This article was downloaded by: [University of Tasmania]On: 13 November 2014, At: 10:30Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Historical StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rahs19

‘The question of the poor’ in thenineteenth-century cityA.J.C. Mayne aa University of MelbournePublished online: 27 Jan 2009.

To cite this article: A.J.C. Mayne (1983) ‘The question of the poor’ in the nineteenth-centurycity, Historical Studies, 20:81, 557-573, DOI: 10.1080/10314618308682900

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10314618308682900

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms& Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

fli.slo~i~al Slt¢dies. ~)l. 20, n o , S l , OCt. 1!1~3

' T H E Q U E S T I O N OF T H E P O O R ' IN T H E N I N E T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y CITY

There is sometimes a tendency, when consider ing Australia 's past. to adopt an isolationist h i s to r iography which treats local events and developments as being un ique to Australia. On occasions, no doubt, this is amply justified. Misplaced, however, the tendency can lead to the most pedestrian of parochia l ism; at the very least, it robs otherwise fine local studies of the extra dimensions of mean ing and relevance which may reward a compara t ive analysis. This criticism is by no means appl icable only to Austral ian h is tor iography, a l though with the year 1988 approaching , an Austral ian context is par t icular ly apt. Nor is the cri t icism wi thout significance for specialist fields, as well as nat ional schools, of history. For, in their m ix ing of the narrow with the broad in research and analysis, all his tor ians may at times get their parameters wrong. The field of urban history is one case in point.

In the fol lowing pages I draw upon evidence taken from nineteenth-century Sydney in order, firstly, to indicate some valid areas for compar i son between Australia and other societies, and secondly, to suggest a n u m b e r of parallels between the par t icular urban experience of Sydney and that of other cities in a wider internat ional setting. The approach adopted is themat ic rather than r igorously systematic: on balance, the possibili t ies for advancing sustainable a rgumen t by this means outweigh the possible technical weaknesses inherent in it. Sydney experience is contrasted, in the main , with examples drawn from New York, and in Britain, f rom Bi rmingham, Liverpool , and Manchester. These and other cities have been chosen so as to avoid min imi s ing areas of dissimilarity between nineteenth-century cities: differences in antiquity, for example , in size and economic base, in popu la t ion growth and density, in age and sex structure, and in the adminis t ra t ion and f inancing of city services and government . The inclusion of Sydney in the compar i son adds the fur ther complexit ies of distance and isolation. These dissimilari t ies in the urban world can nonetheless be overstated. The nineteenth century witnessed the m a t u r i n g of a world-wide grid of cities, l inked by c o m m o n technologies in p roduc t ion and commun ica t i on which made possible the in terchange of goods, investment, and ideas, and sustained by c o m m o n par t ic ipat ion in a global economic network based upon private enterprise and laissez-faire.

I suggest that we may speak with some confidence about things ' c o m m o n ' to, or ' typical ' of, the character and deve lopment of European urban society in the nineteenth century. Certainly wi thin the Engl i sh-speaking world, en la rg ing cities encountered s imilar env i ronmenta l and social problems, and responded to those pressures in remarkably similar ways. T h e identif ication of u rban poverty as a ma jo r social p rob lem is a case in point. T h r o u g h o u t the Engl i sh-speaking world, two factors were of fundamenta l impor tance as sources of in fo rmat ion about the urban poor, and also in shap ing percept ions of and de te rmin ing repsonses towards u rban poverty. These factors were firstly, heal th concerns at the possibly epidemic consequences of the diseases endemic a m o n g the inner-city districts of the work ing classes, and secondly, the combined religious and secular assumpt ions with which

557

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

558 A. Mayne

Protestant society viewed the apparen t godlessness and deviance of the inner city. Together , these two factors were responsible for en t rench ing a popu la r stereotype of the s lum as being separate from, and alien to, c o m m u n i t y norms. They were responsible also for suggest ing solut ions in defence of c o m m u n i t y equ i l ib r ium which were essentially negative in character and which, with their concentrat ion on f inding generally acceptable remedies, ignored or overlooked individuals and minor i ty problems.

The conclusions drawn about health, and the Protestant- inf luenced assumpt ions concerning deviancy, were both in turn shaped heavily by class. Both reflected in large measure the viewpoints of poli t icians, churchmen, the medical profession, journalists , and others involved in social and sanitary reform. In brief. we are deal ing with concepts that were suggested by the middle classes. It is not, however, useful to suggest a model of elite m a n i p u l a t i o n and control. Firstly, many of the reformers could hardly be classified as coming f rom the ranks of the rich and powerful . Secondly, the apparen t acceptance of the 'el i te 's ' v iewpoints th roughou t the c o m m u n i t y remains unexpla ined. In speaking of class, we are considering more than social stratification; we are deal ing with modes of thought , with patterns of self-identification. Middle-class concepts of urban poverty were so influential because the social a s sumpt ions upon which they were based matched the bourgeois aspirat ions of petty business and the marg ina l professions, and of work ing men and women p roud in their accumula t ion of skills and possessions. Strictures delivered at the expense of the urban poor acted s imul taneously as an economic and moral yardstick of what one was not, and as an aff i rmat ion of what one was or had ambi t ions to be.

Midway th rough 1871 a leading article in the Lancet commented that it 'is certain that we cannot afford to neglect the study of ep idemic diseases'. Referr ing to the sma l lpox then spreading th rough England, the writer noted that at ' this m o m e n t nearly every great city in the world is suffering from its ravages', and he pointed to reports coming f rom London and Liverpool , f rom Rot terdam and Paris, f rom Brussels, Berlin, and New York in conf i rmat ion of his claim. ~ In B i rmingham, where smal lpox had also appeared that year, the epidemic was not finally s tamped out until 1876. Scarlet fever, epidemic in the city dur ing the early 1870s, returned in epidemic form at the end of the decade, again in 1883, and yet again in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Smal lpox, after a fresh outbreak in 1883, appeared once again in 1891 and thereafter returned in epidemic bouts t h roughou t the remainder of the decade. Epidemics of influenza in the early 1890s, and of typhoid at the turn of the century, added further to c o m m u n i t y gloom. A catalogue of woes, this cycle of disease and death was paral leled in city after city across the globe. Sydney's experience was unexcept ional : outbreaks of scarlet fever, w h o o p i n g cough, and typhoid in 1858, of measles and influenza two years later, and of measles and scarlet fever in 1875. 'The topic of general concern of late', announced an editorial in the Svdney Morning Herald dur ing 1875, 'has been the

Lancet, !3 May 1871, p. 656.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

The Question of the Poor 559

Public Heahh'. z Cholera alarms in Sydney, triggered by the spread of that disease in ports overseas, occurred in 1832, throughout the later 1860s, and again during the 1890s. Smallpox, which appeared in epidemic form in 1881, also caused widespread alarm during smaller outbreaks in 1876 and the mid-1880s. The appearance of bubonic plague at the turn of the century caused a social upheaval in the city.

