EXPERIENCES OF A SURGEON. 35 



shoes, old clothes, potatoes, herrings, or eggs, oysters, beer-cans, or 

 pipes, and other indications of the callings of the inmates. The 

 filthy and squalid aspect of the majority of these places of rest was 

 too disgusting and repulsive to permit of any examination beyond 

 what the nose and eye could make from the outside : others that 

 promised better, I inquired after : a stare, or a brief remark that the 

 room was for a single man, was all the information I could get. 

 After pacing backwards and forwards for some hours, I at length 

 prevailed upon a slip-shod damsel, with a marvellously grimy dress, 

 to show me the " Room to let," as notified by a paper in the win- 

 dow. It was a miserable affair, truly ! three-pair back, as she 

 called it; and smelt abominably. This survey satisfied me that 

 " Lodgings for single men" would not be in my way. 



I now turned into another set of streets. Avoiding the great busi- 

 ness-thoroughfares, I explored the secondary shop streets, chiefly 

 inhabited by little tradesmen ; the ground-floor being used as a shop 

 of some sort or other, either a shoe, grocery, watchmaker, baker, 

 pawnbroker, or hairdresser. The announcements of lodgings were as 

 numerous here as in the other situations I had already visited : it 

 seemed indeed as if the idea of a strictly private house was unknown. 

 " Respectable lodgings," " Furnished rooms," or " Lodgings" sim- 

 ply, met me on every hand. Many of these were very eligible, and 

 moderately cheap ; but there were also objections to many of them : 

 in some, the only entrance was through the shop and kitchen : in 

 others they could not cook for me : in a third it was expected I 

 should not even breakfast there. Now none of these met my views : 

 I wanted a place in which I could breakfast, dine occasionally, take 

 tea regularly, and spend my evenings. In this I at last succeeded, 

 in a street near Golden-square. I engaged a comfortable room, 

 containing a tent-bed, a chest of drawers, two chairs, a dressing- table 

 and glass, and a lock-up cupboard : it served as my drawing-room, 

 parlour, and bed-room, and was on the second-floor back. 1 had of 

 course to pay for eating and drinking, coals, washing, and other clean- 

 ing besides. To show how hundreds of families live in London, and 

 how little they consult what is called domestic comfort and seclusion 

 in the country, I will mention how the household was constructed of 

 which I now formed a part ; and I had means of learning that this 

 was a pretty fair exemplar of a large class of housekeepers. In the 

 first place, the ground-floor formed in front a respectable-looking 

 shop, occupied by a boot and shoemakerv: this man did not sleep on 

 the premises : behind the shop was a kitchen and other places, in 

 which lived the landlord of the entire building. The first-floor con- 

 sisted of a drawing-room, as it was styled, communicating by folding- 

 doors with a bed-room behind it : these were now tenanted by a can- 

 tatrice attached to one of the great theatres, and a female companion 

 said to be her mother. The third story was in possession of my im- 

 mediate landlady : the front room she lived in herself, with two boys 

 (she was the wife of the head- waiter at the Clarendon Hotel) : 

 this room was her kitchen, wash-house, coal -cellar, scullery, sitting 

 and sleeping room : her husband she rarely saw : in the back room 



