Dwellings of working-people in London

Front matter

Two Speeches

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS MAY 8, 1874

BY

Dwellings of Working People in London (Kay-Shuttleworth)

House of Commons, May 8, 1874.

-

Dwellings of Working People in London.

Mr. Kay-Shuttleworth: I rise, Sir, to call the attention of the House to the urgent importance of the problems connected with the present condition and future improvement of the dwellings of working people in London, and to the memorials on this subject lately presented to Her Majesty's Government by the Royal College of Physicians, and by the Council and Dwellings Committee of the Charity Organisation Society (Sessional Papers, Nos. 118 and 127); and I shall conclude with the motion which stands in my name, 'That in the opinion of this House a necessity exists for some measure that will provide for the improvement of the poorest classes of dwellings in London, and that this question demands the early attention of Her Majesty's Government.'

I can say with perfect sincerity and earnestness that I regret that such an important subject has not fallen into abler hands than mine, and I must explain to the House briefly how it comes to pass that this subject is in my charge. Some time ago, in the late Parliament, I drew the attention of the House on more than one occasion to the state of our system of water supply in London; and I became conscious from the study of that subject of the great difficulties which stood in the way of any reform on account of the very defective condition of a large proportion of the poorer habitations. Last year, at the commencement of the session, in common with many other members of both Houses of Parliament, I received an invitation from the Charity Organisation Society to serve on a committee appointed to inquire into the state of the dwellings of the poor. It was in the course of the deliberations of that Committee, and in consequence of the evidence which was laid before us, that I became aware of the real magnitude and national importance of this question. And after waiting to see whether any other member of the House would bring it forward, I determined, with the concurrence of that Committee, to give notice of the resolution which I am now about to move.

Moreover, the two memorials to which I call attention have been prepared and presented to the Government—one by the Royal College of Physicians, the other by the Charity Organisation Society; and these have been followed by a correspondence in some of the public journals, which appeared to me to bring the subject into so ripe a condition that it might be promptly dealt with by Parliament.

If I needed any justification of the course I am now pursuing, in asking the attention of the House to this question, I should find it in the speeches of right hon. gentlemen on the opposite benches. The right hon. gentleman, the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Cross), in introducing his Licensing Bill the other day, dwelt earnestly on the necessity which existed for improved habitations for working people. Again, the right hon. gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir S. Northcote), in explaining his Budget, used language on this subject which led one to hope that he was about to sketch out some measure by which the long-wished-for result of improving the dwellings of the working classes might be achieved. To go back a very little further, Lord Derby, in his speeches in the North of England, has repeatedly called attention to these sanitary questions.

And the right hon. gentleman who is now at the head of Her Majesty's Government, in laying down his programme at Manchester, adopted as his motto, Sanitas Sanitatum, omnia Sanitas.' However, the right hon. gentleman confined himself to words, and the country is now in expectation of the acts which ought to follow on those words. Sir, if it should be the good fortune of the Government who now occupy those benches to legislate wisely on sanitary matters, especially as regards the habitations of the working classes in London, they will not only confer enduring benefit on the metropolis, but will surround their names with lustre and the history of their administration with credit.

If honourable members wish to have an authoritative statement with regard to the special needs of London for im of the dwellings of the working classes, I will refer them to a report prepared and presented in 1865, by Mr. Simon, then the Medical Officer to the Privy Council and now to the Local Government Board, in which he named numerous towns in which the poorer houses were practically unfit for human habitation, but said that they were worst of all in London and five other towns (Bristol, Merthyr, Newcastle, Plymouth, and Sunderland).

To step down from that very high authority to the very humble authority of the Member who is now addressing the House, I have made it my business during the past few weeks to visit various parts of London and to see for myself to what extent the evil existed. Amongst other parts, I have been to courts in the neighbourhood of Holborn, pretty nearly all over the parish of St. Giles, through the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, and also through one of the very worst portions of London—the district called Bedfordbury—but which I hope honourable members will not connect with the name of the Duke of Bedford, whose property is of a very different character. I could not describe to the House the full details of what I saw in the course of my visit to those localities. Honourable members in taking short cuts through the town, as, for instance, in the neighbourhood of Lincoln's Inn, may, perhaps, see places in which they would be very sorry to have to reside; but I do not think that they have any real idea of the character of large masses of the dwellings which exist in our immediate neighbourhood, nor is any such idea possessed by 99 out of every 100 of the wealthy inmates of luxurious West-end houses.

