Englishmen at home

Preface

. A foreign people cannot be understood in a short, and generally hurried visit ; nor, indeed, can they be appreciated by the oldest foreign resident, unless he will consent to waive all prejudice and live among them as one of themselves. Perhaps, I will not be envied for the experience I have gained. It has been clearly bought, — enforced by protracted illness, and involving banishment from my family and friends, the privileges of society, and even the common comlorts of life. I went to England unprejudiced against the people, and lived among them, chiefly in London I had no " secret histories" from which to copy, but derived my facts from my own observations. I am indebted to my learned friend, Mr. John Fullard of Birmingham, with whom I lived, moved and travelled in different places of Great Britain and Ireland.

I am also indebted for some historical matter to Mr. Edward Leach's " SJcctcJies of Christian Work Among The Lowly "; and also to Green wood's interesting book entitled " The Seven Curses of London" which was very ably reviewed by Mr. Spurgeon. The readers will find in it very interesting and instructive information, striking incident, scenes of thrilling excitement, of touching tenderness, of in tensely rude and blunted sympathies and of dark crime— not concocted in the brain of the novelist, but enacted in the real life of the great English nation such as the Indian mind never conceives. The book has an interest of its own as showing how English social and moral life strike a foreigner ; or rather as showing what are the standards by which foreign writers of the present day should measure Englishmen and Englishwomen.

Therefore this book will help a foreigner to learn a great deal more about English social and moral life, as in it the inner life of the "Teat English nation is laid bare. The descriptions are weighty ; and the readers will find in it how the demon of drink, with almost undis puted sway, rules the masses, and devours them at his will. London, I N. L. G 10th May, 1885. CONTENTS. Chapter. Par/r. I. London ... ... ... ... 1 TI. Seamen tn The Dock _ ... ... ... 8 III. Homeless And Destitute ... ... ... 1.1 IV. Homes With No Name ... ... ... 34 V. The Young Men of London ... ... -U VI. Young Men And Evangelistic Work In London ... 50 VII. TUe Costermongers Of London ... ... 50 VIII. The Gipsies Of London ... ... ... 74 IX. Chimney Sweepers ... ... ... 8-1 X. Day Cabmen ... ... ... ... 92 XI. Night Cabmen... ... ... ... 101 XII.

Among The Thieves And Tramps Of St. Giles ... 111 XIII. Among Tlie Thieves And Tramps Of St. Giles (concluded) ... ... ... 120 XIV. Poor Sarah ... ... ... ... 130 XV. Westminster ... ... ... ... 138 XVI. Tlie Public Houses ... ... ... 147 XVII. The Seven Evils Of London ... ... ]58 XVIII, The Dustwomen ... ... ... 170 XTX. Pleaching In A Low Lodging-House ... ... 1 74 XX. Among The Spitafields' Lodging Houses ... 181 XXI. Stray Thoughts ... ... ... 186 XXII, English Society And English Character ... ERRATA. Page 1 8, line 22, read "hay-loft" instead of "hay left." Page 163, the word "are" is dropped after English men, read " The Englishmen are unmistakably." Page 187, the word "liquor" is dropped, read "any kind of liquor."

Chapter I

, London. ON the 28th of March, 1883, we entered Dover's giant cliffs, and left Calais harbour without a thought of the chops of tbe channel, or any other of the disagreeables of life. It is a dull journey from Dover to London, just a dreary drag over a huge flat ; monotonous as the clergyman's tones at Droneton-in-the Marsh, and two-thirds as dull as his of repeated sermons ; but London itself is a full reward for all the tedium of the way. London is the metropolis of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. As a commercial and trading city London is complete ; it has extensive and well-built manufactories, shops, warehouses, and mercantile firms ; and within its limit it contains an immense wealth which all Europe besides could not excel. As an educational city, London, like Paris, is also complete ; it has large and well-arranged libraries, colleges and museums of every language, science and art; here the thoughtful observer may study in different colleges and museums, zoology, anatomy, comparative anatomy, Darwin's apedom, diseased pathology, conchology, entomology, geology, botany, hydrostatics, astronomy, electricity, mechanics, and indeed every branch of knowledge ; and his studies may be diversified with wanderings among miles of advertisements and acres of heavy sign-boards.

