The Kenilworth Advertiser. — 1873-11-13 (Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England)

THE DARK SIDE OF ENGLISH LIFE.  The New York Tribune publishes a report of a lecture de. livered at Steinway Hall, New York, by Mr. Edward Jenkins, author of "Clines Baby," on "The England ot Today.' In the course of his lecture, Mr. Jenkins said :  . The amazing vitality and wealth of England transfix the foreigner with astonishment. The endless streets of noble mansions in Belgravia and May Fair, the magnificence of the merchants, the shipping on the rivers, give the spectator ideas of fabulous wealth, among which it would seem Impossible for poverty to have a place. But there exists a poverty and degradation so terrible that Lila a greater marvel than the splendour which covers it. I stood the other day gazing at the magnifixint pile of buildings in London erected on the plans of England's greatest architects. Where all these now stand. I used eight years ago to visit week after week the population of the artisan and labouring classes. Here were alleys with rude tenements occupied by families each occupying one room. The population was so dense that in one square mile were 4,500 people. There was an innumerable quantity  iu;ffitit  of gin *hops, which could not be diminished by prayer- man sailed for * idendieity Society ticket, which hi meetings or churches or Bibles. What um was it tt) gave him, and he, took his departure. Shortly afterpreach temperanoe and morality where the (Annul. ward% however, he retamecl, thrust himself into the stances made them not merely self-denial, but martyr- house, and strmck him (Lippingwell) senseless by Qom? But the Government walked ha and shoved out a blow,irem the silver teapot. The local osiestaide was these people. Where were they to go'! They had to called in, to whom the youth repeated his dory, and live near their work. The single ones got quartered both jamPered to Canterbury in search of a man whom on families, occupying a share of the room and a ninth he described as having been guilty of the robbery and of the bed. The families got into cellars Sr encroached outrage. They, bower, did not succeed in mediae on other families; got into holeslike spiders. Intolerable with any one whom the page would reoorisei al' are the conditions of life of a popalati ackedllke that. though it is understood that the Canterbury city police Healthissimplya name for moslified Isease. All they apprehended a man the Name night answering the careforisa night'siodging. Mostofthealliminthestreets description. On the following day the superintend' day. Yen look at a huge animal cruellystriking the dent of the division (Mr. Walker) mid a visit to the thin creature which strives to guide him homeward., vicarage, and made certain inquiries and an investiYou see boys of ten or twelve with old, hard faces and , gallon, which led him to direct the apprehension of cunning eyes 9 taking their brandy and cigars. Con- . the page. The suoerintendent found that the indentssideringisowthey all live, whet is left to them but to : lion in the teapot was such as could not reasonably seek nepenthe in (suicide or intoxication? In England have been produced by coming in contact with a perI have heard men deny these things, which existed son's faoe • and moreover, that the money-boxes had around the corner. This picture, you say, is that of a been opened by great force, as though from repeated tr°plat. It is true of dmost every district in kicks. Indentations of the heel of a very small boot enhrwhere the poor congregate. It is true not appeared upon them, which were found to correspond only of London, but of hundreds and thousands of other exactly with the size of boots worn by the prisoner. places. It is reported that there are 26,000 houses in Shortly after the boy was locked up he asked to see Liverpool °templed by families in single rooms; that at hie master, to whom he admitted that the whole lead one-third of the population of that city were of his statement was a fabrication; that he cornBeing in that oondition. What are their rooms like f mitts I the robbery, and in order to attribute it to a In rooms 1211. by 13ft. and nit, high lived eight stranger made his nose bleed, battered in the teapot, and persons paying a rent of 4s. per week. Some of feigned insensibility. The contents of the money-boxes the 'vie* are occupied by relays of human were found concealed in a place he described. To animal/. Persons attending at the theatres at perfect, if possible, the artful proceeding, the boy had night let them out to market people who begin actually taken a mendicity ticket from its repository, their work when the others cease. We can even tore it into pieces, and threw them outside the door of give worse examples than that. Sir James Simpson his master's house. The magistrates sentenced_ the visited a man living at the top of h house in whose prisoner to six months' imprisonment with hard labour, room was an enormous 'pig. He asked the seen, and regretted that his age (just over 16 years) prevented "How did this pig get up here?" "Sure," said he, them ordering him to undergo a sound thrashing. "he never was clown." Let us hasten to breathe the purer air of the sountry. There, amid clipped hedges, the fields of wheat, where the meanest dwellings are covered with running vines; there, at all events, you say, we shall find health and happiness. You talk with the old, bent man, who is dill toiling with the temdes and he takes you to his garret, where he hae slept with seven or eight others for fifteen or twenty years. Or if you are a novelist, you may have stories told you of the very depth of wickedness of this fair- country. Earning two or three dollars per week, the families regularly fall back in the winter upon the poor rates. Suoh in many a county of England is the lot of those who till the soil. Now when you consider these facts you may begin to think of the problem that English reformers have to face. lean only say this: If 7on were to go out into the street and think that every seventh man was receiving help from your pocket, or one man in every twenty of those you would meet in the country, you may imagine it. The perils of English society now are four in number. First, Oie relationship of the working men with politics ;, second, the mass of pauperism which lives upon our rates; third, the terrible, unparalleled power of degradation which is wielded by strong drink; fourth, the deficency of incitements, moral and material, to 'and ambition among the working classes.