"Poor Tom's a-cold! Who gives anything to poor Tom?"
--King Lear.
One sometimes meets with remarkable differences of condition in the
households of poor folk, which stand side by side in the same
street. I am not speaking of the uncertain shelters of those who
struggle upon the skirts of civilisation, in careless, uncared-for
wretchedness, without settled homes, or regular occupation,--the
miserable camp followers of life's warfare,--living habitually from
hand to mouth, in a reckless wrestle with the world, for mere
existence. I do not mean these, but the households of our common
working people. Amongst the latter one sometimes meets with striking
differences, in cleanliness, furniture, manners, intellectual
acquirements, and that delicate compound of mental elements called
taste. Even in families whose earnings have been equal in the past,
and who are just now subject alike to the same pinch of adversity,
these disparities are sometimes very great. And, although there are
cases in which the immediate causes of these differences are evident
enough in the habits of the people, yet, in others, the causes are
so obscure, that the wisest observer would be most careful in
judging respecting them. I saw an example of this in a little bye-
street, at the upper end of Scholes--a quarter of Wigan where the
poorest of the poor reside, and where many decent working people
have lately been driven for cheap shelter by the stress of the
times. Scholes is one of those ash-pits of human life which may be
found in almost any great town; where, among a good deal of despised
stuff, which by wise treatment might possibly be made useful to the
world, many a jewel gets accidentally thrown away, and lost. This
bye-street of mean brick cottages had an unwholesome, outcast look;
and the sallow, tattered women, lounging about the doorways, and
listlessly watching the sickly children in the street, evinced the
prevalence of squalor and want there. The very children seemed
joyless at their play; and everything that met the eye foretold that
there was little chance of finding anything in that street but
poverty in its most prostrate forms. But, even in this unpromising
spot, I met with an agreeable surprise.
The first house we entered reminded me of those clean, lone
dwellings, up in the moorland nooks of Lancashire, where the sweet
influences of nature have free play; where the people have a
hereditary hatred of dirt and disorder; and where, even now, many of
the hardy mountain folk are half farmers, half woollen weavers,
doing their weaving in their own quiet houses, where the smell of
the heather and the song of the wild bird floats in at the workman's
window, blent with the sounds of rindling waters,--doing their
weaving in green sequestered nooks, where the low of kine, and the
cry of the moorfowl can be heard; and bearing the finished "cuts"
home upon their backs to the distant town. All was so bright in this
little cottage,--so tidy and serene,--that the very air seemed
clearer there than in the open street. The humble furniture, good of
its kind, was all shiny with "elbow grease," and some parts of it
looked quaint and well-preserved, like the heirlooms of a careful
cottage ancestry. The well polished fire-irons, and other metal
things, seemed to gather up the diffuse daylight and fling it back
in concentrated radiances that illuminated the shady cottage with
cheerful beauty. The little shelf of books, the gleaming window,
with its healthy pot flowers, the perfect order, and the trim
sweetness of everything, reminded me, as I have said, of the better
sort of houses where simple livers dwell, up among the free air of
the green hills--those green hills of Lancashire, the remembrance of
which will always stir my heart as long as it can stir to anything.
This cottage, in comparison with most of those which I had seen in
Scholes, looked like a glimpse of the star-lit blue peeping through
the clouds on a gloomy night. I found that it was the house of a
widower, a weaver of diaper, who was left with a family of eight
children to look after. Two little girls were in the house, and they
were humbly but cleanly clad. One of them called her father up from
the cellar, where he was working at his looms. He was a mild,
thoughtful-looking man, something past middle age. I could not help
admiring him as he stood in the middle of the floor with his
unsleeved arms folded, uttering quiet jets of simple speech to my
friend, who had known him before. He said that he hardly ever got
anything to do now, but when he was at work he could make about 7s.
2d. a week by weaving two cuts. He was receiving six tickets weekly
from the Relief Committee, which, except the proceeds of a little
employment now and then, was all that the family of nine had to
depend upon for food, firing, clothes, and rent. He said that he was
forced to make every little spin out as far as it would; but it kept
him bare and busy, and held his nose "everlastingly deawn to th'
grindlestone." But he didn't know that it was any use complaining
about a thing that neither master nor man could help. He durst say
that he could manage to grin and bide till things came round, th'
same as other folk had to do. Grumbling, in a case like this, was
like "fo'in eawt wi' th' elements," (quarrelling with a storm.) One
of his little girls was on her knees, cleaning the floor. She
stopped a minute, to look at my friend and me. "Come, my lass," said
her father, "get on wi' thi weshin'." "I made application for th'
watchman's place at Leyland Mill," continued he, "but I wur to lat.
