THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1188, 7 December 1894, Page 29

THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON.

HELL-AND-TOMMY CLUBS. From Oar Special Correspondent. London, October 120. In its vigorous crusade against the Prowling Prudes whose nasty minds have led to the closing up of the Empire Theatre the Daily Telegraph puts its-hand boldly on the supper or Hell - and-Tommy Clubs, which are the real curse and,' scandal, of West Central London. The’ writer’s acquaintance with these haunts seems, I feel bound to remark, extensive and peculiar. He says :—Within a radius of one hundred yards of the .EmpireTheatre at the present moment there exist • at least a dozen of these night hells; where some of the members say good evening with an oath and good morning with a champagne bottle. Here you can, unfettered by County Council meddling, become a member of the club by payment of a fee at the door. Here you can dance . with the best and the finest of .the demimonde to the strains of a more or less efficient orchestra, with vitriolised drink supplied to you at fabulous prices, while . the master of the ceremones will come up to you with suggestions not to be repeated. Here, if you are in that way inclined, you can have* a music-hall song-and-dance turn supplied to you between the'waltzes, if you are of a “ variety " loving turn of mind, and from here you can be taken home to some of the souteneur robbing dens of Soho if you are not careful, and ! need not say what is in store for you: if you are not in the company of “one who knows." It is from a place of this description that you can oe lured where you will soon find that all. your money can be stolen from you in a few hours. It was in a resort of this description that a Government engineer whom I knew found himself in the hands of a gang of blackmailers, with the result that he had to use a water-jug as a weapon of selfdefence, which ensured his appearance at a police-court. The men who had him arrested, and who should have prosecuted him, fled the country, as one of tbeir gang had just received a grant from the State of twenty-five years’ penal servitude, and the poor engineer, goaded to death by the publicity of the affair, blew his brains out. It was at one of these places, kept by a man who has “ done time " twice, that I saw a poor fast woman felled to the ground with a blow from the fist of a pugilist. It was at one of these places that I, with my cwn eyes, saw another poor creature well soaked in drink persuaded to divest herself of every vestige of her clothing, and dance to an applauding crowd of shameless cardsharpers and well-dressed rogues and vagabonds. “It is at these dens," adds the correspondent, “ that the licensing laws are openly defied, that the lowest form of human scum is allowed to gather, under the legalising aegis of a club and the purity policy of a goody-goody Council." And be asks, “ Are we, then, to be driven to this ?«