Days and Nights in London; Or, Studies in Black and Gray

by J. Ewing Ritchie

Transcribed from the 1880 Tinsley Brothers edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

DAYS AND NIGHTS
IN LONDON;

OR,

STUDIES IN BLACK AND GRAY.

BY
J. EWING RITCHIE,

AUTHOR OF
“THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON,” “RELIGIOUS LIFE OF LONDON,”
“BRITISH SENATORS,” ETC.

LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1880.
[All rights reserved.]

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.

PREFACE.

London has vastly altered since the Author, some quarter of a century ago, described some of the scenes which occurred nightly in its midst of which respectable people were ignorant, which corrupted its young men and young women, and which rendered it a scandal and a horror to civilisation itself. The publication of his work, “The Night Side of London”—of which nearly eight thousand copies were sold—did something, by calling the attention of Members of Parliament and philanthropists to the subject, to improve the scenes and to abate the scandal. As a further contribution to the same subject, the present volume is published. Every Englishman must take an interest in London—a city which it has taken nearly two thousand years to build; whose sons, to enrich which, have sailed on every sea and fought or traded on every land; and which apparently, as the original home and centre of English-speaking people, must grow with the growth and strengthen with the strength of the world.