AN AUTUMN EVENING IN WHITECHAPEL

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2570, 29 December 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN AUTUMN EVENING IN WHITECHAPEL

WniTECHAPEr, ami Spitalfields always wereeinteresting neighbourhoods, and recenteveu ts have made them decidedly more interesting. They have afforded startling illustrations of the dreadful possibilities of life down in the unfathomable depths of these vast human warrens. At all times one who strolls through this quarter of the town, especially by night, must feel that below his ken are the awful deeps of an ocean teeming with life, but enshrouded in impenetrable mystery. As lie catches here and there a glimpse of a face under the flickering, uncertain light of a lamp—the face perhaps of some woman, bloated by drink and distorted by passion—he may got a momentary shuddering sense of what humanity may sink to when life is lived apart from the' sweet health-giving influences of fields and flowers, of art and music and books and travel, of the stimulus of interesting enterprise, the gentle amenities of happy homes and intercourse with the educated and the cultured. A momentary sense of what human nature may become may here and there flash in upon one as he gazes out upon the dark waters, but it is only when the human monster actually rises for a moim'ut to the surface and disanpears again, leaving a victim dead and disembowelled, that one quite realises that that momentary scene is a dread reality. Just for a few duys the mass of the people of Spitalfields and Whiteehapel themselves seemed to be realising the awful possibilities of the nature belonging to them. Thousands of them were really shocked and sobered, by the last tragedy especially. One could see in the people's faces, and could detect in their tones and answers, an indefinable something which told plainly that they had been horrified by a revelation. Many of course were terribly frightened. Mr George Holland, whoso remarkable work has been going on for no very many years in premises occupying an obscure position in George Yard, Whiteehapel, where it will be remembered one of these unfortunate women was found with thirty or forty stabs, says that the sensation has affected his institution very greatly. He has some hundreds of young women connected with his place, and many of them have been afraid to stir out after dark. He is under some anxiety, too, lest ladies who have been wont to come down there on winter evenings to teach and entertain his young people, should be deterred by this latest addition to the evil reputation of Whiteehapel, and he is earnestly pushing on alterations in his premises which will givo him a frontage out in the main road. On the other hand, Mr Cbarrington, whose great place stands out boldly ou the Mile End highway a blaze of light and cheerfulness, thinks that people have more than evor thronged out of the dark and silent byways and back lanes into the broad pavement and into the glare of light thrown upon it by shops and publichouses aud entertainments, and the innumerable hawkers and salesmen of one sort and another who line the "waste" along tho Mile End Road. Since these outrages the dark places in Whiteehapel and Spitalfields have undoubtedly been a little darker and stiller aud more depressing. Some streets have presented, even to those familiar with them, quite a desolate and deserted appearance after nightfall. But the nine days' wonder has passed, the effect of the shock has visibly subsided, and people are beginning to move freely again. Turn down this side street out of the main Whiteehapel Road. It may be well to tuck out of view any bit of jewellery that may bo glittering about: tho sight of means to do ill deeds make ill-deeds done. Tho stivet is oppressively dark, though at present tho gloom is relieved somewhat by feeblvlighted shops fronts. Men are lotiugirig at the doors of the shops, smokingevil smelling pipes. Women with bare heads and with arms under their aprons and sauntering about in twos and threes, or are seated gossiping ou stuns leading into passutros dark as Krebus. Now round the corner into another still gloomier passage, for thero are no shops hen; to speak of. This is the notorious Weul-worth-street. The police used to make a point of going through this only in couples, and possibly may do so still when they go there at all. Just now there are none met with, It is getting on into the night, but gutters, and doorways, and passages, and staircases appear to be teeming with children. See there in that doorway of a house without a glimmer of light about it. It looks to be a baby in long clothes laid on the floor of the passage, and seemingly exhausted with crying. Listen for a moment at this next house. There is a scuffle going on upon the staircase—all in the densest darkness

—and before you have passed a dozen yards there is a rush downstairs and nn outsurging into the street with fighting and screaming, and an outpouring of such horrible blackguardism that it makes you shudder as you look at those curly headed pretcrnaturally sharp witted children

