The Claims of Labour Part 8

The experienced student of history, reading of long wars, looks for their consummation in the coming pestilence. Gathering itself up, now from the ravaged territory, now from the beleaguered town, now from the carnage of the battle field, this awful form arises at last in its full strength, and rushing over the world, leaves far behind man's puny efforts at extermination. We have a domestic pestilence, it seems, dwelling with us; and if we look into the causes of that, shall we find less to blame, or less to mourn over, than in the insane wars which are the more acknowledged heralds of this swift destruction? But, to return to detail. Mr. Toynbee, one of the surgeons of the St. George's and the St.

James's Dispensary, tells us:

"In the cla.s.s of patients to our dispensary, nearly all the families have but a single room each, and a very great number have only one bed to each family. The state of things in respect to morals, as well as health, I sometimes find to be terrible. I am now attending one family, where the father, about 50, the mother about the same age, a grown up son about 20, in a consumption, and a daughter about 17, who has scrofulous affection of the jaw and throat, for which I am attending her, and a child, all sleep in the same bed in a room where the father and three or four other men work during the day as tailors, and they frequently work there late at night with candles.

I am also treating, at this present time, a woman with paralysis of the lower extremities, the wife of the a.s.sistant to a stable-keeper, whose eldest son, the son by a former wife, and a girl of 11 or 12 years of age, all sleep in the same bed! In another case which I am attending in one room, there are a man and his wife, a grown up daughter, a boy of 16, and a girl of 13; the boy has scrofulous ulcers in the neck; the father, though only of the age of 49, suffers from extreme debility and a broken const.i.tution."

The medical officer of the Whitechapel Union says,

"I know of few instances where there is more than one room to a family."

Mr. Austin, an architect, gives us the following description of Snow's Rents, Westminster, which is but one instance "among many worse," of the state of things produced simply by the want, as he expresses it, of "proper structural arrangement and control."

"This court is of considerable width, upwards of 20 feet, but the houses are mostly without yards, and the refuse, when become intolerable inside the houses, is deposited in the court itself, the whole centre being a pool of black stagnant filth, that acc.u.mulates from time to time, and is left to decompose and infect the whole neighbourhood. Ventilation, or rather a healthy state of the atmosphere is impossible. What little disturbance of the air does take place, would appear only to render its state more intolerable."

Being asked what the condition of this court is with regard to drainage and the supply of water, he says,

"There are none whatever there. In wet weather, when the water attains a certain height In the court, it finds its way into an open, black, pestilence-breathing ditch in a neighbouring court; but in the ordinary state of things the whole centre of this place is one ma.s.s of wet decomposing filth, that lies undisturbed for weeks, from which, so dreadful is the effluvia at times arising, that in the tenants' own words, 'they are often ready to faint, it's so bad!'

The supply of water consists in this: that 16 houses are accommodated with one stand pipe in the court! On the princ.i.p.al cleaning day, Sunday, the water is on for about five minutes, and it is on also for three days in the week for one half hour, and so great is the rush to obtain a modic.u.m before it is turned off, that perpetual quarrelling and disturbance is the result."

If we go now from the Metropolis to some of the great towns, we find, substantially, the same account, varied by the special circ.u.mstances of each place. Liverpool, which we will look at next, is probably the worst. An official enumeration of the court and cellar population of that town was made two years ago, from which it appeared that 55,534 persons, more than one-third of the working cla.s.ses, inhabited courts; and 20,168 persons lived in cellars. There are also cellars in the courts containing probably 2000 inhabitants.

"With regard to the _character_ of these courts, 629, or nearly one-third, were closed at both ends; 875, or less than one-half, were open at one end; and only 478, or less than one-fourth, open at both ends.

