The Secret World of the Victorian Lodging House

by Joseph O'Neill

  Wider developments were also having an impact on lodging houses. The Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwelling Act (Cross Act) of 1875 empowered local councils to buy up areas of slum dwellings to clear and develop them. In London this led directly to the obliteration of sixteen slum areas mainly in the East End, such as Stepney, Islington, Finsbury and Whitechapel, including Spitalfields. Among the notorious rookeries swept away none had as bad a reputation as the Flower and Dean Street area. In total about 23,000 of the city’s poorest inhabitants were made homeless. In Birmingham slums were obliterated for the Corporation Street development. The expectation was that philanthropists intent on improving the living conditions of the poorest would buy the land and build affordable accommodation. In a few instances this happened but the new accommodation was generally beyond the means of those who had been evicted.

  Owners of private homes sold up and moved out. In most cases, however, the owners of the condemned slums used their windfall to buy dwellings in adjacent areas and convert them into lodging houses. With less accommodation available, demand for their beds was greater than ever and profits undiminished.

  These developments also opened the way for a new class of property owners, people very different from the established moneyed and property classes. These were people who had started out with nothing, often locals brought up in poverty or Famine Irish who arrived after 1848. Many of these began by leasing a house, furnishing the rooms cheaply and renting them out on a weekly basis. This arrangement avoided the regulations that applied to lodging houses, as beds were not let on a nightly basis. The commercial danger inherent in this was the large number of tenants who disappeared while owing rent – allowance for which the wise man built into his charges. Middle class liberals denounced these landlords, much as they denounce payday lenders today, as ‘rapacious men who are often dishonest’ but they met a real need.

  It was only with the 1885 Housing of the Working Classes Act that the lodging house was defined as a ‘separate house or cottage for the labouring classes whether containing one or several tenements’. By then there was clear evidence that improvement was having an effect even in the most unpromising districts.

  Thomas Wright, describing the area around the port of London, said that the lodging houses there were no longer the ‘fearsome and noisome dens’ they once were and instead were usually ‘the sweetest and cleanliest’ houses in the area. He puts this down to regulation and the fact that they were subject to inspection at all hours of the day and night. However, this does not necessarily reflect on the personal hygiene of the inmates; though the keeper made available washing facilities, many of the inmates were unable to resist the ‘luxury of dirt’.

  By the 1880s many local authorities, including Oxford City Council, had in place a licensing system, which together with frequent inspection by sanitary officers seems to have brought about a general improvement. In the words of a 1900 report the lodging houses of St Thomas’ were ‘beyond reproach’ and deemed clean, well-kept and not overcrowded. There is no doubt that they were better than the majority of private houses in the same area. Their lodgers too elicited praise, as they ‘caused no trouble’.

  In 1894 the Metropolitan Police gleefully relinquished control of common lodging houses to the London County Council. They had always regarded such places as the criminal’s natural habitat and the focus of their inspections was never the public health aspects but the register of inmates. This meant that owners’ and keepers’ primary concern had been to develop a working relationship with the police. The new regime came as a shock as public Officials adopted an entirely different approach. They had the power to insist that all walls were limewashed twice a year; that shake-downs, bunks, hammocks and mattresses covered in oilskin were replaced by genuine beds with clean bedding; to close ‘doubles’ – mixed sex lodging houses – which were usually a front for brothels; and to inspect regularly. Inevitably the new inspection regime increased overheads and forced many keepers of small lodging houses to close while the profits of the rest plummeted.

  There is no doubt regulation contributed to the decline of the lodging house. A range of other factors, however, combined to bring about its demise, perhaps the most important of which was a major in shift in lodgers’ expectations. One of Mary Higgs’ respondents, a working man who travelled in the course of his employment, told her that no common lodging house compared with the Huddersfield municipal, which he described as ‘a palace’. Owners and keepers could resist middle class censure but they could not ignore the demands of their customers, who were increasingly influenced by the working class desire for respectability. The models in particular and improved housing generally encouraged the patrons of the lodging house, in the words of one disgruntled keeper, to ‘demand nothing less than a palace’.

  These heightened expectations threatened the very existence of the lodging house, whose economic viability depended on keeping overheads to an absolute minimum, which could be achieved only by providing minimal facilities and spending little on maintenance and repairs. Regulation, to the extent that it was enforced, squeezed profits. Increasing prices was not an option: the model lodging houses demonstrated that to turn even a modest operating profit necessitated a price regime which precluded traditional customers. Even this was insufficient to repay any capital investment and made a lodging house an unappealing investment.

  Ultimately the traditional lodging house, offering little for little, withered as it became economically untenable. Wider economic developments were working towards its demise. The vast army of peddlers, hawkers and entertainers who circulated around the country and were the life blood of many lodging houses dwindled as the twentieth century approached. As the population soared, towns and cities continued to grow and incomes rose among skilled workers and the middle class, demand increased to such an extent that it could only be met by a multiplication of shops. The gaps in the range of goods shops supplied, which had provided scope for the itinerant trader, shrank and hawking became the occupation of last resort for those unable to get regular employment.

