Newgate and its Neighbourhood.
RIVERS UNDER GROUND.--DIVISION OF LABOUR.--EXECUTIONS.--THE
PEOPLE'S FESTIVALS.--PREDILECTION FOR CRIMINAL CASES.--STATISTICS
OF NEWGATE.--PATERNOSTER-ROW.--SMITHFIELD.--SELF-GOVERNMENT, ITS
BRIGHT AND DARK SIDES.
London has, besides the Thames, a great many smaller rivers, the
majority of which have, for many years past, been appropriated by the
commissioners of sewers and the antiquarians. In the olden days, men
went out of the way of rivers. In our own time, the rivers are compelled
to give way to mankind. They are vaulted and bridged over, and houses
have been built on the vaults, or streets have been constructed over
them; and the grocer in the corner shop yonder has not the least
suspicion of his house standing on a river, and he never thinks of the
lamentable condition of his goods, in case the vault were to give way
under him.
One of these rivers was the Fleet river. After it the street is named
even at the present day. The site of its bed is still marked by a broad
valley street with considerable hills, all built over, on either side.
The hills are so steep that heavy drays and omnibuses cannot come down
without locking.
This operation, though insignificant, furnishes an opportune
illustration of the extent to which the principle of the division of
labour has been carried in London.
Just look at that lumbering omnibus, thundering along at a sharp trot.
It has reached the brink when the horses are stopped for a second; and
at that very moment a fellow makes a rush at the omnibus, bending his
body almost under the wheels, and moving forward with the vehicle, which
still proceeds, he unhooks the drag, and puts it to one of the
hind-wheels. This done, he calls out "All right!" The horses, sagacious
creatures, understand the meaning of that sentence as well as the
driver; they fall again into a sharp trot down the hill. At the bottom
there is another human creature making a neck-or-nothing rush at the
wheels, taking the drag off and hooking it on again. "All right!" The
horses stamp the pavement to the flying-about of sparks, the driver
makes a noise which is half a whistle and half a hiss, and the omnibus
rushes up the opposite bank of the quondam Fleet river.
"Time is money!" is an English proverb, and one whose validity is so
strongly acknowledged, that in many instances money is freely spent in
order to effect a saving of time. Those two men save the omnibuses
exactly one minute in each tour down Holborn Hill, for one minute each
of them would lose if they were to stop to put on the drag. But one
minute's loss to the many thousands who daily pass this way represents a
considerable capital of time. If the two men are remunerated at the rate
of only one halfpenny per omnibus, their incomes will be found to be
larger than the salary of many a public functionary in Germany.
This, then, is another specimen of industry and economy peculiar to
London streets. But, let us say, that it is possible only by means of
the enormous traffic which crowds the streets of London.
We have, meanwhile, walked down the steep descent. We have crossed the
hidden stream, walked up the hill on the other side, and now we stand on
a broad _plateau_, where two large streets cross at right angles. This
conformation produces a considerable amount of space between the
pavements--a sort of irregular open square, and one which from time to
time presents a melancholy spectacle.
One of the street corners is taken up by the old Newgate Prison; and the
open place in front serves for the execution of felons who have been
sentenced to death at the Sessions, and who, in the first instance, had
been committed to Newgate. It is a shocking custom, though it springs
from the humane desire to shorten the agony which the criminal must
suffer on his road from the prison to the scaffold.
"Our popular festivals!" said a lady, who had been emancipated by a
lengthened residence on the Continent. "You wish to know where the
people's merry-makings are held? Go to Newgate on a hanging day, or to
Horsemonger Lane, or to any other open space in front of a prison; there
you will find shouting, and joking, and junketting, from early dawn
until the hangman has made his appearance and performed his office. The
windows are let out, stands are erected, eating and drinking booths
surround the scaffold; there is an enormous consumption of beer and
brandy. They come on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, from a
distance of many miles, to see a spectacle which is a disgrace to
humanity; and foremost are the women--my countrywomen--not only the
females of low degree, but also ladies, 'by birth and education.' It is
a shame; but, nevertheless, it is true. And our newspapers are
afterwards compelled to chronicle the last death-struggles of the
wretched criminal!"
There is no exaggeration in this. A criminal process, robbery and
murder, a case of poisoning--these suffice to keep the families of
England in breathless suspense for weeks at a time. The daily and weekly
papers cannot find space enough for all the details of the inquest, the
proceedings of the police, the trial, and the execution; and woe to the
paper that dared to curtail these interesting reports! it would at once
lose its supporters. Rather let such a paper take no notice of an
insurrection in Germany; but neglect a criminal trial, a scene on the
scaffold--never!
Let us look into that room. The father of the family, his wife, the old
grandmother, with her hands demurely folded, and the daughters and
little children, are all crowded round the table. The father reads the
newspaper; the family listens to him. The tea is getting cold, the fire
is going out, the curtains are still undrawn and the blinds are up; the
very passengers in the street--"O tell it not in Gath!"--can see what is
going on in the parlour; but the listeners pay no attention to all this,
for the paper contains a full report of the trial of Mrs. Manning, or
some other popular she-assassin. Did she do the deed? Is she innocent?
