“I always go out with a Guy Fawkes every year. I’m seventeen years
old, and I’ve been out with a guy ever since I can remember, except
last year; I didn’t then, because I was in Middlesex Hospital with
an abscess, brought on by the rheumatic fever. I was in the hospital
a month. My father was an undertaker; he’s been dead four months:
mother carries on the trade. He didn’t like my going out with guys,
but I always would. He didn’t like it at all, he used to say it was a
disgrace. Mother didn’t much fancy my doing it this year. When I was
a very little un, I was carried about for a guy. I couldn’t a been
more than seven years old when I first begun. They put paper-hangings
round my legs--they got it from Baldwin’s, in the Tottenham Court-road;
sometimes they bought, and sometimes got it give ’em; but they give a
rare lot for a penny or twopence. After that they put me on a apron
made of the same sort of paper--showy, you know--then they put a lot of
tinsel bows, and at the corners they cut a sort of tail like there is
to farriers’ aprons, and it look stunnin’; then they put on my chest
a tinsel heart and rosettes; they was green and red, because it shows
off. All up my arms I had bows and things to make a show-off. Then I
put on a black mask with a little red on the cheek, to make me look
like a devil: it had horns, too. Always pick out a devil’s mask with
horns: it looks fine, and frightens the people a’most. The boy that
dressed me was a very clever chap, and made a guy to rights. Why, he
made me a little guy about a foot high, to carry in my lap--it was
piecings of quilting like, a sort of patch-work all sewn together,--and
then he filled it with saw-dust, and made a head of shavings. He picked
the shavings small, and then sewed ’em up in a little bag; and then he
painted a face, and it looked wery well; and he made it a little tinsel
bob-tail coat, and a tinsel cap with two feathers on the top. It was
made to sit in a chair; and there was a piece of string tied to each
of the legs and the arms, and a string come behind; and I used to pull
it, and the legs and arms jumped up. I was put in a chair, and two old
broom-handles was put through the rails, and then a boy got in front,
and another behind, and carried me off round Holborn way in the streets
and squares. Every now and then they put me down before a window; then
one of ’em used to say the speech, and I used all the time to keep
pulling the string of my little guy, and it amused the children at the
winders. After they’d said the speech we all shouted hurrah! and then
some of them went and knocked at the door and asked ‘Please to remember
the guy;’ and the little children brought us ha’pence and pence; and
sometimes the ladies and gentlemen chucked us some money out of the
winder. At last they carried me into Russell-square. They put me down
before a gentleman’s house and begun saying the speech: while they was
saying it, up comes a lot o’ boys with sticks in their hands. One of
our chaps knowed what they was after, and took the little guy out of my
hand, and went on saying the speech. I kept all on sitting still. After
a bit one of these ’ere boys says, ‘Oh, it’s a dead guy; let’s have a
lark with it!’ and then one of ’em gives me a punch in the eye with his
fist, and then snatched the mask off my face, and when he’d pulled it
off he says, ‘Oh, Bill, it’s a live un!’ We was afraid we should get
the worst of it, so we run away round the square. The biggest one of
our lot carried the chair. After we’d run a little way they caught us
again, and says, ‘Now then, give us all your money;’ with that, some
ladies and gentlemen that see it all came up to ’em and says, ‘If you
don’t go we’ll lock you up;’ and so they let us go away. And so we went
to another place where they sold masks; and we bought another. Then
they asked me to be guy again, but I wouldn’t, for I’d got a black-eye
through it already. So they got another to finish out the day. When
we got home at night we shared 2_s._ a-piece. There was five of us
altogether; but I think they chisselled me. I know they got a deal more
than that, for they’d had a good many sixpences and shillings. People
usen’t to think much of a shilling that time a-day, because there
wasn’t any but little guys about then; but I don’t know but what the
people now encourage little guys most, because they say that the chaps
with the big ones ought to go to work.
“Next year I was out with a stuffed guy. They wanted me to be guy
again, because I wasn’t frightened easy, and I was lightish; but I
told ’em ‘No, I’ve had enough of being guy; I don’t be guy any more:
besides, I had such fine money for getting a whack in the eye!’ We
got on pretty well that year; but it gets wus and wus every year. We
got hardly anything this year; and next I don’t suppose we shall get
anything at all. These chaps that go about pitchin’ into guys we call
‘guy smashers;’ but they don’t do it only for the lark of smashing the
guys: they do it for the purpose of taking the boys’ money away, and
sometimes the clothes. If one of ’em has a hole in his boots, and he
sees a guy with a good pair on, he pretty soon pulls ’em of the guy and
hooks it off with ’em.
“After I’d been out with guys for three or four years, I got big enough
to go to work, and I used to go along with my brother and help him at
a coal-shed, carrying out coals. I was there ten months, and then one
night--a bitter cold night, it was freezing hard--we had a naphtha lamp
to light in the shop; and as me and my brother was doing it, either a
piece of the match dropped in or else he poured it over, I can’t say
which, but all at once it exploded and blowed me across the road and
knocked him in the shop all a-fire; and I was all a-fire, too--see how
it’s burnt my face and the hand I held the lucifer in. A woman run out
of the next shop with some wet sacks, and throw’d ’em upon me, but it
flared up higher then: water don’t put it out, unless it’s a mass of
water like a engine. Then a milkman run up and pulled off his cape
and throwed it over me, and that put it out; then he set me up, and I
run home, though I don’t know how I got there, and for two days after
I didn’t know anybody. Another man ran into the shop and pulled out
my brother, and we was both taken to the University Hospital. Two or
three people touched me, and the skin came off on their hands, and at
nine o’clock the next morning my brother died. When they took me to the
hospital they had no bed for me, and so they sent me home again, and
I was seven months before I got well. But I’ve never been to say well
since, and I shall never be fit for hard work any more.
