Milford chronicle., 1888-04-27
PLACES WHERE MANY OF THE GREAT
ClTY'S POOR FIND SHELTER.

The Common Lodging House OF To-day
Clean and Fairly Comfortable - This
Various Glasses of Patrons-VIew of an
Interior-A Valet.
The common lodging house of today is
clean and fairly comfortable. Each house is
! licensed to receive a certain number only;
every man must have bed to himself, and
each bed must have so much space given to
it. The difference in this respect may be
! judged from tho fact that in one common
! lodging house with which am acquainted a
room now licensed fo- eleven beds formerly
| contained twenty-eight. Moreover, the law
compels frequent scrubbings of floors and
whitewashing of walls, and the slightest case
| of illness must be at once reported to the
nearest police station. Seeing the class Of
customers the proprietor has to accommo-
date, you may imagine that the floors of the
dormitories get a terrific amount Of scrub
bing, with the result that they are far
| cleaner and more wholesome than the car
peted rooms Of many more pretentious estab-
lishments, where an overworked housemaid
flicks the furniture with duster, tickles the
carpet with a brown and sweeps the fluff
under the bed
There is very keen competition in the
trade, and some houses are naturally much
better than others. As a consequence the
class Of dodgers differs also. One proprietor,
by keeping his house as dirty as he dares, Sc
cures the patronage of one class, while an
other, by making his hosse as comfortablea as
possible, attracts men Of superior grade.
But to thoroughly understand what the
common lodging houses are you must see
one. Come down this narrow, unswept and
under the weather looking street. You see
that house which looks as though it were a
double frcnted shop with the shutters still
up. That is a common lodging bouse. The
door in the center is a swing door, Outside
it gentleman in the unpicturesque tatters
Of our national costume is smoking a clay
pipe, and with his hands thrust in his trou-
sers pockets is looking fxedly at nothing
Over the doorway at which the gentleman
stands is the inscription in white letters on a
black board, Registered Lodging House.
Beds, sgd. and I'D. Night
Let us push the swing door open and walk
in. It is broad daylight outside, but directly
we have passed the swing door we find our
selves almost in darkness. The room we are
in IS the Kitchen or common room, In
which all the guests sit and take their meals,
and amuse themselves until il is time to go |
up stairs to bed. ! cannot say how one of /
these kitchens would look in the glare Of day. |
There is nothing to showsunbeams that they |
would be Hospitality received, and so they re- /
main outside. And even there they are 1
snubbed, for, lest they should be inquisitive 4
and try and peep in at the lodging house I
windows, the said windows are kept as grimy
as possible outside, and inside they are COW
cred with a coat Of some dirty looking prep
aration.
The light in these kitchens, then, is gener-
ally Of the dim, religious order It suits the
scene. The people who are sitting on the long
forms at the table, or crouching together
before the duh red FIRE, would, some of them,
look hideous in the full light Of day. In the
red glow that the fire throws on them, as
they sit in the darkened room, they look al
most picturesque.
The workmen who live in these lodging
houses are not home yet They will come in
about 8 o'clock. There win not be many in 4
ibis house because it is low house-that is