Part 2

The pecuniary success of the plan has been due to two causes. First, to the absence of middlemen; and, secondly, to great strictness about punctual payment of rent. At this moment not one tenant in any of the houses owes any rent, and during the whole time, as I have said, the bad debts have been exceedingly small. The law respecting such tenancies seems very simple, and when once the method of proceeding is understood, the whole business is easily managed; and I must say most seriously that I believe it to be better to pay legal expenses for getting rid of tenants than to lose by arrears of rent—better for the whole tone of the households, kinder to the tenants. The rule should be clearly understood and the people will respect themselves for having obeyed it. The commencement of proceedings which are known to be genuine and not a mere threat is usually sufficient to obtain payment of arrears; in one case only has an ejectment for rent been necessary. The great want of rooms gives the possessors of such property immense power over their lodgers. Let them see to it that they use it righteously. The fluctuations of work cause to respectable tenants the main difficulties in paying their rent. I have tried to help them in two ways. First, by inducing them to save; this they have done steadily, and each autumn has found them with a small fund accumulated, which has enabled them to meet the difficulties of the time when families are out of town. In the second place, I have done what I could to employ my tenants in slack seasons. I carefully set aside any work they can do for times of scarcity, and I try so to equalize in this small circle the irregularity of work, which must be more or less pernicious, and which the childishness of the poor makes doubly so. They have strangely little power of looking forward; a result is to them as nothing if it will not be perceptible till next quarter! This is very curious to me, especially as seen in connection with that large hope to which I have alluded, and which often makes me think that if I could I would carve over the houses the motto, “Spem, etiam illi habent, quibus nihil aliud restat.”

Another beautiful trait in their character is their trust; it has been quite marvellous to find how great and how ready this is. In no single case have I met with suspicion or with anything but entire confidence.

It is needless to say that there have been many minor difficulties and disappointments. Each separate person who has failed to rise and meet the help that would have been so gladly given has been a distinct loss to me; for somehow the sense of relation to them has been a very real one, and a feeling of interest and responsibility has been very strong, even where there was least that was lovely or lovable in the particular character. When they have not had sufficient energy or self-control to choose the sometimes hard path that has seemed the only right one, it would have been hard to part from them, except for a hope that others would be able to lead them where I have failed.

Two distinct kinds of work depend entirely on one another if they are to bear their full fruit. There is, firstly, the simple fulfilment of a landlady’s bounden duties, and uniform demand of the fulfilment of those of the tenants. We have felt ourselves bound by laws which must be obeyed, however hard obedience might often be. Then, secondly, there is the individual friendship which has grown up from intimate knowledge and from a sense of dependence and protection. Knowledge gives power to see the real position of families; to suggest in time the inevitable result of certain habits; to urge such measures as shall secure the education of the children and their establishment in life; to keep alive the germs of energy; to waken the gentler thought; to refuse resolutely to give any help but such as rouses self-help; to cherish the smallest lingering gleam of self-respect; and, finally, to be near with strong help should the hour of trial fall suddenly and heavily, and to give it with the hand and heart of a real old friend, who has filled many relations besides that of almsgiver, who has long ago given far more than material help, and has thus earned the right to give this lesser to the most independent spirits.

III BLANK COURT (1871)

How this relation between landlord and tenant might be established in some of the lowest districts of London, and with what results, I am about to describe by relating what has been done in the last two years in Blank Court.

