THE MORNING CHRONICLE'S AUTHORITY.

319

which sometimes run into a low typhoid state. The neighborhood in general is considered in as good a state of drainage as it will admit of.

"There is a subject, which I wish particularly to press on the attention of the Commissioners the existence throughout the country, and in every parish, of low lodging-houses, where persons of the lowest grade of society, beggars, thieves and such-like, take up a temporary abode in passing from one part of the kingdom to the other, bringing with them the seeds of infectious diseases, and oftentimes the actual disease itself, into a neighborhood previously in a comparative state of health."

The Report of Mr. Aaron Little, the medical officer of the Chippenham Union in Wiltshire, affords what is declared to be a specimen of the frequent condition of rural villages which have apparently the most advantageous sites:

"The parish of Cornwall, which, upon a cursory view, would be pronounced one of the most healthy villages in England, is one of the most unhealthy. From its commanding position on a high hill, it has an appearance of health and cheerfulness which delight the eye of the traveler who commands a view of it from the Great Western Road; but this impression is immediately removed on entering it at any point of the town. The filthy, dilapidated buildings, the squalid appearance of the majority of the lower orders, have a sickening effect upon the stranger who first visits this place. During three years attendance upon the poor of this district, I have never known small pox, scarletina, or typhus fever to be absent."

XI.

N the year 1849 a series of very able and startling letters appeared in the London Morning Chronicle. The correspondent of that candid journal says that, in traversing Devon and Somerset, he was particularly struck with the utter absence of new cottages. Most of the cottages were so rickety and ruined that they could no longer be inhabited; while, as regards others, the process of demolition or decomposition had confined the wretched tenants, who had formerly two rooms, to the only remaining one. He says:

"It is not necessary to go into remote and sequestered parts where things are done which would not be exposed in the neighborhood of highways, to see such spectacles, for I have scen them in this state along the line from Exeter and Honiton, and in the district traversed by the high road to London. In no instance did I see new cottages being erected to supply the exigencies of an increasing population, but the old ones, instead of being kept in repair, were suffered to crumble to pieces or were demolished by design, for the purpose of driving off the population, which bad become so famished and incompetent to labor that they were got rid of by any means possible."

"In a parish between Honiton and the coast, a great part of which is owned by Sir Edward Elton, this process of cottage clearing seems to be a marked feature in proprietary policy. On Sir Edward Elton's property, by the average rate of decay or demolition, the proprietor

320

DEPLORABLE HOMES.

clears his estate of about forty-two poor persons each year, unless they can find room in their neighbors' hovels, which in most cases can be but ill spared. Other estates are similarly dealt with. While in many parts of Devon and Somerset the demolition of cottages has been going on far more rapidly than that of building new ones, the population of the two counties has been fast increasing. The real effect of the demolition of cottages is to reduce, if possible, to a still lower point of wretchedness the physical condition of the laborer. While population is increasing in these counties, not only is house accommodation not increasing, but it is actually diminishing."

Through these extensive districts the writer found that, in the great majority of instances, the condition of the cottages was deplorably bad. The very few well-situated and commodious were exceptions to the general character of the peasants' dwellings. He thus describes them :

