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Hi all,
Ive recently come across a great website with a lot of links to stories, images and even dictionary terms for the Victorian Period. I thought that this article posted there was an interesting read, so Ive copied some of it below for anyone who is interested.
Its from a paper written by a Richard Rowe in 1881 for a Journalism assignment I believe, and its called "Saturday Night at the East End".
" ON a rainy Saturday afternoon a sight may be seen in this huge London that gives a most vivid idea of its hugeness and its heterogeneous population-a little foreign town in its midst, silent and sealed. Wander on such an afternoon through the Jews' quarter - the nest of narrow streets, and lanes, and courts, of which alley-like Petticoat Lane, or Middlesex Street, and the broader and more wholesale dealing Houndsditch may be called the main arteries, and you pass line after line of fast-shuttered shops, catching over window-blinds glimpses of Jewish domesticities arranged by Gentile hirelings, hearing now and then the wheeze or the tinkle of indoor music, but seeing scarcely any outdoor life, save when a little band of laughing Jewesses (arrayed in the bright-hued and sometimes rich-tissued garments and gilt back-[-2-]combs, in which their parents love to frame their lemon-like complexions and glossy black or almost scarlet hair) make a dash out into the rain and then flash back again, screaming like a flock of paroquets. On a brighter Saturday afternoon the elders in Israel lean and loll at or on their thresholds, exchanging remarks and repartees with their neighbours on each side and opposite, whilst the youngsters - the girls for the most part bare-headed, armed, and necked - take their al fresco amusement.
On a summer's Saturday evening in Duke's Place (as those who frequent it persist in calling St. James's Place) a crowd of shrewd-looking Jews in black broadcloth, more or less white shirt sleeves, and gold chains, and portly, gaily-garbed Jewesses, with jewelled rings on their fat fingers, may be seen "enjoying the evening air" in armchairs tilted in front of the closed or nearly closed fruit warehouses; the children meanwhile playing leapfrog, or dancing ,to an Italian organ on the rotting fruit-market garbage that litters the small square. But still - especially as contrasted with its bustle when the street-sellers pour into it for their supplies - there is a Sabbatic tranquillity in the dingy, oriental-looking little place. A good deal of the Sabbath-keeping in the Jews' quarter may be formal and perfunctory enough, there being, probably, in proportion to totals, nearly as many merely nominal Jews as merely nominal [-3-] Christians in London. The widespread outward show of the observance, nevertheless, brings Sinai and London slums into an historical connection which it is startling to realise. The old clothesman still, after a fashion, observes the law which his forefathers pledged themselves and their seed to keep for ever, under the curses which the Mountain of Blessing echoed back to Mount Ebal.
The Friends, who have a meeting-house and a reading-room on the borders of the Jews' quarter, must find its seventh-day quiet congenial, but that advantage has a heavy set-off in its first-day stir. This sets in as the Sabbath sun goes down - an epoch, for the most part, only ascertainable from the almanac in London. Shutters are then rattled down, and the whilom quiet streets again buzz with life. The elders, with appetite sharpened by abstinence, resume their chaffering, whilst the young Jews flock to the theatre, the singing-room, or the dancing- room, play cards, or dominoes, or bagatelle in low coffee-houses, or gamble by tossing on tables muffled to prevent the chink of the falling coin from being heard outside. The Jewish element crops up every here and there in the strange medley of gaslight and squalor, dissipation and destitution, to be seen on a Saturday night in the East End, during the hours in which courts and thoroughfares in the City proper, that hum like hives by day, are almost [-4-] as silent and solitary places to hear the chimes in as a country churchyard.
To give an idea of some of the ins as well as outs of the East End's strange "Preparation for the Sabbath, or rather Sunday"- as seen under efficient guidance, in some out-of-the- way places - is the object of this paper.
