London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (31 page)

Of an Irishwoman, as a Street-seller

[pp. 521–3] I have before had occasion to remark the aptitude of the poor Irish in the streets of London not so much to lie, which may be too harsh a word when motives and idiosyncrasy are considered, but to exaggerate, and misrepresent, and colour in such a way that the truth becomes a mere incident in the narrative, instead of being the animating principle throughout. I speak here not as regards any direct question or answer on one specific point, but as regards a connected statement. Presuming that a poor Irishwoman, for instance, had saved up a few shillings, very likely for some laudable purpose, and had them hidden about her person, and was asked if she had a farthing in the world, she would reply with a look of most stolid innocence, ‘Sorra a fardin, sir.’ This of course is an unmitigated lie. Then ask her
why
she is so poor and what are her hopes for the future, and a very slender substratum of truth will suffice for the putting together of a very ingenious history, if she think the occasion requires it.

It is the same when these poor persons are questioned as to their former
life. They have heard of societies to promote emigration, and if they fancy that any inquiries are made of them with a view to emigration, they will ingeniously shape their replies so as to promote or divert that object, according to their wishes. If they think the inquiries are for some charitable purpose, their tale of woe and starvation is heart-rending. The probability is that they may have suffered much, and long, and bravely, but they will still exaggerate. In one thing, however, I have found them understate the fact, and that I believe principally, or wholly, when they had been previously used to the most wretched of the Irish hovels. I mean as to their rooms. ‘Where do you live,’ may be asked. ‘Will, thin, in Paraker-street [Parker-street], Derwry-lane.’ ‘Have you a decent room?’ ‘Shure, thin, and it is dacint for a poor woman.’ On a visit, perhaps the room will be found smoky, filthy, half-ruinous, and wretched in every respect. I believe, however, that if these poor people could be made to comprehend the motives which caused their being questioned for the purposes of this work, the elucidation of the truth – motives which they cannot be made to understand – they would speak with a far greater regard to veracity. But they
will
suspect an ulterior object, involving some design on the part of the querist, and they will speak accordingly. To what causes, social or political, national, long-rooted, or otherwise, this spirit may be owing, it is not now my business to inquire.

At the outset of my inquiries amongst the poor Irish, whose civility and often native politeness, where there is a better degree of intelligence, makes it almost impossible to be angry with them even when you listen to a story of which you believe not one-sixth – at the outset of my inquiries, I say, I was told by an Irish gentleman that I was sure to hear the truth if I had authority to use the name of their priest. I readily obtained the consent of reverend gentlemen to use their names and for any purpose of inquiry, a courtesy which I thankfully acknowledged. I mention this more especially, that it may not be thought that there has been exaggeration in my foregoing or in the following statement, where the Irish are the narrators. I have little doubt of their truth.

It may be but proper to remark, in order that one class of poor people may not be unduly
depreciated
, while another class is, perhaps, unduly
appreciated
, that the poor Irishman is much more imaginative, is readier of wit and far readier of speech, than an Englishman of a corresponding grade; and were the untaught Englishman equally gifted in those respects, who will avouch that
his
regard for the truth would be much more severe?

Of the causes which induced a good-looking Irish woman to become a street-seller I had the following account, which I give in its curious details:

