Capital Volume I
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478
Chapter 25 of population, or has not brought about that expulsion which, under the name “migration to towns,” generally occurs. In Fingringhoe, a parish of 3,443 acres, were in 1851, 145 houses; in 1861, only 110. But the people did not wish to go away, and managed even to increase under these circumstances. In 1851, 252 persons inhabited 61 houses, but in 1861, 262 persons were squeezed into 49 houses. In Basilden, in 1851, 157 persons lived on 1,827 acres, in 35 houses; at the end of ten years, 180 persons in 27 houses. In the parishes of Fingringhoe, South Fambridge, Widford, Basilden, and Ramsden Crags, in 1851, 1,392 persons were living on 8,449 acres in 316 houses; in 1861, on the same area, 1,473 persons in 249 houses. (6.) Herefordshire This little county has suffered more from the “eviction-spirit” than any other in England. At Nadby, overcrowded cottages generally, with only 2 bedrooms, belonging for the most part to the farmers. They easily let them for £3 or £4 a-year, and paid a weekly wage of 9s. (7.) Huntingdon Hartford had, in 1851, 87 houses; shortly after this, 19 cottages were destroyed in this small parish of 1,720 acres; population in 1831, 452; in 1852, 382; and in 1861, 341. 14 cottages, each with 1 bedroom, were visited. In one, a married couple, 3 grown-up sons, 1 grown-up daughter, 4 children – in all 10 in another, 3 adults, 6 children. One of these rooms, in which 8 people slept, was 12 feet 10 inches long, 12 feet 2 inches broad, 6 feet 9 inches high: the average, without making any deduction for projections into the apartment, gave about 130 cubic feet per head. In the 14 sleeping rooms, 34 adults and 33 children. These cottages are seldom provided with gardens, but many of the inmates are able to farm small allotments at 10s. or 12s. per rood. These allotments are at a distance from the houses, which are without privies. The family “must either go to the allotment to deposit their ordures,” or, as happens in this place, saving your presence, “use a closet with a trough set like a drawer in a chest of drawers, and drawn out weekly and conveyed to the allotment to be emptied where its contents were wanted.” In Japan, the circle of life-conditions moves more decently than this. (8.) Lincolnshire Langtoft. A man lives here, in Wright’s house, with his wife, her mother, and 5 children; the house has a front kitchen, scullery, bedroom over the front kitchen; front kitchen and bedroom, 12 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches; the whole ground floor, 21 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches. The bedroom is a garret: the walls run together into the roof like a sugar-loaf, a dormer-window opening in front. “Why did he live here? On account of the garden? No; it is very small. Rent? High, 1s. 3d. per week. Near his work? No; 6 miles away, so that he walks daily, to and fro, 12 miles. He lived there, because it was a tenantable cot,” and because he wanted to have a cot for himself alone, anywhere, at any price, and in any conditions. The following are the statistics of 12 houses in Langtoft, with 12 bedrooms, 38 adults, and 36 children. TWELVE HOUSES IN LANGTOFT House No.
1. No.
2. No.
3. No.
4. No.
5. No.
6. No.
7. No.
8. No.
9. No.
10. No.
11. No.
12. Bedrooms. 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Adults. 3 4 4 5 2 5 3 3 2 2 3 2 Children. 5 3 4 4 2 3 3 2 0 3 3 4 Number of Persons. 8 7 8 9 4 8 6 5 2 .5
6 6
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Chapter 25 (9.) Kent Kennington, very seriously over-populated in 1859, when diphtheria appeared, and the parish doctor instituted a medical inquiry into the condition of the poorer classes. He found that in this locality, where much labour is employed, various cots had been destroyed and no new ones built. In one district stood four houses, named birdcages; each had 4 rooms of the following dimensions in feet and inches: Kitchen: 9 ft. 5 by 8 ft. 11 by 6 ft. 6 Scullery: 8 ft. 6 by 4 ft. 6 by 6 ft. 6 Bedroom: 8 ft. 5 by 5 ft. 10 by 6 ft. 3 Bedroom: 8 ft. 3 by 8 ft. 4 by 6 ft. 3 (10.) Northamptonshire Brinworth, Pickford and Floore: in these villages in the winter 20-30 men were lounging about the streets from want of work. The farmers do not always till sufficiently the corn and turnip lands, and the landlord has found it best to throw all his farms together into 2 or 3. Hence want of employment. Whilst on one side of the wall, the land calls for labour, on the other side the defrauded labourers are casting at it longing glances. Feverishly overworked in summer, and half- starved in winter, it is no wonder if they say in their peculiar dialect, “the parson and gentlefolk seem frit to death at them.” At Floore, instances, in one bedroom of the smallest size, of couples with 4, 5, 6 children; 3 adults with 5 children; a couple with grandfather and 6 children down with scarlet fever, &c.; in two houses with two bedrooms, two families of 8 and 9 adults respectively. (11.) Wiltshire
3d. weekly with 4 adults and 4 children, had nothing good about it, except the walls, from the floor of rough-hewn pieces of stones to the roof of worn-out thatch. (12.) Worcestershire House-destruction here not quite so excessive; yet from 1851 to 1861, the number of inhabitants to each house on the average, has risen from 4.2 to 4.6. Badsey. Many cots and little gardens here. Some of the farmers declare that the cots are “a great nuisance here, because they bring the poor.” On the statement of one gentleman: “The poor are none the better for them; if you build 500 they will let fast enough, in fact, the more you build, the more they want” (according to him the houses give birth to the inhabitants, who then by a law of Nature press on “the means of housing”). Dr. Hunter remarks: “Now these poor must come from somewhere, and as there is no particular attraction, such as doles, at Badsey, it must be repulsion from some other unfit place, which will send them here. If each could find an allotment near his work, he would not prefer Badsey, where he pays for his scrap of ground twice as much as the farmer pays for his.” The continual emigration to the towns, the continual formation of surplus population in the country through the concentration of farms, conversion of arable land into pasture, machinery, &c., and the continual eviction of the agricultural population by the destruction of their cottages, go hand in hand. The more empty the district is of men, the greater is its “relative surplus population,” the greater is their pressure on the means of employment, the greater is the absolute
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