The vain may very easily find in London a feast for their vanity, but the intelligent may be equally content with the feast of knowledge which its splendid colleges and museums afford them. London owes very much to the great fire which consumed its old inflammable houses, and raised a new city of palaces. The event proved to be a sanitary blessing, although it was not appreciated as such. Indeed, religious men vehemently asserted that the devastation occurred as a judgment against the crying sins of the age, and was more especially aimed at the gluttony of Londoners, since the fire began at Pudding Lane, and ended at Pie Corner ; but it was forgotten that nature awards another kind of punishment to gluttonous appetites whicli indulge too freely in puddings and pies. Two hundred years ago, London was the most dirty city in Europe.

From the time of George the First to the present day the extension of London was carried on at such a marvellous rate, and is still continued with greater zest than ever, so that the metropolis has assumed a character which makes it the greatest marvel of the age. From malarious swamps and den of fever, it has become the most populous, com mercial, wealthy, and largest city in the world. No doubt, from a marvel of foulness it has become the most wonderful city, although it makes one shudder to know that the city abounds with infamy and loathsome vices. Alas ! that a Christian city of high civilization and culture should be so clouded with abounding sin. London, the centre of English enterprise and spirit, the seat of English commerce and wealth, the home of English literature and science, the nursery of English intelligence and civilization, has swol len like dropsy to an enormous degree, swollen by the mixture of prosperity and poverty, virtue and vice, good and evil, right and wrong.

It is the haunt of the harlot and the thief. Poverty, with all its variety of filth, hid itself here, that is, poverty shows itself in a horror of every method of commanding public attention. The broken-down and distressed workman, the worn-out, dissipated shoe maker, the intoxicated, rude sailor, and the halt and maimed and blind, who begged in the streets for a living, inhabited its long, narrow, dirty lanes. The victims of whiskey and gin here found an appropriate refuge. The Irish, who huddle together without any sense of decency or domestic comfort, swarmed the ill-ventilated houses. In the summer, numbers died of fever generated by ill ventilated rooms, and badly-drained closes ! In the winter, the old and tottering were taken off by cold and hunger. London, with its streams of busy life, like mighty rivers, is a seething bog.

The poor folks here are like rotten wood, they winna hand the nail ! On the surface London looks like bright gold, but its inner part is rotten like putrid corpse. Those lines of first-class residences, those long terraces of respectable houses, those miles of pretty villas, those LONDON. leagues of busy shops— one rides along them by the hour, and feels that London is great, flourishing, wealthy, orderly ; ay, but turn out of that broad thoroughfare, stop at Paradise Court or Rosemary Alley, take your walks abroad where many poor you see, note the ragged children, the filthy Irishwomen, the harlots, the drunkards, the swarms of villainous-looking big boys ; and now, as you return, sick from the reek of gin and the mustiness of rags, you learn that London is poor, wretched, lawless, horrible.

It is well to have the rose-water removed, and the rose-colour washed off awhile. The city of London is full of remarkable impressions. Up in the garret of a large high house, were three persons seated on the floor, with a broken bottle and a couple of broken tea-cups. The old man and his wife wore in a deplorable condition. Another man in the room waa dressed in good black, with " thin silky grey hair falling over a forehead that bore the marks of some culture. This man had been a respectable tradesman, but drink had been his ruin. "Well, John, how are you getting on ?" asked Mr. Parker's cicerone. "Just gone to the devil again. Master Wright," replied the wizened face old fellow, as he dropped the cup with its contents from his hand. The wife put herself in a fighting attitude, and dealt out some imaginary blows which were intended to puuish the old man for his naughty language, but the rebuke had no effect.

