London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (50 page)

‘We always meet at St Martin’s steps – the “jury house”, we calls ’em – at three o ‘clock in the morning, that’s always our hour. We reckons up what we ‘ve taken, but we don’t divide. Sometimes, if we owe anythink where we lodge, the women of the house will be waiting on the steps for us: then, if we ‘ve got it, we pay them; if we haven ‘t, why it can ‘t be helped, and it goes on. We gets into debt, because sometimes the women where we live gets lushy; then we don’t give them anythink, because they’d forget it, so we spends it ourselves. We can ‘t lodge at what’s called model lodging-houses, as our hours don’t suit them folks. We pays threepence a-night for lodging. Food, if we get plenty of money, we buys for ourselves. We buys a pound of bread, that’s two-pence farthing – best seconds, and a farthing’s worth of dripping – that’s enough for a pound of bread – and we gets a ha’porth of tea and a ha’porth of sugar; or if we ‘re hard up, we gets only a penn’orth of bread. We make our own tea at home; they lends us a kittle, tea-pot, and cups and saucers, and all that.

‘Once or twice a-week we gets meat. We all club together, and go into Newgate Market and gets some pieces cheap, and biles them at home. We tosses up who shall have the biggest bit, and we divide the broth, a cupful in each basin, until it’s lasted out. If any of us has been unlucky we each gives the unlucky one one or two halfpence. Some of us is obliged at times to sleep out all night; and sometimes, if any of us gets nothink, then the others gives him a penny or two, and
he
does the same for us when
we
are out of luck.

‘Besides, there’s our clothes: I’m paying for a pair of boots now. I paid a shilling off Saturday night.

‘When we gets home at half-past three in the morning, whoever cries out “first wash” has it. First of all we washes our feet, and we all uses the same water. Then we washes our faces and hands, and necks, and whoever fetches the fresh water up has first wash; and if the second don’t like to go and get fresh, why he uses the dirty. Whenever we come in the landlady makes us wash our feet. Very often the stones cuts our feet and
makes them bleed; then we bind a bit of rag round them. We like to put on boots and shoes in the day-time, but at night-time we can ‘t, because it stops the tumbling.

‘On the Sunday we all have a clean shirt put on before we go out, and then we go and tumble after the omnibuses. Sometimes we do very well on a fine Sunday, when there’s plenty of people out on the roofs of the busses. We never do anythink on a wet day, but only when it’s been raining and then dried up. I have run after a Cremorne bus, when they ‘ve thrown us money, as far as from Charing-cross right up to Piccadilly, but if they don’t throw us nothink we don’t run very far. I should think we gets at that work, taking one Sunday with another, eightpence all the year round.

‘When there’s snow on the ground we puts our money together, and goes and buys an old shovel, and then, about seven o ‘clock in the morning, we goes to the shops and asks them if we shall scrape the snow away. We general gets twopence every house, but some gives sixpence, for it’s very hard to clean the snow away, particularly when it’s been on the ground some time. It’s awful cold, and gives us chilblains on our feet; but we don’t mind it when we ‘re working, for we soon gets hot then.

‘Before winter comes, we general save up our money and buys a pair of shoes. Sometimes we makes a very big snowball and rolls it up to the hotels, and then the gentlemen laughs and throws us money; or else we pelt each other with snowballs, and then they scrambles money between us. We always go to Morley’s Hotel, at Charing-cross. The police in winter times is kinder to us than in summer, and they only laughs at us – p’rhaps it is because there is not so many of us about then – only them as is obligated to find a living for themselves; for many of the boys has fathers and mothers as sends them out in summer, but keeps them at home in winter when it’s piercing cold.

‘I have been to the station-house, because the police always takes us up if we are out at night; but we ‘re only locked up till morning, – that is, if we behaves ourselves when we ‘re taken before the gentleman. Mr Hall, at Bow-street, only says, “Poor boy, let him go.” But it’s only when we ‘ve done nothink but stop out that he says that. He’s a kind old gentleman; but mind, it’s only when you have been before him two or three times he says so, because if it’s a many times, he’ll send you for fourteen days.

