In the report of the London Fever Hospital for 1845 a certain overcrowded room in the neighbourhood was described—a room which was filled to excess every night, sometimes from 90 to 100 men being in it; a room 33 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 7 feet high. From that one room alone no fewer than 130 persons affected with fever were received into the hospital in the course of the year.[21]
One, whose very close experience of the conditions of life and circumstances of the poorer classes of London at the time of the cholera epidemic of 1848–9 entitled him to speak with special authority on the subject, thus summed up his views and conclusions:—
“The members of the medical profession, in the presence of these physical evils, when they are, as so often happens, concentrated, find their science all but powerless; the minister of religion turns from these densely crowded and foul localities almost without hope; whilst the administrators of the law, especially the chaplains and governors of prisons, see that crime of every complexion is most rife where material degradation is most profound.”[22]
And he quoted from the report of the Governors of the Houses of Correction at Coldbath Fields and Westminster the following passage:—
“The crowning cause of crime in the metropolis is, in my opinion, to be found in the shocking state of the habitations of the poor, their confined and fœtid localities, and the consequent necessity for consigning children to the streets for requisite air and exercise. These causes combine to produce a state of frightful demoralisation. The absence of cleanliness, of decency, of all decorum—the disregard of any needful separation of the sexes—the polluting language and the scenes of profligacy hourly occurring, all tend to foster idleness and vicious abandonment. Here I beg emphatically to record my conviction that this constitutes the monster mischief.”
And then he himself adds:—
“If to considerations like these regarding the moral and religious aspect of this great question, be added those suggested by the indescribable physical sufferings inflicted on the labouring classes by the existing state of the public health in the metropolis, the conviction must of necessity follow, that the time is come when efforts in some degree commensurate with these great and pervading evils can no longer with safety be deferred.”[23]
This opinion was expressed three years after the Royal Commissioners of 1847 had said in their report:—
“There appears to be no available (legal) means for the immediate prevention of overcrowding; all we can do is to point it out as a source of evil to be dealt with hereafter.”