crowded and unwholesome districts, appears to re-act as another
concurrent, cause in aggravation of the wretchedness and vice in which
they are plunged. Seeing the apparent uncertainty of the morrow, the
inhabitants really take no heed of it, and abandon themselves with the
recklessness and avidity of common soldiers in a war to whatever gross
enjoyment comes within their reach. All the districts I visited, where
the rate of sickness and mortality was high, presented, as might be
expected, a proportionate amount of severe cases of destitute orphanage
and widowhood; and the same places were marked by excessive recklessness
of the labouring population. In Dumfries, for example, it is estimated,
that the cholera, swept away one-eleventh part of the population. Until
recently, the town had not recovered the severe effects of the
visitation, and the condition of the orphans was most deplorable.
Amongst young artisans who were earning from 16_s._ to 18_s._ a-week, I
was informed that there were very few who made any reserves against the
casualties of sickness. I was led to ask the provost what number of
bakers’ shops there were? “Twelve,” was his answer. And what number of
whiskey-shops may the town possess? “Seventy-nine” was the reply. If we
might rely on the inquiries made of working-men when Dr. Arnott and I
went through the wynds of Edinburgh, their consumption of spirits bore
almost the like proportion to the consumption of wholesome food. We
observed to Captain Stuart, the superintendent of the police at
Edinburgh, in our inspection of the wynds, that life appeared to be of
little value, and was likely to be held cheap in such spots. He stated,
in answer, that a short time ago a man had been executed for the murder
of his wife in a fit of passion in the very room we had accidentally
entered, and where we were led to make the observation. At a short
distance from that spot, and amidst others of this class of habitation,
were those which had been the scenes of the murders by Burke and Hare.
Yet amidst these were the residences of working men engaged in regular
industry. The indiscriminate mixture of workpeople and their children in
the immediate vicinity, and often in the same rooms with persons whose
character was denoted by the question and answer more than once
exchanged, “When were you last washed?” “When I was last in prison,” was
only one mark of the entire degradation to which they had been brought.
The working-classes living in these districts were equally marked by the
abandonment, of every civil or social regulation. Asking some children
in one of the rooms of the wynds in which they swarmed in Glasgow what
were their names, they hesitated to answer, when one of the inmates
said, they called them ——, mentioning some nicknames. “The fact is,”
observed Captain Miller, the superintendent of the police, “they really
have no names. Within this range of buildings I have no doubt I should
be able to find a thousand children who have no names whatever, or only
nicknames, like dogs.” There were found amidst the occupants, labourers
earning wages undoubtedly sufficient to have paid for comfortable
tenements, men and women who were intelligent, and so far as could be
ascertained, had received the ordinary education which should have given
better tastes and led to better habits. My own observations have been
confirmed by the statement of Mr. Sheriff Alison, of Glasgow, that in
the great manufacturing towns of Scotland, “in the contest with whiskey,
in their crowded population, education has been entirely overthrown.”
The ministers, it will be seen, make similar reports from the rural
districts. On the observation of other districts, and the comparison of
the habits of the same workmen in town and country, it will be seen that
I consider that the use of the whiskey and the prostration of the
education and moral habits for which the Scottish labourers have been
distinguished is, to a considerable extent, attributable to the
surrounding physical circumstances, including the effects of the bad
ventilation. The labourers presented to our notice in the condition
described, in the crowded districts, were almost all Scotch. It is
common to ascribe the extreme of misery and vice wholly to the Irish
portion of the population of the towns in Scotland. A short inspection
on the spot would correct this error. Mr. Baird, in his report on the
sanitary condition of the poor of Glasgow, observes that “the bad name
of the poor Irish had been too long attached to them.” Dr. Cowan, of
Glasgow, stated that “From ample opportunities of observation, they
appeared to him to exhibit much less of that squalid misery and
addiction to the use of ardent spirits than the Scotch of the same
grade.” Instances were indeed stated to us, where the Irish were
preferred for employment from their superior steadiness and docility;
and Mr. Stuart, the Factory Inspector for Scotland, states, that
“instances are now occurring of a preference being given to them as
workers in the flax factories on account of their regular habits, and
that very significant hints have been given by extensive factory owners,
that Irish workmen will be selected unless the natives of the place, and
other persons employed by them, relinquish the prevailing habits of
intemperance.” Dr. Scott Alison, in his report on Tranent, has described
the population in receipt of high wages, but living under similar
influences, as prone to passionate excitement, and as apt instruments
for political discontents; their moral perceptions appeared to have been
obliterated, and they might be said to be characterised by a “ferocious
indocility which makes them prompt to wrong and violence, destroys their
social nature, and transforms them into something little better than
wild beasts.”
