defective. Perhaps it may be said that among the English costers not
one female in twenty can read, and not one in forty can write. But
they are fond of listening to any one who reads the newspaper or any
exciting story. Among the street-selling Irish, also, education is
very defective. As regards the adults, who have been of woman’s estate
before they left Ireland, a knowledge of reading and writing may be as
rare as among the English costerwomen; but with those who have come to
this country sufficiently young, or have been born here, education is
far more diffused than among the often more prosperous English street
children. This is owing to the establishment of late years of many
Roman Catholic schools, at charges suited to the poor, or sometimes
free, and of the Irish parents having availed themselves (probably
on the recommendation of the priest) of such opportunities for the
tuition of their daughters, which the English costers have neglected to
do with equal chances. Of the other classes whom I have specified as
street-sellers, I believe I may say that the education of the females
is about the average of that of “servants of all work” who have been
brought up amidst struggles and poverty; they can read, but with little
appreciation of what they read, and have therefore little taste for
books, and often little leisure even if they have taste. As to writing,
a woman told me that at one time, when she was “in place,” and kept
weekly accounts, she had been complimented by her mistress on her neat
hand, but that she and her husband (a man of indifferent character) had
been street-sellers for seven or eight years, and during all that time
she had only once had a pen in her hand; this was a few weeks back, in
signing a petition--something about Sundays, she said--she wrote her
name with great pain and difficulty, and feared that she had not even
spelled it aright! I may here repeat that I found the uneducated always
ready to attribute their want of success in life to their want of
education; while the equally poor street-sellers, who were “scholars,”
are as apt to say, “It’s been of no manner of use to me.” In all these
matters I can but speak generally. The male street-sellers who have
seen better days have of course been better educated, but the most
intelligent of the street class are the patterers, and of them the
females form no portion.
_The diet of the class_ I am describing is, as regards its poorest
members, tea and bread or bread and grease; a meal composed of nothing
else is their fare twice or thrice a day. Sometimes there is the
addition of a herring--or a plaice, when plaice are two a penny--but
the consumption of cheap fish, with a few potatoes, is more common
among the poor Irish than the poor English female street-sellers.
“Indeed, sir,” said an elderly woman, who sold cakes of blacking and
small wares, “I could make a meal on fish and potatoes, cheaper than on
tea and bread and butter, though I don’t take milk with my tea--I’ve
got to like it better without milk than with it--but if you’re a long
time on your legs in the streets and get to your bit of a home for a
cup of tea, you want a bit of rest over it, and if you have to cook
fish it’s such a trouble. O, no, indeed, this time of year there’s
no ’casion to light a fire for your tea--and tea ’livens you far
more nor a herring--because there’s always some neighbour to give a
poor woman a jug of boiling water.” Married women, who may carry on
a trade distinct from that of their husbands, live as well as their
earnings and the means of the couple will permit: what they consider
good living is a dinner daily off “good block ornaments” (small pieces
of meat, discoloured and dirty, but not tainted, usually set for sale
on the butcher’s block), tripe, cow-heel, beef-sausages, or soup from
a cheap cook-shop, “at 2_d._ a pint.” To this there is the usual
accompaniment of beer, which, in all populous neighbourhoods, is “3_d._
a pot (quart) in your own jugs.” From what I could learn, it seems to
me that an inordinate or extravagant indulgence of the palate, under
any circumstances, is far less common among the female than the male
street-sellers.
During the summer and the fine months of the spring and autumn, there
are, I am assured, one-third of the London street-sellers--male and
female--“tramping” the country. At Maidstone Fair the other day, I
was told by an intelligent itinerant dealer, there were 300 women, all
of whose faces he believed he had seen at one time or other in London.
The Irish, however, tramp very little into the country for purposes
of trade, but they travel in great numbers from one place to another
for purposes of mendicancy; or, if they have a desire to emigrate,
they will tramp from London to Liverpool, literally begging their
way, no matter whether they have or have not any money. The female
street-sellers are thus a fluctuating body.
