66	ENGLISH    SAGA
streaming with filth, opened out of the street. . . . Here, during
the days of business, the sound of the hammer and the file never
ceased, amid gutters of abomination, and piles of foulness, and
stagnant pools of filth; reservoirs of leprosy and plague, whose
exhalations were sufficient to taint the atmosphere of the whole
of the kingdom and fill the country with fever and pestilence."
Reality was more terrible than art. Disraeli did not exaggerate
but, out of deference to Victorian proprieties, toned down the '
horror of his picture. The official reports of the Royal Health
of Towns Commission of 1845 were more graphic for they were
more exact. In 442 dwellings examined in Preston, 2400 people
slept in 852 beds. In 84 cases four shared a bed, in 28 five, in
13 six, in 3 seven, and in i eight. The cellar populations of
Manchester and Liverpool, nearly 18,000 in the former and more
in the latter, were without any means of removing night-soil
from the habitations. Even for those who lived above ground
water-closets were unknown' and the privies, shared in common
by hundreds, were generally without doors. A doctor in his
report on the Lancashire towns testified:
"I have known instances where the wall of a dwelling-
house has been constantly wet with foetid fluid which has
filtered through from a midden and poisoned the air with
its intolerable stench: and the family was never free from
sickness during the six months they endured the nuisance.
Instances in which foetid air finds its way into the next
dwelling-house are not infrequent. I know an instance (and
I believe- there are many such), where it is impossible to
keep food without its being tainted for even a single night
in the cupboards on the side of the house next the public
necessary, and where the foetor is offensively perceptible
always and oppressive in the morning before the door is
opened. In this instance the woman of \the house told me
she had never been well since she came to it, and the only
reason she gave for her living in it was, the house was 6d.
a weekTheaper than others free from the nuisance."^1
Such horrors, intolerable to modern minds, must be judged
in proper proportion: it was only the unprecedented rapidity
^:Dr. Lyon Playfavr, Health of Towns Commission, L Xeporton the State of Large Towns in
Lancashire^ 184$.