The London Gazette

“ On the demise of the crown, a London Gazette Extraordinary is immediately published, with a proclamation announcing the death of one sovereign and the accession of the other. This proclamation styles itself to be that of the—
"Peers Spiritual and Temporal of the Realm, assisted by those of the late Privy Council, with numbers of others, Gentlemen of Quality, with the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of London." ”

“ Let the purchaser, however, beware the Newsman doth not give him a paper or gazette—three weeks old—in the hurry of the moment!
Such are the methods adopted by the London Tradesmen to attract attention, and such the appearance of the lower part of their Houses: indeed, Commodities are now generally used in place of the antient Signs. One of their absurdities deserves reprehension: when a man has a front door between two windows, or a door on the right side of a window, he will have his name over the door, and his business on the friezes of the windows ”

“ In January 1855 ‘The Business and Agency Gazette’ had been established. It was merely a sheet of advertisements given away weekly to people living in Clerkenwell. In May 1856 it became ‘The Clerkenwell News,’ its price was a halfpenny, and it was the first district newspaper of London. ”

“ London Gazette, reformation of the Stage; the Presentment of Middlesex Grand Jury 1723, Advertisements of Figg and others, masters of defence, Notice from Wilks, &c. and Cibber's answer 1733, Notice from the Proprietor of Vauxhall-gardens, proposal from same 1738, Life of Handel, original letter from Mrs. Clive, Statements by Mr. Garrick and Mr. Beard, Letters of Messrs. Harris and Colman, Macklin's narrative, Plan of the Regatta 1775, Foote's letter to the Lord Chamberlain, Advertisements of Clothing lost, Peruke-makers' petition 1763, Sir William Davenant, original docquet to Mr. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By a young journalist, or an old one, there is always an adventure to be found in London, as in any great city of the world where the passions of men and women, the conflict of life, the heroism and crimes of human nature, its dreams, its madness, and its faith, are but thinly masked behind the commonplace aspect of modern streets, and beneath the drab cloak of dullness of modern civilization.
It was my hobby in those early Fleet Street days to explore the underworld of London and to get behind the scenes of its monstrous puppet show. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is the mighty rendezvous of nobility, gentry, courtiers, divines, lawyers, physicians, merchants, seamen, and all kinds of excellent artificers of the most refined arts, and most excellent beauties; for it is observed, that in most families of England, if there be any son or daughter that excels the rest in beauty or wit, or perhaps courage or industry, or any other rare quality, London is their north star, and they are never at rest till they point directly thither. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ My reason for so thinking is contained in the following interesting item, culled from a well-known daily newspaper:—
"There is in London one man at least who works hard every day and has to lay prone to do it. ”

“ Once more the gray of morning hung over the city of London, a faint hum of voices and the sound of busy feet rose gradually within its bosom. With the earliest glimmer a host of workmen came to their daily toil upon the palace, and were seen in the yet dim light swarming upon the heaps of material gathered in the court, and creeping, like ants drawn from their mound, along the damp walls and the scaffolding that bristled over them. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Few things are so funny as the start of surprise with which a London journal upon rare occasion finds itself face to face with a something that also appears every morning at a price varying from a penny to threepence. ”

“ In every place of amusement in London, be it high or low, there is a place set apart for the Queen's family, so that should she take a notion to visit the most out of the way place, she may be certain of being able to secure a secluded nook or loge where she will not be intruded upon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every town cherishes the sacred memory of its own particular great man, but London bears in its bosom intimate and familiar tokens of them all. The city and its neighbourhood for miles round are marked with historic and literary associations. The [67] place is all composed of great men's fame and chapters of world-history. London Clay is made of London's Pride, and London Pride grows in the London Clay.
Not a quarter, not a suburb is free of hallowed associations. ”

“ THE GUILD HALLS OF LONDON. Perhaps there are no corporate bodies now existing in England which can trace their beginnings in a more unbroken line to the earliest recorded historical events of the country, and surely none which have exercised so great political and civic influence, as the famous trade-guilds of London. There now exist in that city about one hundred such associations, the twelve most prominent and influential of them being styled as the Twelve Great Livery Companies, and these associations exercise no slight share in the government of the world's metropolis. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All that can be attempted is to give one or two glimpses of mediæval life in London from points of view which may possibly be novel, or, at any rate, worthy of the consideration of those who desire to study the past in its human interests, and as something more than mere bricks and mortar. ”

“ The Queen's stables—
"They form a college of horses, with pedantic grooms for professors, and a harness room for a library:"
English omnibuses—
"The omnibuses of London are worn out, ill built, and remarkably dirty. Even in wet weather nobody is ever allowed to enter the interior so long as any places are vacant outside. We had expected to find them built of mahogany and lined with velvet."
London—
"London, wholly devoted to private interests, offers nothing to the heart or mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”