The beggars among the women who profess to be street-traders are
chiefly Irishwomen, some of whom, though otherwise well-conducted,
sober and chaste, beg shamelessly and with any mendacious
representation. It is remarkable enough, too, that of the Irishwomen
who will thus beg, many if employed in any agricultural work, or in
the rougher household labours, such as scouring or washing, will work
exceedingly hard. To any feeling of self-respect or self-dependence,
however, they seem dead; their great merit is their chastity, their
great shame their lying and mendicancy.
The female street-sellers are again a fluctuating body, as in the
summer and autumn months. A large proportion go off to work in
market-gardens, in the gathering of peas, beans, and the several
fruits; in weeding, in hay-making, in the corn-harvest (when they
will endeavour to obtain leave to glean if they are unemployed more
profitably), and afterwards in the hopping. The women, however, thus
seeking change of employment, are the ruder street-sellers, those who
merely buy oranges at 4_d._ to sell at 6_d._, and who do not meddle
with any calling mixed up with the necessity of skill in selection,
or address in recommending. Of this half-vagrant class, many are not
street-sellers usually, but are half prostitutes and half thieves,
not unfrequently drinking all their earnings, while of the habitual
female street-sellers, I do not think that drunkenness is now a very
prevalent vice. Their earnings are small, and if they become habituated
to an indulgence in drink, their means are soon dissipated; in which
case they are unable to obtain stock-money, and they cease to be
street-sellers.
If I may venture upon an estimation, I should say that the women
engaged in street sale--wives, widows, and single persons--number from
25,000 to 30,000, and that their average earnings run from 2_s._ 6_d._
to 4_s._ a week.
I shall now proceed to give the histories of individuals belonging to
each of the above class of female street-sellers, with the view of
illustrating what has been said respecting them generally.
OF A SINGLE WOMAN, AS A STREET-SELLER.
I had some difficulty, for the reasons I have stated, in finding a
single woman who, by her unaided industry, supported herself on the
sale of street merchandise. There were plenty of single young women
so engaged, but they lived, or lodged, with their parents or with one
parent, or they had some support, however trifling, from some quarter
or other. Among the street Irish I could have obtained statements from
many single women who depended on their daily sale for their daily
bread, but I have already given instances of their street life. One
Irishwoman, a spinster of about 50, for I had some conversation with
her in the course of a former inquiry, had supported herself alone,
by street sale, for many years. She sat, literally packed in a sort
of hamper-basket, at the corner of Charles-street, Leather-lane. She
seemed to fit herself cross-legged, like a Turk, or a tailor on his
shop-board, into her hamper; her fruit stall was close by her, and
there she seemed to doze away life day by day--for she usually appeared
to be wrapped in slumber. If any one approached her stall, however,
she seemed to be awake, as it were, mechanically. I have missed this
poor woman of late, and I believe she only packed herself up in the way
described when the weather was cold.
A woman of about 26 or 27--I may again remark that the regular
street-sellers rarely know their age--made the following statement. She
was spare and sickly looking, but said that her health was tolerably
good.
“I used to mind my mother’s stall,” she stated, “when I was a girl,
when mother wasn’t well or had a little work at pea-shelling or such
like. She sold sweet-stuff. No, she didn’t make it, but bought it. I
never cared for it, and when I was quite young I’ve sold sweet-stuffs
as I never tasted. I never had a father. I can’t read or write, but I
like to hear people read. I go to Zion Chapel sometimes of a Sunday
night, the singing’s so nice. I don’t know what religion you may call
it of, but it’s a Zion Chapel. Mother’s been dead these--well I don’t
know how long, but it’s a long time. I’ve lived by myself ever since,
and kept myself, and I have half a room with another young woman
who lives by making little boxes. I don’t know what sort of boxes.
Pill-boxes? Very likely, sir, but I can’t say I ever saw any. She goes
out to work on another box-maker’s premises. She’s no better off nor
me. We pays 1_s._ 6_d._ a-week between us; it’s my bed, and the other
sticks is her’n. We ’gree well enough. I haven’t sold sweet stuff for
a great bit. I’ve sold small wares in the streets, and artificials
(artificial flowers), and lace, and penny dolls, and penny boxes (of
toys). No, I never hear anything improper from young men. Boys has
sometimes said, when I’ve been selling sweets, ‘Don’t look so hard at
’em, or they’ll turn sour.’ I never minded such nonsense. I has very
few amusements. I goes once or twice a month, or so, to the gallery at
the Wick (Victoria Theatre), for I live near. It’s beautiful there. O,
it’s really grand. I don’t know what they call what’s played, because I
can’t read the bills.
