TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND.
Barry Cornwall tells us that when he was a little boy he was told that
the streets of London were all paved with gold; and it must be admitted
that, to the youthful mind in general, the metropolis is a sort of Tom
Tiddler's ground, where gold and silver are to be picked up in handfuls
any day. There is a good deal of exaggeration in this, undoubtedly. To
many, London is dark and dismal as one of its own fogs, cold and stony as
one of its own streets. The Earl of Shaftesbury, a few years back,
calculated there were 30,000 ragged, houseless, homeless children in our
streets. The number of persons who died last year in the streets of
London, from want of the necessaries of life, would shock a Christian.
Last year the total number of casual destitute paupers admitted into the
workhouses of the metropolitan districts amounted to 53,221 males, 62,622
females, and 25,710 children. We cannot wonder at this when we remember
that it is said 60,000 persons rise every morning utterly ignorant as to
the wherewithal to feed and maintain themselves for the day. Wonderful
are the shifts, and efforts, and ingenuities of this class. One
summer-day, a lady-friend of the writer was driving in one of the
pleasant green lanes of Hornsey, when she saw a poor woman gathering the
broad leaves of the horse-chestnut. She asked her why she did so. The
reply was that she got a living by selling them to the fruiterers in
Covent Garden, who lined the baskets with them in which they placed their
choicest specimens. One day it came out in evidence at a police-court,
that a mother and her children earned a scanty subsistence by rising
early in the morning, or rather late at night, and tearing down and
selling as waste-paper, the broad sheets and placards with which the dead
walls and boardings of our metropolis abound. The poor sick needlewomen,
stitching for two-and-six-pence a-week, indicate in some quarters how
hard is the London struggle for life. But one of the worst sights, I
think, is that of women (a dozen may be seen at a time), all black and
grimy, sifting the cinders and rubbish collected by the dustmen from
various parts, and shot into one enormous heap.
The last dodge exposed for making money is amusing. A writer in the
_Times_ wanted to know how it was we see advertisements in London papers
for a million of postage-stamps. A writer in reply says all the stories
about severe papas, who will not let their daughters marry till they have
papered a room with them, are false. He says if the reader will go to
some of the purlieus of the Borough (leaving his watch and purse at home)
he will very possibly be enlightened. He will be accosted by a
hook-nosed man, who will pull out a greasy pocket-book, and produce some
apparently new postage-stamps, not all joined together, but each one
separate, and will offer them for sale at about 2d. a dozen. If the
enterprising stranger looks very closely, indeed, into these stamps, he
may perhaps detect a slight join in the middle. They are made by taking
the halves which are unobliterated of two old stamps and joining them,
regumming the backs and cleaning the faces. This practice is, it is
said, carried on to a great extent, in the low neighbourhoods of
Ratcliff-highway, and the Borough.
During the year 1858 it appears 10,004 persons died in the public
institutions of London: 5,535 in the workhouses, 57 in the prisons, and
4,412 in hospitals. Of the latter number 317 belong to the Greenwich and
the Chelsea hospitals, 211 to the military and naval hospitals. About
one in six of the inhabitants of the metropolis dies in the public
institutions, nearly one in eleven dies in the workhouses. Only think of
the population of London. In 1857 that was estimated by the
Registrar-General at 2,800,000; since then the population has gone on
steadily increasing, and it may be fairly estimated that the London of
to-day is more than equal to three Londons of 1801. Now, amidst this
teeming population, what thousands of vicious, and rogues, and fools
there must be; what thousands suddenly reduced from affluence to poverty;
what thousands plunged into distress by sickness or the loss of friends,
and parents, and other benefactors; to such what a place of pain, and
daily mortification, and trial London must be!
But, on the other hand, from the time of Whittington and his cat, London
has abounded with instances showing how, by industry and intelligence,
and--let us trust--honesty, the poorest may rise to the possession of
great wealth and honour. Indeed all the great city houses abound with
examples. Poor lads have come up to town, friendless and moneyless, have
been sober and steady, and firm against London allurements and vices,
have improved the abilities and opportunities God has given them, and are
now men of note and mark. The late Lord Mayor was but an office-lad in
the firm of which he is now the head. Mr. Herbert Ingram, M.P. for
Boston, and proprietor of the _Illustrated News_, blackened the shoes of
one of his constituents. Mr. Anderson, of the Oriental Steam Navigation
Company, and formerly M.P. for the Orkneys, rose in a similar manner.
Sir Peter Laurie was originally in a humble position in life, so was Mr.
Dillon, of the house of Dillon and Co. Our great Lord Chancellor, when
employment was scarce and money ditto, held a post as reporter and
theatrical critic on the _Morning Chronicle_ newspaper. Mr. Chaplin, the
late Salisbury M.P., was an extraordinary instance of a man rising from
the humblest rank. Before railways were in operation Mr. Chaplin had
succeeded in making himself one of the largest coach proprietors in the
kingdom. His establishment, from small beginnings, grew till, just
before the opening of the London and North Western line, he was
proprietor of sixty-four stage-coaches, worked by fifteen hundred horses,
and giving yearly returns of more than half a million sterling. Mr.