"The cellars are 10 or 12 feet square; generally flagged,-but frequently having only the bare earth for a floor,-and sometimes less than six feet in height. There is frequently no window, so that light and air can gain access to the cellar only by the door, the top of which is often not higher than the level of the street. In such cellars, ventilation is out of the question. They are of course dark; and from the defective drainage, they are also very generally damp. There is sometimes a back-cellar, used as a sleeping apartment, having no direct communication with the external atmosphere, and deriving its scanty supply of light and air solely from the front apartment."

The above extract, and the numbers of the court and cellar population, are taken from Dr. Duncan's evidence. He thinks, from extensive data in his possession, that the numbers, as given in this enumeration, are under the mark. And it is suggested that, possibly, casual lodgers have been omitted. Dr. Duncan then gives some further details which enable us more fully to understand what dog-holes these cellars are.

"Of the entire number of cellars, 1617 have the back apartment I have mentioned; while of 5297 whose measurements are given, 1771, or one-third, are from five to six feet deep,-2324 are from four to five feet, and 1202 from three to four feet below the level of the street: 5273, or more than five-sixths, have no windows to the front; and 2429, or about 44 per cent. are reported as being either damp or wet."

In cellars of this kind there are sometimes 30 human beings, sometimes more, "furnished," as Dr. Duncan tells us, "with a supply of air sufficient for the wants of only seven." Occasionally, in this Report, there are scenes described in a circ.u.mstantial, Dutch-picture way which the most vigorous imagination, priding itself on its ingenuity in depicting wretchedness, would hardly have conceived. Take the following instance from the evidence of Mr. Holme of Liverpool.

"Some time ago I visited a poor woman in distress, the wife of a labouring man. She had been confined only a few days, and herself and infant were lying on straw in a vault through the outer cellar, with a clay floor, impervious to water. There was no light nor ventilation in it, and the air was dreadful. _I had to walk on bricks across the floor to reach her bed-side_, _as the floor itself was flooded with stagnant water_. This is by no means an extraordinary case, for I have witnessed scenes equally wretched; and it is only necessary to go into Crosby-street, Freemason's row, and many cross streets out of Vauxhall-road, to find hordes of poor creatures living in cellars, which are almost as bad and offensive as charnel houses. In Freemason's-row I found, about two years ago, a court of houses, the floors of which were below the public street, and the area of the whole court was a floating ma.s.s of putrefied animal and vegetable matter, so dreadfully offensive that I was obliged to make a precipitate retreat. Yet the whole of the houses were inhabited!"

Think what materials for every species of comfort and luxury, are perpetually circulating through Liverpool. If there had not been, for many a day, a sad neglect of supervision on the part of the employers, and great improvidence on that of the employed, we should not see the third part of the working population of such a town immersed in the most abject wretchedness, and all this wealth pa.s.sing through and leaving so little of the comforts of life in the active hands through which it has pa.s.sed. It may be said, however, that a considerable part of the population of Liverpool is immigrant, and Irish. Turn then to Nottingham, or York, or Preston, it is the same story. Mr. Hawksley, the engineer, says of Nottingham:

"With few exceptions the houses of Nottingham and its vicinity are laid out either in narrow streets, or more commonly are built in confined courts and alleys, the entrance to which is usually through a tunnel from 30 to 36 inches wide, about 8 feet high, and from 25 to 30 feet long, so that purification by the direct action of the air and solar light is in the great majority of these cases perfectly impracticable. Upwards of 7000 houses are erected _back to back and side to side_, and are of course by this injurious arrangement deprived of the means of adequate ventilation and decent privacy."

Dr. Layc.o.c.k says of York,

"From these inquiries it appears that in the parish of St. Dennis, in which strict accuracy was observed, from 8 to 11 persons slept in one room in 4 per cent. of the families resident there; in 7 per cent.

from 6 to 8 persons slept in one room; of the total 2195 families visited by the district visitors, 26 per cent. had one room only for all purposes."

The Rev. Mr. Clay gives an account of an examination of a part of Preston,

"The streets, courts, and yards examined contain about 422 dwellings, inhabited at the time of the inquiry by 2400 persons sleeping in 852 beds, i.e. an average of 5.68 inhabitants to each house, and 2.8 persons to each bed.

