and carriage-way swarm with pigs, poultry, and ragged
children.... But in the space called the Dials itself the scene is far
different. There at least rise splendid buildings with stuccoed fronts
and richly-ornamented balustrades.... These are the gin-palaces."
Naturally, among so much poverty gin-palaces and public-houses abounded.
It is curious to note how many of Hogarth's pictures of misery and vice
were drawn from St. Giles's. "Noon" has St. Giles's Church in the
background, while his "Gin Lane" shows the neighbouring church of St.
George, Bloomsbury; the scene of his "Harlot's Progress" is Drury Lane,
and the idle apprentice is caught when wanted for murder in a cellar in
St. Giles's.

The gallows were in this parish from about 1413 until they were removed
to Tyburn, and then the terrible Tyburn procession passed through St.
Giles's, and halted at the great gate of the hospital, and later at the
public-house called The Bowl, described more fully hereafter. From very
early times St. Giles's was notorious for its taverns. The Croche Hose
(Crossed Stockings), another tavern, was situated at the corner of the
marshlands, and in Edward I.'s reign belonged to the cook of the
hospital; the crossed stockings, red and white, were adopted as the sign
of the hosiers. Besides these, there were numerous other taverns dating
from many years back, including the Swan on the Hop, Holborn; White
Hart, north-east of Drury Lane; the Rose, already mentioned. In the
parish also were various houses of entertainment, of which the most
notorious was the Hare and Hounds, formerly Beggar in the Bush, which
was kept by one Joe Banks in 1844, and was the resort of all classes.
This was in Buckridge Street, over which New Oxford Street now runs. In
the last sixty years the face of the parish has been greatly changed.
The first demolition of a rookery of vice and squalor took place in
1840, when New Oxford Street was driven through Slumland. Dyott (once
George) Street, Church Lane, Buckridge and Bainbridge, Charlotte and
Plumtree, were among the most notorious streets thus wholly or partially
removed.

In 1844 many wretched houses were demolished, and in 1855 Shaftesbury
Avenue drove another wedge into the slums to let in light and air. There
are poor and wretched courts in St. Giles's yet, but civilization is
making its softening influence felt even here, and though cases of
Hooliganism in broad daylight still occur, they are less and less