WORKING BOYS.
_The London Errand Boy_.—_His Drudgery and Privations_.—_His
Temptations_.—_The London Boy after Dark_.—_The Amusements provided for
him_.
THE law takes account of but two phases of human existence,—the child
irresponsible, and the adult responsible, and overlooks as beneath its
dignity the important and well-marked steps that lead from the former
state to the latter.
Despite the illegality of the proceeding, it is the intention of the
writer hereof to do otherwise, aware as he is, and as every thinking
person may be, of how critical and all-important a period in the career
of the male human creature, is “boyhood.” Amongst people of means and
education, the grave responsibility of seeing their rising progeny safely
through the perilous “middle passage” is fully recognized; but it is
sadly different with the labouring classes, and the very poor.
It is a lamentable fact that at that period of his existence when he
needs closest watching, when he stands in need of healthful guidance, of
counsel against temptation, a boy, the son of labouring parents, is left
to himself, almost free to follow the dictates of his inclinations, be
they good or had. Nothing than this can be more injudicious, and as
regards the boy’s moral culture and worldly welfare, more unjust. Not,
as I would have it distinctly understood, that the boy of vulgar breeding
is by nature more pregnable to temptation than his same age brother of
genteel extraction; not because, fairly tested with the latter, he would
be the first to succumb to a temptation, but because, poor fellow,
outward circumstances press and hamper him so unfairly.
It has recently come to my knowledge that at the present time there is
striving hard to attract public attention and patronage an institution
styled the “Errand Boys’ Home.” It would be difficult, indeed, to
overrate the importance of such an establishment, properly conducted.
Amongst neglected children of a larger growth, those of the familiar
“errand boy” type figure first and foremost. It would be instructive to
learn how many boys of the kind indicated are annually drafted into our
great criminal army, and still more so to trace back the swift downhill
strides to the original little faltering step that shuffled from the
right path to the wrong.
Anyone who has any acquaintance with the habits and customs of the
labouring classes, must be aware that the “family” system is for the
younger branches, as they grow up, to elbow those just above them in age
out into the world; not only to make more room at the dinner-table, but
to assist in its substantial adornment. The poorer the family, the
earlier the boys are turned out, “to cut their own grass,” as the saying
is. Take a case—one in ten thousand—to be met with to-morrow or any day
in the city of London. Tom is a little lad—one of seven or eight—his
father is a labourer, earning, say, a guinea a week; and from the age of
seven Tom has been sent to a penny-a-week school; partly for the sake of
what learning he may chance to pick up, but chiefly to keep him “out of
the streets,” and to effect a simultaneous saving of his morals and of
his shoe-leather. As before stated, Tom’s is essentially a working
family. It is Tom’s father’s pride to relate how that he was “turned
out” at eight, and had to trudge through the snow to work at six o’clock
of winter mornings; and, that though on account of coughs and chilblains
and other frivolous and childish ailments, he thought it very hard at the
time, he rejoices that he was so put to it, since he has no doubt that it
tended to harden him and make him the man he is.
Accordingly, when Tom has reached the ripe age of ten, it is accounted
high time that he “got a place,” as did his father before him; and, as
there are a hundred ways in London in which a sharp little boy of ten can
be made useful, very little difficulty is experienced in Tom’s launching.
He becomes an “errand boy,” a newspaper or a printing boy, in all
probability. The reader curious as to the employment of juvenile labour,
may any morning at six or seven o’clock in the morning witness the
hurried trudging to work of as many Toms as the pavement of our great
highways will conveniently accommodate, each with his small bundle of
food in a little bag, to last him the day through. Something else he may
see, too, that would be highly comic were it not for its pitiful side.
As need not be repeated here, a boy’s estimate of earthly bliss might be
conveniently contained in a dinner-plate of goodly dimensions. When he
first goes out to work, his pride and glory is the parcel of food his
mother makes up for the day’s consumption. There he has it—breakfast,
dinner, tea! Possibly he might get as much, or very nearly, in the
ordinary course of events at home, but in a piece-meal and ignoble way.
