Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London LifeKirwan, Daniel Joseph
History
Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life
Kirwan, Daniel Joseph
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- Social life and customs
This street, or road, is called the "New Cut," and is situated in
Lambeth on the Surrey side of the Thames. It is reached from the City
by Waterloo Bridge and the Waterloo road, and from the West End by
Lambeth and Vauxhall bridges. Thousands are born, baptized, many beget
children and die within the municipality of the Great Metropolis, and
yet have never seen the New Cut--nay, have never even heard of it, or
if they did, the word would have as much meaning to them as the plains
of El Ghizeh, or the source of the Nile to a Bow Cockney. Yet there are
thousands who are born here in this New Cut who live and die in it
and make a living for themselves, after a fashion, who, if not content
with, are certainly unaware of any method of changing or bettering
their lot in this life.
Narrow, dark, and mean streets run contiguous to the New Cut, and
branch from it in a winding, snaky way. A decently-dressed man is not
safe in this street, and the only sound of civilization to cheer him,
once lost in the mazes of these festering lanes and alleys, teeming
with low pot-houses, tap-rooms, and wild-looking children, bold,
bad-looking desperadoes of men, and reckless, obscene women, is the
low, rumbling sound coming like the approaching thunder to his ears
every few minutes as the loaded passenger trains dash to and fro on the
Northwestern and Southeastern Railways.
The New Cut runs into the Lower Marsh and is flanked by Wootton, White
Horse, Collingwood, Eaton, Marlboro streets, and the Broad Wall. To
the west are Thomas, Isabella, and Granby streets, and from all this
misery and destitution of a quarter where the inhabitants are packed
like rabbits in a well-stocked warren, the road leads through the
Upper Marsh down to the rare pleasaunce or garden of the palace of
the Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the most sumptous ecclesiastical
retreats in England. The Archbishop's gardens, although located in the
heart of a populous city, cover as much ground, it is calculated, as
gives sleeping and eating room to 11,000 human beings in the New Cut
district.
It is true that the river rolls sluggishly five or six hundred yards
below the New Cut, and those who are tired of dog's meat, rotten
vegetables, and the offal of the street markets for their common food,
and of sleeping eight in a room on straw which is not even clean, can
at any time deliver their bodies from further pain and starvation, and
their minds from a daily never-ending struggle as to how the dog's meat
and decayed offal may be procured, by a quick plunge in the river, near
by.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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