the dipping had sponges fixed before their
mouths; and some have suggested that such
sponges might be moistened with an alkaline
solution. An expensive system of ventilation
had then recently been carried out upon the
premises, and all worked well.

Before we pass to a report of our own visit
to the factory at Bow, we must add two or
three more facts to the previous information
by which we had been induced to turn our
face in that direction. We must give a summary
of the intelligence transmitted for our
use from Manchester.

The fourteen cases mentioned by our correspondent
have all arisen, he believes, in the
same factory. The work of this factory used
to be carried on in two small rooms, which
have recently, for better ventilation, been
thrown into one. No complaint of any kind
has been made by sufferers against the proprietor,
who has himself mourned for the
death of a near relation, in whom the disease
contracted in the factory proved fatal. At
this factory the matches manufactured are
of the common kind, and the preparation
for the dipping is contained in iron bowls,—
phosphorus, chlorate of potass, and glue.

The narrative supplied to us of one or two
of these cases, will assist us to a practical
understanding of some of the facts already stated.
Names we, of course, falsify.

Annie Brown is twenty years of age, of pale
and scrofulous aspect. She went to work at
the lucifer-factory, when she was nine years
old, and after she had worked for about four
years, the complaint began, like a toothache.
Her teeth had all been sound before that
time (she says; but it was impossible for her
to know more than that, at any rate, they
had not troubled her by aching). She was
occupied in putting the lids on the boxes. She
could smell the phosphorus at first, but soon
grew used to it. At night, she could see
that her clothes were glowing on the chair
where she had put them; her hands and arms
were glowing also. She used to wash her
hands, and to attend to cleanliness. (The water
in which such hands are washed, ought to be
made alkaline with soda; pure water does
not easily remove the phosphorus.) On uncovering
her face, we perceived that her
lower jaw is almost entirely wanting; at the
side of her mouth are two or three large holes.
The jaw was removed at the Infirmary seven
years ago.

Maggie Black is twenty-three years old;
she used to sort the matches when they had
been dipped and dried. After two or three
years her complaint began like toothache.
She had one tooth drawn, but the gum afterwards
gathered and discharged outside. The
operatives used to work in two rooms, and the
place does not smell so badly since they have
been both thrown into one. She has undergone
five operations. Her under jaw being nearly
gone, the oval shape of her face is destroyed.
At the same time, her upper features show
that she would be by nature a good-looking
girl. She is obliged to live upon soft food,
and is employed now in making boxes, out
of the way of the fumes.

Robert Smith is twenty-one years old, and
worked six years before he began to suffer;
he was a dipper. He has now no teeth in his
lower jaw, of which a great part is destroyed.
He mixed the preparation before dipping: the
matches were previously dipped in sulphur.
He lived near the factory, and could smell the
fumes even outside its walls when the wind
blew in the right direction. His clothes
glowed at night, and the room seemed in
parts to contain white smoke. He knows of
fourteen who have had the disease; two of
them died. He had a good appetite at the
factory, and was well in all respects except
his mouth. The walls of the factory glow
after the gas has been put out.

The correspondent to whom we are indebted
for these cases informs us that, after an operation
for this disease at Saint Bartholomew's
Hospital, the students were informed by the
operating surgeon, that saucers filled with oil
of turpentine— a solvent of phosphorus—
placed among the work-people, would absorb
the vapour of phosphorous acid, by which the
disease is caused. And this precaution is
adopted in some London factories.

We have now stated the information which
induced us to go out and use our eyes at
Bow.

Where is Bow ? In the unfashionable
East. To go to Bow, you must go down
Whitechapel way, and Bow is farther to the
eastward than Whitechapel. But then, so is
Persia. If a man living in London wishes to
go to Bow, let him go past the Whitechapel
shambles and the hay-carts, to Whitechapel
gate. Then he must walk, under a clear blue
sky, like that which favoured us on our own
first journey to Bow. The great breadth of the
highway, and the picturesque variety of the
small houses lining it on either side, tend very
much to make one cheerful.

After a great deal of walking, we got to
suburban terraces, and villas, and little
cottages with large bells, awful in " Kitchen"
and " Visitors " gentility. The gardens before
the houses rich in blossoming almond-trees;
under one railway, and in the next half
minute over another; a little bit of genteel
suburb, and then suddenly the thoroughly old-
fashioned village of Bow.

Bow's pardon must be begged if it be not a
village. There is a good old-fashioned church,
with a great crumbling square tower and a
flag-staff; and there are old shops and houses
up one side of the church, and down the other
side of the church to Bow Bridge; over the
bridge we looked down upon a fine piece of
mud, and it took us from Bow to a road lined
with unaccountable-looking factories and
workers' cottages, not unlike a slip
transplanted out of the far suburbs of Manchester.
Not many paces brought us at length to the