Caricatures and cartoons -- Great Britain; English wit and humor; English wit and humor, Pictorial
But there were many, many others, who were excluded from the privilege
of registering their names amongst the population of their country. The
unfortunate individuals who slept throughout the night in the stony
precincts of the police-office lock-up cells, were deprived of this
honour. Even admitting that the police had received instructions to
take down the names of the stray-flocks under their charge, the ends
of the commissioners were still defeated, for it was not probable that
the Hon. Clarence Piercefield, who had kicked the head waiter at the
Cider-cellars, for telling him not to join in the glees so loudly--who
had thrashed the cabman in Holborn--who had climbed up behind King
Charles at Charing-cross, and who, finally, upon being pulled down again
by the police and taken into custody, had given his name as Thomas
Brown,--it was not probable, we repeat, that this honourable gentleman
would see any occasion to alter the name in the schedule, or recant his
alleged profession of "medical student." His rightful appellation found
no place in the paper, no more than the hundreds who slept out altogether
that night, from the wretched, shivering, poverty-stricken occupiers
of the embryo coal-cellars of future houses in the neighbourhood of
railway _termini_, to the tipsy gentleman who tumbled by mistake into
a large basket of turnip-tops and onions in Covent Garden-market, and
slept there until morning, dreaming that he was the inhabitant of an
Eastern paradise, with _houris_ pelting roses at him. Even the ill-used
Mr. Ferguson, whom everybody has heard of, but nobody knows, failing in
all his attempts to procure a lodging for the night, found no place in
the strictly-worded schedule. The real name of Mr. Ferguson is Legion,
yet he found a lodging nowhere. And many returns of the erratic youth
of respectable families must prove, that their very fathers did not
know they were out, to say nothing of their mothers: on the other hand,
probably many more would be found wanting in the real numbers, were
circumstances narrowly inquired into.
It is fortunate for the correctness of the statistics that Sunday was the
day fixed upon for enumerating the population. Had it been any other, the
numbers who _slept in the house_ would have materially swelled the lists.
The House of Commons might have furnished an imposing array of names
every night in the week to begin with. The various literary institutions
and scientific meetings of the metropolis, on their respective nights,
would not have been behind hand; and even the theatres, might have sent
in a tolerably fair muster-roll of slumberers, according to the nature of
their performances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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