122 DROITWICH.

let down with ropes to rescue them ! Probably these cracks mark the course of subterraneous springs or streams, which run into the Droitwich basin, and geologists suppose that this course is near the junction of the marl and gravel.

As to the sewerage, the Sanitary Act now confers the power of sewering without adopting either the Health of Towns or Local Government Act; and as there is a growing disposition in the governing body here to brush up the town and keep pace with the age, something may shortly be done, although the matter requires grave consideration, owing to the natural disadvantages arising from the rights of individuals into whose streams the sewers would be carried. Injunctions and prohibitions from the Court of Chancery are by no means the nicest things for a poor town to deal with. But the typhus and the cholera take dismal vengeance on all delays. When the latter epidemic visited Droitwich in 1832 it was fearfully virulent. How is it that sanitary measures were delayed till another visitation?

Population of Droitwich about 3,124, which I am told was an increase of only one soul in the decade of '51-61.

The town is well lighted, and something is being done in the way of building. Additions are] being made to the town-hall; a new police-station is constructed; a building society has done much good to the town in the erection of various decent dwellings on its western side; and when the newly-projected church is built in the same neighbourhood the whole will prove a pleasing feature.

Droitwich contains the parishes of St. Andrew, St. Mary Witton, St. Peter, St. Nicholas, and part of St. Augustine de Wych, or Dodderhill. The latter is a large country parish, and only a small portion of it, which is in the town, lies in the municipal borough. This portion is called "The In-liberties." The parishes, places, chapelries, and manors in Droitwich, with Dodderhill and its members, are therefore very numerous, but their history scarcely embraces anything beyond a recapitulation of the change of owners,