to Liverpool wid my father and mother, and brother William that’s dead
and gone, rest his soul. He died when he was fourteen. They was masons
in Ireland. Was both father and mother masons, sir? Well, then, in
any quiet job mother helped father, for she was a strong woman. They
came away sudden. They was in some thrubble, but I never knew what,
for they wouldn’t talk to me about it. We thravelled from Liverpool
to London, for there was no worruk at Liverpool; and he got worruk on
buildings in London, and had 18_s._ a week; and mother cleaned and
worruked for a greengrocer, as they called him--he sold coals more than
anything--where we lodged, and it wasn’t much, she got, but she airned
what is such a thrubble to poor people, the rint. We was well off, and
I was sent to school; and we should have been better off, but father
took too much to the dhrop, God save him. He fell onste and broke
his leg; and though the hospital gintlemen, God bless them for good
Christians, got him through it, he got little worruk when he came out
again, and died in less than a year. Mother wasn’t long afther him; and
on her death-bed she said, so low I could hardly hear her, ‘Mary, my
darlint, if you starruve, be vartuous. Rimimber poor Illen’s funeral.’
When I was quite a child, sir, I went wid mother to a funeral--she was
a relation--and it was of a young woman that died after her child had
been borrun a fortnight, and she wasn’t married; that was Illen. Her
body was brought out of the lying-in hospital--I’ve often heard spake
of it since--and was in the churchyard to be buried; and her brother,
that hadn’t seen her for a long time, came and wanted to see her in
her coffin, and they took the lid off, and then he currused her in
her coffin afore him; she’d been so wicked. But he wasn’t a good man
hisself, and was in dhrink too; still nobody said anything, and he
walked away. It made me ill to see Illen in her coffin, and hear him
curruse, and I’ve remimbered it ever since.
“I was thin fifteen, I believe, and hadn’t any friends that had any
tie to me. I was lone, sir. But the neebours said, ‘Poor thing, she’s
left on the shuckrawn’ (homeless); and they helped me, and I got a
place. Mistress was very kind at first, that’s my first mistress was,
and I had the care of a child of three years old; they had only one,
because mistress was busy making waistcoats. Master was a hatter, and
away all day, and they was well off. But some women called on mistress
once, and they had a deal of talkin’, and bladherin’, and laughin’,
and I don’t know how often I was sent out for quarterns of gin. Then
they all went out together; and mistress came home quite tipsy just
afore master, and went up-stairs, and had just time to get into bed;
she told me to tell master she had one of her sick head-aches and was
forced to go to bed; she went on that way for three or four days, and
master and she used to quarrel of a night, for I could hear them. One
night he came home sooner than common, and he’d been drinking, or
perhaps it might be thrubble, and he sent me to bed wid the child; and
sometime in the night, I don’t know what time, but I could only see
from a gas-lamp that shined into the room, he came in, for there was
no fastenin’ inside the door, it was only like a closet, and he began
to ask me about mistress. When he larned she’d been drinking wid other
women, he used dreadful language, and pulled me out of bed, and struck
me with a stick that he snatched up, he could see it in the gas-light,
it was little Frank’s horse, and swore at me for not telling him
afore. He only struck me onste, but I screamed ever so often, I was so
frightened. I dressed myself, and lay down in my clothes, and got up as
soon as it was light--it was summer time--and thought I would go away
and complain to some one. I would ask the neebours who to complain to.
When I was going out there was master walking up and down the kitchen.
He’d never been to bed, and he says, says he, ‘Mary, where are you
going?’ So I told him, and he begged my pardon, and said he was ashamed
of what he’d done, but he was half mad; then he began to cry, and so
I cried, and mistress came home just then, and when she saw us both
crying together, _she_ cried, and said she wasn’t wanted, as we was man
and wife already. Master just gave her a push and down she fell, and he
ran out. She seemed so bad, and the child began to cry, that I couldn’t
lave thin; and master came home drunk that night, but he wasn’t cross,
for he’d made out that mistress had been drinking with some neebours,
and had got to her mother’s, and that she was so tipsy she fell asleep,
they let her stay till morning, and then some woman set her home, but
she’d been there all night. They made it up at last, but I wouldn’t
stay. They was very kind to me when I left, and paid me all that was
owing, and gave me a good pair of shoes, too; for they was well off.
