Southwark Bridge and the Boy Dickens Such good progress has been made with the rebuilding of Southwark Bridge, which was suspended during the war, that it is hoped to reopen it to vehicular traffic in the next few weeks, the "Morning Post" reported on' September 11. Little more than a hundred years have passed since Rennie surveyed his handiwork, and pronounced it good. In that period the public who have used the bridge, either above or below, have never ceased to condemn its faults. Drivers complained that its gradients were too steep, pedestrians that its paths were too narrow, bargees that its piers were not in a line With those of Cannon-street railway bridge (though surely this was the fault of Cannon-street as being the younger structure), and were an impediment to navigation.
Old Southwark Bridge was built by a public company at the cost of £300,000, and its erection was rushed through in fear that old London Bridge might not last a year if there came one hard frost. The bridge was begun on September 23, 1814, and the first stone of the south pier was laid by Admiral Viscount Keith in the following year. The—ironwork, weighing 5,700. tons, was put together by Walkers, of Rotherham, a firm which had cast many of the cannon used in the Peninsular War, and the only firm in Rennie's opinion capable of carrying out that task. Iron-founders and masons did their work well, so that when the structure was complete, scarcely any sinking was discernible in either of the—three arches, Experinients were made to ascertain the expansion and contragtion between the extreme range of strumer heat and winter cold. and it was found that the arch rose in sumner by about one-and-a-half inches. At midnight on March 24, 1819, the bridge was opened to the public as the clock of St. Paul's was tolling the hour, Tae Secrer or tHe Prison Hovse.
The bridge has few literary associations. Bat the present writer never passes the approach leading north across the river without thinking of the boy, Charles Dickens, on his way home from the blacking factory, where he had been seized with illness. He was too proud to admit that his destination was the Marshalsea. After making several attempts to get rid of Bob Fagin, his companion, to which 'Bob in his goodness' was deaf, he shook hands with him on the steps of a house near Southwark Bridge, making believe that he lived there. "As a finishing piece of reality, in case of his looking back, I knocked at the door, I recollect, and asked when the woman opened it if that was Mr. Robert Fagin's house." The little ruse succeeded, and the bay's secret of the prison house was not revealed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.