who leave tlieir play to gather round the melee, God help the little mortals ! How can they become anything but savages, " pests of society," the " dangerous classes," and so on. How black and unutterably gloomy all the houses look ! How infinitely all the moral and physical wretchedness of such localities as these is intensified by the darkness of the streets and the houses. It is wise and astute of Mr Bernett to give emphatic expression to the cry that has so often been raised for " moro light" for lower London. If in this one matter of light alone, the street and houses of the West End were rcdunod to the condition of the East, what would life become there ? Oh, for a great installation of tho electric light, with which, as the sun {joes down, to deluge the streets and lanes, tho dark alleys and passages, the staircases and rooms of this nether world. Homes would become cleaner, and more cheerful and nttrnotivc; life would become healthier, whole masses of crime would die out like toadstools uuder sunlight, and what remained would be more easily dealt with. Tho Cimmerian darkness of lower London indoors and out constitutes no small part of \ its wretchedness, and tho brilliant lighting of the public-houses gives it much of its attraction. Even tho repute of many of these shady localities is duo in great measure to their impenetrable gloom after nightfall. There arc many of those doorways and staircases into which a stranger might venture with perfect impunity, and many of the people are harmless, wellmeaning sort of folk, but they are all enshrouded in that murky obscurity which in the apprehension of adventurers from more favoured regions converts them into possible assassins and thieves. It is a relief to get out of this vile little slum and to work one's way back into the life and light of the great highway, with its flaunting shops, its piles of glowing fruit, its glittering jewellery, its steaming cookshops, its flaring gin palaces and noisy shows, and clubs and assembly rooms, and churches and mission halls, its cheap jacks and shooting

galleries, its streaming naphtha lights | and roar and rattle, ami hurrying throni'-s and noisy groups, and little assemblies gathered together under the stars and the street lamps to listen to pome expounders of tho mysteries of the universe or of tho peculiar merits of a new patent pill. Here are the newspapercontents bills spread out at largo with some of the nowsvondors own additions and amplifications, toiling of new murders or further details of tho old one*. The young man with a bundle of papers under his arm is evidently on the friendliest of terms with tho neighbouring shseblack.

One or the other of thorn has picked up half a cigar, and the two are getting alternate pulis at it with evident enjoyment. Up in a retired corner there is n little mob gathered round an almost inanimate looking figure beating out with a oouple of quills what he takes apparently to be music from

a sort of home-made dulcimer. A few yards farther on, a boy without any legs is the object of attention, the next comes a group thronging curiously round a four-wheel

cab. Nothing cm be 3een, but as the vehicle drives off towards the hospital and the mob disperses it is generally understood that "she has been knocked about. The only question about which there seems to bo any uncertainty is as to whether she is nearly dead or only very drunk. Nobody appears to be greatly concerned, and the people turn from this mild sensation to listen for a moment to a eulogy on the everlasting qualities of new trousers at nine and sixpence a pair. A hundred people at least are clustered round the salesman, who descants hoarsely on the unrivalled qualities of his goods, and winds up by flinging a pair out into the crowd for closer inspection. A few yards further on there is a waxwork show with some horrible pictorial representations of the recent murders, and all the dreadful details are being Mated out into tho night, and women with children in their arms are pushing their way to the front with their pennies to see the ghastly objects therein. Next door is a show in which ghosts and devils and skeletons appear to

be the chief attractions ; and near at hand is a flaring picture of a modern Hercules performing theroiu. Then conies a gathering of some fifty or sixty people around a preacher, who is evidently desperately in earnest, but who somehow manages at every step to mill-; up the feelings of his congregation. Ho is what a cabby would call a harbitrary agent, and he comes it over his listeners just a little too strougly. " Never heard nobody go on like 'ira in nil my days," said a little dame on the fringe'of the crowd, '' There ain't nobody right but'ira, and he'sal'ays tho same, a pitchin' into everybody. I declare there ain't no chance for none of ns." Certainly tho people round were sparring and fencing with him on all hands, and the controversy at one point ran so high that it looked as though the preacher would have to take oft his coat and turn up his sleeves. Not fifty yards off was Mr Chan-ingtou's great assembly room, where Mr Henry Varlcy, who

looked to be mounted on a bank of Ho reaching half-way up the line organ,

quietly harranguing some hundreds of people, the whole place looking bright and attractive, and the audience, very attentive. Out again into the thoroughfare, back a little way past the roaring salesmen and the hideous waxworks, and round the corner. This opening here, where the public-house, the bar of which looks to be full of mothers with children in their arms, blazes at the corner, leads down to Buck's Row. Nobody about here seems at all conscious of the recent tragedy, the only suggestion of which is a bill in the public-bouse window, offering, on behalf of an enterprising newspaper, a reward of a hundred pounds for the conviction of the criminal. A little way down out of tho public-house glare, and Buck's Row looks to be a singularly desolate, out-of-the-way region. Bit

there is a piano-organ grinding out

" Men of Harlech " over tlio spot where the murdered woman was found ; women and girls are freely comi!]^ - aud going through the darkness, ami the rut tie of sewing arid the rushing of railway trains, and the noisy horseplay of a gang of boys all seem to be combining with the organ-grinder to drown recollection and to banish all uuplcusant reflecti-m. " There seems to be little apprehension of further mischief by this a-sassin at large," was an observation addressed to a respectable-looking elderly man within a few yards of the house in Uanbury Street, where the latest victim was found. "No; very little. People, most of 'em, think he's gone to Gateshead," was the reply. —Daily News.