Note 11 — Chapter II

“However miserable these rooms may be they are yet too dear for many, who wander about all day seeking to get a living as well as they can, and at night take shelter in one of the common lodging-houses, of which there are so many. The lodging-houses are often the meeting place of thieves and vagabonds of the lowest sort, and some are even kept by the receivers of stolen goods. In the kitchen men and women may be seen cooking their food, doing their washing, or lounging around smoking and gambling. In the sleeping room there is a long row of beds on each side, as many as sixty or eighty in a single room. In many lodging-houses the two sexes are permitted to lodge together without any regard for the commonest decency. Yet there is still a lower step. Hundreds cannot procure even the twopence necessary to secure the privilege of passing a night in the stuffy air of these dormitories; and so they lie down on the steps and in the passage ways, where it is nothing uncommon in the early morning to find six or eight human beings huddled together or stretched out.”11