Preface. This book summarizes the work of Henry Mayhew from 1849 to 1852. He wrote about the people and goods being sold on the streets of London, interviewing hundreds of street vendors. He estimated there were about 30,000 of them (called costermongers in the account below).
After the introduction is a long list of the ways people earn their living. If you don’t want to be a farmer postcarbon (before fossil fuels, 80-90% of the population farmed), here are some alternative professions! Though by 1850 many goods were being made with coal, and that won’t be so possible after fossils decline substantially in the future. Still though, much of what was sold on the street was fixed up and sold second hand.
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Women in ecology Podcasts: WGBH, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity, Index of best energyskeptic posts
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Mayhew H (2008) London Labour and the London Poor (Oxford World’s Classics). Wordsworth Editions.
Introduction
The number and variety of Mayhew’s subjects sometimes disguise the fact that he tended to target the most desperate and, in many cases, oddest examples that came under the series heading ‘Labour and the Poor’. There was little on skilled craftsmen, and nothing at all on servants, who by the time of the 1851 census amounted to 1 in 18 of the population as a whole.
His writings on their hard lives and poverty did more than raise awareness; they also raised money. The Female Emigration Society raised £17,000 and sent 700 unemployed seamstresses out to the colonies.
Different interview-subjects seem to have understood the experience of talking to him in different ways, as confession, therapy, or interrogation, and this uncertainty is reflected in the mobility of the terms he uses to describe their testimony: ‘statements’, ‘accounts’, ‘experiences’, ‘street-biography’. His own identity is equally unstable: at different times he was mistaken for a truant officer and a dog-tax collector, which suggests the potential theatricality of the project as a whole, and just as he took on the role of serious investigator, so his subjects could reinvent themselves, shaping their life-stories through the reciprocal pressures exerted by a commitment to fact and the more playful possibilities of fiction.
Although London Labour and the London Poor celebrates the ingenuity and comic resilience of ordinary working people, it also offers a long lament over the fate of those who, like many costermongers, found their options gradually narrowing until the only way of life open to them was to follow the same rounds and repeat the same cries as their ancestors, like the needle skipping on an old record.
Costermongers, in particular, the street hawkers who sold everything from fruit to fireworks, needed to get themselves noticed if they wanted to win customers; like a bird asserting its territory in the branches of a tree, their street-cries were defiant signatures of selfhood, a means of asserting their individuality against the anonymous roar of the city. Only about one in ten of the regular costermongers is able to read.
Watercress girls pitch with the cry ‘Water-creases!’, with a jabbing emphasis that is the aural equivalent of someone using her elbow in a crowd. In showing how this figure tries to make herself heard with those ‘screams’, no other social investigator of the period comes close to bringing alive what The Great World of London describes as ‘the riot, the struggle, and the scramble for a living’.
Conmen routinely sold greenfinches they had painted to resemble more exotic species of singing birds. The popularity of oysters in London meant that ‘in round numbers’ there were 500 million shells to be disposed of every year. An old showman who travelled with performing animals ‘sometimes had trouble to get lodgings for the bear’, even though ‘Bears is well-behaved enough if they ain’t aggravated.
Here is a description of the London street markets on a Saturday night: “…When the scene ‘has more of the character of a fair than a market’: One man stands with his red-edged mats hanging over his back and chest, like a herald’s coat; and the girl with her basket of walnuts lifts her brown-stained fingers to her mouth, as she screams, ‘Fine warnuts! sixteen a penny, fine war-r-nuts.’ A bootmaker, to ‘ensure custom’, has illuminated his shop-front with a line of gas, and in its full glare stands a blind beggar, his eyes turned up so as to show only ‘the whites’, and mumbling some begging rhymes, that are drowned in the shrill notes of the bamboo-flute-player next to him. The boy’s sharp cry, the woman’s cracked voice, the gruff, hoarse shout of the man, are all mingled together…. Then the sights, as you elbow your way through the crowd, are equally multifarious. Here is a stall glittering with new tin saucepans; there another, bright with its blue and yellow crockery, and sparkling with white glass…. One minute you pass a man with an umbrella turned inside up and full of prints;
The flexibility of this description reflects Mayhew’s control of his material, but also some of his uncertainty over how to account for, or even write an account of, people whose lives were so alien to his own; hence his frequent recourse to words such as ‘peculiar’, ‘odd’, ‘strange’, and ‘distinct’ when referring to activities that for the people themselves were usually too ordinary to be worth noticing.
Few Victorian writers are as good at revealing the texture of everyday life, and the acquisitiveness of a developing economy, that are present in ordinary piles of things, such as the wares which ‘crowd the window’ (Mayhew’s emphasis) of London’s swag-shops: egg-boilers, tapers, flat and box irons, Italian irons and heaters, earthenware jugs, metal covers, tea-pots, plaited straw baskets, sieves, wood pails, camera-obscuras, medals, amulets, perfumery and fancy soaps of all kinds, mathematical instruments, steel pens, silver and German silver patent pencil-cases and leads, snuff-boxes ‘in great variety’, strops, ink, slates, metal eyelet-holes and machines, padlocks, braces, belts, Congreves, lucifers, fuzees, pocket-books, bill-cases, bed-keys, and a great variety of articles too numerous to mention.
I. STREET-SELLERS. II. STREET-BUYERS. III. STREET-FINDERS. IV. STREET-PERFORMERS, ARTISTS, AND SHOWMEN. V. STREET-ARTIZANS, OR WORKING PEDLARS; and VI. STREET-LABOURERS
The Street-sellers of Fish, shell-fish—and poultry, game, and cheese.
The Street-sellers of Vegetables, fruit, flowers, trees, shrubs, seeds, and roots, and other greens like water-cresses, chickweed.
The Street-sellers of Eatables and Drinkables, including the vendors of fried fish, hot eels, pickled whelks, sheep’s trotters, ham sandwiches, pea-soup, hot green peas, penny pies, plum ‘duff’, meat-puddings, baked potatoes, spice-cakes, muffins and crumpets, Chelsea buns, sweetmeats, brandy-balls, cough drops, and cat and dog’s meat—such constituting the principal eatables sold in the street; while under the head of street-drinkables may be specified tea and coffee, ginger-beer, lemonade, hot wine, new milk from the cow, asses milk, curds and whey, and occasionally water.
The Street-sellers of Stationery, Literature, and the Fine Arts—among whom are comprised the flying stationers, or standing and running patterers; the long-song-sellers; the wall-song-sellers (or ‘pinners-up’, as they are technically termed); the ballad sellers; the vendors of playbills, second editions of newspapers, back numbers of periodicals and old books, almanacks, pocket books, memorandum books, note paper, sealing-wax, pens, pencils, stenographic cards, valentines, engravings, manuscript music, images, and gelatine poetry cards.
The Street-sellers of Manufactured Articles, which class comprises a large number of individuals, as, (a) the vendors of chemical articles of manufacture—viz., blacking, lucifers, corn-salves, grease-removing compositions, plating-balls, poison for rats, crackers, detonating-balls, and cigar-lights.
(b) The vendors of metal articles of manufacture—razors and pen-knives, tea-trays, dog-collars, and key-rings, hardware, bird-cages, small coins, medals, jewelry, tinware, tools, card-counters, red-herring-toasters, trivets, gridirons, and Dutch ovens.
(c) The vendors of china and stone articles of manufacture—as cups and saucers, jugs, vases, chimney ornaments, and stone fruit,
(d) The vendors of linen, cotton, and silken articles of manufacture—as sheeting, table-covers, cotton, tapes and thread, boot and stay-laces, haberdashery, pretended smuggled goods, shirt-buttons, etc., etc.; and
(e) The vendors of miscellaneous articles of manufacture—as cigars, pipes, and snuff-boxes, spectacles, combs, ‘lots’, rhubarb, sponges, wash-leather,* paper-hangings, dolls, Bristol toys, sawdust, and pin-cushions.
The Street-sellers of Second-hand Articles, of whom there are again four separate classes; as
(a) those who sell old metal articles—viz. old knives and forks, keys, tin-ware, tools, and marine stores generally;
(b) those who sell old linen articles—as old sheeting for towels;
(c) those who sell old glass and crockery—including bottles, old pans and pitchers, old looking glasses,
(d) those who sell old miscellaneous articles—as old shoes, old clothes, old saucepan lids
The Street-sellers of Live Animals —including the dealers in dogs, squirrels, birds, gold and silver fish, and tortoises.
The Street-sellers of Mineral Productions and Curiosities—as red and white sand, silver sand, coals, coke, salt, spar ornaments, and shells.
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They appear to constitute nearly three-fourths of the entire number of individuals obtaining a subsistence in the streets of London.
The next class are the STREET-BUYERS, under which denomination come the purchasers of hare-skins, old clothes, old umbrellas, bottles, glass, broken metal, rags, waste paper, and dripping.
After these we have the STREET-FINDERS, or those who, as I said before, literally ‘pick up’ their living in the public thoroughfares. They are the ‘pure’ pickers, or those who live by gathering dogs’-dung; the cigar-end finders, or ‘hard-ups’, as they are called, who collect the refuse pieces of smoked cigars from the gutters, and having dried them, sell them as tobacco to the very poor; the dredgermen or coal-finders; the mud-larks, the bone-grubbers; and the sewer-hunters.
The Street-Performers, who admit of being classified into:
(a) mountebanks—or those who enact puppet-shows, as Punch and Judy, the fantoccini,* and the Chinese shades.
(b) The street-performers of feats of strength and dexterity—as ‘acrobats’ or posturers, ‘equilibrists’ or balancers, stiff and bending tumblers, jugglers, conjurors, sword-swallowers, ‘salamanders’ or fire-eaters, swordsmen, etc.
(c) The street-performers with trained animals—as dancing dogs, performing monkeys, trained birds and mice, cats and hares, sapient pigs, dancing bears, and tame camels.
(d) The street-actors—as clowns, ‘Billy Barlows’, ‘Jim Crows’,* and others.
The Street Showmen, including shows of (a) extraordinary persons—as giants, dwarfs, Albinos, spotted boys, and pig-faced ladies (b) Extraordinary animals—as alligators, calves, horses and pigs with six legs or two heads, industrious fleas, and happy families (c) Philosophic instruments—as the microscope, telescope, thaumascope (d) Measuring-machines—as weighing, lifting, measuring, and striking machines and (e) miscellaneous shows—such as peep-shows, glass ships, mechanical figures, wax-work shows, pugilistic shows, and fortune-telling apparatus.
The Street-Artists—as black profile-cutters, blind paper-cutters, ‘screevers’ or draughtsmen in coloured chalks on the pavement, writers without hands, and readers without eyes.
The Street Dancers—as street Scotch girls, sailors, slack and tight rope dancers, dancers on stilts, and comic dancers.
The Street Musicians—as the street bands (English and German), players of the guitar, harp, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer, musical bells, cornet, tom-tom, and so on.
The Street Singers, as the singers of glees, ballads, comic songs, nigger melodies, psalms, serenaders, reciters, and improvisatori.
The Proprietors of Street Games, as swings, highflyers, roundabouts, puff-and-darts, rifle shooting, down the dolly, spin-’em-rounds, prick the garter, thimble-rig, etc.
ARTISANS, or WORKING PEDLARS
These may be severally arranged into three distinct groups: (1) Those who make things in the streets (2) Those who mend things in the streets and (3) Those who make things at home and sell them in the streets.
Of those who make things in the streets there are the following varieties: (a) the metal workers—such as toasting-fork makers, pin makers, engravers, tobacco-stopper makers (b) The textile-workers—stocking-weavers, cabbage-net makers, night-cap knitters, doll-dress knitters (c) The miscellaneous workers such as the wooden spoon makers, the leather brace and garter makers, the printers, and the glass-blowers.
Those who mend things in the streets, consist of broken china and glass menders, clock menders, umbrella menders, kettle menders, chair menders, grease removers, hat cleaners, razor and knife grinders, glaziers, travelling bell hangers, and knife cleaners.
Those who make things at home and sell them in the streets, are (a) the wood workers—as the makers of clothes-pegs, clothes-props, skewers, needle-cases, foot-stools and clothes-horses, chairs and tables, tea-caddies, writing-desks, drawers, work-boxes, dressing-cases, pails and tubs (b) The trunk, hat, and bonnet-box makers, and the cane and rush basket makers (c) The toy makers—such as Chinese roarers, children’s windmills, flying birds and fishes, feathered cocks, black velvet cats and sweeps, paper houses, cardboard carriages, little copper pans and kettles, tiny tin fireplaces, children’s watches, Dutch dolls, buy-a-brooms, and gutta-percha heads (d) The apparel makers—viz., the makers of women’s caps, boys and men’s cloth caps, night-caps, straw bonnets, children’s dresses, watch-pockets, bonnet shapes, silk bonnets, and gaiters, (e) The metal workers,—as the makers of fire-guards, bird-cages, the wire workers (f) The miscellaneous workers—or makers of ornaments for stoves, chimney ornaments, artificial flowers in pots and in nosegays, plaster-of-Paris night-shades, brooms, brushes, mats, rugs, hearthstones, firewood, rush matting, and hassocks.
STREET-LABOURERS
There are four classes: (1) The Cleansers —such as scavengers, nightmen, flushermen, chimney-sweeps, dustmen, crossing-sweepers, ‘street-orderlies’, labourers to sweeping-machines and to watering-carts. (2) The Lighters and Waterers— or the turn-cocks and the lamplighters (3) The Street-Advertisers: the bill-stickers, bill-deliverers, boardmen, men to advertising vans, and wall and pavement stencillers (4) The Street-Servants —as horse holders, link-men, coach-hirers, street-porters, shoe-blacks.
Time travel: what it was like to be on the street in 1850
Until it is seen and heard, we have no sense of the scramble that is going on throughout London for a living. Go to whatever corner of the metropolis you please, either on a Saturday night or a Sunday morning, and there is the same shouting and the same struggling to get the penny profit out of the poor man’s Sunday’s dinner.
The street sellers are to be seen in the greatest numbers at the London street markets on a Saturday night. The scene in these parts has more of the character of a fair than a market. There are hundreds of stalls, some crimson with the fire shining through the holes beneath the baked chestnut stove; others have handsome octohedral lamps, while a few have a candle shining through a sieve: these, with the sparkling ground-glass globes of the tea-dealers’ shops, and the butchers’ gaslights streaming and fluttering in the wind, like flags of flame, pour forth such a flood of light, that at a distance the atmosphere immediately above the spot is as lurid as if the street were on fire.
Little boys, holding three or four onions in their hand, creep between the people, wriggling their way through every interstice, and asking for custom in whining tones, as if seeking charity.
Then the tumult of the thousand different cries of the eager dealers, all shouting at the top of their voices, at one and the same time, is almost bewildering.
‘Chestnuts all ’ot, a penny a score,’ bawls another. ‘An ’aypenny a skin, blacking,’* squeaks a boy. ‘Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy—bu-u-uy!’ cries the butcher. ‘Twopence a pound grapes.’ ‘Three a penny Yarmouth bloaters.’ ‘Who’ll buy a bonnet for fourpence?’ ‘Pick ’em out cheap here! three pair for a halfpenny, bootlaces.’ ‘Now’s your time! beautiful whelks, a penny a lot.’ Sometimes an Irishman is heard with his ‘fine ating apples’; or else the jingling music of an unseen organ breaks out, as the trio of street singers rest between the verses. The man with the donkey-cart filled with turnips has three lads to shout for him to their utmost, with their ‘Ho! ho! hi-i-i! What do you think of this here? A penny a bunch—hurrah for free trade! Here’s your turnips!’
The continual calling in the streets is very distressing to the voice. One man told me that it had broken his, and that very often while out he lost his voice altogether. The costers mostly go out with a boy to cry their goods for them. If they have two or three hallooing together, it makes more noise than one, and the boys can shout better and louder than the men.
One man stands with his red-edged mats hanging over his back and chest, like a herald’s coat; and the girl with her basket of walnuts lifts her brown-stained fingers to her mouth, as she screams, ‘Fine warnuts! sixteen a penny, fine war-r-nuts.’ A bootmaker, to ‘ensure custom’, has illuminated his shop-front with a line of gas, and in its full glare stands a blind beggar, his eyes turned up so as to show only ‘the whites’, and mumbling some begging rhymes, that are drowned in the shrill notes of the bamboo-flute-player next to him.
Here is a stall glittering with new tin saucepans; there another, bright with its blue and yellow crockery, and sparkling with white glass. Now you come to a row of old shoes arranged along the pavement; now to a stand of gaudy tea-trays; then to a shop with red handkerchiefs and blue checked shirts. After this is a butcher’s shop, crimson and white with meat piled up to the first-floor, in front of which the butcher himself, in his blue coat, walks up and down, sharpening his knife on the steel that hangs to his waist.
One minute you pass a man with an umbrella turned inside up and full of prints; the next, you hear one with a peepshow of Mazeppa, and Paul Jones the pirate,* describing the pictures to the boys looking in at the little round windows.
