accounts of the dreadful place, have we not? Greatly to my
disappointment, because when one goes to an opium den for the first time
one expects a creeping of the flesh at least, the place was neither
dreadful nor horrible. The room was of fair size, on the first floor; it
was furnished with a great bed, covered with a mattress; there was a
bench against the wall, and there were half a dozen common cane chairs.
Two men were lying on the bed enjoying the opium sleep, perhaps with the
dreams that De Quincey has described—but one cannot, even the thought
reader cannot, read another man’s dreams. A third man was taking his
opium by means of a long pipe. Half a dozen men were waiting their turn.
One of them had a musical instrument. Except for the smell of the place,
which was overwhelming, the musical instrument was the only horror of
the opium den. When I think of it I seem to remember a thousand
finger-nails scratching the window, or ten thousand slate-pencils
scratching a schoolboy’s slate. It is one of those memories which sink
into the brain and never leave a man. Nor can I understand why, under
the weird and wonderful torture of the intolerable music of that
instrument, even the sleepers themselves did not awake, their dreams
dissipated, their opium, so to speak, wasted and rendered of none
account, and fly, shrieking, forswearing forever opium and the Chinese
quarter.
There are small colonies and settlements of other foreigners. Anarchists
make little clubs where murders are hatched, especially murders of
foreign sovereigns; they think to overthrow a settled government by the
assassination of a king; they succeed only in adding one more to the
anxieties and the dangers that accompany a crown. There are Orleanists,
Bonapartists, Carlists, and I know not what, who carry on their little
intrigues and their correspondence with partizans in France and Spain
and elsewhere, with a great show of zeal and much promise of results—the
day after to-morrow. But with these we have nothing to do. It is enough
for us to note the continual immigration into London of aliens who
become in a few years English in manners, and in the next generation are
English in speech and in thought, in will, as in manners. As it was in
the days of Edward I, when the men of Rouen, the men of Caen, the men of
the Empire, the Venetian, the Genoese, the Fleming, the Gascon, the
Spaniard, the Hamburger, from every part of western Europe came as
merchants to trade, and remained to settle. So it is in the days of
Victoria. They come to the banks of the Thames by thousands every year,
and they come to stay, and they are content to be absorbed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIII
THE HOUSELESS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIII
THE HOUSELESS
AT the present moment nearly all those parts of East London which are
inhabited by working-men of all kinds, from the foreman and the engineer
and the respectable craftsman in steady employ at good wages down to the
casual and the dock-hand and the children of the street, are suffering
from a dearth of houses. In this vast labyrinthine maze of streets—all
houses—there are not enough houses. The people are willing to incur
discomfort; a respectable household, accustomed to the decencies of life
and the wholesome separation of their children from themselves and from
each other, will consent to pack them all into one room, or into a
work-man’s flat of two rooms in a “model” barrack; they are ready to
offer double the former rent, with a tremendous premium on the “key,”
but still there are no houses and no lodgings to be had even on those
terms. The rents of the lowest tenements are mounting daily; there seems
to be no limit in the upward tendency; the landlord is no longer
doubtful as to the increased rent he can demand; the rise is automatic,
it goes on without any stimulus or grinding on his part. A single room,
in some quarters, is the very best that can be hoped for; the rent of
that room, which was formerly from three to four shillings, is now six
or more, while the charge for the “key,”—_i.e._, the fine on taking the
room,—which was formerly a few shillings, is now a pound or even more.
Meantime, although they are willing to pay the high rents, people are
everywhere found wandering in search of lodgings. A workman who has
found employment must be within easy reach of his work; if he cannot
find lodgings, what is he to do? The workhouse authorities have in some
cases risen to the occasion. They agree to take in a man’s wife and
family and to keep them at a fixed charge until the breadwinner finds a
lodging. He himself seeks a fourpenny bed at a “doss” house—_i.e._, a
common lodging-house.