In many of the houses the dustbins were utterly unapproachable, and cabbage-leaves, stale fish and every sort of dirt were lying in the passages and on the stairs; in some the back kitchen had been used as a dustbin, but had not been emptied for years, and the dust filtered through into the front kitchens, which were the sole living and sleeping rooms of some families; in some, the kitchen stairs were many inches thick with dirt, which was so hardened that a shovel had to be used to get it off; in some there was hardly any water to be had; the wood was eaten away, and broken away; windows were smashed, and the rain was coming through the roofs. At night it was still worse; and during the first winter I had to collect the rents chiefly then, as the inhabitants, being principally costermongers, were out nearly all day, and they were afraid to entrust their rent to their neighbours. It was then that I saw the houses in their most dreadful aspect. I well remember wet, foggy Monday nights, when I turned down the dingy court, past the brilliantly lighted public-house at the corner, past the old furniture outside the shops, and dived into the dark, yawning passage-ways. The front doors stood open day and night, and as I felt my way down the kitchen stairs, broken, and rounded by the hardened mud upon them, the foul smells which the heavy, foggy air would not allow to rise met me as I descended, and the plaster rattled down as I groped along. It was truly appalling to think that there were human beings who lived habitually in such an atmosphere, with such surroundings. Sometimes I had to open the kitchen door myself, after knocking several times in vain, when a woman, quite drunk, would be lying on the floor on some black mass which served as a bed; sometimes, in answer to my knocks, a half-drunken man would swear, and thrust the rent-money out to me through a chink of the door, placing his foot against it so as to prevent it opening wide enough to admit me. Always it would be shut again without a light being offered to guide me up the pitch-dark stairs. Such was Blank Court in the winter of 1869. Truly, a wild, lawless, desolate little kingdom to come to rule over.

On what principles was I to rule these people? On the same as I had already tried, and tried with success, in other places, and which I may sum up as the two following: firstly, to demand a strict fulfilment of their duties to me—one of the chief of which would be the punctual payment of rent; and secondly, to endeavour to be so unfailingly just and patient that they should learn to trust the rule that was over them.

With regard to details, I would make a few improvements at once, such, for example, as the laying on of water and repairing of dustbins; but, for the most part, improvements should be made only by degrees, as the people became more capable of valuing them and not abusing them. I would have the rooms distempered and thoroughly cleansed as they became vacant, and then they should be offered to the more cleanly of the tenants. I would have such repairs as were not immediately needed used as a means of giving work to the men in times of distress. I would draft the occupants of the underground kitchens into the upstairs rooms, and would ultimately convert the kitchens into bathrooms and washhouses. I would have the landlady’s portion of the house—i.e. the stairs and passages—at once repaired and distempered, and they should be regularly scrubbed, and, as far as possible, made models of cleanliness, for I knew, from former experience, that the example of this would, in time, silently spread itself to the rooms themselves, and that payment for this work would give me some hold over the older girls. I would collect savings personally, not trust to their being taken to distant banks or savings clubs. And, finally, I knew that I should learn to feel these people as my friends, and so should instinctively feel the same respect for their privacy and their independence, and should treat them with the same courtesy that I should show towards any other personal friends. There would be no interference, no entering their rooms uninvited, no offer of money or the necessaries of life. But when occasion presented itself I should give them any help I could, such as I might offer without insult to other friends—sympathy in their distresses; advice, help and counsel in their difficulties; introductions that might be of use to them; means of education; visits to the country; a lent book when not able to work; a bunch of flowers brought on purpose; an invitation to any entertainment, in a room built at the back of my own house, which would be likely to give them pleasure. I am convinced that one of the evils of much that is done for the poor springs from the want of delicacy felt, and courtesy shown, towards them, and that we cannot beneficially help them in any spirit different to that in which we help those who are better off. The help may differ in amount, because their needs are greater. It should not differ in kind.

I have learned to know that people are ashamed to abuse a place they find cared for. They will add dirt to dirt till a place is pestilential, but the more they find done for it, the more they will respect it, till at last order and cleanliness prevail. It is this feeling of theirs, coupled with the fact that they do not like those whom they have learned to love, and whose standard is higher than their own, to see things which would grieve them, which has enabled us to accomplish nearly every reform of outward things that we have achieved; so that the surest way to have any place kept clean is to go through it often yourself.

Amongst the many benefits which the possession of the houses enables us to confer on the people, perhaps one of the most important is our power of saving them from neighbours who would render their lives miserable. It is a most merciful thing to protect the poor from the pain of living in the next room to drunken, disorderly people. “I am dying,” said an old woman to me the other day; “I wish you would put me where I can’t hear S—— beating his wife. Her screams are awful. And B—— too, he do come in so drunk. Let me go over the way to No. 30.” Our success depends on duly arranging the inmates; not too many children in any one house, so as to overcrowd it; not too few, so as to overcrowd another; not two bad people side by side, or they drink together; not a terribly bad person beside a very respectable one.