It is to be regretted that the coincidence of pestilence and moral
disorder is not confined to one part of the island, nor to any one race
of the population. The overcrowding and the removal of what may be
termed the architectural barriers or protections of decency and
propriety, and the causes of physical deterioration in connexion with
the moral deterioration, are also fearfully manifest in the districts in
England, which, at the time to which the evidence refers, were in a
state of prosperity.
_Mr. Baker_, in his report on the condition of the population, after
giving an instance of the contrast presented by the working people
living in better dwellings, situated in better cleansed neighbourhoods
(to which I shall advert when submitting the evidence in respect to
preventive measures), describes the population living in houses—
“With broken panes in every window-frame, and filth and vermin in
every nook. With the walls unwhitewashed for years, black with the
smoke of foul chimneys, without water, with corded bed-stocks for
beds, and sacking for bed-clothing, with floors unwashed from year to
year, without out-offices, * * * * while without, there are streets,
elevated a foot, sometimes two, above the level of the causeway, by
the accumulation of years, and stagnant puddles here and there, with
their fœtid exhalations, causeways broken and dangerous, ash-places
choked up with filth, and excrementitious deposits on all sides as a
consequence, undrained, unpaved, unventilated, uncared-for by any
authority but the landlord, who weekly collects his miserable rents
from his miserable tenants.
“Can we wonder that such places are the hot-beds of disease, or that
it obtains, upon constitutions thus liberally predisposed to receive
it, and forms the mortality which Leeds exhibits. Adult life, exposed
to such miasmata, gives way. How much more then infant life, when
ushered into, and attempted to be reared in, such obnoxious
atmospheres. On the moral habits similar effects are produced. An
inattention on the part of the local authorities to the state of the
streets diminishes year by year the respectability of their occupiers.
None dwell in such localities but to whom propinquity to employment is
absolutely essential. Those who might advocate a better state of
things, depart; and of those who remain, the one-half, by repeated
exhibitions of indecency and vulgarity, and indeed by the mere fact of
neighbourship, sink into the moral degradation which is natural to the
other, and vicious habits and criminal propensities precede the death
which these combinations prepare.”
No education as yet commonly given appears to have availed against such
demoralizing circumstances as those described; but the cases of moral
improvement of a population, by cleansing, draining, and the improvement
of the internal and external conditions of the dwellings, of which
instances will be presented, are more numerous and decided, though there
still occur instances of persons in whom the love of ardent spirits has
gained such entire possession as to have withstood all such means of
retrieving them. The most experienced public officers acquainted with
the condition of the inferior population of the towns would agree in
giving the first place in efficiency and importance to the removal of
what may be termed the physical barriers to improvement, and that as
against such barriers moral agencies have but a remote chance of
success.
A gentleman who has had considerable experience in the management of
large numbers of the manufacturing population stated to me that in every
case of personal and moral improvement the successful step was made by
the removal of the party from the ill-conditioned neighbourhood in which
he had been brought up. When a young workman married, he interfered to
get him a better residence apart from the rest; and when this was done
important alterations followed; but if he took up his abode in the old
neighbourhood, the condition of the wife was soon brought down to the
common level, and the marriage became a source of wretchedness.
Benevolent persons, viewing the bare aspect of some of the most
afflicted neighbourhoods, have raised subscriptions for the purchase of
furniture, bedding, and blankets, for the relief of the inmates, but by
this pecuniary aid they have only added fuel to the flame; that is, they
have enabled the inmates to purchase more ardent spirits. The force of
the habit, which is aggravated by misdirected charity, is indicated in
the following instances, of which one was mentioned to me by the _Rev.
