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46 HOUSES PERMANENTLY UNFIT FOR HABITATION.
ordeal, he finds himself as in a well, with little
light, with less ventilation, amid a dense population
of human beings, with an atmosphere hardly respirable
from its closeness and pollution. The
stranger, during his visit, feels his breathing constrained,
as though he were in a diving-bell; and
experiences afterwards a sensible and immediate
relief as he emerges again into the comparatively
open street.
Now, I am prepared to show that there are
many, very many, courts within the City, to which
the above description accurately applies; courts
and alleys hemmed in on all sides by higher houses;
having no possibility of any current of air; and
(worst of all) sometimes so constructed back to
back, as to forbid the advantage of double windows
or back doors, and thus to render the house as
perfectly a cul-de-sac out of the court, as the court
is a cul-de-sac out of the next thoroughfare.
It is surely superfluous to observe, that these
local conditions are utterly incompatible with
health. Among their dense population it is rare
to see any other appearance than that of squalid
sickness and misery; and the children, who are
reproduced with the fertility of a rabbit-warren,
perish in early infancy. In the worst localities
probably not more than half the children born
survive their fifth year, and of the 3,799 deaths