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HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 91
of those suggestions which the incompleteness of
your Act of Parliament has hitherto prevented your
adopting.
1. There are within the City some blocks of
houses which are, I fear, irremediably bad and pestilential
from such errors of construction as I have
already described; and which, further, are so dilapidated,
as to show at a glance their little pecuniary
value. In many instances the destruction of such
a block of houses would confer a sensible advantage
on the population of a considerable district. Of
this class I could hardly give you a better illustration
than would be seen in the ground-plan of Sevenstep
alley. There are other instances (frequent in
Cripplegate) where the removal of a single house
at the extremity of a court or passage would make
a material difference to the ventilation of several
houses, and to the health of a numerous population.
2. Again, in very many parts of the City, you
find illustrations of a constructional error to which I
have adverted as in the highest degree pernicious
to health. You find a number of courts, probably
with very narrow inlets, diverging from the open
street in such close succession, that their backs adjoin
with no intermediate space whatsoever. Consequently,
each row of houses has but a single row
of windows, facing into the confined court; and thus
there is no possibility of ventilation, either through
the court generally, or through the houses which