Epidemics of disease were a common experience in all nineteenth-century cities. The similarities and links between cities which this implies are nonetheless easily exaggerated, and the significance of epidemic disease misinterpreted. Australian capitals, at the end of long shipping lanes, avoided the catastrophic outbreaks of smallpox and cholera which periodically cross-infected more closely located cities overseas. English smallpox victims from the epidemic of the early 1870s numbered over 44,000; in Sydney, the introduction of smallpox late in 1876 caused only four fatalities. Just 40 deaths were reported during the Sydney epidemic of 1881. Smallpox failed to register even a hiccup on the graph of the city's annual mortality levels. Not that epidemics of disease in Australian cities were statistically insignificant: over one hundred people died in Sydney from bubonic plague in 1900, and in 1867 epidemic measles caused over 460 deaths; mortality levels in Sydney for 1867 were the highest recorded for the city in the nineteenth century. Yet epidemic outbursts of disease in Sydney were not the major causes of high mortality. In this important respect, Sydney was typical of nineteenth-century cities. The true significance of epidemic diseases, and in particular of smallpox and cholera, lies less in their long-term influence upon urban mortality than in the climate of opinion they sustained. The recurring patterns of epidemic disease, such as those traced in Birmingham and Sydney, produced profound community alarm. Newspaper telegraphic reports and emergency quarantine restrictions prompted by epidemics elsewhere in the world compounded these anxieties.

It is possible, within the diversity and complexity of nineteenth-century mortality statistics, to identify several important general patterns. Firstly, it was not epidemic but endemic diseases which maintained city ill-heahh. High morbidity and mortality levels resulted in part from the continuing presence of disorders spread by droplet infection or by touch, such as scarlet fever, measles, diphtheria, and whooping cough. Still more important were gastro-intestinal disorders, notably diarrhoea and dysentry, and enteric or typhoid fever. Typhoid, endemic in Sydney's ill-drained suburban districts, boosted suburban crude death- rates during 1885-89 above that of the inner city for the first time in the century. Secondly, death-rates from such endemic disorders remained stubbornly high throughout the nineteenth century because of the catastrophic mortality levels prevailing among children. Infant and child death-rates admittedly displayed enormous disparities even between districts in the same city. Yet the overall pattern evident in Sydney, where children under five years consistently formed approximately half of total annual deaths in the city, holds generally true both in Britain and North America. The New South Wales government statistician was not speaking merely figuratively when he remarked that, in 1875, children in Sydney

z Sydney Morning Herald, 4 March 1875. p. 4.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

560 A. Mayne

were decimated: as Coghlan continued, 'out of 23,327 children of five years and under, 2,177 died dur ing the year '? Illness and disease were a dreaded and frequent presence among all families, of all social strata.

Illness and disease, it was commonly assumed, had their origins in city filth. The process of decay and corrupt ion released mal ignant miasmatic poisons into the air people breathed. Whether the mechanics of that process were chemical or biological, whether fermentation actually generated or merely fostered the development of mal ignant poisons, germs, or fungi, all agreed ' that noth ing fosters and promotes disease so much as filth wherever it may be'. 4 One of 'the oldest and most universal of medical experiences', John Simon told the new Local Government Board in Whitehall dur ing 1873, was ' that populations, living amid Filth, and within direct reach of its pol lu t ing influence, succumb to various diseases which under opposite conditions are comparatively or absolutely unknown ' . 5 Sources of disease might be expected in the newer and as yet incompletely drained suburban districts, in polluted waterways, in the refuse from slaughterhouses and vegetable markets, in municipal garbage tips. But collective wisdom held that the menace was most concentrated a m o n g the cesspools, the ill- drained courts, and the crowded, insanitary dwellings of the inner city. Theorists of miasmatic disease-causation had blundered upon the socio-physical sources of ur- ban ill-health. Whether in Bi rmingham's St Mary's district, marked out for clearance by the city council in 1875, or in the inner-city neighbourhoods of Sydney, or the multi-layered immigrant communit ies of central-city wards in the United States, above-city-average mortality corresponded with above-average crowding, and below-average hous ing and general sanitary order. Inner-Sydney wards contained the highest propor t ions of unskilled labour, the highest levels of occupancy per dwelling, and the highest concentrat ion of one- to four-roomed houses in the city. Significantly, the inner-city death-rate per 1,000 of infants under one year, which age group were the chief victims of endemic diarrhoeal diseases, was th roughout the century clearly higher than in the Sydney suburbs and roughly double that of rural New South Wales. 6

In 1844 Dr William Duncan, soon to become Liverpool 's first Medical Officer of Health (MOH), remarked u p o n the frequency with which it had:

been observed that where a poor population is densely crowded, a kind of poisonous matter, of a highly contagious character, is generated in the system, affecting with typhus and other

T.A. Coghlan, The Wealth And Progress O] New South Wales 1886-87, Sydney 1887, p. 177; and see the annual NSW Statistical Register, and reports by the Registrar General in Votes and Proceedings of the N S W Legislative Assembly. See also B. Gandevia, Tears Often Shed: Child Health And Welfare In Australia From 1788, Sydney 1978; F.B. Smith, The People's Health 1830-1910, Canberra 1979; E.E. Lampard, 'The Urbanizing World', in H.J. Dyos and M. Wolff (eds.), The Victorian City: Images and Realities, London 1973, vol. 1, pp. 19-27. 4 Dr G. Dansey. 9 Sept. 1875. in Sydney City Council, Letters Received. 1875, vol. 5. no. 597.

