London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (13 page)

‘Well, sir,’ she began, ‘what is it you want of me? Do I owe you anything? There’s half-pay officers about here for no good; what is it you want? Hold your tongue, you young fool,’ (to her daughter, who was beginning to speak;) ‘what do you know about it?’ [On my satisfying her that I had no desire to injure her, she continued, to say after spitting, a common practice with her class, on a piece of money, ‘for luck’,] ‘Certainly, sir, that’s very proper and good. Aye, I’ve seen the world – the town world and the country. I don’t know where I was born; never mind about that – it’s nothing to nobody. I don’t know nothing about my father and mother; but I know that afore I was eleven I went through the country
with my missis. She was a smuggler. I didn’t know then what smuggling was – bless you, sir, I didn’t; I knew no more nor I know who made that lamp-post. I didn’t know the taste of the stuff we smuggled for two years – didn’t know it from small beer; I’ve known it well enough since, God knows. My missis made a deal of money that time at Deptford Dockyard. The men wasn’t paid and let out till twelve of a night – I hardly mind what night it was, days was so alike then – and they was our customers till one, two, or three in the morning – Sunday morning, for anything I know. I don’t know what my missis gained; something jolly, there’s not a fear of it. She was kind enough to me. I don’t know how long I was with missis. After that I was a hopping, and made my 15
s
. regular at it, and a haymaking; but I’ve had a pitch at my corner for thirty-eight year – aye! turned thirty-eight. It’s no use asking me what I made at first – I can’t tell; but I’m sure I made more than twice as much as my daughter and me makes now, the two of us. I wish people that thinks we’re idle now were with me for a day. I’d teach them. I don’t – that’s the two of us don’t – make 15
s
. a week now, nor the half of it, when all’s paid. D—d if I do. The d—d boys take care of that.’ [Here I had a statement of the boys’ tradings, similar to what I have given.] ‘There’s “Canterbury” has lots of boys, and they bother me. I can tell, and always could, how it is with working men. When mechanics is in good work, their children has halfpennies to spend with me. If they’re hard up, there’s no halfpennies. The pennies go to a loaf or to buy a candle. I might have saved money once, but had a misfortunate family. My husband? O, never mind about him. D—n him. I’ve been a widow many years. My son – it’s nothing how many children I have – is married; he had the care of an ingine. But he lost it from ill health. It was in a feather-house, and the flue got down his throat, and coughed him; and so he went into the country, 108 miles off, to his wife’s mother. But his wife’s mother got her living by wooding, and other ways, and couldn’t help him or his wife; so he left, and he’s with me now. He has a job sometimes with a greengrocer, at 6
d
. a day and a bit of grub; a little bit – very. I must shelter him. I couldn’t turn him out. If a Turk I knew was in distress, and I had only half a loaf, I’d give him half of that, if he was ever such a Turk – I would, sir! Out of 6
d
. a day, my son – poor fellow, he’s only twenty-seven! – wants a bit of ’baccy and a pint of beer. It’ud be unnatural to oppose that, wouldn’t it, sir? He frets about his wife, that’s staying with her mother, 108 miles off; and about his little girl; but I tell him to wait, and he may have more little girls. God knows, they come when they’re not wanted a bit. I joke and say all my old sweethearts is dying away. Old Jemmy went off sudden. He lent me money sometimes,
but I always paid him. He had a public once, and had some money when he died. I saw him the day afore he died. He was in bed, but wasn’t his own man quite; though he spoke sensible enough to me. He said, said he, “Won’t you have half a quartern of rum, as we’ve often had it?” “Certainly, Jemmy,” says I, “I came for that very thing.” Poor fellow! his friends are quarrelling now about what he left. It’s 56
l
. they say, and they’ll go to law very likely, and lose every thing. There’ll be no such quarrelling when I die, unless it is for the pawn-tickets. I get a meal now, and got a meal afore; but it was a better meal then, sir. Then look at my expenses. I was a customer once, I used to buy, and plenty such did, blue cloth aprons, opposite Drury-lane theatre: the very shop’s there still, but I don’t know what it is now; I can’t call to mind. I gave 2
s
. 6
d
. a yard, from twenty to thirty years ago, for an apron, and it took two yards, and I paid 4
d
. for making it, and so an apron cost 5
s
. 4
d
. – that wasn’t much thought of in those times. I used to be different off then. I never go to church; I used to go when I was a little child at Sevenoaks. I suppose I was born somewhere thereabouts. I’ve forgot what the inside of a church is like. There’s no costermongers ever go to church, except the rogues of them, that wants to appear good. I buy my fruit at Covent-garden. Apples is now 4
s
. 6
d
. a bushel there. I may make twice that in selling them; but a bushel may last me two, three, or four days.’

