Such a stream doth run By lovely London as beneath the sun There's not the like.--Old Ballad.

Of the London and

Westminster

of Chaucer's time,

Chaucer's England,

there is little which the poet, however forewarned, would recognise if he were to return. The Thames, certainly, he would scarcely know, with its many bridges. The

London Bridge

of Peter Colechurch, with its crypt and fishpond in

one

of the piers, and the drawbridge arch over which rushed the insurgent commons of England under Wat Tyler, he would surely miss. And John of Gaunt's London palace of the Savoy which the insurgents burnt; would he know it? or would he know

Westminster Abbey

? Not Henry the

Seventh

's chapel, of course; nor Sir Christopher Wren's clumsy towers. Not

St. Paul's

, which in his days had a spire . . Not the streets; assuredly not the Strand, which in the days of the Plantagenets was really a strand sloping down to the river, with only a house here and there . . . He would know the Tower, however, and

Lambeth Palace

, perhaps, and

St. Mary's

Overies, where his contemporary, Gower, was married by William of Wykeham.

But even the Thames has seen its changes, years ago the river on both sides was fringed with trees and flowers to such an extent that Izaak Walton quotes the compliment of a German poet of his own time:--

So many gardens dress'd with curious care That Thames with royal Tiber may compare.

silver Thames

fruitful Thame;

the silver-streaming Thames,

the silver-footed Thamesis.

Oh! could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;

Strong without rage; without o'erflowing full.

England's Helicon

Beta:

And oh! thou silver Thames, O dearest crystal flood!

Beta alone the phoenix is of all thy watery brood

The queen of virgins only she,

And thou the queen of floods shalt be.

Range all thy swans, fair Thames, together in a rank,

And place them duly one by one upon thy stately bank.

an old woman with bare neck, black teeth, and false red hair.

The river and the metropolis, both so dear to Englishmen, are thus fantastically celebrated by Pope in his

Windsor Forest,

From his oozy bed

Old Father Thames advanced his reverend head;

His tresses dropp'd with dews, and o'er the stream

His shining horns diffused a golden gleam:

Grav'd on his arm appear'd the moon that guides

His swelling waters and alternate tides:

The figur'd streams in waves of silver roll'd,

And on her banks Augusta rose in gold.

Polyolbion,

The Seventeenth Song,

When Thames now understood what pains the Mole did take,

How far the loving nymph adventur'd for his sake;

Although with Medway matcht, yet never could remove

The often-quick'ning sparks of his more ancient love.

So that it comes to pass, when by great Nature's guide

The ocean doth return, and thrusteth in the tide

Up towards the place where first his much-loved Mole was seen,

He ever since doth flow beyond delightful Shene.

Do you think that rivers which have lived in London and its neighbourhood all their days, will run roaring and tumbling about like your tramontane torrents in the North?

The following charming verses on our muchloved river, from the volume of based on the quaint expression of Leland, who speaks of London as

a praty town by Tamise ripe,

Of Tamise ripe old Leland tells: I read, and many a thought up-swells Of Nature in her gentlest dress, Of peaceful homes of happiness, Deep-meadow'd farms, sheep-sprinkled downs, Fair bridges with their praty towns

By Tamise ripe. Fair Oxford with her crown of towers, Fair Eton in her happy bowers, The reach by Henley broadly spread, High Windsor, with her royal dead, And Richmond's lawns and Hampton's glades; What shore has memories and shades Like Tamise ripe?

Not vine-clad Rhine, nor Danube's flood, Nor sad Ticino, red with blood, Not ice-born Rhone or laughing Seine, Nor all the golden streams of Spain; Far dearer to our English eyes And bound with English destinies Is Tamise ripe.

High up on Danesfield's guarded post Great Alfred turn'd the heathen host; Below the vaults of Hurley sent A tyrant into banishment; And still more sacred was the deed Done on the isle by Runnymede On Tamise ripe.

