common decency, how unutterable horrors are avoided, is beyond all
conception. The case is aggravated when there is a young woman to be
lodged in this confined space who is not a member of the family, but
is hired to do the field-work, for which every hind is bound to
provide a female. It shocks every feeling of propriety to think that
in a room, and within such a space as I have been describing,
civilized beings should be herding together without a decent
separation of age and sex. So long as the agricultural system in this
district requires the hind to find room for a fellow-servant of the
other sex in his cabin, the least that morality and decency can demand
is that he should have a second apartment where the unmarried female
and those of a tender age should sleep apart from him and his wife.
Last Whitsuntide, when the annual lettings were taking place, a hind,
who had lived one year in the hovel he was about to quit, called to
say farewell, and to thank me for some trifling kindness I had been
able to show him. He was a fine tall man of about 45, a fair specimen
of the frank, sensible, well-spoken, well-informed Northumbrian
peasantry—of that peasantry of which a militia regiment was composed,
which so amazed the Londoners (when it was garrisoned in the capital
many years ago) by the size, the noble deportment, the soldier-like
bearing, and the good conduct of the men. I thought this a good
opportunity of asking some questions. Where was he going? and how
would he dispose of his large family (eleven in number)? He told me
they were to inhabit one of these hind’s cottages, whose narrow
dimensions were less than 24 feet by 15, and that the eleven would
have only three beds to sleep on; that he himself, his wife, a
daughter of 6, and a boy of 4 years old, would sleep in one bed; that
a daughter of 18, a son of 12, a son of 10, and a daughter of 8 would
have a second bed; and a third would receive his three sons of the age
of 20, 16, and 14. ‘Pray,’ said I, ‘do you not think that this is a
very improper way of disposing of your family?’ ‘Yes, certainly,’ was
the answer; ‘it is very improper in a Christian point of view; but
what can we do until they build us better houses.’”
_Mr. Riddall Wood_ was examined as to the effects of overcrowded
tenements on the moral habits observed in the course of his visits from
house to house in the various towns he was engaged to examine:—
“In what towns did you find instances of the greatest crowding of the
habitations?—In Manchester, Liverpool, Ashton-under-Lyne, and
Pendleton. In a cellar in Pendleton, I recollect there were three beds
in the two apartments of which the habitation consisted, but having no
door between them, in one of which a man and his wife slept; in
another, a man, his wife and child; and in a third two unmarried
females. In Hull I have met with cases somewhat similar. A mother
about 50 years of age, and her son I should think 25, at all events
above 21, sleeping in the same bed, and a lodger in the same room. I
have two or three instances in Hull in which a mother was sleeping
with her grown up son, and in most cases there were other persons
sleeping in the same room, in another bed. In a cellar in Liverpool, I
found a mother and her grown-up daughters sleeping on a bed of chaff
on the ground in one corner of the cellar, and in the other corner
three sailors had their bed. I have met with upwards of 40 persons
sleeping in the same room, married and single, including, of course,
children and several young adult persons of either sex. In Manchester
I could enumerate a variety of instances in which I found such
promiscuous mixture of the sexes in sleeping-rooms. I may mention one;
a man, his wife and child sleeping in one bed; in another bed, two
grown up females; and in the same room two young men, unmarried. I
have met with instances of a man, his wife, and his wife’s sister,
sleeping in the same bed together. I have known at least half-a-dozen
cases in Manchester in which that has been regularly practised, the
unmarried sister being an adult.
“In the course of your own inquiry, how many instances, if you were to
look over your Notes, of persons of different sexes sleeping
promiscuously, do you think you met with?—I think I am speaking within
bounds when I say I have amongst my memoranda above 100 cases,
including, of course, cases of persons of different sexes sleeping in
the same room.
“Was it so common as to be in nowise deemed extraordinary or culpable
amongst that class of persons?—It seemed not to be thought of. As a
proof of this I may mention one circumstance which just occurs to
me:—Early in my visitation of Pendleton, I called at the dwelling of a
person whose sons worked with himself in a colliery. It was in the
afternoon, when a young man, one of the sons, came down stairs in his
shirt and stood before the fire where a very decently-dressed young
female was sitting. The son asked his mother for a clean shirt, and on
its being given to him, very deliberately threw off the shirt he had
on, and after warming the clean one, put it on. In another dwelling in
Pendleton, a young girl 18 years of age, sat by the fire in her
chemise during the whole time of my visit. Both these were houses of
working people (colliers), and not by any means of ill-fame.
