Dr. Jeaffreson, lately resident medical officer to the London Fever
Hospital, has published a letter directly tracing typhus to the overcrowding of some London districts. Working families are bonsai in these places worse than animals in the country, crowdof together five, six, or more in a room, with no supply of water, dilapidated waterciosets, filth, and stench all around. The separate houses are a:most as bad, and in fact there is no remedy except rebuilding. Whole districts oit London are covered with low houses, which if given up to lofty buildings would amply accommodate the population. They must in the end be so covered, and the Times calls upon the proprietors to make their fortunes by commencing the work. We fear that before it is commenced Parliament will be compelled to pass a Tenure Bill which will disturb the minds of many very great people. Who is going to build lofty mansions for poor tenants upon a sixty years' lease ? Or how long would it take a philanthropic millionaire to obtain a title to Seven Dials, so that he might replace those rookeries with lofty streets? The first evil of London, the origin of all others, is the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of obtaining either a freehold or a permanent lease. Till that is surmounted we shall have " run-up" houses, and rack rents, and the poor crammed together until their rentals are twice as profitable as those of the rich.
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