Rotten borough

“ Dante Rossetti, whose father was a professor at King’s, like Pepoli at University College, used, as a student-boy at the first-named, to purchase “Vates,” and devour it eagerly; so he told me when many years later we met.
Leaving the arena of letters and art for country life, which is, however, worth seeing once, I settled myself down in the monastic borough of Bury St. Edmunds. Like all the old county towns, it was formerly the little metropolis of a squirearchy, where the dowagers retired for life into the family mansions. ”

“ So the queer existence of the tranquil place moves on; petty scandal, petty thieving, petty jobbery, petty jealousy employ the energies of the beings who inhabit the "good old town"—the borough is always good and old—and a man with a soul who really tried to dwell in the moral atmosphere of the community would infallibly be asphyxiated. Nowhere are appearances so deceptive; nowhere do the glamour of antiquity and the beauty of natural scenery draw the attention away from so vile a centre. ”

“ While the bulk of them grew by simple increase of population from township to town, larger boroughs such as York with its "six shires" or London with its wards and sokes and franchises show how families and groups of settlers settled down side by side, and claimed as they coalesced, each for itself, its shire or share of the town-ground while jealously preserving its individual life within the town-community. But strange as these aggregations might be, the constitution of the borough which resulted from them was simply that of the people at large. ”

“ In the lodging-houses at Westminster the inhabitants are of a much more industrious character. In Lant Street, Borough, they are quite the reverse. A man should have his wits about him who attempts to penetrate into the mysteries or to understand the life of a low lodging-house there.
For ages the Mint in the Borough has gained an unenviable name, not only as the happy hunting-ground of the disreputable, the prostitute, the thief, the outcast, the most wretched and the lowest of the poor, yet there was a time when it was great and famous. ”

“ Or they were fighting a sturdy battle with the king's justices to preserve some ancient privilege, the right of the borough perhaps to "swear by itself,"—that is, to a jury of its own or its freedom from the general custom of "frank-pledge." As trade advanced commercial bodies grew up in the boroughs and formed themselves into gilds; and these gilds gradually drew into their own hands the government of the town, which in old days had been decided by the general voice of the whole body of its burghers—that is, of those who held land within its walls. ”

“ It is a time when suburbs and quarters, invidiously distinguished from one another in the social scale, have established themselves; when, in short, from being just the resort of a class, a place becomes a microcosm of life, in which all classes and degrees are represented. The seal was set upon the arrival of that time for Bournemouth with its admission to the dignity of a municipal borough, fully equipped with Mayor and Town Council, in the summer of 1890, and again, later, with the opening of electric tramways. ”

“ The southern part of the borough is comparatively new. Within the last sixty years long lines of houses have sprung up, concealing beneath unpromising exteriors, such as only London houses can show, comfort enough and to spare. This is a favourite residential quarter, though we now consider it in, not "conveniently near," town. Snipe were shot in the marshes of Brompton, and nursery gardens spread themselves over the area now devoted to the museums and institute. ”

“ There is nothing in England to-day with which we can compare the life of a fully enfranchised borough of the fifteenth century. Even the revival of our local institutions and our municipal ambition has scarcely stirred any memory of the great tradition of the past, of the large liberties, the high dignities and privileges which our towns claimed in days when the borough was in fact a free self-governing community, a state within the state, boasting of rights derived from immemorial custom and of later privileges assured by law. ”

“ The inner surface of this space is paved with cobble-stones, worn smooth by centuries of usage: it is only of late years that the conservative spirit of the old borough has so far accommodated itself to modern requirements as to provide foot-paths in front of the shops and houses. ”

“ Officials and loyal citizens who desire that the historic character of Brooklyn should be preserved cannot afford to wait ten years before a beginning is made to brighten up the downtown district. Continued migrations of home owners from Brooklyn to New Jersey and to counties outside of Greater New York may weaken the ability of the borough to preserve its entity and character. If it should once become a somewhat neglected industrial annex of Manhattan, the result would be injurious both to Brooklyn and Manhattan. ”

“ Matthew Arnold once wrote to his mother: "I think you will be struck with the aspect of London in May; the wealth and brilliancy of it is more remarkable every year. The carriages, the riders, and the walkers in Hyde Park, on a fine evening in May or June, are alone worth coming to London to see." This description, though written some years before, was eminently true of Rotten Row and its adjacent drives when I first frequented them. Frederick Locker, a minor poet of Society, asked in some pensive stanzas on Rotten Row ”

“ The town possesses iron, steel and brass works, railway wagon works, potteries, glass-works, breweries, saw-mills and rope-yards. At the township of Masborough, opposite Rotherham across the Don, works were established in 1746 by Samuel Walker, a successful iron master. The municipal borough, incorporated in 1871, is under a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 6012 acres. The town was of some importance in Anglo-Saxon times, and at Templeborough, on the S.E. side of Rotherham, there was a Roman fort, but its traces are effaced. ”

“ Paul smiled. They understood. A little while later they drove off with him to his committee room in the motor car gay with his colours. There was still much to be done that day.
CHAPTER XX
HICKNEY HEATH blazed with excitement. It is not every day that a thrill runs through a dull London borough, not even every election day. For a London borough, unlike a country town, has very little corporate life of its own. You cannot get up as much enthusiasm for Kilburn, say, as a social or historical entity, as you can for Winchester or Canterbury. ”

“ Hillsborough and its outlying suburbs make bricks by the million, spin and weave both wool and cotton, forge in steel from the finest needle up to a ship's armor, and so add considerably to the kingdom's wealth.
But industry so vast, working by steam on a limited space, has been fatal to beauty: Hillsborough, though built on one of the loveliest sites in England, is perhaps the most hideous town in creation. All ups and down and back slums. Not one of its wriggling, broken-backed streets has handsome shops in an unbroken row. ”

