The Secret World of the Victorian Lodging House

by Joseph O'Neill

  Animal shows of staggering ingenuity exercised an irresistible pull on the Victorian public. One of the most intriguing was ‘Happy Family’ in which the showman displayed an enormous wire cage on the back of a cart or a wheelbarrow which housed a dog, a cat, half a dozen mice, canaries, finches and sometimes a small monkey, all co-existing in perfect harmony. The trainer opened the cage door and called the cats by the names of famous boxers at which they sprang onto their hind legs, walked out onto a miniature stage and, donning boxing gloves on their forepaws, bobbed and weaved while delivering upper-cuts and kidney punches. Next the dog responded to questions by barking before emerging from the cage and breaking up the cats’ fight.

  Conjurers, jugglers and magicians always drew large crowds, while musicians were so common that they found it hard to attract an audience. The hoarse wail of the Tyrolean pipes – invariably accompanied by white mice, marmots or a squirrel in a rotating cage – filled the air of many a Victorian street, usually playing twelve bars of the same tune incessantly and the fairground whirr of the hurdy-girdy was as common as the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.

  Organ grinders elicited a powerful reaction. They gave children and street Arabs a focal point and enlivened the day for many. Small organs were of two types. The soprano of the type was the tall-backed tinkling instrument that gave little offence, while the thundering bass was a wind and reed contraption in a rectangular casing which produced a deep and full sound. In both cases the musician carried his instrument on his back and, when playing, supported it on folding legs. The casing often doubled as a stage for a dancing monkey, with pillbox hat and a maroon waistcoat with gold piping.

  Far less common was the ‘marrow-bone and cleaver band’, who used large animal bones like castanets to strike the sharp edge of a meat cleaver. By this means they produced a powerful rhythm without any tune as they usually accompanied a butcher’s wedding. Bells were also popular and usually set out on a wooden frame. In order to gain a competitive edge some musicians introduced a novelty element – in one case in the form of a dun mare that played ‘Home Sweet Home’ by striking the bells with her right hoof.

  Musicians, genuinely and professionally blind, formed a sub-class of those who exploited their misfortune as much as their musical prowess. As in every area of streetcraft, success was enhanced by a novelty dimension. At least one blind musician played a violin with his feet while playing another in the conventional manner. Other fiddlers specialised in using their instrument to recreate the sounds of the farmyard, producing the bellow of a bull, the lowing of a calf, the bark of a dog, the crowing of a cock, the cluck of a hen and the screech of a peacock. Buskers’ dexterity was always amusing and those who played six instruments were not uncommon. The busker was a common sight on Victorian streets and popular, though he often supplemented his income by selling obscene songs and occasionally performing in pubs, usually for free drink.

  Street photographers erected their canvas booths on open ground near a busy thoroughfare. They invariably worked with a caller who advertised their services, calling ‘Hi! Hi! Walk insides. Walk inside. Have your true likeness took, frame and glass complete and only sixpence!’

  Street patterers chanted details of the murders recounted in the newspapers and periodicals they were selling. Many a reader complained that the enticing titbits which had induced them to buy the journal bore no relation to anything within its pages.

  Deception was a complaint seldom made against the numerous hawkers and peddlers who circulated through the villages and towns of Victorian Britain, bringing goods to many who had no other access to them. These too depended on the lodging house for their way of life.

  It is difficult for us to appreciate the enormous number of nineteenth century people who squeezed a living of sorts from street selling. Mayhew estimated that it formed the means by which 30,000 adults and an inestimable number of children survived in London alone in the 1840s and 1850s and he estimated that between 1 and 2 out of every 150 people sustained themselves by this method. There is no doubt that there were tens of thousands of others throughout the country who plied the same trades and many of these were itinerant. Their average income was generally no more than mere subsistence and fluctuated throughout the year, usually better in summer than in winter when it was often negligible.

