The illustration presented this week is of a place in Fox-court, Gray’s-inn-lane, long notorious as a “thieves’ house,” but now far less frequented. On the visit, a few months back, of an informant (who declined staying there), a number of boys were lying on the floor gambling with marbles and halfpennies, and indulging in savage or unmeaning blasphemy. One of the lads jumped up, and murmuring something that it wouldn’t do to be idle any longer, induced a woman to let him have a halfpenny for “a stall;” that is, as a pretext with which to enter a shop for the purpose of stealing, the display of the coin forming an excuse for his entrance. On the same occasion a man walked into “the kitchen,” and coolly pulled from underneath the back of his smock-frock a large flat piece of bacon, for which he wanted a customer. It would be sold at a fourth of its value.
I am assured that the average takings of lodging-house keepers may be estimated at 17s. 6d. a night, not to say 20s.; but I adopt the lower calculation. This gives a weekly payment by the struggling poor, the knavish, and the outcast, of 1,000 guineas weekly, or 52,000 guineas in the year. Besides the rent and taxes, the principal expenditure of the lodging-house proprietors is for coals and gas. In some of the better houses, blacking, brushes, and razors are supplied, without charge, to the lodgers: also pen and ink, soap, and, almost always, a newspaper. For the meals of the frequenters salt is supplied gratuitously, and sometimes, but far less frequently, pepper also; never vinegar or mustard. Sometimes a halfpenny is charged for the use of a razor and the necessary shaving apparatus. In one house in Kent-street, the following distich adorns the mantel-piece:
“To save a journey up the town,
A razor lent here for a brown:
But if you think the price too high,
I beg you won’t the razor try.”
In some places a charge of a halfpenny is made for hot water, but that is very rarely the case. Strong drink is admitted at almost any hour in the majority of the houses, and the deputy is generally ready to bring it; but little is consumed in the houses, those addicted to the use or abuse of intoxicating liquors preferring the tap-room or the beer-shop.
Of the Filth, Dishonesty, and Immorality of Low Lodging-houses.
In my former and my present inquiries, I received many statements on this subject. Some details, given by coarse men and boys in the grossest language, are too gross to be more than alluded to, but the full truth must be manifested, if not detailed. It was remarked when my prior account appeared, that the records of gross profligacy on the part of some of the most licentious of the rich (such as the late Marquis of Hertford and other worthies of the same depraved habits) were equalled, or nearly equalled, by the account of the orgies of the lowest lodging-houses. Sin, in any rank of life, shows the same features.
And first, as to the want of cleanliness, comfort, and decency: “Why, sir,” said one man, who had filled a commercial situation of no little importance, but had, through intemperance, been reduced to utter want, “I myself have slept in the top room of a house not far from Drury-lane, and you could study the stars, if you were so minded, through the holes left by the slates having been blown off the roof. It was a fine summer’s night, and the openings in the roof were then rather an advantage, for they admitted air, and the room wasn’t so foul as it might have been without them. I never went there again, but you may judge what thoughts went through a man’s mind—a man who had seen prosperous days—as he lay in a place like that, without being able to sleep, watching the sky.”