“ III. All inhabitants of a borough were also deeply interested in the preservation of the boundaries which marked the extent of their dominions, the “liberties” within which they could enforce their own law, regulate trade, and raise taxes. Century after century the defence of the frontier remained one of the urgent questions of town politics, insistent, perpetually recurring, now with craft and treachery, now with violence and heated passion breaking into sudden flame. Every year the mayor and corporation made a perambulation of the bounds and inspected the landmarks ”

“ Their history extends back to the Celtic and Roman times, when Aldborough or Iseur, the Isurium of the Romans, was the capital of the Brigantian Celts, and near by ran northward from York a great Roman road, which crossed the Ure by a ford, which was supplanted after the Conquest by a wooden bridge, which gave rise to a great convergence of roads at this point, and the growth of a town, which obtained the name of Boroughbridge, i.e., the borough by the bridge. ”

“ Three generations ago then Islington was an isolated village becoming a country residence for city men, its next stage was to become a suburb, from that it rapidly became part of outer London, now it is indistinguishable from London itself, but has undergone, like other absorbed townships a civic revulsion towards independence by promotion to Borough-hood. ”

“ In the fourth year after the Restoration the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses petitioned for a ratification of their existing privileges and for an enlargement of them, which Charles II. granted, “the borough being an ancient and populous borough, and he being desirous that for the time to come, for ever, one certain and invariable method might be had of, for, and in the preservation of our peace, and in the rule and governance of the same borough, and of our people in the same inhabiting, and of others resorting thither ”

“ The river Lea, which the eastern boundary generally follows, is believed to have been crossed towards the north of the modern borough by a Roman road, the existence of which is recalled by the district-name of Old Ford; while Bow (formerly Stratford-le-Bow or Stratford-atte-Bowe) was so named from the “bow” or arched bridge which took the place of the ford in the time of Henry II. South of these districts lies Bromley; in the south-east the borough includes Blackwall; and a deep southward bend of the Thames here embraces the Isle of Dogs. ”

“ On its outskirts and in the corn-fields where are to-day rows of red-brick villas, were still to be found flint cottages, long blue-roofed barns, and timbered farmsteads among elms. As little by little the town, with its border of allotment gardens, flooded along the New Road, sweeping up Rodmill and brimming over towards Ratton and the Decoy on the edge of the marshes, these buildings that dated from another age were gradually diverted from their pristine use to be the habitations of those who no longer drew their living from the earth. ”

“ It might however be conjectured that a difference of usage between those boroughs, where the ancient exclusive rights of burgage tenants were maintained, and those where the equitable claim of taxable inhabitants possessing only a chattel interest received attention, might ultimately produce those very opposite species of franchise, which we find in the scot and lot borough, and in those of burgage-tenure. ”

“ Famous also is this town for the loveliness and virtue of its women; and beauteous and faithful wives make their husbands and sons good and great. Oh! supremely blessed is the town of Rottenborough, situate in its happy valley, and through whose streets sweep balmy gales, laden with perfume and delicious odour.'—At this moment, the voice of some purblind Tory exclaimed, 'What do you say to the putrid black ditch at the back of the church?' Of course one of my own supporters smashed this ruffian's hat over his eyes ”

“ In the south-west the king’s officials seem to be grappling with difficulties as best they may. In Dorset they place Dorchester, Bridport, Wareham and Shaftesbury above the rubric Terra Regis [840] , and we can not find that they reckon any other place as a borough. In Devonshire we see Exeter above the line; Lidford and Barnstaple, however, are called boroughs though they are assigned to the king’s land, and (as already said) Totness is a borough, though it is mediatized and is described among the estates of its Breton lord [841] . ”

“ They want to boost Brooklyn and boom it and push it and make it the most important borough in Greater New York, and develop its harbour facilities, and establish a great university, and double the assessed value of real estate within five years. Such people are in Brooklyn, but not of it. ”

“ Houses seem to have battled in the air, and stuck wherever they tumbled down dead out of the melee. But worst of all, the city is pockmarked with public-houses, and bristles with high round chimneys. These are not confined to a locality, but stuck all over the place like cloves in an orange. They defy the law, and belch forth massy volumes of black smoke, that hang like acres of crape over the place, and veil the sun and the blue sky even in the brightest day. But in a fog—why, the air of Hillsborough looks a thing to plow, if you want a dirty job. ”

“ The black and gold sign that surmounted its blue roofs could be seen from the top of Acre Lane and half way along Shawport Lane, proclaiming the progress of lithography and steam-printing, and the name of Edwin Clayhanger. Let the borough put that in its pipe and smoke it! He was well aware that the borough felt pride in his works. And he had orders more than sufficient to keep the enterprise handsomely going. Even in the Five Towns initiative seemed to receive its reward.
Life might be as profoundly unsatisfactory as you pleased, but there was zest in it. ”

“ Gradually the interest of other figures made Rotha forget her own. They came out from the poor part of the city where she dwelt; streets grew wide and shops lofty and imposing; equipages drove along, outstripping the slow-going car; and in them, what ladies, and what gentlemen, and what little girls now and then! This was the wonderful New York, at which she had now and then had a peep; this was something five hundred miles removed from Jane Street. What sort of human beings were these? ”

“ During that time she has been a dependent borough within the great city of New York. Many thought that when that transition took place Brooklyn would lose her old-time spirit, her pride would be humbled and she would sink into the slough of despair, but we are here to-day to make known to these United States that Brooklyn's old-time courage is as high, her spirit is as heavily charged with municipal energy and her pride is the same pride as of old.
"Brooklyn is a peculiar community. She differs from all others. The wits have long fed upon her. ”