Did she make a confession? And what about her husband? And how was it
done, and when, and where?
It is truly marvellous! These good, gentle people, who would not
willingly hurt or pain any living creature, actually warm to the scenes
of horror reported in that paper. It is altogether incomprehensible, how
and to what extent this passion for the horrible has seized hold of the
hearts of English men and women. They languish after strong emotions;
they yearn for something which will make their flesh creep. A similar
phenomenon may occasionally be observed on the other side of the
Channel; but there it forms the exception, while here it is the rule.
And on the Continent, too, we find this horror-mongering only in the
provinces, where people, wearied with the monotony of their long winter
evenings, hunger and thirst after anything like a public scandal or
spectacle; but we do not find this sort of thing in large towns, where
people have a variety of objects and incidents to attract their
attention. But the English on the Continent make long journeys to be
present at an execution. Their passion accompanies them even across the
Channel. Surely we do not envy their feelings in this respect!
Newgate is a gloomy-looking, ancient building. It is the _beau ideal_ of
prison architecture, with hardly any windows, with here and there an
empty niche, or some dilapidated carvings; all besides is gloomy, stony,
and cold.
Newgate has gone down in the world. In its early years it was devoted to
the reception of persons of high rank; it has since submitted to the
principle of legal equality, and rich and poor, high and low, pass
through its gates to freedom or the scaffold. About three thousand
prisoners are annually confined within its walls. The prison can
accommodate five hundred at a time, and this number is usually found
there immediately before the commencement of the sessions. But the
sessions of the Central Criminal Court once over, Newgate is almost
empty, for some of its inmates have been discharged from custody, while
the majority of them have received their sentence and taken their
departure for sundry houses of detention and correction. The prisoners
in Newgate are at liberty to communicate with one another; they are not
compelled to work.
We pass through Newgate-street and turn to the right into
Paternoster-row, a narrow street, from times immemorial the manufactory
of learning, where the publishing trade is carried on in dingy houses,
and where it runs its anarchical career without the benefit of a
_censor_.
"From times immemorial!" That is a hasty expression. There was a time
when Paternoster-row harboured the grocery trade of the city, while the
upper stories were taken by _Marchandes des Modes_ and visited by all
the beauty and elegance of old London. But gaiety had to give way to
religion, and the _Marchandes des Modes_, taking flight to more modern
streets, were followed by the rosary-girls under Henry VIII. Luther's
translation of the Bible was publicly burnt in this neighbourhood, and
soon after warrants were issued against those who had burnt it. So
varied have been the applications of this narrow dusky lane, in which,
to this day, the traveller may read an inscription on a stone tablet,
announcing that Paternoster-row is the highest point of ancient London.
In our own days this street is to London what Leipzig is to Germany. The
departments of the publishing trade are, however, kept more strictly
separate. The publishers of Bibles, who send forth the Scriptures in
volumes of all sizes, from the smallest to the largest, and who do
business in all the civilised and barbarous languages on the face of the
earth, exclude all vain and secular literature, such as tales, novels,
plays, poems, and works of history. While the publishers of such like
works in their turn, generally fight shy of tourists and travellers
whose works belong to departments of another class of publishing firms.
Juvenile books form a very important department of the publishing trade;
and this department, like the infant schools, is entirely devoted to the
instruction and amusement of the rising generation. So strenuous are the
exertions of those publishers to entice the babes and infants of England
into the treacherous corners of the A, B, C, and of the higher sciences,
that their solicitude in this respect appears almost touching to those
who fancy that all this trouble is taken and all this ingenuity
expended, purely and simply for the interest of philanthropy, and of
good sound education.
We ought not to stop too long in Paternoster-row. Our presence is
required elsewhere. But still we must for the benefit of German mothers
and publishers, state the fact, that of late years the publishers of
Paternoster-row have hit upon the plan of printing the rudiments of all
human science on strong white canvass. English children, in the dawn of
their young existence, are as essentially practical as German children.
They have an instinctive aversion to all printed matter. The A, B, C, is
to them the first fruit from the tree of knowledge, the key to the
mysteries and woes of life. Therefore do the children of England detest
the primers; they soil them, tear them, roll the leaves, in short treat
them with as much scorn and contumely, as though the annihilation of a
single copy would lead to the extinction of the whole species.
The practical spirit of English speculation meets this prejudice on its
own ground. The primers, or A, B, C, books as they are called in
Germany, are printed on canvass, and each leaf is moreover hemmed, for
all the world like a respectable domestic pocket-handkerchief. For
children are sagacious, and but for the hemming the rudiments of science
would, under their hands, be converted into lint. As it is, even the
most obstreperous of little boys is powerless in the presence of such a
canvass book. And, supposing, he be uncommonly obstinate, and that after
great exertion he succeeds in running his finger through one of the
leaves; even then he is foiled, for his mother darns it as she would an
old stocking; and the monster book appears again as clean and immaculate
as a diplomatic note. And the upshot of the affair is that the poor
little boy must go without the usual allowance of Sunday pudding.
