London Labour and the London Poor (Vol. 2 of 4)

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Title: London Labour and the London Poor (Vol. 2 of 4)
Author: Mayhew, Henry
Language: English
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LONDON LABOUR
AND THE LONDON POOR

A Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings

THOSE THAT _WILL_ WORK
THOSE THAT _CANNOT_ WORK, AND
THOSE THAT _WILL NOT_ WORK

BY
HENRY MAYHEW

THE LONDON STREET-FOLK

COMPRISING

STREET SELLERS · STREET BUYERS · STREET FINDERS
STREET PERFORMERS · STREET ARTIZANS · STREET LABOURERS

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

VOLUME TWO

First edition 1851
(_Volume One only and parts of Volumes Two and Three_)
Enlarged edition (Four volumes) 1861-62
New impression 1865

CONTENTS

VOLUME II.

THE STREET-FOLK.

PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND ARTICLES 5
STREET-SELLERS OF LIVE ANIMALS 47
STREET-SELLERS OF MINERAL PRODUCTIONS AND NATURAL CURIOSITIES 81
THE STREET-BUYERS 103
THE STREET-JEWS 115
STREET-FINDERS OR COLLECTORS 136
THE STREETS OF LONDON 181
CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 338
CROSSING SWEEPERS 465

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE
A VIEW IN PETTICOAT-LANE 36
A VIEW IN ROSEMARY-LANE 39
THE STREET DOG-SELLER 54
THE CRIPPLED STREET BIRD-SELLER 66
STREET-SELLER OF BIRDS’-NESTS 72
THE JEW OLD-CLOTHES MAN 118
THE BONE-GRUBBER 138
THE MUD-LARK 155
THE LONDON DUSTMAN 172
VIEW OF A DUST-YARD 208
THE LONDON SCAVENGER 226
STREET ORDERLIES 253
THE ABLE-BODIED PAUPER STREET-SWEEPER 262
THE RUBBISH-CARTER 289
THE LONDON SWEEP 346
ONE OF THE FEW REMAINING CLIMBING-SWEEPS 354
THE MILKMAID’S GARLAND 370
THE SWEEP’S HOME 378
THE SEWER-HUNTER 388
MODE OF CLEANSING CESSPOOLS 406
FLUSHING THE SEWERS 424
THE RAT-CATCHERS OF THE SEWERS 431
LONDON NIGHTMEN 433
THE BEARDED CROSSING-SWEEPER AT THE EXCHANGE 471
THE CROSSING-SWEEPER THAT HAS BEEN A MAID-SERVANT 479
THE IRISH CROSSING-SWEEPER 481
THE ONE-LEGGED CROSSING-SWEEPER AT CHANCERY-LANE 488
THE BOY CROSSING-SWEEPERS 494

LONDON LABOUR
AND
THE LONDON POOR.

VOL. II.

THE STREET-FOLK.
BOOK THE SECOND.

INTRODUCTION.

In commencing a new volume I would devote a few pages to the
consideration of the import of the facts already collected concerning
the London Street-Folk, not only as regards the street-people
themselves, but also in connection with the general society of which
they form so large a proportion.

The precise extent of the proportion which the Street-Traders bear
to the rest of the Metropolitan Population is the first point to be
evolved; for the want, the ignorance, and the vice of a street-life
being in a direct ratio to the numbers, it becomes of capital
importance that we should know how many are seeking to pick up a
livelihood in the public thoroughfares. This is the more essential
because the Government returns never _have_ given us, and probably
never _will_ give us, any correct information respecting it. The
Census of 1841 set down the “Hawkers, Hucksters, and Pedlars” of the
Metropolis as numbering 2045; and from the inquiries I have made among
the street-sellers as to the means taken to obtain a full account
of their numbers for the next population return, the Census of 1851
appears likely to be about as correct in its statements concerning the
Street Traders and Performers as the one which preceded it.

According to the accounts which have been collected during the
progress of this work, the number of the London Street-People, so
far as the inquiry has gone, is upwards of 40,000. This sum is made
up of 30,000 Costermongers; 2000 Street-Sellers of “Green-Stuff,” as
Watercresses, Chickweed, and Groundsell, Turf, &c.; 4000 Street Sellers
of Eatables and Drinkables; 1000 selling Stationery, Books, Papers,
and Engravings in the streets; and 4000 other street-sellers vending
manufactured articles, either of metal, crockery, textile, chemical, or
miscellaneous substances, making altogether 41,000, or in round numbers
say 40,000 individuals. The 30,000 costermongers may be said to include
12,000 men, 6000 women, and 12,000 children.

The above numbers comprise the main body of people selling in
the London streets; hence if we assert that, with the vendors of
second-hand articles, as old metal, glass, linen, clothes, &c., and
mineral productions, such as coke, salt, and sand, there are about
45,000 street-traders in the Metropolis, we shall not, I am satisfied,
be very far from the truth.

The value of the Capital, or Stock in Trade, of these people, though
individually trifling, amounts, collectively, to a considerable sum
of money--indeed, to very nearly 40,000_l._, or at the rate of about
1_l._ per head. Under the term Capital are included the donkeys,
barrows, baskets, stalls, trays, boards, and goods belonging to the
several street-traders; and though the stock of the water-cress, the
small-ware, the lucifer, the flower, or the chickweed and groundsell
seller may not exceed in value 1_s._, and the basket or tray upon
which it is carried barely half that sum, that of the more prosperous
costermonger, possessed of his barrow and donkey; or of the Cheap John,
with his cart filled with hardware; or the Packman, with his bale of
soft wares at his back, may be worth almost as many pounds as the
others are pence.

The gross amount of trade done by the London Street-Sellers in the
course of the year is so large that the mind is at first unable to
comprehend how, without reckless extravagance, want can be in any way
associated with the class. After the most cautious calculation, the
results having been checked and re-checked in a variety of ways, so
that the conclusion arrived at might be somewhat near and certainly
not beyond the truth, it appears that the “_takings_” of the London
Street-Sellers cannot be said to be less than 2,500,000_l._ per annum.
But vast as this sum may seem, and especially when considered as only a
portion of the annual expenditure of the Metropolitan Poor, still, when
we come to spread the gross yearly receipts over 40,000 people, we find
that the individual takings are but 62_l._ per annum, which (allowing
the rate of profit to be in all cases even 50 per cent., though I am
convinced it is often much less) gives to each street-trader an annual
income of 20_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._, or within a fraction of 8_s._ a week,
all the year round. And when we come to deduct from this the loss
by perishable articles, the keep of donkeys, the wear and tear, or
hire, of barrows--the cost of stalls and baskets, together with the
interest on stock-money (generally at the rate of 4_s._ a week--and
often 1_s._ a day--for 1_l._, or 1040_l._ per cent. per annum), we
may with safety assert that the average gain or clear income of the
Metropolitan Street-Sellers is rather under than over 7_s._ 6_d._ a
week. Some of the more expert street-traders may clear 10_s._ or even
15_s._ weekly throughout the year, while the weekly profit of the less
expert, the old people, and the children, may be said to be 3_s._ 6_d._
These incomes, however, are the average of the gross yearly profits
rather than the regular weekly gains; the consequence is, that though
they might be sufficient to keep the majority of the street-sellers in
comparative comfort, were they constant and capable of being relied
upon, from week to week--but being variable and uncertain, and rising
sometimes from nothing in the winter to 1_l._ a week in the summer,
when street commodities are plentiful and cheap, and the poorer classes
have money wherewith to purchase them--and fluctuating moreover, even
at the best of times, according as the weather is wet or fine, and the
traffic of the streets consequently diminished or augmented--it is but
natural that the people subject to such alternations should lack the
prudence and temperance of those whose incomes are more regular and
uniform.

To place the above facts clearly before the reader the following table
has been prepared. The first column states the titles of the several
classes of street-sellers; the second, the number of individuals
belonging to each of these classes; the third, the value of their
respective capitals or stock in trade; the fourth, the gross amount
of trade done by them respectively every year; the fifth, the average
yearly takings of each class; and the sixth, their average weekly
gains. This gives us, as it were, a bird’s-eye view of the earnings
and pecuniary condition of the various kinds of street-sellers already
treated of. It is here cited, as indeed all the statistics in this
work are, as an approximation to the truth rather than a definite and
accurate result.

-------------------------------------+-----------+--------------+----------------------+-----------+---------
| | Gross amount | | |
| Number of | of capital, | | Average |
DESCRIPTION OF CLASS. | Persons | or stock | Gross amount of | yearly | Average
| in each | in trade | trade annually done | receipts | weekly
| Class. | belonging to | by each class. | per head. | gains.
| | each class. | | |
-------------------------------------+-----------+--------------+----------------------+-----------+---------
COSTERMONGERS[1] } | | | £ | |
Street-Sellers of Wet Fish } | | | 1,177,200 } | |
„ „ Dry fish } | | | 127,000 } | |
„ „ Shell Fish } | | | 156,600 } | |
} | | | --------- } | |
} | | | 1,460,800 } | |
„ „ Green Fruit } | | | 332,400 } | |
„ „ Dry Fruit } | 30,000[2] | £25,000 | 1,000 } | £60 | 8_s._
„ „ Vegetables } | | | 292,200 } | |
} | | | --------- } | |
„ „ Game, Poultry, } | | | 625,600 } | |
Rabbits, &c. } | | | 80,000 } | |
} | | | 14,800 } | |
„ „ Flowers, } | | | --------- } | |
Roots &c. } | | | 2,181,200 } | |
| | | | |
STREET-SELLERS OF GREEN STUFF | | | | |
Watercresses[3] | 1,000 | 87 | 13,900 | 13 | 3_s._ 6_d._
Chickweed, Groundsell, and | | | | |
Plantain[4] | 1,000 | 42 | 14,000 | 14 | 5_s._
Turf-Cutters and Sellers | 40 | 20 | 570 | 14 | 5_s._ 6_d._
| | | | |
STREET-SELLERS OF EATABLES AND | | | | |
DRINKABLES | 4,000 | 9,000 | 203,100 | 50 | 10_s._
| | | | |
STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, | | | | |
LITERATURE, AND THE FINE ARTS | 1,000 | 400 | 33,400 | 30 | 8_s._
| | | | |
STREET-SELLERS OF MANUFACTURED | | | | |
ARTICLES of Metal, Crockery | | | | |
and Glass, Textile, Chemical, | | | | |
or Miscellaneous Substances | 4,000 | 2,800 | 188,200 | 47 | 10_s._
-------------------------------------+-----------+--------------+----------------------+-----------+---------
| 41,040 | £37,529 | £2,634,370 | £60 | 8_s._
-------------------------------------+-----------+--------------+----------------------+-----------+---------

Now, according to the above estimate, it would appear that the gross
annual receipts of the entire body of street-sellers (for there are
many besides those above specified--as for instance, the vendors
of second-hand articles, &c.) may be estimated in round numbers at
3,000,000_l._ sterling, and their clear income at about 1,000,000_l._
per annum. Hence, we are enabled to perceive the importance of
the apparently insignificant traffic of the streets; for were the
street-traders to be prohibited from pursuing their calling, and so
forced to apply for relief at the several metropolitan unions, the
poor-rates would be at the least doubled. The total sum expended in
the relief of the London poor, during 1848, was 725,000_l._, but this
we see is hardly three-fourths of the income of the street-traders.
Those, therefore, who would put an end to the commerce of our streets,
should reflect whether they would like to do so at the cost of doubling
the present poor-rates and of reducing one-fortieth part of the entire
metropolitan population from a state of comparative independence to
absolute pauperism.

However unsatisfactory it may be to the aristocratic pride of the
wealthy commercial classes, it cannot be denied that a very important
element of the trade of this vast capital--this marvellous centre of
the commerce of the world--I cite the stereotype phrases of civic
eloquence, for they are at least truths--it is still undeniable, I
say, that a large proportion of the commerce of the capital of Great
Britain is in the hands of the Street-Folk. This simple enunciation
might appear a mere platitude were it not that the street-sellers are
a _proscribed class_. They are driven from stations to which long
possession might have been thought to give them a quasi legal right;
driven from them at the capricious desire of the shopkeepers, some of
whom have had bitter reason, by the diminution of their own business,
to repent their interference. They are bandied about at the will of a
police-officer. They must “move on” and not obstruct a thoroughfare
which may be crammed and blocked with the carriages of the wealthy
until to cross the road on foot is a danger. They are, in fine, a body
numbering thousands, who are allowed to live in the prosecution of
the most ancient of all trades, sale or barter in the open air, _by
sufferance alone_. They are classed as unauthorized or illegal and
intrusive traders, though they _“turn over” millions in a year_.

The authorities, it is true, do not sanction any general arbitrary
enforcement of the legal proscription of the Street-Folk, but they have
no option if a section of shopkeepers choose to say to them, “Drive
away from our doors these street-people.” It appears to be sufficient
for an inferior class of tradesmen--for such the meddlers with the
street-folk generally seem to be--merely to desire such a removal in
order to accomplish it. It is not necessary for them to say in excuse,
“We pay heavy rents, and rates, and taxes, and are forced to let our
lodgings accordingly; we pay for licences, and some of us as well pay
fines for giving short weight to poor people, and that, too, when it
is hardly safe to give short weight to our richer patrons; but what
rates, taxes, or licences do these street-traders pay? Their lodgings
may be dear enough, but their rates are nominally nothing” (being
charged in the rent of their rooms). “From taxes they are blessedly
exempt. They are called upon to pay no imposts on their property or
income; they defray merely the trifling duties on their tobacco, beer,
tea, sugar, coffee” (though these by the way--the chief articles in
the excise and customs returns--make up one-half of the revenue of
the country). “They ought to be put down. _We_ can supply all that is
wanting. What may become of _them_ is simply their own concern.”

The Act 50 Geo. III., c. 41, requires that every person “carrying to
sell or exposing to sale any goods, wares, or merchandize,” shall pay
a yearly duty. But according to s. 23, “nothing in this Act shall
extend to prohibit any person or persons from selling (by hawking in
the streets) any printed papers licensed by authority; or any fish,
fruit, or victuals.” Among the privileged articles are also included
barm or yeast, and coals. The same Act, moreover, contains nothing to
prohibit the maker of any home-manufacture from exposing his goods
to sale in any town-market or fair, nor any tinker, cooper, glazier,
or other artizan, from going about and carrying the materials of his
business. The unlicensed itinerant vendors of such things however as
lucifer-matches, boot-laces, braces, fuzees, or any wares indeed, not
of their own manufacture, are violators of the law, and subject to a
penalty of 10_l._, or three months’ imprisonment for each offence. It
is in practice, however, only in the hawking of such articles as those
on which the duty is heavy and of considerable value to the revenue
(such as tea, tobacco, or cigars), that there is any actual check in
the London streets.

Nevertheless, a large proportion of the street-trading without a
licence is contrary to law, and the people seeking to obtain a living
by such means are strictly liable to fine or imprisonment, while even
those street-traders whom the Act specially exempts--as for instance
the street-sellers of fish, fruit, and vegetables, and of eatables and
drinkables, as well as the street artizans, and who are said to have
the right of “exposing their goods to sale in any market or fair in
every city, borough, town-corporate, and market-town”--even these, I
say, are liable to be punished for obstructing the highway whenever
they attempt to do so.

Now these are surely anomalies which it is high time, in these
free-trade days, should cease. _The endeavour to obtain an honest and
independent livelihood should subject no man to fine or imprisonment_;
nor should the poor hawker--the neediest perhaps of all tradesmen--be
required to pay 4_l._ a year for the liberty to carry on his business
when the wealthy shopkeeper can do so “scot-free.” Moreover, it is a
glaring iniquity that the rich tradesman should have it in his power,
by complaining to the police, to deprive his poorer rival of the
right to dispose of his goods in the streets. It is often said, in
justification, that as the shopkeepers pay the principal portion of
the rates and taxes, _they_ must be protected in the exercise of their
business. But this, in the first place, is far from the truth. As
regards the taxes, the poorer classes pay nearly half of the national
imposts: they pay the chief portion of the malt duty, and that is in
round numbers 5,000,000_l._ a year; the greater part of the spirit
duty, which is 4,350,000_l._; the tobacco duty, 4,250,000_l._; the
sugar duty, 4,500,000_l._; and the duty on tea, 5,330,000_l._; making
altogether 23,430,000_l._, out of about 50,000,000_l._ Concerning the
rates, however, it is not so easy to estimate what proportion the poor
people contribute towards the local burdens of the country; but if
they are householders, they have to pay quota of the parish and county
expenses directly, and, if lodgers, indirectly in the rent of their
apartments. Hence it is evident, that to consider the street-sellers
unworthy of being protected in the exercise of their calling because
they pay neither rates nor taxes, is to commit a gross injustice, not
only to the street-sellers themselves by forcing them to contribute
in their tea and sugar, their beer, gin, and tobacco, towards the
expenses of a Government which exerts itself rather to injure than
benefit them, but likewise to the ratepayers of the parish; for it is
a necessary consequence, if the shopkeepers have the power to deprive
the street-dealers of their living whenever the out-of-door tradesmen
are thought to interfere with the business of those indoors (perhaps
by underselling them), that the street-dealers, being unable to live
by their own labour, must betake themselves to the union and live upon
the labour of the parishioners, and thus the shopkeepers may be said to
enrich themselves at the expense, not only of the poor street-people,
but likewise of their brother ratepayers.

Nor can it be said that the _Street-Sellers_ are interlopers upon these
occasions, for if ancient custom be referred to, it will be found that
the Shopkeepers are the real intruders, they having succeeded the
Hawkers, who were, in truth, the original distributors of the produce
of the country.

But though no body of Shopkeepers, nor, indeed, any other class of
people _individually_, should possess the power to deprive the Hawkers
of what is often the last shift of struggling independence--the sale
of a few goods in the street--still it is evident that the _general_
convenience of the public must be consulted, and that, were the
Street-Traders to be allowed the right of pitching in any thoroughfare
they pleased, many of our principal streets would be blocked up with
costers’ barrows, and the kerb of Regent-street possibly crowded like
that of the New Cut, with the hawkers and hucksters that would be sure
to resort thither; while those thoroughfares which, like Fleet-street
and Cheapside, are now almost impassable at certain times of the day,
from the increased traffic of the City, would be rendered still more
impervious by the throngs of street-sellers that the crowd alone would
be sure to attract to the spot.

Under the circumstances, therefore, it becomes necessary that we
should provide for the vast body of Street-Sellers some authorized
place of resort, where they might be both entitled and permitted to
obtain an honest living according to Act of Parliament. To think for a
moment of “putting down” street-trading is to be at once ignorant of
the numbers and character of the people pursuing it. To pass an Act
declaring 50,000 individuals rogues and vagabonds, would be to fill our
prisons or our workhouses with men who would willingly earn their own
living. Besides, the poor _will_ buy of the poor. Subject the petty
trader to fine and imprisonment as you please, still the very sympathy
and patronage of the petty purchaser will in this country always call
into existence a large body of purveyors to the poorer classes. I
would suggest, therefore, and I do so after much consideration, and
an earnest desire to meet all the difficulties of the case, that a
number of “poor men’s markets” be established throughout London, by
the purchase or rental of plots of ground in the neighbourhood of
the present street-markets; that a small toll be paid by each of the
Street-Sellers attending such markets, for the right to vend their
goods there--that the keeper or beadle of each market be likewise an
Inspector of Weights and Measures, and that any hawker found using
“slangs” of any kind, or resorting to any imposition whatever, be
prohibited entering the market for the future--that the conduct and
regulation of the markets be under the direction of a committee
consisting of an equal number of shareholders, sellers, and working
men--the latter as representatives of the buyers--and that the surplus
funds (if any, after paying all expenses, together with a fair interest
to the shareholders of the market) should be devoted to the education
of the children of the hawkers before and after the hours of sale.
There might also be a penny savings’-bank in connection with each of
the markets, and a person stationed at the gates on the conclusion of
the day’s business, to collect all he could from the hawkers as they
left.

There are already a sufficient number of poor-markets established at
the East end of the town--though of a different character, such as
the Old Clothes Exchange--to prove the practicability of the proposed
plan among even the pettiest traders. And I am convinced, after long
deliberation, that such institutions could not but tend to produce a
rapid and marked improvement in the character of the London Hawkers.

This is the only way evident to me of meeting the evil of our present
street-life--an evil which is increasing every day, and which
threatens, ere long, almost to overwhelm us with its abominations. To
revile the street-people is stark folly. Their ignorance is no demerit
to them, even as it is no merit to us to know the little that we do.
If we really wish the people better, let us, I say again, do for them
what others have done for us, and without which (humiliating as it may
be to our pride) we should most assuredly have been as they are. It is
the continued forgetfulness of this truth--a truth which our wretched
self-conceit is constantly driving from our minds--that prevents our
stirring to improve the condition of these poor people; though, if we
knew but the whole of the facts concerning them, and their sufferings
and feelings, our very fears alone for the safety of the state would
be sufficient to make us do something in their behalf. I am quite
satisfied, from all I have seen, that there are thousands in this great
metropolis ready to rush forth, on the least evidence of a rising of
the people, to commit the most savage and revolting excesses--men who
have no knowledge of the government of the country but as an armed
despotism, preventing their earning their living, and who hate all
law, because it is made to appear to them merely as an organised
tyranny--men, too, who have neither religious nor moral principles to
restrain the exercise of their grossest passions when once roused, and
men who, from our very neglect of them, are necessarily and essentially
the dangerous classes, whose existence we either rail at or deplore.

The rate of increase among the street-traders it is almost impossible
to arrive at. The population returns afford us no data for the
calculation, and the street-people themselves are unable to supply the
least information on the subject; all they can tell us is, that about
20 years ago they took a guinea for every shilling that they get now.
This heavy reduction of their receipts they attribute to the cheapness
of commodities, and the necessity to carry and sell a greater quantity
of goods in order to get the same profit, as well as to the increase
in the number of street-traders; but when questioned as to the extent
of such increase, their answers are of the vaguest possible kind.
Arranging the street-people, however, as we have done, into three
distinct classes, according to the causes which have led to their
induction into a street-life, viz., those who are _born_ and _bred_
to the streets--those who _take_ to the streets--and those who are
_driven_ to the streets, it is evident that the main elements of any
extraordinary increase of the street-folk must be sought for among the
two latter classes. Among the first the increase will, at the utmost,
be at the same rate as the ordinary increase of the population--viz.,
1-1/2 per cent. per annum; for the English costermongers and
street-traders in general appear to be remarkable rather for the small
than the large number of their children, so that, even supposing all
the boys and girls of the street-sellers to be brought up to the
same mode of life as their father, we could not thus account for any
_enormous_ increase among the street-folk. With those, however, who
_take_ to the streets from the love of a “roving life,” or the desire
to “shake a free leg”--to quote the phrases of the men themselves--or
are _driven_ to the streets from an inability to obtain employment
at the pursuit to which they have been accustomed, the case is far
different.

That there is every day a greater difficulty for working men to live
by their labour--either from the paucity of work, or from the scanty
remuneration given for it--surely no one will be disposed to question
when every one is crying out that the country is over-populated.
Such being the case, it is evident that the number of mechanics in
the streets must be daily augmenting, for, as I have before said,
street-trading is the last shift of an unemployed artizan to keep
himself and his family from the “Union.” The workman out of work,
sooner than starve or go to the parish for relief, takes to making
up and vending on his own account the articles of his craft, whilst
the underpaid workman, sooner than continue toiling from morning till
midnight for a bare subsistence, resorts to the easier trade of buying
and selling. Again, even among the less industrious of the working
classes, the general decline in wages has tended, and is continually
tending, to make their labour more and more irksome to them. There is
a cant abroad at the present day, that there is a special pleasure in
industry, and hence we are taught to regard all those who object to
work as appertaining to the class of natural vagabonds; but where is
the man among us that loves labour? for work or labour is merely that
which is irksome to perform, and which every man requires a certain
amount of remuneration to induce him to perform. If men really loved
work they would pay to be allowed to do it rather than require to be
paid for doing it. That occupation which is agreeable to us we call
amusement, and that and that only which is disagreeable we term labour,
or drudgery, according to the intensity of its irksomeness. Hence as
the amount of remuneration given by way of inducement to a man to go
through a certain amount of work becomes reduced, so does the stimulus
to work become weakened, and this, through the decline of wages, is
what is daily taking place among us. Our operatives are continually
ceasing to be producers, and passing from the creators of wealth
into the exchangers or distributors of it; becoming mere tradesmen,
subsisting on the labour of other people rather than their own, and
so adding to the very non-producers, the great number of whom is the
main cause of the poverty of those who make all our riches. To teach
a people the difficulty of living by labour is to inculcate the most
dangerous of all lessons, and this is what we are daily doing. Our
trading classes are increasing at a most enormous rate, and so giving
rise to that exceeding competition, and consequently, to that continual
reduction of prices--all of which must ultimately fall upon the working
man. This appears to me to be the main cause of the increase of the
London street people, and one for which I candidly confess I see no
remedy.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND ARTICLES.

I have already treated of the street-commerce in such things as
are presented to the public in the form in which they are to be
cooked, eaten, drank, or used. They have comprised the necessaries,
delicacies, or luxuries of the street; they have been either the raw
food or preparations ready cooked or mixed for immediate consumption,
as in the case of the street eatables and drinkables; or else they were
the proceeds of taste (or its substitute) in art or literature, or of
usefulness or ingenuity in manufacture.

All these many objects of street-commerce may be classified in one
well-known word: they are bought and sold _first-hand_. I have next
to deal with the _second-hand_ sellers of our streets; and in this
division perhaps will be found more that is novel, curious, and
interesting, than in that just completed.

Mr. Babbage, in his “Economy of Machinery and Manufactures,” says,
concerning the employment of materials of little value: “The worn-out
saucepan and tin-ware of our kitchens, when beyond the reach of the
tinker’s art, are not utterly worthless. We sometimes meet carts loaded
with old tin kettles and worn-out iron coal-skuttles traversing our
streets. These have not yet completed their useful course; the less
corroded parts are cut into strips, punched with small holes, and
varnished with a coarse black varnish for the use of the trunk-maker,
who protects the edges and angles of his boxes with them; the remainder
are conveyed to the manufacturing chemists in the outskirts, who employ
them in combination with pyroligneous acid, in making a black dye for
the use of calico-printers.”

Mr. Babbage has here indicated one portion of the nature of the
street-trade in second-hand articles--the application of worn-out
materials to a new purpose. But this second-hand commerce of the
streets--for a street-commerce it mainly is, both in selling and
buying--has a far greater extent than that above indicated, and many
ramifications. Under the present head I shall treat only of street
_sellers_, unless when a street _purchase_ may be so intimately
connected with a street _sale_ that for the better understanding of the
subject it may be necessary to sketch both. Of the STREET-BUYERS and
the STREET-FINDERS, or COLLECTORS, both connected with the second-hand
trade, I shall treat separately.

In London, where many, in order to live, struggle to extract a meal
from the possession of an article which seems utterly worthless,
nothing must be wasted. Many a thing which in a country town is
kicked by the penniless out of their path even, or examined and left
as meet only for the scavenger’s cart, will in London be snatched
up as a prize; it is money’s worth. A crushed and torn bonnet, for
instance, or, better still, an old hat, napless, shapeless, crownless,
and brimless, will be picked up in the street, and carefully placed
in a bag with similar things by one class of street-folk--the
STREET-FINDERS. And to tempt the well-to-do to _sell_ their second-hand
goods, the street-trader offers the barter of shapely china or shining
glass vessels; or blooming fuchsias or fragrant geraniums for “the
rubbish,” or else, in the spirit of the hero of the fairy tale, he
exchanges, “new lamps for old.”

Of the street sale of second-hand articles, with all the collateral or
incidental matter bearing immediately on the subject, I shall treat
under the following heads, or under such heads as really constitute
the staple of the business, dismissing such as may be trifling or
exceptional. Of these traffickers, then, there are five classes, the
mere enumeration of the objects of their traffic being curious enough:--

1. _The Street-Sellers of Old Metal Articles_, such as knives, forks,
and butchers’ steels; saws, hammers, pincers, files, screw-drivers,
planes, chisels, and other tools (more frequently those of the workers
in wood than of other artisans); old scissors and shears; locks,
keys, and hinges; shovels, fire-irons, trivets, chimney-cranes,
fenders, and fire-guards; warming-pans (but rarely now); flat and
Italian irons, curling-tongs; rings, horse-shoes, and nails; coffee
and tea-pots, urns, trays, and canisters; pewter measures; scales and
weights; bed-screws and keys; candlesticks and snuffers; niggards,
generally called niggers (_i. e._, false bottoms for grates); tobacco
and snuff-boxes and spittoons; door-plates, numbers, knockers, and
escutcheons; dog-collars and dog-chains (and other chains); gridirons;
razors; coffee-mills; lamps; swords and daggers; gun and pistol-barrels
and locks (and occasionally the entire weapon); bronze and cast metal
figures; table, chair, and sofa castors; bell-pulls and bells; the
larger buckles and other metal (most frequently brass) articles of
harness furniture; compositors’ sticks (the depositories of the type
in the first instance); the multifarious kinds of tin-wares; stamps;
cork-screws; barrel-taps; ink-stands; a multiplicity of culinary
vessels and of old metal lids; footmen, broken machinery, and parts of
machinery, as odd wheels, and screws of all sizes, &c., &c.

2. _The Street-Sellers of Old Linen, Cotton, and Woollen Articles_,
such as old sheeting for towels; old curtains of dimity, muslin,
cotton, or moreen; carpeting; blanketing for house-scouring cloths;
ticking for beds and pillows; sacking for different purposes, according
to its substance and quality; fringes; and stocking-legs for the supply
of “jobbing worsted,” and for re-footing.

I may here observe that in the street-trade, second-hand linen
or cotton is often made to pay a double debt. The shirt-collars
sold, sometimes to a considerable extent and very cheap, in the
street-markets, are made out of linen which has previously been used in
some other form; so is it with white waistcoats and other habiliments.
Of the street-folk who vend such wares I shall speak chiefly in the
fourth division of this subject, viz. the second-hand street-sellers of
miscellaneous articles.

3. _The Street-Sellers of Old Glass and Crockery_, including the
variety of bottles, odd, or in sets, or in broken sets; pans, pitchers,
wash-hand basins, and other crockery utensils; china ornaments;
pier, convex, and toilet glasses (often without the frames); pocket
ink-bottles; wine, beer, and liqueur glasses; decanters; glass
fish-bowls (occasionally); salt-cellars; sugar-basins; and lamp and gas
glasses.

4. _The Street-Sellers of Miscellaneous Articles._ These are such as
cannot properly be classed under any of the three preceding heads,
and include a mass of miscellaneous commodities: Accordions and other
musical instruments; brushes of all descriptions; shaving-boxes
and razor-strops; baskets of many kinds; stuffed birds, with and
without frames; pictures, with and without frames; desks, work-boxes,
tea-caddies, and many articles of old furniture; boot-jacks and hooks;
shoe-horns; cartouche-boxes; pocket and opera glasses; rules, and
measures in frames; backgammon, and chess or draught boards and men,
and dice; boxes of dominoes; cribbage-boards and boxes, sometimes
with old packs of cards; pope-boards (boards used in playing the
game of “Pope,” or “Pope Joan,” though rarely seen now); “fish,” or
card counters of bone, ivory, or mother of pearl (an equal rarity);
microscopes (occasionally); an extensive variety of broken or faded
things, new or long kept, such as magic-lanterns, dissected maps or
histories, &c., from the toy warehouses and shops; Dutch clocks;
barometers; wooden trays; shells; music and books (the latter being
often odd volumes of old novels); tee-totums, and similar playthings;
ladies’ head-combs; umbrellas and parasols; fishing-rods and nets;
reins, and other parts of cart, gig, and “two-horse” harness; boxes
full of “odds and ends” of old leather, such as water-pipes; and a mass
of imperfect metal things, which had “better be described,” said an old
dealer, “as from a needle to an anchor.”

5. _The Street-Sellers of Old Apparel_, including the body habiliments,
constituting alike men’s, women’s, boys’, girls’, and infants’ attire:
as well as hats, caps, gloves, belts, and stockings; shirts and
shirt-fronts (“dickeys”); handkerchiefs, stocks, and neck-ties; furs,
such as victorines, boas, tippets, and edgings; beavers and bonnets;
and the other several, and sometimes not easily describable, articles
which constitute female fashionable or ordinary wear.

I may here observe, that of the wares which once formed a portion of
the stock of the street-sellers of the fourth and fifth divisions,
but which are now no longer objects of street sale, were, till within
the last few years, fans; back and shoulder boards (to make girls
grow straight!); several things at one time thought indispensable to
every well-nurtured child, such as a coral and bells; belts, sashes,
scabbards, epaulettes, feathers or plumes, hard leather stocks, and
other indications of the volunteer, militia, and general military
spirit of the early part of the present century.

* * * * *

Before proceeding immediately with my subject, I may say a few words
concerning what is, in the estimation of some, a _second-hand_ matter.
I allude to the many uses to which that which is regarded, and indeed
termed, “offal,” or “refuse,” or “waste,” is put in a populous city.
This may be evidenced in the multiform uses to which the “offal” of
the animals which are slaughtered for our use are put. It is still
more curiously shown in the uses of the offal of the animals which are
killed, not for our use, but for that of our dogs and cats; and to this
part of the subject I shall more especially confine the remarks I have
to make. My observations on the uses of other waste articles will be
found in another place.

What in the butcher’s trade is considered the offal of a bullock, was
explained by Mr. Deputy Hicks, before the last Select Committee of
the House of Commons on Smithfield Market: “The carcass,” he said,
“as it hangs clear of everything else, is the carcass, and all else
constitutes the offal.”

The carcass may be briefly termed the four quarters, whereas the offal
then comprises the hide, which in the average-sized bullock that is
slaughtered in London is worth 12_s._; but with the hide are sold the
horns, which are worth about 10_d._ to the comb-makers, who use them
to make their “tortoise-shell” articles, and for similar purposes.
The hoofs are worth 2_d._ to the glue-makers, or prussiate of potash
manufacturers. What “comes out of a bullock,” to use the trade term,
is the liver, the lights (or lungs), the stomach, the intestinal canal
(sometimes 36 yards when extended), and the gall duct. These portions,
with the legs (called “feet” in the trade), form what is styled the
tripe-man’s portion, and are disposed of to him by the butcher for
5_s._ 6_d._ Separately, the value of the liver is 8_d._, of the lights,
6_d._ (both for dogs’-meat), and of the legs which are worked into
tooth-brush handles, dominoes, &c., 1_s._ The remaining 3_s._ 4_d._ is
the worth of the other portion. The heart averages rather more than
1_s._; the kidneys the same; the head, 1_s._ 9_d._; the blood (which
is “let down the drain” in all but the larger slaughtering houses)
1-1/2_d._ (being 3_d._ for 9 gallons); the tallow (7 stone) 14_s._; and
the tail, I was told, “from nothing to 2_s._,” averaging about 6_d._;
the tongue, 2_s._ 6_d._ Thus the offal sells, altogether, first hand,
for 1_l._ 18_s._ 6_d._

I will now show the uses to which what is far more decidedly pronounced
“offal,” and what is much more “second-hand” in popular estimation,
viz., a dead horse, is put, and even a dead horse’s offal, and I will
then show the difference in this curious trade between the Parisian and
London horse offal.

The greatest horse-slaughtering establishments in France are at
Montfaucon, a short distance from the capital. When the animal has been
killed, it is “cut up,” and the choicer portions of the flesh are eaten
by the work-people of the establishment, and by the hangers-on and
jobbers who haunt the locality of such places, and are often men of a
desperate character. The rest of the carcass is sold for the feeding of
dogs, cats, pigs, and poultry, a portion being also devoted to purposes
of manure. The flesh on a horse of average size and fatness is 350
lbs., which sells for 1_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._ But this is only one of the
uses of the dead animal.

The skin is sold to a tanner for 10_s._ 6_d._ The hoofs to a
manufacturer of sal ammonia, or similar preparations, or of Prussian
blue, or to a comb or toy-maker, for 1_s._ 4_d._ The old shoes and the
shoe-nails are worth 2-1/2_d._ The hair of the mane and tail realizes
1-1/2_d._ The tendons are disposed of, either fresh or dried, to
glue-makers for 3_d._--a pound of dried tendons (separated from the
muscles) being about the average per horse. The bones are bought by
the turners, cutlers, fan-makers, and the makers of ivory black and sal
ammoniac, 90 lbs. being an average weight of the animal’s bones, and
realizing 2_s._ The intestines wrought into the different preparations
required of the gut-makers, or for manure, are worth 2_d._

The blood is used by the sugar-refiners, and by the fatteners of
poultry, pigeons, and turkeys (which devour it greedily), or else for
manure. When required for manure it is dried--20 lbs. of dried blood,
which is the average weight, being worth 1_s._ 9_d._ The fat is removed
from the carcass and melted down. It is in demand for the making of
gas, of soap, and (when very fine) of--bear’s grease; also for the
dubbing or grease applied to harness and to shoe-leather. This fat when
consumed in lamps communicates a greater portion of heat than does
oil, and is therefore preferred by the makers of glass toys, and by
enamellers and polishers. A horse at Montfaucon has been known to yield
60 lbs. of fat, but this is an extreme case; a yield of 12 lbs. is the
produce of a horse in fair condition, but at these slaughterhouses
there are so many lean and sorry jades that 8 lbs. may be taken as
an average of fat, and at a value of 6_d._ per lb. Nor does the list
end here; the dead and putrid flesh is made to teem with life, and to
produce food for other living creatures. A pile of pieces of flesh,
six inches in height, layer on layer, is slightly covered with hay or
straw; the flies soon deposit their eggs in the attractive matter,
and thus maggots are bred, the most of which are used as food for
pheasants, and in a smaller degree of domestic fowls, and as baits for
fish. These maggots give, or are supposed to give, a “game flavour” to
poultry, and a very “high” flavour to pheasants. One horse’s flesh thus
produces maggots worth 1_s._ 5_d._ The total amount, then, realized on
the dead horse, which may cost 10_s._ 6_d._, is as follows:--

£ _s._ _d._

The flesh 1 12 6
The skin 0 10 6
The hoofs 0 1 4
The shoes and nails 0 0 2-1/2
The mane and tail 0 0 1-1/2
The tendons 0 0 3
The bones 0 2 0
The intestines 0 0 2
The blood 0 1 9
The fat 0 4 0
The maggots 0 1 5
-----------
£2 14 3

The carcass of a French horse is also made available in another
way, and which relates to a subject I have lately treated of--the
destruction of rats; but this is not a regularly-accruing emolument.
Montfaucon swarms with rats, and to kill them the carcass of a horse
is placed in a room, into which the rats gain access through openings
in the floor contrived for the purpose. At night the rats are lured by
their keenness of scent to the room, and lured in numbers; the openings
are then closed, and they are prisoners. In one room 16,000 were killed
in four weeks. The Paris furriers gave from three to four francs for
100 skins, so that, taking the average at 3_s._ of our money, 16,000
rat-skins would return 24_l._

In London the uses of the dead horse’s flesh, bones, blood, &c., are
different.

Horse-flesh is not--as yet--a portion of human food in this country. In
a recent parliamentary inquiry, witnesses were examined as to whether
horse-flesh was used by the sausage-makers. There was some presumption
that such might be the case, but no direct evidence. I found, however,
among butchers who had the best means of knowing, a strong conviction
that such _was_ the case. One highly-respectable tradesman told me
he was as certain of it as that it was the month of June, though, if
called upon to produce legal evidence proving either that such was the
sausage-makers’ practice, or that this _was_ the month of June, he
might fail in both instances.

I found among street-people who dealt in provisions a strong, or, at
any rate, a strongly-expressed, opinion that the tongues, kidneys, and
hearts of horses were sold as those of oxen. One man told me, somewhat
triumphantly, as a result of his ingenuity in deduction, that he had
thoughts at one time of trying to establish himself in a cats’-meat
walk, and made inquiries into the nature of the calling: “I’m satisfied
the ’osses’ ’arts,” he said, “is sold for beastesses’; ’cause you see,
sir, there’s nothing as ’ud be better liked for favourite cats and pet
dogs, than a nice piece of ’art, but ven do you see the ’osses’ ’arts
on a barrow? If they don’t go to the cats, vere does they go to? Vy, to
the Christians.”

I am assured, however, by tradesmen whose interest (to say nothing of
other considerations) would probably make them glad to expose such
practices, that this substitution of the equine for the bovine heart is
not attempted, and is hardly possible. The bullock’s heart, kidneys,
and tongue, are so different in shape (the heart, more especially), and
in the colour of the fat, while the rough tip of the ox’s tongue is not
found in that of the horse, that this second-hand, or offal kind of
animal food could not be palmed off upon any one who had ever purchased
the heart, kidneys, or tongue of an ox. “If the horse’s tongue be used
as a substitute for that of any other,” said one butcher to me, “it
is for the dried reindeer’s--a savoury dish for the breakfast table!”
Since writing the above, I have had convincing proof given me that the
horses’ tongues are cured and sold as “neats.” The heart and kidneys
are also palmed, I find, for those of oxen!! Thus, in one respect,
there is a material difference between the usages, in respect of this
food, between Paris and London.

One tradesman, in a large way of business--with many injunctions that
I should make no allusion that might lead to his being known, as
he said it might be his ruin, even though he never slaughtered the
meat he sold, but was, in fact, a dead salesman or a vendor of meat
consigned to him--one tradesman, I say, told me that he fancied there
was an _unreasonable_ objection to the eating of horse-flesh among us.
The horse was quite as dainty in his food as the ox, he was quite
as graminivorous, and shrunk more, from a nicer sense of smell, from
anything pertaining to a contact with animal food than did the ox. The
principal objection lies in the number of diseased horses sold at the
knackers. My informant reasoned only from analogy, as he had never
tasted horse-flesh; but a great-uncle of his, he told me, had relished
it highly in the peninsular war.

The uses to which a horse’s carcass are put in London are these:--The
skin, for tanning, sells for 6_s._ as a low average; the hoofs, for
glue, are worth 2_d._; the shoes and nails, 1-1/2_d._; the mane and
tail, 1-1/2_d._; the bones, which in London (as it was described to
me) are “cracked up” for manure, bring 1_s._ 6_d._; the fat is melted
down and used for cart-grease and common harness oil; one person
acquainted with the trade thought that the average yield of fat was 10
lbs. per horse (“taking it low”), another that it was 12 lbs. (“taking
it square”), so that if 11 lbs. be accepted as an average, the fat,
at 2_d._ per lb., would realize 1_s._ 10_d._ Of the tendons no use
is made; of the blood none; and no maggots are reared upon putrid
horse-flesh, but a butcher, who had been twenty years a farmer also,
told me that he knew from experience that there was nothing so good as
maggots for the fattening of poultry, and he thought, from what I told
him of maggot-breeding in Montfaucon, that we were _behind_ the French
in this respect.

Thus the English dead horse--the vendor receiving on an average 1_l._
from the knacker,--realizes the following amount, without including the
knacker’s profit in disposing of the flesh to the cats’-meat man; but
computing it merely at 2_l._ we have the subjoined receipts:--

£ _s._ _d._
The flesh (averaging 2 cwt.,
sold at 2-1/2_d._ per lb.) 2 0 0
The skin 0 6 0
The hoofs 0 0 2
The shoes and nails 0 0 1-1/2
The bones 0 1 6
The fat 0 1 10
The tendons 0 0 0
The tongue, &c. ----------------- ?
The blood 0 0 0
The intestines 0 0 0
-----------------
£2 9 7-1/2

The French dead horse, then, is made a source of nearly 5_s._
higher receipt than the English. On my inquiring the reason of this
difference, and why the blood, &c., were not made available, I was
told that the demand by the Prussian blue manufacturers and the sugar
refiners was so fully supplied, and over-supplied, from the great
cattle slaughter-houses, that the private butchers, for the trifling
sum to be gained, let the blood be wasted. One bullock slaughterer
in Fox and Knot-yard, who kills 180 cattle in a week, receives only
1_l._ for the blood of the whole number, which is received in a well
in the slaughter-house. The amount paid for blood a few years back was
more than double its present rate. Under these circumstances, I was
told, it would be useless trying to turn the wasted offal of a horse
to any profitable purpose. There is, I am told, on an average, 1000
horses slaughtered every week in London, and this, at 2_l._ 10_s._
each animal, would make the value of the dead horses of the metropolis
amount to 130,000_l._ per annum.

Were it not that I might be dwelling too long on the subject, I might
point out how the offal of the skins was made to subserve other
purposes from the Bermondsey tan-yards; and how the parings and
scrapings went to the makers of glue and size, and the hair to the
builders to mix with lime, &c., &c.

I may instance another thing in which the worth of what in many places
is valueless refuse is exemplified, in the matter of “waste,” as
waste paper is always called in the trade. Paper in all its glossiest
freshness is but a reproduction of what had become in some measure
“waste,” viz. the rags of the cotton or linen fabric after serving
their original purpose. There is a body of men in London who occupy
themselves entirely in collecting waste paper. It is no matter of what
kind; a small prayer-book, a once perfumed and welcome love-note,
lawyers’ or tailors’ bills, acts of parliament, and double sheets of
the _Times_, form portions of the waste dealer’s stock. Tons upon tons
are thus consumed yearly. Books of every description are ingredients
of this waste, and in every language; modern poems or pamphlets and
old romances (perfect or imperfect), Shakespeare, Molière, Bibles,
music, histories, stories, magazines, tracts to convert the heathen
or to prove how easily and how immensely our national and individual
wealth might be enhanced, the prospectuses of a thousand companies,
each certain to prove a mine of wealth, schemes to pay off the national
debt, or recommendations to wipe it off, auctioneers’ catalogues and
long-kept letters, children’s copy-books and last century ledgers,
printed effusions which have progressed no further than the unfolded
sheets, uncut works and books mouldy from age--all these things are
found in the insatiate bag of the waste collector, who of late has
been worried because he could not supply enough! “I don’t know how it
is, sir,” said one waste collector, with whom I had some conversation
on the subject of street-sold books, with which business he was also
connected, “I can’t make it out, but paper gets scarcer or else I’m out
of luck. Just at this time my family and me really couldn’t live on my
waste if we had to depend entirely upon it.”

I am assured that in no place in the world is this traffic carried on
to anything approaching the extent that it is in London. When I treat
of the street-buyers I shall have some curious information to publish
on the subject. I do but allude to it here as one strongly illustrative
of “second-hand” appliances.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND METAL ARTICLES.

I have in the preceding remarks specified the wares sold by the vendors
of the second-hand articles of metal manufacture, or (as they are
called in the streets) the “old metal” men. The several articles I
have specified may never be all found at one time upon one stall, but
they are all found on the respective stalls. “Aye, sir,” said one old
man whom I conversed with, “and there’s more things every now and then
comes to the stalls, and there used to be still more when I were young,
but I can’t call them all to mind, for times is worse with me, and so
my memory fails. But there used to be a good many bayonets, and iron
tinder-boxes, and steels for striking lights; I can remember them.”

Some of the sellers have strong heavy barrows, which they wheel from
street to street. As this requires a considerable exertion of strength,
such part of the trade is carried on by strong men, generally of the
costermongering class. The weight to be propelled is about 300 lbs. Of
this class there are now a few, rarely more than half-a-dozen, who sell
on commission in the way I have described concerning the swag-barrowmen.

These are the “old metal swags” of street classification, but their
remuneration is less fixed than that of the other swag-barrowmen. It is
sometimes a quarter, sometimes a third, and sometimes even a half of
the amount taken. The men carrying on this traffic are the servants of
the marine-store dealers, or vendors of old metal articles, who keep
shops. If one of these people be “lumbered up,” that is, if he find
his stock increase too rapidly, he furnishes a barrow, and sends a man
into the streets with it, to sell what the shopkeeper may find to be
excessive. Sometimes if the tradesman can gain only the merest trifle
more than he could gain from the people who buy for the melting-pot, he
is satisfied.

There is, or perhaps was, an opinion prevalent that the street “old
metals” in this way of business got rid of stolen goods in such a
manner as the readiest mode of sale, some of which were purposely
rusted, and sold at almost any price, so that they brought but a profit
to the “fence,” whose payment to the thief was little more than the
price of old metal at the foundry. I understand, however, that this
course is not now pursued, nor is it likely that it ever was pursued to
any extent. The street-seller is directly under the eye of the police,
and when there is a search for stolen goods, it is not very likely that
they would be paraded, however battered or rusted for the purpose,
before men who possessed descriptions of all goods stolen. Until the
establishment of the present system of police, this might have been
an occasional practice. One street-seller had even heard, and he “had
it from the man what did it,” that a last-maker’s shop was some years
back broken into in the expectation that money would be met with, but
none was found; and as the thieves could not bring away such heavy
lumbering things as lasts, they cursed their ill-luck, and brought
away such tools as they could stow about their persons, and cover with
their loose great coats. These were the large knives, fixed to swivels,
and resembling a small scythe, used by the artizan to rough hew the
block of beech-wood; and a variety of excellent rasps and files (for
they must be of the best), necessary for the completion of the last.
These very tools were, in ten days after the robbery, sold from a
street-barrow.

The second-hand metal goods are sold from stalls as well as from
barrows, and these stalls are often tended by women whose husbands may
be in some other branch of street-commerce. One of these stalls I saw
in the care of a stout elderly Jewess, who was fast asleep, nodding
over her locks and keys. She was awakened by the passing policeman,
lest her stock should be pilfered by the boys: “Come, wake up, mother,
and shake yourself,” he said, “I shall catch a weazel asleep next.”

Some of these barrows and stalls are heaped with the goods, and some
are very scantily supplied, but the barrows are by far the best
stocked. Many of them (especially the swag) look like collections of
the different stages of rust, from its incipient spots to its full
possession of the entire metal. But amongst these seemingly useless
things there is a gleam of brass or plated ware. On one barrow I saw an
old brass door-plate, on which was engraven the name of a late learned
judge, Baron B----; another had formerly announced the residence of a
dignitary of the church, the Rev. Mr. ----.

The second-hand metal-sellers are to be seen in all the street-markets,
especially on the Saturday nights; also in Poplar, Limehouse, and the
Commercial-road, in Golden-lane, and in Old-street and Old-street-road,
St. Luke’s, in Hoxton and Shoreditch, in the Westminster Broadway,
and the Whitechapel-road, in Rosemary-lane, and in the district
where perhaps every street calling is pursued, but where some
special street-trades seem peculiar to the genius of the place, in
Petticoat-lane. A person unacquainted with the last-named locality may
have formed an opinion that Petticoat-lane is merely a lane or street.
But Petticoat-lane gives its name to a little district. It embraces
Sandys-row, Artillery-passage, Artillery-lane, Frying-pan-alley,
Catherine Wheel-alley, Tripe-yard, Fisher’s-alley, Wentworth-street,
Harper’s-alley, Marlborough-court, Broad-place, Providence-place,
Ellison-street, Swan-court, Little Love-court, Hutchinson-street,
Little Middlesex-street, Hebrew-place, Boar’s-head-yard,
Black-horse-yard, Middlesex-street, Stoney-lane, Meeting-house-yard,
Gravel-lane, White-street, Cutler-street, and Borer’s-lane, until the
wayfarer emerges into what appears the repose and spaciousness of
Devonshire-square, Bishopsgate-street, up Borer’s-lane, or into what
in the contrast really looks like the aristocratic thoroughfare of the
Aldgate High-street, down Middlesex-street; or into Houndsditch through
the halls of the Old Clothes Exchange.

All these narrow streets, lanes, rows, passages, alleys, yards, courts,
and places, are the sites of the street-trade carried on in this
quarter. The whole neighbourhood rings with street cries, many uttered
in those strange east-end Jewish tones which do not sound like English.
Mixed with the incessant invitations to buy Hebrew dainties, or the
“sheepest pargains,” is occasionally heard the guttural utterance
of the Erse tongue, for the “native Irish,” as they are sometimes
called, are in possession of some portion of the street-traffic of
Petticoat-lane, the original Rag Fair. The savour of the place is
moreover peculiar. There is fresh fish, and dried fish, and fish being
fried in a style peculiar to the Jews; there is the fustiness of old
clothes; there is the odour from the pans on which (still in the Jewish
fashion) frizzle and hiss pieces of meat and onions; puddings are
boiling and enveloped in steam; cakes with strange names are hot from
the oven; tubs of big pickled cucumbers or of onions give a sort of
acidity to the atmosphere; lemons and oranges abound; and altogether
the scene is not only such as can only be seen in London, but only such
as can be seen in this one part of the metropolis.

When I treat of the street-Jews, I shall have information highly
curious to communicate, and when I come to the fifth division of my
present subject, I shall more particularly describe Petticoat-lane, as
the head-quarters of the second-hand clothes business.

I have here alluded to the character of this quarter as being one
much resorted to formerly, and still largely used by the sellers of
second-hand metal goods. Here I was informed that a strong-built man,
known as Jack, or (appropriately enough) as Iron Jack, had, until
his death six or seven years ago, one of the best-stocked barrows in
London. This, in spite of remonstrances, and by a powerful exercise of
his strength, the man lifted, as it were, on to the narrow foot-path,
and every passer-by had his attention directed almost perforce to the
contents of the barrow, for he must make a “_detour_” to advance on
his way. One of this man’s favourite pitches was close to the lofty
walls of what, before the change in their charter, was one of the
East India Company’s vast warehouses. The contrast to any one who
indulged a thought on the subject--and there is great food for thought
in Petticoat-lane--was striking enough. Here towered the store-house
of costly teas, and silks, and spices, and indigo; while at its foot
was carried on the most minute, and apparently worthless of all
street-trades, rusty screws and nails, such as only few would care to
pick up in the street, being objects of earnest bargaining!

An experienced man in the business, who thought he was “turned 50, or
somewhere about that,” gave me the following account of his trade, his
customers, &c.

“I’ve been in most street-trades,” he said, “and was born to it, like,
for my mother was a rag-gatherer--not a bad business once--and I helped
her. I never saw my father, but he was a soldier, and it’s supposed
lost his life in foreign parts. No, I don’t remember ever having heard
what foreign parts, and it don’t matter. Well, perhaps, this is about
as tidy a trade for a bit of bread as any that’s going now. Perhaps
selling fish may be better, but that’s to a man what knows fish well.
I can’t say I ever did. I’m more a dab at cooking it (with a laugh). I
like a bloater best on what’s an Irish gridiron. Do you know what that
is, sir? I know, though I’m not Irish, but I married an Irish wife, and
as good a woman as ever was a wife. It’s done on the tongs, sir, laid
across the fire, and the bloater’s laid across the tongs. Some says
it’s best turned and turned very quick on the coals themselves, but
the tongs is best, for you can raise or lower.” [My informant seemed
interested in his account of this and other modes of cookery, which I
need not detail.] “This is really a very trying trade. O, I mean it
tries a man’s patience so. Why, it was in Easter week a man dressed
like a gentleman--but I don’t think he was a real gentleman--looked
out some bolts, and a hammer head, and other things, odds and ends,
and they came to 10-1/2_d._ He said he’d give 6_d._ ‘Sixpence!’ says
I; ‘why d’ you think I stole ’em?’ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘if I didn’t think
you’d stole ’em, I shouldn’t have come to _you_.’ I don’t think he was
joking. Well, sir, we got to high words, and I said, ‘Then I’m d--d
if you have them for less than 1_s._’ And a bit of a crowd began to
gather, they was most boys, but the p’liceman came up, as slow as you
please, and so my friend flings down 1_s._, and puts the things in his
pocket and marches off, with a few boys to keep him company. That’s the
way one’s temper’s tried. Well, it’s hard to say what sells best. A
latch-lock and keys goes off quick. I’ve had them from 2_d._ to 6_d._;
but it’s only the lower-priced things as sells now in any trade. Bolts
is a fairish stock, and so is all sorts of tools. Well, not saws so
much as such things as screwdrivers, or hammers, or choppers, or tools
that if they’re rusty people can clean up theirselves. Saws ain’t so
easy to manage; bed-keys is good. No, I don’t clean the metal up unless
it’s very bad; I think things don’t sell so well that way. People’s
jealous that they’re just done up on purpose to deceive, though they
may cost only 1_d._ or 2_d._ There’s that cheese-cutter now, it’s
getting rustier and there’ll be very likely a better chance to sell it.
This is how it is, sir, I know. You see if a man’s going to buy old
metal, and he sees it all rough and rusty, he says to himself, ‘Well,
there’s no gammon about it; I can just see what it is.’ Then folks
like to clean up a thing theirselves, and it’s as if it was something
made from their own cleverness. That was just my feeling, sir, when
I bought old metals for my own use, before I was in the trade, and I
goes by that. O, working people’s by far my best customers. Many of
’em’s very fond of jobbing about their rooms or their houses, and they
come to such as me. Then a many has fancies for pigeons, or rabbits,
or poultry, or dogs, and they mostly make up the places for them
theirselves, and as money’s an object, why them sort of fancy people
buys hinges, and locks, and screws, and hammers, and what they want of
me. A clever mechanic can turn his hand to most things that he wants
for his own use. I know a shoemaker that makes beautiful rabbit-hutches
and sells them along with his prize cattle, as I calls his great big
long-eared rabbits. Perhaps I take 2_s._ 6_d._ or 3_s._ a day, and it’s
about half profit. Yes, this time of the year I make good 10_s._ 6_d._
a week, but in winter not 1_s._ a day. That would be very poor pickings
for two people to live on, and I can’t do without my drop of beer, but
my wife has constant work with a first-rate laundress at Mile End, and
so we rub on, for we’ve no family living.”

This informant told me further of the way in which the old metal stocks
sold in the streets were provided; but that branch of the subject
relates to street-buying. Some of the street-sellers, however, buy
their stocks of the shopkeepers.

I find a difficulty in estimating the number of the second-hand
metal-ware street-sellers. Many of the stalls or barrows are the
property of the marine-store shopkeepers, or old metal dealers (marine
stores being about the only things the marine-store men do not sell),
and these are generally placed near the shop, being indeed a portion
of its contents out of doors. Some of the marine-store men (a class of
traders, by the by, not superior to street-sellers, making no “odious”
comparison as to the honesty of the two), when they have purchased
largely--the refuse iron for instance after a house has been pulled
down--establish two or three pitches in the street, confiding the
stalls or barrows to their wives and children. I was told by several
in the trade that there were 200 old metal sellers in the streets, but
from the best information at my command not more than 50 appear to be
strictly _street_-sellers, unconnected with shop-keeping. Estimating
a weekly receipt, per individual, of 15_s._ (half being profit), the
yearly street outlay among this body alone amounts to 1950_l._

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND METAL TRAYS, &c.

There are still some few portions of the old metal trade in the streets
which require specific mention.

Among these is the sale of second-hand trays, occasionally with such
things as bread-baskets. Instead of these wares, however, being matters
of daily traffic, they are offered in the streets only at intervals,
and generally on the Saturday and Monday evenings, while a few are
hawked to public-houses. An Irishman, a rather melancholy looking
man, but possessed of some humour, gave me the following account. His
dress was a worn suit, such as masons work in; but I have seldom seen
so coarse, and never on an Irishman of his class, except on a Sunday,
so clean a shirt, and he made as free a display of it as if it were
the choicest cambric. He washed it, he told me, with his own hands,
as he had neither wife, nor mother, nor sister. “I was a cow-keeper’s
man, your honour,” he said, “and he sent milk to Dublin. I thought I
might do betthur, and I got to Liverpool, and walked here. Have I done
betthur, is it? Sorry a betthur. Would I like to returren to Dublin?
Well, perhaps, plaze God, I’ll do betthur here yit. I’ve sould a power
of different things in the sthreets, but I’m off for counthry work
now. I have a few therrays left if your honour wants such a thing. I
first sould a few for a man I lodged along wid in Kent-street, when
he was sick, and so I got to know the therrade. He tould me to say,
and it’s the therruth, if anybody said, ‘They’re only second-hand,’
that they was all the betthur for that, for if they hadn’t been real
good therrays at first, they would niver have lived to be second-hand
ones. I calls the bigghur therrays butlers, and the smhaller, waithers.
It’s a poor therrade. One woman’ll say, ‘Pooh! ould-fashioned things.’
‘Will, thin, ma’am,’ I’ll say, ‘a good thing like this is niver
ould-fashioned, no more than the bhutiful mate and berrid, and the
bhutiful new praties a coming in, that you’ll be atin off of it, and
thratin’ your husband to, God save him. No lady iver goes to supper
widout her therray.’ Yes, indeed, thin, and it is a poor therrade. It’s
the bhutiful therrays I’ve sould for 6_d._ I buys them of a shop which
dales in sich things. The perrofit! Sorry a perrofit is there in it at
all at all; but I thries to make 4_d._ out of 1_s._ If I makes 6_d._ of
a night it’s good worruk.”

These trays are usually carried under the arm, and are sometimes piled
on a stool or small stand, in a street market. The prices are from
2_d._ to 10_d._, sometimes 1_s._ The stronger descriptions are sold to
street-sellers to display their goods upon, as much as to any other
class. Women and children occasionally sell them, but it is one of the
callings which seems to be disappearing from the streets. From two men,
who were familiar with this and other second-hand trades, I heard the
following reasons assigned for the decadence. One man thought it was
owing to “swag-trays” being got up so common and so cheap, but to look
“stunning well,” at least as long as the shininess lasted. The other
contended that poor working people had enough to do now-a-days to get
something to eat, without thinking of a tray to put it on.

If 20 persons, and that I am told is about the number of sellers, take
in the one or two nights’ sale 4_s._ a week each, on second-hand trays
(33 per cent. being the rate of profit), the street expenditure is
208_l._ in a year.

In other second-hand metal articles there is now and then a separate
trade. Two or three sets of small _fire-irons_ may be offered in a
street-market on a Saturday night; or a small stock of _flat and
Italian irons_ for the laundresses, who work cheap and must buy
second-hand; or a _collection of tools_ in the same way; but these
are accidental sales, and are but ramifications from the general “old
metal” trade that I have described. Perhaps, in the sale of these
second-hand articles, 20 people may be regularly employed, and 300_l._
yearly may be taken.

In Petticoat-lane, Rosemary-lane, Whitecross-street, Ratcliff-highway,
and in the street-markets generally, are to be seen men, women, and
children selling _dinner knives and forks, razors, pocket-knives, and
scissors_. The pocket-knives and scissors are kept well oiled, so that
the weather does not rust them. These goods have been mostly repaired,
ground, and polished for street-commerce. The women and children
selling these articles are the wives and families of the men who
repair, grind, and polish them, and who belong, correctly speaking,
to the class of street-artizans, under which head they will be more
particularly treated of. It is the same also with the street-vendors
of second-hand tin saucepans and other vessels (a trade, by the way,
which is rapidly decreasing), for these are generally made of the old
drums of machines retinned, or are old saucepans and pots mended for
use by the vendors, who are mostly working tinmen, and appertain to the
artizan class.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND LINEN, &c.

I now come to the second variety of the several kinds of street-sellers
of second-hand articles. The accounts of the street-trade in
second-hand linens, however, need be but brief; for none of the
callings I have now to notice supply a mode of subsistence to the
street-sellers independently of other pursuits. They are resorted to
whenever an opportunity or a prospect of remuneration presents itself
by the class of general street-sellers, women as well as men--the women
being the most numerous. The sale of these articles is on the Saturday
and Monday nights, in the street-markets, and daily in Petticoat and
Rosemary lanes.

One of the most saleable of all the second-hand textile commodities of
the streets, is an article the demand for which is certainly creditable
to the poorer and the working-classes of London--_towels_. The
principal supply of this street-towelling is obtained from the several
barracks in and near London. They are a portion of what were the
sheets (of strong linen) of the soldiers’ beds, which are periodically
renewed, and the old sheeting is then sold to a contractor, of whom the
street-folk buy it, and wash and prepare it for market. It is sold to
the street-traders at 4_d._ per pound, 1 lb. making eight penny towels;
some (inferior) is as low as 2_d._ The principal demand is by the
working-classes.

“Why, for one time, sir,” said a street-seller to me, “there wasn’t
much towelling in the streets, and I got a tidy lot, just when I
knew it would go off, like a thief round a corner. I pitched in
Whitecross-street, and not far from a woman that was making a great
noise, and had a good lot of people about her, for cheap mackarel
weren’t so very plenty then as they are now. ‘Here’s your cheap
mack’rel,’ shouts she, ‘cheap, cheap, cheap mac-mac-mac-_mack_’rel.
Then _I_ begins: ‘Here’s your cheap towelling; cheap, cheap, cheap,
tow-tow-tow-_tow_-ellings. Here’s towels a penny a piece, and two for
twopence, or a double family towel for twopence.’ I soon had a greater
crowd than she had. O, yes! I gives ’em a good history of what I has
to sell; patters, as you call it; a man that can’t isn’t fit for the
streets. ‘Here’s what every wife should buy for her husband, and every
husband for his wife,’ I goes on. ‘Domestic happiness is then secured.
If a husband licks his wife, or a wife licks her husband, a towel is
the handiest and most innocent thing it can be done with, and if it’s
wet it gives you a strong clipper on the cheek, as every respectable
married person knows as well as I do. A clipper that way always does me
good, and I’m satisfied it does more good to a gentleman than a lady.’
Always patter for the women, sir, if you wants to sell. Yes, towels is
good sale in London, but I prefer country business. I’m three times
as much in the country as in town, and I’m just off to Ascot to sell
cards, and do a little singing, and then I’ll perhaps take a round to
Bath and Bristol, but Bath’s not what it was once.”

Another street-seller told me that, as far as his experience went,
Monday night was a better time for the sale of second-hand sheetings,
&c., than Saturday, as on Monday the wives of the working-classes who
sought to buy cheaply what was needed for household use, usually went
out to make their purchases. The Saturday-night’s mart is more one for
immediate necessities, either for the Sunday’s dinner or the Sunday’s
wear. It appears to me that in all these little distinctions--of
which street-folk tell you, quite unconscious that they tell anything
new--there is something of the history of the character of a people.

“Wrappers,” or “bale-stuff,” as it is sometimes styled, are also sold
in the streets as second-hand goods. These are what have formed the
covers of the packages of manufactures, and are bought (most frequently
by the Jews) at the wholesale warehouses or the larger retail shops,
and re-sold to the street-people, usually at 1-1/2_d._ and 2_d._ per
pound. These goods are sometimes sold entire, but are far more often
cut into suitable sizes for towels, strong aprons, &c. They soon get
“bleached,” I was told, by washing and wear.

_“Burnt” linen or calico_ is also sold in the streets as a second-hand
article. On the occasion of a fire at any tradesman’s, whose stock of
drapery had been injured, the damaged wares are bought by the Jewish or
other keepers of the haberdashery swag-shops. Some of these are sold
by the second-hand street dealers, but the traffic for such articles
is greater among the hawkers. Of this I have already given an account.
The street-sale of these burnt (and sometimes _designedly_ burnt) wares
is in pieces, generally from 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ each, or in yards,
frequently at 6_d._ per yard, but of course the price varies with the
quality.

I believe that no _second-hand sheets_ are sold in the streets as
sheets, for when tolerably good they are received at the pawn-shops,
and if indifferent, at the dolly-shops, or illegal pawn-shops. Street
folk have told me of sheets being sold in the street-markets, but so
rarely as merely to supply an exception. In Petticoat-lane, indeed,
they are sold, but it is mostly by the Jew shopkeepers, who also expose
their goods in the streets, and they are sold by them very often to
street-traders, who convert them into other purposes.

The statistics of this trade present great difficulties. The
second-hand linen, &c., is not a regular street traffic. It may be
offered to the public 20 days or nights in a month, or not one. If a
“job-lot” have been secured, the second-hand street-seller may confine
himself to that especial stock. If his means compel him to offer only
a paucity of second-hand goods, he may sell but one kind. Generally,
however, the same man or woman trades in two, three, or more of the
second-hand textile productions which I have specified, and it is
hardly one street-seller out of 20, who if he have cleared his 10_s._
in a given time, by vending different articles, can tell the relative
amount he cleared on each. The trade is, therefore, irregular, and is
but a consequence, or--as one street-seller very well expressed it--a
“tail” of other trades. For instance, if there has been a great auction
of any corn-merchant’s effects, there will be more sacking than usual
in the street-markets; if there have been sales, beyond the average
extent, of old household furniture, there will be a more ample street
stock of curtains, carpeting, fringes, &c. Of the articles I have
enumerated the sale of second-hand linen, more especially that from the
barrack-stores, is the largest of any.

The most intelligent man whom I met with in this trade calculated that
there were 80 of these second-hand street-folk plying their trade two
nights in the week; that they took 8_s._ each weekly, about half of it
being profit; thus the street expenditure would be 1664_l._ per annum.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND CURTAINS.

Second-Hand Curtains, but only good ones, I was assured, can now be
sold in the streets, “because common new ones can be had so cheap.”
The “good second-hands,” however, sell readily. The most saleable of
all second-hand curtains are those of chintz, especially old-fashioned
chintz, now a scarce article; the next in demand are what were
described to me as “good check,” or the blue and white cotton curtains.
White dimity curtains, though now rarely seen in a street-market,
are not bought to be re-used as curtains--“there’s too much washing
about them for London”--but for petticoats, the covering of large
pincushions, dressing-table covers, &c., and for the last-mentioned
purpose they are bought by the householders of a small tenement who let
a “well-furnished” bed-room or two.

The uses to which the second-hand chintz or check curtains are put,
are often for “Waterloo” or “tent” beds. It is common for a single
woman, struggling to “get a decent roof over her head,” or for a
young couple wishing to improve their comforts in furniture, to do so
piece-meal. An old bedstead of a better sort may first be purchased,
and so on to the concluding “decency,” or, in the estimation of some
poor persons, “dignity” of curtains. These persons are customers of the
street-sellers--the second-hand curtains costing them from 8_d._ to
1_s._ 6_d._

Moreen curtains have also a good sale. They are bought by working
people (and by some of the dealers in second-hand furniture) for the
re-covering of sofas, which had become ragged, the deficiency of
stuffing being supplied with hay (which is likewise the “stuffing” of
the new sofas sold by the “linen-drapers,” or “slaughter-houses”).
Moreen curtains, too, are sometimes cut into pieces, for the
re-covering of old horse-hair chairs, for which purpose they are sold
at 3_d._ each piece.

Second-hand curtains are moreover cut into portions and sold for the
hanging of the testers of bedsteads, but almost entirely for what
the street-sellers call “half-teesters.” These are required for the
Waterloo bedsteads, “and if it’s a nice thing, sir,” said one woman,
“and perticler if it’s a chintz, and to be had for 6_d._, the women’ll
fight for it.”

The second-hand curtains, when sold entire, are from 6_d._ to 2_s._
6_d._ One man had lately sold a pair of “good moreens, only faded, but
dyeing’s cheap,” for 3_s._ 6_d._

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND CARPETING, FLANNELS,
STOCKING-LEGS, &c., &c.

I class these second-hand wares together, as they are all of woollen
materials.

_Carpeting_ has a fair sale, and in the streets is vended not as an
entire floor or stair-carpet, but in pieces. The floor-carpet pieces
are from 2_d._ to 1_s._ each; the stair-carpet pieces are from 1_d._ to
4_d._ a yard. Hearth-rugs are very rarely offered to street-customers,
but when offered are sold from 4_d._ to 1_s._ Drugget is also sold in
the same way as the floor-carpeting, and sometimes for house-scouring
cloths.

“I’ve sold carpet, sir,” said a woman street-seller, who called all
descriptions--rugs and drugget too--by that title; “and I would like to
sell it regular, but my old man--he buys everything--says it can’t be
had regular. I’ve sold many things in the streets, but I’d rather sell
good second-hand in carpet or curtains, or fur in winter, than anything
else. They’re nicer people as buys them. It would be a good business
if it was regular. Ah! indeed, in my time, and before I was married,
I have sold different things in a different way; but I’d rather not
talk about that, and I make no complaints, for seeing what I see.
I’m not so badly off. Them as buys carpet are very particular--I’ve
known them take a tape out of their pockets and measure--but they’re
honourable customers. If they’re satisfied they buy, most of them does,
at once; without any of your ‘is that the lowest?’ as ladies asks in
shops, and that when they don’t think of buying, either. Carpet is
bought by working people, and they use it for hearth-rugs, and for
bed-sides, and such like. I know it by what I’ve heard them say when
I’ve been selling. One Monday evening, five or six years back, I took
10_s._ 9_d._ in carpet; there had been some great sales at old houses,
and a good quantity of carpet and curtains was sold in the streets.
Perhaps I cleared 3_s._ 6_d._ on that 10_s._ 9_d._ But to take 4_s._
or 5_s._ is good work now, and often not more than 3_d._ in the 1_s._
profit. Still, it’s a pretty good business, when you can get a stock of
second-hands of different kinds to keep you going constantly.”

