Death in the Devil's Acre
“He took his oldest coat and a rather battered hat that normally not even he would have worn and set out in a drizzling rain for the Devil’s Acre, to find Max’s establishments—or at least one of them.
It was an area like many of the older slums of London, a curious mixture of societies that lived quite literally on top of each other. In the highest, handsomest houses with frontages on lighted thoroughfares lived successful merchants and men of private means. Below them, in smaller houses on less...er streets, were lodging-rooms for clerks and tradesmen. Beneath even these, squat and grimy, were the sagging tenements and cellars of the very poor, sometimes packed so full of humanity that two or three families shared one room. The stench of refuse and bodily waste was choking. Rats teemed everywhere, so that an untended baby might well be eaten alive. And more children died of starvation or disease than ever reached an age of six or seven years, when they might profitably join one of the schools for pickpockets and apprentice thieves.MoreLess
It was an area like many of the older slums of London, a curious mixture of societies that lived quite literally on top of each other. In the highest, handsomest houses with frontages on lighted thoroughfares lived successful merchants and men of private means. Below them, in smaller houses on less...er streets, were lodging-rooms for clerks and tradesmen. Beneath even these, squat and grimy, were the sagging tenements and cellars of the very poor, sometimes packed so full of humanity that two or three families shared one room. The stench of refuse and bodily waste was choking. Rats teemed everywhere, so that an untended baby might well be eaten alive. And more children died of starvation or disease than ever reached an age of six or seven years, when they might profitably join one of the schools for pickpockets and apprentice thieves.MoreLess
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