Volume 2

Labour and life of the people / edited by Charles Booth ; contributors Charles Booth, Beatrice Potter [and others].

Date:
1889-1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Labour and life of the people / edited by Charles Booth ; contributors Charles Booth, Beatrice Potter [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    45 6d, and let the back room to another poor woman. Had lived here for seven years and been a widow for five. The room in a most dilapidated condition and the fire (like many in this street) smoked badly. In the third floor back was another widow who did a little needlework when she could get it. This was a small room with leaky, rattling window, and walls which did not appear to have been touched with a brush for a long time. This neglect sometimes arises from persons staying long and not liking to be disturbed. This poor woman had a dejected appearance and was often without fire or food and barely clad. She was brought up in a convent. Since her husband's death she has been in great depths of poverty, partly through shif tless- ness. Has a trifle allowed her by a lady for rent and gets along as best she can. No. 11, ParJcer Street. Here before the clearance lived in the parlours Mrs. Jackson, with a blind sister and sister's son. These ^people were English Protestants. Mr. Jackson was a cabman, and after his death, four years ago, the widow, who was seventy- three years old, lived here and supported herself and the rest by washing and mangling. Though clean people, their rooms, they complained, swarmed with bugs. These houses were not fit to exist. Close by the back parlour window was the closet, making the room most offensive, and the dust-bin and tap were close neighbours with the smallest space between them and the back door. On the first floor to the front lived Mrs. McNeill and five children under eight years of age. She was deserted by her husband about a year and a half ago, and had to get her living by selling oranges, &c., in the street. She was latterly allowed to live rent free, after the propei^ty was bought by the Board of Works. The husband was in America. The children were often locked in during the day crying, perhaps, while the mother was out trying to earn bread for them. No fire, often no food, almost naked, and hardly 2s worth of furniture. The woman (an Irish Catholic) seems quiet and sober and tries hard. In the back room were people in bad condition. On the second floor to the back lived another Irish widow, but without children, who got her living by selling oranges, &c. She had been here for six years, on the whole steady, though she may occasionally take