Chapter I: Part 1

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o.} 20.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

A DETECTIVE POLICE PARTY.

The fresh-complexioned, smooth-faced officer, with the strange air of simplicity, began, with a rustic smile, and in a soft, wheedling tone of voice, to relate the Butcher’s Story, thus:

“It’s just about six years ago, now, since information was given at Scotland Yard of there being extensive robberies of lawns and silks going on, at some wholesale houses in the City. Directions were given for the business being looked into; and Straw, and Fendall, and me, we were all in it.”

“When you received your instructions,” said we, “you went away, and held a sort of Cabinet Council together?”

The smooth-faced officer coaxingly replied, “Ye-es. Just so. We turned it over among ourselves a good deal. It appeared, when we went into it, that the goods were sold by the receivers extraordinarily cheap—much cheaper than they could have been if they had been honestly come by. The receivers were in the trade, and kept capital shops—establishments of the first respectability—one of ’em at the West End, one down in Westminster. After a lot of watching and inquiry, and this and that among ourselves, we found that the job was managed, and the purchases of the stolen goods made, at a little public-house near Smithfield, down by Saint Bartholomew’s; where the Warehouse Porters, who were the thieves, took ’em for that purpose, don’t you see? and made appointments to meet the people that went between themselves and the receivers. This public-house was principally used by journeymen butchers from the country, out of place, and in want of situations; so, what did we do, but—ha, ha, ha!—we agreed that I should be dressed up like a butcher myself, and go and live there!”

Never, surely, was a faculty of observation better brought to bear upon a purpose, than that which picked out this officer for the part. Nothing in all creation, could have suited him better. Even while he spoke, he became a greasy, sleepy, shy, good-natured, chuckle-headed, unsuspicious, and confiding young butcher. His very hair seemed to have suet in it, as he made it smooth upon his head, and his fresh complexion to be lubricated by large quantities of animal food.

——“So I—ha, ha, ha!” (always with the confiding snigger of the foolish young butcher) “so I dressed myself in the regular way, made up a little bundle of clothes, and went to the public-house, and asked if I could have a lodging there? They says, ‘yes, you can have a lodging here,’ and I got a bedroom, and settled myself down in the tap. There was a number of people about the place, and coming backwards and forwards to the house; and first one says, and then another says, ‘Are you from the country, young man?’ ‘Yes,’ I says, ‘I am. I’m come out of Northamptonshire, and I’m quite lonely here, for I don’t know London at all, and it’s such a mighty big town?’ ‘It _is_ a big town,’ they says. ‘Oh, it’s a _very_ big town!’ I says. ‘Really and truly I never was in such a town. It quite confuses of me!’—and all that, you know.

“When some of the Journeymen Butchers that used the house, found that I wanted a place, they says, ‘Oh, we’ll get you a place!’ And they actually took me to a sight of places, in Newgate Market, Newport Market, Clare, Carnaby—I don’t know where all. But the wages was—ha, ha, ha!—was not sufficient, and I never could suit myself, don’t you see? Some of the queer frequenters of the house, were a little suspicious of me at first, and I was obliged to be very cautious indeed, how I communicated with Straw or Fendall. Sometimes, when I went out, pretending to stop and look into the shop-windows, and just casting my eye round, I used to see some of ’em following me; but, being perhaps better accustomed than they thought for, to that sort of thing, I used to lead ’em on as far as I thought necessary or convenient—sometimes a long way—and then turn sharp round, and meet ’em, and say, ‘Oh, dear, how glad I am to come upon you so fortunate! This London’s such a place, I’m blowed if I an’t lost again!’ And then we’d go back all together, to the public-house, and—ha, ha, ha! and smoke our pipes, don’t you see?

“They were very attentive to me, I am sure. It was a common thing, while I was living there, for some of ’em to take me out, and show me London. They showed me the Prisons—showed me Newgate—and when they showed me Newgate, I stops at the place where the Porters pitch their loads, and says, ‘Oh dear,’ ‘is this where they hang the men! Oh Lor!’ ‘That!’ they says, ‘what a simple cove he is! _That_ an’t it!’ And then, they pointed out which _was_ it, and I says ‘Lor!’ and they says, ‘Now you’ll know it agen, won’t you?’ And I said I thought I should if I tried hard—and I assure you I kept a sharp look out for the City Police when we were out in this way, for if any of ’em had happened to know me, and had spoke to me, it would have been all up in a minute. However, by good luck such a thing never happened, and all went on quiet: though the difficulties I had in communicating with my brother officers were quite extraordinary.

