Dickens was not exaggerating when he wrote of "the immense mass of corruption" that sickened and killed so many people in his day. England's polluted environment affected the health of every Victorian. Contamination was everywhere. Chemicals from mills and factories hung in the air and poisoned nearby rivers. Piles of garbage bred disease-carrying rats and flies. Mud and manure clogged the streets and were tracked into homes on shoes and the hems of women's skirts. In a letter to the London Times on July 5, 1849, fifty-four laborers expressed their concern over the danger from so much uncontrolled dirt and waste:

We are Sur, as it may be, living in a Wilderniss, so far as the rest of London knows anything of us.... We live in muck and filthe. We aint got no privez [bathrooms], no dust bins, no drains, no water splies [supplies], and no...