Slumming was a phenomenon in the late 19th/early 20th century. People from the elite moved into the slums to see what life was like there. This happened mainly in London. Many different initiatives were developed with the aim of improving the situation of the poor, but of course the rich often had to gain something as well.
Slumming
At the end of the 19th and mid-20th centuries, people considered ‘slumming’ very important. As a member of the elite, you had to have seen life in the slums with your own eyes. It almost became a tourist attraction. Adderley was an example of a man from a good background who gave up his rich life to live among the poor and do the work of a priest. Perhaps the philanthropists needed the poor more than the other way around. Some saw it as a kind of penance for the sin of their class that had become rich off the backs of the slum residents. Many learned from this experience and wrote down their tremors in reports. ‘Real slummers’ like Adderley hated many others who only did it out of self-interest. He called this ‘fashionable slumming’, but never explained what exactly he thought ordinary slumming entailed.
Objections
There were also objections to this new trend, such as the argument that one never got a good picture of poverty in this way, or that it was a privilege of the rich and this precisely reflected the contradictions. Moreover, there was not just one group of poor people, but a great diversity. Some workers had seasonal occupations and lived half the year in better neighborhoods or in better housing and with more access to healthy food. Still others were completely unemployed due to a disability and could not sink lower in terms of living standards. The slummers themselves almost never called what they did slumming, because it had too negative and elitist connotation.
James Hinton was an example of a social philosopher who contributed through his promotion of altruism. He believed it was essential that women should enjoy sexuality and wrote extensively about sexual freedom in which he showed quite progressive views on women’s rights.
The work of Octavia Hill
Another elite figure who worked for the interests of the poor was Octavia Hill. She saw that the tenancy system in London was not good. The workers lived close together and the owner of the buildings did little or no maintenance. Hill became concerned about the fate of these people after visiting a poor neighborhood at a young age. She took on the role of tenant after a gift from a friend that served as start-up capital. She repaired homes and had personal contact with her tenants. Relations were bad in the beginning and people were very suspicious, but slowly this improved into a warm relationship. She also did not care about the policy of housing associations that were against multiple families in one room. This was incompatible with the desire of morality. However, the seriously needy could not pay for a room separately, this was a fact. For that reason she allowed several families to live in a single room. Not for a profit motive, but out of compassion. Perhaps it was an advantage that she was a woman and this contributed to better social contact.
Good intentions
With the little profit that Hill made from renting out rooms, she was able to further expand her projects. She made an average profit of around 5%, while preventing rents from becoming excessively high as in some other areas of London. Occasionally she had to accept that partial improvements were not possible because she could not obtain proof of ownership of certain plots of land. She wanted it to be possible for buildings to be expropriated for a fee if this was for public benefit. A committee should be set up for this. However, the realization of this plan in the Cross-act turned out to be a major disappointment, because compensation was poorly arranged.