Down and Out in London and Paris

by Orwell, George

  3. The Coffin, at fourpence a night. At the Coffin

  you sleep in a wooden box, with a tarpaulin for cover

  ing. It is cold, and the worst thing about it are the bugs,

  which, being enclosed in a box, you cannot escape.

  Above this come the common lodging-houses, with

  charges varying between sevenpence and one and a

  penny a night. The best are the Rowton Houses, where

  the charge is a shilling, for which you get a cubicle to

  yourself, and the use of excellent bathrooms. You can

  also pay half a crown for a "special," which is practi

  cally hotel accommodation. The Rowton Houses are

  splendid buildings, and the only objection to them

  is the strict discipline, with rules against cooking, card

  playing, etc. Perhaps the best advertisement for the

  Rowton Houses is the fact that they are always full to

  overflowing. The Bruce Houses, at one and a penny, are

  also excellent.

  Next best, in point of cleanliness, are the Salvation

  Army hostels, at sevenpence or eightpence. They vary (I

  have been in one or two that were not very unlike common

  lodging-houses), but most of them are clean, and they

  have good bathrooms; you have to pay extra for a bath,

  however. You can get a cubicle for a shilling. In the

  eightpenny dormitories the beds are comfortable, but

  there are so many of them (as a rule at least forty to a

  room), and so close together, that it is impossible to get a

  quiet night. The numerous restrictions stink of prison and

  charity. The Salvation Army hostels would only appeal to

  people who put cleanliness before anything else.

  Beyond this there are the ordinary common lodging-

  houses. Whether you pay sevenpence or a shilling, they

  are all stuffy and noisy, and the beds are uniformly dirty

  and uncomfortable. What redeems them are their laissez-

  faire atmosphere and the warm homelike kitchens where

  one can lounge at all hours of the day or night. They are

  squalid dens, but some kind of social life is possible in

  them. The women's lodging-houses are said to be generally

  worse than the men's, and there are very few houses with

  accommodation for married couples. In fact, it is nothing

  out of the common for a homeless man to sleep in one

  lodging-house and his wife in another.

  At this moment at least fifteen thousand people in

  London are living in common lodging-houses. For an

  unattached man earning two pounds a week, or less, a

  lodging-house is a great convenience. He could hardly get

  a furnished room so cheaply, and the lodging-house gives

  him free firing, a bathroom of sorts, and plenty

  of society. As for the dirt, it is a minor evil. The really bad

  fault of lodging-houses is that they are places in which

  one pays to sleep, and in which sound sleep is impossible.

  All one gets for one's money is a bed measuring five feet

  six by two feet six, with a hard convex mattress and a

  pillow like a block of wood, covered by one cotton

  counterpane and two grey, stinking sheets. In winter there

  are blankets, but never enough. And this bed is in a room

  where there are never less than five, and sometimes fifty

  or sixty beds, a yard or two apart. Of course, no one can

  sleep soundly in such circumstances. The only other

  places where people are herded like this are barracks and

  hospitals. In the public wards of a hospital no one even

  hopes to sleep well. In barracks the soldiers are crowded,

  but they have good beds, and they are healthy; in a

  common lodginghouse nearly all the lodgers have chronic

  coughs, and a large number have bladder diseases which

  make them get up at all the hours of the night. The result

  is a perpetual racket, making sleep impossible. So far as

  my observation goes, no one in a lodging-house sleeps

  more than five hours a night-a damnable swindle when

  one has paid sevenpence or more.

  Here legislation could accomplish something. At

  present there is all manner of legislation by the L.C.C..

  about lodging-houses, but it is not done in the interests of

  the lodgers. The L.C.C. only exert themselves to forbid

  drinking, gambling, fighting, etc. etc. There is no law to

  say that the beds in a lodging-house must be comfortable.

  This would be quite an easy thing to enforce-much easier,

  for instance, than restrictions upon gambling. The

  lodging-house keepers should be compelled to provide

  adequate bedclothes and better mattresses, and above all

  to divide their dormitories into cubicles. It does not matter

  how small a cubicle is,

  the important thing is that a man should be alone when

  he sleeps. These few changes, strictly enforced, would

  make an enormous difference. It is not impossible to make

  a lodging-house reasonably comfortable at the usual rates

  of payment. In the Croydon municipal lodging-house,

  where the charge is only ninepence, there are cubicles,

  good beds, chairs (a very rare luxury in lodging-houses),

  and kitchens above ground instead of in a cellar. There is

  no reason why every ninepenny lodging-house should not

  come up to this standard.

  Of course, the owners of lodging-houses would be

  opposed en bloc to any improvement, for their present

  business is an immensely profitable one. The average

  house takes five or ten pounds a night, with no bad debts

  (credit being strictly forbidden), and except for rent the

  expenses are small. Any improvement would mean less

  crowding, and hence less profit. Still, the excellent

  municipal lodging-house at Croydon shows how well one

  can be served for ninepence. A few welldirected laws could

  make these conditions general. If the authorities are going

  to concern themselves with lodging-houses at all, they

  ought to start by making them more comfortable, not by

  silly restrictions that would never be tolerated in a hotel.

  XXXVIII

  AFTER we left the spike at Lower Binfield, Paddy and I

  earned half a crown at weeding and sweeping in

  somebody's garden, stayed the night at Cromley, and

  walked back to London. I parted from Paddy a day or two

  later. B. lent me a final two pounds, and, as I had only

  another eight days to hold out, that was the end

  of my troubles. My tame imbecile turned out worse than I

  had expected, but not bad enough to make me wish myself

  back in the spike or the Auberge de Jehan Cottard.

  Paddy set out for Portsmouth, where he had a friend

  who might conceivably find work for him, and I have never

  seen him since. A short time ago I was told that he had

  been run over and killed, but perhaps my informant was

  mixing him up with someone else. I had news of Bozo only

  three days ago. He is in Wandsworth -fourteen days for

  begging. I do not suppose prison worries him very much.

  My story ends here. It is a fairly trivial story, and I can

  only hope that it has been interesting in the same way as

  a travel diary
is interesting. I can at least say, Here is the

  world that awaits you if you are ever penniless. Some day I

  want to explore -that world more thoroughly. I should like

  to know people like Mario and Paddy and Bill the

  moocher, not from casual encounters, but intimately; I

  should like to understand what really goes on in the souls

  of plongeurs and tramps and Embankment sleepers. At

  present I do not feel that I have seen more than the fringe

  of poverty.

  Still I can point to one or two things I have definitely

  learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all

  tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be

  grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men

  out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation

  Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor

  enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.