  Industry too was changing and with it the demand for mobile labour declined. The development of Britain as the workshop of the world and the major exporter of manufactured goods during the middle decades of the nineteenth century meant that fewer skilled men found it necessary to tramp the country in search of work. Skilled labour became more and more factory based and factories increasingly clustered in towns and cities, which reduced the need for a workforce that was constantly on the move.

  This is reflected in the changing composition of the clientele of the urban lodging house, which was becoming apparent by the beginning of the twentieth century. Transients were now in a minority, outnumbered nine to one by those who regarded the lodging house as their permanent or semi-permanent abode. As the twentieth century wore on lodging houses became more respectable, more orderly and more conducive to the working man of regular habits. Rural houses, however, generally proved more resistant to change, especially those which enjoyed a monopoly in areas where they offered the only available accommodation. The demand for mobile labour persisted in rural areas long after it had virtually died out in cities and towns.

  No single nineteenth century event boosted the demand for cheap accommodation more than the Irish Potato Famine when, in the period from 1847 to 1851, over a million people left Ireland. However, it was not long before the Irish demonstrated their remarkable adaptability and became the most fully assimilated ethnic minority to wash up on these shores. They progressed economically and became no more dependent on the lodging house than the host community.

  The cities that gave rise to the lodging house were also changing. Mayhew reported that towards the mid-nineteenth century the number of squalid lodging houses declined, as many of them were demolished to make way for major building projects. In Manchester the Deansgate demolition did away with many of the worst lodging houses. Simultaneously, there was an increase in accommodation which provided an a
lternative to the lodging house. It is true that few authorities availed themselves of the opportunity to build lodging houses, but the few that did offered a large number of beds. By 1865 Huddersfield’s municipal lodging house had 2,870 beds at 3d a night. By 1900 Glasgow had 7 houses offering accommodation for 2,166 men and 248 women. In the 1890s the London County Council had 3 hostels, which by 1906 accommodated 1,875 men.

  From 1888 the Salvation Army’s Metropoles sprang up all over the country. Bleak and functional though they were, they nevertheless created more demanding expectations in terms of cleanliness and order which meant the worst doss houses no longer had the capacity to attract lodgers. The Metropoles in London included the Ark, the Harbour and the Lighthouse. Prices ranged from 2d to 6d a night and those who could not afford even that could earn their keep in one of the Army’s labour factories. It did not take the Army long to establish itself as the foremost philanthropic provider of accommodation and by 1900 its hostels were subject to the same inspection as commercial lodging houses. Though clean they afforded none of the boisterous camaraderie and raucous banter of the lodging house kitchen and many lodgers disliked the emphasis on moral improvement and the officious demeanour of the officers.

  Yet the facilities of the Metropole were excellent value for money and superior to anything available in commercial lodging houses. For 5d a night the lodger got a warm, clean bed, a locker for his valuables and for an extra 2d a substantial meal, usually stew, universally known as ‘Alleluia Stew’. Cleaning and airing took place from 10am to 1pm when the men had to leave. For those who felt that 5d was a little extravagant the Army made available until 1906 coffin beds at 2d a night. For the same price you could get a bunk in the women’s lodging house, for 4d a bed with sheets and for 6d a cubicle. The Evangelical wing of the Anglican Church also provided lodgings for the needy but on a much smaller scale.

  The expansion of philanthropic establishments, such as Rowton Houses, has been touched on. These were much superior to the typical commercial lodging house and accurately described as respectable ‘working men’s hotels’. By 1905 there were five in London and they immediately became the standard by which all similar provision was measured. Technically they were not lodging houses as they offered meals and were therefore theoretically hotels. They undoubtedly spurred on many local authorities to provide comparable accommodation.

  The number of temperance and railway hotels also increased. The former in particular offered travellers excellent accommodation at reasonable prices. Joseph Livesey opened the first temperance hotel in 1833 and by the end of the nineteenth century they extended throughout the country: there were eight in Halifax alone and they were found in many country towns such as Banbury, Shrewsbury, Northampton, Oswestry, Oxford, Peterborough, Stamford and Wantage. As working men’s clubs and commercial music halls increased, many of them provided accommodation for their entertainers and most railway companies built accommodation specifically for employees working away from home.

  The mechanisation of agriculture, resulting in a fall in demand for labour and the increased building of labourers’ cottages, reduced the reliance of farm workers on lodging houses. Fewer soldiers used them as the railway network developed and new barracks and soldiers’ homes sprang up in the 1870s and 1880s.

  The development of the workhouse also contributed to the decline of the lodging house. For much of the nineteenth century most poor law unions regarded casuals as an intolerable nuisance and did their utmost to discourage them. As late as 1863 the combined casual accommodation of all the London unions was less than a thousand. However, legislation in 1864 and 1865 led to improved provision by spreading the cost throughout the capital, with the result that by 1866 there were 2,000 beds available.

