The street classes that are still undescribed are the lower class of
street singers, the Street Artists, the Writers without Hands, and the
Street Exhibition-keepers. I shall begin with the Street Singers.
Concerning the ordinary street ballad-singers, I received the following
account from one of the class:--
“I am what may be termed a regular street ballad-singer--either
sentimental or comic, sir, for I can take both branches. I have been,
as near as I can guess, about five-and-twenty years at the business.
My mother died when I was thirteen years old, and in consequence of
a step-mother home became too hot to hold me, and I turned into the
streets in consequence of the harsh treatment I met with. My father
had given me no education, and all I know now I have picked up in the
streets. Well, at thirteen years, I turned into the streets, houseless,
friendless. My father was a picture-frame gilder. I was never taught
any business by him--neither his own nor any other. I never received
any benefit from him that I know. Well then, sir, there was I, a boy
of thirteen, friendless, houseless, untaught, and without any means
of getting a living--loose in the streets of London. At first I slept
anywhere: sometimes I passed the night in the old Covent-garden-market;
at others, in shutter-boxes; and at others, on door-steps near my
father’s house. I lived at this time upon the refuse that I picked up
in the streets--cabbage-stumps out of the market, orange-peel, and the
like. Well, sir, I was green then, and one of the Stamp-office spies
got me to sell some of the _Poor Man’s Guardians_, (an unstamped paper
of that time), so that his fellow-spy might take me up. This he did,
and I had a month at Coldbath-fields for the business. After I had been
in prison, I got in a measure hardened to the frowns of the world, and
didn’t care what company I kept, or what I did for a living. I wouldn’t
have you to fancy, though, that I did anything dishonest. I mean, I
wasn’t particular as to what I turned my hand to for a living, or where
I lodged. I went to live in Church-lane, St. Giles’s, at a threepenny
house; and having a tidy voice of my own, I was there taught to go out
ballad-singing, and I have stuck to the business ever since. I was
going on for fifteen when I first took to it. The first thing I did was
to lead at glee-singing; I took the air, and two others, old hands, did
the second and the bass. We used to sing the ‘Red Cross Knight,’ ‘Hail,
smiling Morn,’ and harmonize ‘The Wolf,’ and other popular songs.
Excepting when we needed money, we rarely went out till the evening.
Then our pitches were in quiet streets or squares, where we saw, by the
light at the windows, that some party was going on. Wedding-parties was
very good, in general quite a harvest. Public-houses we did little at,
and then it was always with the parlour company; the tap-room people
have no taste for glee-singing. At times we took from 9_s._ to 10_s._
of an evening, the three of us. I am speaking of the business as it was
about two or three-and-twenty years ago. Now, glee-singing is seldom
practised in the streets of London: it is chiefly confined to the
provinces, at present. In London, concerts are so cheap now-a-days,
that no one will stop to listen to the street glee-singers; so most
of the ‘schools,’ or sets, have gone to sing at the cheap concerts
held at the public-houses. Many of the glee-singers have given up
the business, and taken to the street Ethiopians instead. The street
glee-singers had been some of them brought up to a trade, though some
had not. Few were so unfortunate as me--to have none at all. The two
that I was with had been a ladies’ shoemaker and a paper-hanger.
