I
MANAGEMENT OF HOUSES FOR THE POOR
(1899)
Thirty-four years ago, when I first began to manage houses inhabited by
working people, London was in a very different state from what it is
now, and it is useful and interesting to review the changes, their
effects, and their bearing on the special work we are considering
to-day.
(1) The standard of comfort was far lower then than now. In Marylebone,
where I began work, nearly every family rented but one room; now there
are hundreds of two- and three-roomed tenements. There were no
cooking-ranges in the rooms; water was hardly ever carried up higher
than the parlours. There were hardly any amusements open to the people;
there was no underground railway, no trams, few cheap omnibuses; there
were no free libraries, no Education Act, no Board schools. Wages were
very decidedly lower, hours of work were longer. The bright oil-lamps
did not exist. Food was not so cheap or so various. Flowers were never
sold in the streets to the poor. The people stood in those days far more
in need of cheer and of help.
(2) The knowledge of sanitary matters had penetrated hardly at all;
gross ignorance prevailed. There were, moreover, few, if any,
Convalescent Homes, no country holiday arrangements. The Building Acts
took cognizance of very few of the requirements for health, and hardly
any sanitary measures were enforcible—fewer were enforced. Few hospitals
for infectious diseases existed. Many excellent appliances for drainage
were not invented.
(3) There was not one-tenth part of the sympathy and interest in the
welfare of the people which permeates all classes now.
From these and many other causes a London court in 1864 was a far more
degraded and desolate place than it can be now, even in the remotest and
forlornest region, and in taking charge of it one had to do a variety of
things oneself, where now one finds the intelligent and willing
co-operation of many other agencies.
Again, there were next to no “model” dwellings and little power of cheap
locomotion, so that a court in those days was subject to little change
of population; the same families clung to it, lived, married and died in
it. Cheap locomotion and facilities in reading have brought the
different parts of London into much closer communication.
Many of these facts made the necessity for preserving and regulating the
old courts and houses far more important than is the case now. The old
courts are rapidly disappearing, and numerous blocks of buildings with
modern appliances are now scattered over most neighbourhoods. But in
1864 tenants were neither routed out of foul and close courts nor would
they have been received into the rare and select model dwellings.
Moreover, in the rough courts they were little meddled with, and could
pursue in ignorance their insanitary habits further than would be
possible now.
It was very natural, therefore, that my first efforts should have been
directed to rough courts and the inhabitants as I found them there.
Steady and gradual improvement of the people of the houses, without
selection of the former or sudden reconstruction of the latter, was our
first duty, and my little book on _Homes of the London Poor_ tells the
history of that early work. But if there is one duty more incumbent on
us than another in such efforts, it is to be quick to see where advance
is possible, how higher standards can be realized, and how much old
forms may be rightly superseded. With certain exceptions in regard to
small old houses, our work of late years has been increasingly in new
houses and with chosen tenants.
The principles, however, are the same, and there is one great fact which
the changing form has only brought out more and more clearly, and that
is that the conduct of houses or blocks, old or new, so as to secure
health and comfort and homelike feeling, depends on management. One can
see any day excellent buildings execrably managed, and one may see
tumble-down old places of wretched construction both healthier and far
more homelike because well managed. And I may confidently say that the
distinctive feature of our work has been that of devoting our full
strength to management. It will be realized at once how much more this
implies than “rent collecting.” An ordinary clerk will go from door to
door for rents; that is a very different matter from managing houses. We
have tried, so far as possible, to enlist ladies, who would have an idea
of how—by diligent attention to all business which devolves on a
landlord, by wise rule with regard to all duties which a tenant should
fulfil, by sympathetic and just decisions with a view to the common
good—a high standard of management could be attained: repairs promptly
and efficiently attended to, references carefully taken up, cleaning
sedulously supervised, overcrowding put an end to, the blessing of
ready-money payments enforced, accounts strictly kept, and, above all,
tenants so sorted as to be helpful to one another.
