The Victorian City

by Judith Flanders

  ‘on the town’: ‘The Amusements of the People (II)’, Household Words, 13 April 1850, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 2, pp. 195–6.

  ‘take gravy away’: ham-and-beef shop: Sala, Gaslight and Daylight, p. 5; Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 288; Badcock and Rowlandson, Real Life in London, vol. 1, p. 388; window display: A. Mayhew, Paved with Gold, pp. 81–2; newspaper and dishes: Callow, Old London Taverns, pp. 82, 292–3.

  ‘sit and eat’: hours: Yates, Recollections, p. 107; locations, Yates, ibid., and London by Night, or, The Bachelor’s Facetious Guide to All the Ins and Outs and the Nightly Doings of the Metropolis ... (London, William Ward [?1857]), pp. 44–6; Holborn oyster house: ‘Misplaced Attachment of Mr John Dounce’, Sketches by Boz, pp. 286–7.

  ‘its roller afterwards’: Scott’s: ‘Anonyma’, London by Night, p. 82, and Kirwan, Palace and Hovel, pp. 181–2; ‘lobsters, crabs’: Sala, Twice Round the Clock, p. 324.

  ‘their names suggest’: Sala, Twice Round the Clock, p. 147.

  ‘conducted houses’: David Copperfield, p. 335; ‘Refreshments for Travellers’, 24 March 1860, All the Year Round, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 4, p. 78; Pardon, Routledge’s Popular Guide to London, p. 48.

  ‘coming and going’: earthenware dishes: Smith, Curiosities, p. 255; thieving cookshops: Wright, Habits and Customs, pp. 216–17; Christmas Day: Forster, Life, vol. 3, p. 477.

  ‘twenty-four hours’: Little Dorrit, p. 283; Bethnal Green: Archer: The Pauper, the Thief, p. 17; pea soup: Bullen, Confessions of a Tradesman, pp. 40–41.

  ‘and doze indoors’: workers, newspapers: Carter, Memoirs of a Working Man, p. 186; Greville Street: Lovett, Life and Struggles, p. 88; Egan, Life in London, p. 181; Sala, Gaslight and Daylight, p. 15.

  ‘knife and fork’: number of coffee shops: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 1, p. 317, vol. 1, p. 140; working-class coffee house: ibid., vol. 4, pp. 317–18; customers bringing food: Hugh Miller, First Impressions of England and its People (London, John Johnstone, 1847), p. 354; ‘Night Walks’, in All the Year Round, 21 July 1860, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 4, pp. 155–6; footnote on hats: these references are in: Pickwick Papers, p. 397; Oliver Twist, pp. 30, 69, 202; Nicholas Nickleby, pp. 482, 672, 809; Old Curiosity Shop, p. 544; Martin Chuzzlewit, pp. 98, 630; Little Dorrit, pp. 321, 833; and David Copperfield, p. 455; the Sherlock Holmes story is ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ (1891).

  ‘particularly successful’: Brontës: Mrs Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Brontë, pp. 270–71; Little Dorrit, p. 68, Our Mutual Friend, p. 35; American newspapers: Wheaton, Journal of a Residence, p. 120; business connections: Tambling, Going Astray, pp. 283–4; Garraway’s and coffee-house boxes: Callow, Old London Taverns, p. 6; footnote on boxes: Dickens, ‘A Sleep to Startle Us’, Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 3, p. 52; David Copperfield, p. 754.

  ‘in such a place’: cigar divans: Masson, Memories, p. 124, and London by Night: The Bachelor’s..., pp. 50–52; Trollope, The Warden, pp. 226–7.

  ‘nothing at all: post-office clerk: Yates, Recollections, p. 80; Our Mutual Friend, p. 590; speed, and bread and cheese lunches: Sala, Twice Round the Clock, p. 140.

  ‘a fourpenny’: Yates, Recollections, pp. 80–81; beef with carrots: Callow, Old London Taverns, p. 84; Boiled-Beef House: Badcock and Rowlandson, Real Life in London, vol. 2, p. 158; ‘Which would you please’: ibid., vol. 1, p. 388; lesser houses: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 4, p. 314.

  ‘something like meat’: display and prices: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 4, p. 314; Raumer, England in 1835, vol. 2, p. 113.

