I was one of eleven (ten sons and one daughter). Seven years before
my father’s death he left his farm, and went to live on his money.
He had made a good bit at farming; but when he died it was all gone,
and we was left to shift as we could. I had little or no education.
My brothers could read and write, but I didn’t take to it; I went a
bird’s-nesting, boy-like, instead, so that what little I did larn I
have forgot. I am very sorry for that now. I used to drive the plough,
and go a harrowing for father. I was brought up to nothing else. When
father died, I thought as I should like to see London. I was a mere
lad--about 20--and so I strolled up to town. I had 10_s._ with me,
and that, with a bundle, was all that I possessed in the world. When
I got to London I went to lodge at a public-house--the Red Lion--in
Great Wild-street; and while I was there I sought about for work,
but could not get any; when all was gone, I was turned out into the
streets, and walked about for two days and two nights, without a bed,
or a bit to eat, unless what I picked out of the gutter, and eat like
a dog--orange-peel and old cabbage-stumps, indeed _anything_ I could
find. When I was very hard put to it, I was coming down Drury-lane,
and I looked in, quite casual like, to ask for a job of work at the
shop of Mr. Bolton, the needle-maker from Redditch. I told him as how
I was nigh starving, and would do anything to get a crust; I didn’t
mind what I put my hand to. He said he would try me, and gave me two
packets of needles to sell--they was the goolden-eyed ones of that
time of day--and he said when I had got rid of them I was to come back
to him, and I should have two packets more. He told me the price to
ask--sixpence a paper--and away I went like a sand-boy, and got rid
of the two in an hour and a half. Then I went back, and when I told
him what I’d done, he shook hands with me, and said, as he burst out
laughing, “Now, you see I’ve made a man of you.” Oh, he was an uncommon
nice gentleman! Then he told me to keep the shilling I had taken, and
said he would trust me with two more packets. I sold them, and two
others besides, that day. Then, he says, ‘I shall give you something
else,’ and he let me have two packets of tailors’ needles and half a
dozen of tailors’ thimbles. He told me how to sell them, and where to
go, and on them I did better. I went round to the tailors’ shops and
sold a good lot, but at last they stopped me, because I was taking
the bread out of the mouths of the poor blind needle-sellers what
supplies the journeymen tailors at the West-end. Then Mr. Bolton sent
me down to one of his relations, a Mr. Crooks, in Fetter Lane, who was
a Sheffield man, and sold cutlery to the hawkers; and Mr. Crooks and
Mr. Bolton sot me up between them, and so I’ve followed the line ever
since. I dare say I shall continue in it to my dying day. After I got
fairly set agoing, I used to make--take good and bad, wet and dry days
together--18_s._ a week; three shillings a day was what I calculated
on at the least, and to do that I was obligated to take between 2_l._
and 3_l._ a week, or about eight or nine shillings each day. I went
on doing this for upwards of thirty year. I have been nearly forty
years, altogether, in the streets, selling cutlery. I did very tidy
till about 4 years back--I generally made from 18_s._ to 1_l._ a week
up to that time. I used to go round the country--to Margate, Brighton,
Portsmouth--I mostly travelled by the coast, calling at all the
sea-port towns, for I always did best among the sailors. I went away
every Spring time, and came to London again at the fall of the year.
