in course. We had the Greeks (the lately-arrived Irish) down upon us
more than once. In Liverpool-street, on the night of the meeting at
Guildhall about the Papal Aggression, we had a regular skrimmage.
One gentleman said: ‘Really, you shouldn’t sing such improper songs,
my men.’ Then up comes another, and he was a little crusted with port
wine, and he says: ‘What, against that cove the Pope! Here, give me
half a dozen of the papers.’ The city was tidy for the patter, sir, or
the chaunt; there was sixpences; but there was shillings at the West
End. And for the first time in their innocent lives, the parsons came
out as stunning patrons of the patter. One of ’em as we was at work
in the street give a bit of a signal and was attended to without any
parade to the next street, and was good for half-a-crown! Other two
stopped, that wery same day, and sent a boy to us with a Joey. Then me
and my mate went to the Rev. W.’s, him as came it so strong for the
fire-works on the Fifth of November. And we pattered and we pattered,
and we chaunted and we chaunted, but no go for a goodish bit. His
servant said he weren’t at home. In course _that_ wouldn’t do for us,
so down he came his-self at last, and says, werry soft: ‘Come to-morrow
morning, my men, and there’ll be two gentlemen to hear you.’ We stuck
to him for something in hand, but he said the business had cost him
so much already, he really couldn’t. Well, we bounced a bob out of
him, and didn’t go near him again. After all we did for his party, a
shilling was black ingratitude. Of course _we_ has no feeling either
for or agin the Pope. _We_ goes to it as at an election; and let me
tell you, sir, we got very poorly paid, it couldn’t be called paid, for
working for Lord John at the City Election; and I was the original of
the live rats, which took well. But there’s a good time coming to pay
Lord Johnny off.
“Some of the tunes--there’s no act of parliament about tunes, you know,
sir--was stunners on the fiddle; as if a thousand bricks was falling
out of a cart at once. I think ‘The Pope and Cardinal Wiseman,’ one
of the first of the songs, did as well as any. This werse was greatly
admired:--
‘Now Lord John Russell did so bright,
to the Bishop of Durham a letter write
Saying while I’ve a hand I’ll fight,
The pope and cardinal wiseman,
Lord John’s ancestor as I tell,
Lord William Russell then known well
His true religion would not sell,
A martyr he in glory fell,
And now Lord John so bold and free,
Has got a rope as we may see,
To hang up on each side of a tree,
The pope and cardinal wiseman.’
“This finishing werse, too, was effective, and out came a few browns:--
‘Now we don’t care a fig for Rome,
why can’t they let the girls alone,
And mind their business at home,
the pope and cardinal wiseman.
With their monsical red cardinals hat,
And lots of wafers in a sack,
If they come here with all their clack,
we’ll wound them fil fal la ra whack,
In England they shall not be loose,
Their hum bugging is all no use,
If they come here we’ll cook their goose,
The pope and Cardinal Wiseman.
CHORUS
Monks and Nuns and fools afloat,
We’ll have no bulls shoved down our throat,
Cheer up and shout down with the Pope,
And his bishop cardinal Wiseman.’
“Then there was another, sir. ‘The Pope he is coming; oh, crikey,
oh dear!’ to the tune of the ‘Camels are coming.’ There was one bit
that used to tickle them. I mayn’t exactly remember it, for I didn’t
do anything beyond a spurt in it, and haven’t a copy for you, but it
tickled ’em with others. This was the bit:--
‘I’ve heard my old grandmother’s grandmother say,
They burnt us in Smithfield full ten every day.
O, what shall I do, for I feel very queer,
The Pope he’s a-coming, oh! crikey, oh, dear!’
“Bless you, sir, if I see a smart dressed servant girl looking shyly
out of the street-door at us, or through the area railings, and I can
get a respectful word in and say, ‘My good young lady, do buy of a poor
fellow, we haven’t said a word to your servants, we hasn’t seen any on
’em,’ then she’s had, sir, for 1_d._ at least, and twice out of thrice;
that ‘good young lady’ chloroforms her.
“Then this one, now, is stunning. It’s part of what the Queen was a
going to sing at the opening of the parliament, but she changed her
mind, and more’s the pity, for it would have had a grand effect. It’s
called ‘The Queen, the Pope, and the Parliament,’ and these is the best
of the stanzas; I calls them werses in common, but stanzas for Wick:
‘My lords and my gentlemen all,
The bishops and great house of commons
On you for protection I call,
For you know I am only a woman,
I am really quite happy indeed--
To meet you like birds of a feather,
So I hope you will all struggle with me,
And pull away boys altogether,
My name is Victoria the Queen.
