a dozen of Chigwell-rows, and earn my supper in half an hour off of
’em. The murder of Sarah Holmes at Lincoln is good, too--that there
has been worked for the last five year successively every winter. Poor
Sarah Holmes! Bless her! she has saved me from walking the streets all
night many a time. Some of the best of these have been in work twenty
years--the Scarborough murder has full twenty years. It’s called ‘THE
SCARBOROUGH TRAGEDY.’ I’ve worked it myself. It’s about a noble and
rich young naval officer seducing a poor clergyman’s daughter. She is
confined in a ditch, and destroys the child. She is taken up for it,
tried, and executed. This has had a great run. It sells all round the
country places, and would sell now if they had it out. Mostly all our
customers is females. They are the chief dependence we have. The
Scarborough Tragedy is very attractive. It draws tears to the women’s
eyes to think that a poor clergyman’s daughter, who is remarkably
beautiful, should murder her own child; it’s very touching to every
feeling heart. There’s a copy of verses with it, too. Then there’s the
Liverpool Tragedy--that’s very attractive. It’s a mother murdering
her own son, through gold. He had come from the East Indies, and
married a rich planter’s daughter. He came back to England to see his
parents after an absence of thirty years. They kept a lodging-house
in Liverpool for sailors; the son went there to lodge, and meant to
tell his parents who he was in the morning. His mother saw the gold
he had got in his boxes, and cut his throat--severed his head from
his body; the old man, upwards of seventy years of age, holding the
candle. They had put a washing-tub under the bed to catch his blood.
The morning after the murder, the old man’s daughter calls and inquires
for a young man. The old man denies that they have had any such person
in the house. She says he had a mole on his arm, in the shape of a
strawberry. The old couple go up-stairs to examine the corpse, and find
they have murdered their own son, and then they both put an end to
their existence. This is a deeper tragedy than the Scarborough Murder.
That suits young people better; they like to hear about the young woman
being seduced by the naval officer; but the mothers take more to the
Liverpool Tragedy--it suits them better. Some of the ‘cocks’ were in
existence long before ever I was born or thought of. The ‘Great and
important battle between the two young ladies of fortune,’ is what we
calls ‘a ripper.’ I should like to have that there put down correct,”
he added, “’cause I’ve taken a tidy lot of money out of it.”
My informant, who had been upwards of 20 years in the running patter
line, told me that he commenced his career with the “Last Dying Speech
and Full Confession of William Corder.” He was sixteen years of age,
and had run away from his parents. “I worked that there,” he said,
“down in the very town (at Bury) where he was executed. I got a whole
hatful of halfpence at that. Why, I wouldn’t even give ’em seven for
sixpence--no, that I wouldn’t. A gentleman’s servant come out and
wanted half a dozen for his master and one for himself in, and I
wouldn’t let him have no such thing. We often sells more than that at
once. Why, I sold six at one go to the railway clerks at Norwich about
the Manning affair, only a fortnight back. But Steinburgh’s little
job--you know he murdered his wife and family, and committed suicide
after--that sold as well as any ‘die.’ Pegsworth was an out-and-out
lot. I did tremendous with him, because it happened in London, down
Ratcliff-highway--that’s a splendid quarter for working--there’s
plenty of feelings--but, bless you, some places you go to you can’t
move no how, they’ve hearts like paving-stones. They wouldn’t have
‘the papers’ if you’d give them to ’em--especially when they knows
you. Greenacre didn’t sell so well as might have been expected, for
such a diabolical out-and-out crime as he committed; but you see he
came close after Pegsworth, and that took the beauty off him. Two
murderers together is never no good to nobody. Why there was Wilson
Gleeson, as great a villain as ever lived--went and murdered a whole
family at noon-day--but Rush coopered him--and likewise that girl
at Bristol--made it no draw to any one. Daniel Good, though, was a
first-rater; and would have been much better if it hadn’t been for
that there Madam Toosow. You see, she went down to Roehampton, and guv
2_l._ for the werry clogs as he used to wash his master’s carriage
in; so, in course, when the harristocracy could go and see the real
things--the werry identical clogs--in the Chamber of ’Orrors, why
the people wouldn’t look at our authentic portraits of the fiend in
human form. Hocker wasn’t any particular great shakes. There was a
deal expected from him, but he didn’t turn out well. Courvoisier was
