Chapter 39 - Page 2

But the remarkable
thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while
singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if
it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he
performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in
falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met with an
injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.

I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common character.
He was full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in terrific stories of
pirates and sea murders, and all sorts of nautical enormities. He was a
monomaniac upon these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the
robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in the sailor
quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were upon kindred
subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had them printed for
sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at this
business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to
go to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the Old Fort Tavern;
and mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of the town had just
been killed at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The
murderer was carried off by the police before my eyes, and the very next
morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm, was singing the
tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and handing round printed
copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly bought up by the
seamen.

This passing allusion to the murder will convey some idea of the events
which take place in the lowest and most abandoned neighborhoods
frequented by sailors in Liverpool. The pestilent lanes and alleys
which, in their vocabulary, go by the names of Rotten-row,
Gibraltar-place, and Booble-alley, are putrid with vice and crime; to
which, perhaps, the round globe does not furnish a parallel. The sooty
and begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodomlike, and
murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke, which hangs over
this part of the town, more than any other, attempt to hide the
enormities here practiced. These are the haunts from which sailors
sometimes disappear forever; or issue in the morning, robbed naked, from
the broken doorways. These are the haunts in which cursing, gambling,
pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues too lofty for the
infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety forbids that I should
enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and resurrectionists are
almost saints and angels to them. They seem leagued together, a company
of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing all the malice to mankind in
their power. With sulphur