Rattling into London on a Saturday night by the railway that runs round its north and east like a great fortification, you can see a great part of the East End in gloomily picturesque panorama. The angular meanness of the buildings is veiled by the dusk, and there stretches on either hand a hummocked wilderness of mysterious murk, now thickly, now thinly, sprinkled with withered windfall stars. In by-streets the lamps are so few and dim that the feeble flickering light they cast upon the house-fronts is only less dark than the pitchy blackness that broods above the lonely-looking roofs on which unseen murder might be done. In the midst of the gloom gas-works' furnaces give out their infernal glow, kindling the air above and around into a core of lurid light, and painting bloody gleams and weirdly fantastic shadows on the neighbouring buildings and the grim black gasometers, that look like gore-stained devil's drums. Shadowy warehouses, and chimney-stalks, and ships' spars hang between the darksome earth and the darksome sky in. very spectral fashion. And then, as [-5-] the train rumbles over a bridge, there is a glimpse for a moment of a long broad thoroughfare, with its dense dark throngs of stationary or slowly circulating passengers, dimly seen through the dazzling glare of the great publicans' lamps, and the double avenues of blazing shop burners and street-sellers' flaring lights; gas-lit dust, and smoke, and mist hanging and dancing above like motes in the sunbeams, and the shrill or hoarse cries of the costermongers piercing the hum of many voices like sea-gulls screaming over murmuring waves.
I may as well jot down here a little incident I witnessed near a railway arch, whilst walking from the station to the place in which I was to meet my guide. Under the arch (on a route not likely to have been selected for the playing of a trick), a ragged little girl, crying bitterly, was prying into a patch of black mud, in which, she said, she had dropped a penny. Some roughly clad men, who looked like dock labourers, were giving her their sympathy and help; but, as the help proved fruitless, the sympathy seemed very cold consolation. "Mammy had sent her out to buy "supper" (!) with the missing coin, and would "whop" her if she returned empty-handed. When, however, a passer-by, who had stopped like myself to see what was the matter, gave her a penny, her tears were soon dried, and the little group was dispersing when one of the men ran back to [-6-] say to the departing donor, "God bless ye, sir- may ye niver want a penny!" Had he lingered, he might have been suspected of wanting a penny for himself; but he instantly ran off again. Had I witnessed the scene later in the night, when I had learned to look upon human nature with detective eyes, I might have thought the whole affair - notwithstanding the poorness of the result from such ponderous machinery - a "plant"; but, as things were, I found more pleasure in supposing that the Irishman, as the next best thing to doing a benefit himself, wished to enjoy the moral gratification of bestowing commendation on one who had conferred a kindness, which the Irishman's pinched pocket enabled him to appreciate."
Heres something from our neck of the woods...
"Across the Whitechapel Road, where the fog is so thick that passing vehicles, dimly appearing, suddenly vanishing, have a phantasmal look; and people who want to cross, linger on the kerb, like timid bathers hesitating to take their plunge. Up, by way of Osborne Street, to the lodging-houses, which are as thick as thieves - and some of them almost exclusively used by thieves - in and about Flower-and-Dean Street. But there are comparatively respectable houses - houses that will not take everybody in - in that neighbourhood; and in some of these there [-45-] is a degree of comfort which a stranger does not expect to find in a low lodging-house. To be able to pass the little lodge in which sits the proprietor or his deputy before his account book, must be cheery, after a weary day in the cold streets, or wearying docks. Some of the inmates have lived in them for years as weekly lodgers; others pay half-weekly; chance-corners pay every night. The general charge is four- pence a night, or two shillings a week, for a single bed in a general dormitory. For a trifle more, a boarded-off bedroom, dark, but private can be secured. In all registered houses the number of beds which each room is to contain is stated on a ticket hung upon the wall In the comfortable houses it is enclosed in a little gilt frame; in the houses in which the proprietors strive to do the very least they ,can, it is pasted on a bit of millboard. These comfort able houses have "maple"-framed engravings along their walls, and, besides the kitchen, with cooking apparatus, and dressers covered with white crockery, a "coffee-room," with boxes, to which the lodgers can retreat when tired of the kitchen, in which each cooks for himself the food he has brought in. One of these comfortable houses is a regular warren. A row of old-fashioned buildings have been thrown into one; and if it were not for index-fingers, with verbal directions beneath, painted on the corner of every passage, a stranger might wan-[-46-]der about in it the whole day long without being able