“The stolen goods that were brought to the public-house, by the Warehouse Porters, were always disposed of in a back parlor. For a long time, I never could get into this parlor, or see what was done there. As I sat smoking my pipe, like an innocent young chap, by the tap-room fire, I’d hear some of the parties to the robbery, as they came in and out, say softly to the landlord, ‘Who’s that? What does _he_ do here?’ ‘Bless your soul,’ says the landlord, ‘He’s only a’—ha, ha, ha!—‘he’s only a green young fellow from the country, as is looking for a butcher’s sitiwation. Don’t mind _him_!’ So, in course of time, they were so convinced of my being green, and got to be so accustomed to me, that I was as free of the parlor as any of ’em, and I have seen as much as Seventy Pounds worth of fine lawn sold there, in one night, that was stolen from a warehouse in Friday Street. After the sale, the buyers always stood treat—hot supper, or dinner, or what not—and they’d say on those occasions ‘Come on, Butcher! Put your best leg foremost, young ’un, and walk into it!’ Which I used to do—and hear, at table, all manner of particulars that it was very important for us Detectives to know.

“This went on for ten weeks. I lived in the public-house all the time, and never was out of the Butcher’s dress—except in bed. At last, when I had followed seven of the thieves, and set ’em to rights—that’s an expression of ours, don’t you see, by which I mean to say that I traced ’em, and found out where the robberies were done, and all about ’em—Straw, and Fendall, and I, gave one another the office, and at a time agreed upon, a descent was made upon the public-house, and the apprehensions effected. One of the first things the officers did, was to collar me—for the parties to the robbery weren’t to suppose yet, that I was anything but a Butcher—on which the landlord cries out, ‘Don’t take _him_,’ he says, ‘whatever you do! He’s only a poor young chap from the country, and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth!’ However, they—ha, ha, ha!—they took me, and pretended to search my bedroom, where nothing was found but an old fiddle belonging to the landlord, that had got there somehow or another. But, it entirely changed the landlord’s opinion, for when it was produced, he says ‘My fiddle! The Butcher’s a pur-loiner! I give him into custody for the robbery of a musical instrument!’

“The man that had stolen the goods in Friday Street was not taken yet. He had told me, in confidence, that he had his suspicions there was something wrong (on account of the City Police having captured one of the party), and that he was going to make himself scarce. I asked him, ‘Where do you mean to go, Mr. Shepherdson?’ ‘Why, Butcher,’ says he, ‘the Setting Moon, in the Commercial Road, is a snug house, and I shall hang out there for a time. I shall call myself Simpson, which appears to me to be a modest sort of a name. Perhaps you’ll give us a look in, Butcher?’ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘I think I _will_ give you a call’—which I fully intended, don’t you see, because, of course, he was to be taken! I went over to the Setting Moon next day, with a brother officer, and asked at the bar for Simpson. They pointed out his room, upstairs. As we were going up, he looks down over the bannisters, and calls out, ‘Halloa, Butcher! is that you?’ ‘Yes, it’s me. How do you find yourself?’ ‘Bobbish,’ he says; ‘but who’s that with you?’ ‘It’s only a young man, that’s a friend of mine,’ I says. ‘Come along, then,’ says he; ‘any friend of the Butcher’s is as welcome as the Butcher!’ So, I made my friend acquainted with him, and we took him into custody.

“You have no idea, Sir, what a sight it was, in Court, when they first knew that I wasn’t a Butcher, after all! I wasn’t produced at the first examination, when there was a remand; but I was, at the second. And when I stepped into the box, in full police uniform, and the whole party saw how they had been done, actually a groan of horror and dismay proceeded from ’em in the dock!

“At the Old Bailey, when their trials came on, Mr. Clarkson was engaged for the defence, and he _couldn’t_ make out how it was, about the Butcher. He thought, all along, it was a real Butcher. When the counsel for the prosecution said, ‘I will now call before you, gentlemen, the Police-officer,’ meaning myself, Mr. Clarkson says, ‘Why Police-officer? Why more Police-officers? I don’t want Police. We have had a great deal too much of the Police. I want the Butcher! However, Sir, he had the Butcher and the Police-officer, both in one. Out of seven prisoners committed for trial, five were found guilty, and some of ’em were transported. The respectable firm at the West End got a term of imprisonment; and that’s the Butcher’s Story!”

The story done, the chuckle-headed Butcher again resolved himself into the smooth-faced Detective. But, he was so extremely tickled by their having taken him about, when he was that Dragon in disguise, to show him London, that he could not help reverting to that point in his narrative; and gently repeating, with the Butcher snigger, “‘Oh, dear!’ I says, ‘is that where they hang the men? Oh, Lor!’ ‘_That!_’ says they. ‘What a simple cove he is!’”

It being now late, and the party very modest in their fear of being too diffuse, there were some tokens of separation; when Serjeant Dornton, the soldierly-looking man, said, looking round him with a smile:

“Before we break up, Sir, perhaps you might have some amusement in hearing of the Adventures of a Carpet Bag. They are very short; and, I think, curious.”

We welcomed the Carpet Bag, as cordially as Mr. Shepherdson welcomed the false Butcher at the Setting Moon. Serjeant Dornton proceeded:

“In 1847, I was dispatched to Chatham, in search of one Mesheck, a Jew. He had been carrying on, pretty heavily, in the bill-stealing way, getting acceptances from young men of good connexions (in the army chiefly), on pretence of discount, and bolting with the same.