‘But we don’t mind the police much at night-time, because we jumps over the walls round the place at Trafalgar-square, and they don’t like to follow us at that game, and only stands looking at you over the parrypit. There was one tried to jump the wall, but he split his trousers all to bits,
and now they’re afraid. That was Old Bandy as bust his breeches; and we all hate him, as well as another we calls Black Diamond, what’s general along with the Red Liners, as we calls the Mendicity officers, who goes about in disguise as gentlemen, to take up poor boys caught begging.

‘When we are talking together we always talk in a kind of slang. Each policeman we gives a regular name – there’s “Bull’s Head”, “Bandy Shanks”, and “Old Cherry Legs”, and “Dot-and-carry-one”, they all knows their names as well as us. We never talks of crossings, but “fakes”. We don’t make no slang of our own, but uses the regular one.

‘A broom doesn ‘t last us more than a week in wet weather, and they costs us twopence halfpenny each; but in dry weather they are good for a fortnight.’

Young Mike’s Statement

[pp. 564–5] The next lad I examined was called Mike. He was a short, stout-set youth, with a face like an old man’s, for the features were hard and defined, and the hollows had got filled up with dirt till his countenance was brown as an old wood carving. I have seldom seen so dirty a face, for the boy had been in a perspiration, and then wiped his cheeks with his muddy hands, until they were marbled, like the covering to a copy-book.

The old lady of the house in which the boy lived seemed to be hurt by the unwashed appearance of her lodger. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself – and that’s God’s truth – not to go and sluice yourself afore spaking to the jintlemin,’ she cried, looking alternately at me and the lad, as if asking me to witness her indignation.

Mike wore no shoes, but his feet were as black as if cased in gloves with short fingers. His coat had been a man’s, and the tails reached to his ankles; one of the sleeves was wanting, and a dirty rag had been wound round the arm in its stead. His hair spread about like a tuft of grass where a rabbit has been squatting.

He said, ‘I haven’t got neither no father nor no mother – never had, sir; for father’s been dead these two year, and mother getting on for eight. They was both Irish people, please sir, and father was a bricklayer. When father was at work in the country, mother used to get work carrying loads at Covent-garden Market. I lived with father till he died, and that was from a complaint in his chest. After that I lived along with my big brother, what’s ‘listed in the Marines now. He used to sweep a crossing in Camden-town, opposite the Southampting Harms, near the toll gate.

‘He did pretty well up there sometimes, such as on Christmas-day,
where he has took as much as six shillings sometimes, and never less than one and sixpence. All the gentlements knowed him thereabouts, and one or two used to give him a shilling a week regular.

‘It was he as first of all put me up to sweep a crossing, and I used to take my stand at St Martin’s Church.

‘I didn ‘t see anybody working there, so I planted myself on it. After a time some other boys come up. They come up and wanted to turn me off, and began hitting me with their brooms, – they hit me regular hard with the old stumps; there was five or six of them; so I couldn ‘t defend myself, but told the policeman, and he turned them all away except me, because he saw me on first, sir. Now we are all friends, and work together, and all that we earns ourself we has.

‘On a good day, when it’s poured o’ rain and then leave off sudden, and made it nice and muddy, I ‘ve took as much as ninepence; but it’s too dry now, and we don’t do more than fourpence.

‘At night, I go along with the others tumbling. I does the cat’en-wheel [probably a contraction of Catherine-wheel]; I throws myself over sideways on my hands with my legs in the air. I can ‘t do it more than four times running, because it makes the blood to the head, and then all the things seems to turn round. Sometimes a chap will give me a lick with a stick just as I’m going over – sometimes a reg’lar good hard whack; but it ain ‘t often, and we general gets a halfpenny or a penny by it.

‘The boys as runs after the busses was the first to do these here cat’en-wheels. I know the boy as was the very first to do it. His name is Gander, so we calls him the Goose.

‘There’s about nine or ten of us in our gang, and as is reg’lar; we lodges at different places, and we has our reg’lar hours for meeting, but we all comes and goes when we likes, only we keeps together, so as not to let any others come on the crossings but ourselves.

‘If another boy tries to come on we cries out, “Here’s a Rooshian”, and then if he won ‘t go away, we all sets on him and gives him a drubbing; and if he still comes down the next day, we pays him out twice as much, and harder.

‘There’s never been one down there yet as can lick us all together.

‘If we sees one of our pals being pitched into by other boys, we goes up and helps him. Gander’s the leader of our gang, ’cause he can tumble back’ards (no, that ain ‘t the cat’en-wheel, that’s tumbling); so he gets more tin give him, and that’s why we makes him cap’an.