As I have already, under the street-sale offish, given an account of the oyster stall-keeper, as well as the stationary dealers in sprats, and the principal varieties of wet fish, there is no necessity for me to continue this part of my subject.

[pp. 115–17] In almost all of the poorer districts of London are to be found ‘nests of Irish’ – as they are called – or courts inhabited solely by the Irish costermongers. These people form separate colonies, rarely visiting or mingling with the English costers. It is curious, on walking through one of these settlements, to notice the manner in which the Irish deal among themselves – street-seller buying of street-seller. Even in some of the smallest courts there may be seen stalls of vegetables, dried herrings, or salt cod, thriving, on the associative principle, by mutual support.

The parts of London that are the most thickly populated with Irish lie about Brook-street, Ratcliff-cross, down both sides of the Commercial-road, and in Rosemary-lane, though nearly all the ‘coster-districts’ have their Irish settlements – Cromer-street, Saffron-hill and King-street, Drury-lane,
for instance, being thickly peopled with the Irish; but the places I have mentioned above are peculiarly distinguished, by being almost entirely populated by visitors from the sister isle.

The same system of immigration is pursued in London as in America. As soon as the first settler is thriving in his newly chosen country, a certain portion of his or her earnings are carefully hoarded up, until they are sufficient to pay for the removal of another member of the family to England; then one of the friends left ‘at home’ is sent for; and thus by degrees the entire family is got over, and once more united.

Perhaps there is no quarter of London where the habits and habitations of the Irish can be better seen and studied than in Rosemary-lane, and the little courts and alleys that spring from it on each side. Some of these courts have other courts branching off from them, so that the locality is a perfect labyrinth of ‘blind alleys’; and when once in the heart of the maze it is difficult to find the path that leads to the main-road. As you walk down ‘the lane’, and peep through the narrow openings between the houses, the place seems like a huge peep-show, with dark holes of gateways to look through, while the court within appears bright with the daylight; and down it are seen rough-headed urchins running with their feet bare through the puddles, and bonnetless girls, huddled in shawls, lolling against the door-posts. Sometimes you see a long narrow alley, with the houses so close together that opposite neighbours are talking from their windows; while the ropes, stretched zig-zag from wall to wall, afford just room enough to dry a blanket or a couple of shirts, that swell out dropsically in the wind.

I visited one of the paved yards round which the Irish live, and found that it had been turned into a complete drying-ground, with shirts, gowns, and petticoats of evey description and colour. The buildings at the end were completely hidden by ‘the things’, and the air felt damp and chilly, and smelt of soap-suds. The gutter was filled with dirty gray water emptied from the wash-tubs, and on the top were the thick bubbles floating about under the breath of the boys ‘playing at boats’ with them.

It is the custom with the inhabitants of these courts and alleys to assemble at the entrance with their baskets, and chat and smoke away the morning. Every court entrance has its little group of girls and women, lolling listlessly against the sides, with their heads uncovered, and their luxuriant hair fuzzy as oakum. It is peculiar with the Irish women that – after having been accustomed to their hoods – they seldom wear bonnets, unless on a long journey. Nearly all of them, too, have a thick plaid shawl, which they keep on all the day through, with their hands
covered under it. At the mouth of the only thoroughfare deserving of the name of street – for a cart could just go through it – were congregated about thirty men and women, who rented rooms in the houses on each side of the road. Six women, with baskets of dried herrings, were crouching in a line on the kerbstone with the fish before them; their legs were drawn up so closely to their bodies that the shawl covered the entire figure, and they looked very like the podgy ‘tombolers’ sold by the Italian boys. As all their wares were alike, it was puzzling work to imagine how, without the strongest opposition, they could each obtain a living. The men were dressed in long-tail coats, with one or two brass buttons. One old dame, with a face wrinkled like a dried plum, had her cloak placed over her head like a hood, and the grisly hair hung down in matted hanks about her face, her black eyes shining between the locks like those of a Skye terrier; beside her was another old woman smoking a pipe so short that her nose reached over the bowl.

