“With regard to the _character_ of these courts, 629, or nearly one-third, were closed at both ends; 875, or less than one-half, were open at one end; and only 478, or less than one-fourth, open at both ends.
“The cellars are 10 or 12 feet square; generally flagged,—but frequently having only the bare earth for a floor,—and sometimes less than six feet in height. There is frequently no window, so that light and air can gain access to the cellar only by the door, the top of which is often not higher than the level of the street. In such cellars, ventilation is out of the question. They are of course dark; and from the defective drainage, they are also very generally damp. There is sometimes a back-cellar, used as a sleeping apartment, having no direct communication with the external atmosphere, and deriving its scanty supply of light and air solely from the front apartment.”
The above extract, and the numbers of the court and cellar population, are taken from Dr. Duncan’s evidence. He thinks, from extensive data in his possession, that the numbers, as given in this enumeration, are under the mark. And it is suggested that, possibly, casual lodgers have been omitted. Dr. Duncan then gives some further details which enable us more fully to understand what dog-holes these cellars are.
“Of the entire number of cellars, 1617 have the back apartment I have mentioned; while of 5297 whose measurements are given, 1771, or one-third, are from five to six feet deep,—2324 are from four to five feet, and 1202 from three to four feet below the level of the street: 5273, or more than five-sixths, have no windows to the front; and 2429, or about 44 per cent. are reported as being either damp or wet.”
In cellars of this kind there are sometimes 30 human beings, sometimes more, “furnished,” as Dr. Duncan tells us, “with a supply of air sufficient for the wants of only seven.” Occasionally, in this Report, there are scenes described in a circumstantial, Dutch-picture way which the most vigorous imagination, priding itself on its ingenuity in depicting wretchedness, would hardly have conceived. Take the following instance from the evidence of Mr. Holme of Liverpool.
“Some time ago I visited a poor woman in distress, the wife of a labouring man. She had been confined only a few days, and herself and infant were lying on straw in a vault through the outer cellar, with a clay floor, impervious to water. There was no light nor ventilation in it, and the air was dreadful. _I had to walk on bricks across the floor to reach her bed-side_, _as the floor itself was flooded with stagnant water_. This is by no means an extraordinary case, for I have witnessed scenes equally wretched; and it is only necessary to go into Crosby-street, Freemason’s row, and many cross streets out of Vauxhall-road, to find hordes of poor creatures living in cellars, which are almost as bad and offensive as charnel houses. In Freemason’s-row I found, about two years ago, a court of houses, the floors of which were below the public street, and the area of the whole court was a floating mass of putrefied animal and vegetable matter, so dreadfully offensive that I was obliged to make a precipitate retreat. Yet the whole of the houses were inhabited!”