Sir, I myself had no better knowledge of the true state of the homes of thousands of the people who live around us until I visited some of them recently. I will just tell the House two or three of the things which I saw during my excursions into these comparatively unknown regions. In the first place, there are a great many courts which are not only extremely narrow in themselves, but are approached by tunnels passing under other houses. These houses close one end of the court, and the other end is also completely closed up, so that it is impossible that the houses in the court should have any ventilation. There are other houses which are built back to back, so that no air can pass between them. There are other houses which are, perhaps, even worse than these, because, though a very narrow space is left between their backs, this space is almost dark, and at its base is filled with everything that is filthy and abominable; consequently the air that enters these dwellings from the rear is anything but pure, and is constantly liable to be laden with the most offensive odours, and with the germs of disorder and disease. There are some houses the fronts of which look closely upon the backs of the opposite houses, and hon. members can easily imagine what must be the consequence of that arrangement, because, of course, the sanitary offices (if the term 'sanitary' can be properly applied to them) of all the opposite houses are immediately under their windows. The construction of these houses is antiquated and utterly bad.

Possibly some hon. members would be surprised to learn that among the mischiefs of which complaint has to be made are the following:—I saw a row in Bedfordbury that is entirely built of wood; and many of the houses in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane are built of mere lath and plaster. Not only must such dwellings be dirty and unfit for human habitation, but in the event of a fire breaking out during a strong wind, it is quite impossible to say where the consequences might end.

Many of the houses I have described, and probably all of them, were built before any Building Act existed for London. We have now a Building Act for the Metropolis, the defects in which I am glad to see we are to attempt to remedy by the Bill which the hon. and gallant member who represents the Metropolitan Board of Works (Colonel Hogg) has brought in. When the houses to which I refer were built, no sanitary arrangements of any kind were enforced. The dwellings were often erected in backyards and in gardens; and, consequently, the means of approach to them were most inconvenient and most inadequate.

A much more vivid description than any I can give of these houses was given by Mr. Simon, the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, in 1865. The account is in such language that I must apologise to the House for reading it; but I think it better to call a spade a spade, and if things are in a bad condition to let the House know the whole truth. Under these circumstances I trust the House will allow me to refer to one or two passages in that gentleman's report, which give a description of some of the houses in London. Mr. Simon says: 'By places "unfit for human habitation" I mean places in which, by common consent, even moderately healthy life is impossible to human dwellers,—places which, therefore, in themselves (indepen of removable filth which may be about them) answer to the common conception of "nuisances"; such, for instance, as those underground and other dwelling's which permanently are almost entirely dark and unventilable: and dwellings which are in such constructional partnership with public privies, or other depositories of filth, that their very sources of ventilation are essentially offensive and injurious, and dwellings which have such relations to local drainage that they are habitually soaked into by water or sewage, and so forth. But beyond these instances where the dwelling would, I think, even now be deemed by common consent "unfit for human habitation," instances, varying in degree, are innumerable, where, in small closed courts, surrounded by high buildings, and approached by narrow and perhaps winding gangways, houses of the meanest sort stand, acre after acre of them, back to back, shut from all enjoyment of light and air, with nothing but privies and dustbins to look upon; and surely such can only be counted "fit for human habitation" while the standard of that humanity is low. Again, by "over-crowded" dwellings I mean those where dwellers are in such proportion to dwelling-space that no obtainable quantity of ventilation will keep the air of the dwelling-space free from hurtfully large accumulations of animal effluvium. ...... … And as a particular class of cases, in which both evils are combined to form one monstrous nuisance, I ought expressly to mention certain of the so-called "tenement-houses" of the poor; especially those large but ill-circumstanced houses, once perhaps wealthily inhabited, but now pauperised, and often without a span of courtyard either front or back, where in each house perhaps a dozen or more rooms are separately let to a dozen or more lodgers, and where in each house the entire number of occupants (which even in England may be little short of a hundred) will necessarily have the use of but a single staircase and of a privy which perhaps is placed in the cellar.'