“During your inquiries were you able to observe any further
demoralization attendant upon these circumstances?—I have frequently
met with instances in which the parties themselves have traced their
own depravity to these circumstances. As, for example, while I was
following out my inquiries in Hull, I found in one room a prostitute,
with whom I remonstrated on her course of life, and asked her whether
she would not be in a better condition if she were an honest servant
instead of living in vice and wretchedness. She admitted she should,
and on asking the cause of her being brought to her present condition,
she stated that she had lodged with a married sister, and slept in the
same bed with her and her husband; that hence improper intercourse
took place, and from that she gradually became more and more depraved;
and at length was thrown upon the town, because, having lost her
character, the town was her only resource. Another female of this
description admitted that her first false step was in consequence of
her sleeping in the same room with a married couple. In the instance I
have mentioned of the two single women sleeping in the same room with
the married people, I have good authority for believing that they were
common to the men. In the case which I have mentioned of the two
daughters and the woman where I found the sailors, I learned, from the
mother’s admission, that they were common to the lodgers. In all of
these cases the sense of decency was obliterated.”
_Mr. Baker_, in his report on the condition of the labouring classes in
Leeds corroborates this statement:—
“In the houses of the working classes, brothers and sisters, and
lodgers of both sexes, are found occupying the same sleeping-room with
the parents, and consequences occur which humanity shudders to
contemplate. It is but three or four years ago since a father and
daughter stood at the bar of the Leeds Sessions as criminals, the one
in concealing, and the other in being an accessary to concealing, the
birth of an illegitimate child, born on the body of the daughter by
the father; and now, in November, 1841, one of the Registrars of Leeds
has recorded the birth of an illegitimate child born on the body of a
young girl, only 16 years of age, who lived with her mother, who
cohabited with her lodger, the father of this child, of which the girl
had been pregnant five months, when the mother died.”
The overcrowding of the tenements of the labouring classes is productive
of demoralization in a mode pointed out by _Mr. Barnett_, the clerk to
the Nottingham Union, who states—
“That the houses are generally too small to afford a comfortable
reception to the family, and the consequence is that the junior
members are generally in the streets. Girls and youths destitute of
adequate house-room, and freed from parental control, are accustomed
to gross immoralities.”
Hereafter, when considering the pecuniary means of defraying the expense
of sanitary measures, it will be shown how much less of such
consequences in most districts than may be supposed is ascribable to
absolute poverty or real inability to pay for better accommodation. To
obviate even immediate impressions of this description, I might adduce
much evidence of the character of the following testimony of _Mr. J.
Thomson_, of Clitheroe:—
“What is the number of persons whom you have in your employment?—Men,
women, and children, between 900 and 1000.
“Are you the owner of any of the tenements where they reside?—Very
few; not more than 12 or 15.
“What description of tenements are they?—Houses with two rooms above,
two rooms below, and a yard; and letting at a rent of from 7_l._ to
8_l._ per annum. These are occupied by foremen in various departments,
and the better description of artisans.
“What wages do this description of persons earn?—Various, from 30_s._
to 3_l._ weekly; averaging, perhaps, 2_l._ weekly; out of which they
pay 3_s._ per week for rent.
“What is your experience in respect to the habits of the workpeople in
these tenements?—The remark which I have to make is on the very low
state of feeling prevalent amongst even a high class of workmen as to
decency or propriety. The tenements sufficed for them when they were
young, but when the female children become young women, and the boys
advance to puberty, and decency requires them to have separate rooms,
the usual practice of the parents is to take the young women into
their own sleeping-rooms. I have one highly respectable foreman who
has one daughter aged 20, and another aged 22, sleeping on each side
of the bed in which himself and his wife sleep. The next bed-room is
filled with the younger children of both sexes, boys and girls, up to
16 years of age. The earnings of this family must have been 50_s._ per
week. The rent they paid was 3_s._ weekly, which was little more than
the interest on the money invested. I have remonstrated on the
indecency of such habits, and on their bad effects, but the expense of
the extra shilling a-week for a house with another bed-room was
considered a sufficient answer to my remonstrance. In my own tenements
I have built the additional room, and notwithstanding the
remonstrances, I have required the additional rent. When they have
remonstrated, I have told them of the fact, that the cost of the
additional room would only be a beneficial deduction from the money
spent in liquor.”