And down where commerce stains the tide Lies London in her dusky pride, Deep in dim wreaths of smoke enfurl'd, The wonder of the modern world: How much to love within the walls That lie beneath the shade of Paul's By Tamise ripe !

swan-upping

The Old Curiosity Shop,

Our Mutual Friend.

light horsemen,

bummarees

stevedores,

teaskippers,

whisky-runners,

rough-scullers

In Fitzstephen's time the Thames at London was indeed

a fishful river,

swannes

The regulations respecting the keeping of swans on the Thames have always been very strict, and from a very early date the privilege of being allowed to keep them has always been jealously guarded. For example, we find that in the twentysecond year of the reign of Edward IV., , it

upping

upping

A correspondent in a weekly journal has pictured to us in vivid colours the sad story of the

River Waifs and Dead-houses,

Very peaceful and beautiful does the river look as we push off from one of the queer old flights of steps to be found at intervals all along the riversides. The light of the afternoon sun is gleaming down through a soft luminous mist, beneath which the face of old Father Thames looks up so smiling and placid that the idea that beneath his heaving bosom he conceals hideous secrets of death and decay, seems well nigh incredible. But he does so, nevertheless. Rarely a day passes but some poor struggling wretch goes down into those mysterious depths beneath that shining, glittering surface, never to rise again, or, if to rise, only to find a brief resting-place in one of the grim, foul little dead-houses--scarcely less repulsive--dotted here and there among the dense population along the shores on either side of the great silent highway.

Of course they are not all found, but within the London portion of the river Thamesbe- tween Chelsea and Barking, that is--there are on an average three or four of these poor waifs of humanity picked up every week.

Yonder goes one of them, covered over with a cloth, in that small boat, threading its way through the midst of the shipping towards the foot of a long narrow stair, leading up through quaint old blocks of building overhanging the river. Following in the track of it I am soon standing before a tall iron railing, shutting in from the busy world a dreary little patch of ground, planted with old moss-covered gravestones and overrun with weeds. In the middle of this plot stands the dead-house. The depository of the dead must, of course, under any circumstances, be a dismal and unpleasant place to visit; but about many of these river-side houses there is-or one fancies there is-something peculiarly oppressive and dejecting, and any one tempted to entertain the idea of evading the responsibilities and troubles of a troublesome world by a short cut over the parapet of Waterloo Bridge would do well to take a turn round to some of them. If the thought of being brought there, friendless and unknown, bundled unceremoniously down on to a bare floor damp and blood-stained, covered with filthylook- ing cloths, and laid in a shell, in which temporarily, perhaps, hundreds of other piteous objects have already awaited identification or consignment to a nameless grave--if the thought of that does not act as a powerful deterrent there must, one would think, be a natural penchant for suicide, with which it would be hopeless to contend. There is something unutterably sad in the idea of such a termination to all the hopes and fears, the struggles and strivings of a human life; and there is something hideously grotesque in the aspect of the grizzled, crinkly-faced old beadle, as he sets about his preparations for the coroner, and chuckles at the evident shrinking of his visitor from the long black box in which, as he rolls up his sleeves, he tells him he has rather a bad subject to deal with. It is clear that he is rather proud of the indifference which long familiarity with the dead has enabled him to acquire, and he evidently enjoys the shock which he conveys in reply to a question as to what it is he is sweeping out into a corner of the ground. What's them? Why, somebody's toes, says the old man; and he adds, with a grim little smile, There's 'undreds o' toes down in that corner.

The body just brought in has been laid upon the slate shelf which runs along two sides of the building, and in the shell on the floor are the remains of a young man, probably one of a score or so of poor fellows who lost their lives during the two or three days of dense fog some weeks ago, and the bodies of some of whom have ever since been floating about the still awful gloom of the bed of the river. No description of the contents of that shell can be attempted. Without some clear and specific object in doing so-such as we have here-even the mention of it would be unwarrantable. Only those who have seen a human body under such circumstances can form any conception of the duty which somebody has to perform before an inquest can be held, and they only are in a position to understand how inadequate and imperfect are the arrangements of the various metropolitan authorities for dealing with them.

