No. 2.

On the Housing of the Poor in Towns,

by Dr. Hunter.

M. F. M. F.

The houses stand at the bottom of Coalpit Lane. Chief Constable Jackson, to whose courtesy I owe the opportunity of presenting this Table, has very properly considered all persons above 13 years of age to be adults, as no doubt they must be in all statistics of concubinage. The houses are a fair sample of the worst class in Sheffield. It need scarcely be added, that in none was there any ventilation, except that derived from doors, windows, and chimneys.

SHEFFIELD.

1

H

APPENDIX..

SOUTHAMPTON.

No. 2. At Southampton all the Local Acts were in effect superseded on On the the formation of a board of health under the Local Government Act. Housing of the Poor in Towns, The board, which is identical with the corporation, has proceeded far by Dr. Hunter. in extensive drainage, and it is probable that of about 6,000 houses 4,000 are now in connexion with the board's system; the rest SOUTHAMPTON. are supplied with cesspools, and among this rest are very few

Common lodgings.

but labourers' tenements. The board has an active medical officer, Mr. Cooper, to whom it pays 2001. a year. He engages in private practice of his profession. He and the surveyor between them have the services of a street keeper and reporter of nuisances, but the real inspection, both of nuisances and of common lodgings, is performed by the medical officer in person. A sanitary committee of the board has been formed, and for a while it met regularly, but now the officers seem but seldom to require reference to it. The people fall in willingly to the requisitions of the board, and no objection has been raised on the ground of the street keeper not being himself the inspector.

Nothing has yet been done under the Labourers' Dwellings Act. A joint stock company formed for the purposes of the Act has not yet begun operations. There is no peculiar difficulty attending the acquisition of land on which to build small houses. Working men are generally able to pay the rent of a whole house, and the rents were certainly high.

The definition of a common lodging sanctioned by the board is a lodging-house where the lodgers take beds for a single day. The cubical area assigned to each bed is 250 feet. There has as yet been no prosecution under the Common Lodgings Act, and the owners are anxious to obtain registration, and to conform, as far as their means allow, to the requirements of the medical officer. From the definition accepted it might have been expected, as actually occurred, that on the officer's withdrawing his licence from a house which was manifestly improperly kept, the owner eluded the law by accepting no lodgers for so short a term as that defined. Though fewer than formerly, there are still 25 common lodgings in Southampton. I visited various common lodgings and other poor tenements in Simnel Street and Blue Anchor Lane, and also in the neighbourhood called the Rookery. As a general rule, the walls of the registered lodgings were limewashed; there were sheets and utensils to each bed; the floors were decently clean. The worst of the accommodation was that the houses were old and tumble-down. It was represented that lords and ladies had slept in the mouldering garrets now occupied by itinerant musicians and journeymen out of work; but, except for spaciousness, there was nothing good about these rooms. A "bed," as usual, means room for two; a single bed is a "half-bed." The beds were let for 3d. a night each person. The bedding was usually good; there was seldom a dirty floor or a bundle of dirty clothes to be seen. The married were always separated from the single, and the sexes of the latter parted. I visited the houses of Mary W. and Mr. S., who had applied for a licence without success. These houses were quite unfit, and the contrast which they presented to the registered houses showed the usefulness of the law of registry. The sheets were ragged, the floors filthy; there were heaps of dirty rags and clothing, and beggars' baggage on the bedroom floors. The privy, which served seven houses, was covered, floor and seat, with fresh dung. The broken windows were numerous, and stuffed with rags. The houses

APPENDIX.

No. 2.

On the

were short of washing and other utensils. The owners said they might well be poor, because they could take no nightly lodgers, and that weekly lodgers so often defaulted. They promised to get into order for registration. It would appear that these houses were evading Housing of the the law, through the definition chosen for a common lodging by the Poor in Towns, local authority. Nothing could be more filthy and unwholesome than by Dr. Hunter. the whole establishments. The charge was very low.