II
COTTAGE PROPERTY IN LONDON
(1866)
Two years ago I first had an opportunity of carrying out the plan I had
long contemplated, that of obtaining possession of houses to be let in
weekly tenements to the poor. That the spiritual elevation of a large
class depended to a considerable extent on sanitary reform was, I
considered, proved, but I was equally certain that sanitary improvement
itself depended upon educational work among grown-up people; that they
must be urged to rouse themselves from the lethargy and indolent habits
into which they have fallen, and freed from all that hinders them from
doing so. I further believed that any lady who would help them to obtain
things, the need of which they felt themselves, and would sympathize
with them in their desire for such, would soon find them eager to learn
her view of what was best for them; that whether this was so or not, her
duty was to keep alive their own best hopes and intentions, which come
at rare intervals, but fade too often for want of encouragement.
I laid the plan before Mr. Ruskin, who entered into it most warmly. He
at once came forward with all the money necessary, and took the whole
risk of the undertaking upon himself. He showed me, however, that it
would be far more useful if it could be made to pay; that a working man
ought to be able to pay for his own house; that the outlay upon it
ought, therefore, to yield a fair percentage upon the capital invested.
Thus empowered and directed, I purchased three houses in my own
immediate neighbourhood. They were leasehold, subject to a small
ground-rent. The unexpired term of the lease was for fifty-six years;
this we purchased for £750. We spent £78 additional in making a large
room at the back of my own house, where I could meet the tenants from
time to time. The plan has now been in operation about a year and a
half; the financial result is that the scheme has paid 5 per cent.
interest on all the capital (it should be remembered that 5 per cent.
interest in England on house property is equivalent to at least 8 per
cent. in the United States), has repaid £48 of the capital; sets of two
rooms have been let for little more than the rent of one, the houses
have been kept in repair, all expenses have been met for taxes,
ground-rent and insurance. In this case there is no expense for
collecting rents, as I do it myself, finding it most important work; but
in all the estimates I put aside the usual percentage for it, in case
hereafter I may require help, and also to prove practically that it can
be afforded in other cases. It should be observed that well-built houses
were chosen, but they were in a dreadful state of dirt and neglect. The
repairs required were mainly of a superficial and slight character;
slight in regard to expense—vital as to health and comfort. The place
swarmed with vermin; the papers, black with dirt, hung in long strips
from the walls; the drains were stopped, the water supply out of order.
All these things were put in order, but no new appliances of any kind
were added, as we had determined that our tenants should wait for these
until they had proved themselves capable of taking care of them. A
regular sum is set aside for repairs, and this is equally divided
between the three houses; if any of it remains, after breakage and
damage have been repaired, at the end of the quarter, each tenant
decides in turn in what way the surplus shall be spent, so as to add to
the comfort of the house. This plan has worked admirably; the loss from
carelessness has decreased to an amazing extent, and the lodgers prize
the little comforts which they have waited for, and seem in a measure to
have earned by their care, much more than those bought with more lavish
expenditure. The bad debts during the whole time the plan has been in
operation have only amounted to £2 11s. 3d. Extreme punctuality and
diligence in collecting rents, and a strict determination that they
shall be paid regularly, have accomplished this; as a proof of which it
is curious to observe that £1 3s. 3d. of the bad debts accumulated
during two months that I was away in the country. I have tried to
remember, when it seemed hardest, that the fulfilment of their duties
was the best education for the tenants in every way. It has given them a
dignity and glad feeling of honourable behaviour which has much more
than compensated for the apparent harshness of the rule.
