Days and Nights in London: or, Studies in Black and Gray

Apparently the improvement of which my informant spoke was of a very superficial character. Coming from the Aldgate Station at the early hour of six, I found every drinking shop crammed, including the gaudy restaurant at the station, and descending to the filthiest gin-palace, there were the men drinking, and if they were not drinking they were loafing about in groups of by no means pleasant aspect. When at a later hour I returned, the sight was still sadder, as hordes of wild young girls, just emancipated from the workshop, were running up and down the streets, shrieking and howling as if mad. As most of the shops were then closed, the streets seemed almost entirely given over to these girls and their male friends. In the quarter to which I bent my steps the naval element was predominating, and there were hundreds of sailors cruising, as it were, up and down, apparently utterly unconscious that their dangers at sea were nothing to those on land. Men of all creeds and of all nations were to be encountered in search of amusement, while hovered around some of the most degraded women it is possible to imagine – women whose bloated faces and forms were enough to frighten anyone, and to whom poor Jack, in a state of liquor, is sure to become a prey. To the low public-houses of this district dancing-rooms are attached, and in them, as we may well suppose, vice flourishes and shows an unabashed front. I must say it was with a feeling of relief that I found a harbour of refuge in the music-hall. Compared with the streets, I must frankly confess it was an exchange for the better. On the payment of a shilling I was ushered by a most polite attendant into a very handsome hall, where I had quite a nice little leather arm-chair to sit in, and where at my ease I could listen to the actors and survey the house. The place was by no means crowded, but there was a good deal of the rough element at the back, to which, in the course of the evening’s amusement, the chairman had more than once to appeal. From the arrangements made around me, it was evident that there was the same provision which I have remarked elsewhere for the drinking habits of the people. There was a side bar at which the actors and actresses occasionally appeared on their way to or from the stage, and affably drank with their friends and admirers. The other day I happened to hear a thief’s confession, and what do you think it was? That it was his mingling with the singers off the stage that had led to his fall. He was evidently a smart, clever, young fellow, and had thought it a sign of his being a lad of spirit to stand treat to such people. Of course he could not afford it, and, of course, he had a fond and foolish mother, who tried to screen him in his downward career. The result was he embezzled his employer’s money, and, when that was discovered, imprisonment and unavailing remorse were the result. To the imagination of raw lads there is something wonderfully attractive in the music-hall singer, as, with hat on one side and in costume of the loudest character, and with face as bold as brass, he sings, “Slap, bang! here we are again!” or takes off some popular theatrical performer or some leading actor on a grander stage. On the night in question one singer had the audacity to assume as much as possible the character of the Premier of our day, not forgetting the long gray coat by which the Earl of Beaconsfield is known in many quarters. Comic singing, relieved by dancing, seemed to be the staple amusement of the place, and when one of the female performers indecently elevated a leg, immense was the applause. All the while the performances were going on, the waiters were supplying their customers with drink, and one well-dressed woman – evidently very respectable – managed a couple of glasses of grog in a very short while. But mostly the people round me were quiet topers, who smoked and drank with due decorum, and who seemed to use the place as a kind of club, where they could sit comfortably for the night, and talk and listen, and smoke or drink, at their pleasure. It is hardly necessary to say that the majority of the audience were young men. The attendance was not crowded. Perhaps in the east of London the pressure of bad times is being felt. The mock Ethiopian element, next to the dancing, was the feature of the evening’s amusements which elicited the most applause. It is a curious thing that directly a man lampblacks his face and wears a woollen wig, and talks broken English, he at once becomes a popular favourite.

A few nights after I found myself in quite another part of London – in a music-hall that now calls itself a theatre of varieties. It was a very expensive place, and fitted up in a very costly manner. You enter through an avenue which is made to look almost Arcadian. Here and there were little rustic nooks in which Romeo and Juliet would make love over a cheerful glass. Flunkeys as smart almost as Lord Mayors’ footmen took your orders. It was late when I put in an appearance, and it was useless to try and get a seat. It was only in the neighbourhood of the refreshment bar that I could get even standing room, and being a little taller than some of the stunted half-grown lads around me, could look over their heads to the gaudy and distant stage. I did not hear much of the dialogue. Old Astley, who years before had lived in that neighbourhood, and knew the art of catering for the people, used to remark when the interest of the piece seemed to flag, “Cut the dialogue and come to the ’osses,” and here the stage direction evidently was to set the ballet-girls at work, and it seemed to me that the principal aim of the piece was to show as many female arms and legs as was possible. I am not of Dr. Johnson’s opinion that it is indecent for a woman to expose herself on the stage, but I was, I own, shocked with the heroine of the evening, whose too solid form in the lime-light – which was used, apparently, to display all her beauties – was arrayed in a costume, which, at a distance, appeared to be of Paradisaical simplicity, more fitted for the dressing-room of the private mansion than for the public arena of the stage. There was, I doubt not, animated dialogue, and the swells in the stalls, I daresay, enjoyed it; but for my shilling I could see little, and hear less; and weary of the perpetual flourish of female arms and legs, I came away. What I did most distinctly hear were the orders at the bar for pale ale and grog, and the cry of the waiter, as he pushed on with his tray well filled, of “By your leave,” to the crowd on each side – all of whom had, of course, a cigar or short pipe in their mouths, and were evidently young men of the working class. That evening’s amusement, I am sure, must have taken some two or three hundred pounds out of their pockets. But I saw no one the worse for liquor, though the public-houses all round were crowded with drunken men and women; for the morrow was Sunday, and who can refuse the oppressed and over-taxed working man his right to spend all his week’s wages on a Saturday night?

