The Night Side of London Part 1

The Night Side of London.

by J. Ewing Ritchie.

INTRODUCTION.

It is said of a stranger who came to London for the first time, and took up his quarters in one of the most crowded city streets, that he remained standing at the door the whole of the first day of his London existence, because he waited until the crowd had gone. A man, says Max Schlesinger, who would do that, ought to rise and go to bed with the owl. The owl is the symbol of wisdom; for once I would prevail upon the reader to do as the owls do, and become wise as they. You may live at Clapham all your life, come into the city every day, attend on a gospel ministry, as the slang phrase is,-for it is not only wicked people that talk slang,-and know no more of London than the British public do of Timbuctoo.

Think of what London is. At the last census there were 2,362,236 persons of both s.e.xes in it; 1,106,558 males, of whom 146,449 were under 5 years of age; and 1,255,678 females, of whom 147,173 were under 5 years of age.

The unmarried males were 679,380, ditto females 735,871; the married men were 399,098, the wives 409,731; the widowers were 37,080, the widows 110,076. On the night of the census there were 28,598 husbands whose wives were not with them, and 39,231 wives mourning their absent lords.

In 1856 the number of children born in London was 86,833, only one in 25 of which is illegitimate; in the same period 56,786 persons died. The Registrar-General a.s.sumes that, with the additional births, and by the fact of soldiers and sailors returning from the seat of war, and of persons engaged in peaceful pursuits settling in the capital, sustenance, clothing, and house accommodation must now be found in London for about 60,000 inhabitants more than it contained at the end of 1855. Think of that-the population of a large city absorbed in London, and no perceptible inconvenience occasioned by it! Houses are still to let; there are still the usual tickets hung up in windows in quiet neighbourhoods, intimating that apartments furnished for the use of single gentlemen can be had within; the country still supplies the town with meat and bread, and we hear of no starvation in consequence of deficient supply. London is the healthiest city in the world. The city death-rate, according to Dr. Letheby's report for 1857, is 22.5 per 1000, and in all England it is 22.2. During the last ten years the annual deaths have been on the average 25 to 1000 of the population, in 1856 the proportion was 22 to 1000; yet, in spite of this, half of the deaths that happen on an average in London between the ages of 20 and 40 are from consumption and diseases of the respiratory organs. The Registrar traces this to the state of the streets. He says: "There can be no doubt that the dirty dust suspended in the air that the people of London breathe often excites diseases of the respiratory organs. The dirt of the streets is produced and ground now by innumerable horses, omnibuses, and carriages, and then beat up in fine dust, which fills the mouth, and inevitably enters the air-pa.s.sages in large quant.i.ties. The dust is not removed every day, but, saturated with water in the great thoroughfares, sometimes ferments in damp weather, and at other times ascends again under the heat of the summer sun as atmospheric dust."

London, says Henry Mayhew, may be safely a.s.serted to be the most densely populated city in all the world; containing one-fourth more people than Pekin, and two-thirds more than Paris-more than twice as many as Constantinople-four times as many as St. Petersburg-five times as many as Vienna, or New York, or Madrid-nearly seven times as many as Berlin-eight times as many as Amsterdam-nine times as many as Rome-fifteen times as many as Copenhagen-and seventeen times as many as Stockholm. "London,"

says Horace Say, "c'est une province couverte de maisons." It covers an area of 122 square miles in extent, or 78,029 statute acres; and contains 327,391 houses. Annually 4000 new houses are in erection for upwards of 40,000 new-comers. The continuous line of buildings stretching from Highgate to Camberwell is said to be 12 miles long. It is computed if the buildings were set in a row they would reach across the whole of England and France, from York to the Pyrenees.

When the stone in Panyer's Alley was placed on its site three centuries since, the circ.u.mference was about five miles. At present, however, to make a pedestrian expedition around the metropolis would, to most persons, be an undertaking of some importance, as may be seen by referring to the following particulars, which have been gathered from a recently published map:-From Chiswick to Kentish-town, 12 miles; from Kentish-town to Millwall, 17 miles; from Millwall to Chiswick, 28 miles-total, 57 miles, very nearly three days' journey, at the rate of 20 miles a day; and it will be observed that in the line drawn, Battersea, Clapham, Canning-town, and many other places, which even at present can be scarcely said to be separated from London, have been left out. "As the crow would fly" across streets and houses from the point whence we started at Chiswick to the farthest east, the distance is nearly eleven miles, and the greatest width from north to south upwards of seven miles. The metropolis is divided into 38 different poor-law districts, some of them parishes, and some of them unions, but each managing separately their own poor. Of these, 27 are in Middles.e.x, two in Kent, and nine in Surrey. Of the 27 in Middles.e.x, 10 are unions of various extent; 17 are single parishes, many of them of great extent, and comprising a large amount of property and population. The unions in Middles.e.x consist of a small number of parishes, two consisting of two parishes, two of three, one of five, one of four, one of six, one of seven, and one of nine parishes. The city of London consists of 98 parishes, some of them small in extent, but containing a large amount of property and population. The unions in Kent consist of four and seven parishes. Of the nine in Surrey three are unions, consisting, one of two parishes, another of three, and the third of six parishes. The remaining six are all single parishes, each administering its own affairs. The total population of these districts is 2,500,000; the average number of paupers to be dealt with 105,000; the amount of expenditure for the year ending Lady-day, 1856, was 875,000; and the net rateable value of the property contributing to the relief of the poor was 10,900,000. The proportion which the metropolis bore to the whole of England and Wales was, as to population, one-eighth; as to pauperism, one-twelfth.