‘Our bishops and deans did relent,
And say they for ever was undone,
Bishop Philpott a long challenge sent
To his lordship the bishop of London,
To fight him on Hounslow Heath--
But the bishop of London was coosey,
He gave him one slap in the mouth,
And then sent a letter to pusey,
No humbuggery stories for vick--
‘I heard my old grandfather say
His great grandmother easily loved reckon
When they made a fool run away,
Whose name was king Jemmy the second.
Billy gave him a ticket for soup,
Though Bill married old Jemmy’s daughter
He knocked him from old Palace yard,
To Ireland, across the Boyne water,
Long life to Victoria the Queen.
‘Come here my old friend Joey Hume,
I know you in silence wont mope now,
Go up and get inside the moon
And make fast a great torry rope now,
And then give a spring and a jump
And you to a peerage shall rise then,
For we’ll swing up old Pius the Pope
And his eminence cardinal Wiseman,
Old England and down with the Pope.’
“Then there wasn’t no risk with Haynau--I told you of the Pope first,
’cause he was most chaunted--no fear of a _ferricadouzer_ for the
butcher. How is it spelled, sir? Well, if you can’t find it in the
dictionary, you must use your own judgment. What does it mean? It means
a dewskitch (a good thrashing). I’ve been threatened with dark nights
about the Pope, after the Greeks has said: ‘Fat have you to say agin
the holy gintleman? To the divil wid all the likes o’ ye.’ Haynau was a
fair stage and no favour. This werse was best liked:--
‘The other day as you must know,
In Barclay’s brewhouse he did go
And signed his bloody name “Haynau.”
The fellow that flogged the women.
Baron Rothchild did him shend,
And in the letter which he penn’d
He shaid the sheneral wash his friend,
And so good a man he could not mend.
CHORUS
Rumpsey bumsy--bang him well--
Make his back and sides to swell
Till he roars aloud with dreadful yell,
The fellow that flogged the women.’
“The women bought very free; poor women, mostly; we only worked him to
any extent in the back drags. One old body at Stepney was so pleased
that she said, ‘O, the bloody-minded willain! Whenever you come this
way again, sir, there’s always 1_d._ for you.’ She didn’t pay in
advance though.
“Then it ended, sir, with a beautiful moral as appeals to every female
bosom:--
‘That man who would a female harm,
Is never fit to live.’
“We always likes something for the ladies, bless ’em. They’re our best
customers.
“Then there was poor Jael Denny, but she was humped, sir, and I’ve told
you the reason. Her copy of werses began:--
‘Since Corder died on Buystree,
No mortal man did read or see,
Of such a dreadful tragedy,
As I will now unfold.
A maid in bloom--to her silent tomb,
Is hurried in the prime of life,
How could a villain cause such strife
She worthy was a famous wife.
The like was seldom told.
CHORUS.
She was young and gay,
Like the flowers of may,
In youth and vigour health and bloom,
She is hurried to the silent tomb.
Through Essex, such a dreadfull gloom,
Jael Denny’s murder caused.’
“My last chaunt was Jane Wilbred; and her werses--and they did tidy
well--began:--
‘A Case like this you seldom read,
Or one so sad and true,
And we sincerely hope the perper-
trators both will rue
To serve a friendless servant girl,
Two years they did engage,
Her name it is Jane Willbred,
And eighteen years of age.’
“What do you think of the Great Exhibition, sir? I shall be there. Me
and my mates. We are going to send in a copy of werses in letters of
gold for a prize. _We’ll_ let the foreigners know what the real native
melodies of England is, and no mistake.”
OF THE DEATH AND FIRE HUNTERS.
I have described the particular business of the running patterer,
who is known by another and a very expressive cognomen--as a “Death
Hunter.” This title refers not only to his vending accounts of all the
murders that become topics of public conversation, but to his being
a “murderer” on his own account, as in the sale of “cocks” mentioned
incidentally in this narrative. If the truth be saleable, a running
patterer prefers selling the truth, for then--as one man told me--he
can “go the same round comfortably another day.” If there be no truths
for sale--no stories of criminals’ lives and loves to be condensed from
the diffusive biographies in the newspapers--no “helegy” for a great
man gone--no prophecy and no crim. con.--the death hunter invents, or
rather announces, them. He puts some one to death for the occasion,
which is called “a cock.” The paper he sells may give the dreadful
details, or it may be a religious tract, “brought out in mistake,”
should the vendor be questioned on the subject; or else the poor fellow
puts on a bewildered look and murmurs, “O, it’s shocking to be done
this way--but I can’t read.” The patterers pass along so rapidly that
this detection rarely happens.
