The Sun.
London, England, 1853-09-08 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1853,

" I do not mind holding the plough in Val.
Diemen's Land, but I cannot make up my mind
to do it here," was the remark fully 20 years ago
of a respectable farmer to a friend who was dis-
suading him from emigration. The style of
living expected of him in England, the parlour
life which his daughters must lead, the disinclina-
tion of his sons to work as labourers, combined
with the high rents due to the competition of
his own class, convinced the sensible yeoman that
England was no longer a home for him and his
family. They at least could not enter upon life
in the style in which he was living, and maintain
it ; while neither he nor they had courage to
dismiss all servants to whose work their own
hands were physically competent, and to become
literally working farmers, dining in the kitchen
with their servants. Possibly could they have
done so, they need not have taken the voyage to
Van Diemen's Land. This little incident, how-
ever, is a striking illustration of the painful posi-
tion of a large number of our middle classes, and
of the only remedy which they can look to.
There has been a natural and growing tendency
amongst the class lying between those whom th 3
income tax begins with and the wealthy, not
merely to educate and cultivate their minds, but
to adopt to the utmost the indulgences and re-
finements in daily life of those above them.
Sens, whose fathers began their apprenticeship
ith the rough and handicraft work of their
e,
what they have brought up merely to superintend
situations, never worked at ; or, professions,
soetTships, and employments of all
kinds
for them which will not
demand an
..,11pgt t
hands
anan,thor compel them to soil
their
The daughters too-heoilli.,superfine black coat.
whose mothers could do
anything in the
not venture esw ef rbtoenYlondthemaksicnugllethrye
to the attic, dare
most delicate pastry or
piano, st,h lest their hands
should be unfit for the
feudal e awingbook,
or embroidery. The
fe
way, with which the parents began,nti the small
dining at the same time with them, ilne stervants
he onl
room which was enliv y
n ened by a fire in the
witer
was gradually changed as the family grow
up;an impassable line was drawn between the kitchen;
and the parlour ; the mother and father,
indeed,
remain from early habits a kind of connecting
link, but the children have become members of
another caste ; they are young ladies and young
gentlemen of the present half century. The
pipe is exchanged for the cigar, the cheerful
song for the piano, and a thousand things
" very proper for pa' and ma' in their young
days, —whv they won't do now. Now this would
all be pretty enough and bearable enough but for
one unhappy result—the young men don't get on,
and the young ladies don't go off ; the former
come back upon their fathers to save them from
sinking, the latter surround mamma till she looks
more like a Lady Abbess than a matron.
It cannot be denied that the evil, as we sup-
pose we must call it, is a wide-spread one. The
lower strata of the middle classes are cultivating
domestic and business habits which will not bring
up and settle families in the world. What, then,
is the remedy for it? There is none whatever
but a return to working habits. While corn-laws
interfered with the eiml.rant's market for his
b
chief product, and
while
at home that families d ur was such a drug
doing their own work was
only a sure means to fill the parish workhouse,
the encouragement to fall back on manual in-
dustry was much less. Now it is altogether
Our domestic servants are rapidly becoming
co gain.m.
cc helps," it being questionable whether we shallil
not need an immigration of negroes or coolies, if
we are to retain the mastery in our own houses,

