SIXTY TEARS AGO.

Evening Star, Issue 10339, 12 June 1897, Page 4 (Supplement)

SIXTY TEARS AGO.

[By Thomas Cocll ]

There are not a great many in our young community who can look back over sixty years, but"l happen to be one of those few, and among my remembrancer, as a small lad, was seeing our present Queen paying a visit to her first Parliament on the 18th of July, 1837, passing along the mall in St. James's Park looking bright, happy, and joyous, with her glittering tiara of diamonds, and surrounded by her life guards. No one could have lived during ail those past days without being able to say something interesting, and, with your permission, I would like to give a short sketch of the contrasts which existed then and now, so that our yonng folk may somewhat understand how most things have been altered for the better, gathering my information from all available resources. If time and space allowed, the picture given would be so strange that a young man or woman could hardly understand it. Among other thingß, aristocracy was worshipped with a servility unknown in these more democratic days, and poor people were expected to reverence their betters; religion waS cold and formal; the rights of labor were not recognised ; there were no trades unions; there were no railways to speak of, for they were just starting into existence ; scarcely anybody travelled except the rich ; the majority of the people, in England, at any rate, could not read or write; blue ribbon societies were unheard of—a teetotaller was a kind of phenomenon ; freedom of speech was very limited, and if the sovereign people had ventured to hold a meeting in Trafalgar square that meeting would have been disposed of in a quick and surprising manner. There was no book post, parcel post; no telephones or telegraphs ; aud newspapers paid a duty of Is 61 upon each advertisement they inserted. It was not till 1841 that the flow of emigrants came out to these colonies, Canada being the outlet before that date. Penal settlements were still flourishing, and during the ten preceding years 48,712 convicts had been sent out to Sydney. New Zealand was not then important enough to have a map to itself in educational books, the coast line was imperfectly surveyed, and it was a common practice with captains and others who visited these shores to purchase smoked and tattooed Maori heads to remit Home as a curiosity, just as one might send a bit of greenstone now. It is a fact that Maori chiefs would bring down live prisoners of war to the shore, and permit the captain or mate to choose which of the prisoners' heads he liked to have cut off and properly dressed and marked. There was scarcely a museum in the Old Country at that date which did not have a Maori head in its cabinet of curiosities. But to return to Great Britain. The condition of the ordinary folk was dreadful to contemplate. The poorer Irish people were in a state of chronic starvation and rebellion even in England before the passing of the corn laws admitting free grain. I was told by a small freeholder in Buckinghamshire on my last visit to the Old Country, in 1893, that he well remembered as a boy often going to bed crying with hunger because of the iniquitous methods farmers and landlords in those days used to keep up the price of grain of every kind, making it impossible for poor people to purchase it. The wealthier classes of the community took but little interest in their poorer brethren. Nearly every seat in Parliament was won by opan bribery, notwithstanding the Reform Bill, and every vote had its price. It was estimated that fcircely one working man in a hundred ever opened a Bible—that is, in England. Ou Sunday the vast population of the industrial towns resorted to the suburbs, and in ponds and canals amused themselves with duck - hunting, bearbaiting, etc. Fairs were held, and every kind of iniquity and license was practised. The prisons especially were foul dens of infamy. Fifteen cr twenty prisoners were locked up toge' her in one cell during the night—men and women, boys and girls—aud the result was the destruction of all morals aud the loss of the last shied of principle any might possess. As regards punishment for crimes, the law recognised 237 capital offences. A man might be hanged for almost anything. If he cut down a young tree on an estate, if he shot a rabbit, if he poached at night, if he stole anything worth the sum of five shillings from a person or a shop, if he was a gipsy and found remaining in the same place foi a whole year, he was liable to be hanged. In fact the desire of the Government of that day seemed to be to get rid of all lawbreakers by banging them. As regards the drinking habits of the people, much as they are still to be deplored, they are nothing to what they were sixty years ago. A man was almost ostracised by his fellow - workmen unless he joined in drinking his beer or whisky. The number of visitors to a gin shop in London was found to average 3,000 per day; in Edinburgh there was a whisky shop to every fifteen families; in one Irish town of 800 people there were thirty-eight whisky shops. In London, according to estimates, there was one publicbouse to every fifty-six houses, in Glasgow one whisky shop to every ten houses. Not many years ago the scholars in Cambridge University had no other beverage for breakfast than beer, and it was drunk at many country houses at that meal. I remember being sent to a school where light ale was given to the boys twice a week at dinner, and on great occasions we were treated to a glass or two of wine. Indeed, beer was universally drunk, and it required no small amount of moral courage to refuse to join in with the rest.

Sixty years ago the condition of the working people, and especially little children, in workshops and factories was something horrible. Especially in the coal and other mines was this the case, and we have to thank the good Earl of Shaftesbury for bringing about a change in their condition. No laws existed in those days to protect women and children as now. It was customary then to work children of six years of age. The poor little things were sent dcwn into the mine at four in the morning and worked till five or six in the evening; so they never saw daylight at all in winter. Their employment was sitting in the dark passages of the mine to open the doors to allow the coal trucks to pass, and then to shut them to prevent the draught and keep out the inflammable air. The children were trained to do this, and, of course, they grew up in ignorance and wretchedness in Christian Britain when Victoria first came to reign. The little girls, if they remained in the pit when they grew up, were known as drawers or thrutchers, pushing the coal trucks along the passages to the pit's mouth with their hands and their heads, which, we are told, generally became bald. Boys and girls were dressed alike, clad in a short pair of trousers, and nothing else. Printed plates taken from the 'Westminster Review' of that date show these children working in the coal mines exactly as above described. Most employers in those days resented any interference in the management of their business, however cruel it was, and protested against Parliament making any change. Then some of us remember the story of the poor boy chimney-sweep of those days. The orphans from the workhouses or the benevolent institutions were in almost all cases apprenticed to the master sweeps. In the morning of cold winter days you would see the master with his climbing boys walking round the streets and calling " Sweep !" These poor lads were compelled to climb up the various chimneys of the large towns, and their poor little hands and feet were constantly being torn by the bricks; sometimes the chimney pot at the top fell and the child with it, and he was killed. There were differences in masters, of course, but the general rua of them kicked and beat these poor little waifs unmercifully. Sometimes the master would light a fire at the bottom when he thought the poor little fellow had been up the chimney longer than he ought He was badly fed, badly clothed, and hardly ever washed, al-

