I kept my eye on one particularly offensive-looking bit
of meat, and followed it through the clutches of over twenty women, till
it fell to the lot of a timid-appearing little woman whom the butcher
bluffed into taking it. All day long this heap of scraps was added to
and taken away from, the dust and dirt of the street falling upon it,
flies settling on it, and the dirty fingers turning it over and over.
The costers wheel loads of specked and decaying fruit around in the
barrows all day, and very often store it in their one living and sleeping
room for the night. There it is exposed to the sickness and disease, the
effluvia and vile exhalations of overcrowded and rotten life, and next
day it is carted about again to be sold.
The poor worker of the East End never knows what it is to eat good,
wholesome meat or fruit--in fact, he rarely eats meat or fruit at all;
while the skilled workman has nothing to boast of in the way of what he
eats. Judging from the coffee-houses, which is a fair criterion, they
never know in all their lives what tea, coffee, or cocoa tastes like. The
slops and water-witcheries of the coffee-houses, varying only in
sloppiness and witchery, never even approximate or suggest what you and I
are accustomed to drink as tea and coffee.
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