while the cost of keeping servants will advance
rapidly. Young gentlemen and young ladies, de-
riving that title from dress, education, and accom-
plishments alone, will, if things go on as they are
now doing, find it remunerative enough to use
their muscular system a little more than many of
them have done ; and if they can guide its exer-
tions by a clear head and a willing heart, they
need not despair even in old England. If, how-
ever, like the farmer, with whose remark we began,
they cainot brook the apron, the paper cap, or
the smock frock at home, they can easily put up
with it all in a colony. There, not only are the
witnesses of their former habits left behind, but
all their new associates will live in like style, or
rather in no style, with themselves. Many will
also be found who will sympathise with them in the
first hardships of a change which they themselves
experienced. Still the remedy is the same ; there
must be the change from polished idleness to plain
rough work. They must take Mrs. CHISHOLM for
their teacher, must doff the attire of the office, the
counting-house, and the parlour, and. make up
their minds to honest industry in the most un-
varnished sense of the phrase.
On no other terms can our overdone middle
classes relieve themselves. Labour is alleviating its
condition by emigration, in the case both of those
who go to a better market for their work, and of
those who remain to enjoy a widened one. The
hundreds of young men and young women who
answer in vain every advertisement for a secre-
or railway situation, for a nursery
tary, clerk,
governess, or a teacher of every accomplishment
for 201. a year, must relieve their market also.
They are not wanted here ; they are not wanted
anywhere. In this country they only lower the
salaries of the lucky ones who get a berth till the
luck is hardly to be envied. In Australia, or in
Canada, they are equally superfluous ; diggers in
Australia, or working-farmers in Canada, espe-
cially if commanding but a very moderate amount
of capital, may see their way to a certain inde-
pendence ; but educated quill-drivers find no use
for their powers but that of writing melancholy
letters home. If, however, whether male or
female, they have sufficient physical vigour to get
over the commencement of a life of sober work,
their sky soon begins to brighten. Habit soon
makes all easy, robuster health and conscious
independence imparts the pride of men and women
to their bearing. They soon cease to be ashamed
of what daily makes them aware of its advantages,
and the hope of yet better days makes the young
lady, from some terrace in an English town, sing
merrily in a Melbourne kitchen ; or a 8.A., and
even an M.A., of one of our universities, whistle
as he drives his waggon to and from the baggage-
covered quays. For our part, we still prefer
agriculture to gold digging. Van Diemen's Land
is now becoming as wealthy by the gold diggers
paying 4s. for the 41b. loaf, as the diggers are by
keeping what they can save after such enormous
expenses, and so many failures. The grower of
food will for a long time have the advantage over
the digger. The supplies from England or America
are so distant, that all the farmers within easy
reach of the Land of Gold must always have a
first-rate market for their produce. The tempta-
tions and the risks of the agricultural life are also
much less, and the prospect every way better for
those who purpose a colonial settlement. In
regard to Canada, the letter in our Friday's paper,
from an old correspondent, entirely bears out Mr.
RONEY'S interesting statements. There can be no
doubt that the able-bodied industrious labourer,
the little farmer of small capital, hardly getting a
living on a few acres of land, and carting for his
neighbours ; the farmer's son, active and strong,
with an amount of property which here is scarcely
sufficient to work properly a small farm ; the
farmer himself, yet hale, with a vigorous rising
family, hardly able to make two ends meet—
would all find on the Banks of the Ottawa, and
almost anywhere in Canada, a glorious field for
their industry or their capital.

