countrymen no interest is ever charged. “I don’t like the Irish,” said
an English costermonger to me; “but they _do_ stick to one another far
more than we do.”
The Irish costers hire barrows and shallows like the English, but,
if they “get on” at all, they will possess themselves of their own
vehicles much sooner than an English costermonger. A quick-witted
Irishman will begin to ponder on his paying 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for the
hire of a barrow worth 20_s._, and he will save and hoard until a pound
is at his command to purchase one for himself; while an obtuse English
coster (who will yet buy cheaper than an Irishman) will probably pride
himself on his cleverness in having got the charge for his barrow
reduced, in the third year of its hire, to 1_s._ a week the twelvemonth
round!
In cases of sickness the mode of relief adopted is similar to that of
the English. A raffle is got up for the benefit of the Irish sufferer,
and, if it be a bad case, the subscribers pay their money without
caring what trifle they throw for, or whether they throw at all. If
sickness continue and such means as raffles cannot be persevered in,
there is one resource from which a poor Irishman never shrinks--the
parish. He will apply for and accept parochial relief without the least
sense of shame, a sense which rarely deserts an Englishman who has been
reared apart from paupers. The English costers appear to have a horror
of the Union. If the Irishman be taken into the workhouse, his friends
do not lose sight of him. In case of his death, they apply for, and
generally receive his body, from the parochial authorities, undertaking
the expence of the funeral, when the body is duly “waked.” “I think
there’s a family contract among the Irish,” said a costermonger to me;
“that’s where it is.”
The Irish street-folk are, generally speaking, a far more provident
body of people than the English street-sellers. To save, the Irish will
often sacrifice what many Englishmen consider a necessary, and undergo
many a hardship.
From all I could ascertain, the saving of an Irish street-seller does
not arise from any wish to establish himself more prosperously in his
business, but for the attainment of some cherished project, such as
emigration. Some of the objects, however, for which these struggling
men hoard money, are of the most praiseworthy character. They will
treasure up halfpenny after halfpenny, and continue to do so for
years, in order to send money to enable their wives and children, and
even their brothers and sisters, when in the depth of distress in
Ireland, to take shipping for England. They will save to be able to
remit money for the relief of their aged parents in Ireland. They will
save to defray the expense of their marriage, an expense the English
costermonger so frequently dispenses with--but they will _not_ save to
preserve either themselves or their children from the degradation of a
workhouse; indeed they often, with the means of independence secreted
on their persons, apply for parish relief, and that principally to
save the expenditure of their own money. Even when detected in such
an attempt at extortion an Irishman betrays no passion, and hardly
manifests any emotion--he has speculated and failed. Not one of them
but has a positive genius for begging--both the taste and the faculty
for alms-seeking developed to an extraordinary extent.
Of the amount “saved” by the patience of the poor Irishmen, I can form
no conjecture.
OF THE HISTORY OF SOME IRISH STREET-SELLERS.
In order that the following statements might be as truthful as
possible, I obtained permission to use the name of a Roman Catholic
clergyman, to whom I am indebted for much valuable information touching
this part of my subject.
A young woman, of whose age it was not easy to form a conjecture, her
features were so embrowned by exposure to the weather, and perhaps when
I saw her a little swollen from cold, gave me the following account as
to her living. Her tone and manner betrayed indifference to the future,
caused perhaps by ignorance,--for uneducated persons I find are apt
to look on the future as if it must needs be but a repetition of the
present, while the past in many instances is little more than a blank
to them. This young woman said, her brogue being little perceptible,
though she spoke thickly:
“I live by keepin’ this fruit stall. It’s a poor livin’ when I see
how others live. Yes, in thruth, sir, but it’s thankful I am for to
be able to live at all, at all; troth is it, in these sore times. My
father and mother are both did. God be gracious to their sowls! They
was evicted. The family of us was. The thatch of the bit o’ home was
tuk off above our hids, and we were lift to the wide worruld--yis,
indeed, sir, and in the open air too. The rint wasn’t paid and it
couldn’t be paid, and so we had to face the wither. It was a sorrowful
time. But God was good, and so was the neighbours. And when we saw the
praste, he was a frind to us. And we came to this counthry, though I’d
always heard it called a black counthry. Sure, an’ there’s much in it
to indhure. There’s goin’s on it, sir, that the praste, God rewarrud
him! wouldn’t like to see. There’s bad ways. I won’t talk about thim,
and I’m sure you are too much of a gintlemin to ask me; for if you
know Father ----, that shows you are the best of gintlemin, sure. It
was the eviction that brought us here. I don’t know about where we was
just; not in what county; nor parish. I was so young whin we lift the
land. I belave I’m now 19, perhaps only 18” (she certainly looked much
older, but I have often noticed that of her class). “I can’t be more, I
think, for sure an’ its only 5 or 6 years since we left Watherford and
come to Bristol. I’m sure it was Watherford, and a beautiful place it
is, and I know it was Bristol we come to. We walked all the long way to
London. My parints died of the cholera, and I live with mysilf, but my
aunt lodges me and sees to me. She sills in the sthreets too. I don’t
make 7_d._ a day. I may make 6_d._ There’s a good many young payple I
know is now sillin’ in the streets becase they was evicted in their
own counthry. I suppose they had no where ilse to come to. I’m nivir
out of a night. I sleep with my aunt, and we keep to oursilves sure.