One night last winter I was at a meeting held in the Mission Hall, Little Wild Street, at which some three hundred thieves had been collected together to supper. One of them, who had seen the evil of his ways, said: “The greatest curse of my life was the music-halls. They have been the means of my ruin;” and the way in which that speech was received by his mates evidently testified to the fact that the experience of many was of a similar character. I said to him afterwards that I knew the music-hall to which he referred, and that I had calculated that on an average each man spent there two shillings a night. “Oh sir,” was the reply, “I spent a great deal more than that of a night.” If so, I may assume that he spent as much as four shillings a night – and that, as the place was his favourite haunt after office-hours, he was there every night in the week, this would make an expenditure of one pound four shillings – a sum, I imagine, quite as much as his wages as a poor clerk. What wonder is it that the silly youth became a thief, especially when the devil whispers in his ear that theft is easy and the chance of detection small? The one damning fact which may be charged against all music-halls is that their amusements are too high in price, and that every device is set to work to make people spend more money than the cost of the original admission. In the theatre you may sit – and most people do sit all the evening – without spending a penny. In the music-hall a man does not like to do that. He drinks for the sake of being sociable, or because the waiter solicits him, or because he has drunk already and does not like to leave off, or because he meets doubtful company at the bar, or because the burden of every song is that he must be a “jolly pal” and that he must enjoy a cheerful glass. I can remember when at one time the admission fee included the cost of a pint of beer or some other fluid. Now drink is an extra, and as the proprietor of the music-hall, to meet the competition all round him, has to beautify his hall as much as possible, and to get what he calls the best available talent, male or female – whether in the shape of man or ass, or dog or elephant, or monkey – he is of course put to a considerable extra expense; and that of course he has to get out of the public the best way he can. No one loves to work for nothing, and least of all the proprietor of a music-hall.

Talking of “pals” and “a cheerful glass” reminds me of a scene which made me sick at the time, and which I shall not speedily forget. On the night of the Lord Mayor’s Show, I entered a music-hall in the north of London – in a region supposed to be eminently pious and respectable, and not far from where Hick’s Hall formerly stood. As I saw the thousands of people pushing into the Agricultural Hall, to see the dreary spectacle of an insane walking match, and saw another place of amusement being rapidly filled up, I said to myself: “Well, there will be plenty of room for me in the place to which I am bound;” and it was with misgiving that I paid the highest price for admission – one shilling – to secure what I felt, under the circumstances, I might have had at a cheaper rate. Alas! I had reckoned without my host. The hour for commencing had not arrived, and yet the place was full to overflowing. Mostly the audience consisted of young men. As usual, there were a great many soldiers. It is wonderful the number of soldiers at such places; and the spectator would be puzzled to account for the ability of the private soldier thus to sport his lovely person did not one remember that he is usually accompanied by a female companion, generally a maid-of-all-work of the better class, who is too happy to pay for his aristocratic amusements, as she deems them, on condition that she accompanies him in the humble capacity of a friend. Soldiers, I must do them justice to say, are not selfish, and scorn to keep all the good things to themselves. As soon as they find a neighbourhood where the servant “gal” is free with her wages, they generally tell each other of the welcome fact, and then the Assyrian comes down like the wolf on the fold.

Well, to continue my story. On the night, and at the place already referred to, they were a very jolly party – so far as beer and “baccy” and crowded company and comic singing were concerned. They had a couple of Brothers, who were supposed to be strong in the delineation of Irish and German character, but as their knowledge of the language of the latter seemed simply to be confined to the perpetually exclaiming “Yah, yah!” I had misgivings as to their talents in that respect, which were justified abundantly in the course of the evening. Dressed something in the style of shoeblacks, and wearing wooden shoes, which made an awful noise when they danced, the little one descries his long-lost elder brother, to whom his replies are so smart and witty that the house was in a roar of laughter, in which I did not join, as I had heard them twice already.

After they had finished we had a disgustingly stout party, who was full of praise of all conviviality, and who, while he sang, frisked about the stage with wonderful vivacity and with as much grace as a bull in a china-shop, or a bear dancing a hornpipe. As he sang, just behind me there was all at once a terrible noise; the chairman had to call out “Order,” the spectators began howling, “Turn him out;” the singer had to stop, the roughs in the gallery began to scream and cheer, and the bars were for a wonder deserted. In so dense a crowd it was so difficult to see anything, that it was not at once that I discovered the cause of the disorder; but presently I saw in one of the little pews, into which this part of the house was divided (each pew having a small table in the middle for the liquor) a couple of men quarrelling. All at once the biggest of them – a very powerful fellow of the costermonger type – dealt his opponent – a poor slim, weedy lad of the common shop-boy species – a tremendous blow. The latter tried to retaliate, and struggled across the table to hit his man, but he merely seemed to me to touch his whiskers, while the other repeated his blow with tremendous effect. In vain the sufferer tried to get out of the way; the place was too crowded, and with a stream of blood flowing from his nose he fell, or would have fallen, to the earth had not some of the bystanders dragged him a few yards from his seat. Then as he lay by me drunk, or faint, or both, unable to sit up or to move, with the blood pouring down his clothes and staining the carpet all round, I saw, as the reader can well believe, a commentary on the singer’s Bacchanalian song of a somewhat ironical character; but business is business, and at the music-hall it will not do to harrow up the feelings of the audience with such sad spectacles. Perfectly insensible, the poor lad was carried out, while a constable was the means of inducing his muscular and brutal-looking opponent to leave the hall. Order restored, the stout party bounded on to the stage, and the hilarity of the evening – with the exception of here and there a girl who, evidently not being used to such places, was consequently frightened and pale and faint for awhile – was as great as ever. The comic singer made no reference to the unfortunate incident; all he could do was to say what he had got by heart, and so he went on about the cheerful glass and the fun of going home powerfully refreshed at an early hour in the morning, and much did the audience enjoy his picture of the poor wife waiting for her husband behind the door with a poker, assisting him upstairs with a pair of tongs, and after she had got him sound asleep meanly helping herself to what cash remained in his pocket.

