two-roomed
basement, where the overcrowding would nominally be less. As a matter
of fact, owing to insufficient beds and bedding, the whole family would
probably sleep in one of the two basement rooms, and therefore the air
space at night would be no more adequate than in one room upstairs, while
bronchitis and rheumatism would be added to the dangers of overcrowding.
The percentages given in the little table on p. 26 are calculated
approximately to the nearest whole number below.
It is interesting to note that, while the death-rate increases from
nothing in the case of families with only three children to 40 per
cent. and over in the case of families with ten or eleven children, the
intermediate percentages do not follow in numerical order. Families with
five children have a worse death-rate than families with six, seven, or
eight.
In the same way, if you compare death-rates according to household
allowances, the death-rate of families with between 20s. and 22s. a week
is actually higher than that of families with less than 20s.
THIRTY-ONE FAMILIES WITH THREE OR MORE CHILDREN TAKEN WITHIN THE
INVESTIGATION.
Total of 186 children; 46 dead; death-rate, 24·7.
_Arranged according to Number in Family._
+--------------+-----------+-------------+-------------+
|Number born in| Number of | Number Dead.| Approximate |
| Each Family. | Families. | | Death-rate. |
+--------------+-----------+-------------+-------------+
| | | | Per Cent. |
| | | | |
| 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | 9 | 6 | 16 |
| 5 | 3 | 4 | 26 |
| 6 | 5 | 6 | 20 |
| 7 | 4 | 6 | 21 |
| 8 | 5 | 10 | 25 |
| 10 | 2 | 8 | 40 |
| 11 | 1 | 6 | 54 |
+--------------+-----------+-------------+-------------+
_Arranged according to Household Allowance._
+----------------+----------+-----------+--------+-------------+
| | Number | Number of | | |
| Allowance. | of | Children | Number | Approximate |
| | Families.| born. | Dead. | Death-rate. |
+----------------+----------+-----------+--------+-------------+
| | | | | Per Cent. |
| | | | | |
|Over 22/0 a week| 11 | 73 | 11 | 15 |
|20/0 to 22/0 | 9 | 59 | 19 | 32 |
|Less than 20/0 | 11 | 54 | 16 | 29 |
+----------------+----------+-----------+--------+-------------+
_Arranged according to Rent._
+-------------+----------+-----------+--------+-------------+
| | Number | Number of | | Approximate |
| Rent. | of | Children | Number | Death-rate. |
| | Families.| born. | Dead. | |
+-------------+----------+-----------+--------+-------------+
| | | | | Per Cent. |
| | | | | |
|Over 6/6 | 12 | 72 | 9 | 12 |
|6/0 to 6/6 | 7 | 39 | 7 | 17 |
|Less than 6/0| 12 | 75 | 30 | 40 |
+-------------+----------+-----------+--------+-------------+
(See Appendix A, p. 42.)
When, however, the amount paid in rent is the basis of the arrangement,
the death-rate rises from 12 per cent. to 40 per cent. as the rent gets
less.
It is hardly necessary to point out that the death-rate is a
rough-and-ready test, and not to be considered as a close indication. If
it were practicable to use the general health of those alive as well as
the death-rate, it would be far better. Also, of course, no one of the
three arrangements is independent of the other two. Moreover, the numbers
are few. The results of the analysis, however, though proving nothing,
were considered interesting enough to encourage the making of the same
analysis of thirty-nine cases of families with three or more children,
taken from the records of the weighing-room at Moffat’s Institute (see p.
28). The two lists were kept separate, as the cases at Moffat’s Institute
had been passed by no doctor, and hereditary disease may be considered to
be more rampant among them. Added to this the wages are, on the whole,
lower than the wages of families within the limits of the investigation.
It is curious that the death-rate in the second table for families
paying under 6s. rent is much the same as it is in the first. The great
difference between the two tables lies in the far larger death-rate in
families paying over 6s. rent shown in the second table, where disease
and insecurity and poverty were certainly greater factors.
