midnight
Even in these places , the inhabitants had often good reason for extinguishing their lamp as soon as it was lighted ; and the watch being utterly inefficient and powerless to prevent them , they did so at their pleasure . Thus , in the lightest thoroughfares , there was at every turn some obscure and dangerous spot whither a thief might fly or shelter , and few would care to follow ; and the city being belted round by fields , green lanes , waste grounds , and lonely roads , dividing it at that time from the suburbs that have joined it since , escape , even where the pursuit was hot , was rendered easy . It is no wonder that with these favouring circumstances in full and constant operation , street robberies , often accompanied by cruel wounds , and not unfrequently by loss of life , should have been of nightly occurrence in the very heart of London , or that quiet folks should have had great dread of traversing its streets after the shops were closed . It was not unusual for those who wended home alone at midnight , to keep the middle of the road , the better to guard against surprise from lurking footpads ; few would venture to repair at a late hour to Kentish Town or Hampstead , or even to Kensington or Chelsea , unarmed and unattended ; while he who had been loudest and most valiant at the supper-table or the tavern , and had but a mile or so to go , was glad to fee a link-boy to escort him home . There were many other characteristics -- not quite so disagreeable -- about the thoroughfares of London then , with which they had been long familiar . Some of the shops , especially those to the eastward of Temple Bar , still adhered to the old practice of hanging out a sign ; and the creaking and swinging of these boards in their iron frames on windy nights , formed a strange and mournful concert for the ears of those who lay awake in bed or hurried through the streets . Long stands of hackney-chairs and groups of chairmen , compared with whom the coachmen of our day are gentle and polite , obstructed the way and filled the air with clamour ; night-cellars , indicated by a little stream of light crossing the pavement , and stretching out half-way into the road , and by the stifled roar of voices from below , yawned for the reception and entertainment of the most abandoned of both sexes ; under every shed and bulk small groups of link-boys gamed away the earnings of the day ; or one more weary than the rest , gave way to sleep , and let the fragment of his torch fall hissing on the puddled ground .