In the 19th century one of the few options for people without a home was to find the money to stay at a common lodging house like this one (building on the corner behind the two men). Conditions were often appalling and rooms overcrowded:
‘the room was very dirty; it was 9 feet broad by 15 feet long… in which slept two men, four women, and thirteen children. I found in one of the beds two children very ill of scarlet fever; in another, a child ill of the measles; in another, a child that had died of the measles the day before.’
(quote from a health official describing a Newcastle lodging house, 1842)
Laws were passed to improve the conditions of lodging houses but they’re impact was minimal. Lodging houses were still in use by the 1930s.
We found this photograph in Newcastle City Library, Historic Photographs Collection