they are also encouraging in regard to the eagerness of respectable labourers for respectable homes. To an account of tenements of four rooms each, with out-buildings and garden, costing from 75l. to 80l. each, the rent of which is 4l. 10s., the remark is added:—
“The rents are paid up very regularly, so that this Michaelmas, out of twenty-six occupiers, there was not one defaulter.”
This question of the cost of cottages is a very important one,—not only because it is bad for labourers to be charged anything but the genuine price for their abodes, but because there is no chance for the working-classes being well housed unless dwellings of a good quality can be made to pay. At present, unconscionable rents are, on the one hand, extorted for unwholesome and decayed dwellings; and, on the other, it is supposed that nobody but wealthy landowners can afford to build good cottages,—such cottages being regarded as an expensive charity. In my small way, I am satisfied with my investment: I know that other people are: and I believe that it is possible to lodge the working population of the kingdom well and comfortably, without depraving charity on the one hand, or pecuniary loss on the other.
In many—perhaps in most places—however, the first stage of the business is yet unaccomplished. Society is not convinced of the sin and shame of restricting the building of abodes for the working-classes, and of making them pay high rents for places unfit for human habitation. I fear there are many neighbourhoods in England too like, in this respect, to the one in which I live,—where many of the abodes of the humbler inhabitants are a disgrace to any civilised community. If ever there was a settlement favoured beyond others in regard to natural sanitary conditions, it is Ambleside: and if any one spot can be found superior even to Ambleside, it is Windermere (five miles off), where the railway ends, and whence the Lake tourist, on his arrival, overlooks from a height a glorious view of lake, wood, and mountain. In both places there is scarcely any level ground in the whole area. The facilities for drainage cannot be surpassed. There is rock for foundations; and the water-supply is unbounded—unbounded as to quantity, if it were regulated and distributed with any degree of care and good sense. Good soil, good air, great variety of level, and plenty of water,—what more could we ask in choosing a dwelling-place? Yet there is disease, vice and misery which would be accounted intolerable if they came in the shape of inevitable calamity. Instead of general declarations, I will offer a few facts,—omitting at present any notice of such abodes as are private property, in the hope that when reform begins with public property, the owners of cottages and small houses will be awakened to a sense of what they are doing in letting such tenements as many in Ambleside, either by the shame of contrast, or by losing their tenants. While mansions and villas are rising throughout the neighbourhood, one has to wait years to obtain a few yards of ground on which to build a cottage. All possible discountenance is shown to cottage-building: and I have myself been told, many times a year, for many years, that the people could not pay rent for good cottages, and would not take them if they were provided to-morrow. This must be altogether a mistake. There is, as I said, great anxiety to occupy my cottages; and rents of 4l. and 5l. are paid for dwellings of which the following is a true account. They were measured and reported upon a day or two ago.
These houses are endowment property, under the care of the trustees of the school. The trustees do not dispute the condition of the property, nor defend the exorbitant rents they are obliged to demand; but they declare that they find it impossible to obtain from the Charity Commissioners the necessary powers for its improvement. They have repeatedly made application; but the delays, the mislaying of papers, the fruitless trouble incurred, has discouraged them. Meantime, the state of three houses, as examined, is this.
Number One is inhabited by a family of six persons. There is no water-supply whatever. There is no out-door convenience which can be used by decent people. There is no opening in back or sides, and no ventilation at all in the sleeping-place but one small pane, which the mother broke the other day, to prevent the young people being stifled (a danger increased, by the way, by the boys smoking their pipes within doors, even in the mornings). The six sleep in two beds scarcely larger than sofas. The living-room is 10½ feet long by 10 broad, and 7 feet 2 inches high.
Number Two contains a family of eight persons. The conditions as to air, water, and convenience, are the same; the living-room is 10½ feet by 9. The rent is 4l.
Number Three contains a family of six. Conditions mainly the same. The living-room is 7 feet 2 inches in height; but only 8 feet 6 inches long by 7 feet 9 inches wide. The rent is 5l., the same that is paid by my friend’s tenant for an airy, cheerful, well-found dwelling of four rooms and outhouse, on the hill-side.—This is all I will at present say of labourers’ dwellings at Ambleside.
At Windermere a new town has sprung up since the establishment of the railway-station, and the temporary residence of a clergyman of architectural propensities; so that we naturally supposed the new settlement to be peculiarly healthy,—all fresh and new, and set upon a platform, absolutely tempting for drainage. Some weeks ago we were startled by news of a terrible fever—typhoid fever—at Windermere, the schoolmaster being dead, and several other persons who could ill be spared. The mortality between that time and this has been fearful. A good man who lived there desired, a few years since, to carry his large family to Australia. He was too old to go by the aid of the Emigration Commissioners, and his friends lent him the means to go and establish himself, with the intention of sending afterwards for his wife and seven children. He slowly made his way in Australia, has paid his friends, and is now, no doubt, looking forward to the arrival of his family in no