|When I come to the task of describing how the poor amuse themselves,
there comes back to me the memory of a certain 'exam.' I submitted
myself to in the happy long ago. I am not quite sure now whether the
result was to be a clerkship in Somerset House, or a certificate of
proficiency which I could frame, and glaze, and hang up in my bedroom;
all I remember is, that I was taken up to London with half a dozen of my
fellow-collegians, and deposited in a large room, at a desk, and that in
front of me was placed a paper with a string of printed questions on
it, which I was requested to answer in writing. The questions were not
particularly flabbergasting then, though I doubt whether I could answer
a single one of them correctly now; but that which carried terror to my
fluttering heart at once was the special note which enjoined me to write
my answers briefly and concisely. There are certain questions which will
not be answered in half a dozen words. Several such there were on my
examination-paper, and such a question, after a lapse of years, again
stands and defies me to mortal combat.
'How do the poor amuse themselves?'
The name of their amusements is legion, and to catalogue them briefly is
beyond my powers.
The principal amusement of the people who have no money is, I take it,
loafing at street corners and gossiping with their neighbours, and the
form of enjoyment by far the most prevalent is getting drunk.
The public-house, after centuries of philanthropic tall-talk and
hundreds of miles of newspaper and magazine writing, tracts and essays,
remains still the Elysian field for the tired toiler. The well-meaning
efforts of the societies which have endeavoured to attract the poor
to hear countesses play the fiddle, and baronets sing comic songs in
temperance halls, have not been crowned with anything like success, for
the simple reason that there is an air of charity and goody-goody about
the scheme which the poor always regard with suspicion. They want
their amusement as a right, not as a favour, and they decline to be
patronized.
The public-house, then, is still the centre of attraction for the
masses during their leisure--the public-house and its giant offspring,
the music-hall. The old Free and Easy, held every Monday or every
Saturday, as the case might be, in the bar-parlour or the big room
upstairs, is dying the death--the halls have killed it. There are a few
still in existence, but the attendance is meagre, and the entertainment
is only kept up by ambitious amateurs of the type who sit back in a
chair and close their eyes to sing a sentimental ballad, and the young
gentlemen who are anxious to exchange the workshop or the counter for
the footlights, and try their hand first at the comic songs of Messrs.
Arthur Roberts and McDermott before the dozen or so of the bar-parlour
frequenters of the Blue Bear who make up the weekly audiences of the
'Free and Easy.'
The old sporting-houses, once the resort of half the blackguardism of
the East-End and a good deal of the West, have gone down before the
steady bowling of the law. The friendly bouts with the gloves between
local 'chickens' and 'novices,' which once were regular Saturday night
amusements, are few and far between, and dog-fights and ratting-matches
have to be searched for by the curious as diligently as though they were
looking for a policeman in a suburban neighbourhood, and the result is
generally the same.
That boxing and ratting, and other forms of the 'fancy,' still exist as
part of the amusement of the lower orders is perfectly true, but they
exist in such a hole-and-corner, out-of-the-way, few-and-far-between
style, that they can no longer be classed as among the amusements of
those who cannot afford to pay high prices of admission to illegal
entertainments.
The noble art of self-defence did undoubtedly linger among the lower
orders as a pastime long after it had passed out of favour with the
Corinthians, and many of the porters of Billingsgate, Covent Garden, and
Smithfield, waterside labourers, costermongers, and street-hawkers are
to this day famous as 'bruisers,' and given to indulge their friends at
odd times with a display of their prowess on the extreme Q.T., in quiet
out-houses and secluded spots where the police are unlikely to mar the
harmony of the proceedings. Such meetings, when they do take place,
always attract a mob of the lowest riff-raff, and if there be, as is
generally the case, a charge for admission, ragged wretches, who look as
though a crust of bread and cheese would be of considerable advantage
to them, manage in some mysterious way to find the requisite amount of
silver, without the production of which the crystal Bar of the Pug's
Paradise moves not, and the sporting Peri is sent disconsolate away.
It has been my good or evil fortune, in my desire to know all sorts
and conditions of men, to witness some of the latest revivals of
glove-fighting; now in drill-sheds, now in top-floors of public-houses,
and once in the upper floor of a workshop, which nearly gave way with
the weight of accumulated blackguardism collected. These, it is only
fair to say, were mostly 'ramps,' or swindles, got up to obtain
the gate-money, and generally interrupted by circumstances arranged
beforehand by those who were going to 'cut up' the plunder.
