ABSTRACT
The Bitter Cry formed the focus for various Nonconformist groups in a joint conference to discuss the spiritual and physical condition of the London masses. The agitation stimulated by The Bitter Cry was not shortlived or fruitless, for it forced both political parties to pay attention to housing conditions within working-class districts, and led directly to the appointment of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes. With The Bitter Cry a new stage in the housing reform movement was opened, a stage characterized by its final and complete divorce from sanitary problems, and by a new emphasis upon overcrowding and the forces of supply and demand. The two most influential pleas of the period, the Reverend Andrew Mearns's The Bitter Cry of Outcast London and Lord Salisbury's 'Labourers' and Artisans' Dwellings' in the National Review were not, it is true, written for the newspapers.
