return to normal view
Leytonstone Express and Independent (UK)
Saturday, 1 September 1888

FACTS AND FANCIES.
IN A LONDON LODGING HOUSE.

At a little table in the corner of the room are seated men and women, roughly merry over their midday meal, while in friendly argument the inevitable can of beer circulates quickly among another group. Here is a woman busily preparing her wares from out her scanty stock of many-coloured tissues - fly-catchers, flowers, and grate ornaments while scattered about are the rest of the units that complete the scene. This is the abode of the most unfortunate of their class, the lowest rung of life's ladder, the last refuge of independent casual labour, of those who are too weak or too old for the more active ways of gaining a livelihood. Sellers of tapes, pins, and threads, of flowers (real and artificial), vendors of all kinds of penny toys and articles in daily use, matchboxes, tobacco-boxes, combs, photos and pictures, live here. This is generally the refuge of the "clapper" men, who, after vain attempts to gain a living, are at least thankful to earn a scanty meal at 1s. 3d. a day. Trudge, trudge, trudge over one beaten track, they exhibit the advertisements of some popular amusement or enterprising tradesman at 1½d. per hour. And even here the same fierce struggle is enacted, the same ravenous selfishness is uppermost where there is a chance of earning this miserable pittance.


Related pages:
  Lodging Houses
       Dissertations: An East End Lodging House in the 1880s 
       Official Documents: Parliamentary Debates - November 16 1888 
       Official Documents: Parliamentary Debates - November 22 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily News - 17 November 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily News - 23 November 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily News - 3 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily News - 6 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily Telegraph - 17 November 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily Telegraph - 21 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily Telegraph - 22 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily Telegraph - 23 November 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily Telegraph - 24 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily Telegraph - 26 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily Telegraph - 27 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily Telegraph - 6 October 1888 
       Press Reports: East End News - 05 October 1888 
       Press Reports: East End News - 4 January 1889 
       Press Reports: East London Advertiser - 10 November 1888 
       Press Reports: East London Advertiser - 6 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Echo - 3 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Echo - 5 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Evening News - 23 November 1888 
       Press Reports: Evening News - 3 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Evening News - 5 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Leytonstone Express and Independent - 1 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Morning Advertiser - 14 December 1888 
       Press Reports: Morning Advertiser - 17 November 1888 
       Press Reports: Morning Advertiser - 5 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Star - 12 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Star - 20 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Star - 3 October 1888 
       Press Reports: Times [London] - 10 June 1914 
       Press Reports: Times [London] - 3 October 1888 
       Victorian London: The Worst Street in London 

Advertise with us | Link to us | Privacy Policy | Copyright © Stephen P. Ryder & Johnno, 1996-2024 Thomas Schachner