ago. My father was a grocer and had 1,000_l._ worth of freehold
property besides his business, which was very large for a small town;
his was the principal shop, and in the general line. He had a cart of
his own, in which he attended market. I was very comfortably brought
up, never wanted for nothing, and had my mother lived I should have
had an independent fortune. At five years old, while mother was still
alive, I caught the small pox. I had four sisters and one brother,
and we all six had it at once; that was before the vaccination was
properly established. I’ve heerd said that father did not want to have
us inoculated, because of the people coming backwards and forwards
to the shop. I only wish vaccination had been in vogue then as it is
now, and I shouldn’t have lost my eyes. God bless the man who brought
it up, I say; people doesn’t know what they’ve got to thank him for.
Well, all my sisters and brothers had not a mark upon them. It laid
hold of only me. They couldn’t lay a finger upon me, they was obligated
to lift me up in one of my father’s shirts, by holding the corners of
it like a sheet. As soon as ever the pock began to decay it took away
my eyes altogether. I didn’t lose both my eyeballs till about twenty
years after that, though my sight was gone for all but the shadow of
daylight and any high colours. At sixteen years of age my left eye
bursted; I suffered terribly then--oh terribly! yes, that I did. The
black-and-white like all mixed together, the pock came right through
the star of the eye the doctor said; and when I was five-and-twenty
my other eye-ball bursted, and then my eyes was quite out of my head.
Till that time I could see a little bit; I could tell the daylight,
and I could see the moon, but not the shape of it. I never could see
a star, and do you know I grieved about the loss of that little bit
of sight as much as if I was losing the whole of it. As my eye-ball
sloughed day by day, I could see the light going away by little, every
day till the week’s end. When I looked at the daylight just before it
all went, I could see the light look as red as fire--as red as blood;
and when it all left me, oh, I was dreadful sorrowful, I thought I was
lost altogether. But, I shouldn’t have been so bad off, as I said,
if mother had lived, but she died when I was about six year old. I
didn’t care much about her, indeed I took a dreadful dislike to her. I
heerd her say one day to a person in the shop, that she would sooner
see me dead and buried than be as I was, but now I know that it was
her fondness for me. Mother catched a cold, and died after six day’s
illness. When she was gone, father got to neglect his business. He had
no one then to attend to it, and he took and shut up the shop. He lost
heart, you see. He took and turned all the tenants out of his property,
and furnished all the rooms of a large house suitable for the quality
that used to come to the town to bathe. He mortgaged the place for
250_l._ to buy the furniture, and that was the ruin of him. Eighteen
years afterwards the lawyers got the better of him, and all the family
was turned out of the door without a penny. My father they’d put in
jail before. He died a few years afterwards in the workhouse. When
the family was turned out, there was only my eldest brother away at
sea, and my eldest sister in sarvice; so me and my three sisters was
sent in the wide world without the means of getting a crust or a place
to put our heads in. All my sisters after that got into sarvice, and
I went to drive some coal carts at North Shields. The coal carts was
father’s, and they was all he had left out of his property; so I used
to go to Wall’s End and fill the carts, then take them down to North
Shields and sell them at the people’s doors. We never used to sell
less than the load. I did all this, blind as I was, without a person
to guide, and continued at it night and day for about fifteen year.