Whitwell Elwin_:—
“I was lately informed by a master tailor of Bath that one of his men,
who had earned 3_l._ a-week at piece-work for years, had never within
his knowledge possessed table, chairs, or bedding. I found the
statement on examination to be strictly true. Some straw on which he
slept, a square block of wood, a low three-legged stool, and an old
tea-caddy, are the complete inventory of the articles of a room, the
occupier of which, with only himself and his wife to maintain, was
wealthier than many in the station of gentlemen. He had frequently
excited lively compassion in benevolent individuals, who, supposing
that he was struggling for very existence, furnished him with a
variety of household goods, which were regularly pawned before a week
was out, and afforded to the superficial observer fresh evidence of
the extremity of his distress. The cause of all this is quickly told:
the wife was to be seen going to and fro several times a-day with a
cream-jug of gin, and to gratify this appetite, they had voluntarily
reduced themselves to the condition of savages. I could add numerous
instances of a similar kind. Indeed, were a stranger to go through the
town, and judge only from the appearance of things, I am convinced
that he would select his examples of greatest privation not from the
really poor, but from men who were in the receipt of more than 30_s._
a-week. Charity, which when prompted by pure motives, always blesses
him that gives, does not always bless him that takes. I am afraid that
the indiscriminate adoption of dirt and rags as a test of poverty,
especially in a town like Bath, where private charity prevails on an
extensive scale, operates as a premium upon ill habits, and as a
discouragement to cleanliness, and leads many to affect a vice which
was not habitual to them.”
As an instance of that state of voluntary wretchedness which renders all
such charity or assistance worse than useless, I may give an incident
mentioned to me by _Sir Charles Shaw_, the chief commissioner of the new
police force in Manchester:—
“A week since,” says Sir Charles, “I sent an inspector of police to
examine a lodging-house. He came back to state that he had never
witnessed such a sight. He found in one room, totally destitute of
furniture, three men and two women lying on the bare floor, without
straw, and with bricks only for their pillows. I observed, that I
supposed they were drunk. ‘Yes,’ said the inspector; ‘they were, and I
found the lodging-house keeper himself in a tolerable bed, and in
another room I found bundles of fine fresh straw. I blamed the man for
not giving that straw to his lodgers.’ He answered, ‘I keep that straw
for the people who prefer purchasing it to gin: those above stairs
preferred the gin.’ It is, I find, a common thing here for
lodging-house keepers to have straw for sale.”
In the course of an examination which I took, under the Poor Law
Commission of Inquiry, from the late _Mr. Walker_, the stipendiary
magistrate of the Thames Police Office, he observed, in respect to cases
of apparent destitution:—
“Casualties occurring among the indigent or profligate are at all
times liable to be represented as cases resulting from the neglect of
the proper authorities. Some time ago, in going round the parish of
Whitechapel with the churchwardens, during service-time, we entered an
old building in Rosemary-lane, for which there was then no owner, the
stairs were so dark and ruinous that though it was mid-day we were
obliged to have a candle, to enable us to go up to them: the
first-floor was the receptacle of every description of filth. We
entered one room, in which we found two half-naked dirty children;
their mother lay in one corner on some dirty straw, covered only with
a sack. There was no furniture nor other articles in the place, except
a fagot of wood and a few broken plates, a basket of skate, and some
sprats strewed on the floor. This woman was a fish-hawker, a business
by which, in all probability, she gained enough to have made her
extremely comfortable, but she preferred an alternation of great
privation and profligate enjoyment. Had she accidentally died in this
state, here would have been a scene of misery, and a case of
excitement for the philanthropists! In our district there are other
premises under similar circumstances, all of which are tenanted by
persons of the very lowest grade; and it is surprising, considering
the state in which they live, that unaccountable deaths, having the
semblance of starvation, do not take place amongst them. From what I
have observed of these places, I am fully convinced that if shambles
were built on any spot, and all who choose were allowed to occupy
them, they would soon be occupied by a race lower than any yet known.
I have often said that if empty casks were placed along the streets of
Whitechapel, in a few days each of them would have a tenant, and these
tenants would keep up their kind, and prey upon the rest of the
community. I am sure that if such facilities were offered, there is no
conceivable degradation to which portions of the species might not be
reduced. Allow these tub-men no education, and you would have so many
savages living in the midst of civilization. Wherever there are empty
houses which are not secured, they are soon tenanted by wretched
objects, and these tenants continue so long as there is a harbour for
them. Parish officers and others come to me to aid them in clearing
such places. I tell the police and the parish that there is no use in
their watching these places, that they must board them up if they
would get rid of the occupants. If they will give the accommodation
they will get the occupants. If you will have marshes and stagnant
waters you will there have suitable animals, and the only way of
getting rid of them is by draining the marshes.”