“Mesheck was off, before I got to Chatham. All I could learn about him was, that he had gone, probably to London, and had with him—a Carpet Bag.

“I came back to town, by the last train from Blackwall, and made inquiries concerning a Jew passenger with—a Carpet Bag.

“The office was shut up, it being the last train. There were only two or three porters left. Looking after a Jew with a Carpet Bag, on the Blackwall Railway, which was then the high road to a great Military Depôt, was worse than looking after a needle in a hayrick. But it happened that one of these porters had carried, for a certain Jew, to a certain public-house, a certain—Carpet Bag.

“I went to the public-house, but the Jew had only left his luggage there for a few hours, and had called for it in a cab, and taken it away. I put such questions there, and to the porter, as I thought prudent, and got at this description of—the Carpet Bag.

“It was a bag which had, on one side of it, worked in worsted, a green parrot on a stand. A green parrot on a stand was the means by which to identify that—Carpet Bag.

“I traced Mesheck, by means of this green parrot on a stand, to Cheltenham, to Birmingham, to Liverpool, to the Atlantic Ocean. At Liverpool he was too many for me. He had gone to the United States, and I gave up all thoughts of Mesheck, and likewise of his—Carpet Bag.

“Many months afterwards—near a year afterwards—there was a Bank in Ireland robbed of seven thousand pounds, by a person of the name of Doctor Dundey, who escaped to America; from which country some of the stolen notes came home. He was supposed to have bought a farm in New Jersey. Under proper management, that estate could be seized and sold, for the benefit of the parties he had defrauded. I was sent off to America for this purpose.

“I landed at Boston. I went on to New York. I found that he had lately changed New York paper-money for New Jersey paper-money, and had banked cash in New Brunswick. To take this Doctor Dundey, it was necessary to entrap him into the State of New York, which required a deal of artifice and trouble. At one time, he couldn’t be drawn into an appointment. At another time, he appointed to come to meet me, and a New York officer, on a pretext I made; and then his children had the measles. At last, he came, per steamboat, and I took him, and lodged him in a New York Prison called the Tombs; which I dare say you know, Sir?”

Editorial acknowledgment to that effect.

“I went to the Tombs, on the morning after his capture, to attend the examination before the magistrate. I was passing through the magistrate’s private room, when, happening to look round me to take notice of the place, as we generally have a habit of doing, I clapped my eyes, in one corner, on a—Carpet Bag.

“What did I see upon that Carpet Bag, if you’ll believe me, but a green parrot on a stand, as large as life!

“‘That Carpet Bag, with the representation of a green parrot on a stand,’ said I, ‘belongs to an English Jew, named Aaron Mesheck, and to no other man, alive or dead!’

“I give you my word the New York Police-officers were doubled up with surprise.

“‘How do you ever come to know that?’ said they.

“‘I think I ought to know that green parrot by this time,’ said I; ‘for I have had as pretty a dance after that bird, at home, as ever I had, in all my life!’”

“And _was_ it Mesheck’s?” we submissively inquired.

“Was it, Sir? Of course it was! He was in custody for another offence, in that very identical Tombs, at that very identical time. And, more than that! Some memoranda, relating to the fraud for which I had vainly endeavoured to take him, were found to be, at that moment, lying in that very same individual—Carpet Bag!”

Such are the curious coincidences and such is the peculiar ability, always sharpening and being improved by practice, and always adapting itself to every variety of circumstances, and opposing itself to every new device that perverted ingenuity can invent, for which this important social branch of the public service is remarkable! For ever on the watch, with their wits stretched to the utmost, these officers have, from day to day and year to year, to set themselves against every novelty of trickery and dexterity that the combined imaginations of all the lawless rascals in England can devise, and to keep pace with every such invention that comes out. In the Courts of Justice, the materials of thousands of such stories as we have narrated—often elevated into the marvellous and romantic, by the circumstances of the case—are dryly compressed into the set phrase, “in consequence of information I received, I did so and so.” Suspicion was to be directed, by careful inference and deduction, upon the right person; the right person was to be taken, wherever he had gone, or whatever he was doing to avoid detection: he is taken; there he is at the bar; that is enough. From information I, the officer, received, I did it; and, according to the custom in these cases, I say no more.

These games of chess, played with live pieces, are played before small audiences, and are chronicled nowhere. The interest of the game supports the player. Its results are enough for Justice. To compare great things with small, suppose LEVERRIER or ADAMS informing the public that from information he had received he had discovered a new planet; or COLUMBUS informing the public of his day that from information he had received, he had discovered a new continent; so the Detectives inform it that they have discovered a new fraud or an old offender, and the process is unknown.

Thus, at midnight, closed the proceedings of our curious and interesting party. But one other circumstance finally wound up the evening, after our Detective guests had left us. One of the sharpest among them, and the officer best acquainted with the Swell Mob, had his pocket picked, going home!

