Dickens's England: Life in Victorian Times

by Pritchard, R. E.

  7. Money and jewellery, kept, or sold to Jews.

  The dustyards, or places where the dust is collected and sifted, are generally situated in the suburbs, and they may be found all round London . . . frequently, however, they cover a large extent of ground in the fields, and there the dust is piled up to a great height in a conical heap, and having much the appearance of a volcanic mountain. . . . Some time since there was an immense dust-heap in the neighbourhood of Gray’s Inn Lane, which sold for £20,000; but that was in the days when 15s and £1 per chaldron [32–36 bushels, dry measure] could easily be procured for the dust. . . .

  In a dustyard lately visited, the sifters formed a curious sight; they were almost up to their middle in dust, ranged in a semi-circle in front of that part of the heap which was being ‘worked’; each had before her a small amount of soil which had fallen through her sieve and formed a sort of embankment, behind which she stood. The appearance of the entire group at their work was most peculiar. Their coarse dirty cotton gowns were tucked up behind them, their arms were bared above their elbows, their black bonnets crushed and battered like those of fish-women; over their gowns they wore a strong leathern apron, extending from their necks to the extremities of their petticoats, while over this, again, was another leathern apron, shorter, thickly padded, and fastened by a stout string or strap round the waist. In the process of their work they pushed the sieve from them and drew it back again with apparent violence, striking it against the outer leathern apron with such force that it produced each time a hollow sound, like a blow on the tenor drum. 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. She was the daughter of a dustman, the wife or woman of a dustman, and the mother of several young dustmen – sons and grandsons – all at work at the dustyards at the east end of the metropolis. . . .

  THE DUSTMAN’S TALE

  ‘Father vos a dustie; – vos at it all his life, and grandfather afore him for I can’t tell how long. . . . I never vos at a school in all my life; I don’t know what it’s good for. It may be wery well for the likes o’ you, but I doesn’t know it ’u’d do a dustie any good. You see, ven I’m not out with the cart, I digs here all day; and p’raps I’m up all night, and digs avay agen the next day. Vot does I care for reading, or anythink of that there kind, ven I gets home arter my vork? I tell you vot I likes, though! Vhy, I jist likes two or three pipes o’ baccer, and a pot or two of good heavy [beer, porter] and a song, and then I tumbles in with my Sall, and I’m as happy as here and there von. That there Sall of mine’s a stunner – a riglar stunner. There ain’t never a voman can sift a heap quickerer nor my Sall. Sometimes she yarns as much as I does; the only thing is, she’s sitch a beggar for lush [drink], that there Sall of mine, and then she kicks up sitch jolly rows, you niver see the like in your life. That there’s the only fault as I know on in Sall; but, barring that, she’s a hout-and-houter, and worth half a dozen of t’other sifters – pick ’em out vare you likes. No, we ain’t married ’zactly, though it’s all one for all that. I sticks to Sall, and Sall sticks to I, and there’s an end on’t: – vot is it to any von?’

  Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor (2 vols, 1851–2; 4 vols, 1861–2)

  SIX

  London

  A rumour broke through the thin smoke

  Enwreathing abbey, tower and palace,

  The parks, the squares, the thoroughfares,

  The million-peopled lanes and alleys,

  An ever-muttering prisoned storm,

  The heart of London beating warm.

  John Davidson, ‘London’ (late Victorian)

  In 1801, London’s population was already one-tenth that of England and Wales; by 1901, at over 6.5 million, it was about one-fifth. There was a continuous flow of immigrants: the Irish constituted the largest minority, of over 6 per cent; next were the Jews from central Europe, some 46,000 by 1881; of course, most incomers were country people from southern England (over 20 per cent), seeking better wages and a more stimulating life.

