HORRIBLE LONDON.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1146, 28 February 1884, Page 3

HORRIBLE LONDON.

The following extracts are from one of George R. Sims'articles entitled 'Horrible London,' in the Daily News. After some general remarks the writer goes ou to say : On a Saturday night, in a certain East End thoroughfare, there are three corner public houses which take as much money as the who!" of the other shops of both sides of the way put together. Butchers, linkers, greengrocers, clothiers, furniture dealers, all the caterers for the wants of the populace, are open till a late hour ; there are hundreds of them trading round and about, but the whole of them do not take as much money as the three publicans—that is a fact ghastly enough in all , conscience. Enter the public houses and you will see them all crammed. H>re are artisans and laborers drinking away the wages that ought to clothe their little ones. Here are the women squandering the money that would purchase food for the lack of which their children are dying. One group rivets the eye of an observer at once. It consists of an old grey haired dame, a woman of forty, and a girl of about nineteen with a baby in her arm 3. All these are in a state which is best described as ' maudlin ' —they iave finished une lot of gin, and the youugear, woman is ordering another rouud. It is n great grandmother, grandmother, and a mother and a baby—four generations together—and they are dirty, and dishevelled, and drunk, except the baby, and even that poor little mite may have its first taste of alcohol presently It is no uncommon sight in these places to see a mother wet a baby's lips with gin and water. The process is called ' giving the young'nn a taste,' and the baby's father will look on sometimes and enjoy the joke immensely. But the time to see the result of a heavy night's drinking in a low neighborhood is after the houses are closed. Then you meet dozens of the poor wretches reeling home to their miserable dens , some of them roll across the roadway and fall, cutting themselves till the blood flows. Every penny in some instances has gone in drink. One dilapidated ragged wretch I met last night was gnawing a baked potato. By his side stood a thinly-clad woman bearing a baby in her arms, a"d in mo-t hideous language she reDro>ched him for Jiis selfishness. She had fetched him out of a public house with his last half-penny in his pocket. With that half-penny he bought the potato which he refused to share with lirr. At every corner the police are ordering or coaxing men and women to 'move on.' Between twelve and one o'c ock it is a long procession of drunken men and women, and the most drunken seem to be those whose outward appearance betokens the most abject poverty. Turn out of the main thoroughfare and into the dimiy lighted back streets and yon come upon scene after scene to the grim, grotesque horror of which only the pencil of a Doie could do justice. Women with hideous distorted faces are rolling from side to side shrieking aloud snatches of popular songs plentifully interlarded with the vilest expressions. Men us drunk as themselves meet them ; there is a short exchange of ribald jests and foul oaths, then a quarrel and a shower of blows. Down from the dark courts rings a cry of murder, and a woman, hei face hideously gashed, makes across the road pursued by a howling madman. It is only a drunken husband having a row with his wife, Far into the small hours such cres will ring here—now that of an injured wife, now that of a diunken fool trapped in a den of infamy to be robbed and hurled into the street by the professional bully who resides on the premises. As you pass the open doors of some of the bouses you may hear a heavy thud and a groan, and then stillness. It is only a drunken man who, stngoering up the staircase to his bed, has missed Lis footing and fallen heavily. To one fearful court where men, women and children herd together like animals, we trace a master in a celebrated college, a Fellow of the Koyal Society. To another a lieutenant in the army, who ekes out a miserable drunken existence as a begging letter impostor. Among the tenants of houses that are in the last stage of dilapidation and dirt we find the sons of officers in the army and nayy, of contractors and wealthy tradesmen. Some of them are waterside laborers, and one is a potman of a low beer shop. Perhaps the most terrible case that has drifted to this slum is the wife of a west end physician, who became one of the lowest outcasts of the neighborhood nnd died in the workhouse. A friend of mins, who is never tired of trying to urge the people of this district to temperance, not long since found a man sitting up naked on a heap of rags shivering with the death throes on him, and crying for water to cool his parched thoat. His wife, in a maudlin' *tate of intoxication, was staring helplessly at her ing husband. A coat was given to wrap round the poor fellow. At night, when my friend returned, he found the man cold and dead and naked, and the woman in a state of mad intr xication. She had torn the coat from the body of the dying man and pawned it for dr nk. In these districts men and women who are starving will get grants of bread, and some of them ask for the bread to be wrapped in clean paper. Do you know why 1 That they may sell the loaf to someone for a copper or two, and get drink with the money. Men will come and buy a pair of boots in the morning out of their earnings, and pay 7s for them At night they will return to the same shop and offer to sell them for 4s. They have started drinking, and want the money to finish the cuouse with. There aredruukards, there are criminals,' there are poor laborers in theso districts who will never be 'improved.' No one who knows them has the slightest hone for them. But Sodom was to be spared for the sake of ten just peisons ; in the City of Dreadful Night where our poor herd together there are hundreds of just persons. For their sake the city must be saved.