The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-04 00:00:00

INTRODUCTION.

London is a phenomenon so familiar that we scarcely
appreciate its greatness. It is only when we appeal to the
records of the past, gather together the scattered threads of
topography woven by local inquirers, and call in the aid of
statistics to the task, that we can fairly estimate the cha-
racter of the wonderful aggregate of towns and villages
which we call London. We sometimes speak with amaze-
ment of the rapid growth of the cities of the New World,
of the development in a few years of a few huts in a Mis•
sissippi swamp or a Canadian clearing into a busy town;
but London furnishes an endless succession of such won-
ders, and we scarcely note the fact. The infallible cen-
sus returns make us acquainted with some surprising
matters. In iB5l, London had a population of 2,362,236 :
in 1861, of 2,803,034, showing an increment in the decennial
period of 440,798. More people, therefore, live in London
than in the whole of 'Switzerland or Denmark; more than
twice as many as in Norway, Hanover, or Saxony, and
nearly as many as in Scotland. 'When the census was
taken in 1851, there were 305,933 inhabited houses in the
metropolitan district; ten years later there were 362,890;
the increase therefore was 56,957. A comparative view of
other large towns will best enable us to estimate the real
value of this enormous increase. In the number of inha-
bited houses, London has added to itself, within ten years,
nearly another Liverpool, Birmingham, or Manchester
(exclusive of Salford) ; four Nottinghams, Prestons, or
Glasgows ; nearly three Huddersfields or Salfords. The
increase of inhabitants has been very nearly equal to the
entire population of Liverpool, more than equal to that of
Manchester and Salford together, and considerably above
that of two Sheffields. We will put the increase in a still
more familiar point of view, and say, that in respect of size,
as indicated by the number of inhabited houses, London
adds every year to itself a Cambridge, or Exeter, or North-
ampton, or Plymouth, or Oxford, or Worcester; two
Bedfords, or Durhams, or Lancasters ; and in respect of
population, a Coventry, or Derby, or Southampton, or York,
or Swansea ; two Canterburys, or Colchesters, or Lincolns,
or Shrewsburys. In short, nearly one-seventh part of the
entire population •of England and Wales reside in the
metropolitan district.
Briefly, then, modern London comprises the old city,
the neighbouring city of Westminster, and six Parlia-
mentary boroughs—Marylebone, Finsbury, and the Tower
Hamlets on the north side of the Thames; and Lambeth,
Southwark, and Greenwich on the south, and several out-
lying districts, now part and parcel of the metropolis. The
city proper, that is, the old Rorsan Londinium and the city
suburbs, or parts without the walls. occupies an area of 725
acres, and contains 97 parishes within" and 11 "
wirh-
uut." The city and Parliamentary boroughs together have
an area of 50 square miles; and the extensive districts of
uswgton, nun iiamwersmitu are not yet in-
cluded in a borough. Altogether, that agglomeration of
houses which we call London, including various suburban
districts, spreads over an area of 122 square miles, 51 of
which are in Middlesex, 36 in Surrey, and 35 in Kent.
Within the limits are comprised 36 registration districts
and poor-law unions, and 186 parishes. There are at least
6,500 streets and lines of road. The religious wants of
the population are provided for by about 470 churches and
episcopal chapels, and 650 places of worship belonging to
Roman Catholics, Jews, Protestant Dissenters, and other
denominations. Every day, or rather everynight, 17,000,000
cubic feet of gas are consumed, and 90,000,000 gallons of
water ; though it would be unfair to assume that Londoners
are therefore the greatest water-drinkers in the world, for
no less than 8,000 publichouses and beershops ore devoted
to the supply of stronger drinks.
This wonderful aggregation of humanity—this immense
town growing so certainly and rapidly—deserves ,a better
history of its progress than has yet appeared. Very clever
and industrious men have entered partially on the task,
narrating the growth of certain localities, and exploring
ancient records and modern books of archaeological research
for sketches of manners and the architecture of different
epochs. But, as yet, London in its entirety has not been
sketched. We have tried, in the following pages, to bring
the diversified labours of many explorers into a focus, to
add ne slight amount of original research, and, by so cbmig,
tell a tale that all may read of the growth of the great
city. Starting from the first authentic traces of the British
town, we shall trace briefly, we trust not unattractively,
the history i f the splendid Roman city, and how in due
time it included in its metropolitan area, stately Westmins-
ter and busy Southwark, the western fields to Chelsea,
Bayswater, and Hammersmith, the pleasant slopes of
northern Hampstead, merry Islington, Shoreditch and
Hackney, Bethnal Green, Stepney and Poplar, and
stretched even to the slopes of the Kentish and Surrey
Hills, including Greenwich and Camberwell in its vast
domain.

