INDING it necessary to have a companion with me who had a perfect knowledge of the English Metropolis, I paid a visit to the headquarters of the police in the Old Jewry, and procured from Inspector Bailey, the Chief of Police, the aid of a detective to accompany me in my nightly adventures. Shortly after midnight Sergeant Moss and myself passed through Gracechurch into Fenchurch street, by towering warehouses, and along Aldgate into High street, Whitechapel. Until we got well up into Whitechapel we had not met more than three or four persons, and they were principally individuals who had taken more ale or strong liquor than was good for their equilibrium. One person, who was evidently out of his latitude, accosted the detective and demanded of him, in a menacing but rather ludicrous way:
"I s'ay ole fel', whish ish Goodman's Feelsh? I wansh to go to Somshseet sthreeths. Goodman's Feelsh, ole boy. Show we waysh and give shixpensh, ole fel?"
"Go along and turn off to your left, and when you get home eat an onion, and it will do you good p'raps," said he, as he tried to dodge the drunken fellow, who seemed well dressed, and had some jewelry on his person.
"Eesh an onionsh. Sir, yer a gentlesmansh—ole boy. Blesh you. Blesh you," and he staggered away into the darkness, rolling like a yawl-boat in the breakers.
We turned off the Whitechapel road into Baker street, up Charles into Wellington street. The neighborhood was a poor desolate one, and every building, and every stone in the street, with the offal in the gutters, spoke of poverty and wretchedness.
Now and then a policeman spoke to us and looked sharply at me, but always they seemed civil and obliging.
The district we were now traversing was a kind of debatable land between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green. The streets, or rather lanes, ran across and along at angles and in circles of a perfect maze tending to confound ways that were well calculated to puzzle a stranger.
The lanes were, with few exceptions, not more than two or three hundred feet long, and the odor from the cellars and lodging houses was miasmatic. Shouts and yells and curses came from drunken male brutes who passed us, and now and then a wretched looking outcast of a woman, hideous with filth and bloated with gin, stole like a shadow from some of the low public houses that were, in accordance with the beer-house act, putting up their shutters.
A woman passed us with a stone bottle in one hand and a herring in the other, while we stood looking up and down the narrow street. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face seamed with dissipation and wretchedness, while she grasped the stone bottle hard, and seemed ready to defend her precious property with her life.