Feeding the poor at Christmas in Victorian New Cross

Charitable appeals from Victorian New Cross:

'Poor Children's Dinners 

Sir, —The time is drawing very near when it is  customary to give the poor little destitute children a Christmas dinner of roast beef and plum-pudding, also weekly dinners during the succeeding three or four months. May I be permitted to invite the attention of your readers to the fact that this season, though a festive one to many, is very trying to the poor and wretched inmates of the courts and alleys. The distress has been truly severe throughout the year, but has seriously increased up to this time, there being no employment to be obtained. We wish to give a Christmas dinner, if possible, to about fifty poor and aged women. Contributions of money, clothing, provisions, &c., will be gratefully received by, yours respectfully, D. Anderson, Hon. Sec. The Good Shepherd Ragged and Industrial Schools, Pomeroy Street, New Cross-road, S.E' (Globe,  20 December 1869)

'Christmas Breakfast and Dinners to 30,000 poor London children 

The Robin Society, of 390, New Cross road, London, S.E., writes us: "Last Christmastide we arranged breakfasts and dinners in some forty different centres in various parts of London and suburbs for nearly 25,000 poor children. The committee of the Robin Society hope this year to invite 30,000 of all sects and creeds. We are receiving parcels of cuffs and cards from all parts of the country, but are still a long, long way short of the 30,000 pairs we shall require for our little guests. We want funds so as to be in a position to carry through our gigantic undertaking. May we venture to hope that your readers will help us? All amounts will be gratefully acknowledged by our hon. treasurer if addressed to the Robin Society, 390, New Cross road, London' (Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News - Saturday 22 December 1894)

'More than 3,000 poor children were entertained yesterday at breakfast in connection with the Robin Society, in John Addey’s schools, Church-street, Deptford. It required the assistance of 200 ladies and gentlemen to supply the needs of all the hungry children (St James's Gazette, 26 December 1888)

Thank God people no longer have to rely on food banks to eat.

Leaving Lewisham

The latest estate agents puff-piece for New Cross has an interesting typo. According to 'New Cross: Bohemian city living with a definite buzz' at net-lettings.co.uk (published 29 October 2013): 'New Cross is becoming an increasingly popular place to leave, particularly with younger, more artistic types'.

A new release of data from the 2011 Census suggests though that the borough of Lewisham really is a place to leave - at least during the working day. 'The Workday Population of England and Wales' compares the difference between the resident population and workday populations in different parts of the country. Obviously many people work in an area different to the one they live in, but the pattern varies. Some areas have many more people travelling into them for work than leaving them, for others its the opposite.

One of the striking findings is that Lewisham has the highest percentage loss in the country between the resident population and the workday population. In 2011, 206,000 adults aged 16-74 lived in Lewisham. But in working hours on a working day, the number within the borough fell by 28% to 149,000. This means that many more people living in Lewisham have to travel out of borough for work than travel into Lewisham for their jobs. By comparison - at the most extreme - only 6,000 adults aged 16-74 were living in the City of London but 314,000 people worked there.

Does it matter? Well it does reflect the fact that jobs are unevenly distributed across London and across the country. And that also presumably means that people in Lewisham are more likely to have a longer journey into work than people in some areas. Factor into that the high levels of deprivation in some parts of Lewisham, high transport costs, and relatively poor transport links in some areas (no tube at least) and you get many people in low paid jobs extending their working days with long journeys on buses. But if you get the bus very early in the morning you probably already know that.

Child Poverty in Lewisham

Clare's Diary has done a good job in using data from the Government and the End Child Poverty campaign's data to show levels of child poverty in different parts of Lewisham and Greenwich. Nationally, 20% of children are estimated to live in poverty, for Lewisham as a whole the figure is 24%. But in some areas it is much higher- in Evelyn ward (Deptford) the rate is 37%, followed by 30% in New Cross, Bellingham and Downham. The lowest rates are in Lee Green (14%) and Crofton Park (15%), but even here more than 400 children per ward are in poverty.

