The author begs to acknowledge the courtesy of Messrs. Francis Day, and Hunter, for their kind permission in allowing him to quote the words of the songs marked with an asterisk in Chapter VI., and to Messrs. Charles Sheard and Co., Messrs. Feldham, Bertram and Co., the Proprietors of the News of the World, and Mr. Richard F. W. Maynard, for the others that are quoted.

A WORD TO THE READER

THIS book is a human document. It professes to be no more; it claims to be no less. The persons who figure in it are living, breathing realities, not creations of pen and inkpot. The experiences recorded in it are history, not myth, and have been cast into mould pipinghot from the memory.

Being a simple record of fact, this book seeks neither to flatter nor to disparage. Therefore, parts of it may be found unpalatable; while other parts, let us hope, will be found palatable. The mixture should surprise Human life is made up in that way, simply because human life is fact and not fiction. I have not written a novel, but a history.

no one.

I believe experience is given us to be used. I believe that facts have their lessons, even for the humblest. In so far as facts are faithfully recorded, they are valuable. They are valueless only when they are glossed over or misrepresented. It is certain that false inferences may be drawn from true facts; it is equally certain that the facts remain. They are "stubborn things," very

tenacious of life; and, one day, they will inevitably yield their secret. Meantime, the most that any of us can do is to gather them, question them, and honestly tell the world what we believe to be their answers.

In this book I have used the terms "East End," "East-ender" in the accepted sense. Let any reader who finds himself at variance with statements regarding the one or the other, remember that "the exception proves the rule." No one is more alive than I to the fact that some of the East End is West End in all but name, even as many West-enders may be East-enders at heart. But for the practical purpose in hand the words must connote specific qualities, and no connotation. could be better, or more generally accurate, than the popular one.

This book has been put together in odd moments of a busy life. Chapters of it have been written at the fagends of laborious days; paragraphs, and even single sentences of it, have been violently sandwiched between preaching and scrubbing, choir-training and sing-song dancing-classes and prayers for the dying. Moreover, it has not been compiled in that sweet solitude so dear to the literary expert. The smells of fried fish, boiling soap, and stewing cocoanuts have been aggressively obvious; the cries and screams of children, filled with the wild joy of life or its wilder pain, have formed a kind of running accompaniment to my theme; while my auditory nerve has been kept painfully alert by the piano-organist, the vendor of shrimps, the muffin-man,