Father used to do odd jobs with the gas-pipes in the streets, and
when work was slack we had very hard times of it. Mother always liked
being with us at home, and used to manage to keep us employed out of
mischief--she’d give us an old gown to make into pinafores for the
children and such like! She’s been very good to us, has mother, and
so’s father. She always liked to hear us read to her whilst she was
washing or such like! and then we big ones had to learn the little
ones. But when father’s work got slack, if she had no employment
charing, she’d say, ‘Now I’ll go and buy a bushel of apples,’ and then
she’d turn out and get a penny that way. I suppose by sitting at the
stall from nine in the morning till the shops shuts up--say ten o’clock
at night, I can earn about 1_s._ 6_d._ a day. It’s all according to the
apples--whether they’re good or not--what we makes. If I’m unlucky,
mother will say, ‘Well, I’ll go out to-morrow and see what _I_ can
do;’ and if I’ve done well, she’ll say ‘Come you’re a good hand at it;
you’ve done famous.’ Yes, mother’s very fair that way. Ah! there’s many
a gal I knows whose back has to suffer if she don’t sell her stock
well; but, thank God! I never get more than a blowing up. My parents is
very fair to me.
“I dare say there ain’t ten out of a hundred gals what’s living with
men, what’s been married Church of England fashion. I know plenty
myself, but I don’t, indeed, think it right. It seems to me that the
gals is fools to be ’ticed away, but, in coorse, they needn’t go
without they likes. This is why I don’t think it’s right. Perhaps a
man will have a few words with his gal, and he’ll say, ‘Oh! I ain’t
obligated to keep her!’ and he’ll turn her out: and then where’s that
poor gal to go? Now, there’s a gal I knows as came to me no later than
this here week, and she had a dreadful swole face and a awful black
eye; and I says, ‘Who’s done that?’ and she says, says she, ‘Why,
Jack’--just in that way; and then she says, says she, ‘I’m going to
take a warrant out to-morrow.’ Well, he gets the warrant that same
night, but she never appears again him, for fear of getting more
beating. That don’t seem to me to be like married people ought to be.
Besides, if parties is married, they ought to bend to each other; and
they won’t, for sartain, if they’re only living together. A man as is
married is obligated to keep his wife if they quarrels or not; and he
says to himself, says he, ‘Well, I may as well live happy, like.’ But
if he can turn a poor gal off, as soon as he tires of her, he begins
to have noises with her, and then gets quit of her altogether. Again,
the men takes the money of the gals, and in coorse ought to treat ’em
well--which they don’t. This is another reason: when the gal is in the
family way, the lads mostly sends them to the workhouse to lay in, and
only goes sometimes to take them a bit of tea and shuggar; but, in
coorse, married men wouldn’t behave in such likes to their poor wives.
After a quarrel, too, a lad goes and takes up with another young gal,
and that isn’t pleasant for the first one. The first step to ruin is
them places of ‘penny gaffs,’ for they hears things there as oughtn’t
to be said to young gals. Besides, the lads is very insinivating, and
after leaving them places will give a gal a drop of beer, and make her
half tipsy, and then they makes their arrangements. I’ve often heerd
the boys boasting of having ruined gals, for all the world as if they
was the first noblemen in the land.
“It would be a good thing if these sort of goings on could be stopped.
It’s half the parents’ fault; for if a gal can’t get a living, they
turns her out into the streets, and then what’s to become of her? I’m
sure the gals, if they was married, would be happier, because they
couldn’t be beat worse. And if they was married, they’d get a nice
home about ’em; whereas, if they’s only living together, they takes a
furnished room. I’m sure, too, that it’s a bad plan; for I’ve heerd
the gals themselves say, ‘Ah! I wish I’d never seed Jack’ (or Tom, or
whatever it is); ‘I’m sure I’d never be half so bad but for him.’
