Evicted London
(Quoted verbatim from George R. Sims, Living London, 1902, pages 203-205)
The problem of the Housing of the Working Classes in London lives on through the centuries. It occupied the attention of our grandfathers, and it is exceedingly probable that it will be a burning question when our grandsons have attained a green old age. The problem arises in the first instance from overcrowding. Overcrowding is the result of the multiplication of rnanufactories and workshops in the larger centres. The wealth of a city, and the opportunities it offers of picking up gold and silver - either legitimately by labour or illegitimately by crime - attract not only the population of the rural districts, but also the inhabitants of less-favoured towns and less-favoured countries. Generally speaking, the present condition of affairs is, however, mainly due to two things - the increased birth rate and the migration of the rural population.
In the train of overcrowding have come evils which threaten the health and welfare not only of the overcrowded, but of the city itself. Hence philanthropists and reformers have busied themselves with the Housing Problem. In obedience to popular outcry, vast areas of working class dwellings have been condemned as insanitary, and levelled to the ground in order that superior accommodation might be raised upon the vacant space.
This clearing necessitates the eviction of the inhabitants. All over London the tenants of mean streets and slums and courts and alleys are being evicted. The slum dwellers are daily receiving notice to quit their homes and find shelter elsewhere.
To study the subject at first-hand, let us take a walk through a block of condemned property, the tenants of which have long overstayed their notice to quit. Let us knock boldly at the closed doors, and push back those that are ajar. The inhabitants will open them if we speak sympathetically. They will imagine we are officials connected with the "pulling down," and they will talk either to us or at us.
At the first house is a decent-looking woman, who says that her husband is at work and her children are at school. Half the houses of the court are empty, and the housebreakers have commenced on some of them. Why does she linger still ? "Well, sir, you wouldn't believe the miles as I've been. I can't get a decent place, not as good as this, through having the five children you see. But I must get a place to-morrow; they're going to take the windows out."
In the next house is a man. He is at work, he is busy with a hammer and a piece of leather. What he is making he doesn't give us time to see. He jumps up and comes to the door. He is fierce and defiant, and prepared to orate after the manner which may be described as the early Hyde Park. But we pacify him with tobacco, and he explains that he can't afford the time to go tramping about. His missis is in the hospital, else she'd go. He's got to earn the money for the children. Knowing something of the ways of Slumland, we point out to him that he has been living rent free for many weeks, and that at least is some compensation for disturbance. The saved rent should have allowed him leisure for house hunting.
That is a point that must not be forgotten in considering these evictions. After the period of notice has expired many of the tenants deliberately stay on because there is no rent to pay. They know that frequently after the houses have been cleared they are left standing. There are condemned houses which night after night are converted into free hotels by tramps and outcasts. Sometimes a burly ruffian will take temporary possession of an empty house, from which the tenants have been evicted, and let the rooms out for a copper or so. One rascal did a great business until the authorities discovered him. He not only filled the rooms with wayfarers, but charged a penny a head for the privilege of sleeping on the stairs.
At the next house...there lives an old woman who does mangling. We knock at the door and shout at the window, but she refuses to take any notice. She is a besieged resident. She thinks if she comes out she won't get in again. So for her food supply she lowers a small basket attached to a string. A neighbour puts into it the purchases made on her behalf, and thus she thinks she is defying the authorities. Poor old woman! She was in that house many years, but she left it at last. When I went down the court a few weeks ago not a brick of her Southwark Château Chabrol remained.
When a slum has been levelled to the ground, a huge block of working class dwellings generally rises on its site. These buildings are wanted. Many of them are excellent. But up to the present they have hardly succeeded in solving the great problem, because the evicted or displaced tenants, practically left without any superior accommodation, are driven into worse.
