MENAGE OF THE SLUM

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7871, 5 August 1911, Page 5

MENAGE OF THE SLUM

A TYPICAL CASE GOOD -CITIZENSHIP DESTROYED. (By Charles C. Reade. Editor of the "New Zealand Weekly Graphic.") The editor of the “Times” * has asked me —in view of my lantern lecture at the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall on Monday—to describe a • typical example of bad housing in onr cities and show by actual fact bow it militates against health, life and citizenship. There is a certain type of house, squeezed into a narrow space at the head of blind lanes in cur cities, which at once comes to mind. In rear the “backyard' 5 is composed of a space exactly four foot wide sunk between the house 'itself and the wall of a two-storied stable adjoining. No man long inured to the decencies of suburbia can adequately imagine just exactly what that four feet represents. It would be just as hard to picture the sudden transformation of the little flower bods and garden plots that adorn the frontage, of his home into a space not more than fourteen feet square littered about with rubbish and a privy at ono end facing his front door. But this is an actual case existing in New Zealand to-day—the facts of which I propose now to recite. THE SLOAV MARCH OP DECAY. Possible few people know of a fourroomed house placed between a narrow chasm-like yard and the unlovely space in front. The slow march of decay is upon this city home. The roof leaks and the floor boards placed but a few inches above the ground level shake as you walk over them. Near the fireplaces and in the corners are rat holes that lead down to the damp humid earth below. The rooms are all narrow,,- stuffy places where the wall paper is torn and tarnished to the, colour of a penny and whore unhappily vermin congregate to share the humble lot of human, beings. There is a faint oppressive odour, too, that hangs to the tiny bedrooms with their ■low ceilings and the windows that will not open because the eash is warped. Bedrooms, I moan where the husband and wife and baby sleep in one (10 x 12), and four 'children sleep in the dther (10 x 8). There is also an old lady who Is a member of the household, and for her slumbers is reserved the couch in the “sitting room." This couch, a clumsy, ■ wooden affair, that forms an important unit in the sum total of Dio household furniture. . It is difficult to: picture that decrepit little habitation whore children have come into life‘and are growing up Hero little minds are moulded by the language, the -habits, and the example of their elders. Here little bodies are being developed according to the methods and necessities of the poor. Their food is contaminated, more or less, through the conditions under which it is supplied, in the one case, and in the other by the surroundings where it is kept. Cupboards are virtually a luxury in houses such as this, and as for baths, sinks, or inside taps—such things mostly belong to the great unknown. A caudle box or two and a bit'of trough shelving answer all requirements. The food is left there in the day where flies are free to ream, and at night put into tins i: ocause of the rats that hold high revel there in the darkness. Those people after, all are hopelessly inefficient ’members of the community' down in. the rut. - where the ordinary conveniences ami requisites to cleanliness are denied them. They accept the conditions thus imposed by ■’ poverty and "the rights r t private property” with that dumb acquiescence which is the fruit of habit. If the roof does leak and the rats and the vortmin are troublesome at night, or the odours from the stable immediately adjoining invade their tiny home, it is no use complaining. They never see nor do they even know w,ho is their landlord. He leaves it entirely to the, agent to . collect Die Weekly toll, and if the tenant* . do ask or plead for a plumber to repair the roof, there is always the stock answer forthcoming that repairs cannot possibly be made Without a corresponding increase in the rent. ■■ ■■...... THINGS AS THEY ARE. ’ The husband—a casual labourer whose income fluctuates from; 30s to £2 5s per week, ocoording to the trade of the port—is silenced beyond protest. ' Ho knows .very well that at the’ rent he is paying—Bs G>l per week—ho cannot get another house cheaper, and ho must at all costs be near the waterfront, in order to get employment. The wife‘grumbles to her neighbour and the children, inner cent of everything except dirt, continue ' ' to play amongst the rubbish and the , accumulations’ of the yard. It is easy. ;; to see how circumstances in such a case compel human beings to abide with A things as they are and not what, they might be. Because of this, because our- ’ local authorities and health officers require wider powers to compel repairs, more air space and conveniences, here is a family and a home which is a living , menace to the health of the com-, munity. The wife keeps fairly well, but the husband has fits of coughing, and the children readily catch prevailing . epidemics. If you could watch them at ; their scanty meals of bread and butter —sometimes dripping—the inevitable tea, and a bit of fish, moat not every day, : or (as a treat) pork for Sunday dinner,- ' if you could real ire the quality and the i nature of their staple foods, understanding of failure on their part in citizen-, ship should become simple. Poor food ‘ consumed amid insanitary surroundings : .can hut produce physical ■ inefficiency. ; Unhappily, ns the history of older countries, where actual slums are in exist- , once, shows, these: defects in the focxl supply (combined with the habits of the , people) are more often- productive of disease, moral failing, and complete social ; incompetence. This is no picturesque ~ I sketch of life in our cities. Consideration is asked not for the sake of. a thrill, - nor merely an appeal to sentiment. - All that is required for the momentis that ; the. public should come to with ■ what realities do exist in young New Zealand—realities hidden away from, the gaze of citizens in little odd corner! or squeezed into the ugliness of some congested area where the least prosperous reside-

