BUDGETS
Perhaps it will be as well here to reiterate the statement that these
chapters are descriptive of the lives and conditions of families where
the wage of the father is continuous, where he is a sober, steady man
in full work, earning from 18s. to 30s. a week, and allowing a regular
definite sum to his wife for all expenses other than his own clothes,
fares, and pocket-money. Experience shows how fatally easy it is for
people to label all poverty as the result of drink, extravagance, or
laziness. It is done every day in the year by writers and speakers and
preachers, as well as by hundreds of well-meaning folk with uneasy
consciences. They see, or more often hear of, people whose economy is
different from their own. Without trying to find out whether their
own ideas of economy are practicable for the people in question, they
dismiss their poverty as “the result of extravagance” or drink. Then
they turn away with relief at the easy explanation. Or they see or hear
of something which seems to them bad management. It may be, not good
management, but the only management under the circumstances. But, as
the circumstances are unknown, the description serves, and middle-class
minds, only too anxious to be set at rest, are set at rest. Drink is an
accusation fatally easy to throw about. By suggesting it you account
for every difficulty, every sorrow. A man who suffers from poverty is
supposed to drink. That he has 18s. or 20s. a week, and a family to bring
up upon that income, is not considered evidence of want. People who
have never spent less than £4 a week on themselves alone will declare
that a clever managing woman can make 18s. or 20s. a week go as far as
an ordinary woman, not a good manager, will make 30s. They argue as
though the patent fact that 30s. misspent may reduce its value to 18s.
could make 18s. a week enough to rear a family upon. It is not necessary
to invoke the agency of drink to make 20s. a week too small a sum for
the maintenance of four, five, six, or more, persons. That some men in
possession of this wage may drink does not make it a sufficient wage for
the families of men who do not drink.
It is now possible to begin calculations as to the expenditure of
families of various sizes on a given wage or household allowance. For a
family with six children the rent is likely to be 8s., 8s. 6d., or even
9s., for three or four rooms. A woman with one or two children sometimes
manages, by becoming landlady, to make advantageous arrangements with
lodgers, and so reduce her payments, though not her risk, to considerably
less than the usual market price of one or two fairly good rooms. But
women with large families are not able to do this. A family with four or
five children may manage in two rooms at a rental of 6s. to 7s., while
a family with one, two, three or even occasionally four, children will
take one room, paying from 3s. 6d. up to 5s., according to size. It is
safe to assume that a man with a wife and six children and a wage of
24s. a week will allow 22s. for all outgoings other than his own clothes
and pocket-money, and that his wife will pay for three, or perhaps four,
rooms the sum of 8s. a week.
The budget may begin thus:
s. d.
Rent (four rooms: two upstairs, two down) 8 0
Clothing club 0 6
Boot club 1 0
Soap, soda, etc. 0 5
Burial insurance 0 11
The other regular items in such a woman’s budget, apart from food,
would be heating and lighting, comprising coal, wood, matches, gas or
oil, and candles. The irregular items include doctor’s visits to a sick
child, which may cost 6d. a visit, or 1s. a visit, including medicine,
and renewals which may be provided for by “crockery club, 4d.,” or may
appear as “teapot, 6d.,” or “jug, 3¾d.,” at rare intervals.
Coal is another necessary for which the poor pay a larger price than
the well-to-do. The Lambeth woman is compelled to buy her coal by the
hundredweight for two reasons, the chief of which is that she is never in
possession of a sum of ready money sufficient to buy it by the ton or by
the half-ton. A few women, in their passion for regular weekly payments,
make an arrangement with the coalman to leave 1 cwt. of coal every week
throughout the year, for which they pay a settled price. In the summer
the coal, if they are lucky enough to have room to keep it, accumulates.
