London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (11 page)

The notions of morality among these people agree strangely, as I have said, with those of many savage tribes – indeed, it would be curious if it were otherwise. They are a part of the Nomades of England, neither knowing nor caring for the enjoyments of home. The hearth, which is so sacred a symbol to all civilized races as being the spot where the virtues of each succeeding generation are taught and encouraged, has no charms to them. The tap-room is the father’s chief abiding place; whilst to the mother the house is only a better kind of
tent
. She is away at the stall, or hawking her goods from morning till night, while the children are left to play away the day in the court or alley, and pick their morals out of the gutter. So long as the limbs gain strength the parent cares for nothing else. As the younger ones grow up, their only notions of wrong are formed by what the policeman will permit them to do. If we, who have known from babyhood the kindly influences of a home, require, before we are thrust out into the world to get a living for ourselves, that our perceptions of good and evil should be quickened and brightened (the same as our perceptions of truth and falsity) by the experience and counsel of those who are wiser and better than ourselves, – if, indeed, it needed a special creation and example to teach the best and strongest of us the law of right, how bitterly must the children of the street-folk require tuition, training, and advice, when from their very cradles (if, indeed, they ever know such luxuries) they are doomed to witness in their parents, whom they naturally believe to be their superiors, habits of life in which passion is the sole rule of action, and where every appetite of our animal nature is indulged in without the least restraint.

I say thus much because I am anxious to make others feel, as I do myself, that
we
are the culpable parties in these matters. That they poor things should do as they do is but human nature – but that
we
should allow them to remain thus destitute of every blessing vouchsafed to ourselves – that we should willingly share what we enjoy with our brethren at the Antipodes, and yet leave those who are nearer and who, therefore, should be dearer to us, to want even the commonest moral necessaries is a paradox that gives to the zeal of our Christianity a strong savour of the chicanery of Cant.

The costermongers strongly resemble the North American Indians in their conduct to their wives. They can understand that it is the duty of the woman to contribute to the happiness of the man, but cannot feel that
there is a reciprocal duty from the man to the woman. The wife is considered as an inexpensive servant, and the disobedience of a wish is punished with blows. She must work early and late, and to the husband must be given the proceeds of her labour. Often when the man is in one of his drunken fits – which sometimes last two or three days continuously – she must by her sole exertions find food for herself and him too. To live in peace with him, there must be no murmuring, no tiring under work, no fancied cause for jealousy – for if there be, she is either beaten into submission or cast adrift to begin life again – as another’s leavings.

The story of one coster-girl’s life may be taken as a type of the many. When quite young she is placed out to nurse with some neighbour, the mother – if a fond one – visiting the child at certain periods of the day, for the purpose of feeding it, or sometimes, knowing the round she has to make, having the infant brought to her at certain places, to be ‘suckled’. As soon as it is old enough to go alone, the court is its play-ground, the gutter its school-room, and under the care of an elder sister the little one passes the day, among children whose mothers like her own are too busy out in the streets helping to get the food, to be able to mind the family at home. When the girl is strong enough, she in her turn is made to assist the mother by keeping guard over the younger children, or, if there be none, she is lent out to carry about a baby, and so made to add to the family income by gaining her sixpence weekly. Her time is from the earliest years fully occupied; indeed, her parents cannot afford to keep her without doing and getting
something
. Very few of the children receive the least education. ‘The parents,’ I am told, ‘never give their minds to learning, for they say, “What’s the use of it?
that
won’t yarn a gal a living.”’ Everything is sacrificed – as, indeed, under the circumstances it must be – in the struggle to live – aye! and to live
merely
. Mind, heart, soul, are all absorbed in the belly. The rudest form of animal life, physiologists tell us, is simply a locomotive stomach. Verily, it would appear as if our social state had a tendency to make the highest animal sink into the lowest.

