The Express.
London, England, 1868-04-08 00:00:00

[ONE PENNY

of the sufferings which sovereigns are bowel to ac-
cept, and made it certain that not at a less sacrifice
than goinground byHolborn-hill should the Kingor
Queen escape the ceremonies by submission to
which they purchased the right to drive down
Fleet-street. Immediately adjoining, but to the
' westward of the barber's shop stood at one time a
small penthouse of lath and plaster which was for
many years occupied by Crockford as a shell-fish
shop ; and here it was that he made the money
which enabled him to open the club in St. James's-
street which was to make him a name in
the history of gaming places. The old stave-
tore was removed immediately after Crock-
ford's death, and the house which is about
to be removed was connected with his memory
only by its site. Ship-yard and Star-court were in
their time better known than many others of the
courts and lanes already destroyed, or about to be
destroyed ; but, except that the' former appears to
have taken its name from an inn which was the
property of Sir C. Hatton, and was at one
time supposed to have been the residence of Elias
Ashmole, there is nothing that need be told of
either of these places. Crown-place, Chain-court,
Hemlock-court, and other alleys which formerly
wound their slow and dirty length about the now
desolated area, were, as far as we have been able to
discover, equally undistinguished in history ; nor
does more than a local interest attach to the names
of Newcastle-court, Boswell-court, or Robin Hood-
court. Clement's-inn is only celebrated as having
been the scene of the early study and exploits of
that distinguished county magistrate, Mr. Justice
Shallow, and the laurels of Carey-street have yet
to be earned. There is some chance, however, that
the name of this somewhat gloomy highway may
survive in the recollection of posterity, for a hand-
some doorway-can it he the portal of the house
which Lady Fanshawe hired of Sir Geo. Carey t—
hee been saved from the general ruin, and is to be
transported to the South Kensington Museum.
Of the fate which has befallen the district which
lay between the Strand and Carey-street it is diffi-
cult to speak with regret. Included within its
bounds were a good number of public-houses, not
a few marine-store aheps or rag shops, innumerable
"general" shops, one or two undertaker's esta-
blishments, and a chapel. The houses were mainly
let off in floors, or, in many instances, in single
rooms, and how much of misery and shame,i of vice
and crime, have been contained in the smallest of
these rooms, it is impossible for the most vivid
imagination to conceive. But they were not all cri-
minal, or even vicious, who occupied these fallen
dwellings. Constrained by the necessities of their
employment, or driven by the destruction of houses
in other districts into a companionship which they
would willingly have avoided, not a few respectable
working men and their families found a home
among the courts and alleys which lay to the north
of the Strand. There was one court—it ran, if we
mistake not, at right angles with New Boswell-
court—the inhabitants of which were peculiarly
objectionable in their conduct. When they were
quiet it was a sure sign that they were suffering
from fever; and when they were free from this
unpleasant disorder they spent six days of
the week, both day and night, in quarrel-
ling, fighting, and the use of the most abomi-
nable language towards each other ; and vexed the
quiet of Sunday by singing hymns to the tunes of
the most vulgar of the comic songs of the day. At
one time, and indeed almost up to the period of
its destruction, this district was the dwelling-place
of large number* of the peripatetic performers
who make the streets of London their stage, and
live by astonishing or amusing the hosts of idle
people who are always going to and fro upon
their pavements. from somewhat
I slight, but perhaps sufficient premises, and
without any spacial knowledge of the allotment
of individual dwellings, we should say that it
was in the neighbourhood of Clement's-lane and
Ship-yard that the residences of these " pro-
fesaimisla " were mostly to be found. Few
organ men had their homes among these
narrow and crowded courts they chiefly
congregate in the district which lies below
Gray's-inn lane—and although about Horseshoe-
court there was more than one " crib" which
to the adventurous visitor appeared to be all alive
with dogs, we doubt whether the monkies and their
Italian masters ever took up their quarters in this
part of the town. But many a troupe of swarthy
Ethiopians fresh blacked issued from beneath " the
pillars ' in the morning—giving their first, as they
had on the night previous given their last, per-
formance at the gates of Clement's-inn • and
many a wearied acrobat, attended by a tired wife
and a crusty companion with the properties upon
his back, has limped up Ship-yard or Star-court
king after dark in the evening. Persons of far
worse character than these impudent, but indus-
trious vagabonds, used to hang about the entrances
to these and other courts at all hours of the day
and night, but of them we need say no more. It
was to indicate their presence among the
motley population the end of whose abiding places
we are chronicling, but it is neither necessary nor
agreeable to trace further their habits, nor to
Indicate the quarters where they found refuge.
All that now remains of the district once inhabited
by this curiously mingled population is some
hundred houses or so, the major part of which
seem ready to imitate the example already set by
two of their old companions, and crumble into dust
before they have felt the pick of the destroyer—
surrounded by or surrounding a series of irregular
mounds, where the d4bris of bricks and timber, and
rotting boards, and decayed plaster and brokenflags, and rusty iron, which were too far gone in
decay to be worth even the trouble of carting
away, have been heaped together in gigantic tumuli.
The houses still standing—some of them still occu-
ried—in Bell-yard, Carey-street, and Serle's-place,
hpeewsmfragt amenfairts
ofrof ntht but th
e;
ineee courts
appearanceouttewhier of the
etw
re-
main and miserable in the extreme. The
doors are off the hinges, the windows
are all shattered, the floors have, in most
cases, been torn up—so that there is a
clear view from the ground floor to the roof, and
in many instances to the sky above. Much of
this damage is, of course, part of the process of
destruction which is going on all around, or, at all
events, has been done since the houses were de-
serted by their last occupants, and sold to the pur-
chasers of old materials ; but there are abundant
indications that before the advent of government
surveyors and auctioneers the majority of these
houses were in a condition which rendered them
hardly fit for human habitation ; and wherever
' their former occupants may have gone they can-
not, one would fancy, have found worse dwellings
than those they have left.

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