The Borough recalled the Marshalsea that once stood close by; and there opposite was St. George’s, Southwark, where Little Dorrit, accidentally locked out of the prison, was allowed by “the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was,” to take refuge in the vestry, where, years afterwards, she signed the marriage register when wedded to Arthur Clennam.
The next stoppage was at the Elephant and Castle—not the tavern of that name, where in the past on Derby Day the superabundant holiday traffic usually became hopelessly congested, but the City and South London’s new station, close to Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, Rabbits’ great boot warehouse, and Tarn’s vast emporium, that seems to occupy most of Newington Causeway. Onwards to Kennington Common, once the place of public executions for Surrey, now a well-kept miniature park. Beyond it, Kennington Oval, associated with cricket all the world over; and finally we arrived at Stockwell, the then terminus of the line, since extended to Clapham, where Tom Hood used to go to school at a house “with ugly windows ten in a row, its chimney in the rear,” a style of architecture of which many specimens still exist round and about the Common.
At Stockwell we visited the generating station, recently much extended, and provided with entirely new plant, and, wondering at and admiring all we saw, learned from the chief engineer that the contretemps en route was due to a slight defect in the new and untried power-machinery; and thus at the point where the dip in the line was greatest, the cars stopped.
An excellent luncheon restored us all to eloquence and equanimity, extinguishing the cannibalistic feeling of half an hour ago, and, returning without any incident worth recording, we emerged once more in the City, to be greeted by the noise of the traffic that ever surges around King William the Fourth’s statue.
Those were the “green salad” days of London’s Pioneer Electric Railway Line. Now it runs without a hitch, and has been extended north as far as the historic “Angel,” thus giving a direct route between Clapham and Islington. It has powers to exchange traffic with the Great Northern and the City Railway viâ Old Street, and also to connect itself with the Baker Street and Waterloo Electric Railway at the Elephant and Castle Station; and in a new building at Finsbury Pavement it now has commodious head offices.
At the last half-yearly general meeting the chairman, Mr. C. G. Mott, in the course of his speech, stated that the Board aspired to have a thoroughly first-class terminus in the City of London, and had deposited plans with this view. They proposed to construct this station between the present Bank Station and the King William Street statue.
That the City and South London Railway is most useful and popular is shown by the number of passengers it has carried—some ninety millions since its opening—the returns for last year showing about eighteen millions, over a total route of about seven miles. For the convenience of travellers, it eventually will have subways, connecting its Lombard Street Station with the Bank Station of the Central London Railway, and it already has them from its new London Bridge Station to the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. Finally, it can boast of possessing a station below a church—a unique position, I believe. St. Mary Woolnoth’s foundations were completely removed, the vaults cleared out, and the whole replaced by huge iron girders, whereon the sacred edifice now rests, with the booking-office below.
THE WATERLOO AND CITY RAILWAY
The month of August, 1898, was unusually warm, and the heat was felt as much in the City as anywhere. Straw hats were universal; the shady side of the street, if there happened to be one, was thronged; secluded alleys and courts were resorted to by the knowing ones who could afford the time to linger there; and even highly respectable merchants were to be found sitting in shirt-sleeves at their writing-tables and wishing, with Sydney Smith, that they could “sit in their bones.”
At the junction of the Poultry with Victoria Street, shadowed by the Mansion House, from each side of the road a mysterious hoarding had just been removed, revealing an iron railing enclosing a small area with a mysterious staircase bearing the announcement that it led to the subway to the new electric railway, connecting the City with Waterloo Station. Descending a few steps, and emerging into a tunnelled incline, the perspiring pedestrian quickly found that here, if anywhere, was a refuge from the heat, the coolest place in London, and that it was well worth while, on the pretence of urgent business across the water, to pay twopence each way, merely to drink in the refreshing air wafted backwards and forwards along subway, platform, and tube.