---
title: "Down and Out in Paris and London"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 37 of 38
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/37/
cite: "George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, section 37. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/37/"
---

# Down and Out in Paris and London

*George Orwell*

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> Title: Down and Out in Paris and London
Date of first publication: 1933
Author: George Orwell (1903-1950)
Date first posted: Mar. 14, 2018
Date last updated: Mar. 14, 2018
Faded Page eBook #20180314

> This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Howard Ross
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

> GEORGE ORWELL

> _Down and Out_
    _in Paris and London_

> O scathful harm, condicion of poverte!
       CHAUCER

> PENGUIN BOOKS

> First published by Victor Gollancz 1933

> Copyright 1933 by Eric Blair

> [The end of _Down and Out in Paris and London_ by George Orwell]

## 37. Chapter XXXVII

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/37/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/37/#p-N

[¶0] A word about the sleeping accommodation open to a homeless person in
London. At present it is impossible to get a _bed_ in any non-charitable
institution in London for less than sevenpence a night. If you cannot
afford sevenpence for a bed, you must put up with one of the following
substitutes:

[¶1] 1. The Embankment. Here is the account that Paddy gave me of sleeping on
the Embankment:

[¶2] 'De whole t'ing wid de Embankment is gettin' to sleep early. You got to
be on your bench by eight o'clock, because dere ain't too many benches
and sometimes dey're all taken. And you got to try to get to sleep at
once. 'Tis too cold to sleep much after twelve o'clock, an' de police
turns you off at four in de mornin'. It ain't easy to sleep, dough, wid
dem bloody trams flyin' past your head all de time, an' dem skysigns
across de river flickin' on an' off in your eyes. De cold's cruel. Dem
as sleeps dere generally wraps demselves up in newspaper, but it don't
do much good. You'd be bloody lucky if you got t'ree hours' sleep.'

[¶3] I have slept on the Embankment and found that it corresponded to Paddy's
description. It is, however, much better than not sleeping at all, which
is the alternative if you spend the night in the streets, elsewhere than
on the Embankment. According to the law in London, you may sit down for
the night, but the police must move you on if they see you asleep; the
Embankment and one or two odd corners (there is one behind the Lyceum
Theatre) are special exceptions. This law is evidently a piece of wilful
offensiveness. Its object, so it is said, is to prevent people from
dying of exposure; but clearly if a man has no home and is going to die
of exposure, die he will, asleep or awake. In Paris there is no such
law. There, people sleep by the score under the Seine bridges, and in
doorways, and on benches in the squares, and round the ventilating
shafts of the Metro, and even inside the Metro stations. It does no
apparent harm. No one will spend a night in the street if he can
possibly help it, and if he is going to stay out of doors he might as
well be allowed to sleep, if he can.

[¶4] 2. The Twopenny Hangover. This comes a little higher than the
Embankment. At the Twopenny Hangover, the lodgers sit in a row on a
bench; there is a rope in front of them, and they lean on this as though
leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet, cuts the rope
at five in the morning. I have never been there myself, but Bozo had
been there often. I asked him whether anyone could possibly sleep in
such an attitude, and he said that it was more comfortable than it
sounded—at any rate, better than the bare floor. There are similar
shelters in Paris, but the charge there is only twenty-five centimes (a
halfpenny) instead of twopence.

[¶5] 3. The Coffin, at fourpence a night. At the Coffin you sleep in a wooden
box, with a tarpaulin for covering. It is cold, and the worst thing
about it are the bugs, which, being enclosed in a box, you cannot
escape.

[¶6] Above this come the common lodging-houses, with charges varying between
sevenpence and one and a penny a night. The best are the Rowton Houses,
where the charge is a shilling, for which you get a cubicle to yourself,
and the use of excellent bathrooms. You can also pay half a crown for a
'special', which is practically hotel accommodation. The Rowton Houses
are splendid buildings, and the only objection to them is the strict
discipline, with rules against cooking, card-playing, etc. Perhaps the
best advertisement for the Rowton Houses is the fact that they are
always full to overflowing. The Bruce Houses, at one and a penny, are
also excellent.