THIRTY-NINE FAMILIES WITH THREE OR MORE CHILDREN TAKEN FROM WITHOUT THE
INVESTIGATION.
Total of 223 children; 70 dead; death-rate, 31·3.
_Arranged according to Number in Family._
+--------------+-----------+-------------+-------------+
|Number born in| Number of | Number Dead.| Approximate |
| Each Family. | Families.| | Death-rate.|
+--------------+-----------+-------------+-------------+
| | | | Per Cent. |
| 3 | 7 | 2 | 9 |
| 4 | 7 | 4 | 14 |
| 5 | 6 | 15 | 50 |
| 6 | 7 | 11 | 26 |
| 7 | 4 | 8 | 28 |
| 8 | 2 | 2 | 12 |
| 9 | 4 | 21 | 58 |
| 11 | 2 | 7 | 31 |
+--------------+-----------+-------------+-------------+
_Arranged according to Household Allowance._
+-------------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+
| Allowance. |Number | Number of| Number| Approximate |
| | of | Children| Dead.| Death-rate.|
| |Families. | born. | | |
+-------------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+
| | | | | Per Cent. |
|Over 22/0 a week | 8 | 60 | 20 | 33 |
|20/0 to 22/0 | 20 | 111 | 34 | 30 |
|Less than 20/0 | 11 | 52 | 16 | 30 |
+-------------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+
_Arranged according to Rent._
+-----------------+---------+----------+-------+-------------+
|Rent. | Number | Number of| Number| Approximate |
| | of | Children| Dead.| Death-rate.|
| |Families.| born. | | |
+-----------------+---------+----------+-------+-------------+
| | | | | |
| | | | | Per Cent. |
|Over 6/6 | 15 | 105 | 26 | 24 |
|6/0 to 6/6 | 14 | 71 | 26 | 36 |
|Less than 6/0 | 10 | 47 | 18 | 38 |
+-----------------+---------+----------+-------+-------------+
(See Appendix B, p. 44.)
It is not pretended that the two tables do more than indicate that decent
housing has as much influence on children’s health as, given a certain
minimum, the quality and quantity of their food. That is to say, it is as
important for a young child to have light, air, warmth, and freedom from
damp, as it is for it to have sufficient and proper food.
The kind of dwelling to be had for 7s. or 8s. a week varies in several
ways. If it be light, dry, and free from bugs, if it be central in
position, and if it contain three rooms, it will be eagerly sought
for and hard to find. Such places exist in some blocks of workmen’s
dwellings, and applications for them are waiting long before a vacancy
occurs, provided, of course, that they are in a convenient district.
There are even sets of three very small rooms at a rental of 5s. 6d. in
one or two large buildings. These are few in number, snapped up, and tend
to go to the man with not too large a family and in a recognised and
permanent position.
Perhaps the next best bargain after such rooms in blocks of workmen’s
dwellings is a portion of a small house. These small houses are let
at rents varying from 10s. to 15s., according to size, condition, and
position. They are let to a tenant who is responsible to the landlord for
the whole rent, and who sublets such rooms as she can do without in order
to get enough money for the rent-collector. She is often a woman with
five or six children, who would not, on account of her large family,
be an acceptable subtenant. If she is a good woman of business, it is
sometimes possible for her to let her rooms advantageously, and stand
in herself at a low rental—as rents go in Lambeth. But there is always
a serious risk attached to the taking of a whole house—the risk of not
being able to sublet, or, if there are tenants, of being unable to make
them pay. Many a woman who nominally stands at a rent of 6s. or 6s. 6d.
for the rooms which she keeps for her own use is actually paying 11s. to
15s. a week, or is running into debt at the rate of 5s. to 10s. a week
because of default on the part of her lodgers.
The ordinary housing for 8s. a week consists generally of three rooms out
of a four-roomed house where the responsible tenant pays 10s. or 11s.
for the whole, and sublets one small room for 2s. to 3s., or of three
or four rooms out of a five- or six-roomed house where the whole rent
might be 14s. or 15s., and a couple of rooms may be sublet at 6s. or 7s.
