Eight feet square is the average size of very many of these ‘living-rooms.’ Walls and ceiling are black with the accumulation of dirt which has become fastened there through the neglect of years. It falls down from the cracks in the ceiling, sticks out of the holes in the walls, in short, is everywhere. What goes by the name of a window is half stuffed up with rags or nailed up with boards, in order to keep out the wind and rain, while the rest is so smeared and darkened that no light can get in, nor is it possible to see out. If we climb up to an attic room, where at least we may expect a breath of fresh air through an open or broken window, and look down upon the roofs or cornices of the stories below, we shall discover that the already tainted air which might find its entrance into the window, has come thither over the decayed bodies of cats, birds, or still more nauseous things. The buildings themselves are in such miserable condition that the thought naturally arises, ‘Will they fall down upon the heads of the inmates?’ And furniture? We shall perhaps discover a broken down chair, the rickety remains of an old bedstead, or the mere fragments of a table; more often, however, as a substitute for these we shall find only rough boards resting upon bricks, an old warped trunk, or a box; and more often still nothing but rags and rubbish. “Every room in these rotten, damp, fetid houses is occupied by one, and often by two families. A sanitary inspector reports that he found in a cellar a man, his wife, three children, and four hogs. In another room a missionary found a man sick with small-pox, his wife just recovering from child-birth, and the children half naked and covered with dirt. Here seven persons live in a cellar-kitchen, and a dead child lies between the living. In another room a poor widow was living with three children, and one child who had already been dead thirteen days. Her husband, a cab-driver, had committed suicide a short time before.—Here lives a widow and her six children, including a daughter of 29, another of 21, and a son of 27. Another room contains father, mother, and six children, of whom two are sick with scarlet fever. In another live, eat, and sleep nine brothers and sisters from 29 years old down. Here is a mother who sends her children out on the street from early evening till late after midnight, because she rents her room during this time for immoral purposes. Afterwards the poor worms may creep back to their dwelling if they have not found some scanty shelter elsewhere. Where there is a bed it consists of nothing but a heap of dirty rags, refuse, or straw, but mostly there is not even this, and the miserable beings lie upon the dirty floor. The renter of this room is a widow, who takes the only bed herself and sublets the floor to a married couple for two shillings sixpence a week.” [276]