I was told that a little girl formed one of the association of young
sweepers, and at my request one of the boys went to fetch her.
She was a clean-washed little thing, with a pretty, expressive
countenance, and each time she was asked a question she frowned, like
a baby in its sleep, while thinking of the answer. In her ears she
wore instead of rings loops of string, “which the doctor had put there
because her sight was wrong.” A cotton velvet bonnet, scarcely larger
than the sun-shades worn at the sea-side, hung on her shoulders,
leaving exposed her head, with the hair as rough as tow. Her green
stuff gown was hanging in tatters, with long three-cornered rents
as large as penny kites, showing the grey lining underneath; and
her mantle was separated into so many pieces, that it was only held
together by the braiding at the edge.
As she conversed with me, she played with the strings of her bonnet,
rolling them up as if curling them, on her singularly small and also
singularly dirty fingers.
“I’ll be fourteen, sir, a fortnight before next Christmas. I was born
in Liquorpond-street, Gray’s Inn-lane. Father come over from Ireland,
and was a bricklayer. He had pains in his limbs and wasn’t strong
enough, so he give it over. He’s dead now--been dead a long time, sir.
I was a littler girl then than I am now, for I wasn’t above eleven at
that time. I lived with mother after father died. She used to sell
things in the streets--yes, sir, she was a coster. About a twelvemonth
after father’s death, mother was taken bad with the cholera, and
died. I then went along with both grandmother and grandfather, who
was a porter in Newgate Market; I stopped there until I got a place
as servant of all-work. I was only turned, just turned, eleven then.
I worked along with a French lady and gentleman in Hatton Garden, who
used to give me a shilling a-week and my tea. I used to go home to
grandmother’s to dinner every day. I hadn’t to do any work, only just
to clean the room and nuss the child. It was a nice little thing. I
couldn’t understand what the French people used to say, but there was a
boy working there, and he used to explain to me what they meant.
“I left them because they was going to a place called Italy--perhaps
you may have heerd tell of it, sir. Well, I suppose they must have
been Italians, but we calls everybody, whose talk we don’t understand,
French. I went back to grandmother’s, but, after grandfather died, she
couldn’t keep me, and so I went out begging--she sent me. I carried
lucifer-matches and stay-laces fust. I used to carry about a dozen
laces, and perhaps I’d sell six out of them. I suppose I used to make
about sixpence a-day, and I used to take it home to grandmother, who
kept and fed me.
“At last, finding I didn’t get much at begging, I thought I’d go
crossing-sweeping. I saw other children doing it. I says to myself,
‘I’ll go and buy a broom,’ and I spoke to another little girl, who was
sweeping up Holborn, who told me what I was to do. ‘But,’ says she,
‘don’t come and cut up me.’
“I went fust to Holborn, near to home, at the end of Red Lion-street.
Then I was frightened of the cabs and carriages, but I’d get there
early, about eight o’clock, and sweep the crossing clean, and I’d stand
at the side on the pavement, and speak to the gentlemen and ladies
before they crossed.
“There was a couple of boys, sweepers at the same crossing before I
went there. I went to them and asked if I might come and sweep there
too, and they said Yes, if I would give them some of the halfpence I
got. These was boys about as old as I was, and they said, if I earned
sixpence, I was to give them twopence a-piece; but they never give me
nothink of theirs. I never took more than sixpence, and out of that I
had to give fourpence, so that I did not do so well as with the laces.
“The crossings made my hands sore with the sweeping, and, as I got so
little, I thought I’d try somewhere else. Then I got right down to
the Fountings in Trafalgar-square, by the crossing at the statey on
’orseback. There were a good many boys and girls on that crossing at
the time--five of them; so I went along with them. When I fust went
they said, ‘Here’s another fresh ’un.’ They come up to me and says,
‘Are you going to sweep here?’ and I says, ‘Yes;’ and they says, ‘You
mustn’t come here, there’s too many;’ and I says, ‘They’re different
ones every day,’--for they’re not regular there, but shift about,
sometimes one lot of boys and girls, and the next day another. They
didn’t say another word to me, and so I stopped.
“It’s a capital crossing, but there’s so many of us, it spiles it. I
seldom gets more than sevenpence a-day, which I always takes home to
grandmother.
“I’ve been on that crossing about three months. They always calls me
Ellen, my regular name, and behaves very well to me. If I see anybody
coming, I call them out as the boys does, and then they are mine.
“There’s a boy and myself, and another strange girl, works on our side
of the statey, and another lot of boys and girls on the other.
“I like Saturdays the best day of the week, because that’s the time
as gentlemen as has been at work has their money, and then they are
more generous. I gets more then, perhaps ninepence, but not quite a
shilling, on the Saturday.
“I’ve had a threepenny-bit give to me, but never sixpence. It was a
gentleman, and I should know him again. Ladies gives me less than
gentlemen. I foller ’em, saying, ‘If you please, sir, give a poor girl
a halfpenny;’ but if the police are looking, I stop still.
“I never goes out on Sunday, but stops at home with grandmother. I
don’t stop out at nights like the boys, but I gets home by ten at
latest.”