Housing of the working classes in London : Notes on the action taken between the years 1855 and 1912 for the better housing of the working classes in London, with special reference to the action taken by the London County Council between the years 1889 and 1912 / Prepared, under the direction of the Housing of the Working Classes Committee of the Council, by the clerk of the Council.
- London County Council. Housing and Public Health Committee.
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Housing of the working classes in London : Notes on the action taken between the years 1855 and 1912 for the better housing of the working classes in London, with special reference to the action taken by the London County Council between the years 1889 and 1912 / Prepared, under the direction of the Housing of the Working Classes Committee of the Council, by the clerk of the Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Appendix XV; * * rf -ii' ■ ■ ■ . p ^ Extracts from the evidence giveri in 1884 hy^ thfC^ Earl of ^jiafteshury before the Royal Commission on the Housing of'ih^'WoYMng Glasses. ‘ ' “ When they began [about 1857] pull down,parts of the houses in TyndalFs-buildings, Gray’s-Inn-road^. dhe^ of vermin were so great that . . . .the workmen, accustoiped tplthd^^ thing, struck work . . . until fire-enginesjrhud been in^^^ charged with water that destroyed those am^ufsj’. (Question 25.) “Formerly there were a great many long alleys, and when X used to go into them if I stretched out my arms I struck the walls on both sides ... In those alleys lived from 200 to 300 people, and there was but one accommodation for the whole of that num- ber, and that at the end ; . . . one could not even approach that end. ... We could not possibly go into the rooms at the bottom of the alley, but we were obliged to speak to the people through the windows above.” (Question 31.) “The air was dreadfully foul. The sun could not penetrate, and there never was any ventilation.” (Question 32.) “ Frying-pan-alley, Holborn, was very narrow, the only neces- sary accommodation being at the end. In the first house that I turned into there was a single room ; the window was very small, and the light came through the door. I saw a young woman there. . . . ‘ Look there,’ said she, ‘ at that great hole; the landlord will not mend it. I have every night to sit up and watch, or my hus- band sits up to watch, because that hole is over a common sewer, and the rats come up, sometimes twenty at a time, and if we did not watch for them they would eat the baby up.’ . . . That could not exist now.” (Question 36.) “ I went into a low cellar [in Tyndall’s-buildings] . . . There were a woman and two children there; . . . from a hole in the ceiling there came a long open wooden tube supported by props, and from that flowed all the filth of the house above, right through the place where this woman was living, into the common sewer. . . . I believe much of that sort of thing occurred in London which could not occur now. Again in another place I had heard that there were people living over cesspools. ... We went there, and in the room there was boarding upon the floor; upon that boarding were living a woman and three children. We lifted up the boarding, and there was the open cesspool . . . not one foot below the surface of the room. ... It took an hour to clean by means of the machine.” (Question 37.) “ They go into these tenement-houses; they remain there a couple of months or three months ; they go out again, and are succeeded by another family ; they leave all their filth ... The other family come in, stay three months, and deposit their filth, and off they go.” (Question 39.) “There was a famous place called Bermondsey Island. . . . It was a large swamp ; a number of people lived there ... in houses built upon piles [in about 1864] ... So bad was the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28126993_0173.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
