London Gazette

“ Indeed, at times there has seemed reason to believe the London "Literary Gazette" (we quote from memory) right in attributing this whole controversy to a quarrel which has long existed in London, and which, having its origin in the alleged abstraction of manuscripts from a Cambridge library by a Shakespearian scholar, has made most of the British students of this department of English letters more or less partisans on one side or the other. ”

“ James’s Gazette (1880) , it more or less repeats the function of a morning paper, as being chiefly devoted to news, with comment, as a subordinate feature. The Pall Mall Gazette is the spoilt child of journalism. Founded in 1865 under the editorship of Frederick Greenwood, it sprang at once to the position of being the darling favourite of intellectual London, which it has never entirely lost in spite of alternate periods of hideous sensationalism and considered dulness, in spite of a complete reversal of politics and of every imaginable transformation of “make-up” and journalistic devices. ”

“ There is no reason why newsboys should not be replaced as the medium for the sale and delivery of newspapers by old men, cripples, the tuberculous and those otherwise incapacitated for regular work. In London, the Westminster Gazette, the Pall Mall Gazette, the Evening Standard and the Globe (all penny papers) are sold in the streets by old men; the Westminster Gazette pays them a wage of 1s. ”

“ The 'Fancy Gazette' was a part of 'The Annals of Sporting and Fancy Gazette,' thirteen volumes of which were published between 1822 and 1828. The 'Living Picture of London' was compiled by Badcock as a guide to its condition in the year 1818, and a similar volume was produced by him in 1828. ”

“ THE ordinary West-End Londoner—who is a citizen of no city at all, but dwells amid a mere conglomerate of houses at a certain distance from Charing Cross—has known a fleeting surprise when, by rare chance, his eye fell upon the advertisement of some such newspaper as the Battersea Times, the Camberwell Mercury, or the Islington Gazette. ”

“ When we come to consider the weekly and monthly periodicals of the metropolis the number and variety of them is staggering. It is possible to deal with them only in groups and mention expressly a few, which must be taken to be not necessarily the most important ones but those which are perhaps the best representatives of their class. In dealing with illustrated journalism we have not yet altogether done with the dailies, as London has three daily illustrated papers, the Daily Graphic, a penny paper and two halfpenny186 papers the Daily Mirror and Daily Sketch. ”

“ There is always an old and respectable look about the interior of newspaper establishments, in whatever country you may find them. For rusty dinginess, perhaps, there is nothing to equal a London office, with its floors strewed with newspapers from all parts of the world, parliamentary reports, and its shelves creaking under books of all sorts, thumbed to the last extremity. Notwithstanding these appearances, however, there is discipline—there is real order in the apparent disorder of things. ”

“ Not indeed in colonnade and marble halls, not even in a tavern parlour, but in the open air, at the corner of Catherine-street, Strand. There they meet, shouting, squabbling and fighting in hot haste, for they have not much time to lose. All the papers must be posted by six o’clock. Here spare copies of the Herald are exchanged for spare copies of the Daily News, the Times is bartered against the Post, according to the superfluities and necessities of the various traders. The exchanges, of course, are made on the spot, the papers are posted, and the newsvender’s business is over for the day. ”

“ It is not exhaustive. London contains so much that is of profound interest, that many additional volumes would be needed in order to describe all its treasures. The city of Westminster, the suburbs and the West End, have for the most part been excluded from the plan of this work, and possibly may be treated of in a subsequent volume. The domain of the city of London, not of the London County Council, provides the chief subjects of these volumes, though occasionally our writers have strayed beyond the city boundaries. ”

“ Every one must have known that such an event as the visit of his majesty to the city of London must, from its rarity, collect thousands, if not myriads, to witness it; so that any accident to which the metropolis was exposed at present, from the collection of a large mass of people together, must have been as palpable a month ago as at the present moment. ”

“ As a news story, it is an event to test the news-gathering ability of the greatest newspaper. The dramatic repetition, on a modern stage, of feudal forms and priestly rites, may never again be repeated. The Herald’s best writers are already in London. ”

“ Thus the Queen's Men, in a petition written probably in the autumn of the following year, 1584, requested the Privy Council to dispatch "favorable letters unto the Lord Mayor of London to permit us to exercise within the city," and the Lord Mayor refused, with the significant remark that "if in winter ... the foulness of season do hinder the passage into the fields to play, the remedy is ill conceived to bring them into London." ”

“ The suburbs of the City of London grew in a long line along the river; on the west side were noblemen's houses on both sides of the Strand. East of the Tower was a seafaring and industrial population. Goldsmiths' Row was replete with four story houses. A few wealthy merchants became money- lenders for interest, despite the law against usury. The mayor of London was typically a rich merchant prince. Each trade occupied its own section of the town and every shop had its own signboard, for instance, hat and cap sellers, cloth sellers, grocers, butchers, cooks, taverns, and booksellers. ”

“ Peter’s, than appear ignorant of any person, thing, custom, or fashion, concerning whom or which you might have a curiosity. It is understood all over the world that the “city” of London is that crowded, smoky, jostling, omnibus and cab-haunted portion of the metropolis of England which lies east of Temple Bar. A kind of debatable country, consisting of the Strand, Covent Garden, and Tottenham Court road, then intervenes, and west of these lies what is called “the town.” A transit from one to the other by an inhabitant of either, is a matter of some forethought and provision. ”

“ Sitting on the banks of the Thames, a short railway journey from the narrowest portion of the channel and thus, of all the large towns, most near to the Continent, London is the most efficient mediatrix and exchanger of news between the Continent and England and the Continent and America. As capital of England, of a country which has always carried the mails of all the nations and parts of the world to all the nations and parts of the world, London is the great political, mercantile, and scientific storehouse of the world. No other periodical press can boast of such favourable circumstances ”

