How the Poor Live; and, Horrible London / 1889

by George R. Sims

The presence of animals not exactly regarded as domestic is a feature of certain poor districts of London. Fowls roost nightly in dozens of bedrooms in the back streets; and only the other day a score of those miserable tortoises that one sees on barrows destitute of the smallest vestige of green stuff, and probably enduring the most prolonged agony, were discovered crawling about the floor of a costermonger's attic among his progeny, only slightly inferior in point of numbers to the poor animals themselves.

It is a great complaint of the men, who, as a rule, are hardworking, honest fellows enough in their way, and thrifty, too, when they can keep away from the temptation of drink, that so little attention is being paid to their needs in the many schemes for improved dwellings for the industrial classes.

In some of the cases where the accommodation for ponies and donkeys may fairly be called 'stabling,' the entrance is through the passage of a house densely inhabited, and the animals are led in and out daily in such a manner as to be a nuisance to the occupants, while the stables, being so close to the windows of the room and kept in anything but good order, are a constant danger to health.

I have been assured by an old inhabitant of the costers' quarters that he knew a donkey who went upstairs to the third floor every night to go to bed; but old inhabitants are not to be relied upon, and I give you the story for what it is worth.

Of one thing, however, no one who personally investigates the poorer districts of great cities can remain in doubt. There are there hidden away from general observation marvels as great as any of those which the enterprising Farini imports from the Cannibal Islands, the dismal swamps, the deserts and jungles of the savage world, for the amusement and edification of the shilling-paying public. Missing links abound, and monstrosities are plentiful. Some of the terrible sights which we have seen we have too much respect for the reader's feelings to reproduce. Now and again the revelations of some police-court send a shudder through society. Children starved and stunted and ignorant as the lowest beasts of the forests are unearthed in foul dens, where they have passed their little lives chained to the walls, or pounced upon by the police, led to the discovery by the tavern gossip of the neighbours. Grown women who have lived naked in underground cellars, and long ago lost their reason, are found one fine morning by the merest accident while their gaolers are away. On these hidden horrors of unknown London I need not dwell here. The history of Horrible London has yet to be written; but the brutality which makes many of these terrible things possible is largely due to the circumstances under which the poor live. The careless disregard of human life and human suffering which has so long characterized us as a nation must bear fruit. The waste of human life brought about by the conditions under which the poor are allowed to live breeds in them a contempt for the sufferings of others. They become hardened, and the cruelty at which we shudder is their second nature. All that is best and holiest in life there is nothing to encourage—only the ferocious instincts of the brute are fostered by a state of existence in which the struggle for the very air men breathe is bitter and intense.

Says a philanthropist, who has gone to the root of this appalling subject: 'In these districts men live in little more than half the space their corpses occupy when dead.' Think of it! Penetrate the awful places where vice and squalor, crime and brutality, reign supreme; where the oath of the gin-maddened ruffian, the cry of the trampled wife, and the wail of the terrified child ring out night and day; where all is one fierce ferment in a hell upon earth, where day brings no light, and night no rest, and ask yourself what manner of fruit these forcing-houses can bear.

When some one bold enough shall write 'Horrible London,' and the black page lies open that all may read, then, and not till then, will the enormity of the responsibility be recognised of those to whom the power to do so much has been given and who have done so little.

That work is for stronger hands than mine to do. I am content here to chronicle such lights and shadows of life among the poor as fall across my path in a journey round the outskirts only of the dark continent in our midst.

Here is an incident which, pathetic enough, has yet its humorous side. Here is a boy of eight years old in petticoats, a big, strong, healthy lad. His father is a dock labourer, and this is how he was brought forward as a candidate for some cast-off clothing which a director of the East and West India Dock Company was generously distributing.

The dock labourers are a distinct class among the East-End poor, and I hope at some future time to give the reader a glimpse of life among them. How hard their struggle is may be gathered from the fact that their boys have to go till eight and nine years old in petticoats because the parents cannot afford to buy them knickerbockers or trousers.