Some of the older four-roomed houses are built on a terrible plan. The
passage from the front door runs along one side of the house straight
out at the back. Two tiny rooms open off it, a front one and a back one.
Between these two rooms, at right angles to the passage, ascends a steep
flight of stairs. Because of the narrowness of the house the stairs have
no landing at the top, but continue as stairs until they meet the wall.
Where the landing should be, but is not, two doors leading into a front
bedroom and a back stand opposite one another, and open directly on to
the steps themselves. Coming out of a bedroom with a child in their arms,
obscuring their own light from the door behind them, many a man and woman
in Lambeth has trodden on the edge of a step and fallen down the stairs
to the ground below. There is no hand-rail, nothing but the smooth wall
on each side.
Of the four little rooms contained in such a house, perhaps not one will
measure more than 12 feet the longer way, and there may be a copper
wedged into the tiny kitchen. A family of eight persons using three rooms
in a house of this kind might let off the lower front room to an aunt
or a mother at a rent of 2s. 6d. a week, live in the kitchen, and sleep
in the two upstairs rooms. The advantage of such a way of living is its
privacy. The single lodger, even if not a relative, is less disturbing
than would be another family sharing another house. When the lodger is
a relative, a further advantage is that a child is often taken into its
grandmother’s or aunt’s room at night, and the terrible overcrowding is
relieved just to that extent.
In some districts four rooms may be had for 8s. a week—on the further
side of Kennington Park, for instance. Here the plan of the house is
more modern. The stairs face the front door, have a hand-rail and any
light which the passage affords. The front room may be 12 feet square,
and the kitchen, cut into by the stairs, 10 feet square. There is a tiny
scullery at the back, which is of enormous value, as the 10 feet square
kitchen is the living-room of the family—sure to be a fairly large one
or it would not take four rooms. Upstairs are three rooms. Two at the
back will be very small, and the front one, extending the whole breadth
of the house, perhaps 15 feet by 12 feet. A family of ten persons, now
living in a house like this, lets off one of the small back bedrooms at a
rental of 2s., and occupies the four remaining rooms at a cost of 8s. a
week. The copper belongs to the woman renting the house, who makes what
arrangements she pleases with her lodger in regard to its use.
There are four-roomed cottages in Lambeth where there is no passage at
all. The front door opens into the front room. The room behind opens out
of the front room. The stairs lead out of the room behind, and twist up
so as to serve two communicating rooms above. Here the upstairs tenants
are forced to pass through both the rooms of the lower tenants every time
they enter or leave the house. The inconvenience and annoyance of this is
intense. Both exasperated families live on the edge of bitter feud.
There are two-roomed cottages reached by alley-ways, where both tiny
rooms are below the level of the pathetic garden at the door. Here one
sanitary convenience serves for two cottages. Here the death-rate would
be high, but not so high as the death-rate in the dismal basements.
Where two families share a six-roomed house, the landlady of the two
probably chooses the ground-floor, with command over the yard and washing
arrangements. The upstairs people contract with her for the use of the
copper and yard on one day of the week. The downstairs woman hates having
the upstairs woman washing in her scullery, and the upstairs woman hates
washing there. Differences which result in “not speaking” often begin
over the copper. Three rooms upstairs and three rooms downstairs would
be the rule in such a house, the downstairs woman being answerable to
the landlord for 13s. a week, and the upstairs woman paying her 6s. Each
woman scrubs the stairs in turn—another fruitful source of difficulty.
Some of these houses are frankly arranged for two families, although the
landlord only recognises one tenant. In such cases, though there is but
one copper, there will be a stove in an upstairs room. In some houses the
upstairs people have to manage with an open grate and a hob, and nearly
all of them have to carry water upstairs and carry it down again when
dirty.
