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Glimpses into the Abyss

Chapter 89: INDEX.
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About This Book

The author reports a sustained, hands-on investigation into urban destitution and vagrancy, combining first-person immersion in tramp wards, lodging-houses, and shelters with visits to municipal institutions and foreign poor-law systems. She classifies observed social types, traces patterns of degeneration and potential reclamation, and links individual psychological decline to broader social conditions. Statistical and anecdotal evidence is assembled alongside legal and comparative study of vagrancy legislation, and existing remedial agencies are critiqued. The account closes with practical reform proposals advocating scientific, national measures to prevent and remedy poverty-related deterioration.

Common Lodging-house.Municipal Lodging-house or Shelter.
Interested Management.Disinterested Management.
Not to proprietary interest to put down vice and drunkenness, and to call in police. Interest to secure greatest number of lodgers.Against interest to have disturbances, and therefore desirable to prevent vice and drunkenness from commencement.
Interest to provide minimum that will pass muster, e.g., usually no stoving apparatus to prevent vermin, and no lockers to prevent theft.Interest to provide maximum consistent with cleanliness. Usually apparatus for stoving, and lockers for private property.
Imperfect sanitary arrangements, deficient arrangements for cooking and washing.Sanitary arrangements considered in building. Proper arrangements for cooking and washing.
Deputy (usually chosen from inmates) exercises little control.Management removes at once any warden suspected of ill conduct.
Regulations if made, hard to enforce, as interest is retention of lodgers.Regulations being made by management can be more easily enforced.
Small number makes better provision not profitable.Larger number allows of better provision.

But it is not a question merely of the state of the common lodging-house. Bound up with this is the fact that around the common lodging-houses in each large town is growing up silently a great evil, a network of single "furnished rooms," which are the last refuge of evicted householders, but also the home of immorality. The insufficient provision of the common lodging-house is being silently largely supplemented by these. These evils are flagrant. Yet they cannot be suppressed. The homeless must have somewhere to go. The crowding of slum areas by "lodgers" is as grave an evil.

The "way out" is to provide in every town, under charge of the Municipality, well-regulated sanitary and sufficient accommodation. As a national provision is required, Municipalities of smaller towns might be encouraged by loans for building purposes on national credit, Government in return exercising care as to expense. Glasgow has shown that such enterprises

(1) Suppress the poor insufficient houses,

(2) Provide adequate return on capital,

(3) Lead to the rise of still better accommodation for working men.

A Municipal lodging-house should be linked to remedial agencies, and a chain should exist on routes of travel.

Especially for women, municipal lodging-houses are a necessity. With regard to the question of "bunks" versus "beds," it is strange that while on the one hand for sanitary reasons the Government allows plank beds and wire mattresses, it is about to enforce for a class confessedly dirtier (see Vagrancy Report, 335) a universal bed. The idea that "inspection" can keep beds clean without stoving is futile. Some of the vermin most troublesome to get rid of are microscopic. Also the idea that people undress to go to bed, and do not undress in a bunk, is not correct. The class that possess only "what they stand up in" possess no night garments. Women keep some of their garments on. Men may undress (for protection from vermin). All the garments not worn all night are usually tucked into the bed for fear of thefts. I have seen women undressing similarly in a bunk. The Salvation Army keeps its shelters spotlessly clean and free from vermin. Unless cleansing of the person is compelled by law, all that can be done for the lowest class of all is to provide some easily cleansed resting-place (see p. 30. Something must be done to prevent the scandal of "sleeping out" in our wealthy cities.

The popularity of the Shelter shows it meets a social need. Also in connection with public institutions, remedial action and sorting into classes is possible, which is impossible in places provided for private profit. We should aim at getting every individual into a safe and sanitary shelter at night. How can a destitute woman find 3s. 6d. per week for bare shelter? If she pays this should not it entitle her to a place which is clean, where she can keep herself clean, and can keep her self-respect?


INDEX.

Aboriginal Vagrant, 2

Admission, Refusal of, 29

Afforestation, 77

Agricultural Vagrancy, 5, 83

Appenzell, 310

Beggars, 11, 19, 97-100

Casual Ward, Admission to, 109, 120, 139-142, 295, 304, 312-315; Bath, 37, 39, 40, 80, 111, 121, 144, 260; Bed, 114, 122, 146, 167, 279; Cleanliness, 34, 37, 39, 80, 111, 114, 144, 145; Cost of, 79; Defects of, 53, 54, 111, 113, 124, 125, 147-149, 168, 172, 274, 294; Detention, 29, 81, 273; Drink, 113, 124, 129, 164, 260; Food, 26, 27, 33, 40, 44, 75, 112, 115, 123, 125, 129, 143, 168, 260, 305; Institution of, 14; Investigation of, 33; Overcrowding, 37, 39, 41, 42, 44, 80; Task, 22, 28, 33, 34, 40, 45, 96, 117, 126-128, 154, 162-165, 261, 264, 273

