BOOKS.
THE ROOKERIES OF LONDON..
IN the course of pastoral duties Mr. Beames, "Preacher and Assistant of St. James, Westminster," became extensively ac- quainted with the London hells upon earth called "Rookeries." The editor of "a periodical" wished him to furnish some results of his experience among the working classes : Mr. Beames produced a couple of papers on the subject, and they have been expanded into the present volume. The author does not seem to have been well advised at starting. He was told that the public would "not read dry disquisitions or ponder on figures, unless relieved by something of a lighter cast." This lightness has unluckily been interpreted into word-spinning or magazine-writing. Mr. Beames opens with an account of the rookeries he is not going to write about, and in other places he pours forth sermonizing exhortations upon all the various ques- tions connected with rookeries—sanatory, educational, moral, re- ligious, and "condition-of-England." Even when he goes directly into his subject, he does not so much give the reader his own ob- servations, though he says they have been long, numerous, and extensive, as the gleanings of blue books, with occasionally facts from pamphlets, or from the reports of publicist commissioners. Hence there is an absence of life, and, what was not so distinctly to be expected, the want of a whole. Mr. Beanies may not have the faculty to grasp a subject in its entirety and to present it with unity- but we think that the notion of " lightness " is at the bottom of this and other faults.
The most interesting part of the book, to our taste, is that which concerns the " past " of London though not always connected with rookeries. There is something that affects the mind in witnessing in tangible form the mutations of hellion and the decline of greatness ; to see to what base uses mansions may re- turn ; to trace the degradation of the alcoves of "lords and ladies bright," till we find them housing the juvenile thief or the wandering beggar. To Londoners there is also an interest in reading the story of the growth of "town," and endeavouring to i
revive n imagination the rural appearance of places that are now the very centre of traffic or the purlieus of 'wretchedness. Within "the memory of the oldest inhabitant," nearly all to the North of Great Ormond and Great Russell Streets, and to the East of Tot- tenham Court Road, was country. Queen Square, Bloomsbury, was fashionable ; Powis House stood in Great Ormond Street, its gar- den-wall running down the site of what is now Powis Place. Chancellor Thurlow lived in Great Ormond Street, and rode in old baronial state to his court. The palace of the house of Bedford stood on the North side of Bloomsbury Square, its garden-wall extending along what is now the West side of Southampton Row, and ending about the spot where stands the statue of Francis Duke of Bedford. The garden of Montagu House in Great Russell Street (now the British Museum) ran back to a simi- lar distance but Southampton and Thanet Houses in the same street, can hardly be remembered in their pristine state even by the octogenarian. Very nearly along the site of what is now Guildford Street, across the centre of Russell Square, and through the side of Bedford Square, ran a rustic lane from Gray's Inn lane to Tottenham Court Road, which, sixty years since, was not considered particularly safe in the day-time, and none but the armed and hardy ventured down after dusk. The New Road, bounding the North of London by a sort of boulevard, is of an older date than man's memory ; its formation being opposed by Junius's Duke of Bedford, lest the dust should annoy him in his dwelling. Rows of houses, too, began to fringe it probably beyond the memory of man ; but within these forty years its now uniform ranges of building were broken by large spaces of green fields or nursery-grounds • on its Northern 'and North-eastern side from Paddington to Islington, all was country save where Somers Town intervened. From the foot of Hampstead and Highgate Hills to the Thames nearly all is now London. In this one quarter "town" has increased twice as much again within half a century : further Westward, from Edgeware Road to Westbourne Terrace, or in Belgravia, the increase seems more marvellous, as being on a more magnificent scale, and in a still briefer period. Of these changes Mr. Beames does not seem to have much living knowledge ; nor does he exhibit that practical acquaintance with localities which is able to vivify tradition. Beyond seventy or eighty years, of course all depends upon record ; and books are the same to one man as to .another, except so far as minds differ in
imagination. It requires this quality to clothe Holborn Hill and Hatton Garden with herbage, and to fancy Fleet Ditch a rapidly- flowing and pellucid stream : yet such they once were. The Strand, busy and bustling—eternal street, as it now seems—is not two centuries old. Before that time, or in fact till about the be- ginning of the last century, it was like Knightsbridge some years since ; noble mansions in their gardens, with shops and houses be- tween. The then vacant space before old Somerset House was occupied by a maypole till the erection of Queen Anne's churches; and there Pope placed his dunces, to struggle or see the struggles of their "high heroic games."
"Amid that area wide they took their stand, Where the tall maypole once o'erlook'd the Strand, But now (so Anne and piety ordain) A church collects the saints of Drury Lane."