It appears to me, then, to be proved by practical experience that when we can induce the rich to undertake the duties of landlords in poor neighbourhoods, and ensure a sufficient amount of the wise, personal supervision of educated and sympathetic people acting as their representatives, we achieve results which are not attainable in any other way. I would call upon those who may possess cottage property in large towns to consider the immense power they thus hold in their hands and the large influence for good they may exercise by the wise use of that power. When they have to delegate it to others, let them take care to whom they commit it; and let them beware lest, through the widely prevailing system of subletting, this power ultimately abide with those who have neither the will nor the knowledge which would enable them to use it beneficially.

It is on these things and their faithful execution that the life of the whole matter depends, and by which steady progress is ensured. It is the smaller things of the world that colour the lives of those around us, and it is on persistent efforts to reform these that progress depends; and we may rest assured that they who see with greater eyes than ours have a due estimate of the service, and that if we did but perceive the mighty principles underlying these tiny things we should rather feel awed that we are entrusted with them at all, than scornful and impatient that they are no larger. What are we that we should ask for more than that God should let us work for Him among the tangible things which He created to be fair and the human which He redeemed to be pure? From time to time He lifts a veil and shows us, even while we struggle with imperfections here below, that towards which we are working—shows us how, by governing and ordering the tangible things one by one, we may make of this earth a fair dwelling-place. And, far better still, how, by cherishing human beings, He will let us help Him in His work of building up temples meet for Him to dwell in—faint images of that best Temple of all which He promised that He would raise up on the third day, though men might destroy it.

IV THE INFLUENCE OF MODEL DWELLINGS UPON CHARACTER (1892)

As it now seems fairly clear that the working population of London is likely to be more and more housed in “blocks,” it is not very profitable to spend time in considering whether this is a fact to rejoice in or to deplore, except so far as the consideration may enable us to see how far the advantages of the change may be increased or the drawbacks diminished. The advantages of the change are very apparent and are apt to appear overwhelming, and the disadvantages are apt to be dismissed as somewhat sentimental or inevitable. I have, however, little to say upon advantages. They may, I think, be briefly summed up under two heads. It is supposed that better sanitary arrangements are secured in blocks. It is also certain that all inspection and regulation are easier in blocks; and on inspection and regulation much of our modern legislation, much of our popular hope is based.

With regard to the sanitary arrangements, I think all who are at all conversant with the subject are beginning to be aware that these at least may be as faulty in blocks as in smaller buildings; but it is undoubtedly true that even where this is so, the publicity of the block enables inspection to be carried out much more easily, and so, theoretically at least, a certain standard can be enforced. And though this is not quite so true in actual practice as those who put their faith in enforcement of sanitary law are apt to imagine, still it is true, and it is a very distinct advantage to be noted.

Your readers may be astonished that I do not put down the greater economy of the block system as a distinct gain, but I am not so wholly sure as may seem that it exists. For, first, room by room the block dwellings are not at all invariably cheaper than those in small houses. Moreover, I think we can hardly permit, and assuredly cannot permanently congratulate and pride ourselves upon, a form of construction which admits so very little sunlight into lower floors. So that to the present cost of block buildings must, I should think, be fairly added in the future such diminution of height or such increase of yard space as would allow of the freer entrance of air and light. This would increase the ground-rent payable on each room. I think also that the cheapness of erecting many-storied buildings is exaggerated. I have built very few blocks, but I have been consulted about some, and I have more than once proved in £ s. d. that cutting off a story from the block as shown in the plans was a very small net loss, when cost of building, saving on rates, repairs, etc., and possibly even diminution in wall thickness, justified by the lower elevation, were taken into account. We must also remember the increase of rent gladly paid by the sober and home-loving man for ground-floor rooms lighter and pleasanter than if overshadowed by high blocks. I do not wish to generalize—the matter is one of £ s. d.—but I say that the figures are well worth careful study on each building scheme, and that, as far as the model dwellings are concerned, I think their undue height in proportion to width of yard has sometimes been due to the mistaken zeal for accommodating numbers of families. I say mistaken, for with our increased means of cheap transit we should try to scatter rather than to concentrate our population, especially if the concentration has to be secured by dark lower rooms.

