Dickens' London Part 18

absorption of local and timely accessory, mostly of fact as against purely imaginative interpolation merely:

A man named Burke (an Irishman) and a woman named Helen M'Dougal, coalesced with one Hare in Edinburgh to murder persons by wholesale, and dispose of their bodies to the teachers of anatomy. According to the confession of the princ.i.p.al actor, sixteen persons, some in their sleep, others after intoxication, and several in a state of infirmity from disease, were suffocated. One of the men generally threw himself on the victim to hold him down, while the other "burked" him by forcibly pressing the nostrils and mouth, or the throat, with his hands. Hare being admitted as king's evidence, Burke and his other partner in guilt were arraigned on three counts. Helen M'Dougal was acquitted and Burke was executed.

This crime gave a new word to our language. To "burke" is given in our dictionaries as "to murder by suffocation so as to produce few signs of violence upon the victim." Or to bring it directly home to d.i.c.kens, the following quotation will serve:

"'You don't mean to say he was "burked," Sam?' said Mr. Pickwick."

With no cla.s.s of society did d.i.c.kens deal more successfully than with the sordidness of crime. He must have been an observer of the most acute perceptions, and while in many cases it was only minor crimes of which he dealt, the vagaries of his a.s.sa.s.sins are unequalled in fiction. He was generally satisfied with ordinary methods, as with the case of Lawyer Tulkinghorn's murder in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but even in this scene he does throw into crime something more than the ordinary methods of the English novelist. He had the power, one might almost say the Shakespearian power, of not only describing a crime, but also of making you feel the sensation of crime in the air. First and foremost one must place the murder of Montague Tigg.

The grinning Carker of "Dombey and Son" is ground to death under the wheels of a locomotive at a French railway station; Quilp, of "The Old Curiosity Shop," is dramatically drowned; Bill Sykes' neck is broken by the rope meant for his escape; Bradley Headstone and his enemy go together to the bottom of the ca.n.a.l; while the mysterious Krook, of "Bleak House"

is disposed of by spontaneous combustion.

Certainly such a gallery of horrors could not be invented purely out of an imaginative mind, and must admittedly have been the product of intimate first-hand knowledge of criminals and their ways.

Doubtless there was a tendency to improve moral conditions as things went on. Britain is not the dying nation which the calamity howlers would have us infer.

In the year 1800, there were--notwithstanding the comparative spa.r.s.eness of population--eighteen prisons in London alone, whereas in 1850, when d.i.c.kens was in his prime and when population had enormously increased, that number had been reduced one-third.

In the early days the jailor in many prisons received no salary, but made his livelihood from the fees he could extort from the prisoners and their friends; and in some cases he paid for the privilege of holding office.

Not only had a prisoner to pay for his food and for the straw on which he slept, but, if he failed to pay, he would be detained until he did so.

In Cold Bath Fields prison, men, women, and children were indiscriminately herded together, without employment or wholesome control; while smoking, gaming, singing, and every species of brutalizing conversation obtained.

At the Fleet Prison there was a grate or iron-barred window facing Farringdon Street, and above it was inscribed, "Pray remember the poor prisoners having no allowance," while a small box was placed on the window-sill to receive the charity of the pa.s.sers-by, and a man ran to and fro, begging coins "for the poor prisoners in the Fleet."

At Newgate, the women usually numbered from a hundred to one hundred and thirty, and each had only eighteen inches breadth of sleeping-room, and all were "packed like slaves in the hold of a slave-ship."

And Marshalsea, which d.i.c.kens incorporated into "David Copperfield" and "Little Dorrit," was quite as sordid, to what extent probably none knew so well as d.i.c.kens, _pere et fils_, for here it was that the father fretfully served out his sentence for debt.

Of all the prisons of that day it may be stated that they were hotbeds of immorality, where children herded with h.o.a.ry criminals; where no sanitary laws were recognized; where vermin swarmed and disease held forth, and where robbery, tyranny, and cruelty, if not actually permitted, was at least winked at or ignored.

In 1829 Sir Robert Peel brought into force his new police establishment, an event which had not a little to do with the betterment of social life of the day.

"The whole metropolitan district was formed into five local divisions, each division into eight sections, and each section into eight beats, the limits of all being clearly defined and distinguished by letters and numbers; the force itself was divided into companies, each company having one superintendent, four inspectors, sixteen sergeants, and one hundred and forty-four police constables, being also sub-divided into sixteen parts, each consisting of a sergeant and nine men." Incalculable as the boon was in the repression of crime, the Corporation of the City of London could not be persuaded, until several years afterward, to follow such an example, and give up their vested interests in the old system of watchmen.

