Front matter (continued 5)

[#] Wherever there are such brooks the same phenomenon appears. Visitors to Nice may have witnessed the sudden rise of the Paillon, and the Birsig at Basle, usually a fine thread of water, has repeatedly risen five or six feet high in the market-place of that town.

Here we take our leave of the Fleet, and proceeding westward, find nothing to arrest our steps till we come to a spot which once went by the name of the Strand Bridge; not Waterloo Bridge, which originally was so called, but a 'fair bridge,' as Stow calls it, erected many hundred years ago over a brook which crossed the Strand opposite to the present Strand Lane, and descended from the ponds in Fickett's Fields, part of Lincoln's Inn Fields, now all built over. This bridge probably disappeared about the year 1550, when an Act was passed for paving the streets east and west of Temple Bar, and 'Strand Bridge' is specially mentioned in the Act; the paving of the Strand seems to have done away with the brook and the bridge over it. The name of Strand Bridge was also given to the landing-stage at the bottom of Strand Lane, which descends in a tortuous line from the Strand down to the Thames. In this lane there is at the present day the old Roman bath, which, it is supposed, is supplied from the well which gave its name to Holywell Street, and which supply never fails.

There are no written records or other traces of any brook descending from the northern heights through London west of the Strand, till we come to the Tyburn.

This brook, like the Fleet, took its rise near Hampstead, but turning westward, and receiving several tributary streamlets, it ran due south through the Regent's Park, where it was joined by another affluent from the site of the present Zoological Gardens, from which point it turned to the west and crossed the Marylebone Road opposite Gloucester Terrace, and after running parallel with it for a short distance it took a sharp turn to the east, following the hollow in which the present Marylebone Lane stands, the windings of which indicate the course of the brook. On reaching the southern end of High Street, it again turned to the south, crossed Oxford Street, ran down part of South Molton Street, turned west again to the south of Berkeley Square; thence it flowed through the narrow passage between the gardens of Lansdowne House and Devonshire House, whose hollow sound seems to indicate the existence of the watercourse below. It next crossed Piccadilly, ran due south through the Green Park, passed under Buckingham Palace, directly after which it divided into three branches, one of which ran through the ornamental water in St. James's Park, whence it fell into the Thames: the middle branch ran into the ancient Abbey at Westminster, where it turned the mills the monks had erected there. But from old maps it appears that this arm of the Tyburn, at a point a little north-west of the Abbey, threw out a branch which in a northerly course rejoined the park, and then in a curved line to the east reached the Thames at a point not far from Westminster Bridge, and to the north-east of it. The spot where this branch touched St. James's Park was close to Storey's Gate. Now last year (1898) when the ground was being excavated for the foundations of the new Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the workmen came upon the piles and brickwork of an ancient wharf. The structure was wonderfully well preserved; it had evidently been well constructed, probably by the monks, and may have been for the accommodation of the fishermen bringing their goods to the monastery. But at present, and until further information is obtained, if ever it is obtained, we can only form conjectures as to the purposes of the wharf; but its discovery on that spot is curiously illustrative of the history which still lies hidden under our streets.

We have yet to mention the third branch of the Tyburn, which started south of Buckingham Palace. It ran in a southerly direction across Victoria Street, for a short distance skirted the Vauxhall Bridge Road, then crossed it and ran through the marshy grounds then existing down to the Thames a little to the west of Vauxhall Bridge.

Such was the course of the Tyburn. Of the bridges that once must have crossed it not a vestige remains; but we have the record of one which was at the spot which is now Stratford Place, and where the Lord Mayor's Banqueting-house stood, to which he resorted when he, the Aldermen, and other distinguished citizens went to inspect the head conduits from which the City conduits were supplied, on which occasions they combined pleasure with business, hunting the hare before and the fox after dinner. The Tyburn must at one time have been a stream of considerable size; in the year 1238 it was so copious as to furnish nine conduits for supplying the City with water. It had rows of elms growing on its banks, and as it generally, but erroneously, is supposed to have flowed past the southern corner of the Edgware Road, the name of Elm Place was given to a street (now pulled down) west of Connaught Place. How this error arose we shall show when speaking of the West Bourne. On the Tyburn stood the church of St. Mary la bonne; by the vulgar omission of letters 'burn' became 'bone,' hence Marylebone. The Tyburn, like the other brooks already discussed, is now a mere sewer.

Proceeding still further west, we come to the Westbourne, which, like the other brooks, rose in the northern heights above London. Around Jack Straw's Castle at Hampstead various rills sprang from the ground, which, forming a united stream a little north of the Finchley Road, that stream, flowing west towards the spot known as West End, continued its western course till it reached Maygrove Road; it crossed that road, and taking a sudden turn south, it ran through Kilburn down to Belsize Road, south of which a small lake was formed, by its confluence there with a considerable tributary in the form of a two-pronged fork and its handle, coming from the lower southern heights of Hampstead. From the lake the Westbourne flowed in a westerly course, and near Cambridge Road received another affluent from the high ground where Paddington Cemetery now stands; still running west at Chippenham Road, its volume was further increased by the reception of a stream coming from the neighbourhood of Brondesbury, and from this point it ran due south, but with many windings, through Paddington, and across the Uxbridge Road, through part of Kensington Gardens, through the Serpentine in Hyde Park and across the Knightsbridge Road, and what was then called the Five Fields, a miserable swamp, and formed the eastern boundary of Chelsea till it discharged itself into the Thames, west of Chelsea Bridge, but divided into a considerable number of small streams.

Such was its course, and from its description we see that it was no insignificant stream, and may assume that the first settlers in those northern parts of London must be looked for on its banks. Like the Fleet, it had various names in different localities; thus at Kilburn it was known as the Keele Bourne, Coldbourne, and Kilbourne; at Bayswater it was called the Bayswater Rivulet; the name of Bayswater itself is supposed to be derived from Baynard, who built Baynard Castle on the Thames, and also possessed lands at Bayswater. At the end of the fourteenth century it was called Baynard's Watering-place, which in time was shortened to its present appellation.

The bridge which gave Knightsbridge its name was a stone bridge; by whom or when erected is not on record, but probably Edward the Confessor, who conferred the land about here on the Abbots of Westminster, also built the bridge for their accommodation. The road was the only way to London from the west, and the stream was broad and rapid. The bridge was situated in front of the present entrance into the Park by Albert Gate, and part of it still remains underground, while the other portion was removed for the Albert Gate improvements. In the churchwardens' accounts of St. Margaret's, Westminster, are the following entries regarding the bridge:

The Westbourne was occasionally a source of inconvenience and even danger to the inhabitants of Knightsbridge. After heavy rains or in sudden thaws it overflowed. On September 1, 1768, it did so, and did great damage, almost undermining some of the houses; and in January, 1809, it overflowed again, and covered the neighbouring fields so deeply that they resembled a lake, and passengers were for several days rowed from Chelsea to Westminster by Thames boatmen.

On the site now covered by St. George's Row, Pimlico, there stood in the middle of the last century a house of entertainment known as 'Jenny's Whim.' A long wooden bridge over one of the many arms of the Westbourne led up to the house. The present Ebury Bridge over the Grosvenor Canal, which this river-branch has become, occupies the site of this old bridge. 'Jenny's Whim' had trim gardens, alcoves, ponds, and facilities for duck-hunting; in the gardens were recesses, where, by treading on a spring, up started different figures, some ugly enough to frighten people, a harlequin, a Mother Shipton, or some terrible animal. Horace Walpole occasionally alludes to 'Jenny's Whim'; in one of his letters to Montagu, he says: 'Here (at Vauxhall) we picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny's Whim.' Towards the beginning of this century 'Jenny's Whim' began to decline; at last it sank down to the condition of a beershop, and in 1804 it was finally closed. The origin of the name is doubtful. Davis, the historian of Knightsbridge, accepts the account given him by an old inhabitant, that it was so called from its first landlady, who directed the gardens to be laid out in so fantastic a manner as to cause the noun to be added to her own Christian name. Other reports say that the place was established by a celebrated pyrotechnist in the reign of George I.; but that does not account for the name.

Like other London rivers, the Westbourne in the end became a sewer; it was gradually covered up; of the two chief branches by which it reached the Thames, the eastern one became the Grosvenor Canal, and the western the Ranelagh Sewer. The canal was crossed by several other bridges, Stone Bridge being one of them.

We stated above that the Westbourne formed the western boundary of Chelsea; its eastern boundary was also a river, or rather rivulet, which it appears never even had a name, though in one old map I find it called Bridge Creek. It rose in Wormwood Scrubs, skirted the West London and Westminster Cemetery, and entered the Thames west of Battersea Bridge, where, in fact, there is still a creek going some distance inland. The rest of the stream has been absorbed by the West Kensington Railway. No vestige of it remains, and it has no history.

Brook Green took its name from a brook which once rose near Shepherd's Bush, but it has no records.

The next river we should come to, if we pursued our journey westward, would be the Brent; but as that is still existing—how long will it continue to do so?—it does not enter into the scope of our investigations.

Having now given an account of all the extinct brooks north of the Thames, we will cross that river and see what watercourses formerly existed on the Surrey side.

