London : Its Crimes & Dens Of Misery

[Howard Brown]

A letter to the editor (unsigned ) a year before the outbreak of Civil War in America.

Wilkes Spirit Of The Times
July 14, 1860
************

London, June, 1860.

London—Its Dens of Crime and Misery.

Having visited the better parts of London, and given due at-
tention to its more deserving features, I reserved for the last
night of my stay a visit to those dens and hiding holes of misery
and crime, which make this city the reproach of civilization,
and in an unenviable sense entitle it to be called one of the
wonders of the world. To enable myself to do this to advan-
tage and with safety, I made a requisition upon the services of
the policeman who had been detailed to attend upon my friends
and myself by the superintendent; and he, to afford us the
largest facilities for our purpose, sent information to the various
stations in the neighborhoods we wished to visit, in order that
we might be provided with a local guard, in waiting at each
place, who were known to the desperadoes of each district.

Thus prepared, we chartered two coaches, and eight of us
set out at ten o'clock upon our novel expedition. Having made
a good outside observation of the neighborhood of Seven Dials,
we plunged into the recesses of a dark and filthy passage called
Church Lane, groping our way in the rear of two of the de-
tectives of the district (one of whom bore a lantern for our
guidance), and instructed by our special officer, who kept close
beside us, to be careful how we stepped here and there. Truly,
all these attentions were necessary. The vile street was filled
with noisome pools, which gathered from the stifled dwellings
faster than they could be swept away; while from the cave-
like doors on either side, there issued steams of odor that poison-
ed the whole atmosphere. Our entrance into this region seemed
to be an event among its inmates. Our lantern had not ad-
vanced many yards before the narrow street swarmed with
squalid-looking wretches, and the doorways stood wedged with
sullen figures, some of whom were smoking short stumps of
pipes with their arms folded, as if they were standing for gal-
lows illustrations of the Newgate Calendar; while others peep-
ed over their heads, and secure in their retreat, delivered them-
selves of some ribald witticisms on the object of our visit.
Those who were in the street flocked around us and ran along
side, as if we were a troop of Japanese; but while they pre
tended to be very officious in our service, by shouting, “Clear
the road for the gentlemen there!” we discovered that they had
quite another object.

At almost every step, some impersonation of the “Artful
Dodger” would make a skillful strike at a coat pocket, and fail
ing, would be succeeded by some female operator, perhaps full
grown, perhaps no older than himself. We had been cautioned
against these attempts by our conductor, before we set out, and
had consequently left our watches and our pocket-books at
home, making him our treasurer for way expense, in the sum of
three or four pounds for distribution among the beats we were
to see. Nevertheless, though barren of temptation, our pockets
were continually angled at, and in every dark passage through
which we passed, we could feel some new and enterprising mo-
bler at his work. In issuing from a doorway, I felt a gentle
approach from a hand behind, but being indifferent, from the
insignificance of my possessions in that quarter, I quietly abided
the result. The hand stole along as soft as the touch of love,
and when properly poised within the neck of the pocket, made
a dexterous dive into its racesses. A sudden movement of the
crowd defeated the excellent intention, and in commisseration
for the disappointment of one so worthy in his profession, I
turned and handed the operator the handkerchief he had been
alter, with a polite bow and a remark that I feared it was hardly
worthy of his acceptance. The unblushing ruffian received it
gayly, and after taking off a cap which lay on his bullet shaped
head like a muffin, in answer to my politeness, passed the cam-
bric two or three times under his nose, and hoped he might [text is unclear]
to see the day when I would be Lord Chancellor. At the same
moment another of our party felt a signal to gather up his
skirts while as I issued from the doorway into the street a
third member of our crowd gently satirized a hatchet-faced
fellow, who had an expression like a badger, with not having
“sounded” him sufficiently low down. “Thank you, sir,” said
the badger, “I'll try and do better next time;” and he vanish-
ed among the crowd.

