Ragged homes and how to mend them

by Mrs. Bayly

O royal island, beautiful and fair!
There are who aid when ev’n thy statesmen sleep,
With the soft voice of prayer.

Each year’s intimacy with the interesting people of whom I have written has afforded fresh information, so that I find myself embarrassed with a multitude of facts; and after six years’ experience, selection from the accumulation of details is the only difficulty. It would be easy to multiply scenes of interest, equalling any already described; but if enough have been given to awaken sympathy, and stimulate to exertion, my object is accomplished. A few observations on subjects of great importance, not prominently brought forward in any of the preceding narratives, will be sufficient to close the whole.

One of the greatest obstacles which meets those who are striving to improve the homes of the poor is the construction of dwellings. There are whole streets of houses in this neighbourhood, whose appearance gives you the idea that they were originally designed for a higher class of people; and yet the builder must have known that the supply of such houses was already much beyond the demand, and that, if let at all, the inmates must be poor. Nothing, however, adapts them for this class of inhabitants. Five or six families may occasionally be found in one such house, with no more provision for health, comfort, and decency, than ought to be made for each one.

The houses professedly erected for the poor are still more deficient. They are sometimes built below the level of the road, so that the drainage is to them, instead of from them. The basements are consequently fearfully damp, and the whole atmosphere, in every part of the house, is impregnated with the effluvia from stagnant sewage.

The materials used in buildings are so bad, and the workmanship so inferior, that the floors are always loose, and everything seems constantly getting out of order. We have whole streets of small six-roomed houses let out entirely to the poor; so that three families frequently live in one house. There is no outlet to the air at the back of these dwellings, either by door or by window. One long, blank wall is all that is to be seen. Frequent illness prevails among the inhabitants of these streets, and I can never forget the scenes presented there during the visitation of the cholera. I cannot bear to dwell upon them, but, for the sake of my subject, I must mention one case. In a small bed-room on the top floor of one of these dwellings I found, one morning, that a woman and a child had died in the night; and another woman in the same room, though still living, appeared in a dying state. I shudder when I think of that room; no pen can describe its horrors. It was a close, hot morning in July, not a breath of air was stirring. The window was thrown up at the bottom; it could not be opened at the top; and as there was no draught through the house to draw the air into the room, very little relief could be obtained. The dying woman was the mother of little children, and I would have given anything to save her. The only possible expedient that suggested itself to me was to have some of the bricks forced out of the back wall. This was done; but all was in vain, the poor mother died, surviving her husband only a few days; and the little children either cried in the street, or were cared for by a neighbour, till they were taken away to the workhouse.

As I left that street, I could think only of the words—“It is of the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed.” The contrivances of men seemed so fraught with destruction, that, if it were not for the interposition of God, the consequences would be still more disastrous.

I sat down as soon as I reached home, and wrote a letter to the editor of the Times, describing the scenes I had witnessed that morning, calling his attention particularly to the construction of those houses; and then asked, in the bitterness of my heart, if, with all our extensive and costly paraphernalia of government, nothing could be done to stop this awful waste of comfort, health, and life. The importance of the subject at once commended itself. The narrative not only appeared, but was backed by every argument and appeal that the talented pen of the editor could bring to bear upon it. But there it ended: no steps have been taken to make the construction of such dwellings contrary to the law of the land. Many fathers, mothers, and children, too, have since died in those streets; only, in these cases, by lingering fever, instead of by sudden cholera. Surely the cries of distress must have ascended again and again, and have “entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth!”

But there is still a darker side to this grievance. The death of the few is less calculated to excite our compassion, than the miserable, lingering existence of the many. When I see the little boys and girls playing before the doors, often with crooked backs or crooked limbs, with emaciated forms and faces, if not with still more unmistakable marks of disease, I cannot help thinking,—Are these boys to be our future working-men, upon whose sinew and muscle we are to depend for cultivating our soil, constructing our railways, sinking our mines, and defending our country; and are these girls to be the mothers of the next generation?

There was mercy, as well as judgment, in the punishment that followed the disobedience of our first parents. The sentence, “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,” is not an unmitigated evil. The most active persons are generally the most cheerful; and the hard workers are usually happier than the deep thinkers. But when the body, which God intended and adapted for labour, has, by the habitual violation of the laws of health, during all its first years, become enfeebled and deranged, the necessity for exertion becomes a painful reality, and may, indeed, be looked upon as a curse—as “the dark cloud without a silver lining.”

There is a deeper meaning than some suppose in that constant application for “light places,” of which we hear so much. Some tell us, it is all indolence; and thus on the surface it often appears. But surely there must be some cause, even for indolence. A child of good constitution, and where health has been judiciously cared for, becomes, as soon as he is able to manifest his power, almost inconveniently active. The nurse complains that “he will never bide still;” that she “can’t get a minute’s peace for him;” that “there is no end to the mischief he does.” Now, a child is not active from principle, nor because he feels it would be wrong to be indolent. He has not to be instructed to move, although he sometimes has to be taught to be still. Activity is the joy of his life, and would doubtless continue so, if it were not for the evil influences that are permitted to surround the body, marring God’s beautiful work, and bringing down the dishonouring reflection upon the Creator, that man, as he is constituted, is “not strong enough for his place.”