Lancashire - Preston squalor

Industrial Victorian Britain was an amazing place with staggering output making our tiny island one of the main players on the international trading scene.  However, arm in arm with that impressive production came squalor and poverty.

Preston Lancashire was a cotton town which suffered fiercely from poor conditions.  Following are two lists compiled by a Prestonian called Joseph Livesey. He was a dynamo of a man who helped found the teetotal movement, and had a huge impact on improving the working conditions of the working class of Preston.   I want to share his list of "Things I do not like to see" and another one entitled "I don't like the smell from..." I like these lists because they add a sense of smell and everyday life to the Victorian Preston picture.

Remember these were both written in 1838. My remarks are written in italics:

"Things I do not like to see..."

•  A workhouse funeral almost without attendance.
• an orphan girl tempted to walk the streets for the purpose of prostitution.
• a country overseer putting out a poor woman by her shoulders.
• a poor lad going to the factory very much out of health.
• the bailiffs carrying the bed and chairs of a poor widow to the obelisk, to sell for rent.
•  a street of houses nearly all uninhabited. (many families moved in with others so they could share the rent. This was called 'huddling', but left many homes vacant)
• all the public pumps dry in hot weather.
• a window blind drawn up on one side twelve inches higher than the other. (Right....now you're getting picky :0) 
• orange peels thrown on the footpath (!!)

Joseph Livesey, Moral Reformer, Saturday February 10, 1838, p.45

"I dont' like the smell from..."

• a bedroom where the windows have never been open for days and weeks together (this man obviously never had teenage sons)
• Dirty straw which has laid some time in a damp cellar.
• a cart taking away dung from the privies during the day time.
• wiskets filled with fish upon a coach. (Wisket? I think it is a basket?)
• the dead carcasses of dogs and other animals thrown into pools of stagnant water.
• the effluvia from a person who perspires freely but seldom washes. (Try Lynx)
• a drunkards breath in a morning after a fuddle. (Fuddle = a drinking binge... or so I'm told)
• a cart laden with gas tar. (What's that??)
• a corpse kept too long in hot weather. 

Joseph Livesey, Moral Reformer, March 24, 1838, p. 10

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