We passed from the neutral ground of Soho Square into St. Giles's, where we saw an Irishwoman, somewhat elevated with the private consolation of the afternoon, thumping her husband about the head with a shoulder of mutton, because he had bought it in preference to a leg, which she wished for, while her four little starveling children (who had neither beaver hats on their heads, nor red morocco shoes to their feet), were playing with the motley tails of three full-sized mackerel, upon which the famishing labourer had expended a portion of his hard-earned wages, by way of supper, which the poor creature had told his spouse he intended to take, that it might give him an appetite for his next day's dinner.
Just above these, in a room, the windows of which were open, were a set of unfortunate creatures, who had, in happier days, named themselves the "Sons of Frolic;" these wretched persons were suffering under the dreadful effects of civil dissension, which always creeps in with domestic distress. That type of kings, the parish beadle, had been sent for by the overbearing landlord, to secure the most active of three of the members, who had just kicked the waiter down stairs for having brought them up a corked bottle of port wine. These distressed tradesmen, however, were so far imposed upon as to be induced to make up the affair by a present of three guineas to the waiter, and a pound to the beadle. Still, exclaimed we, accumulation upon accumulation.
We found in all the dingy streets about those rural and unfrequented parts of London, Bedford, Russell, Red Lion, Bloomsbury, Tavistock, and Brunswick squares, the same congregation of carriages standing (and lights were on the tables in the eating-rooms of the houses) at different doors, which proved to us that the most respectable families, at this period of distress, are driven to club together to get food upon a principle of economy.
This remote passage led us towards Islington. At a melancholy place, quite on the outskirts of the town, called White Conduit House, many thousands of our fellow-mourners were congregated in the open fields; night, too, was coming on, and the poor children were drinking milk just as it came from the cow, while their parents, equally wretched, but more experienced in sorrow, were swallowing the same succedaneum, made into a mixture called syllabub.