The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 58: what you’re looking at

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THE MYSTERIES OF THE COURT. 45 tations builtin the midst of a perfect swamp of mud. Such is Agar Town even to the present day, —the little improvements above alluded to as aris- ing from the formation of the railway, being con- fined to the springing up of a fow cottages of a bet- ter description than the old ones, but which being dotted about here and there, only serve to throw the squalor and wretchodness of the surrrounding dwellings into a bolder and more sickening relief. From all that has just been said, the reader will be able to comprehend that eight years ago, be- fore the formation of the railway in that district, Agar Town must have been one of the lowest, most miserable, and likewise most dangerous re- gions within the circumference of London. It was indeed the refuge of peuperism—the hiding- place of orime—the abode of wretchedness and squalor—and therefore one of the most prolific hotbeds of demoralization, disease, vice, and pro- fligacy that could be found in the metropolis. Con- taining but very few shops, and those such asare only to be seen in the poorest neighbourhoods, Agar Town chiefly consisted of lodging-houses, where the avarice of landlords or the poverty of the tenants led tothe grouping together of as great a number of occupauteas could possibly be squeezed into the smallestimaginable compass. Throughout the whole region the size of the rooms averages about ten or twelve feet square; and at the time of which we are writing, four or five beds, to be cocupied by as many different families, were arowded into each room. These beds, consisting only of a wretched flock mattress and a blanket black with grime, were necessarily so cluse to each other as almost to touch. Thus it might be said that the whole flooring of each room was covered over with bedding as straw is littered down in a stable; and there did several separate families, comprising persons of both sexes and all ages, huddle together beyond the possibility of any re- gard for modesty or decency. The same horrible system prevails to a great extent in Agar Town at the present day: butat the time of which we are writing, ere the presence of railway workmen in- troduced some little civilizing improvements into the place, that herding together of whole fami- lics was carried to a frightful extent. In the year 1844 Agar Town was like a morass where the noxious weeds and puisonous plants had attained to the fulness of their rank growth. It was then swarming with human reptiles—the ecum, the outcasts, and the rejected of all society. It was under no parochijal care, and appeared to be beyond the reach of any civilizing influences. We do no not believe that even the Sunday-morning distributors of tracts, who generally poke their noses everywhere, ventured within the precincts of Agar Town: certainly the parson of no adja- cent churth ever thought it worth his while to visit the inhabitants of that strange colony, which in every respect was an isolated spot of utter bar- \. barism in the midst of the shining lights of London | l civilization. It was one of those cesspools into which the mora] filth of this modern Babylon re- gularly and continuously flowed, but which no legislative prudence, nor parochial intervention, nor philanthropic care ever thought of emptying. Having no gas laid on, no street-lamps of any kind, and but very few shops to throw out even the feeble glimmerings of tallow-candles through their dingy panes, Agar Town in dark nights was enveloped in almost utter gloom; and as by the very nature of its few and narrow approaches from thesurrounding thoroughfares it stood in the posi- tion of a sort of fastness, it necessarily afforded a most convenient asylum for any offender against the law to whom the police might be giving chase in that part of London at the time. Suppose, for example, a thief or other malefactor, disturbed in his depredations anywhere within a small dis- tance of Agar Town,—if he could only manage to keep ahead of his pursuers until he dodged off into that maze of dark and dangerous defiles, he might at once relax his speed, take breath, and congratulate himself upon having reached a place that was as good as a sanctuary. It must not however be thought that the police never made incursions into Agar Town, because such an impression would be erroneous. What we have meant to convey by the preceding remarks, is that from the peculiarity of its situation and the defile-nature of its approaches, it afforded advan- tages, or at all events chances of escape for fugitive offenders, which no other low neighbourhood of London could present. Amongst the various scenes of demoralization and depravity which character- ized the place, were “ penny gaffs,"—or in plain . terms penny theatres; and occasionally the police got scent of the existence and the whereabouts of these cheap dramatic representations. Then, per- haps, just at the moment when an audience of the moat dissolute and profligate description, including boys and girls of even a very tender age, were en-~ joying the dozen murders that formed the plot of some terrible tragedy, or devouring in rapt ad- miration the insane rantings of a banjo-looking Othello or a seedy Hamlet, the door would burst open, a posse of police rush in, and the whole as- semblage of audience and actors be comfortably marched off to the nearest station, to undergo such penalties as the magisterial wisdom might choose to inflict next morning. But these were not the only occasions on which the myrmidons of the law would make an irruption into Agar Town. Now and then they received information that some of those chemical ex perimentalists termed ‘illicit dis- tillers ” were working a private still in a secluded nook of that isolated region,—for which commerce indeed the whole locality, with the convenience of the canal and barges thereon, was well adapted. Then, in the silence of the night, when the still was in full operation, the abrupt invasion of the police would startle the unlawful experimentalists aforesaid, the genuine product of their industry would be confiscated, and they themselves sent with all the usual circumstances of ignominy to vegetate for a period in prison. But these little variations in the monotony of Agar Town were not of such frequeat occurrence as might be ex- pected, considering the almost incessant viola- tions of the law that were taking place in the ways thus specially described. Such was Agar Town in the year 1844: such too it had been for a long time previous—but at that particular epoch it was in the very height of its ignominious glory and the full blow of its pesti- lential rankness. There, at thecorner of one of the little streets, — if the rough unpaved thoroughfare, defined only by a couple of rows of squalid-look- ing habitations, could be denominated a street at all,—-stood a public-house bearing the sign of the Billy Goat,—the same where Ralph Farefleld CONNEC MOO SS COMM