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Rookeriesand ModelDwellin$s Dnglish Housing Reform and the Moralities of PrivaúeSpace Robi¡ Evang ¡zs no accident that Henry Robens' early and influential family dwellings (1847-50) was planted at the irf London's most disr,eputable rookery, in Streatham S¡. Gile's; nor that forty years later London's last re' rookery, tbe Jago, was lorn down to make way for the model hoosing estate by the LCC, the Boundary Road rhcmc (1889-1900). Perhaps ¡he desire to see purity triumpb err iniquity was enough to explain théir vivid coniunction but ir i¡undiced remark from the architm Robert Kerr, trying ineÊ iÊcrircty ro muscle in on tenemenl constructioi'r, suggests that: üc connection between rookêry and model was more than a E:ttcr of siting. 'Philantbropists' he said 'accept the worst oscs as the type on which to base their operations'.r It was an observation and furnishes this anicle with its theme ¡hich is that 20th cenrury housing is in some measure the relic I ofrn cntirely successful campaign to liquidate the rookery den t rc for model
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Tbc contagion of
inmorality
.
kitchen) was characteristically ponrayed as the scene of daylight dissipation, drunkennness and criminal conspiracy;
'
the dormitory as a nest ofsexual promiscuity. Brought together ¡ they represented the ultimately malig¡ power of bad dwellings. \ It was a picnrre not ofan acn¡al place but ofa latent coqdition; a potent fearful and lurid presentinent revealing the intimate
bond between physical and moral degradation. . These two words, physical and moral, were as good as welded together in the literature of improvement. The,Health of Towns C.ommittee reponed in 1840 that''in addhion to the .
unhealthy surroundings on the moral æ well as the physical condition of the poor confirmed ¡hat the lowest morality was renlenrless social always to be found in the wont constiruted dwellings and
thc middle years of the nineteenth cenrury the crowded
of thè poor was subiected to
Ramblíngs c:¡n more easily be understood from this engraving, r with its inhabited sewer, crowded day room and pagked anic )1 dormitories, than fiom ¡he ten itself. This was the spectre behind pbilanthropy; these ûree types ofinterior stood for certain specifìc evils. The cellar flooded witü eflluent was regard-'î, ed as the source ofz¡rmotic diseases; the day room (or com¡non
ised era ofdomesric legislation'.? But when
con
audacious neigírbourhoods,6 that'fìlthy habits oflife were never fir from
to be found an¡vhere in Bethnal' . ailment, other ¡ookeries in London alone, where thc dangerous classes c¡on of a common lodqinq house, 1847, the only ran¡@ry Rambtings
illustrarion
were to bc found amongst the chronically pogr and dispossess' cd, crammed into a congestèd, dilapidated fabric and 'sur'
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