The Road to Wigan Pier

A key cause of the terrible living conditions in working-class communities, Orwell observes, is the housing crisis in many industrial towns. Few of the homes are clean and livable, meaning that the miners and their families are forced to accept whatever is available. While middle-class people are unaffected by the housing shortage, working-class people must accept the terrible conditions provided by cheap, corrupt landlords who exploit their tenants. The government has even condemned many of these houses as unfit for human habitation, but they remain open because the inhabitants have nowhere else to live. Orwell’s firsthand experience of these houses includes floors collapsing, roofs leaking, and the landlords routinely charging much more than the property’s value while forcing tenants into cramped, filthy rooms.

Orwell admits that he cannot fully encapsulate the extent of the misery the lack of housing causes, struggling to describe the reality of eight people forced to share small rooms, or two or three people sharing a bed. In such circumstances, maintaining personal hygiene is impossible. Everything and everyone is constantly filthy. The same is true in every industrial town Orwell visits, and he suggests that the terrible conditions rob people even of any desire to keep themselves clean.