'Medical Officer's Supplemental Report on Filth Diseases And Their Prevention', in British Parliamentary Papers, 1874, XXXI, p. 8. 6 Registrar General's annual reports in Votes and Proceedings of the N S W Legislative Assembly; and

see my Fever, Squalor and Vice: Sanitation and Social Policy in Victorian Sydney, St Lucia 1982.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

T h e Ques t ion o] the Poor 561

fevers not only those in whom it first originates, but spreading with rapidity amid such a population, from individual to individual, from house to house, and from street to street. 7

What was so a la rming was the l ikelihood of the fevers endemic amongst the poor extending outwards in epidemic proport ions. New York sanitary investigators in 1853 stated as their starting assumption that it 'is a well-established fact that diseases are not confined to the localities where they originate, but widely diffuse their poisonous miasma' . 8 Thus, the investigators concluded, disorders limited initially to the neighbourhoods of the poor often spread th roughout the community. It was a f inding echoed in cities across the nation. In Australian cities also, sanitary policy was founded upon the initial premise that endemic sickness and disease 'spread from the abode of poverty and filth, to that of all classes'. 9 Against pestilence, warned the Manchester physician James Kay in 1832, 'wealth cannot absolutely bar'. Disease, he cautioned, 'may be unconsciously conveyed from those haunts of beggary where it is rife, into the most still and secluded retreat of refinement', to

Kay, later Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, was at the time associated with the efforts by the local board of health in Manchester to check the cholera epidemic then raging in England. The disclosures made by Kay, of 'the close alleys, the crowded courts, the overpeopled habitations of wretchedness' to which his sanitary work dur ing the epidemic had led him, excited general interest and concern. As Kay noted, cholera's effect in Manchester was 'to impress the public mind with a sense of the importance of minutely investigating the state of the working classes. TM

Sanitary investigations, prompted by concern at the menace of epidemic disease, were th roughout the nineteenth century the chief and most influential sources of information about condit ions of life amongst the urban working classes. Efforts by MOHs in Sydney, first appointed in 1857, to trace the causes of endemic disease led to the rapid evolution of comprehensive house-to-house visitations about the working-class districts of the inner city. The most thorough survey of working- class hous ing to appear in Sydney dur ing the century was produced in 1876 by a special sanitary board that had been set up to enquire urgently into the causes and possible remedies for worsening mortali ty levels in the city. 12 One year earlier, a similar document had been prepared in Bi rmingham when the city council, battling epidemic smallpox, ordered the compi l ing of a Sanitary Census of the city.

The consequence of the public health concerns which sustained the investigations of inner-city ne ighbourhoods was that the question of working-class

7 W.H. Duncan, 'On The Physical Causes Of The High Rate Of Mortality In Liverpool'. pp. 12-13. in 'First Report Of The Commissioners For Inquiring Into The State Of Large Towns And Populous Districts', British Parliamentary Papers, 1844, XVII. s Quoted in R.H. Bremner, From the Depths: The Discovery o[Poverty in the United States, NewYork

1956, p. 7. 9 Dr H. Graham. 9 Sept. 1865, in Sydney City Council. I,etters Received. 1865. vol. 4. no. 790. 10 j.p. Kay. introductory letter to the Reverend Thomas Chalmers, in The Moral And Physical

Condition Of The Working Classes Employed In The Cotton Manufacture In Manchester (2nd ed.. 1832), Manchester 1969, p. 12. H Ibid., pp. 4, 8. lz See Mayne, op.cit.; also S.H. Fisher, 'An Accumulation Of Misery?', Labour History, no. 40, 1981,

pp. 16-28.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

562 A. Ma)me

living condit ions became identified as merely one part in the wider problem of city ill-health. Communi ty perceptions of slums and slum dwellers were drawn from sources of information which, as was the case of the 1844 report in Britain on the State Of Large Towns And Populous Districts, had as their primary objectives the 'causes of disease among the inhabitants ' and the 'best means of p romot ing and securing the public health', t3 Any conclusions respecting the unfamiliar world of the urban poor thus tended to be made through the distorting perspective of the general communi ty ' s inherently self-interested concern at the burdens and dangers posed for themselves by poverty-bred disease.

Everybody recognised that poverty and disease were financial liabilities. This could be considered in abstract, in terms of the loss of productive labour to the communi ty , but could also be calculated in more immediate and personal terms. TM

British commentators frequently remarked that the cost of illness and death a m o n g the poor was translated, through the Poor Law rates, into a tax upon all ratepayers. The New York journalist Jacob Riis pointed out in 1890 that that city's tenement districts were similarly costly to the community . ~5 Tha t the poor, in their unwholesome and overcrowded dwellings, should moreover menace the health of other city dwellers, sustained still greater antipathy. Ignor ing the economic pressures operat ing within the most depressed areas of working-class housing, the founder of the New York Association for Improving the Condit ion of the Poor noted disapprovingly in 1851 that the poor 'love to clan together', and were 'content to live in filth and disorder', t~ Comment ing upon evictions caused by the municipal authori ty 's condemning of houses unfit for h u m a n habitation, a Sydney newspaperman observed unfeelingly in 1882 that the:

occupants will, in too many cases, be like the dogs we read of which "returned to their vomit," and the pigs which went back "to their wallowing in the mire", t7

By their apparent defiance of personal and domestic cleanliness, indifference to house ventilation, and fondness for herding together, slum dwellers were blamed for actively encouraging the spread of disease. In a memorial to Disraeli in 1874, the Royal College of Physicians cautioned that the 'evils' thus engendered among city slums promised ill consequences for 'the whole of society', t8

Such conclusions were shaped by other than just sanitary considerations. The evils ment ioned by the Royal College of Physicians embraced more than the economic and health consequences of epidemic diseases. A subsequent memorial tabled at Westminster in 1874, by Kay-Shuttleworth on behalf of the Charity Organisat ion Society, spoke revealingly of London ' s slums as being 'deeply injurious to the physical and moral welfare of the inhabitants, and to the well-

~3 'First Report Of The Commissioners'. p. vii. ~4 For example, the presidential address by Professor A. Liversidge in Journal and Proceedings of the

Royal Society o[ N.S.W., vol. 22. Sydney 1888. pp. 16-17. is j.A. Riis (ed. S.B. Warner), How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements o] New York,

Harvard 1970. p. 5. ~6 Quoted in Bremner, op.cit., p. 5. 17 Daily Telegraph, 11 Aug. 1882. p. 2. a8 'Memorial on the Condition of the Dwellings of the Poor in London', British Parliamentary Papers,

1874, LII, p. 675.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

The Question of the Poor 563

being of the communi ty at large'. ~9 City slums were regarded as const i tut ing not only a sanitary incubus, but as presenting perturbing moral and social problems for the general communi ty . The comment in 1893 by the American city missionary Josiah Strong, that slums were 'a commingled mass of venomous filth and seething sin, of lust and drunkenness, of pauperism and crime of every sort', was typical of sentiments voiced internationally th roughout the nineteenth century, z° For communi ty perceptions of slum dwellers, as well as reflecting findings and concerns publicised by the public health movement, also drew heavily upon sources of information permeated by the assumptions of popular Protestantism.

