It is a remarkable circumstance, that different trades appear to
partake of the disease to which elephants and dogs are especially
liable, and to run stark, staring, raving mad, periodically. The great
distinction between the animals and the trades, is, that the former run
mad with a certain degree of propriety—they are very regular in their
irregularities. We know the period at which the emergency will arise,
and provide against it accordingly. If an elephant run mad, we are all
ready for him—kill or cure—pills or bullets, calomel in conserve of
roses, or lead in a musket-barrel. If a dog happen to look unpleasantly
warm in the summer months, and to trot about the shady side of the
streets with a quarter of a yard of tongue hanging out of his mouth, a
thick leather muzzle, which has been previously prepared in compliance
with the thoughtful injunctions of the Legislature, is instantly
clapped over his head, by way of making him cooler, and he either looks
remarkably unhappy for the next six weeks, or becomes legally insane,
and goes mad, as it were, by Act of Parliament. But these trades are as
eccentric as comets; nay, worse, for no one can calculate on the
recurrence of the strange appearances which betoken the disease.
Moreover, the contagion is general, and the quickness with which it
diffuses itself, almost incredible.
We will cite two or three cases in illustration of our meaning. Six or
eight years ago, the epidemic began to display itself among the
linen-drapers and haberdashers. The primary symptoms were an inordinate
love of plate-glass, and a passion for gas-lights and gilding. The
disease gradually progressed, and at last attained a fearful height.
Quiet, dusty old shops in different parts of town, were pulled down;
spacious premises with stuccoed fronts and gold letters, were erected
instead; floors were covered with Turkey carpets; roofs supported by
massive pillars; doors knocked into windows; a dozen squares of glass
into one; one shopman into a dozen; and there is no knowing what would
have been done, if it had not been fortunately discovered, just in
time, that the Commissioners of Bankruptcy were as competent to decide
such cases as the Commissioners of Lunacy, and that a little
confinement and gentle examination did wonders. The disease abated. It
died away. A year or two of comparative tranquillity ensued. Suddenly
it burst out again amongst the chemists; the symptoms were the same,
with the addition of a strong desire to stick the royal arms over the
shop-door, and a great rage for mahogany, varnish, and expensive
floor-cloth. Then, the hosiers were infected, and began to pull down
their shop-fronts with frantic recklessness. The mania again died away,
and the public began to congratulate themselves on its entire
disappearance, when it burst forth with tenfold violence among the
publicans, and keepers of ‘wine vaults.’ From that moment it has spread
among them with unprecedented rapidity, exhibiting a concatenation of
all the previous symptoms; onward it has rushed to every part of town,
knocking down all the old public-houses, and depositing splendid
mansions, stone balustrades, rosewood fittings, immense lamps, and
illuminated clocks, at the corner of every street.
The extensive scale on which these places are established, and the
ostentatious manner in which the business of even the smallest among
them is divided into branches, is amusing. A handsome plate of ground
glass in one door directs you ‘To the Counting-house;’ another to the
‘Bottle Department; a third to the ‘Wholesale Department;’ a fourth to
‘The Wine Promenade;’ and so forth, until we are in daily expectation
of meeting with a ‘Brandy Bell,’ or a ‘Whiskey Entrance.’ Then,
ingenuity is exhausted in devising attractive titles for the different
descriptions of gin; and the dram-drinking portion of the community as
they gaze upon the gigantic black and white announcements, which are
only to be equalled in size by the figures beneath them, are left in a
state of pleasing hesitation between ‘The Cream of the Valley,’ ‘The
Out and Out,’ ‘The No Mistake,’ ‘The Good for Mixing,’ ‘The real
Knock-me-down,’ ‘The celebrated Butter Gin,’ ‘The regular Flare-up,’
and a dozen other, equally inviting and wholesome _liqueurs_. Although
places of this description are to be met with in every second street,
they are invariably numerous and splendid in precise proportion to the
dirt and poverty of the surrounding neighbourhood. The gin-shops in and
near Drury-Lane, Holborn, St. Giles’s, Covent-garden, and Clare-market,
are the handsomest in London. There is more of filth and squalid misery
near those great thorough-fares than in any part of this mighty city.
We will endeavour to sketch the bar of a large gin-shop, and its
ordinary customers, for the edification of such of our readers as may
not have had opportunities of observing such scenes; and on the chance
of finding one well suited to our purpose, we will make for Drury-Lane,
through the narrow streets and dirty courts which divide it from
Oxford-street, and that classical spot adjoining the brewery at the
bottom of Tottenham-court-road, best known to the initiated as the
‘Rookery.’
The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of London can hardly
be imagined by those (and there are many such) who have not witnessed
it. Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper:
every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two
or even three—fruit and ‘sweet-stuff’ manufacturers in the cellars,
barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the
back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second,
starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a ‘musician’ in the
front kitchen, and a charwoman and five hungry children in the back
one—filth everywhere—a gutter before the houses and a drain
behind—clothes drying and slops emptying, from the windows; girls of
fourteen or fifteen, with matted hair, walking about barefoot, and in
white great-coats, almost their only covering; boys of all ages, in
coats of all sizes and no coats at all; men and women, in every variety
of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking,
squabbling, fighting, and swearing.
