cresses are mostly bought in Farringdon-market: “The usual time to go
to the market is between five and six in the morning, and from that to
seven,” said one informant; “myself, I am generally down in the market
by five. I was there this morning at five, and bitter cold it was, I
give you my word. We poor old people feel it dreadful. Years ago I
didn’t mind cold, but I feel it now cruel bad, to be sure. Sometimes,
when I’m turning up my things, I don’t hardly know whether I’ve got
’em in my hands or not; can’t even pick off a dead leaf. But that’s
nothing to the poor little things without shoes. Why, bless you, I’ve
seen ’em stand and cry two and three together, with the cold. Ah!
my heart has ached for ’em over and over again. I’ve said to ’em,
I wonder why your mother sends you out, that I have; and they said
they was obligated to try and get a penny for breakfast. We buy the
water-cresses by the ‘hand.’ One hand will make about five halfpenny
bundles. There’s more call for ’em in the spring of the year than what
there is in the winter. Why, they’re reckoned good for sweetening the
blood in the spring; but, for my own eating, I’d sooner have the crease
in the winter than I would have it in the spring of the year. There’s
an old woman sits in Farringdon-market, of the name of Burrows, that’s
sot there twenty-four years, and she’s been selling out creases to us
all that time.
“The sellers goes to market with a few pence. I myself goes down there
and lays out sometimes my 4_d._; that’s what I laid out this morning.
Sometimes I lay out only 2_d._ and 3_d._, according as how I has the
halfpence in my pocket. Many a one goes down to the market with only
three halfpence, and glad to have that to get a halfpenny, or anything,
so as to earn a mouthful of bread--a bellyful that they can’t get no
how. Ah, many a time I walked through the streets, and picked a piece
of bread that the servants chucked out of the door--may be to the
birds. I’ve gone and picked it up when I’ve been right hungry. Thinks
I, I can eat that as well as the birds. None of the sellers ever goes
down to the market with less than a penny. They won’t make less than
a pennorth, that’s one ‘hand,’ and if the little thing sells that,
she won’t earn more than three halfpence out of it. After they have
bought the creases they generally take them to the pump to wet them.
I generally pump upon mine in Hatton-garden. It’s done to make them
look nice and fresh all the morning, so that the wind shouldn’t make
them flag. You see they’ve been packed all night in the hamper, and
they get dry. Some ties them up in ha’porths as they walks along. Many
of them sit down on the steps of St. Andrew’s Church and make them up
into bunches. You’ll see plenty of them there of a morning between
five and six. Plenty, poor little dear souls, sitting there,” said the
old man to me. There the hand is parcelled out into five halfpenny
bunches. In the summer the dealers often go to market and lay out as
much as 1_s._ “On Saturday morning, this time of year, I buys as many
as nine hands--there’s more call for ’em on Saturday and Sunday morning
than on any other days; and we always has to buy on Saturdays what
we want for Sundays--there an’t no market on that day, sir. At the
market sufficient creases are bought by the sellers for the morning
and afternoon as well. In the morning some begin crying their creases
through the streets at half-past six, and others about seven. They go
to different parts, but there is scarcely a place but what some goes
to--there are so many of us now--there’s twenty to one to what there
used to be. Why, they’re so thick down at the market in the summer
time, that you might bowl balls along their heads, and all a fighting
for the creases. There’s a regular scramble, I can assure you, to get
at ’em, so as to make a halfpenny out of them. I should think in the
spring mornings there’s 400 or 500 on ’em down at Farringdon-market
all at one time--between four and five in the morning--if not more
than that, and as fast as they keep going out, others keep coming
in. I think there is more than a thousand, young and old, about the
streets in the trade. The working classes are the principal of the
customers. The bricklayers, and carpenters, and smiths, and plumbers,
leaving work and going home to breakfast at eight o’clock, purchase the
chief part of them. A great many are sold down the courts and mews,
and bye streets, and very few are got rid of in the squares and the
neighbourhood of the more respectable houses. Many are sold in the
principal thoroughfares--a large number in the City. There is a man who
stands close to the Post-office, at the top of Newgate-street, winter
and summer, who sells a great quantity of bunches every morning. This
man frequently takes between 4_s._ and 5_s._ of a winter’s morning,
and about 10_s._ a day in the summer.” “Sixteen years ago,” said the
old man who gave me the principal part of this information, “I could
come out and take my 18_s._ of a Saturday morning, and 5_s._ on a
Sunday morning as well; but now I think myself very lucky if I can
take my 1_s._ 3_d._, and it’s only on two mornings in the week that I
can get that.” The hucksters of watercresses are generally an honest,
industrious, striving class of persons. The young girls are said to
be well-behaved, and to be the daughters of poor struggling people.
