BERLIN.
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light are characteristics common to most of such dwellings inhabited by workingclass
households, and these defects are often met with in aggravated form. Many
of these dwellings are approached through dark corridors and passages along
which it is necessary to grope one’s way step by step, and it is no uncommon
custom to keep a small lamp burning all day long. Basement rooms were
visited in which no direct light ever enters, yet they were used as living
rooms by day and as bedrooms by night. Notes like the following were the
result of house visitation in the Centre, where basement dwellings of the worst
class abound :—
“ Basement dwelling, consisting of one room, 14 feet by 10 feet by 7 feet
high, with kitchen, reached by a descent of nine steps ; damp. Six persons sleep
in the one room. The kitchen has a brick floor. Rent 14s. monthly ; tenant a
labourer with wages of 20s. per week.”
“ Basement dwellings, each consisting of one room and a kitchen, and
costing 20s. monthly. Lime falling from the brickwork, never repaired, dark
rooms in spite of whitewashing of area walls.”
" Basement dwellings of two rooms and a kitchen ; dark, small and low.
Rent 22s. 6c?. per month.”
“ Basement dwelling of one room and kitchen, costing 17s. W. per month ;
inhabited by a saddler, his wife, two children, and an adult lodger. A bed in
the kitchen. The corridor pitch-dark.”
" Basement dwelling, consisting of one room, costing 9s. per month ; a
small iron stove used for cooking and heating. Another, consisting of one
room and kitchen, 18s. per month ; three beds in the room, with a sofa used as
a bed and a cradle.”
" Basement dwelling, consisting of two rooms and kitchen, rent 19s. ;
occupied by six persons. Rooms small, dark, and cold ; two beds in kitchen.
Size of rooms, 10 by 10 by 12 feet.”
“ Basement dwelling, consisting of three rooms and kitchen, one room
used as a workshop. One dark bedroom has three beds, another similar room
has two beds, and the kitchen has two beds.”
The accommodation most usually met with in basement dwellings is one
living room and a kitchen, and from 14s. to 18s. per month is a common rent.
A fitting counterpart to the basement dwellings of the older parts of Berlin
is found in the attics and higher stories of the same districts, and the Centre
is again specially instructive. In the narrow by-streets found here
housing conditions of the worst kind exist—dilapidated buildings, which would
appear to be never repaired,-narrow and dark staircases at times dangerous of
ascent, rickety balustrades, rotten floors, and rooms at once small, low, and
poorly lighted. There is, however, much bad property in the North and East
as well, and where the worst dwellings are, there also is the worst poverty.
Rents entirely disproportionate both to the quantity and the quality of the
accommodation are charged. For two small rooms, each 10 by 10 by 7 feet, and
a kitchen, 9 by 9 by 7 feet, the monthly rent was 26s. 6&, a lodger at 10s.
helping the tenant to eke out the rent ; in another case, a living room, a dark
anteroom, and a kitchen cost 30s. monthly ; in another, two rooms and a kitchen
cost 24s.,'and here again lodgers were kept ; in another, a labourer earning 26s.
per week paid 26s. per month, with the help of lodgers, for a room and a
kitchen ; and in another, a widow with her two sons and daughter paid 22s. 6d.
monthly for a dwelling consisting of a living room, 10 feet square and 6 feet
6 inches high, a bedroom, in which stood three beds, and a kitchen without window.
In one dwelling consisting of a large room and a kitchen, a family of ten persons,
the parents and eight children, lived. The rent was 5s. per week. In the kitchen
were six beds. Both husband and wife were employed in the clothing trade, and
they earned together about £45 per annum, in addition to which they received
£10 in poor relief. A tenement in another house consisted of a single room,
rented at 12s. per month, and it contained three beds. A room in the same
house served a tailor as living room, bedroom, and workshop, the rent being 9s.
per month. In a dwelling consisting of one room and a kitchen, rented at
18s. 6d. per month, the husband and wife had beds in the kitchen, and the living
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