Nothing has impressed me more than the people’s perception of an
underlying current of sympathy through all dealings that have seemed
harsh. Somehow, love and care have made themselves felt. It is also
wonderful that they should prize as they do the evenness of the law that
is over them. They are accustomed to alternate violence of passion and
toleration of vice. They expected a greater toleration, ignorant
indulgence and frequent almsgiving; but in spite of this have recognized
as a blessing a rule which is very strict, but the demands of which they
know, and a government which is true in word and deed. The plan of
substituting a lady for a resident landlady of the same class as her
tenants is not wholly gain. The lady will probably have subtler sympathy
and clearer comprehension of their needs, but she cannot give the same
minute supervision that a resident landlady can. Unhappily, the
advantage of such a change is, however, at present unquestionable. The
influence of the majority of the lower class of people who sublet to the
poor is almost wholly injurious. That tenants should be given up to the
dominion of those whose word is given and broken almost as a matter of
course, whose habits and standards are very low, whose passions are
violent, who have neither large hope nor clear sight, nor even sympathy,
is very sad. It seems to me that a greater power is in the hands of
landlords and landladies than of schoolteachers—power either of life or
death, physical or spiritual. It is not an unimportant question who
shall wield it. There are dreadful instances in which sin is really
tolerated and shared; where the lodger who will drink most with his
landlord is most favoured, and many a debt overlooked, to compensate for
which the price of rooms is raised; and thus the steady and sober pay
more rent to make up for losses caused by the unprincipled.
With the great want of rooms there is in this neighbourhood it did not
seem right to expel families, however large, inhabiting one room.
Whenever from any cause a room was vacant and a large family occupied an
adjoining one, I have endeavoured to induce them to rent the two. To
incoming tenants I do not let what seems decidedly insufficient
accommodation. We have been able to let two rooms for four shillings and
sixpence, whereas the tenants were in many cases paying four shillings
for one. At first they considered it quite an unnecessary expenditure to
pay more rent for a second room, however small the additional sum might
be. They have gradually learnt to feel the comfort of having two rooms,
and pay willingly for them. (It is not possible to form any comparison
between the rent of rooms in London and New York, the circumstances of
the two cities being so different; but the point to be observed is that,
by a very small increase of rent, the amount of accommodation may be
doubled.)
The pecuniary success of the plan has been due to two causes. First, to
the absence of middlemen; and, secondly, to great strictness about
punctual payment of rent. At this moment not one tenant in any of the
houses owes any rent, and during the whole time, as I have said, the bad
debts have been exceedingly small. The law respecting such tenancies
seems very simple, and when once the method of proceeding is understood,
the whole business is easily managed; and I must say most seriously that
I believe it to be better to pay legal expenses for getting rid of
tenants than to lose by arrears of rent—better for the whole tone of the
households, kinder to the tenants. The rule should be clearly understood
and the people will respect themselves for having obeyed it. The
commencement of proceedings which are known to be genuine and not a mere
threat is usually sufficient to obtain payment of arrears; in one case
only has an ejectment for rent been necessary. The great want of rooms
gives the possessors of such property immense power over their lodgers.
Let them see to it that they use it righteously. The fluctuations of
work cause to respectable tenants the main difficulties in paying their
rent. I have tried to help them in two ways. First, by inducing them to
save; this they have done steadily, and each autumn has found them with
a small fund accumulated, which has enabled them to meet the
difficulties of the time when families are out of town. In the second
place, I have done what I could to employ my tenants in slack seasons. I
carefully set aside any work they can do for times of scarcity, and I
try so to equalize in this small circle the irregularity of work, which
must be more or less pernicious, and which the childishness of the poor
makes doubly so. They have strangely little power of looking forward; a
result is to them as nothing if it will not be perceptible till next
quarter! This is very curious to me, especially as seen in connection
with that large hope to which I have alluded, and which often makes me
think that if I could I would carve over the houses the motto, “Spem,
etiam illi habent, quibus nihil aliud restat.”
Another beautiful trait in their character is their trust; it has been
quite marvellous to find how great and how ready this is. In no single
case have I met with suspicion or with anything but entire confidence.
