are quite sufficient to reduce the circumstances of the people from financial affluence to habitual penury; and this is actually its effect. The money that might build or buy an unpretending, spacious, well-constructed house is spent in worthless ‘elegance’ and ornament; and the small, ill-ventilated hired rooms are crammed with cumbrous furniture and finery that make habitual cleanliness and health impossible, and phthisis has become the national disease.[1]
In such ‘rooms,’ quite inappropriately named, two millions of the London population are compelled to pass their lives; and the effect upon the social habits and the moral character of men and women is deplorable. A man and wife can live perhaps in quiet in these little dens; but when the family begins to grow, and children multiply, and move and play, as children do, the father finds himself a surplusage at home, and goes for peace and quiet to the public-house, to join his fellow-sufferers from leasehold tenure. There he, of course, must drink, and then the habit comes, and grows. The company is not select; the man, if tolerably educated and intelligent, meets numbers who are otherwise; and he must make the best of, or become the worse for, his companions. To invite a chosen, well-conditioned few to his own home would be absurd. He has no home: the place is but a cupboard, or is possibly a stye. In one small room all culinary and domestic operations must be carried on; the men would therefore be entirely in the way: or if there is another cupboard, called the best front parlour, all its little floor is occupied by quasi-fashionable table, sofa, easy-chair, and chiffonier, the necessary demonstrations of gentility; and not a yard of width is left for movement and for social comfort and companionship.
The women, who are left, and are supposed to be at home, are possibly still greater sufferers: they never get fresh air.
- ↑ In London there are every year some twenty thousand deaths from chest disease.
