Days and Nights in London: or, Studies in Black and Gray

One night last winter I was at a meeting held in the Mission Hall, Little Wild Street, at which some three hundred thieves had been collected together to supper. One of them, who had seen the evil of his ways, said: “The greatest curse of my life was the music-halls. They have been the means of my ruin;” and the way in which that speech was received by his mates evidently testified to the fact that the experience of many was of a similar character. I said to him afterwards that I knew the music-hall to which he referred, and that I had calculated that on an average each man spent there two shillings a night. “Oh sir,” was the reply, “I spent a great deal more than that of a night.” If so, I may assume that he spent as much as four shillings a night – and that, as the place was his favourite haunt after office-hours, he was there every night in the week, this would make an expenditure of one pound four shillings – a sum, I imagine, quite as much as his wages as a poor clerk. What wonder is it that the silly youth became a thief, especially when the devil whispers in his ear that theft is easy and the chance of detection small? The one damning fact which may be charged against all music-halls is that their amusements are too high in price, and that every device is set to work to make people spend more money than the cost of the original admission. In the theatre you may sit – and most people do sit all the evening – without spending a penny. In the music-hall a man does not like to do that. He drinks for the sake of being sociable, or because the waiter solicits him, or because he has drunk already and does not like to leave off, or because he meets doubtful company at the bar, or because the burden of every song is that he must be a “jolly pal” and that he must enjoy a cheerful glass. I can remember when at one time the admission fee included the cost of a pint of beer or some other fluid. Now drink is an extra, and as the proprietor of the music-hall, to meet the competition all round him, has to beautify his hall as much as possible, and to get what he calls the best available talent, male or female – whether in the shape of man or ass, or dog or elephant, or monkey – he is of course put to a considerable extra expense; and that of course he has to get out of the public the best way he can. No one loves to work for nothing, and least of all the proprietor of a music-hall.

Talking of “pals” and “a cheerful glass” reminds me of a scene which made me sick at the time, and which I shall not speedily forget. On the night of the Lord Mayor’s Show, I entered a music-hall in the north of London – in a region supposed to be eminently pious and respectable, and not far from where Hick’s Hall formerly stood. As I saw the thousands of people pushing into the Agricultural Hall, to see the dreary spectacle of an insane walking match, and saw another place of amusement being rapidly filled up, I said to myself: “Well, there will be plenty of room for me in the place to which I am bound;” and it was with misgiving that I paid the highest price for admission – one shilling – to secure what I felt, under the circumstances, I might have had at a cheaper rate. Alas! I had reckoned without my host. The hour for commencing had not arrived, and yet the place was full to overflowing. Mostly the audience consisted of young men. As usual, there were a great many soldiers. It is wonderful the number of soldiers at such places; and the spectator would be puzzled to account for the ability of the private soldier thus to sport his lovely person did not one remember that he is usually accompanied by a female companion, generally a maid-of-all-work of the better class, who is too happy to pay for his aristocratic amusements, as she deems them, on condition that she accompanies him in the humble capacity of a friend. Soldiers, I must do them justice to say, are not selfish, and scorn to keep all the good things to themselves. As soon as they find a neighbourhood where the servant “gal” is free with her wages, they generally tell each other of the welcome fact, and then the Assyrian comes down like the wolf on the fold.

Well, to continue my story. On the night, and at the place already referred to, they were a very jolly party – so far as beer and “baccy” and crowded company and comic singing were concerned. They had a couple of Brothers, who were supposed to be strong in the delineation of Irish and German character, but as their knowledge of the language of the latter seemed simply to be confined to the perpetually exclaiming “Yah, yah!” I had misgivings as to their talents in that respect, which were justified abundantly in the course of the evening. Dressed something in the style of shoeblacks, and wearing wooden shoes, which made an awful noise when they danced, the little one descries his long-lost elder brother, to whom his replies are so smart and witty that the house was in a roar of laughter, in which I did not join, as I had heard them twice already.

