We shall, therefore,
content ourselves with mentioning the existence of such a School for the
refuse population of this large town.
The deficient education of the working classes, consequent on unregulated
infant labour, would alone be sufficient to account for the prevalence of the
idle custom of losing at least one day every week in busy times, and the
drinking habits, which are a blot upon a population of superior intelligence.
But a still more demoralizing influence exists in the state of the dwellings
of the working classes in Birmingham, which, although at first sight very
attractive in appearance, forming neat courts of cottages, compared with the
crowded lodging-houses of many manufacturing towns, are, nevertheless,
lamentably deficient in two essentials for health and decency, viz.,
efficient drainage, and a sufficient supply of wholesome water.
In two thousand courts, inhabited by fifty thousand people, the supply of
water is either obtained at great loss of time from wells, often dirty,
sometimes fetid, or purchased at an extravagant rate from itinerant water-
carriers.
A Private Water Company exists, but has scarcely been called upon at all to
supply the houses of the working classes.
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