It is needless to say that there have been many minor difficulties and
disappointments. Each separate person who has failed to rise and meet
the help that would have been so gladly given has been a distinct loss
to me; for somehow the sense of relation to them has been a very real
one, and a feeling of interest and responsibility has been very strong,
even where there was least that was lovely or lovable in the particular
character. When they have not had sufficient energy or self-control to
choose the sometimes hard path that has seemed the only right one, it
would have been hard to part from them, except for a hope that others
would be able to lead them where I have failed.
Two distinct kinds of work depend entirely on one another if they are to
bear their full fruit. There is, firstly, the simple fulfilment of a
landlady’s bounden duties, and uniform demand of the fulfilment of those
of the tenants. We have felt ourselves bound by laws which must be
obeyed, however hard obedience might often be. Then, secondly, there is
the individual friendship which has grown up from intimate knowledge and
from a sense of dependence and protection. Knowledge gives power to see
the real position of families; to suggest in time the inevitable result
of certain habits; to urge such measures as shall secure the education
of the children and their establishment in life; to keep alive the germs
of energy; to waken the gentler thought; to refuse resolutely to give
any help but such as rouses self-help; to cherish the smallest lingering
gleam of self-respect; and, finally, to be near with strong help should
the hour of trial fall suddenly and heavily, and to give it with the
hand and heart of a real old friend, who has filled many relations
besides that of almsgiver, who has long ago given far more than material
help, and has thus earned the right to give this lesser to the most
independent spirits.
III
BLANK COURT
(1871)
How this relation between landlord and tenant might be established in
some of the lowest districts of London, and with what results, I am
about to describe by relating what has been done in the last two years
in Blank Court.
In many of the houses the dustbins were utterly unapproachable, and
cabbage-leaves, stale fish and every sort of dirt were lying in the
passages and on the stairs; in some the back kitchen had been used as a
dustbin, but had not been emptied for years, and the dust filtered
through into the front kitchens, which were the sole living and sleeping
rooms of some families; in some, the kitchen stairs were many inches
thick with dirt, which was so hardened that a shovel had to be used to
get it off; in some there was hardly any water to be had; the wood was
eaten away, and broken away; windows were smashed, and the rain was
coming through the roofs. At night it was still worse; and during the
first winter I had to collect the rents chiefly then, as the
inhabitants, being principally costermongers, were out nearly all day,
and they were afraid to entrust their rent to their neighbours. It was
then that I saw the houses in their most dreadful aspect. I well
remember wet, foggy Monday nights, when I turned down the dingy court,
past the brilliantly lighted public-house at the corner, past the old
furniture outside the shops, and dived into the dark, yawning
passage-ways. The front doors stood open day and night, and as I felt my
way down the kitchen stairs, broken, and rounded by the hardened mud
upon them, the foul smells which the heavy, foggy air would not allow to
rise met me as I descended, and the plaster rattled down as I groped
along. It was truly appalling to think that there were human beings who
lived habitually in such an atmosphere, with such surroundings.
Sometimes I had to open the kitchen door myself, after knocking several
times in vain, when a woman, quite drunk, would be lying on the floor on
some black mass which served as a bed; sometimes, in answer to my
knocks, a half-drunken man would swear, and thrust the rent-money out to
me through a chink of the door, placing his foot against it so as to
prevent it opening wide enough to admit me. Always it would be shut
again without a light being offered to guide me up the pitch-dark
stairs. Such was Blank Court in the winter of 1869. Truly, a wild,
lawless, desolate little kingdom to come to rule over.
On what principles was I to rule these people? On the same as I had
already tried, and tried with success, in other places, and which I may
sum up as the two following: firstly, to demand a strict fulfilment of
their duties to me—one of the chief of which would be the punctual
payment of rent; and secondly, to endeavour to be so unfailingly just
and patient that they should learn to trust the rule that was over them.
