Now, you know, it wouldn't matter a bit if it was only the publicans who
gave short measure. Most of us know what their gin-glasses are--regular
little humbugs of things--werry broad at the top, and werry solid at the
bottom, and holding precious little in 'em; bad as the old-fashioned
wine bottles, that have had such a kick as has sent the bottom right up
inside ever so far, like a glass mountain, so that when you think the
bottle's half full, it's three-parts empty. But it isn't the publican
so much as the street-sellers, who one way and the other do drop most
terribly on to the poor man in what he buys; and yet that ain't the
worst of it, for there's someone else as drops on to the poor man worse
than anybody; cheats him; gives him short measure; and one way and
another knocks twenty-five per cent, off his wages and the good they
would do him; and I'm going to show you how; while "Who is it?" says
you; "Why, himself!" says I. And now I'm going to prove it.
Now, I don't know what you are as is reading this; but we'll say you're
a working man, for once in a way, and say you and I settled down in
London. You makes your three-and-thirty shillings a week at your trade!
and I, being a bill-sticker, makes what I can--sometimes more, sometimes
less--finds my own paste--makes it myself, you know; and though I says
it as shouldn't say it, you never see my bills a-going flip-flap in the
wind, like some people's as I knows, which ain't neither here nor there,
in a manner of speaking; though as regards a wall or hoarding, they are
here and there. I allus make good paste, and though sometimes when I
has one of them big posters to stick up a letter at a time, I do get a
bit bothered with the spelling, it ain't often. I ain't ashamed of my
faults, and having made myself a scholard off bills on walls, why,
'tain't surprising as I blunders a bit sometimes, even if one's reading
has been a bit diversified. As I said before, it ain't surprising, and
I ain't ashamed if, when I stuck them _Star_ bills, I did putt the cart
afore the horse, and instead of saying "War Correspondence" put it up as
"Raw Correspondence," which, seeing as it related to cutting up and
butchering, warn't so werry much out of place. But it warn't me as
stuck the Prince o' Wales's feathers upside down, and if I do have to
put a letter up at a time I always makes them meet at the edges, and
don't put 'em over other folkses.
But this ain't proving how pore men cheats and measures themselves out
short; so, as I said before, we'll suppose you and me to be working men
settled in London. Well, rent we can't say nothing about; but if we
goes on as some people do, living from hand to mouth and back again,
why, where are we? Now, this is what I always noticed--the poorer a man
is, the dearer he buys his things.
"Get out," says you; "how can that be?"
"Why, so," says I, and in imagination, you know, I holds the bill up
against the wall with one hand, stirs the brush round in my paste with
the other, and then well lathers or lubricates the back of the paper,
then turns him, claps him in his place, and touches him over with the
brush so as he fits into all the crevices tight. "And now," says I,
"read," and you read, or is s'posed to read, as follers, though of
course it's me speaking:--
"The poor man allus goes to the cheap shop."
"Right enough too," says you.
"Gammon," says I, for that cheap's a word as ain't to be found in
reality; it's a word as my philosophic friend Josef Sprouts would call
"a beautiful illoosion." It's a ignis something--I don't quite know
what--as cheats men on to follow it, and then bogs them as tight as my
brush is bogged in dry weather in the crusty paste. Don't you never buy
nothing cheap. Now, this is the way. You goes and buys cheap butter at
fourteen-pence when you might have had it as honest dripping, afore the
tater flour and yaller colour was put in, for ninepence. You buys penny
candles one at a time, and so gives eight pence a pound when you might
have had 'em for seven-pence. You buys: cheap tea at two shillings,
when one spoonful of three-shilling goes twice as fur. Working men's
stout bluchers, all brown paper and bosh. Cheap clothes, as falls all
to pieces, and shrinks anyhow, till the bottoms of the trousers seem to
have made up their minds to be tight knickerbockers. Cheap calico, as
is all facing till it's washed, when it turns out canvas or fine net.
Coffee, as is--well, perhaps what I heard about burnt liver ain't true,
after all; but you may depend upon one thing, and that is, that the man
as buys the best of everything in a plain way lives the cheapest. Look
at flour. Well, say the best is a penny a quartern more--and the wife
seems so satisfied because she thinks she is saving. Why, it's a
mistake altogether, and if you feed yourself with so much husk amongst
your corn, mustn't you have more corn to supply the nutriment? Don't
tell me! I haven't made paste so many years without being a good judge
of flour.