“I had a many places for seven years; after that, and when I was out of
a place, I stayed wid a widder, and a very dacint woman, she was wid a
daughter working for a bookbinder, and the old woman had a good pitch
with fruit. Some of my places was very harrud, but shure, again, I met
some as was very kind. I left one because they was always wanting me to
go to a Methodist chapel, and was always running down my religion, and
did all they could to hinder my ever going to mass. They would hardly
pay me when I left, because I wouldn’t listen to them, they said--the
haythens!--when they would have saved my soul. _They_ save my soul,
indeed! The likes o’ thim! Yes, indeed, thin, I had wicked offers
sometimes, and from masters that should have known better. I kept no
company wid young men. One mistress refused me a karackter, because I
was so unhandy, she said; but she thought better of it. At last, I had
a faver (fever), and wasn’t expected for long (not expected to live);
when I was getting well, everything went to keep me. What wasn’t good
enough for the pawn went to the dolly (dolly-shop, generally a rag
and bottle shop, or a marine store). When I could get about, I was so
shabby, and my clothes hung about me so, that the shops I went to said,
‘Very sorry, but can’t recommend you anywhere;’ and mistresses looked
strange at me, and I didn’t know what to do and was miserable. I’d
been miserable sometimes in place, and had many a cry, and thought how
‘lone’ I was, but I never was so miserable as this. At last, the old
woman I stayed along wid--O, yes, she was an Irishwoman--advised me to
sill fruit in the streets, and I began on strawberries, and borrowed
2_s._ 6_d._ to do it wid. I had my hilth better than ever thin; and
after I’d sold fruit of all kinds for two years, I got married. My
husband had a potato can thin. I knew him because he lived near, and
I saw him go in and out, and go to mass. After that he got a porter’s
place and dropped his can, and he porters when he has a chance still,
and has a little work in sewing sacks for the corn-merchants. Whin he’s
at home at his sacks, as he is now, he can mind the children--we have
two--and I sells a few oranges to make a thrifle. Whin there’s nothing
ilse for him to do, he sills fruit in the sthreets, and thin I’m at
home. We do middlin, God be praised.”
There is no doubt my informant was a modest, and, in her way, a worthy
woman. But it may be doubted if any English girl, after seven years of
domestic service, would have so readily adapted herself to a street
calling. Had an English girl been living among, and used to the society
of women who supported themselves by street labour, her repugnance to
such a life might have been lessened; but even then, I doubt if she,
who had the virtue to resist the offers told of by my Irish informant,
could have made the attempt to live by selling fruit. I do not mean
that she would rather have fallen into immoral courses than honestly
live upon the sale of strawberries, but that she would have struggled
on and striven to obtain any domestic labour in preference to a street
occupation.
OF A WIDOW, A STREET-SELLER.
A woman, apparently about 50, strong-built and red-faced, speaking in
a loud tone, and what people of her class account a _hearty_ manner,
gave me the following account. I can readily condense it, for in her
street career there was nothing very novel. She was the daughter
of a costermonger, and she married a costermonger before she was 20.
On my hinting that sometimes the marriage ceremony was not considered
indispensable, the good woman laughed and said, “married, or as good,
it’s hall as one--but we was married.” The marriage was not one of
unalloyed happiness, for the couple often wrangled and occasionally
fought. This was told to me with some laughter, and with perfect good
humour; for the widow seemed interested to have a listener. She did
not, I feel confident, exaggerate the merits of the deceased, nor,
perhaps, his failings. He was the best judge of fish in the streets,
she said, and was the neatest hand in cutting it up, or showing it off;
he was not “a bad sort,” and was very fond of his children. When sober
and at work he was a quiet fellow, without a cross word for a whole
morning, but when drunk, which was far too often (unless _very_ drunk,
and then he was silly), he went about tearing and swearing “like one
o’clock.” But if he saw his wife take but a glass or two, to do her
good, he went on like a madman, and as if he never touched it himself.
