In what condition in respect to cleanliness are the courts and other places within your district, chiefly inhabited by the labouring classes?—The cleansing of the courts and alleys in my district is defective. I agree with what Mr. Blenkarne says in respect to cesspools. For instance, in one room in a house in Sugar Loaf-court, Garlick-hill, next to their common cesspool, I have frequently attended patients, and before going, I surmise that whatever disease they are primarily affected with, it will generally run into one of low character with tendency to typhus. In the interval of little more than a twelvemonth, I have attended several occupants of the house, one after the other, who have all been, to a certain extent, similarly affected. I have generally improved their health by giving diffusive stimuli, and have occasionally prevailed on them to remove.
How many visits in the year may you have paid to this same house?—Upwards of forty visits. But there are other houses where there are similar evils, where I have had occasion to visit them still more frequently. In one house in Star-court, Bread Street-hill, which is similarly situated, where almost the whole of the inmates were laid up with fever, and where I had to visit it three times a day for upwards of three weeks. There were deaths on each floor of that house. Fever assumed, at one time, so malignant an aspect, that there appeared to be no possibility of saving them, except by removal. I do not remember one case of a removal in time where death ensued. The ward inquest had the inhabitants removed, and the house cleansed.
But was the cesspool removed?—Emptied but not removed.
Then in time you will have a recurrence of the same evils in the place in question?—Yes, certainly.
What is the condition of children brought up in such places?—Generally pale and emaciated, scrofulous, and apt to mesenteric disease.
You were medical attendant at the Norwood school, where the pauper children from the city of London are taken. Do you think, that on a view of the children, and without any positive knowledge of the sort of residences of the parents of the children, you could on the view select from the rest, the children who came from the courts and alleys, such as you have described in the city of London?—I have but little doubt of it, though generally speaking the children from the city were of rather a better description than those from more crowded localities. Indeed, the courts and alleys of my district are superior to those in other quarters of the metropolis. They are situated near the banks of the Thames with a considerable fall towards the river. Some parents also take their children much out into the open air, and in these the influence of the place would not be so visible, but with the majority there would be but very little mistake. Whilst at Norwood, my chief trouble arose from this sick and diseased class of children, who generally improved very much after being there some little time.
What was the moral condition of these physically depressed children, as compared with other pauper children, whose position had been less unfavourable?—The moral condition of this depressed class of children was generally worse also.
No. 8.
Effects observed of Dark, Ill-ventilated, and Ill-drained Localities on the Moral and Physical Condition of the Population of Paris.
Dr. la Chaise, in his Medical Topography of Paris, which is an early attempt to investigate the influence of localities on the moral and physical condition of a population, gives the following description of the physical condition of the short-lived population bred up in the narrow and dark streets, and ill-cleansed and badly ventilated houses of Paris, which description may serve for comparison with those given of the native population in the crowded and badly cleansed districts of London.