Everything was for sale there, and there was a great crowd of wretched, ill-clothed, poverty-stamped human beings passing along the lanes between the handcarts.
The hucksters were shouting their wares and abusing each other mercilessly. They called each other cheats, robbers and jailbirds, and seemed to consider it a part of the regular order of business. They swore at each other, but they did not come to blows.
One man accused another of murdering his father in order to get the old man’s clothes to sell. At this the other laughed and cried:
“Never mind that liar hover there. ’E takes that way to get rid of his old cholera blankets what he has robbed from ’ospitals. Of course ’e sells ’em cheap; they didn’t cost him nothink. Go on an’ buy his old blankets an’ ketch the cholera.”
Frank made his way into Petticoat Lane, and then wandered into other streets. On all the well-lighted streets were cars lighted by oil lamps, and hucksters trying to sell their goods.
The laborers, having been paid off, were out in force, and it seemed that they had been drinking to a man. Some were noisy and merry, while some were sullen and bent on fighting.
The public houses were open on all sides, blazing with gas and glittering with mirrors and filled with drinking men and women. Frank could never accustom himself to the bold abandon with which women walked into groggeries and took their drinks with the men.
Sausages and fish were cooking in the small fish houses, where the great wide front windows were open, allowing to escape rays of smoky light and the odor of burning fat.
He saw stout, respectable workingmen’s wives, with great baskets on their arms, who were out to do their shopping at the markets and stores.
He saw trembling, drink-besotted hags and starving, wild-eyed young men, the faces of the latter often marked by the most hideous of evil purposes, murder in their eyes.