People Of The Abyss

‘…Nowhere in the streets of London may one escape the sight of abject poverty, while five minutes’ walk from almost any point will bring one to a slum; but the region my hansom was now penetrating was one unending slum.  The streets were filled with a new and different race of people, short of stature, and of wretched or beer-sodden appearance.  We rolled along through miles of bricks and squalor, and from each cross street and alley flashed long vistas of bricks and misery.  Here and there lurched a drunken man or woman, and the air was obscene with sounds of jangling and squabbling.  At a market, tottery old men and women were searching in the garbage thrown in the mud for rotten potatoes, beans, and vegetables, while little children clustered like flies around a festering mass of fruit, thrusting their arms to the shoulders into the liquid corruption, and drawing forth morsels but partially decayed, which they devoured on the spot…