On the whole, the healthiest accommodation is usually to be found in
well-managed large blocks of workmen’s dwellings. This may be as dear as
three rooms for 9s., or it may be as cheap as three very small rooms for
5s. 6d. The great advantages are freedom from damp, freedom from bugs,
light and air on the upper floors, water laid on, sometimes a yard where
the children can play, safe from the traffic of the street. But there are
disadvantages. The want of privacy, which is very great in the cheaper
buildings, the tendency to take infection from other families, the noise
on the stairs, the inability to keep a perambulator, are some of them.
Then there is no such thing as keeping the landlord waiting. The rent
must be paid or the tenant must quit. The management of most buildings
exacts one or two weeks’ rent in advance in order to be on the safe side.
A tenant thus has one week up her sleeve, as it were, but gets notice
directly she enters on that week. In some buildings the other people,
kindly souls, will lend the rent to a steady family in misfortune. A
carter’s wife—one of the cases in the investigation—had her rent paid for
ten weeks, while her husband was out of work and bringing in odd sums
far below his usual wage, by the kindness of the neighbours, who saw her
through. She was in good buildings, paying a low rent, and as she said,
“If I’d a-got out of this I’d never a-got in agen.” She paid off the
money when her husband was in work again at the rate of 3s. 6d. a week.
The three-quarters of a small house or the half of a larger house are
likely to be less healthy than “buildings,” because houses are less
well-built, often damp, often infested with bugs which defy the cleanest
woman, have as a rule no water above the ground-floor, and may have
fearful draughts and no proper fireplace. Their advantages are the
superior privacy and possibly superior quiet, their accessibility from
the street, and, above all, the elasticity with regard to rent. On the
whole, the actual landlord is by no means the monster he is popularly
represented to be. He will wait rather than change a good tenant. He will
make no fuss if the back rent is paid ever so slowly. To many respectable
folk, keeping the home together on perhaps 22s. a week, this is an
inestimable boon. It is wonderful how, among these steady people, rent is
made a first charge on income, though naturally, given enough pressure,
rent must wait while such income as there is goes to buy food.
Rents of less than 6s. a week are generally danger-signals, unless the
amount is for a single room. Two rooms for 5s. 6d. are likely to be
basement rooms or very small ground-floor rooms, through one of which,
perhaps, all the other people in the house have to pass. One of two such
rooms visited for fifteen months measured 8 feet by 12 feet, had doors
in three sides of it, and was the only means of exit at the back of the
house.
Two sets of basement rooms at 5s. 6d. visited during the investigation
were extremely dark and damp. In both cases the amount of coal burned
was unusually large, as was also the amount of gas. One of these
basements was reached by stairs from within the house, the other from a
deep area without. The former was warmer, but more airless, while the
latter was impossible to warm in any way. The airlessness of basement
dwellings is much enhanced by the police regulations, which insist on
shut windows at night on account of the danger of burglary! Both the
women in these two homes were languid and pale, and suffered from anæmia.
The first had lost three children out of seven; the second, one out of
four.
Four and six paid for two rooms meant two tiny rooms below the level of
the alley-way outside—rooms which measured each about 12 feet square. A
family of six persons lived in them. Four children were living, and five
had died.
The question of vermin is a very pressing one in all the small houses. No
woman, however clean, can cope with it. Before their confinements some
women go to the trouble of having the room they are to lie in fumigated.
In spite of such precautions, bugs have dropped on to the pillow of the
sick woman before the visitor’s eyes. One woman complained that they
dropped into her ears at night. Another woman, when the visitor cheerily
alluded to the lovely weather, answered in a voice of deepest gloom:
“Lovely fer you, miss, but it brings out the bugs somethink ’orrible.”
The mothers accept the pest as part of their dreadful lives, but they do
not grow reconciled to it. Re-papering and fumigation are as far as any
landlord goes in dealing with the difficulty, and it hardly needs saying
that the effects of such treatment are temporary only. On suggesting
distemper rather than a new paper in a stuffy little room, the visitor
was met with the instant protest: “But it wouldn’t keep the bugs out a
minute.” It would seem as though the burning down of such properties were
the only cure.
