"HAPPY " HOMES IN ENGLAND.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1919, 26 February 1875, Page 4

"HAPPY " HOMES IN ENGLAND.

A special reporter of "The Times " has been visiting Somersetshire, and he writes thus on October 24, resiDecting what he saw at a Tillage named Wiveliscombe :— I w*nt into one of the houses of this iw. In all probability it was the worst kept and in the worst repair. There was hardly a scrap of furniture in what may, by a stretch of fancy, be called the living room. The one bedroom upstairs was in a wretched condition. There were two filthy beds. ;One consisted of nothing but an old chaff mattress on the ground— its sole covering what looked like a patchwork counterpane, hardly distinguishable for dirt. A similar mattress, still more filthy, was stretched upon an old .-.four* post bedstead, and here, three weeks before, a girl of about 20 had given birth to an illegitimate child, while her father and-two brothers slept on the floor of the same room.

Further down the hill is a court best known as Billingsgate.. Two of the cottage? into which I went here, were of Ihe sanie class,' and evert iii worse repair, with single bed-rooms, boards gaping, and hardly able to.bear a vigorous spring, roofs not water-tignt, and the: concrete on the ground floor of the living room worn away in many places to the earth. A stalwart laborer and his wife lived in one of; these hovels, with three children. The man said he earned 10s. a week. His rent was Is. and the, woman added that coal now cost them Is. 4d. a week. She went out to dig :potatoes or to do ; any other work she could get, and then paid 2d. a day to an ; old woman to take care of the children. The stench was abominable. To any. traveller in search of the unpicturesque, another court, called Gullet, in another part of ; the village, may be safely recommended. A cottage in one corner : contains a man and his wife with nine or ten children. The eldest girl, 15 years old, was taking care of the household at the time of my^ visit, but the woman came in soon afterwards. Here again the earth showed through the concrete in the living room. An out-house opening from this room was tumbling down. The stairs were dangerous and you had to take two at once to avoida loose plank. There was one large bed-room, partitioned off into two. ; In the first of these rooms slept the man and his wife with, the baby. Directly overhead a large,piece of the plaster ceiling had lately fallen down, and if the babyhad Been beneath it, as the woman said, there would have been an end to its little life.. The man had attempted to-coyer this hole with a bit of old tarpauline, but the thatch above it- was also worn into holes, and in wet weather the rain came through "by the bucket." In the next room, where the children slept on two mattresses, large gaps in the wall gave ventilation enough and to spare. " You could , lie and look at the stars." At times . the woman said, when the- wind was . high, it blew down anything she could put to cover these gaps, and the children "might almost as well ssleep out of doors." Here also, in ,g:W,et weather, the rain streamed through £ithe thatch, and ran between the yawning *- beards-mbo-the living room below. Up-sfairs-.^ndr;doffn^ dirt,reigned supreme. Stich a'lißvelrind'eed,' let alone scanty m^n^ft^d^aP^waHttf'-of children, was enough todepire^Sjanyboldy, however tidy by nature. " Pigs~are better lodged," said the woman bitterly,, and I have, in fact, *WSn } sties which might easily be made more comfortable. It was of no use (she added) to ask the person from whom she rented the house, to do any repairs, and where were they to find a better house ? Her rent book showed that for this miserable home and a small garden patch she had till lately paid 2s. 6d. a week; but, I suppose, in consideration of its increasing wretchedness, the rent was now reduced to two shillings.--This, however,- was not the. abode of a farm laborer. This man was a mason's laborer, who "allowed" his wife (this was her expression) lls.^ a week for housekeeping and kept 2s. for • Himself. She thought this was not a large deduction, because out of it her husband 'clothed and shod himself, so that not much was left for "his pint of beer- and bit of'bacca." But of course she had to work too. So had her eldest daughter, and when both were away, the house and the .young children were left in charge of a girl of 12. There ere a good many allotments round Wiveliscombe, and I could at first hardly believe the statement which reached me that these allotments are let •at the rate of from £8 to £10 or even £12 an acre. On enquiry, however, the statement turned out to be no exaggeration. The land belongs to more than one owner, and is let by the rod, the lowest rental being Is Id, and the highest Is 6d, or £8 13s and £12 an acre. The land is of good quality; and the man who showed me his allotment, said the laborers were glad to get hold of it even at these prices, their " second crop " of mangold or turnipa generally paying the rent. He had more than a quarter of an acre, but the | majority of .the holders occupy less land. The rents paid by the farmers in the neighbourhood, he added, are abont 30s or £2. My informant was a small tradesman, not a laborer, and employed a man to spud the land st 3d a rod, so that upon his 52 rods this work cost him 13s. In political economy I suppose the value of a thing'is "just as much as it will bring ,' yet most people will have a strong opinion upon the greed which makes large profits through/the laborers, longing for a bit ofland, and wriijgs from him rents four or five times larger than those paid by the ,; farmer. ■