The Victorian City Read online

  Finally, in 1869, the Embankment opened, and even Munby was awed:

  January 1869: ‘The bright morning sun shone on the broad bright river, and the white walls of the Embankment, which stretch away in a noble curve to Westminster, under the dark contrasting masses of the bridges. There is silence, except for the tread of passersby; there is life and movement, almost noiseless, on the water...What a change from the vulgar riot of the Strand! Here is stateliness and quiet, and beauty of form and colour.’

  Today the gardens that covered much of the reclaimed land are gone, or are cut off by a four-lane road of whizzing cars, somehow becoming invisible. One historian suggests that this is because we view the Embankment from the wrong viewpoint: it was designed by people who still thought the entrance to London was by water, whereas we approach it from land. This part of London would benefit from a return to stateliness, quiet, and beauty of form and colour.

  PART THREE

  Enjoying Life

  1867: The Regent’s Park Skating Disaster

  In the Pickwick Papers, Sam Weller and the fat boy ‘cut out a slide’ on the ice, and ‘all’ go sliding – Wardle, Pickwick, Sam, Winkle, Bob Sawyer, the fat boy and Snodgrass. Mr Pickwick in particular slides over and over, enjoying himself enormously. But when ‘The sport was at its height...a sharp smart crack was heard. There was a quick rush towards the bank, and a wild scream from the ladies’ – who are not skating, but watching admiringly – as ‘A large mass of ice disappeared, the water bubbled over it, Mr Pickwick’s hat, gloves, and handkerchief were floating on the surface, and this was all of Mr Pickwick that anybody could see.’ This being a comic novel, nothing worse happens than Mr Pickwick getting a ducking and rushing indoors for a hot bath and his bed to ward off a cold.

  And that too was how the vast numbers of men who skated regularly on the frozen waters of the London parks regarded the hazards, although this was hardly a risk-free pastime. On one day in 1844 over 5,000 people were counted on the Serpentine, even after ‘the icemen of the Royal Humane Society’ had warned that the ice was dangerously thin; another 2,500 were counted on Long Water, the area north of the Serpentine Bridge, while 1,500 skated on the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. The Humane Society, established for ‘the recovery of persons apparently drowned or dead’, had set up its first receiving house in 1794 beside the Serpentine, where bathers were taken in summer, skaters in winter. In that one afternoon, by four o’clock the ice had broken under at least ten people on the Serpentine. At St James’s Park, the iceman working for the Humane Society went to the aid of seven or eight skaters who went through the ice there, saving five, while another fifteen got a ducking at the Buckingham Palace end of the water.

  The risks slowed few down. In 1855, at St James’s Park, ‘the Express Train came off’: between 300 and 400 men formed a line, each holding on to the coat of the man in front, starting off with ‘some whistling the railway overture, and others making a noise resembling the blowing off of the steam of a locomotive’. Some of the Foot Guards joined in and soon they ‘glided over the ice at the rate of three-quarters of a mile per minute’. In Regent’s Park, ‘hundreds’ of men skated along the canal tunnel between Aberdeen Place and Maida Hill, racing through ‘in imitation of express trains, with appropriate noises and whistlings’. One weekend there were so many wanting to go through the tunnel that the police barred the entrance; but the next day ‘the trains’ were permitted to go through the tunnel ‘as usual’.

  On 6 January 1867, the Serpentine’s ice ‘was about three inches thick, and, with the exception of a small portion at the eastern end, perfectly safe’. A large number of skaters were out, and only five people went through the ice, of whom four were not seriously hurt; the final man ‘was rescued after considerable difficulty’ and put into a warm bath in the Humane Society’s receiving house. St James’s Park, by contrast, warned its skaters of the ‘irregular’ ice, and ‘several immersions’ needed the Humane Society’s assistance. Other parks reported no problems: Kensington Gardens, Clapham Park, Hampstead Ponds ‘and the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company’s ponds at Brixton’ were all ‘crowded with sliders and skaters. Several accidents occurred, but not of a serious nature.’