The southern banks of the Thames, being low and flat, originally were a swamp, continually overflowed by the river—Lambeth Marsh commemorates that condition of the locality. Down to Deptford, Peckham, Camberwell, Stockwell, Brixton, and Clapham did the flood extend. But by the gradual damming up of the southern bank of the Thames, the erection of buildings on the Surrey side, and the draining of the soil, the latter was gradually laid dry, and the numerous rivulets which meandered through the marsh were reduced to three between the still-existing rivers—namely, the Ravenscourt to the east, and the Wandle to the west. The first brook, again going from east to west, is the Neckinger, which rose at the foot of Denmark Hill and adjacent parts, and, after passing in two streams under the Old Kent Road, united north of it, and reached the Thames at St. Saviour's Dock, which, in fact, is the enlarged mouth of the old river. But according to some old maps we have consulted, it had a branch running in a more easterly direction, and entering the Thames at a point near the present Commercial Docks Pier. But of this latter branch no trace remains, whilst the northerly course to the Thames is indicated by various roads, such as the Grange and the Neckinger Roads. The brook ran past Bermondsey Abbey, up to the gates of which it was navigable from the Thames. The Grange Road took its name from a farm known as the Grange, and here the Neckinger was spanned by a bridge. When Bermondsey Abbey was destroyed, a number of tanneries were established on the site, which took their water from the Neckinger, in connection with which a number of tidal ditches, to admit water from the Thames, were cut in various directions. Near the Upper Grange Road stood a windmill, and at the mouth of the Neckinger a water-mill, the owner of which shut off the tide when it suited his purpose, which led to frequent disputes between him and the tanners. But in time the latter sank artesian wells, the mill was driven by steam-power, and the water of the Neckinger being no longer required for manufacturing purposes, the river was neglected and finally built over. The Neckinger Mills had been erected in the last century by a company to manufacture paper from straw; but, this enterprise failing, the premises passed into the hands of the leather manufacturers. A street to the east of St. Saviour's Dock, and parallel with it, is still known as Mill Street. There was another bridge over the Neckinger where it crossed the Old Kent Road, near the spot where the Albany Road joins the latter road. It was known as Thomas-a-Watering, from St. Thomas, the patron of the dissolved monastery or hospital of that name in Southwark. The bridge was the most southern point of the boundary of the Borough of Southwark, and in ancient days the first halting-place out of London on the road to Kent. Chaucer's pilgrims passed it on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas-a-Becket at Canterbury:

'And forth we riden ...

Unto the watering-place of St. Thomas,

And then our host began his hors arrest.'

Deputations of citizens used to go so far to meet royal or other distinguished personages who came to visit London. From the end of the fifteenth century the spot was set apart for executions, and numerous are the records of criminals who were hanged there until about the middle of the last century.

In 1690 two very handsome Janus heads—i.e., heads with two faces—were discovered near St. Thomas-a-Watering. They were found near two ancient piers of a large gate—Janus was the God of Gates. One was taken up and set up on a gardener's door; but the other, being embedded in quicksand, from which springs flowed out pretty freely, was left. Dr. Woodward, who founded the Professorship of Geology in the University of Cambridge, afterwards purchased the head which had been saved, and added it to his collection of curiosities. At the beginning of this century there was still a brook running across the Kent Road on the spot mentioned above, with a bridge over it, and the current from the Peckham and Denmark hills was at times so strong as to overflow at least two acres of ground. East of the Mill Street above mentioned there is a spot which has been rendered famous by Dickens in 'Oliver Twist'—namely, Jacob's Island. As the description he gives of it is known to everyone, we need not here repeat it; it applies, partially only, to the locality now.

It is, or to speak correctly was, a 'Venice of drains.' But it was not always so; in the reign of Henry II. the foul, stagnant ditch, which till recently made an island of this pestilential spot, was a running stream, supplied with the waters which were brought down in the Neckinger from the southern hills. On its banks stood the mills of the monks of St. John and St. Mary, dependencies of the Abbey of Bermondsey, which were worked by it. In those days the neighbourhood consisted of blooming gardens and verdant meadows. Close to Jacob's Island were Cupid's Gardens, a kind of Ranelagh on a small scale, but still a very pleasant place of public entertainment. Tanneries, and many still more objectionable trades now carried on in the locality, were then undreamt of.

Many of the horrors of Jacob's Island are now things of the past. The foul ditch, in whose black mud the juveniles used to disport themselves, undeterred by the close proximity of the unsavoury carcasses of dead dogs and cats, is now filled up and turned into a solid road. Many of the tumble-down houses have been pulled down—in fact, the romance of the place is gone.

Let us proceed westward; we come to the once important Effra, which remained a running stream till within the sixties, when it, like others, became a mere sewer. It rose in the high grounds of Norwood, and ran down Croxted Lane, till within the last two or three years a perfectly rural retreat; at the Half Moon Inn at Herne Hill it received an affluent, which rose between Streatham Hill and Knight's Hill. Skirting the park of Brockwell Hall, it ran along Water Lane, past the police-station in the Brixton Road. Here it took a sharp turn to the north, and ran parallel to the Brixton Road, access to the houses on the eastern side being gained by little bridges, till it reached St. Mark's Church, where it took a sharp turn to the west. But before reaching that point, a branch of the river, at a spot somewhere between the present Clapham and South Lambeth Roads, in what used formerly to be called Fentiman's Fields, turned in a northerly direction towards the South Lambeth Road, flowing through what was then Caroon Park, afterwards the Lawn Estate, a portion of which has recently become Vauxhall Park. The river ran along the lane leading by the side of the present Vauxhall Park to the Crown Works of Messrs. Higgs and Hill, at the corner of the lane turning almost at right angles up the South Lambeth Road towards Vauxhall Cross. As in the Brixton Road, little bridges here gave access to the houses on the eastern side of the South Lambeth Road. According to an old map, this branch of the Effra sent off another across the South Lambeth Road and a Mr. Freeman's land, lying between it and the Kingston Highway, as the Wandsworth Road was then called, and thus reached the Thames. The main stream, which we left at St. Mark's Church, continued its course along the south side of the Oval, sending off in a north-westerly direction a branch which fell into a circular basin, probably on the spot where the great gas-holders now stand in Upper Kennington Lane. It then turned towards Vauxhall, where it passed under a bridge, called Cox's Bridge, and fell into the Thames a little northward of Vauxhall Bridge.

At Belair, one of the show-houses of Dulwich, a branch of the Effra ran through the grounds; the Effra itself also traversed the Springfield Estate near Herne Hill, now given up to the builders. The river there appears to have been much wider than elsewhere, and in depth about nine feet, with banks shaded by old trees. The present writer remembers the Effra as a river, and was told by a gardener, now deceased, who had worked on the Caroon Estate, which extended from the present Dorset Road to the Oval, for more than fifty years, that he had often seen the Effra along Lawn Lane assume the proportions of a river, wide and deep enough to bear large barges, which statement gives countenance to the tradition that Queen Elizabeth frequently in her barge visited Sir Noel Caroon, the Dutch Ambassador, who lived at Caroon House, on the site of which stand the mansion and factory of Mark Beaufoy, Esq., who is also the owner of the Belair House above-mentioned. Dr. Montgomery, sometime Vicar of St. Mark's, and now Bishop of Tasmania, in his 'History of Kennington,' says that, in 1753, the whole space occupied by the Oval and a number of streets was open meadow through which the Effra meandered at will. It was a sparkling river running over a bright gravelly bottom, and supplied fresh water to the neighbourhood. A bridge crossed the Effra at St. Mark's, and was called Merton Bridge, from its formerly having been repaired by the Canons of Merton Abbey, who had lands for that purpose. Curiously enough, the author from whom we take this, Thomas Allen, in his 'History of Lambeth,' published in 1827, when the Effra was yet a running stream, refers to it only on the above occasion, when he calls it a 'small stream.' 'Et c'est ainsi qu'on écrit l'histoire.'

One more 'lost river' remains on our list, the Falcon Brook, which, rising on the south side of Balham Hill, flowed almost due north between Clapham and Wandsworth Commons to Battersea Rise, which it crossed, after which it turned sharply to the west, ran along Lavender Road, crossed the York Road, and discharged itself into the Thames through Battersea Creek, which is all that now remains of the river, except the underground sewer which represents its former course. Once many pleasant villas stood on its banks; at the present day the entire valley through which it flowed is covered by one of the densest masses of dingy streets to be seen anywhere near London. Nothing remains to recall even its name, except the Falcon Road, and a newly-erected public-house which has supplanted the original Falcon, a somewhat rustic building, which, however, harmonized well with the then surroundings, which were of a perfectly rural aspect, such as, looking at the present scene, we can scarcely realize. But it can be seen in a rare print of the river, engraved by S. Rawle, after an original drawing by J. Nixon. He was an artist, who, passing the Falcon, which was then kept by a man named Robert Death, saw a number of undertaker's men regaling themselves after a funeral on the open space in front of the inn. They were not only eating and drinking and smoking, but indulging in various antics, endeavouring to make the maids of the inn join in their hilarity. This scene, and the queer coincidence of the landlord's strange name, induced Nixon to make a sketch of it, which was engraved and published in 1802, the following lines from Blair's poem 'The Grave' being added to the print:

'But see the well-plumed hearse comes nodding on,

Stately and slow, and properly attended

By the whole sable tribe, that painful watch

The sick man's door, and live upon the dead,

By letting out their persons by the hour

To mimic sorrow, when the heart's not sad.'

