The living conditions in many areas of London during the past were extraordinarily cramped. St. Giles, notorious as one of the worst neighborhoods, was depicted by William Hogarth in his engraving "Gin Lane." In this district, an astonishing fifty-four thousand individuals were crammed into a limited number of streets. Reports indicated that one alley alone housed eleven hundred inhabitants in just twenty-seven houses, creating an average of over forty residents per dwelling.

Further east in Spitalfields, situations were similarly dire, with sixty-three people found residing in one house that contained only nine beds, essentially providing one bed for every seven occupants. Such overcrowding led to the emergence of the term "slums," signifying the dire and unsanitary living conditions that plagued these neighborhoods.