Rough sleeping in Victorian London & now
Temperatures have been at 0C or a bit below in London for the last few nights and the Mayor has announced the opening of night shelters for those without somewhere to go. These used to open after 3 days of low temperatures but with extra funding now do so straight away.
Homelessness in London is a significant problem:
London’s ten worst areas for homelessness
Newham; London; 13,607
Haringey; London; 9,717
Westminster; London; 8,054
Enfield; London; 10,057
Kensington and Chelsea; London; 4,401
Waltham Forest; London; 7,634
Brent; London; 8,905
Barking and Dagenham; London; 5,578
Tower Hamlets; London; 7,428
Hackney; London; 6,167
These figures are for November 2017 and were collected by Shelter that obviously has its own housing policies and agendas. They don’t indicate rough sleeping but people without a permanent place to stay. The division between the two will often be a fine one though.
What is unfortunately striking is how much the picture remains as it was in Victorian London. In his long essay Comers and Goers the late historian Ralph Samuel wrote about how the poor in the Capital survived at this time of year.
January and February were bad months for the working man and especially for the poor and insecure. Almost every trade experienced a lull after the Christmas rush of work and unemployment became widespread as the weather became more severe. Even so.. there was warmth and shelter in the town even if work was impossible to come by, soup to be obtained at public kitchens, open to all comers, Night Refuges and Asylums in place of the Workhouse, public works (always started up by the Vestries when the weather was particularly severe) in place of the humiliations of the Parish stoneyard
Public works sounds like a reasonable idea. I wonder if the present Government has it in hand
Leave a Reply