The place of a sinner like him, she said, was to sit silent and listen. The old man did not acquiesce, but ordered her to be quiet, which she did with her tongue, but not with her arms and hands, which were still vapoured over the head of John. In another garret, an old woman, who resembled a bundle of rags, was lying crouched in the corner. On the window-sill was a well-thumbed copy of Horace, which was the mental food of the old woman's son, who supported her as best he could on a few shillings a week. An old Irishwoman, whose nose and chin nearly met, aud whose "long elfin locks, half black and half grey, gave her a weird appearance," had been found in love with a shoemaker in her old age. This is the universal experience of strange London. There was John Duncan, the bill sticker, leading gently to grog-shop on Sabbath and week night, his pale, patient, blind Mary, the wife who, even then, washed and baked for him.

There, too, was Alexander Thorburn, standing daily at the auction-room door, or at the photographer's with nOME. necklace of pictures ; and his wife, too, that needed all her clear vision, to keep him straight. There, too, was John Bonar, sideling with slow pace into the church, but always there with fresh guilt Bible, at which he looked from an angle impossible to any other eye. No doubt, London is a unique city, comprising representa tives of all classes of her Majesty's Christian subjects. The wealthy lords, the proud barons, the covetous bankers, the thrifty merchants, the unhappy workmen, the wretched sailors, the worth less beggars, the half-naked drunkards, are to be found in every street and lane. With all the sin of London it has a Sabbath ; and the houses of prayer, though not so well attended as they should be, do neverthe less receive within their doors an exceeding great army.

When the church was crowded, some of the visitors would peep into the vestry before service, and say, " We have swept the closes clean to-night." There they sat, many of them in rags, some of them unwashed, some brought in from their firesides as they sat after their Saturday night's dissipation. Many had never in their life been within a church door, many had not been for ten and twenty years. And there they sat, as the minister stood up to preach, looking into his eyes with eager search, as if for light, waiting to know if he really has any good news for them. They seemed to say, "We have come for once in our life, at any rate, within your reach, and we shall listen to-night till you're done. Say your best. Do your utmost. We are dead, hopeless creatures. We know we're lost ; you need not tell us that.

We believe in hell ; we have been there. But is there salvation for us V With such feelings as those, a man cannot preach anything but Christ. Conversions became numerous. A com munion class was formed. "I want to be admitted," observed a man, "dressed in blue pilot cloth, with a great shaggy headand a rough wea ther-beaten face, one eye hopelessly disfigured, as if by some terrible blow." " What makes you press forward to-night 1" he was asked. The reply was, " Seeing so many press into the kingdom, ancl I'm likely to be left oot." Strange ways had some of these characters of expressing the great change which the religion of Christ had wrought for them. " I'm a changeful man," said a noted drunken man, " the guid used to be drooned by the evil, but noo it's floating on the top." On one occasion at the Lord's table, a poor old man .-> LONDON. of eighty-one years, admitted there for the first time, took the large slice of bread handed by the elder, and instead of breaking off the morsel, ate the whole slice.

" I stopped the elder as he was about gently to speak to him, " says Mr. Parker, and said, " Our Master would not take it from him." But Mr. Parker forgets that the Master would have prevented the mistake by breaking the bread himself, as was his ordained method. These are the sad pictures of the city of London ? It is the city of corruption, it is the city of Christian religion crowded with the habitations of cruelty. Its people feed upon provision made for the flesh, and they are armed from the magazine of unsanctified nature ; the Old Adam is their father, sin is their mother, unbelief their nurse, and self their captain. For number they are legion, and they prowl in bands, each band doing its best to make havoc of every good thing. They break down the temples of morality, they dig up the wells of vice, they loiter in the streets like packs of wolves and hungry-looking dogs for their prey.

