“My father was a barber--a three-ha’penny one--and doing a good
business, in Southwark. I used to assist him, lathering up the chins
and shaving ’em--torturing, I called it. I was a very good light hand.
You see, you tell a good shaver by the way he holds the razor, and the
play from the wrist. All our customers were tradesmen and workmen,
but father would never shave either coalheavers or fishermen, because
they always threw down a penny, and said there was plenty of penny
barbers, and they wouldn’t give no more. The old man always stuck up
for his price to the day of his death. There was a person set up close
to him for a penny, and that injured us awful. I was educated at St.
George’s National and Parochial School, and I was a national lad,
and wore my own clothes; but the parochials wore the uniform of blue
bob-tailed coats, and a badge on the left side. When they wanted to
make an appearance in the gallery of the church on charity-sermon days,
they used to make all the nationals dress like the parochials, so as
to swell the numbers up. I was too fond of entertainments to stick to
learning, and I used to step it. Kennington common was my principal
place. I used, too, to go to the outside of the Queen’s-bench and pick
up the racket-balls as they was chucked over, and then sell them for
three-ha’pence each. I got promoted from the outside to the inside;
for, from being always about, they took me at threepence a-day, and
gave me a bag of whitening to whiten the racket-balls. When I used to
hop the wag from school I went there, which was three times a-week,
which was the reg’lar racket-days. I used to spend my threepence in
damaged fruit--have a pen’orth of damaged grapes or plums--or have a
ha’porth of wafers from the confectioner’s. Ah, I’ve eat thousands and
thousands of ha’porths. It’s a kind of a paste, but they stick like
wafers--my father’s stuck a letter many a time with ’em. They goes at
the bottom of the russetfees cake--ah, ratafees is the word.
“I got so unruly, and didn’t attend to school, so I was turned out,
and then I went to help father and assist upon the customers. I was
confined so in the shop, that I only stopped there three months, and
then I run away. Then I had no home to go to, but I found a empty cart,
situated in Red-cross-street, near the Borough-market, and there I
slept for five nights. Then Greenwich fair came on. I went round the
fair, and got assisting a artist as was a likeness-cutter, and had
a booth, making black profiles. I assisted this man in building his
booth, and he took a great fancy to me, and kept me as one of his own.
He was a shoemaker as well, and did that when fair was over. I used to
fetch his bristles and leather, and nuss the child. He lived near the
Kent-road; and one day as I was going out for the leather, I fell upon
mother, and she solaced me, and took me home; and then she rigged me
out, and kept me, till I run away again; and that was when Greenwich
fair came on again, for I wanted to go back then. At the fair I got to
be doorsman and grease-pot boy inside a exhibition, to let the people
out and keep the lamps. I got a shilling a-day for my attendance during
fair time, and I travelled with them parties for five months. That
was Peterson’s, the travelling comedian, or what we call a ‘mumming
concern.’ When we got to Bexley, I thought I should like to see a piece
called ‘Tricks and Trials,’ then being performed at the Surrey Theatre,
so I cut away and come up to London again. There I got employment at a
japanner, boiling up the stuff. I made a little bit of an appearance,
and then I went home. I had learnt three or four comic songs, and I
used to go singing at consart-rooms. I was a reg’lar professional. I
went a busking at the free consart-rooms, and then go round with the
cap. I principally sing ‘The Four-and-nine,’ or ‘The Dark Arches,’ or
‘The Ship’s Carpenter,’ and ‘The Goose Club.’
“It was at one of these free consart-rooms that I first saw a chap
fire-eating. You see, at a free consart-room the professionals ain’t
paid, no more do the audience to come in, but the performers are
allowed to go round with a cap for their remuneration. They are the
same as the cock-and-hen clubs. This fire-eater was of the name of
West, and I know’d him afore, and he used to ask me to prepare the
things for him. His performance was, he had a link a-light in his
hand, and he used to take pieces off with a fork and eat it. Then he
would get a plate with some sulphur, light it, place it under his
nose, and inhale the fumes that rose from it; and then he used to eat
it with a fork whilst a-light. After that he’d get a small portion of
gunpowder, put it in the palm of his hand, and get a fusee to answer
for a quick-match, to explode the powder, and that concluded the
performance--only three tricks. I was stunned the first time I see him
do it; but when I come to prepare the things for him, I got enlightened
into the business. When his back was turned, I used to sniff at the
sulphur on the sly. I found it rather hard, for the fumes used to get
up your head, and reg’lar confuse you, and lose your memory. I kept on
the singing at consarts, but I practised the fire-eating at home. I
tried it for the matter of two months, before I found the art of it.