London has 10,500 distinct streets, squares, circuses, crescents, terraces, villas, rows, buildings, places, lanes, courts, alleys, mews, yards, rents. The paved streets of London, according to a return published in 1856, number over 5000, and exceed 2000 miles in length; the cost of this paved roading was 14 millions, and the repairs cost 1,800,000 per annum. The Post Office employs 3200 officials in London alone. London contains 1900 miles of gas pipes, with a capital of nearly 4,000,000 spent in the preparation of gas. The cost of gas-lighting is half a million. It has 360,000 lights; and 13,000,000 cubic feet of gas are burnt every night. Last year along these streets the enormous quant.i.ty of upwards of 80 millions of gallons of water rushed for the supply of the inhabitants, being nearly double what it was in 1845. Mr Mayhew says, if the entire people of the capital were to be drawn up in marching order, two and two, the length of the great army of Londoners would be no less than 670 miles, and supposing them to move at the rate of three miles an hour, it would require more than nine days and nights for the average population to pa.s.s by. To accommodate this crowd, 125,000 vehicles pa.s.s through the thoroughfares in the course of 12 hours; 3000 cabs, 10,000 private and job carriages and carts, ply daily in the streets; at the present time there are upwards of 800 omnibuses running along various routes in the metropolis, and of this number 595 are the property of a single and mostly foreign proprietary, the London General Omnibus Company. 600 omnibuses, with horses and harness and goodwill, were purchased by the company for a sum of 400,000, or for very nearly 700 for each vehicle. The 595 omnibuses of the company ran in London, in the week ending 31st of October, 1857, not less than 222,779 miles, or nearly ten times the circ.u.mference of the globe, and they carried not less than 920,000 pa.s.sengers. a.s.suming that the remaining one-fourth of the London omnibuses, not belonging to the company, carried an equal proportion, we shall have, as the travelling portion of the population of London, 1,115,000 persons. 3000 conveyances enter the metropolis daily from the surrounding country. In the year 1856 the total revenue derived from the duty on omnibuses within the area of the great metropolis amounted to 74,270 against 85,965 in 1855, and 108,051 in 1854. The revenue from cabs in the metropolis was 82,110 against 75,281, and 64,210 in 1854. Of the revenue on omnibuses last year, 69,493 accrued from mileage duty, 3791 from license duty, and 983 from drivers' and conductors' licenses. As regards the cab duty, 74,736 accrued from weekly duty, 5292 from license duty, and 2081 from drivers' and watermen's licenses.

Speaking generally, Tennyson tells us-

"Every minute dies a man, Every minute one is born."

In London, 169 people die daily, and a babe is born every five minutes.

The number of persons, says the Registrar-General, who died in 1856, in 116 public inst.i.tutions, such as workhouses and hospitals, was 10,381.

It is really shocking to think, and a deep stigma on the people,-or on the artificial arrangements of society, by which so much poverty is perpetuated,-that nearly one person out of five, who died that year, closed his days under a roof provided by law or public charity. In 1856 the police report 147 suicides. Dr. Wakley says, 4000 infants die annually of neglect. It is calculated 500 people are drowned in the Thames every year. In the first week of last year there were five deaths from intemperance alone. How much wretchedness lies in these facts,-for the deaths from actual intemperance bear but a small proportion to the deaths induced by the immoderate use of intoxicating liquors; and of the 500 drowned, by far the larger cla.s.s, we have every reason to believe, are of the number of whom Hood wrote-

"Mad with life's history, Glad to death's mystery Swift to be hurled- Anywhere, anywhere, Out of the world!"

A meeting was held last year of the unemployed, chiefly the carpenters, bricklayers, and bricklayers' labourers of the metropolis, in which it was stated that their number-though very probably there may be some exaggeration here-is 35,000. If these men are married and have families, we get a further idea of the deep distress in this wealthy and luxurious capital,-this capital where the gold of Australia, the jewels of Golconda, the silks and spices of the East, come for sale, and are lavished as freely on the most questionable purposes and persons as on the n.o.blest specimens of humanity and the most glorious objects for which men care to live. Then think of the inmates of the lunatic asylums, and the poor-houses, and the hospitals, in most cases sent there as the result of their own ignorance or imprudence. Last Christmas day the dinners provided at the workhouses for the inmates fed between 30 and 40,000. Add to these our prison population, and our criminal cla.s.ses, and our prost.i.tutes,-and what a picture we get of the Night Side of London, of the cla.s.ses whose existence is a reproach or a curse. In London one man in every ninety belongs to the criminal cla.s.s.

According to the last reports, there were in London 143,000 vagrants admitted in one year into the casual wards of the workhouses. In 1856 it appears that in all 73,240 persons were taken into custody, of whom 45,941 were males, and 27,209 females; 18,000 of the apprehensions were on account of drunkenness, 8160 for unlawful possession of goods, 7021 for simple larceny, 6763 for common a.s.saults, 2914 for a.s.saults on the police; 4303 women were taken into custody as prost.i.tutes. The period of life most prolific of crime is that between the 20th and 25th years. The convictions upon trial in 1856 were in the following proportions:-Under 10 years of age, 1; 10 years and under 15 years, 91; 15 years and under 20 years, 610; 20 years and under 25 years, 770; 25 years and under 30 years, 390; 30 years and under 40 years, 410; 40 years and under 50 years, 188; 50 years and under 60 years, 90; 63 years and upwards, 37.

