RAGGED LONDON.* WERE it in the nature of the English
people ever to despair of a good work to which they have once set their hands, we might have some fear for Mr. Hollingshead's book, lest it should receive less at- tention than it eminently deserves. But we have no such fear, though the public has been surfeited with an infinity of talking and writing about the cancerous parts of the metropolis, which has all ended in leaving the disease as deeply rooted and as malignant as ever. Mr. Holling,shead indulges in no superfluous variations upon a well-worn theme; all lie writes in this book is thoroughly to the purpose. He has no pet scheme to advocate, he is neither a senti- mentalist nor a professional philanthropist, but he presents a most clear and comprehensive statement of the main facts which have to be dealt with, and he shows how and why all the measures hitherto re- lied on as remedial have only helped to intensify the evil they were expected to cure. Such being the nature of his book, there is little danger that its value will be underrated by men of practical under- standing. They know that in every enterprise two things are essen- tially requisite: first, to know precisely what is the very thing to be done, and, secondly, to ascertain, by the process of exhaustion or otherwise, what means may and what means cannot be employed with a reasonable hope of thereby achieving the desired end. Much as this subject has been discussed in all manner of ways, it is probable that many readers of this volume will learn from it for the first time what is the real extent of "ragged London." It is not confined to certain notorious localities, the favourite abomina- tions of sanitary reformers and popular authors ; it burrows in holes and corners at the back of busy thoroughfares in every district from the centre to the outskirts. "Poverty, ignorance, dirt, immorality, crime, are the five great divisions of its history. Immovability, love of place, a determination to huddle together, are some of its chief cha- racteristics; and the growth of many courts and alleys, disgraceful to humanity, is the sure result. Whatever is demanded in London, whether in defiance of laws or public decency, is promptly supplied; and ill-constructed, ill-ventilated lurking nests of dwellings exist in every quarter of the metropolis, in obedience to the rule of trade." Some parishes consist almost wholly of such dens, in others they are rendered still more noxious by the vicinity of handsome streets which dam in the stagnant pool of life behind them. There are three hundred and sixteen inhabitants to an acre in the Strand dis- trict, and in one of its parishes, St. Clement's Danes, at least five hundred and eighty-one persons are packed upon every acre of its surface, the majority of them having in their dwellings less than half or even one-third the quantity of air which nature requires. They live by whole families in a single room, and there they perform the offices of nature without the possibility of privacy, even it may be in the presence of strangers, for the Lodging House Act is to a great ex- tent a dead letter. The Earl of Shaftesbury stated in theHouse of Lords, on the 28th of February last, that in eight small courts off Holborn-hill he found one thousand four hundred and seventy-nine persons living in three hundred and fourteen rooms, of the average size of eight feet by three and seven by nine. He knew it to be the truth, "that incestuous crime was frightfully common—common to the greatest possible extent within the range of these courts." Other plague-spots as horrible as these are to be found within a few yards of Regent- street or Charing-cross, under the shadow of Westminster Abbey, and in all the busiest parts of London. A large factory or other great scene of industry, like the docks on the Thames, is sure to gather such a neighbourhood around it, for the poor "must live near their bread." The evil increases with the annual growth of the population, with the augmentation of trade and manufactures, and with the encroachments which railways, new thoroughfares, and other urban improvements are making upon the rookeries of London. The Metropolitan Railway projects of 1861 are estimated to destroy one thousand houses in low neighbourhoods, and displace a population of not less than twenty thousand, but a small proportion of whom are likely to become tenants of the suburban villages which the directors have promised to provide for them. The sum of the matter, accord- ing to our author, is this : "Strike off a few cases of obvious imposition—of pardonable exaggeration on the part of Scripture readers—and make a little allowance for the late severe weather—and
• Ragged London in 1881. By John Hollingsbend, Author of "Under Bow Bells," !' Odd Journeys," Re. Smith, Elder, and Co. •
we shall find the social condition of nearly one-half of London to be nearly as low and degraded as that of Ireland in its worst days." And this, he says, is the condition of at least one-third of the three millions of human beings congregated in the metropolis.
Many palliatives have been applied to this great national evil, but with no permanent good effects, and with some decidedly bad ones. The only 'direct attempt at a cure is that which has been made on a comparatively small scale by the various societies for improving the condition of the poor and their dwellings—an attempt which has en- tirely failed. The model lodging-houses have not in any perceptible degree benefited the poor neighbourhoods adjacent to them, and they are commercially unprofitable undertakings. Hardly a tenth part of their tenants belong to the class for whose benefit the buildings were erected ; the rest are well-paid mechanics, clerks, porters, and others who are well able to help themselves, and who are morally dete- riorated by. the acceptance of charity. The rent they pay yields at most a net dividend of only two per cent. upon the capital of their landlords, and, therefore, although "the charity they receive through a sentimental standard of rent is given to them in such a silent under- ground way that they are not aware when they receive it," the fact is plain that something is really given to them that they do not pay for. Into these model lodgm,g-hotises there is no admission for the costermonger or the confirmed dweller in courts ; they are invariably repulsed from the door. "No one seems to touch the lowest of the low, or their putrid hiding-places, and the depths in education reached by ragged schools are not reached by philanthropists in providing
model dwellings The most awful thing in connexion with these people is to find them utterly blind to their dirt and misery. Their senses are blunted by long familiarity, they cannot see the overcrowd- ing, the mass of rotten filth that surrounds them; they cannot smell the stench ; they are choked with dirt, and yet feel clean; and they slink up the foul back streets, and are satisfied with their condition. The six thousand dwellers in London model lodging-houses look down upon them with contempt, the very porters spurn them from the model doors, and they sink back a million of hopeless lepers that no man will touch."
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