much better; he sold wery well, but nothing to Blakesley. Why I worked
him for six weeks. The wife of the murdered man kept the King’s Head
that he was landlord on open on the morning of the execution, and the
place was like a fair. I even went and sold papers outside the door
myself. I thought if she war’n’t ashamed, why should I be? After that
we had a fine ‘fake’--that was the fire of the Tower of London--it
sold rattling. Why we had about forty apprehended for that--first we
said two soldiers was taken up that couldn’t obtain their discharge,
and then we declared it was a well-known sporting nobleman who did it
for a spree. The boy Jones in the Palace wasn’t much of an affair for
the running patterers; the ballad singers--or street screamers, as we
calls ’em--had the pull out of that. The patter wouldn’t take; they had
read it all in the newspapers before. Oxford, and Francis, and Bean
were a little better, but nothing to crack about. The people doesn’t
care about such things as them. There’s nothing beats a stunning good
murder, after all. Why there was Rush--I lived on him for a month or
more. When I commenced with Rush, I was 14_s._ in debt for rent, and
in less than fourteen days I astonished the wise men in the east by
paying my landlord all I owed him. Since Dan’el Good there had been
little or nothing doing in the murder line--no one could cap him--till
Rush turned up a regular trump for us. Why I went down to Norwich
expressly to work the execution. I worked my way down there with ‘_a
sorrowful lamentation_’ of his own composing, which I’d got written
by the blind man expressly for the occasion. On the morning of the
execution we beat all the regular newspapers out of the field; for we
had the full, true, and particular account down, you see, by our own
express, and that can beat anything that ever they can publish; for we
gets it printed several days afore it comes off, and goes and stands
with it right under the drop; and many’s the penny I’ve turned away
when I’ve been asked for an account of the whole business _before_ it
happened. So you see, for herly and correct hinformation, we can beat
the _Sun_--aye, or the moon either, for the matter of that. Irish Jem,
the Ambassador, never goes to bed but he blesses Rush the farmer; and
many’s the time he’s told me we should never have such another windfall
as that. But I told him not to despair; there’s a good time coming,
boys, says I, and, sure enough, up comes the Bermondsey tragedy. We
might have done very well, indeed, out of the Mannings, but there was
too many examinations for it to be any great account to us. I’ve been
away with the Mannings in the country ever since. I’ve been through
Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk, along with George Frederick
Manning and his wife--travelled from 800 to 1,000 miles with ’em, but I
could have done much better if I had stopped in London. Every day I was
anxiously looking for a confession from Mrs. Manning. All I wanted was
for her to clear her conscience afore she left this here whale of tears
(that’s what I always calls it in the patter), and when I read in the
papers (mind they was none of my own) that her last words on the brink
of heternity was, ‘I’ve nothing to say to you, Mr. Rowe, but to thank
you for your kindness,’ I guv her up entirely--had completely done
with her. In course the public looks to us for the last words of all
monsters in human form, and as for Mrs. Manning’s, they were not worth
the printing.”
OF THE RECENT EXPERIENCE OF A RUNNING PATTERER.
From the same man I had the following account of his vocation up to the
present time:
“Well, sir,” he said, “I think, take them altogether, things hasn’t
been so good this last year as the year before. But the Pope, God bless
him! he’s been the best friend I’ve had since Rush, but Rush licked
his Holiness. You see, the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman is a one-sided
affair; of course the Catholics won’t buy anything against the Pope,
but _all_ religions could go for Rush. Our mob once thought of starting
a cardinal’s dress, and I thought of wearing a red hat myself. I did
wear a shovel hat when the Bishop of London was our racket; but I
thought the hat began to feel too hot, so I shovelled it off. There was
plenty of paper that would have suited to work with a cardinal’s hat.
There was one,--‘Cardinal Wiseman’s Lament,’--and it was giving his own
words like, and a red hat would have capped it. It used to make the
people roar when it came to snivelling, and grumbling at little Jack
Russell--by Wiseman, in course; and when it comes to this part--which
alludes to that ’ere thundering letter to the Bishop of Durham--the
people was stunned:
‘He called me a buffalo, bull, and a monkey,
And then with a soldier called Old Arthur conkey
Declared they would buy me a ninepenny donkey,
And send me to Rome to the Pope.’