  ‘down to eat’: menu: Hollingshead, My Lifetime, vol. 1, pp. 57–8; Old Fleece and Sun, and the Bay Tree: Callow, Old London Taverns, pp. 2–3, 29–30, and John Murray Fisher, The World of London, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, William Blackwood, 1843), vol. 2, pp. 4–5.

  ‘the day before’: system of waiting staff: Seymour, ‘The Eating House’, in Seymour’s Humorous Sketches, [no page]; footnote on income and outgoings: The Servant Girl in London: Showing the Dangers to which Young Country Girls are Exposed ... (London, R. Hastings, 1840), pp. 34–6; Bleak House, p. 337; police-court report: ILN, 25 June 1842; Dickens, ‘Thoughts about People’, Sketches by Boz, p. 252.

  ‘quarter-hour break’: Edmund Yates, After Office-Hours (London, W. Kent and Co., 1861), p. 251; Great Expectations, p. 383; Reeves’ Luncheon Rooms: Pardon, Routledge’s Popular Guide to London, prelims.

  ‘sustained coo’: Yates, After Office-Hours, pp. 246–7.

  ‘its turtle soup’: menu: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 4, p. 313; specialities: Forney, Letter from Europe, p. 345.

  ‘the carving-knife’: Bleak House, p. 337; Pickwick Papers, p. 584.

  ‘implore or threaten’: location, description of Bell Alley, reputation: Callow, Old London Taverns, pp. 120–21; guidebook: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 4, p. 314; description: [Dickens with W. H. Willis], ‘A Popular Delusion’, Household Words, 1 June 1850, in Stone (ed.), Uncollected Writings, vol. 1, p. 120 and Callow, ibid., pp. 120–22.

  ‘civil and quick’: new Simpson’s: Callow, ibid., pp. 125–6, and Yates, After Office-Hours, p. 243; the Albion: Yates, ibid., p. 105.

  ‘box and all’: Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 767.

  ‘meat and drink’: Old Curiosity Shop, pp. 108–9.

  ‘of its time’: Postmaster General: Yates, Recollections, pp. 80–81; Reeves’ Luncheon Rooms: Pardon, Routledge’s Popular Guide to London, prelims.

  12. STREET THEATRE

  ‘a drunken man’: original opening for ‘The Prisoner’s Van’, in Butt and Tillotson, Dickens at Work, p. 44.

  ‘in my life’: Forster, Life, vol. 3, p. 141.

  ‘summoned a throng’: boys’ comments: A. Mayhew, Paved with Gold, pp. 333, 109; prisoners’ van jokes: ibid., p. 1; Bow Street prisoners: Sala, Twice Round the Clock, p. 215, also mentioned by Kirwan, Palace and Hovel, p. 175; mailcoaches, Wheaton, Journal of a Residence, p. 400, and Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, pp. 19–20.

  ‘landlord’s men’: Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 829; Ritchie, Days and Nights in London, p. 257; Serpentine: ILN, 16 October 1869, pp. 379, 392; Dombey and Son, p. 790; Peel: Wey, A Frenchman Sees London, pp. 263–4; Clerkenwell eviction: ILN, 11 January 1843, p. 19.

  ‘part of a week’: the earthquake: from the Era, Examiner, Morning Post, Observer, Standard and Morning Chronicle, as well as some local papers: Aberdeen Journal, Belfast News-Courant, Berrow’s Worcester Journal, Bradford Observer, Bristol Mercury, Caledonian Mercury, Cornwall Royal Gazette, Derby Mercury, Freeman’s Journal, Hampshire Advertiser and Salisbury Guardian, Hull Packet, Ipswich Journal, Jackson’s Oxford Journal, Liverpool Mercury, Manchester Times and Gazette, Newcastle Courant, Preston Chronicle, Sheffield and Rotherham Independent between 2 March and 8 April 1842; Whitechapel Church ghost: ILN, 15 October 1842, p. 359.

  ‘the arrival itself’: Wyatt’s sculpture: Mrs E. M. Ward, Mrs. E. M. Ward’s Reminiscences, ed. Elliott O’Donnell (London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1911), pp. 65–6; Hudson, Munby, p. 150.

  ‘crowd of 500’: ILN, 8 April 1854, p. 329, 7 October 1854, pp. 340–41.

