The History of London by Walter Besant (best classic books TXT) 📕

getting rich, and with a decorous, self-respecting population of retail traders, clerks, craftsmen, and servants of all kinds, a noisy but a well-behaved people. A church-going, sermon-loving, and orderly people.

This is in the main a fair and just appreciation of the City. But there is the other side which must not be overlooked--that side, namely, which presents the vice and sin and misery which always accompany the congregation of many people and the accumulation of wealth.

The vice which has always been the father of most miseries is that of drink. In the middle of the last century, everybody drank too much. The dignity of the grave merchant was too often marred by indulgence in port and punch: the City clergy drank too much: even the ladies drank too much: it was hardly a reproach, in any class, to be overcome with liquor. As for the lower classes their habitual drink was beer--Franklin tells us that when he was a printer in London every man drank seven or eight pints of beer every day: nor was this small ale or porter: it was generally good strong beer: the beer would not perhaps hurt them so much--though the money spent on drink was enormous--but unfortunately they had now taken to gin as well--or instead. The drinking of gin at one time threatened, literally, to destroy the whole of the working classes of London. There were 10,000 houses--one in four--where gin was sold either secretly or openly. It was advertised that a man could get drunk for a penny and dead drunk for twopence. A check was placed upon this habit by imposing a tax of 5_s._ on every gallon of gin. This was in the year 1735 and in 1750 about 1,700 gin shops were closed. Since then the continual efforts made to stop the pernicious habit of dram drinking have greatly reduced the evil. But it was not only the drinking of gin: there was also the rum punch which formed so large a part in the life of the Georgian citizen. Every man had his club to which he resorted in the evening after the day's work. Here he sat and for the most part drank what he called a sober glass: that is to say, he did not go home drunk, but he drank every night more than was good for him. The results were the transmission of gout and other disorders to his children. It should be, indeed, a most serious thing to reflect that in every evil habit we are bringing misery and suffering upon our children as well as ourselves. The habits of drinking showed themselves externally in a bloated body; puffed and red cheeks; a large and swollen nose; trembling hands; fat lips and bleared eyes: in the case of gin drinkers it showed itself in a face literally blue. It is said that King George the Third was persuaded to a temperate life--in a time of universal intemperance, this King remained always temperate--by the example of his uncle the Duke of Cumberland, who at the age of forty-five in consequence of his excesses in drink exhibited a body swollen and bloated and tortured with disease.

If you look at a map of London of this time you will see that the city extended a long way up and down the river on either bank. Outside the walls there were the crowded districts of Whitechapel, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, St. Katherine's, Wapping, Ratcliff, Shadwell, Stepney, and others. These places were not only outside the wards and the jurisdiction of the City, but they were outside any government whatever. They were growing up in some parts without schools, churches, or any rule, order, or discipline whatever. The people in many of these quarters were of the working classes, but too often of the criminal class. They were rude and rough and ignorant to an extraordinary degree. How could they be anything else, living as they did? They were so unruly, they were so numerous, they were so ready to break out, that they became a danger to the very existence of Order and Government. They were kept in some kind of order by the greatest severity of punishment. They were hanged for what we now call light offences: they were kept half starved in foul and filthy prisons: and they were mercilessly flogged. In the army it was not unknown for a man to receive 500 lashes: in the navy they were always flogging the men. Horrible as it is to read of these punishments we must remember that the men who received them were brutal and dead to any other kind of persuasion. Drink and ignorance and habitual vice had killed the sense of shame and stilled the voice of conscience. The only thing they would feel was the pain of the whip.



59. UNDER GEORGE THE SECOND.

PART V.