“They shod me, sir. _Who’s_ they? Why, the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman. I
call my clothes after them I earn money by to buy them with. My shoes
I call Pope Pius; my trowsers and braces, Calcraft; my waistcoat and
shirt, Jael Denny; and my coat, Love Letters. A man must show a sense
of gratitude in the best way he can. But I didn’t start the cardinal’s
hat; I thought it might prove disagreeable to Sir Robert Peel’s dress
lodgers.” [What my informant said further of the Pope, I give under the
head of the Chaunter.] “There was very little doing,” he continued,
“for some time after I gave you an account before; hardly a slum worth
a crust and a pipe of tobacco to us. A slum’s a paper fake,--make a
foot-note of that, sir. I think Adelaide was the first thing I worked
after I told you of my tomfooleries. Yes it was,--her helegy. She
weren’t of no account whatsomever, and Cambridge was no better nor
Adelaide. But there was poor Sir Robert Peel,--he _was_ some good;
indeed, I think he was as good as 5_s._ a day to me for the four or
five days when he was freshest. Browns were thrown out of the windows
to us, and one copper cartridge was sent flying at us with 13-1/2_d._
in it, all copper, as if it had been collected. I worked Sir Robert at
the West End, and in the quiet streets and squares. Certainly we had a
most beautiful helegy. Well, poor gentleman, what we earned on him was
some set-off to us for his starting his new regiment of the Blues--the
Cook’s Own. Not that they’ve troubled me much. I was once before
Alderman Kelly, when he was Lord Mayor, charged with obstructing, or
some humbug of that sort. ‘What are you, my man?’ says he quietly, and
like a gentleman. ‘In the same line as yourself, my lord,’ says I.
‘How’s that?’ says he. ‘I’m a paper-worker for my living, my lord,’
says I. I was soon discharged; and there was such fun and laughing,
that if I’d had a few slums in my pocket, I believe I could have sold
them all in the justice-room.
“Haynau was a stunner, and the drayman came their caper just in the
critical time for us, as things was growing very taper. But I did best
with him in chaunting; and so, as you want to hear about chaunting,
I’ll tell you after. We’re forced to change our patter--first running,
then chaunting, and then standing--oftener than we used to.
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATIONS OF STREET-ART--No. I.
Horrible and Bar-bari-ous Murder of Poor
=JAEL DENNY=,
THE ILL-FATED VICTIM OF THOMAS DRORY.
]
“Then Calcraft was pretty tidy browns. He was up for starving his
mother,--and what better can you expect of a hangman? Me and my mate
worked him down at Hatfield, in Essex, where his mother lives. It’s
his native, I believe. We sold her one. She’s a limping old body. I
saw the people look at her, and they told me arterards who she was.
‘How much?’ says she. ‘A penny, marm,’ say I. ‘Sarve him right,’ says
she. We worked it, too, in the street in Hoxton where he lives, and
he sent out for two, which shows he’s a sensible sort of character in
some points, after all. Then we had a ‘Woice from the Gaol! or the
Horrors of the Condemned Cell! Being the Life of William Calcraft,
the present Hangman.’ It’s written in the high style, and parts of it
will have astonished the hangman’s nerves before this. Here’s a bit of
the patter, now:
“Let us look at William Calcraft,” says the eminent author, “in
his earliest days. He was born about the year 1801, of humble but
industrious parents, at a little village in Essex. His infant ears
often listened to the children belonging to the Sunday schools of his
native place, singing the well-known words of Watt’s beautiful hymn,
‘When e’er I take my walks abroad,
How many poor I see, &c.’
But alas for the poor farmer’s boy, he never had the opportunity of
going to that school to be taught how to shun ‘the broad way leading
to destruction.’ To seek a chance fortune he travelled up to London
where his ignorance and folorn condition shortly enabled that fell
demon which ever haunts the footsteps of the wretched, to mark him for
her own.”
“Isn’t that stunning, sir? Here it is in print for you. ‘Mark him
for her own!’ Then, poor dear, he’s so sorry to hang anybody. Here’s
another bit:
‘But in vain he repents, he has no real friend in the world but his
wife, to whom he can communicate his private thoughts, and in return
receive consolation, can any lot be harder than this? Hence his
nervous system is fast breaking down, every day rendering him less
able to endure the excruciating and agonizing torments he is hourly
suffering, he is haunted by remorse heaped upon remorse, every fresh
victim he is required to strangle being so much additional fuel thrown
upon that mental flame which is scorching him.’
“You may believe me, sir, and I can prove the fact--the author of that
beautiful writing ain’t in parliament! Think of the mental flame, sir!
