Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State For the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry Into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; With AppendicesChadwick, Edwin
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Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State For the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry Into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; With Appendices
Chadwick, Edwin
Housing -- Great Britain; Public health -- Great Britain
“In what towns did you find instances of the greatest crowding of the
habitations?—In Manchester, Liverpool, Ashton-under-Lyne, and
Pendleton. In a cellar in Pendleton, I recollect there were three beds
in the two apartments of which the habitation consisted, but having no
door between them, in one of which a man and his wife slept; in
another, a man, his wife and child; and in a third two unmarried
females. In Hull I have met with cases somewhat similar. A mother
about 50 years of age, and her son I should think 25, at all events
above 21, sleeping in the same bed, and a lodger in the same room. I
have two or three instances in Hull in which a mother was sleeping
with her grown up son, and in most cases there were other persons
sleeping in the same room, in another bed. In a cellar in Liverpool, I
found a mother and her grown-up daughters sleeping on a bed of chaff
on the ground in one corner of the cellar, and in the other corner
three sailors had their bed. I have met with upwards of 40 persons
sleeping in the same room, married and single, including, of course,
children and several young adult persons of either sex. In Manchester
I could enumerate a variety of instances in which I found such
promiscuous mixture of the sexes in sleeping-rooms. I may mention one;
a man, his wife and child sleeping in one bed; in another bed, two
grown up females; and in the same room two young men, unmarried. I
have met with instances of a man, his wife, and his wife’s sister,
sleeping in the same bed together. I have known at least half-a-dozen
cases in Manchester in which that has been regularly practised, the
unmarried sister being an adult.
“In the course of your own inquiry, how many instances, if you were to
look over your Notes, of persons of different sexes sleeping
promiscuously, do you think you met with?—I think I am speaking within
bounds when I say I have amongst my memoranda above 100 cases,
including, of course, cases of persons of different sexes sleeping in
the same room.
“Was it so common as to be in nowise deemed extraordinary or culpable
amongst that class of persons?—It seemed not to be thought of. As a
proof of this I may mention one circumstance which just occurs to
me:—Early in my visitation of Pendleton, I called at the dwelling of a
person whose sons worked with himself in a colliery. It was in the
afternoon, when a young man, one of the sons, came down stairs in his
shirt and stood before the fire where a very decently-dressed young
female was sitting. The son asked his mother for a clean shirt, and on
its being given to him, very deliberately threw off the shirt he had
on, and after warming the clean one, put it on. In another dwelling in
Pendleton, a young girl 18 years of age, sat by the fire in her
chemise during the whole time of my visit. Both these were houses of
working people (colliers), and not by any means of ill-fame.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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