These Galleries, Into
Which Every Tenement Opens, Run Round The Inside Of The Hollow Court
Which The Building Encloses, And Afford An Admirable Play-Place For
The Little Children, Out Of The Dangers And Temptations Of The Street,
And In View Of Their Respective Mothers.
The foregoing print,
representing the inner half of the quadrangle, shows the arrangement
of the galleries.
"Now," said Lord Shaftesbury, as he was showing me through these
tenements, which were models of neatness and good keeping, "you must
bear in mind that these are tenanted by the very people who once were
living in the dirtiest and filthiest lodging houses; people whom the
world said, it did no good to try to help; that they liked to be dirty
better than clean, and would be dirty under any circumstances."
He added the following anecdote to show the effect of poor lodgings in
degrading the character. A fine young man, of some considerable taste
and talent, obtained his living by designing patterns for wall paper.
A long and expensive illness so reduced his circumstances, that he was
obliged to remove to one of these low, filthy lodging houses already
alluded to. From that time he became an altered man; his wife said
that he lost all energy, all taste in designing, love of reading, and
fondness for his family; began to frequent drinking shops, and was
visibly on the road to ruin. Hearing of these lodging houses, he
succeeded in renting a tenement in one of them, for the same sum which
he had paid for the miserable dwelling.
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