So far we understand that London about the year 1750 was a city filled
with dignified merchants all 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.
[Illustration: COSTUMES OF GENTLEFOLK, ABOUT 1784.]
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.
[Illustration: VESSELS UNLOADING AT THE CUSTOMS HOUSE, AT THE BEGINNING
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.]
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.