FURNITURE—SLEEPING ACCOMMODATION—EQUIPMENT FOR COOKING AND BATHING
It is difficult to say whether more furniture or less furniture would be
the better plan in a home consisting of three rooms. Supposing the family
to consist of eight persons, most people would be inclined to prescribe
four beds. As a matter of fact, there will probably be two. In a double
bed in one room will sleep father, mother, baby, and ex-baby, while in
another bed in another room will sleep the four elder children. Sometimes
the lodger granny will take a child into her bed, or the lodger uncle
will take a boy into his; but the four in a bed arrangement is common
enough to need attention. It must be remembered again that these people
are respectable, hard-working, sober, and serious. They keep their jobs,
and they stay on in the same rooms. They are not slum people. They pay
their rent with wonderful regularity, and are trusted by the landlord
when for any reason they are obliged to hold it back. But, all the same,
they have to sleep four in a bed, and suffer the consequences. It is not
an elastic arrangement; in case of illness it goes on just the same.
When a child has a sore throat or a rash it sleeps with the others as
usual. By the time a medical authority has pronounced the illness to be
diphtheria or scarlet fever, and the child is taken away, perhaps another
child is infected. Measles and whooping-cough just go round the bed as a
matter of course. When a new baby is born, the mother does not get her
bed to herself. There is nowhere for the others to go, so they sleep in
their accustomed places. This is not a fact which obtrudes itself on the
notice of a visitor as a rule. She arrives to find the mother and child
alone in the bed, with the exception, perhaps, of a two-year-old having
its daily nap at the foot. But in a case where there was but one room,
and where the man was a night-worker, the visitor of the sick woman
found him asleep beside her. This discovery led to questions being put
to the other women, who explained at once that of course their husbands
and children sleep with them at night. Where else is there for the
unfortunate people to sleep? Moreover, the husband is probably needed to
act as monthly nurse at night for the first week. It is an arrangement
which does not allow of real rest for any of them, but it has to be put
up with.
The rooms are small, and herein lies the open-window difficulty far more
than in the ignorance of the women. Poor people dread cold. Their one
idea in clothing their children is to keep them warm. To this end they
put on petticoat over ragged petticoat till the children are fettered
by the number of garments. It is not the best method, but it is the
best method they know of. The best, of course, would be so to feed the
children that their bodies would generate enough heat to keep them warm
from within without unnecessary clothing. A second-best method might be
to clothe the badly-nourished bodies warmly and lightly from without.
The best they can do is to load the children with any kind of clothing
they can procure, be it light and warm or cold and heavy. The best is too
expensive; the second-best is too expensive; and so they have recourse
to the third. It is all they can do with the means at their disposal. So
with sleeping and fresh air. The best arrangement is a large room, a bed
to oneself, plenty of bedclothes, and an open window. The second-best
is a small room, a bed for every two persons, plenty of bedclothes, and
an open window. The only arrangement actually possible is a tiny room,
one bed for four people, one blanket or two very thin ones, with the bed
close under the window. In wet or very cold weather the four people in
the bed sleep with the window shut. What else can they do? Here are some
cases each visited for over a year during the investigation:
1. Man, wife, and three children; one room, 12 feet by 10 feet; one bed,
one banana-crate cot. Man a night-worker. Wages varying from 16s. to 20s.
Bed, in which woman and two children slept all night, and man most of
the day, with its head half across the window; cot right under the window.
2. Man, wife, and four children; one room, 12 feet by 14 feet; one bed,
one cot, one banana-crate cot. Wage from 19s. to 22s. The bed and small
cot stood alongside the window; the other cot stood across it.
3. Man, wife, and six children; four rooms; two beds, one sofa, one
banana-crate cot. Wage 22s. One double bed for four people in very small
room, crossing the window; cot in corner by bed. One single bed for two
people (girls aged thirteen and ten years) in smaller room, 8 feet by 10
feet, with head under the window. One sofa for boy aged eleven years in
front downstairs room, where police will not allow window to be open at
night. The kitchen, which is at the back, has the copper in it, and is
too small for a bed, or even a sofa to stand anywhere.
