“The city of Durham, like all ancient cities and towns, is built very irregularly, and surrounded on all sides by the river Wear, which is frequently overflown, and much wooded. These in summer and autumn, by the combined influences of heat, moisture, and decaying vegetable substances, become abundant sources of malaria. The streets are very narrow, and the houses are built so much behind each other that the entrance to a great many of the dwellings is by a passage, lane, or alley, either a steep ascent or descent, where, from a proper want of receptacles and sewers, filth is allowed to accumulate, and there necessarily is a constant emanation of fœtid effluvia. The majority of the houses are very old and in a dilapidated state, several not being weather proof. The great bulk of the working classes inhabit these tenements, and they seldom occupy more than two rooms, many only one, where all that is requisite in conducing to cleanliness and comfort has to be performed. “The spirit of improvement, which is making such rapid strides in other parts of the country, is here quite dormant. Nothing calls louder for the attention of the constituted authorities than the improvements which might be effected in the habitations of the industrious classes, thereby increasing their health, comfort, and happiness.” _Mr. George Brown_, of Barnard Castle, in the Teesdale union, states that— “The residences of the labouring population within the Teesdale Union, especially in Barnard Castle and the more populous villages, is mostly in large houses let into tenements. At least four-fifths of the weavers in Barnard Castle live in such residences, and about one half of all the other labouring poor in the Union. The tenements which form the residences of the weavers and other labourers in Barnard Castle are principally situate in Thorngage, Bridgegate, and the lower parts of the town, and in confined yards and alleys. The houses are many of them very large. I am told somewhere there are as many as 50 or more individuals under one roof. There is generally, perhaps, one privy to a whole yard (or onset as they term it), embracing five or six houses. From the crowded state of these dwelling-houses, and the filthiness of many of their inmates, disease would undoubtedly arise more commonly than it actually does, but the river Tees flows at the foot of each yard, running alongside of all the houses in Bridgegate. The impurities are thus speedily carried away, and the evils which might otherwise be expected from the effluvia of vegetable and other bodies in a state of decomposition are prevented; besides which, the houses in general being large and the poorer class in the upper stories, they are more protected against cold and damp.” _Mr. Brown_, in regard to Barnard Castle, further states, that—