‘After twelve at night we goes to the Regent’s Circus, and we tumbles there to the gentlemen and ladies. The most I ever got was sixpence at a
time. The French ladies never give us nothink, but they all says, “Chit, chit, chit,” like hissing at us, for they can ‘t understand us, and we ‘re as bad off with them.

‘If it’s a wet night we leaves off work about twelve o’clock, and don’t bother with the Haymarket.

‘The first as gets to the crossing does the sweeping away of the mud. Then they has in return all the halfpence they can take. When it’s been wet every day, a broom gets down to stump in about four days. We either burns the old brooms, or, if we can, we sells ’em for a ha’penny to some other boy, if he’s flat enough to buy ’em.’

Gander – the ‘Captain’ of the Boy Crossing-sweepers

[pp. 565–7] Gander, the captain of the gang of boy crossing-sweepers, was a big lad of sixteen, with a face devoid of all expression, until he laughed, when the cheeks, mouth, and forehead instantly became crumpled up with a wonderful quantity of lines and dimples. His hair was cut short, and stood up in all directions, like the bristles of a hearth-broom, and was a light dust tint, matching with the hue of his complexion, which also, from an absence of washing, had turned to a decided drab, or what house-painters term a stone-colour.

He spoke with a lisp, occasioned by the loss of two of his large front teeth, which allowed the tongue as he talked to appear through the opening in a round nob like a raspberry.

The boy’s clothing was in a shocking condition. He had no coat, and his blue-striped shirt was as dirty as a French-polisher’s rags, and so tattered, that the shoulder was completely bare, while the sleeve hung down over the hand like a big bag.

From the fish-scales on the sleeves of his coat, it had evidently once belonged to some coster in the herring line. The nap was all worn off, so that the lines of the web were showing like a coarse carpet; and instead of buttons, string had been passed through holes pierced at the side.

Of course he had no shoes on, and his black trousers, which, with the grease on them, were gradually assuming a tarpaulin look, were fastened over one shoulder by means of a brace and bits of string.

During his statement, he illustrated his account of the tumbling backwards – the ‘caten-wheeling’ – with different specimens of the art, throwing himself about on the floor with an ease and almost grace, and taking up so small a space of the ground for the performance, that his limbs seemed to bend as though his bones were flexible like cane.

‘To tell you the blessed truth, I can ‘t say the last shilling I handled.’

‘Don’t you go a-believing on him,’ whispered another lad in my ear, whilst Gander’s head was turned: ‘he took thirteenpence last night, he did.’

It was perfectly impossible to obtain from this lad any account of his average earnings. The other boys in the gang told me that he made more than any of them. But Gander, who is a thorough street-beggar, and speaks with a peculiar whine, and who, directly you look at him, puts on an expression of deep distress, seemed to have made up his mind, that if he made himself out to be in great want I should most likely relieve him – so he would not budge an inch from his twopence a-day, declaring it to be the maximum of his daily earnings.

‘Ah,’ he continued, with a persecuted tone of voice, ‘if I had only got a little money, I’d be a bright youth! The first chance as I get of earning a few halfpence, I’ll buy myself a coat, and be off to the country, and I’ll lay something I’d soon be a gentleman then, and come home with a couple of pounds in my pocket, instead of never having ne’er a farthing, as now.’

One of the other lads here exclaimed, ‘Don’t go on like that there, Goose; you’re making us out ail liars to the gentleman.’

The old woman also interfered. She lost all patience with Gander, and reproached him for making a false return of his income. She tried to shame him into truthfulness, by saying –

‘Look at my Johnny – my grandson, sir, he’s not a quarther the Goose’s size, and yet he’ll bring me home his shilling, or perhaps eighteenpence or two shillings – for shame on you, Gander I Now, did you make six shillings last week? – now, speak God’s truth!’

‘What! six shillings?’ cried the Goose –’six shillings!’ and he began to look up at the ceiling, and shake his hands. ‘Why, I never heard of sich a sum. I did once
see
a half-crown; but I don’t know as I ever touched e‘er a one.’

‘Thin,’ added the old woman, indignantly, ‘it’s because you ‘re idle, Gander, and you don’t study when you ‘re on the crossing; but lets the gintlefolk go by without ever a word. That’s what it is, sir.’