  The economic downturn of 1867 increased the number of those travelling in search of work and led to a revival of the system whereby those genuinely looking for work, as opposed to beggars, were issued with way tickets. Distributed by the police or the workhouse, they guaranteed preferential treatment for the bearer when presented at a workhouse en route to a specified destination. The bearer was exempted from the labour task imposed on other casuals. Similarly, some casual wards issued ‘bread tickets’, which could be exchanged for food at police stations and food shops along a specified route. Where this system operated it made the casual ward much more attractive to the genuine working man in search of employment.

  In addition, conditions in casual wards were gradually getting better. Between 1865 and 1905 vagrant wards improved significantly, particularly in London, where they became the best in the country. From 1892 those who managed to convince the tramp master that they were seeking paid employment might be released at dawn, thus enabling them to present themselves to prospective employers early in the morning. This general improvement, however, had at least one major drawback.

  There is little doubt that the casual regime was becoming increasingly attractive to professional moochers. The figures confirm this: the number of poor law dependents remained constant from 1865 to 1910, while the number of casuals doubled to between 8,000 and 9,000 per night. Though these figures varied with the state of the economy, there is no doubt that there were a number of people who chose the wandering life, resisted all attempts to drive them into a more conventional existence and increasingly found in the casual wards acceptable accommodation.

  The Vagrancy Committee concurred with this explanation for the increase in the number of casuals. Its 1906 report stated that habitual users of the casual wards – about 16,000 in London alone – were growing in number and attributed this to the improved accommodation. Each major city’s casual wards had their ‘regulars’, tramps who made no pretence of searching for work and were regarded by the authorities as incorrigible. Their numbers were particularly large in Birmingham and Manchester, in contrast to the situation in rural casual wards where only a tiny minority were professional scroungers and where navvies, seamen and craftsmen made up the great bulk of inmates. The tramp ward census of 1896–7 showed that almost one in four inmates claimed to be ex-soldiers, though only a fraction could prove it: hence the expression ‘playing the old soldier’.

  The inevitable result of this increase in the use of causal wards was a fall in the demand for lodging house accommodation. Lodging houses closed at such a rate that the shortage of accommodation was already a problem by the early years of the twentieth century. Mary Higgs told of men travelling in search of work recounting the great difficulty they had in finding accommodation, many maintaining that there were an increasing number of areas where it was simply not to be had. Some had to resort to the tramp ward and occasionally, finding that that full, were forced to sleep rough.

  As Zachary Edwards found on his travels through Lancashire in the years immediately before the First World War, the squalid lodging house survived. The ‘Penny Sit-Up’ still thrived in Preston, where in a room 25ft by 18ft up to 60 men slept on the floor with nothing but a timber block as a head rest, with no heating and no washing facilities. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the twentieth century most surviving lodging houses provided accommodation at least as good as that enjoyed by the respectable working class and in many cases infinitely better.

  Like all institutions that survive over a period of time the lodging house served several useful functions. Its reputation, however, was from the outset so bad that many commentators focused exclusively on its defects and were blind to the real needs that it served. Many of its deficiencies were common to much working class housing and some were simply the result of the huge disparity between middle class expectations and the reality of the life of the poor.

  Yet, even the worst lodging houses served useful social and economic functions. They were vital to the mobility of labour, enabling workers to travel to find work and provide services. The peddlers and hawkers, habitués of the lodging house, provided a valuable service to people living in the countryside who, in the absence of shops, were often dependent on them for basic goods.
They provided semi-permanent accommodation for many agricultural labourers, immigrants, the elderly, the bereaved, discharged soldiers and the unmarried.

  The political elite’s preoccupation with lodging houses became something of an obsession with those who supported social reform. Inevitably this drew the attention of the political class to the wider problem of working class housing and public health. This in its turn fostered interest in the world of the inner city poor.

  Without the lodging house the Victorian streets would have been a great deal duller. The travelling entertainer alleviated the gloom of drab industrial towns and narcoleptic villages where anything that relieved the monotony of relentless labour was welcome. Many of these performers were disreputable, in the manner of a favourite uncle, and others were rogues; but they bestowed on millions of people, especially children, moments of wonder and delight.

  Though greatly diminished in numbers, lodging houses survived throughout the first part of the twentieth century. Near Covent Garden and other markets throughout the country porters still depended on them; in St Giles’s theatreland, the sandwich-board men and those who made a living hailing cabs for the swells had no other accommodation and in Stepney and Bermondsey, dockers and sailors between ships rested their heads.

  Despite what many commentators had their readers believe, all lodging houses were not the same and there was a clear social stratification between them. At the bottom end many lodgers drifted between the lodging house and the workhouse. Most lodgers were not beggars but were productive: once settled in employment they married and then rented. In the meantime, the houses played a vital role in enabling newcomers to adjust to the social and economic demands of the city and town.