This old dame is remarkable from the fact of being the chief support of
a poor deaf cripple, who is as much poorer than the crossing-sweeper as
she is poorer than Mrs. ----, in ---- street, who allows the sweeper
sixpence a-week. The crossing-sweeper is a rather stout old woman, with
a carneying tone, and constant curtsey. She complains, in common with
most of her class, of the present hard times, and reverts longingly to
the good old days when people were more liberal than they are now, and
had more to give. She says:--
“I was on my crossing before the police was made, for I am not able to
work, and only get helped by the people who knows me. Mr. ----, in the
square, gives me a shilling a-week; Mrs. ----, in ---- street, gives
me sixpence; (she has gone in the country now, but she has left it at
the oil-shop for me); that’s what I depinds upon, darlin’, to help pay
my rent, which is half-a-crown. My rent was three shillings, till the
landlord didn’t wish me to go, ’cause I was so punctual with my money.
I give a corner of my room to a poor cretur, who’s deaf as a beadle;
she works at the soldiers’ coats, and is a very good hand at it, and
would earn a good deal of money if she had constant work. She owed as
good as twelve shillings and sixpence for rent, poor thing, where
she was last, and the landlord took all her goods except her bed; she’s
got that, so I give her a corner of my room for charity’s sake. We must
look to one another: she’s as poor as a church mouse. I thought she
would be company for me, still a deaf person is but poor company to
one. She had that heavy sickness they call the cholera about five years
ago, and it fell in her side and in the side of her head too--that made
her deaf. Oh! she’s a poor object. She has been with me since the month
of February. I’ve lent her money out of my own pocket. I give her a
cup of tea or a slice of bread when I see she hasn’t got any. Then the
people up-stairs are kind to her, and give her a bite and a sup.
“My husband was a soldier; he fought at the battle of Waterloo.
His pension was ninepence a-day. All my family are dead, except my
grandson, what’s in New Orleans. I expect him back this very month that
now we have: he gave me four pounds before he went, to carry me over
the last winter.
“If the Almighty God pleases to send him back, he’ll be a great help to
me. He’s all I’ve got left. I never had but two children in all my life.
“I worked in noblemen’s houses before I was married to my husband, who
is dead; but he came to be poor, and I had to leave my houses where I
used to work.
“I took twopence-halfpenny yesterday, and threepence to-day; the day
before yesterday I didn’t take a penny. I never come out on Sunday; I
goes to Rosomon-street Chapel. Last Saturday I made one shilling and
sixpence; on Friday, sixpence. I dare say I make three shillings and
sixpence a-week, besides the one shilling and sixpence I gets allowed
me. I am forced to make a do of it somehow, but I’ve no more strength
left in me than this ould broom.”