Casuals, Statistics of, 17, 18, 19, 20, 65, 67, 68, 294

Central Hall, Manchester, 71, 85, 280

Charity, 58, 76

Common Lodging-House, 35, 36, 47, 94-106, 175-177, 232-254, 269-271, 307; Beds in, 48, 49, 101, 102; Cost in, 48; Cleanliness of, 47-49, 103-105, 237, 241, 242, 245, 246, 252, 270; Overcrowding in, 47, 104, 252, 254, 271, 298; versus Shelter, 324-327

Danish Poor Law, 58

Department of Labour, 74

Dietary, Tramp Ward, 26

Doctor refused, 37, 43, 157

Drink, 20, 139, 161, 186, 189

Ensor, Research by, 25

Forced Labour, 59, 61, 63

Fuller on Vagrancy, 3

Furnished Rooms, 176, 247

German Relief Station, 14

German Colonies, 62, 310

Glasgow Municipal Lodging-Houses, 299-300

Herdern, 310

Hibbert, Sir John, 44

Home, Disintegration of the, 12, 288-297, 321, 322

Identification, 81

Impotent, 6, 32, 36, 42

Incapable, 5, 7, 32, 42, 150, 151, 156, 157, 298

Independent Review, 25

Inefficient, 8, 10, 20, 26, 53, 290

Inspection, 48, 258

Investigation, Value of, 23

Investigation into Belgian Labour Colonies, 54

Investigation into Manchester poverty, 12

Labour Bureaux, 62, 75

Labour Colonies, 82, 173, 271, 281, 301, 306-311; Cost in, 58, 62, 76, 173, 309-310, 311; English: Hadleigh, 310; Hollesley Bay, 71, 311; Laindon, 71, 311; Lingfield, 71, 310; Foreign: Belgian, 56, 57, 309; Dutch, 62, 309; German, 62, 310; Swiss, 63, 310; Visit to, 34; Wage in, 79

Legislation against Vagrancy, 3, 4, 11-15, 53, 64, 81

Legislation, Faults of, 15, 16

Lodging-houses, 35, 36, 47-49, 76, 94-106, 173, 191, 197-231, 233, 293, 299 (see Shelters); German, 60; Municipal, 49, 74, 89-93, 178, 299, 324-326; (Glasgow), 299; Rowton Houses, 50, 324; Women's, 197-231. 255-259, 280

London Lodging-houses, 48, 254-259, 298, 300; Tramp Ward, 259-268

Low-skilled Labour, 8

Lucerne, 310

Luhterheim, 62

Magistrates, 11, 69, 306, 316

Merxplas, 56, 57, 309

Migration, 9, 19, 29, 35, 38, 51, 66, 72, 287-290, 297

Moritzburg, 310

Municipality, 73, 301

Nomad, 1

Pastoral Vagrancy, 2

Personality, Theory of, xi.

Police, 303-305

Prison, 25, 28, 29, 31, 38, 55, 56, 172, 214, 276-279, 299; Cost, 58; Food, 27, 276

Prostitution, 200-203, 206-208, 212-216, 220, 222, 226, 231, 292, 294, 296, 319-327

Relief Station, 14, 60, 61, 63, 65, 173, 275, 279, 306

Rose, "Rise of Democracy", 12

Rosebery, Lord, 12

Rowton Houses, 50

Settlement, Law of, 4, 303

Shelters, 29, 30, 48, 130-135, 173, 190, 195-196, 295, 299, 307, 324-327; Beds in, 133; German, 61; Salvation Army, 175-196, 233; Beds in, 180, 183; Food in, 184, 192

Sleeping Out, 13, 18, 30, 31, 38, 51, 65, 137, 166, 171, 275, 308

Small-pox, 37, 42, 105, 245, 307

Soldiers discharged, 21

St. Johannsen, 63, 310

Task of Work, 15, 33, 34

Theory of Personality, xi.

Tramp Ward defects, 53, 54 See Casual Ward.

Unemployed, 20, 21, 24, 25, 29-32, 35, 36, 50, 51, 56, 69, 72, 84, 137, 150, 162, 167, 188, 189, 215, 220

Unemployment in England, 73, 76, 77, 301; in Denmark, 59; in Germany, 60-62

Unions, Combination of, 81

Unskilled Labour, 5, 9, 18, 20, 70

Vagrancy Definition of, 1; in early England, 3, 284-285; Agricultural, 5, 11, 83, 85, 285; Industrial, 6, 83, 85, 286; Modern, 7, 16-23; in other countries, 54-64

Vagrancy Committee, Recommendations of, 305-308

Vagrancy Reform, 71-82

Vagrants, Number of, 4, 5, 10, 17, 20, 21-23, 25, 43, 67, 261

Veenhuizen, 209

Way Tickets, 60, 63, 65-69, 80, 81, 306

Westphalia, 310

Wilhelmsdorf, 310

Witzwyl, 63, 310

Women, 312-315, 319-327; Dirty Clothing of, 129, 191, 244, 250; Lodging-Houses for, 93, 95, 176, 190, 191, 195, 196-231, 233, 247, 248, 252-259, 280, 300; Sanitation for, 92, 93, 104-105, 235, 242, 243, 257; Vagrants, 80, 114, 116, 135, 160-161, 188, 193, 211, 225, 228, 237, 249, 267, 304, 308, 312-315

Workhouse, Cost in, 58; Austrian, 64; Danish, 58, 59; German, 61