3. One storey, and the largest, is below the street level, an arrangement which, from a sanitary point of view, is unjustifiable, and ought never to be imitated in the country.
4. There is no back door, which is a very serious defect in a house. The result is that the coals have to be got in, and the ashes and garbage to be got out, under the dining-room windows, and that while these tedious processes are in doing the traffic in the main street is very much impeded.
It is said that eels get used to skinning, and so the Londoner becomes very blind to the failings of the house which he inhabits.
The house of which the plan and sections are shown in the figures is not, be it observed, one of the dwellings of the poor, of which we hear so much, but one of the dwellings of the well-to-do, or even rich, fetching probably 350l. a year rent. It would need four servants, one of whom would sleep below ground level in the pantry; and in addition to the servants, eight persons might squeeze into such a house.
The basement below ground level is really a cellar dwelling, against which we inveigh, when we find it in Whitechapel. It is very dark, and requires artificial light nearly every day in the year. A butler sleeps in a dingy 'pantry' among the tea-cups and other gear, which he possibly sorts upon his unmade bed before he lays the cloth for breakfast.
This basement (Fig. [2]) contains four sinks and two closets, each with its trap, and in each of the three areas are trapped gullies so placed that any gases which escape from them are more likely than not to find their way into the house.
The only way into the kitchen is through the scullery. The scullery sink is turned away from the window, and the smell of cooking and of cabbage water must inevitably find its way into the basement. A water-closet has been wedged into the back area between the windows of the kitchen and the servants' hall; and the larder, while it is without adequate light or ventilation, has a trapped gully at its door to serve as a seed-bed for mould fungi which will infect the food.
There is only one staircase, and this must serve as a shaft for the culinary and other fumes of the basement to rise in. It is entirely without independent ventilation until the half-landing above the drawing-room is reached. In fig. [1] there is another staircase window on the second floor, but this, be it observed, has been blocked by a water-closet in the house, as altered by the plumbers. This is a very serious thing to have done, and, in my judgment, is not in any way compensated by the changes recommended. The staircase has a skylight at the top, but skylights, being never opened in London because of 'the blacks,' are of very little use for ventilation. On the ground floor a water-closet abuts on the morning-room windows, while in the area beneath these windows is another water-closet, previously mentioned.
The first floor contains two fine drawing-rooms and a staircase window, and being without 'sanitary apparatus' is wholesome, except for the fumes which may ascend or descend the well-staircase. On this floor the light and decoration will render one oblivious of the basement. On the second floor the staircase window has been blocked, and there is an impossible bath-room, without adequate light or ventilation, which nothing can make wholesome, and which ought to be abolished absolutely. On the top floor the staircase ends in an unventilated cul-de-sac formed by four bedrooms, a dark 'box-room,' and a water-closet which is wedged in between two bedrooms.
This house has, if one may say so, been over-plumbered. There are five closets, five sinks, and a bath-waste (eleven trapped waste-pipes) for a maximum of twelve people. The closet on the second floor, and the one in the basement between the servants' hall and kitchen, should be abolished, and the fixed bath on the second floor should be removed. A bath-room wants light and air, and should always be against an outside wall. Persons should never take houses with extemporised bath-rooms poked in 'anywhere.'