The police system, as remodelled by Sir Robert Peel in 1829, was, of course, the foundation of the present admirable body of constabulary, of which the London "Bobby" must be admitted by all as ranking at the very head of his contemporaries throughout the civilized world. Certainly no more affable and painstaking servants of the public are anywhere to be found; they are truly the "refuge of the inquiring stranger and timid women."

The London policeman, then, is essentially a product of our own times; a vast advance over the peripatetic watchman of a former day, and quite unlike his brother on the Continent, who has not only to keep the peace, but act as a political spy as well. Perhaps it is for this reason that the London policeman is able to exhibit such devotion and affability in the conduct of his duties. Surely no writer or observer has ever had the temerity to a.s.sail the efficiency of the London "Peeler" or "Bobby," as he now exists.

No consideration or estimate of middle-cla.s.s London would be complete without mention of that very important factor in its commissariat--beer, or its various species, mild or bitter, pale or stale. Your true c.o.c.kney East-Ender, however, likes his 'arf and 'arf, and further admonishes the cheery barmaid to "draw it mild." Brewers, it would seem, like their horses and draymen, are of a substantial race; many of the leading brewers of the middle nineteenth-century times, indeed, of our own day, are those who brewed in the reigns of the Georges.

By those who know, genuine London ale (presumably the "Genuine Stunning ale" of the "little public house in Westminster," mentioned in "Copperfield") alone is supposed to rival the ideal "berry-brown" and "nut-brown" ale of the old songs, or at least what pa.s.sed for it in those days.

The increase of brewers has kept pace with London's increase in other respects. Twenty-six brewhouses in the age of Elizabeth became fifty-five in the middle of the eighteenth century, and one hundred and forty-eight in 1841; and in quant.i.ty from 284,145 barrels in 1782 to 2,119,447 in 1836. To-day, in the absence of any statistics to hand, the sum total must be something beyond the grasp of any but the statistician.

Without attempting to discuss the merits or demerits of temperance in general, or beer in particular, it can be safely said that the brewer's dray is a prominent and picturesque feature of London streets, without which certain names, with which even the stranger soon becomes familiar, would be meaningless; though they are, as it were, on everybody's tongue and on many a sign-board in nearly every thoroughfare. As a historian, who would have made an unexceptionable literary critic, has said: Beer overflows in almost every volume of Fielding and Smollett. Goldsmith was not averse to the "_parson's black champagne_;" Hogarth immortalized its domestic use, and Gilray its political history; and the "pot of porter"

and "mug of bitter" will go down in the annals of the literature, art, and history of London, and indeed all Britain, along with the more aristocratic port and champagne.

LONDON TOPOGRAPHY

From Park Land to Wapping, by day and by night, I've many a year been a roamer, And find that no Lawyer can London indite, Each street, every Lane's a misnomer.

I find Broad Street, St. Giles, a poor narrow nook, Battle Bridge is unconscious of slaughter, Duke's Place can not muster the ghost of a Duke, And Brook Street is wanting in water.

JAMES SMITH, _Comic Miscellanies_.

It is not easy to delimit the territorial confines of a great and growing city like London. The most that the most sanguine writer could hope to do would be to devote himself to recounting the facts and features, with more or less completeness, of an era, or an epoch, if the word be thought to confine the period of time more definitely.

There is no London of to-day; like "unborn to-morrow" and "dead yesterday," it does not exist. Some remains there may be of a former condition, and signs there a.s.suredly are of still greater things to come, but the very face of the earth in the great world of London is constantly changing and being improved or disimproved, accordingly as its makers have acted wisely or not.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Billingsgate and_ _The Bank, Royal Exchange,_ _the Custom House._ _and Mansion House._

_General Post-Office._ _King William Street and_ _Gracechurch Street._

_St. Paul's, Cheapside,_ _Fleet Street at Temple Bar._ _and Paternoster Row._

_"The City"--London._]

The London of d.i.c.kens' time--the middle Victorian period--was undergoing, in some degree, at least, the rapid changes which were making themselves felt throughout the civilized world. New streets were being put through, old landmarks were being removed, and new and greater ones rising in their stead; roadways were being levelled, and hills were disappearing where they were previously known. How curious it is that this one topographical detail effects so great a change in the aspect of the buildings which border upon the streets. Take for instance the Strand as it exists to-day.

d.i.c.kens might have to think twice before he would know which way to turn to reach the _Good Words_ offices. This former narrow thoroughfare has been straightened, widened, and graded until about the only recognizable feature of a quarter of a century ago is the sky-line. Again, St.

