"'Where else can we get any? Everybody drinks it; and you shall too—you shall!' he cried, with a fearful oath, 'and then see if you don't run off to the gin-shop, to take the taste of it out of your mouth. Drink! and who can help drinking, with his stomach turned with such hell-broth as that—or such a hell's blast as this air is here, ready to vomit from morning till night with the smells? I'll show you. You shall drink a bucket-full of it, as sure as you live, you shall.' "And he ran out of the back door, upon a little balcony, which hung over the ditch. "I tried the door, but the key was gone, and the handle too. I beat furiously on it, and called for help. Two gruff authoritative voices were heard in the passage. "'Let us in; I'm the policeman!' "'Let me out, or mischief will happen!' "The policeman made a vigorous thrust at the crazy door; and just as it burst open, and the light of his lantern streamed into the horrible den, a heavy splash was heard outside. "'He has fallen into the ditch!' "'He'll be drowned, then, as sure as he's a born man,' shouted one of the crowd behind. "We rushed out on the balcony. The light of the policeman's lantern glared over the ghastly scene—along the double row of miserable house-backs, which lined the sides of the open tidal ditch—over strange rambling jetties, and balconies, and sleeping sheds, which hung on rotting piles over the black waters, with phosphorescent scraps of rotten fish gleaming and twinkling out of the dark hollows, like devilish gravelights—over bubbles of poisonous gas, and bloated carcases of dogs, and lumps of offal, floating on the stagnant olive-green hell-broth—over the slow sullen rows of oily ripple which were dying away into the darkness far beyond, sending up, as they stirred, hot breaths of miasma—the only sign that a spark of humanity, after years of foul life, had quenched itself at last in that foul death. I almost fancied that I could see the haggard face staring up at me through the slimy water; but no—it was as opaque as stone." Downes had been a "sweater," and before his death was a "sweater's slave." When the comparatively respectable workshop in which Alton Locke laboured was broken up, and the workmen were told by the heartless employer that he intended to give out work, for those who could labour at home, these toil-worn men held a meeting, at which a man named John Crossthwaite, thus spoke for his oppressed and degraded class:—