The Night Side of London by James Ewing Ritchie

Not the Great Mogul in Thibet, but the Mogul in Drury-lane, is an increasingly popular place of public amusement. I was there a few years since, and it was not more than half full. The other night I could hardly get standing room, though I paid sixpence and went with the operative swells into the gallery. In these days the test of everything is success. We speak well of the tradesman who does the largest business -- of the writer whose books sell the most -- of the actor or preacher that draws the largest crowd. We do not stop to criticise the manner in which that business is done, the influence of the writer, the doctrine taught by the preacher, or the character of the acting. On the ordinary principle, then, the Mogul is a creditable establishment, for it is a successful one. Indeed, in the present state of society, it is hardly possible to conceive how a place that combines entertainment and drinking together can well be otherwise. In the course of last summer Vauxhall was open a few nights; I was credibly informed that on each night it was supposed not more than half the company paid for admission, the other half having been admitted by means of orders. It is calculated the sale of drink and refreshment to the crowd thus collected will yield a profit sufficient to cover all expenses. Thus it is such places as the Mogul pay. The entrance fee and the sale of intoxicating drinks must amount to a sum out of which a proprietor can extract a handsome profit.

Thus at the Mogul you have a double attraction. Are you a gin-drinker, you can go and get your quartern or half-quartern over the bar -- or you can lounge into the concert-room and quietly sit soaking the whole evening; for, as the performance does not close till midnight, the time admits of a man getting "fou" between the commencement and the close of the entertainment. Drury-lane is what may be called a low neighbourhood, devoted principally to butchers' and bakers' shops, pawnbrokers' establishments, and gin-palaces. Pass these latter any hour of the day you will, and you will find them crowded by laundresses, and charwomen, and haggard old crones from the sister isle, and young wives whose husbands, it may be, are hard at work. There they stand in the streets, with babies in their arms and dirty children in rags by their side, gossiping with women as ill-conditioned as themselves; and as gossiping makes them thirsty, and as drinking makes people drunk, it is not difficult to imagine the state in which many of these women are. In the middle of the day it is very obvious that many of them have had more than enough. How they can afford it always puzzles me -- I cannot, I know, and I believe my weekly earnings equal theirs. The pawnbrokers may help them -- but their material guarantees cannot be perpetually forthcoming. These gin-drinkers live cheap, I grant. They herd in the horrid slums of Drury-lane -- and people say sometimes, Can you wonder that such poor wretches drink? but they forget that it is the drink that makes them such poor wretches.