November 21, 1902 — Annual General Meeting of the Edinburgh Social Union, Edinburgh, Scotland

It is with the greatest pleasure that I have come here to meet those who are grappling with the same difficult problems that we have to face in London, to learn what, if any, differences there are in the problems, what steps you have found most effectual in solving them. Such a meeting of workers, aiming at the same objects, but pursuing them in different places, and perhaps different ways, ought to encourage us all, to make us more watchful and intelligent, more ready to learn from one another, and to sympathise with one another.

As this meeting happens to come at the end of my stay at Edinburgh, I shall before I read this have learnt, I hope, very much of the scope of your  undertakings, of your special difficulties, of how you are meeting or have met them; but I write this in London before my visit. And that is perhaps as well, for it forces me to write about what may be interesting to you in our work, and the great principles which seem to me to underlie and govern all wise work among the poor, leaving aside minor points and local accidents to be discussed in detail with actual workers. What I am saying now will therefore have no special reference to Edinburgh — on such questions I have no claim to speak — but my paper will contain thoughts suggested and facts ascertained during 38 years of London work.

If I begin with the difficulties I should say that most prominent among them is neither that of finance nor that of legal provisions. It is a moral one. It consists in the large number of untrained and undisciplined grown-up people who form the bulk of the prominent poor. I say the prominent poor, for I well know the steady artisan, intelligent and affectionate, who avails himself of better houses offered to him even if he has to make a sacrifice of creature comforts. I know also the patient industry of the quiet widow, who by the regularity of her small earnings, and her year-long self-denial in their expenditure, becomes one of our best tenants. I know of these, but these, I say, are not the prominent sufferers. They are apt to dip out of sight in silent, serviceable, often heroic lives, meeting their own difficulties with their own resources, becoming better men and women by doing so, and earning our respect and even gratitude.

The people who form the really difficult problem in all questions of housing, who give rise to “bitter cries”, who attract the attention of the newspaper correspondent, who force themselves on the attention of the kindly but inexperienced charitable people are not these. They are the idle, the passionate, the badly controlled, the drunkard, the gambler, the beggar. I am not attempting to judge their guilt: they may have a thousand excuses, we might do far worse under their circumstances, our faults may be far worse in God’s sight than theirs. I am only saying that they exist, and that they form the main difficulty in securing better housing — as well as in achieving many other desirable things.

As second among the housing difficulties I should place our own way, private, municipal, and political of dealing with these people.

To take the mistakes made by private people first. Many of us are grossly ignorant of the temper of these people. We know too little of them to have any idea of their plausible lies, their out-of-sight debauch, their hopeless idleness. Some of us have an uneasy sense of the great advantages we ourselves have had, and we give with careless, or lavish, hand to ease our own feelings. And what is the effect of these ill-considered gifts? Of this misplaced indulgence? Believe me, you who have never watched its effect on the houses which it influences, it is deadly. It is the cause of a steady deterioration of character pitiable to watch. The drunkard is enabled to drink, the idle to idle and to bet. The uncertainty of the gifts upsets all attempt at plan; life becomes a lottery. Where do you think we find the least attempt at home life in London, and the most vice and drink? Not in the acres of poor houses in the entirely poor districts of East and South London, not in the darkest and most crowded courts, but in Notting Hill, close to the well-to-do classes. There the beggar is made and kept a beggar, there the public houses swarm with people spending their easily-got shillings, there the furnished lodging, paid for night by night, takes the place of the settled and thrifty house. The neighbourhood of the rich, the would-be charitable, makes the poverty which strikes the eye.

Take but one family under your care, watch its struggles, sympathise with its efforts, advise as to the health, education, preparation for work of its younger members, encourage thrift, stimulate the energy of those who compose it, and you shall see growth instead of deterioration, order succeed disorder, industry reap its quiet but sure reward.

Then take our municipalities. The existence of this undisciplined class, seen by the superficial observer is driving corporations to all manner of ill-considered, and to my mind, ill-judged schemes for housing. Such schemes are most unlikely to be financially sound. If they are not sound — even the expectation that they will not be so — is paralysing, has paralysed independent builders and thoughtful investors, so reducing the supply of good housing. Municipal building will probably degenerate into subsidising from the rates, open or concealed by clever balance sheets. This means rating the really poor, the steadily industrious, to meet part of the rent of their demoralised neighbours. Nor is the municipality ever likely to be a strong, or a wise landlord, using any helpfully restraining influence on the tenants. The tenants will be their constituents, their employees will be their constituents, and firm quiet beneficent rule which alone can help the undisciplined to grow, will be relaxed at recurring elections, even if it gets a chance of being established. To my mind too the municipality has its own great necessary function: that of overlooking — a function not exercised better for being itself a landlord.