For my part, I candidly own I felt more inclined to sympathise with the wife than with her husband; but the music-hall is bound to stand up for drinking, for it is by drinking that it lives. If people cared for music and the drama, they would go to the theatre; but that declines, and the music-hall flourishes. Astley’s Theatre is a case in point. That has been an old favourite with the public. At one time, I should imagine, few places paid better – does not Ducrow sleep in one of the most magnificent monuments in Kensal Green, and did he not make his money at Astley’s? – but now there are two flourishing music-halls one on each side of Astley’s, and as I write I see one of the proprietors, as a plea why he should be given more time for the payment of a debt, admits that sometimes they lose at Astley’s as much as forty pounds a week. If Astley’s is to be made to pay, evidently the sooner it is turned into a music-hall the better.

Will the London School Boards raise the character of the future public? is a question to be asked but not to be answered in our time. The real fact is that amusements have a deteriorating effect on the character of those who devote themselves to them, and become more frivolous as they become more popular. This is the case, at any rate, as regards music-halls. A gentleman the other day, as we were speaking of one of the most successful of them, said how grieved he was on a visit to it lately to see the generally lowered tone of entertainment. At one time the attempt was made to give the people really good music, and there were selections of operas of first-rate character. Now all that is done away with, and there is nothing but silly comic singing of the poorest kind.

In another respect also there has been a deterioration – that is, in the increased sensationalism of the performance. A music-hall audience requires extra stimulus – the appetite becomes palled, and if a leap of fifty feet does not “fetch the public,” as Artemus Ward would say, why then, the leap must be made a hundred; and really sometimes the spectacles held up for the beery audience to admire are of the most painful character. I have said that the doubtful female element is not conspicuous in the music-hall – that is the case as regards those on the outskirts of London, but the nearer you approach the West-End the less is that the case; and there is more than one music-hall I could name which is little better than a place of assignation and rendezvous for immoral women, and where you may see them standing at the refreshment bars soliciting a drink from all who pass. Such music-halls are amongst the most successful of them all, and the proprietor reaps a golden harvest.

I presume it is impossible to tell the number of our metropolitan music-halls, or to give an idea of the numbers who frequent them, and of the amount of money spent in them during the course of a single night. Apparently they are all well supported, and are all doing well. If you see a theatre well filled, that is no criterion of success. It may be, for aught you know, well filled with paper, but the music-hall is a paying audience, and it is cash, not paper, that is placed in the proprietor’s hands. In the east of London I find that both as regards the theatres and music-halls the proprietors have a dodge by means of which they considerably increase their profits, and that is to open a particular entrance a little before the time for admission, and to allow people to enter on payment of a small extra fee. It was thus the other night I made my way into a music-hall. I paid an extra twopence rather than stand waiting half an hour outside in the crowd. Another thing I also learned the other night that must somewhat detract from the reputation of the theatre, considered in a temperance point of view, and that is the drinking customs are not so entirely banished as at first sight we may suppose. The thousands who fill up the Vic., and the Pavilion in Whitechapel, perhaps do not drink quite as much as they would had they spent the evening at a music-hall, but they do drink, nevertheless, and generally are provided with a bottle of liquor which they carry with them, with other refreshment, down into the pit, or up where the gods live and lie reclined.

If it is impossible to reckon the number of music-halls in London, it is equally impossible to denote the public-houses with musical performances. In Whitechapel the other night I discovered two free-and-easies on my way to one of the music-halls of that district. They were, in reality, music-halls of a less pretentious character, and yet they advertised outside the grand attractions of a star company within. Prospects may be cloudy, trade may be bad, and, as a slang writer remarks, things all round may be unpromising, but the business of the music-hall fluctuates very little. Enter at any time between nine and ten and you have little chance of a seat, and none whatever of a good place. As to numbers it is difficult to give an idea. Some of the officials are wisely chary in this matter, and equally so on the subject of profits. The Foresters’ Hall in Cambridge Heath Road advertises itself to hold four thousand people, and that does not by any means strike me as one of the largest of the music-halls. Last year the entire British public spent £140,000,000, or eight shillings a week for each family, in drink, and the music-halls help off the drink in an astonishing way. As I went into a music-hall last autumn I saw a receipt for £51 as the profit for an entertainment given there on behalf of the Princess Alice Fund, and if the attendance was a little greater, and the profit a little larger than usual, still a fair deduction from £51 for bad nights and slack times will make a pretty handsome total at the end of the year after all. Now and then the music-hall does a little bit of philanthropy in another way, which is sure to be made the most of in the papers. For instance, last year Mr. Fort, of the Foresters’ Music Hall, invited some of the paupers from a neighbouring workhouse to spend the evening with him. I daresay he had a good many old customers among the lot, whereupon someone writes in Fun as follows: “The Bethnal Green Guardians showed themselves superior to the Bath Guardians the other day, and in response to the offer of Mr. Fort, proprietor of the Foresters’ Music-hall, rescinded the resolution prohibiting the paupers from partaking of any amusement other than that afforded within the workhouse walls. So the inmates of the union had a day out, and, we trust, forgot for awhile their sorrows and troubles. It is whispered that, in addition to pleasing the eye and the ear, the promoter of the entertainment presented each of his visitors with a little drop of something of an equally Fort-ified character.” I may add that the Foresters’ Music-hall claims to be a celebrated popular family resort, and that evening I was there the performance was one to which a family might be invited. Of course the family must have a turn for drink. They cannot go there without drinking. There is the public-house entrance to suggest drink, the bar at the end of the saloon to encourage it, and the waiters are there expressly to hand it round, and a good-natured man of course does not like to see waiters standing idle, and accordingly gives his orders; and besides, it is an axiom in political economy that the supply creates the demand.

