Essay No.1 Out Damned Spot

On public health, home and social responsibility, using found material from the nineteenth century to the present day

'Poor little baby sentinel,' 1887. Courtesy of the British Library

Dear friends,

Last year I took a course in the lyric essay. I hoped to learn about the essay form and become more open to experimental writing. Since then I’ve been working on a series of collage essays, sewing together fragments of found material — words I have found in archives, novels, and newspapers — and blending them with some of my own. The idea is that by placing different pieces of writing next to each other, their connections, continuities and contradictions become visible.

In his book The Made Up Self: Impersonation in the Personal Essay, Carl Klaus writes that the, “serial arrangement,” of texts, “results in a composition the whole of which can only be held entirely in the mind by a special act of will.” The collage essay invites us to re-read and circle back; to reflect and draw our own conclusions. On first reading at least, the collage provides more questions than answers. An antidote to the shouty dogmas of social media, the collage essay provides a space for quiet contemplation — empowering the reader to play an active role in its meaning.

This year I plan to share some of my own experiments with the collage form. In this newsletter you’ll find my first effort, exploring public health, home and social responsibility. It’s an essay in eighteen short fragments, taking inspiration from a line of Shakespeare, and using sources from the nineteenth century to the present day. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thank you so much for reading.

Out, damned spot; out, I say. One, two,—why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

***

There is a spot on the bathroom ceiling. A grey smudge. I watch it from the tub day-by-day, in time lapse. It gets darker, it spreads. Creeping when I’m not looking, like a game of Grandmother’s footsteps. Before long it’s an inch across. Soon it will be bigger. Unchecked it will take over the whole ceiling, pressing down on me like a black cloud.

***

Bermondsey 1849. Here, as usual, we heard stories that made one’s blood curdle, of the cruelty of those from whom they rented the sties they called dwellings. They had begged for pure water to be laid on, and the rain to be shut out; and the answer for 18 years had been that the lease was just out. This, indeed, seems to us to be the great evil. Out of these wretches’ health, comfort, and even lives, small capitalists reap a petty independence; and until the poor are rescued from the fangs of these mercenary men, there is but little hope either for their physical or moral welfare.

***

Case study one, 2023. A severe maladministration case after damp and mould issues were left for over 10 years. The landlord identified works that needed doing but failed to carry them out, having a detrimental impact on the resident and her son’s health. In our investigation it was clear there were serious problems with damp and mould at the property, as well as related issues with slugs for a substantial period of time which were reported as an infestation on a number of occasions, and that required repairs were not carried out. The landlord also referred to the issues being due to “lifestyle choices.”

***

The mark can be scrubbed out but, lacking proper treatment, it will reappear somewhere else. The wall, the window frame, the skirting board. Mould is a symptom, a manifestation of rot, a kind of gangrene in the fabric of the house.

***

When Charles Booth drew his poverty maps at the end of the nineteenth century, the dwellings with the poorest residents were coloured black. In Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, dark concentrations can be seen radiating out. These black buildings were described as the ‘lowest class’ and later their inhabitants tarnished with the designation ‘vicious, semi-criminal’. The physical manifestation of poverty excited moral panic. The Old Nichol was flattened and 5,000 people displaced. New buildings sprung up in their place, organised around a central, elevated garden where bands played in the summertime. A few years later social researcher George Duckworth found that: The area is better because the old class has left and a new more respectable one has come in. But the streets immediately east of it are worse than they used to be, by the immigration of the worst characters. The causes of poverty were not addressed and these people abandoned to suffering.

***

London 1849. No man of feeling or reflection can look abroad without being shocked and startled by the sight of enormous wealth and unbounded luxury, placed in direct juxtaposition with the lowest extremes of indigence and privation. Is this contrast a necessary result of the unalterable laws of nature, or simply the sure indication of an effete social system!

***

London 2019. Some economists say an entirely equal society might be undesirable, arguing that a wholly homogenous world would lack diversity and dynamism… The prevailing logic of the past four decades has been that stronger economic growth serves as the greatest antidote to inequality. Increasing the size of the pie means everyone has a bigger slice. Peter Mandelson, the Labour peer, is famously quoted as saying in the 1990s that he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes” for this reason. Attitudes towards tackling inequality may depend on your view of work and how it is valued. Does hard work deserve higher pay? Is banking more valuable than nursing?

***

Sir - I have enclosed half-a-crown for the case of distress mentioned in The Morning Chronicle of the 23 October 1849. I intend it for the old man whom your reporter found with six or seven children, and making velvet with cotton back. I am an employer myself in the manufacture of shawls, and do not believe in the necessity of these low priced wages.

