Page:The Ethics of Urban Leaseholds.djvu/25

Rh class. All ranks are injured by it: the nobility and West End residents as well as City clerks and working men. All suffer in domestic comfort; but to those whose state and dignity are held to be their great distinction leasehold influences must be specially obnoxious. To have lost the amplitude and individuality of a town house, and to be numbered in a row of compo-fronted slips of leasehold work, to be the subject of a common building speculation, with its transient fashions and vulgarities, is not consistent with the notion of an ancient aristocracy. The change from Grosvenor Square to Grosvenor Place is like an abdication of nobility. A nobleman till lately had a ducal residence between the river and Trafalgar Square; the House has been pulled down; the site has been converted into 'frontages;' and now his Grace finds shelter in a narrow leasehold tenement that faces a cross road behind the Queen's back garden.

The effect of leaseholds on the working classes is, however, of more consequence than loss of dignity; it tends with them directly to disease, to dissipation, and to death. At least one half of London houses are unfit for human beings to reside in. All the rooms are made so small that any locomotion in them causes injury to walls, partitions, furniture, and fixtures. Everything becomes dilapidated, roughly worn, and consequently dirty. Then, their houses being sorry imitations of the homes of richer people, those who labour, thinking such display to be distinguished and correct, endeavour also, in their sordid way, to imitate their betters in their household goods and dress. Thus everything about the families and homes of working men is now a travesty of the pernicious follies of the middle class, as these again are imitators of the social ranks above them. People do not spend their money to secure convenient healthy homes, but to appear to be above their sphere, to be acquainted with the fashion, and to assert their right and interest in the foolish custom of the day. The cost and outlay that all this requires