No Place Like Gin Lane
Originally posted to
tenebrae_nostro RP community
Those poor and unclean unfortunates who felt the touch of cholera, gentle bout of consumption or perhaps the possessive arms of plague, were lucky enough to be lulled into the motherly comfort of death’s embrace. Otherwise, death came slowly and ravaged the young and old from the inside out, feeding on their intestines and turning them a leprous dull gray and green with sieve-like holes that dripped waste into the body like a leaky hose. Arsenic, Laudenum and Opium were all heavenly demons that twisted the soul into a picturesque dream, where the rot surrounding one from leaky roofs and damp, human stained, yellowed mattresses turned into gilded walls of gold. How many had lost their lives chasing the red dragon? It was a slithery beast disguised in shiny red scales that stripped good men of their socially sculpted refinement and turned them into Dorianesque creatures with the twisted aggression of Mr. Hyde. At the end of this pit of moral depravity lay of wasteland of souls, confined to hell no matter whether their station in life alloted them soft silks or rough twine fibers. Gin Lane was at the depths of the devil's trough.
Ankle deep in mud, our Mrs. Lovett trudged through the congested lane whose arteries were clogged with all walks of life. Men, women and children squeezed through while wearily trudging passed slow moving horse drawn carriages that carried the rich toward the palace. The interior of their carriages were lined with french silk and lace on plush pillows that were obtained during trips to the Continent. Those glorious fops with their top hats and damask black vests were warmed by the fur trims on their coats. It was a deep contrast to the squalor on the streets. Children poked around the cold with holes in scruffy thin shoes that were either too big or too small. Slopping through the ditches they carefully choose the stinking remains of that nights meal and secured the kiss of cholera. Most, however, fought and and ripped each other apart like ravenous hyenas. Their wild eyes shone with unspoken malice towards strangers they had never laid eyes on before. They were not fighting over the last piece of rotting bruised fruit that rolled out of a boney dogs mouth, but were fighting over the penny dropped from a hand dressed in supple leather out from a carriage. Its owner smirked cruelly with less than generous intentions, as through his boredom, the devil caught his attention.
A penny, maybe two, would buy a thimble full of murky cloudy gin, whose salubrious properties were as strong a delusion as Mrs. Lovett’s belief that she could make Mr. Todd leave them past behind him. The penny less poor could only afford to sell their bodies as work horses, or worse. Stuffy work houses were cramped with the scrawny limbs of children in torn dirty clothing, whose hunger was sated by enough gin that would make a good man drunk. The hungry, whose bones could be counted like the rings on a tree, lay stinking of alcohol in the streets.
"Alms, Alms, for miserable woman, on a miserable chilly morning." Calls a woman of ill-repute, who no man wanted to further disgrace due the syphilitic stinking sores on her body. The forgotten hadn’t a pittance to get something to eat, so they stole and begged until they had enough money to buy gin.
“Just the bottle of that, luv.” Said Mrs. Lovett to the seller, as she leaned against the counter and looked out of the window onto Gin Lane. Nothing she hadn’t seen before, she thought wearily as she tucked a strand of curly reddish-brown hair under her ear. It popped right back out like a box spring. A fat maggot of a pawn broker, took the rusty saw off a carpenter and his wife. They would forgot that they just sold his occupation for a bottle of gin over a glass of gin.
“It appears Mr. Weller's, that the only people gettin’ a deal off ‘is stuff is you, old Mr. Gripe; the Pawnbroker and nasty Mr. Black; the Undertaker.”
The Gin Seller grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Per’haps, Mrs. Lovett. They buy it all the same. Gin Lane, this is.”
“Or hell,” she muttered, as she carried the bottle of Gin back to her little bakery for Tobias, Mr. Todd and herself.
Mrs. Lovett sat alone in her new empty meat pie shoppe with her hands tucked under her chin as she watched the modern world breeze by through her window. Los Angeles did not have gin poisoning, it did not have work houses, cholera, consumption nor Opium dens that spoke of the Orient as they snagged ones life away. It did not have a Toby nor a Mr. Todd. She lifts a brow and tosses back the glass of clear gin.
No, there is no place like London.
