MISERABLE DENS IN THE CENTRE Of LONDON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6261, 10 December 1881, Page 7

MISERABLE DENS IN THE CENTRE Of LONDON.

- I.v the fine summer evenings the green tu: i of the Temple gardens is crowded with chi ; dren of all ages and both sexes, who swan and sprawl over its surface, running, rompin; '■ dancing, and shouting. Th3V are very dirtj r very ragged, very noisy ; but it is pleasai: ; to see them, and to know that these poc ; little ones have.-, chance of smelling grass an i even plucking a daisy. To follow one c ! the tattered families home is not so agreeable ■ Some ot them come from considorabl \ distances rom tno Leicester Square an . Gray's Inn PLoad districts, as well as farthe i to th's east; but the majority are from th narrow alleys round Lincoln's Inn and Fleet street, in the immediate neighbourhood c tlie Gardens, close to the courts which we ar ' accustomed to consider the fountains o justice, under the eyes and noses of the judge who administer equity, fester the squalii alleys in which the children of the Tempi Gardens grow up with pale faces, blearec eyes, and weakly lunge. Here they may b seen tottering to and fro with the pewte mu"s of beer with which their parents drivi away the perpetual thirst that comes fron breathing over again the same fetid air. Thi destruction of the horrible purlieus of grea Wild-street and the Gray's Inn Road hai only caused the rookeries which survive to b< more thickly thronged. The streets of ware houses which have been driven through then have done something for their ventilation but there are places which cannot be effec tually ventilated in any other way than bj i pulling them down ; close courts in which th< same air seems to have stagnated since theii erection. While the long lines of villas ant cottages are crawling over the hills of High gate and Hampstoad, over the green fields ol Willi'Silen, Hammersmith, and Catfort Bridge, the centre of London seems to gro-n more ruinous and dilapidated, as if the greal city were a rotten tree with the heart decaying, while as yet the branches put forth new foliage in the spring. The analogy is oi course only true to a limited extent. There is at work a gradual process of substituting shops and warehouses or dwelling-house; which the wholesomely harrassing requiremen's of the sanitary inspectors tend tc hasten. Hut while this period of change is being passed through, needless sufferings are endured by the poor which only individual care and succour can relieve, and serious dangers are incurred to the public health. Dove Court, under the shadow of the great printing establishments from which Bluehooks, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed ami sent out to enlighten the world, is one of the most remarkable examples oi street architecture to be found in Europe. It is approached from Gunpowder Alley, itself an unsavoury thoroughfare, the name of which is but too suggesthe of the fate it deserve?. Through what seems to be the door of a house in Gunpowder Alley you pass into a court entirely sorrounded by houses, with the main doors of some opening on the little square. There can be no movement of air in such a place, and it is such as no one would live in from choice ; but the people who inhabit it are most anxious to assure visitors that it is salutrious and not overcrowded, so much do they fear being turned adrift and having to seek shelter at a distance. These miserable houses are the abode of the most gripiiiLC poverty. The people herding together in them are in most cases in receipt of allowance from the the rates or from city charities, and it seems to be a condition of their continued receipt of these allowances that they should reside in the LMty and therefore in wretched tenements like these. Tlie warehouses are encroaching everywhere upon the space before assigned to habitations, and it follows that those who by long residence in the city have earned the right to receive its charities have less and less choice as years go by in the matter of their dwellings. These collections of hovels are more than anything else hospitals. Old women and men bedridden, some with horrible diseases preying on their emaciated forms, live in their narrow rooms, unwilling to lose the comparative privacy and the independence of one room of their own by going into "the house," and unable to live except in places which entitle them to the receipt of doles. It is obvious to every one who walks through these byways that the rules which induce human beings to inhabit them ought to be at once and for ever abolished. Many of the poor people who linger on hers have plainly gone too far down the hill of want and disease to be ever again capable of supporting themselves by labour, but charity ought to be extended to them at a distance in some place where the remainder of their days could be passed under loss painful conditions. Many families of young and old children, fathers, mothers, and grown sons and daughters sleeping in one room (which also serves as a kitchen and washing and drying ground for foul linen), are to be found among these courts. The wail of children is heard among them, and a child's funeral often leaves their doors. Apollo Court, just behind Temple Bar. and approached by a passage at the side of tlie well-known fish-shop, now about to be pulled down for the city improvements, is one of the worst places, On a first floor here a casual visitor found a woman with her child prematurely horn, au older child of three or four, a boy of 114, all huddledtogetherinadirty little room, and almost starving. The mother had been confined a month before ; the father was away in the country seeking work ; occasionally he sent up a few shillings. The boy had been earning money, but was now out of work, and his clothes were so bad that he could not go out again yet with the hope of getting anything to do. Here a gift of clothes and a prescription of nourishing food by the kind-hearted doctor of the Farringdon Dispensary did something to set matters right. In amother room two old women were found sleeping in one bed, each unable to walk in consequence of some of the swellings and p:iins in the legs that are rife among the poor, and are attributed to lack of food and superfluity of drink. In another place an old woman was found with the window and door closed in a most ill-smelling room about 9ft. square, where she nourishes two cats aud a dog to keep down the ever present plague of rats. She had only one eye, the other having been destroyed four years before by her husband, who was now dead, for which she thanked God, while the cats sprang about her, leaping on her shoulder and writhing round her head like familiar spirits. It was like a horrible nightmare to pass through these courts and see the cadaverous faces of tlie women and children; but the places are less noisy and los 3 populated now than usually. Those of their population who are able to go abroad have sallied out into Kent for the hop-pieking. Wandering through the dirty and stulfy streets, we suddenly came, to our surprise, upon a little house with a few feet of garden ground in front, in which flourished marigolds, fuchias, and evergreens, while a fig tree actually grew high enough to enable the occupier of the house to sit beneath its shade. Well-shod and well-dressed children—a striking contrast to the tatterdemallions around were playing in the garden.— Tim»i.