The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-09-03 00:00:00

NIGHT IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.
(BY A MIDNIGHT VISITOR.)

The midnight hour had chimed and the stra..its
were beginning to look very deserted, when (says a
writer in the Daily News) for the purposes of this
article, I concluded a hurried inspection of the
pauper.' dormitory in Trafalgar-square. Here, accord-
Mg to public rumour, were gathered nightly a most
extraorainary assembly of the outcast poor, the vaga-
bond, and the thief. "You should really see the
square at midnight," said my latest informant, and I
went and saw it. It was indeed the spacious open-
air dormitory of a wondrous crew—an aggregation of
these miserable units and small groups that are seen
in the summer nights on the Embankments alai
the bridges, and that are the wonder, the com-
passion, and despair of those who witness them,
and know not what to do to mend a state
of affairs that seems so terrible and so un-
natural. In the black shadows of the square they
lie, homeless in the heart of a great city, without a
refuge in the neighbourhood of palaces, without a
hearing for their tales of distress, or redress for their
grievances, within sight of the towers of St. Stephen's.
There is some reason for their being so unobserved.
All the thousands of passers-by are not priests and
Levites; but the good Samaritans do not see the
misery sa near them. On three sides the obscurity of
the square conceals it, on the fourth it is effectually
screened by the parapet at the foot of which, on the
inner side, it is wrapped up in its wretchedness and
rage. Put your foot between the columns of the parapet,
raise yourself up and look over, and there you can
dimly see the sleepers, sitting, lying, sprawling, and
crouching along the whole length of the wall-foot.
Within the railed-off corners they are lying—a grimy,
bad-looking lot. There are benches two or three
yards in front. These offer accommodation for
a second line of the loafers. Many women in the
tawdry bonnets and long black shawls common to the
begging tribe are settled there for the night, while
men who have come too late for the seats, or may have
been chivalrous enough to abandon them to the other
sex, are coiled up on the ground behind. On the steps '
leading up towards the National Gallery are sonie
late corners, and all along the two sides of the en-
closure as you walk down towards Parliament-
street, beings are lying well in the deep
shadow of the wall. The numbers are, however, by
no means so large this morning as the last report that
reached me had led me to anticipate. Some two or
three hundred may be easily counted, bnt rumour hal
doubled, perhaps multiplied, that sum. Rumour, one
of the people told me, had not gone far wrong ; for
a multitude who had found a habitation in the square
on the previous night had gone into Kent for the
hopping: and, moreover. I was told that if I waited
till two o'clock I should see there were more to
come.

_
In the centre of the tramp-like figures who were
taking refuge under the wall was a brightly-dresed
girl of about nineteen—a curious contrast to the
wretched-looking men and women on each ride. She
had a baby in her arms, and young fellows protecting
her on either side. "Who is she?" I inquired'.
"They call her the Queen of the Square," said a
policeman, laughing. "She is always here. She
prefers being among those people to being anywhere
else. The baby is not her own. She is minding it
for another woman, who herself has ten shillings
a week for the maintenance of it, and yet is content
to live in the square." "The Queen" herself when
spoken to giggled a good deal, but was not readily
drawn out. Her companions were eloquent denun-
ciators of the workhouse, which they said a man
would be crazy to go into While there was a Tra-
falgar-square, the prison, or the Thames in which to
k eek passing or everlasting refuge. Prolonged con-
versation was rendered impossible by the closing in
around the visitor of a dirty crowd from which
escape was in every respect desirable. There was also
in the square, I was told, a woman recognised by the
name of "the Duchess of Devonshire." She for the
moment was missing.
Underneath the side walls some old stagers bad
disposed themselves in a tolerably comfortable
rcanner. One man or woman, it was impossible to
tell which in the gloom, was snugly wrapped up in a
canvass, from which a pair of not bad looking shoes
peeped out. This figure, however, was an exception.
The nearest approach to a blanket possessed by most
of these London vagrants was a newspaper. Many
bad a fancy for this kind of wrap who had not been
able to obtain enough to cover them. These poor
fellows were content if they could but cover their
knees with a scrap of paper. Having done that they
thrust their hands into their pockets or their rags
and went to sleep with their knees up to their chins.
Hanging on to the outskirts of the square was the
only man who asked me for money. "He
bad been five nights on the square,'" he said,
because he was not able to find work after
coming from Manchester in search of it. What did
be do? Well, he was stable-man "by profession."
He could earn 225. a week at that work when ho
could get employment, and he was daily searching
for it; not like others, he self .complacently told me,
who would never leave tbe square, preferriug its
liberty at night and a beggar's life through the day.
Another man, more broken in spirit, volunteered the
statement that it might not be altogether his misfor-
tune, but a good deal his fault, that he was now in
such straits, but he murmured, the life-long punish-
ment for one offence bitterly repented ot was hard.
He shared with others whose story had not inspired
the same confidence or sympathy a cordial detes-
tation of the casual ward. The poorest and the
meanest of human beings are sensitive to slights and
harsh tones and contemptuous treatment.