4. Man, wife, and five children; two rooms; one bed, one sofa, one
perambulator. Wage 22s. One bed for four persons across window in tiny
room; perambulator for baby by bed; one sofa for two boys in kitchen,
also tiny.
5. Man, wife, and four children; two basement rooms; one bed, one baby’s
cot, one sofa. One bed for four, with baby’s cot by it, in one room; sofa
for child of nine in the other. In front room the police will not allow
the window open at night.
6. Man, wife, and five children; three small rooms upstairs; two beds,
one cot; one double bed for three persons, with head to window, cot
beside it, in one room; one wide single bed for three persons across
window in other room.
7. Man, wife, and five children; two rooms upstairs; one wide single bed,
one narrow single bed, one cot. Wife sleeps with two children in wide
single bed, baby in cot by her side. Two children under window in tiny
back room in narrow single bed. The man works at night, and gets home
about four in the morning. He sits up on a chair till six o’clock, when
his wife gets up and makes up the children’s bed in the back room for him.
There are plenty more of such cases. Those above have been taken at
random from an alphabetical list. In one a woman and five children sleep
in one room, but, as it is large enough to have two windows, they can
keep one open, and are better off than many parties of four in smaller
rooms, where the bed perforce comes under the only window.
It may be noticed that in some of the cases given, as in some which I
have no space to give, a third or fourth room, which is generally the
living-room, has no one sleeping in it at night. The women, when asked
why they do not relieve the pressure in the family bedroom by putting a
child or two in the kitchen, explain that they have no more beds and no
more bedclothes. Each fresh bed needs blankets and mattress. They look
round the tiny room, and ask, “Where’d I put it if I ’ad it?” Besides, to
put a couple of children to bed in the one living-room makes it both a
bad bedroom and a bad sitting-room, even if the initial difficulty of bed
and bedding could be overcome.
It will be noticed, too, that in the list given a cot of some sort
was always provided for the little baby. Unfortunately, this is not a
universal rule. It appears here because the investigation insisted on
the new baby having a cot to itself. Otherwise it would have taken its
chance in the family bed. In winter the mothers find it very difficult to
believe that a new-born baby can be warm enough in a cot of its own. And
when one looks at the cotton cot blankets, about 30 inches long, which
are all their wildest dreams aspire to, one understands their disbelief.
The cost of a cot at its cheapest runs as follows: Banana-crate with
sacking bottom, 1s.; bag filled with chaff for mattress, 2d.; blankets,
1s. 6d. bought wholesale and sold at cost price. This mounts up to 2s.
8d., and, for a woman who has to buy blankets at an ordinary shop, a
quality good enough for the purpose would cost her more. She would have
to spend something like 3s. 6d. over the child’s cot—a sum which is
beyond the reach of most women with a 20s. budget. As a rule it would be
safe to say that the new baby does take its share of the risks of the
family bed, legislation to the contrary notwithstanding.
The rest of the furniture is both as insufficient and crowded as is the
sleeping accommodation. There are not enough chairs, though too many for
the room. There is not enough table space, though too much for the room.
There is no wardrobe accommodation other than the hook behind the door,
and possibly a chest of drawers, which may partly act as a larder, and
has in the visitor’s experience been used as a place in which to put a
dead child.
To take an actual case of a one-room tenement. There are four children,
all living. The man is a dusky, friendly soul who usually addresses an
elderly visitor as “mate.” On first making his acquaintance, the visitor
was so much struck by the brilliance of his teeth shining from his grimy
face, that she ventured to express her admiration. “Yes, mate, an’ I
tell yer why: ’cause I cleans ’em,” he answered delightedly, and after a
short pause added, “once a week.” On one occasion the visitor, noticing
that a slight pressure was needed on a certain part of the baby’s person,
looked for a penny in her purse, found none, but was supplied by the
interested father. The penny was quickly stitched into a bandage, and
tied firmly over the required place. The next week saw the family in dire
need of a penny to put in the gas-meter in order to save the dinner from
being uncooked. At the moment of crisis a flash of genius inspired the
father; the baby was undressed, the penny disinterred, and the dinner
saved. The visitor, arriving in the middle of the scene, could but accept
the position, sacrifice a leaden weight which kept the tail of her coat
hanging as it should, and rebandage the baby.
