House property & its management

How this relation between landlord and tenant might be established in some of the lowest districts of London, and with what results, I am about to describe by relating what has been done in the last two years in Blank Court.

In many of the houses the dustbins were utterly unapproachable, and cabbage-leaves, stale fish and every sort of dirt were lying in the passages and on the stairs; in some the back kitchen had been used as a dustbin, but had not been emptied for years, and the dust filtered through into the front kitchens, which were the sole living and sleeping rooms of some families; in some, the kitchen stairs were many inches thick with dirt, which was so hardened that a shovel had to be used to get it off; in some there was hardly any water to be had; the wood was eaten away, and broken away; windows were smashed, and the rain was coming through the roofs. At night it was still worse; and during the first winter I had to collect the rents chiefly then, as the inhabitants, being principally costermongers, were out nearly all day, and they were afraid to entrust their rent to their neighbours. It was then that I saw the houses in their most dreadful aspect. I well remember wet, foggy Monday nights, when I turned down the dingy court, past the brilliantly lighted public-house at the corner, past the old furniture outside the shops, and dived into the dark, yawning passage-ways. The front doors stood open day and night, and as I felt my way down the kitchen stairs, broken, and rounded by the hardened mud upon them, the foul smells which the heavy, foggy air would not allow to rise met me as I descended, and the plaster rattled down as I groped along. It was truly appalling to think that there were human beings who lived habitually in such an atmosphere, with such surroundings. Sometimes I had to open the kitchen door myself, after knocking several times in vain, when a woman, quite drunk, would be lying on the floor on some black mass which served as a bed; sometimes, in answer to my knocks, a half-drunken man would swear, and thrust the rent-money out to me through a chink of the door, placing his foot against it so as to prevent it opening wide enough to admit me. Always it would be shut again without a light being offered to guide me up the pitch-dark stairs. Such was Blank Court in the winter of 1869. Truly, a wild, lawless, desolate little kingdom to come to rule over.

On what principles was I to rule these people? On the same as I had already tried, and tried with success, in other places, and which I may sum up as the two following: firstly, to demand a strict fulfilment of their duties to me—one of the chief of which would be the punctual payment of rent; and secondly, to endeavour to be so unfailingly just and patient that they should learn to trust the rule that was over them.

With regard to details, I would make a few improvements at once, such, for example, as the laying on of water and repairing of dustbins; but, for the most part, improvements should be made only by degrees, as the people became more capable of valuing them and not abusing them. I would have the rooms distempered and thoroughly cleansed as they became vacant, and then they should be offered to the more cleanly of the tenants. I would have such repairs as were not immediately needed used as a means of giving work to the men in times of distress. I would draft the occupants of the underground kitchens into the upstairs rooms, and would ultimately convert the kitchens into bathrooms and washhouses. I would have the landlady’s portion of the house—i.e. the stairs and passages—at once repaired and distempered, and they should be regularly scrubbed, and, as far as possible, made models of cleanliness, for I knew, from former experience, that the example of this would, in time, silently spread itself to the rooms themselves, and that payment for this work would give me some hold over the older girls. I would collect savings personally, not trust to their being taken to distant banks or savings clubs. And, finally, I knew that I should learn to feel these people as my friends, and so should instinctively feel the same respect for their privacy and their independence, and should treat them with the same courtesy that I should show towards any other personal friends. There would be no interference, no entering their rooms uninvited, no offer of money or the necessaries of life. But when occasion presented itself I should give them any help I could, such as I might offer without insult to other friends—sympathy in their distresses; advice, help and counsel in their difficulties; introductions that might be of use to them; means of education; visits to the country; a lent book when not able to work; a bunch of flowers brought on purpose; an invitation to any entertainment, in a room built at the back of my own house, which would be likely to give them pleasure. I am convinced that one of the evils of much that is done for the poor springs from the want of delicacy felt, and courtesy shown, towards them, and that we cannot beneficially help them in any spirit different to that in which we help those who are better off. The help may differ in amount, because their needs are greater. It should not differ in kind.

I have learned to know that people are ashamed to abuse a place they find cared for. They will add dirt to dirt till a place is pestilential, but the more they find done for it, the more they will respect it, till at last order and cleanliness prevail. It is this feeling of theirs, coupled with the fact that they do not like those whom they have learned to love, and whose standard is higher than their own, to see things which would grieve them, which has enabled us to accomplish nearly every reform of outward things that we have achieved; so that the surest way to have any place kept clean is to go through it often yourself.

Amongst the many benefits which the possession of the houses enables us to confer on the people, perhaps one of the most important is our power of saving them from neighbours who would render their lives miserable. It is a most merciful thing to protect the poor from the pain of living in the next room to drunken, disorderly people. “I am dying,” said an old woman to me the other day; “I wish you would put me where I can’t hear S—— beating his wife. Her screams are awful. And B—— too, he do come in so drunk. Let me go over the way to No. 30.” Our success depends on duly arranging the inmates; not too many children in any one house, so as to overcrowd it; not too few, so as to overcrowd another; not two bad people side by side, or they drink together; not a terribly bad person beside a very respectable one.

It appears to me, then, to be proved by practical experience that when we can induce the rich to undertake the duties of landlords in poor neighbourhoods, and ensure a sufficient amount of the wise, personal supervision of educated and sympathetic people acting as their representatives, we achieve results which are not attainable in any other way. I would call upon those who may possess cottage property in large towns to consider the immense power they thus hold in their hands and the large influence for good they may exercise by the wise use of that power. When they have to delegate it to others, let them take care to whom they commit it; and let them beware lest, through the widely prevailing system of subletting, this power ultimately abide with those who have neither the will nor the knowledge which would enable them to use it beneficially.

It is on these things and their faithful execution that the life of the whole matter depends, and by which steady progress is ensured. It is the smaller things of the world that colour the lives of those around us, and it is on persistent efforts to reform these that progress depends; and we may rest assured that they who see with greater eyes than ours have a due estimate of the service, and that if we did but perceive the mighty principles underlying these tiny things we should rather feel awed that we are entrusted with them at all, than scornful and impatient that they are no larger. What are we that we should ask for more than that God should let us work for Him among the tangible things which He created to be fair and the human which He redeemed to be pure? From time to time He lifts a veil and shows us, even while we struggle with imperfections here below, that towards which we are working—shows us how, by governing and ordering the tangible things one by one, we may make of this earth a fair dwelling-place. And, far better still, how, by cherishing human beings, He will let us help Him in His work of building up temples meet for Him to dwell in—faint images of that best Temple of all which He promised that He would raise up on the third day, though men might destroy it.