In my early recollection Chelsea had many industries characteristic of the village, which have entirely passed away. The only conveyance—a two-horse stage coach, called the “Village Clock”—used to run from the Cross Keys, in Lawrence Street, twice a day, for one shilling to Charing Cross, and one-and-six pence to the City. It would stop to change horses at the “Black Horse,” in Coventry Street. Time, from Chelsea, ten in the morning and two in the afternoon; supposed to do the journey in an hour—which it never did. This coach appeared to be as much as was required, as it was seldom full, although it would go round in the morning to pick up its regular passengers.

The roads and streets had a very different appearance at that time, when the King’s Road was like a country road, with a toll gate on the north-east side of Sloane Square. By the Asylum Wall, as far as Whitelands, there was no path at all. Where Colville Terrace now stands was Colville’s Nursery, as far as Downing’s Floorcloth Factory, with no path, and on the opposite side from Whitelands to the White Stiles was Siger’s Nursery. The White Stiles—where is now Avenue Terrace—was an open space with a grand avenue of horse chestnuts and some old-fashioned wood fence with two stone steps and a stile at each end, and where Bywater Street and Markham Square stand was Morr’s Nursery.

The King’s Road only took a second place in Chelsea proper. Paradise Row and Cheyne Walk were considered the busiest and most thriving parts of the village, as nearly all its industries were located on the river bank, and nearly all the best families lived in Cheyne Walk or Paradise Row, and in the Royal Hospital, where the old soldiers used to pass the board, and pensions were paid.

For a boy in those days there were but few opportunities for amusement and recreation. The only resources we had were rowing, running, swimming and boxing, to learn which was the proper thing to do and nearly every boy’s ambition. I know it was mine, and as soon as I could save up two-and-six pence and get a half holiday, I used to go up to Air Street, Piccadilly, to a tavern on the right hand side kept by a retired prize-fighter, there to have a lesson from a professional in the “noble art of self-defence,” as it was then called. There were always a lot of professionals waiting about who used to take it in turns to give the lessons, and a very shabby, disreputable lot they were. We had to pay one shilling for the lesson and sixpence for the use of the room, the lesson to last twenty minutes (which was quite long enough.) You could have a wash and brush up if you knew your way about and were a regular customer, and could always get information of the whereabouts of a fight that was to come off. After leaving I would walk down St. James’ Street to Charing Cross, to the pastrycook’s shop at the left hand corner of Spring Gardens, and sit down at one of the tables, and, as we then called it, “do the Baron,” by ordering a sixpenny ice, or jelly and two cheese-cakes, and give the pretty waitress the twopence change, and go home proud and happy thinking of my next dissipation. These expeditions were always taken alone, being too choice to be shared with anyone else.

Downing’s Floorcloth Factory, that I was speaking of, was burnt down about 1829, having been set on fire one Saturday night, and a young man about eighteen, named Butler, was hanged for it. His father used to be a sort of odd man or jobbing gardener for us, and a committee for his defence sat at our house, mostly people belonging to the chapel that young Butler was connected with. I used to be taken out to see an old officer from Chelsea Hospital, who used to come in full uniform with cocked hat and white plume of feathers, to be chairman. I can see him now, going up the stairs with his sword clinking on every stair. A memorial was sent in, but was not successful. The evidence of a woman who knew him and lived in one of the cottages at the back, stated that she came home late on the Saturday and forgot to take in her black-bird, and was woke up by its making a noise. She got up to take it in, and saw young Butler in the factory yard holding the dog by the chain and patting it. Butler had only recently been discharged for some irregularities. The place had been robbed as well as set on fire. It was well known that others were in it, but they escaped and were never taken, as there were no police at that time, only the night watchman—a tall old soldier, who was paid by subscription by the inhabitants, and used to perambulate the streets and call out the hour and state of the weather—such as “Half-past two and a stormy night,” and would eke out his livelihood by calling up the riverside labourers and lightermen at such times as the tide served.