The single room inhabited by this family is large—15 feet by 13 feet—and
has two windows. Under the window facing the door is the large bed, in
which sleep mother, father, and two children. A perambulator by the
bedside accommodates the baby, and in the further corner is a small cot
for the remaining child. The second window can be, and is, left partly
open at night. At the foot of the bed which crosses the window is a
small square table. Three wooden chairs and a chest of drawers complete
the furniture, with the exception of a treadle machine purchased by
the mother before her marriage on the time-payment system. The small
fireplace has no oven, and open shelves go up each side of it. There are
two saucepans, both burnt. There is no larder. On the floor lies a loose
piece of linoleum, and over the fireplace is an overmantel with brackets
and a cracked looking-glass. On the brackets are shells and ornaments.
Tiny home-made window-boxes with plants in them decorate each window.
The whole aspect of the room is cheerful. It is not stuffy, because the
second window really is always open. The overmantel was saved for penny
by penny before marriage, and is much valued. It gives the room an air,
as its mistress proudly says.
Another family with eight children, all living, rent four rooms—two
downstairs and two up. Downstairs is a sitting-room 10 feet by 12 feet.
In it are a sofa, a table, four chairs, and the perambulator. A kitchen
10 feet by 10 feet contains a tiny table and six chairs. The cupboard
beside the stove has mice in it. A gas-stove stands in the washhouse
beside the copper. By it there is room for a cupboard for food, but it
is a very hot cupboard in the summer. One bedroom with two windows,
upstairs, has a large bed away from the window, in which sleep mother and
three children. The baby sleeps in a cot beside the bed, and in a small
cot under one window sleeps a fifth child. One chair and a table complete
the furniture. In another bedroom, 10 feet by 8 feet, sleep two children
in a single bed by night, and the father, who is a night-worker, and any
child taking its morning rest, by day. The remaining child sleeps on the
sofa downstairs, where the window has to be shut at night.
Another family with six children rent three rooms. The kitchen has the
copper in it, and measures 12 feet by 10 feet. A table of 4 feet by 2
feet under the window, three chairs, a mantel-shelf, and a cupboard high
up on the wall, complete the furniture. Food can be kept in a perforated
box next the dust-hole by the back door. The room has a tiny recess
under the stairs beside the stove, where stands the perambulator in the
daytime, though it goes upstairs to form the baby’s bed at night. In one
bedroom, 12 feet by 10 feet, is a big bed near the window, in which sleep
father, mother, and one child, with the baby by the bedside. In another
smaller room sleep four children under the window, in one bed. No other
furniture.
It will be noticed that in none of the bedrooms are any washing
arrangements. The daily ablutions, as a rule, are confined to face and
hands when each person comes downstairs, with the exception of the little
baby, who generally has some sort of wash over every day. Once a week,
however, most of the children get a bath. In the family of eight children
mentioned above, the baby has a daily bath in the washing-up basin. On
Friday evenings two boys and a girl under five years of age are bathed,
all in the same water, in a washing-tub before the kitchen fire. On
Saturday nights two boys under eleven bathe in one water, which is then
changed, and two girls of nine and twelve take their turn, the mother
also washing their hair. The mother manages to bathe herself once a
fortnight in the daytime when the five elder children are at school, and
the father goes to public baths when he can find time and afford twopence.
A woman with six children under thirteen gives them all a bath with two
waters between them on Saturday morning in the washing-tub. She generally
has a bath herself on Sunday evening when her husband is out. All the
water has to be carried upstairs, heated in her kettle, and carried down
again when dirty. Her husband bathes, when he can afford twopence, at the
public baths.
In another family, where there are four children in one room and only a
very small washtub, the children get a bath on Saturday or Sunday. The
mother manages to get hers when the two elder children are at school.