A cantata was also published about the same time, supposed to be sung by undertakers' merry men, to celebrate the pleasure and benefit of burying a nabob, and drink to their

'...next merry meeting and quackery's increase!'

Here we close our journey and our records at a funeral. Well, the finale is not inappropriate. Have we not been attending the funerals of so many gay and bright and sparkling, joyfully leaping and rushing, and sometimes roaring, brooks and rivers, descending from the sunny hillsides, finally to be buried in dark and noisome sewers? And the lost river, alas! is but too often the type of the lost life. But moralizing is not in our line—we think it sad waste of time; it is no better than doctors' prescriptions. We would rather remind the reader, who in these notes may miss elegance of style and picturesqueness of description, that such qualities were incompatible with the compactness of details the space at our command imposed upon us. Besides, a more florid style must borrow something from imagination; but here we had only to deal with facts, and if the reader finds as much pleasure in studying as we did in collecting them, though the labour was great, he will not regret the time bestowed on their perusal.

XVI.

ROGUES ASSORTED.

On Horwood's Map of London, dated 1799, just one hundred years ago, there is shown a road, starting from Blue Anchor Lane, Bermondsey, at almost a right angle to the latter, and running in an easterly direction, but with a considerable curve in it, and this road is called Rogues' Lane. It is more than half a mile long, perfectly solitary, not a house on or near it, the land around it being a wild waste, and as deserted as a lonely moor in the recesses of Wales or Cornwall. How did this lane acquire its name? Did the inhabitants of the East End of London construct it as a kind of sewer for carrying off into the outlying wilderness the rogues who infested their streets? or did the rogues of that day, openly or tacitly acknowledging themselves to be such, choose the lane as a kind of rendezvous, as a sort of peripatetic exchange for the transaction of their rascally schemes? The East End of London seems, indeed, in those days, to have been a favourite resort of rogues—Stepney had its Rogues' Well—now they prefer the West End. But the rogues of old were somewhat different from the modern specimens; they were chiefly thieves, footpads, burglars, sneaks, low cheats, sham cripples, and such mean fry—modern civilization, with its panacea of education, had not yet asserted itself. Culture, which licks all the world into shape, has even reached the rogues; the petty scoundrels of old are replaced by the magnificent swindlers of the present day, who deal not in paltry pence, but in weighty sovereigns—who do not cheat a silly countryman out of the few shillings his purse may contain, but wheedle trusting spinsters and mad and greedy speculators out of thousands of pounds. The modern rogue is either a promoter of bogus companies, or a director who issues bogus shares, an embezzling bank-manager or trustee, or a man who lives far beyond his means, even when he knows that all his available assets are gone in betting, racing, and Stock Exchange speculation, or a fraudulent bankrupt. And there is no slitting of noses, no whipping, not even exposure on the pillory ominously looming at the end of their career; when the game is up, no more cash to be obtained by loans, and the infuriated creditors become troublesome, he attempts one more big haul, the proceeds of which, if successful, he prudently settles on his wife, and then the unfortunate victim of circumstances, over which, as he pathetically says, he had no control, leisurely takes a walk to Carey Street, has a comfortable wash and brush up in the financial lavatory which hospitably stands open there, and he comes out, thoroughly whitewashed and rid of all importunate claims upon him, after which he hires a fine mansion in Belgravia, fares sumptuously every day, and bespatters with the mud of his chariot-wheels the deluded shareholders and tradespeople whom his wily schemes have ruined. It is all, or nearly all, the outcome of modern education, which, by ramming notions totally unsuited to the minds and characters under tuition into juvenile minds, bears such bitter fruit. But educational cranks have it all their own way now, though it is wrong to call them 'educational'; they fancy that education means 'cramming,' never mind whether the food is assimilated with the body, whilst education really means the very opposite—namely, a drawing out, not a putting in: a drawing out of the hidden properties of mind and character. But let us come to our theme—the London rogues of old; their evil deeds were done long ago, and will therefore not rile as does the rascality we see around us now. We will take the beggars first: not all beggars are rogues, but the majority are. They fared variously under various Kings; some protected, some persecuted them. Strange it is that, under the juvenile, gentle Edward VI., one of the most severe laws was passed against them: a servant absenting himself for three days or more from his work was to be, on his re-capture, marked with a hot iron with the letter V (vagabond), and be his master's slave for two years, and fed on bread and water; should he run away again, he was, on being caught, to be marked on his forehead or cheek with a hot iron with the letter S (slave), and be his master's slave for life; for a third escape the punishment was death. This diabolical law was repealed two years after. Under Elizabeth sturdy beggars were whipped till the blood came. James I. rather sympathized with them; he, like them, always was in need of 'siller.' Hence the country, and especially London, swarmed with rogues of every description, known by various cant terms, such as Rufflers, Upright Men, Hookers, Rogues, Pallyards, Abraham Men, Traters, Freshwater Mariners or Whipjacks, Dommerars, Swadders, Bawdy Baskets, Doxies, with many other names of the same slang category; and, of course, the object of all the members of these various associations was to cheat the unwary and charitable. In course of time some of these terms went out of use—the cant of rogues is always on the move—but new ones took their places; and, in spite of all the laws passed against them, beggars continued to flourish. In 1728 a spirited presentment to the Court of King's Bench was made by the Grand Jury of Middlesex against the unusual swarms of sturdy and clamorous beggars, as well as the many frightful objects exposed in the streets; and, the nuisance not abating, a similar presentment was made in 1741, with the same unsatisfactory result. And as long as there are people who will not, and people who cannot, work, and as long as there are thoughtless people who will indiscriminately give alms, beggars will infest our streets. Referring to such, Sir Richard Phillips, in his 'Morning's Walk from London to Kew' (1820), tells us that the passage from Charing Cross to St. James's Park through Spring Gardens was a favourite haunt of beggars. Says he: 'A blind woman was brought to her post by a little boy, who, carelessly leading her against the step of a door, she gave him a smart box on the ear, and exclaimed, "Damn you, you rascal! can't you mind what you are about?" and then, leaning her back against the wall, in the same breath she began to chaunt a hymn.' Even now you may hear a psalm-singing woman, who has hired two or three children to render the show more effective, when these get weary, growl, in a hoarse whisper between her Hallelujahs, 'Sing out, ye devils!' The Rookery in St. Giles's, demolished to make room for New Oxford Street, was the very paradise of beggars. They there held an annual carnival, to which Major Hanger on one occasion accompanied George IV., when still Prince of Wales. The chairman, addressing the company, and pointing to the Prince, said: 'I call upon that 'ere gemman with a shirt for a song.' The Prince got excused on his friend agreeing to sing for him, who then sang a ballad called 'The Beggar's Wedding; or, the Jovial Crew,' with great applause. The beggars drank his health, and he and the Prince soon after managed to make good their retreat.

Among the most infamous rogues of the last century were men of the Jonathan Wild stamp—agents provocateurs, as we should now style them—who not only led people into crime, but shared the proceeds of it with the felons; nay, worse, they got persons who were quite innocent convicted, by perjured witnesses, of crimes which had never been committed. It was practices like these which at last brought Jonathan Wild himself to the scaffold.

The tricks of rogues change their names, but remain the same; what is now known as the 'confidence trick,' which, though it has been exposed in police-courts and reported in the press thousands of times, even in our day finds ready victims, was formerly called 'coney-catching,' and there were generally three confederates—the Setter, the Verser, and the Barnacle. The Setter, strolling along the Strand, Fleet Street, or Holborn, on the look-out for flats, on espying a coney, whom his dress and general appearance pronounced to be a man from the country, would make up to him, and, as a rule, quickly find out what county he came from, his name, and other particulars. If he could not induce him to have a drink with him, he would manage to convey to his confederate, the Verser, close by, the information gained, whereupon the Verser would suddenly come upon the countryman, salute him by his name, and ask after friends in the country. He proclaimed himself the near kinsman of some neighbour of the coney, and asserted to have been in the latter's house several times. The countryman, though he could not remember these visits, was yet taken unawares, and readily accepted the invitation to have a drink. They then induced him to play at cards, and soon left him as bare of money as an ape is of a tail, for in those days coney-catching was practised by the assistance of a pack of cards. But if all these lures were wasted on the coney, the Setter or Verser would drop a shilling in the street, so that the coney must see it fall, when he would naturally pick it up, whereupon one of the confederates would cry out, 'Half-part!' and claim half the find. The countryman would readily agree to exchange the money, but the Setter or Verser would say, 'Nay, friend; it is unlucky to keep found money,' and the farce would end in the money being spent in drink at a tavern; then cards would be called for, and the coney induced to take an interest in them by being initiated into a new game called 'mum-chance,' at which he was allowed to win money. While so engaged, the door would be opened by a stranger, the Barnacle, who, on seeing the players, would say, 'Excuse me, gentlemen: I thought a friend of mine was here.' The stranger would be invited to have a glass of wine, and join in the game, which he would readily do, 'to oblige the company'; and the end would be that the coney, after having been allowed to win for some time, would gradually begin to lose his money, then his watch, or any other valuables he might have about him, and finally be left with no property but the clothes he was standing up in. This, as we have stated, was called 'coney-catching,' or 'coney-catching law,' for those rogues possessed a great regard for law; all their practices went by the name of 'law'—'high law' meant highway robbery; 'cheating law,' playing with false dice; 'versing law,' the passing of bad gold; 'figging law,' the cutting of purses.