FIDE, PEE.,TILENCE, AND FAMINE.
We must now recount some of the terrible calamities
which befel the City in these early days, and necessarily
hindered its progress. No town on the face of the globe has
experienced more appalling visitations. Earthquake ex-
cepted, there is sonic° a form of human suffering which the
inhabitants of London did not endure during the four cen-
turies after the Norman period. We are so accustomed to
hear of the terrors of the Great Plague of 1665, and the
Great Fire of the succeeding year, that we are induced to
ignore the previous fearful pestilences and conflagrations
which time after time almost depopulated the City and re-
duced it to ashes. The more terrible of these visitations
we shall now-briefly enumerate. We have already men-
tioned several great fires previous to the destruction of St.
Paul's in 1086. In 1212 a fire broke out at Southwark;
crossed the river, and made fearful havoc. When the
flames had subsided, the charred bodies of 3,000 persons
were found. In 1483, Leadenhall, which was built in 1419
by Alderman Sir Simon Eyre, for a public granary, was
totally destroyed, with many other houses. Storms and
hurricanes, too, did their work. In 1090, 600 houses and
several churches were blown down. In 1439 many houses
were unroofed, and Old Change nearly demolished; and in
February, 1444, a great storm struck down the steeple of
St. Paul's.
We have records of eleven awful pestilences, which filled
the streets of the City with tho dead and dying. In 1348,
50,000 deaths occurred, and the dead bodies were hastily
carted to spots in the suburbs. Sir Walter de Manny pur-
ehaserl a plot of ground at a ripe. eallpd Spittln Cross, near
West Smithfield, and gave it for a cemetery. In after
years the same Sir Walter de Manny established there a
monastery for the monks of the Chattreuse, out of which
grew the present Charterhouse; but for very many years
after the monks took possession a stone cross with a Latin_
inscription reminded tho passers-by of tZ,lpinuono-sterirnokenno
thousands who mouldered below.
were carried off in two days, among
them
King Edward
in
nil-the Duke persona
Lan-
caster;o and so great was 1
111. prohibited the slaughteringofl
as the putrified blood and entrails. y
the fright
draining into the Thames, vreerrrei ttle within the City,
in the streets, and
pi pestilence carried off,
Bute to the sickness. This t jn_esteilanygsupposed to contri-
-1 67,374 persons; Paris lost
between January and . 11
'ld?"' Five years later there was
50,060 in the same
1ien).407, 30,000 of the inhabitants were
another visitation.
aliing Henry IV., fled appalled to Leeds
Castle,
tld off,
theSepternber, 1478, the plague again broke
for 14 months with terrible results. A new
coiaeen,dKrea gte. andd
In
form of pes e sweating
30,000 persons
mayors, six aldermen, three she •
tilencel apdpeared in 1485, known as th •
sickness. Two oi .
~ eriffs,
and many thousands of the citizens fell victims to the ter-
y *VII. removed with
rible visitant. Fifteen years afterwards,
sickness once
hwiesrecocoarrrtietod ocffalbayiop. lagulne ;15a1n8d,
the
oosrweating
more appeared, and it is estimated that one-third of the
population were carried off. In li2l and 1525, plague agaia
raged ; and, in the latter year, Henry -VIII. retreated to
Eltham. Our last record r -ffers to 1528, when, for the last
time, the fatal and mysterious sweating sickness again
visited London, with terrible results. Added to thew
appalling calamities, were occasional famines, caused by
bad harvest-. In-1258, 20,000 died of absolute starvation
in the streets of London •
besieged Jerusalem for, says he,
believe old Fleetwood, the horrors of
and in 1270, so terrible was the
want, that, if we may t
were renewed in London;
"parents did eat their own children 1"

WOLSEY'S GATE-lIOrsE.
Just through the Bar, on the right hand side of Fleet-
the lane leading to Lincoln's Inn, and bear-
- -..rv), is the gate-house at the end of
- Temple. This gate-house
''posed by Cardi-
"r man,

street
ing the name of
the passage leading to the Islicuu. -
was built by Sir Amias Panlet, as a fine ru.r_
nal Wolsey. When Wolsey was a young and a pus._
parson of Lymington, he had offended Sir Amias, who, say
the old biographers of the cardinal, put him into the stocks.
Fifteen years afterwards, Wolsey was the greatest man in
England, and ordered his old persecutor to come to London,
where he lived in a state of semi-captivity for six years. He
ornamented thoPfront of the house with coats of arms, car-
dinals' hats, and other devices ; and, not being possessed of
the spirit irophecy, could not foresee that, in 300 years'
time, a hair reaser of lively imagination would dignify hie

penal house with the style of a "palace of Henry VIII. and
Cardinal Wolsey."

