The social and national influence of the domiciliary condition of the people : three addresses / by Robert Rawlinson.

  • Robert Rawlinson
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The social and national influence of the domiciliary condition of the people : three addresses / by Robert Rawlinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    relieving officer ancl the parish surgeon cannot long be absent. The rent is paid by the parish, and not unfrequently more than the value is so expended. There are room-spaces of the most wretched class which annually cost a parish more to maintain than any equal area of floor-space in Windsor or in Buck- ingham Palaces could be valued at. The Registrar-General has stated that the ten- dencies of modern civilisation in this country are to mass men into towns. In 1841, the population in 117 districts comprising the chief towns was 6,612,958 souls. In 1851, in the same districts, the number was 7,795,882, being an increase of 1,182,924 in ten years, or about 18 per cent. There is a cor- responding increase in the rates of mortality, although in some cities and towns there have been many sanitary improvements. As towns increase, there is an engulphing or lowering of whole streets and of entire districts of houses built originally for the merchant and supe- rior tradesman. Examine some of our great sea- ports and inland manufacturing towns, and it will be found that streets of houses originally erected for the merchant princes are now in partial ruin; from having been the abodes of those possessing wealth, they are now the abodes of the improvident, of the. vagrant, of the vicious, and of the unfortunate. The quaint carving on the stone-work looks out of place, the walls are half in ruins, the gables are shattered, and foul weather-stains of damp blotch the surface. Within, matters are even worse: the rooms are now divided and subdivided on every floor; the staircase is darkened, its massive hand-rail and carved balusters are crippled and broken, the once firm stairs are now rickety and dan- gerous; the stucco-finished plastering is blackened and in holes, the dusty and rotten laths being in many places bare; the landing-windows, when the space is open, have neither frame nor glass, so that the rain drives in right and left; make-shift doors lead into
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