In some parts it is reported that the overcrowding has actually led to
the letting, not of rooms, but of beds; the children are put to sleep
under the bed; men on night duty hire the bed for the day; nay, it is
even said that beds are divided among three tenants, or sets of tenants.
Of these one will occupy it from ten in the evening till six in the
morning, another from six in the morning till two in the afternoon, and
a third from two until ten. This Box and Cox arrangement would present
difficulties with the children.
The situation, which has been growing worse for a long time, has now
reached that acute stage in a social problem when it can no longer be
neglected by statesmen or by philanthropists. Attention, at least, has
been called to the evil—papers are read, articles are written, speeches
are made; so far we have got little farther than an understanding of the
difficulties which are such as to seem fatal to any proposed remedy that
has been yet advanced. For my own part, I have no views except a
conviction that something must be done, and that without delay, and that
the best that can be done will only be the least dangerous of many
proposed experiments.
The subject may appear technical and dry, but it is impossible to speak
of work-a-day London without touching on the difficulty of housing the
people. A speaker at a recent meeting took exception to the phrase
“housing of the people.” He said, which is quite true, that the people
are not cattle. We are not, yet we must be housed whether we are rich or
poor, or only middling. I am, myself, housed indifferent well, but I
feel no comparison with an ox or a cow when I am told so.
The facts of the case were first ascertained by a commissioner for the
“Daily News,” and published in that paper early in 1899. The work was
carried out by Mr. George Haw, a resident in one of the new settlements.
The reader who wishes to consider the subject from every point of view
is referred to the volume in which Mr. Haw has reprinted his valuable
papers.
It is not probable that the difficulties which any one populous city has
to encounter have no lesson to convey to other cities, though the
circumstances in each case must vary with the conditions of site,
access, and many other considerations. Overcrowding in New York or in
Boston would certainly present many features differing widely from those
in London. Moreover, the remedy or the alleviations which would serve in
one case might be impossible in another.
The principal causes operating to produce this overcrowding are
three—the vast and rapid increase of population, the extraordinary
development of new industries in East London, with a consequent demand
for more labor, and the flocking of country lads into the town.
For instance, there are two places, both lying outside the limits of the
London County Council, which twenty or thirty years ago were mere
villages or rural hamlets, the churches standing among market gardens
and fields, having still their great houses and gardens, the residence
of City merchants who drove in their own carriages to and from their
offices. One of them, called East Ham, I remember, a quarter of a
century ago, as a village spread about on a large area, as if land had
no value. It was a flat expanse, fertile, and lying close to the Thames
marshes. The map of that time shows farms and farmhouses, almshouses,
and a few cottages. This place has now a population of ninety thousand,
increasing every day, and consisting entirely of the working-class.
Its neighbor, formerly also a village a little nearer London and called
West Ham, presents on the map of 1891 the aspect, familiar to the
growing suburban town, of a small central area covered with streets, and
with new streets running out north, south, east, and west. It is quite
obvious from the map that West Ham was destined to be rapidly built
over. It is now a huge town of two hundred and seventy thousand people,
also, like East Ham, entirely consisting of working-people. It was at
one time a place much loved by Quakers; evidence of their occupation
still remains in certain stately old houses, now let out in lodgings;
their gardens are built over; the character of the place is changed; the
streets are crowded with people; trains and omnibuses run about all day;
one of the Quaker’s gardens still survives; it belonged to a member of
the Gurney family; the house has been pulled down, but the lordly garden
is kept up and the grounds around it have become the park for the West
Ham folk. The quickened demand for lodgings has caused the whole of this
town to be overrun with streets of small workmen’s houses, containing
four or six rooms each, most of which are let to families by two rooms
or by single rooms. But the demand still continues; by-streets are run
across, narrow lanes usurp the small backyard or little slip of garden;
when the whole available space is built over, what will happen next? The
crazy condition of these jerry-built houses, after a few years, opens up
another and a different set of questions. The case of West Ham
represents only on a more rapid scale what has been going on for many
years over the whole of industrial London. And now we seem at last to
have arrived at an end to the accommodation possible on the old method
of small houses and narrow streets.
