Nothing of the kind. There were no public buildings of any sort; no churches, chapels, town hall, institute, theatre; and the principal streets in the heart of the town in which were situate the coarse and grimy shops, though formed by houses of a greater elevation than the preceding, were equally narrow, and, if possible, more dirty. At every fourth or fifth house, alleys, seldom above a yard wide, and streaming with filth, opened out of the street. These were crowded with dwellings of various size, while from the principal court often branched out a number of smaller alleys, or rather narrow passages, than which nothing can be conceived more close and squalid and obscure. Here, during the days of business, the sound of the hammer and the file never ceased, amid gutters of abomination, and piles of foulness; and stagnant pools of filth, reservoirs of leprosy and plague, whose exhalations were sufficient to taint the atmosphere of the whole kingdom, and fill the country with fever and pestilence. Such were the conditions of life in Willenhall, at least from the industrial side; for Willenhall and Wednesfield were at that time almost identical in their industrial, social, and municipal economics. The novelist is, of course, incorrect in saying Wednesfield had no church; as we have seen in Chapter XXIII. it had possessed a small church or chapel since 1746. Another novelist who has dealt with the same theme is Louis Becke. The hero of his tale, entitled “Old Convict Days” (published by T. Fisher Unwin), is a runaway apprentice from Darlaston; and Willenhall is alluded to in this work as “Wilnon.” Spirited descriptions are given of regular set fights between the apprentices of the two towns, which took place on the canal bridge that divided their respective territories near Bug Hole, and in the course of which drownings have not been unknown to occur. Allusions are also made to the dog-fighting, human rat worrying, and other brutal sports with which the populace of these two places were wont to amuse themselves; and particularly to the haunted Red Barn in which a murder had been committed. Willenhall can lay a further claim to classic ground in the realm of fiction, though the exact spot has not yet been satisfactorily identified. It is the place called Mumper’s Dingle, in the works of George Borrow, the gipsy traveller and linguist, or as he calls himself in the Romany dialect, Lavengro, the “Word-Master.”