O, dear.
“Sirrell was no good either. Not salt to a herring. Though we worked
him in his own neighbourhood, and pattered about gold and silver all
in a row. ‘Ah!’ says one old woman, ‘he was a ’spectable man.’ ‘Werry,
marm,’ says I.
“Hollest weren’t no good either, ’cause the wictim was a parson.
If it had happened a little later, _we’d_ have had it to rights;
the newspapers didn’t make much of it. We’d have shown it was the
‘Commencement of a Most Horrid and Barbarious Plot got up by the
Pope and Cardinal Wiseman _for-r_ the Mas-ser-cree-ing of all good
Protestant Ministers.’ That would have been the dodge, sir! A beautiful
idear, now, isn’t it? But the murder came off badly, and you can’t
expect fellows like them murderers to have any regard for the interest
of art and literature. Then there’s so long to wait between the murder
and the trial, that unless the fiend in human form keeps writing
beautiful love-letters, the excitement can’t be kept up. _We_ can write
the love-letters for the fiend in human? That’s quite true, and we
once had a great pull that way over the newspapers. But Lord love you,
there’s plenty of ’em gets more and more into our line. They treads in
our footsteps, sir; they follows our bright example. O! isn’t there a
nice rubbing and polishing up. This here copy won’t do. This must be
left out, and that put in; ’cause it suits the walk of the paper. Why,
you must know, sir. _I_ know. Don’t tell me. You can’t have been on the
_Morning Chronicle_ for nothing.
“Then there was the ‘Horrid and Inhuman Murder, Committed by T. Drory,
on the Body of Jael Denny, at Donninghurst, a Village in Essex.’ We
worked it in every way. Drory had every chance given to him. We had
half-sheets, and copies of werses, and books. A very tidy book it was,
setting off with showing how ‘The secluded village of Donninghurst
has been the scene of a most determined and diabolical murder, the
discovery of which early on Sunday, the 12th, in the morning has
thrown the whole of this part of the country into a painful state of
excitement.’ Well, sir, well--very well; that bit was taken from a
newspaper. Oh, we’re not above acknowledging when we condescends to
borrow from any of ’em. If you remember, when I saw you about the
time, I told you I thought Jael Denny would turn out as good as Maria
Martin. And without any joke or nonsense, sir, it really is a most
shocking thing. But she didn’t. The weather coopered her, poor lass!
There was money in sight, and we couldn’t touch it; it seemed washed
away from us, for you may remember how wet it was. I made a little by
her, though. For all that, I haven’t done with Master Drory yet. If
God spares my life, he shall make it up to me. Why, now, sir, is it
reasonable, that a poor man like me should take so much pains to make
Drory’s name known all over the country, and walk miles and miles in
the rain to do it, and get only a few bob for my labour? It can’t be
thought on. When the Wile and Inhuman Seducer takes his trial, he must
pay up my just claims. I’m not going to take all that trouble on his
account, and let him off so easy.”
My informant then gave me an account of his sale of papers relating
to the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman, but as he was then a chaunter,
rather than a patterer (the distinction is shown under another head),
I give his characteristic account, as the statement of a chaunter. He
proceeded after having finished his recital of the street business
relating to the Pope, &c.:
“My last paying caper was the Sloanes. They beat Haynau. I declare to
you, sir, the knowingest among us couldn’t have invented a cock to
equal the conduct of them Sloanes. Why, it’s disgusting to come near
the plain truth about them. I think, take it altogether, Sloane was as
good as the Pope, but he had a stopper like Pius the Ninth, for that
was a one-sided affair, and the Catholics wouldn’t buy; and Sloane was
too disgusting for the gentry, or better sort, to buy him. But I’ve
been in little streets where some of the windows was without sashes,
and some that had sashes had stockings thrust between the frames, and
I’ve taken half a bob in ha’pennies. Oh! you should have heard what
poor women said about him, for it was women that bought him most.
They was more savage against him than against her. Why, they had fifty
deaths for him. Rolling in a barrel, with lots of sharp nails inside,
down Primrose-hill, and turned out to the women on Kennington-common,
and boiled alive in oil or stuff that can’t be mentioned, or hung over
a slow fire. ‘O, the poor dear girl,’ says they, ‘what she’s suffered.’
We had accounts of Mistress Sloane’s apprehension before the papers.