One such woman came through the coal strike without paying anything
extra. She used only ½ cwt. a week from the coalman, and depended for the
rest upon her store. But not all have the power to do this, because they
have nowhere to keep their coal but a box on the landing or a cupboard
beside the fireplace. They therefore pay in an ordinary winter 1s. 6d. a
cwt., except for any specially cold spell, when they may pay 1s. 7d. or
1s. 8d. for a short time; and in the summer they probably pay 8d. or 8½d.
for ½ cwt. a week. In districts of London where the inhabitants are rich
enough to buy coal by the ton, the same quality as is used in Lambeth
can be bought in an ordinary winter—even now, when the price is higher
than it used to be—for 22s. 6d. a ton, with occasional short rises to
23s. 6d. in very cold weather. Householders who have a large cellar space
have been able to buy the same quality of coal which the Lambeth people
burn, in truck loads, at the cheap time of year, at a price of about 20s.
a ton. The Lambeth woman who buys by the hundredweight deems herself
lucky. Only those in regular work can always do that. Some people, poorer
still, are driven to buy it by the 14 lbs. in bags which they fetch home
themselves. For this they pay a higher proportionate price still. While,
therefore, it has been in the power of the rich man to buy cheap coal at
£1 a ton, the poor man has paid 30s. a ton in winter, and almost 27s. in
summer—a price for which the rich man could and did get his best quality
silkstone.
Wood may cost 2d. a week, or in very parsimonious hands 1d. is made to
do. Gas, by the penny-in-the-slot system, is used rather more for cooking
than lighting. The expense in such a family as that under consideration
would be about 1s.
The budget now may run:
s. d.
Rent 8 0
Clothing club 0 6
Boot club 1 0
Burial insurance 0 11
Coal 1 6
Gas 1 0
Wood 0 1
Cleaning materials 0 5
-----
13 5
The whole amount of the household allowance was supposed to be 22s.
The amount left for food therefore would be 8s. 7d. in a week when no
irregular and therefore extra expense, such as a doctor’s visit or a new
teapot, is incurred. This reasoned calculation of expenses other than
food has been built up from the actual personal knowledge of the visitors
in the investigation—from the study of rent-books and of insurance-books,
from the sellers of coal, from the amount taken by the gasman from the
meter, from the amount paid in clothing clubs and boot clubs, down to the
price of soap and soda and wood at the local shop. It does not depend
upon the budget or _bona fides_ of any one woman. It is therefore given
in order to show how closely it bears out budget after budget of woman
after woman now to be given.
Mr. P., printer’s labourer. Average wage 24s. Allows 20s. to 22s. Six
children.
November 23, 1910, allowed 20s.
s. d.
Rent 8 0
Burial insurance (2d. each child, 3d.
wife, 5d. husband; unusually heavy) 1 8
Boot club 1 0
Soap, soda, blue 0 4½
Wood 0 3
Gas 0 8
Coal 1 0
------
12 11½
Left for food 7s. 0½d.
November 30, allowed 20s.
s. d.
Rent 8 0
Burial insurance 1 8
Boot club 1 0
Soap, soda, blue, starch 0 5
Gas 0 8
Coal 1 0
-----
12 9
Left for food 7s. 3d.
December 7, allowed 20s.
s. d.
Rent 8 0
Burial insurance 1 8
Coal 1 6
Boot club 1 0
Soap, soda, etc. 0 5
Wood 0 3
Gas 1 0
Hearthstone and blacklead 0 1
Blacking 0 1
Cotton and tapes 0 3
-----
14 3
Left for food 5s. 9d.
A note in margin of this budget explains that no meat was bought that
week owing to a present of a pair of rabbits. Meat generally cost 2s. 6d.
The next week Mr. P. was ill and earned only 19s. He allowed 18s. 1d.
s. d.
Rent 8 0
Burial insurance (stood over) --
Boot club 1 0
Coal 0 6
Liquorice-powder 0 1
Wood 0 2
Gas 0 9
-----
10 6
Left for food 7s. 7d.
This family spent extraordinarily little upon coal, and less than the
usual amount on gas. Their great extravagance was in burial insurance.
The extra penny on each child was not to bring a larger payment at death,
but to provide a small sum at the age of fourteen with which to start the
child in life. A regular provision of 6d. for other clothing than boots
was made when the household allowance rose to 21s. 9d. on January 6, 1911.
Mr. B., printer’s warehouseman, jobbing hand. Average wage 23s. Allows
20s. Four children.
August 18, 1910, allowed 20s.
s. d.
Rent 8 0
Burial insurance 1 0
Coal (regular sum paid all through the year) 1 6
Oil and wood 0 4½
Soap, soda, etc. 0 5½
------
11 4
Left for food 8s. 8d.
August 25, work slack, allowed 18s.
s. d.
