a crowded street, where every family lives in one room, or in two at the
most, there is an unfailing, perennial stream of interest in the fortune
and the conduct, the good luck and the bad luck, of the neighbors. Liz
and her companions did exactly what other people do in country towns
much duller than London Street—they talked about one another and the
people about them. They talked also of the time when they, like their
elder sisters, would go about as they pleased: to the Queen’s Music-hall
and to the Pavilion Theatre; when they could enjoy the delights of
walking up and down their favorite boulevard—it is called Brook
Street—all the long winter evening, each with her young man. The young
girls always talk about the life before them. They know perfectly what
it is going to be; they see it all round them. Who are they that they
should expect anything but the common round, the common lot? They also,
like their elder sisters, talk of dress. Already they plan and contrive
for some extra bit of finery. Let us not believe that Liz was ever
troubled with vacuity of mind or with lack of interest in her thoughts
and conversation. There is in London Street even too much incident.
Where there are always in the street men out of work, families whose
“sticks” are all “in,” children who are kept alive by the generosity of
other people, only not quite so poor as themselves; where there is
always sickness, always violence, always drunkenness, always lads taken
away by the man in blue, and always the joy of youth and the animation
of children and young girls—why, Piccadilly is a waste by comparison,
and Berkeley Square is like unto Tadmor in the desert.
[Illustration: The British Workman in Epping Forest.]
In the case of Liz and her friends there was an additional interest in
the river and the craft of all kinds. The children would stand on
Ratcliffe Cross Stairs and gaze out upon the rushing tide and upon the
ships that passed up and down. At low tide they ran out upon the mud,
with bare feet, and picked up apronfuls of coal to carry home. Needs
must that a child who lives within sight of ships should imagine strange
things and get a sense of distance and of mystery. And sometimes a
sailor would find his way to London Street—a sailor full of stories of
strange lands across the seas, such as would make even the dullest of
Ratcliffe girls launch out in imagination beyond the dim and dusty
street.
Once, for instance, a cousin came. It was at Christmas. Never was such a
Christmas. He was a sailor. He came from the West India docks—or was it
from Limehouse Basin? It was the only time; he never came again. But
could any one privileged to be present ever forget the celebration of
that home-coming? He had money in his pocket—lots of money. He threw it
all upon the table—nine pounds in gold, Liz remembered, and a heap of
silver and copper. On Christmas eve the feast began. Relations and
far-off cousins were found and invited. The family had two rooms. The
company, with the guests, numbered twenty-one. A barrel of beer and any
quantity of whisky and gin were laid in for the occasion. No more joyful
family reunion was ever known. Outside, there were the usual Christmas
rejoicings. In the street the drunken men reeled about; there was an
occasional fight; the houses were all lighted up, but nowhere was a
nobler spread or a longer feast or a more joyous Christmas known than in
those two rooms. It took three days and three nights. From Friday, which
was Christmas eve, till Monday, which was Boxing-day, this feast
continued. During all this time not one among them, man, woman, or
child, undressed or went to bed. The children fell asleep, with flushed
faces and heavy heads, in corners, on the landing, anywhere; the others
feasted and drank, danced and sang, for three days and three nights. Now
and then one would drop out and fall prone upon the floor; the others
went on regardless. Presently the sleeper awoke, sat up, recovered his
wandering wits, and joined the revelers again.
For plenty and profusion it was like unto the wedding-feast of Camacho.
There were roast geese and roast ducks, roast turkey and roast beef,
roast pork and sausages and ham, and everything else that the shops at
this festive season could supply.
On the third day, toward three in the afternoon of Monday, lo, a
miracle! For the money was all gone, and the barrel of beer was empty,
and the bottles were empty, and the bones of the geese and the turkeys
were all that was left of the feast. The company broke up, the cousin
departed, the family threw themselves upon the beds and slept the clock
twice round. Who could forget this noble Christmas? Who could forget a
feast that lasted for three whole days and three long nights?
Liz had got through her school-time; she must go to work.
Of course, she knew all along what awaited her. She must do as the
others did, she must enter a factory. She contemplated the necessity
without any misgiving. Why should she not go into a factory? It was all
in the natural order of things, like getting hungry or waking up in the
morning. Every girl had to be cuffed, every girl had to get out of the
way when her father was drunk, every girl had to go to work as soon as
she left school.
