On the [subject] of Model Dwellings for the labouring classes, and of Public Baths and Wash-houses, as illustrating this view, I dwelt at some length in my [former Report]; and, deeply convinced of the boon which their establishment would confer on the poor, I explained, to the best of my ability, the nature and the extent of their usefulness.
I now recur to the subject, only that I may repeat my profound conviction of its importance; and that in doing so, I may congratulate your Hon. Court, and may utter my deep thankfulness for the labouring and suffering poor of this great community, that, in compliance with the Standing Orders of Parliament, formal notice has been given on the part of the Corporation of the City of London, of their intention, in the approaching session of the Legislature, to apply for authority which may enable them to achieve, for their dependent fellow-citizens, this almost incalculable good.[60]
[60] The intention of the Corporation, here spoken of, has not hitherto been carried into effect.—J. S., 1854.
I cannot too strongly express the importance I attach to this implied intention of the Corporation, to establish model dwellings for the industrial population of the City. But the first and immediate operation of such an Act will, from the nature of things, hardly reach to those very destitute and degraded classes of which I have spoken. Model lodgings of the ordinary character will become the residence of men, who now pay from two to five shillings a week for such space as they occupy, and who have the habit of sleeping in beds. To them the gain will be very great; and the example of improved domestic habits will be beneficial to their entire class. But among the lowest order which I have described to you, as it subsists in thronged and pestilent heaps within your worst quarters, there is little knowledge of beds. The first hirer of the room may possibly have a pile of rags on which he lies, with his wife and children, in one corner of the tenement; but the majority of his sub-tenants (paying for their family-lodging from sixpence to ten-pence a week) lie on straw, or on the bare boards. It will be obvious to you, that no Model Lodging-house could be reduced to the level of their means. By those restrictions to which I have adverted, something may be done, no doubt, for improving the arrangement of houses so tenanted—something to prevent the more glaring outrages of decency which at present prevail—something to maintain comparative cleanliness, and to check the spread of disease. I fear that no further remedy than this would prove effectual, unless it were universal for the metropolis. Unquestionably, it would be possible, with persons even of the lowest sort above pauperism, to proceed on the same principle as in the establishment of model-lodgings for the working orders; to provide for them, namely, under respectable control and supervision, the best accommodation which their price could purchase, of the kind to which they have been habituated; to give them the means of lying down, free from damp or cold, partitioned from one another, and with isolation of sexes, in a building constructed or arranged for the purpose, where the ventilation and the facilities for cleanliness might be complete. There seems little room to doubt that this might be done, on a very large scale, at a rate considerably less than the poorest now pay for the right of lairage amid vermin, filth, obscenity, and fever; and with such dormitories, obviously, there might be connected other arrangements for giving comfort and cleanliness to the very poor and destitute, at the lowest possible price. Of gratuitous reception I do not speak, because that is already provided, under certain regulations, in all the work-houses of the metropolis. But while I conceive that such a measure, if generally adopted throughout London, would defray its own cost, and would remove evils and miseries horrid to contemplate, I cannot but feel that it would be inadmissible (in its cheapest form) as a local measure. For if the price of reception—for instance, here, were so low as to allure the wretched population in question from their places of present resort within the City, it cannot be doubted that its influence would extend beyond your jurisdiction, and would throng your dormitories with the destitute of other districts. As the evil is metropolitan, so ought the remedy to be; and if there were thus instituted within each Union of the metropolis, a Ragged Dormitory of the nature described, I am persuaded, from my knowledge of the poorest classes, that its establishment would be of infinite advantage in improving the habits, and diminishing the mortality of those who would become its inmates.
III. Suggested Alterations in the Act of Parliament.
Finally, gentlemen, considering that you are about to procure a renewal of your Act of Parliament, and that you contemplate strengthening it with such additional clauses as may render it effective for the eradication of all preventable disease within the City of London, I would ask permission, in this point of view, to submit to you in a connected series, such modifications as in my judgment would contribute to that purpose. Most of these I have already had the advantage of suggesting to your Committee on Health; and to many of them I have adverted by anticipation, in previous passages of my Report. I would beg to enumerate the desiderata under the following heads, viz.
1. A clause, which would give you control over the supply and distribution of water, would enable you in your corporate capacity to contract with any person or any company for the total service of the City; and would authorise you to defray the expenses of such contract by certain specified rates.
2. A clause empowering you to require, that every trade or manufacture practised within the City shall be carried on with such precautions, and with such available improvements, from time to time, as shall reduce to the lowest practicable amount whatever nuisance or inconvenience to the neighbourhood is apt to arise therefrom.
3. Such change in the definition affixed to your 91st clause as would render this operative for the regulation and improvement of a larger number of houses; and such addition to the clause as would enable you, on the joint certificate of your Officer of Health and Surveyor, to enforce the making of additional windows, where requisite for the proper ventilation of houses.