Westminster, its aristocratic neighbour, "York Stairs," being but seldom
used at that time. The latter, one of the few existing works of Inigo
Jones, remains to-day, set about with greensward in the "Embankment
Gardens," but Hungerford Stairs, like the Market, and old Hungerford
Bridge, has disappeared for ever. The present railway bridge is often
referred to as Hungerford Bridge, by reason of the fact that a foot-bridge
runs along its side, a proviso made when the former structure was
permitted to be pulled down. Of the old blacking factory, which must have
stood on the present Villiers Street, nothing remains, nor of its "crazy
old wharf, abutting on the water when the tide was out, and literally
overrun by rats."

On the 1st of May, 1845, Hungerford Suspension Bridge was opened to the
public without ceremony, but with much interest and curiosity, for between
noon and midnight 36,254 persons passed over it. Hungerford was at that
time the great focus of the Thames Steam Navigation, the embarkation and
landing exceeding two millions per annum. The bridge was the work of Sir
I. K. Brunel, and was a fine specimen of engineering skill. There were
three spans, the central one between the piers being 676 feet, or 110 feet
more than the Menai Bridge, and second only to the span of the wire
suspension bridge at Fribourg, which is nearly 900 feet. It was built
without any scaffolding, with only a few ropes, and without any impediment
to the navigation of the river. The entire cost of the bridge was
L110,000, raised by a public company.

The bridge was taken down in 1863, and the chains were carried to Clifton
for the Suspension Bridge erecting there. The bridge of the South Eastern
Railway at Charing Cross occupies the site of the old Hungerford Bridge.

Many novelists, philanthropists, and newspaper writers have dwelt largely
upon the horrors of a series of subterranean chambers, extending beneath
the Adelphi Terrace in the West Strand, and locally and popularly known as
the "Adelphi Arches." To this day they are a forbidding, cavernous black
hole, suggestive of nothing if not the horrors of thievery, or even
murder. They are, however, so well guarded by three policemen on "fixed
point" duty that at night there is probably no more safe locality in all
London than the former unsavoury neighbourhood, a statement that is herein
confidently made by the writer, as based on a daily and nightly
acquaintance with the locality of s