said he first left home from bad usage; and could not say whether
it was the same with his sister or not, but she left her home about
nine months ago, when he met her while he was getting his living as a
costermonger. With the stock-money that he had, rather than she should
be driven to prostitution and the streets, he bought as many things
as he could to furnish a room. This exhausted his stock-money, and
then his furniture had to go a little at a time to support him and his
sister in food. After this he was obliged to take a furnished room,
which put him to greater expense. To keep her off the streets, he
was compelled to thieve. His father, if he ever had the feeling of a
Christian, would never have treated him as he had done. Could a father
(he asked) have any feeling, who chained his son up by the leg in a
shed, as _his_ father had done to him, and fed him on bread and water
for one entire month: and then, after chaining him up all day, still
chain him in bed at night. This it was that drove him into the streets
at first. It was after his mother died, and he had a step-mother, that
his father treated him thus. His mother-in-law ill-treated him as
well as his father. If he had been a transport he could not have been
treated worse. He told his father that he was driving him on the road
to transportation, but he took no notice of it; and he was obliged to
leave his roof. He had been in Newgate since.
A little boy, dressed in the garb of a sailor, came up to Mr. Mayhew
crying bitterly, and implored him to allow him to say a word. He
stated--I am here starving all my time. Last night I was out in the
cold and nearly froze to death. When I got up I was quite stiff and
could hardly walk. I slept in Whitechapel under a form where they sell
meat. I was an apprentice on board of a fishing smack, and ran away
because I was ill-treated. After I ran away I broke into my master’s
house because I was hungry. He gave me twelve months, and now he is in
the union himself; he failed in business and got broken up. I have been
out of prison three months, starving; and I would rather do anything
than thieve. If I see a little thing I take it, because I can’t get
anything to eat without it. [Here the child, still weeping piteously,
uncovered his breast, and showed his bones starting through his skin.
He said he was anxious to get out of the country.]
The following statement respecting the lodging-houses was made, after
the others had left, by another lad. He left home when about thirteen,
and never thieved before that. His father was dead, and his mother was
unable to keep him. He got a situation and held it for three years and
nine months, until he picked up with a man from a lodging-house, and
through keeping late hours he was obliged to leave his place and sleep
in a lodging-house himself. The lodging-house is in Short’s-gardens.
This he considered to have been the commencement of his downfall. About
forty thieves lived in the house, and they brought in stolen property
of every description, and the deputies received it and took it to other
people to sell it again, and get the price and pay the thieves. They
got double as much as the thieves did, or else they would have nothing
to do with it. Several housebreakers lived at the house, and he heard
them there plan the robbery of Bull and Wilson, the woollen-drapers in
St. Martin’s-lane. One of the men secreted himself in the house in the
daytime, and the other two were admitted by him at night. If he had
stated this at the meeting the persons present would have killed him.
He was sure that more might be done by giving proper encouragement to
virtue, and by reforming the criminal, than by rigorous prosecution. He
said (with tears in his eyes) that he should be very willing and happy
to work for an honest living if he could only get it to do. He showed
a letter of recommendation for good conduct to his former master, and
a Bible; both of which had been given him by the chaplain of the gaol
which he had just left, after undergoing an imprisonment of twelve
months. It was useless (he said) for a young man like him to apply to
the parish for relief; he might just as well stand in the street and
talk to a lamp-post. Then what was a man to do after he left prison?
He must go a thieving to live. He was persuaded that if there was an
institution to give employment to the homeless, the friendless, and the
penniless, after being liberated from prison, it would be the means of
rescuing thousands.
The proceedings then terminated. The assemblage, which had become more
rational and manageable towards the close, dispersed, quite peaceably
it should be added, and the boys were evidently sincerely grateful for
the efforts being made to bring their misfortunes before the notice of
those in whose power it may be to alleviate them.
Before they were dismissed, as much money was dispensed to each as
would defray his night’s lodging.
OF THE COUNTRY LODGING-HOUSES.
