HE newly-arrived traveller in Sydney is generally pestered by the urbane and well-meaning citizens of that London of the South by three or more questions. Until he has answered these, and done so to their satisfaction,—and the correct reply is the “Open Sesame” to their hospitable homes and hearts,—his polite inquisitors will look coldly upon him. This knowledge is worth much to those of our readers who intend visiting Sydney for the first time; and we highly recommend such persons to study what we have to say upon this highly important subject.
Many a time have we seen the learned scholar, the gallant soldier, and the wealthy globe-trotter turned back from the very gates of that Antipodean Paradise, the inner circle of Sydney society, from an inability to pass this curious test. As often we have seen the artful “new chum,” who has received a clear hint 20 from his friends, and acted upon such, glide without exertion into the Elysium fields of Elizabeth Bay and Pott’s Point.
The principal of these questions, and the first one generally asked, is, “What do you think of our beautiful harbour?” (Time being precious in Sydney, the aspirate is seldom sounded in this case.)
The second screw of the interviewer’s mental thumb-smasher is, “What do you think of the Post-Office carvings?”
The third query is generally, “Have you been to Paddy’s Market?”
Now experience has shown us that to the first two questions the simple words “Awfully jolly, bai Jove!” especially if accompanied with a long drawl, will put the knowing if unscrupulous candidate upon his way rejoicing. That he may be able to answer the third in a satisfactory manner, we ask him to follow our story through the wastes that lie over against Cambell and Hay Streets.
It is a curious and interesting fact that no one, whatever command of language he may possess, can describe a place, or thing, successfully to another, if his auditor has never had personal experience of something similar. Who could picture up in his mind the ocean in a storm, or a cavalry charge, from a mere verbal or written description?
The best literary effort would be thrown away upon a man of no experience. Such an individual would, after reading or hearing of the glories of the sea, probably still have only a vague idea that it was in appearance something similar to an animated potato-bed of a green colour.
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We trouble our readers with all this in order that they may assist us in picturing the scene we are about to describe, by conjuring up “in the mind’s eye,” one of the flaring midnight markets of the Old World,—Petticoat Lane, Seven Dials, Deptford, the more ancient parts of the Cité, Paris, or the like.
The best admirers of Sydney—and it rightly has many of these—will scarcely proclaim it as a moral city. The unlimited license granted to its youth of both sexes and every class, by the custom and habits of the community, is fraught with those dangerous elements that encourage the growth of the worst sorts of crimes. Monied and unscrupulous blackguards are to be found here, as elsewhere in the world; and nowhere can they have their fling—that every devil’s dance—to better advantage than in Sydney.
Paddy’s Market is one of the hunting-grounds of this class of individuals.
As evening draws over the city vast crowds are to be seen hurrying homeward past the glaring shops and brilliantly-lighted hotels. Now dodging red- and green-eyed steam-trams, as they screech and rumble along the handsome but narrow streets; and anon dashing in open order like frighted sheep across the bus-covered squares, the migratory sojourners of the city flock nightly outwards from the business centres.
Let us allow ourselves to be carried down George Street in the human stream “Southward Ho!” till Cambell Street is reached. Here in the slack-water of the comparatively deserted footpath of a side street we can look around us. A vacant space of ground surrounded by a white railing is on the opposite side of the way, and we become aware of a Chinese quarter22 being at hand from the acrid stench that reaches us from up the street.
The open square in front of us is being appropriated for the night by a noisy crowd of itinerant ragamuffin “entertainers of the public,” of various callings.
There are the usual Try-yer-weight, Balm-of-Gilead, and Try-afore-yer-buy rascals, and others of like kidney. These, with the dirty evangelists of Kings-of-Pain and Quack-doctors, are busy erecting various machines and tables for the night’s work. The place is busy with moving figures and the Norse-alphabetical rappings of twenty hammers, and gay with the crowd-attracting glories of red paint and bright brass-work. The gloaming gradually sinks into night, and flaring lamps appear in all directions; and four long buildings, that during the week have formed the Covent Garden of Sydney, begin to light up as the numerous stall-holders within commence business. Most of these are Jews of the lower classes; but here and there the child-like smile of a quarantine-flag-coloured follower of Confucius, or the merry, black, oily face of an African, breaks the monotony. At one stall half-a-dozen under-sized Chinamen are fingering some shoddy clothes; at another a “young man from the country” is hurriedly purchasing some indecent photographs from a dealer in church pictures and altar decorations, looking around him nervously the while, lest “his people” should see him. Close by, a lump of human flesh, in black oily ringlets and an astoundingly ample dress of vivid green, is showing off the glories of a ruby-coloured velvet skirt to two fragile “daughters of the public” by holding it against her majestic base. Near this last group, seated upon the only empty show 23 bench within sight, are two men. One, enveloped in a long, light dust-coat, and wearing a fashionable light-felt hat, looks to the casual observer like what he once was, namely, a gentleman. His companion is a short, thick-set fellow, with the ever-restless eyes of a detective or a criminal. His otherwise stolid-looking features are those that mark him at once as a foreigner, probably a Wurtemburger. As far as can be made out, as he sits in the shadow, he is more anxious to avoid notice than is his companion, and is dressed in a suit of dark-coloured tweed. Both are apparently watching for somebody they expect in the column of men, women, and children, as with the orderly manner, characteristic of a Sydney crowd, it dawdles its long length past.
