The Night Side of London Part 6

d.i.c.kens makes Mrs General in "Little Dorrit" remark, "Society never forms opinions, and is never demonstrative." Well, the costermongers are the reverse of all this, and as the pots of heavy and the quarterns of juniper are freely quaffed, and the world and its cares are forgotten, and the company becomes hourly more noisy and hilarious, you will perceive the truth of my remarks. Anybody sings who likes; sometimes a man, sometimes a female, volunteers a performance, and I am sorry to say it is not the girls who sing the most delicate songs. The burdens of these songs are what you might expect. In one you were recommended not to go courting in the kitchen when the master was at home, but, instead, to choose the "airey." One song, with a chorus, was devoted to the deeds of "those handsome men, the French Grenadiers." Another recommended beer as a remedy for low spirits; and thus the harmony of the evening is continued till twelve, when the landlord closes his establishment, to the great grief of the few who have any money left, who would only be too happy to keep it up all night. Let me say a word about costermonger literature. I see Mr Manby Smith calculates its pecuniary value at twelve thousand a year. It is wretched in every way,-in composition, in printing, in cuts, and paper. These street ballads-we are all familiar with them-are sold by a cla.s.s of men called patterers, and are written so as to bear on the events of the day. Thus, at the last Lord Mayor's day we had a song sung in the streets, of which the following is a specimen:-

"Away they go, the high and low, Such glorious sights was never seen, But still the London Lord Mayor's show Is not as it has former been, When old d.i.c.k Whittington was mayor, And our forefathers had to go; They had not got no Peelers there, To guard great London's Lord Mayor's show."

And we are told in another verse that-

"They will talk of Russia, France, and that, And mention how the money goes; Each man will eat a pect of sprats, That's the fas.h.i.+on at the Lord Mayor's show."

Some of these songs are indecent; almost all of them have a morbid sympathy with criminals. Thus Redpath in the following lines is almost made a martyr to his benevolence and Christian life.

"Alas! I am convicted, there's no one to blame- I suppose you all know Leopold Redpath is my name; I have one consolation, perhaps I've more, All the days of my life _I ne'er injured the poor_.

"I procured for the widow and orphan their bread, The naked I clothed, and the hungry I fed; But still I am sentenced, you must understand, Because I had broken the laws of the land.

"A last fond adieu to my heart-broken wife- Leopold Redpath, your husband, 's transported for life; Providence will protect you, love, do not deplore, _Since your husband never hurted or injured the poor_.

"In London and Weybridge _I in splendour did dwell_, _By the rich and the poor was respected right well_; But now I'm going-oh! where shall I say- A convict from England, oh! far, far away.

"I might have lived happy with my virtuous wife, Kept away from temptation, from tumult and strife, I'd enough to support me in happiness to live, _But I wanted something more poor people for to give_."

The street singers of the metropolis seized upon the Waterloo Bridge Tragedy as a fit subject for the exercise of their dismal strains. The following is printed verbatim, from an ill.u.s.trated broadsheet vended "at the charge of one halfpenny:"-

"Oh such a year for dreadful murders As this before was never seen; In England, Ireland, Britain over, Such horrid crimes has never been.

But this which now has been discovered Very far exceeds the whole, The very thought makes men to shudder, How horrible for to unfold.

"See and read in every paper This dreadful crime, this mystery, Worse, far worse, than James Greenacre's Is the London mystery.

"His body it was cut to pieces- Oh how dreadful was his fate!

Then placed in brine and hid in secret- Horrible for to relate.

The head and limbs had been divided- Where parts was taken no one knows; In a carpet bag they packed the body, Over Waterloo bridge they did it throw.

"It is supposed that a female monster Her victim's body onward dragged, With no companion to a.s.sist her, All packed within a carpet bag.

Justice determined is to take her, When without doubt she'll punished be, The atrocious female Greenacre Of the Waterloo Bridge Tragedy."

The reader will see from these specimens how alien the costermonger race is in sympathy and life from the respectable and the well-to-do. Their songs are not ours, nor their aims nor conventional observances. What wonder is it that they leave their wretched cellars all dirt and darkness, and crowd round the public-house; or that at the costermongers'

house of call-in the midst of an atmosphere of gin and tobacco-smoke, and under the influence of songs of very questionable merit-the poor lads receive the education which is to stamp their character and to teach them to grow up Ishmaelites, with their hands against every one, and every one's hand against them. Society will not educate its poor; wonder not then that they educate themselves, and that after a fas.h.i.+on not very desirable in the eyes of the friends of morality, of order, and of law.

THE POLICE-COURT

Is an attractive lounge to the seedy, the disreputable, the unwashed.