Sixteen year ago, I married the widow of a printer--a pressman--she had
no money, but you see I had no home, and I thought I should be more
comfortable, and so I have been--a great deal more comfortable--and
so I should be now, if things hadn’t got so bad. Four year ago, as
I was a telling you, it was just after the railways had knocked off
work, things began to get uncommon bad--before then, I had as good
as 30_s._ or 40_s._ stock, and when things got slack, it went away,
little by little. I couldn’t make profit enough to support me and my
old woman--she has got the rheumatics and can’t earn me a halfpenny or
a farden in the world; she hasn’t done so for years. When I didn’t make
enough to live upon, of course I was obligated to break into my stock;
so there it kept going shilling by shilling, and sixpence by sixpence,
until I had got nothing left to work upon--not a halfpenny. You see,
four or five months ago, I was took very bad with the rheumatic fever
and gout. I got wet through in the streets, and my clothes dried on
me, and the next day I was taken bad with pains in my limbs, and then
everything that would fetch me a penny went to the pawn-shop; all my
own and my old woman’s clothes went to get us food--blankets, sheets
and all. I never would go nigh the parish; I couldn’t bring myself to
have the talk about it. When I got well and out into the streets again,
I borrowed 2_s._ or 3_s._ of my landlady--I have lived with her these
three years--to get my stock again, but you see that got me so few
things, that I couldn’t fetch myself up. I lost the greater portion of
my time in going backards and forrards to the shop to get fresh goods
as fast as I sold them, and so what I took wasn’t enough to earn the
commonest living for me and my missus. Since December we have been
nearly starving, and that’s as true as you have got the pen in your
very hand. Sunday after Sunday we have been without a bit of dinner,
and I have laid a-bed all day because we have had no coal, and then
been obligated to go out on Monday morning without a bit of victuals
between my lips. I’ve been so faint I couldn’t hardly walk. I’ve picked
the crusts off the tables of the tap-rooms where I have been to hawk
my goods, and put them in my pocket to eat them on the sly. Wet and
dry I’m obligated to be out; let it come down ever so hard I must be
in it, with scarcely a bit of shoe, and turned 60 years old, as I am.
Look here, sir,” he said, holding up his foot; “look at these shoes,
the soles is all loose, you see, and let water. On wet days I hawk my
goods to respectable shops; tap-rooms is no good, decent people merely
get insulted there. But in most of the shops as I goes to people tells
me, ‘My good man it is as much as we can do to keep ourselves and our
family in these cutting times.’ Now, just to show you what I done last
week. Sunday, I laid a-bed all day and had no dinner. Monday, I went
out in the morning without a morsel between my lips, and with only
8-1/2_d._ for stock-money; with that I bought a knife and sold it for
a shilling, and then I got another and another after that, and that
was my day’s work--three times 3-1/2_d._ or 10-1/2_d._ in all, to keep
the two of us. Tuesday, I sold a pair of small scissors and two little
pearl-handled knives, at 6_d._ each article, and cleared 10-1/2_d._ on
the whole, and that is all I did. Wednesday, I sold a razor-strop for
6_d._, a four-bladed knife for a shilling, and a small hone for 6_d._;
by these I cleared 10_d._ altogether. Thursday, I sold a pair of razors
for a shilling, clearing by the whole 11-1/2_d._ Friday, I got rid of
a pair of razors for 1_s._ 9_d._, and got 9_d._ clear.” I added up the
week’s profits and found they amounted to 4_s._ 3-1/2_d._ “That’s about
right,” said the man, “out of that I shall have to pay 1_s._ for my
week’s rent; we’ve got a kitchen, so that I leave you to judge how we
two can live out of what’s remaining.” I told him it would’nt average
quite 6_d._ a day. “That’s about it,” he replied, “we have half a loaf
of bread a day, and that thank God is only five farthings now. This
lasts us the day, with two-penny-worth of bits of meat that my old
woman buys at a ham-shop, where they pare the hams and puts the parings
by on plates to sell to poor people; and when she can’t get that, she
buys half a sheep’s head, one that’s three or four days old, for then
they sells ’em to the poor for 1-1/2_d._ the half; and these with
3/4_d._ worth of tea, and 1/2_d._ worth of sugar, 1/4_d._ for a candle,
1_d._ of coal--that’s seven pounds--and 3/4_d._ worth of coke--that’s
half a peck--makes up all we gets.” These items amount to 6-1/2_d._ in
all. “That’s how we do when we can get it, and when we can’t, why we
lays in bed and goes without altogether.”
OF THE BLIND STREET-SELLERS OF TAILORS’ NEEDLES, ETC.