***

Bethnal Green 1854. The last winter has been commonly said to be a very hard one, and I have heard many an old lady cry over the price of bread, “God help the poor!” What does a mere penny a loaf matter? I have thought. A slice of bread less in the day perhaps; a little hunger, and a little falling in of cheek. Things not entirely unendurable.

***

Liverpool 2022. Dear Chief Executive. There has been an exponential rise in casework involving damp and mould reaching our service, with 134% more cases for formal investigation and 42% of our severe maladministration decisions involving damp and mould. With the cost of living crisis, I am concerned that more cases will present themselves and it is crucial that landlords have an effective approach in place. This letter aims to complement those you will have received from the Secretary of State and the Regulator, and primarily focuses on approach, complaints and claims.

***

The thing with black mould is, eventually, it makes you sick. Symptoms of living in a mouldy environment include sneezing and a runny nose, eye inflammation, skin rashes, asthma attacks, nausea and headaches. Mould depletes your immune system. It can spread from walls to curtains, to carpets and bedding, cushioned headboards and pillows. The mustiness, the earthiness seems to settle on your chest, heavy and wet like phlegm. Black mould is stealthy, attacking you with every breath, even while you sleep.

***

Case study two, 2023. A severe maladministration case after raw sewage was left to leak from a soil pipe for over six years. This could be smelled on entering the flat often causing the resident to vomit. In the communal areas the waste water pipes had developed 8 inch stalactites. Extreme damp in the flat continually reappeared within one week of cleaning. The resident was diagnosed with an incurable lung disease that medical experts have linked to conditions inside the flat.

***

The Victorian poor were frequently described in the language of disease and infestation. They lived in moral plague-spots; on pest island; they were a nest of rats. Their houses were crumbling, their walls sagging, roofs rotting, being eaten alive by damp in buildings that never dried out. But it was men who were casting the shadows. Men who were pouring water on the house.

***

Bethnal Green 1854. I have seen in the sickly autumn months a ruined household opposite the back premises of a tripe and leather factory, which is a dreadful nuisance to its neighbours; it emits a frightful stench, and lays men, women, and children down upon sick beds right and left. In this room opposite the place, I have seen the father of the family and three children hopelessly ill with typhus fever, and the eldest daughter with malignant small pox, while the mother, the one person able to stir about, sat on a chair in the midst of them all deadened with misery. The place by which this household was being murdered has been several times indicted and fined as a nuisance. Every time this has occurred, the proprietors have paid the fine and gone on as before; they regard such fine-paying as only a small item in their trade expenses.

***

Liverpool 2022. My report highlighted our concerns about the tone of some communications, especially language such as ‘lifestyle choices’ and ‘behaviours’ that infer blame on the resident and places the onus for resolving the issue on them, absolving the landlord of responsibility. This underlying attitude can impede an effective diagnosis of the causes and timely actions that should be taken by the landlord. This reflects some of the evidence heard at the inquest. This call to change language has resonated with many landlords who have taken action. However, I am acutely aware that, given this language has become so widespread and accepted, the sector may still have some way to go before it is eradicated from the vernacular of social housing.

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Bermondsey 1849. The starving state of a large portion of the people, if suffered to remain unremedied many years longer, will eat, like a dry rot, into the very framework of our society, and haply bring down the whole fabric with a crash.

***

Case study three, 2023. After complaining about the damp in their one bedroom flat, the residents face a 30% increase in their rent when the lease expires. The residents are now facing eviction. One of the residents said: I don’t think the landlord thinks of herself as the bad guy. She thinks of it as a business decision, whereas for us it’s actually our home, and we can’t magic up an extra 30%. Who would have thought man had so much blood in him.

Sources:

Macbeth William Shakespeare

Labour and the Poor 1849-50 Henry Mayhew, Alexander Mackey, Shirley Brooks

The Streets of London: The Booth Notebooks (East) 1890s

Letter to landlords from the Housing Ombudsman

Housing Ombudsman Service Spotlight Report (Update)

Equality: Is it rising and can we reverse it? Richard Partington for The Guardian

Modern day case studies are composites of residents’ experiences documented in the national press:

Damp, dirt, decay: is the mould in this east London housing block the UK’s worst? Andrew Kersley for The Observer

Tenants in mouldy London estate face uncertainty as council considers demolition Sammy Gecsoyler for The Guardian

UK renters can’t afford their mouldy, exorbitant homes — now they can’t afford to complain either Elle Hunt for The Guardian

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