London has vastly altered since the Author, some quarter of a century
ago, described some of the scenes which occurred nightly in its midst of
which respectable people were ignorant, which corrupted its young men and
young women, and which rendered it a scandal and a horror to civilisation
itself. The publication of his work, “The Night Side of London”—of which
nearly eight thousand copies were sold—did something, by calling the
attention of Members of Parliament and philanthropists to the subject, to
improve the scenes and to abate the scandal. As a further contribution
to the same subject, the present volume is published. Every Englishman
must take an interest in London—a city which it has taken nearly two
thousand years to build; whose sons, to enrich which, have sailed on
every sea and fought or traded on every land; and which apparently, as
the original home and centre of English-speaking people, must grow with
the growth and strengthen with the strength of the world.
WRENTHAM HOUSE, HENDON,
_February_, 1880.