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HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 99
By those restrictions to which I have adverted,
something may be done, no doubt, for improving
the arrangement of houses so tenanted—something
to prevent the more glaring outrages of decency
which at present prevail—something to maintain
comparative cleanliness, and to check the spread of
disease. I fear that no further remedy than this
would prove effectual, unless it were universal for
the metropolis. Unquestionably, it would be possible,
with persons even of the lowest sort above pauperism,
to proceed on the same principle as in the
establishment of model-lodgings for the working
orders; to provide for them, namely, under respectable
control and supervision, the best accommodation
which their price could purchase, of the kind
to which they have been habituated; to give them
the means of lying down, free from damp or cold,
partitioned from one another, and with isolation of
sexes, in a building constructed or arranged for the
purpose, where the ventilation and the facilities for
cleanliness might be complete. There seems little
room to doubt that this might be done, on a very
large scale, at a rate considerably less than the
poorest now pay for the right of lairage amid vermin,
filth, obscenity, and fever; and with such dormitories,
obviously, there might be connected other arrangements
for giving comfort and cleanliness to the very
poor and destitute, at the lowest possible price. Of
gratuitous reception I do not speak, because that is
already provided, under certain regulations, in all