196
DRESDEN.
below. The kitchen, like the “ alcove,” is only indirectly lighted from the
living room, but the light in all the rooms is somewhat better, especially in the
“ alcove,” which, besides the door, has two windows communicating with the
living room. This seems to be the explanation of the fact that the rent is
higher (£15, or 5s. 9c/. per week) than that charged for the corresponding
tenement below (£12, or 4s. 7d. per week), although the rooms in the
dearer tenement are less lofty. The front dwelling on this floor has hitherto
been occupied by a middle-class family, and need not, therefore, be described in
detail. It may be observed, however, that two of the four rooms (one being
the kitchen) are only dimly lighted, owing to the absence of windows communicating
with the open air, and that the rent is £21 5s. per annum, or say
8s. per week. On this floor, the passage connecting the front with the back
tenement has only one water-closet, which, it may be added, adjoins a larder.
On the next, or third floor, is a tenement of a kind much sought after by
workpeople in the inner town because of the number of rooms into which it is
divided and the opportunities which it therefore affords for taking lodgers. It
consists of six rooms and a separate corridor. The tenants, a childless workingclass
couple, rent it for £21 5s. a year, or 8s. 2d. per week, and earn from £6
to £7 10s. a year by letting bedrooms, usually to single workmen. All the
rooms are low (7 feet from floor to ceiling). The chief tenant and his wife
occupy three rooms themselves, viz., a living room, an adjoining bedroom, and
the kitchen. The living room has two windows and the adjoining bedroom one
window looking into the street. The dimensions of the former room are
15 feet 11 inches by 11 feet 5 inches, and those of the latter 15 feet 11 inches
by 6 feet 2 inches. The kitchen, which measures 9 feet 9 inches by 7 feet
6 inches, is dark, being only indirectly lighted from the corridor. Of the three
rooms available for lodgers, one has a window looking into the street. This
room, measuring 16 feet in length, is 7 feet wide at one end and 6 feet at
the other. The two other lodgers’ rooms are dark. One of them measures
7 feet 6 inches by 4 feet 3 inches, and, having no window whatever, is entirely
without light when the door is closed ; the other is reached through the kitchen
and gets such light as it has through a couple of windows looking on to the
general landing, which in its turn is imperfectly lighted from the well. This
room is 8^ feet square. The back tenement on this floor is practically a
repetition of the corresponding tenement on the floor below except that the
ceilings are lower (7 feet 8 inches). The four rooms of which it consists are
occupied by a workman and his family at a rent of £12 10s. per annum, or
4s. 10d. per week. Two of the rooms are practically without light, the other
two being lighted by windows looking into the well.
On the top floor of this house the front tenement, like the corresponding
one on the floor beneath, although one of the kind much sought after by
workpeople desirous of letting rooms to lodgers, was unoccupied at the
date of this Enquiry. It consists of five rooms with a corridor, part of
which also serves as the kitchen. This tenement was rented by its last
occupiers for £17 10s. a year, or 6s. 9d. per week, and the same occupier is
stated to have made £ll 10s. a year by letting off bedrooms. The ceilings are
very low (6 feet 4 inches), and in each of the three rooms with windows looking
into the street the outer wall slopes with the roof. Each of these three rooms
has a length of 15 feet (exclusive of the floor space over which the wall slopes).
The largest of them, which is the living room, has a width of 10 feet, while the
other two, which are bedrooms, measure 8 feet and 6 feet across respectively.
The two remaining rooms in this tenement are very small and dark, having no
windows communicating with the open air. One of them measures &}¿ feet
by 7 ¡¿ feet and the other 8¿ feet by 8 feet.
The back tenement on this floor consists of three rooms occupied by a
workman, his wife and two children, at a rent of £9 per year (3a. 6d. per
week). The dwelling is entered through the kitchen, a long, narrow room
(I8g feet by 5 feet) in which the ceiling is only 6 feet 4 inches from the floor,
and in which the only light is that obtained through the doorway leading
into the adjoining living room. The latter is fairly well lighted by two
windows looking into the court-yard, is 18 feet 6 inches long and 10 feet
wide, but only 6 feet high. The bedroom is entered and receives its only light
through the door leading from the living room. It is 18J feet long, 7 b feet
