Second report of Her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the housing of the working classses : Scotland.
- Great Britain. Royal Commission on Housing of the Working Classes
- Date:
- 1885
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Second report of Her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the housing of the working classses : Scotland. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![j\Tr, A/dernuni II'. MrdifluT, Pil. P.. /'j'o/i'.s'xiir C.A.('a/ii(roii, M.D., F.R.C.S.I., Mr. J. Beveridye, Mr. P. Neville, C.E., Mr. S. Hurly. 23 May 188.'5. ^52,319. Do 3'on think (Imt tliey would 1)p inclined lo let, tlicir la.nd Ibv tiic erection of dwollinpjs snitable for tlic working ('lasses!'—That is the only case in which the landlords were even asked to do it, and in that case the thing fell through. I do not know of any other case where they Avere asked to do it; and I am quite sure that if they had been asked to do it they would not have let the ground for that pur- pose. 22.320. Therefore the option is not open to the work- ing classes in Dublin to go outside the city, because they have no places to go to ?—It is not. They are coming in from the outside to the inside by reason of the destruction of their dwellings, and they are crowding into the city. I know from my own knowledge of the Pembroke townshij) that a large number of the houses thei'e that were occupied by the poor people have been taken down and the people have come into the city. 22.321. Going down the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway the other day, in the suburbs of London, an estate was pointed out to me that had been laid out with workmen's dwellings, and I was told by the chairman of the company, with whom I happened to be travelling, that they carry those work- men in and out for 2c?. per day ; that is to say. Vs. per week ; are there any facilities of that kind in Dublin ; do the railway companies or any of the carrying com- panies in Dublin afford facilities of that class to the working classes to live outside, and to come into tlieir work in the city at cheap rates ?—They do to a certain extent. The Dublin and Ivingstov/n Railway Com- pany luTve early and late trains for woidcmen, but that is more to bring them out to their work in the suburbs. They, have also what are called workmen's trams in Dublin; but they are designed specially to take the workmen out of Dublin into the suburbs in the morning and bring them back in the evening. 22.322. In fact it is the reverse of the operation which t have described in London ?—It is. (^Mr. Bcveridge.) The providing by the company of one workman's car each way was insisted upon by the corporation. 22.323. {To Dr. Cameron.) I think you have a good deal of knowledge with regard to the .system of house farming in Dublin ?—I have. 22.324. Is it the fact that a large number of houses are owned by individua.1 house farmers in Dublin ?— A great number. A large number of houses in the older parts of the city are owned by families occupying good positions, some of them living in other countries, fiervis Street is owned by the representatives of Sir Clu'istopher Jervis, who lived 200 years ago. Then Mr. Tanker\ ille Chamberlayne, a well-known country gentleman, is the owner of a number of houses. Those liouses iiavc been lei at very small rents to house jobbers, who live by screwing the largest amount of rent they can out of the tenants. The dispropor- tion between the rents which tlie actual owner of the house gets and tlie rents which these house jobbers g(!t out of the tenants is sometimes as one to three. I iiave scheduled a number of houses, showing the terrific rents which are got out of these old houses. 22.325. Would you mind giving us one or two instances ?—Some of the hoixses are valued at 8/. and let at 70.'. a year. 22.326. It l;as been stated by former Avitnessos that five house jobbers in Dublin owned 1,100 houses betv/cen them ?—I think that is rather an over esti- mate ; but there is a large number. I have known a case where a man had two houses that were in a ])erfeci!y insanitary state, and we got a magistrate's order to close them, and the man came to me and said It is a cruel thing closing these two houses. I said thoyan; quite untit for human h.abitation. Well, said he, I will have to go into the poor- house if they arc closed. I said I cannot lielp tliat ; you ought to get some other occupation. He was a mere year-to-year man ; he had not even a !e,ise. He took two houses and he and his Large family lived upon the produce of those two small teuemeiit houses. I said that is not the way to make a living; yon ought to have some other emplovment tlian screwing raekrents out of your unfbrlun!it(> tenants. The real cvners of many of the houses get very little nut of them, and as for'the middlemen, whom I look upon as the curse of Dublin, even the rents which they undertake to pay they sometimes do not: pay. Then there is another great hardship; one of these middlemen takes a house on a 21 years' lease ; he pays 12/. a year rent, and he gets 40/. or 50/. from the tenants, and yet, if we want structural alterations done, we cannot even make that man pay for the expense of the structural alterations ; and we make the head landlord pay, perhaps, 25/. or 30/. for putting in a water closet, all for the benefit of this middleman. We have no hold upon him at all. When we enforcestructural improvements in houses I say that every one who has a beneficiary interest in the houses should be made to contribute to the expense of putting them in a proper state. I have known land- lords have to pay so much money in improving their houses that for three or four years the rent altogether went in that direction ; whereas in the meantime the middleman got his full rent. 22.327. Have you any information as to the valua- tion for the purposes of taxation of those houses for which the occupiers have to pay sucli large rents ?— Yes, I have got the valuaiion recently from official sources of 175 of them. It sliows that the rent is in round numbers about three times the valuation. 22.328. So that these house jobbers do not pay a reasonable contribution towards the local burdens ■•'— They do not. 22.329. Although they are tlie main cause of (he heavy sanitary expenditure ?—Yes. 22.330. They cause considerably more than the average expenditure and they contribute a great dc.d le.ss in proportion ?—-Yes. 22.331. Has your investigation into the valuation question shown you that in the poorer districts of the city the valuation, apart from the excessive rents derived from tlio.sc houses by exceptional means is proportionately lower than the valuation in tlie wealthier parts of the city ?—It has. One reason why houses are sometimes unlet iu the decaying parts of the city is tha^the valuation is excessive, and persons do not like takmg those places because the A'aluation is too high; the letting value and the actual valuation are much the same; whereas in other parts of the city, for instance, in my own case, I pay a rent which is one third greater than the valuation. In Gardiner Street, for example, the houses are valued at a rate that no one would now give for them; and the result is that they are rapidly becoming tenement hou.ses. 22.332. In the poorer streets tlie valuation ap- proaclies the rackrent and in the wealthier streets it is one thii'd less ?—Yes. The valuation is in excess of some of the rents that are obtained from those houses. 22.333. In the business parts of the city, say, for in.?taiice, in places Avhere the great insurance offices, and banks, and such like, are situated—Westmoreland Sti-oet, College Green, Grafton Street — and places where the houses are not occupied as residences, but as places of business, have you any knowledge of the proportion that the valuation would bear to the real I'ents ?—I think the valuation there might be, p(!rliaps, raised. The valuation in some of the best jjarts of the city does not appear to be much more than the valuation of the same kind of houses in a private street would be, although there are very fine houses in the best parts of Dublin valued at 100/. or 150/. a year, which is very small. 22.334. Is tlio net result this : that the wealthier and more valuable portions of the city do not con- tribute a just proportion to the taxation ?—T'hat is my opinion. I think tiiat iu the north, as a whole, which is a decaying part of the city, the valuation is rather liigh, and the south part is very much under- valued.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24398329_0056.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