“I hear what they’re called, but I forgets. I knows Miss Vincent and
John Herbert when they come on. I likes them the best. I’m a going to
leave the streets. I have an aunt a laundress, because she was mother’s
sister, and I always helped her, and she taught me laundressing.
I work for her three and sometimes four days a-week now, because
she’s lost her daughter Ann, and I’m known as a good ironer. Another
laundress will employ me next week, so I’m dropping the streets, as I
can do far better. I’m not likely to be married and I don’t want to.”
OF A MECHANIC’S WIFE, AS A STREET-SELLER.
A middle-aged woman, presenting what may be best understood as a
decency of appearance, for there was nothing remarkable in her face
or dress, gave me the following account of her experience as a
street-seller, and of her feelings when she first became one:--
“I went into service very young in the country,” she said, “but
mistress brought me up to London with her, where master had got a
situation: the children was so fond of me. I saved a little money in
that and other places as girls often does, and they seems not to save
it so much for themselves as for others. Father got the first bit of
money I saved, or he would have been seized for rent--he was only a
working man (agricultural labourer)--and all the rest I scraped went
before I’d been married a fortnight, for I got married when I was 24.
O no, indeed, I don’t mean that my money was wasted by my husband. It
was every farthing laid out in the house, besides what he had, for we
took a small house in a little street near the Commercial-road, and let
out furnished rooms. We did very well at first with lodgings, but the
lodgers were mates of vessels, or people about the river and the docks,
and they were always coming and going, and the rooms was often empty,
and some went away in debt. My husband is a smith, and was in middling
work for a good while. Then he got a job to go with some horses to
France, for he can groom a horse as well as shoe it, and he was a long
time away, three or four months, for he was sent into another country
when he got to France, but I don’t understand the particulars of it.
The rooms was empty and the last lodger went away without paying, and
I had nothing to meet the quarter’s rent, and the landlord, all of a
sudden almost, put in the brokers, for he said my husband would never
come back, and perhaps I should be selling the furniture and be off to
join him, for he told me it was all a planned thing he knew. And so
the furniture was sold for next to nothing, and 1_l._ 6_s._ was given
to me after the sale; I suppose that was over when all was paid, but
I’d been forced to part with some linen and things to live upon and
pay the rates, that came very heavy. My husband came back to an empty
house three days after, and he’d been unlucky, for he brought home
only 4_l._ instead of 10_l._ at least, as he expected, but he’d been
cheated by the man he went into the other country with. Yes, the man
that cheated him was an Englishman, and my poor John was put to great
trouble and expense, and was in a strange place without knowing a word
of the language. But the foreigners was very kind to him, he said, and
didn’t laugh at him when he tried to make hisself understood, as I’ve
seen people do here many a time. The landlord gave us 1_l._ to give up
the house, as he had a good offer for it, and so we had to start again
in the world like.
“Our money was almost all gone before John got regular work, tho’ he
had some odd jobs, and then he had for a good many months the care of
a horse and cart for a tradesman in the City. Shortly after that he
was laid up a week with a crushed leg, but his master wouldn’t wait
a week for him, so he hired another: ‘I have nothing to say against
John,’ says he, when I told his master of the accident, ‘and I’m
sorry, very sorry, but my business can’t be hindered by waiting for
people getting better of accidents.’ John got work at his own business
next, but there was always some stopper. He was ill, or I was ill,
and if there was 10_s._ in the house, then it went and wasn’t enough.
