London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) Read online

  The proprietors of these lodging-houses mostly have been, I am assured, vagrants, or, to use the civiller and commoner word, ‘travellers’ themselves, and therefore sojourners, on all necessary occasions, in such places. In four cases out of five I believe this to be the case. The proprietors have raised capital sufficient to start with, sometimes by gambling at races, sometimes by what I have often, and very vaguely, heard described as a ‘run of luck’; and sometimes, I am assured, by the proceeds of direct robbery. A few of the proprietors may be classed as capitalists. One of them, who has a country house in Hampstead, has six lodging-houses in or about Thrawl-street, Whitechapel. He looks in at each house every Saturday, and calls his deputies – for he has a deputy in each house – to account; he often institutes a stringent check. He gives a poor fellow money to go and lodge in one of his houses, and report the number present. Sometimes the person so sent meets with the laconic repulse – ‘Full’; and woe to the deputy if his return do not evince this fulness. Perhaps one in every fifteen of the low lodging-houses in town is also a beer-shop. Very commonly so in the country.

  To ‘start’ a low lodging-house is not a very costly matter. Furniture which will not be saleable in the ordinary course of auction, or of any traffic, is bought by a lodging-house ‘starter’. A man possessed of some money, who took an interest in a bricklayer, purchased for 20l., when the Small Pox Hospital, by King’s-cross, was pulled down, a sufficiency of furniture for four lodging-houses, in which he ‘started’ the man in question. None others would buy this furniture, from a dread of infection.

  It was the same at Marlborough-house, Peckham, after the cholera had broken out there. The furniture was sold to a lodging-house keeper, at 9d. each article. ‘Big and little, sir,’ I was told; ‘a penny pot and a bedstead – all the same; each 9d. Nobody else would buy.’

  To about three-fourths of the low lodging-houses of London, are ‘deputies’. These are the conductors or managers of the establishment, and are men or women (and not unfrequently a married, or proclaimed a married couple), and about in equal proportion. These deputies are paid from 7s. to 15s. a week each, according to the extent of their supervision; their lodging always, and sometimes their board, being at the cost of ‘the master’. According to the character of the lodging-house, the deputies are civil and decent, or roguish and insolent. Their duty is not only that of general superintendence, but in some of the houses of a nocturnal inspection of the sleeping-rooms; the deputy’s business generally keeping him up all night. At the better-conducted houses strangers are not admitted after twelve at night; in others, there is no limitation as to hours.

  The rent of the low lodging-houses varies, I am informed, from 8s. to 20s. a week, the payment being for the most part weekly; the taxes and rates being of course additional. It is rarely that the landlord, or his agent, can be induced to expend any money in repairs, – the wear and tear of the floors, &c., from the congregating together of so many human beings being excessive: this expenditure in consequence falls upon the tenant.

  Some of the lodging-houses present no appearance differing from that of ordinary houses; except, perhaps, that their exterior is dirtier. Some of the older houses have long flat windows on the ground-floor, in which there is rather more paper, or other substitutes, than glass. ‘The windows there, sir,’ remarked one man, ‘are not to let the light in, but to keep the cold out.’

  In the abodes in question there seems to have become tacitly established an arrangement as to what character of lodgers shall resort thither; the thieves, the prostitutes, and the better class of street-sellers or traders, usually resorting to the houses where they will meet the same class of persons. The patterers reside chiefly in Westminster and Whitechapel.

  Some of the lodging-houses are of the worst class of low brothels, and some may even be described as brothels for children.

  On many of the houses is a rude sign, ‘Lodgings for Travellers, 3d. a night. Boiling water always ready,’ or the same intimation may be painted on a window-shutter, where a shutter is in existence. A few of the better order of these housekeepers post up small bills, inviting the attention of ‘travellers’, by laudations of the cleanliness, good beds, abundant water, and ‘gas all night’, to be met with. The same parties also give address-cards to travellers, who can recommend one another.

  The beds are of flock, and as regards the mere washing of the rug, sheet, and blanket, which constitute the bed-furniture, are in better order than they were a few years back; for the visitations of the cholera alarmed even the reckless class of vagrants, and those whose avocations relate to vagrants. In perhaps a tenth of the low lodging-houses of London, a family may have a room to themselves, with the use of the kitchen, at so much a week – generally 2s. 6d. for a couple without family, and 3s. 6d. where there are children. To let out ‘beds’ by the night is however the general rule.

