I acquired a knowledge of London, which though necessarily super- 

 ficial, was yet more extensive than that of most Londoners. I was often 

 amused by having the born Cockneys in the laboratory come to me to 

 inquire how to reach some place that was outside of their ordinary 

 beat. 



What manner of place was the London of sixty years ago? Needless 

 to say, it has undergone very great changes since then, both in outward 

 aspects and in the manners and customs of the natives and these changes 

 are almost all improvements. In spite of continual, unremitting efforts 

 to keep it clean, the London of that period was a smoky, grimy, dirty 

 place. Many of the principal streets, such as Piccadilly, were macadam- 

 ized, like country roads, and when the rain fell, as it usually did, such 

 streets became covered with thin sheets of liquid mud, which was 

 speedily trailed over the sidewalks. Even in the asphalted streets, such 

 as Oxford Street and Holborn, which looked immaculately clean in 

 dry weather, were converted by a few minutes' rain into surfaces of 

 greasy slime, which was destructive to shoes and trousers. The im- 

 mense multitude of horses added greatly to the difficulty of keeping 

 the streets clean. 



The fogs, the "atmospheric pea soup" for which London has long 

 been famous, were then more prevalent than they are now and I went 

 through a great many, though none were so bad as to hold up the 

 traffic entirely. Our laboratory, at the top of a high building, rising far 

 above the surrounding houses, was yet so dark in winter that, for 

 more than half the time, we had to burn gas all day. Sun, moon and 

 stars retired altogether from sight, so that I actually forgot all about 

 them and, on one exceptionally clear night, I mistook the full moon, 

 seen over Green Park, for an illuminated clock face. The first time I 

 saw the sun in 1879 was on February 4. This all sounds very bad, but 

 it was not. Being fully and happily occupied, I cared nothing for the 

 weather and when it rained, I did "as they do down South and let it 

 rain." 



Certain aspects of life in London I found distressing beyond all words. 

 The squalid poverty and drunkenness that one saw on every hand and 

 on such an enormous scale were heartbreaking. Except in Glasgow and 

 Birmingham in 1875, I had never before encountered anything so ap- 

 palling. Above all grievous, were the multitudes of wretched Httle 

 children, pale, anaemic, with faces and hair literally encrusted with 

 filth. In my later visits (1912 and 1926) I have been kept too exactingly 

 occupied to visit the East End, but in the districts which I did see, there 



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