Slums and Poverty: A look at inner-Sydney housing from the 1850s to the 1890s

There is a ten by twelve-foot dwelling with little ventilation. It is split into two rooms and houses a family of eight. The stained ceiling is a mere six to seven feet high, and like the other twenty-five such residences in the row, the sanitation was poor, the walls were cracked or crumbling and the floor lay lower than the ground outside. This meant that any refuse that accumulated on the street alongside animal, and even human, excrement, could wash under the entrance door during rainfall, adding to the misery, and often disease-ridden despair of its occupants.

This scene could be conjured in the mind and connected to many European cities of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but this was 1850s Sydney.

This photo, taken in the 1870s, illustrates the poor state of housing in some suburbs in Sydney during the nineteenth century. These residences were situated in Lynches Lane, off Clarence Street. (Image: SLNSW, Mitchell Library).

A health officer of the time was quoted as saying: “I think they (housing conditions in Sydney) are worse than in any part of the world that I have seen–worse than in London.”

By the end of the 1850s, the poverty within certain parts of Sydney in the colony of New South Wales (Australia) had become so acute that a Select Committee, chaired by Henry Parkes (later to become known as the Father of Federation) was set up to investigate the city’s poverty and slum conditions.

The report would eventually be released in 1860, and was titled: Condition Of The Working Classes Of The Metropolis, Report From The Select Committee On The Legislative Assembly, New South Wales.

Sydney had changed rapidly in the decades leading up to the 1860s. A city council was formed in 1842, and from that year to 1851, the population within the city boundaries grew by more than thirty per-cent.

The report from the Select Committee found that unemployment was not just a matter of people’s intemperance and poor management of their money, but an underlying shift in how people saw themselves within society.

Clerks and accountants were also unable to find work within their field, and many men would often not accept job offers of a perceived lower-standing, even if they were offered it.

The discovery of gold in significant quantities during the 1850s increased immigration dramatically, but also drew men and their labour out of the city and onto the diggings as they pursued a quick fortune. The gold rush and exodus of labour played its part in depriving thousands of families of core family foundations: the security of a constant bread-winner, and the protection of a father.

A by-product of this was a dramatic increase in child vagrancy. The report found that the number of vagrant and totally neglected children in Sydney was: “…appalling and almost incredible.”

High rents brought overcrowding, with examples of seventy people found living in one lodging house of six rooms, while 315 Chinese resided in just one building.

These cases were not isolated, and the increasing overcrowding, coupled with shoddy construction, poor sanitation, low income (within certain suburbs) and high rents, increased the number of slum areas in Sydney that were riddled with sickness and disease.

This problem was in stark contrast to a place that was often portrayed as the land of opportunity. This idea was true in many instances, especially in certain parts of Sydney where merchants thrived in trade, and in rural areas where large land owners made their fortunes in agricultural pursuits.

William Stanley Jevons Sydney in 1858: A Social Survey, had a significant impact on how citizens and government officials viewed housing and social conditions in different parts of Sydney. (Image: National Portrait Gallery, London).

Prior to the Select Committee’s report, another study had been completed by an Englishmen named W. S. Jevons. His observations in Sydney in 1858: A Social Survey, would be reprinted in newspapers, highlighting the living conditions of many Sydney-siders to those living on the peripheral of the working harbour.

William Stanley Jevons was born in Liverpool, England in 1835. He arrived in the Colony of New South Wales in 1854 to take up a position as an assayer at the Sydney Mint, where, along with other studies on Australian meteorological patterns and meetings at the Philosophical Society, he gained a reputation as person of high intelligence with a penchant for detail.

In Jevons writings he noted the deplorable living conditions in certain parts of Sydney, with the need for people to be within walking distance of their place of employment a determining factor in where they could live, and how many of these areas evolved into slums.

Many of the jobs that employed residents in slum areas were directly or indirectly linked to the harbour.

Jevons noted that the notorious Durand’s Alley, near the Haymarket, as having the amongst the worst living conditions in 1858, Sydney.

The Rocks and the lower end of Sussex Street, among many others, were also described as deplorable by Jevons. He wrote of the irony of human misery against the idyllic and beautiful drop-back of Sydney Harbour.

“Nowhere have I seen such a retreat for filth and vice as the Rocks of Sydney. Few places could be found more healthily and delightfully situated but nowhere are the country and beauty of nature so painfully contrasted with the misery which lie to the charge of man.”

Out of practicality, Sydney’s industry was also closely situated to the city limits, and Jevons describes the older areas of the suburb of Glebe, and in particular the area between Bay Street and Blackwattle Swamp (Bay), where several slaughter houses operated.

The waters, he said: “bear all the filthy refuse of the slaughter. The foul mud deposited in the channel, giving off a fearful stench…”

Incredibly, this place of industry was also a home for some, with ramshackle cottages built randomly along the shoreline and in the lanes. A journalist from the Herald wrote in early 1851.

