London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics)

by Henry Mayhew

  Nearly all the inhabitants were costermongers, and, indeed, the narrow cartway seemed to have been made just wide enough for a truck to wheel down it. A beershop and a general store, together with a couple of sweeps – whose residences were distinguished by a broom over the door – formed the only exceptions to the street-selling class of inhabitants.

  As I entered the place, it gave me the notion that it belonged to a distinct coster colony, and formed one large hawkers’ home; for everybody seemed to be doing just as he liked, and I was stared at as if considered an intruder. Women were seated on the pavement, knitting, and repairing their linen; the doorways were filled up with bonnetless girls, who wore their shawls over their head, as the Spanish women do their mantillas; and the youths in corduroy and brass buttons, who were chatting with them, leant against the walls as they smoked their pipes, and blocked up the pavement, as if they were the proprietors of the place. Little children formed a convenient bench out of the kerb-stone; and a party of four men were seated on the footway, playing with cards which had turned to the colour of brown paper from long usage, and marking the points with chalk upon the flags.

  The parlour-windows of the houses had all of them wooden shutters, as thick and clumsy-looking as a kitchen flap-table, the paint of which had turned to the dull dirt-colour of an old slate. Some of these shutters were evidently never used as a security for the dwelling, but served only as tables on which to chalk the accounts of the day’s sales.

  Before most of the doors were costermongers trucks – some standing ready to be wheeled off, and others stained and muddy with the day’s work. A few of the costers were dressing up their barrows, arranging the sieves of waxy-looking potatoes – and others taking the stiff herrings, browned like a meerschaum with the smoke they had been dried in, from the barrels beside them, and spacing them out in pennyworths on their trays.

  You might guess what each costermonger had taken out that day by the heap of refuse swept into the street before the doors. One house had a blue mound of mussel-shells in front of it – another, a pile of the outside leaves of broccoli and cabbages, turning yellow and slimy with bruises and moisture.

  Hanging up beside some of the doors were bundles of old strawberry pottles, stained red with the fruit. Over the trap-doors to the cellars were piles of market-gardeners’ sieves, ruddled like a sheep’s back with big red letters. In fact, everything that met the eye seemed to be in some way connected with the coster’s trade.

  From the windows poles stretched out, on which blankets, petticoats, and linen were drying; and so numerous were they, that they reminded me of the flags hung out at a Paris fete. Some of the sheets had patches as big as trap-doors let into their centres; and the blankets were – many of them – as full of holes as a pigeon-house.

  As I entered the court, a ‘row’ was going on; and from a first-floor window a lady, whose hair sadly wanted brushing, was haranguing a crowd beneath, throwing her arms about like a drowning man, and in her excitement thrusting her body half out of her temporary rostrum as energetically as I have seen Punch lean over his theatre.

  ‘The willin dragged her,’ she shouted, ‘by the hair of her head, at least three yards into the court – the willin! and then he kicked her, and the blood was on his boot.’

  It was a sweep who had been behaving in this cowardly manner; but still he had his defenders in the women around him. One with very shiny hair, and an Indian kerchief round her neck, answered the lady in the window, by calling her a ‘d—d old cat’; whilst the sweep’s wife rushed about, clapping her hands together as quickly as if she was applauding at a theatre, and styled somebody or other ‘an old wagabones as she wouldn’t dirty her hands to fight with’.

  This ‘row’ had the effect of drawing all the lodgers to the windows – their heads popping out as suddenly as dogs from their kennels in a fancier’s yard.

  The Boy Sweepers’ Room

  [pp. 570–71] The room where the boys lodged was scarcely bigger than a coach-house; and so low was the ceiling, that a fly-paper suspended from a clothes-line was on a level with my head, and had to be carefully avoided when I moved about.

  One corner of the apartment was completely filled up by a big four-post bedstead, which fitted into a kind of recess as perfectly as if it had been built to order.

  The old woman who kept this lodging had endeavoured to give it a homely look of comfort, by hanging little black-framed pictures, scarcely bigger than pocket-books, on the walls. Most of these were sacred subjects, with large yellow glories round the heads; though between the drawing representing the bleeding heart of Christ, and the Saviour bearing the Cross, was an illustration of a red-waistcoated sailor smoking his pipe. The Adoration of the Shepherds, again, was matched on the other side of the fireplace by a portrait of Daniel O’Connell.

