London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (57 page)

‘The other trick is a feat which I make known to the public as one of Ramo Samee’s, which he used to perform in public-houses and tap-rooms, and made a deal of money out of. With the same plate and a piece of dry tow placed in it, I have a pepper-box, with ground rosing and sulphur together. I light the tow, and with a knife and fork I set down to it and eat it, and exclaim, ‘This is my light supper.’ There isn’t no holding the breath so much in this trick as in the others, but you must get it into the mouth any how. It’s like eating a hot beef-steak when you are ravenous. The rosin is apt to drop on the flesh and cause a long blister. You see, we have to eat it with the head up, full-faced; and really, without it’s seen, nobody would believe what I do.

‘There’s another feat, of exploding the gunpower. There’s two ways of exploding it. This is my way of doing it, though I only does it for my own benefits and on grand occasions, for it’s very dangerous indeed to the frame, for it’s sure to destroy the hair of the head; or if anything smothers it, it’s liable to shatter a thumb or a limb.

‘I have a man to wait on me for this trick, and he unloops my dress and takes it off, leaving the bare back and arms. Then I gets a quarter of a pound of powder, and I has an ounce put on the back part of the neck, in the hollow, and I holds out each arm with an orange in the palm of each hand, with a train along the arms, leading up to the neck. Then I turns my back to the audience, and my man fires the gunpowder, and it blew up in a minute, and ran down the train and blew up that in my hands. I’ve been pretty lucky with this trick, for it’s only been when the powder’s got under my bracelets, and then it hurts me. I’m obliged to hold the hand up, for if it hangs down it hurts awful. It looks like a scurvy, and as the new skin forms, the old one falls off.

‘That’s the whole of my general performance for concert business, when I go busking at free concerts or outside of shows (I generally gets a crown a day at fairs). I never do the gunpowder, but only the tow and the link.

‘I have been engaged at the Flora Gardens, and at St Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe, and then I was Signor Salamander, the great fire-king from the East-end theatres. At the Eel-pie–house, Peckham, I did the “terrific
flight through the air”, coming down a wire surrounded by fire-works. I was called Herr Alma, the flying fiend. There was four scaffold-poles placed at the top of the house to form a tower, just large enough for me to lie down on my belly, for the swivels on the rope to be screwed into the cradle round my body. A wire is the best, but they had a rope. On this cradle were places for the fireworks to be put in it. I had a helmet of fire on my head, and the three spark cases (they are made with steel-filings, and throw out sparks) made of Prince of Wales feathers. I had a sceptre in my hand of two serpents, and in their open mouths they put fire-balls, and they looked as if they was spitting fiery venom. I had wings, too, formed from the ankle to the waist. They was netting, and spangled, and well sized to throw off the fire. I only did this two nights, and I had ten shillings each performance. It’s a momentary feeling coming down, a kind of suffocation like, so that you must hold your breath. I had two men to cast me off. There was a gong first of all, knocked to attract the attention, and then I made my appearance. First, a painted pigeon, made of lead, is sent down the wire as a pilot. It has moveable wings. Then all the fire-works are lighted up, and I come down right through the thickest of ’em. There’s a trap-door set in the scene at the end, and two men is there to look after it. As soon as I have passed it, the men shut it, and I dart up against a feather-bed. The speed I come down at regularly jams me up against it, but you see I throw away this sceptre and save myself with my hands a little. I feel fagged for want of breath. It seems like a sudden fright, you know. I sit down for a few minutes, and then I’m all right.

‘I’m never afraid of fire. There was a turner’s place that took fire, and I saved that house from being burned. He was a friend of mine, the turner was, and when I was there, the wife thought she heard the children crying, and asked me to go up and see what it was. As I went up I could smell fire worse and worse, and when I got in the room it was full of smoke, and all the carpet, and bed-hangings, and curtains smouldering. I opened the window, and the fire burst out, so I ups with the carpet and throw’d it out of window, together with the blazing chairs, and I rolled the linen and drapery up and throw’d them out. I was as near suffocated as possible. I went and felt the bed, and there was two children near dead from the smoke; I brought them down, and a medical man was called, and he brought them round.

