POT STREET

Maoriland Worker, Volume 12, Issue 303, 20 December 1922, Page 3

POT STREET

A TYPICAL MINING TILLAGE. 1 By "One Who Has Been There/? ' j ■in the "Daily Herald." j The. Minister of Health is stated to j be of;, opinion that tbe demaid fprj houses-- ; &aa : .keen greatly exaggerated.;] SoniQ ot jis' wish he v,-o.uld have a ] look at i?pt Street, a L} r picai Diirhamj miuin-g. village. -..-"..- j A yesterday poet sang, "Life is real, life is earitest." ; ; Mrs. -Numher-Nine-Pot-Street heard i iiei' , second £'ii ; l chanting this line in j. the course of home-work preparaiion.; Mrs. JSlne.looked out of i her front door, at. the, jfow of oj»en privy midcleas. .all down the middle of the ix^ipaved, street. It, had been a wet morning,' and mud was evei'ywhere. Just then j Mrs. Three, emptied a pailful of slops" inta the open channel that runs along" the edge of the footpatJi, the liquid ran. down past the houses to Number | Tvv elv'e, where ii reached a gully grate and .entered the' Kewer. ■Mrs. Three liad no other place to empty the slops unless she pi;t them | in the mkldeu. "And it's bad enough ;. without that,'.' thought Mrs. Nine, visualising the once a week, or once a fortnight, if ".They" were busy, when the contents of the' privy middens! were thrown on. the street and left for f an hour or two in the middle of the day until'carts came round to remove it—the, filth blowing into milk cans, bread baskets, and the babies' ptams," > as the daily life of the street perforce,. went on. ... '. ■*' ..***■• Pot Street houses h,ave two rooms, one up and one down; the front door opens into the kitchen-living room, and the staircase. leads out of this room. .A, lean-to scullery serves also as a larder. There is no water s«pply insfde, nor sink to carry off waste j water, .and all that is required for a ] family's use has to be carried in from j Uie street .stand-pipe, one to each-ten houses, and carried out to the channel. There are 36 houses each side of tlie street, arid one gully to 12 houses. At One there are six people dowastaits; tne. father of the family was gassed .In'the war, and still has chest trouble. Upstairs is another family of five. '. At Four is only one tenant, but 11 people. IJessie Four is tubercular, and has. .just come from six months' stay in a sanatorium. She sleeps in a room with five others. At Fifteen there are six people. Mr.. Fifteen is dying of pulmonary tuberculosis. He and his wife, his daughter, son-in-law and their baby, sleep in the bedroom, while a youth of 17 sleeps in the kitchen. Eighty babies have been born in' Pot Street in the last four years, of whom 12 died in' their first year aml'j eight others between their first and\ fourth year. ■■■■.■'■■■. It is understood that State help foJthe building of working-class houses is withheld as a measure of national economy; it is respectfully submitted" that Pot Street is eiot a national economy. • i