If you enjoy www.victorianlondon.org why not ...
A thaw, by all that is miserable! The frost is completely broken up. You look down the long perspective of Oxford-street, the gas-lights mournfully reflected on the wet pavement, and can discern no speck in the road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be had - the very coachmen have gone home in despair. The cold sleet is drizzling down with that gentle regularity, which betokens a duration of four-and-twenty hours at least; the damp hangs upon the house-tops and lamp-posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak. The water is 'coming in' in every area, the pipes have burst, the water-butts are running over; the kennels seem to be doing matches against time, pump-handles descend of their own accord, horses in market-carts fall down, and there's no one to help them up again, policemen look as if they had been carefully sprinkled with powdered glass; here and there a milk-woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list round each foot to keep her from slipping; boys who 'don't sleep in the house,' and are not allowed much sleep out of it, can't wake their masters by thundering at the shop-door, and cry with the cold - the compound of ice, snow, and water on the pavement, is a couple of inches thick - nobody ventures to walk fast to keep himself warm, and nobody could succeed in keeping himself warm if he did.
Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 1836
Sir, - I am much surprised to see that one of the most dangerous
nuisances which, under the provisions of the Police Act, the police are
empowered and directed to prevent in and near the metropolis, is allowed to be
committed (even in their presence), which almost every street in the metropolis
will prove. I allude to the making of slides by boys upon the road and pavement.
I saw a striking effect of this practice myself a few evenings since. A person,
in walking over a slide, fell down, and a gentleman passing myself having
assisted him up and taken him to a surgeon, we found that he had received a
violent contusion, and had his head and one eye cut in a most frightful way.
I take the liberty, as a friend to man and beast, of
requesting your kind insertion of this letter, hoping that it may draw attention
to and cause the prevention of this dangerous
practice. I am,
&c.,
Dec.16
HUMANITAS
P.S. You will find, that under the 17th clause of the 54th section of the 47th
cap. of 2 and 3 Victoria, "that every person who shall make or use any
slide upon ice or snow in any street or other thoroughfare shall be liable to a
penalty of 40s." If this was enforced in a few instances, it would be a
very useful warning to offenders.
letter to The Times, December 17, 1840
see also Mysteries of Modern London - click here
see also Charles Manby Smith in The Little World of London - click here