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14
Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
inconveniences and losses incidental to removal. Before we eject the industrious poor, it is
but reasonable that we have better houses for them to go into. They are not to be harried
about from a mere desire of doing something. Overcrowding seems to be a permanent
evil, both as regards time and place. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, warning was given
against the inhabitants "being heaped together and in a sort smothered with many families
of children and tenants in one house, or small tenement." Whilst in villages and the cottages
of the agriculturers it is met with, in its worst form; and in New Zealand we are
told that men, women, and children for ten hours out of twenty-four hours "respire an
atmosphere which is as unwholesome as the most crowded and worst ventilated houses in
some of the poor parts of London." But this evil of overcrowding is not viewed alike
by all. There are men of undoubted experience, and of as undoubted benevolence,
who think we are partial and narrow in our aims, and that we attribute far too much
to overcrowding, forgetting that there are other causes in operation quite as powerful,
in producing the results we are endeavouring to do away with. That great preacher
and theologian, Dr. Guthrie, says, "much nonsense is talked and written about the
diseases and deaths caused by overcrowding. Some staticians, for example, take a respectable
district of a town, and find a certain percentage of death-rate occurring there: then, they
take another but disreputable district with the same number of inhabitants, and find that
it has, say, double the number of deaths; and ascertaining the inhabitants in the latter are
crowded into half the space occupied by the other quarter, they leap at once to the conclusion,
that the main, if not the sole cause of this terrible mortality in the disreputable district
lies in overcrowding, and the want of a sufficient supply of pure air. We admit the
importance of a supply of pure air; and yet believe that the gentlemen referred to, by
overlooking other elements of disease and death besides overcrowding, offer illustrations
of the famous saying, 'That there is nothing so false as figures, but facts.' Transfer the
people amongst whom there is such a dreadful mortality to the lofty and spacious chambers
of a palace, and unless you change their habits with their houses, the bills of mortality
will shew little improvement. It is drunkenness with its attendant train of evils, insufficient
nourishment, inadequate clothing, cold, hunger, cruel usage, and broken hearts,
with want and misery in a hundred forms to which the high mortality of these districts is
chiefly owing. Knowing what we say, and whereof we affirm, we say if foul air kills its
thousands, drunkenness kills its ten thousands."
Statements of this kind are worthy of grave consideration, if only to shew why fuller
and plainer evidence of the good results of sanitary work are not more manifest. Still, I
think Dr. Guthrie does not give sufficient weight to the evils which must necessarily follow,
from the poor being compelled to pass their lives in the wretched dwellings now only open
to them. These dull and squalid homes too often drive their unhappy occupants to the
noisy glaring gin shop, where they waste away those means they possess—their time,
money, and health. Gin shops do not make thirsty or drunken people: thirsty or drunken
people make the gin shop. There is a demand, and that is supplied. Suitable homes for
the working classes are a necessity, a grave necessity. Houses built for the purpose of
subletting, with all necessary conveniences on every floor, and with rents which would
meet that class whose earnings range from 12/ to 20/ per week. It is no use talking about
benefitting the poor until this is done. There are streets, and courts, and alleys which are
not fit for habitation, and never can be made so; and as long as these remain, so long