The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-11-07 00:00:00

OPENING OP "FOLLETT BUILDINGS,"

IN EXETER.

Lords Devon am! Fortescue and the Bishop of
Exeter were present on Saturday, at Exeter, at the
opening of a block of tenements erected by the Im-
proved Industrial Dwellings Company at a cost of
1:1,MIO. The Company was brought into existence
chiefly by the efforts ,4 the Mayor of Exeter, and in
oommemoration of him the block has been named
"Follett Buildings." 'I lie tenements are let at rentals
varying from 2s. to 4s. &I. a week; and it is expected
that the undertaking will pay from 3 to 4 per cent.
I he Corporation attended the ceremony in State, and
the buildings were opened by the Mayor, who delivered
an able address._
__ _ _

The Bishop of Exeter said he attended as represent-
ing the Church of England, and bound therefore to take
the deepest interest in all that concerned the welfare of
the poor. For that reason he wished that the under-
taking conk! have been a purely commercialone ; for he
was convinced that it would be much mere to the
aavantage of the poor if everything of an eleemosynary
character could be avoided in such matters. It would
be a great gain if all the buildings occupied by the poor
were such as would supply them with the comforts
of home, prevent them from seeking the pleasures
of the publichouse, and, above all, enable them to
observe the decencies of life. The present was a
sort of transition period. He should be glad indeed
if the remedying of this evil could be undertaken, not
by voluntary companies but by the municipality,
with the direct authority of the law, as hail been
/lone in Glasgow with remarkable success. (Hear.)
Nothing so interfered with public morality wr the state of
the homes of the poor, when those houses were ouch as
to demoralize the occupants. The houses of the poor,
especially in great cities, were a disgrace to the coun
try—a disgrace whirls ought to be reintived as speedily
as possible. But if the work could not be done on
commercial principles, it was one that might well be
taken up in a spirit of the purest benevolence, because
it was a charity of far greater value to those who
received it than the charities which usually went by
that name. That only was a permanent benefit to any
claw which improved its moral character and helped
to make its members better Christians and better
citizens, and he believed the work in which they were
engaged would have that effect. Addressing those
who were about to occupy the tenements, his Lord-
ship urged them to do their best to keep their
houses clean, wholesome, and attractive. They would
thus not only benefit themselves but help to teach
their own class the value of having better homes to
live in.
The Earl of Devon referred to the efforts of Lords
Shaftesbury and Fortescue and of Sir Sydney Water-
low in improving the homes of the poor. and said he
hoped the experiment now being tried in Exeter would
be followed eitensively throughout the country. Good
dwellings were essential not only to the physical well-
being of the people, but had a not indirect or remote
influence on their moral and intellectual condition.
They could not carry on the work of education if the
lemons taught in sehools were rendered impossible of
practice by dwellings crowded so as to foster im-
morality; and the mental powers could not be de-
veloped as they ought if the body was kept in a
vitiated atmosphere. It was, therefore, as benefitting
the moral and intellectual no less than the physical
condition of the people that improved dwellings were
important.
Earl Fortescue alluded to the part he had taken in
connexion with the Metropolitan Association for Im-
proving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes, and