The father, who can never afford a twopenny bath, gets a “wash-down”
sometimes after the children have gone to sleep at night. “A bath it
ain’t, not fer grown-up people,” explained his wife; “it’s just a bit
at a time like.” Some families use the copper when it is built in the
kitchen or in a well-built scullery. But it is more trouble to empty,
and often belongs to the other people’s part of the house. All of these
bathing arrangements imply a great deal of hard work for the mother of
the family. Where the rooms are upstairs and water is not laid on, which
is the case in a great many first-floor tenements, the work is excessive.
The equipment for cooking is as unsatisfactory as are the arrangements
for sleeping or bathing. One kettle, one frying-pan, and two saucepans,
both burnt, are often the complete outfit. The woman with 22s. a week
upon which to rear a family may not be a professed cook and may not
understand food values—she would probably be a still more discouraged
woman than she is if she were and if she did—but she knows the weak
points of her old saucepans, and the number of pennies she can afford
to spend on coal and gas, and the amount of time she can allow herself
in which to do her cooking. She is forced to give more weight to
the consideration of possible time and possible money than to the
considerations of excellence of cooking or extra food value. Also she
must cook for her husband food which he likes rather than food which she
may consider of greater scientific value, which he may dislike.
The visitors in this investigation hoped to carry with them a gospel of
porridge to the hard-worked mothers of families in Lambeth. The women of
Lambeth listened patiently, according to their way, agreed to all that
was said, and did not begin to feed their families on porridge. Being
there to watch and note rather than to teach and preach, the visitors
waited to hear, when and how they could, what the objection was. It was
not one reason, but many. Porridge needs long cooking; if on the gas,
that means expense; if on an open fire, constant stirring and watching
just when the mother is most busy getting the children up. Moreover, the
fire is often not lit before breakfast. It was pointed out that porridge
is a food which will keep when made. It could be cooked when the children
are at school, and merely warmed up in the morning. The women agreed
again, but still no porridge. It seemed, after further patient waiting on
the part of the visitors, that the husbands and children could not abide
porridge—to use the expressive language of the district, “they ’eaved at
it.”
Why? Well cooked the day before, and eaten with milk and sugar, all
children liked porridge. But the mothers held up their hands. Milk! Who
could give milk—or sugar either, for that matter? Of course, if you could
give them milk and sugar, no wonder! They might eat it then, even if it
was a bit burnt. Porridge was an awful thing to burn in old pots if you
left it a minute; and if you set the pot flat on its bottom instead of
holding it all to one side to keep the burnt place away from the flame,
it would “ketch” at once. An’ then if you’d happened to cook fish or
“stoo” in the pot for dinner, there was a kind of taste come out in
the porridge. It was more than they could bear to see children who was
’ungry, mind you, pushin’ their food away or ’eavin’ at it. So it usually
ended in a slice of “bread and marge” all round, and a drink of tea,
which was the breakfast they were accustomed to. One woman wound up a
long and patient explanation of why she did not give her husband porridge
with: “An’, besides, my young man ’e say, Ef you gives me that stinkin’
mess, I’ll throw it at yer.” Those were the reasons. It is true that to
make porridge a good pot which is not burnt, and which is not used for
“fish or stoo,” is needed. It is also true that to eat porridge with
the best results milk is needed. If neither of these necessaries can be
obtained, porridge is apt to be burnt or half cooked, and is in either
case very unpalatable. Children do not thrive on food they loathe, and
men who are starting for a hard day’s work refuse even to consider the
question. What is the mother to do? Of course, she gives them food they
do like and can eat—bread and margarine or bread and jam, with a drop of
hot weak tea. The women are very fond of Quaker oats when they can afford
the luxury, and if milk is provided to drink with it. They can cook a
little portion in a tin enamelled cup, and so escape the family saucepan.