I think I have quoted sufficient to show how bad some of these places are. But it may be said that that report of Mr. Simon was written in 1865, and that we are now in the year 1874. Therefore I will ask the House to let me quote two reports made in 1874. The first is by Mr. Liddle, the Medical Officer of Health of the Whitechapel District Board of Works. All inspection of Cooper's Court, Whitechapel, had just been made, and he reports that the walls and ceilings of these houses were found in 'such a dirty and dilapidated condition as to render them unfit for habitation; the ventilation was very defective, there being no fittings to the windows to allow of their being opened. The public privies, which are built of wood, were in a dilapidated condition. This court contains 13 houses, in which there are 35 rooms; two of them were indecently occupied, three were overcrowded and indecently occupied; and three were overcrowded. The ground-floor room at No. 6 was indecently occupied and over-crowded. It was occupied by a man, his wife, and seven children, one of whom was a son 15 years of age. This room contains about 630 cubic feet of space, which allows only 70 feet for each.' I may add, that I believe the cubical air-space for each person should be at least five times as much, or about 350 cubic feet.

I have not mentioned in my description of these houses the common lodging-houses. I shall have a little more to say about these by-and-by; but in one respect, namely in cleanliness, they contrast most favourably with the houses surrounding them, because they were placed under police inspection by Lord Shaftesbury's Acts, which secure that they shall be thoroughly cleansed and whitewashed twice a year at certain fixed times. But then many of the structures used as common lodging-houses are such bad and ancient buildings, and they are generally so over-crowded, that it is certainly high time for the Legislature to interfere again.

I do not think that anything can be done with large numbers of the present buildings occupied either as the dwellings of families, or as lodging-houses, but to sweep them away and put up something better in their place. To fortify my case as completely as possible, I must quote one more extract from a Medical Officer's Report.

Dr. Whitmore, the Medical Officer of Health for St. Marylebone, thus describes some tenements in Marylebone Lane. 'One of these contains 19 rooms, which would appear to have been originally constructed with the most especial disregard to order in arrangement, uniformity, or convenience. Every part of this most miserable abode is in a ruinous and dilapidated condition; the flooring of the rooms and staircases is worn into holes and broken away, the plaster is crumbling from the walls, the roofs let in the wind and rain, the drains are very defective, and the general aspect of the place is one of extreme wretchedness. The number of persons living in this house is 47.'

And let the House particularly observe what follows. Dr. Whitmore adds:—'My first impulse was to declare the houses unfit for human habitation, and, by means of a magistrate's order, to remove the inmates at once. A moment's reflection, however, convinced me that by adopting that course I should really accomplish no good object, inasmuch as the poor people, thus suddenly ejected, would be compelled to seek shelter in dwellings probably more crowded, and in an equally bad sanitary condition. The utmost amount of sanitary work the Vestry has power to enforce has of course been ordered, and when completed may be productive of some little benefit to the comfort and convenience of the poor tenants and their families, but no amount of work short of entire reconstruction can render it, in the proper acceptation of the word, a healthy dwelling.'

Now let me say, with respect to these poorest houses in London, that they fall under two heads—they are either improveable or they are unimproveable. The houses which fall under the following category may be considered past all improvement. First of all those which stand back to back, or in so confined a space as to be incapable of free ventilation; secondly, those old tumble-down houses which are not worth spending money upon; thirdly, those that are built of wood or of lath and plaster; and fourthly, such as are incapable of having proper sanitary arrangements provided for them, one for every family, or at least one for every two or three families.

Well, in what I have been describing to the House I have been describing large areas available as sites for building improved dwellings for the working classes; for all those great spaces which are now covered by those bad dwellings could shortly be made use of if they were cleared, and would be made use of, if Parliament said clearly that they should be used for proper habitations for the poor.

But there is another class of sites which exist in London, and in referring to them I shall appeal to the authority of my hon, friend the member for Maidstone (Sir Sydney Sydney Waterlow), the late Lord Mayor of London, who has identified himself so honourably with the movement for providing better habitations for the poor, and who can tell the House more than I can with respect to this subject. In April 1872, in a letter which he wrote to the Daily News, he described the existence in London of large waste places, and explained what a mistake it was that they should exist, for the sake not only of the people who live in them, but of the owners of the adjoining property. This is what he describes in April 1872.

'Commercial Street—Shoreditch to Whitechapel—was opened in 1852; Southwark Street in 1862; and in both streets large plots of land still remain uncovered. The new Farringdon Road is another case in point. It was opened in 1858, and very little of the surplus land has yet been built upon. The frontages are from one end to the other almost a dreary waste; the loss in the interest of the money alone amounts to nearly the whole of the principal; so that even were the land to be now sold for double what it would have fetched in 1858, the Corporation would only just recoup the loss sustained by this 14 years' waiting. Meanwhile other and more serious losses have been going on. The district has lost the whole value of the parochial rates and taxes which would have been paid on inhabited houses; it has lost the increased value on the surrounding property which increased trade would have brought.'

