The Victorian City Read online

  ‘pornography industry’: this paragraph and the next draw on Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport, vol. 1, pp. 10–11, 64ff.

  ‘blocked by traffic’: Park Lane widening: ILN, 10 December 1864, p. 591, 17 December 1864, p. 603; footnote: ILN, 11 August 1866, p. 127.

  ‘several hours’ duration’: Wheaton, Journal of a Residence, pp. 243–4.

  ‘into shop-windows’: tourist: MacKenzie, The American in England, pp. 73–4; ‘Passage in the Life of Mr Watkins Tottle’, Sketches by Boz, p. 511.

  ‘the crossing-sweepers’: Schlesinger, Saunterings (and at the end of the paragraph), pp. 231–2; licensed horse-killing: Gordon, The Horse-Sense of London, p. 184ff.; road deaths: ILN, 4 January 1868, p. 7, gives a figure of 170 deaths in 1867.

  ‘and umbrellas’: Tambling, Going Astray, p. 264, identifies the church and therefore suggests that Holborn is the site of Tom-all-Alone’s, but I am not persuaded that the description is not a composite: the routine of Jo’s day suggests a location closer to Drury Lane. It is also Tambling who identifies the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; Dickens, Bleak House, pp. 274–5.

  ‘for their customers’: Venice: Smith (ed.), Gavarni in London, p. 36; footnote on crossing-sweepers: Hudson, Munby, p. 143; Bleak House, p. 200; different types of sweeps: Charles Manby Smith, Curiosities of London Life: or, Phases, Physiological and Social, of the Great Metropolis (London, William and Frederick G. Cash, 1853), pp. 44–9, and Smith, Little World of London, p. 84; police and companies: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 2, pp. 465.

  ‘are all shown’: the Select Committee, undated, is cited in Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 2, pp. 193; ingredients of street dirt, and scavengers: ibid., vol. 2, pp. 185, 193, 196–7, 217, and Turvey, ‘Street Mud, Dust and Noise’, p. 134; dustmen’s clothes: Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Costume, p. 277, and Our Mutual Friend, p. 770.

  ‘scuttle or trough’: William Tayler, The Diary of William Tayler, Footman, 1837, ed. Dorothy Wise (London, Westminster City Archives, 1998), p. 17; sweeping by machine: Dickinson, My First Visit to Europe, p. 119.

  ‘private households’: David Copperfield, p. 183; Derby wear: A. Mayhew, Paved with Gold, pp. 218–19; effect of dust on shops and houses: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 2, p. 213.

  ‘a dusty roadway’: tank-like carts: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 173; mechanics of pumps, and footnote: Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 46–7.

  ‘indicative of light’: tallow lights: William T. O’Dea, The Social History of Lighting (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 96; John Gay, ‘Of Walking the Streets by Night’, in A Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain (London, John and Arthur Arch [1792–5]), vol. 8, p. 293, ll. 139–43; City oil lamps: O’Dea, ibid.; Pickwick Papers, p. 50; Simond, Journal of a Tour and Residence, vol. 1, pp. 26–7.

  ‘shares her concern’: Carlton House illuminations: Hugh Barty-King, New Flame: How Gas Changed the Commercial, Domestic and Industrial Life of Britain ... (Tavistock, Graphmitre, 1984), p. 28; visitors to Pall Mall: Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialisation of Light in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Angela Davies (Oxford, Berg, 1988), p. 115; Rowlandson: Arnold, Re-Presenting the Metropolis, p. 33, but note that she has confused the 1805 and 1807 displays, thinking the latter three-month display was the temporary display for the birthday of George III (she says it is the Regent’s).

  ‘could be accessed’: lights spanning the lane: Athenaeum, cited in O’Dea, Social History of Lighting, pp. 29ff.; lamp-posts and pavements: David Hughson, Walks through London ... (London, Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1817), p. 396.

  ‘their own lamp’: dress: Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Costume, p. 286.

  ‘roads were lighter’: Wheaton, Journal of a Residence, p. 38; ‘Walter’, My Secret Life, vol. 1, p. 143.