observed that of the similar associaticns since formed
none had been more successful than that presided over
by Sir Sydney Waterlow. Many speakers and writers
had of late diverted public attention from the terrible
evils of increasingly overcrowded dwellings in towns
by descanting on the condition of the agricultural
labourers' cottages in the country. God knew that
many of the latter much required improvement; but
for years they had been, and they still were, fast
improving. A great proportion of landlords had
been doing more or less in the improvement of
their cottages, not merely because their attention
had been called to the matter by others, but chiefly
from a sense of duty, and certainly not as a lucra-
tive speculation. The work bad been carried on
extensively. For instance, the late Duke of Bedford
told him that for years he and the Duke of Northum-
berland had been spending tens of thousands annually
in that work. The improvement had also arisen from
another cause—viz., the gradual consolidation of farms
throughout the country, which had liberated a number
of farmhouses, to be occupied as cottages by a gradually
but constantly decreasin,g agricultural population. The
population of towns had enormously increased, while
that of agricultural districts bad decreased, not only
relatively, but absolutely. The mortality in rural dis-
tricts had steadily diminished for some years, but that
quite inadequately represented the superior healthiness
of the agricultural population, because the latter sent
off a large number of its healthy young men and women
into the towns, leaving the old people and the babies
behind. And yet, notwithstanding these fresh elements
of vitality bionght iota the towns, to their shame
be it said that the rate of mortality was still increasing,
and that though hundreds of thousands of pounds were
I laid out in improving sewerage and water supply.
I Why had that increase of mortality occurred? Chiefly in
consequence of the horrible overcrowding of dwellings.
Too few new houses had been built, and too many had
been cleared away in many towns for railway pur-
poses and the improvement of streets, without ade-
quate provision being made to replace them, and tens
of thousands had been forced into already overcrowded
lodgings in the neighbourhood. (Hear). With re-
gard to tivercrow,?ed cottages, he had lately, in conse-
quence of the labour agitation in the Eastern Counties,
looked at the la.st census for Suffolk, and he found
that, omitting the Parliamentary boroughs, the average
number of human beings per house in that county
was rather under four, though there were several
noble lords and members of the House of Commons
occupying faintest palatial residences. It was clear,
;therefore, that overcrowding in the country was rather
the exception than the rule. But in towns, as he had
said, it was not only a evil of long-stauding, but an
increasing evil, and he did trust that vigorous efforts
would be made to remedy it promptly, because tho
neglect to du so was not only disgraceful to the lar-te
towns, but, it was dangerous mat expensive. (Hear.)
Complaints were moinetiinse made that agrimiltural
cottages did not contain Wee bed-rooms as well as a
a sitting-room. He knew of only one house in the rural
districts of Devonshire which had but one room, and
that was occupied by the owner of 40 acres of freehold.
( Laughter. ) But there were tens of thouriallds of families
in towns that had only one room—as he knew from
personal inspection of ninny—in which to sleep, eat,
and work, and so on, and then they wondered that
sometimes the head of the family took refuge in the
publichouse. (Hear.) Even in the building.just opened
only a few of the dwelling* consisted of four rooms—a
sitting-room and three bedrooms—and the bulk of the
. . . ...