Of course these figures are just estimates based on the official definition of child poverty as the percentage of children living in households earning below 60% of median income before housing costs. This definition sounds rather abstract, what living in this category means for many families in practice is children skipping meals, going without new clothes when they need them (such as new shoes or warm winter coats) or missing out on experiences that others take for granted (such as school trips or holidays).

Child poverty by London borough, source: End Child Poverty, Child Poverty Map of the UK, February 2013

Another dimension of poverty not captured in this definition is overcrowded housing. A recent report No space at home: overcrowding in London  (4in10 Campaign, 2012) found that: 'Overcrowding is on the rise again among London’s children. One in four or 391,000 children are now estimated to be growing up in an overcrowded home – an 18 per cent increase since 2008... Overcrowding is growing because of the chronic shortage of genuinely affordable family-sized social housing. For a generation, governments of all political parties have failed to provide the investment needed to build social housing in the numbers required, and the Right-to-Buy has resulted in more than a third of the Capital’s council housing moving into the private sector. London’s children are suffering the consequences of that social policy failure'.

A 2011 London Assembly report showed that in Lewisham there were more than 4,000 households on the housing waiting list needing at least three bedrooms. The report, Crowded houses: Overcrowding in London's social rented housing recommended building more large family homes. Of course, Councils alone can't build these homes without more Government funding... and that is not forthcoming!

Again, behind these figures are real children sharing beds with their siblings, teenage girls sharing bedrooms with their brothers, nights of disturbed sleep and tired days at school.

With every cut in benefits and wages, with every rent increase, with every housing development approved without enough genuinely affordable housing, the situation for these children is getting worse.

History Corner: Distress in Deptford 1867

'Distress in Greenwich and Deptford

On Tuesday evening a deputation of artisans from the Greenwich and Deptford districts waited upon the General Committee of the London Working Men's Association in reference to the great distress prevailing amongst the many hundreds of unemployed workmen connected with the shipbuilding trades in the above districts. The deputation represented ironworkers, shipwrights, boilermakers, engineers, platers etc. After hearing the statements of the deputation the following resolution was agreed to:

"That the committee at once open communication with gentlemen in the City of London with a view of getting up a meeting at the London Tavern for the purpose or raising funds to alleviate the great distress now existing amongst the shipbuilding artisans and labourers unemployed in the east and south-eastern districts. That the committee make applications to various clergymen and Dissenting ministers to preach sermons in their churches and chapels in aid of the above object"' (South London Press, 25 May 1867).

The London Working Men's Association (LWMA) had been founded not long before by George Potter, the editor of the trade union paper The Bee-Hive (not to be confused with a previous LWMA from the 1830s and 1840s). Potter went on the be one of the first presidents of the Trades Union Congress in 1871.

Earlier in January 1867, the same period of poverty and unemployment prompted bread riots in Deptford.

Lewisham Fuel Poverty Protest Report

I posted earlier this week on the issue of fuel poverty, noting that around 100 people die each year in the borough of Lewisham from cold-related causes. The latest available Government figures, as discussed in Parliament in November 2011, show that in 2008 an estimated 83,000 households in South East London were unable to afford to keep themselves warm in cold periods. With rising fuel prices and decreasing incomes, the position has no doubt got worse since then.

On Friday evening a protest took place at Lewisham Town Hall in Catford as part of a Fuel Poverty Action weekend of action.



'Bring down the Bills! Energy for our needs! Not corporate greed'
Banner at Lewisham Town Hall

They report: '30-40 activists and residents from Lewisham occupied and warmed-up inside Lewisham Town Hall. They staged a peoples’ forum inside, where people shared their experiences of unaffordable energy bills and expressed their anger at the profiteering energy companies and complicit government. People discussed the many examples of community controlled renewable energy projects across the country and how we might transition Lewisham and, more broadly, the UK, to a democratic energy system that works for people’s needs, not for corporate greed. After the peoples’ forum, people moved outside and got even more toasty around a bonfire of burning energy bills'.

