1844, 2,740 persons for one or more nights; and, although the season was
growing more favourable, the number of applicants in this, as well as in
the asylums of Whitecross Street and Wapping, was strongly on the
increase, and a crowd of the homeless had to be sent away every night for
want of room. In another refuge, the Central Asylum in Playhouse Yard,
there were supplied on an average 460 beds nightly, during the first
three months of the year 1844, 6,681 persons being sheltered, and 96,141
portions of bread were distributed. Yet the committee of directors
declare this institution began to meet the pressure of the needy to a
limited extent only when the Eastern Asylum also was opened.

Let us leave London and examine the other great cities of the three
kingdoms in their order. Let us take Dublin first, a city the approach
to which from the sea is as charming as that of London is imposing. The
Bay of Dublin is the most beautiful of the whole British Island Kingdom,
and is even compared by the Irish with the Bay of Naples. The city, too,
possesses great attractions, and its aristocratic districts are better
and more tastefully laid out than those of any other British city. By
way of compensation, however, the poorer districts of Dublin are among
the most hideous and repulsive to be seen in the world. True, the Irish
character, which, under some circumstances, is comfortable only in the
dirt, has some share in this; but as we find thousands of Irish in every
great city in England and Scotland, and as every poor population must
gradually sink into the same uncleanliness, the wretchedness of Dublin is
nothing specific, nothing peculiar to Dublin, but something common to all
great towns. The poor quarters of Dublin are extremely extensive, and
the filth, the uninhabitableness of the houses and the neglect of the
streets, surpass all description. Some idea of the manner in which the
poor are here crowded together may be formed from the fact that, in 1817,
according to the report of the Inspector of Workhouses, {33} 1,318