“ If you think that the columns of the People's Banner are to be bought, you must have opinions respecting the press of the day which make me pity you as one grovelling in the very dust. The daily press of London is pure and immaculate. ”

“ Those, even, who have never left our metropolis, but who, by early rising or late going to rest, have had opportunities of seeing a London sunrise, can judge, as well as by any foreign comparison, the difference between London as it might be, and London as it is. ”

“ The author of these entertaining sketches has taken his place as an ordinary Londoner who is a journalist as well. He has walked and ridden about London with pennies in his pocket, eyes in his head, and a brain behind the eyes. He has found secrets of London hotels, he has pierced the problem of London traffic, he has been to queer boxing contests, and he has been present at the birth of popular song. He has sat in the gallery of the House of Commons, and in the newspaper office that cuts and carves its speeches. And he knows the story of the famous block in Piccadilly. ”

“ The wealth of the world is wafted to London by the Thames, swelled by the tide; and navigable to merchant ships through a safe and deep channel, for sixty miles, from its mouth to the city; its banks are everywhere beautified with fine country seats, woods and farms....
The government of the city is lodged by ancient grant of the 124Kings of England in twenty-five aldermen, that is, seniors; these annually elect out of their own body a mayor and two sheriffs, who determine causes according to municipal laws. ”

“ London is in itself a Pageant. The street names, the buildings, cathedral, churches, prisons, theatres, the river with its bridges, and countless other objects, all summon up the memories of the past, and form a Pageant that is altogether satisfying. Many books have been written on the greatest city of England's Empire—some learned and ponderous tomes, others mere guide books; some devoted to special buildings and foundations, others{viii} to the life, manners, and customs of the citizens. ”

“ Wisely, therefore, did the London daily papers each send their active, fearless, and eloquent correspondents, to endure some of the hardships of the march and the bivouac—to observe the battle-field, not secure from its dangers—to write of victories, surrounded by the dead and dying—to be the historians of a day, and thus to furnish the best materials for all future historians. The life of a London reporter, although a life of constant labour, is generally accompanied by much ease and comfort. ”

“ I knew many men who did fairly well as London correspondents; nowadays the great Press agencies keep a staff to manufacture London letters on the cheap, and the really able original has gone clean out of existence. ”

“ What could you expect of an epoch in which the Life Guards wore cocked hats and pig-tails, the police-officers red waistcoats and top boots, when the king de jure was mad, and the king de facto wore a wig and padded himself? A bad time. We have a lady on the throne now who behaves as a sovereign should behave, and London grows handsomer every day. ”

“ NEWGATE. ROUND and within London lies a land chequered with lights and shadows, close city courts, and stifling suburban alleys, in which the sunshine only lingers for a few minutes during the day (where it seems imprisoned and in a hurry to escape above the dusky chimneys) ; and in this vast metropolis these scenes are contrasted with broad green, airy parks, and long lines of palace-like streets, which stretch westward and dip into the open and surrounding country. Its living crowds are ever in motion—now to witness a royal procession ”

“ Tucked away in the heart of the busiest part of the roaring city, overshadowed by tall, hard-looking, modern banking and insurance buildings and all but a thin strip of it hidden from view, is a veritable piece of old London. ”

“ It concerns all who are interested in the maintenance of civic splendour, and especially those who are authorized to regulate it. Such papers, and indeed any thing regarding the customs of London, will always be acceptable to the readers of this work, who have not until now been indulged with information by those who have the power to give it. The Every-Day Book is a collection of ancient and present usages and manners, wherein such contributions are properly respected, and by the Editor they are always thankfully received. ”

“ Among these the citizens are particularly interested in knowing the extent and limits of the wards in which they reside: and it was absolutely necessary to mention in their proper places all the several companies that compose their whole body: and as every inhabitant of the kingdom may, at one time or another, have occasion to visit or write to their friends or relations residing in this great city, the names and situation of all the several streets, lanes, rows, courts, yards and allies could not be omitted. ”

“ In London, before a newspaper existed, there were private gazetteers, who made a living by picking up scraps of intelligence in taverns and barbers' shops. This class of persons continued even when there were newspapers ”

“ London was to me the city of all cities—the one great goal of the journalist's ambition. I took short views of life even then, but my secret hope, ever present to my mind, was that I might some day attain a post in connection with the London Press. As the crawling train came into the southern counties—farther south than I had ever been in my life before—I remember counting the milestones on the road, and suffering all the emotions of the youth in "Locksley Hall" as he draws nearer to the world's central point. ”

“ When an example was set, the whole fraternity, fired with emulation, thrust each new one beyond his neighbour. Such were the impediments to walking so recently as 1766! The reader may imagine how a Londoner must have felt during a high wind and shower; a thousand signs swinging on rusty hinges above him, threatening ruin to his person at every step, and a thousand spouts pouring cascades at his luckless head. ”

“ I would advise all the strangers in London to procure the services of what is called in France a valet de place—known by Americans as connoisseur, for it is impossible without such aid to see all of interest in this great city. London cannot be seen in a day. ”

“ Even the most creditable provincial notes never approach London in a free tide—never circulate like blood to the heart, and from thence to the extremities, but are current within a limited circle; often, indeed, so very limited, that the notes issued in the morning, to use an old simile, fly out like pigeons from the dovecot, and are sure to return in the evening to the spot which they have left at break of day. ”

“ Among the noble cities of the world that Fame celebrates the City of London, of the Kingdom of the English, is the one seat that pours out its fame more widely, sends to farther lands its wealth and trade, lifts its head higher than the rest. It is happy in the healthiness of its air, in the Christian religion, in the strength of its defences, the nature of its site, the honour of its citizens, the modesty of its matrons ”