London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (22 page)

These traffickers constitute the principal street-sellers of literature, or ‘paper-workers’, of the ‘pattering’ class. In addition to them there are many others vending ‘papers’ in the public thoroughfares, who are mere traders resorting to no other acts for the disposal of their goods than a simple cry or exposition of them; and many of these are but poor, humble, struggling, and inoffensive dealers. They do not puff or represent what they have to sell as what it is not – (allowing them a fair commercial latitude). They are not of the ‘enterprising’ class of street tradesmen. Among these are the street-sellers of stationery – such as note-paper, envelopes, pens, ink, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers. Belonging to the same class, too, are the street-vendors of almanacs, pocket-books, memorandum and account-books. Then there are the sellers of odd numbers of periodicals and broadsheets, and those who vend either playing cards, conversation cards, stenographic cards, and (Epsom, Ascot, &c.) racing cards. Besides these, again, there are the vendors of illustrated cards, such as those embellished with engravings of the Crystal Palace, Views of the Houses of Parliament, as well as the gelatine poetry cards – all of whom, with the exception of the racing-card sellers (who belong generally to the pattering tribe), partake of the usual characteristics of the street-selling class.

After these may be enumerated the vendors of old engravings out of inverted umbrellas, and the hawkers of coloured pictures in frames. Then there are the old book-stalls and barrows, and ‘the pinners-up’, as they are termed, or sellers of old songs pinned against the wall, as well as the vendors of manuscript music. Moreover, appertaining to the same class, there are the vendors of playbills and ‘books of the performance’ outside the theatre; and lastly, the pretended sellers of tracts – such as the Lascars and others, who use this kind of street traffic as a cloak for the more profitable trade of begging. The street-sellers of images, although strictly comprised within those who vend fine art productions in the public thoroughfares will be treated of under the head of
THE STREET ITALIANS
, to which class they mostly belong.

Of the Sale of Newspapers, Books, &c
at the Railway Stations

[pp.
315
–16] Although the sale of newspapers at the railway termini, &c., cannot strictly be classed as a street-sale, it is so far an open-air traffic as to require some brief notice, and it has now become a trade of no small importance.

The privilege of selling to railway-passengers, within the precincts of the terminus, is disposed of by tender. At present the newsvendor on the North-Western Line, I am informed, pays to the company, for the right of sale at the Euston-square terminus, and the provincial stations, as large a sum as 1,700
l
. per annum. The amount usually given is of course in proportion to the number of stations, and the traffic of the railway.

The purchaser of this exclusive privilege sends his own servants to sell the newspapers and books, which he supplies to them in the quantity required. The men thus engaged are paid from 20
s
. to 30
s
. a week, and the boys receive from 6
s
. to 10
s
. 6
d
. weekly, but rarely 10
s
. 6
d
.

All the morning and evening papers are sold at the Station, but of the weekly press, those are sent for sale which in the manager’s judgment are likely to sell, or which his agent informs him are ‘asked for’. It is the same with the weekly unstamped publications. The reason seems obvious; if there be more than can be sold, a dead loss is incurred, for the surplusage, as regards newspapers, is only saleable as waste paper.

The books sold at railways are nearly all of the class best known as ‘light reading’, or what some account light reading. The price does not often exceed 1
s
.; and among the books offered for sale in these places are novels in one volume, published at 1
s
. – sometimes in two volumes, at 1
s
. each;
‘monthly parts’ of works issued in weekly numbers; shilling books of poetry; but rarely political or controversial pamphlets. One man, who understood this trade, told me that ‘a few of the pamphlets about the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman sold at first; but in a month or six weeks, people began to say, “A shilling for that! I’m sick of the thing.”’

The large sum given for the privilege of an exclusive sale, shows that the number of books and papers sold at railway stations must be very considerable. But it must be borne in mind, that the price, and consequently the profit on the daily newspapers, sold at the railways, is greater than elsewhere. None are charged less than 6
d
., the regular price at the news-agent’s shop being 5
d
., so that as the cost price is 4
d
. the profit is double. Nor is it unusual for a passenger by an early train, who grows impatient for his paper, to cry out, ‘A shilling for the
Times
!’ This, however, is only the case, I am told, with those who start very early in the morning; for the daily papers are obtained for the railway stations from among the earliest impressions, and can be had at the accustomed price as early as six o’clock, although, if there be exciting news and a great demand, a larger amount may be given.