‘’Deed thin, sir, it’s more than 20 long years since I came from Dublin to Liverpool wid my father and mother, and brother William that’s dead and gone, rest his soul. He died when he was fourteen. They was masons in Ireland. Was both father and mother masons, sir? Well, then, in any quiet job mother helped father, for she was a strong woman. They came away sudden. They was in some thrubble, but I never knew what, for they wouldn’t talk to me about it. We thravelled from Liverpool to London, for there was no worruk at Liverpool; and he got worruk on buildings in London, and had 18
s
. a week; and mother cleaned and worruked for a greengrocer, as they called him – he sold coals more than anything – where we lodged, and it wasn’t much, she got, but she aimed what is such a thrubble to poor people, the rint. We was well off, and I was sent to school; and we should have been better off, but father took too much to the dhrop, God save him. He fell onste and broke his leg; and though the hospital gintlemen, God bless them for good Christians, got him through it, he got little worruk when he came out again, and died in less than a year. Mother wasn’t long afther him; and on her death-bed she said, so low I could hardly hear her, “Mary, my darlint, if you starruve, be vartuous. Rimimber poor Illen’s funeral.” When I was quite a child, sir, I went wid mother to a funeral – she was a relation – and it was of a young woman that died after her child had been borrun a fortnight, and she wasn’t married; that was Illen. Her body was brought out of the lying-in hospital – I’ve often heard spake of it since – and was in the churchyard to be buried; and her brother, that hadn’t seen her for a long time came and wanted to see her in her coffin, and they took the lid off, and then he currused her in her coffin afore him; she’d been so wicked. But he wasn’t a good man hisself, and was in dhrink too; still nobody said anything, and he walked away. It made me ill to see Illen in her coffin, and hear him curruse, and I’ve remimbered it ever since.

‘I was thin fifteen, I believe, and hadn’t any friends that had any tie to me. I was lone, sir. But the neebours said, “Poor thing, she’s left on the shuckrawn” (homeless); and they helped me, and I got a place. Mistress was very kind at first, that’s my first mistress was, and I had the care of a child of three years old; they had only one, because mistress was busy making waistcoats. Master was a hatter, and away all day, and they was well off. But some women called on mistress once, and they had a deal of talkin’, and bladherin’, and laughin’, and I don’t know how often I was sent out for quarters of gin. Then they all went out together; and mistress came home quite tipsy just afore master, and went upstairs, and had just time to get into bed; she told me to tell master she had one of her sick
headaches and was forced to go to bed; she went on that way for three or four days, and master and she used to quarrel of a night, for I could hear them. One night he came home sooner than common, and he’d been drinking, or perhaps it might be thrubble, and he sent me to bed wid the child; and sometime in the night, I don’t know what time, but I could only see from a gas-lamp that shined into the room, he came in, for there was no fastenin’ inside the door, it was only like a closet, and be began to ask me about mistress. When he larned she’d been drinking wid other women, he used dreadful language, and pulled me out of bed, and struck me with a stick that he snatched up, he could see it in the gas-light, it was little Frank’s horse, and swore at me for not telling him afore. He only struck me onste, but I screamed ever so often, I was so frightened. I dressed myself, and lay down in my clothes, and go up as soon as it was light – it was summer time – and thought I would go away and complain to some one. I would ask the neebours who to complain to. When I was going out there was master walking up and down the kitchen. He’d never been to bed, and he says, says he, “Mary, where are you going?” So I told him, and he begged my pardon, and said he was ashamed of what he’d done, but he was half mad; then he began to cry, and so I cried, and mistress came home just then, and when she saw us both crying together,
she
cried, and said she wasn’t wanted, as we was man and wife already. Master just gave her a push and down she fell, and he ran out. She seemed so bad, and the child began to cry, that I couldn’t lave thin; and master came home drunk that night, but he wasn’t cross, for he’d made out that mistress had been drinking with some neebours, and had got to her mother’s, and that she was so tipsy she fell asleep, they let her stay till morning, and then some woman set her home, but she’d been there all night. They made it up at last, but I wouldn’t stay. They was very kind to me when I left, and paid me all that was owing, and gave me a good pair of shoes, too; for they was well off.

