House property & its management

In 1872 Miss Octavia Hill began the practice of writing at the end of each year a letter which was sent to all who were associated with her in her work. The following are some selections:

Work under the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

Letter of 1902.—During the past year the Ecclesiastical Commissioners asked us to take charge of some of their property, of which the leases fell in, in Southwark and Lambeth.

In Southwark the area had been leased long ago on the old-fashioned tenure of “lives.” That is, it was held not for a specified term of years, but subject to the life of certain persons. The lease fell in, therefore, quite suddenly, and fifty of the houses, which were occupied by working people, were placed under my care. I had only four days’ notice before I had to begin collecting. It was well for us that my fellow-workers rose to the occasion and at once undertook the added duties; well, too, that we were then pretty strong in workers. It was a curious Monday’s work. The houses having been let and sublet, I could be furnished with few particulars. I had a map and the numbers of the houses, which were scattered in various streets over the five acres which had reverted to the Commissioners, but I had no tenant’s name nor the rental of any tenement, nor did the tenants know or recognize the written authority, having long paid to other landlords. I subdivided the area geographically between my two principal South London workers, and I went to every house, accompanied by one or other of them. I learnt the name of the tenant, explained the circumstances, saw their books and learnt their rental, and finally succeeded in obtaining every rent. Many of the houses required much attention, and since then we have been busily employed in supervising necessary repairs. The late lessees were liable for dilapidations, and I felt once more how valuable to us it was to represent owners like the Commissioners, for all this legal and surveying work was done ably by responsible and qualified men of business, while we were free to go in and out among the tenants, watch details, report grievous defects, decide what repairs essential to health should be done instantly. We have not half done all this, but we are steadily progressing.

The very same day the Commissioners sent to me about this sudden accession of work in Southwark, they asked me whether I could also take over one hundred and sixty houses in Lambeth. I had known that this lease was falling in to them, and I knew that they proposed rebuilding for working people on some seven acres there, and would consult me about this. But I had no idea that they meant to ask me to take charge of the old cottages pending the rebuilding. However, we were able to undertake this, and it will be a very great advantage to us to get to know the tenants, the locality, the workers in the neighbourhood, before the great decisions about rebuilding are made. In this case I had the advantage of going round with the late lessee, who gave me names, rentals and particulars, and whose relations with his late tenants struck me as very satisfactory and human. On this area our main duties have been to induce tenants to pay who knew that their houses were coming down (in this we have succeeded), to decide those difficult questions of what to repair in houses soon to be destroyed, to empty one portion of the area where cottages are first to be built, providing accommodation elsewhere so far as is possible, and to arrange the somewhat complicated minute details as to rates and taxes payable for cottages partly empty, temporarily empty, on assessments which had all to be ascertained, and where certain rates in certain houses for certain times only were payable by the owners whom we represent.

Letter of 1903.—The past year has brought one very large expansion of our work, larger than that of any previous year; and it is started on independent lines, in a way which gives hope for future growth. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners wrote to tell me in the autumn that an area in South London containing twenty-two acres, and with between five hundred and six hundred houses on it, was falling in to them at the expiration of a long lease, and they asked me to undertake the management of the property. Bearing in mind what they themselves had said as to providing for the continuity of such work, and with a deep desire not to lose near touch with my own old tenants, workers and places, if I spread my time over still larger areas, I set myself to think whether this new work might not be started from a new centre, and have been fortunate enough to be able to recommend a lady of great power and experience, who consents to undertake this new property, with direct responsibility to the Commissioners.

It was a huge undertaking, and needed much care and labour to start it well, and naturally we were all keen to help. It was a great day when we took over the place. Our seconds-in-command took command manfully for a fortnight of all our old courts, and fourteen of us met on Monday, October 5th, to take over the estate and collect from five hundred to six hundred tenants wholly unknown to us. We organized it all thoughtfully; we had fifteen collecting books and all the tenants’ books prepared, opened a bank account, found a room as an office, and divided the area among the workers. Our first duty was to get the tenants to recognize our authority and pay us. I think we were very successful; we got every tenant on the estate to pay us without any legal process, except one who was a regular scamp. We collected some £250, most of it in silver, and got it safely to the bank. Then came the question of repairs; there were written in the first few weeks one thousand orders for these, although, as the whole area is to be rebuilt, we were only doing actually urgent and no substantial ones. All these had to be overlooked and reported on and paid for. Next came pouring in the claims for borough and water rates. We had to ascertain the assessments of every house, the facts as to whether landlord or tenant was responsible, whether the rates were compounded for or not, what allowance was to be claimed for empty houses or rooms. There were two Water Companies supplying the area, and we had to learn which supplied each house.