Vagrants and tramps in those days called themselves by the more dignified appellation of 'cursitors'; and the counterfeiter of epilepsy was a 'counterfeit crank'; money-dropping and ring-dropping were even then old tricks of cozenage. Those who are acquainted with the modern way of coney-catching, or the confidence trick—and who is not that lives in London?—will know that the trick is now much simplified, and yields much quicker and more satisfactory results—to the rogues. And though, as we mentioned above, the trick has been exposed over and over again, new fools are found every day to go into the trap. In fact, all the old rogueries flourish at the present time, besides a few new ones invented in this century. The holders of sham auctions; the horse-makers, who, by means of drugs and other devices, make old horses look as good as new till they are sold; the free foresters, who during the night rob suburban gardens of roots and flowers, and sell them next day off their barrows, all 'a-growing and a-blowing'; the dog stealers; the beer and spirit doctors, who double and treble Master Bung's stock by vile adulteration; the sellers of established businesses, which never had any actual existence—all these are types of venerable institutions which survive to this day, and not only survive, but flourish in everlasting youth. The racing, betting and Stock Exchange swindles perform their eternal merry-go-round, as they did when first started several centuries ago, and the home employment deception still draws the last shillings from the purses of poor people. And in most cases, unfortunately, the law is powerless to reach the rogues; our foolish humanitarianism, the interests of trade, the freedom of the subject to contract, the technicalities and quibbles of legislative acts, and the uncertainty as to their meaning, are at the bottom of all this failure of justice. We ought to cease prating about the dignity of man—as if there were any dignity in such paltry rogues!—and return, perhaps in a modified form, to the drastic remedies of our forefathers, who retaliated on those who made their neighbour suffer in health or in purse by inflicting on them bodily pain and personal disgrace, and not merely fining them, as is the custom with us. In the 'Memorials of London and London Life,' extracted from the City Archives, and extending from the years 1272 to 1419, will be found between twenty and thirty condemnations to the pillory, the stocks, imprisonment, and being drawn through the city on a hurdle, for deficiency of weight in bread, coals, etc., for false measure, for enhancing the price of wheat, for swindling, such as selling brass rings and chains for gold, for selling false bowstrings, putrid meat, fowls and fish, and in these latter cases the articles condemned were burnt under the noses of the culprits, as they stood in the pillory. Even women had to undergo the punishment of the pillory, one specially constructed for them being used on such occasions; it was called the thewe.

At the commencement we referred to a Rogues' Lane at Bermondsey, but there was another lane of that name in the very centre of London, Shire Lane, which was close to Temple Bar, and pulled down when room had to be made for the new Law Courts. The Kit-Kat Club held its meetings in that lane; but in spite of the dukes and lords frequenting that club, the lane never was considered respectable, and in the days of James I. was known as Rogues' Lane, it being then the resort of persons coming under that denomination. In the Bible public-house—a printers' house of call—there was a room with a trap in it, by which Jack Sheppard, who used the house, could drop into a subterranean passage which led to Bell Yard. The Angel and Crown, another public-house in the same lane, was the scene of the murder of a Mr. Quarrington, for which Thomas Carr and Elizabeth Adams were hanged at Tyburn. One night a man was robbed, thrown downstairs and killed in one of the dens of Rogues' Lane. Nos. 13 and 14 were bad houses; Nos. 9, 10 and 11, where thieves used to meet, was known as 'Cadgers' Hall'; Nos. 1, 2 and 3 were houses of ill-fame, and there existed a communication with the house No. 242, Strand, through which the thieves used to escape after ill-treating their victims. In Ship Yard, close to Shire Lane, there stood a block of houses which were let out to vagrants, thieves, sharpers, smashers and other disreputable characters. Throughout the vaults of this rookery there existed a continuous passage, so that easy access could be obtained from one to the other, facilitating escape or concealment in the case of pursuit. The end house of this block was selected for the manufacture of bad coin, and was known as the 'Smashing Lumber.' Every room had its secret trap or panel, and from the upper story, which was the workshop, there was a draft connected with the cellar, to which the base coin could be lowered in case of surprise.

It is astonishing, and shows us the hollowness of the pretence to civilization and decency set up on behalf of the velvet-dressed, lace and gold-bedizened aristocrats of those days, that persons, not only of respectability, but of rank and title, could live in such close quarters with thieves and vagabonds of the lowest grade. Yet, as already mentioned, the Kit-Kats had their club in Shire Lane; in 1603 there was living in it Sir Arthur Atie, in early life secretary to the Earl of Leicester; Elias Ashmole also inhabited the lane, so did Hoole, the translator of Tasso, and James Perry, the editor of the Morning Chronicle, who died worth £130,000.

London in the last century, and even in this, was full of retreats for criminals. The demolition of West Street, formerly Chick Lane, and of Field Lane, so recent as to be still fresh in the memory of living persons, brought many of them to light. The Dog, a low public-house in Drury Lane, was known as the 'Robbers' Den'; in fact, the whole street had a bad reputation, and is even now a disgrace to London. But beside these private retreats, the rogues and villains of the past had their public refuges, where even the officers of the law had to leave them unmolested—the sanctuaries at Westminster, St. John of Jerusalem, St. Martin's-le-Grand, Whitefriars and the Mint, and Montague Close in Southwark, some of which retained their privileges to the middle of the last century. The name Sanctuary, still given to a certain spot near Westminster Abbey, commemorates the actual sanctuary formerly existing in that locality, and the narrow street called Thieving Lane, now demolished, received that name because thieves, on their way to Gate House Prison, were taken through it, to prevent their escape into the sanctuary.

It is said that when rogues fall out honest men come to their own again. Yes, when their 'own' is still come-atable, but as a rule it is not; rogues seldom keep what they gain by trickery—lightly earned, lightly spent is the rule with them. Rogues are as great fools as are the fools they cheat, and the fools at heart are rogues too, without the wit of the rogues. The fool who is done out of his money or other property by trusting a perfect stranger is so done because he fancies himself more clever than the cheat, and hopes to beat him. The victim scarcely deserves any pity, for it is only a case of diamond cut diamond. And unfortunately, as we intimated above, honest men do not come to their own again, when rogues fall out, or are detected. The rogue who has cheated a commercial firm out of goods to the value of thousands of pounds, which he immediately pawns for half they are worth, rushes off to a turf tipster or bookie, and though his betting turns out lucky, he cannot get his winnings from the said bookie, who resists payment on the plea that the transaction was illegal. The rogues fall out, a lawsuit is the result, the speculator loses his case, but the firm do not get their money; that is irretrievably gone. Plenty of such cases happened hundreds of years ago, and continue to happen to the present day, and there are various resorts in the City and West End of London where it might truthfully be written up, Si sceleratos quœris, circumspice!

XVII.

BARS AND BARRISTERS.

The profession of a barrister is a curious one. Theoretically, he is the champion and protector of right and justice; but, practically, he often is but the hired advocate of wrong and injustice. It is only when he has attained high distinction at the Bar that he can, like Serjeant Ballantine, be independent enough to say that he will undertake no case of the justice of which he is not fully satisfied. True, counsel is assumed to base his arguments on behalf of his client on the instructions he receives from the solicitor who employs him; yet he, counsel, having had a legal education, and practice, too, cannot fail to see the weak points, supposing there are any, in the case before him, and the evidence adduced in examination and cross-examination must very soon satisfy him as to the real merits of his case; hence we often see counsel throwing up his brief. It is related in Laud's Diary that, when he was standing one day near his unfortunate master, then Prince Charles, the Prince said that, if necessity compelled him to choose any particular profession, he could not be a lawyer, 'for,' said he, 'I could neither defend a bad cause, nor yield in a good one.' By the Roman laws every advocate was required to swear that he would not undertake a cause which he knew to be unjust, and that he would abandon a defence which he should discover to be supported by falsehood and iniquity. This is continued in Holland at this day, and if an advocate brings forward a cause there which appears to the court plainly to be iniquitous, he is condemned in the costs of the suit; and if, in consequence of this, a cause, just in itself, should not be able to find a defender because of some strong and general prejudice concerning it, the court has authority to appoint a counsel.

The universal opinion that advocates are ready to support injustice for the sake of gain—that they will undertake more work than they can possibly attend to—is of very ancient date. The Lord Keeper Puckering, directing attention to the grasping habits which too frequently disgraced the leaders of the Bar, observed: 'I am to exhort you also not to embrace multitude of causes, or to undertake more places of hearing causes, than you are well able to consider of or perform, lest thereby you either disappoint your clients, when their causes be heard, or come unprovided, or depart when their causes be in hearing.' That the administration of justice is much improved in modern days is sufficiently proved by the fact that now no judge would be allowed, as he was in the closing years of the fourteenth century, to give opinions for money to his private clients, although he was forbidden to take gold or silver from any person having 'plea or process hanging before him.'

