scanty day clothing. The poor
woman told him that she had been forced to sell her bedstead the year
before to buy food. Her bedding she had pawned with the victualler for
food. In short, everything had gone for food. The magistrate ordered
the woman a considerable provision from the poor-box.

In February, 1844, Theresa Bishop, a widow 60 years old, was recommended,
with her sick daughter, aged 26, to the compassion of the police
magistrate in Marlborough Street. She lived at No. 5 Brown Street,
Grosvenor Square, in a small back room no larger than a closet, in which
there was not one single piece of furniture. In one corner lay some rags
upon which both slept; a chest served as table and chair. The mother
earned a little by charring. The owner of the house said that they had
lived in this way since May, 1843, had gradually sold or pawned
everything that they had, and had still never paid any rent. The
magistrate assigned them 1 pound from the poor-box.

I am far from asserting that _all_ London working-people live in such
want as the foregoing three families. I know very well that ten are
somewhat better off, where one is so totally trodden under foot by
society; but I assert that thousands of industrious and worthy people--far
worthier and more to be respected than all the rich of London--do find
themselves in a condition unworthy of human beings; and that every
proletarian, everyone, without exception, is exposed to a similar fate
without any fault of his own and in spite of every possible effort.

But in spite of all this, they who have some kind of a shelter are
fortunate, fortunate in comparison with the utterly homeless. In London
fifty thousand human beings get up every morning, not knowing where they
are to lay their heads at night. The luckiest of this multitude, those
who succeed in keeping a penny or two until evening, enter a
lodging-house, such as abound in every great city, where they find a bed.
But what a bed! These houses are filled with beds from cellar to garret,
four, five, six beds in a room; as many as can be crowded in. Into every
bed four, five, or six human beings are piled, as many as can be packed
in, sick and well, young and old, drunk and sober, men and women, just as
they come, indiscriminately. Then come strife, blows, wounds, or, if
these bedfellows agree, so much the worse; thefts are arranged and things
done which our language, grown more humane than our deeds, refuses