Rent 8 0
Coal 1 6
Burial insurance (left over) --
Oil and wood 0 4½
Soap, soda, etc. 0 5½
------
10 4
Left for food 7s. 8d.
September 1, allowed 20s.
s. d.
Rent 8 0
Burial insurance (partly back payment) 1 6
Coal 1 6
Soap and soda 0 4½
Wood and oil 0 4½
------
11 9
Left for food 8s. 3d.
September 8, allowed 20s.
s. d.
Rent 8 0
Burial insurance 1 0
Coal 1 6
Doctor (sick child) 1 0
Soap, soda, etc. 0 4½
Stamps 0 3
Oil and wood (extra light at night for illness) 0 6
------
12 7½
Left for food 7s. 4½d.
This family make no regular provision for clothing of any kind. Overtime
work solves the problem partly, and throughout the year the budgets show
scattered items of clothing.
Mr. K., labourer. Wage 24s. Allows 22s. 6d. Six children.
March 23, 1911, allowed 22s. 6d.
s. d.
Rent 8 6
Burial insurance 1 0
Oil and candles 0 8
Coal 1 6
Clothing club 0 6
Soap, soda 0 5
Blacking and blacklead 0 1½
------
12 8½
Left for food 9s. 9½d.
March 30, allowed 22s. 6d.
s. d.
Rent 8 6
Burial insurance 1 0
Oil and candles 0 8
Clothing club 0 6
Soap, soda, etc. 0 5
Coal 1 6
Wood 0 3
-----
12 10
Left for food 9s. 8d.
April 6, allowed 21s.
s. d.
Rent 8 6
Burial insurance 1 0
Coal 1 6
Clothing club (left over) --
Oil and candles 0 8
Soap, soda, etc. 0 5
-----
12 1
Left for food 8s. 11d.
No gas was laid on in the house. The item for coal, therefore, is
moderate, as most women pay 1s. 6d. for 1 cwt. of coal a week in cold
weather, besides paying 10d. or 1s. for gas. Boots are paid for when
required. A note against the budget for April 13 says: “Sole old pram for
3s. it was to litle. Bourt boots for Siddy for 2s. 11½d. Made a apeny.”
Mr. L., builder’s handyman. Wage 23s. Allows 19s. to 20s. Six children
alive.
July 10, 1912, allowed 19s. 6d.
s. d.
Rent (two upstairs rooms; lost one child) 6 6
Burial insurance 1 0
½ cwt. of coal 0 8½
Wood 0 2
Gas 0 6
Soap, soda, etc. 0 4
Blacking 0 1
Boracic powder 0 1
-----
9 4½
Left for food 10s. 1½d.
July 17, allowed 19s. 6d.
s. d.
Rent 6 6
Burial insurance 1 0
½ cwt. of coal 0 8½
Gas 0 6
Wood 0 2
Soap, soda 0 4
-----
9 2½
Left for food 10s. 3½d.
July 24, allowed 19s.
s. d.
Rent 6 6
Burial insurance 1 0
½ cwt. of coal 0 8½
Wood 0 2
Gas 0 6
Soap, soda 0 4
-----
9 2½
Left for food 9s. 9½d.
This family squeezes six children into two rooms, thereby saving from 1s.
6d. to 2s. a week, and makes no regular provision for clothing. Clothes
are partly paid for by extra money earned by Mr. L. in summer, when work
is good.
Mr. S., scene-shifter. Wage 24s. Allows 22s. Six children alive.
October 12, 1911, allowed 22s.
s. d.
Rent (two very bad rooms, ground-floor;
lost five children) 5 0
Burial insurance 2 0
½ cwt. of coal 0 8
Wood 0 2
Gas 0 6
Mr. T.’s bus fares 1 0
Newspaper 0 2
Soap, soda, etc. 0 5½
Boracic ointment 0 2
Gold-beater’s skin 0 1
Collar 0 3
Pair of socks 0 4½
Boy’s suit (made at home) 1 2
------
12 0
Left for food 10s.
October 19, allowed 22s.
s. d.
Rent 5 0
Burial insurance 2 0
¾ cwt. of coal 1 0
Wood 0 2
Gas 0 8
Soap, soda 0 4
Bus fares 1 0
Newspaper 0 2
Children’s Band of Hope (two weeks) 0 6
Mending boots 0 6
Material for dress 0 4½
Cotton and tape 0 3
------
11 11½
Left for food 10s. 0½d.