It used to make me very thick in my voice; and if I began it before
breakfast it used to make you feel ill: but I generally began it after
meals. I tried the link and sulphur till I got perfect in these two.
It blistered my mouth swallowing the fire, but I never burnt myself
seriously at it.
“After I learnt those, I got travelling again with a man that swallowed
a poker, of the name of Yates. One of his tricks was with tow. He’d get
some, and then get a fryingpan, and he’d put the tow in the fire-pan,
and he’d get some ground rosin and brimstone together and put them on
top of the tow in the pan. Then, when he’d set light to it, he used to
bring it on the outside of the show and eat it with a knife and fork,
while I held the pan. I learnt how to do the trick; this was when he
had done with it, and I’d take it away. Then I used to eat the portion
that was left in the pan, till I became the master of that feat.
“When I left Yates I practised again at home until I was perfect, and
then I went about doing the performance myself. The first place that I
attempted was at the Fox and Cock, Gray’s-inn-lane, and I was engaged
there at three shillings a-night, and with collections of what people
used to throw to me I’d come away with about seven shillings and
sixpence. I was very successful indeed, and I stopped there for about
seven months, doing the fire-business; and I got another job at the
same place, for one of the potmen turned dishonest, and the master gave
me eight shillings a-week to do his work as well. I have continued ever
since going to different concert-rooms, and giving my performances.
My general demand for a night’s engagement is four shillings and six
pen’orth of refreshment. When I perform I usually have a decanter of
ale and two glasses upon the table, and after every trick I sit down
whilst an overture is being done and wash my mouth out, for it gets
very hot. You’re obliged to pause a little, for after tasting one
thing, if the palate doesn’t recover, you can’t tell when the smoke is
coming.
“I wore a regular dress, a kind of scale-armour costume, with a red
lion on the breast. I do up my moustache with cork, and rouge a bit.
My tights is brown, with black enamel jack-boots. On my head I wears
a king’s coronet and a ringlet wig, bracelets on my wrists, and a red
twill petticoat under the armour dress, where it opens on the limps.
“For my performances I begin with eating the lighted link, an ordinary
one as purchased at oil-shops. There’s no trick in it, only confidence.
It won’t burn you in the inside, but if the pitch falls on the outside,
of course it will hurt you. If you hold your breath the moment the
lighted piece is put in your mouth, the flame goes out on the instant.
Then we squench the flame with spittle. As we takes a bit of link in
the mouth, we tucks it on one side of the cheek, as a monkey do with
nuts in his pouch. After I have eaten sufficient fire I take hold of
the link, and extinguish the lot by putting the burning end in my
mouth. Sometimes, when I makes a slip, and don’t put it in careful, it
makes your moustache fiz up. I must also mind how I opens my mouth,
’cos the tar sticks to the lip wherever it touches, and pains sadly.
This sore on my hand is caused by the melted pitch dropping on my
fingers, and the sores is liable to be bad for a week or eight days.
I don’t spit out my bits of link; I always swallow them. I never did
spit ’em out, for they are very wholesome, and keeps you from having
any sickness. Whilst I’m getting the next trick ready I chews them up
and eats them. It tastes rather roughish, but not nasty when you’re
accustomed to it. It’s only like having a mouthful of dust, and very
wholesome.
“My next trick is with a piece of tow with a piece of tape rolled up
in the interior. I begin to eat a portion of this tow--plain, not
a-light--till I find a fitting opportunity to place the tape in the
mouth. Then I pause for a time, and in the meantime I’m doing a little
pantomime business--just like love business, serious--till I get the
end of this tape between my teeth, and then I draws it out, supposed
to be manufactured in the pit of the stomach. After that--which always
goes immensely--I eat some more tow, and inside this tow there is what
I call the fire-ball--that is, a lighted fusee bound round with tow
and placed in the centre of the tow I’m eating--which I introduce at a
fitting opportunity. Then I blows out with my breath, and that sends
out smoke and fire. That there is a very hard trick, for it’s according
how this here fire-ball bustes. Sometimes it bustes on the side, and
then it burns all the inside of the mouth, and the next morning you can
take out pretty well the inside of your mouth with your finger; but if
it bustes near the teeth, then it’s all right, for there’s vent for it.
I also makes the smoke and flame--that is, sparks--come down my nose,
the same as coming out of a blacksmith’s chimney. It makes the eyes
water, and there’s a tingling; but it don’t burn or make you giddy.
