How the Poor Live; and, Horrible London: 1889 — John Shaqi
How the Poor Live; and, Horrible London: 1889Sims, George R. (George Robert)
History
How the Poor Live; and, Horrible London: 1889
Sims, George R. (George Robert)
Poor -- England -- London -- History -- 19th century; Public housing -- England -- London
Some landlords do repair their tenants' rooms. Why, cert'nly. Here is a
sketch of one and of the repairs we saw the same day. Rent, 4s. a week;
condition indescribable. But notice the repairs: a bit of a box-lid
nailed across a hole in the wall big enough for a man's head to go
through, a nail knocked into a window-frame beneath which still comes
in a little fresh air, and a strip of new paper on a corner of the wall.
You can't see the new paper because it is not up. The lady of the rooms
holds it in her hand. The rent collector has just left it for her to put
up herself. Its value, at a rough guess, is threepence. This landlord
_has_ executed repairs. Items: one piece of a broken soap-box, one yard
and a half of paper, and one nail. _And for these repairs he has raised
the rent of the room threepence a week._
We are not in the square now, but in a long dirty street, full of
lodging-houses from end to end, a perfect human warren, where every door
stands open night and day--a state of things that shall be described and
illustrated a little later on when we come to the ''appy dossers.' In
this street, close to the repaired residence, we select at hazard an
open doorway and plunge into it. We pass along a greasy, grimy passage,
and turn a corner to ascend the stairs. Round the corner it is dark.
There is no staircase light, and we can hardly distinguish in the gloom
where we are going. A stumble causes us to strike a light.
That stumble was a lucky one. The staircase we were ascending, and which
men and women and little children go up and down day after day and night
after night, is a wonderful affair. The handrail is broken away, the
stairs themselves are going--a heavy boot has been clean through one of
them already, and it would need very little, one would think, for the
whole lot to give way and fall with a crash. A sketch, taken at the
time, by the light of successive vestas, fails to give the grim horror
of that awful staircase. The surroundings, the ruin, the decay, and the
dirt, could not be reproduced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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