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



animals, and the dampness of the walls, and, in some cases, the 

 ruinous condition of the buildings, as to be almost intolerable and 

 wholly unfit for human dwellings. In some cases the smells were 

 so bad, that the visitor could not remain in the house, and was 

 forced to call the people out, to obtain the desired information. 

 Some of the houses have almost fallen down, and the inhabitants 

 pay no rent. The state of the gutters and drains is, in some of 

 the streets, very unsatisfactory." 



As to the appearance of the people ; out of the 789 families, 

 118 are described as " dirty and untidy ;" and 168 as " very filthy 

 indeed." The children and even the women were almost naked. 

 In several instances the children were entirely so, and " eating 

 their food out of a pan in the middle of the floor like so many 

 pigs." 



And yet a very large proportion of these people were found to 

 be in the receipt of incomes, which, properly husbanded, would 

 enable them to live in comfort. But most of the money goes to 

 the public house. 



Do not such facts as these, added to others which have lately 

 been made known in reference to the want of education, justify the 

 assertion that if there be a condition which can be described as 

 one of retrograde civilization, it is that of a large number of the 

 inhabitants of Manchester ? 



To return, however, to their sanitary condition. It has been 

 abundantly proved, both that the sources of atmospheric contami- 

 nation exist to an enormous extent, and that the existing arrange- 

 ments of the buildings in large portions of the city are such as to 

 retain the noxious exhalations in and around the habitations of the 

 people, to infect their food, their drink, and their clothing, and to 

 be inspired with every breath they draw. No wonder that the 

 diseases, chronic and acute, produced by a poisoned atmosphere, 

 are so rife, that the mortality, especially of the younger children, 

 is so enormous, and moreover that almost all the cases of continued 

 fever have occurred in those neighbourhoods. If cholera has lately 

 been absent, it has been because, to the curse of foul air, that of 

 impure water has not been added, Diarrhoea, during the last 

 autumn was exceedingly prevalent, but it was almost entirely 

 limited to districts such as have just been described. 



One very interesting and important fact in reference to the 

 type of fever which has recently prevailed in Manchester ought 

 not to be omitted. Although well-marked instances of pure 

 Typhus have not been wanting, as well as of pure Enteric or 

 Typhoid Fever, a large proportion of the cases have been a mix- 

 ture of the two, the characteristic signs of one or the other pre- 

 dominating in different cases. 



This hybrid character of the disease is easily explicable by its 



