Esoteric London

Bermondsey Wall West, London, SE16. Photo ©RogerDean 2014

Bentley’s Miscellany, VOL. XVI. – 1844:

The Physiology of London Life – John Fisher Murray

On a fine, warm day in September, we have counted in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, no less than two hundred and eighty-four anglers, large, small, and intermediate, including gentlemen, chimney-sweepers, military officers, blackguard boys, in short, every gradation of the indefinitely-graduated scale of metropolitan social life, was here represented, in exact conformity with Dr. Johnson’s definition, “a worm at one end, a fool at the other.”