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HOUSES PERMANENTLY UNFIT FOR HABITATION. 45
emanations are conveyed to a distance, and are
enabled to diffuse their influence over a whole
town, instead of concentrating it in some single
slaughter-house or burial-ground, I indirectly suggested
what I have now to illustrate; that all the
evils of all the nuisances in existence acquire their
utmost local intensity of action, when the diffusion
of their gaseous products is interfered with, and
when, from absence of ventilation, these are
retained in the immediate vicinity of their source.
The inhabitants of open streets can hardly conceive
the complicated turnings, the narrow inlets,
the close parallels of houses, and the high
barriers of light and air, which are the common
characteristics of our courts and alleys, and which
give an additional noxiousness even to their cesspools
and their filth. There are very few who,
without personal verification, would credit an
account that might be given of the worst of such
dwelling-places. Let any one, however, who
would do full justice to this frightful subject, visit
the portion of Bishopsgate which lies east of
Houndsditch, or the upper portion of Cripplegate,
which contain some of the worst, though by no
means the only instances, of pestilential residence.
A man of ordinary dimensions almost hesitates, lest
he should immovably wedge himself, with whomsoever
he may meet, in the low and narrow
crevice which is called the entrance to some
such court or alley; and, having passed that