An ounce of practical experience is worth a ton of argument. Let us see for ourselves how an eviction works. Here is a grand new block of working class dwellings in Southwark. On the site where the building stands there stood a short while ago a network of courts and alleys inhabitated mainly by poor people earning a precarious livelihood. After notice had been served upon them some began at once to look about for other accommodation. But the larger number, because it is the nature of the slum dwellers to live only for to-day and to trust to luck for to-morrow, did nothing. At last came the pinch. The authorities served the last notice, "Get out, or your walls will crumble about you." The tenant who after that still remained obstinate soon realised that the end had come. The roof, the doors, and the windows were removed while she (it is generally a woman) still remained crouching in a corner of the miserable room which contained the chair, the table, the bed, the frying pan, and the tub that were her furniture.
Eventually the position became dangerous. When bricks and plaster began to fall in showers about her, and the point of the pickaxe came through the wall against which she was leaning, then at last she scrambled for her belongings and went out unto the street, where a little crowd of onlookers and fellow sufferers welcomed her sympathetically.
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Sometimes a whole family, the head having failed or neglected during the period of grace to find accommodation elsewhere, is turned into the street. I have seen families sitting homeless on their goods, which were piledhigh in the court. You can see them yourself in the photograph reproduced on page 208. Guarding their household gods sat women with infants in their arms. They sat on, hopeless and despairing, and saw their homes demolished before their eyes. Now and again the heap of bedding and furniture was diminished. A man would return and tell his wife he had found a place. They would gather up their goods and go. But all were not so fortunate. I have seen a woman with a child in her arms and two children crouching by her side sitting out long after nightfall by her flung-out furniture, because the husband could find no accommodation at the rent he could afford.
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Sometimes a boy is left in charge of the piled-up property while his parents go off in different directions to hunt for shelter. Frequently the parents wander a considerable distance, and it is long after midnight before they return to the young sentinel.
If you dive below the surface you will understand more readlily how terrible is this problem of Evicted London. Granting that the raising of sanitary dwellings on the site of insanitary is an admirable work, fully adlmitting that the London County Council's idea of breaking up and scattering colonies of undesirables makes for the public good, we are still faced by the difficulty - What is to become of the people who are unfit (by reason of their ways or their families) for the new buildings ? What will happen to the areas in which the "undesirables " (i.e. the criminal and vicious) scatter themselves?
The bulk of the people evicted are the poor, earning small and precarious livelihoods, hawkers and "general dealers"- a description that covers a multitude of trades. The bulk of the people housed in the new buildings are artisans earning a regular and decent wage. The idea in improving insanitary dwellings off the face of London is, of course, that the dishoused shall be rehoused. But many of the dlishoused fail to find accommodation in the new buildings. One or two are admitted at first, but as the block becomes filled they are weeded out on some excuse or other. Slum dwellers are not wanted in nice clean buildings. The superior artisan who will respect his property and pay regularly is the tenant the Board of Directors and the private philanthropist alike desire.
And, again, there is the question of the children. The poorest people seem to have the most. And the children are a bar not only to admission to the new dwellings, where only so many people are allowed to sleep in a room, but even to the common lodging-houses. A man and his wife and five or six children are not wanted anywhere, not even in the lowest of the doss-houses. So when the day of eviction comes mother and the children must turn out and wait "somewhere" while father tramps the city paved with gold in search of a spot in which to lay his head. If father is in work, then mother must do the tramping.
I will take a real case. Tom Brown calls himself a general dealer. As a matter of fact he and his wife make "ornaments for your fire stove" artificial flowers, and rosettes to hawk in the streets for special occasions, such as Boat Race day, St. Patrick's day, Lord Mayor's day, and the days of National holiday or jubilation. He and his wife earn between them when times are good £1. When times are bad they earn a few shillings. I have known Tom [-207-] for the last six years, and during that period he has been evicted four times. The family were evicted for property to be pulled down in the Borough; they found two rooms in Bermondsey. There after eight months they were again evicted for improvements, and went to St. George's. They were turned out of St. Georges and went to Lambeth. They have now been evicted again, and have succeeded, after endless tramping, in finding two rooms in Bermondsey near their old quarters, but their rent is six and six instead of five and six.
