Chapter M: M. Jeffery (2)

The plan of making weekly tenants responsible for rates is very difficult to work; not being general, the machinery and arrangements do not help us. But I have felt it to be very important, as well as to be worth a great effort. It may be that some of those in authority will realize its value and that we may get some help in time. What would conduce most to make the plan succeed would be that some allowance should be made for tenants paying their rates in advance, analogous to, though not naturally so great as, that made to landlords who compound: also that by some means the various payments might be spread over the year, falling due at different quarters. This would go far to mitigate the difficulty for working people of paying a lump sum down twice a year, as is demanded in some London parishes. Weekly or fortnightly collection, which I hear is arranged for in Edinburgh, would manifestly be more costly, but our tenants would manage a quarterly payment pretty easily. However, at present there is no hope of any modification of existing arrangements, and we must do our best to fit in with the present regulations in the several parishes. I hope that, if we lead the van, others will follow, and co-operation may come in time from officials. All newly elected vestrymen might, meantime, do well to try to secure that fuller facts should be inserted on claims and receipts. The words “made,” “due” and “payable” are used in a way not always clear to the ratepayer, while the option of paying in separate instalments is often not shown clearly on the claims.

This subject, however, is somewhat technical, and I only refer to it here because it is interesting me deeply. I think it would tend towards municipal economy, likely to tell to the advantage of the time to come.

GARDENS IN LONDON.

LETTER OF 1875.—When I look at the unused bits of ground around a farm or cottage, I sometimes think what they would be worth at the back of a London house.

But even in the front of their houses in a London court, are the poor much better off? I go sometimes on a hot summer evening into a narrow court, with houses on each side. The sun has heated them all day, until it has driven nearly every inmate out of doors. Those who are not at the public-house are standing or sitting on their doorsteps, quarrelsome, hot, dirty; the children are crawling or sitting on the hard, hot stones, till every corner of the place looks alive. Everyone looks in everyone else’s way; the place echoes with words not of the gentlest. Sometimes on such a hot summer’s evening, in such a court, when I am trying to calm excited women shouting their execrable language at one another, I have looked up suddenly and seen one of those bright gleams of light the summer sun sends out just before he sets, catching the top of a red chimney-pot, and beautiful there, though too directly above their heads for the crowd below to notice it much. But to me it brings sad thought of the fair and quiet places far away, where it is falling softly on tree and hill and cloud, and I feel that that quiet, that beauty, that space would be more powerful to calm the wild excess about me than all my frantic striving with it.

Leicester Square shows us another thing: such places must be made bright, pretty and neat—a small place which is not so becomes painfully dreary; it is quite curious to notice how little one feels shut in when the barriers are lovely, or contain beautiful things which the eye can rest on. The small enclosed leads which too often bound the view of a back dining-room in London oppress one like the walls of a prison; but a tiny cloistered court of the same size will give a sense of repose; and colour introduced into such spaces will give them such beauty as will prevent one from fretting against the boundaries. Strange and beautiful instance this of how—if we recognize the limitations appointed for us, accept them, and deal well with what is given—the passionate longing for more is taken away and a great peace hallows all.

THE WORKERS.

LETTER OF 1900.—I have been thinking a great deal about how responsible bodies can, in the future, secure such management by trained ladies as has been found helpful in the past. This has turned my attention much more than heretofore to the thought of how to provide more responsible professional workers, for I feel that, however much volunteers may help, it is only to professional workers that responsible and continuous duties can, as a rule, be entrusted, especially by large owners or corporations.

Up to now my professional workers have been among my most zealous and selfless colleagues, always ready to take onerous duties, to fill vacant places, to slip out of the way and go to new fields when it seemed best, always ready to help to train others for management in houses, whether in London, the provincial towns, Scotland, Ireland, America, Holland, or any other place from which work came, taking their holidays, when best they could be spared, and in every way proving themselves true helpers by their hearty recognition that what we had to do was to teach, initiate and supplement as many earnest workers as we could. What I owe to them in the past for the devoted help they have thus rendered for now many years, no one will ever know.

But hitherto I or some tried and experienced volunteer have been the responsible person to whom private owners, or men of business or corporations have entrusted their houses; and it is we who have reported upon all business. As a matter of fact, as you all know, we have put all management on a business footing, and with few exceptions have charged the owners the ordinary 5 per cent. on rental usually paid to collectors.

