Mr. Joseph Strutt, of Derby, has presented to that town a public garden of eleven acres, which has been so laid out by Mr. Loudon as to give the advantages of a walk of two miles, and the interest afforded by an arboretum, displaying the specimens of 1000 shrubs and plants. The plan of laying out this public ground so as to make the most of the space, appears to be one deserving of peculiar attention; and I have appended to this report a copy with which I have been favoured. I am informed that his Grace the Duke of Norfolk has expressed an intention, as soon as some leases are out, to bestow 50 acres for the use of Sheffield as a public garden.
Much evidence might be adduced from the experience of the effects of the parks and other places of public resort in the metropolis, to prove the importance of such provision for recreation, not less for the pleasure they afford in themselves, than for their rivalry to pleasures that are expensive, demoralizing, and injurious to the health. A benevolent gentleman near Cambridge, who wished to arrest the debauchery and demoralization promoted by a fair, and, if possible, to put an end to the fair itself, instituted on the days when it was held, and at a distance from it, a grand ploughing match, at which all persons of respectability were invited to attend. This brought from the fair all the young men whom it was desired to lead from it to a regulated and a rational and beneficial entertainment, and thus, without force and at a very trivial expense, the fair was suppressed by the quiet mode of drawing away its profit.
On the holiday given at Manchester in celebration of Her Majesty’s marriage, extensive arrangements were made for holding a chartist meeting, and for getting up what was called a demonstration of the working classes, which greatly alarmed the municipal magistrates. Sir Charles Shaw, the Chief Commissioner of Police, induced the mayor to get the Botanical Gardens, Zoological Gardens, and Museum of that town, and other institutions thrown open to the working classes at the hour they were urgently invited to attend the chartist meeting. The mayor undertook to be personally answerable for any damage that occurred from throwing open the gardens and institutions to the classes who had never before entered them. The effect, was that not more than 200 or 300 people attended the political meeting, which entirely failed, and scarcely 5s. worth of damage was done in the gardens or in the public institutions by the workpeople, who were highly pleased. A further effect produced was, that the charges before the police of drunkenness and riot were on that day less than the average of cases on ordinary days.
I have been informed of other instances of similar effects produced by the spread of temperate pleasures on ordinary occasions, and their rivalry to habits of drunkenness and gross excitement, whether mental or sensual.
But want of open spaces for recreation is not confined to the town population. In the rural districts the children and young persons of the villages have frequently no other places for recreation than the dusty road before their houses or the narrow and dirty lanes, and accidents frequently take place from the playing of children on the public highways. If they go into the fields they are trespassers, and injure the farmer. The want of proper spaces as play-grounds for children is detrimental to the morals as well as to the health in the towns, and it probably is so generally. The very scanty spaces which the children, both of the middle and the lower classes, the ill as well as the respectably educated, can obtain, force all into one company to the detriment of the better children, for it is the rude and boisterous who obtain predominance. In the course of some investigations which I had occasion to make into the causes of juvenile delinquency, there appeared several cases of children of honest and industrious parents, who had been entrapped by boys of bad character; I inquired how the more respectable children became acquainted with the depraved; when it was shown that in the present state of many crowded neighbourhoods all the children of a court or of a street were forced to play, if they had any play whatsoever, on such scraps of ground as they could get, and all were brought into acquaintanceship, and the range of influence of the depraved was extended. The condition of the children in large districts where there are no squares, no gardens attached to the houses, and no play-grounds even to their day-schools, and where they are of a condition in life to be withheld from playing in the streets, is pronounced to be a condition very injurious to their bodily development. The progress of the evil in the rural districts has been, to some extent, arrested by a beneficent standing order of the House of Commons, that all Enclosure Bills shall include provision for a reserve of land for the public use for recreation. For children, however, the most important reservations would be those which could be made for play-grounds in front of their homes, on plots where they may be under the eye of their mothers or their neighbours. Where the cottages are near a road, they should be some distance from it, with the gardens or play-ground in front. The separate or distant play-grounds have many inconveniences besides their being out of sight; and where they are far distant, they are comparatively useless. I have great pleasure in being enabled to testily that the instances are frequent where the regulated resort to private pleasure-grounds, and parks has been indulgently given for the recreation of the labouring population.
Amongst the instances of practical attention to the improvement of the physical condition of labouring classes in the agricultural districts, I may notice the following statement made to me by the late Mr. Monck of Coley House, Reading, who had bestowed much care upon the cottages on his own estate. It comprehends the provision adverted to:—
“The care taken of these cottages and gardens,” said he, “afford an excellent criterion of the character of the labourers. I have paid especial attention to those labourers who have displayed cleanliness and order; and I pay the most respect to those who have achieved a situation of the greatest comfort, and keep themselves and their houses cleanly, and their children tidy. Formerly the cottages were in bad order, their pavements and windows were broken; I had them all paved, and their windows glazed. I told the cottagers that I did not like to see shabby, broken windows, with patches of paper and things stuffed in, or broken pavements which they could not clean; and that I disliked Irish filth and all Irish habits of living. I engaged, after the cottages were thoroughly repaired, to pay 1l. a year for repairing them. I undertook to make the repairs myself, and deduct the expense from this 1l.; but if no repairs were wanted, they were to have the whole 1l. themselves. This course has, I find, formed habits of care; and their cottages are now so well taken care of that very little deduction is made annually from the 1l. Formerly they used to chop wood carelessly on their pavements, and break them; now they abstain from the practice, or do it in a careful manner, to avoid losing the money. In the winter, I give them two score of fagots towards their fuel. I have found that by this means I save my hedges and fences, and am pecuniarily no loser, whilst pilfering habits are repressed. Since the enclosures have been made, I think some place should be provided for the exercise and recreation of the working-classes, and especially for their children. I have set out four acres at Oldworth as a play-ground for the children, or whoever likes to play. They have now their cricket-matches, their quoit-playing, and their revels there. Sheep and cows feed on it; so that it is no great loss to me. I let it for 4l. a-year to a man, on condition that he cuts the hedges and keeps it neat. I have surrounded it with a double avenue of trees. The sheep and cows do good to the ground, as they keep the grass under, which allows the ball to run. I give prizes to the boys at the school, which is maintained by the cottagers themselves, and to which I contribute nothing but the prizes for reading, writing, and knitting.
“Many persons accuse the poor of ingratitude, but I find them the most grateful people alive for these little attentions; and what do they all cost me? why not more altogether than the keep of one fat coach-horse.”
VII.—RECOGNISED PRINCIPLES OF LEGISLATION AND STATE OF THE EXISTING LAW FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH.
The evidence already given will, to some extent, have furnished answers to the question—how far the physical evils by which the health, and strength, and morals of the labouring classes are depressed may be removed, or can reasonably be expected to be removed by private and voluntary exertions. I now submit for consideration the facts which serve to show how far the aid of the legislature, and of administrative arrangements are requisite for the attainment of the objects in question.