I need hardly say that the crowding of houses means loss of liberty, and increases competition--that competition is the cause of “sweating” and other miseries. Having wilfully produced these evils, I for one do not believe that they are to be removed even by the best intentioned efforts of city missionaries, nor by young men’s Christian associations, nor even by music halls, though tea be the beverage and hymn tunes the melodies. We have to bear in mind the fact that all writers on sanitary matters are agreed that of all dangers to health, overcrowding is the greatest, and that the death-rate rises in proportion to the density of population. When, therefore, we allow building to go practically unchecked, and move the poor out of two-storeyed dwellings into six-storeyed barracks, we must remember the possible drawbacks of such a system. The death-rate of Paris is higher than that of London (it was nearly 26 per 1,000 in 1881), but the density of population in Paris is twice that of London, being 117 to the acre, as against 50 in London. Some parts of Paris are very much more crowded than any parts of London, and no parts of it have a density of population so slight as Fulham, Hampstead, Wandsworth, Woolwich, or Lewisham. The effect of overcrowding on death-rate is seen very markedly in the city of New York, which has a population of 1,337,000, which has an almost unlimited water-supply, and the sewage of which is discharged direct into the sea. According to the writer in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” there is an excessive crowding of the inhabitants into tenement houses, and the houses are to a great extent without back entrances. As a consequence, the death-rate was 26·47 in 1880, 31·08 in 1881, and 29·64 in 1882. In overcrowded places the danger is great when contagious disease makes its appearance. The spread of such diseases as typhus, measles, and whooping-cough is very much favoured by overcrowding. I have prepared a table, taken from the Registrar-General’s decennial abstract, which shows this fact very clearly with regard to London. I have arranged the various registration districts of London according to the density of population, and in another column I have given the death-rate per 100,000 from whooping-cough and measles, two diseases which are rarely treated in hospitals, and which are very prone to follow each other in epidemics, so that when we have not measles with us we have whooping-cough, and _vice versâ_. ANNUAL DEATH-RATE PER 100,000 LIVING OF CHILDREN UNDER 5 YEARS OF AGE FROM WHOOPING-COUGH AND MEASLES DURING THE 10 YEARS 1871-80.