  The illustration presented this week is of a place in Fox-court, Gray’s-inn-lane, long notorious as a ‘thieves’ house’, but now far less frequented. On the visit, a few months back, of an informant (who declined staying there), a number of boys were lying on the floor gambling with marbles and halfpennies, and indulging in savage or unmeaning blasphemy. One of the lads jumped up, and murmuring something that it wouldn’t do to be idle any longer, induced a woman to let him have a halfpenny for ‘a stall’; that is, as a pretext with which to enter a shop for the purpose of stealing, the display of the coin forming an excuse for his entrance. On the same occasion a man walked into ‘the kitchen’, and coolly pulled from underneath the back of his smock-frock a large flat piece of bacon, for which he wanted a customer. It would be sold at a fourth of its value.

  I am assured that the average takings of lodging-house keepers may be estimated at 17s. 6d. a night, not to say 20s.; but I adopt the lower calculation. This gives a weekly payment by the struggling poor, the knavish, and the outcast, of 1,000 guineas weekly, or 52,000 guineas in the year. Besides the rent and taxes, the principal expenditure of the lodging-house proprietors is for coals and gas. In some of the better houses, blacking, brushes, and razors are supplied, without charge, to the lodgers: also pen and ink, soap, and, almost always, a newspaper. For the meals of the frequenters salt is supplied gratuitously, and sometimes, but far less frequently, pepper also; never vinegar or mustard. Sometimes a halfpenny is charged for the use of a razor and the necessary shaving apparatus. In one house in Kent-street, the following distich adorns the mantel-piece:

  To save a journey up the town,

  A razor lent here for a brown:

  But if you think the price too high,

  I beg you won’t the razor try.

  In some places a charge of a halfpenny is made for hot water, but that is rarely the case. Strong drink is admitted at almost any hour in the majority of the houses, and the deputy is generally ready to bring it; but little is consumed in the houses, those addicted to the use or abuse of intoxicating liquors preferring the tap-room or the beer-shop.

  Of the Filth, Dishonesty, and Immorality of Low Lodging-houses

  [pp. 272–7] In my former and my present inquiries, I received many statements on this subject. Some details, given by coarse men and boys in the grossest language, are too gross to be more than alluded to, but the full truth must be manifested, if not detailed. It was remarked when my prior account appeared, that the records of gross profligacy on the part of some of the most licentious of the rich (such as the late Marquis of Hertford and other worthies of the same depraved habits) were equalled, or nearly equalled, by the account of the orgies of the lowest lodging-houses. Sin, in any rank of life, shows the same features.

  And first, as to the want of cleanliness, comfort, and decency: ‘Why, sir,’ said one man, who had filled a commercial situation of no little importance, but had, through intemperance, been reduced to utter want. ‘I myself have slept in the top room of a house not far from Drury-lane, and you could study the stars, if you were so minded, through the holes left by the slate
s having been blown off the roof. It was a fine summer’s night, and the openings in the roof were then rather an advantage, for they admitted air, and the room wasn’t so foul as it might have been without them. I never went there again, but you may judge what thoughts went through a man’s mind – a man who had seen prosperous days – as he lay in a place like that, without being able to sleep, watching the sky.’