It is, in fact, still a moot point, and, we suppose, always will be, what lengths an advocate may go to, consistently with truth and honour, in pleading the cause of a client whom he knows to be guilty. The conduct of Charles Phillipps, in defending Courvoisier, has always been condemned. Courvoisier did not confess his guilt to his counsel, but admitted to him that he had made away with some plate from Lord William Russell's house immediately after the murder. This was damning evidence, but the communication was made by the prisoner not to admit his guilt, but merely to prepare his counsel to deal with the evidence. But Phillipps made a remark in his speech which the Bar considered as unjustifiable. He said: 'Supposing him to be guilty of the murder, which is known to God Almighty alone, I hope, for the sake of his eternal soul, he is innocent.' These words were not only in bad taste, but conveyed a positive falsehood. Counsel's part is to lay before the jury possibilities, and not his own opinion of the prisoner's guilt or innocence; and a strange feature of the etiquette of the Bar is that if counsel is prepared to throw up his brief because he sees his cause to be bad, yet he is bound, after accepting the retainer, to continue defending the case if his client insists on his doing so. He may then be compelled to go on arguing on behalf of a man whom he knows to be a thorough scoundrel.

Barristers were first appointed by Edward I. about 1291, but there is an earlier mention of professional advocates in England, who were of various ranks, as King's or Queen's Counsel, Serjeants, etc. At more recent dates we read of utter or outer and inner barristers; these terms appear to have been derived from local arrangements in the halls of the Inns of Court. In the public meetings held in these halls, the benchers and readers—superior to barristers—occupying the daïs, which was separated by a bar, some of the barristers who had attained a certain standing were called from the body of the hall to the bar—that is, to the first place outside the bar—for the purpose of arguing doubtful questions and cases, whence they probably obtained the name of outer barristers. The course of legal education consisted principally of readings and mootings. The readings were expositions of important statutes. These readings being accompanied by costly entertainments, especially at Lincoln's Inn, their original object was forgotten in the splendour of the tables, for which the benchers were severely reprimanded by Charles I. The readings were eventually suspended, but were revived about 1796. Mootings were questions on doubtful points of law, argued between certain of the benchers and barristers in the hall. There was also another exercise in the Inns of Court, called 'bolting'—not gastronomically—which was a private arguing of cases by some of the students and barristers. The term was probably derived from 'bolter,' a sieve, with reference to the sifting of cases.

As to the fees paid to barristers, how they have altered! In 1500 the Corporation of Canterbury paid for advice regarding their civic interests 3s. 4d. to each of three Serjeants, and gave the Recorder of London 6s. 8d. as a retaining-fee. Five years later Mr. Serjeant Wood received a fee of 10s. from the Goldsmiths' Company. In the sixteenth century it was customary for clients to provide food and drink for their counsel. In a bill of costs in the reign of Edward IV. we find:

In like manner the accountant of St. Margaret's, Westminster, entered in the parish books: 'Paid to Roger Fylpott, learned in the law, for his counsel given, 3s. 8d., with 4d. for his dinner.'

In Elizabeth's reign, and during the time of her successors, barristers' fees showed a tendency to increase. Counsel then received 20s. fees, though 10s. was the usual fee. A ten-shilling piece was then called an 'angel,' whence arose the witty saying: 'A barrister is like Balaam's ass, only speaking when he sees the angel.' When Francis Bacon was created King's Counsel to James I., an annual salary of £40 was assigned to him; but at present the status of a Q.C. is simply an affair of professional precedence, to which no fixed emolument is attached. But Francis Bacon, though he received as his official salary £40 only, made £6,000 in his profession; other King's Counsel earned even larger sums in fees. But the barristers were not all greedy. In the days of Sir Matthew Hale, professional etiquette permitted clients and counsel to hold intercourse without the intervention of an attorney. When those who came to Hale for his advice gave him a sovereign, he used to return half, saying his fee was 10s. When appointed arbitrator, he would take no fees, because, as he said, he acted in the capacity of a judge, and a judge should take no money. If he took bad money, as he often did, he would not pass it on again, but kept it by him. At last he had a great heap of it, and his house being once entered by burglars, this accumulation of bad money attracted their attention, and they carried it off in preference to other valuables, fancying that this must be the lawyer's hoarded treasure.

Readers who wish to know in what estimation lawyers were held in the seventeenth century should study the pamphlets and broadsides of the Commonwealth, which show how universal was the belief that wearers of ermine and gentlemen of the long robe would practise any sort of fraud or extortion for the sake of personal advantage. How happy we are to live in this century, when the legal profession is in a state of high purification! It does, indeed, sometimes surprise an outsider that so many barristers should be necessary to carry through one case—it looks as if they were brought in merely for the benefit of the lawyers; but, in justice to the profession, let us say that this is not so. Barristers have their special gifts, and a long and involved case brings them all into play to the advantage of the client. One man has unrivalled powers of statement; another is sound in law; another excels in cross-examination; another in reply; another has the ear of the court, or is all-persuasive with the jury. A barrister, to be successful at the Bar, needs, indeed, many qualifications. Lord Brougham states that Mansfield's powers as an advocate were great; he possessed an almost surpassing sweetness of voice, and it was said that his story was worth other men's arguments, so clear and skilful were his statements. Concerning Lord Erskine, another famous debater in the forensic lists, juries declared that they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him when he had riveted and, as it were, fascinated them by his first glance; and it used to be a common remark of men, who observed his motions, that they resembled those of a blood-horse—as light, as limber, as much betokening strength as speed. His voice was of surpassing sweetness, clear, flexible, strong, less fitted, indeed, to express indignation or scorn than pathos. Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, having brought an action for libel against persons who had charged him with having appointed landsmen as Greenwich pensioners to serve his own electioneering purposes, Erskine undertook the defence, and such was the effect of his speech that, before he left the court, thirty retainers were presented to him. Fortune comes to those who can wait. Lord Ellenborough first distinguished himself as the leading counsel for Warren Hastings, and soon after rose to the head of the Northern Circuit; Lord Brougham attained his subsequent position by his defence of Queen Caroline.

But counsel must not only be able to expound his case clearly, bringing into prominence all its favourable points, and effacing or putting out of sight all those of an opposite character, but he must also be observant and quick enough on the spur of the moment to take advantage of any rift in his opponent's flute, of any weakness in his argument; he must be sharp in dealing with the plaintiff, supposing he is for the defendant, and especially so with his witnesses. He should, in civil cases, by skilful cross-questioning, entrap the principal or his witnesses into damaging admissions and contradictions. The following case, if not vero, is ben trovato to illustrate our meaning. A man brought an action against a coach proprietor, for having by the carelessness of the latter's servants suffered bodily hurt, to wit, been thrown from the coach on to the ground, the hind wheels of which passed over his body, and injured his chest and lungs. In his examination-in-chief he testified to these facts. Then the defendant's counsel took him in hand. As the plaintiff was about to leave the box, 'One moment, my friend,' said counsel quite blandly. 'According to the evidence you have just given, you obviously have suffered much; your voice is gone, you say?'

'Yes, sir; I cannot speak above a whisper.'

'Very sad. The coach, you say, gave a sudden lurch backwards, and thus threw you off the hind seat under the coach wheels? Were you sitting or standing just then?'

'Well, I was standing up just then.'

'What made you stand up whilst the coach was in motion?'

'Well, you would have stood up had you been there.'

'Just answer my question; never mind what I should have done.'

'I don't know why I should answer this question.'

The judge pointed out to him that he must answer it.

'Well, I wanted to look at a pretty girl who had passed the coach; you would have done so.'

'Possibly.' Counsel might have given him a sharper reply, but he did not want to lose his hold over the witness by riling him. So he went on: 'Possibly. And then, like the gallant gentleman you are, you kissed your hand to the lady, and then the accident happened?'

'That's about it,' innocently replied the plaintiff.

'That's how it happened,' said counsel, turning to the jury.

And then, turning to the plaintiff again: 'And the coach-wheels passing over you broke no bones, but ruined your voice, which we all can hear is very weak; this must be a sad affliction, for you especially, because I am given to understand that you were before this accident a famous singer at free-and-easies and other convivial meetings, and made much money by your voice?'

'That's the fact,' hoarsely whispered the plaintiff.

'Very sad. I am told your voice was not only melodious, but very powerful. Perhaps,' continued counsel in the most insidiously flattering tones, 'you might give his Lordship and the jury a specimen of what your voice was before this unlucky accident.'

And the fool, entrapped by counsel's apparent sympathy and the petty vanity clinging to all singing men to show off, actually broke forth into a rollicking drinking song, which shook the walls of the building. Thereupon counsel asked for a verdict for his client the defendant, and for costs, and got the first, if not the second.