[¶7] Next best, in point of cleanliness, are the Salvation Army hostels, at
sevenpence or eightpence. They vary (I have been in one or two that were
as dirty as ordinary common lodging-houses), but most of them are clean,
and they have good bathrooms; you have to pay extra for a bath, however.
You can get a cubicle for a shilling. In the eightpenny dormitories the
beds are comfortable, but there are so many of them (as a rule at least
forty to a room), and so close together, that it is impossible to get a
quiet night. The numerous restrictions stink of prison and charity. The
Salvation Army hostels would only appeal to people who put cleanliness
before anything else.

[¶8] Beyond this there are the ordinary common lodging-houses. Whether you
pay sevenpence or a shilling, they are all stuffy and noisy, and the
beds are uniformly dirty and uncomfortable. What redeems them are their
_laissez-faire_ atmosphere and the warm home-like kitchens where one can
lounge at all hours of the day or night. They are squalid dens, but some
kind of social life is possible in them. The women's lodging-houses are
said to be generally worse than the men's, and there are very few houses
with accommodation for married couples. In fact, it is nothing out of
the common for a homeless man to sleep in one lodging-house and his wife
in another.

[¶9] At this moment at least fifteen thousand people in London are living in
common lodging-houses. For an unattached man earning two pounds a week,
or less, a lodging-house is a great convenience. He could hardly get a
furnished room so cheaply, and the lodging-house gives him free firing,
a bathroom of sorts, and plenty of society. As for the dirt, it is a
minor evil. The really bad fault of lodging-houses is that they are
places in which one pays to sleep, and in which sound sleep is
impossible. All one gets for one's money is a bed measuring five feet
six by two feet six, with a hard convex mattress and a pillow like a
block of wood, covered by one cotton counterpane and two grey, stinking
sheets. In winter there are blankets, but never enough. And this bed is
in a room where there are never less than five, and sometimes fifty or
sixty beds, a yard or two apart. Of course, no one can sleep soundly in
such circumstances. The only other places where people are herded like
this are barracks and hospitals. In the public wards of a hospital no
one even hopes to sleep well. In barracks the soldiers are crowded, but
they have good beds, and they are healthy; in a common lodging-house
nearly all the lodgers have chronic coughs, and a large number have
bladder diseases which make them get up at all hours of the night. The
result is a perpetual racket, making sleep impossible. So far as my
observation goes, no one in a lodging-house sleeps more than five hours
a night—a damnable swindle when one has paid sevenpence or more.

[¶10] Here legislation could accomplish something. At present there is all
manner of legislation by the LCC about lodging-houses, but it is not
done in the interests of the lodgers. The LCC only exert themselves to
forbid drinking, gambling, fighting, etc. etc. There is no law to say
that the beds in a lodging-house must be comfortable. This would be
quite an easy thing to enforce—much easier, for instance, than
restrictions upon gambling. The lodging-house keepers should be
compelled to provide adequate bedclothes and better mattresses, and
above all to divide their dormitories into cubicles. It does not matter
how small a cubicle is, the important thing is that a man should be
alone when he sleeps. These few changes, strictly enforced, would make
an enormous difference. It is not impossible to make a lodging-house
reasonably comfortable at the usual rates of payment. In the Croydon
municipal lodging-house, where the charge is only ninepence, there are
cubicles, good beds, chairs (a very rare luxury in lodging-houses), and
kitchens above ground instead of in a cellar. There is no reason why
every ninepenny lodging-house should not come up to this standard.

[¶11] Of course, the owners of lodging-houses would be opposed _en bloc_ to
any improvement, for their present business is an immensely profitable
one. The average house takes five or ten pounds a night, with no bad
debts (credit being strictly forbidden), and except for rent the
expenses are small. Any improvement would mean less crowding, and hence
less profit. Still, the excellent municipal lodging-house at Croydon
shows how well one _can_ be served for ninepence. A few well-directed
laws could make these conditions general. If the authorities are going
to concern themselves with lodging-houses at all, they ought to start by
making them more comfortable, not by silly restrictions that would never
be tolerated in a hotel.