Here are some of the verses I have heard sung with immense applause:

The spiritualists only can work by night,
They keep it dark;
For their full-bodied spirits cannot stand the light,
So they keep it dark;
They profess to call spirits, but I call for rum
And brandy or gin as the best medium
For raising the spirits whenever I’m glum;
But keep it dark.

The utter silliness of many of the songs is shown by the following, “sung with immense success,” as I read in the programme, by Herbert Campbell:

I’ve read of little Jack Horner,
I’ve read of Jack and Jill,
And old Mother Hubbard,
Who went to the cupboard
To give her poor dog a pill;
But the best is Cowardy Custard,
Who came to awful grief
Through eating a plate of mustard
Without any plate of beef.

    Chorus.
Cowardy Cowardy Custard, oh dear me,
Swallowed his father’s mustard, oh dear me —
He swallowed the pot, and he collared it hot;
For, much to his disgust,
The mustard swelled, Cowardy yelled,
Then Cowardy Cowardy bust.

This is supposed, I presume, to be a good song. What are we to think of the people who call it so? It is difficult to imagine the depth of imbecility thus reached on the part of singer and hearers, and is a fine illustration of the influence of beer and “baccy” as regards softening the brain. The music-hall singer degrades his audience. Even when he sings of passing events he panders as much as possible to the passions and prejudices of the mob. His words are redolent of claptrap and fury, and are a mischievous element in the formation of public opinion. Heroes and patriots are not made in music-halls. But rogues and drunkards and vagabonds – and lazy, listless lives, destitute of all moral aim. There are respectable people who go to music-halls – women as well as men – but they get little good there. Indeed, it would be a miracle if they did.

But the great fact is that the music-hall makes young men indulge in expensive habits – get into bad company, and commence a career which ends in the jail. Amusement has not necessarily a bad effect, or else it would be a poor look-out for all. It is as much our duty to be merry as it is to be wise. It is the drinking at these places that does the mischief. It is that that leads to a low tone of entertainment, and deadens the conscience of the young man who thinks he is enjoying life, and makes the working man forget how the money he squanders away would make his home brighter, and his wife and children happier, and would form a nice fund to be drawn on when necessary on a rainy day. The great curse of the age is extravagant and luxurious living, always accompanied with a low tone of public intelligence and morality and thought. In the present state of society we see that realised in the men and women who crowd our music-halls, and revel in the songs the most improper, and in the dances the most indelicate.

As I write, another illustration of the pernicious influence of music-halls appears in the newspapers. At the Middlesex Sessions, John B. Clarke surrendered to his bail on an indictment charging him with attempting to wound his wife, and with having wounded George Marshall, police constable, in the execution of his duty. When Marshall was on duty in Jubilee Street on the night of November 28th, he heard loud cries of “Murder” and ‘“Police,” and went to the prisoner’s house. He found the prisoner and his wife struggling in the passage, and the wife, seeing him, cried out, “Policeman, he has a knife and has threatened to cut my throat.” The police-constable closed with the prisoner and endeavoured to wrest the knife from him, when the prisoner made two stabs at his wife which fortunately missed her, and another stab which cut the hand of Marshall, who succeeded in wresting the knife from the prisoner, and took him to the station. In cross-examination it was elicited that prisoner’s wife had gone to a music-hall; that her husband, returning home, found her with two or three young men and women sitting together in his parlour; that one of the young men kissed her, and that the prisoner, seeing this, became mad with jealousy, and seized the first thing that came to his hand. A gentleman, in whose employment the prisoner was, gave him an exceptionally high character for more than eighteen years, and expressed his perfect willingness to have him back into his service and to become security for his good behaviour. The jury convicted the prisoner of causing actual bodily harm, strongly recommending him to mercy, and expressing their belief that he had no intention to wound the policeman. Mr. Prentice said this was a peculiarly sad and painful case. To wound or even obstruct a policeman in the execution of his duty was a serious offence; but looking at all the circumstances of the case, the finding of the jury, and their recommendation to mercy, he sentenced him to one month’s hard labour, and accepted his employer’s surety that he would keep the peace for the next three months. The grand jury commended Marshall for his conduct in the case.

Another thing also may be said. The other evening I was dining with a lawyer with a large police practice, in what may be called, and what really is, a suburb of London. My friend is what may be described as a man of the world, and of course is anything but a fanatic in the cause of temperance. I spoke of a music-hall in his immediate neighbourhood, and said I intended dropping in after dinner. “Well,” he said, “the worst of the place is that if we ever have a case of embezzlement on the part of some shop-boy or porter, it is always to be traced to that music-hall. A lad goes there, is led into expenses beyond his means, thinks it manly to drink and to treat flash women, and one fine morning it is discovered that he has been robbing the till, and is ruined for life.”

With these words of an experienced observer, I conclude.