Cobden began life in a very subordinate position in a London warehouse.
Sir William Cubitt when a lad worked at his father's flour-mill. Michael
Faraday, England's most eminent chemist, was the son of a poor
blacksmith. Sir Samuel Morton Peto worked for seven years as a
carpenter, bricklayer, and mason, under his uncle, Mr. Henry Peto. The
well-known Mr. Lindsay, M.P. for Sunderland, was a cabin boy. The editor
of one morning paper rose quite from the ranks, and the editor of another
well known journal used to be an errand-boy in the office before, by
gigantic industry and perseverance, he attained his present high
position. Mr. J. Fox, the eloquent M.P. for Oldham, and the "Publicola"
of the _Weekly Dispatch_, worked in a Norwich factory. The great
warehouses in Cheapside and Cannon-street, and elsewhere, are owned by
men who mostly began life without a rap. Go to the beautiful villas at
Norwood, at Highgate, at Richmond, and ask who lives there, and you will
find that they are inhabited by men whose wealth is enormous, and whose
career has been a marvellous success. Fortunes in London are made by
trifles. I know a man who keeps a knacker's yard, who lives out of town
in a villa of exquisite beauty, and who drives horses which a prince
might envy. Out of the profits of his vegetable pills Morrison bought
himself a nice estate. Mrs. Holloway drives one of the handsomest
carriages you shall meet in the Strand. Sawyer and Strange, who the
other day were respectable young men unknown to fame, paid the Crystal
Palace Company upwards of 12,000 pounds, as per contract, for the liberty
to supply refreshments for a few months. In the city there, at this
time, may be seen the proprietor of a dining-room, who drives a handsome
mail-phaeton and pair daily to town in the morning to do business, and
back at night. Thackeray has a tale of a gentleman who married a young
lady, drove his cab, and lived altogether in great style. The gentleman
was very silent as to his occupation; he would not even communicate the
secret to his wife. All that she knew was what was patent to all his
neighbours--that he went in his Brougham in the morning, and returned at
night. Even the mother-in-law, prying as she was, was unable to solve
the mystery. At length, one day the unfortunate wife, going with her
dear mamma into the city, in the person of a street sweeper clothed in
rags, and covered with dirt, she recognised her lord and master, who
decamped and was never heard of more. The story is comic, but not
improbable, for London is so full of wealth, you have only to take your
place, and it seems as if some of the golden shower must fall into your
mouth. Mr. Thwaites, when examined before the Parliamentary Committee on
the Embankment of the Thames, said, "The metropolis contributes very
largely to the taxation of the country. The value of the property
assessed under Schedule A, is 22,385,350 pounds, whilst the sum for the
rest of the kingdom is 127,994,288 pounds; under Schedule D the
metropolis shows 37,871,644 pounds, against 86,077,676 pounds. The gross
estimated rental of the property of the metropolis assessed to the poor
rates is 16,157,320 pounds, against 86,077,676 pounds from the rest of
the kingdom." The speculations on the Stock Exchange embrace a national
debt of 800 millions, railway shares to the extent of 300 millions,
besides foreign stock, foreign railway shares, and miscellaneous
investments of all kinds. Land has been sold in the neighbourhood of the
Exchange and the Bank at the rate of a million pounds an acre. The
rateable value of the property assessed to the poor rates in the
districts of the metropolis in 1857 amounted to 11,167,678 pounds. A
Parliamentary Return shows that the total ordinary receipts of the
Corporation of the city for the year 1857 amounted to 905,298 pounds, the
largest item being the coal duty, 64,238 pounds. The London omnibuses
pay government a duty of no less than 70,200 pounds a year. The Thames
even, dirty and stinking as it is, is full of gold. One fact will place
its commercial value in the clearest light. In 1856 the Customs' duties
entered as collected from all parts of the United Kingdom were 19,813,622
pounds, and of this large sum considerably more than half was collected
in the port of London,--the Customs' duties paid in the port of London
alone being 12,287,591 pounds, a much larger sum than paid by all the
remaining ports of the United Kingdom put together. No wonder that the
Londoners are proud of the Thames. Why, even the very mudlarks--the boys
who prowl in its mud on behalf of treasure-trove--earn, it is said, as
much as 2,000 to 3,000 pounds by that miserable employment in the course
of a year.
But we stop. The magnitude of Loudon wealth and even crime can never be
fully estimated. It is a boundless ocean, in which the brave, sturdy,
steady swimmer--while the weak are borne away rapidly to destruction--may
pick up precious pearls.