London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (30 page)

The female street-sellers are again a fluctuating body, as in the summer and autumn months. A large proportion go off to work in market-gardens, in the gathering of peas, beans, and the several fruits; in weeding, in haymaking, in the corn-harvest (when they will endeavour to obtain leave to glean if they are unemployed more profitably), and afterwards in the hopping. The women, however, thus seeking change of employment, are the ruder street-sellers, those who merely buy oranges at 4
d
. to sell at 6
d
., and who do not meddle with any calling mixed up with the necessity of skill in selection, or address in recommending. Of this half-vagrant class, many are not street-sellers usually, but are half prostitutes and half thieves, not unfrequently drinking all their earnings, while of the habitual female street-sellers, I do not think that drunkenness is now a very prevalent vice. Their earnings are small, and if they become habituated to an indulgence in drink, their means are soon dissipated; in which case they are unable to obtain stock-money, and they cease to be street-sellers.

If I may venture upon an estimation, I should say that the women engaged in street sale – wives, widows, and single persons – number from 25,000 to 30,000, and that their average earnings run from 2
s
. 6
d
. to 4
s
. a week.

I shall now proceed to give the histories of individuals belonging to each of the above class of female street-sellers, with the view of illustrating what has been said respecting them generally.

Of a Single Woman, as a Street-seller

[pp. 517–18] I had some difficulty, for the reasons I have stated, in finding a single woman who, by her unaided industry, supported herself on the sale of street merchandise. There were plenty of single young
women so engaged, but they lived, or lodged, with their parents or with one parent, or they had some support, however trifling, from some quarter or other. Among the street-sellers I could have obtained statements from many single women who depended on their daily sale for their daily bread, but I have already given instances of their street life. One Irishwoman, a spinster of about 50, for I had some conversation with her in the course of a former inquiry, had supported herself alone, by street sale, for many years. She sat, literally packed in a sort of hamper-basket, at the corner of Charles-street, Leather-lane. She seemed to fit herself cross-legged, like a Turk, or a tailor on his shop-board, into her hamper; her fruit stall was close by her, and there she seemed to doze away life day by day – for she usually appeared to be wrapped in slumber. If any one approached her stall, however, she seemed to awake, as it were, mechanically. I have missed this poor woman of late, and I believe she only packed herself up in the way described when the weather was cold.

A woman of about 26 or 27 – I may again remark that the regular street-sellers rarely know their age – made the following statement. She was spare and sickly looking, but said that her health was tolerably good.

‘I used to mind my mother’s stall,’ she stated, ‘when I was a girl, when mother wasn’t well or had a little work at pea-shelling or such like. She sold sweet-stuff. No, she didn’t make it, but bought it. I never cared for it, and when I was quite young I’ve sold sweet-stuffs as I never tasted. I never had a father. I can’t read or write, but I like to hear people read. I go to Zion Chapel sometimes of a Sunday night, the singing’s so nice. I don’t know what religion you may call it of, but it’s a Zion Chapel. Mother’s been dead these – well I don’t know how long, but it’s a long time. I’ve lived by myself ever since, and kept myself, and I have half a room with another young woman who lives by making little boxes. I don’t know what sort of boxes. Pill-boxes? Very likely, sir, but I can’t say I ever saw any. She goes out to work on another box-maker’s premises. She’s no better off nor me. We pays 1
s
. 6
d
. a-week between us; it’s my bed, and the other sticks is her’n. We ’gree well enough. I haven’t sold sweet stuff for a great bit. I’ve sold small wares in the streets, and artificials (artificial flowers), and lace, and penny dolls, and penny boxes (of toys). No, I never hear anything improper from young men. Boys has sometimes said, when I’ve been selling sweets, “Don’t look so hard at ’em, or they’ll turn sour.” I never minded such nonsense. I has very few amusements. I goes once or twice a month, or so, to the gallery at the Wick (Victoria Theatre), for I live near. It’s beautiful there. O, it’s really grand. I don’t know what they call what’s played, because I can’t read the bills.

