Court Dwellings

The houses only had very small windows and most of these were covered with dirty bits of cloth or wood. The ones that had panes of glass in them were so filthy that nobody could possibly have seen through them.

Court - similar to those off Needless Alley

Not all the houses had doors to them and so John and Will could almost see straight into the rooms - except it was impossible to see anything inside as they were so dark.

Scene similar to the one of Needless Alley.

In front of some of the houses were stone steps leading down to a door below ground level. These doorways looked even dirtier than the ones at ground level. John Knight just had time to notice that there were lots of dirty, half-clothed children playing in the courtyard. They played amongst the rubbish, so that it was difficult to decide which was rubbish and which was a raggedly dressed child.

Then Mr. Jones arrived outside a house in the far corner of the courtyard. He went down the steps and pushed open the wooden door. John and Will followed him down.

"This is it," Mr. Jones said. "You're very lucky to have found a place, you know. People often sleep in the streets for days before they get settled."

John and Will were looking around the room in amazement. It was difficult to believe what they saw. To start with it had taken them a while to see anything at all as it was so dark. The room was about 10 feet by 12 feet (3m by 4m). There was a doorway in the far corner into another room of about the same size. There was a fireplace in the other corner, and the only other thing in the room was rubbish.The floors of both rooms were absolutely covered in rubbish of every description. The walls of the rooms were a mixture of different colours, but they were filthy too. John was particularly worried when he touched one wall by accident and found that it was very wet.

They then heard a noise above them and, looking up, found that they could see into the room above, where somebody was walking. The ceiling of their room simply consisted of two wooden beams, on top of which were floorboards. There were many gaps in these floorboards, and in one corner was quite a large hole - Will could see somebody's leg through the hole.

Alley in centre of Birmingham

John and Will were suddenly startled by Mr. Jones's voice. They had forgotten all about him.

"Well," he was saying, "what do you think of it, eh ? It's a cosy little place, isn't it ?"

Will turned to his father. "We're not going to live here, are we Dad ? The chickens and pigs had a better place than this in Sheldon."

Mr. Jones suddenly turned to Will, and this time he did not sound so friendly.

"You keep your comments to yourself, you cheeky young devil. Better people than you would be glad of this place."

Then turning back to John Knight, he said "Well, make up your mind. I've got better things to do with my time. I can't hang about here all day. It's 1s 3d (6 pence) a week in advance. Take it or leave it !"

House interior - similar to the Knight's home.

Will couldn't believe his ears when he heard his father say he would take it. He didn't want to think what his mother would say when she saw it.

John Knight handed over the money and Mr. Jones said that he would be round every week to collect the rent, and that they must have it ready or they would be thrown out. After he had left, John turned to Will, and trying to sound cheerful said "Let's go and get the rest of the family. We've got a lot to do to tidy up this place."

A few minutes later Mrs. Knight saw the place for the first time. Her reaction was what John had expected. She burst into tears. John told the boys to go and get all their possessions from the cart, but to leave them in the yard outside because they would have to clean the rooms before bringing them in.

Whilst Will and Tom did that, John tried to console his wife, telling her that it would be all right as soon as they had cleaned it up, and put their own things in, and that anyway they would soon get used to it. Mary Knight said that she did not want to live like a pig and that she wanted to go back to Sheldon.

Just then Will came running down into the room. He said that they had better get the furniture inside quickly as all the children in the court were playing with it. He had just caught a couple of young girls trying to steal a chair, but had managed to stop them.

For the next three hours every member of the family worked as hard as they had ever done. They first had to clean all the rubbish from their two rooms. Mary Knight brushed the floors whilst Will and Tom carried all the filth upstairs into the courtyard. They had to throw it on the ground with all the rest, as there was nowhere else to put it. While they were doing this their father stood guarding the furniture. Eventually they were able to take their belongings down into their rooms, although it would be a long time before they called it home.

The Knights did eventually get used to their new home, although they never really liked the place and they always longed for their cottage in Sheldon. They had thought that the two rooms were bad when they had first seen them, but it was only after they had lived there for some time that they began to realise how very bad their conditions really were.

To start with they had great trouble obtaining water. There was a well in the court and they used that at first. The water was fairly dirty and did not taste very good, but they thought it was all right to drink. However, on only the second day at Needless Alley Sarah became very ill, vomiting badly. As she was so young Mary Knight became very worried and asked a neighbour if she knew what might be wrong.

"You haven't been drinking the water, have you, dear ? It's fouled from the privy, you know. It drains down into the well."

Queuing for Water.

Mary Knight was not sure what she meant at first, and later that evening she told John what the woman had said. John thought about it for a while and then said that they must never drink water from that well again, for the cess pit underneath the privy must be overflowing into the well. John said that when they wanted water from now on the boys would have to go to the nearest pump in New Street, several hundred yards away.

The trouble with this pump was that the water was only turned on for two hours each day (between ten in the morning and twelve noon) and it was not turned on at all between Friday and Monday. Because of this great queues of people always formed at the pump, and it was not unknown for scuffles and fights to break out just before noon, as people started to push each other to get water before the pump was turned off. Young Tom got the job and every day he would carry his bucket down to the pump in plenty of time to get water - it was hard work carrying water.

Waterman at work

Wealthy people employed Watermen to bring them clean-tasting water from one of the pumps in the town. These men would work for anyone who could pay and spent their whole day carrying large wooden buckets of water.As soon as the Knights knew about the polluted water in their courtyard they stopped drinking it. Baby Sarah soon got better.Some people did not believe that impure water caused diseases like cholera and typhoid, and when scientists started to tell them the truth sarcastic cartoons appeared in local papers showing the invisible disease bugs as almost human.

Bugs in Water Droplet

Slowly some people started to realise that three diseases really could come from polluted water : cholera, typhoid and diphtheria.It was not until the great cholera outbreak of 1854 in London, which was traced to a polluted water pump in Broad Street, that conclusive proof was accepted that so many deaths could be caused by using dirty water.

Map showing the Broad Street cholera outbreak in London

The map clearly shows where the polluted pump was situated from the distribution of deaths and illness.

River Rea showing her three children named - Cholera, Typhoid & Diphtheria -to the City of Birmingham

This picture is based on a famous print which showed the River Thames showing her 'babies' to the City of London.

After these discoveries some satirical poetry started to appear in various news journals and most large towns realised that something had to be done about cleaning up the water supplies.