Rambling reminiscences of a residence abroad. England--Guernsey

Chapter I. Chap Per II

l'iie Dark Side of London Life— The Social Dregs 12- 27

CHAPTER in.

The Kew Gardens and Richmond Park — Ruminations over some of

John Bull's Peculiarities ... 28 39

CHAPTER IV.

Further Experiences of Richmond — Gypsies — John, Earl Russell, &c. 40 — 4X

CHAPTER V.

Windsor Castle, Past and Present — George IV — The Lawless Lords

of Other Days— The Royal Stables— The Parks, &c 48— 59

CHAPTER VI.

The Inauguration of the Second World's Fair in London— The Fine Art Department — American Exhibition — Letter to the "Times" — Nevv-Made Friends 59 — 71

CHAPTER VII.

Letter to the "Times," referred to in Previous Chapter — Gladstone,

Bright &c, &c 72— 76

CHAPTER VIII.

'The Shaw Farm of Prince Albert — English Agriculture — Stock Breeding, &c.,— Political Influence of the Landlords — Duke

of Somerset * . . . . 77 — 80

CHAPTER IX.

Hampton Court — Mons. Assolant — Cardinal .volsley 86 — 101

CHAPTER X.

Harrow-on-the Hill — Byron', Early Days — Hampstead Heath — Rural Sports — Kissing in thj Ring, Highgate, &c, 101 — 1 16

CHAPTER XL A London Law Court — The English on America — The Duke of Somerset — The Land Laws, &c , — The Courts of Queen's Bench and Exchequer — Nomination of Sheriffs — Lord Mayor's Banquets— The Right Honorable William Cubitt, M. P., Lord Mayor of London — A Village Graveyard — Curious Epitaphs. 117 — 130

CHAPTER XII.

Sanitary Science — House and Town Sewerage — Its Influence on

Health and Longevity 131 — '4 2

CHAPTER XIII.

The Royal Mint — A Distinguished Man and a Club Cub— Sir John

Shelley— The Illusions of History 1 4j— 1 5°

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER XIV.

The Derby Day— British Love of Sport— The Popularity of the Turf

— The Celebrated Racer Eclipse 151 160

Chapter II. The Dark Side Of London Life. — The Social Dregs

Having in the preceding chapter presented a general idea of outside London, we shall introduce the reader in this to some interior views. He will not see in them the most pleasing, interesting or popular aspects of metropolitan life, but there are plenty of writers who riot in descriptions of the beau monde, by which we mean the world of fashion, for neither wit nor learning are elements in it. On the other hand the number is small indeed, of those who are willing to take the less attractive, not to say revolting part, of portraying scenes where vice wears no veil and decency forever blushes. Let it be our part, at least, to touch upon them.

During a long residence in London, the author gathered the information embodied in this chapter from various sources and by personal visits to the haunts of the destitute, and the dens of thieves. He was sometimes accompanied by a clergyman of the District, but more frequently by a brace of well armed policemen. The scenes disclosed to him deepened his convictions that London forms no exception to the rule that sunshine may fall upon the earth and bless it, but the shadow is ever at its side. To know London you must see both sides of the picture —its dens of misery its regions of squalid poverty and perennial suffering, as well as its West end mansions and shops, its noble squares and extensive parks. Prominent as is the mighty Babylon of our day for its wealth and grandeur, it is equally disgraced by its exceptionable regions of poverty which excite pity, and of crime which awaken fear. While it is undeniably a pleasant thing to contemplate man

in all the exaltation of his wisdom and virtue, it is also of service

, to us to occasionally look into his obliquities and to distinctly re-

I mark how great and portentious are his follies, his crimes and his

sufferings.

Penetrate into remote quarters, and you find behind the smiling exterior of West-end wealth and splendor, masses of miserable, over-crowded houses, immured," as it were, in close and narrow streets, from which narrower alleys radiate, where the sun never peeps and broad daylight is never seen ; swarms of poverty stricken people, pale with grief and suffering, emaciated, toiling ! men and women, by the side of beggars and thieves, and all maintaining a desperate struggle with want — literally fighting for I life. No belle, glittering with jewels, rolls in her coach to the Queen's Drawing room without startling the ear of dying poverty in some hovel of wretchedness and despair. No gaily dressed congregation reaches its fashionable church without encountering I the fumes of taprooms and gin palaces, and mixing with their 1 crowd of squalid, drunken customers. Thus is exemplified the truth:

" Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there."

