How the Poor Live; and, Horrible London / 1889

by George R. Sims

Another evil which must inevitably come of the poorest and the most helpless being driven farther and farther back before the march of improvement is this: They must come into closer and closer contact with the criminal and the vicious classes. Men come into a low district because they are poor and other neighbourhoods are beyond their means. Many of them come honest and remain honest, but the children degenerate rapidly under the evil influences of the place.

Take the history of the Black Gang of the Mint as an example. It is composed of the worst desperadoes, young and old, of the metropolis. Its ranks are thinned over and over again by the arrest and conviction of the members, but their places are filled almost directly by the sons of the labourers and hard-working folks of the district. This is a painful fact which is perpetually being forced on the attention of those who do philanthropic work in the slums. The criminal classes are daily recruited from the children of the labouring classes, and this is mainly due to their enforced herding together in the rookeries. But where else are the dislodged poor with large families to go?

Those who have passed their lives among these people, and have watched area after area of labourers' dwellings disappear, know that each fresh clearance has a deteriorating effect on the character of the remaining districts. Unless some scheme be devised which will check the wholesale destruction of slum neighbourhoods and the hasty displacement of those who cannot be accommodated elsewhere, the ultimate result must be pestilence or revolution. We may frankly recognise the necessity of condemning buildings unfit for habitation without denying the hardships of the evicted tenants. All reforms injure one class at first in order to benefit another. But while public attention is so fully aroused to the question of 'Housing the Poor,' we may as well learn the lesson of the past in order to avoid a recurrence of the evil. How is it a puzzled public is asking every day that, with medical officers of health, sanitary inspectors, inspectors of nuisances, and what not, all armed with full powers, so many districts of labouring-class accommodation have been allowed to drift into a state of dilapidation and filth which renders it imperatively necessary to raze them to the ground? The machinery to prevent such a state of things was ample. We have a right to know why it has broken down.

I will endeavour to explain as far as I can why we have at present a 'Horrible London,' and also to suggest in what way it may be possible to avoid having another. The clearance of vast spaces has sent accommodation in tenement houses up to a premium, and landlords have been able to let their rooms regardless of their condition.

The officers whose duty it is to report on sanitary neglect are appointed by the vestry, and hold their appointments at the goodwill and pleasure of the vestryman.

Much of the worst property in London is held either by vestrymen or by persons who have friends in the vestry. The first thing, as a rule, which a man does who acquires low-class and doubtful property is to try and be elected a vestryman. What chance under such circumstances has a vestry-appointed officer of doing his duty in a thorough and efficient manner? His reports, if he make them, are too often burked. Messrs. Jones and Smith and Brown are the gentlemen upon whose votes will depend that increase of salary he is going to ask for next Christmas. And Messrs. Jones and Smith and Brown are the gentlemen who will be put to considerable pecuniary loss if he insists upon the unsanitary condition of certain large blocks of property in the district.

I do not for one moment pretend that this is the case in the Mint—there some of the vestrymen are among the most earnest agitators for a new order of things.

But the evil exists in some of the worst districts, and to an extent of which the public little dreams. If some of the flagrant pieces of jobbery in this class of property, which have been the result of vestry government, could be brought to light, the public would cease to wonder how such a condition of things could have come to pass.

Let anyone who wishes to inform himself thoroughly on the subject walk through any of the slums, and contrast the condition of the registered lodging-houses with the condition of the surrounding dwellings. The lodging-houses are almost everywhere in better repair. The floors are scrubbed continually, the walls are fairly clean, and there is proper sanitary accommodation. But these lodging-houses are under the control of the police—an officer appointed by Scotland Yard inspects them, and sees that every regulation is complied with. If the proprietor fails in his duty he loses his license.

A portion of this very Farm House in the Mint is a common lodging-house, and it is a place the most refined lady might enter and inspect without the slightest repugnance.