I very sildom taste mate, but perhaps I do oftener than before we was
evicted--glory be to God.”
One Irish street-seller I saw informed me that she was a “widdy wid
three childer.” Her husband died about four years since. She had then
five children, and was near her confinement with another. Since the
death of her husband she had lost three of her children; a boy about
twelve years died of stoppage on his lungs, brought on, she said,
through being in the streets, and shouting so loud “to get sale of the
fruit.” She has been in Clare-street, Clare-market, seven years with a
fruit stall. In the summer she sells green fruit, which she purchases
at Covent-garden. When the nuts, oranges, &c., come in season, she
furnishes her stall with that kind of fruit, and continues to sell
them until the spring salad comes in. During the spring and summer her
weekly average income is about 5_s._, but the remaining portion of the
year her income is not more than 3_s._ 6_d._ weekly, so that taking
the year through, her average weekly income is about 4_s._ 3_d._; out
of this she pays 1_s._ 6_d._ a week rent, leaving only 2_s._ 9_d._ a
week to find necessary comforts for herself and family. For fuel the
children go to the market and gather up the waste walnuts, bring them
home and dry them, and these, with a pennyworth of coal and coke, serve
to warm their chilled feet and hands. They have no bedstead, but in
one corner of a room is a flock bed upon the floor, with an old sheet,
blanket, and quilt to cover them at this inclement season. There is
neither chair nor table; a stool serves for the chair, and two pieces
of board upon some baskets do duty for a table, and an old penny
tea-canister for a candlestick. She had parted with every article of
furniture to get food for her family. She received nothing from the
parish, but depended upon the sale of her fruit for her living.
The Irishmen who are in this trade are also very poor; and I learned
that both Irishmen and Irishwomen left the occupation now and then,
and took to begging, as a more profitable calling, often going begging
this month and fruit-selling the next. This is one of the causes which
prompt the London costermongers’ dislike of the Irish. “They’ll beg
themselves into a meal, and work us out of one,” said an English coster
to me. Some of them are, however, less “poverty-struck” (a word in
common use among the costermongers); but these for the most part are
men who have been in the trade for some years, and have got regular
“pitches.”
The woman who gave me the following statement seemed about twenty-two
or twenty-three. She was large-boned, and of heavy figure and
deportment. Her complexion and features were both coarse, but her voice
had a softness, even in its broadest brogue, which is not very frequent
among poor Irishwomen. The first sentence she uttered seems to me
tersely to embody a deplorable history of the poverty of a day. It was
between six and seven in the evening when I saw the poor creature:--
“Sure, thin, sir, it’s thrippince I’ve taken to-day, and tuppince is
to pay for my night’s lodgin’. I shall do no more good to-night, and
shall only stay in the cowld, if I stay in it, for nothing. I’m an
orphand, sir,” (she three or four times alluded to this circumstance,)
“and there’s nobody to care for me but God, glory be to his name! I
came to London to join my brother, that had come over and did will,
and he sint for me, but whin I got here I couldn’t find him in it
anyhow. I don’t know how long that’s ago. It may be five years; it may
be tin; but” (she added, with the true eloquence of beggary,) “sure,
thin, sir, I had no harrut to keep count, if I knew how. My father and
mother wasn’t able to keep me, nor to keep thimsilves in Ireland, and
so I was sint over here. They was counthry payple. I don’t know about
their landlorrud. They died not long afther I came here. I don’t know
what they died of, but sure it was of the will of God, and they hadn’t
much to make them love this worruld; no more have I. Would I like
to go back to my own counthry? Will, thin, what would be the use? I
sleep at a lodging-house, and it’s a dacint place. It’s mostly my own
counthrywomen that’s in it; that is, in the women’s part. I pay 1_s._
a week, that’s 2_d._ a night, for I’m not charged for Sundays. I live
on brid, and ’taties and salt, and a herrin’ sometimes. I niver taste
beer, and not often tay, but I sit here all day, and I feel the hunger
this day and that day. It goes off though, if I have nothin’ to ate.
