the houses, which were not good enough for them, to a population strongly
mixed with Irish blood. Here one is in an almost undisguised working-
men's quarter, for even the shops and beerhouses hardly take the trouble
to exhibit a trifling degree of cleanliness. But all this is nothing in
comparison with the courts and lanes which lie behind, to which access
can be gained only through covered passages, in which no two human beings
can pass at the same time. Of the irregular cramming together of
dwellings in ways which defy all rational plan, of the tangle in which
they are crowded literally one upon the other, it is impossible to convey
an idea. And it is not the buildings surviving from the old times of
Manchester which are to blame for this; the confusion has only recently
reached its height when every scrap of space left by the old way of
building has been filled up and patched over until not a foot of land is
left to be further occupied.

The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and
thirty feet high. On this declivitous hillside there are planted three
rows of houses, of which the lowest rise directly out of the river, while
the front walls of the highest stand on the crest of the hill in Long
Millgate. Among them are mills on the river, in short, the method of
construction is as crowded and disorderly here as in the lower part of
Long Millgate. Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead from
the main street into numerous courts, and he who turns in thither gets
into a filth and disgusting grime, the equal of which is not to be
found--especially in the courts which lead down to the Irk, and which
contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings which I have yet
beheld. In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance, at
the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the
inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through
foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement. This is the first court on