AN ENGLISH SLAVE MART.
There were two fairs held at Tothill Fields ; one, Nag•.-
claim's fair, lasting three days ; and another, lasting 31
days, instituted by a grant from Edward 111. These fairs
were doubtless scenes of great debauchery, winked at for
profit's sake by the chapter, who took the lion's share otthe
proceeds. James 1., however, suppressed the fairs. In
1618 a Bridewell—much wanted in the neighbourhood, we
should think---was erected in Tothill Fields. In earlier
times there had been joustings and other sports; wagers
of battle were held there, and sorcerers and witches
punished. During the raging of the great plague pest-
houses (standing about 40 years since) were built, and the
dead buried in great numbers ; and in 1651 the Scotch pri-
soners, taken by Cromwell, were publicly sold in Tothill
Fields to several merchants, who sent them as slaves to the
Barbadoes ; not, however, until some 1,200 men, worn en,
and children, who had sunk under their sufferings, were
buried in the Fields. We may mention, incidentally, that
somewhat to the west of the Sanctuary, stood, in Queen
Mary's time, a storehouse of ordnance, and a narrow pas-
sage leading to it was named Storehouse Gate, since cor-
rupted into Storey's Gate.

FRI.3tROSE-HILL OF OLD.
As we stand on the sunlit of Primrose-hill, to the north
of the Regent's-park, it is not very easy to realize the idea„
that in the Saxon days a dense forest reached almost to the
city boundaries. This forest of Middlesex, as it was called,
was the lair of wild bulls, stags, terrific boars, such as the
adventurous hunter now meets with in the German or Po-
lish forests, and packs of wolves. It is a popular mistake
that the last-named animals were extirpated by
King Ed gar
in the tenth century. They were numerous in Britain .ter
centuries after that monarch's bones were laid in Glaston-
bury Abbey, and the citizens of Saxon London might.
sometimes hear, in the stillness of the night, the long,
dreadful howl of the hungry beasts, as they prowled around
the fields lying between the city walls and the tangled forest
beyond. Thieves and outlaws, too, driven for their crimes
from the abodes of civilised men, lurked in the forest re-
cesses, meet companions for the savage brutes around them.
It is supposed that the old Roman Watling-strest had cut,
a way through this wild district, and travellers from the
north might congratulate themselves if, having escaped
the fierce beasts of prey, they reached London with whole
skins and unrobbed pouches. There was fine hunting in
those days, we may be sure, when, with horse and hound,
brand and hunting-spear, the Saxon thanes and ealdermen
rode through the forest towards Hama -steed, in pursuit of
stag or boar. Towards the end of the twelfth century,
Fitastephen, a faithful chronicler, with a poetic taste, thus
describes the north-western suburb :—" On the north am
cornfields, pastures, and delightful meadows, intermixed
with pleasant streams, on which stand many a mill, whose
clack is so greatful to the ear. Beyond them an immense
forest extends itself, beautiful with woods and groves, and
full of the lairs and coverts of beasts and game, stags, bucks,
bu 0.,., and wild hulls." The forest of Middlesex was dis-
afforested in 1218, about forty years after Fitzstephen
wrote ; but Hampstead was retained as a royal preserve,
and the heath is mentioned in a proclamation by Henry
VIII., for preserving game for the royal "disport and,
pastime."

ORIGIN OF " HACKNEY COACHES."

Before quitting Hackney, we will devote a few lines to
the correction of a popular mirtake. Our young readers
scarcely know what a hackney-coach was like. They have
heard, of course, of the creaking, dirty, slow vehicles, with
many-caped drunken drivers, which flourished in Loudon
before Sbillibeer invented the omnibus, or cabs werer
known. It is very generally believed, and, indeed, stated
in standard histories of London, that these hired vehicles
were called hackney-coaches because they were first mn -
ployed on the road to Hackney, in conveying genteel citi-
zens to their suburban homes. This is a great mistake.
The word hackney may be traced to the Dutch, French,
Spanish, and Italian languages. In our own tongue it is
at least as old as Chaucer and Froissart, who borrowed it
from the French haquenee, a slow-paced nag. Froissart
says, in one of those glorious chronicles which fired the
blood of Claverhouse, " The knights are well horsed, and
the common people and others on litell hakencys and gel-
dynges." The word subsequently acquired the meaning
of " let for hire," and was seen applied to other matters
than horses. In " Love's Labour Lost," Shakspeare says,
" Your love, perhaps, is a hacknie." In " Hudibratr we
meet with " a broom, the nag and hackney of a Lapland
hag." Pope calls himself " a hackney scribbler." Addi-
son and Steele, in the " Spectator" and " Tatler," speak
of " driving in a hack ;" and we surely remember the
hackney•coach in which Sir Roger de Coverley went to
Westminster Abbey. Hogarth gave the expressive name of
" Bate Hackabout" to the poor harlot whose progress he
depicted. Cooper, in the " Task," uses " hackneyed" as,
an active verb ; and Churchill employs it is an adjective.
So, there are authorities enough for the meaning of " hack-
ney ;" and the pleasant village, now the centre of a subur-
ban town, must be deprived of the honour of the invention
of hackney.coaches.
These will give some idea of the variety of matter
which the volume contains. It will be found in-
valuable by those who wibh to have something
more than a mere vague idea of the rise and progress,
of the greatest city in the world. It possesses an
excellent index ; and its extremely moderate price
will place it within the reach of all.