State of Mining Population.

57

wynds are accustomed to it, as some are said to accustom themselves to poisons, which yet destroy ere the hardening process is terminated. No doubt, the inmates of such dwellings cease to think or feel conscious of any inconvenience; but does this unconsciousness diminish their power to depress the spirits, weaken the springs of life, or destroy the digestive powers? While sinking into insensibility to this as to their other miseries, how many children under the hardening process pine and die! How silently does the fetid atmosphere around undermine the vigour of youth or manhood, sow the seeds of premature decay, and render the resource of strong drink little less than a physical necessity!

But pass the miserable court, stair, and lobby, and look in upon the crowd assembled, after work hours, in one narrow apartment. Are these the homes of the poor? To call them homes is a mockery--dormitories-lodging-houses-not homes. Men and women doomed to such a life, have nothing to fear from our criminal laws. The jail, the bridewell, and the hulks are more desirable abodes. Our jails are palaces in cleanliness and comfort to these dwellings! The inmates of such lodging-houses learn to fortify themselves against their own remaining sensibility, cherish an intense selfishness, practise on others the arts practised on themselves, and human nature sinks into the lowest state of animalism, with appetites and passions inflamed by alternate want and indulgence.

But not only is the contrast worthy of attention between the towns of Scotland and England. The contrast extends to the physical condition and habits of large portions of the mining population-to the Scottish colliers, for instance, now become an extensive and important class, scattered throughout the wealthiest parts of Scotland, where attention should have been long since directed to their condition. Mr. Tremenheere, the Government Commissioner, speaking of the mining population of Scotland,

says-

"I have felt called upon to notice the following marked peculiarities of their general habits and condition, namely, their excessive use of ardent spirits, the extreme neglect of personal cleanliness (not one Scottish collier in a hundred ever washing his whole body, though necessarily as black as the coal he works), the usually dirty state of the colliers' houses, within and without, their absurd restrictions upon each other's labour, and the early age (usually about forty-five) at which they lose their vigour, and die. It may be useful to put in contrast with this the opposite habits and results among the English and Welsh colliers and miners of this extensive mineral district of South Wales. Here it is not spirits that are used to excess, but beer only. As regards personal cleanliness, no collier in this district omits to wash himself all over every day after his labour. Their houses are, within,

almost universally clean and comfortable; and where there is any opportunity of keeping the spaces before them tidy and decent, it is not omitted. The colliers and miners of this district usually preserve their vigour till near fifty-five, and a large per centage may be found capable of doing a good day's work at sixty. . . The houses

of the Scotch mining population are usually deficient in much needful accommodation within and without, the spaces about them also showing no regard to cleanliness; the dirty habits of the children being uncontrolled by their parents or any one else."

So long ago as 1812, Mr. Bald, then of Alloa and lately engineer of the Clyde Trust, published a general view of the coal trade of Scotland, in which he exposed a system of female labour practised in the collieries of Scotland, incompatible with the existence of the lowest form of Christianity, alike brutalizing to soul and body, and from which, to the female colliers, there was no possibility of self-deliverance. Yet, amidst the silence of the Church of Scotland, and of Dissenters, this system of female labour continued, unaltered, until Lord Ashley's Committee exposed the evil, and applied a Parliamentary remedy.

Whatever, therefore, be the superiority of our working population in the education of letters, we must not shut our eyes to the deplorable fact that this education of letters has been wholly unable to prevent the masses in our towns from sinking into a physical state in house and person which to an Englishman, even to a Norwich weaver, earning only seven shillings a-week, were unbearable. If England still wants schools for the education of letters, she has homes for the higher education of domestic habits and tastes, and for nursing into strength the best (feelings and sweetest affections of the human heart. The physical training of the Scottish population has been neglected. The education of degrading and every-day circumstances is proving more than a match for all the intellectual and moral advantages of the nation, and we are vainly imagining that school training is to counteract the training of homes and neighbourhoods, that are strangers to decency and comfort. If all Scotsmen get a smattering of learning, and are able to talk and dispute better than any poverty-stricken and fallen population in Great Britain, what avails it except to make them the more intensely to feel and resent their miseries? The schoolmaster has been abroad among the Scottish as he never was among the English masses-but what has he done to elevate the tens of thousands in our crowded cities and manufacturing villages in the scale of humanity? Has he trained them to wash their persons or to cleanse their dwellings-to prefer air and light to darkness and corruption? Has he made any homes to smile, or rendered the poor man's fireside the most attractive spot in all the poor man's world? If he has

Contrast between English and Scottish Towns.

59

not cleansed even the outside of the man, how shall we hope he has elevated the inner man ; and if he has not been able to rouse him out of the filth, indolence, and apathy of his animal degradation, how can we hope that he is permanently elevated in his spiritual character! A little while ago, the schoolmaster abroad was to do every thing for the poor man. It was only needful to count the proportions at school, or enumerate the readers and writers and arithmeticians, to know the measure of the wellbeing of the people. But did we succeed in coaxing, bribing, or persecuting all the children in all the wynds, lanes, and closes of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Paisley, to school, and in securing to them, to the full measure, the Scottish education of mere letters, or if you will, of intellectual superiority to the boors of Norfolk, what would they be the better? Man is not only what the schoolmaster makes him, but much more what the daily and hourly, the thousand nameless influences of the sights and sounds of his home and neighbourhood make him; and to oppose only the schoolmaster, or even the schoolmaster and pastor, to the constant daily and hourly influences and training of dwellings and neighbourhoods divested of all that can cheer or elevate human beings, is to oppose the force of a torrent by a few twigs.