The committals for murder in the year 1856 were 11; they were 12 in 1855, 10 in 1854, 7 in 1853,11 in 1852, 8 in 1851, 11 in 1850, 19 in 1849, 11 in 1848, and 10 in 1847. Of the larcenies in dwelling-houses last year, only 315 were committed by means of false keys, as many as 2175 through doors being left open, 679 by lifting up a window, or breaking gla.s.s, and 31 by entering attic windows from empty houses. Again, 1595 such larcenies were committed by lodgers, 1701 by servants, and as many as 673 by means of false messages. The cases enumerated under the last three heads are such as the police could hardly be expected to prevent. 2371 persons were reported last year to the police as lost, and of these the police restored 1084. The City returns, for which I am indebted to the kindness of G. Borlase Childs, Esq., surgeon to the force, are for 1856, as follows: number of persons taken into custody; males 3030, females 1014; of these, 1083 males and 450 females were discharged; 1628 males, 517 females were summarily convicted or held to bail; 319 males and 77 females were committed for trial: 8 males and 1 female under 10 years of age; 322 males and 37 females under 15; 755 males and 152 females under 20; 645 males and 235 females under 25; 341 males and 165 females under 30; 497 males and 220 females under 40; 300 males and 116 females under 50; 125 males and 78 females under 60; and above that age 41 males and 20 females. Tried by the education test of the whole number taken into custody, 782 males and 421 females could neither read nor write; 1925 males and 570 females could read and write imperfectly; 317 males and 23 females could read and write well; 6 males come under the head of superior instruction. The value of property stolen was 11,425; of property recovered 3829; the return of dest.i.tute persons taken in charge by the police is, men 141, women 115, children 79. During the same period 1603 males and 1097 females were brought to the station house.

Children missing and found by the police; males 496, females 319. The return of the metropolitan police for 1857, was 2825 brothels, and 8600 prost.i.tutes. In the City, the number of such houses and persons is very small; the prison population at any particular time is 6000, costing for the year 170,000. Our juvenile thieves cost us 300 a-piece. The average income of the London thief is estimated at 2 per week.

Again, let us look at the cla.s.ses whose labours and occupations and modes of life are inconsistent with health, or not favourable to any great development of moral principle. Almost 20,000 persons are engaged in Sunday trading; the number of ragged children is nearly 30,000, the number of families living in one room is estimated as high as 150,000.

It appears from a report by Mr. G.o.derich, officer of health in the parish of Kensington, that in a place called the Potteries there are 1147 human beings and 1041 pigs congregated within a s.p.a.ce of less than nine acres, the present number of pigs being below the usual average. The dwellings of a large proportion of the inhabitants of this locality are mere hovels with shattered roofs and unglazed windows, the floor is below the level of the external soil, which has been raised by excessive acc.u.mulations of filth of all kinds, and the walls are at all times partially damp and giving out pestilential gases, intolerable to those who have not been born among them, fatal to the health of those who have. Another portion of the miserable population has converted old caravan bodies, removed in some cases from their wheels, into houses; others have no other dwelling than ruinous post-chaise bodies, for which a rent of sixpence per week is paid. In one of the caravans eight persons dwell, among whom a child suffering from small-pox was battling with death at the time of Mr.

G.o.derich's visit in March.

Mr. Timbs calculates the number of professional beggars in London at 15,000, two-thirds of whom are Irish. 30,000 men, women, and children are employed in the costermonger trade; besides, we have, according to Mr. Mayhew, 2000 street sellers of green stuff, 4000 street sellers of eatables and drinkables, 1000 street sellers of stationery, 4000 street sellers of other articles, whose receipts are three millions sterling, and whose incomes may be put down at one. Let us extend our survey, and we shall not wonder that the public-houses-and the gin palaces-and the casinos-and the theatres-and the penny gaffs-and the lowest and vilest places of resort in London, are full. In Spitalfields there are 70,000 weavers with but 10_s._ per week; there are 22,479 tailors, 30,805 shoemakers, 43,928 milliners; seamstresses, 21,210; bonnet-makers, 1769; cap-makers, 1277. What hard, wretched work is theirs!

In the first week of January this present year, a poor woman named Martha Duke was brought up at the Thames police office, charged with attempting to commit suicide. She was a poor needle-woman, and found the misery of that mode of life greater than could be borne. Speaking not of this case in particular, but of needlewomen in general, Mr. Burch, the resident medical officer of the London Hospital, stated that "a large number of patients had been under his care, and he had carefully investigated a considerable number of cases, and was satisfied that needle-women were the most ill-paid cla.s.s of people and the most hard-working on earth.

They were miserably paid," he added, "and he knew that numbers of them, with const.i.tutions broken down, earned from 3_s._ to 4_s._ per week only, and for that scanty pittance were compelled to work from three o'clock in the morning till ten at night. They soon became enfeebled by insufficient diet and over-work, and when broken down either had recourse to suicide or prost.i.tution." In 1844 the operative tailors inst.i.tuted an inquiry into the sweating system, and then it was found that there were at the West End 676 men, women, and children working under sweaters, and occupying 92 small rooms, the majority of which measured eight feet by ten. The sweater, it may be as well to state, is the man who contracts with the large houses to supply them with s.h.i.+rts, or clothes, or any other kind of slop work; the more his victims sweat, the more are his gains. The sweater is often a Jew, never a Christian.

