No room to live; the plaint of overcrowded London, by George Haw. With introduction by Sir Walter Besant.

Introduction

Theee is no problem that presses more for a solution than that of the housing and the overcrowding of London, and there is hardly any question of the day which is at the present moment receiving more attention, or is more frequently the subject of discussion and newspaper correspondence and leading articles. Yet there had been no serious attempt to ascertain the plain facts of the case until Mr. George Haw undertook the investigation which has led to the following pages.

The book is not only opportune in its appearance, but it will have to be consulted and quoted by anyone who speaks or writes upon the question. The facts are startling. They go far beyond the current behef and opinion upon the evil. I have no doubt that the book will prove of immense value when legislation is attempted seriously, and with recognition first of the extent of the truth, and next of the certain consequences of neglecting an evil which is daily assuming more formidable proportions, to the lasting injury of the physique, the morals, and the standards of young people numbered by the hundred thousand.

VI

INTRODUCTION

I have found Mr. Haw's work of the greatest value to myself, as one who profits by the researches of others ; and I believe that it will be found equally valuable to all those who, like myself, look on and mark to the best of their powers the changes and chances, the dangers and the improvements in our City of London.

WALTER BESANT.

Frognal End, Hampstead, N.W., Ajpril, 1900.

Author's Preface

In these papers my aim has been rather to state the problem than to solve it. No good can come till the truth is known. Knowledge, to quote Carlyle, must ever go before reform.

So I have tried to set out clearly that the great want of this great city is the want of room to live. I have tried to show what the overcrowding is and where it is ; what the things are that bring about overcrowding, and what the things are that overcrowding brings about in its turn. I have been at some pains to learn the truth, and, startling though some of the facts may be, nothing is misstated nor is anything overdrawn. To a large extent the papers represent the accumulated experience of several years, during which I have lived among the Overcrowded in various parts of Inner London, and made the acquaintance of all kinds of workers in the cause of humanity ; while, at the same time, in my daily work as a journalist, I have been cast a good deal among those public men and officials whose special duty it is to deal with health and housing.

The papers have already gained their object by

Vlll

PREFACE creating public opinion. Since they appeared originally in the Daily Netus — and I am indebted to the editor of that paper for his permission to present them in their present form — the housing problem has become the chief social question of the hour. Not only in London, where the need for reform is greatest, but in country villages and provincial towns there has been a great awakening to the want of room to live. Public conferences and meetings are being held everywhere on the subject, and housing committees formed ; statesmen debate the problem ; Churches discuss it ; co-operative societies and trade unions pass resolutions upon it ; and municipal elections ring with the cry for healthier and more wholesome dwellings. Even an overwrought Government has had to give heed to the plaint by introducing a Bill to amend the Housing Act.

The Government measure is meagre in the extreme. Before it becomes law it is confidently hoped that its scope may be widened to embrace some of the more urgent practicable reforms I have ventured to put forth. At the request of innumerable correspondents, I have added, by way of summary, a final chapter setting out what I regard as the main hues along which reform should run.

GEORGE HAW.

Contents

CHAPTER " PAGE

I. THE HOUSELESS - _ . . . 1

II. THE HALF-HOUSED - - - - - 8

Chapter I The Houseless

One evening, not long ago, there came to the gates of a South London workhouse a North Country mechanic, with his wife and three children. The man wore a pained and worried look, the woman seemed about to faint, two of the children cried.

For Heaven's sake let my wife and children come in," says the man to the porter ab the gate. FU pay for their keep if you'll give them shelter. We've been tramping the streets for miles hereabouts since ten o'clock this morning, but can't find house or rooms to let at any price."

'^It's against the regulations," says the Poor Law official.

Then what on earth am I to do ? I've just got a good job in this district, to start on Monday. We travelled to London by the night train, thinking we might get a house the first thing in the morning, as I was prepared to pay a decent rent ; but though we've spent all the day searching we can't find room anywhere. All day long my wife has been taking one side of a street and I the other, while the children waited at the corner. We would have gone into tenements or apartments or anywhere, but not a solitary room is to be had. As it grew dark, in our despair we went to the Police Station, and they advised me to bring the wife and children to the workhouse till such time as I could find them a place outside."

But we've no room to spare here either," says the gate-porter. Why, we've already got nearly two hundred more people than the House is certified for. Still, if the police sent you, I suppose you must be admitted."

So the man parted with his wife and children at the workhouse gates ; spent the night in a common lodging-house himself ; the whole of Sunday in a further futile search ; but it was not until a full fortnight had gone by, during which he paid for his wife's and bairns' keep in the workhouse, that he found a place to take them to. Then it was not to a house, as he desired, but to tenements ; not near his work, as he wanted, but two miles away.

For the first time, then, in the history of cities we see skilled and sober workmen with good jobs, who are willing to pay even a high rent, failing utterly to find houses at any price, and finally sheltering their families behind workhouse walls, with an offer to bear the cost of their keep, rather than bring them under the contaminating influence of the common lodging-house.

But do workmen's wives and children come out into the light again the better for this sort of housing? Without question, no. They see nothing pleasant, hear nothing good, learn nothing wholesome in the workhouse. Everything in the workhouse taints all who touch it.

LAST EESORT OF THE OVERCEOWDED 3

Ah, but," it may be argued, this is an isolated instance, happening to a family unused to London, who would have been better advised to stay in their native North."

Unhappily, the case is by no means exceptional. Let me call in others to confirm the practice.

Happening the other day to light upon the Eev. Arthur Jephson in the offices of the London School Board, of which he is a member, I named the affair to him. I knew that Mr. Jephson, as Vicar of St. John's, Walworth, also sat on the local Board of Guardians.