Temptations of all shapes barbarously ravage the hearts of London. Flauntily-dressed females, with the sinner's trade stamped heavily upon their other wise interesting features, are scattered here and there ; costermongers with their necks well bandaged by gaudy silk handkerchiefs (which are indispensable to the craft) ; fustianed labourers who only honour the Sabbath by using soap and water ; poorly-clad ragamuffins and boys of various ages, who wriggle into innumerable shapes and quietly poke fun at each other until the policeman manages to arrest their attention. There are divers things to be observed in modern Babylon. Do you catch my thought . For fear you have not I will enlarge. There are depths in London so low, that some of you have no more idea of them, than you have of the holes of the rats in the great sewers ; and in these depths lie damnable curses, deep and deadly, withering and soul-destroying.

It is mournfully interesting now aud then to walk along the streets of London, and see half-clad, hunger-bitten relics of humanity, men and women, glide along the pavement like ghosts, wearing clothing which even the rag-merchant would not buy ; poor, broken-spirited, begrimed, gin-cursed beings, who have not even spirit enough left to beg, but flit along the street, looking like owls in the daylight, as if they were out of their haunts, and were uneasy till they were back again. Give them a sixpence, and they look at you with surprise, and almost with alarm ; and before you can say a word, they vanish as mysteriously as if they had descended through the pavement. In going along the busy streets, we frequently notice a crowd gathere d round a fallen horse or a waggon with a broken wheel. It is odd how soon a crowd gathers when there is an attraction; there may not have been a dozen people in the street before, but there will be scores if not hundreds within five minutes if a couple of boys are fighting.

Only stand and stare at a smoking-chimney-pot yourself for a few minutes, and see if twenty other simpletons will not come and gaze their eyes out with curiosity to know what you can be looking at. Might not stoppages in a crowd give us rare chances of reaching strange people . As you are surrounded by the mob you readily discover that the rascal on your right greatly admires your watch. When a cheap-jack has a little knot of people round his van, he eyes them all, and feels sure that the man who is standing over there is a butcher, and that yonder young lad has more money than brains, and that the girl near him is out with her sweet-heart and is soon to be married. For the most part, the condition of modern Babylon, morally and spiritually, is frightfully low. One who has seen it well, has estimated that only about one-fourth part of it is good.

The dangers of Hell can be pourtrayed with a Pre-Raphaelitish and naked accuracy ; but it is difficult even to a best painter, to paint the wandering rogues, wanton vagabonds, unrestrained drunkards, hunger-bitten beggars, and haggard-looking unmarried women. In the heart of this enlightened city, there lurks an undefined and unexpressed vice which is a sheer disgrace to Christian England. But whence does London derive its black face 1 How is it that Christian London has become subordinated to gross immorality . The reply is ready to our hand. Drink is the root of its gigan tic crimes. Let no mortal man rashly believe himself capable of considering this world and all its ongoings with a perfectly free and unprejudiced mind. We hold that such virtue has died out, and is lost for ever to civilised society.

But imagine for one moment a human being endowed with the reason and understanding, set down, for the first time in his life, on the face of this globe — if you LONDON. 7 please in the heart of London, — and there left to begin, de novo, to make what he could of it ; and we predict, with unhesitating confidence, that the first impression produced on his mind would be that this was assuredly the most outrageous, the most startling, of all worlds. And if, carefully concealing from your visitor any apprehension of a superintending and all-wise Deity, you proceeded to unfold to his perception some of the more complex moral phases of human life, we believe that he would come inevitably to the conclusion, that it was not only the strangest, but also the saddest, and altogether a most hopeless world.

Aud in one aspect — on the side of human speculation — is it not, on the face of it, even so? Conceive for one moment of History — and no God . Turn over its pages if you can — and dare — under the influence of that thought ; and as you have within you a human heart, you will turn away in sheer despair from the perusal of the tragic tale of mortal misery " too deep for tears." Light and darkness ! These are the elements of History ; not softly blending to form fairy pictures, filled with images that inspire delight ; but joining issue to produce dire eclipse and " disastrous twilight," fitted rather to confound. A seemingly illimitable and confused battlefield ! A frantic world determined to go wrong. "Sad moral phenomena? Where shall we look for them in tho nineteenth century ? Perhaps you immediately request us to direct our attention exclusively to the uttermost ends of thc earth ; and we politely decline to do so.

