llar or a garret." I have already
referred to the unusual activity which the sanitary police manifested
during the cholera visitation. When the epidemic was approaching, a
universal terror seized the bourgeoisie of the city. People remembered
the unwholesome dwellings of the poor, and trembled before the certainty
that each of these slums would become a centre for the plague, whence it
would spread desolation in all directions through the houses of the
propertied class. A Health Commission was appointed at once to
investigate these districts, and report upon their condition to the Town
Council. Dr. Kay, himself a member of this Commission, who visited in
person every separate police district except one, the eleventh, quotes
extracts from their reports: There were inspected, in all, 6,951
houses--naturally in Manchester proper alone, Salford and the other
suburbs being excluded. Of these, 6,565 urgently needed whitewashing
within; 960 were out of repair; 939 had insufficient drains; 1,435 were
damp; 452 were badly ventilated; 2,221 were without privies. Of the 687
streets inspected, 248 were unpaved, 53 but partially paved, 112
ill-ventilated, 352 containing standing pools, heaps of debris, refuse,
etc. To cleanse such an Augean stable before the arrival of the cholera
was, of course, out of the question. A few of the worst nooks were
therefore cleansed, and everything else left as before. In the cleansed
spots, as Little Ireland proves, the old filthy condition was naturally
restored in a couple of months. As to the internal condition of these
houses, the same Commission reports a state of things similar to that
which we have already met with in London, Edinburgh, and other cities.
{64}

It often happens that a whole Irish family is crowded into one bed; often
a heap of filthy straw or quilts of old sacking cover all in an
indiscriminate heap, where all alike are degraded by want, stolidity, and
wretchedness. Often the inspectors found, in a single house, two
families in two rooms. All slept in one, and used the other as a kitchen
and dining-room in common. Often more than one family lived in a single
damp cellar, in whose pestilent atmosphere twelve to sixteen persons were
crowded together. To these and other sources of disease must be added
that pigs were kept, and other disgusting things of the most revolting
kind were found.

We must add that many families, who had but one room for themselves,
recei