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22
Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.

The above Table marks the places where deaths from zymotic diseases as well as some
from constitutional diseases have happened. This Table requires no comment: it significantly
tells its own tale. The poorest and worst parts of the Parish have experienced the
greatest mortality. The index steadily points to disease and death.
It is discouraging to see what a vast amount of energy runs to waste and what large
sums of money are uselessly spent, when the right use of both are so urgently demanded,
and the labour required in employing them not more difficult in the one case than the other.
The dwellings in which poverty and wretchedness find shelter have been truly described as
" detrimental to health and life, degrading to the moral and physical constitution, producing
a disastrous amount of intemperance and immorality, successfully opposing the progress of
education and the influence of religious teaching, disgusting all who are not inured to an
atmosphere of impurity ; promoting and intensifying attacks of epidemic disease, and deeply
injurious to the welfare of society at large." We, after all that has been said, hardly recognise
how demoralising these foul dwellings are. A late police magistrate said, that if
empty casks were placed along the streets of Whitechapel, that each of them in a few days
would have a tenant, and that these tenants would keep up their kind, and prey upon the
community. Allow these tub-men no education, and in the midst of civilization you would
have a horde of savages." Without "tubs" we have nearly realized the rearing of "savages,
in the midst of our civilization." How these unfit habitations are to be razed, and more
suitable ones erected, is a problem which now demands solution. To adorn our towns and
cities with monuments, temples, and obelisks will avail little whilst the dwellings of the
poor remain as at present. The poor have no choice ; they must take the houses as they
are; and the space they can obtain, will be in proportion to the amount they can pay, not
according to their requirements. Here lies the whole gist of the matter as regards overcrowding.
No bill passed by Parliament; no society formed by the wealthy and charitable,
will work out the least good, unless provisions are made for allowing sufficient cubic space,
at a rent now paid for insufficient cubic space. If a man with a family can only Pay
eighteen-pence, or two shillings, or three shillings he cannot possibly escape overcrowding.