What in the street-trade is known as “_Flannels_,” is for the most part
second-hand blankets, which having been worn as bed furniture, and then
very probably, or at the same time, used for ironing cloths, are found
in the street-markets, where they are purchased for flannel petticoats
for the children of the poor, or when not good enough for such use, for
house cloths, at 1_d._ each.

The trade in _stocking legs_ is considerable. In these legs the feet
have been cut off, further darning being impossible, and the fragment
of the stocking which is worth preserving is sold to the careful
housewives who attach to it a new foot. Sometimes for winter wear a
new cheap sock is attached to the footless hose. These legs sell from
1/2_d._ to 3_d._ the pair, but very rarely 3_d._, and only when of the
best quality, though the legs would not be saleable in the streets at
all, had they not been of a good manufacture originally. Men’s hose are
sold in this way more largely than women’s.

The trade in second-hand stockings is very considerable, but they form
a part of the second-hand apparel of street-commerce, and I shall
notice them under that head.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND BED-TICKING, SACKING, FRINGE, &c.

For _bed-ticking_ there is generally a ready sale, but I was told “not
near so ready as it was a dozen year or more back.” One reason which
I heard assigned for this was, that new ticking was made so cheap
(being a thin common cotton, for the lining of common carpet-bags,
portmanteaus, &c.), that poor persons scrupled to give any equivalent
price for good sound second-hand linen bed-ticking, “though,” said a
dealer, “it’ll still wear out half a dozen of their new slop rigs. I
should like a few of them there slop-masters, that’s making fortins out
of foolish or greedy folks, to have to live a few weeks in the streets
by this sort of second-hand trade; they’d hear what was thought of them
then by all sensible people, which aren’t so many as they should be by
a precious long sight.”

The ticking sold in the street is bought for the patching of beds and
for the making of pillows and bolsters, and for these purposes is
sold in pieces at from 2_d._ to 4_d._ as the most frequent price. One
woman who used to sell bed-ticking, but not lately, told me that she
knew poor women who cared nothing for such convenience themselves, buy
ticking to make pillows for their children.

_Second-hand Sacking_ is sold without much difficulty in the
street-markets, and usually in pieces at from 2_d._ to 6_d._ This
sacking has been part of a corn sack, or of the strong package in which
some kinds of goods are dispatched by sea or railway. It is bought for
the mending of bedstead sacking, and for the making of porters’ knots,
&c.

_Second-hand Fringe_ is still in fair demand, but though cheaper than
ever, does not, I am assured, “sell so well as when it was dearer.”
Many of my readers will have remarked, when they have been passing the
apartments occupied by the working class, that the valance fixed from
the top of the window has its adornment of fringe; a blind is sometimes
adorned in a similar manner, and so is the valance from the tester of
a bedstead. For such uses the second-hand fringe is bought in the
street-markets in pieces, sometimes called “quantities,” of from 1_d._
to 1_s._

_Second-hand Table-cloths_ used to be an article of street-traffic
to some extent. If offered at all now--and one man, though he was a
regular street-seller, thought he had not seen one offered in a market
this year--they are worn things such as will not be taken by the
pawnbrokers, while the dolly-shop people would advance no more than the
table-cloth might be worth for the rag-bag. _The glazed table-covers_,
now in such general use, are not as yet sold second-hand in the streets.

I was told by a street-seller that he had heard an old man (since
dead), who was a buyer of second-hand goods, say that in the old times,
after a great sale by auction--as at Wanstead-house (Mr. Wellesley
Pole’s), about 30 years ago--the open-air trade was very brisk, as the
street-sellers, like the shop-traders, proclaimed all their second-hand
wares as having been bought at “the great sale.” For some years no such
“_ruse_” has been practised by street-folk.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND GLASS AND CROCKERY.

These sellers are another class who are fast disappearing from the
streets of London. Before glass and crockery, but more especially
glass, became so low-priced when new, the second-hand glass-man was
one of the most prosperous of the open-air traders; he is now so much
the reverse that he must generally mix up some other calling with
his original business. One man, whose address was given to me as an
experienced glass-man, I found selling mackarel and “pound crabs,”
and complaining bitterly that mackarel were high, and that he could
make nothing out of them that week at 2_d._ each, for poor persons, he
told me, would not give more. “Yes, sir,” he said, “I’ve been in most
trades, besides having been a pot-boy, both boy and man, and I don’t
like this fish-trade at all. I could get a pot-boy’s place again, but
I’m not so strong as I were, and it’s slavish work in the place I could
get; and a man that’s not so young as he was once is chaffed so by the
young lads and fellows in the tap-room and the skittle-ground. For this
last three year or more I had to do something in addition to my glass
for a crust. Before I dropped it as a bad consarn, I sold old shoes as
well as old glass, and made both ends meet that way, a leather end and
a glass end. I sold off my glass to a rag and bottle shop for 9_s._,
far less than it were worth, and I swopped my shoes for my fish-stall,
and water-tub, and 3_s._ in money. I’ll be out of this trade before
long. The glass was good once; I’ve made my 15_s._ and 20_s._ a week
at it: I don’t know how long that is ago, but it’s a good long time.
Latterly I could do no business at all in it, or hardly any. The old
shoes was middling, because they’re a free-selling thing, but somehow
it seems awkward mixing up any other trade with your glass.”

The stall or barrow of a “second-hand glass-man” presented, and still,
in a smaller degree, presents, a variety of articles, and a variety
of colours, but over the whole prevails that haziness which seems to
be considered proper to this trade. Even in the largest rag and bottle
shops, the second-hand bottles always look dingy. “It wouldn’t pay to
wash them all,” said one shopkeeper to me, “so we washes none; indeed,
I b’lieve people would rather buy them as they is, and clean them
themselves.”

The street-assortment of second-hand glass may be described as one of
“odds and ends”--odd goblets, odd wine-glasses, odd decanters, odd
cruet-bottles, salt-cellars, and mustard-pots; together with a variety
of “tops” to fit mustard-pots or butter-glasses, and of “stoppers” to
fit any sized bottle, the latter articles being generally the most
profitable. Occasionally may still be seen a blue spirit-decanter,
one of a set of three, with “brandy,” in faded gold letters, upon it,
or a brass or plated label, as dingy as the bottle, hung by a fine
wire-chain round the neck. Blue finger-glasses sold very well for use
as sugar-basins to the wives of the better-off working-people or small
tradesmen. One man, apparently about 40, who had been in this trade
in his youth, and whom I questioned as to what was the quality of his
stock, told me of the demand for “blue sugars,” and pointed out to me
one which happened to be on a stand by the door of a rag and bottle
shop. When I mentioned its original use, he asked further about it,
and after my answers seemed sceptical on the subject. “People that’s
quality,” he said, “that’s my notion on it, that hasn’t neither to yarn
their dinner, nor to cook it, but just open their mouths and eat it,
can’t dirty their hands so at dinner as to have glasses to wash ’em in
arterards. But there’s queer ways everywhere.”

At one time what were called “doctors’ bottles” formed a portion of
the second-hand stock I am describing. These were phials bought by
the poorer people, in which to obtain some physician’s gratuitous
prescription from the chemist’s shop, or the time-honoured nostrum of
some wonderful old woman. For a very long period, it must be borne in
mind, all kinds of glass wares were dear. Small glass frames, to cover
flower-roots, were also sold at these stalls, as were fragments of
looking-glass. Beneath his stall or barrow, the “old glass-man” often
had a few old wine or beer-bottles for sale.

At the period before cast-glass was so common, and, indeed,
subsequently, until glass became cheap, it was not unusual to see at
the second-hand stalls, rich cut-glass vessels which had been broken
and cemented, for sale at a low figure, the glass-man being often a
mender. It was the same with China punch-bowls, and the costlier kind
of dishes, but this part of the trade is now unknown.

There is one curious sort of ornament still to be met with at these
stalls--wide-mouthed bottles, embellished with coloured patterns of
flowers, birds, &c., generally cut from “furniture prints,” and kept
close against the sides of the interior by the salt with which the
bottles are filled. A few second-hand pitchers, teapots, &c., are still
sold at from 1_d._ to 6_d._

There are now not above six men (of the ordinary street-selling
class) who carry on this trade regularly. Sometimes twelve stalls or
barrows may be seen; sometimes one, and sometimes none. Calculating
that each of the six dealers takes 12_s._ weekly, with a profit of
6_s._ or 7_s._, we find 187_l._ 4_s._ expended in this department of
street-commerce. The principal place for the trade is in High-street,
Whitechapel.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES.

I have in a former page specified some of the goods which make up the
sum of the second-hand miscellaneous commerce of the streets of London.

I may premise that the trader of this class is a sort of street broker;
and it is no more possible minutely to detail his especial traffic
in the several articles of his stock, than it would be to give a
specific account of each and several of the “sundries” to be found in
the closets or corners of an old-furniture broker’s or marine-store
seller’s premises, in describing his general business.

The members of this trade (as will be shown in the subsequent
statements) are also “miscellaneous” in their character. A few have
known liberal educations, and have been established in liberal
professions; others have been artisans or shopkeepers, but the mass are
of the general class of street-sellers.

I will first treat of the _Second-Hand Street-Sellers of Articles for
Amusement_, giving a wide interpretation to the word “amusement.”

The backgammon, chess, draught, and cribbage-boards of the second-hand
trade have originally been of good quality--some indeed of a very
superior manufacture; otherwise the “cheap Germans” (as I heard
the low-priced foreign goods from the swag-shops called) would by
their superior cheapness have rendered the business a nullity. The
backgammon-boards are bought of brokers, when they are often in a worn,
unhinged, and what may be called ragged condition. The street-seller
“trims them up,” but in this there is nothing of artisanship, although
it requires some little taste and some dexterity of finger. A new hinge
or two, or old hinges re-screwed, and a little pasting of leather and
sometimes the application of strips of bookbinder’s gold, is all that
is required. The backgammon-boards are sometimes offered in the streets
by an itinerant; sometimes (and more frequently than otherwise in a
deplorable state, the points of the table being hardly distinguishable)
they are part of the furniture of a second-hand stall. I have seen one
at an old book-stall, but most usually they are vended by being hawked
to the better sort of public-houses, and there they are more frequently
disposed of by raffle than by sale. It is not once in a thousand times,
I am informed, that second-hand “men” are sold with the board. Before
the board has gone through its series of hands to the street-seller,
the men have been lost or scattered. New men are sometimes sold or
raffled with the backgammon-boards (as with the draught) at from 6_d._
to 2_s._ 6_d._ the set, the best being of box-wood.

Chess-boards and men--for without the men of course a draught, or
the top of a backgammon-board suffices for chess--are a commodity now
rarely at the disposal of the street-sellers; and, as these means
of a leisurely and abstruse amusement are not of a ready sale, the
second-hand dealers do not “look out” for them, but merely speculate
in them when the article “falls in their way” and seems a palpable
bargain. Occasionally, a second-hand chess apparatus is still sold
by the street-folk. One man--upon whose veracity I have every reason
to rely--told me that he once sold a beautiful set of ivory men and
a handsome “leather board” (second-hand) to a gentleman who accosted
him as he saw him carry them along the street for sale, inviting him
to step in doors, when the gentleman’s residence was reached. The
chess-men were then arranged and examined, and the seller asked 3_l._
3_s._ for them, at once closing with the offer of 3_l._; “for I found,
sir,” he said, “I had a gentleman to do with, for he told me he thought
they were really cheap at 3_l._, and he would give me that.” Another
dealer in second-hand articles, when I asked him if he had ever sold
chess-boards and men, replied, “Only twice, sir, and then at 4_s._ and
5_s._ the set; they was poor. I’ve seen chess played, and I should say
it’s a rum game; but I know nothing about it. I once had a old gent for
a customer, and he was as nice and quiet a old gent as could be, and
I always called on him when I thought I had a curus old tea-caddy, or
knife-box, or anything that way. He didn’t buy once in twenty calls,
but he always gave me something for my trouble. He used to play at
chess with another old gent, and if, after his servant had told him I’d
come, I waited ’til I could wait no longer, and then knocked at his
room door, he swore like a trooper.”

Draught-boards are sold at from 3_d._ to 1_s._ second-hand.
Cribbage-boards, also second-hand, and sometimes with cards, are only
sold, I am informed, when they are very bad, at from 1_d._ to 3_d._,
or very good, at from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 5_s._ One street-seller told me
that he once sold a “Chinee” cribbage-board for 18_s._, which cost
him 10_s._ “It was a most beautiful thing,” he stated, “and was very
high-worked, and was inlaid with ivory, and with green ivory too.”

The Dice required for the playing of backgammon, or for any purpose,
are bought of the waiters at the club-houses, generally at 2_l._ the
dozen sets. They are retailed at about 25 per cent. profit. Dice in
this way are readily disposed of by the street-people, as they are
looked upon as “true,” and are only about a sixth of the price they
could be obtained for new ones in the duly-stamped covers. A few dice
are sold at 6_d._ to 1_s._ the set, but they are old and battered.

There are but two men who support themselves wholly by the street-sale
and the hawking of the different boards, &c., I have described. There
are two, three, or sometimes four occasional participants in the
trade. Of these one held a commission in Her Majesty’s service, but
was ruined by gaming, and when unable to live by any other means, he
sells the implements with which he had been but too familiar. “He lost
everything in Jermyn-street,” a man who was sometimes his comrade in
the sale of these articles said to me, “but he is a very gentlemanly
and respectable man.”

The profits in this trade are very uncertain. A man who was engaged
in it told me that one week he had cleared 2_l._, and the next, with
greater pains-taking, did not sell a single thing.

The other articles which are a portion of the second-hand miscellaneous
trade of this nature are sold as often, or more often, at stalls than
elsewhere. Dominoes, for instance, may be seen in the winter, and they
are offered only in the winter, on perhaps 20 stalls. They are sold at
from 4_d._ a set, and I heard of one superior set which were described
to me as “brass-pinned,” being sold in a handsome box for 5_s._,
the shop price having been 15_s._ The great sale of dominoes is at
Christmas.

Pope-Joan boards, which, I was told, were fifteen years ago sold
readily in the streets, and were examined closely by the purchasers
(who were mostly the wives of tradesmen), to see that the print
or paint announcing the partitions for “intrigue,” “matrimony,”
“friendship,” “Pope,” &c., were perfect, are now never, or rarely,
seen. Formerly the price was 1_s._ to 1_s._ 9_d._ In the present year I
could hear of but one man who had even offered a Pope-board for sale in
the street, and he sold it, though almost new, for 3_d._

“Fish,” or the bone, ivory, or mother-o’-pearl card counters in the
shape of fish, or sometimes in a circular form, used to be sold
second-hand as freely as the Pope-boards, and are now as rarely to be
seen.

Until about 20 years ago, as well as I can fix upon a term from the
information I received, the apparatus for a game known as the “Devil
among the tailors” was a portion of the miscellaneous second-hand
trade or hawking of the streets. In it a top was set spinning on
a long board, and the result depended upon the number of men, or
“tailors,” knocked down by the “devil” (top) of each player, these
tailors being stationed, numbered, and scored (when knocked down) in
the same way as when the balls are propelled into the numbered sockets
in a bagatelle-board. I am moreover told that in the same second-hand
calling were boards known as “solitaire-boards.” These were round
boards, with a certain number of holes, in each of which was a peg. One
peg was removed at the selection of the player, and the game consisted
in taking each remaining peg, by advancing another over its head into
any vacant hole, and if at the end of the game only one peg remained
in the board, the player won; if winning it could be called when
the game could only be played by one person, and was for “solitary”
amusement. Chinese puzzles, sometimes on a large scale, were then also
a part of the second-hand traffic of the streets. These are a series
of thin woods in geometrical shapes, which may be fitted into certain
forms or patterns contained in a book, or on a sheet. These puzzles
are sold in the streets still, but in smaller quantity and diminished
size. Different games played with the teetotum were also a part of
second-hand street-sale, but none of these bygone pastimes were vended
to any extent.

From the best data I have been able to obtain it appears that the
amount received by the street-sellers or street-hawkers in the sale of
these second-hand articles of amusement is 10_l._ weekly, about half
being profit, divided in the proportions I have intimated, as respects
the number of street-sellers and the periods of sale; or 520_l._
expended yearly.

I should have stated that the principal customers of this branch
of second-hand traders are found in the public-houses and at the
cigar-shops, where the goods are carried by street-sellers, who hawk
from place to place.

These dealers also attend the neighbouring, and, frequently in the
summer, the more distant races, where for dice and the better quality
of their “boards,” &c., they generally find a prompt market. The sale
at the fairs consists only of the lowest-priced goods, and in a very
scant proportion compared to the races.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.

Of this trade there are two branches; the sale of instruments which
are really second-hand, and the sale of those which are pretendedly
so; in other words, an honest and a dishonest business. As in street
estimation the whole is a second-hand calling, I shall so deal with it.

At this season of the year, when fairs are frequent and the river
steamers with their bands of music run oft and regularly, and out-door
music may be played until late, the calling of the street-musician
is “at its best.” In the winter he is not unfrequently starving,
especially if he be what is called “a chance hand,” and have not
the privilege of playing in public-houses when the weather renders
it impossible to collect a street audience. Such persons are often
compelled to part with their instruments, which they offer in the
streets or the public-houses, for the pawnbrokers have been so often
“stuck” (taken in) with inferior instruments, that it is difficult to
pledge even a really good violin. With some of these musical men it
goes hard to part with their instruments, as they have their full share
of the pride of art. Some, however, sell them recklessly and at almost
any price, to obtain the means of prolonging a drunken carouse.

From a man who is now a dealer in second-hand musical instruments, and
is also a musician, I had the following account of his start in the
second-hand trade, and of his feelings when he first had to part with
his fiddle.

“I was a gentleman’s footboy,” he said, “when I was young, but I was
always very fond of music, and so was my father before me. He was a
tailor in a village in Suffolk and used to play the bass-fiddle at
church. I hardly know how or when I learned to play, but I seemed to
grow up to it. There was two neighbours used to call at my father’s
and practise, and one or other was always showing me something, and so
I learned to play very well. Everybody said so. Before I was twelve,
I’ve played nearly all night at a dance in a farm-house. I never played
on anything but the violin. You must stick to one instrument, or you’re
not up to the mark on any if you keep changing. When I got a place as
footboy it was in a gentleman’s family in the country, and I never was
so happy as when master and mistress was out dining, and I could play
to the servants in the kitchen or the servants’ hall. Sometimes they
got up a bit of a dance to my violin. If there was a dance at Christmas
at any of the tenants’, they often got leave for me to go and play. It
was very little money I got given, but too much drink. At last master
said, he hired me to be his servant and not for a parish fiddler, so I
must drop it. I left him not long after--he got so cross and snappish.
In my next place--no, the next but one--I was on board wages, in
London, a goodish bit, as the family were travelling, and I had time
on my hands, and used to go and play at public-houses of a night, just
for the amusement of the company at first, but I soon got to know other
musicians and made a little money. Yes, indeed, I could have saved
money easily then, but I didn’t; I got too fond of a public-house life
for that, and was never easy at home.”

I need not very closely pursue this man’s course to the streets, but
merely intimate it. He had several places, remaining in some a year or
more, in others two, three, or six months, but always unsettled. On
leaving his last place he married a fellow-servant, older than himself,
who had saved “a goodish bit of money,” and they took a beer-shop in
Bermondsey. A “free and easy” (concert), both vocal and instrumental,
was held in the house, the man playing regularly, and the business
went on, not unprosperously, until the wife died in child-bed, the
child surviving. After this everything went wrong, and at last the man
was “sold up,” and was penniless. For three or four years he lived
precariously on what he could earn as a musician, until about six
or seven years ago, when one bitter winter’s night he was without a
farthing, and had laboured all day in the vain endeavour to earn a
meal. His son, a boy then of five, had been sent home to him, and an
old woman with whom he had placed the lad was incessantly dunning for
12_s._ due for the child’s maintenance. The landlord clamoured for
15_s._ arrear of rent for a furnished room, and the hapless musician
did not possess one thing which he could convert into money except his
fiddle. He must leave his room next day. He had held no intercourse
with his friends in the country since he heard of his father’s death
some years before, and was, indeed, resourceless. After dwelling on
the many excellences of his violin, which he had purchased, “a dead
bargain,” for 3_l._ 15_s._, he said: “Well, sir, I sat down by the
last bit of coal in the place, and sat a long time thinking, and
didn’t know what to do. There was nothing to hinder me going out in
the morning, and working the streets with a mate, as I’d done before,
but then there was little James that was sleeping there in his bed.
He was very delicate then, and to drag him about and let him sleep
in lodging-houses would have killed him, I knew. But then I couldn’t
think of parting with my violin. I felt I should never again have such
another. I felt as if to part with it was parting with my last prop,
for what was I to do? I sat a long time thinking, with my instrument
on my knees, ’til--I’m sure I don’t know how to describe it--I felt
as if I was drunk, though I hadn’t even tasted beer. So I went out
boldly, just as if I _was_ drunk, and with a deal of trouble persuaded
a landlord I knew to lend me 1_l._ on my instrument, and keep it by him
for three months, ’til I could redeem it. I have it now, sir. Next day
I satisfied my two creditors by paying each half, and a week’s rent in
advance, and I walked off to a shop in Soho, where I bought a dirty old
instrument, broken in parts, for 2_s._ 3_d._ I was great part of the
day in doing it up, and in the evening earned 7_d._ by playing solos by
Watchorn’s door, and the Crown and Cushion, and the Lord Rodney, which
are all in the Westminster-road. I lodged in Stangate-street. There was
a young man--he looked like a respectable mechanic--gave me 1_d._, and
said: ‘I wonder how you can use your fingers at all such a freezing
night. It seems a good fiddle.’ I assure you, sir, I was surprised
myself to find what I could do with my instrument. ‘There’s a beer-shop
over the way,’ says the young man, ‘step in, and I’ll pay for a pint,
and try my hand at it.’ And so it was done, and I sold him my fiddle
for 7_s._ 6_d._ No, sir, there was no take in; it was worth the money.
I’d have sold it now that I’ve got a connection for half a guinea. Next
day I bought such another instrument at the same shop for 3_s._, and
sold it after a while for 6_s._, having done it up, in course. This
it was that first put it into my head to start selling second-hand
instruments, and so I began. Now I’m known as a man to be depended on,
and with my second-hand business, and engagements every now and then as
a musician, I do middling.”

In this manner is the honest second-hand street-business in musical
instruments carried on. It is usually done by hawking. A few, however,
are sold at miscellaneous stalls, but they are generally such as
require repair, and are often without the bow, &c. The persons carrying
on the trade have all, as far as I could ascertain, been musicians.

Of the street-sale of musical instruments by drunken members of the
“profession” I need say little, as it is exceptional, though it is
certainly a branch of the trade, for so numerous is the body of
street-musicians, and of so many classes is it composed, that this
description of second-hand business is being constantly transacted,
and often to the profit of the more wary dealers in these goods. The
statistics I shall show at the close of my remarks on this subject.

OF THE MUSIC “DUFFERS.”

Second-Hand Guitars are vended by the street-sellers. The price
varies from 7_s._ 6_d._ to 15_s._ _Harps_ form no portion of the
second-hand business of the streets. A _drum_ is occasionally, and
only occasionally, sold to a showman, but the chief second-hand traffic
is in violins. _Accordions_, both new and old, used to sell readily in
the streets, either from stalls or in hawking, “but,” said a man who
had formerly sold them, “they have been regularly ‘duffed’ out of the
streets, so much cheap rubbish is made to sell. There’s next to nothing
done in them now. If one’s offered to a man that’s no judge of it,
he’ll be sure you want to cheat him, and perhaps abuse you; if he be a
judge, of course it’s no go, unless with a really good article.”

Among the purchasers of second-hand musical instruments are those of
the working-classes who wish to “practise,” and the great number of
street-musicians, street-showmen, and the indifferently paid members of
the orchestras of minor (and not always of minor) theatres. Few of this
class ever buy new instruments. There are sometimes, I am informed, as
many as 50 persons, one-fourth being women, engaged in this second-hand
sale. Sometimes, as at present, there are not above half the number.
A broker who was engaged in the traffic estimated--and an intelligent
street-seller agreed in the computation--that, take the year through,
at least 25 individuals were regularly, but few of them fully, occupied
with this traffic, and that their weekly takings averaged 30_s._ each,
or an aggregate yearly amount of 190_l._ The weekly profits run from
10_s._ to 15_s._, and sometimes the well-known dealers clear 40_s._
or 50_s._ a week, while others do not take 5_s._ Of this amount about
two-thirds is expended on violins, and one-tenth of the whole, or
nearly a tenth, on “duffing” instruments sold as second-hand, in which
department of the business the amount “turned over” used to be twice,
and even thrice as much. The sellers have nearly all been musicians in
some capacity, the women being the wives or connections of the men.

* * * * *

What I have called the “dishonest trade” is known among the street-folk
as “music-duffing.” Among the swag-shopkeepers, at one place in
Houndsditch more especially, are dealers in “duffing fiddles.” These
are German-made instruments, and are sold to the street-folk at 2_s._
6_d._ or 3_s._ each, bow and all. When purchased by the music-duffers,
they are discoloured so as to be made to look old. A music-duffer,
assuming the way of a man half-drunk, will enter a public-house or
accost any party in the street, saying: “Here, I must have money, for I
won’t go home ’til morning, ’til morning, ’til morning, I won’t go home
’til morning, ’til daylight does appear. And so I may as well sell my
old fiddle myself as take it to a rogue of a broker. Try it anybody,
it’s a fine old tone, equal to any Cremonar. It cost me two guineas
and another fiddle, and a good ’un too, in exchange, but I may as well
be my own broker, for I must have money any how, and I’ll sell it for
10_s._”

Possibly a bargain is struck for 5_s._; for the duffing violin is
perhaps purposely damaged in some slight way, so as to appear easily
reparable, and any deficiency in tone may be attributed to that
defect, which was of course occasioned by the drunkenness of the
possessor. Or possibly the tone of the instrument may not be bad, but
it may be made of such unsound materials, and in such a slop-way,
though looking well to a little-practised eye, that it will soon fall
to pieces. One man told me that he had often done the music-duffing,
and had sold trash violins for 10_s._, 15_s._, and even 20_s._,
“according,” he said, “to the thickness of the buyer’s head,” but that
was ten or twelve years ago.

It appears that when an impetus was given to the musical taste of the
country by the establishment of cheap singing schools, or of music
classes, (called at one time “singing for the million”), or by the
prevalence of cheap concerts, where good music was heard, this duffing
trade flourished, but now, I am assured, it is not more than a quarter
of what it was. “There’ll always be something done in it,” said the
informant I have before quoted, “as long as you can find young men
that’s conceited about their musical talents, fond of taking their
medicine (drinking). If I’ve gone into a public-house room where I’ve
seen a young gent that’s bought a duffing fiddle of me, it don’t happen
once in twenty times that he complains and blows up about it, and
only then, perhaps, if he happens to be drunkish, when people don’t
much mind what’s said, and so it does me no harm. People’s too proud
to confess that they’re ever ‘done’ at any time or in anything. Why,
such gents has pretended, when I’ve sold ’em a duffer, and seen them
afterwards, that they’ve done _me!_”

Nor is it to violins that this duffing or sham second-hand trade is
confined. At the swag-shops _duffing cornopeans_, _French horns_, and
_clarionets_ are vended to the street-folk. One of these cornopeans
may be bought for 14_s._; a French horn for 10_s._; and a clarionet
for 7_s._ 6_d._; or as a general rule at one-fourth of the price of a
properly-made instrument sold as reasonably as possible. These things
are also made to look old, and are disposed of in the same manner as
the duffing violins. The sale, however, is and was always limited,
for “if there be one working man,” I was told, “or a man of any sort
not professional in music, that tries his wind and his fingers on
a clarionet, there’s a dozen trying their touch and execution on a
violin.”

Another way in which the duffing music trade at one time was made
available as a second-hand business was this:--A band would play before
a pawnbroker’s door, and the duffing German brass instruments might be
well-toned enough, the inferiority consisting chiefly in the materials,
but which were so polished up as to appear of the best. Some member of
the band would then offer his brass instrument in pledge, and often
obtain an advance of more than he had paid for it.

One man who had been himself engaged in what he called this “artful”
business, told me that when two pawnbrokers, whom he knew, found that
they had been tricked into advancing 15_s._ on cornopeans, which they
could buy new in Houndsditch for 14_s._, they got him to drop the
tickets of the pledge, which they drew out for the purpose, in the
streets. These were picked up by some passer-by--and as there is a
very common feeling that there is no harm, or indeed rather a merit,
in cheating a pawnbroker or a tax-gatherer--the instruments were soon
redeemed by the fortunate finder, or the person to whom he had disposed
of his prize. Nor did the roguery end here. The same man told me that
he had, in collusion with a pawnbroker, dropped tickets of (sham)
second-hand musical instruments, which he had bought new at a swag-shop
for the very purpose, the amount on the duplicate being double the
cost, and as it is known that the pawnbrokers do not advance the value
of any article, the finders were gulled into redeeming the pledge, as
an advantageous bargain. “But I’ve left off all that dodging now, sir,”
said the man with a sort of a grunt, which seemed half a sigh and half
a laugh; “I’ve left it off entirely, for I found I was getting into
trouble.”

The derivation of the term “duffing” I am unable to discover. The Rev.
Mr. Dixon says, in his “Dovecote and Aviary,” that the term “_Duffer_,”
applied to pigeons, is a corruption of _Dovehouse_,--but _query_? In
the slang dictionaries a “_Duffer_” is explained as “a man who hawks
things;” hence it would be equivalent to _Pedlar_, which means strictly
beggar--being from the Dutch _Bedclaar_, and the German _Bettler_.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND WEAPONS.

The sale of second-hand pistols, for to that weapon the street-sellers’
or hawkers’ trade in arms seems confined, is larger than might be
cursorily imagined.

There must be something seductive about the possession of a pistol, for
I am assured by persons familiar with the trade, that they have sold
them to men who were ignorant, when first invited to purchase, how the
weapon was loaded or discharged, and seemed half afraid to handle it.
Perhaps the possession imparts a sense of security.

The pistols which are sometimes seen on the street-stalls are almost
always old, rusted, or battered, and are useless to any one except to
those who can repair and clean them for sale.

There are three men now selling new or second-hand pistols, I am told,
who have been gunmakers.

This trade is carried on almost entirely by hawking to public-houses.
I heard of no one who depended solely upon it, “but this is the way,”
one intelligent man stated to me, “if I am buying second-hand things
at a broker’s, or in Petticoat-lane, or anywhere, and there’s a pistol
that seems cheap, I’ll buy it as readily as anything I know, and I’ll
soon sell it at a public-house, or I’ll get it raffled for. Second-hand
pistols sell better than new by such as me. If I was to offer a new
one I should be told it was some Brummagem slop rubbish. If there’s
a little silver-plate let into the wood of the pistol, and a crest
or initials engraved on it--I’ve got it done sometimes--there’s a
better chance of sale, for people think it’s been made for somebody
of consequence that wouldn’t be fobbed off with an inferior thing. I
don’t think I’ve often sold pistols to working-men, but I’ve known them
join in raffles for them, and the winner has often wanted to sell it
back to me, and has sold it to somebody. It’s tradesmen that buy, or
gentlefolks, if you can get at them. A pistol’s a sort of a plaything
with them.”

On my talking with a street-dealer concerning the street-trade in
second-hand pistols, he produced a handsome pistol from his pocket.
I inquired if it was customary for men in his way of life to carry
pistols, and he expressed his conviction that it was, but only when
travelling in the country, and in possession of money or valuable
stock. “I gave only 7_s._ 6_d._ for this pistol,” he said, “and have
refused 10_s._ 6_d._ for it, for I shall get a better price, as it’s an
excellent article, on some of my rounds in town. I bought it to take to
Ascot races with me, and have it with me now, but it’s not loaded, for
I’m going to Moulsey Hurst, where Hampton races are held. You’re not
safe if you travel after a great muster at a race by yourself without a
pistol. Many a poor fellow like me has been robbed, and the public hear
nothing about it, or say it’s all gammon. At Ascot, sir, I trusted my
money to a booth-keeper I knew, as a few men slept in his booth, and he
put my bit of tin with his own under his head where he slept, for safe
keeping. There’s a little doing in second-hand pistols to such as me,
but we generally sell them again.”

Of _second-hand guns_, or other offensive weapons, there is no street
sale. A few “_life-preservers_,” some of gutta percha, are hawked,
but they are generally new. Bullets and powder are not sold by the
pistol-hawkers, but a _mould_ for the casting of bullets is frequently
sold along with the weapon.

Of these second-hand pistol-sellers there are now, I am told, more than
there were last year. “I really believe,” said one man, laughing, but I
heard a similar account from others, “people were afraid the foreigners
coming to the Great Exhibition had some mischief in their noddles, and
so a pistol was wanted for protection. In my opinion, a pistol’s just
one of the things that people don’t think of buying, ’til it’s shown to
them, and then they’re tempted to have it.”

The principal street-sale, independently of the hawking to
public-houses, is in such places as Ratcliffe-highway, where the mates
and petty officers of ships are accosted and invited to buy a good
second-hand pistol. The wares thus vended are generally of a well-made
sort.

In this traffic, which is known as a “straggling” trade, pursued by
men who are at the same time pursuing other street-callings, it may be
estimated, I am assured, that there are 20 men engaged, each taking
as an average 1_l._ a week. In some weeks a man may take 5_l._; in
the next month he may sell no weapons at all. From 30 to 50 per cent.
is the usual rate of profit, and the yearly street outlay on these
second-hand offensive or defensive weapons is 1040_l._

One man who “did a little in pistols” told me, “that 25 or 30 years
ago, when he was a boy, his father sometimes cleared 2_l._ a week in
the street-sale and hawking of second-hand _boxing-gloves_, and that
he himself had sometimes carried the ‘gloves’ in his hand, and pistols
in his pocket for sale, but that now boxing-gloves were in no demand
whatever among street-buyers, and were ‘a complete drug.’ He used to
sell them at 3_s._ the set, which is four gloves.”

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND CURIOSITIES.

Several of the things known in the street-trade as “curiosities” can
hardly be styled second-hand with any propriety, but they are so styled
in the streets, and are usually vended by street-merchants who trade in
second-hand wares.

Curiosities are displayed, I cannot say temptingly (except perhaps to a
sanguine antiquarian), for there is a great dinginess in the display,
on stalls. One man whom I met wheeling his barrow in High-street,
Camden-town, gave me an account of his trade. He was dirtily rather
than meanly clad, and had a very self-satisfied expression of face.
The principal things on his barrow were _coins_, _shells_, and _old
buckles_, with a pair of the very high and wooden-heeled _shoes_, worn
in the earlier part of the last century.

The coins were all of copper, and certainly did not lack variety.
Among them were tokens, but none very old. There was the head of
“Charles Marquis Cornwallis” looking fierce in a cocked hat, while
on the reverse was Fame with her trumpet and a wreath, and banners
at her feet, with the superscription: “His fame resounds from east
to west.” There was a head of Wellington with the date 1811, and the
legend of “Vincit amor patriæ.” Also “The R. Hon. W. Pitt, Lord Warden
Cinque Ports,” looking courtly in a bag wig, with his hair brushed
from his brow into what the curiosity-seller called a “topping.” This
was announced as a “Cinque Ports token payable at Dover,” and was
dated 1794. “Wellingtons,” said the man, “is cheap; that one’s only a
halfpenny, but here’s one here, sir, as you seem to understand coins,
as I hope to get 2_d._ for, and will take no less. It’s ‘J. Lackington,
1794,’ you see, and on the back there’s a Fame, and round her is
written--and it’s a good speciment of a coin--‘Halfpenny of Lackington,
Allen & Co., cheapest booksellers in the world.’ That’s scarcer and
more vallyballer than Wellingtons or Nelsons either.” Of the current
coin of the realm, I saw none older than Charles II., and but one of
his reign, and little legible. Indeed the reverse had been ground quite
smooth, and some one had engraved upon it “Charles Dryland Tunbridg.”
A small “e” over the “g” of Tunbridg perfected the orthography. This,
the street-seller said, was a “love-token” as well as an old coin, and
“them love-tokens was getting scarce.” Of foreign and colonial coins
there were perhaps 60. The oldest I saw was one of Louis XV. of France
and Navarre, 1774. There was one also of the “Republique Francaise”
when Napoleon was First Consul. The colonial coins were more numerous
than the foreign. There was the “One Penny token” of Lower Canada;
the “one quarter anna” of the East India Company; the “half stiver
of the colonies of Essequibo and Demarara;” the “halfpenny token of
the province of Nova Scotia,” &c. &c. There were also counterfeit
halfcrowns and bank tokens worn from their simulated silver to rank
copper. The principle on which this man “priced” his coins, as he
called it, was simple enough. What was the size of a halfpenny he asked
a penny for; the size of a penny coin was 2_d._ “It’s a difficult trade
is mine, sir,” he said, “to carry on properly, for you may be so easily
taken in, if you’re not a judge of coins and other curiosities.”

The shells of this man’s stock in trade he called “conks” and “king
conks.” He had no “clamps” then, he told me, but they sold pretty well;
he described them as “two shells together, one fitting inside the
other.” He also had sold what he called “African cowries,” which were
as “big as a pint pot,” and the smaller cowries, which were “money in
India, for his father was a soldier and had been there and saw it.” The
shells are sold from 1_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._

The old buckles were such as used to be worn on shoes, but the plate
was all worn off, and “such like curiosities,” the man told me, “got
scarcer and scarcer.”

Many of the stalls which are seen in the streets are the property of
adjacent shop or store-keepers, and there are not now, I am informed,
more than six men who carry on this trade apart from other commerce.
Their average takings are 15_s._ weekly each man, about two-thirds
being profit, or 234_l._ in a year. Some of the stands are in Great
Wyld-street, but they are chiefly the property of the second-hand
furniture brokers.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND TELESCOPES AND POCKET GLASSES.

In the sale of second-hand telescopes only one man is now engaged
in any extensive way, except on mere chance occasions. Fourteen or
fifteen years ago, I was informed, there was a considerable street sale
in small telescopes at 1_s._ each. They were made at Birmingham, my
informant believed, but were sold as second-hand goods in London. Of
this trade there is now no remains.

The principal seller of second-hand telescopes takes a stand on Tower
Hill or by the Coal Exchange, and his customers, as he sells excellent
“glasses,” are mostly sea-faring men. He has sold, and still sells,
telescopes from 2_l._ 10_s._ to 5_l._ each, the purchasers generally
“trying” them, with strict examination, from Tower Hill, or on the
Custom-House Quay. There are, in addition to this street-seller, six
and sometimes eight others, who offer telescopes to persons about the
docks or wharfs, who may be going some voyage. These are as often new
as second-hand, but the second-hand articles are preferred. This,
however, is a Jewish trade which will be treated of under another head.

An old opera-glass, or the smaller articles best known as
“pocket-glasses,” are occasionally hawked to public-houses and offered
in the streets, but so little is done in them that I can obtain no
statistics. A spectacle seller told me that he had once tried to sell
two second-hand opera-glasses at 2_s._ 6_d._ each, in the street, and
then in the public-houses, but was laughed at by the people who were
usually his customers. “Opera-glasses!” they said, “why, what did they
want with opera-glasses? wait until they had opera-boxes.” He sold the
glasses at last to a shopkeeper.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF OTHER MISCELLANEOUS SECOND-HAND ARTICLES.

The other second-hand articles sold in the streets I will give under
one head, specifying the different characteristics of the trade, when
any striking peculiarities exist. To give a detail of the whole trade,
or rather of the several kinds of articles in the whole trade, is
impossible. I shall therefore select only such as are sold the more
extensively, or present any novel or curious features of second-hand
street-commerce.

_Writing-desks_, _tea-caddies_, _dressing-cases_, and _knife-boxes_
used to be a ready sale, I was informed, when “good second-hand;” but
they are “got up” now so cheaply by the poor fancy cabinet-makers
who work for the “slaughterers,” or furniture warehouses, and for
some of the general-dealing swag-shops, that the sale of anything
second-hand is greatly diminished. In fact I was told that as regards
second-hand writing-desks and dressing-cases, it might be said there
was “no trade at all now.” A few, however, are still to be seen at
miscellaneous stalls, and are occasionally, but very rarely, offered
at a public-house “used” by artisans who may be considered “judges” of
work. The tea-caddies are the things which are in best demand. “Working
people buy them,” I was informed, and “working people’s wives. When
women are the customers they look closely at the lock and key, as they
keep ‘my uncle’s cards’ there” (pawnbroker’s duplicates).

One man had lately sold second-hand tea-caddies at 9_d._, 1_s._, and
1_s._ 3_d._ each, and cleared 2_s._ in a day when he had stock and
devoted his time to this sale. He could not persevere in it if he
wished, he told me, as he might lose a day in looking out for the
caddies; he might go to fifty brokers and not find one caddy cheap
enough for his purpose.

_Brushes_ are sold second-hand in considerable quantities in the
streets, and are usually vended at stalls. Shoe-brushes are in the
best demand, and are generally sold, when in good condition, at 1_s._
the set, the cost to the street-seller being 8_d._ They are bought, I
was told, by the people who clean their own shoes, or have to clean
other people’s. Clothes’ brushes are not sold to any extent, as the
“hard brush” of the shoe set is used by working people for a clothes’
brush. Of late, I am told, second-hand brushes have sold more freely
than ever. They were hardly to be had just when wanted, in a sufficient
quantity, for the demand by persons going to Epsom and Ascot races, who
carry a brush of little value with them, to brush the dust gathered
on the road from their coats. The coster-girls buy very hard brushes,
indeed mere stumps, with which they brush radishes; these brushes are
vended at the street-stalls at 1_d._ each.

In _Stuffed Birds_ for the embellishment of the walls of a room, there
is still a small second-hand street sale, but none now in images or
chimney-piece ornaments. “Why,” said one dealer, “I can now buy new
figures for 9_d._, such as not many years ago cost 7_s._, so what
chance of a second-hand sale is there?” The stuffed birds which sell
the best are starlings. They are all sold as second-hand, but are often
“made up” for street-traffic; an old bird or two, I was told, in a new
case, or a new bird in an old case. Last Saturday evening one man told
me he had sold two “long cases” of starlings and small birds for 2_s._
6_d._ each. There are no stuffed parrots or foreign birds in this sale,
and no pheasants or other game, except sometimes wretched old things
which are sold because they happen to be in a case.

The street-trade in second-hand _Lasts_ is confined principally
to Petticoat and Rosemary lanes, where they are bought by the
“garret-masters” in the shoemaking trade who supply the large wholesale
warehouses; that is to say, by small masters who find their own
materials and sell the boots and shoes by the dozen pairs. The lasts
are bought also by mechanics, street-sellers, and other poor persons
who cobble their own shoes. A shoemaker told me that he occasionally
bought a last at a street stall, or rather from street hampers in
Petticoat and Rosemary lanes, and it seemed to him that second-hand
stores of street lasts got neither bigger nor smaller: “I suppose
it’s this way,” he reasoned; “the garret-master buys lasts to do the
slop-snobbing cheap, mostly women’s lasts, and he dies or is done up
and goes to the “great house,” and his lasts find their way back to
the streets. You notice, sir, the first time you’re in Rosemary-lane,
how little a great many of the lasts have been used, and that shows
what a terrible necessity there was to part with them. In some there’s
hardly any peg-marks at all.” The lasts are sold from 1_d._ to 3_d._
each, or twice that amount in pairs, “rights and lefts,” according to
the size and the condition. There are about 20 street last-sellers in
the second-hand trade of London--“at least 20,” one man said, after he
seemed to have been making a mental calculation on the subject.

_Second-hand harness_ is sold largely, and when good is sold very
readily. There is, I am told, far less slop-work in harness-making than
in shoemaking or in the other trades, such as tailoring, and “many
a lady’s pony harness,” it was said to me by a second-hand dealer,
“goes next to a tradesman, and next to a costermonger’s donkey, and if
it’s been good leather to begin with--as it will if it was made for a
lady--why the traces’ll stand clouting, and patching, and piecing, and
mending for a long time, and they’ll do to cobble old boots last of
all, for old leather’ll wear just in treading, when it might snap at a
pull. Give me a good quality to begin with, sir, and it’s serviceable
to the end.” In my inquiries among the costermongers I ascertained
that if one of that body started his donkey, or rose from that to his
pony, he never bought new harness, unless it were a new collar if he
had a regard for the comfort of his beast, but bought old harness, and
“did it up” himself, often using iron rivets, or clenched nails, to
reunite the broken parts, where, of course, a harness-maker would apply
a patch. Nor is it the costermongers alone who buy all their harness
second-hand. The sweep, whose stock of soot is large enough to require
the help of an ass and a cart in its transport; the collector of bones
and offal from the butchers’ slaughter-houses or shops; and the many
who may be considered as co-traders with the costermonger class--the
greengrocer, the street coal-seller by retail, the salt-sellers, the
gravel and sand dealer (a few have small carts)--all, indeed, of
that class of traders, buy their harness second-hand, and generally
in the streets. The chief sale of second-hand harness is on the
Friday afternoons, in Smithfield. The more especial street-sale is in
Petticoat and Rosemary lanes, and in the many off-streets and alleys
which may be called the tributaries to those great second-hand marts.
There is no sale of these wares in the Saturday night markets, for
in the crush and bustle generally prevailing there at such times,
no room could be found for things requiring so much space as sets
of second-hand harness, and no time sufficiently to examine them.
“There’s so much to look at, you understand, sir,” said one second-hand
street-trader, who did a little in harness as well as in barrows, “if
you wants a decent set, and don’t grudge a shilling or two--and I never
grudges them myself when I has ’em--so that it takes a little time. You
must see that the buckles has good tongues--and it’s a sort of joke in
the trade that a bad tongue’s a d----d bad thing--and that the pannel
of the pad ain’t as hard as a board (flocks is the best stuffing, sir),
and that the bit, if it’s rusty, can be polished up, for a animal no
more likes a rusty bit in his mouth than we likes a musty bit of bread
in our’n. O, a man as treats his ass as a ass ought to be treated--and
it’s just the same if he has a pony--can’t be too perticler. If I
had my way I’d ’act a law making people perticler about ’osses’ and
asses’ shoes. If your boot pinches you, sir, you can sing out to your
bootmaker, but a ass can’t blow up a farrier.” It seems to me that in
these homely remarks of my informant, there is, so to speak, a sound
practical kindliness. There can be little doubt that a fellow who
maltreats his ass or his dog, maltreats his wife and children when he
dares.

_Clocks_ are sold second-hand, but only by three or four foreigners,
Dutchmen or Germans, who hawk them and sell them at 2_s._ 6_d._ or
3_s._ each, Dutch clocks only being disposed of in this way. These
traders, therefore, come under the head of STREET-FOREIGNERS. “Ay,” one
street-seller remarked to me, “it’s only Dutch now as is second-handed
in the streets, but it’ll soon be Americans. The swags is some of them
hung up with Slick’s;” [so he called the American clocks, meaning the
“Sam _Slicks_,” in reference to Mr. Justice Hallyburton’s work of that
title;] “they’re hung up with ’em, sir, and no relation whatsomever
(pawnbroker) ’ll give a printed character of ’em (a duplicate), and
so they must come to the streets, and jolly cheap they’ll be.” The
foreigners who sell the second-hand Dutch clocks sell also new clocks
of the same manufacture, and often on tally, 1_s._ a week being the
usual payment.

_Cartouche-boxes_ are sold at the miscellaneous stalls, but only after
there has been what I heard called a “Tower sale” (sale of military
stores). When bought of the street-sellers, the use of these boxes is
far more peaceful than that for which they were manufactured. Instead
of the receptacles of cartridges, the divisions are converted into nail
boxes, each with its different assortment, or contain the smaller kinds
of tools, such as awl-blades. These boxes are sold in the streets at
1/2_d._ or 1_d._ each, and are bought by jobbing shoemakers more than
by any other class.

Of the other second-hand commodities of the streets, I may observe
that in _Trinkets_ the trade is altogether Jewish; in _Maps_, with
frames, it is now a nonentity, and so it is with _Fishing-rods_,
_Cricket-bats_, _&c._

In _Umbrellas_ and _Parasols_ the second-hand traffic is large, but
those vended in the streets are nearly all “done up” for street-sale by
the class known as “Mush,” or more properly “Mushroom Fakers,” that is
to say, the makers or _fakers_ (_facere_--the slang _fakement_ being
simply a corruption of the Latin _facimentum_) of those articles which
are similar in shape to _mushrooms_. I shall treat of this class and
the goods they sell under the head of Street-Artisans. The collectors
of Old Umbrellas and Parasols are the same persons as collect the
second-hand habiliments of male and female attire.

* * * * *

The men and women engaged in the street-commerce carried on in
second-hand articles are, in all respects, a more mixed class than the
generality of street-sellers. Some hawk in the streets goods which they
also display in their shops, or in the windowless apartments known
as their shops. Some are not in possession of shops, but often buy
their wares of those who are. Some collect or purchase the articles
they vend; others collect them by barter. The itinerant crock-man, the
root-seller, the glazed table-cover seller, the hawker of spars and
worked stone, and even the costermonger of the morning, is the dealer
in second-hand articles of the afternoon and evening. The costermonger
is, moreover, often the buyer and seller of second-hand harness in
Smithfield. I may point out again, also, what a multifariousness of
wares passes in the course of a month through the hands of a general
street-seller; at one time new goods, at another second-hand; sometimes
he is stationary at a pitch vending “lots,” or “swag toys;” at others
itinerant, selling braces, belts, and hose.

I found no miscellaneous dealer who could tell me of the proportionate
receipts from the various articles he dealt in even for the last
month. He “did well” in this, and badly in the other trade, but beyond
such vague statements there is no precise information to be had. It
should be recollected that the street-sellers do not keep accounts, or
those documents would supply references. “It’s all headwork with us,” a
street-seller said, somewhat boastingly, to me, as if the ignorance of
book-keeping was rather commendable.

OF SECOND-HAND STORE SHOPS.

Perhaps it may add to the completeness of the information here given
concerning the trading in old refuse articles, and especially those
of a miscellaneous character, the manner in which, and the parties
by whom the business is carried on, if I conclude this branch of the
subject by an account of the shops of the second-hand dealers. The
distance between the class of these shopkeepers and of the stall and
barrow-keepers I have described is not great. It may be said to be
merely from the street to within doors. Marine-store dealers have
often in their start in life been street-sellers, not unfrequently
costermongers, and street-sellers they again become if their ventures
be unsuccessful. Some of them, however, make a good deal of money in
what may be best understood as a “hugger-mugger way.”

On this subject I cannot do better than quote Mr. Dickens, one of the
most minute and truthful of observers:--

“The reader must often have perceived in some by-street, in a poor
neighbourhood, a small dirty shop, exposing for sale the most
extraordinary and confused jumble of old, worn-out, wretched articles,
that can well be imagined. Our wonder at their ever having been bought,
is only to be equalled by our astonishment at the idea of their ever
being sold again. On a board, at the side of the door, are placed about
twenty books--all odd volumes; and as many wine-glasses--all different
patterns; several locks, an old earthenware pan, full of rusty keys;
two or three gaudy chimney ornaments--cracked, of course; the remains
of a lustre, without any drops; a round frame like a capital O, which
has once held a mirror; a flute, complete with the exception of the
middle joint; a pair of curling-irons; and a tinder-box. In front of
the shop-window, are ranged some half-dozen high-backed chairs, with
spinal complaints and wasted legs; a corner cupboard; two or three
very dark mahogany tables with flaps like mathematical problems; some
pickle-bottles, some surgeons’ ditto, with gilt labels and without
stoppers; an unframed portrait of some lady who flourished about the
beginning of the thirteenth century, by an artist who never flourished
at all; an incalculable host of miscellanies of every description,
including armour and cabinets, rags and bones, fenders and street-door
knockers, fire-irons, wearing-apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp, and
a room-door. Imagine, in addition to this incongruous mass, a black
doll in a white frock, with two faces--one looking up the street, and
the other looking down, swinging over the door; a board with the
squeezed-up inscription ‘Dealer in marine stores,’ in lanky white
letters, whose height is strangely out of proportion to their width;
and you have before you precisely the kind of shop to which we wish to
direct your attention.

“Although the same heterogeneous mixture of things will be found at
all these places, it is curious to observe how truly and accurately
some of the minor articles which are exposed for sale--articles of
wearing-apparel, for instance--mark the character of the neighbourhood.
Take Drury-lane and Covent-garden for example.

“This is essentially a theatrical neighbourhood. There is not a potboy
in the vicinity who is not, to a greater or less extent, a dramatic
character. The errand-boys and chandlers’-shop-keepers’ sons, are
all stage-struck: they ‘get up’ plays in back kitchens hired for the
purpose, and will stand before a shop-window for hours, contemplating
a great staring portrait of Mr. somebody or other, of the Royal Coburg
Theatre, ‘as he appeared in the character of Tongo the Denounced.’
The consequence is, that there is not a marine-store shop in the
neighbourhood, which does not exhibit for sale some faded articles of
dramatic finery, such as three or four pairs of soiled buff boots with
turn-over red tops, heretofore worn by a ‘fourth robber,’ or ‘fifth
mob;’ a pair of rusty broad-swords, a few gauntlets, and certain
resplendent ornaments, which, if they were yellow instead of white,
might be taken for insurance plates of the Sun Fire-office. There are
several of these shops in the narrow streets and dirty courts, of
which there are so many near the national theatres, and they all have
tempting goods of this description, with the addition, perhaps, of a
lady’s pink dress covered with spangles; white wreaths, stage shoes,
and a tiara like a tin lamp reflector. They have been purchased of some
wretched supernumeraries, or sixth-rate actors, and are now offered
for the benefit of the rising generation, who, on condition of making
certain weekly payments, amounting in the whole to about ten times
their value, may avail themselves of such desirable bargains.

“Let us take a very different quarter, and apply it to the same
test. Look at a marine-store dealer’s, in that reservoir of dirt,
drunkenness, and drabs: thieves, oysters, baked potatoes, and pickled
salmon--Ratcliff-highway. Here, the wearing-apparel is all nautical.
Rough blue jackets, with mother-of-pearl buttons, oil-skin hats,
coarse checked shirts, and large canvass trousers that look as if
they were made for a pair of bodies instead of a pair of legs, are
the staple commodities. Then, there are large bunches of cotton
pocket-handkerchiefs, in colour and pattern unlike any one ever saw
before, with the exception of those on the backs of the three young
ladies without bonnets who passed just now. The furniture is much the
same as elsewhere, with the addition of one or two models of ships,
and some old prints of naval engagements in still older frames. In the
window are a few compasses, a small tray containing silver watches in
clumsy thick cases; and tobacco-boxes, the lid of each ornamented with
a ship, or an anchor, or some such trophy. A sailor generally pawns or
sells all he has before he has been long ashore, and if he does not,
some favoured companion kindly saves him the trouble. In either case,
it is an even chance that he afterwards unconsciously repurchases the
same things at a higher price than he gave for them at first.

“Again: pay a visit, with a similar object, to a part of London, as
unlike both of these as they are to each other. Cross over to the Surry
side, and look at such shops of this description as are to be found
near the King’s Bench prison, and in ‘the Rules.’ How different, and
how strikingly illustrative of the decay of some of the unfortunate
residents in this part of the metropolis! Imprisonment and neglect have
done their work. There is contamination in the profligate denizens of
a debtors’ prison; old friends have fallen off; the recollection of
former prosperity has passed away; and with it all thoughts for the
past, all care for the future. First, watches and rings, then cloaks,
coats, and all the more expensive articles of dress, have found their
way to the pawnbroker’s. That miserable resource has failed at last,
and the sale of some trifling article at one of these shops, has been
the only mode left of raising a shilling or two, to meet the urgent
demands of the moment. Dressing-cases and writing-desks, too old to
pawn but too good to keep; guns, fishing-rods, musical instruments, all
in the same condition; have first been sold, and the sacrifice has been
but slightly felt. But hunger must be allayed, and what has already
become a habit, is easily resorted to, when an emergency arises. Light
articles of clothing, first of the ruined man, then of his wife, at
last of their children, even of the youngest, have been parted with,
piecemeal. There they are, thrown carelessly together until a purchaser
presents himself, old, and patched and repaired, it is true; but the
make and materials tell of better days: and the older they are, the
greater the misery and destitution of those whom they once adorned.”

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND APPAREL.

The multifariousness of the articles of this trade is limited only by
what the uncertainty of the climate, the caprices of fashion, or the
established styles of apparel in the kingdom, have caused to be worn,
flung aside, and reworn as a revival of an obsolete style. It is to
be remarked, however, that of the old-fashioned styles none that are
costly have been revived. Laced coats, and embroidered and lappeted
waistcoats, have long disappeared from second-hand traffic--the last
stage of fashions--and indeed from all places but court or fancy balls
and the theatre.

The great mart for second-hand apparel was, in the last century,
in Monmouth-street; now, by one of those arbitrary, and almost
always inappropriate, changes in the nomenclature of streets, termed
Dudley-street, Seven Dials. “Monmouth-street finery” was a common term
to express tawdriness and pretence. Now Monmouth-street, for its new
name is hardly legitimated, has no finery. Its second-hand wares are
almost wholly confined to old boots and shoes, which are vamped up with
a good deal of trickery; so much so that a shoemaker, himself in the
poorer practice of the “gentle craft,” told me that blacking and brown
paper were the materials of Monmouth-street cobbling. Almost every
master in Monmouth-street now is, I am told, an Irishman; and the great
majority of the workmen are Irishmen also. There were a few Jews and a
few cockneys in this well-known street a year or two back, but now this
branch of the second-hand trade is really in the hands of what may be
called a clan. A little business is carried on in second-hand apparel,
as well as boots and shoes, but it is insignificant.

The head-quarters of this second-hand trade are now in Petticoat and
Rosemary lanes, especially in Petticoat-lane, and the traffic there
carried on may be called enormous. As in other departments of commerce,
both in our own capital, in many of our older cities, and in the cities
of the Continent, the locality appropriated to this traffic is one of
narrow streets, dark alleys, and most oppressive crowding. The traders
seem to judge of a Rag-fair garment, whether a cotton frock or a ducal
coachman’s great-coat, by the touch, more reliably than by the sight;
they inspect, so to speak, with their fingers more than their eyes.
But the business in Petticoat and Rosemary lanes is mostly of a retail
character. The wholesale mart--for the trade in old clothes has both a
wholesale and retail form--is in a place of especial curiosity, and one
of which, as being little known, I shall first speak.

OF THE OLD CLOTHES EXCHANGE.

The trade in second-hand apparel is one of the most ancient of
callings, and is known in almost every country, but anything like the
Old Clothes Exchange of the Jewish quarter of London, in the extent and
order of its business, is unequalled in the world. There is indeed no
other such place, and it is rather remarkable that a business occupying
so many persons, and requiring such facilities for examination and
arrangement, should not until the year 1843 have had its regulated
proceedings. The Old Clothes Exchange is the latest of the central
marts, established in the metropolis.

Smithfield, or the Cattle Exchange, is the oldest of all the markets;
it is mentioned as a place for the sale of horses in the time of
Henry II. Billingsgate, or the Fish Exchange, is of ancient, but
uncertain era. Covent Garden--the largest Fruit, Vegetable, and
Flower Exchange--first became established as the centre of such
commerce in the reign of Charles II.; the establishment of the Borough
and Spitalfields markets, as other marts for the sale of fruits,
vegetables, and flowers, being nearly as ancient. The Royal Exchange
dates from the days of Queen Elizabeth, and the Bank of England and the
Stock-Exchange from those of William III., while the present premises
for the Corn and Coal Exchanges are modern.

Were it possible to obtain the statistics of the last quarter of a
century, it would, perhaps, be found that in none of the important
interests I have mentioned has there been a greater increase of
business than in the trade in old clothes. Whether this purports a high
degree of national prosperity or not, it is not my business at present
to inquire, and be it as it may, it is certain that, until the last
few years, the trade in old clothes used to be carried on entirely in
the open air, and this in the localities which I have pointed out in
my account of the trade in old metal (p. 10, vol. ii.) as comprising
the Petticoat-lane district. The old clothes trade was also pursued in
Rosemary-lane, but then--and so indeed it is now--this was but a branch
of the more centralized commerce of Petticoat-lane. The head-quarters
of the traffic at that time were confined to a space not more than ten
square yards, adjoining Cutler-street. The chief traffic elsewhere
was originally in Cutler-street, White-street, Carter-street, and in
Harrow-alley--the districts of the celebrated Rag-fair.

The confusion and clamour before the institution of the present
arrangements were extreme. Great as was the extent of the business
transacted, people wondered how it could be accomplished, for it
always appeared to a stranger, that there could be no order whatever
in all the disorder. The wrangling was incessant, nor were the
trade-contests always confined to wrangling alone. The passions of the
Irish often drove them to resort to cuffs, kicks, and blows, which
the Jews, although with a better command over their tempers, were not
slack in returning. The East India Company, some of whose warehouses
adjoined the market, frequently complained to the city authorities
of the nuisance. Complaints from other quarters were also frequent,
and sometimes as many as 200 constables were necessary to restore or
enforce order. The nuisance, however, like many a public nuisance,
was left to remedy itself, or rather it was left to be remedied by
individual enterprise. Mr. L. Isaac, the present proprietor, purchased
the houses which then filled up the back of Phil’s-buildings, and
formed the present Old Clothes Exchange. This was eight years ago;
now there are no more policemen in the locality than in other equally
populous parts.

Of Old Clothes Exchanges there are now two, both adjacent, the one
first opened by Mr. Isaac being the most important. This is 100 feet by
70, and is the mart to which the collectors of the cast-off apparel of
the metropolis bring their goods for sale. The goods are sold wholesale
and retail, for an old clothes merchant will buy either a single
hat, or an entire wardrobe, or a sackful of shoes,--I need not say
_pairs_, for odd shoes are not rejected. In one department of “Isaac’s
Exchange,” however, the goods are not sold to parties who buy for their
own wearing, but to the old clothes merchant, who buys to sell again.
In this portion of the mart are 90 stalls, averaging about six square
feet each.

In another department, which communicates with the first, and is
two-thirds of the size, are assembled such traders as buy the old
garments to dispose of them, either after a process of cleaning, or
when they have been repaired and renovated. These buyers are generally
shopkeepers, residing in the old clothes districts of Marylebone-lane,
Holywell-street, Monmouth-street, Union-street (Borough), Saffron-hill
(Field-lane), Drury-lane, Shoreditch, the Waterloo-road, and other
places of which I shall have to speak hereafter.

The difference between the first and second class of buyers above
mentioned, is really that of the merchant and the retail shopkeeper.
The one buys literally anything presented to him which is vendible, and
in any quantity, for the supply of the wholesale dealers from distant
parts, or for exportation, or for the general trade of London. The
other purchases what suits his individual trade, and is likely to suit
regular or promiscuous customers.

In another part of the same market is carried on the _retail_ old
clothes trade to any one--shopkeeper, artisan, clerk, costermonger,
or gentlemen. This indeed, is partially the case in the other parts.
“Yesh, inteet,” said a Hebrew trader, whom I conversed with on the
subject, “I shall be clad to shell you one coat, sir. Dish von is
shust your shize; it is verra sheep, and vosh made by one tip-top
shnip.” Indeed, the keenness and anxiety to trade--whenever trade seems
possible--causes many of the frequenters of these marts to infringe the
arrangements as to the manner of the traffic, though the proprietors
endeavour to cause the regulations to be strictly adhered to.

The second Exchange, which is a few yards apart from the other is known
as Simmons and Levy’s Clothes Exchange, and is unemployed, for its more
especial business purposes, except in the mornings. The commerce is
then wholesale, for here are sold collections of unredeemed pledges in
wearing apparel, consigned there by the pawnbrokers, or the buyers at
the auctions of unredeemed goods; as well as draughts from the stocks
of the wardrobe dealers; a quantity of military or naval stores, and
such like articles. In the afternoon the stalls are occupied by retail
dealers. The ground is about as large as the first-mentioned exchange,
but is longer and narrower.

In neither of these places is there even an attempt at architectural
elegance, or even neatness. The stalls and partitions are of unpainted
wood, the walls are bare, the only care that seems to be manifested is
that the places should be dry. In the first instance the plainness was
no doubt a necessity from motives of prudence, as the establishments
were merely speculations, and now everything but _business_ seems
to be disregarded. The Old Clothes Exchanges have assuredly one
recommendation as they are now seen--their appropriateness. They have
a threadbare, patched, and _second-hand_ look. The dresses worn by the
dealers, and the dresses they deal in, are all in accordance with the
genius of the place. But the eagerness, crowding, and energy, are the
grand features of the scene; and of all the many curious sights in
London there is none so picturesque (from the various costumes of the
buyers and sellers), none so novel, and none so animated as that of the
Old Clothes Exchange.

Business is carried on in the wholesale department of the Old Clothes
Exchanges every day during the week; and in the retail on each day
except the Hebrew Sabbath (Saturday). The Jews in the old clothes trade
observe strictly the command that on their Sabbath day they shall do no
manner of work, for on a visit I paid to the Exchange last Saturday,
not a single Jew could I see engaged in any business. But though
the Hebrew Sabbath is observed by the Jews and disregarded by the
Christians, the Christian Sabbath, on the other hand, is disregarded
by Jew and Christian alike, some few of the Irish excepted, who may
occasionally go to early mass, and attend at the Exchange afterwards.
Sunday, therefore, in “Rag-fair,” is like the other days of the week
(Saturday excepted); business closes on the Sunday, however, at 2
instead of 6.

On the Saturday the keen Jew-traders in the neighbourhood of the
Exchanges may be seen standing at their doors--after the synagogue
hours--or looking out of their windows, dressed in their best. The
dress of the men is for the most part not distinguishable from that of
the English on the Sunday, except that there may be a greater glitter
of rings and watch-guards. The dress of the women is of every kind;
becoming, handsome, rich, tawdry, but seldom neat.

OF THE WHOLESALE BUSINESS AT THE OLD CLOTHES EXCHANGE.

A considerable quantity of the old clothes disposed of at the Exchange
are bought by merchants from Ireland. They are then packed in bales by
porters, regularly employed for the purpose, and who literally _build_
them up square and compact. These bales are each worth from 50_l._ to
300_l._, though seldom 300_l._, and it is curious to reflect from how
many classes the pile of old garments has been collected--how many
privations have been endured before some of these habiliments found
their way into the possession of the old clothesman--what besotted
debauchery put others in his possession--with what cool calculation
others were disposed of--how many were procured for money, and how
many by the tempting offers of flowers, glass, crockery, spars,
table-covers, lace, or millinery--what was the clothing which could
first be spared when rent was to be defrayed or bread to be bought, and
what was treasured until the last--in what scenes of gaiety or gravity,
in the opera-house or the senate, had the perhaps departed wearers of
some of that heap of old clothes figured--through how many possessors,
and again through what new scenes of middle-class or artizan comfort
had these dresses passed, or through what accidents of “genteel”
privation and destitution--and lastly through what necessities of
squalid wretchedness and low debauchery.

Every kind of old attire, from the highest to the _very lowest_, I was
emphatically told, was sent to Ireland.

Some of the bales are composed of garments originally made for the
labouring classes. These are made up of every description of colour and
material--cloth, corduroy, woollen cords, fustian, moleskin, flannel,
velveteen, plaids, and the several varieties of those substances.
In them are to be seen coats, great-coats, jackets, trousers, and
breeches, but no other habiliments, such as boots, shirts, or
stockings. I was told by a gentleman, who between 40 and 50 years ago
was familiar with the liberty and poorer parts of Dublin, that the most
coveted and the most saleable of all second-hand apparel was that of
leather breeches, worn commonly in some of the country parts of England
half a century back, and sent in considerable quantities at that time
from London to Ireland. These nether habiliments were coveted because,
as the Dublin sellers would say, they “would wear for ever, and look
illigant after that.” Buck-skin breeches are now never worn except
by grooms in their liveries, and gentlemen when hunting, so that the
trade in them in the Old Clothes Exchange, and their exportation to
Ireland, are at an end. The next most saleable thing--I may mention,
incidentally--vended cheap and second-hand in Dublin, to the poor
Irishmen of the period I speak of, was a wig! And happy was the man who
could wear two, one over the other.

Some of the Irish buyers who are regular frequenters of the London Old
Clothes Exchange, take a small apartment, often a garret or a cellar,
in Petticoat-lane or its vicinity, and to this room they convey their
purchases until a sufficient stock has been collected. Among these old
clothes the Irish possessors cook, or at any rate eat, their meals,
and upon them they sleep. I did not hear that such dealers were more
than ordinarily unhealthy; though it may, perhaps, be assumed that such
habits are fatal to health. What may be the average duration of life
among old clothes sellers who live in the midst of their wares, I do
not know, and believe that no facts have been collected on the subject;
but I certainly saw among them some very old men.

Other wholesale buyers from Ireland occupy decent lodgings in the
neighbourhood--decent considering the locality. In Phil’s-buildings, a
kind of wide alley which forms one of the approaches to the Exchange,
are eight respectable apartments, almost always let to the Irish old
clothes merchants.

Tradesmen of the same class come also from the large towns of England
and Scotland to buy for their customers some of the left-off clothes of
London.

Nor is this the extent of the wholesale trade. Bales of old clothes are
exported to Belgium and Holland, but principally to Holland. Of the
quantity of goods thus exported to the Continent not above one-half,
perhaps, can be called old _clothes_, while among these the old livery
suits are in the best demand. The other goods of this foreign trade
are old serges, duffles, carpeting, drugget, and heavy woollen goods
generally, of all the descriptions which I have before enumerated as
parcel of the second-hand trade of the streets. Old merino curtains,
and any second-hand decorations of fringes, woollen lace, &c., are in
demand for Holland.

Twelve bales, averaging somewhere about 100_l._ each in value, but not
fully 100_l._, are sent direct every week of the year from the Old
Clothes Exchange to distant places, and this is not the whole of the
traffic, apart from what is done retail. I am informed on the best
authority, that the average trade may be stated at 1500_l._ a week all
the year round. When I come to the conclusion of the subject, however,
I shall be able to present statistics of the amount turned over in the
respective branches of the old clothes trade, as well as of the number
of the traffickers, only one-fourth of whom are now Jews.

The conversation which goes on in the Old Clothes Exchange during
business hours, apart from the “larking” of the young sweet-stuff and
orange or cake-sellers, is all concerning business, but there is,
even while business is being transacted, a frequent interchange of
jokes, and even of practical jokes. The business talk--I was told by
an old clothes collector, and I heard similar remarks--is often to the
following effect:--

“How much is this here?” says the man who comes to buy. “One pound
five,” replies the Jew seller. “I won’t give you above half the money.”
“Half de money,” cries the salesman, “I can’t take dat. Vat above
the 16_s._ dat you offer now vill you give for it? Vill you give me
eighteen? Vell, come, give ush your money, I’ve got ma rent to pay.”
But the man says, “I only bid you 12_s._ 6_d._, and I shan’t give no
more.” And then, if the seller finds he can get him to “spring” or
advance no further, he says, “I shupposh I musht take your money even
if I loosh by it. You’ll be a better cushtomer anoder time.” [This is
still a common “deal,” I am assured by one who began the business at 13
years old, and is now upwards of 60 years of age. The Petticoat-laner
will always ask at least twice as much as he means to take.]

* * * * *

For a more detailed account of the mode of business as conducted at the
Old Clothes Exchange I refer the reader to p. 368, vol. i. Subsequent
visits have shown me nothing to alter in that description, although
written (in one of my letters in the _Morning Chronicle_), nearly two
years ago. I have merely to add that I have there mentioned the receipt
of a halfpenny toll; but this, I find, is not levied on Saturdays and
Sundays.

* * * * *

I ought not to omit stating that pilfering one from another by the
poor persons who have collected the second-hand garments, and have
carried them to the Old Clothes Exchange to dispose of, is of very
rare occurrence. This is the more commendable, for many of the wares
could not be identified by their owner, as he had procured them only
that morning. If, as happens often enough, a man carried a dozen pairs
of old shoes to the Exchange, and one pair were stolen, he might have
some difficulty in swearing to the identity of the pair purloined.
It is true that the Jews, and crock-men, and others, who collect, by
sale or barter, masses of old clothes, note all their defects very
minutely, and might have no moral doubt as to identity, nevertheless
the magistrate would probably conclude that the legal evidence--were it
only circumstantial--was insufficient. The young thieves, however, who
flock from the low lodging-houses in the neighbourhood, are an especial
trouble in Petticoat-lane, where the people robbed are generally
too busy, and the article stolen of too little value, to induce a
prosecution--a knowledge which the juvenile pilferer is not slow in
acquiring. Sometimes when these boys are caught pilfering, they are
severely beaten, especially by the women, who are aided by the men, if
the thief offers any formidable resistance, or struggles to return the
blows.

OF THE USES OF SECOND-HAND GARMENTS.

