London ’Prentice Street, was called Western Street or Westley’s Row on the old maps, its continuation, the Coach Yard, being then Pemberton’s Yard.  How the name of London ’Prentice Street came to be given to the delectable thoroughfare is one of “those things no fellow can understand.”  At one time there was a schoolroom there, the boys being taught good manners upstairs, while they could learn lessons of depravity below.  With the anxious desire of putting the best face on everything that characterises the present local “fathers of the people,” the London ’Prentice has been sent to the right-about, and the nasty dirty stinking thoroughfare is now called “Dalton Street.”

Loveday Street, from Loveday Croft, a field given in Good Queen Bess’s reign, by John Cooper, as a trysting-place for the Brummagem lads and lasses when on wooing bent.

Low Rents.—­A return of unassessed houses in the parish of Birmingham, taken October 19, 1790, showed 2,000 at a rental under L5, 2,000 others under L6, 3,000 under L7, 2,000 under L8, 500 under L9, and 500 under L10.

Lozells.—­In the lease of a farm of 138 acres, sold by auction, June 24, 1793, it was written “Lowcells.”  Possibly the name is derived from the Saxon “lowe” (hill) and “cele” (cold or chill) making it “the cold hill.”

Lunacy.—­Whether it arises from political heat, religious ecstacies, intemperance, or the cares and worry of the universal hunt for wealth, it is certainly a painful fact to chronicle that in proportion to population insanity is far more prevalent now than it was fifty years ago, and Birmingham has no more share in such excess than other parts of the kingdom.  Possibly, the figures show more prominently from the action of the wise rules that enforce the gathering of the insane into public institutions, instead of leaving the unfortunates to the care (or carelessness) of their relatives as in past days, when the wards of the poor-houses were the only receptacles for those who had no relatives to shelter them.  The erection of the Borough Asylum, at Winson Green, was commenced in 1846, and it was finished in 1851.  The house and grounds covered an area of about twenty acres, the building being arranged to accommodate 330 patients.  Great as this number appeared to be, not many years passed before the necessity of enlargement was perceived, and, ultimately, it became evident the Winson Green establishment must either be doubled in size or that a second Asylum must be erected on another site.  An estate of 150 acres on the south-eastern slopes of Rubery Hill, on the right-hand side of the turnpike road from here to Bromsgrove, was purchased by the Corporation, and a new Asylum, which will accommodate 616 patients, has there been erected.  For the house and its immediate grounds, 70 acres have been apportioned, the remainder being kept for the purposes of a farm, where those of the inmates fit for work can be employed, and where the sewage from the asylum