At about seven years of age the girls first go into the streets to sell. A shallow-basket is given to them, with about two shillings for stock-money, and they hawk, according to the time of year, either oranges, apples, or violets; some begin their street education with the sale of water-cresses. The money earned by this means is strictly given to the parents. Sometimes – though rarely – a girl who has been unfortunate during the day will not dare to return home at night, and then she will sleep under some dry arch or about some market, until the morrow’s gains shall ensure her a safe reception and shelter in her father’s room.

The life of the coster-girls is as severe as that of the boys. Between four and five in the morning they have to leave home for the markets, and sell in the streets until about nine. Those that have more kindly parents, return then to breakfast, but many are obliged to earn the morning’s meal for themselves. After breakfast, they generally remain in the streets until about ten o’clock at night; many having nothing during all that time but one meal of bread and butter and coffee, to enable them to support the fatigue of walking from street to street with the heavy basket on their heads. In the course of a day, some girls eat as much as a pound of bread, and very seldom get any meat, unless it be on a Sunday.

There are many poor families that, without the aid of these girls, would be forced into the workhouse. They are generally of an affectionate disposition, and some will perform acts of marvellous heroism to keep together the little home. It is not at all unusual for mere children of fifteen to walk their eight or ten miles a day, carrying a basket of nearly two hundred weight on their heads. A journey to Woolwich and back, or to the towns near London, is often undertaken to earn the 1
s
. 6
d
. their parents are anxiously waiting for at home.

Very few of these girls are married to the men they afterwards live with. Their courtship is usually a very short one; for, as one told me, ‘the life is such a hard one, that a girl is ready to get rid of a
little
of the labour at any price.’ The coster-lads see the girls at market, and if one of them be pretty, and a boy take a fancy to her, he will make her bargains for her, and carry her basket home. Sometimes a coster working his rounds will feel a liking for a wench selling her goods in the street, and will leave his barrow to go and talk with her. A girl seldom takes up with a lad before she is sixteen, though some of them, when barely fifteen or even fourteen, will pair off. They court for a time, going to raffles and ‘gaffs’ together, and then the affair is arranged. The girl tells her parents ‘she’s going to keep company with so-and-so’, packs up what things she has, and goes at once, without a word of remonstrance from either father or mother. A furnished room, at about 4
s
. a week, is taken, and the young couple begin life. The lad goes out as usual with his barrow, and the girl goes out with her basket, often working harder for her lover than she had done for her parents. They go to market together, and at about nine o’clock her day’s selling begins. Very often she will take out with her in the morning what food she requires during the day, and never return home until eleven o’clock at night.

The men generally behave very cruelly to the girls they live with. They are as faithful to them as if they were married, but they are jealous in the
extreme. To see a man talking to their girl is sufficient to ensure the poor thing a beating. They sometimes ill-treat them horribly – most unmercifully indeed – nevertheless the girls say they cannot help loving them still, and continue working for them, as if they experienced only kindness at their hands. Some of the men are gentler and more considerate in their treatment of them, but by far the larger portion are harsh and merciless. Often when the Saturday night’s earnings of the two have been large, the man will take the entire money, and as soon as the Sunday’s dinner is over, commence drinking hard, and continue drunk for two or three days together, until the funds are entirely exhausted. The women never gamble; they say, ‘it gives them no excitement.’ They prefer, if they have a spare moment in the evening, sitting near the fire making up and patching their clothes. ‘Ah, sir,’ said a girl to me, ‘a neat gown does a deal with a man; he always likes a girl best when everybody else likes her too.’ On a Sunday they clean their room for the week and go for a treat, if they can persuade their young man to take them out in the afternoon, either to Chalk Farm or Battersea Fields – ‘where there’s plenty of life’.

