About London

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James Ewing Ritchie. About London

CHAPTER I. NEWSPAPER PEOPLE

CHAPTER II. SPIRITUALISM

CHAPTER III. ABOUT COAL

CHAPTER IV. HIGHGATE

CHAPTER V. TOM TIDDLER’S GROUND

CHAPTER VI. WESTMINSTER ABBEY

CHAPTER VII. LONDON CHARITIES

CHAPTER VIII. PEDESTRIANISM

CHAPTER IX. OVER LONDON BRIDGE

CHAPTER X. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND THE EARLY-CLOSING MOVEMENT

CHAPTER XI. TOWN MORALS

CHAPTER XI. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

CHAPTER XII. LONDON MATRIMONIAL

CHAPTER XIII. BREACH OF PROMISE CASES

CHAPTER XIV. COMMERCIAL LONDON

CHAPTER XV. LONDON GENTS

CHAPTER XVI. THE LONDON VOLUNTEERS

CHAPTER XVII. CRIMINAL LONDON

CHARTER XVIII. CONCERNING CABS

CHAPTER XIX. FREE DRINKING FOUNTAINS

CHAPTER XX. CONCLUSION

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In the Morning Star, a few months since, appeared a letter from William Howitt, intimating that if the religious public wished to hear a man truly eloquent and religious, a Christian and a genius, they could not do better than go and hear the Rev. Mr. Harris. Accordingly, one Sunday in January, we found ourselves part of a respectable congregation, chiefly males, assembled to hear the gentleman aforesaid. The place of meeting was the Music Hall, Store-street; the reverend gentleman occupying the platform, and the audience filling up the rest of the room. It is difficult to judge of numbers, but there must have been four or five hundred persons present. Mr. Harris evidently is an American, is, we should imagine, between thirty and forty, and with his low black eye-brows, and black beard, and sallow countenance, has not a very prepossessing appearance. He had very much of the conventional idea of the methodist parson. I do not by this imply that the conventional idea is correct, but simply that we have such a conventional idea, and that Mr. Harris answers to it. As I have intimated that I believe Mr. Harris is an American, I need not add that he is thin, and that his figure is of moderate height. The subject on which he preached was the axe being laid at the foot of the tree, and at considerable length – the sermon lasted more than an hour – the reverend gentleman endeavoured to show that men lived as God was in them, and that we were not to judge from a few outward signs that God was in them, and, as instances of men filled and inspired by God’s Spirit, we had our Saxon Alfred, Oliver Cromwell, and Florence Nightingale. In the prayer and sermon of the preacher there was very little to indicate that he was preaching a new gospel. The principal thing about him was his action, which, in some respects, resembled that of the great American Temperance orator, Mr. Gough. Mr. Harris endeavours as much as possible to dramatise his sermon. He stands on tiptoe, or he sinks down into his desk, he points his finger, and shrugs up his shoulders. He has a considerable share of poetical and oratorical power, but he does not give you an idea of much literary culture. He does not bear you away “far, far above this lower world, up where eternal ages roll.” You find that it was scarce worth while coming all the way from New York to London, unless the Rev. Gentleman has much more to say, and in a better manner, than the sermon delivered in Store-street. Of course I am not a Spiritualist. I am one of the profane – I am little better than one of the wicked, though I, and all men who are not beasts, feel that man is spirit as well as flesh; that he is made in the image of his Maker; that the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. Spiritualism in this sense is old as Adam and Eve, old as the day when Jehovah, resting from his labours, pronounced them to be good. But this is not the Spiritualism of Mr. Harris, and of the organ of his denomination, The Spiritual Magazine. That spirits appear to us – that they move tables – that they express their meaning by knocks, form the great distinctive peculiarity of Spiritualism, and they are things which people in our days are many of them more and more beginning to believe. At any rate the Spiritualists of the new school ought not to be angry with us. Mr. Howitt writes, “Moles don’t believe in eagles, nor even skylarks; they believe in the solid earth and earth-worms; – things which soar up into the air, and look full at the noon sun, and perch on the tops of mountains, and see wide prospect of the earth and air, of men and things, are utterly incomprehensible, and therefore don’t exist, to moles. Things which, like skylarks, mount also in the air, to bathe their tremulous pinions in the living æther, and in the floods of golden sunshine, and behold the earth beneath; the more green, and soft, and beautiful, because they see the heavens above them, and pour out exulting melodies which are the fruits and streaming delights of and in these things, are equally incomprehensible to moles, which, having only eyes of the size of pins’ heads, and no ears that ordinary eyes can discover, neither can see the face of heaven, nor hear the music of the spheres, nor any other music. Learned pigs don’t believe in pneumatology, nor in astronomy, but in gastronomy. They believe in troughs, pig-nuts, and substantial potatoes. Learned pigs see the wind, or have credit for it – but that other Πνευμα, which we translate Spirit, they most learnedly ignore. Moles and learned pigs were contemporaries of Adam, and have existed in all ages, and, therefore, they know that there are no such things as eagles, or skylarks and their songs; no suns, skies, heavens, and their orbs, or even such sublunary objects as those we call men and things. They know that there is nothing real, and that there are no genuine entities, but comfortable dark burrows, earthworms, pig-troughs, pig-nuts, potatoes, and the like substantials.” If this be so, – and Mr. Howitt is an old man and ought to know, especially when he says there are not in London at this time half-a-dozen literary or scientific men who, had they lived in Christ’s time, would have believed in him – well, there is no hope for us. Spiritualism is beyond our reach; it is a thing too bright for us. It is high, we cannot attain unto it. The other Sunday night, Mr. Harris was very spiritual, at any rate, very impractical and unworldly. At the close of the service he informed us that some few of his sermons, containing an outline of his religious convictions, were for sale at the doors, and would be sold at one penny and a half, a mere insignificant sum, just sufficient to cover the expense of paper and printing. On inquiring, we found, of the three sermons, one was published at three-halfpence, one at twopence, and one at fourpence, prices which, if we may judge by the copy we purchased, would yield a fair profit, if the sale were as great as it seemed to be on Sunday night.

