A Tour Through the Batavian Republic/Letter XII
LETTER XII.
Amsterdam, 1800.
THE streets of Amsterdam are not to be compared for neatness or cleanliness with those of Leyden or Haerlem. With the exception of a few streets in the best quarter of the town, they are in general extremely dirty, and the canals abound with putrid offals of every description. During the heats of summer, the noxious effluvia which proceed from the stagnate waters of the canals, corrupted with the most offensive animal and vegetable substances, must be highly pernicious to the health, and destructive of the comforts, of the inhabitants of this city. To purify the canals, there are erected at the extremities of the town, mills to pump out the foul water, and cause the stagnate pools to circulate. Every day the gates and sluices are opened, and a number of barges are employed to collect the dirt that floats on the surface of the canals, or raise the mud from the bottom. These boats, when they are full, transport their cargoes to Brabant, and the price which is given there for the manure defrays the expence of the voyage.
Notwithstanding all the care that is taken to cleanse the canals of Amsterdam, they are most disgustingly impure. In most of them are to be seen the offals of slaughterhouses, putrified fish, and the refuse of the vegetable markets. Dead dogs and cats float about without number, and in one canal I saw a horse in a horrid state of corruption. The water of the canals is generally a yard below the pavement of the street, and about eight or nine feet deep, with perhaps a yard of soft mud at the bottom, so that when an animal or a man tumbles in, unless assistance is at hand, his destiny is singularly fortunate if he escapes drowning. The brink of very few of the canals is guarded with rails or a chain, but there are a sufficient number of lamps, at convenient distances, to show the proximity of the canals in the darkest nights; and as strangers are cautious how they walk, from a proper sense of danger, and the inhabitants of the town are well acquainted with the situation of the canals, few accidents occur.
The streets of Amsterdam, and indeed of all Holland, have no path for the exclusive accommodation of foot passengers, as in England. Flag-stones, the best kind of pavement for this purpose, are not to be expected in a country where there are no quarries (though if I recollect right London is principally paved with stones from Scotland), but some attention should surely be paid to the security and comforts of the multitude. The streets of Amsterdam are paved with bricks; and in the trading part of the town are as dirty as Wapping or Thames-street.
Contrary to the practice of shopkeepers in England, the traders of Amsterdam make no ostentatious display of their commodities in the windows of their shops, and indeed they are generally unfit for exhibitions of that nature. A few of the coarsest articles which they sell, and least likely to be damaged by exposure are placed with little regularity or attention in their windows, and barely serve to announce the nature of their dealings. We found in the shops which we had occasion to visit, the men polite and intelligent; if they could not speak English or French, which frequently happened, we rarely had much difficulty in making them understand what we wanted, and they never in the least imposed upon us because we were foreigners, or unacquainted with the value of the articles which we purchased. I cannot, however, commend the female shopkeers with whom we had dealings, either for civility, intelligence, or honesty: when the difficulty of making known our wants to them was subdued, which often was a violent exercise of patience and ingenuity, we were repulsed by the exorbitance of their charges. A female shopkeeper asked me for a small bust of Bonaparte, which on the recommendation of General d'Henisdale as a faithful likeness I was desirous to purchase, sixteen florins: being persuaded that her demand was unreasonable, I went elsewhere, and purchased at a shop, not under female management, a similar cast at a reduction of price little short of ten florins.—, unless she was accompanied by some Dutch lady, had equal reason to complain of the merchande des modes. These bad qualities in Dutch women who keep shops, which I record with great reluctance, probably proceed from some defects in their educations, and the subordinate rank, corrupting their minds, and weakening their feelings of moral equity, to which women are condemned in Holland, and I may add, in seven eighths of the world.
