Round about a Pound a Week. Mrs. Pember Reeves
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Mrs. Pember Reeves
Round about a Pound a Week
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066231019
Table of Contents
Thirty-one Families with Three or More Children taken within the Investigation.
Thirty-nine Families with Three or More Children taken from without the Investigation.
CHAPTER IV FURNITURE—SLEEPING ACCOMMODATION—EQUIPMENT FOR COOKING AND BATHING
CHAPTER VII FOOD: CHIEF ARTICLES OF DIET
CHAPTER VIII BUYING, STORING, AND CARING FOR FOOD
CHAPTER IX ACTUAL MENUS OF SEVERAL WORKING MEN’S FAMILIES
CHAPTER X AMOUNT SPENT A HEAD ON FOOD—PER WEEK, PER DAY
CHAPTER XI THE POOR AND MARRIAGE
CHAPTER XIV THE PEOPLE WHO ARE OUT OF WORK
CHAPTER XV THE STANDARD OF COMFORT
CHAPTER XVI THE STATE AS GUARDIAN
PREFACE
I am glad to take this opportunity to acknowledge the use I have made of a manuscript written by Mrs. Charlotte Wilson, Hon. Secretary of the Fabian Women’s Group. The manuscript was founded on a lecture, entitled “The Economic Disintegration of the Family,” delivered by Mrs. Wilson to the Fabian Society in June, 1909. Not only ideas contained in the lecture, but also some of the wording of the manuscript, have been used in the last two chapters.
I wish also to thank Dr. Ethel Bentham for the invaluable professional service rendered by her during the five years of the investigation.
M. S. REEVES.
ROUND ABOUT A POUND A WEEK
CHAPTER I
THE DISTRICT
Take a tram from Victoria to Vauxhall Station. Get out under the railway arch which faces Vauxhall Bridge, and there you will find Kennington Lane. The railway arch roofs in a din which reduces the roar of trains continually passing overhead to a vibrating, muffled rumble. From either end of the arch comes a close procession of trams, motor-buses, brewers’ drays, coal-lorries, carts filled with unspeakable material for glue factory and tannery, motor-cars, coster-barrows, and people. It is a stopping-place for tramcars and motor-buses; therefore little knots of agitated persons continually collect on both pathways, and dive between the vehicles and descending passengers in order to board the particular bus or tram they desire. At rhythmic intervals all traffic through the arch is suspended to allow a flood of trams, buses, drays, and vans, to surge and rattle and bang across the opening of the archway which faces the river.
At the opposite end there is no cross-current. The trams slide away to the right towards the Oval. In front is Kennington Lane, and to the left, at right angles, a narrow street connects with Vauxhall Walk, leading farther on into Lambeth Walk, both locally better known as The Walk. Such is the western gateway to the district stretching north to Lambeth Road, south to Lansdowne Road, and east to Walworth Road, where live the people whose lives form the subject of this book.
They are not the poorest people of the district. Far from it! They are, putting aside the tradesmen whose shops line the big thoroughfares such as Kennington Road or Kennington Park Road, some of the more enviable and settled inhabitants of this part of the world. The poorest people—the river-side casual, the workhouse in-and-out, the bar-room loafer—are anxiously ignored by these respectable persons whose work is permanent, as permanency goes in Lambeth, and whose wages range from 18s. to 30s. a week.
They generally are somebody’s labourer, mate, or handyman. Painters’ labourers, plumbers’ labourers, builders’ handymen, dustmen’s mates, printers’ labourers, potters’ labourers, trouncers for carmen, are common amongst them. Or they may be fish-fryers, tailors’ pressers, feather-cleaners’ assistants, railway-carriage washers, employees of dust contractors, carmen for Borough Council contractors, or packers of various descriptions. They are respectable men in full work, at a more or less top wage, young, with families still increasing, and they will be lucky if they are never worse off than they now are. Their wives are quiet, decent, “keep themselves-to-themselves” kind of women, and the children are the most punctual and regular scholars, the most clean-headed children of the poorer schools in Kennington and Lambeth.
The streets they live in are monotonously and drearily decent, lying back from the main arteries,