Cheap things is nasty. At least that's wrong, for cheap things is good,
and the real cheap things is the best of everything; and what you've got
to do is this--have a little, but have it good. I've watched the dodges
long enough to know; I've stuck up the cheap advertising bills, and then
looked into it, and blowed the missus up for being so took in: cheap
soap as is kept wet and runs all to a mosh in the water; cheap rice full
of grit; cheap bacon as shrinks in the pot; cheap currants with plenty
of stones; cheap meat--there, if there is a cruel thing perpetrated on
the poor people of London streets, it's that sending up diseased beasts,
sheep, and pigs, to be sold cheap; and if I were the Lord Mayor of
London, or either of the other magistrates (which ain't likely to be the
case this year, because the election's over, and there ain't a bench at
liberty) I'd just tar the gentlemen as sells the stuff with their own
brush, I'd--I would, and no mistake--I'd feed 'em with their own meat--
now then!
I've stuck so much poetry about cheap clothes for the tailors, and
strong tea for the groshers, that I'm sick of it; but I know one piece
right off by heart, and at the end of a verse it says:--
"Oh, God, that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!"
You know! "Song of the shirt." Cheap shirts for cheap people, who make
fortunes out of the poor.
"Oh," you'll say, "that was only a made-up thing."
What! here, save up your pence and go down Bethnal Green, or amongst the
tottering old houses in Spitalfields, places where I can find heaps of
spots for sticking bills, and you can hunt 'em out for yourself; women
sewing their shrouds, hard at work at 'em, doing a little bit every day
till they get 'em done, and then the parish sends a cheap coffin,
supplied by the lowest bidder, the undertaker as does these things by
contract on the cheap fetches the rough black case; and then "rattle his
bones over the stones," and off to the cemetery; and you and I will buy
the cheap shirt, and find as the calico's thin, and the buttons come
off, and the stitches fall out almost from our bargain.
"Just come here, will you?" says a p'leeceman to me one day as I was
a-sticking an "Alarming Sacrifice" against the wall, and a thinking to
myself it was like the way we used to gammon the old hens at home,
shamming to throw down barley, so that they'd come running and clucking
like fun to find nought; while here was these rogues a-using me to
scatter their barley about to bring all the old London hens a-clucking
over their bargains in calicoes and dresses, bought at unheard-of
prices, "in bankruptcy." "Just come in here a minute," says the
policeman, and I leaves off at "Alarming Sac--;" and I daresay there was
an alarming sack made out of the noodles, for that bill never got
finished, but stopped there till another sticker went and stuck the
"Christy's" over it. I follows my chap in, carrying my bills and
crutches and paste, on account of the boys, and follows him right
upstairs--up stairs as wern't safe--to a miserable attic, where there
was a poor thing lying on a bed--at least on a few rags, and she dressed
in rags herself. There was the rain pelting against the broken windows
and making a puddle on the floor; the wind whistling down the chimney,
where there was no grate, only a few bits or iron hoop resting on some
bricks, but no fire; whilst the rest of the furniture, after the
ricketty bedstead, was a little table, and a chair with the bottom
sticking down like part of a fish basket.
"Stop with her while I goes for help," says the p'leeceman, and I
nodded, staring all the while at the poor thing on the bed; and as soon
as he had gone, I goes a tiptoe to the winder, pulls a little bill out
of my bag, lays on the paste, and pops it over one of the broken panes;
and then does the same by two more, which was some improvement, you
know, only when I looks on the first, if it wasn't in big letters,
"Coffin!" for the "Dr" was tucked round outer sight one side, and the
"s" and the "Pills" the other.
"That won't do," I says, and I fetches out another bill from
another parcel. Nice thing that for a sick woman to see as a
transparency--"Coffin!" so I pastes the other bill and sets up, but
snatches it down again directly, for it was "The Dead Letter," and there
was only "The Dead" to be seen. But the next one did service, for it
was "Good Words."
"Ah!" I says, she wants some bad enough, and then I spoke and said
something or another, but there was no answer; so thinking it best, I
waited quietly till the p'leeceman came back, when he whispered to me as
they were going to take her in a cab to the House.