Concerning the lodging-houses, more especially in the country, I give
the statement of a middle-aged man, familiar with them for twenty
years. He was recommended to me as possessed of much humour and a great
master of humourous slang:--
“I can tell you all about it, sir; but one lodging-house is so like
another that I can’t draw much distinction. In small country towns,
especially agricultural towns, they are decent places enough, regular
in their hours, and tidy enough. At these places they have what they
call ‘their own travellers,’ persons that they know, and who are always
accommodated in preference. As to the characters that frequent these
places, let us begin with _the Crocusses_. They carry about a lot of
worms in bottles, what they never took out of anybody, though they’ll
tell you different, or long pieces of tape in bottles, made to look
like worms, and on that they’ll _patter_ in a market place as if on
a real cure, and they’ve got the cheek to tell the people that that
very worm was taken from Lady ----, near the town, and referring them
to her to prove it. The one I knew best would commence with a piece
of sponge in a bottle, which he styled the stomach wolf. That was his
leading slum, and pretty well he sponged them too. When he’d pattered
on about the wolf, he had another bottle with what he called a worm
200 inches long, he bounced it was, which the day before yesterday
he had from Mrs. ----’s girl (some well-known person), and referred
them to her. While he’s going on, a brother Crocus will step up, a
stranger to the people, and say, ‘Ah, Doctor ----, you’re right. I had
the pleasure of dining with Mr. ---- when the worm was extracted, and
never saw a child so altered in my life.’ That’s what the Crocus’s
call giving a jolly; and after that don’t the first Crocus’s old woman
serve out the six-pennyworths? The stuff is to cure every mortal thing
a man can ail--ay, or a woman either. They’d actually have the cheek
to put a blister on a cork leg. Well, when they’re done pattering on
the worm racket, then come the wonderful pills. Them are the things.
These pills, from eight to a dozen in a box, are charged 4_d._ to 6_d._
according to the flat’s appearance--as the Crocus call his customers.
The pills meet with a ready sale, and they’re like chip in porridge,
neither good nor harm. It’s chiefly the bounciful patter, the cheek
they have, that gets them Crocusses on. It’s amazing. They’ll stare a
fellow in the face, and make him believe he’s ill whether he is or no.
The man I speak of is a first-rate cove; he trains it and coaches it
from market to market like any gentleman. He wears a stunning fawny
(ring) on his finger, an out-and-out watch and guard, and not a duffer
neither--no gammon; and a slap-up suit of black togs. I’ve seen the
swell bosmen (farmers) buy the pills to give the people standing about,
just to hear the Crocus patter. Why they’ve got the cheek to pitch
their stall with their worms opposite a regular medical man’s shop, and
say, ‘Go over the way and see what he’ll do--he’ll drive up in a horse
and gig to your door, and make you pay for it too; but I don’t--I’ve
walked here to do you good, and I _will_ do you good before I leave
you. One trial is all I ask’--and quite enough too (said my informant).
I’ll warrant they won’t come a second time; if they do, it’s with a
stick in their hands. If he does much business in the worm-powder way
(some have it in cakes for children), the Crocus never gives them a
chance to catch him. But if it’s only pills, he’ll show next market
day, or a month after, and won’t he crack about it then? He says, ‘One
trial is all I ask,’ and one of them got it and was transported. I knew
one of these Crocusses who was once so hard up from lushing and boozing
about that he went into a field and collected sheep dung and floured
it over, and made his pills of it, and made the people swallow it at
Lutterworth market, in Leicestershire; because there they’ll swallow
anything. If the Crocus I have mentioned see this in the paper--as he
will, for he’s a reading-man--won’t he come out bouncefull? He’ll say,
‘Why am I thus attacked--why don’t the proprietor and the editor of
this paper come forward--if he’s among you? Who made this report? let
him come forward, and I’ll refute him face to face.’ And no doubt (my
informant remarked), he’d give him a tidy dose, too, the Crocus would.
For myself, I’d far rather meet him face to face than his medicine,
either his blue or his pink water. There’s another sort who carry on
the crocussing business, but on a small scale; they’re on the penny
and twopenny racket, and are called hedge crocusses--men who sell corn
salve, or ‘four pills a penny,’ to cure anything, and go from house
to house in the country. But as the hedge crocus is shickery togged,
he makes poorly out. Respectable people won’t listen to him, and it’s
generally the lower order that he gulls. These hedge fellows are slow
and dull; they go mouching along as if they were croaking themselves.