It is customary with many trades, for the journeymen to buy such
articles as they require in their business of those members of their
craft who have become incapacitated for work, either by old age, or
by some affliction. The tailors--the shoe-makers--the carpenters--and
many others do this. These sellers are, perhaps, the most exemplary
instances of men _driven_ to the streets, or to hawking for a means
of living; and they, one and all, are distinguished by that horror of
the workhouse which I have before spoken of as constituting a peculiar
feature in the operative’s character. At present I purpose treating of
the street-sellers of needles and “trimmings” to the tailors.
There are, I am informed, two dozen “broken-down” journeymen tailors
pursuing this avocation in and around London. “There may be more,”
said one who had lost his sight stitching, “but I get my information
from the needle warehouse, where we all buy our goods; and the lady
there told me she knew as many as twenty-four hawkers who were once
tailors. These are all either decayed journeymen, or their widows.
Some are incapacitated by age, being between sixty and seventy years
old; the greater part of the aged journeymen, however, are inmates
of the tailors’ almshouses. I am not aware,” said my informant, “of
there being more than one very old man hawking needles to the tailors,
though there may be many that I know nothing about. The one I am
acquainted with is close upon eighty, and he is a very respectable
man, much esteemed in St. James’s and St. George’s; he sells needles,
and ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ to the journeymen: he is
very feeble indeed, and can scarcely get along.” Of the two dozen
needle-sellers above mentioned, there are only six who confine their
“rounds” solely to the metropolis. Out of these six my informant knew
two who were blind beside himself (one of these sells to the journeymen
in the city). There are other blind tailors who were formerly hawkers
of needles, but being unable to realize a subsistence thereby, have
been obliged to become inmates of the workhouses; others have recently
gained admission into the almshouses. Last February, I am assured,
there were two blind needle-sellers, and two decrepit, in St. James’s
workhouse. There are, moreover, two widows selling tailors’ needles
in London. One of these, I am told, is wretchedly poor, being “eat up
with the rheumatics, and scarcely able to move”--she is the relict of
a blind journeyman, and well known in St. James’s. The other widow is
now in St. Pancras Workhouse, having been unable, to use the words of
my informant, “to get anything to keep life and soul together at the
needle trade;” she, too, I am told, is well known to the journeymen.
The tailors’ needle-sellers confining themselves more particularly to
London consist of, at present, one old man, three blind, one paralyzed,
and one widow; besides these, there are now in the alms-houses, two
decrepit and one paralyzed; and one widow in the workhouse, all of
whom, till recently, were needle-sellers, and originally connected with
the trade.
“That is all that I believe are now in London,” said one to me, “I
should, I think, know if there were more; for it is not from one place
we get our articles, but many; and there I hear that six is about
the number of tailors’ hawkers in town; the rest of the two dozen
hawkers that I spoke of go a little way out into the suburbs. The six,
however, stick to London altogether.” The needle-sellers who go into
the country, I am told, travel as far as Reading, westward, and to
Gravesend, in the opposite direction, or Brentwood, in Essex, and they
will keep going back’ards and for’ards to the metropolis immediately
their stock is exhausted. These persons sell not only tailors’ needles,
but women’s needles as well, and staylaces and cottons, and small ware
in general, which they get from Shepherd’s, in Compton Street; they
have all been tailors, and are incapacitated from labour, either by
old age or some affliction. There was one widow of a tailor among the
number, but it is believed she is now either too old to continue her
journeys, or else that she is deceased. The town-sellers confine their
peregrinations mostly to the parishes of St. James’s and St. George’s
(my informant was not aware that any went even into Marylebone). One
travels the City, while the other five keep to the West End; they all
sell thimbles, needles, inch-measures, bodkins, inch sticks, scissars
(“when they can get them,” I was told, “and that’s very seldom”),
and bees’-wax, basting cotton, and, many of them, publications. The
publications vended by these men are principally the cheap periodicals
of the day, and two of these street-sellers, I am informed, do much
better with the sale of publications than by the “trimmings.” “_They_
get money, sir,” said one man to me, “while _we_ are starving. They
have their set customers and have only to go round and leave the paper,
and then to get their money on the Monday morning.”
