Was ever a more vivid picture of more revolting scenes offered to the reader’s eye than that which the following pages present? If any doubt creep into his mind as to the accuracy of its details, he has but to read the reports of Dr. Littlejohn and Dr. Alexander Wood , in which everything here stated, not vouched for by the writer herself, is authenticated. Can nothing be done, shall nothing be done, to wipe out such foul blots from the face of our fair city? One effort among others is being mad

It has been my fortune to see the worst slums of the Thames district of London, of Birmingham, and other English and foreign cities, the “water-side” of Quebec, and the Five Points and mud huts of New York, and a short time ago a motive stronger than curiosity induced me to explore some of the worst parts of Edinburgh—not the very worst, however. Honest men can have no desire to blink facts, and no apology is necessary for stating the plain truth, as it appears to me, that there are strata of mi

In the Old Town, where the population of a village or a fashionable square is constantly crammed into the six or seven storeys of one house, room-to-room visitation, for it is nothing else, affords a visitor in one morning a glimpse of a state of things without a parallel. In no other city could tenements be found without gas, without water-pipes, water-closet, or sink, or temporary receptacle for ashes, and entered only by one long dark stone stair, which return such enormous profits to their o

This rickety “land” is not by any means in one of the worst closes in Edinburgh. It is not a haunt of the criminal classes. Vice and virtue live side by side, though the virtuous are in a miserable minority, and their children are in grievous peril of vice. I was given to understand, by those well acquainted with the city, that it was a good representative specimen of an average “land” in a High Street close. On that and another occasion we visited thirty-two families, going by room-row. I propo

I have given the aspect of the houses and population of a particular district by daylight, avoiding all sensational details. The “night side” of the same is well known from description—the High Street filled with a densely compacted, loitering, brawling, buying, selling, singing, cursing, quarrelsome crowd—every fifth man and woman the worse for drink so early as ten at night—a nocturnal market vigorously proceeds under difficulties—men and women puff their wares with stentorian tones and coarse