They had been built at the back of some houses fronting on Mott
Street--in fact, they had been put in the little spot of ground that had
been the yard belonging to the front houses.
They came up so close to the front buildings that, by stretching out your
arms, you could almost touch the front wall of one house and the back wall
of the other. The actual distance apart was a little over seven feet.
This would have been bad enough, but worse was to come. After a time,
warehouses were built over the surrounding back yards, and at last these
poor tenements had brick walls round their sides and backs, to within
eight inches of the windows, and all the light they got was given them by
the seven-foot court that divided them from the houses in front.
Just imagine the darkness and the stuffiness of these rooms. Think how
awful they must have been in the summer, with not a breath of air reaching
them from any quarter. The tenants were obliged to go up to the roof and
sleep there, for the rooms were unbearable.
The people who lived on the lower floors paid less rent than those on the
top, because when you got up to the top floor there was a faint glimmer of
daylight.
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