October 26, allowed 22s.
s. d.
Rent 5 0
Burial insurance 2 0
½ cwt. of coal 0 8
Wood 0 1
Gas 0 3
Soap, soda 0 4½
Lamp oil 0 2
Matches 0 1
Bus fares 1 0
Newspaper 0 2
Children’s Band of Hope 0 3
Mending boots 1 0
Print 0 6
Pair of stockings 0 4½
Boy’s coat (made at home) 0 9
------
12 8
Left for food 9s. 4d.
In this family there is no regular provision for clothes, which are
paid for as they must be bought. No extra money is at any time of the
year forthcoming. Mr. S. clothes himself, but extracts from his wife
his newspaper as well as his fares. The latter are usually paid by the
men. The mother is an excellent needlewoman, and makes nearly all the
children’s clothes. She is also a wonderful manager, and her two rooms
are as clean as a new pin. This had not prevented her from losing five
children when these particular budgets were taken. She soon after lost a
sixth. The rent is far too low for healthy rooms. Though she pays for the
same number of rooms as Mrs. L., she pays 1s. 6d. less a week for them,
and they are wretchedly inferior. Her burial insurance is extremely
high. Her record shows that she thought herself wise to make the sum so
liberal. Even then she had to borrow 10s. to help to pay the 30s. for
the funeral of her last child, because the burial insurance money only
amounted to £1.
All the women, with the exception of Mrs. K., are notable managers, and
all but Mrs. K. and Mrs. P. are extremely tidy and clean. Mrs. K., who
has five sons and a daughter, is more happy-go-lucky than the others, as,
fortunately for her, her husband “can’t abide ter see the ’ouse bein’
cleaned,” and when it is clean “likes to mess it all up agen.” Mrs. K.
doesn’t go in for worryin’ the boys, either. Her eldest child is Louie,
the only girl, who is thirteen, and rather good at school, but doesn’t
do much to help at home, as Mrs. K. likes to see her happy. With all
her casual ways, Mrs. K. has a delicate mind, and flushes deeply if the
visitor alludes to anything which shocks her. Louie’s bed is shared by
only one small brother; Louie’s clothes are tidy, though Mr. and Mrs. K.
seem to sleep among a herd of boys, and Mrs. K.’s skirt looks as though
rats had been at it, and her blouse is never where it should be at the
waist.
Mrs. P. is under thirty, and, when she has time to look it, rather
pretty. Her eldest child is only ten. The tightest economy reigns in
that little house, partly because Mr. P. is a careful man and very
delicate, and partly because Mrs. P. is terrified of debt. It was she
who discovered the plan of buying seven cracked eggs for 3d. As she said,
it might lose you a little of the egg, but you could smell it first,
which was a convenience. She is clean, but untidy, very gentle in her
manner, and as easily shocked as Mrs. K. Her mother rents one of her
rooms, and, much beloved, is always there to advise in an unscientific,
inarticulate, but soothing way when there is a difficulty. The children
are fair and delicate, and are kept clean by their tired little mother,
who plaintively declared that she preferred boys to girls, because you
could cut their hair off and keep their heads clean without trouble, and
also because their nether garments were less easily torn. When in the
visitor’s presence the little P.’s have swallowed a hasty dinner, which
may consist of a plateful of “stoo,” or perhaps of suet pudding and
treacle, taken standing, they never omit to close their eyes and say,
“Thang Gord fer me good dinner—good afternoon, Mrs. R.” before they go.
Mrs. P. would call them all back if they did not say that.
Mrs. B. is a manager who could be roused at any moment in the night and
inform the inquirer exactly what money she had in her purse, and how many
teaspoonfuls of tea were left, before she properly opened her eyes. She
likes to spend exactly the same sum on exactly the same article, and the
same amount of it, every week. Her menus are deplorably monotonous—never
a flight into jam, when the cheapest “marge” goes farther! Never an
exciting sausage, but always stew of “pieces” on Wednesday and stew
warmed up on Thursday. When bread goes up it upsets her very much. It
gives her quite a headache trying to take the exact number of farthings
out of other items of expenditure without upsetting her balance. She
loved keeping accounts. It was a scheme which fell in with the bent of
her mind, and, though she is no longer visited, she is believed to keep
rigorous accounts still. She and all her family are delicate. Her height
is about 5 feet, and when the visitor first saw her, and asked if Mr. B.
were a big man, she replied, “Very big, miss—’e’s bigger than me.” She
was gentle with children, and liked to explain to a third person their
constant and mysterious symptoms. She dressed tidily, if drably, and
always wore a little grey tippet or a man’s cap on her head.
