314

CONDITION OF THE PEASANTS' COTTAGES.

1

foreign peasant does. He cannot get a piece of ground even as tenant-at-will. He cannot get the lease of a common cottage nor of a garden. The peasants have to herd together in the manner before spoken of. Contrast his condition with that of a French or German peasant. A great majority of the French peasants, over thirty or thirty-five years of age, have houses and little farms of five or ten acres, making them feel that they are masters of their own fate. He is removed from the curses which English landlords inflict. The condition of his house, its tenure, the tenure of his farm and the social position of his family, all depend upon himself. This ennobles his character, increases the comfort of his family, augments his happiness, and makes him a good and conservative citizen. There is a great outcry made by the English press about French tyranny. England has at most 35,000 land-owners; France has millionsso that, in the sense in which I use the term "degradation" as applied to the English peasantry, there is no such thing in France.

Of the condition of the peasants' cottages in Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Leicestershire, rich and well cultivated. counties, with farms generally of considerable size, Mr. Kay tells us, the peasants have no chance of ever rising to the farmer class. The cottages have scarcely ever a garden attached to them, the lands being all divided between great farms and parks, and they are as wretched as they can be. The majority of them live in small low huts of one story, walls about eight feet high, roofs very often incompletely thatched, and no cellar beneath the rooms. In the middle of one side of the walls there is a door, with a window on either side, but too of ten minus several panes, and half stuffed with rags. One-half the interior of many of these cottages is boarded or walled off, and in the little bedroom, parents and daughters and sons are compelled to sleep. It is by no means rare for the two sexes to sleep, not only in the same bedroom, but in the same bed, without regard to decency. Even of the few new cottages being built, none have more than two bedrooms, however large

PEASANTS' FAMILIES.

315

the family may be, and many have not more than one bedroom. The cottages are only slightly improved from the old style, while their sites are at least as wretched as those of the old.

This state of things has existed so long, that the wretched inmates very seldom think of complaining. They have sunk below it, and any visitor speaking of their miserable condition is met with a blank look of astonishment, on the part of proprietors; the ground of defence for such a state of things being generally alleged and often boldly maintained, that education would only make the peasant discontented; and so neither side speaks, or seems to think of any change. The peasants have long ago got below even discontent!

VIII.

UT we come to the specific causes.

Mr. Alfred Austin,

B Special Assistant Poor Law Commissioner, in his report

on the employment of women in agriculture, says of Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Wilts, that the want of sufficient accommodation seems universal-cottages having, with very rare exceptions for large families, only two bedrooms, and generally but one; it is difficult, if not impossible, to divide a family so that grown up persons, brothers and sister, fathers and daughters, do not sleep in the same room, three or more sleep in the same so-called bed. Where the females of two neighboring cottages slept in one, and the males in another, decency was preserved; but these arrangements were very rare, while in the generality of cottages the only attempt to separate beds with occupants of different sexes, was made by an old shawl suspended as a curtain. He says he measured, at Stourpain, a bedroom in a cottage, consisting of two rooms-the bedroom in question being up stairs. It was ten feet square, a thatched roof, and the middle of the chamber being seven feet high. The only window was fifteen inches square, yet three beds were crammed into this little room for both sexes, with no curtain between them. One bed contained the father, mother and an

316

MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE'S PEASANTRY.

infant; the second, three daughters; the third, four sons, ten, fourteen, fifteen, and seventeen years of age. Mr. Austin says, that this was not an extraordinary case, and that every bedroom in the village (Blandford) was crowded with inmates of both sexes and various ages.

Mr. Phelps, an agent of the Marquis of Lansdowne, says in this same Report of Mr. Austin: That he was engaged in taking the census in Bremhill parish, and that he found twentynine people living under one roof, and among them married men and women, and young people of all ages in the same condition. "In Studley it is not at all uncommon for a whole family to sleep in the same room. The number of bastards in that place is very great." Mr. Austin remarks, that “The sleeping of boys, girls, young men and young women in the same room, in beds almost touching one another, must have the effect of breaking down the great barriers between the sexesthe sense of modesty and decency on the part of women, and respect for the other sex on the part of men." We are prepared to hear him add, that "The consequences of this state of things are seen in the early licentiousness of the rural districts—a licentiousness which does not always respect the family relationship. It necessarily creates an early and illicit familiarity between the sexes; and universally in the villages, where the cottages are the most crowded, there is the greatest number of illegitimate children and the greatest depravity observable."

The Rev. H. Austen, curate of Pimperne, furnishes painful testimony to the same effect. Rev. J. Guthrie, vicar of Colne, says:

"The want of good cottages, where the members of a family can live separately, was a great cause of demoralization; and when grown up members of the same family are continually occupying the same room, modesty, delicacy and a sense of shame are soon put to flight. When these are absent, and dirt and disorder take their place, a gradual declension in good morals and character succeeds, and the whole family sinks perceptibly to a lower grade in character and conduct."

