The earnest care of the Government to know the exact number of people
that the parish of Clumpley-cum-Bogglesmere contained on an especial
night—how many folks slept in 43, Parson's Court, Upper Bloater Street,
Chandler's Market, on the same occasion: who populated the police-cells;
who put up at hotels; who dozed the night away in cabs and coffee-shops—
on billiard-tables and heaps of cabbages—anywhere, everywhere, and
nowhere—this great investigation of those who cannot believe their
Census any longer, is about to come off again, and again to furnish its
utterly false returns.
We say utterly false, for the means taken to insure correctness, as to
the number of persons who slept in a particular place on a particular
night, are contemptibly inefficient. With the smallest foresight, we can
furnish a number of tables proving its inaccuracy; and from the mass of
evidence taken by the Census Committee of Inquiry after the last return
(which evidence has never been made public) we can also bring forward
conclusive facts. To show the futility of expecting a correct return
from houses we subjoin the following information, taken quite at random,
from different individuals.
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CASE 1.—_Mr. Mark Lane._—I am a single man, and on the Corn Exchange. I
never slept anywhere on the night in question. I went to dine at the
Divan, and then I went to the play, and then I went to the Albion, and
then I went to the Cyder Cellars, and then I went about, and then I went
to a coffee-house, and then I went to Westminster Bridge to see the sun
rise, and then I went to my office and then I went to bed on the
counting-house table, and upset the inkstand into the wafers; and then I
went to sleep till the clerk came.
[Illustration:
TAKING THE CENSUS.
]
CASE 2.—_Joseph Badger._—I'm a cabman. I didn't sleep not in no house on
that night: I haven't done for years. I took a party from Doory Lane,
Julyun's, to Pentonwill; and afterwards nodded on my box a bit, just a
wink, cos no cabs as never no call there. Then I took a gent as was a
little overcome, and thought he was at Paddington, as far as the Edg'er
Road, by St. Paul's and the Regency Circus; and then I went to the Great
West'un, and dozed a bit again, inside, and set on my whip and broke it,
just like anythink, as you might say. Next fare I got was a up-passenger
from Exeter, and took him to the Piazzy Hotel, and then I got another
wink in Bedford Street, and there I was till morning.
[Illustration]
CASE 3.—_Mr. Gregory Barnes._—I am a surgeon and chemist in Seven Dials.
I certainly never slept in any house on that evening. I was rung up at
eleven o'clock to an obstetric case in Endell Street; and sent from
there at two, to an Irishman who'd got his skull fractured in St.
Giles's, by a quart pot; and was obliged to leave him to cut down a
tipsy tailor, who had just hung himself in Crown Street, and was two
hours coming round; and then I had his wife in hysterics for the same
time; and then it was morning, and I was obliged to go off to the Old
Bailey on a trial of manslaughter.
[Illustration:
ALARMING INCREASE OF
THE POPULATION.
]
But these examples might be multiplied to the ages of Sinclair,
Widdicombe, Braham, and any other "veterans," as they are termed,
combined. The people unnumbered in the Census compose waiters, tramps,
stokers, carriers, gamblers, piemen, breakfast-stall-keepers, steamboat
stewards, mail-train passengers, moon-shooters, show-folks, Vauxhall
lamp-men, and renowned individuals of all sorts, whose night's repose is
doubtful; such as Mr. Braidwood; the toll-keepers at the bridges, the
beadles of the arcades, Mr. Green, if on a night ascent; the editor of
the _Times_; and, on certain debates, Mr. Chisholm Anstey.
We are told that population doubles in a certain number of years. If so,
when it doubles itself again, what the dickens will the crowd do in
Cheapside at four o'clock in the afternoon; or the people on the roof of
the Cremorne omnibuses homeward-bound; in the pit of the Adelphi; the
Derby-day cheap trains; the Blackwall whitebait houses on fine Sundays;
or the Watermen steamers from Greenwich Fair?