A story, which under other circumstances would be ludicrous, is told of a military officer who, some time ago, was called on to go to one of these places to identify one of his men who had been accidentally drowned in the summer time, and whose body had been recovered after many days' immersion. The officer had gone through some active service, and made light of the warning of those in charge of the mortuary as to the shock he might possibly receive. He would take just a sip of brandy if, as they said, the smell of the place was so very unpleasant; but as to the sight of a dead body-pooh, nonsense! He had seen too many of them. It had been necessary to place a heavy stone on the lid of the shell containing the poor fellow, and no sooner was this removed and the lid raised than, on the instant, this stout-hearted officer rushed from the place sick and pale as a ghost, and declaring that if his whole regiment were drowned he would never go near another such a sight.

It is not surprising that the appearance of some of these melancholy objects on the river by night is often sufficient to unnerve men of the most dauntless character, and whose familiarity with them would, it might be supposed, tend to render them comparatively indifferent, Veteran watermen are sometimes found to be the veriest children in dealing with them. There is an old stager now on the river whose courage, under all ordinary circumstances, has been proved in a thousand different ways, but who yet dare not stay by himself for a few moments in charge of one of these stark, silent creatures. He and his comrades one night brought one to shore tied to the boat, which was left in his charge while his companions fetched a shell. They had no sooner disappeared than he made his way to a neighbouring publichouse, ostensibly to get a light for his lantern, but, as the joke goes, to let some of the folks there know that there was something to be seen down at his boat. His little ruse was successful, but his troubles were not quite over. His comrades returned with the shell, and all marched off with the body to the dead-house, which was reached by crossing a churchyard. On their arrival he was sent back to the boat, but with such terror had the sight of that object inspired this burly, really boldhearted man, that he could not for the life of him open the gate of the churchyard, and stood inside fumbling at the handle and shaking with fear until a woman passed, and she, poor soul, took him for a ghost, and when he asked her the time of night took to her heels and ran off in frantic terror.

It would be reasonable to suppose that with an average of some 150 to 200 of these bodies requiring attention every year there would, at proper intervals along the river-banks, and at no great distance from the river, be found not only mortuaries of the most complete and perfect construction, but every facility for conveying the bodies to them. Such, however, is by no means the case. Till within the past few months, the body of a person found drowned on the lower side of London Bridge should have been deposited in a kind of vault just between the church of St. Magnus the Martyr and the bridge. At the present time, no matter how sickening and dreadful the object found may be, it must be conveyed through the public streets to the mortuary in Golden Lane, a distance considerably over a mile. If found within that part of the river lying between the Equitable Gas Works and Chelsea College, it must be conveyed right away to Mount Street, in the neighbourhood of Hanover Square, a distance certainly not less than two miles. The idea of a corpse--it may be in an advanced stage of decomposition-being dragged from the river, laid in a filthy shell, and carried upon men's shoulders for a distance of two miles, and that, perhaps, in the height of summer, is something most revolting, and altogether discreditable to those who are responsible for it. In other cases the distance is not so great, but the accommodation for properly dealing with the dead is altogether wanting. The only dead-house for the river between Nine Elms and Waterloo Bridge is a kind of toolhouse in one corner of Lambeth churchyard. Lower down the river another little tool-house, standing close under the windows of a row of cottages, is the only mortuary. Even where the places themselves are tolerably satisfactory their situations are, in some instances, most objectionable. There is a new mortuary in Pennyfields, Poplar. It is situated at the bottom of a close and narrow lane, between the workhouse on the one hand, and a densely-populated little street on the other. Often there are five or six, bodies lying here at one time, and the surrounding inhabitants speak of the stench as at times something most unbearable.