The fault is not entirely that either of the sanitary authorities or
of the immediate landlords. Nor is the blame to be given to the people
living in these houses. In spite of being absurdly costly, they are too
unhealthy for human habitation. Sanitation has improved vastly in the
last dozen years, though there is still a great need for more qualified,
authoritative women sanitary inspectors. But no inspection and no
subsequent tinkering can make a fundamentally unhealthy house a proper
home for young children. The sanitary standard is still deplorably low.
That is simply because it has to be low if some of these houses are to be
considered habitable at all, and if others are to be inhabited by two,
and often by three, families at the same time.
The landlords might use a different system with advantage to the great
majority of their tenants. To insist on letting a whole house to tenants
who are invariably unable to afford the rent of it is to contract out of
half the landlord’s risks, and to leave them on the shoulders of people
far less able to bear them. A woman who can barely stagger under a rent
of 6s., 7s., or 8s., may at any moment find herself confronted with a
rent of 10s. 6d. or 15s., because, in her desperate desire to let at all,
she is forced to accept an unsatisfactory tenant. Turned into a landlord
in her own person, she is wonderfully long-suffering and patient, but at
the cost of the food of her family. If ejectment has to be enforced, she,
not the real landlord, has to enforce it. She goes through great stress
rather than resort to it. Houses intended for the use of more than one
family should, I consider, be definitely let off to more than one family.
Each tenant should deal direct with the landlord.
The tenants might do more for themselves if they understood and could use
their rights—if they expected to be more comfortable than they are. They
put up with broken and defective grates which burn twice the coal for
half the heat; they accept plagues of rats or of vermin as acts of God;
they deplore a stopped-up drain without making an effective complaint,
because they are afraid of being told to find new quarters if they make
too much fuss. If they could or would take concerted action, they could
right a great many of the smaller grievances. But, when all is said and
done, these reforms could do very little as long as most of the present
buildings exist at all, or as long as a family of eight persons can only
afford two, or at most three, small rooms to live in. The rent is too
dear; the houses are too old or too badly built, or both; the streets are
too narrow; the rooms are too small; and there are far too many people to
sleep in them.
The question is often asked why the people live where they do. Why do
they not live in a district where rents are cheaper, and spend more
on tram fares? The reason is that these overburdened women have no
knowledge, no enterprise, no time, and no cash, to enable them to visit
distant suburbs along the tram routes, even if, in their opinion, the
saving of money in rent would be sufficient to pay the extra outlay on
tram fares. Moreover—strange as it may seem to those whose bi-weekly
visit to Lambeth is like a bi-weekly plunge into Hades—the people to
whom Lambeth is home want to stay in Lambeth. They do not expect to be
any better off elsewhere, and meantime they are in surroundings they
know, and among people who know and respect them. Probably they have
relatives near by who would not see them come to grief without making
great efforts to help them. Should the man go into hospital or into the
workhouse infirmary, extraordinary kindness to the wife and children will
be shown by the most stand-off neighbours, in order to keep the little
household together until he is well again. A family who have lived for
years in one street are recognised up and down the length of that street
as people to be helped in time of trouble. These respectable but very
poor people live over a morass of such intolerable poverty that they
unite instinctively to save those known to them from falling into it.
A family which moves two miles away is completely lost to view. They
never write, and there is no time and no money for visiting. Neighbours
forget them. It was not mere personal liking which united them; it was
a kind of mutual respect in the face of trouble. Even relatives cease
to be actively interested in their fate. A fish-fryer lost his job in
Lambeth owing to the business being sold and the new owner bringing in
his own fryer. The man had been getting 26s. a week, and owed nothing.