With regard to details, I would make a few improvements at once, such,
for example, as the laying on of water and repairing of dustbins; but,
for the most part, improvements should be made only by degrees, as the
people became more capable of valuing them and not abusing them. I would
have the rooms distempered and thoroughly cleansed as they became
vacant, and then they should be offered to the more cleanly of the
tenants. I would have such repairs as were not immediately needed used
as a means of giving work to the men in times of distress. I would draft
the occupants of the underground kitchens into the upstairs rooms, and
would ultimately convert the kitchens into bathrooms and washhouses. I
would have the landlady’s portion of the house—i.e. the stairs and
passages—at once repaired and distempered, and they should be regularly
scrubbed, and, as far as possible, made models of cleanliness, for I
knew, from former experience, that the example of this would, in time,
silently spread itself to the rooms themselves, and that payment for
this work would give me some hold over the older girls. I would collect
savings personally, not trust to their being taken to distant banks or
savings clubs. And, finally, I knew that I should learn to feel these
people as my friends, and so should instinctively feel the same respect
for their privacy and their independence, and should treat them with the
same courtesy that I should show towards any other personal friends.
There would be no interference, no entering their rooms uninvited, no
offer of money or the necessaries of life. But when occasion presented
itself I should give them any help I could, such as I might offer
without insult to other friends—sympathy in their distresses; advice,
help and counsel in their difficulties; introductions that might be of
use to them; means of education; visits to the country; a lent book when
not able to work; a bunch of flowers brought on purpose; an invitation
to any entertainment, in a room built at the back of my own house, which
would be likely to give them pleasure. I am convinced that one of the
evils of much that is done for the poor springs from the want of
delicacy felt, and courtesy shown, towards them, and that we cannot
beneficially help them in any spirit different to that in which we help
those who are better off. The help may differ in amount, because their
needs are greater. It should not differ in kind.
I have learned to know that people are ashamed to abuse a place they
find cared for. They will add dirt to dirt till a place is pestilential,
but the more they find done for it, the more they will respect it, till
at last order and cleanliness prevail. It is this feeling of theirs,
coupled with the fact that they do not like those whom they have learned
to love, and whose standard is higher than their own, to see things
which would grieve them, which has enabled us to accomplish nearly every
reform of outward things that we have achieved; so that the surest way
to have any place kept clean is to go through it often yourself.
Amongst the many benefits which the possession of the houses enables us
to confer on the people, perhaps one of the most important is our power
of saving them from neighbours who would render their lives miserable.
It is a most merciful thing to protect the poor from the pain of living
in the next room to drunken, disorderly people. “I am dying,” said an
old woman to me the other day; “I wish you would put me where I can’t
hear S—— beating his wife. Her screams are awful. And B—— too, he do
come in so drunk. Let me go over the way to No. 30.” Our success depends
on duly arranging the inmates; not too many children in any one house,
so as to overcrowd it; not too few, so as to overcrowd another; not two
bad people side by side, or they drink together; not a terribly bad
person beside a very respectable one.
It appears to me, then, to be proved by practical experience that when
we can induce the rich to undertake the duties of landlords in poor
neighbourhoods, and ensure a sufficient amount of the wise, personal
supervision of educated and sympathetic people acting as their
representatives, we achieve results which are not attainable in any
other way. I would call upon those who may possess cottage property in
large towns to consider the immense power they thus hold in their hands
and the large influence for good they may exercise by the wise use of
that power. When they have to delegate it to others, let them take care
to whom they commit it; and let them beware lest, through the widely
prevailing system of subletting, this power ultimately abide with those
who have neither the will nor the knowledge which would enable them to
use it beneficially.