Churchmen figured prominent ly a m o n g those whose activities brought them into contact with city slums. The Protestant churches, th rough charity and educational work, preaching, parish visitation, and mission activities, were a major channel of information for the wider communi ty concerning the shadowy existence of the city slum. The greatest influence of Protestantism, however, was felt not so much through such direct reportage of slum life as through its effect in shaping the values and perceptions firstly of slum-observers as a body, and secondly of the general audience which received and interpreted the former's findings.

Protestantism influenced thinking about slum dwellers in three major respects. Firstly, it presented a world view dominated by the starkly contrast ing images of the darkness of Sin and the sublimity of Grace. Secondly, it taught individual accountability: what one sowed, one reaped. Thirdly, its spiritual concepts had entered to such a degree into secular ways of thought that the secular and the religious had become but the two sides of one coin: middle-class attitudes and culture. Religious and secular codes of behaviour were so intertwined that the one served as a measure for the other. Christian strictures concerning moral conduct formed the foundat ion for the secular ideal of respectability, and strengths of character such as hard work, thrift, and diligence were praised both for their accord with secular middle-class values and also as evidence of spiritual progress. Slum dwellers offended on all scores. City missionaries described their work among the slums in terms of a battle waged against Sin, a moral crusade to rescue sinners. In the stark divide identified in Protestant thought between Grace and Sin, probity and degeneracy~ honest industry and idle self-gratification, the s lum's inhabitants were judged to stand on the wrong side.

It was claimed in 1897 that among mainstream society in Montreal, the condition of the city's underprivileged was 'as little known as that of natives in Central Africa'. 21 Seven years earlier Riis had selected as the title for his portrait of the New York ghetto, H o w the Other Ha l ]L ives . The same phrase had been used by sanitary investigators in Sydney dur ing the middle 1870s, as they sought to underline the alien quality of existence in the city's slums. Descriptions of inner-city working- class ne ighbourhoods were regularly presented in the imagery of expeditions to foreign and unknown lands.

The two-world imagery was of course an exaggeration; the social and

19 'Memorial on the Improvement of the Dwellings of the Poor in London'. ibid., p. 677. z0 Quoted in Bremner. op.cit., p. 6. zl H.B. Ames (intro. P.F.W. Rutherford). The City Below the Hill, Toronto 1972. p. 6.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

56.t /i. Mayne

geographical fragmentation of urban society was not quite that intense. Populat ions, after all, are not static entities; a striking characteristic of nineteenth- century cities was the fluidity of their populations, and in North America and Australia the demographic volatility of the nineteenth century has been well- established by social historians. In Sydney, the constraints imposed by working hours and intermittent employment , and by commuter costs and timetabling, nevertheless steadily narrowed the margin for class interaction in proport ion as the city expanded outwards. The resettlement patterns of persons displaced from inner-city housing by slum-clearance policies in Sydney dur ing 1890 and 1891 suggest that these people were extremely immobile, and generally relocated within the same inner-city neighbourhoods. ~2 In Britain, Kay-Shuttleworth had noted dur ing 1832 that as greater Manchester had expanded, so were its mercantile classes now 'seldom in immediate contact with the people', z3 In Birmingham, where social relationships have long been obscured by the cliche of masters and men perpetually rubbing shoulders, before the sanitary investigations of the 1870s 'few if any of the town's influential citizens had ever penetrated into the courts and alleys that lay behind the main thoroughfares of the worst districts'. 24 Joseph Chamberlain, a member of the city council 's 1871 Sewage Enquiry Committee, expressed shocked surprise at the conditions which the committee uncovered. Council lor William White, phi lanthropis t and a major force behind the redevelopment scheme launched in Birmingham under the 1875 Artisans' and Labourers ' Dwellings Improvement Act, remarked incredulously of the working-class localities affected that their 'dilapidation ... reminded me of Strasbourg, which I saw soon after the bombardment! '25

Overdrawn though the reactions of such men were as accurate descriptions of inner-city neighbourhoods, they are nonetheless significant as reflections of the perception of slum life held by those who shaped communi ty attitudes towards urban poverty. It was the viewpoint of outsiders, of the middle classes. The sharpness of the contrasts identified between mainstream communi ty existence and the twin sanitary and social problems of city slums rested upon the perceptions by some of the more fortunately placed in society of a working-class way of life totally unfamil iar to them.

22 A.J.C. Mayne, 'Commuter Travel and Class Mobility in Sydney, 1855-88', Australian Economic History Review, vol. 21, 1981. pp. 53-65; and see my sketch of Sydney's floating population in 'Sydney Sojourns: An Approach To Geographical Mobility In Nineteenth-Century Australia', Australia 1888, no. 8, 1981, pp. 3-12: also S.H. Fisher. 'Life And Work In Sydney, 1870-1890: Aspects of Social Development in a Nineteenth-Century City', Ph.D.. Macquarie University 1976, and 'The Family And The Sydney Economy'. Australia 1888, no. 9, 1982, pp. 83-87. A.J.C. Mayne, 'Disease, Sanitation, And The "Lower Orders": Perception And Reality In Sydney, 1875-1881'. Ph.D.. Australian National University 1980, vol. 2, Appendix 10, pp. 69-72. 23 Kay, op.cit., p. 9. z4 E.P. Hennock, 'The Role Of Religious Dissent In The Reform Of Municipal Government In

Birmingham, 1865-1876'. Ph.D., University of Cambridge 1956, p. 172. 25 Borough of Birmingham, The Artisans and Labourers Dwellings Act 1875. Proceedings on the

Adoption by the Council o[ a Scheme [or the Improvement o] the Borough. With the Speeches o[ the Mayor Joseph Chamberlain Esquire and the Chairman of the Improvement Committee Mr Councillor White in Support Thereo], Birmingham 1875, p. 12.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

The Question o] the Poor 565

Hostile comments about the alien nature of city slums were maintained in part by the involuntary protests of the visitors' own senses. The combinat ion of smells and sights offended the nose and turned the stomach. The Reverend John Johns, of the Unitarian Mission to the Poor in Liverpool, recalled in 1845 how in one alleyway 'the effluvia were scarcely supportable. I have often to return from these places with a sick stomach, and an aching head', z6 New York tenements, said one clergyman in 1869, were ' impregnated with a stench that would poison cattle'. 27 In Sydney, the M O H recalled how, when inspecting insanitary houses with the Mayor dur ing the mid-1870s, one house-closet:

emitted such an abominable stench that it caused an involuntary fit of vomiting on my part, and very nearly upset the Mayor. It had the effect of bringing our labours for the day to a sudden termination. ~8

Observers united in expressing surprise that normal human beings would or could live under such conditions.

