Sanitation and social economics : an object lesson / by James B. Russell.
- Date:
- [1889]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Sanitation and social economics : an object lesson / by James B. Russell. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![The man who says so, Avho is generally the ownei' of such property, would shrink from becoming known as the landlord of thieves and loose persons. I noticed this wholesome feeling in a recent discussion of the Town Council with reference to the propei'ty held by the Improvement Trust in this very district. To speak of building houses to be let to the inhabitants of insanitary dwellings, is to speak of something which never has been done and never will be done. What is done is to select respectable, steady tenants, and put a caretaker in every block, and if the class of people referred to choose to become such they can get suitable houses at any time. They never will while their present dwellings are allowed to exist as they are. In this district there are shops where the beggars sell the bread and scraps of meat which you give them, that they may procure drink with the proceeds. The inhabitants buy those scraps rather than wholesome food, that they may have more money to spend on drink, and they resort to these houses for no other reason. In the main, it is not want of money, so much as want of self-restraint in the use of the money they have, which keeps them there. Nothing shows this so well as the system of sub-letting which prevails in District 14. I have received from the City Assessor a list of houses which are held by .16 persons in this district. They are 116 in mimber. The total rental paid to the proprietors is £537 8s. The average rent of each house is therefore £4 13s.—some are rented as low as £2 ] Os. All are sub-let in rooms, or even parts of a room— generally to husbands and wives, frequently with children—at 6d. to 8d. per night. True, they get furniture, bedding, and cooking utensils j but as a nile these are of the most meagre, miserable description. This means £7 16s. to £10 8s. per annum for a fraction of a house. One man in this district leases 36 wretched houses, for which he pays £122 2s., an average of £3 8s. a year. The sub-tenants pay 6d. to 8d. per night; Sunday does not count, but on each other day this sum must be paid in advance. Nor are these casual tenants; they live there and pay these extravagant rents for months or even years. If you point out to the sub- tenants that they are paying sums which would secure the best one- and two-room houses in the city, simply because they never have a month's rent in hand, you generally discover—what other signs sufficiently show—that their position is the same as that of the fast young man who borrows £50 on a £100 bill, and pays 10 per cent, on the full amount of his bill.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21973738_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