V. – SUNDAYS WITH THE PEOPLE

It is said – and indeed it has been said so often that I feel ashamed of saying it – that one half the world does not know how the other half lives. I am sure that whether that is true or not, few of my City readers have any idea of what goes on in the City while they are sitting comfortably at home, or are sitting equally comfortably at church or chapel (for of course the denunciations of the preacher when he speaks of the depravity of the age do not refer to them). Suppose we take a stroll in the eastern part of the City, where the dirt is greatest, the population most intense, and the poverty most dire. We need not rise very early. On a Sunday morning we are all of us a little later at breakfast than on ordinary occasions. We sit longer over our welcome meal – our toilette is a little more elaborate – so that we are in the City this particular Sunday about half-past nine – a later hour than most of the City-men patronise on the week-day. In the leading thoroughfares shops are shut and there are few people about, and in the City, especially these dark winter mornings, when the golden gleam of sunshine gilds the raw and heavy fog which in the City heralds the approach of day, very few signs of life are visible, very few omnibuses are to be seen, and even the cabs don’t seem to care whether you require their services or whether you let them alone. Here and there a brisk young man or a spruce maiden may be seen hastening to teach at some Sunday school; otherwise respectability is either asleep or away.

As we pass along, the first thing that strikes the stranger is a dense unsavoury mob to be met outside certain buildings. We shall see one such assemblage in Bell Alley, Goswell Street; we shall see another in Artillery Street; there will be another at the Cow Cross Mission Hall, and another in Whitecross Street, and another in a wretched little hovel, you can scarcely call it a building, in Thaull Street. Just outside the City, at the Memorial Hall, Bethnal Green, and at the Rev. W. Tyler’s Ragged Church in King Edward Street, there will be similar crowds. Let us look at them. It is not well to go too near, for they are unsavoury even on these cold frosty mornings. Did you ever see such wretched, helpless, dirty, ragged, seedy, forlorn men and women in all your life? I think not. Occasionally on a week-day we see a beggar, shirtless and unwashed and unkempt, shivering in the street, but here in these mobs we see nothing else. They have tickets for free breakfasts provided for them under the care of Mr. J. J. Jones and the Homerton Mission. How they crowd around the doors, waiting for admission; how sad and disconsolate those who have not tickets look as they turn away! What a feast of fat things, you say, there must be inside. My dear sir, it is nothing of the kind. All that is provided for them is a small loaf of bread, with the smallest modicum of butter, and a pint of cocoa. Not much of a breakfast that to you or me, who have two or three good meals a day, but a veritable godsend to the half-starved and wretched souls we see outside. Let us follow them inside. The tables and the long forms on which they are seated are of the rudest kind. The room, as a rule, is anything but attractive, nor is the atmosphere very refreshing. A City missionary or an agent of the Christian community, or a devoted Christian woman or a young man, whose heart is in the work – is distributing the materials of the feast, which are greedily seized and ravenously devoured. Let us look at them now they have taken their hats off. What uncombed heads; what dirty faces; what scant and threadbare garments! There are women too, and they seem to have fallen lower than the men. They look as if they had not been to bed for months; as if all pride of personal appearance had long since vanished; as if they had come out of a pigstye.

Well, the world is a hard one for such as they, and no one can grudge them the cheap meal which Christian charity provides. It seems a mockery to offer these waifs and strays of the streets and alleys and disreputable slums of the City a Gospel address till something has been done to assuage the pangs of hunger, and to arouse in them the dormant and better feelings of their nature. It is thus these mission-halls are enabled to do a little good, to go down to the very depths, as it were, in the endeavour to reform a wasted life, and to save a human soul. As you look at these men and women you shudder. Most of them are in what may be called the prime of life; able-bodied, ripe for mischief, fearing not God, regarding not man. It must do them good to get them together at these Sunday morning breakfasts, where they may realise that Christian love which makes men and women in the middle and upper classes of society have compassion on such as they.

Getting out into the open air, or rather into the open street, I heard a band of singers advance. It is a procession, but not a very dangerous one. The leader walks with his back to us, an act rarely exercised out of royal circles. It is thus he guides the vocalists before him, who go walking arm-in-arm singing with all their might; while at the rear a pleasant-looking man follows, giving papers to the people. I take one, and learn that this is Mr. Booth’s Allelujah Band, and that a seat is kindly offered me in his tabernacle, where I can hear the Gospel. I don’t accept the invitation; I can hear the Gospel without going to Whitechapel, and Mr. Booth’s extravagances are not to my taste. Apparently this Sunday morning the people do not respond to the invitation. It is evident that in this part of the City the novelty of the thing has worn off.

I scarce know whether I am in the City or not. I plunge into a mass of streets and courts leading from Artillery Street to King Edward Street at one end, and Bethnal Green at the other. Here is a market in which a brisk provision trade is carried on, and men and women are purchasing all the materials of a Sunday dinner. Outside Rag-fair a trade similar to that which prevails there seems also to be carried on. I see no policemen about, and the people apparently do just as they like; and the filth and garbage left lingering in some of the narrow streets are anything but pleasant. As a I rule, I observe the policemen only patronise the leading thoroughfares, and then it seems to me they act in a somewhat arbitrary manner. For instance, opposite the Broad Street Terminus a lad is cleaning a working man’s boots. While he is in the middle of the operation the policeman comes and compels him to march off. I move on a dozen steps, and there, up Broad Street – just as you enter the Bishopsgate Station of the Metropolitan Railway – is another lad engaged in the same work of shoe or boot cleaning. Him the policeman leaves alone. I wonder why. Justice is painted blind, and perhaps the policeman is occasionally ditto. In Bishopsgate Street itself the crowd was large of idle boys and men, who seemed to have nothing particular to do, and did not appear to care much about doing that. They took no note of the Sabbath bells which called them to worship. To them the Sunday morning was simply a waste of time. They had turned out of their homes and lodgings, and were simply walking up and down the street till it was time to open the public-house. In that street, as the reader may be aware, there is the Great Central Hall, and as its doors were open, I went in. The audience was very scanty, and apparently temperance does not find more favour with the British working man than the Gospel. Mr. Ling was in the chair. There was now and then a hymn sung or a temperance melody, and now and then a speech. Indeed, the speeches were almost as numerous as the hearers. It seems the society keeps a missionary at work in that part of the City, and he had much to say of the cases of reformation going on under his care. The best speech I heard was that of a working builder, who said for years he had been in the habit of spending eight shillings a week in the drink, and how much better off he was now that he kept the money in his pocket. I wished the man had more of his class to hear him. Of course he rambled a little and finished off with an attack on the bishops, which the chairman (Mr. Ling) very properly did not allow to pass unchallenged, as he quoted Bishop Temple as a teetotaler, and referred to the hearty way in which many of the clergy of the Church of England supported the temperance cause.

