Hallelujah Lasses 
E.S. Turner
- Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain by Pamela Walker
It was widely supposed that London’s East End, in Victorian times, was a sink of evil, an outpost of the Cities of the Plain. Were there fifty righteous men to be found in this cockney Sodom? Well, yes, if you looked for them, and there were some uncommonly righteous lasses too. Together they had seen the vision splendid. Let Bernard Shaw, running on rich mixture, explain:
Joyousness, a sacred gift long dethroned by the hellish laughter of derision and obscenity, rises like a flood miraculously out of the fetid dust and mud of the slums; rousing marches and impetuous dithyrambs rise to the heavens from people among whom the distressing noise called ‘sacred music’ is a standing joke; a flag with Blood and Fire on it is unfurled, not in murderous rancour, but because fire is beautiful and blood a vital and splendid red . . .
(this from the preface to Major Barbara).
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E.S. Turner wrote his first article for the Dundee Courier in 1927. He contributed to Punch for 53 years, and wrote more than eighty pieces for the London Review. His last social history was Unholy Pursuits: The Wayward Parsons of Grub Street. He died on 6 July 2006, at the age of 96.
Other articles by this contributor:
Petting Cafés! · wartime spivs and dodgers
Our chaps will deal with them · The Great Flap of 1940
A Broad Grin and a Handstand · ‘the fastest woman in the world’ and the wild early years of motor-racing
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