University of Virginia Library

OF THE LOW LODGING-HOUSES OF LONDON.

The patterers, as a class, usually frequent the
low lodging-houses. I shall therefore now pro-
ceed to give some further information touching
the abodes of these people — reminding the reader
that I am treating of patterers in general, and
not of any particular order, as the "paper
workers."

In applying the epithet "low" to these places,
I do but adopt the word commonly applied,
either in consequence of the small charge for
lodging, or from the character of their fre-
quenters. To some of these domiciles, however,
as will be shown, the epithet, in an opprobrious
sense, is unsuited.

An intelligent man, familiar for some years
with some low lodging-house life, specified the
quarters where those abodes are to be found,
and divided them into the following districts, the
correctness of which I caused to be ascertained.

Drury-lane District. Here the low lodging-
houses are to be found principally in the Coal-
yard, Charles-street, King-street, Parker-street,
Short's-gardens, Great and Little Wyld-streets,
Wyld-court, Lincoln-court, Newton-street, Star-
court.

Gray's -inn Lane. Fox -court, Charlotte-
buildings, Spread Eagle-court, Portpool-lane,
Bell-court, Baldwin's-gardens, Pheasant-court,
Union-buildings, Laystall-street, Cromer-street,
Fulwood's-rents (High Holborn).

Chancery-lane. Church-passage, and the
Liberty of the Rolls.

Bloomsbury. George-street, Church-lane,
Queen-street, Seven-dials, Puckeridge-street
(commonly called the Holy Land).

Saffron-hill and Clerkenwell. Peter-street, Cow-
cross, Turnmill-street, Upper and Lower White-
cross-street, St. Helen's-place, Playhouse-yard,
Chequer-alley, Field-lane, Great Saffron-hill.

Westminster. Old and New Pye-streets, Ann-

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street, Orchard-street, Perkins's-rents, Roches-
ter-row.

Lambeth. Lambeth-walk, New-cut.

Marylebone. York-court, East-street.

St. Pancras. Brooke-street.

Paddington. Chapel-street, Union-court.

Shoreditch. Baker's-rents, Cooper's-gardens.

Islington. Angel-yard.

Whitechapel, Spitalfields, &c. George-yard,
Thrawl-street, Flower and Dean-street, Went-
worth -street, Keate -street, Rosemary -lane,
Glasshouse-yard, St. George's-street, Lambeth-
street, Whitechapel, High-street.

Borough. Mint-street, Old Kent-street, Long-
lane, Bermondsey.

Stratford. High-street.

Limehouse. Hold (commonly called Hole).

Deptford. Mill-lane, Church-street, Gifford-
street.

There are other localities, (as in Mile-end,
Ratcliffe-highway, Shadwell, Wapping, and
Lisson-grove,) where low lodging-houses are to
be found; but the places I have specified may
be considered the districts of these hotels for
the poor. The worst places, both as regards
filth and immorality, are in St. Giles's and
Wentworth-street, Whitechapel. The best are in
Orchard-street, Westminster (the thieves having
left it in consequence of the recent alterations
and gone to New Pye-street), and in the Mint,
Borough. In the last-mentioned district, in-
deed, some of the proprietors of the lodging-
houses have provided considerable libraries for
the use of the inmates. In the White Horse,
Mint-street, for instance, there is a collection of
500 volumes, on all subjects, bought recently,
and having been the contents of a circulating
library, advertised for sale in the Weekly Dis-
patch.

Of lodging-houses for "travellers" the
largest is known as the Farm House, in the
Mint: it stands away from any thoroughfare,
and lying low is not seen until the visitor stands
in the yard. Tradition rumour states that the
house was at one time Queen Anne's, and was
previously Cardinal Wolsey's. It was proba-
bly some official residence. In this lodging-
house are forty rooms, 200 beds (single and
double), and accommodation for 200 persons.
It contains three kitchens, — of which the largest,
at once kitchen and sitting-room, holds 400
people, for whose uses in cooking there are two
large fire-places. The other two kitchens are
used only on Sundays; when one is a preach-
ing-room, in which missionaries from Surrey
Chapel (the Rev. James Sherman's), or some
minister or gentleman of the neighbourhood,
officiates. The other is a reading-room, sup-
plied with a few newspapers and other peri-
odicals; and thus, I was told, the religious and
irreligious need not clash. For the supply of
these papers each person pays 1d. every Sun-
day morning; and as the sum so collected is
more than is required for the expenses of the
reading-room, the surplus is devoted to the
help of the members in sickness, under the
management of the proprietor of the lodging-
house, who appears to possess the full confi-
dence of his inmates. The larger kitchen is
detached from the sleeping apartments, so that
the lodgers are not annoyed with the odour of
the cooking of fish and other food consumed by
the poor; for in lodging-houses every sojourner
is his own cook. The meal in most demand is
tea, usually with a herring, or a piece of bacon.

