The next house we called at in Walker's Court was much like the
first in appearance--very little left but the walls, and that
little, such as none but the neediest would pick up, if it was
thrown out to the streets. The only person in the place was a pale,
crippled woman; her sick head, lapped in a poor white clout, swayed
languidly to and fro. Besides being a cripple, she had been ill six
years, and now her husband, also, was taken ill. He had just crept
off to fetch medicine for the two. We did not stop here long. The
hand of the Ancient Master was visible in that pallid face; those
sunken eyes, so full of deathly langour, seemed to be wandering
about in dim, flickering gazes, upon the confines of an unknown
world. I think that woman will soon be "where the weary are at
rest." As we came out, she said, slowly, and in broken, painful
utterances, that "she hoped the Lord would open the heavens for
those who had helped them." A little lower down the court, we peeped
in at two other doorways. The people were well known to my
companion, who has the charge of visiting this part of the ward.
Leaning against the door-cheek of one of these dim, unwholesome
hovels, he said, "Well, missis; how are you getting on?" There was a
tall, thin woman inside. She seemed to be far gone in some
exhausting illness. With slow difficulty she rose to her feet, and,
setting her hands to her sides, gasped out, "My coals are done." He
made a note, and said, I'll send you some more." Her other wants
were regularly seen to on a certain day every week. Ours was an
accidental visit. We now turned up to another nook of the court,
where my companion told me there was a very bad case. He found the
door fast. We looked through the window into that miserable man-
nest. It was cold, gloomy, and bare. As Corrigan says, in the
"Colleen Bawn," "There was nobody in--but the fire--and that was
gone out." As we came away, a stalwart Irishman met us at a turn of
the court, and said to my companion, "Sure, ye didn't visit this
house." " Not to-day;" replied the visitor. "I'll come and see you
at the usual time." The people in this house were not so badly off
as some others. We came down the steps of the court into the fresher
air of Friargate again.
Our next walk was to Heatley Street. As we passed by a cluster of
starved loungers, we overheard one of them saying to another,
"Sitho, yon's th' soup-maister, gooin' a-seein' somebry." Our time
was getting short, so we only called at one house in Heatley Street,
where there was a family of eleven--a decent family, a well-kept and
orderly household, though now stript almost to the bare ground of
all worldly possession, sold, bitterly, piecemeal, to help to keep
the bare life together, as sweetly as possible, till better days.
The eldest son is twenty-seven years of age. The whole family has
been out of work for the last seventeen weeks, and before that, they
had been working only short time for seven months. For thirteen
weeks they had lived upon less than one shilling a head per week,
and I am not sure that they did not pay the rent out of that; and
now the income of the whole eleven is under 16s., with rent to pay.
In this house they hold weekly prayer-meetings. Thin picking--one
shilling a week, or less--for all expenses, for one person. It is
easier to write about it than to feel what it means, unless one has
tried it for three or four months. Just round the corner from
Heatley Street, we stopped at the open door of a very little
cottage. A good-looking young Irishwoman sat there, upon a three-
legged stool, suckling her child. She was clean; and had an
intelligent look. "Let's see, missis," said the visitor, "what do
you pay for this nook?" "We pay eighteenpence a week--and they WILL
have it--my word." "Well, an' what income have you now?" "We have
eighteenpence a head in the week, an' the rent to pay out o' that,
or else they'll turn us out." Of course, the visitor knew that this
was true; but he wanted me to hear the people speak for themselves.
"Let's see, Missis Burns, your husband's name is Patrick, isn't it?"
" Yes, sir; Patrick Burns." "What! Patrick Burns, the famous foot-
racer?" The little woman smiled bashfully, and replied, "Yes, sir; I
suppose it is." With respect to what the woman said about having to
pay her rent or turn out, I may remark, in passing, that I have not
hitherto met with an instance in which any millowner, or wealthy
man, having cottage property, has pressed the unemployed poor for
rent. But it is well to remember that there is a great amount of
cottage property in Preston, as in other manufacturing towns, which
belongs to the more provident class of working men. These working
men, now hard pressed by the general distress, have been compelled
to fall back upon their little rentals, clinging to them as their
last independent means of existence. They are compelled to this,
for, if they cannot get work, they cannot get anything else, having
property. These are becoming fewer, however, from day to day. The
poorest are hanging a good deal upon those a little less poor than
themselves; and every link in the lengthening chain of neediness is
helping to pull down the one immediately above it. There is, also, a
considerable amount of cottage property in Preston, belonging to
building societies, which have enough to do to hold their own just
now. And then there is always some cottage property in the hands of
agents.
