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VI. Last, and not least, among the influences prejudicial to health in the City of London, as elsewhere, must be reckoned the social condition of the lower classes; and I refer to this the more especially, because often, in discussion of sanitary subjects before your Hon. Court, the filthy, or slovenly, or improvident, or destructive, or intemperate, or dishonest habits of these classes, are cited as an explanation of the inefficiency of measures designed for their advantage. It is constantly urged, that to bring improved domestic arrangements within the reach of such persons is a waste and a folly; that if you give them a coal-scuttle, a washing-basin, and a watercloset, these several utensils will be applied indifferently to the purposes of each other, or one to the purposes of all; and that meanwhile the objects of your charitable solicitude will remain in the same unredeemed lowness and misery as before. Now it is unquestionable, and I admit it,—that in houses containing all the sanitary evils which I have enumerated—undrained, and waterless, and unventilated—there do dwell whole hordes of persons, who struggle so little in self-defence against that which surrounds them, that they may be considered almost indifferent to its existence, or almost acclimated to endure its continuance. It is too true that, among these classes, there are swarms of men and women, who have yet to learn that human beings should dwell differently from cattle; swarms, to whom personal cleanliness is utterly unknown; swarms, by whom delicacy and decency in their social relations are quite unconceived. Men and women, boys and girls, in scores of each, using jointly one single common privy; grown persons of both sexes sleeping in common with their married parents; a woman suffering travail in the midst of the males and females of three several families of fellow-lodgers in a single room; an adult son sharing his mother’s bed during her confinement;—such are instances recently within my knowledge (and I might easily adduce others) of the degree and of the manner in which a people may relapse into the habits of savage life, when their domestic condition is neglected, and when they are suffered to habituate themselves to the uttermost depths of physical obscenity and degradation.

Here again, as in an earlier part of my Report, I think it requisite to remark, that I do not mean in any degree to suggest that the evils adverted to present themselves within the City to a greater extent than in sundry other parts of the metropolis. My sphere of duty lies within the City boundary, and it would be an impertinence in me to comment, either favourably or unfavourably, on districts which lie within another jurisdiction than that of the Commission which I have the honour to address. Simply to guard myself against the possibility of being misunderstood, I again draw attention to the fact that I studiously refrain from instituting comparisons with other metropolitan localities. Let me likewise observe that I am far from insinuating, or suspecting, that the majority of the poorer population of the city has fallen to that extreme debasement which I have just illustrated as affecting some portion (perhaps not an inconsiderable portion) of the poorest; but I dare not suppress my knowledge that such instances exist, nor can I refrain from stating my belief, that ignorance and poverty will soon contribute to increase them, if sanitary and social improvement do not co-operate against their continuance.

Contemplating such cases, I feel the deepest conviction that no sanitary system can be adequate to the requirements of the time, or can cure those radical evils which infest the under-framework of society, unless the importance be distinctly recognised, and the duty manfully undertaken, of improving the social condition of the poor.

Those who suffer under the calamitous sanitary conditions which I have disclosed, have been led, perhaps, to consider them as inseparable from poverty; and after their long habituation to such influences, who can wonder if personal and moral degradation conform them more and more to the physical debasement of their abode? In the midst of inevitable domestic filth, who can wonder that personal cleanliness should be neglected? In an atmosphere which forbids the breath to be drawn freely, which maintains habitual ill health, which depresses all the natural spring and buoyancy of life, who can wonder that frequent recourse should be had to stimulants, which, however pernicious in themselves, still for a moment dispel the malarious languor of the place, give temporary vigour to the brain, and cheer the flagging pulses of a poisoned circulation? Who can wonder that habits of improvidence and recklessness should arise in a population, which not only has much ignorance and prejudice amongst it, but is likewise often unaccustomed to consideration and kindness? Who can wonder that the laws of society should at times be forgotten by those whom the eye of society habitually overlooks, and whom the heart of society often appears to discard?

I believe that now there is a very growing feeling abroad, that the poor of a Christian country can no longer, in their own ignorance and helplessness, be suffered to encounter all the chances which accompany destitution, and which link it often indissolubly to recklessness, profligacy, and perdition. The task of interfering in behalf of these classes, however insensible they may be of their own danger and frequent degradation, begins at length to be recognised as an obligation of society; and as such an interference may be fraught with the utmost advantage to sanitary progress, I shall now proceed to point out the manner in which, with this view only, it may most usefully and most humanely be made.

