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Karl Marx and Winslow
Karl Marx's Das Kapital was first published in German in 1867 and in English as Capital in 1887. Volume 1 chapter 25 of the English edition, The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, section 5, sub-section E, The British Agricultural Proletariat, contains information about housing in Buckinghamshire with some detailed notes on Winslow.
Marx's source, which he must have read in the British Museum Reading Room, was the report by Dr Henry Julian Hunter on "the House-Accommodation had by Rural Laborers in the different parts of England". This was published in The Seventh Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council (HMSO, 1865); Winslow is on pp.157-58. Marx summarised the first paragraph shown below and quoted the whole of the second paragraph.
Hunter wrote:
Much of Winslow is new built, in a good style of red brick, and houses seem in demand, three very poor cots of Mr. King's being let at 1s., 1s., and 1s. 3d. a week. Although a town, Winslow had no inspection of nuisances, the relieving officer, who was formerly a highly efficient inspector, having been removed for economy's sake. This officer did not seem anxious for the revival of the office because he thought the Local Government Act was wanted.
The Inspector of Nuisances was appointed by the Board of Guardians. William Minter, the Master of the Workhouse and Relieving Officer, had also been Inspector but is no longer listed as such in the 1864 Post Office Directory, so he is presumably the "highly efficient inspector" referred to. Mr King the slum landlord was probably James King, land agent and auctioneer. The Local Government Act of 1858 (21 & 22 Vict. c. 98) and its predecessor enabled "local boards of health" to be established by local initiative, which is presumably what the former inspector wanted for Winslow.
At Tinker's End, near Winslow, in Buckinghamshire, I saw a bedroom in which slept four adults with five children, and which measured 11 feet by 9 by 6 feet 5 inches at the highest point; another was 11 feet 7 by 9 by 5 feet 10, and contained six persons. Each of these families had less than the allowance necessary to one single convict. No houses had more than one bed room, none had any back door; water was very scarce; the rents from 1s. up to 2s. In 16 houses visited, only one man could be heard of who could earn above 10s. a week. The reservoir of air alloted to each person in the case mentioned may be described as about equal to his being shut up all night in a box four feet cube; but of course the miserable old huts were well provided with unintentional ventilation.
This paragraph was printed in full in the Buckingham Advertiser, 20 May 1865. Tinkers End probably had the worst housing in Winslow at the time. In the 1861 Census the most overcrowded house was that of George and Leah Smith and their nine children aged from 1 to 19. In 1871 there were a number of households with eight occupants including parents and their adult and younger children.
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