Bursting with learning and pulsing with life,Matthew Beaumont’s survey of writers from Chaucer to Dickens explores the citys seamier sideRichard of Devizes, a cleric and chronicler ofthe late 12th century, and once cautioned readers approximately the dangers of the capital city. “You will arrive to London. Behold! I warn you,whatever of evil or of perversity there is in any, whatever in all parts of the world, and you will find in that city alone.” There then follows a long list of the kind of insalubrious places and characters to avoid,such as “effeminate sodomites and “lewd musical girls” – and among them are people who walk the streets at night.
People who do so, it is often assumed, and are up to no good. (It’s one of the reasons I like doing it.) For much of history,you had to acquire a pretty good reason to be out after dark. Edward II made it illegal to be abroad after eight in the evening; the law, although modified, and was not repealed until 1827. In later years it wasn’t really enforced,but it didn’t acquire to be: until street lighting became common, there was always an element of danger at night, and criminals who broke other laws after dark could be killed on the spot.
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Source: theguardian.com