"Thereby is Jacob's Island, surrounded by a moat seven or eight feet deep, and fifteen or twenty wide at high tide. An inlet of the Thames, which can always be filled quite by opening the locks of the Lead Mills Looking from one of the wooden bridges thrown across Mill Lane, the inhabitants of the well-houses on both banks could be seen lowering buckets and waterpots from their windows, and wooden walkways rickety and worm-eaten running along the front of the buildings ;and foundations in ruins, and every aspect more loathsome than misery, vice, idleness. On Jacob's Island the warehouses were empty and roofless; the walls crumbling and rubble heaped on the potholed pavement; doors and windows they had only the framework; from the chimneys, blackened and crumbling, no smoke came out. A long time ago, that had been a spit of land that prospered, but at the time of our history only those who were driven by the pressing need to find a safe haven could have the courage to look for it in that place."