MAGAZINE OF SCIENCE AND ART. 
197 
miserable in the extreme. The houses are of 
weather-board, very old and much dilapidated, 
and are let for from 10s. to 16s. per week. 
A little farther south is Queen's-plaee, a 
narrow street between George-street and Pitt- 
street, on the right hand of which are some 
small houses, having the lower floors much 
below the level of the street. On the left is a 
small court, of six or eight houses, which is 
paved, but badly drained and always dirty. 
Behind there is a narrow dirty path, bounded on 
one side by a bank above four feet high, com¬ 
prising the back premises of one side of the said 
court, unfenced, and displaying in disgusting 
prominence and proximity to the passer-by a 
dilapidated common privy, and on the other by 
the foundation of some unfinished buildings, 
the excavation for which serves as a reservoir 
for rain and drainage water, duly seasoned with 
dead cats, rats, and vegetable and animal refuse 
of all kinds. At the extremity of this path, 
you emerge into a court, consisting of 18 or 19 
houses, of two rooms each let for 10s. per week, 
except one in the comer, which having only one 
apartment, the landlord considerately lets for 7s. 
only. The houses on one side have one room 
over the other, communicating ns usual by an 
open ladder; those on the other have both 
rooms on the ground floor, and are, all hut one, 
if I recollect right, below the level of the court, 
which is unpaved. Down the centre is a channel, 
hut so badly constructed as to he a mere succes¬ 
sion of holes full of dirty, stinking fluid, opening 
into the Tank stream by a small aperture in the 
enclosing wall. After heavy rains the houses 
nearest to this part are usually flooded, and they 
will now he worse off than before, as, on every 
such occurrence, their own refuse water wil I be 
thrown back on them. To this court, occupied 
by an average of 100 souls, there is but one 
privy, which also drains into the T'ank; the 
latter, once, alasl a woodland rivulet, flowing in 
pristine purity from the native forest, and at 
the mouth of which England’s first cargo of 
moral pollution was discharged, but now a foul 
sluggish streamlet, straggling aloDg its devious 
course amidst a collection of articles which 
would make a London or Parisian chiffonier’s 
fortune, interspersed abundantly with the car¬ 
cases of dead dogs, cats, rats, and fowls, cabbage- 
stalks, to Anally lose itself in an abominable 
delta of black disgusting slime. 
In Abercrombie's and Maleom’s lanes, to the 
south of Bridge-street, are a few houses of a 
somewhat superior description to those before 
mentioned ; but the courts are neither drained 
nor paved, and always dirty. Tn one of the 
houses of the latter, 1 lately attended a tvotnan 
with chronic dysentery. She and her husband 
occupied the back room (or rather cell) on the 
ground-floor. It was so small that the truckle- 
bed, with its head in contact with the wall 
under the window and its foot within a few 
inches of the fire place, a stool, and a couple of 
boxes, so tilled it that the door could only be 
opened wide enough to admit me side-ways: 
and for this wretched accommodation they paid, 
I believe, 10s. per week. 
In the very bed of the Tank stream, imme¬ 
diately below the unfinished buildings in Bridge- 
street, stands a miserable hovel, occupied by an 
old couple : the man a victim to chronic rheu¬ 
matism and bronchitis, and the wife endea¬ 
vour,ng to eke out the charity of some benevo¬ 
lent individuals by taking in a little washing. 
In Castlereagh-street, near the Prince of Wales 
theatre, is a. passage about 12 or 14 feet wide 
into Pitt street, called Brougham-place, con¬ 
sisting of 20 houses, 13 on each side, all built of 
the same size and on the same plan The back 
yards unpaved and very small. One of these 
houses, in which I had to seo a patient with 
erysipelas, was thus occupied. In the frout 
room on the ground-floor lived the primary 
tenant, with his wife and thteo children, and 
carrying on a green-grocery business. In the 
back room was a widow with two or threo 
children, who took in washing. The first-floor 
front room accommodated a man, his wife, and 
six children, and the other, a young man, his 
mother, and his daughter, a child of 9 or 10 
> ears of age. The landlord, 1 was told, received 
from the primary tenant, 80s. per week, who 
sub-iet the other rooms for from 7s. to 10s. each. 
Many of the other houses were, more or less, 
tenanted in a similar manner. In one of them 
I have recently had to see a poor woman dying 
of consumption, threo of her children, eating, 
drinking, and sleeping in the same room. 
In Castlereagh-street, near Park-street, 1 have 
lately had to attend a young woman suffering 
from constant bilious vomiting. For this, I 
could And nothing to account but the State of 
the premises. The house, placed a little distance 
back from the street, is of four low small rooms, 
weather-boarded, very old and dilapidated. 
From the front court there is a descent into the 
house, and a still deeper one from the back, and 
in immediate contact with the back wall is tho 
privy. Tho floor is rotted in many parts, and I 
thrust my stick several inches into the black soft 
earth, saturated with the tcccal filtration. The 
yard, which is common to several houses, is 
uupaved and unlevelled, and has a ditch of un¬ 
certain depth winding diagonally across it, filled 
with the most Stygian looking “hell broth, 
thick and slab,” distilling into the air its sul¬ 
phuretted hydrogen, which breaks in bubbles on 
its surface. For this pest-house, which looks as 
though a shilling had not been expended on it 
these twenty years, the woman told me she paid 
20 s. a week, the owner at this very time dis¬ 
bursing a considerable sum in putting into 
thorough repair and beautifying a public-house 
close by, also belonging to him. 
But i will not weary you with further details 
of this kind. Those 1 have given are but a small 
sample of what is to be found all around us. 
The surgeon of Gipps and Brisbane Wards could 
furnish similar facts existing about Sussex-street 
and the " classic locality of the Bocks.” Lod¬ 
ging-houses crammed to repletioi) with human 
beings, regardless alike of health and decency, 
with unimaginable abominations all around’ 
with innumerable heaps of stable manure and 
refuse matter reeking in the hot sun, fostering 
clouds of blow-flies, and pouring out the 
gasevous results of putrefaction to taint the 
atmosphere; ought we to wonder if, with the 
Cholera so near to ns, it should one day startle 
us with its justly dreaded presence? Tho 
people of the .Mauritius have been bitterly 
denouncing “ the misconduct of Government in 
allowing the cholera to come amongst ’’ them. 
