The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 234: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MYSTERIES, On leaving the abode of the medical gentleman, Miles the Burgloak proceeded rapidly towards Westminster ; and, passing round the Abbey ceme- tery, he struck into the maze of vile and crowded streets lying in the immediate vicinity of that vene- rable pile. In spite of the frosty chill of the weather, half-naked women were seen standing at the open doors of the wretched houses,—the light from the windows flickering dimly upon their persons, and revealing countenances either bloated or emaciated with dissipation: while their language, as they dis- coursed across the thoroughfares with each other, bore terrible and unequivocal evidence to their atter depravity and boundless prodigacy. From many of the dwellings came the noise of aproarious revelry and the boisterous sounds of dranken orgies,— mingled with the shrieks of some anfortunate female woom a paramour was treating with ruffian brutality, and the shrill voice of some querulous wife responding in bitter taunts to the 23 coarse and gruff upbraidings of a worthless husband. Around the coors of the low public-houses were congregated loathsome wretches in female shape, chattering or disputing in loud tones —- insulting any respectable person who might chance to pass that way—and making the whole neighbourhood ring with their vociferations of delight, when some flash fellow or fancy man accosted them with an offer to stand treat for gin. Now and then a poor mechanic out of work, and whom dire penury had forced to take up his abode in that horrible dis- trict, would creep shivering and miserable along the street to the house in which he occupied a wretched attic, and where he knew that a wife was giving a withered breast to a poor frail infant, and where starving children were crying piteously for the bread which he had not succeeded in obtaining throughont a long day’s anxious and heart-break- ing quest for honest employment. Now and then, too, some scantily clad and emaciated woman would CDOO SS COMM