SOHO UNDER WORLD

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 July 1936, Page 6

SOHO UNDER WORLD

SQUARE MILE OF MYSTERY.

Murder recently put Soho in the news—Soho, the forgotten mile in the heart of gayest London, says the “Daily Mail.” Not one in a hundred Londoners, and probably not one in ten thousand of the holiday visitors from the provinces who will soon be flocking to the Metropolis, ever really explores the narrow streets of this underworld which lies not a stone’s throw from the crowded shops and stores of Regent Street. - What passions of love and hate surge through the hearts of those who live and work and sleep in this international melting pot. Creeds and feuds and strange cults there are of which the Englishman knows little or nothing. One can walk from one end of Soho to the other and hear not one familiar word. Greeks and Italians, Cypriots and negroes, Turks and Swiss, they are all there, jostling one another amid the maze of stalls and barrows and old orange-boxes. One might be in the market at Marseilles or Lisbon or Milan for all there is of London in these crowded Soho streets.

Sausages and scent, saxophones and silk stockings—they are all to be bought there. The aroma of innumerable Swiss cheeses assails the nostrils, while round the corner come hurrying the commis and waiters with an hour off duty from the big hotels —they come to Soho for their shirts and studs and cuff-links. The raven hair and sallow skin of the Latins contrast strangely with the rosy cheeks of the fat East End butcher who has mysteriously sandwiched his shop in between a cafe and a .music store.

The scarlet lips and shawl of some sparkling-eyed gamin flash across the pavement like a meteor. And they disappear as suddenly into a doorway as black and mysterious as the night. The Englishman can never hope to penetrate the veil which shrouds the secret movements of this cosmopolitan colony.

Huge modern buildings encroach yard by yard on its invisible frontiers but the little Chianti store still holds fast before the invasion of concrete and steel.