The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER IV THE CHANDLER’S SHOP Murron Hitt is a small section of that large and loath- some neighbourhood which lies immediately behind the Sessions House on Clerkenwell Green. At the period of which we are writing, as well as at the present day, it con- sisted principally of second-hand furniture warehouses, old- clothes’ emporiums, and shops devoted to the sale of sweet stuff, chandlery, shell-fish, coals and potatoes, and cheap crockery. The chandler’s shop requires especial attention. It was small, dingy in outward appearance, and gloomy-looking internally. Over the door was painted, in little white letters on a black ground, the name of William Taggarty; and under this name, in smaller letters still, were the words, ‘Licensed Dealer in Tea, Coffee, Tobacco, and Snuff.” The door which was half-glazed, usually stood open as long as it was light; but when evening began to draw in, it was closed, a tinkling bell being suspended above to give notice of the entrance of a customer. On a shelf, or ledge, which ran along the middle of the window, appeared an array of small glasses, containing brandy-balls, peppermint-sticks, bull’s-eyes, hardbake, acid drops, barley-sugar, candy, horehound, lollipops, and other sweets of the same school of confectionery. On the board in the lower part of the Window appeared bundles of fire-wood, Flanders’ bricks, red herrings, a basket of eggs, a huge piece of Cheshire cheese, three or four ditto Glo’ster, some bottles of blacking, five or six bars of yellow soap, a few loaves of bread, a piece of bacon, a bladder of hog’s lard, a box of ‘‘ real Havanas ”’ made of cabbage leaves, some jars of pickles, and a small box of starch. Suspended to the woodwork of the windows, oo COM a LOOKS (CO)