A family group, father, mother and four children; they had come to Adullam Street because they had been ejected from their own home.
Their goods and chattels had been put on the street pavement, whence the parish had removed them to the dust destructor, probably the best thing to do with them.
The family were all unhealthy and unclean.

The parents did not seem to have either strength, grit or intelligence to fit them for any useful life.

But they could creep forth and beg, the woman could stand in the gutter with a little bit of mortality wrapped in her old shawl, for tender-hearted passers-by to see its wizened face, and the father could stand not far away from her with a few bootlaces or matches exposed, as if for sale.

They managed to live somehow.
Room 6.

An elderly couple who had possessed no home of their own for years past, but who know London well, for the furnished lodgings of the east, west, north and south are familiar to them.
He sells groundsel, she sells water-cress, at least they tell us so, and point to baskets as evidence.