It is on these things and their faithful execution that the life of the
whole matter depends, and by which steady progress is ensured. It is the
smaller things of the world that colour the lives of those around us,
and it is on persistent efforts to reform these that progress depends;
and we may rest assured that they who see with greater eyes than ours
have a due estimate of the service, and that if we did but perceive the
mighty principles underlying these tiny things we should rather feel
awed that we are entrusted with them at all, than scornful and impatient
that they are no larger. What are we that we should ask for more than
that God should let us work for Him among the tangible things which He
created to be fair and the human which He redeemed to be pure? From time
to time He lifts a veil and shows us, even while we struggle with
imperfections here below, that towards which we are working—shows us
how, by governing and ordering the tangible things one by one, we may
make of this earth a fair dwelling-place. And, far better still, how, by
cherishing human beings, He will let us help Him in His work of building
up temples meet for Him to dwell in—faint images of that best Temple of
all which He promised that He would raise up on the third day, though
men might destroy it.
IV
THE INFLUENCE OF MODEL DWELLINGS UPON CHARACTER
(1892)
As it now seems fairly clear that the working population of London is
likely to be more and more housed in “blocks,” it is not very profitable
to spend time in considering whether this is a fact to rejoice in or to
deplore, except so far as the consideration may enable us to see how far
the advantages of the change may be increased or the drawbacks
diminished. The advantages of the change are very apparent and are apt
to appear overwhelming, and the disadvantages are apt to be dismissed as
somewhat sentimental or inevitable. I have, however, little to say upon
advantages. They may, I think, be briefly summed up under two heads. It
is supposed that better sanitary arrangements are secured in blocks. It
is also certain that all inspection and regulation are easier in blocks;
and on inspection and regulation much of our modern legislation, much of
our popular hope is based.
With regard to the sanitary arrangements, I think all who are at all
conversant with the subject are beginning to be aware that these at
least may be as faulty in blocks as in smaller buildings; but it is
undoubtedly true that even where this is so, the publicity of the block
enables inspection to be carried out much more easily, and so,
theoretically at least, a certain standard can be enforced. And though
this is not quite so true in actual practice as those who put their
faith in enforcement of sanitary law are apt to imagine, still it is
true, and it is a very distinct advantage to be noted.
Your readers may be astonished that I do not put down the greater
economy of the block system as a distinct gain, but I am not so wholly
sure as may seem that it exists. For, first, room by room the block
dwellings are not at all invariably cheaper than those in small houses.
Moreover, I think we can hardly permit, and assuredly cannot permanently
congratulate and pride ourselves upon, a form of construction which
admits so very little sunlight into lower floors. So that to the present
cost of block buildings must, I should think, be fairly added in the
future such diminution of height or such increase of yard space as would
allow of the freer entrance of air and light. This would increase the
ground-rent payable on each room. I think also that the cheapness of
erecting many-storied buildings is exaggerated. I have built very few
blocks, but I have been consulted about some, and I have more than once
proved in £ s. d. that cutting off a story from the block as shown in
the plans was a very small net loss, when cost of building, saving on
rates, repairs, etc., and possibly even diminution in wall thickness,
justified by the lower elevation, were taken into account. We must also
remember the increase of rent gladly paid by the sober and home-loving
man for ground-floor rooms lighter and pleasanter than if overshadowed
by high blocks. I do not wish to generalize—the matter is one of £ s.
d.—but I say that the figures are well worth careful study on each
building scheme, and that, as far as the model dwellings are concerned,
I think their undue height in proportion to width of yard has sometimes
been due to the mistaken zeal for accommodating numbers of families. I
say mistaken, for with our increased means of cheap transit we should
try to scatter rather than to concentrate our population, especially if
the concentration has to be secured by dark lower rooms.
With regard to the disadvantages of blocks, I think they may be divided
into those which may be looked upon, by such of us as are hopeful, as
probably transitory, and those which seem, so far as we can see, quite
essential to the block system. The transitory ones are by far the most
serious. They are those which depend on the enormously increasing evil
which grows up in a huge community of those who are undisciplined and
untrained. They disappear with civilization; they are, so far as I know,
entirely absent in large groups of blocks where the tenants are the
quiet, respectable working-class families who, to use a phrase common in
London, “keep themselves to themselves,” and whose well-ordered, quiet
little homes, behind their neat little doors with bright knockers,
nicely supplied with well-chosen appliances, now begin to form groups
where responsible, respectable citizens live in cleanliness and order.
