17 OCTOBER 1863, Page 3

Mr. Henry Spicer, Secretary of the Nichol Street Ragged Schools,

has published two or three little facts illustrative of the condition of Bethnal Green which deserve a passing remark :- 4- In 1855, out of an infant class of 160, 60 children died in the 'course of a month of destitution and the resulting diseases. During the famine of 1860, more than 200 families were daily re- lieved, and more than once children have been brought into the school to die beside the school-room fires, as their parents were unable to afford them that luxury at home." Had sixty puppies died in the same manner all London would have rung with denun- ciations of their owners' cruelty; but then puppies have no settle- ment on the rates. And then the " respectables" who allow these things, and who would have been horrified had the poor little wretches been allowed fires to die by at home, groan piously over the growing prevalence of that " unnatural crime " infanticide. The marvel to us is only that any children survive.