The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844: with a Preface written in 1892Engels, Friedrich
History
The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844: with a Preface written in 1892
Engels, Friedrich
Great Britain -- Economic conditions; Working class -- Great Britain
The New Town, known also as Irish Town, stretches up a hill of clay,
beyond the Old Town, between the Irk and St. George's Road. Here all the
features of a city are lost. Single rows of houses or groups of streets
stand, here and there, like little villages on the naked, not even grass-
grown clay soil; the houses, or rather cottages, are in bad order, never
repaired, filthy, with damp, unclean, cellar dwellings; the lanes are
neither paved nor supplied with sewers, but harbour numerous colonies of
swine penned in small sties or yards, or wandering unrestrained through
the neighbourhood. The mud in the streets is so deep that there is never
a chance, except in the dryest weather, of walking without sinking into
it ankle deep at every step. In the vicinity of St. George's Road, the
separate groups of buildings approach each other more closely, ending in
a continuation of lanes, blind alleys, back lanes and courts, which grow
more and more crowded and irregular the nearer they approach the heart of
the town. True, they are here oftener paved or supplied with paved
sidewalks and gutters; but the filth, the bad order of the houses, and
especially of the cellars, remains the same.
It may not be out of place to make some general observations just here as
to the customary construction of working-men's quarters in Manchester. We
have seen how in the Old Town pure accident determined the grouping of
the houses in general. Every house is built without reference to any
other, and the scraps of space between them are called courts for want of
another name. In the somewhat newer portions of the same quarter, and in
other working-men's quarters, dating from the early days of industrial
activity, a somewhat more orderly arrangement may be found. The space
between two streets is divided into more regular, usually square courts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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