One man told me that in the last eight or ten years, he, either singly
or with his “mob,” had twice put the Duke of Wellington to death,
once by a fall from his horse, and the other time by a “sudden and
myst-_e_rious” death, without any condescension to particulars. He had
twice performed the same mortal office for Louis Phillipe, before that
potentate’s departure from France; each death was by the hands of an
assassin; “one was stabbing, and the other a shot from a distance.” He
once thought of poisoning the Pope, but was afraid of the street Irish.
He broke Prince Albert’s leg, or arm, (he was not sure which), when
his royal highness was out with his harriers. He never had much to say
about the Queen; “it wouldn’t go down,” he thought, and perhaps nothing
had lately been said. “Stop, there, sir,” said another patterer, of
whom I inquired as to the correctness of those statements, (after my
constant custom in sifting each subject thoroughly,) “stop, stop, sir.
I _have_ had to say about the Queen lately. In coorse, nothing can be
said against her, and nothing ought to; that’s true enough, but the
last time she was confined, I cried her _accouchement_ (the word was
pronounced as spelt to a merely English reader, or rather more broadly)
of _three_! Lord love you, sir, it would have been no use crying _one_;
people’s so used to that; but a Bobby came up and he stops me, and
said it was some impudence about the Queen’s _coachman_! Why look at
it, says I, fat-head--I knew I was safe--and see if there’s anything
in it about the Queen or her coachman! And he looked, and in coorse
there was nothing. I forget just now what the paper _was_ about.” My
first-mentioned informant had apprehended Feargus O’Connor on a charge
of high treason. He assassinated Louis Napoleon, “from a _fourth_
edition of the _Times_,” which “did well.” He caused Marshal Haynau to
die of the assault by the draymen. He made Rush hang himself in prison.
He killed Jane Wilbred, and put Mrs. Sloane to death; and he announced
the discovery that Jane Wilbred was Mrs. Sloane’s daughter.
This informant did not represent that he had originated these little
pieces of intelligence, only that he had been a party to their
sale, and a party to originating one or two. Another patterer--and
of a higher order of genius--told me that all which was stated was
undoubtedly correct, “but me and my mates, sir,” he said, “did Haynau
in another style. A splendid slum, sir! Capital! We assassinated
him--_mys_-terious. Then about Rush. His hanging hisself in prison was
a fake, I know; but we’ve had him lately. His ghost appeared--as is
shown in the Australian papers--to Emily Sandford, and threatened her;
and took her by the neck, and there’s the red marks of his fingers to
be seen on her neck to this day!” The same informant was so loud in his
praise of the “Ass-sass-sination” of Haynau that I give the account. I
have little doubt it was his own writing. It is confused in passages,
and has a blending of the “I” and the “we:”--
“We have just received upon undisputed authority, that, that savage
and unmanly tyrant, that enemy to civil and religious liberty, the
inhuman Haynau has at last finished his career of guilt by the hand of
an assassin, the term assassin I have no doubt will greet harshly upon
the ears of some of our readers, yet never the less I am compelled
to use it although I would gladly say the _average_ of outraged
innocence, which would be a name more suitable to one who has been the
means of ridden the world of such a despicable monster.”
[My informant complained bitterly, and not without reason, of the
printer. “Average,” for instance (which I have _italicised_), should be
“avenger.” The “average of outraged innocence!”]
“It appears by the Columns of the Corour le Constituonal of Brussels,”
runs the paper, “that the evening before last, three men one of
which is supposed to be the miscreant, Haynau entered a Cafe in the
Neighbourhood of Brussels kept by a man in the name of Priduex,
and after partaking of some refreshments which were ordered by his
two companions they desired to be shown to their chambers, during
their stay in the public or Travellers Room, they spoke but little
and seemed to be very cautious as to joining in the conversations
which was passing briskly round the festive board, which to use the
landlord’s own words was rather strange, as his Cafe was mostly
frequented by a set of jovial fellows. M. Priduex goes on to state
that after the three strangers had retired to rest some time a tall
and rather noble looking man enveloped in a large cloak entered and
asked for a bed, and after calling for some wine he took up a paper
and appeared to be reading it very attentively, in due time he was
shown to bed and all passed on without any appearance of anything
wrong until about 6 o’clock in the morning, when the landlord and his
family, were roused by a noise over head and cries of murder, and
upon going up stairs to ascertain the cause, he discovered the person
who was [known] to be Marshal Haynau, lying on his bed with his throat
cut in a frightful manner, and his two companions standing by his bed
side bewailing his loss. On the table was discovered a card, on which
was written these words ‘Monster, I am avenged at last.’ Suspicion
went upon the tall stranger, who was not anywhere to be found, the
Garde arms instantly were on the alert, and are now in active persuit
of him but up to the time of our going to press nothing further has
transpired.”