I have now to describe the uses to which the several kinds of garments
which constitute the commerce of the Old Clothes Exchange are devoted,
whether it be merely in the re-sale of the apparel, to be worn in its
original form or in a repaired or renovated form; or whether it be
“worked up” into other habiliments, or be useful for the making of
other descriptions of woollen fabrics; or else whether it be fit merely
for its last stages--the rag-bag for the paper-maker, or the manure
heap for the hop-grower.

* * * * *

Each “left-off” garment has its peculiar after _uses_, according to
its material and condition. The practised eye of the old clothes man
at once embraces every capability of the apparel, and the amount which
these capabilities will realize; whether they be woollen, linen,
cotton, leathern, or silken goods; or whether they be articles which
cannot be classed under any of those designations, such as macintoshes
and furs.

A _surtout_ coat is the most serviceable of any second-hand clothing,
originally good. It can be re-cuffed, re-collared, or the skirts
re-lined with new or old silk, or with a substitute for silk. It can
be “restored” if the seams be white and the general appearance what is
best understood by the expressive word “seedy.” This restoration is a
sort of re-dyeing, or rather re-colouring, by the application of gall
and logwood with a small portion of copperas. If the under sleeve be
worn, as it often is by those whose avocations are sedentary, it is
renewed, and frequently with a second-hand piece of cloth “to match,”
so that there is no perceptible difference between the renewal and
the other parts. Many an honest artisan in this way becomes possessed
of his Sunday frock-coat, as does many a smarter clerk or shopman,
impressed with a regard to his personal appearance.

In the last century, I may here observe, and perhaps in the early
part of the present, when woollen cloth was much dearer, much more
substantial, and therefore much more durable, it was common for
economists to have a good coat “turned.” It was taken to pieces by
the tailor and re-made, the inner part becoming the outer. This
mode prevailed alike in France and England; for Molière makes his
miser, _Harpagon_, magnanimously resolve to incur the cost of his
many-years’-old coat being “turned,” for the celebration of his
expected marriage with a young and wealthy bride. This way of dealing
with a second-hand garment is not so general now as it was formerly in
London, nor is it in the country.

If the surtout be incapable of restoration to the appearance of a
“respectable” garment, the skirts are sold for the making of cloth
caps; or for the material of boys’ or “youths’” waistcoats; or for
“poor country curates’ gaiters; but not so much now as they once
were. The poor journeymen parsons,” I was told, “now goes for the new
slops; they’re often green, and is had by ’vertisements, and bills,
and them books about fashions which is all over both country and town.
Do you know, sir, why them there books is always made so small? The
leaves is about four inches square. That’s to prevent their being any
use as waste paper. I’ll back a coat such as is sometimes sold by a
gentleman’s servant to wear out two new slops.”

_Cloaks_ are things of as ready sale as any kind of old garments. If
good, or even reparable, they are in demand both for the home and
foreign trades, as cloaks; if too far gone, which is but rarely the
case, they are especially available for the same purposes as the
surtout. The same may be said of the great-coat.

_Dress-coats_ are far less useful, as if cleaned up and repaired they
are not in demand among the working classes, and the clerks and shopmen
on small salaries are often tempted by the price, I was told, to buy
some wretched new slop thing rather than a superior coat second-hand.
The dress-coats, however, are used for caps. Sometimes a coat, for
which the collector may have given 9_d._, is cut up for the repairs of
better garments.

_Trousers_ are re-seated and repaired where the material is strong
enough; and they are, I am informed, now about the only habiliment
which is ever “turned,” and that but exceptionally. The repairs to
trousers are more readily effected than those to coats, and trousers
are freely bought by the collectors, and as freely re-bought by the
public.

_Waistcoats_--I still speak of woollen fabrics--are sometimes used
in cap-making, and were used in gaiter-making. But generally, at the
present time, the worn edges are cut away, the buttons renewed or
replaced by a new set, sometimes of glittering glass, the button-holes
repaired or their jaggedness gummed down, and so the waistcoat is
reproduced as a waistcoat, a size smaller. Sometimes a “vest,” as
waistcoats are occasionally called, is used by the cheap boot-makers
for the “legs” of a woman’s cloth boots, either laced or buttoned, but
not a quarter as much as they would be, I was told, if the buttons and
button-holes of the waistcoat would “do again” in the boot.

Nor is the woollen garment, if too thin, too worn, or too rotten
to be devoted to any of the uses I have specified, flung away as
worthless. To the traders in second-hand apparel, or in the remains
of second-hand apparel, a dust-hole is an unknown receptacle. The
woollen rag, for so it is then considered, when unravelled can be made
available for the manufacture of cheap yarns, being mixed with new
wool. It is more probable, however, that the piece of woollen fabric
which has been rejected by those who make or mend, and who must make
or mend so cheaply that the veriest vagrant may be their customer,
is formed not only into a new material, but into a material which
sometimes is made into a new garment. These garments are inferior to
those woven of new wool, both in look and wear; but in some articles
the re-manufacture is beautiful. The fabric thus snatched, as it
were, from the ruins of cloth, is known as shoddy, the chief seat of
manufacture being in Dewsbury, a small town in Yorkshire. The old
material, when duly prepared, is torn into wool again by means of fine
machinery, but the recovered wool is shorter in its fibre and more
brittle in its nature; it is, indeed, more a woollen pulp than a wool.

Touching this peculiar branch of manufacture, I will here cite from the
_Morning Chronicle_ a brief description of a Shoddy Mill, so that the
reader may have as comprehensive a knowledge as possible of the several
uses to which his left-off clothes may be put.

“The small town of Dewsbury holds, in the woollen district, very
much the same position which Oldham does in the cotton country--the
spinning and preparing of waste and refuse materials. To this stuff
the name of “shoddy” is given, but the real and orthodox “shoddy” is a
production of the woollen districts, and consists of the second-hand
wool manufactured by the tearing up, or rather the grinding, of woollen
rags by means of coarse willows, called devils; the operation of which
sends forth choking clouds of dry pungent dirt and floating fibres--the
real and original “devil’s dust.” Having been, by the agency of the
machinery in question, reduced to something like the original raw
material, fresh wool is added to the pulp in different proportions,
according to the quality of the stuff to be manufactured, and the
mingled material is at length reworked in the usual way into a little
serviceable cloth.

“There are some shoddy mills in the neighbourhood of Huddersfield, but
the mean little town of Dewsbury may be taken as the metropolis of the
manufacture. Some mills are devoted solely to the sorting, preparing,
and grinding of rags, which are worked up in the neighbouring
factories. Here great bales, choke full of filthy tatters, lie
scattered about the yard, while the continual arrival of loaded waggons
keeps adding to the heap. A glance at the exterior of these mills shows
their character. The walls and part of the roof are covered with the
thick clinging dust and fibre, which ascends in choky volumes from the
open doors and glassless windows of the ground floor, and which also
pours forth from a chimney, constructed for the purpose, exactly like
smoke. The mill is covered as with a mildewy fungus, and upon the gray
slates of the roof the frowzy deposit is often not less than two inches
in depth.

“In the upper story of these mills the rags are stored. A great
ware-room is piled in many places from the floor to the ceiling with
bales of woollen rags, torn strips and tatters of every colour peeping
out from the bursting depositories. There is hardly a country in
Europe which does not contribute its quota of material to the shoddy
manufacturer. Rags are brought from France, Germany, and in great
quantities from Belgium. Denmark, I understand, is favourably looked
upon by the tatter merchants, being fertile in morsels of clothing,
of fair quality. Of domestic rags, the Scotch bear off the palm; and
possibly no one will be surprised to hear, that of all rags Irish rags
are the most worn, the filthiest, and generally the most unprofitable.
The gradations of value in the world of rags are indeed remarkable.
I was shown rags worth 50_l._ per ton, and rags worth only 30_s._
The best class is formed of the remains of fine cloth, the produce
of which, eked out with a few bundles of fresh wool, is destined
to go forth to the world again as broad cloth, or at all events as
pilot cloth. Fragments of damask and skirts of merino dresses form
the staple of middle-class rags; and even the very worst bales--they
appear unmitigated mashes of frowzy filth--afford here and there
some fragments of calico, which are wrought up into brown paper. The
refuse of all, mixed with the stuff which even the shoddy-making devil
rejects, is packed off to the agricultural districts for use as manure,
to fertilize the hop-gardens of Kent.

“Under the rag ware-room is the sorting and picking room. Here the
bales are opened, and their contents piled in close, poverty-smelling
masses, upon the floor. The operatives are entirely women. They sit
upon low stools, or half sunk and half enthroned amid heaps of the
filthy goods, busily employed in arranging them according to the colour
and the quality of the morsels, and from the more pretending quality
of rags carefully ripping out every particle of cotton which they can
detect. Piles of rags of different sorts, dozens of feet high, are the
obvious fruits of their labour. All these women are over eighteen years
of age, and the wages which they are paid for ten hours’ work are 6_s._
per week. They look squalid and dirty enough; but all of them chatter
and several sing over their noisome labour. The atmosphere of the room
is close and oppressive; and although no particularly offensive smell
is perceptible, there is a choky, mildewy sort of odour--a hot, moist
exhalation--arising from the sodden smouldering piles, as the workwomen
toss armfuls of rags from one heap to another. This species of work is
the lowest and foulest which any phase of the factory system can show.

“The devils are upon the ground floor. The choking dust bursts out from
door and window, and it is not until a minute or so that the visitor
can see the workmen moving amid the clouds, catching up armfuls of the
sorted rags and tossing them into the machine to be torn into fibry
fragments by the whirling revolutions of its teeth. The place in which
this is done is a large bare room--the uncovered beams above, the rough
stone walls, and the woodwork of the unglazed windows being as it were
furred over with clinging woolly matter. On the floor, the dust and
coarse filaments lie as if ‘it had been snowing snuff.’ The workmen are
coated with the flying powder. They wear bandages over their mouths,
so as to prevent as much as possible the inhalation of the dust, and
seem loath to remove the protection for a moment. The rag grinders,
with their squalid, dust-strewn garments, powdered to a dull grayish
hue, and with their bandages tied over the greater part of their faces,
move about like reanimated mummies in their swathings, looking most
ghastly. The wages of these poor creatures do not exceed 7_s._ or 8_s._
a week. The men are much better paid, none of them making less than
18_s._ a week, and many earning as much as 22_s._ Not one of them,
however, will admit that he found the trade injurious. The dust tickles
them a little, they say, that is all. They feel it most of a Monday
morning, after being all Sunday in the fresh air. When they first take
to the work it hurts their throats a little, but they drink mint tea,
and that soon cures them. They are all more or less subject to ‘shoddy
fever,’ they confess, especially after tenting the grinding of the
very dusty sorts of stuff--worsted stockings, for example. The shoddy
fever is a sort of stuffing of the head and nose, with sore throat, and
it sometimes forces them to give over work for two or three days, or
at most a week; but the disorder, the workmen say, is not fatal, and
leaves no particularly bad effects.

“In spite of all this, however, it is manifestly impossible for
human lungs to breathe under such circumstances without suffering.
The visitor exposed to the atmosphere for ten minutes experiences
an unpleasant choky sensation in the throat, which lasts all the
remainder of the day. The rag grinders, moreover, according to the
best accounts, are very subject to asthmatic complaints, particularly
when the air is dull and warm. The shoddy fever is said to be like a
bad cold, with constant acrid running from the nose, and a great deal
of expectoration. It is when there is a particularly dirty lot of rags
to be ground that the people are usually attacked in this way, but the
fever seldom keeps them more than two or three days from their work.

“In other mills the rags are not only ground, but the shoddy is worked
up into coarse bad cloth, a great proportion of which is sent to
America for slave clothing (and much now sold to the slop-shops).

“After the rags have been devilled into shoddy, the remaining processes
are much the same, although conducted in a coarser way, as those
performed in the manufacture of woollen cloth. The weaving is, for the
most part, carried on at the homes of the workpeople. The domestic
arrangements consist, in every case, of two tolerably large rooms, one
above the other, with a cellar beneath--a plan of construction called
in Yorkshire a “house and a chamber.” The chamber has generally a bed
amid the looms. The weavers complain of irregular work and diminished
wages. Their average pay, one week with another, with their wives to
wind for them--_i. e._, to place the thread upon the bobbin which
goes into the shuttle--is hardly so much as 10_s._ a week. They work
long hours, often fourteen per day. Sometimes the weaver is a small
capitalist with perhaps half a dozen looms, and a hand-jenny for
spinning thread, the workpeople being within his own family as regular
apprentices and journeymen.”

Dr. Hemingway, a gentleman who has a large practice in the shoddy
district, has given the following information touching the “shoddy
fever”:--

“The disease popularly known as ‘shoddy fever,’ and which is of
frequent occurrence, is a species of bronchitis, caused by the
irritating effect of the floating particles of dust upon the mucous
membrane of the trachea and its ramifications. In general, the
attack is easily cured--particularly if the patient has not been for
any length of time exposed to the exciting cause--by effervescing
saline draughts to allay the symptomatic febrile action, followed by
expectorants to relieve the mucous membrane of the irritating dust;
but a long continuance of employment in the contaminated atmosphere,
bringing on as it does repeated attacks of the disease, is too apt,
in the end, to undermine the constitution, and produce a train of
pectoral diseases, often closing with pulmonary consumption. Ophthalmic
attacks are by no means uncommon among the shoddy-grinders, some of
whom, however, wear wire-gauze spectacles to protect the eyes. As
regards the effect of the occupation upon health, it may shorten life
by about five years on a rough average, taking, of course, as the point
of comparison, the average longevity of the district in which the
manufacture is carried on.”

“Shoddy fever” is, in fact, a modification of the very fatal disease
induced by what is called “dry grinding” at Sheffield; but of course
the particles of woollen filament are less fatal in their influence
than the floating steel dust produced by the operation in question.

At one time shoddy cloth was not good and firm enough to be used for
other purposes than such as padding by tailors, and in the inner
linings of carriages, by coach-builders. It was not used for purposes
which would expose it to stress, but only to a moderate wear or
friction. Now shoddy, which modern improvements have made susceptible
of receiving a fine dye (it always looked a dead colour at one
period), is made into cloth for soldiers’ and sailors’ uniforms and
for pilot-coats; into blanketing, drugget, stair and other carpeting,
and into those beautiful table-covers, with their rich woollen look,
on which elegantly drawn and elaborately coloured designs are printed
through the application of aquafortis. Thus the rags which the beggar
could no longer hang about him to cover his nakedness, may be a
component of the soldier’s or sailor’s uniform, the carpet of a palace,
or the library table-cover of a prime-minister.

There is yet another use for old woollen clothes. What is not good
for shoddy is good for manure, and more especially for the manure
prepared by the agriculturists in Kent, Sussex, and Herefordshire,
for the culture of a difficult plant--hops. It is good also for corn
land (judiciously used), so that we again have the remains of the old
garment in our beer or our bread.

* * * * *

I have hitherto spoken of _woollen_ fabrics. The garments of other
materials are seldom diverted from their original use, for as long as
they will hold together they can be sold for exportation to Ireland,
though of course for very trifling amounts.

The black _Velvet_ and _Satin Waistcoats_--the latter now so commonly
worn--are almost always resold as waistcoats, and oft enough, when
rebound and rebuttoned, make a very respectable looking garment.
Nothing sells better to the working-classes than a _good_ second-hand
vest of the two materials of satin or velvet. If the satin, however,
be so worn and frayed that mending is impossible, the back, if not in
the same plight, is removed for rebacking of any waistcoat, and the
satin thrown away, one of the few things which in its last stage is
utterly valueless. It is the same with silk waistcoats, and for the
most part with velvet, but a velvet waistcoat may be thrown in the
refuse heap with the woollen rags for manure. The coloured waistcoats
of silk or velvet are dealt with in the same way. At one time,
when under-waistcoats were worn, the edges being just discernible,
quantities were made out of the full waistcoats where a sufficiency
of the stuff was unworn. This fashion is now becoming less and
less followed, and is principally in vogue in the matter of white
under-waistcoats. For the jean and other vests--even if a mixture of
materials--there is the same use as what I have described of the black
satin, and failing that, they are generally transferable to the rag-bag.

_Hats_ have become in greater demand than ever among the street-buyers
since the introduction into the London trade, and to so great an
extent, of the silk, velvet, French, or Parisian hats. The construction
of these hats is the same, and the easy way in which the hat-bodies are
made, has caused a number of poor persons, with no previous knowledge
of hat-making, to enter into the trade. “There’s hundreds starving at
it,” said a hat-manufacturer to me, “in Bermondsey, Lock’s-fields, and
the Borough; ay, hundreds.” This facility in the making of the bodies
of the new silk hats is quite as available in the restoration of the
bodies of the old hats, as I shall show from the information of a
highly-intelligent artisan, who told me that of all people he disliked
rich slop-sellers; but there was another class which he disliked more,
and that was rich slop-buyers.

The bodies of the stuff or beaver hats of the best quality are made
of a firm felt, wrought up of fine wool, rabbits’ hair, &c., and at
once elastic, firm, and light. Over this is placed the nap, prepared
from the hair of the beaver. The bodies of the silk hats are made of
calico, which is blocked (as indeed is the felt) and stiffened and
pasted up until “only a hat-maker can tell,” as it was expressed to
me, “good sound bodies from bad; and the slop-masters go for the cheap
and bad.” The covering is not a nap of any hair, but is of silk or
velvet (the words are used indifferently in the trade) manufactured for
the purpose. Thus if an old hat be broken, or rather crushed out of
all shape, the body can be glazed and sized up again so as to suit the
slop hatter, if sold to him as a body, and that whether it be of felt
or calico. If, however, the silk cover of the hat be not worn utterly
away, the body, without stripping off the cover, can be re-blocked
and re-set, and the silk-velvet trimmed up and “set,” or re-dyed, and
a decent hat is sometimes produced by these means. More frequently,
however, a steeping shower of rain destroys the whole fabric.

_Second-hand Caps_ are rarely brought into this trade.

Such things as _drawers_, _flannel waistcoats_, and what is sometimes
called “inner wear,” sell very well when washed up, patched--for
patches do not matter in a garment hidden from the eye when worn--or
mended in any manner. Flannel waistcoats and drawers are often in
demand by the street-sellers and the street-labourers, as they are
considered “good against the rheumatics.” These habiliments are often
sold unrepaired, having been merely washed, as the poor men’s wives may
be competent to execute an easy bit of tailoring; or perhaps the men
themselves, if they have been reared as mechanics; and they believe
(perhaps erroneously) that so they obtain a better bargain. _Shirts_
are repaired and sold as shirts, or for old linen; the trade is not
large.

_Men’s Stockings_ are darned up, but only when there is little to be
done in darning, as they are retailed at 2_d._ the pair. The sale is
not very great, for the supply is not. “Lots might be sold,” I was
informed, “if they was to be had, for them flash coves never cares what
they wears under their Wellingtons.”

_The Women’s Apparel_ is sold to be re-worn in its original form quite
as frequently, or more frequently, than it is mended up by the sellers;
the purchasers often preferring to make the alterations themselves. A
gown of stuff, cotton, or any material, if full-sized, is frequently
bought and altered to fit a smaller person or a child, and so the
worn parts may be cut away. It is very rarely also that the apparel
of the middle-classes is made into any other article, with the sole
exception, perhaps, of _silk gowns_. If a silk gown be not too much
frayed, it is easily cleaned and polished up, so as to present a new
gloss, and is sold readily enough; but if it be too far gone for this
process, the old clothes renovator is often puzzled as to what uses to
put it. A portion of a black silk dress may be serviceable to re-line
the cuffs of the better kind of coats. There is seldom enough, I was
told, to re-line the two skirts of a surtout, and it is difficult to
match old silk; a man used to buying a good second-hand surtout, I was
assured, would soon detect a difference in the shade of the silk, if
the skirts were re-lined from the remains of different gowns, and say,
“I’ll not give any such money for that piebald thing.” Skirts may be
sometimes re-lined this way on the getting up of frock coats, but very
rarely. There is the same difficulty in using a coloured silk gown
for the re-covering of a parasol. The quantity may not be enough for
the gores, and cannot be matched to satisfy the eye, for the buyer of
a silk parasol even in Rosemary-lane may be expected to be critical.
When there is enough of good silk for the purposes I have mentioned,
then, it must be borne in mind, the gown may be more valuable, because
saleable to be re-worn as a gown. It is the same with satin dresses,
but only a few of them, in comparison with the silk, are to be seen at
the Old Clothes’ Exchange.

Among the purposes to which portions of worn silk gowns are put are
the making of spencers for little girls (usually by the purchasers,
or by the dress-maker, who goes out to work for 1_s._ a day), of
children’s bonnets, for the lining of women’s bonnets, the re-lining
of muffs and fur-tippets, the patching of quilts (once a rather
fashionable thing), the inner lining or curtains to a book-case, and
other household appliances of a like kind. This kind of silk, too, no
matter in how minute pieces, is bought by the fancy cabinet-makers (the
small masters) for the lining of their dressing-cases and work-boxes
supplied to the warehouses, but these poor artisans have neither means
nor leisure to buy such articles of those connected with the traffic
of the Old Clothes’ Exchange, but must purchase it, of course at an
enhanced price, of a broker who has bought it at the Exchange, or in
some establishment connected with it. The second-hand silk is bought
also for the dressing of dolls for the toy-shops, and for the lining of
some toys. The hat-manufacturers of the cheaper sort, at one time, used
second-hand silk for the padded lining of hats, but such is rarely the
practice now. It was once used in the same manner by the bookbinders
for lining the inner part of the back of a book. If there be any part
of silk in a dress not suitable for any of these purposes it is wasted,
or what is accounted wasted, although it may have been in wear for
years. It is somewhat remarkable, that while woollen and even cotton
goods can be “shoddied”--and if they are too rotten for that, they are
made available for manure, or in the manufacture of paper--no use is
made of the refuse of silk. Though one of the most beautiful and costly
of textile fabrics, its “remains” are thrown aside, when a beggar’s
rags are preserved and made profitable. There can be little doubt that
silk, like cotton, could be shoddied, but whether such a speculation
would be remunerative or not is no part of my present inquiry.

There is not, as I shall subsequently show, so great an exportation of
female attire as might be expected in comparison with male apparel; the
poorer classes of the metropolis being too anxious to get any decent
gown when within their slender means.

_Stays_, unless of superior make and in good condition, are little
bought by the classes who are the chief customers of the old-clothes’
men in London. I did not hear any reason for this from any of the
old-clothes’ people. One man thought, if there was a family of
daughters, the stays which had became too small for the elder girl were
altered for the younger, and that poor women liked to mend their old
stays as long as they would stick together. Perhaps, there may be some
repugnance--especially among the class of servant-maids who have not
had “to rough it”--to wear street-collected stays; a repugnance not,
perhaps, felt in the wearing of a gown which probably can be washed,
and is not worn so near the person. The stays that are collected are
for the most part exported, a great portion being sent to Ireland. If
they are “worn to rags,” the bones are taken out; but in the slop-made
stays, it is not whalebone, but wood that is used to give, or preserve
the due shape of the corset, and then the stays are valueless.

_Old Stockings_ are of great sale both for home wear and foreign trade.
In the trade of women’s stockings there has been in the last 20 or 25
years a considerable change. Before that period black stockings were
worn by servant girls, and the families of working people and small
tradesmen; they “saved washing.” Now, even in Petticoat-lane, women’s
stockings are white, or “mottled,” or some light-coloured, very rarely
black. I have heard this change attributed to what is rather vaguely
called “pride.” May it not be owing to a more cultivated sense of
cleanliness? The women’s stockings are sold darned and undarned, and
at (retail) prices from 1_d._ to 4_d._; 1_d._ or 2_d._ being the most
frequent prices.

The _petticoats_ and other under clothing are not much bought
second-hand by the poor women of London, and are exported.

_Women’s caps_ used to be sold second-hand, I was told, both in the
streets and the shops, but long ago, and before muslin and needlework
were so cheap.

I heard of one article which formerly supplied considerable “stuff”
(the word used) for second-hand purposes, and was a part, but never
a considerable part, of the trade at Rag-fair. These were the
“_pillions_,” or large, firm, solid cushions which were attached to a
saddle, so that a horse “carried double.” Fifty years ago the farmer
and his wife, of the more prosperous order, went regularly to church
and market on one horse, a pillion sustaining the good dame. To the
best sort of these pillions was appended what was called the “pillion
cloth,” often of a fine, but thin quality, which being really a sort of
housing to the horse, cut straight and with few if any seams, was an
excellent material for what I am informed was formerly called “making
and mending.” The colour was almost exclusively drab or blue. The
pillion on which the squire’s lady rode--and Sheridan makes his _Lady
Teazle_ deny “the pillion and the coach-horse,” the butler being her
cavalier--was a perfect piece of upholstery, set off with lace and
fringes, which again were excellent for second-hand sale. Such a means
of conveyance may still linger in some secluded country parts, but it
is generally speaking obsolete.

_Boots_ and _Shoes_ are not to be had, I am told, in sufficient
quantity for the demand from the slop-shops, the “translators,” and
the second-hand dealers. Great quantities of second-hand boots and
shoes are sent to Ireland to be “translated” there. Of all the wares
in this traffic, the clothing for the feet is what is most easily
prepared to cheat the eye of the inexperienced, the imposition having
the aids of heel-ball, &c., to fill up crevices, and of blacking to
hide defects. Even when the boots or shoes are so worn out that no
one will put a pair on his feet, though purchaseable for about 1_d._,
the insoles are ripped out; the soles, if there be a sufficiency of
leather, are shaped into insoles for children’s shoes, and these
insoles are sold in bundles of two dozen pairs at 2_d._ the bundle.
So long as the boot or shoe be not in many holes, it can be cobblered
up in Monmouth-street or elsewhere. Of the “translating” business
transacted in those localities I had the following interesting account
from a man who was lately engaged in it.

“Translation, as I understand it (said my informant), is this--to
take a worn, old pair of shoes or boots, and by repairing them make
them appear as if left off with hardly any wear--as if they were
only soiled. I’ll tell you the way they manage in Monmouth-street.
There are in the trade ‘horses’ heads’--a ‘horse’s head’ is the foot
of a boot with sole and heel, and part of a front--the back and the
remainder of the front having been used for refooting boots. There
are also ‘stand-bottoms’ and ‘lick-ups.’ A ‘stand-bottom’ is where
the shoe appears to be only soiled, and a ‘lick-up’ is a boot or shoe
re-lasted to take the wrinkles out, the edges of the soles having
been rasped and squared, and then blacked up to hide blemishes, and
the bottom covered with a ‘smother,’ which I will describe. There
is another article called a ‘flyer,’ that is, a shoe soled without
having been welted. In Monmouth-street a ‘horse’s head’ is generally
retailed at 2_s._ 6_d._, but some fetch 4_s._ 6_d._--that’s the
extreme price. They cost the translator from 1_s._ a dozen pair to
8_s._, but those at 8_s._ are good, and are used for the making up
of Wellington boots. Some ‘horses’ heads’--such as are cut off that
the boots may be re-footed on account of old fashion, or a misfit,
when hardly worn--fetch 2_s._ 6_d._ a pair, and they are made up as
new-footed boots, and sell from 10_s._ to 15_s._ The average price
of feet (that is, for the ‘horse’s head,’ as we call it) is 4_d._,
and a pair of backs say 2_d._; the back is attached loosely by chair
stitching, as it is called, to the heel, instead of being stitched to
the in-sole, as in a new boot. The wages for all this is 1_s._ 4_d._
in Monmouth-street (in Union-street, Borough, 1_s._ 6_d._); but I was
told by a master that he had got the work done in Gray’s-inn-lane at
9_d._ Put it, however, at 1_s._ 4_d._ wages--then, with 4_d._ and 2_d._
for the feet and back, we have 1_s._ 10_d._ outlay (the workman finds
his own grindery), and 8_d._ profit on each pair sold at a rate of
2_s._ 6_d._ Some masters will sell from 70 to 80 pairs per week: that’s
under the mark; and that’s in ‘horses’ heads’ alone. One man employs,
or did lately employ, seven men on ‘horses’ heads’ solely. The profit
generally, in fair shops, in ‘stand-bottoms,’ is from 1_s._ 6_d._ to
2_s._ per pair, as they sell generally at 3_s._ 6_d._ One man takes,
or did take, 100_l._ in a day (it was calculated as an average) over
the counter, and all for the sort of shoes I have described. The profit
of a ‘lick-up’ is the same as that of a ‘stand-bottom.’ To show the
villanous way the ‘stand-bottoms’ are got up, I will tell you this. You
have seen a broken upper-leather; well, we place a piece of leather,
waxed, underneath the broken part, on which we set a few stitches
through and through. When dry and finished, we take what is called a
‘soft-heel-ball’ and ‘smother’ it over, so that it sometimes would
deceive a currier, as it appears like the upper leather. With regard
to the bottoms, the worn part of the sole is opened from the edge, a
piece of leather is made to fit exactly into the hole or worn part, and
it is then nailed and filed until level. Paste is then applied, and
‘smother’ put over the part, and that imitates the dust of the road.
This ‘smother’ is obtained from the dust of the room. It is placed in
a silk stocking, tied at both ends, and then shook through, just like
a powder-puff, only we shake at both ends. It is powdered out into
our leather apron, and mixed with a certain preparation which I will
describe to you (he did so), but I would rather not have it published,
as it would lead others to practise similar deceptions. I believe
there are about 2000 translators, so you may judge of the extent of
the trade; and translators are more constantly employed than any other
branch of the business. Many make a great deal of money. A journeyman
translator can earn from 3_s._ to 4_s._ a day. You can give the average
at 20_s._ a week, as the wages are good. It must be good, for we have
2_s._ for soling, heeling, and welting a pair of boots; and some men
don’t get more for making them. Monmouth-street is nothing like what
it was; as to curious old garments, that’s all gone. There’s not one
English master in the translating business in Monmouth-street--they are
all Irish; and there is now hardly an English workman there--perhaps
not one. I believe that all the tradesmen in Monmouth-street make
their workmen lodge with them. I was lodging with one before I married
a little while ago, and I know the system to be the same now as it
was then, unless, indeed, it be altered for the worse. To show how
disgusting these lodgings must be, I will state this:--I knew a
Roman Catholic, who was attentive to his religious duties, but when
pronounced on the point of death, and believing firmly that he was
dying, he would not have his priest administer extreme unction, for
the room was in such a filthy and revolting state he would not allow
him to see it. Five men worked and slept in that room, and they were
working and sleeping there in the man’s illness--all the time that
his life was despaired of. He was ill nine weeks. Unless the working
shoemaker lodged there he would not be employed. Each man pays 2_s._ a
week. I was there once, but I couldn’t sleep in such a den; and five
nights out of the seven I slept at my mother’s, but my lodging had to
be paid all the same. These men (myself excepted) were all Irish, and
all teetotallers, as was the master. How often was the room cleaned
out, do you say? Never, sir, never. The refuse of the men’s labour
was generally burnt, smudged away in the grate, smelling terribly.
It would stifle you, though it didn’t me, because I got used to it.
I lodged in Union-street once. My employer had a room known as the
‘barracks;’ every lodger paid him 2_s._ 6_d._ a week. Five men worked
and slept there, and three were _sitters_--that is, men who paid 1_s._
a week to sit there and work, lodging elsewhere. A little before that
there were six sitters. The furniture was one table, one chair, and
two beds. There was no place for purposes of decency: it fell to bits
from decay, and was never repaired. This barrack man always stopped the
2_s._ 6_d._ for lodging, if he gave you only that amount of work in the
week. The beds were decent enough; but as to Monmouth-street! you don’t
see a clean sheet there for nine weeks; and, recollect, such snobs are
dirty fellows. There was no chair in the Monmouth-street room that
I have spoken of, the men having only their seats used at work; but
when the beds were let down for the night, the seats had to be placed
in the fire-place because there was no space for them in the room. In
many houses in Monmouth-street there is a system of sub-letting among
the journeymen. In one room lodged a man and his wife (a laundress
worked there), four children, and two single young men. The wife was
actually delivered in this room whilst the men kept at their work--they
never lost an hour’s work; nor is this an unusual case--it’s not an
isolated case at all. I could instance ten or twelve cases of two or
three married people living in one room in that street. The rats have
scampered over the beds that lay huddled together in the kitchen. The
husband of the wife confined as I have described paid 4_s._ a week,
and the two single men paid 2_s._ a week each, so the master was rent
free; and he received from each man 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for tea (without
sugar), and no bread and butter, and 2_d._ a day for potatoes--that’s
the regular charge.”

In connection with the translation of old boots and shoes, I have
obtained the following statistics. There are--

In Drury-lane and streets adjacent, about 50 shops.
Seven-dials do. do. 100 do.
Monmouth-street do. do. 40 do.
Hanway-court, Oxford-street do. 4 do.
Lisson-grove do. do. 100 do.
Paddington do. do. 30 do.
Petticoat-lane (shops, stands, &c.) do. 200 do.
Somers’-town do. do. 50 do.
Field-lane, Saffron-hill do. 40 do.
Clerkenwell do. 30 do.
Bethnal-green, Spitalfields do. 100 do.
Rosemary-lane, &c. do. 30 do.
---
774 shops,

employing upwards of 2000 men in making-up and repairing old boots and
shoes; besides hundreds of poor men and women who strive for a crust
by buying and selling the old material, previously to translating it,
and by mending up what will mend. They or their children stand in the
street and try to sell them.

Monmouth-street, now the great old shoe district, has been “sketched”
by Mr. Dickens, not as regards its connection with the subject of
street-sale or of any particular trade, but as to its general character
and appearance. I first cite Mr. Dickens’ description of the Seven
Dials, of which Monmouth-street is a seventh:--

“The stranger who finds himself in ‘The Dials’ for the first time,
and stands, Belzoni-like, at the entrance of seven obscure passages,
uncertain which to take, will see enough around him to keep his
curiosity and attention awake for no inconsiderable time. From the
irregular square into which he has plunged, the streets and courts
dart in all directions, until they are lost in the unwholesome vapour
which hangs over the house-tops, and renders the dirty perspective
uncertain and confined; and, lounging at every corner, as if they came
there to take a few gasps of such fresh air as has found its way so
far, but is too much exhausted already, to be enabled to force itself
into the narrow alleys around, are groups of people, whose appearance
and dwellings would fill any mind but a regular Londoner’s with
astonishment.

“In addition to the numerous groups who are idling about the gin-shops
and squabbling in the centre of the road, every post in the open
space has its occupant, who leans against it for hours, with listless
perseverance. It is odd enough that one class of men in London appear
to have no enjoyment beyond leaning against posts. We never saw a
regular bricklayer’s labourer take any other recreation, fighting
excepted. Pass through St. Giles’s in the evening of a week-day,
there they are in their fustian dresses, spotted with brick-dust and
whitewash, leaning against posts. Walk through Seven Dials on Sunday
morning: there they are again, drab or light corduroy trowsers, Blucher
boots, blue coats, and great yellow waistcoats, leaning against posts.
The idea of a man dressing himself in his best clothes, to lean against
a post all day!

“The peculiar character of these streets, and the close resemblance
each one bears to its neighbour, by no means tends to decrease the
bewilderment in which the unexperienced wayfarer through ‘the Dials’
finds himself involved. He traverses streets of dirty, straggling
houses, with now and then an unexpected court, composed of buildings
as ill-proportioned and deformed as the half-naked children that
wallow in the kennels. Here and there, a little dark chandler’s shop,
with a cracked bell hung up behind the door to announce the entrance
of a customer, or betray the presence of some young gentleman in
whom a passion for shop tills has developed itself at an early age;
others, as if for support, against some handsome lofty building, which
usurps the place of a low dingy public-house; long rows of broken
and patched windows expose plants that may have flourished when ‘The
Dials’ were built, in vessels as dirty as ‘The Dials’ themselves; and
shops for the purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen-stuff,
vie in cleanliness with the bird-fanciers and rabbit-dealers, which
one might fancy so many arks, but for the irresistible conviction
that no bird in its proper senses, who was permitted to leave one of
them would ever come back again. Brokers’ shops, which would seem to
have been established by humane individuals, as refuges for destitute
bugs, interspersed with announcements of day-schools, penny theatres,
petition-writers, mangles, and music for balls or routs, complete the
‘still-life’ of the subject; and dirty men, filthy women, squalid
children, fluttering shuttlecocks, noisy battledores, reeking pipes,
bad fruit, more than doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs,
and anatomical fowls, are its cheerful accompaniments.

“If the external appearance of the houses, or a glance at their
inhabitants, present but few attractions, a closer acquaintance with
either is little calculated to alter one’s first impression. Every room
has its separate tenant, and every tenant is, by the same mysterious
dispensation which causes a country curate to ‘increase and multiply’
most marvellously, generally the head of a numerous family.

“The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked ‘jemmy’ line, or the
fire-wood and hearth-stone line, or any other line which requires a
floating capital of eighteen pence or thereabouts: and he and his
family live in the shop, and the small back parlour behind it. Then
there is an Irish labourer and _his_ family in the back kitchen, and
a jobbing-man--carpet-beater and so forth--with _his_ family, in the
front one. In the front one pair there’s another man with another wife
and family, and in the back one-pair there’s ‘a young ’oman as takes
in tambour-work, and dresses quite genteel,’ who talks a good deal
about ‘my friend,’ and can’t ‘abear anything low.’ The second floor
front, and the rest of the lodgers, are just a second edition of the
people below, except a shabby-genteel man in the back attic, who has
his half-pint of coffee every morning from the coffee-shop next door
but one, which boasts a little front den called a coffee-room, with a
fire-place, over which is an inscription, politely requesting that,
‘to prevent mistakes,’ customers will ‘please to pay on delivery.’ The
shabby-genteel man is an object of some mystery, but as he leads a life
of seclusion, and never was known to buy anything beyond an occasional
pen, except half-pints of coffee, penny loaves, and ha’porths of ink,
his fellow-lodgers very naturally suppose him to be an author; and
rumours are current in the Dials, that he writes poems for Mr. Warren.

“Now any body who passed through the Dials on a hot summer’s evening,
and saw the different women of the house gossiping on the steps, would
be apt to think that all was harmony among them, and that a more
primitive set of people than the native Diallers could not be imagined.
Alas! the man in the shop illtreats his family; the carpet-beater
extends his professional pursuits to his wife; the one-pair front has
an undying feud with the two-pair front, in consequence of the two-pair
front persisting in dancing over his (the one-pair front’s) head, when
he and his family have retired for the night; the two-pair back _will_
interfere with the front kitchen’s children; the Irishman comes home
drunk every other night, and attacks every body; and the one-pair back
screams at everything. Animosities spring up between floor and floor;
the very cellar asserts his equality. Mrs. A. ‘smacks’ Mrs. B.’s child
for ‘making faces.’ Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water over Mrs. A.’s
child for ‘calling names.’ The husbands are embroiled--the quarrel
becomes general--an assault is the consequence, and a police-officer
the result.”

Of Monmouth-street the same author says:--

“We have always entertained a particular attachment towards
Monmouth-street, as the only true and real emporium for second-hand
wearing apparel. Monmouth-street is venerable from its antiquity,
and respectable from its usefulness. Holywell-street we despise; the
red-headed and red-whiskered Jews who forcibly haul you into their
squalid houses, and thrust you into a suit of clothes whether you will
or not, we detest.

“The inhabitants of Monmouth-street are a distinct class; a peaceable
and retiring race, who immure themselves for the most part in deep
cellars, or small back parlours, and who seldom come forth into the
world, except in the dusk and coolness of evening, when they may
be seen seated, in chairs on the pavement, smoking their pipes, or
watching the gambols of their engaging children as they revel in the
gutter, a happy troop of infantine scavengers. Their countenances bear
a thoughtful and a dirty cast, certain indications of their love of
traffic; and their habitations are distinguished by that disregard of
outward appearance, and neglect of personal comfort, so common among
people who are constantly immersed in profound speculations, and deeply
engaged in sedentary pursuits.

“Through every alteration and every change Monmouth-street has still
remained the burial-place of the fashions; and such, to judge from all
present appearances, it will remain until there are no more fashions to
bury.”

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF PETTICOAT AND ROSEMARY-LANES.

Immediately connected with the trade of the central mart for old
clothes are the adjoining streets of Petticoat-lane, and those of the
not very distant Rosemary-lane. In these localities is a second-hand
garment-seller at almost every step, but the whole stock of these
traders, decent, frowsy, half-rotten, or smart and good habiliments,
has first passed through the channel of the Exchange. The men who sell
these goods have all bought them at the Exchange--the exceptions being
insignificant--so that this street-sale is but an extension of the
trade of the central mart, with the addition that the wares have been
made ready for use.

[Illustration: SCENE IN PETTICOAT-LANE.]

A cursory observation might lead an inexperienced person to the
conclusion, that these old clothes traders who are standing by the
bundles of gowns, or lines of coats, hanging from their door-posts,
or in the place from which the window has been removed, or at the
sides of their houses, or piled in the street before them, are
drowsy people, for they seem to sit among their property, lost in
thought, or caring only for the fumes of a pipe. But let any one
indicate, even by an approving glance, the likelihood of his becoming
a customer, and see if there be any lack of diligence in business.
Some, indeed, pertinaciously invite attention to their wares; some
(and often well-dressed women) leave their premises a few yards to
accost a stranger pointing to a “good dress-coat” or “an excellent
frock” (coat). I am told that this practice is less pursued than it
was, and it seems that the solicitations are now addressed chiefly
to strangers. These strangers, persons happening to be passing, or
visitors from curiosity, are at once recognised; for as in all not very
extended localities, where the inhabitants pursue a similar calling,
they are, as regards their knowledge of one another, as the members
of one family. Thus a stranger is as easily recognised as he would
be in a little rustic hamlet where a strange face is not seen once a
quarter. Indeed so narrow are some of the streets and alleys in this
quarter, and so little is there of privacy, owing to the removal, in
warm weather, even of the casements, that the room is commanded in all
its domestic details; and as among these details there is generally a
further display of goods similar to the articles outside, the jammed-up
places really look like a great family house with merely a sort of
channel, dignified by the name of a street, between the right and left
suites of apartments.

In one off-street, where on a Sunday there is a considerable demand for
Jewish sweet-meats by Christian boys, and a little sly, and perhaps not
very successful gambling on the part of the ingenuous youth to possess
themselves of these confectionaries at the easiest rate, there are
some mounds of builders’ rubbish upon which, if an inquisitive person
ascended, he could command the details of the upper rooms, probably the
bed chambers--if in their crowded apartments these traders can find
spaces for beds.

It must not be supposed that old clothes are more than the great staple
of the traffic of this district. Wherever persons are assembled there
are certain to be purveyors of provisions and of cool or hot drinks
for warm or cold weather. The interior of the Old Clothes Exchange
has its oyster-stall, its fountain of ginger-beer, its coffee-house,
and ale-house, and a troop of peripatetic traders, boys principally,
carrying trays. Outside the walls of the Exchange this trade is still
thicker. A Jew boy thrusts a tin of highly-glazed cakes and pastry
under the people’s noses here; and on the other side a basket of
oranges regales the same sense by its proximity. At the next step
the thoroughfare is interrupted by a gaudy-looking ginger-beer,
lemonade, raspberryade, and nectar fountain; “a halfpenny a glass,
a halfpenny a glass, sparkling lemonade!” shouts the vendor as you
pass. The fountain and the glasses glitter in the sun, the varnish of
the wood-work shines, the lemonade really does sparkle, and all looks
clean--except the owner. Close by is a brawny young Irishman, his red
beard unshorn for perhaps ten days, and his neck, where it had been
exposed to the weather, a far deeper red than his beard, and he is
carrying a small basket of nuts, and selling them as gravely as if they
were articles suited to his strength. A little lower is the cry, in a
woman’s voice, “Fish, fried fish! Ha’penny; fish, fried fish!” and so
monotonously and mechanically is it ejaculated that one might think
the seller’s life was passed in uttering these few words, even as a
rook’s is in crying “Caw, caw.” Here I saw a poor Irishwoman who had
a child on her back buy a piece of this fish (which may be had “hot”
or “cold”), and tear out a piece with her teeth, and this with all the
eagerness and relish of appetite or hunger; first eating the brown
outside and then _sucking_ the bone. I never saw fish look firmer or
whiter. That fried fish is to be procured is manifest to more senses
than one, for you can hear the sound of its being fried, and smell
the fumes from the oil. In an open window opposite frizzle on an old
tray, small pieces of thinly-cut meat, with a mixture of onions, kept
hot by being placed over an old pan containing charcoal. In another
room a mess of batter is smoking over a grate. “Penny a lot, oysters,”
resounds from different parts. Some of the sellers command two
streets by establishing their stalls or tubs at a corner. Lads pass,
carrying sweet-stuff on trays. I observed one very dark-eyed Hebrew
boy chewing the hard-bake he vended--if it were not a substitute--with
an expression of great enjoyment. Heaped-up trays of fresh-looking
sponge-cakes are carried in tempting pyramids. Youths have stocks of
large hard-looking biscuits, and walk about crying, “Ha’penny biscuits,
ha’penny; three a penny, biscuits;” these, with a morsel of cheese,
often supply a dinner or a luncheon. Dates and figs, as dry as they
are cheap, constitute the stock in trade of other street-sellers.
“Coker-nuts” are sold in pieces and entire; the Jew boy, when he
invites to the purchase of an entire nut, shaking it at the ear of the
customer. I was told by a costermonger that these juveniles had a way
of drumming with their fingers on the shell so as to satisfy a “green”
customer that the nut offered was a sound one.

Such are the summer eatables and drinkables which I have lately seen
vended in the Petticoat-lane district. In winter there are, as long
as daylight lasts--and in no other locality perhaps does it last so
short a time--other street provisions, and, if possible, greater zeal
in selling them, the hours of business being circumscribed. There is
then the potato-can and the hot elder-wine apparatus, and smoking pies
and puddings, and roasted apples and chestnuts, and walnuts, and the
several fruits which ripen in the autumn--apples, pears, &c.

Hitherto I have spoken only of such eatables and drinkables as are
ready for consumption, but to these the trade in the Petticoat-lane
district is by no means confined. There is fresh fish, generally of the
cheaper kinds, and smoked or dried fish (smoked salmon, moreover, is
sold ready cooked), and costermongers’ barrows, with their loads of
green vegetables, looking almost out of place amidst the surrounding
dinginess. The cries of “Fine cauliflowers,” “Large penny cabbages,”
“Eight a shilling, mackarel,” “Eels, live eels,” mix strangely with the
hubbub of the busier street.

Other street-sellers also abound. You meet one man who says
mysteriously, and rather bluntly, “Buy a good knife, governor.” His
tone is remarkable, and if it attract attention, he may hint that he
has smuggled goods which he _must_ sell anyhow. Such men, I am told,
look out mostly for seamen, who often resort to Petticoat-lane; for
idle men like sailors on shore, and idle uncultivated men often love
to lounge where there is bustle. Pocket and pen knives and scissors,
“Penny a piece, penny a pair,” rubbed over with oil, both to hide
and prevent rust, are carried on trays, and spread on stalls, some
stalls consisting of merely a tea-chest lid on a stool. Another
man, carrying perhaps a sponge in his hand, and well-dressed, asks
you, in a subdued voice, if you want a good razor, as if he almost
suspected that you meditated suicide, and were looking out for the
means! This is another ruse to introduce smuggled (or “duffer’s”)
goods. Account-books are hawked. “Penny-a-quire,” shouts the itinerant
street stationer (who, if questioned, always declares he said “Penny
half quire”). “Stockings, stockings, two pence a pair.” “Here’s your
chewl-ry; penny, a penny; pick ’em and choose ’em.” [I may remark that
outside the window of one shop, or rather parlour, if there be any such
distinction here, I saw the handsomest, as far as I am able to judge,
and the best cheap jewellery I ever saw in the streets.] “Pencils, sir,
pencils; steel-pens, steel-pens; ha’penny, penny; pencils, steel-pens;
sealing-wax, wax, wax, wax!” shouts one, “Green peas, ha’penny a pint!”
cries another.

These things, however, are but the accompaniments of the main traffic.
But as such things accompany all traffic, not on a small scale, and may
be found in almost every metropolitan thoroughfare, where the police
are not required, by the householders, to interfere, I will point out,
to show the distinctive character of the street-trade in this part,
what is _not_ sold and not encouraged. I saw no old books. There were
no flowers; no music, which indeed could not be heard except at the
outskirts of the din; and no beggars plying their vocation among the
trading class.

Another peculiarity pertaining alike to this shop and street locality
is, that everything is at the veriest minimum of price; though it may
not be asked, it will assuredly be taken. The bottle of lemonade which
is elsewhere a penny is here a halfpenny. The tarts, which among the
street-sellers about the Royal Exchange are a halfpenny each, are
here a farthing. When lemons are two a-penny in St. George’s-market,
Oxford-street, as the long line of street stalls towards the western
extremity is called--they are three and four a-penny in Petticoat
and Rosemary lanes. Certainly there is a difference in size between
the dearer and the cheaper tarts and lemons, and perhaps there is a
difference in quality also, but the rule of a minimized cheapness has
no exceptions in this cheap-trading quarter.

But Petticoat-lane is essentially the old clothes district. Embracing
the streets and alleys adjacent to Petticoat-lane, and including the
rows of old boots and shoes on the ground, there is perhaps between
two and three miles of old clothes. Petticoat-lane proper is long and
narrow, and to look down it is to look down a vista of many coloured
garments, alike on the sides and on the ground. The effect sometimes
is very striking, from the variety of hues, and the constant flitting,
or gathering, of the crowd into little groups of bargainers. Gowns of
every shade and every pattern are hanging up, but none, perhaps, look
either bright or white; it is a vista of dinginess, but many coloured
dinginess, as regards female attire. Dress coats, frock coats, great
coats, livery and game-keepers’ coats, paletots, tunics, trowsers,
knee-breeches, waistcoats, capes, pilot coats, working jackets, plaids,
hats, dressing gowns, shirts, Guernsey frocks, are all displayed. The
predominant colours are black and blue, but there is every colour;
the light drab of some aristocratic livery; the dull brown-green of
velveteen; the deep blue of a pilot jacket; the variegated figures of
the shawl dressing-gown; the glossy black of the restored garments;
the shine of newly turpentined black satin waistcoats; the scarlet and
green of some flaming tartan; these things--mixed with the hues of the
women’s garments, spotted and striped--certainly present a scene which
cannot be beheld in any other part of the greatest city of the world,
nor in any other portion of the world itself.

The ground has also its array of colours. It is covered with
lines of boots and shoes, their shining black relieved here and
there by the admixture of females’ boots, with drab, green, plum
or lavender-coloured “legs,” as the upper part of the boot is
always called in the trade. There is, too, an admixture of men’s
“button-boots” with drab cloth legs; and of a few red, yellow, and
russet coloured slippers; and of children’s coloured morocco boots and
shoes. Handkerchiefs, sometimes of a gaudy orange pattern, are heaped
on a chair. Lace and muslins occupy small stands or are spread on the
ground. Black and drab and straw hats are hung up, or piled one upon
another and kept from falling by means of strings; while, incessantly
threading their way through all this intricacy, is a mass of people,
some of whose dresses speak of a recent purchase in the lane.

I have said little of the shopkeepers of Petticoat-lane, nor is it
requisite for the full elucidation of my present subject (which
relates more especially to _street-sale_), that I should treat of them
otherwise than as being in a great degree connected with street-trade.
They stand in the street (in front of their premises), they trade in
the street, they smoke and read the papers in the street; and indeed
the greater part of their lives seems passed in the street, for, as I
have elsewhere remarked, the Saturday’s or Sabbath’s recreation to some
of them, after synagogue hours, seems to be to stand by their doors
looking about them.

In the earlier periods of the day--the Jewish Sabbath excepted, when
there is no market at all in Petticoat-lane, not even among the Irish
and other old clothes people, or a mere nothing of a market--the
goods of these shops seem consigned to the care of the wives and
female members of the families of the proprietors. The Old Clothes
Exchange, like other places known by the name--the Royal Exchange, for
example--has its daily season of “high change.” This is, in summer,
from about half-past two to five, in winter, from two to four o’clock.
At those hours the crockman, and the bartering costermonger, and the
Jew collector, have sought the Exchange with their respective bargains;
and business there, and in the whole district, is at its fullest tide.
Before this hour the master of the shop or _store_ (the latter may be
the more appropriate word) is absent buying, collecting, or transacting
any business which requires him to leave home. It is curious to observe
how, during this absence, the women, but with most wary eyes to the
business, sit in the street carrying on their domestic occupations.
Some, with their young children about them, are shelling peas; some are
trimming vegetables; some plying their needles; some of the smaller
traders’ wives, as well as the street-sellers with a “pitch,” are
eating dinners out of basins (laid aside when a customer approaches),
and occasionally some may be engaged in what Mrs. Trollope has called
(in noticing a similar procedure in the boxes of an American theatre)
“the most maternal of all offices.” The females I saw thus occupied
were principally Jewesses, for though those resorting to the Old
Clothes Exchange and its concomitant branches may be but one-fourth
Jews, more than half of the remainder being Irish people, the
householders or shopkeepers of the locality, when capital is needed,
are generally Israelites.

It must be borne in mind that, in describing Petticoat-lane, I have
described it as seen on a fine summer’s day, when the business is at
its height. Until an hour or two after midday the district is quiet,
and on very rainy days its aspect is sufficiently lamentable, for then
it appears actually deserted. Perhaps on a winter’s Saturday night--as
the Jewish Sabbath terminates at sunset--the scene may be the most
striking of all. The flaring lights from uncovered gas, from fat-fed
lamps, from the paper-shaded candles, and the many ways in which the
poorer street-folk throw some illumination over their goods, produce a
multiplicity of lights and shadows, which, thrown and blended over the
old clothes hanging up along the line of street, cause them to assume
mysterious forms, and if the wind be high make them, as they are blown
to and fro, look more mysterious still.

On one of my visits to Petticoat-lane I saw two foreign Jews--from
Smyrna I was informed. An old street-seller told me he believed it
was their first visit to the district. But, new as the scene might be
to them, they looked on impassively at all they saw. They wore the
handsome and peculiar dresses of their country. A glance was cast
after them by the Petticoat-lane people, but that was all. In the
Strand they would have attracted considerable attention; not a few
heads would have been turned back to gaze after them; but it seems
that only to those who may possibly be customers is any notice paid in
Petticoat-lane.

ROSEMARY-LANE.

Rosemary-lane, which has in vain been re-christened Royal Mint-street,
is from half to three-quarters of a mile long--that is, if we include
only the portion which runs from the junction of Leman and Dock streets
(near the London Docks) to Sparrow-corner, where it abuts on the
Minories. Beyond the Leman-street termination of Rosemary-lane, and
stretching on into Shadwell, are many streets of a similar character as
regards the street and shop supply of articles to the poor; but as the
old clothes trade is only occasionally carried on there, I shall here
deal with Rosemary-lane proper.

[Illustration: A VIEW IN ROSEMARY-LANE.]

This lane partakes of some of the characteristics of Petticoat-lane,
but without its so strongly marked peculiarities. Rosemary-lane is
wider and airier, the houses on each side are loftier (in several
parts), and there is an approach to a gin palace, a thing unknown in
Petticoat-lane: there is no room for such a structure there.

Rosemary-lane, like the quarter I have last described, has its
off-streets, into which the traffic stretches. Some of these
off-streets are narrower, dirtier, poorer in all respects than
Rosemary-lane itself, which indeed can hardly be stigmatized as very
dirty. These are Glasshouse-street, Russell-court, Hairbrine-court,
Parson’s-court, Blue Anchor-yard (one of the poorest places and with
a half-built look), Darby-street, Cartwright-street, Peter’s-court,
Princes-street, Queen-street, and beyond these and in the direction
of the Minories, Rosemary-lane becomes Sharp’s-buildings and
Sparrow-corner. There are other small non-thoroughfare courts,
sometimes called blind alleys, to which no name is attached, but which
are very well known to the neighbourhood as Union-court, &c.; but as
these are not scenes of street-traffic, although they may be the abodes
of street-traffickers, they require no especial notice.

The dwellers in the neighbourhood or the off-streets of Rosemary-lane,
differ from those of Petticoat-lane by the proximity of the former
place to the Thames. The lodgings here are occupied by dredgers,
ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, watermen, lumpers, and others whose
trade is connected with the river, as well as the slop-workers and
sweaters working for the Minories. The poverty of these workers compels
them to lodge wherever the rent of the rooms is the lowest. As a
few of the wives of the ballast-heavers, &c., are street-sellers in
or about Rosemary-lane, the locality is often sought by them. About
Petticoat-lane the off-streets are mostly occupied by the old clothes
merchants.

In Rosemary-lane is a greater _street_-trade, as regards things placed
on the ground for retail sale, &c., than in Petticoat-lane; for though
the traffic in the last-mentioned lane is by far the greatest, it is
more connected with the shops, and fewer traders whose dealings are
strictly those of the street alone resort to it. Rosemary-lane, too,
is more Irish. There are some cheap lodging-houses in the courts,
&c., to which the poor Irish flock; and as they are very frequently
street-sellers, on busy days the quarter abounds with them. At every
step you hear the Erse tongue, and meet with the Irish physiognomy;
Jews and Jewesses are also seen in the street, and they abound in the
shops. The street-traffic does not begin until about one o’clock,
except as regards the vegetable, fish, and oyster-stalls, &c.; but the
chief business of this lane, which is as inappropriately as that of
Petticoat is suitably named, is in the vending of the articles which
have often been thrown aside as refuse, but from which numbers in
London wring an existence.

One side of the lane is covered with old boots and shoes; old clothes,
both men’s, women’s, and children’s; new lace for edgings, and a
variety of cheap prints and muslins (also new); hats and bonnets; pots,
and often of the commonest kinds; tins; old knives and forks, old
scissors, and old metal articles generally; here and there is a stall
of cheap bread or American cheese, or what is announced as American;
old glass; different descriptions of second-hand furniture of the
smaller size, such as children’s chairs, bellows, &c. Mixed with these,
but only very scantily, are a few bright-looking swag-barrows, with
china ornaments, toys, &c. Some of the wares are spread on the ground
on wrappers, or pieces of matting or carpet; and some, as the pots, are
occasionally placed on straw. The cotton prints are often heaped on the
ground; where are also ranges or heaps of boots and shoes, and piles of
old clothes, or hats, or umbrellas. Other traders place their goods on
stalls or barrows, or over an old chair or clothes-horse. And amidst
all this motley display the buyers and sellers smoke, and shout, and
doze, and bargain, and wrangle, and eat and drink tea and coffee, and
sometimes beer. Altogether Rosemary-lane is more of a _street_ market
than is Petticoat-lane.

This district, like the one I have first described, is infested with
young thieves and vagrants from the neighbouring lodging-houses,
who may be seen running about, often bare-footed, bare-necked, and
shirtless, but “larking” one with another, and what may be best
understood as “full of fun.” In what way these lads dispose of their
plunder, and how their plunder is in any way connected with the
trade of these parts, I shall show in my account of the Thieves. One
pickpocket told me that there was no person whom he delighted so much
to steal from as any Petticoat-laner with whom he had professional
dealings!

In Rosemary-lane there is a busy Sunday morning trade; there is a
street-trade, also, on the Saturday afternoons, but the greater part
of the shops are then closed, and the Jews do not participate in the
commerce until after sunset.

The two marts I have thus fully described differ from all other
street-markets, for in these two second-hand garments, and second-hand
merchandize generally (although but in a small proportion), are
the grand staple of the traffic. At the other street-markets, the
second-hand commerce is the exception.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MEN’S SECOND-HAND CLOTHES.

In the following accounts of street-selling, I shall not mix up any
account of the retailers’ modes of buying, collecting, repairing, or
“restoring” the second-hand garments, otherwise than incidentally. I
have already sketched the systems pursued, and more will have to be
said concerning them under the head of STREET-BUYERS. Neither have
I thought it necessary, in the further accounts I have collected,
to confine myself to the trade carried on in the Petticoat and
Rosemary-lane districts. The greater portion relates to those places,
but my aim, of course, is to give an account which will show the
character of the second-hand trade of the metropolis generally.

“People should remember,” said an intelligent shoemaker (not a
street-seller) with whom I had some conversation about cobbling for
the streets, “that such places as Rosemary-lane have their uses this
way. But for them a very poor industrious widow, say, with only 2_d._
or 3_d._ to spare, couldn’t get a pair of shoes for her child; whereas
now, for 2_d._ or 3_d._, she can get them there, of some sort or other.
There’s a sort of decency, too, in wearing shoes. And what’s more,
sir--for I’ve bought old coats and other clothes in Rosemary-lane, both
for my own wear and my family’s, and know something about it--how is a
poor creature to get such a decency as a petticoat for a poor little
girl, if she’d only a penny, unless there were such places?”

In the present state of the very poor, it may be that such places as
those described have, on the principle that half a loaf is better than
no bread, their benefits. But whether the state of things in which an
industrious widow, or a host of industrious persons, _can_ spare but
1_d._ for a child’s clothing (and nothing, perhaps, for their own), is
one to be lauded in a Christian country, is another question, fraught
with grave political and social considerations.

The man from whom I received the following account of the sale of men’s
wearing apparel was apparently between 30 and 40 years of age. His face
presented something of the Jewish physiognomy, but he was a Christian,
he said, though he never had time to go to church or chapel, and Sunday
was often a busy day; besides, a man must live as others in his way
lived. He had been connected with the sale of old clothes all his
life, as were his parents, so that his existence had been monotonous
enough, for he had never been more than five miles, he thought, from
Whitechapel, the neighbourhood where he was born. In winter he liked a
concert, and was fond of a hand at cribbage, but he didn’t care for the
play. His goods he sometimes spread on the ground--at other times he
had a stall or a “horse” (clothes-horse).

“My customers,” he said, “are nearly all working people, some of them
very poor, and with large families. For anything I know, some of them
works with their heads, though, as well, and not their hands, for I’ve
noticed that their hands is smallish and seems smoothish, and suits a
tight sleeve very well. I don’t know what they are. How should I? I
asks no questions, and they’ll tell me no fibs. To such as them I sell
coats mostly; indeed, very little else. They’re often very perticler
about the fit, and often asks, ‘Does it look as if it was made for
me?’ Sometimes they is seedy, very seedy, and comes to such as me,
most likely, ’cause we’re cheaper than the shops. They don’t like to
try things on in the street, and I can always take a decent customer,
or one as looks sich, in there, to try on (pointing to a coffee-shop).
Bob-tailed coats (dress-coats) is far the cheapest. I’ve sold them
as low as 1_s._, but not often; at 2_s._ and 3_s._ often enough; and
sometimes as high as 5_s._ Perhaps a 3_s._ or 3_s._ 6_d._ coat goes off
as well as any, but bob-tailed coats is little asked for. Now, I’ve
never had a frock (surtout or frock coat), as well as I can remember,
under 2_s._ 6_d._, except one that stuck by me a long time, and I sold
it at last for 20_d._, which was 2_d._ less than what it cost. It was
only a poor thing, in course, but it had such a rum-coloured velvet
collar, that was faded, and had had a bit let in, and was all sorts
of shades, and that hindered its selling, I fancy. Velvet collars
isn’t worn now, and I’m glad of it. Old coats goes better with their
own collars (collars of the same cloth as the body of the coat). For
frocks, I’ve got as much as 7_s._ 6_d._, and cheap at it too, sir.
Well, perhaps (laughing) at an odd time they wasn’t so very cheap, but
that’s all in the way of trade. About 4_s._ 6_d._ or 5_s._ is perhaps
the ticket that a frock goes off best at. It’s working people that buys
frocks most, and often working people’s wives or mothers--that is as
far as I knows. They’re capital judges as to what’ll fit their men;
and if they satisfy me it’s all right, I’m always ready to undertake
to change it for another if it don’t fit. O, no, I never agree to
give back the money if it don’t fit; in course not; that wouldn’t be
business.

“No, sir, we’re very little troubled with people larking. I have had
young fellows come, half drunk, even though it might be Sunday morning,
and say, ‘Guv’ner, what’ll you give me to wear that coat for you, and
show off your cut?’ We don’t stand much of their nonsense. I don’t
know what such coves are. Perhaps ’torneys’ journeymen, or pot-boys
out for a Sunday morning’s spree.” [This was said with a bitterness
that surprised me in so quiet-speaking a man.] “In greatcoats and
cloaks I don’t do much, but it’s a very good sale when you can offer
them well worth the money. I’ve got 10_s._ often for a greatcoat, and
higher and lower, oftener lower in course; but 10_s._ is about the
card for a good thing. It’s the like with cloaks. Paletots don’t sell
well. They’re mostly thinner and poorer cloth to begin with at the
tailors--them new-fashioned named things often is so--and so they show
when hard worn. Why no, sir, they can be done up, certainly; anything
can be touched up; but they get thin, you see, and there’s nothing to
work upon as there is in a good cloth greatcoat. You’ll excuse me, sir,
but I saw you a little bit since take one of them there square books
that a man gives away to people coming this way, as if to knock up the
second-hand business, but he won’t, though; I’ll tell you how them
slops, if they come more into wear, is sure to injure us. If people
gets to wear them low-figured things, more and more, as they possibly
may, why where’s the second-hand things to come from? I’m not a tailor,
but I understands about clothes, and I believe that no person ever saw
anything green in my eye. And if you find a slop thing marked a guinea,
I don’t care what it is, but I’ll undertake that you shall get one
that’ll wear longer, and look better to the very last, second-hand, at
less than half the money, plenty less. It was good stuff and good make
at first, and hasn’t been abused, and that’s the reason why it always
bangs a slop, because it was good to begin with.

“Trousers sells pretty well. I sell them, cloth ones, from 6_d._ up
to 4_s._ They’re cheaper if they’re not cloth, but very seldom less
or so low as 6_d._ Yes, the cloth ones at that is poor worn things,
and little things too. They’re not men’s, they’re youth’s or boy’s
size. Good strong cords goes off very well at 1_s._ and 1_s._ 6_d._,
or higher. Irish bricklayers buys them, and paviours, and such like.
It’s easy to fit a man with a pair of second-hand trousers. I can tell
by his build what’ll fit him directly. Tweeds and summer trousers is
middling, but washing things sells worse and worse. It’s an expense,
and expenses don’t suit my customers--not a bit of it.

“Waistcoats isn’t in no great call. They’re often worn very hard under
any sort of a tidy coat, for a tidy coat can be buttoned over anything
that’s ‘dicky,’ and so, you see, many of ’em’s half-way to the rag-shop
before they comes to us. Well, I’m sure I can hardly say what sort of
people goes most for weskets” [so he pronounced it]. “If they’re light,
or there’s anything ‘fancy’ about them, I thinks it’s mothers as makes
them up for their sons. What with the strings at the back and such
like, it aint hard to make a wesket fit. They’re poor people as buys
certainly, but genteel people buys such things as fancy weskets, or
how do you suppose they’d all be got through? O, there’s ladies comes
here for a bargain, I can tell you, and gentlemen, too; and many on ’em
would go through fire for one. Second-hand satins (waistcoats) is good
still, but they don’t fetch the tin they did. I’ve sold weskets from
1-1/2_d._ to 4_s._ Well, it’s hard to say what the three-ha’pennies is
made of; all sorts of things; we calls them ‘serge.’ Three-pence is a
common price for a little wesket. There’s no under-weskets wanted now,
and there’s no rolling collars. It was better for us when there was, as
there was more stuff to work on. The double-breasted gets scarcer, too.
Fashions grows to be cheap things now-a-days.

“I can’t tell you anything about knee-breeches; they don’t come into my
trade, and they’re never asked for. Gaiters is no go either. Liveries
isn’t a street-trade. I fancy all those sort of things is sent
abroad. I don’t know where. Perhaps where people doesn’t know they was
liveries. I wouldn’t wear an old livery coat, if it was the Queen’s,
for five bob. I don’t think wearing one would hinder trade. You may
have seen a black man in a fine livery giving away bills of a slop in
Holborn. If we was to have such a thing we’d be pulled up (apprehended)
for obstructing.

“I sells a few children’s (children’s clothes), but only a few, and
I can’t say so much about them. They sells pretty freely though, and
to very decent people. If they’re good, then they’re ready for use.
If they ain’t anything very prime, they can be mended--that is, if
they was good to begin with. But children’s woollen togs is mostly
hardworn and fit only for the ‘devil’ (the machine which tears them up
for shoddy). I’ve sold suits, which was tunics and trousers, but no
weskets, for 3_s._ 6_d._ when they was tidy. That’s a common price.

“Well, really, I hardly know how much I make every week; far too
little, I know that. I could no more tell you how many coats I sell in
a year, or how many weskets, than I could tell you how many days was
fine, and how many wasn’t. I can carry all in my head, and so I keeps
no accounts. I know exactly what every single thing I sell has cost me.
In course I must know _that_. I dare say I may clear about 12_s._ bad
weeks, and 18_s._ good weeks, more and less both ways, and there’s more
bad weeks than good. I have cleared 50_s._ in a good week; and when
it’s been nothing but fog and wet, I haven’t cleared 3_s._ 6_d._ But
mine’s a better business than common, perhaps. I can’t say what others
clears; more and less than I does.”

The profit in this trade, from the best information I could obtain,
runs about 50 per cent.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND BOOTS AND SHOES.

The man who gave me the following account of this trade had been
familiar with it a good many years, fifteen he believed, but was by no
means certain. I saw at his lodgings a man who was finishing his day’s
work there, in cobbling and “translating.” He was not in the employ of
my informant, who had two rooms, or rather a floor; he slept in one and
let the other to the “translator” who was a relation, he told me, and
they went on very well together, as he (the street-seller) liked to sit
and smoke his pipe of a night in the translator’s room, which was much
larger than his own; and sometimes, when times were “pretty bobbish,”
they clubbed together for a good supper of tripe, or had a “prime hot
Jemmy a-piece,” with a drop of good beer. A “Jemmy” is a baked sheep’s
head. The room was tidy enough, but had the strong odour of shoemaker’s
wax proper to the craft.

“I’ve been in a good many street-trades, and others too,” said my
informant, “since you want to know, and for a good purpose as well as
I can understand it. I was a ’prentice to a shoemaker in Northampton,
with a lot more; why, it was more like a factory than anything else,
was my master’s, and the place we worked in was so confined and hot,
and we couldn’t open the window, that it was worse than the East
Ingees. O, I know what they is. I’ve been there. I was so badly treated
I ran away from my master, for I had only a father, and he cared
nothing about me, and so I broke my indentures. After a good bit of
knocking about and living as I could, and starving when I couldn’t, but
I never thought of going back to Northampton, I ’listed and was a good
bit in the Ingees. Well, never mind, sir, how long, or what happened me
when I was soldier. I did nothing wrong, and that ain’t what you was
asking about, and I’d rather say no more about it.”

I have met with other street-folk, who had been soldiers, and who were
fond of talking of their “service,” often enough to grumble about it,
so that I am almost tempted to think my informant had deserted, but I
questioned him no further on the subject.

“I had my ups and downs again, sir,” he continued, “when I got back
to England. God bless us all; I’m very fond of children, but I never
married, and when I’ve been at the worst, I’ve been really glad that I
hadn’t no one depending on me. It’s bad enough for oneself, but when
there’s others as you must love, what must it be then? I’ve smoked a
pipe when I was troubled in mind, and couldn’t get a meal, but could
only get a pipe, and baccy’s shamefully dear here; but if I’d had a
young daughter now, what good would it have been my smoking a pipe to
comfort her? I’ve seen that in people that’s akin to me, and has been
badly off, and with families. I had a friend or two in London, and
I applied to them when I couldn’t hold out no longer, and they gave
me a bit of a rise, so I began as a costermonger. I was living among
them as was in that line. Well, now, it’s a pleasant life in fine
weather. Why it was only this morning Joe (the translator) was reading
the paper at breakfast time;--he gets it from the public-house, and
if it’s two, three, or four days old, it’s just as good for us;--and
there was 10,000 pines had been received from the West Ingees. There’s
a chance for the costermongers, says I, if they don’t go off too dear.
Then cherries is in; and I was beginning to wish I was a costermonger
myself still, but my present trade is _surer_. My boots and shoes’ll
keep. They don’t spoil in hot weather. Cherries and strawberries does,
and if it comes thunder and wet, you can’t sell. I worked a barrow, and
sometimes had only a bit of a pitch, for a matter of two year, perhaps,
and then I got into this trade, as I understood it. I sells all sorts,
but not so much women’s or children’s.

“Why, as to prices, there’s two sorts of prices. You may sell as you
buy, or you may sell new soled and heeled. They’re never new welted
for the streets. It wouldn’t pay a bit. Not long since I had a pair of
very good Oxonians that had been new welted, and the very first day I
had them on sale--it was a dull drizzly day--a lad tried to prig them.
I just caught him in time. Did I give him in charge? I hope I’ve more
sense. I’ve been robbed before, and I’ve caught young rips in the act.
If it’s boots or shoes they’ve tried to prig, I gives them a stirruping
with whichever it is, and a kick, and lets them go.