The tailors’ hawkers buy their trimmings mostly at the retail shops.
They have not stock-money sufficient, I am assured, to purchase at
the wholesale houses, for “such a thing as a paper of needles large
tradesmen don’t care about of selling us poor men.” They tell me that
if they could buy wholesale they could get their goods one-fourth
cheaper, and to be “obligated” to purchase retail is a great drawback
on their profits. They call at the principal tailors’ workshops,
and solicit custom of the journeymen; they are almost all known
to the trade, both masters and men, and, having no other means of
living, they are allowed to enter the masters’ shops, though some of
the masters, such as Allen, in Bond-street; Curlewis, Jarvis, and
Jones, in Conduit-street, and others, refuse the poor fellows even
this small privilege. The journeymen treat them very kindly, the
needle-sellers tell me, and generally give them part of the provisions
they have brought with them to the shop. If it was not for this the
needle-sellers, I am assured, could hardly live at all. “There’s that
boy there,” said a blind tailor, speaking of the youth who had led him
to my house, and who sat on the stool fast asleep by the fire,--“I’m
sure he must have starved this winter if it hadn’t been for the
goodness of the men to us, for it’s little that me and his mother
has to give him; she’s gone almost as blind as myself working at the
‘sank work’ (making up soldiers’ clothing). Oh, ours is a miserable
life, sir!--worn out--blind with over work, and scarcely a hole to
put one’s head in, or a bit to put in one’s mouth. God Almighty knows
that’s the bare truth, sir.” Sometimes the hawkers go on their rounds
and take only 2_d._, but that is not often; sometimes they take 5_s._
in a day, and “that is the greatest sum,” said my informant, “I ever
took; what others might do I can’t say, but that I’m confident is about
the highest takings.” In the summer three months the average takings
rise to 4_s._ per day; but in the winter they fall to 1_s._, or at the
outside 1_s._ 6_d._ The business lasts only for three hours and a half
each day, that is from eight till half-past eleven in the morning;
after that no good is to be done. Then the needle-sellers, I am told,
go home, and the reason of this is, I am told, if they appear in the
public streets selling or soliciting alms, the blind are exempted
from becoming recipients of the benefits of many of the charitable
institutions. The blind man whom I saw, told me that after he had done
work and returned home, he occupied himself with pressing the seams of
the soldiers’ clothes when his “missus” had sewed them. The tailors’
needle-sellers are all married, and one of the wives has a mangle; and
“perhaps,” said my informant, “the blind husband turns the mangle
when he goes home, but I can’t say.” Another wife is a bookfolder, but
she has no work. The needles they usually sell five a penny to the
journeymen, but the most of the journeymen will take but four; they
say “we can’t get a living at all if we sell the needles cheaper. The
journeymen are mostly very considerate--very indeed; much more than
the masters; for the masters won’t hardly look at us. I don’t know
that a master ever gave me a farden--and yet there’s some of them very
soothing and kind in speaking.” The profit in the needles, I am told,
is rather more than 100 per cent.; “but,” say the sellers, “only think,
sir, we must get rid of 150 needles even to take 3_s._ The most we ever
sell in one shop is 6_d._ worth--and the usual amount is 2_d._ worth.
You can easy tell how many shops we must travel round to, in order to
get rid of 3_s._ worth.” Take one shop with another, the good with the
bad, they tell me they make about 1_d._ profit from each they visit.
The profit on the rest of the articles they vend is about 20 per cent.,
and they calculate that all the year round, summer and winter, they may
be said to take 2_s._ a day, or 12_s._ a week; out of which they clear
from 5_s._ to 5_s._ 6_d._ They sell far more needles than anything
else. Some of the blind needle-sellers make their own bees’-wax into
“shapes,” (pennyworths) themselves, melting into and pouring into small
moulds.
