2-982-240 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A Day at London Bridge Station, 1858. 'If you want to go anywhere you may, and in most cases must, go to London-bridge. The extent of the journey varies through an infinite series of gradations. One person who intends merely to spend a few hours lying on the green turf of Greenwich Park, or in the Crystal Palace, purposing to be back again at Westminster before the announcement is made that "Mr. Speaker is at prayers," jostles in the portal with the tourist who has just "booked through" to the confines of Europe, and actually stops the way for the young traveller to whom the trajet to Folkestone is but the first stage in a journey which will carry him deviously round the globe, and end possibly thirty years hence in an Indian grave or an English peerage. Between Tooley-street and St. Thomas's Hospital...lies the way which leads to the ends of the earth. On the average about one hundred and fifty thousand travellers - counting only the "paying passengers" - pass up that avenue outward bound every twenty-four hours. During the summer months and upon occasions of special attraction this number must be doubled, or something more'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.