to find his way out. It must not be supposed, however, that all the inmates of these better houses are model characters. In one, a hulking tramp dogs us about, hoping first that our honours, and then that our lordships, will give him a trifle to drink our healths. In the coffee-room of the same house, a lodger of the "patterer" class leans back in his box, puts his legs on the seat, and somewhat to this effect addresses the room at large :-" My friends, we are in a place of public entertainment. Is there anything derogatory in that? My friends, there is nothing derogatory in being in a place of public entertainment, into which, as into the London tavern, any person of good moral character, or, perhaps, otherwise, can come, if he has only money enough to pay for his admission. My friends, there are gentlemen present. They may, and they may not, have paid for admission to our room; I cannot say. But, my friends, the gentlemen go about and smile, and now they laugh. Why do they smile and laugh? What is a smile and laugh? Can they not express their feelings in a way more satisfactory to our feelings ?- put into a more substantial shape those sentiments of deep admiration and philanthropy with which doubtless they regard us?" Even in these houses, too, it is considered a great joke for a lodger to ask of our dragoman, "Who's wanted?" or for our [-47-] dragoman to say to some unseen sleeper, into whose cupboard bedroom he has peeped, "Don't disturb yourself; I'll let you go to church in peace to-morrow."
On our way to houses of a lower class-lower in character and comfort, although the charges are sometimes the same as those of the better class houses-we pass one with the whole of a lower window-sash smashed in. The dirty drab blind, inscribed with "Accommodation for Travellers," leans against the shattered frame. The mischief was done, we learn, by some ill-conditioned fellow who had a spite against the keeper of the house; and as we pass the broken window there comes out a clamour of angry voices, highly flavoured with the hottest oaths, which seems to menace the continuity of the other casement."
The site is www.victorianlondon.org, lots of great stuff for those wanting the atmosphere of the times.
Best regards all
Ive recently come across a great website with a lot of links to stories, images and even dictionary terms for the Victorian Period. I thought that this article posted there was an interesting read, so Ive copied some of it below for anyone who is interested.
Its from a paper written by a Richard Rowe in 1881 for a Journalism assignment I believe, and its called "Saturday Night at the East End".
" ON a rainy Saturday afternoon a sight may be seen in this huge London that gives a most vivid idea of its hugeness and its heterogeneous population-a little foreign town in its midst, silent and sealed. Wander on such an afternoon through the Jews' quarter - the nest of narrow streets, and lanes, and courts, of which alley-like Petticoat Lane, or Middlesex Street, and the broader and more wholesale dealing Houndsditch may be called the main arteries, and you pass line after line of fast-shuttered shops, catching over window-blinds glimpses of Jewish domesticities arranged by Gentile hirelings, hearing now and then the wheeze or the tinkle of indoor music, but seeing scarcely any outdoor life, save when a little band of laughing Jewesses (arrayed in the bright-hued and sometimes rich-tissued garments and gilt back-[-2-]combs, in which their parents love to frame their lemon-like complexions and glossy black or almost scarlet hair) make a dash out into the rain and then flash back again, screaming like a flock of paroquets. On a brighter Saturday afternoon the elders in Israel lean and loll at or on their thresholds, exchanging remarks and repartees with their neighbours on each side and opposite, whilst the youngsters - the girls for the most part bare-headed, armed, and necked - take their al fresco amusement.
On a summer's Saturday evening in Duke's Place (as those who frequent it persist in calling St. James's Place) a crowd of shrewd-looking Jews in black broadcloth, more or less white shirt sleeves, and gold chains, and portly, gaily-garbed Jewesses, with jewelled rings on their fat fingers, may be seen "enjoying the evening air" in armchairs tilted in front of the closed or nearly closed fruit warehouses; the children meanwhile playing leapfrog, or dancing ,to an Italian organ on the rotting fruit-market garbage that litters the small square. But still - especially as contrasted with its bustle when the street-sellers pour into it for their supplies - there is a Sabbatic tranquillity in the dingy, oriental-looking little place. A good deal of the Sabbath-keeping in the Jews' quarter may be formal and perfunctory enough, there being, probably, in proportion to totals, nearly as many merely nominal Jews as merely nominal [-3-] Christians in London. The widespread outward show of the observance, nevertheless, brings Sinai and London slums into an historical connection which it is startling to realise. The old clothesman still, after a fashion, observes the law which his forefathers pledged themselves and their seed to keep for ever, under the curses which the Mountain of Blessing echoed back to Mount Ebal.
