Forty-five Lascars smoking opium together
in a little house in Shadwell; twenty-nine
Lascars and women huddled up together in
another little house, with a dead Lascar
under an old rug, and another, almost dead,
put by to finish dying in a cupboard. Two
hundred and fifty persons in a large house,
having the requisites of decency supplied not
quite in the measure necessary for a single
family; that is the sort of evil now abated
by the law. Keepers of such houses are
bound to register their lodgings, taught in a
considerate manner how to keep them wholesome,
told how many persons can be safely
housed in them, and then kept with a firm
hand to the performance of their duty. In
London alone fifteen thousand persons have
been called upon to register the lodgings
that they keep for the homeless and wandering
population that remains not more than a
week under one roof. Eight and twenty
thousand of the poor class of Londoners,
once littered in filth of nights, now are lodged
in a becoming way; are better lodged, in
truth, than their poor neighbours fixed in
little homes. During the five years of the
new system of oversight, the number of visits
of inspectors, paid in London, have amounted
to more than seven hundred thousand; they
have been paid among people thought to be
incorrigible, yet there never has been one
instance of the assault of an officer in the
performance of his duty. The inspection was
at first very distasteful to the lodgers; now
they look for it and prize it as a right. To
the improved common lodging-houses in
London we must add the model lodging-
houses, the number of which slightly exceeds
a hundred. They accommodate about a
thousand families, and not quite a thousand
single persons, all of a higher class than that
of people who frequent the common-lodging.
The removal of two or three thousand
nuisances connected with the common lodging-
houses has been secured by magistrates'
order; and when it has been found that the
owner of such a house has been compelled to
abate a nuisance, neighbouring landlords
have, in many instances, removed similar
nuisances, in order that the use of their
premises, as a lodging-house, may not bring them
within arm's length of the law.

During the operation of the acts in question,
nearly five hundred cases of contagious
disease have, by the powers they give, been
removed from the lodging-house to the
infirrnary or hospital. After the removal of a
fever-case, the room is closed for fumigation
and lime-washing before lodgers are again
admitted. The bedclothes are disinfected or
destroyed.

But this kind of law which has done so
much for the protection both of life and
morals, has an extremely narrow field of
action. Not only are the pot-houses exempt
from its jurisdiction, but even the most
immoral lodging-house has an immunity from
oversight, because it makes a special business
of its immorality, and is an establishment
which the law cannot be asked to
license.

Then again, in the case of single rooms,
the inspecting-officers finding them over-
crowded by reckless subletting, are told that
the tenants are all uncles and aunts, nephews
and nieces, brothers-in-law and cousins to
each other. The room claims to be a private
castle, and the law, as it now stands, cannot
compel the owner of the room to do his duty
in the letting of it. Houses or rooms occupied
by one family are exempt from the
operation of the law. Now, there are certain
regulations respecting ventilation, supply of
water, &c., with which every owner or sub-
owner of a house sub-let in rooms, should be
bound to comply. The application of these
rules to your case, poor and faithful citizens
of England, crammed into crowded dwellings
where you can't be healthy and you can't be
clean, you ought, says Lord Tyler, to demand
as your right from the government. Also,
there should be somebody to see that persons
do not be sick of contagious fevers in the
midst of crowded rooms, and to secure their
removal to a place where they themselves
have infinitely more chance of recovery, while
their friends and neighbours are saved
from the imminent risk of contracting like
disease. This cries Lord Tyler, is what I
would contrive for you, O people, with what
I call my Crowded Dwellings Prevention
Bill; but there comes John Ball Cox with
a leaden tail, who stops the run of my
intentions.

What say your medical officers of health,
who admire the great change made in the
common lodging-houses and their tenants?
"I am quite sure," says Mr. Gill of Islington,
"could the same laws be brought to bear
upon that class of the population tenanting
single rooms, disease would be mitigated in
its effects, the process of incubation very
much destroyed, and, what is socially
important too, public morals would be
improved." "I have remarked lately," says
Dr. Greggs of Westminster, "much less
disease in the common lodging-houses than in
the private dwellings of the poor." "It is
highly necessary," says Mr. Cogan of Greenwich,
"that this act should be extended to
the class of lodging-houses inhabited by many
families, but only one family in each room;
these are the only houses now where we get
the old types of fever that used to pervade
the lodging-houses." "I sincerely wish,"
says Dr. Arthur of Deptford, "this act could
be extended to those other lodging-houses
which are let out to families in rooms. They
are frequently crowded to excess, causing
disease, morally as well as physically, amongst
the inmates." "I am sure," says Mr. Sequeine
of Whitechapel, "a great improvement would
be effected in the dwellings of the poor, if the
property let out in tenements were also under