“Only last night father was talking about religion. We often talks
about religion. Father has told me that God made the world, and I’ve
heerd him talk about the first man and woman as was made and lived--it
must be more than a hundred years ago--but I don’t like to speak on
what I don’t know. Father, too, has told me about our Saviour what
was nailed on a cross to suffer for such poor people as we is. Father
has told us, too, about his giving a great many poor people a penny
loaf and a bit of fish each, which proves him to have been a very kind
gentleman. The Ten Commandments was made by him, I’ve heerd say, and
he performed them too among other miracles. Yes! this is part of what
our Saviour tells us. We are to forgive everybody, and do nobody no
injury. I don’t think I could forgive an enemy if she injured me very
much; I’m sure I don’t know why I couldn’t, unless it is that I’m poor,
and never learnt to do it. If a gal stole my shawl and didn’t return
it back or give me the value on it, I couldn’t forgive her; but if she
told me she lost it off her back, I shouldn’t be so hard on her. We
poor gals ain’t very religious, but we are better than the men. We all
of us thanks God for everything--even for a fine day; as for sprats,
we always says they’re God’s blessing for the poor, and thinks it hard
of the Lord Mayor not to let ’em come in afore the ninth of November,
just because he wants to dine off them--which he always do. Yes, we
knows for certain that they eats plenty of sprats at the Lord Mayor’s
‘blanket.’ They say in the Bible that the world was made in six days:
the beasts, the birds, the fish, and all--and sprats was among them in
coorse. There was only one house at that time as was made, and that
was the Ark for Adam and Eve and their family. It seems very wonderful
indeed how all this world was done so quick. I should have thought
that England alone would have took double the time; shouldn’t you,
sir? But then it says in the Bible, God Almighty’s a just and true
God, and in coorse time would be nothing to him. When a good person is
dying, we says, ‘The Lord has called upon him, and he must go,’ but I
can’t think what it means, unless it is that an angel comes--like when
we’re a-dreaming--and tells the party he’s wanted in heaven. I know
where heaven is; it’s above the clouds, and they’re placed there to
prevent us seeing into it. That’s where all the good people go, but I’m
afeerd,”--she continued solemnly--“there’s very few costers among the
angels--’specially those as deceives poor gals.
“No, I don’t think this world could well go on for ever. There’s
a great deal of ground in it, certainly, and it seems very strong
at present; but they say there’s to be a flood on the earth, and
earthquakes, and that will destroy it. The earthquake ought to have
took place some time ago, as people tells me, but I never heerd any
more about it. If we cheats in the streets, I know we shan’t go to
Heaven; but it’s very hard upon us, for if we didn’t cheat we couldn’t
live, profits is so bad. It’s the same with the shops, and I suppose
the young men there won’t go to Heaven neither; but if people won’t
give the money, both costers and tradesmen must cheat, and that’s very
hard. Why, look at apples! customers want them for less than they cost
us, and so we are forced to shove in bad ones as well as good ones; and
if we’re to suffer for that, it does seem to me dreadful cruel.”
Curious and extravagant as this statement may perhaps appear to the
uninitiated, nevertheless it is here given as it was spoken; and it was
spoken with an earnestness that proved the poor girl looked upon it as
a subject, the solemnity of which forced her to be truthful.
OF COSTERMONGERS AND THIEVES.
Concerning the connection of these two classes I had the following
account from a costermonger: “I’ve known the coster trade for twelve
years, and never knew thieves go out a costering as a cloak; they may
have done so, but I very much doubt it. Thieves go for an idle life,
and costermongering don’t suit them. Our chaps don’t care a d--n who
they associate with,--if they’re thieves they meet ’em all the same,
or anything that way. But costers buy what they call ‘a gift,’--may-be
it’s a watch or coat wot’s been stolen--from any that has it to sell. A
man will say: ‘If you’ve a few shillings, you may make a good thing of
it. Why this identical watch is only twenty shillings, and it’s worth
fifty;’ so if the coster has money, he buys. Thieves will get 3_d._
where a mechanic or a coster will earn 1/2_d._, and the most ignorant
of our people has a queer sort of respect for thieves, because of the
money they make. Poverty’s as much despised among costers as among
other people. People that’s badly off among us are called ‘cursed.’
In bad weather it’s common for costers to ‘curse themselves,’ as they
call having no trade. ‘Well, I’m cursed,’ they say when they can make
no money. It’s a common thing among them to shout after any one they
don’t like, that’s reduced, ‘Well, ain’t you cursed?’” The costers, I
am credibly informed, gamble a great deal with the wealthier class of
thieves, and win of them the greater part of the money they get.
OF THE MORE PROVIDENT COSTERMONGERS.