It was well known to the whole country side. I was the talk for miles
round. They couldn’t believe I was blind; though they see my eyes was
gone, still they couldn’t hardly believe. Then, after the fifteen year,
me and my father had a complete fall out. He took an advantage of my
sister. He had borrowed 20_l._ of her, and when he could he wouldn’t
pay her. He behaved as bad as father could, and then I broke with
him.” (He then went over the whole story, and was affected, even to
speechlessness, at the remembrance of his family troubles. Into these
there is no necessity to enter here; suffice it, the blind man appears
to have behaved very nobly.) “I came away and went to my brother, who
was well off at Hull; when I got there, I found he had gone to Russia
and died there that very spring. While I was on my way to Hull, I used
to go to sleep at the lodging-houses for travellers. I had never been
in one before, and there I got to think, from what I heerd, that a
roving life was a fine pleasant one. The very first lodging-house I
went into was one in Durham, and there persons as was coming the same
road persuaded me to go and beg with them, but I couldn’t cheek it; it
was too near hand at home. We came on to Darlington, that was 18 miles
further, that day. They still kept company with me, and wanted me to
beg, but I wouldn’t; I couldn’t face it. I thought people would know
me. The next day we started on our way to Northallerton, and then my
few shillings was all gone; so that night we went to seek relief, and
got a pennyworth of milk, and a penny loaf each and our bed. The parish
gave us a ticket to a lodging-house. The next morning we started from
Northallerton, and then I was very hungry; all I had the day before was
the pennyworth of bread I got from the parish. Then as we got about a
mile out of the town, there was a row of houses, and the Scotchman who
was with me says, ‘If ye’ll gang up wi’ me, I’ll speak for ye.’ Well,
we went up and got 3_d._, and plenty of bread and butter; almost every
house we got something at; then I was highly delighted; thinks I, this
is a business--and so I did. We shared with the other man who had come
on the road with us, and after that we started once more, and then I
was all eager to go on with the same business. You see I’d never had
no pleasure, and it seemed to me like a new world--to be able to get
victuals without doing anything--instead of slaving as I’d been with
a couple of carts and horses at the coal-pits all the time. I didn’t
think the country was half so big, and you couldn’t credit the pleasure
I felt in going about it. I felt as if I didn’t care for nothing; it
was so beautiful to be away there quite free, without any care in
the world, for I could see plainly I could always get the best of
victuals, and the price of my lodgings. There’s no part in all England
like Yorkshire for living. We used to go to all the farm-houses, we
wouldn’t miss one if it was half a mile off the road; if the Scotchman
who was with me could only see a road he’d take me up it, and we got
nice bits of pie and meat, and bread and cake, indeed as much as would
serve four people, when we got to the lodging-house at night and a few
shillings beside. I soon got not to care about the loss of my brother.
At last we got to make so much money that I thought it was made to
chuck about the streets. We got it so easy, you see. It was only 4_s._
or 5_s._, but then I was only a flatty or I could have made 14_s._
or 15_s._ at least. This was in Borough-bridge, and there at a place
called, I think, Bridely-hill, there was a lodging-house without never
a bed in it at all; but only straw littered on the ground, and here I
found upwards of sixty or seventy, all tramps, and living in different
ways, pattering, and thieving, and singing, and all sorts; and that
night I got to think it was the finest scene I had ever known. I grew
pleaseder, and pleaseder, with the life, and wondered how any one
could follow any other. There was no drunkenness, but it was so new
and strange, and I’d never known nothing of life before, that I was
bewildered, like, with over-joy at it. Then I soon got to think I’d
have the summer’s pleasure out and wouldn’t go near Hull till the back
end of the year, for it was the month of May, that what I’m talking
about took place; and so things went on. I never thought of home, or
sisters, or anything, indeed. I was so over-joyed that I could think
of nothing else. Whenever I got to a new county it seemed like getting
into a new nation, and when I heard we were close upon a new place I
used to long and long to get into it. At last I left the Scotchman
and took up with an old sailor, a man-of-warsman, who was coming up
to London to get his pension, and he was a regular ‘cadger’ like the
other who had put me ‘fly to the dodge,’ though none of us wer’nt ‘fly’
to nothing then. I can’t tell you, I wanted to, how I longed to be
in town, and, as I came through the streets with him, I didn’t know
whether I carried the streets or they carried me. You see I had heard
people talk about London in North Shields, and I thought there was no
poor people there at all--none but ladies and gentlemen and sailors. In
London the sailor drew his pension, and he and me got robbed, and then
the sailor left me, and then I started off without a penny into the
country; and at Stratford-le-Bow I began, for the first time, to say,
‘Pity the poor blind.’ Up to this time I had never axed no one--never
spoke, indeed--the cadgers who had been with me had done this for me,
and glad to have the chance of sharing with me. A blind man can get a
guide at any place, because they know he’s sure to get something.