Here, then, was an end to. the only case cited fir the
i pariah n which. a man maintained himself wholly
from the cultivation of si small pit of land. Combining
the two callings of peaszun fanner and lalseures,-and
working twice as hard as an ordinary labourer, this
man, with his wife's earnings, no doubt made a
tolerably comfortable living. I Fathered, however,
that the great advantage of tie position in his eyes was
its independence.' He was at nobody's Beck and call.
He had his cares, but he was his own master; and
there is a joy in the
,aLlit of a man's own crops,
growing on his own I ....", pnd as the fruit of his
own toil, which sterna to.---ktpoy him for much
care and Tabour' and to be zuriff „szekm,l than a larger
money reward coupled with grear :dependence.
'The other cases in which small farmers `ware de-
scribed to Inc as living out of the land were these.
I indicate them by letters :—A, farms nearly 11
acres of hired land, and until this year had a larger
I, .Iding. B. hires close on 11 acres. C., a widow,
farms 10 acres, partly orchard and pasture, her eon,
ii labourer, being with her and helping to maintain her.
D. hires 12 acres. He is :in old man, and his son, a
small farmer in the parish, does the work on his land
for nothing. E. hires 16, acres, and formerly cultivated
considerably more. His son lives with him, and does
the work. I had sonic talk with E., a worn man bent
with rheumatism, who from his dwss was not to lie dis-
tinguished from the poi :rest peasant. Indeed, I have
seen few labourers worse clothed. According to him,
again, life was a hard struggle. For some of the laud
he pays £3 an acre; a higher rent by l's. than the large
farmers would give for it. Though his 13011 works on
the land, at times, of course, hired labour is necessary.
A blind old horse is used at plough, and sometieues
a donkey in front of it. The donkey, which was in
the farmyard, keeps the horse straight, and is useful
also in the muck-cart. The dry season had been a
very bad one f r the farmer's corn crops, and he has
only grown 74 coombs of wheat per acre; whereas one
of the large farmers in the parish tells me that upon no
better land he has grown from nine to ten (wombs. It
is hardly necessary to say that such a crop of corn can
never pay at anything like present prices. Two cows
and some pigs are kept, and the farmer an 1 his son are
as thrifty and industrious as men can be. But the
tit.o.,orinfgelldo7
kill,,
was evidently, to use his own phrase,
, and had lately been obliged to sell
a °few acres of freehold land which his father had
owned before him.
One cannot help noticing with interest and sym-
pathy the struggles of some of the peasants to get a
living, apazt from farm labour. One very old man
I met had taken to sherp.keeeping, though he never POPULAR SCIENCE AT SOUTH
had a scrap of land of his own. He began life KEN:INGTON.
as a shepherd, and thirty years ago bought four The series of lectures to working men to be delivered
"crones' (ewes culled from the flock as unservice- during the present session in connection with the
able), and started on his own account. In the first Royal School of Mines, commenced on Monday
year his four ewes, by careful tending, brought him
evening in the chemical theatre at South Kensington
six lambs. This was a good beginning. In his Museum. The first course, and that likely to be—
!pare time he worked for various employers; but as with perhaps the exception of that .on Applied
Ms flock gradually increased he spent his whole Mechanics—the most popular of the series, conzprises
time in looking after them. For the most part they six lectures on 'The First Principles of Chemistry,"
fed along the roadside, and in those days no objec-
by Profess :r Frankland, Ph.D., F.R.S. Owing to
tion was raised by road surveyors or waywardens.
the greater strictness observed this year in comparison
Occasionally, he bought a bit of feed of one of the
with last in the distribution of tickets, the audience
farmers, and at night his Sheep was folded in some
a was almost, if not entirely, composed of members of
farmer's field. BY selling a portion of the lambs an. the artisaa classes, numbering m all exactly four
ewes, with the wool, every year, he maintained him-
self in tolerable comfort till he became too old to hundred.
Ihe subject chosen for the opening lecture was that
look after the flock. So two years ago he diaposed of
with which it is by no means unusual to begin courses
his sheep, wlsish then numbered forty, big and
of chemical lectures to non-scientific audiences, namely,
little, • and fetched £2 a head. He was now
the sit 1 1 . 'properties of water; for,
compo len an. p iymioa
living upon the Proceeds which
keep him out of the which with his little
Raving*, he thought woul
while dealing with one of the commonest and most
familiar objects of daily life, and so at once ensuring
workhouse till he was called away. His age •f h•
he was not sure about, except tlfat he was a.goodiseh the attention 0 is hearers, the lecturer is afforded
bit over eighty. Time with Lim dated fsom his ample opportunity for the introduction iif many
being first drawn for the Militia in 1111, when brilliant and striking experiments which are no less
essential to the clear demonstration of the phenomena
he must have been at least eighteen years o!d, and he d 'bee than they are interesting to the
