The Victorian City

by Judith Flanders

  Gas illuminations in the early days were a novelty strictly for free-spending princes, but they built on a popular tradition. For state celebrations and public events, illuminations were a regular part of London’s night-time celebrations via hundreds and thousands of small oil lamps hung from windows and along the façades of buildings, with glass of different colours, to build up images and even words. These lamps appeared not only on government buildings and on shops, but also on private houses, offering an indicator – in the mind of one tourist, at least – of an individual’s loyalty ‘by the quantity of oil consumed’. Even he, cynic that he was, admitted that the ‘effect on the whole was very pretty’, even ‘brilliant’.

  As the long French wars drew to a close and Wellington roared across Europe, the two technologies for a time coexisted. In 1813, the victory at the battle of Vittoria was celebrated over three nights: ‘The fronts of Carltonhouse and Somerset-house, exhibited...a blaze of light, with the name of Wellington formed with [oil]-lamps, and allusions to the hero’s exploits’, while other oil lights spelt out ‘The Grand Alliance’. In 1814, for the Grand National Jubilee marking the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, an illuminated Temple of Concord was set up on a revolving platform in Green Park, while St James’s Park was lit by large paper lanterns hung from the trees, their painted paper shades illustrating battles, heroes ‘and every variety of subject’. So bright were the illuminations, or so dark were cities more usually at the time, that their light was visible nearly fifteen miles away, in Bromley, Kent.

  However great these celebrations were, they were surpassed when London became ‘one continual scene of uproar and joy in consequence of the total defeat of Bonaparte at Waterloo by Lord Wellington...Friday and Saturday night all the public buildings and many private ones were illuminated. Many fanciful and beautiful devices were exhibited.’ One house in St James’s mounted a replica ‘fortress with cannon, flags, etc...A publican who keeps a tavern with the sign of a cock, had a large transparency representing a game cock strutting over his fallen combatant with the inscription, “England, the cock of the walk!”’

  By the coronation of William IV, in 1830, street illuminations had become even more elaborate, with ‘various, most ingenious, and fantastic devices – always, however, representing in some form the initials or full names, of the king and queen – the principal centre of which ordinarily would be a crown’. Sometimes these would be created by the new technology, for private houses as well as palaces: ‘Here and there a temporary gas machinery had been erected, on which the slightest breeze would occasion a sportful dance of lights and shadows by blowing out some portions, and lighting others, in rapid succession – at one moment showing the whole tracery in full blaze, and then only parts.’ Seven years later, when Princess Victoria, heir to the throne, attained her majority, the streets, according to the footman William Tayler, were decorated by a ‘grand ilumination’. Six months later the princess had become a queen and on the occasion of the Lord Mayor’s installation made her first formal visit to the City as monarch. ‘The sitisens are making great preperations to receve her. All the streets ... will be very briliantly eluminated. It is said it will cost eight hundred pound to eluminate Temple Bar alone, and many thousands to eluminate the Citty.’

  The illuminations varied in quantity and quality with the event being celebrated, and to a degree it is possible to trace popular enthusiasm for royalty, or lack thereof, through the reports. When the Prince of Wales was born in 1842, ‘The illuminations on Wednesday night were few, and many of the club-houses were not illuminated at all. Pall-mall contained but one illumination.’ The United Services Club in Trafalgar Square, however, was ‘beautifully illuminated’, complete with an illuminated ‘Ich Dien’ and a set of Prince of Wales feathers. Unfortunately, ‘the night being wet the streets were nearly deserted’. In 1847, when Prince Albert had still not achieved the popularity that came in the last decade of his short life, his birthday was ‘observed in the metropolis with the usual rejoicings. In the evening the Royal tradesmen illuminated their houses’, making a business proposition of this supposed happy day. Attitudes were very similar in 1859 when the Prince of Wales turned eighteen: ‘in the evening the theatres Royal and the houses of the purveyors to the Royal household were illuminated.’141 And the ho-hum air continued even with the queen herself. For her fifty-first birthday in 1870, nearly a decade after Albert’s death, at a time when her subjects were heartily tired of a seclusion that seemed to mean she could attend only the events she enjoyed, ‘The various clubhouses, theatres, and residences of the members of the Ministry were illuminated, as were also the establishments of the Royal tradesmen’, but evidently there was nothing further.