• The Rookeries of London; Past, Present, and Prospective. By Thomas Beanies, M.A., Preacher and Assistant of St. James, Westminster. Published by Bosworth. Drury Lane itself is not much more than two centuries old; and though at first respectable and fashionable, it soon declined in repute. The following passage gives a not uninteresting account of the whole of that vicinity, still, in spite of late improvements, one of the grand rookeries of town. "We hear as early as the reign of Henry I. of the Hospital of St. Giles, established for the reception of those afflicted with leprosy, a disorder then prevalent. We next learn that the'gallows first set up in Smithfield was re- moved in the reign of Henry V. to St. Giles's; that place being then on the outskirts of London. The famous Lord Cobham, the great patron of the Lollards, and indeed one of the foremost of them, was executed here' after much barbarous treatment, 'in the year 1418. It is Stowe, we think, who
mentions the gallows standing St. Gyles in Felde.' "When the Hospital was suppressed, this parish, called of old 'the verbe pleasant village of St. Giles's,' was built over, and a cluster of houses erected there.
"In the reign of Elizabeth mention is made of thick forests extending from the village of St. Giles's Westward towards Tybourne. There was also the great black forest of Mary-la-Bonne, into which the Queen used to send the Muscovite Ambassador to hunt the wild boar.
• "Stows, in an account which he gives of the Lord Mayor visiting the tells us that, on this occasion before dinner, they ed her, and thence went to dine at the head of the number entertained with good cheer by the er they went to hunting the fox. There was a g.reat cry for a mile ; and at length the hounds killed him at the end of St. Giles's ; great hallooing at his death and blowing of horns.'
"The Hospital, of which such. frequent mention occure, had been sup- pressed in 1547, but a considerable portion of the wall which surrounded it remained in 1595; after which it was nearly demolish ,ed and residences were built on the East and West ends towards the year 1600. Holborn, as early as 1595, had extended so far Westward as nearly to join St. Giles's Street, which itself also was increasing rapidly. On the High Street, Holborn,' says Stowe, have ye many, faire houses builded, and lodgings for gentle- men, inns for travellers, and such like, up almost, for it lacketh little, to St. Giles's-in-the-Fields.' Mr. Dobie tells us, that in Anas's plan a consider- able Space of fields and gardens extended from St. Giles's Hospital wall to Chancery Lane Eastward, with scarce a house intervening if we except a few scattered buildings opposite to what is now Red Lion Sired, and again some few at the North end of the present. Drury Lane, now Broad Street. From thence Southward till we come to the North end of the Strand, two or three houses in Covent Garden, Drury House at the bottom of Drury Lane, and a few scattered dwellings towards the South-east, alone indicate that this portion of London was inhabited. Cattle were seen grazing where Great Queen Street now is ; and the few houses in the neighbourhood were sur- rounded by fields. "In the reign of James I., Drury Lane' which had been previously a road to the Strand, was built on ; and in 1628 the whole number of houses rated amounted to eight hundred and ninety-seven, and more than twenty courts and alleys are mentioned by name. Soon after this, mention is made of the erection of fifty-six houses, which it is supposed were inhabited by people of rank and wealth. Thus, more than two -hundred years since, a nucleus for rookeries was formed in these very courts and alleys ; they must have been built f173 dwellings of the .poor ; and we are not surprised to find that the larger houses in the vicinity were gradually deserted by their inhabitants as the tide swept Westward, whilst at the same time we cease to wonder at the size, internal decorations, and external ornaments of many of the houses now tenanted by the very refuse of the population."
The past and the present combine in this description of a rook- ery (Field Lane, Seam. Hill, &c.) that scarcely ever rose to much distinction, save what it drew from the Bishops of Ely and Chan- cellor Hatton.
"From the back of a cottage the writer was -enabled to see the Fleet Ditch, a window opening on it. It is a most unsavoury black stream of some width ; it does not so much flow as rush impetuously between the walls of the houses on each side. It is only visible from the back of these tene- ments; it carries along with its current all sorts of refuse, corks, &c., float- ing on the surface. Its waters are dark and fetid, and it is difficult, even in cold weather, to stand a few minutes in the room when the windows looking down upon it are opened. In summer, the inhabitants tell you the stench is intolerable. This may readily be supposed, when a wide deep open sewer momentarily recharged with putrid matter is running just under the kitch- ens of the houses.
" Clerkenwell, in the neighbourhood, is famed for its printing-houses; this district for several trades, peculiar, -we believe, to its precincts. In one street was an establishment where the skins of horses' legs were boiled and then hung up to dry; and other branches of commerce, not less redolent, were carried on not far off.
"The rookeries of this district consist for the most part of lodging-houses, where hampers and others of uncertain occupation are received; several thieves live in the neighbourhood; in some of these receiving-houses fami- lies are taken in, others seem only intended for single men : the rooms are small, and the beds closely packed." conduits at Tybo hunted the hare and conduit. There was a Chamberlain; and after
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