Slum Housing Quotes in Mary Barton

 

Slum Housing in Mary Barton.

The second important theme in Gaskell’s writing that I wanted to explore were the slum communities in Manchester. Often overlooked in various areas of historiography, I thought a piece remembering the families that lived in notorious slums such as Angel Meadow should be documented in print.

Page 56.

‘On the way Wilson said Davenport was a good fellow, though too much of a Methodee, that his children were too young to work, but not too young to be cold and hungry; that they had sunk lower and lower, and pawned thing after thing, and that they now lived in a cellar in Berry Street, off Shore Street.’

‘It was unpaved and down the middle a gutter forced its way, every now and then forming pools in the holes with which the street abounded. Never was the old Edinburgh cry of ‘Gardez l’eau!’ more necessary than in this street.’

‘As they passed, women from their doors tossed household slops of every description into the gutter; they ran into the next pool, which overflowed and stagnated. Heaps of ashes were the stepping-stones, on which the passer-by, who cared in the least for cleanliness, took care not to put his foot.’

Page 57.

‘You went down one step even from the foul area into the cellar in which a family of human beings lived. It was very dark inside. The window-panes, many of them, were broken and stuffed with rags, which was reason enough for the dusky light that pervaded the place even at midday.’

‘the smell was so foetid as almost to knock the two men down. Quickly recovering themselves, as those injured to such things do, they began to penetrate the thick darkness of the place, and to see three or four little children rolling on the damp, nay wet brick floor, through which the stagnant, filthy moisture of the street oozed up; the fireplace was empty and black; the wife sat on her husband’s lair and cried in the dark loneliness.’

Page 58

‘The fever’ was (as it usually is in Manchester) of a low, putrid, typhoid kind, brought on by miserable living, filthy neighbourhood and great depression of mind and body. It is virulent, malignant and highly infectious.’

‘The two men, rough, tender nurses as they were, lighted the fire, which smoked and puffed into the room as if it did not know the way up the damp, unused chimney. The very smoke seemed purifying and healthy in the thick clammy air.’

Manchester University Special Collections, Map Collection, Map of the city of Manchester: exhibiting the premises devoted exclusively to commercial purposes to ecclesiastical and other public uses, C17:70.