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39
is no competition for vacancies, one or more rooms being usually empty. The superintendent
says, this is "because of the neighbourhood, and because there are still a good
many low Irish who keep the decent respectable English from living there." The total
population is about 350, of whom one-half are estimated to be children. The buildings
therefore are thickly inhabited, but individual cases of overcrowding are prevented.
They have a good supply of water, dust shafts and closets on every floor of
every house; by misuse, however, these appliances occasionally become useless.
The other model houses for families, belonging to this society, are situated
in Clark's Buildings. To prevent repetition, it may be stated that they resemble
those of Wild Court in all respects, except that their accommodation is somewhat inferior,
and their class of residents has been decidedly lower, scarcely to be distinguished
from the inhabitants of the surrounding streets. A new resident Superintendent is now
trying to induce a better class of persons to reside here.*
The houses are 11 in number, and contain 86 rooms, each of which is a tenement,
except in four or five instances, where two rooms are held by the same person.
263 persons are now resident here (June 1, 1858); the number has probably been
larger.
The "Houses for single men," belonging to this Society for Improving the
Condition of the Labouring Classes, are three in number. That in George Street
was built especially for its purpose, and has been in full operation since 1848, being
arranged with every requisite for the comfort of the inmates. It accommodates 104
men.
The lodging house in Charles Street, Drury Lane, consists of three old houses
which have been thrown into one, and re-modelled on good sanitary principles. It
will contain 82 lodgers.
The Society's house, in King Street, Drury Lane, holds 25 men, and
appears to have been fitted up in a very bad locality, in order to exhibit the difference
that can be made in a house by only a small expenditure on sanitary requirements. It
is the least inviting of the three establishments, but a great improvement on the common
lodging houses around it.
These houses, then, contain an aggregate of 211 single men, who are of the
age of 16 and upwards, and are of every sort of occupation. Some of them are old
residents of ten or twenty years; some are of just the ordinary migrating character that
frequent other common lodging houses.
These establishments are under the operation of the act of parliament which
regulates common lodging houses, and in other respects, although the best dwellings of
their class, cannot be naturally separated from other houses, let out by the night to
more than one family in each room.
These endeavours of the Superintendents appear to me to be at variance with the
first objects of the Society. I suppose these functionaries are meant to exercise an influence
by example and precept on the poor and ignorant residents, so that they may get the utmost
fruition of the Society's benefits. But in what way is the "condition of the labouring classes"
improved, if the Superintendent gets rid of the labouring man from his renovated dwelling, in
favor of a " superior class of persons," clerks, postmen, milliners, and artisans?