Great Western Railway Paddington A Handbook for London 1849

The London Police. Before the year 1829, when the present excellent Police Force (for which London is wholly indebted to Sir Robert Peel) was first introduced, the watchmen, familiarly called “Charlies,” who guarded the streets of London, were often incompetent and feeble old men, totally unfitted for their duties. The Police is now composed of young and active men, and the force that has proved perfectly effective for the metropolis (having saved it more than once from Chartist and other rioters, and from calamities such as befel Bristol in 1831), has since been introduced with equal success nearly throughout the kingdom.
The streets of London were long ago infested with a set of disorderly debauchees, unthrifts of the Inns of Court and Chancery, who, under the various cant names of nickers, scowrers, mohocks, &c., insulted passengers and attacked the watch. Shadwell’s comedy of The Scowrers affords a striking picture of the streets of London at night, in the reign of Charles II., and the mohocks are well described in the Spectator and in Swift’s Journal:—
“Who has not heard the Scowrer’s midnight fame ?
Who has not trembled at the Mohock’s name?”—Gray.

The first street in London lighted with gas was Pall Mall, in 1807, and the last street or square lighted with oil was Grosvenor-square, in 1842. The cry of the old London watchman was—”Lantern and a whole candle— Light ! hang out your lights here,” and this cry and kind of lighting (lanterns with cotton-wick candles) continued till the introduction of the glass lights or convex lights in 1694. The first glass lights in use among us were placed on the road between the two palaces of Whitehall and Kensington, and, after the first season of their use, Sir Christopher Wren was instructed to build a shed for their preservation through the summer. But this magnificence was confined to a particular thoroughfare; and twenty-four years after, King William’s three hundred lamps were erected on the road to Kensington; Lady Mary Wortley Montague gives the Paris of 1718 the advantage over London of the same year, “in the regular lighting of the streets at night.” Our lighting, indeed, before the introduction of gas, was miserably imperfect.

A SALVATION ARMY WEDDING.

MARRYING   LONDON.
By   MRS. BELLOC-LOWNDES.

IN one matter London may safely be asserted to be quite unlike Heaven, for nowhere is there more marrying or giving in marriage. The mere wedding statistics compare favourably—or from the misogamist’s point of view unfavourably—with every other great city in the world, while not even in the capital of the land of the stars and stripes is there to be found a greater diversity of hymeneal ceremonies. In no European town, moreover, can a marriage be celebrated at less cost and with less “fuss” than in London, or with more pomp, and, from a pecuniary point of view, more extravagant splendour.

A FASHIONABLE WEDDING (ST. PAUL’S, KNIGHTSBRIDGE).

Every kind of wedding, whether celebrated in Hymen’s classic temple, St. George’s, Hanover Square, in the now more fashionable St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, amid the matter of fact surroundings of a Registrar’s office, or in one of the characteristically plain meetinghouses of the Society of Friends, exercises a curious fascination on a London crowd. A really great marriage—where the contracting parties are well known in political or social life—will bring together thousands of eager sightseers, who will stand patiently for hours outside the church where the ceremony is about to take place, in order that they may catch a glimpse of the blushing bride and gallant bridegroom; and few men and women hurrying to daily work or pleasure but will pause a moment to watch the passage of even a humble wedding party.

Jenny Whims, or, Jenny’s Whim. A tavern at the end of the…

The last population returns (1841) exhibit the following tradespeople, &c., residing in…