An interesting festivity took place last evening
at Dover, in celebration of the opening of the
Lord. Warden Hotel—a splendid establishment
in connection with the terminus at that seaport
of the South-Eastern Railway, and one which it
is understood will be conducted upon a scale pre-
cisely similar to that of the Pavilion Hotel at
Folkestone. The occasion was one possessing a
twofold interest in every respect entitled to pub-
lic consideration. It indicated a large amount of
local prosperity already achieved, while, at the
same time, it augured the yet farther continuance
of that success and its more extended develop-
ment. During the last ten years, as the Chair-
man of the occasion intimated yesterday, the con-
tinental traffic via Dover has been actually
doubled, and this, moreover, notwithstanding the
deteriorating effects of perpetual competition from
London direct and from Folkestone. Doubled
in a single decade, while the railway sys-
tem of the Continent may still be con-
sidered as, comparatively speaking, only
arrived at the period of its commencement,
the traffic through Dover to and fro between
France and England may be reasonably expected
to attain before long an increase much more ex-
traordinary. It is only now, as Mr. JAMES
MACGREGOR remarked last evening, that a trunk
line of 360 miles has connected the frontiers of
Spain with the city of Bordeaux, while in another
direction a yet larger enterprise of a similar
character, a trunk line 400 miles in length, has
just been completed between Strasburg and
Switzerland—in addition to all which it may be
confidently anticipated that Dover and Marseilles
will speedily be brought together by a new route
of direct steam communication. Bearing those
three facts in recollection, it must consequently,
we take it, be perfectly obvious that a remarkable
stimulus is at this moment on the eve of being
imparted to that Continental traffic, the extension
of which has even now been so astonishing both
in rapidity and magnitude. And of the Conti-
nental traffic Dover remains up to this hour
indisputably the focus, or centre, or prin-
cipal point of radiation. Of this fact we can-
not possibly doubt for an instant even while
we remember the sudden rise of the neighbour-
ing harbour of Folkestone. It becomes a matter
of interest, therefore, to all those who are soli-
citous to observe the fulfilment of those golden
anticipations, that the South-Eastern Railway
Company should in all respects aid, as far as it
possibly can, this advance along the path of social,
physical, political, and commercial improvement.
It cannot be forgotten, of course, that for the
progress already made in the direction above indi-
cated, the country is mainly, if not exclusively,
indebted to the enterprise displayed by the direc-
tors and promoters of that vast establishment.
Without the intervention of the South-Eastern
Railway Company, nothing of all this, obviously
enough, could in any way have been accomplished.
But for the zeal shown by the Directors of
that
Company in acquitting themselves of their
onerous and complicated responsibilities, we might
still have
miser-
able been not very far ahead of that miser-
olgrrt em mentioned last evening by Mr.
Ric z, under
between which a boat traversed the channel
half a dozen Dove r and Calais at a snail's pace, with
bed, cabmen, and wretchedconfined"
apassengers literally " crib-
the like of which nee for a period during
nowadays the traveller
pro-
ceed comfortably from London may
fOrtifications ! Thanks to the admirable
to the Paris
e manage-
ment, however, of the South-Eastern Railway
Company, matters have arrived at a position
wonderfully different. The original project has
been happily conducted by that management
mid-
way between the Sc and ylla of the public
the Cha-
rybdis of the shareholders—the latter being an in-
satiable greed of dividends, and the former an equally
insatiable greed of accommodation. Insomuch,
indeed, has the onward movement been expedited
by the Directors in spite of all these interposing
difficulties, that one of the after-dinner orators
yesterday had the delightful effrontery to talk
about the certainty of the time arriving when
alarms
d, w
travellers—[don't let the reader be
CMAY'S ever-
e
are not going to allude to Mr. MA
lastine. New Zealander !]--when travellers from
6 China shall procure tickets at the South-Eastern
Railway Station to carry them direct to Pekin.
And, what was more, the charming audacity
of the suggestion could be listened to last ,

evening by a body of commercial men as not by
any means extravagant. People's minds, in fact,
have of late years become accustomed to these
colossal notions, when telegraphic messages are
flashing instantaneously between Cornhill and the
Boulevards ; when electric wires can be " paid
out" in a gale of wind to Ostend ; when autumnal
excursions are made not to Boulogne or Weston-
super-mare, but to Alexandria and Constantinople;
when millions upon millions worth of gold can be
shipped to the mother country from Australia ;
and when the Celestial Empire is being overrun
from Yunnan to Mongolia by an army of Chinese
revolutionists.

At such an epoch in the world's history the
opening of an establishment, like the Lord Warden
Hotel at Dover, rises to an importance far above
the sordid level of a mere commercial speculation.
It must be regarded as something worthier of
consideration—as another link, for instance, in
that great chain which is binding together the
nations of the earth, and bringing them into more
immediate association. In speaking thus we are
guilty of no exaggeration whatever. We are not
giving utterance to merely fantastic hyperboles.
We are talking of plain matters of fact. We are
simply evincing our appreciation of what we be-
lieve in our heart and in our conscience to be at
once the channel and the security of the great
civilising movement of the age—that vast railway
system through which the marvellous powers of
the steam-engine and the electric telegraph are
rendered subservient to the social, political, phy-
sical, and intellectual advancement of the human
race.

TERRIBLE OCCURRENCE IN THE
STRAND, AND LOSS OF LIFE.

This morning, between the hours of eight and
nine, the greatest excitement was caused in the
Strand, in the immediate vicinity of Norfolk-street,
in consequence of the following frightful occurrence,
which was attended with fatal results to three per-
sons, the destruction of a vast amount of valuable
property, and serious injuries to one or two other
persons.

