323 7
seven
bed', and underneath each bed a pigsty containing pigs five to eight, the occupant of the house having a Government Licence to keep pigs and having no other place to keep them.
Attached to this report, I can send eight Licences by the authority of which the occupants of the house kept pigs under their beds, and two other where the pigs, though not kept under the beds, were in the same room the people slept and lived in. I could send many others.
The construction of this class of houses is against every sanitary rule as regards drainage, ventilation and cleanliness, which is rendered impossible to the inhabitants, as you will easily understand by what I shall show you. Many houses being built back to back have no yards, having only windows on front, there is nothing to promote a current of air through them.
In others which are not built back to back, no yard is provided but a narrow passage between. The backs of the two sets of houses face a wide, open gully exists in which foul and filthy matter lies in pools or slowly trickles from one pool to another with a slight descent.
The private drains existing are of the most complicated description, beginning in the kitchen of the house and terminating goodness only knows where, in but too often with no outlet, through which the filth percolates till it finds the water level.
The upper floors of the houses are in many cases made with thin, very thin boards which, not lying close together, renders it impossible to attempt to wash them as that would result in giving the inhabitants of the rooms beneath a dirty shower bath. They are consequently covered with mud and filth deposited by their human inhabitants (in many instances, assisted by pigs) half an inch thick. The ground floors are for the most part made of mud, though sometimes badly tiled or covered with stone. On this mud flows every imaginable filth falls, from cats' vomit to pigs' urine. The earth is saturated with decomposing animal and vegetable matter of all descriptions, and mud floors can't be washed or cleaned.
So that I don't think the value of this class of property is known. The prices for which these houses let are high. Repairs cost little or nothing yearly. In nearly every room, three or more families reside, up to as many as six or eight, the room being partitioned off, each partition pays a dollar to two dollars a month rent. A house with three rooms about fourteen feet square, with a miserable little kitchen attached, fetches from £50 to £70 a year. If it is a brothel, it fetches from £80 to £100 a year. I saw one room with four partitions for which the owner of the house paid $16 a month rent, the girls paying her £4 a month for each partition.
So that it is evident it is better to own property of this description which requires little or no repair than to own houses in better quarters which pay less rent and require frequent repair. I mean that the inhabitants have no choice (in the first instance) and the landlords none in the other, as to whether little or much repair is needed.