The blind needle-seller whom I saw was a respectable-looking man, with
the same delicacy of hand as is peculiar to tailors, and which forms
so marked a contrast to the horny palms of other workmen. He was tall
and thin, and had that upward look remarkable in all blind men. His
eyes gave no signs of blindness (the pupils being full and black),
except that they appeared to be directed to no one object, and though
fixed, were so without the least expression of observation. His long
black surtout, though faded in colour, was far from ragged, having
been patched and stitched in many places, while his cloth waistcoat
and trowsers were clean and neat--very different from the garments of
street-sellers in general. In his hand he carried his stick, which,
as he sat, he seemed afraid to part with, for he held it fast between
his knees. He came to me accompanied by his son, a good-looking
rough-headed lad, habited in a washed-out-blue French kind of pinafore,
and whose duty it was to lead his blind father about on his rounds.
Though the boy was decently clad, still his clothes, like those of his
father, bore many traces of that respectable kind of poverty which
seeks by continuous mending to hide its rags from the world. The face
of the father, too, was pinched, while there was a plaintiveness about
his voice that told of a wretched spirit-broken and afflicted man.
Altogether he was one of the better kind of handicraftsmen--one of
those fine specimens of the operatives of this country--independent
even in their helplessness, scorning to beg, and proud to be able
to give some little equivalent for the money bestowed on them. I
have already given accounts of the “beaten-out” mechanic from those
who certainly cannot be accused of an excess of sympathy for the
poor--namely the Poor Law Commissioners and masters of workhouses;
and I can only add, that all my experience goes fully to bear out
the justice of these statements. As I said before, the class who are
_driven_ to the streets to which the beaten-out or incapacitated
operative belongs, is, of all others, the most deserving of our
sympathy; and the following biography of one of this order is given
to teach us to look with a kindly eye upon the many who are forced to
become street-sellers as the sole means of saving themselves from the
degradation of pauperism or beggary.
“I am 45 years of age next June,” said the blind tailor. “It is
upwards of 30 years since I first went to work at the tailoring trade
in London. I learnt my business under one of the old hands at Mr.
Cook’s, in Poland-street, and after that went to work at Guthrie’s,
in Bond-street. I belonged to the Society held at the Old White Hart.
I continued working for the honourable trade and belonging to Society
for about 15 years. My weekly earnings then averaged 1_l._ 16_s._ a
week while I was at work, and for several years I was seldom out of
work, for when I got into a shop it was a long time before I got out
again. I was not married then. I lived in a first floor back room,
well-furnished, and could do very comfortably indeed. I saved often my
15_s._ or 16_s._ in a week, and was worth a good bit of money up to the
time of my first illness. At one period I had nearly 50_l._ by me, and
had it not been for “vacations” and “slack seasons” I should have put
by more; but you see to be out of work even a few weeks makes a large
hole in a journeyman’s savings. All this time I subscribed regularly to
Society, and knew that if I got superannuated I should be comfortably
maintained by the trade. I felt quite happy with the consciousness of
being provided for in my old age or affliction then, and if it had not
been for that perhaps I might have saved more even than I did. I went
on in this way, as I said before, for 15 years, and no one could have
been happier than I was--not a working man in all England couldn’t. I
had my silver watch and chain. I could lay out my trifle every week
in a few books, and used to have a trip now and then up and down the
river, just to blow the London smoke off, you know. About 15 years ago
my eyes began to fail me without any pain at all; they got to have as
it were a thick mist, like smoke, before them. I couldn’t see anything
clear. Working by gas-light at first weakened and at last destroyed the
nerve altogether. I’m now in total darkness. I can only tell when the
gas is lighted by the heat of it.