Evidently it is a grand and refres.h.i.+ng and popular sight to see justice doled out in small parcels-to see the righteous flourish, and the wicked put to shame. I fear, however, it is a feeling of a more personal nature that is the chief attraction, after all. Jones goes to see what a mess Davis gets into; Smithes to see if Scroggins keeps "mum" like a brick; the many, to retail a little scandal at the expense of their neighbours,-if at the expense of a friend, of course so much the better.

A little before ten a crowd is ranged round the police-office, waiting to see the prisoners, who have been locked up all night, marched into the court, which generally commences its operations at ten. The court itself offers very little accommodation to the most thinking public. At one end of the room is the presiding magistrate; below him is the clerk; on the right of the magistrate is the box for complainant and witnesses.

Opposite him is the dock in which the defendant is placed; behind some boards, over which only tall people can see, is the public; and on the magistrate's right are the reporters-or, rather, the penny-a-liners-who write on "flimsy," and leave "copy" on spec. at all the daily paper offices. Let me say a word about these exceedingly seedy-looking individuals connected with the fourth estate. That they are not better dressed is, I take it, their own fault, and arises from that daring defiance of conventionalism which is so great a characteristic of the lower orders of gentlemen connected with the press. Let me say, _en pa.s.sant_, the public owe these men much. It is they who labour with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, and that deserves to be successful, to describe the cases heard in the police-courts in the most racy and tempting terms. In their peculiar phraseology, every bachelor who gets into a sc.r.a.pe is a gay Lothario, and every young woman that appeals to justice is lady-like in manners and interesting in appearance.

The poor wretch that crawls along the street, all rouged and decked out in finery not her own, is "a das.h.i.+ng Cyprian." Every Irishman is described as "a native of the Green Isle;" every man in a red coat, "a brave son of Mars;" every sailor, "a jolly tar;" and a man with a little hair on his chin, or under it, is invariably "bearded like the pard;" and if anything causing a smile occurs,-and sometimes on the gravest occasions justice will even grin,-the court is-so they always put it-convulsed with laughter. Knights of the pen, a police-case loving-to-read public should be grateful to you! By the side of the reporters often sit some three or four of those mischief-makers, pettifogging attorneys; men who, in their own opinion, only require a clear stage and no favour, and the mere formality of a call to the bar, to rival, if not surpa.s.s, the fame of a Scarlett, or a Brougham, or a Lyndhurst, or an Erskine, or even of a c.o.ke himself; and truly if to bully, to suppress what is true, and insinuate what is false-if to gloss over the injustice done by a client, and to proclaim aloud that of the opposite party-if to speak in an emphatic manner and at a most unmerciful length-if to browbeat witnesses, mislead the court, and astonish the weak nerves of their hearers, const.i.tute a fitness for legal greatness, these gentlemen have only to enter their names at any of the Inns of Court, and eat the requisite number of dinners, to win at once undying reputation.

At the dock appears the trembling culprit, guarded sedulously by the police, who quietly a.s.sume his or her guilt, and do all they can in endeavouring to make out a case,-occasionally going so far in their zeal as to state things not exactly true, the _esprit de corps_ of course leading them to aid each other whenever they have a chance.

In a low neighbourhood the princ.i.p.al cases heard are those arising from intoxication. On this particular morning we will suppose the court opens with what is very common, an a.s.sault case between two Irish families who were hereditary foes, and who, emigrating, or rather, like Eneas, "driven by fate," from the mother country at the same time, locate, unfortunately for themselves, in the same neighbourhood,-and who, in accordance with the well-known remark of Horace, continue in St Giles's the amicable quarrels of Tipperary, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of a congenial neighbourhood, which likes a good fight rather than not, but to the intense terror and annoyance of all such of her Majesty's lieges as are well disposed. As generally happens, the case, after a considerable amount of hard swearing on both sides, is dismissed, leaving to each party the inestimable privilege of paying costs. This case creates great interest; complainants and defendants are well-known performers, and the mob comes to see them as people go to see Wright at the Adelphi. When it terminates, the Guelphs and Ghibelines leave the court to discuss the oft-told tale in the nearest public-house. The remaining cases are those of sailors and navvies, charged with being drunk and disorderly, of robberies committed by prost.i.tutes when their victims were stupified by beer, and of ragged urchins with precocious developments, the head and front of whose offending was that they "heaved" stones, or that they declined to "move on" when particularly requested to do so by the police.