I hasten to other scenes. I next find myself in Sclater Street, and here up and down surges a black mob, sufficient at any rate, were it so disposed, to fill St. Paul’s Cathedral. This mob is composed entirely of working men – men who are amused with anything, and hurry in swarms to a hatter’s shop, who simply throws out among them pink and yellow cards, indicating the extraordinary excellence and unparalleled cheapness of the wares to be sold within.

Foreigners say Sunday is a dull day; that then there is no business doing in London; and that everyone is very sad on that day. In Sclater Street they would soon find out their mistake. There, it is evident, little of Sunday quiet and Sunday dulness exists. On each side of me are shops with birds; and if there is not a brisk trade going on, it is certainly not the fault of the tradesmen. We have just had what the bird-catchers call the November flight of linnets, and in Sclater Street the market overflows with them. The London and suburban bird-catchers, who are not to be put down by Act of Parliament, have had a fine time of it this year. The principal part of the linnets are bred on the wild gorse lands, and it is the wild weather such as we have had of late that drives them into the nets of the suburban fowler, who this year has been so lucky as to take five dozen of them at one pull of the clap-net. Goldfinches also are abundant, in consequence of the provision of the Wild Birds Preservation Act. On Sunday a bird-dealer offers me them at threepence each, or four for a shilling. It is sad to see the poor little things shut up in their bits of cages in the dirty shops of Sclater Street. The proprietor with his unwashed hands takes them out one by one and holds them out in vain. The British workman crowds round and admires, but he does not buy, as he is keeping his money in his pocket till 1 p. m., when the “public” opens its congenial doors, and his unnatural thirst is slaked. It is really shocking, this display of these beautiful little songsters. What crime have they committed that they should be imprisoned in the dirt and bad air and uncongenial fog of Sclater Street? What are the uses of the Wild Birds Preservation Act if the only result is the crowding the shops of the bird-dealers in Sclater Street? I felt indeed indignant at the sight thus permitted, and at the trade thus carried on. Cocks and hens, ducks and rabbits, are proper subjects of sale, I admit, though I see no particular reason why, when other shops are closed, shops for the sale of them are permitted to remain open; but blackbirds, linnets, thrushes, goldfinches, bullfinches – the ornaments of the country, the cheerful choristers of the garden and the grove – deserve kinder treatment at our hands, even if the result be that Sclater Street does less business and is less of an attractive lounge to the British operative on a Sabbath morn. Away from Sclater Street and Bishopsgate Street the crowd thins, and the ordinary lifeless appearance of the Sunday in London is visible everywhere. Here and there a gray-headed old gentleman or an elderly female may be seen peeping out of a first-floor window into the sad and solitary street, but the younger branches of the family are away. Now and then you catch a crowd of workmen who are much given to patronise the showy van which the proprietor of some invaluable preparation of sarsaparilla utilises for the sale of his specific for purifying the blood and keeping off all the ills to which flesh is heir. Such shops as are open for the sale of cheap confectionery I see also are well patronised, and in some quarters evidently an attempt made to dispose of ginger-beer. On the cold frosty morning the hot-chestnut trade appears also to be in demand, though I question whether all who crowd round the vendors of such articles are bonâ-fide buyers; rather, it seems to me, that under the pretence of being such they are taking a mean advantage of the little particle of warmth thrown out by the charcoal fire used for the purpose of roasting chestnuts. Well, I can’t blame them; it is cold work dawdling in the streets, and if I were a British workman I fancy I should find a little more interest in church than in the idle walk and talk of some, or in the habit others have of standing stock still till The Pig and Whistle or the Blue Lion open their doors. It is well to be free and independent and your own master, but that is no reason why all the Sunday morning should be spent in loafing about the streets.

But what about the many? Well, the public-houses are open, and it is there the British workman feels himself but too much at home. And then there is the Hall of Science, in Old Street, which is generally crowded by an audience who pay gladly for admission to hear Mr. Bradlaugh, who is a very able man, lecture, in a style which would shock many good people if they were to hear him. I must candidly admit that in that style he is far outdone by Mrs. Besant, who takes the Bible to pieces, and turns it inside out, and holds up to ridicule all its heroes and prophets, and kings and apostles, and Christ himself, with a zest which seems perfectly astonishing when we remember how much Christianity has done for the elevation of the people in general and woman in particular. Mrs. Besant is a very clever woman, and she means well I daresay, still it is not pleasant to see the Hall of Science so well filled as it is on a Sunday night.

The Hall of Science in the Old Street Road is not an attractive place outside, and internally it is less of a hall and more of a barn than any public building with which I chance to be familiar. And yet, Sunday night after Sunday night, it is well filled, though the admission for each person is from threepence to a shilling, and there is no attempt by music or ritual to attract the sentimental or the weak. The lectures delivered are long and argumentative, and it is worth the study, especially of the Christian minister who complains that he cannot get at the working man, how it is that the people prefer to pay money to hear the lectures at Old Street, while he offers them the Gospel without money and without price and often with the additional attraction of a free tea. With that view I went to hear Mrs. Besant one Sunday night. I know little of Mrs. Besant, save that she has been made the subject of a prosecution which, whatever be its results, whether of fine or imprisonment to herself or of gain to her prosecutors, is one deeply to be deplored. If a clergyman of the Established Church of England established or attempted to establish the fact that mankind has a tendency to increase beyond the means of existence, a woman, on behalf of the sex that has the most to suffer from the misery of overpopulation, has a right in the interests of humanity to call attention to the subject. In a very old-fashioned couplet it has been remarked of woman —

That if she will, she will, you may depend on’t;
And if she won’t, she won’t, and there’s an end on’t.