  There was plenty to do: in London were a quarter of England’s wholesale and retail dealers, government employees and professionals, 40 per cent of banking (London was the world’s greatest money market: it seemed a city of clerks). University and other colleges, great museums, large shops and two-thirds of the country’s arts and entertainment business had grown up there. Remarkably, one third of London’s working population consisted of manufacturing workers – 13 per cent of the national manufacturing force. Though essentially a great mercantile and administrative centre, in 1851 London was the largest industrial city in the world. Until the 1860s, it was England’s chief ship-building centre (Brunel’s iron steamer, the Great Eastern, in 1851; the first iron-clad warship, Warrior, in 1860). Other industries included metal goods, clock-making, furniture, chemicals, printing, leather-working, tailoring, dress-making and brewing. The docks dominated East London, from the earlier East India and West India Docks to the later Victoria and Tilbury Docks down river, down, in Joseph Conrad’s words, ‘a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth’.

  It was not a healthy place to live, its gas-lit streets filthy with horse-dung, the air thick with smoke and soot, the whole intermittently ravaged by tuberculosis, typhoid (Prince Albert died of typhoid fever), smallpox (23,000 died in 1871) and, most notably, cholera. This first hit London in 1832 and killed thousands for fifty years. The water of London was foul, contaminated by human, animal and industrial waste, either accumulating in or leaking from thousands of cesspits, or draining somehow into the Thames (1858 was the year of ‘The Great Stink’, when eight miles of the river fermented and stank). Edwin Chadwick’s report on the sanitary condition of London led to the Public Health Act of 1848, but there was little significant improvement; in 1854 John Snow shut off a main waterpump in Broad Street that fed neighbouring Regent, Wardour, Brewer and Great Marlborough Streets, producing an immediate large decline in cholera deaths in that area. From 1868, Joseph Bazalgette was responsible for the construction of London’s great drainage and sewerage systems, that eventually transformed London life.

  Increased population meant more buildings, of varying styles and qualities. Until the mid-nineteenth century London was, architecturally as in many other ways, largely Georgian, with neo-classical or Italianate stucco buildings. Increasingly, as in the Palace of Westminster and the hundreds of new churches, Gothic developed, with granite, spires, and polychromatic tiles; by the late 1870s, Queen Anne and Flemish Renaissance styles were also competing. The years 1857 to 1877 saw much rebuilding in the central area, with great public buildings and big new offices. Close to the wealthy centre were the rotten, teeming slums (such as Saffron Hill where Fagin lived, or Bethnal Green and Bermondsey where Bill Sikes lived and died), home to disease, crime and the working poor, needing ready access to their workplaces and cheap accommodation. For most, work was irregular, often seasonal and affected by the weather. In winter, there was less work but increased food and fuel expenses: in 1861, when the middle classes skated on the Serpentine, there were bread riots. The railways ripped through the slums for their viaducts, yards, great termini and hotels, displacing thousands, with little or no compensation, into greater overcrowding nearby, or the workhouse. Railway-building inflated land values, provoking much speculation and profiteering; there was less profit in building for the poor, but renting proved extremely lucrative.

  The central areas were increasingly clogged by commercial development and made ever less attractive by threats to health, slums and fears of crime (with panics about garrotters and street robbers in 1856) and the working classes (there were 1,000 Chartist demonstrators in the new Trafalgar Square in 1848, and 10,000 rallied for trade unionism in Hyde Park in 1867). The middle classes steadily moved out into the new suburbs, with their fresh air and gardens (conservatories, rockeries and croquet), commuting by means of the extending rail services. Within London one
could travel by brougham, hansom cab or horse-drawn omnibus, but most, especially the working people, walked – though with so many street traders and entertainers, one sometimes wonders how people got anywhere!

  While trade has been touched on here, one of the main businesses of London – entertainment – has not: that is the concern of the next section.

  * * *

  CITY AND PEOPLE

  London is the largest and wealthiest, as well as the most populous of the cities of the world. It is at once the centre of liberty, the seat of a great imperial government, and the metropolis of that great race whose industry and practical application of the arts of peace are felt in every clime, while they exert an almost boundless influence over the moral and political destinies of the world. About to become the theatre of an event of the highest moral importance, it is desirable that the stranger in our giant city should be made acquainted with its organization and structure – with its trade and commerce – with the sources of its social and political greatness – with its many treasures hidden from the eye of the superficial observer. . . .