Poor little outcasts, they are better off in jail than on the streets; and they know it, and own to an astonis.h.i.+ng number of convictions, and gladly look forward to the time when they shall be able to achieve greater enormities and manlier offences against law. These cases are soon disposed of; in the majority the magistrate hears the complaint, and simply tells the little urchin he "may go down." But let us not leave yet. That is a publican, and he has a charge against this decent-looking woman,-she is not a drunkard;-let us listen.

"Call Phil. Bird," says the superintendent.

As Phil. Bird is in court, there is no need to call him, but he is called in stentorian tones nevertheless. Policemen, like other men, love to hear the sound of their own voices. Phil. immediately steps into the witness-box. That he is a favourite with the beer-drinking public around is clear as soon as he kisses the Bible, and promises-a promise lightly made, and lightly broken-to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, "So help me G.o.d."

"Well, Bird," says the magistrate, "will you state your complaint?"

"Certainly, your honour," is the reply. "I was in my shop on Sat.u.r.day, when that woman (pointing to the trembling female in the dock) came in kicking up a row, and asking for her husband; well, she spoke to her husband, and wanted to get him away, but her husband did not choose to go; and as she would not leave quietly, I was obliged to go and speak to her, upon which she turned round, abusing me, saying I had robbed her of her husband, that I had got his money, and kept making a great many remarks which I was not going to submit to, especially as she had got quite a crowd of people together, and it was interfering with my business; so I called in policeman Brown, and gave her in charge."

Policeman Brown corroborates the testimony. He has yet to win his spurs, and is glad of an opportunity of distinguis.h.i.+ng himself; besides, he has drunk too much of Phil. Bird's fine sparkling ales to refuse to do him a little friendly turn when he has a chance.

"Mr Bird's house is a well-conducted house, I believe, Mr Superintendent?" says the magistrate, more from habit than with any view of eliciting information.

"Good, your wors.h.i.+p," is the answer,-"impossible to be better." The superintendent, perhaps, has received a small cask of Devons.h.i.+re cyder, as a mark of private friends.h.i.+p and personal esteem, from the complainant, and this might, though I would fain hope not-but flesh is gra.s.s, and a superintendent of police is but flesh after all-have influenced the nature of his reply. This is the more probable, as one bystander whispers to another, that he believes Phil. Bird's is the worst house in the street, a remark which seems to excite the cordial approbation of the party to whom it is addressed-a remark also which the superintendent hears, and which leads him to cry "silence" in his loudest voice and sternest manner. The whisperer is cowed at once.

Phil. Bird looks gratefully at the superintendent; the latter is grateful in O'Connell's sense, and has a lively sense of favours to come.

"And the woman, what about her?" asks the magistrate.

"I believe generally she's very well behaved," says policeman Brown, as if on the present occasion she had been guilty of an enormous offence.

"Do you know anything against her?"

"Not as I know of, yer wors.h.i.+p."

"Well," says the magistrate, addressing the poor washerwoman, nervous and "all of a tremble," as she afterwards confidentially informs a friend, looking as if she expected immediate sentence of death pa.s.sed upon her, "what do you say to the charge? Mr Bird says you went and created a disturbance in his shop; now you had no business to do that, you know."

"I know I hadn't, sir," said the poor woman; but here she burst into tears.

Had she been alone with the magistrate, who is a kind-hearted man, and wishes to do what is right, she would soon have found her tongue, and her warm appeal, told with natural eloquence, because told out of a full heart, would soon have reached his own; but she is frightened-her energies are paralysed,-she cannot speak at all.

"Oh, Brown," says the magistrate, as if a bright thought struck him, "was the woman sober?"

"Well, I can't swear that she was drunk," said Brown, reluctantly.

This by no means helps to soothe the poor woman's nerves, but it drives her to speak in her own behalf.

"Your wors.h.i.+p," she exclaims, "I was as sober as you are now"-she might have added, but she did not, "and a good deal more sober than policeman Brown." "I did go to Phil. Bird's, but it was to fetch my husband out, who had been inveigled in there, and had been led into spending all the money he had, and getting drunk."

"Well, my good woman, the publican must be protected. You should not have created a disturbance. I shan't inflict a fine, but you must pay the costs. You may go down."

And so the time of the magistrate is taken up; not one case out of ten comes to anything; but the officiousness of the police is shown; the lazy and good-for-nothing part of the public have a gratuitous entertainment provided for them, and the criminal cla.s.s get an initiation into the secrets of the law, which robs it of its terrors, as in such matters it is especially true familiarity breeds contempt. Most of the lads and girls-especially the latter-placed at the bar, rather seem to like the excitement, and go before the bench in their best clothes and with their best looks, as they go to the gallery of the Victoria or the Sunday tea-garden.