Heathendom we dare say presents a deplorable sight; but what of Christendom? Here are institutions designed — so we are told — expressly for the advance ment of man's immortal weal, and above all, for the benefit of enlightened and happy Englishmen ; and among these — strange to say — we find their saddest illustrations of gross moral perversion. Ho who wishes for a proof of human depravity, drunken revelry and shameless wantonness, has only to walk through the paved streets of London and watch several grades of cruelty, dissipation, drunkenness, poverty, brutality, ignorance, and blackguardism. London, tlie city of infamy and vice, Is a dark den, where fiends and wolves howl. Before it " Hell trembles throughout, In all its palaces of fire."

Chapter II

Seamen in the Docks Looking over London Bridge, the eye is arrested by a forest of sails, of all descriptions of dirty drab ; by vessels of all kinds and shapes — some of no particular kind at all, and others of no describable shape ; by ropes old and by ropes new ; by boats crazy and boats that by repainting have had a new lease of life given them ; by cargoes heavy and cargoes light ; by colliers black and barges blacker ; by ruinous, dilapidated wharves, and by a medley of labourers, and sailors, and watermen, and lightermen, and mates professional and mates unprofessional — loafers who find that loafing pays, and others that starve upon it. The sight of industry seems to provoke idleness. One always sees the idlest vagabonds lounging where they may observe the hardest and most busy work.

Thus the parapets of London Bridge are invariably, from early morn to dusk, fringed by some of the most depraved and vicious idlers that could claim commiseration or excite disgust. How they enjoy the sight of perspiring labour before them ! What rude observations are jerked out occasionally, as if they who were too lazy to work were most competent to criticise those who could and did what it would be a pleasure to compel them to do. More animating and interesting still is the scene at the Docks. One of our first, and most boyish, literary efforts was a description of a visit paid to the London Docks. We have a clear recollection of the dismal, damp wine-vaults through which we travelled — one barrel, we remember, contained 4,500 gallons of port; - we walked through one of the immense tobacco-stores, the whole of which will cover five acres, and our juvenile eyes were attracted and delighted at seeing a labouring man shovelling damaged tobacco, on which no duty had been paid, into a huge furnace appropriately designated "The Queen's Pipe."

The wine-vaults will accomodate 60,000 pipes of wine, while one dock is devoted exclusively to ships laden with tobacco. So be wilderingly extensive is the London Dock that the eye fails to take in all that is spread out before it. The dock contains an average of 240 sails. It must not be supposed that each ship has its crew. The crews are paid off, on the vessel entering the dock, SEAMEN in THE LOCK... ancl otily about five or six hands are retained. But the hundreds of men engaged on the docks, and the numbers of seamen in the ships, render this a fine field for the study of character of the "son of the ocean," who has braved many a fierce wind, and has been strong where others would be weak, is weak when he should be strong— unguarded when he should be careful. Alas ! poor Jack, his very virtues lead him to vice.

His assumed friends, the land sharks, the wretched women who drug him with their smiles and professions of friendship, make him their prey. He is soon pressed with liquor, and liquor is his curse. He falls into the hands of designing Delilah's, and soon loses that which took him many hour.-, of rough work to earn. Mr. Mayhew, in his " London Labour and London Poor," has very graphically pictured the social condition of this class of men. The picture, we fear, is but too true. "The dock labourers," he says, "are a striking instance of mere brute force with brute appetites. This class of labour is as unskilled as the power of a hurricane. Mere muscle is all that is needed ; hence every human locomotive is capable of working there .... Dock work is pre cisely the office, that every kind of man is fitted to perform, and there we find every kind of man performing it."