Slum dwellers, however, were not regarded as being normal h u m a n beings. In Liverpool, the Reverend Johns admitted that it was constantly 'necessary for me to rouse up all the strength of my previous reasonings and convictions, in order to convince myself that these were really fellow-beings', z9 Working people habi tuat ing the city's cheap common lodging houses, Sydney's M O H agreed with a parliamentary questioner in 1876, were ' lower in the scale of humani ty ' than were normal folk. s° John Stanley James, whose descriptions of the Melbourne and Sydney poor anticipated the style of G.R. Sims in London, wrote in the same year of a distinct 'race of outcasts' living within Melbourne. sa To many people in Britain, increasingly by the 1880s and 1890s, accumula t ing evidence seemed to show that each new generation of slum dwellers was evolving more and more into a permanently debased sub-race.

At the root of the distinction identified between a debased slum existence and normal communi ty life lay the middle-class anxiety, suggested by the intertwined religious and secular belief system embedded in Protestant culture, that the slum dweller was indifferent and inherently antagonist ic to the values and codes of conduct which held society together in its existing form. The sanitarians, the churchmen, and journalists who reported slum life had all been culturally conditioned by their own upbr inging to accept the rules of conduct and hierarchy of values championed by their class as the basis of social order and communi ty cohesion. What was unfamil iar to them about the lives of city working people was judged by them to be unfamiliar and hence alien to what was normal and healthy in society generally. Defiance of such sanitary good sense as cleanliness was but one

2~ Quoted in M.B. Simey. Charitable Effort In Liverpool In The Nineteenth Century, Liverpool 1951, p. 42. z7 Quoted in Bremner. op.cit., pp. 5-6. ~8 Sydney City and Suburban Sewage and Health Board, Eleventh Report, qu. 257, p. 606, in Votes and

Proceedings o[ the NSW Legislative Assembly, 1875-76, vol. 5. z9 Quoted in Simey. op.cit., p. 40. 30 Report of the Select Committee on Common I.odging Houses, qu. 297, p. 860, in Votes and

Proceedings of the N S W Legislative Assembly, 1875-76, vol. 6. s~ J.S. James (ed. M. Cannon), The Vagabond Papers, Melbourne 1969. p. 40.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

566 A. Mayne

i l lustrat ion of the manner in which the s lum dweller stood in conflict with society. Such deviance extended beyond the laws of health to embrace the morals as well. A glut of description, much of it coloured by high moral indignat ion, survives of allegedly widespread adultery and even incest in city slums; of a passion for dr ink that reduced otherwise capable workmen to penury, that produced broken homes and sapped nat ional wealth; of parental responsibili t ies ignored and children left to wander the streets; of church and chapel s tanding abandoned; of a disposi t ion to crime and r iotous behaviour.

The apparen t indifference towards those key inst i tut ions for social equi l ibr ium, Church and Home, and thus isolation from the mutua l ly reinforcing values and codes of behaviour which they taught, was regarded with part icular dismay. And because, f rom the s tandpoint of communi ty equi l ibr ium, s lum dwellers were perceived to constitute a menace, perceptions of s lum dwellers became progressively simplif ied and extended th rough the opera t ion of this sense of menace into a r igidly-appl ied and a l l -embracing stereotype of the urban poor. The complexi ty of social structure and of economic stratification amongst the working- class districts of the inner city was obscured by outside observers employ ing the generalised imagery of the ' lower orders' , the 'c r iminal classes' or the 'dangerous classes'. T h e infinite variety o[ individual c i rcumstances and behaviour was understated. Instead, the s lum and its inhabi tants were seen as a monol i th ic presence, an abstraction, the collective ills s t emming from which required drastic and sweeping remedies. The same process is evident in relation to publ ic health. It was all too easy for sanitary officials, who were inclined by the very nature of their duties to approach the problems of publ ic health in ways which would satisfy majori ty demands, to formulate policies in the interests of the general c o m m u n i t y that were at the expense and not for the benefit of the residents of insanitary areas. In the eyes of sanitary and social reformers alike, it seemed that the urban poor, l iving on the fringes of normal c o m m u n i t y life, formed a sanitary and moral canker within society. They had, in the words of a Sydney c lergyman, been ' thrown out of the race of life', and c o m m o n prudence as well as Chris t ian duty required their re- integration. 32

At this point it will be per t inent to consider the posi t ion of the Catholic Church. Its clergy, too, visited the homes of the inner city, and its charities also laboured a m o n g the urban poor. Cathol ic ism, its interpretat ion of Mark and Matthew's d ic tum on poverty differing f rom that of the Protestant sects in d iscount ing the significance of individual accountabi l i ty , tended to regard the s lum dweller more as an object of pity than of scorn or dismay. And no twi ths tand ing the barriers somet imes evident between laity and clerical hierarchy, the Church ' s picture of the inner city tended also to be less coloured by the remoteness and aloofness which characterised that of the Protestant churches. The Cathol ic Church, as an inst i tut ion, was commit ted to ma in t a in ing the status quo, but papal encyclicals as well as condemning l iberalism and socialism, were critical of unt ramel led laissez- faire. In Australia, it is c o m m o n p l a c e for historians to emphas ise the links between the Cathol ic Church and the workingclasses , and in Nor th America also, working-

~ S3,dnev Morttin~ Ilerald, 13 May 1879, p. 6.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

The Question of the Poor 567

class families were prominent in many Catholic congregations.Neither here nor in Ireland, however, were Catholics in a position consislently and significantly to influence the elite groups which determined policy. The measure of influence that was achieved by a Manning, a Gibbons, or a Moran, serves to underline how relatively inarticulate at this level were the mass of their fellows.

