HOW THE POOR LIVE IN WINDSÒR.

XXIV.

399

IN

N the City Mission Magazine for November, 1847, I find a missionary saying of St. Giles's parish, that

"there are 5 private houses, and 8 lodging houses, in all 13 houses, which are each inhabited by 100 individuals, so that 1800 persons, or more than half a district, is comprised in only 13 houses.

"Nor let it be supposed that these houses are so enormously large; for such is not the case. But the rooms are closely packed with human beings, in a manner which would hardly be believed by those who had not actually seen them. Church Lane consists of 32 houses, which contain 190 rooms, in each of which rooms live an average of 9 individuals, making a total of 1710 persons. Separate families live in separate corners of the rooms. The party who hires the entire room re-lets it in portions. And such rooms are the private and respectable rooms of the district, in distinction to the lodging-houses.

"In a ground-floor front room in Fletcher's Court I found 14 persons; five different families with only one bed-in another room the same number, only one bed (straw) and neither room more than 7 feet by 10, and of these 28 people not one could read.

"Many women, now living with men in an unmarried state, in the district, have stated to the missionary, that it was by such crowded rooms they were led into temptation, and that when they entered these houses they had no idea to what they were to be exposed. Some of these were servants out of place, who thought that because the houses looked respectable outside, they were the same within. They came up to London in search of situations, found they could not obtain them so immediately as they expected, were ignorant of this great city, and fell into company with the men with whom they now reside."

From an account of the condition of the dwellings of the poor of Windsor, the city of the English monarchs, and in close proximity to the Royal Castle (London Times, October 13, 1849). "In Garden Court there are 21 small houses, each consisting of three rooms, the whole of which are occupied; each room containing upon an average not less, including children, than five persons. These rooms are generally let out to separate families. The back doors of each house open close to the privies, which are in a horribly filthy state, the stench arising from them being most offensive to the whole neighborhood. Within 5 feet of the court there is an open stinking ditch, running into the Thames, into which it carries the soil from some other houses in the neighborhood.

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This ditch at times is most offensive, especially during the hot summer months. Into the rooms of four of the houses, the soil from the privies in Thames Street absolutely oozes, rendering these habitations unfit even for a dog, and much less for

400

MR. KAY'S CONCLUSIONS.

human beings. In the centre of the small yard there is a pump, from which water is supplied to all the inmates of this pestiferous court. This water is strongly impregnated with the stinking water of the ditches and drains by which the pump is surrounded." No wonder that the cholera found here a genial haunt for its ravages.

my

XXV.

EFORE leaving Mr. Kay, from whose valuable work I have so often quoted proofs of the truth and accuracy of otherwise incredible declarations, I add two citations. The first says: I have, lying under my hand, accounts precisely similar to those I have given of London, of the back streets of Liverpool, Manchester, Wigan, Preston, Rochdale, Durham, York, Lancaster, Carlisle, Stafford, Nottingham, Cambridge, Ely, Norwich, and of many other towns in all parts of England and Wales; but want of space prevents me publishing more than the few extracts which I have given."

In view of all this he naturally reaches the following conclusions: "The only way by which we can hope to reform the habits and character of the poor, who live in the back streets and alleys of our towns, is, to snatch their children from the horrible influences of such a life as most of them now lead; ; and to endeavor, by means of good teachers and good schools, to keep them out of the streets during their younger years; to give them good principles, good habits and useful knowledge; to make them desire to escape from their present social degradation; to enable them to act wisely and prudently; and to stimulate them to improve their own social condition. Before we can hope to civilize the poor of our back streets and alleys, we must teach them to become dissatisfied with their present miserable condition. But so long as the greatest number of the children of the town poor are left, as at present, during the most susceptible period of their lives, to spend their days in such foul and degrading scenes as now surround the

EDUCATION THE ONLY REMEDY.

401

majority of them from morning to night, so long will our criminal calendars continue to increase, so long will the character of our poorer classes continue to degenerate, and so long will our towns remain hotbeds of vice and of misery.

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If our poor were educated, as the German town poor are, they would not be able to endure such a life as they now lead. It would become as intolerable to them as it would be to the richer and better educated classes of society.

"Educate the habits of the poor, and the poor will soon find out a way to improve their homes. The homes will then aid the schools, by surrounding the children, from their earliest years, with improving, instead of demoralizing, associations."