The terms barrister and counsel are often used indiscriminately; every barrister is a counsel, but not every counsel a barrister. There are barristers whose names are in everybody's mouth, and who earn their thousands a year; there are counsel unknown to the public, who never, or only under peculiar circumstances, appear at the Bar, but who are well known to the legal profession, and make more than twice as much as the barrister practising at the Bar; they are 'consulting' counsel. When you go to a joiner and tell him to make you a cabinet, he takes your order, and sets about making the piece of furniture you want; he does not say that, as such an article is not one he ever heard of in his trade, he will go and learn from someone more experienced than himself how to execute your order, and that you will have to pay for his improving himself in joinery. But if you go to your lawyer with a case which is not of the most usual description, he informs you that he must have counsel's opinion, for which you have to pay from two to five guineas, to improve your lawyer's legal knowledge. And he sends a number of questions to a 'consulting' counsel. Now, as every lawyer of any standing has in his library all the legal handbooks and reports of cases which are the consulting counsel's only guides, the lawyer might as well look up the precedents himself, but that would not be etiquette, nor so profitable all round, and so the more expensive method must be followed. The consulting counsel sits in his chambers as the soothsayers of old sat in their temples, whence, like them, he sends forth oracular utterances as obscure and ambiguous as those of the ancient mummers, and straightway solicitors and clients feel relieved of all anxiety: they have counsel's opinion and their case is as good as won. For their counsel's opinion is favourable, or, at all events, this is the interpretation they put on it, though counsel's opinion on the same case on the other side reads the very reverse. Should it so happen that on the day in which counsel has given his opinion a case should be decided in a law-court, which shows that his opinion is not worth a rap, will counsel rush off to the lawyer to tell him so? Not he; he is not going to admit that he is fallible. And he will not give his opinion on the same case twice. A lawyer's clerk having obtained such an opinion from counsel, and passing a pub, where he had agreed to meet a friend of his to settle a little betting transaction, left the opinion in the omnibus in which he had come, and did not discover his loss till it was too late to go to counsel again the same day. So he went the next day, prepared to pay out of his own pocket for another copy of the document. Counsel honestly said: 'I could not do that, my friend, for to-day I might give you an opinion totally opposed to the one I gave you yesterday, which would be awkward if the first should turn up.'

Sometimes consulting counsel will condescend to come into court to argue some disgustingly technical point about 'contingent remainders' or 'conveyancing.' On such occasions they evince unbounded contempt for the court, whose ignorance necessitates their presence. They will consume a whole day in dull and dry arguments, and send some judges to sleep, and those who remain awake after counsel's speech know less of the matter than they knew before; their brains are muddled with the legal rigmarole they have been listening to. The ecclesiastical counsel, who flourished in the days before the Probate and Divorce Courts were established, and from 'doctors' became 'counsel,' when called out into the general practice of the new system, were like so many owls suddenly brought into daylight, Sir Cresswell Cresswell so bedevilled them, and yet did it so politely that they could not complain.

Barristers had a good time of it in those old days of the Ecclesiastical Courts; the system of appeal was splendidly organized—the pettiest case could gradually be raised into one of great importance. There were courts throughout the country—royal, archiepiscopal, episcopal, decanal, sub-decanal, prebendal, rectorial, vicarial, and manorial. A case arises in any one of these courts, and the verdict being unsatisfactory to one of the parties, he appeals to the courts of the archdeacons and others, where the case is again heard, decided, and again appealed against. Poor men, who cannot go on for ever, must stop; but the party who can afford it goes to the Consistorial Court, where the whole process of hearing, deciding, and appealing is repeated. The third step is the Chancellor's Court; the fourth the Court of Arches. If the appellant still has some money left, he may go to the Privy Council—formerly to the Court of Delegates at Doctors' Commons, now abolished. This is no mere imaginary case. 'There was a case,' says Dr. Nicholls, 'in which the cause had originally commenced in the Archdeacon's Court at Totnes, and thence there had been an appeal to the Court at Exeter, thence to the Arches, and thence to the Delegates; and the whole question at issue was simply the question which of two persons had the right of hanging his hat on a particular peg. Fancy, what an army of barristers must have grown fat on this oyster!'

Success at the Bar comes to barristers in the most capricious manner. In this profession, as in many other pursuits, modest merit but slowly makes its way. Manners make the man, but impudence an advocate; without this latter quality even high connections and powerful patronage often seem ineffectual. Earl Camden, the son of Chief Justice Pratt, was called to the Bar in his twenty-fourth year, and remained a briefless barrister for nine long years, when he resolved to abandon Westminster Hall for his College Fellowship; but at the solicitation of his friend Healey, afterwards Lord Chancellor Northington, he consented once more to go the Western Circuit, and through his kind offices received a brief as his junior in an important case. His leader's illness threw the management of the case into Mr. Pratt's hands; his success was complete, and, after many years' lucrative practice, he was made Attorney-General, and three years after, in 1762, raised to the Bench as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In 1766 he was made Lord Chancellor, and raised to the peerage. The Earl of Eldon was on the point of retiring from the contest for clients, when fortune unexpectedly smiled upon him, and the records of the Bar are full of similar instances.

We have spoken of cross-examination. Its legitimate object is not to produce startling effects, but to elicit facts which will support the theory intended to be put forward; but in most cases the first is aimed at, and frequently with success. Counsel, however, must perform this operation with much discretion. To a barrister who was recklessly asking a number of questions in the hope of getting at something, Mr. Baron Alderson said: 'You seem to think that the art of cross-examination consists in examining crossly.' Judges frequently give hints to counsel; to one who was terribly long-winded, the judge said: 'You have stated that before, but you may have forgotten it—it was so long ago.' Counsel must not allow himself to be carried away by the fervour of his oratorical powers, and thus overshoot the mark. Arabin, the Commissioner, a shrewd, quaint little man, uttered absurdities without knowing he did so. 'I assure you, gentlemen,' he one day said to the jury, 'the inhabitants of Uxbridge will steal the very teeth out of your mouth as you walk through the streets. I know it from experience.' When technical expressions are likely to be brought up in a case before the court, counsel should be careful to get posted up in them, or he may make a strange and laughable mess of it. A question of collision between two boats down the river Thames was being investigated. The master of one of the boats was in the witness-box.

'Now,' said counsel, cross-examining him, 'what time was it when the other boat ran into you, as you say?'

'It was during the dog-watch,' replied the mariner.

'You hear this, gentlemen?' said counsel, turning to the jury. 'According to this man's evidence, a boat, laden with valuable merchandize, is left in charge of a dog! And, guilty of such contributory negligence, this man has the impudence to come into court and claim compensation and damages!' And, turning to the witness again: 'Was your boat attached to a landing-stage?'

'No; to a buoy.'

'A boy! These are curious revelations. A mere boy is made to hold the boat! And where was the boy?'

'Why, in the water, of course!'

'This is getting more strange every moment. The poor boy is actually kept standing in the water whilst he is holding the boat! I had no idea such cruelties were practised in the shipping—shipping interest. The Legislature should see to this.' Then, fumbling among his papers, counsel went on: 'You said, when questioned by my learned friend, that you had gone on shore? Why did you go on shore?'

'To get a man to bleed the buoy. It wanted bleeding very much.'

'You went to get a surgeon, you mean?'

'No; a workman from the yard.'

'What, to bleed a boy! To perform so delicate an operation on a boy, then standing in the water, and, in the state of health he was in, no doubt in great pain, whilst holding the boat all the time—shocking inhumanity!'

Here judge and jury thought it time to interfere. They all knew the meaning of the technical terms; but as they enjoyed the fun of seeing counsel getting deeper and deeper into the mire, they allowed him to go on, and the court being full of sailors, who cheered counsel vociferously as he stumbled from blunder to blunder, the trial was one of the most amusing in that court, and gave judge and jury a splendid appetite for their lunch.

Some counsel are very fond of reminding a witness at every other question they put to him that he is 'on his oath.' The practice is absurd, the very reminder sounds sarcastic. This 'taking the oath' is a relic of ancient barbarism and superstition; for the man who means to tell the truth it is unnecessary, and on the man who intends to tell a lie it is no check; he looks on the proceeding as a ridiculous ceremony. The very official who administers the oath in court, by the way he rattles it off, shows in what estimation he holds it. Nay, in matters far more important than the mere stealing of a piece of cheese off a counter, on occasions when one would expect taking the oath to be invested with some solemnity, how is it done? I once accompanied an Italian friend of mine, who was being naturalized in this country, to the court where he was to take the oath of allegiance. This is how the official authorized to administer the oath rushed through it: 'I A. B. do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria her heirs and successors according to law so help me God it will be half a crown.' My friend produced the half-crown, which, I suppose, stood in place of a seal, and the performance was over. With the court 'So help me God it will be half a crown' was evidently the chief point, the crowning glory and confirmation of the allegiance business.

Swearing children as witnesses leads to very ludicrous scenes, enough to cover the whole proceeding with contempt, and show its utter futility. Montagu Williams, Q.C., tells a good story:

At a trial a discussion arose as to whether or no a boy of very tender age was old enough to be sworn. The judge, at the suggestion of counsel for the prosecution, interrogated the boy: 'Do you know what will become of you if you tell an untruth?'

The boy, evidently brought up in the Spurgeon school, replied: 'Hell fire.'

'What will become of you if you play truant, and do not go to school?'

'Hell fire,' again answered the boy.

'What if you spill the milk?'

'Hell fire.'

His lordship ran through a list of trifling faults; the punishment was always the same—'Hell fire.'

Counsel then suggested that the boy was scarcely intelligent enough to be sworn. But the judge thought otherwise, and expected he would grow up a very good man, seeing he believed that the most trifling error involved the penalty of hell fire, and the boy was sworn. The boy, of course, was a fool, through no fault of his, but through that of his bigoted teachers.

