the races in different parts of the country, more especially at those
in the vicinity of a large town. The race-course of Wolverhampton,
for instance, is usually thronged with them during the period of the
sport. While taking these perigrinations they sometimes sleep in the
low lodging-houses with which most of our provincial towns abound:
frequently “skipper it” in the open air, when the weather is fine and
warm, and occasionally in barns or outhouses attached to farms and
cottages. Sometimes they travel in couples--a boy and a girl, or two
boys or two girls; but the latter is not so common a case as either of
the former. It is rare that more than two may be met in company with
each other, except, indeed, of a night, and then they usually herd
together in numbers. The boys who carry dominoes sometimes, also, have
a sheet of paper for sale, on which is rudely printed a representation
of a draught-board and men--the latter of which are of two colours
(black and white) and may be cut out with a pair of scissors; thus
forming a ready means of playing a game so popular in rustic places.
These sheets of paper are sold (if no more can be got for them) at a
penny each. The boy who showed them to me said he gave a halfpenny a
piece for them, or 6_d._ for fifteen. He said he always bought them in
London, and that he did not know any other place to get them at, nor
had “ever heard any talk of their being bought nowhere else.”
The extraordinary lasciviousness of this class which I have already
mentioned, appears to continue to mark their character during their
vagabondizing career in the country as fully as in town; indeed, an
informant, upon whom I think I may rely, says, that the nightly scenes
of youthful or even childish profligacy in the low lodging-houses
of the small provincial towns quite equal--even if they do not
exceed--those which may be witnessed in the metropolis itself. Towards
the approach of winter these children (like the vagrants of an older
growth) advance towards London; some remain in the larger towns, such
as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, &c., but the greater
proportion appear to return to the metropolis, where they resume the
life they had previously led, anything but improved in education,
morals, manners, or social position generally, by their summer’s
excursion.
The language spoken by this rambling class is peculiar in its
construction: it consists of an odd medley of cockneyfied English, rude
provincialisms, and a large proportion of the slang commonly used by
gipsies and other “travellers,” in conveying their ideas to those whom
they wish to purchase their commodities.
Among the propensities of the street-boys I do not think that
pugnacity, or a fondness, or even a great readiness, for fighting, is
a predominant element. Gambling and thieving may be rife among a class
of these poor wretches; and it may not unfrequently happen that force
is resorted to by one boy bigger than another to obtain the halfpence
of which the smaller child is known to be possessed. Thus quarrels
among them are very frequent, but they rarely lead to fighting. Even
in the full swing and fury of their jealousy, it does not appear that
these boys attack the object of their suspicions, but prefer the less
hazardous course of chastising the delinquent or unjustly suspected
girl. The girls in the low lodging-houses, I was told a little time
since, by a woman who used to frequent them, sometimes, not often,
scratched one another until the two had bloody faces; and they tried to
bite one another now and then, but they seldom fought. What was this
poor woman’s notion of a fight between two girls, it may not be very
easy to comprehend.
The number of children out daily in the streets of London, employed
in the various occupations I have named, together with others which
may possibly have been overlooked--including those who beg without
offering any article for sale--those who will work as light porters,
as errand boys and the like, for chance passengers, has been variously
calculated; probably nothing like exactitude can be hoped for, much
less expected, in such a speculation, for when a government census has
been so frequently found to fail in correctness of detail, it appears
highly improbable that the number of those so uncertain in their places
of resort and so migratory in their habits, can be ascertained with
anything like a definite amount of certainty by a private individual.
Taking the returns of accommodation afforded to these children in the
casual wards of workhouses, refuges for the destitute and homeless
poor; of the mendicity and other societies of a similar description,
and those of our hospitals and gaols,--and these sources of information
upon this subject can alone be confidently relied upon,--and then
taking into the calculation the additional numbers, who pass the night
in the variety of ways I have already enumerated, I think it will be
found that the number of boys and girls selling in the streets of this
city, and often dependent upon their own exertions for the commonest
necessaries of life, may be estimated at some thousands, but nearer
10,000 than 20,000.
The consideration which I have devoted to this branch of my subject
has been considerable, but still not, in my own opinion, commensurate
to the importance of its nature. Steps ought most unquestionably to be
taken to palliate the evils and miseries I have pointed out, even if a
positive remedy be indeed impossible.