"In 84 cases 4 persons slept in the same bed.

28 5 13 6 3 7 1 8

"And, in addition, a family of 8 on bed stocks covered with a little straw."

The results of statistical investigations, with respect to the duration of life, are in unison with the inferences that we should naturally make from the facts before us. Dr. Layc.o.c.k shows us that in York, in the best drained parishes, where the population to the square rood is 27, and the mean alt.i.tude above the sea in feet is 50, the mean age at death is 35.32; in intermediate parishes, where the population is denser and the alt.i.tude less, the mean age at death is 27.29; in the worst drained, worst ventilated, and lowest situated parishes, the mean age at death is 22.57. He mentions a fact well worth noticing, that the cholera in 1832 broke out in the court called "the Hagworm's nest," which is in the same spot where the pestilences of 1551 and 1604 had dwelt. Surely, in these last two hundred years, we might have drained and ventilated a locality which experience had shown to be so attractive to epidemics. The Rev.

Mr. Clay has furnished a table, subjoined in the Appendix, showing the progressive diminution of vitality in the respective cla.s.ses of gentry, tradesmen, and operatives, at Preston. Dr. Duncan says respecting the mortality of Liverpool,

"While in Rodney Street and Abercromby Wards, with upwards of 30,000 inhabitants, the mortality is below that of Birmingham-the most favoured in this respect of the large towns in England-in Vauxhall Ward, with a nearly equal amount of population, the mortality exceeds that which prevails in tropical regions. * * * * * 177 persons die annually in Vauxhall Ward for every 100 dying out of an equal amount of population in Rodney Street and Abercromby Wards."

Vauxhall Ward is where the greater number of inhabitants dwell in cellars. Well may Dr. Duncan, in commenting on this difference of mortality in Vauxhall Ward and Rodney Street, declare that it is a fact "sufficient to arouse the attention and stimulate the exertions of the most indifferent."

The average age at death in the following cla.s.ses is made out from all the deaths which took place in the Suburban, the Rural, and the Town districts of Sheffield in the three years, 1839, 1840, and 1841:

Gentry, professional persons, and their families 47.21

Tradesmen and their families 27.18

Artisans, Labourers, and their families

A. Employed in different kinds of trade and handicraft 21.57 common to all places

B. Employed in the various descriptions of manufacture 19.34 pursued in Sheffield and its neighbourhood

Persons whose condition in life is undescribed 15.04

Paupers in the Workhouse 25.51

Farmers and their families 37.64

Agricultural Labourers and their families 30.89

In considering such statistics, the premature death of these poor people is not the saddest thing which presents itself to us, but the unhealthy, ineffectual, uncared-for, uncaring life which is the necessary concommitant of such a rapid rate of mortality.

Since the publication of the preceding Essay, Mr. Pusey's "Poor in Scotland," an abstract which has brought the evidence taken before the Scotch Poor Law Commission within short compa.s.s, has been published.

This evidence is of a nature that cannot be pa.s.sed by. We may think that such details are wearisome, but we must listen to them, if we would learn the magnitude of the evil. It is no use proceeding without a sufficient substratum of facts. Turning then to this abstract, we find one minister in Edinburgh saying,

"I visited a part of my parish on Friday last, and in all the houses I found persons dest.i.tute of food, and completely dest.i.tute of fuel; without an article of furniture; without beds or bedding, the inmates lying on straw."

Another tells the Commissioners,

"the allowance generally made, is not sufficient to keep them (the outdoor pensioners) in existence at the lowest possible rate of living."

A third says

"I have often trembled when I have gone at the call of duty to visit the receptacles of wretchedness, because I felt that I could not relieve the misery which I must look upon; and in such cases, nothing but a sense of duty could compel me to go and visit the poor."

And a fourth minister mentions that his poor parishioners had stated to him