The chocolate Christian soldier's mission in the slums

By DAVID MYTON

The ancient city of York in Northern England is a living, breathing, interactive museum.

For the history buff it’s a fascinating place that boasts (among many things) a magnificent Gothic cathedral called The Minster (with stunning stained-glass windows), Roman artifacts, medieval fortress-like walls, a brilliant underground Viking-era exhibition, scores of historic churches, a Norman-era tower, a fabulous national railway museum, 22 ancient monuments, and more than 2000 listed buildings.

If you like history, York’s got history. Lots of it.

But there’s another kind of history there, darker, tragic, harder to find, but of national importance all the same. One man decided to investigate.

Seebohm Rowntree was a wealthy, well-educated, and deeply religious man (he was a Quaker) with a social conscience. His father, Joseph, owned a chocolate factory on the outskirts of York and it’s still there today. (I worked at Rowntrees for six weeks or so in 1972 - packing Kit Kat bars - before going to college to study journalism. It was hard work but the pay was great, many times as much as I earned in my first reporter’s job.)

Seebohm voluntarily taught at schools in poor areas of York, he had witnessed the lives of the poor in the slums of Newcastle, and had read the works of philanthropist and social researcher Charles Booth.

Booth had examined the lives of the poor in London, resulting in a detailed report Life and Labour of the People of London which brought about social reforms targeting poverty, the introduction of Old Age pensions, and free school meals.

Inspired by Booth, in 1897 Seebohm decided to investigate the lives of the poor in York. Four years later his findings were published in a book Poverty: a Study of Town Life (pdf reader) which soon became a classic social sciences text.

Both Booth and Seebohm’s work was much influenced by the intellectual and sociological currents then swirling in the Victorian era Fin de Siecle, which I wrote about in my previous post.

At that time York was (and still is) an important railway hub with the North Eastern Railway company employing some 5,500 workers; thanks to train travel, tourism was a growing sector as was confectionery; goods including coal and food were transported on the rivers Ouse and Foss; and there were numerous shops and other small enterprises.

‘A fact of the gravest significance’

On April 1 1899 York covered an area of 3692 acres, contained about 15,000 houses, with an estimated population of 75,812. For contrast Seebohm notes that in 1086 the Domesday Book - King William The Conqueror’s great survey of the country - records that York contained 1600 houses with a population of 8000.

Seebohm and his researchers found that some 20,302 people (about 30 per cent of the total population) were living in poverty - barely surviving on a meagre diet of poor food, “a fact of the gravest significance”.

The immediate causes of poverty in York, he found, included the death or injury/illness of the chief wage earner; unemployment or “chronic irregularity” of work; largeness of family (more than four children); and lowness of wage “insufficient to maintain a moderate family in a state of physical efficiency”.

The lives of the poor were “precarious” - at all times they were liable to be plunged into poverty by the death or illness of the chief wage earner. Wages for unskilled labourers in York were insufficient to provide food, shelter, and clothing adequate to meet the basic needs of a family of moderate size.

York then contained up to 4,000 back-to-back slums, which were generally small (maximum of four rooms), dark, damp and dirty, set in gloomy narrow cobbled alleys, overcrowded and unsanitary, with poor ventilation and inadequate water supply. All kinds of rubbish was “distributed promiscuously” outdoors.

Overcrowding and insanitary conditions abounded in the slums, there was little through ventilation, and water supply was inadequate -

“One tap is often the sole supply for a large number of houses. Pantries and toilets are sometimes separated by a wall of only one brick thickness”.

He adds: “In the poorest areas one child out of every four dies before it is 12 months old. In one parish, one out of every three children born dies in its first year.”

Puny and feeble bodies, privation and neglect

The children of the slums formed a “pathetic spectacle” with all the hallmarks of the hard conditions against which they were struggling.

“Puny and feeble bodies, dirty and often sadly insufficient clothing, sore eyes often acutely inflamed, filthy hair and heads, cases of hip disease, swollen glands, all these and other signs tell the same tale of privation and neglect.”

In the poor families the children had no money for dolls, marbles or sweets and …

“The father must smoke no tobacco, the mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children … nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health and what is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description … finally, the wage earner must never be absent from his work for a single day … if any of these conditions are broken the extra expenditure involved can only be met by limiting the diet.”

Seebohm’s report helped to draw national attention to the living conditions of the poor in England and he went on to produce several more influential studies of the causes and nature of poverty. He also developed the concepts of the poverty line and poverty cycle.

REFERENCES

Charles Booth, Life and Labour Of The People Of London (17 volumes) - link above in story

Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: A Study Of Town Life - link above in story