I don’t know why, but I won’t deny the goodness of God to bring such
a thing about. I have lived for a day on a pinny, sir: a ha’pinny for
brid, and a ha’pinny for a herrin’, or two herrin’s for a ha’pinny,
and ’taties for the place of brid. I’ve changed apples for a herrin’
with a poor man, God rewarrud him. Sometimes I make on to 6_d._ a day,
and sometimes I _have_ made 1_s._ 6_d._, but I think that I don’t make
5_d._ a day--arrah, no, thin, sir! one day with the other, and I don’t
worruk on Sunday, not often. If I’ve no mate to ate, I’d rather rist. I
never miss mass on a Sunday. A lady gives me a rag sometimes, but the
bitther time’s comin’. If I was sick I don’t know what I’d do, but I
would sind for the praste, and he’d counsil me. I could read a little
oncte, but I can’t now.”
OF THE IRISH “REFUSE”-SELLERS.
There still remains to be described one branch of the Irish
street-trade which is peculiar to the class--viz., the sale of
“refuse,” or such fruit and vegetables as are damaged, and suited only
to the very poorest purchasers.
In assorting his goods, a fruit-salesman in the markets generally
throws to one side the shrivelled, dwarfish, or damaged fruit--called
by the street-traders the “specks.” If the supply to the markets be
large, as in the pride of the season, he will put his several kinds
of specks in separate baskets. At other times all kinds are tossed
together, and sometimes with an admixture of nuts and walnuts. The
Irish women purchase these at a quarter, or within a quarter, of the
regular price, paying from 6_d._ to 1_s._ a bushel for apples; 9_d._
to 1_s._ 6_d._ for pears; 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ for plums. They
are then sorted into halfpenny-worths for sale on the stalls. Among
the refuse is always a portion of what is called “tidy” fruit, and
this occupies the prominent place in the “halfpenny lots”--for they
are usually sold at a halfpenny. Sometimes, too, a salesman will throw
in among the refuse a little good fruit, if he happen to have it over,
either gratuitously or at the refuse price; and this, of course, is
always made the most conspicuous on the stalls. Of other fruits,
perhaps, only a small portion is damaged, from over-ripeness, or by
the aggression of wasps and insects, the remainder being very fine, so
that the retail “lots” are generally cheap. The sellers aim at “half
profits,” or cent. per cent.
The “refuse” trade in fruit--and the refuse-trade is mainly confined to
fruit--is principally in the hands of the Irish. The persons carrying
it on are nearly all middle-aged and elderly women. I once or twice
saw a delicate and pretty-looking girl sitting with the old “refuse”
women; but I found that she was not a “regular hand,” and only now and
then “minded the stall” in her mother’s absence. She worked with her
needle, I was told.
Of the women who confine themselves to this trade there are never less
than twenty, and frequently thirty. Sometimes, when the refuse is very
cheap and very abundant, as many as 100 fruit-sellers, women and girls,
will sell it in halfpenny-worths, along with better articles. These
women also sell refuse dry-fruit, purchased in Duke’s-place, but only
when they cannot obtain green-fruit, or cannot obtain it sufficiently.
All is sold at stalls; as these dealers seem to think that if it were
hawked, the police might look too inquisitively at a barrow stocked
with refuse. The “refuse-sellers” buy at all the markets. The poorer
street-sellers, whose more staple trade is in oranges or nuts, are
_occasional_ dealers in it.
Perhaps the regular refuse-buyers are not among the _very_ poorest
class, as their sale is tolerably quick and certain, but with the usual
drawbacks of wet weather. They make, I was told, from 4_d._ to 1_s._ a
day the year round, or perhaps 7_d._ or 8_d._ a day, Sunday included.