After looking at the low foreheads and long bulging upper lips of some of the group, it was pleasant to gaze upon the pretty faces of the one or two girls that lolled against the wall. Their black hair, smoothed with grease, and shining almost as if ‘japanned’, and their large gray eyes with the thick dark fringe of lash, seemed out of place among the hard features of their companions. It was only by looking at the short petticoats and large feet you could assure yourself that they belonged to the same class.

In all the houses that I entered were traces of household care and neatness that I had little expected to have seen. The cupboard fastened in the corner of the room, and stocked with mugs and cups, the mantelpiece with its images, and the walls covered with showy-coloured prints of saints and martyrs, gave an air of comfort that strangely disagreed with the reports of the cabins in ‘ould Ireland’. As the doors to the houses were nearly all of them kept open, I could, even whilst walking along, gain some notion of the furniture of the homes. In one house that I visited there was a family of five persons, living on the ground floor and occupying two rooms. The boards were strewn with red sand, and the front apartment had three beds in it, with the printed curtains drawn closely round. In a dark room, at the back, lived the family itself. It was fitted up as a parlour, and crowded to excess with chairs and tables, the very staircase having pictures fastened against the wooden partition. The fire, although it was midday, and a warm autumn morning, served as much for light as for heat, and round it crouched the mother, children, and visitors, bending over the flame as if in the severest winter time. In a room above this were a man and woman lately arrived in England. The woman sat huddled up
in a corner smoking, with the husband standing over her in, what appeared at first, a menacing attitude; I was informed, however, that they were only planning for the future. This room was perfectly empty of furniture, and the once white-washed walls were black, excepting the little square patches which showed where the pictures of the former tenants had hung. In another room, I found a home so small and full of furniture, that it was almost a curiosity for domestic management. The bed, with its chintz curtains looped up, filled one end of the apartment, but the mattress of it served as a long bench for the visitors to sit on. The table was so large that it divided the room in two, and if there was one picture there must have been thirty – all of ‘holy men’, with yellow glories round their heads. The window-ledge was dressed out with crockery, and in a tumbler were placed the beads. The old dame herself was as curious as her room. Her shawl was fastened over her large frilled cap. She had a little ‘button’ of a nose, with the nostrils entering her face like bullet holes. She wore over her gown an old pilot coat, well-stained with fish slime, and her petticoats being short, she had very much the appearance of a Dutch fisherman or stage smuggler.

Her story was affecting – made more so, perhaps, by the emotional manner in which she related it. Nine years ago ‘the father’ of the district – ‘the Blissed Lady guard him!’ – had found her late at night, rolling in the gutter, and the boys pelting her with orange-peel and mud. She was drunk – ‘the Lorrud pass by her’ – and when she came to, she found herself in the chapel, lying before the sanctuary, ‘under the shadow of the holy cross’. Watching over her was the ‘good father’, trying to bring back her consciousness. He spoke to her of her wickedness, and before she left she took the pledge of temperance. From that time she prospered, and the 1
s
. 6
d
. the ‘father’ gave her ‘had God’s blissin’ in it’, for she became the best dressed woman in the court, and in less than three years had 15
l
. in the savings’ bank, ‘the father – Heaven chirish him’ – keeping her book for her, as he did for other poor people. She also joined ‘the Association of the Blissed Lady’, (and bought herself the dress of the order ‘a beautiful grane vilvit, which she had now, and which same cost her 30
s
.’), and then she was secure against want in old age and sickness. But after nine years prudence and comfort, a brother of hers returned home from the army, with a pension of 1
s
. a day. He was wild, and persuaded her to break her pledge, and in a short time he got all her savings from her and spent every penny. She couldn’t shake him off, ‘for he was the only kin she had on airth’, and ‘she must love her own flish and bones’. Then began her misery. ‘It pleased God to visit her ould limbs with aches and throubles, and
her hips swole with the cowld’, so that she was at last forced into a hospital, and all that was left of her store was ‘aten up by sufferin’s’. This, she assured me, all came about by the ‘good father’s’ leaving that parish for another one, but now he had returned to them again, and, with his help and God’s blessing, she would yet prosper once more.