n the deepest
gloom. Many of the courts and lanes were left in total darkness; those
of the meaner sort, where one glimmering light twinkled for a score of
houses, being favoured in no slight degree. Even in these places, the
inhabitants had often good reason for extinguishing their lamp as soon
as it was lighted; and the watch being utterly inefficient and powerless
to prevent them, they did so at their pleasure. Thus, in the lightest
thoroughfares, there was at every turn some obscure and dangerous spot
whither a thief might fly or shelter, and few would care to follow; and
the city being belted round by fields, green lanes, waste grounds, and
lonely roads, dividing it at that time from the suburbs that have joined
it since, escape, even where the pursuit was hot, was rendered easy.

It is no wonder that with these favouring circumstances in full and
constant operation, street robberies, often accompanied by cruel wounds,
and not unfrequently by loss of life, should have been of nightly
occurrence in the very heart of London, or that quiet folks should have
had great dread of traversing its streets after the shops were closed.
It was not unusual for those who wended home alone at midnight, to
keep the middle of the road, the better to guard against surprise from
lurking footpads; few would venture to repair at a late hour to Kentish
Town or Hampstead, or even to Kensington or Chelsea, unarmed and
unattended; while he who had been loudest and most valiant at the
supper-table or the tavern, and had but a mile or so to go, was glad to
fee a link-boy to escort him home.

There were many other characteristics--not quite so disagreeable--about
the thoroughfares of London then, with which they had been long
familiar. Some of the shops, especially those to the eastward of Temple
Bar, still adhered to the old practice of hanging out a sign; and the
creaking and swinging of these boards in their iron frames on windy
nights, formed a strange and mournful concert for the ears of those
who lay awake in bed or hurried through the streets. Long stands of
hackney-chairs and groups of chairmen, compared with whom the coachmen
of our day are gentle and polite, obstructed the way and filled the
air with clamour; night-cellars, indicated by a little stream of light
crossing the pavement, and stretching out half-way into the road, and
by the stifled roar of voices from below, yawned for the reception and
entertainment of the most abandon