But with 900,000 people actually living under illegal conditions, the authorities have their hands full.When the overcrowded folk are ejected they stray off into some other hole; and, as they move their belongings by night, on hand-barrows (one hand-barrow accommodating the entire household goods and the sleeping children), it is next to impossible to keep track of them.If the Public Health Act of 1891were suddenly and completely enforced, 900,000 people would receive notice to clear out of their houses and go on to the streets, and 500,000 rooms would have to be built before they were all legally housed again.
The mean streets merely look mean from the outside, but inside the walls are to be found squalor, misery, and tragedy.While the following tragedy may be revolting to read, it must not be forgotten that the existence of it is far more revolting.In Devonshire Place, Lisson Grove, a short while back died an old woman of seventy-five years of age.At the inquest the coroner's officer stated that all he found in the room was a lot of old rags covered with vermin.He had got himself smothered with the vermin.The room was in a shocking condition, and he had never seen anything like it.Everything was absolutely covered with vermin.'
The doctor said: 'He found deceased lying across the fender on her back.She had one garment and her stockings on.The body was quite alive with vermin, and all the clothes in the room were absolutely gray with insects.Deceased was very badly nourished and was very emaciated.She had extensive sores on her legs, and her stockings were adherent to those sores.The sores were the result of vermin.'
A man present at the inquest wrote; 'I had the evil fortune to see the body of the unfortunate woman as it lay in the mortuary; and even now the memory of that gruesome sight makes me shudder.There she lay in the mortuary shell, so starved and emaciated that she was a mere bundle of skin and bones.Her hair, which was matted with filth, was simply a nest of vermin.Over her bony chest leaped and rolled hundreds, thousands, myriads of vermin.'