[-120-]
CHAPTER XII.
SHOULD AUGHT BE DONE, AND WHAT?
Possibly more than one of the readers of these pages may say that nothing is
contained in them that they did not already know or could not have surmised.
"It is not surprising," they will say, "that the condition of
common lodging-houses should be uncleanly and malodorous, for the people who
tenant them are uncleanly and malodorous, too." Granting this, which I do
not grant without some reservation, the question arises which is cause and which
effect? Are the lodging-houses unwholesome and filthy because the tenants are
so; or are the condition and habits of the dosser to be ascribed to the squalor
and insanitary condition of their lodgings - it were a mockery to say their
homes? I incline to the latter opinion. I believe that if the "doss-'ouses"
were cleaner, the dossers would be cleaner; that if they had light and comfort
and fresh air, they would learn to avoid the gin-palace and the beershop; that
if there were in their surroundings more regard for the decencies of life, they
would also show in their persons and their habits more remembrance of those
decencies. [-121-] You cannot expect people whom
custom and the law alike compel to herd and breed like swine to live like human
beings. You cannot expect those to whom nearly all necessaries, and absolutely
all comforts and refinements, are unknown, to be creditable or even decent
members of society. You cannot expect those who only see a brightly lighted room
in a public-house to be sober. In a word, if you allow the common lodging-houses
to remain what they are, you must expect no improvement in the people who tenant
them.
Yes, but what can you expect for fourpence a night? Not
luxury, certainly; but wholesomeness, cleanliness, and perhaps some slight
attempt at comfort. Fourpence a night for a man and his wife means four and
eightpence a week. If they were a little better off, they would probably take a
small furnished room and pay four shillings or four shillings and sixpence a
week for it. In many cases we find among the poorer, but not the poorest, class
of artizans, a man and wife and one child living in a fairly comfortable
furnished room, of which the weekly rent ranges from four shillings to four
shillings and sixpence or five shillings a week. Such a man would have to pay
for himself, his wife, and child, in a "doss-'ouse," tenpence a night
or five and tenpence a week. His evenings he would have to spend in the filthy
and foul-smelling kitchen, and during his nights he would have to sleep in a
sort of magnified hog-pen-not a room. "Why, then," is the natural
question, "does he not take such a furnished room
[-122-] rather than pay more and put up with such infinitely inferior
accommodation?" For the simple reason that when people come down to the
lodging-houses it is because they are poor - very poor. They have no effects
which would be security against possible arrears of rent, their clothes are
tattered, and their general appearance is such that few respectable householders
would take them in as lodgers. In nine cases out of ten it is difficult to
secure the eightpence a night that must be obtained before there is a prospect
of a shelter and a bed. So that, practically, it amounts to this. Because folks
are only able to pay their rent nightly instead of weekly, they must be
compelled to pass their existence amongst surroundings of the most unfortunate
description. Their lives must be devoid of comfort and even of hope, their
children corrupted and debased, and their whole prospect of doing good in the
future blighted and lost. For, in sober truth, as matters stand to-day, this is
what taking to lodging-house life means. There are few instances of people who
have once taken to it ever returning to a more reputable sort of existence. It
is far easier to degrade than to elevate, and the habits acquired-necessarily
acquired - even during a short sojourn in common lodging-houses, are not readily
to be shaken off.
"But, after all," some good people will observe,
"you won't deny, for your own account implies it, that these people are
drunken, profligate, often dishonest, and unworthy the consideration you ask for
them." Admitting that for a moment, it may be [-123-]
fairly rejoined that the public interest lies, not in keeping them as
they are, nor in suffering them to sink lower, but in endeavouring to raise
them, and to improve their condition in order to secure those changes in their
habits and manners which such an improved condition would bring with it. But I
do not admit that the inhabitants of common lodging- houses are anything like as
black as they are painted. They are very drunken, very foul-mouthed, very
profligate, very uncleanly; but what can you expect? There are very many
working-men who are neither sober, clean, nor scrupulous as to their language;
and the majority of those who live in doss-'ouses are not so very much worse
than the lower class of working-men. Many of them have themselves been working
men, and have been driven to irregular and precarious means of earning a
livelihood by the stagnation in trade. Many, again, are lads who, earning but
very scanty wages, and who having no parents able or willing to maintain them,
are compelled to resort to common lodging-houses. The very fact that the vast
majority use every means in their power to avert the necessity of living in
these places, before they have become habituated to their abominations, proves,
to my mind, that were some means of escape from the dirt and stench and
degradation provided for them, by far the larger portion would gladly and
gratefully utilize them.
Humanity, at any rate, prescribes that something should be
done to rescue our poorest brothers and sisters, from the unhappy surroundings
in which their [-124-] poverty compels them to
exist. We are continually recognizing this principle, and it is only for its
extension that I plead. Little difficulty was found in collecting £100,000 for
the "People's Palace" at the East-end, and many of the poor will
beyond the shadow of a doubt, derive pleasure and profit, both physical and
intellectual, from the expenditure. But imagine a "dosser" going to
the People's Palace. The poor fellow would want a bath and a new suit first, and
the projectors do not, I fear, propose furnishing intending visitors with these.