Take another case, that of George Jones, a carman in regular employ, lately evicted to make room for artisans' dwellings. The family consists of Jones, his wife, and seven children. When they were turned out, the father lost several days' work trying to find a place where the nine of them could be accommodated at a rental he could afford. For three nights and three days the family were homeless, and at last had to apply to the workhouse, where the wife and children were received as "paying guests". The workhouse authorities eventually succeeded in finding rooms for the family.slum4.gif (20123 bytes)
It occasionally happens, such is the generosity of the poor to the poor, that the younger and weaker children when evictions take place are accommodated for a night or two by the poor neighbours who are still left in peaceable possession of a roof. Quite recently in a house of four rooms in Foxley Street, Bermondsey, there lived a man, his wife, and ten children the latter ranging from four to twenty-four years in age. Yet, when a case of eviction occurred near them, they took in the three children of a poor woman who was unable to find shelter. The same hospitality I have known extended by a family of eight occupying two rooms.
A large number of the evicted drift into the various common lodging-houses when there are no children, or children who can be disposed of temporarily among friends.
If there are children who cannot be housed temporarily the situation is desperate. Here is a case in point. A decent hardworking man and his wife had lived in a small tenement house which was eventually demolished under an improvement scheme. They tried in vain to get another small house. At last the father, mother, and three children drifted into an utterly disreputable common lodging-house. Here the Rescue Society's officer discovered the children, and the law took them from the parents and sent them to an industrial school to be kept at the expense of the ratepayers.
We point with pride to the new and improved dwellings raised by the enterprise of governing bodies, public companies, and private philanthropists on the sites where recently stood foul and insanitary dwellings, in which the poor huddled together without light, without ventilation, and without a water supply; and we say that here at least is a step in the right direction. No one will deny it; but we shall never get further than a [-208-] step, we shall never come within measurable distance of the goal if we shut our eyes to the terrible difficulties which beset the present system of dishousing a poor and struggling class in order to make room for a superior class in constant employment.
The people who can go into model buildings, who can afford the number of rooms demanded by the regulations for a family of a certain number, are only slightly represented in the insanitary areas in which demolition compels wholesale eviction. The dwellers in the new buildings come as a rule from other districts and from a better class of property. The evicted, unless they are fortunate, find shelter in already overcrowded and insanitary areas, because it is only in this class of property they will be tolerated. Thus every area cleared for superior dwellings, for street improvements, or for railway schemes only adds to the further congestion of areas in which the poor are already massed together under the worst conditions.
And increased overcrowding is not the only evil that follows the wholesale evictions which are now almost weekly occurrences in London. The struggle for life of the evicted, always keen, becomes fiercer than ever. At each fresh rush for accommodation rents are advanced, so that it frequently happens that a family housed in one insanitary area for five and sixpence a week for two rooms are, after eviction, compelled to pay six and sixpence a week for worse rooms in another insanitary area. And so fearful are they of having to go through the terrible search for shelter again that they never dream of making the slightest complaint, however grossly the landlord may neglect his duty.
I once interviewed a woman who with her four children was living in a wretched garret in a court in the Borough. It was a wet day, and the rain was coming through the broken roof and falling on a child who was lying on a bed in the corner. "You should complain to the landlord," I said; "he is bound at least to give you a rainproof roof for your [-209-] money." "Complain!" exclaimed the woman in a tone of horror ; "yes, I should like to see myself doing it. I did complain to him once, when we was better off and lived in a room downstairs. There was a brick loose in the, wall, and the rain had soaked through, and the plaster had given way till there was a hole as you could put your two fists in - so I went to him, and I said he ought to repair it."
"And of course he did?"
"Yes, he did - he come and nailed the lid of a soap box across the hole, and he put the rent of the room up sixpence a week for the improvement."
A good deal of the neglect and abuse of property with which the poor of London are credited is due to this kind of conduct on the part of the slum landlord. The hapless tenants are glad to get accommodation anywhere, and they cannot afford to be particular as to the condition of the room or rooms. If they complain they will be told that they can clear out, there are plenty of people waiting to come in. So the tenants, unable to move the landlord's heart, take their revenge on his property. Boards that have been used to patch walls are torn off and used as firewood, stair railings - if there are any left - share the same fate. Presently there is very little left of the house but the walls, some crumbling plaster, and a window-frame or two patched with brown paper. The doors suffer less than any other portion of the property. The reason is that the slum-dweller desires occasional privacy. A door is useful, not only when you want to shut yourself in, but when you want to shut your neighbours out - and some neighbours in the slums are given to making mistakes and walking into, or falling into, other rooms than those for which they have paid the weeks rent.
