Victorian London by Liza Picard

Author:Liza Picard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

CHAPTER 16

Amusements

Rat pits and dog fights • penny gaffs • music halls • the Alhambra • the opera • musical concerts • the pleasure gardens • Vauxhall • Cremorne • public parks • Victoria Park • Battersea Park • the royal parks • destitutes and rats • Green Park and St James’s Park • Hyde Park • Kensington Gardens • Regent’s Park • the Zoo • Surrey Gardens • Kew • Wyld’s ‘Monster Globe’ • museums • Buckingham Palace

The brutal blood sports that had delighted Londoners in Hogarth’s day had been banned, since 1835. No longer could you enjoy bear-baiting or bull-baiting, or throwing sticks at a tethered cock for fun. But there were some 70 places scattered through the poorer parts of London where, if you knew the ropes, you could watch rats fighting dogs, or dogs fighting each other.

In Bunhill Row, near Moorgate, ‘in one two-roomed house is a notorious dog-trainer, who keeps a dog-pit. It was in his upper room, reached by a ladder through a trap-door. All the windows were boarded up’.1 The ‘pit’ was ‘a small circus 6 feet in diameter, gas-lit’. There was a large cage full of rats, from which 12 were let out and set against an untrained dog, but it did so badly that it was not sold. A good ratter could fetch a high price. Next, 50 rats were loosed against a bull terrier, and various other dogs were tried. This ‘sport’ went on till midnight. One publican bought 26,000 live rats for 3d each, every year, mostly from the country round Enfield. ‘I’ve had noble lords and titled ladies come here to see the sport – on the quiet’.2

There were theatres and music halls to suit all tastes. Slum children always seemed to have the necessary cash to get into a ‘penny gaff’, their kind of neighbourhood theatre. ‘On a Monday night as many as 6 performances will take place [in the same room] each having its 200 visitors … [they are] a platform to teach the cruellest debauchery’ fulminated Mayhew. The audience was aged between eight and twenty, and – surprisingly – mostly female. Perhaps the men were at the rat-pit. There were ‘filthy songs, clumsy dancing and filthy dances by men and women’.3 ‘The true penny gaff is the place where juvenile poverty meets juvenile crime … the foulest, dingiest place of public entertainment I can conceive … the odour is indescribable … Demands for gin assailed us on all sides, women old and young, girls and boys in the most woful [sic] tatters … some cried for a pint, others for half a pint, others for a glass.’4 Gory stories of violent crime were most popular, such as the Murder of Maria in the Red Barn, or the robberies of Jack Sheppard the highwayman. The capital outlay was minimal – a platform of some sort, and a piano. They were held in the back rooms of public houses all over the poor districts of London. The

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