  ‘easier to control’: 1814: White, London in the Nineteenth Century, p. 261; Crimean War: Creaton (ed.), Victorian Diaries, p. 39.

  ‘injuries and disease’: this paragraph and the next: ILN, 12 July 1856, p. 31. I am grateful to Michael Hargreave Mawson for attempting to instil in me some rudimentary knowledge of military terminology.

  ‘the civic dinner’: Schlesinger, Saunterings, pp. 90–92.

  ‘handsome walking stick’: Prince Regent: Joseph Ballard, England in 1815: A Critical Edition of The Journal of Joseph Ballard, ed. Alan Rauch (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 54; Prince Albert: Wyon, Journal, BL Add MS 59,617, 27 April 1855.

  ‘not impressed’: Charles Greville, The Greville Diary..., ed. Philip Whitwell Wilson (London, William Heinemann, 1927), vol. 2, pp. 14–15, 28, 41; footnote on Greville: Christopher Hibbert (ed.), Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals: A Selection (London, John Murray, 1984), pp. 237–
8.

  ‘held his Barony’: Disraeli, Benjamin Disraeli, Letters, ed. M. G. Wiebe et al. (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1987, 1997), vol. 3, 1838–1841, pp. 54–5, 67, 69, 70, 72.

  ‘ground of insanity’: German sausage: there are a number of broadsides with these songs. An example, ‘The Queen’s Marriage’, can be seen in Charles Hindley, The Life and Times of James Catnach, Ballad Monger (London, Reeves and Turner, 1878), p. 326, while James Hepburn, A Book of Scattered Leaves: Poetry and Poverty in Broadside Ballads of Nineteenth-Century England (London, Associated University Presses, 2001), vol. 2, p. 453, contains more. I am grateful to Suzanne Daly and Inktwala Meredith for pointing me in the direction of these volumes; Victoria’s wedding day: Greville, Diary, vol. 2, pp. 130–31; birth of Prince of Wales: ILN, 12 November 1842, p. 423; refusal to remove hats, and miser Neild: ILN, 25 March 1848, p. 201, and 18 September 1852, p. 222; amount of bequest: Stanley Weintraub, Victoria, Biography of a Queen (London, Unwin Hyman, 1987), p. 201.

  ‘opera went on’: 1840 assassination attempt: Greville, Diary, vol. 2, pp. 203–4; first 1842 attempt: ILN, 4 June 1842, pp. 49–50; fifth attempt: Beale, Recollections, p. 13.

  ‘all the trees’: Dickens to John Forster, ?30 November 1846, Letters, vol. 4, p. 669.

  ‘arriving in the capital’: Buckingham Palace notice: Elizabeth Longford, Victoria R.I. (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964), p. 321; Shakespeare notice: in Agnes E. Claflin, From Shore to Shore: A Journey of Nineteen Years (Cambridge, MA, Riverside Press, 1873), p. 154. My thanks to Abigail Burnham Bloom for copying the pages of this book for me; Holborn Viaduct opening: ILN, 6 November 1869, p. 451.

  ‘station to another’: this paragraph and the next two: Hudson, Munby, pp. 149–52.

  ‘biscuit the Garibaldi’: Beale, Recollections, pp. 118–19; Hudson, Munby, pp. 186–9; McCarthy, Reminiscences, vol. 1, p. 133; footnote on Garibaldi: ILN, 16 April 1864, p. 374.

  ‘carried by rail’: the mailcoaches on the king’s birthday: Bradfield, Public Carriages, p. 21, Corbett, Old Coachman’s Chatter, pp. 43–4, Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, pp. 19–20, Raumer, England in 1835, vol. 2, p. 52 and Thrupp, History of Coaches, p. 113.

  ‘this civic ritual’: Smith, Little World of London, p. 109; Holborn: ILN, 23 May 1857, p. 493.

  ‘danced round’: ‘They go about’: Southey, Letters from England, p. 78; ‘The First of May’, Sketches by Boz, pp. 205–8.

  ‘gave her something’: Dickens, ‘The First of May’, ibid.; Hudson, Munby, p. 285.

  ‘and daisies’: ‘open carriages’: A. Mayhew, Paved with Gold, pp. 217–18; verse: ILN, 28 May 1842, p. 41.

  ‘remember the grotto’: Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 70–71; ILN, 10 August 1850, p. 115.