  A chest of drawers was covered over with a green baize cloth, on which books, shelves, and clean glasses were tidily set out.

  Where so many persons (for there were about eight of them, including the landlady, her daughter, and grandson) could all sleep, puzzled me extremely.

  The landlady wore a frilled nightcap, which fitted so closely to the skull, that it was evident she had lost her hair. One of her eyes was slowly recovering from a blow, which, to use her own words, ‘a blackgeyard gave her’. Her lip, too, had suffered in the encounter, for it was swollen and cut.

  ‘I’ve a nice flock-bid for the boys,’ she said, when I inquired into the accommodation of her lodging-house, ‘where three of them can slape aisy and comfortable.’

  ‘It’s a large bed, sir,’ said one of the boys, ‘and a warm covering over us; and you see it’s better then a regular lodging-house; for, if you want a knife or a cup, you don’t have to leave something on it till it’s returned.’

  The old woman spoke up for her lodgers, telling me that they were good boys, and very honest; ‘for,’ she added, ‘they pays me rig’lar ivery night, which is threepence.’

  The only youth as to whose morals she seemed to be at all doubtful was ‘the Goose’, ‘for he kept late hours, and sometimes came home without a penny in his pocket’.

  The Girl Crossing-sweeper Sent Out by her Father

  [pp. 571–2] A little girl, who worked by herself at her own crossing, gave me some curious information on the subject.

  This child had a peculiarly flat face, with a button of a nose, while her mouth was scarcely larger than a button-hole. When she spoke, there was not the slightest expression visible in her features; indeed, one might have fancied she wore a mask and was talking behind it; but her eyes were shining the while as brightly as those of a person in a fever, and kept moving about, restless with her timidity. The green frock she wore was fastened close to the neck, and was turning into a kind of mouldy tint; she also wore a black stuff apron, stained with big patches of gruel, ‘from feeding baby at home’, as she said. Her hair was tidily dressed, being drawn tightly back from the forehead, like the buy-a-broom girls; and as she stood with her hands thrust up her sleeves, she curtseyed each time before answering, bobbing down like a float, as though the floor under her had suddenly given way.

  ‘I’m twelve years old, please sir, and my name is Margaret R—, and I sweep a crossing in new Oxford-street, by Dunn’s-passage, just facing Moses and Sons’, sir; by the Catholic school, sir. Mother’s been dead these two years, sir, and father’s a working cutler, sir; and I lives with him, but he don’t get much to do, and so I’m obligated to help him, doing what I can, sir. Since mother’s been dead, I’ve had to mind my little brother and sister, so that I haven’t been to school; but when I goes a crossing-sweeping I takes them along with me, and they sits on the steps close by, sir. If it’s wet I has to stop at home and take care of them, for father depends upon me for looking after them. Sister’s three and a-half year old, and brother’s five year, so he’s just beginning to help me, sir. I hope he’ll get something better than a crossing when he grows up.

  ‘First of all I used to go singing so
ngs in the streets, sir. It was when father had no work, so he stopped at home and looked after the children. I used to sing the “Red, White, and Blue”, and “Mother, is the Battle over?” and “The Gipsy Girl”, and sometimes I’d get fourpence or fivepence, and sometimes I’d have a chance of making ninepence, sir. Sometimes, though, I’d take a shilling of a Saturday night in the markets.

  ‘At last the songs grew so stale people wouldn’t listen to them, and, as I carn’t read, I couldn’t learn any more, sir. My big brother and father used to learn me some, but I never could get enough out of them for the streets; besides, father was out of work still, and we couldn’t get money enough to buy ballads with, and it’s no good singing without having them to sell. We live over there, sir, (pointing to a window on the other side of the narrow street).

  ‘The notion come into my head all of itself to sweep crossings, sir. As I used to go up Regent-street I used to see men and women, and girls and boys, sweeping, and the people giving them money, so I thought I’d do the same thing. That’s how it come about. Just now the weather is so dry, I don’t go to my crossing, but goes out singing. I’ve learnt some new songs, such as “The Queen of the Navy for ever”, and “The Widow’s Last Prayer”, which is about the wars. I only go sweeping in wet weather, because then’s the best time. When I am there, there’s some ladies and gentlemen as gives to me regular. I knows them by sight; and there’s a beer-shop where they give me some bread and cheese whenever I go.

