Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1883-07-02
LONDON LETTER.
London, June II.

How the poor live in large towns,
and particularly in London, is not so
inviting a subject to persons of
means and fastidious taste. Rags
and squalor, in this country at least,
are essentially lacking in the ele-
ments of the picturesque. The char
ity organization are just now taking
up this subject in practical spirit,
and by endeavoring to effect re-
form in matter of minor detail,
may, perchance, enlighten the public
on the main facts of crying evil.
They complain of a growing practice
in houses let out in tenements to the
very poor of leaving the front door,
abutting the street, open all night.
Finding their ingress unbarred, home
less wretches walk in unlimited, and
flinging themselves down in dark
corners of the common staircase, fall
asleep until morning. Sometimes
they are content to rise before the
rest of the inmates are awake, and
skulk away unseen. Occasionally
they venture to knock at the nearest
room door and beg the use of NOR
sci of soap and painful of water.
In cases where these wafes and strays
of humanity discover any of the Gel
lars or vaults to be let they take
temporary possession of these cheer
less lairs, and there lie hidden all
day and night until driven forth by
the pangs of hunger. Not long ago
a non-rent-paying lodger, a woman
cold and hungry, was found crouch
ing in a back cellar of a house in
Dudley street, ST. Giles, in pitable
state. There's no doubt, this lost
creature would have given up the
ghost, unseen except by the rats, her
sole companions, had not the wife of
a shop-keeper been disturbed by her
distressful coughing. According to
the statement of the health officer of
the district, ''she had no right to be
there, she had no lodge in the
house, but was a tramp and an out
cast" That be it understood, is no
uncommon experience. Cases of the
kind constantly occur. Only last
year the corpse of another such out
cast was found in rubbish hole, for
no other description properly applies
to those damp underground lodgings.
We are told that the sanitary author
tiles not only find difficulty in rem
edying the evil, but are often power
less by reason of the state of the
law. The legal hours fixed for the
inspection of dwelling houses are be-
tween nine in the morning and six in
the afternoon. The tramps know
exactly how far they may venture,
and generally time their entrances
and exits so as to defy the inspec-
tors. No sooner are the public
houses closed than the passages and
stair-ways leading to their living
rooms become crowded with the vii
est characters, whose language and
conversation forbid repetition. Faith
ers of families, their ears tingling
with shame, have been known to get
out of bed half dozen times during
a single night and endeavor to dis
perse the intruders. AS often as not
they find themselves overpowered by
numbers, and are glad to beat a
hasty retreat. Girls and lads steep
ed too the lips in vice, men who live
by petty thievery and truculent beg
gary, and the lowest classes of lost
wretches such as lnfest the poorest
neighborhoods, after dark, encourag-
ed by immunity from police interfer-
ence, jostle and elbow the more
quiet. Starving, homeless poor, in
the passages of these tenement houses.
which, by legal fiction, are assum-
ed to be open to the inspection and
control of local authority. That the
landlords-in ninty-nine cases out Of
hundred non-resident-are culpably