  The 1851 census shows that street sellers outnumbered general shopkeepers by about 30,000. There were another 8,000 who were categorised as ‘General Dealers, Hucksters, Dealers in Small Wares and Costermongers’, many of whom were probably indistinguishable from hawkers. They were to be found in over half the country’s lodging houses in the mid-century and their numbers continued to grow until the 1870s. A high proportion were Irish.

  The array of goods they sold included fabrics, linen, lace, buttons, tapes, pins, flowers and matches. The making and selling of knitted caps was common among lodgers. Many sold fruit and vegetables – often bought as surplus stock from local greengrocers – while the poorest sold cress. Sweets and confectionery were commonly sold, especially in areas where sugar production was based, including Daventry, Hereford, Kettering, Leicester, Lincoln, Northampton and Stamford. There were few market towns where muffins could not be had from street vendors, while herbal medicines and medical advice from doctors of dubious qualifications were freely available. For those with poor eyesight there was always a peddler offering a range of spectacles. Stationery of all sorts was sold by others who followed the wandering life, alongside the wares touted by makers of pin cushions, combs, mops and rat and bird catchers.

  Some commodities, though apparently unsuitable for sale by hawkers, were nevertheless widely sold by them. Thus, careful hawkers dealt in crockery while those with broad backs and well developed biceps sold hardware and whetstones, fire shovels and dustpans and tinkers, tinmen, tinplate workers and braziers also dealt in the sale and repair of metal objects. There were many wireworkers who went from one lodging house to another as itinerant tradesmen. Basket-makers, sellers of mats and brushes, and men who hawked toys and jewellery all added to the variety of goods and services available.

  Makers and repairers of umbrellas formed a large group and were to be found in almost every lodging house. Umbrellas with whale spokes were common and far too valuable to be simply discarded when broken. Match-sellers were among the poorest of the street vendors and were generally children or disabled adults who relied on the sympathy of customers. Some exchanged their wares – such as ‘donkey stones’ for cleaning doorsteps – for old clothes, while others specialised in clothing that was beginning to show signs of wear, going from door to door in middle-class areas buying such distressed garments. There was always a ready market for second-hand clothes: the majority of working class people never knew what it was to wear something that was not moulded to the contours of someone else’s body.

  There is little that the modern eco-warrior could tell our Victorian predecessors about recycling: they reused everything and were loath to waste anything. Much of the recycling of goods and materials that seemed beyond use depended on the residents of lodging houses. Clothes dealers, rag collectors and rag and bone men were fixtures in lodging houses. Marine stores employed lodgers from local lodging houses to gather virtually anything – broken furniture, threadbare garments, gaping shoes, discoloured dripping, skins, iron blistered with rust, rags, ashes from a thousand grates, bottles and even waste paper.

  Hawkers and tinkers made up seventeen per cent of women lodgers and were the largest group among them. The reports of the Leicester Domestic Mission for the 1850s describe the lodging houses on the northern edge of the St Margaret’s parish in South Wharf Street. No less than 40,000 people passed through this area’s 38 lodging houses each year, a figure that rose during the following two decades when rapid industrialisation increased the city’s demand for labour. Among the lodgers of the 1850s, peddlers, hawkers and general dealers, travellers in cloth and watercress-sellers made up the bulk of those who stayed for short periods. Nati
onally they accounted for more than half of lodgers in 1861 and in market towns, such as Oxford, they made up seventy per cent.

  While hawkers and collectors were transient residents, it is clear that the lodging houses of many market towns were the semi-permanent homes to many agricultural labourers who travelled as far as six miles a day to and from work. Agricultural labourers were found in almost half the country’s lodging houses in 1861, and in greatest numbers within those counties with large estates which employed many labourers, such as Lincolnshire. Single men and widowers were in the majority and in areas where the gang system operated they were also found in large numbers.

  Many houses provided accommodation for particular types of agricultural labourers. In 1851 the Mitre in Corve Street, Ludlow, was kept by Robert Allum, a drillman, whose house was favoured by other drillmen. The same clustering in specific lodging houses is found among drain-diggers, timber fellers and travelling clog-makers.

