any one who cares to look for them, showing this daily operation, the causes of which might be removed, of "Typhus," "Scarlatina maligna," and "Fever," in increasing the mortality and pauperism of the metropolis. Fever, in its varied forms, still adds greatly, in parts of the metropolis, to all other pauperising influences, to which the working classes are exposed.*

Dr. Southwood Smith has well described the peculiar effect of fever, both on the health and happiness of those who are compelled to ask for parish relief, and on the pockets of those who are obliged to pay for it. "There is no disease which brings so much affliction into a It most commonly attacks the heads of the family, those upon

poor man's family as fever.

*In the week ending December 6. 1851, occurs the death, from typhus, of a labourer's son, aged ten years, in Wink's Buildings, South Chelsea: the medical attendant states, that the building in which the child had died "is most pestiferous," and "has always been the haunt of fever, which from that point, as from a centre, has often spread with great virulence." In the following week several similar cases are recorded. 'In Paddington, at 108. Praed Street, a cordwainer's son, aged two years, died on the 7th December, of scarlatina maligna, fourteen days. The deceased lived in a damp and ill-ventilated kitchen; this is the second death that has occurred, from the same cause, in this kitchen, within three weeks." Another entry, in the same week, is of the death, at 9. Ball's Gardens, Chelsea, from fever, of a child aged five years, the son of a labourer. "The Gardens are the most unhealthy part of the district: they have an open sewer running along the front of the whole." At Rhodes Cottages, Islington, on the 13th December, 1851, occurs the death of a child, which is entered with the statement: "These cottages are in every respect unfit for habitation." In the following week, on December 15th, at 4. Pleasant Place, St. James's, Bermondsey, a stonemason's daughter, aged five years, died of scarlatina, "the third death within the same house within thirteen days, the house consisting of two rooms and an out-house, ill drained and ventilated: the supply of water is insufficient." In Camberwell, at 61. Waterloo Street, on 10th December, a carpenter's daughter, aged eight years, died of scarlatina maligna; an open sewer runs within a few yards of the house; the effluvium is said to be most offensive; the mother states that this was the cause of the disease." In the same week's list, several other similar entries are found, of deat s seemingly caused by deleterious atmospheric influences. In the week ending on 27th December, 1851, we find an equal proportion of similar entries of deaths from these preventible causes. One of them will serve as a specimen : it is found at 23. Lucy's Buildings, Vine Street, St. Andrew Holborn, in death by typhus. "Lucy's Buildings are very close, thickly inhabited by working people, and the greater part built over the old sewer; the inhabitants are very poor; there is a public pump, but the supply of water is scanty."

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whose daily labour the subsistence of the family depends. The present returns afford melancholy evidence of the pauperising influence of this prevalent and fatal disease. They show that out of the total number of persons, in London, who received parochial relief during the last year, more than onefifth were the subjects of fever. In Bethnal Green the proportion was one-third, in Whitechapel it was nearly one-half, and in St. George the Martyr it was 1276 out of 1467. Placing out of consideration the suffering of the individual. attacked with fever, which is one of the most painful maladies to which the human being is subject,-placing out of view also the distress brought upon all the members of the family of the sick,-it is plain that this disease is one of the main causes of pressure upon the poor-rates. That pressure must continue, and the same large sums of money must be expended year after year, for the support of families afflicted with fever, as long as those dreadful sources of fever, which encompass the habitations of the poor, are allowed to remain." *

The very improvements which have taken place recently in Westminster and in New Oxford Street, beneficial as they may be to the upper and middle classes, have only served to aggravate the evils under which the wretched population of adjoining lanes and alleys suffer. "The public are little aware of the extent of ignorance, depravity, and vice, in which a large proportion of the population of these parishes (of St. Margaret's and St. John's, Westminster) is sunk." "There are wretched dwellings in these parishes, occupied principally by thieves, prostitutes, huxters, street-singers, and persons who gain their living by begging, and the gross depravity of these classes is indescribable. The state of many of the dwellings it is impossible to conceive. The grossest immorality is the necessary result of their promiscuously crowded habitations." "These places have become more crowded since the making of new streets, and other improvements in similar parts of the metropolis; and it is to be feared that the proposed improvement in Westminster will

* See Report on Fever in the Metropolis, in the Fifth Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, p. 174.

tend in the same way to increase the evils in the dwellings that will be left standing; while part of the degraded population will be driven to other localities to propagate their vices amongst a less corrupted class.”*

The returns of the census of the present year, 1851, show how such evils of these confined and unhealthy quarters must have been aggravated, in various parts of London, during the last ten years. The five unions, or parishes of Clerkenwell, East London, Holborn, St. Margaret and St. John Westminster, and Whitechapel, are found to have increased, in inhabitants, from 269,730, in 1841, to 301,048, in 1851 and their houses have increased, during the same period, from 31,618 to 32,040.† Upwards of 30,000 additional inhabitants in the last ten years, and only 422 additional houses for them to live in! Fewer than nine inhabitants to each house in 1841, and nearly ten in 1851!

