In many instances little if any sunlight could get to the courts, and the atmosphere within the dwellings was always foul, owing largely to the saturated condition of the walls and ceilings, which for so many years had absorbed the exhalations of the occupants into their porous material.  Singular testimony to the absence of sunlight in these courts was furnished by the action of the Parks and Gardens Committee, who desired to brighten the homes of the poorest class by gifts of growing flowers and window-boxes; but these gifts could not be made in courts such as these, as flowers and plants were susceptible to the unwholesome surroundings, and would not live.

Mr. George Haw has compiled the following table on the three St. George’s parishes (London parishes):-

Percentage of
Population      Death-rate
Overcrowded      per 1000
St. George’s West  10                 13.2
St. George’s South 35                 23.7
St. George’s East  40                 26.4

Then there are the “dangerous trades,” in which countless workers are employed.  Their hold on life is indeed precarious—­far, far more precarious than the hold of the twentieth-century soldier on life.  In the linen trade, in the preparation of the flax, wet feet and wet clothes cause an unusual amount of bronchitis, pneumonia, and severe rheumatism; while in the carding and spinning departments the fine dust produces lung disease in the majority of cases, and the woman who starts carding at seventeen or eighteen begins to break up and go to pieces at thirty.  The chemical labourers, picked from the strongest and most splendidly-built men to be found, live, on an average, less than forty-eight years.

Says Dr. Arlidge, of the potter’s trade:  “Potter’s dust does not kill suddenly, but settles, year after year, a little more firmly into the lungs, until at length a case of plaster is formed.  Breathing becomes more and more difficult and depressed, and finally ceases.”

Steel dust, stone dust, clay dust, alkali dust, fluff dust, fibre dust—­all these things kill, and they are more deadly than machine-guns and pom-poms.  Worst of all is the lead dust in the white-lead trades.  Here is a description of the typical dissolution of a young, healthy, well-developed girl who goes to work in a white-lead factory:-

Here, after a varying degree of exposure, she becomes anaemic.  It may be that her gums show a very faint blue line, or perchance her teeth and gums are perfectly sound, and no blue line is discernible.  Coincidently with the anaemia she has been getting thinner, but so gradually as scarcely to impress itself upon her or her friends.  Sickness, however, ensues, and headaches, growing in intensity, are developed.  These are frequently attended by obscuration of vision or temporary blindness.  Such a girl passes into what appears to her friends and medical adviser as ordinary hysteria.  This gradually deepens without