The _Reverend Whitwell Elwin_ observes upon this subject that—
“Those who think that labourers will work for themselves a reform in
their habitations very much underrate the effects of habit. A person
accustomed to fresh air, and all the comforts of civilized life, goes
into a miserable room, dirty, bare, and, above all, sickening from the
smell. Judging from his own sensations, he conceives that nothing but
the most abject poverty could have produced this state of things, and
he can imagine nothing necessary to a cure but a way for escape. A
very simple experiment will correct these erroneous impressions. Let
him remain a short time in the room, and the perception of closeness
will so entirely vanish that he will almost fancy that the atmosphere
has been purified since his entrance. There are few who are not
familiar with this fact; and if such are the effects of an hour in
blunting our refined sensations, and rendering them insensible to
noxious exhalations, what must be the influence of years on the
coarser perceptions of the working-man?
“All who know the lower classes will testify that the last want felt
by the dirty is cleanliness, that their last expenditure is on the
comforts of their home. Two winters ago I found a painter whose bed
was without blankets, whose room was without furniture, who was
destitute even of the ordinary utensils of civilized life, whose floor
was covered with worse filth than that of the streets—I found this man
at dinner with a roast loin of pork stuffed with onions, a Yorkshire
pudding, a large jug of ale, cheese, and a salad. I will undertake to
say that half the gentlemen in Bath did not sit down on that Sunday to
so good a dinner.”
A number of communications simply assign “intemperance” as the cause of
fever, and of the prevalent mortality. Of most of these communications,
which it were unnecessary to recite, it may be observed, that when
intemperance is mentioned as the cause of disease, as being the
immediate antecedent, on carrying investigation a little further back,
discomfort is found to be the immediate antecedent to the intemperance;
and where the external causes of positive discomfort do not prevail in
the towns, the workpeople are generally found to have few or no rival
pleasures to wean them from habits of intemperance, and to have come
from districts subject to the discomforts likely to engender them. In
one of the returns from Scotland it is observed that with the people,
whether for a fever, a cold, or consumption, or a pleurisy, whiskey is
the universal antidote. The popular belief that fermented liquor or
ardent spirits are proper antidotes to the effects of damp or cold has
been universal, and has not wanted even medical sanction. Out-door
allowances of beer have been prescribed by some medical officers in
marshy and undrained districts as the proper preservatives against ague
or rheumatism. The Board will now be in a position to urge the
importance of facilitating drainage as a means for the protection of the
population by the prevention of disease and the inducement to pernicious
habits, as well as a source of profitable industry. It is now beginning
to be observed in several dangerous occupations that temperance is the
best means of withstanding the effects of the noxious agencies which
they have to encounter. Amongst the painters, for example, the men who
are temperate and cleanly suffer little from the occupation, but if any
one of them become intemperate, the noxious causes take effect with a
certainty and rapidity proportioned to the relaxed domestic habits. The
Inquiry presents many instances of the beneficial effects of the changes
of the popular habit of having recourse to fermented liquors or to
spirits as necessary protective stimulants. In several of the mining
districts, for example, it is an extensive practice to provide for the
accommodation of the miners out of the hot mines a room in which they
may drink beer as a preservative against the effects of the change to
the cold and damp air to which they are about to expose themselves. _Dr.
Barham_, in his Report to the Commissioners appointed to inquire into
the Employment of Young Persons in Mines and Manufactories, notices an
admirable example within the province of voluntary exertion, and the
beneficial effects produced by it at the Dolcoath copper and tin mine,
Camborne, Cornwall. There the proprietors, besides establishing other
easy and economical preventive arrangements, provide a warm room for the
miners to change their dresses and take hot meat-soup, which is cheaper,
probably, than beer. “And the men” (says a witness) “say they never feel
cold when they take it. We conceive that there have been much fewer
cases of consumption on the club since this practice has been adopted.”
The effects of the noxious physical agencies on the moral condition of
the population will receive more full illustration in connexion with the
statistical evidence as to their effects, with the evidence on the
practical operation of the means of prevention.
_Domestic mismanagement, a predisposing cause of disease._
The subsequent examples relate chiefly to the effects of general
domestic mismanagement as a concurrent cause of disease.
