Our Personal Responsibility for the Slums
THERE is an ever-present danger that we shall forget the miseries of the slums while considering -the complexities of what has been achieved and the details of what there is yet to do. We must not allow ourselves to be swamped by statistics : the stark human side of the problem was summed up very tersely by Judge Moore at Southwark County Court the other day : "It is horrible and appalling. In some way or other this condition of things must be stopped imme- diately." In the case to which he referred four boys of ages between eight and nineteen and- two girls of sixteen and seventeen were all sleeping together in one room.
• In 1885 the Report of the Royal Commission on the Housing Conditions in London deeply stirred the public .conscience. Nearly a -million people were then living in overcrowded dwellings. More than forty years have passed. To-day more than a million people are still living in overcrowded conditions in London. At this rate of housing progress it has been calculated that one • hundred and fifty years must pass before the slums are abolished. Are we content with that ? Are we satisfied that during the last ten years the poorer workers in London have been at all better housed than they were in 1919-? If not, then the problem, instead of remaining a mere shadow in the mind of the average man and woman—a kind of skeleton in the civic -cupboard—Must be dragged out into the light of day again and again.
The truth is that slum clearance is so complicated that -we shun the subject The technical aspects alone extend to every department of life, and are too big to be grasped as a whole save by those who have given long study to the subject. It is the human aspect to which we would return this week. The woes of women and the cries of children of the slums remain terrible and insistent, a disgrace alike to our country, our Church, and mu—civilization: If, then, we call attention once again to the conditions existing in Fulham, it is not because the remediable -Wretchedness there is worse than in other parts ' of London, but because it gives us the opportunity to recommend -an excellent Report* 'which our readers should study. We have already written .of that house in Stamford Place (on the way to Hur- lingham), where in a little- back room a man, his wife and five children are living. Many Other equally bad instances of overcrowding can be given. In the Sotheron Road, for instance, there is a dduble bed in which four girls of the ages Of 24, 22,-15 and 18 are sleeping together. In a basement room fir Aintree Street there are eight * Report on Housing Conditions in Fulham. We understand that the Local Authority' in- Fulham have been co,operatiag With tiv_sociai workers who prepared this .Report and that much good work 'has already been done. people in one room. In Hann.ell Road a man and his wife and two children are living in a back room (eight feet by nine) which is full of rats, mice, beetles, spiders and bugs. During the flood, storm water and sewage swept in to the height of three feet, but in spite of this the bugs were afterwards reported to be very bad.
Can our readers form a mental picture of being kept awake by bugs ? The question is no frivolous one. During a certain period of the War the present writer underwent that experience, and he believes that others who have been subjected to a like ordeal will be quick to sympathize with slum-dwellers. The pervasive foul- ness of the smell from these insects, the impossibility of escape from them, their slow and subtle trampling -arousing every nerve-centre of the body in protest, and stimu/ating it to a shuddering revulsion that is mental as well as physical, can only be known to those who have endured it. Custom does not stale the horror of being bitten all night long by bugs. Compared to them, fleas are a joke. Lice a man may grow accustomed to. Bugs never. Yet many thousands of decent men and women and children will lie down to-night to suffer this itch and contamination.
"Overcrowding is one of the most potent factors in lessening vitality," the Minister of Health said recently. In the house in Hannell Road we have just referred to, the w.c. is infested by rats and the frying pans hanging in the wash-house are fouled with their footmarks. In Aintree Street there is another rat-ridden house with holes in the walls through which you can see into the next house : a man and his wife with their five children live here. Two of the children have lung complaints. 'Can we wonder ? Can we be surprised if from such filth invalids are bred ?
To continue this catalogue of wretched promiscuity, crumbling walls, verminous woodwork, pestilential closets and rickety children would serve no purpose. The same 'conditions exist, as we have already shown, in parts of Westminster, and, indeed, every Borough of London. We must remind the public of these things from time to time, as foreibly and directly as possible. There are certain friends of Housing Reform from whom we would pray to be saved : the pedants, for instance, who produce statements so complicated that they are largely unread- able, thereby giving the public the impression that they can never understand the subject at all ; then there are the exaggerators, the cranks, the too-easy optimists, and the sentimentalists who plead for the preservation of "charming old-world cottages" in unsuitable places, such as the heart of a city. To all these and to the public at large, even a single day spent in a slum might come as a revelation.
Our own suggestion of a National Rehousing Loan is already known to our readers. Sir. Tudor Walters, in his recent article, pointed out that it would be perfectly feasible to abolish slums within a given number of years and with no powers or facilities that the Ministry of Health and Local Authorities do not already possess. To recondition and rebuild a quarter of England is no .small task. We have never anticipated it would be easy. But the more public opinion is aroused on the subject, the easier will be the task of .those on whom the planning and provision will fall.
Cannot the Church, which has done so much in . Missions such as that at Somers Town (which we were recently privileged to visit), do more to bring home to every Christian his personal responsibility in the matter ? The slums, as they stand, are a menace to Christianity and a proof of how incomplete is the expression of our Faith. It is on this note we would end. A Church with the privileges and traditions of the Church of England may be looked to not only for faith, but for guidance. We must make the way of life more easy for those . unhappy families who have been driven underground, huddled as beasts for the slaughter, cabined with rats and vermin, and denied even the light of day under the pressure of our civilization. Let us strive to bring the light of Easter into the houses as well as the hearts of our poor s and end the shame that is stifling England.
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