But although the commissioners were pleasantly minute and clear in their instructions for filling up their circulars, they will still be wide away from the real statistics of the population, when all the bills are returned and the totals properly added. What industrious enumerator, we would ask, did, with praiseworthy indefatigability, leave a schedule at the temporary habitations of the thousand individuals who on the Monday in question were located upon Ascot Heath, in anticipation of the approaching races? Who dared to penetrate into the mysteries of the yellow caravans there collected, or invade the Bohemian seclusion of the tilted hovels? What account was taken of the roadside tent-holders, and the number of the families of these real "potwallopers?" Is the following paper relating to these people, which has fallen into our hands, the mislaid document of a careless enumerator of the Sunning-hill district, or is it an attempt to play upon our credulity:
Name, (if any) of the House, or of the Village or } Caravan, No. 937,654. Hamlet in which it stands. }
Name of the Street or other part of the Town, (if in } Winkfield Lane. a Town), and No. of the House. }
----------------+-------+---------+--------------+---------+--------- Name and | | |Of what |If born |If born surname of each| Age | | Profession, | in the | in person who | of | Age | Trade, or | County. |Ireland, abode or slept | Males.| of | Employment, | | in this House | | Females.| or if of | |&c. on the night | | | Independent | | of June 6. | | | means. | | ----------------+-------+---------+--------------+---------+--------- Bill Soames | 45 | |Shoman. | No |don't Kno | | | | | Mary Soames | | 38 |Wife--vurks | No | No | | | the barrul | | | | | horgan outside| | Gipsy Mike |not | |None. | No |No veres | Nown | | | | pertickler Phelim Conolly | 35 | |Black vild |not | never Knowd | | | ingian. | sartin | Sarah Cooper | | 24 |tellin off | No | | | | fortuns. | | Young Chubby a | 2 | |ired fur the |St. Giles's| babby | | | Races. | | Brummagim Harry | 40 | |keeps a | Yes | | | | Thimble-rig. | | ----------------+-------+---------+--------------+---------+---------
But there were many, many others, who were excluded from the privilege of registering their names amongst the population of their country. The unfortunate individuals who slept throughout the night in the stony precincts of the police-office lock-up cells, were deprived of this honour. Even admitting that the police had received instructions to take down the names of the stray-flocks under their charge, the ends of the commissioners were still defeated, for it was not probable that the Hon. Clarence Piercefield, who had kicked the head waiter at the Cider-cellars, for telling him not to join in the glees so loudly--who had thrashed the cabman in Holborn--who had climbed up behind King Charles at Charing-cross, and who, finally, upon being pulled down again by the police and taken into custody, had given his name as Thomas Brown,--it was not probable, we repeat, that this honourable gentleman would see any occasion to alter the name in the schedule, or recant his alleged profession of "medical student." His rightful appellation found no place in the paper, no more than the hundreds who slept out altogether that night, from the wretched, shivering, poverty-stricken occupiers of the embryo coal-cellars of future houses in the neighbourhood of railway _termini_, to the tipsy gentleman who tumbled by mistake into a large basket of turnip-tops and onions in Covent Garden-market, and slept there until morning, dreaming that he was the inhabitant of an Eastern paradise, with _houris_ pelting roses at him. Even the ill-used Mr. Ferguson, whom everybody has heard of, but nobody knows, failing in all his attempts to procure a lodging for the night, found no place in the strictly-worded schedule. The real name of Mr. Ferguson is Legion, yet he found a lodging nowhere. And many returns of the erratic youth of respectable families must prove, that their very fathers did not know they were out, to say nothing of their mothers: on the other hand, probably many more would be found wanting in the real numbers, were circumstances narrowly inquired into.
