GLANCING BACK. 199 



individuals. The whole family had the fever, some of 

 them very severely. The son's wife, with two of her chil- 

 dren, were in a bed in an outhouse ; in the outhouse was 

 a well and a large tub containing pigs' victuals, and the 

 general receptacle for everything. The floor was earthen, 

 with no ceiling but the thatch of the roof. In the same 

 village there were more than forty cases of typhus, and 

 the spread of the disease must be attributed to the people 

 living so densely packed together ! " 



A, at that time, well-known clergyman, a frequent 

 correspondent of The Times under the signature of 

 " S. G. O.," the Honourable and Rev. Sidney Godolphin 

 Osborne, wrote to the same Commissioner from Bryan- 

 ston Rectory, near Blandford, and gave other illustrative 

 instances. He stated : 



" Within the last year I saw, in a room about thirteen feet 

 square, three beds : on the first lay the mother, a widow, 

 dying of consumption ; on the second, two unmarried 

 daughters, one eighteen years of age, the other twelve ; 

 on the third, a young married couple whom I myself had 

 married two days before." 



He added :- 



" A married woman of thoroughly good character told 

 me a few weeks ago that, on her confinement, so crowded 

 with children is her one room, they are obliged to put her 

 on the floor in the middle of the room that they may pay 

 her the requisite attention. She spoke of this as, to her, 

 the most painful part of that, her hour of trial." 



But this clergyman said he " could not put on paper " 

 scenes that had occurred in consequence of the over- 

 crowding of labourers' cottages. 



The Blue Book exposure of 1843 seems to have 

 effected very little, if any, improvement, and at the end 

 of twenty-five years, namely, in 1868, when further 

 inquiry was made by a Poor Law Commissioner, things 

 were generally very much as before. If in a few 

 instances there was improvement it was practically due 

 to individual benevolent effort. One of the individuals 

 indicated was the clergyman already referred to, Lord 

 Sidney Godolphin Osborne. Although in alluding to 



