m highly injurious to health. During the spring-floods of 1839
the action of such a choking of the sewers was so injurious, that,
according to the report of the Registrar of Births and Deaths for this
part of the town, there were three deaths to two births, whereas in the
same three months, in every other part of the town, there were three
births to two deaths. Other thickly populated districts are without any
sewers whatsoever, or so badly provided as to derive no benefit from
them. In some rows of houses the cellars are seldom dry; in certain
districts there are several streets covered with soft mud a foot deep.
The inhabitants have made vain attempts from time to time to repair these
streets with shovelfuls of cinders, but in spite of all such attempts,
dung-heaps, and pools of dirty water emptied from the houses, fill all
the holes until wind and sun dry them up. {40b} An ordinary cottage in
Leeds occupies not more than five yards square of land, and usually
consists of a cellar, a living room, and one sleeping-room. These
contracted dwellings, filled day and night with human beings, are another
point dangerous alike to the morals and the health of the inhabitants."
And how greatly these cottages are crowded, the Report on the Health of
the Working-Classes, quoted above, bears testimony: "In Leeds we found
brothers and sisters, and lodgers of both sexes, sharing the parents'
sleeping-room, whence arise consequences at the contemplation of which
human feeling shudders."

So, too, Bradford, which, but seven miles from Leeds at the junction of
several valleys, lies upon the banks of a small, coal-black,
foul-smelling stream. On week-days the town is enveloped in a grey cloud
of coal smoke, but on a fine Sunday it offers a superb picture, when
viewed from the surrounding heights. Yet within reigns the same filth
and discomfort as in Leeds. The older portions of the town are built
upon steep hillsides, and are narrow and irregular. In the lanes,
alleys, and courts lie filth and _debris_ in heaps; the houses are
ruinous, dirty, and miserable, and in the immediate vicinity of the river
and the valley bottom I found many a one, whose ground-floor, half-buried
in the hillside, was totally abandoned. In general, the portions of the
valley bottom in which working-men's cottages have crowded between the
tall factories, are among the worst built and dirtiest districts of the
whole town. In the newer portions of this, a