Page 252 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

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 seven-
pence or more.
Here legislation could accomplish something. At present
there is all manner of legislation by the L.C.C. about lodg-
ing-houses, but it is not done in the interests of the lodgers.
The L.C.C. only exert themselves to forbid drinking, gam-
bling, 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 keep-
ers should be compelled to provide adequate bedclothes
and better mattresses, and above all to divide their dormi-
tories 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 Groydon 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 op-
posed EN BLOC to any improvement, for their present

1