The discussion that has lately been going on as to the best method of finally disposing of the dead, is no doubt a very important one; but it is evident that in London at least we have not as yet given anything like sufficient attention to the disposal of the dead during the interval between death and the final solemnity, whatever it may be. This applies not only to the river district, but to all ports of London; but in no other part does it happen that bodies that have been practically buried for weeks or even months are dragged to the light of day, and have to be dealt with as in the case of a ordinary death. In no part, therefore, is it so important that mortuary accommodation of the most complete kind shall be easily accessible, and, it may be added, in no part is it so thoroughly defective. There is, of course, great difficulty in securing open spaces for these structures, and the cost would, in some cases, be very serious if provided on shore. Where this appears to be an insuperable difficulty, however, a very simple and inexpensive solution of it would be to set up a floating mortuary here and there. This would afford fresh air, plenty of water, and ready access. Something ought speedily to be done in this matter, and now that the summer is approaching it appears to be a very suitable time for calling attention to what is undoubtedly a very discreditable state of things for a great city like London.

Of the Thames [extra_illustrations.3.305.1]  and wherrymen, a brief mention has been made in the volume of this work (see pages and ): we may, however, add here a few more particulars concerning this once celebrated and now almost extinct body of men.

As may easily be imagined, they formed very much of a caste by themselves, and recognised their kinship in the craft by being ambitious of burial, when they died, in the southern side of the churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. They were a rough, saucy, and independent lot, if we may judge from allusions to then which occur in the novels, comedies, farces, and popular songs of the last century. Their phraseology, too, was as peculiar as that of the cabmen and omnibus drivers of our own day. Peter Cunningham calls it

the water dialect or mob language,

one

of the privileges of the river assumed by the fraternity,

Voyage to Lisbon;

shocked

Life of Johnson,

The Thames watermen received their licences from, and were directly amenable to, the Lord Mayor and the other members of the Thames Conservancy; and their fares were regulated by a published scale of charges a years ago. A copy of the

Rates of Watermen plying on the River Thames, either with oars or skullers,

oars

Wapping Old Stairs

over the water directly from any place between

Vauxhall

in the west, and

Limehouse

in the east, for fourpence.

skullers

rates of oars, down and up the river, as well for the whole fare as for company

above bridge

oars

To the above list the same little book gives in an appendix the

Rates authorised for carrying goods in the tilt-boat from London to Gravesend.

ordinary hamper,

the hire of the whole tiltboat was

£ 1

2s. 6d.

tilt

tilt

the silent highway

The olden recreations on

the noble Thames

battles on Easter holidays on the water, by striking a shield with a lance.

make a book after his hest,

Confessio Amantis.

of the most interesting annual events in the present day in connection with the Thames watermen, and perhaps the most popular gala day now which gladdens the heart of the multitudes, next to Derby Day at Epsom and the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, is the afforded by Thomas Doggett, comedian, on the , to commemorate the accession of the House of Brunswick.

This scene,

Book for a Rainy Day,

is sure to be picturesque and cheerful should it be lit up by the glorious sun that gems the sea and every land that blooms. In

1715

, the year after George I. came to the throne, Doggett, to quicken the industry and raise a laudable emulation in our young men of the Thames, whereby they not only may acquire a knowledge of the river but a skill in managing the oar with dexterity, gave an orangecoloured coat and silver badge, on which was sculptured the Hanoverian Horse, to the successful candidate of

six

young watermen just out of their apprenticeship, to be rowed for on the

1st of August

, when the current was strongest against them, starting from the Old Swan,

London Bridge

, to the Swan at

Chelsea

.

They gripe their oars, and every panting breast Is raised by turns with hope, by turns with fear depressed.

Charles Dibdin was so amused with the sight of the contest for Doggett's prize, that in he brought out at the a ballad opera, entitled the hero in which,

Tom Tug,

And did you ne'er hear of a jolly young waterman, Who at Blackfriars Bridge used for to ply? He feather'd his oars with such skill and dexterity, Winning each heart and delighting each eye;

Then, farewell, my trim-built wherry, Oars and coat, and badge, farewell! Never more at Chelsea ferry . Shall your Thomas take a spell, &c.