“How do they live here…the people cook in dirt–they eat in dirt–and they sleep in it, they are born, bred, they die in dirt; from the cradle to the grave…”.

At this time, the only constraints on buildings in Sydney were contained in the inoperative Buildings Act of 1837, and it would take until the early twentieth century before this heavily polluted, breeding ground of disease, was demolished and re-planned.

It is a common thought that slums are caused when inner-city housing is put under pressure by a rapid increase in population. This was not the case in nineteenth-century Sydney, in the sense that while the population increased, the residences built in the 1860s through to the 1880s were sub-standard to begin with.

Even prior to the 1850s, the shoddy construction of some cottages from the 1830s had already collapsed or had serious structural faults. The lack of housing in a rising population resulted in high rents, so tenants tried to counter the expense by fitting as many people into a cottage as possible.

In places such as the infamous Durand’s Alley where sanitation was non-existent, and the aforementioned over-crowding was rife, deplorable living conditions became the norm.

This image, taken in the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century, illustrates how any accumulated waste could easily wash into the Sydney Harbour and pollute the waters. Note the open drain at the left of the photograph. (Image: SLNSW, Mitchell Library).

During the mid-1870s, the city west of George Street from Millers Point to the head of Darling Harbour was a picture of over-crowded buildings and poverty. The air was foul from the odours of cesspits and uncleaned water closets, while gases from the limited underground sewerage system only added to the putrid air that crept between ramshackle dwellings. Garbage and other filth that had washed into the harbour, accumulating and rotting under the timber wharves, adding to the overall state of misery in this part of Sydney.

Bodies, such as the Sewage and Health Board would file reports as the years and decades past; solutions would be offered, but there appeared a sense of exasperation from officials as they struggled to not only address the serious health issues, but to solve it.

In 1875, at the time of the Sewage and Health Boards staggered report, Sydney had an alarming rise in the death of children.

Diarrhoea and atrophy, pneumonia and bronchitis, diphtheria and scarlatina, were all major killers, with the suburb of Waterloo having amongst the worst rates of fatality.

Sanitation was the major cause of this, but the lack of sanitation stemmed from many factors, including the overall failure to adequately plan Sydney, which Jevons had pin-pointed in his survey.

The formation of the Health Society of Sydney in 1876 was a concerted effort by influential people in Sydney to provide education on health matters as a way of preventing or reducing the instance of disease.

In the eyes of many the high death-rates of 1875-76 had highlighted the ignorance of parents in matters of sanitation and basic health. Booklets such as Hints for the Prevention of Scarlet Fever and The Mischief of Overcrowding were published and distributed.

The practical absence of city infrastructure was also a route cause of poor sanitation. In the 1840s, the colonial government had thought the construction of new roads to aid markets was more of a concern than underground sewage or other sanitary measures.

In the case of Waterloo in 1875, it was reported by the health officers that cesspits were mostly of poor construction, and would overflow at the slightest amount of rain. With the sand-based soil of the area, any leakage would drain easily into the groundwater, and overtime, contaminate nearby wells.

Moreover, when these cesspits were ultimately filled, they would simply be covered, and a new one established a few yards away, exasperating the aforementioned groundwater issue.

At this point, Dr George Dansey warned the city to the potential of a Bubonic Plague break out.

While Dansey’s warning did not eventuate immediately, the continuing sanitation problems in the City of Sydney would see 303 residents contract the Bubonic Plague from January to August of 1900.

A disease that is often associated with medieval Europe would kill 103 people in Sydney, the first victim being from the Rocks.

Prior to cases being discovered, the Sydney Morning Herald published a cable from the British Consul on 28 December 1899, stating that the Steamer Maroc had arrived in the Port of Newcastle with two confirmed cases of the Bubonic Plague after having previously docked in Sydney prior to Christmas of 1899.

Another report from 26 January 1900 in the Daily Telegraph (Sydney) suggested the outbreak had originated in Mauritius, but the unsanitary conditions around the Rocks certainly aided the diseases spread.

A group of children gathered outside a rundown residence in Magraths Lane near Kent Street, Sydney in 1875. (Image: State Library of NSW).

In 1877 a draft of the City Improvements Bill was put forward to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. The draft placed the authority of condemning and demolition of Sydney’s buildings with the council.

Politicians, who had received feedback from prominent property owners argued that the proposed Act gave too much power to the Corporation (city council), and as a result a watered-down version of the bill was passed in 1879.

It was known as the City of Sydney Improvement Act, and it had the effect of causing more problems by splitting power between the council and the new government-appointed Improvement Board.