Let the reader walk with us to a fas.h.i.+onable clothing establishment-a mart, we believe, as it is called. The building, as you approach it, seems a palace. It is redolent with polished mahogany and plate-gla.s.s and gilt. You pa.s.s it when the lamps are lit, and you think of the Arabian Nights. It is illuminated as if peace had just been proclaimed, or some great national desire had been realised. You enter with cash, and all is fair and smooth within. Whatever you want in the way of apparel is there, and at a price for which no honest tradesman can afford to sell it. Honest! asks the reader, is not the man honest? Does he steal the cloth? Certainly not. Does he not pay rent, and taxes, and wages? Most certainly he does. Do not his creditors all get twenty s.h.i.+llings in the pound? Most undoubtedly they do; the law protects them, and with them the man, willing or not, must keep himself right. So far as they are concerned, honesty is the best policy. How, then, does he make his profit? How is this monster establishment maintained? Out of what fund is it that its glitter and glare are paid for? We shall now see. Come down this stinking court. Go up those creaking stairs. Enter that miserable garret. Look at those men, who know nothing of labour but its curse, and of life but its misery. Mark the haggard faces already stamped with the impress of death. If you can bear the polluted atmosphere, you will hear from these men how they toil from early morning far into the night for two s.h.i.+llings a day; how for them the fine air and the golden suns.h.i.+ne, and the rest of the sabbath, exist not; and it is by them, by their sweat and blood and sinew, that the profit is made. And now go back and look into the gilded shop, and it will seem to you a Golgotha-a place of skulls. Is another ill.u.s.tration needed? Up in yon miserable chamber, without fire-without food-without furniture-almost without clothes, Martha Duke is st.i.tching to earn the few pence by which she prolongs life, and its misery. Once, youth was hers, with its bright hopes and joys; but they are gone, and with an aching heart and pallid brow she plies her daily task. Is it wonderful that, wanting coals or something better than dry bread, the s.h.i.+rt or the waistcoat should be p.a.w.ned? Is it not more wonderful that such bleak and hopeless poverty should be so honest as it is? And yet from such poor forlorn, forgotten women as these, proceed the profits which pay for dazzling window and gorgeous pile. Is it strange that the city missionaries for last year show an increase of fallen women in their districts of 1035?

Bear in mind also that corporal labourers are shorter lived and endure more physical evil than the mental labourers. The coal-whippers'

work-the most wasteful, unscientific, and pernicious expenditure of human muscle ever devised, writes Dr Chambers-overstrains the fibres of the heart, and the organs become diseased. Painters again are liable to palsy and colic, from the use of white lead. The tailor sits till the stomach and bowels becomes disordered, the spine twisted, the gait shambling, and the power of taking the exercise necessary to health obliterated. Shoemakers and bootmakers suffer equally from a constrained position and the pressure of the last against the stomach. Heart-burn and indigestion are so common among them, that a pill in the Pharmacopeia is called the cobbler's pill. Then there is the baker's malady, which carries off a large proportion of its victims. Dressmakers are peculiarly subject to the attacks of consumption; workwomen constantly suffer from varicose veins.

There are two worlds in London, with a gulf between-the rich and the poor. We have glanced at the latter; for the sake of contrast let us look at the former. Emerson says the wealth of London determines prices all over the globe. The revenue of the corporation of the city of London for 1856 was 2,595,216 16_s._ 4_d._ In 1853 the money coined in the mint was 11,952,391 in gold, and 701,544 in silver. The business of the Bank of England is conducted by about 800 clerks, whose salaries amount to about 200,000. The Bank in 1857 had 26,683,790 bank notes in circulation. In the same year there were about 5 millions deposited in the Savings Banks of the metropolis. The gross Customs revenue of the port of London in 1849 was 11,070,176. 65 millions is the estimate formed by Mr M'Culloch of the total value of the produce conveyed into and from London. The gross rental as a.s.sessed by the property and income tax is 12 millions. The gross property insured is 166,000,000, and only two-fifths of the houses are insured. The amount of capital at the command of the entire London bankers may be estimated at 64 millions; the insurance companies have always 10 millions of deposits ready for investment. 78 millions are employed in discounts. In 1841 the transactions of one London house amounted to 30 millions. In 1840 the payments made in the clearing house were 974,580,600,-an enormous sum, which will appear still greater when we remember all sums under 100 are omitted from this statement. All this business cannot be carried on without a considerable amount of eating and drinking. The population consumes annually 277,000 bullocks, 30,000 calves, 1,480,000 sheep, 34,000 pigs, 1,600,000 quarters of wheat, 310,464,000 pounds of potatoes, 89,672,000 cabbages. Of fish the returns are almost incredible.