The Hon. and Rev. S. Godolphin Osborne, rector of Bryanston-cum-Durweston, Dorsetshire, says:

ALL AGES AND SEXES TOGETHER.

317 "The children of the agricultural laborers, for the most part, sleep in the same room with their parents; and whatever attempts may be made at decency-and I have seen many most ingenious and praiseworthy attempts-still there is the fact that the young, married and unmarried of both sexes, all herd together in one and the same sleeping apartment. Within this last year, I saw in a room, about thirteen feet square, three beds; on the first lay the mother, a widow, dying with consumption; on the second, two unmarried daughters, aged eighteen and twelve; on the third, a young married couple, whom I myself had married two days before. A married woman, of very good character, told me a few weeks ago, that on her confinement, her single room was so crowded that they were obliged to put her on the floor in the middle of the room. She spoke of this as, to her, the most painful part of that hour of trial. I do not choose to put on paper the disgusting scenes that I have found to occur from this promiscuous intermingling of the sexes. Seeing, however, to what the mind of the young female is exposed from her very childhood, I have long ceased to wonder at the otherwise seemingly precocious licentiousness of conversation which may be heard in every field where the sexes are working together."

MR.

IX.

R. M. FISHER, of Blandford, says: "That on the average at the last census, there were thirty-six persons in each separate house in Milton Abbas. A fair average," he states, “is a family of nine persons to every two rooms throughout the population. In Kingston, a neighboring village, you may see open, stagnant cesspools, and filth of all descriptions; and the character of the people is similar to these external appearances."

H. N. Tilsey, Esq., of North Petherton, Somersetshire, surgeon, says: "What cottages there are, are generally badly arranged, badly ventilated, and badly drained-all ages and sexes often sleeping in one common room. As a class, these laboring men, women and children, although, perhaps, sufficiently skilled in all matters relating to their own particular calling, manifest the most complete and perfect ignorance of all that regards school instruction."

Mr. Gilbert, formerly assistant Poor-Law Commissioner for Devonshire and Cornwall, in speaking of a large district in Tiverton, and the numerous applications made for relief to the Board of Guardians, in consequence of illness from fever, traces the cause to the condition of the cottages, "built on the ground, without flooring, or against a damp hill, some having neither windows nor doors sufficient to keep out the weather, let in the

318

GENERATION OF DISEASE.

rays of the sun, or supply the means of ventilation, the roofs not weather-tight, wet, rotten, giving out malaria from the thatch and other decaying vegetable matter."

Mr. John Fox, the medical officer of the Cerne Union in Dorsetshire, enumerating the causes of disease among the poor where he attended, says: He had often seen the springs bursting through the floor of the mud cottages, and little channels cut from the centre, under the doorways, to carry off water, while the door has been removed from its hinges for the children to put their feet on whilst employed in making buttons.

"It is not surprising that fever and scrofula in all its forms, prevail under such circumstances. Most of the cottages are of the worst description, some of them mere mud hovels, situated in low and damp places, and cesspools or accumulations of filth close to the doors. In many of the cottages, where synochus prevailed, the beds stood on the ground floor, which was damp three parts of the year. Scarcely one had a fire-place in the bedroom. One had a single small pane of glass stuck in the mud wall as its only window, with a large heap of wet and dirty potatoes in one corner. The habitants of such cottages are generally very poor, very dirty, and usually in rags, living almost wholly on bread and potatoes, scarcely ever tasting animal food, consequently highly susceptible to disease, and very unable to contend with it." He says, that throughout his whole district, “I do not believe there is one cottage to be found consisting of a dayroom, three bedrooms, scullery, pantry and convenient receptacles for refuse and for fuel in the occupation of a laborer."

X.

R. JAMES GANE, the medical officer of the Axbridge Union, in his Sanitary Report, speaking of the situation of that district where these diseases prevailed, says:

"It is a perfect flat, that called the South Marsh, on the main road between Bristol and Bridgewater." He says: "The walls of the cottages are very frequently made of mud, often situated close to dykes, which are filled with stagnant water; oftentimes there is not more than one room for a whole family. A pigstye, where the inmates are capable of keeping a pig, is frequently attached to the dwelling, and, in the heat of summer, produces a stench quite intolerable; but the want of space prevents its being otherwise. The ordinary houses of the poor peasants, in most of the parishes in this district, are of a much worse description than the detached cottages, several large families living under the same roof, each family occupying only one room, with only one entrance-door to the dwelling. Here filth and poverty go hand in hand, without any restriction and under no control, the accumulation of filth being attributable to the want of proper receptacles for refuse. Owing to the indolent and filthy disposition of the inhabitants, in no instance have such places been provided. The floors are seldom or never scrubbed, and the parish authorities pay so little attention to these houses, that the walls never get white-limed from one end of the year to the other. The windows are kept air-tight by the stuffing of some old garments; and every article for use is kept in the same room. The necessary is close to the building, where all have access, and produces a most intolerable nuisance. In a locality naturally engendering malaria, the diseases with which the poor are, for the most part, afflicted are fevers, such as are stated in this Report,