From 1880, the council could impose fines on owners that had not complied with notices to repair unsanitary properties, but they could not order demolition. The Improvement Board could order demolition, but only on structural issues, leaving some residential areas of the City of Sydney with deplorable sanitation.

The 1890s brought no relief for those suffering under conditions of poverty in Sydney.  A huge maritime strike occurred in 1890, which was followed by a Shearer’s strike in 1891, which impacted all of the colonies.

At this time, sixty-six percent of people lived in urban areas, but the economy still relied heavily on the agriculture sector.

The Queen Victoria Building on Sydney's George Street, pictured here in the early twentieth century, was completed in 1898. The beautiful building was a symbol of Sydney's progress, but it stood in stark contrast to housing, just streets away, that could be only described as deplorable. (Image: State Library of New South Wales).

Despite the wide-spread industrial action, the City of Sydney advanced in many regards, and elaborate and ornate buildings such as the Queen Victoria Building were under construction, and completed by the end of the decade.

To counter this, a commentator of the period wrote in the Sunday Times under the heading of ‘Sydney Slums’ that a person who felt they knew the city would not have to venture far from George or Pitt Streets to have their opinion altered by narrow lanes stricken with poverty, disease and crime.

The issue of addressing sanitation continued for the council, with both municipal officials and citizens split in their views.

A site at Moore Park, known as ‘the tip’, and another at Camperdown were used to collect and bury the city’s refuse, but these garbage collection sites soon started to strain under the volume of waste deposited there.

In 1891 links were made between ‘the tip’ and cases of typhoid, with a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald highlighting the impact on the suburb:

“…the deposit of offensive and poisonous rubbish at Moore Park, a practice which is fast changing a grand reserve intended for the health of the people…”

The use of the word “poisonous”, while maybe a descriptor for the foul smell, could also be an indication of the lack regulation as to what could be placed on the site.

The Inspector of Nuisances, for example, reported that within a five-day period in January of 1891, some 524 dead animals were removed from the City of Sydney.

That same month, a group representing rate payers approached the council about burning the waste, but this idea met with strong opposition from residences all over Sydney, as the black ash from previous like-minded experiments had been deposited all over houses and the shores of the harbour.

City resources were stretched due to the economic downturn, with action taken by the City Building Surveyor in the late 1880s and into 1890 in regards to the demolition of condemned housing diminishing significantly from 1891.

Many people, sceptical of the true intent of politicians and municipal officers, argued that any demolitions that occurred had more to do with the growing wealth of the city’s elite than any real concern for the living conditions of the poor.

While this sentiment could be considered extremely unfair to those who fought for government action, it could also be understood. As the decades from 1850s Sydney moved towards the twentieth Century, and with no significant change to the areas that had been continually afflicted by disease and death, a cycle of desperation and despair, and social stigma, had firmly entrenched itself in Sydney.

Newspapers of the time were full of comment and ideas on how to solve poverty, but as time wore on the suggestions that poverty and therefore slums were the result of ill-moral behaviour, or an inevitable outcome for a ‘type’ of person different than the regular citizen, rang out the loudest.

Was this, and does it remain, one of the most confronting issues relating to poverty that in an effort to deal with a difficult problem, eventually, through frustration, apathy or any number of reasons, society at large amputates part of the community from the defining qualities in which it sees itself. As a result, those perceived qualities of any society are diminished.

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Further Reading

Jevons, W. S., Sydney in 1858: A Social Survey.

Conditions of the Working Classes of the Metropolis, Report from the Select Committee on the Legislative Assembly, New South Wales, 18 April 1860, Thomas Richards, Government Printer, Sydney.

The Nineteenth Century: An Overview (Extracts from an Act to declare the Town of Sydney to be a city, and to incorporate the inhabitants thereof, 20 July 1842.

Kelly, Max, Nineteenth Century Sydney: Essays in Urban History, ch 6: Picteresque and Pestilential: The Sydney Slum Observed 1860-1900.

Mayne, Allan, City Back Slums in the Land of Promise: Some Aspects of the 1876 Report on Overcrowding in Sydney, Labour History (Canberra), 1980, vol. 38 (38).

Australian Town and Country Journal, Sydney, 3 July 1875, p. 10.

Daily Telegraph (Sydney), ‘Sydney Sanitation’, 27 January 1891, p. 3.

Daily Telegraph (Sydney), ‘The Plague’, 26 January 1900, p.7.

Evening News, ‘Sydney Sanitation’, 14 January 1891, p.5.

Sydney Morning Herald, 28 March 1857, p.4.

Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Sydney Sanitation’, 3 October 1892, p. 5.

Sydney Morning Herald, ‘The Bubonic Plague: Cable from the British Consul’, 28 December 1899.

Sunday Times, ‘Sydney Slums’, 21 November 1897, p. 5.

Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 30 October 1875, p. 569.