“Men’s shoes, the regular sort, isn’t a very good sale. I get from
10_d._ to 4_s._ 6_d._ a pair; but the high priced ’uns is either soled
and heeled, and mudded well, or they’ve been real well-made things, and
not much worn. I’ve had gentlemen’s shooting-shoes sometimes, that’s
flung aside for the least thing. The plain shoes don’t go off at all.
I think people likes something to cover their stocking-feet more. For
cloth button-boots I get from 1_s._--that’s the lowest I ever sold
at--to 2_s._ 6_d._ The price is according to what condition the things
is in, and what’s been done to them, but there’s no regular price.
They’re not such good sale as they would be, because they soon show
worn. The black ‘legs’ gets to look very seamy, and it’s a sort of boot
that won’t stand much knocking about, if it ain’t right well made at
first. I’ve been selling Oxonian button-overs (‘Oxonian’ shoes, which
cover the instep, and are closed by being buttoned instead of being
stringed through four or five holes) at 3_s._ 6_d._ and 4_s._ but they
was really good, and soled and heeled; others I sell at 1_s._ 6_d._
to 2_s._ 3_d._ or 2_s._ 6_d._ Bluchers is from 1_s._ to 3_s._ 6_d._
Wellingtons from 1_s._--yes, indeed, I’ve had them as low as 1_s._, and
perhaps they weren’t very cheap at that, them very low-priced things
never is, neither new nor old--from 1_s._ to 5_s._; but Wellingtons is
more for the shops than the street. I do a little in children’s boots
and shoes. I sell them from 3_d._ to 15_d._ Yes, you can buy lower than
3_d._, but I’m not in that way. They sell quite as quick, or quicker,
than anything. I’ve sold children’s boots to poor women that wanted
shoeing far worse than the child; aye, many a time, sir. Top boots
(they’re called ‘Jockeys’ in the trade) isn’t sold in the streets.
I’ve never had any, and I don’t see them with others in my line. O no,
there’s no such thing as Hessians or back-straps (a top-boot without
the light-coloured top) in my trade now. Yes, I always have a seat
handy where anybody can try on anything in the street; no, sir, no
boot-hooks nor shoe-horn; shoe-horns is rather going out, I think. If
what we sell in the streets won’t go on without them they won’t be sold
at all. A good many will buy if the thing’s only big enough--they can’t
bear pinching, and don’t much care for a fine fit.

“Well, I suppose I take from 30_s._ to 40_s._ a week, 14_s._ is about
my profit--that’s as to the year through.

“I sell little for women’s wear, though I do sell their boots and shoes
sometimes.”

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF OLD HATS.

The two street-sellers of old coats, waistcoats, and trousers, and of
boots and shoes, whose statements precede this account, confined their
trade, generally, to the second-hand merchandize I have mentioned as
more especially constituting their stock. But this arrangement does
not wholly prevail. There are many street-traders “in second-hand,”
perhaps two-thirds of the whole number, who sell indiscriminately
anything which they can buy, or what they hope to turn out an
advantage; but even they prefer to deal more in one particular kind of
merchandize than another, and this is most of all the case as concerns
the street-sale of old boots and shoes. Hats, however, are among the
second-hand wares which the street-seller rarely vends unconnected
with other stock. I was told that this might be owing to the hats sold
in the streets being usually suitable only for one class, grown men;
while clothes and boots and shoes are for boys as well as men. Caps may
supersede the use of hats, but nothing can supersede the use of boots
or shoes, which form the _steadiest_ second-hand street-trade of any.

There are, however, occasions, when a street-seller exerts himself to
become possessed of a cheap stock of hats, by the well-known process
of “taking a quantity,” and sells them without, or with but a small
admixture of other goods. One man who had been lately so occupied, gave
me the following account. He was of Irish parentage, but there was
little distinctive in his accent:--

“Hats,” he said, “are about the awkwardest things of any for the
streets. Do as you will, they require a deal of room, so that what
you’ll mostly see isn’t hats quite ready to put on your head and walk
away in, but to be made ready. I’ve sold hats that way though, I mean
ready to wear, and my father before me has sold hundreds--yes, I’ve
been in the trade all my life--and it’s the best way for a profit. You
get, perhaps, the old hat in, or you buy it at 1_d._ or 2_d._ as may
be, and so you kill two birds. But there’s very little of that trade
except on Saturday nights or Sunday mornings. People wants a decent
tile for Sundays and don’t care for work-days. I never hawks hats,
but I sells to those as do. My customers for hats are mechanics, with
an odd clerk or two. Yes, indeed, I sell hats now and then to my own
countrymen to go decent to mass in. I go to mass myself as often as
I can; sometimes I go to vespers. No, the Irish in this trade ain’t
so good in going to chapel as they ought, but it takes such a time;
not just while you’re there, but in shaving, and washing, and getting
ready. My wife helps me in selling second-hand things; she’s a better
hand than I am. I have two boys; they’re young yet, and I don’t know
what we shall bring them up to; perhaps to our own business; and
children seems to fall naturally into it, I think, when their fathers
and mothers is in it. They’re at school now.

“I have sold hats from 6_d._ to 3_s._ 6_d._, but very seldom 3_s._
6_d._ The 3_s._ 6_d._ ones would wear out two new gossamers, I know.
It’s seldom you see beaver hats in the street-trade now, they’re nearly
all silk. They say the beavers have got scarce in foreign parts where
they’re caught. I haven’t an idea how many hats I sell in a year,
for I don’t stick to hats, you see, sir, but I like doing in them as
well or better than in anything else. Sometimes I’ve sold nothing but
hats for weeks together, wholesale and retail that is. It’s only the
regular-shaped hats I can sell. If you offer swells’ hats, people’ll
say: ‘I may as well buy a new “wide-awake” at once.’ I have made
20_s._ in a week on hats alone. But if I confined my trade to them
now, I don’t suppose I could clear 5_s._ one week with another the
year through. It’s only the hawkers that can sell them in wet weather.
I wish we could sell under cover in all the places where there’s what
you call ‘street-markets.’ It would save poor people that lives by the
street many a twopence by their things not being spoiled, and by people
not heeding the rain to go and examine them.”

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF WOMEN’S SECOND-HAND APPAREL.

This trade, as regards the sale to retail customers in the streets,
is almost entirely in the hands of women, seven-eighths of whom
are the wives, relatives, or connections of the men who deal in
second-hand male apparel. But gowns, cloaks, bonnets, &c., are
collected more largely by men than by women, and the wholesale old
clothes’ merchants of course deal in every sort of habiliment.
Petticoat and Rosemary-lanes are the grand marts for this street-sale,
but in Whitecross-street, Leather-lane, Old-street (St. Luke’s), and
some similar Saturday-night markets in poor neighbourhoods, women’s
second-hand apparel is sometimes offered. “It is often of little use
offering it in the latter places,” I was told by a lace-seller who
had sometimes tried to do business in second-hand shawls and cloaks,
“because you are sure to hear, ‘Oh, we can get them far cheaper in
Petticoat-lane, when we like to go as far.’”

The different portions of female dress are shown and sold in the
street, as I have described in my account of Rosemary-lane, and of the
trading of the men selling second-hand male apparel. There is not so
much attention paid to “set off” gowns that there is to set off coats.
“If the gown be a washing gown,” I was informed, “it is sure to have
to be washed before it can be worn, and so it is no use bothering with
it, and paying for soap and labour beforehand. If it be woollen, or
some stuff that wont wash, it has almost always to be altered before it
is worn, and so it is no use doing it up perhaps to be altered again.”
Silk goods, however, are carefully enough re-glossed and repaired. Most
of the others “just take their chance.”

A good-looking Irishwoman gave me the following account. She had come
to London and had been a few years in service, where she saved a little
money, when she married a cousin, but in what degree of cousinship she
did not know. She then took part in his avocation as a crockman, and
subsequently as a street-seller of second-hand clothes.

“Why, yis, thin and indeed, sir,” she said, “I did feel rather quare
in my new trade, going about from house to house, the Commercial-road
and Stepney way, but I soon got not to mind, and indeed thin it don’t
matter much what way one gets one’s living, so long as it’s honest. O,
yis, I know there’s goings on in old clothes that isn’t always honest,
but my husband’s a fair dealing man. I felt quarer, too, whin I had
to sell in the strate, but I soon got used to that, too; and it’s not
such slavish work as the ‘crocks.’ But we sometimes ‘crocks’ in the
mornings a little still, and sells in the evenings. No, not what we’ve
collected--for that goes to Mr. Isaac’s market almost always--but stock
that’s ready for wear.

“For _Cotton Gowns_ I’ve got from 9_d._ to 2_s._ 3_d._ O, yis, and
indeed thin, there’s gowns chaper, 4_d._ and 6_d._, but there’s nothing
to be got out of them, and we don’t sell them. From 9_d._ to 18_d._
is the commonest price. It’s poor people as buys: O, yis, and indeed
thin it is, thim as has families, and must look about thim. Many’s the
poor woman that’s said to me, ‘Well, and indeed, marm, it isn’t my
inclination to chapen anybody as I thinks is fair, and I was brought up
quite different to buying old gowns, I assure you’--yis, that’s often
said; no, sir, it isn’t my countrywomen that says it (laughing), it’s
yours. ‘I wouldn’t think,’ says she, ‘of offering you 1_d._ less than
1_s._, marm, for that frock for my daughter, marm, but it’s such a hard
fight to live.’ Och, thin, and it is indeed; but to hear some of them
talk you’d think they was born ladies. _Stuff-gowns_ is from 2_d._ to
8_d._ higher than cotton, but they don’t sell near so well. I hardly
know why. Cotton washes, and if a dacent woman gets a chape second-hand
cotton, she washes and does it up, and it seems to come to her fresh
and new. That can’t be done with stuff. _Silk_ is very little in my
way, but silk gowns sell from 3_s._ 6_d._ to 4_s._ Of satin and velvet
gowns I can tell you nothing; they’re never in the streets.

“_Second-hand Bonnets_ is a very poor sale--very. The milliners, poor
craitchers, as makes them up and sells them in the strate, has the
greatest sale, but they makes very little by it. Their bonnets looks
new, you see, sir, and close and nice for poor women. I’ve sold bonnets
from 6_d._ to 3_s._ 6_d._, and some of them cost 3_l._ But whin they
git faded and out of fashion, they’re of no vally at all at all.
_Shawls_ is a very little sale; very little. I’ve got from 6_d._ to
2_s._ 6_d._ for them. Plaid shawls is as good as any, at about 1_s._
6_d._; but they’re a winter trade. _Cloaks_ (they are what in the
dress-making trade are called mantles) isn’t much of a call. I’ve had
them from 1_s._ 6_d._ as high as 7_s._--but only once 7_s._, and it was
good silk. They’re not a sort of wear that suits poor people. Will and
indeed thin, I hardly know who buys them second-hand. Perhaps bad women
buys a few, or they get men to buy them for them. I think your misses
don’t buy much second-hand thin in gineral; the less the better, the
likes of them; yis, indeed, sir. _Stays_ I don’t sell, but you can buy
them from 3_d._ to 15_d._; it’s a small trade. And I don’t sell _Under
Clothing_, or only now and thin, except _Children’s_. Dear me, I can
hardly tell the prices I get for the poor little things’ dress--I’ve a
little girl myself--the prices vary so, just as the frocks and other
things is made for big children or little, and what they’re made of.
I’ve sold frocks--they sell best on Saturday and Monday nights--from
2_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ Little petticoats is 1_d._ to 3_d._; shifts is
1_d._ and 2_d._, and so is little shirts. If they wasn’t so low there
would be more rags than there is, and sure there’s plinty.

“Will, thin and indeed, I don’t know what we make in a week, and if I
did, why should I tell? O, yes, sir, I know from the gentleman that
sent you to me that you’re asking for a good purpose: yis, indeed,
thin; but I ralely can’t say. We do pritty well, God’s name be praised!
Perhaps a good second-hand gown trade and such like is worth from
10_s._ to 15_s._ a week, and nearer 15_s._ than 10_s._ ivery week; but
that’s a _good_ second-hand trade you understand, sir. A poor trade’s
about half that, perhaps. But thin my husband sells men’s wear as well.
Yis, indeed, and I find time to go to mass, and I soon got my husband
to go after we was married, for he’d got to neglect it, God be praised;
and what’s all you can get here compared to making your sowl” [saving
your soul--_making_ your soul is not an uncommon phrase among some of
the Irish people]. “Och, and indeed thin, sir, if you’ve met Father
----, you’ve met a good gintleman.”

* * * * *

Of the street-selling of _women and children’s second-hand boots and
shoes_, I need say but little, as they form part of the stock of the
men’s ware, and are sold by the same men, not unfrequently assisted by
their wives. The best sale is for black _cloth boots_, whether laced
or buttoned, but the prices run only from 5_d._ to 1_s._ 9_d._ If the
“legs” of a second-hand pair be good, they are worth 5_d._, no matter
what the leather portion, including the soles, may be. Coloured boots
sell very indifferently. Children’s boots and shoes are sold from 2_d._
to 15_d._

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND FURS.

Of furs the street-sale is prompt enough, or used to be prompt; but
not so much so, I am told, last season, as formerly. A fur tippet
is readily bought for the sake of warmth by women who thrive pretty
well in the keeping of coffee-stalls, or any calling which requires
attendance during the night, or in the chilliness of early morning,
even in summer, by those who go out at early hours to their work. By
such persons a big tippet is readily bought when the money is not an
impediment, and to many it is a strong recommendation, that when new,
the tippet, most likely, was worn by a real lady. So I was assured by a
person familiar with the trade.

One female street-seller had three stalls or stands in the New Cut
(when it was a great street market), about two years back, and all for
the sale of second-hand furs. She has now a small shop in second-hand
wearing apparel (women’s) generally, furs being of course included.
The business carried on in the street (almost always “the Cut”) by
the fur-seller in question, who was both industrious and respectable,
was very considerable. On a Monday she has not unfrequently taken
3_l._, one-half of which, indeed more than half, was profit, for the
street-seller bought in the summer, when furs “were no money at all,”
and sold in the winter, when they “were really tin, and no mistake.”
Before the season began, she sometimes had a small room nearly full of
furs.

This trade is less confined to Petticoat-lane and the old clothes
district, as regards the supply to retail customers, than is anything
else connected with dress. But the fur trade is now small. The money,
prudence, and forethought necessary to enable a fur-seller to buy in
the summer, for ample profit in the winter, as regards street-trade, is
not in accordance with the habits of the general run of street-sellers,
who think but of the present, or hardly think even of that.

The old furs, like all the other old articles of wearing apparel,
whether garbs of what may be accounted primary necessaries, as shoes,
or mere comforts or adornments, as boas or muffs, are bought in the
first instance at the Old Clothes Exchange, and so find their way to
the street-sellers. The exceptions as to this first transaction in the
trade I now speak of, are very trifling, and, perhaps, more trifling
than in other articles, for one great supply of furs, I am informed, is
from their being swopped in the spring and summer for flowers with the
“root-sellers,” who carry them to the Exchange.

Last winter there were sometimes as many as ten persons--three-fourths
of the number of second-hand fur sellers, which fluctuates, being
women--with fur-stands. They frequent the street-markets on the
Saturday and Monday nights, not confining themselves to any one market
in particular. The best sale is for _Fur Tippets_, and chiefly of the
darker colours. These are bought, one of the dealers informed me,
frequently by maid-servants, who could run of errands in them in the
dark, or wear them in wet weather. They are sold from 1_s._ 6_d._
to 4_s._ 6_d._, about 2_s._ or 2_s._ 6_d._ being a common charge.
Children’s tippets “go off well,” from 6_d._ to 1_s._ 3_d._ _Boas_
are not vended to half the extent of tippets, although they are
lower-priced, one of tolerably good gray squirrel being 1_s._ 6_d._
The reason of the difference in the demand is that boas are as much
an ornament as a garment, while the tippet answers the purpose of a
shawl. _Muffs_ are not at all vendible in the streets, the few that are
disposed of being principally for children. As muffs are not generally
used by maid-servants, or by the families of the working classes, the
absence of demand in the second-hand traffic is easily accounted for.
They are bought sometimes to cut up for other purposes. _Victorines_
are disposed of readily enough at from 1_s._ to 2_s._ 6_d._, as are
_Cuffs_, from 4_d._ to 8_d._

One man, who told me that a few years since he and his wife used to
sell second-hand furs in the street, was of opinion that his best
customers were women of the town, who were tolerably well-dressed,
and who required some further protection from the night air. He could
readily sell any “tidy” article, tippet, boa, or muff, to those
females, if they had from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 5_s._ at command. He had so
sold them in Clare-market, in Tottenham-court-road, and the Brill.

OF THE SECOND-HAND SELLERS OF SMITHFIELD-MARKET.

No small part of the second-hand trade of London is carried on in
the market-place of Smithfield, on the Friday afternoons. Here is
a mart for almost everything which is required for the harnessing
of beasts of draught, or is required for any means of propulsion or
locomotion, either as a whole vehicle, or in its several parts, needed
by street-traders: also of the machines, vessels, scales, weights,
measures, baskets, stands, and all other appliances of street-trade.

The scene is animated and peculiar. Apart from the horse, ass, and
goat trade (of which I shall give an account hereafter), it is a grand
Second-hand Costermongers’ Exchange. The trade is not confined to that
large body, though they are the principal merchants, but includes
greengrocers (often the costermonger in a shop), carmen, and others. It
is, moreover, a favourite resort of the purveyors of street-provisions
and beverages, of street dainties and luxuries. Of this class some of
the most prosperous are those who are “well known in Smithfield.”

The space devoted to this second-hand commerce and its accompaniments,
runs from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital towards Long-lane, but
isolated peripatetic traders are found in all parts of the space
not devoted to the exhibition of cattle or of horses. The crowd on
the day of my visit was considerable, but from several I heard the
not-always-very-veracious remarks of “Nothing doing” and “There’s
nobody at all here to-day.” The weather was sultry, and at every few
yards arose the cry from men and boys, “Ginger-beer, ha’penny a glass!
Ha’penny a glass,” or “Iced lemonade here! Iced raspberriade, as cold
as ice, ha’penny a glass, only a ha’penny!” A boy was elevated on a
board at the end of a splendid affair of this kind. It was a square
built vehicle, the top being about 7 feet by 4, and flat and surmounted
by the lemonade fountain; long, narrow, champagne glasses, holding a
raspberry coloured liquid, frothed up exceedingly, were ranged round,
and the beverage dispensed by a woman, the mother or employer of the
boy who was bawling. The sides of the machine, which stood on wheels,
were a bright, shiny blue, and on them sprawled the lion and unicorn in
gorgeous heraldry, yellow and gold, the artist being, according to a
prominent announcement, a “herald painter.” The apparatus was handsome,
but with that exaggeration of handsomeness which attracts the high
and low vulgar, who cannot distinguish between gaudiness and beauty.
The sale was brisk. The ginger-beer sold in the market was generally
dispensed from carts, and here I noticed, what occurs yearly in
street-commerce, an innovation on the established system of the trade.
Several sellers disposed of their ginger-beer in clear glass bottles,
somewhat larger and fuller-necked than those introduced by M. Soyer for
the sale of his “nectar,” and the liquid was drank out of the bottle
the moment the cork was undrawn, and so the necessity of a glass was
obviated.

Near the herald-painter’s work, of which I have just spoken, stood
a very humble stall on which were loaves of bread, and round the
loaves were pieces of fried fish and slices of bread on plates, all
remarkably clean. “Oysters! Penny-a lot! Penny-a-lot, oysters!” was
the cry, the most frequently heard after that of ginger-beer, &c.
“Cherries! Twopence a-pound! Penny-a pound, cherries!” “Fruit-pies!
Try my fruit-pies!” The most famous dealer in all kinds of penny pies
is, however, not a pedestrian, but an equestrian hawker. He drives a
very smart, handsome pie-cart, sitting behind after the manner of the
Hansom cabmen, the lifting up of a lid below his knees displaying his
large stock of pies. His “drag” is whisked along rapidly by a brisk
chestnut poney, well-harnessed. The “whole set out,” I was informed,
poney included, cost 50_l._ when new. The proprietor is a keen Chartist
and teetotaller, and loses no opportunity to inculcate to his customers
the excellence of teetotalism, as well as of his pies. “Milk! ha’penny
a pint! ha’penny a pint, good milk!” is another cry. “Raspberry cream!
Iced raspberry-cream, ha’penny a glass!” This street-seller had a
capital trade. Street-ices, or rather ice-creams, were somewhat of a
failure last year, more especially in Greenwich-park, but this year
they seem likely to succeed. The Smithfield man sold them in very
small glasses, which he merely dipped into a vessel at his feet, and
so filled them with the cream. The consumers had to use their fingers
instead of a spoon, and no few seemed puzzled how to eat their ice, and
were grievously troubled by its getting among their teeth. I heard one
drover mutter that he felt “as if it had snowed in his belly!” Perhaps
at Smithfield-market on the Friday afternoons every street-trade in
eatables and drinkables has its representative, with the exception
of such things as sweet-stuff, curds and whey, &c., which are bought
chiefly by women and children. There were plum-dough, plum-cake,
pastry, pea-soup, whelks, periwinkles, ham-sandwiches, hot-eels,
oranges, &c., &c., &c.

These things are the usual accompaniment of street-markets, and I
now come to the subject matter of the work, the sale of second-hand
articles.

In this trade, since the introduction of a new arrangement two months
ago, there has been a great change. The vendors are not allowed to vend
barrows in the market, unless indeed with a poney or donkey harnessed
to them, or unless they are wheeled about by the owner, and they are
not allowed to spread their wares on the ground. When it is considered
of what those wares are composed, the awkwardness of the arrangement,
to the sales-people, may be understood. They consist of second-hand
collars, pads, saddles, bridles, bits, traces, every description of
worn harness, whole or in parts; the wheels, springs, axles, &c., of
barrows and carts; the beams, chains, and bodies of scales;--these,
perhaps, are the chief things which are sold separately, as parts of a
whole. The traders have now no other option but to carry them as they
best can, and offer them for sale. You saw men who really appear clad
in harness. Portions were fastened round their bodies, collars slung
on their arms, pads or small cart-saddles, with their shaft-gear, were
planted on their shoulders. Some carried merely a collar, or a harness
bridle, or even a bit or a pair of spurs. It was the same with the
springs, &c., of the barrows and small carts. They were carried under
men’s arms, or poised on their shoulders. The wheels and other things
which are too heavy for such modes of transport had to be placed in
some sort of vehicle, and in the vehicles might be seen trestles, &c.

The complaints on the part of the second-hand sellers were neither few
nor mild: “If it had been a fat ox that had to be accommodated,” said
one, “before he was roasted for an alderman, they’d have found some way
to do it. But it don’t matter for poor men; though why we shouldn’t be
suited with a market as well as richer people is not the ticket, that’s
the fact.”

These arrangements are already beginning to be infringed, and will be
more and more infringed, for such is always the case. The reason why
they were adopted was that the ground was so littered, that there was
not room for the donkey traffic and other requirements of the market.
The donkeys, when “shown,” under the old arrangement, often trod on
boards of old metal, &c., spread on the ground, and tripped, sometimes
to their injury, in consequence. Prior to the change, about twenty
persons used to come from Petticoat-lane, &c., and spread their old
metal or other stores on the ground.

Of these there are now none. These Petticoat-laners, I was told by a
Smithfield frequenter, were men “who knew the price of old rags,”--a
new phrase expressive of their knowingness and keenness in trade.

The statistics of this trade will be found under that head; the prices
are often much higher and much lower. I speak of the regular trades.
I have not included the sale of the superior butchers’ carts, &c.,
as that is a traffic not in the hands of the regular second-hand
street-sellers. I have not thought it requisite to speak of the hawking
of whips, sticks, wash-leathers, brushes, curry-combs, &c., &c., of
which I have already treated distinctively.

The accounts of the Capital and Income of the Street-Sellers of
Second-Hand Articles I am obliged to defer till a future occasion.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF LIVE ANIMALS.

The live animals sold in the streets include beasts, birds, fish, and
reptiles, all sold in the streets of London.

The class of men carrying on this business--for they are nearly all
men--is mixed; but the majority are of a half-sporting and half-vagrant
kind. One informant told me that the bird-catchers, for instance, when
young, as more than three-fourths of them are, were those who “liked
to be after a loose end,” first catching their birds, as a sort of
sporting business, and then sometimes selling them in the streets, but
far more frequently disposing of them in the bird-shops. “Some of these
boys,” a bird-seller in a large way of business said to me, “used to
become rat-catchers or dog-sellers, but there’s not such great openings
in the rat and dog line now. As far as I know, they’re the same lads,
or just the same sort of lads, anyhow, as you may see ‘helping,’
holding horses, or things like that, at concerns like them small races
at Peckham or Chalk Farm, or helping any way at the foot-races at
Camberwell.” There is in this bird-catching a strong manifestation
of the vagrant spirit. To rise long before daybreak; to walk some
miles before daybreak; from the earliest dawn to wait in some field,
or common, or wood, watching the capture of the birds; then a long
trudge to town to dispose of the fluttering captives; all this is done
cheerfully, because there are about it the irresistible charms, to this
class, of excitement, variety, and free and open-air life. Nor do these
charms appear one whit weakened when, as happens often enough, all this
early morn business is carried on fasting.

The old men in the bird-catching business are not to be ranked as
to their enjoyment of it with the juveniles, for these old men are
sometimes infirm, and can but, as one of them said to me some time ago,
“hobble about it.” But they have the same spirit, or the sparks of it.
And in this part of the trade is one of the curious characteristics of
a street-life, or rather of an open-air pursuit for the requirements
of a street-trade. A man, worn out for other purposes, incapable of
anything but a passive, or sort of lazy labour--such as lying in a
field and watching the action of his trap-cages--will yet in a summer’s
morning, decrepid as he may be, possess himself of a dozen or even a
score of the very freest and most aspiring of all our English small
birds, a creature of the air beyond other birds of his “order”--to use
an ornithological term--of sky-larks.

The dog-sellers are of a sporting, trading, idling class. Their sport
is now the rat-hunt, or the ferret-match, or the dog-fight; as it was
with the predecessors of their stamp, the cock-fight; the bull, bear,
and badger bait; the shrove-tide cock-shy, or the duck hunt. Their
trading spirit is akin to that of the higher-class sporting fraternity,
the trading members of the turf. They love to sell and to bargain,
always with a quiet exultation at the time--a matter of loud tavern
boast afterwards, perhaps, as respects the street-folk--how they “do”
a customer, or “do” one another. “It’s not cheating,” was the remark
and apology of a very famous jockey of the old times, touching such
measures; “it’s not cheating, it’s outwitting.” Perhaps this expresses
the code of honesty of such traders; not to cheat, but to outwit or
over-reach. Mixed with such traders, however, are found a few quiet,
plodding, fair-dealing men, whom it is difficult to classify, otherwise
than that they are “in the line, just because they likes it.” The
idling of these street-sellers is a part of their business. To walk
by the hour up and down a street, and with no manual labour except to
clean their dogs’ kennels, and to carry them in their arms, is but an
idleness, although, as some of these men will tell you, “they work hard
at it.”

Under the respective heads of dog and bird-sellers, I shall give more
detailed characteristics of the class, as well as of the varying
qualities and inducements of the buyers.

The street-sellers of foreign birds, such as parrots, parroquets, and
cockatoos; of gold and silver fish; of goats, tortoises, rabbits,
leverets, hedgehogs; and the collectors of snails, worms, frogs, and
toads, are also a mixed body. Foreigners, Jews, seamen, countrymen,
costermongers, and boys form a part, and of them I shall give a
description under the several heads. The prominently-characterized
street-sellers are the traders in dogs and birds.

OF THE FORMER STREET-SELLERS, “FINDERS,” STEALERS, AND RESTORERS OF
DOGS.

Before I describe the present condition of the street-trade in dogs,
which is principally in spaniels, or in the description well known as
lap-dogs, I will give an account of the former condition of the trade,
if trade it can properly be called, for the “finders” and “stealers” of
dogs were the more especial subjects of a parliamentary inquiry, from
which I derive the official information on the matter. The Report of
the Committee was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, July
26, 1844.

In their Report the Committee observe, concerning the value of pet
dogs:--“From the evidence of various witnesses it appears, that in one
case a spaniel was sold for 105_l._, and in another, under a sheriff’s
execution, for 95_l._ at the hammer; and 50_l._ or 60_l._ are not
unfrequently given for fancy dogs of first-rate breed and beauty.”
The hundred guineas’ dog above alluded to was a “black and tan King
Charles’s spaniel;”--indeed, Mr. Dowling, the editor of _Bell’s Life
in London_, said, in his evidence before the Committee, “I have known
as much as 150_l._ given for a dog.” He said afterwards: “There are
certain marks about the eyes and otherwise, which are considered
‘properties;’ and it depends entirely upon the property which a dog
possesses as to its value.”

I need not dwell on the general fondness of the English for dogs,
otherwise than as regards what were the grand objects of the
dog-finders’ search--ladies’ small spaniels and lap-dogs, or, as they
are sometimes called, “carriage-dogs,” by their being the companions of
ladies inside their carriages. These animals first became fashionable
by the fondness of Charles II. for them. That monarch allowed them
undisturbed possession of the gilded chairs in his palace of Whitehall,
and seldom took his accustomed walk in the park without a tribe of
them at his heels. So “fashionable” were spaniels at that time and
afterwards, that in 1712 Pope made the chief of all his sylphs and
sylphides the guard of a lady’s lapdog. The fashion has long continued,
and still continues; and it was on this fashionable fondness for a
toy, and on the regard of many others for the noble and affectionate
qualities of the dog, that a traffic was established in London, which
became so extensive and so lucrative, that the legislature interfered,
in 1844, for the purpose of checking it.

I cannot better show the extent and lucrativeness of this trade,
than by citing a list which one of the witnesses before Parliament,
Mr. W. Bishop, a gunmaker, delivered in to the Committee, of “cases
in which money had recently been extorted from the owners of dogs
by dog-stealers and their confederates.” There is no explanation of
the space of time included under the vague term “recently;” but the
return shows that 151 ladies and gentlemen had been the victims of
the dog-stealers or dog-finders, for in this business the words were,
and still are to a degree, synonymes, and of these 62 had been so
victimized in 1843 and in the six months of 1844, from January to
July. The total amount shown by Mr. Bishop to have been paid for the
restoration of stolen dogs was 977_l._ 4_s._ 6_d._, or an average of
6_l._ 10_s._ per individual practised upon. This large sum, it is
stated on the authority of the Committee, was only that which came
within Mr. Bishop’s knowledge, and formed, perhaps, “but a _tenth_
part in amount” of the whole extortion. Mr. Bishop was himself in the
habit of doing business “in obtaining the restitution of dogs,” and
had once known 18_l._--the dog-stealers asked 25_l._--given for the
restitution of a spaniel. The full amount realized by this dog-stealing
was, according to the above proportion, 9772_l._ 5_s._ In 1843, 227_l._
3_s._ 6_d._ was so realized, and 97_l._ 14_s._ 6_d._ in the six months
of 1844, within Mr. Bishop’s personal knowledge; and if this be
likewise a _tenth_ of the whole of the commerce in this line, a year’s
business, it appears, averaged 2166_l._ to the stealers or finders
of dogs. I select a few names from the list of those robbed of dogs,
either from the amount paid, or because the names are well known. The
first payment cited is from a public board, who owned a dog in their
corporate capacity:

£ _s._ _d._
Board of Green Cloth 8 0 0
Hon. W. Ashley (v. t.[5]) 15 0 0
Sir F. Burdett 6 6 0
Colonel Udney (v. t.) 12 0 0
Duke of Cambridge 30 0 0
Count Kielmansegge 9 0 0
Mr. Orby Hunter (v. t.) 15 0 0
Mrs. Holmes (v. t.) 50 0 0
Sir Richard Phillips (v. t.) 20 0 0
The French Ambassador 1 11 6
Sir R. Peel 2 0 0
Edw. Morris, Esq. 17 0 0
Mrs. Ram (v. t.) 15 0 0
Duchess of Sutherland 5 0 0
Wyndham Bruce, Esq. (v. t.) 25 0 0
Capt. Alexander (v. t.) 22 0 0
Sir De Lacy Evans 3 0 0
Judge Littledale 2 0 0
Leonino Ippolito, Esq. (v. t.) 10 0 0
Mr. Commissioner Rae 5 0 0
Lord Cholmondeley (v. t.) 12 0 0
Earl Stanhope 8 0 0
Countess of Charlemont (v. t. in 1843) 12 0 0
Lord Alfred Paget 10 0 0
Count Leodoffe (v. t.) 7 0 0
Mr. Thorne (whipmaker) 12 12 0
Mr. White (v. t.) 15 0 0
Col. Barnard (v. t.) 14 14 0
Mr. T. Holmes 15 0 0
Earl of Winchelsea 6 0 0
Lord Wharncliffe (v. t.) 12 0 0
Hon. Mrs. Dyce Sombre 2 2 0
M. Ude (v. t.) 10 10 0
Count Batthyany 14 0 0
Bishop of Ely 4 10 0
Count D’Orsay 10 0 0

Thus these 36 ladies and gentlemen paid 438_l._ 5_s._ 6_d._ to
rescue their dogs from professional dog-stealers, or an average, per
individual, of upwards of 12_l._

These dog appropriators, as they found that they could levy
contributions not only on royalty, foreign ambassadors, peers,
courtiers, and ladies of rank, but on public bodies, and on the
dignitaries of the state, the law, the army, and the church, became
bolder and more expert in their avocations--a boldness which was
encouraged by the existing law. Prior to the parliamentary inquiry,
dog-stealing was not an indictable offence. To show this, Mr.
Commissioner Mayne quoted Blackstone to the Committee: “As to those
animals which do not serve for food, and which therefore the law holds
to have no intrinsic value, as dogs of all sorts, and other creatures
kept for whim and pleasure--though a man may have a base property
therein, and maintain a civil action for the loss of them, yet they
are not of such estimation as that the crime of stealing them amounts
to larceny.” The only mode of punishment for dog-stealing was by
summary conviction, the penalty being fine or imprisonment; but Mr.
Commissioner Mayne did not know of any instance of a dog-stealer being
sent to prison in default of payment. Although the law recognised
no property in a dog, the animal was taxed; and it was complained
at the time that an unhappy lady might have to pay tax for the full
term upon her dog, perhaps a year and a half after he had been stolen
from her. One old offender, who stole the Duke of Beaufort’s dog, was
transported, not for stealing the dog, but his collar.

The difficulty of proving the positive theft of a dog was extreme. In
most cases, where the man was not seen actually to seize a dog which
could be identified, he escaped when carried before a magistrate. “The
dog-stealers,” said Inspector Shackell, “generally go two together;
they have a piece of liver; they say it is merely bullock’s liver,
which will entice or tame the wildest or savagest dog which there
can be in any yard; they give it him, and take him from his chain.
At other times,” continues Mr. Shackell, “they will go in the street
with a little dog, rubbed over with some sort of stuff, and will
entice valuable dogs away.... If there is a dog lost or stolen, it is
generally known within five or six hours where that dog is, and they
know almost exactly what they can get for it, so that it is a regular
system of plunder.” Mr. G. White, “dealer in live stock, dogs, and
other animals,” and at one time a “dealer in lions, and tigers, and all
sorts of things,” said of the dog-stealers: “In turning the corners of
streets there are two or three of them together; one will snatch up a
dog and put into his apron, and the others will stop the lady and say,
‘What is the matter?’ and direct the party who has lost the dog in a
contrary direction to that taken.”

In this business were engaged from 50 to 60 men, half of them actual
stealers of the animals. The others were the receivers, and the
go-betweens or “restorers.” The thief kept the dog perhaps for a day
or two at some public-house, and he then took it to a dog-dealer with
whom he was connected in the way of business. These dealers carried on
a trade in “honest dogs,” as one of the witnesses styled them (meaning
dogs honestly acquired), but some of them dealt principally with the
dog-stealers. Their depots could not be entered by the police, being
private premises, without a search-warrant--and direct evidence was
necessary to obtain a search-warrant--and of course a stranger in quest
of a stolen dog would not be admitted. Some of the dog-dealers would
not purchase or receive dogs known to have been stolen, but others
bought and speculated in them. If an advertisement appeared offering a
reward for the dog, a negotiation was entered into. If no reward was
offered, the owner of the dog, who was always either known or made out,
was waited upon by a restorer, who undertook “to restore the dog if
terms could be come to.” A dog belonging to Colonel Fox was once kept
six weeks before the thieves would consent to the Colonel’s terms. One
of the most successful restorers was a shoemaker, and mixed little
with the actual stealers; the dog-dealers, however, acted as restorers
frequently enough. If the person robbed paid a good round sum for the
restoration of a dog, and paid it speedily, the animal was almost
certain to be stolen a second time, and a higher sum was then demanded.
Sometimes the thieves threatened that if they were any longer trifled
with they would inflict torture on the dog, or cut its throat. One
lady, Miss Brown of Bolton-street, was so worried by these threats, and
by having twice to redeem her dog, “that she has left England,” said
Mr. Bishop, “and I really do believe for the sake of keeping the dog.”
It does not appear, as far as the evidence shows, that these threats
of torture or death were ever carried into execution; some of the
witnesses had merely heard of such things.

The shoemaker alluded to was named Taylor, and Inspector Shackell
thus describes this person’s way of transacting business in the dog
“restoring” line: “There is a man named Taylor, who is one of the
greatest restorers in London of stolen dogs, through Mr. Bishop.” [Mr.
Bishop was a gunmaker in Bond-street.] “It is a disgrace to London that
any person should encourage a man like that to go to extort money from
ladies and gentlemen, especially a respectable man. A gentleman applied
to me to get a valuable dog that was stolen, with a chain on his neck,
and the name on the collar; and I heard Mr. Bishop himself say that
it cost 6_l._; that it could not be got for less. Capt. Vansittart
(the owner of the dog) came out; I asked him particularly, ‘Will you
give me a description of the dog on a piece of paper,’ and that is his
writing (producing a paper). I went and made inquiry; and the captain
himself, who lives in Belgrave-square, said he had no objection to
give 4_l._ for the recovery of the dog, but would not give the 6_l._ I
went and took a good deal of trouble about it. I found out that Taylor
went first to ascertain what the owner of the dog would give for it,
and then went and offered 1_l._ for the dog, then 2_l._, and at last
purchased it for 3_l._; and went and told Capt. Vansittart that he had
given 4_l._ for the dog; and the dog went back through the hands of Mr.
Bishop.”

The “restorers” had, it appears, the lion’s share in the profits of
this business. One witness had known of as much as ten guineas being
given for the recovery of a favourite spaniel, or, as the witness
styled it, for “working a dog back,” and only two of these guineas
being received by “the party.” The wronged individual, thus delicately
intimated as the “party,” was the thief. The same witness, Mr. Hobdell,
knew 14_l._ given for the restoration of a little red Scotch terrier,
which he, as a dog-dealer, valued at four shillings!

One of the coolest instances of the organization and boldness of the
dog-stealers was in the case of Mr. Fitzroy Kelly’s “favourite Scotch
terrier.” The “parties,” possessing it through theft, asked 12_l._ for
it, and urged that it was a reasonable offer, considering the trouble
they were obliged to take. “The dog-stealers were obliged to watch
every night,” they contended, through Mr. Bishop, “and very diligently;
Mr. Kelly kept them out very late from their homes, before they could
get the dog; he used to go out to dinner or down to the Temple, and
take the dog with him; they had a deal of trouble before they could get
it.” So Mr. Kelly was expected not only to pay more than the value of
his dog, but an extra amount on account of the care he had taken of his
terrier, and for the trouble his vigilance had given to the thieves!
The matter was settled at 6_l._ Mr. Kelly’s case was but one instance.

Among the most successful of the practitioners in this street-finding
business were Messrs. “Ginger” and “Carrots,” but a parliamentary
witness was inclined to believe that Ginger and Carrots were nicknames
for the same individual, one Barrett; although he had been in custody
several times, he was considered “a very superior dog-stealer.”

If the stolen dog were of little value, it was safest for the stealers
to turn him loose; if he were of value, and unowned and unsought for,
there was a ready market abroad. The stewards, stokers, or seamen of
the Ostend, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburgh, and all the French steamers,
readily bought stolen fancy dogs; sometimes twenty to thirty were
taken at a voyage. A steward, indeed, has given 12_l._ for a stolen
spaniel as a private speculation. Dealers, too, came occasionally
from Paris, and bought numbers of these animals, and at what the dog
foragers considered fair prices. One of the witnesses (Mr. Baker, a
game dealer in Leadenhall-market) said:--“I have seen perhaps twenty or
thirty dogs tied up in a little room, and I should suppose every one
of them was stolen; a reward not sufficiently high being offered for
their restoration, the parties get more money by taking them on board
the different steam-ships and selling them to persons on board, or to
people coming to this country to buy dogs and take them abroad.”

The following statement, derived from Mr. Mayne’s evidence, shows the
extent of the dog-stealing business, but only as far as came under
the cognizance of the police. It shows the number of dogs “lost” or
“stolen,” and of persons “charged” with the offence, and “convicted” or
“discharged.” Nearly all the dogs returned as lost, I may observe, were
stolen, but there was no evidence to show the positive theft:--

+------+---------+-------+----------+------------+------------
| | Dogs | Dogs | Persons | Convicted. | Discharged.
| | Stolen. | Lost. | Charged. | |
+------+---------+-------+----------+------------+------------
| 1841 | 43 | 521 | 51 | 19 | 32
| 1842 | 54 | 561 | 45 | 17 | 28
| 1843 | 60 | 606 | 38 | 18 | 20
+------+---------+-------+----------+------------+------------

In what proportion the police-known thefts stood to the whole number,
there was no evidence given; nor, I suppose, could it be given.

The dog-stealers were not considered to be connected with
housebreakers, though they might frequent the same public-houses. Mr.
Mayne pronounced these dog-stealers a genus, a peculiar class, “what
they call dog-fanciers and dog-stealers; a sort of half-sporting,
betting characters.”

The law on the subject of dog-stealing (8 and 9 Vict., c. 47) now is,
that “If any person shall steal any dog, every such offender shall be
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, being convicted thereof before any
two or more justices of the peace, shall, for the first offence, at the
discretion of the said justices, either be committed to the common gaol
or house of correction, there to be imprisoned only, or be imprisoned
and kept to hard labour, for any term not exceeding six calendar
months, or shall forfeit and pay over and above the value of the said
dog such sum of money, not exceeding 20_l._, as to the said justices
shall seem meet. And if any person so convicted shall afterwards be
guilty of the same offence, every such offender shall be guilty of an
indictable misdemeanor, and, being convicted thereof, shall be liable
to suffer such punishment, by fine or imprisonment, with or without
hard labour, or by both, as the court in its discretion shall award,
provided such imprisonment do not exceed eighteen months.”

OF A DOG-“FINDER”.--A “LURKER’S” CAREER.

Concerning a dog-finder, I received the following account from one who
had received the education of a gentleman, but whom circumstances had
driven to an association with the vagrant class, and who has written
the dog-finder’s biography from personal knowledge--a biography
which shows the _variety_ that often characterizes the career of the
“lurker,” or street-adventurer.

“If your readers,” writes my informant, “have passed the Rubicon of
‘forty years in the wilderness,’ memory must bring back the time
when the feet of their childish pilgrimage have trodden a beautiful
grass-plot--now converted into Belgrave-square; when Pimlico was a
‘village out of town,’ and the ‘five fields’ of Chelsea were fields
indeed. To write the biography of a living character is always
delicate, as to embrace all its particulars is difficult; but of the
truthfulness of my account there is no question.

“Probably about the year of the great frost (1814), a French Protestant
refugee, named La Roche, sought asylum in this country, not from
persecution, but from difficulties of a commercial character. He built
for himself, in Chelsea, a cottage of wood, nondescript in shape, but
pleasant in locality, and with ample accommodations for himself and
his son. Wife he had none. This little bazaar of mud and sticks was
surrounded with a bench of rude construction, on which the Sunday
visitors to Ranelagh used to sit and sip their curds and whey, while
from the entrance--far removed in those days from competition--

‘There stood uprear’d, as ensign of the place,
Of blue and red and white, a checquer’d mace,
On which the paper lantern hung to tell
How cheap its owner shaved you, and how well.’

Things went on smoothly for a dozen years, when the old Frenchman
departed this life.

“His boy carried on the business for a few months, when frequent
complaints of ‘Sunday gambling’ on the premises, and loud whispers of
suspicion relative to the concealment of stolen goods, induced ‘Chelsea
George’--the name the youth had acquired--to sell the good-will of the
house, fixtures, and all, and at the eastern extremity of London to
embark in business as a ‘mush or mushroom-faker.’ Independently of his
appropriation of umbrellas, proper to the mush-faker’s calling, Chelsea
George was by no means scrupulous concerning other little matters
within his reach, and if the proprietors of the ‘swell cribs’ within
his ‘beat’ had no ‘umbrellas to mend,’ or ‘old ’uns to sell,’ he would
ease the pegs in the passage of the incumbrance of a greatcoat, and
telegraph the same out of sight (by a colleague), while the servant
went in to make the desired inquiries. At last he was ‘bowl’d out’ in
the very act of ‘nailing a yack’ (stealing a watch). He ‘expiated,’
as it is called, this offence by three months’ exercise on the
‘cockchafer’ (tread-mill). Unaccustomed as yet to the novelty of the
exercise, he fell through the wheel and broke one of his legs. He was,
of course, permitted to finish his time in the infirmary of the prison,
and on his liberation was presented with five pounds out of ‘the
Sheriffs’ Fund.’

“Although, as I have before stated, he had never been out of England
since his childhood, he had some little hereditary knowledge of the
French language, and by the kind and voluntary recommendation of one
of the police-magistrates of the metropolis, he was engaged by an
Irish gentleman proceeding to the Continent as a sort of supernumerary
servant, to ‘make himself generally useful.’ As the gentleman was
unmarried, and mostly stayed at hotels, George was to have permanent
wages and ‘find himself,’ a condition he invariably fulfilled, if
anything was left in his way. Frequent intemperance, neglect of duty,
and unaccountable departures of property from the portmanteau of his
master, led to his dismissal, and Chelsea George was left, without
friends or character, to those resources which have supported him for
some thirty years.

“During his ‘umbrella’ enterprise he had lived in lodging-houses of
the lowest kind, and of course mingled with the most depraved society,
especially with the vast army of trading sturdy mendicants, male and
female, young and old, who assume every guise of poverty, misfortune,
and disease, which craft and ingenuity can devise or well-tutored
hypocrisy can imitate. Thus initiated, Chelsea George could ‘go upon
any lurk,’ could be in the last stage of consumption--actually in his
dying hour--but now and then convalescent for years and years together.
He could take fits and counterfeit blindness, be a respectable
broken-down tradesman, or a soldier maimed in the service, and
dismissed without a pension.

“Thus qualified, no vicissitudes could be either very new or very
perplexing, and he commenced operations without delay, and pursued
them long without desertion. The ‘first move’ in his mendicant career
was _taking them on the fly_; which means meeting the gentry on their
walks, and beseeching or at times menacing them till something is
given; something in general _was_ given to get rid of the annoyance,
and, till the ‘game got stale,’ an hour’s work, morning and evening,
produced a harvest of success, and ministered to an occasion of
debauchery.

“His less popular, but more upright father, had once been a
dog-fancier, and George, after many years vicissitude, at length
took a ‘fancy’ to the same profession, but not on any principles
recognised by commercial laws. With what success he has practised, the
ladies and gentlemen about the West-end have known, to their loss and
disappointment, for more than fifteen years past.

“Although the police have been and still are on the alert, George
has, in every instance, hitherto escaped punishment, while numerous
detections connected with escape have enabled the offender to hold
these officials at defiance. The ‘modus operandi’ upon which George
proceeds is to varnish his hands with a sort of gelatine, composed
of the coarsest pieces of liver, fried, pulverised, and mixed up
with tincture of myrrh.” [This is the composition of which Inspector
Shackell spoke before the Select Committee, but he did not seem to know
of what the lure was concocted. My correspondent continues]: “Chelsea
George caresses every animal who seems ‘a likely spec,’ and when his
fingers have been rubbed over the dogs’ noses they become easy and
perhaps willing captives. A bag carried for the purpose, receives the
victim, and away goes George, bag and all, to his printer’s in Seven
Dials. Two bills and no less--two and no more, for such is George’s
style of work--are issued to describe the animal that has thus been
_found_, and which will be ‘restored to its owner on payment of
expenses.’ One of these George puts in his pocket, the other he pastes
up at a public-house whose landlord is ‘fly’ to its meaning, and poor
‘bow-wow’ is sold to a ‘dealer in dogs,’ not very far from Sharp’s
alley. In course of time the dog is discovered; the possessor refers
to the ‘establishment’ where he bought it; the ‘dealer makes himself
_square_,’ by giving the address of ‘the chap he bought ’un of,’ and
Chelsea George shows a copy of the advertisement, calls in the publican
as a witness, and leaves the place ‘without the slightest imputation on
his character.’ Of this man’s earnings I cannot speak with precision:
it is probable that in a ‘good year’ his clear income is 200_l._;
in a bad year but 100_l._, but, as he is very adroit, I am inclined
to believe that the ‘good’ years somewhat predominate, and that the
average income may therefore exceed 150_l._ yearly.”

OF THE PRESENT STREET-SELLERS OF DOGS.

It will have been noticed that in the accounts I have given of the
former street-transactions in dogs, there is no mention of the
_sellers_. The information I have adduced is a condensation of the
evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, and
the inquiry related only to the stealing, finding, and restoring of
dogs, the selling being but an incidental part of the evidence. Then,
however, as now, the street-sellers were not implicated in the thefts
or restitution of dogs, “just except,” one man told me, “as there was
a black sheep or two in every flock.” The black sheep, however, of
this street-calling more frequently meddled with restoring, than with
“finding.”

Another street dog-seller, an intelligent man,--who, however did not
know so much as my first informant of the state of the trade in the
olden time,--expressed a positive opinion, that no dog-stealer was
now a street-hawker (“hawker” was the word I found these men use).
His reasons for this opinion, in addition to his own judgment from
personal knowledge, are cogent enough: “It isn’t possible, sir,” he
said, “and this is the reason why. We are not a large body of men. We
stick pretty closely, when we are out, to the same places. We are as
well-known to the police, as any men whom they most know, by sight at
any rate, from meeting them every day. Now, if a lady or gentleman has
lost a dog, or it’s been stolen or strayed--and the most petted will
sometimes stray unaccountably and follow some stranger or other--why
where does she, and he, and all the family, and all the servants, first
look for the lost animal? Why, where, but at the dogs we are hawking?
No, sir, it can’t be done now, and it isn’t done in my knowledge, and
it oughtn’t to be done. I’d rather make 5_s._ on an honest dog than
5_l._ on one that wasn’t, if there was no risk about it either.” Other
information convinces me that this statement is correct.

Of these street-sellers or hawkers there are now about twenty-five.
There may be, however, but twenty, if so many, on any given day in the
streets, as there are always some detained at home by other avocations
connected with their line of life. The places they chiefly frequent
are the Quadrant and Regent-street generally, but the Quadrant far the
most. Indeed before the removal of the colonnade, one-half at least of
all the dog-sellers of London would resort there on a very wet day, as
they had the advantage of shelter, and generally of finding a crowd
assembled, either lounging to pass the time, or waiting “for a fair
fit,” and so with leisure to look at dogs. The other places are the
West-end squares, the banks of the Serpentine, Charing-cross, the Royal
Exchange, and the Bank of England, and the Parks generally. They visit,
too, any public place to which there may be a temporary attraction of
the classes likely to be purchasers--a mere crowd of people, I was
told, was no good to the dog-hawkers, it must be a crowd of people
that had money--such as the assemblage of ladies and gentlemen who
crowd the windows of Whitehall and Parliament-street, when the Queen
opens or prorogues the houses. These spectators fill the street and
the Horse-guards’ portion of the park as soon as the street mass has
dispersed, and they often afford the means of a good day’s work to the
dog people.

Two dogs, carefully cleaned and combed, or brushed, are carried in a
man’s arms for street-vending. A fine chain is generally attached to a
neat collar, so that the dog can be relieved from the cramped feel he
will experience if kept off his feet too long. In carrying these little
animals for sale--for it is the smaller dogs which are carried--the men
certainly display them to the best advantage. Their longer silken ears,
their prominent dark eyes and black noses, and the delicacy of their
fore-paws, are made as prominent as possible, and present what the
masses very well call “quite a pictur.” I have alluded to the display
of the _Spaniels_, as they constitute considerably more than half of
the street trade in dogs, the “King Charleses” and the “Blenheims”
being disposed of in nearly equal quantities. They are sold for
lap-dogs, pets, carriage companions or companions in a walk, and are
often intelligent and affectionate. Their colours are black, black and
tan, white and liver-colour, chestnut, black and white, and entirely
white, with many shades of these hues, and inter-blendings of them, one
with another, and with gray.

The small _Terriers_ are, however, coming more into fashion, or, as
the hawkers call it, into “vogue.” They are usually black, with tanned
muzzles and feet, and with a keen look, their hair being short and
smooth. Some, however, are preferred with long and somewhat wiry hair,
and the colour is often strongly mixed with gray. A small Isle of Skye
terrier--but few, I was informed know a “real Skye”--is sometimes
carried in the streets, as well as the little rough dogs known as
Scotch terriers. When a street-seller has a litter of terrier pups, he
invariably selects the handsomest for the streets, for it happens--my
informant did not know why, but he and others were positive that so
it was--that the handsomest is the worst; “the worst,” it must be
understood as regards the possession of choice sporting qualities, more
especially of pluck. The terrier’s education, as regards his prowess in
a rat-pit, is accordingly neglected; and if a gentleman ask, “Will he
kill rats?” the answer is in the negative; but this is no disparagement
to the sale, because the dog is sold, perhaps, for a lady’s pet, and is
not wanted to kill rats, or to “fight any dog of his weight.”

The _Pugs_, for which, 40 to 50 years ago, and, in a diminished
degree, 30 years back, there was, in the phrase of the day, “quite a
rage,” provided only the pug was hideous, are now never offered in the
streets, or so rarely, that a well-known dealer assured me he had only
sold one in the streets for two years. A Leadenhall tradesman, fond of
dogs, but in no way connected with the trade, told me that it came to
be looked upon, that a pug was a fit companion for only snappish old
maids, and “so the women wouldn’t have them any longer, least of all
the old maids.”

_French Poodles_ are also of rare street-sale. One man had a white
poodle two or three years ago, so fat and so round, that a lady, who
priced it, was told by a gentleman with her, that if the head and the
short legs were removed, and the inside scooped out, the animal would
make a capital muff; yet even _that_ poodle was difficult of sale at
50_s._

Occasionally also an _Italian Greyhound_, seeming cold and shivery on
the warmest days, is borne in a hawker’s arms, or if following on foot,
trembling and looking sad, as if mentally murmuring at the climate.

In such places as the banks of the Serpentine, or in the Regent’s-park,
the hawker does not carry his dogs in his arms, so much as let them
trot along with him in a body, and they are sure to attract attention;
or he sits down, and they play or sleep about him. One dealer told me
that children often took such a fancy for a pretty spaniel, that it
was difficult for either mother, governess, or nurse, to drag them
away until the man was requested to call in the evening, bringing with
him the dog, which was very often bought, or the hawker recompensed
for his loss of time. But sometimes the dog-dealers, I heard from
several, meet with great shabbiness among rich people, who recklessly
give them no small trouble, and sometimes put them to expense without
the slightest return, or even an acknowledgment or a word of apology.
“There’s one advantage in my trade,” said a dealer in live animals, “we
always has to do with principals. There’s never a lady would let her
most favouritest maid choose her dog for her. So no parkisits.”

The species which I have enumerated are all that are now sold in the
streets, with the exception of an odd “plum-pudding,” or coach-dog
(the white dog with dark spots which runs after carriages), or an odd
bull-dog, or bull-terrier, or indeed with the exception of “odd dogs”
of every kind. The hawkers are, however, connected with the trade in
sporting dogs, and often through the medium of their street traffic, as
I shall show under the next head of my subject.

There is one peculiarity in the hawking of fancy dogs, which
distinguishes it from all other branches of street-commerce. The
purchasers are all of the wealthier class. This has had its influence
on the manners of the dog-sellers. They will be found, in the majority
of cases, quiet and deferential men, but without servility, and with
little of the quality of speech; and I speak only of speech which
among English people is known as “gammon,” and among Irish people as
“blarney.” This manner is common to many; to the established trainer
of race-horses for instance, who is in constant communication with
persons in a very superior position in life to his own, and to whom he
is exceedingly deferential. But the trainer feels that in all points
connected with his not very easy business, as well, perhaps, as in
general turf knowingness, his royal highness (as was the case once),
or his grace, or my lord, or Sir John, was inferior to himself; and so
with all his deference there mingles a strain of quiet contempt, or
rather, perhaps, of conscious superiority, which is one ingredient in
the formation of the manners I have hastily sketched.

The customers of the street-hawkers of dogs are ladies and gentlemen,
who buy what may have attracted their admiration. The kept mistresses
of the wealthier classes are often excellent customers. “Many of ’em,
I know,” was said to me, “dotes on a nice spaniel. Yes, and I’ve known
gentlemen buy dogs for their misses; I couldn’t be mistaken when I
might be sent on with them, which was part of the bargain. If it was
a two-guinea dog or so, I was told never to give a hint of the price
to the servant, or to anybody. _I_ know why. It’s easy for a gentleman
that wants to please a lady, and not to lay out any great matter
of tin, to say that what had really cost him two guineas, cost him
twenty.” If one of the working classes, or a small tradesman, buy a dog
in the streets, it is generally because he is “of a fancy turn,” and
breeds a few dogs, and traffics in them in hopes of profit.

The homes of the dog-hawkers, as far as I had means of
ascertaining--and all I saw were of the same character--are comfortable
and very cleanly. The small spaniels, terriers, &c.,--I do not now
allude to sporting dogs--are generally kept in kennels, or in small
wooden houses erected for the purpose in a back garden or yard. These
abodes are generally in some open court, or little square or “grove,”
where there is a free access of air. An old man who was sitting at
his door in the summer evening, when I called upon a dog-seller, and
had to wait a short time, told me that so quiet were his next-door
neighbour’s (the street-hawker’s) dogs, that for some weeks, he did not
know his newly-come neighbour was a dog-man; although he was an old
nervous man himself, and couldn’t bear any unpleasant noise or smell.
The scrupulous observance of cleanliness is necessary in the rearing or
keeping of small fancy dogs, for without such observance the dog would
have a disagreeable odour about it, enough to repel any lady-buyer. It
is a not uncommon declaration among dog-sellers that the animals are
“as sweet as nuts.” Let it be remembered that I have been describing
the class of regular dog-sellers, making, by an open and established
trade, a tolerable livelihood.

The spaniels, terriers, &c., the stock of these hawkers, are either
bred by them--and they all breed a few or a good many dogs--or they
are purchased of dog-dealers (not street-sellers), or of people who
having a good fancy breed of “King Charleses,” or “Blenheims,” rear
dogs, and sell them by the litter to the hawkers. The hawkers also
buy dogs brought to them, “in the way of business,” but they are wary
how they buy any animal suspected to be stolen, or they may get into
“trouble.” One man, a carver and gilder, I was informed, some ten years
back, made a good deal of money by his “black-patched” spaniels. These
dogs had a remarkable black patch over their eyes, and so fond was
the dog-fancier, or breeder of them, that when he disposed of them to
street-sellers or others, he usually gave a portrait of the animals, of
his own rude painting, into the bargain. These paintings he also sold,
slightly framed, and I have seen them--but not so much lately--offered
in the streets, and hung up in poor persons’ rooms. This man lived in
York-square, behind the Colosseum, then a not very reputable quarter.
It is now Munster-square, and of a reformed character, but the seller
of dogs and the donor of their portraits has for some time been lost
sight of.

The prices at which fancy-dogs are sold in the streets are about the
same for all kinds. They run from 10_s._ to 5_l._ 5_s._, but are very
rarely so low as 10_s._, as “it’s only a very scrubby thing for that.”
Two and three guineas are frequent street prices for a spaniel or small
terrier. Of the dogs sold, as I have before stated, more than one-half
are spaniels. Of the remainder, more than one-half are terriers; and
the surplusage, after this reckoning, is composed in about equal
numbers of the other dogs I have mentioned. The exportation of dogs
is not above a twentieth of what it was before the appointment of the
Select Committee, but a French or Belgium dealer sometimes comes to
London to buy dogs.

It is not easy to fix upon any per-centage as to the profit of the
street dog-sellers. There is the keep and the rearing of the animal to
consider; and there is the same uncertainty in the traffic as in all
traffics which depend, not upon a demand for use, but on the caprices
of fashion, or--to use the more appropriate word, when writing on such
a subject--of “fancy.” A hawker may sell three dogs in one day, without
any extraordinary effort, or, in the same manner of trading, and
frequenting the very same places, may sell only one in three days. In
the winter, the dogs are sometimes offered in public houses, but seldom
as regards the higher-priced animals.

From the best data I can command, it appears that each hawker sells
“three dogs and a half, if you take it that way, splitting a dog like,
every week the year through; that is, sir, four or five one week in the
summer, when trade’s brisk and days are long, and only two or three
the next week, when trade may be flat, and in winter when there isn’t
the same chance.” Calculating, then, that seven dogs are sold by each
hawker in a fortnight, at an average price of 50_s._ each, which is
not a high average, and supposing that but twenty men are trading in
this line the year through, we find that no less a sum than 9100_l._ is
yearly expended in this street-trade. The weekly profit of the hawker
is from 25_s._ to 40_s._ More than seven-eighths of these dogs are bred
in this country, Italian greyhounds included.

A hawker of dogs gave me a statement of his life, but it presented
so little of incident or of change, that I need not report it. He
had assisted and then succeeded his father in the business; was a
pains-taking, temperate, and industrious man, seldom taking even a
glass of ale, so that the tenour of his way had been even, and he was
prosperous enough.

I will next give an account of the connection of the hawkers of dogs
with the “sporting” or “fancy” part of the business; and of the present
state of dog “finding,” to show the change since the parliamentary
investigation.

I may observe that in this traffic the word “fancy” has two
significations. A dog recommended by its beauty, or any peculiarity,
so that it be suitable for a pet-dog, is a “fancy” animal; so is he if
he be a fighter, or a killer of rats, however ugly or common-looking;
but the term “sporting dog” seems to become more and more used in
this case: nor is the first-mentioned use of the word “fancy,” at all
strained or very original, for it is lexicographically defined as “an
opinion bred rather by the imagination than the reason, inclination,
liking, caprice, humour, whim, frolick, idle scheme, vagary.”

[Illustration: THE STREET DOG-SELLER.]

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SPORTING DOGS.

The use, if use it may be styled, of sporting, or fighting dogs, is
now a mere nothing to what it once was. There are many sports--an
appellation of many a brute cruelty--which have become extinct,
some of them long extinct. Herds of bears, for instance, were once
maintained in this country, merely to be baited by dogs. It was even
a part of royal merry-making. It was a sport altogether congenial
to the spirit of Henry VIII.; and when his daughter, then Queen Mary,
visited her sister Elizabeth at Hatfield House, now the residence
of the Marquess of Salisbury, there was a bear-baiting for their
delectation--_after mass_. Queen Elizabeth, on her accession to the
throne, seems to have been very partial to the baiting of bears and
of bulls; for she not unfrequently welcomed a foreign ambassador with
such exhibitions. The historians of the day intimate--they dared do
no more--that Elizabeth affected these rough sports the most in the
decline of life, when she wished to seem still sprightly, active, and
healthful, in the eyes of her courtiers and her subjects. Laneham,
whose veracity has not been impeached--though Sir Walter Scott has
pronounced him to be as thorough a coxcomb as ever blotted paper--thus
describes a bear-bait in presence of the Queen, and after quoting his
description I gladly leave the subject. I make the citation in order to
show and contrast the former with the present use of sporting dogs.

“It was a sport very pleasant to see the bear, with his pink eyes
leering after his enemies, approach; the nimbleness and wait of the
dog to take his advantage; and the force and experience of the bear
again to avoid his assaults: if he were bitten in one place, how he
would pinch in another to get free; that if he were taken once, then
by what shift with biting, with clawing, with roaring with tossing and
tumbling, he would work and wind himself from them; and, when he was
loose, to shake his ears twice or thrice, with the blood and the slaver
hanging about his physiognomy.”

The suffering which constituted the great delight of the _sport_ was
even worse than this, in bull-baiting, for the bull gored or tossed the
dogs to death more frequently than the bear worried or crushed them.

The principal place for the carrying on of these barbarities was
at Paris Garden, not far from St. Saviour’s Church, Southwark. The
clamour, and wrangling, and reviling, with and without blows, at these
places, gave a proverbial expression to the language. “The place was
like a bear-garden,” for “gardens” they were called. These pastimes
beguiled the _Sunday_ afternoons more than any other time, and were
among the chief delights of the people, “until,” writes Dr. Henry,
collating the opinions of the historians of the day, “until the refined
amusements of the drama, possessing themselves by degrees of the public
taste, if they did not mend the morals of the age, at least forced
brutal barbarity to quit the stage.”

Of this sport in Queen Anne’s days, Strutt’s industry has collected
advertisements telling of bear and bull-baiting at Hockley-in-the-Hole,
and “Tuttle”-fields, Westminster, and of dog-fights at the same places.
Marylebone was another locality famous for these pastimes, and for its
breed of mastiffs, which dogs were most used for baiting the bears,
whilst bull-dogs were the antagonists of the bull. Gay, who was a
sufficiently close observer, and a close observer of street-life too,
as is well shown in his “Trivia,” specifies these localities in one of
his fables:--

“Both Hockley-hole and Mary-bone
The combats of my dog have known.”

Hockley-hole was not far from Smithfield-market.

In the same localities the practice of these sports lingered, becoming
less and less every year, until about the middle of the last century.
In the country, bull-baiting was practised twenty times more commonly
than bear-baiting; for bulls were plentiful, and bears were not. There
are, perhaps, none of our older country towns without the relic of
its bull-ring--a strong iron ring inserted into a large stone in the
pavement, to which the baited bull was tied; or a knowledge of the site
where the bull-ring was. The deeds of the baiting-dogs were long talked
of by the vulgar. These sports, and the dog-fights, maintained the
great demand for sporting dogs in former times.

The only sporting dogs now in request--apart, of course, from hunting
and shooting (remnants of the old barbarous delight in torture or
slaughter), for I am treating only of the street-trade, to which
fox-hounds, harriers, pointers, setters, cockers, &c., &c., are
unknown--are terriers and bull-terriers. Bull-dogs cannot now be
classed as sporting, but only as fancy dogs, for they are not good
fighters, I was informed, one with another, their mouths being too
small.

The way in which the sale of sporting dogs is connected with
street-traffic is in this wise: Occasionally a sporting-dog is offered
for sale in the streets, and then, of course, the trade is direct. At
other times, gentlemen buying or pricing the smaller dogs, ask the cost
of a bull-dog, or a bull-terrier or rat-terrier, and the street-seller
at once offers to supply them, and either conducts them to a
dog-dealer’s, with whom he may be commercially connected, and where
they can purchase those dogs, or he waits upon them at their residences
with some “likely animals.” A dog-dealer told me that he hardly knew
what made many gentlemen so fond of bull-dogs, and they were “the
fonder on ’em the more blackguarder and varmint-looking the creatures
was,” although now they were useless for sport, and the great praise of
a bull-dog, “never flew but at head in his life,” was no longer to be
given to him, as there were no bulls at whose heads he could now fly.

Another dog-dealer informed me--with what truth as to the judgment
concerning horses I do not know, but no doubt with accuracy as
to the purchase of the dogs--that Ibrahim Pacha, when in London,
thought little of the horses which he saw, but was delighted with the
bull-dogs, “and he weren’t so werry unlike one in the face hisself,”
was said at the time by some of the fancy. Ibrahim, it seems, bought
two of the finest and largest bull-dogs in London, of Bill George,
giving no less than 70_l._ for the twain. The bull-dogs now sold by the
street-folk, or through their agency in the way I have described, are
from 5_l._ to 25_l._ each. The bull-terriers, of the best blood, are
about the same price, or perhaps 10 to 15 per cent. lower, and rarely
attaining the tip-top price.

The bull-terriers, as I have stated, are now the chief fighting-dogs,
but the patrons of those combats--of those small imitations of the
savage tastes of the Roman Colosseum, may deplore the decay of the
amusement. From the beginning, until well on to the termination of
the last century, it was not uncommon to see announcements of “twenty
dogs to fight for a collar,” though such advertisements were far more
common at the commencement than towards the close of the century. Until
within these twelve years, indeed, dog-matches were not unfrequent
in London, and the favourite time for the regalement was on Sunday
mornings. There were dog-pits in Westminster, and elsewhere, to which
the admission was not very easy, for only known persons were allowed
to enter. The expense was considerable, the risk of punishment was not
a trifle, and it is evident that this Sunday game was _not supported
by the poor or working classes_. Now dog-fights are rare. “There’s
not any public dog-fights,” I was told, “and very seldom any in a pit
at a public-house, but there’s a good deal of it, I know, _at the
private houses of the nobs_.” I may observe that “the nobs” is a common
designation for the rich among these sporting people.

There are, however, occasionally dog-fights in a sporting-house, and
the order of the combat is thus described to me: “We’ll say now that
it’s a scratch fight; two dogs have each their corner of a pit, and
they’re set to fight. They’ll fight on till they go down together, and
then if one leave hold, he’s sponged. Then they fight again. If a dog
has the worst of it he mustn’t be picked up, but if he gets into his
corner, then he can stay for as long as may be agreed upon, minute
or half-minute time, or more than a minute. If a dog won’t go to the
scratch out of his corner, he loses the fight. If they fight on, why to
settle it, one must be killed--though that very seldom happens, for if
a dog’s very much punished, he creeps to his corner and don’t come out
to time, and so the fight’s settled. Sometimes it’s agreed beforehand,
that the master of a dog may give in for him; sometimes that isn’t to
be allowed; but there’s next to nothing of this now, unless it’s in
private among the nobs.”

It has been said that a sportsman--perhaps in the relations of life
a benevolent man--when he has failed to kill a grouse or pheasant
outright, and proceeds to grasp the fluttering and agonised bird and
smash its skull against the barrel of his gun, reconciles himself to
the sufferings he inflicts by the _pride of art_, the consciousness of
skill--he has brought down his bird at a long shot; that, too, when he
cares nothing for the possession of the bird. The same feeling hardens
him against the most piteous, woman-like cry of the hare, so shot that
it cannot run. Be this as it may, it cannot be urged that in matching
a favourite dog there can be any such feeling to destroy the sympathy.
The men who thus amuse themselves are then utterly insensible to any
pang at the infliction of pain upon animals, witnessing the infliction
of it merely for a passing excitement: and in this insensibility the
whole race who cater to such recreations of the wealthy, as well as
the wealthy themselves, participate. There is another feeling too at
work, and one proper to the sporting character--every man of this class
considers the glories of his horse or his dog his own, a feeling very
dear to selfishness.

The main sport now, however, in which dogs are the agents is
rat-hunting. It is called hunting, but as the rats are all confined in
a pit it is more like mere killing. Of this sport I have given some
account under the head of rat-catching. The dogs used are all terriers,
and are often the property of the street-sellers. The most accomplished
of this terrier race was the famous dog Billy, the eclipse of the rat
pit. He is now enshrined--for a stuffed carcase is all that remains
of Billy--in a case in the possession of Charley Heslop of the Seven
Bells behind St. Giles’s Church, with whom Billy lived and died. His
great feat was that he killed 100 rats in five minutes. I understand,
however, that it is still a moot point in the sporting world, whether
Billy did or did not exceed the five minutes by a very few seconds. A
merely average terrier will easily kill fifty rats in a pit in eight
minutes, but many far exceed such a number. One dealer told me that
he would back a terrier bitch which did not weigh 12 lbs. to kill 100
rats in six minutes. The price of these dogs ranges with that of the
bull-terriers.

The passion for rat-hunting is evidently on the increase, and seems to
have attained the popularity once vouchsafed to cock-fighting. There
are now about seventy regular pits in London, besides a few that are
run up for temporary purposes. The landlord of a house in the Borough,
familiar with these sports, told me that they would soon have to breed
rats for a sufficient supply!

But it is not for the encounter with dogs alone, the issue being that
so many rats shall be killed in a given time, that these vermin are
becoming a trade commodity. Another use for them is announced in the
following card:--

A FERRET MATCH.

A Rare Evening’s Sport for the Fancy will take place
at the
“---- ----,”
---- STREET, NEW ROAD,
_On Tuesday Evening next, May 27._

* * * * *

MR. ---- ----
has backed his Ferret against Mr. W. B----’s Ferret to
kill 6 Rats each, for 10_s._ a-side.

