THE POOR OF LONDON.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 41, 15 March 1884, Page 6

THE POOR OF LONDON.

Tiik condition of the poor m London and other great cities ot the United Kingdom Is simply indescribable. No savage race ever reached a stage of deeper immorality and barbarism ; none ever endured more terrible sufferings through the callousness or cruelty of their fellow -men. In Scotland, the people are perhaps worse housed than m England-- forty-one per cent, of the tenancies of (ilasgow are one-room dwellings, and 'M two-rooms. No doubt these returns include lodgers, but they also renresont thousands of families huddled together, day and night, m the com|ia>s of oiie small room, m Avhieh little or no attempt can be made to preserve the decencies of life or conform to sanitary laws ; where, m fact, as Lord Salisbury wrote of the dens of London, "they eat, sleep, multiply and die.'' In some of these dens, not one but two and three families herd together. The misery and squalour of the poor m Edinburgh probably exceeds m the aggregate that of the commercial metropolis of the North. We clip from the " .Scotsman " of the 20th December last the following advertisement soliciting aid for the wretched inhabitants of the slums of the city : —

"Tin-: Tkkkii;u: Ukstitttio.n. —On Friday night (14th December) J had to visit one of the houses of the poor. One of these •—mother, father, and three little childrenwere so utterly destitute and wretched that the house is literally empty of furniture. The state of misery m this one- roomed house is ,-o great that the two children, aged ten and seven years, wander on the .streets at night, and for about two years Imccbecn m. the habit of sleeping on the .stones at night. Even that night oi the terrible storm this week they were sleeping on the stone steps rather than go into their wretched home. Think of this, ye fathers and mothers, who would rather die thsin that your darling children should sutler even the chill blast of winter. And who is the neighbour to these little children ? The answer is, the policeman. And where is this home, you will ask? It [;• not 100 yards from the Free Assembly Hall, about 100 yards from t lie Established Church, where the Ocneral Assembly meets. There are some six churches within bow-shot of this oneroomed house. To-day (Wednesday), 19th, i visited some mast painful cases of destitution m tin; Fountainbiidgo district. Let the people of Edinburgh Jay to heart that three children were sent to-day to school not having tasted food for 24 hours. Every day we are visiting such cases. 1 have no doiibt there are hundreds of similar cases. May (iod melt, the hearts of the men and women who have money and to spare themaehes to visit the houses of the poor, and themselves receive the blessings of the poor. This alone will heal the dreadful state of misery presently prevailing. Can anyone imagine the terrible state things are m when just a week ago the Sheriff oliiccr broke open a door m a house m Edinburgh, and found the corpse of a young man m ' bed." lying for nearly three months eaten up of worms V No food m house.' 1 This is no new tiling. Men and women and little children have so lived and si: tiered and died at. any time during the present century, and their groans have been unheeded by the well-led millions who talk of free and happy and Christian England. Or if the gaunt ligure of death, emerging from the confines of this inferno, has stalked abroad among the cosy dwellings ot the wealthy ; or perchance the starved hordes, driven to desperation, have become menacing m their demeanour, organised repression has been exercised to put down the troublesome ourbreak, and when this was accomplished, the disagreeable subject has been dismissed as being an exceedingly unpleasant and aggravating cloud over the sun which dispenses warmth and happiness and abundance to the hearts and stomachs of those who have possessed themselves of the lion's share of the earth and the fulness thereof. Appeals to the humane sentiments of the people, though awakening responsive chords m the hearts of philanthropists, failed to move the nation or its Government. In 18(58, when m England, Sir George Grey published a series of letters m the London 'Daily News " with the object of exciting sympathy for the condition of the poor of England. In these papers he proved, from a report to the Privy Council, that the agricultural population of England had been steadily sinking m the vortex of pauperism for throe centuries. One of these letters, originally printed sixteen years ago, we republish m our Supplement to-day. The appeal, however, fell on deaf ears. English statesmen have treated the declaration that the poor shall be always with us as though it were a command to accept poverty as a divinely-appointed institution.

At last, however, the public conscience has been awakened. The people of England are profoundly agitated. Mr Archibald Forbes, writing to a Sydney contemporary recently, says :— " The populace are thrilling with pity and indignation over the revelations of the " Horrible London " whose air so many of us breathe. Cabinet ministers are wandering among the slums, notebook m hand. The cry of the wretched is reaching up to

heaven through tho thick curtain of London fog ; it has pierced the yet thicker film of London Philistine indifference." The change has been wrought solely by faithful writers holding up for public inspection a true picture of the poor as they are — spocial correspondents, have won more enduring fame by penetrating the wastes where London barbarism roigns supreme than were earned by expeditions to the wilds of Central Africa, or exploits of journalistic enterprise performed on the fields of military carnage m Europe. The correspondent of the " Daily News," describing his explorations, says :— "In the early part of the present year 1 spent some two months m visiting some of the worst slums of London, and investigating the condition of the inhabitants. I

not only went from cellar to attic, but I traced back the family history of many of its occupants. I followed the workers to their work, the thieves and wantons to their haunts, the children to their schools, and the homeless loafers to the holes and corners, the open passages and back yards where they herded together at night. 1 began my task with a light heart, but finished it with a heavy one. In that two months I saw a vision of hell more terrible than the immortal Florentine's, and this was no poet's dream — it was a terrible truth, ghastly m its reality, heartbreaking m its intensity, and the doom of the imprisoned bodies inthis modern Inferno was as horrible as any that Dante depicted for his tortured souls. But the most terrible thing of all was that the cases of many of these lost creatures seemed utterly hopeless. 1 felt this then, and now that the press has been Hooded with suggestions, I feel it still."

The pessimism of tin's writer is only too well sustained by the experience of other reforms, llr has been pointed out that Paris, which m KSf)3 was a counterpart, of the London of to-day, was wholly rebuilt upon the latest plans of modern .science, under the direction of Napoleon 111., and the £ I '1-1,000,000 spent on this gigantic work has produced no measurable change m the poverty and crime of the French capital. The (loverninent may compelgrasping landlords to pull clown theirfever-breeding rookeries, but will not the compulsory outlay of capit.nl provoke new oppressions on the miserable classes who have found some sort of shelter from the elements m these places? Millions may be spent m carrying bivad roads, as m Paris, through the pestilential lanes of the metropolis, and m erecting comfortable tenements, but. will the poor occupy them, or will they fall into the hands of a el i.ss already fairly well of!', while other persons m the community, now just above the level of the lowest order, are forced down by the extra taxation laid upon them to uive cheap rents to persons no worse oil' than themselves '! These are questions that are now being asked m England, and which the Parliamentary Commission lately appointed must reply to, and on the answer will turn the future of England. That this problem may not be reproduced m these new lands should be the Hist care of our statesmen. The germs already exist m our social system, but it is not yet too late to prevent their development by applying antidotes to the poison of criminal and pauperising agencies.