London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics)

by Henry Mayhew

  Donkey-carts are rarely hired. ‘If there’s 2,000 donkey and pony-carts in London, more or less, not 200 of them’s borrowed; but of barrows five to two is borrowed.’ A donkey-cart costs from 2l. to 10l.; 3l. 10s. being an average price. The hire is 2s. or 2s. 6d. a week. The harness costs 2l. 10s. new, but is bought, nineteen times out of twenty, second-hand, at from 2s. 6d. to 20s. The donkeys themselves are not let out on hire, though a costermonger may let out his donkey to another in the trade when he does not require its services; the usual sum paid for the hire of a donkey is 2s. 6d. or 3s. per week. The cost price of a pony varies from 5l. to 13l.; that of a donkey from 1l. to 3l. There may be six donkeys, or more, in costermonger use, to one pony. Some traffic almost weekly in these animals, liking the excitement of such business.

  The repairs to barrows, carts, and harness are almost always effected by the costermongers themselves.

  ‘Shallows’ (baskets) which cost 1s. and 1s. 6d., are let out at 1d. a day; but not five in 100 of those in use are borrowed, as their low price places them at the costermonger’s command. A pewter quart-pot, for measuring onions, &c., is let out at 2d. a day, its cost being 2s. Scales are 2d., and a set of weights 1d. a day.

  Another common mode of usury is in the lending of stock-money. This is lent by the costermongers who have saved the means for such use of their funds, and by beer-shop keepers. The money-lending costermongers are the most methodical in their usury – 1,040l. per cent, per annum, as was before stated, being the rate of interest usually charged. It is seldom that a lower sum than 10s. is borrowed, and never a higher sum than 2l. When a stranger applies for a loan, the money-lender satisfies himself as I have described of the barrow-lender. He charges 2d. a day for a loan of 2s. 6d.; 3d. a day for 5s.; 6d. a day for 10s.; and 1s. a day for 1l. If the daily payments are rendered regularly, at a month’s end the terms are reduced to 6d. a week for 5s.; 1s. for 10s.; and 2s. for 1l. ‘That’s reckoned an extraordinary small interest,’ was said to me, ‘only 4d. a day for a pound.’ The average may be 3s. a week for the loan of 20s.; it being only to a few that a larger sum than 20s. is lent. ‘I paid 2s. a week for 1l. for a whole year,’ said one man, ‘or 5l. 4s. for the use of a pound, and then I was liable to repay the 1l.’ The principal, however, is seldom repaid; nor does the lender seem to expect it, though he will occasionally demand it. One money-lender is considered to have a floating capital of 150l. invested in loans to costermongers. If he receives 2s. per week per 1l. for but twenty-six weeks in the year (and he often receives it for the fifty-two weeks) – his 150l. brings him in 390l. a year.

  Sometimes a loan is effected only for a day, generally a Saturday, as much as 2s. 6d. being sometimes given for the use of 5s.; the 5s. being of course repaid in the evening.

  The money-lenders are subject to at least twice the extent of loss to which the barrow-lender is exposed, as it is far oftener that money is squandered (on which of course no interest can be paid) than that a barrow is disposed of.

  The money-lenders, (from the following statement, made to me by one who was in the habit of borrowing,) pursue their business in a not very dissimilar manner to that imputed to those who advance larger sums: ‘If I want to borrow in a hurry,’ said my informant, ‘as I may hear of a good bargain, I run to my neighbour L—’s, and he first says he hasn’t 20s. to lend, and his wife’s by, and she hasn’t 2s. in her pocket, so I can’t be accommodated. Then he said if I must have the money he’ll have to pawn his watch, – or to borrow it of Mr —, (an innkeeper) who would charge a deal of interest, for he wasn’t paid all he lent two months back, and 1s. would be expected to be spent in drink – though L— don’t drink – or he must try if his sister would trust him, but she was sick and wanted all her money – or perhaps his barrow-merchant would lend him 10s., if he’d undertake to return 15s. at night; and it ends by my thinking I’ve done pretty well if I can get 1l. for 5s. interest, for a day’s use of it.’

  The beer-shop keepers lend on far easier terms, perhaps at half the interest exacted by the others, and without any regular system of charges; but they look sharp after the repayment, and expect a considerable outlay in beer, and will only lend to good customers; they however have even lent money without interest.