There is apparently a choice of work. There are many industries which
employ girls. There is the match-making, there is the bottle-washing,
there is the box-making, there is the paper-sorting, there is the
jam-making, the fancy confectionery, the cracker industry, the making of
ornaments for wedding-cakes, stockings for Christmas, and many others.
There are many kinds of sewing. Virtually, however, this child had no
choice; her sisters were in the jam factory, her mother had been in the
jam factory, she too went to the jam factory.
There are many branches of work more disagreeable than the jam factory.
Liz found herself at half-past seven in the morning in a huge building,
where she was one among a thousand working women and girls, men and
boys, but chiefly girls. The place was heavily laden with an
overpowering fragrance of fruit and sugar. In some rooms the fruit was
boiling in great copper pots; in some girls were stirring the fruit,
after it had been boiled, to get the steam out of it; in some machinery
crushed and ground the sugar till it became as fine as flour. The place
was like a mill. The flour of sugar hung about the room in a cloud of
dust; it lay in such dust on the tables and the casks; it got into the
girls’ hair, so that they were fain to tie up their heads with white
caps; it covered their clothes, and made them sticky; it made tables,
benches, floor, all alike sticky. There were other developments of
sugar; sometimes it lay on tables in huge, flat cakes of soft gray stuff
like gelatine; they turned this mass, by their craft and subtlety, into
innumerable threads of fine white silk; they drew it through machines,
and brought it out in all the shapes that children love. Then there were
rooms full of cocoanut. They treated casks full of dessicated cocoanut
till that also became like flour. There were other rooms full of
almonds, which they stripped and bleached and converted also into fine
flour; or they turned boxes of gelatine into Turkish delight and
jujubes. All day long and all the year round they made crackers; they
made ornaments for wedding-cakes; they made favors; they made caramels;
they made acidulated drops; they made things unnamed except by children.
In all these rooms girls worked by hundreds, some sitting at long
tables, some boiling the sugar, filling the pots with jam, stirring the
boiling fruit, feeding machinery, filling molds; all were as busy as
bees and as mute as mice. Some of them wore white caps to cover their
hair, some wore white aprons, some wore coarse sacking tied all round
for a skirt to keep off stickiness. All day long the machinery whirred
and pulsed an accompaniment to the activity and industry of the place.
“I like the smell,” said Liz. First impressions are the best; she
continued to like the smell and the factory and the work.
She was stouter and stronger than most girls. They gave her a skirt of
sacking, and put her where her strength would be of use. She liked the
movement, she liked the exercise of her strong arms, and she liked the
noise of the place; she liked the dinner-hour, with its talking and
laughing; she liked the factory better than the school; she liked the
pay-day, and the money which she kept for herself.
I say that she liked the work and the sense of society and animation.
About a year afterward, however, a strange and distressing restlessness
seized her. Whether she was attracted by the talk of the other girls, or
whether it was an instinctive yearning for change and fresh air, I know
not. The thing was infectious. Many other girls compared their symptoms,
and found them the same. Finally, the restlessness proving altogether
too much for the children, they took hands, thirty of them, and one
Saturday afternoon, without bag or baggage, they ran away.
They ran through Wapping and along Thames Street, which is empty on
Saturday afternoon; they ran across London Bridge, they poured into
London Bridge Station. One of the girls knew the name of the station
they wanted; it was in Kent. They took tickets, and they went off.
They had gone hopping.
Thousands of Londoners in the season go hopping. I wish I could dwell
upon the delights of the work. Unfortunately, like the summer, it is too
soon over. While it lasts the hoppers sleep in barns, they work in the
open, they breathe fresh air, they get good pay, they enjoy every
evening a singsong and a free-and-easy. The beer flows like a rivulet;
everybody is thirsty, everybody is cheerful, everybody is friendly.
When it was over Liz returned, browned and refreshed and strengthened,
but fearful of the consequences, because she had deserted her work. But
she was fortunate. They took her back into the factory, and so she went
on as before.
Let us follow her through a single day. She had to be at the factory at
half-past seven in the morning, and, with an hour off for dinner, to
work till six. She made her breakfast on tea, bread and margarine, and a
“relish.” The relish included many possibilities. It depended mainly on
the day of the week. It is obvious that what one can afford on a Monday
is unattainable on a Friday. On Monday it might be a herring or a
haddock, an egg or a rasher of bacon. On Friday and Saturday it would be
a sprig of water-cress or a pickle.
