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    be reduced to about fifteen pounds . Lighting and warming , with an abundant supply of hot and cold water , would be performed much under twenty pounds , without any labour to the inmates . The price of washing would be reduced at least one half , for the

    washerwoman would need no horse and cart to carry home the clothes , and she would risk no robbery or mistakes , or bad debts . The price of provisions would be reduced probably to something like two-thirds , and variety would be attained without trouble ; and moreover , cold meats and unwholesome food would not need

    to be eaten to prevent waste . Health would benefit by this arrangement . Thus from eighty to one hundred pounds per annum would amply pay for lodging , domestic servicej lighting , warming , and washing for a family of five persons , and such perfect accommodation as no private dwelling ever yet attained at double the expense . One hundred per annum would suffice to secure an ample supply

    of wholesome food in great variety , and a man with an income of three hundred per annum would have a third left for clothing and other expenses , and all this would be absolutely without the time of any member of the family being taken up with any duty of drudgery . The whole time might be disposed of in the improvement of their own minds , or of the minds of others . There would

    be no need with rational people to send children to school , as they might be educated at home ; but if a school were required , it would be easy to apply the dancing and music room to that purpose during the day . The teachers would of course form part of the establishment . Such a community of rational people , well arranged , would offer a greater sphere of comfort than any other mode of life which our present knowledge enables us to devise .

    It is a trial which would scarcely fail of success . The reader will observe that the plan is calculated for one side of a square . Three other similar ranges of buildings would make the square complete , and the space enclosed would serve for public walks and gardens . A small theatre or a lecture-room , or music-room , might also be erected in the centre , where the whole of the inhabitants

    might occasionally assemble . There are many who will at once pronounce the scheme Utopian . Let them show it to be so . Let them show that there is any one single portion of the plan herein set down which is not in actual practice in some workshop , or private dwelling , or clubhouse , or inn . If there be , I will agree that it is Utopian . Let

    them show that there is any thing in it beyond a combination of actually-existing physical means , in order to enable human beings to unite for purposes of economy , and yet to lose no jot of privacy , and I will be content to be set down as a wild schemer instead of a plain ' practical' man . As regards the building calculations , I do not pretend to accuracy , —merely to an approximation , *—but I cannot be very far wide of the truth . Should

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    582 Housebuilding and Housekeeping .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 582, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/52/