It was mentioned above that in the days of Sir Matthew Hale professional etiquette allowed clients to have interviews with counsel without the intervention of a solicitor. But gradually, after his time, the public were deprived of this privilege, and a rigid rule was enforced that all communications to counsel must be through the solicitor only, a rule highly detrimental to litigants, since it caused constant misunderstandings and misleading instructions. It is a roundabout way of doing business, which would not be tolerated for a day in any commercial transaction. It was from the first a tyrannical assumption on the part of the profession that the public should submit to a restriction, based nominally on professional etiquette, but really on professional interest. The public have begun to object to the rule, and in 1888 the Attorney-General (Sir R. Webster), on being asked to express his views in reference to the occasions when a barrister may advise and otherwise act for a client without the intervention of a solicitor, replied that in contentious business, necessitating inquiry into facts, which could not possibly be undertaken by a barrister, it was essential that the latter should have the advice of a solicitor. But might this advice not be given in the presence of the client to exclude the possibility of misapprehension? As to non-contentious business Sir Richard allowed of direct communication between counsel and client. My own rule, whenever it has been my misfortune to be involved in a legal dispute, has always been to push aside this bogie of professional etiquette, and insist on telling counsel my own story myself.

The profession, as we hardly need remind the reader, has produced many distinguished characters; to choose from amongst them those most deserving of praise would be difficult, and perhaps invidious; still, the actions of those whose conduct has not imparted to them the mere splendour of passing meteors, but has conferred permanent benefits on the country, seem to entitle them to a certain pre-eminence. A man entitled to such pre-eminence and the grateful remembrance of Englishmen was Sir Samuel Romilly. His father was a jeweller in Frith Street, Soho; the boy was first placed with a solicitor, then with a merchant, and finally articled to one of the sworn clerks of Chancery. At the expiration of his articles he qualified himself for the Bar, but he had to wait long before he was rewarded with any practice. But when briefs came, they came in a flood; his income rose to about £9,000 a year. He was returned to Parliament in 1806 by the electors of Westminster, without the expenditure of a shilling on his part—a significant fact of his merits in those days of bribery and corruption. He was also appointed Solicitor-General and knighted. He distinguished himself in the House by his speeches in favour of the abolition of the slave trade, but his great claims to the gratitude of the nation are the efforts he made to mitigate the Draconic code of the criminal law, in which nearly three hundred offences, varying from murder to keeping company with a gipsy, were punishable with death. The first success he had was the repeal of the statute of Elizabeth which made it a capital offence to steal privately from the person of another. He next tried to get several statutes repealed which made it a capital offence to privately steal from a house or a shop goods to the value of five shillings. But this Bill was lost. What bloodthirsty savages the members of the House must have been in those days! Some of this savagery remains in their blood now, for when the abolition of training children to become acrobats, contortionists and similar horrors, the abolition of vivisection and such-like cruelties, are mooted in the House, the introducer of the Bill is hooted down. Romilly, as we have seen, did not succeed in all his humane efforts, but he kept on agitating session after session, and cleared the way for the modification and mitigation of the ferocious laws which turned England into human shambles. And what Romilly had been striving for was a long time in coming. In the first decades of this century it was no unusual sight to see from a dozen to twenty criminals, many for slight offences only, hanged in one morning in front of Newgate. The end of Romilly was sad; it showed the malignity of fate. He who had spent his life in endeavouring to lighten the lot of others was terribly stricken himself. In 1818 he lost his wife, whom he had married twenty years before, and her loss was such a shock to him that he fell into delirium, and in an unwatched moment he sprang from his bed, cut his throat, and expired almost instantly.

Nowadays briefless barristers utilize their legal knowledge as financiers and company promoters; before those two honest pursuits had been invented they had to turn their attention to other specs. Thus Francis Forcer the younger, the son of Francis Forcer, a musician, had received a liberal education, and, on leaving Oxford, entered Gray's Inn, and was afterwards called to the Bar, where he practised for a short time. He was very gentlemanly in his manners, and in person remarkably tall and athletic. In 1735, having been disturbed by legal interference, or some other cause, he petitioned Parliament for a license for Sadler's Wells, which application, we are told, was rejected at first, but in the end it must have been granted, for we are informed that he was the first who exhibited there the diversions of rope-dancing and tumbling, and performances on the slack wire. It is doubtful whether the speculation paid, for at the time of his death (he died in 1743) he directed by his will that the lease of the premises, together with the scenery, implements, stock, furniture, household stuff and things thereunto belonging, should be sold for the purpose of paying his debts, which direction was carried out soon after his decease. This seems as if the refreshment bar, for which Mr. Forcer had left the legal Bar, had not proved very remunerative; perhaps he had better have stuck to the litigation oyster, than to the native he dispensed at Sadler's Wells.

XVIII.

THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS AND THE KIT-KAT AND ROTA CLUBS.

The last two centuries were very prolific in the production of clubs, founded to gratify rational purposes or fanciful whims. In those days, as soon as a set of men found themselves agree in any particular, though ever so trivial, they immediately formed themselves into a fraternity called a club. The Apollo Club, which held its meetings at the Devil tavern in Fleet Street, comprised all the wits of Ben Jonson's day; the Cauliflower in Butcher Hall Lane was the sober symposium of Paternoster Row booksellers. Humdrum clubs were composed of peaceable nobodies, who used to meet at taverns, sit and smoke and say nothing. A few of these latter clubs survive. But Addison, who knew something of the club life of his day, said: 'All celebrated clubs were founded on eating and drinking, which are points wherein most men agree, and in which the learned and the illiterate, the dull and the airy, the philosopher and the buffoon can all of them bear a part.' Just so, though not every club would acknowledge it; but the Beefsteakers boldly proclaimed their object in the name they assumed; theirs was the worship of beef-steaks.

Now, chops and steaks are relics of barbarism, of ages when men, having not as yet invented cooking apparatus, made a fire between some stones, and laid their slices of raw meat on the top, and ate them when half burnt and blackened. Steaks done on a gridiron are antediluvian enough, but mutton chops diffusing, when undergoing this roasting process, throughout the room the stench of a tallow candle just blown out, are enough to turn the stomach, not of the refined gourmet only, but of the untutored savage. It is only custom which enables the visitor to the grill-room to stand its effluvium, and to eat the food placed before him. Steaks are not so bad, because they have not the sickening smell of the chop, and so they actually found a set of worshippers, who formed themselves into a society to pay due adoration to their idol. Of course, in this age of higher culture and more widely diffused intelligence, such a proceeding must appear to us not only childish, but somewhat degrading; it was, however, a phase of the convivial life and tendency of the Georgian era, and as such merits a record; but lest we, in producing it, should be suspected of sympathizing with it, we deem it necessary to preface it with the above remarks.

The Beefsteak Club[#] was founded in the reign of Anne, and was composed of the 'chief wits and great men of the nation,' who were, however, silly enough to wear suspended from the neck by a green silk ribbon a small gridiron of gold, the badge of the club. Dick Estcourt the player, and landlord of a tavern called the Bumper, in Covent Garden, was made caterer of the club. He was, we are told, a man of good manners and of infinite wit, or of what in those days passed for wit, though much of it at the present time would be declined by the editor of the poorest comic paper. Steele, however, grows quite enthusiastic over him. The club first established itself at the sign of the Imperial Phiz, just opposite the famous conventicle in the Old Jewry; here the superintendent of the kitchen was wont to provide several nice specimens of their beef-steak cookery. Eventually the boys of Merchant Taylors' School were accustomed to regale the club on its nights of meeting with uproarious shouts of 'Huzza, Beefsteak!' But these attentions in course of time became irksome, and the club withdrew to more quiet quarters, but its final fate is left in the dark. Ned Ward, in his 'Secret History of Clubs,' from whom we get our chief information concerning the Beefsteak Club, simply says: 'So that now, whether they have healed the breach, and are again returned into the Kit-Kat community, whence it is believed, upon some disgust, they at first separated ... I shan't presume to determine, ... but, though they are much talked of, they are difficult to be found.'

[#] Not to be confounded with the 'Sublime Society of Steaks,' founded a few years after the club, and of which we shall speak more fully presently as the more important of the two associations.

The Beefsteak Society, or the 'Sublime Society of Beefsteaks,' as they chose to designate themselves, whilst severely objecting to be called a club, originated with George Lambert, the scene-painter of Covent Garden Theatre during Rich's management (1735), where Lambert often dined from a steak cooked on the fire in his painting-room, in which he was frequently joined by his visitors. This led to the foundation of the society in a room in the theatre. Afterwards the place of meeting was at the Shakespeare tavern in the Piazza, and subsequently at the Lyceum, and on its destruction by fire (1830), at the Bedford Hotel, and on its being rebuilt in 1834, at the theatre again. The members used to meet on Saturdays, from November to the end of June, to partake of a dinner of beefsteaks. The room in which they met was appropriately fitted up, the doors, wainscoting and roof, of English oak, being ornamented with gridirons; Lambert's original gridiron, saved from two fires, formed the chief ornament in the centre of the ceiling.

Among the members of this society, restricted to twenty-five, were George, Prince of Wales, and his brothers, the Dukes of York and Sussex, Sheridan, Lord Sandwich, Garrick, John Wilkes, the Duke of Argyle, the Duke of Leinster, Alderman Wood, and many other men of note. The club had its president and vice-president, its bishop, who said grace, and its 'boots,' as the steward was called; the Dukes of Sussex and Leinster in their turn discharged the office of 'boots.' Its festivals were of a somewhat bacchanalian character; the chief liquors consumed were port and punch, and fun, the more rampant the more relished, followed the feast. They had their bard, or laureate, Captain Morris, who had been in the Life Guards. Here is a stanza of one of his songs:

'Like Britain's island lies our steak,

A sea of gravy bounds it;

Shallots, confusedly scattered, make

The rockwork that surrounds it.

