Word: squalorous
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...that early morning raid on a six-room apartment, 17 hippies were arrested on narcotics charges. One unfortunate--who arrived shortly after the raid to look for his sunglasses, was booked for vagrancy. In his press and television statements, Hayes laid primary emphasis on the squalor in which these hippies lived. "A flop-house," he said. "I never saw such a filthy situation. There are terms which I could use but I would not use in public...
...Hong Kong has swelled incrementally: more than 4,000 Chinese a year now settle in the Bay Area, creating a job shortage so severe that exploitation is the order of the day-and night. The traditional Chinese family fabric has visibly frayed. With mothers working, delinquency climbs. Tenement squalor sustains a tuberculosis rate double that of San Francisco as a whole...
...most of its 132 years, the Missouri poky resembled a Dickensian choky. Though custody was lax for the favored few who hid money or political pull, most inmates lived in nightmarish squalor. At one time the prison held close to twice as many as it was supposed to, with many 12-ft. by 9-ft. cubicles sleeping seven or more. Maggots and rats infested the food-handling areas. Gambling, homosexuality and use of drugs were rife, and as a result of their stay in "Jeff City," many convicts were more intractable when they left prison than when they went...
DEATH ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. The founding father of black humor in a new and splendidly gutty translation of his classic about the bitter, unbreakable orphan whose horrid childhood and nonage were a lugubrious epic of squalor, filth, misery and hatred...
...background of any story about a hero's rise from squalor to quiddery there should be Mum; Caine's is just about the best since J. M. Barrie's The Old Lady Shows Her Medals. He reports that he has finally persuaded his mother to give up her lifelong job as a charwoman. When he invited her to attend the première of his first big movie, she shyly refused, then, unbeknownst to him, just joined the crowd outside. She still takes the bus to his openings. "She used to tell me proudly...