Business topics are discussed in a most peculiar style. One man takes the pipe from his mouth and says, ‘Bill made a doogheno hit this morning.’ ‘Jem,’ says another, to a man just entering, ‘you’ll stand a top o’ reeb?’ ‘On,’ answers Jem, ‘I’ve had a trosseno tol, and have been doing dab.’ If any strangers are present, the conversation is still further clothed in slang, so as to be unintelligible even to the partially initiated.
It is called ‘plucky’ to bear pain without complaining. To flinch from expected suffering is scorned, and he who does so is sneered at and told to wear a gown, as being more fit to be a woman. They also delight in tattooing their chests and arms with anchors, and figures of different kinds. During the whole of this painful operation, the boy will not flinch, but laugh and joke with his admiring companions, as if perfectly at ease.
A fondness for ‘sparring’ and ‘boxing’ lingers among the rude members of some classes of the working men, such as the tanners. The sparring seldom continues long, sometimes not above a quarter of an hour; for the costermongers, though excited for a while, weary of sports in which they cannot personally participate. The winner is the man who gives the first ‘noser’; a bloody nose however is required to show that the blow was veritably a noser.
A good pugilist is looked up to with great admiration by the costers, and fighting is considered to be a necessary part of a boy’s education. Among them cowardice in any shape is despised as being degrading and loathsome, indeed the man who would avoid a fight, is scouted by the whole of the court he lives in. Hence it is important for a lad and even a girl to know how to ‘work their fists well’—as expert boxing is called among them. If a coster man or woman is struck they are obliged to fight. When a quarrel takes place between two boys, a ring is formed, and the men urge them on to have it out, for they hold that it is a wrong thing to stop a battle, as it causes bad blood for life; whereas, if the lads fight it out they shake hands and forget all about it.
‘Twopenny-hops’ are much resorted to by the costermongers, men and women, boys and girls.
At these ‘hops’ the clog-hornpipe is often danced. The other dances are jigs, ‘flash jigs’—hornpipes in fetters—a dance rendered popular by the success of the acted ‘Jack Sheppard’—polkas, and country-dances, the last-mentioned being generally demanded by the women. Waltzes are as yet unknown to them. Sometimes they do the ‘pipe-dance’. For this a number of tobacco-pipes, about a dozen, are laid close together on the floor, and the dancer places the toe of his boot between the different pipes, keeping time with the music. Two of the pipes are arranged as a cross, and the toe has to be inserted between each of the angles, without breaking them. The numbers present at these ‘hops’ vary from 30 to 100 of both sexes, their ages being from 14 to 45, and the female sex being slightly predominant as to the proportion of those in attendance. At these ‘hops’ there is nothing of the leisurely style of dancing—half a glide and half a skip—but vigorous, laborious capering. The hours are from half-past eight to twelve, sometimes to one or two in the morning, and never later than two, as the costermongers are early risers.
Flash songs are liked, and sailors’ songs, and patriotic songs. Most costers—indeed, I can’t call to mind an exception—listen very quietly to songs that they don’t in the least understand. We have among us translations of the patriotic French songs. “Mourir pour la patrie” is very popular, and so is the “Marseillaise”. A song to take hold of us must have a good chorus.’
Their sports are enjoyed the more, if they are dangerous and require both courage and dexterity to succeed in them. They prefer, if crossing a bridge, to climb over the parapet, and walk along on the stone coping. When a house is building, rows of coster lads will climb up the long ladders, leaning against the unsalted roof, and then slide down again, each one resting on the other’s shoulders.
Among the men, rat-killing is a favourite sport. They will enter an old stable, fasten the door and then turn out the rats. Or they will find out some unfrequented yard, and at night time build up a pit with apple-case boards, and lighting up their lamps, enjoy the sport. Nearly every coster is fond of dogs. Some fancy them greatly, and are proud of making them fight. If when out working, they see a handsome stray, whether he is a ‘toy’ or ‘sporting’ dog, they whip him up—many of the class not being very particular whether the animals are stray or not.
Their dog fights are both cruel and frequent. It is not uncommon to see a lad walking with the trembling legs of a dog shivering under a bloody handkerchief, that covers the bitten and wounded body of an animal that has been figuring at some ‘match’. These fights take place on the sly—the tap-room or back-yard of a beer-shop, being generally chosen for the purpose. A few men are let into the secret, and they attend to bet upon the winner, the police being carefully kept from the spot.
Pigeons are ‘fancied’ to a large extent, and are kept in lath cages on the roofs of the houses. The lads look upon a visit to the Red-house, Battersea, where the pigeon-shooting takes place, as a great treat. They stand without the hoarding that encloses the ground, and watch for the wounded pigeons to fall, when a violent scramble takes place among them, each bird being valued at 3d. or 4d. So popular has this sport become, that some boys take dogs with them trained to retrieve the birds, and two Lambeth costers attend regularly after their morning’s work with their guns, to shoot those that escape the ‘shots’ within.
To serve out a policeman is the bravest act by which a costermonger can distinguish himself. Some lads have been imprisoned upwards of a dozen times for this offence; and are consequently looked upon by their companions as martyrs. When they leave prison for such an act, a subscription is often got up for their benefit. In their continual warfare with the force, they resemble many savage nations, from the cunning and treachery they use. The lads endeavour to take the unsuspecting ‘crusher’ by surprise, and often crouch at the entrance of a court until a policeman passes, when a stone or a brick is hurled at him, and the youngster immediately disappears. Their love of revenge too, is extreme—their hatred being in no way mitigated by time; they will wait for months, following a policeman who has offended or wronged them, anxiously looking out for an opportunity of paying back the injury.
Where it is known that the landlord will not supply cards, ‘a sporting coster’ carries a pack or two with him. The cards played with have rarely been stamped; they are generally dirty, and sometimes almost illegible, from long handling and spilled beer. Some men will sit patiently for hours at these games, and they watch the dealing round of the dingy cards intently. In a full room of card-players, the groups are all shrouded in tobacco-smoke, and from them are heard constant sounds—according to the games they are engaged in—of ‘I’m low, and Ped’s high.’ ‘Tip and me’s game.’ ‘Fifteen four and a flush of five.’
‘Shove-halfpenny’ is another game played by them; so is ‘Three up’. Three halfpennies are thrown up, and when they fall all ‘heads’ or all ‘tails’, it is a mark; and the man who gets the greatest number of marks out of a given amount—three, or five, or more—wins.
The other amusements of this class of the community are the theatre and the penny concert, and their visits are almost entirely confined to the galleries of the theatres Three times a week is an average attendance at theatres and dances by the more prosperous costermongers.
On a good attractive night, the rush of costers to the threepenny gallery of the ‘the Vic’ is peculiar and almost awful. The long zig-zag staircase that leads to the pay box is crowded to suffocation at least an hour before the theatre is opened; but, on the occasion of a piece with a good murder in it, the crowd will frequently collect as early as three o’clock in the afternoon. There are few grown-up men that go here. The generality of the visitors are lads from about twelve to three-and-twenty, and though a few black-faced sweeps or whitey-brown dustmen may be among the throng, the gallery audience consists mainly of costermongers. Young girls, too, are very plentiful, only one-third of whom now take their babies, owing to the new regulation of charging half-price for infants.
At each step up the well-staircase the warmth and stench increase, until by the time one reaches the gallery doorway, a furnace-heat rushes out through the entrance that seems to force you backwards, whilst the odour positively prevents respiration. The mob on the landing, standing on tiptoe and closely wedged together, resists any civil attempt at gaining a glimpse of the stage. The gallery at ‘the Vic’ is one of the largest in London. It will hold from 1,500 to 2,000 people, When the gallery is well packed, it is usual to see piles of boys on each other’s’ shoulders at the back, while on the partition boards, dividing off the slips, lads will pitch themselves, despite the spikes.
When the orchestra begins playing, before ‘the gods’ have settled into their seats, it is impossible to hear a note of music. The puffed-out cheeks of the trumpeters, and the raised drumsticks tell you that the overture has commenced, but no tune is to be heard.
Presently a fight is sure to begin, and then every one rises from his seat whistling and shouting; three or four pairs of arms fall to, the audience waving their hands till the moving mass seems like microscopic eels in paste. But the commotion ceases suddenly on the rising of the curtain. The ‘Vic’ gallery is not to be moved by touching sentiment. They prefer vigorous exercise to any emotional speech. The comic actor kicking a dozen Polish peasants was encored, but the grand banquet of the Czar of all the Russia’s only produced merriment, Whilst the pieces are going on, brown, flat bottles are frequently raised to the mouth. No delay between the pieces will be allowed, and should the interval appear too long, some one will shout out—referring to the curtain—‘Pull up that there winder blind!’
The dances and comic songs, between the pieces, are liked better than anything else. A highland fling is certain to be repeated, and a stamping of feet will accompany the tune, and a shrill whistling, keep time through the entire performance. But the grand hit of the evening is always when a song is sung to which the entire gallery can join in chorus. Then a deep silence prevails all through the stanzas. Should any burst in before his time, a shout of ‘orda-a-r’ is raised, and the intruder put down by a thousand indignant cries.
Crab Seller
He seemed about thirty. He was certainly not ill-looking, but with a heavy cast of countenance, his light blue eyes having little expression.
My crabs is caught in the sea, in course. I gets them at Billingsgate. I never saw the sea, but it’s salt-water, I know. I can’t say whereabouts it lays. I went to Croydon once by rail, and slept all the way without stirring, and so you may to Naples for anything I know. I never heard of the Pope being a neighbour of the King of Naples. Do you mean living next door to him? But I don’t know nothing of the King of Naples. I don’t know what the Pope is. Is he any trade? It’s nothing to me, when he’s no customer of mine. ‘I never was in France, no, sir, never. I don’t know the way. Do you think I could do better there? I never was in the Republic there. What’s it like? Bonaparte? O, yes; I’ve heard of him. He was at Waterloo. I’ve worked the streets and the courts at all times. I’ve worked them by moonlight, but you couldn’t see the moonlight where it was busy. I can’t say how far the moon’s off us. It’s nothing to me, but I’ve seen it a good bit higher than St Paul’s. I don’t know nothing about the sun. Why do you ask? It must be nearer than the moon for it’s warmer,—and if they’re both fire, that shows it. Jesus Christ? Yes. I’ve heard of him.
That a class numbering 30,000 should be permitted to remain in a state of almost brutish ignorance is a national disgrace. If the London costers belong especially to the ‘dangerous classes’, the danger of such a body is assuredly an evil of our own creation; for the gratitude of the poor creatures to anyone who seeks to give them the least knowledge is almost pathetic.
The root of the costermonger tongue, so to speak, is to give the words spelt backward, or rather pronounced rudely backward, while any syllable is added to a proper slang word, at the discretion of the speaker. It is not indispensable for the carrying on of their business; the grand object, however, seems to be, to shield their bargainings at market, or their conversation among themselves touching their day’s work and profits, from the knowledge of any Irish or uninitiated fellow-traders. The intelligence communicated in this slang is, in a great measure, communicated, as in other slang, as much by the inflection of the voice, the emphasis, the tone, the look, the shrug, the nod, the wink, as by the words spoken.
Like many rude, and almost all wandering communities, the costermongers, like the cabmen and pickpockets, are hardly ever known by their real names; even the honest men among them are distinguished by some strange appellation. Indeed, they are all known one to another by nicknames, which they acquire either by some mode of dress, some remark that has ensured costermonger applause, some peculiarity in trading, or some defect or singularity in personal appearance. Men are known as ‘Rotten Herrings’, ‘Spuddy’ (a seller of bad potatoes, until beaten by the Irish for his bad wares), ‘Curly’ (a man with a curly head), ‘Foreigner’ (a man who had been in the Spanish-Legion), ‘Brassy’ (a very saucy person), ‘Gaffy’* (once a performer), ‘The One-eyed Buffer’, ‘Jawbreaker’, ‘Pine-apple Jack’, ‘Cast-iron Poll’ (her head having been struck with a pot without injury to her), ‘Whilky’, ‘Blackwall Poll’ (a woman generally having two black eyes), ‘Lushy Bet’, ‘Dirty Sall’ (the costermongers generally objecting to dirty women), and ‘Dancing Sue’.
The costermongers usually reside in the courts and alleys in the neighbourhood of the different street-markets. As a specimen of the dwellings of the struggling costers, the following may be cited: The man, a tall, thick-built, almost good-looking fellow, with a large fur cap on his head, lived with his family in a front kitchen, and as there were, with his mother-in-law, five persons, and only one bed, I was somewhat puzzled to know where they could all sleep. A cat with a kitten were seated on the hearthrug in front. ‘They keeps the varmint away,’ said the woman, stroking the ‘puss’, ‘and gives a look of home.’ By the drawers were piled up four bushel baskets, and in a dark corner near the bed stood a tall measure full of apples that scented the room. Over the head, on a string that stretched from wall to wall, dangled a couple of newly-washed shirts, and by the window were two stone barrels, for lemonade, when the coster visited the fairs and races.
Of the third class, or the very poor, I chose the following ‘type’ out of the many others that presented themselves. The family here lived in a small slanting-roofed house, partly stripped of its tiles. More than one half of the small leaden squares of the first-floor window were covered with brown paper, puffing out and crackling in the wind, while through the greater part of the others were thrust out ball-shaped bundles of rags, to keep out the breeze. The panes that did remain were of all shapes and sizes, and at a distance had the appearance of yellow glass, they were so stained with dirt.
It took me some time after I had entered the apartment before I could get accustomed to the smoke, that came pouring into the room from the chimney. The place was filled with it, curling in the light, and making everything so indistinct that I could with difficulty see the white mugs. On a mattrass, on the floor, lay a pale-faced girl—‘eighteen years old last twelfth-cake day’—her drawn-up form showing in the patch-work counterpane that covered her. She had just been confined, and the child had died! A little straw, stuffed into an old tick, was all she had to lie upon, and even that had been given up to her by the mother until she was well enough to work again. The room was about nine feet square, and furnished a home for three women. The ceiling slanted like that of a garret. The chair I sat on was by far the best out of the three in the room, and that had no back, and only half its quantity of straw.
The neighbours helped her a good deal, and often sent her part of their unsold greens;—even if it was only the outer leaves of the cabbages, she was thankful for them.
They generally prefer the poorer neighbourhoods. They go down or through almost all the courts and alleys—and avoid the better kind of streets, unless with lobsters, rabbits, or onions. If they have anything inferior, they visit the low Irish districts—for the Irish people, they say, want only quantity, and care nothing about quality
In the season the poor generally dine upon herrings. The poorer classes live mostly on fish, and the ‘dropped’ and ‘rough’ fish is bought chiefly for the poor.
‘I’ve boiled lots of oranges,’ chuckled one man, ‘and sold them to Irish hawkers, as wasn’t wide awake, for stunning big uns. The boiling swells the oranges and so makes ’em look finer ones, but it spoils them, for it takes out the juice. People can’t find that out though until it’s too late. I boiled the oranges only a few minutes, and three or four dozen at a time.’ Oranges thus prepared will not keep, and any unfortunate Irishwoman, tricked as were my informant’s customers, is astonished to find her stock of oranges turn dark-coloured and worthless in forty-eight hours.
A cheap red-skinned fruit, known to costers as ‘gawfs’, is rubbed hard, to look bright and feel soft, and is mixed with apples of a superior description. Some foreign apples, from Holland and Belgium, were bought very cheap last March, at no more than 16d. a bushel, and on a fine morning as many as 50 boys might be seen rubbing these apples. The smaller apples are thrown to and fro in a sack, a lad holding each end.
Cherries are capital for mixing, I was assured by practical men. They purchase three sieves of indifferent Dutch, and one sieve of good English cherries, spread the English fruit over the inferior quality, and sell them as the best.
Filberts they bake to make them look brown and ripe. Prunes they boil to give them a plumper and finer appearance. The latter trick, however, is not unusual in the shops.
The more honest costermongers will throw away fish when it is unfit for consumption, less scrupulous dealers, however, only throw away what is utterly unsaleable; but none of them fling away the dead eels, which are mixed with the living, often in the proportion of 20 lb. dead to 5 lb. alive, equal quantities of each being accounted very fair dealing.
On a Saturday—the coster’s business day—it is computed that as many as 2,000 donkey-barrows, and upwards of 3,000 women with shallows and head-baskets visit this market during the forenoon. As you glance down any one of the neighbouring streets, the long rows of carts and donkey-barrows seem interminable in the distance. They are of all kinds, from the greengrocer’s taxed cart to the coster’s barrow—from the showy excursion-van to the rude square donkey-cart and bricklayer’s truck. In every street they are ranged down the middle and by the curb-stones. Along each approach to the market, too, nothing is to be seen, on all sides, but vegetables; the pavement is covered with heaps of them waiting to be carted; the flagstones are stained green with the leaves trodden under foot; sieves and sacks full of apples and potatoes, and bundles of broccoli and rhubarb, are left unwatched upon almost every door-step;
Men and women push past with their arms bowed out by the cauliflowers under them, or the red tips of carrots pointing from their crammed aprons, or else their faces are red with the weight of the loaded head-basket. The donkey-barrows, from their number and singularity, force you to stop and notice them. Every kind of ingenuity has been exercised to construct harness for the costers’ steeds; where a buckle is wanting, tape or string make the fastening secure; traces are made of rope and old chain,
There is no shouting, as at other markets, but a low murmuring hum is heard, like the sound of the sea at a distance, and through each entrance to the market the crowd sweeps by. Cabbages are piled up into stacks as it were. Carts are heaped high with turnips, and bunches of carrots like huge red fingers, are seen in all directions. Flower-girls, with large bundles of violets under their arms, run past, leaving a trail of perfume behind them. At every turn there is a fresh odor to sniff at; either the bitter aromatic perfume of the herbalists’ shops breaks upon you, or the scent of oranges, then of apples, and then of onions is caught for an instant as you move along. The sieves of crimson love-apples, polished like china,—the bundles of white glossy leeks, their roots dangling like fringe,—the celery, with its pinky stalks and bright green tops,—the dark purple pickling-cabbages,—the scarlet carrots,—the white knobs of turnips,—the bright yellow balls of oranges, and the rich brown coats of the chestnuts—attract the eye on every side.