‘I hear what they’re called, but I forgets. I knows Miss Vincent and John Herbert when they come on. I likes them the best. I’m a going to leave the streets. I have an aunt a laundress, because she was mother’s sister, and I always helped her and she taught me laundressing. I work for her three and sometimes four days a-week now, because she’s lost her daughter Ann, and I’m known as a good ironer. Another laundress will employ me next week, so I’m dropping the streets, as I can do far better. I’m not likely to be married and I don’t want to.’

Of a Mechanic’s Wife, as a Street-seller

[pp. 518–21] A middle-aged woman, presenting what may be best understood as a decency of appearance, for there was nothing remarkable in her face or dress, gave me the following account of her experience as a street-seller, and of her feelings when she first became one:

‘I went into service very young in the country,’ she said, ‘but mistress brought me up to London with her, where master had got a situation: the children was so fond of me. I saved a little money in that and other places as girls often does, and they seems not to save it so much for themselves as for others. Father got the first bit of money I saved, or he would have been seized for rent – he was only a working man (agricultural labourer) – and all the rest I scraped went before I’d been married a fortnight, for I got married when I was 24. O no, indeed, I don’t mean that my money was wasted by my husband. It was every farthing laid out in the house, besides what he had, for we took a small house in a little street near the Commercial-road, and let out furnished rooms. We did very well at first with lodgings, but the lodgers were mates of vessels, or people about the river and the docks, and they were always coming and going, and the rooms was often empty, and some went away in debt. My husband is a smith, and was in middling work for a good while. Then he got a job to go with some horses to France, for he can groom a horse as well as shoe it, and he was a long time away, three or four months, for he was sent into another country when he got to France, but I don’t understand the particulars of it. The rooms was empty and the last lodger went away without paying, and I had nothing to meet the quarter’s rent, and the landlord, all of a sudden almost, put in the brokers, for he said my husband would never come back, and perhaps I should be selling the furniture and be off to join him, for he told me it was all a planned thing he knew. And so the furniture was sold for next to nothing, and 1
l
. 6
s
. was given to me after the sale; I suppose that was over when all was paid, but I’d been
forced to part with some linen and things to live upon and pay the rates, that came very heavy. My husband came back to an empty house three days after, and he’d been unlucky, for he brought home only 4
l
. instead of 10
l
. at least, as he expected, but he’d been cheated by the man he went into the other country with. Yes, the man that cheated him was an Englishman, and my poor John was put to great trouble and expense, and was in a strange place without knowing a word of the language. But the foreigners was very kind to him, he said, and didn’t laugh at him when he tried to make hisself understood, as I’ve seen people do here many a time. The landlord gave us 1
l
. to give up the house, as he had a good offer for it, and so we had to start again in the world like.