Little had been done to maintain cleanliness within the private SOUTHAMPTON. houses. Dustmen went round regularly, and emptied the dust bins of Cleaning. public courts. When a yard was strictly private to a single house, the refuse had to be exposed in a basket in front for the dustman. The town scavengers visited and washed every public court and privy twice a week, and as the board has obtained a smooth flagging for the courts the result was an unusually clean appearance.

On visiting the privies I saw three classes :-(1) the old cesspools, Privies. none of which were over full, though many were badly arranged; the closets rickety and difficult to get at: (2) new waterclosets set on the town drains, which were unnecessarily numerous in some parts. Each house in a very poor street had one. The rough tenants had in many cases disordered the mechanism, and many pans were piled with ordure. A third plan (3) of trough waterclosets is an uncommon but very good one. Temporary cesspools, shallow and smooth bottomed, are formed on the drain, the privies are set over them, and twice a week when the scavenger comes round the whole is flushed out into the drain. By far the greater number of complaints of nuisances received were of obstructed closets. In the summer of 1865 a gentleman was charged before the magistrates with keeping privies at Northiam so as to be a nuisance. They were on cesspools, and the magistrates, on Mr. Cooper's evidence, ordered them to be drained. This was resisted and a fine of 21. each on 11 cottages was inflicted. The owner preferred to go to prison, but afterwards paid the fines and drained the privies. His rents were raised from 3s. 6d. to 4s. a week, and, as I was told, tenants at that rent were easy to get, though between 400 and 500 houses are to be let in Southampton.

Four-roomed houses were common, and brought about 4s. a week. Cottages. Three-roomed back-to-back houses were not so common, and brought about 3s., while it was only here and there a two-roomed house was met with, or indeed any tenement at less than half a crown. Goater's Court was a specimen of back-to-back property. There were 14 houses and 2 privies. One house was to be let; the rest contained 74 persons. I visited Goater's Alley; Campbell's Court, Cross Street; Lansdowne Place (10 houses with 2 privies); Petty's Court (one bedroom, rent 2s. 9d., largest family 5); Pardy's Court (23 persons in 5 houses to one privy); and the conclusion drawn from the inspection was, on comparing with other towns, that there was little overcrowding. The old property was uncomfortable from the masses of decayed wood work, and the rents were high. Many of the gully holes on private property were untrapped, and waterclosets had been too freely introduced where the cottagetenants were not of a class to be trusted with their management.

The officers entrusted with the administration of the Local Government Act regretted the loss of some of the repealed clauses of the Public Health Act. They thought that the party walls of new small tenements should extend to the roof, but had no power to enforce it. There had been cases in which the magistrates had required, as proof of a nuisance on cottage property, the evidence of neighbours who had suffered from the nuisance, and this was said to be felt as a hardship by poor people, who thought the inspector ought to shield.

APPENDIX.

No. 2.
On the
Housing of the
Poor in Towns,
by Dr. Hunter.

SOUTHAMPTON.

them from the invidious responsibility of complaint against a powerful neighbour.

I append a plan of Spring Court, Rookery, Southampton.

Houses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and other buildings, are 3 storeys high; 3, 4, and 5 have no back door or window. Over the privy and dungheap are two storeys of hay store. Thus the only openings into No. 5, for instance, are from a court, 3 storeys high, and 7 feet 9 broad, and just opposite a privy and dung store. The rents 2s.

The inconvenience of combining the prosecution of nuisances with private medical practice, as indeed with any private business at all, was almost daily apparent, and Mr. Cooper thought better results would be got by a combination of towns to support a medical officer, who should have no other engagement, and who would be entirely free from local influences.

SUNDERLAND.

SUNDERLAND.