Swan Inn,

blushed an answer to his wooing tale,

The old

Swan Inn

Thomas Doggett is stated to have been a native of Dublin, and to have been born about the middle of the century. Colley Cibber, speaking of him, says,

As an actor he was a great

observer of Nature; and as a singer he had no competitor.

Country Wake,

Among the most celebrated of Thames watermen in bygone days was Taylor,

the water poet,

And thou, O Thames, his lonely sighs hast caught

When one, the rhyming Charon of his day,

Who tugged the oar, yet conned a merry lay,

Full oft unconscious of the freight he bore,

Transferred the musing bard from shore to shore.

Too careless Taylor! hadst thou well divined,

The marvellous man to thy frail skiff consigned,

Thou shouldst have craved one tributary line,

To blend his glorious destiny with thine!

Nor vain the prayer!--who generous homage pays

To genius, wins the second meed of praise.

Down to about the middle of the century, when not only coaches, but also sedan chairs, had become pretty general, the Thames had formed the great medium of metropolitan conveyance. Its banks on either side were studded thick, as far as London extended, with the quays and

stairs

Row thy boat, Norman,

Down to the time of the discontinuance of the

water pageant

The remains of Anne of Bohemia, queen of Henry VII., who died at Richmond, were honoured with a state funeral by water, being brought with great pomp by the river to . In the mayor and citizens accompanied Anne Boleyn in their barges from Greenwich to the Tower, preparatory to her coronation at ; and this was the highway along which that unfortunate lady and more than other of the wives of Henry VIII. made their last journey. Along it also

the

seven

bishops

Passing up the Thames on frequent occasions might be seen in mid-stream the royal barge of Queen Elizabeth with her Majesty on board in gayest trim, on her way up the stream along with the tide going to her palace at , and possibly to land at , or atthe Palace Water Gate, at that time known, as we learn from Ralph Aggas' map, as

The Queen's Stairs.

After the great civil war, however, the royal water processions dwindled into the paltry annual pageant of the Lord Mayor's Show; and even this, we need hardly say, has now died out. The state barge last in use by the Lord Mayor was built in , and named the (from the then Lord Mayor's eldest daughter); it was very capacious, and richly carved and gilt. A few of the City Companies had their own state barges,

to attend my Lord Mayor;

The Queen maintains her river state barge, though it has not been used since the year , when she went by water to open the new ; the rowers of the royal barge, however, still wear scarlet state liveries, though, like Othello, they find their

occupation gone.

The nobility, in imitation of royalty, laid aside their gilded barges; the fashionables who dwelt near the Thames, at St. Katharine's, , , , Whitefriars, [extra_illustrations.3.309.4] 

Boat, your honour! boat, boat!

The Thames was the usual road, and persons, a century ago, spoke of

taking the water

You do me great honour, Mr. Handel, said my great uncle. I take this early visit as a great kindness. A delightful morning for the water, said Colley Cibber. Pray, did you come with oars or scullers, Mr. Handel? asked Pepusch, who had lately been setting the airs to the songs in the

Beggar's Opera

.

It may interest some readers, however, to learn that when George IV. came to the throne there were still wherries plying on the Thames, while the hackney coaches could muster only a sorry in the whole of London. As late as the year , if not more recently still, a boat was the usual conveyance from the neighbourhood of to ; and Mr. J. T. Smith, in his

Book for a Rainy Day,

Thames watermen,

A couple of centuries ago the river was so clear and pure that the noblemen who lived upon its banks along the Strand used to bathe in it constantly. It is on record, for instance, that in the reign of Charles I. such was the practice of Lord Northampton; and Roger North tells us, in his

Lives of the Norths,

above bridge,

he could live in the water an afternoon with as much ease as others walk upon land.