  ‘In the depth of last winter,’ said a man of good character to me, ‘I borrowed 5s. The beer-shop keeper wouldn’t lend; he’ll rather lend to men doing well and drinking. But I borrowed it at 6d. a day interest, and that 6d. a day I paid exactly four weeks, Sundays and all; and that was 15s. in thirty days for the use of 5s. I was half starving all the time, and then I had a slice of luck, and paid the 5s. back slap, and got out of it.’

  Many shopkeepers lend money to the stall-keepers, whom they know from standing near their premises, and that without interest. They generally lend, however, to the women, as they think the men want to get drunk with it. ‘Indeed, if it wasn’t for the women,’ said a costermonger to me, ‘half of us might go to the Union.’

  Another mode of usurious lending or trading is, as I said before, to provide the costermonger – not with the stock-money – but with the stock itself. This mode also is highly profitable to the usurer, who is usually a costermonger, but sometimes a greengrocer. A stock of fruit, fish, or vegetables, with a barrow for its conveyance, is entrusted to a street-seller, the usual way being to ‘let him have a sovereign’s worth.’ The value of this, however, at the market cost, rarely exceeds 14s., still the man entrusted with it must carry 20s. to his creditor, or he will hardly be trusted a second time. The man who trades with the stock is not required to pay the 20s. on the first day of the transaction, as he may not have realised so much, but he must pay some of it, generally 10s., and must pay the remainder the next day or the money-lender will decline any subsequent dealings.

  It may be thought, as no security is given, and as the costermongering barrow, stock, or money-lender never goes to law for the recovery of any debt or goods, that the per centage is not so very exorbitant after all. But I ascertained that not once in twenty times was the money-lender exposed to any loss by the non-payment of his usurious interest, while his profits are enormous. The borrower knows that if he fails in his payment, the lender will acquaint the other members of his fraternity, so that no future loan will be attainable, and the costermonger’s business may be at an end. One borrower told me that the re-payment of his loan of 2l., borrowed two years ago at 4s. a week, had this autumn been reduced to 2s. 6d. a week: ‘He’s a decent man I pay now,’ he said; ‘he has twice forgiven me a month at a time when the weather was very bad and the times as bad as the weather. Before I borrowed of him I had dealings with —. He was a scurf. If I missed a week, and told him I would make it up next week, “That won’t do,” he’d say, “I’ll turn you up. I’ll take d—d good care to stop you. I’ll have you to rights.” If I hadn’t satisfied him, as I did at last, I could never have got credit again; never.’ I am informed that most of the moneylenders, if a man paid for a year or so, will now ‘drop it for a month or so in a very hard-up time, and go on again.’ There is no I.O.U. or any memorandum given to the usurer. ‘There’s never a slip of paper about it, sir,’ I was told.

  I may add that a very intelligent man from whom I derived information, said to me concerning costermongers never going to law to recover money owing to them, nor indeed for any purpose: ‘If any one steals anything from me – and that, as far as I know, never happened but once in ten years – and I catch him, I take it out of him on the spot. I give him a jolly good hiding and there’s an end of it. I know very well, sir, that costers are ignorant men, but in my opinion’ (laughing) ‘our never going to law shows that in that point we are in advance of the aristocrats. I never heard of a coster in a law court, unless he was in trouble (charged with some offence) – for assaulting a crusher, or anybody he had quarrelled with, or something of that kind.’

  The barrow-lender, when not regularly paid, sends some one, or goes himself, and carries away the barrow.