I took only 5_d._ at Stratford-le-Bow, and then started on my way to
Romford; and there, in the lodging-house, I met a blind man, who took
me in partnership with him, and larnt me my business complete--that
he just did, and since then I’ve been following it, and that’s about
two or three and twenty year ago. Since I’ve been in London, and
that’s fourteen year, I’ve lived very regular, always had a place, and
attended my church. If it hadn’t been for the lodging-houses I should
never, may be, have been as I am; though, I must confess, I always
had a desire to find out travelling, but couldn’t get hold of any one
to put me in the way of it. I longed for a roving life and to shake a
loose leg, still I couldn’t have done much else after my quarrel with
my father. My sister had offered to lend me money enough to buy a horse
and cart for myself, but I didn’t like that, and thought I’d get it of
my brother at Hull; and that and the padding kens is solely the cause
of my being as I am; and since I first travelled there’s more now than
ever--double and treble as many.”
OF THE LOW LODGING-HOUSES.
The revelations of the Blind Boot-Lace Seller concerning the low
lodging-houses make me anxious to arouse the public to a full sense of
the atrocities committed and countenanced in those infamous places. It
will have been noticed that the blind man frankly tells us that he was
“taught his business” as a mendicant in one of these houses of call for
vagabonds of all kinds--beggars, prostitutes, cheats, and thieves. Up
to the time of his starting to see his brother at Hull, he appears to
have had no notion of living but by his labour, and, more especially,
no wish to make a trade of his affliction. Till then he seems to have
been susceptible of some of the nobler impulses of humanity, and to
have left his home solely because he refused to be party to a fraud on
his own sister. Unfortunately, however, on his way to carry out his
generous purposes, he put up for the night at the “travellers’” house
in the town where he arrived, at the end of his first day’s journey;
from the very minute that he set foot in the place he was a lost man.
Here were assembled scores of the most degraded and vicious members
of society, lying in ambush, as it were, like tigers in the jungle,
ready to spring upon and make a prey of any one who came within the
precincts of their lair. To such as these--sworn to live on the labours
of others, and knowing almost to a sixpence the value of each human
affliction as a means of operating upon both the heart-strings and
the purse-strings of the more benevolent of the industrious or the
affluent--to such as these, I say, a blind man, unskilled in the art
and system of mendicancy, was literally a God-send. A shipwreck or a
colliery explosion, as they too well knew, some of the more sceptical
of the public _might_ call in question, but a real blind man, with
his eye-balls gone, was beyond all doubt; and to inspire faith, as
they were perfectly aware, was one of the most important and difficult
processes of the beggar’s craft. Besides, of all misfortunes,
blindness is one which, to those who have their sight, appears not
only the greatest of human privations, but a privation which wholly
precludes the possibility of self-help, and so gives the sufferer the
strongest claim on our charity. In such a place, therefore, as a low
lodging-house, the common resort of all who are resolved not to work
for their living, it was almost impossible for a blind man to pass
even an hour without every virtuous principle of his nature being
undermined, and overtures of the most tempting character being made
to him. To be allowed to go partners in so valuable a misfortune was
a privilege that many there would strive for; accordingly, as we have
seen, the day after the blind man entered the low lodging-house, he
who, up to that time, had been, even in his affliction, earning his
living, was taken out by one of the “travellers,” and taught how much
better a living--how much more of the good things of this world--he
could get by mendicancy than by industry; and from the very hour when
the blind man learnt this, the most dangerous lesson that any human
being can possibly be taught, he became, heart and soul, an ingrained
beggar. His description of the delight he felt when he found that he
had no longer any need to work--that he could rove about the country as
he pleased--without a care, without a purpose--with a perfect sense of
freedom, and a full enjoyment of the open air in the day, and the wild
licence of the lodging-house society at night, satisfied that he could
get as much food and drink, and even money as he needed, solely for
the asking for it; his description of this is a frank confession of a
few of the charms of vagabondism--charms to which the more sedate are
not only strangers, but of which they can form no adequate conception.
