COMMITTEE ON RECOMMITMENT. (Hansard, 16 July 1857)

§ THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY

said, that a justification of the additional powers which the Bill would grant to remedy the evils of crowded dwellings would be found in a Report of the Commissioners of Police on the subject. The Act of 1851 had been beneficial beyond expectation. A better class of lodging-houses had sprung up, and accommodation of a higher standard was provided without increased payment. A case that had occurred under the amended Act furnished an example of the nature and extent of the evils which arose in lodging-houses not controlled by law— At a house No. 17 Lincoln Court, St. Giles's, in one room ten feet square, wherein three persons would be allowed by the regulations now enforced, seven men, nine women, and one child, were found huddled together in a most filthy 1543 state; the bedding dirty beyond description, no partitions or ventilation; and a, few minutes before the visit of the officer one of the women had been confined. The keeper was summoned on the 24th of October, 1854, to Bow Street Police Court, and fined £4, or six weeks' imprisonment. Not less than forty-eight medical men, being the metropolitan medical officers of their several districts, and living in the most densely crowded parts of the metropolis, attested the beneficial effects of the law. They stated that there had been a complete cessation of fever in these lodging-houses, that there had been, a great diminution in other diseases, a disappearance of vermin, and an increase of cleanliness, decency, and order. Forty medical men from the provincial districts gave their testimony to the same effect. The Report of the Commissioners of Police issued a few weeks ago stated— The Act (says the Report of 1857) for the well-ordering of Common Lodging-houses has now been in operation since the year 1851, and has been attended by most beneficial results. Before this enactment the evils existing in the lodging-houses of the poor were beyond description. Crowded and filthy, without water or ventilation, without the least regard to cleanliness or decency, they were hotbeds of disease, misery, and crime. Under the operation of the Act the evils attending such houses have been in a great degree removed or abated. It must, of course, be a work of time to establish a complete system of supervision, and there will be need of constant vigilance to maintain it; but a vast amount of improvement, sanitary and moral, has been already effected. The houses are now much improved and daily improving, the keepers are of a better class, and, without increase of payment, the accommodation provided for the poor is, in all respects, of a higher standard. These results will, without doubt, follow in greater degree as the operation of the law extends itself and becomes more searching and complete. He remembered the state of the lodging-houses of the metropolis before the Act of 1851, and he could assure their Lordships that the change approached the marvellous. Instead of dirt, impurity, and indecency, there was now cleanliness, decency, and order. He would take one sample. In Mint Street there was a lodging-house called "Jack Sheppard's house," which used to be frequented by such a desperate class of inmates that the police seldom dared to visit it even in the discharge of their duty. This House used to be a hotbed of vice, crime, and disease, but it was now precisely the reverse. He paid this house a visit not long ago, and he found in it eighty inmates in the common rooms, all peaceful and orderly, some engaged in cooking, others in eating, reading, or conversation. He next went upstairs, where 1544 he found everything sweet and clean, and when he spoke to the inmates they said that the change had been greater than, they could have supposed it in the power of any Act of Parliament to produce. The Scripture readers and city missionaries now had access to these houses, and a great effect was produced by their ministrations. On the Sunday before last one of the missionaries went his round through one of the most populous districts of the metropolis, which used also to be one of the most degraded. He found every one of these lodging-houses vacant, the whole body of the inmates having gone to attend the evening service in Exeter Hall. He felt bound to express his deep gratitude to the Commissioners of Police for the manner in which they had carried into effect the provisions of the statute. The labour thereby imposed upon the police had been very great. The Commissioners stated in their Report— In enforcing the provisions of the Common Lodging-houses Act, great care has been taken to impress upon the minds of the officers engaged in this duty the necessity of consideration and forbearance. The result of this system has been highly gratifying. During a period exceeding five years ending 1857, about 700,655 visits have been made, both by day and by night, among a class of persons deemed almost incorrigible, without the occurrence of one assault on any of the officers, and without one just complaint of intrusion into a 'private dwelling.' The weekly distance travelled by the police in carrying out this Act was 800 miles, exclusive of the labour of mounting