Besides, it eats 2,742,000 fowls, 1,281,000 game. Exclusive of those brought from the different parts of the united kingdom, from 70 to 75 millions of eggs are annually imported into London from France and other countries. About 13,000 cows are kept in the city and its environs for the supply of milk and cream; and if we add to their value that of the cheese, and b.u.t.ter, and milk, brought from the country into the city, the expenditure on dairy produce must be enormous. Then London consumes 65,000 pipes of wine, 2,000,000 gallons of spirits, 43,200,000 gallons of porter and ale, and burns 3,000,000 tons of coal; and I have seen it estimated that one-fourth of the commerce of the nation is carried on in its port. On Boxing Night it was estimated that 60,000 persons visited the various theatres and places of amus.e.m.e.nt in London. In 1856, 361,714 persons visited the British Museum; 161,764, Hampton Court; 344,140 went to Kew Gardens. The total number of bathers in the Serpentine were 20,000 persons. On the last Derby, the South Western Company alone conveyed 37,700 pa.s.sengers. In London in 1853, according to Sir R.

Mayne, there were 3613 beer shops, 5279 public houses, 13 wine rooms.

The theatres and saloons licensed by the Lord Chamberlain are, the Haymarket Theatre, Adelphi, Olympic, Princess's, Strand, Surrey, Queen's, Soho, City of London, Marylebone, Standard, Pavilion, Victoria, Sadler's Wells, St James's, Lyceum, Astley's, Her Majesty's, Drury Lane, Grecian Saloon, Albert, Britannia, Bower, Earl of Effingham. Literary Inst.i.tutions shut up. The Great Globe itself is a doubtful property.

That beautiful building, the Panopticon in Leicester-square, was a failure, and the Adelaide Gallery has long been closed. An attempt was made to form an educational a.s.sociation in Charing Cross, where, by means of a library and cheap lectures, the popular mind could be improved and instructed and amused, but the attempt did not succeed; dancing, drinking, theatrical representations,-most of them adaptations from the French,-music, are the only pleasures which a London population cared for. Even as in the old Hebrew days, Wisdom lifts up her voice in our streets, and no man regards her testimony.

And now to guard all this wealth, to preserve all this ma.s.s of industry honest, and to keep down all this crime, what have we? 5847 police, costing 434,081, 13 police courts, costing 67,006, and about a dozen criminal prisons; 69 union relieving officers, 316 officers of local boards, and 1256 other local officers. We have 35 weekly magazines, 9 daily newspapers, 5 evening, 72 weekly ones. Independently of the mechanics' inst.i.tutions, colleges, and endowed schools, we have 14,000 children of both s.e.xes clothed and educated gratis, and the National and British and Foreign Schools in all parts of London, and Sunday schools.

We have Bartholomew's Hospital, relieving, in 1856, in-patients 5933, out-patients 78,443; Guy's Hospital; St Thomas's, with 4531 in-patients, outpatients, 34,281; St George's; the Middles.e.x, last year relieving 2268 in-patients, and 16,844 out-patients; the London, the King's College, the University College, and many more. In the Cancer Hospital last year 2500 patients were treated: then there are Bedlam, the Foundling Hospital, the Philanthropic Inst.i.tution, the Magdalen. In the report of the Statistical Society of London it is stated that 14 general hospitals in London possess an income from realised property to the amount of 109,687; annual subscriptions, 17,091; donations, 16,636; legacies, 10,206; and their miscellaneous sources of income to 1996. The total income of all these hospitals from every source is 155,616; and the annual contributions of the public amount to 45,929. In addition to the above hospitals there are in this metropolis 36 special hospitals, possessing an aggregate income of 117,218; making the income of the general and special hospitals taken together amount to 272,834. There are also returns from 42 general dispensaries, possessing incomes from all sources of 21,000; and 18 special dispensaries, with annual incomes of 8064. If these two sums, making 29,064, be added to the former, it gives the enormous amount of 301,898 annually expended in medical charities in this metropolis; and this sum, large as it is, excludes Samaritan and other funds connected with hospitals and dispensaries, poor-law medical relief (28,776), cost of maintenance of pauper lunatics (79,988), vaccination (4292), and nurses' training inst.i.tutions. All these sums would make a grand total of nearly half a million expended on our sick poor. The City Missionaries now number 325, and every missionary visits once a month about 500 families or 2800 persons. The Ragged School Union has its ramifications in every part of the metropolis. Their returns are 128 Sunday Schools with 16,937 scholars in attendance; 98 day ditto, with 13,057; 117 evening schools with 8085; and 84 industrial cla.s.ses with 3224. London has 12 societies for the reformation of life and public morals with a total income of 11,583; 18 for reclaiming the fallen, and staying the progress of crime, with 35,036; 14 for the relief of general dest.i.tution and distress, with 23,880; 12 for the relief of specified distress, with 29,881; 14 for aiding the resources of the industrious, with 7246; 11 for the blind, deaf, and dumb, with 34,762; 103 colleges, hospitals, and other asylums for the aged (exclusive of Chelsea and Greenwich Hospitals, 83,047); 16 charitable pension societies, with 18,989; 74 charitable and provident societies, chiefly for specified cla.s.ses, with 103,227; 31 asylums for orphans and other necessitous children, with 81,015; 10 educational foundations, exclusive of libraries, modern colleges, or proprietary schools, 93,112; 4 charitable ditto, with 13,300; 40 school societies, religious book, church-aiding, and Christian instructing, irrespective of government grants or establishments, with an income, taking the sale of publications, as much as 318,189. Mr Low gives the total number of charitable inst.i.tutions as 500; Mr Mayhew puts down their number as 530.