  The same man told me (and I received abundant corroboration of his statement, besides that incidental mention of the subject occurs elsewhere), that he had scraped together a handful of bugs from the bedclothes, and crushed them under a candlestick, and had done that many a time, when he could only resort to the lowest places. He had slept in rooms so crammed with sleepers – he believed there were 30 where 12 would have been a proper number – that their breaths in the dead of night and in the unventilated chamber, rose (I use his own words) ‘in one foul, choking steam of stench’. This was the case most frequently a day or two prior to Greenwich Fair or Epsom Races, when the congregation of the wandering classes, who are the supporters of the low lodging-houses, was the thickest. It was not only that two or even three persons jammed themselves into a bed not too large for one full-sized man; but between the beds – and their partition one from another admitted little more than the passage of a lodger – were placed shakes-down, or temporary accommodation for nightly slumber. In the better lodging-houses the shake-downs are small palliasses or mattresses; in the worst, they are bundles of rags of any kind; but loose straw is used only in the country for shake-downs. One informant saw a traveller, who had arrived late, eye his shake-down in one of the worst houses with anything but a pleased expression of countenance; and a surly deputy, observing this, told the customer he had his choice, ‘which’, the deputy added, ‘it’s not all men as has, or I shouldn’t have been waiting here on you. But you has your choice, I tell you; – sleep there on that shake-down, or turn out and be d—; that’s fair.’ At some of the busiest periods, numbers sleep on the kitchen floor, all huddled together, men and women (when indecencies are common enough), and without bedding or anything but their scanty clothes to soften the hardness of the stone or brick floor. A penny is saved to the lodger by this means. More than 200 have been accommodated in this way in a large house. The Irish, at harvest-time, very often resort to this mode of passing the night.

  I heard from several parties, of the surprise, and even fear or horror, with which a decent mechanic – more especially if he were accompanied by his wife – regarded one of these foul dens, when destitution had driven him there for the first time in his life. Sometimes such a man was seen to leave the place abruptly, though perhaps he had pre-paid his last halfpenny for the refreshment of a night’s repose. Sometimes he was seized with sickness. I heard also from some educated persons who had ‘seen better days’, of the disgust with themselves and with the world, which they felt on first entering such places. ‘And I have some reason to believe,’ said one man, ‘that a person, once well off, who has sunk into the very depths of poverty, often makes his first appearance in one of the worst of those places. Perhaps it is because he keeps away from them as long as he can, and then, in a sort of desperation fit, goes into the cheapest he meets with; or if he knows it’s a vile place, he very likely says to himself – I did – “I may as well know the worst at once.”’

  Another man who had moved in good society, said, when asked about his resorting to a low lodging-house: ‘When a man’s lost caste in society, he may as well go the whole hog, bristles and all, and a low lodging-house is the entire pig.’

  Notwithstanding many abominations, I am assured that the lodgers, in even the worst of these habitations, for the most part sleep soundly. But they have, in all probability, been out in the open air the whole of the day, and all of them may go to their couches, after having walked, perhaps, many miles, exceedingly fatigued, and some of them half-drunk. ‘Why, in course, sir,’ said a ‘traveller’, whom I spoke to on this subject, ‘if you is in a country town or village, where there’s only one lodging-house, perhaps, and that a bad one – an old hand can always suit his-self in London – you must get half-drunk, or your money for your bed is wasted. There’s so much rest owing to you, after a hard day; and bugs and bad air’ll prevent its being paid, if you don’t lay in some stock of beer, or liquor of some sort, to sleep on. It’s a duty you owes yourself; but, if you haven’t the browns, why, then, of course, you can’t pay it.’ I have before remarked, and, indeed, have given instances, of the odd and sometimes original manner in which an intelligent patterer, for example, will express himself.

  The information I obtained in the course of this inquiry into the condition of low lodging-houses, afforded a most ample corroboration of the truth of a remark I have more than once found it necessary to make before – that persons of the vagrant class will sacrifice almost anything for warmth, not to say heat. Otherwise, to sleep, or even sit, in some of the apartments of these establishments would be intolerable.

  From the frequent state of weariness to which I have alluded, there is generally less conversation among the frequenters of the low lodging-houses than might be expected. Some are busy cooking, some (in the better houses) are reading, many are drowsy and nodding, and many are smoking. In perhaps a dozen places of the worst and filthiest class, indeed, smoking is permitted even in the sleeping-rooms; but it is far less common than it was even half-a-dozen years back, and becomes still less common yearly. Notwithstanding so dangerous a practice, fires are and have been very unfrequent in these places. There is always some one awake, which is one reason. The lack of conversation, I ought to add, and the weariness and drowsiness, are less observable in the lodging-houses patronised by thieves and women of abandoned character, whose lives are comparatively idle, and whose labour a mere nothing. In their houses, if the conversation be at all general, it is often of the most unclean character. At other times it is carried on in groups, with abundance of whispers, shrugs, and slang, by the members of the respective schools of thieves or lurkers.

