$2 Human Physiology, 



drainage, light, water, and also of the requisite provisions for de- 

 cency and modesty. Every year the plague centres become more 

 and more crowded and loathsome. Every year the labouring 

 classes more grievously suffer from want of house accommoda- 

 tion, as our public works one after another narrow the area 

 of their old habitations, at the same time that their numbers 

 keep constantly on the increase ; and this while the lower 

 order of labouring men in London pay, according to Lord 

 Derby's calculations, as much for their wretched lodgings, in 

 proportion to the accommodation, as a Duke in Belgravia." 



The filth of persons living in such conditions is simply inde- 

 scribable. They sleep in their day-clothes, and have no others;, 

 they huddle together on straw, or rags, or filthy pallets, to keep 

 each other warm men, women, and children a dozen in a 

 room, with every crevice stopped to keep out the cold. Sani- 

 tary inspectors have found in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and in 

 great numbers of the courts of London, whole blocks of houses, 

 in which every inhabited room, and the physical condition of 

 their inhabitants, were more horrible than the worst of the 

 dungeons Howard found in Europe with more filth, more 

 physical suffering, and more hideous moral disorder. The 

 Times may well say " It is a scandal that such horrible dens 

 should exist within a civilised city." 



In town and country, in what seems to the stranger the most 

 beautiful rural villages, in the Lake Country perhaps the most 

 picturesque portion of England and in the hideous Black 

 Country, the condition of the poorer classes is much the same. 

 They are very ignorant, very sensual, and partly from poverty, 

 partly from habit, live crowded together, in the worst sanitary 

 conditions, and with little regard to the decencies of life. What 

 can be expected where families and lodgers, men and women, 

 and grown up sons and daughters, all sleep in the same room, and 

 in many cases on the same bed ? It can only be said that their 

 moral character closely corresponds to their physical condition. 