The first of the dens which we entered in this region, was
a cellar, or more properly a cave, many steep steps under
ground, lit by a single rushlight, with walls as black as if it
had long done service as a coal pit. A narrow table tra-
versed the extreme length of the apartment, around which
sat a dozen evil-looking men, most of whom were smoking
pipes, while a tall, gaunt fellow, more sinister in appearance
than the rest, stood with his ragged skirts spread independ-
ently before a fire-place, whistling a tune, as he rocked himself
carelessly to and fro in the style of Robert Macaire. There was
a general stir as we entered, and most of the men at the table
touched their caps in honor of the visitation Robert Macaire,
however, merely stopped his note, and kept settling himself
dashing y in his clothes at intervals, by way of evincing his
complete indifference to our presence. Our guide saluted the
company respectfully, inquired how many boarded in that es-
tablishment, and after he had received the answer of “fourteen,”
asked if one of them would not sing a song. At this three or
four of them glanced at a man at the centre of the board, who
till this moment had evinced no disposition to look up. Feeling
himself urged, however, to respond to the invitation, he glanced
towards the ruffian at the fire-place, and receiving a slight nod
of permission from that quarter, he took off his hat to begin. I
had not noticed him till that moment, and now that I scrutinized
him clearly, I was surprised at his appearance. His hair, which
had once been flaxen, was matted and begrimmed, but though
in this sorry plight, it lay in large and not ungraceful waves,
and exhibited here and there a latent golden tinge. Its fault
was its abundance, but when he lifted it with his dirty hand,
he displayed a fine white forehead, even features, and a pair of
large blue eyes, that would have made the fortune of many a
gallant at the court of Louis XIV. Dirty as he was, he seemed
extremely out of place in this foul and noisome den, and as if
to enlarge the proofs of his unfitness, he selected the plaintive
song of
“The light of other days.”

[Howard Brown]

Before he had finished the first stanza, it was plain why com-
mon consent had indicated him as the minstrel of the party. He
not only had a full and melodious voice, but he sang with ex-
ceeding good taste, and there was a thrill of sad feeling in his
tone, that claimed sympathy from every one who heard him.
He puzzled me very much, and I longed for an opportunity to
question him as to his life, but fenced off by the forbidding men
around, I was content to read in his features and his tone the
gloomy story of a life of broken hopes, perhaps of broken love,
and a condition of irretrievable depression. Even in that place
he seemed to be a hopeless loafer, whose want of spirit was
tolerated because of his gifts, and whose yielding good nature
helped to make him the pet of the crowd. When we had fin-
ished, most of the party glanced towards us to witness our ad-
miration, and even Robert Macaire, who had been beating time
with his foot, condescended a nod of approbation. After a slight
pause, our guide put his hand in his pocket and asked who was
the captain of the room. “That's our captain,” said a fellow
with a head like a walrus, pointing with the stump of his pipe to
the figure at the fire-place. Our policeman at this turned the
stream of his lantern full upon the independent gentleman in the
torn coat tails. A slight recognition might then have been observ-
ed to pass between the ruffian and the officer, but it was only the
recognition of a reciprocal glance, after which the latter drop-
ped a few shillings in the captain's hands, and told him to spend
it for the entertainment of the company, concluding his remark
with: “and no chisseling; do you mind?”“Oh, our captain
is an honest man,” said a voice from the extreme end of the
table, whereupon we vanished into the open air.

Our policemen led the way across the street, and brushed the
crowd from a narrow passage, the gap of which seemed like the
entrance to a pig-sty, and was but wide enough for us to ad-
vance in single file. The board flooring, sluiced and under-
mined by continual streams of filth, plashed under our feet, and
our noses were assailed with vapors that seemed almost tan-
gible to the touch. However, we groped on, sustained in har-
dihood by a common example, though the loss of my handker-
chief almost made me a deserter. Far up in this foul alley we
came to a side-door, which let us into an apartment some sixteen
feet square, and about ten feet high. All was dark when we
entered, but our lantern lit up a sight such as I had never
seen before, and such a one as I pray God I may never see
again. In that contracted lair lay thirty human beings, men,
women, and children; yes, thirty white Christians, of a Chris-
tian land, packed head and feet in layers, like the black cargo
of a slave-ship under chase, and most of them, adults as well as
infants, as naked as they were born. Some were families, some
were man and wife, some were single lodgers at a penny a head.
Some wore a few scanty patches, others were partly covered
by a sheet, but many were threadless and indifferent to expo-
sure. In the centre of the room stood a large tub or reservoir,
which the comity of the apartment permitted to be used by two
or three at once; and in the muck and gloom, and stench and
vermin of the place, these larvæ of a stifled and rotten civiliza-
tion, crawled and grovelled and profaned the rites of nature;
and what seems most strange of all, bred souls for immortality.
I deal with a repulsive subject, but surgery cannot be fastidious,
and I dwell upon the features of this den, because it exists al-
most within a stone's throw from the palaces of nobles, and
under the noses, it may be said, of the snuffling hypocrites of
Exeter Hall, whose mock philanthropy denies Sunday sunshine
to the wearied artisan, and who plunder well-meaning poverty
to provide blankets and bibles for the happier heathen.

