London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (14 page)

Whilst I was in the room, the father entered, and ‘old Norah’, half-laughed and wept at the same time. She stood wiping her eyes with the shawl, and groaning out blessings on ‘his rivirince’s hid’, begging of him not ‘to scould her for she was a wake woman’. The renegade brother was had in to receive a lecture from ‘his rivirince’. A more sottish idiotic face it would be difficult to imagine. He stood with his hands hanging down like the paws of a dog begging, and his two small eyes stared in the face of the priest, as he censured him, without the least expression even of consciousness. Old Norah stood by, groaning like a bagpipe, and writhing while the father spoke to her ‘own brother’, as though every reproach were meant for her.

The one thing that struck me during my visit to this neighbourhood, was the apparent listlessness and lazy appearance of the people. The boys at play were the only beings who seemed to have any life in their actions. The women in their plaid shawls strolled along the pavements, stopping each friend for a chat, or joining some circle, and leaning against the wall as though utterly deficient in energy. The men smoked, with their hands in their pockets, listening to the old crones talking, and only now and then grunting out a reply when a question was directly put to them. And yet it is curious that these people, who here seemed as inactive as negroes, will perform the severest bodily labour, undertaking tasks that the English are almost unfitted for.

The better class of flower-girls reside in Lisson-grove, in the streets off Drury-lane, in St Giles’s, and in other parts inhabited by the very poor. Some of them live in lodging-houses, the stench and squalor of which are in remarkable contrast to the beauty and fragrance of the flowers they sometimes have to carry thither with them unsold.

Of Two Orphan Flower Girls

[pp. 141–2] Of these girls the elder was fifteen and the younger eleven. Both were clad in old, but not torn, dark print frocks, hanging so closely, and yet so loosely, about them as to show the deficiency of under-clothing; they wore old broken black chip bonnets. The older sister (or rather half-sister) had a pair of old worn-out shoes on her feet, the younger was barefoot, but trotted along, in a gait at once quick and feeble – as if the soles of her little feet were impervious, like horn, to the roughness of the road. The elder girl had a modest expression of countenance, with no pretensions to prettiness except in having tolerably good eyes. Her complexion was somewhat muddy, and her features somewhat pinched. The younger child had a round, chubby, and even rosy face, and quite a healthful look. Her portrait is here given.

They lived in one of the streets near Drury-lane. They were inmates of a house, not let out as a lodging-house, in separate beds, but in rooms, and inhabited by street-sellers and street-labourers. The room they occupied was large, and one dim candle lighted it so insufficiently that it seemed to exaggerate the dimensions. The walls were bare and discoloured with damp. The furniture consisted of a crazy table and a few chairs, and in the centre of the room was an old four-post bedstead of the larger size. This bed was occupied nightly by the two sisters and their brother, a lad just turned thirteen. In a sort of recess in a corner of the room was the decency of an old curtain – or something equivalent, for I could hardly see in the dimness – and behind this was, I presume, the bed of the married couple. The three children paid 2
s
. a week for the room, the tenant an Irishman out of work paying 2
s
. 9
d
., but the furniture was his, and his wife aided the children in their trifle of washing, mended their clothes, where such a thing was possible, and such like. The husband was absent at the time of my visit, but the wife seemed of a better stamp, judging by her appearance, and by her refraining from any direct, or even indirect, way of begging, as well as from the ‘Glory be to Gods!’ ‘the heavens be your honour’s bed!’ or ‘it’s the thruth I’m telling of you sir’, that I so frequently meet with on similar visits.

The elder girl said, in an English accent, not at all garrulously, but merely in answer to my questions: I sell flowers, sir; we live almost on flowers when they are to be got. I sell, and so does my sister, all kinds, but it’s very little use offering any that’s not sweet. I think it’s the sweetness as sells them. I sell primroses, when they’re in, and violets, and wallflowers, and stocks, and roses of different sorts, and pinks, and carnations,

THE WALLFLOWER GIRL.