After they had finished we had a disgustingly stout party, who was full of praise of all conviviality, and who, while he sang, frisked about the stage with wonderful vivacity and with as much grace as a bull in a china-shop, or a bear dancing a hornpipe. As he sang, just behind me there was all at once a terrible noise; the chairman had to call out “Order,” the spectators began howling, “Turn him out;” the singer had to stop, the roughs in the gallery began to scream and cheer, and the bars were for a wonder deserted. In so dense a crowd it was so difficult to see anything, that it was not at once that I discovered the cause of the disorder; but presently I saw in one of the little pews, into which this part of the house was divided (each pew having a small table in the middle for the liquor) a couple of men quarrelling. All at once the biggest of them – a very powerful fellow of the costermonger type – dealt his opponent – a poor slim, weedy lad of the common shop-boy species – a tremendous blow. The latter tried to retaliate, and struggled across the table to hit his man, but he merely seemed to me to touch his whiskers, while the other repeated his blow with tremendous effect. In vain the sufferer tried to get out of the way; the place was too crowded, and with a stream of blood flowing from his nose he fell, or would have fallen, to the earth had not some of the bystanders dragged him a few yards from his seat. Then as he lay by me drunk, or faint, or both, unable to sit up or to move, with the blood pouring down his clothes and staining the carpet all round, I saw, as the reader can well believe, a commentary on the singer’s Bacchanalian song of a somewhat ironical character; but business is business, and at the music-hall it will not do to harrow up the feelings of the audience with such sad spectacles. Perfectly insensible, the poor lad was carried out, while a constable was the means of inducing his muscular and brutal-looking opponent to leave the hall. Order restored, the stout party bounded on to the stage, and the hilarity of the evening – with the exception of here and there a girl who, evidently not being used to such places, was consequently frightened and pale and faint for awhile – was as great as ever. The comic singer made no reference to the unfortunate incident; all he could do was to say what he had got by heart, and so he went on about the cheerful glass and the fun of going home powerfully refreshed at an early hour in the morning, and much did the audience enjoy his picture of the poor wife waiting for her husband behind the door with a poker, assisting him upstairs with a pair of tongs, and after she had got him sound asleep meanly helping herself to what cash remained in his pocket.

For my part, I candidly own I felt more inclined to sympathise with the wife than with her husband; but the music-hall is bound to stand up for drinking, for it is by drinking that it lives. If people cared for music and the drama, they would go to the theatre; but that declines, and the music-hall flourishes. Astley’s Theatre is a case in point. That has been an old favourite with the public. At one time, I should imagine, few places paid better – does not Ducrow sleep in one of the most magnificent monuments in Kensal Green, and did he not make his money at Astley’s? – but now there are two flourishing music-halls one on each side of Astley’s, and as I write I see one of the proprietors, as a plea why he should be given more time for the payment of a debt, admits that sometimes they lose at Astley’s as much as forty pounds a week. If Astley’s is to be made to pay, evidently the sooner it is turned into a music-hall the better.

Will the London School Boards raise the character of the future public? is a question to be asked but not to be answered in our time. The real fact is that amusements have a deteriorating effect on the character of those who devote themselves to them, and become more frivolous as they become more popular. This is the case, at any rate, as regards music-halls. A gentleman the other day, as we were speaking of one of the most successful of them, said how grieved he was on a visit to it lately to see the generally lowered tone of entertainment. At one time the attempt was made to give the people really good music, and there were selections of operas of first-rate character. Now all that is done away with, and there is nothing but silly comic singing of the poorest kind.

In another respect also there has been a deterioration – that is, in the increased sensationalism of the performance. A music-hall audience requires extra stimulus – the appetite becomes palled, and if a leap of fifty feet does not “fetch the public,” as Artemus Ward would say, why then, the leap must be made a hundred; and really sometimes the spectacles held up for the beery audience to admire are of the most painful character. I have said that the doubtful female element is not conspicuous in the music-hall – that is the case as regards those on the outskirts of London, but the nearer you approach the West-End the less is that the case; and there is more than one music-hall I could name which is little better than a place of assignation and rendezvous for immoral women, and where you may see them standing at the refreshment bars soliciting a drink from all who pass. Such music-halls are amongst the most successful of them all, and the proprietor reaps a golden harvest.