  ‘they had finished’: Sala, Twice Round the Clock, p. 43; Parliament Square: O’Dea, Social History of Lighting, pp. 29ff.; Camberwell: H. J. Dyos, Victorian Suburb: A Study of the Growth of Camberwell (Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1973), p. 147; closure of Fleet Street: ILN, 15 August 1846, p. 99; Strand closure: ILN, 7 August 1858, p. 128.

  ‘end of the street’: ILN, 23 November 1850, p. 403.

  ‘for the upkeep’: demolitions: Peter Jackson, George Scharf’s London: Sketches and Watercolours of a Changing City, 1820–50 (London, John Murray, 1987), pp. 110–11; Upper Thames Street: ILN, 28 May 1842, p. 42; Piccadilly: ibid., and 20 July 1844.

  ‘if generally adopted’: ‘The Wants of London’: ILN, 30 September 1854, p. 291; descriptive addresses: Silvester notebooks, British Library, Egerton 3710; Dickens autobiographical fragment in Forster, Life of Charles Dickens, vol. 1, p. 41; lack of signage: ILN, 5 March 1853, p. 183.

  ‘also took place’: repeated street names: [W. H. Wills], ‘Streetography’, Household Words, 38, 14 December 1850, pp. 275–6; synonyms for slum streets: John Hollingshead, Ragged London in 1861 (London, Smith, Elder, 1861), p. 96; George Streets: ILN, 1 February 1868, p. 103; street renaming: ILN, 25 July 1846, p. 54, and reprinted Metropolitan Board of Works announcements, 13 August 1864, p. 163, 25 February 1865, p. 175, 1 July 1865, p. 627, 11 November 1865, 16 February 1867, 20 February 1869, p. 175, among many others.

  ‘mammoth unknowability’: Ordnance Survey: ILN, 29 January 1848, p. 53; 1850 publication: Ackroyd, London, p. 117.

  ‘Fyodor Dostoyevsky’: Byron, Don Juan, ed. Leslie A. Marchand (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1958), Canto 10, v. 82; Philadelphia visitor: Orville Horwitz, Brushwood Picked Up on the Continent: or, Last Summer’s Trip to the Old World (Philadelphia, Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1855), pp. 21–2; Dostoevsky: Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, trans. David Patterson (Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 1997), p. 37.

  ‘pageant of phantoms’: Heine: cited in Hugh and Pauline Massingham, The London Anthology (London, Spring Books [n.d.]), pp. 474–5; de Quincey: De Quincey’s Writings, fol. 23, ‘Life and Manners’ (Boston, Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 1851), p. 53.

  ‘the prime minister’: Bagehot: ‘Charles Dickens’, vol. 3, pp. 82–5; number of new roads: ILN, 2 January 1869, p. 3, 15 September 1849, p. 186; Downing Street and environs: John Thomas Smith, An Antiquarian Ramble in the Streets of London, ed. Charles Mackay (London, Richard Bentley, 1846), vol. 1, pp. 180–81.

  ‘the building trade’: development of Euston, and footnote: Alan A. Jackson, London’s Termini (London, Pan, 1969), pp. 18–20; Wellington House Academy: ‘Our School’, Household Words, 11 October 1851, Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 3, p. 35; Dickens, Dombey and Son, ed. Peter Fairclough, intro. Raymond Williams (first published 1846–48; Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985), pp. 120–21; building trade: John Summerson, The London Building World of the Eighteen-Sixties (London, Thames and Hudson, 1973), p. 9.

  ‘Grosvenor Estate’: hill at Piccadilly: ILN, 19 September 1846, p. 182; Oxford Street: ILN, 5 October 1850, p. 273; Grosvenor Basin: ILN, 7 July 1860, p. 13.

  ‘frames of timber’: Hudson, Munby, p. 175; Daily News, cited in Richard Altick, The Presence of the Present: Topics of the Day in the Victorian Novel (Columbus, OH, Ohio State University Press, 1991), pp. 414–15; description of Viaduct site: ILN, 30 March 1867, p. 303.

  3. TRAVELLING (MOSTLY) HOPEFULLY

  ‘City by boat’: Dombey and Son, pp. 362 and 725 for example; Yates, Recollections, p. 63.

