JO Human Physiology. 



were worked in relays, one set got into beds as another got out, 

 until fevers broke out in their filth, and carried off great num- 

 bers. Those apprenticed to farmers and mechanics fared little 

 better. They were beaten and starved, hired out and sold by 

 inhuman masters. 



And at this time, in spite of much humane legislation, the 

 condition of several millions of the people of this country is 

 most deplorable. The condition of agricultural labourers is 

 generally bad. Their wages average about twelve shillings a 

 week, and they are crowded into poor, old, unventilated hovels, 

 a whole family living in one or two rooms, and much worse 

 lodged and fed than their employer's cattle. " I know agricul- 

 tural labourers well," says Professor Fawcett. " Their wages 

 are so small that they are insufficient to provide them with the 

 bare necessaries of life. They live in dwellings which scarcely 

 deserve the name of human habitations. They are so poor 

 that parents cannot afford to keep their children at school. 

 The result of this is, that the whole of our agricultural popula- 

 tion is growing up in a state of absolute ignorance. The Eng- 

 lish labourer has to pass a life of toil for wages which are 

 scarcely sufficient to provide him with the bare necessaries of 

 life ; and when his strength is exhausted and his vigour spent, 

 all he has to come to is to be buffeted about by relieving 

 officers, and to come as a suppliant mendicant to claim parish 

 relief." 



The workhouse is the final, one may say the only, home of 

 great multitudes. In London, 13,000 persons die in a year in 

 public institutions; more than 7000 of whom die in its 46 work- 

 houses. And a workhouse, says the Pall Mall Gazette, " is a 

 shapeless agglomeration of the following institutions : a hospital 

 for the sick, a school for orphans and foundlings, an almshouse 

 for the aged, a refuge for the able-bodied when out of work, 

 and a quasi-prison for casuals. This mass of institutions is 

 governed by a committee of jobbing shopkeepers, who dele- 