‘Our money was almost all gone before John got regular work, tho’ he had some odd jobs, and then he had for a good many months the care of a horse and cart for a tradesman in the City. Shortly after that he was laid up a week with a crushed leg, but his master wouldn’t wait a week for him, so he hired another: “I have nothing to say against John,” says he, when I told his master of the accident, “and I’m sorry, very sorry, but my business can’t be hindered by waiting for people getting better of accidents.” John got work at his own business next, but there was always some stopper. He was ill, or I was ill, and if there was 10
s
. in the house, then it went and wasn’t enough. And so we went on for a good many years, I don’t know how many. John kept working among horses and carts, or at his own business, but what with travelling abroad, I suppose, and such like, he got to like best to be in the streets, and he has his health best that way.’ (The husband, it is evident, was afflicted with the restlessness of the tribe.) ‘About seven years ago we were very badly off – no work, and no money, and neither of us well. Then I used to make a few women’s plain night-caps and plain morning caps for servants, and sell them to a shopkeeper, but latterly I couldn’t sell them at all, or get no more than the stuff cost me, without any profit for labour. So at last – and it was on a Friday evening of all unlucky times – my gold wedding-ring that cost 8
s
. 6
d
., and that I’d stuck to all along, had to be pawned for 4
s
. 6
d
. for rent and bread. That
was
a shocking time, sir. We’ve sat in the dark of an evening, for we could get neither coals nor a candle as we was a little in debt, and John said, it was a blessing after all perhaps that we hadn’t no family, for he often, both joking and serious, wished for children, but it wasn’t God’s will you see that we should have any. One morning when I woke very early I found my husband just going out, and when I asked him what sent him out so soon, he says: “It’s for nothing bad, so don’t fret yourself, old gal.” That day he walked all over London and called on
all the masters as had employed him, or knowed him, and told them how he was situated, and said that if he could borrow 20
s
. up and down, he could do a little, he knew – the thought of it came into his mind all of a sudden – in going about with a horse and cart, that he could hire, and sell coals to poor people. He raised 8
s
. 6
d
., I think it was, and started with a quarter of a ton of coals, and then another quarter when the first was sold, and he carried it on for three or four weeks. But the hire of the horse and cart took all the profit, and the poor people wanted credit, besides people must cheat to thrive as sells coals in the street. All this time I could do nothing – though I tried for washing and charing, but I’m slow at washing – but starve at home, and be afraid every knock was the landlord. After that John was employed to carry a very heavy board over his shoulder, and so as to have it read on both sides. It was about an eating-house, and I went with him to give little bills about it to all we met, for it was as much as a man could do to carry the board. He had 1
s
. a day, and I had 6
d
. That was my first time in the streets and I felt so ’shamed to come to that. I thought if I met any people I knew in Essex, or any of my old mistresses, what would they think. Then we had all sorts of jokes to stand. We both looked pinched, and young gents used to say, “Do you dine there yourselves?” and the boys – O, of all the torments! – they’ve shouted out, “Excellent Dining-rooms” that was on the board, sir, “and two jolly speciments of the style of grub!” I could have knocked their saucy heads together. We was resting in the shade one day – and we were anxious to do our best, for 1
s
. 6
d
. a day was a great thing then – and an old gentleman came up and said he was glad to get out of the sun. He looked like a parson, but was a joky man, and he’d been having some wine, I think, he smelled of it so. He began to talk to us and ask us questions, such as you have, sir, and we told him how we was situated. “God bless you,” says he, “for I think you’re honest folks. People that lie don’t talk like you; here’s some loose silver I have,” and he gave John 5
s
. 6
d
. and went away. We could hardly think it was real; it seemed such a lot of money just then, to be got clear all at once. I’ve never seen him since, and never saw him, as I knows of, before, but may God Almighty bless him wherever he is, for I think that 5
s
. 6
d
. put new life into us, and brought a blessing. A relation of John’s came to London not long after and gave him a sovereign and sent him some old clothes, and very good ones, when he went back. Then John hired a barrow – it’s his own now – and started as a costermonger. A neighbour of ourn told him how to do it, and he’s done very well at it since.

‘Well, you know, sir, I couldn’t like to stay at home by myself doing of
a nothing, and I couldn’t get any charing; besides John says, “Why, can’t
you
sell something?” So I made some plain women’s caps, and as we lived in Anne’s-place, Waterloo-road, then, I went into the New Cut with them on a Saturday night. But there was such crowding, and shoving, and shouting, that I was kept under and sold only one cap. I was very much nervoused before I went and thought again – it was very foolish, I know – “if I saw anybody from Essex”, for country people seem to think all their friends in London are making fortunes! Before I went my landlady
would
treat me to a little drop of gin to give me spirits, and “for luck”, but I think it made me more nervoused. I very seldom taste any. And John’s very good that way. He takes his pint or two every now and then, but I know where he uses, and if it gets late I go for him and he comes home. The next time I went to sell in the Cut I got bold, for I knew I was doing nothing but what was honest; I’ve sold caps, and millinery, and laces, and artificial flowers, and such like ever since. We’ve saved a little money now, which is in the bank, thank God, but that’s not done by costering, or by my trade. But my husband buys a poney every now and then, and grooms and fattens it up well, and makes it quite another thing, and so clears a pound or two; he once cleared 3
l
. 15
s
. on it. We don’t go to church or chapel on a Sunday, we’re so tired out after the week’s work. But John reads a tract that a young lady leaves ‘till he falls asleep over it.’