I presume it is impossible to tell the number of our metropolitan music-halls, or to give an idea of the numbers who frequent them, and of the amount of money spent in them during the course of a single night. Apparently they are all well supported, and are all doing well. If you see a theatre well filled, that is no criterion of success. It may be, for aught you know, well filled with paper, but the music-hall is a paying audience, and it is cash, not paper, that is placed in the proprietor’s hands. In the east of London I find that both as regards the theatres and music-halls the proprietors have a dodge by means of which they considerably increase their profits, and that is to open a particular entrance a little before the time for admission, and to allow people to enter on payment of a small extra fee. It was thus the other night I made my way into a music-hall. I paid an extra twopence rather than stand waiting half an hour outside in the crowd. Another thing I also learned the other night that must somewhat detract from the reputation of the theatre, considered in a temperance point of view, and that is the drinking customs are not so entirely banished as at first sight we may suppose. The thousands who fill up the Vic., and the Pavilion in Whitechapel, perhaps do not drink quite as much as they would had they spent the evening at a music-hall, but they do drink, nevertheless, and generally are provided with a bottle of liquor which they carry with them, with other refreshment, down into the pit, or up where the gods live and lie reclined.

If it is impossible to reckon the number of music-halls in London, it is equally impossible to denote the public-houses with musical performances. In Whitechapel the other night I discovered two free-and-easies on my way to one of the music-halls of that district. They were, in reality, music-halls of a less pretentious character, and yet they advertised outside the grand attractions of a star company within. Prospects may be cloudy, trade may be bad, and, as a slang writer remarks, things all round may be unpromising, but the business of the music-hall fluctuates very little. Enter at any time between nine and ten and you have little chance of a seat, and none whatever of a good place. As to numbers it is difficult to give an idea. Some of the officials are wisely chary in this matter, and equally so on the subject of profits. The Foresters’ Hall in Cambridge Heath Road advertises itself to hold four thousand people, and that does not by any means strike me as one of the largest of the music-halls. Last year the entire British public spent £140,000,000, or eight shillings a week for each family, in drink, and the music-halls help off the drink in an astonishing way. As I went into a music-hall last autumn I saw a receipt for £51 as the profit for an entertainment given there on behalf of the Princess Alice Fund, and if the attendance was a little greater, and the profit a little larger than usual, still a fair deduction from £51 for bad nights and slack times will make a pretty handsome total at the end of the year after all. Now and then the music-hall does a little bit of philanthropy in another way, which is sure to be made the most of in the papers. For instance, last year Mr. Fort, of the Foresters’ Music Hall, invited some of the paupers from a neighbouring workhouse to spend the evening with him. I daresay he had a good many old customers among the lot, whereupon someone writes in Fun as follows: “The Bethnal Green Guardians showed themselves superior to the Bath Guardians the other day, and in response to the offer of Mr. Fort, proprietor of the Foresters’ Music-hall, rescinded the resolution prohibiting the paupers from partaking of any amusement other than that afforded within the workhouse walls. So the inmates of the union had a day out, and, we trust, forgot for awhile their sorrows and troubles. It is whispered that, in addition to pleasing the eye and the ear, the promoter of the entertainment presented each of his visitors with a little drop of something of an equally Fort-ified character.” I may add that the Foresters’ Music-hall claims to be a celebrated popular family resort, and that evening I was there the performance was one to which a family might be invited. Of course the family must have a turn for drink. They cannot go there without drinking. There is the public-house entrance to suggest drink, the bar at the end of the saloon to encourage it, and the waiters are there expressly to hand it round, and a good-natured man of course does not like to see waiters standing idle, and accordingly gives his orders; and besides, it is an axiom in political economy that the supply creates the demand.

