This man lived in a small cottage at the back of Bethnal Green-road,
and the little railed space in front of the humble dwelling was
littered with sundry evidences of the inmate’s ingenuity. Here was
a mechanical carriage the crippled father had made to drive himself
along, and a large thaumatrope, or disc of painted figures, that seemed
to move while revolving rapidly before the eye; and this, I afterwards
learnt, the ingenious cripple had made, as a street exhibition, for a
poor man, whom he was anxious to put in the way of doing something for
himself.
The principal apartment in the little two-roomed house was blocked up
with carpenters’ benches, and long planks were resting against the
wall, while the walls themselves were partly covered with tools and
patterns of the craft pursued; and in one corner there were heaps of
the penny mouse-traps and penny money-boxes, that formed the main
articles of manufacture.
In a little room adjoining this, and about the size of a hen-house, I
found the cripple himself in bed, but still sitting up with a small
desk-like bench before him, and engaged in the act of cutting and
arranging the wires for the little wooden traps in which he dealt. And
as I sat by his bedside he told me the following story:--
“I am,” he said, “a white-wood toy-maker, in a small way; that is, I
make a variety of cheap articles,--nothing beyond a penny,--in sawed
and planed pine-wood. I manufacture penny and halfpenny money-boxes,
penny and halfpenny toy bellows, penny carts, penny garden-rollers,
penny and halfpenny dolls’ tables and washhand-stands, chiefly for
baby-houses; penny dressers, with drawers, for the same purpose; penny
wheelbarrows and bedsteads; penny crossbows; and the mouse-trap that I
am about now. I make all the things I have named for warehouses--for
what are called the cheap Birmingham and Sheffield houses. I am
paid the same price for whatever I make, with the exception of the
mouse-trap. For the principal part of the penny articles that I make
I get 7_s._ for twelve dozen, that is 7_d._ a-dozen; and for the
halfpenny articles I get 3_s._ 6_d._, at the rate of 3-1/2_d._ a-dozen.
For the penny mouse-traps, however, I am paid only 1_l._ for thirty-six
dozen, and that’s a shilling less than I get for the same quantity of
the other shilling articles; whilst for the penny boxes I’m paid only
at the rate of a halfpenny each.
“You will please to look at that, sir,” he said, handing me his
account-book with one of his employers for the last year; “you will
see there that what I am saying is perfectly correct, for there is the
price put to every article; and it is but right that you should have
proof that what I’m a-telling you is the truth. I took of one master,
for penny mouse-traps alone, you perceive, 36_l._ 10_s._ from January
to December, 1849; but that is not all gain, you’ll understand. Out of
that I have to pay above one half for material. I think, altogether,
my receipts of the different masters I worked for last year came to
about 120_l._--I can’t lay my hands on the bills just now.--Yes,
it’s about 120_l._ I know, for our income,--that is, my clear gains
is about 1_l._ to 1_l._ 5_s._ every week. So, calculating more than
one half what I take to go for the expense for material, that will
bring it to just about to what I state. To earn the 25_s._ a-week,
you’ll understand, there are four of us engaged,--myself, my wife,
my daughter, and son. My daughter is eighteen, and my son eleven:
that is my boy, sir; he’s reading the _Family Friend_ just now. It’s
a little work I take in for my girl, for her future benefit. My girl
is as fond of reading as I am, and always was. My boy goes to school
every evening, and twice on a Sunday. I am willing that they should
find as much pleasure from reading as I have in my illness. I found
books often lull my pain. Yes, I have, indeed, for many hours. For nine
months I couldn’t handle a tool; and my only comfort was the love of
my family, and my books. I can’t afford them now, for I have no wish
to incur any extraneous expense, while the weight of the labour lies
on my family more than it does on myself. Over and over again, when I
have been in acute pain with my thigh, a scientific book, or a work
on history, or a volume of travels, would carry my thoughts far away,
and I should be happy in all my misery--hardly conscious that I had
a trouble, a care, or a pang to vex me. I always had love of solid
works. For an hour’s light reading, I have often turned to a work of
imagination, such as Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, and Shakspeare’s Plays;
but I prefer science to poetry. I think every working man ought to be
acquainted with general science. If he is a mechanic--let his station
be ever so simple,--he will be sure to find the benefit of it. It
gives a man a greater insight into the world and creation, and it makes
his labour a pleasure and a pride to him, when he can work with his
head as well as his hands. I think I have made, altogether, about one
hundred and six gross of mouse-traps for the master whose account I
have given you, and as many more for other employers, in the course
of the last year. I calculate that I made more than thirty thousand
mouse-traps from January to December, 1849. There are three or four
other people in London making penny mouse-traps, besides myself. I
reckon they may make among them near upon half as many as I do; and
that would give about forty-five or fifty thousand penny mouse-traps
made in London in the course of the year. I myself brought out the
penny mouse-trap in its improved shape, and with the improved lever
spring. I have no calculations as to the number of mice in the country,
or how soon we should have caught them if we go on at this rate; but
I think my traps have to do with that. They are bought more for toys
than for use, though they are good for mice as well as children; and
though we have so many dozen mouse-traps about the house, I can assure
you we are more troubled with mice here than most people. The four
of us here can make twenty-four dozen traps in the day, but that is
all we can get through comfortable. For eighteen dozen we get about
10_s._ at the warehouse, and out of that I reckon our clear gains are
near upon 4_s._, or a little less than 1_s._ a head. Take one with
the other, we can earn about a penny an hour; and if it wasn’t for me
having been a tailor originally, and applying some of my old tools to
the business, we shouldn’t get on so quick as we do. With my shears
I can cut twenty-four wires at a time, and with my thimble I thread
the wires through the holes in the sides. I make the springs, cut the
wires, and put them in the traps. My daughter planes the wood and
gauges out the sides and bottom, bores the wire-holes and makes the
door as well. My wife nails the frames ready for wiring, and my son
fixes the wires in their places when I have entered them; then the
wife springs them, after which the daughter puts in the doors and so
completes them. I can’t form an idea as to how many penny and halfpenny
money-boxes I made last year. I might have made, altogether, eight
thousand, or five thousand halfpenny and three thousand penny ones.