Cases of lemons in their white paper jackets, and blue grapes, just seen above the sawdust are ranged about, and in some places the ground is slippery as ice from the refuse leaves and walnut husks scattered over the pavement.
The curb-stone is blocked up by a crowd of admiring lads, gathered round the bird-catcher’s green stand, and gazing at the larks beating their breasts against their cages.
One has seedcake, another small-tooth and other combs, others old caps, or pig’s feet, and one hawker of knives, razors, and short hatchets, may occasionally be seen driving a bargain with a countryman, who stands passing his thumb over the blade to test its keenness.
Men and women, and most especially boys, purchase their meals day after day in the streets. The coffee-stall supplies a warm breakfast; shell-fish of many kinds tempt to a luncheon; hot-eels or pea-soup, flanked by a potato ‘all hot’, serve for a dinner; and cakes and tarts, or nuts and oranges, with many varieties of pastry, confectionary, and fruit,
Men whose lives, as I have before stated, are alternations of starvation and surfeit, love some easily-swallowed and comfortable food, better than the most approved substantiality of a dinner-table.
The solids then, according to street estimation, consist of hot-eels, pickled whelks, oysters, sheep’s-trotters, pea-soup, fried fish, ham-sandwiches, hot green peas, kidney puddings, boiled meat puddings, beef, mutton, kidney, and eel pies, and baked potatoes. In each of these provisions the street poor find a mid-day or mid-night meal.
The pastry and confectionary which tempt the street eaters are tarts of rhubarb, currant, gooseberry, cherry, apple, damson, cranberry, and (so called) mince pies; plum dough and plum-cake; lard, currant, almond and many other varieties of cakes,
One costermonger hit upon the plan of vending sandwiches at the theatre doors. The attempt was successful; the man soon took 10s. a night, half of which was profit. He ‘attended’ both the great theatres, and was ‘doing well’; but at five or six weeks’ end, competitors appeared in the field. At first, I made 10s., and 7s., and 8s. a week—that’s seven years, or so—but things are worse now, and I make 3s. 6d. some weeks, and 5s. others, and 6s. is an out-and-outer. My rent’s 2s. a week. I’d do anything to get out of it; but I don’t see a way. I’ve often walked eight miles to see if I could find ham a halfpenny a pound cheaper anywhere.
I do dread the winter so. I’ve stood up to the ankles in snow till after midnight, and till I’ve wished I was snow myself, and could melt like it and have an end. I’d do anything to get away from this, but I can’t. I’ve been bilked by cabmen, who’ve taken a sandwich; but, instead of paying for it, have offered to fight me. There’s no help. We’re knocked about sadly by the police. Time’s very heavy on my hands, sometimes, and that’s where you feel it.
I live very poorly. A ha’porth or a penn’orth of cheap fish, which I cook myself, is one of my treats—either herrings or plaice—with a ’tatur, perhaps. Then there’s a sort of meal, now and then, off the odds and ends of the ham, such as isn’t quite viewy enough for the public, along with the odds and ends of the loaves.
Recently it was calculated that 436,800 ham-sandwiches were supplied by street-sellers,
The cat and dogs’-meat dealers, or ‘carriers’, as they call themselves, generally purchase the meat at the knackers’ (horse-slaughterers’) yards. There are upwards of twenty of such yards in London.
The proprietors of these yards purchase live and dead horses. They contract for them with large firms, such as brewers, coal-merchants, and large cab and ’bus yards, giving so much per head for their old live and dead horses through the year. The live horses are purchased merely for slaughtering. Frequently young horses that will not work in cabs—such as ‘jibs’—are sold to the horse-slaughterers as useless. They are kept in the yard, and after being well fed, often turn out good horses. The horse to be slaughtered has his mane clipped as short as possible (on account of the hair, which is valuable). The bones (called ‘racks’ by the knackers) are chopped up and boiled, in order to extract the fat, which is used for greasing common harness, and the wheels of carts and drags, &c. The bones themselves are sold for manure. The pieces of flesh are thrown into large coppers or pans, about nine feet in diameter and four feet deep. Each of these pans will hold about three good-sized horses. Sometimes two large brewers’ horses will fill them, and sometimes as many as four ‘poor’ cab-horses may be put into them. The flesh is boiled about an hour and 20 minutes for a ‘killed’ horse, and from two hours to two hours and 20 minutes for a dead horse (a horse dying from age or disease). The flesh, when boiled, is taken from the coppers, laid on the stones, and sprinkled with water to cool it. It is then weighed out
Cat ladies go way back
There was one woman who used to have as much as 16 pennyworth [of cat food] every day. This person used to get out on the roof of the house and throw it to the cats on the tiles. By this she brought so many stray cats round about the neighbourhood, that the parties in the vicinity complained; it was quite a nuisance. She would have the meat always brought to her before ten in the morning, or else she would send to a shop for it, and between 10 and 11 in the morning the noise and cries of the hundreds of stray cats attracted to the spot was ‘terrible to hear’. When the meat was thrown to the cats on the roof, the riot, and confusion, and fighting, was beyond description. ‘A beer-shop man’, I was told, ‘was obliged to keep five or six dogs to drive the cats from his walls.’
Prior to 1824, coffee was in little demand, and often adulterated by mixing ground chicory with the ground coffee, was an enhancement of the profits, the chicory itself being, in its turn, adulterated by the admixture of baked carrots, and the like saccharine roots, which, of course, are not subjected to any duty. The coffee-stall usually consists of a spring-barrow, with two, and occasionally four, wheels. Some are made up of tables, and some have a tressel and board. On the top of this are placed two or three, and sometimes four, large tin cans, holding upon an average five gallons each. Beneath each of these cans is a small iron fire-pot, perforated like a rushlight shade, and here charcoal is continually burning, so as to keep the coffee or tea, with which the cans are filled, hot throughout the early part of the morning.
Interview with a coffee stall vendor: ‘I was a mason’s labourer, a smith’s labourer, a plasterer’s labourer, or a bricklayer’s labourer. I was, indeed, a labouring man. I could not get employment. I was for six months without any employment. I saw no other means of getting a living but out of the streets. I was almost starving before I took to it—that I certainly was. I’m not ashamed of telling anybody that, because it’s true. Many said they wouldn’t do such a thing as keep a coffee-stall, but I said I’d do anything to get a bit of bread honestly.
The milk-vendors sell upon an average, in the summer, from 18 to 20 quarts per day; in the winter, not more than a third of that quantity. The chief customers are infants, and adults, and others, of a delicate constitution, there’s twenty women, and more, to one man what drinks new milk.
The itinerant trade in pies is one of the most ancient of the street callings of London. The meat pies are made of beef or mutton; the fish pies of eels; the fruit of apples, currants, gooseberries, plums, damsons, cherries, raspberries, or rhubarb, according to the season—and occasionally of mince-meat. A few years ago the street pie-trade was very profitable, but it has been almost destroyed by the ‘pie-shops’. The pie-dealers usually make the pies themselves. The meat is bought in ‘pieces’, of the same part as the sausage-makers’ purchase. Treacle and sugar are the ground-work of the manufacture of all kinds of sweet-stuff. ‘Hardbake’, ‘almond tony’, ‘halfpenny lollipops’, ‘black balls’, the cheaper ‘bulls eyes’, and ‘squibs’ are all made of treacle
Candy Maker: Of peppermint rock and sticks he made a good quantity. Half-a-crown’s worth, as retailed in the streets, requires 4 lbs. of rough raw sugar at 4¼d. per lb., 1½d. for scent (essence of peppermint), 1½d. for firing, and ½d. for paper
We now come to a class of street-folk wholly distinct from any before. As yet we have been dealing principally with the uneducated portion of the street-people—men whom, for the most part, are allowed to remain in nearly the same primitive and brutish state as the savage—creatures with nothing but their appetites, instincts, and passions to move them, and made up of the same crude combination of virtue and vice—the same generosity combined with the same predatory tendencies as the Bedouins of the desert—the same love of revenge and disregard of pain, and often the same gratitude and susceptibility to kindness as the Red Indian—and, furthermore, the same insensibility to female honour and abuse of female weakness.
The street-sellers of stationery, literature, and the fine arts, however, differ from all before treated of in the general, though far from universal, education of the sect. They constitute principally the class of street-orators, known in these days as ‘patterers’, and formerly termed ‘mountebanks’,—people who, in the words of Strutt, strive to ‘help off their wares by pompous speeches, in which little regard is paid either to truth or propriety’.
To indulge in this kind of oral puffery, of course, requires a certain exercise of the intellect, and it is the consciousness of their mental superiority which makes the patterers look down upon the costermongers as an inferior body.
Few of the residents in London—but chiefly those in the quieter streets—have not been aroused, and most frequently in the evening, by a hurly-burly on each side of the street. An attentive listening will not lead any one to an accurate knowledge of what the clamor is about. It is from a ‘mob’ or ‘school’ of the running patterers (for both those words are used), and consists of two, three, or four men. All these men state that the greater the noise they make, the better is the chance of sale. The running patterers describe, or profess to describe, the contents of their papers as they go rapidly along, and they seldom or ever stand still. They usually deal in murders, seductions, explosions, alarming accidents, ‘assassinations’, deaths of public characters, duels, and love-letters. But popular, or notorious, murders are the best sellers.
“The murder of Sarah Holmes at Lincoln is good, too—that there has been worked for the last five year successively every winter. Poor Sarah Holmes! Bless her! she has saved me from walking the streets all night many a time. Some of the best of these have been in work twenty years—the Scarborough murder has full twenty years. It’s called “THE SCARBOROUGH TRAGEDY”. I’ve worked it myself. It’s about a noble and rich young naval officer seducing a poor clergyman’s daughter. Mostly all our customers is females. They are the chief dependence we have. The Scarborough Tragedy is very attractive. It draws tears to the women’s eyes to think that a poor clergyman’s daughter, who is remarkably beautiful, should murder her own child; it’s very touching to every feeling heart.
Then there’s the Liverpool Tragedy—that’s very attractive. It’s a mother murdering her own son, through gold. He had come from the East Indies, and married a rich planter’s daughter. He came back to England to see his parents after an absence of thirty years. They kept a lodging-house in Liverpool for sailors; the son went there to lodge, and meant to tell his parents who he was in the morning. His mother saw the gold he had got in his boxes, and cut his throat—severed his head from his body;
If there be no truths for sale—no stories of criminals’ lives and loves to be condensed from the diffusive biographies in the newspapers—no ‘helegy’ for a great man gone—no prophecy and no crim. con.—the death hunter invents, or rather announces, them. He puts some one to death for the occasion, which is called a cock”.
One man told me that in the last eight or ten years, he, either singly or with his ‘mob’, had twice put the Duke of Wellington to death, once by a fall from his horse, and the other time by a ‘sudden and mysterious’ death, without any condescension to particulars.
It is very easy to stigmatise the death-hunter when he sets off all the attractions of a real or pretended murder,—when he displays on a board, as does the standing patterer, ‘illustrations’ of ‘the ’dentical pick-axe’ of Manning, or the stable of Good,—or when he invents or embellishes atrocities which excite the public mind. He does, however, but follow in the path of those who are looked up to as ‘the press’,—as the ‘fourth estate’.
The Illustrated London News is prompt in depicting the locality of any atrocity over which the curious in crime may gloat. The Observer, in costly advertisements, boasts of its 20 columns (sometimes with a supplement) of details of some vulgar and mercenary bloodshed,—the details being written in a most honest deprecation of the morbid and savage tastes to which the writer is pandering.
Until the ‘respectable’ press become a more healthful public instructor, we have no right to blame the death-hunter, who is but an imitator—a follower—and that for a meal.
The ballad-singer and seller of to-day is the sole descendant, or remains, of the minstrel of old, as regards the business of the streets. The themes of the minstrels were wars, and victories, and revolutions; so of the modern man of street ballads. If the minstrel celebrated with harp and voice the unhorsings, the broken bones, the deaths, the dust, the blood, and all the glory and circumstance of a tournament,—so does the ballad-seller, with voice and fiddle, glorify the feelings, the broken bones, the blood, the deaths, and all the glory and circumstance of a prize-fight. In his satire the modern has somewhat of an advantage over his predecessor. The minstrel not rarely received a ‘largesse’ to satirize some one obnoxious to a rival, or to a disappointed man. The ballad-singer (or chaunter, for these remarks apply with equal force to both of these street-professionals), is seldom hired to abuse.
‘One gentleman, you see, sir, gave us 1s. to go and sing; and afore we’d well finished the chorus, somebody sent us from the house another 1s. to go away agin. As it is, I sometimes write verses all over a slate, and rub them out again. Live hard! yes, indeed, we do live hard. I hardly know the taste of meat. We live on bread and butter, and tea; no, not any fish. As you see, sir, I work at tinning. I put new bottoms into old tin tea-pots, and such like.’
Of the ‘Gallows’ Literature of the Streets
Under this head I class all the street-sold publications which relate to the hanging of malefactors. A very extensive a portion of the reading of the poor is supplied by the ‘Sorrowful Lamentations’ and ‘Last Dying Speech, Confession, and Execution’ of criminals.
Not long after Rush was hung, a gallows literature vendor saw, one evening after dark, through an uncurtained cottage window, 11 persons, young and old, gathered round a scanty fire, which was made to blaze by being fed with a few sticks. An old man was reading, to an attentive audience, a broad-sheet of Rush’s execution, which my informant had sold to him. The most important of all the broad-sheets of executions, according to concurrent, and indeed unanimous, testimony is the case of Rush. The sheet bears the title of ‘The Sorrowful Lamentation and Last Farewell of J. B. Rush, who is ordered for Execution on Saturday next, at Norwich Castle’. There are three illustrations. The largest represents Rush, cloaked and masked, ‘shooting Mr Jermy, Sen.’. Another is of ‘Rush shooting Mrs Jermy’. A prostrate body is at her feet, and the lady herself is depicted as having a very small waist and great amplitude of gown-skirts. The account of the trial and biography of Rush, his conduct in prison, &c., is a concise and clear enough condensation from the newspapers. Indeed, Rush’s Sorrowful Lamentation is the best, in all respects, of any execution broad-sheet I have seen; 2. 5 million copies of Rush sold and four other gallows accounts 1.6 million or so
Nearly all I have seen have one characteristic—the facts can be plainly understood. The narrative, embracing trial, biography, &c., is usually prepared by the printer, being a condensation from the accounts in the newspapers, and is perhaps intelligible, simply because it is a condensation. Often a love letter written by the murderer addressed to either wife or sweetheart—in the style of ‘a last letter” is included, also written to father, mother, son, daughter, or friend; and is usually to the following purport:
‘My Dear——, —By the time you receive this my hours, in this world, will indeed be short. It is an old and true saying, that murderers will one day meet their proper reward. My sufferings have been more than I can possibly describe. Let me entreat you to turn from your evil ways and lead a honest and sober life.
Another account: On arriving at the foot of the steps leading to the scaffold she thanked the sheriffs and the worthy governor of the prison, for their kind attentions to her during her confinement; & then the unfortunate woman was seen on the scaffold, there was a death like silence prevailed among the vast multitude of people assembled. In a few seconds the bolt was drawn, and, after a few convulsive struggles, the unhappy woman ceased to exist.’
This mode of procedure in ‘gallows’ literature, and this style of composition, have prevailed for 20 to 30 years. In the most ‘popular’ murders, the street ‘papers’ are a mere recital from the newspapers, but somewhat more brief, when the suspected murderer is in custody; but when the murderer has not been apprehended, or is unknown, ‘then,’ said one Death-hunter, ‘we has our fling,
Some of these books have the title-page set forth in full display,—for example: ‘Horrible Murder and Mutilation of Lucy Game, aged 15, by her Cruel Brother, William Game, aged 9, at Westmill, Hertfordshire. His Committal and Confession. With a Copy of Letter. Also, Full Particulars of the Poisonings in Essex.’ Here, as there was no execution, the matter was extended, to include the poisonings in Essex.
Of the Street-Sellers of Conundrums. ‘This Picture when looked at from a particular point of view, will not only appear perfect in all respects and free from distortion, but the figures will actually appear to stand out in relief from the paper.’
