: How the Poor Live; and Horrible London 1889 by Sims George R - Poor England London History 19th century; Public housing England London

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the decay, and the dirt, could not be reproduced.

It is 'werry bad' higher up, so bad that we begin to light some more matches and look round to see how we are to get down. But as we continue to ascend the darkness grows less and less. We go a step at a time, slowly and circumspectly, up, up to the light, and at last our heads are suddenly above a floor and looking straight into a room.

We have reached the attic, and in that attic we see a picture which will be engraven on our memory for many a month to come.

The attic is almost bare; in a broken fireplace are some smouldering embers; a log of wood lies in front like a fender. There is a broken chair trying to steady itself against a wall black with the dirt of ages. In one corner, on a shelf, is a battered saucepan and a piece of dry bread. On the scrap of mantel still remaining embedded in the wall is a rag; on a bit of cord hung across the room are more rags--garments of some sort, possibly; a broken flower-pot props open a crazy window-frame, possibly to let the smoke out, or in--looking at the chimney-pots below, it is difficult to say which; and at one side of the room is a sack of Heaven knows what--it is a dirty, filthy sack, greasy and black and evil-looking. I could not guess what was in it if I tried, but what was on it was a little child--a neglected, ragged, grimed, and bare-legged little baby-girl of four. There she sat, in the bare, squalid room, perched on the sack, erect, motionless, expressionless, on duty.

She was 'a little sentinel,' left to guard a baby that lay asleep on the bare boards behind her, its head on its arm, the ragged remains of what had been a shawl flung over its legs.

That baby needed a sentinel to guard it, indeed. Had it crawled a foot or two, it would have fallen head-foremost into that unprotected, yawning abyss of blackness below. In case of some such proceeding on its part, the child of four had been left 'on guard.'

The furniture of the attic, whatever it was like, had been seized the week before for rent. The little sentinel's papa--this we unearthed of the 'deputy' of the house later on--was a militiaman, and away; the little sentinel's mamma was gone out on 'a arrand,' which, if it was anything like her usual 'arrands,' the deputy below informed us, would bring her home about dark, very much the worse for it. Think of that little child keeping guard on that dirty sack for six or eight hours at a stretch--think of her utter loneliness in that bare, desolate room, every childish impulse checked, left with orders 'not to move, or I'll kill yer,' and sitting there often till night and darkness came on, hungry, thirsty, and tired herself, but faithful to her trust to the last minute of the drunken mother's absence! 'Bless yer! I've known that young'un sit there eight 'our at a stretch. I've seen her there of a mornin' when I've come up to see if I could git the rint, and I've seen her there when I've come agin at night,' says the deputy. 'Lor, that ain't nothing--that ain't.'

Nothing! It is one of the saddest pictures I have seen for many a day. Poor little baby-sentinel!--left with a human life in its sole charge at four--neglected and overlooked: what will its girl-life be, when it grows old enough to think? I should like some of the little ones whose every wish is gratified, who have but to whimper to have, and who live surrounded by loving, smiling faces, and tendered by gentle hands, to see the little child in the bare garret sitting sentinel over the sleeping baby on the floor, and budging never an inch throughout the weary day from the place that her mother had bidden her stay in.

With our minds full of this pathetic picture of child-life in the 'Homes of the Poor,' we descend the crazy staircase, and get out into as much light as can find its way down these narrow alleys.

Outside we see a portly gentleman with a big gold chain across his capacious form, and an air of wealth and good living all over him. He is the owner of a whole block of property such as this, and he waxes rich on his rents. Strange as it may seem, these one-roomed outcasts are the best paying tenants in London. They pay so much for so little, and almost fight to get it. That they should be left to be thus exploited is a disgrace to the Legislature, which is never tired of protecting the oppressed of 'all races that on earth do dwell,' except those of that particular race who have the honour to be free-born Englishmen.

Perhaps if I hint at a few of the very bad cases, it will be sufficient. Men and women of the world will be able to supply the details and draw the correct deductions; and it is, after all, only men and women of the world whose practical sympathy is likely to be enlisted by a revelation of the truth about the poor of great cities.

Come with me down this court, where at eleven o'clock in the morning a dead silence reigns. Every house is tenanted, but the blinds of the windows are down and the doors are shut. Blinds and doors! Yes, these luxuries are visible here. This is an aristocratic street, and the rents are paid regularly. There is no grinding poverty, no starvation here, and no large families to drag at the bread-winner. There is hardly any child-life here at all, for the men are thieves and highway cheats, and the women are of the class which has furnished the companions of such men from the earliest annals of roguedom.

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