The Friends, who have a meeting-house and a reading-room on the borders of the Jews' quarter, must find its seventh-day quiet congenial, but that advantage has a heavy set-off in its first-day stir. This sets in as the Sabbath sun goes down - an epoch, for the most part, only ascertainable from the almanac in London. Shutters are then rattled down, and the whilom quiet streets again buzz with life. The elders, with appetite sharpened by abstinence, resume their chaffering, whilst the young Jews flock to the theatre, the singing-room, or the dancing- room, play cards, or dominoes, or bagatelle in low coffee-houses, or gamble by tossing on tables muffled to prevent the chink of the falling coin from being heard outside. The Jewish element crops up every here and there in the strange medley of gaslight and squalor, dissipation and destitution, to be seen on a Saturday night in the East End, during the hours in which courts and thoroughfares in the City proper, that hum like hives by day, are almost [-4-] as silent and solitary places to hear the chimes in as a country churchyard.
To give an idea of some of the ins as well as outs of the East End's strange "Preparation for the Sabbath, or rather Sunday"- as seen under efficient guidance, in some out-of-the- way places - is the object of this paper.
Rattling into London on a Saturday night by the railway that runs round its north and east like a great fortification, you can see a great part of the East End in gloomily picturesque panorama. The angular meanness of the buildings is veiled by the dusk, and there stretches on either hand a hummocked wilderness of mysterious murk, now thickly, now thinly, sprinkled with withered windfall stars. In by-streets the lamps are so few and dim that the feeble flickering light they cast upon the house-fronts is only less dark than the pitchy blackness that broods above the lonely-looking roofs on which unseen murder might be done. In the midst of the gloom gas-works' furnaces give out their infernal glow, kindling the air above and around into a core of lurid light, and painting bloody gleams and weirdly fantastic shadows on the neighbouring buildings and the grim black gasometers, that look like gore-stained devil's drums. Shadowy warehouses, and chimney-stalks, and ships' spars hang between the darksome earth and the darksome sky in. very spectral fashion. And then, as [-5-] the train rumbles over a bridge, there is a glimpse for a moment of a long broad thoroughfare, with its dense dark throngs of stationary or slowly circulating passengers, dimly seen through the dazzling glare of the great publicans' lamps, and the double avenues of blazing shop burners and street-sellers' flaring lights; gas-lit dust, and smoke, and mist hanging and dancing above like motes in the sunbeams, and the shrill or hoarse cries of the costermongers piercing the hum of many voices like sea-gulls screaming over murmuring waves.
I may as well jot down here a little incident I witnessed near a railway arch, whilst walking from the station to the place in which I was to meet my guide. Under the arch (on a route not likely to have been selected for the playing of a trick), a ragged little girl, crying bitterly, was prying into a patch of black mud, in which, she said, she had dropped a penny. Some roughly clad men, who looked like dock labourers, were giving her their sympathy and help; but, as the help proved fruitless, the sympathy seemed very cold consolation. "Mammy had sent her out to buy "supper" (!) with the missing coin, and would "whop" her if she returned empty-handed. When, however, a passer-by, who had stopped like myself to see what was the matter, gave her a penny, her tears were soon dried, and the little group was dispersing when one of the men ran back to [-6-] say to the departing donor, "God bless ye, sir- may ye niver want a penny!" Had he lingered, he might have been suspected of wanting a penny for himself; but he instantly ran off again. Had I witnessed the scene later in the night, when I had learned to look upon human nature with detective eyes, I might have thought the whole affair - notwithstanding the poorness of the result from such ponderous machinery - a "plant"; but, as things were, I found more pleasure in supposing that the Irishman, as the next best thing to doing a benefit himself, wished to enjoy the moral gratification of bestowing commendation on one who had conferred a kindness, which the Irishman's pinched pocket enabled him to appreciate."
