"If a poor man gets married he is pretty sure to have a large family of children, and at the present rate of mortality several will die of zymotic disease. "Hence, when a death occurs, the living and the dead must be together in the same room; the living must eat, drink, and sleep beside a decomposing corpse, and this in usually a small, ill-ventilated room, overheated by a fire required for cooking, and already filled with the foul emanations from the bodies of the living and their impure clothes. "This is an everyday occurrence in Clerkenwell, and constitutes a formidable evil." So great was the pressure for accommodation of some sort or kind, that even the cellars and kitchens in the basements of the houses were occupied as dwelling-places and overcrowded. In St. James', "the worst feature of the overcrowding was the very common practice of residence in cellars or kitchens. In the majority of cases the places are quite unfit for human residence. "... A cellar in St. Giles'," wrote the Medical Officer of Health for that district in 1858, "has been the by-word for centuries to express a wretched habitation unworthy of humanity. "Dating from the time of Charles I., the underground dwellings of our district attained the acme of their miserable notoriety from the pen and pencil of Fielding and Hogarth. "... The Building Act of 1844 contained stringent clauses against the use of such rooms unless they possessed requisites of area and ventilation, such as were out of the question in the cellars of St. Giles'. "The Metropolis Management Act (1855) repeated the prohibition of 1844, and in defence of the public health the Board have lately put this statute in force. This has been done without compromise. As separate habitations for occupation by human beings at night 'a cellar in St. Giles'' is no longer to exist." This was written in 1858, but in the following year he wrote:-- "The profit derived from letting the basement of these houses as dwelling-rooms was too strong a temptation for their owners, and many of the kitchens were let again as soon as the Inspector had reported them emptied." In the Strand (1856) underground rooms and kitchens were inhabited "notwithstanding that District Surveyors are numerous, and that the Metropolitan Building Act is in operation." In Westminster, "an examination of various portions of the parishes shows that large numbers of the poor occupy premises whereby they are not only deprived of the required quantity of air, but being situated below the level of the street, the ventilation is insufficient, the rooms generally damp, and when closed for the night the atmosphere is perfectly insufferable--mostly kitchens and cellars, evidently never intended to be used as sleeping rooms" (1858-9). The causes of the dreadful overcrowding which existed so extensively were many and deep-seated--springing from the very roots of the social and economic system. And they were of great force and widespread in effect.