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TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 109 
of proper reference. Up to that time they had not hada single default in payment of 
the rent, and general satisfaction was expressed by the tenants with the extra com- 
forts and accommodation afforded them. The balance-sheet showed that the building 
had cost 13,252/. 17s. lid. The last report is dated May 1849. It is the first oc- 
casion in which details of a year’s occupation can be given, and they are satisfactory 
throughout. The directors say—“ It affords your directors great satisfaction to state 
that all the dwellings have been occupied, almost without interruption, from the date 
of their completion, and several applicants have been and still are waiting for va- 
cancies; 59 families have continued tenants since their respective dwellings were 
ready for occupation in January, February, March, and April 1848. The total num- 
ber of tenants has been 173, several of whom having left their apartments have sub- 
sequently wished to return. Not only have the tenants expressed themselves pleased 
with the superior accommodation afforded to them, but have also proved, by regularly 
paying their rents, and their general strict observance of such rules as your Directors 
have thought proper to lay down for the management of so large a building, that they 
are desirous of assisting them in preserving a high character for respectability in its 
occupants.’’ Col. Sykes remarked that the last trait mentioned by the Directors is of 
extended bearing and importance ; it holds out a prospect that not only will such com- 
munities be advanced in their physical and social condition, but that a feeling will ori- 
ginate within themselves to maintain a certain moral standing, a certain pride of cha- 
racter, which will prevent individuals or their neighbours in this community from 
offending against a publicsentiment. The total number of shares taken at the date of 
the Report was 1527. The buildings up to that date had cost 17,2251. 5s. 3d. Colonel 
Sykes proceeded to consider how far, in addition to certain physical and ceconomical 
advantages, this Association acts as an efficient auxiliary in thegreat efforts now making 
to improve the sanitary condition of towns. The best test, he says, for this would 
be the health of the population inhabiting the buildings of the Association; and he 
accordingly requested the Hon. Secretary, Mr. Gatliff, to have drawn out for him a 
weekly return for one year of the inhabitants, showing the male and female heads of 
families, children, weekly changes of population, number of deaths and previous oc- 
cupation, age, and disease. ‘The weekly outgoings and incomings rendered it a 
somewhat complicated matter to determine accurately the per-centage of deaths, 
and he consulted his friend Mr. Neison. The Return shows that there has not oc- 
curred a single’case of cholera, although the fatal disease was all around the buildings. 
Having viewed this picture in detail, in which a population is represented as 
comfortably housed, with the proper accompaniments of ventilation, proper supply 
of water and cleanliness, let us turn, Col. Sykes says, to a state of things the contrast 
of this picture :—In December 1847, a Committee of the Statistical Society of London 
inspected the dwellings, room by room, and condition of the inhabitants of Church 
Lane, St. Giles’s, London. On the 17th of January, 1848, their report was made to the 
Statistical Society :—Church Lane was 290 feet long, 20 feet wide, and contained 32 
houses. The population examined was 463; the number of families 100, and the 
number of bedsteads amongst them 90. There was an average therefore of above 5 
souls to a bed, and many rooms were inhabited by as many as 22 souls, without water, 
without drainage, and without privies. The whole condition of these people was so 
revolting, that the Committee concluded their Report in the following terms :— 
“‘ Your Committee have thus given a picture in detail of human wretchedness, filth, 
and brutal degradation, the chief features of which are a disgrace to a civilized coun- 
try, and which your Committee have reason to fear, from letters that have appeared 
in the public journals, is but the type of the miserable condition of masses of the 
community, whether located in’ the small, ill-ventilated rooms of manufacturing 
towns, or in many of the cottages of the agricultural peasantry. In these wretched 
dwellings, all ages and both sexes, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, grown 
up brothers and sisters, stranger-adult males and females, and swarms of children, 
the sick, the dying, and the dead, are herded together with a proximity and mutual 
pressure which brutes would resist ; where it is physically impossible to preserve the 
ordinary decencies of life; where all sense of propriety and self-respect must be 
lost, to be replaced only by a recklessness of demeanour which necessarily results 
from vitiated minds; and yet with many of the young, brought up in such hot-beds 
of mental pestilence, the hopeless, but benevolent attempt is making to implant, by 