  The same could not be said of Regent’s Park. The lake in the park was partially fed by the Tyburn, and there were dangerous currents. Between three and four o’clock a man, possibly employed by the Humane Society, told one spectator the ice was ‘in a very unsafe condition, and that there would be a terrible accident very soon’; she watched as park employees broke up the ice by the Long Island. After the event no one knew why this had been done: an iceman from the Humane Society said he had done so because ‘It has been done ever since I was a boy.’ The park superintendent claimed that the ice was being broken only by the islands, to protect the vegetation and the birds, and no one, he said, had ever suggested it was dangerous. This was contradicted by the Secretary to the Humane Society, who replied that it was very clearly dangerous. The Society’s men had asked the police to keep people away, but were told they had no such powers: it might have been dangerous to go on the ice, but it was not illegal.

  The ice was ‘tessellated’, cracked in squares a yard or more across, with water oozing up between the cracks. Suddenly, near the island, the water abruptly rose up in ‘spurts’. This prompted a sudden rush as everyone headed for the banks, but many were cut off by the quickly cracking surface. Ladders were pushed out along the ice, but some people fell off and disappeared through the ice. Panic ensued, as ‘they skated back towards the centre of the ice, and as they did so they fell, and the whole surface suddenly gave way, and all of them went into the water’.

  A huge sheet of ice had broken off, plunging about 250 people into the lake, with hundreds more scrambling to safety. The water, dropping away to the natural bed of the river, was up to twelve feet deep in places and without a firm bottom. Some who were tipped off the ice became trapped underneath. Others lay flat on the surface, clinging to isolated pieces of ice, screaming for help, as the thousand or so spectators on the banks began to scream too. The ten Humane Society icemen did their best. They had ‘the usual appliances’: ropes, wicker ice-boats, a sledge, ladders, drags, boathooks, ice axes and cork belts. But the ice was not firm enough for the Humane Society’s sledges to be launched; the boats were blocked by the large chunks of floating ice; the ropes that were thrown out saved some, but others snapped. And all the while, women and girls stood on the shore, watching as their husbands, sons and brothers, dressed in sodden, woollen, three-piece suits and overcoats, held on to smaller and smaller pieces of ice, finally letting go and sinking, frozen, as the fragments disintegrated. Several men onshore grabbed ropes and jumped in, attempting to rescue their children, brothers or fathers, or complete strangers.

  In January, darkness falls by four o’clock, and although flares were lit and placed around the water, it was too dark to continue the search, which had to be given up for the night. By this time nearly 200 men and boys had managed to reach the shore, or were dragged out by hooks and ropes before they drowned, or died of cold. Two surgeons were regularly on call near by for the Humane Society. More doctors and surgeons from the surrounding area rushed to the spot and, in makeshift premises, in the Humane Society’s receiving house and on the open ground, they worked to revive those who had been pulled from the water, while bodies beyond rescue were carried past.

  None of those who died in the water that afternoon had any identification on them whatsoever. Almost every one of them was in their teens or twenties; five were children and only two were older men. The bodies were all taken to the nearby Marylebone Workhouse, where they were laid out for relatives and friends to identify. Small objects that might help – a hat with the maker’s name, a letter beginning ‘Dear Richard’ – were placed beside them.

  Shirley Brooks, a journalist, and later editor of Punch, who lived in Kent Terrace, in the ring of houses surrounding the park, wrote in his diary:
/>   Day of the hideous disaster in the Regents Park...I had gone to the Garrick [Club] to meet [the musician] German Reed. I walked, on my way, about 2.15 through the ‘Ornamental’ [Garden, near the water], & great numbers were skating. It was a fine day. I had half decided on hiring skates, & trying whether I had forgotten the work – I could skate fast in old days; but I thought my shoes were unsuitable, & I went on. Reed was late, & when I left him to walk home it was 5.10. At the Clarence gate I saw several cabs & carriages, & some groups, but it was dark, & being in a hurry, I asked no questions. On getting into the hall Reginald rushed out[.] ‘O papa, there has been a dreadful accident, the ice broke, & at least 30 are drowned.’ Then I had the details from poor Emily, who had been fearfully frightened. The boys had gone to see the skating in the Botanic [Garden, on the other side of the park], & at their prayers, she had at last relaxed the order not to go on the ice. Mrs. Linton called, & while they were talking...Hawkins rushed in – ‘the ice had broken, where were the boys.’...Of course she dashed out with Mrs L. & hurried among the crowds, saw the frightful scene, heard the women shrieking & wailing, & witnessed many agonies – and though told by several that her boys were all right, was convinced that no one really knew. She went into the Humane Tent, where was a boy, in bed, but a moment told her he was not hers, & she went out again. At last she met them, strolling leisurely up to the scene. She was soon crying over them by her fireside. I returned to hear all this...After [dinner]...went into...the tent. That work was over – all who were in that lake were dead – but eight or ten bodies had been taken out...Rego cried – Cecil was silent, he would not eat, & scarcely slept. That night Emily & I thanked God for the children.