Then there are 100 temperance meetings held weekly. May we not hope that all these inst.i.tutions have some effect, that by means of them some are reclaimed, and many saved?

The more direct religious agency may be estimated as follows. In the Handbook to Places of Wors.h.i.+p, published by Low, in 1851, there is a list of 371 churches and chapels in connexion with the Establishment; the number of church sittings, according to Mr Mann, is 409,184; the Independents have about 140 places of wors.h.i.+p and 100,436 sittings; the Baptists, 130 chapels, and accommodation for 54,234; the Methodists, 154 chapels, 60,696; the Presbyterians, 23 chapels and 18,211 sittings; the Unitarians, 9 chapels and about 3300 sittings; the Roman Catholics, 35 chapels and 35,994 sittings; 4 Quaker chapels, with sittings for 3151; the Moravians have two chapels, with 1100 sittings; the Jews have 11 synagogues and 3692 sittings. There are 94 chapels belonging to the New Church, the Plymouth Brethren, the Irvingites, the Latter-Day Saints, Sandemanians, Lutherans, French Protestants, Greeks, Germans, Italians, which chapels have sittings for 18,833. We thus get 691,723 attendants on divine exercises.

Those who know London life will know that I have not glanced at its darkest side: any man of the world will tell you infamies which I may not name here. I do not go so far as Mr Patmore, and affirm that in the higher ranks of life a young man is obliged to keep a mistress to avoid being laughed at; but I can conceive of no city more sunk in licentiousness and rascality than ours. Paris, Hamburgh, Vienna, may be as bad, but they cannot be worse. The poor are looked after by the police-visited by the city missionary; their wants and woes are worked up into newspaper articles, and they live as it were in houses of gla.s.s. It is true that one half the world does not know how the other half lives; but it is not true in the sense in which it is generally affirmed. Who ever has an idea that a pious baronet, taking the chair at a religious meeting in Exeter Hall, will prove a felon; that that house, eminent in the mercantile and philanthropic world, will sanction the circulation of forged Dock warrants; that that manager, about to engage in prayer at a meeting of directors, will turn out to be the manager of the greatest swindle of modern times? Who sees a dishonoured suicide in the patriotic Sadleir, or in the philanthropic Redpath a convict for life, or in the das.h.i.+ng Robson a maniac? If I tell you that respectable old gentleman now coming out of his club is going to inspect a fresh victim, whom some procuress has lured with devilish art, you will tell me that I am uncharitable; or if I point you to that well-appointed equipage in the Park, and tell you that that fair young girl that sits within has crushed many a young wife's heart, and has sent many a man to the devil before his time, you will tell me I exaggerate: I do nothing of the kind. If I were to tell what most men know-what everyone knows, except those whose business it is to know it, and to seek to reform it-I should be charged with indelicacy, as if truth could be indelicate, and my book perhaps suppressed by the Society for the Suppression of Vice-if that abortion exists still. We are choked up with cant; almost everything we believe in is a lie. The prayer of Ajax should be ours,-Light-more light.

What are we to do?-to stand stock still, looking to heaven "with a frenzied air, as if to ask if a G.o.d were there?" One can almost believe, with George Gilfillan, that the earth needs a new gospel and a new manifestation of divine power. From this low estate who is to rescue us?

Not the aristocracy, a barbarous inst.i.tution, perpetrating barbarous ideas in our midst,-that work is not honourable; whereas all true civilization points us to the fact, that man is only happy and virtuous as he is steadily industrious; and thus our most uncivilized cla.s.ses are our upper and lower,-our lords and ladies on one side, and our rogues and prost.i.tutes on the other. Not our law-makers, who imprison our young lads in costly jails, where the criminals have luxuries denied to the poor; and then in Newgate, or at the public works, mix them all up together, that the comparatively innocent may learn to be adepts in crime. Not our religious, I fear, when, from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to Dr c.u.mming, the cry is, If you have a proper translation of the Bible you will destroy the faith of the people. Not our trading cla.s.ses, becoming richer and more sunk in flunkeyism every day. But it may be that these-

"Are graves from which a glorious phantom may Burst to illumine our tempestuous day."

Whom am I to blame? Not the victims, but the fathers, and mothers, and divines, and schoolmasters, and governing cla.s.ses. Father, you have given your bold, manly son an emasculated religion,-a religion that wilfully shuts its eyes, and will not look upon life as it is; and, immediately he goes into the world, away vanish all the pasteboard defences with which you childishly sought to guard him; and yet you will not confess that in inculcating religious creeds,-that in teaching children catechisms,-that in vaguely telling them to be good,-that in leading them to believe in forms rather than truths, you are only damming up for a while the pa.s.sionate impulses of young blood, that they may ultimately exert a more tumultuous and irresistible sway. You take the little Arab of the streets, and, for acts of levity and wantonness which all boys commit, you send him to prison, at an age when you confess he is not a responsible creature, and then idiotically wonder that he turns out a criminal, and that he wars with society till he is hanged. You are surprised that woman, fond of praise, of dress, and pleasure, should prefer to walk the street in silk and satin, to have a short life and a merry one, rather than slave and drudge, and end her days after all in a workhouse. You tone down your fas.h.i.+onably educated daughters into automatons, and then wonder that hot youth finds domestic life tame and dull. Above all, do not go away with the idea that we have reached the utmost height of civilization,-that we are a model people,-that it is our mission to set up as teachers of religion to all mankind. Let us remember that the increase of crime and dissipation are facts; that there can be no corrupter city than London, and that it must be so, so long as we make professions our practice so scandalously denies. I have heard Her Majesty's proclamation against vice and immorality read at quarter-sessions by men in whose reading it became a farce which the most ignorant b.u.mpkin in court could relish. Now we are going to do wonders, the policeman is to supplement the parson, the wicked are to be hunted down. Is this the way seriously to set about moral reform? Routine and officialism in church and state have made the outside of the sepulchre white enough; do we not need a little cleansing within? How long will men look for grapes from thorns?