  My personal exper
ience with this peculiar class justifies me in saying that they are far less dishonest than they are usually believed to be, and much more honest than their wandering habits, their want of education and ‘principle’ would lead even the most charitable to suppose. Since I have exhibited an interest in the sufferings and privations of these neglected people, I have, as the reader may readily imagine, had many applications for assistance, and without vanity, I believe I may say, that as far as my limited resources would permit, I have striven to extricate the street-sellers from the grasp of the usurer. Some of whom I have lent small sums (for gifts only degrade struggling honest men into the apathy of beggars) have taken the money with many a protestation that they would repay it in certain weekly instalments, which they themselves proposed, but still have never made their appearance before me a second time – it may be from dishonesty and it may be from inability and shame – others, however, and they are not a few, have religiously kept faith with me, calling punctually to pay back a sixpence or a shilling as the precarious-ness of their calling would permit, and doing this, though they knew that I adjured all claims upon them but through their honour, and was, indeed, in most cases, ignorant where to find them, even if my inclination led me to seek or enforce a return of the loan. One case of this kind shows so high a sense of honour among a class, generally considered to rank among the most dishonourable, that, even at the risk of being thought egotistical, I will mention it here: ‘Two young men, street-sellers, called upon me and begged hard for the loan of a little stock-money. They made needle-cases and hawked them from door to door at the east end of the town, and had not the means of buying the wood. I agreed to let them have ten shillings between them; this they promised to repay at a shilling a week. They were utter strangers to me; nevertheless, at the end of the first week one shilling of the sum was duly returned. The second week, however, brought no shilling, nor did the third, nor the fourth, by which time I got to look upon the money as lost; but at the end of the fifth week one of the men called with his sixpence, and told me how he should have been with me before but his mate had promised each week to meet him with his sixpence, and each week disappointed him; so he had come on alone. I thanked him, and the next week he came again; so he did the next, and the next after that. On the latter occasion he told me that in five more weeks he should have paid off his half of the amount advanced, and that then, as he had come with the other man, he would begin paying off his share as well!’

  Those who are unacquainted with the character of the people may feel inclined to doubt the trustworthiness of the class, but it is an extraordinary fact that but few of the costermongers fail to repay the money advanced to them, even at the present ruinous rate of interest. The poor, it is my belief, have not yet been sufficiently tried in this respect; – pawnbrokers, loan-offices, tally-shops, dolly-shops, are the only parties who will trust them – but, as a startling proof of the good faith of the humbler classes generally, it may be stated that Mrs Chisholm (the lady who has exerted herself so benevolently in the cause of emigration) has lent out, at different times, as much as 160,000l. that has been entrusted to her for the use of the ‘lower orders’, and that the whole of this large amount has been returned – with the exception of 12l.!

  I myself have often given a sovereign to professed thieves to get ‘changed’, and never knew one to make off with the money. Depend upon it, if we would really improve, we must begin by elevating instead of degrading.

  The Life of a Coster-lad

  [pp. 41–2] One lad that I spoke to gave me as much of his history as he could remember. He was a tall stout boy, about sixteen years old, with a face utterly vacant. His two heavy lead-coloured eyes stared unmeaningly at me, and, beyond a constant anxiety to keep his front lock curled on his cheek, he did not exhibit the slightest trace of feeling. He sank into his seat heavily and of a heap, and when once settled down he remained motionless, with his mouth open and his hands on his knees – almost as if paralyzed. He was dressed in all the slang beauty of his class, with a bright red handkerchief and unexceptionable boots.

  ‘My father’ he told me in a thick unimpassioned voice, ‘was a waggoner, and worked the country roads. There was two on us at home with mother, and we used to play along with the boys of our court, in Golding-lane, at buttons and marbles. I recollects nothing more than this – only the big boys used to cheat like bricks and thump us if we grumbled – that’s all I recollects of my infancy, as you calls it. Father I’ve heard tell died when I was three and brother only a year old. It was worse luck for us! – Mother was so easy with us. I once went to school for a couple of weeks, but the cove used to fetch me a wipe over the knuckles with his stick, and as I wasn’t going to stand that there, why you see I ain’t no great schollard. We did as we liked with mother, she was so precious easy, and I never learned anything but playing buttons and making leaden “bonces”, that’s all,’ (here the youth laughed slightly). ‘Mother used to be up and out very early washing in families – anything for a living. She was a good mother to us. We was left at home with the key of the room and some bread and butter for dinner. Afore she got into work – and it was a goodish long time – we was shocking hard up, and she pawned nigh everything. Sometimes, when we hadn’t no grub at all, the other lads, perhaps, would give us some of their bread and butter, but often our stomachs used to ache with the hunger, and we would cry when we was werry far gone. She used to be at work from six in the morning till ten o’clock at night, which was a long time for a child’s belly to hold out again, and when it was dark we would go and lie down on the bed and try and sleep until she came home with the food. I was eight year old then.