and mixed flowers, and lilies of the valley, and green lavender, and mignonette (but that I do very seldom), and violets again at this time of the year, for we get them both in spring and winter.’ [They are forced in hot-houses for winter sale, I may remark.] ‘The best sale of all is, I think, moss-roses, young moss-roses. We do best of all on them. Primroses are good, for people say: “Well, here’s spring again to a certainty.” Gentlemen are our best customers. I’ve heard that they buy flowers to give to the ladies. Ladies have sometimes said: “A penny, my poor girl, here’s three-halfpence for the bunch.” Or they’ve given me the price of two bunches for one; so have gentlemen. I never had a rude word said to me by a gentleman in my life. No, sir, neither lady nor gentleman ever gave me 6
d
. for a bunch of flowers. I never had a sixpence given to me in my life – never. I never go among boys, I know nobody but my brother. My father was a tradesman in Mitchelstown, in the County Cork. I don’t know what sort of a tradesman he was. I never saw him. He was a tradesman I’ve been told. I was born in London. Mother was a chairwoman, and lived very well. None of us ever saw a father.’ [It was evident that they were illegitimate children, but the landlady had never seen the mother, and could give me no information.] ‘We don’t know anything about our fathers. We were all “mother’s children”. Mother died seven years ago last Guy Faux day. I’ve got myself, and my brother and sister a bit of bread ever since, and never had any help but from the neighbours. I never troubled the parish. 0, yes, sir, the neighbours is all poor people, very poor, some of them. We’ve lived with her’ (indicating her landlady by a gesture) ‘these two years, and off and on before that. I can’t say how long.’ ‘Well, I don’t know exactly,’ said the landlady, ‘but I’ve had them with me almost all the time, for four years, as near as I can recollect; perhaps more. I’ve moved three times, and they always followed me.’ In answer to my inquiries the landlady assured me that these two poor girls, were never out of doors all the time she had known them after six at night. ‘We’ve always good health. We can all read.’ [Here the three somewhat insisted upon proving to me their proficiency in reading, and having produced a Roman Catholic book, the ‘Garden of Heaven’, they read very well.] ‘I put myself,’ continued the girl, ‘and I put my brother and sister to a Roman Catholic school – and to Ragged schools – but I could read before mother died. My brother can write, and I pray to God that he’ll do well with it. I buy my flowers at Covent Garden; sometimes, but very seldom, at Farringdon. I pay 1
s
. for a dozen bunches, whatever flowers are in. Out of every two bunches I can make three, at 1
d
. a piece. Sometimes one or two over in the dozen, but not so often as I would like. We make the
bunches up ourselves. We get the rush to tie them with for nothing. We put their own leaves round these violets (she produced a bunch). The paper for a dozen costs a penny; sometimes only a halfpenny. The two of us doesn’t make less than 6
d
. a day, unless it’s very ill luck. But religion teaches us that God will support us, and if we make less we say nothing. We do better on oranges in March or April, I think it is, than on flowers. Oranges keep better than flowers you see, sir. We make 1
s
. A day and 9
d
. a day, on oranges, the two of us. I wish they was in all the year. I generally go St John’s-wood way, and Hampstead and Highgate way with my flowers. I can get them nearly all the year, but oranges is better liked than flowers, I think. I always keep 1
s
. stock-money, if I can. If it’s bad weather, so bad that we can’t sell flowers at all, and so if we’ve had to spend our stock-money for a bit of bread,
she
(the landlady) lends us 1
s
., if she has one, or she borrows one of a neighbour, if she hasn’t, or if the neighbours hasn’t it, she borrows it at a dolly-shop’ (the illegal pawnshop). ‘There’s 2
d
. a week to pay for 1
s
. at a dolly, and perhaps an old rug left for it; if it’s very hard weather, the rug must be taken at night time, or we are starved with the cold. It sometimes has to be put into the dolly again next morning, and then there’s 2
d
. to pay for it for the day. We’ve had a frock in for 6
d
., and that’s a penny a week, and the same for a day. We never pawned anything; we have nothing they would take in at the pawnshop. We live on bread and tea, and sometimes a fresh herring of a night. Sometimes we don’t eat a bit all day when we’re out; sometimes we take a bit of bread with us, or buy a bit. My sister can’t eat taturs; they sicken her. I don’t know what emigrating means.’ [I informed her and she continued]: ‘No, sir, I wouldn’t like to emigrate and leave brother and sister. If they went with me I don’t think I should like it, not among strangers. I think our living costs us 2
s
. a week for the two of us; the rest goes in rent. That’s all we make.’

