THE HOUSING PROBLEM

Evening Star, Issue 19062, 3 October 1925, Page 9

THE HOUSING PROBLEM

A VISIT TO LIMEHOUSE “THE CHARM OF THE SLUMS.** 1 How many people, before last weelty ’ had heard of Elfa street, Eastfiela street, Marroon street, or Carr street, Limehouse? (asks a writer ip the LdPdon ‘Observer’). Mean streets, von would, call them; grey vistas of drab’ little brick houses, a door and two windows to each, terminating in a blank wall or a pile of fish orates. Noisy, lusty, happy-go-lucky kiddies everywhere. Women sunning their elbow* at the doors; youths and men in “ chokers ” at the street corners, A soaring temple of gasometers, a railway embankment, and a dead-cat Wild _of canal as bulwarks against the outside world in general and the Stepney Council in particular. Such, at first glance, are the 9J acres which the council has condemned as insanitary, threatened with clearance, and marked for the erection of moderp blocks of flats. And yet from that congeries of humble working men’s homes has flared up a spirit ot intense local patriotism which has beaten like a tempest against the decorous green baize tables of the inquiry room in the Limehouse Town Hall, impelling the men and women threatened _ with dispossession to shout, to gesticulate, to point the finger of scorn and denunciation in defence of home, livelihood, and backyard. No Swiss marksman, defending his canton from foreign aggression, showed a fiercer spirit of revolt, PRIDE OP THE HADDOCK. Backyards, haddocks, and th«S Cockney spirit at its proudest may account for the phenomenon One had not been “ paying calls ” half an hour, in the company of Mr Morgan Hopkin, the champion of the tenants, before one realiseA»that this was not jnst a segment of the East End, like any other East End in Christendom, but virtually a self-contained village community—proud, independent, and with an industrial ancestry. A century and a-half ago fish-curing started there; to-day _ there are halt a dozen curing yards in the area supporting, directly and indirectly, probably not far short of a hundred families. The sheds,are, literally, in the backyards of some of the houses. In the when stoking-np for the night is going on, you may stand at your bade door under a gas attack of acrid deal and oak sawdust fumes, with the haddocks hanging before you all arow. It may not be ozone, but at least it is livelihood, and livelihood right at your door, as it was at your father’s and grandfather’s before you,People grow as jealous of work like that as the old hand-loom weavers of 100 years ago did of theirs. They also grow proud, boasting that haddocks from the Limehouse backyards penetrate even as far ns Buckingham Palace; and what will Buckingham Palace do if the little backyards with 1 their weather-boarded sheds have to make way for cupboards on stilts, tiet; upon tier? SOME PERSONAL PROTESTS,

In Buckley’s, which supports sixteen curers and some sixty-eight souls—one a woman of sixty, who says she will die if the place comes down and she can no longer work; some wnth as many ds eleven children—you find the sideboard in the tidy little back parlor stacked with silver cups won in trotting races, for all those flsh-curers ana I dock-workers have some hobby or other, from poultry and pigeon breeding to pmo-fighting. Over forty years the family has lived there. “Is it likely we’re going to see our business kicked from under ns now?” you are asked. 'Mr Fancourt, at the corner of Carr street, not only cures fish, but fries | and sells over the counter. Seventy ; years ago his grandfather was in the fish business in Limehouse Fields. An R.F.A. man, ho was wounded in the war. By dint of hard work ho saved enough to buy the freehold. “ Two years ago I refused £1,400 for it,” he says. “ And what will the ‘ site value'' bring me? Not more than, say, £400.” Then there is Mr Cafirey, ex-scrvicc man, who bought the goodwill of his little grocery shop only last April for £2OO. “It means,” he says,' “ that my savings will he taken from mo. I shall be a boilermaker on tho dole.” “ NEVER WILL BE SLAVES.” A hardy, swarthy veteran is Henry Fisher, near by. Seventy-five years ago ho was born in a Romany tent in Kent. “ I don’t want that there little house taken away from mo while I’m on thin coil,” he said, “and I’ll fight for it. Eleven children have been brought up there. There’s been two deaths in tho house in thirty-four years, and I’va never troubled a doctor for forty-five,' Is that insanitary? I don’t want ’em to make a serf o’ me, and put mQ where they think they will.” At every door I was shown bevies of lusty, laughing children. “ Look at ’em I ” said the proud mothers. “ Poor, weak, unhealthy things, aren’t they?” and sometimes: “I’ve ’ad fifteen like that. Sounds insanitary, don’t it?” One bouncing girl of twelve asked mo earnestly: “They’re not going to take' our house away, are they?” Well, are they? That is to ho decided by tho Forces of Progress after the resumed meeting. In the meantime much energetic titivating is going on in the area, and the occupiers are preparing to fight for tho haddocks, backyards, and Ideal homes to the last ditch. i But the backyards are tho wonder, with their washtubs, clothes lines, chicken houses, and even nasturtium and geranium boxes. Hero is Mr Derby’s, in Eastfield street—only 68ft of it, hut it has fowls which give him five or six eggs a day, rabbits, and pigeons. Four honny-looking grandchildren play about in it, and even tho youngest little chap has his own carrier pigeon. “ Look at ’em,” h© says; “they’re healthy enough, ain’t they? They get fresh air, and plenty of it. > D’you think I want ’em boxed up ir fiats ? ”