On Christmas Eve, in the midst of a dense fog that filled one’s throat
and closed one’s eyes, and rendered the vast City one huge sepulchre, as
it were, peopled by ghosts and ghouls, I spent a few hours in what may be
called studies at the bar.
First, I turned my steps down Whitechapel way. It is there the pressure
of poverty is felt as much as anywhere in London, and as it was early in
the evening I went there, I saw it under favourable circumstances, for
the sober people would be shopping, and the drunken ones would scarcely
have commenced that riot and quarrelling which are the result in most
cases of indulgence in alcohol. From the publican’s point of view, of
course, I had nothing to expect but unmitigated pleasure. The stuff they
sell, they tell us, is the gift of a good Providence, sent us in order to
alleviate the gloom and lighten the cares of life. “It is a poor heart
that never rejoices,” and on Christmas Eve, when we are thinking of the
birth of Him who came to send peace on earth and goodwill amongst men, a
little extra enjoyment may be expected. In some bars ample provision had
been made for the event; decorations had been freely resorted to, and
everything had been done to give colour to the delusion that Christmas
jollity was to be produced and heightened by the use of what the publican
had to sell. Almost the first glimpse I got of the consequences of
adherence to this doctrine was at a corner house in Whitechapel, before I
got as far as the church, where from the side-door of a gin-palace rushed
out a little dirty woman with a pot of beer in her hand, followed by a
taller one, who, catching hold of her, began to hit her. On this the
attacked woman took a savage grip of the front hair of her opponent, who
began to scream “Murder!” with might and main. A crowd was formed
immediately, in the expectation of that favourite entertainment of a
certain section of the British public—a free fight between two tipsy
women; but, alas! they were too far gone to fight, and, after a good deal
of bad language, the woman with the porter pursued her victorious way,
while the other, almost too drunk to stand, returned to the bar, to
rejoin the dirty group she had left, and to be served again—contrary, as
I understand, to the law of the land—with the liquor of which she had
already had more than enough. In that compartment everything was
dirty—the women at the bar and the man behind it, nor was there a spark
of good feeling or happiness in the group. There they were—the wives and
mothers of the people—all equally besotted, all equally wretched. Oh
heavens, what a sight!
And this reminds me of what I saw at a bar in the Gray’s Inn Road, in one
of the largest of the many houses opened for refreshment, as it is
called. In one compartment there were some thirty or forty wretched,
dirty, ragged people, mostly women. One of them was in a state of
elevation, and was dancing to a set who were evidently too far gone to
appreciate her performance. With tipsy gravity, however, she continued
her self-appointed task. Ah, poor thing! thought I, you are gay and
hilarious now—to-morrow you will lie shivering in the cold—possibly
crying for a morsel of bread. You have a garret to sleep in, and nothing
to look forward to but the hospital or the workhouse. Heaven wills it,
says the pietist. Heaven does nothing of the kind. In the mad
debauchery I saw in that bar I am sure there must have been spent money
that would have given the wretched topers happier homes, better dinners,
and a future far happier than that which I saw hanging over them.
In Chancery Lane I came on several illustrations of the joyous
conviviality of the season. One poor fellow just before me came down
with a tremendous crash. Another nearly ran me down as he steered his
difficult way along the slippery street and through the gloomy fog.
Another merry old soul had given up all attempt to find his way home, and
had seated himself on a doorstep, planted his hat on one side of his
head, put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, and there, asleep,
with a short pipe in his mouth, and his legs stretched out, looked as
mournful and seedy an object as anyone could desire to contemplate. He
had evidently been having a pleasant evening with his companions over a
social glass, merely keeping up good old English customs, wishing himself
and everyone he knew a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
At the gin-palaces near the railway termini, and in those bordering on
any place of general marketing, the crowd of customers was enormous, and
the class was far superior to those I saw in Drury Lane or Whitechapel,
or the Gray’s Inn Road. They were real respectable working men and their
wives, who had been out marketing for the morrow, and who, proud of their
success in that direction, and of the store of good things they had
collected for the anticipated dinner, had to treat themselves with a
parting glass ere they went home. It was a busy time for the men at the
bar. In one large public with four or five compartments, I reckoned
there must have been nearly a hundred customers. It was quite an effort
for anyone to get served; he had to fight his way through the mob to pay
his money and get his glass, and then to struggle back to a quiet corner
to drink off its contents with a friend or his wife, but there was no
drunkenness.
The men and women of the respectable working class are not drunkards.
They have too much sense for that, but they were merry, and a little
inclined to be too talkative and heedless. For instance, a party of four
went straight from a public-house to a railway station at which I
happened to be waiting. One couple were going by the train home—another
couple had come to see them off. The wife of the travelling party was
fat and heavy, and in her jolly, careless mood, induced by the evening’s
conviviality, as the train came up she missed her step and fell between
the wheels and the platform. Fortunately the train had come to a
standstill, or that woman and her husband and her family would have had
anything but a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
In one place, patronised by navvies and their wives, there was such a
hideous exhibition of indecency that I may not record it. “Why don’t you
interfere?” said a gentleman to the pot-boy. “Oh,” was the reply, “you
can’t say anything at this season of the year. It is best to leave them
alone.”