Engraving is called Gin Lane by Hogarth 1751
tenebrae_nostro RP community
Those poor and unclean unfortunates who felt the touch of cholera, gentle bout of consumption or perhaps the possessive arms of plague, were lucky enough to be lulled into the motherly comfort of death’s embrace. Otherwise, death came slowly and ravaged the young and old from the inside out, feeding on their intestines and turning them a leprous dull gray and green with sieve-like holes that dripped waste into the body like a leaky hose. Arsenic, Laudenum and Opium were all heavenly demons that twisted the soul into a picturesque dream, where the rot surrounding one from leaky roofs and damp, human stained, yellowed mattresses turned into gilded walls of gold. How many had lost their lives chasing the red dragon? It was a slithery beast disguised in shiny red scales that stripped good men of their socially sculpted refinement and turned them into Dorianesque creatures with the twisted aggression of Mr. Hyde. At the end of this pit of moral depravity lay of wasteland of souls, confined to hell no matter whether their station in life alloted them soft silks or rough twine fibers. Gin Lane was at the depths of the devil's trough.
Ankle deep in mud, our Mrs. Lovett trudged through the congested lane whose arteries were clogged with all walks of life. Men, women and children squeezed through while wearily trudging passed slow moving horse drawn carriages that carried the rich toward the palace. The interior of their carriages were lined with french silk and lace on plush pillows that were obtained during trips to the Continent. Those glorious fops with their top hats and damask black vests were warmed by the fur trims on their coats. It was a deep contrast to the squalor on the streets. Children poked around the cold with holes in scruffy thin shoes that were either too big or too small. Slopping through the ditches they carefully choose the stinking remains of that nights meal and secured the kiss of cholera. Most, however, fought and and ripped each other apart like ravenous hyenas. Their wild eyes shone with unspoken malice towards strangers they had never laid eyes on before. They were not fighting over the last piece of rotting bruised fruit that rolled out of a boney dogs mouth, but were fighting over the penny dropped from a hand dressed in supple leather out from a carriage. Its owner smirked cruelly with less than generous intentions, as through his boredom, the devil caught his attention.
A penny, maybe two, would buy a thimble full of murky cloudy gin, whose salubrious properties were as strong a delusion as Mrs. Lovett’s belief that she could make Mr. Todd leave them past behind him. The penny less poor could only afford to sell their bodies as work horses, or worse. Stuffy work houses were cramped with the scrawny limbs of children in torn dirty clothing, whose hunger was sated by enough gin that would make a good man drunk. The hungry, whose bones could be counted like the rings on a tree, lay stinking of alcohol in the streets.
"Alms, Alms, for miserable woman, on a miserable chilly morning." Calls a woman of ill-repute, who no man wanted to further disgrace due the syphilitic stinking sores on her body. The forgotten hadn’t a pittance to get something to eat, so they stole and begged until they had enough money to buy gin.
“Just the bottle of that, luv.” Said Mrs. Lovett to the seller, as she leaned against the counter and looked out of the window onto Gin Lane. Nothing she hadn’t seen before, she thought wearily as she tucked a strand of curly reddish-brown hair under her ear. It popped right back out like a box spring. A fat maggot of a pawn broker, took the rusty saw off a carpenter and his wife. They would forgot that they just sold his occupation for a bottle of gin over a glass of gin.
“It appears Mr. Weller's, that the only people gettin’ a deal off ‘is stuff is you, old Mr. Gripe; the Pawnbroker and nasty Mr. Black; the Undertaker.”
The Gin Seller grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Per’haps, Mrs. Lovett. They buy it all the same. Gin Lane, this is.”
“Or hell,” she muttered, as she carried the bottle of Gin back to her little bakery for Tobias, Mr. Todd and herself.
Mrs. Lovett sat alone in her new empty meat pie shoppe with her hands tucked under her chin as she watched the modern world breeze by through her window. Los Angeles did not have gin poisoning, it did not have work houses, cholera, consumption nor Opium dens that spoke of the Orient as they snagged ones life away. It did not have a Toby nor a Mr. Todd. She lifts a brow and tosses back the glass of clear gin.
No, there is no place like London.
Engraving is called Gin Lane by Hogarth 1751