_Dr. Baker_, in his report on the sanitary condition of the population
of Derby, states that—
“There is also another cause of sickness to be found in their houses,
and which, like the former, _i. e._, the external circumstances, is in
constant operation: I mean the want of domestic comforts, a want which
the wages they earn would, in many instances, enable them to remove if
their means were not, as too often happens, expended viciously or
improvidently. It is with regret that I speak unfavourably of the
poor, whilst my whole aim, in this communication, has been to awaken a
sympathy towards those sufferings of which I have been so often a
witness. But several years’ experience of the habits of the poor,
derived from my situation as an hospital physician, and backed by the
additional evidence I have obtained by acting for three years as a
guardian of the poor in this large town, has, I am sorry to say,
served but to confirm me in the opinion I have just now expressed; and
in support of which I shall instance the family of the Slaters
mentioned at No. 12, in Short-street.
“The earnings of four members of this family were as follows:—
_s._ _d._
The father 14 0 per week, at gardening, &c.
The eldest son, aged 20 12 0 per week, at a brewery.
Daughter {Twins, } 6 0 per week, at a factory.
Son {aged 18} 9 0 per week, at the same factory.
—— —— —
£2 1 0 per week.
“The mother of this family, it appears, is left disengaged from all
but her household duties and the care of the younger children; the
house, nevertheless, is nearly destitute of furniture, and presents a
picture of disorder and want. On the other hand, at No. 15, (Briggs)
although the husband has for some years past been a weak and ailing
man, the family is well ordered and cleanly; and to this fact I mainly
attribute the milder and modified form of fever which affected the
children.”
The Committee of Physicians and Surgeons at Birmingham, in their report,
indicate the powerful operation of depraved domestic habits as a
predisposing cause to disease:—
“It cannot,” they say, “be doubted that whilst the arts and
manufactures of the place prove in some instances injurious to health,
and in a few possibly destructive to life, these evil consequences, as
well as hereditary predisposition to disease, are promoted by
intemperance, not that intemperance is an infinitely more frequent
cause of disease and death amongst the artisans than all the various
employments of all the manufactories combined.
“In the expenditure of their weekly earnings, improvidence and
thoughtless extravagance prevail to a lamentable degree. The
observations upon which this opinion is formed are made upon the
habits of the people themselves, confirmed by extensive and recent
inquiries among the shopkeepers with whom they deal. Tea, coffee,
sugar, butter, cheese, bacon, (of which a great deal is consumed in
this town,) and other articles, the working people purchase in small
quantities from the hucksters, who charge an enormous profit upon
them, being, as they state, compelled to do so to cover the losses
which they frequently sustain by bad debts. Huckster dealing is a most
extravagant mode of dealing; there were in this town, in 1834, 717 of
these shops, and the number has greatly increased since that time.
Meat is purchased in the same improvident manner; the working men
generally contrive to have a good joint of meat upon the Sunday; the
dinner on the other days of the week is made from steaks or chops,
which is the most extravagant mode either of purchasing or cooking
meat.
“The improvidence of this class of persons arises in many instances
from the indulgence of vicious propensities. Drunkenness, with all its
attendant miseries, prevails to a great extent, though it is by no
means to be regarded as a characteristic feature of the mechanic of
this town in particular. It most generally prevails among that class
of workmen who obtain the highest wages, but who are often found in
the most deplorable and abject condition. The improvidence of which we
are speaking is to be traced in very many instances to extreme
ignorance on the part of the wives of these people. The females are
from necessity bred up from their youth in the workshops, as the
earnings of the younger members contribute to the support of the
family. The minds and morals of the girls become debased, and they
marry totally ignorant of all those habits of domestic economy which
tend to render a husband’s home comfortable and happy; and this is
very often the cause of the man being driven to the alehouse to seek
that comfort after his day of toil which he looks for in vain by his
own fireside. The habit of a manufacturing life being once established
in a woman, she continues it, and leaves her home and children to the
care of a neighbour or of a hired child, sometimes only a few years
older than her own children, whose services cost her probably as much
as she obtains for her labour. To this neglect on the part of their
parents is to be traced the death of many children; they are left in
the house with a fire before they are old enough to know the danger to
which they are exposed, and are often dreadfully burnt.”
_Mr. Mott’s_ report on the sanitary condition of the population of his
district presents parallel instances of the different economy prevalent
amongst these classes:—
_Contrast in the Economy of Families._
1. 1.