18. In the Doss Houses of the slums, people took turns to sleep in the same filthy beds.
Not everyone had a room of their own in the slums. A significant number of people, including men, women and whole families, moved from place to place constantly. Doss houses – also known as common lodging houses – rented out beds for the night. By the end of the 19th century, there were 1,000 doss houses registered in London, and they were often the last resort for anyone wanting to avoid spending the nights on the streets or checking themselves into the nearest workhouse and toiling away in return for basic accommodation.
Beds in doss houses were very cheap. They were even cheaper if you rented them for a few hours, as most people did. Grown adults would sleep in shifts – and, of course, the bedding wasn’t changed between guests. Though unpleasant, the alternative was much worse. Notably, the East End prostitute Mary Ann Nichols was working the streets of Whitechapel trying to raise the pennies needed to get a bed in a local doss house when she fell victim to Jack the Ripper. According to some accounts, she had raised the money twice over but had spent it on drink before she went back out on the streets to sell her body one last time.