“I know he left the hotel, and I know he’s not been able to see the firm to-day,” whispers the man in the dust-coat, rising and striking a match upon his pants, and proceeding to light a cigarette. “I slung him a moral yarn or two about Paddy’s Market that’ll fetch him along.”
“Why you not bring ’im mit you?” growls his companion.
“Because, my dear sir, if anything should happen to the young man, and I had been seen in his company, I might find it awkward; d’ye see, Grosse?”
The last speaker continues, after knocking the ashes off his cigarette with a delicate little cane he held in his gloved hands,—
“When I see him I’ll touch your arm. Clear out then at once. And when you see us again—at, you know where—don’t attempt to act if you don’t hear me whistling ‘Killaloo.’”
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Here he of the cigarette whistled a bar of that melody for the benefit of his accomplice.
The two men continue for some time sitting moodily watching the faces of the crowd, till the one in the tweed clothes abruptly rises, and, pulling his hat well over his eyes, slouches off. His companion shortly after leaves his seat, and, settling his collar, strolls off in the opposite direction. His walk is slow and deliberate, and as his lack-lustre eyes gaze alternately right and left upon the busy stalls, more than one remark about “swell attire” reaches his ear. His face, however, remains a perfect blank, until he meets the eye of a gentleman going the other way, when it becomes suffused with the smiles and beams of gratified pleasure.
A few words of recognition pass between the two and they join company, and pushing onward are lost to our view. The latest arrival, as our readers have no doubt guessed, is the hero of this story. Regardful of all his uncle’s instructions, save that clause concerning the risk he ran by using his own name in Sydney, he has just met a casual but delightful acquaintance, who is stopping at the same hotel that he has put up at. But before we follow the pair let us try and learn a lesson from, or rather philosophize over, the human panorama before us.
One of the first things that would strike a thoughtful observer of the habitués of Paddy’s Market are the number of young people to be seen there,—that is, persons under twenty-one years of age. Of course anywhere in the Australian colonies, save, perhaps, in some parts of Tasmania, the balance of population will be found to be in favour of youth rather than age, but25 here there are far more than one would expect to meet at such a place and at such an hour, for it is past eleven o’clock.
Numbers of these young people are pale-faced girls of tender age, who, earning their own livelihood at the big warehouses or millinery establishments of the city, laugh at the discipline of home (too often far away “up-country”), and are rapidly following that easy path that, with ever-increasing declivity, will likely land them ultimately amongst the unfortunates of the pavements. The “pals” of these young damsels are also there by scores. Most of these have been “turned out” after one general pattern; and, to use another mechanic’s term, are chiefly “wasters.” The same disgusting, unnatural, and unhealthy manikin appearance surrounds all of them. There is hardly any sight more pitiful to behold than these youthful bodies, that have never known the youth which Coleridge describes as “the body and spirit in unity.” These little weak-eyed, weak-kneed, man-like creatures are mostly addicted to sham meerschaums, “flash ties,” and “blunderbuss” cut trousers, the bell-bottoms of which cover nearly the whole of their high-heeled “number nineteens.”
Why, for the sake of these unhappy chickens of Hers, does not fair Liberty—who is fast being dethroned in Sydney by her sly bastard-sister License—wake up, and let some paternal edict become law that will make it a State concern to watch over these truly “fatherless and motherless bairns”?