Thinking over all this with regard to the further future and to the larger areas that we can cover, it seemed to me that the present plan had its limitations. Even if many more such leaders were found, how would they be known? Could responsible bodies make plans dependent on them? Then I realized that my best plan for the future would be not only to train such volunteers as offered and the professional workers whom we required, but to train more professional workers than we ourselves can use, and, as occasion offers, to introduce them to owners wishing to retain small tenements in their own hands and to be represented in them by a kind of manager not hitherto existing. The ordinary collector is not a man of education, with time to spare, nor does he estimate that his duties comprise much beyond a call at the doors for rent brought down to him and a certain supervision of repairs that are asked for. If there existed a body of ladies trained to more thorough work, qualified to supervise more minutely, likely to enter into such details as bear on the comfort of home life, they might be entrusted by owners with house property. We all can remember how the training of nurses and of teachers has raised the standard of work required in both professions. The same change might be hoped for in the character of the management of dwellings let to the poor. Whether or no volunteers co-operated with them would settle itself. At any rate, owners could have, as I have told them they should have, besides their lawyer to advise them as to law, their architect as to large questions of buildings, their auditor to supervise their accounts, also a representative to see to their people and to those details of repair and management on which the conduct of courts or blocks inhabited by working people depends. Where people live close together, share yards, washhouses and staircases, too often there is no one whose business it is to supervise and govern the use of what is used in common or to see how one tenant’s conduct affects others.

THE WORK.

LETTER OF 1879.—I should like, in my letter this year, to note down what it appears to me you are all feeling as to the difference between the charge of a court where the people are your tenants and much other visiting among the poor. The care of tenants calls out a sense of duty founded on relationship; the work is permanent, and the definite character of much of it makes its progress marked. Have you ever asked yourselves why you have chosen the charge of courts, with all its difficulties and ties? The burthen of the problems before you has been heavy, and the regularity of the occupation has often demanded of you great sacrifices. Why have you not chosen transitory connection with hundreds of receivers of soup, or pleasant intercourse with little Sunday scholars, or visiting among the aged and bedridden, who were sure to greet you with a smile when you went to them and had no right to say a word of reproach to you about your long absences in the country? Why did you not take up district-visiting, where, if any family did not welcome you, you could just stay away? Because you preferred a work where duty was continuous and distinct and where it was mutual. Because, also, the petty annoyances brought before you at such awkward moments, with so little discretion or good-temper—the smoky chimneys, broken water-pipes, tiresome neighbours, drunken husbands—as well as the great sorrows caused by death, disease, poverty, sin, have called not only for your sympathy but for your action. From the greatest to the least, the problems have implied some duty on your part. You have each had to ask yourself, “What ought I, in my relation to the tenants, to do for them in this difficulty?” From the merest trifle of a cupboard key broken in the lock to the future of some family desolated by death, or sunk in misery through drink, _all_ has asked your sympathy, much has demanded your action. I have said the charge of tenants has been valued by you also because the duty is mutual: it implies your determination, not simply to do kindnesses with liberal hand, popular as that would be, but to meet the poor on grounds where they too have duties to you.

SPIRIT OF THE WORK.

LETTER OF 1890.—I will not in this, which is my one letter of the year to you, my friends and fellow-workers, enter on the great public questions which are attracting an ever-increasing degree of interest.

Whatever be done about free meals, free education (why do we call them free, instead of paid for by charity, by rates, or by tax, do you think?)—whatever may happen about strikes or immigration from the country—for you and me there remain much the same great eternal duties, love, thought, justice, liberality, simplicity, hope, industry, for ever; still human heart depends on human heart for sympathy, and still the old duties of neighbourliness continue. Let us see that we fulfil them, each in our own circle, large or small; perhaps we may find the fulfilment of them answer more social problems than we quite expected. Perhaps we may find changes of system effect little reform unless courageous and honest men carry them out with single-mindedness and thought for others.

If the free meal, free education, subsidized house accommodation attract you, will you pause and remember, first, that they are by no means free, but cost someone, somehow, just as much, probably a great deal more, than if provided otherhow? The question, if you get rid of the word “free,” which is deceptive, clears up a little, and becomes, “Is this the best way of, first, providing, and second, paying for these necessities?”

And then, having answered this for yourself, see to it that you are wholly single-minded if you advocate this sort of subsidy for the poor. Be sure you do so neither from cowardice nor from ambition. If, indeed, it be pity, genuine kindness and a sense of justice that moves you, then the feeling is so good that in some way I believe it will lead you right; besides, you will keep your power to watch and see and alter as you come face to face with facts, and may modify all systems, and keep the desire to do justice and help in whatever way is seen finally to be really helpful.

But if you let one touch of terror dim your sight and flinch before the most terrible upheaval of rampant force or threat; if, for popular favour, or seat at board, or success on platform, you hesitate to speak what you know to be true, then shall your cowardice and your ambition be indeed answerable for consequences which you little dream of. They may come now, or they may come later, but come they will; for only Truth abides and will stand the test of time. Let us see that we hold her very fast; only those who are loyal to her can.

