they play truant, at thirteen steal, and at sixteen
are sufficiently developed hooligans to smash the
policemen.

The Rev. J. Cartmel Robinson tells of a boy and
girl of his parish, who set out to walk to the forest.
They walked and walked through the never-ending
streets, expecting always to see it by and by; until
they sat down at last, faint and despairing, and
were rescued by a kind woman who brought them
back. Evidently they had been overlooked by the
people who try to help.

The same gentleman is authority for the state
ment that in a street in Hoxton (a district of the
vast East End), over seven hundred children,
between five and thirteen years, live in eighty
small houses. And he adds: " It is because Lon
don has largely shut her children in a maze of
streets and houses and robbed them of their rightful
inheritance in sky and field and brook, that they
grow up to be men and women physically unfit."

He tells of a member of his congregation who let
a basement room to a married couple. " They said
they had two children; when they got possession it
turned out that they had four. After a while a fifth
appeared, and the landlord gave them notice to
quit. They paid no attention to it. Then the
sanitary inspector, who has to wink at the law so
often, came in and threatened my friend with legal

[[280]]

p279 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p280w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p281

v?