Homes of the London PoorMacmillan, 1875 - 212 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
able applicant asked better Bill Board of Guardians body brought buildings cation Charity Organisation Society CHARLES DICKENS clean cleanliness costermonger court CRYSTAL PALACE damp deal dirt dirty Drury Lane duties dwellings effort Elberfeld elder girls evil feel gifts give given Glasgow habits hope houses improvement individual influence intrusted kind kitchens labour ladies landladies landlord Leicester Square lives lodgers London poor look Macmillan's Magazine Marylebone Metropolitan Board mittee neighbourhood neighbours never once outdoor relief owners paid parish playground Poor-Law present racter recognised referee reform Relief Committee relieving-officer repairs rience sanitary Saturday savings scheme School Board secure seems shillings sometimes space street sympathy tenants things thought undertake volunteers walls week whole workhouse wynds yards
Popular passages
Page 7 - The people's homes are bad," she wrote, " partly because they are badly built and arranged ; they are tenfold worse because the tenants' habits and lives are what they are. Transplant them to-morrow to healthy and commodious homes, and they would pollute and destroy them.
Page 33 - I feel most deeply that the disciplining of our immense poor population must be effected by individual influence ; and that this power can change it from a mob of paupers and semi-paupers into a body of self-dependent workers.
Page 75 - Truly a wild, lawless, desolate little kingdom to come to rule over. On what principles was I to rule these people ? On the same that 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...
Page 35 - About four years ago I was put in possession of three houses in one of the worst courts of Marylebone. Six other houses were bought subsequently. All were crowded with inmates. The first thing to be done was to put them in decent tenantable order. The set last purchased was a row of cottages facing a bit of desolate ground, occupied with wretched, dilapidated cowsheds, manure heaps, old timber, and rubbish of every description. The houses were in a most deplorable condition — the plaster was dropping...
Page 35 - The dust-bin, standing in the front of the houses, was accessible to the whole neighbourhood, and boys often dragged from it quantities of unseemly objects, and spread them over the court. The state of the drainage was in keeping with everything else. The pavement of the back-yard was all broken up, and great puddles stood in it, so that the damp crept up the outer walls.
Page 106 - ... 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 intrusted with them at all, than scornful and impatient that they are no larger.
Page 44 - Mr. Ruskin, to whom the whole undertaking owes its existence, has had trees planted in the playground, and creepers against the houses. In May, we have a May-pole or a throne covered with flowers for the May-queen and her attendants. The sweet luxuriance of the spring flowers is more enjoyed in that court than would readily be believed.
Page 179 - wynds," as they call them there, were at least as narrow as the London courts. Like them, they were often blocked up at one end, so as completely to stop the free passage of air. But I saw there — what I have seldom or never seen in London — a perfect honeycomb or maze of buildings, where, to reach the " wynd " furthest from the street, one had to pass under archway after archway built under the houses, and leading from one squalid court into another. Some of these narrow, tunnel-like passages...
Page 103 - The principle on which the whole work rests is, that the inhabitants and their surroundings must be improved together. It has never yet failed to succeed. Finally, 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...
Page 86 - ... 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...