“… Overcrowding is the normal state in our poorer districts. Small houses of four rooms are usually inhabited by 3 or 4 families, and by 8, 16, or 24 persons, e.g., 133 inhabitants in 8 houses … a filthy yard generally implies a filthy house and unclean habits” … “this parish with its thousands of refuse heaps.”
“I know that we are on the right track. May Pole Alley, a cul-de-sac with its 23 houses and 180 people, was once a nest of infectious diseases. I attended some 10 cases of typhus there, some of them malignant enough to destroy life in 48 hours. With great trouble this court has been cleansed and amended. It is very much more healthy.”
1858. 2nd Quarter:—
“June—an exceedingly hot and dry month. You may judge of the effect of such temperature upon exposed dung-heaps, wet sloppy yards, and rotten, filthy, uncovered water-butts; three characteristics of this parish….
“The Surgeon of the District writes thus to the Board of Guardians: ‘The smell is very bad from a horse-boiling establishment in Green Street, which causes a great increase of sickness near that part.’ This of course refers to the bone boiling and other like establishments, of which there are, in this one small street, three cat gut manufacturers, one soap boiler, one horse slaughterer, and four bone boilers—all very offensive trades. I am receiving complaints in all directions as to this matter. I am inclined to think that this is not altogether just to the 20,000 inhabitants who live within the effluvia circle of Green Street.”
As to infantile mortality he writes: “I confess I see but little difference between that sanguinary ancient law that directly destroyed weakly and deformed children, and that modern indifference that insures at the very least an equally fatal result” … “these disturbing truths involving so much trouble and expense, and giving us painful reminders of new duties, as well as of old ones neglected.”
He complains of having to neglect a great many cases of insanitation owing to want of staff. “… Of those upon whom orders come to remove nuisances, &c., a large number are objectors, and not a few positive obstructors….”
“The items in this last table merit attention, and throw a sad sort of light upon the condition of the poor of this parish. We have visited 73 unclean and ruinous houses; 118 in which the water was stored in a most unwholesome manner; 163 in which the drains were defective enough to be disease producing; 72 in which the w.c.’s were more or less unfit for use; 110 yards sloppy, not paved, or ill-paved; and 138 in which there was no sufficient provision for house refuse….
“We are packing more and more closely.
“In the great mass of our poorer habitations the allowance of breathing room is not more than 200 cubic feet per head—often as low as 120. In one house reported to me there were 30 in four rooms with only 2,410 cubic feet, or 80 cubic feet per individual. This must, of course, be premature death to many of them….