In order to make the account intelligible, it is
necessary to state that, at the corner of Arundel-
street, the opposite side to the Whittington Club-
house, a great number of men have been employed
by Mr. Lucas, the contractor, under the direction
of Mr. Abrahams, the surveyor, in preparing the
foundations for an extensive range of premises for
the Messrs. Smith, the well-known newsvenders.
The house adjoining the spot first named, was
numbered 184, in the Strand, was tenanted by
Mr. Thompson, a tailor, Mr. Henderson, a
daugerreotype artist, and several other families.
Fortunately, however, with the exception of Mr.
Thompson and his family, the other residents
were out of town, or the loss of life which we
should have to record would have been far more
serious than it really has been.
At a few minutes after eight o'clock, a young
man named George Dunn, proceeded as was his
daily custom to open the shop. Having taken
down one of the shutters, the glass commenced
cracking. At that moment a man was driving
one of Smith's express carts along the Strand, and
hearing the glass breaking, he called out to Dunn,
" You have broken a window, have you ?" He
then noticed Dunn enter the passage, and at the
same instant the whole of the lofty building fell
with a crash resembling a peal of thunder, which
so terrified the horse in Messrs. Smith's cart,: that
it refused to move an inch. At the same time
articles of furniture, heaps of bricks, and heavy
pieces of timber fell, some into the street, and a
considerable quantity amongst the men employed
on the adjoining property.
For the space of nearly five minutes it was almost
impossible to tell the amount of mischief done, for
the whole neighbourhood became completely ob-
scured in dust. As soon, however, as the dust had

in some measure cleared away, it was found that
not one brick of the building was left standing,
and that every person who was in the house at the
time was buried beneath the debris. Information
was at once sent for the aid of the police, and.
forthwith Mr. Superintendent Pearce and Inspec-
tors Dodd and Wilkinson arrived with a powerful
body of men of the F division. The officers at
once stopped the thoroughfare, and then com-
menced searching the ruins for the missing parties.
As soon as they had removed a few things from
the pavement they heard the cries of a female be-
low. Mr. Dodd upon removing the grating over
the vault that runs under the pavement, found
that the cries proceeded from that part of the pre-
mises. This person was found to be a young
woman, and Mr. Thompson's niece. By removing
the rubbish, the police and the men engaged on
the adjoining works succeeded in rescuing the
young woman, who was terribly alarmed, but for-
tunatly uninjured. She then stated that she was
certain Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were in the ruins,
as they were going to sit down to breakfast, when
she went to the cellar to draw some ale. It was
exceedingly fortunately that she did so, or she
would have been numbered with the dead.
The most strenuous exertions were made by all
present to get to the other unfortunate persons,
and after the lapse of some time, James Roe, fore-
man to Mr. Lucas, was found amongst the ruins
that had fallen into the vacant space in which the
men were at work, with his right thigh and leg
broken. He was forthwith placed on the police
stretcher and removed to King's College Hospital,
where he remains in a state of great agony. Every
one present laboured in a most praiseworthy man-
ner, and after the space of an hour the bodies of
Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were found terribly
crushed about the head and shoulders. They were
likewise placed on stretchers and taken to King's
College Hospital. The whole medical staff of the
institution was at once in attendance, but after
examining the bodies, pronounced life to be in
each extinct.

The police, the workmen of Mr. Lucas, &c.,
were next engaged till past 10 o'clock, when they
at length discovered the body of George Dunn, the
shopman, which was found terribly crushed and quite
dead. This body was likewise removed to King's
College Hospital. It is presumed that this unfor-
tunate person, on finding the glass breaking, per-
ceived the house was sinking, and that he entered
the premises again for the purpose of alarming his
employer, when the structure fell as he was passing
along the passage, and by that means lost his life.
The area of the intended new building for the
Messrs. Smith is a most extensive one, and there
can be no doubt that the catastrope was occasioned
by the operations for the foundation. There have
been for some few weeks at work on this site thirty
labourers in the employ of Mr. Lucas, and under
the immediate inspection of Mr. Abrahams, of
Howard-street, Strand, the surveyor to the Duke
of Norfolk's estate.

It would seem that every precaution had been
taken for securing Mr. Thompson's house by shoring
it up, but there is too much reason to fear that the
digging for the foundation was carried too deep for
the props to have any secure standing, and that,
consequently, their base being undermined, they
gave way, and the house thus suddenly deprived of
its main support fell as above described.
Information of the melancholy event has been
dispatched to the coroner's office, but the time is
not yet fixed for holding the inquest.
It was at first reported that no fewer than 16
persons had been prematurely hurried into eternity
by this accident, which, in all probability, would
have been the number had the other families living
in the house not been out of town. The house
was in the best state of repair, as some few years
since over 3001. was expended on it.
The latest intelligence from the hospital reports
James Roe, Mr. Lucas's foreman, to be in a most
critical state.