  It had not always been like this. In 1853, riding a wave of emotion after the success of the Great Exhibition, which Albert was seen to have steered so successfully, the illuminations on the queen’s birthday were ‘more than usually brilliant and the various devices in gas and coloured lamps [were]...worthy of the occasion...O n no former anniversary of her Majesty’s birthday has the illumination been so good.’ Particularly worthy of mention were the illuminations at the Junior United Services Club, in Waterloo Place, which included ‘A large bulging-crown’ with a ‘V’ inside the order of the garter, and the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense, together with ‘two irradiated stars of Brunswick, military flags and ensigns, wreaths of laurel, scrolls’.

  A grand effort was made for the wedding of Princess Alexandra to the Prince of Wales. For the previous week the gas companies had been ‘economising gas, and the street lamps were not lighted till long after the usual time...Circulars...were sent round...asking that the inhabitants would burn as little gas as possible inside, in order that there might be enough to supply the innumerable jets which were to blaze on the outside of their houses.’ The results amply justified the scrimping. The dome of St Paul’s was given ‘a fiery coronet’, while its base was surrounded by a ring of yellow lamps, with the supporting pillars having ‘a ring of red lamps’. In addition to these gas illuminations, limelight was projected onto the dome, so that ‘from a distance, the high fires darted out rays...and the streams of light thrown upon the building looked like the water forced from a fire-engine’.142 The most spectacular displays in the City were at the Mansion House, the Bank and the Royal Exchange buildings. The Mansion House had strung lamps along all its cornices and pediments, as well as five large gas stars, and its columns were covered with crimson cloth, with illuminated swags of flowers hanging between the columns. At the Royal Exchange a row of lights ran along the pediments, ‘and its columns [were] twined by thousands of small oil lamps of various colours’. The effect was enhanced by oil lamps spelling out: ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof ’ in coloured lights. The West End did not lag behind. The National Gallery began with Prince of Wales feathers, moving on to a more ambitious transparency of two medallion portraits, with ‘two guardian angels crowning them with wreaths’ and a star of St George made of crystal, surmounted by a series of mottoes: ‘Long Life to the Prince and Princess of Wales!’ and ‘England’s Hope!’ in ‘amber-coloured crystal glass’. In addition the fountains in Trafalgar Square were lit by that dazzling new technology, ‘the electric light, which was also at intervals directed upon the Nelson Monument’. That night the streets were so densely crowded by people out to see the illuminations that it was almost impossible to walk through them, and Hungerford Bridge was closed at six that evening, for fear it would collapse. All night there were ‘dead locks’ of pedestrians, ‘during which no one progressed more than a dozen yards in an hour’.

  Public events were celebrated by massive illuminations on public buildings and private houses alike. Here the Ordnance Office in Pall Mall marks the end of the Crimean War in 1856 with flags, an illuminated Order of the Garter and a giant VR, for Victoria Regina.

  This physical impasse was not unprecedented. When Leonard Wyon set off with his wife from their house in St John’s Wood to see
the illuminations in the West End that marked the end of the Crimean War, they too had difficulty walking: ‘the crowd was so great, and the carriages so thickly packed in Oxford Street that we could not cross the road without going a good deal out of the way.’ They were deeply impressed by the illuminations on public buildings and on the mansions that lined Park Lane, including one that required 2,000 feet of gas a minute to light the coat of arms encircled with gas jets and the façade’s eighteen pillars ‘decorated with spiral twists and flags of all nations’. Even the railway stations were decorated, one having ‘a beading of gas running along the top and sides of the principal face of the [station], with a monster reflecting star in the centre’. In Lincoln’s Inn Fields, three large transparencies showed the Allies attacking Sebastopol, with the word ‘Peace’ next to the coats of arms of England and the Allies. A shopkeeper in the Strand proudly boasted a transparency that read:

  MAY THE

  DESTROYERS OF PEACE

  BE DESTROYED BY US.