Glasgow, distinguished, as we have just seen, by the great mortality of its pauper class, exhibits in its wynds, comprising a fluctuating population of from 15,000 to 30,000 persons, a labyrinth of lanes, out of which a number of entrances lead into small square courts, each with a dunghill reeking in the centre. In some of the lodging rooms, are found "a whole layer of human beings littered along the floor, sometimes fifteen and twenty; some clothed and some naked; men, women, and children, huddled promiscuously together:" their bed consisting of a layer of musty straw intermixed with rags.

Dr. Sutherland, in his Report to the General Board of Health, dated April 24. 1850, says that, in these frightful abodes of human wretchedness, which constitute the wynds of Glasgow, "all sanitary evils exist in perfection." It appears, moreover, that Glasgow is rapidly increasing its population, without making any corresponding increase in the number of its houses, and must, therefore, suffer, like

* London City Magazine, Jan. 1851, cited by Mr. Montague Gore, "On the Dwellings of the Poor, and the Means of improving them." London: Ridgway, 1851, p. 14.

For the details, see Appendix.

London, more and more, from that over-crowding which is so great a cause of immorality, disease, and death, among the poorer classes, when they are

In populous cities pent,

Where houses thick, and sewers, annoy the air.

The indigent classes seem to suffer, in respect of their excessive mortality, in some parts of other great cities and towns much in the same way as in parts of London and Glasgow. Interesting inquiries, instituted by M. Villermé, first showed how great a difference, in the duration of life, is found in different parts of the same city. M. Villermé especially examined and ascertained the mortality of the different arrondissements of Paris. The average mortality in Paris is 1 in 36.44: the rate in the first, second, and third arrondissements, mainly inhabited by the wealthier classes, is only 1 in 52, 1 in 48, and 1 in 43; while in the seventh, eighth, and twelfth arrondissements, inhabited mainly by the labouring classes, the rate becomes 1 in 30, 1 in 23, and 1 in 20; in other words, the sons and daughters of labour among the poor inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Antoine die, on the average, at little more than half the age which is attained by those who are born in the wealthier quarter of the Faubourg St. Honoré.

Subsequent investigations have tended to show the difference in mortality in different parts of London, and in different parts of several of the principal cities and towns of England. The difference in mortality between the worst and best parts of London, seems to be quite as great as the corresponding difference in Paris. If the result be embodied in a statement of the different duration of life of three different classes into which we may divide our society, it appears as follows:

and in our other cities and towns the corresponding difference in mortality, in the different classes who mainly inhabit different localities, is equally great.

It is worth while to compare the amount of the pauperism of London with that of Paris. Throughout France the indoor relief of the poor is given in hospitals (hôpitaux) for the sick, and in almshouses (hospices) for the aged and infirm. The out-door relief (secours à domicile), in great part raised by a local tax, is wholly under the controul of Bureaux de Bienfaisance. Laws, passed chiefly in 1796 and 1798, still regulate the administration of these establishments.* It is manifest that such establishments include not only the relief corresponding to what is administered in England by boards of guardians, but also the whole of that which our numerous medical and other charities supply.

To compare the pauperism of the capitals of the two countries, it is therefore plain that we must either add to the English account of our workhouses and boards of guardians, the sums expended, and the persons cured and relieved, in hospitals and almshouses, or we must omit from our comparison all inmates of hospitals and almshouses on both sides of the Channel.

Adding the relief by hospitals and other charities, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter†, to the relief given under the Poor Law, we should obtain for the pauperism of the metropolis, an annual expenditure of upwards of 1,200,000% distributed among about 800,000 indigent poor. The result would give an average of 30s. a head for each poor person relieved, and the pauperism, or poverty, so estimated, must

*It is hardly necessary to correct the vulgar error, that all contribution to the relief of the poor in France is voluntary. The hospitals and hospices, like many of our own hospitals and other charities, possess considerable funds of their own, in land and other property, bequeathed to them by the piety of former ages; and the Bureaux de Bienfaisance, though obtaining some supplies by collections from poor boxes in churches and otherwise, still have recourse to taxation for the whole residue of the moneys which they administer in relief to the poor. They obtain this residue from what we may term the "borough fund" of the municipality. In each city the municipal council is to supply the Bureaux de Bienfaisance with funds "pris sur les revenus de la ville."

† Above, pp. 32—34.

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