Your isle's best emblem there behold,

Remember ancient story;

Be, like your grandsires, first and bold,

And live and die with glory.'

Now what can we think of the literary taste then prevailing in the highest quarters, when we are told that this song rendered Morris so great a favourite with the Prince of Wales that he adopted him in the circle of his intimate friends, and made him his constant guest both at Carlton House and the Pavilion at Brighton? Truly, in those days fame and distinction were lightly earned! But does not our own time admire, or pretend to admire, the jerky platitudes of a Tennyson, and the jejune prose, cut up into measured lines, of a Browning as poetry? By the society Morris was presented with an elegant silver bowl for his 'pottery.'

In the decline of life and fortune Morris was handsomely provided for by his fellow-steak, the Duke of Norfolk, who conferred upon him a charming retreat at Brockham in Surrey, which he lived to enjoy until the year 1838, surviving his benefactor by twenty-three years, whilst hundreds of men of real merit were left to fight the battle of life unaided and unrewarded. But those who amuse the idle hours of fools with foolish nonsense are always more highly thought of than those who instruct and impart useful knowledge. There is more money spent at a State or Municipal banquet in one evening than would suffice for maintaining a scientific institution for a whole year. What did the Queen's Jubilee cost the nation, and what lasting benefit has this extravagant expenditure conferred on the nation? Of all this firework, what remains but the sticks and the burnt-out cartridge tubes? Carlyle, with whom we agree in few things, was right in what he said about the aggregate of fools. But return we to the 'sublime' Beefsteakers. The epithet they assumed reminds us that there is indeed but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. When a society, formed for the mere purpose of gorging and swilling, and howling drinking songs, the most stupid of all songs, calls itself 'sublime,' may we not ask, Where are the 'Lofty Taters-all-'ot' and the 'Exalted Tripe and Onioners?'

There were some queer members in the society. A wealthy solicitor, named Richard Wilson, popularly called Dick, having been to Paris, and not knowing a word of French, praised French cookery, and said that its utmost perfection was seen in the way in which they dished up a 'rendezvous'; he meant a ris de veau. Being asked if he ate partridge in France, Dick said 'Yes,' but he could not bear them served up in 'shoes'; he meant perdrix aux choux. William Taylor, another member, believed firmly that Stonehenge was formed by an extraordinary shower of immense hailstones which fell two thousand years ago. The society, we know, claimed to be a literary society, and had actually offered a prize of £400 for the best comedy. It had many dramatic authors among its members. One of them was Cobb, who, among other plays, wrote 'Ramah Drug'—drug or droog meaning in India, where the scene was laid, a hill-fort;[#] he was complimented by his fellow-members on the happy titles he always chose for his pieces. 'What could be better for your last attempt to ram a drug down the public throat than "Ramah Drug"?' said one of the Beefsteakers. But Arnold, a rival dramatist, disputed Cobb's claim to admiration on this account. 'What worse title,' said he, 'could he have chosen for his "Haunted Tower"? Why, there is no spirit in it from beginning to end!'

[#] The tower known as Severndroog on Shooter's Hill commemorates the taking of the fort of that name on the coast of Malabar.

When the Beefsteak Society was broken up in 1869, the pictures of the former members, mostly copies, were sold for only about £70. The plate, however, brought high prices; the forks and table-spoons, all bearing the emblem of the club, a gridiron, fetched about a sovereign apiece; the punch-ladle realized £14 5s.; a cheese-toaster brought £12 6s.; an Oriental punch-bowl, £11 15s. Wine-glasses, engraved with the gridiron, sold for from 27s. to 34s. a pair. The actual gridiron, plain as it was, fetched 5-½ guineas. Eulogies have been written on the society, as if it had been a really meritorious institution, and endless anecdotes are told, chiefly illustrating the gluttony of the members; but such details are neither attractive in themselves nor profitable to the reader, and we will not enter into them. We agree with Thackeray's estimate of the club-life of the last century: 'It was too hard, too coarse a life.... All that fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, reduced the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age.' But such were the convivial clubs of the past; it is as well to see the other side of things.

Addison, in support of his assertion that all clubs were founded on eating and drinking, says that the Kit-Kat Club itself is said to have taken its original from mutton-pies. If he means its name, he is, as far as can now be known, right; but if he means that its object was the consumption of pies, as the consumption of steaks was that of the 'Sublime' Beefsteaks, he was wrong. The Kit-Kat was the great Whig club of Queen Anne's time; it consisted of the principal noblemen and gentlemen who had opposed the arbitrary measures of James II., and was instituted about the year 1700 for the purpose ostensibly of encouraging literature and the fine arts, but really for promoting loyalty and allegiance to the Protestant succession in the House of Hanover. Among the forty-eight members were the Dukes of Marlborough and Newcastle; the Earls of Halifax, Dorset, and Wharton; Sirs Robert Walpole, John Vanbrugh, Richard Steele, Samuel Garth, Godfrey Kneller; Addison, Congreve, Pulteney, Walsh, and other persons, illustrious for rank or talent.

The real founder of the club is said to have been Jacob Tonson, the bookseller; he was for many years their secretary, and, in fact, the very pivot upon which the society revolved. Their meetings were originally held at a house in Shire Lane, close to Temple Bar, a lane which in time became infamous as the resort of thieves, rogues, and ruffians of every kind, though in previous years it had been fashionable. The house where they met was kept by one Christopher Katt, a pastrycook, famous for his mutton pies, which immortalized his name, since they became known by it, Kit being then a vulgar abbreviation of Christopher, and Katt being his surname, and from these pies the club took its name, the pies always forming part of its bill of fare. It seems strange that with so simple a derivation the origin of the name Kit-Kat should have been unknown even to Pope or Arbuthnot—it is uncertain to whom the lines are attributable—who wrote:

'Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his name

Few critics can unriddle:

Some say from pastrycook it came,

And some from Cat and Piddle.

From no trim beans its name it boasts,

Grey statesmen or green wits,

But from this pell-mell pack of toasts,

Of old Cats and young Kits.'

Surely the name is simply that of the pastrycook, Kit (Christopher) Katt, given to his pies, and has no reference to old cats or young kits or kittens.

As regards the pies, Dr. King, in his 'Art of Cookery,' wrote:

'Immortal made as Kit-Kat by his pies;'

and in the prologue to 'The Reformed Wife,' a comedy, 1700, is the line:

'A Kit-Kat is a supper for a lord.'

Tonson had his own and the portraits of all the members painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller; each member gave him his.[#] The canvas was 36 inches by 28 inches, sufficiently long to show a hand, and the size is still known as the Kit-Kat. There were forty-two of those portraits, and they were first hung up in the club-room, but Tonson in time removed them to his country-house at Barn Elms, where he built a handsome room for their reception, and where the club frequently met. At his death in 1736, Tonson left them to his great-nephew, also an eminent bookseller, who died in 1767. The paintings were then removed to the house of his brother at Water-Oakley, near Windsor, and on his death to the house of Mr. Baker, one of the sons of Sir William Baker, who had married the elder of the two daughters of old Tonson; the house of this Mr. Baker is called the Park, situate at Hertingfordbury, where they still remain.

[#] They were all engraved in mezzotinto by the younger Faber.

As regards the room at Barn Elms referred to above, Sir Richard Phillips, in his 'Morning Walk from London to Kew,' in 1816, gives an account of his visit to it.

'A lane,' he says, 'brought me to Barn Elms, where now resides a Mr. Hoare, a banker, of London. The family were not at home, but on asking the servants if that was the house of Mr. Tonson, they assured me, with great naïveté, that no such gentleman lived there. I named the Kit-Kat Club as accustomed to assemble here, but the oddity of the name excited their ridicule, and I was told that no such club was held there; but perhaps, said one to the other, the gentleman means the club that assembles at the public-house on the common.... One of them exclaimed: "I should not wonder if the gentleman means the philosopher's room." "Aye," rejoined his comrade, "I remember somebody coming once before to see something of this sort, and my master sent him there." I requested, then, to be shown to this room, distinguished by so high an appellation, when I was conducted across a detached garden and brought to a handsome erection in the architectural style of the early part of the last century, evidently the establishment of the Kit-Kat Club! ... The man unfastened the decayed door of the building, and showed me the once elegant hall filled with cobwebs, a fallen ceiling, and accumulated rubbish. On the right the present proprietor had erected a copper, and converted one of the parlours into a wash-house. The door on the left led to a spacious and once superb staircase, now in ruins, presenting pendant cobwebs that hung from the lofty ceiling, and which seemed to be deserted even by the spiders.... I ascended the staircase; here I found the Kit-Kat Club-room nearly as it existed in its days of service. It was about 18 feet high, 40 feet long, and 20 wide. The mouldings and ornaments were in the most superb fashion of the day, but the whole was tumbling to pieces from the effects of the dry rot.... The marks and sizes [of the portraits] were still visible, and the numbers and names remained as written in chalk for the guide of the hanger.... On rejoining Mr. Hoare's man in the hall below ... he told me that his master intended to pull [the room] down.... Mr. Tonson's house had a few years since been taken down.'