Chapter 6 takes the reader to the 'lower depths': the experiences of working-class children in the challenging conditions of nineteenth-century towns. To begin with, it documents the generally high levels of infant mortality, and the conditions that explain them. Secondly, it considers the continuation of certain harmful practices for infants, in the form of infanticide, abandonment and wet-nursing. Thirdly, it assesses family life among the working classes, frequently maligned by middle-class observers unsympathetic to its difficult circumstances. Finally it looks at child welfare in the towns, noting the recent tendency among historians to re-evaluate philanthropy and emphasizing the co-operation between charities and state institutions. This section is organized under the headings of measures for the so-called deserving and undeserving poor.