There were several persons, indeed, present on the 17th inst., who were prepared and even desirous to hear another proposition brought forward, connected with the domiciliary condition of the poor, and tending to correct an evil in their present dwellings, confessedly far more difficult to reach than either their defective sewerage, or their scanty provision of water. And it is one which not only affects most seriously their sanitary state, but impairs all the decency of their daily habits of life, and nearly defeats whatever means can be attempted for the improvement of their spiritual and moral character. I allude to the crowded manner in which they live together; the landlord of the house too often entirely regardless of any rule for restricting the number of its inmates; and his tenants sometimes deriving a large profit, beyond the amount of their own rent, from the numerous under-tenants whom they admit, without scruple or restraint, to share in the occupation of them. Thus it happens not unfrequently, that into a cottage with two small bed-rooms, built and adapted only for a single family, two or even three other families, besides individual lodgers, are admitted. And from that hour must the inmates of it be compelled to abandon all the happy arrangements of household cleanliness, decency, and order. Mr. Rouse, in his faithful and elaborate MS. Report on the sanitary condition of a large part of this parish, states, that he has known in the summer twenty-six persons living in such an house: and from fifteen to twenty is the frequent number of their inmates. But while it ought to be stated that the worst cases of this kind occur among the Irish labourers, they prevail to a greater or a less extent in all the following districts, viz.: Parson’s Green Lane, Peterborough Row, Sand End, Garden Row, Carpenter’s Row, Dawe’s Lane, Wheat-Sheaf Alley, Gain’s Buildings, Bedford Place, Stanley Place, the cottages near Normand House, Orchard Place, Buckler’s Alley, the Old Greyhound Cottages, Marsh Croft, Sun Street, Star Lane, and Willow Place.
And it is a melancholy fact, that while in some other parts of Fulham a considerable number of small houses have been built within the last few years, of a more substantial and commodious style, in order to meet the increasing wants of this portion of the inhabitants, better drained, better ventilated, and in some more healthy localities, they are gradually lapsing into the same state. A very few of them once becoming occupied in this comfortless manner lower the credit of those contiguous to them. One tenant sets a bad example to the rest: and thus in the very districts where some hope had been encouraged for a time of better things, the same baneful system of crowding the houses with lodgers is spreading.
The history of these masses of ill-regulated dwellings is, alas! uniform and instructive. Some speculating builder or other, oftentimes unknown in the neighbourhood, and having no sympathy with the miseries which he inflicts upon it, becomes possessed of a narrow slip of land, the mere frontage of a road or a footpath, and erects upon it a collection of low, slightly built cottages, with windows wholly unsuited to them, with no drainage but that of cesspools, confined in their dimensions, rarely emptied, and saturating with their noxious contents not only the adjacent soil, but even the walls of the houses close to which they are often placed; with no pumps for drinking-water but such as soon become tainted by the contiguity of these very cesspools; and with no provision of other water, but that which an occasional cart, drawn by a miserable donkey, brings dear-bought to the door. High rents, far beyond the means of the tenants, but sternly collected as each week comes round, can only be met by the vicious practice of subletting each room or fraction of a room which can by any sacrifice be dispensed with. Even the essential whitewashing of the walls within is sometimes imposed as a burden upon the occupier, who of course does it in the most careless way, instead of its being undertaken by the landlord. And whenever the work of dilapidation begins in one of these tenements, each successive tenant, flying from his hard bargain, leaves it of course more dismantled than he found it; until they become utterly unfit for the occupation of human beings, whether under the summer sun, striking upon their slight and exposed roofs, or the winter wind, penetrating the settlements of their walls and the cracks of their windows.
This account may, I believe, be taken as an accurate description of the average character of these dwellings which are now provided, without the option or alternative of any others, for the large and rapidly increasing poor populations of the suburbs of London. Such, I am confident, is the character of those at Fulham. Let it be remembered that every improvement of the worst built streets of London has a direct tendency to swell the number of these inhabitants of its suburbs. And if it be true that they enjoy, some from the very nature of their occupations, and all from the position of their houses, a more free ventilation during the day than is attainable by the pent-up inhabitants of the narrow alleys and courts of the metropolis itself, yet is there not one among them who can have access to the improved dwellings, or to the baths and wash-houses, now in successful operation for the health and comfort even of the poorest classes, (though still upon a scale too limited to be extensively useful,) in the parishes of Whitechapel, St. Pancras, St. Martin, and Marylebone. Within the last ten days the boon of these last-named valuable institutions has been promised to the densely peopled district of Lambeth.
There is one fact connected with the late epidemic to which I cannot forbear requesting your serious attention, and which, I have little doubt, would be abundantly confirmed, if requisite, by a reference to the experience of other places. Whenever the disorder affected the inmates of some of the less crowded and better regulated houses, its progress was comparatively slow; the symptoms were accessible to those medicines or palliatives, of which the gracious Providence of God has taught us the value; and by these means the last fatal issue was sometimes averted. But whenever it assailed even the healthiest inmate of one of those wretched abodes which I have described, the subtle poison took its course at once; no remedies availed to reach it, and the only symptom was Death.
Does not this fact speak volumes as to what we ought to do in endeavouring to improve these dwellings of our poorer brethren, before the Cholera comes again to visit us?
Of the extreme difficulty of the question, indeed, no one who has ever considered it can deem lightly. Nor is it likely that this difficulty will be effectually removed until the country has the wisdom to bear, and the legislature the firmness to enact some new statute that can reach it. Hitherto, unhappily, our legislation, with the best purpose, has only aggravated the evil which it sought to correct, and has thus been moving in the wrong direction. The Building Act made it penal for any person to lodge in a cellar, of which the height came below a certain standard, or its window within a certain width; and the only effect of this prohibition has been to drive the cellar lodgers into the attics, where they are stowed more closely than before. The claims of reason, and morality, and common decency have been urged in vain against this fearful state of things. But since it has been proved, by the history of such a season as that through which we have been lately carried, to involve the actual considerations of life and death, some power will surely, ere long, be called forth to correct it. If the cupidity of the proprietors of a steam-boat or an omnibus can be restrained, in order that the capacity of those vehicles may be defined, and that we may travel uncrowded in our journeys to and from the metropolis, has it not become at length necessary that some attempt should be made to regulate the stowage of a bed-room, and to rescue civilized and immortal beings from the ruinous consequences of their present mode of living?
If ever such a measure is passed, it will afford a better scope than now exists for the operations of those useful schemes with which we have become familiar under the title of the “Labourers’ Friend Societies,” the “Societies for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes,” and the “Associations for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes.” Whenever any considerable number of the inmates of the present houses of the poor are compelled to quit them, there will then be a demand created, and at length, it may be hoped, a taste formed for others more conducive to their health, and better adapted to their social improvement than those to which they are now doomed. [14]
Meanwhile these Societies have solved one most important problem, which cannot too forcibly be urged upon us. They have shown, that without any appeals to the benevolence of the public, healthy and comfortable dwellings can be provided for the working classes of the community, upon reasonable rents, with a remuneration of higher interest for the investment than can be obtained in the Public Securities to those who may be induced to embark their money in such undertakings.
My wish is to propose to you a plan for securing to the poor of our own parish the benefits of one of these institutions, and for gaining the sanction of our own Vestry to the first measure required for the adoption of it.