Patterns of Consumption: Shelter

Abstract

After bodily sustenance the next priority for all classes was accommodation, and here again the poor suffered for their poverty. Just before the First World War a middle-class, well-to-do man, earning £2000 a year, might pay £250 in rent, rates and taxes, one-eighth of his income. The comfortably off gentleman on £500 a year might pay £85, one-sixth of his income. The working man on 24s a week might pay 8s on rent and rates, one-third of his income.

To young people … I would strongly recommend a house some little way out of London. Rents are less; smut and blacks are conspicuous by their absence; a small garden, or even a tiny conservatory, are not an impossibility; and if ‘Edwin’ has to pay for his season-ticket, that is nothing in comparison with his being able to sleep in fresh air, to have a game of tennis in summer, or a friendly evening of music, chess or games in the winter, without expense … Mrs J. E. Panton, From Kitchen to Garret (1888).

There was nothing in this miserable room save a tiny saucepan on an empty stove. There was no fire, no warmth or light, no furniture. A Covent Garden flower-seller’s home c. 1900, in O. C. Malvery, The Soul Market, 6th edn (n.d.).