  The next morning, volunteers arrived to break up the ice, to try to find the bodies under the surface; they were watched by as many as 3,000 on the shore. Even as the light faded once more, 1,000 still kept watch, Shirley Brooks and his wife among them: ‘We saw the cutting, the dragging, & the bringing out a body, a man, in black, his arms extended & bent – they brought him across the island, to our very feet. The crowds were great. Four bodies have been got out today up to the time I write (12). Two boys in Hanover Terrace, next to us, are dead...’

  Three days later, bodies were still being taken from the water, and forty men were hired at 2s a day to help. On the following Monday, another 104 were employed, and still another 207 on the Tuesday, a full week later, as the search continued. And still the spectators stood on the banks, even if their numbers were ‘considerably less’ than the week before. It was not until 22 January, seven days after the accident, that the list of the forty dead could be compiled:

  Frederick Beer, 21, paper-hanger

  R. Born, 13, the stepson of a publican

  John Broadbridge, aged 10

  John Bryant, 29, costermonger

  Thomas Chadwick, 22, porter

  James Crawley, 28, coach-joiner

  William Davies, 22, medical student

  Henry Gamble, aged 14

  Harold Giles, 15, schoolboy

  Frank Glanfield, 15, son of a butcher

  James Griffin, 28, orange-seller

  Henry Hardiman, 17, cabinetmaker

  Richard Harnack, aged 10

  Thomas Harries, 29, gentleman

  Thomas Harvey, 17, medical student

  James Justice, 21, corn-chandler

  James Jobson, 35, painter

  Charles Jukes, 9, the son of a carpenter

  C. E. Luckman, 24, warehouseman

  Donald Macintyre, aged 26, silk-merchant

  James Mitchell, 26, organ-builder

  David North, aged 13

  Samuel Olley, 20, wood-turner

  William Parkinson, 18, organ pipe-maker

  Edward Pullan, 25, commercial traveller

  George Rhodes, 20, paper-hanger

  William Robertson, 33, dentist

  Robert Edwin Scott, 29, clerk

  Charles Smith, 13, son of a coachman

  Thomas Wilson Spencer, 25, solicitor

  Arthur Reginald Stevens, 16, the son of an army officer

  Edward Thurley, 30, butler

  John Vincent, aged 10

  Joseph Waite, 22, clerk

  Charles William Wake, 20, law student

  John Thomas Whatley, 14, schoolboy

  H. Woodhouse, 16, son of a colonial broker

  John Spencer Woods, 18, upholsterer

  unnamed, aged 13

  unnamed, 20, gas-fitter

  9.

  STREET PERFORMANCE

  In the 1830s, a building running between Oxford Street and Regent Street was turned into a ‘bazaar’, a warren of small luxury-goods shops. The Pantheon, as it was named, boasted vestibules filled with sculptures, a hall, a series of galleries, ‘a species of atrium’, a conservatory eighty-eight feet long ‘in the Moorish style’, complete with ‘stands for parroquets’, a fountain and goldfish.77 Those who wanted to shop could do so, but the Pantheon was primarily used as a place to meet, walk, chat and watch the world, especially when it was raining. For there was a type of lounging about the fashionable streets, watching the world go by, that was the prerogative of the man about town. According to Thackeray, ‘now a stroll, then a look-in [to a shop], then a ramble, and presently a strut’ was the right way for a gent to occupy his day.