To that class of female Mrs. Besant emphatically belongs. She is one of those rare ones who will say what she thinks. There is a great deal of firmness in her face. Such a woman always goes her own way. It was a pleasant change from the strong meat of the Hall of Science – the withering scorn and contempt there poured on all that the best men in the world have held to be best – to the mild excitement of a Shakespearian reading in a public-house. Could there be a fitter teacher for the people who do not go to church, and, let me add, also for those who do? There could be no negative reply to such a question, and surely if Shakespeare is quoted in the pulpit on a Sunday morning, the people may hear him read on a Sunday evening.

“Sunday evening readings for the people!” Only think of that! What a gain from the tap-room and the bar-parlour. Such was the announcement that met my eye the other night in a street not a hundred miles from King’s Cross railway station. Mr. So-and-So, the bill proceeded to state, had the pleasure to inform his friends that, with a view to oblige the public, he had secured the services of a celebrated dramatic reader, who would on every Sunday evening read or recite passages from Shakespeare, Thackeray, Dickens, Hood, Thornbury, Sketchley, etc. Further, the bill stated that these readings would commence at a quarter-past seven, and terminate at a quarter-past ten. Could I resist such an intellectual treat? Could I deny myself such an exquisite gratification? Forgive me, indulgent reader, if for once I made up my mind I could not. The difficulty was where to find the place, for, in my delight at finding a publican so public-spirited – so ready to compete with the attractions of St. George’s Hall – I had unfortunately failed to make a note of the house thus kindly thrown open to an intelligent public. The difficulty was greater than would at first sight appear, for on Sunday night shops are mostly closed, and there are few people in a position to answer anxious inquirers. Great gin-palaces were flaring away in all their glory, and doing a roaring trade at the time when church-bells were ringing for evening service, and decent people were hastening to enter the sanctuary, and for awhile to forget earth with its care and sin. In vain I timidly entered and put the query to the customers at the crowded bar, to potman over the counter, to landlord, exceptionally brilliant in the splendour of his Sunday clothes. They knew nothing of the benevolent individual whose whereabouts I sought; and evidently had a poor opinion of me for seeking his address. Sunday evening readings for the people! what cared they for them? Why could I not stand soaking like the others at their bar, and not trouble my head about readings from Shakespeare and Dickens? Such evidently was the train of thought suggested by my questions. Just over the way was a police-station. Of course the police would know; it was their duty to know what went on in all the public-houses of the district. I entered, and found three policemen in the charge of a superior officer. I put my question to him, and then to them all. Alas! they knew as little of the matter as myself; indeed, they knew less, for they had never heard of such a place, and seemed almost inclined to “run me in” for venturing to suppose they had. What wonderful fellows are our police! I say so because all our penny-a-liners say so; but my opinion is, after all, that they can see round a corner or through a brick wall just as well as myself or any other man, and no more. Clearly this was a case in point, for the public-house I was seeking was hardly a stone’s-throw off, and I was directed to it by an intelligent greengrocer, who was standing at his shop-door and improving his mind by the study of that fearless champion of the wrongs of the oppressed and trodden-down British working man, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper. It was he who put me on the right scent – not that he was exactly certain – but he indicated the house at which such proceedings were likely to take place, and as he was right in his conjecture, I take this opportunity of publicly returning him my thanks. Had it not been for him I should have had no Shakespeare, no Thackeray, no Hood, no Dickens, no feast of reason and flow of soul that Sunday night. As it was, it turned out as I expected, and I had very little of either to reward my painful search. As I have said, the nominal hour at which proceedings commenced was a quarter-past seven; in reality, it was not till nearly half-past eight that the celebrated dramatic reader favoured us with a specimen of his powers. It was true he was in the house, but he was down in the bar with a select circle, indulging in the luxuries generally to be found in such places. In the meantime I took stock leisurely of the room upstairs in which we assembled, and of its occupants. At that early hour the latter were not numerous. A little foreigner with his wife was seated by the fire, and him she led off before the dramatic readings commenced. Reasons, which a sense of delicacy forbids my mentioning, suggested the wisdom and the prudence of an early retirement from a scene rather dull – at any rate, quite the reverse of gay and festive. As to the rest of us, I can’t say that we were a particularly lively lot. A stern regard to truth compels me reluctantly to remark that we were unprepossessing looking rather than otherwise. The majority I of us there were lads with billycock hats and short pipes, who talked little to each other, but smoked and drank beer in solemn silence. The cheerfulest personage in the room was the potboy, who, as he stalked about with his apron on and his shirt-sleeves tucked up, seemed to be quite at home with his customers. Some of the lads had their sweethearts with them; at any rate I presume they were such from the retiring way in which they sat – she, after the manner of such young people in a large room, chiefly occupied in counting the ten fingers of her red and ungloved hands, while her male admirer sat smoking his short pipe and spitting on the sanded floor in a way more suggestive of perfect freedom than of grace. I could see but two decent-looking girls in the room, which, by the time the entertainment was over, contained as many as sixty or seventy. Evidently the class of customers expected was a low one, greengrocers’ and costermongers’ boys apparently, and such like. The tables were of the commonest order, and we had no chairs, nothing but long forms, to sit on. In the middle by the wall was a small platform, carpeted; on this platform was a chair and table, and it was there the hero of the evening seated himself, and it was from thence that at intervals he declaimed. As to the entertainment, if such it may be called, the less said about it the better. A more fifth-rate, broken-down, ranting old hack I think I never heard. Even now it puzzles me to think how the landlord could have ever had the impudence to attach the term “celebrated” to his name. It seemed as if the reader had an impediment in his speech, so laughable and grotesque was his enunciation, which, however, never failed to bring down an applause in the way of raps on the tables which caused the glasses to jingle – to the manifest danger of spilling their contents. We had a recitation about Robert Bruce, and other well-known readings; then he bellowed and tossed his arms about and screamed! How dull were his comic passages! How comic was his pathos! Surely never was good poetry more mangled in its delivery before. I can stand a good deal – I am bound to stand a good deal, for in the course of a year I have to listen to as much bad oratory as most; but at last I could stand it no longer, and was compelled to beat a precipitate retreat, feeling that I had over-estimated the public spirit of the landlord and his desire to provide intellectual amusement for his friends – feeling that these readings for the people are nothing better than an excuse for getting boys and girls to sit smoking and drinking, wasting their time and injuring their constitutions, on a night that should be sacred to better things, in the tainted atmosphere of a public-house.