Richard Cross, reviewing in 1885 the findings of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, remarked upon the time devoted by the commissioners to answering a question 'which has often been asked .... whether drink and evil habits are the cause or consequence of the condit ion in which the poor live'. 3-~ Was it the pig that made the sty, asked Cross, or the sty thai made the pig? Most people in Britain and elsewhere inclined throughout the century towards the former belief. The extent and cont inuat ion of poverty otherwise threatened the complacency of believers in the rationality of the way things were. Conventional wisdom, reflecting assumptions inherent in Protestant culture, held that poverty was sustained by character-weaknesses in individuals, and not by faults within society. An Australian newspaperman maintained in 1869 that the pattern of local economic development was plainly favourable to anyone intent upon self- improvement, and yet poverty cont inued amongst them. Clearly, then, it was 'useless to flatter ourselves that the causes are involuntary' , s4 The cause of poverty was reckless 'self-indulgence', concluded the influential American Handbook o] Charity Organization in 1882, and thus the only remedy lay in 'the moral elevation of the poor' , ss

In large measure, therefore, nineteenth-century responses to poverty took the form of a mult i tude of temperance societies, city missions, Sunday and day schools, bible and tract societies, all of which by teaching the virtues of frugality and 'ambitious industry' , tempered by obedience and respectability, sought to achieve the harmonious integration of the urban poor into mainstream society. -s6 Kay- Shuttleworth, who as the result of his experiences in Manchester looked to elementary education as a remedy for the 'social discontent and political disorder in the centre of our large towns', devoted his career to seeking 'the Christian civilisation of the entire people by the Public School' . ~7 Others, increasingly as the century progressed, sought by p romot ing 'the personal intercourse of the wealthier citizens with the poor ' to win the poor 's acquiescence in, if not allegiance to, the values and the institutions of the wider communi ty , s8

It was widely hoped that personal intervention amongst the poor, with an emphasis on friendliness and kindness, would encourage class reconciliation. At the Liverpool Diocesan Conference in 1883 it was predicted that social bitterness would thus be forgotten, s9 Applaud ing the volunteer work undertaken at the

3:~ R.A. (-]ross. ' H o u s i n g The Poor', Nineteenth Centurs,, vol. 17. 1885. p. 929. 3~ Sydne"v Morning Herald, 12 Feb. 1869, p. . t . 3~ Quoted in P. Boyer. Irrban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1020, Harvard 1978. p. 1,16. :~6 Riis. op.cit., p. 13,1. 37 Kay. op.cit., p. 8; F. Smith. The Life of Sir ]arnes Kay-Shuttleworth, London 1923. p. 2,t5. ~ Quowd in Boycr, op.cit., p. 151. ~9 Simey. op.cit., p. 106.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

568 A. Mayne

Sydney Ragged Schools by 'Chr is t ian ladies and gent lemen ' , one c lergyman in 1880 reflected how pleasing it was ' to contempla te the kindly feeling that was thus engendered between one class of society and another ' . 4° T h o u g h t s such as these inspired a galaxy of relief agencies, clubs and educat ional institutes. They were at the base of the charity organisa t ion movemen t which spread from Britain to the cities of Nor th America and Austral ia in the last quar ter of the century, and helped sustain the sett lement movemen t in Britain and the United States dur ing the 1880s and 1890s.

Middle-class visitors, by act ing as 'wise counsellors ' to the poor, would funct ion as mora l pol icemen/~ Octavia Hill , whose influence extended beyond L o n d o n to B i r m i n g h a m and other provincial cities in Britain, to Nor th America and Australia, envisaged 'an ever-present, a l l -pervading, informal , but most active body of volunteer inspectors ' . 4z They would, said the leader of the Minneapol is Chari ty Organisa t ion Society, be ' the light that guides ... the poor to self-help, respectability, and mul t ip ly ing oppor tuni t ies ' . 4~ Al though this task, in the set t lement movement especially, was motivated to a significant degree by compass ion and even guil t at the p l ight of those who dwelt in city ghettos, the elements of proselytisation and social expediency dominated: p r o m o t i n g class reconci l iat ion meant in practice achieving the reconci l ia t ion of the poor to societal or thodoxy, what Sir John Gorst called ' the duties and obl igat ions of social life', and a Sydney clergyman ' the duties of cit izenship' . 44 Personal interaction, it was implici t ly assumed, by emphas i s ing the seniority, the success, the self-sufficiency of the chari ty workers and the dependency, the failings, and the obl igat ions of those receiving help, acted to reinforce the structured cohesion and economic rat ionale of society.

Efforts to counter paupe r i sm and vice by i m p r o v i n g the characters of s lum dwellers cont inued unabated into the twentieth century. Dur ing the last three decades of the preceding century, however, d i s appo in tmen t at the results being achieved eroded the assumpt ion that individual character failings alone were the cause of poverty. By the middle 1870s Joseph Chamber la in , forever adept at j u m p i n g aboard other people ' s band-waggons , was asking:

how they could tell a man to be good and decent, and moral, when they found him living in a place that was not fit for a beast, much less a human being? 45

Sanitary and hous ing reform were elevated by h im into impor t an t parts of the Radical chal lenge in Par l iament . Envi ronmenta l influences were being increasingly recognised as potent factors pe rpe tua t ing u rban poverty. Attempts to reform s lum dwellers, it was admit ted in Sydney dur ing 1884, required first that

4o Sydney, Morning tterald, 7 Sept. 1880, p. 3. 4t j. Gorst, '"Selt lements" In England And America', in J.M. Knapp (ed.), The Universities And The

Social Problem: An Account of the University Settlements in East London, London 1895, p. 16. ~z O. Hill, "Our Dealings With The Poor', Nineteenth Century, vol. 30, 1891, p. 163. 42 Quoted in Boyer, op.cit., p. 153. ~ Gorst, op.cit., p. 1 I, S3,dney Morning Herald, 16 Sept. 1879, p. 3, 45 Newspapel curling dated 12 Oct. 1874, nf a speech at the Bi rmingham Hurst Street Chapel, in

Joseph Chamberlain Papers, JC4/1.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

The Question of the Poor 569

such people dwell in houses ' in which decency, cleanliness, health, and moral i ty are possible' . 46

Glasgow's local 1866 Improvemen t Act, enabl ing the redevelopment of inner- city slums, had been hailed by the Lancet as a measure calculated to improve ' the health, morals, and social habits of large masses of their poorer fellow men' . 47 The progressive t igh ten ing and extension of bu i ld ing codes, of regulat ions governing crowding in dwell ings and lodging houses, of munic ipa l house- to-house inspection, were all intended to fulfil mora l as well as sanitary objectives. Moral regeneration was likewise a major a im of mode l -hous ing companies in Britain and the U.S.A., and of the movement ' s echoes in Canada and Australia. There was general agreement a m o n g experts in the 1880s, in the debates which were sparked in Britain and overseas by release of the Reverend Andrew Mearns ' The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, that the demol i t ion of unwholesome districts, unless accompanied by the rehous ing of their occupants in improved dwellings, only served to mul t ip ly health and social problems. The new at tent ion being given to improv ing the env i ronment in which the inner-city work ing classes lived was reflected also in ever more lengthy discussions, a l though less frequently action, by munic ipa l authori t ies concerning the provis ion of recreational space for working people, and the bu i ld ing or free opera t ion of baths and laundries. Logical consequences were the c i ty -p lanning and garden-city movements , which gathered m o m e n t u m in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. B i r m i n g h a m sent its munic ipa l representatives to study the p ioneer ing results achieved in Germany; in Washington, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, comprehensive improvemen t plans were drafted; in Australia, the garden-city movemen t bore its noblest fruit in the design compet i t ion for a new national capital .

