I remember once a young ladies' school used to send roses once a week from a pretty suburb of London; they used to bring them to school in the morning from their gardens, make them at twelve into bouquets, send them up by three, and they were in East London homes by five. As I used to take the bouquets of beautiful flowers round on trays--followed, I may say, by a mob of children yelling for a flower, for old and young have a touching love for flowers in East London--I always found that I required four bouquets for each house, for each house contained at least four families. This is a fact which escapes the notice of the casual visitor, who sees a harmless-looking house outside, but does not know what is inside. We are overcrowded, and what overcrowding means from the point of view of health and morality only those who reside in the district and the local medical officer really know. I used to have sent me by the excellent Medical Officer for Bethnal Green--Dr. Bate--the death-rate each month compared with the death-rate for the whole of London, and there is no reason that I know of to account for the 22-27 per 1,000 registered for Bethnal Green compared with the 18 per 1,000 of the rest of London, except the overcrowded and sometimes insanitary conditions in which the people live. [Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._) A CROWD IN PETTICOAT LANE.] Things, however, are much better than they used to be. The London County Council has done a good deal in pulling down rookeries and rehousing large areas--as, for instance, the famous Boundary Street area between Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. The Mansion House Council for the Dwellings of the Poor has done much through its local committees to stimulate local effort; and the district authorities are far more active than they were, and alive to the responsibilities which fall upon them. Many an afternoon have I spent with the Sanitary Committee of the Vestry of Bethnal Green, condemning insanitary property, and many are the sad sights which I have seen when I have been round with them. I remember vividly one or two large houses abutting on a little court. As we went with difficulty through the narrow passages and looked into the different rooms, we found women sitting silent and patient, too busy to say much to us, pasting match-boxes together, for which they were to get twopence-farthing a gross. Needless to say that these houses had to be condemned; but the difficulty is by no means over when such dwellings are condemned. As a man said caustically and truly at a meeting held on the subject, "A rat in a hole is better than a rat out, any day"; and great consideration has to be shown in not turning out too quickly those who have found these poor tenements their home before provision has been made elsewhere for them.