Who can judge of the splendour of the West End of London by even the most fashionable quarters of Edinburgh or Dublin?
Who can conceive the amount of revolting squalor and hideous penury existing in the poor districts of London, by a knowledge of the worst portions of Liverpool or Manchester?
Who can form a conjecture of the dreadful immorality and shocking vice of the low neighbourhoods of London, judging by the scenes presented to view in the great mining or manufacturing counties?
No:—for all that is most gorgeous and beautiful, as well as all that is most filthy and revolting,—all that is best of talent, or most degraded of ignorance,—all that is most admirable for virtue, or most detestable for crime,—all that is most refined in elegance, or most strange in barbarism,—all, all these wondrous phases are to be found, greatest in glory, or lowest in infamy, in the imperial city of the British Isles!
And shall we be charged with vanity, if we declare that never until now has the veil been so rudely torn aside, nor the corruptions of London been so boldly laid bare?
But, in undertaking this work, we were determined at the outset to be daunted by no fear of offending the high and the powerful: we were resolved to misrepresent nothing for the purpose of securing to ourselves the favour of those whom so many sycophants delight to bespatter with their sickly praises.
In the same independent spirit do we now pursue our narrative.
On the left-hand side of Brydges Street, as you proceed from the Strand towards Russell Street, Covent Garden, you may perceive a lamp projecting over the door of an establishment which, viewed externally, appears to be a modest eating-house; but which in reality is one of the most remarkable places of nocturnal entertainment in London.
Upon the lamp alluded to are painted these words——"The Paradise."
It was past midnight, towards the end of January, 1843, when two gentlemen, wearing fashionable Taglioni coats over their elegant attire, and impregnating the fine frosty air with the vapour of their cigars, strolled into this establishment.