London is the greatest market for books in the world. Not only does it
supply England, but also Asia, Africa, Australia, and those island
colonies of the great ocean, in which English daring and English
enterprise have established the Anglo-Saxon race, and with it the
English language. About 15,000 persons are employed in the printing,
binding, and in the sale of books. Their mechanical aids and machinery
have been brought to an astounding height of perfection, and an edition
of a thousand copies in octavo requires but ten or twelve hours for the
binding. But when you consider those bony, broad-shouldered,
firm-looking Englishmen, you understand at once that such men could not
live on literature alone. Paternoster-row, the centre of the
book-trade, carries on its existence in modest retirement amidst a
conglomeration of large and small streets, but to the north there is the
provoking, broad, impertinent extent of old Smithfield, the notorious
cattle-market of London, the greatest cattle-market in the world, the
dirtiest of all the dirty spots which disgrace the fair face of the
capital of England.
This immense open place, or more properly speaking, this immense
conglomeration of a great many small open places, with its broad open
street market, is covered all over with wooden compartments and pens,
such as are usual on the sheep-farms of the continent.
Each of these pens is large enough to accommodate a moderate sized
statue; each of them must, on Mondays and Fridays, accommodate an ox and
a certain number of cattle, pigs, or sheep. If by a miracle all these
wretched animals were converted into marble or bronze, surely after
thousands of years, the nations of the earth would journey to Smithfield
to study the character of this our time in that vast field of monuments.
But since such a poetical transformation has not taken place, the
appearance of that quarter of the town is curious but not agreeable.
Surrounded by dirty streets, lanes, courts, and alleys, the haunts of
poverty and crime, Smithfield is infested not only with fierce and
savage cattle, but also with the still fiercer and more savage tribes of
drivers and butchers. On market-days the passengers are in danger of
being run over, trampled down, or tossed up by the drivers or "beasts";
at night, rapine and murder prowl in the lanes and alleys in the
vicinity; and the police have more trouble with this part of the town
than with the whole of Brompton, Kensington, and Bayswater. The crowding
of cattle in the centre of the town is an inexhaustible source of
accidents. Men are run down, women are tossed, children are trampled to
death. But these men, women, and children, belong to the lower classes.
Persons of rank or wealth do not generally come to Smithfield early in
the morning, if, indeed, they ever come there at all. The child is
buried on the following Sunday, when its parents are free from work; the
man is taken to the apothecary's shop close by, where the needful is
done to his wound; the woman applies to some female quack for a
plaister, and if she is in good luck she gets another plaister in the
shape of a glass of gin from the owner of the cattle. The press takes
notice of the accidents, people read the paragraph and are shocked; and
the whole affair is forgotten even before the next market day.
For years Smithfield has been denounced by the press and in Parliament.
The Tories came in and went out; so did the Whigs. But neither of the
two great political parties could be induced to set their faces against
the nuisance. The autonomy of the city, moreover, deprecated anything
like government intervention, for Smithfield is a rich source of
revenue; the market dues, the public-house rents, and the traffic
generally, represent a heavy sum. In the last year only, the Lords and
Commons of England have pronounced the doom of Smithfield. The cattle
market is to be abolished. But when? That is the question--for its
protectors are sure to come forward with claims of indemnity, and other
means of temporisation; and the choice of a fitting locality, on the
outskirts of the town, will most likely take some years. For we ought
not to forget that in England everything moves slowly, with the
exception of machinery and steam.
Smithfield and its history are instances of the many dark sides of
self-government. For self-government has its dark sides, commendable
though it be as the basis of free institutions. It is to the
self-government of every community, of every parish, and of every
association, that England is indebted for her justly envied industrial,
political, and commercial, greatness. But self-government is the cause
of many great and useful undertakings proceeding but slowly; and, in
many instances, succumbing to the assaults of hostile and vested
interests. The government, indeed, attempts to combat all nuisances by
mooting and fostering a variety of agitations. In Germany, it wants but
a line from a minister to eradicate small evils, or introduce signal
improvements. In England the same matters must be dealt with in a tender
and cautious manner; it takes a score or so of years of agitation, until
parliament yielding to public opinion, passes its vote for the
improvement, or against the nuisance. Great joy there would be in
London, if Smithfield, as Sodom of old, were consumed with fire; but
the whole of London would have been urged to resistance if the
government had presumed, on its own responsibility, to interfere with
Smithfield. Is this prejudice or political wisdom? On which side is the
greater good--and on which the worse evil? The present happy condition
of England has long since answered that question in favour of
self-government. If ever there was a question on this point, it has long
been settled in the hearts and minds of all continental nations. If they
were to act according to their inclinations, I am positive they would
"go and do so likewise."