The Keepers of the People

Chapter viii

"the degrading influences of an English Public School" — the public schools were under steady reforming attack throughout the 1890s, and Lady Hammersmith's line is a recognisable piece of advanced opinion.

Chapter ix

"a subscription at Mudie's" — Mudie's Select Library in New Oxford Street, the dominant circulating library of the century and, through its buying power, the effective censor of the English novel. That Althea's punishment is the withdrawal of her Mudie's subscription, and that she has "left the manager astonished and troubled by her choice," is a joke with an edge.

"I.O.U. three pounds — Althea Flodden" — three sovereigns, which is what she has taken. Her income is three hundred a year, held in trust; Lord Lisdor is one of the trustees.

"Wouldn't that have rather been taking the children's bread, and giving it to the dogs?" — Matthew xv. 26 and Mark vii. 27: Christ to the Canaanite woman, "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs." Althea, told that the money she spent was destined for a fallen woman, is arguing that charity begins with one's own child. Her mother calls it blasphemy. It is better exegesis than her mother's.

she hailed a four-wheeler — the four-wheeled "growler," slower and less fashionable than the hansom, but able to take a very large dog.

the air of Frascati's pleased her — Frascati's Restaurant in Oxford Street, opened in the early 1890s: a large, glittering, respectable place, exactly what an unaccompanied thirteen-year-old with three pounds would be drawn to.

the Serpentine … the Row — the lake in Hyde Park and Rotten Row, the riding track along its south side, where fashionable London displayed itself.

working Scotland Yard, the District Messengers and the telegraph wires — the Metropolitan Police headquarters; and the District Messenger Company, founded 1879, whose uniformed boys were the late-Victorian equivalent of a courier service. Three of them are waiting in the hall when Althea gets home.

the Society for the Penalisation of Vice — invented, but not far invented: compare the National Vigilance Association, founded 1885 out of the agitation over the "Maiden Tribute," which prosecuted publishers and campaigned against music halls. "Penalisation" rather than suppression is Jepson's touch.