The pleasure of “shaking a loose leg,” as the vagrants themselves call
it, is, perhaps, known only in its intensity by those wayward spirits
who object to the restraint of work or the irksomeness of any settled
pursuit. The perfect _thoughtlessness_ that the blind man describes
as the first effect produced upon him by his vagabondism is the more
remarkable, because it seems to have effaced from his mind all regard,
even for the sister for whose sake he had quitted his home--though
to those who have made a study of the vagrant character it is one of
those curious inconsistencies which form the principal feature in
the idiosyncrasy of the class, and which, indeed, are a necessary
consequence of the very purposelessness, or want of some permanent
principle or feeling, which constitutes, as it were, the mainspring of
vagabondism. Indeed, the blind man was a strange compound of cunning
and good feeling; at one moment he was weeping over the afflictions of
others--he was deeply moved when I read to him the sufferings of the
Crippled Nutmeg-Grater Seller; and yet, the next minute he was grinning
behind his hand, so that his laughter might be concealed from me, in
a manner that appeared almost fiendish. Still, I am convinced that
at heart he was far from a bad man; there was, amid the degradation
that necessarily comes of habitual mendicancy, a fine expression of
sympathy, that the better class of poor always exhibit towards the
poor; nor could I help wondering when I heard _him_--the professed
mendicant--tell me how he had been moved to tears by the recital of
the sufferings of another mendicant--sufferings that might have been
as profitable a stock in trade to the one as his blindness was to the
other; though it is by no means unusual for objects of charity to have
_their_ objects of charity, and to be imposed upon by fictitious or
exaggerated tales of distress, almost as often as they impose upon
others by the very same means.
I now invite the reader’s attention to the narratives given below as to
the character of the low lodging-houses. The individuals furnishing me
with those statements, it should be observed, were not “picked” people,
but taken promiscuously from a number belonging to the same class. I
shall reserve what else I may have to remark on the subject till the
conclusion of those statements.
Prisons, tread-mills, penal settlements, gallows, I said, eighteen
months ago, in the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ are all vain and impotent as
punishments--and Ragged Schools and City missions are of no avail
as preventives of crime--so long as the wretched dens of infamy,
brutality, and vice, termed “padding-kens” continue their daily and
nightly work of demoralization. If we would check the further spread of
our criminals--and within the last four years they have increased from
24,000 to 30,000--we must apply ourselves to the better regulation and
conduct of these places. At present they are not only the preparatory
schools, but the finishing academies for every kind of profligacy and
crime.
“The system of lodging-houses for travellers, otherwise trampers,”
says the Constabulary Commissioners’ Report, “requires to be
altogether revised; at present they are in the practice of lodging all
the worst characters unquestioned, and are subject to no other control
than an occasional visit of inspection from the parish officers,
accompanied by the constables, whose power of interference--if they
have a legal right of entry--does not extend to some of the most
objectionable points connected with those houses, as they can merely
take into custody such persons as they find in commission of some
offence. The state in which those houses are found on the occasion of
such visit, proves how much they require interference. The houses are
small, and yet as many as thirty travellers, or even thirty-five, have
been found in one house; fifteen have been found sleeping in one room,
three or four in a bed--men, women, and children, promiscuously: beds
have been found occupied in a cellar. It is not necessary to urge the
many opportunities of preparing for crime which such a state of things
presents, or the actual evils arising from such a mode of harbouring
crowds of low and vicious persons.”
According to the report of the Constabulary Commissioners, there were
in 1839--
Total No.
Mendicants’ of
Lodging-houses. Lodgers. Inmates.
In London 221 average 11 or 2,431
In Liverpool 176 6 1,056
Bristol 69 7 483
Bath 14 9 126
Kingston-on-Hull 11 3 33
Newcastle-on-Tyne 78 3 234
Chester (see Report, p. 35) 150 3 450
--- -----
619 4,813
Moreover, the same Report tells us, at p. 32, that there is a low
lodging-house for tramps in every village. By the Post-office Directory
there are 3823 postal towns in England and Wales; and assuming that
in each of these towns there are two “travellers’” houses, and that
each of these, upon an average, harbours every night ten tramps (in
a list given at p. 311, there were in 83 towns no less than 678 low
lodging-houses, receiving 10,860 lodgers every night; this gives, on
an average, 8 such houses to each town, and 16 lodgers to each such
house), we have thus 76,460 for the total number of the inmates of such
houses.
To show the actual state of these lodging-houses from the testimony of
one who had been long resident in them, I give the following statement.