  The Irish featured prominently among agricultural labourers, especially among seasonal workers. Describing Leicester’s lodging houses in the 1850s, Joseph Dare noted that many of their occupants were Irish, ‘who crowded in particularly at harvest time’. Speaking of the summer of 1847, he recorded that a two-room house, normally occupied by an Irishman, his wife and six children, accommodated an additional fourteen harvesters. There was at that time no supervision of lodging houses and Dare was by no means alone in calling for regulation, particularly necessary because of the dangers posed by ‘the lower classes of dwelling, the abodes of the newly-arrived Irish’.

  In the first half of the nineteenth century Irish men provided most of the additional labour needed at harvest time. Every year they crossed the Irish Sea and moved from one harvesting area to another – from hop fields to corn, from vegetables to potatoes. As the century progressed hops became the preserve of Londoners, above all East Enders.

  Navvies were famed for constructing their own, often lawless encampments. The evidence, however, suggests that many of those working on major engineering projects near towns and villages used inns and lodging houses. This is certainly true of the Severn Valley Railway construction in 1861. In the same year railway construction provided employment for almost 40,000 men and navvies were to be found in nearly every lodging house throughout the country.

  Whereas navvies working in cities always had a choice of lodging houses, small towns often had only one. Regardless of its location, according to W.H. Davies, the renowned tramp, navvies were never comfortable in lodging houses as they were the object of the contempt of both peddlers and beggars, who regarded them as mugs for having to work for a living. But for those travelling in search of work they were the only alternative to the casual wards of the workhouse, many of which were small and often full at certain times of year. In addition, working men, in common with beggars, objected to them on the grounds that they were demeaning.

  Market town lodging houses averaged less than ten occupants, though it is sometimes difficult to determine the exact number of lodgers in the smaller houses; the household often included the keeper’s family and live-in servants and the distinction between these is not always clear. As in the industrial cities and towns, market town lodging houses were frequently clustered in particular streets. In Oxford, for instance, St Thomas’s High Street was the nucleus of over twenty lodging houses, where a bed was to be had for as little as 2d a night. In Banbury they centred on Ragrow, Wantage and Grove Street.

  Some were substantial buildings, originally prestigious homes in areas that had gone to seed, roughly converted for multiple occupancy, with the emphasis on cramming in as many paying customers as was humanly possible, with little regard for the requirements of hygiene, health, decency or good order. Some lodgers slept in cellars. In rural areas it was common for the owner and his family to share the house. An analysis of the residents of Oxford lodging houses shows that almost half were men under 45 with only about a sixth older men and the same fraction children. A surprising number – one in four – were women, who were usually married, whereas most of the men were single.

  Though there were lodgers from all over the country most were local. At every stage of the nineteenth century the Irish were found in many houses, their numbers peaking during the Famine, from 1845–50. Though the array of lodgers’ occupations was considerable, they were chiefly unskilled labourers: crossing sweepers, hawkers, street entertainers, abandoned women, labourers, domestics, match-sellers, agricultural and railway workers, travelling fair workers and the ubiquitous tramping navvy. Many were in seasonal employment and the majority were transients, though there were some permanent and semi-permanent lodgers.

  All those who worked in the transport industry including drovers and cattle dealers, carters and waggoners, together with the crews of barges and narrow boats, used the lodging houses situated along trade routes. Sailors, both genuine and of the turnpike variety, also used them en route to and from their vessels.

  ‘Crimps’ – those who preyed on sailors – were thick on the ground in all major ports and particularly along the Thames. Theoretically these predators were owners of lodging houses, used by sailors, but in reality this was no more than a pretext for their chief source of income. Generally, the more professional crimps boarded ships making their way up the Thames at Gravesend and latched onto sailors looking for lodgings. They took sailors’ belongings to their lodging house and, as mariners frequently had to wait for their wages after reaching port, lent them money at exorbitant interest rates. They also directed their prey to particular prostitutes. Before his leave was over the sailor owed money to the crimp and was often forced to get into further debt to acquire the things he needed to go to sea again – which the crimp supplied at inflated prices.