The brother earned from 1
s
. 6
d
. to 2
s
. a week, with an occasional meal, as a costermonger’s boy. Neither of them ever missed mass on a Sunday.

Watercress Girl

[pp. 157–8] The little watercress girl who gave me the following statement, although only eight years of age, had entirely lost all childish ways, and was, indeed, in thoughts and manner, a woman. There was something cruelly pathetic in hearing this infant, so young that her features had scarcely formed themselves, talking of the bitterest struggles of life, with the calm earnestness of one who had endured them all. I did not
know how to talk with her. At first I treated her as a child, speaking on childish subjects; so that I might, by being familiar with her, remove all shyness, and get her to narrate her life freely. I asked her about her toys and her games with her companions; but the look of amazement that answered me soon put an end to any attempt at fun on my part. I then talked to her about the parks, and whether she ever went to them. ‘The parks!’ she replied in wonder, ‘where are they?’ I explained to her, telling her that they were large open places with green grass and tall trees, where beautiful carriages drove about, and people walked for pleasure, and children played. Her eyes brightened up a little as I spoke; and she asked, half doubtingly, ‘Would they let such as me go there – just to look?’ All her knowledge seemed to begin and end with watercresses, and what they fetched. She knew no more of London than that part she had seen on her rounds, and believed that no quarter of the town was handsomer or pleasanter than it was at Farringdon-market or at Clerkenwell, where she lived. Her little face, pale and thin with privation, was wrinkled where the dimples ought to have been, and she would sigh frequently. When some hot dinner was offered to her, she would not touch it, because, if she eat too much, ‘it made her sick,’ she said; ‘and she wasn’t used to meat, only on a Sunday.’

The poor child, although the weather was severe, was dressed in a thin cotton gown, with a threadbare shawl wrapped round her shoulders. She wore no covering to her head, and the long rusty hair stood out in all directions. When she walked she shuffled along, for fear that the large carpet slippers that served her for shoes should slip off her feet.

‘I go about the streets with water-creases, crying, “Four bunches a penny, water-creases.” I am just eight years old – that’s all, and I’ve a big sister, and a brother, and a sister younger than I am. On and off, I’ve been very near a twelvemonth in the streets. Before that, I had to take care of a baby for my aunt. No, it wasn’t heavy – it was only two months old; but I minded it for ever such a time – till it could walk. It was a very nice baby, not a very pretty one; but, if I touched it under the chin, it would laugh. Before I had the baby, I used to help mother, who was in the fur trade; and, if there was any slits in the fur, I’d sew them up. My mother learned me to needle-work and to knit when I was about five. I used to go to school, too; but I wasn’t there long. I’ve forgot all about it now, it’s such a time ago; and mother took me away because the master whacked me, though the missus use’n’t to never touch me. I didn’t like him at all. What do you think? he hit me three times, ever so hard, across the face with his cane, and made me go dancing down stairs; and when mother
saw the marks on my cheek, she went to blow him up, but she couldn’t see him – he was afraid. That’s why I left school.

‘The creases is so bad now, that I haven’t been out with ’em for three days. They’re so cold, people won’t buy ’em; for when I goes up to them, they say, “They’ll freeze our bellies.” Besides, in the market, they won’t sell a ha’penny handful now – they’re ris to a penny and tuppence. In summer there’s lots, and ‘most as cheap as dirt; but I have to be down at Farringdon-market between four and five, or else I can’t get any creases, because everyone almost – especially the Irish – is selling them, and they’re picked up so quick. Some of the saleswomen – we never calls ’em ladies – is very kind to us children, and some of them altogether spiteful. The good one will give you a bunch for nothing, when they’re cheap; but the others, cruel ones, if you try to bate them a farden less than they ask you, will say, “Go along with you, you’re no good.” I used to go down to market along with another girl, as must be about fourteen, ’cos she does her back hair up. When we’ve bought a lot, we sits down on a door-step, and ties up the bunches. We never goes home to breakfast till we’ve sold out; but, if it’s very late, then I buys a penn’orth of pudden, which is very nice with gravy. I don’t know hardly one of the people, as goes to Farringdon, to talk to; they never speaks to me, so I don’t speak to them. We children never play down there, ’cos we’re thinking of our living. No; people never pities me in the street – excepting one gentleman, and he says, says he, “What do you do out so soon in the morning?” but he gave me nothink – he only walked away.