Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/207

 We must not dismiss this part of our subject, without alluding to the manner in which the dwellings of the working classes are occupied. If the enquirer into the condition of the poor is amazed at their achievements in abridging the necessaries of life, he will experience no less surprise at the ingenuity which they manifest in accommodating crowds of living beings in a small compass. And in this art our Hibernian brethren maintain their supremacy. It is a common circumstance for a house to be tenanted by five or six families. In their arrangements there are many grades of landlords or letters; thus, one individual, not much higher in the world than his tenants, rents the entire house of the landlord, and lets the floors to other individuals, who, in their turn, let single rooms to families or single persons; the latter, also, have their tenants, who hire corners in the room. We have found thirteen individuals, men, women and children, living promiscuously in one garret of no very large dimensions. On one occasion it happened to us to discover that thirty individuals had, on one night, slept in a room, the measurements of which did not exceed 20 ft. by 16. The people thus congregated were Irish; they chanced to be on their way from London to their native country. At that period cholera was hovering over us, and on the night to which we refer, it swooped down on nine out of the thirty, and seven became corpses in the course of a few hours. By mentioning the latter fact in this connection, we do not mean to intimate that the accumulation of so many individuals in a small space, was the only cause of the terrible incursion, for they were under the