ady seen under
the garish candlelight of the Seven Dials and Commercial Road I saw
gilded into picturesqueness by that glorious and never-to-be-forgotten
sunrise on Epsom Downs which ushered in the Derby Day.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE WIFESLAYER'S "HOME."

There is something very weird and strange in that exceptional avocation
which takes one to-day to a Lord Mayor's feast or a croquet tournament,
to-morrow to a Ritualistic service, next day to the home of a homicide.
I am free to confess that each has its special attractions for me. I am
very much disposed to "magnify my office" in this respect, not from any
foolish idea that I am "seeing life," as it is termed, but still from a
feeling that the proper study of mankind _is_ man in all his varied
aspects.

It need not always be a morbid feeling that takes one to the scene of a
murder or other horrible event, though, as we well know, the majority of
those who visit such localities do go out of mere idle curiosity. It may
be worth while, however, for some who look a little below the surface of
things, to gauge, as it were, the genius loci, and see whether, in the
influences surrounding the spot and its inhabitants there be anything to
afford a clue as to the causes of the crime.

In summing up the evidence concerning a certain tragedy at Greenwich,
where a man killed his wife by throwing a knife, the coroner "referred
to the horrible abode--a coal cellar--in which the family, nine in
number, had resided, which was unfit for human habitation, and ought to
have been condemned by the parish authorities." Having seen and
described in these pages something of how the poor are housed in the
cellars of St. Giles's and Bethnal Green, and traced the probable
influences of herding together the criminal and innocent in the low
lodging-houses, it occurred to me to visit the scene of this awful
occurrence, and see how far the account given before the coroner's jury
was correct.

With this view I took the train to Greenwich, and, consulting the first
policeman I met, was by him directed to Roan Street as the scene of the
tragedy. Roan Street I found to be a somewhat squalid by-street, running
out of Skelton Street, close--it seemed significantly close--to the old
parish church. One could not help thinking of the familiar proverb, "The
nearer the church, the farther from God." The actual locality is called
Munyard's Row, being some dozen moderate-sized houses in Roan Street,
le