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

by J. Ewing Ritchie

In one place, patronised by navvies and their wives, there was such a hideous exhibition of indecency that I may not record it. “Why don’t you interfere?” said a gentleman to the pot-boy. “Oh,” was the reply, “you can’t say anything at this season of the year. It is best to leave them alone.”

In such low neighbourhoods as Drury Lane it seemed to me that the men preponderated; indeed, at many places they were the only customers. One could not much wonder to find them in such places. Either they live in the low lodging-houses close by, where they pay fourpence a night for a bed, or they have a room for themselves and families in the neighbourhood. In neither case is there much peace for them in what they call their home. They are best out of doors, and then comes the attraction of the public-house, and on Christmas Eve in the dull raw fog almost the only bright spot visible was the gleam of its gaudy splendour, and as a natural consequence bars were pretty well filled. They always are in poor neighbourhoods of a night, and especially such as have a corner situation. It is always good times with the proprietors of such places, even if trade be bad and men are out of work, and little children cry for bread and old people die of starvation and want. A corner public-house is never driven into the bankruptcy court.

But let me change the scene. These low neighbourhoods are really disgusting to people of cultivated minds and refined tastes. I am standing in a wonderfully beautiful hall. On one side is a long counter filled with decanters and wineglasses. Behind these are some lively young ladies, fashionably dressed, and with hair elaborately arranged. The customers are chiefly young men, whom Albert Smith would have described as gents. They mostly patronise what they call “bittah” beer, and they are wise in doing so, as young men rarely can afford wine, and “bittah” beer is not so likely to affect the few brains they happen to have about them. Of course a good deal of wine is drunk, and there is a great demand for grog, but beer is the prevailing beverage; and as to tea and coffee and such things, they are unfairly handicapped, as the Hebe at the bar charges me sixpence for a small cup of coffee, while the gent by my side pays but twopence for his beer; nor can I say that he pays too much, as he has the opportunity thus afforded to him of talking to a young lady who has no refuge from his impertinence, and who is bound to be civil unless the cad is notoriously offensive, as her trade is to sell liquor, and the more he talks the more he drinks. But the mischief does not end here. Many a married man fancies it is fun to loll over the counter and spoon with the girls behind. He has more cash than the gent, and spends more. If he is not a rich man he would pass himself off as such; he drinks more than is good for him; he makes the young ladies presents; he talks to them in a sentimental strain, and it may be he has a wife and family at home who are in need of almost the necessaries of life.

In many cases the end of all this is wretchedness at home and loss of character and means of subsistence; if he is in a house of business he lives beyond his income, and embezzlement is the result. If he be in business on his own account his end is bankruptcy, at any rate his health is not benefited by his indulgence at the bar, and to most men who have to earn their daily bread loss of health is loss of employment and poverty, more or less enduring and grinding and complete. What the gin-shop is to the working man, the restaurant and the refreshment bar are to the middle classes of society. There is no disgrace in dropping in there, and so the young man learns to become a sot. Planted as they are at all the railway termini, they are an ever-present danger; they are fitted up in a costly style, and the young ladies are expected to be as amiable and good-looking as possible, and thus when a young man has a few minutes to spare at a railway terminus, naturally he makes his way to the refreshment bar.

Dartmoor was full, writes the author of “Convict Life,” with the men whom drink had led into crime—from the mean wretch who pawned his wife’s boots for ninepence, which he spent in the gin-shop, to the young man from the City who became enamoured “with one of the painted and powdered decoy-ducks who are on exhibition at the premises of a notorious publican within a mile of Regent Circus.” At first he spent a shilling or two nightly; but he quickly found that the road to favour was at bottle of Moët, of which his inamorata and her painted sisters partook very freely. The acquaintance soon ripened under the influence of champagne till he robbed his employer, and was sent to Dartmoor. “He told me himself,” writes our author, “that from the time he first went to that tavern he never went to bed perfectly sober, and that all his follies were committed under the influence of champagne.”

Another case he mentions was even worse. At the time of his conviction the young man of whom he writes was on the eve of passing an examination for one of the learned professions; but be had been an habitué of the buffet of let us call it the Royal Grill Room Theatre and a lounger at the stage door of that celebrated establishment, and had made the acquaintance of one of the ladies of the ballet. Under the influence of champagne he also soon came to grief. “In the name of God,” says the writer to young men in London, “turn up taverns.”

But what is to be done? The publican, whether he keeps a gin-palace or a refreshment bar, must push his trade. The total number of public-houses, beershops, and wine-houses in the Metropolitan Parliamentary boroughs is 8,973, or one to each 333 persons. This is bad; but Newcastle-on-Tyne is worse, having one public-house to 160 inhabitants, and Manchester has one to every 164 inhabitants. The amount paid in license-fees by publicans in the Metropolitan district last year amounted to £108,316; the total for the kingdom being £1,133,212. But great as is the number of these places, the trade flourishes. A licensed house in one of the finest parts of London (Bethnal Green), lately sold for upwards of £22,000. Another, a third or fourth rate house in North London, sold for £18,000; other licensed houses sell for £30,000, £40,000, £50,000, and even more. As to the refreshment bars, it lately came out in evidence that a partner in one of the firms most connected with them stated his income to be £40,000 a year. It is said one firm, whose business is chiefly devoted to refreshment bars, pays its wine merchants as much as £1,000 a week.

VIII.—IN AN OPIUM DEN.

An effort is being made by a band of British philanthropists, of which the Rev. Mr. Turner is secretary, to put down, if not the opium traffic, at any rate that part of it which is covered by the British flag. Opium is to the Chinese what the quid is to the British tar, or the gin-bottle to the London charwoman. But in reality, as I firmly believe, for the purpose of opening the door to all sorts of bribery and corruption, the traffic is prohibited as much as possible by the Chinese Government, for the ostensible object of preserving the health and morals of the people. This task is a very difficult one. A paternal Government is always in difficulties, and once we Christian people of England have gone to war with the Chinese in order to make them take our Indian-grown opium—a manufacture in which a large capital is invested, and the duty of which yields the British Government in India a magnificent revenue. It is a question for the moralist to decide how far a Government is justified in saying to a people: “We know so and so is bad, but as you will use it, you may as well pay a heavy tax on its use.” That is the practical way in which statesmen look at it, and of course there is a good deal to be said for that view. But it is not pleasant to feel that money, even if it be used for State purposes, is made in a dirty manner; though I have been in countries where the minister of the religion of holiness and purity is content to take a part of his living from the brothel-keeper and the prostitute. Evidently there are many men as ready to take the devil’s money as was Rowland Hill to accept the Bible at his hands.

But I am touching on questions not to be settled in the twinkling of an eye, or by a phrase or two in print. Perhaps I may best serve the cause of humanity if, instead of saying what I think and feel, I merely content myself with describing what I saw in the East-End of London, one Saturday night, in this year of grace one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five.