[pp.
269
–72] The patterers, as a class, usually frequent the low lodging-houses. I shall therefore now proceed to give some further information touching the abodes of these people – reminding the reader that I am treating of patterers in general, and not of any particular order, as the ‘paper workers’.

In applying the epithet ‘low’ to these places, I do but adopt the word commonly applied, either in consequence of the small charge for lodging, or from the character of their frequenters. To some of these domiciles, however, as will be shown, the epithet, in an opprobrious sense, is unsuited.

An intelligent man, familiar for some years with some low lodging-house life, specified the quarters where those abodes are to be found, and divided them into the following districts, the correctness of which I caused to be ascertained.

Drury-lane District
. Here the low lodging-houses are to be found principally in the Coalyard, Charles-street, King-street, Parker-street, Short’s-gardens, Great and Little Wyld-streets, Wyld-court, Lincoln-court, Newton-street, Star-court.

Gray’s-inn District
. Fox-court, Charlotte-buildings, Spread Eagle-court,
Portpool-lane, Bell-court, Baldwin’s-gardens, Pheasant-court, Union-buildings, Laystall-street, Cromer-street, Fulwood’s-rents (High Holborn).

Chancery-lane
. Church-passage, and the Liberty of the Rolls.

Bloomsbury
. George-street, Church-lane, Queen-street, Seven-dials, Puckeridge-street (commonly called the Holy Land).

Saffron-hill and Clerkenwell
. Peter-street, Cow-cross, Turnmill-street, Upper and Lower Whitecross-street, St Helen’s-place, Playhouse-yard, Chequer-alley, Field-lane, Great Saffron-hill.

Westminster
. Old and New Pye-streets, Ann-street, Orchard-street, Perkins’s-rents, Rochester-row.

Lambeth
. Lambeth-walk, New-cut.

Marylebone
. York-court, East-street.

St Pancras
. Brooke-street.

Paddington
. Chapel-street, Union-court.

Shoreditch
. Baker’s-rents, Cooper’s-gardens.

Islington
. Angel-yard.

Whitechapel, Spitalfields, &c
. George-yard, Thrawl-street, Flower and Dean-street, Wentworth-street, Keate-street, Rosemary-lane, Glasshouse-yard, St George-street, Lambeth-street, Whitechapel, High-street.

Borough
. Mint-street, Old Kent-street, Long-lane, Bermondsey.

Stratford
. High-street.

Limehouse
. Hold (commonly called Hole).

Deptford
. Mill-lane, Church-street, Gifford-street.

There are other localities (as in Mile-end, Ratcliffe-highway, Shadwell, Wapping, and Lisson-grove), where low lodging-houses are to be found; but the places I have specified may be considered the
districts
of these hotels for the poor. The worst places, both as regards filth and immorality, are in St Giles’s and Wentworth-street, Whitechapel. The best are in Orchard-street, Westminster (the thieves having left it in consequence of the recent alterations and gone to New Pye-street), and in the Mint, Borough. In the last-mentioned district, indeed, some of the proprietors of the lodging-houses have provided considerable libraries for the use of the inmates. In the White Horse, Mint-street, for instance, there is a collection of 500 volumes, on all subjects, bought recently, and having been the contents of a circulating library, advertised for sale in the
Weekly Dispatch
.

Of lodging-houses for ‘travellers’ the largest is known as the Farm House, in the Mint: it stands away from any thoroughfare, and lying low is not seen until the visitor stands in the yard. Tradition rumour states that the house was at one time Queen Anne’s, and was previously Cardinal Wolsey’s. It was probably some official residence. In this lodging-house are
forty rooms, 200 beds (single and double), and accommodation for 200 persons. It contains three kitchens, – of which the largest, at once kitchen and sitting-room, holds 400 people, for whose uses in cooking there are two large fire-places. The other two kitchens are used only on Sundays; when one is a preaching-room, in which missionaries from Surrey Chapel (the Rev. James Sherman’s), or some minister or gentleman of the neighbourhood, officiates. The other is a reading-room, supplied with a few newspapers and other periodicals; and thus, I was told, the religious and irreligious need not clash. For the supply of these papers each person pays 1
d
. every Sunday morning; and as the sum so collected is more than is required for the expenses of the reading-room, the surplus is devoted to the help of the members in sickness, under the management of the proprietor of the lodging-house, who appears to possess the full confidence of his inmates. The larger kitchen is detached from the sleeping apartments, so that the lodgers are not annoyed with the odour of the cooking of fish and other food consumed by the poor; for in lodging-houses every sojourner is his own cook. The meal in most demand is tea, usually with a herring, or a piece of bacon.

