UNDERWORLD

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 119, 12 January 1932, Page 7

UNDERWORLD

LABYRINTHS OF TRAVEL UNDERNEATH LONDON "One for the Underworld, to-night, Miss." The , remark, spoken through the telephone at a motor-coach agency, was a little startling. One pictured a sort of female Charon waiting below. The ticket, too, was definite enough — '"Charing Cross to the Underworld, one." Nothing was said about a return, says a writer in the London "Daily Telegraph." I was in search of "London's Underworld," which, according to various charabanc and motor-coach companies, has an actual existence. Moreover, it is visited every ."season" by hundreds of foreigners and visitors from the country. Agog for the dubious mysteries of the East End, we swung in our "r.uh-ber-neck wagon" first towards Seven Dials and Bloomshury. An American flanked .me, whilst ahaft there was a contingent from New Zealand. ; . The coach made its first halt in Doughty Street, before a dimly-seen house. This, it i_anspired, had been occupied at ono time by the celebrated thug, Charlie ("Pickwick") Dickens. Through the city we went, and presently by Old Street and Brick Lane came to. Whitechapel High Street "The Jewish quarter," remarked the guide, and added: "You are now approaching the heart of the Underworld." The point was not well taken. We gazed " rather coldly at buses, pavements thronged with neatly-dressed people, brilliantly lighted shops and cinemas. The sight of a lone policeman strolling imperturbably made me blush as I thought of New York's police and gangsters . out for their nightly orgy of "bumping off." "Chinatown," proudly declared the guide, as we entered Pennyfields. Sure enough a moment later we perceived about a dozen indubitable Chinese on"the pavement. Unfortunately, they immediately shattered the immemorial cairn of the East by greeting us with a loud (if cynical) cheer. At a famous publiehouse in the East India Doclc Road a few girls danced with dreary decorum to a piano. Rather in the apologetic manner of the garden lover who insists on showing you round, only to keep on repeating, "But you should have been here last week, when "the delphiniums were out," or "You are just too early to see the roses at their best," the guide was audibly astonished at the sedateness of everything. "Never known it so quiet," he repeated in aggreviated tones. "Now last week wherever he went we saw fights, and at one place they pelted us with tomatoes." But as we climbed back into our coach not a voice was raised in anger, not a solitary tomato found a juicy billet. Through Rotherhithe Tunnel we plunged, and by Tooley Street came to Waterloo Bridge. Crossing it, I turned to the American who had maintained an enigmatic silence. "And what," I inquired, "did you think of the Underworld?" "Tough," was the unlooked-for response. "It certainly looked tough to me. And where," I continued gently, "do you. come from?" "Ghicago," he said.