‘I don’t reckon no more than two other fire-kings in London beside myself. I only know of two, and I should be sure to hear of ’em if there were more. But they can only do three of the tricks, and I’ve got novelties enough to act for a fortnight, with fresh performances every evening.
There’s a party in Drury-lane is willing to back me for five, fifteen, or twenty pounds, against anybody that will come and answer to it, to perform with any other man for cleanness and cleverness, and to show more variety of performance.

‘I’m always at fire-eating. That’s how I entirely get my living, and I perform five nights out of the six. Thursday night is the only night, as I may say, I’m idle. Thursday night everybody’s fagged, that’s the saying – Got no money. Friday, there’s many large firms pays their men on, especially in Bermondsey.

‘I’m out of an engagement now, and I don’t make more than eleven shillings a week, because I’m busking; but when I’m in an engagement my money stands me about thirty-five shillings a week, putting down the value of the drink as well – that is, what’s allowed for refreshment. Summer is the worst time for me, ’cos people goes to the gardens. In the winter season I’m always engaged three months out of the six. You might say, if you counts the overplus at one time, and minus at other time, that I makes a pound a week. I know what it is to go to the treasury on a Saturday, and get my thirty shillings, and I know what it is to have the landlord come with his “Hallo! hallo! here’s three weeks due, and another week running on.”

‘I was very hard up at one time – when I was living in Friar-street – and I used to frequent a house kept by a betting-man, near the St George’s Surrey Riding-school. A man I knew used to supply this betting-man with rats. I was at this public-house one night when this rat-man comes up to me, and says he, “Hallo! my pippin; here, I want you: I want to make a match. Will you kill thirty rats against my dog?” So I said, “Let me see the dog first;” and I looked at his mouth, and he was an old dog; so I says,’ ‘No, I won’t go in for thirty; but I don’t mind trying at twenty.” He wanted to make it twenty-four, but I wouldn’t. They put the twenty in the rat-pit and the dog went in first and killed his, and he took a quarter of an hour and two minutes. Then a fresh lot were put in the pit, and I began; my hands were tied behind me. They always make an allowance for a man, so the pit was made closer, for you see a man can’t turn round like a dog; I had half the space of the dog. The rats lay in a cluster, and then I picked them off where I wanted ’em and bit ’em between the shoulders. It was when they came to one or two that I had the work, for they cut about. The last one made me remember him, for he gave me a bite, of which I’ve got the scar now. It festered, and I was obliged to have it cut out. I took Dutch drops for it, and poulticed it by day, and I was bad for three weeks. They made a subscription in the room of fifteen shillings for
killing these rats. I won the match, and beat the dog by four minutes. The wager was five shillings, which I had. I was at the time so hard up, I’d do anything for some money; though, as far as that’s concerned, I’d go into a pit now, if anybody would make it worth my while.’

Street Clown

[pp. 129–31] He was a melancholy-looking man, with the sunken eyes and other characteristics of semi-starvation, whilst his face was scored with lines and wrinkles, telling of paint and premature age.

I saw him performing in the streets with a school of acrobats soon after I had been questioning him, and the readiness and business-like way with which he resumed his professional buffoonery was not a little remarkable. His story was more pathetic than comic, and proved that the life of a street clown is, perhaps, the most wretched of all existence. Jest as he may in the street, his life is literally no joke at home.

‘I have been a clown for sixteen years,’ he said, ‘having lived totally by it for that time. I was left motherless at two years of age, and my father died when I was nine. He was a carman, and his master took me as a stable boy, and I stayed with him until he failed in business. I was then left destitute again, and got employed as a supernumerary at Astley’s, at one shilling a night. I was a “super” some time, and got an insight into theatrical life. I got acquainted, too, with singing people, and could sing a good song, and came out at last on my own account in the streets, in the Jim Crow line. My necessities forced me into a public line, which I am far from liking. I’d pull trucks at one shilling a day, rather than get twelve shillings a week at my business. I’ve tried to get out of the line. I’ve got a friend to advertise for me for any situation as groom. I’ve tried to get into the police, and I’ve tried other things, but somehow there seems an impossibility to get quit of the street business. Many times I have to play the clown, and indulge in all kinds of buffoonery, with a terrible heavy heart. I have travelled very much, too, but I never did over-well in the profession. At races I may have made ten shillings for two or three days, but that was only occasional; and what is ten shillings to keep a wife and family on, for a month maybe? I have three children, one now only eight weeks old. You can’t imagine, sir, what a curse the street business often becomes, with its insults and starvations. The day before my wife was confined, I jumped and labour’d doing Jim Crow for twelve hours – in the wet, too – and earned one shilling and threepence; with this I returned to a home without a bit of coal, and with only half a quartern loaf in it.
I know it was one shilling and threepence; for I keep a sort of log of my earnings and my expenses; you’ll see on it what I’ve earn’d as clown, or the funnyman, with a party of acrobats, since the beginning of this year.’