He never in his life possessed such a wealth of food, all his own, to do
as he pleases with. Eight—ten slices of bread and butter, and may
be—especially if it happen to be Monday—a slice of meat and a lump of
cold pudding; relics of that dinner of dinners, Sunday’s dinner!
His, all his, with nobody to say nay; but still only wealth in
prospective! It is now barely seven o’clock, and, by fair eating, he
will not arrive at that delicious piece of cold pork with the crackling
on it until twelve! It is a keen, bracing morning; he has already walked
a mile or more; and it wants yet fully an hour and a half to the factory
breakfast time. It is just as broad as it is long; suppose he draws on
his breakfast allowance just to the extent of one slice? Only one, and
that in stern integrity: the topmost slice without fee or favour! But,
ah! the cruel fragrance of that juicy cut of spare-rib! It has
impregnated the whole contents of the bundle. The crust of that
abstracted slice is as savoury, almost, as the crisp-baked rind of the
original. Six bites—“too brief for friendship, not for fame”—have
consumed it, and left him, alas! hungrier than ever. Shall he?
What—taste of the sacred slice? No. It isn’t likely. The pork is for
his dinner. But the pudding—that is a supplemental sort of article; a
mere extravagance when added to so much perfection as the luscious meat
embodies. And out he hauls it; the ponderous abstraction afflicting the
hitherto compact parcel with such a shambling looseness, that it is
necessary to pause in one of the recesses of the bridge to readjust and
tighten it. But, ah! rash boy! Since thou wert not proof against the
temptation lurking in that slice of bread-and-butter, but faintly odorous
of that maddening flavour, how canst thou hope to save thyself now that
thou hast tasted of the pudding to which the pork was wedded in the
baker’s oven? It were as safe to trust thee at hungry noon with a
luscious apple-dumpling, and bid thee eat of the dough and leave the
fruit. It is all over. Reason, discretion, the admonitions of a
troubled conscience, were all gulped down with that last corner, crusty
bit, so full of gravy. The bridge’s next recess is the scene of another
halt, and of an utterly reckless spoliation of the dwindled bundle. And
now the pork is consumed, to the veriest atom, and nought remains but
four reproachful bread slices, that skulk in a corner, and almost demand
the untimely fate visited on their companions. Shall they crave in vain?
No. A pretty bundle, _this_, to take to the factory for his mates to
see. A good excuse will serve his purpose better. He will engulf the
four slices as he did the rest, and fold up his bag neatly, and hide it
in his pocket, and, when dinner-time comes, he will profess that there is
something nice at home, and he is going there to partake of it; while,
really, he will take a dismal stroll, lamenting his early weakness, and
making desperate vows for the future.
It is not, however, with Tom as the lucky owner of a filled food-bag that
we have here to deal, but with Tom who at least five days out of the six
is packed off to work with just as much bread and butter as his poor
mother can spare off the family loaf. Now “going out to work” is a
vastly different matter from going from home to school, and innocently
playing between whiles. In the first place, the real hard work he has to
perform (and few people would readily believe the enormous amount of
muscular exertion these little fellows are capable of enduring), develops
his appetite for eating to a prodigious extent. He finds the food he
brings from home as his daily ration but half sufficient. What are a
couple of slices of bread, with perhaps a morsel of cheese, considered as
a dinner for a hearty boy who has perhaps trudged from post to pillar a
dozen miles or so since his breakfast, carrying loads more or less heavy?
