The Night Side of London

Transcribed from the 1858 William Tweedie edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
by J. EWING RITCHIE, author of the “london pulpit,” etc.
“In cities vice is hidden with most ease. Or seen with least reproach. I do confess them nurseries of the arts. Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaim’d The fairest capital of all the world, By riot and incontinence the worst.” Cowper.
Second Edition, revised.
LONDON: WILLIAM TWEEDIE, 337, STRAND. mdccclviii.
john childs and son, printers.
It is said of a stranger who came to London for the first time, and took up his quarters in one of the most crowded city streets, that he remained standing at the door the whole of the first day of his London existence, because he waited until the crowd had gone. A man, says Max Schlesinger, who would do that, ought to rise and go to bed with the owl. The owl is the symbol of wisdom; for once I would prevail upon the reader to do as the owls do, and become wise as they. You may live at Clapham all your life, come into
the city every day, attend on a gospel ministry, as the slang phrase is,—for it is not only wicked people that talk slang,—and know no more of London than the British public do of Timbuctoo.
Think of what London is. At the last census there were 2,362,236 persons of both sexes in it; 1,106,558 males, of whom 146,449 were under 5 years of age; and 1,255,678 females, of whom 147,173 were under 5 years of age. The unmarried males were 679,380, ditto females 735,871; the married men were 399,098, the wives 409,731; the widowers were 37,080, the widows 110,076. On the night of the census there were 28,598 husbands whose wives were not with them, and 39,231 wives mourning their absent lords. In 1856 the number of children born in London was 86,833, only one in 25 of which is illegitimate; in the same period 56,786 persons died. The Registrar-General assumes that, with the additional births, and by the fact of soldiers and sailors returning from the seat of war, and of persons engaged in peaceful pursuits settling in the capital, sustenance, clothing, and house accommodation must now be found in London for about 60,000 inhabitants