  I have now to speak of the habitual violation of all the Injunctions of law, of all the obligations of morality, and of all the restraints of decency, seen continually in the vilest of the lodging-houses. I need but cite a few facts, for to detail minutely might be to disgust. In some of these lodging-houses, the proprietor – or, I am told, it might be more correct to say, the proprietress, as there are more women than men engaged in the nefarious traffic carried on in these houses – are ‘fences’, or receivers of stolen goods in a small way. Their ‘fencing’, unless as the very exception, does not extend to any plate, or jewellery, or articles of value, but is chiefly confined to provisions, and most of all to those which are of ready sale to the lodgers.

  Of very ready sale are ‘fish got from the gate’ (stolen from Billingsgate); ‘sawney’ (thieved bacon), and ‘flesh found in Leadenhall’ (butcher’s-meat stolen from that market). I was told by one of the most respectable tradesmen in Leadenhall-market, that it was infested – but not now to so great an extent as it was – with lads and young men, known there as ‘finders’. They carry bags round their necks, and pick up bones, or offal, or pieces of string, or bits of papers, or ‘anything, sir, please, that a poor lad, that has neither father nor mother, and is werry hungry, can make a ha’penny by to get him a bit of bread, please, sir.’ This is often but a cover for stealing pieces of meat, and the finders, with their proximate market for disposal of their meat in the lowest lodging-houses in Whitechapel, go boldly about their work, for the butchers, if the ‘finder’ be detected, ‘won’t’, I was told by a sharp youth who then was at a low lodging-house in Keate-street, ‘go bothering theirselves to a beak, but gives you a scruff of the neck and a kick and lets you go. But some of them kicks werry hard.’ The tone and manner of this boy – and it is a common case enough with the ‘prigs’ – showed that he regarded hard kicking merely as one of the inconveniences to which his business-pursuits were unavoidably subjected; just as a struggling hous
ekeeper might complain of the unwelcome calls of the tax-gatherers. These depredations are more frequent in Leadenhall-market than in any of the others, on account of its vicinity to Whitechapel. Even the Whitechapel meat-market is less the scene of prey, for it is a series of shops, while Leadenhall presents many stalls, and the finders seem loath to enter shops without some plausible pretext.

  Groceries, tea especially, stolen from the docks, warehouses, or shops, are things in excellent demand among the customers of a lodging-house fence. Tea, known or believed to have been stolen ‘genuine’ from any dock, is bought and sold very readily; 1s. 6d., however, is a not unfrequent price for what is known as 5s. tea. Sugar, spices, and other descriptions of stolen grocery, are in much smaller request.

  Wearing-apparel is rarely bought by the fences I am treating of; but the stealers of it can and do offer their wares to the lodgers, who will often, before buying, depreciate the garment, and say ‘It’s never been nothing better nor a Moses.’

  ‘Hens and chickens’ are a favourite theft, and ‘go at once to the pot’, but in no culinary sense. The hens and chickens of the roguish low lodging-houses are the publicans’ pewter measures; the bigger vessels are ‘hens’; the smaller are ‘chickens’. Facilities are provided for the melting of these stolen vessels, and the metal is sold by the thief – very rarely if ever, by the lodging-house keeper, who prefers dealing with the known customers of the establishment – to marine-store buyers.

  A man who at one time was a frequenter of a thieves’ lodging-house, related to me a conversation which he chanced to overhear – he himself being then in what his class would consider a much superior line of business – between a sharp lad, apparently of twelve or thirteen years of age, and a lodging-house (female) fence. But it occurred some three or four years back. The lad had ‘found’ a piece of Christmas beef, which he offered for sale to his landlady, averring that it weighed 6 lbs. The fence said and swore that it wouldn’t weigh 3 lbs., but she would give him 5d. for it. It probably weighed above 4 lbs. ‘Fip-pence!’ exclaimed the lad, indignantly; ‘you haven’t no fairness. Vy, it’s sixpun’ and Christmas time. Fip-pence! A tanner and a flag (a sixpence and a four-penny piece) is the werry lowest terms.’ There was then a rapid and interrupted colloquy, in which the most frequent words were ‘Go to blazes!’ with retorts of ‘You go to blazes!’ and after strong and oathful imputations of dishonest endeavours on the part of each contracting party, to over-reach the other, the meat was sold to the woman for 6d.