As a matter of fact, the suburban racecourse has now absorbed most of
the poorer patrons of the ring, and the fighting men--that is, the
class who are of the slum order--find employment in connection with the
betting-lists and booths. The turf is still as highly patronised as
ever in poor districts, in spite of the objection of the police to
ready-money betting, and the racing element enters largely into the
recreations of the residuum.
This, however, is hardly the class of amusement with which we are
concerned, which is more that which engages the attention of the poorer
toilers after work-hours. Saturday night is the great night in these
districts for the play which prevents Jack being dull, and accordingly
it is a Saturday night we select to take a trip once more through the
streets of the unfashionable quarters.
We choose the heart of a thickly-populated district, and emerge from
comparative quiet into a Babel of sound. A sharp turn brings us from a
side-street into one long thoroughfare ablaze with light, and as busy as
a fair. It is a fair, in fact; the pavement and the roadway are crowded
with a seething mass of human beings side by side with the meat-stalls,
the fish-stalls, the fruit and vegetable stalls, and the cheap-finery
stalls; there are shooting-galleries, try-your-strength-machines,
weighing-chairs, raffling-boards, and nothing is lacking but 'three
shies a penny' and a Richardson's show to make a complete picture of an
old-fashioned fair.
All the world and his wife are out to-night, and the wildest
extravagances are being committed in the way of fish for supper to-night
and vegetables for dinner to-morrow. The good housewives, basket on arm,
are giving the ready-witted hawker as much repartee over the price of a
cabbage as would suffice for a modern comedy.
The workman, released from his toil, is smoking his pipe and listening
open-mouthed to the benevolent and leather-lunged gentlemen who are
sacrificing household utensils, boots, ornaments, concertinas, and
cutlery, at prices which would have cajoled the money from the pocket of
a Daniel Dancer. And the golden youth of the neighbourhood, with their
best attire on, all cut after one relentless fashion--the mashers of the
East--they, too, are out in full force, entering into the wild delirium
of reckless pleasure which the scene invites.
The principal amusement in the street, apart from buying knives and
neckties of the Cheap Jack and entering into a raffle for a concertina,
which is the sole business of one densely-crowded stall, seems to be
shooting at a target--three shots a penny--and the prize for hitting
the bull's-eye a real Whitechapel cigar. This seems to be an intensely
popular pastime with the boys, and the one who wins a cigar and turns
away and proudly lights it is at once surrounded by a crowd of lads,
who praise his skill, and plead for a puff at the luxury which his
marksmanship has won for him.
The public-houses are crammed all along the line. This form of
'amusement' seems to be the favourite one with families, for in house
after house there are little groups comprising a gray-headed old lady
with a glass of neat gin, a buxom young woman with a baby and ditto, and
a burly young fellow with a big pewter. On barrels against the wall,
and on forms set around, these groups of young men and young women are
talking more or less loudly, and spending an idle hour in putting the
bulk of the week's wages down their throats. It is a truism to say that
the curse of the lower orders is drink, but no man with eyes can walk
on a Saturday night through the homes of the wage-earning class without
feeling how terrible the evil is, and how earnestly, without being
either a bigot or a fanatic, every man who has a chance should raise his
voice at the criminal neglect which flings these poor people into the
arms of their only caterer--the publican.
Many people object to the music-halls as sinks of iniquity. That
they are unmixed blessings I am not going to contend, but if properly
conducted they do an immense deal of comparative good. Drink is sold
certainly in some of them, but few people get drunk. A very little
liquor goes a long way at a hall, and the people, being amused and
interested in the entertainment, do not want much liquid sustenance. The
entertainments at some of the lower halls might, it is true, be weeded
of certain suggestive songs; but, after all, the best patrons of
indecency are the rich, and the poor give their loudest applause to
skilful dancing and sentimental singing. A good ballad, well sung,
'fetches' the masses as nothing else will, and they can appreciate good
music. If the managers of halls would do away with the coarser items in
their programmes, I should say that this form of entertaining the masses
was absolutely calculated to benefit them. I am quite certain that to
keep young men and women off the streets and away from bars is no
bad service to the cause of morality. In the East of London there are
several places where a big entertainment is given and no liquor is sold
at all. At one of them--the best of its kind in London--there are
two houses nightly. From seven till nine dramas are performed, then
everybody is turned out and the house is refilled with a fresh audience
for a music-hall entertainment--and nearly every evening the theatre is
crammed to suffocation; the admission is 1d. the gallery, 2d. the pit,
and 3d. and 6d. the upper circle and boxes. On the night of our visit
there wasn't room to cram another boy in the place; the gallery and pit
were full of boys and girls of from eight to fifteen, I should say, and
the bulk of the audience in the other parts were quite young people.