“My next trick is with the brimstone. I have a plate of lighted
sulphur, and first inhale the fumes, and then devour it with a fork
and swallow it. As a costermonger said when he saw me do it, ‘I say,
old boy, your game ain’t all brandy.’ There’s a kind of a acid, nasty,
sour taste in this feat, and at first it used to make me feel sick; but
now I’m used to it, and it don’t. When I puts it in my mouth it clings
just like sealing-wax, and forms a kind of a dead ash. Of a morning,
if I haven’t got my breakfast by a certain time, there’s a kind of a
retching in my stomach, and that’s the only inconvenience I feel from
swallowing the sulphur for that there feat.
“The next is, with two sticks of sealing-wax and the same plate. They
are lit by the gas and dropped on one another till they are bodily
a-light. Then I borrow either a ring of the company, or a pencil-case,
or a seal. I set the sealing-wax a-light with a fork, and I press the
impression of whatever article I can get with the tongue, and the seal
is passed round to the company. Then I finish eating the burning wax.
I always spits that out after, when no one’s looking. The sealing-wax
is all right if you get it into the interior of the mouth, but if it
is stringy, and it falls, you can’t get it off, without it takes away
skin and all. It has a very pleasant taste, and I always prefer the
red, as it’s flavour is the best. Hold your breath and it goes out,
but still the heat remains, and you can’t get along with that so fast
as the sulphur. I often burn myself, especially when I’m bothered in
my entertainment; such as any person talking about me close by, then I
listen to ’em perhaps, and I’m liable to burn myself. I haven’t been
able to perform for three weeks after some of my burnings. I never let
any of the audience know anything of it, but smother up the pain, and
go on with my other tricks.
“The other trick is a feat which I make known to the public as one of
Ramo Samee’s, which he used to perform in public-houses and tap-rooms,
and made a deal of money out of. With the same plate and a piece of dry
tow placed in it, I have a pepper-box, with ground rosin and sulphur
together. I light the tow, and with a knife and fork I set down to it
and eat it, and exclaim, ‘This is my light supper.’ There isn’t no
holding the breath so much in this trick as in the others, but you must
get it into the mouth any how. It’s like eating a hot beef-steak when
you are ravenous. The rosin is apt to drop on the flesh and cause a
long blister. You see, we have to eat it with the head up, full-faced;
and really, without it’s seen, nobody would believe what I do.
“There’s another feat, of exploding the gunpowder. There’s two ways of
exploding it. This is my way of doing it, though I only does it for my
own benefits and on grand occasions, for it’s very dangerous indeed
to the frame, for it’s sure to destroy the hair of the head; or if
anything smothers it, it’s liable to shatter a thumb or a limb.
“I have a man to wait on me for this trick, and he unloops my dress and
takes it off, leaving the bare back and arms. Then I gets a quarter of
a pound of powder, and I has an ounce put on the back part of the neck,
in the hollow, and I holds out each arm with an orange in the palm of
each hand, with a train along the arms, leading up to the neck. Then
I turns my back to the audience, and my man fires the gunpowder, and
it blew up in a minute, and ran down the train and blew up that in my
hands. I’ve been pretty lucky with this trick, for it’s only been when
the powder’s got under my bracelets, and then it hurts me. I’m obliged
to hold the hand up, for if it hangs down it hurts awful. It looks like
a scurvy, and as the new skin forms, the old one falls off.
“That’s the whole of my general performance for concert business, when
I go busking at free concerts or outside of shows (I generally gets a
crown a-day at fairs). I never do the gunpowder, but only the tow and
the link.
“I have been engaged at the Flora Gardens, and at St. Helena Gardens,
Rotherhithe, and then I was Signor Salamander, the great fire-king
from the East-end theatres. At the Eel-pie-house, Peckham, I did the
‘terrific flight through the air,’ coming down a wire surrounded by
fire-works. I was called Herr Alma, the flying fiend. There was four
scaffold-poles placed at the top of the house to form a tower, just
large enough for me to lie down on my belly, for the swivels on the
rope to be screwed into the cradle round my body. A wire is the best,
but they had a rope. On this cradle were places for the fire-works to
be put in it. I had a helmet of fire on my head, and the three spark
cases (they are made with steel-filings, and throw out sparks) made of
Prince of Wales feathers. I had a sceptre in my hand of two serpents,
and in their open mouths they put fire-balls, and they looked as if
they was spitting fiery venom. I had wings, too, formed from the ankle
to the waist. They was netting, and spangled, and well sized to throw
off the fire. I only did this two nights, and I had ten shillings
each performance. It’s a momentary feeling coming down, a kind of
suffocation like, so that you must hold your breath. I had two men to
cast me off. There was a gong first of all, knocked to attract the
attention, and then I made my appearance. First, a painted pigeon, made
of lead, is sent down the wire as a pilot. It has moveable wings. Then
all the fire-works are lighted up, and I come down right through the
thickest of ’em. There’s a trap-door set in the scene at the end, and
two men is there to look after it. As soon as I have passed it, the men
shut it, and I dart up against a feather-bed. The speed I come down at
regularly jams me up against it, but you see I throw away this sceptre
and save myself with my hands a little. I feel fagged for want of
breath. It seems like a sudden fright, you know. I sit down for a few
minutes, and then I’m all right.