After a girl has once grown accustomed to a street-life, it is almost impossible to wean her from it. The muscular irritability begotten by continued wandering makes her unable to rest for any time in one place, and she soon, if put to any
settled
occupation, gets to crave for the severe exercise she formerly enjoyed. The least restraint will make her sigh after the perfect liberty of the coster’s ‘roving life’. As an instance of this I may relate a fact that has occurred within the last six months. A gentleman of high literary repute, struck with the heroic strugglings of a coster Irish girl to maintain her mother, took her to his house, with a view of teaching her the duties of a servant. At first the transition was a painful one to the poor thing. Having travelled barefoot through the streets since a mere child, the pressure of shoes was intolerable to her, and in the evening or whenever a few minutes’ rest could be obtained, the boots were taken off, for with them on she could enjoy no ease. The perfect change of life, and the novelty of being in a new place, reconciled her for some time to the loss of her liberty. But no sooner did she hear from her friends, that sprats were again in the market, than, as if there were some magical influence in the fish, she at once requested to be freed from the confinement, and permitted to return to her old calling.

Such is the history of the lower class of girls, though this lower class, I regret to say, constitutes by far the greater portion of the whole. Still I would not for a moment have it inferred that
all
are bad. There are many
young girls getting their living, or rather helping to get the living of others in the streets, whose goodness, considering the temptations and hardships besetting such an occupation, approximates to the marvellous. As a type of the more prudent class of coster-girls, I would cite the following narrative received from the lips of a young woman in answer to a series of questions.

The Life of a Coster-girl

[pp.
47
–8] I wished to have obtained a statement from the girl whose portrait is here given, but she was afraid to give the slightest information about the habits of her companions, lest they should recognize her by the engraving and persecute her for the revelations she might make. After disappointing me some dozen times, I was forced to seek out some other coster girl.

The one I fixed upon was a fine-grown young woman of eighteen. She had a habit of curtseying to every question that was put to her. Her plaid shawl was tied over the breast, and her cotton-velvet bonnet was crushed in with carrying her basket. She seemed dreadfully puzzled where to put her hands, at one time tucking them under her shawl, warming them at the fire, or measuring the length of her apron, and when she answered a question she invariably addressed the fireplace. Her voice was husky from shouting apples.

‘My mother has been in the streets selling all her lifetime. Her uncle learnt her the markets and she learnt me. When business grew bad she said to me, “Now you shall take care on the stall, and I’ll go and work out charing.” The way she learnt me the markets was to judge of the weight of the baskets of apples, and then said she, “Always bate ’em down, a’most a half.” I always liked the street-life very well, that was if I was selling. I have mostly kept a stall myself, but I’ve known gals as walk about with apples, as have told me that the weight of the baskets is sich that the neck cricks, and when the load is took off, its just as if you’d a stiff neck, and the head feels as light as a feather. The gals begins working very early at our work; the parents makes them go out when a’most babies. There’s a little gal, I’m sure she an’t more than half-past seven, that stands selling water-cresses next my stall, and mother was saying, “Only look there, how that little one has to get her living afore she a’most knows what a penn’orth means.”

‘There’s six on us in family, and father and mother makes eight. Father used to do odd jobs with the gas-pipes in the streets, and when work was
slack we had very hard times of it. Mother always liked being with us at home, and used to manage to keep us employed out of mischief – she’d give us an old gown to make into pinafores for the children and such like! She’s been very good to us, has mother, and so’s father. She always liked to hear us read to her whilst she was washing or such like! and then we big ones had to learn the little ones. But when father’s work got slack, if she had no employment charing, she’d say, “Now I’ll go and buy a bushel of apples,” and then she’d turn out and get a penny that way. I suppose by sitting at the stall from nine in the morning till the shops shuts up – say ten o’clock at night, I can earn about 1
s
. 6
d
. a day. It’s all according to the apples – whether they’re good or not – what we makes. If I’m unlucky, mother will say, “Well, I’ll go out to-morrow and see what
I
can do;” and if I’ve done well, she’ll say “Come you’re a good hand at it; you’ve done famous.” Yes, mother’s very fair that way. Ah! there’s many a gal I knows whose back has to suffer if she don’t sell her stock well; but, thank God! I never get more than a blowing up. My parents is very fair to me.