General Poet Office.—This large building, at the corner of Cheapside and St. Martin’s-le-Grand, was finished in 1829, from the designs of Sir Robert Smirke. It is in the Ionic style, with a lofty central portico; beneath which is the entrance to the spacious hall (80 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 53 feet high), having also an entrance at the opposite extremity; but the central Hall is now entirely enclosed, owing to the recent great extension of the Postal business. A Money-order Office has been built on the opposite side of the street; and the Post Office has been added to in various ways, to make room for increased business. The main building, which contains a vast number of rooms, is enclosed by a railing; and at the north end is a courtyard, in which mail-vans range up and depart with their load of bags, at certain hours in the morning and evening, for the several railway termini. At other portions of the building the foreign, colonial, and India mails are despatched. From six to seven o’clock in the evening a prodigious bustle prevails in putting letters into the Post Office; and on Saturday evening, when the Sunday newspapers are posted, the excitement is still further increased—especially just before six, by which hour the newspapers must be posted. The establishment, some four years ago, employed 20,000 clerks, sorters, and letter-carriers in the various parts of the United Kingdom; and since the Post Office took over the business of the Telegraph Companies, the number of its employés is greatly increased. The postage charged on foreign and colonial letters is too small to pay for the mail-packets and other expenses; profit is derived only from the inland letters. There are now in London and the suburbs about 730 pillar-boxes and wall-boxes; without counting receiving houses. Newspapers and book packets must not be put in town pillar-boxes. A very useful novelty, Post Office Savings’ Banks, was introduced in 1861. In the year 1840, in which the uniform rate of one penny per letter of half an ounce weight, &c., commenced, the revenue of the Post Office was only £471,000. Its revenue received during the year 1871–72 was no less than £6,102,900, and every year the receipts are increasing. New postal buildings of great extent have been erected on the opposite side of the street.
THE CORPORATION; MANSION HOUSE; GUILDHALL; MONUMENT; ROYAL EXCHANGE.
It will be convenient to group here certain buildings belonging to the Corporation of London; and to prefix to a notice of them some account of the mode in which the city of London is governed.
The Corporation.—With respect to civic jurisdiction, the city of London is governed in a peculiar manner. In virtue of ancient charters and privileges, the city is a species of independent community, governed by its own laws and functionaries. While all other boroughs have been reformed in their constitution, London has been suffered to remain, as yet, in the enjoyment of nearly all its old usages. The city is civilly divided into twenty-five wards, each of which has an alderman; and with one alderman without a ward, the number of aldermen is 26. Each is chosen for life, and acts as magistrate within his division. The freemen of the various wards elect representatives annually to the common-council, to the number of 206 members. The lord mayor, aldermen, and common-council, compose the legislative body for the city. The lord mayor is chosen by a numerous and respectable constituency, called the livery, or liverymen; these are certain qualified members of trading corporations, who, except in electing the lord mayor, sheriffs, members of parliament, &c., do not directly interfere in city management. The Court of Aldermen and the Court of Common-council have certain legislative and executive duties, partly with and partly without the immediate aid of the lord mayor. The revenue of the city corporation is derived from sundry dues, rents, interest of bequests, fines for leases, &c. The magistracy, police, and prisons cost about £40,000 annually; but this is exclusive of large sums disbursed by the court of aldermen. The lord mayor is elected annually, on the 29th of September, from among the body of aldermen. The livery send a list of two candidates to the court of aldermen, and one of these, generally the senior, is chosen by them. He enters office, with much pomp, on the 9th of November, which is hence called Lord Mayor’s Day. The procession through the streets on this occasion attracts citizens as well as strangers. The advocate and legal adviser of the corporation is an official with the title of Recorder. The lord mayor and corporation exercise a jurisdiction over Southwark and other precincts. Westminster, which is not connected in civic matters with London Proper, is under the jurisdiction of a high-bailiff. The city returns 4 members to Parliament, besides the 16 returned by Westminster, Southwark, Marylebone, Tower Hamlets, Finsbury, Lambeth, Chelsea, and Greenwich.
