London has 10,500 distinct streets, squares, circuses, crescents, terraces, villas, rows, buildings, places, lanes, courts, alleys, mews, yards, rents. The paved streets of London, according to a return published in 1856, number over 5000, and exceed 2000 miles in length; the cost of this paved roading was 14 millions, and the repairs cost £1,800,000 per annum. The Post Office employs 3200 officials in London alone. London contains 1900 miles of gas pipes, with a capital of nearly £4,000,000 spent in the preparation of gas. The cost of gas-lighting is half a million. It has 360,000 lights; and 13,000,000 cubic feet of gas are burnt every night. Last year along these streets the enormous quantity of upwards of 80 millions of gallons of water rushed for the supply of the inhabitants, being nearly double what it was in 1845. Mr Mayhew says, if the entire people of the capital were to be drawn up in marching order, two and two, the length of the great army of Londoners would be no less
than 670 miles, and supposing them to move at the rate of three miles an hour, it would require more than nine days and nights for the average population to pass by. To accommodate this crowd, 125,000 vehicles pass through the thoroughfares in the course of 12 hours; 3000 cabs, 10,000 private and job carriages and carts, ply daily in the streets; at the present time there are upwards of 800 omnibuses running along various routes in the metropolis, and of this number 595 are the property of a single and mostly foreign proprietary, the London General Omnibus Company. 600 omnibuses, with horses and harness and goodwill, were purchased by the company for a sum of £400,000, or for very nearly £700 for each vehicle. The 595 omnibuses of the company ran in London, in the week ending 31st of October, 1857, not less than 222,779 miles, or nearly ten times the circumference of the globe, and they carried not less than 920,000 passengers. Assuming that the remaining one-fourth of the London omnibuses, not belonging to the company, carried an equal proportion, we shall have, as the travelling portion of the population of London, 1,115,000 persons. 3000 conveyances enter the
metropolis daily from the surrounding country. In the year 1856 the total revenue derived from the duty on omnibuses within the area of the great metropolis amounted to £74,270 against £85,965 in 1855, and £108,051 in 1854. The revenue from cabs in the metropolis was £82,110 against £75,281, and £64,210 in 1854. Of the revenue on omnibuses last year, £69,493 accrued from mileage duty, £3791 from license duty, and £983 from drivers’ and conductors’ licenses. As regards the cab duty, £74,736 accrued from weekly duty, £5292 from license duty, and £2081 from drivers’ and watermen’s licenses.
Speaking generally, Tennyson tells us—
“Every minute dies a man,
Every minute one is born.”
In London, 169 people die daily, and a babe is born every five minutes. The number of persons, says the Registrar-General, who died in 1856, in 116 public institutions, such as workhouses and hospitals, was 10,381. It is really shocking to think, and a deep stigma on the people,—or on the artificial arrangements of society, by which so much poverty is perpetuated,—that nearly one person out of five, who died
that year, closed his days under a roof provided by law or public charity. In 1856 the police report 147 suicides. Dr. Wakley says, 4000 infants die annually of neglect. It is calculated 500 people are drowned in the Thames every year. In the first week of last year there were five deaths from intemperance alone. How much wretchedness lies in these facts,—for the deaths from actual intemperance bear but a small proportion to the deaths induced by the immoderate use of intoxicating liquors; and of the 500 drowned, by far the larger class, we have every reason to believe, are of the number of whom Hood wrote—
“Mad with life’s history,
Glad to death’s mystery
Swift to be hurled—
Anywhere, anywhere,
Out of the world!”
A meeting was held last year of the unemployed, chiefly the carpenters, bricklayers, and bricklayers’ labourers of the metropolis, in which it was stated that their number—though very probably there may be some exaggeration here—is 35,000. If these men are married and have families, we get a further idea of the deep
distress in this wealthy and luxurious capital,—this capital where the gold of Australia, the jewels of Golconda, the silks and spices of the East, come for sale, and are lavished as freely on the most questionable purposes and persons as on the noblest specimens of humanity and the most glorious objects for which men care to live. Then think of the inmates of the lunatic asylums, and the poor-houses, and the hospitals, in most cases sent there as the result of their own ignorance or imprudence. Last Christmas day the dinners provided at the workhouses for the inmates fed between 30 and 40,000. Add to these our prison population, and our criminal classes, and our prostitutes,—and what a picture we get of the Night Side of London, of the classes whose existence is a reproach or a curse. In London one man in every ninety belongs to the criminal class.