206 Manchester : its Sanitary and Social State. [April, 



that number of persons there are 26 privies bnt of these six only 

 are fit for use. one to every 91 individuals."' "We cannot wonder 

 that, as the report adds, " The streets are generally in a filthy con- 

 dition, being swept only once a week." 



There being in Manchester 50,000 ashpits, the foul emanations 

 from them more or less pervade the whole city : but they are, of course, 

 most abundant in such districts as that just described. In those 

 districts, also, they are made more deleterious by the construction 

 and arrangement of the dwellings of the people. These are such as 

 almost entirely to prevent the dilution and removal, by the winds 

 of heaven, of the noxious effluvia, and to retain them, in then most 

 concentrated form, in and around the houses. Allusion has already 

 been made to cellar dwellings. Of these there were, in 1860, 

 4,467 inhabited by 17,478 persons. The number has probably 

 since been rather reduced, but with the effect of still more over- 

 crowding those which remain. Xext are the back-to-back houses. 

 These are tenements consisting usually of two rooms, bavins: the 

 door and windows on one side, and therefore not allowing through- 

 currents of ah. In the rear of each such abode is another, similarly 

 constructed, and hence the name. Of such houses as these, there 

 are thousands in Manchester. The erection of any more of them is 

 forbidden by a local act. But the law is evaded. Many houses, 

 previously having rooms to the back and front, have, within the last 

 few years, been converted into back-to-back tenements. 



These abodes are further made worse by then position. An 

 immense proportion, if not all, of the back-to-back houses stand in 

 courts, having only one entrance, placed usually at one end, but 

 sometimes at the side. Each court has its ashpit, with one or two 

 public conveniences, situated usually at the end opposite to the 

 entrance. An instance can. however, be shown in the township of 

 Hulme, in which an ashpit stands on each side of the entrance into 

 a court containing about a dozen houses. Every breath of air, 

 therefore, which enters the court in a horizontal direction, comes 

 poisoned with the effluvia from the ashpits. Such places as these are 

 veritable stench-traps, with an inverted action. And they are fever- 

 traps also. In the particular court just described, a number of cases 

 of fever occurred in the course of last winter. Such was the inten- 

 sity of the poison, that one young woman having, after her recovery 

 in the union hospital, gone back to the same house, took the disease 

 a second, and a third time, and after all recovered; perhaps an 

 unique instance. In another court in the same neighbourhood, 

 thirteen cases of fever occurred in one house. In another house, 

 having its back entrance into the same court, were, last autumn, 

 four fatal cases of cholera, a lm ost the only genuine cases which 

 occurred in Hulme. 



Each court usually contains from eight to a dozen houses. But 