In such low neighbourhoods as Drury Lane it seemed to me that the men
preponderated; indeed, at many places they were the only customers. One
could not much wonder to find them in such places. Either they live in
the low lodging-houses close by, where they pay fourpence a night for a
bed, or they have a room for themselves and families in the
neighbourhood. In neither case is there much peace for them in what they
call their home. They are best out of doors, and then comes the
attraction of the public-house, and on Christmas Eve in the dull raw fog
almost the only bright spot visible was the gleam of its gaudy splendour,
and as a natural consequence bars were pretty well filled. They always
are in poor neighbourhoods of a night, and especially such as have a
corner situation. It is always good times with the proprietors of such
places, even if trade be bad and men are out of work, and little children
cry for bread and old people die of starvation and want. A corner
public-house is never driven into the bankruptcy court.
But let me change the scene. These low neighbourhoods are really
disgusting to people of cultivated minds and refined tastes. I am
standing in a wonderfully beautiful hall. On one side is a long counter
filled with decanters and wineglasses. Behind these are some lively
young ladies, fashionably dressed, and with hair elaborately arranged.
The customers are chiefly young men, whom Albert Smith would have
described as gents. They mostly patronise what they call “bittah” beer,
and they are wise in doing so, as young men rarely can afford wine, and
“bittah” beer is not so likely to affect the few brains they happen to
have about them. Of course a good deal of wine is drunk, and there is a
great demand for grog, but beer is the prevailing beverage; and as to tea
and coffee and such things, they are unfairly handicapped, as the Hebe at
the bar charges me sixpence for a small cup of coffee, while the gent by
my side pays but twopence for his beer; nor can I say that he pays too
much, as he has the opportunity thus afforded to him of talking to a
young lady who has no refuge from his impertinence, and who is bound to
be civil unless the cad is notoriously offensive, as her trade is to sell
liquor, and the more he talks the more he drinks. But the mischief does
not end here. Many a married man fancies it is fun to loll over the
counter and spoon with the girls behind. He has more cash than the gent,
and spends more. If he is not a rich man he would pass himself off as
such; he drinks more than is good for him; he makes the young ladies
presents; he talks to them in a sentimental strain, and it may be he has
a wife and family at home who are in need of almost the necessaries of
life.
In many cases the end of all this is wretchedness at home and loss of
character and means of subsistence; if he is in a house of business he
lives beyond his income, and embezzlement is the result. If he be in
business on his own account his end is bankruptcy, at any rate his health
is not benefited by his indulgence at the bar, and to most men who have
to earn their daily bread loss of health is loss of employment and
poverty, more or less enduring and grinding and complete. What the
gin-shop is to the working man, the restaurant and the refreshment bar
are to the middle classes of society. There is no disgrace in dropping
in there, and so the young man learns to become a sot. Planted as they
are at all the railway termini, they are an ever-present danger; they are
fitted up in a costly style, and the young ladies are expected to be as
amiable and good-looking as possible, and thus when a young man has a few
minutes to spare at a railway terminus, naturally he makes his way to the
refreshment bar.
Dartmoor was full, writes the author of “Convict Life,” with the men whom
drink had led into crime—from the mean wretch who pawned his wife’s boots
for ninepence, which he spent in the gin-shop, to the young man from the
City who became enamoured “with one of the painted and powdered
decoy-ducks who are on exhibition at the premises of a notorious publican
within a mile of Regent Circus.” At first he spent a shilling or two
nightly; but he quickly found that the road to favour was at bottle of
Moët, of which his _inamorata_ and her painted sisters partook very
freely. The acquaintance soon ripened under the influence of champagne
till he robbed his employer, and was sent to Dartmoor. “He told me
himself,” writes our author, “that from the time he first went to that
tavern he never went to bed perfectly sober, and that all his follies
were committed under the influence of champagne.”
Another case he mentions was even worse. At the time of his conviction
the young man of whom he writes was on the eve of passing an examination
for one of the learned professions; but be had been an _habitué_ of the
buffet of let us call it the Royal Grill Room Theatre and a lounger at
the stage door of that celebrated establishment, and had made the
acquaintance of one of the ladies of the ballet. Under the influence of
champagne he also soon came to grief. “In the name of God,” says the
writer to young men in London, “turn up taverns.”
But what is to be done? The publican, whether he keeps a gin-palace or a
refreshment bar, must push his trade. The total number of public-houses,
beershops, and wine-houses in the Metropolitan Parliamentary boroughs is
8,973, or one to each 333 persons. This is bad; but Newcastle-on-Tyne is
worse, having one public-house to 160 inhabitants, and Manchester has one
to every 164 inhabitants. The amount paid in license-fees by publicans
in the Metropolitan district last year amounted to £108,316; the total
for the kingdom being £1,133,212. But great as is the number of these
places, the trade flourishes. A licensed house in one of the finest
parts of London (Bethnal Green), lately sold for upwards of £22,000.
Another, a third or fourth rate house in North London, sold for £18,000;
other licensed houses sell for £30,000, £40,000, £50,000, and even more.
As to the refreshment bars, it lately came out in evidence that a partner
in one of the firms most connected with them stated his income to be
£40,000 a year. It is said one firm, whose business is chiefly devoted
to refreshment bars, pays its wine merchants as much as £1,000 a week.