"THE BITTER CRY OF OUTCAST LONDON." Harrowing Picture of the London Poor.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 32, 12 January 1884, Page 6

"THE BITTER CRY OF OUTCAST LONDON." Harrowing Picture of the London Poor.

A very remarkable pamphlet has been published in London which bears the above title. Although it is published presumably in the interest of an evangelistic scheme of one of the Nonconformist denominations, the facts of which it reminds us are sufficiently important to deserve the attention of all. The author, who begins by remarking that there is no more hopeful sign than the increased attention which is being given to the outcast classes of society, admits that the ugly fact remains —and needs to be faced— that seething m the very centre of our great cities, concealed by the thinnest crust of civilisation and decency, is a vast mass of moral corruption, of heart-breaking misery and absolute Godlessness, and that'scarcely anything has been done to take into this awful slough the only influences that can purify or remove it. Convinced that it is high time some combined and organized effort was made by all denominations of Christians, though not for denominational purposes, the London Congregational Union determined to open in several of the lowest and >ost needy districts of the metropolis suitable mission halls, as a base of operations for evangelistic work. They accordingly made a diligent search, and ••omeof the results of the inquiries made are set forth in a pamphlet entitled "The Cry of the Outcast Poor of London,' from which we make the following extracts :—

" The Best Paying Property in London. Few have any adequate conception of what the pestilential human rookeries are where tens of thousands of the London poor are crowded together. To get into them you have to penetrate courts reeking with poisonous and malodorous gases arising from accumulations of sewage and refuse scattered in all directions and often flowing beneath your feet; courts which the sun never penetrates, and which are never visited by a breath of fresh air. You have to ascend rotten staircases, which threaten to give way beneath every step, and which, in some places, have already broken down, leaving gaps that imperil the limbs and lives of the unwary. You have to grope your way along dark and filthy passages swarming with vermin. Then, if you are not driven back by the intolerable stench, you may gain admittance to the dens in which these thousands of beings herd together. Should you ascend to the attic, where at least some approach to fresh air might be expected to enter from open or broken window, you find that the sickly air which finds its way into the room has to pass over the putrefying carcases of dead cats or birds, or viler abominations still. Here is a hole in the wall which has been repaired by the landlord. He has done it by nailing a few pieces of an old soap-box over the place, and for this has put threepence a week upon the rent ! And this is the best paying property in London ! Three shillings, four and sixpence, as much as six shillings a week is readily paid for one of these horrible rooms. Houses that have been condemned by the authorities as unfit for habitation are very gold mines to sleek speculators, who fatten upon the wretchedness of the poor.

Overcrowding. Every room in these rotten and reeking tenements houses a family, often two. In one cellar have been found a father, mother, three children, and four pigs ! In another room is a man ill with small-pox, his wife just recovering from her eighth confinement, and the children running about half nakef and covered with dirt. Here are seve;. people living in one underground kitchen, and a little dead child lying in the same room. Another apartment contains father, mother, and six children, two of whom are ill with scarlet fever. In another nine brothers and sisters, from twenty-nine years of age downwards, live, eat and sleep together. Here is a mother who turns her children into the street in the early evening because she lets her room for immoral purposes until long after midnight, when the poor little wretches creep back again if they have not found some miserable shelter elsewhei»e. In many cases matters are made worse by the unhealthy occupations of those who dwell in these habitations. Here you are choked as you enter by the air laden with particles of the superfluous fur pulled from the skins of rabbits, rats, dogs, and other animals in their preparation for the furrier. Here the smell of paste and of drying match-boxes, mingling with other sickly odours, overpowers you ; or it may be the fragrance of stale fish or vegetables, not sold on the previous day, and kept in the room overnight. Who can wonder that young girls wander off into a life of immorality ? Who can wonder that the publichouse should still be "the Elysian field of the tired toiler?"