Under rules they grow to think natural and reasonable, inspected and
disciplined, every inhabitant registered and known, School Board laws
and laws of the landlord or company regularly enforced, every infectious
case of illness instantly removed, all disinfecting done at public cost,
is developed a life of law, regular, a little monotonous, and not
encouraging any great individuality, but consistent with happy home
life, and it promises to be the life of the respectable London working
man.
On the other hand, what life in blocks is to the less self-controlled
hardly any words of mine are strong enough to describe, and it is
abhorred accordingly by the tidy and striving, wherever any—even a small
number—of the undisciplined are admitted to blocks, or where, being
admitted, there is no real living rule exercised. Regulations are of
small avail; no public inspection can possibly, for more than an hour or
two, secure order; no resident superintendent has at once conscience,
nerve and devotion single-handed to stem the violence, the dirt, the
noise, the quarrels; no body of public opinion on the part of the
tenants themselves asserts itself: one by one the tidier ones depart
disheartened, the rampant remain and prevail, and often, though with a
very fair show to the outsider, the block becomes a sort of pandemonium.
No one who is not in and out day by day, or, better still, night after
night; no one who does not watch the swift degradation of children
belonging to tidy families; no one who does not know the terrorism
exercised by the rough over the timid and industrious poor; no one who
does not know the abuse of every appliance provided by the benevolent or
speculative but non-resident landlord, can tell what life in blocks is
where the population is low class. Sinks and drains are stopped; yards
provided for exercise must be closed because of misbehaviour; boys bathe
in the drinking-water cisterns; washhouses on staircases—or staircases
themselves—become the nightly haunt of the vicious, the Sunday gambling
places of boys; the yell of the drunkard echoes through the hollow
passages; the stairs are blocked by dirty children, and the life of any
decent hard-working family becomes intolerable.
The very same evils are nothing like as injurious where the families are
more separate, so that, while in smaller houses one can often try
difficult tenants with real hope of their doing better, it is wholly
impossible usually to try (or to train) them in blocks. The temptations
are greater, the evils of relapse are far greater. It is like taking a
bad girl into a school. Hence the enormous importance of keeping a large
number of small houses wherever possible for the better training of the
rowdy and the protection of the quiet and gentle; and I would implore
well-meaning landlords to pause before they clear away small houses and
erect blocks, with any idea of benefiting the poorer class of people.
The change may be inevitable, it may have to come, but as they value the
life of our poorer fellow-citizens, let them pause before they throw
them into a corporate life for which they are not ready, and which will,
so far as I can see, not train them to be ready for it. Let them either
ask tidy working people they know, or learn for themselves, whether I am
not right in saying that in the shabbiest little two-, four-, six- or
eight-roomed house, with all the water to carry upstairs, with one
little w.c. in a tiny backyard, with perhaps one dustbin at the end of
the court, and even, perhaps, with a dark little twisted staircase,
there are not far happier, better, yes, and healthier homes than in the
blocks where lower-class people share and do not keep in order far
better appliances.
And let them look the deeper into this in so far as our reformers who
trust to inspection for all education, our would-be philanthropists or
newspaper correspondents who visit a court or block once and think they
have seen it, even our painstaking statisticians who catalogue what can
be catalogued, are unable to deal with these facts. Those who know the
life of the poor know—those who watch the effect of letting to a given
family a set of rooms in a block in a rough neighbourhood, or rooms in a
small house in the same district, know—those who remember how numerous
are the kinds of people to whom they must refuse rooms in a block for
their own sake, or that of others, know. To the noisy drunkard one must
say, “For the quiet people’s sake, No”; to the weak drunkard one must
say, “You would get led away, No”; to the young widow with children one
must say, “Would not you be better in a small house where the resident
landlady would see a little to the children?” thinking in one’s heart
also, “and to you.” For the orphaned factory girl who would “like to
keep mother’s home together” one feels a less public life safer; for the
quiet family who care to bring up their children well one fears the bad
language and gambling on the stairs. For the strong and self-contained
and self-reliant it may be all right, but the instinct of the others who
cling on to the smaller houses is right for them.
