[Richard Markham and a policeman look for the Resurrection Man in Rat’s Castle] — illustration for G. W. M. Reynolds’s “The Mysteries of London” by G. Stiff

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> G. Stiff —> Next]

Rat’s Castle

G. Stiff

1846

Wood engraving

Source: The Project Gutenberg version of G. W. M. Reynolds’s The Mysteries of London, Volume 2, Chapter 137

Richard Markham and a policeman look for the Resurrection Man in Rat’s Castle, “the night-house where all kind of low people meet to sup and lodge.”

Click on image to enlarge it

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit Project Gutenberg and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. — George P. Landow]

Passage illustrated

Crowded together at the two tables, and anxiously 3watching the proceedings of an old blear-eyed woman, who was occupied at an immense fire at the farther end of the room, were about thirty or forty persons, male and female. And never did Markham's eyes glance upon a more extraordinary—a more loathsome—a more revolting spectacle than that assemblage of rags, filth, disease, deformity, and ugliness.

Mendicants, vagabonds, impostors, and rogues of all kinds were gathered in that room, the fetid heat of which was stifling. The horrible language of which they made use,—their frightful curses,—their obscene jests,—their blasphemous jokes, were calculated to shock the mind of the least fastidious:—it was indeed a scene from which Markham would have fled as from a nest of vipers, had not a stern duty to society and to himself urged him to penetrate farther into that den. [II, 3]

Bibliography

Reynolds, George W. M. The Mysteries of London. vol 2. London: George Vickers, 1846. Project Gutenberg EBook #51294. Produced by Richard Tonsing, Chuck Greif, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Web. 3 October 2016.

Last modified 3 October 2016