I’ve seen the head crocus I’ve mentioned at four markets in one week,
and a town on a Saturday night, clear from 5_l._ to 7_l._--all clear
profit, for his fakement costs him little or nothing. For such a
man’s pound, the hedge fellow may make 1_s._ The next I’ll tell you
about is durynacking, or duryking. The gipsies (and they’re called
Romanies) are the leading mob at this racket, but they’re well known,
and I needn’t say anything about those ladies. But there’re plenty of
travelling women who go about with a basket and a bit of driss (lace)
in it, gammy lace, for a stall-off (a blind), in case they meet the
master, who would order them off. Up at a bosken (farm-house) they’ll
get among the servant girls, being pretty well acquainted with the
neighbourhood by inquiries on the road, as to the number of daughters
and female servants. The first inquiry is for the missus or a daughter,
and if they can’t be got at they’re on to the slaveys. Suppose they do
get hold of one of the daughters, they commence by offering the driss,
which, as it is queer stuff, wouldn’t be picked up by an agricultural
young lady, as the durynacker very well knows. Then she begins, ‘Ah!
my sweet young lady, my blessed looking angel’--if she’s as ugly as
sin, and forty; they say that, and that’s the time you get them to
rights, when they’re old and ugly, just by sweetening them, and then
they don’t mind tipping the loaver (money)--‘I know you dont want this
stuff (she’ll continue), there’s something on your mind. I see you’re
in love; but the dear handsome gentleman--he’ll not slight you, but
loves you as hard as a hammer.’ This is thrown out as a feeler, and
the young lady is sure to be confused; then the durrynacker has hold
of her mauly (hand) in a minute. It’s all up with the girl, once the
woman gets a grip. She’s asked in directly, and of course the sisters
(if she has any) and the slavey are let into the secret, and all have
their fortunes told. The fortune-teller may make a week’s job of it,
according as the loaver comes out. She’ll come away with her basket
full of eggs, bacon, butter, tea and sugar, and all sorts of things. I
_have_ seen them bring the scran in! Every one is sure to have handsome
husbands, thumping luck, and pretty children. The durrynacker, too,
is not particular, if there’s a couple of silver spoons--she doesn’t
like odd ones; and mind you, she alway carries a basket--big enough
too. I know a man on this lurk, but he works the article with a small
glass globe filled full of water, and in that he shows girls their
future husbands, and kids them on to believe they do see them--ay,
and the church they’re to be married in--and they fancy they do see
it as they twist the globe this way and that, while he twists the tin
out of them, and no flies. He actually had the cheek, though he knew
I was fly to every fake, to try to make me believe that I could see
the place where Smith O’Brien had the fight in Ireland! ‘Don’t you
see them cabbages, and a tall man in a green velvet cap among them,
holloring out, “I’m the King of Munster?”’ I don’t know any other male
durrynacker worth noticing; the women have all the call. Young women
won’t ask their fortunes of men. The way the globe man does is to
go among the old women and fiddle (humbug) them, and, upon my word,
three-parts of them are worse than the young ones. Now I’ll tell you
about the tat (rag) gatherers; buying rags they call it, but I call
it bouncing people. Two men I lodged with once, one morning hadn’t
a farthing, regularly smashed up, not a feather to fly with, they’d
knocked down all their tin lushing. Well, they didn’t know what to be
up to, till one hit upon a scheme. ‘I’ve got it, Joe,’ says he. He
borrows two blue plates from the lodging-house keeper, a washing jug
and basin. Off they goes, one with the crockery, and the other with a
bag. They goes into the by-courts in Windsor, because this bouncing
caper wouldn’t do in the main drag. Up goes the fellow with a bag, and
hollas out, ‘Now, women, bring out your copper, brass, white rags, old
flannel, bed-sacking, old ropes, empty bottles, umbrellas--any mortal
thing--the best price is given;’ and the word’s hardly out, when up
comes his pal, hollaring, ‘Sam, holloa! stop that horse,’ as if he’d a
horse and cart passing the court, and then the women bring out their
umbrellas and things, and they’re all to be exchanged for crockery such
as he shows, and all goes into the bag, and the bagman goes off with
the things, leaving the other to do the bounce, and he keeps singing
out for the horse and cart with the load of crockery, gammoning there
is one, that the ladies may have their choice, and he then hurries down
to quicken his cart-driver’s movements, and hooks it, leaving the flats
