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The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 by Friedrich Engels
page 74 of 366 (20%)
is furnished by old barrack-like factory buildings. On the lower right
bank stands a long row of houses and mills; the second house being a ruin
without a roof, piled with debris; the third stands so low that the
lowest floor is uninhabitable, and therefore without windows or doors.
Here the background embraces the pauper burial-ground, the station of the
Liverpool and Leeds railway, and, in the rear of this, the Workhouse, the
"Poor-Law Bastille" of Manchester, which, like a citadel, looks
threateningly down from behind its high walls and parapets on the
hilltop, upon the working-people's quarter below.

Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more flat and the right bank
steeper, but the condition of the dwellings on both banks grows worse
rather than better. He who turns to the left here from the main street,
Long Millgate, is lost; he wanders from one court to another, turns
countless corners, passes nothing but narrow, filthy nooks and alleys,
until after a few minutes he has lost all clue, and knows not whither to
turn. Everywhere half or wholly ruined buildings, some of them actually
uninhabited, which means a great deal here; rarely a wooden or stone
floor to be seen in the houses, almost uniformly broken, ill-fitting
windows and doors, and a state of filth! Everywhere heaps of debris,
refuse, and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench which alone
would make it impossible for a human being in any degree civilised to
live in such a district. The newly-built extension of the Leeds railway,
which crosses the Irk here, has swept away some of these courts and
lanes, laying others completely open to view. Immediately under the
railway bridge there stands a court, the filth and horrors of which
surpass all the others by far, just because it was hitherto so shut off,
so secluded that the way to it could not be found without a good deal of
trouble. I should never have discovered it myself, without the breaks
made by the railway, though I thought I knew this whole region
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