he parishes of St. John and St.
Margaret there lived in 1840, according to the _Journal of the
Statistical Society_, 5,366 working-men's families in 5,294 "dwellings"
(if they deserve the name!), men, women, and children thrown together
without distinction of age or sex, 26,830 persons all told; and of these
families three-fourths possessed but one room. In the aristocratic
parish of St. George, Hanover Square, there lived, according to the same
authority, 1,465 working-men's families, nearly 6,000 persons, under
similar conditions, and here, too, more than two-thirds of the whole
number crowded together at the rate of one family in one room. And how
the poverty of these unfortunates, among whom even thieves find nothing
to steal, is exploited by the property-holding class in lawful ways! The
abominable dwellings in Drury Lane, just mentioned, bring in the
following rents: two cellar dwellings, 3s.; one room, ground-floor, 4s.;
second-storey, 4s. 6d.; third-floor, 4s.; garret-room, 3s. weekly, so
that the starving occupants of Charles Street alone, pay the house-owners
a yearly tribute of 2,000 pounds, and the 5,336 families above mentioned
in Westminster, a yearly rent of 40,000 pounds.

The most extensive working-people's district lies east of the Tower in
Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, where the greatest masses of London
working-people live. Let us hear Mr. G. Alston, preacher of St.
Philip's, Bethnal Green, on the condition of his parish. He says:

"It contains 1,400 houses, inhabited by 2,795 families, or about
12,000 persons. The space upon which this large population dwells, is
less than 400 yards (1,200 feet) square, and in this overcrowding it
is nothing unusual to find a man, his wife, four or five children,
and, sometimes, both grandparents, all in one single room, where they
eat, sleep, and work. I believe that before the Bishop of London
called attention to this most poverty-stricken parish, people at the
West End knew as little of it as of the savages of Australia or the
South Sea Isles. And if we make ourselves acquainted with these
unfortunates, through personal observation, if we watch them at their
scanty meal and see them bowed by illness and want of work, we shall
find such a mass of helplessness and misery, that a nation like ours
must blush that these things can be possible. I was rector near
Huddersfield during the three years in which the mills w