Name, (if any) of the House, or of the Village or } Caravan, No. 937,654.
Hamlet in which it stands. }
Name of the Street or other part of the Town, (if in } Winkfield Lane.
a Town), and No. of the House. }
| Name and surname of each person who abode or slept in this House on the night of June 6. | Age of Males. | Age of Females. | Of what Profession, Trade, or Employment, or if of Independent means. | If born in the County. | If born in Ireland, &c. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bill Soames | 45 | Shoman. | No | don't Kno | |
| Wife—vurks the | |||||
| Mary Soames | 38 | barrul horgan outside | No | No | |
| Gipsy Mike | not Nown | None. | No | No veres pertickler | |
| Phelim Conolly | 35 | Black vild ingian. | not sartin | never Knowd | |
| Sarah Cooper | 24 | tellin off fortuns. | No | ||
| Young Chubby a babby | 2 | ired fur the Races. | St. Giles's | ||
| Brummagim Harry | 40 | keeps a Thimble-rig. | Yes |
But there were many, many others, who were excluded from the privilege of registering their names amongst the population of their country. The unfortunate individuals who slept throughout the night in the stony precincts of the police-office lock-up cells, were deprived of this honour. Even admitting that the police had received instructions to take down the names of the stray-flocks under their charge, the ends of the commissioners were still defeated, for it was not probable that the Hon. Clarence Piercefield, who had kicked the head waiter at the Cider-cellars, for telling him not to join in the glees so loudly—who had thrashed the cabman in Holborn—who had climbed up behind King Charles at Charing-cross, and who, finally, upon being pulled down again by the police and taken into custody, had given his name as Thomas Brown,—it was not probable, we repeat, that this honourable gentleman would see any occasion to alter the name in the schedule, or recant his alleged profession of "medical student." His rightful appellation found no place in the paper, no more than the hundreds who slept out altogether that night, from the wretched, shivering, poverty-stricken occupiers of the embryo coal-cellars of future houses in the neighbourhood of railway termini, to the tipsy gentleman who tumbled by mistake into a large basket of turnip-tops and onions in Covent Garden-market, and slept there until morning, dreaming that he was the inhabitant of an Eastern paradise, with houris pelting roses at him. Even the ill-used Mr. Ferguson, whom everybody has heard of, but nobody knows, failing in all his attempts to procure a lodging for the night, found no place in the strictly-worded schedule. The real name of Mr. Ferguson is Legion, yet he found a lodging nowhere. And many returns of the erratic youth of respectable families must prove, that their very fathers did not know they were out, to say nothing of their mothers: on the other hand, probably many more would be found wanting in the real numbers, were circumstances narrowly inquired into.
It is fortunate for the correctness of the statistics that Sunday was the day fixed upon for enumerating the population. Had it been any other, the numbers who slept in the house would have materially swelled the lists. The House of Commons might have furnished an imposing array of names every night in the week to begin with. The various literary institutions and scientific meetings of the metropolis, on their respective nights, would not have been behind hand; and even the theatres, might have sent in a tolerably fair muster-roll of slumberers, according to the nature of their performances.
We presume that the guards of mail-coaches, drovers who were going to the Monday's markets, watchmen of houses, newly-buried relations, and medical men attending Poor Law Unions, will be allowed a future opportunity of registering their names; for none of these individuals were ever known—at least we believe not—to sleep or abide one night in their houses. Are these hardworking and useful classes of society to be accounted as nothing—to be placed in a scale even beneath "persons sleeping over a stable or outhouse," who, although not worthy to be inserted along with their betters in the schedule, are, at all events allowed a paper to themselves? The care that arranged the manner of enumerating the population ought to have put forward plans for taking the census of the always-out-of-doors portion of the English on the night in question, hackney-coachmen included; and a space might, at the same time, have been appropriated in the schedule for "those who were not at home, but ought to have been." We will not dwell upon the material difference this important feature would have made to the calculations in many points. We give the commissioners a peep at the fallacy of their plans, and we leave it to them to remedy it. All we have to add, in conclusion is, that we sent in our own name according to the prescribed ordinance, but it was not Rocket.
LOVE'S MASQUERADING.
BY LAMAN BLANCHARD.