Now if any hon. member will walk through Farringdon Street and near the Holborn Viaduct he will still see large spaces of this kind surrounded by buildings, these spaces lying waste, to the injury not only of the Corporation or other persons who may own the land, but of the occupiers of surrounding property, the shopkeepers, the ratepayers, and above all of the working classes who are living over-crowded in the neighbouring parts of London.

I have a letter which was kindly addressed to me by the Surveyor of the Trustees of Mr. Peabody, which shows that there also exist other sites, some of the class I first mentioned, some of the class I last mentioned, and some partly of the one class and partly of the other, which though they exist cannot be obtained by those anxious to build for the working classes. I think I am justified in reading this statement to the House, coming as it does with all the authority of the Peabody Trustees. The letter says:—

'There are many large sites in and around London, suitable for dwellings for working-men, and such sites have been in the market for years unsold, simply because the price asked is far above the value. I know of one in Lambeth for sale since 1868, in which year I offered a fair price for the Peabody Trust. There are now unsold several suitable sites in Westminster, one in Goswell Street, one in Whitechapel, one in City Road; land in Westminster little used belonging to Trustees who cannot sell without compulsory powers; land in Paddington kept in a useless state by an old man quite incapable of dealing with his property, and this land is in a situation much wanting help with clean houses; a property in Westminster consisting of two plots of land, both too small to be dealt with separately, but having some of the worst houses in Westminster between the plots. These houses cannot be purchased without compulsory powers.'

The statement which I have quoted shows the existence of sites to a large extent which might be used for the purpose of building proper dwellings for the poor.

There are other spaces also which might be made available, where, under the act passed by my hon. friend the member for Finsbury (Mr. Torrens), the Medical Officers of Health have stepped in and have moved the Vestries to demolish buildings unfit for habitation. In some of these places sites have been cleared and still remain cleared without being made useful or productive for any purpose. I saw one of these properties (belonging to the Foundling Hospital) in Bloomsbury, near Russell Square, which scarcely can be utilised, partly because there are not proper approaches, and partly because, though tolerably large, it is not sufficiently extensive to be made use of by the Peabody Trustees or others, unless compulsory powers could be obtained over the adjoining property. In this space, when I saw it the other day, there were heaps of offensive refuse thrown from the neighbouring houses, and the Vestry were employing several men—naturally not without expense to the ratepayers—to clear the rubbish away.

I think, then, I have shown the House that there exists in London a plentiful supply of sites which might be used for the purpose of erecting good dwellings; sites at present occupied by houses unfit for habitation; sites which cannot be turned to account in consequence of the too high prices asked for them by their owners, and sites too small to be made available themselves, because there are no compulsory powers of dealing with adjacent property. I purpose now to show that there exists in London a large demand for such sites.

The Trustees of Mr. Peabody, whose name—although he was not a native of this country—must always be mentioned as that of one of the greatest benefactors that our metropolis has ever had (hear, hear), not only inform me, in the letter I have quoted to the House, that they have been endeavouring without success to get the sites I have mentioned, but they state in their last report that, out of a total fund of 578,000l.—including all the bequests of Mr. Peabody and such profits as have already been received from the dwellings they have built, while they have spent on land 102,000l., and 198,000l. on buildings, making 300,000l. in all—they have still left about 278,000l. available for the purposes of the Trust. There can be no doubt that the Trustees of Mr. Peabody would lose no time in employing that money if they could only meet with the sites which they want, and yet I have shown to the House that such sites exist in great quantity.

Then, I am told by my hon. friend, the member for Maidstone, who will second my motion, that his company have refused money which they would be glad to put to use if they could only get sites. The great difficulty is to obtain sites, and if my right hon. friend opposite (Mr. Cross) sees his way to get over that difficulty, I have no doubt the demands on the part of philanthropists, semi-philanthropists, and those who desire to build for their own private gain, will do the rest. If my right hon. friend would only bring the supply to the demand he would do a great and most useful work.