though his occupation demanded incessant cleanliness, the laok of which brought upon him dreadful diseases. And all this because the master objected to use a broom, which did the work quite as effectively. It was not till the year 1841, after the public mind had been so aroused upon the subject, that these ohildren were protected by Act of Parliament.

Then the ohildren in many of the schools, especially in out-of-the-way country places, were horribly treated, until Charles Diokens, in his 'Nicholas Niekleby,' exposed the: doings of many of the masters in his sketch of ' Dotheboy's Hall,' and that exposure brought about a change. How different the treatment now, when a few extra palmies on a boy's hand with the strap sometimes causes a great hubbub, - and meetings of boards and newspaper articles ohronicle the enormity. But it would fill your paper to narrate merely the more prominent customs of cruelty and injustice of those days of sixty years ago. But there was beginning to dawn a brighter side of things as well, and I might say that bright side commenced more prominently when our present Queen ascended the throne. It would, of course, not be true to say that the Queen herself brought about these reforms, but she has done her best by living and example to help to bring them about. Her predecessors, George IV. and William IV., were not men of good character. They were profligate and licentious to a degree. George IV., in his latter days, used to go to bed drunk nearly every night. He had a bed made one foot high, so that he might o»Jy have the trouble of tumbling in when he retired from his numerous debauches. Now, our present Queen soon put a stop to all that kind of thing when she came to the throne, and her court has been as clean and as pure as could be. Before she will receive anybody she satisfies herself they are people of good character. It is well known she loves the Bible, and when she goes to Balmoral often visits the poor cottagers and reads it to them without any show of ostentation, and we have the charity to believe she feels as much at home in such work as she does amidst the splendors of her court in Windsor or London. In the new book printed by Spottiswoode aud Co., the Queen's printers, Sir Thomas Maxwell, Bart, gives a very interesting account of the Queen's accession to the throne. He says it was in Juue, 1837, jußt sixty years ago, that the old King William IV. lay dying at Windsor Castle. He drew his last breath before dawn on the morning of the 20th June. Mounted messengers were at once despatched to London to tell the young Princess Victoria that she was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. They left Windsor Castle in a post coach shortly after two in the morning—for it gets light in Eugland about that time and they did not arrive in Kensington Palace, London, till about five o'clock. The messengers included the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain, the Marquis of Coningham. The palace, at that early hour of the morning, was wrapt in silence. It was with great difficulty the gate-keeper could be aroused. At length the Archbishop and the Chamberlain obtained admission. They were shown into a room and left to themselves. After waiting some time they rang the bell, and desired the sleepy servant who answered it to convey to the Princess their request for au immediate audience upon business of extreme urgency. Again the dignitaries were left alone, and again they rang the bell. They were informed this time " that the Princess was asleep, and must on no account be disturbed." "We are come," was the reply, on business of State to the Queen, and her sleep must give way to that." The attendant was obliged to yield, and in a few minutes the Queen came into the room in a loose white nightgown, covered by a shawl, and was informed of her high position. The next thing done was that Lord Melbourne was summoned, the then Prime Minister, after whom the City of Melbourne is named. Then what is called a Privy Council was held at eleven o'clock. It is stated that between the arrival of the messengers and the sitting of the Council she retired to her room, and there prayed to God that she might be given the wisdom and the strength to enable her to undertake the heavy task imposed upon her. At noon the Council was held, and after having taken the oath for the security of the Church of Scotland she received .the allegiance of the Privy Councillors the two Royal duke?, her uncl'P, having precedeuce of the others. Mr Greville, the clerk of the Council, in his memoirs, says: "As these two old men, the Dukes of Sussex and Cumberland, knelt bsfore her I 6aw her blush up to the eye 3 as if she felt the contrast between their civil and natural relations." At her first Parliament, in addressing the members present, she said: "I ascend the throne with a deep sense of the responsibility imposed upon me, but I am supported by the consciousness of my right intentions and by my dependence upon the protection of Almighty God." She was crowned on the following June,' 1838. It would be tedious to comment upon the splendor of the ceremony of that day, but it is believed chat not the least truthful of the accounts left to us is told by the Rev. Mr Barham in a song in the ' Ingoldsby Legends' entitled ' Barney Macguire's Acoount of the Coronation,' and beginning— Och ! the coronation, what celebration For emulation with it can compare ? When to Westminster the Royal Spinster And the Duke of Leinster all in order did repair. 'Twas there you see the new Polishemen* Making a scrimmage at half afther four ; And the lords and ladies and the Miss O'Gradys AU standing round the abbey door. In conclusion, though much remainß to be done, there haß been a distinot advanoe in the condition of the people. Mr George says "the poor have grown poorer''; but that is certainly untrue. The working man, at any rate, is better off; he is better fed and better dressed; his children are educated; in most great towns he has free libraries, though not yet in Dunedin, but it is coming ; he bag clubs, and, as for political power, he has all the power there is, because you cannot give any man more than his vote.

"These were the new policemen named after Sir Robert Peel.