Sixpenny Pieces — Inside the Classic

(0 User reviews) 1801

In Category - Adventure Picaresque Fiction

Authors: Lyons, A. Neil (Albert Neil), 1880-1940 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2014 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Physicians -- Fiction; Poor -- Fiction; London (England) -- Social conditions -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 57,972

Reading time 253 min

Text sections 10

This digital edition of Sixpenny Pieces — Inside the Classic is described by source-level measurements including 57,972 words, 4 hr 13 min estimated reading time, and 10 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 12.2 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Physicians -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #44952

A series of linked vignettes set in London's East End, following Dr. Brink and his sixpenny surgery, with a narrator who observes poverty, violence, and dark humor through recurring motifs of coins, crowds, and ironic contrasts.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg44952

Read the Text

eginning of this book. I happened to be standing at Mr. Wilson’s coffee stall. And I heard the screaming. And I saw some shadows moving briskly, like the funny silhouettes on the blind at a pantomime. And some of us laughed and some of us whined and one of us blew a whistle. And the constabulary arrived, and with their coming the tumult died. And they brought the girl to the light of the stall, and her face was bruised and swollen and she lost her voice. But before doing so she was able to assure us that "’E done it in drink." "’E" was removed under escort.

They did not take her to a hospital, because there was a round little man at the stall who prevented them from doing so. "Lemme alone," the lady had remarked, upon regaining speech. "Don’t you worry me. I’m all right, I am. I got my doctor ’ere: this genelman in the top ’at. Ain’t that right, sir? You are my doctor, ain’t you?"

"That is so," said the round little man, "I’m her doctor. Shift your dam carcases and give the woman some air."

"There you are," gasped the woman, "what did I tell you? He _is_ my doctor. I got ’is confinement card in me pocket this minute."

"She can’t stop ’ere you know, Dr. Brink," expostulated a constable.

"I’ll take her home," said the round man.

"Be a lot better in the ’orspital," muttered the constable.

"I’m obliged for your opinion, officer; but I think I’ll have my own way _this_ time. Catch hold of her middle, will you, Sonny?"

It was your servant who had the honour to be addressed as Sonny, and he hastened to do the little round man’s bidding. When we had got the lady into a perpendicular attitude, the doctor put his arm about her, and, anticipating the little man’s commands, your servant did the same. And so we led her from the stall, all the cut-throats of Bovingdon Street following reverently behind us. Happily our march was not a long one, for the patient lived in Smith Street; and Smith Street, as everybody knows, is the second turning past the African Chief beer-house in Bovingdon Street. Short as the journey was, however, I could have wished it to be shorter: for the cut-throats pressed us close, breathing thickly about our ears; and the woman weighed heavy, having no manner of use for her legs and being stupid in the head. She only spoke once during the walk, and that was to say, in a drowsy sort of monotone: "’E done it—in drink."

We came at last to 13, Smith Street, and the fact that eighteen eager faces were already distributed among the six small windows of that dwelling-house removed my latent fears that our arrival would disturb "the neighbours." The owners of these faces were entirely mute, save for one, an elderly woman, who, in a loud wail, made certain representations to Providence in regard to one ’Erry Barber, whom I understood to be the lusty gallant primarily responsible for this adventure. Having repeated these commands a great number of times, and having exercised undoubted talent in describing ’Erry and ’Erry’s parentage, the old woman proceeded to chronicle her views respecting a vast number of alien subjects. At last this lady had the great misfortune to "catch her breath," at which the doctor cut in.

"Stop that beastly noise!" he shouted, "and shut the window, and put on a respectable garment, and come downstairs and let us in."

The lady looked benignly down upon us.

"Go’ bless ye, doctor," she exclaimed, "you are a good man. But you didn’t ought to talk like that to _me_. I lorst a son in the Bower war."

At that moment the door was opened by some other dweller in the house. And the doctor and his patient entered in. Not knowing the neighbourhood and not liking it, and being also of a curious nature, I awaited the doctor’s return. I had not long to wait. He came out very soon, and we walked away together into clearer air. And the doctor spoke.