T h e architectural symbol ism sought for in Canberra and Washing ton however had more to do with na t ionhood than with the e l imina t ion of poverty; aestheticism rather than social reformism spurred the city planners. Efforts to solve fundamenta l social p roblems by env i ronmenta l reforms had indeed always been characterised by uncertainty and hesitation. Bui lding model dwell ings which poorer work ing people could not afford to live in was slowly recognised dur ing the last decades of the nineteenth century to be a largely pointless exercise. Chamber la in could still in 1874 offer the trite comment that if 'work ing men wanted good houses they must pay for good houses. No one was fool enough to believe he could get a 5s. house for half-a-crown' . 48 British par l iamentary investigators had already concluded in 1845, however, that many of the slum problems with which they grappled were ' the inseparable concomitanls of poverty' . 49 Refusal to contemplate the logical conclusions of this admiss ion sapped the movemen t for env i ronmenta l i m p r o v e m e n t of much of its potential . Building model dwellings and bathhouses was no remedy for the under ly ing economic and

46 Sydney Morning Herald, 25 Jan. 1884, p. 7. 47 Lancet, 19 May 1866, p. 547. 48 Newspaper cutting dated 22 Dec. 1874. of a speech to the Birmingham Householders' Association. in

Joseph Chamberlain Papers, JC4/1. 49 'Second Report Of The Commissioners For Inquiring Into The State Of Large Towns And

Populous Districts'. British Parliamentary Papers, 1845, XVIII. p. 2.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

570 ,4. llla3,ne

social realities sustaining urban poverty. The efforts made to improve the city slum environment undeniably represented a genuine effort to resolve acknowledged defects in society. 15mired though their scope was, such efforts were the most that could be rationally contemplated by men who were yet determined to believe that the existing basic structure of society was the best one possible. Environmental reforms represented 'a way of avoiding any but the most superficial examination of the fundamental problems of poverty and social justice'. -~°

Attempts to alleviate poverty by improving the unwholesome inner-city environment that seemed to 'breed vice and crime' were thus undermined in part by the unwill ingness of city' reformers to acknowledge and confront the sources of the problems which the}' had set out to resolve. ~l Their efforts were weakened further by general communi ty indifference, if not active opposi t ion. The British I.ocal Government Board noted in its annual report of 1877 that the sums sanctioned to be borrowed by local authorities for sanitary, purposes in the previous 3 years had amounted to more than a third of the total amount sanctioned dur ing the past 29 }'ears. This development was in the Board's eyes a welcome indication of the awakening by local authorities to their sanitary' responsibilities. Ratepayers and many of the local authorities themselves thought differently': the increasing expenditure was as much the result of new obligations imposed by Parliament as of willing local initiative. Local city politics in Britain and overseas had as common elements throughout the nineteenth century electors' protests at burdensome rates and needless extravagance, and a relentless drive for economy by a majority of their representatives. Innovators risked isolation in the municipal chamber, and ejection at the next municipal contest. Endeavours in 1866-67 to pass through Westminster a comprehensive measure for the improvement of working-class housing were blocked, the Bill's originator complained, by the 'objections raised to the measure ... from ... those corporate and local authorities upon whom it would impose additional trouble'. ,52

The efforts being made to tame the slum by reforming the characters of its inhabitants likewise faltered from lack of general support. When in 1854 the Reverend A. H u m e analysed the current subscription lists from Liverpool 's main charities, he found that only 9,760 people had given donations, and that of these, about half had come from less than 700 subscribers. The honorary secretaries of charitable societies in cities across the world spoke sadly of efforts undermined from want of funds and volunteers, of the same handful of subscribers carrying the burden of all the city's ph i lan thropic endeavours. The bulk of the membership of the Protestant churches stood aloof from the efforts of those who sought to devise, however imperfectly, positive responses to urban poverty. While church spokesmen and church journals, increasingly dur ing the 1880s and 1890s, frequently displayed a depth of positive social concern, few congregations sought to give effect to their words. As cities grew in size those able to do so withdrew from

50 D.J. Olsen. The Growth ol Victorian London. London 1976. p. 267. 5~ The Reverend J. Jefferis, in ,Sydney Morning Herald. 4 Aug. 1880, p. 3. 52 W. Torrens. in British Parliamentary Debates. 3rd series, vol. 186. 1867. p. 668. See my Fever,

Squalor and |'ice, pp. 39-71.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

The Question of the Poor 571

inner-city congregat ions to more aff luent and socially more homogeneous ne ighbourhoods in the suburbs. Here, the new congregat ions turned increasingly inwards upon themselves, to their local social clubs, bazaars, and picnic excursions, and away from Positive involvement with the social problems of the inner city. 5~

It was here in the suburbs that the nature of communi ty responses to the slum was determined. It was a nature reflecting the middle classes' sanitary concerns and cultural imperiousness, attitudes that were shared and reinforced by the smugly self-confident self- improvers of the work ing and lower-middle classes. The efforts of moral reformers, a r rogant though their s tar t ing premises were, to seek the elevation and h a r m o n i o u s integrat ion into mains t ream society of s lum dwellers were everywhere subordinated to the drive for moral repression. Moral conformity and thus social cohesion were not things to be achieved by guidance and advice, but were to be imposed with the backing of penal codes.