[Illustration: East and West Ham.]
[Illustration: East and West Ham, from the Marshes.]
The results of the overcrowding are, as might be expected, deplorable in
the extreme. Among other evils, it kills the infants; it dwarfs those
who grow up among its evil influences; it poisons the air; it deprives
the house of comfort, of cleanliness, of decency; it drives the man to
drink; and it makes the life of their unhappy wives one long-continued
misery of hopeless battle with dirt and disease. The late Sir Benjamin
Richardson would allow, in his “City of Health,” no more than
twenty-five persons to an acre; in some of the outlying suburbs of
London there are no more; in others there are, or have been, actually as
many as 3000 people crowded together over a single acre of ground. Put
them up all together in a solid square; each person will take 2 feet by
1½ feet—that is, three square feet. The whole company of 3000 will stand
on 9000 square feet, or 1000 square yards. This is about a fifth of an
acre, so that if we spread them out to cover the whole of the acre each
person will have no more than a square yard and a half in which to
stand, to sleep, and to breathe.
Of course, the first effect of the overcrowding is the vitiation of the
air. The extent of this vitiation has been ascertained by chemical
analysis. But, indeed, the senses of sight and smell do not require the
aid of chemical analysis in order to prove that the air is corrupt and
unwholesome. It is poisoned by the breathing of so many; by the refuse
that will always be found lying about where a multitude of people are
massed together; by all the contributions of all the unwashed. Sometimes
the kindly rains descend and wash the pavements and the roads; sometimes
the fresh breeze quickens and drives out the malodorous air from the
narrow streets, but wind and rain cannot enter into rooms where the
occupants jealously keep the windows closed, and fear cold more than
they fear the fetid breath of diphtheria and fever; the wind drops; the
warm sun comes out; then from the ground under and between the stones,
from the saturated road, from the brick walls, from the open doors, the
foul air steals back into the street and hangs over the houses
invisible, yet almost as pestilential as the white mist of the morning
that floats above the tropical marsh.
The magnitude of the evil may be estimated by the fact that nearly a
million people have to live in London under these conditions. A whole
million of people are condemned to this misery and to the moral and
physical sufferings entailed—the degradation of decent women, the death
of children who might have grown up honest and respectable men and
women! A whole million! We cannot think in millions; the magnitude of
the number conveys no impression as to the magnitude of the evil. We can
only realize it by taking a single case. Let us take the case of A. B.
and his family. He was by trade a mechanical engineer; perhaps they
called him a fitter, but it matters nothing; he was a decent and a sober
man; he had a wife and five children, the eldest of whom was twelve and
as “likely” a girl as one would see anywhere—but they were all likely
children, clean and well kept and well fed and well mannered, the pride
of their mother. The man had employment offered him in some works. It
was absolutely necessary for him to live near his work. He broke up,
therefore, his “little home”—they all delight in making a “little
home”—and brought his children to live in the overcrowded quarter near
his work. After a great deal of difficulty he secured one room. It was
no more than ten feet square; in that room he had to pack all his
children and his wife and all his effects. There was simply no room for
the latter; he therefore pawned them; it would be only for a time, a few
days, a week or two, and they would find a house, or at least better
lodgings. Imagine, if you can, the change. This unfortunate family came
from a decent flat of three rooms, in which the two boys slept in the
living-room, the three girls in one bedroom and the parents in the
other. They had on the staircase access to a common laundry; the roof
was the place for drying the clothes; it was also a place where on a
summer evening they could breathe fresh air. In place of this flat they
had to accommodate themselves in a single small room. This had to
contain all their furniture; to be at once the common bedroom,
living-room, kitchen, wash-house, drying-room, dressing-room—think of
it! There was, however, no choice. They pawned most of their “sticks”;
they brought in nothing but absolute necessaries; they had a large bed,
a table, a cupboard, two or three chairs, some kitchen things, and a
washtub—little else. And so, uncomplaining, they settled down. It would
only be for a week or two. Meantime, the rent of this den was 6_s._
6_d._ a week, and a pound for the “key.”