In the body of the broad-sheet are the Enigmas, &c., announced; of each of which I give a specimen, to show the nature of this street performance or entertainment. Enigma 107 is— ‘I’ve got no wings, yet in the air I often rise and fall; I’ve got no feet, yet clogs I wear, And shoes, and boots, and all.’ As the answer is foot-ball. The ‘Conundrums’ are next in the arrangement, and I cite one of them: ‘Why are there, strictly speaking, only 325 days in the year?’ ‘Because,’ is the reply, ‘forty of them are lent and never returned.’ The ‘Riddles’ follow in this portion of the ‘Nuts to Crack’. ‘What gentleman is it,’ one man told me he would ask, ‘in this street, that has— “Eyes like saucers, a back like a box, A nose like a pen-knife, and a voice like a fox?” You can learn for a penny. One vendor said that when he saw a tailor’s name on a door, as soon as he passed the corner of the street, and sometimes in the same street, would ask: “Why is Mr So-and-so, the busy tailor of this (or the next street) never at home?” “Because he’s always cutting out.
Of the Street-Sellers of Engravings, etc., in Umbrellas, etc. The sale of ‘prints’, ‘pictures’, and ‘engravings’—I heard them designated by each term—in umbrellas in the streets, has been known, as far as I could learn from the street-folk for some 15 years. The umbrella is inverted and the ‘stock’ is disposed within its expanse. The engravings thus sold are of all descriptions. Some have evidently been the frontispieces of sixpenny or lower-priced works. These works sometimes fall into hands of the ‘waste collectors’. Many of these were and are found in the ‘street umbrellas’; more especially the portraits of popular actors and actresses. ‘Mr J. P. Kemble, as Hamlet’ or ‘Mrs Siddons, as Lady Macbeth’
Well, sir, I think I sell most “coloured”. “Master Toms” wasn’t bad last summer. “Master Toms” was pictures of cats, sir—you must have seen them—and I had them different colours. If a child looks on with its father, very likely, it’ll want “pussy”, and if the child cries for it, it’s almost a sure sale. There’s so many “fine portraits of Her Majesty”, or the others, given away with the first number of this or of that, that people’s overstocked.
The street-sellers of manufactured articles present, as a body, so many and often such varying characteristics, that I cannot offer to give a description of them as a whole. Among them are several distinct and peculiar street-characters, such as the pack-men, who carry their cotton or linen goods in packs on their backs, and are all itinerants. Then there are duffers, who vend pretended smuggled goods, handkerchiefs, silks, tobacco or cigars; also, the sellers of sham sovereigns and sham gold rings
and the men who vend poison for vermin and go about the streets with live rats clinging to, or running about, their persons. This class of street-sellers also includes many of the very old and the very young; the diseased, crippled, maimed, and blind. These poor creatures sell, and sometimes obtain a charitable penny, by offering to sell such things as boxes of lucifer-matches; cakes of blacking; boot, stay, and other laces; pins, and sewing and knitting-needles; tapes; cotton-bobbins; garters; pincushions; combs; nutmeg-graters;
“Here I am, the original cheap John from Sheffield. I’ve not come here to get money; not I; I’ve come here merely for the good of the public, and to let you see how you’ve been imposed upon by a parcel of pompous shopkeepers, who are not content with less than 100 per cent. for rubbish. Here I am, cheap John, born without a shirt, one day while my mother was out, in a haystack.
I’ve in this cart a cargo of useful and cheap goods; can supply you with anything, from a needle to an anchor. Nobody can sell as cheap as me, seeing that I gets all my goods upon credit, and never means to pay for them. Now then, what shall we begin with? Here’s a beautiful guard-chain; if it isn’t silver, it’s the same colour—I don’t say it isn’t silver, nor I don’t say it is—in that affair use your own judgment
See how it improves a man’s appearance’ (hanging the chain round his neck). ‘Any young man here present wearing this chain will always be shown into the parlour instead of the tap-room; into the best pew in church, when he and—but the advantages the purchaser of this chain will possess I haven’t time to tell. What! no buyers? Why, what’s the matter with ye? Have you no money, or no brains? But I’ll ruin myself for your sakes. Say 9s. for this splendid piece of jewellery—8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1—a shilling, will anybody give a shilling? Well, here 11d., 10d., 9d., 8d., 7d., 6½d., 6d.! Is there ever a buyer at sixpence? Now I’ll ask no more and I’ll take no less;
‘This is the original teapot’ (producing one), ‘formerly invented by the Chinese; the first that ever was imported by those celebrated people—only two of them came over in three ships. If I do not sell this to-day, I intend presenting it to the British Museum or the Great Exhibition.”
I now give an example of one of the classes driven to the streets by utter inability to labour. Many ingrained beggars certainly use the street trade as a cloak for alms-seeking, but as certainly many more, with every title to our assistance, use it as a means of redemption from beggary.
“On a wet day when I can’t get out, I often go without food. I may have a bit of bread and butter give me, but that’s all—then I lie a-bed. I feel miserable enough when I see the rain come down of a week day, I can tell you. Ah, it is very miserable indeed lying in bed all day, and in a lonely room, without perhaps a person to come near one—helpless as I am—and hear the rain beat against the windows, and all that without nothing to put in your lips. It’s very hard work indeed is street-selling for such as me. I can’t walk no distance. I suffer a great deal of pains in my back and knees. When I go only a short way I crawl along on my knees and toes. The most I’ve ever crawled is two miles. When I get home afterwards, I’m in great pain. My knees swell dreadfully, and they’re all covered with blisters. I can’t wash nor ondress myself. Sometimes I think of my helplessness a great deal. The thoughts of it used to throw me into fits at one time—very bad. It’s the Almighty’s will that I am so, and I must abide by it. People says, as they passes me in the streets, “Poor fellow, it’s a shocking thing”; but very seldom they does any more than pity me”.
Of the Life of a Street-Seller of Dog-Collars. ‘I was born in Brewer-street, St James,’ he said, in answer to my questions; ‘I am 73 years of age. My father and mother were poor people; I never went to school; my father died while I was young; my mother used to go out charing, she couldn’t afford to pay for schooling, and told me, I must look out and yearn my own living while I was a mere chick. At ten years of age I went to sea in the merchant sarvice.
I went three voyages besides to the West Ingees. I never got drunk even there, though I was obliged to drink rum; it wouldn’t ha done to ha drunk the water NEAT, there was so many insects in it. I used to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning in the summer time, and make my collars; then I’d turn out about 9, and keep out until 7 or 8 at night. I seldom took more than 2s. per day. What profit did I get out of 2s.? Why, lor bless you, sir! if I hadn’t made them myself, I shouldn’t have got no profit at all.
Why, I think I’d a starved if it hadn’t a been for the ’bus-men about Hungerford-market. They are good lads them there ’bus lads to such as me; they used to buy my collars when they didn’t want them. Ask any on ’em if they know anything about old Tom, the collar-maker, and see if they don’t flare up and respect me.”
The pedlar tallyman is a hawker who supplies his customers with goods, receiving payment by weekly installments, and derives his name from the tally or score he keeps with his customers. Linen drapery—or at least the general routine of linen-draper’s stock, as silk-mercery,* hosiery, woollen cloths, &c.—is the most prevalent trade of the tallyman. There are a few shoemakers and some household furniture dealers who do business in the tally or ‘score’ system; but the great majority are linen-drapers.
There are many who have incurred a tally debt, and have never been able to ‘get a-head of it’, but have been kept poor by it all their lives. The great majority of the tally-packmen are Scotchmen. The children who are set to watch the arrival of the tallyman, and apprise the mother of his approach, when not convenient to pay, whisper instead of ‘Mother, here’s the Tallyman,’
After his pitch, should she still demur, he says, ‘O, I’m sure your husband cannot object—he will not be so unreasonable; besides, consider the easy mode of payment, you’ll only have to pay 1s. 6d. a week for every pound’s worth of goods you take; why it’s like nothing; you possess yourself of respectable clothing and pay for them in such an easy manner that you never miss it’.
These preliminaries being settled, and the question having been asked what business the husband is—where he works—and (if it can be done without offence) what are his wages? The Scotchman takes stock of the furniture, &c.; the value of what the room contains gives him a sufficiently correct estimate of the circumstances of his customers. His next visit is to the nearest chandler’s shop, and there as blandly as possible he inquires into the credit, &c., of Mr——. If he deal, however, with the chandler, the tallyman accounts it a bad omen, as people in easy circumstances seldom resort to such places. ‘It is unpleasant to me,’ he says to the chandler, ‘making these inquiries; ‘but Mrs ——wishes to open an account with me, and I should like to oblige them if I thought my money was safe.’ ‘Do you trust them, and what sort of payers are they?’ According to the reply—the tallyman determines upon his course. But he rarely stops here; he makes inquiries also at the greengrocer’s, the beer shop, &c. The persons who connect themselves with the tallyman, little know the inquisition they subject themselves to.
The Blind Street-Seller of Boot-Laces. ‘I can’t see the least light in the world—not the brightest sun that ever shone. I have pressed my eye-balls—they are quite decayed, you see; but I have pushed them in, and they have merely hurt me, and the water has run from them faster than ever. I have never seen any colours when I did so.’
Of the Street-Sellers of Corn-Salve. ‘Here you have a speedy remedy for every sort of corn! Your hard corn, soft corn, blood corn, black corn, old corn, new corn, wart, or bunion, can be safely cured in three days! ‘Here you are! here you are! all that has to complain of corns. As fast as the shoemaker lames you, I’ll cure you. Now, in this little box you see a large corn which was drawn by this very salve from the honourable foot of the late lamented Sir Robert Peel. It’s been in my possession three years and four months, and though I’m a poor man—hard corn, soft corn, or any corn—though I’m a poor man, the more’s the pity, I wouldn’t sell that corn for the newest sovereign coined. No cutting and paring, and sharpening penknives, and venturing on razors to level your corns; this salve draws them out. The corn from ‘the honourable foot’ of Sir Robert Peel, or from the foot of any one likely to interest the audience, has been scraped and trimmed from a cow’s heel.”
Some get a friend to post a letter—expressive of delighted astonishment at the excellence and rapidity of the corn-cure—at some post-office and display the letter, with the genuine post-mark of Piccadilly, St James’s-street, Pall-mall, or any such quarter, to show how the fashionable world avails itself of his wares, cheap as they are, and fastidious as are the fashionable!
Of the Street-Seller of Crackers and Detonating Balls. The trade is only known in the streets at holiday seasons. At the fairs near London there is a considerable sale of these combustibles; and they are often displayed on large stalls in the fair. They furnish the means of practical jokes to the people on their return.
Of the Street-Sellers of Dolls. The making of dolls, like that of many a thing required for a mere recreation, a toy, a pastime, is often carried on amidst squalor, wretchedness, or privation, or—to use the word I have frequently heard among the poor—‘pinching’. there’s so many bazaars, and so many toy shops that the doll hawker hasn’t half the chance he used to have. One vendor told me “the police are so very particular there’s not much of a livelihood to be had. We lays the dolls out to the best advantage in a deep basket, all standing up, as it were, or leaning against the sides of the basket. The legs and bodies is carefully wrapped in tissue paper, not exactly to preserve the lower part of the doll, for that isn’t so very valuable, but in reality to conceal the legs and body, which is rather the reverse of symmetrical; for, to tell the truth, every doll looks as if it were labouring under an attack of the gout.
‘The way I took to the dolls was this; I met a girl with a doll basket one day as I was standing at Somerset-house corner; she and I got a talking. “Will you go to the ’Delphy to night?” says I; she consented. They was a playing Tom and Jerry* at this time, all the street-sellers went to see it, and other people; and nice and crabbed some on ’em was. Well, we goes to the ’Delphy—and I sees her often arter that, and at last gets married. She used to buy her dolls ready made; I soon finds out where to get the heads—and the profits when we made them ourselves was much greater.
We used to spend our money very foolishly; we were too fond of what was called getting on the spree. You see we might have done well if we had liked, but we hadn’t the sense.
‘I was selling wax-dolls one day in London, and a gentleman asked me if I could mend a wax figure whose face was broken. I replied yes, for I had made a few wax heads, large size, for some showmen, I had made some murderers who was hung;
Of the Street-Sellers of Poison for Rats. The rat-catcher’s dress is usually a velveteen jacket, strong corduroy trowsers, and laced boots. Round his shoulder he wears an oilskin belt, on which are painted the figures of huge rats, with fierce-looking eyes and formidable whiskers.
Occasionally—and in the country far more than in town—he carries in his hand an iron cage in which are ferrets, while two or three crop-eared rough terriers dog his footsteps. Sometimes a tamed rat runs about his shoulders and arms, or nestles in his bosom or in the large pockets of his coat. When a rat-catcher is thus accompanied, there is generally a strong aromatic odor about him, far from agreeable; this is owing to his clothes being rubbed with oil of thyme and oil of aniseed, mixed together. This composition is said to be so attractive to the sense of the rats (when used by a man who understands its due apportionment and proper application) that the vermin have left their holes and crawled to the master of the powerful spell.
The rat-catchers are also rat-killers. They destroy the animals sometimes by giving them what is called in the trade ‘an alluring poison’. Every professional destroyer, or capturer, of rats will pretend that as to poison he has his own particular method—his secret—his discovery. But there is no doubt that arsenic is the basis of all their poisons.
Another mode of killing rats is for the professional destroyer to slip a ferret into the rats’ haunts wherever it is practicable. The ferret soon dislodges them, and as they emerge for safety they are seized by terriers, who, after watching the holes often a long time, and very patiently, and almost breathlessly, throttle them silently, excepting the short squeak, or half-squeak, of the rat, who, by a ‘good dog’, is seized unerringly by the part of the back where the terrier’s gripe and shake is speedy death; if the rat still move, or shows signs of life, the well-trained rat-killer’s dog cracks the vermin’s skull between his teeth.
Of the Hawking of Tea. The branch of the tea trade closely connected with the street business is that in tea-leaves. The exhausted leaves of the tea-pot are purchased of servants or of poor women, and they are made into ‘new’ tea. The old tea-leaves, to be converted into new, are placed by the manufacturers on hot plates, and are re-dried and re-dyed. To give the ‘green’ hue, a preparation of copper is used. For the ‘black’ no dye is necessary in the generality of cases. This tea-manufacture is sold to ‘cheap’ or ‘slop’ shopkeepers, both in town and country, and especially for hawking in the country, and is almost always sold ready mixed.
Of the Children Street-Sellers of London. Among the wares sold by the boys and girls of the streets are:—money-bags, lucifer-match boxes, leather straps, belts, firewood (common, and also ‘patent’, that is, dipped into an inflammable composition), fly-papers, a variety of fruits, especially nuts, oranges, and apples; onions, radishes, water-cresses, cut flowers and lavender (mostly sold by girls), sweet-briar, India rubber, garters, and other little articles of the same material, including elastic rings to encircle rolls of paper-music, toys of the smaller kinds, cakes, steel pens and penholders with glass handles, exhibition medals and cards, gelatine cards, glass and other cheap seals, brass watch-guards, chains, and rings; small tin ware, nutmeg-graters, and other articles of a similar description, such as are easily portable; iron skewers, fuzees,* shirt buttons, boot and stay-laces, pins (and more rarely needles), cotton bobbins, Christmasing (holly and other evergreens at Christmas-tide), May-flowers, coat-studs, toy-pottery, blackberries, groundsel and chickweed, and clothes’-pegs.
There are also other things which children sell temporarily, or rather in the season. This year I saw lads selling wild birds’-nests with their eggs, such as hedge-sparrows, minnows in small glass globes, roots of the wild Early Orchis (Orchis mascula), and such like things found only out of town.
Independently of the vending of these articles, there are many other ways of earning a penny among the street boys: among them are found—tumblers, mud-larks, water-jacks,* Ethiopians,* ballad-singers, bagpipe boys, the variety of street musicians (especially Italian boys with organs), Billingsgate boys or young ‘roughs’, Covent Garden boys, porters, and shoeblacks (a class recently increased by the Ragged School Brigade*). A great many lads are employed also in giving away the cards and placards of advertising and puffing tradesmen, and around the theatres are children of both sexes (along with a few old people) offering play-bills for sale,
The going on errands and carrying parcels for persons accidentally met with; holding horses; sweeping crossings (but the best crossings are usually in the possession of adults); carrying trunks for any railway traveller to or from the terminus, and carrying them from an omnibus when the passenger is not put down at his exact destination.
When temporary help is needed, as when a cabman must finish the cleaning of his vehicle in a hurry, or when a porter finds himself over-weighted in his truck. Boys are, moreover, the common custodians of the donkeys on which young ladies take invigorating exercise in such places as Hampstead-heath and Blackheath. At pigeon-shooting matches they are in readiness to pick up the dead birds,
They have their share again in the picking of currants and gooseberries, the pottling of strawberries, in weeding, &c., &c., and though the younger children may be little employed in haymaking, or in the more important labours of the corn harvest.
I have had to speak far more frequently of boys than of girls, for the boy is far more the child of the streets than is the girl. The female child can do little but sell (when a livelihood is to be gained without a recourse to immorality); the boy can not only sell, but work.