You turn the corner. What a change! All is light and brilliancy. The
hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin-shop which forms the
commencement of the two streets opposite; and the gay building with the
fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the
plate-glass windows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of
gas-lights in richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when
contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left. The interior
is even gayer than the exterior. A bar of French-polished mahogany,
elegantly carved, extends the whole width of the place; and there are
two side-aisles of great casks, painted green and gold, enclosed within
a light brass rail, and bearing such inscriptions, as ‘Old Tom, 549;’
‘Young Tom, 360;’ ‘Samson, 1421’—the figures agreeing, we presume, with
‘gallons,’ understood. Beyond the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon,
full of the same enticing vessels, with a gallery running round it,
equally well furnished. On the counter, in addition to the usual spirit
apparatus, are two or three little baskets of cakes and biscuits, which
are carefully secured at top with wicker-work, to prevent their
contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it, are two
showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces, dispensing the spirits
and ‘compounds.’ They are assisted by the ostensible proprietor of the
concern, a stout, coarse fellow in a fur cap, put on very much on one
side to give him a knowing air, and to display his sandy whiskers to
the best advantage.
The two old washerwomen, who are seated on the little bench to the left
of the bar, are rather overcome by the head-dresses and haughty
demeanour of the young ladies who officiate. They receive their
half-quartern of gin and peppermint, with considerable deference,
prefacing a request for ‘one of them soft biscuits,’ with a ‘Jist be
good enough, ma’am.’ They are quite astonished at the impudent air of
the young fellow in a brown coat and bright buttons, who, ushering in
his two companions, and walking up to the bar in as careless a manner
as if he had been used to green and gold ornaments all his life, winks
at one of the young ladies with singular coolness, and calls for a
‘kervorten and a three-out-glass,’ just as if the place were his own.
‘Gin for you, sir?’ says the young lady when she has drawn it:
carefully looking every way but the right one, to show that the wink
had no effect upon her. ‘For me, Mary, my dear,’ replies the gentleman
in brown. ‘My name an’t Mary as it happens,’ says the young girl,
rather relaxing as she delivers the change. ‘Well, if it an’t, it ought
to be,’ responds the irresistible one; ‘all the Marys as ever _I_ see,
was handsome gals.’ Here the young lady, not precisely remembering how
blushes are managed in such cases, abruptly ends the flirtation by
addressing the female in the faded feathers who has just entered, and
who, after stating explicitly, to prevent any subsequent
misunderstanding, that ‘this gentleman pays,’ calls for ‘a glass of
port wine and a bit of sugar.’
Those two old men who came in ‘just to have a drain,’ finished their
third quartern a few seconds ago; they have made themselves crying
drunk; and the fat comfortable-looking elderly women, who had ‘a glass
of rum-srub’ each, having chimed in with their complaints on the
hardness of the times, one of the women has agreed to stand a glass
round, jocularly observing that ‘grief never mended no broken bones,
and as good people’s wery scarce, what I says is, make the most on ’em,
and that’s all about it!’ a sentiment which appears to afford unlimited
satisfaction to those who have nothing to pay.
It is growing late, and the throng of men, women, and children, who
have been constantly going in and out, dwindles down to two or three
occasional stragglers—cold, wretched-looking creatures, in the last
stage of emaciation and disease. The knot of Irish labourers at the
lower end of the place, who have been alternately shaking hands with,
and threatening the life of each other, for the last hour, become
furious in their disputes, and finding it impossible to silence one
man, who is particularly anxious to adjust the difference, they resort
to the expedient of knocking him down and jumping on him afterwards.
The man in the fur cap, and the potboy rush out; a scene of riot and
confusion ensues; half the Irishmen get shut out, and the other half
get shut in; the potboy is knocked among the tubs in no time; the
landlord hits everybody, and everybody hits the landlord; the barmaids
scream; the police come in; the rest is a confused mixture of arms,
legs, staves, torn coats, shouting, and struggling. Some of the party
are borne off to the station-house, and the remainder slink home to
beat their wives for complaining, and kick the children for daring to
be hungry.
We have sketched this subject very slightly, not only because our
limits compel us to do so, but because, if it were pursued farther, it
would be painful and repulsive. Well-disposed gentlemen, and charitable
ladies, would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description
of the drunken besotted men, and wretched broken-down miserable women,
who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts;
forgetting, in the pleasant consciousness of their own rectitude, the
poverty of the one, and the temptation of the other. Gin-drinking is a
great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater; and
until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished
wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery,
with the pittance which, divided among his family, would furnish a
morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and
splendour. If Temperance Societies would suggest an antidote against
hunger, filth, and foul air, or could establish dispensaries for the
gratuitous distribution of bottles of Lethe-water, gin-palaces would be
numbered among the things that were.