Couples apparently married and apparently respectable, but who are neither, are common enough, who are continually on the look-out for fresh places of abode, where they may continue their depredation.
They are ready enough with a deposit, but that is all the money they mean to part with, and that has probably been raised by robbing their last landlady.

They can give references if required, and show receipts, too, from their last lodgings, for they carry rent-books made out by themselves and fully paid up for the purpose.

They are adepts at obtaining entrance, and, once in, they remain till they have secured another place and marked another prey.
Meanwhile their poor victims suffer in kind and money, and are brought nearer destitution.

I have frequently known a week's rent paid with the part proceeds of articles stolen from either the furnished apartments, or some other part of the house just entered.
I could tell some sad stories of suffering and distress brought to struggling and decent people by these pests, of whom a great number are known to the police.
And so the merry game goes on, for while vampires are sucking the impure blood of the wretched dwellers in Adullam Street lodgings, the dwellers in Adullam Street in their turn prey on the community at large.
Meanwhile the honest and unfortunate poor can scarcely find cover, and when they do, why, then their thin blood is drained, for they have to pay exorbitantly.
It is apparently easy to transmute wretched humanity into gold.

But who is going to call order out of this horrid chaos?
No one, I am thinking, for no one seems to dare attempt in any thorough way to solve the question of housing the very poor, and that question lies at the root of this matter.
Let any one attempt it, and a thousand formidable vested interests rise up and confront him, against which he will dash himself in vain.