Of the Street-Sellers of Second-Hand Articles. Each ‘left-off ’ garment has its peculiar after uses, according to its material and condition. The practised eye of the old clothes man at once embraces every capability of the apparel, and the amount which these capabilities will realize; whether they be woollen, linen, cotton, leathern, or silken goods; or whether they be articles which cannot be classed under any of those designations, such as macintoshes and furs. A coat is the most serviceable of any second-hand clothing, originally good. It can be re-cuffed, re-collared. Restoration is a sort of re-dyeing, or rather re-colouring, by the application of gall and logwood with a small portion of copperas.
When woollen cloth was much dearer, much more substantial, and therefore much more durable, it was common for economists to have a good coat ‘turned’. It was taken to pieces by the tailor and re-made, the inner part becoming the outer. When incapable of restoration to the appearance of a ‘respectable’ garment, the skirts are sold for the making of cloth caps; or for the material of boys’ or ‘youths’ ’ waistcoats; or for ‘poor country curates’ ’ gaiters; but not so much now as they once were.
The woollen rag, for so it is then considered, when unravelled can be made available for the manufacture of cheap yarns, being mixed with new wool. It is more probable, however, that the piece of woollen fabric which has been rejected by those who make or mend, and who must make or mend so cheaply that the veriest vagrant may be their customer, is formed not only into a new material, but into a material which sometimes is made into a new garment. These garments are inferior to those woven of new wool, both in look and wear; The fabric thus snatched, as it were, from the ruins of cloth, is known as shoddy, made into cloth for soldiers’ and sailors’ uniforms and for pilot-coats; into blanketing, drugget, stair and other carpeting, and into those beautiful table-covers,
What is not good for shoddy is good for manure, and more especially for the manure prepared by the agriculturists in Kent, Sussex, and Herefordshire, for the culture of a difficult plant—hops. It is good also for corn land (judiciously used), so that we again have the remains of the old garment in our beer or our bread.
Of the Street-Sellers of Petticoat and Rosemary-Lanes. The interior of the Old Clothes Exchange has its oyster-stall, its fountain of ginger-beer, its coffeehouse, and ale-house, and a troop of peripatetic traders, boys principally, carrying trays. Outside the walls of the Exchange this trade is still thicker.
Close by is a brawny young Irishman, his red beard unshorn for perhaps ten days, and his neck, where it had been exposed to the weather, a far deeper red than his beard, and he is carrying a small basket of nuts.
Heaped-up trays of fresh-looking sponge-cakes are carried in tempting pyramids. Youths have stocks of large hard-looking biscuits, and walk about crying, ‘Ha’penny biscuits, ha’penny; three a penny, biscuits’; these, with a morsel of cheese, often supply a dinner or a luncheon.
Petticoat-lane proper is long and narrow, and to look down it is to look down a vista of many coloured garments, alike on the sides and on the ground. The effect sometimes is very striking, from the variety of hues, and the constant flitting, or gathering, of the crowd into little groups of bargainers. Gowns of every shade and every pattern are hanging up,
Of the Street-Sellers of Coals. According to the returns of the coal market for the last few years, there has been imported into London, on an average, 3,500,000 tons of seaborne coal annually. Besides this immense supply, the various railways have lately poured in a continuous stream of the same commodity from the inland districts. The wealthy shopkeepers, and many others periodically see at their doors the well-loaded wagon of the coal merchant, with two or three swarthy ‘coal-porters’ bending beneath the black heavy sacks, in the act of laying in the 10 or 20 tons for yearly or half-yearly consumption. But this class is supplied from a very different quarter from that of the artisans, laborer’s, and many others, who, being unable to spare money sufficient to lay in at once a ton or two of coals, must have recourse to other means. To meet their limited resources, there may be found in every part, always in back streets, persons known as coal-shed men, there is not a low neighborhood in any part of the city which contains not two or three of them in every street.
The police reports of the last year show that many of the coal merchants, standing high in the estimation of the world, have been heavily fined for using false weights; and, did the present inquiry admit of it, there might be mentioned many other infamous practices by which the public are shamefully plundered in this commodity, and which go far to prove that the coal trade, in toto, is a gigantic fraud.
The people who have vans do much better than those with the carts, because they carry so much that they save time.
STREET-BUYERS. The principal things bought by the itinerant purchasers consist of waste-paper, hare and rabbit skins, old umbrellas and parasols, bottles and glass, broken metal, rags, dripping, grease, bones, tea-leaves, and old clothes. With the exception of the buyers of waste-paper, among whom are many active, energetic, and intelligent men, the street-buyers are of the lower sort, both as to means and intelligence. The only further exception is that among some umbrella-buyers, there is considerable smartness, and sometimes, in the repair or renewal of the ribs, a slight degree of skill.
Of the Street-Buyers of Rags, Broken Metal, Bottles, Glass, and Bones. The traders in these things are not unprosperous men. The poor creatures who may be seen picking up rags in the street are ‘street-finders’, and not buyers. It is the same with the poor old men who may be seen bending under an unsavoury sack of bones. The bones have been found, or have been given for charity, and are not purchased. Upon presenting himself at any house, he offers to buy rags, broken metal, or glass.
Of the Rag-and-Bottle’, and the ‘Marine-Store’ Shops. The principal purchasers of any refuse or worn-out articles are the proprietors of the rag-and-bottle-shops. The stench in these shops is positively sickening. Here in a small apartment may be a pile of rags, a sack-full of bones, the many varieties of grease and ‘kitchen-stuff’, corrupting an atmosphere. The windows are often crowded with bottles, which exclude the light; while the floor and shelves are thick with grease and dirt. The front of the house is sometimes one glaring colour, blue or red; so that the place may be at once recognised, even by the illiterate, as the ‘red house’, or the ‘blue house’.
These shops are exceedingly numerous. Perhaps in the poorer and smaller streets they are more numerous even than the chandlers’ or the beer-sellers’ places. They might have old horse-shoe nails (valuable for steel manufacturers), and horse and donkey shoes; brass knobs; glass stoppers; small bottles (among them a number of the cheap cast ‘hartshorn bottles’); broken pieces of brass and copper; small tools (such as shoemakers’ and harness-makers’ awls*), punches, gimlets, plane-irons, hammer heads, odd dominoes, dice, and backgammon-men; lock escutcheons, keys, and the smaller sort of locks, especially padlocks; a mass of old iron, then just bought. It consisted of a number of screws of different lengths and substance; of broken bars and rails; of the odds and ends of the cogged wheels of machinery, broken up or worn out; of odd-looking spikes, and rings, and links;
These things had all to be assorted; some to be sold for re-use in their then form; the others to be sold that they might be melted and cast into other forms.
‘Why, I’ve bought everythink; at sales by auction there’s often “lots” made up of different things, and they goes for very little. I buy of people, too, that come to me, and of the regular hands that supply such shops as mine. I sell retail, and I sell to hawkers. I sell to anybody, for gentlemen ’ll come into my shop to buy anythink that’s took their fancy in passing.
Every kind of paper is purchased by the ‘waste-men’. An old man dies, you see, and his papers are sold off, letters and all; that’s the way; get rid of all the old rubbish, as soon as the old boy’s pointing his toes to the sky. What’s old letters worth, when the writers are dead and buried? why, perhaps 1½d. a pound, and it’s a rattling big letter that will weigh half-an-ounce.
Of the Street-Buyers of Umbrellas and Parasols. They may be seen in all quarters of the town and suburbs, carrying a few ragged-looking umbrellas, or the sticks or ribs of umbrellas, under their arms, and crying ‘Umbrellas to mend,’ or ‘Any old umbrellas to sell?’ Not so very many years back the use of an umbrella by a man was regarded as partaking of effeminacy, but now they are sold in thousands in the streets, and in the second-hand shops
Of the Street-Finders or Collectors. These men, for by far the great majority are men, may be divided, according to the nature of their occupations, into three classes: 1. The bone-grubbers and rag-gatherers, who are, indeed, the same individuals, the pure-finders, and the cigar-end and old wood collectors. 2. The dredgermen, the mud-larks, and the sewer-hunters. 3. The dustmen and nightmen, the sweeps and the scavengers.
The first class go abroad daily to find in the streets, and carry away with them such things as bones, rags, ‘pure’ (or dogs’-dung), which no one appropriates. These they sell, and on that sale support a wretched life. The second class of people are also as strictly finders; but their labor is confined to the river, or to that subterranean city of sewerage unto which the Thames supplies the great outlets. The third class is distinct from either of these, as the labourers comprised in it are not finders, but collectors or removers of the dirt and tilth of our streets and houses, and of the soot of our chimneys.
The two first classes also differ from the third in the fact that the sweeps, dustmen, scavengers, are paid (and often large sums) for the removal of the refuse they collect; whereas the bone-grubbers, mud-larks, pure-finders, dredgermen, and sewer-hunters, get for their pains only the value of the articles they gather. All lead a wandering, unsettled life, compelled to be continually on foot, and to travel many miles every day in search of the articles in which they deal. They seldom have any fixed place of abode, and are mostly to be found at night in one or other of the low lodging-houses throughout London. The majority are, moreover, persons who have been brought up to other employments, but who from some failing or mishap have been reduced to such a state of distress that they were obliged to take to their present occupation, and have never after been able to get away from it.
The bone-picker and rag-gatherer. He may be known at once by the greasy bag which he carries on his back. Usually he has a stick in his hand, and this is armed with a spike or hook, for the purpose of more easily turning over the heaps of ashes or dirt that are thrown out of the houses, and discovering whether they contain anything that is saleable at the rag-and-bottle or marine-store shop. The bone-grubber generally seeks out the narrow back streets, where dust and refuse are cast, or where any dust-bins are accessible. The articles for which he chiefly searches are rags and bones—rags he prefers—but waste metal, such as bits of lead, pewter, copper, brass, or old iron, he prizes above all. Whatever he meets with that he knows to be in any way saleable he puts into the bag at his back.
The bone-pickers and rag-gatherers are all early risers. They have all their separate beats or districts, and it is most important to them that they should reach their district before anyone else of the same class can go over the ground. It usually takes the bone-picker from seven to nine hours to go over his rounds, during which time he travels from 20 to 30 miles with a quarter to a half hundredweight on his back. On his return home he proceeds to sort the contents of his bag. He separates the rags from the bones, and these again from the old metal (if he be lucky enough to have found any). When he has finished the sorting he takes his several lots to the rag-shop or the marine-store dealer, and realizes upon them whatever they may be worth.
‘I don’t go out before daylight to gather anything, because the police takes my bag and throws all I’ve gathered about the street to see if I have anything stolen in it. I never stole anything in all my life, indeed I’d do anything before I’d steal. Many a night I’ve slept under an arch of the railway when I hadn’t a penny to pay for my bed; but whenever the police find me that way, they make me and the rest get up, and drive us on, and tell us to keep moving. I don’t go out on wet days, there’s no use in it, as the things won’t be bought. I can’t wash and dry them, because I’m in a lodging-house. There’s a great deal more than a 100 bone-pickers about here, men, women, and children.
I make about 2s. 6d. a week, and the way I manage is this: sometimes I get a piece of bread about 12 o’clock, and I make my breakfast of that and cold water; very seldom I have any dinner,—unless I earn 6d. I can’t get any,—and then I have a basin of nice soup, or a penn’orth of plum-pudding and a couple of baked ’tatoes. At night I get ¼d. worth of coffee, ½d. worth of sugar, and 1¼d. worth of bread, and then I have 2d. a night left for my lodging; I always try to manage that, for I’d do anything sooner than stop out all night. I’m always happy the day when I make 4d., for then I know I won’t have to sleep in the street. I’ve lost my health since I took to bone-picking, through the wet and cold in the winter, for I’ve scarcely any clothes, and the wet gets to my feet through the old shoes; this caused me last winter to be nine weeks in the hospital of the Whitechapel workhouse.’
Of the Cigar-End Finders. Almost all the street-finders, when they meet with such things, pick them up, and keep them in a pocket set apart for that purpose. The men allow the ends to accumulate till they amount to two or three pounds weight, and then some dispose of them to a person residing in the neighbourhood. Children go out in the morning not only to gather cigar-ends, but to pick up out of dust bins, and from amongst rubbish in the streets, the smallest scraps and crusts of bread, no matter how hard or filthy they may be, which they mix up with a large quantity of water, and after washing and steeping the hard and dirty crusts, they put them into the pot or kettle and boil all together. Of this mass the whole family partake, and it often constitutes all the food they taste in the course of the day.
Of the Sewer-Hunters. They travel through the mud along shore in the neighbourhood of ship-building and ship-breaking yards, for the purpose of picking up copper nails, bolts, iron, and old rope. The shore-men, however, do not collect the lumps of coal and wood they meet with on their way.
They carry a bag on their back, and in their hand a pole seven or eight feet long, on one end of which there is a large iron hoe. The uses of this instrument are various; with it they try the ground wherever it appears unsafe, before venturing on it, and, when assured of its safety, walk forward steadying their footsteps with the staff. Should they, as often happens, even to the most experienced, sink in some quagmire, they immediately throw out the long pole armed with the hoe, which is always held uppermost for this purpose, and with it seizing hold of any object within their reach, are thereby enabled to draw themselves out; without the pole, however, their danger would be greater, for the more they struggled to extricate themselves from such places, the deeper they would sink; and even with it, they might perish, I am told, in some part, if there were nobody at hand to render them assistance.
To enter the sewers and explore them to any considerable distance is considered, even by those acquainted with what is termed ‘working the shores’, an adventure of no small risk. There are a variety of perils to be encountered in such places. The brick-work in many parts—especially in the old sewers—has become rotten through the continual action of the putrefying matter and moisture, and parts have fallen down and choked up the passage with heaps of rubbish; over these obstructions, nevertheless, the sewer-hunters have to scramble ‘in the best way they can’.
In such parts they are careful not to touch the brick-work over head, for the slightest tap might bring down an avalanche of old bricks and earth, and severely injure them, if not bury them in the rubbish. Since the construction of the new sewers, the old ones are in general abandoned by the ‘hunters’; but in many places the former channels cross and re-cross those recently constructed, and in the old sewers a person is very likely to lose his way. It is dangerous to venture far into any of the smaller sewers branching off from the main, for in this the ‘hunters’ have to stoop low down in order to proceed; and, from the confined space, there are often accumulated in such places, large quantities of foul air, which, as one of them stated, will ‘cause instantious death’. Moreover, far from there being any romance in the tales told of the rats, these vermin are really numerous and formidable in the sewers, and have been known, I am assured, to attack men when alone, and even sometimes when accompanied by others, with such fury that the people have escaped from them with difficulty.
In some quarters, ditches or trenches which are filled as the water rushes up the sewers with the tide; in these ditches the water is retained by a sluice, which is shut down at high tide, and lifted again at low tide, when it rushes down the sewers with all the violence of a mountain torrent, sweeping everything before it. If the sewer-hunter be not close to some branch sewer, so that he can run into it, whenever the opening of these sluices takes place, he must inevitably perish.
The sewer-hunters usually go in gangs of three or four for the sake of company, and in order that they may be the better able to defend themselves from the rats.
Whenever the shore-men come near a street grating, they close their lanterns and watch their opportunity of gliding silently past unobserved, for otherwise a crowd might collect over head and intimate to the policeman on duty, that there were persons wandering in the sewers below.
There are in many parts of the sewers holes where the brick-work has been worn away, and in these holes clusters of articles are found, which have been washed into them from time to time, and perhaps been collecting there for years; such as pieces of iron, nails, various scraps of metal, coins of every description, all rusted into a mass like a rock, and weighing from a half hundred to two hundred weight altogether.
The sewer-hunters occasionally find plate, such as spoons, ladles, silver-handled knives and forks, mugs and drinking cups, and now and then articles of jewellery; but even while thus ‘in luck’ as they call it, they do not omit to fill the bags on their backs with the more cumbrous articles they meet with—such as metals of every description, rope and bones.
Strange to say, the sewer-hunters are strong, robust, and healthy men, generally florid in their complexion, while many of them know illness only by name. Some of the elder men, who head the gangs when exploring the sewers, are between 60 and 80 years of age, and have followed the employment during their whole lives.
When we comes to a narrow-place as we don’t know, we takes the candle out of the lantern and fastens it on the hend of the o,* and then runs it up the sewer, and if the light stays in, we knows as there a’n’t no danger. We used to go up the city sewer at Blackfriars-bridge, but that’s stopped up now; it’s boarded across inside. The city wouldn’t let us up if they knew it, ’cause of the danger, they say, but they don’t care if we hav’n’t got nothink to eat nor a place to put our heads in.
Of the Mud-Larks.
There is another class who may be termed river-finders, although their occupation is connected only with the shore; they are commonly known by the name of ‘mud-larks’, from being compelled, in order to obtain the articles they seek, to wade sometimes up to their middle through the mud left on the shore by the retiring tide. These poor creatures are certainly about the most deplorable in their appearance of any I have met with in the course of my inquiries. They may be seen of all ages, from mere childhood to positive decrepitude, crawling among the barges at the various wharfs along the river; it cannot be said that they are clad in rags, for they are scarcely half covered by the tattered indescribable things that serve them for clothing; their bodies are grimed with the foul soil of the river, and their torn garments stiffened up like boards with dirt of every possible description.