It was estimated, some years later than the period we are considering, that there were then in London 3,000 receivers of stolen goods; that is to say, people who bought without question whatever was brought to them for sale: that the value of the goods stolen every year from the ships lying in the river--there were then no great Docks and the lading and unlading were carried on by lighters and barges--amounted to half a million sterling every year: that the value of the property annually stolen in and about London amounted to 700,000_l._: and that goods worth half a million at least were annually stolen from His Majesty's stores, dockyards, ships of war, &c. The moral principle, a writer states plainly, 'is totally destroyed among a vast body of the lower ranks of the people.' To meet this deplorable condition of things there were forty-eight different offences punishable by death: among them was shoplifting above five shillings: stealing linen from a bleaching ground: cutting hop bines and sending threatening letters. There were nineteen kinds of offences for which transportation, imprisonment, whipping, or pillory were provided: there were twenty-one kinds of offences punishable by whipping, pillory, fine and imprisonment. Among the last were 'combinations and conspiracies for raising the price of wages.' The classification seems to have been done at haphazard: for instance, to embezzle naval stores would seem as bad as to steal a master's goods: but the latter offence was capital and the former not. Again, it is surely a most abominable crime to set fire to a house, yet this is classed among the lighter offences. It was therefore a time when there was a large and constantly increasing criminal class: and, as a natural cause or a natural consequence, whichever we please, there was a very large class of people as ignorant, as rude, and as dangerous as could well be imagined. I do not think there was ever a time, not even in the most remote ages, when London contained savages more brutal and more ignorant than could be found in certain districts outside the City of the Second George. But these poor wretches had one great virtue--they were brave: they manned our ships for us and gave Britannia the command of the sea: they were knocked down, driven and dragged aboard the ships by the press-gang. Once there they fell into rank and order, carried a valiant pike, manned the guns with zeal, joined the boarding party with alacrity and carried their cutlasses into the forlorn hope with faces that showed no fear. They were so strong, so stubborn, and so brave, that one sighs to think of the lash that kept them in discipline and order. There is one more side of London that must not be forgotten. It was a great and prosperous city: we can never dwell too strongly on the prosperity of the city: but there were shipwrecks many and disastrous. And the fate of the man who could not pay his debts was well known to all and could be witnessed every day, as an example and a warning. For he went to prison and in prison he stopped. 'Pay what you owe,' they said to the debtor, 'or else stay where you are.' The debtor could not pay: in prison the debtor had no means of making any money: therefore he stayed where he was until he died. For the accommodation of these unhappy persons there were the King's Bench and the Marshalsea, both in Southwark: there were the two Compters, both in the City: and there was the Fleet Prison.

The life in these prisons can be found described in many novels. It was a squalid and miserable life among ruined gamblers, spendthrifts, profligates, broken down merchants, bankrupt tradesmen, and helpless women of all classes. Unless one had allowances from friends, starvation might be the end. In one at least the common hall had shelves ranged round the walls for the reception of beds: everything was carried on in the same room, living, sleeping, eating, cooking. And into such a place as this the unhappy debtor was thrust, there to remain till death released him.

This was the London of a hundred and fifty years ago. No longer picturesque as in the old days, but solidly constructed, handsome, and substantial. The merchants still lived in the city but the nobles had all gone. The Companies possessed the greater part of the City and still ruled though they no longer dictated the wages, hours, and prices. Within the walls there reigned comparative order: outside there was no government at all. The river below the Bridge was crowded with ships moored two and four together side by side with an open way in the middle. Thousands of barges and lighters were engaged upon the cargoes: every day the church bells rang for a large and orderly congregation: every day arose in every street such an uproar as we cannot even imagine: yet there were quiet spots in the City with shady gardens where one could sit at peace: wealth grew fast: but with it there grew up the mob with the fear of anarchy and license, a taste of which was afforded by the Gordon Riots. Yet it would be eighty years before the city should understand the necessity for a police.



60. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY.

PART I.

Let us walk into the streets. You will not observe, because you are used to these things, and have been brought up among them, and are accustomed to them, that all the men go about unarmed: that they do not carry even a stick for their protection: that they do not fight or quarrel with each other: that the strong do not knock down the weak but patiently wait for them and make room for them: that ladies walk about with no protection or escort: that things are exposed for sale with no other guard than a boy or a girl: that most valuable articles are hung up behind a thin pane of glass. You will further observe men in blue--you call them policemen--who stroll about in a leisurely manner looking on and taking no part in the bustle. What do these policemen do? In the roads the vehicles do not run into one another, but follow in rank and order, those going one way taking their own side. Everybody is orderly. Everything is arranged and disposed as if there was no such thing as violence, crime, or disorder. You think it has always been so? Nay: order in human affairs does not grow of its own accord. Disorder, if you please, grows like the weeds of the hedge side--but not order.

Again, you always find the shops well provided and filled with goods. There are the food shops--those which offer meat, bread, fruit, vegetables, coffee, tea, sugar, butter, cheese. These shops are always full of these things. There is never a day in the whole