The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1883-06-30

|risc before the rest Of the inmates are
awake, and shulk away unseen. Occasions
! ally they venture 10 knock Al the nearest
room door aud beg the use OF morSel OF
soap and a painful Of water. in cases
where these waits and strays of humanity
discover any OF the cellars or vaults to DC
inlet, they take temporary possession oil
these cherries luirs and there lie hidden
all day and night until driven forth by the
panrs of hunger. Not long ago non
rent paving ledger a woman cold ana
hungry, was found crouching III BACK
cellar of a house in Dudley street, 1T
GILES, in pitiable state. There, no doubt
this lost creature would have given up the
ghost, unseen except by the rats, her sole
com panlons, had not the wife OF shop
keeper been disturbed 10y her distressiul
coughing. According to the statement OF
the health officer OF the district, "shc had
no RICH, to be there; she had no lodge III
the house, but was tramp and an out
cast" That, be 1t understood, is no I'M
common experience. Cases of the kind
constantly occur. Only last year the
corpse of another such 0utcast was found
III rubbish hole, for no other description
properly applies TO those damp under
ground lodgings. We arc told that the
sanitary authorities not only find DIM
Guilty in remedying the evil, but are often
powerless by reason OF the state OF the law
The legal hours fixed for the inspection OF
dwelling houses are between nine IN the
mornIng and SIX in the evening. The
,ramps know exactly how far they may
venture, and generally time their entrances
and exits SO as to defy the inspectors. No
sooner are the public houses closed than
the passages and stalrways leading to their
living rooms become crowded with the
vilest characters, whose language and con-
yersation forbid repetition. Fathers OF
families, their ears tlngling with shame,
have been known to get out of bed half a
dozen times during a single night and en-
deavor to dispense the lntrudcrs. AS often
as not they find themselves overpowered
by numbers, and are glad to beat hasty
retreat. Girls and lads stepped to the lips
in vice, men who live by petty thievery
and truculent beggary, and the lowest
classes of lost wretches such as infest the
poorest neighborhOods, after dark, eHcour-
aged by immunity from police lnterfer-
ence, iostle and elbow the more quiet,
starving, houseless poor, in the passages of
these tenement houses, which, by legal
fiction, arc assumed to be open to the in
spection and control of local authority.
That the landlords-in ninety.nne cases
out of hundred non resident-are culpa
bly, to blame, does not aud can not alter
the facts. The rents paid by the legitimate
occuplers are out OF all proportion to the
accommodations furnished and SO long as
property of this kind remains an i'm
mensely profitable investment SO long will
petty capitalists disregard every feeling of
charity and decency at the dictate of
greed. The question of the supervision of
tenement houses and the evils arising from
open street doors, which occupied the at
tention of the recent meeting of the Char
ity Organization, although important, is
not as drop of water In the ocean COM
paaed to the real and larger issues involv-
ed, Something more is wanted TO ensure
the better housing of The poor than can be
found IN existing Sanitary Improvements
or Artisans Dwelling Acts. London, more
than any other city or town IN the world,
sorely needs large, wel.considered, and
comprehensive measure dealing with the
hab,tatlons of the working classes in a
Just, generous and statesnanllke spirit