“In this court there are eight common lodging-houses, and the number of lodgers sometimes amounts to 100; at this time it is 50: eight or ten sleeping in a room, upon the most unwholesome straw. The buildings are in general good; but the wretched and filthy state of the houses can scarcely be conceived. From this part many of our applications arise. It is, indeed, a source of physical and moral disease.”
Mr. Gilbert Ward, the medical officer of the Tynemouth union, describes the lodging-houses there as sources of disease, of which one example may suffice:—
“In a low, damp, dirty, ill-ventilated, miserable hovel, kept by the most filthy people I ever beheld, containing four beds seldom changed, and which I have witnessed filled with beggars of the lowest description, there have been the following cases:—A son and daughter died, another son and daughter had the disease, and the mother had two attacks, all within a period of 18 months. This family, in consequence of their filthy habits, was removed to the workhouse, but could not be induced to remain; and they again returned to their old quarters, and were afflicted as above described.
“The constable has several times visited these houses, to endeavour to prevent the nuisance of so many congregating in them; but his efforts have hitherto been ineffectual.”
Sir John Walsham thus exemplifies the descriptions he has received of the lodging-houses in Newcastle:—
“There is a considerable number of lodging-houses in Newcastle, some of the rooms of which are frequently occupied by from 15 to 20 persons each. In these houses the most deplorable scenes of profligacy and depravity are met with, both sexes being crowded together in a manner injurious to both health and morals.
“A medical gentleman told me, in Stockton, this morning, that in the common lodging-houses where travelling vagrants are frequently attacked with fever, &c., and in many cases die, the beds are the very next night occupied by fresh inmates, who of course are infected with the same disorder.”
And one of the relieving officers for the same town says:—
“I have frequently had occasion to complain to the magistrates against the lodging-houses taking in so many lodgers; but the law in this respect is so defective that they could render me no assistance. On a Sunday last July, I went to see a man (a travelling musician) who was very ill of the small-pox, and died a few days afterwards. The house contained four small rooms, and was situated in a back yard, in a very narrow, confined, dirty lane. There were 40 people in the house, and they were not all in that lodged there. Four months ago I went into a room in the same yard; the room was very dirty; it was 9 feet broad by 15 feet long, and contained four beds, in which slept two men, four women, and thirteen children. I found in one of the beds two children very ill of scarlet fever; in another, a child ill of the measles; in another, a child that had died of the measles the day before; and in a fourth, a woman and her infant, born two days before; and the only space between the four beds was occupied by a tinker, hard at work.”
The lodging-houses in Scotland are similarly characterized. Dr. Scott Alison states that,—