The Express.
London, England, 1862-12-08 00:00:00

MOM WATEN AT LONDON BRIDGIL

TWa Dai=lorisiiiiiC.lo.7.7.iiiiSti. 25m.
roagoszow—marning. Sn. 40s.....Aflorsoes, 4k. Om

LONDON, MONDAY, DECEMBER 8.

THE streets of London are not paved with gold.
They are very large, very straggling, and generally
very miserable. They are paved with mud, vice,
poverty, and struggling respectability. They are
crowded with a population exactly equal to that
of the whole Cotton district, a large portion of
which is always trembling on the brink of star-
vation. Every winter the same appeals come
before us, the same shivering crowds are found
standing at the workhouse doors, and the same
pothonse inquests are held upon the bony remains
of those who have dropped prematurely into
eternity for want of a bit of bread. With all our
boasted Poor-law system, with all our large and
impulsive private benevolence, with institutions
cropping up in every street for the relief of every
form of suffering, more people die annually of
absolute starvation in London that in any other
city in the world. They are not the obtrus,ve
poor, the dramatic poor, the poor who are only
divided from the professional beggar by a very thin
line. They are those whose misery has to be
sought out, who slink into corners, hoping against
hope, who are the last to brave the brutality of
parish officers—the last to fight their way for the
pauper's dole. They shiver in their rags, and,
sustain a wretched parody of life on chance scraps'
and soddened tea-leaves. Every working clergy-
man in London—east, west, north, south, and in
the centre—knows where to put his finger on
hundreds of these sinking beings. While the li
Lancashire misery has been at its height—within li
the short space of two autumnal months—we'
have noted fifteen deaths from starvation in Lon-
don which have been reported in the papers. How
many have dropped through without this record ?
How many have been buried with cei.ific....tes
drawn up by surgeons who are ashamed to write
the disgraceful word, and who rake up fancy
names for such deaths from the depths of medical
dictionaries?

What do we read in the last weekly return of
the Registrar-General under the bitter mocking
term of "The Health of London " ? Let us quote
the official words :—" Four deaths are returned
"as caused by privation. The following are the
" particulars of those cases :—On the Bth of
" November a man, aged 57 years, who had been
"an artificial florist, died in St. Pancras I
" Workhouse of exhaustion from starva-
" tion.' On the 17th of November,
"in the same workhouse, the widow of
" a tailor, aged 43 years, died of ' exhaustion
" from starvation.' On the 24th of November,
" at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a man unknown,
" probably about 33 years of age, died of cold
" and want of food.' He had been found in the
" Smithfield pens. On the 14th of November,
" at 11, Parliament-street, Bethnal.green, the son
"of a weaver, aged 3 months, died of destitu-
" tion, the mother not having milk for the child
" from want of food.' " Is this a state of things
to be proud oft One man found like a dead
dog in the Smithfield pens—a place where no
dead beast whose carcase was worth a shilling
was ever suffered to lie unheeded for ten minutes!

The deaths from "privation"—deaths from
"want of breast-milk," deaths from " neglect,"
deaths from " cold," or, in plain, unsavoury
words, from utter starvation, increase every year.
This is not in a poor, second-rate country which
lives from hand-to-mouth, which repudiates Sate
loans less from poverty than from want of means.
It is a country which glories in a gigantic national
debt, and squanders a hundred millions a year in
universal government.
We would not willingly say one word to check
the London contributions for the Lancashire dis-
tresa, nor to back the doctrine that charity begins
at home. These are not times in which to rein in
the benevolent, but rather to spur them on to
fresh exertions. There have been hard London
winters when Lancashire was prosperous, and
when she gave our starving thousands a few meals
from her plenty. This must not be forgotten—
the loan must be repaid with interest ; and we
must do our duty to the London poor at the same
time. Voices are already crying for help from
Bethnal-green and St. George's-in-the-East, from
Lambeth and Bermondsey, and even from St.
James's, Westminster. They must not be un-
heeded. It is not all poverty which is a disgrace
to those who suffer from it, and even if it were it
still demands to be fed. A death from starvation
is a national disgrace, and ought to be recorded
for ever in a temple of national shame. Without
such a record—such a rude but wholesome cham-
ber of horrors—we are too apt to forget these