G a m b l i n g laws, l icensing laws, and prosecut ions against b lasphemy all reflected the stern purpose to coerce the deviant into conformity. Strident Sabbatar ianism waged a bitter though losing battle against p roponents of the burgeoning mass leisure-time activities. In Australia, the r u n n i n g of cheap workmen ' s excursion trains out of the cities on Sundays was still being assailed at the turn of the century. Attitudes towards in temperance, a p rob lem that t h roughou t the nineteenth century was identified as ' the most impor t an t single cause of the misery and suffering still rife in our midst ' , hardened dur ing the last third of the century. 54 In Britain, Chamber la in wooed voters by advoca t ing munic ipa l ownersh ip of publ ic houses as a means of progressively reducing the n u m b e r of d r ink ing outlets, and thus dictat ing socially more acceptable d r ink ing habits upon the work ing classes. Sexual pur i ty impulses also became more stridently dogmatic . In Sydney, sexual moral i ty received an increasingly d i spropor t iona te a m o u n t of at tention by legislators and the courts dur ing the century 's last decades. 55 In American cities, attitudes towards saloon and brothel du r ing the 1890s followed a s imilar course. 56

The negative and repressive tendencies of the moral responses towards the inner city's s lums were evident also in the field of publ ic health. Working-class tenants of unwholesome premises were often prosecuted for sanitary nuisances over which they had no control. Quaran t ine and fumiga t ion techniques, which were appl ied with increasing r igour and thoroughness as the century progressed in order to protect the general c o m m u n i t y f rom outbreaks of infectious disease, were characterised by insensitivity towards work ing people, and in the absence of adequate compensa t ion provisions entai led considerable ha rdsh ip a m o n g the

s3 See K.S. Inglis. Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England, London 1963; J.D. Bollen. Protestantism and Social Reform in New South Wales 1890-1910, Melbourne 1972; R. Broome, Treasure in Earthen Vessels: Protestant Christianity in New South Wales Society IO00-1914, St Lucia 1980; B. McKelvey, American Urbanization: A Comparative History, Glenview 1973. 54 j. Chamberlain, 'The Right Method With The Publicans', Fortnightl~ Review, vol. 113, 1876, p.

631. 55 P.N. Graboski, Sydne?~ in Ferment: Crime, Dissent, and OJficial Reaction 1788 to 1973, Canberra

1977; also N. Hicks, 'This Sin And Scandal':Australia's Population Debate 1891-1911, Canberra 1978. 56 See Boyer, op.cit., p. 162[f.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

572 A. M a y n e

working classes) 7 It is, however, in the development of slum clearance as an answer for the sanitary and social problems of urban poverty that communi ty attitudes and priorities regarding the resolution of these problems were made plain.

One of the parl iamentary representatives for Glasgow noted in 1874 that the slum clearance scheme undertaken under the local Act of 1866 had displaced 23,000 people. The ultimate financial success of the scheme was not in doubt, he said. 'The great question, however, was the social one - - namely, what became of the vast popu la t ion that was displaced? '58 His question was answered with platitudes. It would be misleading to ignore or to discount the considerable attention given by polit icians and reformers th roughou t the world to the need for rehousing as well as demoli t ions if a lasting remedy for slum condit ions was to be found. Nor is it possible to doubt the sincerity of all those who voiced concern to see the poor adequately housed. Such concerns indeed intensified dur ing the 1870s and 1880s as evidence built up of the overcrowding and hardship caused by large-scale evictions in the past. These facts suggested to more perceptive observers the fallacy of the earlier easy assumption that working people displaced from the inner city by clearance works would automatical ly migrate to better homes in the suburbs.

Even amongst reformers, however, relocating slum dwellers in the suburbs remained little more than a pious hope. Practical measures designed to give this hope effect were largely confined to the inadequate provision of workmen's tickets on trains and trams. In Britain, moreover, the 1880s saw Parl iament determining to grant 'a liberal interpretation to the relaxing power ' governing the rehousing obligations in existing slum clearance legislat ion) 9 The Local Government Board, watching with disapproval the attempts by the B i rmingham City Corporat ion to evade the requirements for working-class rehousing imposed by its improvement Act of 1876, concluded that a l though 'the plain fact is that they have not obeyed these requirements ' , objections could not be pressed since ' the policy of Parl iament in the matter has altered'. 6°

The Bi rmingham corporat ion well knew that inner-city lands could be more profitably utilised for public and commercial purposes than for providing working people with low-cost model dwellings. After visiting one insanitary inner-city ne ighbourhood in 1876, the Mayor of Sydney concluded similarly that all:

courts and lanes of this description off main streets should ... be cleared of these wretched tenements which would not be allowed to exist if they were not thus hidden from public observation, and the ground devoted to its legitimate use, the erection of substantial stores and warehouses. 6~

In Sydney as in Birmingham, the municipal authorities were content in the main to leave the task of rehousing work ing people to private enterprise and phi lanthropy. The more extensive redevelopment of city centres being worked independently by

~7 See Smith, op.eit., pp. 202-203; Mayne. 'Disease, Sanitation, And The "Lower Orders" ', pp. 300-302. ~8 British Parliarnentar~, Debates, 3rd series, vol. 218, 1874, 1980. 59 'Report from the Select Committee oil Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings'. British Parliamentary

Papers, 1881, VII. p. iii. 6o Ix~cal Gow'rnnrent Board Minute, 14 Oct. 1882, in Public Records Office, MH12 no. 13312. 6~ Sydney City and Suburban Sewage and Health Board, Eleventh Report, qu. 272, p. 625.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

The Question o[ the Poor 573

commerce was still less wedded to the idea of rehousing those evicted. 'Business ... has been New York's real Napoleon III ' , Riis concluded in 1890, adding that more than once:

I have returned, after a few brief weeks, to some specimen rookery in which I was interested, to find it gone and an army of workmen delving twenty feet underground to lay the foundations of a mighty warehouse. 6z

In the centre of Sydney also, commercial expansion rolled back the slums' boundaries as 'houses which had been the habitations of artisans, labourers, and the poor have been swept away not merely by the score, but by the hundred' . 63

Here, to the general communi ty , lay the ultimate remedy for the disease, the disorder, and the deviancy of city slums. Public health and communi ty cohesion would be preserved not by embarking upon costly and disturbing social reforms, but by al lowing unimpeded operation to the bricks-and-mortar process of city redevelopment which supply and demand forces and the subsequent rising of central land prices sustained. The slum would be swept clear, all visible trace removed or confined to isolated pockets of infamy which could be well-guarded by health authorities and the police. The s lum's inhabitants would be dispersed: some perhaps to be absorbed into mainstream patterns of life, and others to sink without trace amid the anonymi ty of the big city. But that was not the communi ty ' s abiding interest; the collective entity of the urban poor would have been destroyed.

Univers i t y o[ M e l b o u r n e A.J.C. MAYNE

6~ Riis, op.cit., pp. 179-180. 63 Sydney Morning Herald, 26 Nov. 1887, p. 13: and see my Fever. Squalor and Vice..

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

asm

ania

] at

10:

30 1

3 N

ovem

ber

2014