upstairs, diving into cellars, going to fetch medical men, and making their reports. Every night from 40,000 to 50,000 persons slept in these registered lodging-houses, and whenever he had paid night visits to these places he had found the Act duly carried out, and the rooms strictly sweet, wholesome, and well ventilated. There was, nevertheless, something to be done, and it was necessary that a certain class of houses and rooms should be brought within the beneficial regulations of the Act. These were tenement houses or tenement rooms as they were called, which were occupied by a number of persons professing to be members of a single family, one of whom paid the rent. The principle of English law, that "every man's house (or room) was his castle," was here grossly abused. The magistrates, whom he did not blame, had ruled that although a single room might be tenanted by a vast number of people, yet that if the person who hired the house or the room, 1545 and who paid the rent, declared that all the persons living with him were members of the same family, that was a private room or house, and could not be brought within the Act. The Report of the Metropolitan Police for 1857 gave the following description of one of these tenement rooms— In the occupation by families of single rooms all the evils incident to the crowding of persons together without regard to age or sex are produced. On visiting a house in Church Lane, St. Giles's, soon after midnight, there were found in a room, measuring 14 feet 6 inches by 14 fret 6 inches, no less than thirty-seven men, women, and children, all lying together on the floor like beasts, with scarcely any other covering than the clothes taken from their persons, which they had worn throughout the day. On opening the door leading into this loathsome place the heat was so great and the odour so offensive as to make it nearly unsupportable. No means whatever were employed to ventilate the room, except the chimney. Dr. Letheby, the able medical officer of the City Board of Health, said in his valuable Report for the present year that there were— Numerous instances where adults of both sexes, belonging to different families, are lodged in the same room, regardless of all the common decencies of life, herding together like brute beasts; where all the offices of nature are performed in the most public and offensive manner, where every human instinct of decency is smothered—a woman suffering in travail in the midst of males and females of different families that tenant the same room, birth and death going hand in hand. A scientific man would tell their Lordships that "in such a polluted atmosphere it was not surprising that epidemic and other infectious maladies should almost decimate the population." These persons, occupying tenement houses or rooms, as he had stated, were excluded from the operation of the Bill, because they declared that they were all members of the same family. The definition of the word "family," as given in the Bill, embraced within its compass the relations of grandfather and grandmother, and must, he thought, be regarded as sufficiently liberal in its character. It would, in fact, leave a large number of homes which would be untouched by the law; and yet the testimony of the inspecting sergeants of police, as well as of medical men of the greatest eminence throughout the country, was to the effect that, unless those houses containing single families were brought under the control of legislation, the ravages which fever and disease committed 1546 among the lower classes could never effectually be put an end to. But, although he felt that the Bill did not go so far as it was desirable that it should, he had to a great extent paid regard to the dwellings of private families notwithstanding; but it was his opinion that no great hardship would be inflicted upon them if they were, as far as possible, brought under the operation of the Common Lodging-houses Act, and thus enabled to enjoy the advantages of an improved ventilation and greater cleanliness. The 4th clause of the Bill gave to the Commissioners of Police the power of calling upon the local authorities to put into operation the Nuisances Removal Act of 1855, section 29, and having stated thus much he believed he had put their Lordships in possession at least of the substance of the measure. It was one of a character very simple and very short. It conferred no new powers, although it assigned some new duties, and if it were permitted to pass into a law it would, he felt assured, conduce to the removal of many evils, the magnitude of which could be ascertained by personal observation alone. In making an effort of that kind their Lordships had to deal with a class of people who, however degraded they might seem, were good at the bottom, and who were animated by aspirations nobler than their position enabled them to carry into effect. In helping these persons, so far as to give them the power to help themselves, their Lordships would be conferring upon them a great boon, and he felt assured that every effort which was made in that direction would be amply repaid by the increased industry and comfort of which it would be productive, and by the gratitude which it would inevitably evoke.