VI. – THE LOW LODGING-HOUSE

Is chiefly to be found in Whitechapel, in Westminster, and in Drury Lane. It is in such places the majority of our working men live, especially when they are out of work or given to drink; and the drinking that goes on in these places is often truly frightful, especially where the sexes are mixed, and married people, or men and women supposed to be such, abound. In some of these lodging-houses as many as two or three hundred people live; and if anything can keep a man down in the world, and render him hopeless as to the future, it is the society and the general tone of such places. Yet in them are to be met women who were expected to shine in society – students from the universities – ministers of the Gospel – all herding in these filthy dens like so many swine. It is rarely a man rises from the low surroundings of a low lodging-house. He must be a very strong man if he does. Such a place as a Workman’s City has no charms for the class of whom I write. Some of them would not care to live there. It is no attraction to them that there is no public-house on the estate, that the houses are clean, that the people are orderly, that the air is pure and bracing. They have no taste or capacity for the enjoyment of that kind of life. They have lived in slums, they have been accustomed to filth, they have no objection to overcrowding, they must have a public-house next door. This is why they live in St. Giles’s or in Whitechapel, where the sight of their numbers is appalling, or why they crowd into such low neighbourhoods as abound in Drury Lane. Drury Lane is not at all times handy for their work. On the contrary, some of its inhabitants come a long way. One Saturday night I met a man there who told me he worked at Aldershot. Of course to many it is convenient. It is near Covent Garden, where many go to work as early as 4 a. m.; and it is close to the Strand, where its juvenile population earn their daily food. Ten to one the boy who offers you “the Hevening Hecho,” the lass who would fain sell you cigar-lights and flowers, the woman who thrusts the opera programme into your carriage as you drive down Bow Street, the questionable gentleman who, if chance occurs, eases you of your pocket-handkerchief or your purse, the poor girl who, in tawdry finery, walks her weary way backwards and forwards in the Strand, whether the weather be wet or dry, long after her virtuous sisters are asleep – all hail from Drury Lane. It has ever been a spot to be shunned. Upwards of a hundred years ago, Gay wrote in his “Trivia” —

Oh, may thy virtue guard thee through the roads
Of Drury’s mazy courts and dark abodes.

It is not of Drury Lane itself, but of its mazy courts that I write. Drury Lane is a shabby but industrious street. It is inhabited chiefly by tradespeople, who, like all of us, have to work hard for their living; but at the back of Drury Lane – on the left as you come from New Oxford Street – there run courts and streets as densely inhabited as any of the most crowded and filthy parts of the metropolis, and compared with which Drury Lane is respectability itself. A few days since I wanted to hear Happy William in a fine new chapel they have got in Little Wild Street. As I went my way, past rag-shops and cow-houses, I found myself in an exclusively Irish population, some of whom were kneeling and crossing themselves at the old Roman Catholic chapel close by, but the larger number of whom were drinking at one or other of the public-houses of the district. At the newspaper-shop at the corner, the only bills I saw were those of The Flag of Ireland, or The Irishman, or The Universe. In about half an hour there were three fights, one of them between women, which was watched with breathless interest by a swarming crowd, and which ended in one of the combatants, a yellow-haired female, being led to the neighbouring hospital. On his native heather an Irishman cares little about cleanliness. As I have seen his rude hut, in which the pigs and potatoes and the children are mixed up in inextricable confusion, I have felt how pressing is the question in Ireland, not of Home Rule, but of Home Reform. I admit his children are fat and numerous, but it is because they live on the hill-side, where no pestilent breath from the city ever comes.

In the neighbourhood of Drury Lane it is different; there is no fresh air there, and the only flowers one sees are those bought at Covent Garden. Everywhere on a summer night (she “has no smile of light” in Drury Lane), you are surrounded by men, women, and children, so that you can scarce pick your way. In Parker Street and Charles Street, and such-like places, the houses seem as if they never had been cleaned since they were built, yet each house is full of people – the number of families is according to the number of rooms. I should say four-and-sixpence a week is the average rent for these tumble-down and truly repulsive apartments. Children play in the middle of the street, amidst the dirt and refuse; costermongers, who are the capitalists of the district, live here with their donkeys; across the courts is hung the family linen to dry. You sicken at every step. Men stand leaning gloomily against the sides of the houses; women, with unlovely faces, glare at you sullenly as you pass by.