. . . There's nought for it," continued he, as we came out of the
house, "there's nought for it but to keep one's een oppen, an' do as
weel as they con, till it blows o'er."
A few yards from this house, we looked in at a slip of a cottage, at
the corner of the row. It was like a slice off some other cottage,
stuck on at the end of the rest, to make up the measure of the
street; for it was less than two yards wide, by about four yards
long. There was only one small window, close to the door, and it was
shrouded by a dingy cotton blind. When we first entered, I could
hardly see what there was in that gloomy cell; but when the eyes
became acquainted with the dimness within, we found that there was
neither fire nor furniture in the place, except at the far end,
where an old sick woman lay gasping upon three chairs, thinly
covered from the cold. She was dying of asthma. At her right hand
there was another rickety chair, by the help of which she raised
herself up from her hard bed. She said that she had never been up
stairs during the previous twelve months, but had lain there, at the
foot of the stairs, all that time. She had two daughters. They were
both out of the house; and they had been out of work a long time.
One of them had gone to Miss B_'s to learn to sew. "She gets her
breakfast before she starts," said the old woman, "an' she takes a
piece o' bread with her, to last for th' day." It was a trouble to
her to talk much, so we did not stop long; but I could not help
feeling sorry that the poor old soul had not a little more comfort
to smooth her painful passage to the grave. On our way from this
place, we went into a cottage near the "Coal Yard," where a tall,
thin Irishwoman was washing some tattered clothes, whilst her
children played about the gutter outside. This was a family of
seven, and they were all out of work, except the father, who was
away, trying to make a trifle by hawking writing-paper and
envelopes. This woman told us that she was in great trouble about
one of her children--the eldest daughter, now grown up to womanhood.
"She got married to a sailor about two year ago," said she, "an' he
wint away a fortnit after, an' never was heard of since. She never
got the scrape ov a pen from him to say was he alive or dead. She
never heard top nor tail of him since he wint from her; an' the girl
is just pinin' away."
Poor folk have their full share of the common troubles of life,
apart from the present distress. The next place we visited was the
"Fleece Yard," another of those unhealthy courts, of which there are
so many in Scholes--where poverty and dirt unite to make life doubly
miserable. In this yard we went up three or four steps into a little
disorderly house, where a family of eleven was crowded. Not one of
the eleven was earning anything except the father, who was working
for ls. 3d. a day. In addition to this the family received four
tickets weekly from the Relief Committee. There were several of the
children in, and they looked brisk and healthy, in spite of the dirt
and discomfort of the place; but the mother was sadly "torn down" by
the cares of her large family. The house had a sickly smell. Close
to the window, a little, stiff built, bullet-headed lad stood,
stript to the waist, sputtering and splashing as he washed himself
in a large bowl of water, placed upon a stool. By his side there was
another lad three or four years older, and the two were having a bit
of famous fun together, quite heedless of all else. The elder kept
ducking the little fellow's head into the water, upon which the one
who was washing himself sobbed, and spat, and cried out in great
glee, "Do it again, Jack!" The mother, seeing us laugh at the lads,
said, "That big un's been powin' tother, an' th' little monkey's
gone an' cut every smite o' th' lad's toppin' off. "" Well," said
the elder lad, "Aw did it so as nobody can lug him. "And it
certainly was a close clip. We could see to the roots of the little
fellow's hair all over his round, hard head. "Come," said the
mother, "yo two are makin' a nice floor for mo. Thae'll do, mon;
arto beawn to lother o' th' bit o' swoap away that one has to wash
wi'; gi's howd on't this minute, an' go thi ways an' dry thisel',
thae little pouse, thae." We visited several other places in Scholes
that day, but of these I will say something hereafter. In the
evening I returned home, and the thing that I best remember hearing
on the way was an anecdote of two Lancashire men, who had been
disputing a long time about something that one of them knew little
of. At last the other turned to him, and said, "Jem; does thae know
what it is that makes me like thee so weel, owd brid?" "Naw; what is
it?" "Why; it's becose thae'rt sich a ___ foo!" "Well," replied the
other, "never thee mind that;" and then, alluding to the subject
they had been disputing about, he said, "Thae knows, Joe, aw know
thae'rt reet enough; but, by th' men, aw'll not give in till
mornin'."