He never had nothing to say to other women--if he had she would have
clawed their eyes out, and his’n too--he was as good that way as any
nobleman could be, and he was a fine man to look at; and on a Sunday,
when he dressed hisself, he was beautiful. He was never in a church in
his life, and didn’t trouble hisself about such things; they was no
concern of his’n.
It may be thought that I have treated this matter too lightly, but the
foregoing is really the substance, and certainly it is the tone, of the
widow’s talk, which she poured forth freely, without expressing wonder
why any one, a perfect stranger, cared to listen to such a history. She
needed but a few hints and leading questions to make her talk on. Nor
is this an uncommon quality even among classes who would be shocked to
be classed, in any respect, with the Widowed Street-Seller. Their own
career, their own sayings and doings, hopes and disappointments, alone
interest masses of people, and with the simplicity which not seldom
pertains to selfishness, they will readily talk of all that interests
themselves, as if it must necessarily interest others. On the whole,
though the departed costermonger was greatly deplored by his widow and
family, they did very well without him, and carry on the business to
this day. He died four or five years back.
I have no doubt this widow is a shrewd saleswoman enough. I have heard
her cry “mack’rel, live mack’rel, eight a shilling, mack’rel!” and
at other times, “Eight a bob, fine mack’rel, mack’rel, eight a bob,
eight a bob!” On my inquiring as to the cause of this difference in
her cries, the fish-seller laughed and said, “I cries eight a bob when
I sees people as I thinks is likely to like slang; to others I cries
eight a shilling, which no doubt is the right way of talking.”
OF THE CHILDREN STREET-SELLERS OF LONDON.
When we consider the spirit of emulation, of imitation, of bravado, of
opposition, of just or idle resentment, among boys, according to their
training, companionship, natural disposition, and, above all, home
treatment, it seems most important to ascertain how these feelings and
inclinations are fostered or stimulated by the examples of the free
street-life of other lads to be seen on every side. There is no doubt
that to a large class of boys, whose parents are not in poverty, the
young street ruffian is a hero.
If this inquiry be important, as it unquestionably is, concerning boys,
how much more important is it, when it includes the female children of
the streets; when it relates to the sex who, in all relations of life,
and in all grades of society, are really the guardians of a people’s
virtue.
The investigation is, again, rendered more interesting and more
important, when it includes those children who have known no guidance
from parent, master, or relative, but have been flung into the streets
through neglect, through viciousness, or as outcasts from utter
destitution. Mixed with the children who really _sell_ in the streets,
are the class who assume to sell that they may have the better chance
to steal, or the greater facility to beg.
Before I classify what I consider to be the causes which have driven
children to a street career, with all its hardening consequences,
I may point out that culpability cannot be imputed to them at the
commencement of their course of life. They have been either untaught,
mistaught, maltreated, neglected, regularly trained to vice, or fairly
turned into the streets to shift for themselves. The censure, then,
is attributable to parents, or those who should fill the place of
parents--the State, or society. The exceptions to this culpability as
regards parents are to be found in the instances where a costermonger
employs his children to aid him in his business occupation, which the
parents, in their ignorance or prejudices, may account as good as any
other, and the youths thus become unfit, perhaps, for any other than a
scrambling street life. A second exception may be where the children in
a poor family (as continually happens among the Irish in London) _must_
sell in the streets, that they may eat in any place.
In the following details I shall consider all to be children who
are under fifteen years of age. It is just beyond that age (or the
age of puberty) that, as our prison statistics and other returns
show, criminal dispositions are developed, “self-will” becomes more
imperious and headstrong, that destructive propensity, or taste, which
we term the ruling passion or character of the individual is educed,
and the destiny of the human being, especially when apart from the
moulding and well-directed care of parents or friends, is influenced
perhaps for life.
_The Causes_, then, which fill our streets with children who either
manifest the keen and sometimes roguish propensity of a precocious
trader, the daring and adroitness of the thief, or the loutish
indifference of the mere dull vagabond, content if he can only eat and
sleep, I consider to be these:--
1. The conduct of parents, masters, and mistresses.
2. The companionship and associations formed in tender years.
3. The employment of children by costermongers and others who live by
street traffic, and the training of costermongers’ children to a street
life.
