This class is fond of Theatrical amusements; and numbers may be observed waiting on an evening before the doors of the Theatres impatient and crowding for admission. The Pickpocket is always ready; but his operations are often frustrated by the Peace-officer's constant exclamation of "Take care of your pockets." When the door is opened, a dangerous trial of skill ensues: every person endeavours to enter first; the space is clogged; and pushing, screams, and execrations follow. If we enter the One-shilling Gallery, we witness constant disputes often terminating in
blows, and observe heated bodies stripped of the outward garments, furious faces, with others grinning horribly, hear loud and incessant talking and laughter, beating the floor with sticks, hissing, clapping the hands, and the piercing whistle, with exclamations for "Musick."
This motley collection are, however, generally attentive spectators and patient auditors during the representations; and I have remarked that any generous sentiment from the characters on the stage never fails to receive the loudest tokens of applause from the One-shilling Gallery; but this Gallery becomes a very troublesome appendage to the Theatre, when their highnesses divide into two parties, one for, and the other against the repetition of a pleasing song. This is particularly felt in the performance of a favourite Opera or Musical Farce.
The next stage is that of Journeymen; thousands of whom have been steady well-behaved youths, in the practice of passing their evenings and holidays in rational pursuits with parents or friends, and who enter upon their profession determined to render themselves respectable, and their connexions happy. With such I have nothing to do; there is too much still-life for description in the man who rises at six in the morning, and works without cessation till six in the evening. His intervals of amusement may be directed to the same objects, Tea-gardens, public
Exhibitions, and the Theatres; but his conduct is so properly governed, that Temperance and Pleasure dance in his features.
Those whose characteristic outline I have traced before work, perhaps, three days in the week. Sunday they appropriate to the same species of relaxation to which they accustomed themselves in apprenticeship: Monday is sainted with them. And who will work on Saint Monday? Not the idle Journeyman and Labourer of London. Unfortunately the votaries of this Saint celebrate his name with libations of Beer and Gin, the fumes of which render them unfit for work on Tuesday. On Wednesday they begin the week; not by a close attention to their business, as their employers find to the extent of vexation and disappointment, but by repeated potations of beer, which a boy brings at stated hours all through the day; by retiring at twelve o'clock to dinner, and frequently returning at four, and going again to tea at four, if they should accidentally get to work at one. The excessive use of the former soporific beverage renders the Journeyman stupid, fretful, and quarrelsome, which any person may perceive by passing a public house at almost any period of the day. At the close of the week necessity compels this description of madmen to work; for, Saturday arriving, he must procure the means of redeeming his own and his wife's clothes from that most respectable member of
society the Pawnbroker. And this is the labouring life of at least thirty thousand persons at present in London!
Their domestic amusements chiefly consist in disputes with a Wife, who finds herself and children sacrificed to the brutal propensities of Drinking and Idleness; and the scene of contention is intolerable, if the lady possesses a high spirit; so entirely so to the husband, that he fixes himself for the evening with a party at the public house, where he is at first entertained, and entertains in turn, on the thriving subject of Politicks, culled from the delightful themes of so many thousands massacred in one place, and as many in another. As the night advances, the Journeyman becomes whimsical; one of the company is requested to sing, the rest join in chorus; and another hour elapses in a chaos of sounds equally insulting to the general quiet of the publick and the neighbourhood. By this time the Wife peeps through the windows, hoping to find a favourable opportunity of getting the sot to bed; which if she accomplishes without a kicking, she may be pronounced a lucky woman for that evening. A sober inhabitant of London cannot but be shocked at the staggering fellow-citizens he meets with late on a summer evening, labouring under a voluntary St. Vitus's dance, when returning to their homes. I saw a man of this description in Russel-square, who had placed
his hat on the pavement, and danced round it. To this ludicrous exhibition all eyes were directed. "Ah!" said an old female to another, "that man would never drink again could he see himself with our sensations."
There are thirty-six public-houses in Old-street between Goswell-street and the City-road. Can they be supported by the population of that neighbourhood without endless excesses? And there are other districts where those curses to society are equally numerous? Shame on our thoughtless conduct in permitting a trade calculated only for human destruction! If comfort, health, and pleasure can arise from quaffing gallons of beer, let the lower classes be compelled to drink it at home with their friends and families; and no longer suffer that promiscuous mixture of folly and vice which results from thieves drinking with honest men. It is from this cause alone that men are brutalized. Difference of opinion will arise between members of the most polished classes: those become quarrels in the lower; and hence the petty actions for assaults which are tried in every direction. Examine the Old Bailey causes; and if Public-houses and Dram-shops are not found to be the general theatres of thieving plots and murders, let me receive no farther credit.