The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject PoorMearns, Andrew
Religion
The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor
Mearns, Andrew
Poor -- England -- London
Every room in these rotten and reeking tenements houses a family, often
two. In one cellar a sanitary inspector reports finding a father,
mother, three children and four pigs! In another room a missionary found
a man ill with small pox, his wife just recovering from her eighth
confinement, and the children running about half naked and covered with
dirt. Here are seven people living in one underground kitchen, and a
little dead child lying in the same room. Elsewhere is a poor widow, her
three children, and a child who had been dead thirteen days. Her
husband, who was a cabman, had shortly before committed suicide. Here
lives a widow and her six children, including one daughter of 29,
another of 21, and a son of 27. Another apartment contains father,
mother and six children, two of whom are ill with scarlet fever. In
another nine brothers and sisters, from 29 years of age downwards, live,
eat and sleep together. Here is a mother who turns her children into the
street in the early evening because she lets her room for immoral
purposes until long after midnight, when the poor little wretches creep
back again if they have not found some miserable shelter elsewhere.
Where there are beds they are simply heaps of dirty rags, shavings or
straw, but for the most part these miserable beings huddle together upon
the filthy boards. The tenant of this room is a widow, who herself
occupies the only bed, and lets the floor to a married couple for 2s.
6d. per week. In many cases matters are made worse by the unhealthy
occupations followed by those who dwell in these habitations. Here you
are choked as you enter by the air laden with particles of the
superfluous fur pulled from the skins of rabbits, rats, dogs and other
animals in their preparation for the furrier. Here the smell of paste
and of drying match-boxes, mingling with other sickly odours, overpowers
you; or it may be the fragrance of stale fish or vegetables, not sold on
the previous day, and kept in the room overnight. Even when it is
possible to do so the people seldom open their windows, but if they did
it is questionable whether much would be gained, for the external air is
scarcely less heavily charged with poison than the atmosphere within.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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