EXPECTANT MOTHERS (EVICTION FROM LODGINGS) (Hansard, 20 October 1944)

Mr. John Duggdale (West Bromwich)
The House, during the greater part of this afternoon, has been considering foreign 2794 and Colonial affairs. I propose to consider for a moment affairs rather nearer our own country and to deal with matters that affect every constituency, and I also propose to be brief because the time is late. I wish to raise the question of the eviction by landladies of expectant mothers and mothers with young children. I am not intending to make any attack on the Minister, which is perhaps somewhat unusual both for myself and indeed for most hon. Members who raise matters on the Adjournment; nor do I intend to attack the vast number of landladies throughout the country, many of whom have, particularly during the period of flying bombs in London, performed a very noble service in taking in large numbers of people, as they have in my constituency, from flying bomb areas and putting them up at great inconvenience to themselves. But I wish to attack a peculiarly poisonous type of reptile, and that is, the landlady who, on discovering that a woman living in the house is about to have a child, immediately gives that woman notice and says that she must leave her lodgings.
I will give an illustration of what happens. Corporal Jones goes away on active service and leaves his wife behind and shortly she writes to him to say that she is going to have a child. After having done so, she then may very likely tell the landlady and she may expect congratulations or the landlady to say that she hopes everything will go off all right. But not at all. The landlady says immediately, "You will have to leave, I do not like having children in this house, I refuse to have children young"; and she tells that woman that, at the earliest moment, she must leave the house. The woman looks round to try and find other accommodation. She cannot find it. What does she do then? She goes back to the landlady and she says that she cannot find other accommodation, and the landlady says, "It is not my affair; you will have to leave." This woman, without any protection under the Rent Restrictions Acts, either has to leave or, as is done in many cases, she remains there and suffers the greatest injustice. The landlady cuts off the electric light supply or takes the electric light bulbs out, or again, she may cut off the heating system. They even in some cases lock up the lavatory on the half-landing and take 2795 away the key. There is no end to the kind of petty, mean actions of which some landladies—it is a very small class—have been guilty in cases such as this.
The woman might write to her husband, but what is the use of that? He is out fighting maybe in France or Burma. He is already suffering hardship and does not want to have to suffer still greater hardship by knowing what his wife is suffering at home. She does not write, and she bears her suffering the best she can. You cannot say, "Why cannot she stand up to the landlady?" Those people who have been in the Army know how difficult a young private soldier finds it to stand up to a sergeant-major, and it is about as difficult for a young woman to stand up to these tough old landladies, and she cannot do it. It is in these horrible circumstances that the child is born. To show that this is not imagination, I will give a concrete instance, as is usual in connection with Adjournments. It is exceedingly difficult to find instances, as the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary knows, because the women will not, in fact, say what is happening. I cannot even give an instance from my own constituency, but I can give one from the next-door constituency. The medical officer of health for Smethwick in his report for 1943 says: A married woman, the wife of a war worker and the mother of two young children, gave birth at St. Chad's to twins. On hearing the news, the landlady of the furnished rooms they occupied told the happy father that she would not allow the babies to return to the rooms—she did not like babies, and mother and children could die of exposure or go to the workhouse for all she cared; she could easily re-let her rooms. That is the kind of case I want to protect. It is very difficult, I know, and the hon. Lady knows how difficult it is. This is no attack on the Ministry for its failure so far to protect these women, but I hope the Ministry will be able to find some method of doing so.
Recently the Labour Party on the Birmingham City Council raised this question, and they asked that a resolution be passed that access be afforded to water, light, heat, and lavatory accommodation for all expectant mothers and mothers with children under two. The Conservative chairman of the Birmingham City Council—the leader of the Conservative Party—refused to accept this Amend 2796 ment because he said there was no evidence. But, Sir, quite a number of applicants for corporation houses in Birmingham are women such as I have described, who apply for corporation houses because they can get no other and have found themselves in this difficulty.
I said I would be brief and, in conclusion, I hope that somehow the Government will find a method of making it an offence to turn out expectant mothers, and mothers with young children, from lodging houses, and that they will give them as much protection as is afforded to people under the Rent Restrictions Act. I do not know how this can be done. It may be by some system of issuing licences; it may be simply by instituting a very severe penalty so that when the crime is found out—and it is a crime—the penalty will be so severe as to deter people from committing it, because I think it is an accepted principle that the harder it is to find out a crime, the more important it is to make the penalty for that crime as great as possible when it is found out. I hope the Ministry will give this matter very careful consideration, and that when the hon. Lady replies she will see if she cannot afford some kind of protection for this very hard-pressed class.