I well recollect the first policeman coming on duty in Chelsea. Nearly all the school boys, nurse girls, and children turned out to see him. His beat when I saw him was along Green’s Row by the dead wall of Burton’s Court. He was a tall, ungainly-looking countryman, dressed in a blue bobtailed coat with white metal buttons, white duck trousers, heavy blucher boots, and a top hat and white gloves. For several days an admiring crowd persistently followed him up and down his beat, a little way behind like the tail of a comet, the crowd in the road and he on the path, but the novelty wore off after a time.

At that time the Swan brewery stood at the bottom of Swan Walk on the River, and between that and the Botanical Gardens was the Skinner’s Company’s Dock and barge wharf, where the state barge was kept. Old Captain May had charge of her, a worthy old man and quite an important character among the riverside people, as he had the engaging of the watermen to row the barge on Lord Mayor’s Day and other state occasions, and when they went swan-upping. As they were well fed and well paid it was considered a desirable appointment. It took eighteen watermen to row the barge, and I think they were paid one guinea each for the day. We used to think it a grand sight to see them in their scarlet coats and badges, breeches, low shoes and silk stockings. It used to be almost a holiday when they went out, as nobody could stick to his work. The land between the barge house and the brewery was a rare place to catch eels, and a favourite place for us boys to lay night lines, as it was always well ground-baited by the refuse from the brewery. I have taken twenty-four eels off twenty-five hooks on a night line. There used to be a grand day’s sport for us boys once a year at the brewery, on Good Friday. The drains from the brewery at their outlet on the river were stopped up by ramming bags of sand in them when the tide was down, and every boy or man that had a dog (and there were but few who had not) would arrive as the tide served inside the yard gates in readiness, and at a given signal the hot liquor from the coppers would be let down the drains, and in a few minutes out rushed the rats by the score. Away went the dogs, and as all the outlets were stopped there was a nice scrimmage, and there being a large number of barrels in the yard that the rats could get between and the dogs could not, it would last some time, for we had to move the barrels, and a good many of the rats would get away. I have seen them run up a barrel and get in the bung hole. They were quite safe then, and it would drive the dogs almost mad, and we had a job to get them away.

There were several notable characters along the waterside. One hard-featured, powerful old man, named Jamie Cator, had the reputation of being a remnant of the old press gang—and he looked it every bit. He was morose, dark-featured, heavily marked with the small-pox, and had a deep scar from the comer of his mouth to the back of his jaw, which did not add to his beauty. He was dressed in oiled canvas trousers, a shiny black sailor’s hat, and an old pensioner’s undress blue short coat, and was not looked upon with respect. He had a small pension of some sort from the navy, and used to eke out his living by bringing down the floats of timber from the docks to the different timber yards, and at other times to work on the sand-barges dredging in the river.

There was another well-known character, a half-witted fellow, who got his living by collecting corks and drift wood that was washed in by the eddies at high tide. He had an old boat that had been mended by tacking bits of old floor cloth over the holes in her, and when afloat had always to have someone baling out the water to keep her so. The Thames in those days was considerably more of a highway than at present. There were two watermen who went regularly up to Thames Street every day as a sort of carriers, and would fetch or take anything from a message to a house of furniture. They would frequently bring a barrel of herrings, or two or three sacks of potatoes, or anything they could buy cheap, and would go round themselves with a bell and announce that they would sell in the boat at the drawdock, at six in the evening, and in the winter they would have one or two flaring lights and sell by Dutch auction. Of course, we boys always attended these sales.