Outside, the pressure grew worse; the more the factories flourished, the
more hands were wanted; new houses were run up with all the speed and
all the scamping of work that a jerry-builder could provide, but still
the pressure grew. For the man his home brought no comfort; he was not a
drinking man, but he began to sit in the public house and to spend his
evenings talking; his children could not sit at home; they ran about the
streets; the eldest girl, who was so pretty and had been so sweet, began
to assume the loud talk and rowdy habits of the girls around her; on the
unfortunate woman lay the chief burden of all. She toiled all day long
to keep things sweet and clean; alas! what can be done when seven people
have to sleep in a room with little more than a thousand cubic feet of
air between them all? She saw her husband driven away to the public
house, she saw her children losing their bright looks and their rosy
cheeks: what could she do? Many of the women around her, giving up the
struggle, went in and out of the public house all day. This woman did
not. But she was no longer the neat, clean housewife amid her clean
surroundings. The stamp of deterioration was upon her and upon the
others.
Then the summer came, with a week of hot weather to begin with, and the
foundation of the house asserted itself; the house, you see, was built
upon the rubbish of the dust-cart. You do not believe it possible? I can
show you whole streets in the suburbs which I have myself seen built
upon the rubbish of the dust-heap. It contains, among other things
useful and beneficial to the occupants, quantities of cabbage stumps and
other bits of vegetable matter. So when the hot weather came the cabbage
stumps behaved accordingly; the foul air from the foundations crept
through the floors and crawled up the stairs and poured under the doors.
First it was sore throat, then it was something else, and from house to
house it was spread, and the doctor came and went, and in the broad bed
of the little room lay four children sick at once; their soft, white
skins were hard and dry and red; their brains wandered; the mother, with
haggard face, bent over them.
It is all over now; three of the children lie in the new cemetery; the
man has got a house at last; he will not get back his children, nor will
the two who are left to him ever be again what they once were. This is
one story out of the thousands which may be told of the people who live
in the crowded quarters.
Another cause of overcrowding springs from the bad building of the
workmen’s houses. It is not only the foundation that is rotten: the
house itself is built of bad brick laid in single courses, the woodwork
is unseasoned and shrinks, zinc is used instead of lead, the stairs are
of matchboard—only the cheapest and worst materials are used. There are
laws, there always have been laws, against bad building; there are
inspectors, yet the bad building continues. A man who had been an
apprentice in the building trade told me how this surprising result of
our laws and our inspectors used to be possible twenty-five years ago.
“It is this way,” he said; “I was a boy when these houses were built.
For a house like this it was £15 to the inspector; for one of the
smaller houses it was £10.” We must not believe it possible for such a
thing to happen now; one’s faith in human nature would suffer too severe
a blow, but when one looks around in certain quarters that little
transaction between the honest builder and the faithful inspector recurs
to my unwilling memory.
In course of time authority interposes. The houses are condemned. Out go
the people, with their sticks, into the street; the houses are boarded
up, the boys throw stones at the windows; the place is deserted. But
where are the people to go?
There is a riverside parish entirely inhabited by the lowest kind of
working-people, chiefly dock laborers and casuals and factory girls.
There are literally no inhabitants of a higher class, except the clergy
and a few ladies who live and work among the people. There was until
recently a population of eight thousand in this parish. But street after
street has been condemned; the houses, boarded up, their windows broken
by the boys, stand miserably waiting to be pulled down; the parish has
lost three thousand of its population. Where have they gone? Nobody
knows; but they must go somewhere, and they have certainly gone where
the rents are higher and the crowding worse.
Or the London County Council, becoming aware of the insanitary condition
of a whole area, condemns it all, _en bloc_, takes it over, pulls down
the miserable tenements and erects new buildings in their place. Nothing
could be better; everybody applauds this vigorous action. Yet what
happens? I will show you from a single example.