But Mr. Harris is a poet – there is not such another in the universe. The Golden Age opens thus: —

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A coal pit, or rather a coal country, such as that you see around Merthyr Tydvil, or as you speed on by the Great Northern to Newcastle, does not give you a bad idea of Pandemonium. A coal pit is generally situated by the side of some bleak hill where there are but few signs of life. A cloud of smoke from the engine, or engines, hangs heavily all round. The workmen, of whom there may be hundreds, with the exception of a few boys, who stand at the mouth of the pit to unload the coal waggons as they come up, or to run them into the tram-road that connects them with the neighbouring railroad, or canal, are all under-ground. If you descend, a lighted candle is put into your hand, and you must grope your way as best you can. If the vein of coal be a pretty good one you will be able to walk comfortably without much trouble, but you must mind and not be run over by the coal waggons always passing along. As you proceed you will observe numerous passages on each side which lead to the stalls in which the men work, and hard work it is, I can assure you: a great block is first undermined, and then cut out by wedges driven into the solid coal; I believe the work is chiefly contracted for at so much a ton. In these little stalls the men sit, and dine, and smoke. Little else is to be seen in a coal pit. There are doors by which the air is forced along the different passages; there are engines by which the water is drained off; there is constant communication between the upper and the lower world, all going on with a methodical exactness which can only be violated with loss of life. Let the engines cease, and possibly in a couple of hours the pit may be filled with water. Let a workman, as is too often the case, enter his stall with a candle instead of with a safety lamp, and an explosion may occur which may be attended with the loss of many lives; but the rule is care and regularity, each man doing his part in a general whole. The mortality in coal mining is still unusually great. It is ascertained that of the total number of 220,000 persons employed as colliers, 1000 are killed annually – that is to say, the poor collier has 1000 more chances of being killed at his work than any one of the whole travelling public has of being killed or injured on English railways. Dr. Philip Holland read a paper on the subject at a recent meeting of the Society of Arts. He stated that out of 8015 deaths by accidents in eight years, 1984 (or about one-fourth) were caused by explosions. Remarkable it is, that in the northern counties of Durham and Northumberland (in which one-fourth of the coal is raised, and one-fifth of the collier population employed) the average deaths per annum from explosions do not exceed 21 out of 248; and as the average of such deaths for the whole country, including the Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire districts, is 105, so 143 lives yearly are lost because the precautions against explosion proved to be effectual in the extreme north are neglected in all the other districts. Equally remarkable it is that falls of roof have caused nearly 1000 more deaths in the eight years than explosions, although the latter chiefly excite public feeling. Here, again, the extreme northern district affords a gratifying contrast with the others, as, out of an average of 371 such accidents yearly, only 49 occur there. It is suggested that the comparative immunity of the north from this cause of accident is attributable to the fact, that one man in six belongs to the safety staff, who are charged with the superintendence of ventilation, road, and prop making, &c. In other parts no such person is employed, and the men in their anxiety to get coal neglect these salutary means of safety. The next greatest number of fatal accidents occurs in the shafts, 1734 in the eight years. Here, again, the cautious north exhibits its superiority, its proportion of fatalities from this source not being more than a fifth part of the proportion throughout the country. Other fatalities there are, principally the result of bad discipline, the employment of too large a proportion of boys under fifteen years, the use of machinery where hand-pulling would be preferable, the narrowness of the galleries, and such like. Dr. Holland notices that the system of government inspection has, in the southern coal districts, led to the discontinuance of the services of “viewers,” or mine engineers, to direct the operations, which it never was intended to do. Either these viewers must, as a rule, be reinstated, or the government system of inspection must be enormously increased. Among the means suggested to prevent accidents is that of making the coal owner civilly responsible for accidents caused by the obvious neglect of reasonable precautions in the working. In the course of the discussion which followed, it was urged that the workers should no more be exempted from the penal consequences of neglect than the employers.