  ‘I generally takes about sixpence, or sevenpence, or eightpence on the crossing, from about nine o’clock in the morning till four in the evening, when I come home. I don’t stop out at nights because father won’t let me, and I’m got to be home to see to baby.

  ‘My broom costs me twopence ha’penny, and in wet wether it lasts a week, but in dry weather we seldom uses it.

  ‘When I sees the busses and carriages coming I stands on the side, for I’m afeard of being runned over. In winter I goes out and cleans ladies’ doors, general about Lincoln’s-inn, for the housekeepers. I gets twopence a door, but it takes a long time when the ice is hardened, so that I carn’t do only about two or three.

  ‘I carn’t tell whether I shall always stop at sweeping, but I’ve no clothes, and so I carn’t get a situation; for, though I’m small and young, yet I could do housework, such as cleaning.

  ‘No, sir, there’s no gang on my crossing – I’m all alone. If another girl or a boy was to come and take it when I’m not there, I should stop on it as well as him or her, and go shares with ’em.’

  Girl Crossing-sweeper

  [pp. 572–3] I was told that a little girl formed one of the association of young sweepers, and at my request one of the boys went to fetch her.

  She was a clean-washed little thing, with a pretty, expressive countenance, and each time she was asked a question she frowned, like a baby in its sleep, while thinking of the answer. In her ears she wore instead of rings loops of string, ‘which the doctor had put there because her sight was wrong’. A cotton velvet bonnet, scarcely larger than the sun-shades worn at the sea-side, hung on her shoulders, leaving exposed her head, with the hair as rough as tow. Her green stuff gown was hanging in tatters, with long three-cornered rents as large as penny kites, showing the grey lining underneath; and her mantle was separated into so many pieces, that it was only held together by the braiding at the edge.

  As she conversed with me, she played with the strings of her bonnet, rolling them up as if curling them, on her singularly small and also singularly dirty fingers.

  ‘I’ll be fourteen, sir, a fortnight before next Christmas. I was born in Liquorpond-street, Gray’s Inn-lane. Father come over from Ireland, and was a bricklayer. He had pains in his limbs and wasn’t strong enough, so he give it over. He’s dead now – been dead a long time, sir. I was a littler girl then than I am now, for I wasn’t above eleven at that time. I lived with mother after father died. She used to sell things in the streets – yes, sir, she was a coster. About a twelvemonth after father’s death, mother was taken bad with the cholera, and died. I then went along with both grandmother and grandfather, who was a porter in Newgate Market; I stopped there until I got a place as servant of all-work. I was only turned, just turned, eleven then. I worked along with a French lady and gentleman in Hatton Garden, who used to give me a shilling a week and my tea. I used to go home to grandmother’s to dinner every day. I hadn’t to do any work only just to clean the room and nuss the child. It was a nice little thing. I couldn’t understand what the French people used to say, but there was a boy working there, and he used to explain to me what they meant.

  ‘I left them because they was going to a place called Italy – perhaps you may have heerd tell of it, sir. Well, I suppose they must have been Italians, but we calls everybody, whose talk we don’t understand, French. I went back to grandmother’s, but, after grandfather died, she couldn’t keep me, and so I went out begging – she sent me. I carried lucifer-matches and stay-laces fust. I used to carry about a dozen laces, and perhaps I’d sell six out of them. I suppose I used to make about sixpence a day, and I used to take it home to grandmother, who kept and fed me.

  ‘At last, finding I didn’t get much at begging, I thought I’d go crossing-sweeping. I saw other children doing it. I says to myself, “I’ll go and buy a broom”, and I spoke to another little girl, who was sweeping up Holborn, who told me what I was to do. “But,” says she, “don’t come and cut up me.”

  ‘I went fust to Holborn, near to home, at the end of Red Lion-street. Then I was frightened of the cabs and carriages, but I’d get there early, about eight o’clock, and sweep the crossing clean, and I’d stand at the side on the pavement, and speak to the gentlemen and ladies before they crossed.

  ‘There was a couple of boys, sweepers at the same crossing before I went there. I went to them and asked if I might come and sweep there too, and they said Yes, if I would give them some of the halfpence I got. These was boys about as old as I was, and they said, if I earned sixpence, I was to give them twopence a-piece; but they never give me nothink of theirs. I never took more than sixpence, and out of that I had to give fourpence, so that I did not do so well as with the laces.