Opposite this model lodging house, over the way as it were,
but across a passage only two feet wide, is a restaurant, where
chops are cooked, lobsters and ale served out, and dirty-faced
gentlemen are furnished with pipes and tobacco at the very low-
est rates. Here the creatures who crawl and move in the other
room get fed, and replenish the foul currents of their being with
fouler food. The occupations of those who inhabit such dens
as these are various; some are street cadgers, who rake the
thoroughfares for rags and paper; some are those peculiar seav-
engers who gather offal, and who become so enterprizing in
their calling, as to chase the coach horses in the street in anti-
cipation of a windfall—a frequent sight in London; some are
beggars; some thieves, and some are mere loafers, who, having
raised a capital of children, send them forth to pilfer or to beg,
in order that they, their parents, may recline in an opulence of
gin and tobacco during the evening of their days.

I need not suggest what should be done to eradicate this state
of things. It is a reproach and a scandal which bears its own
lesson on its face.

[Howard Brown]

Our party went into two other dens of this description, in one
of which there were twenty four, and in the other sixteen per-
sons, but as they did not differ much from the one I have de-
scribed. I pass them by. In each some women were found ready
to sit up, and give us the statistics of the apartment, and to re-
ceive in behalf of the company our customary largess to provide
them all with a treat of coffee in the morning. In the last
place, the spokes woman, in telling over the numbers, pointed
out a young Irish lad of eighteen, and his sister two years
younger, who, she said, had come in from the country out of
work that day, with but fourpence between them; but she
added that they were going away in the morning. The poor
young creatures had been driven to this horrid lodging by the
condition of their purse, but terrified and shocked at what they
had seen, they lay clasped fast together, as if they feared to
lose each other for a moment. The girl did not open her eyes,
but her guardian looked at us askant, without turning his head
or changing his position. Their bright red cheeks lay together
like two roses among a patch of brown and wilted weeds, and
told by their freshness the story of their innocence, much plainer
than the language of the hag. “Here is a penny for you, my
boy,” said I, leaning over, and slipping a half crown in his
hand; “Here is a penny to help you in your journey.”“And
here is one, too, for your sister,” said a gentleman beside me,
who saw my movement, and appreciated my object in under-
rating the coin. The lad gripped the money in his fist, but too
occupied with his sacred care even to thank us, he threw his
arms quickly about his sister's neck again and in that position
the pair remained when we retired.

Our peregrinations in this neighborhood had now occasioned
such a crowd about the doors from which we issued, who
swarmed after us wherever we moved, that our policemen
thought it prudent we should leave, so we betook ourselves to
our coaches and whirled off in fresh air (if any portion of the
London atmosphere can be so called), towards the direction of
Whitechapel at the other end of the town.

There we visited the gin palaces and the cider cellars, and
thought it was past midnight, we found them crowded with com-
pany, and the adjacent streets swarming as full of life as the
neighborhood of a bee-hive. But on all sides we were received
with the utmost good humor, and in one place I received an
invitation to dance from a young lady in a pink bodice and blue
skirt, who might have been handsome if it had not been for a
squint; and might have been engaging if her expression had not
been damaged a little by a cut in her upper lip, and a dark puff
under her left eye. She compromised for my refusal, however, in
a pot of half-and-half, and found amends for the disappointment
by obtaining a sailor for a partner, whose head was covered all
over with red ruglets, and whose weather-beaten countenance
looked like the map of the world. It was curious to observe
the sublime indifference with which the sailors who were
present in these places treated our presence, They did not no-
tice us at all, or seem in any way to recognize the fact that we
were there, but went on dancing and drinking, and talking to
their doxies, as if they were in their own peculiar paradise,
where every object figured at a disadvantageous comparison
with themselves.

The entire of this region was filled with oyster-stands, and
tables for the sale of lobsters, crabs, shrimp, and blood-puddings,
and at short intervals we would find the highway made vocal
by ballad-singers, who with one hand beside their faces to enable
them to roar with facility, and the other full of penny ballads,
would dole forth the “Loss of the Albion,”“My charming
Nancy,” and other refreshing ditties of that sort.

