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}

“These streets,” says an English journal in an article upon the sanitary condition of the working-people in cities, “are often so narrow that a person can step from the window of one house into that of its opposite neighbour, while the houses are piled so high, storey upon storey, that the light can scarcely penetrate into the court or alley that lies between.  In this part of the city there are neither sewers nor other drains, nor even privies belonging to the houses.  In consequence, all refuse, garbage, and excrements of at least 50,000 persons are thrown into the gutters every night, so that, in spite of all street sweeping, a mass of dried filth and foul vapours are created, which not only offend the sight and smell, but endanger the health of the inhabitants in the highest degree.  Is it to be wondered at, that in such localities all considerations of health, morals, and even the most ordinary decency are utterly neglected?  On the contrary, all who are more intimately acquainted with the condition of the inhabitants will testify to the high degree which disease, wretchedness, and demoralisation have here reached.  Society in such districts has sunk to a level indescribably low and hopeless.  The houses of the poor are generally filthy, and are evidently never cleansed.  They consist in most cases of a single room which, while subject to the worst ventilation, is yet usually kept cold by the broken and badly fitting windows, and is sometimes damp and partly below ground level, always badly furnished and thoroughly uncomfortable, a straw-heap often serving the whole family for a bed, upon which men and women, young and old, sleep in revolting confusion.  Water can be had only from the public pumps, and the difficulty of obtaining it naturally fosters all possible filth.”

In the other great seaport towns the prospect is no better.  Liverpool, with all its commerce, wealth, and grandeur yet treats its workers with the same barbarity.  A full fifth of the population, more than 45,000 human beings, live in narrow, dark, damp, badly-ventilated cellar dwellings, of which there are 7,862 in the city.  Besides these cellar dwellings there are 2,270 courts, small spaces built up on all four sides and having but one entrance, a narrow, covered passage-way, the whole ordinarily very dirty and inhabited exclusively by proletarians.  Of such courts we shall have more to say when we come to Manchester.  In Bristol, on one occasion, 2,800 families were visited, of whom 46 per cent. occupied but one room each.