  TIFFIN & SON,

  BUG-DESTROYERS TO HER MAJESTY.

  While individual choices were made by each resident or shopkeeper, the decision to illuminate at all came from the top. The end of the siege of Sebastopol in 1855 had led to many houses being decorated, but, admonished the Illustrated London News severely, ‘this was not by any means general; no intimation having been given that any external marks of rejoicing on the part of the people would at present be expected’. Later in the week, the French ambassador’s residence ‘was splendidly illuminated’ with 10,000 lamps, even though ‘the order for illumination was not given until half-past six in the evening’.

  When they first heard about the illuminations, Wyon and his wife had bought ‘half a dozen French Lanterns’ to tie to their balcony before they realized that only ‘people of note’ were obliged to join in. The danger must have been one factor – those vast quanitites of gas in temporary pipes cannot have been entirely safe; the cost another; and, finally, a heartfelt cry in The Times suggested that many people did not want to participate. ‘Mr. (with the consent and approbation of Mrs.) GLASS’ wrote in to say:

  I have not met with a single person in society who has not spoken of the illumination of private houses as a nuisance, which no one would incur if it were not for the fear of a stone through his drawing-room window...I rest my appeal on the absolute nastiness of smoke, grease, and gas...I agree most willingly to my share in the cost...of the public illuminations. I am perfectly willing, if any public or parochial boards will undertake to exhibit supplementary fireworks or transparencies in the open spaces of each quarter of the town, to be rated or to subscribe for that purpose; but I object, with all my heart, to be coerced into a piece of domestic dirt and discomfort.

  On the one hand were the people in the street, public entertainment and street theatre; on the other, ‘domestic dirt and discomfort’. In nineteenthcentury London, there was no competition: the street won every time.

  14.

  STREET VIOLENCE

  Entertainment and street theatre often met and, when they did, the result could be violent. Not all violence was condemned and suppressed by the state and its authorities. In fact, some violence was state-sanctioned; nor was it even seen as violence, but as the individual’s just deserts. Some cruelties only gradually came to be seen as such: as the norms of behaviour and personal interaction changed, so what had been acceptable at one end of the century appeared shocking at the other.

  In 1836, Dickens wrote ‘The Great Winglebury Duel’, presenting duelling as a relic from the past, a matter for farcical treatment – mistaken identities, runaway marriages and all. But even as he wrote, newspapers from time to time reported on duels still occurring. In 1842, two men from genteel St John’s Wood trekked out to Putney Heath for a duel over a political disagreement. Both were wounded, but there was no hint of censure in the report of the incident, one magazine even calling it an ‘affair of honour’. In the following year, an Anti-Duelling Association was formed, aiming to see ‘the disgraceful practice’ ‘speedily exploded’, but six weeks later two officers fought a duel in Camden Town and one died. The ensuing investigation produced an interesting set of mixed signals. The inquest found that the duellist had been murdered by his opponent; the seconds and the attending doctor were charged with murder in the second degree. Yet after a series of trials, only the duellist was convicted, with the jury giving a strong recommendation for mercy. This was endorsed by the judge, who even as he passed the death sentence assured the prisoner that it would not be carried out.