HEALTH BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT.

There was a story current in the city of Mosul, about the time that the first edition of “The Hundred and One Nights” began to be popular in Oriental society, of a certain Prince who was taken ill of the plague. Though his retinue was large, he was the only person who was in imminent danger. The Court physician was also at death’s door, and a strange doctor was sent for, who pronounced the Great Man to be in a fearful state of debility, but retired without prescribing. The Prince waited long and anxiously for remedies, but in vain. He clapped his hands to summon a slave. “Where,” he exclaimed, “is the physic?”

“Sun of the Earth,” exclaimed the Nubian, “it is all taken!”

“And who has dared to swallow the medicine designed for the anointed of Allah?”

“As it is written by the Prophet,” returned Hassan, “‘when the sheik sickens, his slaves droop.’ Thy whole household was sick, and clamoured for medicine; and, lo, the man of drugs straightway drenched them therewith, ordering us all, on pain of the Prophet’s curse, not to give thee so much as a single grain of rhubarb.”

“Breath of Mahomet,” ejaculated his Mightiness; “am I then to die, and are my slaves to live?”

When a Mussulman is puzzled what to say, he invariably exclaims, “Allah is merciful;” which was Hassan’s consolation.

“Let the wretched mediciner appear!” commanded the Prince.

The doctor came. “Illustrious father of a hundred generations!” said the general practitioner, “thine own physician only could cure thee, and he lies on his pallet a helpless being. _I_ may not so much as look at thy transcendant tongue, or feel thine omnipotent pulse.”

“Wherefore? O licenciate of the Destroyer!”

“Inasmuch as I may not infringe the _vested rights_ of thine own special and appointed physician. The law—even that of the Medes and Persians, which never altereth—forbids me. Thy slaves I _may_ heal, seeing that no vested rights in them exist; but——”

Here the Prince interrupted the speaker with a hollow groan, and sank on his pillow in despair.

The Arabic manuscript, from which this affecting incident was translated, ends with these words—“and the Prince died.”

This story is evidently a foreshadowing of what has recently happened in reference to the metropolis of this country and the Public Health Act. London was _in extremis_ from the effects of density of population, filth, bad air, bad water, the window-tax, and deficient drainage. It called in certain sanitary doctors—the regular consulting body, namely, the Government, being too weak to afford the slightest assistance. The result was, that a prescription, in the form of the Public Health Act, was concocted,—but was made applicable to every other member of the great retinue of towns, _except_ to the Imperial City; which was exempted in consequence of the existing Vested Rights in crowded houses, deadly stenches, putrid water, foggy courts, and cesspools. “Although,” in the words of a resolution, passed at the meeting which formed the Metropolitan Sanitary Association, “the strenuous efforts made in the metropolitan districts to procure a sanitary enactment mainly contributed to the passing of the Public Health Act; yet these districts were the only parts excluded from the benefits of that enactment. This exclusion has led to much misery and a great sacrifice of life.”

This exception was so monstrous, that even the Corporation of the City of London took powers under their own Sewers’ Act for the preservation of the health of the people dwelling within the City boundary,—who number no more than one hundred and twenty-five thousand out of the two millions of us who are congregated in civic and suburban London. The remaining one million eight hundred thousand are left to be stifled or diseased at the good pleasure of Vested Interests. Indeed, it is ascertained that a quarter of a million of individuals absolutely _do_ die every year from the want of such a sanitary police as the Public Health Act, amended by some few additional powers, would establish. What number of persons are really sent out of the world from preventable causes. It is also true that those causes can be efficiently removed for about a halfpenny per head a week; or threepence per week per house; or about eight times less than those who die unnecessarily cost the public in hospitals, poor’s rates, and burial. In the “Journal of Public Health” for November, 1848, and August, 1849, it is shown by elaborate tables, that the direct cost of, and estimated money loss through, typhus fever alone in the metropolis, amounted during the four years, 1843–1847, to one million three hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds, or two hundred and sixty-five thousand, six hundred pounds annually. This sum is exclusive of the amounts contributed for the purchase and maintenance of fever hospitals. For 1848, when the mortality from typhus had increased to three thousand five hundred and sixty-nine, the direct cost and money loss was estimated at four hundred and forty thousand pounds.

This cold-blooded way of putting the really appalling state of the case is, alas! the only successful mode of appealing to that hard-headed, though sometimes soft-hearted, periphrasis, John Bull, when he is under no special exciting cause of dread. His heart is only reached through his pocket, except when put in a state of alarm. Cry “Cholera!” or any other frightful conjuration, and he bestirs himself. To cholera we owe the few sanitary measures now in force; but which were passed by the House—as a coward may seem courageous—in its agonies of fright. The moment, however, Cholera bulletins ceased to be issued, John buttoned up his pockets tighter than ever, and Parliament was dumb regarding public health, except to undo one or two good things it had done. The inflated promises of the legislature collapsed into thin air, on the very day the danger was withdrawn. It was the legend over again of the nameless gentleman who, when he was sick, swore he would turn a monk; but when he got well “the devil a monk was he.” Ever since, sanitary legislation has been as much a dead letter in the Metropolis, as if the deadly condition of some of its districts had never been whispered between the wind and the nobility of Westminster, in Parliament assembled.

