Poverty and unemployment, slums and dirt were the conditions best known to those who worked amongst the under-privileged in 1925. In London and all the big cities families lived in houses that were dismal and insanitary, houses where a bathroom was an undreamed of luxury, where, as likely as not, hot water was to be obtained only from a kettle on an open fire. Walls were damp and crumbling and many women waged perpetual warfare against the ‘steam tugs’, as the Londoners called the bugs which tainted the air with their sickly smell. Families who had a four-roomed house to themselves were fortunate, for many were housed in large tenement buildings where lavatory accommodation was shared between several families and every drop of water used by the top floor tenants must be carried from upstairs a tap in the yard. In such buildings it was not unusual for babies to be bitten by rats or mice and for girls who were working in the exclusive shops of the town to be forced to keep their clothes in large paper bags that could not be invaded by the bugs at night. A bed to oneself was unheard of privacy in these overcrowded homes; there were few facilities for personal cleanliness and the family washing was done at the public washhouse. Cooking facilities were little better, and as there was no space for the storage of provisions food had to be bought in small quantities from day to day. Many spoke scornfully of the thriftlessness of the poor who had no knowledge of the conditions which forced them to live in such a hand-to-mouth fashion.