Homes of the London Poor.

Waikato Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1514, 18 March 1882, Page 4

Homes of the London Poor.

Aghastlypictureof life in London slums was unfolded before the Southwark coroner the other day at an inquest on a six-ycar-olcl girl, who was killed by tripping in a hole in the rotten staircase of a house in Gimn-strcet. The child's mother, who is the wife of a hard-working general dealer and hawker, said she had asked the landlord to mend the stairs, but the work had not been done. The house, said the doctor, was in a shocking condition, not fit for human beings to live in. Ho knew the family to be straightforward, decent people, who paid five shillings a week for two abominable rooms which were not worth one-fifth that rent. The mother deposed that she herself had tumbled through the floor, and a short time since three of her children lay dead at one time with the measles, nnd the ceiling was so rotten that it fell down in lumps upon the coffins, and had never been mended yet," The measles, said the doctor, were the result of the bad sanitary state of the house. The jury returned a verdict of " Accidental death," with a rider censuring the landlord. Some honest folk will think that it would have been to the point if they had returned a verdict of manslaughter against the landlord, his agent, and the sanitary inspector of the district.