The Mysteries of London; or, Lights and Shadows of London Life — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a THE MYSTERIES OF LONDON, 9 if a i ii | I i a a a | iS it . Kir, din, te L AT Att HF ‘ia i Fill A ee ee wom asa, ~ Meee eee 7 ~—- en an ae tain and stormy skies of the future in the mirror of | is inadequate to give more than a very faint notion the remote past. | of the vice and poverty to be found within its limits. Leaving the nobleman plunged in a profound re-; From the Cannon-street road to the West India very of this kind, we must now beg the reader to | Docks the line of the railway is carried upon arches accompany us on a Visit to a totally opposite quarter | over a series of streets so densely populated that of the metropolis, and there make acquaintance with | scarcely a house can be met with untenanted by less a character who will have to play a somewhat con-| than six, and in some cases eight, distinct families, spicuous part in our faithful record of the lights and | Trending towards the banks of the river, and lying shadows of a London existence. south of the busy thoroughfare of Radcliffe Highway, a : ‘lare miserable tenements, built upwards of a century ago, and still exhibiting the narrow-pointed gables | and projecting windows of a former age. These are ye now crumbling down about the heads of the inmates; coe Se NACE Re ‘| and though here and there a supporting rafter shows In the eastern extremity of London—utterly un- | that the landlord, in attempting to arrest the dilapida- known to thousands who have been born and passed | tion, has sought to postpone the hour of the final fall, their lives at the west end—there is a district which | the broken windows left unmended, andthe rotten for filth, wretchedness, and squalid misery, cen hardly | pricks pulverised to dust by the slightest touch, show be surpassed by any other in the metropolis. the work of destruction silently but surely going on The London and Blackwall Railway crosses a por- | has been tacitly acknowledged both by tenant and tion of this repulsive region; but the slight view | owner to be beyond the reach of effectual repair. alforded to the passenger, as he gazes fromthewindow| The chief inhabitants of this locality are those em- 3 r CHAPTER III. ofthe carriage during the rapid progress of the train, | ployed in various ways about the neighbonrhard of thy, (E(©) _