“It is not the black clothes that is trying to the sight--black is
the steadiest of all colours to work at; white and all bright colours
makes the eyes water after looking at ’em for any long time; but of all
colours scarlet, such as is used for regimentals, is the most blinding,
it seems to burn the eyeballs, and makes them ache dreadful. After
working at red there’s always flying colours before the eyes; there’s
no steady colour to be seen in anything for some time. Everything
seems all of a twitter, and to keep changing its tint. There’s more
military tailors blind than any others. A great number of tailors go
blind, but a great many more has lost their sight since gas-light
has come up. Candle-light was not half so pernicious to the sight.
Gas-light is so very heating, and there’s such a glare with it that it
makes the eyes throb, and shoot too, if you work long by it. I’ve often
continued working past midnight with no other light than that, and
then my eyes used to feel like two bits of burning coals in my head.
And you see, sir, the worst of it was, as I found my sight going bad
I was obliged to try it more, so as to keep up with my mates in the
shop. At last my eyes got so weak that I was compelled to give up work,
and go into the country, and there I stopped, living on my savings,
and unable to do any work for fear of losing my sight altogether. I
was away about three years, and then all my money was gone, and I was
obligated, in spite of my eyes, to go back to work again. But then,
with my sight defective as it was, I could get no employment at the
honourable trade, and so I had to take a seat in a shop at one of the
cheap houses in the city, and that was the ruin of me entirely; for
working there, of course I got “scratched” from the trade Society, and
so lost all hope of being provided for by them in my helplessness. The
workshop at this cheap house was both small and badly ventilated. It
was about seven foot square, and so low, that as you sot on the floor
you could touch the ceiling with the tip of your finger. In this place
seven of us worked--three on each side and one in the middle. Two of
my shopmates were boys, or else I am sure it would not have held us
all. There was no chimney, nor no window that could be opened to let
the air in. It was lighted by a skylight, and this would neither open
nor shut. The only means for letting out the foul air was one of them
working ventilators--like cockades, you know, sir--fixed in one of the
panes of glass; but this wouldn’t work, so there we were, often from
5 in the morning till 10 at night, working in this dreadful place.
There was no fire in the winter, though we never needed one, for the
workshop was over-hot from the suffocation, and in the summer it was
like an oven. This is what it was in the daytime, but mortal tongue
can’t tell what it was at night, with the two gas-lights burning away,
and almost stifling us. Many a time some of the men has been carried
out by the others fainting for air. They all fell ill, every one of
them, and I lost my eyes and my living entirely by it. We spoke to the
master repeatedly, telling him he was killing us, and though when he
came up to the workshop hisself, he was nearly blown back by the stench
and heat, he would not let us have any other room to work in--and yet
he’d plenty of convenience up stairs. He paid little more than half the
regular wages, and employed such men as myself--only those who couldn’t
get anything better to do. What with illness and all, I don’t think
my wages there averaged above 12_s._ a week: sometimes I could make
1_l._ in the week, but then, the next week, maybe I’d be ill, and would
get but a few shillings. It was impossible to save anything then--even
to pay one’s way was a difficulty, and, at last, I was seized with
rheumatics on the brain, and obliged to go into St. Thomas’s Hospital.
I was there eleven months, and _came out stone blind_. I am convinced I
lost my eyesight by working in that cheap shop; nothing on earth will
ever persuade me to the contrary, and what’s more, my master robbed me
of a third of my wages and my sight too, and left me helpless in the
world, as, God knows, I am now. It is by the ruin of such men as me
that these masters are enabled to undersell the better shops; they get
hold of the men whose eyes are just beginning to fail them, like mine
did, because they know they can get them to work cheap, and then, just
at the time when a journeyman requires to be in the best of shops, have
the best of air, and to work as little by gas-light as possible, they
puts him into a hole of a place that would stifle a rat, and keeps him
working there half the night through. That’s the way, sir, the cheap
clothes is produced, by making blind beggars of the workmen, like
myself, and throwing us on the parish in our old age. You are right,
sir, they not only robs the men but the ratepayers too.