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“How It Strikes A Stranger.” The Nonconformist. June 4, 1873, p.573

Mr. Thomas Hughes expressed his gratitude the day before Parliament broke up that we should this year be spared the degradation of the annual motion for an adjournment over the Derby Day. Mr. Hughes is not a Puritan, and is rather inclined to the ancient creed that sports are a kind of religious ceremony, but he was quite right in objecting to the Derby. What kind of amusement the national holiday may be to those who bet or those who can get drunk, or those who can find any pleasure in mere coarseness and obscenity, I do not know, but for the ordinary decent, modest Englishman, so far from being an amusement it is a misery. The newspapers talk about the gaiety of the scene on the Downs, about the beauty of the horses, and the splendour of the dresses, but these accounts are none of them original. The authors may, perhaps, belong to the class who like horseracing and dissipation, but the probability is that they do not write what they feel. It is their duty to fall into the rut, and to paint in bright colours a saleable picture of a very dreary landscape. What the Derby is to an average reader of the Nonconformist living in Epsom I will endeavour to describe from my own personal experience, the experience happily of one Derby only. The Downs I suppose most Londoners have seen. During the early spring and the late autumn, when the traces of the ravage wrought by the race-meeting are not visible, these chalk uplands are one of the most beautiful districts near London. They present a large expanse of turf, over which the shadows of the clouds wander, and towards the south they break into the woods of Headley and Walton-on-the-Hill. There is no more solitary place within a hundred miles of this city than the outskirts of the racecourse when there is no racing. Naturally, therefore, the lover of Nature who is in the habit of walking about that part of the country is disgusted to find a few weeks before the race that his favourite haunts are forbidden to him. Crowds of ragged wretches gradually troop from all parts of the island and take up their quarters on the grass. They get sticks from the hedges, bend them into a curve about three feet high, and having fastened the two ends in the ground, they stretch some old carpet or canvas over them, and under this miserable tent they sleep all huddled together like pigs. The next profanation is the placarding of every fence and every tree in all the lanes which lead to the course with puffing advertisements, some of them of the most indecent kind. The police have no power to prevent this nuisance. It is done in the night by men specially employed, who are seldom or never caught, and if caught the punishment awarded is but trifling. It is horrible to see the landscape at the loveliest time of year so defiled as it is near Epsom by the preparation for the Derby, and the Seven Dials itself is really not so repulsive, because there at least the open display of vice is prohibited.

It may be said that these are but sentimental grievances ; if so, what follows is certainly not sentimental. On the Tuesday of the fatal week the uproar begins, and happy must be the constitution which is able to let its owner go to sleep again till Saturday. Some of the Epsom people escape, and let their houses, for which extravagant rates can be obtained. Knowing the character of the tenants I might be expected to obtain, I preferred not to let my house, but boldly to face the difficulty. I afterwards saw what was done in some houses which the owners let. One party turned the furniture out on the lawn, as the weather was fine, and spent in drinking most of the time not occupied in racing, nigger melodists and itinerant conjurors being invited inside to amuse them. About two o'clock on Wednesday morning the procession to the Downs commences ; the people who have to get their living out of the day, the mountebanks, vendors of elixirs, and performers with cocoanuts, starting thus early in order to obtain a good position. It may be observed that on all roads leading to the Downs from London or the suburbs for miles round watch has to be kept to prevent the destruction of young trees for the sticks which are flung at the cocoanuts, and for other purposes. The music to which these gentry march is not of a very moral kind, and they are by no means particular as to what they do on the road. The numbers of them were a marvel to me. I could not believe that London held such a mass of what are really and truly the residuum. Unshaven, gaunt, shambling, dirty scoundrels, specimens of whom the Londoner seldom sees in the streets, poured up to the course in thousands. They were all dressed alike. None of them had the garments of the true working class ; they were clothed in cast-off frock-coat and trousers, all in wretched rags, but originally black cloth of superior quality. All had that gruff, coarse, half-broken voice which seems to be the product of habitual cursing at Billingsgate. These are the secret of those returns of the Poor Law Board which show that in the midst of our extraordinary prosperity one man in every twenty or twenty-five in this country is a pauper. These are the true dangerous classes, who notwithstanding all the pressure for labour are never affected by it. If the wages of the agricultural labourer were to rise to a guinea a week, they would not be induced to do any regular work, No church, no organisation ever touches them. They are the consequence of our civilisation, and to a great extent, as I believe, of our poor laws. When they have nothing to do, they go upon the rates ; when they are in work, they will spend three pounds a week.

At eleven o'clock the company began to arrive in every kind of vehicle which the horse can draw, from the drag down to the trade cart of the greengrocer, with the trade inscription, Furniture carefully removed in town and country," emblazoned on the side. Profligate women dressed in most expensive costumes, officers, members of Parliament, red-faced publicans, van-loads of shopmen and servant-girls, foreigners, grooms, thieves – the most motley collection – all passed in unbroken crowded rank for three hours, until the chalk roads were ground into dust which smothered the trees and hedges, making their natural colour almost indistinguishable. At two o'clock I walked up to the Grand Street and found myself in the largest crowd I ever saw in my life. People say it is grand to see this crowd. All I can say is that as twenty foolish intoxicated persons are not more sublime than one foolish intoxicated person, the sight of two hundred thousand of such persons was not sublime. I never was more dull or depressed, for I was entirely alone in the midst of an enormous mob with whom I had not the slightest sympathy. From what I observed I cannot help thinking that there was a great deal of trying to be merry, but very little genuine merriment. There was a vast consumption of liquor going on, there was a vast amount of chaff, blasphemy, obscenity, and brutality, and the gorgeous female occupants of the drags had begun to show their true colours ; but of pleasure, in even the commonest sense of the term, there could not have been much. At a quarter to three, I observed a general struggle to get near the chains which bound the course, and I followed, bitterly to repent. For the next half-hour, I was squeezed intolerably, and at one time thought I should hardly survive. At a quarter past three there was a loud shout of "Here they come," and for a moment a flash of colour rushed past me. I could distinguish nothing, but in another instant the crowd poured over the course, and I was told the race was over. Threading my way through the same chaffing, blaspheming, obscene, and brutal mob, I reached home, disgusted and tired. the procession then recommenced back to town, and at last I was obliged to pull down the blinds. It seemed to me as if there were a great many persons who considered that what was unlawful on any other day in te year, was lawful on the Derby Day, and that there was a general absolution from all the laws of God or man. I cannot repeat here what I saw take place before my house, till I determined to look no more, nor have I the patience to disentangle and depict the composite horror which possessed me. For weeks afterwards I did not care to go near the Downs, and when I did visit them, I found the grass worn away, and a litter of broken bottles, greasy newspapers, betting cards, and other abominations, which made me hastily turn my steps in another direction.