We had it at Jersey, and they had it at Boulogne, but we were first.
Then we discovered, because we _must_ be in advance of the papers, that
Miss Devaux was Sloane’s daughter by a former wife, and Jane Wilbred
was Mrs. Sloane’s daughter by a former husband, and was entitled to
1,000_l._ by rights. Haynau was a fool to Sloane.
“I don’t know of anything fresh that’s in hand, sir. One of our authors
is coming out with something spicy, against Lord John, for doing
nothing about Wiseman; ’cause he says as no one thing that he’s written
for Lord John ever sold well, something against him may.”
OF THE CHAUNTERS.
“As the minstrel’s art,” writes Mr. Strutt, in his “Sports and
Pastimes,” “consisted of several branches, the professors were
distinguished by different denominations, as ‘rimours, _chanterres_,
conteours, jougleours or jongleurs, jestours, lecours, and troubadours
or trouvers:’ in modern language, rhymers, singers, story-tellers,
jugglers, relaters of heroic actions, buffoons, and poets; but all
of them were included under the general name of minstrel. An eminent
French antiquary says of the minstrels, that some of them themselves
composed the subjects they sang or related, as the trouvers and the
conteurs; and some of them used the compositions of others, as the
jougleours and the chanteurs. He further remarks, that the trouvers
may be said to have embellished their productions with rhyme, while
the conteurs related their histories in prose; the jougleours, who in
the middle ages were famous for playing upon the vielle” [a kind of
hurdy-gurdy], “accompanied the songs of the trouvers. These jougleours
were also assisted by the chanteurs; and this union of talents rendered
the compositions more harmonious and more pleasing to the auditory,
and increased their rewards, so that they readily joined each other,
and travelled together in large parties. It is, however, very certain
that the poet, the songster, and the musician were frequently united in
the same person.” My account of the authors, &c., of street literature
shows that the analogy still holds.
The French antiquary quoted was Fauchet, in his “Origine de la Langue
et Poësie Françoise” (1581); and though he wrote concerning his own
country, his descriptions apply equally to the English minstrels, who
were principally Normans, for many reigns after the Conquest, and were
of the same race, and habits, and manners as on the French side of the
Channel.
Of the minstrels, I shall have more to say when I treat of the
ballad-singers and the bands of street and public-house musicians
of to-day, between whom and the minstrels of old there is, in many
respects, a somewhat close resemblance. Minstrelsy fell gradually from
its high estate, and fell so low that, in the 39th year of Elizabeth’s
reign--a period when the noblest poetry of any language was beginning
to command the ear of the educated in England--the minstrels were
classed in a penal statute with rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars!
Putenham, in his “Arte of English Poesie” (1589), speaks of “taverne
minstrels that give a fit of mirth for a groat.” One of the statutes
enacted in Cromwell’s Protectorate was directed against all persons
“commonly called fidlers or minstrells.”
In the old times, then, the jougeleurs and jestours were assisted by
the chanteurs. In the present day the running patterer--who, as I
have shown, is the sufficiently legitimate descendant of the jestour,
and in some respects of the mountebank--is accompanied generally by
a chaunter, so presenting a further point of resemblance between
ancient and modern street-folk. The chaunter now not only sings, but
fiddles, for within these few years the running patterers, to render
their performances more attractive, are sometimes accompanied by
musicians. The running performer then, instead of hurrying along with
the members of his mob, making sufficient noise to arouse a whole
street, takes his stand with the chaunter in any promising place, and
as the songs which are the most popular are--as is the case at many of
the concert-rooms--sometimes “spoken” as well as sung, the performers
are in their proper capacity, for the patterer not only “speaks,” but
speaks more than is set down for him, while the chaunter fiddles and
sings. Sometimes the one patters while the other sings, and their
themes are the same.
I am told, however, that there are only fifty running patterers who
are regularly their own chaunters, fiddling to their songs, while the
mob work as usual, or one man sings, or speaks and sings, with the
chaunter. Two of these men are known as Brummagem Jack, and the Country
Paganini. From twenty to thirty patterers, however, are chaunters also,
when they think the occasion requires it.
Further to elucidate chaunting, and to show the quality of the
canticles, and the way of proceeding, I cite a statement of his
experience as a chaunter, from the running patterer, whose details
of his more especial business I have already given, but who also
occasionally chaunts:--
OF THE EXPERIENCE OF A CHAUNTER.