One Inevitable Result. Immorality is but the natural outcome of conditions like these. _ "Marriage," it has been said, " as an institution is not fashionable in these districts." And this is only the bare truth. Ask if the men and women living together in these rookeries are married, and your simplicity will cause a &mile. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. Nobody expects that they are. Incest is common ; and no form of vice and sensuality causes surprise or attracts attention. The only check upon communism in this regard is jealousy, and not virtue. The vilest practices are looked upon with the most matter-of-fact indifference. Entire courts are filled with thieves, prostitutes, and liberated convicts. In one street are 35 houses, 32 of which are known to be brothels. In another district are 43 of these houses, and 428 fallen women and girls, many of them not more than 12 years of age. A neighbourhood whose population is returned at 10,100 contains 400 who follow this immoral traffic, their ages varying from 13 to 50 ; while the moral degradation of the people is deplorable. Some idea may be 'formed from an incident which was brought to our notice. An East-end missionary rescued a young girl from an immoral life, and obtained for her a situation with people who were going abroad. He saw her to Southampton, and on his return was violently abused by the girl's grandmother, who had the sympathy of her neighbours, for having taken away from a poor old woman her means of subsistence.

Driven to Drinking. The misery and sin caused by drink in these districts have often been told. In the district of Euston-road is one public-house to every 100 people, counting men, women, and children. Immediately around one chapel in Orange-street, Leicester-square, are one hundred gin-palaces, most of them very large ; and these districts are but j samples of what exists in all the localities which we have investigated. Look into one of these glittering saloons, with its motley, miserable crowd, and you may be horrified as you think of the evil that is nightly wrought there; but contrast it with any of the abodes which you find in these fetid courts, and you will wonder no longer that it is crowded.

The Earnings chf the Very Pooe. There are those who endeavour to live honestly— and they outnumber the dishonest—but what are their wages ? A child " seven years old may easily make 10s 6d a week by thieving, but what can he earn by such work as match-box making, for which 2£d a gross is paid, and the makers have to find their own fire for drying the boxes, paste, and string ? Before he can gain as much as the young thief, he must make fifty-six grosa of match-boxes a week, or 1,296 a day, which is impossible. Women, for the work of trousers finishing {i.e., sewing in linings, making button-holes, and stitching on the buttons), receive 2£d. a pair, and have to find their own thread. For making men's shirts they are paid lOd. a dozen ; lawn tennis aprons, 3d. a dozen ; babies' hoods, from Is. Gd. to 2s. 6d. a dozen. In one house were found a widow and her half idiot daughter making palliasses at Ifd. each. Here is a woman who has a sick husband and a little one to look after. She is "employed at shirt finishing at 3c?. a dozen, and by the utmost effort can only earn 6d a day, out of which she has to find her own thread. Another, with a crippled hand, maintains herself and a blind husband by match-box making, for which she is remunerated on the liberal scale mentioned above ; and out of her 2£d. a gross she has to pay a girl a penny a gross to help her. Here is a mother who has taken away whatever articles of clothing she can strip from her four little children without leaving them absolutely naked. She has pawned them, not for drink, but for coals and food. i A shilling is all she can procure, and with this she has bought seven pounds of coals and a loaf of bread.

Terrible Destitution. Amidst all this misery and squalour heart-breaking scenes are inevitable. The Rev. Archibald Brown, during a personal visitation, found a family living at the top of an otherwise empty house. The husband had gone to try and find some work. The mother, twenty-nine years of age, was sitting on the only chair in the placo in front of a grate destitute of any fire. She was nursing a baby only six weeks old, that had never had anything but one old rag round it. The mother had nothing but a gown on, and that dropping to pieces ; it was all she had night or day. There were six children under thirteen years of age. They were barefooted, and the few rags on them scarcely covered their nakedness. In this room, where was an unclothed infant, the ceiling was in holes. An old bedstead was in the place, and seven sleep on it at night, the eldest girl being on the floor.

