Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State For the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry Into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; With Appendices

by Edwin Chadwick

6. Every cottage, including its garden, yard, &c., ought to occupy not less than one-sixth of an acre; and the garden ought to surround the cottage, or at all events to extend both before and behind. In general, there ought to be a front garden and a back yard, the latter being entered from the back kitchen, and containing a privy, liquid-manure tank, place for dust and ashes, and place for fuel.

7. If practicable, every cottage ought to stand singly, and surrounded by its garden, or, at all events, not more than two cottages ought to be joined together. Among other important arguments in favour of this arrangement, it may be mentioned, that it is the only one by which the sun can shine every day on every side of the cottage. When cottages are joined together in a row, unless that row is in a diagonal direction, with reference to a south and north line, the sun will shine chiefly on one side. By having cottages singly or in pairs, they may always be placed along any road in such a manner that the sun may shine on every side of them, provided the point be given up of having the front parallel to the road; a point which, in our opinion, ought not for a moment to be put in competition with the advantages of an equal diffusion of sunshine.

8. Every cottage ought to have an entrance-porch for containing the labourer’s tools, and into which, if possible, the stairs ought to open, in order that the bed-rooms may be communicated with without passing through the front or back kitchen. This, in the case of sickness, is very desirable, and also in the case of deaths, as the remains may be carried down stairs while the family are in the front room.

9. The door to the front kitchen or best room should open from the porch, and not from the back kitchen, which, as it contains the cooking utensils and washing apparatus, can never be fit for being passed through by a stranger, or even the master of the family, where proper regard is had by the mistress to cleanliness and delicacy.

10. When there is not a supply of clear water from a spring adjoining the cottage, or from some other efficient source, then there ought to be a well or tank, partly under the floor of the back kitchen, supplied from the roof, with a pump in the back kitchen for drawing it up for use, as hereafter described in detail. The advantages of having the tank or well under the back kitchen are, that it will secure from frost, and that the labour of carrying water will be avoided.

11. The privy should always be separated from the dwelling, unless it is a proper water-closet, with a soil-pipe communicating with a distant liquid-manure tank or cesspool. When detached, the privy should be over or adjoining a liquid-manure tank, in which a straight tube from the bottom of the basin ought to terminate; by which means the soil basin may always be kept clean by pouring down the common slops of the house. No surface being left from which smell can arise, except that of the area of the pipe, the double flap, to be hereafter described, will prevent the escape of the evaporation from this small surface, and also ensure a dry and clean seat.

12. The situation of the liquid-manure tank should be, as far as possible, from that of the filtered-water tank or clear-water well. It should be covered by an air-tight cover of flagstone, and have a narrow well adjoining, into which the liquid should filter through a grating, so as to be pumped up or taken away without grosser impurities, and in this state applied to the soil about growing crops.

13. In general, proprietors ought not to entrust the erection of labourers’ cottages on their estates to the farmers, as it is chiefly owing to this practice that so many wretched hovels exist in the best-cultivated districts of Scotland and in Northumberland.

14. No landed proprietor, as we think, ought to charge more for the land on which cottages are built than he would receive for it from a farmer, if let as part of a farm; and no more rent ought to be charged for the cost of building the cottage and enclosing the garden than the same sum would yield if invested in land, or, at all events, not more than can be obtained by government securities.