He is still open to match his Ferret for £1 to £5 to kill
against any other Ferret in London.

* * * * *

_Two other Matches with Terriers will come off the same
Evening._

* * * * *

Matches take place every ---- Evening. Rats always
on hand for the accommodation of Gentlemen to try
their dogs.

Under the Management of ----

As a rat-killer, a ferret is not to be compared to a dog; but his
use is to kill rats in holes, inaccessible to dogs, or to drive the
vermin out of their holes into some open space, where they can be
destroyed. Ferrets are worth from 1_l._ to 4_l._ They are not animals
of street-sale.

The management of these sports is principally in the hands of the
street dog-sellers, as indeed is the dog-trade generally. They are the
breeders, dealers, and sellers. They are compelled, as it were, to
exhibit their dogs in the streets, that they may attract the attention
of the rich, who would not seek them in their homes in the suburbs.
The evening business in rat-hunting, &c., for such it is principally,
perhaps doubles the incomes I have specified as earned merely by
street-_sale_. The amount “turned over” in the trade in sporting-dogs
yearly in London, was computed for me by one of the traders at from
12,000_l._ to 15,000_l._ He could not, however, lay down any very
precise statistics, as some bull-dogs, bull-terriers, &c., were bred by
butchers, tanners, publicans, horse-dealers, and others, and disposed
of privately.

* * * * *

In my account of the former condition of the dog-trade, I had to dwell
principally on the stealing and restoring of dogs. This is now the
least part of the subject. The alteration in the law, consequent upon
the parliamentary inquiry, soon wrought a great change, especially the
enactment of the 6th Sect. in the Act 8 and 9 Vict. c. 47. “Any person
who shall corruptly take any money or reward, directly or indirectly,
under pretence or upon account of aiding any person to recover any
dog which shall have been stolen, or which shall be in the possession
of any person not being the owner thereof, shall be guilty of a
misdemeanour, and punishable accordingly.”

There may now, I am informed, be half a dozen fellows who make a
precarious living by dog-stealing. These men generally keep out of the
way of the street dog-sellers, who would not scruple, they assure me,
to denounce their practices, as the more security a purchaser feels in
the property and possession of a dog, the better it is for the regular
business. One of these dog-stealers, dressed like a lime-burner--they
generally appear as mechanics--was lately seen to attempt the enticing
away of a dog. Any idle good-for-nothing fellow, slinking about the
streets, would also, I was informed, seize any stray dog within his
reach, and sell it for any trifle he could obtain. One dealer told
me that there might still be a little doing in the “restoring” way,
and with that way of life were still mixed up names which figured in
the parliamentary inquiry, but it was a mere nothing to what it was
formerly.

From a man acquainted with the dog business I had the following
account. My informant was not at present connected with the dog and
rat business, but he seemed to have what is called a “hankering after
it.” He had been a pot-boy in his youth, and had assisted at the bar of
public-houses, and so had acquired a taste for sporting, as some “fancy
coves” were among the frequenters of the tap-room and skittle-ground.
He had speculated a little in dogs, which a friend reared, and he
sold to the public-house customers. “At last I went slap into the
dog-trade,” he said, “but I did no good at all. There’s a way to do it,
I dare say, or perhaps you must wait to get known, but then you may
starve as you wait. I tried Smithfield first--it’s a good bit since,
but I can’t say how long--and I had a couple of tidy little terriers
that we’d bred; I thought I’d begin cheap to turn over money quick,
so I asked 12_s._ a-piece for them. O, in course they weren’t a werry
pure sort. But I couldn’t sell at all. If a grazier, or a butcher, or
anybody looked at them, and asked their figure, they’d say, ‘Twelve
shillings! a dog what ain’t worth more nor 12_s._ ain’t worth a d--n!’
I asked one gent a sovereign, but there was a lad near that sung out,
‘Why, you only axed 12_s._ a bit since; ain’t you a-coming it?’ After
that, I was glad to get away. I had five dogs when I started, and about
1_l._ 8_s._ 6_d._ in money, and some middling clothes; but my money
soon went, for I could do no business, and there was the rent, and
then the dogs must be properly fed, or they’d soon show it. At last,
when things grew uncommon taper, I almost grudged the poor things
their meat and their sop, for they were filling their bellies, and I
was an ’ung’ring. I got so seedy, too, that it was no use trying the
streets, for any one would think I’d stole the dogs. So I sold them
one by one. I think I got about 5_s._ apiece for them, for people took
their advantage on me. After that I fasted oft enough. I helped about
the pits, and looked out for jobs of any kind, cleaning knives and
spittoons at a public-house, and such-like, for a bite and sup. And I
sometimes got leave to sit up all night in a stable or any out-house
with a live rat trap that I could always borrow, and catch rats to
sell to the dealers. If I could get three lively rats in a night, it
was good work, for it was as good as 1_s._ to me. I sometimes won a
pint, or a tanner, when I could cover it, by betting on a rat-hunt
with helpers like myself--but it was only a few places we were let
into, just where I was known--’cause I’m a good judge of a dog, you
see, and if I had it to try over again, I think I could knock a tidy
living out of dog-selling. Yes, I’d like to try well enough, but it’s
no use trying if you haven’t a fairish bit of money. I’d only myself
to keep all this time, but that was one too many. I got leave to sleep
in hay-lofts, or stables, or anywhere, and I have slept in the park.
I don’t know how many months I was living this way. I got not to mind
it much at last. Then I got to carry out the day and night beers for a
potman what had hurt his foot and couldn’t walk quick and long enough
for supplying his beer, as there was five rounds every day. He lent
me an apron and a jacket to be decent. After that I got a potman’s
situation. No, I’m not much in the dog and rat line now, and don’t see
much of it, for I’ve very little opportunity. But I’ve a very nice
Scotch terrier to sell if you should be wanting such a thing, or hear
of any of your friends wanting one. It’s dirt cheap at 30_s._, just
about a year old. Yes, I generally has a dog, and swops and sells. Most
masters allows that in a quiet respectable way.”

OF THE STREET SELLERS OF LIVE BIRDS.

The bird-_sellers_ in the streets are also the bird-_catchers_ in the
fields, plains, heaths, and woods, which still surround the metropolis;
and in compliance with established precedent it may be proper that I
should give an account of the catching, before I proceed to any further
statement of the procedures subsequent thereunto. The bird-catchers are
precisely what I have described them in my introductory remarks. An
intelligent man, versed in every part of the bird business, and well
acquainted with the character of all engaged in it, said they might
be represented as of “the fancy,” in a small way, and always glad to
run after, and full of admiration of, fighting men. The bird-catcher’s
life is one essentially vagrant; a few gipsies pursue it, and they
mix little in street-trades, except as regards tinkering; and the
mass, not gipsies, who become bird-catchers, rarely leave it for any
other avocation. They “catch” unto old age. During last winter two
men died in the parish of Clerkenwell, both turned seventy, and both
bird-catchers--a profession they had followed from the age of six.

The mode of catching I will briefly describe. It is principally
effected by means of nets. A bird-net is about twelve yards square;
it is spread flat upon the ground, to which it is secured by four
“stars.” These are iron pins, which are inserted in the field, and hold
the net, but so that the two “wings,” or “flaps,” which are indeed
the sides of the nets, are not confined by the stars. In the middle
of the net is a cage with a fine wire roof, widely worked, containing
the “call-bird.” This bird is trained to sing loudly and cheerily,
great care being bestowed upon its tuition, and its song attracts the
wild birds. Sometimes a few stuffed birds are spread about the cage as
if a flock were already assembling there. The bird-catcher lies flat
and motionless on the ground, 20 or 30 yards distant from the edge
of the net. As soon as he considers that a sufficiency of birds have
congregated around his decoy, he rapidly draws towards him a line,
called the “pull-line,” of which he has kept hold. This is so looped
and run within the edges of the net, that on being smartly pulled,
the two wings of the net collapse and fly together, the stars still
keeping their hold, and the net encircles the cage of the call-bird,
and incloses in its folds all the wild birds allured round it. In fact
it then resembles a great cage of net-work. The captives are secured
in cages--the call-bird continuing to sing as if in mockery of their
struggles--or in hampers proper for the purpose, which are carried on
the man’s back to London.

The use of the call-bird as a means of decoy is very ancient.
Sometimes--and more especially in the dark, as in the taking of
nightingales--the bird-catcher imitates the notes of the birds to be
captured. A small instrument has also been used for the purpose, and to
this Chaucer, although figuratively, alludes: “So, the birde is begyled
with the merry voice of the foulers’ whistel, when it is closed in your
nette.”

Sometimes, in the pride of the season, a bird-catcher engages a
costermonger’s poney or donkey cart, and perhaps his boy, the better
to convey the birds to town. The net and its apparatus cost 1_l._ The
call-bird, if he have a good wild note--goldfinches and linnets being
principally so used--is worth 10_s._ at the least.

The bird-catcher’s life has many, and to the constitution of some
minds, irresistible charms. There is the excitement of “sport”--not the
headlong excitement of the chase, where the blood is stirred by motion
and exercise--but still sport surpassing that of the angler, who plies
his finest art to capture one fish at a time, while the bird-catcher
despises an individual capture, but seeks to ensnare a flock at one
twitch of a line. There is, moreover, the attraction of idleness, at
least for intervals, and sometimes long intervals--perhaps the great
charm of fishing--and basking in the lazy sunshine, to watch the
progress of the snares. Birds, however, and more especially linnets,
are caught in the winter, when it is not quite such holiday work. A
bird-dealer (not a street-seller) told me that the greatest number of
birds he had ever heard of as having been caught at one pull was nearly
200. My informant happened to be present on the occasion. “Pulls” of
50, 100, and 150 are not very unfrequent when the young broods are all
on the wing.

Of the bird-catchers, including all who reside in Woolwich, Greenwich,
Hounslow, Isleworth, Barnet, Uxbridge, and places of similar
distance, all working for the London market, there are about 200.
The localities where these men “catch,” are the neighbourhoods of
the places I have mentioned as their residences, and at Holloway,
Hampstead, Highgate, Finchley, Battersea, Blackheath, Putney, Mortlake,
Chiswick, Richmond, Hampton, Kingston, Eltham, Carshalton, Streatham,
the Tootings, Woodford, Epping, Snaresbrook, Walthamstow, Tottenham,
Edmonton--wherever, in fine, are open fields, plains, or commons around
the metropolis.

I will first enumerate the several birds sold in the streets, as well
as the supply to the shops by the bird-catchers. I have had recourse
to the best sources of information. Of the number of birds which I
shall specify as “supplied,” or “caught,” it must be remembered that a
not-very-small proportion die before they can be trained to song, or
inured to a cage life. I shall also give the street prices. All the
birds are caught by the nets with call-birds, excepting such as I shall
notice. I take the singing birds first.

The _Linnet_ is the cheapest and among the most numerous of what may
be called the London-caught birds, for it is caught in the nearer
suburbs, such as Holloway. The linnet, however,--the brown linnet
being the species--is not easily reared, and for some time ill brooks
confinement. About one-half of those birds die after having been caged
a few days. The other evening a bird-catcher supplied 26 fine linnets
to a shopkeeper in Pentonville, and next morning ten were dead. But
in some of those bird shops, and bird chambers connected with the
shops, the heat at the time the new broods are caught and caged,
is excessive; and the atmosphere, from the crowded and compulsory
fellowship of pigeons, and all descriptions of small birds, with white
rats, hedgehogs, guinea-pigs, and other creatures, is often very foul;
so that the wonder is, not that so many die, but that so many survive.

Some bird-connoisseurs prefer the note of the linnet to that of the
canary, but this is far from a general preference. The young birds
are sold in the streets at 3_d._ and 4_d._ each; the older birds,
which are accustomed to sing in their cages, from 1_s._ to 2_s._ 6_d._
The “catch” of linnets--none being imported--may be estimated, for
London alone, at 70,000 yearly. The mortality I have mentioned is
confined chiefly to that year’s brood. One-tenth of the catch is sold
in the streets. Of the quality of the street-sold birds I shall speak
hereafter.

The _Bullfinch_, which is bold, familiar, docile, and easily attached,
is a favourite cage-bird among the Londoners; I speak of course as
regards the body of the people. It is as readily sold in the streets
as any other singing bird. Piping bullfinches are also a part of
street-trade, but only to a small extent, and with bird-sellers who
can carry them from their street pitches, or call on their rounds,
at places where they are known, to exhibit the powers of the bird.
The piping is taught to these finches when very young, and they must
be brought up by their tutor, and be familiar with him. When little
more than two months old, they begin to whistle, and then their
training as pipers must commence. This tuition, among professional
bullfinch-trainers, is systematic. They have schools of birds, and
teach in bird-classes of from four to seven members in each, six being
a frequent number. These classes, when their education commences, are
kept unfed for a longer time than they have been accustomed to, and
they are placed in a darkened room. The bird is wakeful and attentive
from the want of his food, and the tune he is to learn is played
several times on an instrument made for the purpose, and known as a
bird-organ, its notes resembling those of the bullfinch. For an hour
or two the young pupils mope silently, but they gradually begin to
imitate the notes of the music played to them. When one commences--and
he is looked upon as the most likely to make a good piper--the others
soon follow his example. The light is then admitted and a portion of
food, but not a full meal, is given to the birds. Thus, by degrees,
by the playing on the bird-organ (a flute is sometimes used), by the
admission of light, which is always agreeable to the finch, and by the
reward of more and more, and sometimes more relishable food, the pupil
“practises” the notes he hears continuously. The birds are then given
into the care of boys, who attend to them without intermission in a
similar way, their original teacher still overlooking, praising, or
rating his scholars, till they acquire a tune which they pipe as long
as they live. It is said, however, that only five per cent. of the
number taught pipe in _perfect_ harmony. The bullfinch is often pettish
in his piping, and will in many instances not pipe at all, unless
in the presence of some one who feeds it, or to whom it has become
attached.

The system of training I have described is that practised by the
Germans, who have for many years supplied this country with the best
piping bullfinches. Some of the dealers will undertake to procure
English-taught bullfinches which will pipe as well as the foreigners,
but I am told that this is a prejudice, if not a trick, of trade.
The mode of teaching in this country, by barbers, weavers, and
bird-fanciers generally, who seek for a profit from their pains-taking,
is somewhat similar to that which I have detailed, but with far less
elaborateness. The price of a piping bullfinch is about three guineas.
These pipers are also reared and taught in Leicestershire and Norfolk,
and sent to London, as are the singing bullfinches which do not “pipe.”

The bullfinches netted near London are caught more numerously about
Hounslow than elsewhere. In hard winters they are abundant in the
outskirts of the metropolis. The yearly supply, including those sent
from Norfolk, &c., is about 30,000. The bullfinch is “hearty compared
to the linnet,” I was told, but of the amount which are the objects of
trade, not more than two-thirds live many weeks. The price of a good
young bullfinch is 2_s._ 6_d._ and 3_s._ They are often sold in the
streets for 1_s._ The hawking or street trade comprises about a tenth
of the whole.

The sale of piping bullfinches is, of course, small, as only the rich
can afford to buy them. A dealer estimated it at about 400 yearly.

The _Goldfinch_ is also in demand by street customers, and is a
favourite from its liveliness, beauty, and sometimes sagacity. It
is, moreover, the longest lived of our caged small birds, and will
frequently live to the age of fifteen or sixteen years. A goldfinch
has been known to exist twenty-three years in a cage. Small birds,
generally, rarely live more than nine years. This finch is also in
demand because it most readily of any bird pairs with the canary, the
produce being known as a “mule,” which, from its prettiness and powers
of song, is often highly valued.

Goldfinches are sold in the streets at from 6_d._ to 1_s._ each, and
when there is an extra catch, and they are nearly all caught about
London, and the shops are fully stocked, at 3_d._ and 4_d._ each. The
yearly catch is about the same as that of the linnet, or 70,000, the
mortality being perhaps 30 per cent. If any one casts his eye over
the stock of hopping, chirping little creatures in the window of a
bird-shop, or in the close array of small cages hung outside, or at
the stock of a street-seller, he will be struck by the preponderating
number of goldfinches. No doubt the dealer, like any other shopkeeper,
dresses his window to the best advantage, putting forward his smartest
and prettiest birds. The demand for the goldfinch, especially among
women, is steady and regular. The street-sale is a tenth of the whole.

The _Chaffinch_ is in less request than either of its congeners, the
bullfinch or the goldfinch, but the catch is about half that of the
bullfinch, and with the same rate of mortality. The prices are also
the same.

_Greenfinches_ (called _green birds_, or sometimes _green linnets_, in
the streets) are in still smaller request than are chaffinches, and
that to about one-half. Even this smaller stock is little saleable, as
the bird is regarded as “only a middling singer.” They are sold in the
open air, at 2_d._ and 3_d._ each, but a good “green bird” is worth
2_s._ 6_d._

_Larks_ are of good sale and regular supply, being perhaps more
readily caught than other birds, as in winter they congregate in large
quantities. It may be thought, to witness the restless throwing up of
the head of the caged sky-lark, as if he were longing for a soar in the
air, that he was very impatient of restraint. This does not appear to
be so much the fact, as the lark adapts himself to the poor confines of
his prison--poor indeed for a bird who soars higher and longer than any
of his class--more rapidly than other wild birds, like the linnet, &c.
The mortality of larks, however, approaches one-third.

The yearly “take” of larks is 60,000. This includes sky-larks,
wood-larks, tit-larks, and mud-larks. The sky-lark is in far better
demand than any of the others for his “stoutness of song,” but
some prefer the tit-lark, from the very absence of such stoutness.
“Fresh-catched” larks are vended in the streets at 6_d._ and 8_d._, but
a seasoned bird is worth 2_s._ 6_d._ One-tenth is the street-sale.

The larks for the supply of fashionable tables are never provided by
the London bird-catchers, who catch only “singing larks,” for the
shop and street-traffic. The edible larks used to be highly esteemed
in pies, but they are now generally roasted for consumption. They are
principally the produce of Cambridgeshire, with some from Bedfordshire,
and are sent direct (killed) to Leadenhall-market, where about
215,000 are sold yearly, being nearly two-thirds of the gross London
consumption.

It is only within these twelve or fifteen years that the London dealers
have cared to trade to any extent in _Nightingales_, but they are now
a part of the stock of every bird-shop of the more flourishing class.
Before that they were merely exceptional as cage-birds. As it is,
the “domestication,” if the word be allowable with reference to the
nightingale, is but partial. Like all migratory birds, when the season
for migration approaches, the caged nightingale shows symptoms of
great uneasiness, dashing himself against the wires of his cage or his
aviary, and sometimes dying in a few days. Many of the nightingales,
however, let the season pass away without showing any consciousness
that it was, with the race of birds to which they belonged, one for a
change of place. To induce the nightingale to sing in the daylight,
a paper cover is often placed over the cage, which may be gradually
and gradually withdrawn until it can be dispensed with. This is to
induce the appearance of twilight or night. On the subject of this
night-singing, however, I will cite a short passage.

“The Nightingale is usually supposed to withhold his notes till the sun
has set, and then to be the only songster left. This is, however, not
quite true, for he sings in the day, often as sweetly and as powerfully
as at night; but amidst the general chorus of other singing birds,
his efforts are little noticed. Neither is he by any means the only
feathered musician of the night. The Wood-lark will, to a very late
hour, pour forth its rich notes, flying in circles round the female,
when sitting on her nest. The Sky-lark, too, may frequently be heard
till near midnight high in the air, soaring as if in the brightness
of a summer’s morning. Again we have listened with pleasure long
after dark to the warblings of a Thrush, and been awakened at two in
the morning by its sweet serenade.” It appears, however, that this
night-singing, as regards England, is on fine summer nights when the
darkness is never very dense. In far northern climates larks sing all
night.

I am inclined to believe that the mortality among nightingales, before
they are reconciled to their new life, is higher than that of any
other bird, and much exceeding one-half. The dealers may be unwilling
to admit this; but such mortality is, I have been assured on good
authority, the case; besides that, the habits of the nightingale unfit
him for a cage existence.

The capture of the nightingale is among the most difficult achievements
of the profession. None are caught nearer than Epping, and the
catchers travel considerable distances before they have a chance of
success. These birds are caught at night, and more often by their
captor’s imitation of the nightingale’s note, than with the aid of the
call-bird. Perhaps 1000 nightingales are reared yearly in London, of
which three-fourths may be, more or less, songsters. The inferior birds
are sold at about 2_s._ each, the street-sale not reaching 100, but the
birds, “caged and singing,” are worth 1_l._ each, when of the best; and
10_s._ 12_s._ and 15_s._ each when approaching the best. The mortality
I have estimated.

_Redbreasts_ are a portion of the street-sold birds, but the catch is
not large, not exceeding 3000, with a mortality of about a third. Even
this number, small as it is, when compared with the numbers of other
singing birds sold, is got rid of with difficulty. There is a popular
feeling repugnant to the imprisonment, or coercion in any way, of “a
robin,” and this, no doubt has its influence in moderating the demand.
The redbreast is sold, when young, both in the shops and streets for
1_s._, when caged and singing, sometimes for 1_l._ These birds are
considered to sing best by candlelight. The street-sale is a fifth, or
sometimes a quarter, all young birds, or with the rarest exceptions.

The _Thrush_, _Throstle_, or (in Scottish poetry) _Mavis_, is of good
sale. It is reared by hand, for the London market, in many of the
villages and small towns at no great distance, the nests being robbed
of the young, wherever they can be found. The nestling food of the
infant thrush is grubs, worms, and snails, with an occasional moth or
butterfly. On this kind of diet the young thrushes are reared until
they are old enough for sale to the shopkeeper, or to any private
patron. Thrushes are also netted, but those reared by hand are much
the best, as such a rearing disposes the bird the more to enjoy his
cage life, as he has never experienced the delights of the free hedges
and thickets. This process the catchers call “rising” from the nest.
A throstle thus “rose” soon becomes familiar with his owner--always
supposing that he be properly fed and his cage duly cleaned, for all
birds detest dirt--and among the working-men of England no bird is a
greater favourite than the thrush; indeed few other birds are held
in such liking by the artisan class. About a fourth of the thrushes
supplied to the metropolitan traders have been thus “rose,” and as
they must be sufficiently grown before they will be received by the
dealers, the mortality among them, when once able to feed themselves,
in their wicker-work cages, is but small. Perhaps somewhere about a
fourth perish in this hand-rearing, and some men, the aristocrats of
the trade, let a number go when they have ascertained that they are
hens, as these men exert themselves to bring up thrushes to sing well,
and then they command good prices. Often enough, however, the hens are
sold cheap in the streets. Among the catch supplied by netting, there
is a mortality of perhaps more than a third. The whole take is about
35,000. Of the sale the streets have a tenth proportion. The prices run
from 2_s._ 6_d._ and 3_s._ for the “fresh-caught,” and 10_s._, 1_l._,
and as much as 2_l._ for a seasoned throstle in high song. Indeed I may
observe that for any singing bird, which is considered greatly to excel
its mates, a high price is obtainable.

_Blackbirds_ appear to be less prized in London than thrushes, for,
though with a mellower note, the blackbird is not so free a singer
in captivity. They are “rose” and netted in the same manner as the
thrush, but the supply is less by one-fifth. The prices, mortality,
street-sale, &c., are in the same ratio.

The street-sale of _Canaries_ is not large; not so large, I am assured
by men in the trade, as it was six or seven years ago, more especially
as regarded the higher-priced birds of this open-air traffic. Canaries
are now never brought from the group of islands, thirteen in number,
situate in the North Atlantic and near the African coast, and from
which they derive their name. To these islands and to these alone (as
far as is known to ornithologists) are they indigenous. The canary is
a slow flyer and soon wearied; this is one reason no doubt for its not
migrating. This delightful songster was first brought into England
in the reign of Elizabeth, at the era when so many foreign luxuries
(as they were then considered, and stigmatised accordingly) were
introduced; of these were potatoes, tobacco, turkeys, nectarines, and
canaries. I have seen no account of what was the cost of a canary-bird
when first imported, but there is no doubt that they were very dear,
as they were found only in the abodes of the wealthy. This bird-trade
seems, moreover, to have been so profitable to the Spaniards, then
and now the possessors of the isles, that a government order for the
killing or setting at liberty of all hen canaries, caught with the
males, was issued in order that the breed might be confined to its
native country; a decree not attended with successful results as
regards the intention of the then ruling powers.

The foreign supply to this country is now principally from Holland
and Germany, where canaries are reared in great numbers, with that
care which the Dutch in especial bestow upon everything on which
money-making depends, and whence they are sent or brought over in the
spring of every year, when from nine to twelve months old. Thirty
years ago, the Tyrolese were the principal breeders and purveyors of
canaries for the London market. From about the era of the peace of
1814, on the first abdication of Napoleon, for ten or twelve years
they brought over about 2000 birds yearly. They travelled the whole
way on foot, carrying the birds in cages on their backs, until they
reached whatever port in France or the Netherlands (as Belgium then
was) they might be bound for. The price of a canary of an average
quality was then from 5_s._ to 8_s._ 6_d._, and a fair proportion were
street-sold. At that period, I was told, the principal open-air sale
for canaries (and it is only of that I now write) was in Whitechapel
and Bethnal-green. All who are familiar with those localities may smile
to think that the birds chirping and singing in these especially urban
places, were bred for such street-traffic in the valleys of the Rhætian
Alps! I presume that it was the greater rapidity of communication, and
the consequent diminished cost of carriage, between England, Holland,
and Germany, that caused the Tyrolese to abandon the trade as one
unremunerative--even to men who will live on bread, onions, and water.

I have, perhaps, dwelt somewhat at length on this portion of the
subject, but it is the most curious portion of all, for the canary is
the only one of all our singing-birds which is _solely_ a household
thing. Linnets, finches, larks, nightingales, thrushes, and blackbirds,
are all free denizens of the open air, as well as prisoners in our
rooms, but the canary with us is unknown in a wild state. “Though not
very handy,” wrote, in 1848, a very observant naturalist, the late Dr.
Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, “canaries might possibly be naturalized
in our country, by putting their eggs in the nests of sparrows,
chaffinches, or other similar birds. The experiment has been partially
tried in Berkshire, where a person for years kept them in an exposed
aviary out of doors, and where they seemed to suffer no inconvenience
from the severest weather.”

The breeding of canaries in this country for the London supply has
greatly increased. They are bred in Leicester and Norwich, weavers
being generally fond of birds. In London itself, also, they are bred to
a greater extent than used to be the case, barbers being among the most
assiduous rearers of the canary. A dealer who trades in both foreign
and home-bred birds thought that the supply from the country, and from
the Continent, was about the same, 8000 to 9000 each, not including
what were sold by the barbers, who are regarded as “fanciers,” not to
say interlopers, by the dealers. No species of birds are ever bred by
the shop-dealers. The price of a brisk canary is 5_s._ or 6_s._; but
they are sold in the streets as low as 1_s._ each, a small cage worth
6_d._ being sometimes included. These, however, are hens. As in the
life of a canary there is no transition from freedom to enthralment,
for they are in a cage in the egg, and all their lives afterwards, they
are subject to a far lower rate of mortality than other street-sold
birds. A sixteenth of the number above stated as forming the gross
supply are sold in the streets.

* * * * *

The foregoing enumeration includes all the singing-birds of
street-traffic and street-folk’s supply. The trade I have thus sketched
is certainly one highly curious. We find that there is round London
a perfect belt of men, employed from the first blush of a summer’s
dawn, through the heats of noon, in many instances during the night,
and in the chills of winter; and all labouring to give to city-pent
men of humble means one of the peculiar pleasures of the country--the
song of the birds. It must not be supposed that I would intimate that
the bird-catcher’s life, as regards his field and wood pursuits, is
one of hardship. On the contrary, it seems to me to be the very one
which, perhaps unsuspected by himself, is best suited to his tastes
and inclinations. Nor can we think similar pursuits partake much of
hardship when we find independent men follow them for mere sport, to be
rid of lassitude.

* * * * *

But the detail of the birds captured for the Londoners by no means ends
here. I have yet to describe those which are not songsters, and which
are a staple of street-traffic to a greater degree than birds of song.
Of these my notice may be brief.

The trade in _Sparrows_ is almost exclusively a street-trade and,
numerically considered, not an inconsiderable one. They are netted
in quantities in every open place near London, and in many places in
London. It is common enough for a bird-catcher to obtain leave to catch
sparrows in a wood-yard, a brick-field, or places where is an open
space certain to be frequented by these bold and familiar birds. The
sparrows are sold in the streets generally at 1_d._ each, sometimes
halfpenny, and sometimes 1-1/2_d._, and for no purpose of enjoyment
(as in the case of the cheap song birds), but merely as playthings for
children; in other words, for creatures wilfully or ignorantly to be
tortured. Strings are tied to their legs and so they have a certain
degree of freedom, but when they offer to fly away they are checked,
and kept fluttering in the air as a child will flutter a kite. One man
told me that he had sometimes sold as many as 200 sparrows in the back
streets about Smithfield on a fine Sunday. These birds are not kept in
cages, and so they can only be bought for a plaything. They oft enough
escape from their persecutors.

But it is not merely for the sport of children that sparrows are
purveyed, but for that of grown men, or--as Charles Lamb, if I remember
rightly, qualifies it, when he draws a Pentonville sportsman with
a little shrubbery for his preserve--for grown cockneys. The birds
for adult recreation are shot in sparrow-matches; the gentleman
slaughtering the most being, of course, the hero of a sparrow
“_battue_.” One dealer told me that he had frequently supplied dozens
of sparrows for these matches, at 2_s._ the dozen, but they were
required to be fine bold birds! One dealer thought that during the
summer months there were as many sparrows caught close to and within
London as there were goldfinches in the less urban districts. These
birds are sold direct from the hands of the catcher, so that it is
less easy to arrive at statistics than when there is the intervention
of dealers who know the extent of the trade carried on. I was told
by several, who had no desire to exaggerate, that to estimate this
sparrow-sale at 10,000 yearly, sold to children and idlers in the
streets, was too low, but at that estimate, the outlay, at 1_d._ a
sparrow, would be 850_l._ The adult sportsmen may slaughter half that
number yearly in addition. The sporting sparrows are derived from the
shopkeepers, who, when they receive the order, instruct the catchers to
go to work.

_Starlings_ used to be sold in very great quantities in the streets,
but the trade is now but the shadow of its former state. The starling,
too, is far less numerous than it was, and has lost much of its
popularity. It is now seldom seen in flocks of more than 40, and it is
rare to see a flock at all, although these birds at one period mustered
in congregations of hundreds and even thousands. Ruins, and the roofs
of ancient houses and barns--for they love the old and decaying
buildings--were once covered with them. The starling was moreover
the poor man’s and the peasant’s parrot. He was taught to speak, and
sometimes to swear. But now the starling, save as regards his own note,
is mute. He is seldom tamed or domesticated and taught tricks. It is
true starlings may be seen carried on sticks in the street as if the
tamest of the tame, but they are “braced.” Tapes are passed round their
bodies, and so managed that the bird cannot escape from the stick,
while his fetters are concealed by his feathers, the street-seller of
course objecting to allow his birds to be handled.

Starlings are caught chiefly Ilford way, I was told, and about
Turnham-green. Some are “rose” from the nest. The price is from 9_d._
to 2_s._ each. About 3000 are sold annually, half in the streets. After
having been braced, or ill-used, the starling, if kept as a solitary
bird, will often mope and die.

_Jackdaws_ and _Magpies_ are in less demand than might be expected from
their vivacity. Many of the other birds are supplied the year round,
but daws and pies for only about two months, from the middle of June to
the middle of August. The price is from 6_d._ to 1_s._ and about 1000
are thus disposed of, in equal quantities, one-half in the streets.
These birds are for the most part reared from the nest, but little
pains appear to be taken with them.

The _Redpole_ is rather a favourite bird among street-buyers,
especially where children are allowed to choose birds from a stock.
I am told that they most frequently select a goldfinch or a redpole.
These birds are supplied for about two months. About 800 or 1000 is
the extent of the take. The mortality and prices are the same as with
the goldfinch, but a goldfinch in high song is worth twice as much as
the best redpole. About a third of the sale of the redpole is in the
streets.

There are also 150 or 200 _Black-caps_ sold annually in the open air,
at from 3_d._ to 5_d._ each.

* * * * *

These are the chief birds, then, that constitute the trade of the
streets, with the addition of an occasional yellow-hammer, wren, jay,
or even cuckoo. They also, with the addition of pigeons, form the stock
of the bird-shops.

I have shown the number of birds caught, the number which survive for
sale, and the cost; and, as usual, under the head of “Statistics,” will
be shown the whole annual expenditure. This, however, is but a portion
of the London outlay on birds. There is, in addition, the cost of their
cages and of their daily food. The commonest and smallest cage costs
6_d._, a frequent price being 1_s._ A thrush’s basket-cage cannot be
bought, unless rubbish, under 2_s._ 6_d._ I have previously shown the
amount paid for the green food of birds, and for their turfs, &c., for
these are all branches of street-commerce. Of their other food, such as
rape and canary-seed, German paste, chopped eggs, biscuit, &c., I need
but intimate the extent by showing what birds will consume, as it is
not a portion of street-trade.

A goldfinch, it has been proved by experimentalising ornithologists,
will consume _90_ grains, in weight, of canary-seed in 24 hours. A
greenfinch, for whose use 80 grains of wheat were weighed out, ate 79
of them in 24 hours; and, on another occasion ate, in the same space
of time, 100 grains of a paste of eggs and flour. Sixteen canaries
consumed 100 grains’ weight of food, each bird, in 24 hours. The amount
of provision thus eaten was about one-sixth of the full weight of the
bird’s body, or an equivalent, were a man to swallow victuals in the
same proportion, of 25 lbs. in 24 hours. I may remark, moreover, that
the destruction of caterpillars, insects, worms, &c., by the small
birds, is enormous, especially during the infancy of their nestlings.
A pair of sparrows fed their brood 36 times an hour for 14 hours of a
long spring day, and, it was calculated, administered to them in one
week 3400 caterpillars. A pair of chaffinches, also, carried nearly as
great a number of caterpillars for the maintenance of their young.

* * * * *

The singing-birds sold in the street are offered either singly in small
cages, when the cage is sold with the bird, or they are displayed in
a little flock in a long cage, the buyer selecting any he prefers.
They always appear lively in the streets, or indeed a sale would be
hopeless, for no one would buy a dull or sick bird. The captives are
seen to hop and heard to chirp, but they are not often heard to sing
when thus offered to the public, and it requires some little attention
to judge what is but an impatient flutter, and what is the fruit of
mere hilarity.

The places where the street-sellers more especially offer their birds
are--Smithfield, Clerkenwell-green, Lisson-grove, the City and New
roads, Shepherdess-walk, Old Street-road, Shoreditch, Spitalfields,
Whitechapel, Tower-hill, Ratcliffe-highway, Commercial-road
East, Poplar, Billingsgate, Westminster Broadway, Covent-garden,
Blackfriars-road, Bermondsey (mostly about Dock-head), and in the
neighbourhood of the Borough Market. The street-sellers are also
itinerant, carrying the birds in cages, holding them up to tempt
the notice of people whom they see at the windows, or calling at
the houses. The sale used to be very considerable in the “Cut” and
Lambeth-walk. Sometimes the cages with their inmates are fastened to
any contiguous rail; sometimes they are placed on a bench or stall; and
occasionally in cages on the ground.

To say nothing, in this place, of the rogueries of the bird-trade,
I will proceed to show how the street-sold birds are frequently
inferior to those in the shops. The catcher, as I have stated, is also
the street-seller. He may reach the Dials, or whatever quarter the
dealer he supplies may reside in, with perhaps 30 linnets and as many
goldfinches. The dealer selects 24 of each, refusing the remaining
dozen, on account of their being hens, or hurt, or weakly birds. The
man then resorts to the street to effect a sale of that dozen, and
thus the streets have the refuse of the shops. On the other hand,
however, when the season is at its height, and the take of birds is
the largest, as at this time of year, the shops are “stocked.” The
cages and recesses are full, and the dealer’s anxiety is to sell before
he purchases more birds. The catchers proceed in their avocation;
they must dispose of their stock; the shopkeeper will not buy “at any
figure,” and so the streets are again resorted to, and in this way
fine birds are often sold very cheap. Both these liabilities prevail
the year through, but most in the summer, and keep up a sort of poise;
but I apprehend that the majority, perhaps the great majority, of the
street-sold birds, are of an inferior sort, but then the price is much
lower. On occasions when the bird-trade is overdone, the catchers will
sell a few squirrels, or gather snails for the shops.

The buyers of singing-birds are eminently the working people, along
with the class of tradesmen whose means and disposition are of the
same character as those of the artisan. Grooms and coachmen are
frequently fond of birds; many are kept in the several mews, and
often the larger singing-birds, such as blackbirds and thrushes.
The fondness of a whole body of artificers for any particular bird,
animal, or flower, is remarkable. No better instance need be cited
than that of the Spitalfields weavers. In the days of their prosperity
they were the cultivators of choice tulips, afterwards, though not
in so full a degree, of dahlias, and their pigeons were the best
“fliers” in England. These things were accomplished with little cost,
comparatively, for the weavers were engaged in tasks, grateful and
natural to their tastes and habitudes; and what was expense in the
garden or aviary of the rich, was an exercise of skill and industry
on the part of the silk-weaver. The humanising and even refining
influence of such pursuits is very great, and as regards these pure
pleasures it is not seldom that the refinement which can appreciate
them has proceeded not to but _from_ the artisans. The operatives have
often been in the van of those who have led the public taste from
delighting in the cruelty and barbarity of bear and bull-baiting and
of cock-fighting--among the worst of all possible schools, and very
influential those schools were--to the delight in some of the most
beautiful works of nature. It is easy to picture the difference of
mood between a man going home from a dog-fight at night, or going home
from a visit to his flowers, or from an examination to satisfy himself
that his birds were “all right.” The families of the two men felt the
difference. Many of the rich appear to remain mere savages in their
tastes and sports. Battues, lion and hippopotamus hunting, &c.,--all
are mere civilized barbarisms. When shall we learn, as Wordsworth says,

“Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”

But the change in Spitalfields is great. Since the prevalence of low
wages the weaver’s garden has disappeared, and his pigeon-cote, even if
its timbers have not rotted away, is no longer stocked with carriers,
dragoons, horsemen, jacobins, monks, poulters, turtles, tumblers,
fantails, and the many varieties of what is in itself a variety--the
fancy-pigeon. A thrush, or a linnet, may still sing to the clatter of
the loom, but that is all. The culture of the tulip, the dahlia, and
(sometimes) of the fuchsia, was attended, as I have said, with small
cost, still it _was_ cost, and the weaver, as wages grew lower, could
not afford either the outlay or the loss of time. To cultivate flowers,
or rear doves, so as to make them a means of subsistence, requires
a man’s whole time, and to such things the Spitalfields man did not
devote his time, but his leisure.

The readers who have perused this work from its first appearance
will have noticed how frequently I have had to comment on the always
realized indication of good conduct, and of a superior taste and
generally a superior intelligence, when I have found the rooms
of working people contain flowers and birds. I could adduce many
instances. I have seen and heard birds in the rooms of tailors,
shoemakers, coopers, cabinet-makers, hatters, dressmakers, curriers,
and street-sellers,--all people of the best class. One of the most
striking, indeed, was the room of a street-confectioner. His family
attended to the sale of the sweets, and he was greatly occupied at
home in their manufacture, and worked away at his peppermint-rock, in
the very heart of one of the thickliest populated parts of London,
surrounded by the song of thrushes, linnets, and goldfinches, all kept,
not for profit, but because he “loved” to have them about him. I have
seldom met a man who impressed me more favourably.

The flowers in the room are more attributable to the superintending
taste of a wife or daughter, and are found in the apartments of the
same class of people.

There is a marked difference between the buyers or keepers of birds
and of dogs in the working classes, especially when the dog is of a
sporting or “varmint” sort. Such a dog-keeper is often abroad and so
his home becomes neglected; he is interested about rat-hunts, knows
the odds on or against the dog’s chance to dispatch his rats in the
time allotted, loses much time and customers, his employers grumbling
that the work is so slowly executed, and so custom or work falls off.
The bird-lover, on the other hand, is generally a more domestic, and,
perhaps consequently, a more prosperous and contented man. It is
curious to mark the refining qualities of particular trades. I do not
remember seeing a bull-dog in the possession of any of the Spitalfields
silk-weavers: with them all was flowers and birds. The same I observed
with the tailors and other kindred occupations. With slaughterers,
however, and drovers, and Billingsgatemen, and coachmen, and cabmen,
whose callings naturally tend to blunt the sympathy with suffering, the
gentler tastes are comparatively unknown. The dogs are almost all of
the “varmint” kind, kept either for rat-killing, fighting, or else for
their ugliness. For “pet” or “fancy” dogs they have no feeling, and in
singing birds they find little or no delight.

OF THE BIRD-CATCHERS WHO ARE STREET-SELLERS.

The street-sellers of birds are called by themselves “hawkers,” and
sometimes “bird hawkers.”

Among the bird-catchers I did not hear of any very prominent
characters at present, three of the best known and most prominent
having died within these ten months. I found among all I saw the
vagrant characteristics I have mentioned, and often united with a
quietness of speech and manner which might surprise those who do not
know that any pursuit which entails frequent silence, watchfulness,
and solitude, forms such manners. Perhaps the man most talked of by
his fellow-labourers, was Old Gilham, who died lately. Gilham was his
real name, for among the bird-catchers there is not that prevalence
of nicknames which I found among the costermongers and patterers. One
reason no doubt is, that these bird-folk do not meet regularly in the
markets. It is rarely, however, that they know each other’s surnames,
Old Gilham being an exception. It is Old Tom, or Young Mick, or Jack,
or Dick, among them. I heard of no John or Richard.

For 60 years, almost without intermission, Old Gilham caught birds.
I am assured that to state that his “catch” during this long period
averaged 100 a week, hens included, is within the mark, for he was a
most indefatigable man; even at that computation, however, he would
have been the captor, in his lifetime, of three hundred and twelve
thousand birds! A bird-catcher who used sometimes to start in the
morning with Old Gilham, and walk with him until their roads diverged,
told me that of late years the old man’s talk was a good deal of where
he had captured his birds in the old times: “‘Why, Ned,’ he would say
to me, proceeded his companion, ‘I’ve catched goldfinches in lots at
Chalk Farm, and all where there’s that railway smoke and noise just by
the hill (Primrose Hill). I can’t think where they’ll drive all the
birds to by and bye. I dare say the first time the birds saw a railway
with its smoke, and noise to frighten them, and all the fire too, they
just thought it was the devil was come.’ He wasn’t a fool, wasn’t old
Gilham, sir. ‘Why,’ he’d go on for to say, ‘I’ve laid many a day at
Ball’s Pond there, where it’s nothing but a lot of houses now, and
catched hundreds of birds. And I’ve catched them where there’s all
them grand squares Pimlico way, and in Britannia Fields, and at White
Condic. What with all these buildings, and them barbers, I don’t know
what the bird-trade’ll come to. It’s hard for a poor man to have to go
to Finchley for birds that he could have catched at Holloway once, but
people never thinks of that. When I were young I could make three times
as much as I do now. I’ve got a pound for a good sound chaffinch as I
brought up myself.’ Ah, poor old Gilham, sir; I wish you could have
seen him, he’d have told you of some queer changes in his time.”

A shopkeeper informed me that a bird-catcher had talked to him of
even “queerer” changes. This man died eight or ten years ago at an
advanced age, but beyond the fact of his offering birds occasionally
at my informant’s shop, where he was known merely as “the old man,” he
could tell me nothing of the ancient bird-catcher, except that he was
very fond of a talk, and used to tell how he had catched birds between
fifty and sixty years, and had often, when a lad, catched them where
many a dock in London now stands. “Where there’s many a big ship now in
deep water, I’ve catched flocks of birds. I never catched birds to be
sure at them docks,” he would add, “as was dug out of the houses. Why,
master, you’ll remember their pulling down St. Katherine’s Church, and
all them rummy streets the t’other side of the Tower, for a dock.” As I
find that the first dock constructed on the north side of the Thames,
the West India dock, was not commenced until the year 1800, there
seems no reason to discredit the bird-catcher’s statement. Among other
classes of street-sellers I have had to remark the little observation
they extended to the changes all around, such as the extension of
street-traffic to miles and miles of suburbs, unknown till recently.
Two thousand miles of houses have been built in London within the last
20 years. But with the bird-catchers this want of observance is not so
marked. Of necessity they must notice the changes which have added to
the fatigues and difficulties of their calling, by compelling them,
literally, to “go further a-field.”

A young man, rather tall, and evidently active, but very thin, gave
me the following account. His manners were quiet and his voice low.
His dress could not so well be called mean as hard worn, with the
unmistakable look of much of the attire of his class, that it was not
made for the wearer; his surtout, for instance, which was fastened
in front by two buttons, reached down to his ancles, and could have
inclosed a bigger man. He resided in St. Luke’s, in which parish there
are more bird-catchers living than in any other. The furniture of his
room was very simple. A heavy old sofa, in the well of which was a bed,
a table, two chairs, a fender, a small closet containing a few pots
and tins, and some twenty empty bird-cages of different sizes hung
against the walls. In a sort of wooden loft, which had originally been
constructed, he believed, for the breeding of fancy-pigeons, and which
was erected on the roof, were about a dozen or two of cages, some old
and broken, and in them a few live goldfinches, which hopped about very
merrily. They were all this year’s birds, and my informant, who had “a
little connection of his own,” was rearing them in hopes they would
turn out good specs, quite “birds beyond the run of the streets.” The
place and the cages, each bird having its own little cage, were very
clean, but at the time of my visit the loft was exceedingly hot, as the
day was one of the sultriest. Lest this heat should prove too great for
the finches, the timbers on all sides were well wetted and re-wetted at
intervals, for about an hour at noon, at which time only was the sun
full on the loft.

“I shall soon have more birds, sir,” he said, “but you see I only
put aside here such as are the very best of the take; all cocks, of
course. O, I’ve been in the trade all my life; I’ve had a turn at other
things, certainly, but this life suits me best, I think, because I have
my health best in it. My father--he’s been dead a goodish bit--was a
bird-catcher as well, and he used to take me out with him as soon as I
was strong enough; when I was about ten, I suppose. I don’t remember
my mother. Father was brought up to brick-making. I believe that most
of the bird-catchers that have been trades, and that’s not half a
quarter perhaps, were brick-makers, or something that way. Well, I
don’t know the reason. The brick-making was, in my father’s young days,
carried on more in the country, and the bird-catchers used to fall in
with the brick-makers, and so perhaps that led to it. I’ve heard my
father tell of an old soldier that had been discharged with a pension
being the luckiest bird-catcher he knowed. The soldier was a catcher
before he first listed, and he listed drunk. I once--yes, sir, I dare
say that’s fifteen year back, for I was quite a lad--walked with my
father and captain” (the pensioner’s sobriquet) “till they parted for
work, and I remember very well I heard him tell how, when on march
in Portingal--I think that’s what he called it, but it’s in foreign
parts--he saw flocks of birds; he wished he could be after catching
them, for he was well tired of sogering. I was sent to school twice or
thrice, and can read a little and write a little; and I should like
reading better if I could manage it better. I read a penny number,
or the ‘police’ in a newspaper, now and then, but very seldom. But on
a fine day I hated being at school. I wanted to be at work, to make
something at bird-catching. If a boy can make money, why shouldn’t he?
And if I’d had a net, or cage, and a mule of my own, then, I thought,
I could make money.” [I may observe that the mule longed for by my
informant was a “cross” between two birds, and was wanted for the
decoy. Some bird-catchers contend that a mule makes the best call-bird
of any; others that the natural note of a linnet, for instance, was
more alluring than the song of a mule between a linnet and a goldfinch.
One birdman told me that the excellence of a mule was, that it had been
bred and taught by its master, had never been at large, and was “better
to manage;” it was bolder, too, in a cage, and its notes were often
loud and ringing, and might be heard to a considerable distance.]

“I couldn’t stick to school, sir,” my informant continued, “and I don’t
know why, lest it be that one man’s best suited for one business, and
another for another. That may be seen every day. I was sent on trial
to a shoemaker, and after that to a ropemaker, for father didn’t seem
to like my growing up and being a bird-catcher, like he was. But I
never felt well, and knew I should never be any great hand at them
trades, and so when my poor father went off rather sudden, I took to
the catching at once and had all his traps. Perhaps, but I can’t say to
a niceness, that was eleven year back. Do I like the business, do you
say, sir? Well, I’m forced to like it, for I’ve no other to live by.”
[The reader will have remarked how this man attributed the course he
pursued, evidently from natural inclination, to its being the best and
most healthful means of subsistence in his power.] “Last Monday, for my
dealers like birds on a Monday or Tuesday best, and then they’ve the
week before them,--I went to catch in the fields this side of Barnet,
and started before two in the morning, when it was neither light nor
dark. You must get to your place before daylight to be ready for the
first flight, and have time to lay your net properly. When I’d done
that, I lay down and smoked. No, smoke don’t scare the birds; I think
they’re rather drawn to notice anything new, if all’s quite quiet.
Well, the first pull I had about 90 birds, nearly all linnets. There
was, as well as I can remember, three hedge-sparrows among them, and
two larks, and one or two other birds. Yes, there’s always a terrible
flutter and row when you make a catch, and often regular fights in the
net. I then sorted my birds, and let the hens go, for I didn’t want
to be bothered with them. I might let such a thing as 35 hens go out
of rather more than an 80 take, for I’ve always found, in catching
young broods, that I’ve drawn more cocks than hens. How do I know the
difference when the birds are so young? As easy as light from dark.
You must lift up the wing, quite tender, and you’ll find that a cock
linnet has black, or nearly black, feathers on his shoulder, where
the hens are a deal lighter. Then the cock has a broader and whiter
stripe on the wing than the hen has. It’s quite easy to distinguish,
quite. A cock goldfinch is straighter and more larger in general than a
hen, and has a broader white on his wing, as the cock linnet has; he’s
black round the beak and the eye too, and a hen’s greenish thereabouts.
There’s some gray-pates (young birds) would deceive any one until he
opens their wings. Well, I went on, sir, until about one o’clock, or
a little after, as well as I could tell from the sun, and then came
away with about 100 singing birds. I sold them in the lump to three
shopkeepers at 2_s._ 2_d._ and 2_s._ 6_d._ the dozen. That was a good
day, sir; a very lucky day. I got about 17_s._, the best I ever did but
once, when I made 19_s._ in a day.

“Yes, it’s hard work is mine, because there’s such a long walking home
when you’ve done catching. O, when you’re at work it’s not work but
almost a pleasure. I’ve laid for hours though, without a catch. I smoke
to pass the time when I’m watching; sometimes I read a bit if I’ve had
anything to take with me to read; then at other times I thinks. If you
don’t get a catch for hours, it’s only like an angler without a nibble.
O, I don’t know what I think about; about nothing, perhaps. Yes, I’ve
had a friend or two go out catching with me just for the amusement.
They must lie about and wait as I do. We have a little talk of course:
well, perhaps about sporting; no, not horse-racing, I care nothing
for that, but it’s hardly business taking any one with you. I supply
the dealers and hawk as well. Perhaps I make 12_s._ a week the year
through. Some weeks I’ve made between 3_l._ and 4_l._, and in winter,
when there’s rain every day, perhaps I haven’t cleared a penny in a
fortnight. That’s the worst of it. But I make more than others because
I have a connection and raise good birds.

“Sometimes I’m stopped by the farmers when I’m at work, but not often,
though there is some of ’em very obstinate. It’s no use, for if a
catcher’s net has to be taken from one part of a farm, after he’s had
the trouble of laying it, why it must be laid in another part. Some
country people likes to have their birds catched.”

My informant supplied shopkeepers and hawked his birds in the streets
and to the houses. He had a connection, he said, and could generally
get through them, but he had sometimes put a bird or two in a fancy
house. These are the public-houses resorted to by “the fancy,” in some
of which may be seen two or three dozen singing-birds for sale on
commission, through the agency of the landlord or the waiter. They are
the property of hawkers or dealers, and must be good birds, or they
will not be admitted.

The number of birds caught, and the proportion sold in the streets,
I have already stated. The number of bird-catchers, I may repeat, is
about the same as that of street bird-sellers, 200.

OF THE CRIPPLED STREET BIRD-SELLER.

From the bird-seller whose portrait will be given in the next number
of this work I have received the following account. The statement
previously given was that of a catcher and street-seller, as are the
great majority in the trade; the following narrative is that of one
who, from his infirmities, is merely a street-_seller_.

[Illustration: THE CRIPPLED STREET BIRD-SELLER.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

The poor man’s deformity may be best understood by describing it in his
own words: “I have no ancle.” His right leg is emaciated, the bone is
smaller than that of his other leg (which is not deformed), and there
is no ancle joint. The joints of the wrists and shoulders are also
defective, though not utterly wanting, as in the ancle. In walking
this poor cripple seems to advance by means of a series of jerks. He
uses his deformed leg, but must tread, or rather support his body,
on the ball of the misformed foot, while he advances his sound leg;
then, with a twist of his body, after he has advanced and stands upon
his undeformed leg and foot, he throws forward the crippled part of
his frame by the jerk I have spoken of. His arms are usually pressed
against his ribs as he walks, and convey to a spectator the notion
that he is unable to raise them from that position. This, however, is
not the case; he can raise them, not as a sound man does, but with an
effort and a contortion of his body to humour the effort. His speech
is also defective, his words being brought out, as it were, by jerks;
he has to prepare himself, and to throw up his chin, in order to
converse, and then he speaks with difficulty. His face is sun-burnt and
healthy-looking. His dress was a fustian coat with full skirts, cloth
trowsers somewhat patched, and a clean coarse shirt. His right shoe was
suited to his deformity, and was strapped with a sort of leather belt
round the lower part of the leg.

A considerable number of book-stall keepers, as well as costermongers,
swag-barrowmen, ginger-beer and lemonade sellers, orange-women,
sweet-stuff vendors, root-sellers, and others, have established their
pitches--some of them having stalls with a cover, like a roof--from
Whitechapel workhouse to the Mile End turnpike-gate; near the gate they
are congregated most thickly, and there they are mixed with persons
seated on the forms belonging to adjacent innkeepers, which are placed
there to allow any one to have his beer and tobacco in the open air.
Among these street-sellers and beer-drinkers is seated the crippled
bird-seller, generally motionless.

His home is near the Jews’ burial-ground, and in one of the many
“places” which by a misnomer, occasioned by the change in the
character and appearance of what _were_ the outskirts, are still
called “Pleasant.” On seeking him here, I had some little difficulty
in finding the house, and asking a string of men, who were chopping
fire-wood in an adjoining court, for the man I wanted, mentioning
his name, no one knew anything about him; though when I spoke of his
calling, “O,” they said, “you want Old Billy.” I then found Billy at
his accustomed pitch, with a very small stock of birds in two large
cages on the ground beside him, and he accompanied me to his residence.
The room in which we sat had a pile of fire-wood opposite the door;
the iron of the upper part of the door-latch being wanting was
replaced by a piece of wood--and on the pile sat a tame jackdaw, with
the inquisitive and askant look peculiar to the bird. Above the pile
was a large cage, containing a jay--a bird seldom sold in the streets
now--and a thrush, in different compartments. A table, three chairs,
and a hamper or two used in the wood-cutting, completed the furniture.
Outside the house were cages containing larks, goldfinches, and a very
fine starling, of whose promising abilities the bird-seller’s sister
had so favourable an opinion that she intended to try and teach it to
talk, although that was very seldom done now.

The following is the statement I obtained from the poor fellow. The
man’s sister was present at his desire, as he was afraid I could not
understand him, owing to the indistinctness of his speech; but that was
easy enough, after awhile, with a little patience and attention.

“I was born a cripple, sir,” he said, “and I shall die one. I was born
at Lewisham, but I don’t remember living in any place but London. I
remember being at Stroud though, where my father had taken me, and
bathed me often in the sea himself, thinking it might do me good. I’ve
heard him say, too, that when I was very young he took me to almost
every hospital in London, but it was of no use. My father and mother
were as kind to me and as good parents as could be. He’s been dead
nineteen years, and my mother died before him. Father was very poor,
almost as poor as I am. He worked in a brick-field, but work weren’t
regular. I couldn’t walk at all until I was six years old, and I was
between nine and ten before I could get up and down stairs by myself.
I used to slide down before, as well as I could, and had to be carried
up. When I could get about and went among other boys, I was in great
distress, I was teased so. Life was a burthen to me, as I’ve read
something about. They used to taunt me by offering to jump me” (invite
him to a jumping match), “and to say, I’ll run you a race on one leg.
They were bad to me then, and they are now. I’ve sometimes sat down and
cried, but not often. No, sir, I can’t say that I ever wished I was
dead. I hardly know why I cried. I suppose because I was miserable. I
learned to read at a Sunday school, where I went a long time. I like
reading. I read the Bible and tracts, nothing else; never a newspaper.
It don’t come in my way, and if it did I shouldn’t look at it, for I
can’t read over well and it’s nothing to me who’s king or who’s queen.
It can never have anything to do with me. It don’t take my attention.
There’ll be no change for me in this world. When I was thirteen my
father put me into the bird trade. He knew a good many catchers. I’ve
been bird-selling in the streets for six-and-twenty years and more,
for I was 39 the 24th of last January. Father didn’t know what better
he could put me to, as I hadn’t the right use of my hands or feet,
and at first I did very well. I liked the birds and do still. I used
to think at first that they was like me; they was prisoners, and I
was a cripple. At first I sold birds in Poplar, and Limehouse, and
Blackwall, and was a help to my parents, for I cleared 9_s._ or 10_s._
every week. But now, oh dear, I don’t know where all the money’s gone
to. I think there’s very little left in the country. I’ve sold larks,
linnets, and goldfinches, to captains of ships to take to the West
Indies. I’ve sold them, too, to go to Port Philip. O, and almost all
those foreign parts. They bring foreign birds here, and take back
London birds. I don’t know anything about foreign birds. I know there’s
men dressed as sailors going about selling them; they’re duffers--I
mean the men. There’s a neighbour of mine, that’s very likely never
been 20 miles out of London, and when he hawks birds he always dresses
like a countryman, and duffs that way.

“When my father died,” continued the man, “I was completely upset;
everything in the world was upset. I was forced to go into the
workhouse, and I was there between four and five months. O, I hated
it. I’d rather live on a penny loaf a day than be in it again. I’ve
never been near the parish since, though I’ve often had nothing to
eat many a day. I’d rather be lamer than I am, and be oftener called
silly Billy--and that sometimes makes me dreadful wild--than be in the
workhouse. It was starvation, but then I know I’m a hearty eater, very
hearty. Just now I know I could eat a shilling plate of meat, but for
all that I very seldom taste meat. I live on bread and butter and tea,
sometimes bread without butter. When I have it I eat a quartern loaf
at three meals. It depends upon how I’m off. My health’s good. I never
feel in any pain now; I did when I first got to walk, in great pain.
Beer I often don’t taste once in two or three months, and this very hot
weather one can’t help longing for a drop, when you see people drinking
it all sides of you, but they have the use of their limbs.” [Here two
little girls and a boy rushed into the room, for they had but to open
the door from the outside, and, evidently to tease the poor fellow,
loudly demanded “a ha’penny bird.” When the sister had driven them
away, my informant continued.] “I’m still greatly teased, sir, with
children; yes, and with men too, both when they’re drunk and sober.
I think grown persons are the worst. They swear and use bad language
to me. I’m sure I don’t know why. I know no name they call me by in
particular when I’m teased, if it isn’t ‘Old Hypocrite.’ I can’t say
why they call me ‘hypocrite.’ I suppose because they know no better.
Yes, I think I’m religious, rather. I would be more so, if I had
clothes. I get to chapel sometimes.” [A resident near the bird-seller’s
pitch, with whom I had some conversation, told me of “Billy” being
sometimes teased in the way described. Some years ago, he believed it
was at Limehouse, my informant heard a gentlemanly-looking man, tipsy,
d--n the street bird-seller for Mr. _Hobbler_, and bid him go to the
Mansion House, or to h--l. I asked the cripple about this, but he had
no recollection of it; and, as he evidently did not understand the
allusion to Mr. Hobbler, I was not surprised at his forgetfulness.]

“I like to sit out in the sunshine selling my birds,” he said. “If it’s
rainy, and I can’t go out, because it would be of no use, I’m moped to
death. I stay at home and read a little; or I chop a little fire-wood,
but you may be very sure, sir, its little I can do that way. I never
associate with the neighbours. I never had any pleasure, such as going
to a fair, or like that. I don’t remember having ever spent a penny in
a place of amusement in my life. Yes, I’ve often sat all day in the
sun, and of course a deal of thoughts goes through my head. I think,
shall I be able to afford myself plenty of bread when I get home? And
I think of the next world sometimes, and feel quite sure, quite, that
I shan’t be a cripple there. Yes, that’s a comfort, for this world
will never be any good to me. I feel that I shall be a poor starving
cripple, till I end, perhaps, in the workhouse. Other poor men can
get married, but not such as me. But I never was in love in my life,
never.” [Among the vagrants and beggars, I may observe, there are men
more terribly deformed than the bird-seller, who are married, or living
in concubinage.] “Yes, sir,” he proceeded, “I’m quite reconciled to my
lameness, quite; and have been for years. O, no, I never fret about
that now; but about starving, perhaps, and the workhouse.

“Before father died, the parish allowed us 1_s._ 6_d._ and a quartern
loaf a week; but after he was buried, they’d allow me nothing; they’d
only admit me into the house. I hadn’t a penny allowed to me when I
discharged myself and came out. I hardly know how ever I _did_ manage
to get a start again with the birds. I knew a good many catchers, and
they trusted me. Yes, they was all poor men. I did pretty tidy by bits,
but only when it was fine weather, until these five years or so, when
things got terrible bad. Particularly just the two last years with
me. Do you think times are likely to mend, sir, with poor people? If
working-men had only money, they’d buy innocent things like birds to
amuse them at home; but if they can’t get the money, as I’ve heard them
say when they’ve been pricing my stock, why in course they can’t spend
it.”

“Yes, indeed,” said the sister, “trade’s very bad. Where my husband and
I once earned 18_s._ at the fire-wood, and then 15_s._, we can’t now
earn 12_s._ the two of us, slave as hard as we will. I always dread the
winter a-coming. Though there may be more fire-wood wanted, there’s
greater expenses, and it’s a terrible time for such as us.”

“I dream sometimes, sir,” the cripple resumed in answer to my question,
“but not often. I often have more than once dreamed I was starving and
dying of hunger. I remember that, for I woke in a tremble. But most
dreams is soon forgot. I’ve never seemed to myself to be a cripple in
my dreams. Well, I can’t explain how, but I feel as if my limbs was
all free like--so beautiful. I dream most about starving I think, than
about anything else. Perhaps that’s when I have to go to sleep hungry.
I sleep very well, though, take it altogether. If I had only plenty to
live upon there would be nobody happier. I’m happy enough when times
is middling with me, only one feels it won’t last. I like a joke as
well as anybody when times is good; but that’s been very seldom lately.

“It’s all small birds I sell in the street now, except at a very odd
time. That jackdaw there, sir, he’s a very fine bird. I’ve tamed him
myself, and he’s as tame as a dog. My sister’s a very good hand among
birds, and helps me. She once taught a linnet to say ‘Joey’ as plain
as you can speak it yourself, sir. I buy birds of different catchers,
but haven’t money to buy the better kinds, as I have to sell at 3_d._,
and 4_d._, and 6_d._ mostly. If I had a pound to lay out in a few nice
cages and good birds, I think I could do middling, this fine weather
particler, for I’m a very good judge of birds, and know how to manage
them as well as anybody. Then birds is rather dearer to buy than they
was when I was first in the trade. The catchers have to go further,
and I’m afeared the birds is getting scarcer, and so there’s more time
taken up. I buy of several catchers. The last whole day that I was at
my pitch I sold nine birds, and took about 3_s._ If I could buy birds
ever so cheap, there’s always such losses by their dying. I’ve had
three parts of my young linnets die, do what I might, but not often so
many. Then if they die all the food they’ve had is lost. There goes
all for nothing the rape and flax-seed for your linnets, canary and
flax for your goldfinches, chopped eggs for your nightingales, and
German paste for your sky-larks. I’ve made my own German paste when
I’ve wanted a sufficient quantity. It’s made of pea-meal, treacle,
hog’s-lard, and moss-seed. I sell more goldfinches than anything else.
I used to sell a good many sparrows for shooting, but I haven’t done
anything that way these eight or nine years. It’s a fash’nable sport
still, I hear. I’ve reared nightingales that sung beautiful, and have
sold them at 4_s._ a piece, which was very cheap. They often die when
the time for their departure comes. A shopkeeper as supplied such
as I’ve sold would have charged 1_l._ a piece for them. One of my
favouritest birds is redpoles, but they’re only sold in the season.
I think it’s one of the most knowingest little birds that is; more
knowing than the goldfinch, in my opinion.

“My customers are all working people, all of them. I sell to nobody
else; I make 4_s._ or 5_s._; I call 5_s._ a good week at this time
of year, when the weather suits. I lodge with a married sister; her
husband’s a wood-chopper, and I pay 1_s._ 6_d._ a week, which is cheap,
for I’ve no sticks of my own. If I earn 4_s._ there’s only 2_s._ 6_d._
left to live on the week through. In winter, when I can make next to
nothing, and must keep my birds, it is terrible--oh yes, sir, if you
believe me, terrible!”

OF THE TRICKS OF THE BIRD-DUFFERS.

The tricks practised by the bird-sellers are frequent and systematic.
The other day a man connected with the bird-trade had to visit
Holloway, the City, and Bermondsey. In Holloway he saw six men, some
of whom he recognised as regular bird-catchers and street-sellers,
offering sham birds; in the City he found twelve; and in Bermondsey
six, as well as he could depend upon his memory. These, he thought,
did not constitute more than a half of the number now at work as
bird-“duffers,” not including the sellers of foreign birds. In the
summer, indeed, the duffers are most numerous, for birds are cheapest
then, and these tricksters, to economise time, I presume, buy of other
catchers any cheap hens suited to their purpose. Some of them, I am
told, never catch their birds at all, but purchase them.

The greenfinch is the bird on which these men’s art is most commonly
practised, its light-coloured plumage suiting it to their purposes. I
have heard these people styled “bird-swindlers,” but by street-traders
I heard them called “bird-duffers,” yet there appears to be no very
distinctive name for them. They are nearly all men, as is the case in
the bird trade generally, although the wives may occasionally assist
in the street-sale. The means of deception, as regards the greenfinch
especially, are from paint. One aim of these artists is to make their
finch resemble some curious foreign bird, “not often to be sold so
cheap, or to be sold at all in this country.” They study the birds in
the window of the naturalists’ shops for this purpose. Sometimes they
declare these painted birds are young Java sparrows (at one time “a
fashionable bird”), or St. Helena birds, or French or Italian finches.
They sometimes get 5_s._ for such a “duffing bird;” one man has been
known to boast that he once got a sovereign. I am told, however, by a
bird-catcher who had himself supplied birds to these men for duffing,
that they complained of the trade growing worse and worse.

It is usually a hen which is painted, for the hen is by far the
cheapest purchase, and while the poor thing is being offered for sale
by the duffers, she has an unlimited supply of hemp-seed, without
other food, and hemp-seed beyond a proper quantity, is a very strong
stimulus. This makes the hen look brisk and bold, but if newly caught,
as is usually the case, she will perhaps be found dead next morning.
The duffer will object to his bird being handled on account of its
timidity; “but it is timid only with strangers!” “When you’ve had
him a week, ma’am,” such a bird-seller will say, “you’ll find him as
lovesome and tame as can be.” One jealous lady, when asked 5_s._ for
a “very fine Italian finch, an excellent singer,” refused to buy, but
offered a deposit of 2_s._ 6_d._, if the man would leave his bird and
cage, for the trial of the bird’s song, for two or three days. The
duffer agreed; and was bold enough to call on the third day to hear
the result. The bird was dead, and after murmuring a little at the
lady’s mismanagement, and at the loss he had been subjected to, the
man brought away his cage. He boasted of this to a dealer’s assistant
who mentioned it to me, and expressed his conviction that it was true
enough. The paints used for the transformation of native birds into
foreign are bought at the colour-shops, and applied with camel-hair
brushes in the usual way.

When canaries are “a bad colour,” or have grown a paler yellow
from age, they are re-dyed, by the application of a colour sold at
the colour-shops, and known as “the Queen’s yellow.” Blackbirds are
dyed a deeper black, the “grit” off a frying-pan being used for the
purpose. The same thing is done to heighten the gloss and blackness
of a jackdaw, I was told, by a man who acknowledged he had duffed a
little; “people liked a gay bright colour.” In the same way the tints
of the goldfinch are heightened by the application of paint. It is
common enough, moreover, for a man to paint the beaks and legs of the
birds. It is chiefly the smaller birds which are thus made the means of
cheating.

Almost all the “duffing birds” are hawked. If a young hen be passed off
for a good singing bird, without being painted, as a cock in his second
singing year, she is “brisked up” with hemp-seed, is half tipsy in
fact, and so passed off deceitfully. As it is very rarely that even the
male birds will sing in the streets, this is often a successful ruse,
the bird appearing so lively.

A dealer calculated for me, from his own knowledge, that 2000 small
birds were “duffed” yearly, at an average of from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 3_s._
each.

As yet I have only spoken of the “duffing” of English birds, but
similar tricks are practised with the foreign birds.

In parrot-selling there is a good deal of “duffing.” The birds are
“painted up,” as I have described in the case of the greenfinches, &c.
Varnish is also used to render the colours brighter; the legs and beak
are frequently varnished. Sometimes a spot of red is introduced, for
as one of these duffers observed to a dealer in English birds, “the
more outlandish you make them look, the better’s the chance to sell.”
Sometimes there is little injury done by this paint and varnish, which
disappear gradually when the parrot is in the cage of a purchaser;
but in some instances when the bird picks himself where he has been
painted, he dies from the deleterious compound. Of this mortality,
however, there is nothing approaching that among the duffed small birds.

Occasionally the duffers carry really fine cockatoos, &c., and if they
can obtain admittance into a lady’s house, to display the beauty of the
bird, they will pretend to be in possession of smuggled silk, &c., made
of course for duffing purposes. The bird-duffers are usually dressed as
seamen, and sometimes pretend they must sell the bird before the ship
sails, for a parting spree, or to get the poor thing a good home. This
trade, however, has from all that I can learn, and in the words of an
informant, “seen its best days.” There are now sometimes six men thus
engaged; sometimes none: and when one of these men is “hard up,” he
finds it difficult to start again in a business for which a capital of
about 1_l._ is necessary, as a cage is wanted generally. The duffers
buy the very lowest priced birds, and have been known to get 2_l._
10_s._ for what cost but 8_s._, but that is a very rare occurrence, and
the men are very poor, and perhaps more dissipated than the generality
of street-sellers. Parrot duffing, moreover, is seldom carried on
regularly by any one, for he will often duff cigars and other things
in preference, or perhaps vend really smuggled and good cigars or
tobacco. Perhaps 150 parrots, paroquets, or cockatoos, are sold in this
way annually, at from 15_s._ to 1_l._ 10_s._ each, but hardly averaging
1_l._, as the duffer will sell, or raffle, the bird for a small sum if
he cannot dispose of it otherwise.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF FOREIGN BIRDS.

This trade is curious, but far from extensive as regards street-sale.
There is, moreover, contrary to what might be expected, a good deal
of “duffing” about it. The “duffer” in English birds disguises them
so that they shall look like foreigners; the duffer in what are
unquestionably foreign birds disguises them that they may look _more_
foreign--more Indian than in the Indies.

The word “Duffer,” I may mention, appears to be connected with the
German _Durffen_, to want, to be needy, and so to mean literally
a needy or indigent man, even as the word _Pedlar_ has the same
origin--being derived from the German _Bettler_, and the Dutch
_Bedelaar_--a beggar. The verb _Durffen_, means also to dare, to be so
bold as to do; hence, to _Durff_, or _Duff_, would signify to resort to
any impudent trick.

The supply of parrots, paroquets, cockatoos, Java sparrows, or St.
Helena birds, is not in the regular way of consignment from a merchant
abroad to one in London. The commanders and mates of merchant vessels
bring over large quantities; and often enough the seamen are allowed to
bring parrots or cockatoos in the homeward-bound ship from the Indies
or the African coast, or from other tropical countries, either to
beguile the tedium of the voyage, for presents to their friends, or,
as in some cases, for sale on their reaching an English port. More, I
am assured, although statistics are hardly possible on such a subject,
are brought to London, and perhaps by one-third, than to all the other
ports of Great Britain collectively. Even on board the vessels of the
royal navy, the importation of parrots used to be allowed as a sort
of boon to the seamen. I was told by an old naval officer that once,
after a long detention on the west coast of Africa, his ship was
ordered home, and, as an acknowledgment of the good behaviour of his
men, he permitted them to bring parrots, cockatoos, or any foreign
birds, home with them, not limiting the number, but of course under
the inspection of the petty officers, that there might be no violation
of the cleanliness which always distinguishes a vessel of war. Along
the African coast, to the southward of Sierra Leone, the men were not
allowed to land, both on account of the unhealthiness of the shores,
and of the surf, which rendered landing highly dangerous, a danger,
however, which the seamen would not have scrupled to brave, and
recklessly enough, for any impulse of the minute. As if by instinct,
however, the natives seemed to know what was wanted, for they came off
from the shores in their light canoes, which danced like feathers on
the surf, and brought boat-loads of birds; these the seamen bought of
them, or possessed themselves of in the way of barter.

