Flora Tristan

London Journal.

The following extract comes her chapter on St. Giles, the largest continuous slum in London and home, by 1842, of large numbers of immigrant Irish.  Along with the Engels reading this captures the misery, squalor, and desperation of urban conditions that made the "social question" the burning issue of the 1840s.  Tristan became one of the earliest French Socialists

From The London Journal of Flora Tristan 1842

 

There are more than two hundred thousand members of the Irish proletariat living in different parts of the metropolis; they work as porters, men who are given the heaviest tasks because they will work for the lowest wages. That they are poor, Heaven knows, but at least they are employed; they do not give a true picture of Irish poverty, covered in rags and disputing with stray dogs for potato peelings in the streets. The Irish poverty * * * is found in the very heart of one of London's wealthiest districts, and that is where we must go to see in all its horror the misery that exists in a rich and fertile country when it is governed by the aristocracy for the benefit of its members.

At its starting-point, the elegant, long thoroughfare of Oxford Street, with its throng of carriages, its wide pavements and splendid shops, is joined almost at right angles by Totenharn Court Road; just off this street, facing Oxford Street there is a narrow alley nearly always obstructed by an enormous cart loaded with coal, which leaves hardly enough room for you to pass, even if you flatten yourself against the wall. This little alley, Bainbridge Street, is the entrance to the Irish quarter.

It is not without fear that the visitor ventures into the dark, narrow alley known as Bainbridge Street. Hardly have you gone ten paces when you are almost suffocated by the poisonous smell. The alley, completely blocked by the huge coal-yard, is impassable. We turned off to the right into another unpaved muddy alley with evil-smelling soapy water and other household slops even more fetid lying everywhere in stagnant pools. I had to

struggle against my revulsion and summon up all my courage to go on through this veritable cesspool. In St Giles, the atmosphere is stifling; there is no fresh air to breathe nor daylight to guide your steps. The wretched inhabitants wash their tattered garments themselves and hang them on poles across the street, shutting out all pure air and sunshine. The slimy mud beneath your feet gives off all manner of noxious vapours, while the wretched rags above you drip their dirty rain upon your head. The fantasies of a fevered imagination could never match the horrifying reality! When I reached the end of the alley, which was not very

long, my resolution faltered; my body is never quite as strong as my will, and now I felt my stomach heave, while a fierce pain gripped my head. I was wondering whether I could bear to go any further when it struck me that I was in the midst of human beings, my fellow men, my brothers and sisters who had mutely suffered for centuries the pains I had endured for barely ten minutes. I overcame my suffering; the inspiration of my soul came to my aid and I felt within me an energy equal to the task I had set myself-to examine one by one every sign of destitution. Then an indefinable compassion surged through my heart, and at the same time a sombre terror took possession of me.

Picture, if you can, barefoot men, women and children picking their way through the foul morass; some huddled against the wall for want of anywhere to sit, others squatting on the ground, children wallowing in the mud like pigs. But unless you have seen it for yourself, it is impossible to imagine such extreme poverty, such total degradation. I saw children without a stitch of clothing, barefoot girls and women with babies at their breast, wearing nothing but a torn shirt that revealed almost the whole of their bodies; I saw old men cowering on dunghills, young men covered in rags.

Inside and out, the tumbledown hovels are entirely in keeping with the ragged population who inhabit them. In most of them the doors and windows lack fastenings and the floor is unpaved; the only furniture is a rough old oak table, a wooden bench, a stool, a few tin plates and a sort of kennel where father, mother, sons, daughters, and friends all sleep together regardless; such is the 'comfort' of the Irish quarter! All this is horrifying enough, but it is nothing compared with the expressions of the people's faces. They are all fearfully thin, emaciated and sickly-, their faces, necks and hands are covered with sores; their skin is so filthy and their hair so matted and dishevelled that they look like negroes; their sunken eyes express a stupid animal ferocity, but if you look at them with assurance they cringe and whine. I recognised in them the self same faces and expressions that I had observed when I visited the prisons. It must be a red-letter day for them when they enter Coldbath Fields; at least in prison they will have fresh linen, comfortable clothes, clean beds and pure air. How do they all live? By prostitution and theft. From the age of nine or ten the boys begin to steal; at eleven or twelve the girls are sold to brothels. The adults of both sexes are all professional thieves and their sole passion is drinking. If I had seen this quarter before I visited Newgate I would not have been so surprised to learn that the prison takes in fifty or sixty children a month and as many prostitutes, Theft is the only logical consequence when people live in such destitution as, this.

In great distress I asked myself what remedy there could be for such evils; then I thought of the doctrines propounded by our friends the English economists, and their maxims seemed to be written in blood....