CONTENTS PREFACE. CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. HORRIBLE LONDON. CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. T he papers which form this volume appeared originally in The Pictorial World and The Daily News . The interest now evinced in the great question of Housing the Poor leads me to hope that they will be of assistance to many who are studying the su

I commence, with the first of these chapters, a book of travel. An author and an artist have gone hand-in-hand into many a far-off region of the earth, and the result has been a volume eagerly studied by the stay-at-home public, anxious to know something of the world in which they live. In these pages I propose to record the result of a journey into a region which lies at our own doors—into a dark continent that is within easy walking distance of the General Post Office. This continent will, I h

A s I glance over the notes I have jotted down during my journey through Outcasts' Land, the delicacy of the task I have undertaken comes home to me more forcibly than ever. The housing of the poor and the remedy for the existing state of things are matters I have so much at heart, that I fear lest I should not make ample use of the golden opportunities here afforded me of ventilating the subject. On the other hand, I hesitate to repel the reader, and, unfortunately, the best illustrations of th

I cannot help being struck, in my wanderings through Povertyopolis, with the extraordinary resemblance which Caesar bore to Pompey—especially Pompey. One room in this district is very like the other. The family likeness of the chairs and tables is truly remarkable, especially in the matter of legs. Most chairs are born with four legs, but the chairs one meets with here are a two-legged race—a four-legged chair is a rara avis , and when found should be made a note of. The tables, too, are of a ty

The Elementary Education Acts, 1870, 1873, and 1876....

Notice to attend before Divisional Committee. ...........Division. May 30, 1883. To Mr. Bridge, 2, Smith's Court. Take Notice, that you have been guilty of a breach of the law in that your child Robert has not duly attended school, and you are hereby invited to attend at George Street School on Wednesday, the 6th day of June, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon precisely, to state any excuse you may have, and to show cause why you should not be summoned before a magistrate and fined. Dated this 31st d

T he ladies and gentlemen whom I had the pleasure of introducing to you in the last chapter had, most of them, some good and sufficient excuse for the non-attendance of their children at school. Before the 'B' meeting at which we assisted was over, more than one case was examined which left the official no option but to take out a summons and run the risk of one of those amiable lectures which unthinking magistrates now and again see fit to bestow upon the luckless officer of the Board who has d

T he difficulty of getting that element of picturesqueness into these chapters which is so essential to success with a large class of English readers becomes more and more apparent as I and my travelling companion explore region after region where the poor are hidden away to live as best they can. There is a monotony in the surroundings which became painfully apparent to us, and were our purpose less earnest than it is, we might well pause dismayed at the task we have undertaken. The Mint and th

I f I were asked to say off-hand what was the greatest curse of the poor and what was the greatest blessing, I think my answer to the first query would be the public-house, and to the second the hospital. Of course, I might be wrong. There are some people who will contend that in these islands the greatest blessing of the natives of all degrees is that they are Great Britons. Our patriotic songs bid us all rejoice greatly at the fact, and patriotism is not a class privilege. The starved outcast,

O ne of the greatest evils of the overcrowded districts of London is the water-supply. I might almost on this head imitate the gentleman who wrote a chapter on 'Snakes in Iceland,' which I quote in its entirety—'There are no snakes in Iceland.' To say, however, that in these districts there is no water-supply would be incorrect, but it is utterly inadequate to the necessities of the people. In many houses more water comes through the roof than through a pipe, and a tub or butt in the back-yard a

T hese pages would be incomplete without at least a passing reference to some of the many efforts which have already been made to deal with the evils arising from the condition of things it has been my desire to expose. The mere charitable work going on I have not space to deal with. There are night refuges, missions, and many excellent institutions due to public and private enterprise in all the poorer quarters, all of which in a manner more or less satisfactory afford relief to the inhabitants

W hen I come to the task of describing how the poor amuse themselves, there comes back to me the memory of a certain 'exam.' I submitted myself to in the happy long ago. I am not quite sure now whether the result was to be a clerkship in Somerset House, or a certificate of proficiency which I could frame, and glaze, and hang up in my bedroom; all I remember is, that I was taken up to London with half a dozen of my fellow-collegians, and deposited in a large room, at a desk, and that in front of

L ooking over what I have written, I am struck by what seems to me an important omission. In driving home the nail of the miserable condition in which the poor are forced to live, I have perhaps led the reader to imagine that the better instincts of humanity have been utterly stamped out—that the courts and alleys are great wastes of weed, where never a flower grows. I should be loth to father such an idea as this. In the course of many years of the closest contact with the most poverty-stricken

W ith the present chapter I bring this series to a close. I have endeavoured briefly to present to the reader a few of the phases of existence through which their poorer brethren pass. I have necessarily left untrodden whole acres of ground over which a traveller, in search of startling revelations, might with advantage have journeyed. But startling revelations were not the object I had in view when I undertook these sketches. My object was to skim the surface lightly, but sufficiently to awaken

* Originally published in the Daily News....

A great subject, which for years journalists and philanthropists have been vainly endeavouring to interest the general public in, has suddenly by leaps and bounds assumed the front rank in the great army of social and political problems. The housing of the poor has long been a smouldering question; dozens of willing hands have sought to fan it into a flame, but hitherto with small results. At the last moment a little pamphlet laid modestly on the dying embers has done what all the bellows-blowin

I n a sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, the Rev. Prebendary Capel-Cure referred to the preceding article on 'Horrible London.' While insisting on the necessity for State interference, the preacher went on to say that he had read a series of papers on the 'Misery of Paris,' published in 1881, and that the unspeakable, the nameless horrors, the awful accumulation of guilt and filth and misery which the French writer had seen with his own eyes, and heard with his own ears, 'made even the dre

A public meeting was held at 'the Farm House,' Harrow Street, in the Mint, some time since, to take into consideration the grievances of the poor people whose homes were about to be demolished to make way for a new street, a railway, and some dwellings for the accommodation of a superior class of tenants. It is necessary for a thorough understanding of the question which is agitating the entire community that every phase of it should be studied. In and about the Mint, which is a notorious 'slum,

I t has been asserted by several writers who have joined in the present controversy concerning the Housing of the Poor that drink and unthrift are the main causes of the existing distress, and some go so far as to say that the masses live to drink, and that consequently no legislation can improve their condition. This is a pessimist view of the question which is by no means warranted by the facts. To deny that the poor in the rookeries drink and are unthrifty would be foolish. But I venture to a