nd, and
containing the greater number of the working-people of the city. These
courts are usually narrow, muddy, badly ventilated, ill-drained, and
lined with eight to twenty houses, which, by reason of having their
rear walls in common, can usually be ventilated from one side only. In
the background, within the court, there is usually an ash heap or
something of the kind, the filth of which cannot be described. It
must, however, be observed that the newer courts are more sensibly
built and more decently kept, and that even in the old ones, the
cottages are much less crowded than in Manchester and Liverpool,
wherefore Birmingham shows even during the reign of an epidemic a far
smaller mortality than, for instance, Wolverhampton, Dudley, and
Bilston, only a few miles distant. Cellar dwellings are unknown, too,
in Birmingham, though a few cellars are misused as workrooms. The
lodging-houses for proletarians are rather numerous (over four
hundred), chiefly in courts in the heart of the town. They are nearly
all disgustingly filthy and ill-smelling, the refuge of beggars,
thieves, tramps, and prostitutes, who eat, drink, smoke, and sleep
here without the slightest regard to comfort or decency in an
atmosphere endurable to these degraded beings only."

Glasgow is in many respects similar to Edinburgh, possessing the same
wynds, the same tall houses. Of this city the _Artisan_ observes:

"The working-class forms here some 78% of the whole population (about
300,000), and lives in parts of the city which exceed in wretchedness
and squalor the lowest nooks of St. Giles and Whitechapel, the
Liberties of Dublin, the Wynds of Edinburgh. There are numbers of
such localities in the heart of the city, south of the Trongate,
westward from the Saltmarket, in Calton and off the High Street,
endless labyrinths of lanes or wynds into which open at almost every
step, courts or blind alleys, formed by ill-ventilated, high-piled,
waterless, and dilapidated houses. These are literally swarming with
inhabitants. They contain three or four families upon each floor,
perhaps twenty persons. In some cases each storey is let out in
sleeping places, so that fifteen to twenty persons are packed, one on
top of the other, I cannot say accommodated, in a single room. These
districts shelter the poorest, most depraved, and worthless members of