Toronto by Gaslight: The Night Hawks of a Great City As Seen by the Reporters of "The Toronto News"

It cannot be said of Toronto, as it can be of some other cities, that whole districts are in such a condition as to be aptly designated slums. Portions of streets are inhabited...

The jail is a place towards which the night-hawk gravitates as naturally and as irresistibly as Newton’s apple to the ground. They disappear for a season, and when they resume t...

“Come along Teraulay street,” said a night policeman the other night to me, “you may as well go that way to the office as any other.” It was after one o’clock in the morning, it...

My next interview was with the rector of a church west of Yonge street, the congregation of which, although attended by many of the elite in Toronto uppertendom, mainly consists...

The French in their superficial way speak of a bagnio as a maison de joie, which may be translated literally as a house of joy. It would be impossible to conceive of a more fals...

The lights are burning dimly in the Union station—they never burn brightly in a station, somehow—and it is an hour before the night express starts on its noisy triumphant journe...

This is Yonge street at 10.30 on a Thursday night. I will take up my stand in the shadow of this corner and watch the crowds roll by. What a moving mass of young folks, for the...

Below the glittering surface of our beautiful civilization, drifting in the silent undertide is a current of guilt, injustice, and despair that has no voice to proclaim its mise...

Knowing that a hackman knew as much of city life if not more, than any other one man out of 10,000, I climbed on the box of a hack and asked an old-timer to drive me around town.

A good many of these unappointed attaches of the stevedores have once been sailors and still have a hankering for the water side. A few days ago I met a good specimen of this cl...

My experience as a police court reporter is considerable, and in this sketch I propose to give the readers of THE NEWS a sketch of the Magistrate’s morning levee, in which those...

The night-hawks of a great city like Toronto are not confined to men and women. Boys and girls, and even children of more tender years, fill a place in the ranks. They are, ther...

It is the custom for people to say that evil has existed from the beginning, and will continue till the end of all things. And as far as anybody knows this is entirely true, but...

The reporter makes gossip a business. He knows all the news of the city that is published, and he knows a good deal more that is never published. He asks you when he meets you,...

The pickpocket who steals your watch, the burglar who invades your house in the middle of the night, or the foot-pad who knocks you down with a sand-bag, are citizens whom it is...

There are gamblers and gamblers, but in the expressed opinion of his Worship they are all thieves. Some affect good manners, society, and clothes, wear genuine diamonds, and cla...

The numerous police stations of the city, and especially the Central station are on account of the news and incidents which surround them, favorite fishing grounds for the repor...

The convalescent patients at the hospital are not only permitted, but encouraged, to take full advantage of the two greatest remedies in nature’s pharmacœpea, fresh air and exer...

The crash of tamborines, the jarring roar of a badly strung snare-drum, and the troubled, fitful echoing of a discordant chorus breaks through the quiet atmosphere of the darken...

The News man sought a clergyman who is well-known for his zeal and earnest preaching, which excuses him in the eyes of many, at least, for his somewhat heterodox views. He was a...

“One half the world knows not how the other half lives,” and for the matter of that doesn’t care. The “one half,” by which in all probability is meant the well-to-do portion of...

The millionaire and the shivering beggar at his gates may differ in every other respect, but they have one feeling in common. Both desire to live, and to live one must eat. The...

It is seldom possible to watch the whole career of an abandoned woman. As they step lower and lower in abasement they keep moving from city to city until they reach a stage wher...

In another of these sketches I have spoken of certain members of the female sex who spend the most of their evenings in promenading the streets. They are young and full of lusty...

The classes about whom we have been speaking take dinner at midnight, and for some of them at least, the eating house which keeps open till early morning is indeed a boon. It ca...

The vast, smoky building facing the Esplanade between York and Simcoe streets is a great theater in which are enacted some of the strangest scenes in life in this city. Through...

It seems that when the rain is falling, when the air is chill, when the darkness is deepest and when the great station looks most gloomy and dreary, the emigrant train arrives....

Standing at the entrance to a prominent hotel on King street one summer evening some years ago were two stylishly-dressed young men, each with nobby canes, which they twirled ca...

In the morning, as I have watched the conductors, engineers, and trainmen trooping down to the Union station, and marked one of them, a fine, hearty, lusty, fellow, I have wonde...

I never could understand what attracts people to the railway station. Go there when you will, morning, noon, or night, there are the same or similar lollers on the waiting-room...

That a good deal of the ailing and suffering endured by humanity is superinduced by vicious habits of one kind or another is a pretty well ascertained fact. The staff of the Gen...

Ask any old and experienced officer on the police force, What does more to corrupt the morals of the young men and young women of this city than anything else, and he will answe...

While looking over his exchanges the other day THE NEWS editor clipped from the Switchellville Recorder a two-column article with five headings, the first of which was “Kidnappe...

There is a section of the young men in the city who may well be included in the ranks of the vicious classes. A deal of their miserable little histories is made during the hours...

There is no amusement I can think of out of which innocent enjoyment cannot be extracted. Personally, I can see no harm in young people dancing or playing billiards or cards—as...

When the streets leading from the center of the city are full of people hurrying gleefully or otherwise homewards from their day’s toil, there is another small section of the co...

There are so many different devices resorted to by the professional gambler in order to secure the money of his victim without showing that he has been cheating, that it is almo...

The life of a professional gambler is not passed in a constant whirl of excitement, as the uninitiated may suppose; neither is it a continual source of pleasure to him, as many...

than one when I saw Pearl, who was the only one who was anyways sober, go to the door and return with my man. I had the handcuffs on him before he recovered from his surprise. W...