(1) The standard of comfort was far lower then than now. In Marylebone, where I began work, nearly every family rented but one room; now there are hundreds of two- and three-roomed tenements. There were no cooking-ranges in the rooms; water was hardly ever carried up higher than the parlours. There were hardly any amusements open to the people; there was no underground railway, no trams, few cheap omnibuses; there were no free libraries, no Education Act, no Board schools. Wages were very decidedly lower, hours of work were longer. The bright oil-lamps did not exist. Food was not so cheap or so various. Flowers were never sold in the streets to the poor. The people stood in those days far more in need of cheer and of help. (2) The knowledge of sanitary matters had penetrated hardly at all; gross ignorance prevailed. There were, moreover, few, if any, Convalescent Homes, no country holiday arrangements. The Building Acts took cognizance of very few of the requirements for health, and hardly any sanitary measures were enforcible—fewer were enforced. Few hospitals for infectious diseases existed. Many excellent appliances for drainage were not invented. (3) There was not one-tenth part of the sympathy and interest in the welfare of the people which permeates all classes now. From these and many other causes a London court in 1864 was a far more degraded and desolate place than it can be now, even in the remotest and forlornest region, and in taking charge of it one had to do a variety of things oneself, where now one finds the intelligent and willing co-operation of many other agencies. Again, there were next to no “model” dwellings and little power of cheap locomotion, so that a court in those days was subject to little change of population; the same families clung to it, lived, married and died in it. Cheap locomotion and facilities in reading have brought the different parts of London into much closer communication. Many of these facts made the necessity for preserving and regulating the old courts and houses far more important than is the case now. The old courts are rapidly disappearing, and numerous blocks of buildings with modern appliances are now scattered over most neighbourhoods. But in 1864 tenants were neither routed out of foul and close courts nor would they have been received into the rare and select model dwellings. Moreover, in the rough courts they were little meddled with, and could pursue in ignorance their insanitary habits further than would be possible now.