“I’m never afraid of fire. There was a turner’s place that took fire,
and I saved that house from being burned. He was a friend of mine,
the turner was, and when I was there, the wife thought she heard the
children crying, and asked me to go up and see what it was. As I went
up I could smell fire worse and worse, and when I got in the room it
was full of smoke, and all the carpet, and bed-hangings, and curtains
smouldering. I opened the window, and the fire burst out, so I ups with
the carpet and throw’d it out of window, together with the blazing
chairs, and I rolled the linen and drapery up and throw’d them out. I
was as near suffocated as possible. I went and felt the bed, and there
was two children near dead from the smoke; I brought them down, and a
medical man was called, and he brought them round.
“I don’t reckon no more than two other fire-kings in London beside
myself. I only know of two, and I should be sure to hear of ’em if
there were more. But they can only do three of the tricks, and I’ve got
novelties enough to act for a fortnight, with fresh performances every
evening. There’s a party in Drury-lane is willing to back me for five,
fifteen, or twenty pounds, against anybody that will come and answer to
it, to perform with any other man for cleanness and cleverness, and to
show more variety of performance.
“I’m always at fire-eating. That’s how I entirely get my living, and I
perform five nights out of the six. Thursday night is the only night,
as I may say, I’m idle. Thursday night everybody’s fagged, that’s the
saying--Got no money. Friday, there’s many large firms pays their men
on, especially in Bermondsey.
“I’m out of an engagement now, and I don’t make more than eleven
shillings a-week, because I’m busking; but when I’m in an engagement my
money stands me about thirty-five shillings a-week, putting down the
value of the drink as well--that is, what’s allowed for refreshment.
Summer is the worst time for me, ’cos people goes to the gardens. In
the winter season I’m always engaged three months out of the six. You
might say, if you counts the overplus at one time, and minus at other
time, that I makes a pound a-week. I know what it is to go to the
treasury on a Saturday, and get my thirty shillings, and I know what it
is to have the landlord come with his ‘Hallo! hallo! here’s three weeks
due, and another week running on.’
“I was very hard up at one time--when I was living in Friar-street--and
I used to frequent a house kept by a betting-man, near the St. George’s
Surrey Riding-school. A man I knew used to supply this betting-man with
rats. I was at this public-house one night when this rat-man comes up
to me, and says he, ‘Hallo! my pippin; here, I want you: I want to make
a match. Will you kill thirty rats against my dog?’ So I said, ‘Let me
see the dog first;’ and I looked at his mouth, and he was an old dog;
so I says, ‘No, I won’t go in for thirty; but I don’t mind trying at
twenty.’ He wanted to make it twenty-four, but I wouldn’t. They put the
twenty in the rat-pit, and the dog went in first and killed his, and
he took a quarter of an hour and two minutes. Then a fresh lot were
put in the pit, and I began; my hands were tied behind me. They always
make an allowance for a man, so the pit was made closer, for you see
a man can’t turn round like a dog; I had half the space of the dog.
The rats lay in a cluster, and then I picked them off where I wanted
’em, and bit ’em between the shoulders. It was when they came to one
or two that I had the work, for they cut about. The last one made me
remember him, for he gave me a bite, of which I’ve got the scar now. It
festered, and I was obliged to have it cut out. I took Dutch drops for
it, and poulticed it by day, and I was bad for three weeks. They made a
subscription in the room of fifteen shillings for killing these rats.
I won the match, and beat the dog by four minutes. The wager was five
shillings, which I had. I was at the time so hard up, I’d do anything
for some money; though, as far as that’s concerned, I’d go into a pit
now, if anybody would make it worth my while.”