“The childhood,” said Milton, “shows the man, as morning shows the day.” What will Australia’s day be like with all this wealth of youth, that should one26 day form the voting and the thinking power of the rising Republic of the South, wasting its sweetness upon the tobacco-and-gin-stained wilderness of vice and idleness in all her cities? Who that knows Sydney is not also aware of the fact that these merry, over-dressed companions of these miserable little “market-toffs” fall an easy prey before the devilish machinations of the foul prowler and her client-slaves of appetence? Each girl—womanlike—vies with her work-fellows in extravagance of dress, destroying the beautiful architectural lines of “Nature’s divine building” with her uneducated idea of a perfect vestis forensis. If her legitimate exertions and the pocket money of her “pal” is insufficient for her purpose, other persons, whose business it is to do so, come forward to show her other means of obtaining the necessary funds, and the mischief is done.
The colony of New South Wales is badly in want of wives and mothers, and cries out ceaselessly to the older countries that she cannot give to every man a wife. Yet here are her own flesh and blood, female forms of which she need not be ashamed, all hurrying down the sewer of crime, like drowning butterflies, to rot in the foul slums and gutters of the capital.
As democracy grows used to her new-born powers, perhaps the people will cease to toy with the bright but keen-edged weapons of responsibility, and turn to guard their boys and girls. At present, however, and that is what concerns the object of this book, Sydney is a gigantic bait-pond where the wealthy debauchee can luxuriously roll in sin, and feed, shark-like and unchecked, upon the daughters of the colony.
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But to return to Claude, and the delightful acquaintance he has made. Our hero, having discovered that he must wait a few days in Sydney before starting northwards to prosecute the object of his journey, has become fidgety and impatient. It is so annoying that he cannot begin his work at once; and he is only too glad to find any means of passing the intervening time. As the two men stroll along, Claude’s companion discourses eloquently to him upon the scenes around them, and Claude, walking silent and thoughtful at his side, feels grateful to him for doing all the talking.
“You have no idea, my dear fellow,” rattles on the young man in the grey coat, “you can’t have the slightest idea of the growing tendency which the unlimited freedom of the youth of this colony encourages towards the doctrine of Free-love.
“We see the lower orders here,” gracefully waving his cane, “and, mind you, the ‘lower orders’ is not a synonymous term with that of ‘poorer classes,’ as in the older countries. And which of the young people here to-night looks forward to marriage as more or less of a certainty, as people do in the older countries? Even in the parent-land the new doctrine is growing in strength. Here, I assure you, the girls dread marriage, and simply because it curtails that freedom of life, of following their own inclination, that passion that is bred in their bones, and was the holiest creed of their parents.
“Only a wealthy husband, who is not likely to be too uxorious or too particular, will be endured in a few years. Do we not see it already in some of the States of America? Steady fellows like you may call28 the new doctrine simply open sin. But after all, what is sin? What but the breaking of certain unstable laws, that change and give way to others, as the nations that made them clamber painfully upwards towards the attractive light of freedom. Divorce is becoming every day more common, and easier to obtain. Every day home life is more and more exposed, and is fading away before the searching bull’s-eye of the unsympathetic paper-reading public. The beauties of home, that suited our mutton-headed fathers, are departing; and the price—marriage—is too much nowadays to give for what is often everybody’s property, as much as that of the unfortunate and foolish purchaser. But, as I said, you can see here the lower orders of the people. If you can judge the mind from the exterior body, you will acknowledge I am right in my deductions. And now, if you have no objection, we will visit another place I want you to see, where we can study those human fowls that roost upon the second perch from the ground. Are you agreeable?”
“Oh, I’m in your hands entirely,” replies Claude. His companion smiles grimly,—turning his head away, for they are passing under a lamp. “It’s only too good of you to take the trouble of entertaining a dull country-fellow like myself. Where do you propose taking me to next?”
“Oh, it isn’t far, and I’ll take you a short cut. I want you to see a skating-rink. You’ll see lots of human moths there, and very pretty specimens of lepidoptera some of them are, fluttering, or rather rolling, round the lamp of sin. These rinks are little more or less than places of assignation.”
The young men have left the whirring, noisy, lamplit 29 crowds of Paddy’s Market during this conversation, and are making their way westward to George Street. The air is hot, and steamy with the butyric odours of a Saturday-night crowd. Crossing the wide rattling thoroughfare just mentioned, with its thousands of lights, and busy streams of thundering omnibuses and cabs, Claude and his companion push their way across the pavement,—crowded with purchasing humanity,—and find themselves suddenly in a new world. It is in this locality that one of the few nests of ancient rookeries that still remain in Sydney exists,—a menace breathing the foul odours of vice and sickness upon the rest of the city. Stately warehouses are, bit by bit, pushing these plague spots out of existence, and in a few more years they will happily be swept away. Here is before us an example of Dr. Johnson’s saying “that men are seldom better employed than when making money,”—commerce successfully waging a war of extermination against those fortresses of the city’s criminal population. A few gas lamps here and there, at long intervals, make the dark dreariness of the blank wall, and lightless broken windows of the tumble-down houses, more complete. Black, suspicious-looking alleys and lanes slink off to nowhere in particular from unexpected corners to right and left of the midnight passer-by, as if fearful of being noticed.
