P1G-SCAB.-
/THERE are horrors beyond starvation, in spite of our article of last week, and one of them is described in a report published in the Telegraph of Wednesday on the condition of Bethnal Green. In that wretched city of grey hovels, which " respectability " will
not enter because it is afraid of plunder, and pauperism will not de- nounce lest rents should, perchance, be raised, in which civilization is represented only by the policeman, and Christianity chiefly by
the relieving officer, there is a quarter called lIollybush place. Nature has done something for it, for it is built on gravel, and as water runs through gravel without awaiting Mr. Thwaites' leisure, there is some natural drainage. Art has done something also, for as the place touches Victoria Park, there is a constant possibility, resisted with marvellous care by the population, that air, as fresh as the smoke will allow, may penetrate into its crowded courts. But with those two exceptions, every injury which avarice, ignorance, and disorganization can inflict is inflicted in the highest degree, culminating in the production of a new and most frightful form of disease. The people, though generally free from vice, at least in its grosser forms, are so poor that every available scrap of ground, backyard, or court is let to pig-breeders, the men who supply so many East-end shops with "fine perk, fresh from Oxfordshire." The pigs, badly fed and in- tended, wallowing all day in ordure, and drinking out of gutters fu'l of all imaginable filth, cannot be kept in health, the children have no playground other than the street or the piggeries, and the result is a new and horrible skin disease. Dr. Moore, the medical officer, apparently a man with Quixotic ideas about "poor- doctors" obligation to do something more than their duty, calls it bluntly the pig scab, and allows that "its peculiar symptom is a disgusting odour, like that of the animal from whom the disease is derived." This disease, which attacks the children of the locality, is described as a "chief evil against which Dr. Moore, the medical officer—whose annual average of patients is 1,500—has to con- tend." We commend that little statement to the five hundred members of Parliament, who fly from London every year that they may get a breath of fresh air, and whose wives, while miserable if their own children are kept an hour too long from the sea, will throw down this paper in disgust because we dare to quote such a fact. We would reprint much worse things, till the ears of comfort-worshippers tingled, . if we only knew them ; but that is happily impossible. No fact can ever transcend in all true elements of horror the simple statement that there exists in London a place where poverty, neglect, and ignorance are generating a new disease, to take the place of the leprosy we are so proud of having banished from Western Europe. There is nothing to be done in the matter, of course ; all manner of sciences may be quoted to prove that ; to assert the contrary is to fly in the face of the whole race of writers who justify so scientifically Earl Russell's monstrous assertion, that it is the will of the nation at present to be "at rest, and be thankful." It is, however, permitted to whisper that when a scab broke out last year in Hampshire among the sheep, great people showed very keen interest, and contrived to do something by orders in Council of very considerable stringency. Sheep, no doubt, are more valuable, philosophically considered, than costermongers' brats ; the animals increase rent, while the " souls " born in Hollybush place only in- crease thepoor-rates ; but then England is not openly governed on philosophical principles. That comparison of the men with the sheep is, of course, vulgar radicalism ; but it is the deduction the sufferers would be most apt to draw, and when they draw it gene- rally the well-to-do classes may wake to the knowledge that work remains to be done, which will impair the "rest" the nation ap- proves for at least one generation. Disguise the matter as we please, that is not good government which allows such a scene as The Telegraph has described, any more than that is good building which leaves fetid sewers untrapped and open under human lungs.
Suppose, instead of applauding pleasant things about the national desire for "rest,"—uttered as if sleep were a sign of the strength instead of the weakness of human nature—governing men set themselves deliberately to study the alleviation of that pauperism, that abject lack at once of savage self-helpfulness and civilized help from others, which is the secret disease of our magnificent
English life. They have admitted the principle any time for tha last three hundred years; have fairly acknowledged the truth that in a Christian State the respectable " Haves " must discharge their responsibility to the despised " Have-uots." No man in Eng- land can starve, unless he himself consents, while there is rental left in the land. The terrible oath of French workmen, "To live working or die fighting," has been anticipated by a sacrifice on the part of property-holders, which may or may not come up to the requirements of Christianity, but which, at least, transcends any sacrifice made in any other land in the world. Even in this very Hollybush place the wretched are not allowed to suffer with- out medical attendance, gratuitously provided, and S01113 sort of legal authority is lodged with an officer who is called, we trust in no spirit of latent sarcasm, the Government "Inspector of Nui- sances." There will be no innovation in carrying out the.principle which dictated these arrangements, or trying to make part of Lon- don bear some distant resemblance to the city which London ought to become. Suppose the power of that Inspector were made•more nearly efficient, or that medical officer enabled to move some Board invested with authority to see piggeries, like cemeteries, transferred to the open air. Or suppose that, instead of leaving Parliament with nothing to do except criticize, and nothing to resist except the Speaker's authority, Lord Palmerston were to promote Sir George Grey, and confide to some other man of the governing families, possessed of some faint trace of ori- ginality, a bill for the improvement of Unknown London, the cluster of great cities which stretch from Shoreditch into the depths of Essex, and contain in the aggregate more people than Liverpool or Vienna. All England has been stirred for Lancashire ; suppose the philanthropists stir for these half-forgotten cities which need always the attention with which Lancashire nine years in ten can so easily dispense :— Cities. Population. Cities. Population.
Milo End 88,456 Shoreditch and Suburbs 129,365 Bethnal Green 78,803 Riverton* 100,101
St. George's in the East 48,891 Bow 35,666 These places, thus grouped by geographical arrangement, are really cities, and but for their unexampled misfortune in being connected with London would every one of them have a complete organization, with resident gentry, rich manufacturers, dozens of clergy, an organized municipality, and a thousand permanent links between the poor and the well-to-do. It is not doubted that all those things are exceedingly conducive to well-being; country gentlemen would sentence to social obloquy any one who habitually argued that their county towfi would be the better for wanting them. Suppose, if they are so excellent, that these gentlemen try to create similar institutions in the cities which have been suffered to grow, as it were accidentally, all round London, establish municipalities, mark out and endow parishes, clear out squares and streets, and, by making rigorous local Health Acts operative for a few years, render the cities, at all events, habitable for the dass which can choose its residence. It is possible to do all that if the measures are passed on local and exceptional grounds, and not applied to the entire kingdom, without trenching on personal freedom, or applying State revenue—except by loan—to purposes strictly local. Let the medical officers be also health officers under a local act, with power, by direct appeals to the Poor-law Board, to compel the guardians to do the duty, which, if the poor of these regions may be credited, or the statements made to the magistrates may be trusted, they often so grievously neglect. The mere appointment of mayors, of officers who would be visible, and could act as centres for local effort, and direct outside assist- ance, would of itself do much to remove the anarchy of adminis- tration which now stands in the way of all attempts at reform. Means would be found fast enough if those who possess them were only assured against waste, and every penny thus spent out of the rates on progress would save twopence out of the burden pro- duced by the pauperism of disease. What is the use of preaching thrift, or sobriety, or sell-help to the men whose children have the pig-scab, or how expect that a race bred up among such scenes should abstain from the momentary relief which can be obtained even out of adulterated gin? The wonder is that they abstain from crime, and do not deliberately prefer the clean prison- cell to the hovels in which they are compelled to toil. It may be that the mere application of country organization to these places would not remove the evils with which they are rife ; bul then the busi- ness of statesmen is to discover what will remove them, and not, with Ireland and London alike demanding government, to sit with folded hands, contemplating the work accomplished, and crying, "Let us rest and be thankful."
• Shadwell, Ratoliff, Limehouse, Poplar.
Previous page
