LONDON LIFE ON £1 A WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 4, 24 July 1912, Page 61

LONDON LIFE ON £1 A WEEK.

Among the speakers at the annual conference of the Association of Teachers of Domestic Subjects, held in London this week, was Airs. Pember Beeves, wife of New Zealand’s first High Commissioner. Airs. Reeves’ contribution was an interesting discourse on “Housekeeping on £1 per week in London,” which is a vastly different thing to living on £1 a week in a country place. In the course of her paper Airs. Reeves said that if the family income was only £1 a week “housekeeping” had to be done on a part of it. The size of the family had, of course,, much to do with the problem. The people about whom she was talking were people in regular work, absolutely steady and respectable. The wages a man got were divided into two parts, the amount he gave his wife and the amount he kept for himself. She had been surprised to find that in numerous cases the amount the man kept for himself was nothing. The wife gave him a penny or a half penny for a tram when it was necessary, but very often lie did not get even that. A man getting 25/ a week might keep 2/ or 3/ or even 5/ for himself. It seemed to be a convention that if the man gave the lady £1 a week, she had nothing to complain about. Out of th? £1 she had to pay rent, provide light, insurance, clothing, cleanliness, and food. Rent was made the first call. It was quite a common thing for a family in which there were five or six children to pay 8/ or 9/ out of the £1 for rent. Insurance was the saving of this class,

but they saved only for death, and to avoid the parish funeral. She had known cases where 2/ a week went for this, but more often it was about lid. Coal to these people was, in normal times, 1/2 to 1/6 per cwt. Gas, if they had it, they got by the dear method ot the penny-in-the-slot. That might be a shilling a week, in which case it would do part of the cooking.

She knew a carter on 24/ a week. He gave his wife 21/, and out of the remainder he clothed himself, paid his fares, and bought his tobacco, and so forth. The wife fed him. Their rent was 8/6, insurance 1/, eoal 1/6, oil 3d., candles Id., gas 4d.—11/8 out of 21/. There was thus 9/4 to spend on food for eight people. It was spent as follows: Bread 3/2J, tea Bd, sugar Bd, butter (margarine) 1/1, potatoes 9d, greens 4d, meat 2/7J; that came to 1/2 a head for eight people. But out of that a working man had to be kept. The woman told her that they could not keep a man in full work in good condition on less than 6d a day. The man’s food cost 3/6 a week. That brought the average for the others down to lOd, less than lid a day!

The general menu consisted of bread and dripping, suet pudding, and potatoes. Children of this class of people seldom saw milk. This family had one kettle and two pots. The wife told her that every time she washed the pots she looked to see whether there was a hole. If she saw one she said she should fill it with soap so that the pot would last a. bit longer. Asked if it would not make the food taste, she replied that sue used only the bc-t soap. That was the kind of life she found quite common. The children or families like that did not get fed at school. They wer? much too respectable. These children were the tidy, regular, well-behaved children.

In answer to a criticism that she had s.aio nothing about clothes, Mrs Reeves said she did not know how they managed. Some of them paid 6d a week to a boot club and some to a calico club. The man nearly always mended the boots himself, and it was no wonder that the ■women looked untidy, for they bought fifth hand, even tenth-hand, clothes.