It has no effect upon unreasoning John Bull to tell him that, on an average, cholera does not devour a tithe of the victims which fever, consumption, and other preventible diseases make away with. Cholera comes upon him like an ogre, eating its victims all at once, and he quakes with terror; the daily, deadly destruction of human beings by “every-day” diseases, he takes no heed of. Take him, however, a slate and pencil; count costs to him; show that cholera costs so much; that ordinary, contagious, but preventible diseases, cost so much more; and that prevention is so many hundred per cent. cheaper than the cheapest cures, he begins to be amenable to reason. Nothing but pocket arithmetic, terror, or melo-dramatic appeals to his soft-hearted sympathy, moves John Bull.

In order to supply the best of these exercitations by the accumulation of carefully sifted, and well authenticated facts, and sound reasonings; the results of scientific investigations, and of a large range of pathological statistics, the Metropolitan Sanitary Association has been for some months—like another “Ole Joe”—knocking at the door of Old John. Whether the heavy old gentleman will soon open it to conviction and improvement depends, we think, very much upon the energy and liberality with which that society is supported and seconded by the public; for whose sole benefit it was called into existence. To the exertions of many of its leading members, if not to the collective body itself, John Bull has responded, by admitting into his premises the Extra-Mural Interment Bill, and we think he is just now holding his door a-jar to catch the Water Supply Bill, which it is hoped he will admit, and pass through That House next session. Meantime we, in common with the association aforesaid, beg his attention to a few other points of improvement:—

The adage “as free as air,” has become obsolete by Act of Parliament. Neither air nor light have been free since the imposition of the window-tax. We are obliged to pay for what nature supplies lavishly to all, at so much per window per year; and the poor who cannot afford the expense, are stinted in two of the most urgent necessities of life. The effects produced by a deprivation of them are not immediate, and are therefore unheeded. When a poor man or woman in a dark, close, smoky house is laid up with scrofula, consumption, water in the head, wasting, or a complication of epidemic diseases, nobody thinks of attributing the illness to the right cause;—which may be a want of light and air. If he or she were struck down by a flash of lightning, there would be an immediate outcry against the authorities, whoever they may be, for not providing proper lightning conductors; but because the poison—generated by the absence of light and air—is not seen at work, the victim dies unheeded, and the window-tax, which shuts out the remedies, is continued without a murmur. In illustration of these facts, we may quote a little information respecting the tadpole, an humble animal, which—if the author of “Vestiges of Creation” be any authority and the theory of development be more than a childish dream—was the progenitor of man himself. The passage is from the report of the half-fledged Health of Towns’ Commission:—

“If the young of some of the lower tribes of creatures are supplied with their proper food, and if all the other conditions necessary for their nourishment are maintained, while at the same time light is wholly excluded from them, their development is stopped; they no longer undergo the metamorphosis through which they pass from imperfect into perfect beings; the tadpole, for example, is unable to change its water-breathing apparatus, fitted for its first stage of existence, into the air-breathing apparatus, with the rudiment of which it is furnished, and which is intended to adapt it for a higher life, namely, for respiration in air. In this imperfect state it continues to live; it even attains an enormous bulk, for such a creature in its state of transition, but it is unable to pass out of its transitional state; it remains permanently an imperfect being, and is doomed to pass a perpetual life in water, instead of attaining maturity and passing its mature life in air.”

It may give some support to the theory of tadpole development above mentioned, to add, that the same cause produces the very same effects upon human beings; upon human mothers, and upon human children. Human mothers living in dark cellars produce an unusual proportion of defective children. Go into the narrow streets, and the dark lanes, courts, and alleys of our splendid cities, there you will see an unusual number of deformed people, men, women, and children, but particularly children. In some cells under the fortifications of Lisle, a number of poor people took up their abode; the proportion of defective infants produced by them became so great, that it was deemed necessary to issue an order commanding these cells to be shut up. The window duties multiply cells like those of the fortifications of Lisle, in London, in Liverpool, in Manchester, in Bristol, and in every city and town in England by hundreds and by thousands, and with the same result; but the cells here are not shut up, nor is the cause that produces them removed. Even in cases in which the absence of light is not so complete as to produce a result thus definite and striking, the effects of the privation are still abundantly manifest in the pale and sickly complexion, and the enfeebled and stunted frame; nor can it be otherwise, since, from the essential constitution of organised beings, light is as necessary to the development of the animal as it is to the growth of the plant. The diseases the want of it produces are of long continuance, and waste the means of life before death results; they may therefore be characterised as pauperising diseases. As to death itself, it has been calculated that nearly ten thousand persons perish annually in London alone from diseases solely produced by an impeded circulation of air and admission of light.