completely stunned. Oh! it does give them a ferry-cadouzer. Two other
men go about on this lurk, one with an old cracked plate under his
waistcoat, and the other with a bag. And one sings out, ‘Now, women,
fourpence a pound for your white rags. None of your truck system, your
needles and thread for it. I don’t do it that way; ready money, women,
is the order of the day with me.’ Well, one old mollesher (woman),
though she must have known her rags would only bring 2_d._ a lb. at a
fair dealer’s, if there be one, brought out 8 lbs. of white rags. He
weighs them with his steelyards, and in they went to the bag. The man
with the bag steps it immediately, and the other whips out his flute
quite carelessly, and says--‘Which will you have marm, Jem Crow, or
the Bunch of Roses?’ The old woman says directly, ‘What do you mean,
8 times 4 is 32, and 32 pence is 2_s._ 8_d._; never mind, I won’t be
hard, give me half-a-crown.’ Well, when she finds there’s no money,
out she hollars, and he plays his distracted flute to drown her voice,
and backs himself manfully out of the court. I have known these men
get on so that I have seen them with a good horse and cart. There’s
another class of rag bloaks, who have bills printed with the Queen’s
Arms at the top, if you please, ‘By royal authority’--that’s their own
authority, and they assume plenty of it. Well, this bill specifies the
best prices for rags, left-off clothes, &c. One fellow goes and drops
these bills at the kens (houses), the other comes after him, and as the
man who drops marks every house where a bill has been taken, the second
man knows where to call. Any house where he gets a call commences the
caper. Well, anything to be disposed of is brought out, often in the
back yard. The party of the house produces the bill, which promises a
stunning tip for the old lumber. The man keeps sorting the things out,
and running them down as not so good as he expected; but at the same
time he kids them on by promising three times more than the things are
worth. This is a grand racket--the way he fakes them, and then he says,
‘Marm (or sir, as it may be), I shall give you 15_s._ for the lot,’
which stuns the party, for they never expected to get anything like
that--and their expectations is not disappointed, for they don’t. Then
he turns round directly, and commences sorting more particularly than
before, putting the best and the easiest to carry altogether. He starts
up then, and whips a couple of bob, or half a bull (2_s._ 6_d._) into
the woman’s hand, saying, ‘I always like to bind a bargain, marm--one
of the fairest dealing men travelling. Do save all your old lumber for
me.’ Of a sudden he begins searching his pockets, and exclaims, ‘Dear
me, I haven’t enough change in my pocket, but I’ll soon settle that--my
mate has it outside. I’ll just take a load out to the cart, and come
back for the others with the money;’ and so he hooks it, and I’ve no
occasion to tell you he never comes back; and that’s what he calls
having them on the knock.”
The other inmates at the lodging-houses which my informant described
are of the class concerning whom full information is or will be given
in other portions of this or the following letters. His description of
the lodging-houses, too, was a corroboration of the statement I give
to-day. All the classes described meet and mix at the lodging-houses.
I shall reserve what I have to say concerning the influence of the low
lodging-houses of London and the country till the conclusion of the
present volume.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF CHEMICAL ARTICLES OF MANUFACTURE.
The street purveyors of blacking, of the different preparations of
black lead, of plating-balls, of corn-salves, of grease-removing
compositions, of china and glass cements, of rat poisons,
of fly-papers, of beetle-wafers, of gutta-percha heads, of
lucifer-matches, and of cigar-lights, may be classed generally under
two heads. They are either very old or very young persons, or else they
are men who recommend their wares by patter.
Among the first-mentioned class are the vendors of cakes of blacking,
papers of black-lead, and lucifer matches. Of blacking and black-lead
the street-sellers are more frequently old women; of lucifer matches
they are usually women and children, and of all ages. It is not
uncommon, in the quieter roads of the suburbs especially, to see a
young woman extend her bare red arm from beneath a scanty ragged shawl,
and with an imploring look, a low curtsey, and a piteous tone, proffer
a box of matches for sale; while a child in her arms, perhaps of two
or three years old, extends in its little hand another box. There are
also in the street sale of lucifer matches very many girls and boys,
parentless or uncared for, and many old or infirm women and men.