And so we went on for a good many years, I don’t know how many. John
kept working among horses and carts, or at his own business, but what
with travelling abroad, I suppose, and such like, he got to like best
to be in the streets, and he has his health best that way.” (The
husband, it is evident, was afflicted with the restlessness of the
tribe.) “About seven years ago we were very badly off--no work, and no
money, and neither of us well. Then I used to make a few women’s
plain night-caps and plain morning caps for servants, and sell them
to a shopkeeper, but latterly I couldn’t sell them at all, or get no
more than the stuff cost me, without any profit for labour. So at
last--and it was on a Friday evening of all unlucky times--my gold
wedding-ring that cost 8_s._ 6_d._, and that I’d stuck to all along,
had to be pawned for 4_s._ 6_d._ for rent and bread. That _was_ a
shocking time, sir. We’ve sat in the dark of an evening, for we could
get neither coals nor a candle as we was a little in debt, and John
said, it was a blessing after all perhaps that we hadn’t no family, for
he often, both joking and serious, wished for children, but it wasn’t
God’s will you see that we should have any. One morning when I woke
very early I found my husband just going out, and when I asked him what
sent him out so soon, he says: ‘It’s for nothing bad, so don’t fret
yourself, old gal.’ That day he walked all over London and called on
all the masters as had employed him, or knowed him, and told them how
he was situated, and said that if he could borrow 20_s._ up and down,
he could do a little, he knew--the thought of it came into his mind
all of a sudden--in going about with a horse and cart, that he could
hire, and sell coals to poor people. He raised 8_s._ 6_d._, I think it
was, and started with a quarter of a ton of coals, and then another
quarter when the first was sold, and he carried it on for three or
four weeks. But the hire of the horse and cart took all the profit,
and the poor people wanted credit, besides people must cheat to thrive
as sells coals in the street. All this time I could do nothing--though
I tried for washing and charing, but I’m slow at washing--but starve
at home, and be afraid every knock was the landlord. After that John
was employed to carry a very heavy board over his shoulder, and so
as to have it read on both sides. It was about an eating-house, and
I went with him to give little bills about it to all we met, for it
was as much as a man could do to carry the board. He had 1_s._ a day,
and I had 6_d._ That was my first time in the streets and I felt so
’shamed to come to that. I thought if I met any people I knew in Essex,
or any of my old mistresses, what would they think. Then we had all
sorts of jokes to stand. We both looked pinched, and young gents used
to say, ‘Do you dine there yourselves?’ and the boys--O, of all the
torments!--they’ve shouted out, ‘Excellent Dining-rooms’ that was on
the board, sir, ‘and two jolly speciments of the style of grub!’ I
could have knocked their saucy heads together. We was resting in the
shade one day--and we were anxious to do our best, for 1_s._ 6_d._ a
day was a great thing then--and an old gentleman came up and said he
was glad to get out of the sun. He looked like a parson, but was a joky
man, and he’d been having some wine, I think, he smelled of it so. He
began to talk to us and ask us questions, such as you have, sir, and we
told him how we was situated. ‘God bless you,’ says he, ‘for I think
you’re honest folks. People that lie don’t talk like you; here’s some
loose silver I have,’ and he gave John 5_s._ 6_d._ and went away. We
could hardly think it was real; it seemed such a lot of money just
then, to be got clear all at once. I’ve never seen him since, and never
saw him, as I knows of, before, but may God Almighty bless him wherever
he is, for I think that 5_s._ 6_d._ put new life into us, and brought a
blessing. A relation of John’s came to London not long after and gave
him a sovereign and sent him some old clothes, and very good ones, when
he went back. Then John hired a barrow--it’s his own now--and started
as a costermonger. A neighbour of ourn told him how to do it, and he’s
done very well at it since.
