Posted with permission of the transcriber, Ann Selchick. The following articles #53 through #60 contain fairly graphic descriptions of the living conditions of the poor. I shudder to think that many of my own ancestors must have lived, or rather endured, such conditions. It's a wonder I'm here.... <g> Geo SICKNESS & POVERTY IN Nineteenth Century Whitehaven. # 53. PRESENT CONDITION OF TOWN. ________ To an ordinary and careless observer, Whitehaven may appear a clean town; in fact, in the Parliamentary Gazette of 1845-6 it is described as follows, "The town itself is one of the most handsome in all the Northern Counties; the streets being regular and spacious and crossing each other at right angles, many of the buildings are very neat, and the shops exhibit a degree of elegance seldom, till recently, seen in the North." This may apply to the main streets, such as Lowther-street, Duke-street, King-street, Scotch-street and some others which are wide and open, with convenient foot walks flagged, and the road way either paved or macadamized. These streets are tolerably "clean, and may be called convenient for purposes of business," but even the houses here, and the street themselves have no useful sewers or drains; they are generally confined at the back, and crowded with a poorer class of property; few have privies or ash pits, and the inhabitants are compelled either to keep their refuse on the premises until removed by the scavenger's cart, or it is thrown out into the street. But a casual examination of this portion of the town alone will give no indication of its true state and condition; the back streets must be noticed, the courts and passages in confined places examined, the room and cellar tenements visited, the public lodging houses inspected, and then such an amount of human wretchedness and misery will be revealed, as few persons in better circumstances would believe existed. Words written or spoken cannot convey to the mind the whole state of things, there must be sight and smell to aid and inform the imagination. The pen of novelist never yet depicted such depth of utter wretchedness. There is a grim facetiousness about the names of the town and places "Whitehaven," "Mount Pleasant," "Solomon's Temple," "Harmless Hill," and "Rosemary Lane." To be continued.