The which now since my dying day Is Shoreditch call’d, as authors say; Which is a witness of my sin For being concubine to a king. By the church the road turns acutely to the right, along the Hackney Road, to Mare Street and Cambridge Heath, where, at the junction of the roads, the first turnpike from London stood. The ’Ackney Road—for it is thus that the inhabitants know it—is a broad artery athwart those wilds of Bethnal Green and Haggerston, where the Hooligans live—those sprightly hobbledehoys who find life all too dull and tame, and so spice it with the uncivilised frays that keep the police so actively employed. Boot and buckled strap play their part in the street-war between Hooligan and Hooligan, a warfare varied by unprovoked assaults upon unoffending citizens, who find themselves unexpectedly floored and their ears and noses being savaged off by the Hooligan teeth. It is no new thoroughfare, the Hackney Road, and is merely the modern development of the country lane that once upon a time led into the fields immediately after Shoreditch church was passed. It follows exactly the same route as when Hackney was a pleasant country village, when Cambridge Heath really was a heath, and when the sheep grazed in the meadows of Hoxton. But it was a dangerous as well as a pretty road in those times, the scene during the long series of years between 1718 and 1756 of so many robberies and murders that the village residents of Hackney, weary of being clubbed separately, at last clubbed together and offered handsome rewards for the arrest of any of those footpads and Highway-men who rendered it unsafe to stir abroad. That it was not in 1732 a desirable place for an evening stroll may readily be gathered from the adventures that befell a worthy tradesman who, returning to London from Hackney about six o’clock in the evening, was set upon by two fellows, who robbed him of his money and pocket-book. He pleaded earnestly for the book to be restored to him, and happening to recognise one of the rogues, said, “Honest friend, one good turn deserves another. I was one of the jurymen who took compassion upon you last sessions at the Old Bailey, when you were tried for robbery and acquitted, although we all believed you to be guilty.” To this the thief ungratefully replied, “Curse your eyes, you son of a bitch, learn to do justice another time and be damned”; and, knocking their unfortunate victim backwards into a slimy ditch, they both decamped. The papers of the time, reporting this little incident, seem astonished at the violence of the language, but we moderns feel inclined to ask, “Is that all?” It is mildness itself compared with the foul language, the damning and cursing that may be heard to-day, without any provocation, at every street-corner.