This prodigal waste of health, strength, and of life itself, falls much more heavily on the poor, than the mere fiscal burden, imposed by the tax, falls on the richer classes. Inasmuch, then, as health is the capital of the working man, whatever be the necessities of the state, _nothing_ can justify a tax affecting the health of the people, and especially the health of the labouring community, whose bodily strength constitutes their wealth, and oftentimes their only possession. In conclusion we may say, without wishing to libel any respectable Act of Parliament, that the Window-Tax kills countless human beings in tens of thousands every year.

The next improvement which must speedily be pushed under John Bull’s very nose, is the removal of the nuisances which abound in crowded neighbourhoods from Land’s End to John o’Groats. The back-yards of houses in poor neighbourhoods are so many gardens, sown broadcast with the seeds of disease, and but too plentifully manured for abundant and continual crops. When rain falls on the surface of these parterres of poison, and is afterwards evaporated by the heat of the sun, there rises a malaria, intensified by decomposing refuse, which, inhaled into human lungs, engenders consumption, ending in the parish workhouse and death. It is a fact that the surfaces of some of the back-yards in London have been raised six feet by successive accumulations of vegetable and animal refuse. We must have no more such accumulations; offal of every kind must be removed daily by Act of Parliament.

Ill-kept stables, which cause horses to become blind, and men to die of typhus, must be reformed; cow-feeding sheds, which produce diseased milk and offensive refuse, must be abolished, and milk supplied per railway from the country; disgusting and noxious manufactures, such as are carried on a few yards west of Lambeth Palace, on the river’s bank, must be removed to consort with knackers’ yards, in places remote from human habitations.

The strong bar which John Bull opposes to such improvements is the dread of the Centralisation, which, he says, carrying them into effect would occasion. Local Government, he insists, is the great bulwark of the British Constitution. No bill is ever brought into Parliament for the good of the people,—that is well known,—but is passed for the sake of the places it creates, and the patronage it gives. Now, if we allow a practicable bill for the removal of these nuisances to pass, a swarm of commissioners, secretaries, clerks, inspectors, inquisitors, dustmen, and scavengers will be let loose upon the contented public, to supersede snug, comfortable, local boards, and to ruin innocent contractors. “Is,” John asks vehemently, “this to be borne?” and answers himself with equal emphasis, “Decidedly not. We prefer the nuisances.” But common sense steps in to reply, that as nuisances are a matter of taste, if every board could confine its own nuisances to its own parish so as not to take its neighbours by the nose, there would, perhaps, be no harm in letting it doze and wallow in its own filth as long as its taste would dictate. But as this is impossible, centralisation or no centralisation, Government, or somebody else, _must_ interfere to protect the extra-parochial lieges from destruction, by upsetting the Board and removing the rest of the nuisances.

A practical example of the impossibility of confining noxious nuisances to the boundaries whence they originate, is afforded in the immediate neighbourhood of one of the most beautiful parts of the metropolis. In a neighbourhood studded thickly with elegant villas and mansions—namely, Bayswater and Notting Hill, in the parish of Kensington—is a plague spot scarcely equalled for its insalubrity by any other in London: it is called the Potteries. It comprises some seven or eight acres, with about two hundred and sixty houses (if the term can be applied to such hovels), and a population of nine hundred or one thousand. The occupation of the inhabitants is principally pig-fattening; many hundreds of pigs, ducks, and fowls are kept in an incredible state of filth. Dogs abound for the purpose of guarding the swine. The atmosphere is still further polluted by the process of fat-boiling. In these hovels discontent, dirt, filth, and misery, are unsurpassed by anything known even in Ireland. Water is supplied to only a small proportion of the houses. There are foul ditches, open sewers, and defective drains, smelling most offensively, and generating large quantities of poisonous gases; stagnant water is found at every turn, not a drop of _clean_ water can be obtained,—all is charged to saturation with putrescent matter. Wells have been sunk on some of the premises, but they have become, in many instances, useless from organic matter soaking into them; in some of the wells the water is perfectly black and fetid. The paint on the window frames has become black from the action of sulphuretted hydrogen gas. Nearly all the inhabitants look unhealthy, the women especially complain of sickness, and want of appetite; their eyes are shrunken, and their skin shrivelled.

The poisonous influence of this pestilential locality extends far and wide. Some twelve or thirteen hundred feet off there is a row of clean houses, called Crafter Terrace; the situation, though rather low, is open and airy. On Saturday and Sunday, the 8th and 9th of September, 1849, the inhabitants complained of an intolerable stench, the wind then blowing directly upon the Terrace from the Potteries. Up to this time, there had been no case of cholera among the inhabitants; but the next day the disease broke out virulently, and on the following day, the 11th of September, a child died of cholera at No. 1. By the 22nd of the same month, no less than seven persons in the Terrace lost their lives by this fatal malady.

