Posted with permission of the transcriber, Ann Selchick. Geo SICKNESS & POVERTY IN Nineteenth Century Whitehaven. # 59. VAGRANTS' LODGING HOUSES. ______ There are 24 houses of this class which have in the whole 68 rooms and 120 beds. There are 7 beds in one room, and 3 and 4 in the others; 117 are very dirty, and there are three which can be described as clean. These lodging houses are in most towns the worst form of residence to be found in the district; but in Whitehaven it is not so, here they can only take rank with the better conditioned room tenements. They are, however, crowded, dirty, and ill ventilated; 12 cases of fever were taken to the fever house in three months from one lodging house in Harmless-hill. Fever is common in all of them. These house are not under local inspection or control; vagrants and improper characters resort to them; the beds are let off at 3d per night to each person, or 6d per bed; but I have seen 7 persons in one bed, and 9 beds in one room; men, women and children, frequently strangers to each other, are crowded into the same room, and there is not the slightest attempt at privacy or division betwixt the beds; the persons in one may lay their hands upon those in the bed adjoining, with ease. ____________________ SCAVENGING AND CLEANSING. The Trustees have power to scavenge, pave, sewer and cleanse the streets, and to levy rates to defray the expense of such works. They employ a surveyor of roads and streets, four scavengers, and four horses and carts, besides masons and laborers employed on the harbour and in paving and repairing streets. In addition to the scavengers carts there two night soil carts belonging to the Trustees, and one belonging to a private individual. The expenditure in 1848 on the town department, as distinguished from the harbour department, for lighting, police, paving, and cleansing amounted to £2261-10s-11d; but £670 of this had been refunded from the harbour funds. ____________________