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pretence to collect for a deceased friend, is an occasion for the
worst display of debauchery by drink, it being very common for
boys and girls to be made to drink and seen drunk.
I have known men with their families earning £ 2 a-week
living in one miserable overcrowded room. They could well afford
two rooms. The waste of money and destruction to health and
comfort by drink is incredible to those who do not care to study
the question in its relation to public health and pauperism. If
only half the money spent in low neighbourhoods were directed
from the drink shop and appropriated by the wives of the men
to domestic comfort, how changed would be the aspect of some
of these streets and their denizens. The licensed public-houses
are too often a veritable nuisance to a working-man's family
So injurious are they to health and morals, that respectable
inhabitants will sooner or later regard them as their common
enemy. They begin to complain, that after working hard all day
they cannot sleep from disturbances of people leaving publics at a
late hour. I have extensive personal knowledge of working
men who have suffered, and become the victims of drink, and I
mostly find them honest hard - working men, generally from the
country, intending to do well on higher wages, but in a very
short time became unconsciously degraded. I am certain
that, if they were appealed to in sober moments, and were
allowed, as other sober-minded people ought to be allowed, to
express an opinion as to the necessity for a public-house, they
would request magistrates to put down the allurements to
drunkenness, which are now so cruelly permitted to exist near
their homes—homes which are made miserable by the licensed
system of temptation placed near their very door-steps.
An Improvement Committee suggested.
The Vestry has however power to undertake, and certainly
ought to initiate, improvements to promote public health, which
I would venture to suggest. Dudley Street, Albert Street,
Victoria Street, Welling's Place, and Kent's Place are all culs
de sac, in which there is no proper ventilation—a current of
air cannot pass through, blocked up as they are at each end.
These streets have always a very high death rate, and epidemics
are worst in them in comparison with other more open streets.
The property that would have to come down would open up
sites for a few model dwellings, capable of receiving a greater
number of inmates than would have to be displaced by the
demolitions. The improvement I suggest would not be costly,
and might be made a remunerative investment of public money,
and it would set an example of what could be done by Local
Authority to improve the homes of the working class.