Healthy homes, and how to make them / by Wm. Bardwell.

  • Bardwell, Wm. (William)
Date:
[1854]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Healthy homes, and how to make them / by Wm. Bardwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    23/108 (page 17)
    might have bought the whole of these fields for fifty pounds an acre, (having in that year projected a Cemetery thereon, and a bridge of approach,) whereas, in 1854, a thousand guineas would not be taken for any one acre, and three thousand guineas an acre has been asked for some parts of this ground. That an imperative necessity exists for the provision of Healthy Homes for our industrious classes, let us look at a specimen of one of the BEST places in which they are now lodged, and also at one or two of the worst, imagining the intermediate specimens, which graduate from one to the other by almost imperceptible degrees. The first is one of a row of houses situated in a paved and cleanly kept thoroughfare, at the back of my house, in Westminster. Its eleva- tion exhibits more than the usual quantity of those objects of the bricklayers' pride, gauged arches'' of red rubbers; those above the windows are called flat arches, but possess little of the properties of an arch, consequently there is scarcely a house in London in which we do not see one or more of the window-heads fractured, and dropping to pieces; indeed so universal is this, that it is calculated that upwards of ^12,000 a year is spent in repairing these fractures. In the reign of Queen Anne, the window heads were almost invariably segmental, and therefore remain perfect. Two courses of four inch brickwork, forming the segment of a circle, would better satisfy the eye, hence be handsomer, and not cost one tenth part of the sum expended upon the gauged arch, but to render these latter-mentioned great favourites of the bricklayers secure, they should always be supported and tied with an iron bar in the same manner as the opening for the fire-place in a chimney breast. Our illustration represents a house of eight rooms, with small back yard, containing a wash house, a privy, a dust bin, and a water butt. The front kitchen—the top of the window of which is below the surface of the street, and against its wall the earth abuts, except for a small space in front of the window,—when not occupied by the tenant renting the house from the landlord, it is let for two shillings and sixpence a week, and sometimes for three shillings. The back kitchen is too damp, and the smell of the drain which passes beneath the house is too ofi^ensive to permit this room to be occupied c