First of all I would point out to you, that within your Act of Parliament there are contained some enactments on this subject which might be of great value, were it not for their very limited application:—‘Whereas the owners and keepers of lodging-houses of an inferior description, for the accommodation of mendicants, strangers, and other persons for the night, or other short periods, allow the same to be crowded, by receiving more lodgers than such lodging-houses are adapted to contain with a due regard to health,’ therefore, and for some other reasons enumerated in the 91st clause, it is enacted that you may require the registration, and may order the periodical inspection of such houses; that you may from time to time fix and determine the number of lodgers who may be accommodated in each lodging-house; that you may issue ‘rules or instructions regarding health, cleanliness, and ventilation;’ that you may ‘order that a ticket, containing the number of lodgers for which the house is registered,’ together with your rules and regulations, ‘shall be hung up, or placed in a conspicuous part of each room into which lodgers are received;’ and finally, ‘that if any keeper of such lodging-house shall offend against any of these provisions, he shall be liable for each such offence to a penalty not exceeding 5l., and the like penalty for every day after the first upon which any such offence shall be continued.’ The spirit of these enactments is excellent; but unhappily the definition given at the end of the clause excludes from the operation of the law those very cases which most need to fall within it. ‘Common lodging-house’ (it runs) ‘shall, for the purposes of this act, mean any public lodging-house, not being a licensed victualling-house, in which persons are harboured or lodged for hire, for a single night, or for less than a week at one time, or in which any room is let for hire to be occupied by more than one family at one time.’ Lodging-houses, according to this definition, are (I am informed) hardly to be found within the City of London; and the clause has remained, and seems in its present form likely to remain, quite inoperative. If, in any future renewal or amendment of your Act, the definition could be modified in such a manner, that the powers given in respect of lodging-houses should be extended to all the poorer tenements of the City, where the several floors are let separately at a weekly rent, the clause in question would be rendered one of the most serviceable in the Act, and one of the most general application. In its present form, the clause barely enables you to deal with the temporary bed-accommodation of trampers and vagrants,—a class happily not very numerous in the City; while, modified in the manner I suggest, it would put under your sanitary regulation the whole household economy of the permanent industrial population of the City; and, if effectively worked, would conduce beyond all estimation to the physical, social, and moral improvement of that class.

Secondly, and as a matter of even higher importance, I would beg you to consider the incalculable good which may be conferred on the poorer classes of society, by the direct educational influence of those in better and more enlightened circumstances than their own. When I say that all the social errors to which I now more particularly refer, would gradually but swiftly vanish under the influence of education, I do not mean that the cure would lie in learning to read and to write and to sum:—though these attainments, of course, would largely increase the power, usefulness, and market value of their possessor. The education to which I refer, as an all-important influence for sanitary progress, is that which would consist in exhibiting to the lowest classes of society frequent practical evidences of the attainability and the advantages of higher civilization; an education which, by model and examples, would lead them to know cleanliness from dirt, decency from grossness, human propriety from brutish self-abandonment; an education which, by sensible experience, would teach them to feel the comfort and the profit of sanitary observances, and would apply their instinct of self-preservation to the deliberate avoidance of disease.

It is in this point of view, gentlemen, that I would solicit your attention to the useful and philanthropic exertions of three societies which have been established during the last few years, with the object of improving the condition of the labouring classes; and I would venture to suggest that the course which those societies have adopted in various parts of the metropolis, is one that might with the utmost advantage be pursued within the City of London.

The establishment of Model Dwelling and Lodging-houses, and of Public Baths and Laundries, for the use of the labouring population, is now no longer a matter of recent speculation. Under the beneficent auspices of the Societies to which I have referred, the following experiments have been tried:—

The Committee for promoting the establishment of Baths and Wash-houses, having at first Mr. W. Cotton, and then Sir H. Dukinfield, for its Chairman, and including in its number, with other influential persons, several members of this Corporation, founded, at great pains and expense, a model institution at Goulston-square, Whitechapel. In spite of many circumstances conspiring to render this first and experimental establishment particularly expensive, it has more than supported itself by the small payments of the poor; and its arrangements are sufficiently extensive for it to have given in one day as many as 932 baths. This fact, having occurred in the first year of its establishment, shows how much the poor must have appreciated the additional comfort placed within their reach; and I may add that, from the first opening of the building, the annual receipts have been progressively on the increase. Somewhat earlier, and under the influence of the same parent-committee, though specially directed by a branch-committee, a similar establishment was founded in George-street, Euston-square. During the year 1848 the number of payments made here for bathing was 111,788; the number of payments for washing in the laundries, 246,760. This establishment has not only proved self-supporting, but has been enabled to accumulate a large surplus, which is now being applied to enlarge and improve the building. At Glasshouse-yard, near the entrance to the London Docks, there has been founded, on the same model, a small establishment of free baths and washhouses for the destitute poor. It was opened in May, 1845. In the first year the baths given amounted to 27,662; the usings of the laundry to 35,840; and its total working expenses were covered by £378.

No language, however eloquent—no comment, however instructive, could equal the significance of the figures which I have cited as illustrating the great utility of these institutions; and, as regards their pecuniary success, it is impossible to furnish you with better testimony than is comprised in the fact, that the Guardians of the Poor in a great metropolitan parish[26] have recently, out of the poor-rates, founded an institution of this nature. They have become witnesses to the financial economy of that sanitary and social boon. In their establishment, which is not only self-supporting, but amply remunerative, the poor are enabled to have baths at an expense of a penny for a cold bath, and twopence for a warm bath; and the women are enabled to do their washing, ironing, and drying, with an unlimited water-supply, and with other arrangements of most admirable completeness, at an expense of only twopence for the first two hours, during which they occupy the separate chambers allotted to them. A very considerable proportion of the expense is covered by the receipts for baths given at the higher price of sixpence, and with some additional luxuries, to persons of a higher grade in society than those who use the ordinary baths; the former, though used by a different class of persons, being sought with almost as much avidity as the latter.