SEEING A MAN HANGED.

I am not about to give an opinion as to the propriety or impropriety of capital punishments. On this point good men have differed, and will differ, I dare say, for some time to come. What I wish to impress upon the philanthropic or Christian reader is the horrible nature and atrocious effect of a public execution.

A few Sunday evenings since I was pa.s.sing by Newgate, along the outside of which a considerable crowd had been collected. Respectable mechanics, with their wives and children, were staring at its dreary stone walls.

Ragged boys and girls were romping and laughing in the streets. All the neighbouring public-houses were filled with a tipsy crowd. Here and there a few barriers had been erected, and workmen were engaged in putting up more. Why were these preparations made? For what purpose had this crowd collected? A man was to be hung, was the reply. I resolved for once to see the tragedy performed. To me or the living ma.s.s around, that man was an utter stranger. I had never seen him or heard the sound of his voice; all I knew was that he had led an outlaw's life, and was to die as outlaws ofttimes do. How strange the mysterious interest with which death clothes everything it touches! Is it that looking at a man so soon to have done with life we fancy we can better pry into the great secret? Do we deem that seeing him struggle we shall die more manfully ourselves, or is it merely the vague interest with which we regard any one about to travel into distant regions, all unknown to him or us, and the secrets of which he can never return to tell? Be this as it may, I went back at twelve. The public-houses had been closed, decent people had gone home to bed; but already the crowd had become denser, already had the thief and the bully from all the slums and stews of the metropolis been collected together. You can easily recognise the criminal population of our capital. The policeman knows them instinctively, as with their small wiry figures, restless eyes, and pale faces, they pa.s.s him by. One can tell them as easily as one knows the child of Norman origin by his n.o.ble bearing, or the Anglo-Saxon by his blue eyes and rosy cheeks. There is generally something fine, and genial, and hearty about an English mob. On the night of the peace-rejoicing you might have taken a lady from one end of London to the other, and she would not have heard an objectionable word, or been inconvenienced in the least; but the mob of which I now write seemed utterly repulsive and reprobate; all its sympathies seemed perverted. It is a hard world this, I know, and it has but little mercy for the erring and the unfortunate; but that they should regard it with such evil eyes, that they should be so completely estranged from all its recognised modes of thought and action, that it should seem to them such a complete curse, was what I was not prepared to expect. It really made one's blood run cold to hear the mob around me talk. The man to be hung had rushed into a jeweller's shop as it was being closed, beaten the shopman, who tried to defend his master's property, with a life-preserver, and then left him for dead. But he had not said one word about his accomplices, and the crowd evidently admired him rather than not. "The ticket-of-leave man was out on starvation," as one of them informed me. "The Government," I drop the expressive adjective by which the noun was prefixed, "dodges him, and if he steals it is only what he must do, and if murder follows it is not his fault, and Government is unjust in hanging him for it."

Such was the popular notion of the subject in my immediate neighbourhood.

Government seemed to have planned the opportunity for the holders of such opinions to ventilate them. Till eight o'clock these men were to be formed into one compact ma.s.s; and how were they to pa.s.s their time if they did not talk? and here who was there to lift up his voice on behalf of law and order? and if there were such, who would have listened?

Realise the state of the case. Look around! Where do you see the clear front and unabashed presence of honesty and virtue? The virtuous and the honest have long been in bed. Here there is a fight. That bundle of rags, with matted hair covering all the face so that you cannot clearly see a feature, is the Clare Market Pet, and she has just encountered Slas.h.i.+ng Sal, between whom and herself there has been mortal enmity for years. Both women-yes, they are women, nor so fallen are they but that the temperance agent or the city missionary may yet lead them to a diviner life, and _He_ may smile on them who never yet turned away repentant son or daughter of sin and shame-are very tipsy, very dirty, and very red. Shrieking and cursing, the Clare Market Pet rushes on Slas.h.i.+ng Sal, who is by no means loth for the encounter. A ring is formed, men and boys halloo and encourage, and the battle rages furiously, though both women are far too drunk to do each other any serious harm. At length the Clare Market Pet is vanquished and order is restored, just as we are told tranquillity reigns at Naples. "Please give me a penny," says a girl of about fourteen, and I find myself in the midst of a group of youthful costermongers and their wives, who have come here for a lark, just as they frequent the penny gaff, or crowd the gallery in the Victoria. I listen to their slang till I feel sick, as I think for what a future of crime and its result they are now rapidly ripening. In this Christian land can no agency be formed that shall save these young heathens? Again, I find a female standing by my side; she is horridly dirty; she stinks of gin; her face is that of the confirmed sot-of one who has given up home and husband, and comfort, and decency, for the accursed drink. She looks very piteously in my face. "And so they are going to hang the poor man," she exclaims; "they have no mercy on him." "You forget," I reply, "the poor man whom he murdered, and on whom he had no mercy." "No, I don't," she exclaims with tipsy gravity; "he had no right to kill the man, and ought to be punished; but ain't we all morally bad?"-but here the conversation ends, for she has sunk down, maudlin, stinking with gin, and overcome by it and weariness, on the doorstep. Ah, these doorsteps, let us look at them. To-night the police don't bid the _habitues_ move on. What crowds are collected on them,-ragged boys, who, perhaps, have nowhere else to sleep, wild-looking women unbonnetted and shoeless, with red, uncombed hair, faces very much marked with the small pox, only seen on such occasions as these-old men crouch on them for whom home has no charm, and life no l.u.s.tre, and girls whose rouged cheeks and shabby finery tell to what wretchedness and degradation, though young in years, they have already come. Let them sleep on, if they can, on their stony mattress, beneath this inclement sky, out in this cold December night; they are happier now than they can be in their waking hours! But look at the windows, all lighted up and filled with gay company. Those two beautiful girls-let us hope they are not ladies-not English mothers or wives-who have just stepped out of the brougham, and are now gazing from a first-floor on the wild human sea beneath, will sit playing cards and drinking champagne all night; yet scarce have the sounds of Sabbath bells died away, and in a few hours a man is to be hung, and these girls, all sensibility and tears, will sit with their opera gla.s.ses during the fearful agony, as if merely Grisi acted or Mario sang.

