Another portion
of the miserable population has converted old caravan bodies, removed in
some cases from their wheels, into houses; others have no other dwelling
than ruinous post-chaise bodies, for which a rent of sixpence per week is
paid. In one of the caravans eight persons dwell, among whom a child
suffering from small-pox was battling with death at the time of Mr.
Goderich's visit in March.

Mr. Timbs calculates the number of professional beggars in London at
15,000, two-thirds of whom are Irish. 30,000 men, women, and children
are employed in the costermonger trade; besides, we have, according to
Mr. Mayhew, 2000 street sellers of green stuff, 4000 street sellers of
eatables and drinkables, 1000 street sellers of stationery, 4000 street
sellers of other articles, whose receipts are three millions sterling,
and whose incomes may be put down at one. Let us extend our survey, and
we shall not wonder that the public-houses--and the gin palaces--and the
casinos--and the theatres--and the penny gaffs--and the lowest and vilest
places of resort in London, are full. In Spitalfields there are 70,000
weavers with but 10_s._ per week; there are 22,479 tailors, 30,805
shoemakers, 43,928 milliners; seamstresses, 21,210; bonnet-makers, 1769;
cap-makers, 1277. What hard, wretched work is theirs!

In the first week of January this present year, a poor woman named Martha
Duke was brought up at the Thames police office, charged with attempting
to commit suicide. She was a poor needle-woman, and found the misery of
that mode of life greater than could be borne. Speaking not of this case
in particular, but of needlewomen in general, Mr. Burch, the resident
medical officer of the London Hospital, stated that "a large number of
patients had been under his care, and he had carefully investigated a
considerable number of cases, and was satisfied that needle-women were
the most ill-paid class of people and the most hard-working on earth.
They were miserably paid," he added, "and he knew that numbers of them,
with constitutions broken down, earned from 3_s._ to 4_s._ per week only,
and for that scanty pittance were compelled to work from three o'clock in
the morning till ten at night. They soon became enfeebled by
insufficient diet and over-work, and when broken down either had recourse
to suicide or prostitution." In 1844 the operative tailors instituted an
inquiry into the sweating system, and then it was found that there wer