The Sunderland corporation has appointed Mr. Paine inspector of nuisances and common lodgings. The action of a medical officer is to some extent attained through the reports received by the sanitary committee of the corporation from the registrars of deaths. Two instances of overcrowding had been prosecuted on medical evidence. The cases were thus described :-10, Simpson Street, 2 upstair front rooms contained 4 adults with 8 children, being two families, cubic space 1,951 feet; 2 back rooms contained two families of 4 adults and 4 children in 1,979 feet. Also at No. 13, Simpson Street, two upstair back rooms held two families of 3 adults with 7 live and 2 dead children * in 1,979 cubic feet. These instances were convicted on the evidence of Dr. Yeld and Dr. Morgan, and the magistrates warned the offenders.

Under the Common Lodgings Acts much had been done to control overcrowding. The detectives visit suspected houses at night, and are bringing all the seamen's boarding houses under the law. The

*Private benevolence could hardly find a better or more pleasing object than the erection of a mortuary chapel in a great town of single-room tenements, such as Sunderland, where bodies of the dead might be reverently cared for while awaiting interment. The poor, as a rule, only bury on Sunday.

No. 2.
On the

worst houses of the sort now open were said to be those kept by APPENDIX. licensed victuallers. There were no emigrants' houses. The registered lodging houses were only about 30. The space ordered was 300 cubic feet per head. Those visited were among the worst, and were Housing of the certainly untidy, and in one case dirty, but they were better than the Poor in Towns, private houses around, and gave the authorities some satisfaction in by Dr. Hunter.

the fact that no case of fever had occurred in them. They were SUNDERLAND. 3-storey houses, and held 24, 26, or 28 persons. These people washed

at home, and having no yards hung out their linen at the win

dows.

At Sunderland, as at Liverpool and Hull, the houses are by far Dense buildtoo many on the area; there is not street or yard room. A dense ing. aggregation of houses forms an almost solid block on the landward side of High Street, on the right hand, after passing Church Street. In this great block may be seen long unbroken rows of houses of 3 or 4 storeys, and often nearly 30 feet high, each room being let at 1s., or 1s. 4d., or 1s. 6d. a week (besides a water rent) to a separate family. It would be deceptive to quote the numbers of people said to be in single rooms in this warren; an accurate account could not be got. It must suffice to say that in long lanes of 3-storey houses, often back-to-backs, the width of roadway between the houses is only 6, 7, or 8 feet, and that every room seemed full of people; the linen drying from nearly every window, and mixing with that of the opposite neighbour, showed at a glance how universal were the single-room lettings. Robinson's Lane, a sort of main street of larger houses traversing this block, measures 13.3 in width. None of these houses or even rooms were observed to be void, and the rents are high. Cottage building ground was supposed to be worth 34d. or 4d. a yard.

A power like that of the Liverpool Act is much wanted here, and might be applied in this comparatively small town without any evil resulting from dislodging the well-paid labourers who live here. The authorities thought a patient course of buying and destroying old houses would before long redeem the place. And there were houses rendered almost useless by the close proximity in which the neighbouring owner had built up to them, and consequently offered for sale at the value of the land and material. The privies also were SO cabined that emptying was difficult. The crowded state of all the poorer houses, old or new, large or small, or even when the little property of the labourer himself, showed that there were not houses enough for the demands of the trade of the town. In hundreds of instances the back-to-backs were so arranged that no out-door place could be found where even the public could build privies, and consequently the authorities have been obliged to compel the owners to put water-closets into houses. These are now numerous among a population unfitted for their use. There were no cellar bedrooms discovered; they are probably very few, and all qualified under the cellars clauses.

New byelaws had been recently obtained. By the 31st the authorities supposed they had taken power to declare some old houses "unfit for human habitation." One miserable old house, broken almost to pieces, has been ordered to be declared uninhabitable under this byelaw, and the authorities had some thoughts of trying to get the declaration of unfitness applied to all instances of the absence of a closet. They had previously succeeded in shutting up one house, and indeed seemed to wish to push all their powers for the public protection as far as the law would let them.