With all factory girls dinner is a continual source of anxiety and
disappointment, for the ambitions of youth are lofty, and the yearnings
of youth are strong, and the resources of youth are scanty. Within the
factory there were, for those who chose to use them, frying-pans and a
gas-stove. The girls might cook their food for themselves. There was
also hot water for making tea; but the factory girl detests cooking, and
may be trusted to spoil and make unfit for human food whatever cooking
is intrusted to her. Besides, there were the eating-houses. Here, if you
please, were offered to the longing eyes of Liz, always hungry at
half-past twelve, daily temptations to extravagance. Just think what the
bill of fare every day offered to a girl of discernment in the matter of
dinner.
Saveloy and Pease Pudding
German Sausages and Black Pudding
Fried Fish and Pickles
Meat-pie
Pie-crust and Potatoes
Fagots and Mustard Pickle
Beans, Potatoes, Greens, Currant Pudding
Jam Pudding
The mere choice between these delicacies was bewildering, and, alas! on
many days only the cheapest were attainable. Every day Liz pondered over
the list and calculated the price. The meat-pie at twopence—glorious!
But could she afford twopence? The jam pudding at one halfpenny! It
seems cheap, and a good lump too, with a thick slab of red jam—plum
jam—laid all over the top. But yet, even a halfpenny is sometimes dear.
You see that dinner is wanted on seven days in the week. It was
impossible to afford jam pudding every day. Fagots, again. They are only
a penny hot, and three farthings cold. A fagot is a really toothsome
preparation. In appearance it is a square cake. In composition it
contains the remnants and odd bits of a butcher’s shop—beef, veal,
mutton, lamb, with fat and gristle contributed by all the animals
concerned. The whole is minced or triturated. It is treated with spices
and shreds of onion, and is then turned out in shapes and baked. No one
in the position of our Liz can withstand the temptation of a fagot. The
rich people who keep the shops, she believes, live exclusively on
fagots. Wealth cannot purchase anything better than a fagot.
[Illustration: Brook Street, Limehouse.]
To begin with, she had only five shillings a week. When we consider the
Sunday dinner, her clothes and her boots, her share of the rent, her
breakfast, her amusements, her clubs, of which we shall speak
immediately, I do not think that she was justified in laying out more
than twopence, or at the most twopence halfpenny, on her daily dinner. A
meat-pie with potatoes, a fagot with mustard pickles and greens, and a
jam pudding would absorb the whole of her daily allowance. It left this
growing girl hungry after eating all of it.
Meantime, the factory people are as careful about their girls as can be
expected. They insist on their making a respectable appearance and
wearing a hat. In many other ways they look after them. There is a good
deal of paternal kindliness in the London employer, especially when he
is in a large way.
The factory girls of East London have shown a remarkable power of
looking after themselves. Once or twice they have even had a strike. On
one occasion they made a demonstration which made the government give
in. It is old history now. Once there was a certain statesman named
Lowe—Bob Lowe, he was irreverently called. He made a considerable stir
in his day, which was about five-and-twenty years ago. He was then
Chancellor of the Exchequer. To-day I doubt if there are many young
people in England under five-and-twenty who could pass an examination in
the political career of Bob Lowe. He was a very fine scholar. He had
been a fellow and lecturer of his college at Oxford; he had been a
barrister practising in Australia, and he was believed to hold in
contempt our colonial empire, and to hunger after the time when Great
Britain would become a second Holland. Once he conceived the idea of a
tax on matches. His scholarship supplied him with a punning motto, “Ex
luce lucellum” (“from light a little profit”). The match-makers
rebelled. They marched down to Westminster in their thousands. They
demonstrated: they stated their grievance. Bob Lowe quailed, and the
government withdrew the bill.
Our young friend Liz had nothing to do with this prenatal business,
which, had it happened in her own time, she would have greatly enjoyed.
Where she showed her native ability was in the establishment of clubs.
They were practical clubs; they were organized upon an entirely new and
original method. I can best explain it by giving an illustration. Thus,
there is the one-pound club. Twenty girls agree to get up a one-pound
club. For twenty weeks they have to subscribe each a shilling. To
determine the order of taking the money they draw numbered tickets. The
girl who draws No. 1 receives twenty shillings in a lump the first week;
the girl who draws No. 2 takes the second week’s money, and so on. It is
obvious that this method can be applied to anything, provided the girls
who draw the earlier numbers play fair. It seems that they generally do.
