In his explorations of the purlieus of the town in prosecution of these popular objects, Thorsby observed how closely the dwellings of the poor were jammed upon one another. Every little spot of a back-yard was bought up for the building of a factory, and every day the unhealthiness of this crowding was becoming more obvious. Asking himself what was the remedy for this evil, he immediately remembered that all round the higher part of the town, the very part most adapted for building, the land was denied to this important object by being town land. Every year till “Lammas-tide,” temporary fences were put up, extremely ugly in themselves, being of hurdles or dead thorns, the natural hedges being only in fragments, and after the hay was cut, all these temporary fences were thrown down or withdrawn, and the whole ground became a desolate, unsightly waste, over which the rabble ranged in listless idleness, or engaged in boxing and dog-fighting. The corporation, who deemed themselves most useful and patriotic conservators of the rights of the freedmen, had maintained the freedom of these lands from full inclosure most jealously; making every man who became a member of the corporation take an oath never to vote for an inclosure. Thorsby saw that whilst no one, except a few butchers, derived any benefit from the keeping open of these lands, the greatest evils were inflicted on the town by it; that the whole of that side of the place was made hideous by it; there was no longer the necessary room for the natural expansion of the town till this obstruction was removed. He took his resolve at once.