He hungers for more, and more is constantly in his sight if he only had
the means, a penny or twopence even, to buy it. He makes the
acquaintance of other boys; he is drawn towards them in hungry, envious
curiosity, seeing them in the enjoyment of what he so yearns after, and
they speedily inform him how easy it is to “make” not only a penny or
twopence, but a sixpence or a shilling, if he has a mind. And they are
quite right, these young counsellors of evil. The facilities for petty
pilfering afforded to the shopkeeper’s errand-boy are such as favour
momentary evil impulses. He need not engage in subtle plans for the
purloining of a shilling or a shilling’s worth. The opportunity is at
his fingers’ ends constantly. Usually he has the range of the business
premises. Few people mistrust a little boy, and he is left to mind the
shop where the money-till is, and he has free access to the store-room or
warehouse in which all manner of portable small goods are heaped in
profusion. It is an awful temptation. It is not sufficient to urge that
it should not be, and that in the case of a lad of well-regulated mind it
would not be. It would perhaps be more to the purpose to substitute
“well-regulated meals” for “well-regulated minds.” Nine times out of ten
the confessions of a discovered juvenile pilferer go to prove that he
sinned for his belly’s sake. He has no conscience above his waistband,
poor little wretch; nor can much better be expected, when we consider
that all his life, his experience and observation has taught him that the
first grand aim of human ingenuity and industry is to place a hot baked
dinner on the table of Sundays. To be sure, in the case of his
hardworking father he may never have known him resort to any other than
honest industry; he never found out that his parent was any other than an
honest man; and so long as his father or his employer does not find him
out to be any other than an honest boy, matters may run smoothly.
It is least of all my intention to make out that every errand-boy is a
petty thief; all that I maintain is that he is a human creature just
budding into existence as it were in the broad furrowed field of life,
and that his susceptibilities are tender, and should be protected from
evil influence with even extraordinary care; and that instead of which he
is but too often left to grow up as maybe. In their ignorance and hard
driving necessity, his parents having given him a spell of penny
schooling, and maintained him until he has become a marketable article,
persuade themselves that they have done for him the best they can, and
nothing remains but for him to obey his master in all things, and he will
grow to be as bright a man as his father before him.
It is only necessary to point to the large number of such children, for
they are no better, who annually swell our criminal lists, to prove that
somewhere a screw is sadly loose, and that the sooner it is set right the
better it will be for the nation. The Home for Errand Boys is the best
scheme that has as yet been put forth towards meeting the difficulty.
Its professed object, I believe, is to afford shelter and wholesome food
and healthful and harmless recreation for boys who are virtually without
a home, and who have “only a lodging.” That is to say, a place to which
they may retire to sleep come bed-time, and for which they pay what
appears as a paltry sum when regarded as so many pence per night, but
which tells up to a considerable sum by the end of a week.
The most important feature, however, of such a scheme as the Home for
Errand Boys embraces, does not appear in the vaunted advantage of reduced
cost. Its main attraction is the promise it holds out to provide its
lodgers with suitable amusement after work hours and before bed-time. If
this were done on an extensive scale, there is no telling how much real
substantial good might be accomplished. It is after work hours that boys
fall into mischief. There is no reason why these homes should not have
existence in various parts of London. One such establishment indeed is
of little practical use. If it were possible to establish such places (a
careful avoidance of everything savouring of the “asylum” and the
“reformatory” would of course be necessary) in half a dozen different
spots in the immediate neighbourhood of the city, they would doubtless
meet with extensive patronage. They might indeed be made to serve many
valuable ends that do not appear at a first glance. If these “homes”
were established east, west, north, and south, they might be all under
one management, and much good be effected by recommending deserving
members for employment. There might even be a provident fund, formed by
contributions of a penny or so a week, out of which lads unavoidably out
of employ could be supported until a job of work was found for them.
Allusion has, in a previous page, been made to that dangerous time for
working boys—the time between leaving work and retiring to bed. It would
be bad enough were the boy left to his own devices for squandering his
idle time and his hard-earned pence. This task, however, is taken out of
his hands. He has only to stroll up this street and down the next, and
he will find pitfalls already dug for him; neatly and skilfully dug, and
so prettily overspread with cosy carpeting, that they do not in the least
appear like pitfalls. It may at first sight seem that “neglected
children” are least of all likely to make it worth the while of these
diggers of pits, but it should be borne in mind that the term in question
is here applied in its most comprehensive sense, that there are children
of all ages, and that there are many more ways than one of neglecting
children. It is evident that young boys who are out at work from six
till six say, and after that spend the evening pretty much how they
please, are “neglected” in the most emphatic meaning of the term.