Among the mud-larks may be seen many old women, and it is indeed pitiable to behold them, especially during the winter, bent nearly double with age and infirmity, paddling and groping among the wet mud for small pieces of coal, chips of wood, or any sort of refuse washed up by the tide. These women always have with them an old basket or an old tin kettle, in which they put whatever they chance to find. It usually takes them a whole tide to fill this receptacle, but when filled, it is as much as the feeble old creatures are able to carry home.
When the tide is sufficiently low they scatter themselves along the shore, separating from each other, and soon disappear among the craft lying about in every direction. This is the case on both sides of the river, as high up as there is anything to be found, when engaged in searching the mud, hold but little converse one with another. The men and women may be passed and repassed, but they notice no one; they never speak, but with a stolid look of wretchedness they plash their way through the mire, their bodies bent down while they peer anxiously about, and occasionally stoop to pick up some paltry treasure that falls in their way.
The mud-larks collect whatever they happen to find, such as coals, bits of old-iron, rope, bones, and copper nails that drop from ships while lying or repairing along shore. Copper nails are the most valuable of all the articles they find, but these they seldom obtain,
Sometimes the younger and bolder mud-larks venture on sweeping some empty coal-barge, and one little fellow with whom I spoke, having been lately caught in the act of so doing, had to undergo for the offence seven days’ imprisonment in the House of Correction: this, he says, he liked much better than mud-larking, for while he staid there he wore a coat and shoes and stockings, and though he had not over much to eat, he certainly was never afraid of going to bed without anything at all—as he often had to do when at liberty. He thought he would try it on again in the winter, he told me, saying, it would be so comfortable to have clothes and shoes and stockings then, and not be obliged to go into the cold wet mud of a morning.
There was not one of them over 12 years of age, and many of them were but six. Some carried baskets, filled with the produce of their morning’s work, and others old tin kettles with iron handles. Some, for want of these articles, had old hats filled with the bones and coals they had picked up; and others, more needy still, had actually taken the caps from their own heads, and filled them with what they had happened to find. The muddy slush was dripping from their clothes and utensils, and forming a puddle in which they stood.
‘It is very cold in winter,’ he said, ‘to stand in the mud without shoes,’ but he did not mind it in summer. He had been three years mud-larking, and supposed he should remain a mud-lark all his life. What else could he be? for there was nothing else that he knew how to do.
Of the Dustmen of London
Dust and rubbish accumulate in houses from a variety of causes, but principally from the residuum of fires, the white ash and cinders, or small fragments of unconsumed coke, giving rise to by far the greater quantity. Some notion of the vast amount of this refuse annually produced in London may be formed from the fact that the consumption of coal in the metropolis is, according to the official returns, 3,500,000 tons per annum, which is at the rate of a little more than 11 tons per house; the poorer families, it is true, do not burn more than 2 tons in the course of the year, but then many such families reside in the same house, and hence the average will appear in no way excessive.
Now the ashes and cinders arising from this enormous consumption of coal would, it is evident, if allowed to lie scattered about in such a place as London, render, ere long, not only the back streets, but even the important thoroughfares, filthy and impassable. Upon the Officers of the various parishes, therefore, has devolved the duty of seeing that the refuse of the fuel consumed throughout London is removed almost as fast as produced; this they do by entering into an agreement for the clearance of the ‘dustbins’ of the parishioners as often as required, with some person who possesses all necessary appliances for the purpose—such as horses, carts, baskets, and shovels, together with a plot of waste ground whereon to deposit the refuse.
The persons with whom this agreement is made are called ‘dust-contractors’, and are generally men of considerable wealth.
The dust thus collected is used for two purposes, (1) as a manure for land of a peculiar quality; and (2) for making bricks.
But during the operation of sifting the dust, many things are found which are useless for either manure or brick-making, such as oyster shells, old bricks, old boots and shoes, old tin kettles, old rags and bones, &c. These are used for various purposes.
The bricks, &c., are sold for sinking beneath foundations, where a thick layer of concrete is spread over them. Many old bricks, too, are used in making new roads, especially where the land is low and marshy.
A visit to any of the large metropolitan dust-yards is far from uninteresting. Near the centre of the yard rises the highest heap, composed of what is called the ‘soil’, or finer portion of the dust used for manure. Around this heap are numerous lesser heaps, consisting of the mixed dust and rubbish carted in and shot down previous to sifting. Among these heaps are many women and old men with sieves made of iron, all busily engaged in separating the ‘brieze’ from the ‘soil’. There is likewise another large heap in some other part of the yard, composed of the cinders or ‘brieze ‘waiting to be shipped off to the brickfields. The whole yard seems alive, some sifting and others shovelling the sifted soil on to the heap, while every now and then the dustcarts return to discharge their loads, and proceed again on their rounds for a fresh supply. Cocks and hens keep up a continual scratching and cackling among the heaps, and numerous pigs seem to find great delight in rooting incessantly about after the garbage and offal collected from the houses and markets.
All the women present were middle aged, with the exception of one who was very old—68 years of age she told me—and had been at the business from a girl.
Of the General Characteristics of the Working Chimney-Sweepers There are many reasons why the chimney-sweepers have ever been a distinct and peculiar class. They have long been looked down upon as the lowest order of workers, and treated with contumely by those who were but little better than themselves. The peculiar nature of their work giving them not only a filthy appearance, but an offensive smell, of itself, in a manner, prohibited them from associating with other working men; and the natural effect of such proscription has been to compel them to herd together apart from others, and to acquire habits and peculiarities of their own widely differing from the characteristics of the rest of the labouring classes.
Such men present the appearance of having just come out of a chimney. There seems never to have been any attempt made by them to wash the soot off their faces. I am informed that there is scarcely one of them who has a second shirt or any change of clothes, and that they wear their garments night and day till they literally rot, and drop in fragments from their backs.
The chimney-sweepers generally are fond of drink; indeed their calling, like that of dustmen, is one of those which naturally lead to it. The men declare they are ordered to drink gin and smoke as much as they can, in order to rid the stomach of the soot they may have swallowed during their work. They are considered a short-lived people, and among the journeymen, the masters ‘on their own hook’, &c., few old men are to be met with. Many of these men still suffer, I am told, from the chimney-sweeper’s cancer, which is said to arise mainly from uncleanly habits. Some sweepers assure me that they have vomited balls of soot.
The house was rented by a sweeper, a master on his own account, and every room in the place was let to sweepers and their wives or women, which, with these men, often signify one and the same thing. The inside of the house looked as dark as a coal-pit; there was an insufferable smell of soot, always offensive to those unaccustomed to it; and every person and everything which met the eye, even to the caps and gowns of the women, seemed as if they had just been steeped in Indian ink.
There are two or three ways of climbing. In wide flues you climb with your elbows and your legs spread out, your feet pressing against the sides of the flue; but in narrow flues, such as nine-inch ones, you must slant it; you must have your sides in the angles, it’s wider there, and go up just that way.’ [Here he threw himself into position—placing one arm close to his side, with the palm of the hand turned outwards, as if pressing the side of the flue, and extending the other arm high above his head, the hand apparently pressing in the same manner.] ‘There,’ he continued, ‘that’s slantin’. You just put yourself in that way, and see how small you make yourself. I niver got to say stuck myself, but a many of them did; yes, and were taken out dead. They were smothered for want of air, and the fright, and a stayin’ so long in the flue;
Most all the printices used to come from the “House” (workhouse.) There was nobody to care for them, and some masters used them very bad. I was out of my time at fourteen, and began to get too stout to go up the flues; so after knockin’ about for a year or so, as I could do nothink else, I goes to sea on board a man-o’-war, and was away four year. Many of the boys, when they got too big and useless, used to go to sea in them days
The Quantity of Refuse Bought, Collected, or Found, in the Streets of London. Perhaps the most curious trade is that in waste paper, or as it is called by the street collectors, in ‘waste’, comprising every kind of used or useless periodical, and books in all tongues. That portion of the London street-folk who earn a scanty living by sweeping crossings constitute a large class of the Metropolitan poor. We can scarcely walk along a street of any extent, or pass through a square of the least pretensions to ‘gentility’, without meeting one or more of these private scavengers. Crossing-sweeping seems to be one of those occupations which are resorted to as an excuse for begging; and, indeed, as many expressed it to me, ‘it was the last chance left of obtaining an honest crust.’
The advantages of crossing-sweeping as a means of livelihood seem to be: 1st, the smallness of the capital required in order to commence the business; 2ndly, the excuse the apparent occupation it affords for soliciting gratuities without being considered in the light of a street-beggar; and 3rdly, the benefits arising from being constantly seen in the same place, and thus exciting the sympathy of the neighbouring householders, till small weekly allowances or ‘pensions’ are obtained.
People take to crossing-sweeping either on account of their bodily afflictions, depriving them of the power of performing ruder work, or because the occupation is the last resource left open to them of earning a living, and they considered even the scanty subsistence it yields preferable to that of the workhouse.
The greater proportion of crossing-sweepers are those who, from some bodily infirmity or injury, are prevented from a more laborious mode of obtaining their living. Among the bodily infirmities the chief are old age, asthma, and rheumatism; and the injuries mostly consist of loss of limbs. Many of the rheumatic sweepers have been bricklayers’ labourers.
‘At night-time we tumbles—that is, if the policemen ain’t nigh. We goes general to Waterloo-place when the Opera’s on. We sends on one of us ahead, as a looker-out, to look for the policeman, and then we follows. It’s no good tumbling to gentlemen going to the Opera; it’s when they’re coming back they gives us money. When they’ve got a young lady on their arm they laugh at us tumbling; some will give us a penny, others threepence, We either do the cat’un-wheel,* or else we keep before the gentleman and lady, turning head-over-heels, putting our broom on the ground and then turning over it.
‘I work a good deal fetching cabs after the Opera is over; we general open the doors of those what draw up at the side of the pavement for people to get into as have walked a little down the Haymarket looking for a cab. We gets a month in prison if we touch the others by the columns. I once had half a sovereign give me by a gentleman; ‘After the Opera we go into the Haymarket, where all the women are who walk the streets all night. They don’t give us no money, but they tell the gentlemen to.
Whenever we come in the landlady makes us wash our feet. Very often the stones cuts our feet and makes them bleed; then we bind a bit of rag round them. We like to put on boots and shoes in the day-time, but at nighttime we can’t, because it stops the tumbling.
The ‘King’ of the Tumbling-Boy Crossing-Sweepers. The ‘king’ also was kind enough to favour me with samples of his wondrous tumbling powers. He could bend his little legs round till they curved like the long German sausages we see in the ham-and-beef shops; and when he turned head over heels, he curled up his tiny body as closely as a wood-louse, and then rolled along, wabbling like an egg. ‘The boys call me Johnny,’ he said; ‘and I’m getting on for eleven, and I goes along with the Goose and Harry, a-sweeping at St Martin’s Church, and about there. ‘Neither father nor mother’s alive, sir, but I lives along with grandmother and aunt, as owns this room, and I always gives them all I gets. ‘Sometimes I makes a shilling, sometimes sixpence, and sometimes less. I can tumble about 40 times over head and heels. I does the most of that, and I thinks it’s the most difficult, but I can’t say which gentlemen likes best. You see they are anigh sick of the head-and-heels tumbling, and then werry few of the boys can do caten-wheels on the crossings—only two or three besides me. ‘When I see anybody coming, I says, “Please, sir, give me a halfpenny,” and touches my hair, and then I throws a caten-wheel, and has a look at ’em, and if I sees they are laughing, then I goes on and throws more of ’em. Perhaps one in ten will give a chap something. ‘Goose can stand on his nose as well as me; we puts the face flat down on the ground, instead of standing on our heads. ‘Ah, we works hard for what we gets, and then there’s the policemen birching us. Some of ’em is so spiteful, they takes up their belt what they uses round the waist to keep their coat tight, and ’ll hit us with the buckle; but we generally gives ’em the lucky dodge and gets out of their way. ‘I’ve been sweeping the crossings getting on for two years. Before that I used to go caten-wheeling after the busses. I don’t like the sweeping, and I don’t think there’s e’er a one of us wot likes it. In the winter we has to be out in the cold, and then in summer we have to sleep out all night, or go asleep on the church-steps, reg’lar tired out. Eight or ten of us into a doorway of the church, where they keep the dead in a kind of airy-like underneath, and there we go to sleep. The most of the boys has got no homes.
Rat killing matches
‘All my lifetime I’ve been a-dealing a little in rats; but it was not till I come to London that I turned my mind fully to that sort of thing. ‘If anybody has a place that’s eaten up with rats, I goes and gets some ferruts, and takes a dog, if I’ve got one, and manages to kill ’em. Sometimes I keep my own ferruts, but mostly I borrows them. Some of ’em is real cowards to what others is; some won’t even kill a rat.
I thought it necessary, for the full elucidation of my subject, to visit the well-known public-house in London, where, on a certain night in the week, a pit is built up, and regular rat-killing matches take place, and where those who have sporting dogs, and are anxious to test their qualities, can, after such matches are finished, purchase half a dozen or a dozen rats for them to practise upon, and judge for themselves of their dogs’ ‘performances’.
Like the bar, no pains had been taken to render the room attractive to the customers, for, with the exception of the sporting pictures hung against the dingy paper, it was devoid of all adornment. Over the fireplace were square glazed boxes, in which were the stuffed forms of dogs famous in their day. Pre-eminent among the prints was that representing the ‘Wonder’ Tiny, ‘five pounds and a half in weight’, as he appeared lulling 200 rats. Among the stuffed heads was one of a white bull-dog, with tremendous glass eyes sticking out, as if it had died of strangulation.
‘That there is a dog,’ he continued, pointing to one represented with a rat in its mouth, ‘it was as good as any in England, though it’s so small. I’ve seen her kill a dozen rats almost as big as herself, though they killed her at last; for sewer-rats are dreadful for giving dogs canker in the mouth, and she wore herself out with continually killing them, though we always rinsed her mouth out well with peppermint and water while she were at work.
The dogs belonging to the company were standing on the different tables, or tied to the legs of the forms, or sleeping in their owners’ arms, Nearly all the little animals were marked with scars from bites. ‘Pity to bring him up to rat-killing,’. When a rusty wire cage of rats, filled with the dark moving mass, was brought forward, the noise of the dogs was so great that the proprietor was obliged to shout out—‘Now, you that have dogs do make ’em shut up.’
Whilst the rats were being counted out, some of those that had been taken from the cage ran about the painted floor and climbed up the young officer’s legs, making him shake them off.
We doubt if the terrier would not have preferred leaving the rats to themselves, to enjoy their lives. Some of the rats, when the dog advanced towards them, sprang up in his face, making him draw back with astonishment.
Preparations now began for the grand match of the evening, in which fifty rats were to be killed. These were all sewer and water-ditch rats, and the smell that rose from them was like that from a hot drain.
Fly paper sellers. A big lad with a dirty face, and hair like hemp, was the first of the ‘catch-’em-alive’ boys who gave me his account of the trade. Some of us says, “Fly-papers, flypapers, ketch ’em all alive.” Others make a kind of song of it, singing out, “Fly-paper, ketch ’em all alive, the nasty flies, tormenting the baby’s eyes. Who’d be fly-blow’d, by all the nasty blue-bottles, beetles, and flies?” ‘The stuff as they puts on the paper is made out of boiled oil and turpentine and resin. It’s seldom as a fly lives more than five minutes after it gets on the paper, and then it’s as dead as a house. He was very communicative, and took great delight in talking like Punch, with his call in his mouth, while some young children were in the room, and who, hearing the well-known sound of Punch’s voice, looked all about for the figure.
Punch & Judy show operator. ‘I am the proprietor of a Punch’s show,’ he said. ‘I goes about with it myself, and performs inside the frame behind the green baize. I have a pardner what plays the music—the pipes and drum; him as you see’d with me. I have been five-and-twenty year now at the business. I wish I’d never seen it, though it’s been a money-making business—indeed, the best of all the street hexhibitions I may say. I am fifty years old. I took to it for money gains—that was what I done it for. I formerly lived in service—was a footman in a gentleman’s family. When I first took to it, I could make two and three pounds a-day—I could so.
The boys would be sure to recognise me behind the counter, and begin a shouting into the shop (they must shout, you know): “Oh, there’s Punch and Judy—there’s Punch a-sarving out the customers!” Ah, it’s a great annoyance being a public kerrackter, I can assure you, sir; go where you will, it’s “Punchy, Punchy!” As for the boys, they’ll never leave me alone till I die, I know; and I suppose in my old age I shall have to take to the parish broom. All our forefathers died in the workhouse. I don’t know a Punch’s showman that hasn’t.