  ‘The crossings made my hands sore with the sweeping, and, as I got so little, I thought I’d try somewhere else. Then I got right down to the Fountings in Trafalgar-square, by the crossing at the statey on ‘orseback. There were a good many boys and girls on that crossing at the time – five of them; so I went along with them. When I fust went they said, “Here’s another fresh ’un.” They come up to me and says, “Are you going to sweep here?” and I says, “Yes;” and they says, “You mustn’t come here, there’s too many;” and I says, “They’re different ones every day” – for they’re not regular there, but shift about, sometimes one lot of boys and girls, and the next day another. They didn’t say another word to me, and so I stopped.

  ‘It’s a capital crossing, but there’s so many of us, it spiles it. I seldom gets more than sevenpence a day, which I always takes home to grandmother.

  ‘I’ve been on that crossing about three months. They always calls me Ellen, my regular name, and behaves very well to me. If I see anybody coming, I call them out as the boys does, and then they are mine.

  ‘There’s a boy and myself, and another strange girl, works on our side of the statey, and another lot of boys and girls on the other.

  ‘I like Saturdays the best day of the week, because that’s the time as gentlemen as has been at work has their money, and then they are more generous. I gets more then, perhaps ninepence, but not quite a shilling, on the Saturday.

  ‘I’ve had a threepenny-bit give to me, but never sixpence. It was a gentleman, and I should know him again. Ladies gives me less than gentlemen. I foller ’em, saying, “If you please, sir, give a poor girl a halfpenny;” but if the police are looking, I stop still.

  ‘I never goes out on Sunday, but stops at home with grandmother. I don’t stop out at nights like
the boys, but I gets home by ten at latest.’

  VOLUME THREE

  OUR STREET FOLK

  STREET ENTERTAINMENT

  Punch

  [pp. 51–5] The performer of Punch that I saw was a short, dark, pleasant-looking man, dressed in a very greasy and very shiny green shooting-jacket. This was fastened together by one button in front, all the other button-holes having been burst through. Protruding from his bosom, a corner of the pandean pipes was just visible, and as he told me the story of his adventures, he kept playing with the band of his very limp and very rusty old beaver hat. He had formerly been a gentleman’s servant, and was especially civil in his manners. He came to me with his hair tidily brushed for the occasion, but apologised for his appearance on entering the room. 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. Not seeing the show, they fancied the man had the figure in his pocket, and that the sounds came from it. The change from Punch’s voice to the man’s natural tone was managed without an effort, and instantaneously. It had a very peculiar effect.

  ‘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. You see, the way in which I took first to the business was this here – there was a party used to come and “cheer” for us at my master’s house, and her son having a hexhibition of his own, and being in want of a pardner, axed me if so be I’d go out, which was a thing that I degraded at the time. He gave me information as to what the money-taking was, and it seemed to me that good, that it would pay me better nor service. I had twenty pounds a-year in my place, and my board and lodging, and two suits of clothes, but the young man told me as how I could make one pound a day at the Punch-and-Judy business, after a little practice. I took a deal of persuasion, though, before I’d join him – it was beneath my dignity to fall from a footman to a showman. But, you see, the French gennelman as I lived with (he were a merchant in the city, and had fourteen clerks working for him) went back to his own country to reside, and left me with a written kerrackter; but that was no use to me: though I’d fine recommendations at the back of it, no one would look at it; so I was five months out of employment, knocking about – living first on my wages and then on my clothes, till all was gone but the few rags on my back. So I began to think that the Punch-and-Judy business was better than starving after all. Yes, I should think anything was better than that, though it’s a business that, after you’ve once took to, you never can get out of – people fancies you know too much, and won’t have nothing to say to you. If I got a situation at a tradesman’s, why 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. One of my pardners was buried by the workhouse; and even old Pike, the most noted showman as ever was, died in the workhouse – Pike and Porsini. Porsini was the first original street Punch, and Pike was his apprentice; their names is handed down to posterity among the noblemen and footmen of the land. They both died in the workhouse, and, in course, I shall do the same. Something else might turn up, to be sure. We can’t say what this luck of the world is. I’m obliged to strive very hard – very hard indeed, sir, now, to get a living; and then not to get it after all – at times, compelled to go short, often.