The gallery was a sight which, once seen, could never be forgotten.
It was one dense mass of little faces and white bare arms twined and
intertwined like snakes round a tree--tier above tier of boys rising
right away from the front rows until the heads of the last row touched
the ceiling. It was a jam--not a crowd--when one boy coughed it shook
the thousands wedged in and round about; and when one boy got up to go
out he had to crawl and walk over the heads of the others; space below
for a human foot to rest there was absolutely none.
All this vast audience was purely local. Our advent, though our attire
was a special get-up for the occasion, attracted instant attention, and
the cry of 'Hottentots' went round. 'Hottentots' is the playful way in
this district of designating a stranger, that is to say, a stranger come
from the West.
The entertainment was admirable; the artistes were clever, and in only
one case absolutely vulgar; and the choruses were joined in by the
entire assembled multitude.
When it was time for the chorus to leave off and the singer to go on
again, an official in uniform, standing by the orchestra, and commanding
the entire house, raised his hand, and instantly, as if by magic, the
chorus ceased.
Of course there are disturbances, but the remedy is short and effective.
Two young gentlemen in the dress circle fought and used bad language to
each other. Quick as lightning the official was upstairs with a solitary
policeman, the delinquents were seized by the collar, and, before they
could expostulate, flung down a flight of steps and hustled out into the
street with a celerity which could only come of constant practice.
It is fair to say that the youths seemed quite ready for the emergency,
and took their 'chucking out' most skilfully. I should have fallen and
broken my nose had I been flung down a flight of steps like that;
these youths were evidently prepared, and took a flying jump on to
the landing. What they did outside I can't say, but after a chorus of
hooting at the helmeted intruder, the audience resumed their seats, and
the performance went on without any further interruption.
Such places as this--the cheaper halls, gaffs, and singsongs--are the
principal places of resort of the ladies and gentlemen of the slums who
have coppers to spare for amusement. But the streets themselves offer to
many a variety of entertainments for which there is no charge. A horse
down is a great source of quiet enjoyment; a fight attracts hundreds;
and round in one dark spot we came upon an _al fresco_ gambling
establishment, where some hundreds of lads were watching half a dozen
of their companions playing some game at cards on a rough deal stand,
presided over by a villainous-looking Jew. What the game was we could
not stay long enough to study, for our approach was signalled by scouts,
and as we came close to the crowd it dispersed as if by magic, and
the gentleman with the board produced from his pocket a quantity of
cough-drops, and flung them upon the board, bawling aloud, 'Six a penny,
six a penny!' in a manner intended to convince us that this was his
occupation. Possibly we were mistaken for plain clothes policemen; at
any rate, we were followed and watched for fully a hundred yards.
The mock-litany scoundrel had a big crowd in one street, and an infant
phenomenon--a boy who played all the popular airs down the spout of
a coffee-pot--was largely patronised; but the biggest audience of the
evening surrounded a gentleman who, mounted on a cart, was at once
carrying on the business of an ointment vendor and the profession of an
improvisatore. His ointment was only a penny a box, but its intrinsic
merits were priceless. It was warranted to draw glass or iron or steel
from any part of the human body with one application; also to cure weak
eyes, bad legs, and sores of all descriptions.
The gentleman indulged in anecdotes full of ancient and modern history,
all proving the value of his ointment, and every now and then he dropped
into rhyme:=
```'If you have a bad leg, and physicians have given you up,
```Or you have been to the doctors, who've half poisoned you with nasty
`````stuff,
```Perhaps you fancy that it's no good--that your leg can't be cured;
```But Moore's ointment will do, of that rest assured.
```Try it; if it don't succeed, you're only a penny the worse.
```If you don't try it, you may think of it too late, when you're in
your `````funeral hearse.
```It's cured hundreds, and thousands will testify
```It is good for even the tenderest baby's eye.
```Why pay a doctor, or in hospital lie for months,
```When this ointment will cure you by only applying it once?'=
Then the gentleman broke off into prose, and related how Napoleon, in
the Island of 'Helber,' had bought a box of this very ointment of the
seller's grandfather, who was under the British Government then, and had
declared, if ever he got free, every soldier in the French army should
have a box in his knapsack, and also gave certain humorous reminiscences
of his own struggles to get the English people to believe in the
specific. His eloquence was not thrown away, for he did a roaring trade,
and at one time a perfect forest of hands was held up to secure the
famous ointment.
The crowd thins as closing-time comes, and the hawkers pack up what
is left of their stock, strike their naphtha-lamps, and wheel off the
ground. What they have left they will sell in the early market on Sunday
morning.