I stood, yesterday, in a room in one of the "Municipal Dwellings," not far from Leman Street.

If I looked into a dreary future and saw that I would have to live in such a room until I died, I should immediately go down, plump into the Thames, and cut the tenancy short.
It was not a room.

Courtesy to the language will no more permit it to be called a room than it will permit a hovel to be called a mansion.

It was a den, a lair.

Seven feet by eight were its dimensions, and the ceiling was so low as not to give the cubic air space required by a British soldier in barracks.