VII
WOMEN MANAGERS—A CROWN ESTATE[2]

Footnote 2:

Reprinted from _Housing_, the official journal of the Ministry of
Health, September 27, 1919, by kind permission of the Controller, H.M.
Stationery Office.

A scheme of reconstruction which should be of interest to local authorities about to exercise the new powers conferred upon them by the Housing Act has been undertaken by the Office of Woods on a London estate near Regent’s Park, belonging to the Crown.

The area in question lies to the east of Albany Street. It forms part of an estate, known as the “Marylebone Farm,” which about a hundred years ago was leased by the Office of Woods principally for residential purposes, ample provision being made in the type of building for all classes. The estate includes the Cumberland Basin, connected with the Regent’s Canal; Cumberland Market, an ancient market for the sale of hay and straw; and two other open spaces. The Market is now seldom used, but it is still paved with setts and furnished with a weighing-house. The other two spaces are squares, laid out with trees and shrubs, and are managed by the London County Council.

During the last year or two many of the leases of property of the tenement class have fallen in, and others, which are not yet quite due, have been surrendered by the owners in preference to putting the houses into repair.

With the gradual falling in of the leases the Office of Woods were faced with the question whether the site was again to be let on lease or whether it was to be held and managed on behalf of the Crown. The latter course was happily decided upon, and it was resolved to place the property immediately under the care of Miss Jeffery, an experienced house-property manager, trained under Miss Octavia Hill’s system, who has under her a staff of trained women.

The plan of reconstruction, which includes rebuilding most of the houses and altering the course of some of the streets, is being prepared by the Office of Woods. It is intended to convert Cumberland Market into a public garden and to form one or more children’s playgrounds in addition.

Rebuilding is hardly to be thought of for the moment. The immediate need is to make the existing houses reasonably fit for habitation. Most of them are dilapidated and some of them are filthy. Backyards have been built over, and in some instances another cottage has been put up, the only entrance to which is through the house which faces the street. The property has been for the most part badly neglected during the later years of the leases, while in the earlier years little care was exercised to see that the conditions of the lease were not departed from.

Miss Jeffery has opened a small office on the estate, as a centre from which the rents of the houses are collected week by week. On their visits the women managers find out what repairs are needed to make the houses habitable and clean, and supervise the repairs already in hand. Miss Jeffery and her assistants are thus in constant touch with the tenants, helping them in many ways and inducing them to do their part in improving their surroundings. While insisting that necessary alterations and cleansing must be carried out forthwith, the managers do their best to study the comfort and convenience of the tenants as far as possible. If the tenants must be removed for a time, temporary accommodation is found for them.

It is intended that the number of licensed houses on the estate shall be reduced as the leases fall in, and the managers are taking steps to ensure improved management, on Public House Trust lines, of those that will remain.

About 170 families (representing a population of nearly 1,000) are already paying their rent to the women managers, and fresh houses come in every few weeks. The managers, with the Office of Woods behind them, believe that the work of reconstructing the estate can be successfully accomplished only if they can ensure the good will and co-operation of the present tenants. With this end in view, they called a meeting of the tenants already on their rent-roll in March last, and suggested the formation of a Tenants’ Association. The intentions of the Office of Woods with regard to the estate were explained to the meeting, as well as the reasons for desiring the tenants themselves to combine and co-operate in carrying out the scheme. The Association has been formed, a Chairman elected, and several other meetings have since been held. The scope of the scheme has been further explained, and points arising in the management—such as whether rates should be paid direct to the local authority or with the rent—have been discussed. That the powers and responsibilities of a Tenants’ Association are beginning to be realized is shown by the fact that within the last few days a petition has been put forward by the Association, asking that one of the first buildings to be put up on the estate may be a building containing rooms in which working men’s clubs may be held; at present these clubs, several of which have a large number of members, are held in the public-houses because there is no other place for them.

The scheme bids fair to be a success. The necessary changes will be carried through with the least possible disturbance and friction among the tenants, because the women managers have already won the confidence of a large number of them. Many tenants do not want to part with their old cottages, dirty and dilapidated as they are, and others are afraid that, when the new houses are built, they will not be the persons to get them. The women managers, being on the spot, will get to know the individual needs of each household, and they will use every effort to meet the needs of these households when the houses are rebuilt. In the meantime, they are in a position to persuade the tenants gradually to adopt higher standards of cleanliness and comfort, and so enable them to take care of the new houses when they get them.