  When the day was fine, the fashionable crowds came to Regent Street at the fashionable hours, between two and five o’clock, peaking around four. What today we call window-shopping was part of the life of the street, a performance participated in by those who could afford actually to go in and buy, as well as by those who could not. Thus window-shopping, and shopping itself, were different: one was part of the performance of street life, the other consumption. The former included the ‘carriages...in groups in front of Swan and Edgars silk shop...gentlemen [on horseback] wishing to pay their respects to the ladies...The pavements...swarming with pedestrians, idlers, or shoppers bent on a visit to the gunmaker, the haberdasher’s or the jeweller’s.’ The Regent Street shop windows were considered to be the most glamorous, displaying, wrote Dickens in the late 1830s, ‘sparkling jewellery, silks and velvets of the richest colours, the most inviting delicacies, and the most sumptuous articles of luxurious ornament’. In the first half of the century, the street encompassed a wide range of shops, not merely those selling luxury goods, and their displays were enjoyed by all. In Regent Street alone, Sala itemized ‘a delightful bird-stuffer’s shop...with birds of paradise, parrots, and hummingbirds...[a] funeral monument shop, with the mural tablets, the obelisks, the broken columns, the extinguished torches, and the draped urns in the window’, an ‘Italian statuary shop’ and a ‘filter shop, with the astonishing machines for converting foul and muddy water...into a sparkling, crystal stream’, in between bakers, staymakers, stationers, a grocer and an optician with a model of a steam engine in his window. Two decades later, the luxury trade had taken over, and the street was the home of ‘Fancy watchmakers, haberdashers, and photographers; fancy stationers, fancy hosiers, and fancy staymakers; music shops, shawl shops, jewellers, French glove shops, perfumery, and point lace shops, confectioners and milliners’.

  All this glamour was seasonal for the upper classes and depended on the parliamentary calendar, around which all social occasions were scheduled. When Parliament sat, towards the end of January or in February, the wealthy returned from country to town, although the more sporting did not appear until March, when the hunting season ended; the Royal Academy summer exhibition in April or May was the signal for entertainment to get under way at full tilt. In August, Parliament rose and, together with the partridge-shooting season, caused the main exodus back to the country. Many of the gentry and landed classes did not return to London until January, but professionals and businessmen took as holiday just the single month of August. The shops that supplied them, therefore, frequently closed for August too. In 1853, Dickens complained that ‘The West End of London is entirely deserted...I went to three shops this morning...Bl
ackmore the tailor was at Brighton. Butler the tailor was...in the bosom of his family. Only two subordinates were in attendance at Beale’s the hosier’s, and they were playing at draughts’. Shops that were open were staffed by temporary employees ‘who are imperfectly acquainted with the prices of the goods, and contemplate them with unsophisticated delight’. The milkwomen didn’t even bother to water down their milk they had so few customers. All the luxury trades were affected, even prostitutes, whose clients also vanished.

  There were many shopping streets that were not as fashionable as Regent Street, and therefore did not suffer in the same way, even in the same fashionable West End districts, and yet the street life they promoted was every bit as lively. ‘In secluded corners’ near by, Dickens noted, there were many little shops ‘withdrawn from public curiosity’, shops that traded with servants, both selling them goods and buying their perquisites: the cook sold offcuts of food, the butler got rid of empty wine bottles, the valets and the lady’s maids the second-hand clothes they had been given.

  There were several types of second-hand shop, whose names supposedly indicated what they bought, although the names could be misleading and the goods in which they dealt often overlapped. Marine stores sold and bought nothing nautical, but stocked pretty much the same thing as the rag-and-bone shops. In Bleak House, Krook, who calls his shop a ‘Rag and Bottle Warehouse’, says he is also a dealer in ‘Marine Stores’, and he buys old furniture, paper, rags, bones, kitchen equipment and ‘kitchen-stuff’ (food waste), fire-irons, iron, old clothes, bottles, old books, pictures, tools and bits of metal. The paper was sold to tradesmen for wrapping goods; the dirty rags for breaking down for fertilizer, clean ones to paper mills; bones for soap or fertilizer; kitchen stuff to the pig-keepers; grease to tallow makers; old iron to manufacturers. Dripping and old clothes were sold either directly to the poor, or to wholesalers who resold them through the Rag Fair market.