"House? What house?" somebody cries all at once in a horrid cracked,
hoarse voice, "No--no--no--no!" And there, sitting up in the bed, with
her blue bony fingers stretched out, and her dull eyes straining, the
poor thing kept motioning the p'leeceman away, and no one tried to touch
her.
"Little bread--little water--that's all;" she says again so pitifully;
"Let me stay here till I'm gone, and I shan't be long now;" and then
sinking back on the bed, she closed her eyes and lay muttering, with her
poor thin, bony arms stretched across her breast.
I looked at the p'leecemen, and they looked at me, and not being men
much given to softness, they were about to lift the poor thing up and
carry her down, only I stopped 'em, for there was something about the
poor soul then as made me hold up my hand; and when they saw what I did,
one of them went down to send away the cab and fetch a doctor, while me
and t'other stood looking on to see the look of horror and fear go off
her face, while the hands kept their place across her poor breast--to
see her eyes stopping shut, then open widely for a minute, and then
close again, as she lay quiet and still--gone to sleep to wake
elsewhere.
P'leeceman went out werry quietly and stopped at the door, beckoning me
to come, but I couldn't see him, for I was seeing that poor woman
sitting on that broken chair, close to the broken window, in the early
morning, and through the long day, and right into the night, by the
light of a cheap candle, stitching away at tailor's slopwork hour after
hour, to make at first 7 shillings 6 pence a week, then, as her eyes
grew feebler, and the stitches less regular, six shillings--five
shillings--four shillings--_two shillings_--nothing! for flesh and blood
is cheap in London, and when one bone and gristle machine wears out,
there are plenty more to take its place. Sitting there in the bitter
cold wet autumn of this year, sick at heart, sick in body, weak, old,
and helpless--too feeble to work, too proud to tell of her sufferings;
and with the horror of the poor against the tender mercies of the
parish, where the feeble sink amidst the horrors of the infirmary.
Working on till she could work no more, and then, with bloodless limbs
and pallid face, when work and food were given, and she took both, the
strength failed, and the stomach unused to sustenance could not bear
it--the lamp was going out, the flame trembling, and the oil for which
it was sinking drowned out the last flickering ray.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
No fiction--no tale of imagination--but true! true! true! Not in the
past times, before there were visitations, and poor-law boards, and
plenty of missionary enterprise, but now--now, within the past few
days--in Christian England, whose wealth makes the fabled greatness of
the East turn pale and shine with diminished lustre. Here--at home--in
our great city--lying down to die, listening to the hurrying tramp of
thousands; with help ready to come when it was too late; with coroner
and jury ready to sit, and wag their sapient heads, and the twelve to
smoke it in their pipes in the evening, saying, "How dreadful!" The
coroner saying, too, that such things came before him weekly. And what
is done to amend the misery? Where is the plaister for this hideous
boil? There was no canting whine here for aid, but the act of the
stricken one who knew full well that she would be told to go to the
House,--than enter which she would sooner die.
"I'd have taken her a drop of brandy if I'd known how bad she was; but,
poor soul, she always kep herself to herself." God bless you for it,
woman! You told me with an earnestness and truthful air that none could
doubt: it was the fruition of that loving sympathy that prompts the poor
to give of their little to aid distress. Where does the beggar make his
harvest? Where do the canting hypocrites who trade upon sympathy
fatten? Amidst the thronging streets of East and South London, finding
the heart that has felt the pinchings of poverty ever ready to open in
their favour. But such sad tales need veiling, 'neath the medium of
fiction, and one seeks again to soften the tale.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I see it all, as I said, and at last, seeing it less and less plain for
something as came in my eyes, I picked up my paste-tin and my brush, and
then made towards the door; but I was obliged to go back and have
another look, for the thought come as it might have been a sister, or a
mother, or--or--or--I broke down there; for I said to myself as it might
have been a widder, and that widder might have been mine. But the
thoughts of that made me start again and hurry out of the place, with a
will and a spirit in me to have posted up all London, if I could have
got the job; and short work I made of what else I had to do. But there
in my pipe that night was that worn-out seamstress, whose calm, sleeping
face cried out so appealingly--crying in a way that should make all
London shudder:
"Brother, I was starved to death!"