Concerning this head, I give the statement of a man whose information
I found fully confirmed:--“We are not such a degraded set as some
believe; sir, but a living doesn’t tumble into a man’s mouth, now a
days. A good many of us costers rises into greengrocers and coal-sheds,
and still carries on their rounds as costers, all the same. Why, in
Lock’s-fields, I could show you twenty such, and you’d find them very
decent men, sir--very. There’s one man I know, that’s risen that way,
who is worth hundreds of pounds, and keeps his horse and cart like a
gentleman. They rises to be voters, and they all vote liberal. Some
marry the better kind of servants,--such servant-maids as would’nt
marry a rag and bottle shop, but doesn’t object to a coal shed. It’s
mostly younger men that manages this. As far as I have observed, these
costers, after they has settled and got to be housekeepers, don’t turn
their backs on their old mates. They’d have a nice life of it if they
did--yes! a very nice life.”
OF THE HOMES OF THE COSTERMONGERS.
The costermongers usually reside in the courts and alleys in the
neighbourhood of the different street-markets. They themselves
designate the locality where, so to speak, a colony of their people has
been established, a “coster district,” and the entire metropolis is
thus parcelled out, almost as systematically as if for the purposes of
registration. These costermonger districts are as follows, and are here
placed in the order of the numerical importance of the residents:
The New Cut (Lambeth).
Whitecross-street.
Leather-lane.
The Brill, Somers’ Town.
Whitechapel.
Camberwell.
Walworth.
Peckham.
Bermondsey.
The Broadway, Westminster.
Shoreditch.
Paddington and Edgeware Road.
Tottenham-court Road.
Drury-lane.
Old-street Road.
Clare Market.
Ratcliffe Highway.
Lisson-grove.
Petticoat and Rosemary-lane.
Marylebone-lane.
Oxford-street.
Rotherhithe.
Deptford.
Dockhead.
Greenwich.
Commercial-road (East).
Poplar.
Limehouse.
Bethnal-green.
Hackney-road.
Kingsland.
Camden Town.
The homes of the costermongers in these places, may be divided into
three classes; firstly, those who, by having a regular trade or by
prudent economy, are enabled to live in comparative ease and plenty;
secondly, those who, from having a large family or by imprudent
expenditure, are, as it were, struggling with the world; and thirdly,
those who for want of stock-money, or ill success in trade are nearly
destitute.
The first home I visited was that of an old woman, who with the
assistance of her son and girls, contrived to live in a most
praiseworthy and comfortable manner. She and all her family were
teetotallers, and may be taken as a fair type of the thriving
costermonger.
As I ascended a dark flight of stairs, a savory smell of stew grew
stronger at each step I mounted. The woman lived in a large airy room
on the first floor (“the drawing-room” as she told me laughing at her
own joke), well lighted by a clean window, and I found her laying out
the savory smelling dinner looking most temptingly clean. The floor
was as white as if it had been newly planed, the coke fire was bright
and warm, making the lid of the tin saucepan on it rattle up and down
as the steam rushed out. The wall over the fire-place was patched
up to the ceiling with little square pictures of saints, and on the
mantel-piece, between a row of bright tumblers and wine glasses filled
with odds and ends, stood glazed crockeryware images of Prince Albert
and M. Jullien. Against the walls, which were papered with “hangings”
of four different patterns and colours, were hung several warm shawls,
and in the band-box, which stood on the stained chest of drawers, you
could tell that the Sunday bonnet was stowed safely away from the
dust. A turn-up bedstead thrown back, and covered with a many-coloured
patch-work quilt, stood opposite to a long dresser with its mugs and
cups dangling from the hooks, and the clean blue plates and dishes
ranged in order at the back. There were a few bushel baskets piled up
in one corner, “but the apples smelt so,” she said, “they left them in
a stable at night.”
By the fire sat the woman’s daughter, a pretty meek-faced gray-eyed
girl of sixteen, who “was home nursing” for a cold. “Steve” (her boy)
I was informed, was out working. With his help, the woman assured me,
she could live very comfortably--“God be praised!” and when he got the
barrow he was promised, she gave me to understand, that their riches
were to increase past reckoning. Her girl too was to be off at work
as soon as sprats came in. “Its on Lord Mayor’s-day they comes in,”
said a neighbour who had rushed up to see the strange gentleman, “they
says he has ’em on his table, but I never seed ’em. They never gives
us the pieces, no not even the heads,” and every one laughed to their
utmost. The good old dame was in high spirits, her dark eyes sparkling
as she spoke about her “Steve.” The daughter in a little time lost
her bashfulness, and informed me “that one of the Polish refugees was
a-courting Mrs. M----, who had given him a pair of black eyes.”