His wife’s brothers and parents, who lived near by, combined to feed
three of the four children; a certain amount of coal was sent in; the
rent was allowed to stand over by a sympathetic landlady to whom the
woman had been kind in her confinement; and at last, after nine weeks,
the man got work at Finsbury Park at 24s. a week. Nearly £3 was owing in
rent, but otherwise there was no debt. The family stayed on in the same
rooms, paying 3s. a week extra as back rent, and the man walked daily
from south of Kennington Park to Finsbury Park and back. He started at
five in the morning, arrived at eight, and worked till noon, when he had
four hours off and a meal. He was allowed to lie down and sleep till 4
p.m. Then he worked again till 10 p.m., afterwards walking home, arriving
there at about one in the morning. A year of this life knocked him up,
and he left his place at Finsbury Park to find one in a fish-shop in
Westminster at a still slightly lower wage. The back rent is long ago
paid off, and the family, now with five children, is still in the same
rooms, though in reduced circumstances. When questioned as to why he had
remained in Kennington instead of moving after his work, the man pointed
out that the back rent would seem almost impossible to pay off at a
distance. Then there was no one who knew them at Finsbury, where, should
misfortune overtake them again, instead of being helped through a period
of unemployment, they would have nothing before them but the “house.”
It is obvious that, in London at any rate, the wretched housing, which
is at the same time more than they can afford, has as bad an influence
on the health of the poor as any other of their miserable conditions.
If poverty did not mean wretched housing, it would be shorn of half its
dangers. The London poor are driven to pay one-third of their income
for dark, damp rooms which are too small and too few in houses which
are ill-built and overcrowded. And above the overcrowding of the house
and of the room comes the overcrowding of the bed—equally the result of
poverty, and equally dangerous to health. Even if the food which can be
provided out of 22s. a week, after 7s. or 8s. has been taken for rent,
were of first-rate quality and sufficient in quantity, the night spent in
such beds in such rooms in such houses would devitalise the children.
It would take away their appetites, and render them more liable to any
infection at home or at school. Taken in conjunction with the food
they do get, it is no wonder that the health of London school-children
exercises the mind of the medical officials of the London County Council.
APPENDIX A
LIST OF THIRTY-ONE FAMILIES, WITHIN THE INVESTIGATION, FROM WHICH TABLE
OF COMPARISON IS COMPILED.
+------------------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------+
| | Allowance | Children | | |
| | to Wife. | born. | Dead. | Rent. |
| | | | | |
+------------------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------+
|Printer’s warehouseman | 20/0 | 4 | 0 | 8/0 |
|Printer’s labourer | 28/0 | 8 | 0 | 8/0 |
|Dustman | 25/0 | 4 | 0 | 7/0 |
|Policeman | 27/0 | 8 | 1 | 8/6 |
|Bus conductor | 18/0 | 5 | 0 | 9/0 |
|Coal carter | 22/0 | 4 | 1 | 7/0 |
|Plumber’s mate | 24/0 | 10 | 3 | 8/0 |
|Horse-keeper | 22/0 | 8 | 2 | 7/6 |
|Printer’s labourer | 21/9 | 7 | 1 | 8/0 |
|Railway-carriage washer | 19/6 | 3 | 0 | 7/0 |
|Packer of pottery | 23/0 | 6 | 0 | 7/3 |
|Carman’s trouncer | 24/0 | 5 | 1 | 8/0 |
|Horse-keeper | 23/0 | 3 | 0 | 6/6 |
|Plumber’s labourer | 18/0 | 6 | 3 | 6/6 |
|Potter’s labourer | 20/0 | 4 | 0 | 6/0 |
|Carter | 19/0 | 4 | 1 | 6/0 |
|Builder’s handyman | 22/6 | 7 | 1 | 6/6 |
|Postal-van driver | 23/0 | 8 | 1 | 6/6 |
|Labourer | 22/6 | 7 | 1 | 6/0 |
|Carter | 15/0 to | 6 | 1 | 5/0* |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Pugilist | Very | 8 | 6 | 5/0 |
| | irregular;| | | |
| | average | | | |
| | below | | | |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Builder’s labourer | Irregular;| 6 | 1 | 3/0 |
| | average | | | |
| | below | | | |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Fish-fryer | 23/0 | 7 | 3 | 5/6 |
|Carter for vestry | 19/0 | 4 | 0 | 4/6* |
| contractor | | | | |
|Motor-car washer | Irregular;| 4 | 1 | 3/3 |
| | below | | | |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Butcher’s assistant | Irregular;| 4 | 1 | 5/6 |
| | below | | | |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Scene-shifter | 22/0 | 11 | 6 | 5/0 |
|Carman | Below | 4 | 2 | 4/6 |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Carter | 20/0 | 10 | 5 | 4/6 |
|Feather-cleaner’s | 20/0 | 5 | 3 | 5/0 |
| assistant | | | | |
|Borough Council | 21/0 | 6 | 1 | 5/6 |
| street-sweeper | | | | |
+------------------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------+
* These rooms are in buildings, upstairs and sanitary.
