The Sun. — 1850-01-05 (London, England)

POLICE INTELLIGENCE. MANSION-HOUSE. Three tailors, named Patrick Reenham, Patrick Lemon, and James Crimmon, inhabitants of one of the tenements in Gun-square, near Seven-step-alley, Bishopsgate, a locality frequently denounced by the City of London Officer of Health during the late cholera plague, were brought before Alderman Hum• phery upon the charge of having assaulted Ann Costello. The complainant, it appeared, rented a room and a closet in a house in Gun-square, and contrived to accommodate nine tailors, besides her own family, in that narrow space. The other rooms were let to other parties, who also contrived to stow away multitudes of under-tenants; so that, according to Alderman Humphery's estimate, the population under the single roof actually amounted to about a hundred individuals, men, women, and children. The season of the year being fortunately adapted to the dense population, the mortality in the neighbourhood was stated not to have exceeded the City average since the winter commenced ; but Christmas, at the same time, that it brought cold weather, brought with it the excuse for the glass and for the wild merriment for which the tailors have been long distinguished above all sedentary trades. A row took place in the complainant's apartments, and the poker and the goose and other familiar instruments were brandished about amidst cries of murder, so that it became necessary to try the experiment of the police as a check to the disturbance. The three defendants were seized as the most noisy of the aggressors (for after all, there was more noise than work), and Gun-square poured numbers of its inhabitants into the justice-room, to witness the result. The policeman who interfered for the restoration of peace stated that the' condition of the houses in Gunsquare and Seven-step-alley was the most extraordinary that could be imagined. The difference between the sexes appeared to b 2 no difference at all. There they were, old and young, men and women, nlrried and unmarried. Every room was crammed with occupants, so that when a dispute took place in any particular building, such crowds flocked intdo toit from the other habitations, that it often be a miracle how the walls could standtuogaeptpheeurr;e and what was most surprising of all was, theat every inmate seemed to be fighting, and when' the was at end, not a drop of blood was to be seen (Laughter.) A singular instance of the teninc..—; amongst the tailors in the district to cry "murder(e " upon very slight provocation occurred on Christmas bight, when the police, alarmed by the cry into one of the houses, and found that their assistance t was invoked by a woman, whose husband had " murthered her altogether," by throwing a plum puddio at hcr head),:, g \Mtlern\ An iiiih4Pll ERIC —Was there no other violecee ecitrirnitted,,upon that occasion ? Policeman-None, sir. The'Man acknowledged to me that he had flung the pudding tit his wife because she had made it badly, and I certainly saw her face covered with it. He said it was a.plum pudding, but it looked more like something else.—(Laughter.) The rooms are all over straw, and how in such dreadful habitations the people can Ere is quite amazing. Alderman