[Howard Brown]

In this region was also a class of up-stairs rooms, frequented
by men and women of the vilest character, which furnished
music in a sort of free and easy style. When we entered one of
them, a female, and sometimes two, would set up a sentimental
song, and then be succeeded by a man kept for the purpose of
comic singing. One of these fellows was a rare genius, and
though a little shaky from the hard service and long career of
gin, he sang more humorously than I ever heard any one sing
before. He continually reminded me of my notions of the face
of Liston. His grimaces were abundant beyond description;
his face seemed to unfold and take new shapes as naturally as a
Chinese light, and as for his mouth, it was made up of tucks and
flounces that produced continual revelations, and seemed to be
capable of as voluminous a history as the Acts of the Apostlee.
While I was standing lost in admiration of this human hydran-
gea, I felt another light twitch at my coat skirts, something
like the stroke of a trout, and turning sharply, discovered di-
rectly behind me a young woman in an open straw bonnet, just
folding her hands demurely across her bosom, and composing
her features after her failure. I raised my hat, and regretted
that she had found nothing in that quarter worthy of her at-
tention, upon which I could see a titter run the round of her
acquaintances at her discomfiture. The young woman denied
the soft impeachment, whereupon I borrowed a shilling from
our treasurer to heal her lacerated feelings. A few coppers
thrown upon the floor compensated the gentleman with the
flexible face, and we retired to our coaches, and changed our
region to that of the “Thieves' Kitchen.”

Some of my readers may perhaps recollect the publication of
a descent by the London police upon that den some time ago,
in consequence of a development having been made, that it was
a sort of college, or academy, where children were taught the
art of theft, and prepared for the degrees of house-breaking and
of murder. Attention had been specially attracted to it through
the arrest of several juvenile thieves of both sexes, who de-
scribed how they had been decoyed from their parents into this
den by an old Jew, or modern Fagin, and practiced in the ways
of pilfering, for his profit. In return for their work, he corrupted
their appetites for drink, and furnished them with means of sexual
license that made them soon unfit for any other sort of life.
When the police made a descent upon this place, they found all
the gymnasia of roguery in operation for juvenile tuition, and
at the very moment of their entrance, these young pupils for
the gallows were practicing at the skirts of coats, hung loosely
upon clothes lines, in order to earn rewards from their precep-
tors, for taking a purse or handkerchief from the pockets with-
out shaking the line, or disturbing the little bells that were at-
tached to the ends of the garments. There were a great num-
ber of experienced old thieves residing in this den at the time
of the descent, as well as children, and indignant at the profan-
ation of this sanctuary of their arts, they gave battle to the
invaders, and after a severe contest, succeeded in rescuing some
of the children, and in beating the officers off. A reinforcement
of authority was however soon obtained, and the den raneacked
of its professors and its pupils. At the time of our visit it was
comparatively quiet, and we were received by only five or six
gentlemen of the skirt, who preserved a very quiet demeanor.
Though shorn of their numbers, and reduced in strength, they
showed, however, that they were conscious of their standing,
for they did not condescend to any civility during our stay and
regarded us all the time with a sort of sullen defiance. There
was but one relief from this behavior, and that was in the shape
of a little jocose sarcasm between a fellow with a black thatch
over his eye, and a little ferret-eyed chap, with a humpy body,
and a pair of thin legs, which he seemed to have picked up in a
hurry, and clapped on for the purpose of flight, when his own
were out of the way. “I say, Tommy,” said the fellow with
the thatch, pulling out his pipe and sending out a long whiff of
smoke; “I say, Tommy, the Queen gives a ball to-night, I be-
lieve!”“Yes,” replied the owner of the legs, nursing one of
them with an air of aristocratic repose; “yes, I saw her Majesty
this morning, and she hoped I would be present; but she let me
off when I told her I had a small bit of a job at Blackfriar's
Bridge.” Just at this point our party was ready to retire, and
satisfied with the peregrinations of the night, we resumed our
coaches, drove back to our hotels, and got to bed an hour after
daybreak in the morning.

[Stephen Thomas]

Many thanks, Howard.

The guy is talking about the St Giles rookery and he writes very well.

On JTR sites it's all Spitalfields this and Spitalfields that, but the real biggie area of social deprivation and criminality in London was this particular part, laid out in 1690 and amazingly the street plan worked out then still exists.

And very few tourists visit it.

[Howard Brown]

ST:

My pleasure, old bean...I thought the article would be of interest.