Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Railways, Environmentalism, Architecture, Commerce, Politics

    Discusses and savours a report of a Mr Fry who, as a deputy alderman on the Court of Common Council, maintained that Ludgate Hill would be disfigured by the proposed railway viaduct, however much it was to be beatified with ornamental designs. Punch believes that the bridge will be 'a monument to the barbarism of a crew of sordid speculators out of the Legislature, and of their representatives within it', and thinks the names of such characters should be engraved on the bridge 'to the scorn of posterity'. Ends by suggesting that the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company (which is to build the viaduct) be renamed the 'Goths and Vandals, Railway'.