The Law and the Poor

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

Nor was it only sentimental Radicals who painted in lurid colours the horrible houses of the people. D’Israeli, in “Sybil,” draws an eloquent picture of the narrow lanes of the rural town of Marney, which might be any country town of the South of England—the rubble cottages with gaping chinks admitting every blast, with rotten timbers, yawning thatch letting in the wind and wet, and open drains full of decomposing animal and vegetable refuse, spreading out here and there with stagnant pools—these things were common-places in the homes of rural England in 1845.

“These wretched tenements,” writes D’Israeli, “seldom consisted of more than two rooms, in one of which the whole family, however numerous, were obliged to sleep, without distinction of age or sex or suffering. With the water streaming down the walls, the light distinguished through the roof, with no hearth even in winter, the virtuous mother in the sacred pangs of child-birth gives forth another victim to our thoughtless civilisation, surrounded by three generations, whose inevitable presence is more painful than her sufferings in that hour of travail; while the father of her coming child, in another corner of the sordid chamber, lies stricken by that typhus which his contaminating dwelling has breathed into his veins, and for whose next prey is perhaps destined his new-born child. These swarming walls had neither windows nor doors sufficient to keep out the weather or admit the sun or supply the means of ventilation, the humid or putrid roof of thatch exhaling malaria like all other decaying vegetable matter. The dwelling rooms were neither boarded nor paved; and whether it were that some were situate in low and damp places, occasionally flooded by the river and usually much below the level of the road, or that the springs, as was often the case, would burst through the mud floor, the ground was at no time better than so much clay, while sometimes you might see little channels cut from the centre under the doorways to carry off the water, and the door itself removed from its hinges, a resting place for infancy in its deluged home. These hovels were, in many instances, not provided with the commonest conveniences of the rudest police; contiguous to every door might be observed the dung heap on which every kind of filth was accumulated for the purpose of being disposed of for manure, so that when the poor man opened his narrow habitation in the hope of refreshing it with the breeze of summer, he was met with a mixture of gases from reeking dung-hills.”

Science, medicine, philanthropy, sanitary engineering and enlightened local government have done something to remove many of the horrible things D’Israeli describes, but one cannot say that the law has co-operated with much vigour in this beneficent crusade. Without law and compulsion the work will never be done as thoroughly as is necessary throughout the length and breadth of the land.

The eloquent outcry, from writers of all creeds and parties, demanding better houses for the people at length made itself heard within the walls of Westminster. But it was not until 1868 that the Torrens Act was passed, the first attempt of the Legislature to deal with slum property. This was followed by the Artisans Dwelling Act of 1875, which enabled local authorities to compulsorily purchase slum areas and re-build sanitary dwellings. In Birmingham, where Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was mayor, magnificent use was made of these powers to the great present benefit of the city. In Liverpool, Manchester, and other towns something was done, but as the business depended in the main on local initiative, and the spending of money, much more remained undone.

A few small measures were passed, but they did not lead to any great practical work being put in hand, and again it was the man of letters who wakened the national conscience. I remember well in the eighties the appearance of “How the Poor Live” by George R. Sims and the interest and sympathy it aroused. There is no exaggeration in the book, but merely a graphic record of fact, and it proves with melancholy certainty the small progress that had been made since the days of Dickens, Kingsley and D’Israeli.

It was with a great chorus of self congratulation and the loud braying of journalistic trumpets that on March 4th, 1884, a Royal Commission was announced to inquire into the Housing of the Working Classes. It is almost forgotten to-day, but in its time it aroused great hopes in the breast of social reformers. Sir Charles Dilke was Chairman, the Prince of Wales himself was a working member of the commission, Cardinal Manning, Lord Salisbury, Samuel Morley, Jesse Collings, Henry Broadhurst and other great public men of the day were his colleagues.

The overcrowding, the immorality and disease and waste caused by bad housing, the terrible tax of rent on the incomes of the poor were all rehearsed in painful detail before these great ones of the earth. But when one comes to remedies and recommendations, there is nothing except the most trivial and inadequate propositions that the eminent ones can agree upon.

Their first suggestion is that vestries and district boards should put in force existing by-laws, though who was to make them do it is not mentioned. Then they think it would be an added decency to the lives of the poor if there were more mortuaries near their homes to take the dead bodies from the already overcrowded rooms—as though the problem they were there to consider was not the housing of the quick, but the housing of the dead.

Building by-laws, sanitary inspection, and workmen’s trains are a few of the Mother Partington Mop remedies that this great Commission had to offer to keep back the sea of troubles that overwhelmed the poor of our great cities in their struggle for decent existence.

One cannot blame the members of the Commission that so little was suggested. It was inevitable when one remembers that nothing at all is possible in the right direction without a great upheaval which is bound to re-act injuriously on some of the greatest vested interests in the country. A meeting of the great ones in whom the interests vest is not likely to bring about immediate reforms.