Then turn to the political world. How we play with the great questions affecting the life of our poorest people! What cowardice is shown — or what ignorance — in questions affecting Poor Law administration, what hopes are raised about the old age pensions, without any considered scheme of granting them. Always the delusive hope raised, the energies paralysed, no vigorous effort to make our laws stimulate energy on which alone a man’s happy future depends.

Now how do all these facts (which I assure you are most clear to me after long and close observation though I daresay many here may doubt about them), if they be facts, affect our action as managers of houses for the poor? I say as managers for to my mind it is as managers, even more than as providers, or builders, that our main usefulness lies. It is greatly and deeply true that more and better tenements are needed, but I would far rather see the present tenements left alone and the very best possible management of them secured, than I would see a multitude of new good tenements built and no good management established.

This house management is specially a task for ladies. It depends on watchful supervision with regard to detail, but it is none the less based on the great laws which govern good human life, called — somewhat dully — principles.

If any lady then comes forward to help in this your work of managing houses I would ask her, however small a share she means to take in it, what principles she proposes should guide her.

She is to be the head, not of one household as perhaps she is at her own house, but of several. What does she think will make her rule beneficent? She may learn a little by experience in her own house. She has been, perhaps, very anxious to make her household a training place, but she will have found that there are limits to the amount of reformatory work she can do there. She may be able to engage a cook who has been more or less addicted to drink, a young girl who has been guilty of a theft, or other wrongdoing, but she has felt that there must be a limit to what she ought to do in this respect, above all that, if she does anything, it must be at her own cost, not that of others. The erring member must on no account be a cause of dragging down others of the household, nor must she destroy the peace and comfort of the kitchen. The lady herself must give far more responsible supervision if she aims at this reformatory work. One thing moreover will become rapidly clear to her if she attempts it in her own house, and that is that her only hope of doing good will be not by “overlooking” or tolerating the evil but by most  serious action should it return. Quite as much for the sake of the wrongdoer as of others the tone will have to be “such things cannot go on here, I am in charge here and I must not allow it”.

Now when any of you who have had such experience, or such hope of action, comes to be in charge of a sub-divided house, or a group of families, she will at once feel that the same principles must apply with even greater force. The fact that there are several households instead of one, that there are certain to be children to be influenced, that some of the residents may be in far greater temptation to which the wrongdoer has fallen a victim will make her responsibility ten-fold greater in deciding whether to retain or exclude an objectionable tenant. It will be in vain that kindly outsiders plead: “what will become of him?” She will reply with sad seriousness: “He must do better”. She will know that this is the only thing that can mend his position — or, what is more, his life. If she has that high gift of missionary power which can make him do better she will thank God for it, but she will know that mere toleration of wrong will not help him, and will corrupt or disturb others. She will feel that often the fact of having to move may be a lesson to him, and that if other landlords did the same it certainly might stop much evil, and that, be this as it may, she can no more leave him to go on doing definite wrong where she has control than she could leave wrongdoing to go on in a school.

I once heard a clergyman pleading with a friend of mine that she should keep as a tenant a man subject to attacks of delirium tremens and he urged that she should show Christian charity. She answered: “It would be very easy and pleasant to me to say “yes” but you see it is not you or I that are kept awake at night by this man, and who have to get up all the same early to a long day’s work. Ours would be cheap charity indeed, and hardly real”.

It may quite be that some of you in your own houses have come to the conclusion that you will do more good by keeping a healthy happy tone in kitchen and parlour making yours a household where mothers think it well for young daughters to live, and which radiate a good influence. Some on the other hand may exercise strong reforming power.

So it may be with your groups of tenants. Some of you may feel that to gather together and strengthen by association groups of really quiet families, giving them peace and order and good influences for their children, raising the standard of order, and securing a good environment for many who otherwise might fall into temptation is as good and useful a work as reformatory work. I have had both kinds of workers, and they have made the courts under their care very different according to their gifts, but of one thing I am sure: I have never had either kind of court usefully managed by anyone who was indulgently pitiful. The rule must be diligent, bracing, discriminating, and the sense of responsibility must be always heavy in deciding when order in the house and when the reform of the individual is the immediate duty.