Why, bless you," said he, when I told my tale, we've had at least some half dozen similar cases in our own workhouse — women and children admitted temporarily, with the husband at work, because they were absolutely unable to get accommodation outside for love or money

Not a doubt about it. There are people to-day in our workhouses who would come out to-morrow could they get shelter elsewhere. But they cannot, even at excessive rents.

There was never a time when rooms were harder to get, or rents so high, or competition so keen among workpeople to get houses. They compete against each other for houses as their masters compete for trade. One will offer sixpence and a shilling a week more in rent, and another will deposit two or three pounds as security for the key. They understate the number of their children so as to improve their chances ; they will take a house, no matter how insanitary. Those who intend to leave will levy blackmail on those who want to come in. With all this going on, landlords can well-nigh get any rent they want.

1—2

Such a state of things has never been known in London since the Great Fire. Earely, indeed, in the poorer quarters, is a house ever empty at all. People get to know when the out-going tenants are timed to leave ; so you have two vans at the door at the same time : the one loading furniture coming out, the other unloading furniture going in. Should it really happen that a house is left empty, then you get as many as twenty or thirty applicants in the same day. As things are at present, I learn, on the authority of a large estate-agent, that within a radius of two miles from the Elephant and Castle " there is not a vacant house to be had. A firm of house-agents in the New Kent Eoad have lists of people waiting for houses four hundred deep.

So hard-pressed are the poor for want of room to live that they can only be got out of condemned houses by being evicted. Down in Hoxton Market a magistrate's closing order was made against a house because of its filth and stinks, yet the famihes inhabiting it clung to the place as for very life, there being no other house or tenements to be had thereabouts. In the end they had to be evicted and their chattels stacked in the street. One or two of them were taken in by friendly neighbours, who thereby so much overcrowded their own rooms that the Vestry had to issue notices under the Public Health Act to stop the overcrowding. But three of the displaced families had to be removed from the street to the workhouse in Kingsland Eoad.

I could point also to recent cases in Wapping. It was another eviction, whereby fifty people were turned into the street, about thirty of whom were children under

THE NEW HOUSELESS CLASS fourteen years of age. Here again many of them failed to find any shelter save St. George's Workhouse.

Can nothing be done to remedy the evils of overcrowding in our midst asked a vestryman in that district the other day.

We are doing all we can," was the Chairman's reply of despair, "but all our efforts seem as drops of water in the ocean. The houses in the district are inhabited from the top floor to the basement, and where six people once occupied a house, there are now as many as twenty-four !"

Hitherto we have always looked upon the Houseless as the destitute. To-day London has become so overcrowded that many artisans and labourers in work are also of the houseless class. At the time I write I know of my own personal knowledge that there are several families in Poplar Workhouse from the sole reason that they cannot find accommodation outside. The men, who are in work, are living in the meantime in lodging-houses.

Look at this case which recently came before the Bermondsey Vestry. A labourer, who had left his wife and children in the workhouse, at last found a room, and promptly secured it for his family. . At once the room became overcrowded under the Public Health Act, and the Vestry threatened to put the by-laws into operation. The labourer pointed out that if they did he would have no alternative but to take his family back to the workhouse. I am not aware whether the Vestry stayed its hand or not, but one would suppose they did, for about the same time they received a letter from the local Board of Guardians, stating that a number of workmen had applied to leave their wives and children in the workhouse while they themselves went out to their work, being unable to get house-room anywhere.

Let us take the word of relieving-officers themselves. One of them, connected with the Poplar Union, has made public the following case :

I had the case of a carman in regular employment and earning from 24s. to 26s. a week. Through overcrowding he and his wife and their four children, aged respectively twelve, nine, eight, and five, were ejected from Eastward Street, Devon's Eoad. While under notice they made every effort to get rooms, but failed. They continued their search after eviction, sleeping in the meantime in passages and in stables. All this may seem incredible, but by the very nature of their calling relieving-officers are sceptical, and I can vouch for every word of this being correct. About that time there was a good deal of rain, and at last the family came to me in a most sad state. The father explained the position, but I said that a man in the receipt of 24s. or 26s. could not be considered destitute. Becoming desperate upon hearing this, he said that sooner than allow his poor httle children to undergo any further suffering he would throw up his job, and then the whole of them would have to be admitted. Certainly, according to the strict letter of the law, the family were not destitute, but they were destitute in so far as they could get no shelter and could not afford the charges of a hotel, and so I gave an order for admission. Before they were formally entered in the books the father went out to make a final effort, but returned with the information that he could not succeed."

The fact is, as I was told by Mr. Will Crooks, L.C.C., himself a member of the Poplar Board of Guardians, the people are simply at their wits* ends for want of house accommodation. They will do anything, pay anything, endure anything, only that they may find a place to shelter in.*'

Down in Southwark the other day a workman com-

THE COMPETITION FOR SHELTER f

plained in the local Court that he had tramped the streets for hours seeking a house. His wife had gone as far as Walthamstow. Neither of them, however, had heard even of a single room to let, not to mention a house, and were now helpless as to what to do or where to go.

With the assistance of two friends I tried a test case not long ago. We selected an area in the Tower Hamlets comprising a population of about 200,000 people. After a week's searching and inquiry, one of us for two whole days in succession, we at last heard of a place, and got the address of the firm to apply to, in another part of London. It fell to my lot to go. We had made our discovery late in the night ; so I turned out early the next morning, and reached the firm's office before any member of the staff. Not, however, before several women, who had come from the distant district after the same house. Other women arrived before the office was opened. I let them all go in first, and at last got an audience myself.

See those women who have just passed out one by one ?" said the smart young Hebrew, pointing towards the door with his pen. They are all after the same house, and we have bid them against each other till we are now getting 15s. for a house that once only brought in 7s. 6d. Now, if you go one better and make it 16s., the house is yours."