On all the phases of Evicted London I have not dwelt. I have but slightly sketched a few of the difficulties that the wholesale dishousing of the poor brings in its train. All the schemes of rehousing, with perhaps two exceptions -and those I believe have not been very successful - aim at the survival of the fittest. But the unfittest do not die. They are not destroyed. Like Jo in Bleak House they are only being eternally "moved on."
If you dive below the surface you will understand more readlily how terrible is this problem of Evicted London. Granting that the raising of sanitary dwellings on the site of insanitary is an admirable work, fully adlmitting that the London County Council's idea of breaking up and scattering colonies of undesirables makes for the public good, we are still faced by the difficulty - What is to become of the people who are unfit (by reason of their ways or their families) for the new buildings ? What will happen to the areas in which the "undesirables " (i.e. the criminal and vicious) scatter themselves?
The bulk of the people evicted are the poor, earning small and precarious livelihoods, hawkers and "general dealers"- a description that covers a multitude of trades. The bulk of the people housed in the new buildings are artisans earning a regular and decent wage. The idea in improving insanitary dwellings off the face of London is, of course, that the dishoused shall be rehoused. But many of the dlishoused fail to find accommodation in the new buildings. One or two are admitted at first, but as the block becomes filled they are weeded out on some excuse or other. Slum dwellers are not wanted in nice clean buildings. The superior artisan who will respect his property and pay regularly is the tenant the Board of Directors and the private philanthropist alike desire.
And, again, there is the question of the children. The poorest people seem to have the most. And the children are a bar not only to admission to the new dwellings, where only so many people are allowed to sleep in a room, but even to the common lodging-houses. A man and his wife and five or six children are not wanted anywhere, not even in the lowest of the doss-houses. So when the day of eviction comes mother and the children must turn out and wait "somewhere" while father tramps the city paved with gold in search of a spot in which to lay his head. If father is in work, then mother must do the tramping.
I will take a real case. Tom Brown calls himself a general dealer. As a matter of fact he and his wife make "ornaments for your fire stove" artificial flowers, and rosettes to hawk in the streets for special occasions, such as Boat Race day, St. Patrick's day, Lord Mayor's day, and the days of National holiday or jubilation. He and his wife earn between them when times are good £1. When times are bad they earn a few shillings. I have known Tom [-207-] for the last six years, and during that period he has been evicted four times. The family were evicted for property to be pulled down in the Borough; they found two rooms in Bermondsey. There after eight months they were again evicted for improvements, and went to St. George's. They were turned out of St. Georges and went to Lambeth. They have now been evicted again, and have succeeded, after endless tramping, in finding two rooms in Bermondsey near their old quarters, but their rent is six and six instead of five and six.
Take another case, that of George Jones, a carman in regular employ, lately evicted to make room for artisans' dwellings. The family consists of Jones, his wife, and seven children. When they were turned out, the father lost several days' work trying to find a place where the nine of them could be accommodated at a rental he could afford. For three nights and three days the family were homeless, and at last had to apply to the workhouse, where the wife and children were received as "paying guests". The workhouse authorities eventually succeeded in finding rooms for the family.slum4.gif (20123 bytes)
It occasionally happens, such is the generosity of the poor to the poor, that the younger and weaker children when evictions take place are accommodated for a night or two by the poor neighbours who are still left in peaceable possession of a roof. Quite recently in a house of four rooms in Foxley Street, Bermondsey, there lived a man, his wife, and ten children the latter ranging from four to twenty-four years in age. Yet, when a case of eviction occurred near them, they took in the three children of a poor woman who was unable to find shelter. The same hospitality I have known extended by a family of eight occupying two rooms.