Begging is so rigorously prohibited in the streets of Amsterdam, that, strictly speaking, not a mendicant is to be seen. A number of poor wretches, however, are to be found in the most frequented streets, who carry with them cheap toys for sale, and they loudly entreat passengers for charity sake and christian compassion to purchase some of their little articles. A little pedlar boy of this description, not seven years of age, asked me in three different languages (French, English, and Dutch) to become a purchaser of his wares; and if the physiognomy of the youthful linguist was to be relied on as a proof of his extraction, a competent acquaintance with the Hebrew tongue might be added to his acquisitions in modern dialects. Knowledge so premature was not likely to be extensive. His acquirements in English and French were barely sufficient to recommend his commodities, and piteously to state his claims on benevolence. His instructions in the art of soliciting charity had, however, been ample, and he had digested his lessons with a sagacity and acuteness vastly superior to his years. It may readily be believed, I did not turn a deaf ear to the entreaties of a child, clad in the habiliments of want and misery, thus singularly endowed; and from a grateful spirit, or perhaps to show himself master of his profession (which supposition I would rather adopt), prayers for my welfare were offered to Heaven through the distinct and articulate medium of three separate languages.
The association of ideas when I was conversing with this little urchin, brought to my mind the story of Prince Maurice of Orange, and the parrot that conversed with, him in the Brazils, as it is told by Sir William Temple, and adopted, with a credulity worthy of the gossiping bishop of Sarum, Dr. Burnet, by Locke in his Essay concerning Human Understanding.
At the Hague, and Rotterdam, where they are permitted, I have met with beggars who could ask charity in the French and English tongues, as well as their native language; but they were persons advanced in life, and consequently my wonder was diminished. I must here remark, that throughout the towns of Holland which I have seen, none of those squalid and disgusting objects obtrude themselves on the compassion of the public, which are to be met with, and offend the eye, in the streets and on the highways of England. In the great cities of Holland there are munificent foundations for the reception of all kinds of lazars, where their treatment is tender, and their maintenance comfortable.
Notwithstanding the decayed state of the commerce of Amsterdam, at the hours of business the exchange is filled with merchants and traders. It is a smaller building than the Royal Exchange of London, and less neat and commodious. Like the Exchange of Rotterdam, it serves also as a rendezvous for the militia of the city, who assemble once a week to be exercised in the use of arms. It can only be the force of habit, now that their trade is nearly extinct, which leads the merchants of Amsterdam to assemble as usual on their exchange. The hours of business are from twelve to two, and the exchange then exhibits a singular assemblage of men of various nations dressed in the peculiar habits of their countries, and to appearance all ardently engaged in one common pursuit — the accumulation money.
I hasten with pleasure from a scene where the energies of the human mind are disgracefully employed, to mention an institution honourable to the citizens of Amsterdam, and advantageous to science.
In 1777 a society, composed of forty opulent and enlightened individuals, was formed at Amsterdam for the laudable purpose of promoting knowledge and the elegant arts. In the prosecution of their designs, the society experienced at first much opposition from the stadtholderian party, the orthodox clergy of Holland, and the frugal merchants of the old school, who regarded as dangerous innovations all pursuits which were not immediately and distinctly connected with trade. Notwithstanding the disadvantages against which the society had to struggle, from this powerful combination, animated by political rancour, religious fears, and inveterate prejudices, its condition soon became more flourishing than the most sanguine hopes of its projectors had led them to expect. In a short time the funds of the institution amounted to a million florins, and a noble edifice was built for its use in one of the principal streets of Amsterdam, This building was opened for public instruction, with a suitable discourse by Professor Van Swinden, the first of November, 1788.
The title which this society has adopted is Felix Meritis, implying perhaps the happiness which results to the human species from the successful cultivation of science; and the number of its members is increased from forty to upwards of twelve hundred. The researches of this society are comprehended under five general heads. Physics, which embrace natural history, medicine, and chemistry; commerce, which includes whatever relates to navigation, agriculture, or manufactures; the imitative arts, painting and sculpture; music; and lastly, literature.
Each of these classes is furnished with an apartment for its exclusive use, and proper instruments for experiments, or to facilitate the communication of knowledge. The chamber of physics contains a small museum of natural history, and some anatomical preparations. Their arrangement is neat and scientific. In the hall of commerce are various models of useful inventions. The music room is admired for the happy disposition of its orchestra, but in what its peculiar merit consists I could not perfectly learn, nor had I an opportunity of judging, as we were unfortunately prevented by an engagement from attending the concert, which is weekly held at this room. In the apartment sacred to literature is a good collection of books: the lecturer's pulpit of mahogany is ornamented with carvings emblematical of learning, of the most beautiful execution. The hall of painting afforded us no favourable ideas of the present state of that art in Holland. It contained only two pictures, one of which was the front elevation of the building, the other a group of students (portraits) attending to the lecture of a professor. There were, however, a tolerable assemblage of casts from the antique, for the instruction of young painters, and I was told that several pupils of respectable promise attended almost daily to profit by them.
