Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1883 — The London Poor. [ARTICLE]

The London Poor.

“If you want statistics of the oneroom horrors aou shall hare them out of my very disirct,” said a minister, turning to a carefully prepared Tabulated sheet, which comprised every house to which his active missionaries bad access. “ What do you say to ibis ? 340 rooms yield* .-i. 2lii) families, or, in square figur. s, 1,244 human beings. Cast vour eve, sir, over the list. No. 4H?a bable street. There are 6* families in 12 rooms, ;,»d ::9 persons living in the 12-roomed house. Next door there are 2$ human Wings in a house exactly The same size. No. 57 llroofc street appears to head the list. No less than 47 human beings, the total of (i familiee, are thrust every night into 0 ico:un! And you shall see presently

what rooms they are for which sums Varying from 21 shillings 6 pence to 3 shillings 6 pehce a week are charged:— rooms with the ceilings breaking away from the rafters, smoke-begrimed rooms, where the chimneys smoke and the windows won’t unfasten, rooms smothered in vermin and overrun with mice, rooms approached by break-neck staircases as black, as pitch, garrets of rooms with sloping rafters, cellars of rooms underneath the pavement, rooms overlboking low, miserable streets or fodl mud-yards, hopeless, cheerless, despairing rooms, where wives strip the children piecemeal for the pawnshop, where the furniture seldom consists of more than a broken table or a backless chair, where the children when a stranger knocks at the door come across to him with staring eyes and ask, ‘Have you brought mother some bread ?’ and where the blind, neglected and lonely widow sits upon an empty floor in a fireless room, and mumbles hopeless assent when asked by the good-hearted missionary to join him in prayer to God that some miracle may be worked in order to lighten this unspeakable darkness. ” —London Telegraph.