The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-06-15

''There is safety in numbers" says an old
truism, besides which, on Sunday morning,
picked constables, the flower of the force, are
| distributed through the fair at intervals of fifty
yards. / arrived ct my destination at $50 a.
NJ, and found pandemonium in full swing. Up
the narrow roadway are placed stalls three deep,
on which are to be found every kind of salable
article, from meat to mouse-traps- Pettieoat
! lane is devoted to general merchandise, and the
cross streets to second hand clothing exclusively.
The stolen goods of the week from all quarters
appear in tempting array. Every species OF
merchandise, food, clothing, books and live
stock, every style of clothing, from a priests
surplice to a seedy frock-coat, from a duchess's
toilet to a child's p~inafore, may be seen on these
stalls. Here is a table containing jersey suits
for little boys presided over bya salesman with
his eternal yell, Buy! Buy! Buy. Buyi Buyl
Buy! Here y'are en- y piece yer like. Buyi
Buyi Buy!' ETC., etc, fitting his suits on a living
model perched on his barrow and pulling them
off for purchasers as fast as his hands can work.
They are goods stolen from some clothing
house and sell rapidly at a shilling rs centsl a
suit. What is got for nothing can be sold for
nothing. Next l met a tropical bird stall, most
of the birds being honest British sparrows with
the feathers of some rare species stuck on with
muciiage. A book-stall follows, containing edl-
tons of priceless value, amongst common works
fflched from second hand book-stalls. Meat-bar-
rows abound, on which the principal attraction
is pork, invariably covered with suspiciously blue
measly looking spots.
A very large proportion of the meat sold ON
these barrows consists Of that which has been
thrown aside by London butchers, or condemned
by the inspector, as unfit for human food. 1t Is
then sold to these men, who are on the lookout,
and buy it up rapidly; selling it even more so,
and at liberal profits in the Sunday fair.
And the crowd, the molly cosmopolitan crowd
who throng and surge on the narrow ~footpath,
forming a solid, moving mass Of humanity.
Human rats who vegetate under ground for six
days Of every week, emerge on the seventh for
one single hour like moies in wet weather, with
ascoin in their skinny hands to purchase the
necessaries of life. There are Turks, japanese,
Cinnamon, Russians, Scandinavians, French,
Germans, Italians and Spaniards. Many are
clad In remnants of their national costume,
which gives a weird picturesoueness to the scene.
There Is every color and shade of countenance.
Black, brown, white and cream; but there are
some characteristics common to all. Each indl-
vidual among those thousands of persons is thin,
dirty and squalid, his face stamped with the dull
apathy of despair, and scared with the bar SIMS
ter that can only appear as the fruit of genera
tions Of depravity. Even the little infants in
their mothers arms-for even in this hot-bed of
unnatural vice women do manage to re-
produce their kind-do not look like 9th
er babies. They seem even at that tender
age to wear that bar sinister on their often
deformed, always truly ugly, little faces. But
there is comedy as well as tragedy In the Sunday
morning melodrama, though it is apts to border
very closely upon either the nauseating or the
tragical. In one of my visits Il made ~several)
whilst elbowing my way through the throng |
detected a few yards before me a man who had
missed his vocation in life. He was a human
skeleton, and had been designed for a dime
museum, which position he was most admirably
qualified to fill. Unhappily, however, in its
thoughtful care for the children Of men, provi-
dence had made a slight mistake and dumped
this deplorable specimen of the human race on
the wrong side of the Atlantic, where dime
museums are unknown. So here he was vast
ing his invaluable qualities, which ought to have
brought him 5000 a week, on the unappreciative
audience in Petticoat lane.
Clutched in his skinny fingers was a single
penny, with which he elbowed his way from
food stall to food stall, gazing hungrily at the
contents of each. He stood long at the meat
tables, but finally fixed his affections upon some
salt fish long alienated from their native deep,
and displayed in tempting, if odoriferous
rows. Laying Town his penny, he received
two large, uncooked ~bloaters, which there
and then he proceeded to eat. Holding these
ex-denizens of the deep by the caudal appendage
so thoughtfully provided by nature for a handle.
he calmly devoured them, head, skins, bones,
tail and all. No considerations of cleanliness or
~longings for the unattainable luxuries of cookery
disturbed his enjoyment Of the toothsome repast.
Leaving the record of a painful experience with
| a patent medicine vender, together with other
amusing items for another glimpse" l hasten
to the end. At II o'clock sharp all Sunday fairs
close by act of Parliament. AS the melodious
bells from various churches chime the hour of
noon there is a general stampede. Barrows are
wheeled away, stalls are cleared, merchants
vanish with their goods and the surging crowd
melts, like the mists of a summer morning or
clouds before the rising sun. The whole picture
vanishes in five minutes like the scenes in a
panorama, the tavern doors (closed by law dur
ing Sunday morningl are thrown wide open and
Rag Fair becomes a memory of the past until
next Sunday awakes it into fresh activity.