They are all Roman Catholics, and resort to the street-sale after
mass. They are mostly widows, or women who have reached middle-age,
unmarried. Some are the wives of street-sellers. Two of their best
pitches are on Saffron-hill and in Petticoat-lane. It is somewhat
curious to witness these women sitting in a line of five or six, and
notwithstanding their natural garrulity, hardly exchanging a word one
with another. Some of them derive an evident solace from deliberate
puffs at a short black pipe.
A stout, healthy-looking woman of this class said:--“Sure thin, sir,
I’ve sat and sould my bit of fruit in this place, or near it, for
twinty year and more, as is very well known indeed, is it. I could make
twice the money twinty year ago that I can now, for the boys had the
ha’pinnies more thin than they has now, more’s the pity. The childer
is my custhomers, very few beyant--such as has only a ha’pinny now and
thin, God hilp them. They’ll come a mile from any parrut, to spind it
with such as me, for they know it’s chape we sill! Yis, indeed, or
they’ll come with a fardin either, for it’s a ha’pinny lot we’ll split
for them any time. The boys buys most, but they’re dridful tazes. It’s
the patience of the divil must be had to dale wid the likes of thim.
They was dridful about the Pope, but they’ve tired of it now. O, no, it
wasn’t the boys of my counthry that demaned themselves that way. Well,
I make 4_d._ some days, and 6_d._ some, and 1_s._ 6_d._ some, and I
have made 3_s._ 6_d._, and I have made nothing. Perhaps I make 5_s._ or
6_s._ a week rigular, but I’m established and well-known you see.”
The quantity of refuse at the metropolitan “green” markets varies
with the different descriptions of fruit. Of apples it averages
one-twentieth, and of plums and greengages one-fifteenth, of the
entire supply. With pears, cherries, gooseberries, and currants,
however, the damaged amounts to one-twelfth, while of strawberries and
mulberries it reaches as high as one-tenth of the aggregate quantity
sent to market.
The Irish street-sellers, I am informed, buy full two-thirds of all the
refuse, the other third being purchased by the lower class of English
costermongers--“the illegitimates,”--as they are called. We must not
consider the sale of the damaged fruit so great an evil as it would,
at the first blush, appear, for it constitutes perhaps the sole luxury
of poor children, as well as of the poor themselves, who, were it
not for the halfpenny and farthing lots of the refuse-sellers, would
doubtlessly never know the taste of such things.
* * * * *
Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be as well to say
a few words concerning the curious revelations made by the returns
from Billingsgate, Covent-garden, and the other London markets, as
to the diet of the poor. In the first place, then, it appears that
in the matter of fish, herrings constitute the chief article of
consumption--no less than 210,000,000 lbs. weight of this fish in a
“fresh” state, and 60,000,000 lbs. in a “dried” state, being annually
eaten by the humbler classes of the metropolis and the suburbs. Of
sprats there are 3,000,000 lbs. weight consumed--and these, with the
addition of plaice, are the staple comestibles at the dinners and
suppers of the ichthyophagous part of the labouring population of
London. One of the reasons for this is doubtless the extraordinary
cheapness of these kinds of fish. The sprats are sold at a penny per
pound; the herrings at the same rate; and the plaice at a fraction
less, perhaps; whereas a pound of butcher’s meat, even “pieces,” or
the “block ornaments,” as they are sometimes called, cannot be got for
less than twopence-halfpenny or threepence. But the relative cheapness
of these two kinds of food can only be tested by the proportionate
quantity of nutrition in each. According to Liebig, butcher’s meat
contains 26 per cent. of solid matter, and 74 per cent. of water;
whereas, according to Brande, fish consists of 20 parts of solid
matter, and 80 parts water in every 100. Hence it would appear that
butcher’s meat is five per cent. more nutritive than fish--or, in
other words, that if the two were equally cheap, the prices, according
to the quantity of nutrition in each, should be for fish one penny
per pound, and butcher’s meat not five farthings; so that even at
twopence-halfpenny the pound, meat is more than twice as dear an
article of diet as fish.
