“To Robert Weale, Esq.,
“Assistant Poor Law Commissioner.”
The next exemplification is afforded in a letter from the clerk of the Stafford Union:—
“Marston, Stafford, January 20, 1841.
“Sir,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 1st instant, as to the Return made by the Board of Guardians on the sanitary condition of the labouring population of this Union, in which it is stated that improved cottages have been erected by landed proprietors for their labourers, and the advantages afforded by such cottages have had a salutary influence on the moral habits of the inmates, and requesting to be informed in what particular acts the improvement in moral conduct is displayed.
“In answer thereto, I will endeavour to illustrate the remark of the Board of Guardians by contrasting the habits, the condition, and prospects of a labourer occupying an improved cottage with the occupier of a cottage of a contrary description. If we follow the agricultural labourer into his miserable dwelling, we shall find it consisting of two rooms only; the day-room, in addition to the family, contains the cooking utensils, the washing apparatus, agricultural implements, and dirty clothes, the windows broken, and stuffed full of rags. In the sleeping apartment, the parents and their children, boys and girls, are indiscriminately mixed, and frequently a lodger sleeping in the same and the only room; generally no window, the openings in the half-thatched roof admit light, and expose the family to every vicissitude of the weather; the liability of the children so situated to contagious maladies frequently plunges the family into the greatest misery. The husband, enjoying but little comfort under his own roof, resorts to the beer-shop, neglects the cultivation of his garden, and impoverishes his family. The children are brought up without any regard to decency of behaviour, to habits of foresight, or self-restraint; they make indifferent servants; the girls become the mothers of bastards, and return home a burden to their parents, or to the parish, and fill the workhouse. The boys spend the Christmas week’s holiday and their year’s wages in the beer shop, and enter upon their new situation in rags. Soon tired of the restraint imposed upon them under the roof of their master, they leave his service before the termination of the year’s engagement, seek employment as day-labourers, not with a view of improving their condition, but with a desire to receive and spend their earnings weekly in the beer-shop; associating with the worst of characters, they become the worst of labourers, resort to poaching, commit petty thefts, and add to the county rates by commitments and prosecutions.
“On the contrary, on entering an improved cottage, consisting on the ground-floor of a room for the family, a wash-house and a pantry, and three sleeping-rooms over, with a neat and well-cultivated garden, in which the leisure hours of the husband being both pleasantly and profitably employed, he has no desire to frequent the beer-shop or spend his evenings from home; the children are trained to labour, to habits and feelings of independence, and taught to connect happiness with industry, and to shrink from idleness and immorality: the girls make good servants, obtain the confidence of their employers, and get promoted to the best situations. The boys, at the termination of the year’s engagement, spend the Christmas week’s holiday comfortably under the roof of their parents; clothes suitable for the next year’s service are provided, and the residue of wages is deposited in the savings’ bank; a system of frugality is engrafted with the first deposit, increasing with every addition to the fund: they are gradually employed in those departments of labour requiring greater skill, and implying more confidence in their integrity and industry, and they attain a position in society of comparative independence.
“I have selected an extreme case to show more fully the advantages derived from improved cottages, and the immoral effects of inferior dwellings, unfortunately too numerous, in this Union.
“I have the honour to be, sir,
“Your obedient servant,