The age-herald., 1898-01-09
4 TOUR OF WH|TECHAPEL Interesting Sights in London's
 Most Squalid Quarter. DO NOT WEAR SILK HATS This Unique Warning Was Appended to the An- nouncement of Personally Conducted
 Trip Through Darkest London.

It is an accepted axiom that the country cousin knows the sights of the metropolis far better than the true Londoner, writes a correspondent. No self-respecting prov incial visitor would return to his or her native shire without having explored St. Paurs and the Tower, South Kensington Museum and Westminster Abbey and very much more But some few of us have learned to know Londons underlife and the fascinating interest it possesses.
 My own experience has been chiefly ac- quired in the pursuit of knowledge as to the labors in which the poor of my own sex are mostly engaged; and if have nev- CT ascended the monument, and if there are corners of the British Museum which have not yet explored, have in com pensation an inside acquaintance with dancing saloons in St. George ge's-in-the-east, with dust yards over the water, with many unsavory factories, and other things of whose existence, even most people are un- aware.
 Therefore it was that, when I saw an announcement on the part of the Inter- national Information Agency, Trafalgar Buildings. to send "personally conducted' parties of colonial and American visitors into Darkest Whitechapel," promising them revelations which, once seen, would never be forgotten, I wondered whether there were still sights that I knw not, and again, I wanted to know what might be shown to visitors from over seas as fairly representative of the life and surroundings of our poorer working population.
 It was not difficult to arrange to join a party. A warning slip of paper sent with the notification that the explorers would start from Charing Cross at 7:30, charged gentlemen not to wear tall hats, but other wise the preliminary instructions had noth- ing to note. At the office we duly met and to my delight I found the party con sisted of three charmingly typical Ameri- cans-two ladies and gentleman-who had done the grand tour, been received in audience by the pope, had visited every thing in Paris from Versailles to the cafes chantants, had been to see Windsor Castle and Stratford-on- Avon, and who were posi- lively thirsting for sensations and histori- cal information. We went by train to Aldgate, travelling third class, as a prep aration, no doubt, for the squalor we were to witness later
 been inclined to think that the East End was much less black than it had been painted, and that the Bowery of New York or the slums of Chi cago had far more squid wretch edness to show. Spitalfields, how ever rathed led them to change this view, and indeed, Flower and Dean streets, Fash ion and Dorset streets-names of such diff ferent suggestion-reveal sights of pow erty, dirt and rags that is hard to view unmoved.
 , Tiny boys and girls, their shoeless little feet in the gutter, gnawing a dry crust; drink-sodden old women reeling along be- tween others not much less intoxicated than themselves; knots of shabby, broken down men around the public house doors. were scenes we noted not once Cnly, or even twice, and sadly one thought how many there are still unreached by all that is being so nobly done. And ycs, as 1t struck our transatlantic visitors some in fluence must be at work, for in all the hours we were thus wandering around there was no rude word or remark passed upon us, which some ten or twelve years ago would assuredly not have been tho case; and though comment might have been harmless, it would ha1e been rough and outspoken.
 In the course of this stage of our per ambulations we were on our way to what was certainly one of the great sights of the tour. This was the actual room in which the only one of the Whitechapel murders committed indoors-that of tho miserable Jane Kelly-was done. It is situated in one of the most wretched of the courts abutting on Dorset street, up little passage way so low that a tall per son must stoop to go through it. At the present time it is occupied by very poor old woman, who works at flock pulling for heap mattresses.
 The next phase into which our investiga- tions resolved themselves was that of n- specting the common lodging houses. On a night so hot and heavy as this was none were inside them, save those at their sup pers, who could possibly remain ihe doorsteps or the pavement. A somewhat superior one was this, though only of the
 cheapest class, for has 1t not, in add- tion to the general kitchen, with it's huge, glowing fire, library in the basement, in which several morning and evenin~ pa- pers were taken, and a row of shelves with some well-thumbed volumes upon them?
 Our next visit was to one whose interior arrangements were entirely filled by dou- ble-bedded cubicles at eight pence a night, for even poor married folks are sometimes down on their luck" as we'll as those who fill the houses devoted either to men or women, and of the latter there are two or three hard by. There Is always Somc- thing even more sad and piiful in these last resorts of homeless and friendless wo- manhood than in those of men, and some of the poor creatures in the hot kitchen seemed to have touched the lowest depths of despair and poverty
 The mistress was buxom, kindly body, with whom her lodgers apeared on per- fectly friendly terms. Many sold flowers, trades, or occasionally did little char ing, and of a few, as she said, 'I think they hardly know how they live them selves" And among them, commanding the respect that comparative wealth gives, was woman, the wife of a man moving and esteemed in business circles, and reg ularly allowed and paid 30s. a week. She had been an inmate for several years, pay ing her half crown weekly with unfail- ing punctuality. and what may be her life's romance, which sent her into the oblivion of Spitalfelds "doss house." is proba- bly, untold there. There is more than trace, however, now upon her face of drinking habits,
 But there is not much more now for us to see. We go down the rather infamous Pearl street, where vice and white aprons have significance in common We pass the Cowshed, known to the initiated as the place where the cheapest beer and spir- its are to be obtained in the whole metro- polls, and again we are reminded of an- other murder, historic in Scotland Yards annals, by having the respectable-looking oilman's shop pointed out to us ss the house in which Wainwright did Harriet Lane to death, as we come out into the