Another difficulty which dogs the path of the Lambeth housekeeper is,
either that there is no oven or only a gas oven which requires a good
deal of gas, or that the stove oven needs much fuel to heat it. Once a
week, for the Sunday dinner, the plunge is taken. Homes where there is
no oven send out to the bakehouse on that occasion. The rest of the week
is managed on cold food, or the hard-worked saucepan and frying-pan are
brought into play. The certainty of an economical stove or fireplace is
out of the reach of the poor. They are often obliged to use old-fashioned
and broken ranges and grates which devour coal with as little benefit to
the user as possible. They are driven to cook by gas, which ought to be
an excellent way of cooking, but under the penny-in-the-slot system it is
a way which tends to underdone food.
Table appointments are never sufficient. The children hardly sit down to
any meal but dinner, and even then they sometimes stand round the table
for lack of chairs. Some women have a piece of oilcloth on the table;
some spread a newspaper. So many plates are put round, each containing
a dinner. The eating takes no time at all. A drink of water out of a
tea-cup which is filled for each child in turn finishes the repast.
Equipment for cleaning is one of the elastic items in a budget. A Lambeth
mother would like to spend 5d. on soap, 1d. on soda, 1d. on blue and
starch. She is obliged in many cases to compress the expenditure to
3d. or 5d. all told. She sometimes has to make 2d. do. There is the
remains of a broom sometimes. Generally there is only a bucket and a
cloth, which latter, probably, is the quite hopelessly worn-out shirt
or pinafore of a member of the family. One woman heard of soda which
could be bought in The Walk for less than the traditional 7 pounds for
3d., and, in her great economy, supplied her house with this inferior
kind. She scrubbed and washed and cleaned with it till her poor arms
lost all their skin, and she was taken into the workhouse infirmary with
dangerous blood-poisoning. There she stayed for many weeks, while sisters
and sisters-in-law took care of her children at a slight charge for
mere food, and the husband, who was earning steady wages, looked after
himself. He said it was more expensive without her than with her, and
never rested till he got her home again.
The cleaning of the house is mostly done in the afternoons, when dinner
is disposed of. Scrubbing, grate-cleaning, bed-making, are attended to
after the return to school and to work of the children and husband. The
baby and ex-baby are persuaded to sleep then, if possible, while the
mother, with due regard to economy of soap, cleans out her little world.
She has hardly finished before the children are back for tea, and after
tea the washing up.
Two pennyworth of soap may have to wash the clothes, scrub the floors,
and wash the people of a family, for a week. It is difficult to realise
the soap famine in such a household. Soda, being cheap, is made to do a
great deal. It sometimes appears in the children’s weekly bath; it often
washes their hair. A woman who had been using her one piece of soap to
scrub the floor next brought it into play when she bathed the baby, with
the unfortunate result of a long scratch on the baby from a cinder in
the soap. She sighed when the visitor noticed the scratch, and said: “I
sometimes think I’d like a little oven best, but now it do seem as if I’d
rather ’ave two bits of soap.” The visitor helpfully suggested cutting
the one piece in two, but the mother shook her experienced head, and
said: “It wouldn’t last not ’arf as long.”
Clothing is, frankly, a mystery. In the budgets of some women 6d. a
week is set down opposite the item “clothing club” or “calico club.”
This seems meant to provide for underclothing—chiefly flannelette.
One shilling is down, perhaps, against “boot club.” Other provision
in the most thrifty family there seems to be none. A patient visitor
may extract information, perhaps, that the father gets overtime pay at
Christmas, and applies some of it to the children’s clothes, or that he
is in a paying-out club which produces anything from 13s. to 26s., or
thereabouts, at the end of the year. But in the great number of cases
there is no extra money at Christmas, or at any other time, to depend
upon. In the poorer budgets items for clothes appear at extraordinary
distant intervals, when, it is to be supposed, they can no longer be
done without. “Boots mended” in the weekly budget means less food for
that week, while any clothes which are bought seem to be not only
second-hand, but in many instances fourth- or fifth-hand. In the course
of fifteen months’ visiting, one family on 23s. a week spent £3 5s. 5½d.
on clothes for the mother and six children. Half the sum was spent on
boots, so that the clothes other than boots of seven people cost 32s.