  In 1841 the population of the metropolis was taken as 1,998,455, and it is now about 2,250,000, being the city of the greatest ascertained population and greatest number of houses in the world. . . .

  Some Employment Figures

  Millinery

  40,282

  Clothes and Slops

  28,848

  Boots and Shoes

  28,574

  Books, Prints, etc.

  14,563

  Bakers

  9,110

  Butchers

  6,450

  Publicans

  6,061

  Tailors

  23,517

  Shoemakers

  28,574

  Drapers

  3,913

  Dressmakers and

  Seamstresses

  27,049

  Bonnetmakers

  3,282

  Schoolmasters and Teachers

  9,244

  Ecclesiastics

  1,271

  Medical Men

  4,972

  Lawyers

  2,399

  Artists

  4,431

  Clerks

  20,932

  Labourers

  50,279

  Male Servants

  39,300

  Female Servants and

  Nurses

  138,917

  The number of persons taken into custody yearly is 60,000 (males 40,000, females 20,000) . . . Of those taken into custody, 20,000 can neither read nor write; 35,000 read, or read and write imperfectly; 4,500 read and write well; and 500 have superior instruction.

  John Weale and Henry Bohn, The Pictorial Handbook of London (1854 edn)

  THE SPORT IN VIEW

  The extremes, in every point of view, are daily to be met with in the Metropolis; from the most rigid, persevering, never-tiring, down to laziness, which, in its consequences, frequently operates far worse than idleness. The greatest love of and contempt for money are equally conspicuous; and in no place are pleasure and business so much united as in London. The highest veneration for and practice of religion distinguishes the Metropolis, contrasted with the most horrid commission of crimes; and the experience of the oldest inhabitant scarcely renders him safe against the specious plans and artifices continually laid to entrap the most vigilant. The next-door neighbour of a man in London is generally as great a stranger to him, as if he lived at the distance of York. And it is in the Metropolis that prostitution is so profitable a business, and conducted so openly, that hundreds of persons keep houses of ill-fame, for the reception of girls not more than twelve or thirteen years of age, without a blush upon their cheeks, and mix with society heedless of stigma or reproach; yet honour, integrity, and independence of soul, that nothing can remove from its basis, are to be found in every street in London. Hundreds of persons are always going to bed in the morning, besotted with dissipation and gaming, while thousands of his Majesty’s liege subjects are quitting their pillows to pursue their useful occupations. The most bare-faced villains, swindlers and thieves walk about the streets in the daytime, committing their various depredations, with as much confidence as men of unblemished reputation and honesty. . . .

  ‘Life in London’ is the sport in view, and provided the chase is turned to a good account, ‘seeing Life’ will be found to have its advantages; and, upon this calculation, whether an evening is spent over a bottle of champagne at Long’s, or in taking a ‘third of a daffy’ (third part of a quartern of gin) at Tom Belcher’s, if the Mind does not decide it barren, then the purposes are gained. Equally so, in waltzing with the angelics at my Lady Fubb’s assembly, at Almack’s [a fashionable and exclusive assembly-hall], or sporting a toe at Mrs Snooks’s hop at St Kit’s [Kate Hamilton’s notorious ‘night-house’], among the pretty straw damsels and dashing chippers, if a knowledge of ‘Life’, an acquaintance with character, and the importance of comparison, are the ultimate results.

  Pierce Egan, Life in London (1821)

  THROUGH THE STREETS OF LONDON

  . . . Through tracts of thin resort,

  And sights and sounds that come at intervals,

  We take our way. A raree-show is here,

  With children gathered round; another street

  Presents a company of dancing dogs,

  Or dromedary, with an antic pair

  Of monkeys on his back; a minstrel band

  Of Savoyards; or, single and alone,

  An English ballad-singer. Private courts,

  Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes

  Thrilled by some female vendor’s scream, belike

  The very shrillest of all London cries,

  May then entangle our impatient steps . . .

