there are hundreds and thousands of alleys and courts lined with houses
too bad for anyone to live in, who can still spend anything whatsoever
upon a dwelling fit for human beings. Close to the splendid houses of
the rich such a lurking-place of the bitterest poverty may often be
found. So, a short time ago, on the occasion of a coroner's inquest, a
region close to Portman Square, one of the very respectable squares, was
characterised as an abode "of a multitude of Irish demoralised by poverty
and filth." So, too, may be found in streets, such as Long Acre and
others, which, though not fashionable, are yet "respectable," a great
number of cellar dwellings out of which puny children and half-starved,
ragged women emerge into the light of day. In the immediate
neighbourhood of Drury Lane Theatre, the second in London, are some of
the worst streets of the whole metropolis, Charles, King, and Park
Streets, in which the houses are inhabited from cellar to garret
exclusively by poor families. In the parishes of St. John and St.
Margaret there lived in 1840, according to the _Journal of the
Statistical Society_, 5,366 working-men's families in 5,294 "dwellings"
(if they deserve the name!), men, women, and children thrown together
without distinction of age or sex, 26,830 persons all told; and of these
families three-fourths possessed but one room. In the aristocratic
parish of St. George, Hanover Square, there lived, according to the same
authority, 1,465 working-men's families, nearly 6,000 persons, under
similar conditions, and here, too, more than two-thirds of the whole
number crowded together at the rate of one family in one room. And how
the poverty of these unfortunates, among whom even thieves find nothing
to steal, is exploited by the property-holding class in lawful ways! The
abominable dwellings in Drury Lane, just mentioned, bring in the
following rents: two cellar dwellings, 3s.; one room, ground-floor, 4s.;
second-storey, 4s. 6d.; third-floor, 4s.; garret-room, 3s. weekly, so
that the starving occupants of Charles Street alone, pay the house-owners