Child-Misery. The child-misery that one sees is the most heartrending and appalling element in these discoveries ; and of this not the least is the misery inherited from the vice of drunken and dissolute parents, and manifest in the stunted, misshappen, and often loathsome objects that we constantly meet in these localities. Here is one of three years old picking up some dirty pieces of bread and eating them. We go in at the doorway where it is standing, and find a little girl twelve years old. "Where is your mother?" "In the madhouse." " How long has she been there ?" "Fifteen months." "Who looks after you ?" The child, who is sitting at an old table making match-boxes, replies, "I look after my ; little brothers and sisteis as well as I can. ! " Where is your father ?" "He has been out of work three weeks, but he has gone to a job of two days this morning." Another house visited contained nine motherless children. The mother's death was caused by witnessing one of her children being run over. The eldest was only fourteen years old. All lived in one small room, and there was one bed for five. Here is a poor woman deserted by her husband, and left with three little children. One met with an accident a few days ago and broke his arm. He is lying on a shakedown in one corner of the room, with an old sack round him. And here, in a cellar kitchen, are nine little ones, without food, and scarcely any clothing.

"What it is Proposed to Do. These wretched people must live somewhere, and it must be neai the centres where their work lies. It is notorious that the Artisans' Dwellings Act has, in some respects, made matters worse for them. Large spaces have been cleared of feverbreeding rookeries, to make way for the building of decent habitations, but the rents of these are far beyond the means of the abject poor. They are driven to huddle mroe closely together in the few loathsome places still left to them ; and so Dives makes a richer harvest out of their misery, buying up property condemned as unfit for habitation, and turning it into a gold-mine, because the poor must have shelter somewhere, even thoughitbetheshelter of aliving tomb. The State must make short work of this iniquitous traffic, and secure to the poorest the rights of citizenship ; the right to live in something better than fever dens, the right to live as something better than the uncleanest of brute beasts. This must be done before the Christian missionary can have much chance with them. Meanwhile the committee of the Congregational Union have determined to commence operations in three of the very worst districts in London, in each of which a mission-hall and other buildings will be erected and a house-to-house visitation will be organised.

A Typical Slum. Colliers-rents is the name of one of the districts selected, and is thus described: — Colliers-rents stands in a short street leading out of Long-lane, in the Borough. There | are around it some 650 families, or 3,250 people, living in 123 houses. The houses are occupied by bird-catchers, street singers, liberated convicts, thieves and prostitutes. There are many low lodging-houses in the neighbourhood, where men and women are allowed to herd together without any attempt to preserve the commonest decency. Turning out of one of these streets, you enter a court nine yards square. Here are twelve houses of three rooms each, and containing altogether 36 families. The sanitary condition of the place is indescribable. A large dustbin charged with all manner of filth and putrid matter is on one side of the court, and four water-closets on the other. Entering a doorway, and ascending as best you can, you gain admission to one of "the rooms. An old bed, on which there are some evil-smelling rags, is, with the exception of a broken chair, the only article of furniture. Its solo occupant just now is a repulsive, half -drunken Irishwoman. Sheis lookingat some old ragged garments in hope of being able to raise something upon them at the pawnshop, and then from a heap of rubbish in one corner, whence comes an overpowering stench, she pulls out a putrid turkey, utterly unfit for human food, which she tells us she is going to cook for supper. These rooms are let furnished (!) at 3s 6d and 4s a week, or 8d a night, and we are told that the owner is getting from 50 to 60 per cent, upon his money. And this is a specimen of the neighbourhood. Reeking courts, crowded public-houses, low lodging-houses, and numerous brothels are to be found all round. , Even the cellars are tenanted— poverty, rags, and dirt everywhere. The air is laden with diseasebreeding gases. In going about these alleys and courts no stranger is safe if alone, and

even the police seldom venture into some parts of the district except in company. The two other districts are in Ratcliffand Shadwell, and others will be worked as soon as funds come in.