  ‘of the river’: number of boats: White, London in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 14–15; ‘Sculls, sir!’: MacKenzie, The American in England, vol. 2, p. 56; ‘The Steam Excursion’, Sketches by Boz, p. 447; The Old Curiosity Shop, p. 86.

  ‘in the east’: the development of steamers in this and the next five paragraphs, unless otherwise noted, is from: Frank L. Dix, Royal River Highway: A History of the Passenger Boats and Services on the River Thames (Newton Abbot, David and Charles, 1985), pp. 51–84 and passim, Sekon, Locomotion in Victorian London, pp. 56–64 and passim, and Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport, vol. 1, pp. 43ff.; Leigh’s New
Picture of London ... (London, Leigh and Co, 1819 edn), pp. 420–22, and the 1839 edition, p. 350; river stairs: David Paroissien, The Companion to Great Expectations (Robertsbridge, Helm Information, 2000), p. 217.

  ‘boat to another’: Our Mutual Friend, p. 539; ‘half a dozen’: Schlesinger, Saunterings, pp. 31–2.

  ‘people took boat’: Hungerford Stairs: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 233–4; David Copperfield, pp. 150–51.

  ‘man at the wheel’: the dimensions are taken from Allison Lockwood, Passionate Pilgrims: The American Traveller in Great Britain, 1800–1914 (NY, Cornwall Books, 1981), p. 175; operating procedure: Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 113–14; call boy, John Forney, Letters from Europe (Philadelphia, T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1867), p. 362.

  ‘filthy to a degree’: schedules: George Frederick Pardon, Routledge’s Popular Guide to London and its Suburbs (London, Routledge Warne & Routledge, 1862), pp. 44–5; onboard conditions: Revd A. Cleveland Coxe, Impressions of England; or, Sketches of English Scenery and Society (New York, Dana & Co., 1856), p. 37, ILN, 23 May 1846, p. 339, [Elias Derby], Two Months Abroad: or, A Trip to England, France, Baden, Prussia, and Belgium, in August and September, 1843, ‘by a Rail-road Director of Massachusetts’ (Boston, Redding & Co., 1844); Henry Morford, Over-Sea, or, England, France and Scotland, as Seen by a Live American (NY, Hilton and Co., 1867), p. 76, and Forney, Letters from Europe, pp. 360–61.

  ‘Ramsgate on Fridays’: names: Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 108–110.

  ‘of manslaughter’: shoe-leather: Smith, Curiosities; the Cricket: ILN, 27 July 1844, p. 51.

  ‘may have died’: number of accidents: Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport, vol. 1, pp. 41; Our Mutual Friend, p. 436.

  ‘by the City short-stage’: Schlesinger, Saunterings, p. 161; short-stage in 1825: Michael Freeman and Derek H. Aldcroft (eds), Transport in Victorian Britain (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 139; Pickwick Papers, p. 615; David Copperfield, pp. 563, 565; Great Expectations, ed. Charlotte Mitchell, intro. David Trotter (first published 1860–61; Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1996), pp. 186, 269.

  ‘seven or eight miles’: ‘A Dinner at Poplar Walk’ was retitled ‘Mr Minns and His Cousin’ when it was collected into Sketches by Boz, p. 367; Simond, Journal of a Tour and Residence, vol. 1, p. 17.

  ‘costing 2s’: personal service: Bradfield, Public Carriages, p. 38; Mr Minns: ‘A Dinner at Poplar Walk’, Sketches by Boz, p. 372; cost: G. A. Thrupp, The History of Coaches (London, Kerby & Endean, 1877), p. 121.

  ‘Bardell omnibus company’: bus speed and width of three-horse buses: Bradfield, Public Carriages, pp. 35, 37; seating capacity and number of horses, John Gloag, Victorian Comfort: A Social History of Design from 1830–1900 (Newton Abbot, David and Charles, 1973), p. 128; footnote on library of books: Gordon, The Horse-World of London, p. 11; names of buses: Schlesinger, Saunterings, p. 161; the Bardell omnibus company: William F. Long, ‘Mr Pickwick Lucky to Find a Cab?’, Dickensian, Autumn 1991, pp. 167–70.