It would require much time and various opportunities of observation to
attempt to make an exact analysis of the combined causes, and an
estimate of the effect of each separate cause which operate to produce
the masses of moral and physical wretchedness met with in the
investigation of the condition of the lowest population. But it became
evident, in the progress of the inquiry, that several separate
circumstances had each its separate moral as well as physical influence.
Thus tenements of inferior construction had manifestly an injurious
operation on the moral as well as on the sanitary condition,
independently of any overcrowding. For example, it appears to be matter
of common observation, in the instance of migrant families of workpeople
who are obliged to occupy inferior tenements, that their habits soon
become “of a piece” with the dwelling. A gentleman who has observed
closely the condition of the workpeople in the south of Cheshire and the
north of Lancashire, men of similar race and education, working at the
same description of work, namely, as cotton-spinners, mill hands, and
earning nearly the same amount of wages, states that the workmen of the
north of Lancashire are obviously inferior to those in the south of
Cheshire, in health and habits of personal cleanliness and general
condition. The difference is traced mainly to the circumstance, that the
labourers in the north of Lancashire inhabit stone houses of a
description that absorb moisture, the dampness of which affects the
health, and causes personal uncleanliness, induced by the difficulty of
keeping a clean house. The operation of the same deteriorating
influences were also observable in Scotland, and it may be illustrated
by several instances which I have met with in the course of my own
personal inquiries.
One of the circumstances most favourable to the improvement of the
condition of an artisan or an agricultural labourer, is his obtaining as
a wife a female who has had a good industrial training in the well
regulated household of persons of a higher condition. The following
instance of the effect of the dwelling itself on the condition of a
female servant when married, was brought to my notice by a member of the
family in which they had been brought up. One was of a young woman who
had been taught the habits of neatness, order, and cleanliness most
thoroughly as regards household work.
“Her attention to personal neatness,” says a lady who is my informant,
“was very great; her face seemed always as if it were just washed, and
with her bright hair neatly combed underneath her snowwhite cap, a
smooth white apron, and her gown and handkerchief carefully put on,
she used to look very comely. After a year or two, she married the
serving man, who, as he was retained in his situation, was obliged to
take a house as near his place as possible. The cottages in the
neighbourhood were of the most wretched kind, mere hovels built of
rough stones and covered with ragged thatch; there were few even of
these, so there was no choice, and they were obliged to be content
with the first that was vacant, which was in the most retired
situation. After they had been married about two years, I happened to
be walking past one of these miserable cottages, and as the door was
open, I had the curiosity to enter. I found it was the home of the
servant I have been describing. But what a change had come over her!
Her face was dirty, and her tangled hair hung over her eyes. Her cap,
though of good materials, was ill washed and slovenly put on. Her
whole dress, though apparently good and serviceable, was very untidy,
and looked dirty and slatternly; everything indeed about her seemed
wretched and neglected, (except her little child,) and she appeared
very discontented. She seemed aware of the change there must be in her
appearance since I had last seen her, for she immediately began to
complain of her house. The wet came in at the door of the _only room_,
and when it rained, through every part of the roof also, except just
over the hearth-stone; large drops fell upon her as she lay in bed, or
as she was working at the window: in short, she had found it
impossible to keep things in order, so had gradually ceased to make
any exertions. Her condition had been borne down by the condition of
the house. Then her husband was dissatisfied with his home and with
her; his visits became less frequent, and if he had been a day
labourer, and there had been a beer-shop or a public-house, the
preference of that to his home would have been inevitable, and in the
one instance would have presented an example of a multitude of cases.
“She was afterwards, however, removed to a new cottage, which was
water-tight, and had some conveniences, and was built close to the
road, which her former mistress and all her friends must constantly
pass along. She soon resumed, in a great degree, her former good
habits, but still there was a little of the _dawdle_ left about her;
the remains of the dispiritedness caused by her former very
unfavourable circumstances.”
I visited some other dwellings not far from the one above described, and
met with another instance of a female who had been brought up as a
servant in a well-ordered house, and who, for her station, had received
a very excellent religious and moral education. Before her marriage she
had been distinguished by the refinement with which she sung national
airs, and for her knowledge of the Bible and of the doctrines of her
church. Her personal condition had become of “a piece” with the wretched
stone undrained hovel, with a pigsty before it, in which she had been
taken. We found her with rings of dirt about her neck, and turning over
with dirty hands Brown’s Dictionary, to see whether the newly-elected
minister was “sound” in his doctrine. In this case no moral lapse was
apparent, but the children were apparently brought up under great
disadvantages.