Each year sees an increase of the numbers of street-children to a
very considerable extent, and the exact nature of their position may
be thus briefly depicted: what little _information_ they receive is
obtained from the worst class--from cheats, vagabonds, and rogues;
what little _amusement_ they indulge in, springs from sources the most
poisonous--the most fatal to happiness and welfare; what little they
know of a _home_ is necessarily associated with much that is vile and
base; their very means of existence, uncertain and precarious as it is,
is to a great extent identified with petty chicanery, which is quickly
communicated by one to the other; while their physical sufferings from
cold, hunger, exposure to the weather, and other causes of a similar
nature, are constant, and at times extremely severe. Thus every means
by which a proper intelligence may be conveyed to their minds is
either closed or at the least tainted, while every duct by which a
bad description of knowledge may be infused is sedulously cultivated
and enlarged. Parental instruction; the comforts of a home, however
humble--the great moral truths upon which society itself rests;--the
influence of proper example; the power of education; the effect of
useful amusement; are all denied to them, or come to them so greatly
vitiated, that they rather tend to increase, than to repress, the very
evils they were intended to remedy.
The costers invariably say that no persons under the age of fifteen
should be allowed by law to vend articles in the streets; the reason
they give for this is--that the children under that period of life
having fewer wants and requiring less money to live than those who
are older, will sell at a less profit than it is fair to expect the
articles sold should yield, and thus they tersely conclude, “they
pervents others living, and ruins theirselves.”
There probably is truth in this remark, and I must confess that, for
the sake of the children themselves, I should have no objection to
see the suggestion acted upon; and yet there immediately rises the
plain yet startling question--in such a case, what is to become of the
children?
I now cite the histories of street-lads belonging to the several
classes above specified, as illustrations of the truth of the
statements advanced concerning the children street-sellers generally.
OF CHILDREN SENT OUT AS STREET-SELLERS BY THEIR PARENTS.
Of the boys and girls who are sent out to sell in the streets by
parents who are themselves street-traders, I need say but little under
this head. I have spoken of them, and given some of their statements
in other divisions of this work (see the accounts of the coster boys
and girls). When, as is the case with many of the costermongers, and
with the Irish fruit-sellers, the parents and children follow the
same calling, they form one household, and work, as it were, “into
one another’s hands.” The father can buy a larger, and consequently a
cheaper quantity, when he can avail himself of a subdivision of labour
as inexpensive as that of his own family--whom he must maintain whether
employed or unemployed--in order to vend such extra quantity. I have
already noticed that in some families (as is common with rude tribes)
costermongering seems an hereditary pursuit, and the frequent and
constant employment of children in street traffic is one reason why
this hereditary pursuit is perpetuated, for street commerce is thus at
a very early age made part and parcel of the young coster’s existence,
and he very probably acquires a distaste for any other occupation,
which may entail more of _restraint_ and _irksomeness_. It is very
rarely that a costermonger apprentices his son to any handicraft
business, although a daughter may sometimes be placed in domestic
service. The child is usually “sent out to sell.”
There is another class of children who are “sent out” as are the
children of the costers, and sometimes with the same cheap and readily
attained articles--oranges and lemons, nuts, chestnuts, onions,
salt (or fresh) herrings, winks, or shrimps, and, more rarely, with
water-cresses or cut-flowers. Sometimes the young vendors offer small
wares--leather boot-laces, coat-studs, steel pens, or such like. These
are often the children, not of street sales-people, but of persons in
a measure connected with a street life, or some open-air pursuit; the
children of cabmen deprived of their licences, or of the hangers-on
of cabmen; of the “supers” (supernumeraries) of the theatres who have
irregular or no employment, or, as they would call it, “engagement,”
with the unhappy consequence of irregular or no “salary:” the children,
again, of street performers, or Ethiopians, or street-musicians, are
“sent out to sell,” as well as those of the poorer class of labourers
connected with the river--ballast-heavers, lumpers, &c.; of (Irish)
bricklayers’ labourers and paviours’ assistants; of market-porters and
dock-labourers; of coal-heavers out of work, and of the helpers at
coal-wharfs, and at the other wharfs; of the Billingsgate “roughs;” and
of the many classes of the labouring, rather than the artisan poor,
whose earnings are uncertain, or insufficient, or have failed them
altogether.
