Funerals on the river in those days were a frequent occurence. I recollect one in particular. A young man invalided home from the East India Company Service in an advanced stage of consumption came to stay with a sister at Chelsea. The husband worked at the malt house on the river, and there the young man died. He was a native of Mortlake and they took him there by the river in a boat to bury him. I recollect their going by our garden, we boys standing with our caps off while the procession passed. There was one boat rowed by a pair of sculls, containing the coffin and the mother and sisters as chief mourners, followed by three or four boats full of friends, most of the women in white dresses, and the men with white scarves and bows, which was the usual mourning for an unmarried person.
CHAPTER 10.—A Boy’s Tramp by Road to Epsom, on Derby Day, 1837.
At that time it was a difficulty to get to Epsom any other way than tramping it, as there was no railway, and the lowest fare was ten shillings, coach or van, and, being anxious for the treat, I had saved up sixteen shillings and threepence, and by a little diplomacy I had arranged to be abroad for the day without letting anyone know where I was going. At about four o’clock on the Wednesday morning I started from Cheyne for my trip, with my savings and two or three slices of bread and butter in my pocket, and as I passed old Chelsea Church it was a quarter to five, and a beautiful bright spring morning. Going over Battersea Bridge and turning to the right through the Folley, a colony of small cottages with a private way through them into Church Street with fields and herb gardens on one side, then
passing Battersea Church and the draw-dock, into Battersea Square, into the High Street and outside the Castle Tavern. This being open was the first evidence of the road to Epsom, as there was a donkey cart with five or six gipsy men and women and one or two children with them. They had a stack of peas and shooters, back scratchers, paper flowers, plumes of feathers, and small bags of flour, also wooden dolls to sell to the visitors on the road, as at that time the favourite amusement was blowing peas through a tin tube at the people as they drove along, and some of the peas would give one a very painful experience. Throwing bags of flour was another amusement indulged in.
Passing along High Street into Falcon Lane—then really a lane with fields and market gardens on each side, and a small stream where Clapham Junction now stands, then known as the boling brook, and past some cottages to Battersea Rise, and then up the hill past the old smithy that dated from 1626, on to the Common and across it to the end of Nightingale Lane, and along a footpath across where the Station and the St. James’s School now stand. It was then all common, and down Wandsworth Lane to the Wheatsheaf on the main road.
Everything here was in evidence of the Derby proper. All the gentlemen’s houses had stands
erected inside the front gardens, and the walls decorated with festoons of scarlet, most of them making it quite a gala day having dinner parties to see the visitors in their grand equipages, for the turn-outs of the aristocracy and royalty surpassed everything to be seen anywhere in Europe. All the shops and private houses had their windows decorated and full of visitors. It was reported that thirty thousand horses at that time went to Epsom on the Derby Day along the road at this point. The wayfarers to the Derby were mostly horsey-looking tramps with pails on their shoulders in twos and threes, very shabby and down-at-heel. Both men and women, with almost every toy or trinket you could mention; tin trumpets, squeakers, masks to sell on the road, came slouching along; then came barrows, trucks, donkey and pony carts, with all sorts of eatables, such as sheep’s trotters, whelks, oysters, bread and cheese, fried sausages, saveloys, fish, ham and beef sandwiches, ginger beer and table beer—at that time it was allowed to be sold without a license. They would stroll along the road till they found a suitable pitch, and would there establish themselves. There were numerous parties of musicians in gangs of three or four, harp, violin and cornet, or cornet, trombone and French horn; armies of acrobats and children on stilts, conjuring, Punch
and Judy shows; in fact, some on every open space all down the road to the Downs.
The road through the village of Tooting to the Broadway, where you turned off in the Mitcham Road, was the most crowded, for some of the traffic divided and went straight on through Merton and Ewell to Epsom, but the greater part went by the Mitcham Road, past Daniel Defoe’s house and Fig’s Marsh, a long strip of marsh common on one side and the herb and lavender gardens on the other, and a number of wooden cottages with long gardens in front, that made quite a harvest by selling nosegays and refreshments. This extended all the way to the village of Mitcham, the Upper Green at which the Pleasure Fair is held to the present day, I believe the only one remaining near the metropolis, and at a stall outside the Ram I made my first halt for breakfast. I indulged in coffee, plum cake, fried sausages, and bread and butter, at the cost of eight-pence, and started on my way at seven by the clock at the Lavender Distillery, passed through the toll-gate down the road to Mitcham Green, a large open piece of green sward considered at that time one of the best cricket fields in Surrey, and producing some of the best cricketers, and still maintaining that character. I proceeded down the road with several good residences on each side and almost an avenue of
trees and may hedges in full bloom, the road alive with every kind of vehicle and a large number of tramps. At the corner of Mitcham Green had collected a large number of itinerant musicians, and all sorts of diverting vagabonds, looking very shabby, dusty and down at heel, and as if it was anything but a prosperous occupation. There were no negro melodies in those days, but there was the troubadour with his guitar, wearing a broad-brimmed hat with a large feather and loose coloured slashed coat and short cape or cloak loose on his shoulders, and singing love songs, and a man with trestles and a sort of tray strung with wires, played with two short pieces of cane or whale bone with a knob of leather on the end, with which he struck the wires and knocked out a tune, and, by the same process, with bells arranged on a straight bar fixed on high trestles, tunes were played.