He showed me this log, as he called it, which was kept in small figures, on paper folded up as economically as possible. His latest weekly earnings were, 12
s
. 6
d
., 1
s
. 10
d
., 7
s
. 7
d
., 2
s
. 5
d
., 3
s
11½
d
., 7
s
. 7½
d
., 7
s
. 9¼
d
., 6
s
. 4½
d
., 10
s
. 10½
d
., 9
s
. 7
d
., 6
s
. 1½
d
., 15
s
6¼
d
., 6
s
. 5
d
., 4
s
. 2
d
., 12
s
. 10¼
d
., 15
s
. 5½
d
., 14
s
. 4
d
. Against this was set off what the poor man had to expend for his dinner, &c., when out playing the clown, as he was away from home and could not dine with his family. The ciphers intimate the weeks when there was no such expense, or in other words, those which had been passed without dinner, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2
s
. 2½
d
., 3
s
. 9¼
d
., 4
s
. 2
d
., 4
s
. 5
d
., 5
s
. 8¼
d
., 5
s
. 11¼
d
., 4
s
. 10½
d
., 2
s
. 8¾
d
., 3
s
. 7¾
d
., 3
s
. 4¼
d
., 6
s
. 5¼
d
., 4
s
. 6¾
d
., 4
s
3
d
. This account shows an average of 8
s
. 6½
d
. a-week as the gross gain, whilst, if the expenses be deducted, not quite six shillings remain as the average weekly sum to be taken home to wife and family.

‘I dare say,’ continued the man, ‘that no persons think more of their dignity than such as are in my way of life. I would rather starve than ask for parochial relief. Many a time I have gone to my labour without breaking my fast, and played clown until I could raise dinner. I have to make jokes as clown, and could fill a volume with all I knows.’

He told me several of his jests; they were all of the most venerable kind, as for instance: ‘A horse has ten legs: he has two fore legs and two hind ones. Two fores are eight, and two others are ten.’ The other jokes were equally puerile, as, ‘Why is the City of Rome,’ (he would have it Rome), ‘like a candle wick? Because it’s in the midst of Greece.’ ‘Old and young are both of one age: your son at twenty is young, and your horse at twenty is old: and so old and young are the same.’ ‘The dress,’ he continued, ‘that I wear in the streets consists of red striped cotton stockings, with full trunks, dotted red and black. The body, which is dotted like the trunks, fits tight like a woman’s gown, and has full sleeves and frills. The wig or scalp is made of horse-hair, which is sown on to a white cap, and is in the shape of a cock’s comb. My face is painted with dry white lead. I grease my skin first and then dab the white paint on (flake-white is too dear for us street clowns); after that I colour my cheeks and mouth with vermilion. I never dress at home; we all dress at public-houses. In the street where I lodge, only a very few know what I do for a living. I and my wife both strive to keep the business a secret from our neighbours. My wife does a little washing when able, and often works eight hours for sixpence. I go out at eight in the morning and return at dark. My children hardly know
what I do. They see my dresses lying about, but that is all. My eldest is a girl of thirteen. She has seen me dressed at Stepney fair, where she brought me my tea (I live near there); she laughs when she sees me in my clown’s dress, and wants to stay with me: but I would rather see her lay dead before me (and I had two dead in my place at one time, last Whitsun Monday was a twelvemonth) than she should ever belong to my profession.’