slime
pools are left standing on this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of
miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a stench unendurable even
on the bridge forty or fifty feet above the surface of the stream. But
besides this, the stream itself is checked every few paces by high weirs,
behind which slime and refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above
the bridge are tanneries, bonemills, and gasworks, from which all drains
and refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the
contents of all the neighbouring sewers and privies. It may be easily
imagined, therefore, what sort of residue the stream deposits. Below the
bridge you look upon the piles of debris, the refuse, filth, and offal
from the courts on the steep left bank; here each house is packed close
behind its neighbour and a piece of each is visible, all black, smoky,
crumbling, ancient, with broken panes and window frames. The background
is furnished by old barrack-like factory buildings. On the lower right
bank stands a long row of houses and mills; the second house being a ruin
without a roof, piled with debris; the third stands so low that the
lowest floor is uninhabitable, and therefore without windows or doors.
Here the background embraces the pauper burial-ground, the station of the
Liverpool and Leeds railway, and, in the rear of this, the Workhouse, the
"Poor-Law Bastille" of Manchester, which, like a citadel, looks
threateningly down from behind its high walls and parapets on the
hilltop, upon the working-people's quarter below.

Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more flat and the right bank
steeper, but the condition of the dwellings on both banks grows worse
rather than better. He who turns to the left here from the main street,
Long Millgate, is lost; he wanders from one court to another, turns
countless corners, passes nothing but narrow, filthy nooks and alleys,
until after a few minutes he has lost all clue, and knows not whither to
turn. Everywhere half or wholly ruined buildings, some of them actually
uninhabited, which means a great deal here; rarely a wooden or stone
floor to be seen in the houses, almost uniformly broken, ill-fitting
windows and doors, and a state of filth! Everywhere heaps of debris,
refuse, and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench which alone
would make it impossible for a human being in any degree civilised to
live in such a district. The newly-built extension of the