The old men and women are persons striving to save themselves from the
workhouse. The old and young people generally travel nine and ten miles
in the course of the day. They start off to market at four and five,
and are out on their morning rounds from seven till nine, and on their
afternoon rounds from half-past two to five in the evening. They travel
at the rate of two miles an hour. “If it wasn’t for my wife, I must go
to the workhouse outright,” said the old watercress man. “Ah, I do’nt
know what I should do without her, I can assure you. She earns about
1_s._ 3_d._ a day. She takes in a little washing, and keeps a mangle.
When I’m at home I turn the mangle for her. The mangle is my own. When
my wife’s mother was alive she lent us the money to buy it, and as we
earnt the money we paid her back so much a week. It is _that_ what has
kept us together, or else we shouldn’t have been as we are. The mangle
we give 50_s._ for, and it brings us in now 1_s._ 3_d._ a day with the
washing. My wife is younger than I am. She is about thirty-five years
old. We have got two children. One is thirteen and the other fifteen.
They’ve both got learning, and are both in situations. I always sent
’em to school. Though I can’t neither read nor write myself, I wished
to make them some little scholards. I paid a penny a week for ’em at
the school. Lady M---- has always given me my Christmas dinner for the
last five years, and God bless her for it--that I _do_ say indeed.”
WATERCRESS GIRL.
The little watercress girl who gave me the following statement,
although only eight years of age, had entirely lost all childish ways,
and was, indeed, in thoughts and manner, a woman. There was something
cruelly pathetic in hearing this infant, so young that her features had
scarcely formed themselves, talking of the bitterest struggles of life,
with the calm earnestness of one who had endured them all. I did not
know how to talk with her. At first I treated her as a child, speaking
on childish subjects; so that I might, by being familiar with her,
remove all shyness, and get her to narrate her life freely. I asked
her about her toys and her games with her companions; but the look of
amazement that answered me soon put an end to any attempt at fun on
my part. I then talked to her about the parks, and whether she ever
went to them. “The parks!” she replied in wonder, “where are they?” I
explained to her, telling her that they were large open places with
green grass and tall trees, where beautiful carriages drove about, and
people walked for pleasure, and children played. Her eyes brightened
up a little as I spoke; and she asked, half doubtingly, “Would they
let such as me go there--just to look?” All her knowledge seemed to
begin and end with water-cresses, and what they fetched. She knew no
more of London than that part she had seen on her rounds, and believed
that no quarter of the town was handsomer or pleasanter than it was at
Farringdon-market or at Clerkenwell, where she lived. Her little face,
pale and thin with privation, was wrinkled where the dimples ought to
have been, and she would sigh frequently. When some hot dinner was
offered to her, she would not touch it, because, if she eat too much,
“it made her sick,” she said; “and she wasn’t used to meat, only on a
Sunday.”
The poor child, although the weather was severe, was dressed in a thin
cotton gown, with a threadbare shawl wrapped round her shoulders. She
wore no covering to her head, and the long rusty hair stood out in all
directions. When she walked she shuffled along, for fear that the large
carpet slippers that served her for shoes should slip off her feet.
“I go about the streets with water-creases, crying, ‘Four bunches a
penny, water-creases.’ I am just eight years old--that’s all, and I’ve
a big sister, and a brother and a sister younger than I am. On and off,
I’ve been very near a twelvemonth in the streets. Before that, I had
to take care of a baby for my aunt. No, it wasn’t heavy--it was only
two months old; but I minded it for ever such a time--till it could
walk. It was a very nice little baby, not a very pretty one; but, if
I touched it under the chin, it would laugh. Before I had the baby, I
used to help mother, who was in the fur trade; and, if there was any
slits in the fur, I’d sew them up. My mother learned me to needle-work
and to knit when I was about five. I used to go to school, too; but
I wasn’t there long. I’ve forgot all about it now, it’s such a time
ago; and mother took me away because the master whacked me, though the
missus use’n’t to never touch me. I didn’t like him at all. What do you
think? he hit me three times, ever so hard, across the face with his
cane, and made me go dancing down stairs; and when mother saw the marks
on my cheek, she went to blow him up, but she couldn’t see him--he was
afraid. That’s why I left school.
“The creases is so bad now, that I haven’t been out with ’em for three
days. They’re so cold, people won’t buy ’em; for when I goes up to
them, they say, ‘They’ll freeze our bellies.’ Besides, in the market,
they won’t sell a ha’penny handful now--they’re ris to a penny and
tuppence. In summer there’s lots, and ’most as cheap as dirt; but I
have to be down at Farringdon-market between four and five, or else
I can’t get any creases, because everyone almost--especially the
Irish--is selling them, and they’re picked up so quick. Some of the
saleswomen--we never calls ’em ladies--is very kind to us children,
and some of them altogether spiteful. The good one will give you a
bunch for nothing, when they’re cheap; but the others, cruel ones, if
you try to bate them a farden less than they ask you, will say, ‘Go
along with you, you’re no good.’ I used to go down to market along with
another girl, as must be about fourteen, ’cos she does her back hair
up. When we’ve bought a lot, we sits down on a door-step, and ties
up the bunches. We never goes home to breakfast till we’ve sold out;
but, if it’s very late, then I buys a penn’orth of pudden, which is
very nice with gravy. I don’t know hardly one of the people, as goes
to Farringdon, to talk to; they never speaks to me, so I don’t speak
to them. We children never play down there, ’cos we’re thinking of
our living. No; people never pities me in the street--excepting one
gentleman, and he says, says he, ‘What do you do out so soon in the
morning?’ but he gave me nothink--he only walked away.