Before the ship took her final departure, however, she was reported
as utterly uninhabitable below, from the incessant din and clamour:
“We might as well have a pack of women aboard, sir,” was the ungallant
remark of one of the petty officers to his commander. Orders were then
given that the parrots, &c., should be “thinned,” so that there might
not be such an unceasing noise. This was accordingly done. How many
were set at liberty and made for the shore--for the seamen in this
instance did not kill them for their skins, as is not unfrequently
the case--the commander did not know. He could but conjecture; and he
conjectured that something like a thousand were released; and even
after that, and after the mortality which takes place among these birds
in the course of a long voyage, a very great number were brought to
Plymouth. Of these, again, a great number were sent or conveyed under
the care of the sailors to London, when the ship was paid off. The
same officer endeavoured on this voyage to bring home some very large
pine-apples, which flavoured, and most deliciously, parts of the ship
when she had been a long time at sea; but every one of them rotted, and
had to be thrown overboard. He fell into the error, Captain ---- said,
of having the finest fruit selected for the experiment; an error which
the Bahama merchants had avoided, and consequently they succeeded where
he failed. How the sailors fed the parrots, my informant could hardly
guess, but they brought a number of very fine birds to England, some of
them with well-cultivated powers of speech.

This, as I shall show, is one of the ways by which the London supply of
parrots, &c., is obtained; but the permission, as to the importation
of these brightly-feathered birds, is, I understand, rarely allowed
at present to the seamen in the royal navy. The far greater supply,
indeed more than 90 per cent. of the whole of the birds imported, is
from the merchant-service. I have already stated, on the very best
authority, the motives which induce merchant-seamen to bring over
parrots and cockatoos. That to bring them over is an inducement to some
to engage in an African voyage is shown by the following statement,
which was made to me, in the course of a long inquiry, published in my
letters in the _Morning Chronicle_, concerning the condition of the
merchant-seamen.

“I would never go to that African coast again, only I make a pound or
two in birds. We buy parrots, gray parrots chiefly, of the natives,
who come aboard in their canoes. We sometimes pay 6_s._ or 7_s._, in
Africa, for a fine bird. I have known 200 parrots on board; they make a
precious noise; but half the birds die before they get to England. Some
captains won’t allow parrots.”

When the seamen have settled themselves after landing in England,
they perhaps find that there is no room in their boarding-houses for
their parrots; these birds are not admitted into the Sailors’ Home;
the seamen’s friends are stocked with the birds, and look upon another
parrot as but another intruder, an unwelcome pensioner. There remains
but one course--to sell the birds, and they are generally sold to a
highly respectable man, Mr. M. Samuel, of Upper East Smithfield; and
it is from him, though not always directly, that the shopkeepers and
street-sellers derive their stock-in-trade. There is also a further
motive for the disposal of parrots, paroquets, and cockatoos to a
merchant. The seafaring owner of those really magnificent birds,
perhaps, squanders his money, perhaps he gets “skinned” (stripped of
his clothes and money from being hocussed, or tempted to helpless
drunkenness), or he chooses to sell them, and he or his boarding-house
keeper takes the birds to Mr. Samuel, and sells them for what he can
get; but I heard from three very intelligent seamen whom I met with in
the course of my inquiry, and by mere chance, that Mr. Samuel’s price
was fair and his money sure, considering everything, for there is
usually a qualification to every praise. It is certainly surprising,
under these circumstances, that such numbers of these birds should thus
be disposed of.

Parrots are as gladly, or more gladly, got rid of, in any manner, in
different regions in the continents of Asia and America, than with
us are even rats from a granary. Dr. Stanley, after speaking of the
beauty of a flight of parrots, says:--“The husbandman who sees them
hastening through the air, with loud and impatient screams, looks upon
them with dismay and detestation, knowing that the produce of his
labour and industry is in jeopardy, when visited by such a voracious
multitude of pilferers, who, like the locusts of Egypt, desolate whole
tracts of country by their unsparing ravages.” A contrast with their
harmlessness, in a gilded cage in the houses of the wealthy, with us!
The destructiveness of these birds, is then, one reason why seamen can
obtain them so readily and cheaply, for the natives take pleasure in
catching them; while as to plentifulness, the tropical regions teem
with bird, as with insect and reptile, life.

Of parrots, paroquets, and cockatoos, there are 3000 imported to London
in the way I have described, and in about equal proportions. They are
sold, wholesale, from 5_s._ to 30_s._ each.

There are now only three men selling these brilliant birds regularly in
the streets, and in the fair way of trade; but there are sometimes as
many as 18 so engaged. The price given by a hawker for a cockatoo, &c.,
is 8_s._ or 10_s._, and they are retailed at from 15_s._ to 30_s._,
or more, “if it can be got.” The purchasers are the wealthier classes
who can afford to indulge their tastes. Of late years, however, I am
told, a parrot or a cockatoo seems to be considered indispensable to
an inn (not a gin-palace), and the innkeepers have been among the best
customers of the street parrot-sellers. In the neighbourhood of the
docks, and indeed along the whole river side below London-bridge, it
is almost impossible for a street-seller to dispose of a parrot to an
innkeeper, or indeed to any one, as they are supplied by the seamen.
A parrot which has been taught to talk is worth from 4_l._ to 10_l._,
according to its proficiency in speech. About 500 of these birds are
sold yearly by the street-hawkers, at an outlay to the public of from
500_l._ to 600_l._

Java sparrows, from the East Indies, and from the Islands of the
Archipelago, are brought to London, but considerable quantities die
during the voyage and in this country; for, though hardy enough, not
more than one in three survives being “taken off the paddy seed.” About
10,000, however, are sold annually, in London, at 1_s._ 6_d._ each, but
a very small proportion by street-hawking, as the Java sparrows are
chiefly in demand for the aviaries of the rich in town and country. In
some years not above 100 may be sold in the streets; in others, as many
as 500.

In St. Helena birds, known also as wax-bills and red-backs, there is
a trade to the same extent, both as regards number and price; but the
street-sale is perhaps 10 per cent. lower.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF BIRDS’-NESTS.

The young gypsy-looking lad, who gave me the following account of the
sale of birds’-nests in the streets, was peculiarly picturesque in his
appearance. He wore a dirty-looking smock-frock with large pockets
at the side; he had no shirt; and his long black hair hung in curls
about him, contrasting strongly with his bare white neck and chest.
The broad-brimmed brown Italian-looking hat, broken in and ragged at
the top, threw a dark half-mask-like shadow over the upper part of his
face. His feet were bare and black with mud: he carried in one hand his
basket of nests, dotted with their many-coloured eggs; in the other he
held a live snake, that writhed and twisted as its metallic-looking
skin glistened in the sun; now over, and now round, the thick knotty
bough of a tree that he used for a stick. The portrait of the youth is
here given. I have never seen so picturesque a specimen of the English
nomads. He said, in answer to my inquiries:--

“I am a seller of birds’-nesties, snakes, slow-worms, adders,
‘effets’--lizards is their common name--hedgehogs (for killing black
beetles); frogs (for the French--they eats ’em); snails (for birds);
that’s all I sell in the summer-time. In the winter I get all kinds
of wild flowers and roots, primroses, ‘butter-cups’ and daisies, and
snow-drops, and ‘backing’ off of trees; (‘backing’ it’s called, because
it’s used to put at the back of nosegays, it’s got off the yew trees,
and is the green yew fern). I gather bulrushes in the summer-time,
besides what I told you; some buys bulrushes for stuffing; they’re the
fairy rushes the small ones, and the big ones is bulrushes. The small
ones is used for ‘stuffing,’ that is, for showing off the birds as is
stuffed, and make ’em seem as if they was alive in their cases, and
among the rushes; I sell them to the bird-stuffers at 1_d._ a dozen.
The big rushes the boys buys to play with and beat one another--on a
Sunday evening mostly. The birds’-nesties I get from 1_d._ to 3_d._
a-piece for. I never have young birds, I can never sell ’em; you see
the young things generally dies of the cramp before you can get rid
of them. I sell the birds’-nesties in the streets; the threepenny
ones has six eggs, a half-penny a egg. The linnets has mostly four
eggs, they’re 4_d._ the nest; they’re for putting under canaries, and
being hatched by them. The thrushes has from four to five--five is
the most; they’re 2_d._; they’re merely for cur’osity--glass cases or
anything like that. Moor-hens, wot build on the moors, has from eight
to nine eggs, and is 1_d._ a-piece; they’re for hatching underneath a
bantam-fowl, the same as partridges. Chaffinches has five eggs; they’re
3_d._, and is for cur’osity. Hedge-sparrows, five eggs; they’re the
same price as the other, and is for cur’osity. The Bottletit--the
nest and the bough are always put in glass cases; it’s a long hanging
nest, like a bottle, with a hole about as big as a sixpence, and
there’s mostly as many as eighteen eggs; they’ve been known to lay
thirty-three. To the house-sparrow there is five eggs; they’re 1_d._
The yellow-hammers, with five eggs, is 2_d._ The water-wagtails, with
four eggs, 2_d._ Blackbirds, with five eggs, 2_d._ The golden-crest
wren, with ten eggs--it has a very handsome nest--is 6_d._ Bulfinches,
four eggs, 1_s._; they’re for hatching, and the bulfinch is a very dear
bird. Crows, four eggs, 4_d._ Magpies, four eggs, 4_d._ Starlings, five
eggs, 3_d._ The egg-chats, five eggs, 2_d._ Goldfinches, five eggs,
6_d._, for hatching. Martins, five eggs, 3_d._ The swallow, four eggs,
6_d._; it’s so dear because the nest is such a cur’osity, they build up
again the house. The butcher-birds--hedge-murderers some calls them,
for the number of birds they kills--five eggs, 3_d._ The cuckoo--they
never has a nest, but lays in the hedge-sparrow’s; there’s only one egg
(it’s very rare you see the two, they has been got, but that’s seldom)
that is 4_d._, the egg is such a cur’osity. The greenfinches has four
or five eggs, and is 3_d._ The sparrer-hawk has four eggs, and they’re
6_d._ The reed-sparrow--they builds in the reeds close where the
bulrushes grow; they has four eggs, and is 2_d._ The wood-pigeon has
two eggs, and they’re 4_d._ The horned owl, four eggs; they’re 6_d._
The woodpecker--I never see no more nor two--they’re 6_d._ the two;
they’re a great cur’osity, very seldom found. The kingfishers has four
eggs, and is 6_d._ That’s all I know of.

[Illustration: STREET-SELLER OF BIRDS’ NESTS.]

“I gets the eggs mostly from Witham and Chelmsford, in Essex;
Chelmsford is 20 mile from Whitechapel Church, and Witham, 8 mile
further. I know more about them parts than anywhere else, being used
to go after moss for Mr. Butler, of the herb-shop in Covent Garden.
Sometimes I go to Shirley Common and Shirley Wood, that’s three miles
from Croydon, and Croydon is ten from Westminster-bridge. When I’m
out bird-nesting I take all the cross country roads across fields
and into the woods. I begin bird-nesting in May and leave off about
August, and then comes the bulrushing, and they last till Christmas;
and after that comes the roots and wild flowers, which serves me up
to May again. I go out bird-nesting three times a week. I go away at
night, and come up on the morning of the day after. I’m away a day and
two nights. I start between one and two in the morning and walk all
night--for the coolness--you see the weather’s so hot you can’t
do it in the daytime. When I get down I go to sleep for a couple of
hours. I ‘skipper it’--turn in under a hedge or anywhere. I get down
about nine in the morning, at Chelmsford, and about one if I go to
Witham. After I’ve had my sleep I start off to get my nests and things.
I climb the trees, often I go up a dozen in the day, and many a time
there’s nothing in the nest when I get up. I only fell once; I got on
the end of the bough and slipped off. I p’isoned my foot once with the
stagnant water going after the bulrushes,--there was horseleeches,
and effets, and all kinds of things in the water, and they stung me,
I think. I couldn’t use my foot hardly for six weeks afterwards, and
was obliged to have a stick to walk with. I couldn’t get about at all
for four days, and should have starved if it hadn’t been that a young
man kept me. He was a printer by trade, and almost a stranger to me,
only he seed me and took pity on me. When I fell off the bough I wasn’t
much hurt, nothing to speak of. The house-sparrow is the worst nest of
all to take; it’s no value either when it _is_ got, and is the most
difficult of all to get at. You has to get up a sparapet (a parapet)
of a house, and either to get permission, or run the risk of going
after it without. Partridges’ eggs (they has no nest) they gives you
six months for, if they see you selling them, because it’s game, and
I haven’t no licence; but while you’re hawking, that is showing ’em,
they can’t touch you. The owl is a very difficult nest to get, they
builds so high in the trees. The bottle-tit is a hard nest to find; you
may go all the year round, and, perhaps, only get one. The nest I like
best to get is the chaffinch, because they’re in the hedge, and is no
bother. Oh, you hasn’t got the skylark down, sir; they builds on the
ground, and has five eggs; I sell them for 4_d._ The robin-redbreast
has five eggs, too, and is 3_d._ The ringdove has two eggs, and is
6_d._ The tit-lark--that’s five blue eggs, and very rare--I get 4_d._
for them. The jay has five eggs, and a flat nest, very wiry, indeed;
it’s a ground bird; that’s 1_s._--the egg is just like a partridge egg.
When I first took a kingfisher’s nest, I didn’t know the name of it,
and I kept wondering what it was. I daresay I asked three dozen people,
and none of them could tell me. At last a bird-fancier, the lame man
at the Mile-end gate, told me what it was. I likes to get the nesties
to sell, but I havn’t no fancy for birds. Sometimes I get squirrels’
nesties with the young in ’em--about four of ’em there mostly is, and
they’re the only young things I take--the young birds I leaves; they’re
no good to me. The four squirrels brings me from 6_s._ to 8_s._ After
I takes a bird’s nest, the old bird comes dancing over it, chirupping,
and crying, and flying all about. When they lose their nest they wander
about, and don’t know where to go. Oftentimes I wouldn’t take them if
it wasn’t for the want of the victuals, it seems such a pity to disturb
’em after they’ve made their little bits of places. Bats I never take
myself--I can’t get over ’em. If I has an order for ’em, I buys ’em of
boys.

“I mostly start off into the country on Monday and come up on
Wednesday. The most nesties as ever I took is twenty-two, and I
generally get about twelve or thirteen. These, if I’ve an order, I sell
directly, or else I may be two days, and sometimes longer, hawking them
in the street. Directly I’ve sold them I go off again that night, if
it’s fine; though I often go in the wet, and then I borrow a tarpaulin
of a man in the street where I live. If I’ve a quick sale I get down
and back three times in a week, but then I don’t go so far as Witham,
sometimes only to Rumford; that is 12 miles from Whitechapel Church.
I never got an order from a bird-fancier; they gets all the eggs they
want of the countrymen who comes up to market.

“It’s gentlemen I gets my orders of, and then mostly they tells me to
bring ’em one nest of every kind I can get hold of, and that will often
last me three months in the summer. There’s one gentleman as I sells to
is a wholesale dealer in window-glass--and he has a hobby for them. He
puts ’em into glass cases, and makes presents of ’em to his friends. He
has been one of my best customers. I’ve sold him a hundred nesties, I’m
sure. There’s a doctor at Dalston I sell a great number to--he’s taking
one of every kind of me now. The most of my customers is stray ones in
the streets. They’re generally boys. I sells a nest now and then to a
lady with a child; but the boys of twelve to fifteen years of age is my
best friends. They buy ’em only for cur’osity. I sold three partridges’
eggs yesterday to a gentleman, and he said he would put them under a
bantam he’d got, and hatch ’em.

“The snakes, and adders, and slow-worms I get from where there’s moss
or a deal of grass. Sunny weather’s the best for them, they won’t
come out when it’s cold; then I go to a dung-heap, and turn it over.
Sometimes, I find five or six there, but never so large as the one I
had to-day, that’s a yard and five inches long, and three-quarters of
a pound weight. Snakes is 5_s._ a pound. I sell all I can get to Mr.
Butler, of Covent-garden. He keeps ’em alive, for they’re no good dead.
I think it’s for the skin they’re kept. Some buys ’em to dissect: a
gentleman in Theobalds-road does so, and so he does hedgehogs. Some
buys ’em for stuffing, and others for cur’osities. Adders is the same
price as snakes, 5_s._ a pound after they first comes in, when they’re
10_s._ Adders is wanted dead; it’s only the fat and skin that’s of any
value; the fat is used for curing p’isoned wounds, and the skin is used
for any one as has cut their heads. Farmers buys the fat, and rubs it
into the wound when they gets bitten or stung by anything p’isonous.
I kill the adders with a stick, or, when I has shoes, I jumps on ’em.
Some fine days I get four or five snakes at a time; but then they’re
mostly small, and won’t weigh above half a pound. I don’t get many
adders--they don’t weigh many ounces, adders don’t--and I mostly has
9_d._ a-piece for each I gets. I sells _them_ to Mr. Butler as well.

“The hedgehogs is 1_s._ each; I gets them mostly in Essex. I’ve took
one hedgehog with three young ones, and sold the lot for 2_s._ 6_d._
People in the streets bought them of me--they’re wanted to kill the
black-beetles; they’re fed on bread and milk, and they’ll suck a cow
quite dry in their wild state. They eat adders, and can’t be p’isoned,
at least it says so in a book I’ve got about ’em at home.

“The effets I gets orders for in the streets. Gentlemen gives me their
cards, and tells me to bring them one; they’re 2_d._ apiece. I get them
at Hampstead and Highgate, from the ponds. They’re wanted for cur’osity.

“The snails and frogs I sell to Frenchmen. I don’t know what part they
eat of the frog, but I know they buy them, and the dandelion root.
The frogs is 6_d._ and 1_s._ a dozen. They like the yellow-bellied
ones, the others they’re afraid is toads. They always pick out the
yellow-bellied first; I don’t know how to feed ’em, or else I might
fatten them. Many people swallows young frogs, they’re reckoned very
good things to clear the inside. The frogs I catch in ponds and ditches
up at Hampstead and Highgate, but I only get them when I’ve a order.
I’ve had a order for as many as six dozen, but that was for the French
hotel in Leicester-square; but I _have_ sold three dozen a week to one
man, a Frenchman, as keeps a cigar shop in R--r’s-court.

“The snails I sell by the pailful--at 2_s._ 6_d._ the pail. There
is some hundreds in a pail. The wet weather is the best times for
catching ’em; the French people eats ’em. They boils ’em first to get
’em out of the shell and get rid of the green froth; then they boils
them again, and after that in vinegar. They eats ’em hot, but some of
the foreigners likes ’em cold. They say they’re better, if possible,
than whelks. I used to sell a great many to a lady and gentleman in
Soho-square, and to many of the French I sell 1_s._’s worth, that’s
about three or four quarts. Some persons buys snails for birds, and
some to strengthen a sickly child’s back; they rub the back all over
with the snails, and a very good thing they tell me it is. I used to
take 2_s._’s worth a week to one woman; it’s the green froth that does
the greatest good. There are two more birds’-nest sellers besides
myself, they don’t do as many as me the two of ’em. They’re very naked,
their things is all to ribbins; they only go into the country once
in a fortnight. They was never nothing, no trade--they never was in
place--from what I’ve heard--either of them. I reckon I sell about
20 nesties a week take one week with another, and that I do for four
months in the year. (This altogether makes 320 nests.) Yes, I should
say, I do sell about 300 birds’-nests every year, and the other two,
I’m sure, don’t sell half that. Indeed they don’t want to sell; they
does better by what they gets give to them. I can’t say what they
takes, they’re Irish, and I never was in conversation with them. I
get about 4_s._ to 5_s._ for the 20 nests, that’s between 2_d._ and
3_d._ apiece. I sell about a couple of snakes every week, and for some
of them I get 1_s._, and for the big ones 2_s._ 6_d._; but them _I_
seldom find. I’ve only had three hedgehogs this season, and I’ve done
a little in snails and frogs, perhaps about 1_s._ The many foreigners
in London this season hasn’t done me no good. I haven’t been to
Leicester-square lately, or perhaps I might have got a large order or
two for frogs.”

LIFE OF A BIRD’S-NEST SELLER.

“I am 22 years of age. My father was a dyer, and I was brought up to
the same trade. My father lived at Arundel, in Sussex, and kept a shop
there. He had a good business as dyer, scourer, calico glazer, and
furniture cleaner. I have heard mother say his business in Arundel
brought him in 300_l._ a year at least. He had eight men in his employ,
and none under 30_s._ a week. I had two brothers and one sister, but
one of my brothers is since dead. Mother died five years ago in the
Consumption Hospital, at Chelsea, just after it was built. I was very
young indeed when father died; I can hardly remember him. He died
in Middlesex Hospital: he had abscesses all over him; there were
six-and-thirty at the time of his death. I’ve heard mother say many
times that she thinked it was through exerting himself too much at his
business that he fell ill. The ruin of father was owing to his house
being burnt down; the fire broke out at two in the morning; he wasn’t
insured: I don’t remember the fire; I’ve only heerd mother talk about
it. It was the ruin of us all she used to tell me; father had so much
work belonging to other people; a deal of moreen curtains, five or six
hundred yards. It was of no use his trying to start again: he lost
all his glazing machines and tubs, and his drugs and ‘punches.’ From
what I’ve heerd from mother they was worth some hundreds. The Duke of
Norfolk, after the fire, gave a good lot of money to the poor people
whose things father had to clean, and father himself came up to London.
I wasn’t two year old when that happened. We all come up with father,
and he opened a shop in London and bought all new things. He had got
a bit of money left, and mother’s uncle lent him 60_l._ We lived two
doors from the stage door of the Queen’s Theatre, in Pitt-street,
Charlotte-street, Fitzroy-square; but father didn’t do much in London;
he had a new connection to make, and when he died his things was sold
for the rent of the house. There was only money enough to bury him. I
don’t know how long ago that was, but I think it was about three years
after our coming to London, for I’ve heerd mother say I was six years
old when father died. After father’s death mother borrowed some more
money of her uncle, who was well to do. He was perfumer to her Majesty:
he’s dead now, and left the business to his foreman. The business was
worth 2000_l._ His wife, my mother’s aunt, is alive still, and though
she’s a woman of large property, she won’t so much as look at me. She
keeps her carriage and two footmen; her address is, Mrs. Lewis, No. 10,
Porchester-terrace, Bayswater. I have been in her drawing-room two or
three times. I used to take letters to her from mother: she was very
kind to me then, and give me several half-crowns. She knows the state
I am in now. A young man wrote a letter to her, saying I had no clothes
to look after work in, and that I was near starving, but she sent no
answer to it. The last time I called at her house she sent me down
nothing, and bid the servant tell me not to come any more. Ever since
I’ve wanted it I’ve never had nothing from her, but before that she
used to give me something whenever I took a letter from mother to her.
The last half-crown I got at her house was from the cook, who gave it
me out of her own money because she’d known my mother.

“I’ve got a grandmother living in Woburn-place; she’s in service there,
and been in the family for twenty years. The gentleman died lately and
left her half his property. He was a foreigner and had no relations
here. My grandmother used to be very good to me, and when I first got
out of work she always gave me something when I called, and had me
down in her room. She was housekeeper then. She never offered to get
me a situation, but only gave me a meal of victuals and a shilling or
eighteen-pence whenever I called. I was tidy in my dress then. At last
a new footman came, and he told me as I wasn’t to call again; he said,
the family didn’t allow no followers. I’ve never seen my grandmother
since that time but once, and then I was passing with my basket of
birds’ nests in my hand just as she was coming out of the door. I was
dressed about the same then as you seed me yesterday. I was without a
shirt to my back. I don’t think she saw me, and I was ashamed to let
her see me as I was. She was kind enough to me, that is, she wouldn’t
mind about giving me a shilling or so at a time, but she never would do
nothing else for me, and yet she had got plenty of money in the bank,
and a gold watch, and all, at her side.

“After father died, as I was saying, mother got some money from her
uncle and set up on her own account; she took in glazing for the trade.
Father had a few shops that he worked for, and they employed mother
after his death. She kept on at this for eighteen months and then she
got married again. Before this an uncle of mine, my father’s brother,
who kept some lime-kilns down in Bury St. Edmunds, consented to take my
brother and sister and provide for them, and four or five year ago he
got them both into the Duke of Norfolk’s service, and there they are
now. They’ve never seen me since I was a child but once, and that was
a few year ago. I’ve never sent to them to say how badly I was off.
They’re younger than I am, and can only just take care of theirselves.
When mother married again, her husband came to live at the house; he
was a dyer. He behaved very well to me. Mother wouldn’t send me down
to uncle’s, she was too fond of me. I was sent to school for about
eighteen months, and after that I used to assist in the glazing at
home, and so I went on very comfortable for some time. Nine year ago
I went to work at a French dyer’s, in Rathbone-place. My step-father
got me there, and there I stopped six year. I lived in the house after
the first eighteen months of my service. Five year ago mother fell
ill; she had been ailing many years, and she got admitted into the
Consumption Hospital, at Brompton. She was there just upon three months
and was coming out the next day (her term was up), when she died on the
over night. After that my step-father altered very much towards me. He
didn’t want me at home at all. He told me so a fortnight after mother
was in her grave. He took to drinking very hearty directly she was
gone. He would do anything for me before that. He used to take me with
him to every place of amusement what he went to, but when he took to
drinking he quite changed; then he got to beat me, and at last he told
me I needn’t come there any more.

“After that, I still kept working in Rathbone-place, and got a lodging
of my own; I used to have 9_s._ a week where I was, and I paid 2_s._
a week for my bed, and washing, and mending. I had half a room with a
man and his wife; I went on so for about two years, and then I was took
bad with the scarlet fever and went to Gray’s-inn-lane hospital. After
I was cured of the scarlet fever, I had the brain fever, and was near
my death; I was altogether eight weeks in the hospital, and when I come
out I could get no work where I had been before. The master’s nephew
had come from Paris, and they had all French hands in the house. He
wouldn’t employ an English hand at all. He give me a trifle of money,
and told me he would pay my lodgings for a week or two while I looked
for work. I sought all about and couldn’t find any; this was about
three year ago. People wouldn’t have me because I didn’t know nothing
about the English mode of business. I couldn’t even tell the names
of the English drugs, having been brought up in a French house. At
last, my master got tired of paying for my lodging, and I used to try
and pick up a few pence in the streets by carrying boxes and holding
horses, it was all as I could get to do; I tried all I could to find
employment, and they was the only jobs I could get. But I couldn’t make
enough for my lodging this way, and over and over again I’ve had to
sleep out. Then I used to walk the streets most of the night, or lie
about in the markets till morning came in the hopes of getting a job.
I’m a very little eater, and perhaps that’s the luckiest thing for such
as me; half a pound of bread and a few potatoes will do me for the day.
If I could afford it, I used to get a ha’porth of coffee and a ha’porth
of sugar, and make it do twice. Sometimes I used to have victuals give
to me, sometimes I went without altogether; and sometimes I couldn’t
eat. I can’t always.

“Six weeks after I had been knocking about in the streets in the
manner I’ve told you, a man I met in Covent-Garden market told me he
was going into the country to get some roots (it was in the winter
time and cold indeed; I was dressed about the same as I am now, only
I had a pair of boots); and he said if I chose to go with him, he’d
give me half of whatever he earned. I went to Croydon and got some
primroses; my share came to 9_d._, and that was quite a God-send to me,
after getting nothing. Sometimes before that I’d been two days without
tasting anything; and when I got some victuals after that, I couldn’t
touch them. All I felt was giddy; I wasn’t to say hungry, only weak and
sicklified. I went with this man after the roots two or three times;
he took me to oblige me, and show me the way how to get a bit of food
for myself; after that, when I got to know all about it, I went to get
roots on my own account. I never felt a wish to take nothing when I was
very hard up. Sometimes when I got cold and was tired, walking about
and weak from not having had nothing to eat, I used to think I’d break
a window and take something out to get locked up; but I could never
make my mind up to it; they never hurt me, I’d say to myself. I do
fancy though, if anybody had refused me a bit of bread, I should have
done something again them, but I couldn’t, do you see, in cold blood
like.

“When the summer came round a gentleman whom I seed in the market asked
me if I’d get him half a dozen nesties--he didn’t mind what they was,
so long as they was small, and of different kinds--and as I’d come
across a many in my trips after the flowers, I told him I would do
so--and that first put it into my head; and I’ve been doing that every
summer since then. It’s poor work, though, at the best. Often and often
I have to walk 30 miles out without any victuals to take with me, or
money to get any, and 30 miles again back, and bring with me about a
dozen nesties; and, perhaps, if I’d no order for them, and was forced
to sell them to the boys, I shouldn’t get more than a shilling for the
lot after all. When the time comes round for it, I go Christmasing and
getting holly, but that’s more dangerous work than bird-nesting; the
farmers don’t mind your taking the nesties, as it prevents the young
birds from growing up and eating their corn. The greater part of the
holly used in London for trimming up the churches and sticking in the
puddings, is stolen by such as me, at the risk of getting six months
for it. The farmers brings a good lot to market, but we is obligated to
steal it. Take one week with another, I’m sure I don’t make above 5_s._
You can tell that to look at me. I don’t drink, and I don’t gamble;
so you can judge how much I get when I’ve had to pawn my shirt for a
meal. All last week I only sold two nesties--they was a partridge’s
and a yellow-hammer’s; for one I got 6_d._, and the other 3_d._, and
I had been thirteen miles to get them. I got beside that a fourpenny
piece for some chickweed which I’d been up to Highgate to gather for
a man with a bad leg (it’s the best thing there is for a poultice to
a wound), and then I earned another 4_d._ by some mash (marsh) mallow
leaves (that there was to purify the blood of a poor woman): that, with
4_d._ that a gentleman give to me, was all I got last week; 1_s._ 9_d._
I think it is altogether. I had some victuals give to me in the street,
or else I daresay I should have had to go without; but, as it was, I
gave the money to the man and his wife I live with. You see they had
nothing, and as they’re good to me when I want, why, I did what I could
for them. I’ve tried to get out of my present life, but there seems
to be an ill luck again me. Sometimes I gets a good turn. A gentleman
gives me an order, and then I saves a shilling or eighteenpence, so
as to buy something with that I can sell again in the streets; but a
wet day is sure to come, and then I’m cracked up, obligated to eat it
all away. Once I got to sell fish. A gentleman give me a crown-piece
in the street, and I borrowed a barrow at 2_d._ a day, and did pretty
well for a time. In three weeks I had saved 18_s._; then I got an order
for a sack of moss from one of the flower-sellers, and I went down to
Chelmsford, and stopped for the night in Lower Nelson-street, at the
sign of “The Three Queens.” I had my money safe in my fob the night
before, and a good pair of boots to my feet then; when I woke in the
morning my boots was gone, and on feeling in my fob my money was gone
too. There was four beds in the rooms, feather and flock; the feather
ones was 4_d._, and the flock 3_d._ for a single one, and 2-1/2_d._
each person for a double one. There was six people in the room that
night, and one of ’em was gone before I awoke--he was a cadger--and had
took my money with him. I complained to the landlord--they call him
George--but it was no good; all I could get was some victuals. So I’ve
been obliged to keep to birds’-nesting ever since.

“I’ve never been in prison but once. I was took up for begging.
I was merely leaning again the railings of Tavistock-square with
my birds’-nesties in my hand, and the policemen took me off to
Clerkenwell, but the magistrates, instead of sending me to prison,
gave me 2_s._ out of the poors’-box. I feel it very much going about
without shoes or without shirt, and exposed to all weathers, and often
out all night. The doctor at the hospital in Gray’s-inn-lane gave me
two flannels, and told me that whatever I did I was to keep myself
wrapped up; but what’s the use of saying that to such as me who is
obligated to pawn the shirt off our back for food the first wet day as
comes? If you haven’t got money to pay for your bed at a lodging-house,
you must take the shirt off your back and leave it with them, or else
they’ll turn you out. I know many such. Sometimes I go to an artist.
I had 5_s._ when I was drawed before the Queen. I wasn’t ’xactly
drawed before her, but my portrait was shown to her, and I was told
that if I’d be there I might receive a trifle. I was drawed as a gipsy
fiddler. Mr. Oakley in Regent-street was the gentleman as did it. I
was dressed in some things he got for me. I had an Italian’s hat, one
with a broad brim and a peaked crown, a red plush waistcoat, and a
yellow hankercher tied in a good many knots round my neck. I’d a black
velveteen Newmarket-cut coat, with very large pearl buttons, and a pair
of black knee-breeches tied with fine red strings. Then I’d blue stripe
stockings and high-ancle boots with very thin soles. I’d a fiddle in
one hand and a bow in the other. The gentleman said he drawed me for my
head of hair. I’ve never been a gipsy, but he told me he didn’t mind
that, for I should make as good a gipsy fiddler as the real thing. The
artists mostly give me 2_s._ I’ve only been three times. I only wish
I could get away from my present life. Indeed I would do any work if I
could get it. I’m sure I could have a good character from my masters in
Rathbone-place, for I never done nothing wrong. But if I couldn’t get
work I might very well, if I’d money enough, get a few flowers to sell.
As it is it’s more than any one can do to save at bird-nesting, and
I’m sure I’m as prudent as e’er a one in the streets. I never took the
pledge, but still I never take no beer nor spirits--I never did. Mother
told me never to touch ’em, and I haven’t tasted a drop. I’ve often
been in a public-house selling my things, and people has offered me
something to drink, but I never touch any. I can’t tell why I dislike
doing so--but something seems to tell me not to taste such stuff. I
don’t know whether it’s what my mother said to me. I know I was very
fond of her, but I don’t say it’s that altogether as makes me do it. I
don’t feel to want it. I smoke a good bit, and would sooner have a bit
of baccy than a meal at any time. I could get a goodish rig-out in the
lane for a few shillings. A pair of boots would cost me 2_s._, and a
coat I could get for 2_s._ 6_d._ I go to a ragged school three times a
week if I can, for I’m but a poor scholar still, and I should like to
know how to read; it’s always handy you know, sir.”

This lad has been supplied with a suit of clothes and sufficient money
to start him in some of the better kind of street-trades. It was
thought advisable not to put him to any more _settled_ occupation on
account of the vagrant habits he has necessarily acquired during his
bird-nesting career. Before doing this he was employed as errand-boy
for a week, with the object of testing his trustworthiness, and
was found both honest and attentive. He appears a prudent lad, but
of course it is difficult, as yet, to speak positively as to his
character. He has, however, been assured that if he shows a disposition
to follow some more reputable calling he shall at least be put in the
way of so doing.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SQUIRRELS.

The street squirrel-sellers are generally the same men as are engaged
in the open-air traffic in cage-birds. There are, however, about six
men who devote themselves more particularly to squirrel-selling, while
as many more sometimes “take a turn at it.” The squirrel is usually
carried in the vendor’s arms, or is held against the front of his coat,
so that the animal’s long bushy tail is seen to advantage. There is
usually a red leather collar round its neck, to which is attached some
slender string, but so contrived that the squirrel shall not appear
to be a prisoner, nor in general--although perhaps the hawker became
possessed of his squirrel only that morning--does the animal show any
symptoms of fear.

The chief places in which squirrels are offered for sale, are
Regent-street and the Royal Exchange, but they are offered also in
all the principal thoroughfares--especially at the West End. The
purchasers are gentlefolk, tradespeople, and a few of the working
classes who are fond of animals. The wealthier persons usually buy the
squirrels for their children, and, even after the free life of the
woods, the animal seems happy enough in the revolving cage, in which it
“thinks it climbs.”

The prices charged are from 2_s._ to 5_s._, “or more if it can be got,”
from a third to a half being profit. The sellers will oft enough state,
if questioned, that they caught the squirrels in Epping Forest, or Caen
Wood, or any place sufficiently near London, but such is hardly ever
the case, for the squirrels are bought by them of the dealers in live
animals. Countrymen will sometimes catch a few squirrels and bring them
to London, and nine times out of ten they sell them to the shopkeepers.
To sell three squirrels a day in the street is accounted good work.

I am assured by the best-informed parties that for five months of the
year there are 20 men selling squirrels in the streets, at from 20 to
50 per cent. profit, and that they average a weekly sale of six each.
The average price is from 2_s._ to 2_s._ 6_d._, although not very long
ago one man sold a “wonderfully fine squirrel” in the street for three
half-crowns, but they are sometimes parted with for 1_s._ 6_d._ or
less, rather than be kept over-night. Thus 2400 squirrels are vended
yearly in the streets, at a cost to the public of 240_l._

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF LEVERETS, WILD RABBITS, ETC.

There are a few leverets, or young hares, sold in the streets, and
they are vended for the most part in the suburbs, where the houses
are somewhat detached, and where there are plenty of gardens. The
softness and gentleness of the leveret’s look pleases children, more
especially girls, I am informed, and it is usually through their
importunity that the young hares are bought, in order that they may be
fed from the garden, and run tame about an out-house. The leverets thus
sold, however, as regards nine out of ten, soon die. They are rarely
supplied with their natural food, and all their natural habits are
interrupted. They are in constant fear and danger, moreover, from both
dogs and cats. One shopkeeper who sold fancy rabbits in a street off
the Westminster-road told me that he had once tried to tame and rear
leverets in hutches, as he did rabbits, but to no purpose. He had no
doubt it might be done, he said, but not in a shop or a small house.
Three or four leverets are hawked by the street-people in one basket
and are seen lying on hay, the basket having either a wide-worked lid,
or a net thrown over it. The hawkers of live poultry sell the most
leverets, but they are vended also by the singing-bird sellers. The
animals are nearly all bought, for this traffic, at Leadenhall, and are
retailed at 1_s._ to 2_s._ each, one-third to one-half being profit.
Perhaps 300 are sold this way yearly, producing 22_l._ 10_s._

About 400 young wild rabbits are sold in the street in a similar way,
but at lower sums, from 3_d._ to 6_d._ each, 4_d._ being the most
frequent rate. The yearly outlay is thus 6_l._ 13_s._ They thrive, in
confinement, no better than the leverets.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF GOLD AND SILVER FISH.

Of these dealers, residents in London, there are about 70; but during
my inquiry (at the beginning of July) there were not 20 in town. One of
their body knew of ten who were at work live-fish selling, and there
might be as many more, he thought, “working” the remoter suburbs of
Blackheath, Croydon, Richmond, Twickenham, Isleworth, or wherever there
are villa residences of the wealthy. This is the season when the gold
and silver fish-sellers, who are altogether a distinct class from the
bird-sellers of the streets, resort to the country, to vend their glass
globes, with the glittering fish swimming ceaselessly round and round.
The gold fish-hawkers are, for the most part, of the very best class of
the street-sellers. One of the principal fish-sellers is in winter a
street-vendor of cough drops, hore-hound candy, coltsfoot-sticks, and
other medicinal confectionaries, which he himself manufactures. Another
leading gold-fish seller is a costermonger now “on pine-apples.” A
third, “with a good connection among the innkeepers,” is in the autumn
and winter a hawker of game and poultry.

There are in London three wholesale dealers in gold and silver
fish; two of whom--one in the Kingsland-road and the other close by
Billingsgate--supply more especially the street-sellers, and the
street-traffic is considerable. Gold fish is one of the things which
people buy when brought to their doors, but which they seldom care to
“order.” The importunity of children when a man unexpectedly tempts
them with a display of such brilliant creatures as gold fish, is
another great promotive of the street-trade; and the street-traders are
the best customers of the wholesale purveyors, buying somewhere about
three-fourths of their whole stock. The dealers keep their fish in
tanks suited to the purpose, but goldfish are never bred in London. The
English-reared gold fish are “raised” for the most part, as respects
the London market, in several places in Essex. In some parts they are
bred in warm ponds, the water being heated by the steam from adjacent
machinery, and in some places they are found to thrive well. Some are
imported from France, Holland, and Belgium; some are brought from the
Indies, and are usually sold to the dealers to improve their breed,
which every now and then, I was told, “required a foreign mixture,
or they didn’t keep up their colour.” The Indian and foreign fish,
however, are also sold in the streets; the dealers, or rather the
Essex breeders, who are often in London, have “just the pick of them,”
usually through the agency of their town customers. The English-reared
gold fish are not much short of three-fourths of the whole supply, as
the importation of these fishes is troublesome; and unless they are
sent under the care of a competent person, or unless the master or
steward of a vessel is made to incur a share in the venture, by being
paid so much freight-money for as many gold and silver fishes as are
landed in good health, and nothing for the dead or dying, it is very
hazardous sending them on shipboard at all, as in case of neglect they
may all die during the voyage.

The gold and silver fish are of the carp species, and are natives of
China, but they were first introduced into this country from Portugal
about 1690. Some are still brought from Portugal. They have been common
in England for about 120 years.

These fish are known in the street-trade as “globe” and “pond” fish.
The distinction is not one of species, nor even of the “variety” of a
species, but merely a distinction of size. The larger fish are “pond;”
the smaller, “globe.” But the difference on which the street-sellers
principally dwell is that the pond fish are far more troublesome to
keep by them in a “slack time,” as they must be fed and tended most
sedulously. Their food is stale bread or biscuit. The “globe” fish
are not fed at all by the street-dealer, as the animalcules and the
minute insects in the water suffice for their food. Soft, rain, or
sometimes Thames water, is used for the filling of the globe containing
a street-seller’s gold fish, the water being changed twice a day, at a
public-house or elsewhere, when the hawker is on a round. Spring-water
is usually rejected, as the soft water contains “more feed.” One man,
however, told me he had recourse to the street-pumps for a renewal
of water, twice, or occasionally thrice a day, when the weather was
sultry; but spring or well water “wouldn’t do at all.” He was quite
unconscious that he was using it from the pump.

The wholesale price of these fish ranges from 5_s._ to 18_s._ per
dozen, with a higher charge for “picked fish,” when high prices must
be paid. The cost of “large silvers,” for instance, which are scarcer
than “large golds,” so I heard them called, is sometimes 5_s._ apiece,
even to a retailer, and rarely less than 3_s._ 6_d._ The most frequent
price, retail from the hawker--for almost all the fish are hawked, but
only there, I presume, for a temporary purpose--is 2_s._ the pair. The
gold fish are now always hawked in glass globes, containing about a
dozen occupants, within a diameter of twelve inches. These globes are
sold by the hawker, or, if ordered, supplied by him on his next round
that way, the price being about 2_s._ Glass globes, for the display
of gold fish, are indeed manufactured at from 6_d._ to 1_l._ 10_s._
each, but 2_s._ or 2_s._ 6_d._ is the usual limit to the price of
those vended in the street. The fish are lifted out of the water in
the globe to consign to a purchaser, by being caught in a neat net,
of fine and different-coloured cordage, always carried by the hawker,
and manufactured for the trade at 2_s._ the dozen. Neat handles for
these nets, of stained or plain wood, are 1_s._ the dozen. The dealers
avoid touching the fish with their hands. Both gold fish and glass
globes are much cheaper than they were ten years ago; the globes are
cheaper, of course, since the alteration in the tax on glass, and the
street-sellers are, numerically, nearly double what they were.

From a well-looking and well-spoken youth of 21 or 22, I had the
following account. He was the son, and grandson, of costermongers, but
was--perhaps, in consequence of his gold-fish selling lying among a
class not usually the costermongers’ customers--of more refined manners
than the generality of the costers’ children.

“I’ve been in the streets, sir,” he said, “helping my father, until I
was old enough to sell on my own account, since I was six years old.
_Yes, I like a street life, I’ll tell you the plain truth, for I was
put by my father to a paperstainer, and found I couldn’t bear to stay
in doors. It would have killed me._ Gold fish are as good a thing to
sell as anything else, perhaps, but I’ve been a costermonger as well,
and have sold both fruit and good fish--salmon and fine soles. Gold
fish are not good for eating. I tried one once, just out of curiosity,
and it tasted very bitter indeed; I tasted it boiled. I’ve worked both
town and country on gold fish. I’ve served both Brighton and Hastings.
The fish were sent to me by rail, in vessels with air-holes, when I
wanted more. I never stopped at lodging-houses, but at respectable
public-houses, where I could be well suited in the care of my fish.
It’s an expense, but there’s no help for it.” [A costermonger, when
I questioned him on the subject, told me that he had sometimes sold
gold fish in the country, and though he had often enough slept in
common lodging-houses, he never could carry his fish there, for he
felt satisfied, although he had never tested the fact, that in nine
out of ten such places, the fish, in the summer season, would half of
them die during the night from the foul air.] “Gold fish sell better
in the country than town,” the street-dealer continued; “much better.
They’re more thought of in the country. My father’s sold them all over
the world, as the saying is. I’ve sold both foreign and English fish. I
prefer English. They’re the hardiest; Essex fish. The foreign--I don’t
just know what part--are bred in milk ponds; kept fresh and sweet,
of course; and when they’re brought here, and come to be put in cold
water, they soon die. In Essex they’re bred in cold water. They live
about three years; that’s their lifetime if they’re properly seen to. I
don’t know what kind of fish gold fish are. I’ve heard that they first
came from China. No, I can’t read, and I’m very sorry for it. If I have
time next winter I’ll get taught. Gentlemen sometimes ask me to sit
down, and talk to me about fish, and their history (natural history),
and I’m often at a loss, which I mightn’t be if I could read. If I
have fish left after my day’s work, I never let them stay in the globe
I’ve hawked them in, but put them into a large pan, a tub sometimes,
three-parts full of water, where they have room. My customers are
ladies and gentlemen, but I have sold to shopkeepers, such as
buttermen, that often show gold fish and flowers in their shops. The
fish don’t live long in the very small globes, but they’re put in them
sometimes just to satisfy children. I’ve sold as many as two dozen at
a time to stock a pond in a gentleman’s garden. It’s the best sale a
little way out of town, in any direction. I sell six dozen a week, I
think, one week with another; they’ll run as to price at 1_s._ apiece.
That six dozen includes what I sell both in town and country. Perhaps I
sell them nearly three-parts of the year. Some hawk all the year, but
it’s a poor winter trade. Yes, I make a very fair living; 2_s._ 6_d._
or 3_s._ or so, a day, perhaps, on gold fish, when the weather suits.”

A man, to whom I was referred as an experienced gold fish-seller,
had just returned, when I saw him, from the sale of a stock of new
potatoes, peas, &c., which he “worked” in a donkey cart. He had not
this season, he said, started in the gold-fish line, and did very
little last year in it, as his costermongering trade kept steady, but
his wife thought gold fish-selling was a better trade, and she always
accompanied him in his street rounds; so he might take to it again. In
his youth he was in the service of an old lady who had several pets,
and among them were gold fish, of which she was very proud, always
endeavouring to procure the finest, a street-seller being sure of her
as a customer if he had fish larger or deeper or brighter-coloured than
usual. She kept them both in stone cisterns, or small ponds, in her
garden, and in glass globes in the house. Of these fish my informant
had the care, and was often commended for his good management of them.
After his mistress’s death he was very unlucky, he said, in his places.
His last master having been implicated, he believed, in some gambling
and bill-discounting transactions, left the kingdom suddenly, and my
informant was without a character, for the master he served previously
to the one who went off so abruptly was dead, and a character two
years back was of no use, for people said, “But where have you been
living since? Let me know all about that.” The man did not know what to
do, for his money was soon exhausted: “I had nothing left,” he said,
“which I could turn into money except a very good great coat, which had
belonged to my last master, and which was given to me because he went
off without paying me my wages. I thought of ’listing, for I was tired
of a footman’s life, _almost always in the house in such places as I
had_, but I was too old, I feared, and if I could have got over that
I knew I should be rejected because I was getting bald. I was sitting
thinking whatever could be done--I wasn’t married then--and had nobody
to consult with; when I heard the very man as used to serve my old
lady crying gold fish in the street. It struck me all of a heap, and I
wonder I hadn’t thought of it before, when I recollected how well I’d
managed the fish, that I’d sell gold fish too, and hawk it as he did,
as it didn’t seem such a bad trade. So I asked the man all about it,
and he told me, and I raised a sovereign on my great coat, and that was
my start in the streets. I was nervous, and a little ’shamed at first,
but I soon got over that, and in time turned my hand to fruit and other
things. Gold fish saved my life, sir; I do believe that, for I might
have pined into a consumption if I’d been without something to do, and
something to eat much longer.”

If we calculate, in order to allow for the cessation of the trade
during the winter, and often in the summer when costermongering is
at its best, that but half the above-mentioned number of gold-fish
sellers hawk in the streets and that for but half a year, each selling
six dozen weekly at 12_s._ the dozen, we find 65,520 fish sold, at
an outlay of 3276_l._ As the country is also “worked” by the London
street-sellers, and the supply is derived from London, the number and
amount may be doubled to include this traffic, or 131,040 fish sold,
and 6552_l._ expended.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF TORTOISES.

The number of tortoises sold in the streets of London is far greater
than might be imagined, for it is a creature of no utility, and one
which is inanimate in this country for half its life.

Of live tortoises, there are 20,000 annually imported from the port of
Mogadore in Morocco. They are not brought over, as are the parrots,
&c., of which I have spoken, for amusement or as private ventures of
the seamen, but are regularly consigned from Jewish houses in Mogadore,
to Jewish merchants in London. They are a freight of which little care
is taken, as they are brought over principally as ballast in the ship’s
hold, where they remain torpid.

The street-sellers of tortoises are costermongers of the smarter
class. Sometimes the vendors of shells and foreign birds “work” also
a few tortoises, and occasionally a wholesale dealer (the consignee
of the Jewish house in Africa) will send out his own servants to sell
barrow-loads of tortoises in the street on his own account. They are
regularly ranged on the barrows, and certainly present a curious
appearance--half-alive creatures as they are (when the weather is not
of the warmest), brought from another continent for sale by thousands
in the streets of London, and retention in the gardens and grounds of
our civic villas. Of the number imported, one-half, or 10,000, are
yearly sold in the streets by the several open-air dealers I have
mentioned. The wholesale price is from 4_s._ to 6_s._ the dozen; they
are retailed from 6_d._ to 1_s._, a very fine well-grown tortoise being
sometimes worth 2_s._ 6_d._ The mass, however, are sold at 6_d._ to
9_d._ each, but many fetch 1_s._ They are bought for children, and
to keep in gardens as I have said, and when properly fed on lettuce
leaves, spinach, and similar vegetables, or on white bread sopped in
water, will live a long time. If the tortoise be neglected in a garden,
and have no access to his favourite food, he will eat almost any
green thing which comes in his way, and so may commit ravages. During
the winter, and the later autumn and earlier spring, the tortoise is
torpid, and may be kept in a drawer or any recess, until the approach
of summer “thaws” him, as I heard it called.

Calculating the average price of tortoises in street-sale at 8_d._
each, we find upwards of 333_l._ thus expended yearly.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SNAILS, FROGS, WORMS, SNAKES, HEDGEHOGS, ETC.

I class together these several kinds of live creatures, as they are
all “gathered” and sold by the same persons--principally by the men
who supply bird-food, of whom I have given accounts in my statements
concerning groundsel, chickweed, plaintain, and turf-selling.

The principal _snail-sellers_, however, are the turf-cutters, who are
young and active men, while the groundsel-sellers are often old and
infirm and incapable of working all night, as the necessities of the
snail-trade often require. Of turf-cutters there were, at the time of
my inquiry last winter, 42 in London, and of these full one-third are
regular purveyors of snails, such being the daintier diet of the caged
blackbirds and thrushes. These men obtain their supply of snails in the
market-gardens, the proprietors willingly granting leave to any known
or duly recommended person who will rid them of these depredators.
Seven-eighths of the quantity gathered are sold to the bird-dealers, to
whom the price is 2_d._ a quart. The other eighth is sold on a street
round at from 3_d._ to 6_d._ the quart. A quart contains at least 80
snails, not heaped up, their shells being measured along with them. One
man told me there were “100 snails to a fair quart.”

When it is moonlight at this season of the year, the snail gatherers
sometimes work all night; at other times from an hour before sunset to
the decline of daylight, the work being resumed at the dawn. To gather
12 quarts in a night, or a long evening and morning, is accounted a
prosperous harvest. Half that quantity is “pretty tidy.” An experienced
man said to me:--

“The best snail grounds, sir, you may take my word for it, is in Putney
and Barnes. It’s the ‘greys’ we go for, the fellows with the shells
on ’em; the black snails or slugs is no good to us. I think snails is
the slowest got money of any. I don’t suppose they get’s scarcer, but
there’s good seasons for snails and there’s bad. Warm and wet is best.
We don’t take the little ’uns. They come next year. I may make 1_l._ a
year, or a little more, in snails. In winter there’s hardly anything
done in them, and the snails is on the ground; in summer they’re on the
walls or leaves. They’ll keep six months without injury; they’ll keep
the winter round indeed in a proper place.”

I am informed that the 14 snail gatherers on the average gather six
dozen quarts each in a year, which supplies a total of 12,096 quarts,
or individually, 1,189,440 snails. The labourers in the gardens, I am
informed, may gather somewhat more than an equal quantity,--all being
sold to the bird-shops; so that altogether the supply of snails for the
caged thrushes and blackbirds of London is about two millions and a
half. Computing them at 24,000 quarts, and only at 2_d._ a quart, the
outlay is 200_l._ per annum.

The _Frogs_ sold by street-people are, at the rate of about 36 dozen
a year, disposed of in equal proportion to University and King’s
Colleges. Only two men collect the frogs, one for each hospital.
They are charged 1_d._ each:--“I’ve sometimes,” said one of the
frog-purveyors, “come on a place where I could have got six or seven
dozen in a day, but that’s mostly been when I didn’t want them. At
other times I’ve gone days without collaring a single frog. I only want
them four times a year, and four or five dozen at a time. The low part
of Hampstead’s the best ground for them, I think. The doctors like
big fellows. They keep them in water ’til they’re wanted to dissect.”
One man thought that there might be 50 more frogs or upwards ordered
yearly, through the bird-shops, for experiments under air-pumps, &c.
This gives about 500 frogs sold yearly by the street-people. One year,
however, I was told, the supply was larger, for a Camberwell gentleman
ordered 40 frogs to stock a watery place at the foot of his garden, as
he liked to hear and see them.

The _Toad_ trade is almost a nonentity. One man, who was confident
he had as good a trade in that line as any of his fellows, told me
that last year he only supplied one toad; in one year, he forgot the
precise time, he collected ten. He was confident that from 12 to 24 a
year was now the extent of the toad trade, perhaps 20. There was no
regular price, and the men only “work to order.” “It’s just what the
shopkeeper, mostly a herbalist, likes to give.” I was told, from 1_d._
to 6_d._ according to size. “I don’t know what they’re wanted for,
something about the doctors, I believe. But if you want any toads, sir,
for anything, I know a place between Hampstead and Willesden, where
there’s real stunners.”

_Worms_ are collected in small quantities by the street-sellers, and
very grudgingly, for they are to be supplied gratuitously to the
shopkeepers who are the customers of the turf-cutters, and snail and
worm collectors. “They expects it as a parquisite, like.” One man told
me that they only gathered ground worms for the bird-fanciers.

Of the _Snakes_ and _Hedgehogs_ I have already spoken, when treating of
the collection of birds’-nests. I am told that some few _glow-worms_
are collected.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MINERAL PRODUCTIONS AND NATURAL CURIOSITIES.

The class of which I have now to treat, including as it does the
street-sellers of coal, coke, tan-turf, salt, and sand, seem to have
been called into existence principally by the necessities of the
poorer classes. As the earnings of thousands of men, in all the slop,
“slaughter-house,” or “scamping” branches of tailoring, shoe-making,
cabinet-making, joining, &c. have become lower and lower, they are
compelled to purchase the indispensable articles of daily consumption
in the smallest quantities, and at irregular times, just as the
money is in their possession. This is more especially the case as
regards chamber-masters and garret-masters (among the shoemakers)
and cabinet-makers, who, as they are small masters, and working on
their own account, have not even such a regularity of payment as the
journeyman of the slop-tailor. Among these poor artizans, moreover,
the wife must slave with the husband, and it is often an object with
them to save the time lost in going out to the chandler’s-shop or the
coal-shed, to have such things as coal, and coke brought to their very
doors, and vended in the smallest quantities. It is the same with the
women who work for the slop-shirt merchants, &c., or make cap-fronts,
&c., on their own account, for the supply of the shopkeepers, or the
wholesale swag-men, who sell low-priced millinery. The street-sellers
of the class I have now to notice are, then, the principal purveyors of
the very poor.

The men engaged in the street-sale of coal and coke--the chief articles
of this branch of the street-sale--are of the costermonger class,
as, indeed, is usually the case where an exercise of bodily strength
is requisite. Costermongers, too, are better versed than any other
street-folk in the management of barrows, carts, asses, ponies, or
horses, so that when these vehicles and these animals are a necessary
part of any open-air business, it will generally be found in the hands
of the coster class.

Nor is this branch of the street-traffic confined solely to articles of
necessity. Under my present enumeration will be found the street-sale
of _shells_, an ornament of the mantel-piece above the fire-grate to
which coal is a necessity.

The present division will complete the subject of Street _Sale_ in the
metropolis.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF COALS.

According to the returns of the coal market for the last few years,
there has been imported into London, on an average, 3,500,000 tons
of sea-borne coal annually. Besides this immense supply, the various
railways have lately poured in a continuous stream of the same
commodity from the inland districts, which has found a ready sale
without sensibly affecting the accustomed vend of the north country
coals, long established on the Coal Exchange.

To the very poor the importance of coal can be scarcely estimated.
Physiological and medical writers tell us that carbonaceous food is
that which produces heat in the body, and is therefore the fuel of the
system. Experience tells us that this is true; for who that has had
an opportunity of visiting the habitations of the poor--the dwellers
in ill-furnished rooms and garrets--has not remarked the more than
half-starved slop needle-woman, the wretched half-naked children of the
casually employed labourer, as the dock-man, or those whose earnings
are extorted from them by their employers, such as the ballast-man,
sitting crouched around the smouldering embers in the place where the
fire ought to be? The reason of this is, because the system of the
sufferer by long want of food has been deprived of the necessary
internal heat, and so seeks instinctively to supply the deficiency by
imbibing it from some outward source. It is on this account chiefly,
I believe, that I have found the ill-paid and ill-fed workpeople
prize warmth almost more than food. Among the poorest Irish, I have
invariably found them crowding round the wretched fire when they had
nothing to eat.

The census returns of the present year (according to the accounts
published in the newspapers) estimate the number of the inhabitants of
London at 2,363,141, and the number of inhabited houses as 307,722.
Now if we take into consideration that in the immense suburbs of
the metropolis, there are branching off from almost every street,
labyrinths of courts and alleys, teeming with human beings, and that
almost every room has its separate family--for it takes a multitude of
poor to make one rich man--we may be able to arrive at the conclusion
that by far the greater proportion of coals brought into London are
consumed by the poorer classes. It is on this account of the highest
importance, that honesty should be the characteristic of those engaged
in the vend and distribution of an article so necessary not only to the
comfort but to the very existence of the great masses of the population.

The modes in which the coals imported into London are distributed to
the various classes of consumers are worthy of observation, as they
unmistakably exhibit not only the wealth of the few, but the poverty
of the many. The inhabitants of Belgravia, the wealthy shopkeepers,
and many others periodically see at their doors the well-loaded waggon
of the coal merchant, with two or three swarthy “coal-porters” bending
beneath the black heavy sacks, in the act of laying in the 10 or 20
tons for yearly or half-yearly consumption. But this class is supplied
from a very different quarter from that of the artizans, labourers, and
many others, who, being unable to spare money sufficient to lay in at
once a ton or two of coals, must have recourse to other means. To meet
their limited resources, there may be found in every part, always in
back streets, persons known as coal-shed men, who get the coals from
the merchant in 7, 14, or 20 tons at a time, and retail them from 1/4
cwt. upwards. The coal-shed men are a very numerous class, for there is
not a low neighbourhood in any part of the city which contains not two
or three of them in every street.

There is yet another class of purchasers of coals, however, which I
have called the ‘very poor,’--the inhabitants of two pairs back--the
dwellers in garrets, &c. It seems to have been for the purpose of
meeting the wants of this class that the street-sellers of coals have
sprung into existence. Those who know nothing of the decent pride which
often lingers among the famishing poor, can scarcely be expected to
comprehend the great boon that the street-sellers of coals, if they
could only be made honest and conscientious dealers, are calculated
to confer on these people. “I have seen,” says a correspondent, “the
starveling child of misery, in the gloom of the evening, steal timidly
into the shop of the coal-shed man, and in a tremulous voice ask, as if
begging a great favour, for _seven pound of coals_. The coal-shed man
has set down his pint of beer, taken the pipe from his mouth, blowing
after it a cloud of smoke, and in a gruff voice, at which the little
wretch has shrunk up (if it were possible) into a less space than
famine had already reduced her to, and demanded--‘Who told you as how
I sarves seven pound o’ coal?--Go to Bill C---- he may sarve you if he
likes--I won’t, and that’s an end on ’t--I wonders what people wants
with seven pound o’ coal.’ The coal-shed man, after delivering himself
of this enlightened observation, has placidly resumed his pipe, while
the poor child, gliding out into the drizzling sleet, disappeared in
the darkness.”

The street-sellers vend any quantity at the very door of the purchaser,
without rendering it necessary for them to expose their poverty to the
prying eyes of the neighbourhood; and, as I have said were the street
dealers only honest, they would be conferring a great boon upon the
poorer portion of the people, but unhappily it is scarcely possible
for them to be so, and realize a profit for themselves. The police
reports of the last year show that many of the coal merchants, standing
high in the estimation of the world, have been heavily fined for using
false weights; and, did the present inquiry admit of it, there might
be mentioned many other infamous practices by which the public are
shamefully plundered in this commodity, and which go far to prove
that the coal trade, _in toto_, is a gigantic fraud. May I ask how it
is possible for the street-sellers, with such examples of barefaced
dishonesty before their eyes, even to dream of acting honestly? If
not actually certain, yet strongly suspecting, that they themselves
are defrauded by the merchant, how can it be otherwise than that they
should resort to every possible mode of defrauding their customers, and
so add to the already almost unendurable burdens of the poorest of the
poor, who by one means or other are made to bear all the burdens of the
country?

The usual quantity of coals consumed in the poorest rooms, in which
a family resides, is 1/2 cwt. per week in summer, and 1 cwt. do. in
winter, or about 2 tons per annum.

The street sale of coals was carried on to a considerable extent during
the earlier part of the last century, “small coalmen” being among the
regular street-traders. The best known of these was Tom Britton, who
died through fright occasioned by a practical joke. He was a great
fosterer of a taste for music among the people; for, after hawking his
coals during the day, he had a musical gathering in his humble abode
in the evening, to which many distinguished persons resorted. This is
alluded to in the lines, by Hughes, under Tom Britton’s portrait, and
the allusion, according to the poetic fashion of the time being made by
means of a strained classicality:--

“Cyllenius so, as fables tell, and Jove,
Came willing guests to poor Philemon’s grove.”

The trade seems to have disappeared gradually, but has recently been
revived in another form.

Some few years ago an ingenious and enterprising costermonger, during
a “slack” in his own business, conceived the idea of purchasing some
of the refuse of the coals at the wharfs, conveying them round the
poorer localities of his beat, in his ass- or pony-cart, and vending
them to “room-keepers” and others, in small quantities and at a reduced
rate, so as to undersell the coal-shed men, while making for himself a
considerable profit. The example was not lost upon his fraternity, and
no long time had elapsed before many others had started in the same
line; this eventually took so much custom from the regular coal-shed
men, that, as a matter of self-defence, those among them who had a
horse and cart, found it necessary to compete with the originators of
the system in their own way, and, being possessed of more ample means,
they succeeded, in a great measure, in driving the costers out of the
field. The success of the coal-shed men was for a time so well followed
up, that they began by degrees to edge away from the lanes and alleys,
extending their excursions into quarters somewhat more aristocratic,
and even there establishing a trade amongst those who had previously
taken their ton or half ton of coals from the “brass-plate merchant,”
as he is called in the trade, being a person who merely procures orders
for coals, gets some merchant who buys in the coal market to execute
them in his name, and manages to make a living by the profits of these
transactions. Some of this latter class consequently found themselves
compelled to adopt a mode of doing their business somewhat similar, and
for that purpose hired vans from the proprietors of those vehicles,
loaded them with sacks of coals, drove round among their customers,
prepared to furnish them with sacks or half sacks, as they felt
disposed. Finally, many of the van proprietors themselves, finding that
business might be done in this way, started in the line, and, being in
general men of some means, established it as a regular trade. The van
proprietors at the present time do the greater part of the business,
but there may occasionally be seen, employed in this traffic, all sorts
of conveyances, from the donkey-cart of the costermonger, or dock
labourer, the latter of whom endeavours to make up for the miserable
pittance he can earn at the rate of fourpence per hour, by the profits
of this calling, to the aristocratic van, drawn along by two plump,
well-fed horses, the property of a man worth 800_l._ or 900_l._

The van of the street-seller of coals is easily distinguished from
the waggon of the regular merchant. The merchant’s waggon is always
loaded with sacks standing perpendicularly; it is drawn by four
immense horses, and is driven along by a gaunt figure, begrimed with
coal-dust, and “sporting” ancle boots, or shoes and gaiters, white, or
what ought to be white, stockings, velvet knee-breeches, short tarry
smock-frock, and a huge fantail hat slouching half-way down his back.
The street-seller’s vehicle, on the contrary, has the coals shot into
it without sacks; while, on a tailboard, extending behind, lie weights
and scales. It is most frequently drawn by one horse, but sometimes
by two, with bells above their collars jingling as they go, or else
the driver at intervals rings a bell like a dustman’s, to announce his
approach to the neighbourhood.

The street-sellers formerly purchased their coals from any of the
merchants along the river-side; generally the refuse, or what remained
after the best had been picked out by “skreening” or otherwise; but
always taking a third or fourth quality as most suitable for their
purpose. But since the erection of machinery for getting coals out
of the ships in the Regent’s Canal basin, they have resorted to that
place, as the coals are at once shot from the box in which they are
raised from the hold of the ship, into the cart or van, saving all the
trouble of being filled in sacks by coal porters, and carried on their
backs from the ship, barge, or heap, preparatory to their being emptied
into the van; thus getting them at a cheaper rate, and consequently
being enabled to realize a greater profit.

Since the introduction of inland coals, also, by the railways, many of
the street-sellers have either wholly, or in part, taken to sell them
on account of the lower rate at which they can be purchased; sometimes
they vend them unmixed, but more frequently they mix them up with “the
small” of north country coals of better quality, and palm off the
compound as “genuine Wallsend direct from the ship:” this (together
with short weights) being, in fact, the principal source of their
profit.

It occasionally happens that a merchant purchases in the market a cargo
of coals which turns out to be damaged, very small, or of inferior
quality. In such cases he usually refuses to take them, and it is
difficult to dispose of them in any regular way of trade. Such cargoes,
or parts of cargoes, are consequently at times bought up by some of the
more wealthy van proprietors engaged in the coal line, who realize on
them a great profit.

To commence business as a street-seller of coals requires little
capital beyond the possession of a horse and cart. The merchants in
all cases let street-sellers have any quantity of coals they may
require till they are able to dispose of them; and the street-trade
being a ready-money business, they can go on from day to day, or from
week to week, according to their pre-arrangements, so that, as far as
the commodity in which they deal is concerned, there is no outlay of
capital whatever.

There are about 30 two-horse vans continually
engaged in this trade, the price of each van
being 70_l._ This gives £2100
100 horses at 20_l._ each 1200
160 carts at 10_l._ each 1600
160 horses at 10_l._ each 1600
20 donkey or pony carts, value 1_l._ each 20
20 donkeys or ponies at 1_l._ 10_s._ each 30

Making a total of 210 vehicles continually
employed, which, with the horses, ----
&c., may be valued at 6550

This sum, with the price of 210 sets
of weights and scales, at 1_l._ 10_s._ per set 315
----
Makes a total of £6865

This may be fairly set down as the gross amount of capital at present
employed in the street-sale of coals.

It is somewhat difficult to ascertain correctly the amount of coals
distributed in this way among the poorer classes. But I have found
that they generally take two turns per day; that is they go to the
wharfs in the morning, get their vans or carts loaded, and proceed
on their various rounds. This first turn usually occupies them till
dinner-time, after which they get another load, which is sufficient to
keep them employed till night. Now if we allow each van to carry two
and a half tons, it will make for all 150 tons per day, or 900 tons per
week. In the same manner allowing the 160 carts to carry a ton each,
it will give 320 tons per day, or 1920 tons per week, and the twenty
pony carts half a ton each, 40 tons per day, or 240 tons per week,
making a total of 3060 tons per week, or 159,120 tons per annum. This
quantity purchased from the merchants at 14_s._ 6_d._ per ton amounts
to 115,362_l._ annually, and sold at the rate of 1_s._ per cwt., or
1_l._ per ton, leaves 5_s._ 6_d._ per ton profit, or a total profit of
43,758_l._, and this profit divided according to the foregoing account
gives the subjoined amounts, viz.:--

To each two-horse van regularly employed
throughout the year, a profit of £429 0
To each one-horse cart, ditto, ditto, 171 12
To each pony cart, ditto, ditto, 121 12

From which must, of course, be made the necessary deductions for the
keep of the animals and the repair of vehicles, harness, &c.

The keep of a good horse is 10_s._ per week; a pony 6_s._ Three horses
can be kept for the price of two, and so on; the more there are, the
less cost for each.

The localities where the street-sellers of coals may most frequently
be met with, are Blackwall, Poplar, Limehouse, Stepney, St. George’s
East, Twig Folly, Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, Shoreditch, Kingsland,
Haggerstone, and Islington. It is somewhat remarkable that they are
almost unknown on the south side of the Thames, and are seldom or never
to be encountered in the low streets and lanes in Westminster lying
contiguous to the river, nor in the vicinity of Marylebone, nor in any
place farther west than Shoreditch; this is on account of the distance
from the Regent’s Canal basin precluding the possibility of their
making more than one turn in the day, which would greatly diminish
their profits, even though they might get a higher price for their
commodity.

It may be observed that the foregoing statement in figures is rather
under the mark than otherwise, as it is founded on the amount of coals
purchased at a certain rate, and sold at a certain profit, without
taking into account any of the “dodges” which almost all classes of
coal dealers, from the highest to the lowest, are known to practise,
so that the rate of profit arising from this business may be fairly
supposed to amount to much more than the above account can show in
figures.

I received the following statement from a person engaged in the street
traffic:--

“I kept a coal-shed and greengrocer’s shop, and as I had a son grown
up, I wanted to get something for him to do; so about six years ago,
having a pony and cart, and seeing others selling coals through the
street, I thought I’d make him try his hand at it. I went to Mr.
B----’s, at Whiting’s wharf, and got the cart loaded, and sent my son
round our own neighbourhood. I found that he soon disposed of them, and
so he went on by degrees. People think we get a great deal of profit,
but we don’t get near as much as they think. I paid 16_s._ a ton all
the winter for coals and sold them for a shilling a hundred, and when
I came to feed the horse I found that he’ll nearly eat it all up. A
horse’s belly is not so easy to fill. I don’t think my son earns much
more now, in summer, than feeds the horse. It’s different in winter;
he does not sell more nor half a ton a day now the weather’s so warm.
In winter he can always sell a ton at the least, and sometimes two,
and on the Saturday he might sell three or four. My cart holds a ton;
the vans hold from two to three tons. I can’t exactly tell how many
people are engaged in selling coals in the street, but there are a
great many, that’s certain. About eight o’clock what a number of carts
and vans you’ll see about the Regent’s Canal! They like to get away
before breakfast, because then they may have another turn after dinner.
There’s a great many go to other places for coals. The people who have
vans do much better than those with the carts, because they carry so
much that they save time. There are no great secrets in our business;
we haven’t the same chance of ‘doing the thing’ as the merchants have.
They can mix the coals up as they like for their customers, and sell
them for best; all we can do is to buy a low quality; then we may lose
our customers if we play any tricks. To be sure, after that we can go
to parts where we’re not known. I don’t use light weights, but I know
it’s done by a good many, and they mix up small coals a good deal, and
that of course helps their profits. My son generally goes four or five
miles before he sells a ton of coals, and in summer weather a great
deal farther. It’s hard-earned money that’s got at it, I can tell you.
My cart is worth 12_l._; I have a van worth 20_l._ I wouldn’t take
20_l._ for my horse. My van holds two tons of coals, and the horse
draws it easily. I send the van out in the winter when there’s a good
call, but in the summer I only send it out on the Saturday. I never
calculated how much profit I made. I haven’t the least idea how much is
got by it, but I’m sure there’s not near as much as you say. Why, if
there was, I ought to have made a fortune by this time.” [It is right
I should state that I received the foregoing account of the profits of
the street trade in coals from one practically and eminently acquainted
with it.] “Some in the trade have done very well, but they were well
enough off before. I know very well I’ll never make a fortune at
anything; I’ll be satisfied if I keep moving along, so as to keep out
of the Union.”