Here are some of the verses I have heard sung with immense applause:

The spiritualists only can work by night,         They keep it dark;For their full-bodied spirits cannot stand the light,         So they keep it dark;They profess to call spirits, but I call for rumAnd brandy or gin as the best mediumFor raising the spirits whenever I’m glum;         But keep it dark.

The utter silliness of many of the songs is shown by the following, “sung with immense success,” as I read in the programme, by Herbert Campbell:

I’ve read of little Jack Horner,   I’ve read of Jack and Jill,And old Mother Hubbard,Who went to the cupboard   To give her poor dog a pill;But the best is Cowardy Custard,   Who came to awful griefThrough eating a plate of mustard   Without any plate of beef.Chorus.Cowardy Cowardy Custard, oh dear me,   Swallowed his father’s mustard, oh dear me —He swallowed the pot, and he collared it hot;   For, much to his disgust,The mustard swelled, Cowardy yelled,   Then Cowardy Cowardy bust.

This is supposed, I presume, to be a good song. What are we to think of the people who call it so? It is difficult to imagine the depth of imbecility thus reached on the part of singer and hearers, and is a fine illustration of the influence of beer and “baccy” as regards softening the brain. The music-hall singer degrades his audience. Even when he sings of passing events he panders as much as possible to the passions and prejudices of the mob. His words are redolent of claptrap and fury, and are a mischievous element in the formation of public opinion. Heroes and patriots are not made in music-halls. But rogues and drunkards and vagabonds – and lazy, listless lives, destitute of all moral aim. There are respectable people who go to music-halls – women as well as men – but they get little good there. Indeed, it would be a miracle if they did.

But the great fact is that the music-hall makes young men indulge in expensive habits – get into bad company, and commence a career which ends in the jail. Amusement has not necessarily a bad effect, or else it would be a poor look-out for all. It is as much our duty to be merry as it is to be wise. It is the drinking at these places that does the mischief. It is that that leads to a low tone of entertainment, and deadens the conscience of the young man who thinks he is enjoying life, and makes the working man forget how the money he squanders away would make his home brighter, and his wife and children happier, and would form a nice fund to be drawn on when necessary on a rainy day. The great curse of the age is extravagant and luxurious living, always accompanied with a low tone of public intelligence and morality and thought. In the present state of society we see that realised in the men and women who crowd our music-halls, and revel in the songs the most improper, and in the dances the most indelicate.

As I write, another illustration of the pernicious influence of music-halls appears in the newspapers. At the Middlesex Sessions, John B. Clarke surrendered to his bail on an indictment charging him with attempting to wound his wife, and with having wounded George Marshall, police constable, in the execution of his duty. When Marshall was on duty in Jubilee Street on the night of November 28th, he heard loud cries of “Murder” and ‘“Police,” and went to the prisoner’s house. He found the prisoner and his wife struggling in the passage, and the wife, seeing him, cried out, “Policeman, he has a knife and has threatened to cut my throat.” The police-constable closed with the prisoner and endeavoured to wrest the knife from him, when the prisoner made two stabs at his wife which fortunately missed her, and another stab which cut the hand of Marshall, who succeeded in wresting the knife from the prisoner, and took him to the station. In cross-examination it was elicited that prisoner’s wife had gone to a music-hall; that her husband, returning home, found her with two or three young men and women sitting together in his parlour; that one of the young men kissed her, and that the prisoner, seeing this, became mad with jealousy, and seized the first thing that came to his hand. A gentleman, in whose employment the prisoner was, gave him an exceptionally high character for more than eighteen years, and expressed his perfect willingness to have him back into his service and to become security for his good behaviour. The jury convicted the prisoner of causing actual bodily harm, strongly recommending him to mercy, and expressing their belief that he had no intention to wound the policeman. Mr. Prentice said this was a peculiarly sad and painful case. To wound or even obstruct a policeman in the execution of his duty was a serious offence; but looking at all the circumstances of the case, the finding of the jury, and their recommendation to mercy, he sentenced him to one month’s hard labour, and accepted his employer’s surety that he would keep the peace for the next three months. The grand jury commended Marshall for his conduct in the case.

