Muddy Waters 'Folk Singer' [SACD] { } ~54.00.00 88382

In the East End, he reported, an attempt at cleanliness was a "howling farce," and when rain fell it was "more like grease than water." This greasy rain fell in drips and drizzles in the East End most of Thursday, August 30th. Horse-drawn wagons and barrows splashed through the garbage-strewn muddy water of narrow, crowded streets, where flies droned in clouds and people scratched for the next penny. Most inhabitants of this wretched part of the Great Metropolis had never tasted real coffee, tea, or chocolate. Fruit or meat never touched their lips unless it was overripe or rotten. There was no such thing as a bookstore or a decent cafe. There were no hotels, at least not the sort that civilized people might visit. An Unfortunate could not get out of the weather and find a bit of food unless she could convince a man to take her in or give her small change so she could rent a bed for the night in a common lodging house called a doss-house. "Doss" was slang for bed, and a typical doss-house was a hellish, decaying dwelling where men and women paid four or five pence to sleep in communal rooms filled with small iron bedsteads covered with gray blankets ...