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Philip Spiess
And now for something different, if unedifying: Following up on Mr. Lounds' comments on the speed of technological change in our lifetimes, I plan to reverse that speed and remark that some things barely or rarely change.
Dredging up from the depths of my privy knowledge to some knowledge of privies, I wish to report on the origin of the term "slums," as denoting a certain level of housing for the poor. [Was it Christ or Abe Lincoln who said, "The poor are always with us"? Either way, their housing also is usually always with us.] The word slum, first used in Great Britain in the 1820s, has its origin in the old English provincial word "slump," meaning "wet mire." It comes from the word "slam," Low German, Danish, and Swedish for "mire." Its unhallowed use in English in the early years of the 19th Century is simple, if less than eloquent, as follows:
Industry was spreading in the Midlands towns of England over their lower-lying areas, as these were adjacent to the recently built canals, which the newly-developing large-scale industries used to transport needed materals in to their "dark Satanic mills" (to quote William Blake) and to transport the mills' manufactured goods out to the burgeoning markets. Moreover, these low-lying areas were vacant when the industrialists first appeared on the scene, as such land often presented difficult drainage problems (hence "mire"). As a consequence, as town populations rapidly grew with the new industrial jobs available, the ever-industrious industrialists generally built their new streets of working-class houses on such available land (undesirable for any other purpose). Such housing, built cheaply over wet, marshy, and somewhat unstable earth, resulted in sanitary conditions that soon became appalling. (Many houses were built over cess-pits -- yes, the holes in this soggy ground that received the human excrement from makeshift toilets above -- and too often three to five such toilets served whole tenements and courtyards of people.) The slums were born, for the term, as meaning "wet mire," quite adequately describes the dreadful state of the streets and courtyards of the housing on these undrained sites. Such conditions led to the rapid deterioration of the jerry-built housing which the industrialists erected on such soggy land, and these conditions continued in the industrial towns of the Midlands well into the early years of the 20th Century.
Might I add that the industrial barons themselves did not build their houses near the factory works that were making them money and polluting the air, but established their residences on the "heights" above, and walked downhill to their mills each day? Study any American town of the period as well, and you will find that the plutocrats' houses (such as remain) are invariably on the hillsides here, too (cf., Mount Auburn, Clifton, Price Hill, Walnut Hills, Tusculum Heights, etc.) -- where, need I say, they also had fresher air and better views.
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Pelican, Asilomar Beach, CA
Pigeons, Rajasthan, India
Egret, Eisenberg Crane Reserve
Hummingbird, over my back deck, Kensington CA
Vultures on an antelope, Tanzania