Another thing also may be said. The other evening I was dining with a lawyer with a large police practice, in what may be called, and what really is, a suburb of London. My friend is what may be described as a man of the world, and of course is anything but a fanatic in the cause of temperance. I spoke of a music-hall in his immediate neighbourhood, and said I intended dropping in after dinner. “Well,” he said, “the worst of the place is that if we ever have a case of embezzlement on the part of some shop-boy or porter, it is always to be traced to that music-hall. A lad goes there, is led into expenses beyond his means, thinks it manly to drink and to treat flash women, and one fine morning it is discovered that he has been robbing the till, and is ruined for life.”

With these words of an experienced observer, I conclude.

V. – SUNDAYS WITH THE PEOPLE

It is said – and indeed it has been said so often that I feel ashamed of saying it – that one half the world does not know how the other half lives. I am sure that whether that is true or not, few of my City readers have any idea of what goes on in the City while they are sitting comfortably at home, or are sitting equally comfortably at church or chapel (for of course the denunciations of the preacher when he speaks of the depravity of the age do not refer to them). Suppose we take a stroll in the eastern part of the City, where the dirt is greatest, the population most intense, and the poverty most dire. We need not rise very early. On a Sunday morning we are all of us a little later at breakfast than on ordinary occasions. We sit longer over our welcome meal – our toilette is a little more elaborate – so that we are in the City this particular Sunday about half-past nine – a later hour than most of the City-men patronise on the week-day. In the leading thoroughfares shops are shut and there are few people about, and in the City, especially these dark winter mornings, when the golden gleam of sunshine gilds the raw and heavy fog which in the City heralds the approach of day, very few signs of life are visible, very few omnibuses are to be seen, and even the cabs don’t seem to care whether you require their services or whether you let them alone. Here and there a brisk young man or a spruce maiden may be seen hastening to teach at some Sunday school; otherwise respectability is either asleep or away.

As we pass along, the first thing that strikes the stranger is a dense unsavoury mob to be met outside certain buildings. We shall see one such assemblage in Bell Alley, Goswell Street; we shall see another in Artillery Street; there will be another at the Cow Cross Mission Hall, and another in Whitecross Street, and another in a wretched little hovel, you can scarcely call it a building, in Thaull Street. Just outside the City, at the Memorial Hall, Bethnal Green, and at the Rev. W. Tyler’s Ragged Church in King Edward Street, there will be similar crowds. Let us look at them. It is not well to go too near, for they are unsavoury even on these cold frosty mornings. Did you ever see such wretched, helpless, dirty, ragged, seedy, forlorn men and women in all your life? I think not. Occasionally on a week-day we see a beggar, shirtless and unwashed and unkempt, shivering in the street, but here in these mobs we see nothing else. They have tickets for free breakfasts provided for them under the care of Mr. J. J. Jones and the Homerton Mission. How they crowd around the doors, waiting for admission; how sad and disconsolate those who have not tickets look as they turn away! What a feast of fat things, you say, there must be inside. My dear sir, it is nothing of the kind. All that is provided for them is a small loaf of bread, with the smallest modicum of butter, and a pint of cocoa. Not much of a breakfast that to you or me, who have two or three good meals a day, but a veritable godsend to the half-starved and wretched souls we see outside. Let us follow them inside. The tables and the long forms on which they are seated are of the rudest kind. The room, as a rule, is anything but attractive, nor is the atmosphere very refreshing. A City missionary or an agent of the Christian community, or a devoted Christian woman or a young man, whose heart is in the work – is distributing the materials of the feast, which are greedily seized and ravenously devoured. Let us look at them now they have taken their hats off. What uncombed heads; what dirty faces; what scant and threadbare garments! There are women too, and they seem to have fallen lower than the men. They look as if they had not been to bed for months; as if all pride of personal appearance had long since vanished; as if they had come out of a pigstye.