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

by J. Ewing Ritchie

For ages the Mint in the Borough has gained an unenviable name, not only as the happy hunting-ground of the disreputable, the prostitute, the thief, the outcast, the most wretched and the lowest of the poor, yet there was a time when it was great and famous. There that brave and accomplished courtier, the Duke of Suffolk, brought his royal bride, the handsome sister of our Henry VIII. It was there poor Edward VI. came on a visit all the way from Hampton Court. It was the goodly gift of Mary the unhappy and ill-fated to the Archbishop of York. Somehow or other Church property seems to be detrimental to the respectability of a neighbourhood, hence the truth of the old adage, “The nearer the church, the farther from God.” At any rate this was the case as regards the Mint in the Borough, which in Gay’s time had sunk so low that he made it the scene of his “Beggar’s Opera,” and there still law may be said to be powerless, and there still they point out the house in which lived Jonathan Wild. In the reign of William, our Protestant hero, and George I., our Hanoverian deliverer, a desperate attempt was made to clear the place of the rogues and vagabonds to whom it afforded shelter and sanctuary; but somehow or other in vain, though all debtors under fifty pounds had their liabilities wiped off by royal liberality. The place was past mending, and so it has ever since remained. It is not a neighbourhood for a lady at any time, but to inhabit it all that is requisite is that, by fair means or foul (in the Mint they are as little particular as to the way in which money is made as they are in the City or on the Stock Exchange), you have fourpence to pay for a night’s lodging. All round the place prices may be described as low, to suit the convenience of the customer. You are shaved for a penny. Your hair is cut and curled for twopence. The literature for sale may be termed sensational, and the chandlers’ shops, which are of the truest character if I may judge by the contents, do a trade which may be described as miscellaneous.

It is sad to see the successive waves of pauperism rise and burst and disappear. On they come, one after another, as fast as the eye can catch them, and far faster than the mind can realise all the hidden and complex causes of which they are the painful result. One asks, Is this always to be so? Is there to be no end to this supply, of which we see only the surface, as it were? Are all the lessons of the past in vain? Cannot Science, with all its boasted arts, remove the causes, be they what they may, and effect a cure? Is the task too appalling for philanthropy? Some such thoughts came into my head as I looked upon the dense mass of men and women, destitute of work and food, who, at an early hour on the first Sunday in the New Year were collected from all the lodging-houses in the unpretentious but well-known building known as the Gray’s Yard Ragged Church and Schools, in a part of London not supposed, like the Seven Dials, to be the home of the wretched, and close by the mansions of the rich and the great. When I entered, as many as seven hundred had been got together, and there was a crowd three hundred strong, equally hungry, equally destitute, and equally worthy of Christian benevolence. On entering, each person, as soon as he or she had taken his or her seat, was treated to two thick slices of bread-and-butter and a cup of coffee, and at the close of the service there was the usual distribution of a pound meat-pie and a piece of cake to each individual, and coffee ad libitum. It may be added that the cost of this breakfast does not come out of the funds of the institution, but is defrayed by special subscriptions, and that Mr. John Morley had sent, as he always does, a parcel of one thousand Gospels for distribution. But what has this got to do, asks the reader, with the thought which, as I say, the sight suggested to me? Why, everything. In the course of the morning, Mr. F. Bevan, the chairman, asked those who had been there before to hold up their hands, and there was not one hand held up in answer to the question. There was a similar negative response when it was asked of that able-bodied mass before me—for there were no very old men in the crowd—as to whether any of them were in regular work. This year’s pauperism is, then, but the crop of the year. Relieved to-day, next year another crowd will follow; and so the dark and sullen waves, mournfully moaning and wailing, of the measureless ocean of human sorrow and suffering, and want and despair, ever come and ever go. The Christian Church is the lifeboat sailing across this ocean in answer to the cry for help, and rescuing them that are ready to perish. There are cynics who say even all this Christmas feasting does no good. It is a fact that on Christmas week there is a sudden and wonderful exodus from the workhouses around London.

