On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
tto the north end thereof : for ijrho was to put it down in those i days ? The two or three parish beadles and ' constables serving i in their own right' could not take up the five or six hundred reeling or wallowing swine of a swinishly-inclined multitude ; and
as for the Bow-street officers ,, they were better employed than in p icking up the ' dirty spalpeens' who were sprawling in the gutter , and soaked inside and out with puddle-water and ' Hodges ' s best . ' Besides , Pat would have thought it mighty hard , after (running up and down perpendicular ladders during six days , to be debarred from an hour or two ' s horizontal refreshment ' on
Sunday . It was , no doubt , very shocking to witness such scenes : they are past ; and it is something to have lived long enough to see that they are no more—thanks to a better knowledge among the many , and a better police where the few are still inclined to indulge in the old familiar vices .
But Drury-lane had not all the indecorous to itself : other low neighbourhoods disgorged their dirty and debauched , who carried their depravities out of town with them , instead of exhibiting them in the streets ; and accordingly the roads and the fields in the suburbs were covered with born blackguards , some leading home bull-dogs , bitten , torn , mangled , and bleeding , who had had their
bellies-full of fighting—others going to more distant fightingplaces . Dustmen , coster-mongers , draymen , coal-heavers with their beards newly mowed , but the upper parts of their faces still covered with an incrustation of coal-dust , —hackneymen , butchers ' men and boys , —in short , all the lower and worst classes of London , seemed smitten with a sort of tarantula dance , and
toe-andheeled it out of town . The green suburbs were reached sooner in those days , before London had outgrown itself ; and to these inviting spots accordingly such motley groups as we have named bent their steps , not always of the steadiest . In one corner of a cow-pasture you beheld a group engaged at pitch and hustle ; in
another a pitched battle was going on for seven shillings a side , or a leg of mutton and trimmings . Now and then you might bear some respectable-looking person exclaim— ' Zounds , I ' ve lost my watch !*— No / cried a hundred voices , — It vozn ' t wallible , voz it V € Yes , worth ten guineas , ' groaned the bereaved of Tornpion . A shout of laughter told him how much they pitied
him . Shortly afterwards , perhaps , another respectable found that he had lost his purse with twenty guineas in it : whereupon louder roars of laughter shook the welkin , these fellows having a peculiar relish for such happy strokes of practical humour . If the loser could be restored to good-humour by the good-humour of
the blackguards about him , he lacked not such consolexnent : he was told that money generall y changed hands at a fight ; and was advised to offer thirty pounds reward , and he would be sure to get his twenty again , &c . &c . If the field had a pond in it , a wick-hunt wts exciting shrieks of cruel laughter ; or perhaps a
Untitled Article
A London Sunday . M 3
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 563, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/33/
-