Note 58 — APPENDIX. (continued 2)

Mr. George Pearse, the Registrar for the St. John the Evangelist District, thus describes the condition of the places in the lower districts, where the greatest mortality occurs:—“Great Peter-street, Perkin’s rents, Duck-lane, and Old Pye-street, are the most densely populated in the district. The houses in Great Peter-street, for the most part, are very old, irregular, and uncleanly. Occupied by tradesmen and small shopkeepers, together with labourers, mechanics, and others of uncertain earnings. The houses in the other three streets are often occupied by 10 or 12 persons in one room, most of them of the lowest grade in society, such as mendicants, hawkers, costermongers, lodging-house-keepers, thieves, and abandoned females of irregular and intemperate habits. Their food chiefly consists of salt-fish and other scraps, collected by the mendicants and disposed of to the general dealers. The houses are, for the most part, very low, filthy, and dilapidated, badly drained, and indifferently supplied with water. There are other unwholesome nuisances arising from the collecting and boiling bones, soap, and tallow, &c. Holland-street, Medway-street, Marlborough-place. New Peter-street, with several other avenues, surrounding an extensive waste (formerly the site of Marlborough square) oftentimes nearly covered with stagnant water. The houses are small, very dirty, and dilapidated, low in situation, without any drainage, having stagnant waters back and front; some in the occupation of the labouring class, and laundresses low in the scale, irregular in their earnings and habits. Many cases of typhoid fever have occurred here, and several recently. Rochester-row, Strutton-ground, and Artillery-square, are thickly populated by tradesmen of all kinds and others; they are without sewerage or proper drainage; the first having an open ditch through the centre for the greater part; and the occupiers of the latter are under the necessity of pumping out into the open street (generally at night) the offensive water that collects in the cesspools within their dwellings. Part of Vauxhall-bridge road, which is contiguous to Douglas-street, Bentinck-street and place, with sundry other small streets or places communicating with them on the one side, and Upper and Lower Garden-street, with Dean’s-place, on the other. The houses are small and numerous; inhabited by labourers, laundresses, costermongers, and others; without proper drainage, having open ditches and stagnant waters in their vicinity. Typhus and scarlatina have been frequent here, and several deaths therefrom have occurred within the last few weeks. In Causton-street the houses are small, populous, with courts or places occupied by labourers generally, and an open ditch in front. Ship-court, with Cottage-place, is situated very low; composed of small, ill-ventilated, dirty, dilapidated houses; thickly inhabited by labourers and others of very low and irregular earnings and habits; adjoining several large dilapidated premises, with extensive wastes or yards used as pig and cow-yards, or for the purpose of collecting slop-soil and other filth, left evaporating in the open air, without sewerage or proper drainage. Vine-street, with Champion’s-alley, York-buildings in Grub-street, on one side, and Scott’s-rents on the other, for the most part are small old houses, peopled by the labouring classes, with bad drainage, and the wharfs in Millbank-street, for the deposit of slop-soil and other nuisance.”