4. Orphanhood, friendlessness, and utter destitution.
5. Vagrant dispositions and tastes on the part of children, which cause
them to be runaways.
After this I shall treat of (_a_) the pursuits of the street-trading
children; (_b_) their earnings; (_c_) the causes or influences which
have induced children to adopt some especial branch of a street life;
(_d_) their state of education; (_e_) their morals, religion, opinions,
and conduct; (_f_) places and character of dwellings; (_g_) diet; (_h_)
amusements; (_i_) clothing; (_j_) propensities.
Concerning cause 1, viz., “The conduct of parents, masters, and
mistresses,” I should have more to say were I treating of the
juvenile criminals, instead of sellers in the streets. The brute
tyranny of parents, manifested in the wreaking of any annoyances or
disappointments they may have endured, in the passionate beating and
cursing of their children, for trifling or for no causes, is among
the worst symptoms of a depraved nature. This conduct may be the
most common among the poor, for among them are fewer conventional
restraints; but it exists among and debases other classes. Some parents
only exercise this tyranny in their fits of drunkenness, and make
that their plea in mitigation; but their dispositions are then only
the more undisguisedly developed, and they would be equally unjust or
tyrannical when sober, but for some selfish fear which checks them. A
boy perhaps endures this course of tyranny some time, and then finding
it increase he feels its further endurance intolerable, and runs away.
If he have no friends with whom he can hope to find a shelter, the
streets only are open to him. He soon meets with comrades, some of
whom perhaps had been circumstanced like himself, and, if not strongly
disposed to idleness and vicious indulgencies, goes through a course
of horse-holding, errand-running, parcel-carrying, and such like,
and so becomes, if honestly or prudently inclined, a street-seller,
beginning with fuzees, or nuts, or some unexpensive stock. The where
to buy and the how to sell he will find plenty to teach him at the
lodging-houses, where he _must_ sleep when he can pay for a bed.
When I was collecting information concerning brace-selling I met with
a youth of sixteen who about two years previously had run away from
Birmingham, and made his way to London, with 2_s._ 6_d._ Although he
earned something weekly, he was so pinched and beaten by a step-mother
(his father was seldom at home except on Sunday) that his life was
miserable. This went on for nearly a year, until the boy began to
resist, and one Saturday evening, when beaten as usual, he struck in
return, drawing blood from his step-mother’s face. The father came
home before the fray was well ended; listened to his wife’s statement,
and would not listen to the boy’s, and in his turn chastised the lad
mercilessly. In five minutes after the boy, with aching bones and a
bitter spirit, left his father’s house and made his way to London,
where he was then vending cheap braces. This youth could neither read
nor write, and seemed to possess no quickness or intelligence. The only
thing of which he cared to talk was his step-mother’s treatment of him;
all else was a blank with him, in comparison; this was the one burning
recollection.
I may here observe, that I heard of several instances of children
having run away and adopted a street life in consequence of the
violence of step-mothers far more than of step-fathers.
I cite the foregoing instance, as the boy’s career was exactly that
I have described; but the reader will remember, that in the many and
curious narratives I have collected, how often the adult street-seller
has begun such a life by being a runaway from domestic tyranny.
Had this Birmingham boy been less honest, or perhaps less dull, it
would have been far easier for him to have become a thief than a
street-trader. To the gangs of young thieves, a new boy, who is not
known to the police is often (as a smart young pickpocket, then known
as the Cocksparrow, described it to me) “a God-send.”
My readers will remember that in the collected statements of the
street-folk, there are several accounts of runaways, but they were
generally older than the age I have fixed, and it was necessary to give
an account of one who comes within my classification of a child.
I did not hear of any girls who had run away from their homes having
become street-sellers merely. They more generally fall into a course
of prostitution, or sometimes may be ostensibly street-sellers as a
means of accosting men, and, perhaps, for an attractive pretence to the
depraved, that they are poor, innocent girls, struggling for an honest
penny. If they resort to the low lodging-houses, where the sexes are
lodged indiscriminately, their ruin seems inevitable.