I am told by the secretaries of other societies and companies that their hands are tied behind them, that they are crippled for want of land. Well, then here we have this plentiful supply of sites, and this demand for sites, and the question is how to bring this demand to touch the supply. It reminds me of cases which used to interest me very much when I was a student of chemistry. When you have apparently in close contact two substances which have a strong affinity for each other, they may remain in contact for years and years without any union taking place; but once apply heat or the electric spark, or some other power which will bring them into more than mere mechanical contact, and you set up an action of an interesting and important character. That electric force can only be applied in this case by the action of Parliament.

I should not deal completely with the subject if I did not state what has been done by past legislation, especially since the outbreak of cholera in 1831, in attempting to remedy some of these evils in London.

In 1844 the Metropolitan Building Act was passed, and among other things it placed cellar- dwellings under the district surveyors.

In 1846 and 1855 were passed the Nuisances Removal Acts, which checked to some small extent the mischief of over-crowding, and put down many nuisances.

In 1846 and 1847 the Baths and Wash-houses Acts were obtained, which enabled parishes to build for these purposes, and to obtain advances from the Loans Commissioners. In 1848 the Public Health Act followed. From this the metropolis was excepted, but it benefited indirectly by the establishment of the General Board of Health.

In 1849 came the second great attack of cholera, in which 4,000 people perished; and that again awakened public attention to the necessity of some measure for improving the dwellings of the poor. It was at that time that Lord Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, took an important step in that benevolent movement of which he had made himself the leader for improving the dwellings of the poor in London, and introduced Bills which subsequently became the Common Lodging House Acts of 1851 and 1853.

The effect of these Acts was that lodging-houses were required to be approved by the police, then registered, and thoroughly cleansed and lime-whitened twice every year, in April and October. These Acts are now working well in London, although the common lodging-houses I have visited seem to me to be seriously over-crowded, while they often form parts of courts that are not fit for the habitation of human beings.

In 1862 was passed the Metropolis Water Act, which enabled vestries to oblige householders to lay on a supply of water, while the source of that supply was altered.

Cholera came again in 1853, and in 1855 the Metropolitan Board of Works was established by the Metropolis Management Act. This Board undertook the excellent work which is known as the main drainage of London. This work should be most carefully and completely perfected. The chief Building Act now in force in London was also passed in 1855.

I must also mention the Act passed in 1851—the Labouring Classes' Lodging Houses Act, which, in conjunction with the Labouring Classes' Dwelling Houses Act of 1866, enables local authorities to build habitations for working people, and to borrow money from the Public Works Loan Commissioners at four per cent, on the security either of the property or of the local rates.

I now come to the Act which is of most importance in reference to this discussion—I mean the Act passed by my hon. friend the member for Finsbury (Mr. Torrens) in 1868, and called the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Act. The Bill, as passed by the House of Commons, contained provisions for four purposes—compulsory repair, demolition, compensation, and rebuilding. In the House of Lords the last two provisions were struck out, and consequently the Act provides only for compulsory repair, and for the demolition of dwellings unfit for human habitation. Yet this Act has been of great value. Indeed I did not fully realise its value until the other day when I went through the parish of St. Giles, where Dr. Ross, the Medical Officer of the Vestry, has put the Act into force with considerable vigour and courage. About 100 houses have been improved or demolished in his district.

The Act has been also employed with effect in Marylebone, Clerkenwell, Islington, Holborn, St. Luke's, Whitechapel, Mile End Old Town, and other parishes.

It may be worth while to point out how the Act may be considerably improved. Not only should the powers of rebuilding which the House of Lords unfortunately expunged be restored in some form by new legislation, but the experience of Dr. Ross in enforcing the Act induces him to offer these practical suggestions:—First, the Medical Officer, in addition to the report required by the Act, should be directed to detail the grounds upon which his opinion is based; and secondly, the report of the Medical Officer of Health, condemning certain houses as unfit for human habitation, should be forwarded to the Local Government Board, in order that a Medical Inspector may examine the premises and report thereon, previous to the reference to the surveyor of the local authority. The Medical Officers of Health are in the service of the Vestries, and the members of the Vestries are to a large extent property owners; and yet it is to these Vestries that the Medical Officer of Health has to make his report that property is unfit for human habitation and ought to be demolished. The effect of adopting the suggestion would be that the report of the Medical Officer would be made with much greater confidence. At present he sometimes shrinks from condemning places which are unfit for human habitation because he knows his report will be unsupported when it comes before a body who, naturally enough, will be somewhat prejudiced in favour of the supposed rights of their own property. If he were supported by an Inspector of the Local Government Board, he would have more confidence in recommending the resort to the measures now authorised by what is known as Torrens's Act.