Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

The speculative builders never dream of the legitimate necessities of the population. The situation and style of the houses attract purchasers or tenants, when thousands are unoccupied, and thus encouragement to build co-exists with great commercial depression and an immense surplus of accommodation. These are startling truths, but in the further consideration of the subject they will be fully established. The tendency to the over-production of cottage accommodation prevails largely at this moment,[5 November 1841] as may be shewn by a particular case that falls under our immediate observation. The street in which we reside is pleasantly situate apart from the bustle of the town, and contains twenty unoccupied dwellings. In line with it commences a recently improved road, and the land on each side is let for building purposes. About twelve months ago, a person erected nine houses on speculation, half of which were untenanted until within a short time. They are now occupied with the exception of one. A large painted board states that they may be bought by private contract. Within the past few weeks, the same individual has built eight others in continuation with the former, also on speculation, when eight out of twenty-seven in the same situation, and twenty in the adjoining street, are untenanted! Numerous facts of the same kind are observed in every part of the town.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

I’m not clear exactly as to what is meant by “cottage,” but here is Engels:

Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to the palaces of the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where, removed from the sight of the happier classes, it may struggle along as it can. These slums are pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of the towns; usually one- or two-storied cottages in long rows, perhaps with cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built. These houses of three or four rooms and a kitchens form, throughout England, some parts of London excepted, the general dwellings of the working-class. The streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul, stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad, confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human beings here live crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails in these working-men’s quarters may readily be imagined. Further, the streets serve as drying grounds in fine weather; lines are stretched across from house to house, and hung with wet clothing (Engels 1892).

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Original

The speculative builders never dream of the legitimate necessities of the population. The situation and style of the houses attract purchasers or tenants, when thousands are unoccupied, and thus encouragement to build co-exists with great commercial depression and an immense surplus of accommodation. These are startling truths, but in the further consideration of the subject they will be fully established.

The tendency to the over-production of cottage accommodation prevails largely at this moment,[5 November 1841] as may be shewn by a particular case that falls under our immediate observation. The street in which we reside [which?] is pleasantly situate apart from the bustle of the town, and contains twenty unoccupied dwellings. In line with it commences a recently improved road, and the land on each side is let for building purposes. About twelve months ago, a person erected nine houses on speculation, half of which were untenanted until within a short time. They are now occupied with the exception of one. A large painted board states that they may be bought by private contract. Within the past few weeks, the same individual has built eight others in continuation with the former, also on speculation, when eight out of twenty-seven in the same situation, and twenty in the adjoining street, are untenanted! Numerous facts of the same kind are observed in every part of the town.

There is one speculator alone destitute of capital, who has built 200 houses, not in the space of years, but almost in the course of months, numbers of which are at present untenanted. As evidence of the general character of this class of men, some of them actually cannot write their names.

The mode in which these things are accomplished on a large scale, is to get clay on the site fixed upon, and to make bricks as long as the ground can be spared, or means furnished by the forced sales of the property either partly or wholly finished; and on the completion of the undertaking, the projectors are often prepared to take the benefit of the insolvent act, or fall into embarrassed circumstances, involving in their ruin many other parties. The bricklayer – the joiner – the glazier – and the painter frequently combine their efforts – we can scarcely say their capital – in extensive building speculations, and the existence of the whole body depends on a sale being effected, when the market is already glutted with cottage accommodation.

408 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Cottage (1) ·
• Engels, Friedrich (1820-95) (2), philosopher, critic of political economy, historian, political theorist, revolutionary socialist, Manchester mill-owner ·
• Home construction (3) ·
• Poverty (16) ·
• 📌Sheffield (72) ·
• Slum (4) ·
• Speculation (1) ·

All tags.

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