ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Rowton Houses through their material culture and considers the influence of ideas of home life, circulated and celebrated in nineteenth-century culture, on their design and representation. But it also explores the domestic life constructed and experienced by those who lived there. Recent work on social housing and philanthropy in London focuses on the narratives of middle- and upper-class men and women. It proposes how Rowton Houses were represented in the press, through words and images. In addition, photographs formed part of an article on the capital's model lodging houses in George R. Sims's influential work of popular photojournalism, Living London, which, for the first time, showed Rowton Houses populated with lodgers. The language of late nineteenth-century domesticity was used to describe spaces at Rowton that it was hoped would civilize and normalize working men. This chapter attempts to discover the thoughts and feelings of Rowton House residents by examining personal accounts and crime records.