  As late as 1869, what was in effect an upper-class brawl was treated as another affair of honour. Lord Carrington ‘horsewhipped, or something like it’, a man for writing a scurrilous article about Carrington’s father. Carrington was charged with both common assault and for challenging the writer to a duel. Despite this, public opinion was obviously with him, and while he was found guilty of the assault, it was ‘under circumstances of the greatest provocation’. He was merely bound over to keep the peace for a year, on his own recognizance. Four months after the conviction, in a sign of how the establishment regarded the incident, the Prince of Wales made a highly public visit to Carrington’s country house. Yet at the same time, the lower orders found that their violent behaviour was seen as less acceptable. A few months before Carrington carried out his horsewhipping, a licensed victualler was charged with assaulting a policeman who had stopped him for furious driving. He was given two weeks’ imprisonment, with hard labour, although the newspaper noted that, not that long before, he would have been let off with a minimal fine. This type of force, except for grandees, was now harshly punished.

  This was a great change from the early years of the century, when mob rule was far more visible in the streets, beginning with the literally theatrical, and mostly non-violent, protests, the Old Price Riots. Covent Garden theatre had burnt down in 1808; when the new theatre opened in 1809, it was discovered that the galleries and pit – the lower-priced areas – had been reduced in extent to create more seating for the prosperous, while ticket prices had been raised throughout. On the first night, the noise from the pit and galleries was so loud that nothing at all could be heard of the performance above drumming feet and voices shouting, ‘Old prices!’ On subsequent nights, the demonstrations, both inside and outside the theatre, became more vehement, more focused and more purely theatrical, as the participants began to sing Old Price songs and dance the Old Price dance, stamping their feet and banging their sticks in tempo. A coffin bearing the epitaph ‘Here lies the body of the New Price’ was paraded through the streets and into the theatre. The manager, John Philip Kemble, hired Daniel Mendoza, the retired pugilist, to restore order. This was a major error, raising the emotional temperature and pushing the previously good-tempered crowds towards mayhem. After more than a month of performances where all the theatre took place in the auditorium, Kemble had the Riot Act read one night to disperse the audience.143 This was another misjudgement, producing even greater fury as well as even less likelihood that the demonstrators would permit performances to proceed. It was another month before Kemble admitted defeat and returned to the old prices, whereupon the crowds held up a gracious banner: ‘We are Satisfied.’

  The Old Price riots, taking place at one of London’s two patent theatres, attracted attention, but riotous assembly was not uncommon. What were called riots by those in authority were often just street brawls, sometimes organized as an accepted form of channelling popular aggression. In 1821, in St Giles, about 200 people assembled, ‘armed with sticks and other weapons...each party being decorated with distinguishing colours’. They set on each other with a will; one side was gradually pushed back towards High Holborn before regrouping and in turn forcing its opponents back into St Giles. The two groups then made an unspoken alliance and turned on the parish watchmen who, with twenty flurried assistants, had been sent to deal with the problem. It took the Bow Street patrol – the precursors to the police – to charge
with swords drawn, taking thirteen into custody, before the crowd dispersed, clearly feeling a good day had been had by all – or by all but the four dead and the twenty wounded badly enough to require hospitalization.

  Some gangs were more permanently constituted and more focused on gain. In 1826, a gang of marauders gathered (and possibly lived) near a brickfield in Spitalfields, preying on the drovers on the road to Smithfield and Barnet markets, singling out and stealing prize cattle. Their looting was serious enough to be discussed in Parliament, with the Secretary of State questioning whether the men were ‘distressed weavers’ – the highly skilled silk weavers who had inhabited Bethnal Green for centuries who had recently been reduced to poverty by the lifting of import bans on luxury goods at the end of the French wars. The Spitalfields gangs were not weavers, although violence from them was not unusual either. In 1829, two men who had been hired to repossess some silk from a weaver felt it necessary to ask the patrol to accompany them. They were right to be afraid: they were followed by over 500 men, and when they repossessed the goods, ‘bricks, stones, and whatever came to hand, were showered’ on them. Even though they were greatly outnumbered by the outraged mob, which extended halfway down Bethnal Green Road, the patrol foolishly drew their weapons. They were immediately surrounded and themselves had to be rescued from the crowd of angry, semi-starving men.