Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/237

 and had not been rebuilt. The thatch of the roof had been extended over the space where the chimney was; and the smoke, occasionally accompanied by sparks of fire, found its way through as it could. So that, besides the greater danger of fire, the condition of the interior of the cottage was fully worse than in those cases in which the chimney was originally only a circular aperture in the roof. For here the efforts of the smoke to escape to upper air are rather more often unavailing, than where the original design of the cottage architect did not contemplate any chimney at all. I was informed that a deaf woman was in the house when the chimney fell in, and had only left the chimney corner a moment or two before the chimney tumbled down.

Soon after I came to another tenement in this village, which appeared to be undergoing some repairs. It was a cottage of two rooms, without a garden—rent thirty shillings a year. The tenant of it was a labourer, with seven shillings a week, and a wife and six children at home. The woman said she had lived there thirty years, and could never get any repairs done, except a tile now and then. Most of the cottages in the parish were thatched, but this one was tiled. The farmer to