[-45-]
CATHERINE-STREET,
STRAND, is a busy place by day-time (it does a
great business in the newspaper line, and about four or five in the afternoon it
is used by the acute newsboys of the metropolis as a kind of Change), but it is
busier far by night, and the later the hour the more active and lively it grows.
As you walk along the Strand any time in the afternoon and evening, have you not
seen (to our shame be it said) a sight not visible in the chief thoroughfare of
any other capital in Europe? The sight I allude to is that of girls, whose
profession is but too evident from their appearance, stopping almost every man
they meet, mildly, perhaps, in the early part of the evening - but, under the
influence of drink, with greater rudeness and freedom as the night wears on.
These girls, as you .observe, are dressed in finery hired for the purpose; and
following them, as a hawk its prey, you will perceive at a respectful distance
old hags, always Jewesses, [-46-] whose business it
is to see that these girls do not escape with their fine dresses, and that they
are active in their efforts to entrap young men void of understanding. Well,
these women all live in the neighbourhood of Catherine-street. What a filthy
trade the Jews and Jewesses of London drive! You may go into Elysiums, and
wine-rooms, and saloons, in this district, and you will find them belonging to
Jews - the waiters Jews - the wine, the women, the cigars, all in the hands of
Jews - true to their ancient vocation of "spoiling the Egyptians." Let
me not be understood as joining in vulgar prejudices against the Jews. Without
reading "Coningsby," or "Lord George Bentinck, a Political
Biography," I am ready to confess that there have been, and still are,
great and gifted men born to the Jewish race; but I am speaking of the vile crew
who earn an infamous livelihood by pandering to all that is degraded in man or
woman - whose vulture eyes follow you up and down Catherine-street, and who, if
they could, would rob you of your last farthing, and tear off from your back its
last rag, and who by fair means or foul rear up prostitutes, and trade in flesh
and blood. But pardon the digression, and yet not exactly [-47-]
is the subject a digression, when we remember Catherine-street and its
neighbouring courts would be a very different locality, had not the Jews
selected it as a fitting place for operation. In the days Consule Planco, as Mr
Thackeray would write, in the hot youth of the Regency, before George IV. had
become prematurely used up, and a moral people had erected a statue to the
memory of the most dissolute king in Christendom as a lesson for England's
ingenuous youth and as an example for future royal princes, Catherine-street was
gay indeed, if wine and profligacy in the lowest and worst reality of forms are
ever gay. There was Mother H.'s, where bucks assembled, and reckless women
danced and drank for a few short years ere they died wretchedly in parish
poor-houses, or sought oblivion and repose in the dark waters of the
neighbouring Thames. Up and down Catherine-street what wretchedness masked in
smiles has walked - what sin in satin - what devilish craft and brutal lust,
aye, and, what is worse than all, what unavailing repentance and regret!
A very fleeting population is that of Catherine-street. These
women, commencing their life at eighteen, are few of them supposed to last more
[-48-] than eight years; and if you see them in the day-time, before they
are painted and dressed up-with their red eyes and bloated faces, you will think
few of them will last even that short time; but they pass on one by one to the
spirit land, not as did Antigone, conscious of duty done, though wailing her
unwedded state, nor as Jephthah's high-souled daughter, for whom Hebrew maidens
devoutly wept-but with body and soul alike loathsome and steeped in sin. Here in
Catherine-street vice is a monster of a hideous mien. The gay women, as they are
termed, are worse off than American slaves, and the men at the best are but
drunken fools frittering away time and money and health, and rooting out from
their hearts all trace of the divine that may be yet lingering there. The West
is the more fashionable quarter, and the glory of Catherine-street is fled.
Almost every house you come to is a public-house, or something worse. Here there
is a free-and-easy after the theatres are over; there a lounge open all night
for the entertainment of bullies and prostitutes, and pickpockets and thieves,
greenhorns from the country or London-born; here a dancing saloon, which we are
told in the advertisement no visitor [-49-] should
leave London without first seeing, and there a coffee-house where, when expelled
from gayer places of resort, half intoxicated men and women take an early
breakfast. All round you are bitter memories. Every stone you tread is red with
blood; you can almost hear the last dying shriek of virtue, before, by means of
the tempting purse or the hocussed draught, the poor victim-feebler in her
struggles every hour-be lost for ever. Yet the gas burns brightly by night, and
there is dancing, and wine, and songs, and in the small hours you may hear a
hollow laughter, sadder even than cries and tears. Think what years and years of
tedious culture must have elapsed to produce this concentrated essence of vice.
How many must have died in the seasoning-how many must have turned back
shuddering as they saw the dark ending to their infatuated career - how many
weeping parents must have won back to decency and the observance of' moral and
social law-how many the want of pecuniary means must have compelled into a
reluctant abstinence! Such a crop could only be reared in such a Sodom and
Gomorrha as ours. That landlord, gloating over his ill-gotten gains, could not
have sunk into so fallen [-50-] a condition
rapidly. It has taken years to make him what he is. There is no excuse for him,
and he knows it. It is not for the honest refreshment of the weary or the bona
fide accommodation of the public that his house is open. The real public
have been in bed for hours. These men around us are here for immoral purposes.
These women are on the same bad errand, and that they may better pursue their
vocation, here they come and drink; but he sells his poison, thinking not of the
mischief it will do, but of the gain it will bring. Is he not a degraded man,
with his double chin, and dirty face, and low forehead? can you see in him one
trace of' benevolence or humanity? Do you doubt this ?-spend your last farthing
in his bar, pawn every article of clothing you have, and go with an empty pocket
and in rags, and you will soon be ordered to the door. You see he is now turning
out that wretched creature. He has allowed her to drink till she has no more
money; but she solicited chance customers, and they treated her to gin, and so
the landlord let her stop; but now she is so drunk as to interfere with his
business, and he turns her houseless and friendless out into the streets. Let us
watch her. She [-51-] is too far gone to have any
decency left. Drink and sadness combined have tortured her brain to madness. Her
curses fill the air; a crowd collects; the police come up; she is borne on a
stretcher to Bow-street, and in the morning is dismissed with a reprimand, or
sentenced to a month's imprisonment, as the sitting magistrate is in a good
temper or the reverse. The longer we stop here the more of such scenes shall we
see, for with such publicans and sinners Catherine-street abounds. I have known
life lost here in these midnight brawls; yet by day it has a dull and decent
appearance, and little would the passing stranger guess all its revelations of
sorrow and of crime.