In Paradise Row, were Harrison’s, the tallow melters and candle makers, who used to do the work under the shop in a cellar, reached by a flap from the outside. Charlie, the candle maker, was quite a favourite with us boys, for he would occasionally invite two or three of us to supper in the cellar. It was an understood thing that we should bring some potatoes and enough money for a pot of four half and half. We assembled as soon as the shop was closed and the master gone, about half-past six; and then such glorious suppers! I do not think I ever had such before or since. Our first operation was to wash the potatoes, place them in the furnace hole and cover them up with the ashes, and rake out some more ashes and pat them well down. Next, Charlie would go to a special fat-bin and bring forth five or six lumps of fat, each containing a kidney, which by some mistake had been left in. These were dexterously taken out, tied up separately in a piece of thin lining kept for the purpose, leaving a long loop. He would then string them on a dipping rod, used for dipping the candles, place the rod across the coppers and plunge them in the boiling fat. In about twenty minutes they were done, and taken out, and the potatoes, beautifully baked, divided between us. At times we were short of plates, but that did not trouble us, for an inverted saucepan lid answered every purpose. We would then sit and tell stories till we were obliged to go home. Charlie used to work all night Tuesday and Friday, as on those days they got the fresh fat in from the butchers.

In the summer there was the grass-boat, owned by an old man and his wife and a grown-up daughter. It had been an old ship’s jolly-boat, and had a roughly-built half deck cabin about the size of a four-wheeled cab. The three of them lived in it, and came twice a week to the draw-dock with bundles of coarse rush grass cut in the marshes on the river’s bank, to sell to the local tradesmen to feed their horses, at three half-pence a bundle; and all they had left was taken by the cowkeepers at a penny a bundle. When there was no grass they would go sand-dredging, getting the sand by a pole with a leather bag on an iron frame at the end, with a rope to a block rigged up and attached to a windlass. The old man would let down gradually the pole, and the wife and daughter would wind it up. They were a terribly drunken lot; but the temptation to drink in those days in Chelsea was very much greater than at present, for since I can recollect, in that one road not much over a mile, from Battersea Bridge to Ebury Bridge on the canal, there have been eighteen public houses closed, and only one new license granted, and that is to the “Chelsea Pensioner.” The names of the thirteen houses that I alluded to were the “Green Man” at the bottom of Beaufort Street, at the back of Luke Flood’s house, the “Adam and Eve,” the “Cricketers,” the “Magpie and Stump,” the “Don Saltero,” the “Yorkshire Grey,” the “King’s Head,” the “Old Swan,” the “Fox and Hounds,” the “Snow Shoes,” the “General Elliott,” the “Duke of York” (that was the house in Wilkie’s picture of the reading of the news of the Battle of Waterloo), the “Rose and Crown,” the “Cheshire Cheese,” the “Nell Gwynn,” the “Marquess of Granby,” and the “Waterworks,” and several beerhouses. All of these houses have been closed or pulled down.

At the corner of Smith Street was the house where Tommy Faulkner, who wrote the history of Chelsea, carried on his business of bookseller, library keeper, stationer and printer. There were some rich people at that end of Paradise Row, several of them Quaker families, keeping two or three servants. Near the corner of the alley leading into Durham Mews, lived a doctor, a celebrated anatomist, and at the bottom of his garden in the Mews stood a building with no window that could be seen. That had the reputation of being the dissecting room. None of us boys would pass it after dark, as it was reported that the body snatchers who robbed the grave yards, would bring the bodies in a sack to sell to the doctor.

The present Children’s Hospital was Miss Pemberton’s ladies’ school, Gough House, with a lozenge-shaped grass plot and a carriage drive; an avenue of elm trees led on each side to the house from the iron entrance gates, by the side of which stood the coachhouse and stables.

A trip to Clapham was quite an undertaking, as there were no means of getting there but by walking. Once a year I used to go with the mother to pay the ground rent. We had to start after an early dinner and walk over Battersea Bridge along the road, with fields on each side to the top of Surrey Lane, pass Weller’s Farm, and strike off to the left by a pathway through cornfields to Long Hedge Farm—where the Chatham and Dover works now stand—and pass through some water meadows with bridges of planks across the dikes and penstocks, and up the hill by the side of some old cottages that brought you out in the Wandsworth Road; across a narrow footpath, a steep hill with steps cut in the gravel, called Matrimony Hill, and through the old churchyard. A few doors to the left was a ladies’ school,—our destination. The lady we were to see was a Miss Hart, a parlour boarder there. We were regaled with biscuits and a glass of currant wine, which we quite appreciated, to help us on our way home.