“There are many regular lodging-houses in Tranent, perhaps from 15 to 20, in which paupers, vagrants, and a few labouring people live. The people reside there for a considerable time. I have known colliers in employment to live in these houses. They are crowded at all hours, but more especially at night. Men, women, and children live and sleep in the same apartment. In one of them I have seen an apartment, about 18 feet long and 10 feet wide, which contained four beds made up constantly; and when the house was ‘throng,’ another was added to the number. The lodging-houses are the head-quarters for beggars. The people go about during the day pursuing their avocations, and return home at night to regale themselves with their earnings. These people lie in bed till very late, and, if visited in the forenoon, may be seen sitting beside the fire, roasting herrings or frying meat. They live well amidst their wretchedness.”
In the report of Mr. James Cameron, surgeon of Tain, there occurs the following description of the lodging-houses in that part of Scotland:—
“There are three lodging-houses in Tain, which are chiefly occupied by beggars and hawkers. These places are kept in the filthiest condition imaginable: I have been credibly informed that the bed-clothes used in one of these houses have not been washed for the last five years! Summer being the season when these people are generally abroad, these low lodgings are then often crowded to excess. During the week-days the beggars and hawkers perambulate the country, returning on Saturday night. They frequently, especially when collected in large numbers, drink to excess; and their conduct on such occasions is riotous and disgusting in the extreme. The general charge for such lodgings is 2d. per head for the night, with an ample allowance of whisky to the landlords by way of perquisite. These individuals are unfortunately the means of introducing infectious diseases, such as fever, small-pox, measles, &c.”
In Edinburgh and Glasgow, as the confluence of vagrants, and especially of Irish vagrants, becomes greater, such receptacles become more numerous and crowded, and the evils attendant upon them more intense.
The injury done to the health of the public in general, and to the health of portions of the operative classes, by the generation or propagation of disease in such places, forms only one part of the evils which call for interference by preventive measures. These evils appear to require for their correction powers to be put in operation by the concurrent exertions of the officers charged with sanitary measures, or the prevention of disease; of the officers charged with the administration of relief to destitution and the prevention of mendicity, and of the officers charged with the protection of the public peace and the prevention of crime. Further, to complete the view of the chief evils arising from these receptacles, we may refer to the report and evidence for the state of them, collected by my colleagues and myself, on the inquiry as to the state of crime, under the Constabulary Force Commission on the state of the lodging-houses in respect to crime:—
“§35. We found only few of the magisterial divisions from which we obtained information that were not seriously afflicted by the existence of such receptacles, and in any arrangements for the prevention of crime within the rural districts the means of suppressing or controlling the common lodging-house must have a prominent place. The trampers’ lodging-house is distinct from the beer-shop or the public-house, or any licensed place of public accommodation: it is not only the place of resort of the mendicant, but of the common thief; it is the ‘flash-house’ of the rural district; it is the receiving-house for stolen goods; it is the most extensively-established school for juvenile delinquency, and commonly at the same time the most infamous brothel in the district.
The magistrates of the division of Warwick state—
“‘That in the borough of Warwick such houses are both numerous and a very general receptacle of petty offenders. Here the common vagrants and trading beggars assemble in great numbers at nightfall, or take up their quarters for very many days, making the lodging-house the common centre from whence they issue in the morning, traverse their several beats, and return at night. It is not unfrequent for such vagrants to make the immediate neighbourhood their regular walk even for some weeks, changing their beats, which are carefully arranged among themselves, and only quitting their quarters to avoid detection in some petty pilfering, or because, from becoming too well known, they can no longer successfully impose on the public in the quarter they have so long frequented.’
“The magistrates of the Chelmsford division state:—
“‘There are several lodging-houses in the town of Chelmsford where in the course of the year it is supposed upwards of 2000 trampers or vagrants resort. The greater number of these persons shelter themselves from apprehension and punishment under the Vagrant Act, by professing to be match-sellers. This is made a cloak for begging alms, and the pretext for going from house to house, and pilfering, as opportunity offers. The lodging-houses at Chelmsford are made the centre of a kind of circuit which these people make almost periodically.