Here and There in London

by J. Ewing Ritchie

The present number of members of the Stock Exchange approaches nearly 800, each paying a subscription of £10 per annum, besides finding securities for between £800 and £900 for three years. Our stockbroker generally spends his money freely. If he is a married man he has a nice villa at Norwood or Clapham, and affects a stylish appearance. Then there are the “jobbers,” who remain inside the stock market, waiting for the broker, and who are prepared, immediately he appears, to make a price at which they are either buyers or sellers—the jobber calculating upon making it right with the broker, who has undertaken an operation the reverse of his own. Occasionally the jobber runs considerable risk, since, after concluding a bargain, and while endeavouring to obtain a profit on it, the market

may turn. Still he is a useful middle-man, and saves the broker a world of trouble.

But there is much business transacted which is less legitimate, and is known as time bargains, which are bargains to deliver stock on certain days at a certain price, the seller, of course, hoping that the price will fall, and the buyer, that it will rise when the period for completing the bargain has arrived. The speculative settlement is effected without making full payment for stock; the losing party simply pays the difference. One who speculates for a rise is a Bull (it is said the great Rothschild made a vast deal of money in this way), the speculator for a fall is a Bear. Continuation is the interest on money lent on the security of stock. A great deal of business is done in this way. A merchant, or a railway company, or a bank, have large sums of money to dispose of. Instead of locking it up they employ a broker, who lends it on certain securities, for a few days or a few weeks. Operations on the Stock Exchange answer in this way, but the small tradesman, or clerk, or professional man who ventures within the charmed circle of Capel-court for the purpose of speculation, generally learns bitterly to rue the day.

THE LONDON HOSPITAL.

I am walking along the streets, and in doing so pass a scaffolding where some new buildings are being erected. Suddenly I hear a shriek, and see a small crowd collected. A beery Milesian, ascending a ladder with a hod of mortar, slips and falls on the pavement below. He is a stranger in London, has no friends, no money, scarcely any acquaintance. “What’s his name?” we ask. “He ain’t got no name,” says one of his mates; “we calls him Carroty Bill.” What’s to be done? Why, take him to the hospital. The police fetch a stretcher. “Carroty Bill” is raised on it, and a small procession is formed. It swells as it goes along. The idle street population joins. We form one. A medical student is in the rear; he meets a chum, and exclaims exultingly, “They are taking him to our hospital.” The chum turns back, and the door is reached; admittance is easy. Happily, the place is not a Government establishment, and patients

are received whilst there is hope. Poor “Carroty Bill,” bruised and bleeding, yet stupid with drink, is examined carefully by the attendant surgeons. It is of no use asking him what’s the matter; his expressions, never very direct or refined, are now very muddy, and not a little coarse. A careful diagnosis reveals the extent of the injuries received. All that science can do for him is done. If he is taken as an inmate he will have as good nursing and food, and as skilful care and as unremitting attention, as if he were a prince of royal blood. Wonderful places are these hospitals. If Sawney, subject to an unpleasant sensation on the epidermis, blesses the memory of the good duke who erected on his broad domain convenient posts, let us bless a thousandfold the memory of Rahere, who obtained from Henry I. a piece of waste ground, upon which he built a hospital (now known as St. Bartholomew’s) for a master, brethren, and sisters, sick persons, and pregnant women; or of Thomas Guy, son of a lighterman in Horsleydown; but himself a bookseller in Lombard-street after the Great Fire; or of the nameless Prior of Bermondsey, who founded, adjoining the wall of his monastery, a house of alms, now

known as St. Thomas’s Hospital. Likewise let us thankfully record the gifts of the rich, of whose liberality such hospitals as those of King’s, and University, and Westminster, and the London, and St. George’s, are the magnificent results.

Now let us return to our friend Carroty Bill. As we have intimated, he is in the ward appropriated to such cases. One of the professors is now going his round, accompanied by his students. Let us go in. The first thing that strikes us is the size, and cleanliness, and convenience of the wards; how comfortable they are, how light, how cheerful, how lofty, and well ventilated! Each patient is stretched on a clean bed, and at the top are pinned the particulars of his case, and on a chair by his side are the few little necessaries he requires. The practised physician soon detects the disease and the remedies. His pupils are examined; the patient forms the subject of a hasty lecture. One is asked what he would do, another what disease such and such a symptom denotes; a word is whispered to the nurse; the sick man, whose wistful eye hangs on every movement, is bid to keep up his spirits, and he feels all the more confident and the better fitted to struggle back to

health for the few short words of the professor, to whom rich men pay enormous fees, and whose fame perhaps extends over the habitable globe. And so we pass on from bed to bed. Occasionally the professor extracts a moral. This man is dying of gin. “How much did you take a day?”—“Only a quartern.”—“And for how many years?”—“Seven.” The professor shakes his head—the students know that the man is past cure, that death is only a question of time. A similar process is gone through on the women’s ride, and anxiously do sad eyes follow the little group as the professor and students pass on, in their best way mitigating human agony, and bidding the downcast hope. What tales might be told! Here lies down the prodigal to die; here the village maid hides her shame beneath the dark wings of death. Under these hospital walls—reared and maintained by Christian charity, what men once proud, and rich, and great—what women once tenderly nursed and slavishly obeyed—what beauties once fondly caressed, old, withered, wan, without money and without friends, alone in the bleak, bitter world—linger and pass away for ever.

Let us go down stairs, along that long passage