Mr. Kay expresses the hope that his work may, "at least, lead some to reflect on the rapid unfolding of the democratic tendency of the times, and of the imperative necessity of providing beforehand for it. I would ask them to regard Europe, where nothing at all similar to our social condition exists, and to ask themselves, why it is that Prussia, Germany, France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and even Austria, have judged it absolutely necessary to consider this great question so seriously; and then I would beg them to turn their gaze on our own land, and to ask themselves whether it can be really true, that, with our social symptoms, we are really so miserably provided with educational means as the reports of government would have us believe? Alas! it is only too true. Here, with our vast accumulated masses; with a population increasing by 1,000 per diem; with an expenditure on abject pauperism, which, in these days of our prosperity, amounts to £5,000,000 per annum; with a terrible deficiency in the numbers of our churches and of our clergy; with the most demoralizing publications spread through the cottages of our operatives; with democratic ideas of the wildest kinds, and a knowledge of the power of union daily gaining ground among them-here, too, where the poor have no stake whatever in the country; where there are no small properties; where the most frightful discrepancy exists between the richer and

402

NO SUCH DEGRADATION ON THE CONTINENT.

the poorer classes; where the poor fancy they have nothing to lose and everything to gain from a revolution; here, too, where we are stimulating the rapid increase of our population by extending and steadying the base of our commercial greatness; where the majority of the operatives have no religion; where the national religion is one utterly unfitted to attract an uneducated people; where our very freedom is in danger, unless the people are taught to use and not to abuse it; and here, too, where the aristocracy is richer and more powerful than that of any other country in the world, the poor are more depressed, more pauperized, more numerous in comparison to the other classes, more irreligious, and very much worse educated than the poor of any other European nation, solely excepting Russia, Turkey, South Italy, Portugal and Spain."

We fully agree with the philanthropic writer, that such a state of things cannot long continue.

ΟΙ

XXVI.

FTEN in the course of these delineations of the life of the poor in the agricultural districts and the large towns, I have stated that no substantial, radical change has yet been made to ameliorate the condition of the masses of the people. To well-informed readers on this subject, further confirmation is unnecessary. But I quote a short article which appeared in the London Post, Sept. 30, 1863, on "the lamentable condition of the working classes as exposed by the cotton famine," which shows that the masses are still sinking into a more hopeless condition, than during preceding years.

"Our attention is attracted to this subject by the address delivered at the Social Science Congress, on Wednesday,by Mr. E. Chadwick, the President of the Department of Economy and Trade. In ordinary cases of manufacturing distress, the result of over production, the natural consequence is a great fall in the price of the goods with which the markets of the country and the world have been glutted. But although there had been a long period of over production of cotton goods prior to the commencement of the American blockade and the suspension of our supplies of cotton, this effect was obviated by the fact that we were likely to be cut off from the raw material for an indefinite period. so that prices began to rise instead of to fall. Had not the American war intervened, there would no doubt have been a period of distress in the cotton districts, arising from the great over production of the preceding years-a degree of

ENGLAND'S POOR WORSE OFF THAN EVER.

403

distress, indeed, only to be surpassed by what actually followed from the dearth of cotton; but in that case prices would have experienced a very great depression. As it was, the calamity was attended with a twofold evil effect, so far as the consumer was concerned. The cotton operatives were deprived of work and wages, and consequently had, in a great measure, to rely on the benevolence of the country for their means of subsistence, while the working classes were cut off from what, according to their sex, had previously constituted a great portion, or the whole, of their clothing.

"We find Mr. Chadwick complaining that the development of our manufactures has come upon the country too fast. Work people have been enlisted, or rather pressed, from the rural districts all over the country, and massed together by millions in the large towns where the cotton manufacture is concentrated, without any moral or intellectual preparation on the one side, or any sanitary or physical preparation for their reception on the other. They have been huddled together in cellars and garrets. Children's wages have been so high that it was thought useless extravagance to send them to school. Hence the working population grew up without knowing or learning anything, except the special branch of their own trade to which they were restricted. Not that this state of things is worse than what exists in the agricultural districts, as other papers read at the Congress sufficiently prove: still one abuse does not diminish another. The same thing is to be found in all countries. The remedy for this is the sort of plain, useful education which is adapted to make its recipient more of a man and less of a machine, and to be able at a pinch to turn his hand to anything without feeling lost if shifted from the special department of the work in which he has been employed. The oldfashioned apprentice system, under which the best years of life were devoted to what was virtual slavery, has much to answer for in making men into machines as useless out of their own special groove as a railway locomotive launched into the sea. During the late distress, when the workpeople were put into the schools opened for them, it was found that seventy-five per cent. could not read, whence we may infer how many could write. As to arithmetic, that was among the most hidden of all mysteries. Of the females, eighty per cent. could not sew; they began by pressing the needle against the table to push it through their work. Mothers, who had never handled a needle, were seen attempting to make clothes for their sixth child. In short, an utter absence of the most elementary rudiments of education was the rule; knowledge of any sort, out of their special branch of trade, the exception. The proper remedy for this lamentable ignorance lies on the surface."

XXVII.

UM, THE ALL-BLIGHTING CURSE OF THE POOR OF BRITAIN !

R William Halsted, Esq. of Trenton, New Jersey, in one of

the earliest and most powerful legal arguments on the rights and the duty of the Legislature to prohibit the traffic in intoxicating drinks, delivered before the Assembly of the most learned and eminent men of his State, so rich in the genius and culture of its sons, said, February 26, 1835: "For myself, sir, I believe the sale of ardent spirits to be both morally and politically wrong; and, therefore, that the sale of it ought to be prohibited altogether. Legislators expend large sums to build jails, and state prisons, and penitentiaries, to confine vagabonds, rogues and criminals, and yet they authorize the taverns and grogshops which supply more than two-thirds of the tenants of these