I looked out of the window, which should have commanded the back yards of
the neighbouring buildings. But there were no back yards, or, rather,
they were covered with one-storey hovels, cowsheds, in which people
lived. The roofs of these hovels were covered with deposits of filth, in
some places a couple of feet deep--the contributions from the back
windows of the second and third storeys. I could make out fish and meat
bones, garbage, pestilential rags, old boots, broken earthenware, and all
the general refuse of a human sty.

"This is the last year of this trade; they're getting machines to do away
with us," said the sweated one mournfully, as we stepped over the woman
with the breasts grossly naked and waded anew through the cheap young
life.

We next visited the municipal dwellings erected by the London County
Council on the site of the slums where lived Arthur Morrison's "Child of
the Jago." While the buildings housed more people than before, it was
much healthier. But the dwellings were inhabited by the better-class
workmen and artisans. The slum people had simply drifted on to crowd
other slums or to form new slums.

"An' now," said the sweated one, the 'earty man who worked so fast as to
dazzle one's eyes, "I'll show you one of London's lungs. This is
Spitalfields Garden." And he mouthed the word "garden" with scorn.

The shadow of Christ's Church falls across Spitalfields Garden, and in
the shadow of Christ's Church, at three o'clock in the afternoon, I saw a
sight I never wish to see again. There are no flowers in this garden,
which is smaller than my own rose garden at home. Grass only grows here,
and it is surrounded by a sharp-spiked iron fencing, as are all the parks