The street-sellers of chemically-manufactured articles, who feel it
necessary to recommend their wares by a little street oratory, or
patter, (the paper-worker, whose humorous remarks I have before quoted,
once described it to me as “advertising by word of mouth,”) are the
vendors of the articles which are to cure, to repair, to renovate, or
to kill. Any other itinerant vendors of chemical articles are of the
ordinary class of street traders.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF BLACKING, BLACK LEAD, ETC.
I specify these two commodities jointly, because they are frequently
sold by the same individual. In Whitechapel and Spitalfields are eight
establishments, where the street-sellers of blacking are principally
supplied with their stock. It is sold in cakes, which are wrapped in a
kind of oil paper, generally printed on the back, so as to catch the
eye, with the address of some well-known blacking manufacturer. Thus
some which a street-seller of blacking showed me were printed, in large
type, as a sort of border, “Lewis’s India Rubber Blacking,” while in
the middle was a very black and very predominant 30, and beneath it, in
small and hardly distinguishable type, “Princess-st., Portman-market.”
Any shopkeeper, who “supplies the trade,” if he be a regular customer
of the manufacturer, can have his name and address printed on the
cover of the blacking-cakes. The 30 is meant to catch the eye with the
well-known flourish of “30, Strand.”
The quality of these cakes of blacking, the street-sellers whom I
questioned told me was highly approved by their customers, and, as
blacking is purchased by the classes who aim at a smartness and
cleanliness above that of the purchasers of many street commodities,
there is no reason to doubt the assertion. The sale of this blacking,
indeed, is chiefly on a round, and it would be hopeless as to future
custom to call a second time at any house where bad blacking had been
sold on a previous visit. The article is vended wholesale, in “gross
boxes,” and “half-gross boxes.” The half-gross boxes are 1_s._ 9_d._,
and capital, even in this trifling trade, has its customary advantages,
for the “gross boxes” are but 3_s._ It should be remembered, however,
that to the buyer of two “half-gross” a couple of the plain wooden
boxes, in which the blacking is sold, and often hawked, must be
supplied; but to the buyer of a “gross box” only one of these cases is
furnished. I may mention, to the credit of the vendors, that of the
wholesale blacking makers, two have themselves been street-sellers,
and one still, but only at intervals, goes “on a blacking-round” among
his old customers. There are other blacking-makers, but those I have
specified, as to number, are more particularly the providers for the
street trade. The poor people who sell blacking at a distance from
the manufacturer’s premises--as in the case of the “30, Princess-st.,
Portman-market”--are supplied by oilmen, chandlers, and other
shopkeepers, who buy largely of the manufacturers, and can consequently
supply the purchasers by the dozen, for street sale or hawking, as
cheaply as they would be supplied by the manufacturer himself. A dozen
is generally charged 3-1/2_d._, and as the cakes are sold at 1/2_d._
each (occasionally 1_d._, both by the street people and more frequently
the small shopkeepers) the profit is moderate enough. The cakes,
however, which are regularly retailed at 1_d._, are larger, and cost
nearly twice the amount of the others wholesale.
This trade presents the peculiarity of being almost entirely a street
“door-to-door” trade, as I heard it described. Blacking is not
presented for purposes of begging, as are lucifer-matches, tracts,
memorandum-books, boot-laces, &c.; for the half-trading, half-begging,
is carried on in the quieter parts of town, and more extensively in the
suburbs, ladies being principally accosted, and to them blacking is not
offered.
There are now, I learn from good authority, never fewer than 200
persons selling cake blacking, “from door to door.” More than half
of them are elderly women, and more than three-fourths women of all
ages and girls. The other sellers are old men and boys. None of the
blacking-sellers make the article they vend. To sell eight dozen
cakes a week is a full average, and of these the “pennies” and the
“half-pennies” are about equally divided. This gives a weekly outlay of
6_s._ to each individual seller, with an average profit of about 2_s._
6_d._, and shows a yearly street-expenditure by the public of 3120_l._
The profit, however, is not in equal apportionment among the traders
in blacking, for the “old hands” on a regular round will do double the
business of the others.