Whatever it costs us to remedy the disease we shall gain in decreased crime and wickedness. It is better even that the ratepayers should bear a portion of the burthen of new homes for the respectable poor than that they should have to pay twice as much in the long-run for prisons, lunatic asylums, and workhouses.
Enough for the present of the criminal classes. Let us see some of the poor people who earn an honest living—well, 'living,' perhaps, is hardly the word—let us say, who can earn enough to pay their rent and keep body and soul together.
Here is a quaint scene, to begin with. When we open the door we start back half choked. The air is full of floating fluff, and some of it gets into our mouths and half chokes us. When we've coughed and wheezed a little we look about us and gradually take in the situation.
The room is about eight feet square. Seated on the floor is a white fairy—a dark-eyed girl who looks as though she had stepped straight off a twelfth cake. Her hair is powdered all over a la Pompadour, and the effect is bizarre. Seated beside her is an older woman, and she is white and twelfth-cakey too. Alas! their occupation is prosaic to a degree. They are simply pulling rabbit-skins—that is to say, they are pulling away all the loose fluff and down and preparing the skins for the furriers, who will use them for cheap goods, dye them into imitations of rarer skins, and practise upon them the various tricks of the trade.
Floor, walls, ceiling, every inch of the one room these people live and sleep in, is covered with fluff and hair. How they breathe in it is a mystery to me. I tried and failed, and sought refuge on the doorstep. The pair, working night and day at their trade, make, when business is good, about twelve shillings a week. Their rent is four. This leaves them four shillings a week each to live upon, and as there is no one else to share it with them, I suppose they are well-to-do folk.
The younger woman's appearance was striking. Seated on the floor in an Eastern attitude, and white from top to toe—the effect of her dark eyes heightened by the contrast—she was a picture for an artist, and my fellow-worker made excellent use of his pencil, while I engaged her and her mother in conversation.
These people complained bitterly of their surroundings, of the character of the people they had to live among, and of the summary proceedings of their landlord, who absolutely refused to repair their room or give them the slightest convenience.
'Then why not move?' I ventured to suggest. 'Four shillings a week—ten guineas a year for this pigsty—is'. an exorbitant rent: you might do better.'
The woman shook her head. 'There's lots o' better places we'd like to go to, but they won't have us. They object to our business. We must go where they'll take us.'
'But there are plenty of places a little way out where you can have two rooms for what you pay for this.'