Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 100: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER X THE KINCHIN - KEN — THE TABLES TURNED In the time of which we are writing, Grub Street was the uneuphonious and repulsive appellation of that long, narrow, and dirty lane in the Cripplegate district which now bea.s the name of Milton Street. At the present day the features of that thoroughfare are none of the most inviting; but ai the close of the eighteenth century the aspect of the place was disgusting and villainous in the extreme. There was not a vestige of pavement; and the ground was so uneven and rugged that few vehicles ever ventured that way, for in the fine weather they stood a chance of being overturned by the mounds of concrete dirt that dotted the lane, and in the rainy seasons the wheels were sure to sink into deep ruts. The houses were of the most miserable description, the shops of the poorest kind. Every dwelling harboured numerous distinct families; and poverty forced the poor artisan into a close neighbourhood with the avowed thie’. The result, in such cases, too often was that the forme., instead of bringing the latter within the sphere of a commend- able industry, became infected with the poison of demorali- zation, and in the desperation produced by failure of work, threw himself into the arms of the villain who promised a rich harvest with little trouble in the reaping. Vice and depravity accordingly spread like a pestilence in that lo- cality; and as the first words which infants were taught to lisp were oaths and imprecation, so the last which they uttered in their manhood were too frequently the death- prayer on the gallows. | And who can wonder if Grub Street and its neighbourhood had become a noted academy for the training of thieves, a seminary whence the ranks of vice, demoralization, and 83 GOmMmiicdooks (C©)