‘I had a many places for seven years; after that, and when I was out of a place, I stayed wid a widder, and a very dacint woman, she was wid a daughter working for a bookbinder, and the old woman had a good pitch with fruit. Some of my places was very harrud, but shure, again, I met some as was very kind. I left one because they was always wanting me to go to a Methodist chapel, and was always running down my religion, and did all they could to hinder my ever going to mass. They would hardly pay me when I left, because I wouldn’t listen to them, they said – the haythens! – when they would have saved my soul.
They
save my soul, indeed! The likes o’ thim! Yes, indeed, thin, I had wicked offers sometimes,
and from masters that should have known better. I kept no company wid young men. One mistress refused me a karackter, because I was so unhandy, she said; but she thought better of it. At last, I had a faver (fever), and wasn’t expected for long (not expected to live); when I was getting well, everything went to keep me. What wasn’t good enough for the pawn went to the dolly (dolly-shop, generally a rag and bottle shop, or a marine store). When I could get about, I was so shabby, and my clothes hung about me so, that the shops I went to said, “Very sorry, but can’t recommend you anywhere”; and mistresses looked strange at me, and I didn’t know what to do and was miserable. I’d been miserable sometimes in place, and had many a cry, and thought how “lone” I was, but I never was so miserable as this. At last, the old woman I stayed along wid – O, yes, she was an Irishwoman – advised me to sill fruit in the streets, and I began on strawberries, and borrowed 2
s
. 6
d
. to do it wid. I had my hilth better than ever thin; and after I’d sold fruit of all kinds for two years, I got married. My husband had a potato can thin. I knew him because he lived near, and I saw him go in and out, and go to mass. After that he got a porter’s place and dropped his can, and he porters when he has a chance still, and has a little work in sewing sacks for the corn-merchants. Whin he’s at home at his sacks, as he is now, he can mind the children – we have two – and I sells a few oranges to make a thrifle. Whin there’s nothing ilse for him to do, he sills fruit in the sthreets, and thin I’m at home. We do middlin, God be praised.’

There is no doubt my informant was a modest, and, in her way, a worthy woman. But it may be doubted if any English girl, after seven years of domestic service, would have so readily adapted herself to a street calling. Had an English girl been living among, and used to the society of women who supported themselves by street labour, her repugnance to such a life might have been lessened; but even then, I doubt if she, who had the virtue to resist the offers told of by my Irish informant, could have made the attempt to live by selling fruit. I do not mean that she would rather have fallen into immoral courses than honestly live upon the sale of strawberries, but that she would have struggled on and striven to obtain any domestic labour in preference to a street occupation.

Of a Widow, a Street-seller

[pp. 523–4] A woman, apparently about 50, strong-built and red-faced, speaking in a loud tone, and what people of her class account a
hearty
manner, gave me the following account. I can readily condense it, for in
her street career there was nothing very novel. She was the daughter of a costermonger, and she married a costermonger before she was 20. On my hinting that sometimes the marriage ceremony was not considered indispensable, the good woman laughed and said, ‘married, or as good, it’s hall as one – but we was married.’ The marriage was not one of unalloyed happiness, for the couple often wrangled and occasionally fought. This was told to me with some laughter, and with perfect good humour; for the widow seemed interested to have a listener. She did not, I feel confident, exaggerate the merits of the deceased, nor, perhaps, his failings. He was the best judge of fish in the streets, she said, and was the neatest hand in cutting it up, or showing it off; he was not ‘a bad sort’, and was very fond of his children. When sober and at work he was a quiet fellow, without a cross word for a whole morning, but when drunk, which was far too often (unless
very
drunk, and then he was silly), he went about tearing and swearing ‘like one o’clock’. But if he saw his wife take but a glass or two, to do her good, he went on like a madman, and as if he never touched it himself. He never had nothing to say to other women – if he had she would have clawed their eyes out, and his’n too – he was as good that way as any nobleman could be, and he was a fine man to look at; and on a Sunday, when he dressed hisself, he was beautiful. He was never in a church in his life, and didn’t trouble hisself about such things; they was no concern of his’n.

It may be thought that I have treated this matter too lightly, but the foregoing is really the substance, and certainly it is the tone, of the widow’s talk, which she poured forth freely, without expressing wonder why any one, a perfect stranger, cared to listen to such a history. She needed but a few hints and leading questions to make her talk on. Nor is this an uncommon quality even among classes who would be shocked to be classed, in any respect, with the Widowed Street-Seller. Their own career, their own sayings and doings, hopes and disappointments, alone interest masses of people, and with the simplicity which not seldom pertains to selfishness, they will readily talk of all that interests themselves, as if it must necessarily interest others. On the whole, though the departed costermonger was greatly deplored by his widow and family, they did very well without him, and carry on the business to this day. He died four or five years back.