‘Punch, you know, sir, is a dramatic performance in two hacts. It’s a play, you may say. I don’t think it can be called a tragedy hexactly; a drama is what we names it. There is tragic parts, and comic and sentimental parts, too. Some families where I performs will have it most sentimental—in the original style; them families is generally sentimental theirselves. Others is all for the comic, and then I has to kick up all the games I can. To the sentimental folk I am obliged to perform werry steady and werry slow, and leave out all comic words and business. They won’t have no ghost, no coffin, and no devil; and that’s what I call spiling the performance entirely.
We in generally walks from twelve to twenty mile every day, and carries the show, which weighs a good half-hundred, at the least. Arter great exertion, our woice werry often fails us; for speaking all day through the “call” is werry trying, ’specially when we are chirruping up so as to bring the children to the vinders. The boys is the greatest nuisances we has to contend with. Wherever we goes we are sure of plenty of boys for a hindrance; they’ve got no money, bother ’em! and they’ll follow us for miles, so that we’re often compelled to go miles to awoid ’em.
Chelsea, again, has an uncommon lot of boys; and wherever we know the children swarm, there’s the spots we makes a point of awoiding. Why, the boys is such a hobstruction to our performance, that often we are obliged to drop the curtain for ’em. They’ll throw one another’s caps into the frame while I’m inside on it, and do what we will, we can’t keep ’em from poking their fingers through the baize and making holes to peep through. Then they will keep tapping the drum; but the worst of all is, the most of ’em ain’t got a farthing to bless themselves with,
Exhibitor of Mechanical Figures ‘I am the only man in London—and in England, I think—who is exhibiting the figuer of méchanique; that is to say, leetle figuers, that move their limbs by wheels and springs, as if they was de living cretures. They have been made in Germany, and are very clever figures. I will show them to you. They perform on the round table, which must be level or they will not turn round. She holds one arm in the air, and you will see she turns round like a person waltzing. The noise you hear is from the wheels of the méchanique, which is under her petticoats. You shall notice her eyes do move as she waltz. The next figure is the carriage of the Emperor of the French, with the Queen and Prince Albert and the King de Sardaigne inside. It will run round the table, and the horses will move as if they gallop. It is a very clever méchanique. My most clever méchanique is the elephant. It does move its trunk, and its tail, and its legs, as if walking, and all the time it roll its eyes from side to side like a real elephant. The leetle Indian on the neck, who is the driver, lift his arm, and in the pavilion on the back the chieftain of the Indians lift his bow and arrow to take aim, and put it down again. That méchanique cost me very much money. If my table was not high, the leetle children would want to take hold of my figuers. I always carry a small stick with me; and when the leetle children, who are being carried by other leetle children, put their hand to my figuers, I touch them with stick,
Exhibitor of the Microscope. ‘My microscope contains six objects, which are placed on a wheel at the back, which I turn round in succession. The objects are in cell-boxes of glass. The objects are all of them familiar to the public, and are as follows:—1. The flea. 2. The human hair, or the hair of the head. 3. A section of the old oak tree. 4. The animalculae* in water. 5. Cheese-mites. And 6. The transverse section of cane used by schoolmasters for the correction of boys. ‘I always take up my stand in the day-time in Whitechapel, facing the London Hospital, being a large open space, and favourable for the solar rays—for I light up the instrument by the direct rays of the sun. At night-time I am mostly to be found on Westminster-bridge, and then I light up with the best sperm oil.
I’m what is termed a strong man, and perform feats of strength and posturing. What is meant by posturing is the distortion of the limbs, such as doing the splits, and putting your leg over your head and pulling it down your back, a skipping over your leg, and such-like business. Tumbling is different from posturing, and means throwing summersets and walking on your hands; and acrobating means the two together, with mounting three stories high, and balancing each other. ‘Another thing I learnt to do at this beer-shop was, to break the stone on the chest. This man used to do it as well, only in a very slight way—with thin bits and a cobbler’s hammer. Now mine is regular flagstones. I’ve seen as many as twenty women faint seeing me do it. At this beer-shop, when I first did it, the stone weighed about three quarters of a hundred, and was an inch thick. I laid down on the ground, and the stone was put on my chest, and a man with a sledge hammer, twenty-eight pounds weight, struck it and smashed it. The way it is done is this. You rest on your heels and hands and throw your chest up. There you are, like a stool, with the weight on you. When you see the blow coming, you have to give, or it would knock you all to bits.
‘The next, and the best, and most difficult trick of all is, I have a noose close to the ceiling, in which I place one of my ankles, and I’ve another loose noose with a hook at the end, and I place that on the other ankle. Two half-hundreds are placed on this hook, and one in each hand. The moment these weights are put on this ankle, it pulls my legs right apart, so that they form a straight line from the ceiling, like a plumb-line, and my body sticks out at the side horizontally, like a T-square sideways. I strike an attitude when I have the other weights in my hand, and then another half-hundred is put in my mouth, and I am swung backwards and forwards for about eight or twelve times. It don’t hurt the ankle, because the sling is padded. At first it pulls you about, and gives you a tremendous ricking. After this rope-performance I take a half-hundred and swing it round about fifty times. It goes as rapidly as a wheel, and if I was to miss my aim I should knock my brains out. I don’t mind how thick it is, so long as it isn’t heavy enough to crush me. A common curb-stone, or a Yorkshire-flag, is nothing to me, and I’ve got so accustomed to this trick, that once it took thirty blows with a twenty-eight pound sledge-hammer to break the stone, and I asked for a cigar and smoked it all the while.’
The Street Fire-King, or Salamander. If you hold your breath the moment the lighted piece is put in your mouth, the flame goes out on the instant. Then we squench the flame with spittle. As we takes a bit of link in the mouth, we tucks it on one side of the cheek, as a monkey do with nuts in his pouch. After I have eaten sufficient fire I take hold of the link, and extinguish the lot by putting the burning end in my mouth. I also makes the smoke and flame—that is, sparks—come down my nose, the same as coming out of a blacksmith’s chimney. It makes the eyes water, and there’s a tingling; but it don’t burn or make you giddy. ‘My next trick is with the brimstone. I have a plate of lighted sulphur, and first inhale the fumes, and then devour it with a fork and swallow it. When I puts it in my mouth it clings just like sealing-wax, and forms a kind of a dead ash. I often burn myself, especially when I’m bothered in my entertainment; such as any person talking about me close by, then I listen to ’em perhaps, and I’m liable to burn myself. I haven’t been able to perform for three weeks after some of my burnings. I never let any of the audience know anything of it, but smother up the pain, and go on with my other tricks.
The Snake, Sword, and Knife-Swallower. ‘I swallow snakes, swords, and knives; but, of course, when I’m engaged at a penny theatre I’m expected to do more than this, for it would only take a quarter of an hour. ‘At first it turned me, putting it down my throat past my swallow, right down—about eighteen inches. It made my swallow sore—very sore, and I used lemon and sugar to cure it. It was tight at first, and I kept pushing it down further and further. There’s one thing, you mustn’t cough, and until you’re used to it you want to very bad, and then you must pull it up again. My sword was about three-quarters of an inch wide. The trick is, you must oil the sword—the best sweet oil, worth fourteen pence a pint—and you put it on with a sponge. ‘The knives are easier to do than the sword because they are shorter. We puts them right down till the handle rests on the mouth. The sword is about eighteen inches long, and the knives about eight inches in the blade. In the country there is some places where, when you do it, they swear you are the devil, and won’t have it nohow. ‘The snakes I use are about eighteen inches long, and you must first cut the stingers out, ’cos it might hurt you. I always keep two or three by me for my performances. I keep them warm, but the winter kills ’em. I give them nothing to eat but worms or gentles.* I generally keep them in flannel, or hay. ‘The head of the snake goes about an inch and a half down the throat, and the rest of it continues in the mouth, curled round like. When first caught the snake is slimy, and I have to clean him by scraping him off with the finger-nail as clean as I can, and then wiping him with a cloth. ‘I give a man a shilling always to cut the stinger out—one that knows all about it, for the stinger is under the tongue. When I exhibit, I first holds the snake up in the air and pinches the tail, to make it curl about and twist round my arm, to show that he is alive. Then I holds it above my mouth, and as soon as he sees the hole in he goes. He goes wavy-like, as a ship goes, that’s the comparison. You see, a snake will go in at any hole.
The life of a street clown is, perhaps, the most wretched of all existence. Jest as he may in the street, his life is literally no joke at home. ‘I have been a clown for sixteen years,’ he said, ‘having lived totally by it for that time. I was left motherless at two years of age, and my father died when I was nine. I never dress at home; we all dress at public-houses. In the street where I lodge, only a very few know what I do for a living. I and my wife both strive to keep the business a secret from our neighbours. I go out at eight in the morning and return at dark. My children hardly know what I do. They see my dresses lying about, but that is all. ‘Frequently when I am playing the fool in the streets, I feel very sad at heart. I can’t help thinking of the bare cupboards at home; but what’s that to the world? I’ve often and often been at home all day when it has been wet, with no food at all, either to give my children or take myself, and have gone out at night to the public-houses to sing a comic song or play the funnyman for a meal—you may imagine with what feelings for the part—and when I’ve come home I’ve call’d my children up from their beds to share the loaf I had brought back with me. The principal way in which I’ve got up my jokes is through associating with other clowns. We don’t make our jokes ourselves; in fact, I never knew one clown who did. I must own that the street clowns like a little drop of spirits, and occasionally a good deal. They are in a measure obligated to it. I can’t fancy a clown being funny on small beer;* and I never in all my life knew one who was a teetotaller. I think such a person would be a curious character, indeed. Most of the street clowns die in the workhouses. A few minutes afterwards I saw this man dressed as Jim Crow, with his face blackened, dancing and singing in the streets as if he was the lightest-hearted fellow in all London.
What are called strolling actors are those who go about the country and play at the various fairs and towns. As long as they are acting in a booth they are called canvas actors; A strolling actor is supposed to know something of everything. He doesn’t always get a part given to him to learn, but he’s more often told what character he’s to take, and what he’s to do, and he’s supposed to be able to find words capable of illustrating the character; in fact, he has to “gag”, that is, make up words. ‘The mummers have got a slang of their own.
‘When I do my exercise, this what I do. I first of all stand still on one leg, in the position of a militaire, with my crutch shouldered like a gun. That is how I accumulate the persons. Then I have to do all. It makes me laugh, for I have to be the general, the capitaines, the drums, the soldiers, and all. Pauvre diable! I must live. It is curious, and makes me laugh. ‘I first begin my exercises by doing the drums. I beat my hands together, and make a noise like this “hum, hum! hum, hum, hum! hum, hum! hum, hum! hu-u-u-m!” and then the drums go away and I do them in the distance. You see I am the drummers then. Next I become the army, and make a noise with my foot, resembling soldiers on a march, and I go from side to side to imitate an army marching. Then I become the trumpeters, but instead of doing the trumpets I whistle their music, and the sound comes nearer and nearer, and gets louder and louder, and then gradually dies away in the distance, as if a bataillon was marching in front of its general. I make a stamping with my foot, like men marching past. Then I in turn become the officer who gives the commands, and the soldiers who execute them.
Concerning street musicians, they are of multifarious classes. As a general rule, they may almost be divided into the tolerable and the intolerable performers, some of them trusting to their skill in music for the reward for their exertions, others only making a noise, so that whatever money they obtain is given them merely as an inducement for them to depart.
‘I imitate all the animals of the farm-yard on my fiddle: I imitate the bull, the calf, the dog, the cock, the hen when she’s laid an egg, the peacock, and the ass. By constant practice I made myself perfect. I studied from nature, I never was in a farm-yard in my life, but I went and listened to the poultry, anywhere in town that I could meet with them, and I then imitated them on my instrument. The cattle gave me the study for the bull and the calf. My peacock I got at the Belvidere-gardens in Islington. The ass is common, and so is the dog; and them I studied anywhere. It took me a month, not more, if so much, to acquire what I thought a sufficient skill in my undertaking, and then I started it in the streets.
The Dancing Dogs. I received the following narrative from the old man who has been so long known about the streets of London with a troop of performing dogs. To my inquiry as to what the dogs did, ‘un danse, un valse, un jomp a de stick and troo de hoop—non, noting else. Sometime I had de four dogs—I did lose de von. Ah! she had beau-coup d’esprit—plenty of vit, you say—she did jomp a de hoop better dan all. All ma dogs have des habillements—the dress and de leetle hat. Dey have a leetel jackette in divers colours en étoffe—some de red, and some de green, and some de bleu. Deir hats is de rouge et noir—red and black,
Photographers. “For sixpence persons can have their portrait taken, and framed and glazed as well. ‘Once a sailor came in, and as he was in haste, I shoved on to him the picture of a carpenter, who was to call in the afternoon for his portrait. The jacket was dark, but there was a white waistcoat; still I persuaded him that it was his blue Guernsey which had come up very light, and he was so pleased that he gave us 9d. instead of 6d. The fact is, people don’t know their own faces. Half of ’em have never looked in a glass half a dozen times in their life, and directly they see a pair of eyes and a nose, they fancy they are their own.
‘Happy Families’, or assemblages of animals of diverse habits and propensities living amicably, or at least quietly, in one cage, are so well known as to need no further description.
“The way to train the animals is a secret, which I was once taught. It’s principally done by continued kindness and petting, and studying the nature of the creatures. Hundreds have tried their hands at happy families, and have failed. The cat has killed the mice, the hawks have killed the birds, the dogs the rats, and even the cats, the rats, the birds, and even one another; indeed, it was anything but a happy family. In our present cage we have 54 birds and animals, and of 17 different kinds; 3 cats, 2 dogs (a terrier and a spaniel), 2 monkeys, 2 magpies, 2 jackdaws, 2 jays, 10 starlings (some of them talk), 6 pigeons, 2 hawks, 2 barn fowls, 1 screech owl, 5 common sewer-rats, 5 white rats (a novelty), 8 guinea-pigs, 2 rabbits (1 wild and 1 tame), 1 hedgehog, and 1 tortoise. Of all these, the rat is the most difficult to make a member of a happy family: among birds, the hawk. The easiest trained animal is a monkey, and the easiest trained bird a pigeon. The expense of keeping my fifty-four is 12s. a-week; and in a good week—indeed, the best week—we take 30s.; and in a bad week sometimes not 8s
Doll Eye Makers. A curious part of the street toy business is the sale of dolls, and especially that odd branch of it, doll’s-eye making. There are only two persons following this business in London. “Where we make one pair of eyes for home consumption, we make ten for exportation; a great many eyes go abroad. Here, however, nothing but blue eyes goes down; that’s because it’s the colour of the Queen’s eyes, and she sets the fashion in our eyes as in other things. I also make human eyes. These are two cases; in the one I have black and hazel, and in the other blue and grey.”
[Here the man took the lids off a couple of boxes, about as big as binnacles, that stood on the table: they each contained 190 different eyes, and so like nature, that the effect produced upon a person unaccustomed to the sight was most peculiar, and far from pleasant. The whole of the 380 optics all seemed to be staring directly at the spectator, and occasioned a feeling somewhat similar to the bewilderment one experiences on suddenly becoming an object of general notice; as if the eyes, indeed, of a whole lecture-room were crammed into a few square inches, and all turned full upon you. The eyes of the whole world, as we say, literally appeared to be fixed upon one, and it was almost impossible at first to look at them without instinctively averting the head.
“When a lady or gentleman comes to us for an eye, we are obliged to have a sitting just like a portrait-painter. We take no sketch, but study the tints of the perfect eye. False eyes are a great charity to servants. If they lose an eye no one will engage them. In Paris there is a charitable institution for the supply of false eyes to the poor; and I really think, if there was a similar establishment in this country for furnishing artificial eyes to those whose bread depends on their looks, like servants, it would do a great deal of good. We always supplies eyes to such people at half-price.
Cheap lodging-houses usually frequented by the casual labourers at the docks. The floor was unboarded, and a wooden seat projected from the wall all around the room. In front of this was ranged a series of tables, on which lolled dozing men. A number of the inmates were grouped around the fire; some kneeling toasting herrings, of which the place smelt strongly; others, without shirts, seated on the ground close beside it for warmth. They had fallen to a degraded state. A sailor lad assured me he had been robbed of his mariner’s ticket; that he could not procure another under 13s.; and not having as many pence, he was unable to obtain another ship. What could he do? he said. He knew no trade: he could only get employment occasionally as a labourer at the docks; and this was so seldom,
The lodging-house makes up as many as 84 ‘bunks’, or beds, for which 2d. per night is charged. For this sum the parties lodging there for the night are entitled to the use of the kitchen for the following day. In this a fire is kept all day long, at which they are allowed to cook their food. The kitchen opens at 5 in the morning, and closes at about 11 at night, after which hour no fresh lodger is taken in, and all those who slept in the house the night before, but who have not sufficient money to pay for their bed at that time, are turned out.
The kitchen is about 40 feet long by about 40 wide. The ‘bunks’ are each about 7 feet long, and 1 foot 10 inches wide, and the grating on which the straw mattrass is placed is about 12 inches from the ground. The wooden partitions between the ‘bunks’ are about 4 feet high. The coverings are a leather or a rug,
The average number of persons sleeping in this house of a night is 60. Of these there are generally about 30 pickpockets, 10 street-beggars, a few infirm old people who subsist occasionally upon parish relief and occasionally upon charity, 10 or 15 dock-labourers, about the same number of low and precarious callings, such as the neighbourhood affords, and a few persons who have been in good circumstances, but who have been reduced from a variety of causes.
