Several reasons caused the spectacular growth of the proletariat in the 19th century. There was demographic growth. Mainly through the control of epidemics, life expectancy rose from 35 years at the beginning of the century to 55 years at the end. Many farmers, who still cultivated a small piece of land self-sufficiently, could not make a living from agriculture. Another reason was industrialisation, which came after the introduction of the steam engine. The craftsmen, who still worked at home, could not compete with it.
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Many small farmers, day labourers and home workers migrated, first to small and later to large cities. The population of Antwerp increased exponentially from 54,969 in 1816 to 272,831 in 1890. In 1900 only 57.7% of the inhabitants of Antwerp had been born in their city. The others were migrants from the countryside or immigrants, mainly from the Netherlands. A large part of them found no work and ended up in poverty. In the middle of the 19th century, the poor made up a quarter of the population there.
The lowest layer of the population ended up in an outdated housing stock. Citizens, specifically those who had become impoverished through several crises, rented out their large houses. They rented these ‘quarter houses’ per flat, per room, per cellar, and the first tenant sometimes sublet further. Afterwards, the back gardens were monetised. The speculators, mostly small self-employed people such as shopkeepers and craftsmen, had small houses built there with cheap materials. They achieved a yield of 15 to 18% per year. Thus arose the ‘gangen’ or courtyards, which opened onto the street through a gate. The courtyard was usually accessible through a passageway through the house. The ground floor of the house was often rented out as an inn. In 1860, the Handelsblad reported that there was one inn per 80 inhabitants in Antwerp.
The courtyard houses stood with their rear façade against the property boundary and could only take in light through the front façade. They faced a small square or an alley, which was usually no wider than 2.5 to 3 metres. The hygienic condition, however, was deplorable. There was indeed no sewerage and only one latrine, in the larger ones several, but always too few. In the best case there was a pump. Sometimes the residents had to go outside their courtyard for water. In the 1904 report The Courtyards of the City of Ghent by the ‘Protection Committee of Workers’ Dwellings of the District of Ghent’, there are site plans without indication of the location.
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Plate 2 shows 25 dwellings in a courtyard with five latrines and two pumps. There were two types of courtyard houses, each making up about half of the housing stock. The smaller ones had downstairs a living kitchen of about 4 by 4 metres, where the parents also slept, and under the pitched roof a space where the children slept. The larger houses had two storeys with a bedroom on the upper floor. A study in Ghent revealed that in a quarter of the families, boys and girls over twelve years old slept in the same room. In 1830, 66% of the poor dwellings in Antwerp had a floor area of less than 60m². There was overpopulation, which led to unbearable situations. At the alley census of 1842 in Antwerp, 70% of the families shared their (rented) dwelling with another family or even more people. In larger courtyards, one or more additional rows of houses were added in the middle, back to back. In 1823, ‘la colonie’ was built on the south-eastern edge of Antwerp. In 1887, more than a thousand people ‘lived’ in the 90 houses. Yet the situation in the courtyards was not everywhere so bad: in 1899 the Protection Committee of Workers’ Dwellings in Ghent classified, of the 660 (!) courtyards, 409 as ‘good’, 109 as ‘improvable’ and 142 as ‘bad’.
The furnishing of these courtyard houses did not amount to much: a Leuven stove, an oil lamp, a number of beds and a table with chairs. Sometimes the wardrobe was missing, and the residents hung their meagre clothing on hooks. Few interior photographs were taken and preserved.
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The small housing compelled the ‘gateway people’ to spend part of their time in the alley. Women did their washing there, small children lingered around, and in good weather the drying lines were covered with linen and clothing. Because they lived in the same wretched situation and very close to each other, social cohesion was strong. The 1845 report by doctors Mareska and Heyman described in Ghent ‘the darkness, the dampness and the stench’. Some courtyard houses were used for the piling up of rags or bones. The material and spiritual misery of the working population consisted of prostitution, promiscuity, alcohol abuse, inadequate nutrition, unhealthy and dangerous working conditions, contagious diseases, unemployment, begging, juvenile delinquency and banditry.
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In the brochure of the Congrès général d’hygiène de Bruxelles of 1852, there is, as a good example, a plan of a one-room dwelling of the ‘General Deacons’ Society of the Dutch Reformed Congregation’ in Groningen. The room measures 5 metres by 5.5 metres and has two windows, a vestibule and two box beds, with a cupboard in between. The twelve dwellings have eight latrines and two pumps. No staircase is drawn.
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Many single people rented a cellar or an attic in a quarter or courtyard house, where they had little privacy. There was still one link between this and vagrancy: the lodging house. A bed, or a part of it, and a chamber pot were rented per night, usually to day labourers or seasonal workers. Meals were included in the rent. The beds stood next to each other without any partition, usually in the attic of a larger building.
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