Round about a Pound a Week

by Mrs. Pember Reeves

3. Man, wife, and six children; four rooms; two beds, one sofa, one banana-crate cot. Wage 22s. One double bed for four people in very small room, crossing the window; cot in corner by bed. One single bed for two people (girls aged thirteen and ten years) in smaller room, 8 feet by 10 feet, with head under the window. One sofa for boy aged eleven years in front downstairs room, where police will not allow window to be open at night. The kitchen, which is at the back, has the copper in it, and is too small for a bed, or even a sofa to stand anywhere.

4. Man, wife, and five children; two rooms; one bed, one sofa, one perambulator. Wage 22s. One bed for four persons across window in tiny room; perambulator for baby by bed; one sofa for two boys in kitchen, also tiny.

5. Man, wife, and four children; two basement rooms; one bed, one baby’s cot, one sofa. One bed for four, with baby’s cot by it, in one room; sofa for child of nine in the other. In front room the police will not allow the window open at night.

6. Man, wife, and five children; three small rooms upstairs; two beds, one cot; one double bed for three persons, with head to window, cot beside it, in one room; one wide single bed for three persons across window in other room.

7. Man, wife, and five children; two rooms upstairs; one wide single bed, one narrow single bed, one cot. Wife sleeps with two children in wide single bed, baby in cot by her side. Two children under window in tiny back room in narrow single bed. The man works at night, and gets home about four in the morning. He sits up on a chair till six o’clock, when his wife gets up and makes up the children’s bed in the back room for him.

There are plenty more of such cases. Those above have been taken at random from an alphabetical list. In one a woman and five children sleep in one room, but, as it is large enough to have two windows, they can keep one open, and are better off than many parties of four in smaller rooms, where the bed perforce comes under the only window.

It may be noticed that in some of the cases given, as in some which I have no space to give, a third or fourth room, which is generally the living-room, has no one sleeping in it at night. The women, when asked why they do not relieve the pressure in the family bedroom by putting a child or two in the kitchen, explain that they have no more beds and no more bedclothes. Each fresh bed needs blankets and mattress. They look round the tiny room, and ask, “Where’d I put it if I ’ad it?” Besides, to put a couple of children to bed in the one living-room makes it both a bad bedroom and a bad sitting-room, even if the initial difficulty of bed and bedding could be overcome.

It will be noticed, too, that in the list given a cot of some sort was always provided for the little baby. Unfortunately, this is not a universal rule. It appears here because the investigation insisted on the new baby having a cot to itself. Otherwise it would have taken its chance in the family bed. In winter the mothers find it very difficult to believe that a new-born baby can be warm enough in a cot of its own. And when one looks at the cotton cot blankets, about 30 inches long, which are all their wildest dreams aspire to, one understands their disbelief. The cost of a cot at its cheapest runs as follows: Banana-crate with sacking bottom, 1s.; bag filled with chaff for mattress, 2d.; blankets, 1s. 6d. bought wholesale and sold at cost price. This mounts up to 2s. 8d., and, for a woman who has to buy blankets at an ordinary shop, a quality good enough for the purpose would cost her more. She would have to spend something like 3s. 6d. over the child’s cot—a sum which is beyond the reach of most women with a 20s. budget. As a rule it would be safe to say that the new baby does take its share of the risks of the family bed, legislation to the contrary notwithstanding.

The rest of the furniture is both as insufficient and crowded as is the sleeping accommodation. There are not enough chairs, though too many for the room. There is not enough table space, though too much for the room. There is no wardrobe accommodation other than the hook behind the door, and possibly a chest of drawers, which may partly act as a larder, and has in the visitor’s experience been used as a place in which to put a dead child.