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

by J. Ewing Ritchie

What great events from little causes spring! Last year a gentleman was run over by a butcher’s cart through the careless driving of the butcher; and finding that accidents of that nature were of frequent occurrence and were increasing, he, with other gentlemen, obtained a return of the number of accidents from Sir Edmund Henderson, the chief of the Metropolitan Police, which showed that, in 1878, 124 persons were killed and 3,052 run over in the Metropolitan districts. But this is not all. The return only showed such accidents as came under the knowledge of the Metropolitan police. Accordingly application was made to the Registrar-General of Deaths, and from him it was ascertained that 237 persons were killed by vehicles and 3,399 run over during that year in and around London; and hence the formation of the society for the prevention of street accidents. Further researches made by the secretary among the London hospitals resulted in learning that run-over cases formed the most common class of accidents. The house surgeon of the principal hospital wrote that he computed there was an average of thirty “run-over” cases a week brought there for treatment, which, in that one hospital alone, would make 930 accidents attended to there yearly. The result of the society’s operations are satisfactory. At any rate this year the returns show one death less, and a falling off in run-over cases to the number of 517. Such decrease the society claims to be the result of its labours, on the ground that every year during the last ten years has showed an increase of six per cent. If this be so, it was well that the secretary was run over, especially as apparently he was not much hurt by the operation. Physically he is as fine a man as you would wish to see; and though undoubtedly the sensation at the time was not an agreeable one, yet, if it has led to the reduction of street accidents, how much cause have we to rejoice. It seems almost as if Mr. Buckle were right when he questions the beneficial effect of morality on national progress. At any rate, if I were a lover of paradox I would quote Mandeville to show how private vices become public benefits. A butcher boy recklessly ran over Mr. Keevil, and the result is a decrease of street accidents and mortality. Statues have been erected to men who have less benefited the public than that butcher boy.

But accidents will happen, and I fear, as the Lord Mayor truly said at the first annual meeting of the society held in the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House, it is to be feared most of them are really accidents, that is, things that cannot be prevented. The society aims to prevent accidents by enforcing existing laws; by petitioning Parliament to amend them; by prosecuting offenders for furious driving; by granting donations or loans to sufferers; by compulsory carriage of a lamp on all vehicles, trimmed and lighted after sunset; by compulsory use of brake-power; and by stationing the society’s mounted and other officers in the leading thoroughfares of the metropolis, and other towns, to check and pursue offenders, and to enforce the claims of the society. At its first meeting we had an array of elderly peers and distinguished persons, that was really overpowering. One reverend speaker looked quite pathetic, as, with an arm in a sling, he narrated how he had been the victim of a street accident. Let it not be thought that I am inclined to write of the reverend gentleman and the society with levity. I, too, have suffered. The other night in the fog, in a street-crossing, I experienced a disagreeable sensation on the side of my head—which fortunately nature has made thick enough for ordinary wear and tear—and in the gloaming found that a cab had driven up against me. Fortunately, I escaped with a slight contusion, but it would have been a sad thing for my small home circle had it been a serious matter. Alas! to men every day accidents occur that are serious; and there are women white with terror, and children struck dumb with an undefined sense of impending ill, as the news comes to them that the husband and father is in the hospital. Sometimes the agony is prolonged, as they do not even learn that; and who can tell the bitterness as the weary hours of the night pass away and the cold gray of morn reappears, as the watchful ear tries to fancy in every sound of the passing footstep the return of one never to come home more? By all means let us, if we can, prevent street accidents. Life is not so bright, earth is not so full of joy, that we may neglect, when an opportunity occurs, to save one breaking heart, to prevent one solitary tear.

Sir Arthur Helps, just before his death, published another of his popular volumes, “Friends in Council,” in which certain friends—men of the world and of high position—are supposed to discuss the several problems of the day. The scene is laid in a villa on the banks of the Thames. The host is Sir John Ellesmere—not Mr. Milverton. The subject is “Social Pressure,” a subject which may certainly be said to come home to our businesses and bosoms. The aim of all the speeches is how we are to be comfortable; and, as citizens of this great city, as was to be expected, London occupies the chief place in their thoughts, is referred to in all the arguments—in short, points the moral and adorns the tale. Milverton reads an essay on the subject, which lays it down as an indisputable truth that one of the greatest evils of modern life is the existence of great towns. The metropolis is pointed out as an illustration. First we are told the loss of animal power is enormous. Four or five hundred horses are carried to the knacker’s yard each week in London. After a day’s business it is a pleasure to take a walk in the country; but, it is asked, Who can do that in London, where there are, in several directions, ten continuous miles of houses? Then, as to the pleasures of society, these are destroyed by the immense extent of the metropolis. Even the largest houses are not, relatively speaking, large enough for the town in which they are situated. As regards questions of health, Dr. Arnott, whom Sir Arthur terms one of the greatest sanitary reformers of the age, remarked that though London is a place where the rate of mortality is not exceedingly high, yet it is a place where nobody except butchers’ boys enjoy perfect health—the full state of health that they are capable of enjoying.

