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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1681, 18 May 1904, Page 57

An English writer has been startling Great Britain by describing the actual conditions that exist in the large cities among the poorest people of the slums. He has shown that the. rooms in which thousands of people live are as filthy and crowded as pigsties. l< I visited scores of houses in Manchester,” he says, “and found that in all of them the father, mother and children sleep on a single mattress and cover themselves with rags. The - comforts, even the bare decencies, of life are entirely lacking in these homes. Many of the children are never washed. The mothers do not wash themselves. In a number of the houses I found the women with bruised faces and blackened eyes. In one place I found) the mother drunk and sleeping in the coal-hole, with a baby in her arms.” .7 Eight cases of scarlet fever, one of enteric and four of tuberculosis were reported in the city of Wellington last week. A case of diphtheria was reported fron| Hutt County.