“The state of some of the streets and courts examined was found by tile inspectors abominable beyond description, and exhibited a melancholy picture of the filthy condition and unwholesome atmosphere in which a large portion of our poor are doomed to live. “As an example I will extract the description given of Little Ireland from the proceedings of the Special Board of Health, which I have been permitted to examine through the kindness of the borough-reeve, John Brooks, Esq.:— “‘The undersigned having been deputed by the Special Board of Health to inquire into the state of Little Ireland, begs to report that, in some of the streets and courts abutting, the sewers are all in a most wretched state, and quite inadequate to carry off the surface water, not to mention the slops thrown down by the inhabitants in about 200 houses. The privies are in a most disgraceful state, inaccessible from filth, and too few for the accommodation of the number of people, the average number being two to 250 people. The upper rooms are, with few exceptions, very dirty, and the cellars much worse, all damp, and some occasionally overflowed. The cellars consist of two rooms on a floor, each nine or ten feet square, some inhabited by ten persons, others by more; in many the people have no beds, and keep each other warm by close stowage on shavings, straw, &c.; a change of linen or clothes is an exception to the common practice. Many of the back-rooms, where they sleep, have no other means of ventilation than from the front rooms. Some of the cellars on the lower ground were once filled up as uninhabitable, but one is now occupied by a weaver, and he has stopped up the drain with clay to prevent the water flowing from it into his cellar, and mops up the water every morning.’ “The above description represents as faithfully the present state of this place as it did its condition eight years ago. In addition to the circumstances here mentioned, the unhealthiness of this spot is further increased by its low and damp situation, in a deep hollow, bounded on one side by a filthy and stinking brook, which readily overflows after rain; on another, by a very steep embankment; and on another, by a high wall, which separates it from the gas-works, and surrounded moreover by numerous high factories. * * *