1827 3 Litter on Affairs in genual. 4 1 1 



The people of the islands seem to have been highly grateful for the atten- 

 tion shewn to their late sovereign ; and perfectly satisfied as to the manner 

 of his death. There are also some notices of the conduct of Mr. Star- 

 buck, the master of the ship that brought Ihe king and his party to 

 England; who seems to have been a very incomprehensible sort of per- 

 sonage. 



The late high winds have done considerable mischief in the neighbour- 

 hood of the metropolis. Chimney-pots and the houses they belonged to, 

 in several cases, dissolved partnership without any notice in the Gazette; 

 and ladies, by a process far more summary than that of the Ecclesiastical 

 Court, were in many instances divorced from their cloaks, and gentlemen 

 from their umbrellas. Only on Thursday night last, a gentleman walked 

 into the watch-house beyond Waterloo-bridge, and said " Here is a hat 

 that I have found blowing about the road." And as he was turning round 

 to go out, a watchman came in, saying " Here is a gentleman I have 

 found blowing about the road, that I dare say it belongs to." 



I am c;lad to find, by the proceedings of a Common Council, held on 

 the 15th instant, that Mr. Alderman Venables has given notice of a mo- 

 tion, for " considering the state of the nightly watch in the city." This 

 is an inquiry which has very long been wanted ; because, if we are to 

 have the institution of a " street police," it is lit that we should have the 

 advantage of its operation, in one part of the town as well as in another; 

 and it so happens now, that, in one of the very greatest thoroughfares in 

 town the ward of Fleet-street we have practically, after ten o'clock at 

 night, no " street police" at all. While the law in other parts of the town 

 is strictly enforced, which obliges publicans to shut their doors at eleven 

 o'clock, and stop their trade, almost every public-house in the ward of 

 Fleet-street is allowed to be turned into a common gin-shop ; into and out 

 of which all kinds of disorderly and infamous characters are passing and 

 re-passing, until two or three o'clock in the morning. It will hardly be 

 credited by persons not resident on the spot, that, from the hour when the 

 theatres break up at night until two or three o'clock in the morning, Fleet- 

 street is paraded by gangs of pick-pockets, mixed up in parties with the 

 lowest description of prostitutes, to such a degree as, before twelve o'clock, 

 renders it wholly impassable to decent persons : with all which riot and 

 violation of law, the police of the city never seems at all to interfere. Now 

 without going into any abstract question as to the possibility, or policy, of 

 removing particular nuisances, it would be feasible, I think, to confine them 

 within some moderate bounds ; and there does seem to be no very good 

 reason, why one part of the streets of London should, at a particular time 

 of the twenty-four hours, be especially delivered over to the sovereignty of 

 thieves and vagabonds, any more than another! Why it should be impos- 

 sible (particularly) for a man resident in Ludgate-hill, or in Bridge-street, 

 to walk from Temple-bar after eleven at night with his wife or daughter, 

 without subjecting them to offences too gross and horrible to be described ? 

 I rather hope that there is some mistake in the opinion, that this disgrace- 

 ful state of Fleet-street ward, has been suffered to continue by those autho- 

 rities who should have put it down, from a tenderness (founded upon elec- 

 tioneering views or expectations) for the interests of the several publicans 

 who profit by it. Independent of the monstrous corruption and injustice 

 of giving any particular set of traders an exemption from restrictions im- 

 posed upon others, carrying on the same business, it is too muchexerting 



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