“What wages do this description of persons earn?—Various, from 30s. to 3l. weekly; averaging, perhaps, 2l. weekly; out of which they pay 3s. per week for rent.
“What is your experience in respect to the habits of the workpeople in these tenements?—The remark which I have to make is on the very low state of feeling prevalent amongst even a high class of workmen as to decency or propriety. The tenements sufficed for them when they were young, but when the female children become young women, and the boys advance to puberty, and decency requires them to have separate rooms, the usual practice of the parents is to take the young women into their own sleeping-rooms. I have one highly respectable foreman who has one daughter aged 20, and another aged 22, sleeping on each side of the bed in which himself and his wife sleep. The next bed-room is filled with the younger children of both sexes, boys and girls, up to 16 years of age. The earnings of this family must have been 50s. per week. The rent they paid was 3s. weekly, which was little more than the interest on the money invested. I have remonstrated on the indecency of such habits, and on their bad effects, but the expense of the extra shilling a-week for a house with another bed-room was considered a sufficient answer to my remonstrance. In my own tenements I have built the additional room, and notwithstanding the remonstrances, I have required the additional rent. When they have remonstrated, I have told them of the fact, that the cost of the additional room would only be a beneficial deduction from the money spent in liquor.”
It would require much time and various opportunities of observation to attempt to make an exact analysis of the combined causes, and an estimate of the effect of each separate cause which operate to produce the masses of moral and physical wretchedness met with in the investigation of the condition of the lowest population. But it became evident, in the progress of the inquiry, that several separate circumstances had each its separate moral as well as physical influence. Thus tenements of inferior construction had manifestly an injurious operation on the moral as well as on the sanitary condition, independently of any overcrowding. For example, it appears to be matter of common observation, in the instance of migrant families of workpeople who are obliged to occupy inferior tenements, that their habits soon become “of a piece” with the dwelling. A gentleman who has observed closely the condition of the workpeople in the south of Cheshire and the north of Lancashire, men of similar race and education, working at the same description of work, namely, as cotton-spinners, mill hands, and earning nearly the same amount of wages, states that the workmen of the north of Lancashire are obviously inferior to those in the south of Cheshire, in health and habits of personal cleanliness and general condition. The difference is traced mainly to the circumstance, that the labourers in the north of Lancashire inhabit stone houses of a description that absorb moisture, the dampness of which affects the health, and causes personal uncleanliness, induced by the difficulty of keeping a clean house. The operation of the same deteriorating influences were also observable in Scotland, and it may be illustrated by several instances which I have met with in the course of my own personal inquiries.
One of the circumstances most favourable to the improvement of the condition of an artisan or an agricultural labourer, is his obtaining as a wife a female who has had a good industrial training in the well regulated household of persons of a higher condition. The following instance of the effect of the dwelling itself on the condition of a female servant when married, was brought to my notice by a member of the family in which they had been brought up. One was of a young woman who had been taught the habits of neatness, order, and cleanliness most thoroughly as regards household work.
“Her attention to personal neatness,” says a lady who is my informant, “was very great; her face seemed always as if it were just washed, and with her bright hair neatly combed underneath her snowwhite cap, a smooth white apron, and her gown and handkerchief carefully put on, she used to look very comely. After a year or two, she married the serving man, who, as he was retained in his situation, was obliged to take a house as near his place as possible. The cottages in the neighbourhood were of the most wretched kind, mere hovels built of rough stones and covered with ragged thatch; there were few even of these, so there was no choice, and they were obliged to be content with the first that was vacant, which was in the most retired situation. After they had been married about two years, I happened to be walking past one of these miserable cottages, and as the door was open, I had the curiosity to enter. I found it was the home of the servant I have been describing. But what a change had come over her! Her face was dirty, and her tangled hair hung over her eyes. Her cap, though of good materials, was ill washed and slovenly put on. Her whole dress, though apparently good and serviceable, was very untidy, and looked dirty and slatternly; everything indeed about her seemed wretched and neglected, (except her little child,) and she appeared very discontented. She seemed aware of the change there must be in her appearance since I had last seen her, for she immediately began to complain of her house. The wet came in at the door of the only room, and when it rained, through every part of the roof also, except just over the hearth-stone; large drops fell upon her as she lay in bed, or as she was working at the window: in short, she had found it impossible to keep things in order, so had gradually ceased to make any exertions. Her condition had been borne down by the condition of the house. Then her husband was dissatisfied with his home and with her; his visits became less frequent, and if he had been a day labourer, and there had been a beer-shop or a public-house, the preference of that to his home would have been inevitable, and in the one instance would have presented an example of a multitude of cases.