There, however, as in most cases, the internal economy of the houses
were primarily affected by the defective internal and surrounding
drainage that produced the damp and wet, and thence the dirt against
which the inmates had ceased to contend. On inquiry of the male
labourers in the district, it appeared that almost every third man was
subjected to rheumatism; and with them, it was evident that the
prevalence of damp and marsh miasma from the want of drainage, if it did
not necessitate, formed a strong temptation to, the use of ardent
spirits. With them as with the females, the wretched condition of the
tenement formed a strong barrier against personal cleanliness and the
use of decent clothes.
In the rural districts the very defects of the cottages which let in the
fresh air, in spite of all the efforts of the inmates to exclude it,
often obviate the effects of the overcrowding and defective ventilation.
It has been observed, that while the labouring population of several
districts have had no shelter but huts, similar to those described by
Dr. Gilly, as the habitations of the border peasantry, which afforded a
free passage for currents of air, they were not subject to fevers,
though they were to rheumatism; but when, through the good intentions of
the proprietors, such habitations were provided as were deemed more
comfortable from excluding the weather effectually, but which, from the
neglect of ventilation afforded recesses for stagnating air, and
impurities which they had not the means or had not a sufficient love of
cleanliness to remove; though rheumatism was excluded, febrile infection
was generated. In the towns the access of the wind is impeded by the
closeness of the surrounding habitations, and the internal construction
of the dwellings tends to exclude the air still more effectually. Were
the closed windows opened, it would frequently be only to admit a worse
compound, the air from neglected privies, and the miasma from the wet
and undrained court or street.
The close pent up air in these abodes has, undoubtedly, a depressing
effect on the nervous energies, and this again, with the uneducated, and
indeed with many of the educated workpeople, has an effect on the moral
habits by acting as a strong and often irresistible provocative to the
use of fermented liquors and ardent spirits. Much may be due to the
incitement of association of greater numbers of people, but it is a
common fact that, the same workpeople indulge more in drink when living
in the close courts and lanes of the town than when living in the
country, and that the residence in the different places is attended with
a difference of effects similar to those described in respect to the
tailors working in crowded rooms in towns and the tailors working
separately or in the country. The workpeople who have fallen into habits
of drinking, strenuously allege the impossibility of avoiding the
practice in such places; they do, however, drink in greater quantities
in such places, and give increased effect to the noxious miasma by which
they are surrounded.
Some inquiries from _Mr. Liddle_, the medical officer of the Whitechapel
union, as to the condition of the workpeople he visited in such places
as he has described, brought to notice another indirect effect of the
external as well as the internal condition of the dwelling on their
domestic economy and general condition.
It appeared that the persons whom he visited for the purpose of
administering medical relief, were men earning, when in work, from
16_s._ to 20_s._ per week, the women earning proportionably. Yet
whenever they were subjected to the frequent attacks of sickness which
prevailed amongst them, they were in the most, wretched destitution: the
house was bare of everything; they had no provisions and no credit, and
their need for relief was most imminent. In answer to the inquiry how
this was to be accounted for, inasmuch as with agricultural labourers
who earned little more than half that sum, and paid nearly as much for
their food, in visiting their cottages with their ministers, I had
commonly observed some store of provisions; Mr. Liddle stated that in
such places as those in his district, in such atmospheres, a store of
provisions would not keep: everything decayed rapidly, and the
workpeople consequently lived “from hand to mouth.” On inquiring as to
this fact from a respectable butcher, accustomed to sell meat to persons
living in such situations, he stated that—
“Meat sold on a Saturday night, in hot weather, to poor people, who
have only one close room, in which they sleep, and live, and cook,
will certainly turn before the Sunday morning; when, if it were kept
in the butcher’s shop, or in a well-ventilated place, it would be in
as good a condition on the Monday morning. There is a great deal of
loss of meat in consequence of the want of ventilation and bad
condition of the dwellings of the poorer classes. The butter kept in
such places sooner becomes rancid, and the bread dry and
disagreeable.”
Here, then, we have from the one agent, a close and polluted atmosphere,
two different sets of effects; the one set here noticed engendering
improvidence, expense, and waste,—the other, the depressing effects of
external and internal miasma on the nervous system, tending to incite
the habitual use of ardent spirits; both tending to precipitate this
population into disease and misery.