From the top of the building we had a good prospect of the city of Amsterdam. The day was remarkably fine, which, is rather unusual at Amsterdam in the month of November, and as the town is built on a perfect level, we enjoyed from our elevation a complete view of it. To all appearance, the capital of Holland does not cover one third of the space of ground which is occupied by the buildings of London, Westminster, and Southwark[1]. Many of the streets, however, through which canals do not run, are narrow, and there are no extensive squares, so that the number of houses in Amsterdam, for the space of ground on which it stands, is great. The appearance of the stadthouse from the top of the Felix Meritis (for the name of the society is given to the house where it holds its sittings, and inscribed in .large letters of gold on the front) is noble; but the churches and other public buildings of the city are not much to be commended either for elegance or grandeur.
According to an accurate estimate made in 1783, the number of houses in Amsterdam amounted to thirty thousand seven hundred and fifty, and it was then supposed to receive a yearly increase of fifty dwellings. The calamitous circumstances of the times, since that period, have not prevented the erection of new buildings to a greater amount annually than that which I have stated, and therefore it is probable that the number of habitations in Amsterdam exceeds rather than otherwise thirty-two thousand houses. This, at an average of seven and a half persons to each house, which has been used by eminent calculators to estimate the population of London, and may with confidence be applied to Amsterdam, where the houses in general are spacious and lofty, and accommodate three or four families, makes the number of inhabitants in the Dutch metropolis to amount to two hundred and forty thousand persons. The strangers who resort to Amsterdam are not included in this calculation, but they cannot with probability be estimated at less than ten thousand; so that it may safely be concluded, two hundred and fifty thousand souls inhabit this great city.
With a population so large, composed of various nations and languages, where the extremes of opulence and misery are to be found, it is to bestow the highest praise on the discipline, regularity, and good order of Amsterdam, on the excellence of its municipal institutions, and the humanity of the laws by which it is governed, simply to repeat, what I before mentioned, that not more than one criminal a year, in this great city, suffers by the hand of the public executioner, and the number of persons confined in prison for insolvency rarely exceeds thirty[2].
The police of Amsterdam remains almost the same as it was before the revolution, except that the names of the magistrates are changed for modern republican appellations; and certainly to have attempted any alterations of magnitude in a system which so effectually provided for the security of the public, by protecting the peaceful, and coercing the criminal, would have been dangerously presumptuous. The watchmen of the night are not, as in London, decrepid infirm old men, but stout vigorous fellows, who constantly walk two together, the more readily to apprehend offenders, or to report any negligence in each other's conduct, or breach of trust. These men are armed with a sword, and a stick like a constable's staff with a hook at the end of it. They are, however, severely prohibited, unless in cases of obstinate and dangerous resistance, to use their swords, and I conjecture it seldom happens that their staffs are not found sufficient weapons of terror and offence. They also carry with them a wooden clapper, with which they make a fearful noise during the whole of the night, to shew that they are attentive to their duty; and if any disturbance happens which makes it necessary to give an alarm, this instrument is used to call assistance.
To prevent the mischiefs of fire, and for other useful purposes, sentinels are nightly placed on the steeples and principal towers of the city, who sound the half hours with a trumpet, and if a house is discovered to be on fire, give an alarm which is soon spread over the city by hanging out a large lantern from the side where the conflagration is perceived. Fires seldom do much damage in Amsterdam, from the abundant supply of water which is every-where to be obtained, and the celerity with which an alarm is given and assistance received. In addition to the watchmen and fire sentinels, four companies of the city militia mount guard nightly in Amsterdam. The city militia is divided into five battalions of twelve companies each, so that the rotation of duty comes in fifteen days. Before the revolution, any person who chose to provide a substitute, which could be done at a reasonable price, was exempt from serving in this corps; but since the overthrow of aristocracy, the wealthiest individuals, as well as the poorest, have been obliged to contribute their services to the general security. This regulation has not affected so many as might be supposed; for, before it was in force, avarice, which reigns in Amsterdam in its most disgusting forms, induced many rather to serve personally in the militia, than be at the expence of furnishing a substitute; and some wealthy and respectable individuals of patriotic feelings, from public spirit and a right sense of their duty, enrolled themselves in this useful body.
