HOW THE POOR LIVE

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4301, 9 March 1901, Page 4 (Supplement)

HOW THE POOR LIVE

SOME OF THE DANGERS OF THE SWEATING SYSTEM.

In the course of an interesting article on ‘‘The Dangers of Home Work,” .Miss M. H. Inviri, of the Scottish Council for Women’s Trades, gives the following cases as illustrating the conditions met with: ONE PENNY AN HOUR.

Airs A. is the wife of a cobbler. Sho has four children, the eldest of whom is 11 years of age and the youngest eight months. Airs A. is engaged on trouserfinishing, for which she is paid (men’s) 2jd and (boys’) l(d per pair. Each pair takes 1 1 hours to finish, and she supplies her own thread. Her husband’s earnings amount to 13s a week. With very hard and late .work she can sometimes make a little over os a week. Her usual average is 4s. This family of six persons inhabit a single which when visited was found to be in an indescribable state of dirt and general unwholesomeuess. The trousers cn which the woman was engaged were lying in piles on the filthy floor. The youngest child was lying in bed, covered over with some of the work, while the other children, unkempt and unwashed, rolled about on the floor among the remainder. Furniture and floor were foul with grease and the accumatuled fragments of stale food, etc., and the latter had evidently been neither washed nor swept for many a day. It would not be straining the probabilities of the case too far to suppose the presence of vermin, and apparently one of the children was suffering from some cutaneous disorder quite likely to be .of a contagious nature. The garments on which the mother was working would readily lend ; themselves to the dissemination of noth evils far and wide. Take another case. Airs 8., who is also a trouser-finisher, is the wife of a labourer, and the mother of seven chil- I dren. She, too, receives 2-J-d per pair ' for the trousers she finishes. Each oair takes I’,- hours to finish. For others, taking six hours’ work, she gets 7d a dozen. As her husband is unsteady in his habits she seldom gets any help from him, and she and the eldest girl, who earns 7s a week at a pottery, arc practically the bread-winners of the household. Their family income is supplemented by taking in two men lodgers. This household of 11 persons was accommodated in two* rooms, both, of which were in a very dirty and insanitary state. Here, too, the work was lying heaped on the floor and the beds. The former furnished a happy hunting-ground for a large and flourishing brood of cockroaches. The sanitary appliances cf the tenement were apparently in a very bad state through the neglect or abuse of the occupants. Stair and passage were alike filthy. Another case is that of Mrs C., the wife of a labourer who is irregularly employed, and. whose weekly wage is 17s or 18s a week when at work. Mrs C. has three children, all of whom are under six years of age. She is a shirtmaker, and is paid Is 3d a dozen for men’s shirts and Is for hoys’. These shirts take 14 and 12 hours respectively to sew. In this case the family occupied two rooms, both horribly dirty and almost destitute of furniture. THE SANITARY ASPECT'.

A husband and wife engaged in the slipper-making trade were visited. They made the- goods and sold them on their own account. ' Material for a dozen pairs cost 7s, and they were hawked through the streets, or sold to shops for 10s a dozen. Slipper-making being a summer trade, the husband was idle in the winter, and the wife did charing when she could get it. Their joint earnings from the slipper-making amounted to 18s or 19s a week. “We have just to put up with things,” the woman said. They were an Irish couple, and tne buoyant national temperament evidently kept them afloat. The house wasi in a frightful state of squalor and dirt. It was in an outlying district bordering on the country, and in addition to housing the family proper it apparently afforded hospitality to the stray children and poultry of the neighbourhood. There were 13 children all living, the youngest of whom was 10 months old, while three were married, and out of the house, “praise be!” the mother said. The remaining 10 shared with their parents the two-roomed house in which tney all dwelt- together in unity, dirt, and unquenchable cheerfulness.

In another house visited two children wore found lying in bed very ill with some unknown disorder, and covered with the shirts which had come in for the mother to make. The doctor had not been called in. and the mother could not tell what was the matter, further than - that it was ‘ r some kind c trouble.” I do not propose to .speak here or either the social or the economic side of the home-work question. . . I merely quote these few figures as to wages and hours with a view to indicating what time a woman engaged under such conditions might reasonably he expected to give to matters of personal and domestic cleanliness, and what must bo the inevitable results of the neglect of this in cases where so many persons are crowded together in a single apartment, widen has to serve as bedroom, kitchen, sittingroom, workshop, nursery, and frequently sick-room as well. SQUALOR AND DIRT.

It is almost impossible to give any adequate idea of the dreary squalor of many of these places, which have to do duty both as homes and workshops, and which do not meet the most elementary requirements of either. The usual approach to them is by a dismal, dilapidated stair, the atmosphere of which is merely a congestion of evil odours. The landings and passages are foul with all manner of stale debris. The rooms themselves are sometimes overcrowded with dirty lumber representing furniture, sometimes almost destitute of furniture of any kind. The bed, which is usually the leading architectural feature of the apartment, is most frequently that supreme abomination, peculiar to Scotland, known as the '‘box” or “concealed'’ bed. It has been suggested that this may be a lingering relic of ’our cavedwelling ancestors. By day it serves indifferently as a wardrobe, a larder, a playground for the children, and a sort of free coup for the, household odds and ends. It has to receive the vests, trousers, shirts, and other garments the mother has been making up, the unwashed dinner dishes, the ailing baby, or its grandmother as the case may be. It may also have consigned to its friendly shade the person of that member of the family commonly referred to by his better-half as “him there” during periods when circumstances, alas 1 render a temporary retirement from society advisable. At night the same enclosure may have to accommodate, above and below, the entire members of the family. In the case of a sbawl-fringer, where a still Tower depth of poverty had been reached, the only furnishings the room contained was an old chair, a broken cradle, and some empty packing cases. The bed was a mere heap of filthy rags in a comer. Here, as in other cases, thej

.: r .. ASS deficiency in blankets and bedding would bo made up from the work taken in from the warehouse to be done at home. It would he strange indeed if the children of these homes should escape the many and infectious disorders from, which children even in the most favourable circumstances have no immunity. As a matter of fact, pf course, all such diseases are. rampant among them, and the rate of mortality is appalingly high. The remark of one poor mother who iiad buried nine little children was significant enough—“ God took most o’ my bairns. He’s the best friend wo poor folk have.” The thought is an inevitable one that Death was kinder to these poor helpless little ones than life was likely to have been. And it is not only the ravages of disease actually known and attested that fad to be considered here; it is the unknown and ungauged extent to which infection may be conveyed to the community at large from a single case by the vest, the shirt, or the little pinafore made by the mother at the bedside of the sick child, aud which may even have served it as a coverlet.