8 INTRODUCTION. 



times taints tlie air for a mile round. Very few of the tene- 

 ments have any water-supply ; the wells are useless, or worse 

 than useless, through the contamination of their water with 

 putrescent liquid which filters down into them ; and the 

 drainage of the dwellings both for men and pigs is almost 

 entirely superficial, being chiefly discharged into a stagnant 

 piece of water called the "Ocean," which is covered with 

 a filthy slime and bubbles with poisonous gases, and very 

 commonly has dead dogs or cats floating on its surface. It is 

 difficult to conceive anything more horribly offensive than 

 the rears of some of the houses, whose yards are filled with 

 ordure and other filth collected for manure, which is here 

 .stored for weeks, or even months, until an opportunity occurs 

 for selling it. And even the public ways are generally 

 covered with black putrescent mire. Now, during ten 

 months of the year 1852, when no epidemic prevailed, as 

 many as forty deaths occurred in the Potteries, out of a 

 population of about one thousand, the mortality being 

 thus at the rate of 48 per thousand annually ; and no 

 fewer than four-fifths of these deaths occurred at, or beneath, 

 jive years of age. In the first ten months of 1849, when 

 cholera was prevalent, the number of deaths was fifty, or 

 about one in twenty of the whole population, twenty-one of 

 these being due to cholera and diarrhoea, and twenty-nine to 

 typhus and other diseases. On the other hand, in the whole 

 population of the " Model Lodging-houses," amounting to 

 1,343, only seven deaths took place in the whole twelve 

 months of 1852, or at the rate of scarcely more than 5 per 

 thousand; and although they contain a large proportion of 

 children, yet only half the number of deaths occurred below 

 ten years old. During the prevalence of the cholera-epidemic, 

 no cases of that disease occurred among them, although it was 

 raging in their various neighbourhoods ; and from the time 

 that their drainage has been rendered thoroughly efficient, no 

 case of fever has presented itself among their inmates. 



The experience of Cholera-epidemics is peculiarly valuable, 

 on account of the marked tendency of this disease to search 

 out and expose defects, which have continued to produce 

 other diseases year after year, without having been suspected 

 as the causes of them. The greatest severity in each visita- 

 tion has shown itself in identical localities, provided those 