APPENDIX B
LIST OF THIRTY-NINE FAMILIES WITH THREE OR MORE CHILDREN, OUTSIDE THE
INVESTIGATION, FROM WHICH TABLE OF COMPARISON IS COMPILED
+-------------------------+----------+--------+--------+-------+
| |Allowance |Children| | |
| | to Wife. | born. | Dead. | Rent.|
+-------------------------+----------+--------+--------+-------+
|Bricklayer’s labourer | 25/0 | 9 | 4 | 8/0 |
|Music-seller’s assistant | 18/0 | 3 | 0 | 9/0 |
| in West-End shop | | | | |
|Carman | 24/0 | 8 | 1 | 7/3 |
|Postman | 23/6 | 4 | 0 | 7/6 |
|Baker’s van-man | 22/0 | 7 | 1 | 7/6 |
|Stonemason | 20/0 | 8 | 1 | 8/0 |
|Carman | 20/0 | 4 | 0 | 7/0 |
|Sawmill labourer | 20/0 | 5 | 1 | 6/0 |
|Carman | 22/0 | 4 | 1 | 6/6 |
|House-decorator’s |Irregular;| 6 | 2 | 7/6 |
| labourer | average | | | |
| |less than | | | |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Labourer |Less than | 3 | 1 | 4/0 |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Painter’s labourer |Less than | 3 | 0 | 6/6 |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Builder’s labourer |Less than | 6 | 0 | 8/0 |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Carman | 18/0 | 4 | 1 | 6/0 |
|Waterside labourer |Less than | 5 | 3 | 4/0 |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Brass-foundry core-maker | 24/0 | 3 | 1 | 6/6 |
|Labourer | 22/0 | 4 | 1 | 6/0 |
|Shop-assistant | 20/0 | 4 | 1 | 6/0 |
|Carman | 20/0 | 6 | 4 | 6/6 |
|Painter’s labourer | 20/0 | 7 | 3 | 7/6 |
|Carman | 20/0 | 3 | 0 | 4/6 |
|Carman | 18/6 | 7 | 3 | 4/0 |
|Stone-grinder | 20/0 | 3 | 0 | 5/6 |
|Goods porter | 25/0 | 5 | 2 | 7/0 |
|Cleaner for L.G.B. | 22/0 | 3 | 0 | 6/6 |
|Carman | 20/0 | 6 | 1 | 6/6 |
|Stoker | 24/0 | 11 | 3 | 8/0 |
|Carman | 22/0 | 9 | 4 | 7/6 |
|Potter’s labourer |Less than | 5 | 4 | 5/0 |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Labourer |Less than | 4 | 0 | 4/0 |
| | 20/0 | | | |
|Painter’s labourer | 21/0 | 5 | 2 | 6/0 |
|Gas-worker | 20/0 | 6 | 0 | 6/0 |
|Blacksmith’s labourer | 18/0 | 6 | 2 | 4/9 |
|Carman | 24/0 | 9 | 5 | 6/0 |
|Labourer in timber-yard | 20/0 | 5 | 3 | 5/6 |
|Carman for brewery | 20/0 | 6 | 2 | 5/0 |
|Tin-plate worker | 24/0 | 11 | 4 | 8/0 |
|Van-washer | 20/0 | 9 | 8 | 6/0 |
|Carman | 20/0 | 7 | 1 | 8/0 |
+-------------------------+----------+--------+--------+-------+