ABSTRACT
So wrote Walter Besant in 1882 in All Sorts and Conditions of Men-An Impossible Story,1 a novel of social realism set in the East End of London in which he wished to illustrate to his readers the extent of poverty in the area. This theme was taken up by the sensationalist journalist George Sims and the Reverend Andrew Mearns. Mearns, as a vicar, was motivated to write his tract because of low attendance by the poor at Church services, a situation which seriously concerned him. His descriptions of the living conditions of the poor caused a ripple of horror among those living elsewhere in London. If not actually saddened to think that people could be living in such a way they were at
least frightened to discover that potential revolution might be stirring just a few miles from their own dwellings. Mearns aimed to shock with his revelations of life in the East End:
The Condition in Which They Live We do not say the condition of their homes, for how can those places be called homes, compared with which the lair of a wild beast would be a comfortable and healthy spot? Few who will read these pages have any conception of what these pestilential human rookeries are, where tens of thousands are crowded together amidst horrors which call to mind what we have heard of the middle passage of the slave ship. To get into them you have to penetrate courts reeking with poisonous and malodorous gases arising from accumulations of sewage and refuse scattered in all directions and often flowing beneath your feet; courts, many of them which the sun never penetrates, which are never visited by a breath of fresh air, and which rarely know the virtues of a drop of cleansing water. You have to ascend rotten staircases, which threaten to give way beneath every step, and which, in some places have already broken down… You have to grope your way along dark and filthy passages swarming with vermin. Then, if you are not driven back by the intolerable stench, you may gain admittance to the dens in which thousands of beings, who belong as much as you, to the race for whom Christ died, herd together. Have you pitied the poor creatures who sleep under railway arches, in carts or casks, or under any shelter which they can find in the open air? You will see that they are to be envied in comparison with those whose lot it is to seek refuge here. Eight feet square-that is about the average size of very many of these rooms. Walls and ceiling are black with the accretions of filth which have gathered upon them through long years of neglect. It is exuding through cracks in the boards overhead; it is running down the walls; it is everywhere. What goes by the name of a window is half of it stuffed with rags or covered by boards to keep out wind and rain; the rest is so begrimed and obscured that scarcely can light enter or anything be seen outside… As to furniture-you may perchance discover a broken chair, the tottering relics of an old bedstead, or the mere fragment of a table; but more commonly you will find rude substitutes for these things in the shape of rough boards resting upon bricks, an old hamper or box turned upside down, or more frequently still, nothing but rubbish and rags.