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Miss Horsbrugh)
I quite agree with what the hon. Gentleman has said, but we believe, and as far as we have looked into this subject we are convinced, that the majority of people in this country do not turn these people out in the way described by the hon. Gentleman. He referred to what he called "reptiles" and "tough old ladies" who do this, but the majority of people in this country realise the need to help these people, and they are doing it sometimes under very difficult conditions. The hon. Gentleman asked whether there could not be some regulation, some form of licence, something by which a penalty could be imposed on these few exceptions.
I listened very anxiously, when he was nearing the end of his remarks, to hear what suggestion he would make, because I think we all agree that there is difficulty in dealing with this problem of the few. I quite saw his point when he said that a person might be frightened of the one he referred to as the "tough old land- 2797 lady." I think landladies can be very frightening, and the anxiety of wondering whether if you say this or do that you will then be told to leave, is very worrying for these people. I am glad he has taken this opportunity to raise the matter because it may bring it more to the notice of the public. What I would urge these people to do is to go to the local housing authority and tell them the facts. Hon. Members will remember that a little while ago we were talking about exorbitant rents for furnished houses, and we asked people if they were being charged an exorbitant rent, to go to the local housing authority. If people are treated like this, that is the first step to take.
But there are difficulties on both sides. I must be completely honest about this matter. We have heard of cases where it was clear that the room the woman was in was quite unsuitable as a place in which to have a baby, or, even if we arranged for maternity accommodation, as a place in which to keep a baby after-yards. The difficulty lay in the cooking and, above all, in the washing facilities. I have had to deal with this matter over and over again in reception areas, and I know how difficult it is if there are several babies in a house in which there are also several adults. I investigated one case in which a woman told her landlady well in advance of its arrival that she was going to have a baby, and the landlady said, "I feel that you will be far better off if you find other accommodation, because you have only the one small room, there are a number of people in the house and the arrangements for washing will be inadequate." The landlady did not turn the woman out, but she told her, several months before the baby arrived, to find other accommodation on these grounds.
I would like more facts about these cases, if I could get them, where landladies say to expectant mothers, "You will have to go immediately, because you are going to have a baby." The hon. Gentleman mentioned protection under the Rent Restrictions Acts; I am sure he does not think we can make an exception in the renting of furnished rooms in cases where there are children, or where a baby is coming. I have discussed the matter with several people, and I cannot see that that would give us a solution. It would be no help to pick out one or two par- 2798 ticular categories in legislation in this House. There would be many legal difficulties, and, further, I am not at all sure that it would not make matters much worse for people with children to get furnished rooms. The hon. Gentleman spoke of a case given by the medical officer of Smethwick, and said that somebody in an institution who had had twins had been told by her landlady that she would not have her back. I do not think that the mother and her twins were turned into the street; if these things can be brought to the notice of the local authority there are always ways and means in which help can be given.
I have investigated cases brought to my notice and found that there has been no communication whatever with the local authority. We want publicity, and we are getting a certain amount of publicity now, in which to say that the majority of people in this country are helping their neighbours and their children; a minority evidently seems not to be helping. When people come across these cases we ask that they should give us the facts. The mother or the mother-to-be should have no difficulty in going to her local housing authority. We have been trying to make an inquiry into this very subject, and have found it hard to find many such cases. Perhaps as a result of this Debate more people will come forward and tell us about cases of which they have personal knowledge. What we want are more facts.
By publicity, and with the help of hon. Members, we might get more facts. I quite see the difficulty of dealing with the problem but I am certain that if we find that this is really widespread, and that not a small minority but a majority of the people were concerned, we could show them as examples and by that very method bring them to act more kind-hearted. We will look into the matter further but at this moment there is no legislation, or Regulation, which could take these people into a particular category and say that whoever they were, they were not to be turned out.

Mr. Dugdale
Can anything be done to see that, while not turned out, they are not deprived of facilities which people expect when living in lodging houses and that they will not have heat and light cut off?

§ Miss Horsbrugh
They might get legal redress from the courts. If they are paying rent for their rooms and light and heat and cooking facilities, it would seem clear that they are not receiving what they are paying for, but there is this difficulty, that they would not go to the courts because then they might be turned out. We have, in our various services, further arrangements for helping maternity cases. They are given a priority for institutional accommodation when there are medical complications or the home conditions are unsuitable. We have tried to increase housing and to use all the accommodation that we have through our powers of requisition. Everyone is, in theory, in favour of that power of requisition, but I get many letters from hon. Members on both sides of this House on behalf of owners of requisitioned houses who think they ought to get them back, so it is not easy. It is a difficult problem. A house is not in 2800 every case suitable for a mother with babies. There might not be a sufficient water supply, and there are other cases where a lodging would not be suitable and ought not to be used by a mother with a baby. We are not attacking the majority of people who let furnished rooms but a minority who do not realise the hardship they cause. We hope that they, and the public as a whole, will realise that they ought to help and, above all, that those who are in difficulty will go to the local housing authority and explain their needs. Then we will get to know more about the cases and shall get a clearer picture of what is happening.