To the Earl of Pembroke, in the Thames, over against

Whitehall

.

That a very different state of things exists now with regard to the condition or the appearance of the Thames may be inferred when we state that from the report of the Medical Officer of Health, submitted to the Corporation of London towards the close of , it appears that during the month of September of that year vessels had been inspected in the river and the docks between and Woolwich, of which required cleansing, sick sailors had been found afloat and referred to the Seamen's Hospital at Greenwich, and of samples of drinking water taken from vessels in various parts of the port for purposes of analysis, were found unfit for human consumption. The practice of carrying Asiatic crews on board British ships has revived very much since , and there are now always from to Lascars in this port, some living on board the ships to which they belong, and many taking up their quarters in the House for Asiatics at .

Those who do not know what the state of things was in the Thames in the days when shipping discharged in the stream may be astonished to read of the doings little short of piratical which were a part of the established order of things, and prevailed into the reign of George IV., when the opening of the [extra_illustrations.3.310.1]  enabled at least a portion of the shipping to discharge their cargoes with some safety. In the depredations from merchant vessels in the river Thames were estimated by Mr. Colquhoun to amount to a year.

Scuffle-hunters,

Peterboatmen,

light horsemen,

one

gigantic system of plunder seems to have prevailed throughout.

Most of these infamous proceedings,

Our Mercantile Marine,

were carried on according to a regular

system, and in gangs, frequently composed of

one

or more receivers, together with coopers, watermen, and lumpers, who were all necessary in their different occupations to the accomplishment of the general design of wholesale plunder. They went on board the merchant vessel completely prepared with iron crows, adzes, and other implements to open and again head up the casks; with shovels to take out the sugar, and a number of bags made to contain

100

lb. each. These bags went by the name of black strap, having been previously dyed black to prevent their being conspicuous in the night when stowed in the bottom of a river boat or wherry. In the course of judicial proceedings it has been shown that in the progress of the delivery of a large ship's cargo about

ten

to

fifteen

tons of sugar were on an average removed in these nocturnal expeditions, exclusive of what had been obtained by the lumpers during the day, which was frequently excessive and almost uncontrolled whenever night plunder had occurred. This indulgence was generally insisted on and granted to lumpers to prevent their making discoveries of what they called the drum hogsheads found in the hold on going to work in the morning, by which were understood hogsheads out of which from

one

-

sixth

to

one

-

fourth

of the contents had been stolen the night preceding. In this manner

one

gang of plunderers was compelled to purchase the connivance of another to the ruinous loss of the merchant.

It was estimated that about persons got a dishonest livelihood by taking part in the rascalities which received their death-blow from the high walls of the . On the manifold advantage of the dock and bonded warehouse system, which now extends to every shipping port in the kingdom, it is needless to dilate, though outsiders will thank Mr. Lindsay for the clear and interesting explanation of the course of shipping business as it is now conducted in his work above referred to.

Towards the end of the year there were upwards of boys on board the and training ships, lying in the Thames, being educated and trained to man the Royal Navy and Merchant Service. These vessels are recruited from the Refuge for Homeless and Destitute Boys in (see page ).

The mercantile importance of this noble stream is greater than that of any other river in the world. Its merchantmen visit the most distant parts of the globe; and the productions of every soil and of every clime are wafted home upon its bosom to answer the demands of British commerce. The frozen shores of the Baltic and North America, the sultry regions of both the Indies, and the arid coasts of Africa have alike resounded with its name; and there is not a single country, perhaps, in any quarter of the earth, bordering on the sea, that has not been visited by its sails.

[extra_illustrations.3.305.1] watermen

[extra_illustrations.3.308.1] Gower's

[extra_illustrations.3.309.3] Opening Thames Steam Ferry

[extra_illustrations.3.309.2] Edmund Kean as "Hamlet"

[extra_illustrations.3.309.4] Lord Mayor's Procession Passing Royal Exchange

[extra_illustrations.3.310.1] West India Docks