Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/634

620 also much more use of small boats up and down the river, a person being able to go from London to Westminster-bridge for threepence. At night the streets were miserably lighted, and thieves of all kinds were on the alert. In 1736 London had only about a thousand lamps, which were only lit through the winter months, and then only to midnight. People found their way by the aid of torches, or links, as they were called, and link-boys were in constant demand. But woe to those who were out at late hours. By day, the streets and squares were infested by pick-pockets and swarms of beggars; by night, by audacious thieves; nor were the lowest classes the worst that you met. Numbers of broken-down gentlemen and ruined gamblers assumed the trade of bullies, and committed insolences and outrages which now seem almost incredible. But the most famous scamps of those times were the Mohocks, of which you have continual mention in the "Spectator" and "Tatler," and the plays of the day. These fellows ranged the streets disguised as savages, committing horrors and brutalities, which we wonder at existing under any ordinary government for a single week. They insulted and attacked all that they met; knocked down the watchman, exposed women in the most scandalous manner, sometimes performed on unoffending people what they called "tipping the line;" that is, squeezing their noses flat, and gouging out their eyes with their fingers. Some of them were called dancing-masters, because they thrust their swords into the legs of people to make them caper; and others, tumblers, because they placed women on their heads, or put them into barrels, and rolled them down Snow or Holborn Hill.

Amid all this incredible baseness and lawlessness, of course, brawls, fightings, and duels, abounded. The hackney-coachmen would, on occasion of a lock in the streets, descend from their seats, and commence a general battle with their whips, to the no small alarm of their "fares." People jostling on another in the streets, especially as they came from taverns or other places, where they had got flushed with wine, would suddenly draw on each other, and a desperate conflict would take place. Duels were frequent and bloody. The ring in Hyde Park, the back of Montagu House, and Barn Elms, were the great resorts for duelling. On such occasions, the seconds frequently joined, and desperate battles of half a dozen or more combatants took place.

Astrology, fortune-telling, and medical quackery flourished as much as vice and violence. The author of the "Spiritual Quixote" has given us a striking portraiture of one of the impudent quacks who used to traverse the country, and promise all sorts of impossible things. This man challenged all or any of the faculty to dispute with him in seven languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, and other equally unusual tongues, which he knew no medical men of the day were acquainted with. He declared himself the seventh son of a seventh son, and therefore was an infallible physician, according to popular tradition. Many of these fellows rode in splendid carriages; and one Smith, in one drawn by six horses, followed by two other carriages, each with four. He was attended by four footmen in yellow liveries, and four in blue, trimmed with silver. These fine fellows were his tumblers, merry andrew, trumpeter, speech-maker, &c.

In all classes there was an evident ambition to ascend in the social scale. Amongst authors there still remained the practice of dedicating their works in most fulsome terms to some great man, who paid them for their flatteries; but there were already symptoms of the great publishers, Tonson, Lintot, &c. becoming the real patrons. Pope showed how much more might be obtained from the bookseller than from the great lord, who doled out his reward with a befitting contempt; but the ignorance and frivolity of such a public as then existed could not maintain many Popes. Authors were still miserably paid, with some few fashionable exceptions, and pursued their labours in such places as Drury-lane and Grub-street, thence become so expressive of abject authorship. The growing commerce of the country was gradually augmenting the substance and dignity of the English merchants. They were ambitious of knighthood, and were beginning to bestow on each other pretty freely the title of esquire. Still, they mostly continued to live in the city, chiefly in courts behind their warehouses and counting-houses. The hour on 'Change were from one o'clock till three, but some of the most eminent merchants transacted their business at Garraway's, Jonathan's, and Robins' coffee-houses.

The shopkeepers of London, in their eagerness for trade, had so completely obstructed the streets, and almost shut out the light, by their huge signs stretched across from one side of the road to another, that they were compelled, in the reign of George II., to take them down, and place them against their own walls. Many of these signs had grand pictures of particular animals upon them, and some of them have become corrupted now into very ludicrous ones. The motto, "God encompasses us," is now changed into "The Goat and Compasses;" "The Bologne, or Boleyn Mouth," into "The Bull and Mouth;" "The Boleyn Lass"—adopted when Henry VIII. was become enamoured of Anne Boleyn— into "The Bull and Last;" "The Satyr and Bacchanals" into "Satan and Bag of Nails," &c. In many shops, raffles and auctions were the mode of selling their goods, especially jewellery and trinkets. Hawkers abounded, and cried their wares even in Westminster Hall; and in the streets were stalk, where wheels of fortune, dice, and other modes of gambling tempted the people, and thimble-rigging, and other tricks for fleecing the foolish, were openly carried on. Drunkenness was encouraged by carrying about liquors in wheelbarrows, and setting them out on stalls; and though the population of London was not more than one-third of its present amount, pot-houses were quite as numerous as they are now. By a report made by the magistrates of Middlesex in 1725, there were in the metropolis alone, exclusive of Southwark, six thousand one hundred and eighty-seven houses and shops in which gin and other spirits were sold, besides the stalls and wheelbarrows. This amounted, in many parishes, to every tenth house; to others, every seventh; and in one, the largest of all, every fifth house! Such a picture of drunkenness, perhaps, no other age or nation ever exhibited. The same habits pervaded the country. Gentlemen seldom dined without ending the day in intoxication; and nothing was more common at country