Knocking at the Gate
It is confidently assumed that the doss house is extinct. The Public Lodging House for women, licensed by the London County Council, is supposed to have taken its place. This is not so. There are doss houses in all the poorer quarters of London, though they are more numerous on the south side of the river and in the East End than in other districts. The class of lodger who uses this kind of place for a night’s shelter is lower in the social scale than the women who frequent the lodging houses. There is, of course, the great economic difference between those who can pay one shilling and twopence, and those who can only rise to fourpence and, in some cases, threepence. As I explained, my first experience only cost me twopence, owing to the intervention of the lady in the plush coat. The general tariff is fourpence, and the accommodation is not so vastly inferior to those places which are supposed to be inspected by the L.C.C. and are permitted—so far as the beds are concerned—to flourish in undiminished dirt.