I The Royal Palace has its disgusting back-ground of reeking ! sinks, slums and hovels in Pimlico. The opera has its counterpart in the low, vice engendering penny theatre, and the balls of the aristocracy are set off by the costermonger's two-penny hop. The fine shops of Regent street and Piccadilly draw their supplies of silks and rich stuffs from the poverty stricken dens of Spital-fields. The gayest and most brilliant streets of the West-end are close upon St. Giles, the darkest London haunt of crime and misery. Hordes of beings rise every morning without as much food as will serve them through the day, and who derive a precarious existence by sweeping the crossings, selling matches, gathering bones or rags, riddling cinders out of dust holes, retailing apples or oranges, collecting and selling the refuse vegetables of the markets, running errands, and, worst of all, girls selling their perishing charms for the wherewithal to buy bread and meat. — The stranger dreams not of these things when sauntering through Piccadilly or Pall- Mall, where a beggar is rarely seen, and the panorama of which is but a successive procession of prosperous industry and superfluous wealth. The moral geologist of London however, can map out the localities of the different classes, each having its haunt, as clearly as the physical geologist does the chalk and clay, marl and gravel deposits of any given section of country. Each of these localities is known to then). They can point in an instant to the retreat of the burglars, the shop lifters the coiners, the dog stealers, the pick-pockets, the garroters the murderers, the house burners, the hiding places of the infamous generally, where no policeman dare venture alone. The spots where are gathered the social dregs, the lees, the offscourings of he great city the Pariahs, outcasts and outlaws, whose hands like the hand of Ishmael,are against the world.

Formerly one of the most notorious of ail these haunts was St. Oiles, one of Dickens' favorite resorts for studying low life and obtaining materials for his inimitable sketches. St. Giles was however broken up by the extension of Oxford street through its heart, The inhabitants did not cease to exist, and the army of beggars knackers, thieves and murderers, thus unhoused settled down and crammed themselves in the district about Saffron Hill and Smithfield, a region where are still seen, as in Hogarth's day, over gin sellers doors, "Drunk here for one penny, dead drunk for twopence, and clean straw for nothing." Not even is it safe tor the clergyman to enter this district without police attendance In some parts it is a huge bagnio, in others a thieves' caravansary • in others are ware-houses of stolen goods and manufacturies of decaying poisonous food; the whole district being a sink of nauseating stenches and moral putridity.

But it is not in such outlaying districts alone that masses of human beings are huddled together in filthy courts and alleys — 1 he Royal Palace is close upon the sinks and stews of Pimlico the streets of bagnios and the dens of thieves who are the tenants of the Dean and Chapter oi Westminster. Eaton Square in famed Belgravia, closely adjoins one of the still worse drained and most squalid parts of the West end. All around Westminster Abbey are reeking rockeries, under the very noses of the law-givers of the land. This is equally true of the fashionable quarter of Regent street— it lies in the midst of rookeries, filled with human beings for whom modern civilization and progress has done absolutely nothing. The largest and finest streets and quarters indeed London over, have their back ground of wretchedness In these favored localities the fine buildings are but screens for misery behind them, which shocks the mind and from which men avert their gaze In too many cases industrious, hard working families are huddled together in a single room, a sitting room by day, and by night a bed-chamber. Many spots like A|ar's Town have been squatted upon, and it is found "impossible to remove the squalid inhabitants. The ground is undrained, houses foul the streets filthy, water scarce and a clean life impossible. It is the same case in the mmories, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Wappinoand in their antipodes Paddington, Bermondsey and Lambeth. — The disreputable and the criminal classes and the working people are environed with nuisances and live in dwellings which barely supply the most elementary wants of our being, and where the moral as well as the physical atmosphere is full of poison, especially for the susceptible nature of youth. If there be goodness, generosity, nobility in any toiling inhabitant, it is poluted and cramped by the poison and penury of all around. But of these redeeming- qualities there is, we fear, but little. The majority of the resident families are drunken and destitute, and filth and immorality abound to an extraordinary extent.

