

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler

                                          [Picture: Logo of Everett & Co.]

First Edition,     June, 1908.
Second,,          September, 1908.
Third,,           March, 1909.
Cheap,,           March, 1914.

                                London in
                               The Sixties


                                                  (WITH A FEW DIGRESSIONS)

                                * * * * *

  By
  ONE OF THE OLD BRIGADE

London:
EVERETT & CO. LTD.
42 ESSEX STREET,
STRAND, W.C.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                               PAGE
        I.  1860                                         1
       II.  THE TOWER                                   13
      III.  MOTT’S AND CREMORNE                         25
       IV.  KATE HAMILTON’S AND LEICESTER SQUARE        37
        V.  THE NIGHT HOUSES OF THE HAYMARKET           48
       VI.  EVANS’S AND THE DIALS                       61
      VII.  THE RATCLIFF HIGHWAY                        73
     VIII.  THE BOOTHS ON EPSOM DOWNS                   83
       IX.  RACING _par Excellence_                     94
        X.  THE EPIDEMIC OF CARDS                      111
       XI.  THE COUP DE JARNAC                         127
      XII.  THE PUBLIC HANGING OF THE PIRATES          130
     XIII.  THE HOSTELRIES OF THE SIXTIES              140
      XIV.  THE DRAMA (LEGITIMATE AND OTHERWISE)       151
       XV.  MOSTLY “OTHERWISE” (CONTINUED)             163
      XVI.  USURERS AND MILLIONAIRES                   175
     XVII.  SOME CURIOUS FISH OF THE SIXTIES           182
    XVIII.  SPIRITUALISM AND REALISM                   192
      XIX.  THE ROCK AND THE CAPE                      205
       XX.  EASTWARD-HO!                               222
      XXI.  THE GUILLOTINE AND MADAME RACHEL           232
     XXII.  REMINISCENCES OF THE PURPLE                243
    XXIII.  DHULEEP SINGH AND FIFTY YEARS AFTER        257
     XXIV.  THE LAST OF THE OLD BRIGADE                264




CHAPTER I.
1860.


LONDON in the sixties was so different from the London of to-day that,
looking back through the long vista of years, one is astonished at the
gradual changes—unnoticed as they proceed.  Streets have been annihilated
and transformed into boulevards; churches have been removed and flats
substituted; night houses and comfortable taverns demolished and
transformed into plate-glass abominations run by foreigners and Jews,
whilst hulking louts in uniform, electro-plate and the shabby-genteel
masher have taken the place of solid silver spoons and a higher type of
humanity.  So extensive indeed has been the transformation, that, if any
night-bird of those naughty days were suddenly exhumed, and let loose in
Soho, he would assuredly wander into a church in his search of a popular
resort, and having come to scoff, might remain to pray, and so
unwittingly fall into the goody-goody ways that make up our present
monotonous existence.

The highest in the land in those benighted days turned up their coat
collars and rubbed shoulders after dusk with others of their species in
recreations which, if indulged in now, would be tantamount to social
ostracism, or imperilling the “succession.”

It was, in short, the tail end of the days of the Regency, changed,
virtuous reader, for better or worse.  It was, nevertheless, distinctly
enjoyable and straightforward, for it showed its worst, and blinked
nothing in hypocrisy.

The only recommendation for this appearance is its authenticity; every
incident passed within (or very near) my ken, for I was a veritable
“front-rank man” in that long-ago disbanded army—a veteran left behind
when better men have passed away—one of the few who could attend a muster
parade of that vast battalion of roysterers, and who, by sheer physical
strength, has survived what weaker constitutions have succumbed to—a
living contradiction of the theory of the “survival of the fittest.”

It was one morning early in 1860 that I proudly saw my name in the
_Gazette_—as a full-blown ensign.  I had scanned every paper for weeks,
although aware that our late gracious Sovereign (or her deputy) could
hardly have had time to decide the momentous question as to whether I was
to be a fusilier, a rifleman, or a Highlander, so short was the period
between passing my examination and the announcement I so fervently
awaited.  But I had great Army interest, and so it came to pass that,
within six