“The next year I went out with a guy again, and I got on pretty well;
and so I’ve done every year since, except last. I’ve had several little
places since I got burnt, but they haven’t lasted long.
“This year I made a stunning guy. First of all I got a pair of my own
breeches--black uns--and stuffed ’em full of shavings. I tied the
bottoms with a bit of string. Then I got a black coat--that belonged
to another boy--and sewed it all round to the trousers; then we filled
that with shavings, and give him a good corporation. Then we got a
block, sich as the milliners have, and shoved that right in the neck
of the coat, and then we shoved some more shavings all round, to
make it stick in tight; and when that was done it looked just like
a dead man. I know something about dead men, because my father was
always in that line. Then we got some horsehair and some glue, and
plastered the head all round with glue, and stuck the horse-hair on to
imitate the hair of a man; then we put the mask on: it was a twopenny
one--they’re a great deal cheaper than they used to be, you can get a
very good one now for a penny--it had a great big nose, and it had two
red horns, black eyebrows, and red cheeks. I like devils, they’re so
ugly. I bought a good-looking un two or three years ago, and we didn’t
get hardly anything, the people said, ‘Ah! it’s too good-looking; it
don’t frighten us at all.’ Well, then, after we put on his mask we got
two gloves, one was a woollen un, and the other a kid un, and stuffed
them full of shavings, and tied ’em down to the chair. We didn’t have
no lantern, ’cos it keeps on falling out of his hands. After that we
put on an old pair of lace-up boots. We tied ’em on to the legs of
the breeches. The feet mostly twistes round, but we stopped that; we
shoved a stick up the leg of his breeches, and the other end into the
boot, and tied it, and then it couldn’t twist round very easy. After
that we put a paper hanging-cap on his head; it was silk-velvet kind
of paper, and decorated all over with tinsel bows. His coat we pasted
all over with blue and green tinsel bows and pictures. They was painted
theatrical characters, what we buy at the shop a ha’penny a sheet
plain, and penny a sheet coloured: we bought ’em plain, and coloured
them ourselves. A-top of his hat we put a hornament. We got some red
paper, and cut it into narrow strips, and curled it with the blade of
the scissors, and stuck it on like a feather. We made him a fine apron
of hanging-paper, and cut that in slips up to his knees, and curled
it with the scissors, the same as his feather, and decorated it with
stars, and bows, and things, made out of paper, all manner of colours,
and pieces of tinsel. After we’d finished the guy we made ourselves
cock’d hats, all alike, and then we tied him in a chair, and wrote
on his breast, ‘_Villanous Guy_.’ Then we put two broomsticks under
the chair and carried him out. There was four of us, and the two that
wasn’t carrying, they had a large bough of a tree each, with a knob at
the top to protect the guy. We started off at once, and got into the
squares, and put him in front of the gentlemen’s houses, and said this
speech:--
‘Pray, gentlefolks, pray
Remember this day,
At which kind notice we bring
This figure of sly,
Old, villanous Guy,
He wanted to murder the king.
With powder in store,
He bitterly swore
By him in the vaults to compare,
By him and his crew,
And parliament, too,
Should all be blow’d up in the air.
So please to remember
The fifth of November,
The gunpowder treason and plot,
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
So hollo, boys! hollo, boys!
Shout out the day!
Hollo, boys! hollo, boys!
Hollo, Hurrah!’
“After we’d finished our speech in one of the squares, and hollowed
Hurrah! the beadle come out, and said he’d give us the stick about our
backs, and the guy too, if we didn’t go away. So we went away, and got
into Russell-square and Bedford-square; but there was such a lot of
small guys out, that we did worse than ever we’d done before. When we
was in Southampton-street, Holborn, I finished the speech with ‘Down
with the Pope, and God save the Queen;’ so four shoe-black boys come
up, and says, says they, ‘What do you say, Down with the Pope and God
save the Queen for?’ And I says, ‘I didn’t mean no harm of it.’ With
that they makes use of some bad language, and told me they’d smash my
head and the guy’s too; and they was going to do it, when up comes a
boy that I knew, and I says to him, ‘They’re going to knock me about;’
so he says, ‘No they won’t;’ so then the boys made their reply, and
said they would. So I told ’em they was very fast about fighting, I’d
fight one of them; so with that they all got ready to pitch upon me:
but when they see this other boy stuck to me, they went off, and never
struck a blow. When we got home I opened the money-box and shared the
money; one had 5_d._, and two had 4-1/2_d._ each, and I had 7_d._
because I said the speech. At night we pulled him all to pieces, and
burnt his stuffing, and let off some squibs and crackers. I always used
to spend the money I got guying on myself. I used to buy sometimes
fowls, because I could sell the eggs. There is some boys that take out
guys as do it for the sake of getting a bit of bread and butter, but
not many as I knows of.
“It don’t cost much to make a guy. The clothes we never burns--they’re
generally too good: they’re our own clothes, what we wears at other
times; and when people burn a guy they always pull off any of the
things that’s of use fust; but mostly the guy gets pulled all to
pieces, and only the shavings gets burnt.”