  ‘serenade the guy’: this paragraph and the next from: Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 126, 166, ILN, 10 November 1855, p. 547, 7 November 1857, p. 458, 7 November 1863, p. 462, Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 3, pp. 64–8.

  ‘of the family’: mutes: Hall, Retrospect of a Long Life, vol. 1, pp. 70–71, Mrs Gore in Meadows, Heads of the People, vol. 2, p. 38, Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 58–9; funeral drapery: Mrs Gore, ibid.; hatchments: Smith, Little World of London, p. 59; footnote on hatchments: Wey, A Frenchman Sees London, p. 50, and Smith, Letters from Europe, p. 34; funeral carriages and horses: Hall, ibid.; walking funerals: Smith, Little World of London, p. 59.

  ‘Westminster Abbey’: 1831 funeral: McLelland, Journal of a Residence, p. 229; Duke of Northumberland’s funeral: ILN, 27 February 1847, p. 137.

  ‘black and white’: mourning for Prince Albert: Hudson, Munby, p. 111, ILN, 4 January 1862, p. 7; Palmerston: ILN, 4 November 1865, p. 447.

  ‘revolting absurdity’: Martin Chuzzlewit, pp. 380, 386–7; Dickens’ will: cited in Ackroyd, Dickens, p. xiii.

  ‘of the London streets’: Maple’s: ILN, 8 August 1857, p. 150; Prince Pückler-Muskau, A Regency Visitor: The English Tour of Prince Pückler-Muskau, described in his letters, 1826–1828, trans. Sarah Austin, ed. E. M. Butler (London, Collins, 1957), p. 87; Old Curiosity Shop, p. 606; St Paul’s Churchyard: ILN, 17 July 1852, p. 44; Seven Dials, ibid., 2 October 1852, p. 279; Old Broad Street: ibid., 21 January 1854, p. 63.

  ‘a routine hazard’: Nead, Victorian Babylon, pp. 93–4.

  ‘theatres burnt down’: types of fires: Timbs, Curiosities, vol. 1, p. 299; 1848 figures: ILN, 6 January 1849, p. 7; the nine theatres are: 1841, Astley’s; 1846, Garrick, Leman Street; 1849, Olympic; 1853, Islington Circus; 1846, Pavilion, Whitechapel, and Covent Garden; 1865, Surrey; 1866, Standard; 1867, Haymarket.

  ‘Snowballed the Beadle’: workhouse men: G. V. Blackstone, A History of the British Fire Service (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), p. 106; Dickens, ‘The Beadle – The Parish Engine ... ’, Sketches by Boz, p. 20. The history of the Fire Engine Establishment that follows in the next four paragraphs, unless otherwise noted, is drawn from: Blackstone, ibid.; P. G. M. Dickson, The Sun Insurance Office, 1710–1960: The History of Two and a Half Centuries of British Insurance (London, Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 129–30, and Knight (ed.), London, vol. 4, pp. 178–88; Dickens to Miss Mary Boyle, 28 December 1860, Letters, vol. 9, p. 354.

  ‘and 314 men’: insurance company uniforms: Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Costume, p. 260.

  ‘warn oncoming traffic’: Northern Lights footnote: this was claimed by Bartlett, What I Saw in London, pp. 50–51; ‘away scamper the policemen’: [Richard H. Horne], ‘The Fire Brigade of London’, Household Words, 7, 11 May 1850, pp. 145–7; horses’ speed: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 2, p. 381; ‘hi! yi!’ and footnote: Massingham, London Anthology, p. 170; speed modified by horses’ capacity, and standing by driver: R. M. Ballantyne, Fighting the Flames: A Tale of the London Fire Brigade (London, James Nisbet, 1868), pp. 30–31.

  ‘seven minutes’: private roads: Hogg, London as it is, p. 216; nineteenth-century speed of response: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 2, p. 381. 2006 response times: CLG, ‘Review of Fire and Rescue Service response times’ – Fire Research Series 1/2009, www.communities.­gov.uk/documents/­fire/pdf/frsresponse­times.pdf, accessed 16 February 2012.

