Sanatory inquiry - towns in Scotland : report on the sanatory condition and general economy of the town of Tranent, and the neighbouring district in Haddingtonshire / made to the Poor Law Commissioners by S. Scott Alison.

  • Alison, Somerville Scott, 1813-1877.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sanatory inquiry - towns in Scotland : report on the sanatory condition and general economy of the town of Tranent, and the neighbouring district in Haddingtonshire / made to the Poor Law Commissioners by S. Scott Alison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    height of about 20 feet. The roof is composed of thatch or straw, rest- ing upon rafters or boams of wood. There is one fire-place, which is provided with a capacious chimney. The walls are in general substantial, ihere being plenty of s^one on the spot, and lime being almndant in the county. The roof is, in many cases, very inferior. Tiie tha'ch is often quite rotten, and pervious to rain and wind; and the raflers in many cottages are much decayed. These cottages are not supplied with any ceiling or partition to hide the thatch and rafters, audio pro'ect against the wind and rain that may penetrate the thatch covering when tliey are given up to the hinds. This great defect is remedied in part in the cottages of some of the more respectable and comfortaljle hinds, by their putting up a wooden ceihng, which they purchase and carry about with them from cottage to cottage, as a piece of house furniture. In other cottages another and cheaper contrivance is adopted. This is the placing of canvass in the place of wood ; and when, as is often the case, this canvass covering is whitewashed, it gives the apartment the ap- pearance, if not the reality, of comfort. In some cottages no ceiling of any kind is used. The appearance of the cottage is then very bad : tiiere appears an immense dark and diniry space, bounded above by usjly thatch, and rafters generally covered with much dust and multitudes of spi- ders' webs. The floor of these cottages is trenerally beneath the level of the ground outside. For what purpose this arrangemenf is adopted I cannot understand, unless it is to counteract the inability to keep the cold out, through insufficiency of the door and roof, by rendering the apartment as much like a hole as possible, and thereby to keep the heat ia. The walls in the inside are bare, or only whitewashed. There is one window : it is generally about two feet square, and is not provided with hinges, or other appliances, to admit of beinii opened. The ex- pense, I suppove, is tlie only reason./ The door is .^eldom well fitted, is frequently decayed, and admits strong currents of air. The su- perior cottages are, with a very few exceptions, about the same size as those described, have only one apartment, and have the floors below the level of the ground outside; but the walls are plastered and com- fortable ceilina;s are supplied, the doors are well fitted, the windows are constructed so as to open, and the roofs are covered with slates or tiles. The houses of the coUiers and day-labourers are mostly the same as the inferior kind of cottages inhabited by the hinds. The houses inhabited by colliers, day-laliourers, and other operatives, are in general very inferior in accommodation to the cottages of the hinds. A few of the coUiers' houses are good, but the great mass of them is very bad. The roof is frequently insufficient, admitting wind and rain in wet and windy weather; is sometimes composed of thatch, seldom or never renewed, and resting on rafters. In some houses there is nothing between this roof of thatch and the apartment, and the thatch and rafters are covered with the accumulated dust and cobwebs of many years. In some the rafters and tiiatch are quite rotten and decayed. I was in one house, shortly before I left, where the rafters were infested with bugs, which occasionally dropped down. In the worst kind of these houses the apartment is ill supplied with light, the win- dows being only partially supplied with glass, and its place supplied with paper, bundles of rags, and old hats. In some of these houses the windows will not open ; and, were the air excluded from admission by the roof and the ill-hung door, there would be little or no ventdation. inteni.ll ecu- In the better houses of the colliers the furniture is ample, and in some nomy of the ig ^gpt vvith creat ncatuess and cleanliness ; but in others, even where the worktng-'^furniture is good, there prevails a shocking amount of uncleanluiess. clusses. In many of the houses of the colliers there is great want of necessary furniture, and in a good nuuiy I have noticed that the chief articles were one or two chairs, a stool, and a wretched bed and bedstead, and