It contains 1,400 houses, inhabited by 2,795 families, comprising a population of
12,000. The space within which this large amount of population are living is less than
400 yards square, and it is no uncommon thing for a man and his wife, with four or
five children, and sometimes the grandfather and grandmother, to be found living in
a room from ten to twelve feet square, and which serves them for eating and working
in. . . . There is not one father of a family in ten throughout the entire district that
possesses any clothes but his working dress, and that too commonly in the worst
tattered condition; and with many this wretched clothing form their only covering at
night, with nothing better than a bag of straw or shavings to lie upon. 5