I remember in the very first letter I wrote to Mr Ruskin when he thought of putting houses under my care I said I thought I could manage it if he did not want me to work with a committee. I could not do that, not only for want of time, but because the decision whom to keep and whom to send away must depend on hopes, beliefs, and perceptions one could not prove true to a committee. They might be right, or they might be wrong, but they would be the only basis for all attempts to make the people, or the places better. I was a mere girl then but time has only confirmed me in the view that whatever rules and committees may do for well-regulated families, it is personal rule and personal influence only which can raise the lowest, and time has increased with ever greater force my sense of the injury done by tolerance of wrongdoing, and the helpfulness of wise, strict government.

Take for instance the question of irregular payments about which leniency is so often urged. What do you do, I am often asked, when people can’t pay their rent. If tenants tell me they can’t pay it I ask them why, and if it be so I tell them to talk it over with their husbands and tell me what they propose, point out to them that of course credit cannot go on, and get them to do at once whatever they would have to do much later. But of course the time to meet such difficulties is before they arrive, by getting sobriety, industry, thrift, before the day of trouble comes. And what a blessing it is to the people to be out of debt. We hardly ever have to send away a tenant for non-payment — it is the rarest thing in the world. Once, when we did, the woman came back after some time and implored to be taken back again. She pleaded that it had been such a great help to her to have a strict landlady. And once when I was talking to a working man about our absolute determination to insist on regular payments, I expected him to make exceptions, or plead that it was hard, and he looked very grave and then said: “Yes, I know it is best. You see they do say money is the root of all evil, but I often think credit beats it”.

Well, if you get all this well into your heads and hearts, and in very deed believe that your subtlest work is by no means ameliorating the outward condition of your people, but making them better, and that you will do this by helping their weak wills to do what they know to be right, you will not feel much difficulty about the more tangible part of the business.

There is much to learn, much that is technical to learn, about repairs, and accounts, and prices, and rates and taxes, and legal matters but they are definite and soluble under good advice. The more you help your tenants do their duty, the more you will feel it incumbent on you to be most perfect in fulfilment of yours. Not only must you be prompt, thorough and diligent but most gentle, patient and just.

As time goes on you will see your old houses steadily improve, yards encumbered with buildings will be cleared for playgrounds, windows will be broken out on dark staircases, lamps will lighten and so purify dark entrances, fresh cupboards, more cooking ranges will be added, perhaps a tree or two or many Virginia creepers may bring a memory of the country to out-of-the-way courts. Or if you manage blocks you may bring order out of chaos, cleanliness out of dirt, helpful co-operation and mutual confidence where quarrelling raged before. Anyway you will have near you a group of poorer friends whom you know, respect, and love, who have duties to you as you have to them, who meet you in a natural, independent, and friendly way. You will have watched them as you do your friends in another sphere through years of natural intercourse, and should death, sickness or sorrow come upon them you will be beside them as a real friend, and if tangible help is needed it will be only such as will re-establish right living and not undermine self-reliance and energy.

Do not be discouraged if sometimes you have to do a difficult thing, which seems a little hard to your richer friends, or even to your poorer ones, though the latter more often see its wisdom or necessity. Live to your own conscience; be sure that you have “considered” the poor; qualify yourself for judging by patient, earnest watchfulness of a few; do not live to reproach yourself for having been among those who with easy, superficial sight palliate the immediate physical need by corrupting the human spirit in those who are meant to reach the stature of men and women. Look upon the body as the training place for the soul.

Remember that as Mr Browning tells us:

It takes the ideal to blow a hair’s breadth off the actual;
It takes a high-souled man to lead the masses even to a cleaner sty.

In all humility, never despising the duty of attending to the merest detail about lock or tap which adds to comfort or perfection of outward things, but looking to the houses under your care as schools for noble living, and houses for happy families, exercise in hope, love and prayer the power entrusted to you.

Source: Octavia Hill and the Social Housing Debate: Essays and Letters by Octavia Hill, ed. Robert Whelan (London: St Edmundsbury Press, 1998), pp. 116-123.