[-60-]
CHAPTER V.
TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND.
BARRY CORNWALL tells us that when he was a little boy he was told that the
streets of London were all paved with gold; and it must be admitted that, to the
youthful mind in general, the metropolis is a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground,
where gold and silver are to be picked up in handfuls any day. There is a good
deal of exaggeration in this, undoubtedly. To many, London is dark and dismal as
one of its own fogs, cold and stony as one of its own streets. The Earl of
Shaftesbury, a few years back, calculated there were 30,000 ragged, houseless,
homeless children in our streets. The number of persons who died last year in
the streets of London, from want of the necessaries of life, would shock a
Christian. Last year the total number of casual destitute paupers admitted into
the workhouses of the metropolitan districts amounted to 53,221 males, 62,622
females, and 25,716 children. We cannot wonder at this when we remember that it
is said 60,000 persons rise every morning utterly ignorant as to the wherewithal
to feed and maintain themselves [-61-] for the day. Wonderful are the shifts, and efforts, and. ingenuities of this
class. One summer-day, a lady-friend of the writer was driving in one of the
pleasant green lanes of Hornsey, when she saw a poor woman gathering the broad
leaves of the horse-chesnut. She asked her why she did so. The reply was that
she got a living by selling them to the fruiterers in Covent Garden, who lined
the baskets with them in which they placed their choicest specimens. One day it
came out in evidence at a police-court, that a mother and her children earned a
scanty subsistence by rising early in the morning, or rather late at night, and
tearing down and selling as waste-paper, the broad sheets and placards with
which the dead walls and boardings of our metropolis abound. The poor sick
needlewomen, stitching for two-and-sixpence a-week, indicate in some quarters
how hard is the London struggle for life. But one of the worst sights, I think,
is that of women (a dozen may be seen at a time), all black and grimy, sifting
the cinders and rubbish collected by the dustmen from various parts, and shot
into one enormous heap.
The last dodge exposed for making money is amusing. A writer in the Times
wanted to know how it was we see advertisements in London papers for a
million of postage-stamps. A writer in reply says all the stories about severe
papas, who will not let their daughters marry till they have papered a room with
them, are false. He says if the reader will go to some of the purlieus of the
Borough (leaving his watch and purse at home) he will [-62-]
very possibly be enlightened. He will be accosted by a hook-nosed man, who
will pull out a greasy pocket-book, and produce some apparently new
postage-stamps, not all joined together, but each one separate, and will offer
them for sale at about 2d. a dozen. If the enterprising stranger looks very
closely, indeed, into these stamps, he may perhaps detect a slight join in the
middle. They are made by taking the halves which are unobliterated of two old
stamps and joining them, regumming the backs and. cleaning the faces. This
practice is, it is said, carried on to a great extent, in the low neighbourhoods
of Ratcliff-highway, and the Borough.
During the year 1858 it appears 10,004 persons died in the public
institutions of London: 5,535 in the workhouses, 57 in the prisons, and 4,412
in hospitals. Of the latter number 317 belong to the Greenwich and the Chelsea
hospitals, 211 to the military and naval hospitals. About one in six of the
inhabitants of the metropolis dies in the public institutions, nearly one in
eleven dies in the workhouses. Only think of the population of London. In 1857
that was estimated by the Registrar-General at 2,800,000; since then the
population has gone on steadily increasing, and it maybe fairly estimated that
the London of to-day is more than equal to three Londons of 1801. Now, amidst
this teeming population, what thousands of vicious, and rogues, and fools there
must be; what thousands suddenly reduced from affluence to poverty; what
thousands plunged into distress by sickness or the loss of friends, and parents,
and other benefactors; to [-63-] such what a place of pain, and daily mortification, and trial London must be!
But, on the other hand, from the time of Whittington and his cat, London has
abounded with instances showing how, by industry and intelligence, and - let us
trust - honesty, the poorest may rise to the possession of great wealth and
honour. Indeed all the great city houses abound with examples. Poor lads have
come up to town, friendless and moneyless, have been sober and steady, and firm
against London allurements and vices, have improved the abilities and
opportunities God has given them, and are now men of note and mark. The late
Lord Mayor was but an office-lad in the firm of which he is now the head. Mr.
Herbert Ingram, M.P. for Boston, and proprietor of the Illustrated News, blackened
the shoes of one of his constituents. Mr. Anderson, of the Oriental Steam
Navigation Company, and formerly M.P. for the Orkneys, rose in a similar manner.