With such classes as these (and more especially with the Irish),
as soon as Pat or Biddy is big enough to carry a basket, and is of
sufficiently ripened intellect to understand the relative value of
coins, from a farthing to a shilling, he or she _must_ do something
“to help,” and that something is generally to sell in the streets.
One poor woman who made a scanty living in working on corn sacks and
bags--her infirmities sometimes preventing her working at all--sent
out three children, together or separately, to sell lucifer-matches
or small wares. “_They like it_,” she said, “_and always want to be
off into the streets_; and when my husband (a labourer) was ill in the
hospital, the few pence they brought in was very useful; but now he’s
well and at work again and we want to send the eldest--she’s nine--to
school; _but they all_ will _go out to sell if they can get hold of
any stock_. I would never have sent them at all if I could have helped
it, but if they made 6_d._ a day among the three of them, perhaps it
saved their lives when things were at the worst.” If a poor woman, as
in this instance, has not been used to street-selling herself, there is
always some neighbour to advise her what to purchase for her children’s
hawking, and instruct her where.
From one little girl I had the following account. She was then selling
boot-laces and offered them most perseveringly. She was turned nine,
she said, and had sold things in the streets for two years past, but
not regularly. The father got his living in the streets by “playing;”
she seemed reluctant to talk about his avocation, but I found that he
was sometimes a street-musician, or street-performer, and sometimes
sung or recited in public houses, and having “seen better days,” had it
appears communicated some feeling of dislike for his present pursuits
to his daughter, so that I discontinued any allusion to the subject.
The mother earned 2_s._ or 2_s._ 6_d._ weekly, in shoe-binding, when
she had employment, which was three weeks out of four, and a son of
thirteen earned what was sufficient to maintain him as an (occasional)
assistant in a wholesale pottery, or rather pot-shop.
“It’s in the winter, sir, when things are far worst with us. Father can
make very little then--but I don’t know what he earns exactly at any
time--and though mother has more work then, there’s fire and candle to
pay for. We were very badly off last winter, and worse, I think, the
winter before. Father sometimes came home and had made nothing, and if
mother had no work in hand we went to bed to save fire and candle, if
it was ever so soon. Father would die afore he would let mother take as
much as a loaf from the parish. I was sent out to sell nuts first: ‘If
it’s only 1_d._ you make,’ mother said, ‘it’s a good piece of bread.’
I didn’t mind being sent out. I knew children that sold things in the
streets. Perhaps I liked it better than staying at home without a fire
and with nothing to do, and if I went out I saw other children busy.
No, I wasn’t a bit frightened when I first started, not a bit. Some
children--but they was such little things--said: ‘O, Liz, I wish I was
you.’ I had twelve ha’porths and sold them all. I don’t know what it
made; 2_d._ most likely. I didn’t crack a single nut myself. I was fond
of them then, but I don’t care for them now. I could do better if I
went into public-houses, but I’m only let go to Mr. Smith’s, because
he knows father, and Mrs. Smith and him recommends me and wouldn’t let
anybody mislest me. Nobody ever offered to. I hear people swear there
sometimes, but it’s not at me. I sell nuts to children in the streets,
and laces to young women. I have sold nuts and oranges to soldiers.
They never say anything rude to me, never. I was once in a great crowd,
and was getting crushed, and there was a very tall soldier close by me,
and he lifted me, basket and all, right up to his shoulder, and carried
me clean out of the crowd. He had stripes on his arm. ‘I shouldn’t like
you to be in such a trade,’ says he, ‘if you was my child.’ He didn’t
say why he wouldn’t like it. Perhaps because it was beginning to rain.
Yes, we are far better off now. Father makes money. I don’t go out in
bad weather in the summer; in the winter, though, I must. I don’t know
what I make. I don’t know what I shall be when I grow up. I can read a
little. I’ve been to church five or six times in my life. I should go
oftener and so would mother, if we had clothes.”
I have no reason to suppose that in this case the father was an
intemperate man, though some of the parents who thus send their
children out _are_ intemperate, and, loving to indulge in the idleness
to which intemperance inclines them, are forced to live on the labour
of their wives and children.
