George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

why tramps should only stay a day at each casual ward;

they might stay a month or even a year, if there were work

for them to do. The constant circulation of tramps is

something quite artificial. At present a tramp is an

expense to the rates, and the object of each workhouse is

therefore to push him on to the next; hence the rule that he

can stay only one night. If he returns within a month he is

penalised by being confined for a week, and, as this is

much the same as being in prison, naturally he keeps

moving. But if he represented labour to the workhouse,

and the workhouse represented sound food to him, it

would be another matter. The workhouses would develop

into partially self-supporting institutions, and the tramps,

settling down here or there according as they were needed,

would cease to be tramps. They would be doing something

comparatively useful, getting decent food, and living a

settled life. By degrees, if the scheme worked well, they

might even cease to be regarded as paupers, and be able to

marry and take a respectable place in society.

This is only a rough idea, and there are some obvious

objections to it. Nevertheless, it does suggest a way of

improving the status of tramps without piling new burdens

on the rates. And the solution must, in any case, be

something of this kind. For the question is, what to do

with men who are underfed and idle; and the answer-to

make them grow their own food - imposes itself

automatically.

XXXVII

A WORD about the sleeping accommodation open to

a homeless person in London. At present it is impossible

to get a

bed in any non-charitable institution in London for

less than sevenpence a night. If you cannot afford

sevenpence for a bed, you must put up

with one of the following substitutes:

I. The Embankment. Here is the account that Paddy

gave me of sleeping on the Embankment:

"De whole t'ing wid de Embankment is gettin' to sleep

early. You got to be on your bench by eight o'clock,

because dere ain't too many benches and sometimes

dey're all taken. And you got

to try to get to

sleep at once. 'Tis too cold to sleep much after twelve

o'clock, an' de police turns you off at four in de mornin'.

It ain't easy to sleep, dough, wid dem bloody trams flyin'

past your head all de time, an' dem sky-signs across de

river flickin' on an' off in your eyes. De cold's cruel. Dem

as sleeps dere generally wraps demselves

up in newspaper, but it don't do much good. You'd

be bloody lucky if you got t'ree hours' sleep."

I have slept on the Embankment and found that it

corresponded to Paddy's description. It is, however,

much better than not sleeping at all, which is the alter-

native if you spend the night in the streets, elsewhere

than on the Embankment. According to the law in

London, you may sit down for the night, but the police

must move you on if they see you asleep; the Embank

ment and one or two odd corners (there is one behind

the Lyceum Theatre) are special exceptions. This law

is evidently a piece of wilful offensiveness. Its object, so it

is said, is to prevent people from dying of exposure;

but clearly if a man has no home and is going to die of

exposure, die he will, asleep or awake. In Paris there is no

such law. There, people sleep by the score under the Seine

bridges, and in doorways, and on benches in the squares,

and round the ventilating shafts of the Metro, and even

inside the Metro stations. It does no apparent harm. No

one will spend a night in the street if he can possibly help

it, and if he is going to stay out of doors he might as well

be allowed to sleep, if he can.

2. The Twopenny Hangover. This comes a little

higher than the Embankment. At the Twopenny Hang

over, the lodgers sit in a row on a bench; there is a rope

in front of them, and they lean on this as though

leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet,

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.