THE CRIES OF LONDON

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 141, 11 December 1935, Page 20

THE CRIES OF LONDON

TODAY AND YESTERDAY

CAMPAIGN FOR SILENCE

(By Ncllc M. Scanlan.)

LONDON, November 2. The noise of a modern city is now so great that a League of Silence has been started to put a curb upon it. When one recalls the sound of horses and carts on cobble streets in the days before macadamed surfaces and rubber tires, or even the earlier motor-cars, and the insistence upon blowing horns of every type on the smallest provocation, and the clang of cycle bells, one begins to wonder if modern ears are more sensitive, and our nerves today less steady. Roads are smooth, cars are silent, blowing of horns is reduced to the minimum; there is only the drone and murmur of that moving mass of vehicles upon the road. Even the milk carts now have rubber tires, and the milk men are not permitted to utter their call. The coal man, however, shouts his wares. The rag and bone and bottle man has his peculiarwail; the old girls selling lavender sing their ancient song. But even these are threatened.

As to the barrel-organ man, the street singers—the men and women who stand pathetically in >the rain their cracked' voices, or no voice at all, singing "Love's Old Sweet Song" or "Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes"—are being attacked. Of course there are men with portable pianos in handcarts, fiddlers, men with accordions, and in my own street, a young Spaniard whose music is a joy on a* foggy morning. It is the very essence of Spain and, sunshine, and his flashing eye, graceful figure, and gay music always brings him a shower of coins. Then he hops on his bicycle and takes up another beat.

On summer nights wireless through open windows is a perfect pest. Some control will have to be exercised- over this nuisance, and already steps have been taken in certain districts to control it.

In all this clamour and dispute about the evils of noise, some wanting to retain the old characteristic cries of London, even to the Muffin Man with his bell, and others, with shattered nerves, screaming for silence, a small boy was summoned for calling his papers in one of the new housing settlements. In these new and very respectable residential areas the rules are very strict, apparently, and the freedom we enjoy in noisy old London is denied. The boy did not appear, but he wrote to the Court, and here is his letter, spelling and all:—

"Jintleman; I plead guilty of shouting papers in the streets and I am sorry I cannot appeal against the summons has I have a vegetable round to do in the morning together with my paper round at nights. My father is blind, and there his no' one to bring him down. There his over 15 paper boys on the housing estate and each one of these does there share of shouting, yet the particular constable can defiently ignore other boys but must unlawfully attack me. The policeman sent a message to my home that I was to stop playing the mouth-organ in the street. Yet a drum and fife band his aloud to come round the housing scheme after eight o'clock at night and set all the cats and dogs owling in the neighbourhood."

The case was adjourned—with a smile.