“It’s very cold before winter comes on reg’lar--specially getting up
of a morning. I gets up in the dark by the light of the lamp in the
court. When the snow is on the ground, there’s no creases. I bears the
cold--you must; so I puts my hands under my shawl, though it hurts ’em
to take hold of the creases, especially when we takes ’em to the pump
to wash ’em. No; I never see any children crying--it’s no use.
“Sometimes I make a great deal of money. One day I took 1_s._ 6_d._,
and the creases cost 6_d._; but it isn’t often I get such luck as
that. I oftener makes 3_d._ or 4_d._ than 1_s._; and then I’m at work,
crying, ‘Creases, four bunches a penny, creases!’ from six in the
morning to about ten. What do you mean by mechanics?--I don’t know what
they are. The shops buys most of me. Some of ’em says, ‘Oh! I ain’t
a-goin’ to give a penny for these;’ and they want ’em at the same price
as I buys ’em at.
“I always give mother my money, she’s so very good to me. She don’t
often beat me; but, when she do, she don’t play with me. She’s very
poor, and goes out cleaning rooms sometimes, now she don’t work at the
fur. I ain’t got no father, he’s a father-in-law. No; mother ain’t
married again--he’s a father-in-law. He grinds scissors, and he’s very
good to me. No; I dont mean by that that he says kind things to me,
for he never hardly speaks. When I gets home, after selling creases,
I stops at home. I puts the room to rights: mother don’t make me do
it, I does it myself. I cleans the chairs, though there’s only two to
clean. I takes a tub and scrubbing-brush and flannel, and scrubs the
floor--that’s what I do three or four times a week.
“I don’t have no dinner. Mother gives me two slices of bread-and-butter
and a cup of tea for breakfast, and then I go till tea, and has the
same. We has meat of a Sunday, and, of course, I should like to have
it every day. Mother has just the same to eat as we has, but she takes
more tea--three cups, sometimes. No; I never has no sweet-stuff;
I never buy none--I don’t like it. Sometimes we has a game of
‘honey-pots’ with the girls in the court, but not often. Me and Carry
H---- carries the little ’uns. We plays, too, at ‘kiss-in-the-ring.’
I knows a good many games, but I don’t play at ’em, ’cos going out
with creases tires me. On a Friday night, too, I goes to a Jew’s house
till eleven o’clock on Saturday night. All I has to do is to snuff the
candles and poke the fire. You see they keep their Sabbath then, and
they won’t touch anything; so they gives me my wittals and 1-1/2_d._,
and I does it for ’em. I have a reg’lar good lot to eat. Supper of
Friday night, and tea after that, and fried fish of a Saturday morning,
and meat for dinner, and tea, and supper, and I like it very well.
“Oh, yes; I’ve got some toys at home. I’ve a fire-place, and a box of
toys, and a knife and fork, and two little chairs. The Jews gave ’em
to me where I go to on a Friday, and that’s why I said they was very
kind to me. I never had no doll; but I misses little sister--she’s only
two years old. We don’t sleep in the same room; for father and mother
sleeps with little sister in the one pair, and me and brother and other
sister sleeps in the top room. I always goes to bed at seven, ’cos I
has to be up so early.
“I am a capital hand at bargaining--but only at buying watercreases.
They can’t take me in. If the woman tries to give me a small handful of
creases, I says, ‘I ain’t a goin’ to have that for a ha’porth,’ and I
go to the next basket, and so on, all round. I know the quantities very
well. For a penny I ought to have a full market hand, or as much as I
could carry in my arms at one time, without spilling. For 3_d._ I has
a lap full, enough to earn about a shilling; and for 6_d._ I gets as
many as crams my basket. I can’t read or write, but I knows how many
pennies goes to a shilling, why, twelve, of course, but I don’t know
how many ha’pence there is, though there’s two to a penny. When I’ve
bought 3_d._ of creases, I ties ’em up into as many little bundles
as I can. They must look biggish, or the people won’t buy them, some
puffs them out as much as they’ll go. All my money I earns I puts in a
club and draws it out to buy clothes with. It’s better than spending
it in sweet-stuff, for them as has a living to earn. Besides it’s like
a child to care for sugar-sticks, and not like one who’s got a living
and vittals to earn. I aint a child, and I shan’t be a woman till I’m
twenty, but I’m past eight, I am. I don’t know nothing about what I
earns during the year, I only know how many pennies goes to a shilling,
and two ha’pence goes to a penny, and four fardens goes to a penny. I
knows, too, how many fardens goes to tuppence--eight. That’s as much as
I wants to know for the markets.”