At one time there were as many as 9 persons lodging in another house who subsisted by picking up dogs’ dung out of the streets,
The pickpockets generally lodging in the house consist of handkerchief-stealers, shoplifters—including those who rob the till as well as steal articles from the doors of shops. Legs and breasts of mutton are frequently brought in by this class of persons. There are seldom any housebreakers lodging in such places, because they require a room of their own, and mostly live with prostitutes. Besides pickpockets, there are also lodging in the house speculators in stolen goods.
The ‘gonaffs’ are generally young boys; about 20 out of 30 of these lads are under 21 years of age. They almost all of them love idleness, and will only work for one or two days together, but then they will work very hard.
Burglars and smashers generally rank above this class of thieves. A burglar would not condescend to sit among pickpockets.
The beggars who frequent these houses go about different markets and streets asking charity of the people that pass by. They generally go out in couples; the business of one of the two being to look out and give warning when the policeman is approaching, and of the other to stand ‘shallow’; that is to say, to stand with very little clothing on, shivering and shaking, sometimes with bandages round his legs, and sometimes with his arm in a sling.
The conversation among the lodgers relates chiefly to thieving and the best manner of stealing. By way of practice, a boy will often pick the pocket of one of the lodgers walking about the room,
The sanitary state of these houses is very bad. Not only do the lodgers generally swarm with vermin, but there is little or no ventilation to the sleeping-rooms,
The omnibus drivers have been butchers, farmers, horsebreakers, cheesemongers, old stage-coachmen, broken-down gentlemen, turfmen, gentlemen’s servants, grooms, and a very small sprinkling of mechanics. Nearly all can read and write. The majority of them are married men with families; their residences being in all parts, and on both sides of the Thames. Their work is exceedingly hard, their lives being almost literally spent on the coach-box. The most of them must enter ‘the yard’ at a quarter to eight in the morning, and must see that the horses and carriages are in a proper condition for work; and at half-past eight they start on their long day’s labour. They perform (I speak of the most frequented lines), twelve journeys during the day, and are so engaged until a quarter-past 11 at night. During these hours of labour they have 12 ‘stops’; half of 10 and half of 15 minutes’ duration. They generally breakfast at home, or at a coffee-shop, if unmarried men, before they start; and dine at the inn, where the omnibus almost invariably stops, at one or other of its destinations. All these men live ‘well’; that is, they have sufficient dinners of animal food every day, with beer. They are strong and healthy men, for their calling requires both strength and health.
“I must keep exact time at every place where a timekeeper’s stationed. Not a minute’s excused—there’s a fine for the least delay. I can’t say that it’s often levied; but still we are liable to it. If I’ve been blocked, I must make up for the block by galloping; and if I’m seen to gallop, and anybody tells our people, I’m called over the coals. I must drive as quick with a thunder-rain pelting in my face, and the roads in a muddle, and the horses starting—I can’t call it shying, I have ’em too well in hand, at every flash, just as quick as if it was a fine hard road, and fine weather. It’s not easy to drive a ’bus; but I can drive, and must drive, to an inch: yes, sir, to half an inch. I know if I can get my horses’ heads through a space, I can get my splinter-bar through. I drive by my pole, making it my centre. If I keep it fair in the centre, a carriage must follow, unless it’s slippery weather, and then there’s no calculating. A ’bus changes horses four or five times a-day, according to the distance. I’m an unmarried man. A ’bus driver never has time to look out for a wife. Every horse in our stables has one day’s rest in every four; but it’s no rest for the driver. Some work can be pursued only at certain seasons; some depends upon the winds, as, for instance, dock labour; some on fashion; and nearly all on the general prosperity of the country. Now, the labourer who is deprived of his usual employment by any of the above causes, must, unless he has laid by a portion of his earnings while engaged, become a burden to his parish, or the state, or else he must seek work, either of another kind or in another place.
The free hostelries of the unemployed workpeople, where they may be lodged and fed, on their way to find work in some more active district. But the establishment of these gratuitous hotels has called into existence a large class of wayfarers, for whom they were never contemplated. They have been the means of affording great encouragement to those vagabond or erratic spirits who find continuity of application to any task especially irksome to them, and who are physically unable or mentally unwilling to remain for any length of time in the same place, or at the same work—creatures who are vagrants in disposition and principle;
The Asylum for the Houseless Poor of London is opened only when the thermometer reaches freezing-point, and offers nothing but dry bread and warm shelter to such as avail themselves of its charity. To this place swarm, as the bitter winter’s night comes on, some half-thousand penniless and homeless wanderers. It is a terrible thing, indeed, to look down upon that squalid crowd from one of the upper windows of the institution. There they stand shivering in the snow, with their thin, cobwebby garments hanging in tatters about them. Many are without shirts; with their bare skin showing through the rents and gaps of their clothes, like the hide of a dog with the mange. Some have their greasy coats and trousers tied round their wrists and ankles with string, to prevent the piercing wind from blowing up them. A few are without shoes; and these keep one foot only to the ground, while the bare flesh that has had to tramp through the snow is blue and livid-looking as half-cooked meat. It is a sullenly silent crowd, without any of the riot and rude frolic which generally ensue upon any gathering in the London streets;
To each person is given half-a-pound of the best bread on coming in at night, and a like quantity on going out in the morning. The sleeping-wards at the Asylum are utterly unlike all preconceived notions of a dormitory. There is not a bedstead to be seen, nor is even so much as a sheet or blanket visible. The ward itself is a long, bare, whitewashed apartment Around the fierce stove, in the centre of the ward, there is generally gathered a group of the houseless wanderers, the crimson rays tinting the cluster of haggard faces with a bright lurid light that colours the skin as red as wine. One and all are stretching forth their hands, as if to let the delicious heat soak into their half-numbed limbs. They seem positively greedy of the warmth, drawing up their sleeves and trousers so that their naked legs and arms may present a larger surface to the fire.
Then how fearful it is to hear the continued coughing of the wretched inmates! It seems to pass round the room from one to another, now sharp and hoarse as a bark, then deep and hollow as a lowing, or—with the old—feeble and trembling as a bleat. In an hour after the opening the men have quitted the warm fire and crept one after another to their berths,
Here is a herd of the most wretched and friendless people in the world, lying down close to the earth as sheep; here are some two centuries of outcasts, whose days are an unvarying round of suffering, enjoying the only moments when they are free from pain and care—life being to them but one long painful operation as it were, and sleep the chloroform which, for the time being, renders them insensible.
Get down from your moral stilts, and confess it honestly to yourself, that you are what you are by that inscrutable grace which decreed your birthplace to be a mansion or a cottage rather than a ‘padding-ken’, or which granted you brains and strength, instead of sending you into the world, like many of these, a cripple or an idiot. It is hard for smug-faced respectability to acknowledge these dirt-caked, erring wretches as brothers, and yet, if from those to whom little is given little is expected, surely, after the atonement of their long suffering, they will make as good angels as the best of us.
Prostitutes. Her life was a life of perfect slavery, she was seldom if ever allowed to go out, and then not without being watched. Why was this? Because she would ‘cut it’ if she got a chance, they knew that very well, and took very good care she shouldn’t have much opportunity. Their house was rather popular, and they had lots of visitors; she had some particular friends who always came to see her. They paid her well, but she hardly ever got any of the money. Where was the odds, she couldn’t go out to spend it?
She was not brought direct to the house where I found her? Oh! no. There was a branch establishment over the water, where they were broken in as it were. How long did she remain there? Oh! perhaps two months, maybe three; she didn’t keep much account how time went. When she was conquered and her spirit broken, she was transported from the first house to a more aristocratic neighbourhood.
How did they tame her? Oh! they made her drunk and sign some papers, which she knew gave them great power over her, although she didn’t exactly know in what the said power consisted, or how it might be exercised. Then they clothed her and fed her well, and gradually inured her to that sort of life.
Somehow I didn’t like the place, and not feeling all right I asked to be put in a cab and sent home. My friend made no objection and a cab was sent for. He, however, pressed me to have something to drink before I started. I refused to touch any wine, so I asked for some coffee, which I drank. It made me feel very sleepy, so sleepy indeed that I begged to be allowed to sit down on the sofa. They accordingly placed me on the sofa, and advised me to rest a little while, promising, in order to allay my anxiety, to send a messenger to my aunt. Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain my consciousness till the next morning. I was horrified to discover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable, and cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt. ‘When I became quiet I received a visit from my seducer, in whom I had placed so much silly confidence. He talked very kindly to me, but I would not listen to him for some time.
The common thief is not distinguished for manual dexterity and accomplishment, like the pickpocket or mobsman, nor for courage, ingenuity, and skill, like the burglar, but is characterized by low cunning and stealth—hence he is termed the Sneak, and is despised by the higher classes of thieves. There are various orders of Sneaks—from the urchin stealing an apple at a stall, to the man who enters a dwelling by the area or an attic window and carries off the silver plate.
Many of them are only 6 or 7 years of age, others 8 or 10. Some have no jacket, cap, or shoes, and wander about London with their ragged trowsers hung by one brace. They seldom steal from costermongers, but frequently from the old women’s stalls. They generally go in a party of three or four, sometimes as many as eight together. Watching their opportunity, they make a sudden snatch at the apples or pears, or oranges or nuts, or walnuts, as the case may be, then run off, with the cry of ‘stop thief!’ ringing in their ears from the passers-by.
By the petty thefts at the fruit-stalls they do not gain much money—seldom so much as to get admittance to the gallery of the Victoria Theatre, which they delight to frequent. They are particularly interested in the plays of robberies, burglaries, and murders performed there, which are done in melodramatic style.
One goes up and looks at some trifling article in company with his associates. The party in charge of the stall—generally a woman—knowing their thieving propensity, tells them to go away; which they decline to do. When the woman goes to remove him, another boy darts forward at the other end of the stall and steals some article of jewellery, or otherwise, while her attention is thus distracted.
Upon stands on the pavement at each side of his shop-door are cheeses of various kinds and of different qualities, cut up into quarters and slices, and rashers of bacon lying in piles in the open windows, or laid out on marble slabs. On deal racks are boxes of eggs, ‘fresh from the country’, and white as snow, and large pieces of bacon,
On iron and wooden rods, suspended on each side of the door-way, are black and white straw bonnets and crinolines, swinging in the wind; while on the tables in front are exposed boxes of gay feathers, and flowers of every tint, and fronts of shirts of various styles, with stacks of gown-pieces of various patterns.
On each side of the door are baskets of apples, with large boxes of onions and peas.
Beneath the canvas awning before the shop are chairs of various kinds, straw-bottomed and seated with green or puce-coloured leather, fancy looking-glasses in gilt frames, parrots in cages, second-hand clothes store. On iron rods suspended over the doorway we find trowsers, vests, and coats of all patterns and sizes, and of every quality dangling in the wind; and on small wooden stands along the pavement are jackets and coats of various descriptions.
Thefts are often committed from the doors and windows of these shops during the day, in the temporary absence of the person in charge. They are often seen by passers-by, who take no notice, not wishing to attend the police court, as they consider they are insufficiently paid for it.
When the young thief is chased by the shopkeeper, his two associates run and jostle him, and try to trip him up, so as to give their companion an opportunity of escaping. This is generally done at dusk,
In stealing a piece of bacon from the shop-doors or windows, they wait till the shopman turns his back, when they take a piece of bacon or cheese in the same way
These young thieves are the ragged boys formerly noticed, varying from 9 to 14 years of age, without shoes or stockings. They insert the point of a knife or other sharp instrument into the corner or side of the pane, then give it a wrench, when the pane cracks in a semicircular starlike form around the part punctured. Should a piece of glass large enough to admit the hand not be sufficiently loosened, they apply the sharp instrument at another place in the pane. The thief inserts his hand through an opening in the window, seizes a handful of sweets or other goods, and runs away, Such petty robberies are often committed by elder lads at the windows of tobacconists, when cigars and pipes are frequently stolen.
On visiting a room in the garret we saw a man, in mature years, making artificial flowers; he appeared to be very ingenious, and made several roses before us with marvellous rapidity. He had suspended along the ceiling bundles of dyed grasses of various hues, crimson, yellow, green, brown, and other colours to furnish cases of stuffed birds. He was a very intelligent man and a natural genius. He told us strong drink had brought him to this humble position in the garret,
There were about fifteen labouring men present, most of them busy at supper on fish, and bread, and tea. They were a very mixed company, such as we would expect at a London lodging-house, men working in cab-yards assisting cabmen, some distributing bills in the streets, one man carrying advertizing boards, and others jobbing at anything they can find to do in the neighbourhood.
Pickpockets and Shoplifters. In tracing the pickpocket from the beginning of his career, in most cases we must turn our attention to the little ragged boys living by a felon’s hearth, or herding with other young criminals in a low lodging-house, or dwelling in the cold and comfortless home of drunken and improvident parents. The great majority of the pickpockets of the metropolis, with few exceptions, have sprung from the dregs of society
They are learned to be expert in this way. A coat is suspended on the wall with a bell attached to it, and the boy attempts to take the handkerchief from the pocket without the bell ringing. Great numbers of these ragged pickpockets may be seen loitering about our principal streets, ready to steal from a stall or shop-door when they find an opportunity. During the day they generally pick pockets two or three in a little band. When they have booty, they generally bring it to some person to dispose of, as suspicion would be aroused if they went to sell or pawn it themselves. In some cases they give it to the trainer of thieves,
Sometimes a well-dressed thief waylays a servant-girl going out on errands in the evening, professes to fall in love with her, and gets into her confidence, till she perhaps admits him into the house when her master and mistress are out. Having confidence in him she shows him over the house, and informs him where the valuables are kept. If the house is well secured, so that there will be difficulty of breaking in by night, he manages to get an accomplice inside to secrete himself till the family has gone to bed, when he admits one or more of his companions into the house. They pack up all they can lay hold of, such as valuables and jewels. On such occasions there is generally one on the outlook outside,
In warehouses one of the thieves frequently slips in at closing-time, when only a few servants are left behind, and are busy shutting up. He secretes himself behind goods in the warehouse, and when all have retired for the night, and the door locked, he opens it and lets in his companions to pack up the booty.
When the policeman has passed by on his round, the watch stationed outside gives the signal; the door is opened, the cart drives up, and four or five sacks are handed into it by two thieves in about a minute, when the vehicle retires.
They close the outer door after them when they enter a shop or warehouse, most of which have spring locks. When the policeman comes round on his beat he finds the door shut, and there is nothing to excite his suspicion. The cart is never seen loitering at the door above a couple of minutes, and does not make its appearance on the spot till the robbery is about to be committed, when the signal is given.
Lighter goods, such as jewellery, or goods of less bulk, are generally taken away in carpet bags in time to catch an early train, often about five or six o’clock, and the robbers being respectably-dressed, and in a neighbourhood where they are not
Ashamed Beggars. By the above title I mean those tall, lanthorn-jawed men, in seedy well-brushed clothes, who, with a ticket on their breasts, on which a short but piteous tale is written in the most respectable of large-hand, and with a few boxes of lucifer-matches in their hands, make no appeal by word of mouth but invoke the charity of passers-by by meek glances and imploring looks—fellows who, having no talent for ‘patter’, are gifted with great powers of facial pathos, and make expression of feature stand in lieu of vocal supplication.
Turnpike Sailor. This sort of vagabond has two lays,* the ‘merchant’ lay, and the ‘R’yal Navy’ lay. He adopts either one or the other according to the exigencies of his wardrobe, his locality, or the person he is addressing. He is generally the offspring of some inhabitant of the most notorious haunts of a seaport town, and has seldom been at sea, or when he has, has run away after the first voyage. His slang of seamanship has been picked up at the lowest public-houses Soldier beggars may be divided into three classes: those who really have been soldiers and are reduced to mendicancy, those who have been ejected from the army for misconduct, and those with whom the military dress and bearing are pure assumptions.
Disaster Beggars. This class of street beggars includes shipwrecked mariners, blown-up miners, burnt-out tradesmen, and lucifer droppers. The majority of them are impostors, as is the case with all beggars who pursue begging pertinaciously and systematically. There are no doubt genuine cases to be met with, but they are very few, and they rarely obtrude themselves.
A boy or a girl takes up a position on the pavement of a busy street, such as Cheapside or the Strand. He, or she—it is generally a girl—carries a box or two of lucifer matches, which she offers for sale. In passing to and fro she artfully contrives to get in the way of some gentleman who is hurrying along. He knocks against her and upsets the matches which fall in the mud. The girl immediately begins to cry and howl. The bystanders, who are ignorant of the trick, exclaim in indignation against the gentleman who has caused a poor girl such serious loss, and the result is that either the gentleman, to escape being hooted, or the ignorant passers by, in false compassion, give the girl money.
Beggars who excite charity by exhibiting sores and bodily deformities are not so commonly to be met with in London as they were some years ago. The officers of the Mendicity Society have cleared the streets of nearly all the impostors, and the few who remain are blind men and cripples.