Parents are not apt to think so. It is little that they have to concede
him in return for his contributions to the common stock, and probably
they regard this laxity of supervision as the working boy’s due—as
something he has earned, and which is his by right. The boy himself is
nothing backward in claiming a privilege he sees accorded to so many
other boys, and it is the least troublesome thing in the world for the
parents to grant the favour. All that they stipulate for is that the boy
shall be home and a-bed in such good time as shall enable him to be up
and at work without the loss in the morning of so much as an hour; which
is a loss of just as many pence as may happen.
It may not be here out of place to make more definite allusion to the
“pitfalls” above-mentioned. Pitfall broadest and deepest is the
theatrical exhibition, known as the “penny gaff.” Some considerable time
since I wrote on this subject in the columns of the “Morning Star;” and
as precisely the old order of things prevails, and the arguments then
used against them apply with equal force now, I will, with the reader’s
permission, save myself further trouble than that which transcription
involves.
Every low district of London has its theatre, or at least an humble
substitute for one, called in vulgar parlance a “gaff.” A gaff is a
place in which, according to the strict interpretation of the term, stage
plays may not be represented. The actors of a drama may not correspond
in colloquy, only in pantomime, but the pieces brought out at the “gaff”
are seldom of an intricate character, and the not over-fastidious
auditory are well content with an exhibition of dumb show and gesture,
that even the dullest comprehension may understand. The prices of
admission to these modest temples of the tragic muse, are judiciously
regulated to the means of the neighbourhood, and range from a penny to
threepence. There is no “half-price for children,” and for the simple
reason that such an arrangement would reduce the takings exactly fifty
per cent. They are _all_ children who support the gaff. Costermonger
boys and girls, from eight or nine to fourteen years old, and errand boys
and girls employed at factories. As before mentioned, every district has
its own “gaff.” There is one near Peter Street, Westminster; a second in
the New Cut, at Lambeth; a third in Whitecross Street; a fourth, fifth,
and sixth between Whitechapel Church and Ratcliff Highway. It may,
without fear of contradiction, be asserted, that within a circuit of five
miles of St. Paul’s, at least twenty of these dangerous dens of amusement
might be enumerated.
At best of times they are dangerous. The best of times being when
current topics of a highly sensational character are lacking, and the
enterprising manager is compelled to fall back on some comparatively
harmless stock piece. But the “gaff” proprietor has an eye to business,
and is a man unlikely to allow what he regards as his chances to slip by
him. He at once perceives a chance in the modern mania that pervades the
juvenile population for a class of literature commonly known as “highly
sensational.” He has no literature to vend, but he does not despair on
that account. He is aware that not one in five of the youth who honour
his establishment with their patronage can read. If he, the worthy gaff
proprietor, had any doubts on the subject, he might settle them any day
by listening at his door while an admiring crowd of “regular customers”
flocking thereto speculated on the pleasures of the night as foretold in
glowing colours on the immense placards that adorn the exterior of his
little theatre. They can understand the pictures well enough, but the
descriptive legends beneath them are mysteries to which few possess the
key. If these few are maliciously reticent, the despair of the benighted
ones is painful to witness, as with puckered mouths and knitted brows
they essay to decipher the strange straight and crooked characters, and
earnestly consult with each other as to when and where they had seen the
like. Failing in this, the gaff proprietor may have heard them exclaim
in tones of but half-assured consolation, “Ah, well! it doesn’t matter
what the _reading_ is; the piece won’t be spoke, it’ll be _acted_, so we
are sure to know all about it when we come to-night.”