Local authorities who are about to take over slum areas and reconstruct them may find it of advantage to follow the example of the Office of Woods and place an area, as soon as it comes into their hands, under the management of women educated and trained for this work.

E. A. C.

VIII
MANAGEMENT OF MUNICIPAL HOUSES IN AMSTERDAM[3]

Footnote 3:

Reprinted from _Housing_, the official journal of the Ministry of
Health, July 19, 1920, by kind permission of the Controller, H.M.
Stationery Office.

The Municipality of Amsterdam has provided, either directly or through Public Utility Societies, a large number of dwellings for its working-class inhabitants. Up to the present time 4,000 families have been housed in these municipal dwellings, 6,000 more dwellings are in course of erection, and plans are laid for bringing the total number up to 20,000 at no very distant date.

The housing policy of Amsterdam is comprehensive. The town has assumed the duty not only of supplying houses to meet the general shortage, but of providing houses for those for whom no one else is able or willing to find accommodation, and especially for large families. It does not, like most English local authorities, select its tenants, but accepts all, even the worst class, if they are houseless citizens of Amsterdam.

In these circumstances the question of managing the municipal houses becomes a very important one. Mr. Keppler, who has presided over the Housing Department of Amsterdam for five years, came over to England to see for himself the methods of managing working-class property introduced by Miss Octavia Hill, and it was decided, as a result of his experience, to appoint women managers to take charge of the municipal houses and their tenants on the same lines. The first two women appointed had been trained years earlier under Miss Hill in London. There is now a staff of thirteen managers working under the Chief Woman Manager.

It is the duty of the Chief Manager to receive applications from and to interview would-be tenants, to inquire into their circumstances, and to allot new or empty houses to those families whose need she considers most acute. Great care is taken in assigning the new dwellings. Some groups of houses are designed expressly for families with five or more children and are reserved for them, while families with a member suffering from tuberculosis are placed in dwellings which have a sunny balcony or garden.

The managers collect the rents from the tenants in their homes; they take a note of any repairs needed and inform the Repairs Department. They instruct the women in the use of fittings and apparatus (all the municipal houses are fitted with gas cookers and electric light) and insist upon the tenancy regulations being observed. They co-operate with a number of voluntary societies which help the tenants in various ways.

The majority of tenants are of an average working-class type, and each manager looks after some two hundred to three hundred families. But since no tenants are rejected for reasons of character, it follows that there are among them families which are below the average and a few which can be described only as bad; they do not pay their rent promptly, they are destructive, or they are noisy, drunken and quarrelsome. When families are considered by the managers to belong to this group they are removed into one of the special areas set apart for them. They are placed in temporary wooden one-story buildings, built in pairs with a fair amount of space between. These special areas are in open situations on the outskirts of the town. Here the families are under strict supervision—a supervision, however, which has always in view the education and improvement of the tenant. The manager who has charge of one of these areas—on each of which are not more than twenty-five families—resides on the spot, in a dwelling similar to those occupied by the tenants; she reports weekly to the Chief Manager on the circumstances and conduct of each family and does all in her power to help and improve them.

The salary of the Chief Woman Manager rises from £350 to £550 a year. Her assistants are placed in three groups, according to experience and to the responsible nature of their duties. The salary of an apprentice during her year’s training is £83; at the end of the year, if found satisfactory, she receives £125, rising to £183; after this she may rise gradually to £291. During the first twelve months an apprentice must attend an evening course of training at the University School of Social Work in Amsterdam, where she receives instruction in various branches of social work, such as the relief of distress, social hygiene, club management, housing and town planning.

The Director of Housing regards the work of the women managers as extremely valuable from a social point of view, and he hopes to be able to find competent women to take charge of all the houses which the municipality are putting up. The salaries of the women managers are a fairly heavy charge upon the revenue, but the municipality considers the money well spent. They find that the tenants gradually improve, that rents are paid promptly and that the property is kept in good order, while good tenants appreciate the consideration shown to them and the interest taken in their welfare.

E. A. C.

IX
REPORT ON HOUSE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

In October 1920 the Women’s Section of the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association appointed a Sub-Committee to report on the methods and practice of House Property Management, especially with regard to what is generally called working-class property and management by women.

Having collected evidence from the personal observations of their own members and the written statements of other investigators, and having taken evidence also from a leading Woman Sanitary Inspector and from the first Municipal Woman Housing Officer, the Sub-Committee adopted the following principle for general recommendation and as a basis of their Report:

That the management of working-class property should be in the hands
of persons who have had definite training in estate management and in
Social Science.

The points considered and reported on are divided under four heads:

(1) The Classes of Property to be managed.

(2) The Qualifications of Manager and Assistants.

(3) The Training necessary.

(4) Payment.