It would be thought, that such a state of things could not have been permitted to remain undisturbed, but merely required to be brought to light to be remedied. The medical officers have, time after time, reported the condition of the place to the Board of Guardians. Fifteen medical men have testified to the unhealthy state of the Potteries. The inspector of nuisances has done the same. The magistrates have repeatedly granted orders for the removal of the pigs. The General Board of Health have given directions that all the nuisances should be removed, yet nothing, or next to nothing, has been done. The inspector of nuisances has been dismissed, the guardians have signified their intention to inspect the districts themselves, yet things remain in _statu quo_.

Is there then no possibility of cleansing this more than Augean stable? None: the single but insurmountable difficulty being that some of the worst parts of the district are the property of one of the guardians!

Surely the force of self-government can no farther go. Another word in defence of centralisation—the great bugbear of the self-conceited parish orator—would be wasted.

In conclusion, we earnestly call on the public to second and support the efforts of the Metropolitan Sanitary Association to get the evils we have adverted to lessened or wholly removed. The rapid increase of the population demands additional exertion and additional arrangements for their well-being. At present, retrogression instead of improvement assails us. It is an appalling fact, that the number of persons dying of the class of diseases called preventible has been steadily increasing. Mr. Farr, of the Registrar-General’s office, has declared there could be no question that the health of London is becoming worse every year. In 1846, the number of persons dying of zymotic or epidemic diseases was about nineteen per cent. of the total mortality; in 1847, it was twenty-eight per cent.; in 1848, thirty-four per cent.; and last year it increased to forty-one per cent.; thus showing that nearly one-half of the mortality of London was more or less owing to preventible causes.

To reverse this state of things the people of this country must not wait for another great and fatal Fright. We know that typhus fever and consumption, like open drains and stinking water, are mean, commonplace, unexciting instruments of death, which do not get invested with dramatic interest; yet they kill as unerringly as the knife or the bullet of the assassin; only they murder great multitudes instead of single individuals. If, therefore, he will only fix his eyes on the victims of the diseases which can be easily prevented, it is well worth John Bull’s while to consider whether substantially it is not as sound a policy to save a million or two of lives per annum, as to hang the hero and heroine of a Bermondsey murder.

WHAT THERE IS IN THE ROOF OF THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS.

Perhaps no one of the London Squares is more full of interesting associations, and certainly no one of them is more fresh and pleasant to look upon, than Lincoln’s Inn Fields. In the centre of its green Lord William Russell was beheaded; upon the old wall that used to run along its eastern side Ben Jonson, it is said, worked as a bricklayer; amongst its north range of buildings stands the thin sandwich of a house that holds the manifold artistic gems of the Soane Museum; its west side was the scene of some of Lord George Gordon’s riotings; whilst on its south side stands the noble-looking Grecian fronted building dedicated to the purposes of the English College of Surgeons.

This building has many uses, and many points challenging general admiration and approval, the chief of them being its possession of the museum made by John Hunter; afterwards purchased, and now supported, by the nation; and open freely, not only to medical men of all countries, but to the public at large. The visitor who passes under its handsome portico, up the steps and enters its heavy mahogany and plate-glass doors, finds himself in a large hall. On his right is a staid-looking, black-robed porter, who requires him to enter his name in the visitor’s book—a preliminary which members equally with strangers have to go through. On his left are the doors leading to the secretary’s office, where students may, from time to time, be seen going in to register their attendance upon the prescribed lectures, and, later in their career, passing through the same portals big with the desperate announcement that they are ready to submit to the examinations that must be passed before they can get a diploma. Facing the entrance door is a second enclosed hall, with a roof supported by fluted columns, and on the left of this a broad stately architectural stone staircase leading to the library and the council-chamber—the scene of those dreadful ordeals, the examinations, where Hospital Surgeons sit surrounded by crimson and gold, and marble busts, and noble pictures, to _operate_ upon sweating and stuttering and hesitating students who, two by two, are seated in large chairs to be passed or _plucked_.