A large number of the evicted drift into the various common lodging-houses when there are no children, or children who can be disposed of temporarily among friends.
If there are children who cannot be housed temporarily the situation is desperate. Here is a case in point. A decent hardworking man and his wife had lived in a small tenement house which was eventually demolished under an improvement scheme. They tried in vain to get another small house. At last the father, mother, and three children drifted into an utterly disreputable common lodging-house. Here the Rescue Society's officer discovered the children, and the law took them from the parents and sent them to an industrial school to be kept at the expense of the ratepayers.
We point with pride to the new and improved dwellings raised by the enterprise of governing bodies, public companies, and private philanthropists on the sites where recently stood foul and insanitary dwellings, in which the poor huddled together without light, without ventilation, and without a water supply; and we say that here at least is a step in the right direction. No one will deny it; but we shall never get further than a [-208-] step, we shall never come within measurable distance of the goal if we shut our eyes to the terrible difficulties which beset the present system of dishousing a poor and struggling class in order to make room for a superior class in constant employment.
The people who can go into model buildings, who can afford the number of rooms demanded by the regulations for a family of a certain number, are only slightly represented in the insanitary areas in which demolition compels wholesale eviction. The dwellers in the new buildings come as a rule from other districts and from a better class of property. The evicted, unless they are fortunate, find shelter in already overcrowded and insanitary areas, because it is only in this class of property they will be tolerated. Thus every area cleared for superior dwellings, for street improvements, or for railway schemes only adds to the further congestion of areas in which the poor are already massed together under the worst conditions.
And increased overcrowding is not the only evil that follows the wholesale evictions which are now almost weekly occurrences in London. The struggle for life of the evicted, always keen, becomes fiercer than ever. At each fresh rush for accommodation rents are advanced, so that it frequently happens that a family housed in one insanitary area for five and sixpence a week for two rooms are, after eviction, compelled to pay six and sixpence a week for worse rooms in another insanitary area. And so fearful are they of having to go through the terrible search for shelter again that they never dream of making the slightest complaint, however grossly the landlord may neglect his duty.
I once interviewed a woman who with her four children was living in a wretched garret in a court in the Borough. It was a wet day, and the rain was coming through the broken roof and falling on a child who was lying on a bed in the corner. "You should complain to the landlord," I said; "he is bound at least to give you a rainproof roof for your [-209-] money." "Complain!" exclaimed the woman in a tone of horror ; "yes, I should like to see myself doing it. I did complain to him once, when we was better off and lived in a room downstairs. There was a brick loose in the, wall, and the rain had soaked through, and the plaster had given way till there was a hole as you could put your two fists in - so I went to him, and I said he ought to repair it."
"And of course he did?"
"Yes, he did - he come and nailed the lid of a soap box across the hole, and he put the rent of the room up sixpence a week for the improvement."
A good deal of the neglect and abuse of property with which the poor of London are credited is due to this kind of conduct on the part of the slum landlord. The hapless tenants are glad to get accommodation anywhere, and they cannot afford to be particular as to the condition of the room or rooms. If they complain they will be told that they can clear out, there are plenty of people waiting to come in. So the tenants, unable to move the landlord's heart, take their revenge on his property. Boards that have been used to patch walls are torn off and used as firewood, stair railings - if there are any left - share the same fate. Presently there is very little left of the house but the walls, some crumbling plaster, and a window-frame or two patched with brown paper. The doors suffer less than any other portion of the property. The reason is that the slum-dweller desires occasional privacy. A door is useful, not only when you want to shut yourself in, but when you want to shut your neighbours out - and some neighbours in the slums are given to making mistakes and walking into, or falling into, other rooms than those for which they have paid the weeks rent.
On all the phases of Evicted London I have not dwelt. I have but slightly sketched a few of the difficulties that the wholesale dishousing of the poor brings in its train. All the schemes of rehousing, with perhaps two exceptions -and those I believe have not been very successful - aim at the survival of the fittest. But the unfittest do not die. They are not destroyed. Like Jo in Bleak House they are only being eternally "moved on."