Let us take another stroll through this living ma.s.s. The workmen have put up the last barriers-the clock strikes three-a crowd, dense and eager, has planted itself by the Old Bailey. The yard is thrown open, and three strong horses, such as you see in brewers' drays, drag along what seems to be an immense clumsy black box. It stops at the door of Newgate nearest to St Sepulchre's. Women shriek as it rumbles over the stones, and you shudder, for instinctively you guess it is the gallows.

By the dim gas-light you see workmen first fix securely a stout timber-then another-and then a beam across from which hangs a chain-and now the crowd becomes denser. Let us leave it and enter the house, at the top of which we have previously engaged a seat.

We are some eight or nine in a very small room, and most of us are amateurs in hanging, and it seems to us a very pleasant show. Some of us have come a long way, and most of us have been up all night. We have seen every execution for the last ten years, and boast how on one day we saw one man hung at Newgate, and took a cab and got to Horsemonger-lane in time to see another. A rare feat that, and one of which we are justly proud. We talk of these things, and how we have seen criminals die, till some of us get very angry, and flatly contradict each other. Altogether there is somewhat too much mirth in the house, though we could not have had a better place had we paid 5 for it. The women are too exuberant and full of fun. It is true, as the girls say to each other, "they don't hang a man every day," but the gaiety is discordant. Over the way _he_ is just waking up from his troubled sleep. A thin waif of smoke goes up from the dark dreary building opposite-are they boiling him his last cup of tea? See, there is a light in the press-room! Ah, what are they doing there? St Sepulchre's strikes six. The door at the foot of the scaffold opens, and very stealthily, and so as to be seen by none but such as are high up like ourselves, a man throws sawdust on the scaffold, and disappears again; we see him this time with a chain or rope. All this while the hydra-headed mob beneath amuses itself in various ways.

It sings songs, chiefly preferring those with a chorus-it hoots dogs-it tosses small boys about on its top. As we look from the window, we think we never saw such a mob before. Far as the eye can reach towards Ludgate-hill on one side, and Giltspur-street on the other, it is one ma.s.s of human heads; the very air is tainted with their odour-we smell it where we are. Our amateur friends are in excellent spirits; they have not seen so many people at an execution for some years. They are agreeably surprised; they all thought the man would not have been hung, and had backed their opinions by bets.

A long wearisome night was it, even to us-and it is not yet eight. The roar of the crowd is so great-can _he_ hear it within?-that we cannot catch the sound of the neighbouring chimes; but we see signs that the end is approaching. The police have filled up the intervening s.p.a.ce between the scaffold and the crowd. A bell tinkles dismally, horridly. We look beyond the scaffold down into the open doorway, and there they are, ascending the stairs. First the chaplain, then the criminal, and then Jack Ketch. Marley walks steadily, with pale face and eyes cast down, and places himself immediately under the rope. He trembles slightly as his legs are being fastened, his hands had already been pinioned behind.

A nightcap is drawn over his face, the rope is adjusted round his neck, Jack Ketch hastens down the ladder, the chaplain, reading the burial service all the while, steps back, down goes the drop, a woman or two shrieks, there is a slight convulsive movement of the body, and what was a minute back a living man is now a dishonoured corpse. There he dangles in the cold north wind for an hour. We cannot get away, as the crowd is determined to see the last of it, and will not move. It stops to hoot Jack Ketch, as he comes to cut Marley down at nine o'clock. Till then, there he hangs, a tall, well-made man, with fine dark whiskers, in his very prime, heedless of the sixty thousand glaring eyes all round, with hands clasped as if supplicating that divine mercy which all born of woman need, and which may G.o.d grant us in our dying hour. Away hastes the crowd to its business or its pleasure; and when a short time after I pa.s.s by the very spot where that hideous throng had stood, blaspheming in the very presence of death, butchers' and carriers' carts filled up the vacant s.p.a.ce, and the past night seemed a ghastly dream.

CATHERINE-STREET.