In 1829, the old mode of protection by Watchmen was abolished in all parts of the metropolis except the city, and a new Police Force established by Act of Parliament. This has been a highly successful and beneficial improvement. The new police is under the management of commissioners, who are in direct communication with the Secretary of State for the Home Department; under the commissioners are superintendents, inspectors, sergeants, and constables. The district under their care includes the whole metropolis and environs, with the exception of the city, grouped into 21 divisions, each denoted by a letter. The constables wear a blue uniform, and are on duty at all times of the day and night. Three-fourths of the expenses are paid out of the parish rates, but limited to an assessment of 8d. per pound on the rental; the remainder is contributed from the public purse. The corporation have since established a Police Force for the city on the model of that above mentioned. In addition to two Police Offices for the city, at the Mansion House and Guildhall, there are eleven for the remaining parts of the metropolis,—viz., Bow Street, Clerkenwell, Great Marlborough Street, Thames, Worship Street, Southwark, Marylebone, Westminster, Lambeth, Greenwich and Woolwich, and Hammersmith and Wandsworth. The Thames Police have a peculiar jurisdiction over the river. In 1836, a horse patrol was added to the Bow Street establishment, consisting of inspectors and patrols, whose sphere of action is the less frequented roads around the metropolis. With all these means of preserving the peace and preventing crime, the metropolis is now one of the most orderly cities in the world; and provided strangers do not seek the haunts of vice, but pursue their way steadily, they run little or no risk of molestation. The number of metropolitan police in 1872 was about 9,000; of city police, 700—including, in both cases, superintendents, inspectors, &c., &c. The commissioner of metropolitan police is Lieutenant-Colonel E. Y. W. Henderson, C.B., 4 Whitehall Place, S.W.; the commissioner of city police is Colonel James Fraser, C.B., 26 Old Jewry, E.C.
The Drainage of London was a matter barely understood at all, and in no wholesome sense practised, till some time after the Board of Works was formed, in 1855, when their best efforts to check a rapidly growing evil—viz., the casting of London’s poisonous sewage into the Thames at our very doors—were called into play. The estimated cost of one of the most colossal schemes of modern times was, at its outset, put down at something over three millions; and when the vast plan for main drainage was commenced, in 1859, a sanitary revolution began. A far greater sum, however, must be expended ere the idea is wholly carried out. It is obviously out of our power, in our limited space, to do anything more than give the reader a mere rough notion of the good to be done and the difficulties to be overcome. The plan was to construct some 70 odd miles of gigantic sewers on either side of the Thames. The north side of the river has three different lines of sewers, which meet at the river Lea, and thereafter go along, in one huge embankment, to Barking Creek, on the Thames, 14 miles below London Bridge. With certain differences, the sewage of the south side of the Thames is amenable to the same kind of treatment. By some returns, furnished in June, 1870, by the engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, it appears that the average daily quantity of sewage pumped into the river Thames at Crossness was 170,934 cubic metres, and at Barking 152,808 cubic metres—equivalent to about as many tons by weight. That quantity, of course, will every year, as London grows, increase. As the sewers on the north side of the river get more near to the sea, they can be seen. The south side sewers are nearly all out of sight. As the tide flows, the filth of London, by their means, is poured into the water. As it ebbs, the sewage is carried out to sea. Powerful steam-engines, for pumping up sewage from low levels, are used as they are required. The clerk of the Metropolitan Board of Works, who may be seen at Spring Gardens, Charing Cross, will, we should fancy, oblige any gentleman with engineering proclivities with an order to view what has already been accomplished by marvellous ability and enterprise,—whose results can in no fair sense gain anything like fair appreciation without personal inspection.
London is Lighted by sundry joint-stock gas companies; the parishes contract with them for street lights, and individuals for the house and shop lights. Gas was first introduced into London, in Golden Lane, in 1807; in Pall Mall in 1809; and generally through London in 1814. There are something like 2,500 miles of gas-pipes in and about London.