The father was of no particular occupation, picking up odd jobs, and leaning largely to the shrimp trade. He stood high in Honora Bristow's regards as having regularly paid his _1s. 9d._ a week for five years, or, at least, being some _5s._ behind now; a sum which will probably be covered by the chattels in the back garden. The poor home was silent then. The mother lay calmly in the dead-house, after the post-mortem examination, "terrible cut and hacked about," said the one gossip who had ventured to go and see her quondam friend. The father was in Maidstone Gaol. The little children were being taken care of by the grandmother until such time as the mother should have been buried, when they would gravitate to the workhouse. In the meantime the boy, aet. twelve, the cause of all the mischief, disports himself in Munyard's Row as though nothing had happened. Perhaps he is the most difficult part of the problem; but the whole question of the home is a puzzling one. The boy is evidently the product of the home. It very much concerns the community that such produce should become extinct; and therefore the sooner some improvements can be introduced into such homes the better. In the first place, there is decidedly too little light. Sunshine, under any circumstances, would have been impossible there. The advisability of human beings burrowing underground may be questioned, whether in cellars or genteel underground kitchens. Then again, one bedroom--nay, one bedstead--for father, mother, and seven children ranging from seventeen to two is decidedly deficient. This sounds almost too horrible to be true; but I was careful to ascertain that the eldest girl, though in domestic service in Greenwich, slept at the "home." More horrible still is the fact disclosed, that they had a second room, yet had not the decency to use it. "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." They lived according to their light; but they had very little light, literally or figuratively. Surely we want to teach our poor the simple rules of hygiene. One of the gossips, a clean, healthy little woman, with a fine baby at her breast, referred with pride to her poor kitchen, identical in all respects, save dirt, with the home. Then, again, there was one thing that struck me forcibly, and that was the sort of qualified reprobation with which these good gossips--really decent people in their way--spoke of the habit of throwing knives. Honora had once thrown one at her daughter of eighteen, but never meant to do so again. And all this under the bells of the old parish church of Greenwich in the year of grace 1870!