  As on the broadening causeway we advance,

  Behold, turned upwards, a face hard and strong

  In lineaments, and red with over-toil.

  ’Tis one encountered here and everywhere;

  A travelling cripple, by the trunk cut short,

  And stumping on his arms. In sailor’s garb

  Another lies at length, beside a range

  Of well-formed characters, with chalk inscribed

  Upon the smooth flat stones: the Nurse is here,

  The Bachelor, that loves to sun himself,

  The military Idler, and the Dame,

  That fieldward takes her walk with decent steps.

  Now homeward through the thickening hubbub, where

  See, among less distinguishable shapes,

  The begging scavenger, with hat in hand;

  The Italian, as he thrids his way with care,

  Steadying, far-seen, a frame of images

  Upon his head; with basket at his breast

  The Jew; the stately and slow-moving Turk,

  With freight of slippers piled beneath his arm!

  Enough; – the mighty concourse I surveyed

  With no unthinking mind, well pleased to note

  Among the crowd all specimens of man,

  Through all the colours which the sun bestows,

  And every character of form and face:

  The Swede, the Russian; from the genial south,

  The Frenchman and the Spaniard; from remote

  America, the Hunter-Indian; Moors,

  Malays, Lascars, the Tartar, the Chinese,

  And Negro Ladies in white muslin gowns.

  William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1850)

  SWEET THAMES

  (I)

  Never, perhaps, in the annals of mankind, has such a thing been known before, as that the whole stream of a large river for a distance of seven miles should be in a state of putrid fermentation. The cause is the hot weather acting upon the ninety millions of gallons of sewage which discharge themselves daily into the Thames. And by sewage must be understood not merely house and land drainage, but also drainage from bone-boilers, soap-boilers, chemical works, breweries and gas facto
ries – the last the most filthy of all. It is quite impossible to calculate the consequences of such a moving mass of decomposition as the river at present offers to our senses.

  Medical Officer of Health’s Report, 1858

  (II)

  What a pity it is that the thermometer fell ten degrees yesterday. Parliament was all but compelled to legislate upon the great London nuisance by force of sheer stench. The intense heat had driven our legislators from those portions of their buildings which overlook the river. A few members, indeed, bent on investigating the subject to its very depths, ventured into the library, but they were instantly driven to retreat, each man with a handkerchief to his nose. We are heartily glad of it. It is right that our legislators should be made to feel in health and comfort the consequence of their own disregard of the public welfare.

  Anon., The Times, 1858

  ‘THE CAPITAL OF CHOLERA’

  [Jacob’s Island, Bermondsey; and see Oliver Twist, Chapter 50]

  The blanched cheeks of the people that now came out to stare at us were white as vegetables grown in the dark. . . . As we now passed along the reeking banks of the sewer, the sun shone upon a narrow slip of water. In the bright light it seemed the colour of a strong green tea . . . and yet we were assured that this was the only water the wretched inhabitants had to drink. As we gazed in horror at this pool, we saw drains and sewers emptying their filthy contents into it, we heard bucket after bucket of filth splash into it, and the limbs of the vagrant boys bathing in it seemed, by pure force of contrast, white as Parian marble. And yet, as we stood gazing in horror at the fluvial sewer, we saw a child from one of the galleries opposite lower a tin can with rope, to fill a large bucket that stood beside her. In each of the rude and rotten balconies, indeed, that hung over the stream, the self-same bucket was to be seen in which the inhabitants were wont to put the mucky liquid to stand, so that they might, after it had been left to settle for a day or two, skim the fluid from the solid particles of filth and pollution which constituted the sediment. In this wretched place we were taken to a house where an infant lay dead of the cholera. We asked if they really did drink the water. The answer was, ‘They were obliged to drink the ditch unless they could beg or thieve a pailful of the real Thames.’