and on these sleep, mixed indiscriminately, as many persons as apply. What physical and moral atmosphere reigns in these holes I need not state. Each of these houses is a focus of crime, the scene of deeds against which human nature revolts, which would perhaps never have been executed but for this forced centralisation of vice.
Gaskell gives the number of persons living in cellars in Manchester proper as 20,000. The Weekly Dispatch gives the number, “according to official reports,” as twelve percent of the working-class, which agrees with Gaskell’s number; the workers being estimated at 175,000, 21,000 would form twelve percent of it. The cellar dwellings in the suburbs are at least as numerous, so that the number of persons living in cellars in Manchester—using its name in the broader sense—is not less than forty to fifty thousand.
So much for the dwellings of the workers in the largest cities and towns.
The manner in which the need of a shelter is satisfied furnishes a standard for the manner in which all other necessities are supplied. That in these filthy holes a ragged, ill-fed population alone can dwell is a safe conclusion, and such is the fact.
The clothing of the working-people, in the majority of cases, is in a very bad condition. The material used for it is not of the best adapted. Wool and linen have almost vanished from the wardrobe of both sexes, and cotton has taken their place. Shirts are made of bleached or coloured cotton goods; the dresses of the women are chiefly of cotton print goods, and woollen petticoats are rarely to be seen on the washline. The men wear chiefly trousers of fustian or other heavy cotton goods, and jackets or coats of the same. Fustian has become the proverbial costume of the workingmen, who are called