The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-03 00:00:00

THE RACE-COURSE AT NIGHT.

We all know how cheerless a ballroom looks on the
morning after the ball ; or, worse still, the supper-room,
with its fragments of programmes, odd gloves, and bon-
bon papers littering the grates, in which only the ashes
remain. Still all these are hilarious symbols compared to
the Derby course at night. The Grand Stand is a
mere white spectre : the hill-side is empty, but sparkled
over with little fires, which twinkle far and
near. Nearly all the booths are closed, though there
is loud swearing and obscene talk to be heard from most,
and in all lights shine brightly. This has sometimes a
curious effect, for the shadows thrown on the thin canvas
have the effect of a fantoccini show, and thus the figures
of men in their shirts, and women washing in
equal dishabille, are constantly passing over the scenes.
The " German Opera" is an institution which only
such a gathering as Epsom could produce. It is held on
Epsom common at a public-house called The Two Brewers.
Here all the German, Savoyard, and Italian girls who
play on tambourines and hurdy-gurdies regularly assemble
of a night during the race week, and here, too, a very
fair sprinkling of what are termed "swells" may be met
who are so kind to the youngest and the prettiest of
the foreigners as even to offer to drive some of them
back to London—an offer which is seldom de-
clined. The back of the great stands only recall
to mind some bad colliery accident when the bodies have
been brought " to bank," and lie huddled about in their
tattered rags. Beneath Langland's stand some 400
people were sleeping of every age and of every sex. One
was a child of about twelve months old, who was evidently
ill ; but nobody knew whose it was, except that the
mother—a tramp—had left it there while she went to
look for its father. We met the mother a minute after,
and she said she had walked from London to meet the father,
to whom, of course, she was not married, to try and make
him do something for the infant. Her search had been
fruitless, however, though she was confident of ultimate
success. Behind all the stands it was the same tale—
men and women, boys and girls, lying huddled up toge-
ther for warmth in heaps. These, however, were the
luxurious spots—the posts of vantage. Those who
could not find room slept out upon the common round
little fires of furze, and the police had sometimes
to drag the people from around them to prevent their
clothes being lighted by the spreading fire. In one case
the tattered jacket of a man was smouldering beneath
him, and yet, though quite sober, it was with difficulty he
could be awakened. These, as a rule, were all
of the' class who " brush you down," fetch water
for horses, shoeblacks, and all sorts of nondescripts
ready to turn their hands to anything, and to
whom nothing comes amiss, from holding a horse to steal-
ing a watch, The majority, however, leave Epsom as
hungry as they entered it. Under one waggon—for it
must be remembered that, as a rule at Epsom, the people
who have waggons never sleep in them but under
them, sheltered round by bits of canvass—we come upon
a party of negro serenaders. They were very exhausted,
having walked from London the previous night, and
having been singing incessantly for twelve hours. They
had, however, taken £7 Bs., with which they seemed con-
soled, though they, in common with every other person
on the course were loud in their denunciations
of such a poor Derby day. We have as yet only spoken
of the comfortable sleepers out, but beside those who
had the shelter of being under stands or waggons there
were literally hundreds upon hundreds who slept in dry
ditches, under the lee of any wall or bush, or, as with the
Savoyards behind the shelter of their organs. It was a
band of homeless London, with all its vice and poverty con-
densed into one little space, where wasteful riot in the dan-
cing booths and miseg and squalor outside them, could be
seen in every forni- To those who want a new picture of
life in these clays of universal novelty we can only say let
them see the Derby run and then go on the course at
midnight and remain till the shivering dawn wakes up its
wandering population. They will come back from this
inspiction certainly wiser and most probably sadder men.
—Pall Mall Gazette.

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THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY MORNING, JUNE 3, 1870

DISASTROIJS STORM IN GERMAN Y.
the Industriel Alsacien says :—" Germany has been
visited by a dreadful storm. The disasters are immense,
houses have been carried away, and a large number of
persons have perished. At Grosbun (Siebenburgen) the
rain was so heavy that houses and their inhahitants were
carried away by the current of water produced. After
the subsiding of the flood hundreds of cattle, interspersed
with human corpses and the ruins of houses, were disco-
vered in the slime ; more than forty dead bodies have
been recovered up to the present time; of the sixty fami-
lies composing the commune scarcely ten remain alive.
At Nazy-Kun eighty houses were carried off by the waters;
sixty persons were destroyed by this catastrophe, to say
nothing of the loss of property, which is exceedingly
great, At Erfurt the lightning struck several objects,
notably the steeple of All Saints' Church, consuming the
spire."