Fancy – I can do it easily, over my sea-coal fire – fancy the coal dug out of the pit, put into a waggon, that waggon put on a railway – travelling, it may be, some distance, and depositing its precious burden in a collier’s hold; imagine this collier put to sea, and safely arrived in the Thames. As Mr. Cobden said, “What next, and next?” Here a new agency comes into play, the coal cannot come right to my fire. We leave the collier at Gravesend and land, let us say, at Billingsgate – never mind the fish, nor the porters, nor the fair dealers in marine products. Come right away into Thames Street – cross it if you can, for this street, of all London streets, bears away the palm for being blocked up at all times and seasons, and this morning there has been a block lasting a couple of hours; but the people here are used to it, and do not think it worth while to have recourse to hard words, nor to repeat sounds very much like oaths, nor to grow red in the face and threaten each other, as is the case with the angry Jehus of Cheapside and Holborn Hill. We enter a handsome building by a semi-circular portico, with Roman Doric columns, and a tower 106 feet high. A beadle in magnificent livery, and of an unusually civil character – for beadledom is generally a terror to our species – meets us. We wish to see our friend; right into the middle of a busy group of coal dealers and factors the beadle rushes, and repeats the name of our friend; up one story, and then another, and then another, the sound ascends; our friend hears it, and, rapidly descending, gives us a welcome as warm as his own fire-side. We begin our voyage of discovery: – first we descend and examine a Roman well, in excellent preservation, discovered in excavating the foundation of the new building. The water looks thick and muddy, but they tell you it is clear: but the fact that it ebbs and flows seems to connect it with the Thames; and Thames water, when taken opposite Billingsgate, is not generally considered clear. We again ascend to the ground-floor, which is a rotunda sixty feet in diameter, covered by a glazed dome seventy-four feet from the floor. This circular hall has three tiers of projecting galleries running round it; the floor is composed of 4000 pieces of inlaid wood, in the form of a mariner’s compass; in the centre is the city shield, anchor, &c., the dagger blade in the arms being a piece of mulberry tree, planted by Peter the Great when he worked as a shipwright in Deptford Dockyard. The place is worth coming to see – country cousins ought to look at it; the entrance vestibule, Mr. Timbs, in his “Curiosities of London,” informs us, is richly embellished with vases of fruit, arabesque foliage, terminal figures, &c. In the rotunda, between the Raphaelesque scroll-supports, are panels painted with impersonations of the coal-bearing rivers of England – the Thames, Mersey, Severn, Trent, Humber, Aire, Tyne, &c.: and above them, within flower borders, are figures of Wisdom, Fortitude, Vigilance, Temperance, Perseverance, Watchfulness, Justice, and Faith. The arabesques in the first story are views of coal mines – Wallsend, Percy, Pit Main, Regent’s Pit, &c. The second and third storey panels are painted with miners at work; and the twenty-four ovals at the springing of the dome have, upon a turquoise blue ground, figures of fossil plants found in coal formations. The minor ornamentation is flowers, shells, snakes, lizards, and other reptiles, miners’ tools and nautical subjects; – there you can see all the process of coal mining, without troubling yourself to go down a mine, and in a small museum, too small for such a grand building and such a wealthy trade, curious specimens of fossil products and coal will make the observer still more learned; but let us look at the living mass beneath. Some of the men below are famous city names. There sometimes you may see Sir James Duke, who came to London a clerk, poor and under-paid, on board a man-of-war, and who on this Coal Exchange has made a colossal fortune, and who was made a baronet, he being at the time Lord Mayor, when the New Exchange was opened by Prince Albert, on the 29th Oct., 1849, accompanied by the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal. Here oftener you may see Hugh Taylor, M.P., who began life as a cabin-boy, then became a captain, then was developed into a coal-owner, and who is said to be a perfect Midas, and possesses an art, very much, thought of by city people, of turning everything he touches into gold. On a door just below where we stand is inscribed the name of Lord Ward, for even noblemen don’t mind sullying their fingers with vulgar trade, if anything is to be made by it. And there is the name of a Welsh coal-owner, who, some fifty years back, was a clerk in a certain timber merchant’s, at a guinea a week, and who now, I believe, can raise and ship a couple of thousand tons of coal a day. Depend upon it there is some money made by these black diamonds, and the corporation of London know it, for they have managed to get a tax levied of one penny on every ton of coals, whether brought by sea or rail within thirty miles of where we stand. What they do with the enormous sum thus collected it is impossible to say; it is true they built this handsome Exchange, at a cost altogether of £91,167. 11s. 8d., but that is a small part of their receipts. When the tax was first levied it did not much matter; about the year 1550 one or two ships sufficed for the coal trade of London. On Friday, December 2nd, 1859, the number of ships with cargoes for sale on that day was not less than 340 – and on an average each ship employed in the coal trade carries 300 tons of coal. In the month of October alone there were brought into the London markets 283,849 tons by sea, and by rail 95,195 tons and three-quarters. Of course in winter time the trade is very brisk. The retail dealers in the metropolis will tell you that a few cold days make an enormous difference in the sale of coals, and the large dealers are driven to their wits’ end as to how they can find enough waggons and horses to enable them to supply their customers. In the large coal-yards in the winter time the men are at work from five in the morning till late, very late, at night. I am thankful for their industry, I hope they are well paid.

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