A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE 



There is a description of Wolverhampton and its workshops at this 

 time (1843) which gives some idea of the dreadful conditions of life which 

 prevailed in this rapidly-developing industrial district, where population had 

 increased with great rapidity with little or no attempt at control or regulation 

 by the civic authorities in the interests of sanitation or morals. 



There are few manufactories of large size, the work being carried on in small work- 

 shops, usually at the back of the houses, so that the places where children and great bodies 

 of operatives are employed are completely out of sight, in its narrow courts, unpaved yards, 

 and blind alleys. In the smaller dirtier streets, in which the poorest live, there are narrow 

 passages at intervals of every eight or ten houses, and sometimes every third or fourth house - r 

 these are under three yards wide and about nine feet high, and they form the general gutter. 

 Having made your way through the passage you find yourself in a space varying in size with 

 the number of houses, hutches, or hovels it contains, all proportionately crowded. Out of this 

 space other narrow passages lead to similar hovels, the workshops and houses being mostly 

 built on a little elevation sloping towards the passage. The great majority of yards contain 

 two to four houses, one or two of which are workshops, or have room in them for a work- 

 shop. In process of time, as the inhabitants increased, small rooms were raised over the 

 workshops, and hovels were also built wherever space could be found, and tenanted, first 

 perhaps as workshops, then by families also. By these means the increasing population were 

 lodged from year to year, while the circumference of the town remained the same for a long 

 time, owing to the difficulty of obtaining land to build upon, as it was all the property of 

 private individuals or of the church. As soon as land was obtained, Stafford Street and 

 Walsall Street were built for the working classes, two of the largest and most disgraceful 

 streets in the town. 



None of these houses have any underground drainage ; there is often a common dunghill at 

 one end, where everything is cast, more generally there is nothing but the gutter and passage 

 into the street. The interiors of the dwellings are extremely squalid, containing little 

 furniture, and are for the most part exceedingly dirty in every respect. 188 



On the other hand, while workshops of the small masters (locksmiths, &c.) 

 were all of this kind, the large factories were usually placed in healthy situa- 

 tions and were fairly well ventilated. 



The growth of the factory system, and the operation of the Factory 

 Acts, accompanied by a regular system of inspection, has fortunately changed 

 the old industrial conditions very much for the better, except in the lingering 

 survival of the hand-wrought nail makers, whose little workshops round about 

 Sedgley and Upper and Lower Gornal recall some part of the above descrip- 

 tion even yet. 



In 1869 an Act was obtained by the Wolverhampton Corporation to 

 enable them to deal effectually with such things as street management, 

 sewerage, and police. Also, since 1875, an area of 16 acres in the heart of 

 the town has been swept away, and its old dirty streets and noisome courts 

 have been replaced by broad, well-paved, well-lighted roadways, with hand- 

 some buildings. 



But it was small wonder that when a visitation of cholera came, as it did 

 in 1832, and again in 1848-9, such towns as this fell an easy prey, and that 

 the people were swept off in hundreds. In Bilston, e.g., the state of sanitation 

 was, if possible, worse than at Wolverhampton. Here, as there, the people 

 were herded together in narrow courts and alleys, while stagnant pools and 

 heaps of filth were found on every hand, menacing the health and the very 

 life of the inhabitants. 



Yet in March, 1832, a public meeting decided that the health of 

 the township was so good that nothing further need be done in the way 



188 Children's Employment Com. Rep. ii, 1843 [430] ; Rep. of Mr. Home, vol. xiii, App. 33. 



306 