It was made to me by a man of superior education and intelligence (as
the tone of his narrative fully shows), whom circumstances, which do
not affect the object of my present letter, and therefore need not
be detailed, had reduced from affluence to beggary, so that he was
compelled to be a constant resident in those places. All the other
statements that I obtained on the subject--and they were numerous--were
corroborative of his account to the very letter:--
“I have been familiar, unfortunately for me, with low lodging-houses,
both in town and country, for more than ten years. I consider that,
as to the conduct of those places, it is worse in London than in the
country--while in the country the character of the keeper is worse than
in London, although but a small difference can be noted. The worst
I am acquainted with, though I haven’t been in it lately, is in the
neighbourhood of Drury-lane--this is the worst both for filth and for
the character of the lodgers. In the room where I slept, which was
like a barn in size, the tiles were off the roof, and as there was no
ceiling, I could see the blue sky from where I lay. That may be altered
now. Here I slept in what was called the single men’s room, and it was
confined to men. In another part of the house was a room for married
couples, as it was called, but of such apartments I can tell you more
concerning other houses. For the bed with the view of the blue sky I
paid 3_d._ If it rained there was no shelter. I have slept in a room
in Brick-lane, Whitechapel, in which were fourteen beds. In the next
bed to me, on the one side, was a man, his wife, and three children,
and a man and his wife on the other. They were Irish people, and I
believe the women were the men’s wives--as the Irish women generally
are. Of all the women that resort to these places the Irish are far
the best for chastity. All the beds were occupied, single men being
mixed with the married couples. The question is never asked, when a
man and woman go to a lodging-house, if they are man and wife. All
must pay before they go to bed, or be turned into the street. These
beds were made--as all the low lodging-house beds are--of the worst
cotton flocks stuffed in coarse, strong canvas. There is a pair of
sheets, a blanket, and a rug. I have known the bedding to be unchanged
for three months; but that is not general. The beds are an average
size. Dirt is the rule with them, and cleanliness the exception. They
are all infested with vermin. I never met with an exception. No one is
required to wash before going to bed in any of these places (except at
a very few, where a very dirty fellow would not be admitted), unless he
has been walking on a wet day without shoes or stockings, and then he
must bathe his feet. The people who slept in the room I am describing
were chiefly young men, almost all accompanied by young females. I
have seen girls of fifteen sleep with ‘their chaps’--in some places
with youths of from sixteen to twenty. There is no objection to any
boy and girl occupying a bed, even though the keeper knows they were
previously strangers to each other. The accommodation for purposes of
decency is very bad in some places. A pail in the middle of a room, to
which both sexes may resort, is a frequent arrangement. No delicacy or
decency is ever observed. The women are, I think, worse than the men.
If any one, possessing a sense of shame, says a word of rebuke, he is
at once assailed, by the women in particular, with the coarsest words
in the language. The Irish women are as bad as the others with respect
to language, but I have known them keep themselves covered in bed when
the other women were outraging modesty or decency. The Irish will
sleep anywhere to save a halfpenny a night, if they have ever so much
money.” [Here he stated certain gross acts common to lodging-houses,
which cannot be detailed in print.] “It is not uncommon for a boy or
man to take a girl out of the streets to these apartments. Some are
the same as common brothels, women being taken in at all hours of the
day or night. In most, however, they must stay all night as a married
couple. In dressing or undressing there is no regard to decency, while
disgusting blackguardism is often carried on in the conversation of
the inmates. I have known decent people, those that are driven to
such places from destitution, perhaps for the first time, shocked
and disgusted at what they saw. I have seen a decent married pair so
shocked and disgusted that they have insisted on leaving the place,
and have left it. A great number of the lodging-houses are large old
buildings, which were constructed for other purposes; these houses
are not so ill-ventilated, but even there, where so many sleep in one
room, the air is hot and foul. In smaller rooms, say twelve feet by
nine, I have seen four beds placed for single men, with no ventilation
whatsoever, so that no one could remain inside in warmish weather,
without every door and window open; another room in the same house, a
little larger, had four double beds, with as many men and women, and
perhaps with children. The Board of Health last autumn compelled the
keepers of these places to whitewash the walls and ceilings, and use
limewash in other places; before that, the walls and ceilings looked as
if they had been blackwashed, but still you could see the bugs creeping
along those black walls, which were not black enough to hide that. In
some houses in the summer you can hardly place your finger on a part of
the wall free from bugs. I have scraped them off by handfulls.