The library is a noble, large room, of excellent proportions, occupying the whole length of the building in front, having tall plate-glass embayed windows, each with its table and chair; and in each of which the passersby in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, may generally see a live surgeon framed and glazed, busily occupied with his books, or still more busily helping to keep up the tide of gossip for which the place is celebrated. For some twenty feet from the floor on all sides, the walls are lined with books, telling in various languages about all kinds of maladies and all sorts of plans for cure. Above this, and just under the handsomely panelled roof, hang portraits of old surgeons, each famous in his time, and now enjoying a sort of quiet renown amongst their successors in the art and science of chirurgery. All we have seen thus far, betokens the quiet repose of wealth, dignity, and learned leisure and ease. No bustle, no noise, no trace of urgent labour is heard or seen. Such of the officers of the place as may be encountered, have a look of somnolent if not sleek sufficiency, and seem to claim a share of the consideration which all are ready to concede, as due to the character of the spot. Returning to the hall, another door, facing that of the secretary, leads to the great attraction and pride of the place—the Hunterian Museum—a collection of skeletons and glittering rows of bottles full of evidences how “fearfully and wonderfully” all living creatures are made. On all sides we see the bony relics of defunct men and animals—giants, dwarfs, both human and quadruped, challenging attention. The huge megatherium, the bones of poor Chuny, the elephant shot in Exeter ’Change, the skeleton of O’Brien the Irish giant, who walked about the world eight feet high, and near him all that remains of the form of the Sicilian dwarf, who when alive was not taller than O’Brien’s knee. On the walls tier after tier of bottles are ranged, till the eye following them up towards the top of the building, fatigued by their innumerable abundance, and the variety of their contents, again seeks the ground and its tables, there to encounter an almost equal crowd of curious things collected from the earth, the air, and the sea, to show how infinite the varieties in which Nature indulges, and how almost more than infinite the curious ways in which life varies the tenement it inhabits. But with this multiplicity of things we see no confusion, or trace of carelessness or poverty. All is neatness, order, and repose. Not a particle of dirt offends the eye; not a film of dust dims the brilliancy of the regiments of bottles drawn up in long files upon the shelves, to salute the visitor. The place is a very drawing-room of science, all polished and set forth in trim order for the reception of the public. It is the best room in the house kept for the display of _the results_ of the labours of the physiologist,—a spot devoted to the revelations of anatomy, without the horrifying accompaniments of the dissecting-room.

Thus far we have passed through what are in truth the public portions of the College of Surgeons, just glancing at its museum, unequalled as a physiological collection by any other in the world. In their surprise at the curious things it contains, there are many, no doubt, who wonder also where the things all came from; and what patient men have gone on since John Hunter’s time, adding to his museum where it was deficient and keeping all its parts in their present admirable state. Such a question, if put to the officials, would most likely obtain a very vague and misty reply; but a glance behind the scenes at the College will afford an ample and curious explanation, and show how one section of the Searchers for Facts, silently and unheeded, work on in their self-chosen, quiet, scientific path—undisturbed by the noises and the bustle, the excitements and the strife of the modern Babylon, that heaves and throbs around them.

Leave the handsome rooms, with their clear light, and polish, and air of neatness, and come with us up the side stair that leads to the unshown recesses, where, high up in the roof, the workers in anatomy carry on their strange duties. As we open the side door that leads towards these secret chambers, we should go from daylight to darkness, were it not for the gas that is kept burning there. Up the stairs we go, and as we ascend, the way becomes lighter and lighter as we rise, but the stone steps soon change for wooden ones, and at length bring us from the silent stairs to a silent and gloomy-looking passage, having three doors opening into it, and some contrivances overhead for letting in a little light, and letting out certain odours that here abound,—greatly to the discomfort of the novice who first inhales them. We are now in the roof of the building, and on getting a glimpse through a window, we may see the housetops are below us, the only companions of our elevation being a number of neighbouring church-spires.

The feeling of the spot is one of almost complete isolation from the world below, and a neighbourhood to something startling if not almost terrible. Like Fatima in Bluebeard’s Tower, impelled by an overbearing curiosity, we turn the lock of the centre door, and enter the chamber. A strange sight is presented. The room is large, with the sloping roof-beams above, and a stained and uncovered floor below. The walls all round are crowded with shelves, covered with bottles of various sizes full of the queerest-looking of all queer things. Many are of a bright vermilion colour; others yellow; others brown; others black; whilst others again display the opaque whiteness of bloodless death. Three tables are in the room, but these are as crowded as the walls. Cases of instruments, microscopes, tall jars, cans, a large glass globe full of water-newts, hydras, and mosses; small cases of drawers filled with microscopic objects, and a thousand other odds and ends. Here is a long coil of snake’s eggs, just brought from a country stable-yard; there some ears of diseased wheat, sent by a noble landlord who studies farming; beside them lies part of a leaf of the gigantic water-lily, the Victoria Regia, and near that a portion of a vegetable marrow is macerating in a saucer to separate some peculiar vessels for exhibition under the microscope. There are two windows to the room, besides some ventilators in the roof; and before one of these, where the light is best, are ranged microscopes complete and ready for use, and round about them all sorts of scraps of glass and glaziers’ diamonds, and watch-glasses, and forceps, and scissors, and bottles of marine-glue, and of gold-size,—these being the means and appliances of the microscopic observer. Before the second window is a sink, in which stand jars of frogs and newts, and other small creatures. A lathe, a desk, and writing utensils, the model of a whale cast ashore in the Thames, an old stiff-backed wooden chair, once the seat of the Master of the Worshipful Company of Surgeons, a few cases of stuffed birds and animals, and some tall glass-stoppered bottles that went twice round the world with Captain Cook and Dr. Solander, make up the catalogue of the chief contents of an apartment, which, at first glance, has the look of an auctioneer’s room filled with the sold-off stock of a broken down anatomical teacher. A closer inspection, however, shows that though there is so great a crowd of objects, there is little or no confusion, and the real meaning of the place, its intention, and labours, reveal themselves.