But there are many ways in which the evils which surround and oppress the
denizens of common lodging-houses may be mitigated, and several in which they
may be entirely removed. The following suggestions are thrown out, - to use an
expression which has now become almost classic, as "a draft for
discussion."
In the first place, the State might take over the common
lodging-houses from their present proprietors, as they took over the prisons in
order to rid them of the dirt and squalor that made them a by-word years ago.
But though this would be a good speculation pecuniarily, and be of inestimable
benefit to the dossers, it would be undesirable from many points of view. Still,
to show what has already been done in this direction, it may be well to mention
an experiment made by the Victorian Government, and the results that accrued
from it.
When the gold-fever drove so many hundreds to lead a rough
and precarious life at the diggings, no difficulty was so great as that of
obtaining shelter for [-125-] the night; for the
prices charged at the hotels - which, by the way, were few and far between -
were absolutely prohibitive as far as the working men who had ventured their all
in emigration were concerned. The government took the matter up and established
shelter-sheds, in which, for threepence a night, the miners, who brought their
own blankets, were accommodated with a sleeping-bunk; and for a slightly
increased fee they were provided with a good bed and the necessary bed-covering.
The sheds were taken care of by men and women put in by the government, who
received no wages, but took the fees paid by those who availed themselves of the
accommodation thus offered. The experiment, which was at first purely tentative,
was afterwards carried out more completely, and resulted in the greatest benefit
to the miners and in no loss to the government.
But State intervention in matters of this nature has already
been carried too far, rather than not far enough, and there are so many other
ways in which the necessary reforms may be consummated, that it as unnecessary
to adopt what is generally the last resort of impotency. The first thing to do,
if the lodging-houses are to remain in the hands of their present owners, is to
pass a very drastic measure regulating them. In the first place, it should be
provided that all houses receiving a large number of lodgers, should be
compelled to afford adequate bathing accommodation. It may be argued that the
erection of baths and washhouses in so many districts obviates the necessity for
such a provision. But it [-126-] must be remembered
that a man who has the greatest difficulty in finding the fourpence for his
lodging, will almost certainly be unable to provide also threepence for a bath.
The inflated profits at present made by the lodging-house keepers would allow
them to provide such accommodation without ruining themselves, and would enable
their lodgers to enjoy the luxury of a clean skin now and then, a luxury which
at present is unknown to many of them.
The administration of the Lodging Houses' Act should be taken
out of the hands of the Commissioners of Police, who might be allowed to devote
their concentrated and perfected genius to promulgating directions as to the art
of capturing and muzzling the canine race. The size of London and the number of
common lodging-houses constitute quite sufficient reason for appointing a
special staff of inspectors, who might probably be trusted to execute the law
better than is done at present, and might certainly be relied upon not to do it
worse. They might, if they chose to exercise to their full extent the powers now
conferred upon them by the existing act with all its imperfections, do an
immensity of good; and when those powers are more clearly defined, and
strengthened as they should be, they might so change the appearance of the
doss-'ouses, that they could not be recognizable by their present habitués.
If, as I very much doubt, the walls and ceilings are at
present limewashed twice a year, the operation should be performed at least four
times, as the present rate is certainly insufficient. Most of all, a definite [-127-]
principle should be acted upon with regard to the ventilation of the
bedrooms, and the number of beds to be allowed in each. As it is hardly possible
to regulate by Act of Parliament the number of vermin to be allowed each square
inch of bedclothes, it might perhaps not be inadvisable to prescribe that each
bed and its furniture should be cleansed and disinfected at stated periods.
Regarding the question of the dissemination of infectious diseases, it would
appear to be obviously desirable that when a lodger has fallen ill of such an
ailment, the law should provide that the entire house should be thoroughly
disinfected, and should enable the local authority to destroy or disinfect, if
necessary, not merely the bedding of the person so affected, but of every lodger
in that particular room, and, if necessary, of all in the house. In order to
enable those who are compelled to dwell in these houses to protect themselves
against the keepers of them, and to set the law in motion for themselves if any
attempt be made to evade or nullify it, it would be advisable to make it
compulsory for the lodging-house keeper to post conspicuously in every room in
the house an intelligible epitome of the law regulating their houses, just as
pawnbrokers are obliged to post up similar notices in their shops. These
suggestions for the strengthening and improvement of the law are of course crude
and imperfect, but it should be borne in mind that they are the result of
practical experience, and the want of them or of others equivalent to them has
been realized by me on more than one occasion.
