Idea for Cycle Lanes in London

MATTERS MUNICIPAL.

Sir,—At a time when so much interest is centred in Municipal affairs by reason of the London County Council Elections and the proposed Incorporation of certain parts of London, may I be allowed to make a few suggestions to those whom it may concern for the greater convenience and accommodation of the public? The removal of all unsightly obstructions, such as sand boxes, street orderly boxes, &c., by the substitution of square boxes sunk on a level at the edge of the pavement, with a sliding lid and a slanting bottom to facilitate the use of the shovel. The construction of a bicycle track in roads made of wood blocks, at no additional cost whatever, by laying a line of, say, two blocks parallel with the pavement. On the same principle as the whitewashing of the edge of railway platforms, this would act as a warning to foot passengers not to step off the pavement without previously looking for the approach of bicycles. In time the cyclist would keep to his track and the vehicles to the middle of the road as might be convenient. To provide proper lavatory accommodation at all railway stations, with access direct from the street. Abandon all pillar post boxes for wall boxes, and every railway stationin particular to have a wall-box. To provide an "arm" clock at all railway stations. The boon would be enormous and many lives might be saved, as so many people with weak hearts run for a train which has gone and afterwards succumb to the effects of the exertion. To provide newspaper kiosks, to license their tenants, and to put down the present deafening brawl of "Special." These itinerant newnendon, however, should have the preference in the allotment of kiosks. To provide for the more efficient control of processions with brass bands, and to give the same power to the occupier as he now posseses with regard to the ordinary street piano.organ. To provide for the express delivery of small parcels and letters by trams and omnibuses, after the plan adopted in Brussels.—Yours, &c.,
Feb. 28    OLLA PODRIDA

Morning Post, 1 March 1898

I can do nothing with these people.

Here's the great George Sala on street nuisances - musicians, acrobats, and his neighbours - from the excellent collection Twice Round the Clock (1859):