Should they shirk their duty, there are “ructions.” The girl Liz could
not, at first, aspire to the one-pound club. But there were humbler
clubs—sixpenny, even penny, clubs. Thus, there were boot clubs, calico
clubs, petticoat clubs, tea-fight clubs, jewelry clubs, and, but
secretly and among the older girls who had sweethearts to consider and
to please, there were spirit clubs, for gin and whisky, not for
supernatural manifestations. A girl cannot belong to all these clubs at
once, but the convenience of belonging to two or three at a time is very
great. It enables a provident girl to keep her wardrobe in order by
small weekly savings which are not much felt. In the matter of boots,
now; if one draws No. 1 there is a new pair at once; suppose the pair
lasts for three months, after six weeks another boot club might give the
same girl the last number instead of the first, and so on.
Her days were not spent wholly in the factory. At seven in the winter
and at six in the summer she was free; she had also her Saturday
afternoons and her Sundays. In other words, she had a fair five hours of
freedom every day, ten hours of freedom on Saturdays, and the whole of
Sunday. Now, five hours a day of continuous freedom from work is as much
as in any working community can be expected. It is a third of the waking
day. How did Liz get through that time?
She very soon got beyond her mother’s control. It is not, indeed, the
custom with many mothers to exercise authority over a girl at work. Liz
did what other girls did. She therefore spent most of her evenings in
the boulevard of her quarter, a place called Brook Street. Here she
walked about, or ran about, or danced arm in arm with other girls,
chaffing the lads, whom she treated, if she had the money, to a drink.
She went sometimes to a music-hall, where some of the factory girls “did
a turn” or danced in the ballet. She wore no hat or bonnet in the
street, and she retained the apron which is the badge of her class. She
looked on with interest when there was a fight. She listened with a
critical mind when there was an exchange of reproaches between two
women.
Then a girls’ club got hold of her and persuaded her to come in. The
club was run by some of those ladies of whom I have spoken, the same who
trade on the affection of the children for their own purposes, which may
be described as a mean and underhand attempt to make the little ones
learn to prefer good to evil. At this club there was singing every
night, there was dancing with one another, there was reading, there was
talking; everybody behaved nicely, and for two or three hours it was a
restful time, even though young girls do not feel the need of rest or
understand its use.
When the club closed, the girls went away. If it was a fine night and
not too cold they went back for a while to Brook Street, where there was
neither rest nor quiet nor godly talk.
Besides her evenings, the girl had the four bank-holidays, and the
holidays of Christmas and Easter. Nobody in London does any work between
Thursday in Passion Week and Easter Tuesday, nor does any one work much
between Christmas eve, when that falls on Thursday or Friday, and the
following Tuesday.
These days and seasons are not only holidays, they are days reserved for
weddings and christenings. It is necessary, of course, that a girl who
respects herself should make a creditable appearance at such a time. She
must therefore save, and save with zeal. Saving up for bank-holiday
becomes a passion. Dinner is reduced to the lowest possible dimensions,
even to a halfpenny lump of currant pudding, which is as heavy as lead
and the most satisfying thing for the money that can be procured.
Bank-holiday demands a complete change of clothes, from the hat to the
boots. Everything must be new. There must not be an old frock with a new
hat, nor an old pair of boots with a new frock. This means a great deal
of saving. It must also be accompanied by a general cleaning up of the
windows, the door-steps, the stairs, the rooms. All over London Street
before bank-holiday there is unusual movement. Chairs are brought out,
and girls stand upon them to clean the ground-floor windows.
I have already spoken of the change that has come over this quarter.
Formerly a holiday was celebrated after the manner of the ancient Danes,
by long and barbaric drinking bouts. Early in the morning girls would be
seen lying helpless on the pavement. Lads ran about carrying bottles of
gin, which they offered to every one. These are customs of the past,
though complete soberness is not yet quite achieved.
[Illustration: An August Bank Holiday in the East End.]
Still, however, the Ratcliffe girl likes to keep her bank-holiday at
home among her own people, in her beloved Brook Street. She cheerfully
saves up all she can, so that there may be a good sum for bank-holiday,
enough for new clothes and something over, something to treat her
friends with. And when the day is over she must go back to her work with
an empty purse. Well for her if it is not also with an aching head.
