anything whatsoever upon a dwelling fit for human beings. Close to the splendid houses of the rich such a lurking-place of the bitterest poverty may often be found. So, a short time ago, on the occasion of a coroner’s inquest, a region close to Portman Square, one of the very respectable squares, was characterised as an abode “of a multitude of Irish demoralised by poverty and filth.”
So, too, may be found in streets, such as Long Acre and others, which, though not fashionable, are yet “respectable,” a great number of cellar dwellings out of which puny children and half-starved, ragged women emerge into the light of day.
In the immediate neighbourhood of Drury Lane Theatre, the second in London, are some of the worst streets of the whole metropolis, Charles, King, and Park Streets, in which the houses are inhabited from cellar to garret exclusively by poor families.
In the parishes of St. John and St. Margaret there lived in 1840 , according to the Journal of the Statistical Society , 5,366 workingmen’s families in 5,294 “dwellings” (if they deserve the name!), men, women, and children thrown together without distinction of age or sex, 26,830 persons all told; and of these families three-fourths possessed but one room. In the aristocratic parish of St. George, Hanover Square, there lived, according to the same authority, 1,465 workingmen’s families, nearly 6,000 persons, under similar conditions, and here, too, more than two-thirds of the whole number crowded together at the rate of one family in one room.
And how the poverty of these unfortunates, among whom even thieves find nothing to steal, is exploited by the property-holding class in lawful ways! The abominable dwellings in Drury Lane, just mentioned, bring in the following rents: two cellar dwellings, 3 s. ; one room, ground-floor, 4 s. ; second-storey, 4