And there is a terrible scramble after this employment. " It is a curious sight to see the men waiting in these yards to be hired at 4 pence per hour." It is sad to find how brutal many of the men are, and how depraved and drunken. They reside in some of the lowest haunts of East Lon don — in lodging houses which are a disgrace to Christianity, we might almost say. Yet these houses are somewhat better conducted than they used to be — though imagination fails to picture how wretched their former state must have been. The great body of the labourers, it is sad to learn, never attend a place of worship — are not even visited by Christian men. We have heard of several instances in which those who have attempted to benefit them have been insulted and mobbed. The labourers are, therefore, as might be expected, utterly ignorant of the elementary truths of the gospel.

Mr. Splaifie says, "A great many of them can neither read nor write, and are as ignorant of Divine things as if they were living in heathen lands. I have frequently addressed from fifteen to thirty labouring men at the dinner-hour on board of ships ; and, while they were partaking of that meat whicli perisheth, I have endeavoured to impress their minds with a sense of their need of not neglecting to feed their never-dying souls with the bread of life which cometh down from heaven. My access to these men has been better than what I once anticipated." Lightermen differ from bargemen in that the latter convey passengers, while the former convey goods from the vessels to the shore, or vice versa. Many of them work on Sunday ; and consequently never enter God's house. They are more intelligent and less depraved than the dock labourers.

The reports of all the missionaries engaged in evangelistic labour in the various docks agree in their descriptions of the terrible evils produced by drunkenness. Intemperance abounds to a fearful extent among seafaring people. One missionary writes: — "This is not to be wondered at, when it is considered, that there is not a street at this end of London without at least from one to three gin palaces or beer-shops. Whenever a new street is to be built, the first house erected on it, is sure to be a public-house, situate in some prominent place. When a sailor passes by one of these houses, after returning from sea, and hears in one of them some singing and dancing going on, Bill says to Joe, his shipmate, " Come in, and let's go and see what's all this about," and accordingly they go in, and come out drunk and robbed of their money.

Many instances of this will be seen at various times recorded in the police intelligence of London papers, but the larger number of cases never come to light. Here is a sample of the kind of degradation to which humanity will sink. Mr. Splaine, in his last report, wrote : — " It is now over two years since I first noticed an old-looking man, dressed in seamen's clothes, talking very busily at times with sailors, after they were 'paid off' at the shipping-office, adjoining the Sailors' Home. I often endeavoured to get into conversation with him, but found it impossible, as he always succeeded in avoiding to meet me. At last I casually met him talking to a sailor, and gave to both of them a tract ; but on pointing out to them the incomparable blessing of being in a state of peace with God, he became very restless and said, "I think it's no matter what religion a man professes, it's all the same tiling if he believes that there is a God above.

If a man is SEAMEN IN TOE DOCKS. 11 k Turk, and believes this, there is no fear of him. T believe that there is a God that rules all things, and do not fear ever being damned, ifcc. At this time he got still more impatient, and, seeing some sailors passing by, he begged to be excused, and followed them. A few days subsequently one of the shipping masters at the Sailors' Home pointed out this man to me as being the greatest and vilest reprobate in existence. It appears that this old sailor is well known, and lives by 'crimping.' For every sailor he conducts to houses of debauchery, he receives from the inmates a few shillings, besides a stipulated sura he receives from those who become his victims. Many seamen in this way are brought into the paths of ruin ; and many a young man, after leaving the peace ful home of his parents, is thus brought to make shipwreck of his soul and body.

I meet daily in my work with cases of this kind, and I have no doubt but in a few instances my admonitions have not been altogether, I trust, in vain in the Lord." Tho Sailors' Home is an excellent institution. It provides lodgings for seamen where they may be safe from the cupidity and devilish arts of land-sharks. Yet, even here poor Jack is surrounded by these wretched creatures, who, as he is passing into tho building, will draw him into their low haunts. A sad case is mentioned in one of the reports, of a young man who was decoyed into a den of infamy, where he spent the best part of three days in drunkenness. The fourth day he was found dead through starvation and ill-usago. A boatswain of a ship was drugged with laudanum in one of these houses. Finding himself growing suddenly stupid, he endeavoured to make his way for the Sailors' Home.