When Liz was approaching the age of seventeen she had learned, from
every point of view, all that she would ever learn; she had risen as
high as she could rise in the factory; she made as good wages as she
would ever make; she lived at home, sharing a room with two sisters; she
paid her mother sixpence a week for bed and lodging; her character was
formed; her acquaintance with good and evil was deep, wide, and
intimate; she was steady, as girls of her class go, thanks to those
ladies; if she ever drank too much she was ashamed of herself, and as
yet she had no sweetheart. She was affectionate and responded to
kindness, but she was self-willed, and would bear no thwarting. She was
deficient on the side of imagination. She could not enter into the
thoughts or the position of any one except herself; that was the natural
result of her narrow, groove-like life. She had rules of conduct and of
behavior; of religion she had little, if any, discoverable. She never
went to church or chapel. She was fond of every kind of excitement, yet
the emotional side of religion touched her not. The Irish girls, of whom
there are many at Ratcliffe, were Catholics, and sometimes went to
church. Once Liz went there, too, and seemed to like the music and the
lights, but she did not repeat her visit.
This was her life all through the week. On Sunday, however, she made a
difference.
On that morning she lay in bed till ten or eleven. She spent the time
before dinner over her wardrobe; at one o’clock she sat down with the
family to the most important ceremony of the week, the Sunday dinner. To
other people besides the working-folk of Ratcliffe the Sunday dinner is
an institution. Pope’s retired citizen, on Sundays, had, we know, two
puddings to smoke upon the board. To all people of the middle class the
Sunday dinner is the occasion for a little indulgence, for a glass of
wine after dinner. To the resident in Ratcliffe it means a big feed, as
much as a man can eat, and that of a popular and favorite dish. There
are many dishes dear to the heart of the working-man. He loves
everything that is confected with, or accompanied by, things of strong
taste. If he knew of the delicacy called lobscouse he would have it
nearly every Sunday; if he knew of that other delicacy called potato-pot
he would order it frequently. As it is, he relies for the most part upon
some portion of pig—that creature of “fine miscellaneous feeding.” He
loves roast pork, boiled pork, fried pork, baked pork, but especially he
loves pig’s head. His wife buys this portion of the animal, stuffs the
ears and eyes thereof with sage and onions,—a great deal of sage and
much onion,—and sends it to the bakehouse. Pig’s head thus treated and
done to a turn is said to have no fellow. It is accompanied by beer, and
beer in plenty. The family sit down to this meal when it is brought in
from the baker, and continue eating until they can eat no longer. So, in
Arabian deserts, if you would win the hearts of the Bedouin you give
them a sheep, and they will eat until they can eat no longer. It is part
of the Sunday dinner that there is to be no hint or suspicion of any
limit, except that imposed by nature. They eat till they can eat no
more.
When she was seventeen Liz found a sweetheart.
He was a young fellow of twenty or thereabouts. He had come out of his
native village, some place in the quiet country, a dull place, to enjoy
the life of London. He was a highly skilled agricultural laborer; there
was nothing on the farm that he could not do. He knew the fields and the
woods, the wild creatures and the birds; he knew how to plow and to
reap; he could keep an allotment full of vegetables all the year round;
he understood a stable and a dairy, a paddock and sheepfold. Yet with
all this knowledge he came to London, where it was of no earthly use to
him. He threw over the best work that a country lad can have, and he
became nothing but a pair of hands like this girl’s father. He was a
pair of hands; he was a strong back; his sturdy legs were fit to do the
commonest, the heaviest, the most weary work in the world. One evening
Liz was standing alone on the pavement, looking at something or other—a
barrel-organ, a cheap Jack, one of the common sights and sounds—when
this young fellow passed along, walking heavily, as one who has walked
chiefly over plowed fields. He looked at her. Something in her face,—it
was an honest face,—something in her attitude of alertness and the sharp
look of her eye struck his imagination. He hitched closer. In Brook
Street it is permissible, it is laudable, to introduce yourself. He said
huskily: “I’ve seen you here before. What’s your name? Mine is George.”
That was the beginning of it. Presently the other girls met Liz walking
proudly along Brook Street with a big, well-set-up young fellow. They
moved out of her way. Liz had got a chap. When would their turn come?