The yard attached to the Farm House, in
Mint-street, covers an acre and a half; in it
is a washing -house, built recently, the yard
itself being devoted to the drying of the clothes
— washed by the customers of the establishment.
At the entrance to this yard is a kind of porter's
lodge, in which reside the porter and his wife
who act as the "deputies" of the lodging-
house. This place has been commended in
sanitary reports, for its cleanliness, good order,
and care for decency, and for a proper division
of the sexes. On Sundays there is no charge
for lodging to known customers; but this is a
general practice among the low lodging-houses
of London.

In contrast to this house I could cite many
instances, but I need do no more in this place
than refer to the statements, which I shall proceed
to give; some of these were collected in the course
of a former inquiry, and are here given because
the same state of things prevails now. I was
told by a trustworthy man that not long ago
he was compelled to sleep in one of the lowest
(as regards cheapness) of the lodging-houses.
All was dilapidation, filth, and noisomeness.
In the morning he drew, for purposes of ablu-
tion, a basinfull of water from a pailfull kept
in the room. In the water were floating
alive, or apparently alive, bugs and lice,
which my informant was convinced had fallen
from the ceiling, shaken off by the tread
of some one walking in the rickety apartments
above!

"Ah, sir," said another man with whom I
conversed on the subject, "if you had lived in
the lodging-houses, you would say what a vast
difference a penny made, — it's often all in all.
It's 4d. in the Mint House you've been asking
me about; you've sleep and comfort there, and
I've seen people kneel down and say their
prayers afore they went to bed. Not so many,
though. Two or three in a week at nights,
perhaps. And it's wholesome and sweet enough
there, and large separate beds; but in other
places there's nothing to smell or feel but bugs.
When daylight comes in the summer — and it's
often either as hot as hell or as cold as icicles
in those places; but in summer, as soon as its
light, if you turn down the coverlet, you'll
see them a-going it like Cheapside when it's
throngest." The poor man seemed to shudder
at the recollection.

One informant counted for me 180 of these
low lodging-houses; and it is reasonable to say
that there are, in London, at least 200 of them.
The average number of beds in each was com-
puted for me, by persons cognizant of such

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matters, from long and often woful experience,
at 52 single or 24 double beds, where the
house might be confined to single men or
single women lodgers, or to married or pre-
tendedly married couples, or to both classes.
In either case, we may calculate the number
that can be, and generally are, accommodated at
50 per house; for children usually sleep with
their parents, and 50 may be the lowest com-
putation. We have thus no fewer than 10,000
persons domiciled, more or less permanently,
in the low lodging-houses of London — a number
more than doubling the population of many a
parliamentary borough.

The proprietors of these lodging-houses mostly
have been, I am assured, vagrants, or, to use the
civiller and commoner word, "travellers" them-
selves, and therefore sojourners, on all necessary
occasions, in such places. In four cases out of
five I believe this to be the case. The proprie-
tors have raised capital sufficient to start with,
sometimes by gambling at races, sometimes by
what I have often, and very vaguely, heard
described as a "run of luck;" and sometimes,
I am assured, by the proceeds of direct robbery.
A few of the proprietors may be classed as
capitalists. One of them, who has a country
house in Hampstead, has six lodging-houses in
or about Thrawl-street, Whitechapel. He looks
in at each house every Saturday, and calls his
deputies — for he has a deputy in each house
— to account; he often institutes a stringent
check. He gives a poor fellow money to go
and lodge in one of his houses, and report the
number present. Sometimes the person so sent
meets with the laconic repulse — "Full;" and
woe to the deputy if his return do not evince
this fulness. Perhaps one in every fifteen of the
low lodging-houses in town is also a beer-shop.
Very commonly so in the country.

To "start" a low lodging-house is not a very
costly matter. Furniture which will not be
saleable in the ordinary course of auction, or
of any traffic, is bought by a lodging-house
"starter." A man possessed of some money,
who took an interest in a bricklayer, purchased
for 20l., when the Small Pox Hospital, by
King's-cross, was pulled down, a sufficiency of
furniture for four lodging-houses, in which he
"started" the man in question. None others
would buy this furniture, from a dread of in-
fection.

It was the same at Marlborough-house, Peck-
ham, after the cholera had broken out there.
The furniture was sold to a lodging-house
keeper, at 9d. each article. "Big and little,
sir," I was told; "a penny pot and a bedstead
— all the same; each 9d. Nobody else would
buy."