"It is a deuced queer thing," he said, "that a man can’t stop for five minutes at a dam coffee stall without some fool or other finding work for him. I’ll never go to that stall again. I’ll be damned if I will. I ought to have got home half an hour ago."

"Yes," I said—I believe that vaguely I sought to comfort him—"and she _would_ have been better off in the infirmary?"

Continue Reading →

The book opens not with a character but with a tableau: a beautiful May evening in Bovingdon Street, where a lover kicks his sweetheart. This jarring juxtaposition of pastoral cliché and street violence sets the tone for a work that moves between the coffee stall, the sixpenny surgery, and the homes of the poor. The narrator, a young journalist, is drawn into the orbit of Dr. Brink, a round little man in a top hat who claims the bruised woman as his patient. The scene establishes a pattern of abrupt shifts—from laughter to whining, from whistle to constabulary—that recurs throughout the episodes.

The Sixpenny Surgery as Stage

The sixpence itself is a recurring token. It appears in chapter titles ('On Earning Sixpence,' 'Sixpences') and in the transactions that structure encounters. The fee is both a barrier and a bond; it marks the boundary between charity and commerce, and between the doctor's world and the patients'.

Crowds and Chorus

The narrative is punctuated by collective voices. In the opening, 'some of us laughed and some of us whined and one of us blew a whistle.' Later, the crowd follows the doctor and narrator as they escort the woman home, 'all the cut-throats of Bovingdon Street following reverently behind us.' These anonymous groups act as a Greek chorus, commenting on action through laughter, silence, or sudden movement. The crowd is also a source of pressure: when Mr. Boyle becomes famous, the public transforms him into a 'solemn National fact,' and the narrator notes how the same people who joked about him now regard levity as silly. The book repeatedly shows how collective attention shifts—from the street brawl to the celebrity, from the injured woman to the 'hero' of the cordite works.

Movement Between Spaces

The narrative moves restlessly between locations: the coffee stall, the surgery, the street, the home, the workplace. Each chapter or vignette typically begins with a change of scene, often signaled by a character's arrival or departure. The journey from the stall to the woman's home is described as a procession, with the crowd following 'reverently.' Later, the narrator visits Mr. Boyle at the surgery, then imagines his stage career at the Shoreditch Hippodrome. This constant motion reflects the precarious mobility of the poor—shifting between work, home, and public space—and the doctor's own itinerant practice. The book's structure, with its many short titled sections, mirrors this restlessness: no single location holds for long.

Irony and Understatement

The narrator's tone is consistently ironic, undercutting sentiment with flat observation. When the woman says ''E done it in drink,' the response is not outrage but a matter-of-fact recording of the constable's removal of the man. Mr. Boyle's repeated 'funny thing' about his trouser and sock becomes a refrain that deflates the horror of the explosion. The doctor's own language is blunt: 'Shift your dam carcases and give the woman some air.' This verbal style extends to the narrative voice, which describes a 'beautiful' evening only to undercut it with violence. The effect is a kind of deadpan humor that refuses to moralize, leaving the reader to register the gap between event and response. The book does not explain or justify; it presents, and moves on.

Readers should approach Sixpenny Pieces as a series of linked sketches rather than a continuous plot. The narrator's role as observer, not protagonist, means that attention shifts unpredictably. Pay attention to the recurring motifs—coins, crowds, the doctor's top hat—and to the way the book uses contrast (beauty and brutality, fame and obscurity) to structure its episodes. The work rewards those who read for texture and tone rather than narrative arc.

That afternoon, the rain drummed against the windows while I sat with Sixpenny Pieces, and the narrator’s quiet reckoning with Dr. Brink’s weary generosity stayed with me long after I closed it. Idly tracing that same feeling of hidden rooms and delicate transactions, my hand drifted to the shelf and pulled down The Room with the Tassels — Background and Themes, finding a similar hush between its pages. Just like that, one afternoon turned into two.