“She was afterwards, however, removed to a new cottage, which was water-tight, and had some conveniences, and was built close to the road, which her former mistress and all her friends must constantly pass along. She soon resumed, in a great degree, her former good habits, but still there was a little of the dawdle left about her; the remains of the dispiritedness caused by her former very unfavourable circumstances.”
I visited some other dwellings not far from the one above described, and met with another instance of a female who had been brought up as a servant in a well-ordered house, and who, for her station, had received a very excellent religious and moral education. Before her marriage she had been distinguished by the refinement with which she sung national airs, and for her knowledge of the Bible and of the doctrines of her church. Her personal condition had become of “a piece” with the wretched stone undrained hovel, with a pigsty before it, in which she had been taken. We found her with rings of dirt about her neck, and turning over with dirty hands Brown’s Dictionary, to see whether the newly-elected minister was “sound” in his doctrine. In this case no moral lapse was apparent, but the children were apparently brought up under great disadvantages.
There, however, as in most cases, the internal economy of the houses were primarily affected by the defective internal and surrounding drainage that produced the damp and wet, and thence the dirt against which the inmates had ceased to contend. On inquiry of the male labourers in the district, it appeared that almost every third man was subjected to rheumatism; and with them, it was evident that the prevalence of damp and marsh miasma from the want of drainage, if it did not necessitate, formed a strong temptation to, the use of ardent spirits. With them as with the females, the wretched condition of the tenement formed a strong barrier against personal cleanliness and the use of decent clothes.
In the rural districts the very defects of the cottages which let in the fresh air, in spite of all the efforts of the inmates to exclude it, often obviate the effects of the overcrowding and defective ventilation. It has been observed, that while the labouring population of several districts have had no shelter but huts, similar to those described by Dr. Gilly, as the habitations of the border peasantry, which afforded a free passage for currents of air, they were not subject to fevers, though they were to rheumatism; but when, through the good intentions of the proprietors, such habitations were provided as were deemed more comfortable from excluding the weather effectually, but which, from the neglect of ventilation afforded recesses for stagnating air, and impurities which they had not the means or had not a sufficient love of cleanliness to remove; though rheumatism was excluded, febrile infection was generated. In the towns the access of the wind is impeded by the closeness of the surrounding habitations, and the internal construction of the dwellings tends to exclude the air still more effectually. Were the closed windows opened, it would frequently be only to admit a worse compound, the air from neglected privies, and the miasma from the wet and undrained court or street.
The close pent up air in these abodes has, undoubtedly, a depressing effect on the nervous energies, and this again, with the uneducated, and indeed with many of the educated workpeople, has an effect on the moral habits by acting as a strong and often irresistible provocative to the use of fermented liquors and ardent spirits. Much may be due to the incitement of association of greater numbers of people, but it is a common fact that, the same workpeople indulge more in drink when living in the close courts and lanes of the town than when living in the country, and that the residence in the different places is attended with a difference of effects similar to those described in respect to the tailors working in crowded rooms in towns and the tailors working separately or in the country. The workpeople who have fallen into habits of drinking, strenuously allege the impossibility of avoiding the practice in such places; they do, however, drink in greater quantities in such places, and give increased effect to the noxious miasma by which they are surrounded.