By the year 1790, when Ferriar’s accounts of fever in Manchester begin, the industrial revolution had been accomplished, mills were everywhere, and the characteristic hardships and maladies of a prolific working class in a time of slack trade were already much the same as we find them pictured with fidelity and pathos in the pages of Mrs Gaskell half a century after. But, so as not to exaggerate the ill health of the working class in Manchester at the end of the 18th century, let us compare the births with the deaths according to the doubtless imperfect registers[262]: _Manchester, Births and Deaths, 1770-91._ Year Births Deaths 1770 1050 988 1771 1169 993 1772 1127 904 1773 1168 923 1774 1245 958 1775 1359 835 1776 1241 1220 1777 1513 864 1778 1449 975 1779 1464 1288 1780 1566 993 1781 1591 1370 1782 1678 984 1783 1615 1496 1784 1958 1175 1785 1942 1734 1786 2319 1282 1787 2256 1761 1788 2391 1637 1789 2487 1788 1790 2756 1940 1791 2960 2286 The mean lodging-houses in the outskirts of the town, says Ferriar, in 1790[263], were the principal nurseries of febrile contagion: some of these were old houses with very small rooms, into each of which four or more people were crowded to eat, sleep, and frequently to work. They commonly bore marks of a long accumulation of filth, and some of them had been scarcely free from infection for many years past. As soon as one poor creature dies or is driven out of his cell he is replaced by another, generally from the country, who soon feels in his turn the consequences of breathing infected air. There was hardly any ventilation possible, many of these old houses being in dark narrow courts or blind alleys. In other parts of the town the lodging-houses were new, and not yet thoroughly dirty; but in these there was a long garret under the tiles, in which eight or ten people often lodged, the beds almost touching. Again, many lived in cellars, sleeping on the damp floor with few or no bedclothes; the cellars of Manchester, however, were better ventilated than those of Edinburgh, and freer from fever. These cellar-tenants were subject to the constant action of depressing passions of the mind. “I have seen patients,” says Ferriar, “in agonies of despair on finding themselves overwhelmed with filth and abandoned by everyone who could do them any service, and after such emotions I have seldom found them recover.” Addressing the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester previous to 1792, he pointed out in an _argumentum ad hominem_ that “the situation of the poor at present is extremely dangerous, and often destructive to the middle and higher ranks of society[264].” And again, “the poor are indeed the first sufferers, but the mischief does not always rest with them.