In the districts occupied by the better class of laborers — the the porters, policemen and such like — there is likewise extreme poverty, Though their wages are high, so are their rents. Can any one wonder that rent troubles exist in England as well as Ireland ? There is another drain upon them, the almost constant presence of sickness in their dwellings, and the want of medicines and medical advice. A few years ago, the philanthropic Lord Shaftsbury made a visit to one of the favored localities, as they are regarded, near Golden Squares, and thus describes it ; ''It is a quarter inhabited by the most respectable of the laboringclasses, They were all deeply sensible of the misery brought on them by the condition of their dwellings and the impossibility of keeping them tidy, and by the fetid smells to which even habit had not reconciled them. These families have each but one room, about twelve feet square, in which they sleep and live, and some in addition carry -on their trade. I found many of them full of steam, exhaling from clothes hung up across the room to dry, after having been washed, many of them in the same water, owing to its scarcity. In every family we heard of sickness and death ; some had lost two thirds hardly any less than one-half of their children. Their houses had been for the most part once inhabited by separate families of some fortune, and were partitioned off into lodging rooms, at weekly rents, varying from is.6d for a very bad cellar, to 5 shillings for a large upper room. In no case had they any but an intermittent supply of water at the bottom of the house, which in some cases was kept in water butts of decaying wood. Some of these rooms were in overcrowded cow houses, where cows diseased by the badness of the air, supply the neighborhood with diseased milk, some close to slaughter nouses."

From this description it is readily seen that the mortality must be frightful. Indeed it is said to exceed that of a well regulated hospital, and is far beyond any losses England sustains in Afghan and Zulu campaigns. Typhus fever is a constant denizen. What else, indeed, is possible when each small house is occupied on an l6 RAMBLING REMINISCENCES.

average by seventy ? The lessee who pays from /^20 to £30 rent, sublets the rooms at from two to three hundred per cent, on the original rental. It is common for thirty and forty children to sleep in a single room 18x20 feet. These are the scenes of defilement and pestilence in which thousands of children are reared. Their only education is obtained in such homes and in the streets round about them. They are constant witnesses of drunkenness which grows out of this state of physical defilement, and thus become familiar with beastly scenes.

From these dens and haunts issue the lawless, roaming and deserted children of the Metropolis, over fifty thousaud in number. One half of these dine out, living on garbage and sleeping under porticos, sheds, carts, the dry arches of bridges and viaducts, in out houses, saw pits, stair cases, in the open air, or in those cheap lodging houses where forty are placed in a small room 12x18, the floor of which is covered with straw, shavings or old rags, and where they pay a penny each for the night's accommodation. It is in such haunts that the larger part of the crime which is committed is concealed. They are but nurseries or breeding places for the prisons ; the homes of wild, neglected, lawless children. These gamin are seen in every part of London. They are bold, pert and dirty, half starved, half clad, haggard, yet vivacious. They talk obscene slang, raise the shout of laughter at the reeling drunkard, pick pockets and prowl in all directions in search oi prey. Their only education is obtained in their lodging houses or gathered from the festering gutters. The principal part of their education consists in learning the art of picking pockets and committing other crimes without detection. To facilitate the work of instruction, the professors, who are aged and experienced old rogues, who have retired from active life, resort to many ingenious devices and contrivances. Among these for testing the ingenuity and skill of youth aspiring to become a pick -pocket, is a lay figure suspended by a small elastic cord from a bell fastened in the ceiling. Stuffing the pockets of this figure with port-monies, pencil cases, hankerchiefs, etc., they are then buttoned up and the senior class of light fingered gentry is brought in for instruction. The professor now diligently practices them in all the arts and ways of emptying the pockets of the lay figure without sounding the bell. Those who perform the task again and again with dexterity, are graduated arid sent abroad to prey upon the public, while those who do not, are soundly flogged. If after repeated floggings and months of instruction, they do not acquire the requisite delicacy of touch and agility of action to perform such sleight oj hand feats they are permanently passed into another class and become apprentices to less difficult branches of the robbing profession.

RAMBLING REMINISCENCES.

