TESTIMONY OF MEDICAL OFFICERS.

329

reader. One woman told me, without a blush crimsoning her cheek, that she and her daughter bad each had a child by a sweep who lodged with them, and who promised to marry the daughter. The cottage in which these persons slept consisted of but one room, and there were two other lodgers who occupied beds in the same room, in one of which she occasionally slept with the young man she was keeping company with."

In speaking of the extent to which prostitution is carried on in Norwich, the writer says, that "out of 656 licensed public houses and beer shops in the city there are not less than 220 which are known to the police as common brothels; and, although the authorities have the power to withhold the licenses, nothing is done to put a stop to the dreadful vice."

TH

XIX.

HE testimony is before me of a large number of medical officers of the different unions, of different counties, above named, and they all confirm the uniform record of which samples have already been given. Again I wish the reader to know that I am not quoting exceptional cases. Nearly everywhere all the cottages are overcrowded by destitute, filthy, diseased heathen, who in innumerable instances live within hearing of neighboring church bells, but who have no more idea of moral obligation between husband and wife, or towards God, than the lowest heathen that have ever been discovered in the most distant islands and portions of the earth. It is impossible to bring these vast masses within moral gunshot of the gospel of Jesus Christ, so long as they are, by the myriad, immolated upon the altars of a landed aristocracy and a godless hierarchy.

The relieving officer of Leighton Buzzard Union, says: "That in Leighton there are a number of cottages without sleeping rooms separate from the day rooms, and frequently three or four families are found occupying the same bedroom, young men and women promiscuously sleeping in the same apartment."

Mr. Blick, the medical officer of the Bicester Union, says: "A majority of the residences of the poor in my district consist of only one room below and one above, in which a family

330

THE CANON OF DURHAM.

of eight or ten live and sleep. In one of these rooms I saw a father, a mother, three grown up sons and a child, all lying at the same time sick with typhus fever."

Mr. L. O. Fox, medical officer of Romsey Union says: "In the parish of Mottisfont, I have known fourteen individuals of one family sleeping together in a small room, the mother being in labor at the same time; and in the adjoining room, seven other people sleeping-making twenty-one persons in a space which ought to have been occupied by but six persons at most. Here are the young men and the young women, of eighteen or twenty years of age, lying alongside of a father and mother, and the latter actually in labor! It will be asked, What is the condition of the inmates? Just as might be expected."

Now

XX.

OW, let us strike off into the North of England, and see the condition of the houses of the peasants in those counties which have descended for ages through long lines of nobles. Sir F. H. Doyle thus describes the cottages of the peasantry of Northumberland:

"The ordinary cottages contain but one room, perhaps 17 by 15 feet. In point of construction and ventilation there is nothing to be said for them; but as the Northumbrians are, in spite of everything, a healthy and vigorous race of men, such inconveniences do not amount to a crying evil; but when we find that a whole family-father and mother, and children of both sexes, and of all ages-live together, and have to sleep together in one and the same room, any degree of indelicacy and unchastity ceases to surprise, and the only wonder is that the women should behave as well as they do."

Dr. Gilley, canon of Durham, in an appeal in behalf of the border peasantry, describes their dwellings as built of rubble and unhewn stones, loosely cemented; and from age or from badness of the materials, the walls look as if they could scarcely hold together.

"The chinks gape in so many places as to admit blasts of wind. The chimneys have lost half their original height, and lean on the roof with fearful gravitation. The rafters are ovidently rotten and displaced; and the thatch, yawning to admit the wind and wet in some parts, and in all parts utterly unfit for the original purpose of giving protection from the weather, looks more like the top of a dunghill than of a cottage.

"Such is the interior; and when the hind comes to take possession, he finds it no better

THE PEASANTRY OF NORTHUMBERLAND.

331

than a shed. The wet, if it happens to rain, is making a puddle in the earth floor. (This earth floor, by the bye, is one of the causes to which Erasmus ascribed the frequent recurrence of epidemic sickness among the cotters of England more than 300 years ago. It is not only cold and wet, but contains the aggregate filth of years from the time of first being used, the refuse and droppings of meals, decayed animal and vegetable matter of all kinds, which has been cast upon it from the mouth and stomach; these are all mixed together, and exude from it.) Window-frame there is none. There is neither oven, nor copper, nor grate, nor shelf, nor fixture of any kind. All these things he has to bring with him, besides his ordinary articles of furniture. Imagine the trouble, the inconvenience and the expense which the poor fellow and his wife have to encounter, before they can put this shell of a hut into anything like a habitable form.

"This year I saw a family of eight-husband, wife, two sons and four daughters-who were in utter discomfort and in despair of putting themselves in a decent condition, three or four weeks after they had come into one of these hovels.

"In vain did they try to stop up the crannies, and to fill up the holes in the floor, and to arrange their furniture in tolerably decent order, and to keep out the weather. Alas! what will they not suffer in the winter.

"There will be no fireside enjoyment for them. They may huddle together for warmth, and heap coals on the fire; but they will have chilly beds and a damp hearthstone; and the cold wind will sweep through the roof and window, and the crazy door-place, in spite of all their endeavors to exclude it.

"The general character of the best of the old-fashioned hinds' cottages is bad at the best. They have to bring everything with them, partitions, window-frames, fixtures of all kinds, grates, and a substitute for ceiling; for they are, as I have already called them, mere sheds, They have no byre for their cows, nor styes for their pigs, nor pumps, nor wells-nothing to promote cleanliness or comfort.