On taking my leave I was told by the mother that their silver gilt
Dutch clock--with its glass face and blackleaded weights--“was the best
one in London, and might be relied on with the greatest safety.”
As a specimen of the dwellings of the struggling costers, the following
may be cited:
The man, a tall, thick-built, almost good-looking fellow, with a large
fur cap on his head, lived with his family in a front kitchen, and as
there were, with his mother-in-law, five persons, and only one bed, I
was somewhat puzzled to know where they could _all_ sleep. The barrow
standing on the railings over the window, half shut out the light,
and when any one passed there was a momentary shadow thrown over the
room, and a loud rattling of the iron gratings above that completely
prevented all conversation. When I entered, the mother-in-law was
reading aloud one of the threepenny papers to her son, who lolled on
the bed, that with its curtains nearly filled the room. There was the
usual attempt to make the fireside comfortable. The stone sides had
been well whitened, and the mantel-piece decorated with its small tin
trays, tumblers, and a piece of looking-glass. A cat with a kitten
were seated on the hearth-rug in front. “They keeps the varmint away,”
said the woman, stroking the “puss,” “and gives a look of home.” By
the drawers were piled up four bushel baskets, and in a dark corner
near the bed stood a tall measure full of apples that scented the room.
Over the head, on a string that stretched from wall to wall, dangled
a couple of newly-washed shirts, and by the window were two stone
barrels, for lemonade, when the coster visited the fairs and races.
Whilst we were talking, the man’s little girl came home. For a poor
man’s child she was dressed to perfection; her pinafore was clean, her
face shone with soap, and her tidy cotton print gown had clearly been
newly put on that morning. She brought news that “Janey” was coming
home from auntey’s, and instantly a pink cotton dress was placed by the
mother-in-law before the fire to air. (It appeared that Janey was out
at service, and came home once a week to see her parents and take back
a clean frock.) Although these people were living, so to speak, in a
cellar, still every endeavour had been made to give the home a look of
comfort. The window, with its paper-patched panes, had a clean calico
blind. The side-table was dressed up with yellow jugs and cups and
saucers, and the band-boxes had been stowed away on the flat top of the
bedstead. All the chairs, which were old fashioned mahogany ones, had
sound backs and bottoms.
Of the third class, or the very poor, I chose the following “type” out
of the many others that presented themselves. The family here lived in
a small slanting-roofed house, partly stripped of its tiles. More than
one half of the small leaden squares of the first-floor window were
covered with brown paper, puffing out and crackling in the wind, while
through the greater part of the others were thrust out ball-shaped
bundles of rags, to keep out the breeze. The panes that did remain were
of all shapes and sizes, and at a distance had the appearance of yellow
glass, they were so stained with dirt. I opened a door with a number
chalked on it, and groped my way up a broken tottering staircase.
It took me some time after I had entered the apartment before I could
get accustomed to the smoke, that came pouring into the room from the
chimney. The place was filled with it, curling in the light, and making
every thing so indistinct that I could with difficulty see the white
mugs ranged in the corner-cupboard, not three yards from me. When the
wind was in the north, or when it rained, it was always that way, I was
told, “but otherwise,” said an old dame about sixty, with long grisly
hair spreading over her black shawl, “it is pretty good for that.”
On a mattrass, on the floor, lay a pale-faced girl--“eighteen years old
last twelfth-cake day”--her drawn-up form showing in the patch-work
counterpane that covered her. She had just been confined, and the child
had died! A little straw, stuffed into an old tick, was all she had to
lie upon, and even that had been given up to her by the mother until
she was well enough to work again. To shield her from the light of the
window, a cloak had been fastened up slantingly across the panes; and
on a string that ran along the wall was tied, amongst the bonnets, a
clean nightcap--“against the doctor came,” as the mother, curtsying,
informed me. By the side of the bed, almost hidden in the dark shade,
was a pile of sieve baskets, crowned by the flat shallow that the
mother “worked” with.
