Odds and Ends, Pictures of Town, and Mirth and Metre (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1855 Excerpt: ... crowding of the poor together, "The Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Labouring Classes" have erected what might be considered as a series of model club chambers for poor families, between the Lower-road, Pentonville, and Gray's Inn-road. These chambers contain the rude and half-developed germs of those we have been proposing for the middle classes. Buildings of this kind we should like to see erected in our manufacturing districts--arid to these how peculiarly applicable would be a public kitchen, if it could be arranged. In the cotton spinning districts--alas, that it should be so --the women labour in the factory as well as the men, and the household duties are necessarily neglected. Dr. Cooke Taylor, in his tour in the manufacturing districts, has testified to the waste and want of knowledge of even the most simple rules of the culinary art, resultant upon this misapplication of female labour. As long, then, as this labour is so perverted, what a blessing it would be to all parties--to the husband, to the children, to the poor women themselves--if the office of preparing the meals was to be performed in one general kitchen, attached to workmen's club chambers. LONDON STOUT. One of the earliest things to strike the attention of our countrycousins is the universal appearance of the names of certain firms, painted in the largest letters upon the most florid backgrounds of the numerous public-house signs of the Metropolis. "What does 'Reid's Entire' mean?" asked a fair friend of ours the other day, looking up with her brown eyes as though she had asked something very foolish, and pointing to the puzzling inscription upon a neighbouring signboard. And, no doubt, a similar question arises in the minds of more worldly-wise people, and passes ...