Capital Volume I

462 

 

Chapter 25 

 

Bristol takes the third place after London in the misery of its dwellings. 

“Bristol, where the blankest poverty and domestic misery abound in the wealthiest 

town of Europe.” 

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C. The Nomad Population 

We turn now to a class of people whose origin is agricultural, but whose occupation is in great 

part industrial. They are the light infantry of capital, thrown by it, according to its needs, now to 

this point, now to that. When they are not on the march, they “camp.” Nomad labour is used for 

various operations of building and draining, brick-making, lime-burning, railway-making, &c. A 

flying column of pestilence, it carries into the places in whose neighbourhood it pitches its camp, 

small-pox, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, &c.

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 In undertakings that involve much capital outlay, 

such as railways, &c., the contractor himself generally provides his army with wooden huts and 

the like, thus improvising villages without any sanitary provisions, outside the control of the local 

boards, very profitable to the contractor, who exploits the labourers in two-fold fashion –  as 

soldiers of industry and as tenants. According as the wooden hut contains 1, 2, or 3 holes, its 

inhabitant, navvy, or whatever he may be, has to pay 1, 3, or 4 shillings weekly.

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One example 

will suffice. In September, 1864, Dr. Simon reports that the Chairman of the Nuisances Removal 

Committee of the parish of Sevenoaks sent the following denunciation to Sir George Grey, Home 

Secretary: –  

“Small-pox cases were rarely heard of in this parish until about twelve months 

ago. Shortly before that time, the works for a railway from Lewisham to 

Tunbridge were commenced here, and, in addition to the principal works being in 

the immediate neighbourhood of this town, here was also established the depôt for 

the whole of the works, so that a large number of persons was of necessity 

employed here. As cottage accommodation could not be obtained for them all, 

huts were built in several places along the line of the works by the contractor, Mr. 

Jay, for their especial occupation. These huts possessed no ventilation nor 

drainage, and, besides, were necessarily over-crowded, because each occupant had 

to accommodate lodgers, whatever the number in his own family might be, 

although there were only two rooms to each tenement. The consequences were, 

according to the medical report we received, that in the night-time these poor 

people were compelled to endure all the horror of suffocation to avoid the 

pestiferous smells arising from the filthy, stagnant water, and the privies close 

under their windows. Complaints were at length made to the Nuisances Removal 

Committee by a medical gentleman who had occasion to visit these huts, and he 

spoke of their condition as dwellings in the most severe terms, and he expressed 

his fears that some very serious consequences might ensue, unless some sanitary 

measures were adopted. About a year ago, Mr. Jay promised to appropriate a hut, 

to which persons in his employ, who were suffering from contagious diseases, 

might at once be removed. He repeated that promise on the 23rd July last, but 

although since the date of the last Promise there have been several cases of small-

pox in his huts, and two deaths from the same disease, yet he has taken no steps 

whatever to carry out his promise. On the 9th September instant, Mr. Kelson, 

surgeon, reported to me further cases of small-pox in the same huts, and he 

described their condition as most disgraceful. I should add, for your (the Home 

Secretary’s) information that an isolated house, called the Pest-house, which is set 

apart for parishioners who might be suffering from infectious diseases, has been 

continually occupied by such patients for many months past, and is also now 

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463 

 

Chapter 25 

 

occupied; that in one family five children died from small-pox and fever; that 

from the 1st April to the 1st September this year, a period of five months, there 

have been no fewer than ten deaths from small-pox in the parish, four of them 

being in the huts already referred to; that it is impossible to ascertain the exact 

number of persons who have suffered from that disease although they are known 

to be many, from the fact of the families keeping it as private as possible.”

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The labourers in coal and other mines belong to the best paid categories of the British proletariat. 

The price at which they buy their wages was shown on an earlier page.

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  Here I merely cast a 

hurried glance over the conditions of their dwellings. As a rule, the exploiter of a mine, whether 

its owner or his tenant, builds a number of cottages for his hands. They receive cottages and coal 

for firing “for nothing” –  i.e., these form part of their wages, paid in kind. Those who are not 

lodged in this way receive in compensation £4 per annum. The  mining districts attract with 

rapidity a large population, made up of the miners themselves, and the artisans, shopkeepers, &c., 

that group themselves around them. The ground-rents are high, as they are generally where 

population is dense. The master tries, therefore, to run up, within the smallest space possible at 

the mouth of the pit, just so many cottages as are necessary to pack together his hands and their 

families. If new mines are opened in the neighbourhood, or old ones are again set working, the 

pressure increases. In the construction of the cottages, only one point of view is of moment, the 

“abstinence” of the capitalist from all expenditure that is not absolutely unavoidable. 

“The lodging which is obtained by the pitman and other labourers connected with 

the collieries of Northumberland and Durham,” says Dr. Julian Hunter, “is 

perhaps, on the whole, the worst and the dearest of which any large specimens can 

be found in England, the similar parishes of Monmouthshire excepted.... The 

extreme badness is in the high number of men found in one room, in the smallness 

of the ground-plot on which a great number of houses are thrust, the want of 

water, the absence of privies, and the frequent placing of one house on the top of 

another, or distribution into flats, ... the lessee acts as if the whole colony were 

encamped, not resident.”

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“In pursuance of my instructions,” says Dr. Stevens, “I visited most of the large 

colliery villages in the Durham Union.... With very few exceptions, the general 

statement that no means are taken to secure the health of the inhabitants would be 

true of all of them.... All colliers are bound ['bound,’ an expression which, like 

bondage, dates from the age of serfdom] to the colliery lessee or owner for twelve 

months.... If the colliers express discontent, or in any way annoy the ‘viewer,’ a 

mark of memorandum is made against their names, and, at the annual ‘binding,’ 

such men are turned off... It appears to me that no part of the ‘truck system’ could 

be worse than what obtains in these densely-populated districts. The collier is 

bound to take as part of his hiring a house surrounded with pestiferous influences; 

he cannot help himself, and it appears doubtful whether anyone else can help him 

except his proprietor (he is, to all intents and purposes, a serf), and his proprietor 

first consults his balance-sheet, and the result is tolerably certain. The collier is 

also often supplied with water by the proprietor, which, whether it be good or bad, 

he has to pay for, or rather he suffers a deduction for from his wages.”

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In conflict with “public opinion,” or even with the Officers of Health, capital makes no difficulty 

about “justifying” the conditions partly dangerous, partly degrading, to which it confines the 

working and domestic life of the labourer, on the ground that they are necessary for profit. It is 

the same thing when capital “abstains” from protective measures against dangerous machinery in 

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