  ‘as they left’: number of box seats: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 82; the author also notes their popularity, as do other writers of the period (Thrupp, The History of Coaches, p. 122, is the only one to describe them as ‘unpopular’, and he seems to be outnumbered in this); how to mount: Sekon, Locomotion in Victorian London, p. 33; the width: Garwood, The Million Peopled City, p. 204.

  ‘to the top’: the interior height: ILN, 12 August 1854, p. 130, but this may have been journalistic exaggeration. Certainly the height was limited, but no other source claims that those seated had to stoop. According to an earlier paragraph in the ILN, 1 May 1847, p. 288, a new design was being promoted, whereby passengers would be able to enter and exit ‘without stooping’: however, this doesn’t suggest that, once inside, tall men still needed to stoop; the Frenchman: Francis Wey, A Frenchman Sees London in the ’Fifties, ‘adapted from the French’ by Valerie Pirie (London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1935), pp. 69–70.

  ‘own umbrellas’: drivers’ dress and manner, and leather covering: Schlesinger: Saunterings, pp. 163–4, 168; Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 81.

  ‘to the suburbs’: decline of the short-stagecoach: Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport, vol 1, p. 26; incomes: Penny Magazine, 31 March 1837, cited in Freeman and Aldcroft (eds), Transport in Victorian Britain; suburban routes: Dyos, Victorian Suburb, p. 67; the 37.5 million passengers: ILN, 19 September 1857, p. 287.

  ‘along their routes’: dress: Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 81–2, and Schlesinger, Saunterings, p. 164; cad’s step and behaviour, Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 82; the height of the step, Sekon, Locomotion in Victorian London, p. 33.

  ‘up to 9d’: ‘Omnibuses’, Sketches by Boz, p. 169; S. Sophia Beale, Recollections of a Spinster Aunt (London, William Heinemann, 1908), p. 20; impact of snow: Wyon, Journal, BL Add MS 59,617, f.29; increased costs: ILN, 7 January 1854, p. 3.

  ‘the increased work’: ‘Omnibuses’, Sketches by Boz, p. 169; driving on the pavement: ILN, 7 September 1844, p. 155; ignoring passengers: Watts Phillips, The Wild Tribes of London (London, Ward and Lock, 1855), p. 17.

  ‘emptied roads’: use of skids: Yates, Recollections, p. 35, and Schlesinger, Saunterings, p. 58–9; drivers strapped in: Sekon, Locomotion in Victorian London, p. 33; falling horses: Phillips, Wild Tribes, p. 17; boys skating: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 98.

  ‘their own doors’: Nicholas Nickleby, p. 673; Smith, Curiosities, pp. 337–8.

  ‘begin in 1859’: this outline is drawn from Freeman and Aldcroft (eds), Transport in Victorian Britain, p. 145, and Alan A. Jackson, London’s Metropolitan Railway (Newton Abbot, David and Charles, 1986), pp. 14ff.

  ‘natural disaster’: Daily News, 23 June 1862, p. 5.

  ‘regained control’: locomotive explosion: Anthony Clayton, Subterranean City: Beneath the Streets of London (London, Historical Publications, 2000), p. 99; landslide: Jackson, London’s Metropolitan Railway, p. 23; Fleet Ditch disaster: Daily News, 19 and 20 June, 18 July 1862, Standard, 19, 20, 25 and 26 June 1862, ILN, 28 June 1862.

  ‘ventured underground’: VIP trip and photograph: ChristianWolmar, The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground was Built, and How it Changed the City Forever (London, Atlantic, 2004), pp. 37–8, 41; layout and lighting: Mayhew, The Shops and Companies of London, p. 150; fares and numbers of passengers: ILN, 27 December 1862, p. 687, 17 and 24 January 1863, pp. 57, 91.

  ‘passengers annually’: Kensington Canal: Hugh Meller, London Cemeteries: An Illustrated Guide and Gazetteer (2nd edn, Godstone, Surrey, Gregg, 1985), p. 75; otherwise, this paragraph: Christian Wolmar, The Subterranean Railway, pp. 66, 71, 81.

