Publisher's Synopsis
Let us skip a number of years.London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town-for that day. It had a hundredthousand inhabitants-some think double as many. The streets were very narrow, and crooked, anddirty, especially in the part where Tom Canty lived, which was not far from London Bridge. Thehouses were of wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and the third sticking itselbows out beyond the second. The higher the houses grew, the broader they grew. They wereskeletons of strong criss-cross beams, with solid material between, coated with plaster. The beamswere painted red or blue or black, according to the owner's taste, and this gave the houses a verypicturesque look. The windows were small, glazed with little diamond-shaped panes, and theyopened outward, on hinges, like doors.The house which Tom's father lived in was up a foul little pocket called Offal Court, out ofPudding Lane. It was small, decayed, and rickety, but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families.Canty's tribe occupied a room on the third floor. The mother and father had a sort of bedstead inthe corner; but Tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters, Bet and Nan, were not restricted-theyhad all the floor to themselves, and might sleep where they chose. There were the remains of ablanket or two, and some bundles of ancient and dirty straw, but these could not rightly be calledbeds, for they were not organised; they were kicked into a general pile, mornings, and selectionsmade from the mass at night, for service.