“Well, you know, sir, I could’nt like to stay at home by myself doing
of a nothing, and I couldn’t get any charing; besides John says, ‘Why,
can’t _you_ sell something?’ So I made some plain women’s caps, and
as we lived in Ann’s-place, Waterloo-road, then, I went into the New
Cut with them on a Saturday night. But there was such crowding, and
shoving, and shouting, that I was kept under and sold only one cap. I
was very much nervoused before I went and thought again--it was very
foolish, I know--‘if I saw anybody from Essex,’ for country people
seem to think all their friends in London are making fortunes! Before
I went my landlady _would_ treat me to a little drop of gin to give me
spirits, and ‘for luck,’ but I think it made me more nervoused. I very
seldom taste any. And John’s very good that way. He takes his pint or
two every now and then, but I know where he uses, and if it gets late I
go for him and he comes home. The next time I went to sell in the Cut
I got bold, for I knew I was doing nothing but what was honest; I’ve
sold caps, and millinery, and laces, and artificial flowers, and such
like ever since. We’ve saved a little money now, which is in the bank,
thank God, but that’s not done by costering, or by my trade. But my
husband buys a poney every now and then, and grooms and fattens it up
well, and makes it quite another thing, and so clears a pound or two;
he once cleared 3_l._ 15_s._ on it. We don’t go to church or chapel on
a Sunday, we’re so tired out after the week’s work. But John reads a
tract that a young lady leaves ’till he falls asleep over it.”
OF AN IRISHWOMAN, AS A STREET-SELLER.
I have before had occasion to remark the aptitude of the poor Irish in
the streets of London not so much to lie, which may be too harsh a word
when motives and idiosyncrasy are considered, but to exaggerate, and
misrepresent, and colour in such a way that the truth becomes a mere
incident in the narrative, instead of being the animating principle
throughout. I speak here not as regards any direct question or answer
on one specific point, but as regards a connected statement. Presuming
that a poor Irishwoman, for instance, had saved up a few shillings,
very likely for some laudable purpose, and had them hidden about her
person, and was asked if she had a farthing in the world, she would
reply with a look of most stolid innocence, “Sorra a fardin, sir.” This
of course is an unmitigated lie. Then ask her _why_ she is so poor
and what are her hopes for the future, and a very slender substratum
of truth will suffice for the putting together of a very ingenious
history, if she think the occasion requires it.
It is the same when these poor persons are questioned as to their
former life. They have heard of societies to promote emigration, and
if they fancy that any inquiries are made of them with a view to
emigration, they will ingeniously shape their replies so as to promote
or divert that object, according to their wishes. If they think the
inquiries are for some charitable purpose, their tale of woe and
starvation is heart-rending. The probability is that they may have
suffered much, and long, and bravely, but they will still exaggerate.
In one thing, however, I have found them understate the fact, and that
I believe principally, or wholly, when they had been previously used
to the most wretched of the Irish hovels. I mean as to their rooms.
“Where do you live,” may be asked. “Will, thin, in Paraker-street
(Parker-street) Derwry-lane?” “Have you a decent room?” “Shure, thin,
and it is dacint for a poor woman.” On a visit, perhaps the room will
be found smoky, filthy, half-ruinous, and wretched in every respect. I
believe, however, that if these poor people could be made to comprehend
the motives which caused their being questioned for the purposes of
this work, the elucidation of the truth--motives which they cannot
be made to understand--they would speak with a far greater regard to
veracity. But they _will_ suspect an ulterior object, involving some
design on the part of the querist, and they will speak accordingly. To
what causes, social or political, national, long-rooted, or otherwise,
this spirit may be owing, it is not now my business to inquire.
At the outset of my inquiries amongst the poor Irish, whose civility
and often native politeness, where there is a better degree of
intelligence, makes it almost impossible to be angry with them even
when you listen to a story of which you believe not one-sixth--at the
outset of my inquiries, I say, I was told by an Irish gentleman that
I was sure to hear the truth if I had authority to use the name of
their priest. I readily obtained the consent of reverend gentlemen to
use their names and for any purpose of inquiry, a courtesy which I
thankfully acknowledge. I mention this more especially, that it may not
be thought that there has been exaggeration in my foregoing or in the
following statement, where the Irish are the narrators. I have little
doubt of their truth.
It may be but proper to remark, in order that one class of poor people
may not be unduly _depreciated_, while another class is, perhaps,
unduly _appreciated_, that the poor Irishman is much more imaginative,
is readier of wit and far readier of speech, than an Englishman of a
corresponding grade; and were the untaught Englishman equally gifted in
those respects, who will avouch that _his_ regard for the truth would
be much more severe?
Of the causes which induced a good-looking Irish woman to become a
street-seller I had the following account, which I give in its curious
details:--