2. That the companionship and associations formed in tender years lead
many children to a street life is so evident, that I may be brief on
the subject. There are few who are in the habit of noting what they
may observe of poor children in the streets and quieter localities,
who have not seen little boys playing at marbles, or gambling with
halfpennies, farthings, or buttons, with other lads, and who have laid
down their basket of nuts or oranges to take part in the play. The
young street-seller has probably more halfpence at his command, or, at
any rate, in his possession, than his non-dealing playmates; he is also
in the undoubted possession of what appears a large store of things for
which poor boys have generally a craving and a relish. Thus the little
itinerant trader is envied and imitated.
This attraction to a street career is very strong, I have ascertained,
among the neglected children of the poor, when the parents are absent
at their work. On a Saturday morning, some little time since, I was
in a flagged court near Drury-lane, a wretched place, which was full
of children of all ages. The parents were nearly all, I believe,
then at work, or “on the look out for a job,” as porters in Covent
Garden-market, and the children played in the court until their
return. In one corner was a group of four or five little boys gambling
and squabbling for nuts, of which one of the number was a vendor. A
sharp-looking lad was gazing enviously on, and I asked him to guide me
to the room of a man whom I wished to see. He did so, and I gave him
a penny. On my leaving the court I found this boy the most eager of
the players, gambling with the penny I had given him. I had occasion
to return there a few hours after, and the same lad was leaning
against the wall, with his hands in his pockets, as if suffering from
listlessness. He had had no luck with the nut covey, he told me, but
he hoped before long to sell nuts himself. He did not know his age,
but he appeared to be about eleven. Only last week I saw this same
lad hawking a basket, very indifferently stocked with oranges. He had
raised a shilling, he said, and the “Early Bird” (the nickname of a
young street-seller) had put him up to the way to lay it out. On my
asking if his father (a journeyman butcher) knew what he was doing, he
replied that so long as he didn’t bother his father he could do what he
pleased, and the more he kept out of his (the father’s) way the better
he would be liked and treated.
The association of poor boys and girls with the children of the
costermongers, and of the Irish fruit-sellers, who are employed in
itinerant vending, is often productive of a strong degree of envy on
the part of unemployed little ones, who look upon having the charge
of a basket of fruit, to be carried in any direction, as a species of
independence.
3. “The employment of children by costermongers, and others who live by
street traffic; and the training of costermongers’ children to a street
life, is the ordinary means of increase among the street-folk.”
The children of the costermongers become necessarily, as I have
already intimated, street-dealers, and perhaps more innocently than
in any other manner, by being required, as soon as their strength
enables them, to assist their parents in their work, or sell trifles,
single-handed, for the behoof of their parents. The child does but obey
his father, and the father does but rear the child to the calling
by which his daily bread is won. This is the case particularly with
the Irish, who often have large families, and bring them with them to
London.
There are, moreover, a great number of boys, “anybody’s children,” as
I heard them called, who are tempted and trained to pursue an open-air
traffic, through being engaged by costermongers or small tradesmen
to sell upon commission, or, as it is termed, for “bunse.” In the
curious, and almost in every instance novel, information which I gave
to the public concerning the largest body of the street-sellers, the
costermongers, this word “bunse” (probably a corruption of _bonus_,
_bone_ being the slang for good) first appeared in print. The mode
is this: a certain quantity of saleable, and sometimes of not very
saleable, commodities is given to a boy whom a costermonger knows and
perhaps employs, and it is arranged that the young commission-agent
is to get a particular sum for them, which must be paid to the
costermonger; I will say 3_s._, that being somewhere about the maximum.
For these articles the lad may ask and obtain any price he can, and
whatever he obtains beyond the stipulated 3_s._ is his own profit or
“bunse.” The remuneration thus accruing to the boy-vendor of course
varies very materially, according to the season of the year, the nature
of the article, and the neighbourhood in which it is hawked. Much also
depends upon whether the boy has a regular market for his commodities;
whether he has certain parties to whom he is known and upon whom he
can call to solicit custom; if he has, of course his facilities for
disposing of his stock in trade are much greater than in the case of
one who has only the chance of attracting attention and obtaining
custom by mere crying and bawling “Penny a piece, Col-ly-flowers,”
“Five bunches a penny, Red-dish-es,” and such like. The Irish boys call
this “having a back,” an old Hibernian phrase formerly applied to a
very different subject and purpose.