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with managing dirty and improvident tenants. No doubt 
Manchester and Salford landlords were pretty much the 
same as those in other large towns, and the sanitary state of 
the poor must always in a great measure depend on them- 
selves, for it is impossible for other people to be continually 
looking after and protecting their poorer neighbours. The 
ministers of religion may do some good in preaching provi- 
dence and cleanliness to their congregations, but the mis- 
chief is that the great bulk of our dissolute and improvident 
poor is connected with no religious body whatever. 
Manchester and Salford, when compared with other large 
towns, had two great disadvantages, namely, the subsoils on 
which they were built, and the filthy open sewers which 
flow or should flow past them. The chief parts of both 
towns stand on a thick bed of cold brick clay quite imper- 
vious to water, and valley gravel at the lower boundary of 
such clay and betwixt it and the adjoining streams. The 
only exceptions are the higher portions of Harpurhey, 
Cheetham Hill, Higher Broughton, and Pendleton, which 
are for the most on dry sand. 
Nearly thirty years ago he had first called attention to 
the evils of polluting the streams near Manchester, and then 
damming them up as if it were desirable to stop the filth 
from flowing away. The following is an extract from his 
report, published in the Health of Towns Report, for 1845 : — - 
“ The river Irwell, after having, by its tributaries, afforded 
drainage and sewerage to the towns of Bolton, Bury, Roch- 
dale, and numerous other places, and pent up in countless 
reservoirs and dams for manufacturing purposes, approaches 
Salford by the Adelphi in a pretty tolerable condition as to 
purity, inasmuch as small fish live in its waters— -a very 
rare circumstance in any other of the streams, except the 
upper part of the Medlock. At the Adelphi is a high weir, 
built across the river ; after passing this impediment, it is 
polluted by the numerous works upon its banks in the 