I was originally brought up to the tailoring business, but my master
failed, and my sight kept growing weaker every year; so, as I found a
good deal of trouble in getting employment at my own trade, I thought
I would take to the bird-cage making--I had been doing a little at
it before, as a pastime. I was fond of birds, and fonder still of
mechanics, so I was always practising my hands at some craft or other
in my over-time. I used to make dissected maps and puzzles, and so,
when standing for employment, I managed to get through the slack of
the year. I think it is solely due to my taste for mechanics and my
love of reading scientific books that I am able to live so comfortably
as I do in my affliction. After I took to bird-cage making, I found
the employment at it so casual that I could not support my family at
it. This led my mind to toy making, for I found that cheap toys were
articles of more general sale. Then I got my children and my wife to
help me, and we managed to get along somehow, for you see they were
learning the business, and I myself was not in much of a condition to
teach them, being almost as inexperienced at the trade as they were;
and, besides that, we were continually changing the description of toy
that we manufactured, so we had no time to perfect ourselves. One day
we were all at work at garden-rollers; the next, perhaps, we should be
upon little carts; then, may-be, we should have to go to dolls’ tables
or wheelbarrows: so that, with the continual changing the description
of toy that we manufactured from one thing to another, we had a great
difficulty in getting practised in anything. While we were all learning
you may imagine that, not being so quick then as we are now, we found
a great difficulty in making a living at the penny-toy business: often
we had merely dry bread for breakfast, tea, and supper, but we ate it
with a light heart, for I knew repining wouldn’t mend it, and I always
taught myself and those about me to bear our trials with fortitude.
At last I got to work regularly at the mouse-traps, and having less
changing we learnt to turn them out of hand quicker, and to make more
money at the business: that was about four years ago, and then I was
laid up with a strumous abscess in the thigh. This caused necrosis, or
decay of the thigh-bone, to take place, and it was necessary that I
should be confined to my bed until such time as a new thigh-bone was
formed, and the old decayed one had sloughed away. Before I lay up I
stood at the bench until I was ready to drop, for I had no one who
could plane the boards for me; and what could I do? If I didn’t keep
up, I thought we should all starve. The pain was dreadful, and the
anxiety of mind I suffered for my wife and children made it a thousand
times worse. I couldn’t bear the idea of going to the workhouse, and
I kept on my feet until I couldn’t stand no longer. My daughter was
only sixteen then, and I saw no means of escape. It was at that time
my office to prepare the boards for my family, and without that they
could do nothing. Well, sir, I saw utter ruin and starvation before us.
The doctor told me it would take four years before a new bone would be
formed, and that I must lay up all the while. What was to become of us
all in the mean time I could not tell. Then it was that my daughter,
seeing the pain I suffered both in body and mind, came to me, and told
me not to grieve, for that she would do all the heavy work for me, and
plane up the boards and cut out the work as I had done; but I thought
it impossible for her to get through such hard work, even for my sake.