The room was about nine feet square, and furnished a home for three
women. The ceiling slanted like that of a garret, and was the colour of
old leather, excepting a few rough white patches, where the tenants had
rudely mended it. The white light was easily seen through the laths,
and in one corner a large patch of the paper looped down from the wall.
One night the family had been startled from their sleep by a large mass
of mortar--just where the roof bulged in--falling into the room. “We
never want rain water,” the woman told me, “for we can catch plenty
just over the chimney-place.”
They had made a carpet out of three or four old mats. They were
“obligated to it, for fear of dropping anything through the boards into
the donkey stables in the parlour underneath. But we only pay ninepence
a week rent,” said the old woman, “and mustn’t grumble.”
The only ornament in the place was on the mantel-piece--an old
earthenware sugar-basin, well silvered over, that had been given by the
eldest girl when she died, as a remembrance to her mother. Two cracked
tea-cups, on their inverted saucers, stood on each side, and dressed up
the fire-side into something like tidiness. The chair I sat on was by
far the best out of the three in the room, and that had no back, and
only half its quantity of straw.
The parish, the old woman told me, allowed her 1_s._ a week and two
loaves. But the doctor ordered her girl to take sago and milk, and she
was many a time sorely puzzled to get it. The neighbours helped her a
good deal, and often sent her part of their unsold greens;--even if it
was only the outer leaves of the cabbages, she was thankful for them.
Her other girl--a big-boned wench, with a red shawl crossed over her
bosom, and her black hair parted on one side--did all she could, and
so they lived on. “As long as they kept out of the ‘big house’ (the
workhouse) she would not complain.”
[Illustration: THE OYSTER STALL.
“Penny a lot, Oysters! Penny a lot!”
[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]
I never yet beheld so much destitution borne with so much content.
Verily the acted philosophy of the poor is a thing to make those who
write and preach about it hide their heads.
OF THE DRESS OF THE COSTERMONGERS.
From the homes of the costermongers we pass to a consideration of their
dress.
The costermonger’s ordinary costume partakes of the durability of
the warehouseman’s, with the quaintness of that of the stable-boy. A
well-to-do “coster,” when dressed for the day’s work, usually wears a
small cloth cap, a little on one side. A close-fitting worsted tie-up
skull-cap, is very fashionable, just now, among the class, and ringlets
at the temples are looked up to as the height of elegance. Hats they
never wear--excepting on Sunday--on account of their baskets being
frequently carried on their heads. Coats are seldom indulged in; their
waistcoats, which are of a broad-ribbed corduroy, with fustian back
and sleeves, being made as long as a groom’s, and buttoned up nearly
to the throat. If the corduroy be of a light sandy colour, then plain
brass, or sporting buttons, with raised fox’s or stag’s heads upon
them--or else black bone-buttons, with a flower-pattern--ornament the
front; but if the cord be of a dark rat-skin hue, then mother-of-pearl
buttons are preferred. Two large pockets--sometimes four--with huge
flaps or lappels, like those in a shooting-coat, are commonly worn. If
the costermonger be driving a good trade and have his set of regular
customers, he will sport a blue cloth jacket, similar in cut to the
cord ones above described; but this is looked upon as an extravagance
of the highest order, for the slime and scales of the fish stick to the
sleeves and shoulders of the garment, so as to spoil the appearance of
it in a short time. The fashionable stuff for trousers, at the present,
is a dark-coloured “cable cord,” and they are made to fit tightly at
the knee and swell gradually until they reach the boot, which they
nearly cover. Velveteen is now seldom worn, and knee-breeches are quite
out of date. Those who deal wholly in fish wear a blue serge apron,
either hanging down or tucked up round their waist. The costermonger,
however, prides himself most of all upon his neckerchief and boots.
Men, women, boys and girls, all have a passion for these articles. The
man who does not wear his silk neckerchief--his “King’s-man” as it is
called--is known to be in desperate circumstances; the inference being
that it has gone to supply the morning’s stock-money. A yellow flower
on a green ground, or a red and blue pattern, is at present greatly
in vogue. The women wear their kerchiefs tucked-in under their gowns,
and the men have theirs wrapped loosely round the neck, with the ends
hanging over their waistcoats. Even if a costermonger has two or three
silk handkerchiefs by him already, he seldom hesitates to buy another,
when tempted with a bright showy pattern hanging from a Field-lane
door-post.