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SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR.
VI. Last, and not least, among the influences
prejudicial to health in the City of London, as elsewhere,
must be reckoned the social condition of the
lower classes; and I refer to this the more especially,
because often, in discussion of sanitary subjects
before your Honourable Court, the filthy, or slovenly,
or improvident, or destructive, or intemperate, or
dishonest habits of these classes, are cited as an
explanation of the inefficiency of measures designed
for their advantage. It is constantly urged, that
to bring improved domestic arrangements within
the reach of such persons is a waste and a folly;
that if you give them a coal-scuttle, a washingbasin,
and a watercloset, each of these several
utensils will be applied to the purpose of another,
or one to the purposes of all; and that meanwhile
the objects of your charitable solicitude will remain
in the same unredeemed lowness and misery as
before. Now it is unquestionable, and I admit it,
—that in houses containing all the sanitary evils
which I have enumerated—undrained, and waterless,
and unventilated—there do dwell whole hordes
of persons, who struggle so little in self-defence
against that which surrounds them, that they may