The whole place was to be rebuilt, and even the streets rearranged and widened, and I had promised the Commissioners I would advise them as to the future plans. These had to be prepared at the earliest date possible, the more so as the sanitary authorities were pressing, and sent in one hundred orders in the first few days we were there. It is needless to say with what speed, capacity and zeal the representatives of the Commissioners carried on their part of these preparations, and they rapidly decided on which streets should be first rebuilt. But this only implied more to be done, for we had to empty the streets swiftly, and that meant patching up all possible empty houses in other streets and moving the tenants into them. Fortunately, there were several houses empty, the falling in of the leases having scared some people away. The Commissioners had decided to close all the public-houses on the estate, and we let one to a girls’ club, and had to put repairs in hand to fit it for its changed destination.

The matter now stands thus: we have got through the first quarter; have collected £2,672, mostly in silver; the quarter’s accounts are nearly ready to send in; we have completed the most pressing repairs; have emptied two streets, and plans for rebuilding them are decided on; tenders have been accepted for these, and they have been begun. Plans have been prepared for rebuilding and rearrangement of the whole estate, and these are now before the Commissioners for their consideration. They provide a site for rebuilding the parish school, an area of about an acre as a public recreation ground, the substitution of four wide for three narrow streets, and afford accommodation for 790 families in four-roomed and six-roomed cottages, cottage flats, and flats of three- and two-roomed tenements in houses in no case higher than three stories.

But there remains one most important point still under the consideration of the Commissioners. It is whether this domain is to be leased to builders and managed by them and their successors for some eighty years or whether it is to remain under the direct control of the Commissioners. All of you who know anything of how much depends on management will realize how earnestly I trust that they may decide to retain the area, and may feel confident of finding representatives in the future to manage it for them on sound financial principles and in the best interests of tenants and landlords. Those who know what a country landlord can do in a village will realize the influence of wise government in such an area. This land is Church land, it adjoins the parish church, it is quite near the Talbot Settlement, established by, and named after, the Bishop of the diocese; surely it should not pass from the control of the owners. If clauses in leases were as wisely planned and as strongly enforced as possible, they could still not be like the living government of wise owners, and since needs and standards are for ever altering, many decisions involving change during the next eighty years may be desirable.

Payment of Rates by Tenants.

Letter of 1894.—In all these new cottages I am introducing the plan of arranging that the tenants should pay their own rates, the rent being fixed much lower to enable them to do this.

The plan of making weekly tenants responsible for rates is very difficult to work; not being general, the machinery and arrangements do not help us. But I have felt it to be very important, as well as to be worth a great effort. It may be that some of those in authority will realize its value and that we may get some help in time. What would conduce most to make the plan succeed would be that some allowance should be made for tenants paying their rates in advance, analogous to, though not naturally so great as, that made to landlords who compound: also that by some means the various payments might be spread over the year, falling due at different quarters. This would go far to mitigate the difficulty for working people of paying a lump sum down twice a year, as is demanded in some London parishes. Weekly or fortnightly collection, which I hear is arranged for in Edinburgh, would manifestly be more costly, but our tenants would manage a quarterly payment pretty easily. However, at present there is no hope of any modification of existing arrangements, and we must do our best to fit in with the present regulations in the several parishes. I hope that, if we lead the van, others will follow, and co-operation may come in time from officials. All newly elected vestrymen might, meantime, do well to try to secure that fuller facts should be inserted on claims and receipts. The words “made,” “due” and “payable” are used in a way not always clear to the ratepayer, while the option of paying in separate instalments is often not shown clearly on the claims.