For, after all, the “home”—the “life”—does not depend on the number of
appliances, or even in any deep sense on the sanitary arrangements. I
heard a workman once say, with some coarseness but with much truth,
“Gentlemen think if they put a water-closet to every room they have made
a home of it,” and the remark often recurs to me for the element of
truth there is in it, and there is more decency in many a tiny little
cottage in Southwark, shabby as it may be—more family life in many a one
room let to a family—than in many a populous block. And this is due
partly to the comparative peace of the more separate home: for it seems
as if a certain amount of quiet and even of isolation made family life
and neighbourly kindness more possible. People become brutal in large
numbers who are gentle when they are in smaller groups and know one
another, and the life in a block only becomes possible when there is a
deliberate isolation of the family and a sense of duty with respect to
all that is in common. The low-class people herd on the staircases and
corrupt one another, where those a little higher would withdraw into
their little sanctum. But in their own little house, or as lodgers in a
small house, the lower-class people get the individual feeling and
notice which often trains them in humanity.
Whatever may be the way out of the difficulty, let us hope that it may
come before great evil is done by the massing together of herds of
untrained people, and by the ghastly abuse of staircases, open all night
but not under public inspection, not easily inspected even if nominally
so placed. The problem is one we ought all, so far as in us lies, to lay
to heart and do what we can to solve. I have not dwelt here on what may
be called the “sentimental” objections to blocks. The first is the small
scope they give for individual freedom. The second is their painful
ugliness and uninterestingness in external look, which is nearly always
connected with the first. For difference is at least interesting and
amusing, monotony never. Let us hope that when we have secured our
drainage, our cubic space of air, our water on every floor, we may have
time to live in our homes, to think how to make them pretty, each in our
own way, and to let the individual characteristics they take from our
life in them be all good, as well as healthy and beautiful, because all
human life and work were surely meant to be like all Divine creations,
lovely as well as good.
V
SMALL HOUSES IN LONDON
(1886)
“Land is too valuable in London for us to build cottages, we must have
blocks.” Let that be granted for the moment; but that does not preclude
those who own such cottages from keeping them where they are built. And
I wish that any words of mine might avail with even one such owner, to
induce him to pause and consider, very seriously, whether, at any rate
for a time, he might not manage to drain and improve water supply and
roofs, and thoroughly clean such old buildings, instead of sweeping them
away. As to cost, the cottages are far more valuable than the cleared
space; as to health, they may be made, at a small cost, far more healthy
than any but the very best constructed and best managed blocks. As to
the life possible in them—of which the charitable and reforming and
legislating bodies know so little—it is incomparably happier and better.
Let us keep them while we can.
And suppose we grant that London is coming to block buildings, and must
come to them; the preservation of the cottages gives time for the
question of management to be studied and perfected. The improvement may
come from the training and subsequent employment of ladies like my own
fellow-workers, under the directors of large companies and in
conjunction with good resident superintendents. Or it may come from the
co-operation of a consultative body of good tenants, to assist the
managers. Or it may come by the steady improvement of the main body of
the roughest tenants, making them gradually fitted to use things in
common. But, seeing in all classes how difficult it is to get anything
cared for which is used in common, unless there be some machinery for
its management, I think this latter remedy should rather be counted on
as making the work easier than as sufficient in itself. While I am on
this subject, may I remark that it would be well if those who build
blocks would consider, in settling their plans, what machinery they are
mainly trusting to for securing good order?
VI
LETTERS TO FELLOW-WORKERS
In 1872 Miss Octavia Hill began the practice of writing at the end of
each year a letter which was sent to all who were associated with her in
her work. The following are some selections: