Page:London - The People of the Abyss.djvu/289

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COFFEE-HOUSES AND DOSS-HOUSES
237

common sense if they changed the tune to "Feed up, England!"

Not only is the worker poorly fed, but he is filthily fed. I have stood outside a butchershop and watched a horde of speculative housewives turning over the trimmings and scraps and shreds

A Coster's Barrow.

of beef and mutton—dog-meat in the States. I would not vouch for the clean fingers of these house wives, no more than I would vouch for the cleanliness of the single rooms in which many of them and their families lived; yet they raked, and pawed, and scraped the mess about in their anxiety to get