It is very easy to stigmatise the death-hunter when he sets off all
the attractions of a real or pretended murder,--when he displays
on a board, as does the standing patterer, “illustrations” of “the
’dentical pick-axe” of Manning, or the stable of Good,--or when he
invents or embellishes atrocities which excite the public mind. He
does, however, but follow in the path of those who are looked up to as
“the press,”--as the “fourth estate.” The conductors of the _Lady’s
Newspaper_ sent an artist to Paris to give drawings of the scene of
the murder by the Duc de Praslin,--to “illustrate” the blood-stains
in the duchess’s bed-chamber. The _Illustrated London News_ is prompt
in depicting the locality of any atrocity over which the curious in
crime may gloat. The _Observer_, in costly advertisements, boasts
of its 20 columns (sometimes with a supplement) of details of some
vulgar and mercenary bloodshed,--the details being written in a most
honest deprecation of the morbid and savage tastes to which the
writer is pandering. Other weekly papers have engravings--and only
concerning murder--of any wretch whom vice has made notorious. Many
weekly papers had expensive telegraphic despatches of Rush’s having
been hung at Norwich, which event, happily for the interest of Sunday
newspapers, took place in Norwich at noon on a Saturday. [I may here
remark, that the patterers laugh at telegraphs and express trains for
rapidity of communication, boasting that the press strives in vain to
rival _them_,--as at a “hanging match,” for instance, the patterer
has the full particulars, dying speech, and confession included--if a
confession be feasible--ready for his customers the moment the drop
falls, and while the criminal may still be struggling, at the very
scene of the hanging. At a distance he sells it before the hanging. “If
the _Times_ was cross-examined about it,” observed one patterer, “he
must confess he’s outdone, though he’s a rich _Times_, and we is poor
fellows.” But to resume--]
A penny-a-liner is reported, and without contradiction, to have
made a large sum by having hurried to Jersey in Manning’s business,
and by being allowed to accompany the officers when they conducted
that paltry tool of a vindictive woman from Jersey to Southampton
by steamer, and from Southampton to London by “special engine,” as
beseemed the popularity of so distinguished a rascal and homicide;
and next morning the daily papers, in all the typographical honour
of “leads” and “a good place,” gave details of this fellow’s--this
Manning’s--conversation, looks, and demeanour.
Until the “respectable” press become a more healthful public
instructor, we have no right to blame the death-hunter, who is but an
imitator--a follower--and that for a meal. So strong has this morbid
feeling about criminals become, that an earl’s daughter, who had “an
order” to see Bedlam, would not leave the place until she had obtained
Oxford’s autograph for her album! The rich vulgar are but the poor
vulgar--without an excuse for their vulgarity.
* * * * *
“Next to murders, fires are tidy browns,” I was told by a patterer
experienced both in “murders” and “fires.” The burning of the old
Houses of Parliament was very popular among street-sellers, and for
the reason which ensures popularity to a commercial people; it was a
source of profit, and was certainly made the most of. It was the work
of incendiaries,--of ministers, to get rid of perplexing papers,--of
government officers with troublesome accounts to balance,--of a
sporting lord, for a heavy wager,--of a conspiracy of builders,--and
of “a unsuspected party.” The older “hands” with whom I conversed on
the subject, all agreed in stating that they “did well” on the fire.
One man said, “No, sir, it wasn’t only the working people that bought
of me, but merchants and their clerks. I s’pose they took the papers
home with ’em for their wives and families, which is a cheap way of
doing, as a newspaper costs 3_d._ at least. But stop, sir,--stop; there
wasn’t no threepennies then,--nothing under 6_d._, if they wasn’t more;
I can’t just say, but it was better for us when newspapers was high. I
never heard no sorrow expressed,--not _in_ the least. Some said it was
a good job, and they wished the ministers was in it.” The burning of
the Royal Exchange was not quite so beneficial to the street-sellers,
but “was uncommon tidy.” The fire at the Tower, however, was almost as
great a source of profit as that of the Houses of Parliament, and the
following statement shows the profit reaped.
