318 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



the ground, and had very low rooms, as indicated by Gay's lines on 

 the Strand: 



" Where the low penthouse bows the walker's head, 

 And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread." 



Light and air were shut out by the overhanging of each successive 

 floor, and by enormous signboards projecting over the street; while 

 any effective ventilation was out of the question, and, indeed, was 

 never thought of. Water had usually to be brought from the public 

 wells or conduits, and was used sparingly; and most business people 

 lived for whole days and weeks without ever leaving the polluted air 

 of their shops and houses. A friend of Mr. William White told him 

 that he served his apprenticeship to a grocer in Cheapside from 1786 

 to 1793; that the shop was opened at seven in the morning and closed 

 at ten at night; that he slept under the counter; that his ablutions 

 were limited to his face and hands, and that he never went out 

 except to meeting on Sunday. Bishop Wilson of Calcutta was in a 

 silk merchant's shop about the same time, and worked similar hours. 

 He records that the apprentices rarely left the house for weeks 

 together, and that it was three years before he had his first holiday. 

 William Cobbett, in 1783, was in a lawyer's office in Gray's Inn, 

 where, he relates, "I worked like a galley slave from five in the 

 morning till eight or nine at night, and sometimes all night long. I 

 never quitted this gloomy recess except on Sundays, when I usually 

 took a walk to St. James' Park." ! 



When we remember the filthy condition of the streets, and that, 

 owing to the cesspools either under or close behind the houses, the 

 scarcity of water, and the absence of ventilation, the shops and living 

 rooms were always full of foul air, bad smells, and poisonous gases, 

 how r can we wonder at the prevalence of zymotic disease and the 

 dreadful amount of infant and general mortality? And in many 

 houses there was an additional peril in the vicinity of churchyards. 

 In Nicoll's " Illustrations of Literary History " (vol. iv. p. 499), Mr. 

 Samuel Gale is quoted as writing, in 1736, as follows: 



" In the churchyard of St. Paul, Covent Garden, the burials are. 

 so frequent that the place is not capacious enough to contain de- 

 cently the crowds of dead, some of whom are not laid above a foot 

 under the loose earth. The cemetery is surrounded every way with 

 close buildings; and an acquaintance of mine, whose apartments look 

 into the churchyard, hath averred to me that the family have often 

 rose in the night time and been forced to burn frankincense and 



1 White's " Story of a great Delusion," p. 81. 



