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53
luxuriated in the possession of two rooms each. Twelve per cent.
of the tenements were overcrowded. The kitchen was used for
living and sleeping in 60 per cent. of the cases. In 45 per cent.
of the families there was marked evidence of poverty verging in
some instances on destitution. In 33 per cent. of the families the
mother was the usual bread-winner and supported the husband
and the rest of the family.
Thirty per cent. had no separate cupboards to store their food.
It had either to be kept with the wood and coke or on the table.
Some of the tenements had no cupboards or storage accommodation
for food, wood or coke.
These deplorable conditions are usually found in the houses
which were originally built of 8 or 10 rooms to accommodate one
family—but which, with the degradation of the neighbourhood,
have been eventually let in 8 or 10 tenements, consisting each of
one room. So that possibly what was originally a bedroom or
a lumber room may now be occupied by one family for living and
sleeping. In some of these houses there may be a single entry to
two or more one-roomed tenements lying side by side so as to
destroy all opportunity of privacy or effective home isolation.
The occupants have, from this standpoint, no real homes—they
live in what may be almost termed "waiting rooms." With this
limited accommodation and stinted cupboard room, with this
crowding and overcrowding, go domestic dirt and squalid, unclean
surroundings.
With the poverty of the parents, with the employment of the
mother, are associated the underfeeding of the mother, the malnutrition
of the child, and the insufficient clothing of both. In
this connection it may be stated here that the Poor Law Guardians
and their officers have given most ready and valuable assistance
to the cases which have been referred to them. By far the
greater number of these families, however, refuse to accept poor
law relief, and will not allow the use of their names for this
purpose. These, then, are the actualities—the bedrock bottom