In the complicated state of modern society there are many causes operating to produce the crime that nestles in the streets of great cities, which meets us at every turn in the rural districts, which haunts us in our going out and coming in, which spares neither age nor sex. It may be born of ignorance, of depravity, of want, but above all it must be set down to intemperance ; to the whiskey bottle and the ginpalace. These are the fruitful sources of the frightful demoralization of the people. In London there are 180,000 gin drinkers, who spend $15,000,000 a year in this spirituous drink alone. During a period of thirteen years 249,000 males and 183,920 females were taken in custody in London alone, for being drunk and disorderly. Of the ten or twelve thousand charges entered annually at Bow Street police station, one-half are for being drunk Samuel Warren, author of '* Ten Thousand a Year'' who was in 1871 Recorder of Hull, in the course of a long and luminous charge to the grand jury, recently said : "As all crimes have their origin in intemperance or ignorance, there are two causes to which it is your duty to pay particular attention." 30,000 persons are annually committed to prison in Scotland, 40,000 in England and it is estimated that 90 per cent, of these crimes arose out oi the drinking custom of society. These are terrible facts.

The existence of the dangerous classes, to which we have referred briefly, in the midst of modern society, under the shadow iA our churches, schools and libraries, is one of the most deplorable incidents connected with the vaunted progress of the age Classes who owe nothing to society but^a bitter grudge—- who owe nothing to, as they never derive anything from civilization. The ferocity of these classes was brought to light in Paris by the French Commune — classes of whose existence scarcely any one had previous knowledge, and greatly added to the horrors and terrors of that era of crime and bloodshed. Assi and his associates were little else than "tiger apes" or demons in human shape. They were gaunt, inhuman, merciless and savage; a frightfully demoralized brood, who sprang as if from the earth, and filled the streets of the city, the halls of the Tuileries and the saloons of the aristocracy. All law and order was overturned and these barbarians held for a time supreme command. Everybody knows the excesses and crimes of that second "reign of terror." There cannot be a doubt that London contains an equally savage race of "tiger apes" ready to rush forth on the least occasion, to commit equally savage and revolting excesses. The world is not their friend, or the world's law. Nor have they any idea of the governing authorities than that they constituted an armed despotism which prevents their earning a livelihood. They hate all law because they are taught to believe that it is but a tyranny administered for their oppression.

They have no idea of religious or moral principles, and when they are aroused, what is to restrain the exercise of their grossest passions ? Society has no greater enemy than these neglected classes - the wretched — the half fed dregs of the nation, who fester in the cesspools of all great cities. All must shudder at the flood of crime which, like a lava stream flowing from a volcano and destroying the vineyards of the sunny land, is apparently, in spite of repression and detection, withering the good of the world and scorching its promises into the ashes of disappointment. Yet in our opinion there is no reason for despair. The earnest and thoughtful know that below, deeper than all these bad influences and more powerful, there is the true spirit bubbling up, through the hot crust of evil and neglect, in springs of purity — that truth and falsehood are grappling and no one has ever known truth to have the worst of it, in a fair and open encounter. This' spirit is pouring itself forth by a thousand channels, is making religion its minister and science its handmaid. It is sent forth in sermons, essays, lectures, pamphlets, novels, poetry — in a thousand ways we art told that refinement and barbarism are contending powers, and in order that the rich may enjoy their luxury the poor must be elevated ; that one class of the family of man can never be happy while others are miserable. This is the voice which urges noble men to give to the poor parks, picture galleries and libraries, baths and wash houses, improved dwellings which will enable them to live with some decency and refinement. In short, the true spirit of the times is one directed to the improvement of the moral and social state of the masses. This spirit has already accomplished much since these notes were penned, in eradicating and repressing the evils of which we have spoken, and when it was impossible utterly to eradicate them, to mitigate their evils. Let us hope that this great and beneficent work will be ceaselessly prosecuted until the holy mission is accomplished. It is no doubt painful to have seen, at times it may be depressing to reflect over such things and scenes as those just described. The man, however, who has a heart to appreciate and a brain to understand, cannot but be improved by such extension of his knowledge. No matter where he may be afterwards placed, he has laid up for himself mental food for life.

