offal to be found here. I have been in courts, in Millers Street, at least half a foot below the level of the thoroughfares, and without the slightest drainage for the water that accumulates in them in rainy weather!
More recently another different method of building was adopted, and has now become general.
- Workingmen’s cottages are almost never built singly, but always by the dozen or score; a single contractor building up one or two streets at a time.
These are then arranged as follows:
- One front is formed of cottages of the best class, so fortunate as to possess a back door and small court, and these command the highest rent.
- In the rear of these cottages runs a narrow alley, the back street, built up at both ends, into which either a narrow roadway or a covered passage leads from one side.
- The cottages which face this back street command least rent, and are most neglected.
- These have their rear walls in common with the third row of cottages which face a second street, and command less rent than the first row and more than the second.
By this method of construction, comparatively good ventilation can be obtained for the first row of cottages, and the third row is no worse off than in the former method. The middle row, on the other hand, is at least as badly ventilated as the houses in the courts, and the back street is always in the same filthy, disgusting condition as they. The contractors prefer this method because it saves them space, and furnishes the means of fleecing better paid workers through the higher rents of the cottages in the first and third rows. These three different forms of cottage building are found all over Manchester and throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire, often mixed up together,