OF A “NEGLECTED” CHILD, A STREET-SELLER.
Of this class perhaps there is less to be said than of others. Drunken
parents allow their children to run about the streets, and often
to shift for themselves. If such parents have any sense of shame,
unextinguished by their continued besottedness, they may feel relieved
by not having their children before their eyes, for the very sight of
them is a reproach, and every rag about such helpless beings must carry
its accusation to a mind not utterly callous.
Among such children there is not, perhaps, that extreme pressure of
wretchedness or of privation that there is among the orphans, or the
utterly deserted. If a “neglected child” have to shift, wholly or
partly, for itself, it is perhaps with the advantage of a shelter; for
even the bare room of the drunkard is in some degree a shelter or roof.
There is not the nightly need of 2_d._ for a bed, or the alternative of
the Adelphi arches for nothing.
I met with one little girl ten or eleven years of age, whom some of the
street-sellers described to me as looking out for a job every now and
then. She was small-featured and dark-eyed, and seemed intelligent.
Her face and hands were brown as if from exposure to the weather, and
a lack of soap; but her dress was not dirty. Her father she described
as a builder, probably a bricklayer’s labourer, but he could work, she
said, at drains or such like. “Mother’s been dead a long time,” the
child continued, “and father brought another woman home and told me to
call her mother, but she soon went away. I works about the streets, but
only when there’s nothing to eat at home. Father gets drunk sometimes,
but I think not so oft as he did, and then he lies in bed. No, sir, not
all day, but he gets up and goes out and gets more drink, and comes
back and goes to bed again. He never uses me badly. When he’s drinking
and has money, he gives me some now and then to get bread and butter
with, or a halfpenny pudding; he never eats anything in the house when
he’s drinking, and he’s a very quiet man. Sometimes he’s laid in bed
two or three days and nights at a time. I goes to school when father
has money. We lives very well then. I’ve kept myself for a whole week.
I mind people’s stalls, if they’re away a bit, and run for them if
they’re wanted; and I go errands. I’ve carried home flower-pots for
a lady. I’ve got a halfpenny on a day, and a penny, and some bread
perhaps, and I’ve lived on that. I should like very well to have a
pitch of my own. _I think I should like that better than place._ But I
have a sister who has a place in the country; she’s far older than I
am, and perhaps I shall get one. But father’s at work now, and he says
he’ll take the pledge. Five or six times I’ve sold oranges, and ingans
as well, and carried the money to Mrs. ----, who gave me all I took
above 4_d._ for myself.”
It could surprise no one if a child so neglected became so habituated
to a street life, that she could not adapt herself to any other. I
heard of other children thus or similarly neglected, but boys far more
frequently than girls, who traded regularly in apples, oranges, &c., on
their own account. Some have become regular street-sellers, and even in
childhood have abandoned their homes and supported themselves.
OF A HIRED COSTER BOY.
One shell-fish seller, who has known street-commerce and street-folk
for many years, thought, although he only hazarded an opinion, that
there was less drinking among the young costers, and less swearing,
than he had known in a preceding generation.
A young coster boy living with his parents, who had a good business,
told me that he would never be nothing but a “general dealer,”
(which among some of these people is the “genteel” designation for a
costermonger,) as long as he lived, unless, indeed, he rose to a coal
shed and a horse and cart; a consummation, perhaps with the addition of
a green-grocery, a fried fish, and a gingerbeer trade, not unfrequently
arrived at by the more prudent costermongers. This boy could neither
read nor write; he had been sent to school, and flogged to school (he
grinned as he told me) by his mother, who said his father wouldn’t have
been “done” so often by fine folks, when he sold “grass” (asparagus)
and such things as cost money, if he could have kept ’count. But his
father only laughed, and said nothing, when the boy “cut away” from
school, which he did so continuously, that the schoolmaster at length
declined the charge of the young coster’s further education. This
stripling, who was about fourteen, seemed very proud of a pair of
good half-boots which his mother had bought him, and which he admired
continually as he glanced at his feet. His parents, from his account,
were indulgent, and when they got farthings in change or in any manner,
kept them for him; and so he got treats, and smart things to wear now
and then. “We expects to do well,” he said, for he used the “we” when
he spoke of his parents’ business, “when it’s peas and new potatoes,
cheap enough to cry. It’s my dodge to cry. I know a man as says, ‘May
month ought to be ashamed on itself, or things ’ud a been herlier.’
