Mr. Paterson's experience lay on the south side of the river, and the
district possesses peculiarities of its own. On the whole, I think, the
riverside streets there are rather more unhealthy than those in the East
End. Many houses stand below water-level, and in digging foundations I
have sometimes seen the black sludge of old marshes squirting up through
the holes, and even bringing with it embedded reeds that perhaps were
growing when Shakespeare acted there. The population is more distinctly
English than on the north side. Where the poverty is extreme it is more
helpless. Work as a whole is rather steadier, but not so good. The smell
is different and very characteristic, partly owing to the hop-markets.
Life seems to me rather sadder and more depressing there, with less of
gaiety and independence; but that may be because I am more intimate with
the East End, and intimacy with working people nearly always improves
their aspect. It is, indeed, fortunate for our sensational novelists
that they remain so ignorant of their theme, for otherwise murders,
monsters, and mysteries would disappear from their pages, and goodness
knows how they would make a living then!

It is not crime and savagery that characterise the unknown lands where
the working classes of London chiefly live. Matthew Arnold said our
lower classes were brutalised, and he was right, but not if by brutality
he meant cruelty, violence, or active sin. What characterises them and
their streets is poverty. Poverty and her twins, unhappiness and waste.
Under unhappiness, we may include the outward conditions of
discomfort--the crowded rooms, the foul air, the pervading dirt, the
perpetual stench of the poor. In winter the five or six children in a
bed grow practised in turning over all at the same time while still
asleep, so as not to disturb each other. In a hot summer the bugs drive
the families out of the rooms to sleep on the doorstep. Cleanliness is
an expensive luxury almost as far beyond poverty's reach as diamonds.