Under such circumstances, it is easy enough to understand the agonized
anxiety of low-lived ignorant Master Tomkins in these stirring times of
Black Highwaymen, and Spring Heel Jacks, and Boy Detectives. In the shop
window of the newsvendor round the corner, he sees displayed all in a
row, a long line of “penny numbers,” the mere illustrations pertaining to
which makes his heart palpitate, and his hair stir beneath his ragged
cap. There he sees bold highwaymen busy at every branch of their
delightful avocation, stopping a lonely traveller and pressing a pistol
barrel to his affrighted head, and bidding him deliver his money or his
life; or impeding the way of the mail coach, the captain, hat in hand,
courteously robbing the inside passengers (prominent amongst whom is a
magnificent female with a low bodice, who evidently is not insensible to
the captain’s fascinating manner), while members of his gang are seen in
murderous conflict with the coachman and the guard, whose doom is but too
surely foreshadowed. Again, here is a spirited woodcut of a booted and
spurred highwayman in headlong flight from pursuing Bow Street officers
who are close at his heels, and in no way daunted or hurt by the contents
of the brace of pistols the fugitive has manifestly just discharged point
blank at their heads.
But fairly in the way of the bold rider is a toll-gate, and in a state of
wild excitement the toll-gate keeper is seen grasping the long bar that
crosses the road. The tormenting question at once arises in the mind of
Master Tomkins—is he pushing it or pulling it? Is he friendly to the
Black Knight of the Road or is he not? Master T. feels that his hero’s
fate is in that toll-gate man’s hands; he doesn’t know if he should
vastly admire him or regard him with the deadliest enmity. From the
bottom of his heart he hopes that the toll-gate man may be friendly. He
would cheerfully give up the only penny he has in his pocket to know that
it were so. He would give a penny for a simple “yes” or “no,” and all
the while there are eight good letter-press pages along with the picture
that would tell him all about it if he only were able to read! There is
a scowl on his young face as he reflects on this, and bitterly he thinks
of his hardhearted father who sent him out to sell fusees when he should
have been at school learning his A B C. Truly, he went for a short time
to a Ragged School, but there the master kept all the jolly books to
himself—the “Knight of the Road” and that sort of thing, and gave him to
learn out of a lot of sober dry rubbish without the least flavour in it.
Who says that he is a dunce and won’t learn? Try him now. Buy a few
numbers of the “Knight of the Road” and sit down with him, and make him
spell out every word of it. Never was boy so anxious after knowledge.
He never picked a pocket yet, but such is his present desperate spirit,
that if he had the chance of picking the art of reading out of one, just
see if he wouldn’t precious soon make himself a scholar?
Thus it is with the neglected boy, blankly illiterate. It need not be
supposed, however, that a simple and quiet perusal of the astounding
adventures of his gallows heroes from the printed text would completely
satisfy the boy with sufficient knowledge to enable him to spell through
a “penny number.” It whets his appetite merely. It is one thing to
_read_ about the flashing and slashing of steel blades, and of the gleam
of pistol barrels, and the whiz of bullets, and of the bold highwayman’s
defiant “ha! ha!” as he cracks the skull of the coach-guard, preparatory
to robbing the affrighted passengers; but to be satisfactory the marrow
and essence of the blood-stirring tragedy can only be conveyed to him in
bodily shape. There are many elements of a sanguinary drama that may not
well be expressed in words. As, for instance, when Bill Bludjon, after
having cut the throat of the gentleman passenger, proceeds to rob his
daughter, and finding her in possession of a locket with some grey hair
in it, he returns it to her with the observation, “Nay, fair lady, Bill
Bludjon may be a thief: in stern defence of self he may occasionally shed
blood, but, Perish the Liar who says of him that he respects not the grey
hairs of honourable age!” There is not much in this as set down in
print. To do Bill justice, you must see how his noble countenance lights
as his generous bosom heaves with chivalrous sentiments; how defiantly he
scowls, and grinds his indignant teeth as he hisses the word
“_Liar_!”—how piously he turns his eyes heavenward as he alludes to
“honourable old age.” It is in these emotional subtleties that the hero
rises out of the vulgar robber with his villanous Whitechapel cast of
countenance, and his great hands, hideous with murder stains, must be
witnessed to be appreciated. It is the gaff proprietor’s high aim and
ambition to effect this laudable object, and that he does so with a
considerable amount of, at least, pecuniary success, is proved by his
“crowded houses” nightly.