I knew she could do almost anything that she set her mind to, but I
little dreamt that she would be able to compass that. However, with
the instinct of her affection--I can’t call it anything else (for she
learnt at once what it had taken me months to acquire), she planed and
shaped the boards as well as I myself could have done after years of
practice. The first board she did was as cleanly done as she can do
it now, and when you think of the difficulties she had to overcome,
what a mere child she was, and that she had never handled a plane
before, how she had the grain of the wood to find out, to learn the
right handling of her tools, and a many little niceties of touch that
workmen only can understand, it does seem to me as if some superior
Power had inspired her to aid me. I have often heard of birds building
their nests of the most beautiful structure, without ever having seen
one built before, and my daughter’s handiwork seemed to me exactly like
that. It was a thing not learnt by practice, but done in an instant,
without teaching or experience of any kind. She is the best creature
I ever knew or ever heard tell of on earth--at least, so she has been
to me all her life; aye, without a single exception. If it hadn’t been
for her devotion I must have gone to the workhouse, and perhaps never
been able to have got away from it, and had my children brought up as
paupers. Where she got the strength to do it is as much a mystery to me
as how she did it. Though she was but a mere child, so to speak, she
did the work of a grown man, and I assure you the labour of working at
the bench all day is heavy, even for the strongest workman, and my girl
is not over-strong now; indeed she was always delicate from a baby:
nevertheless she went through the labour, and would stand to the bench
the whole of the day, and with such cheerful good humour too that I
cannot but see the hand of the Almighty in it all. I never knew her
to complain of fatigue, or ever go to her work without a smile on her
face. Her only anxiety was to get done, and to afford me every comfort
in my affliction that she could. For three years and two months now
have I been confined to my bed, and for two years and a half of that
time I have not left it, even to breathe the fresh open air. Almost all
that period I have been suffering intense and continued pain from the
formation of abscesses in my thigh previous to the sloughing away of
the decayed bones. I have taken out of the sores at least two hundred
pieces, some as small as needles and some not less than an inch and
a half long, which required to be pulled out with tweezers from the
wound. Often, when I was getting a bit better and able to go about in
the cart you see there outside, with the gravel in it--(I made that on
this bed here, so as to be able to move about on it; the two front
wheels I made myself, and the two back were old ones that I repaired
here. I made the whole of the body, and my daughter planed up the
boards for me)--well, often when I could just get along in that, have
I gone about with a large piece of decayed bone projecting through my
thigh, in hopes that the jolting would force it through the wound. The
pain before the bone came away was often intense, especially when it
had to work its way through the thick of the muscle. Night after night
have I laid awake here. I didn’t wish, of course, to distress the minds
of my family any more than I could help. It would not have been fair;
so I bore all with patience, and since I have been here I have got
through a great deal of work in my little way. In bed, as I sit with my
little bench, I do my share of eight dozen of these penny traps a-day.
Last August I made a ‘thaumatrope’ for a young man that I had known
since a lad of twelve years of age; he got off work and couldn’t find
anything to turn his hand to, so I advised him to get up an exhibition:
anything was better than starving. He had a wife and two children, and
I can’t bear to see any one want, let alone the young ones; and so,
cripple as I was, I set to work here in my bed and made him a large
set of magic circles. I painted all the figures myself in this place,
though I had never handled a brush before, and that has kept him in
bread up to this time. I did it to cause him to exert himself, but now
he has got a situation, and is doing middling to what he has been:
there’s one thing though, a little money, with care, will go farther
than a great deal without it. I shall never be able to get about as I
used, for you see the knee is set stiff and the thigh-bone is arched
with the hip, so that the one leg is three inches shorter than the
other. The bone broke spontaneously, like a bit of rotten wood, the
other day, while I was rubbing my hand down my thigh, and in growing
together again it got out of straight. I am just able to stir about now
with a crutch and stick. I can sometimes treat myself to a walk about
the house and yard, but that is not often, and last Saturday night I
_did_ make a struggle to get out in the Bethnal Green-road, and there,
as I was coming along, my stick tripped against a stone and I fell. If
it hadn’t been for my crutch throwing me forward, I might have fallen
on my new bone and broken it again. But as it was, the crutch threw me
forward and saved me. My doctor tells me my new bone would bear a blow,
but I shouldn’t like to try after all I have gone through. I shall
not be about again till I get my carriage done, and that I intend to
construct so as to drive it with one hand, by means of a new ratchet
lever motion.”
The daughter of the toy-maker, with whom I spoke afterwards, and who
was rather “good-looking,” in the literal sense of the word, than
beautiful, said that she could not describe how it was that she had
learnt to plane and gauge the boards. It seemed to come to her all of
a sudden--quite natural-like, she told me; though, she added, it was
most likely her affection for her poor father that made her take to it
so quick. “I felt it deeply” she said, “to see him take to his bed,
and knew that I alone could save him from the workhouse. No! I never
felt tired over the work,” she continued, in answer to my questions,
“because I know that it is to make him comfortable.”
I should add, that I was first taken to this man by the surgeon who
attended him during his long suffering, and that gentleman not only
fully corroborated all I heard from his ingenious and heroic patient,
but spoke in the highest possible terms of both father and daughter.