M&D questions/observations - up to p.82

[Chris Sweet]

davemarc wrote:
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> > From: still lookin 4 the face i had b4 the world was made
> <traveler at afn.org>
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> > (spoilers)
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> > 1.  What about the frequent references to "Wapping?"  First noticed on p.
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> > 52:  "...the Hautboy-player having been one night absorb'd into that
> Other
> > World of which Wapping is the anteroom..."  Is this some sort of
> euphemism
> > for death?
> >
> Maybe death, but maybe disappearance, too.  My impression is that Wapping
> might've been a place where hapless souls were crimped or shanghaied into
> service on maritime expeditions.  This kind of thing comes up in plays by
> Eugene O'Neill.  From the Gelb bio:  Crimping "involved a conscious, if
> somewhat muddled sailor; he was obliged to sign over his future pay to the
> boardinghouse operator before his gear was released to him.  Shanghaiing
> consisted of putting a thoroughly drunk--or knocked out--sailor aboard an
> undermanned vessel, in return for payment from the ship's master and
> whatever cash the sailor could be robbed of."  Or something to that effect.
>  Comments?
> 
> davemarc

Quite possibly. My Knopf Guide to London says about Wapping, 
"Right beside St. Katharine's Dock, the district of Wapping
has an unsavory reputation. With its famous gallows and its
wretchedly poor people, Wapping could once rival the worst
parts of Whitechapel." They then comment on how Wapping
underwent further dereliction during because of bomb damage
in WWII and closing of docks and warehouses but that now it
is on the economic rebound, "Its modernization prompted
French writer Claude Roy to comment in 1986: 'Wapping Old
Stairs, where for two hundred years there were thousands of
jobless waiting to beg a shilling from passengers as they
landed, were rotten when I last saw them. Now they're gone
altogether.'" The docks at Wapping didnt open until 1802.

About Wapping High Street they say, "There is a fine row of
18th century houses and warehouses to be seen in Wapping
High Street, which also houses the Metropolitan Special
Constabulary. This is the name of London's river police,
a force that was founded in 1798. In Wapping Wall is the
'Prospect of Whitby', the oldest of the Thames riverside
pubs with roots going back to 1520. It was the haunt of
smugglers and thieves, and also of the diarist Samuel
Pepys (1633-1703) and the artist J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)."

-chris