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86 HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR.
times so constructed, back to back, as to forbid the
advantage of double windows or back doors, and
thus to render the house as perfect a cul-de-sac out
of the court, as the court is a cul-de-sac out of the
next thoroughfare:" I affirmed that "this could
never be otherwise than a cause of sickness and
mortality to those whose necessities allot them such
residence and assured you of the "incontrovertible
fact, that subsistence in closed courts is an unhealthy
and short-lived subsistence, in comparison
with that of the dwellers in open streets."
In habitations of this kind, the death-rate would
of necessity be high, even if the population were
distributed thinly in the district. A single pair of
persons with their children, having such a court
for their sole occupancy, would hardly be otherwise
than unhealthy; the infants would die teething, or
would live pallid and scrofulous; or a parent would
perish prematurely—the father, perhaps, with typhus,
the mother with puerperal fever. Judge then,
gentlemen, how the mortality of such courts must
swell your aggregate death-rate for the City, when
I tell you that their population is in many instances
so excessive as in itself, and by its mere density, to
breed disease.
Statistics can give you no conception of this
crowding. If you refer to the results of the last
census, you find the average population per house,
in the City of London Union, to be 7.1; in the
East and West London Unions, 8.8. For the