people were without furniture, without everything, two married couples
often sharing one room. In a single day he had visited seven houses
in which there was not a bed, in some of them not even a heap of
straw. Old people of eighty years sleep on the board floor, nearly
all slept in their day-clothes. In one cellar room he found two
families from a Scotch country district; soon after their removal to
the city two of the children had died, and a third was dying at the
time of his visit. Each family had a filthy pile of straw lying in a
corner; the cellar sheltered besides the two families a donkey, and
was, moreover, so dark that it was impossible to distinguish one
person from another by day. Dr. Lee declared that it was enough to
make a heart of adamant bleed to see such misery in a country like
Scotland."

In the Edinburgh _Medical and Surgical Journal_, Dr. Hennan reports a
similar state of things. From a Parliamentary Report, {35a} it is
evident that in the dwellings of the poor of Edinburgh a want of
cleanliness reigns, such as must be expected under these conditions. On
the bed-posts chickens roost at night, dogs and horses share the
dwellings of human beings, and the natural consequence is a shocking
stench, with filth and swarms of vermin. The prevailing construction of
Edinburgh favours these atrocious conditions as far as possible. The Old
Town is built upon both slopes of a hill, along the crest of which runs
the High Street. Out of the High Street there open downwards multitudes
of narrow, crooked alleys, called wynds from their many turnings, and
these wynds form the proletarian district of the city. The houses of the
Scotch cities, in general, are five or six-storied buildings, like those
of Paris, and in contrast with England where, so far as possible, each
family has a separate house. The crowding of human beings upon a limited
area is thus intensified. {35b}