Some time ago, the author of this article visited one of the chief mercantile towns of England with a view to make a comparison between the dwellings and habits of labouring classes in our Scottish and English towns, and by a renewed inspection of both, was satisfied, with Mr. Symonds, that the population of the Scottish towns have reached a lower depth in physical degradation than the worst of the English towns, and that to Glasgow and to Edinburgh justly belong the bad preeminence. We were struck with the superior air of the dwellings of the poorest even in Manchester and Bolton. The shameful parts of these towns seemed less shameful than the shameful parts of ours. In Birmingham, the superiority of the physical habits of the operative population is still more striking. The majority of its workingclasses live in self-contained houses, comparatively few in garrets or cellars; and the dwellings of the poor wear an air of comfort which is rarely to be seen in our Scottish_towns. The back courts, instead of presenting, as in Scotland, accumulations of refuse and pools of water, are levelled, paved, and flagged; so that the smallest soil is perceptible, and both the inhabitants and the authorities seem more alive to the importance of cleanliness both to private and public wellbeing-the value of air and water -the education of the brush and besom.

The first step towards improving the dwellings of the poor, and, with their dwellings, their personal and domestic habits, is to bring them and their habitations into daylight. As the bril

IT

liant gas-light of our streets has dispersed the dangers of the night, and rendered them safe to the passenger at the dead of night, so the free air and light of heaven let in upon the labyrinth of wynds and closes, will disperse the filth and impurities of the dwellings of the poor. Bury the best and most notable housewife that a Scottish town contains, in a vennel or close, and her notions of cleanliness and decency rapidly degenerate. She won't clean where all may soil, of which no one will have the praise or blame, and where no one better than herself passes by. But take the most ordinary housewife out of one of these vennels and fivestoried houses, and place her in her own self-contained' house, however humble, with her own lobby and her own front-door, in the eye of every passer by, her ideas of cleanliness and decency undergo a rapid improvement, and the love of her own homestead prevails over apathy and indolence. Cleanliness is a social virtue, and to be practised must have eyes upon it, and be seen 'not only by those with whom we are most familiar, but by the eye of the stranger, to whom first appearances are every thing.

A glance at the height of the houses, seldom above two stories, at the width of the streets-the unoccupied lanes, open at both ends, behind every street-the better provision for drainage and sewerage, is sufficient to convince any one of the superiority of the English towns in the dwellings of the poor, and in all the ordinary means of domestic decency and comfort. The number of self-contained houses occupied by the working-classes of EngJand is a beautiful feature of English superiority. The effect of the self-contained house in awakening emulation in neatness and cleanliness throughout a whole neighbourhood, is very noticeable. The well-washed steps and lobbies, and the never-failing white curtain and flower-box discover the interest each housewife takes in the honour of her own home; while the three, four, and five-storied houses of the Scottish towns, with their common closes, stairs, and lobbies, are fatal to emulation, and lead to nothing but a uniformity of filth! The streets and lanes of the poor, instead of running parallel to each other, with free spaces behind, consist, in the Scottish towns, of a front line of dwellings, beyond which lie a mass of houses accessible by closes or courts, without any thoroughfare. The front steadings form a line of defence against the air and light of heaven, more impenetrable to the agencies of health than the British squares at Waterloo to the cavalry of France. The closes and courts by which they are approached, it is no one's business to keep clean. The common stair and common lobby, like other commons, having too many mistresses, are as much neglected as if they had none at all; and the four and five-storied houses of Scotland, by quenching emulation, tend to reduce the best housewife to the level of the worst.

Dr. S. Smith's Report to Poor Law Commissioners.

61

These neglected wynds and courts become the nurseries of fever and small-pox to the rest of the city. One family attacked, the disease passes from inmate to inmate, and from house to house, until it exhaust its virulence by exhausting its bare and squalid victims. Here, too, fever lingers after forsaking healthier localities, ready to break forth anew on every return of this periodical -scourge of Glasgow.

Of the intimate connexion between filth and fever, we shall allow Dr. Southwood Smith, Physician to the London Fever Hospital, in his Report in 1838 to the Poor Law Commissioners, to speak:

The exhalations which accumulate in close, ill-ventilated, and crowded apartments in the confined situations of densely populated cities, where no attention is paid to the removal of putrifying and excrementitious substances, consist chiefly of animal matter. Such exhalations contain a poison which produces fever of the typhoid character. There are situations in which the poison generated is so intense and deadly, that a single inspiration of it is capable of producing instantaneous death; there are others in which a few inspirations of it are capable of destroying life in from two to twelve hours; and there are others, again, as in dirty and neglected ships-in damp, crowded, and filthy gaols-in the crowded wards of ill-ventilated hospitals, filled with persons labouring under malignant surgical diseases, and some forms of typhus fever-in the crowded, filthy, close, unventilated, damp, undrained habitations of the poor, in which the poison generated, although not so immediately fatal, is still too potent to be long breathed even by the most healthy and robust, without producing fever of a highly dangerous and mortal character. But it would be a most inadequate view of the pernicious agency of this poison, if it were restricted to the diseases commonly produced by its direct operation. It is a matter of constant observation, that even when not present in sufficient intensity to produce fever by disturbing the functions of some organ or set of organs, and thereby weakening the general system, this poison acts as a powerful predisposing cause of some of the most common and fatal maladies to which the human body is subject." Dr. Smith then proceeds to show, that by deranging the digestive organs, it is the predisposing cause of stomach-disorders, inflammations, and consumption; and concludes" If then, as is commonly computed, of the total number of deaths that take place annually over the whole surface of the globe, nearly one-half is caused by fever in its different forms; to this sum must be added the number who perish by diseases caused by the constant operation of the poison."

But apart altogether from the waste of human life, and the