ere at their
worst, but I have never seen such complete helplessness of the poor as
since then in Bethnal Green. Not one father of a family in ten in the
whole neighbourhood has other clothing than his working suit, and that
is as bad and tattered as possible; many, indeed, have no other
covering for the night than these rags, and no bed, save a sack of
straw and shavings."

The foregoing description furnishes an idea of the aspect of the interior
of the dwellings. But let us follow the English officials, who
occasionally stray thither, into one or two of these working-men's homes.

On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 14th, 1843, by Mr. Carter,
coroner for Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the
newspapers related the following particulars concerning the deceased: She
had lived at No. 3 White Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her
husband and a nineteen-year-old son in a little room, in which neither a
bedstead nor any other furniture was to be seen. She lay dead beside her
son upon a heap of feathers which were scattered over her almost naked
body, there being neither sheet nor coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast
over the whole body that the physician could not examine the corpse until
it was cleansed, and then found it starved and scarred from the bites of
vermin. Part of the floor of the room was torn up, and the hole used by
the family as a privy.

On Monday, Jan. 15th, 1844, two boys were brought before the police
magistrate because, being in a starving condition, they had stolen and
immediately devoured a half-cooked calf's foot from a shop. The
magistrate felt called upon to investigate the case further, and received
the following details from the policeman: The mother of the two boys was
the widow of an ex-soldier, afterwards policeman, and had had a very hard
time since the death of her husband, to provide for her nine children.
She lived at No. 2 Pool's Place, Quaker Court, Spitalfields, in the
utmost poverty. When the policeman came to her, he found her with six of
her children literally huddled together in a little back room, with no
furniture but two old rush-bottomed chairs with the seats gone, a small
table with two legs broken, a broken cup, and a small dish. On the
hearth was scarcely a spark of fire, and in one corner lay as many old
rags as would fill a woman's apron, which served the whole family as a
bed. For bed clothing they had only their