"It is impossible fully to estimate the wretchedness to which the inmates of the hovels, which meet the eye at all points, are exposed, without a close personal inspection of them. We are accustomed to associate with the idea of a country village, or with a cottage situated in a winding vale, or hanging upon the side of a rich and fertile slope, nothing but health, contentment and happiness. A rural dwelling of this class, with its heavy thatch and embowering trees, makes such a nice pencil sketch, that we are naturally inclined to think it as neat and comfortable as it appears. But to know it aright, it must be turned inside out, and its realities exposed to the gaze of the observer. Could the internal be always given with the external view, it would moderate our enthusiasm for the little sketches, which work so early and so powerfully upon our fancies, and which are suggestive of nothing but contentment and happiness. How often does the cot, which looks so attractive and romantic upon paper, conceal an amount of wretchedness, filth, squalor, disease, privation and frequently of immorality, which, when exposed in their reality, are perfectly appalling! And as to health, nowhere, perhaps, is the pure air of heaven more tainted than in the neighborhood of these rustic dwellings. You will encounter odors in a country village, which it would be difficult to match in Westminster or St. Giles's. Indeed, the most sickening and offensive that I ever came in contact with, had nestled themselves on the summit of Beacon Hill, in the neighborhood of Bath. It is high time that people divested themselves of the false impressions too generally entertained of the character of our rural cottages. They are chiefly drawn from descriptions which at one time may have suited the reality, when the condition of the agricultural laborer was much better than it is now; for that it was much better than at present, is evident from the information derived from a variety of valuable sources. To go a considerable way back: We find Fortescue alluding to their condition in his day, as one of great comfort and happiness; inasmuch as they lived chiefly upon butcher meat, of which they had plenty, and had abundance of good ale, with which to accompany it at their meals. In regard to their diet, at least, their condition now seems the very reverse of what it was then; and it is impossible that they could have fallen back so much in this important element of their physical condition, without having all the others deteriorated in proportion; it is fair to infer that their house accommodation was better formerly than now. It was better in this, if in no other respect-that fewer people were to be found under one and the same roof, a state of things much more favorable to health, cleanliness and good morals than that which now prevails. We must, therefore, judge of the laborer's condition, not from past descriptions of it, but from the sad realities of the present hour."

In another letter the same gentleman writes:

"But bad as are the tenements usually occupied by the poor, they are not, except in rare cases, quite so revolting in their character, and in the scenes to which they give rise, as are

SEXES HUDDLED TOGETHER.

321

some tenements, which have a claim to be regarded in the light of public buildings. These are the parish houses, which are scattered in considerable numbers over the southern and western districts. They are the houses in which the poor were accommodated previously to the erection of the union workhouses. In many cases, since the workhouses came into use, these parish houses have been sold, and the proceeds applied to defraying, pro tanta, the expense of building the workhouses. But in others, the overseers will not part with them, keeping them for the purpose of letting, and thus deriving a profit from them. They are generally let at a lower rent than ordinary cottages, and thus become the resort of those in the most wretched circumstances, who crowd into them by dozens, and fill up almost every crevice of them with lodgers. One of these I saw on the borders of Devonshire and Cornwall, and not far from Launceston. It consisted of two houses, containing between them four rooms. In each room was a family, who used it both night and day. The lower rooms were about twelve feet square. In one of them were a man, and his wife and five children; in the other were a man, and his wife and eight children. In this latter, there were but two beds-the father, and mother, and two children occupying one, and the other six being huddled together in the remaining bed. They lay 'head and foot, as they termed it-that is to say, three with their heads at the top, and three with them at the foot of the bed! The eldest girl was between fifteen and sixteen, and the eldest boy between fourteen and fifteen. The closeness of this room was overpowering. The beds were necessarily large, and occupied most of the floor; indeed, when the whole family was assembled, several of the children were placed upon the beds to keep them out of the way. In this way the beds may be said to have never been cold. How can health be retained or morals preserved under such circumstances as these?"

XII.

F his correspondent's letters the editor of the Morning

0 Chronicle says:

"The cottages at Southleigh, in Devon, are, if possible, even worse. One house, which our correspondent visited, was almost a ruin. It had continued in that state for ten years. The floor was of mud, dipping near the fire-place into a deep hollow, which was constantly filled with water. There were five in the familyy—a young man of twenty-one, a girl of eighteen, and another girl of about thirteen, with the father and mother, all sleeping together up stairs. And what a sleeping room! In places it seemed falling in. To ventilation it was an utter stranger. The crazy floor shook and creaked under me as I paced it.' Yet the rent was one shilling a week; the same sum, for which apartments that may be called luxurious in comparison may be had in the model lodging-houses. And here sat a girl weaving that beautiful Houiton lace, which our peeresses wear on Court days. Cottage after cottage at Southleigh presented the same characteristics. Clay floors, low ceilings letting in the rain, no ventilation: two rooms, one above and one below; gutters running through the lower room to let off the water; unglazed window-frames, now boarded up, and now uncovered to the elements, the boarding going for fire-wood; the inmates disabled by rheumatism, ague and typhus; broad, stagnant, open ditches close to the doors; heaps of abominations piled round the dwellings; such are the main features of Southleigh; and it is in these worse than pig-styes that one of the most beautiful fabrics that luxury demands, or art supplies, is fashioned. The parish houses are still worse."

