It is curious to look upon an old print like that of the Archway road and its toll-gate, reproduced here, and then, with a knowledge of that busy spot, with its thronging omnibuses and tramcars, to compare the old view with the present-day aspect of the place. An Archway Tavern is seen standing at the junction of the roads, but it is quite unlike the flaunting gin-palace of to-day. What, also, has become of the horse and cattle pond in front? The toll-gate, we know, finally disappeared in 1876, but long before then the ascending roadway had been lined with buildings on either side. Only recently the old and ugly archway has been removed, to make way for the new and handsome iron and steel viaduct, which bears the misleading date of 1897, although the structure was not opened until the summer of 1900. It, may be as well to put upon record that it is situated a hundred yards to the north of where the old Archway stood. Of late years, since the government of London has been taken over by the London County Council, the Archway has been more than ever a landmark, showing to where the frontier of London extended, for the London County Council’s boundary ran half-way through the structure, whose northern moiety lay within the territory of the Middlesex Council.

The new viaduct, wholly in Middlesex, cost £25,000. Its date, “1897,” prominent in cast iron on the southern approach, together with the fact that the work was not completed until midway through 1900, perpetuates the sinister memory of the great engineering strike in progress during that interval. Five authorities—the London County Council, the Middlesex County Council, the Islington Vestry, Hornsey District Council, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (who are administrators of the Bishop of London’s estates here)—contributed in varying proportions to the cost. They may look with satisfaction at the result: a light and handsome bridge, that, vaulting across the roadway with a clear flight of three times the span of the old arch, renders it possible to widen the road to any conceivable width, against that time which Mother Shipton foresaw, when “England shall be undone and Highgate Hill stand in the middle of London.”

Let us look back, on passing beneath this triumph of engineering skill, and, seeing with what grace the huddled mass of London is framed by it, conceive the welcome it may seem to extend to the wayfarer (if such there be) coming to the capital to seek his fortunes. It may, however, be readily supposed that the days when ambitious youth resorting by road to London, there to win fortune with the customary half-crown, are done. The roads nowadays have lost all possibilities of that endearing romance of high ambition and courage, coupled with slender resources and an uninstructed belief that London’s streets are paved with gold. The precociously worldly-wise youngsters of to-day, who resort to the Metropolis by rail, have no such illusions.

On the fortune-seekers of old, who tramped the weary miles to this gateway of their ambition, the forbidding old Archway must needs have exercised a dispiriting influence. It looked, from its outer side, so like a fortress gate, and was alas! too often a prison-gate when once within. London, lying down below them, vast and unknown; how, they might have thought, would it be possible to conquer that; to win a place there? Little blame to such of them as may have trembled at the prospect and retraced their steps; and better perhaps had it been for many of those who went forward that their courage had thus failed them at the threshold; rather than that they had gone down into that human whirlpool, to return broken in after days, to leap to death from the footpath above the lofty arch, into that roadway they had trod so hopefully years before.

For old Highgate Archway was a veritable Bridge of Sighs; a favourite resort of London suicides to whom a leap from Waterloo Bridge into the river did not offer great attractions. It was not until the Archway was opened toll-free that the iron railings fencing the upper roadway were erected. They were 7 feet in height, cost £700, and were the cause of great disappointment to would-be suicides by leaping, who have an illogical objection to falling one yard more than necessary for the purpose of breaking their necks. This explains the comparative disfavour with which suicides regard the Golden Gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral and other high places.

It remains uncertain whether those protective railings were erected for the sake of the suicides, or for that of the increased number of persons who used the Archway Road when tolls were abolished, some of whom might have been injured by those too anxious to shuffle off their mortal coil, to first ascertain whether or not the road was clear. Certain, however, it is that it mattered very much to the local authorities from which side the suicides came down: the territory of the Islington Vestry having been on one side and that of the Hornsey Local Board on the other. It is even related that one authority proposing to the other that railings should be erected, and meeting with a refusal to share the cost, fenced in its own side and thus left the self-murderers no choice. The expense and trouble of the necessary inquests falling on the other authority speedily brought about the railing-in of that side also.