Heres something from our neck of the woods...
"Across the Whitechapel Road, where the fog is so thick that passing vehicles, dimly appearing, suddenly vanishing, have a phantasmal look; and people who want to cross, linger on the kerb, like timid bathers hesitating to take their plunge. Up, by way of Osborne Street, to the lodging-houses, which are as thick as thieves - and some of them almost exclusively used by thieves - in and about Flower-and-Dean Street. But there are comparatively respectable houses - houses that will not take everybody in - in that neighbourhood; and in some of these there [-45-] is a degree of comfort which a stranger does not expect to find in a low lodging-house. To be able to pass the little lodge in which sits the proprietor or his deputy before his account book, must be cheery, after a weary day in the cold streets, or wearying docks. Some of the inmates have lived in them for years as weekly lodgers; others pay half-weekly; chance-corners pay every night. The general charge is four- pence a night, or two shillings a week, for a single bed in a general dormitory. For a trifle more, a boarded-off bedroom, dark, but private can be secured. In all registered houses the number of beds which each room is to contain is stated on a ticket hung upon the wall In the comfortable houses it is enclosed in a little gilt frame; in the houses in which the proprietors strive to do the very least they ,can, it is pasted on a bit of millboard. These comfort able houses have "maple"-framed engravings along their walls, and, besides the kitchen, with cooking apparatus, and dressers covered with white crockery, a "coffee-room," with boxes, to which the lodgers can retreat when tired of the kitchen, in which each cooks for himself the food he has brought in. One of these comfortable houses is a regular warren. A row of old-fashioned buildings have been thrown into one; and if it were not for index-fingers, with verbal directions beneath, painted on the corner of every passage, a stranger might wan-[-46-]der about in it the whole day long without being able to find his way out. It must not be supposed, however, that all the inmates of these better houses are model characters. In one, a hulking tramp dogs us about, hoping first that our honours, and then that our lordships, will give him a trifle to drink our healths. In the coffee-room of the same house, a lodger of the "patterer" class leans back in his box, puts his legs on the seat, and somewhat to this effect addresses the room at large :-" My friends, we are in a place of public entertainment. Is there anything derogatory in that? My friends, there is nothing derogatory in being in a place of public entertainment, into which, as into the London tavern, any person of good moral character, or, perhaps, otherwise, can come, if he has only money enough to pay for his admission. My friends, there are gentlemen present. They may, and they may not, have paid for admission to our room; I cannot say. But, my friends, the gentlemen go about and smile, and now they laugh. Why do they smile and laugh? What is a smile and laugh? Can they not express their feelings in a way more satisfactory to our feelings ?- put into a more substantial shape those sentiments of deep admiration and philanthropy with which doubtless they regard us?" Even in these houses, too, it is considered a great joke for a lodger to ask of our dragoman, "Who's wanted?" or for our [-47-] dragoman to say to some unseen sleeper, into whose cupboard bedroom he has peeped, "Don't disturb yourself; I'll let you go to church in peace to-morrow."
On our way to houses of a lower class-lower in character and comfort, although the charges are sometimes the same as those of the better class houses-we pass one with the whole of a lower window-sash smashed in. The dirty drab blind, inscribed with "Accommodation for Travellers," leans against the shattered frame. The mischief was done, we learn, by some ill-conditioned fellow who had a spite against the keeper of the house; and as we pass the broken window there comes out a clamour of angry voices, highly flavoured with the hottest oaths, which seems to menace the continuity of the other casement."
The site is www.victorianlondon.org, lots of great stuff for those wanting the atmosphere of the times.
Best regards all
"What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: "Why is it so dark in here?"" From Pyramids by Sir Terry Pratchett, a British National Treasure. 
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