As to the habits of the street-sellers of coals, they are as various
as their different circumstances will admit; but they closely resemble
each other in one general characteristic--their provident and careful
habits. Many of them have risen from struggling costermongers, to be
men of substance, with carts, vans, and horses of their own. Some of
the more wealthy of the class may be met with now and then in the
parlours of respectable public houses, where they smoke their pipes,
sip their brandy and water, and are remarkable for the shrewdness
of their remarks. They mingle freely with the respectable tradesmen
of their own localities, and may be seen, especially on the Sunday
afternoons, with their wives and showily-dressed daughters in the
gardens of the New Globe, or Green Dragon--the Cremorne and Vauxhall
of the east. I visited the house of one of those who I was told
had originally been a costermonger. The front portion of the shop
was almost filled with coals, he having added to his occupation of
street-seller the business of a coal-shed man; this his wife and a
little boy managed in his absence; while, true to his early training,
the window-ledge and a bench before it were heaped up with cabbages,
onions, and other vegetables. In an open space opposite his door, I
observed a one-horse cart and two or three trucks with his name painted
thereon. At his invitation, I passed through what may be termed the
shop, and entered the parlour, a neat room nicely carpeted, with a
round table in the centre, chairs ranged primly round the walls, and
a long looking-glass reflecting the china shepherds and shepherdesses
on the mantel-piece, while, framed and glazed, all around were
highly-coloured prints, among which, Dick Turpin, in flash red coat,
gallantly clearing the toll-gate in his celebrated ride to York, and
Jack Sheppard lowering himself down from the window of the lock-up
house, were most conspicuous. In the window lay a few books, and one or
two old copies of _Bell’s Life_. Among the well thumbed books, I picked
out the _Newgate Calendar_, and the “_Calendar of Orrers_,” as he
called it, of which he expressed a very high opinion. “Lor bless you,”
he exclaimed, “them there stories is the vonderfullest in the vorld!
I’d never ha believed it, if I adn’t seed it vith my own two hies, but
there can’t be no mistake ven I read it hout o’ the book, can there,
now? I jist asks yer that ere plain question.”

Of his career he gave me the following account:--“I vos at von time a
coster, riglarly brought up to the business, the times vas good then;
but lor, ve used to lush at sich a rate! About ten year ago, I ses to
meself, I say Bill, I’m blowed if this here game ’ill do any longer. I
had a good moke (donkey), and a tidyish box ov a cart; so vot does I
do, but goes and sees von o’ my old pals that gits into the coal-line
somehow. He and I goes to the Bell and Siven Mackerels in the Mile
End Road, and then he tells me all he knowed, and takes me along vith
hisself, and from that time I sticks to the coals.

“I niver cared much about the lush myself, and ven I got avay from the
old uns, I didn’t mind it no how; but Jack my pal vos a awful lushy
cove, he couldn’t do no good at nothink, votsomever; he died they
say of _lirium trumans_” [not understanding what he meant, I inquired
of what it was he died]; “why, of _lirium trumans_, vich I takes to
be too much of Trueman and Hanbury’s heavy; so I takes varnin by poor
Jack, and cuts the lush; but if you thinks as ve don’t enjoy ourselves
sometimes, I tells you, you don’t know nothink about it. I’m gittin on
like a riglar house a fire.”

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF COKE.

Among the occupations that have sprung up of late years is that of the
purchase and distribution of the refuse cinders or coke obtained from
the different gas-works, which are supplied at a much cheaper rate
than coal. Several of the larger gas companies burn as many as 100,000
tons of coals per annum, and some even more, and every ton thus burnt
is stated to leave behind two chaldrons of coke, returning to such
companies 50 per cent. of their outlay upon the coal. The distribution
of coke is of the utmost importance to those whose poverty forces them
to use it instead of coal.

It is supposed that the ten gas companies in and about the metropolis
produce at least 1,400,000 chaldrons of coke, which are distributed to
the poorer classes by vans, one-horse carts, donkey carts, trucks, and
itinerant vendors who carry one, and in some cases two sacks lashed
together on their backs, from house to house.

The van proprietors are those who, having capital, contract with the
companies at a fixed rate per chaldron the year through, and supply
the numerous retail shops at the current price, adding 3_d._ per
chaldron for carriage; thus speculating upon the rise or fall of the
article, and in most cases carrying on a very lucrative business. This
class numbers about 100 persons, and are to be distinguished by the
words “coke contractor,” painted on a showy ground on the exterior of
their handsome well-made vehicles; they add to their ordinary business
the occupation of conveying to their destination the coke that the
companies sell from time to time. These men have generally a capital,
or a reputation for capital, to the extent of 400_l._ or 500_l._, and
in some cases more, and they usually enter into their contracts with
the companies in the summer, when but small quantities of fuel are
required, and the gas-works are incommoded for want of space to contain
the quantity made. They are consequently able, by their command of
means, to make advantageous bargains, and several instances are known
of men starting with a wheelbarrow in this calling and who are now the
owners of the dwellings in which they reside, and have goods, vans, and
carts besides.

Another class, to whom may be applied much that has been said of the
van proprietors, are the possessors of one-horse carts, who in many
instances keep small shops for the sale of greens, coals, &c. These men
are scattered over the whole metropolis, but as they do not exclusively
obtain their living by vending this article, they do not properly
belong to this portion of the inquiry.

A very numerous portion of the distributors of coke are the donkey-cart
men, who are to be seen in all the poorer localities with a quantity
shot in the bottom of their cart, and two or three sacks on the top or
fastened underneath--for it is of a light nature--ready to meet the
demand, crying “Coke! coke! coke!” morning, noon, and night. This they
sell as low as 2_d._ per bushel, coke having, in consequence of the
cheapness of coals, been sold at the gas-works by the single sack as
low as 7_d._, and although there is here a seeming contradiction--that
of a man selling and living by the loss--such is not in reality the
case. It should be remembered that a bushel of good coke will weigh
40 lbs., and that the bushels of these men rarely exceed 25 lbs.; so
that it will be seen that by this unprincipled mode of dealing they can
seemingly sell for less than they give, and yet realize a good profit.
The two last classes are those who own a truck or wheelbarrow or are
the fortunate possessors of an athletic frame and broad shoulders,
who roam about near the vicinity of the gas-works, soliciting custom,
obtaining ready cash if possible, but in most cases leaving one sack on
credit, and obtaining a profit of from 2_d._, 3_d._, 4_d._, or more.
These men are to be seen going from house to house cleverly regulating
their arrival to such times as when the head of the family returns
home with his weekly wage, and in possession of ready cash enough to
make a bargain with the coke contractor. Another fact in connection
with this class, many of whom are women, who employ boys to drag or
carry their wares to their customers, is this: when they fail through
any cause, they put their walk up for sale, and find no difficulty to
obtain purchasers from 2_l._ to as high as 8_l._, 10_l._, and 12_l._
The street-sellers of coke number in all not less than 1500 persons,
who may be thus divided: van proprietors, 100; single horse carts,
300; donkey-cart men, 500; trucks, wheelbarrows, and “physical force
men,” 550; and women about 50, who penetrate to all the densely-crowded
districts about town distributing this useful article; the major
portion of those who are of anything like sober habits, live in
comfort; and in spite of the opinion held by many, that the consumption
of coke is injurious to health and sight, they carry on a large and
increasing business.

At the present time coke may be purchased at the gas factories at 6_s._
per chaldron; but in winter it generally rises to 10_s._, so that,
taking the average, 8_s._, it will be found, that the gas factories of
the metropolis realize no less a sum than 560,000_l._ per annum, by
the _coke_ produced in the course of their operations. And 4_s._ per
chaldron being considered a fair profit, it will be found, that the
total profit arising from its sale by the various vendors is 280,000_l._

It is impossible to arrive with any degree of certainty at the actual
amount of business done by each of the above-named classes, and the
profits consequent on that business: by dividing the above amount
equally among all the coke sellers, it will be found to give 186_l._
per annum to each person. But it will be at once seen, that the same
rule holds good in the coke trade that has already been explained
in connection with coals: those possessing vans reaping the largest
amount of profit; the one-horse cart men next; then the donkey carts,
trucks, and wheelbarrows; and, least of all, the “backers,” as they are
sometimes called.

Concerning the amount of capital invested in the street-sale of coals
it may be estimated as follows:--

If we allow 70_l._ for each of the 100
vans, it will give £7,000
20_l._ for each of the horses 2,000
300 carts at 10_l._ each 3,000
300 horses at 10_l._ each 3,000
500 donkey-carts at 1_l._ each 500
500 donkeys at 1_l._ each 500
200 trucks and barrows at 10_s._ each 100
-------
making a total of £16,000

To this must be added

4800 sacks for the 100 vans at
3_s._ 6_d._ each 840 0 0
3600 sacks for the 300 carts 630 0 0
3000 „ „ 500 donkey carts 525 0 0
1652 „ „ 550 trucks and backers 288 15 0
300 „ „ 50 women 52 10 0
--------------
£18,336 5 0
--------------

Which being added to the value of vans,
carts, and horses employed in the
street-sale of coals, viz. 6,865
--------
gives a capital of £252,015
--------

employed in the street-sale of coal and coke.

The profits of both these trades added
together, namely, that on coals 43,758
and the profit on coke 280,000
--------
shows a total profit of £323,758

to be divided among 1710 persons, who compose the class of itinerant
coal and coke vendors of the metropolis.

The following statement as to the street-sale of coke was given by a
man in good circumstances, who had been engaged in the business for
many years:--

“I am a native of the south of Ireland. More nor twenty years ago I
came to London. I had friends here working in a gas factory, and afther
a time they managed to get me into the work too. My business was to
keep the coals to the stokers, and when they emptied the retorts to
wheel the coke in barrows and empty it on the coke heap. I worked for
four or five years, off and on, at this place. I was sometimes put
out of work in the summer-time, because they don’t want as many hands
then. There’s not near so much gas burned in summer, and then, of
course, it takes less hands to make it. Well, at last I got to be a
stoker; I had betther wages thin, and a couple of pots of beer in the
day. It was dhreadful hard work, and as hot, aye, as if you were in
the inside of an oven. I don’t know how I ever stood it. Be me soul,
I don’t know how anybody stands it; it’s the divil’s place of all you
ever saw in your life, standing there before them retorts with a long
heavy rake, pullin out the red-hot coke for the bare life, and then
there’s the rake red-hot in your hands, and the hissin and the bubblin
of the wather, and the smoke and the smell--it’s fit to melt a man like
a rowl of fresh butther. I wasn’t a bit too fond of it, at any rate,
for it ’ud kill a horse; so I ses to the wife, ‘I can’t stand this much
longer, Peggy.’ Well, behold you, Peggy begins to cry and wring her
hands, thinkin we’d starve; but I knew a grate dale betther nor that,
for I was two or three times dhrinkin with some of thim that carry the
coke out of the yard in sacks to sell to the poor people, and they had
twice as much money to spind as me, that was working like a horse from
mornin to night. I had a pound or two by me, for I was always savin,
and by this time I knew a grate many people round about; so off I goes,
and asks one and another to take a sack of coke from me, and bein
knoun in the yard, and standin a dhrop o’ dhrink now and thin for the
fillers, I alway got good measure, and so I used to make four sacks out
of three, and often three out of two. Well, at last I got tired carryin
sacks on me back all day, and now I know I was a fool for doin it at
all, for it’s asier to dhrag a thruck with five or six sacks than to
carry one; so I got a second-hand thruck for little or nothin, and thin
I was able to do five times as much work in half the time. At last,
I took a notion of puttin so much every Sathurday night in the savin
bank, and faith, sir, that was the lucky notion for me, although Peggy
wouldn’t hear of it at all at all. She swore the bank ’ud be broke,
and said she could keep the goold safer in her own stockin; that thim
gintlemin in banks were all a set of blickards, and only desaved the
poor people into givin them their money to keep it thimselves. But in
spite of Peggy I put the money in, and it was well for me that I did
so, for in a short time I could count up 30 or 40 guineas in bank, and
whin Peggy saw that the bank wasn’t broke she was quite satisfied; so
one day I ses to myself, What the divil’s the use of me breakin my
heart mornin, noon, and night, dhraggin a thruck behind me, whin ever
so little a bit of a horse would dhrag ten time as much as I can? so
off I set to Smithfield, and bought a stout stump of a horse for 12_l._
10_s._, and thin wint to a sale and bought an ould cart for little or
nothin, and in less nor a month I had every farthin back again in the
bank. Well, afther this, I made more and more every day, and findin
that I paid more for the coke in winther than in summer, I thought as
I had money if I could only get a place to put a good lot in summer to
sell in winther it would be a good thing; so I begun to look about, and
found this house for sale, so I bought it out and out. It was an ould
house to be sure; but it’s sthrong enough, and dune up well enough for
a poor man--besides there’s the yard, and see in that yard there’s a
hape o’ coke for the winther. I’m buyin it up now, an it ’ill turn a
nice pinny whin the could weather comes again. To make a long story
short, I needn’t call the king my cousin. I’m sure any one can do well,
if he likes; but I don’t mane that they can do well brakin their heart
workin; divil a one that sticks to work ’ill ever be a hapenny above a
beggar; and I know if I’d stuck to it myself I’d be a grate dale worse
off now than the first day, for I’m not so young nor near so sthrong as
I was thin, and if I hadn’t lift it off in time I’d have nothin at all
to look to in a few years more but to ind my days in the workhouse--bad
luck to it.”

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF TAN-TURF.

Tan-turf is oak bark made into turf after its virtues have been
exhausted in the tan-pits. To make it into turf the manufacturers have
a mill which is turned by horse-power, in which they grind the bark to
a considerable degree of fineness, after which it is shaped by a mould
into thin cakes about six inches square, put out to dry and harden, and
when thoroughly hardened it is fit for sale and for all the uses for
which it is intended.

There is only one place in London or its neighbourhood where there
are tan-pits--in Bermondsey--and there only is the turf made. There
are not more than a dozen persons in London engaged in the sale of
this commodity in the streets, and they are all of the tribe of the
costermongers. The usual capital necessary for starting in the line
being a donkey and cart, with 9_s._ or 10_s._ to purchase a few
hundreds of the turf.

There is a tradition extant, even at the present day, that during the
prevalence of the plague in London the houses where the tan-turf was
used in a great measure escaped that awful visitation; and to this
moment many people purchase and burn it in their houses on account of
the peculiar smell, and under the belief that it is efficacious in
repelling infectious diseases from the localities in which it is used.

The other purposes for which it is used are for forming a sort of
compost or manure for plants of the heath kind, which delight in a soil
of this description, growing naturally among mosses and bogs where the
peat fuel is obtained. It is used also by small bakers for heating
their ovens, as preferable for their purposes, and more economical
than any other description of fuel. Sometimes it is used for burning
under coppers; and very often for keeping alight during the night, on
account of the slowness of its decomposition by fire, for a single cake
will continue burning for a whole night, will be found in the morning
completely enveloped in a white ash, which, on being removed, discovers
the live embers in the centre.

The rate at which the tan turf is sold to the dealers, at the tan-pits,
is from 6_d._ to 9_d._ per hundred cakes. Those at 9_d._ per hundred
are perfect and unbroken, while those at 6_d._ have been injured in
some way or other. The quality of the article, however, remains the
same, and by purchasing some of each sort the vendors are able to make
somewhat more profit, which may be, on an average, about 4-1/2_d._ per
hundred, as they sell it at 1_s._

While seeking information on this subject I obtained the address of a
person in T---- mews, T---- square, engaged in the business. Running
out of the square is a narrow street, which, about mid-way through,
leads on the right-hand side to a narrow alley, at the bottom of which
is the mews, consisting of merely an oblong court, surrounded by
stables of the very smallest dimensions, not one of them being more
than twelve feet square. Three or four men, in the long waistcoats and
full breeches peculiar to persons engaged among horses, were lounging
about, and, with the exception of the horses, appeared to be the only
inhabitants of the place. On inquiring of one of the loungers, I was
shown a stable in one corner of the court, the wide door of which stood
open. On entering I found it occupied by a donkey-cart, containing a
couple of hundred cakes of tan-turf; another old donkey-cart was turned
up opposite, the tailboard resting on the ground, the shafts pointing
to the ceiling, while a cock and two or three draggle-tailed hens were
composing themselves to roost on the front portion of the cart between
the shafts. Within the space thus inclosed by the two carts lay a
donkey and two dogs, that seemed keeping him company, and were busily
engaged in mumbling and crunching some old bones. On the wall hung
“Jack’s harness.” In one corner of the ceiling was an opening giving
access to the place above, which was reached by means of a long ladder.
On ascending this I found myself in a very small attic, with a sloping
ceiling on both sides. In the highest part, the middle of the room,
it was not more than six feet high, but at the sides it was not more
than three feet. In this confined apartment stood a stump bedstead,
taking up the greater portion of the floor. In a corner alongside the
fire-place I noticed what appeared to be a small turn-up bedstead. A
little ricketty deal table, an old smoke dried Dutch clock, and a poor
old woman, withered and worn, were the only other things to be seen in
the place. The old woman had been better off, and, as is not uncommon
under such circumstances, she endeavoured to make her circumstances
appear better than they really were. She made the following statement:--

“My husband was 23 years selling the tan turf. There used to be a great
deal more of it sold than there is now; people don’t seem to think so
much of it now, as they once did, but there are some who still use it.
There’s an old lady in Kentish-town, who must have it regularly; she
burns it on account of the smell, and has burned it for many years:
my husband used to serve her. There’s an old doctor at Hampstead--or
rather he was there, for he died a few days ago--he always bought a
deal of it, but I don’t know whether he burned it or not; he used to
buy 500 or 600 at a time, he was a very good customer, and we miss him
now. The gardeners buy some of it, for their plants, they say it makes
good manure, though you wouldn’t think so to look at it, it’s so hard
and dry. My husband is dead three years; we were better off when he was
alive; he was a very sober and careful man, and never put anything to
waste. My youngest son goes with the cart now; he don’t do as well as
his father, poor little fellow! he’s only fourteen years of age, but he
does very well for a boy of his age. He sometimes travels 30 miles of
a day, and can’t sell a load--sometimes not half a load; and then he
comes home of a night so footsore that you’d pity him. Sometimes he’s
not able to stir out, for a day or two, but he must do something for
a living; there’s nothing to be got by idleness. The cart will hold
1000 or 1200, and if he could sell that every day we’d do very well; it
would leave us about 3_s._ 6_d._ profit, after keeping the donkey. It
costs 9_d._ a day to keep our donkey; he’s young yet, but he promises
to be a good strong animal, and I like to keep him well, even if I
go short myself, for what could we do without him? I believe there
are one or two persons selling tan-turf who use trucks, but they’re
strong; besides they can’t do much with a truck, they can’t travel as
far with a truck as a donkey can, and they can’t take as much out with
them. My son goes of a morning to Bermondsey for a load, and is back by
breakfast time; from this to Bermondsey is a long way--then he goes out
and travels all round Kentish-town and Hampstead, and what with going
up one street and down another, by the time he comes home at night, he
don’t travel less than from 25 to 30 miles a day. I have another son,
the eldest. He used to go with his father when he was alive; he was
reared to the business, but after he died he thought it was useless for
both to go out with the cart, so he left it to the little fellow, and
now the eldest works among horses. He don’t do much, only gets an odd
job now and then among the ostlers, and earns a shilling now and then.
They’re both good lads, and would do well if they could; they do as
well as they can, and I have a right to be thankful for it.”

The poor woman, notwithstanding the extraordinary place in which
she lived, and the confined dimensions of her single apartment (I
ascertained that the two sons slept in the stump bedstead, while she
used the turn-up), was nevertheless cleanly in her person and apparel,
and superior in many respects to persons of the same class, and I give
her statement verbatim, as it corroborates, in almost every particular,
the statement of the unfortunate seller of salt, who is afflicted with
a drunken disorderly wife, and who is also a man superior to the people
with whom he is compelled to associate, but who in evident bitterness
of spirit made this assertion: “Bad as I’m off now, if I had only a
careful partner, I wouldn’t want for anything.”

Concerning the dogs that I have spoken of as being with the donkey,
there is a curious story. During his rounds the donkey frequently met
the bitch, and an extraordinary friendship grew up between the two
animals, so that the dog at last forsook its owner, and followed the
donkey in all his travels. For some time back she has accompanied him
home, together with her puppy, and they all sleep cozily together
during the night, Jack taking especial care not to hurt the young one.
In the morning, when about to go out for the day’s work, it is of no
use to expect Jack to go without his friends, as he will not budge an
inch, so he is humoured in his whim. The puppy, when tired, is put into
the cart, and the mother forages for her living along the way; the poor
woman not being able to feed them. The owner of the dogs came to see
them on the day previous to my visit.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SALT.

Until a few years after the repeal of the duty on the salt, there were
no street-sellers of it. It was first taxed in the time of William
III., and during the war with Napoleon the impost was 15_s._ the
bushel, or nearly thirty times the cost of the article taxed. The duty
was finally repealed in 1823. When the tax was at the highest, salt
was smuggled most extensively, and retailed at 4_d._ and 4-1/2_d._ the
pound. A licence to sell it was also necessary. Street salt-selling is
therefore a trade of some twenty years standing. Considering the vast
consumption of salt, and the trifling amount of capital necessary to
start in the business, it might be expected that the street-sellers
would be a numerous class, but they do not number above 150 at the
outside. The reason assigned by a well-informed man was, that in every
part of London there are such vast numbers of shopkeepers who deal in
salt.

About one-half of those employed in
street salt-selling have donkeys and
carts, and the rest use the two-wheeled
barrow of the costermonger, to which
class the street salt-sellers, generally,
belong. The value of the
donkey and cart may be about 2_l._ 5_s._
on an average, so that 75 of the
number possessing donkeys and carts
will have a capital among them equal
to the sum of £168 15 0
The barrows of the remainder are
worth about 10_s._ each, which will
amount to 37 10 0
To sell 3 cwt. of salt in a day is considered
good work; and this, if purchased
at 2_s._ per cwt., gives for stock-money
the sum total of 45 0 0
-----------
Thus the amount of capital which
may be reasonably assumed to be
embarked in this business is £251 5 0
-----------

The street-sellers pay at the rate of 2_s._ per cwt. for the salt, and
retail it at 3 lbs. for 1_d._, which leaves 1_s._ 1_d._ profit on every
cwt. One day with another, taking wet and dry, for from the nature of
the article it cannot be hawked in wet weather, the street-sellers
dispose of about 2-1/2 cwt. per day, or 18 tons 15 cwt. per day for all
hands, which, deducting Sundays, makes 5825 tons in the course of the
year. The profit of 1_s._ 1_d._ per cwt. amounts to a yearly aggregate
profit of 6310_l._ 8_s._ 4_d._, or about 42_l._ per annum for each
person in the trade.

The salt dealers, generally, endeavour to increase their profits by the
sale of mustard, and sometimes by the sale of rock-salt, which is used
for horses; but in these things they do little, the most profit they
can realize in a day averaging about 4_d._

The salt men who merely use the barrow are much better off than the
donkey-cart men; the former are young men, active and strong, well
able to drive their truck or barrow about from one place to another,
and they can thereby save the original price and subsequent keep of
the donkey. The latter are in general old men, broken down and weak,
or lads. The daily cost of keeping a donkey is from 6_d._ to 9_d._; if
we reckon 7-1/2_d._ as the average, it will annually amount to 11_l._
8_s._ 1_d._ the year, which will reduce the profit of 42_l._ to about
30_l._, and so leave a balance of 11_l._ 8_s._ 1_d._ in favour of the
truck or barrow man.

There are nine or ten places where the street-sellers purchase the
salt:--Moore’s, at Paddington, who get their salt by the canal, from
Staffordshire; Welling’s, at Battle-bridge; Baillie, of Thames-street,
&c. Great quantities are brought to London by the different railways.
The street-sellers have all regular beats, and seldom intrude on each
other, though it sometimes happens, especially when any quarrel occurs
among them, that they oppose and undersell one another in order to
secure the customers.

During my inquiries on this subject, I visited Church-lane, Bloomsbury,
to see a street-seller, about seven in the evening. Since the
alterations in St. Giles’s, Church-lane has become one of the most
crowded places in London. The houses, none of which are high, are all
old, time-blackened, and dilapidated, with shattered window-frames
and broken panes. Stretching across the narrow street, from all the
upper windows, might be seen lines crossing and recrossing each other,
on which hung yellow-looking shirts, stockings, women’s caps, and
handkerchiefs looking like soiled and torn paper, and throwing the
whole lane into shade. Beneath this ragged canopy, the street literally
swarmed with human beings--young and old, men and women, boys and
girls, wandering about amidst all kinds of discordant sounds. The
footpaths on both sides of the narrow street were occupied here and
there by groups of men and boys, some sitting on the flags and others
leaning against the wall, while their feet, in most instances bare,
dabbled in the black channel alongside the kerb, which being disturbed
sent up a sickening stench. Some of these groups were playing cards for
money, which lay on the ground near them. Men and women at intervals
lay stretched out in sleep on the pathway; over these the passengers
were obliged to jump; in some instances they stood on their backs as
they stepped over them, and then the sleeper languidly raised his head,
growled out a drowsy oath, and slept again. Three or four women, with
bloated countenances, blood-shot eyes, and the veins of their necks
swollen and distended till they resembled strong cords, staggered about
violently quarrelling at the top of their drunken voices.

The street salt-seller--whom I had great difficulty in finding in such
a place--was a man of about 50, rather sickly in his look. He wore an
old cloth cap without a peak, a sort of dun-coloured waistcoat, patched
and cobbled, a strong check shirt, not remarkable for its cleanliness,
and what seemed to me to be an old pair of buckskin breeches, with
fragments hanging loose about them like fringes. To the covering of
his feet--I can hardly say shoes--there seemed to be neither soles nor
uppers. How they kept on was a mystery.

In answer to my questions, he made the following statement, in language
not to be anticipated from his dress, or the place in which he resided:
“For many years I lived by the sale of toys, such as little chairs,
tables, and a variety of other little things which I made myself and
sold in the streets; and I used to make a good deal of money by them;
I might have done well, but when a man hasn’t got a careful partner,
it’s of no use what he does, he’ll never get on, he may as well give
it up at once, for the money’ll go out ten times as fast as he can
bring it in. I hadn’t the good fortune to have a careful woman, but one
who, when I wouldn’t give her money to waste and destroy, took out my
property and made money of it to drink; where a bad example like that
is set, it’s sure to be followed; the good example is seldom taken,
but there’s no fear of the bad one. You may want to find out where the
evil lies, I tell you it lies in that pint pot, and in that quart pot,
and if it wasn’t for so many pots and so many pints, there wouldn’t
be half so much misery as there is. I know that from my own case. I
used to sell toys, but since the foreign things were let come over, I
couldn’t make anything of them, and was obliged to give them up. I was
forced to do something for a living, for a half loaf is better than no
bread at all, so seeing two or three selling salt, I took to it myself.
I buy my salt at Moore’s wharf, Paddington; I consider it the purest;
I could get salt 3_d._ or 2_d._ the cwt., or even cheaper, but I’d
rather have the best. A man’s not ashamed when he knows his articles
are good. Some buy the cheap salt, of course they make more profit. We
never sell by measure, always by weight; some of the street weights,
a good many of them, are slangs, but I believe they are as honest as
many of the shopkeepers after all; every one does the best he can to
cheat everybody else. I go two or three evenings in the week, or as
often as I want it, to the wharf for a load. I’m going there to-night,
three miles out and three miles in. I sell, considering everything,
about 2 cwt. a day; I sold 1-1/2 to-day, but to-morrow (Saturday)
I’ll sell 3 or 4 cwt., and perhaps more. I pay 2_s._ the cwt. for it,
and make about 1_s._ a cwt. profit on that. I sold sixpennyworth of
mustard to-day; it might bring me in 2_d._ profit, every little makes
something. If I wasn’t so weak and broke down, I wouldn’t trouble
myself with a donkey, it’s so expensive; I’d easily manage to drive
about all I’d sell, and then I’d save the expense. It costs me 7_d._
or 8_d._ a day to keep him, besides other things. I got him a set of
shoes yesterday, I said I’d shoe him first and myself afterwards; so
you see there’s other expenses. There’s my son, too, paid off the
other day from the _Prince of Wales_, after a four years’ voyage, and
he came home without a sixpence in his pocket. He might have done
something for me, but I couldn’t expect anything else from him after
the example that was set to him. Even now, bad as I am, I wouldn’t want
for anything if I had a careful woman; but she’s a shocking drunkard,
and I can do nothing with her.” This poor fellow’s mind was so full of
his domestic troubles that he recurred to them again and again, and was
more inclined to talk about what so nearly concerned himself than on
any matter of business.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SAND.

Two kinds of sand only are sold in the streets, scouring or floor sand,
and bird sand for birds. In scouring sand the trade is inconsiderable
to what it was, saw-dust having greatly superseded it in the
gin-palace, the tap-room, and the butcher’s shop. Of the supply of
sand, a man, who was working at the time on Hampstead-heath, gave the
following account:--“I’ve been employed here for five-and-thirty years,
under Sir Thomas Wilson. Times are greatly changed, sir; we used to
have from 25 to 30 carts a day hawking sand, and taking six or seven
men to fill them every morning; besides large quantities which went to
brass-founders, and for cleaning dentists’ cutlery, for stone-sawing,
lead and silver casting, and such like. This heath, sir, contains
about every kind of sand, but Sir Thomas won’t allow us to dig it. The
greatest number of carts filled now is eight or ten a day, which I fill
myself. Sir Thomas has raised the price from 3_s._ 6_d._ to 4_s._ a
load, of about 2-1/2 tons. Bless you, sir, some years ago, one might go
into St. Luke’s, and sell five or six cart-loads of house-sand a week;
now, a man may roar himself hoarse, and not sell a load in a fortnight.
Saw-dust is used in all the public-houses and gin-palaces. People’s
sprung up who don’t use sand at all; and many of the old people are too
poor to buy it. The men who get sand here now are old customers, who
carry it all over the town, and round Holloway, Islington, and such
parts. Twelve year ago I would have taken here 6_l._ or 7_l._ in a
morning, to-day I have only taken 9_s._ Fine weather is greatly against
the sale of house-sand; in wet, dirty weather, the sale is greater.”

One street sand-seller gave the following account of his calling:--

“I have been in the sand business, man and boy, for 40 years. I was
at it when I was 12 years old, and am now 52. I used to have two carts
hawking sand, but it wouldn’t pay, so I have just that one you see
there. Hawking sand is a poor job now. I send two men with that ’ere
cart, and pay one of ’em 3_s._ 4_d._ and the other 3_s._ a day. Now,
with beer-money, 2_s._ a week, to the man at the heath, and turnpike
gates, I reckon every load of sand to cost me 5_s._ Add to that 6_s._
4_d._ for the two men, the wear and tear, and horse’s keep (and, to do
a horse justice, you cannot in these cheap times keep him at less than
10_s._ a week, in dear seasons, it will cost 15_s._), and you will find
each load of sand stands me in a good sum. So suppose we get a guinea a
load, you see we have no great pull. Then there’s the licence, 8_l._ a
year. Many years ago we resisted this, and got Mr. Humphreys to defend
us before the magistrates at Clerkenwell; but we were ‘cast,’ several
hawkers were fined 10_l._, and I was brought up before old Sir Richard
Birnie, at Bow-street, and had to find bail that I would not sell
another bushel of sand till I took out a licence. Soon after that Sir
Thomas Wilson shut up the heath from us; he said he would not have it
cut about any more, for that a poor animal could not pick up a crumb
without being in danger of breaking its leg. This was just after we
took out our licences, and, as we’d paid dearly for being allowed to
sell the sand, some of us, and I was one, we waited upon Sir Thomas,
and asked to be allowed to work out our licences, which was granted,
and we have gone on ever since. My men work very hard for their money,
sir; they are up at 3 o’clock of the morning, and are knocking about
the streets, perhaps till 5 or 6 o’clock in the evening.”

The yellow house-sand is also found at Kingsland, and at the Kensington
Gravel-pits; but at the latter place street-sellers are not supplied.
The sand here is very fine, and mostly disposed of to plasterers. There
is also some of this kind of sand at Wandsworth. In the street-selling
of house-sand, there are now not above 30 men employed, and few of
these trade on their own account. Reckoning the horses and carts
employed in the trade at the same price as our Camden-town informant
sets on his stock, we have 20 horses, at 10_l._ each, and 20 carts,
at 3_l._ each, with 3 baskets to each, at 2_s._ apiece, making a
total of 236_l._ of capital employed in the carrying machinery of the
street-selling of sand. Allowing 3_s._ a day for each man, the wages
would amount for 30 men to 27_l._ weekly; and the expenses for horses’
keep, at 10_s._ a head, would give, for 20 horses, 10_l._ weekly,
making a total of 38_l._ weekly, or an annual expenditure for man and
horse of 2496_l._ Calculating the sale at a load per day, for each
horse and cart, at 21_s._ a load, we have 6573_l._ annually expended in
the purchase of house or floor-sand.

_Bird-sand_, or the fine and dry sand required for the use of
cage-birds, is now obtained altogether of a market gardener in Hackney.
It is sold at 8_d._ the barrow-load; as much being shovelled on to
a coster’s barrow “as it will carry.” A good-sized barrow holds
3-1/2 bushels; a smaller size, 3 bushels, and the buyer is also the
shoveller. Three-fourths of the quantity conveyed by the street-sellers
from Hackney is sold to the bird-shop keepers at 6_d._ for 3 pecks.
The remainder is disposed of to such customers as purchase it in the
street, or is delivered at private houses, which receive a regular
supply. The usual charge to the general public is a halfpenny or a
penny for sand to fill any vessel brought to contain it. A penny a
gallon is perhaps an average price in this retail trade.

A man, “in a good way of business,” disposes of a barrow-load once
a week; the others once a fortnight. In wet or windy weather great
care is necessary, and much trouble incurred in supplying this sand
to the street-sellers, and again in their vending it in the streets.
The street-vendors are the same men as supply the turf, &c., for
cage-birds, of whom I have treated, p. 156, vol. i. They are 40 in
number, and although they do not all supply sand, a matter beyond
the strength of the old and infirm, a few costermongers convey a
barrow-load of sand now and then to the bird-sellers, and this addition
ensures the weekly supply of 40 barrow-loads. Calculating these at
the wholesale, or bird-dealer’s price--2_s._ 3_d._ a barrow being an
average--we find 234_l._ yearly expended in this sand. What is vended
at 2_s._ 3_d._ costs but 8_d._ at the wholesale price; but the profit
is hardly earned considering the labour of wheeling a heavy barrow of
sand for miles, and the trouble of keeping over night what is unsold
during the day.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SHELLS.

The street-trade in shells presents the characteristics I have before
had to notice as regards the trade in what are not necessaries, or an
approach to necessaries, in contradistinction of what men must have to
eat or wear. Shells, such as the green snail, ear shell, and others
of that class, though extensively used for inlaying in a variety of
ornamental works, are comparatively of little value; for no matter
how useful, if shells are only well known, they are considered of
but little importance; while those which are rarely seen, no matter
how insignificant in appearance, command extraordinary prices. As an
instance I may mention that on the 23rd of June there was purchased
by Mr. Sowerby, shell-dealer, at a public sale in King-street,
Covent-garden, a small shell not two inches long, broken and damaged,
and withal what is called a “dead shell,” for the sum of 30 guineas. It
was described as the _Conus Glory Mary_, and had it only been perfect
would have fetched 100 guineas.

Shells, such as conches, cowries, green snails, and ear shells (the
latter being so called from their resemblance to the human ear), are
imported in large quantities, as parts of cargoes, and are sold to
the large dealers by weight. Conch shells are sold at 8_s._ per cwt.;
cowries and clams from 10_s._ to 12_s._ per cwt.; the green snail,
used for inlaying, fetches from 1_l._ to 1_l._ 10_s._ per cwt.; and
the ear shell, on account of its superior quality and richer variety
of colours, as much as 3_l._ and 5_l._ per cwt. The conches are found
only among the West India Islands, and are used principally for garden
ornaments and grotto-work. The others come principally from the Indian
Ocean and the China seas, and are used as well for chimney ornaments,
as for inlaying, for the tops of work-tables and other ornamental
furniture.

The shells which are considered of the most value are almost invariably
small, and of an endless variety of shape. They are called “cabinet”
shells, and are brought from all parts of the world--land as well as
sea--lakes, rivers, and oceans furnishing specimens to the collection.
The Australian forests are continually ransacked to bring to light new
varieties. I have been informed that there is not a river in England
but contains valuable shells; that even in the Thames there are shells
worth from 10_s._ to 1_l._ each. I have been shown a shell of the snail
kind, found in the woods of New Holland, and purchased by a dealer for
2_l._, and on which he confidently reckoned to make a considerable
profit.

Although “cabinet” shells are collected from all parts, yet by far the
greater number come from the Indian Ocean. They are generally collected
by the natives, who sell them to captains and mates of vessels trading
to those parts, and very often to sailors, all of whom frequently
speculate to a considerable extent in these things, and have no
difficulty in disposing of them as soon as they arrive in this country,
for there is not a shell dealer in London who has not a regular staff
of persons stationed at Gravesend to board the homeward-bound ships at
the Nore, and sometimes as far off as the Downs, for the purpose of
purchasing shells. It usually happens that when three or four of these
persons meet on board the same ship, an animated competition takes
place, so that the shells on board are generally bought up long before
the ship arrives at London. Many persons from this country go out to
various parts of the world for the sole purpose of procuring shells,
and they may be found from the western coast of Africa to the shores
of New South Wales, along the Persian Gulf, in Ceylon, the Malaccas,
China, and the Islands of the Pacific, where they employ the natives in
dredging the bed of the ocean, and are by this means continually adding
to the almost innumerable varieties which are already known.

To show the extraordinary request in which shells are held in almost
every place, while I was in the shop of Mr. J. C. Jamrach, naturalist,
and agent to the Zoological Society at Amsterdam--one of the largest
dealers in London, and to whom I am indebted for much valuable
information on this subject--a person, a native of High Germany, was
present. He had arrived in London the day before, and had purchased on
that day a collection of shells of a low quality for which he paid Mr.
Jamrach 36_l._; to this he added a few birds. Placing his purchase in
a box furnished with a leather strap, he slung it over his shoulder,
shook hands with Mr. Jamrach, and departed. Mr. Jamrach informed me
that the next morning he was to start by steam for Rotterdam, then
continue his journey up the Rhine to a certain point, from whence he
was to travel on foot from one place to another, till he could dispose
of his commodities; after which he would return to London, as the great
mart for a fresh supply. He was only a very poor man, but there are
a great many others far better off, continually coming backwards and
forwards, who are able to purchase a larger stock of shells and birds,
and who, in the course of their peregrinations, wander through the
greater part of Germany, extending their excursions sometimes through
Austria, the Tyrol, and the north of Italy. A visit to the premises of
Mr. Jamrach, Ratcliff-highway, or Mr. Samuel, Upper East Smithfield,
would well repay the curious observer. The front portion of Mr.
Jamrach’s house is taken up with a wonderful variety of strange birds
that keep up an everlasting screaming; in another portion of the house
are collected confusedly together heaps of nondescript articles, which
might appear to the uninitiated worth little or nothing, but on which
the possessor places great value. In a yard behind the house, immured
in iron cages, are some of the larger species of birds, and some
beautiful varieties of foreign animals--while in large presses ranged
round the other rooms, and furnished with numerous drawers, are placed
his real valuables, the cabinet shells. The establishment of Mr. Samuel
is equally curious.

In London, the dealers in shells, keeping shops for the sale of them,
amount to no more than ten; they are all doing a large business, and
are men of good capital, which may be proved by the following quotation
from the day-books of one of the class for the present year, viz.:--

Shells sold in February £275 0 0
Ditto, ditto, March 471 0 0
Ditto, ditto, April 1389 0 0
Ditto, ditto, May 475 0 0
-------------
Total £2610 0 0
-------------
Profit on same, February £75 12 0
Ditto, ditto, March 140 0 0
Ditto, ditto, April 323 0 0
Ditto, ditto, May 127 0 0
-------------
Total £665 12 0

Besides these there are about 20 private dealers who do not keep
shops, but who nevertheless do a considerable business in this line
among persons at the West End of London. All shell dealers add to that
occupation the sale of foreign birds and curiosities.

There is yet another class of persons who seem to be engaged in the
sale of shells, but it is only seeming. They are dressed as sailors,
and appear at all times to have just come ashore after a long voyage,
as a man usually follows them with that sort of canvas bag in use among
sailors, in which they stow away their clothes; the men themselves
go on before carrying a parrot or some rare bird in one hand, and in
the other a large shell. These men are the “duffers” of whom I have
spoken in my account of the sale of foreign birds. They make shells a
more frequent medium for the introduction of their real avocation, as
a shell is a far less troublesome thing either to hawk or keep by them
than a parrot.

I now give a description of these men, as general duffers, and from
good authority.

“They are known by the name of ‘_duffers_,’ and have an exceedingly
cunning mode of transacting their business. They are all united in some
secret bond; they have persons also bound to them, who are skilled
in making shawls in imitation of those imported from China, and who,
according to the terms of their agreement, must not work for any other
persons. The duffers, from time to time, furnish these persons with
designs for shawls, such as cannot be got in this country, which,
when completed, they (the duffers) conceal about their persons, and
start forward on their travels. They contrive to gain admission to
respectable houses by means of shells and sometimes of birds, which
they purchase from the regular dealers, but always those of a low
quality; after which they contrive to introduce the shawls, their real
business, for which they sometimes have realized prices varying from
5_l._ to 20_l._ In many instances, the cheat is soon discovered, when
the duffers immediately decamp, to make place for a fresh batch, who
have been long enough out of London to make their faces unknown to
their former victims. These remain till they also find danger threaten
them, when they again start away, and others immediately take their
place. While away from London, they travel through all parts of the
country, driving a good trade among the country gentlemen’s houses; and
sometimes visiting the seaports, such as Liverpool, Portsmouth, and
Plymouth.”

An instance of the skill with which the duffers sometimes do business,
is the following. One of these persons some time ago came into the
shop of a shell dealer, having with him a beautiful specimen of a
three-coloured cockatoo, for which he asked 10_l._ The shell dealer
declined the purchase at that price, saying, that he sold these birds
at 4_l._ a piece, but offered to give 3_l._ 10_s._ for it, which was
at once accepted; while pocketing the money, the man remarked that
he had paid ten guineas for that bird. The shell dealer, surprised
that so good a judge should be induced to give so much more than the
value of the bird, was desirous of hearing further, when the duffer
made this statement:--“I went the other day to a gentleman’s house,
he was an old officer, where I saw this bird, and, in order to get
introduced, I offered to purchase it. The gentleman said he knew it was
a valuable bird, and couldn’t think of taking less than ten guineas. I
then offered to barter for it, and produced a shawl, for which I asked
twenty-five guineas, but offered to take fifteen guineas and the bird.
This was at length agreed to, and now, having sold it for 3_l._ 10_s._,
it makes 19_l._ 5_s._ I got for the shawl, and not a bad day’s work
either.”

Of shells there are about a million of the commoner sorts bought by the
London street-sellers at 3_s._ the gross. They are retailed at 1_d._
apiece, or 12_s._ the gross, when sold separately; a large proportion,
as is the case with many articles of taste or curiosity rather than of
usefulness, being sold by the London street-folk on country rounds;
some of these rounds stretch half-way to Bristol or to Liverpool.

OF THE RIVER BEER-SELLERS, OR PURL-MEN.

There is yet another class of itinerant dealers who, if not traders
in the streets, are traders in what was once termed the silent
highway--the river beer-sellers, or purl-men, as they are more commonly
called. These should strictly have been included among the sellers of
eatables and drinkables; they have, however, been kept distinct, being
a peculiar class, and having little in common with the other out-door
sellers.

I will begin my account of the river-sellers by enumerating the
numerous classes of labourers, amounting to many thousands, who get
their living by plying their respective avocations on the river, and
who constitute the customers of these men. There are first the sailors
on board the corn, coal, and timber ships; then the “lumpers,” or
those engaged in discharging the timber ships; the “stevedores,” or
those engaged in stowing craft; and the “riggers,” or those engaged
in rigging them; ballast-heavers, ballast-getters, corn-porters,
coal-whippers, watermen and lightermen, and coal-porters, who, although
engaged in carrying sacks of coal from the barges or ships at the
river’s side to the shore, where there are public-houses, nevertheless,
when hard worked and pressed for time, frequently avail themselves of
the presence of the purl-man to quench their thirst, and to stimulate
them to further exertion.

It would be a remarkable circumstance if the fact of so many persons
continually employed in severe labour, and who, of course, are at
times in want of refreshment, had not called into existence a class to
supply that which was evidently required; under one form or the other,
therefore, river-dealers boast of an antiquity as old as the naval
commerce of the country.

The prototype of the river beer-seller of the present day is the
bumboat-man. Bumboats (or rather _Baum_-boats, that is to say, the
boats of the harbour, from the German _Baum_, a haven or bar) are known
in every port where ships are obliged to anchor at a distance from the
shore. They are stored with a large assortment of articles, such as are
likely to be required by people after a long voyage. Previously to the
formation of the various docks on the Thames, they were very numerous
on the river, and drove a good trade with the homeward-bound shipping.
But since the docks came into requisition, and steam-tugs brought the
ships from the mouth of the river to the dock entrance, their business
died away, and they gradually disappeared; so that a bumboat on the
Thames at the present day would be a sort of curiosity, a relic of
times past.

In former times it was _not_ in the power of any person who chose to
follow the calling of a bumboat man on the Thames. The Trinity Company
had the power of granting licences for this purpose. Whether they were
restrained by some special clause in their charter, or not, from giving
licences indiscriminately, it is difficult to say. But it is certain
that none got a licence but a sailor--one who had “served his country;”
and it was quite common in those days to see an old fellow with a pair
of wooden legs, perhaps blind of an eye, or wanting an arm, and with
a face rugged as a rock, plying about among the shipping, accompanied
by a boy whose duty it was to carry the articles to the purchasers on
shipboard, and help in the management of the boat. In the first or
second year of the reign of her present Majesty, however, when the
original bumboat-men had long degenerated into the mere beer-sellers,
and any one who wished traded in this line on the river (the Trinity
Company having for many years paid no attention to the matter), an
inquiry took place, which resulted in a regulation that all the
beer-sellers or purl-men should thenceforward be regularly licensed
for the river-sale of beer and spirits from the Waterman’s Hall, which
regulation is in force to the present time.

It appears to have been the practice at some time or other in this
country to infuse wormwood into beer or ale previous to drinking it,
either to make it sufficiently bitter, or for some medicinal purpose.
This mixture was called _purl_--why I know not, but Bailey, the
philologist of the seventeenth century, so designates it. The drink
originally sold on the river was purl, or this mixture, whence the
title, purl-man. Now, however, the wormwood is unknown; and what is
sold under the name of purl is beer warmed nearly to boiling heat, and
flavoured with gin, sugar, and ginger. The river-sellers, however,
still retain the name, of _purl_-men, though there is not one of them
with whom I have conversed that has the remotest idea of the meaning of
it.

To set up as a purl-man, some acquaintance with the river, and a
certain degree of skill in the management of a boat, are absolutely
necessary; as, from the frequently-crowded state of the pool, and
the rapidity with which the steamers pass and repass, twisting and
wriggling their way through craft of every description, the unskilful
adventurer would run in continual danger of having his boat crushed
like a nutshell. The purl-men, however, through long practice, are
scarcely inferior to the watermen themselves in the management of their
boats; and they may be seen at all times easily working their way
through every obstruction, now shooting athwart the bows of a Dutch
galliot or sailing-barge, then dropping astern to allow a steam-boat
to pass till they at length reach the less troubled waters between the
tiers of shipping.

The first thing required to become a purl-man is to procure a licence
from the Waterman’s Hall, which costs 3_s._ 6_d._ per annum. The next
requisite is the possession of a boat. The boats used are all in the
form of skiffs, rather short, but of a good breadth, and therefore
less liable to capsize through the swell of the steamers, or through
any other cause. Thus equipped he then goes to some of the small
breweries, where he gets two “pins,” or small casks of beer, each
containing eighteen pots; after this he furnishes himself with a quart
or two of gin from some publican, which he carries in a tin vessel
with a long neck, like a bottle--an iron or tin vessel to hold the
fire, with holes drilled all round to admit the air and keep the fuel
burning, and a huge bell, by no means the least important portion of
his fit out. Placing his two pins of beer on a frame in the stern of
the boat, the spiles loosened and the brass cocks fitted in, and with
his tin gin bottle close to his hand beneath the seat, two or three
measures of various sizes, a black tin pot for heating the beer, and
his fire pan secured on the bottom of the boat, and sending up a black
smoke, he takes his seat early in the morning and pulls away from
the shore, resting now and then on his oars, to ring the heavy bell
that announces his approach. Those on board the vessels requiring
refreshment, when they hear the bell, hail “Purl ahoy;” in an instant
the oars are resumed, and the purl-man is quickly alongside the ship.

The bell of the purl-man not unfrequently performs another very
important office. During the winter, when dense fogs settle down on
the river, even the regular watermen sometimes lose themselves, and
flounder about bewildered perhaps for hours. The direction once lost,
their shouting is unheeded or unheard. The purl-man’s bell, however,
reaches the ear through the surrounding gloom, and indicates his
position; when near enough to hear the hail of his customers, he makes
his way unerringly to the spot by now and then sounding his bell; this
is immediately answered by another shout, so that in a short time the
glare of his fire may be distinguished as he emerges from the darkness,
and glides noiselessly alongside the ship where he is wanted.

The amount of capital necessary to start in the purl line may
be as follows:--I have said that the boats are all of the skiff
kind--generally old ones, which they patch up and repair at but little
cost. They purchase these boats at from 3_l._ to 6_l._ each. If we take
the average of these two sums, the items will be--

£ _s._ _d._
Boat 4 10 0
Pewter measures 0 5 0
Warming-pot 0 1 6
Fire stove 0 5 0
Gallon can 0 2 6
Two pins of beer 0 8 0
Quart of gin 0 2 6
Sugar and ginger 0 1 0
Licence 0 3 6
-----------
Total £5 19 0

Thus it requires, at the very least, a capital of 6_l._ to set up as a
purl-man.

Since the Waterman’s Hall has had the granting of licences, there have
been upwards of 140 issued; but out of the possessors of these many are
dead, some have left for other business, and others are too old and
feeble to follow the occupation any longer, so that out of the whole
number there remain only 35 purl-men on the river, and these are thus
divided:--23 ply their trade in what is called “the pool,” that is,
from Execution Dock to Ratcliff Cross, among the coal-laden ships, and
do a tolerable business amongst the sailors and the hard-working and
thirsty coal-whippers; 8 purl-men follow their calling from Execution
Dock to London Bridge, and sell their commodity among the ships loaded
with corn, potatoes, &c.; and 4 are known to frequent the various
reaches below Limehouse Hole, where the colliers are obliged to lie at
times in sections, waiting till they are sold on the Coal Exchange,
and some even go down the river as far as the ballast-lighters of the
Trinity Company, for the purpose of supplying the ballast-getters. The
purl-men cannot sell much to the unfortunate ballast-heavers, for they
are suffering under all the horrors of an abominable truck system, and
are compelled to take from the publicans about Wapping and Shadwell,
who are their employers, large quantities of filthy stuff compounded
especially for their use, for which they are charged exorbitant prices,
being thus and in a variety of other ways mercilessly robbed of their
earnings, so that they and their families are left in a state of almost
utter destitution. One of the purl-men, whose boat is No. 44, has hoops
like those used by gipsies for pitching their tents; these he fastens
to each side of the boat, over which he draws a tarred canvas covering,
water-proof, and beneath this he sleeps the greater part of the year,
seldom going ashore except for the purpose of getting a fresh supply
of liquors for trade, or food for himself. He generally casts anchor
in some unfrequented nook down the river, where he enjoys all the
quiet of a Thames hermit, after the labour of the day. To obtain the
necessary heat during the winter, he fits a funnel to his fire-stove to
carry away the smoke, and thus warmed he sleeps away in defiance of the
severest weather.

It appears from the facts above given that 210_l._ is the gross amount
of capital employed in this business. On an average all the year round
each purl-man sells two “pins” of beer weekly, independent of gin; but
little gin is thus sold in the summer, but in the winter a considerable
quantity of it is used in making the purl. The men purchase the beer at
4_s._ per pin, and sell it at 4_d._ per pot, which leaves them a profit
of 4_s._ on the two pins, and, allowing them 6_d._ per day profit on
the gin, it gives 1_l._ 7_s._ per week profit to each, or a total to
all hands of 47_l._ 5_s._ per week, and a gross total of 2457_l._
profit made on the sale of 98,280 gallons of beer, beside gin sold on
the Thames in the course of the year. From this amount must be deducted
318_l._ 10_s._, which is paid to boys, at the rate of 3_s._ 6_d._ per
week; it being necessary for each purl-man to employ a lad to take care
of the boat while he is on board the ships serving his customers, or
traversing the tiers. This deduction being made leaves 61_l._ 2_s._ per
annum to each purl-man as the profit on his year’s trading.

The present race of purl-men, unlike the weather-beaten tars who
in former times alone were licensed, are generally young men, who
have been in the habit of following some river employment, and who,
either from some accident having befallen them in the course of their
work, or from their preferring the easier task of sitting in their
boat and rowing leisurely about to continuous labour, have started in
the line, and ultimately superseded the old river dealers. This is
easily explained. No man labouring on the river would purchase from a
stranger when he knew that his own fellow-workman was afloat, and was
prepared to serve him with as good an article; besides he might not
have money, and a stranger could not be expected to give trust, but his
old acquaintance would make little scruple in doing so. In this way
the customers of the purl-men are secured; and many of these people do
so much more than the average amount of business above stated, that it
is no unusual thing to see some of them, after four or five years on
the river, take a public-house, spring up into the rank of licensed
victuallers, and finally become men of substance.

I conversed with one who had been a coal-whipper. He stated that he had
met with an accident while at work which prevented him from following
coal-whipping any longer. He had fallen from the ship’s side into a
barge, and was for a long time in the hospital. When he came out he
found he could not work, and had no other prospect before him but the
union. “I thought I’d be by this time toes up in Stepney churchyard,”
he said, “and grinning at the lid of an old coffin.” In this extremity
a neighbour, a waterman, who had long known him, advised him to take
to the purl business, and gave him not only the advice, but sufficient
money to enable him to put it in practice. The man accordingly got a
boat, and was soon afloat among his old workmates. In this line he now
makes out a living for himself and his family, and reckons himself able
to clear, one week with the other, from 18_s._ to 20_s._ “I should do
much better,” he said, “if people would only pay what they owe; but
there are some who never think of paying anything.” He has between
10_l._ and 20_l._ due to him, and never expects to get a farthing of it.

The following is the form of licence issued by the Watermen’s Company:--

INCORPORATED 1827.

BUMBOAT.

Height 5 feet 8 }
inches, 30 years }
of age, dark }
hair, sallow complexion. }
}
2nd & 3rd Vic. }
cap. 47, sec. 25. }

I hereby certify that of , in the parish of in the
county of Middlesex, is this day registered in a book of the Company
of the Master, Wardens, and Commonalty of Watermen and Lightermen of
the river Thames, kept for that purpose, to use, work, or navigate
a boat called a skiff, named , number , for the purpose of
selling, disposing of, or exposing for sale to and amongst the seamen,
or other persons employed in and about any of the ships or vessels
upon the said river, any liquors, slops, or other articles whatsoever,
between London Bridge and Limehouse Hole; but the said boat is not to
be used on the said river for any other purpose than the aforesaid.

Waterman’s Hall,

JAS. BANYON, _Clerk_.

Beside the regular purl-men, or, as they may be called, bumboat-men,
there are two or three others who, perhaps unable to purchase a boat,
and take out the licence, have nevertheless for a number of years
contrived to carry on a traffic in spirits among the ships in the
Thames. Their practice is to carry a flat tin bottle concealed about
their person, with which they go on board the first ship in a tier,
where they are well known by those who may be there employed. If the
seamen wish for any spirit the river-vendor immediately supplies it,
entering the name of the customers served, as none of the vendors ever
receive, at the time of sale, any money for what they dispose of; they
keep an account till their customers receive their wages, when they
always contrive to be present, and in general succeed in getting what
is owing to them. What their profits are it is impossible to tell,
perhaps they may equal those of the regular purl-man, for they go on
board of almost every ship in the course of the day. When their tin
bottle is empty they go on shore to replenish it, doing so time after
time if necessary.

It is remarkable that although these people are perfectly well known to
every purl-man on the river, who have seen them day by day, for many
years going on board the various ships, and are thoroughly cognizant
of the purpose of their visits, there has never been any information
laid against them, nor have they been in any way interrupted in their
business.

There is one of these river spirit-sellers who has pursued the
avocation for the greater part of his life; he is a native of the
south of Ireland, now very old, and a little shrivelled-up man. He may
still be seen every day, going from ship to ship by scrambling over
the quarters where they are lashed together in tiers--a feat sometimes
attended with danger to the young and strong; yet he works his way
with the agility of a man of 20, gets on board the ship he wants, and
when there, were he not so well known, he might be thought to be some
official sent to take an inventory of the contents of the ship, for he
has at all times an ink-bottle hanging from one of his coat buttons, a
pen stuck over his ear, spectacles on his nose, a book in his hand, and
really has all the appearance of a man determined on doing business of
some sort or other. He possesses a sort of ubiquity, for go where you
will through any part of the pool you are sure to meet him. He seems to
be expected everywhere; no one appears to be surprised at his presence.
Captains and mates pass him by unnoticed and unquestioned. As suddenly
as he comes does he disappear, to start up in some other place. His
visits are so regular, that it would scarcely look like being on board
ship if “old D----, the whiskey man,” as he is called, did not make his
appearance some time during the day, for he seems to be in some strange
way identified with the river, and with every ship that frequents it.

OF THE NUMBERS, CAPITAL, AND INCOME OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF
SECOND-HAND ARTICLES, LIVE ANIMALS, MINERAL PRODUCTIONS, ETC.

The hawkers of second-hand articles, live animals, mineral productions,
and natural curiosities, form, as we have seen, large important
classes of the street-sellers. According to the facts already given,
there appear to be at present in the streets, 90 sellers of metal
wares, including the sellers of second-hand trays and Italian-irons;
30 sellers of old linen, as wrappers and towelling; 80 vendors of
second-hand (burnt) linen and calico; 30 sellers of curtains; 30
sellers of carpeting, &c.; 30 sellers of bed-ticking, &c.; 6 sellers
of old crockery and glass; 25 sellers of old musical instruments;
6 vendors of second-hand weapons; 6 sellers of old curiosities; 6
vendors of telescopes and pocket glasses; 30 to 40 sellers of other
miscellaneous second-hand articles; 100 sellers of men’s second-hand
clothes; 30 sellers of old boots and shoes; 15 vendors of old hats;
50 sellers of women’s second-hand apparel; 30 vendors of second-hand
bonnets, and 10 sellers of old furs; 116 sellers of second-hand
articles at Smithfield-market;--making altogether 725 street-sellers of
second-hand commodities.

But some of the above trades are of a temporary character only, as in
the case of the vendors of old linen towelling or wrappers, carpets,
bed-ticking, &c.--the same persons who sell the one often selling the
others; the towels and wrappers, moreover, are offered for sale only on
the Monday and Saturday nights. Assuming, then, that upwards of 100 or
one-sixth of the above number sell two different second-hand articles,
or are not continually employed at that department of street-traffic,
we find the total number of street-sellers belonging to this class to
be about 500.

Concerning the number selling live animals in the streets, there are
50 men vending fancy and sporting dogs; 200 sellers and “duffers”
of English birds; 10 sellers of parrots and other foreign birds; 3
sellers of birds’-nests, &c.; 20 vendors of squirrels; 6 sellers of
leverets and wild rabbits; 35 vendors of gold and silver fish; 20
vendors of tortoises; and 14 sellers of snails, frogs, worms, &c.; or,
allowing for the temporary and mixed character of many of these trades,
we may say that there are 200 constantly engaged in this branch of
street-commerce.

Then of the street-sellers of mineral productions and natural
curiosities, there are 216 vendors of coals; 1500 sellers of coke;
14 sellers of tan-turf; 150 vendors of salt; 70 sellers of sand; 26
sellers of shells; or 1969 in all. From this number the sellers of
shells must be deducted, as the shell-trade is not a special branch of
street-traffic. We may, therefore, assert that the number of people
engaged in this latter class of street-business amounts to about 1900.

Now, adding all these sums together, we have the following table as to
the numbers of individuals comprised in the _first_ division of the
London street-folk, viz. the street-sellers:--

1. Costermongers (including men,
women, and children engaged in the
sale of fish, fruit, vegetables, game,
poultry, flowers, &c.) 30,000
2. Street-sellers of “green stuff,”
including water-cresses, chickweed
and gru’n’sel, turf, &c. 2,000
3. Street-sellers of eatables and
drinkables 4,000
4. Street-sellers of stationery, literature,
and fine arts 1,000
5. Street-sellers of manufactured
articles of metal, crockery, glass, textile,
chemical, and miscellaneous substances 4,000
6. Street-sellers of second-hand
articles, including the sellers of old
metal articles, old glass, old linen, old
clothes, old shoes, &c. 500
7. Street-sellers of live animals, as
dogs, birds, gold and silver fish, squirrels,
leverets, tortoises, snails, &c. 200
8. Street-sellers of mineral productions
and natural curiosities, as coals,
coke, tan-turf, salt, sand, shells, &c. 1,900
______
TOTAL NUMBER OF STREET-SELLERS 43,640

These numbers, it should be remembered, are given rather as an
approximation to the truth than as the absolute fact. It would
therefore be safer to say, making all due allowance for the temporary
and mixed character of many branches of street-commerce, that there
are about 40,000 people engaged in selling articles in the streets
of London. I am induced to believe that this is very near the real
number of street-sellers, from the _wholesale_ returns of the places
where the street-sellers purchase their goods, and which I have always
made a point of collecting from the best authorities connected with
the various branches of street-traffic. The statistics of the fish
and green markets, the swag-shops, the old clothes exchange, the
bird-dealers, which I have caused to be collected for the first time in
this country, all tend to corroborate this estimate.

The next fact to be evolved is the amount of capital invested in the
street-sale of Second-hand Articles, of Live Animals, and of Mineral
Productions. And, first, as to the money employed in the Second-hand
Street-Trade.

The following tables will show the amount of capital invested in this
branch of street-business.

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Metal Wares._

30 stalls, 5_s._ each; 20 barrows, 1_l._ £ _s._ _d._
each; stock-money for 50 vendors, at
10_s._ per head 52 10 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Metal Trays._

Stock-money for 20 sellers, at 5_s._ 5 0 0

_Street-Sellers of other Second-hand Metal Articles,
as Italian and Flat Irons._

Stock-money for 20 vendors, at 5_s._
each; 20 stalls, at 3_s._ each 8 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Linen, &c._

Stock-money for 30 vendors, at 5_s._ per head 7 10 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand (burnt) Linen and
Calico._

Stock-money for 80 vendors, at 10_s._ each 40 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Curtains._

Stock-money for 30 sellers, at 5_s._ each 7 10 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Carpeting, Flannels,
Stocking-legs, &c._

Stock-money for 30 sellers, at 6_s._ each 9 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Bed-ticking,
Sacking, Fringe, &c._

Stock-money for 30 sellers, at 4_s._ each 6 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Glass and Crockery._

6 barrows, 15_s._ each; 6 baskets,
1_s._ 6_d._ each; stock-money for 6 vendors,
at 5_s._ each 6 9 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Miscellaneous
Articles._

Stock-money for 5 vendors, at 15_s._ each 3 15 0

_Street-Sellers and Duffers of Second-hand Music._

Stock-money for 25 sellers, at 1_l._ each 25 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Weapons._

Stock-money for 6 vendors, at 1_l._ each 6 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Curiosities._

6 barrows, 15_s._ each; stock-money
for 6 vendors, at 15_s._ per head 9 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Telescopes and
Pocket-Glasses._

Stock-money for 6 vendors, at 4_l._ each 24 0 0

_Street-Sellers of other Miscellaneous Articles._

30 stalls, 5_s._ each; stock-money for
30 sellers, at 15_s._ each 30 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Men’s Second-hand Clothes._

100 linen bags, at 2_s._ each; stock-money
for 100 sellers, at 15_s._ each 85 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Boots and Shoes._

10 stalls, at 3_s._ each; 30 baskets, at
2_s._ 6_d._ each; stock-money for 30
sellers, at 10_s._ each 20 5 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Hats._

30 irons, two to each man, at 2_s._ each;
60 blocks, at 1_s._ 6_d._ per block; stock-money
for 15 vendors, at 10_s._ each 15 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Women’s Second-hand Apparel._

Stock-money for 50 sellers, at 10_s._
each; 50 baskets, at 2_s._ 6_d._ each 31 5 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Bonnets._

10 umbrellas, at 3_s._ each; 30 baskets,
at 2_s._ 6_d._ each; stock-money
for 30 sellers, at 5_s._ each 12 15 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Furs._

Stock-money for 10 vendors, at
7_s._ 6_d._ each 3 15 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Articles in
Smithfield-market._

30 sellers of harness sets and collars,
at an average capital of 15_s._ each;
6 sellers of saddles and pads, at 15_s._
each; 10 sellers of bits, at 3_s._ each; 6
sellers of wheel-springs and trays, at
15_s._ each; 6 sellers of boards and
trestles for stalls, at 10_s._ each; 20
sellers of barrows, small carts, and
trucks, at 5_l._ each; 6 sellers of goat
carriages, at 3_l._ each; 6 sellers of
shooting galleries and guns for ditto,
and drums for costers, at 15_s._ each;
10 sellers of measures, weights, and
scales, at 25_s._ each; 5 sellers of potato
cans and roasted-chestnut apparatus,
at 5_l._ each; 3 sellers of ginger-beer
trucks, at 5_l._ each; 6 sellers of
pea-soup cans and pickled-eel kettles,
15_s._ each; 2 sellers of elder-wine
vessels, at 15_s._ each. Thus we find
that the average number of street-sellers
frequenting Smithfield-market
once a week is 116, and the average
capital 217 0 0
--------------
TOTAL AMOUNT OF CAPITAL BELONGING
TO STREET-SELLERS OF
SECOND-HAND ARTICLES 621 14 0

STREET-SELLERS OF LIVE ANIMALS.

_Street-Sellers of Dogs._

Stock-money for 20 sellers (including
kennels and keep), at 5_l._ 15_s._
each seller 115 0 0

_Street-Sellers and Duffers of Birds (English)._

2400 small cages (reckoning 12 to
each seller), at 6_d._ each; 1200 long
cages (allowing 6 cages to each seller),
at 2_s._ each; 1800 large cages (averaging
9 cages to each seller), at 2_s._ 6_d._
each. Stock-money for 200 sellers, at
20_s._ each 605 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Parrots, &c._

20 cages, at 10_s._ each; stock-money
for 10 sellers, at 30_s._ each 25 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Birds’-Nests._

3 hamper baskets, at 6_d._ each 1 6

_Street-Sellers of Squirrels._

Stock-money for 20 vendors, at 10_s._ each 10 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Leverets, Wild Rabbits, &c._

6 baskets, at 2_s._ each; stock-money
for 6 vendors, at 5_s._ each 2 2 0

_Street-Sellers of Gold and Silver Fish._

35 glass globes, at 2_s._ each; 35
small nets, at 6_d._ each; stock-money
for 35 vendors, at 15_s._ each 30 12 6

_Street-Sellers of Tortoises._

Stock-money for 20 vendors, at 10_s._ each 25 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Snails, Frogs, Worms, Snakes,
Hedgehogs, &c._

14 baskets, at 1_s._ each 14 0
--------------
TOTAL AMOUNT OF CAPITAL BELONGING
TO STREET-SELLERS OF LIVE
ANIMALS 798 10 0

STREET-SELLERS OF MINERAL PRODUCTIONS AND NATURAL CURIOSITIES.

_Street-Sellers of Coals._

30 two-horse vans, at 70_l._ each; 100
horses, at 20_l._ each; 100 carts, at 10_l._
each; 160 horses, at 10_l._ each; 20
donkey or pony carts, at 1_l._ each; 20
donkeys or ponies, at 1_l._ 10_s._ each;
210 sets of weights and scales, at
1_l._ 10_s._ each; stock-money for 210
vendors, at 2_l._ each 7,485 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Coke._

100 vans, at 70_l._ each; 100 horses,
at 20_l._ each; 300 carts, at 10_l._ each;
300 horses, at 10_l._ each; 500 donkey-carts,
at 1_l._ each; 500 donkeys, at 1_l._
each; 200 trucks and barrows, at 10_s._
each; 4800 sacks for the 100 vans, at
3_s._ 6_d._ each; 3600 sacks for the 300
carts; 3000 sacks for the 500 donkey
carts; 1652 sacks for the 550
trucks and barrows; 300 sacks for
the 50 women; stock-money for 1500
vendors, at 1_l._ per head 19,936 12 0

_Street-Sellers of Tan-Turf._

12 donkeys and carts, at 2_l._ each;
2 trucks, at 15_s._ each; stock-money
for 14 vendors, at 10_s._ each 32 10 0

_Street-Sellers of Salt._

75 donkeys and carts, at 2_l._ 5_s._
each; 75 barrows, at 10_s._ each;
stock-money for 150 vendors, at 6_s._
each 251 5 0

_Street-Sellers of Sand._

20 horses, at 10_l._ each; 20 carts,
at 3_l._ each; 60 baskets, at 2_s._ each;
wages of 30 men, at 3_s._ per day for
each; expenses for keep of 20 horses,
at 10_s._ per head; estimated stock-money
for 30 sellers, at 5_s._ each; 40
barrows, at 15_s._ each; stock-money
for the barrow-men, at 1_s._ 6_d._ each 320 5 0

_Street-Sellers of Shells._

Stock-money for 70 vendors, at 5_s._
each 17 10 0
-----------------
TOTAL CAPITAL BELONGING TO
STREET-SELLERS OF MINERAL PRODUCTIONS,
ETC. 28,043 2 0

_River-Sellers of Purl._

35 boats, at 4_l._ 10_s._ each; 35 sets
of measures, at 5_s._ the set; 35 warming
pots, at 1_s._ 6_d._ each; 35 fire-stoves,
at 5_s._ each; 35 gallon cans, at 2_s._ 6_d._
each; 70 “pins” of beer, at 4_s._ per
“pin;” 35 quarts of gin, at 2_s._ 6_d._
the quart; 35 licences, at 3_s._ 6_d._;
stock-money for spice, &c., at 1_s._ each 208 5 0

Hence it would appear that the gross amount of property belonging to
the street-sellers may be reckoned as follows:--

Value of stock-in-trade belonging
to costermongers 25,000 0 0

Ditto street-sellers of green-stuff 149 0 0

Ditto street-sellers of eatables
and drinkables 9,000 0 0

Ditto street-sellers of stationery,
literature, and the fine arts 400 0 0

Ditto street-sellers of manufactured
articles 2,800 0 0

Ditto street-sellers of second-hand
articles 621 14 0

Ditto street-sellers of live animals 798 10 0

Ditto street-sellers of mineral
productions, &c. 28,043 2 0

Ditto river-sellers of purl 208 5 0
----------------
TOTAL AMOUNT OF CAPITAL BELONGING
TO THE LONDON STREET-SELLERS 67,023 11 0

The gross value of the stock in trade of the London street-sellers may
then be estimated at about 60,000_l._

INCOME, OR “TAKINGS,” OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND ARTICLES.

We have now to estimate the receipts of each of the above-mentioned
classes.