To about three-fourths of the low lodging-
houses of London, are "deputies." These are
the conductors or managers of the establish-
ment, and are men or women (and not unfre-
quently a married, or proclaimed a married
couple), and about in equal proportion. These
deputies are paid from 7s. to 15s. a week each,
according to the extent of their supervision; their
lodging always, and sometimes their board,
being at the cost of "the master." According
to the character of the lodging-house, the depu-
ties are civil and decent, or roguish and insolent.
Their duty is not only that of general superin-
tendence, but in some of the houses of a noc-
turnal inspection of the sleeping-rooms; the
deputy's business generally keeping him up all
night. At the better-conducted houses strangers
are not admitted after twelve at night; in others,
there is no limitation as to hours.

The rent of the low lodging-houses varies, I am
informed, from 8s. to 20s. a week, the payment
being for the most part weekly; the taxes and
rates being of course additional. It is rarely
that the landlord, or his agent, can be induced
to expend any money in repairs, — the wear and
tear of the floors, &c., from the congregating
together of so many human beings being exces-
sive: this expenditure in consequence falls upon
the tenant.

Some of the lodging-houses present no ap-
pearance differing from that of ordinary houses;
except, perhaps, that their exterior is dirtier.
Some of the older houses have long flat windows
on the ground-floor, in which there is rather
more paper, or other substitutes, than glass.
"The windows there, sir," remarked one man,
"are not to let the light in, but to keep the
cold out."

In the abodes in question there seems to have
become tacitly established an arrangement as to
what character of lodgers shall resort thither;
the thieves, the prostitutes, and the better class
of street-sellers or traders, usually resorting to
the houses where they will meet the same class
of persons. The patterers reside chiefly in West-
minister and Whitechapel.

Some of the lodging-houses are of the worst
class of low brothels, and some may even be
described as brothels for children.

On many of the houses is a rude sign,
"Lodgings for Travellers, 3d. a night. Boiling
water always ready," or the same intimation
may be painted on a window-shutter, where a
shutter is in existence. A few of the better
order of these housekeepers post up small bills,
inviting the attention of "travellers," by lauda-
tions of the cleanliness, good beds, abundant
water, and "gas all night," to be met with.
The same parties also give address-cards to
travellers, who can recommend one another.

The beds are of flock, and as regards the mere
washing of the rug, sheet, and blanket, which
constitute the bed-furniture, are in better order
than they were a few years back; for the visita-
tions of the cholera alarmed even the reckless
class of vagrants, and those whose avocations
relate to vagrants. In perhaps a tenth of the
low lodging-houses of London, a family may
have a room to themselves, with the use of the
kitchen, at so much a week — generally 2s. 6d. for a couple without family, and 3s. 6d. where
there are children. To let out "beds" by the
might is however the general rule.

The illustration presented this week is of a
place in Fox-court, Gray's-inn-lane, long noto-
rious as a "thieves' house," but now far less fre-
quented. On the visit, a few months back, of an
informant (who declined staying there), a num-
ber of boys were lying on the floor gambling
with marbles and halfpennies, and indulging in
savage or unmeaning blasphemy. One of the
lads jumped up, and murmuring something that
it wouldn't do to be idle any longer, induced a
woman to let him have a halfpenny for "a stall;"
that is, as a pretext with which to enter a shop
for the purpose of stealing, the display of the
coin forming an excuse for his entrance. On
the same occasion a man walked into "the
kitchen," and coolly pulled from underneath
the back of his smock-frock a large flat piece
of bacon, for which he wanted a customer. It
would be sold at a fourth of its value.

I am assured that the average takings of lodg-
ing-house keepers may be estimated at 17s. 6d. a night, not to say 20s.; but I adopt the lower
calculation. This gives a weekly payment by
the struggling poor, the knavish, and the out-
cast, of 1,000 guineas weekly, or 52,000 guineas
in the year. Besides the rent and taxes, the
principal expenditure of the lodging-house pro-
prietors is for coals and gas. In some of the
better houses, blacking, brushes, and razors are
supplied, without charge, to the lodgers: also
pen and ink, soap, and, almost always, a news-
paper. For the meals of the frequenters salt is
supplied gratuitously, and sometimes, but far
less frequently, pepper also; never vinegar or
mustard. Sometimes a halfpenny is charged
for the use of a razor and the necessary shaving
apparatus. In one house in Kent-street, the
following distich adorns the mantel-piece:

In some places a charge of a halfpenny is made
for hot water, but that is very rarely the case.
Strong drink is admitted at almost any hour in
the majority of the houses, and the deputy is
generally ready to bring it; but little is consumed
in the houses, those addicted to the use or abuse
of intoxicating liquors preferring the tap-room
or the beer-shop.