Others that I knew had been blacksmiths, carpenters, linendrapers’
shopmen, bakers, French-polishers, pastrycooks, and such-like. They
mostly left their business and took to glee-singing when they were
young. The most that I knew were from nineteen to twenty-two years old;
that had in general been a little rackety, and had got stage-struck
or concert-struck at public-houses: they had got praised for their
voices, and so their vanity led them to take to it for a living, when
they got hard up. Twenty years ago there must have been at the east
and west ends at least fourteen different sets, good and bad; and in
each set there was, on an average, three singers: now I don’t think
there is one set at work in London streets. After I had been three
years glee-singing in the streets, I took up with the ballad business,
and found it more lucrative than the glee line. Sometimes I could take
5_s._ in the day, and not work heavily for it either; but at other
times I couldn’t take enough to pay my lodging. When any popular song
came up, that was our harvest. ‘Alice Gray,’ ‘The Sea,’ ‘Bridal Ring,’
‘We met,’ ‘The Tartar Drum,’ (in which I was well known,) ‘The Banks of
the Blue Moselle,’ and such-like, not forgetting ‘The Mistletoe Bough;’
these were all great things to the ballad-singers. We looked at the
bill of fare for the different concert-rooms, and then went round the
neighbourhood where these songs were being sung, because the airs being
well known, you see it eased the way for us. The very best sentimental
song that ever I had in my life, and which lasted me off and on for two
years, was Byron’s ‘Isle of Beauty.’ I could get a meal quicker with
that than with any other. ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ got me many a Christmas
dinner. We always works at that time. It would puzzle any man, even
the most exactest, to tell what they could make by ballad-singing
in the street. Some nights it would be wet, and I should be hoarse,
and then I’d take nothing. I should think that, take one week with
another, my earnings were barely more than 10_s._ a-week: 12_s._ a-week
on the average, I should think, would be the very outside. Street
ballad-singers never go out in costume. It is generally supposed that
some who appear without shoes and wretchedly clad are made up for the
purpose of exciting charity; but this the regular street ballad-singer
never does.
“He is too independent to rank himself with the beggars. He earns his
money, he fancies, and does not ask charity. Some of the ballad-singers
may perhaps be called beggars, or rather pensioners--that is the term
we give them; but these are of the worst description of singers, and
have money given to them neither for their singing nor songs, but in
pity for their age and infirmities. Of these there are about six in
London. Of the regular ballad-singers, sentimental and comic, there
are not less than 250 in and about London. Occasionally the number is
greatly increased by an influx from the country. I should say that
throughout England, Wales, and Scotland, there is not less than 700
who live solely by ballad-singing, and selling ballads and song-books.
In London the ballad-singers generally work in couples--especially the
comic singers. The sentimental generally go alone; but there are very
few in London who are merely sentimental ballad-singers--not more than
a dozen at the very outside. The rest sing whatever comes up. The tunes
are mostly picked up from the street bands, and sometimes from the
cheap concerts, or from the gallery of the theatre, where the street
ballad-singers very often go, for the express purpose of learning the
airs. They are mostly utterly ignorant of music, and some of them get
their money by the noise they make, by being paid to move on. There is
a house in the Blackfriars’-road where the people has been ill for the
last 16 years, and where the street ballad-singer always goes, because
he is sure of getting 2_d._ there to move on. Some, too, make a point
of beginning their songs outside of those houses where the straw is
laid down in front; where the knockers are done up in an old glove the
ballad-singer is sure to strike up. The comic songs that are popular in
the street are never indecent, but are very often political. They are
generally sung by two persons, one repeating the two first lines of the
verse, and the other the two last. The street-ballads are printed and
published chiefly in the Seven Dials. There are four ballad-publishers
in that quarter, and three at the East-end. Many ballads are written
expressly for the Seven-Dials press, especially the Newgate and the
political ones, as well as those upon any topic of the day. There
are five known authors for the Dials press, and they are all street
ballad-singers. I am one of these myself. The little knowledge I have
I picked up bit by bit, so that I hardly know how I have come by it.
I certainly knew my letters before I left home, and I have got the
rest off the dead walls and out of the ballads and papers I have been
selling. I write most of the Newgate ballads now for the printers in
the Dials, and, indeed, anything that turns up. I get a shilling for a
‘copy of verses written by the wretched culprit the night previous to
his execution.’ I wrote Courvoisier’s sorrowful lamentation. I called
it, ‘A Woice from the Gaol.’ I wrote a pathetic ballad on the respite
of Annette Meyers. I did the helegy, too, on Rush’s execution. It was
supposed, like the rest, to be written by the culprit himself, and was
particular penitent. I didn’t write that to order--I knew they would
want a copy of verses from the culprit. The publisher read it over, and
said, ‘That’s the thing for the street public.’ I only got a shilling
for Rush. Indeed, they are all the same price, no matter how popular
they may be. I wrote the life of Manning in verse. Besides these, I
have written the lament of Calcraft the hangman on the decline of his
trade, and many political songs. But song and Newgate ballad-writing
for the Dials is very poor work. I’ve got five times as much for
writing a squib for a rag-shop as for a ballad that has taken me double
the time.”