[-128-] Statements have recently been made, by
secretaries of companies and others, to the effect that many of the blocks of
artizans' dwellings recently erected are wholly or partially unoccupied. If
arrangements could be made by which the rent of such tenements could be paid
nightly instead of weekly, I venture to say that this would afford the means of
relief to many a poor family at present involuntarily compelled to dwell amidst
the dirt, dissipation, and discomfort that are the invariable surroundings of a
lodging-house.
But if all the suggestions set forth above were drafted in an
Act and passed into law, they would only constitute, to use Carlyle's
description of the poor- law, "an anodyne, not a remedy." The only
real and effectual way in which to improve the common lodging-houses is to
improve them off the face of the earth; and the problem that demands
consideration with a view to its solution is how is this to be done so as to be
a benefit to the dosser without adding to the burdens of the public.
The profits on the lodging-house business are enormous. The
expenses are so small, the accommodation provided is so horribly bad, and
therefore so very cheap, the damage that can be done to the furniture and
fittings so infinitesimal, that the lodging-house keeper is enabled to go on his
way rejoicing, while his customers wallow in the filth and dirt in which he
keeps them in order to increase his own gains. Would it not be possible, by the
formation of companies promoted for the purpose of buying out the present
lodging-house proprietors and erecting [-129-] new
and sanitary buildings, to rid the metropolis of foul and abominable dens which
are a disgrace and scandal to it? Such companies should be empowered, by private
bill legislation or otherwise, to purchase compulsorily and at a fair valuation,
hut without giving compensation for disturbance, any lodging- house, or cluster
of lodging-houses, which could be shown to be in an insanitary condition, or to
be ill-regulated. On the other hand, the company should be bound to erect,
within a brief space of time, other houses in the place of those they demolish.
For it should not be forgotten that there is a dual object to be served:
firstly, to get rid of the existing doss-'ouses; and, secondly, to provide
others which may answer their purpose without possessing their imperfections and
disadvantages.
"Would you, then," some people may say, "build
palaces for people who are as low and depraved as those whom you yourself have
described in these pages?" By no means. Luxury would only frighten away the
very people for whom it is necessary to provide. The sort of lodging-house it
would be desirable to build, would be a plain, solid erection, with large and,
above all, lofty rooms, well ventilated and airy. Bathing accommodation and
proper lavatories should be provided. The furniture should be as plain as it is
possible to procure, but substantial withal. It would be desirable, too, for
plain wholesome food to be sold on the premises at similar prices to those
charged in coffee-houses, so that the lodgers should be able to obtain a meal
which did not consist of a [-130-] decayed "'addick,"
or a bloater in a state of putrefaction. There would be, of course, a profit on
the sale of these provisions, and benefit would thus be conferred on the dossers
and the shareholders at one and the same time.
"Would it pay?" Such a company should pay a
dividend of about ten or twelve per cent, and as times go, that is not bad
interest for money. At present of course the profits are many times as large
proportionately, but I am calculating on the hypothesis that every effort would
be made to give thoroughly good value for money. It is easy enough to see about
what amount the present proprietors make, and, taking their gains as a basis for
an estimate, to arrive at some sort of an idea as to the probable profits. Take,
for example, the case of the Beehive. There are three hundred beds there, some
of which are let at four- pence, and some at sixpence per night. As some are
occasionally unlet, it will be well to reckon them all at the lower price, which
leaves the gross takings at about £35 weekly. The working expenses do not
amount to more than £5, or at the most £7, per week, and we shall be making a
handsome allowance if we deduct another £3 for interest on money laid out.
Deduct, if you will, another £3 for sundries, and you will still leave the
lodging-house keeper £20 a week clear profit - a profit, be it remarked, which
is entirely derived from his poorer brethren, whom he, in order to increase his
gains, keeps in a horrible condition of filth, squalor, and degradation.
One or two precautions would have to be observed [-131-]
in order that such a company should be successful. It would be necessary to
dissociate all idea of charity from the matter, for human nature is averse to
considering as a favour that for which cash is paid. It should be undertaken as
a commercial speculation, in which it is intended to give the best possible
value for money, but in which the relative positions of purchaser and vendor are
maintained. Above all, in order to secure the adherence of the very lowest it
would be advisable to keep the parson away from such an .enterprise. I do not
say this because I am unaware of, or fail to appreciate, the noble work which is
done by the clergymen and ministers of all denominations among the poor. But we
are dealing with a class of people who are most of them indifferent or inimical
to religion, and to try and force it down their throats would he to repel the
very folk whom we most earnestly want to attract. The first object to be gained
is to make them decent. Cleanliness is not only next to godliness, but it is the
first station on the road. Once make those who have lived for years in filth
recognize the desirability of a clean bed, a clean room, and a clean skin; give
them light, warmth, and comfort elsewhere than in the dram-shops, make them
understand that there are higher objects to be attained in the world than the
mere securing of their kip-money, and much will have been done towards the great
work of the social and moral regeneration of the outcasts of society. In a word,
make them fit for earth, and you will be, indirectly perhaps, but still
practically, doing a great deal towards making them fit for Heaven.