  ‘at King’s Cross’: John H. B. Latrobe, Hints for Six Months in Europe ... (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, & Co., 1869); Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now, ed. Frank Kermode (first published 1875; Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1994), p. 696.

  ‘you are reduced’: ILN, 13 February 1869, p. 155.

  ‘besides six persons’: number of coaches: Long, ‘Was Mr Pickwick Lucky ... ?’, p. 167; broughams: Thrupp, History of Coaches, p. 118.

  ‘temper of the drivers’: American tourist: Charles Stewart, Sketches of Society in Great Britain and Ireland (2nd edn, Philadelphia, Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835), vol. 1, pp. 93–4; ‘The Last Cab-driver, and the First Omnibus Cad’, Sketches by Boz, pp. 171–2; the driver’s breath: Fred Belton, Random Recollections of an Old Actor (London, Tinsley Brothers, 1880), p. 4.

  ‘in a hurry’: Schlesinger, Saunterings, p. 158; ‘Coach!’: ‘Hackney-coach Stands’, Sketches by Boz, p. 107; footnote: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 3, p. 353; ‘I’m in a hurry’: Bradfield, Public Carriages, p. 49, is one example of this joke among many.

  ‘1 per 300 residents’: numbers and fares, 1830: Thrupp, History of Coaches, p. 118; hansom design, ibid.; Hudson, Munby, p. 147; Pickwick Papers, p. 290; ILN, 29 January 1864, p. 83; cab numbers: F. M. L. Thompson, ‘Nineteenth-century Horse Sens
e’, Economic History Review, 29: 1 (February 1976), p. 65; the number of black cabs today is given as 25,000 on the government’s official Transport for London website: http://­www.tfl.gov­.uk./businessand­partners/taxis­andprivatehire­/1364.aspx, accessed on 29 July 2011.

  ‘noise and dirt’: description of stands: [Dickens, W. H. Wills and E. C. Grenville-Murray], ‘Common-Sense on Wheels’, Household Words, 12 April 1851, in Harry Stone (ed.), Charles Dickens’ Uncollected Writings from Household Words, 1850–59, 2 vols (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1968), vol. 1, pp. 243–4, Smith, Curiosities, pp. 103, 105, and Phillips, Wild Tribes of London, p. 17; horse manure: Smith, Curiosities, p. 66.

  ‘checked outfits’: watermen’s dress: Pickwick Papers, p. 21, Sketches by Boz, ‘The Last Cab-Driver’, p. 178, and Diana de Marly, Working Dress: A History of Occupational Clothing (London, B. T. Batsford, 1986), p. 88; coachman’s dress: Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Dress, p. 226, and Gloag, Victorian Comfort, p. 136.

  ‘to the pubs’: reputations of cabstands, and railway approach: Garwood, The Million Peopled City, pp. 180–81; watermen: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 3, p. 353.

  ‘£46 a year’: economics of cabs: Garwood, The Million Peopled City, pp. 175–6, and James Greenwood, The Wilds of London (London, Chatto and Windus, 1874), p. 113.

  ‘between specific points’: bucks extorting fares: Garwood, The Million Peopled City, p. 176; Dickens, Wills, Grenville-Murray, ‘Common-Sense on Wheels’, p. 242; 1853 legislation: Sekon, Locomotion in Victorian London, pp. 76–9.

  ‘is a magistrate’: in snow: Wyon, Journal, BL Add MS 59,617, f. 29; Schlesinger, Saunterings, p. 159; Dombey and Son, p. 107.

  ‘Mayfair and Belgravia’: Trollope, Phineas Redux, ed. John C. Whale (first published 1873–4; Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 184, 212–13.

  ‘to need stables’: Our Mutual Friend, p. 249; ‘Anonyma’, London by Night, ‘by the author of ‘Skittles’ (London, William Oliver [?1862]), p. 52. The British Library catalogue suggests that ‘Anonyma’ may be the journalist W. S. Hayward; 10,000 carriages: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 55; builders and mews in 1860s: Freeman and Aldcroft (eds), Transport in Victorian Britain, p. 142.