EFFECT OF ENVIRONMENT. The story of this human habitation it not yet finished. In the ’’yard ’ there is exactly one outside tap that has to do duty for'the whole household. Lack of space compels the wife to hang out her washing in front—that is when she is not out supplementing the family income by "charing” in other people’s homes. The clothes therefore have to be carried through the house before they can be dried. Thus washing is an inconvenience

and Uio minimum of necessity is indulged in. Tho wife is still a young woman, now with Jifif--; or rviru iu lieu - luce. H (Jl ' hair and cloUics have become oven as tinplace—iinti'iy. ili-onion d, and careless. The cyt-s 01 a young girl that ones dancnfl with laugh ut and the joy of living, have hr/Hjio dull and sunken, presaging the* weight of years and tho loss of hope- 3s she clean about tho house? I)oe,s she wash her children daily? Those xiro qnoptions ono cannot answer in the Affirmative and yet in common justice would you condemn her for tho failing. - ' She and her husband ami the old lady, now almost bevoml housework. have lived in this ramshackle cdtage tucked away at tho head of a blind lane for nearly Keven year-.. For that period of married life she has looked out on to the •Jingy space in front and tho yard in rear with* Iks greasy sink and curious odours. She has "mothered her children thorn and grown accustomed to the surroundings. They are to her tho normal, Uio average, in fact the decent thing. She is now the creature of her environment. When i suggested to her, as we stood amid tho debris ono flay, that ftho ought to have a better homo sho turned dogged. ••Wots wrong with this, anyway?” she asked. "You could do bettor,” I suggested. "It s good enough for mo and Hawkins- We've lived hero nigh on seven years, wo 'avo. Wo don t want to shift/* "Why not try for a newer house?'” 1 ventured once more. t "“Why." sho responded quickly, "find mo a bettor house than this for 8s 6d —you caw ’at/' Thorn was tho whole problem. This young-old woman had unconsciously touched a x> r °found economic fact. The margin between tlio family income and their necessities could not stretch to more than Bs Gd per week. But how •comes so cheap a rent in tho city? That is just tho iinal point X want to como to now. DOES IT VA\ ? Tills cottage and its tiny plot of earth ts but ono of four human abodes squeezed Into a narrow alloy-way away from tho public street, r our homes and four families each looking into the other's yard, all tainted, with tho accumulated filth of years, no proper drainage, no privacy for the insanitary conveniences that gape open at ono another, and finally no consideration from landlord or agent. There is only tho dirt, tho squalor and misery, whilst all around, shutting out tho sky, tho cleansing sunlight, and tho sweet winds of God are high walls—walls of factories, stables, and premises of trado huddled together (ovon by the same causes and the same necessities. It can bo seen that 34a per week drawn from tho earnings of these four working families is not such an unprofitable return from so small an area built away from valuable frontages. From tho landlord's point of view such places pay. But does it pay the community to allow such places to fester at tho heart of society? The facts concerning these defective housing conditions in am* cities may make melancholy reading, but wo canno.t aflord to sentimentalise about them. It is a caso to bo up and doing. The details given here are not •exceptional, but represent a more or less familial* instance covering many essential details that cannot bo included in a ■compreHensive survey of city habitations such as I hope to give in Wellington on Monday night.. That survey, I might add In conclusion, will be accompanied by concrete cases, and is intended solely as * preliminary to a discourse on the progressive methods of tho age employed in alder countries to prevent the repetition of similar problems arising from, exactly similar causus.