There is an area of fifteen acres in Bethnal Green, one of the worst and
most overcrowded parts of London. It contains twenty streets, all small;
there were 730 houses, and there were 5719 people. About a third of this
army lived in tenements of one room each; nearly a half lived in
tenements of two rooms. This area has been entirely cleared away; the
London County Council turned out the people, and built upon the site a
small town whose streets are fifty feet wide, whose houses are five
stories high; water and gas are laid on, workshops are provided, there
are only thirty one-room tenements, there are only five hundred of two
rooms, and so on; the rent of the two-room tenements is six shillings a
week; the center of the area is occupied by a circular terraced garden.
Nothing could be better. Moreover, to crown all, the cost of the whole
will be repaid to the ratepayers by means of a sinking fund spread over
sixty years.
BUT—what became of the five thousand while these fine palaces were being
built? Did their condition improve? Or did it become worse during the
period of construction? They were turned out; they had to go somewhere;
they imposed themselves upon districts already overcrowded, their habits
most certainly grew more careless and more draggled, their condition
most certainly grew worse. How many of the five thousand will come back
to the old quarters and enter upon the civilized life offered to them? I
know not; but the experience is that the former occupants do not return.
London in all directions is now thickly planted with the huge, ugly
erections called model lodging-houses, workmen’s residences, and
barracks. South London, across the river, is especially rich in these
erections. Drury Lane, the historic Drury Lane, once the home of Nell
Gwynne, the site of the National Theatre, accommodates a vast number of
people in its barracks; it is favored also with two playgrounds for the
children; both are disused burial grounds—one of them is the burial
ground in “Bleak House.”
Opinions vary as to the success of these buildings. Their advantages at
first sight appear overwhelming. Step out of a Drury Lane block into one
of the courts beside it and a dozen advantages will immediately be
perceived by all your senses at once. It is a great thing to be clean if
you like cleanliness; to have a sanitary house if you like fresh air; to
have conveniences for washing if, unlike Dr. Johnson, you prefer your
linen to be clean. But there are certain losses about the block
building. I do not say that they are greater than the gains. It has
always been the instinctive desire of the Englishman to have his own
home, to himself, separate. It is a survival of the early Anglo-Saxon
custom when each family formed a settlement to itself. The working-man
would like to have his cottage and his bit of garden, and to enjoy his
own individuality apart from the rest of the world. In the block he
loses this distinction; his family is one of fifty, of a hundred; his
children are part of a flock, there is no more distinction among them
than in a flock of sheep. There are great dangers attending the loss of
the individual; it tends to destroy ambition, to weaken the power of
free thought, to injure the responsibility of self-government. This loss
is a very great danger among a people whose whole history illustrates
the value of a sturdy assertion of self, of personal independence, of
responsibility, and of a continual readiness to revolt against any
encroachments of authority. For these reasons many regard the barrack or
block system with suspicion and dislike.
Other reasons there are which make these flats unpopular, even though
they continue to be in great request. They are defects which might be
managed by the exercise of a little organization. But it has not yet
occurred to the managing bodies of these barracks that the tenants who
are intrusted with the votes for the government of the country might
also very well be intrusted with the government of their own dwellings.
Thus it is complained that a whole staircase is sometimes terrorized by
two or three roughs, that there are quarrels and drunken brawls on the
stairs at night, that there are continual disputes concerning the day
for using the laundry, that the stairs are not kept clean, that the
children see and hear and learn things which they should not—but then
the children of the streets learn things which they should not; I fear
we cannot keep the children from the tree of knowledge. The presence of
drunken rowdies, the objection of many to take their share in cleaning
the stairs, and other scandals of the kind ought all to be remedied or,
at least, attacked by the formation of committees of order composed of
the tenants themselves. I have long been of opinion that the real remedy
of most of the abuses of our streets and slums would be the organization
of the respectable inhabitants into committees of order and the
banishment of the police. Such committees in our barrack dwellings
should have power of ejectment against evil-doers; they should be their
own police.