There are certain districts in London the appearance of which conveys to the observer the impression that the houses, and indeed, the entire streets, have been picked up second-hand. There is in this aspect a grey, colourless, mouldy quality, reminiscent, not of the antique shop, but rather of the marine store dealers; a quality which even communicates itself to the inhabitants, so that one gathers the impression that the whole neighbourhood was taken as a going concern.
It was on such a district that I found myself looking down from the top of an omnibus a few days after the inquest (Dr. Cornish’s brougham being at the moment under repairs and his horse “out to grass” during the slack season), being bound for a street in the neighbourhood of Hoxton—Market-street by name—which abutted, as
