the Castle tavern. A crowd quickly surrounded us, and we were soon supplied with seconds, and were hustled by them through the large stable yard of the Castle tavern into a meadow at the back, attended by a large crowd of both men and women, and stripped for a regular fight. I certainly was the younger and the lighter of the two, but my knowledge of the use of my hands stood me in good stead of both weight and age. We had a fair stand-up fight, the only one I ever had in my life, and was well attended. I got terribly punished in the body, but not a crack on the face. It lasted nearly twenty minutes, when a master butcher that was well known in the neighbourhood, pushed through the crowd and said that “The young ’un has had enough of it,” and the crowd began to murmur, when the butcher turned round and said, “If any of you particularly want a fight, you can have one. I do not mind obliging you,” but the offer did not seem to be accepted.
CHAPTER 12.—The First Steamboats.
The Morris Dancers at Chelsea on May Day or early in May would pay us a visit, generally consisting of from nine to twelve, all men or lads. They had the appearance of countrymen, dressed some in smock frocks, others in shirt-sleeves, breeches and gaiters, and all decked out in coloured ribbons tied round their hats, arms, and knees of their breeches, with long streamers, and others carrying short sticks with ribbons twisted round, and bows on top, or garlands of flowers tied on small hoops. They generally stopped outside the taverns in the roadway and danced to a drum and pan pipes, tambourine and triangle. They would form themselves into three rows, according to their number, about three feet apart each way, and would dance a sort of jig, and change places by passing in and out and turning round to face one another, striking their sticks and twisting their garlands to the time of the music, and then stamp their feet and give a sort of whoop or shout, and finish with a chant in honour of the month of May, and make a collection among the crowd.
The “Endeavour,” a wooden paddle boat, was the first to run three times a week from Dyer’s Hall Wharf, London Bridge, to Hampton Court; leaving London Bridge at nine and passing Chelsea at about a quarter past ten. The passengers had to be put on board in the wherries at a charge of threepence each. A signal was made from the Yorkshire Grey stairs for them to lay to to take them on board, as there was no pier at Chelsea at that time. The boat, always once or twice during the summer, would come to grief under Battersea Bridge by knocking its paddle-box off, and get a-ground once or twice before it got to Hampton Court. I have several times seen her a-ground just before you get to Kew Bridge, and lay there for two or three hours with no way of getting ashore but by being carried on men’s backs through the mud. The fare was three shillings and sixpence, and five shillings. They always advertised “Weather and Tide permitting.” If everything was favourable they would arrive about half past twelve and leave again at four. The passengers were not very numerous. The boat ran for about two years, and then one called the “Locomotive” started, a very much superior boat, and much quicker; and a start was made for a ider of a very primitive character at the Yorkshire
Grey stairs—merely two old coal barges with gangways from the shore, and one from a landing stage. A company was then formed called the Chelsea Steamboat Company, with four small wooden boats, and a pier was built.
The Wellesley Street tragedy (now called Upper Manor Street), occurred on the left hand side about four or five doors from the top. The house was kept by an old lady who let the best part to lodgers, and on one Sunday evening about nine she had taken her supper beer from the potman at the Wellesley Arms, who came round in those days at meal times with a tray made for the purpose of carrying beer to be sold at the customers’ doors; and about eleven o’clock the people who occupied the upper part of the house came home and opened the door, but did not find any light as they expected, as it was usual for the old lady to leave a candle burning on the ledge of the staircase window. They went to a neighbour to get a light and returned and found the old lady at the foot of the stairs. She appeared to have been stunned and then strangled. The jug with the beer was standing on the stairs, the place had not been robbed, and nothing had been disturbed. The people in the house had been recently married, and it had been their practice to go away the whole of the Sunday
and spend it with their friends. There were several arrests, but there appeared to be no clue, and the matter was never cleared up; the only theory was that it was a contemplated robbery, someone knocking her down and then strangling her, but got scared and took to flight without taking any thing.
CHAPTER 13—Politics on Kennington Common.
There appears always to have been a radical element in Chelsea, for a large contingent met on Chelsea Common and marched to Kennington Common to give the Dorsetshire Labourers, Frost, Williams, and Jones, a grand reception on their return from imprisonment. They were drawn by four horses in a hackney carriage with outriders, and followed by a large number of vehicles occupied by their admirers, and a large crowd, when a meeting was held on Kennington Common, and violent speeches were made. The crowd became very disorderly, some ugly rushes were made, and the few police and constables who were there got very roughly handled, and in one of the scrimmages a policeman’s top hat was knocked off, and got kicked, and I had a kick at it—what boy would not do so? In the excitement, anyhow, I got collared, and was being dragged away when a rush was made, the police upset, and we all rolled in the mud together, and I got away. More police came up and began to hunt the crowd, and made many arrests. I, in one of the crowds, rushed down a
mews at the back of the houses in the Kennington Road. As I was without a cap, and covered in mud and my face was bleeding, it was thought they were after me, so I was picked bodily up and pitched over the wall into a lilac bush in one of the long gardens, and I slid down on to a stone garden roller on which I sat, pretty well dazed and thoroughly done up. I do not think I was noticed by the people in the house, for I sat there some considerable time, when some children from an upper window noticed me. Soon after, an old gentleman in a dressing gown and a scarlet smoking cap and two or three ladies appeared on a sort of verandah at the back of the house, and had a good look at me, but did not attempt to come down in the garden. Presently two men came up the steps from the kitchen under the verandah, one of them dressed as a groom, and the other in his shirt sleeves and a big rough hairy cap on, who I found afterwards was the potman at the White Bear Tavern opposite, while the other was the doctor’s groom, who lived two or three doors higher up the road, who had been fetched in to arrest me. They brought me up into the hall at the bottom of the kitchen stairs, and the old gentleman began to question how I got into such a scrape, and where I came from. When I told him I came from Chelsea