Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1867-03-22

mlBfatlous q eufefuufty OF 44DOur ana
consequent low wages, must infaIlibly
share with him. It may be seen de-
pictured in the following authentic state
ment, made in 1865, OF the condition Of
the IabOuring poor in that home Of
hypocrisy and cant, which has had so
wonderful a sympathy for the American
negro.
Doctor HuNTER had then lately made
an official report "upOn the painful sub
ject" Of the homes Of English agri-
cultural laborers,P which IS thus con-
densed by the London Telegraph:
The report embraces an examination of
| 1915 rural homes of all sorts, and de-
| scribes the manner OF life of nearly
5000 among the lsboring population.
And first for the ~homes"-those homes,
crowded, fetid and shameful, into which
the close parish system has driven the
bueolic pOer Of England. Lord Leices-
ter was complimented once upon the
/ completion OF HOLMAN, but he said
with ~repentant truth, al am the giant
OF giant castle, and have eaten up all
nv neighbors.u HWho is my neigh
/ Dor - has been answered " Where is
he ~ is the question asked by this bill.
He is, replies DIR. Hunter, huddled into
novels into open parishes, on the out
skirts of rural towns, pretty to paint
on a group Of picturesque mold
mess, with yellow and green
Iichens and fungi on the roofs and
walls, but ugly to investigate. Wells
and closets side by side, sinking puddles
at the Threshold, and sodden filth, breed
ing fever up and down whole rows and
Fo,Nr-og Aa-rrfhol IN a
hundred localities. Nay, it is a luxury
where there exists a well and a closet.
There are many localities where the
women fight for water at some foul pond
or wheeling pump, and where the neces-
stiles of nature are performed as the
cattle perform them. Inside, for thou
sands Of our labOrers, are the same sights
or worse. There are single chambered
houses" palace yard in Biggleswade"
has eight Of them altogether-the floors
IN holes, and soaked with the rain
that drips through the filthy thatch with
ladders for staircases; windows that
won't open sites, not houses in fact,
as at Gamblingay, described as most
miserable and Wilmington, where for
want of water the "exeerably dirty"
women told DR.. Hunter /" we have been
three days and nights without a sup of
tea" Fireplaces of bricks or stones,
piled hgether as at Maiden Newton six
hundred people without a closet, as at
Low Prudence; and at SeatOn a settle
ment of English human creatures so I'M
utterably nasty that the doctor observes,
chad the countless generations of gan
nets laid added eggs there, the odOr
could not have rivaledthatof Red Row."
In Somersetshire, cottage floors are de-
scribed with holes dug in them, that the
- - III Iaw~, Wnnwv
"put their legs somewhere Great
Bowden presented at /" Deacon's houses F"
an uncovered mass of human Ordure
thirty feet square; and Mr.. Bur
roughesis cottages at H~amblington were
so frightful that they are indicated as
public nuisanceS. Long Asten "stinks -
and the children dabbling their feet in
the ordurous slime, must be hardened, if
they live, against all the "miasms of
Africa" At Marlborough there were
cots where people shifted their beds
during the night from spot 70 spot, "tO
dodge the rain ~ and among the dwell
ings of Marion, in Warwiekshire, one
poor old woman pointing to the frightful
heap of refuse before the door, said, "the
stink went through her like a dose Of
physic." Christian MalfOrd drinks
water so d~iseol0ured with dung as " TO
look like cow-yard drainage But we
pause deceney, not want of facts, bids
US hold back our hand from the gTOssser
particulars detailed in this report.
These are sketches of agricultural
"homes - from DIR. Hunters official port
folio-homes most of them made what
they are by the feudal view of the viii
lain or labOreT, and the consequent utter
neglect of him as q man with a mans
soul hidden somewhere inside him..
Now, let US see how the inmates Of those
novels live. How should they live, but
as beasts? How should We live, the
most refined and delicate of US, if we
were brought Up in hideous common cus-
toms, and ugly, narrow, filthy spaces,
crowded with all ages and sexes? The
suuires deny that there is demolition of
aasges under the elose-parish system
theyNeny it in the face of a locality in
/ Kimbelton, which had 7G2 people
living in I67 houses in 1851,
against 728 people in Isl houses in
1861 Perhaps they will as boldly con-
tradict the fact that their laborers are
plugged together in the presence of the
fact that the average number to a bed
room is four, while instances are abso-
lutely broadcast of six, eight, and ten
| huddled together at night; and while in
fourteen single-rOomed houses at Sutton,
standing together, the average number
OF " bedfellOWsn was seven, and two had
eleven, and one thirteen, in a sleeping
room. What results, what must result
from this? We reply, a state of things
so gross, so brutal, that christianity
bushes state of things so shameful,
that the men who rave had ket the least
part or lot in it ought TO come
into the house with tears rather
than ~truculent words and impudent
opposition. DIR. Hunter drops terrible
hints of crimes that pass the boundary
of permitted allUsion, and lusts that bias
pheme nature, with words which show
that such horrors kill with remOrse, as
they did in old Greek days. We dare
not speak of these, but w must speak of
the promiscuous dressing and undress-
ing, and the open community of offices,
which the wretched howell and the
crowded room produce. The laborer
goes home at night to his stsble-to his
shed-like the horses and the bullock
and in consequence, his life and
thoughts, and his wife's life and
thoughts, and his children's, are like the
cattle's-gross and bestial and base.