Now that the police are to be roused to increased vigilance in the
suppression, as well as the arrest of criminality, it would be as well if
those in authority directed their especial attention to these penny
theatres. As they at present exist, they are nothing better than
hot-beds of vice in its vilest forms. Girls and boys of tender age are
herded together to witness the splendid achievements of “dashing
highwaymen,” and of sirens of the Starlight Sall school; nor is this all.
But bad as this is, it is really the least part of the evil. The penny
“gaff” is usually a small place, and when a specially atrocious piece
produces a corresponding “run,” the “house” is incapable of containing
the vast number of boys and girls who nightly flock to see it. Scores
would be turned away from the doors, and their halfpence wasted, were it
not for the worthy proprietor’s ingenuity. I am now speaking of what I
was an actual witness of in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch. Beneath the
pit and stage of the theatre was a sort of large kitchen, reached from
the end of the passage, that was the entrance to the theatre by a flight
of steep stairs. There were no seats in this kitchen, nor furniture of
any kind. There was a window looking toward the street, but this was
prudently boarded up. At night time all the light allowed in the kitchen
proceeded from a feeble and dim gas jet by the wall over the fire-place.
Wretched and dreary-looking as was this underground chamber, it was a
source of considerable profit to the proprietor of the “gaff” overhead.
As before stated, when anything peculiarly attractive was to be seen, the
theatre filled within ten minutes of opening the besieged doors. Not to
disappoint the late comers, however, all who pleased might pay and go
downstairs until the performance just commenced (it lasted generally
about an hour and a half) terminated. The prime inducement held out was,
that “then they would be sure of good seats.” The inevitable result of
such an arrangement may be easier guessed than described. For my part, I
know no more about it than was to be derived from a hasty glance from the
stair-head. There was a stench of tobacco smoke, and an uproar of
mingled youthful voices—swearing, chaffing, and screaming, in boisterous
mirth. This was all that was to be heard, the Babel charitably rendering
distinct pronouncing of blasphemy or indecency unintelligible. Nor was
it much easier to make out the source from whence the hideous clamour
proceeded, for the kitchen was dim as a coal cellar, and was further
obscured by the foul tobacco smoke the lads were emitting from their
short pipes. A few were romping about—“larking,” as it is termed—but the
majority, girls and boys, were squatted on the floor, telling and
listening to stories, the quality of which might but too truly be guessed
from the sort of applause they elicited. A few—impatient of the
frivolity that surrounded them, and really anxious for “the play”—stood
apart, gazing with scowling envy up at the ceiling, on the upper side of
which, at frequent intervals, there was a furious clatter of hobnailed
boots, betokening the delirious delight of the happy audience in full
view of Starlight Sall, in “silk tights” and Hessians, dancing a Highland
fling. Goaded to desperation, one or two of the tormented ones down in
the kitchen reached up with their sticks and beat on the ceiling a
tattoo, responsive to the battering of the hobnailed boots before
mentioned. This, however, was a breach of “gaff” rule that could not be
tolerated. With hurried steps the proprietor approached the kitchen
stairs, and descried me. “This ain’t the theeater; you’ve no business
here, sir!” said he, in some confusion, as I imagined. “No, my friend, I
have no business here, but _you_ have a very pretty business, and one for
which, when comes the Great Day of Reckoning, I would rather you answered
than me.” But I only thought this; aloud, I made the gaff proprietor an
apology, and thankfully got off his abominable premises.