In spite of the somewhat extreme notions of the “Friends,” who seem to forget that men are driven into cities by the necessity which compels most of them to earn their daily bread, it must be admitted that in the question of air they have hit a blot. The first article of food, namely, fresh air, is that which is least under the command of man. Mr. Milverton says there is no danger of London being starved for want of animal food. There is more and more danger every year of its health being diminished from the want of a supply of fresh air. It is stated, in confirmation of this fact, that every year the hospital surgeons in London find it more difficult to cure wounds and injuries of all kinds to the human body, on account, it is supposed, of the growing impurity of the London air. This bad air kills off the cows. A London cow does not last a third part of the time one does in the country. On this head much more might have been said. The author might have referred to the mournful fate of the fine cattle, who, recently, on the field of their triumph, the Smithfield Club Show, found, not laurels and rewards, but a grave, in consequence of the fog. We read that that famous man, Count Rumford, used to estimate the number of millions of chaldrons of coals which were suspended in the atmosphere of London, and to dwell upon the mischief which was caused to furniture by the smoke when it descended. But there are other special causes of injury, such as dust and chemical emanations of all kinds. The result is that everything in such a city as London soon loses all bloom and freshness, and, indeed, is rapidly deteriorated. The more beautiful the thing, the more swift and fatal is this deterioration. The essayist calculates the injury of property in London, caused, not by reasonable wear and tear, but by the result of the agglomeration of too many people upon one spot of ground, as not less than three or four millions of pounds per annum. It is to be feared the estimate is not exaggerated.

There is a further illustration. Sir Rutherford Alcock, as we all know, represented our interests in China. While there he visited the Chinese Wall, and brought back two specimens from it in the way of bricks. These bricks must have been many centuries old, but they had kept their form and betrayed no signs of decay in that atmosphere. Sir Rutherford put these two bricks out in the balcony of his house in London. This was about two years ago. One of these bricks has already gone to pieces, being entirely disintegrated by the corrosive influence of the London atmosphere.

In another way we also suffer. Certain kinds of architecture are out of place in London, says our essayist: “All that is delicate and refined is so soon blurred, defaced, and corroded by this cruel atmosphere, that it is a mockery and a delusion to attempt fine work.” There ought to be a peculiar kind of architecture for such a metropolis—large, coarse, and massive, owning neither delicacy nor refinement, and not admitting minute description of any kind. And, again, that coarse work requires to be executed in the hardest material, otherwise the corrosion is so great as to cause the need for constant repair.

Another danger is pointed out in the following anecdote. At a former time, when this country was threatened with an invasion of cholera, the speaker (Milverton) was one of a committee of persons appointed by Government supposed to have some skill in sanitary science. “We found,” he remarks, “that a most deadly fever had originated from the premises of one of the greatest vendors of oysters in the centre of the metropolis. Attached to his premises there was a large subterranean place where he deposited his oyster shells; this place was connected with the sewers. The small portion of animal matter left in the under shells became putrescent; and from the huge mass of them that had accumulated in that subterranean place there finally arose a stench of the most horrible nature, which came up through all the neighbouring gratings, and most probably into some of the neighbouring houses.”

My readers need not be alarmed. Such a nuisance would not be permitted now; and as oysters are getting dearer and scarcer every day, it is to be questioned whether these shells will be ever again in sufficient numbers as to form a putrid and pernicious heap. But that the air is polluted by noxious substances and trades is one of the greatest and most pressing evils of the ever-threatening perils of such a Babylon as that in which we live. We suggest, advisedly, the removal of all noxious trades from London, in spite of all that the political economists can say to the contrary. This, however, is of course but a small part of the question. The main object is to see what can be done to render this vast agglomeration of animate and inanimate beings less embarrassing and injurious. The first thing that must occur to almost every mind is the necessity for preserving open spaces, and even of creating them, a necessity of which the Corporation of London is at any rate aware.

There is more of novelty in the following: “Another evil of great towns is noise. There is the common proverb that half the world does not know how the other half lives, which, perhaps, would be a more effective saying if the word ‘suffers’ were substituted for ‘lives.’ It is probable that there is no form of human suffering which meets with less sympathy or regard from those who do not suffer from it, than the suffering caused by noise. The man of hard, healthy, well-strung nerves can scarcely imagine the real distress which men of sensitive nerves endure from ill-regulated noise—how they literally quiver and shiver under it. Now, of course, the larger the town, the more varied and the more abundant is the noise in it. Even the domestic noises are dreadful to a man of acute nervous sensibility.”

In the City we have done much to remove this evil. The asphalte pavement has wrought wonders; the police have been also efficacious in putting a stop to some of our roughest and most discordant cries; and yet there is a volume of noise, ever rising up and filling the air, which must shorten many a life, and which must be a permanent source of misery. There are few of us who have not realised what Sir Arthur Helps describes as the terrors and horrors of ill-regulated noise, or have not wondered that so much intellectual work is done so well as it is in these great cities. Now that Sir Arthur has called attention to the subject, it may be other people will think it worth consideration.