We cannot get improved men and women till we have improved lodging-houses. Recently it was calculated that in St. Giles’s parish (once it was St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields), there were no less than 3,000 families living in single rooms. Again, in the parish of Holborn, there were quite 12,000, out of a population of 44,000, living in single rooms. Under such circumstances, what can we expect but physical and moral degradation? Healthy life is impossible for man or woman, boy or girl. A Divine Authority tells us, men do not gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. As I write, however, a ray of light reaches me. It appears nearly 10,000 persons are now reaping the benefit of the Peabody Fund. In the far east there are buildings at Shadwell and Spitalfields; in the far west at Chelsea, in Westminster, and at Grosvenor Road, Pimlico—the latter perfectly appointed edifice alone accommodating 1,952 persons. As many as 768 are lodged in the Islington block, and on the south side of the Thames there are Peabody buildings at Bermondsey, in the Blackfriars Road, Stamford Street, and Southwark Street. One room in the Peabody buildings is never let to two persons. A writer in The Daily News says: Advantage has been taken by the Peabody trustees to purchase land brought into the market by the operation of the Artisans and Labourers’ Dwellings Act. At the present moment nineteen blocks of building are in course of removal either by the City or the Metropolitan Board of Works. They are situate at Peartree Court, Clerkenwell; Goulston Street, Whitechapel; St. George the Martyr, Southwark; Bedfordbury; Whitechapel and Limehouse, near the London Docks; High Street, Islington; Essex Road, Islington; Whitecross Street; Old Pye Street, Westminster; Great Wild Street, Drury Lane; Marylebone, hard by the Edgware Road; Wells Street, Poplar; Little Coram Street; and Great Peter Street, Westminster. All these are under the control of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The remaining three—at Petticoat Square, at Golden Lane, and at Barbican—are being removed by the Corporation of the City of London. It is estimated that forty-one acres of land will be laid bare by this clearance—a space capable of lodging properly at least as many thousand people. There are of course other helpers in the same direction as the Peabody trustees, without being quite in the same sense public bodies administering a large fund for a special purpose, with the single object of extending its sphere of usefulness in accordance with public policy. Some of the companies, however, work for five per cent. return, and their efforts to construct suitable dwellings for workpeople and labourers are very valuable. The Improved Industrial Dwellings Company has buildings at Bethnal Green Road, at Shoreditch, at Willow Street, and close to the goods station of the Great Northern Railway, besides two blocks near the City Road. The Metropolitan Association has blocks of buildings in Whitechapel, and in many spots farther west, as have the Marylebone Association, the London Labourers’ Dwellings Society, and other bodies of similar kind. The success of Miss Octavia Hill in encouraging the construction of dwellings of the class required is well known, as are the buildings erected by Sir Sydney Waterlow, Mr. G. Cutt, and Mr. Newson. It is almost needless to add that the Baroness Burdett-Coutts has taken a warm interest in this important movement, as a building at Shoreditch now accommodating seven hundred persons will testify.

VII.—STUDIES AT THE BAR.

On Christmas Eve, in the midst of a dense fog that filled one’s throat and closed one’s eyes, and rendered the vast City one huge sepulchre, as it were, peopled by ghosts and ghouls, I spent a few hours in what may be called studies at the bar.

