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pointed out that, notwithstanding the many salubrious influences which there are
in country life, the crowding which so favours the extension of contagious
disease, also favours the origination of disease which is not contagious. And those
who have denounced the over-crowded state of our rural population have not been
silent as to a further mischief. Even where their primary concern has been only
with the injury to health, often almost perforce they have referred to other
relations on the subject. In showing how frequently it happens that adult persons
of both sexes, married and unmarried, are huddled together in single small
sleeping rooms, their reports have carried the conviction that, under the
circumstances they describe, decency must always be outraged, and morality
almost of necessity must suffer.
105
Thus, for instance, in the appendix of my last
annual report, Dr. Ord, reporting on an outbreak of fever at Wing, in
Buckinghamshire, mentions how a young man who had come thither from
Wingrave with fever, “in the first days of his illness slept in a room with nine
other persons. Within a fortnight several of these persons were attacked, and in the
course of a few weeks five out of the nine had fever, and one died...” From Dr.
Harvey, of St. George’s Hospital, who, on private professional business, visited
Wing during the time of the epidemic, I received information exactly in the sense
of the above report.... “A young woman having fever, lay at night in a room
occupied by her father and mother, her bastard child, two young men (her
brothers), and her two sisters, each with a bastard child – 10 persons in all. A few
weeks ago 13 persons slept in it.”
106
Dr. Hunter investigated 5,375 cottages of agricultural labourers, not only in the purely
agricultural districts, but in all counties of England. Of these, 2,195 had only one bedroom (often
at the same time used as living-room), 2,930 only two, and 250, more than two. I will give a few
specimens culled from a dozen counties.
(1.) Bedfordshire
Wrestlingworth. Bedrooms about 12 feet long and 10 broad, although many are smaller than this.
The small, one-storied cots are often divided by partitions into two bedrooms, one bed frequently
in a kitchen, 5 feet 6 inches in height. Rent, £3 a year. The tenants have to make their own
privies, the landlord only supplies a hole. As soon as one has made a privy, it is made use of by
the whole neighbourhood. One house, belonging to a family called Richardson, was of quite
unapproachable beauty. “Its plaster walls bulged very like a lady’s dress in a curtsey. One gable
end was convex, the other concave, and on this last, unfortunately, stood the chimney, a curved
tube of clay and wood like an elephant’s trunk. A long stick served as prop to prevent the
chimney from falling. The doorway and window were rhomboidal.” Of 17 houses visited, only 4
had more than one bedroom, and those four overcrowded. The cots with one bedroom sheltered 3
adults and 3 children, a married couple with 6 children, &c.
Dunton. High rents, from £4 to £5; weekly wages of the man, 10s. They hope to pay the rent by
the straw-plaiting of the family. The higher the rent, the greater the number that must work
together to pay it. Six adults, living with 4 children in one sleeping apartment, pay £3 10s. for it.
The cheapest house in Dunton, 15 feet long externally, 10 broad, let for £3. Only one of the
houses investigated had 2 bedrooms. A little outside the village, a house whose “tenants dunged
against the house-side,” the lower 9 inches of the door eaten away through sheer rottenness; the
doorway, a single opening closed at night by a few bricks, ingeniously pushed up after shutting
and covered with some matting. Half a window, with glass and frame, had gone the way of all
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flesh. Here, without furniture, huddled together were 3 adults and 5 children. Dunton is not worse
than the rest of Biggleswade Union.
(2.) Berkshire
Beenham. In June, 1864, a man, his wife and 4 children lived in a cot (one-storied cottage). A
daughter came home from service with scarlet fever. She died. One child sickened and died. The
mother and one child were down with typhus when Dr. Hunter was called in. The father and one
child slept outside, but the difficulty of securing isolation was seen here, for in the crowded
market of the miserable village lay the linen of the fever-stricken household, waiting for the
wash. The rent of H.’s house, 1s. a-week; one bedroom for man, wife, and 6 children. One house
let for 8d. a-week, 14 feet 6 inches long, 7 feet broad, kitchen, 6 feet high; the bedroom without
window, fire-place, door, or opening, except into the lobby; no garden. A man lived here for a
little while, with two grown-up daughters and one grown-up son; father and son slept on the bed,
the girls in the passage. Each of the latter had a child while the family was living here, but one
went to the workhouse for her confinement and then came home.
(3.) Buckinghamshire
30 cottages – on 1,000 acres of land – contained here about 130-140 persons. The parish of
Bradenham comprises 1,000 acres; it numbered, in 1851, 36 houses and a population of 84 males
and 54 females. This inequality of the sexes was partly remedied in 1861, when they numbered
98 males and 87 females; increase in 10 years of 14 men and 33 women. Meanwhile, the number
of houses was one less.
Winslow. Great part of this newly built in good style; demand for houses appears very marked,
since very miserable cots let at 1s. to 1s. 3d. per week.
Water Eaton. Here the landlords, in view of the increasing population, have destroyed about 20
per cent. of the existing houses. A poor labourer, who had to go about 4 miles to his work,
answered the question, whether he could not find a cot nearer: “No; they know better than to take
a man in with my large family.”
Tinker’s End, near Winslow. A bedroom in which were 4 adults and 4 children; 11 feet long, 9
feet broad, 6 feet 5 inches high at its highest part; another 11 feet 3 inches by 9 feet, 5 feet 10
inches high, sheltered 6 persons. Each of these families had less space than is considered
necessary for a convict. No house had more than one bedroom, not one of them a back-door;
water very scarce; weekly rent from 1s. 4d. to 2s. In 16 of the houses visited, only 1 man that
earned 10s. a-week. The quantity of air for each person under the circumstances just described
corresponds to that which he would have if he were shut up in a box of 4 feet measuring each
way, the whole night. But then, the ancient dens afforded a certain amount of unintentional
ventilation.
(4.) Cambridgeshire
Gamblingay belongs to several landlords. It contains the wretchedest cots to be found anywhere.
Much straw-plaiting. “A deadly lassitude, a hopeless surrendering up to filth,” reigns in
Gamblingay. The neglect in its centre, becomes mortification at its extremities, north and south,
where the houses are rotting to pieces. The absentee landlords bleed this poor rookery too freely.
The rents are very high; 8 or 9 persons packed in one sleeping apartment, in 2 cases 6 adults, each
with 1 or 2 children in one small bedroom.
(5.) Essex
In this county, diminutions in the number of persons and of cottages go, in many parishes, hand in
hand. In not less than 22 parishes, however, the destruction of houses has not prevented increase