Leaving Heatley Street, we went to a place called "Seed's Yard."
Here we called upon a clean old stately widow, with a calm, sad
face. She had been long known, and highly respected, in a good
street, not far off, where she had lived for twenty-four years, in
fair circumstances, until lately. She had always owned a good
houseful of furniture; but, after making bitter meals upon the
gradual wreck of it, she had been compelled to break up that house,
and retire with her five children to lodge with a lone widow in this
little cot, not over three yards square, in "Seed's Yard," one of
those dark corners into which decent poverty is so often found now,
creeping unwillingly away from the public eye, in the hope of
weathering the storm of adversity, in penurious independence. The
old woman never would accept relief from the parish, although the
whole family had been out of work for many months. One of the
daughters, a clean, intelligent-looking young woman, about eighteen,
sat at the table, eating a little bread and treacle to a cup of
light-coloured tea, when we went in; but she blushed, and left off
until we had gone--which was not long after. It felt almost like
sacrilege to peer thus into the privacies of such people; but I hope
they did not feel as if it had been done offensively. We called next
at the cottage of a hand-loom weaver--a poor trade now in the best
of times--a very poor trade--since the days when tattered old "Jem
Ceawp" sung his pathetic song of "Jone o' Greenfeelt"--
"Aw'm a poor cotton weighver, as ony one knows;
We'n no meight i'th heawse, an' we'n worn eawt er clothes;
We'n live't upo nettles, while nettles were good;
An' Wayterloo porritch is th' most of er food;
This clemmin' and starvin',
Wi' never a farthin'--
It's enough to drive ony mon mad."
This family was four in number--man, wife, and two children. They
had always lived near to the ground, for the husband's earnings at
the loom were seldom more than 7s. for a full week. The wife told us
that they were not receiving any relief, for she said that when her
husband "had bin eawt o' wark a good while he turn't his hond to
shaving;" and in this way the ingenious struggling fellow had
scraped a thin living for them during many months. "But," said she,
" it brings varra little in, we hev to trust so much. He shaves four
on 'em for a haw-penny, an' there's a deal on 'em connot pay that.
Yo know, they're badly off--(the woman seemed to think her
circumstances rather above the common kind); an' then," continued
she, "when they'n run up a shot for three-hawpence or twopence or
so, they cannot pay it o' no shap, an' so they stoppen away fro th'
shop. They cannot for shame come, that's heaw it is; so we lose'n
their custom till sich times as summat turns up at they can raise a
trifle to pay up wi'. . . . He has nobbut one razzor, but it'll be
like to do." Hearken this, oh, ye spruce Figaros of the city, who
trim the clean, crisp whiskers of the well-to-do! Hearken this, ye
dainty perruquiers, "who look so brisk, and smell so sweet," and
have such an exquisite knack of chirruping, and lisping, and sliding
over the smooth edge of the under lip,--and, sometimes, agreeably
too,--"an infinite deal of nothing,"--ye who clip and anoint the
hair of Old England's curled darlings! Eight chins a penny; and
three months' credit! A bodle a piece for mowing chins overgrown
with hair like pin-wire, and thick with dust; how would you like
that? How would you get through it all, with a family of four, and
only one razor? The next place we called at was what my friend
described, in words that sounded to me, somehow, like melancholy
irony,--as "a poor provision shop." It was, indeed, a poor shop for
provender. In the window, it is true, there were four or five empty
glasses, where children's spice had once been. There was a little
deal shelf here and there; but there were neither sand, salt,
whitening, nor pipes. There was not the ghost of a farthing candle,
nor a herring, nor a marble, nor a match, nor of any other thing,
sour or sweet, eatable or saleable for other uses, except one small
mug full of buttermilk up in a corner--the last relic of a departed
trade, like the "one rose of the wilderness, left on its stalk to
mark where a garden has been." But I will say more about this in the
next chapter.