With regard to the disadvantages of blocks, I think they may be divided into those which may be looked upon, by such of us as are hopeful, as probably transitory, and those which seem, so far as we can see, quite essential to the block system. The transitory ones are by far the most serious. They are those which depend on the enormously increasing evil which grows up in a huge community of those who are undisciplined and untrained. They disappear with civilization; they are, so far as I know, entirely absent in large groups of blocks where the tenants are the quiet, respectable working-class families who, to use a phrase common in London, “keep themselves to themselves,” and whose well-ordered, quiet little homes, behind their neat little doors with bright knockers, nicely supplied with well-chosen appliances, now begin to form groups where responsible, respectable citizens live in cleanliness and order. Under rules they grow to think natural and reasonable, inspected and disciplined, every inhabitant registered and known, School Board laws and laws of the landlord or company regularly enforced, every infectious case of illness instantly removed, all disinfecting done at public cost, is developed a life of law, regular, a little monotonous, and not encouraging any great individuality, but consistent with happy home life, and it promises to be the life of the respectable London working man.

On the other hand, what life in blocks is to the less self-controlled hardly any words of mine are strong enough to describe, and it is abhorred accordingly by the tidy and striving, wherever any—even a small number—of the undisciplined are admitted to blocks, or where, being admitted, there is no real living rule exercised. Regulations are of small avail; no public inspection can possibly, for more than an hour or two, secure order; no resident superintendent has at once conscience, nerve and devotion single-handed to stem the violence, the dirt, the noise, the quarrels; no body of public opinion on the part of the tenants themselves asserts itself: one by one the tidier ones depart disheartened, the rampant remain and prevail, and often, though with a very fair show to the outsider, the block becomes a sort of pandemonium. No one who is not in and out day by day, or, better still, night after night; no one who does not watch the swift degradation of children belonging to tidy families; no one who does not know the terrorism exercised by the rough over the timid and industrious poor; no one who does not know the abuse of every appliance provided by the benevolent or speculative but non-resident landlord, can tell what life in blocks is where the population is low class. Sinks and drains are stopped; yards provided for exercise must be closed because of misbehaviour; boys bathe in the drinking-water cisterns; washhouses on staircases—or staircases themselves—become the nightly haunt of the vicious, the Sunday gambling places of boys; the yell of the drunkard echoes through the hollow passages; the stairs are blocked by dirty children, and the life of any decent hard-working family becomes intolerable.

The very same evils are nothing like as injurious where the families are more separate, so that, while in smaller houses one can often try difficult tenants with real hope of their doing better, it is wholly impossible usually to try (or to train) them in blocks. The temptations are greater, the evils of relapse are far greater. It is like taking a bad girl into a school. Hence the enormous importance of keeping a large number of small houses wherever possible for the better training of the rowdy and the protection of the quiet and gentle; and I would implore well-meaning landlords to pause before they clear away small houses and erect blocks, with any idea of benefiting the poorer class of people. The change may be inevitable, it may have to come, but as they value the life of our poorer fellow-citizens, let them pause before they throw them into a corporate life for which they are not ready, and which will, so far as I can see, not train them to be ready for it. Let them either ask tidy working people they know, or learn for themselves, whether I am not right in saying that in the shabbiest little two-, four-, six- or eight-roomed house, with all the water to carry upstairs, with one little w.c. in a tiny backyard, with perhaps one dustbin at the end of the court, and even, perhaps, with a dark little twisted staircase, there are not far happier, better, yes, and healthier homes than in the blocks where lower-class people share and do not keep in order far better appliances.