George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
cuts the rope at five in the morning. I have never
been there myself, but Bozo had been there often. I asked
him whether anyone could possibly sleep in such
an attitude, and he said that it was more comfortable
than it sounded-at any rate, better than the bare
floor. There are similar shelters in Paris, but the charge
there is only twenty-five centimes (a halfpenny) instead
of twopence.
3. The Coffin, at fourpence a night. At the Coffin
you sleep in a wooden box, with a tarpaulin for cover
ing. It is cold, and the worst thing about it are the bugs,
which, being enclosed in a box, you cannot escape.
Above this come the common lodging-houses, with
charges varying between sevenpence and one and a
penny a night. The best are the Rowton Houses, where
the charge is a shilling, for which you get a cubicle to
yourself, and the use of excellent bathrooms. You can
also pay half a crown for a "special," which is practi
cally hotel accommodation. The Rowton Houses are
splendid buildings, and the only objection to them
is the strict discipline, with rules against cooking, card
playing, etc. Perhaps the best advertisement for the
Rowton Houses is the fact that they are always full to
overflowing. The Bruce Houses, at one and a penny, are
also excellent.
Next best, in point of cleanliness, are the Salvation
Army hostels, at sevenpence or eightpence. They vary (I
have been in one or two that were not very unlike common
lodging-houses), but most of them are clean, and they
have good bathrooms; you have to pay extra for a bath,
however. You can get a cubicle for a shilling. In the
eightpenny dormitories the beds are comfortable, but
there are so many of them (as a rule at least forty to a
room), and so close together, that it is impossible to get a
quiet night. The numerous restrictions stink of prison and
charity. The Salvation Army hostels would only appeal to
people who put cleanliness before anything else.
Beyond this there are the ordinary common lodging-
houses. Whether you pay sevenpence or a shilling, they
are all stuffy and noisy, and the beds are uniformly dirty
and uncomfortable. What redeems them are their
laissez-
faire
atmosphere and the warm homelike kitchens where
one can lounge at all hours of the day or night. They are
squalid dens, but some kind of social life is possible in
them. The women's lodging-houses are said to be generally
worse than the men's, and there are very few houses with
accommodation for married couples. In fact, it is nothing
out of the common for a homeless man to sleep in one
lodging-house and his wife in another.
At this moment at least fifteen thousand people in
London are living in common lodging-houses. For an
unattached man earning two pounds a week, or less, a
lodging-house is a great convenience. He could hardly get
a furnished room so cheaply, and the lodging-house gives
him free firing, a bathroom of sorts, and plenty
of society. As for the dirt, it is a minor evil. The really bad
fault of lodging-houses is that they are places in which
one pays to sleep, and in which sound sleep is impossible.
All one gets for one's money is a bed measuring five feet
six by two feet six, with a hard convex mattress and a
pillow like a block of wood, covered by one cotton
counterpane and two grey, stinking sheets. In winter there
are blankets, but never enough. And this bed is in a room
where there are never less than five, and sometimes fifty
or sixty beds, a yard or two apart. Of course, no one can
sleep soundly in such circumstances. The only other
places where people are herded like this are barracks and
hospitals. In the public wards of a hospital no one even
hopes to sleep well. In barracks the soldiers are crowded,
but they have good beds, and they are healthy; in a
common lodginghouse nearly all the lodgers have chronic
coughs, and a large number have bladder diseases which
make them get up at all the hours of the night. The result
is a perpetual racket, making sleep impossible. So far as
my observation goes, no one in a lodging-house sleeps
more than five hours a night-a damnable swindle when
one has paid sevenpence or more.
Here legislation could accomplish something. At
present there is all manner of legislation by the L.C.C..
about lodging-houses, but it is not done in the interests of
the lodgers. The L.C.C. only exert themselves to forbid
drinking, gambling, fighting, etc. etc. There is no law to
say that the beds in a lodging-house must be comfortable.
This would be quite an easy thing to enforce-much easier,
for instance, than restrictions upon gambling. The
lodging-house keepers should be compelled to provide
adequate bedclothes and better mattresses, and above all
to divide their dormitories into cubicles. It does not matter
how small a cubicle is,
the important thing is that a man should be alone when
he sleeps. These few changes, strictly enforced, would
make an enormous difference. It is not impossible to make
a lodging-house reasonably comfortable at the usual rates
of payment. In the Croydon municipal lodging-house,
where the charge is only ninepence, there are cubicles,
good beds, chairs (a very rare luxury in lodging-houses),
and kitchens above ground instead of in a cellar. There is
no reason why every ninepenny lodging-house should not
come up to this standard.
Of course, the owners of lodging-houses would be
opposed
en bloc to any improvement, for their present
business is an immensely profitable one. The average
house takes five or ten pounds a night, with no bad debts
(credit being strictly forbidden), and except for rent the
expenses are small. Any improvement would mean less
crowding, and hence less profit. Still, the excellent
municipal lodging-house at Croydon shows how well one
can be served for ninepence. A few welldirected laws could
make these conditions general. If the authorities are going
to concern themselves with lodging-houses at all, they
ought to start by making them more comfortable, not by
silly restrictions that would never be tolerated in a hotel.
XXXVIII
AFTER we left the spike at Lower Binfield, Paddy and I
earned half a crown at weeding and sweeping in
somebody's garden, stayed the night at Cromley, and
walked back to London. I parted from Paddy a day or two
later. B. lent me a final two pounds, and, as I had only
another eight days to hold out, that was the end
of my troubles. My tame imbecile turned out worse than I
had expected, but not bad enough to make me wish myself
back in the spike or the Auberge de Jehan Cottard.
Paddy set out for Portsmouth, where he had a friend
who might conceivably find work for him, and I have never
seen him since. A short time ago I was told that he had
been run over and killed, but perhaps my informant was
mixing him up with someone else. I had news of Bozo only
three days ago. He is in Wandsworth -fourteen days for
begging. I do not suppose prison worries him very much.
My story ends here. It is a fairly trivial story, and I can
only hope that it has been interesting in the same way as
a travel diary is interesting. I can at least say, Here is the
world that awaits you if you are ever penniless. Some day I
want to explore -that world more thoroughly. I should like
to know people like Mario and Paddy and Bill the
moocher, not from casual encounters, but intimately; I
should like to understand what really goes on in the souls
of plongeurs and tramps and Embankment sleepers. At
present I do not feel that I have seen more than the fringe
of poverty.
Still I can point to one or two things I have definitely
learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all
tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be
grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men
out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation
Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor
enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.