* * * * *
The market returns I have obtained show the following result of
the quantity vended in the streets, and of the receipts by the
cress-sellers:--
A TABLE SHOWING THE QUANTITY OF WATERCRESSES SOLD WHOLESALE THROUGHOUT
THE YEAR IN LONDON, WITH THE PROPORTION RETAILED IN THE STREETS.
---------------+---------------------+--------------
| | Proportion
| Quantity sold | retailed in
Market. | wholesale. | the Streets.
---------------+---------------------+--------------
Covent Garden | 1,578,000 bunches | one-eighth.
Farringdon | 12,960,000 „ | one-half.
Borough | 180,000 „ | one-half.
Spitalfields | 180,000 „ | one-half.
Portman | 60,000 „ | one-third.
| ---------- |
Total | 14,958,000 „ |
---------------+---------------------+--------------
From this sale the street cress-sellers receive:--
Bunches. Receipts.
Farringdon 6,480,000 1/2_d._ per bunch £13,500
Covent Garden 16,450 „ 34
Borough 90,000 „ 187
Spitalfields 90,000 „ 187
Portman 20,000 „ 41
-------
£13,949
-------
The discrepancy in the quantity sold in the respective markets is to be
accounted for by the fact, that Farringdon is the water-cress market
to which are conveyed the qualities, large-leaved and big-stalked,
that suit the street-folk. Of this description of cress they purchase
one-half of all that is sold in Farringdon; of the finer, and smaller,
and brown-leaved cress sold there, they purchase hardly any. At Covent
Garden only the finer sorts of cress are in demand, and, consequently,
the itinerants buy only an eighth in that market, and they are not
encouraged there. They purchase half the quantity in the Borough,
and the same in Spitalfields, and a third at Portman. I have before
mentioned that 500 might be taken as the number supported by the sale
of “creases;” that is, 500 families, or at least 1,000 individuals. The
total amount received is nearly 14,000_l._, and this apportioned among
1,000 street-sellers, gives a weekly receipt of 5_s._ 5_d._, with a
profit of 3_s._ 3_d._ per individual.
The discrepancy is further accounted for because the other market
salesmen buy cresses at Farringdon; but I have given under the head of
Farringdon _all_ that is sold to those other markets to be disposed to
the street-sellers, and the returns from the other markets are of the
cresses carried _direct_ there, apart from any purchases at Farringdon.
OF GROUNDSEL AND CHICKWEED SELLERS.
On a former occasion (in the _Morning Chronicle_) I mentioned that
I received a letter informing me that a woman, residing in one of
the courts about Saffron-hill, was making braces, and receiving only
1_s._ for four dozen of them. I was assured she was a most deserving
character, strictly sober, and not receiving parochial relief. “Her
husband,” my informant added, “was paralysed, and endeavoured to
assist his family by gathering green food for birds. They are in deep
distress, but their character is irreproachable.” I found the couple
located up a court, the entrance to which was about as narrow as the
opening to a sentry-box, and on each side lolled groups of labourers
and costermongers, with short black pipes in their mouths. As I dived
into the court, a crowd followed me to see whither I was going. The
brace-maker lived on the first floor of a crazy, fœtid house. I
ascended the stairs, and the banisters, from which the rails had all
been purloined, gave way in my hands. I found the woman, man, and
their family busy at their tea-dinner. In a large broken chair, beside
the fire-place, was the old paralysed man, dressed in a ragged greasy
fustian coat, his beard unshorn, and his hair in the wildest disorder.
On the edge of the bed sat a cleanly looking woman, his wife, with a
black apron on. Standing by the table was a blue-eyed laughing and
shoeless boy, with an old camlet cape pinned over his shoulders. Next
him was a girl in a long grey pinafore, with her hair cut close to her
head, with the exception of a few locks in front, which hung down over
her forehead like a dirty fringe. On a chair near the window stood a
basket half full of chickweed and groundsel, and two large cabbages.
There was a stuffed linnet on the mantel-piece and an empty cage
hanging outside the window. In front of the window-sill was the small
imitation of a gate and palings, so popular among the workpeople. On
the table were a loaf, a few mugs of milkless tea and a small piece of
butter in a saucer. I had scarcely entered when the mother began to
remove the camlet cape from the boy’s shoulders, and to slip a coarse
clean pinafore over his head instead. At present I have only to deal
with the trade of the husband, who made the following statement: