00000039 |
Previous | 39 of 64 | Next |
|
small (250x250 max)
medium (500x500 max)
Large
Extra Large
large ( > 500x500)
Full Resolution
All (PDF)
|
Loading content ...
HOW THE POOR LIVE. 39 CHAPTER VIII. One of the greatest evils of the overcrowded districts of London is the water supply. I might almost on this head imitate the gentleman who wrote a chapter on Snakes in Iceland, which I quote in its entirety—" There are no snakes in Iceland." To say, however, that in these districts there is no water supply would be incorrect, but it is utterly inadequate to the necessities of the people. In many houses more water comes through the roof than through a pipe, and a tub or butt in the back.yard about half full of a black, foul-smelling liquid, supplies some dozens of families with the water they drink and the water THE WATER BUTT. they wash in as well. It is, perhaps, owing to the limited nature of the luxury that the use of water both internally and externally is rather out of favour with the inhabitants. As to water for sanitary purposes, there is absolutely no provision for it in hundreds of the most densely-inhabited houses. In the matter of water and air, the most degraded savage British philanthropy has yet adopted as a pet is a thousand times better off than the London labourer and his family, dwelling in the areas whose horrors medical officers are at last divulging to the public. The difficulties of attaining that cleanliness which we are told is next to godliness may be imagined from the contemplation of this butt, sketched in the back yard of a house containing over ninety people. The little boy in his shirt-sleeves has come to fill his tin bowl, and we are indebted to him for the information that he wants it for his mother to drink. The mother is ill—has been for weeks —her lips are burning with fever, her throat is dry and parched, and this common reservoir, open to all the dust and dirt with which the air is thick, open to the draining in rainy weather of the filthy roof of the tumble-down structure beside it, this is the spring at which she is to slake her thirst. Is it any wonder that disease is rampant, or that the Temperance folk have such trouble to persuade the masses that cold water is a good and healthy drink ? Remember, this is absolutely the supply for the day ; it is, perhaps, turned on for about five minutes, and , from this butt the entire inhabitants of the house must get all the water they want. In dozens of instances there is no supply at all—accident or design has interfered with it, and the housewife who wants to wash her child's face or her own, or do a bit of scrubbing, has to beg of a neighbour or make a predatory excursion into a back yard more blessed than her own. Some of the facts about the water supply are not ea^sy to deal with in articles for general reading, nor do they lend themselves to the art of the illustrator. The hewer of wood has found plenty of scope in this series, but the difficulties of the "drawer of water" are great. It was while I and my esteemed collaborator were debating how we could possibly reproduce much that we had seen in connection with this crying evil that a gentleman came along and gave us the chance of at least one sketch " on the spot." You observe him busy at the side of a tub—a tub from which his neighbours will fill their drinkin g and their culinary vessels anon. Do not imagine that he is engaged in his morning ablution. He is washing his potatoes—that is all—and in the evening he will take them out baked, and sell them in the public highway. For the sake of the public I am glad they will be baked, but though the water will in some instances be boiled, I don't think that tea is improved by the dirt off potato-skins—at least I have never heard so. Perhaps at the house where this tub was sketched the inhabitants were not so much injured as they might have been by the deficient water supply in the yard. If they didn't get water in one way, they generally had it in another. The law of compensation is always at work, and the rapacity of a landlord who left his tenants so badly off in one particular way may have been a godsend in another. The water in rainy weather simply poured through the roof of this house, saturating the sleepers in their beds and washing their faces in a rough-and-ready manner, but unfortunately it didn't rain towels at the same time, so that the bath had its inconveniences. The cause of these periodical shower-baths was pointed out to us by a tenant who paid four and sixpence a week for his " watery nest" in the attic, and who, in language which did not tend to show that his enforced cleanliness had brought godliness in its train, explained that the landlord had taken the lead from the roof and sold it, and
Object Description
Title | How the poor live |
Creator | Sims, George Robert |
Publisher | Chatto |
Place of Publication | London |
Date | 1883 |
Language | eng |
Type | Books/Pamphlets |
Description
Title | 00000039 |
Type | Books/Pamphlets |
Transcript | HOW THE POOR LIVE. 39 CHAPTER VIII. One of the greatest evils of the overcrowded districts of London is the water supply. I might almost on this head imitate the gentleman who wrote a chapter on Snakes in Iceland, which I quote in its entirety—" There are no snakes in Iceland." To say, however, that in these districts there is no water supply would be incorrect, but it is utterly inadequate to the necessities of the people. In many houses more water comes through the roof than through a pipe, and a tub or butt in the back.yard about half full of a black, foul-smelling liquid, supplies some dozens of families with the water they drink and the water THE WATER BUTT. they wash in as well. It is, perhaps, owing to the limited nature of the luxury that the use of water both internally and externally is rather out of favour with the inhabitants. As to water for sanitary purposes, there is absolutely no provision for it in hundreds of the most densely-inhabited houses. In the matter of water and air, the most degraded savage British philanthropy has yet adopted as a pet is a thousand times better off than the London labourer and his family, dwelling in the areas whose horrors medical officers are at last divulging to the public. The difficulties of attaining that cleanliness which we are told is next to godliness may be imagined from the contemplation of this butt, sketched in the back yard of a house containing over ninety people. The little boy in his shirt-sleeves has come to fill his tin bowl, and we are indebted to him for the information that he wants it for his mother to drink. The mother is ill—has been for weeks —her lips are burning with fever, her throat is dry and parched, and this common reservoir, open to all the dust and dirt with which the air is thick, open to the draining in rainy weather of the filthy roof of the tumble-down structure beside it, this is the spring at which she is to slake her thirst. Is it any wonder that disease is rampant, or that the Temperance folk have such trouble to persuade the masses that cold water is a good and healthy drink ? Remember, this is absolutely the supply for the day ; it is, perhaps, turned on for about five minutes, and , from this butt the entire inhabitants of the house must get all the water they want. In dozens of instances there is no supply at all—accident or design has interfered with it, and the housewife who wants to wash her child's face or her own, or do a bit of scrubbing, has to beg of a neighbour or make a predatory excursion into a back yard more blessed than her own. Some of the facts about the water supply are not ea^sy to deal with in articles for general reading, nor do they lend themselves to the art of the illustrator. The hewer of wood has found plenty of scope in this series, but the difficulties of the "drawer of water" are great. It was while I and my esteemed collaborator were debating how we could possibly reproduce much that we had seen in connection with this crying evil that a gentleman came along and gave us the chance of at least one sketch " on the spot." You observe him busy at the side of a tub—a tub from which his neighbours will fill their drinkin g and their culinary vessels anon. Do not imagine that he is engaged in his morning ablution. He is washing his potatoes—that is all—and in the evening he will take them out baked, and sell them in the public highway. For the sake of the public I am glad they will be baked, but though the water will in some instances be boiled, I don't think that tea is improved by the dirt off potato-skins—at least I have never heard so. Perhaps at the house where this tub was sketched the inhabitants were not so much injured as they might have been by the deficient water supply in the yard. If they didn't get water in one way, they generally had it in another. The law of compensation is always at work, and the rapacity of a landlord who left his tenants so badly off in one particular way may have been a godsend in another. The water in rainy weather simply poured through the roof of this house, saturating the sleepers in their beds and washing their faces in a rough-and-ready manner, but unfortunately it didn't rain towels at the same time, so that the bath had its inconveniences. The cause of these periodical shower-baths was pointed out to us by a tenant who paid four and sixpence a week for his " watery nest" in the attic, and who, in language which did not tend to show that his enforced cleanliness had brought godliness in its train, explained that the landlord had taken the lead from the roof and sold it, and |