“Nothing can be worse to the health than these places, without
ventilation, cleanliness, or decency, and with forty people’s breaths
perhaps mingling together in one foul choking steam of stench. [The
man’s own words.] They are the ready resort of thieves and all bad
characters, and the keepers will hide them if they can from the police,
or facilitate any criminal’s escape. I never knew the keepers give any
offender up, even when rewards were offered. If they did, they might
shut up shop. These houses are but receptacles, with a few exceptions,
for beggars, thieves, and prostitutes, and those _in training_ for
thieves and prostitutes--the exceptions are those who _must_ lodge at
the lowest possible cost. I consider them in every respect of the worst
possible character, and think that immediate means should be adopted to
improve them. Fights, and fierce fights too, are frequent in them, and
I have often been afraid murder would be done. They are money-making
places, very. One person will own several--as many as a dozen. In each
house he has one or more ‘deputies,’ chiefly men. Some of these keepers
are called respectable men; some live out in the country, leaving
all to deputies. They are quite a separate class from the keepers of
regular brothels. In one house that I know they can accommodate eighty
single men; and when single men only are admitted, what is decent, or
rather what is considered decent in such places, is less unfrequent.
Each man in such houses pays 4_d._ a night, a bed to each man or boy;
that is 26_s._ 8_d._ nightly, or 486_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._ a year, provided
the beds be full every night--and they are full six nights out of
seven. Besides that, some of the beds supply double turns; for many
get up at two to go to Covent-garden or some other market, and their
beds are then let a second time to other men; so that more than eighty
are frequently accommodated, and I suppose 500_l._ is the nearest sum
to be taken for an accurate return. The rent is very trifling; the
chief expense to be deducted from the profits of the house in question
is the payment of three and sometimes four deputies, receiving from
7_s._ to 12_s._ a week each--say an average of from 30_s._ to 40_s._ a
week--as three or four are employed. Fire (coke being only used) and
gas are the other expenses. The washing is a mere trifle. Then there
are the parochial and the water-rates. The rent is always low, as the
houses are useable for nothing but such lodgings. The profits of the
one house I have described cannot be less than 300_l._ a year, and the
others are in proportion. Now, the owner of this house has, I believe,
10 more such houses, which, letting only threepenny beds (some are
lower than that), may realise a profit of about 200_l._ a year each.
These altogether yield a clear profit of 2300_l._ for the eleven of
them; but on how much vice and disease that 2300_l._ has been raised
is a question beyond a schoolmaster. The missionaries visit these
lodging-houses, but, judging from what I have heard said by the inmates
in all of them, when the missionaries have left, scarcely any good
effect has resulted from the visits. _I never saw a clergyman of any
denomination in any one of these places, either in town or country._ In
London the master or deputy of the low lodging-house does not generally
meddle with the disposal of stolen property, as in the country. This
is talked about, alike in the town and country houses, very openly and
freely before persons known only to be beggars, and never stealing:
it is sufficient that they are known as tramps. In London the keepers
must all know that stolen property is nightly brought into the house,
and they wink at its disposal, but they won’t mix themselves up with
disposing of it. If it be provisions that have been stolen, they are
readily disposed of to the other inmates, and the owner or deputy of
the house may know nothing about it, and certainly would not care to
interfere if he did. I never heard robberies planned there, but there
are generally strangers present, and this may deter. I believe more
robberies are planned in low coffee-shops than in lodging-houses. The
influence of the lodging-house society on boys who have run away from
their parents, and have got thither, either separately or in company
with lads who have joined them in the streets, is this:--Boys there,
after paying their lodgings, may exercise the same freedom from every
restraint as they see the persons of maturer years enjoy. This is often
pleasant to a boy, especially if he has been severely treated by his
parents or master; he apes, and often outdoes, all the men’s ways, both
in swearing and lewd talk, and so he gets a relish for that sort of
life. After he has resorted to such places--the sharper boys for three,
and the duller for six months--they are adepts at any thieving or vice.
Drunkenness, and even moderate drinking, is very rare among them. I
seldom or never see the boys drink--indeed, thieves of all ages are
generally sober men. Once get to like a lodging-house life, and a boy
can hardly be got out of it. I said the other day to a youth, ‘I wish I
could get out of these haunts and never see a lodging-house again;’ and
he replied, ‘If I had ever so much money I would never live anywhere
else.’ I have seen the boys in a lodging-house sit together telling
stories, but paid no attention to them.”
STATEMENT OF A YOUNG PICKPOCKET.