The yard attached to the Farm House, in Mint-street, covers an acre and a half; in it is a washing-house, built recently, the yard itself being devoted to the drying of the clothes – washed by the customers of the establishment. At the entrance to this yard is a kind of porter’s lodge, in which reside the porter and his wife who act as the ‘deputies’ of the lodging-house. This place has been commended in sanitary reports, for its cleanliness, good order, and care for decency, and for a proper division of the sexes. On Sundays there is no charge for lodging to known customers; but this is a general practice among the low lodging-houses of London.

In contrast to this house I could cite many instances, but I need do no more in this place than refer to the statements, which I shall proceed to give; some of these were collected in the course of a former inquiry, and are here given because the same state of things prevails now. I was told by a trustworthy man that not long ago he was compelled to sleep in one of the lowest (as regards cheapness) of the lodging-houses. All was dilapidation, filth, and noisomeness. In the morning he drew, for purposes of ablution, a basinfull of water from a pailfull kept in the room. In the water were floating alive, or apparently alive, bugs and lice, which my informant was convinced had fallen from the ceiling, shaken off by the tread of some one walking in the rickety apartments above!

‘Ah, sir,’ said another man with whom I conversed on the subject, ‘if you had lived in the lodging-houses, you would say what a vast difference
a penny made, – it’s often all in all. It’s 4
d
. in the Mint House you’ve been asking me about; you’ve sleep and comfort there, and I’ve seen people kneel down and say their prayers before they went to bed. Not so many, though. Two or three in a week at nights, perhaps. And it’s wholesome and sweet enough there, and large separate beds; but in other places there’s nothing to smell or feel but bugs. When daylight comes in the summer – and it’s often either as hot as hell or as cold as icicles in those places; but in summer, as soon as it’s light, if you turn down the coverlet, you’ll see them a-going it like Cheapside when it’s throngest.’ The poor man seemed to shudder at the recollection.

One informant counted for me 180 of these low lodging-houses; and it is reasonable to say that there are, in London, at least 200 of them. The average number of beds in each was computed for me, by persons cognizant of such matters from long and often woeful experience, at 52 single or 24 double beds, where the house might be confined to single men or single women lodgers, or to married or pretendedly married couples, or to both classes. In either case, we may calculate the number that can be, and generally are, accommodated at 50 per house; for children usually sleep with their parents, and 50 may be the lowest computation. We have thus no fewer than 10,000 persons domiciled, more or less permanently, in the low lodging-houses of London – a number more than doubling the population of many a parliamentary borough.

The proprietors of these lodging-houses mostly have been, I am assured, vagrants, or, to use the civiller and commoner word, ‘travellers’ themselves, and therefore sojourners, on all necessary occasions, in such places. In four cases out of five I believe this to be the case. The proprietors have raised capital sufficient to start with, sometimes by gambling at races, sometimes by what I have often, and very vaguely, heard described as a ‘run of luck’; and sometimes, I am assured, by the proceeds of direct robbery. A few of the proprietors may be classed as capitalists. One of them, who has a country house in Hampstead, has six lodging-houses in or about Thrawl-street, Whitechapel. He looks in at each house every Saturday, and calls his deputies – for he has a deputy in each house – to account; he often institutes a stringent check. He gives a poor fellow money to go and lodge in one of his houses, and report the number present. Sometimes the person so sent meets with the laconic repulse – ‘Full’; and woe to the deputy if his return do not evince this fulness. Perhaps one in every fifteen of the low lodging-houses in town is also a beer-shop. Very commonly so in the country.