Martin's-in-the-Fields, a n.o.ble and imposing church, is manifestly made insignificant by the cutting down of the grade, and even removing the broad and gentle rising flight of steps which once graced its facade.

Generally speaking, the reverse is the case, the level of the roadway being immeasurably raised, so that one actually steps down into a building which formerly was elevated a few steps. All this and much more is a condition which has worked a wondrous change in the topography of London, and doubtless many another great city.

As for grandeur and splendour, that can hardly be claimed for any city which does not make use of the natural features to heighten the effect of the embellishments which the hand of man has added to what nature has already given. London possesses these features to a remarkable degree, and she should make the best of them, even if to go so far as to form one of those twentieth-century innovations, known as an "Art Commission," which she lacks. Such an inst.i.tution might cause an occasional "deadlock," but it would save a vast deal of disfigurement; for London, be it said, has no streets to rank among those of the world which are truly great, such as High Street at Oxford, and Prince's Street in Edinburgh, to confine the comparison to Great Britain.

The author of this book has never had the least thought of projecting "a new work on London," as the industrious author or compiler of Knight's "Old and New London" put it in 1843, when he undertook to produce a monumental work which he declared should be neither a "survey nor a history." The fact is, however, that not even the most sanguine of those writers who may hope to say a new word about any subject so vast as that comprehended by the single word, London, could even in a small measure feel sure that he has actually discovered any new or hitherto unknown fact. In short, one may say that this would be impossible.

London's written history is very extensive and complete, and it is reasonable to suppose that most everything of moment has at one time or another been written down, but there are constantly varying conditions and aspects which do present an occasional new view of things, even if it be taken from an old standpoint; hence even within the limits of which this section treats it is possible to give something of an impression which once and again may strike even a supercritical reader as being timely and pertinent, at least to the purport of the volume.

The latter-day City and County of London, including the metropolitan and suburban area, literally "Greater London," has within the last few years grown to huge proportions. From being a city hemmed within a wall, London has expanded in all directions, gradually forming a connection with various cl.u.s.ters of dwellings in the neighbourhood. It has, in fact, absorbed towns and villages to a considerable distance around: the chief of these once detached seats of population being the city of Westminster. By means of its bridges, it has also absorbed Southwark, Bermondsey, Lambeth, and Vauxhall, besides many hamlets and villages beyond.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _London at the Time of the Great Fire_]

Even in d.i.c.kens' day each centre of urban life, whether it be Chelsea, Whitechapel, or the Borough,--that ill-defined centre south of London Bridge,--was closely identified with local conditions which were no part of the life of any other section. Aside from the varying conditions of social life, or whether the section was purely residential, or whether it was a manufacturing community, there were other conditions as markedly different. Theatres, shops, and even churches varied as to their method of conduct, and, in some measure, of their functions as well. It was but natural that the demand of the Ratcliffe Highway for the succulent "kipper" should conduce to a vastly different method of purveying the edible necessities of life from that of the West End poulterer who sold only Surrey fowl, or, curiously enough, as he really does, Scotch salmon.

So, too, with the theatres and music-halls; the lower riverside population demand, if not necessarily a short shrift, a cheap fare, and so he gets his two and three performances a night at a price ranging from three pence to two shillings for what in the west brings from one to ten shillings.

To vary the simile still farther, but without going into the intricacies of dogma, the church has of necessity to appeal to its const.i.tuency in the slums in a vastly different method of procedure from what would be considered dignified or even devout elsewhere; and it is a question if the former is not more efficacious than the latter. And so these various centres, as they may be best described, are each of themselves local communities welded, let us hope, into as near as may be a perfect whole, with a certain leeway of self-government and privilege to deal with local conditions.

In 1850, taken as best representative of d.i.c.kens' time, London was divided into twenty-six wards (and several liberties). The "Out Parishes" of the "City," the City of Westminster, and the five "Parliamentary Boroughs" of Marylebone, Lambeth, Southwark, Finsbury, and Tower hamlets, and a region of debatable land lying somewhere between that which is properly called London and its environs, and partaking in a certain measure of the attributes of both.

London would seem to be particularly fortunate in its situation, and that a large city should have grown up here was perhaps unavoidable: sufficiently far from the open sea to be well protected therefrom, yet sufficiently near thereto to have early become a powerful city and a great port.