HOW THE POOR LIVE.
41
replaced it with asphalte, which had cracked with the result
above described.
Unacquainted with the stern necessities of the situation,
you will contemplate the picture and say that these people
are idiots to pay rent for such accommodation. What are
they to do ?—Move. Whither ? They know well how they
will have to tramp from slum to slum, losing work, and
the difficulties which will beset them on this room-hunt.
They are thankful to have a roof, even with cracks in it,
and they will go on suffering—not in silence, perhaps, but
accept engagements as acrobats, yet from floor to roof
every room is densely inhabited.
The stairs are rotten, and here and there show where
some foot has trodden too heavily. The landing above is
a yawning gulf which you have to leap, and leap lightly,
or the rotten boarding would break away beneath you.
Open a door and look into a room. There are two women
and three children at work, and the holes in the floor are
patched across with bits of old boxes which the tenants
have nailed down themselves,
WASHING HIS POTATOES.
without taking action, because they know if they go further
they may fare worse.
The accommodation which these people will put up with
is almost incredible.
Some of the houses are as absolutely dangerous to life
and limb as those specially built up on the stage as pitfalls
for the unwary feet of the melodramatic heroes and heroines
led there by designing villains in order that they may fall
through traps into dark rivers and so be got rid of.
Here is a house which has been slowly decaying for
years; the people who live in it must be competent to
The place is absolutely a shell. There is not a sound
room or passage in it. Yet it is always crammed with
tenants, and they pay their rent without a murmur—nay,
within the last year the rents of the rooms have been raised
nearly twenty-five per cent.
The gentleman who inhabits the ground-floor with his
wife and family is best off. He is a bit of a humorist,
and he seems quite proud of pointing out to us the dilapidations of his dwelling-place, and takes the opportunity to
indulge in what the gentlemen of the theatrical persuasion
call "wheezes."
HOW THE POOR LIVE.
41
replaced it with asphalte, which had cracked with the result
above described.
Unacquainted with the stern necessities of the situation,
you will contemplate the picture and say that these people
are idiots to pay rent for such accommodation. What are
they to do ?—Move. Whither ? They know well how they
will have to tramp from slum to slum, losing work, and
the difficulties which will beset them on this room-hunt.
They are thankful to have a roof, even with cracks in it,
and they will go on suffering—not in silence, perhaps, but
accept engagements as acrobats, yet from floor to roof
every room is densely inhabited.
The stairs are rotten, and here and there show where
some foot has trodden too heavily. The landing above is
a yawning gulf which you have to leap, and leap lightly,
or the rotten boarding would break away beneath you.
Open a door and look into a room. There are two women
and three children at work, and the holes in the floor are
patched across with bits of old boxes which the tenants
have nailed down themselves,
WASHING HIS POTATOES.
without taking action, because they know if they go further
they may fare worse.
The accommodation which these people will put up with
is almost incredible.
Some of the houses are as absolutely dangerous to life
and limb as those specially built up on the stage as pitfalls
for the unwary feet of the melodramatic heroes and heroines
led there by designing villains in order that they may fall
through traps into dark rivers and so be got rid of.
Here is a house which has been slowly decaying for
years; the people who live in it must be competent to
The place is absolutely a shell. There is not a sound
room or passage in it. Yet it is always crammed with
tenants, and they pay their rent without a murmur—nay,
within the last year the rents of the rooms have been raised
nearly twenty-five per cent.
The gentleman who inhabits the ground-floor with his
wife and family is best off. He is a bit of a humorist,
and he seems quite proud of pointing out to us the dilapidations of his dwelling-place, and takes the opportunity to
indulge in what the gentlemen of the theatrical persuasion
call "wheezes."