At the end of the dark silent street, by the flickering light of a solitary broken lamp, Claude reads, upon the dirty wall of a house, a notice to the effect that a collar-maker had once lived there. That he or any one else existed there now, and was within call, was hardly to be imagined, so lonely did the spot appear 30 to be,—no lights at the windows, no sign of life, and no sound save the lessening roar of the great, hot, artery of traffic fast being left behind.
The two men walked quickly on, their hollow footsteps echoing over the broken pavements, and then another and still darker lane is crossed, surrounded by still more tumble-down wooden tenements. The place is a wilderness, long deserted, surely, by mankind; only peopled by ghostly cats, and half-starved supernatural dogs, that, at the sound of footsteps, slink off like shadows into fetid drains, or through broken doors and fences, under cover of the blackness beyond.
“Where the dickens are you taking me to?” presently asked Claude,—the sound of his voice making quite a pleasant relief to the dead silence around.
“Oh! we’re quite near to Liverpool Street now,” replies his companion. “It’s a dreary neighbourhood, this; is not it? By Jupiter, it’s warm walking too! I’ll take my coat off.” The speaker stops for a moment, and, divesting himself of his dust-coat, hangs it doubled over his left arm.
“There,” he cries, a few steps further on, pointing with his cane, “there are the lights of the rink.” At this moment the two men left the shadowy lane, and felt under their feet the surface of a well-kept street, a pleasant change after the broken ways they had just traversed. Above where they stand, and about a quarter of a mile off, the blue-white radiance of several electric lights show the location of the famous cosmopolitan rink.
The street they are in terminates as such some twenty feet from where they stand, and, changing to31 a well-paved road, rises upwards, on a wide, serpentine viaduct built upon arches, to the dim building-clad hill before them. A low wall has been built on either side to prevent passengers from falling off upon the pavement below. On the right hand side of the viaduct is a large cobble-stoned yard, covered with hundreds of boxes, crates, and empty barrels of all kinds. It is part of the railway goods station, and is at one point some twenty-five or thirty feet below the road upon the arches.
The faint earth-tremors of moving trucks and carriages, and the distant whirr of machinery, announces that there are persons not very far-off. But, save for a hansom cab that dashes by the spot, it is almost as lonely as the slums just left.
“We’ll soon be there,” says Claude’s companion, who, glancing up the viaduct, has caught sight of a short, stout figure, as it passed under one of the few lamps above, coming slowly down the footing.
“I can hear the music, too, I declare,” he adds presently, as they reach the highest and darkest part of the incline overlooking the railway yard below. “Do you know the air? It’s Killaloo.”
Claude’s friend ceases speaking, and whistles a bar or two of the well-known song. Just then a short lame man is seen hobbling out of the darkness towards them, leaning upon a stick. He passes, and it is odd to notice how he at once becomes cured of his infirmities. At the same instant Claude’s companion exclaims, “A fire, by Jove!” and points towards a distant glare in the sky. Immediately afterwards he quickly steps backward, and seizing his light overcoat in both hands suddenly, with great dexterity flings it32 over his companion’s head, so as to completely muffle any attempted cry. Claude’s head is turned in the direction indicated by his companion, when he feels his arms suddenly pinioned behind. At the same instant some rough kind of drapery is dragged tightly over his head. He gasps for breath, and with the sudden anger of a surprised and wounded tiger dashes himself backward on his unseen foes. His frantic efforts are unavailing; and before his half-dazed senses have properly taken in his terrible situation, he feels himself raised by four strong arms upon the parapet of the viaduct. The fearful truth flashes through his reeling brain. His whole body breaks out into suddenly alternating hot and icy sweats. He vainly tries with struggling feet and back-bound hands to save himself. It is but for an instant. The next moment he feels his back upon the sharp edge of the coping stones. The hot blood surges through his brain in a red, wild, lurid, ever-increasing rush. Then he suddenly turns cold. His back overhangs the wall! He is resting upon nothing! He is falling!