First Italian organ-grinder, hirsute, sunburnt, and saucy, who grinds airs from the "Trovatore" six times over, follows with a selection from the "Traviata," repeated half a dozen times, finishes up with the "Old Hundredth" and the "Postman's Knock," and then begins again. Next, shivering Hindoo, his skin apparently just washed in walnut juice, with a voluminous turban, dirty white muslin caftan, worsted stockings and hob-nailed shoes, who, followed by two diminutive brown imps in similar costume, sings a dismal ditty in the Hindostanee language, and beats the tom-tom with fiendish monotony. Next comes a brazen woman in a Scotch cap, to which is fastened a bunch of rusty black feathers, apparently culled from a mourning coach past service. She wears a faded tartan kilt, fleshings, short calico trews, a velveteen jacket, tin buckles in her shoes, and two patches of red brick-dust on her haggard cheeks, and is supposed to represent a Scottish highlander. She dances an absurd fling, interpolated occasionally with a shrill howl to the music of some etiolated bagpipes screeded by a shabby rogue of the male sex, her companion, arrayed in similar habiliments. Next come the acrobats — drum, clarionet, and all. You know what those nuisances are like, without any extended description on my part. Close on their heels follows the eloquent beggar, with his numerous destitute but scrupulously clean family, who has, of course, that morning parted with his last shirt. Then a lamentable woman with a baby begins to whimper "Old Dog Tray." Then swoop into the street an abominable band of ruffians, six in number. They are swarthy villains, dressed in the semblance of Italian goatherds, and are called, I believe, pifferari. They play upon a kind of bagpipes — a hideous  pig-skin-and-walking-stick-looking affair, and accompany their droning by a succession of short yelps and a spasmodic pedal movement that would be a near approach to a sailor's hornpipe, if it did bear a much closer resemblance to the war-dance of a wild Indian. Add to these the Jews crying "Clo'!" the man who sells hearthstones, and the woman who buys rabbit-skins, the butcher, the baker, and the boys screaming shrill Nigger melodies, and rattling pieces of slate between their fingers in imitation of the "bones," and you will be able to form an idea of the quietude of our street. From the infliction of the soot-and-grease-bedaubed and tambourine-and-banjo-equipped Ethiopian serenaders, we are indeed mercifully spared; but enough remains to turn a respectable thoroughfare into a saturnalia.
     I can do nothing with these people. I shout, I threaten, I shake my fist, I objurgate them from my window in indifferent Italian, but to no avail. They defy, scorn, disregard, make light of me. They are encouraged in their abominable devices, not merely by the idlers in the street, the servant-maids gossiping at the doors, the boys with the baskets, and the nurse children, but by the people at the windows, who seem to have nothing to do but to look from their casements all day long. There is an ancient party of the female persuasion opposite my humble dwelling, who was wont to take intense interest in the composition of my literary essays. She used to bring her work to the window at first; but she never did a stitch, and soon allowed that flimsy pretext to fall through, and devoted herself with unaffected enjoyment to staring at me. As I am modest and nervous, I felt compelled to put a stop to this somewhat too persevering scrutiny; but I disdained to adopt the pusillanimous and self-nose-amputating plan of pulling down the window blinds. I tried taking her portrait as she sat, like an elderly Jessica, at the casement, and drew horrifying caricatures of her in red chalk, holding them up, from time to time, for her inspection; but she rather seemed to like this last process than otherwise; and I was obliged to change my tactics. The constant use of a powerful double-barrelled Solomon's race-glass of gigantic  dimensions was first successful in discomposing her, and ultimately routed her with great moral slaughter; and she now only approaches the window in a hurried and furtive manner. I daresay she thinks my conduct most unhandsome. She and the tall man in the long moustaches at number thirteen, all the pupils at the ladies' school next door, the two saucy little minxes in black merino and worked collars at number nine, and that man with the bald head shaped like a Dutch cheese, in the parlour at number nine, who is always in his shirt sleeves, drums with his fingers on the window panes, and grins and makes faces at the passers-by, and whom I conscientiously believe to be a confirmed idiot, are all in a league against me, and have an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the musical canaille below. They cry out "Shame" when I remonstrate with those nuisances they shout and jeer at me when I sally forth from the door, and make rabid rushes at the man with the bagpipes: they inquire derisively whether I consider myself lord of the creation?

Cads

Here's a list from Judy (a rival to Punch) of 1872, detailing the annoyances to which one might be subjected on public transport:

THE TRAVELLING CAD

JUDY grieves to say that her notice has been frequently called, of late, to certain cads, to be met with on most railways, especially on the Metropolitan. She may thus classify them:-
1. The cad who whistles or hums obtrusively
2. The cad who makes a horrid noise with his heel or stick, probably to convey the idea that he's of a musical turn. JUDY, who travels much herself, and knows the miscreant but too well, hopes he will take some other way of expressing himself.
3. The cad who spits. This is a very low specimen.
4. The cad who talks noisily to his friend, to the intense exasperation of all in the carriage. This is often a foreigner, who doesn't know better; but JUDY is ashamed, sometimes, to hear an Englishman so offend. The best excuse she can make for him is, that the train probably started before he could reach the third class. She trusts this warning may prove sufficient.
5. The cad who smokes where such proceeding is sure to annoy passengers, either at the time, or after he or his nasty cigar has gone out. This person generally uses very cheap tobacco.
6. The cad who wipes his dirty feet on the opposite cushion, and so leaves it. This is a cad one often sees.
7. The cad who writes on the window with a diamond, or some cheap imitation of the same. A very dirty trick!
8. The cad who cuts the cushions or straps, or otherwise injures the fittings of the carriage. JUDY hopes to see him caught oftener. Any one may kick him.

Nuisances!

Here's what the Victorians found legally objectionable in their neighbours, giving you some idea of what 'zero tolerance' meant in 1879. Quite a nice insight into Victorian urban living, if you read it through. No mat-shaking after 8 a.m., for a start.

