On the quality of the rooms for which they pay high rent it is unnecessary to dwell.

Ill-constructed, unrepaired, overcrowded, destitute of ventilation and of proper sanitary arrangements, the mass of low class city tenements finds few apologists.
The Royal Commission on Housing of the Working Classes thus deals with the question of overcrowding-- "The evils of overcrowding, especially in London, are still a public scandal, and are becoming in certain localities a worse scandal than they ever were.

Among adults, overcrowding causes a vast amount of suffering which could be calculated by no bills of mortality, however accurate.

The general deterioration in the health of the people is a worse feature of overcrowding even than the encouragement by it of infectious disease.

It has the effect of reducing their stamina, and thus producing consumption and diseases arising from general debility of the system whereby life is shortened." "In Liverpool, nearly one-fifth of the squalid houses where the poor live in the closest quarters are reported to be always infected, that is to say, the seat of infectious diseases." To apply the name of "home" to these dens is a sheer abuse of words.
What grateful memories of tender childhood, what healthy durable associations, what sound habits of life can grow among these unwholesome and insecure shelters?
The city poor are a wandering tribe.