This subject, however, is somewhat technical, and I only refer to it here because it is interesting me deeply. I think it would tend towards municipal economy, likely to tell to the advantage of the time to come.

Gardens in London.

Letter of 1875.—When I look at the unused bits of ground around a farm or cottage, I sometimes think what they would be worth at the back of a London house.

But even in the front of their houses in a London court, are the poor much better off? I go sometimes on a hot summer evening into a narrow court, with houses on each side. The sun has heated them all day, until it has driven nearly every inmate out of doors. Those who are not at the public-house are standing or sitting on their doorsteps, quarrelsome, hot, dirty; the children are crawling or sitting on the hard, hot stones, till every corner of the place looks alive. Everyone looks in everyone else’s way; the place echoes with words not of the gentlest. Sometimes on such a hot summer’s evening, in such a court, when I am trying to calm excited women shouting their execrable language at one another, I have looked up suddenly and seen one of those bright gleams of light the summer sun sends out just before he sets, catching the top of a red chimney-pot, and beautiful there, though too directly above their heads for the crowd below to notice it much. But to me it brings sad thought of the fair and quiet places far away, where it is falling softly on tree and hill and cloud, and I feel that that quiet, that beauty, that space would be more powerful to calm the wild excess about me than all my frantic striving with it.

Leicester Square shows us another thing: such places must be made bright, pretty and neat—a small place which is not so becomes painfully dreary; it is quite curious to notice how little one feels shut in when the barriers are lovely, or contain beautiful things which the eye can rest on. The small enclosed leads which too often bound the view of a back dining-room in London oppress one like the walls of a prison; but a tiny cloistered court of the same size will give a sense of repose; and colour introduced into such spaces will give them such beauty as will prevent one from fretting against the boundaries. Strange and beautiful instance this of how—if we recognize the limitations appointed for us, accept them, and deal well with what is given—the passionate longing for more is taken away and a great peace hallows all.

The Workers.

Letter of 1900.—I have been thinking a great deal about how responsible bodies can, in the future, secure such management by trained ladies as has been found helpful in the past. This has turned my attention much more than heretofore to the thought of how to provide more responsible professional workers, for I feel that, however much volunteers may help, it is only to professional workers that responsible and continuous duties can, as a rule, be entrusted, especially by large owners or corporations.

Up to now my professional workers have been among my most zealous and selfless colleagues, always ready to take onerous duties, to fill vacant places, to slip out of the way and go to new fields when it seemed best, always ready to help to train others for management in houses, whether in London, the provincial towns, Scotland, Ireland, America, Holland, or any other place from which work came, taking their holidays, when best they could be spared, and in every way proving themselves true helpers by their hearty recognition that what we had to do was to teach, initiate and supplement as many earnest workers as we could. What I owe to them in the past for the devoted help they have thus rendered for now many years, no one will ever know.

But hitherto I or some tried and experienced volunteer have been the responsible person to whom private owners, or men of business or corporations have entrusted their houses; and it is we who have reported upon all business. As a matter of fact, as you all know, we have put all management on a business footing, and with few exceptions have charged the owners the ordinary 5 per cent. on rental usually paid to collectors.

Thinking over all this with regard to the further future and to the larger areas that we can cover, it seemed to me that the present plan had its limitations. Even if many more such leaders were found, how would they be known? Could responsible bodies make plans dependent on them? Then I realized that my best plan for the future would be not only to train such volunteers as offered and the professional workers whom we required, but to train more professional workers than we ourselves can use, and, as occasion offers, to introduce them to owners wishing to retain small tenements in their own hands and to be represented in them by a kind of manager not hitherto existing. The ordinary collector is not a man of education, with time to spare, nor does he estimate that his duties comprise much beyond a call at the doors for rent brought down to him and a certain supervision of repairs that are asked for. If there existed a body of ladies trained to more thorough work, qualified to supervise more minutely, likely to enter into such details as bear on the comfort of home life, they might be entrusted by owners with house property. We all can remember how the training of nurses and of teachers has raised the standard of work required in both professions. The same change might be hoped for in the character of the management of dwellings let to the poor. Whether or no volunteers co-operated with them would settle itself. At any rate, owners could have, as I have told them they should have, besides their lawyer to advise them as to law, their architect as to large questions of buildings, their auditor to supervise their accounts, also a representative to see to their people and to those details of repair and management on which the conduct of courts or blocks inhabited by working people depends. Where people live close together, share yards, washhouses and staircases, too often there is no one whose business it is to supervise and govern the use of what is used in common or to see how one tenant’s conduct affects others.