Nuisances. — A few of the desagremens to which metropolitan flesh is heir have been legally settled to be “nuisances”.

(a) THE FOLLOWING WILL be summarily suppressed on appeal to the nearest police-constable:

• Abusive language; Advertisements, carriage of (except in form approved); Areas left open without sufficient fence.
• Baiting animals; Betting in streets; Bonfires in Streets; Books, obscene, selling in streets.
• Carpet-beating; Carriage, obstruction by; Cattle, careless driving of; Coals, unloading, between prohibited hours; Cock-fighting; Crossings in streets, obstructing.
• Defacing buildings; Deposit of goods in streets ; Dogs loose or mad; Doors, knocking at; Drunk and disorderly persons; Dust, removal of, between 10 am, and 7 p.m.
• Exercising horses to annoyance of persons; Exposing goods for sale in parks.
• Firearms, discharging; Fireworks, throwing in streets; Footways, obstructions on; Footways unswept; Furious driving; Furniture, fraudulent removal of between 8p.m. and 6 am,
• Games, playing in streets.
• Indecent exposure.
• Lamps, extinguishing.
• Mat-shaking after 8 a.m; Musicians in streets.
• Obscene singing; Offensive matters, removal of, between 6 am. and 12 midnight.
• Posting bills without consent;  projections from houses to cause annoyance.
• Reins, persons driving without; Ringing door bells without excuse; Rubbish lying in thoroughfare.
• Slides, making in streets; Stone-throwing.
• Unlicensed public carriage.

(b) THE FOLLOWING WILL require an application to the police-courts:

• Cesspools, foul.
• Dead body, infectious, retained in room where persons live; Disease, person suffering from infectious, riding in public carriage, or exposing himself, or being without proper accommodation; Disorderly houses; Drains, foul.
• Factory, unclean or overcrowded. Furnace in manufactory not consuming its own smoke; Food unfit for consumption, exposing.
• Gaming houses.
• House filthy or injurious to health.
• Infected bedding or clothes, sale of.
• Letting infected house or room; Lotteries.
• Manufactures (making sulphuric acid, steeping skins, &c.); Manure, non-removal of; Milk, exposing, unfit for consumption.
• Obstructions in highways, bridges, or rivers; Overcrowding of house.
• Powder magazine, or keeping too large a quantity.
• Theatres, unlicensed; Trades, offensive (keeping pigs, soap-house, slaughter-house, or manufactures in trade causing effluvia, &c.).
• Want of reparation of highway; Warehousing inflammable materials; Water-fouling or polluting.

(c) THE FOLLOWING WILL require a summons in the County Court:

• Any of those nuisances next-mentioned where the value or the rent of the premises in dispute, or in respect of which and over which the easement is claimed, shall not exceed £20 per annum; or where damages in a personal action not exceeding £50 are sought to be recovered, unless by consent of both parties.

(d) THE FOLLOWING WILL require a regular action at law:

• Buildings from which water falls on to another house.
• Commons, injury to soil, digging turf, injuring pasture.
• Drainage, interruption of.
• Encroachments on highways, rivers, streets, or squares.
• Gas company fouling any stream.
• Lights, obstruction of.
• Party wall, paring off part of; Publication of injurious advertisements.
• Rivers, pulling down banks of; Right of way, interruption of.
• Sewage, conducting, into river; Stream, pollution or diversion of.

(e) THE FOLLOWING HAVE NOT been definitely settled either way, but may, under certain circumstances, be worth the cost and trouble of a trial:

• Church bell-ringing
• Hospital, infectious.
• Manufactory, near house, introducing more noisy machinery, or new way of working it; Music,  powerful band near house.
• Rifle practice; Rockets or fireworks, letting off, frequently.
• Sewage contributed by several persons, amount contributed by each not being sufficient to cause a nuisance.

Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879