View report page

13
small four-roomed houses, occupied by mechanics and the better class of
labourers, in full work, suffering no privations, but where the Cholera was
fearfully disproportionate on the population. Ask about the general health
as I have done, and the houses, and hear the same story from the whole —
"Never been well since coming in, and the children always ailing, and my
husband says he feels more refreshed when he comes from his work than
after he gets up in the morning. And then everything spoils ; meat put into
a cupboard is musty in a night, one can keep nothing. Clothing becomes
damaged, the drugget rots in a month, boots and bhoes, and even the beds we
lie on, are mildewed in a week."
These are all new houses, built with the usual twelve-inch foundation
for the walls, but in all the insterspace the earth remains untouched, or next
to it, on which the flooring rests, sometimes with a slight ventilation, more
commonly none.
A half mile off, a few years ago, there were some acres of gravel pitsThe
gravel had gone to the parishes round about for road-making, the sand
for building purposes, the mould for extemporising gardens. The large pit
was then filled up on invitation of tho owner, with the aid of the scavenger
and others, with all the slush and filth of a large circle of contributors.
When this fund of abominations became consolidated, it was built over in the
usual style. They were soon occupied by tenants and lodgers. Now this
site during the epidemic has been a great slaughter-field; the mortality was
shocking.
These, and such as these, are the Cholera fields, and not dirt and filth
so much ns is commonly believed, within and round about the house, but
under it. There are thousands of such houses built about London. Besides
the Limehouse district there are West Ham, Stratford, Victoria Docks,
Plaistow, Poplar, and the Isle of Dogs, where the Cholera was fearfully felt,
full of them. There are hundreds of such houses now building, all within
the circle of the pestilence and of death ; and when I see, as I have often
seen, the robust mechanic enter with his young family, to seek a home, I
know well it is only to find, as it were, a sepulchre. The Building Act is at
fault for all this : a house may be built anywhere, as it has been said, even
on a dunghill; while observing the line of frontage, the party-walls, and a
few other niceties of the law. A short while ago the demolition of a