Charity, curiosity and philanthropy have united to portray with uniform accuracy all the incidents in the life of the London poor. Home missionary societies, newspaper reporters, adventurous philanthropists, and the intelligent foreigner have penetrated into their retreats and have brought to light innumerable details, curious, sad and revolting. The darkest recesses of their social state have been revealed to us. An elaborate inventory

' has been made of their defects, physical, moral and spiritual. We

I know what their dwellings are, how they live ; the amount of

; their incomes and how they spend them, what they save or rather what they do not save; how they are taxed and what usury they pay ; how many can read and write, what they eat, drink and wear, how many live in one house and sleep in one bed, and and finally how much sooner they sink into graves than the comfortable classes. All has been investigated and lies exposed to the public gaze. The physician has inspected their sores, and

; the magistrate their vices. The Divine knows how many do not

attend church, and the teetotaler how many frequent the gin shop.

It was highly desirable that such information should be ob-

! tained. Having procured it, those who are willing and able to aid the poorer classes in their efforts to elevate themselves, now know what measures to take, how the existing evil may be

I remedied.

It is not our purpose to enter into these grave questions. We shall confine ourselves to giving some of the details of the daily life of the 50,000 prowlers of the streets. The people and authorities of London will doubtless know how to grapple with the subject in its practical bearings. 'The nomadic population of London, the vagabonds or Metro-

! politan Gypsies, or those who live upon the settled classes at large, is composed pretty much as follows ; Beggars of all kinds, tone grubbers, mud larks, patterers, costermongers, fruit-and-fish sellers, dogsellers, hawkers of all kinds, finders, sifters, street artists, musicians and showmen, acrobats ; in short, the entire loose

I and wandering population. The "finders" are a leading class and live by picking up in the public thoroughfares, bits of coal, ends of half smoked cigars, bones, rags, and such like odds and ends, which they manage to sell for money.

In addition to the waifs, in the way of lost articles, picked up

! by these Finders, they in the course of their trade of living in the thoroughfares, occasionally find the way into the pockets of the inexperienced and unwary. Indeed it is believed that the larger part of the "findings" of these light fingered gentry, are of small articles which have never been lost. The largest and most influential division of the street Bohemians goes by the name of the

1 costermongers, and this class includes fish sellers, retailers of vegetables, oranges, ginger beer, pop-cock, fruit and such like articles These wandering traders, people who carry their stock upon

j their backs or in a hand barrow, are the hucksters and greengrocers of the streets, and supply a large portion of the working population with food, little comforts, and the lighter articles of dress. The "upper ten" of these occasionally own a donkey and cart. Many women and even children belong to this roving body of tradesmen, and scarcely any of them can read or write. — Amongst these the percentage of Irish is very large, and they are said to assume a place among the lowest strata of society in other great provincial cities, as well as in London. A fact, if true, strangely in contrast with the settled position the Irish win in America by their steady industry and many noble qualities.

Leaving the class of itinerant hucksters, we next come to the patterers, or distributors of wayside literature, the street musicians or organ grinders, the sellers of water cresses, the keepers of coffee stalls, where a black mixture, one-half chicory and the other half possibly catsup — it tastes like it — is sold at a half penny per cup; the cat's meat retailers, whose stock consists of the carcasses of defunct horses and dogs; ballad singers who parade in front of the best houses, about eleven o'clock p. m., making night hideous with their shrieks ; play bill sellers and purveyors of dubious news ; bone grubbers and mud larks ; crossing sweepers, street periormers and show men; travelling menders of chairs, umbrellas, clocks and pots, and the professional tinkers ; sellers of bonnet boxes, toys, stationary, plaster statuary, songs, ditties and last dying speeches ; vendors of tubs, pails, mats, crockery and blacking; oflucifer matches, which won't light, corn salves, clothes pegs, brooms, sweet meats, commonly called "cholera pizen," ra'- zors, which like those immortalized by Peter Pinder, were not meant to shave but sell ; dog stealers and venders of dogs, dog collars, birds, coals and sand ; scavengers, dust men and many others. It is believed that not fewer than 60.000 individuals belong to this class, and like the 50,030 mentioned previously, find their living in the streets.

As the wine and spirit business is the final resort of old army and navy officers, who wish to add to their pensions; of broken down gentlemen, and of prodigal sons, who are indeed their own best customers, so the costermonger's trade is taken up by speculators of a lower grade, when all other avocations fail. It often happens that you will find among the patterers, those who have been clergymen in the established church, and among the orange and herring sellers, those who have been at one time in their lives mechanics or laborers. As a general rule, however, the costers are a distinct people. The children of the costers grow up costers, as gypsies' children grow up gypsies. They acquire the slang, the wandering habits, and the vocation of their parents ; and rarely in after life settle down to any fixed employment. When efforts have been made by benevolent and well intentioned people to reclaim the children, it has been generally found impossible.