Sir Peter Laurie was originally in a humble position in life, so was Mr. Dillon,
of the house of Dillon and Co. Our great Lord Chancellor, when employment was
scarce and money ditto, held a post as reporter and theatrical critic on the
Morning Chronicle newspaper. Mr. Chaplin, the late Salisbury M.P., was an
extraordinary instance of a man rising from the humblest rank. Before railways
were in operation Mr. Chaplin had succeeded in making himself one of the largest
coach proprietors in the kingdom. His establishment, from small beginnings, grew
till, just [-64-] before the opening of the London and North Western line, he was proprietor of
sixty-four stage-coaches, worked by fifteen hundred horses, and giving yearly
returns of more than half a million sterling. Mr. Cobden began life
in a very subordinate position in a London warehouse. Sir William Cubitt when a
lad worked at his father's flour-mill. Michael Faraday, England's most eminent
chemist, was the son of a poor blacksmith. Sir Samuel Morton Peto worked for
seven years as a carpenter, bricklayer, and mason, under his uncle, Mr. Henry
Peto. The well-known Mr. Lindsay, M.P. for Sunderland, was a cabin boy. The
editor of one morning paper rose quite from the ranks, and the editor of
another well known journal used to be an errand-boy in the office before, by
gigantic industry and perseverance, he attained his present high position. Mr.
J. Fox, the eloquent M.P. for Oldham, and the "Publicola" of the Weekly
Dispatch, worked in a Norwich factory. The great warehouses in Cheapside and
Cannon-street, and elsewhere, are owned by men who mostly began life without a
rap. Go to the beautiful villas at Norwood, at Highgate, at Richmond, and
ask who lives there, and you will find that they are inhabited by men whose
wealth is enormous, and whose career has been a marvellous success. Fortunes in
London are made by trifles. I know a man who keeps a knacker's yard, who lives
out of town in a villa of exquisite beauty, and who drives horses which a prince
might envy. Out of the profits of his vegetable pills [-65-]
Morrison bought himself a nice estate. Mrs. Holloway drives one of the
handsomest carriages you shall meet in the Strand. Sawyer and Strange, who the
other day were respectable young men unknown to fame, paid the Crystal Palace
Company upwards of £12,000, as per contract, for the liberty to supply
refreshments for a few months. In the city there, at this time, may be seen the
proprietor of a dining-room, who drives a handsome mail-phaeton and pair daily
to town in the morning to do business, and back at night. Thackeray has a tale
of a gentleman who married a young lady, drove his cab, and lived altogether in
great style. The gentleman was very silent as to his occupation; he would not
even communicate the secret to his wife, All that she knew was what was patent
to all his neighbours - that he went in his Brougham in the morning, and returned
at night. Even the mother-in-law, prying as she was, was unable to solve the
mystery. At length, one day the unfortunate wife, going with her dear mamma into
the city, in the person of a street sweeper clothed in rags, and covered with
dirt, she recognised her lord and master, who decamped and was never heard of
more. The story is comic, but not improbable, for London is so full of wealth,
you have only to take your place, and it seems as if some of the golden shower
must fall into your mouth. Mr. Thwaites, when examined before the Parliamentary
Committee on the Embankment of the Thames, said, "The metropolis
contributes very largely to the taxation of the country. [-66-]
The value of the property assessed under Schedule A, is £22,385,350, whilst
the sum for the rest of the kingdom is £127,994,288; under Schedule D the
metropolis shows £37,871,644, against £86,077,676. The gross estimated rental
of the property of the metropolis assessed to the poor rates is £16,157,320,
against £86,077,676 from the rest of the kingdom. The speculations on the,
Stock Exchange embrace a national debt of 800 millions, railway shares to the
extent of 300 millions, besides foreign stock, foreign railway shares, and
miscellaneous investments of all kinds. Land has been sold in the neighbourhood
of the Exchange and the Bank at the rate of a million pounds an acre. The
rateable value of the property assessed to the poor rates in the districts of
the metropolis in 1857 amounted to £11,167,678. A Parliamentary Return shows
that the total ordinary receipts of the Corporation of the city for the year
1857 amounted to £905,298, the largest item being the coal duty, £64,238. The
London omnibuses pay government a duty of no less than £70,200 a year. The
Thames even, dirty and stinking as it is, is full of gold. One fact will place
its commercial value in the clearest light. In 1856 the Customs' duties entered
as collected from all parts of the United Kingdom were £19,813,622, and of
this large sum considerably more than half was collected in the port of London,-
the Customs' duties paid in the port of London alone being £12,287,591,
a much larger sum than paid by all the remaining ports of the United Kingdom put
together. No wonder that the [-67-] Londoners are proud of the Thames. Why, even the very
mudlarks - the boys who
prowl in its mud on behalf of treasure-trove - earn, it is said; as much as £2,000
to £3,000 by that miserable employment in the course of a year.
But we stop. The magnitude of London wealth and even crime can never be fully
estimated. It is a boundless ocean, in which the brave, sturdy, steady
swimmer-while the weak are borne away rapidly to destruction-may pick up
precious pearls.