hese were crowded
with dwellings of various size, while from the principal court often
branched out a number of smaller alleys, or rather narrow passages,
than which nothing can be conceived more close and squalid and
obscure.

Here, during the days of business, the sound of the hammer and the
file never ceased, amid gutters of abomination, and piles of
foulness; and stagnant pools of filth, reservoirs of leprosy and
plague, whose exhalations were sufficient to taint the atmosphere of
the whole kingdom, and fill the country with fever and pestilence.

Such were the conditions of life in Willenhall, at least from the
industrial side; for Willenhall and Wednesfield were at that time almost
identical in their industrial, social, and municipal economics. The
novelist is, of course, incorrect in saying Wednesfield had no church; as
we have seen in Chapter XXIII. it had possessed a small church or chapel
since 1746.

Another novelist who has dealt with the same theme is Louis Becke. The
hero of his tale, entitled "Old Convict Days" (published by T. Fisher
Unwin), is a runaway apprentice from Darlaston; and Willenhall is alluded
to in this work as "Wilnon." Spirited descriptions are given of regular
set fights between the apprentices of the two towns, which took place on
the canal bridge that divided their respective territories near Bug Hole,
and in the course of which drownings have not been unknown to occur.
Allusions are also made to the dog-fighting, human rat worrying, and
other brutal sports with which the populace of these two places were wont
to amuse themselves; and particularly to the haunted Red Barn in which a
murder had been committed.

Willenhall can lay a further claim to classic ground in the realm of
fiction, though the exact spot has not yet been satisfactorily
identified. It is the place called Mumper's Dingle, in the works of
George Borrow, the gipsy traveller and linguist, or as he calls himself
in the Romany dialect, Lavengro, the "Word-Master."

The word "mumper" signifies a tramp or roving beggar; but its slight
likeness to the name Monmer has led certain local enthusiasts to identify
Mumpers' Dingle with Monmer Lane. Wherever this particular gipsies'
dingle may have been, it was certainly on the Essington side of
Willenhall, though scarcely five miles out; in fact, the public-house
mentioned in the narrative ("Lavengro," chapter 89) is generally
understoo