The Work.

Letter of 1879.—I should like, in my letter this year, to note down what it appears to me you are all feeling as to the difference between the charge of a court where the people are your tenants and much other visiting among the poor. The care of tenants calls out a sense of duty founded on relationship; the work is permanent, and the definite character of much of it makes its progress marked. Have you ever asked yourselves why you have chosen the charge of courts, with all its difficulties and ties? The burthen of the problems before you has been heavy, and the regularity of the occupation has often demanded of you great sacrifices. Why have you not chosen transitory connection with hundreds of receivers of soup, or pleasant intercourse with little Sunday scholars, or visiting among the aged and bedridden, who were sure to greet you with a smile when you went to them and had no right to say a word of reproach to you about your long absences in the country? Why did you not take up district-visiting, where, if any family did not welcome you, you could just stay away? Because you preferred a work where duty was continuous and distinct and where it was mutual. Because, also, the petty annoyances brought before you at such awkward moments, with so little discretion or good-temper—the smoky chimneys, broken water-pipes, tiresome neighbours, drunken husbands—as well as the great sorrows caused by death, disease, poverty, sin, have called not only for your sympathy but for your action. From the greatest to the least, the problems have implied some duty on your part. You have each had to ask yourself, “What ought I, in my relation to the tenants, to do for them in this difficulty?” From the merest trifle of a cupboard key broken in the lock to the future of some family desolated by death, or sunk in misery through drink, all has asked your sympathy, much has demanded your action. I have said the charge of tenants has been valued by you also because the duty is mutual: it implies your determination, not simply to do kindnesses with liberal hand, popular as that would be, but to meet the poor on grounds where they too have duties to you.

Spirit of the Work.

Letter of 1890.—I will not in this, which is my one letter of the year to you, my friends and fellow-workers, enter on the great public questions which are attracting an ever-increasing degree of interest.

Whatever be done about free meals, free education (why do we call them free, instead of paid for by charity, by rates, or by tax, do you think?)—whatever may happen about strikes or immigration from the country—for you and me there remain much the same great eternal duties, love, thought, justice, liberality, simplicity, hope, industry, for ever; still human heart depends on human heart for sympathy, and still the old duties of neighbourliness continue. Let us see that we fulfil them, each in our own circle, large or small; perhaps we may find the fulfilment of them answer more social problems than we quite expected. Perhaps we may find changes of system effect little reform unless courageous and honest men carry them out with single-mindedness and thought for others.

If the free meal, free education, subsidized house accommodation attract you, will you pause and remember, first, that they are by no means free, but cost someone, somehow, just as much, probably a great deal more, than if provided otherhow? The question, if you get rid of the word “free,” which is deceptive, clears up a little, and becomes, “Is this the best way of, first, providing, and second, paying for these necessities?”

And then, having answered this for yourself, see to it that you are wholly single-minded if you advocate this sort of subsidy for the poor. Be sure you do so neither from cowardice nor from ambition. If, indeed, it be pity, genuine kindness and a sense of justice that moves you, then the feeling is so good that in some way I believe it will lead you right; besides, you will keep your power to watch and see and alter as you come face to face with facts, and may modify all systems, and keep the desire to do justice and help in whatever way is seen finally to be really helpful.

But if you let one touch of terror dim your sight and flinch before the most terrible upheaval of rampant force or threat; if, for popular favour, or seat at board, or success on platform, you hesitate to speak what you know to be true, then shall your cowardice and your ambition be indeed answerable for consequences which you little dream of. They may come now, or they may come later, but come they will; for only Truth abides and will stand the test of time. Let us see that we hold her very fast; only those who are loyal to her can.