  ‘A man as know’d mother, said to her, “Your boy’s got nothing to do, let him come along with me and yarn a few ha’pence,” and so I became a coster. He gave me 4d. a morning and my breakfast. I worked with him about three year, until I learnt the markets, and then I and brother got baskets of our own, and used to keep mother. One day with another, the two of us together could make 2s. 6d. by selling greens of a morning, and going round to the publics with nuts of an evening, till about ten o’clock at night. Mother used to have a bit of fried meat or a stew ready for us when we got home, and by using up the stock as we couldn’t sell, we used to manage pretty tidy. When I was fourteen I took up with a girl. She lived in the same house as we did, and I used to walk out of a night with her and give her half-pints of beer at the publics. She were about thirteen, and used to dress werry nice, though she weren’t above middling pretty. Now I’m working for another man as gives me a shilling a week, victuals, washing, and lodging, just as if I was one of the family.

  ‘On a Sunday I goes out selling, and all I yarns I keeps. As for going to church, why, I can’t afford it, – besides, to tell the truth, I don’t like it well enough. Plays, too, ain’t in my line much; I’d sooner go to a dance – it’s more livelier. The “penny gaffs” is rather more in my style; the songs are out and out, and makes our gals laugh. The smuttier the better, I thinks; bless you! the gals likes it as much as we do. If we lads ever has a quarrel, why, we fights for it. If I was to let a cove off once, he’d do it again; but I never give a lad a chance, so long as I can get anigh him. I never heard about Christianity, but if a cove was to fetch me a lick of the head, I’d give it him again, whether he was a big ’un or a little ’un. I’d precious soon see a henemy of mine shot afore I’d forgive him, – where’s the use? Do I understand what behaving to your neighbour is? – In coorse I do. If a feller as lives next me wanted a basket of mine as I wasn’t using, why, he might have it; if I was working it though, I’d see him further! I can understand that all as lives in a court is neighbours; but as for policemen, they’re nothing to me, and I should like to pay ’em all off well. No; I never heard about this here creation you speaks about. In coorse God Almighty made the world, and the poor bricklayers’ labourers built the houses afterwards – that’s my opinion; but I can’t say, for I’ve never been in no schools, only always hard at work,
and knows nothing about it. I have heard a little about our Saviour, – they seem to say he were a goodish kind of a man; but if he says as how a cove’s to forgive a feller as hits you, I should say he know’d nothing about it. In coorse the gals the lads goes and lives with thinks our walloping ’em wery cruel of us, but we don’t. Why don’t we? – why, because we don’t. Before father died, I used sometimes to say my prayers, but after that mother was too busy getting a living to mind about my praying. Yes, I knows! – in the Lord’s prayer they says, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgives them as trespasses agin us.” It’s a very good thing, in coorse, but no costers can’t do it.’

  Of the ‘Penny Gaff’

  [pp. 42–4] In many of the thoroughfares of London there are shops which have been turned into a kind of temporary theatre (admission one penny), where dancing and singing take place every night. Rude pictures of the performers are arranged outside, to give the front a gaudy and attractive look, and at night-time coloured lamps and transparencies are displayed to draw an audience. These places are called by the costers ‘Penny Gaffs’; and on a Monday night as many as six performances will take place, each one having its two hundred visitors.

  It is impossible to contemplate the ignorance and immorality of so numerous a class as that of the costermongers, without wishing to discover the cause of their degradation. Let any one curious on this point visit one of these penny shows, and he will wonder that any trace of virtue and honesty should remain among the people. Here the stage, instead of being the means for illustrating a moral precept, is turned into a platform to teach the cruelest debauchery. The audience is usually composed of children so young, that these dens become the school-rooms where the guiding morals of a life are picked up; and so precocious are the little things, that the girl of nine will, from constant attendance at such places, have learnt to understand the filthiest sayings, and laugh at them as loudly as the grown-up lads around her. What notions can the young female form of marriage and chastity, when the penny theatre rings with applause at the performance of a scene whose sole point turns upon the pantomimic imitation of the unrestrained indulgence of the most corrupt appetites of our nature? How can the lad learn to check his hot passions and think honesty and virtue admirable, when the shouts around him impart a glory to a descriptive song so painfully corrupt, that it can only have been made tolerable by the most habitual excess? The men who preside over these infamous places know too well the failings of their audiences. They know that these poor children require no nicely-turned joke to make the evening pass merrily, and that the filth they utter needs no double meaning to veil its obscenity. The show that will provide the most unrestrained debauchery will have the most crowded benches; and to gain this point, things are acted and spoken that it is criminal even to allude to.