SUNDAY NIGHT IN LONDON.

Marlborough Express, Volume I, Issue 67, 22 March 1880, Page 3

SUNDAY NIGHT IN LONDON.

Along the embankment between Blackfriara and Westminister the student of social science may, on Sunday evening, observe the most remarkable spectable in Europe. There is net a city on the Continent, not even Vienna, in which anything like it can.be seen. Under the gleam of the eletric Rights thousands upon thousands of men and women are 'strolling, and it is easy to see that allot them belong to the humblest walks of life. It is no exaggeration to say that thousands of young girls may be seen wande.lng entirely unprotected by any male escort, and laughing, shouting, pushing, dancing, sometimes behaving in what the French would call an “ unqualifiable manner.”; These are the work-girls of London. Heaven help tl em and they are so little conscious of their degr ation that they take,a positive delight in it. “Do you suppose they are nappy ? I asked an Old Lbn- j doner. “Happy? They’re pleased as Punch with what they : call a lark! Lor’ bless yon, they don't® think theyire. > doing., anything wrong; ’they're' hot’-- brought up lA a way to : know much about finer feelings, I can tell you.” remains reasonably pure, it is considered a great stroke ot chance., -They are as ignorant aa.sayatefithdusahd J ‘things, which they pught’l to. know for their own ; ‘They wander: whichpen may hoi record. ’dt is easy th sel that 1 "ihlKy "have"been visiting tie public; houses; *nd Jby ithe time they- reached thbpit-j enfcal roof.’* protesting shadow' soine of thetwarel oblivions of external circumstances. Large gangs ;ot men" and boys di all grades,f from the. coarse and dangerous villain! in h'ob-hailed the •mall •IkyiSjerk*. Jpq, .tightly fitting

clothes and hill jargon of the countinghouse parade and the road sidewalks, now engaging in an amatuer dance with some mer ./ party of girls, now talking to other groups in language which would be insulting, if they choose ti consider it so ; and now getting into a sound encounter at fisticuffs. «A fight among the g’rls is not at al l . uncommon. And these are the future mothers of the working druses ; these the creatures that must be iu shop at sunrise and remain there unt:' sunset, every day except Sunday.. And what a use they make of the - ■ Sunday ! Of course the fathers and mothers, careless and callous as the majority of them are, still would feel a certain compaction about al'owing their dangters to wander through the streets alone after midnight, if it were not a custom which has become time honoured. What per cent of the work ing girls of .London are thus exposed to every danger of the g, at metropolis, I do not know, but it must be very great. Judging from the language which one hears from these Sunday promenaders on the embankment, they have been touched by no moral influence whatever, nor by any esthetical one, except that procured by a view of the paper on the public-house wal's, and the row of lights around Cleopatra’s Neecffe, — Edward King, in Boston Journal.