Mrs. L. is older and larger and more gaunt—a very silent woman. Mr. L.
talks immensely, and takes liberties with her which she does not seem to
notice. She is gentle and always tidy, always clean, and very depressed
in manner. When her baby nearly died with double pneumonia, she sat up
night after night, nursed him and did all the work of the house by day,
but all she ever said on the subject was, “I’d not like ter lose ’im
now.” She looked more gaunt as the days went on, but everything was done
as usual. When the baby recovered she made no sign. Before marriage she
had been a domestic servant in a West-End club, receiving 14s. a week and
all found. Her savings furnished the home and bought clothes for some
years.
Mrs. S. could tell you a little about Mr. S. if you pressed her. He was
a “good ’usbin’,” but not desirable on Saturday nights. She was a worn,
thin woman with a dull, slow face, but an extraordinary knack of keeping
things clean and getting things cheap. All her bread was fetched by her
eldest boy of thirteen from the back door of a big restaurant once a
week. It lived in a large bag hung on a nail behind the door, and got
very stale towards the end of the week; but it was good bread. She could
get about 100 broken rolls for 1s. 9d. When she lost her children she
cried a very little, but went about much as usual, saying, if spoken to
on the subject, “I done all I could.’ E ’ad everythink done fer ’im,”
which was perfectly true as far as she was concerned, and in so far as
her means went. She loved her family in a patient, suffering, loyal sort
of way which cannot have been very exhilarating for them.
All of these women, with, perhaps, the exception of Mrs. K., seemed to
have lost any spark of humour or desire for different surroundings. The
same surroundings with a little more money, a little more security, and
a little less to do, was about the best their imaginations could grasp.
They knew nothing of any other way of living if you were married. Mrs. K.
liked being read to. Her husband, hearing that she had had “Little Lord
Fauntleroy” read aloud to her at her mothers’ meeting, took her to the
gallery of a theatre, where she saw acted some version, or what she took
for some version, of this story. It roused her imagination in a way which
was astonishing. She questioned, she believed, she accepted. There were
people like that! How real and how thrilling! It seemed to take something
of the burden of the five boys and the girl from her shoulders. Did the
visitor think theatres wrong? No, the visitor liked theatres. Well,
Mrs. K. would like to go again if it could possibly be afforded, but of
course it could not. At the mothers’ meeting they were now having a book
read to them called “Dom Quick Sotty.” It was interesting, but not so
interesting as “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” though, of course, that would be
Mrs. K.’s own fault most probably. Mrs. K.’s criticism on “Mrs. Wiggs of
the Cabbage Patch,” later, was that it was a book about a queer sort of
people.
The children of these five families were, on the whole, well brought
up as regards manners and cleanliness and behaviour. All of them were
kindly and patiently treated by their mothers. Mrs. P., who was only
twenty-eight, was a little plaintive with her brood of six. Mrs. K.,
as has been explained, was unruffled and placid. The other three were
punctual, clean, and gentle, if a trifle depressing. Want of the joy of
life was the most salient feature of the children as they grew older.
They too readily accepted limitations and qualifications imposed upon
them, without that irrational hoping against impossibility and belief
in favourable miracles which carry more fortunate children through many
disappointments. These children never rebel against disappointment. It
is their lot. They more or less expect it. The children of Mrs. K. were
the most vital and noisy and troublesome, and those of Mrs. B. the most
obedient and quiet, and what the women themselves called “old-fashioned.”
All the children were nice creatures, and not one of them was a
“first-class life” or gave promise of health and strength.
NOTE.—In dissecting budgets in this and following chapters
the writer has not reckoned in the extra nourishment which
was provided for mother and child. It is obvious that general
calculations based upon such temporary and unusual assistance
would be misleading with regard to the whole class of low-paid
labour.