physicians, in spite of the excitement into which the cholera epidemic
plunged the sanitary police by reason of the condition of Little Ireland,
in spite of everything, in this year of grace 1844, it is in almost the
same state as in 1831! Dr. Kay asserts that not only the cellars but the
first floors of all the houses in this district are damp; that a number
of cellars once filled up with earth have now been emptied and are
occupied once more by Irish people; that in one cellar the water
constantly wells up through a hole stopped with clay, the cellar lying
below the river level, so that its occupant, a hand-loom weaver, had to
bale out the water from his dwelling every morning and pour it into the
street!

Farther down, on the left side of the Medlock, lies Hulme, which,
properly speaking, is one great working-people's district, the condition
of which coincides almost exactly with that of Ancoats; the more thickly
built-up regions chiefly bad and approaching ruin, the less populous of
more modern structure, but generally sunk in filth. On the other side of
the Medlock, in Manchester proper, lies a second great working-men's
district which stretches on both sides of Deansgate as far as the
business quarter, and in certain parts rivals the Old Town. Especially
in the immediate vicinity of the business quarter, between Bridge and
Quay Streets, Princess and Peter Streets, the crowded construction
exceeds in places the narrowest courts of the Old Town. Here are long,
narrow lanes between which run contracted, crooked courts and passages,
the entrances to which are so irregular that the explorer is caught in a
blind alley at every few steps, or comes out where he least expects to,
unless he knows every court and every alley exactly and separately.
According to Dr. Kay, the most demoralised class of all Manchester lived
in these ruinous and filthy districts, people whose occupations are
thieving and prostitution; and, to all appearance, his assertion is still
true at the present moment. When the sanitary police made its expedition
hither in 1831, it found the uncleanness as great as in Little Ireland or
along the Irk (that it is not much better to-day, I can testify); and
among other items, they found in Parliament Street for three hundred and
eighty persons, and in Parliament Passage for thirty thickly populated
houses, but a single privy.

If we cross the Irwell to Salford, we find on a peninsula formed by the
river,