9d. in fifteen months—an average of 4s. 8d. a head. Another family spent
9d. a week on boots and 9d. a week on clothes in general. There were
four children. Some families, again, only buy clothes when summer comes
and less is needed for fuel. The clubs to which extra careful women,
or women with more money for housekeeping, subscribe, are generally
run by a small local tradesman. Whether they work for the benefit of
their clients, or whether, as seems far more likely, they are run
entirely in the interests of the proprietors, has not been a subject of
research for the investigation. They fill a want. That is evident. Women
bringing up a family on 20s. or even more a week need to have a definite
expenditure in order to know where they are. They like to buy the same
things week after week, because then they can calculate to a nicety how
the money will last. They like to do their saving in the same way. So
much a week regularly paid has a great attraction for them. If the club
will, in addition to small regular payments, send someone to call for
the amount, the transaction leaves nothing to be desired. A woman who
can see her way towards the money by any possibility agrees at once.
Payment by instalment fascinates the poor for the same reason. It is a
regular amount which they can understand and grasp, and the awful risk,
if misfortune occurs of losing the precious article, together with such
payments as have already been made, does not inflame their imaginations.
If people living on £1 a week had lively imaginations, their lives, and
perhaps the face of England, would be different.
Boots form by far the larger part of clothing expenses in a family of
poor children. Most fathers in Lambeth can sole a little boot with some
sort of skill. One man, a printer’s handyman, spends some time every
day over the boots of his children. He is a steady, intelligent man,
and he says it takes him all his spare time. As soon as he has gone
round the family the first pair is ready again. The women seldom get new
clothes; boots they often are entirely without. The men go to work and
must be supplied, the children must be decent at school, but the mother
has no need to appear in the light of day. If very badly equipped, she
can shop in the evening in The Walk, and no one will notice under her
jacket and rather long skirt what she is wearing on her feet. Most of
them have a hat, a jacket, and a “best” skirt, to wear in the street.
In the house a blouse and a patched skirt under a sacking apron is the
universal wear. Some of the women miraculously manage to look clean and
tidy; some do not. The astonishing difference made by a new pink blouse,
becomingly-done hair, and a well-made skirt, on one drab-looking woman
who seemed to be about forty was too startling to forget. She suddenly
looked thirty (her age was twenty-six), and she had a complexion and
quite pretty hair—features never noticed before. These women who look to
be in the dull middle of middle age are young; it comes as a shock when
the mind grasps it.
In connection with clothing comes the vexed question of flannelette. To
a mother, they all use it. It is warm, soft, and cheap. The skirts for
two children’s petticoats can be bought for 4d.—the bodies, too, if the
children are tiny and skill is used. What else can the women buy that
will serve its purpose as well? It is inflammable—the mothers know that,
but they hope to escape accident—and it is cheap enough to buy. Better,
they think, a garment of flannelette than no garment at all! They would
use material which is not inflammable if there were any they could afford
which is as warm and soft and unshrinkable as flannelette. The shops to
which their calico clubs belong stock flannelettes of all the most cheap
and useful and inflammable kinds. Flannel, merino, cashmere, woollen
material of any kind, are dear in comparison. Enough unshrinkable stuff
to make a child a new warm, soft dress can be bought for 6d. A woman with
6d. to spend will buy that stuff rather than let her child go without the
dress. It is what we should all do in her place. A child must be dressed.
Give any London magistrate 6d. a week on which to dress four children;
give him a great deal of cooking, scrubbing, and housework, to do; put a
flannelette shop round the corner: in exactly four weeks each of those
children would be clothed in flannelette.
The difficulty of keeping windows open at night; the impossibility—with
the best will in the world—of bathing children more than once a week; the
hasty and inadequate cooking in worn-out and cheap utensils; the clumsy,
hampering, and ill-arranged clothing—all these things, combined with the
housing conditions described in the previous chapter, show how difficult
is the path of the woman entrusted, on a few shillings a week, with the
health and lives of a number of future citizens.