"The average size of these sheds is about 24 feet by 16 feet; they are dark and unwholesome. Their windows do not open, and many of them are not larger than 20 inches by 16, and into this place are crowded eight, ten, or twelve persons.

"How they lie down to rest, how they sleep, how they can preserve common decency, how unutterable horrors are avoided, is beyond all conception. The case is aggravated, when there is a young woman to be lodged in this confined space, who is not a member of the family, but is hired to do the field work, for which every hind is bound to provide a female. It shocks every feeling of propriety to think, that in one room, and within such a space as I have been describing, civilized beings should be herded together without the decent separation of age and sex. So long as the agricultural system in this district requires the hind to find room for a fellow-servant of the other sex in his cabin, the least that morality and decency can demand is, that he should have a second apartment, where the unmarried female, and those of a tender age, should sleep apart from him and his wife."

XXI.

AM now about to lay before the reader some extracts from one of the most able and highly accomplished men whom England has ever called upon to perform so disagreeable or so important a duty. I speak of Mr. Lingen, a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Assistant Secretary of the Privy Council on Education. In 1848 he was sent to examine the state of education, the habits and dwellings of the peasants

332

:

MR. LINGEN'S GREAT REPORT.

in the counties of Carmarthen, Glamorgan and Pembroke. In entering upon what he calls one of the most painful subjects of his inquiry, he says: "It is a disgusting fact, that out of 692 schools, I found 364 utterly unprovided with privies. But it is not schools that stand alone in this respect they are but instances of the general neglect." On page 233 of his Report, we find "The whole row of houses (part of the main street) in which this school is held, varying in rent from £10 to £15 a year, had not a single, nor even a common privy. The inhabitants resorted to a hedge side, in a field adjoining at the back, wholly unsheltered from sight." On page 304, he says: "The vast majority of the houses have no privies. Where there is such a thing, it is a mere hole in the ground, with no drainage. This is the case nearly all over Wales; but in a dense population, the consequences of such neglect are more loathsomely and degradingly apparent." Page 241: "Here is an expedient to supply the deficiency. The school, as usual, possesses no privy, and the master informed me that the churchyard is generally used by the poor of the town as the privy, few of them possessing at home any convenience of that nature."

In the Appendix of this Report, page 229, the Rev. J. Pugh says:

"In the farmhouses separation and decency are not better attended to, and the natural bar which consanguinity opposes to vice is removed."

Page 217, John Jones, Esq., says:

"Immorality exists between the sexes to a considerable extent, chiefly among the farm-servants; the imperfect arrangements in the older farm-houses lead the sexes too much together at night. Captain Napier, the Superintendent of Police in Glamorganshire, to whom, by the kindness of the Marquis of Bute, I was introduced, strongly confirmed this statement in a conversation I had with him; saying that he had known servants of different sexes put to sleep in the same room. But it is not merely among inmates of the same farm-houses that evil arises; the system of bundling, or at any rate something analogous to it, prevails extensively. The unmarried men-servants on the farms range the country at night, and it is a known and tolerated practice that they are admitted by the women-servants of the houses to which they come. I heard most revolting anecdotes of the most bestial indelicacy, going to show that sexual intercourse takes place on these occasions."

Mr. W. Reese (page 234) says: "The farmers connive at

IMMORALITY AMONG THE WELSH.

333

the young people meeting in their houses after the families have retired to rest."

Messrs. Roberts and Glantowi say:

"The male farm-servants sleep in out-buildings, and keep what hours they please; the women ask leave to go out in the evening, and then the men meet them in the public-houses, of which there are fourteen in the town here (population, 786), and eight between here and Slandillo, a distance of six and a half miles. In this way much immorality takes place. Such are some of the circumstances under which the early life of a Welsh peasant girl is passed. So far from wondering at what is said of them—namely, that they are almost universally unchaste, the wonder would be that they were otherwise. Their offenses, however, arise from the absence of all checks, rather than from the deliberate infringement of them, and betoken therefore much less depravity than the same conduct in persons more favorably situated."

The evidence goes to show that the first breach of chastity with Welsh women, is almost always under a promise of marriage.

Mr. David Owen (page 237) says:

"The peasantry are generally very poor, and possess few comforts; but they are more economical and more cleanly then a stranger would think. The woman has the entire management of the house, and this she generally does well. She can generally sew and knit, and is very industrious. But in many of the districts of Wales circumstances are too strong for chastity, or even decency, to sustain themselves. In the mining works in the valleys, among the hills, forming culs-de-sac, are found five thousand or six thousand people huddled together and nearly cut-off from the rest of the world."

The Vicar of Aberdare (page 439) says:

"Nothing can be lower, or I should say, more degrading than the character which the women sustain relative to the men. The men and women, married as well as single, live in the same house and sleep in the same room. The men do not hesitate to wash themselves naked before the women; on the other hand the women do not hesitate to change their undergarments before the men. Promiscuous intercourse is most common, is thought of as nothing, and the women do not lose caste by it."

MR.

XXII.

R. SYMONDS, another of the Commissioners, says of the peasantry of Brecknockshire, Cardiganshire and Radnorshire: "The people of my district are almost universally poor. The farmers themselves are very much impoverished. I believe the Welsh cottages to be very little, if at all, superior to the Irish huts in the country districts. In very many of them there is not more than one room, which must answer all purposes."