  Similarly, there were few nineteenth century soldiers unfamiliar with lodging houses as they were often used by soldiers in transit and recruiting parties. There were almost 300,000 soldiers in the British army in 1861; almost 40 per cent were Irish-born and 10 per cent Scots. Most regiments, of course, had links with specific shires. Old soldiers were also a standard part of lodging house life and Chelsea pensioners were to be found in many, even outside London.

  Though unskilled labourers made up the bulk of lodgers in the market towns, skilled men were also to be found, especially in the first sixty years of the century when many travelled in search of employment. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that factory production of most consumer goods became the norm. Prior to that most craftsmen were subject to seasonal fluctuation in demand for their labour, which left them with no alternative but to travel in search of work.

  These were the ‘tramping artisans’ including marble polishers, cabinetmakers, tailors, shoe-makers, masons, carpenters, basket and box-makers, wireworkers, iron founders, umbrella and furniture repairers. Many of these were frequently found in lodging houses and a number of them were semi-permanent residents, but some also used the tramp wards. Before the age of labour exchanges even skilled men had to go looking for work. Add to this the short- and long-term trade cycles which forced people to move in search of employment and the vagaries of war, which sent soldiers and sailors scurrying from one end of the country to the other, and it is easy to see that then, as now, Britain was a realm in constant movement.

  London shoe-makers, cabinet-makers and those in the clothing trade worked towards peaks of demand in March and October. In the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge demand was at its greatest during term time, in Leicestershire during the hunting season and in times of big meetings in towns near race courses. Building workers were in the same situation, but so also were servants, grooms, footmen and all those in domestic service. Couriers, foundry workers, coach and carriage-makers, French polishers, printers and cork cutters were merely a fraction of those who spent a large part of their lives chasing work. A study of the 1861 census for market towns shows that skilled men were found in six out of every ten lodging houses.

  Nail-mak
ers were in a similar situation. Though concentrated in the Black Country and Derbyshire, ‘travelling nailers’ were to be found in lodging houses all over the country, as were hawkers of clay tobacco pipes.

  The quality of accommodation available in market towns, like that in the centres of population, varied greatly. Chester’s lodging houses are described in a report of 1845, which has little good to say of them. They were apparently ‘very miserable and wretched’, many without bedsteads or even beds, with lodgers huddling together on straw instead. The rooms were often overcrowded and there was seldom any ventilation.

  A similar situation was found in Wakefield in 1859 during a midnight tour of the local lodging houses. An entire bed could be had for 6d or a shared bed for 3d. This, as usual, conferred use of the kitchen but each lodger was required to provide his own soap and candle. Many of the lodgers were of a fearsome appearance: ‘The coarse and in too many cases, brutal faces, distorted by sleep, looked weird and ghostly in the dim light of the candle.’ Some of the sleepers were evidently in a drunken stupor. The air was generally ‘close and offensive’ and yet, except in a case where parents were sharing a bed with their children, there was little overcrowding. But for the lack of ventilation, conditions were generally ‘tolerably good’ and ‘the bedrooms were cleanly whitewashed and the iron bedsteads could harbour nothing objectionable.’

  The same investigator visited another house full of men who worked for the visiting fair and then went to ‘a small house kept by an old woman as dirty as she was old’. The kitchen presented ‘an indescribable scene of dirt and confusion’ and in one of the bedrooms there was a mattress ‘which would scarcely hang together’ and a cupboard barely 2ft high, which was ‘the sleeping place of a small boy’.

  Others he visited were objectionable in various ways, and he found ‘an utter disregard of the commonest decencies of life’, such as single girls sleeping in the same rooms as married couples – something that was quite normal by working class standards of the day. Yet some were appalling by any standards: one old building seemed ‘planted over a drain from which noxious effluvium penetrated the whole dwelling.’ In another, ‘all was dirt, stench and discomfort’, reeking of overcrowded, unwashed bodies. He found many single women in these houses who invariably claimed to make a living as hawkers and many of the men claimed that they made a living hawking nuts.