Much of Punch's criticism of the drawbacks of London was destructive. But he did not refrain from specific suggestions. For example, he persistently agitated for the painting of street names on lamps as a guide at night, and to good purpose, as the extract overleaf shows. The lighting of London still left much to be desired, and foreshadowed the obligatory darkness of war time:—
Punch has long been pegging away at the Vestries and District Boards, to turn the street lamps to account for display of the street names after dark. His pegging has profited. He is glad to hear that the practice is spreading, and will soon, he hopes and trusts, be general. Wherever it is neglected, let ratepayers take up the cry, and bombard not their street lamps, but their District Boards. The manufacturer who has supplied labels with street names for the lamps in Camberwell, writes to Punch to say that he has furnished similar labels throughout the parishes of Kennington, St. George the Martyr Southwark, St. Mary's Newington, and Limehouse, as also to the boroughs of Leeds, Leicester, Birmingham, Bootle-cum-Linacre near Liverpool, and Newcastle-on-Tyne. He has also been supplying the Board of Works with lamp-tablets notifying the position of Fire-plugs and Hydrants, in the parishes of St. George the Martyr Rotherhithe, Deptford, Charlton, and Woolwich, and is now preparing to fix similar tablets in the parish of St. George the Martyr Hanover Square.
"Light—more Light"—is Punch's cry, as it was fighting Ajax's, and dying Goethe's. All honour to Sugg for his railway-Argand-burner, and his new naphthalene with its forty-candle power—and when next he fits it to a train, may Punch be there to see, instead of to struggle with a tantalising twilight, as he does under the present mockery of railway-carriage illumination.
Another movement in which Punch took an active part was that for the provision of respectable restaurants for girl workers. The "Coffee-Houses," which were then almost the only sort of cheap eating-houses available, were both dirty and dismal, and the need offered Punch in 1881 an opportunity for combining a practical suggestion with a dig at the Duke of Bedford:—
Punch's Suggested Improvements
A GOOD THING TO DO.
If the Church and Stage Guild, and the Association for Administering Weak Tea to Reluctant Ballet Girls, are inclined for practical work, we can tell them how to make themselves exceedingly useful to the humbler members of the dramatic profession. Pantomime rehearsals are beginning, and hundreds of girls, many of them living far off in the suburbs, and most of them receiving only a few shillings a week, are brought into the neighbourhood of Covent Garden early, kept at work all day, with no time to return home before they are required for their night duty at the theatres. There are hundreds of taverns, public-houses, coffee-shops, restaurants, and pastry-cooks, in and about the Strand, but, as far as we are aware, and we are pretty well up in the supply resources of this neighbourhood, there is not one place where these girls can go to get a cheap and decent meal. They can go to hundreds of places, if they like to spend half their week's earnings in less than an hour, but they cannot even do this without being stared at like wild beasts, or annoyed by the insolent patronage of the cad and the prowler. Commercial philanthropy has given the market-men and women of Covent Garden a "kiosk" in Bow Street, and what is done for the Mudford gang might surely be done for Theatrical London. The old Bow Street Police Station is empty and wanting a tenant, as "To Let" bills are stuck upon its broken windows. It has space and position, and the least the Duke of Mudford—the proprietor of Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres—can do, is to offer it at a very moderate rental for this useful purpose. A chance for Mudford and popularity.
A series of articles on "How to Improve London" began in the same year, and though some of the suggestions were fantastic or counsels of perfection, many have since been translated into reality. The list of metropolitan improvements suggested in 1886 betrays perhaps an excessive solicitude for equestrians in the Parks and a corresponding desire to control 'buses and carts in their interests. The scheme for doing away with all private residences within Regent's Park is magnificently comprehensive. Punch wished to construct
a public Summer and Winter Garden on a French and German model, with Restaurants open for luncheons, dinners, and suppers, a theatre, a circus, lawn tennis grounds, tennis court, boating by day, and by night fireworks on the ornamental water. Such an establishment is a real want, and Regent's Park, being at once well within reach, and yet so far removed as to offer no obstruction to traffic, is the very place for the purpose.
There is a patriarchalism which is almost Teutonic in his suggestion for preserving the amenities of the Parks and public places:—
Parks and Streets. All Processions, not being State Pageants, should be prohibited. All bodies of persons marching about with and playing, or attempting to play, musical instruments, should be prohibited. Fine and imprisonment should be the punishment for breaking these laws.
Quiet Streets. All organ-grinders and so-called street-musicians should not be permitted to come within a radius of ten miles of Charing Cross on pain of imprisonment, fine, and, for a third offence, penal servitude for not less than seven years.
Meetings. Public spaces, at least four miles out of London, to be set apart for open-air meetings, if required, and only such spaces to be used for such purposes.
Parks. The London Parks shall be only used by the Public for the purposes of recreation and enjoyment, and not for political meetings, haranguing, preachings, and suchlike nuisances, which render Sunday a day of turbulence and unrest, and prevent quiet, peaceable people, who are at work all the week, from enjoying the fresh air on their only holiday.
The reference to musical instruments in processions is clearly aimed at the Salvation Army, of which in its earlier phase Punch, as we have learned, was the resolute enemy.