his memory was clear as to events which happened at rmectator. Dr. Frankland began with a few prelimi-
the beginning of the century. "My father ii as a nary • - remarks on the value and endurance of know-
labourer," grad the oil man, "and worked for a ledge acquired by observation when comparelwith that
farmer in Norfolk. There were five of no ehiliren. My
resulting from mere reading, thus inferring the advan-
father earned Is, a week, and that was when flair wee sesea gained by the careful study of the natural phe
once is., and at another time Pa, a stone. As soonnoemena constantly taking place around us. He then
as we were old enough to do anything, each .if lift had I
ssed on to the more immediate text of his discourse,
tmikeereeae7winitnhiTiewithli, tZt'inegh.eeeße r(miZemadfrewmmekTre, and, taking a piece of ice,' explained, as concisely as ,
ssible the changes in its cohesive force which took ,
milk). All the meat we Raw from year's end to year's Place on its being melted cad gradually heated to
end was half a pound of fat pork on Sunday's. there
boiling point and so converted into ateam. A most
was just a bite for each of us and a montisful ov •
4 effective eerie.; of experiments then followed in illsu.
and I used to save my morsel till the last;, "o
that a *anima the decomposition of steam into its component
might leave off with a good taste in my rwaith. On I elementary gases. oxygen and hydrogen, by the electric,
the seine day, justto show it was a Sunday, we used to I
have a little wheaten their. Sometimes as a change , current, awl the subsequent reunion of the two by
simile? means, resulting in the formation of water. Ile
from rye bread we hail pollard, mixed with water .
also pointed out separately such differences in the
in a pail, and then fried into cakes in the fryinc,,pan. perties of three two gases as are made most clearly
Potatoes were rare in thoae days. At all events 1.0.4
'ld strikingly apparent at the lecture-table. Here,
ple di I not get in any, and the latiourers' w i ves need to however, he reminded his audience that in all
Mrnettles, charlock, and 'fat hen'" (atriplex or orach,
the experiments they had hitherto witnessed he
a weed of the spinach tribe). These were common food,
had employed none other than what he might term
and the old man thought they were as wholesome and
rely physical means to tear the water asunder into
perhaps contained OA much nourishment 48 potatoes.
Ken constituents, since electricity was included amongst
His find work WAR RR "flAgf." to shepherd. In thoee
days the shepherds fed and paid the boys they wanted
tiesd
ni4vr.
tor
show r them its eo it isition by chemical
to tend the sheep, and rye bread steeped into milk wag
aphysical forces. Ile would now, however, en-
Phis he pro to ceeded do, preparing from
at first the only food he got. A hard service it inset''
water first hydrogen and then oxygen, each in a mire
have been for all such " pages." "Many is the time,"
state. and afterwards re ting them, as in the former
said the old man, "I have eaten my rye bread Ira in care, nhe o, by purely elinical means. Phe audience
arms like this" (eho them stretched the stretched sense hie
iisteicil thriinghout with the most marked attention,
breast), "became I could not feel my bands for the receiving each experiment with evident tokens :if ap-
cold. Many is the time, too, I have tried tar keep
reoiatl,n. The le •threr concluded by stating that in
warm by huddling against an old sheep. The Oct Kis: leciure 'lest Monday he proposed to take another
cheese Was often eo hard that I have had co ent it with familiar eubstrince, and pull it to pieces, or analyse it
a hatchet. As for the sheep, they hadn't much in a :Midler manner, and WM before quitting the table
focal provided for them as they have now. In most warmly applauded.
winter there was little to eat except what, God
Almighty sent for thens, and when the snow was The lecture lasted rather more than an hour.
thick on the ground they ate the ling or died elf.
Sheep were not of much account then. I have known
lambs sold at Is. ed. a piece. When I got into a
farmhouse we lived better and had three pints of
beer a day, with as mu-hi ' smalle ' a we likelf. Tlie
fauns, 11; n work like his nem, and en m , 1
togeth-^. Hs bruin% meets meee I so'? b.,- ruing than
we ~..... -,.... iiha COIL. 4616•••• Z iiWt., ues write.

Peabody dwellings and the model lodging-houses
in towns generally had only one or two 1-rooms.
Overerowdinc, as he had said, was dangerous and
expensive. No large populatiM could lodge like pigs
and live like Christians. (Hear.) It wae expensive
because preventable disease meant preventable widow-
hood, orphanage, and pauperism; and preventable
indecent overcrowding meant demoralization, which
led to crime. (Hear.) Ac a Devonshire man, it was
a proud reflection to him that the Mayor and Corpora-
tion of the county town had shown so enlightened an
appreciation of this great duty, and he earnestly
hoped that their example would be followed in some
still larger manufacturing and commercial cities. (Ap-
plause.)

TAKING HIS REVENGE !---" Let us go to Mr. Sil/Ip•
son's wedding, my dear," paid a newly-married wile
to her husband. " 0:1 no. La ns stay at borne; it
will be a dreadful bore." But, my ,'ear, you mnst
ty. a'nnion altendid our wedding." "SO
In • , • ' '"orgotten that' (-revenge-
WAY/. NOW De taw.