My informant had been a gentleman’s servant, his last place being
with a gentleman in Russell-square, who went to the East Indies,
and his servant was out of a situation so long that he “parted with
everything.” When he was at the height of his distress, he went to see
the fire at the Tower, as he “had nothing better to do.” He remained
out some hours, and before he reached his lodging, men passed him,
crying the full and true particulars of the fire. “I bought one,”
said the man, “and changed my last shilling. It was a sudden impulse,
for I saw people buy keenly. I never read it, but only looked at the
printer’s name. I went to him at the Dials, and bought some, and so I
went into the paper trade. I made 6_s._ or 7_s._ some days, while the
Tower lasted; and 3_s._ and 4_s._ other days, when the first polish was
off. I sold them mostly at 1_d._ a piece at first. It was good money
then. The Tower was good, or middling good, for from 14 to 20 days.
There was at least 100 men working nothing but the Tower. There’s
no great chance of any more great buildings being burnt; worse luck.
People don’t care much about private fires. A man in this street don’t
heed so much who’s burnt to death in the next. But the foundation-stone
of the new Royal Exchange--fire led to that--was pretty fair, and
portraits of Halbert went off, so that it was for two or three days
as good as the Tower. Fires is our best friends next to murders, if
they’re _good_ fires. The hopening of the Coal Exchange was rather
tidy. I’ve been in the streets ever since, and don’t see how I could
possibly get out of them. At first I felt a great degradation at being
driven to the life. I shunned grooms and coachmen, as I might be known
to them. I didn’t care for others. That sort of feeling wears out
though. I’m a widower now, and my family feels, as I did at first,
that what I’m doing is ‘low.’ They won’t assist--though they may give
me 1_s._ now and then--but they won’t assist me to leave the streets.
They’ll rather blame me for going into them, though there was only
that, or robbing, or starving. The fire at Ben. Caunt’s, where the
poor children was burnt to hashes, was the best of the private house
fires that I’ve worked, I think. I made 4_s._ on it one day. He was
the champion once, and was away at a fight at the time, and it was a
shocking thing, and so people bought.”
After the burning of York Minster by Jonathan Martin, I was told by an
old hand, the (street) destruction of the best known public buildings
in the country was tried; such as Canterbury Cathedral, Dover Castle,
the Brighton Pavilion, Edinburgh Castle, or Holyrood House--all known
to “travelling” patterers--but the success was not sufficiently
encouraging. It was no use, I was told, firing such places as Hampton
Court or Windsor Castle, for unless people _saw_ the reflection of a
great fire, they wouldn’t buy.
OF THE SELLERS OF SECOND EDITIONS.
These “second editions” are, and almost universally, second or later
editions of the newspapers, morning and evening, but three-fourths
of the sale may be of the evening papers, and more especially of the
_Globe_ and _Standard_.
I believe that there is not now in existence--unless it be in a
workhouse and unknown to his fellows, or engaged in some other
avocation and lost sight of by them--any one who sold “second editions”
(the _Courier_ evening paper being then in the greatest demand) at
the time of the Duke of York’s Walcheren expedition, at the period
of the battle of the Nile, during the continuance of the Peninsular
war, or even at the battle of Waterloo. There were a few old men--some
of whom had been soldiers or sailors, and others who have simulated
it--surviving within these 5 or 6 years, and some later, who “worked
Waterloo,” but they were swept off, I was told, by the cholera.
I was assured by a gentlemen who had a perfect remembrance of the
“second editions” (as they were generally called) sold in the streets,
and who had often bought them upwards of forty years ago, that a sketch
in the “Monthly Review,” in a notice of Scott’s “Lord of the Isles”
(published in 1815), gave the best notion he had met with of what the
second edition sale really was. At the commencement of the sixth canto
of his poem, Sir Walter, somewhat too grandiloquently, in the judgment
of his reviewer, asks--
“O who, that shared them, ever shall forget
The emotions of the spirit-rousing time,
When breathless in the mart the couriers met,
Early and late, at evening and at prime?”
“Who,” in his turn asks the reviewer, “can avoid conjuring up the idea
of men with broad sheets of foolscap, scored with ‘VICTORIES’ rolled
round their hats, and horns blowing loud defiance in each other’s
mouth, from the top to the bottom of Pall-mall or the Haymarket, when
he reads such a passage? We actually hear the Park and Tower guns,
and the clattering of ten thousand bells, as we read, and stop our
ears from the close and sudden intrusion of some hot and _horn-fisted_
patriot, blowing ourselves, as well as Bonaparte to the devil!”
The horn carried by these “_horn_-fisted” men was a common tin tube,
from two to three feet long, and hardly capable of being made to
produce any sound beyond a sudden and discordant “trump, trump.” The
men worked with papers round their hats, in a way not very dissimilar
to that of the running patterers of to-day.