ABSTRACT

I travelled with my guide through one Street after another, tili he was fairly sick of his undertaking, and refused to accompany me further. On the following day I set out alone, as I found that I had nothing to fear from the half-famished inhabitants : in this manner I traversed fifteen or sixteen streets and lanes, in that part of the town where the lower Orders generally reside. These streets were unsewered, unpaved; every few yards a pool of stagnant water, and heaps of accumulated filth of every description. The windows of the houses were more or less broken, and pasted over with brown paper, or stuffed with rags, affording a certain proof of poverty within. In some streets, every fourth or fifth house was empty, and boarded up; in the other houses were living two, tliree, and in some four families, crowded together. The lower parts, or cellars of the houses, were occupied as weaving shops for handloom weavers. The floors of these cellars were se­ veral feet below the surface of the street, the walls being damp half-way up. The smell pervading these streets and houses was most noxious and sickening.