Last week I sung out, it was the same man’s dodge, he put me up to
it--‘Here’s your Great Exhibition mackarel.’ People laughed, but it
weren’t no great good. I’ve been to Penny Gaffs, but not this goodish
bit. I likes the singing best as has a stunnin chorus. There’s been a
deal of hard up lately among people as is general dealers. Things is
getting better, I think, and they must. It wouldn’t do at all if they
didn’t. It’s no use your a-asking me about what I thinks of the Queen
or them sort of people, for I knows nothing about them, and never goes
among them.”
The Hired boys, for the service of the costermongers, whether hired
for the day, or more permanently, are very generally of the classes I
have spoken of. When the New Cut, Lambeth, was a great street-market,
every morning, during the height of the vegetable and fruit seasons,
lads used to assemble in Hooper-street, Short-street, York-street, and,
indeed, in all the smaller streets or courts, which run right and left
from the “two Cuts.” When the costermonger started thence, perhaps “by
the first light,” to market, these boys used to run up to his barrow,
“D’you want me, Jack?” or, “Want a boy, Bill?” being their constant
request. It is now the same, in the localities where the costermongers
live, or where they keep their ponies, donkeys, and barrows, and whence
they emerge to market. It is the same at Billingsgate and the other
markets at which these traders make their wholesale purchases. Boys
wait about these marts “to be hired,” or, as they may style it, to “see
if they’re wanted.” When hired, there is seldom any “wage” specified,
the lads seeming always willing to depend upon the liberality of the
costermonger, and often no doubt with an eye to the chances of “bunse.”
A sharp lad thus engaged, who may acquit himself to a costermonger’s
liking, perhaps continues some time in the same man’s employ. I may
observe, that in this gathering, and for such a purpose, there is a
resemblance to the simple proceedings of the old times, when around the
market cross of the nearest town assembled the population who sought
employment, whether in agricultural or household labour. In some parts
of the north of England these gatherings are still held at the two
half-yearly terms of May-day and Martinmas.
A lad of thirteen or fourteen, who did not look very strong, gave me
the following account: “I helps, you see, sir, where I can, for mother
(who sells sheep’s-trotters) depends a deal on her trotters, but
they’re not great bread for an old ’oman, and there’s me and Neddy to
keep. Father’s abroad and a soger. Do I know he is? Mother says so,
sir. I looks out every morning when the costermongers starts for the
markets and wants boys for their barrows. I cried roots last: ‘Here’s
your musks, ha’penny each. Here’s yer all agro’in’ and all a blo’in’.’
I got my grub and 3_d._ I takes the tin home. If there’s a cabbage or
two left, I’ve had it guv to me. _I likes that work better nor school.
I should think so. One sees life._ Well, I don’t know wot one sees
perticler; but it’s wot people calls life. I was a week at school once.
I has a toss up sometimes when I has a odd copper for it. I ’aven’t
’ad any rig’lar work as yet. I shall p’raps when it’s real summer.”
[Said, May 24th.] “This is the Queen’s birthday, is it, sir? Werry
likely, but she’s nothing to me. I can’t read, in coorse not, after
a week’s schooling. Yes, I likes a show. Punch is stunnin’, but they
might make more on the dog. I would if I was a Punch. O, I has tea, and
bread and butter with mother, and gets grub as I jobs besides. I makes
no bargain. If a cove’s scaly, we gets to know him. I hopes to have
a barrer of my own some day, and p’raps a hass. Can I manage a hass?
_In_ coorse, and he don’t want no groomin’. I’d go to Hepsom then; I’ve
never been yet, but I’ve been to Grinnage fairs. I don’t know how I can
get a barrer and a hass, but I may have luck.”
OF AN ORPHAN BOY, A STREET-SELLER.
From one of this class I had the following account. It may be observed
that the lad’s statement contains little of incident, or of novelty,
but this is characteristic of many of his class. With many of them,
it may indeed be said, “one day certifieth another.” It is often the
same tale of labour and of poverty, day after day, so that the mere
uniformity makes a youth half oblivious of the past; the months, or
perhaps years, seem all alike.