The gaping chinks
admitted every blast; the leaning chimneys had lost half their
original height; the rotten rafters were evidently misplaced;
while in many instances the thatch, yawning in some parts to
admit the wind and wet, and in all utterly unfit for its
original purpose of giving protection from the weather, looked
more like the top of a dunghill than a cottage. Before the
doors of these dwellings, and often surrounding them, ran open
drains full of animal and vegetable refuse, decomposing into
disease, or sometimes in their imperfect course filling foul
pits or spreading into stagnant pools, while a concentrated
solution of every species of dissolving filth was allowed to
soak through and thoroughly impregnate the walls and ground
adjoining.
These wretched tenements seldom consisted of more than two
rooms, in one of which the whole family, however numerous,
were obliged to sleep, without distinction of age, or sex, or
suffering. With the water streaming down the walls, the light
distinguished through the roof, with no hearth even in winter,
the virtuous mother in the sacred pangs of childbirth, gives
forth another victim to our thoughtless civilization;
surrounded by three generations whose inevitable presence is
more painful than her sufferings in that hour of travail;
while the father of her coming child, in another corner of the
sordid chamber, lies stricken by that typhus which his
contaminating dwelling has breathed into his veins, and for
whose next prey is perhaps destined, his new-born child.
Pages:
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108