Definition of "cheerless"

I then went on, beginning with the rise and progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various religions of the present time, during which time I labored to show Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; […]

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Ramadan”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, page 96

Men, women and children work together seven days in the week in these cheerless tenements to make a living for the family, from the break of day till far into the night.

1890, Jacob A[ugust] Riis, “The Bohemians—Tenement-house Cigarmaking”, in How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, page 138