A hundred years ago
The distress, touching the point of starvation, in some of our great manuacturing towns is becoming widespread, and in Manchester we are happy to see that strenuous efforts are being made to organise relief. The distress is greatly intensified by the extreme severity of the weather, which amongst people quite unable to procure either fuel or warm clothing, or sufficient food, tells terribly on the health. The suffering in some of the poorest districts of Manchester, epecially Ancoats, Deansgate, and Angel Meadow, is extreme; and even the Wood Street Mission for Children, which can relieve only the worst cases, while it alleviates the sufferings of hundreds, has to turn away, from its doors thousands more but little less in need of help than those whom it admits. The number of people out of work is very great; the number of uninhabited housbs is rapidly increasing, owing to the inability of the poor to pay their rent, and their consequent crowding together, to divide the expense of rent; and the authorities dare not, in common humanity, apply the provisions of the law against overcrowding. In short, all the signs seem to portend great suffering from hunger and cold, and not a little from the disease which suffering and cold and overcrowding, taken together, are sure to produce.
Spectator, 14 December 1878
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