After travelling from Kent to Devon, finding employment very bad (winter 1904-5) correspondent came north. He travelled to East Yorkshire to a harvest job where he was expected, but found the harvest short and only got two days. He found that numbers of men who usually found harvest employment could not obtain it, and that hard-working men were roaming from place to place, and, being forced to take refuge in the tramp ward, were fast losing heart. The following is his experience in a tramp ward, where he was forced to take refuge one rainy day. Usually he slept in the open.
Fourth Letter.
"On going in you have your bread, and before you have time to eat it you are taken to the room for undressing. This is not very large, only for nine or ten to sit down, and there were many that night. You will see that room was limited. There were two dirty-looking baths there, but how many made use of them I could not say. I did not. Your clothes are tied into a bundle and put all together into a heap in the room you undress in. Your clothes may be good and clean and free from vermin when you undress, but what will they be like in the morning?
"You have a shirt and two rugs given you, and go to the sleeping room on the boards. Some have a board for their head. I had not. It is a large room, and it need be, for there were twenty-four of us in it. It is infested with bugs. The shirts and rugs, I should say, have not been washed for months, and are full of vermin. Mine was, and the complaint was general, so I suppose they were all alike. Sleep is impossible. You get up, have your bread and cold water, and are put on the pump, eight on and eight off, every half-hour. There are two pumps kept continually going all day, so it cannot be for the want of water that dirt reigns supreme. Cheese and bread for dinner, bread and bread for supper, and then the awful night to go through again. Get up and have some bread and water. Then you are turned out. It was raining in torrents. I was soaked in twenty minutes after I had left."
Walking north in the vain search for work, my correspondent crossed to Lancashire and encountered the following experience.
Fifth Letter.
"I was admitted at 8.10. They gave me coffee and bread, and sent me to a very nice large and well-ventilated room, a room large enough to sleep fifteen men in easily. There were three others there, and after waiting till nine o'clock, during which time nine more arrived, they started bathing us. There are four baths there, three for each bath, and how many more after used the same water I do not know. Given a shirt, you are sent to the cells. I noticed on going to mine that there were eleven cells on the right, and nine on the left. My cell was four from the top on the left. The right side was full, and the three on the left above mine also full. I noticed three pairs of boots outside each cell; a pleasant prospect. There were two men already in my cell. I made the third. That made forty-five men for the fifteen cells, then there were the eleven men I left in the bath-room, who would fill four others, that would make fifty-six men in nineteen cells. Now when I tell you that these cells are four feet six inches wide, and my two comrades were bigger men than me, and I am not a small one, you can fancy the situation. What I suffered from cramp alone was punishment enough for a lifetime. You have one rug each, not enough to keep you from coming in contact with the other men's flesh. As soon as you are in the door is closed and you are in black darkness, yet the gas is burning in the passage all night. I could see it by the crack in the door, and if they would cut a hole in the door it would serve both for ventilation and light.
"I can safely say that I had never such a night in my life. Sleep was out of the question, even if you had not been disturbed by the groans and curses that were going on more or less all night, a sort of song you would fancy they sing in the Inferno.
"One of my mates was an old man. He had been drinking. Some one had given him a couple of pints of 1½d. beer, and I suppose he had had an empty stomach, anyway he said it upset him. 'Diarrhœa,' he called it. Now the foul air arising from other causes was bad enough, but when I tell you."... Here follows a description of consequences. "The old man said it was useless to call to the attendant, he had been in before." When at 5.30 the door was opened it was only to fetch rugs and shirts. Permission to leave the cell or empty the vessel was refused by two attendants, and also to men in other cells. "It's a mercy I did not go off my head," my correspondent remarks concerning that horrible night.
"The second attendant also brutally refusing to allow the vessel to be removed 'because it was against rules,' said 'it would do to go with the ham and eggs.'
"'Ham and eggs' in the shape of coffee and bread appeared at seven o'clock, and those who could consume it had to do so in that atmosphere of horror. We were kept locked up until about 8.20, and then let out. I shall never forget the feeling in all my life.
"I have noticed on more than one occasion that when small-pox has broken out in various parts of the country, that it has been taken there by tramps. Now supposing small-pox broke out in a place having such a tramp ward, who would be to blame?
"The guardians cannot say they had not the room, there is the room I have mentioned. There were another row of cells I noticed, about twenty, that had the appearance of being unoccupied. There were certainly some of them empty; the doors of others were closed so I cannot say if all were, but that can easily be found out.
"There were thirty-four men kept in, and about twenty of us were sent to the wood-yard. I had asked to see a doctor. I was too ill to work, but was told to go to the yard. I went but did nothing. I could not. I felt I had not the strength of a baby, and had a hard matter to keep on my feet.
"At about ten o'clock the labour master came round. At least he was pointed out to me as the labour master, but as I did not see him again all day, I doubted it. Anyhow he asked me what I was doing; I told him I could do nothing, and wanted to see the doctor. He told me that I was a malingerer and that I should not see the doctor. 'Doctors are not for such as thou,' says he, and that I should have no dinner. I asked him to send me before a magistrate: I would have done a month gladly if I could have made this statement before a magistrate. I had forgotten to mention the state of the cell; it was very damp and coated with dirt and spit, quite enough to spread disease.
