Singular testimony to the absence of sunlight in these courts was furnished by the action of the Parks and Gardens Committee, who desired to brighten the homes of the poorest class by gifts of growing flowers and window-boxes; but these gifts could not be made in courts such as these, _as flowers and plants were susceptible to the unwholesome surroundings, and would not live_.
Mr.George Haw has compiled the following table on the three St.George's parishes (London parishes):- Percentage of Population Death-rate Overcrowded per 1000 St.George's West 10 13.2 St.George's South 35 23.7 St.George's East 40 26.4 Then there are the "dangerous trades," in which countless workers are employed.

Their hold on life is indeed precarious--far, far more precarious than the hold of the twentieth-century soldier on life.

In the linen trade, in the preparation of the flax, wet feet and wet clothes cause an unusual amount of bronchitis, pneumonia, and severe rheumatism; while in the carding and spinning departments the fine dust produces lung disease in the majority of cases, and the woman who starts carding at seventeen or eighteen begins to break up and go to pieces at thirty.

The chemical labourers, picked from the strongest and most splendidly-built men to be found, live, on an average, less than forty-eight years.
Says Dr.Arlidge, of the potter's trade: "Potter's dust does not kill suddenly, but settles, year after year, a little more firmly into the lungs, until at length a case of plaster is formed.

Breathing becomes more and more difficult and depressed, and finally ceases." Steel dust, stone dust, clay dust, alkali dust, fluff dust, fibre dust--all these things kill, and they are more deadly than machine-guns and pom-poms.