These different guards abundantly provide for the nightly security of Amsterdam, and are the means of preventing many depredations and atrocities.
The Rasp-house and Spin-house, places of confinement for the reformation and correction of male and female offenders, are open to every one's inspection, on the payment of an inconsiderable fee for admission[3], which goes to the emolument of the keeper of the prison. In the Rasp-house, the employment of the prisoners is to saw or rasp log-wood and other woods for the dyers; and the quantity of labour daily required of them amounts to fifty pounds of raspings; which, if the men are strong and diligent, they complete early in the afternoon. The Rasp-house is a quadrangular building, three stories high, with a court-yard in the middle; which I found extremely dirty, and much incommoded with piles of wood. It contains only men prisoners, and the number of persons in confinement did not exceed seventy. The most atrocious criminals are confined on the ground-floor, two in a cell, with an open window guarded with iron bars, where they sleep and work; and notwithstanding the labour they had to perform, they were in general heavily fettered. All the men worked without their shirts, and I observed that some of their backs were marked with stripes, which had been inflicted with no sparing hand. When I say that their labours are concluded early in the afternoon, I do not mean thence to insinuate that their work is light: the contrary is the case. But the prisoners work hard in the early part of the day, in order to procure themselves in the afternoon an intermission from toil. Formerly, those who would not work were confined in an apartment into which water was caused to flow in such quantities, that incessant pumping was necessary to preserve the persons so shut up from drowning; and they thereby became reconciled to the less perilous and disagreeable labour of rasping wood. But this barbarous mode of obliging criminals to work has been discontinued, since an unhappy wretch, driven to desperation by his situation, permitted the water to overflow him, and was drowned. Corporal punishment, solitary confinement, and abridgement of food, are the methods which are now used to subdue the refractory; and I fear they are exercised with a rigour which never fails speedily to produce the intended effect.
The prisoners in general appeared emaciated through confinement, unwholesome air, scanty diet, harsh treatment, and severe labour. Their cells were extremely dirty, and their bedding, seamen's hammocks, in a miserable condition.
The length of their confinement varies according to the complexion of their crimes, from one month to five years; or in cases of peculiar atrocity, and hardened offenders, the period of imprisonment is extended to seven, fourteen, or more years; and sometimes, though it rarely happens, a criminal is sentenced to confinement here for life.
Of this last description of prisoners, the Rasp-house contained only one. The moral turpitude of this man's crime was great; but, reasoning from human principles and weakness, I am inclined to suspect the rigour of his punishment exceeded the measure of his offence. He was once a merchant of character and reputation, and guardian of the funds for the maintenance and relief of orphans in the city of Amsterdam. In this office he betrayed his trust, and embezzled the sum of sixty thousand florins. His offence was discovered; a prosecution was instituted against him, and the fact being clearly proved, he was for this breach of confidence, to the general satisfaction of the public, condemned to perpetual imprisonment. In England his crime would have amounted to no more than a felony, within the benefit of clergy, punishable with transportation or imprisonment for a definite term of years. The violation of a trust which should have been held peculiarly sacred, was certainly a moral aggravation of his guilt; but it should have been considered, that in proportion as confidence was reposed in him, so were his temptations to abuse that confidence increased; and that circumstance, which, on a desultory view of the subject, seems to magnify the crime, will on cool reflection be found most essentially to diminish it. The countenance of this plunderer of the sustenance of orphans was that of a very ordinary villain. He was at large in the court-yard, without irons, and did not seem much depressed by his situation, though his fellow-prisoners treated him as a criminal whose guilt so flagrantly surpassed theirs, that they pointed him out to me, through the medium of the valet de place, who acted the part of an interpreter, as a wretch deserving the strongest execration.
