midnight
He had long known of these admirable offices , which had swept the last beggars and matchsellers and all the casual indigent from the London streets , and he believed that he would , as a matter of course , be able to procure a ticket for food and a night 's lodgings and some indication of possible employment . But he had not reckoned upon the new labour troubles , and when he got to the Embankment he found the offices hopelessly congested and besieged by a large and rather unruly crowd . He hovered for a time on the outskirts of the waiting multitude , perplexed and dismayed , and then he became aware of a movement , a purposive trickling away of people , up through the arches of the great buildings that had arisen when all the railway stations were removed to the south side of the river , and so to the covered ways of the Strand . And here , in the open glare of midnight , he found unemployed men begging , and not only begging , but begging with astonishing assurance , from the people who were emerging from the small theatres and other such places of entertainment which abounded in that thoroughfare . This was an altogether unexampled thing . There had been no begging in London streets for a quarter of a century . But that night the police were evidently unwilling or unable to cope with the destitute who were invading those well-kept quarters of the town .