See also report at East London Lines.

 

For information on support available from Lewisham Council see here.

Fuel Poverty in Lewisham

It is a shocking fact that in Lewisham each Winter around 100 people die as a result of the cold. Many if not most of these deaths are preventable, with a signfiicant factor being fuel poverty. An increasing number of people simply cannot afford to keep themselves warm, with a direct impact on their health and well-being. According to the government-commissioned Hills Poverty Review,  at least 2,700 people will die this winter in Britain as a direct result of being ‘fuel poor’.

Tomorrow evening (6 pm, Friday January 27th) there will be a protest at Lewisham Town Hall in Catford as part of the Fuel Poverty Action Winter Warm-Up Weekend 'to demand democratically controlled and accountable energy, decent fuel-efficient housing, and an end to deaths caused by fuel poverty'.  Community Action Lewisham say: 'Poverty, poor housing, no insulation, social isolation, debts...all these conditions affect our ability to pay the bills. None of them are accidental. With six energy companies controlling 99% of our energy supply in the UK, giving us the 'choice' of over 400 different tariffs, whilst hitting us with price hikes of over 15% last year, it's clear we have no power to decide where our energy is sourced and how much it costs. This has to change. Access to warmth, decent housing, and health should be rights not a privilege. At the moment, government and energy companies are preserving the market over peoples' needs and our environment'.

The event will include 'a Peoples' Forum, a burning of bills to keep warm, and a sharing of tea and information on how to bring down the cost of heating. Fire Eaters are also expected' (facebook event details here)

Lewisham report 

A report published by Lewisham public health in 2010 as part of the local Joint Strategic Needs Assessment explores the local extent 'of seasonal excess deaths, which relate to the difference between the number of deaths during the four winter months (December to March) and the average number of deaths during the preceding autumn and summer (April - November).  These deaths are of those people who would not have been expected to die anyway due to illness or old age in the next few weeks or months. Many of these deaths are amongst older people, especially women, and those with underlying health problems. People living with underlying heart, circulatory or lung disease are at the highest risk...'

'Each one degree Celsius decrease in average winter temperature results in 8,000 additional winter deaths in England... However, these deaths are preventable; some countries with more extreme weather conditions than the UK experience fewer winter-related deaths. For example, Finland has 45% fewer winter deaths than the UK... In Lewisham there was an average of 105 excess winter deaths per year between August 2004 and July 2007. This equates to an excess winter mortality index (EWMI) of 18.9 for Lewisham (i.e. there was an 18.9% increase in deaths during the winter months'.

The report highlights that fuel poverty is a significant factor - 'Fuel poverty is when a household needs to spend more than 10% of its income on total fuel use to heat its home to an adequate standard of warmth. Fuel poverty frequently affects people from vulnerable groups that already experience a disproportionately higher level of general poverty and deprivation. These groups include older people, households containing children (including lone parents), households with large adult populations, vulnerable groups (including disabled people), and single person households.In Lewisham in 2007, an estimated 5.5% of households were at risk of fuel poverty. By ward, this varies from 4.9% in Blackheath to 6.3% in Catford South'.

Between 2003 and 2007, fuel poverty in England rose from 5.9% to 13.2 % of households, representing an increase from 1.2 million to 2.8 million households. The increase in fuel poverty since 2004 can be largely attributed to increases in fuel prices. The overall effect of fuel price rises since 2004 has far outweighed the impact of increasing incomes and energy efficiency'.

(Source: Lewisham JSNA: Seasonal Excess Deaths, Lewisham PCT, 2010)

(update 29.1.2012: see report and pictures of Lewisham protest: http://transpont.blogspot.com/2012/01/lewisham-fuel-poverty-protest-report.html)