... Mr. Baker, in his report on the condition of the population, after
giving an instance of the contrast presented by the working-people living
in better dwellings, situated in better
cleansed neighbourhoods (to which I shall advert when submitting the
evidence in respect to preventive measures), describes the population
living in houses -
"With broken panes in every window-frame, and filth and vermin in every
nook. With the walls unwhitewashed for years, black with the smoke of
foul chimneys, without water, with corded bed-stocks for beds, and sacking
for bed-clothing, with floors unwashed from year to year, without out-offices,
... while without, there are streets,
elevated a foot, sometimes two, above the level of the causeway,
by the accumulation of years, and stagnant puddles here and there, with
their foetid exhalations. causeways broken and dangerous, ash-places
choked up with filth, and excrementitious deposits on all sides as a
consequence, undrained, unpaved. unventilated, uncared-for by any authority
but the landlord, who weekly collects his miserable rents from his miserable
tenants.
"Can we wonder that such places are the hot-beds of disease, or that
it obtains, upon constitutions thus liberally predisposed to receive
it, and forms the mortality which Leeds exhibits. Adult life, exposed
to such miasmata, gives way. How much more then infant life, when ushered
into, and attempted to be reared in, such obnoxious atmospheres. On
the moral habits similar effects are produced. An inattention on the
part of the local authorities to the state of the streets diminishes
year by year the respectability of their occupiers. None dwell in such
localities but those to whom propinquity to employment is absolutely
essential. Those who might advocate a better state of things, depart;
and of those who remain, the one-half, by repeated exhibitions of indecency
and vulgarity, and indeed by the mere fact of neighbourship, sink into
the moral degradation which is natural to the other, and vicious habits
and criminal propensities precede the death which these combinations
prepare."
No education as yet commonly given appears to have availed against
such demoralising circumstances as those described, but the cases of
moral improvement of a population, by cleansing, draining, and the improvement
of the internal and external conditions of the dwellings, of which instances
will be presented, are more numerous and decided, though there still
occur instances of persons in whom the love of ardent spirits
has gained such entire possession as to have withstood all such means
of retrieving them. The most experienced public officers acquainted
with the condition of the inferior population of the towns would agree
in giving the first place in efficiency and importance to the removal
of what may he termed the physical barriers to improvement, and that
as against such barriers moral agencies have but a remote chance of
success.
A gentleman who has had considerable experience in the management of
large numbers of the manufacturing population stated to me that in every
case of personal and moral improvement the successful step was made
by the removal of the party from the ill-conditioned neighbourhood in
which he bad been brought up. When a young workman married, he interfered
to get him a better residence apart from the rest, and when this was
done important alterations followed; but if he took up his abode in
the old neighbourhood, the condition of the wife was soon brought down
to the common level, and the marriage became a source of wretchedness,
Benevolent persons, viewing the hare aspect of some of the most afflicted
neighhourhoods, have raised subscriptions for the purchase of furniture,
bedding, and blankets, for the relief of the inmates, but by this pecuniary
aid they have only added fuel to the flame, that is, they have enabled
the inmates to purchase more ardent spirits The force of the habit,
which is aggravated by misdirected charity, is indicated in the following
instances, of which one was mentioned to me by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin:-
" I was lately informed by a master tailor of Bath that one of his
men, who had earned £3 a-week at piece-work for years, had never within
his knowledge possessed table, chairs, or bedding. I found the statement
on examination to be strictly true, Some straw on which he slept,
a square block of wood, a low three-legged stool, and an old tea-caddy,
are the complete inventory of the articles of a room, the occupier
of which, with only himself and his wife to maintain, was wealthier
than many in the station of gentlemen. He had frequently excited lively
compassion in benevolent individuals, who, supposing that he was struggling
for very existence, furnished him with a variety of household goods,
which were regularly pawned before a week was out, and afforded to
the superficial observer fresh evidence of the extremity of his distress,
The cause of all this is quickly told: the wife was to be seen going
to and fro several times a-day with a cream-jug of gin, and to gratify
this appetite, they had voluntarily reduced themselves to the condition
of savages. I could add numerous instances of a similar kind, Indeed,
were a stranger to go through the town, and judge only from the appearance
of things, I am convinced that he would select his examples of greatest
privation not from the really poor, but from men who were in the receipt
of more than 30s. a-week, Charity, which when prompted by pure motives,
always blesses him that gives, does not always bless him that takes.
I am afraid that the indiscriminate adoption of dirt and rags as a
test of poverty, especially in a town like Bath, where private
charity prevails on an extensive scale, operates as a premium upon
ill habits, and as a discouragement to cleanliness, and leads many
to affect a vice which was not habitual to them." ...