But it is not only on account of their cheapness that herrings and
sprats are consumed in such vast quantities by the labouring people of
London. Salmon, eels, herrings, pilchards, and sprats, Dr. Pereira
tells us, abound in oil; and oleaginous food, according to Leibig,
is an “element of respiration,” consisting of nearly 80 per cent.
charcoal, which burns away in the lungs, and so contributes to the
warmth of the system. Fat, indeed, may be said to act as fuel to the
vital fire; and we now know, from observations made upon the average
daily consumption of food by 28 soldiers of the Grand Duke of Hesse
Darmstadt, in barracks, for a month--which is the same as 840 men for
one day--that an adult taking moderate exercise consumes, in the act of
respiration, very nearly a pound of charcoal every day, which of course
must be supplied in his food. “But persons who take much exercise, or
labour hard,” says Dr. Pereira, “require more frequent and copious
meals than the indolent or sedentary. In the active man the number of
respirations is greater than in the inactive, and therefore a more
frequent supply of food is required to furnish the increased quantity
of carbon and hydrogen to be consumed in the lungs.” “A bird deprived
of food,” says Liebig, “dies on the third day; while a serpent, with
its sluggish respiration, can live without food three months, or
longer.”
Captain Parry, in his account of one of the Polar expeditions (1827),
states, that both himself and Mr. Beverley, the surgeon, were of
opinion, that, in order to maintain the strength of the men during
their harassing journey across the ice, living constantly in the
open air, and exposed to the wet and cold for twelve hours a day,
an addition was requisite of at least one-third to the quantity of
provisions daily issued. So, in the gaol dietaries, the allowance to
prisoners sentenced to hard labour for three months is one-third more
than the scale for those sentenced to hard labour for three days--the
former having 254 ounces, and the latter only 168 ounces of solid food
served out to them every week.
But the hard-working poor not only require more food than the
non-working rich, but it is mainly because the rich are better fed
that they are more lethargic than the poor; for the greater the supply
of nutriment to the body, the more inactive does the system become.
From experiments made a few years ago at the Zoological Gardens, it
was found, that, by feeding the animals twice, instead of once, in the
twenty-four hours, their habits, as regards exercise, were altered--a
fact which readily explains how the fat and overfed are always the
least energetic; fat being at once the cause and consequence of
inaction. It is well to hear an obese citizen tell a hollow-cheeked
man, who begs a penny of him, “to go and work--a lazy scoundrel;” but
physiology assures us that the fat tradesman is naturally the laziest
of the two. In a word, he is fat because he is lazy, and lazy because
he is fat.
The industrious poor, however, not only require more food than the
indolent rich, but, getting less, they become more susceptible of cold,
and, therefore, more eager for all that tends to promote warmth. I
have often had occasion to remark the sacrifices that the ill-fed
will make to have “a bit of fire.” “He who is well fed,” observes
Sir John Ross, “resists cold better than the man who is stinted,
while starvation from cold follows but too soon a starvation in food.
This doubtlessly explains in a great measure the resisting powers
of the natives of frozen climates, their consumption of food being
enormous, and often incredible.” Captain Cochrane, in his “Journey
through Russia and Siberian Tartary,” tells us that he has repeatedly
seen a Yakut or Tongouse devour forty pounds of meat in a day; and
one of the Yakuti he speaks of as having consumed, in twenty-four
hours, “the hind-quarter of a large ox, twenty pounds of fat, and a
proportionate quantity of melted butter for his drink.” (Vol. i. p.
255). Much less heat is evolved, physiologists tell us, where there is
a deficiency of food. “During the whole of our march,” says Sir John
Franklin, “we experienced that no quantity of clothing could keep us
warm while we fasted; but, on those occasions on which we were enabled
to go to bed with full stomachs, we passed the night in a warm and
comfortable manner.” Hence, it is evident, that in summer a smaller
quantity of food suffices to keep up the temperature of the body. I
know of no experiments to show the different proportions of aliment
required at different seasons of the year. In winter, however, when a
greater supply is certainly needed, the labouring man, unfortunately,
has less means of obtaining it--nearly all trades slacken as the
cold weather comes on, and some, as brick-making, market-gardening,
building, &c., then almost entirely cease--so that, were it not for
the cheapness of fish, and, moreover, the oleaginous quality of those
kinds which are most plentiful in the winter time, the metropolitan
poor would be very likely to suffer that “starvation from cold which,”
in the words of Sir John Ross, “follows but too soon a starvation in
food.” Hence we can readily understand the remark of the enthusiastic
street-seller--“Sprats _is_ a blessing to the poor.”