First, I turned my steps down Whitechapel way. It is there the pressure of poverty is felt as much as anywhere in London, and as it was early in the evening I went there, I saw it under favourable circumstances, for the sober people would be shopping, and the drunken ones would scarcely have commenced that riot and quarrelling which are the result in most cases of indulgence in alcohol. From the publican’s point of view, of course, I had nothing to expect but unmitigated pleasure. The stuff they sell, they tell us, is the gift of a good Providence, sent us in order to alleviate the gloom and lighten the cares of life. “It is a poor heart that never rejoices,” and on Christmas Eve, when we are thinking of the birth of Him who came to send peace on earth and goodwill amongst men, a little extra enjoyment may be expected. In some bars ample provision had been made for the event; decorations had been freely resorted to, and everything had been done to give colour to the delusion that Christmas jollity was to be produced and heightened by the use of what the publican had to sell. Almost the first glimpse I got of the consequences of adherence to this doctrine was at a corner house in Whitechapel, before I got as far as the church, where from the side-door of a gin-palace rushed out a little dirty woman with a pot of beer in her hand, followed by a taller one, who, catching hold of her, began to hit her. On this the attacked woman took a savage grip of the front hair of her opponent, who began to scream “Murder!” with might and main. A crowd was formed immediately, in the expectation of that favourite entertainment of a certain section of the British public—a free fight between two tipsy women; but, alas! they were too far gone to fight, and, after a good deal of bad language, the woman with the porter pursued her victorious way, while the other, almost too drunk to stand, returned to the bar, to rejoin the dirty group she had left, and to be served again—contrary, as I understand, to the law of the land—with the liquor of which she had already had more than enough. In that compartment everything was dirty—the women at the bar and the man behind it, nor was there a spark of good feeling or happiness in the group. There they were—the wives and mothers of the people—all equally besotted, all equally wretched. Oh heavens, what a sight!

And this reminds me of what I saw at a bar in the Gray’s Inn Road, in one of the largest of the many houses opened for refreshment, as it is called. In one compartment there were some thirty or forty wretched, dirty, ragged people, mostly women. One of them was in a state of elevation, and was dancing to a set who were evidently too far gone to appreciate her performance. With tipsy gravity, however, she continued her self-appointed task. Ah, poor thing! thought I, you are gay and hilarious now—to-morrow you will lie shivering in the cold—possibly crying for a morsel of bread. You have a garret to sleep in, and nothing to look forward to but the hospital or the workhouse. Heaven wills it, says the pietist. Heaven does nothing of the kind. In the mad debauchery I saw in that bar I am sure there must have been spent money that would have given the wretched topers happier homes, better dinners, and a future far happier than that which I saw hanging over them.

In Chancery Lane I came on several illustrations of the joyous conviviality of the season. One poor fellow just before me came down with a tremendous crash. Another nearly ran me down as he steered his difficult way along the slippery street and through the gloomy fog. Another merry old soul had given up all attempt to find his way home, and had seated himself on a doorstep, planted his hat on one side of his head, put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, and there, asleep, with a short pipe in his mouth, and his legs stretched out, looked as mournful and seedy an object as anyone could desire to contemplate. He had evidently been having a pleasant evening with his companions over a social glass, merely keeping up good old English customs, wishing himself and everyone he knew a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

At the gin-palaces near the railway termini, and in those bordering on any place of general marketing, the crowd of customers was enormous, and the class was far superior to those I saw in Drury Lane or Whitechapel, or the Gray’s Inn Road. They were real respectable working men and their wives, who had been out marketing for the morrow, and who, proud of their success in that direction, and of the store of good things they had collected for the anticipated dinner, had to treat themselves with a parting glass ere they went home. It was a busy time for the men at the bar. In one large public with four or five compartments, I reckoned there must have been nearly a hundred customers. It was quite an effort for anyone to get served; he had to fight his way through the mob to pay his money and get his glass, and then to struggle back to a quiet corner to drink off its contents with a friend or his wife, but there was no drunkenness.

The men and women of the respectable working class are not drunkards. They have too much sense for that, but they were merry, and a little inclined to be too talkative and heedless. For instance, a party of four went straight from a public-house to a railway station at which I happened to be waiting. One couple were going by the train home—another couple had come to see them off. The wife of the travelling party was fat and heavy, and in her jolly, careless mood, induced by the evening’s conviviality, as the train came up she missed her step and fell between the wheels and the platform. Fortunately the train had come to a standstill, or that woman and her husband and her family would have had anything but a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.