RAMBLING REMINISCENCES.

The author was informed by his friend, Rev. Francis C. T. Moran, brother-in-law of Sir H'ardinge GifTord, present Solicitor- General, Incumbent of St Philipps, the Evangelist, Peekham, one of the worst quarters of South London, that a young girl of twelve years of age, whom he had taken from her parents to bring up as a domestic in his family, was in a few months so oppressed with the confinement, the ease, comfort and plenty of a well regulated household and the restraints of civilization, that she availed herself of an opportunity, when sent out upon an errand, to return to her poverty and the Arab freedom of her street life, and no persuasion on his and Mrs. Moran's part could induce her to give it up again. She preferred the bare existence she could pick up in the streets with its liberty, to all that religion, civilization and plenty could give her when restricted to the conventional rules of society among domestics. And had she been acquainted with the poet's lines would have probably quoted them, "give me again my hollow tree, my crust of bread and liberty-"

"Bless you," said one of these wild wanderers when asked how they live, "we don't find a living at all, it is only another way of starving." While this is true of a majority, some of them do well, especially the dealers in fish and vegetables, the higher grades of whom make fair earnings, but unfortunately they are spent as quickly as made. The costers are a gambling, improvident set, fond of cards, liquor and tobacco. After business hours they retire to their dens, and with only the feeble light of a tallow candle pass hours at all fours, blind hookey, or cribbage. When excited they lay heavy bets, but play principally for beer and gin. A majority of costers belong to what are called the "sporting community ;" are fond of pugilism, horse racing, dog fighting and rat killing. They are always present at places of amusement, such as penny gaffs, two penny hops, and three penny theatres. The boys are early taught to fight, or as it is called in their slang to "work their fists. ' All disputes between them are settled in the ring, where no interference is allowed by the umpires, but the antagonists are permitted to fight it out. Of these arenas there are several in each quarter, located generally in underground London and these encounters usually take place at night, and are witnessed by men, women and children. Serving out a policeman is the most noted exploit of a young coster. Until he has served out at least one of the legal custodians of public order, he has no standing in the burrowing community. The policemen are called "Bobbies" or "Peelers." They are so called in memory of their founder, the late Sir Robert Peel, under whose auspices they were introduced to supercede the "Charlies," and

Bow street runners of the preceding generation. Thus says Burns :

"At length attacked by runners three

Peg fell, besmeared with wounds so gory, And Bob was hanged on Tyburn tree, She died for love and he for glory."

Between the bobbies and the costers there is perpetual war. Strategy, tactics, treachery and cunning are employed by both sides to secure victory. When a coster has been unlucky and is captured, and some of them have been in prison a dozen times, they are looked on as martyrs by their comrades. After their imprisonment and return to their friends, they are invariably relieved and rewarded by a general subscription. Long inured to this war with the Peelers, they acquire the skill, cunning, and treachery of savages. The coster endeavors to take the peeler or crusher by surprise, and often crouches at the entrance of a court until his foeman passes, when a stone or brick is hurled and the coster immediately vanishes till the effect of the blow is known. If the crusher is brought to the ground, he is quickly mauled with his own baton which the coster carries off in triumph to his retreat. Here it is used for the first night to stir a bowl of gin toddy, after which it is burnt, as they cannot gratify their pride by preserving their trophy longer than one evening, seeing that the peelers are pretty sure to give the coster haunts a visit after one of their number is served out; and it would go hard with those found cherishing such a souvenir of victory. The love of excitement as well as a fondness for gambling is universal among the fraternity of costers ; even the young are desperate gamesters, and no effort to mitigate the evil and eradicate the taste has ever been of the slightest avail. On the contrary, the very exertions of the police to put a stop to it, have seemed to increase their desire to indulge in it. These incorrigible scamps hold with Solomon, "stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret how good is it." Pie boys and butchers' apprentices will toss each other for their stock ; ill luck only increases their recklessness, and they will proceed until they have gambled away their caps, coats, cravats and even shirts.