Many of the prisoners in the Rasp-house were not at work; and I learnt that this exemption from labour was to be purchased. On the whole, I was greatly disappointed in this prison. The Rasp-house of Amsterdam had been mentioned to me, by several persons in Holland, as an almost perfect model for a house of correction; and I had read in various books, relative to the United Provinces, a favourable account of it. But in every particular my expectations were deceived. The place was dirty, and its discipline cruel. Those indeed who could afford to bribe the humanity of the keeper were treated with tenderness, but the indigent prisoner, a wretch probably whom extreme want and pinching famine had driven to the commission of crimes, was wasted with severe toil, and jaundiced with continual severity.Over the gate which leads to the Rasp-house, is an ill-executed wooden figure of Chastisement, brandishing a whip in her hand, with two offenders chained at her feet, and various instruments of punishment and torture within her reach. The inscription in Latin beneath expresses the necessity and virtue of coercing and punishing the criminal[4].
The Spin-house, or Bridewell, for the correction of female offenders, is an institution similar to the Rasp-house, and contains an equal number of prisoners, or I believe generally rather more. The employments of the women vary according to their abilities, or the pleasure of the magistrates. Disagreeable tasks, as picking oakham, &c. are assigned to the most profligate and hardened offenders, while those who have been committed for slighter causes are employed on needle-work. The superintendance of the Spin-house is properly entrusted to a matron, with female assistants; and, on the whole, it appears to be under good regulations. The prisoners are chiefly composed of women who live by prostitution; and they are clean and neat in their persons; those who have not decent clothes of their own, wearing a kind of prison uniform. A woman may be confined for life in the Spin-house, but it is not tenanted at present by any one for so dreadful a period. Few are sentenced for more than a twelvemonth's imprisonment; and on representations to the magistrates of their good behaviour, they are frequently liberated before the expiration of that term. A small fee is paid at this place for admission, as at the Rasp-house; but I believe it is appropriated here to the benefit of the prisoners. The female convicts are healthier and more cheerful in their looks than the male, and their treatment and accommodations are altogether better.
From the prisons of Amsterdam the transition is easy to the licensed brothels of the city, the nurseries and hot-beds which bring vice to maturity. Prostitutes are not permitted to walk in the streets of Amsterdam, for the purposes of their wretched trade, but there are in various parts of the city music rooms, as they are called, under the sanction of the magistrates, who draw an annual revenue from them, which are nightly open for the reception of the dissolute of both sexes. At these places of licentious resort, singular as it may be deemed, the sedate and the innocent mingle with the wanton and the depraved. A reputable tradesman takes his family to one of these places of amusement, as readily as a person of the same class in London would do to the theatres or any other public entertainment. The early part of the evening spent in smoking, drinking, or dancing to the sound of three or four miserable fiddles, and towards midnight the carousals begin, when the most flagrant indecencies are permitted and encouraged. I cannot comment on such institutions. It should, however, he stated, that the number of prostitutes in Amsterdam is small when compared with the population of the place, and the estimate of females who live by prostitution in most of the great cities of Europe.
- ↑ I mean only the connected buildings of London, Westminster, and Southwark, and do not take into my estimate the extensive villages, which within a few years-, to the depopulation of the country, have been created in the vicinity of the British metropolis.
- ↑ Colquhoun (in his Treatise on the Police of the British Metropolis, edit. 4th. p. 393) estimates the number of persons who are annually arrested in Middlesex alone at between six and seven thousand. He does not give us the number of debtors confined in London, but on an average I believe they exceed eight hundred. For the honour of the British metropolis, I hope, and am most firmly persuaded, that many of the statements of this writer are unfounded or exaggerated. In a case where easy and correct information might be obtained (as the annual number of arrests in Middlesex) I should however suppose his authority was to be relied upon; but where his calculations are built upon conjecture, he swells his catalogues of the vicious or unfortunate to a merciless extent.
- ↑ Two stivers, or about two pence.
- ↑ Virtutis est domare quæ cuncti pavent.