In commenting further upon the disclosures of the corre spondent, the editor remarks: "His letter of the 17th details

322

THE LONDON TIMES' COMMISSIONER.

the condition of the laborers in the parish of St. Martin, which for filth, immorality and misery surpasses everything previously described. To extract one specimen worse than another would be impossible. They are all so bad that there are no discrimi nating degrees of evil. Illegitimate children swarm about; men and women live almost indiscriminately together; unmarried women confined in the same department in which nine other human beings are stowed away;-such is the moral state of things to which physical wretchedness has reduced the population. Here, as in many parts of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, the most debasing influences seem to have been collected together in one full tide, as if to show how low a portion of a civilized and refined people can be sunk by poverty and neglect.

XIII.

IN

N the London Times, June, 1846, a gentleman, sent down to examine the condition of the peasantry of Dorsetshire, says:

"It is by no means an uncommon thing for a whole family to sleep in the same room without the slightest regard to age or sex, and without a curtain or the slightest attempt at separation between the beds. It will be easily imagined that the great and promiscuous herding together of young people of both sexes is productive of the most demoralizing effects. In the case of a death occurring in the family, should there be but one room, which is, I think, generally the case, the inmates of the house are compelled to pass their nights in the same room with the corpse until the time of burial. I could produce instances of the most frightful depravity, the unavoidable consequence of this disgusting, indiscriminate herding together, but I must suppress them. The atmosphere of these houses, to an unpractised nose, is almost insupportable. Dishes, plates and other articles of crockery, seem almost unknown. There is, however, the less need for them, as grist bread forms, I believe, the only kind of food that falls to the laborer's lot. In no single instance did I observe meat of any kind in my progress through the parish."

Another letter in the Times of June 29th, signed, “A Country Rector" says: "If you go through Devonshire, Wiltshire, and the hill country to Gloucestershire, you will find the peasant at the point of starvation."

The Honorable and Reverend S. G. Osborne, in describing the parish of Hilton, which he inspected personally in company with the vicar of the parish, describes the degradation of the inhabitants and the wretchedness of the houses, as something almost

THE FILTH OF THE DWELLINGS.

323

incredible. "I despair," he says, "of giving you even a faint idea of the manner in which these people are pigged together in these dwellings. This parish closely adjoins the park of Milton Abbey, the beautiful seat of Portarlington. In the first cottage, a man and his wife lived with two children, a son of his, by a former marriage, and a daughter of hers, by a former marriage. This son is married, but, owing to a want of room, cannot sleep with his own wife and children who are living in another part of the parish, but sleeps in a small room, the only other bed of which is occupied by a grown girl, the daughter of the woman. They pay the parish thirty shillings a year rent." Of another cottage he says: "With some difficulty we ascended to a bedroom, but no one by pen can describe it. You get in to it by a sort of ladder. I ventured to ask how they got a corpse out of such a place. The reply was, ' they had him down stairs to die;' there he was seven weeks, and they took him dead to the church-yard. The parish officers regularly, when they can get it, take rent even of the pauper tenants."

Describing the ditches and cesspools, with privies built over them, to accommodate the dwellers of a large-sized building— nearly a hundred souls, he says: "There was a constant over`flow from this back yard around the sleeping cellars. The stench produced from these causes is so great, the clergyman told me, that, in hot weather, he is obliged to close his vicarage windows, some two hundred yards off, for it is unbearable."

In the Times of October 26th, 1848, the writer, in describing the cottages belonging to the noble proprietors of the estate says: "The filth here accumulated was such as defies all powers of description I possess."

WE

XIV.

E need not wonder that crime in these agricultural districts goes hand in hand with such degradation and destitution. On the 30th of November, 1849, in portraying the