  ‘the crowds back’: metal signs: Weale, London Exhibited in 1852, p. 112; volunteers and wages: Bartlett, What I Saw in London, pp. 47–8; Bartlett translates the pay into US dollars, but many other sources bear him out; number per pump on land: Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 84–5, and Blackstone, British Fire Service, p. 114; river engines: Bartlett, ibid., pp. 47–8; payment methods: Bartlett, ibid., p. 114, and Sala, Twice Round the Clock, p. 355.

  ‘well alight’: Greville, Diary, vol. 1, pp. 307–8; Houses of Parliament fire: Blackstone, British Fire Service, pp. 118–19.

  ‘turn at the pumps’: Carlyle: Carlyle Letters, vol. 7, pp. 318–19; Haydon, Memoirs, cited in Massingham, London Anthology, p. 167; visitors to Covent Garden ruins: ILN, 15 March 1856, p. 275; Dickens, to W. C. Macready, 22 March 1856, Letters, vol. 8, p. 75; Prince of Wales: John A. Walker, ‘The People’s Hero: Millais’s The Rescue and the Image of the Fireman in Nineteenth-century Art and Media’, Apollo, December 2004, p. 59.

  ‘in small boats’: Hékékyan Bey, Journal, British Library, Add MS 37,448; Sala, Twice Round the Clock, p. 348; Battersea: ILN, 20 March 1847, pp. 177–8.

  ‘in its disasters’: journalists on the prowl: Sala, Twice Round the Clock, p. 353.

  1852: THE FUNERAL OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON

  ‘acclamation of all’: the American tourist: Wheaton, Journal of a Residence, p. 161; the coronation crowd: Colton, Four Years in Great Britain, p. 71.

  ‘of Waterloo’: shutters: Stewart, Sketches of Society, vol. 1, p. 170; butler: Haydon, Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon..., vol. 2, p. 275; attitude to his wife: Francis Bamford and the Duke of Wellington (eds), Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, 1820–1832 (London, Macmillan & Co., 1950), vol. 1, p. 169.

  ‘until 11 November’: Disraeli, Letters, vol. 6, p. 148, and I am grateful to Mary Millar for identifying the dramatis pe
rsonae of this letter; the death, the lying-in-state and the preparations for the funeral that follow are all described from newspaper reports, especially the Daily News, Morning Chronicle, Morning Post and The Times.

  ‘or its route’: advertisement for Illustrated London News supplement in Morning Post, 23 September 1852; vergers of St Paul’s and income of Wellington: Daily News, 27 September 1852.

  ‘and other jewellery’: these advertisements, among many others, can be found in Morning Post, 23 and 25 September, Morning Chronicle, 25 September and 16 October 1852.

  ‘glass, cutlery, &c.’: Mr Thearle: Morning Post, 16 October 1852; grocer: Era, 24 October 1852; German advertisement: Morning Post, 5 November 1852; Messrs Purssell: Morning Chronicle, 10 November 1852.

  ‘for the funeral’: St-Mary-le-Strand: Daily News, 23 October 1852, and on many other days; St Clement Danes: Era, 3 November 1852; charitable giving: Illustrated London News, 25 December 1852, p. 555.

  ‘Mourning Habiliments’: American overshoes: Morning Post, 20 October 1852; Glenny’s Irish stockings: Morning Post, 10 November 1852; Moses and Son: Examiner, 13 November 1852.

  ‘Duke of Wellington’: special trains: Daily News, 10 November 1852; Era, 14 November 1852; Mount Alexandra: Daily News, 13 November 1852.

  ‘one ... in mourning’: Morning Chronicle, 11 November 1852.

  ‘in the kingdom’: ‘Official Programme of the Public Funeral of the late Field-Marshal, Arthur Duke of Wellington, K. G., as Issued by the Authority of the Earl-Marshal (London, N. Pearce [1852], BL shelfmark 812.e.2).

  ‘two died’: Belton, Random Recollections, pp. 146–7; crush outside: Morning Chronicle, 15 November 1852; Daily News, 16 November.

  ‘worn in cloaks’: mourning wear at St Paul’s: ‘Official Programme’, and Morning Post, 30 October 1852; mourning wear for observers: Morning Post, 9 November 1852.

  ‘specially piped in’: ‘Non sibi’: ILN, 27 November 1852, p. 467; clubs and Temple Bar: The Wellington News (London, E. Appleyard [1852], BL shelfmark 1764 E8).