"Although I was to have no dinner, I was given some, but gave it away, as I could eat nothing until I was coming out next morning. I did not work till the afternoon, when I felt a little better and very cold. I thought I would see what I could do, but I could not do much. At 4.30 o'clock work ceased and we had a roll each. Afterwards I noticed that a number of men crowded round the door leading to the cells. Thinking there was something in it, I got as near the door as possible. At 5.30 this door opened. The rush of boys on opening the doors of a penny gaff was not in it. It turned out that on the second night there are two rooms to be slept in, each containing nine bedsteads, hence the rush. The first eighteen would get them—I was the lucky eighteenth.
"There were thirteen in the room I was in—four on the floor. I could not say if the remainder slept in the other room or not; I had a better night than the one previous. We were up at 5.30, and after having roll and coffee were let out at 7.30.
"I see some of the northern counties are holding a conference, under the chairmanship of Sir John Hibbert, in order to study the vagrant problem, and he quoted the punishment of vagrants in Henry VIII.'s time. I think if Sir John had studied the matter he would have seen that at that time vagrants were favourably dealt with in comparison with their betters. There was many a better head than even Sir John's stuck on Temple Bar for only saying what they thought.
"One of the favourite complaints at this conference will be the burden to the ratepayers, and the cost of their maintenance will be supplied to them by the various union masters. Now, how does it work out?
"The thirty-four men who were kept for the two nights and a day had 170 rolls, thirty-four portions of cheese, and 102 lots of coffee. This during a year would mean a considerable sum. For this the ratepayers think they would have to do a day's work—but do they? There were twenty-two men put to wood sawing, and here I assert, if the whole of the wood cut during the day had been equally divided between these men, and given to them as a task, it could have been done in two hours. Now, why were these men kept in their cells from 5.30 to 8.20?—why were they not sent to the labour yard at six o'clock and worked for this two hours, given their breakfast, and sent about their business? The ratepayer would have the same amount of work done, and have saved the price of 102 rolls and thirty-four lots of coffee, and thirty-four portions of cheese. To give an instance of the work done. There were two men nearest me who started to saw a sleeper with a cross-cut saw at nine o'clock, they had not finished at three o'clock, and the old man took one away, and I helped to finish it myself. This was the style of work all round, there is no task there; the old man in charge is an inmate and is laughed at, and they do what they like. The professionals dearly love a day's rest and an extra night's rest, and the working man is not going to do much for no pay if he can help it.
"If you want to study the ratepayer, take a man in a night, turn him out after two hours' work, he will have earned his twopenny feed in that time, and it does not cost more. You will give the man looking for work a chance, you will reduce the number of casuals, for you will soon break the professional tramp's heart, and greatly relieve the ratepayer.
"In conclusion, may I say that if you consulted half a dozen men who understood the game, you may be able to solve the tramp problem."
VII. THE COMMON LODGING-HOUSE.
Before we can pass in review the results of investigation into the working of the tramp ward, it is necessary to correlate with it the examination of the common lodging-house. It is not sufficient to look on the tramp ward as a deterrent from vagrancy; it is evident from the evidence already given that it most imperfectly fulfils another function, namely, that of a refuge for wayfarers in extremity.
How is it that such a need has arisen? It has arisen from a little-considered change in social customs, which has gradually led to accumulating evils. In old times there was a double provision for travelling, for rich and poor, the hospitality of the abbey and that of "mine host" at the inn. When the abbey was suppressed, more must have devolved on the inn. Accommodation there could be found both for rich and poor, though that for the latter might be only a bed of straw.[32] But by degrees, as travelling became common, the rich absorbed the accommodation of the inn, which itself evolved from "hostel" into "hotel," and catered for the rich only. A travelling poor man therefore was put to it to find some other shelter. Hospitality is most freely exercised still by the very poor. By degrees some individual became known as willing to entertain strangers for a small charge, and so by degrees also evolved the common lodging-house. A description of one such formed by natural evolution will be found in Chap. II., pp. [97] et seq. It was simply an old house, probably once a farmhouse, now situated in a slum quarter of a northern town. The sanitary arrangements for numerous lodgers were a sink in the common kitchen, and a w.c., perfectly dry, and in a dreadful condition. The house was kept by a widow woman, who could exercise no effective control over the motley inmates. Men, women and children were crowded in the dormitory, separation of sexes being quite insufficient. Insect pests abounded, and cleanliness was but of a surface character. Yet this, and one reputed to be worse, constituted the only accommodation for working-class travellers, men and women, in a fairly large town.
Investigation in another direction, on the main route from Manchester to the south, revealed a similar state of things. The "best lodging-house in the town" contained no separate sitting-room for women, and a small sink without water laid on was all the accommodation for washing purposes. This was in the common kitchen, and water had to be fetched from the single men's room. The bed slept on was infested with vermin.[33] A London investigation revealed that similar accommodation, which in the north cost 4d., cost 6d. A description is given by a male investigator of the state of such a lodging-house. The common sitting-room was a half-cellar with a concrete floor, very dirty, débris of meals and dust were just swept under the tables. Spitting was in evidence everywhere. In the dormitory of another a notice was posted that "Gentlemen are requested not to go to bed in their boots!" Nevertheless it was evidently not obeyed. The state of the beds was such that my informant left without trying them. (See Chap. VII., p. [257].)[34]