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Metal Wares._

I was told by several in this trade £ _s._ _d._
that there were 200 old metal sellers
in the streets, but, from the best information
at my command, not more
than 50 appear to be strictly _street_-sellers,
unconnected with shopkeeping.
Estimating a weekly receipt,
per individual, of 15_s._ (half being
profit), the yearly street outlay
among this body amounts to 1,950 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Metal-Trays, &c._

Calculating that 20 persons take in
the one or two nights’ sale 4_s._ a week
each, on second-hand trays (33 per
cent. being the rate of profit), the
street expenditure amounts yearly to 208 0 0

_Street-Sellers of other Second-hand Metal Articles,
as Italian and Flat Irons, &c._

There are, I am informed, 20 persons
selling Italian and flat irons regularly
throughout the year in the
streets of London; each takes upon
an average 6s. weekly, which gives
an annual expenditure of upwards of 312 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Linen, &c._

There are at present 30 men and
women who sell towelling and canvas
wrappers in the streets on Saturday
and Monday nights, each taking
in the sale of those articles 9_s._ per
week, thus giving an annual outlay
of 702 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand (burnt) Linen and
Calico._

The most intelligent man whom I
met with in this trade calculated that
there were 80 of these second-hand
street-folk plying their trade two
nights in the week; and that they
took 8_s._ each weekly, about half of it
being profit; thus the annual street
expenditure would be 1,664 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Curtains._

From the best data at my command
there are 30 individuals who are engaged
in the street-sale of second-hand
curtains, and reckoning the
weekly takings of each to be 5_s._, we
find the yearly sum spent in the streets
upon second-hand curtains amounts to 390 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Carpeting, Flannels,
Stocking-legs, &c._

I am informed that the same persons
selling curtains sell also second-hand
carpeting, &c.; their weekly average
takings appear to be about 6_s._ each
in the sale of the above articles, thus
we have a yearly outlay of 468 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Bed-ticking,
Sacking, Fringe, &c._

The street-sellers of curtains, carpeting,
&c., of whom there are 30,
are also the street-sellers of bed-ticking,
sacking, fringe, &c. Their weekly
takings for the sale of these articles
amount to 4_s._ each. Hence we find
that the sum spent yearly in the
streets upon the purchase of bed-ticking,
&c., amounts to 312 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Glass and
Crockery._

Calculating that each of the six
dealers takes 12_s._ weekly, with a
profit of 6_s._ or 7_s._, we find there is
annually expended in this department
of street-commerce 187 4 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Miscellaneous
Articles._

From the best data I have been
able to obtain, it appears that there
are five street-sellers engaged in the
sale of these second-hand articles of
amusement, and the receipts of the
whole are 10_l._ weekly, about half
being profit, thus giving a yearly expenditure
of 520 0 0

_Street-Sellers and Duffers of Second-hand Music._

A broker who was engaged in this
traffic estimated--and an intelligent
street-seller agreed in the computation--that,
take the year through, at least
25 individuals are regularly, but few
of them fully, occupied with this
traffic, and that their weekly takings
average 30_s._ each, or an aggregate
yearly amount of 1950_l._ The weekly
profits run from 10_s._ to 15_s._, and
sometimes the well-known dealers
clear 40_s._ or 50_s._ a week, while others
do not take 5_s._ 1,950 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Weapons._

In this traffic it may be estimated,
I am assured, that there are 20 men
engaged, each taking, as an average, 1_l._
a week. In some weeks a man may
take 5_l._; in the next month he may
sell no weapons at all. From 30 to
50 per cent. is the usual rate of profit,
and the yearly street outlay on these
second-hand offensive or defensive
weapons is 1,040 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Curiosities._

There are not now more than six
men who carry on this trade apart
from other commerce. Their average
takings are 15_s._ weekly each man,
about two-thirds being profit, or
yearly 234 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Telescopes and
Pocket-Glasses._

There are only six men at present
engaged in the sale of telescopes and
pocket-glasses, and their weekly
average takings are 30_s._ each, giving
a yearly expenditure in the streets of 468 0 0

_Street-Sellers of other Second-hand Miscellaneous
Articles._

If we reckon that there are 30
street-sellers carrying on a traffic in
second-hand miscellaneous articles,
and that each takes 10_s._ weekly, we
find the annual outlay in the streets
upon these articles amounts to 780 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Men’s Second-hand Clothes._

The street-sale of men’s second-hand
wearing apparel is carried on
principally by the Irish and others.
From the best information I can
gather, there appear to be upwards
of 1200 old clothes men buying
left-off apparel in the metropolis,
one-third of whom are Irish. There
are, however, not more than 100 of
these who sell in the streets the
articles they collect; the average-takings
of each of the sellers are
about 20_s._ weekly, their trading
being chiefly on the Saturday nights
and Sunday mornings. Their profits
are from 50 to 60 per cent. Estimating
the number of sellers at 100,
and their weekly takings at 20_s._ each,
we have an annual expenditure of 5,200 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Boots and Shoes._

There are at present about 30 individuals
engaged in the street-sale
of second-hand boots and shoes of all
kinds; some take as much as 30_s._
weekly, while others do not take
more than half that amount; their
profits being about 50 per cent.
Reckoning that the weekly average
takings are 20_s._ each, we have a
yearly expenditure on second-hand
boots and shoes of 1,560 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Hats._

Throughout the year there are
not more than 15 men constantly
“working” this branch of street-traffic.
The average weekly gains
of each are about 10_s._, and in
order to clear that sum they must
take 20_s._ Hence the gross gains of
the class will be 390_l._ per annum,
while the sum yearly expended in the
streets upon second-hand hats will
amount altogether to 780 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Women’s Second-hand Apparel._

The number of persons engaged in
the street-sale of women’s second-hand
apparel is about 50, each of
whom take, upon an average, 15_s._ per
week; one-half of this is clear gain.
Thus we find the annual outlay in
the streets upon women’s second-hand
apparel is no less than 1,950 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Bonnets._

There are at present 30 persons
(nearly one-half of whom are milliners,
and the others street-sellers) who sell
second-hand straw and other bonnets;
some of these are placed in an umbrella
turned upside down, while
others are spread upon a wrapper on
the stones. The average takings of
this class of street-sellers are about
12_s._ each per week, and their clear gains
not more than one-half, thus giving a
yearly expenditure of 936 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Furs._

During five months of the year there
are as many as 8 or 12 persons who
sell furs in the street-markets on
Saturday nights, Sunday mornings,
and Monday nights. The weekly
average takings of each is about 12_s._,
nearly three-fourths of which is clear
profit. Reckoning that 10 individuals
are engaged 20 weeks during the year,
and that each of these takes weekly
12_s._, we find the sum annually
expended in the streets on furs
amounts to 120 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Second-hand Articles in Smithfield-market._

I am informed, by those who are in
a position to know, that there are sold
on an average every year in Smithfield-market
about 624 sets of harness,
at 14_s._ per set; 1560 collars, at 2_s._
each; 686 pads, at 1_s._ each; 1560
saddles, at 5_s._ each; 936 bits, at 6_d._
each; 520 pair of wheels, at 10_s._ per
pair; 624 pair of springs, at 8_s._ 4_d._
per pair; 832 pair of trestles, at
2_s._ 6_d._ per pair; 520 boards, at 4_s._
each; 1820 barrows, at 25_s._ each;
312 trucks, at 50_s._ each; 208 trays,
at 1_s._ 3_d._ each; 1040 small carts, at
63_s._ each; 156 goat-carriages, at 20_s._
each; 520 shooting-galleries, at 14_s._
each; 312 guns for shooting-galleries,
at 10_s._ each; 1040 drums for costers,
at 3_s._ each; 2080 measures, at 3_d._
each; 2080 pair of large scales, at
5_s._ per pair; 2080 pair of hand-scales,
at 5_d._ per pair; 30 roasted
chestnut-apparatus, at 20_s._ each; 100
ginger-beer trucks, at 30_s._ each; 20
eel-kettles, at 5_s._ each; 100 potato-cans,
at 17_s._ each; 10 pea-soup cans,
at 5_s._ each; 40 elderwine vessels, at
8_s._ each; giving a yearly expenditure
of 10,242 3 8
-----------------
TOTAL SUM OF MONEY ANNUALLY
TAKEN BY THE STREET-SELLERS OF
SECOND-HAND ARTICLES 33,461 1 4

STREET-SELLERS OF LIVE ANIMALS.

_Street-Sellers of Dogs (Fancy Pets)._

From the best data it appears that
each hawker sells “four or five
occasionally in one week in the summer,
when trade’s brisk and days
are long, and only two or three
the next week, when trade may be
flat, and during each week in winter,
when there isn’t the same chance.”
Calculating, then, that seven dogs are
sold by each hawker in a fortnight,
at an average price of 50_s._ each
(many fetch 3_l._, 4_l._, and 5_l._), and supposing
that but 20 men are trading
in this line the year through, we
find that no less a sum is yearly expended
in this street-trade than 9,100 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Sporting Dogs._

The amount “turned over” in the
trade in sporting dogs yearly, in London,
is computed by the best informed
at about 12,000 0 0

_Street-Sellers and Duffers of Live Birds.
(English)._

There are in the metropolis 200
street-sellers of English birds, who
may be said to sell among them 7000
linnets, at 3_d._ each; 3000 bullfinches,
at 2_s._ 6_d._ each; 400 piping bullfinches,
at 63_s._ each; 7000 goldfinches, at
9_d._ each; 1500 chaffinches, at 2_s._ 6_d._
each; 700 greenfinches, at 3_d._ each;
6000 larks, at 1_s._ each; 200 nightingales,
at 1_s._ each; 600 redbreasts, at
1_s._ each; 3500 thrushes and thrustles,
at 2_s._ 6_d._ each; 1400 blackbirds, at
2_s._ 6_d._ each; 1000 canaries, at 1_s._
each; 10,000 sparrows, at 1_d._ each;
1500 starlings, at 1_s._ 6_d._ each; 500
magpies and jackdaws, at 9_d._ each;
300 redpoles, at 9_d._ each; 150 blackcaps,
at 4_d._ each; 2000 “duffed”
birds, at 2_s._ 6_d._ each. Thus making
the sum annually expended in the
purchase of birds in the streets,
amount to 3,624 12 2

_Street-Sellers of Parrots, &c._

The number of individuals at present
hawking parrots and other foreign
birds in the streets is 10, who sell
among them during the year about
500 birds. Reckoning each bird to
sell at 1_l._, we find the annual outlay
upon parrots bought in the streets to
be 500_l._; adding to this the sale of
110 Java sparrows and St. Helena
birds, as Wax-bills and Red-beaks at
1_s._ 6_d._ each, we have for the sum
yearly expended in the streets on the
sale of foreign birds 508 5 0

_Street-Sellers of Birds’-Nests._

There are at present only three
persons hawking birds’-nests, &c., in
the streets during the season, which
lasts from May to August; these
street-sellers sell among them 400
nests, at 2-1/2_d._ each; 144 snakes, at
1_s._ 6_d._ each; 4 hedgehogs, at 1_s._ each;
and about 2_s._’s worth of snails. This
makes the weekly income of each
amount to about 8_s._ 6_d._ during a
period of 12 weeks in the summer,
and the sum annually expended on
these articles to come to 15 6 0

_Street-Sellers of Squirrels._

For five months of the year there
are 20 men selling squirrels in the
streets, at from 20 to 50 per cent.
profit, and averaging a weekly sale of
six each. The average price is from
2_s._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ Thus 2400 squirrels
are vended yearly in the streets, at
a cost to the public of 240 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Leverets, Wild Rabbits, &c._

During the year there are about
six individuals exposing for sale in the
streets young hares and wild rabbits.
These persons sell among them 300
leverets, at 1_s._ 6_d._ each; and 400
young wild-rabbits, at 4_d._ each, giving
a yearly outlay of 29 3 4

_Street-Sellers of Gold and Silver Fish._

If we calculate, in order to allow
for the cessation of the trade during the
winter, and often in the summer when
costermongering is at its best, that
but 35 gold-fish sellers hawk in the
streets and that for but half a year,
each selling six dozen weekly, at 12_s._
the dozen, we find 65,520 fish sold,
at an outlay of 3,276 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Tortoises._

Estimating the number of individuals
selling tortoises to be 20, and
the number of tortoises sold to be
10,000, at an average price of 8_d._
each, we find there is expended yearly
upon these creatures upwards of 333 6 8

_Street-Sellers of Snails, Frogs, &c._

There are 14 snail gatherers, and
they, on an average, gather six dozen
quarts each in a year, which supplies
a total of 12,096 quarts of snails.
The labourers in the gardens, I am
informed, gather somewhat more than
an equal quantity, the greater part
being sold to the bird-shops; so that
altogether the supply of snails for
the caged thrushes and blackbirds of
London is about two millions and a
half. Computing them at 24,000
quarts, and at 2_d._ a quart, the annual
outlay is 200_l._ Besides snails, there
are collected annually 500 frogs and 18
toads, at 1_d._ each, giving a yearly
expenditure of 202 3 2

TOTAL, OR GROSS “TAKINGS,” OF THE
STREET-SELLERS OF LIVE ANIMALS 23,868 16 4

INCOME, OR “TAKINGS,” OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MINERAL PRODUCTIONS AND
NATURAL CURIOSITIES.

_Street-Sellers of Coals._

The number of individuals engaged
in the street-sale of coals is 210;
these distribute 2940 tons of coals
weekly, giving an annual trade of
152,880 tons, at 1_l._ per ton, and consequently
a yearly expenditure by
the poor of 152,880 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Coke._

The number of individuals engaged
in the street-sale of coke is 1500;
and the total quantity of coke sold
annually in the streets is computed
at about 1,400,000 chaldrons. These
are purchased at the gas factories at
an average price of 8_s._ per chaldron.
Reckoning that this is sold at 4_s._ per
chaldron for profit, we find that the
total gains of the whole class amount
to 280,000_l._ per annum, and their
gross annual takings to 840,000 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Tan-Turf._

The number of tan-turf sellers in
the metropolis is estimated at 14;
each of these dispose of, upon an
average, 20,000 per week, during
the year; selling them at 1_s._ per
hundred, and realizing a profit of
4-1/2_d._ for each hundred. This makes
the annual outlay in the street-sale of
the above article amount to 7,280 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Salt._

There are at present 150 individuals
hawking salt in the several
streets of London; each of these pay
at the rate of 2_s._ per cwt. for the salt,
and retail it at 3 lbs. for 1_d._, which
leaves 1_s._ 1_d._ profit on every cwt.
One day with another, wet and dry,
each of the street-sellers disposes of
about 2-1/2 cwt., or 18 tons 15 cwt.
per day for all hands, and this, deducting
Sundays, makes 5868 tons
15 cwt. in the course of the year.
The profit of 1_s._ 1_d._ per cwt.
amounts to a yearly aggregate profit
of 6357_l._ 16_s._ 3_d._, or about 42_l._
per annum for each person in the
trade; while the sum annually expended
upon this article in the streets
amounts to 18,095 6 3

_Street-Sellers of Sand._

Calculating the sale at a load of
sand per day, for each horse and cart,
at 21_s._ per load, we find the sum
annually expended in house-sand
to be 6573_l._; adding to this the sum
of 234_l._ spent yearly in bird-sand,
the total street-expenditure is 6,807 0 0

_Street-Sellers of Shells._

There are about 50 individuals
disposing of shells at different periods
of the year. These sell among them
1,000,000 at 1_d._ each, giving an
annual expenditure of 4,166 13 4
---------------------
TOTAL, OR GROSS TAKINGS, OF THE
STREET-SELLERS OF MINERAL PRODUCTIONS
AND NATURAL CURIOSITIES £1,029,228 19 7
---------------------

_River-Sellers of Purl._

There are at present 35 men following
the trade of purl-selling on the
river Thames to colliers. The weekly
profits of this class amount to 117_l._ 5_s._
per week, and yearly to 6097_l._, while
their annual takings is 8,190 0 0

Now, adding together the above and the other foregone results, we
arrive at the following estimate as to the amount of money annually
expended on the several articles purchased in the streets of the
metropolis.

“Wet” fish £1,177,200 £
Dry fish 127,000
Shell fish 156,600
----------
Fish of all kinds £1,460,800

Vegetables £292,400
Green fruit 332,200
Dry fruit 1,000
----------
Fruit and Vegetables 625,600

Game, poultry, rabbits, &c. 80,000
Flowers, roots, &c. 14,800
Water-cresses 13,900
Chickweed, gru’nsel, and turf for birds 14,570
Eatables and drinkables 203,100
Stationery, literature, and fine arts 33,400
Manufactured articles 188,200
Second-hand articles 29,900
Live animals (_including dogs, birds,
and gold fish_) 29,300
Mineral productions (_as coals, coke,
salt, sand, &c._) 1,022,700
----------
TOTAL SUM EXPENDED UPON THE
VARIOUS ARTICLES VENDED BY THE
STREET-SELLERS £3,716,270

Hence it appears that the street-sellers, of all ages, in the
metropolis are about forty thousand in number--their stock-in-trade is
worth about sixty thousand pounds--and their gross annual takings or
receipts amount to no less than three millions and a half sterling.

OF THE STREET-BUYERS.

The persons who traverse the streets, or call periodically at certain
places to purchase articles which are usually sold at the door or
within the house, are--according to the division I laid down in the
first number of this work--STREET-BUYERS. The largest, and, in every
respect, the most remarkable body of these traders, are the buyers of
old clothes, and of them I shall speak separately, devoting at the same
time some space to the STREET-JEWS. It will also be necessary to give
a brief account of the Jews generally, for they are still a peculiar
race, and street and shop-trading among them are in many respects
closely blended.

The principal things bought by the itinerant purchasers consist of
waste-paper, hare and rabbit skins, old umbrellas and parasols, bottles
and glass, broken metal, rags, dripping, grease, bones, tea-leaves, and
old clothes.

With the exception of the buyers of waste-paper, among whom are many
active, energetic, and intelligent men, the street-buyers are of
the lower sort, both as to means and intelligence. The only further
exception, perhaps, which I need notice here is, that among some
umbrella-buyers, there is considerable smartness, and sometimes, in
the repair or renewal of the ribs, &c., a slight degree of skill. The
other street-purchasers--such as the hare-skin and old metal and rag
buyers, are often old and infirm people of both sexes, of whom--perhaps
by reason of their infirmities--not a few have been in the trade from
their childhood, and are as well known by sight in their respective
rounds, as was the “long-remembered beggar” in former times.

It is usually the lot of a poor person who has been driven to the
streets, or has adopted such a life when an adult, to _sell_ trifling
things--such as are light to carry and require a small outlay--in
advanced age. Old men and women totter about offering lucifer-matches,
boot and stay-laces, penny memorandum books, and such like. But the
elder portion of the street-folk I have now to speak of do not sell,
but _buy_. The street-seller commends his wares, their cheapness, and
excellence. The same sort of man, when a buyer, depreciates everything
offered to him, in order to ensure a cheaper bargain, while many of
the things thus obtained find their way into street-sale, and are then
as much commended for cheapness and goodness, as if they were the
stock-in-trade of an acute slop advertisement-monger, and this is done
sometimes by the very man who, when a buyer, condemned them as utterly
valueless. But this is common to all trades.

OF THE STREET-BUYERS OF RAGS, BROKEN METAL, BOTTLES, GLASS, AND BONES.

I class all these articles under one head, for, on inquiry, I find no
individual supporting himself by the trading in any one of them. I
shall, therefore, describe the buyers of rags, broken metal, bottles,
glass, and bones, as a body of street-traders, but take the articles in
which they traffic seriatim, pointing out in what degree they are, or
have been, wholly or partially, the staple of several distinct callings.

The traders in these things are not unprosperous men. The poor
creatures who may be seen picking up rags in the street are
“street-finders,” and not buyers. It is the same with the poor old men
who may be seen bending under an unsavoury sack of bones. The bones
have been found, or have been given for charity, and are not purchased.
One feeble old man whom I met with, his eyes fixed on the middle of
the carriage-way in the Old St. Pancras-road, and with whom I had some
conversation, told me that the best friend he had in the world was a
gentleman who lived in a large house near the Regent’s-park, and gave
him the bones which his dogs had done with! “If I can only see hisself,
sir,” said the old man, “he’s sure to give me any coppers he has in
his coat-pocket, and that’s a very great thing to a poor man like me.
O, yes, I’ll buy bones, if I have any ha’pence, rather than go without
them; but I pick them up, or have them given to me mostly.”

The street-buyers, who are only buyers, have barrows, sometimes even
carts with donkeys, and, as they themselves describe it, they “buy
everything.” These men are little seen in London, for they “work” the
more secluded courts, streets, and alleys, when in town; but their most
frequented rounds are the poorer parts of the populous suburbs. There
are many in Croydon, Woolwich, Greenwich, and Deptford. “It’s no use,”
a man who had been in the trade said to me, “such as us calling at fine
houses to know if they’ve any old keys to sell! No, we trades with the
poor.” Often, however, they deal with the servants of the wealthy; and
their usual mode of business in such cases is to leave a bill at the
house a few hours previous to their visit. This document has frequently
the royal arms at the head of it, and asserts that the “firm” has been
established since the year ----, which is seldom less than half a
century. The hand-bill usually consists of a short preface as to the
increased demand for rags on the part of the paper-makers, and this is
followed by a liberal offer to give the very best prices for any old
linen, or old metal, bottles, rope, stair-rods, locks, keys, dripping,
carpeting, &c., “in fact, no rubbish or lumber, however worthless, will
be refused;” and generally concludes with a request that this “bill”
may be shown to the mistress of the house and preserved, as it will be
called for in a couple of hours.

The papers are delivered by one of the “firm,” who marks on the door
a sign indicative of the houses at which the bill has been taken in,
and the probable reception there of the gentleman who is to follow him.
The road taken is also pointed by marks before explained, see vol. i.
pp. 218 and 247. These men are residents in all quarters within 20
miles of London, being most numerous in the places at no great distance
from the Thames. They work their way from their suburban residences
to London, which, of course, is the mart, or “exchange,” for their
wares. The reason why the suburbs are preferred is that in those parts
the possessors of such things as broken metal, &c., cannot so readily
resort to a marine-store dealer’s as they can in town. I am informed,
however, that the shops of the marine-store men are on the increase in
the more densely-peopled suburbs; still the dwellings of the poor are
often widely scattered in those parts, and few will go a mile to sell
any old thing. They wait in preference, unless very needy, for the
_visit_ of the street-buyer.

A good many years ago--perhaps until 30 years back--_rags_, and
especially white and good linen rags, were among the things most
zealously inquired for by street-buyers, and then 3_d._ a pound was a
price readily paid. Subsequently the paper-manufacturers brought to
great and economical perfection the process of boiling rags in lye and
bleaching them with chlorine, so that colour became less a desideratum.
A few years after the peace of 1815, moreover, the foreign trade in
rags increased rapidly. At the present time, about 1200 tons of woollen
rags, and upwards of 10,000 tons of linen rags, are imported yearly.
These 10,000 tons give us but a vague notion of the real amount. I may
therefore mention that, when reduced to a more definite quantity, they
show a total of no less than twenty-two millions four hundred thousand
pounds. The woollen rags are imported the most largely from Hamburg
and Bremen, the price being from 5_l._ to 17_l._ the ton. Linen rags,
which average nearly 20_l._ the ton, are imported from the same places,
and from several Italian ports, more especially those in Sicily. Among
these ports are Palermo, Messina, Ancona, Leghorn, and Trieste (the
Trieste rags being gathered in Hungary). The value of the rags annually
brought to this country is no less than 200,000_l._ What the native
rags may be worth, there are no facts on which to ground an estimate;
but supposing each person of the 20,000,000 in Great Britain to produce
one pound of rags annually, then the rags of this country may be valued
at very nearly the same price as the foreign ones, so that the gross
value of the rags of Great Britain imported and produced at home,
would, in such a case, amount to 400,000_l._ From France, Belgium,
Holland, Spain, and other continental kingdoms, the exportation of rags
is prohibited, nor can so bulky and low-priced a commodity be smuggled
to advantage.

Of this large sum of rags, which is independent of what is collected in
the United Kingdom, the Americans are purchasers on an extensive scale.
The wear of cotton is almost unknown in many parts of Italy, Germany,
and Hungary; and although the linen in use is coarse and, compared to
the Irish, Scotch, or English, rudely manufactured, the foreign rags
_are_ generally linen, and therefore are preferred at the paper mills.
The street-buyers in this country, however, make less distinction than
ever, as regards price, between linen and cotton rags.

The linen rag-buying is still prosecuted extensively by itinerant
“gatherers” in the country, and in the further neighbourhoods of
London, but the collection is not to the extent it was formerly. The
price is lower, and, owing to the foreign trade, the demand is less
urgent; so common, too, is now the wear of cotton, and so much smaller
that of linen, that many people will not sell linen rags, but reserve
them for use in case of cuts and wounds, or for giving to their
poor neighbours on any such emergency. This was done doubtlessly to
as great, or to a greater extent, in the old times, but linen rags
were more plentiful then, for cotton shirting was not woven to the
perfection seen at present, and many good country housewives spun their
own linen sheetings and shirtings.

A street-buyer of the class I have described, upon presenting himself
at any house, offers to buy rags, broken metal, or glass, and for rags
especially there is often a serious bargaining, and sometimes, I was
told by an itinerant street-seller, who had been an ear-witness, a
little joking not of the most delicate kind. For coloured rags these
men give 1/2_d._ a pound, or 1_d._ for three pounds; for inferior white
rags 1/2_d._ a pound, and up to 1-1/2_d._; for the best, 2_d._ the
pound. It is common, however, and even more common, I am assured, among
masters of the old rag and bottle shops, than among street-buyers, to
announce 2_d._ or 3_d._, or even as much as 6_d._, for the _best_ rags,
but, somehow or other, the rags taken for sale to those buyers never
are of the best. To offer 6_d._ a pound for rags is ridiculous, but
such an offer may be seen at some rag-shops, the figure ~6~, perhaps,
crowning a painting of a large plum-pudding, as a representation of
what may be a Christmas result, merely from the thrifty preservation
of rags, grease, and dripping. Some of the street-buyers, when working
the suburbs or the country, attach a similar “illustration” to their
barrows or carts. I saw the winter placard of one of these men, which
he was reserving for a country excursion as far as Rochester, “when the
plum-pudding time was a-coming.” In this pictorial advertisement a man
and woman, very florid and full-faced, were on the point of enjoying a
huge plum-pudding, the man flourishing a large knife, and looking very
hospitable. On a scroll which issued from his mouth were the words:
“From our rags! The best prices given by ---- ----, of London.” The
woman in like manner exclaimed: “From dripping and house fat! The best
prices given by ---- ----, of London.”

This man told me that at some times, both in town and country, he did
not buy a pound of rags in a week. He had heard the old hands in the
trade say, that 20 or 30 years back they could “gather” (the word
generally used for buying) twice and three times as many rags as at
present. My informant attributed this change to two causes, depending
more upon what he had heard from experienced street-buyers than upon
his own knowledge. At one time it was common for a mistress to allow
her maid-servant to “keep a rag-bag,” in which all refuse linen, &c.,
was collected for sale for the servant’s behoof; a privilege now rarely
accorded. The other cause was that working-people’s wives had less
money at their command now than they had formerly, so that instead of
gathering a good heap for the man who called on them periodically,
they ran to a marine store-shop and sold them by one, two, and
three pennyworths at a time. This related to all the things in the
street-buyer’s trade, as well as to rags.

“I’ve known this trade ten years or so,” said my informant, “I was a
costermonger before that, and I work coster-work now in the summer,
and buy things in the winter. Before Christmas is the best time for
second-hand trade. When I set out on a country round--and I’ve gone as
far as Guildford and Maidstone, and St. Alban’s--I lays in as great a
stock of glass and crocks as I can raise money for, or as my donkey
or pony--I’ve had both, but I’m working a ass now--can drag without
distressing him. I swops my crocks for anythink in the second-hand way,
and when I’ve got through them I buys outright, and so works my way
back to London. I bring back what I’ve bought in the crates and hampers
I’ve had to pack the crocks in. The first year as I started I got hold
of a few very tidy rags, coloured things mostly. The Jew I sold ’em to
when I got home again gave me more than I expected. O, lord no, not
more than I asked! He told me, too, that he’d buy any more I might
have, as they was wanted at some town not very far off, where there was
a call for them for patching quilts. I haven’t heard of a call for any
that way since. I get less and less rags every year, I think. Well, I
can’t say what I got last year; perhaps about two stone. No, none of
them was woollen. They’re things as people’s seldom satisfied with the
price for, is rags. I’ve bought muslin window curtains or frocks as was
worn, and good for nothink but rags, but there always seems such a lot,
and they weighs so light and comes to so little, that there’s sure to
be grumbling. I’ve sometimes bought a lot of old clothes, by the lump,
or I’ve swopped crocks for them, and among them there’s frequently been
things as the Jew in Petticoat-lane, what I sells them to, has put o’
one side as rags. If I’d offered to give rag prices, them as I got
’em of would have been offended, and have thought I wanted to cheat.
When you get a lot at one go, and ’specially if it’s for crocks, you
must make the best of them. This for that, and t’other for t’other.
I stay at the beer-shops and little inns in the country. Some of the
landlords looks very shy at one, if you’re a stranger, acause, if the
police detectives is after anythink, they go as hawkers, or barrowmen,
or somethink that way.” [This statement as to the police is correct;
but the man did not know how it came to his knowledge; he had “heard of
it,” he believed.] “I’ve very seldom slept in a common lodging-house.
I’d rather sleep on my barrow.” [I have before had occasion to remark
the aversion of the costermonger class to sleep in low lodging-houses.
These men, almost always, and from the necessities of their calling,
have rooms of their own in London; so that, I presume, they hate
to sleep _in public_, as the accommodation for repose in many a
lodging-house may very well be called. At any rate the costermongers,
of all classes of street-sellers, when on their country excursions,
resort the least to the lodging-houses.] “The last round I had in the
country, as far as Reading and Pangbourne, I was away about five weeks,
I think, and came back a better man by a pound; that was all. I mean I
had 30 shillings’ worth of things to start with, and when I’d got back,
and turned my rags, and old metal, and things into money, I had 50_s._
To be sure Jenny (the ass) and me lived well all the time, and I bought
a pair of half-boots and a pair of stockings at Reading, so it weren’t
so bad. Yes, sir, there’s nothing I likes better than a turn into the
country. It does one’s health good, if it don’t turn out so well for
profits as it might.”

My informant, the rag-dealer, belonged to the best order of
costermongers; one proof of this was in the evident care which he had
bestowed on Jenny, his donkey. There were no loose hairs on her hide,
and her harness was clean and whole, and I observed after a pause to
transact business on his round, that the animal held her head towards
her master to be scratched, and was petted with a mouthful of green
grass and clover, which the costermonger had in a corner of his vehicle.

_Tailor’s cuttings_, which consist of cloth, satin, lining materials,
fustian, waistcoatings, silk, &c., are among the things which the
street-buyers are the most anxious to become possessed of on a country
round; for, as will be easily understood by those who have read the
accounts before given of the Old Clothes Exchange, and of Petticoat and
Rosemary lanes, they are available for many purposes in London.

_Dressmaker’s cuttings_ are also a portion of the street-buyer’s
country traffic, but to no great extent, and hardly ever, I am told,
unless the street-buyer, which is not often the case, be accompanied
on his round by his wife. In town, tailor’s cuttings are usually sold
to the piece-brokers, who call or send men round to the shops or
workshops for the purpose of buying them, and it is the same with the
dressmaker’s cuttings.

_Old metal_, or _broken metal_, for I heard one appellation used as
frequently as the other, is bought by the same description of traders.
This trade, however, is prosecuted in town by the street-buyers more
largely than in the country, and so differs from the rag business. The
carriage of old iron bolts and bars is exceedingly cumbersome; nor can
metal be packed or stowed away like old clothes or rags. This makes
the street-buyer indifferent as to the collecting of what I heard one
of them call “country iron.” By “metal” the street-folk often mean
copper (most especially), brass, or pewter, in contradistinction to
the cheaper substances of iron or lead. In the country they are most
anxious to buy “metal;” whereas, in town, they as readily purchase
“iron.” When the street-buyers give merely the worth of any metal by
weight to be disposed of, in order to be re-melted, or re-wrought
in some manner, by the manufacturers, the following are the average
prices:--Copper, 6_d._ per lb.; pewter, 5_d._; brass, 5_d._; iron, 6
lbs. for 1_d._, and 8 lbs. for 2_d._ (a smaller quantity than 6 lbs. is
seldom bought); and 1_d._ and 1-1/4_d._ per lb. for lead. Old zinc is
not a metal which “comes in the way” of the street-buyer, nor--as one
of them told me with a laugh--old silver. Tin is never bought by weight
in the streets.

It must be understood that the prices I have mentioned are those given
for old or broken metal, valueless unless for re-working. When an old
metal article is still available, or may be easily made available,
for the use for which it was designed, the street-purchase is by “the
piece,” rather than the weight.

The broken pans, scuttles, kettles, &c., concerning one of the uses
of which I have quoted Mr. Babbage, in page 6 of the present volume,
as to the conversion of these worn-out vessels into the light and
japanned edgings, or clasps, called “clamps,” or “clips,” by the
trunk-makers, and used to protect or strengthen the corners of boxes
and packing-cases, are purchased sometimes by the street-buyers, but
fall more properly under the head of what constitutes a portion of the
stock-in-trade of the street-finder. They are not bought by weight,
but so much for the pan, perhaps so much along with other things;
a halfpenny, a penny, or occasionally two-pence, and often only a
farthing, or three pans for a penny. The uses for these things which
the street-buyers have more especially in view, are not those mentioned
by Mr. Babbage (the trunk clamps), but the conversion of them into the
“iron shovels,” or strong dust-pans sold in the streets. One street
artisan supports himself and his family by the making of dust-pans from
such grimy old vessels.

As in the result of my inquiry among the street-_sellers_ of old
metal, I am of opinion that the street-_buyers_ also are not generally
mixed up with the receipt of stolen goods. That they may be so to some
extent is probable enough; in the same proportion, perhaps, as highly
respectable tradesmen have been known to buy the goods of fraudulent
bankrupts, and others. The street-buyers are low itinerants, seen
regularly by the police and easy to be traced, and therefore, for
one reason, cautious. In one of my inquiries among the young thieves
and pickpockets in the low lodging-houses, I heard frequent accounts
of their selling the metal goods they stole, to “fences,” and in one
particular instance, to the mistress of a lodging-house, who had
conveniences for the melting of pewter pots (called “cats and kittens”
by the young thieves, according to the size of the vessels), but I
never heard them speak of any connection, or indeed any transactions,
with street-folk.

Among the things purchased in great quantities by the street-buyers
of old metal are keys. The keys so bought are of every size, are
generally very rusty, and present every form of manufacture, from
the simplest to the most complex wards. On my inquiring how such a
number of keys without locks came to be offered for street-sale, I
was informed that there were often duplicate or triplicate keys to
one lock, and that in sales of household furniture, for instance,
there were often numbers of odd keys found about the premises and sold
“in a lump;” that locks were often spoiled and unsaleable, wearing
out long before the keys. Twopence a dozen is an usual price for a
dozen “mixed keys,” to a street-buyer. Bolts are also freely bought
by the street-people, as are holdfasts, bed-keys, and screws, “and
everything,” I was told, “which some one or other among the poor is
always a-wanting.”

A little old man, who had been many years a street-buyer, gave me an
account of his purchases of _bottles_ and _glass_. This man had been a
soldier in his youth; had known, as he said, “many ups and downs;” and
occasionally wheels a barrow, somewhat larger and shallower than those
used by masons, from which he vends iron and tin wares, such as cheap
gridirons, stands for hand-irons, dust-pans, dripping trays, &c. As
he sold these wares, he offered to buy, or swop for, any second-hand
commodities. “As to the bottle and glass buying, sir,” he said, “it’s
dead and buried in the streets, and in the country too. I’ve known
the day when I’ve cleared 2_l._ in a week by buying old things in a
country round. How long was that ago, do you say, sir? Why perhaps
twenty years; yes, more than twenty. Now, I’d hardly pick up odd glass
in the street.” [He called imperfect glass wares “odd glass.”] “O, I
don’t know what’s brought about such a change, but everything changes.
I can’t say anything about the duty on glass. No, I never paid any
duty on my glass; it ain’t likely. I buy glass still, certainly I do,
but I think if I depended on it I should be wishing myself in the East
Injes again, rather than such a poor consarn of a business--d----n me
if I shouldn’t. The last glass bargain I made about two months back,
down Limehouse-way, and about the Commercial-road, I cleared 7_d._ by;
and then I had to wheel what I bought--it was chiefly bottles--about
five mile. It’s a trade would starve a cat, the buying of old glass. I
never bought glass by weight, but I’ve heard of some giving a halfpenny
and a penny a pound. I always bought by the piece: from a halfpenny
to a shilling (but that’s long since) for a bottle; and farthings and
halfpennies, and higher and sometimes lower, for wine and other glasses
as was chipped or cracked, or damaged, for they could be sold in them
days. People’s got proud now, I fancy that’s one thing, and must have
everything slap. O, I do middling: I live by one thing or other, and
when I die there’ll just be enough to bury the old man.” [This is
the first street-trader I have met with who made such a statement as
to having provided for his interment, though I have heard these men
occasionally express repugnance at the thoughts of being buried by
the parish.] “I have a daughter, that’s all my family now; she does
well as a laundress, and is a real good sort; I have my dinner with
her every Sunday. She’s a widow without any young ones. I often go to
church, both with my daughter and by myself, on Sunday evenings. It
does one good. I’m fond of the music and singing too. The sermon I
can very seldom make anything of, as I can’t hear well if any one’s a
good way off me when he’s saying anythink. I buy a little old metal
sometimes, but it’s coming to be all up with street glass-people;
everybody seems to run with their things to the rag-and-bottle-shops.”

The same body of traders buy also _old sacking, carpeting, and
moreen bed-curtains and window-hangings_; but the trade in them is
sufficiently described in my account of the buying of rags, for it is
carried on in the same way, so much per pound (1_d._ or 1-1/2_d._ or
2_d._), or so much for the lot.

Of _Bones_ I have already spoken. They are bought by any
street-collector with a cart, on his round in town, at a halfpenny
a pound, or three pounds for a penny; but it is a trade, on account
of the awkwardness of carriage, little cared for by the regular
street-buyers. Men, connected with some bone-grinding-mill, go round
with a horse and cart to the knackers and butchers to collect bones;
but this is a portion, not of street, but of the mill-owner’s,
business. These bones are ground for manure, which is extensively used
by the agriculturists, having been first introduced in Yorkshire and
Lincolnshire about 30 years ago. The importation of bones is now very
great; more than three times as much as it was 20 years back. The value
of the foreign bones imported is estimated at upwards of 300,000_l._
yearly. They are brought from South America (along with hides), from
Germany, Holland, and Belgium.

The men who most care to collect bones in the streets of London are
old and infirm, and they barter toys for them with poor children; for
those children sometimes gather bones in the streets and put them on
one side, or get them from dustholes, for the sake of exchanging them
for a plaything; or, indeed, for selling them to any shopkeeper, and
many of the rag-and-bottle-tradesmen buy bones. The toys most used for
this barter are paper “wind-mills.” These toy-barterers, when they have
a few pence, will buy bones of children or any others, if they cannot
become possessed of them otherwise; but the carriage of the bones is a
great obstacle to much being done in this business.

In the regular way of street-buying, such as I have described it, there
are about 100 men in London and the suburbs. Some buy only during a
portion of the year, and none perhaps (except in the way of barter) the
year round. They are chiefly of the costermonger class, some of the
street-buyers however, have been carmen’s servants, or connected with
trades in which they had the care of a horse and cart, and so became
habituated to a street-life.

There are still many other ways in which the commerce in refuse and the
second-hand street-trade is supplied. As the windmill-seller for bones,
so will the puppet-show man for old bottles or broken table-spoons,
or almost any old trifle, allow children to regale their eyes on the
beauties of his exhibition.

The trade expenditure of the street-buyers it is not easy to estimate.
Their calling is so mixed with selling and bartering, that very
probably not one among them can tell what he expends in _buying_,
as a separate branch of his business. If 100 men expend 15_s._ each
weekly, in the purchase of rags, old metal, &c., and if this trade be
prosecuted for 30 weeks of the year, we find 2250_l._ so expended. The
profits of the buyers range from 20 to 100 per cent.

OF THE “RAG-AND-BOTTLE,” AND THE “MARINE-STORE,” SHOPS.

The principal purchasers of any refuse or worn-out articles are the
proprietors of the rag-and-bottle-shops. Some of these men make a
good deal of money, and not unfrequently unite with the business the
letting out of vans for the conveyance of furniture, or for pleasure
excursions, to such places as Hampton Court. The stench in these
shops is positively sickening. Here in a small apartment may be a
pile of rags, a sack-full of bones, the many varieties of grease and
“kitchen-stuff,” corrupting an atmosphere which, even without such
accompaniments, would be too close. The windows are often crowded
with bottles, which exclude the light; while the floor and shelves
are thick with grease and dirt. The inmates seem unconscious of this
foulness,--and one comparatively wealthy man, who showed me his horses,
the stable being like a drawing-room compared to his shop, in speaking
of the many deaths among his children, could not conjecture to what
cause it could be owing. This indifference to dirt and stench is the
more remarkable, as many of the shopkeepers have been gentlemen’s
servants, and were therefore once accustomed to cleanliness and order.
The door-posts and windows of the rag-and-bottle-shops are often
closely placarded, and the front of the house is sometimes one glaring
colour, blue or red; so that the place may be at once recognised, even
by the illiterate, as the “red house,” or the “blue house.” If these
men are not exactly street-buyers, they are street-billers, continually
distributing hand-bills, but more especially before Christmas. The
more aristocratic, however, now send round cards, and to the following
purport:--

No. -- No. --

THE ---- HOUSE IS ----’S
RAG, BOTTLE, AND KITCHEN STUFF
WAREHOUSE,
---- STREET, ---- TOWN,
Where you can obtain Gold and Silver to any amount.

ESTABLISHED ----.

THE HIGHEST PRICE GIVEN
For all the undermentioned articles, viz:--

Wax and Sperm Pieces
Kitchen Stuff, &c.
Wine & Beer Bottles
Eau de Cologne, Soda Water
Doctors’ Bottles, &c.
White Linen Rags
Bones, Phials, & Broken Flint Glass
Old Copper, Brass, Pewter, &c.
Lead, Iron, Zinc, Steel, &c., &c.
Old Horse Hair, Mattresses, &c.
Old Books, Waste Paper, &c.
All kinds of Coloured Rags

The utmost value given for all kinds of Wearing
Apparel.

Furniture and Lumber of every description bought, and
full value given at his Miscellaneous Warehouse.

Articles sent for.

Some content themselves with sending hand-bills to the houses in their
neighbourhood, which many of the cheap printers keep in type, so that
an alteration in the name and address is all which is necessary for any
customer.

* * * * *

I heard that suspicions were entertained that it was to some of these
traders that the facilities with which servants could dispose of their
pilferings might be attributed, and that a stray silver spoon might
enhance the weight and price of kitchen-stuff. It is not pertaining to
my present subject to enter into the consideration of such a matter;
and I might not have alluded to it, had not I found the regular
street-buyers fond of expressing an opinion of the indifferent honesty
of this body of traders; but my readers may have remarked how readily
the street-people have, on several occasions, justified (as they seem
to think) their own delinquencies by quoting what they declared were as
great and as frequent delinquencies on the part of shopkeepers: “I know
very well,” said an intelligent street-seller on one occasion, “that
two wrongs can never make a right; but tricks that shopkeepers practise
to grow rich upon we must practise, just as they do, to live at all.
As long as they give short weight and short measure, the streets can’t
help doing the same.”

The _rag-and-bottle_ and the _marine-store shops_ are in many
instances but different names for the same description of business.
The chief distinction appears to be this: the marine-store shopkeepers
(proper) do not meddle with what is a very principal object of
traffic with the rag-and-bottle man, the purchase of dripping, as
well as of every kind of refuse in the way of fat or grease. The
marine-store man, too, is more miscellaneous in his wares than his
contemporary of the rag-and-bottle-store, as the former will purchase
any of the smaller articles of household furniture, old tea-caddies,
knife-boxes, fire-irons, books, pictures, draughts and backgammon
boards, bird-cages, Dutch clocks, cups and saucers, tools and brushes.
The-rag-and-bottle tradesman will readily purchase any of these
things to be disposed of as old metal or waste-paper, but his brother
tradesman buys them to be re-sold and re-used for the purposes for
which they were originally manufactured. When furniture, however, is
the staple of one of these second-hand storehouses, the proprietor
is a furniture-broker, and not a marine-store dealer. If, again, the
dealer in these stores confine his business to the purchase of old
metals, for instance, he is classed as an old metal dealer, collecting
it or buying it of collectors, for sale to iron-founders, coppersmiths,
brass-founders, and plumbers. In perhaps the majority of instances
there is little or no distinction between the establishments I have
spoken of. The _dolly_ business is common to both, but most common to
the marine-store dealer, and of it I shall speak afterwards.

These shops are exceedingly numerous. Perhaps in the poorer and
smaller streets they are more numerous even than the chandlers’ or the
beer-sellers’ places. At the corner of a small street, both in town
and the nearer suburbs, will frequently be found the chandler’s shop,
for the sale of small quantities of cheese, bacon, groceries, &c., to
the poor. Lower down may be seen the beer-seller’s; and in the same
street there is certain to be one rag-and-bottle or marine-store shop,
very often two, and not unfrequently another in some adjacent court.

I was referred to the owner of a marine-store shop, as to a respectable
man, keeping a store of the best class. Here the counter, or table, or
whatever it is to be called, for it was somewhat nondescript, by an
ingenious contrivance could be pushed out into the street, so that in
bad weather the goods which were at other times exposed in the street
could be drawn inside without trouble. The glass frames of the window
were removable, and were placed on one side in the shop, for in the
summer an open casement seemed to be preferred. This is one of the
remaining old trade customs still seen in London; for previously to the
great fire in 1666, and the subsequent rebuilding of the city, shops
with open casements, and protected from the weather by overhanging
eaves, or by a sloping wooden roof, were general.

The house I visited was an old one, and abounded in closets and
recesses. The fire-place, which apparently had been large, was removed,
and the space was occupied with a mass of old iron of every kind; all
this was destined for the furnace of the iron-founder, wrought iron
being preferred for several of the requirements of that trade. A chest
or range of very old drawers, with defaced or worn-out labels--once
a grocer’s or a chemist’s--was stuffed, in every drawer, with old
horse-shoe nails (valuable for steel manufacturers), and horse and
donkey shoes; brass knobs; glass stoppers; small bottles (among them a
number of the cheap cast “hartshorn bottles”); broken pieces of brass
and copper; small tools (such as shoemakers’ and harness-makers’ awls),
punches, gimlets, plane-irons, hammer heads, &c.; odd dominoes, dice,
and backgammon-men; lock escutcheons, keys, and the smaller sort of
locks, especially padlocks; in fine, any small thing which could be
stowed away in such a place.

In one corner of the shop had been thrown, the evening before, a mass
of old iron, then just bought. It consisted of a number of screws of
different lengths and substance; of broken bars and rails; of the
odds and ends of the cogged wheels of machinery, broken up or worn
out; of odd-looking spikes, and rings, and links; all heaped together
and scarcely distinguishable. These things had all to be assorted;
some to be sold for re-use in their then form; the others to be sold
that they might be melted and cast into other forms. The floor was
intricate with hampers of bottles; heaps of old boots and shoes; old
desks and work-boxes; pictures (all modern) with and without frames;
waste-paper, the most of it of quarto, and some larger sized, soiled
or torn, and strung closely together in weights of from 2 to 7 lbs.;
and a fire-proof safe, stuffed with old fringes, tassels, and other
upholstery goods, worn and discoloured. The miscellaneous wares were
carried out into the street, and ranged by the door-posts as well as in
front of the house. In some small out-houses in the yard were piles of
old iron and tin pans, and of the broken or separate parts of harness.

From the proprietor of this establishment I had the following account:--

“I’ve been in the business more than a dozen years. Before that, I
was an auctioneer’s, and then a furniture broker’s, porter. I wasn’t
brought up to any regular trade, but just to jobbing about, and a bad
trade it is, as all trades is that ain’t regular employ for a man. I
had some money when my father died--he kept a chandler’s shop--and I
bought a marine.” [An elliptical form of speech among these traders.]
“I gave 10_l._ for the stock, and 5_l._ for entrance and good-will,
and agreed to pay what rents and rates was due. It was a smallish
stock then, for the business had been neglected, but I have no reason
to be sorry for my bargain, though it might have been better. There’s
lots taken in about good-wills, but perhaps not so many in my way of
business, because we’re rather ‘fly to a dodge.’ It’s a confined sort
of life, but there’s no help for that. Why, as to my way of trade,
you’d be surprised, what different sorts of people come to my shop.
I don’t mean the regular hands; but the chance comers. I’ve had men
dressed like gentlemen--and no doubt they was respectable when they was
sober--bring two or three books, or a nice cigar case, or anythink that
don’t show in their pockets, and say, when as drunk as blazes, ‘Give me
what you can for this; I want it sold for a particular purpose.’ That
particular purpose was more drink, I should say; and I’ve known the
same men come back in less than a week, and buy what they’d sold me at
a little extra, and be glad if I had it by me still. O, we sees a deal
of things in this way of life. Yes, poor people run to such as me. I’ve
known them come with such things as teapots, and old hair mattresses,
and flock beds, and _then_ I’m sure they’re hard up--reduced for a
meal. I don’t like buying big things like mattresses, though I do
purchase ’em sometimes. Some of these sellers are as keen as Jews at
a bargain; others seem only anxious to get rid of the things and have
hold of some bit of money anyhow. Yes, sir, I’ve known their hands
tremble to receive the money, and mostly the women’s. They haven’t been
used to it, I know, when that’s the case. Perhaps they comes to sell to
me what the pawns won’t take in, and what they wouldn’t like to be seen
selling to any of the men that goes about buying things in the street.

“Why, I’ve bought everythink; at sales by auction there’s often ‘lots’
made up of different things, and they goes for very little. I buy of
people, too, that come to me, and of the regular hands that supply such
shops as mine. I sell retail, and I sell to hawkers. I sell to anybody,
for gentlemen’ll come into my shop to buy anythink that’s took their
fancy in passing. Yes, I’ve bought old oil paintings. I’ve heard of
some being bought by people in my way as have turned out stunners, and
was sold for a hundred pounds or more, and cost, perhaps, half-a-crown
or only a shilling. I never experienced such a thing myself. There’s
a good deal of gammon about it. Well, it’s hardly possible to say
anything about a scale of prices. I give 2_d._ for an old tin or metal
teapot, or an old saucepan, and sometimes, two days after I’ve bought
such a thing, I’ve sold it for 3_d._ to the man or woman I’ve bought
it of. I’ll sell cheaper to them than to anybody else, because they
come to me in two ways--both as sellers and buyers. For pictures I’ve
given from 3_d._ to 1_s._ I fancy they’re among the last things some
sorts of poor people, which is a bit fanciful, parts with. I’ve bought
them of hawkers, but often I refuse them, as they’ve given more than I
could get. Pictures requires a judge. Some brought to me was published
by newspapers and them sort of people. Waste-paper I buy as it comes.
I can’t read very much, and don’t understand about books. I take the
backs off and weighs them, and gives 1_d._, and 1-1/2_d._, and 2_d._ a
pound, and there’s an end. I sell them at about 1/4_d._ a pound profit,
or sometimes less, to men as we calls ‘waste’ men. It’s a poor part of
our business, but the books and paper takes up little room, and then
it’s clean and can be stowed anywhere, and is a sure sale. Well, the
people as sells ‘waste’ to me is not such as can read, I think; I don’t
know what they is; perhaps they’re such as obtains possession of the
books and what-not after the death of old folks, and gets them out of
the way as quick as they can. I know nothink about what they are. Last
week, a man in black--he didn’t seem rich--came into my shop and looked
at some old books, and said ‘Have you any black lead?’ He didn’t speak
plain, and I could hardly catch him. I said, ‘No, sir, I don’t sell
black lead, but you’ll get it at No. 27,’ but he answered, ‘Not black
lead, but black letter,’ speaking very pointed. I said, ‘No,’ and I
haven’t a notion what he meant.

“Metal (copper) that I give 5_d._ or 5-1/2_d._ for, I can sell to the
merchants from 6-1/2_d._ to 8_d._ the pound. It’s no great trade, for
they’ll often throw things out of the lot and say they’re not metal.
Sometimes, it would hardly be a farthing in a shilling, if it war’n’t
for the draught in the scales. When we buys metal, we don’t notice the
quarters of the pounds; all under a quarter goes for nothink. When we
buys iron, all under half pounds counts nothink. So when we buys by the
pound, and sells by the hundredweight, there’s a little help from this,
which we calls the draught.

“Glass bottles of all qualities I buys at three for a halfpenny, and
sometimes four, up to 2_d._ a-piece for ‘good stouts’ (bottled-porter
vessels), but very seldom indeed 2_d._, unless it’s something very
prime and big like the old quarts (quart bottles). I seldom meddles
with decanters. It’s very few decanters as is offered to me, either
little or big, and I’m shy of them when they are. There’s such a change
in glass. Them as buys in the streets brings me next to nothing now
to buy; they both brought and bought a lot ten year back and later. I
never was in the street-trade in second-hand, but it’s not what it was.
I sell in the streets, when I put things outside, and know all about
the trade.

“It ain’t a fortnight back since a smart female servant, in slap-up
black, sold me a basket-full of doctor’s bottles. I knew her master,
and he hadn’t been buried a week before she come to me, and she said,
‘missus is glad to get rid of them, for they makes her cry.’ They often
say their missusses sends things, and that they’re not on no account to
take less than so much. That’s true at times, and at times it ain’t.
I gives from 1-1/2_d._ to 3_d._ a dozen for good new bottles. I’m
sure I can’t say what I give for other odds and ends; just as they’re
good, bad, or indifferent. It’s a queer trade. Well, I pay my way, but
I don’t know what I clear a week--about 2_l._ I dare say, but then
there’s rent, rates, and taxes to pay, and other expenses.”

The _Dolly_ system is peculiar to the rag-and-bottle man, as well as
to the marine-store dealer. The name is derived from the black wooden
doll, in white apparel, which generally hangs dangling over the door
of the marine-store shops, or of the “rag-and-bottles,” but more
frequently the last-mentioned. This type of the business is sometimes
swung above their doors by those who are not dolly-shop keepers. The
dolly-shops are essentially pawn-shops, and pawn-shops for the very
poorest. There are many articles which the regular pawnbrokers decline
to accept as pledges. Among these things are blankets, rugs, clocks,
flock-beds, common pictures, “translated” boots, mended trowsers,
kettles, saucepans, trays, &c. Such things are usually styled “lumber.”
A poor person driven to the necessity of raising a few pence, and
unwilling to part finally with his lumber, goes to the dolly-man, and
for the merest trifle advanced, deposits one or other of the articles
I have mentioned, or something similar. For an advance of 2_d._ or
3_d._, a halfpenny a week is charged, but the charge is the same if the
pledge be redeemed next day. If the interest be paid at the week’s end,
another 1_d._ is occasionally advanced, and no extra charge exacted
for interest. If the interest be not paid at the week or fortnight’s
end, the article is forfeited, and is sold at a large profit by the
dolly-shop man. For 4_d._ or 6_d._ advanced, the weekly interest is
1_d._; for 9_d._ it is 1-1/2_d._; for 1_s._ it is 2_d._, and 2_d._ on
each 1_s._ up to 5_s._, beyond which sum the “dolly” will rarely go; in
fact, he will rarely advance as much. Two poor Irish flower girls, whom
I saw in the course of my inquiry into that part of street-traffic, had
in the winter very often to pledge the rug under which they slept at
a dolly-shop in the morning for 6_d._, in order to provide themselves
with stock-money to buy forced violets, and had to redeem it on their
return in the evening, when they could, for 7_d._ Thus 6_d._ a week
was sometimes paid for a daily advance of that sum. Some of these
“_illicit_” pawnbrokers even give tickets.

This incidental mention of what is really an immense trade, as regards
the number of pledges, is all that is necessary under the present head
of inquiry, but I purpose entering into this branch of the subject
fully and minutely when I come to treat of the class of “distributors.”

The _iniquities_ to which the poor are subject are positively
monstrous. A halfpenny a day interest on a loan of 2_d._ is at the rate
of 7280 _per cent. per annum!_

OF THE BUYERS OF KITCHEN-STUFF, GREASE, AND DRIPPING.

THIS body of traders cannot be classed as street-buyers, so that only a
brief account is here necessary. The buyers are not now chance people,
itinerant on any round, as at one period they were to a great extent,
but they are the proprietors of the rag and bottle and marine-store
shops, or those they employ.

In this business there has been a considerable change. Until of late
years women, often wearing suspiciously large cloaks and carrying
baskets, ventured into perhaps every area in London, and asked for
the cook at every house where they thought a cook might be kept, and
this often at early morning. If the well-cloaked woman was known,
business could be transacted without delay: if she were a stranger, she
recommended herself by offering very liberal terms for “kitchen-stuff.”
The cook’s, or kitchen-maid’s, or servant-of-all-work’s “perquisites,”
were then generally disposed of to these collectors, some of whom
were charwomen in the houses they resorted to for the purchase of the
kitchen-stuff. They were often satisfied to purchase the dripping, &c.,
by the lump, estimating the weight and the value by the eye. In this
traffic was frequently mixed up a good deal of pilfering, directly or
indirectly. Silver spoons were thus disposed of. Candles, purposely
broken and crushed, were often part of the grease; in the dripping,
butter occasionally added to the weight; in the “stock” (the remains
of meat boiled down for the making of soup) were sometimes portions of
excellent meat fresh from the joints which had been carved at table;
and among the broken bread, might be frequently seen small loaves,
unbroken.

There is no doubt that this mode of traffic by itinerant charwomen,
&c., is still carried on, but to a much smaller extent than formerly.
The cook’s perquisites are in many cases sold under the inspection of
the mistress, according to agreement; or taken to the shop by the cook
or some fellow-servant; or else sent for by the shopkeeper. This is
done to check the confidential, direct, and immediate trade-intercourse
between merely two individuals, the buyer and seller, by making the
transaction more open and regular. I did not hear of any persons who
merely purchase the kitchen-stuff, as street-buyers, and sell it at
once to the tallow-melter or the soap-boiler; it appears all to find
its way to the shops I have described, even when bought by charwomen;
while the shopkeepers send for it or receive it in the way I have
stated, so that there is but little of street traffic in the matter.

One of these shopkeepers told me that in this trading, as far as his
own opinion went, there was as much trickery as ever, and that many
gentlefolk quietly made up their minds to submit to it, while others,
he said, “kept the house in hot water” by resisting it. I found,
however, the general opinion to be, that when servants could only
dispose of these things to known people, the responsibility of the
buyer as well as the seller was increased, and acted as a preventive
check.

The price for kitchen-stuff is 1_d._ and 1-1/2_d._ the pound; for
dripping--used by the poor as a substitute for butter--3-1/2_d._ to
5_d._

OF THE STREET-BUYERS OF HARE AND RABBIT SKINS.

These buyers are for the most part poor, old, or infirm people, and
I am informed that the majority have been in some street business,
and often as buyers, all their lives. Besides having derived this
information from well-informed persons, I may point out that this
is but a reasonable view of the case. If a mechanic, a labourer,
or a gentleman’s servant, resorts to the streets for his bread, or
because he is of a vagrant “turn,” he does not become a _buyer_, but
a _seller_. Street-selling is the easier process. It is easy for a
man to ascertain that oysters, for example, are sold wholesale at
Billingsgate, and if he buy a bushel (as in the present summer) for
5_s._, it is not difficult to find out how many he can afford for “a
penny a lot.” But the street-buyer must not only know what to _give_,
for hare-skins for instance, but what he can depend upon _getting_
from the hat-manufacturers, or hat-furriers, and upon having a regular
market. Thus a double street-trade knowledge is necessary, and a novice
will not care to meddle with any form of open-air traffic but the
simplest. Neither is street-buying (old clothes excepted) generally
cared for by adults who have health and strength.

In the course of a former inquiry I received an account of
hareskin-buying from a woman, upwards of fifty, who had been in the
trade, she told me, from childhood, “as was her mother before her.”
The husband, who was lame, and older than his wife, had been all _his_
life a field-catcher of birds, and a street-seller of hearth-stones.
They had been married 31 years, and resided in a garret of a house, in
a street off Drury-lane--a small room, with a close smell about it.
The room was not unfurnished--it was, in fact, crowded. There were
bird-cages, with and without birds, over what _was_ once a bed; for
the bed, just prior to my visit, had been sold to pay the rent, and a
month’s rent was again in arrear; and there were bird-cages on the wall
by the door, and bird-cages over the mantelshelf. There was furniture,
too, and crockery; and a vile oil painting of “still life;” but an eye
used to the furniture in the rooms of the poor could at once perceive
that there was not _one_ article which could be sold to a broker or
marine-store dealer, or pledged at a pawn-shop. I was told the man and
woman both drank hard. The woman said:--

“I’ve sold hareskins all my life, sir, and was born in London; but when
hareskins isn’t in, I sells flowers. I goes about now (in November)
for my skins every day, wet or dry, and all day long--that is, till
it’s dark. To-day I’ve not laid out a penny, but then it’s been such a
day for rain. I reckon that if I gets hold of eighteen hare and rabbit
skins in a day, that is my greatest day’s work. I gives 2_d._ for
good hares, what’s not riddled much, and sells them all for 2-1/2_d._
I sells what I pick up, by the twelve or the twenty, if I can afford
to keep them by me till that number’s gathered, to a Jew. I don’t
know what is done with them. I can’t tell you just what use they’re
for--something about hats.” [The Jew was no doubt a hat-furrier, or
supplying a hat-furrier.] “Jews gives us better prices than Christians,
and buys readier; so I find. Last week I sold all I bought for 3_s._
6_d._ I take some weeks as much as 8_s._ for what I pick up, and if
I could get that every week I should think myself a lady. The profit
left me a clear half-crown. There’s no difference in any perticler
year--only that things gets worse. The game laws, as far as I knows,
hasn’t made no difference in my trade. Indeed, I can’t say I knows
anything about game laws at all, or hears anything consarning ’em. I
goes along the squares and streets. I buys most at gentlemen’s houses.
We never calls at hotels. The servants, and the women that chars,
and washes, and jobs, manages it there. Hareskins is in--leastways I
c’lects them--from September to the end of March, when hares, they
says, goes mad. I can’t say what I makes one week with another--perhaps
2_s._ 6_d._ may be cleared every week.”

These buyers go regular rounds, carrying the skins in their hands, and
crying, “Any hareskins, cook? Hareskins.” It is for the most part a
winter trade; but some collect the skins all the year round, as the
hares are now vended the year through; but by far the most are gathered
in the winter. Grouse may not be killed excepting from the 12th, and
black-game from the 20th of August to the 10th of December; partridges
from the 1st of September to the 1st of February; while the pheasant
suffers a shorter season of slaughter, from the 1st of October to the
1st of February; but there is no time restriction as to the killing of
hares or of rabbits, though custom causes a cessation for a few months.

A lame man, apparently between 50 and 60, with a knowing look, gave
me the following account. When I saw him he was carrying a few tins,
chiefly small dripping-pans, under his arm, which he offered for
sale as he went his round collecting hare and rabbit skins, of which
he carried but one. He had been in the streets all his life, as his
mother--he never knew any father--was a rag-gatherer, and at the same
time a street-seller of the old brimstone matches and papers of pins.
My informant assisted his mother to make and then to sell the matches.
On her last illness she was received into St. Giles’s workhouse, her
son supporting himself out of it; she had been dead many years. He
could not read, and had never been in a church or chapel in his life.
“He had been married,” he said, “for about a dozen years, and had a
very good wife,” who was also a street-trader until her death; but “we
didn’t go to church or anywhere to be married,” he told me, in reply
to my question, “for we really couldn’t afford to pay the parson, and
so we took one another’s words. If it’s so good to go to church for
being married, it oughtn’t to cost a poor man nothing; he shouldn’t be
charged for being good. I doesn’t do any business in town, but has my
regular rounds. This is my Kentish and Camden-town day. I buys most
from the servants at the bettermost houses, and I’d rather buy of them
than the missusses, for some missusses sells their own skins, and they
often want a deal for ’em. Why, just arter last Christmas, a young
lady in that there house (pointing to it), after ordering me round to
the back-door, came to me with two hareskins. They certainly was fine
skins--werry fine. I said I’d give 4-1/2_d._ ‘Come now, my good man,’
says she,” and the man mimicked her voice, “‘let me have no nonsense. I
can’t be deceived any longer, either by you or my servants; so give me
8_d._, and go about your business.’ Well, I went about my business; and
a woman called to buy them, and offered 4_d._ for the two, and the lady
was so wild, the servant told me arter; howsomever she only got 4_d._
at last. She’s a regular screw, but a fine-dressed one. I don’t know
that there’s been any change in my business since hares was sold in the
shops. If there’s more skins to sell, there’s more poor people to buy.
I never tasted hares’ flesh in my life, though I’ve gathered so many of
their skins. I’ve smelt it when they’ve been roasting them where I’ve
called, but don’t think I could eat any. I live on bread and butter and
tea, or milk sometimes in hot weather, and get a bite of fried fish or
anything when I’m out, and a drop of beer and a smoke when I get home,
if I can afford it. I don’t smoke in my own place, I uses a beer-shop.
I pay 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for a small room; I want little but a bed in
it, and have my own. I owe three weeks’ rent now; but I do best both
with tins and hareskins in the cold weather. Monday’s my best day. O,
as to rabbit-skins, I do werry little in them. Them as sells them gets
the skins. Still there _is_ a few to be picked up; such as them as has
been sent as presents from the country. Good rabbit-skins is about
the same price as hares, or perhaps a halfpenny lower, take them all
through. I generally clears 6_d._ a dozen on my hare and rabbit-skins,
and sometimes 8_d._ Yes, I should say that for about eight months I
gathers four dozen every week, often five dozen. I suppose I make 5_s._
or 6_s._ a week all the year, with one thing or other, and a lame man
can’t do wonders. I never begged in my life, but I’ve twice had help
from the parish, and that only when I was very bad (ill). O, I suppose
I shall end in the great house.”

There are, as closely as I can ascertain, at least 50 persons buying
skins in the street; and calculating that each collects 50 skins
weekly for 32 weeks of the year, we find 80,000 to be the total. This
is a reasonable computation, for there are upwards of 102,000 hares
consigned yearly to Newgate and Leadenhall markets; while the rabbits
sold yearly in London amount to about 1,000,000; but, as I have shown,
very few of their skins are disposed of to street-buyers.

OF THE STREET-BUYERS OF WASTE (PAPER).

Beyond all others the street-purchase of waste paper is the most
curious of any in the hands of the class I now treat of. Some may have
formed the notion that waste paper is merely that which is soiled or
torn, or old numbers of newspapers, or other periodical publications;
but this is merely a portion of the trade, as the subsequent account
will show.

The men engaged in this business have not unfrequently an apartment,
or a large closet, or recess, for the reception of their purchases of
paper. They collect their paper street by street, calling upon every
publisher, coffee-shop keeper, printer, or publican (but rarely on a
publican), who may be a seller of “waste.” I heard the refuse paper
called nothing but “waste” after the general elliptical fashion.
Attorneys’ offices are often visited by these buyers, as are the
offices of public men, such as tax or rate collectors, generally.

One man told me that until about ten years ago, and while he was a
youth, he was employed by a relation in the trade to carry out waste
paper sold to, or ordered by cheesemongers, &c., but that he never
“collected,” or bought paper himself. At last he thought he would start
on his own account, and the first person he called upon, he said, was a
rich landlady, not far from Hungerford-market, whom he saw sometimes at
her bar, and who was always very civil. He took an opportunity to ask
her if she “happened to have any waste in the house, or would have any
in a week or so?” Seeing the landlady look surprised and not very well
pleased at what certainly appeared an impertinent inquiry, he hastened
to explain that he meant old newspapers, or anything that way, which he
would be glad to buy at so much a pound. The landlady however took in
but one daily and one weekly paper (both sent into the country when a
day or so old), and having had no dealings with men of my informant’s
avocation, could not understand his object in putting such questions.

Every kind of paper is purchased by the “waste-men.” One of these
dealers said to me: “I’ve often in my time ‘cleared out’ a lawyer’s
office. I’ve bought old briefs, and other law papers, and ‘forms’ that
weren’t the regular forms then, and any d----d thing they had in my
line. You’ll excuse me, sir, but I couldn’t help thinking what a lot
of misery was caused, perhaps, by the cwts. of waste I’ve bought at
such places. If my father hadn’t got mixed up with law he wouldn’t have
been ruined, and his children wouldn’t have had such a hard fight of
it; so I hate law. All that happened when I was a child, and I never
understood the rights or the wrongs of it, and don’t like to think of
people that’s so foolish. I gave 1-1/2_d._ a pound for all I bought at
the lawyers, and done pretty well with it, but very likely that’s the
only good turn such paper ever did any one--unless it were the lawyers
themselves.”

The waste-dealers do not confine their purchases to the tradesmen I
have mentioned. They buy of any one, and sometimes act as middlemen or
brokers. For instance, many small stationers and newsvendors, sometimes
tobacconists in no extensive way of trade, sometimes chandlers,
announce by a bill in their windows, “Waste Paper Bought and Sold in
any Quantity,” while more frequently perhaps the trade is carried
on, as an understood part of these small shopmen’s business, without
any announcement. Thus the shop-buyers have much miscellaneous waste
brought to them, and perhaps for only some particular kind have they a
demand by their retail customers. The regular itinerant waste dealer
then calls and “clears out everything” the “everything” being not an
unmeaning word. One man, who “did largely in waste,” at my request
endeavoured to enumerate all the kinds of paper he had purchased as
waste, and the packages of paper he showed me, ready for delivery
to his customers on the following day, confirmed all he said as he
opened them and showed me of what they were composed. He had dealt, he
said--and he took great pains and great interest in the inquiry, as
one very curious, and was a respectable and intelligent man--in “books
on _every_ subject” [I give his own words] “on which a book can be
written.” After a little consideration he added: “Well, perhaps _every_
subject is a wide range; but if there are any exceptions, it’s on
subjects not known to a busy man like me, who is occupied from morning
till night every week day. The only worldly labour I do on a Sunday
is to take my family’s dinner to the bake-house, bring it home after
chapel, and read _Lloyd’s Weekly_. I’ve had Bibles--the backs are taken
off in the waste trade, or it wouldn’t be fair weight--Testaments,
Prayer-books, Companions to the Altar, and Sermons and religious works.
Yes, I’ve had the Roman Catholic books, as is used in their public
worship--at least so I suppose, for I never was in a Roman Catholic
chapel. Well, it’s hard to say about proportions, but in my opinion,
as far as it’s good for anything, I’ve not had _them_ in anything like
the proportion that I’ve had Prayer-books, and Watts’ and Wesley’s
hymns. More shame; but you see, sir, perhaps a godly old man dies,
and those that follow him care nothing for hymn-books, and so they
come to such as me, for they’re so cheap now they’re not to be sold
second-hand at all, I fancy. I’ve dealt in tragedies and comedies, old
and new, cut and uncut--they’re best uncut, for you can make them into
sheets then--and farces, and books of the opera. I’ve had scientific
and medical works of every possible kind, and histories, and travels,
and lives, and memoirs. I needn’t go through them--everything, from
a needle to an anchor, as the saying is. Poetry, ay, many a hundred
weight; Latin and Greek (sometimes), and French, and other foreign
languages. Well now, sir, as you mention it, I think I never _did_ have
a Hebrew work; I think not, and I know the Hebrew letters when I see
them. Black letter, not once in a couple of years; no, nor in three or
four years, when I think of it. I have met with it, but I always take
anything I’ve got that way to Mr. ----, the bookseller, who uses a
poor man well. Don’t you think, sir, I’m complaining of poverty; though
I have been very poor, when I was recovering from cholera at the first
break-out of it, and I’m anything but rich now. Pamphlets I’ve had by
the ton, in my time; I think we should both be tired if I could go
through all they were about. Very many were religious, more’s the pity.
I’ve heard of a page round a quarter of cheese, though, touching a
man’s heart.”

In corroboration of my informant’s statement, I may mention that in the
course of my inquiry into the condition of the fancy cabinet-makers
of the metropolis, one elderly and very intelligent man, a first-rate
artisan in skill, told me he had been so reduced in the world by the
underselling of slop-masters (called “butchers” or “slaughterers,” by
the workmen in the trade), that though in his youth he could take in
the _News_ and _Examiner_ papers (each he believed 9_d._ at that time,
but was not certain), he could afford, and enjoyed, no reading when
I saw him last autumn, beyond the book-leaves in which he received
his quarter of cheese, his small piece of bacon or fresh meat, or his
saveloys; and his wife schemed to go to the shops who “wrapped up their
things from books,” in order that he might have something to read after
his day’s work.

My informant went on with his specification: “Missionary papers of all
kinds. Parliamentary papers, but not so often new ones, very largely.
Railway prospectuses, with plans to some of them, nice engravings; and
the same with other joint-stock companies. Children’s copy-books, and
cyphering-books. Old account-books of every kind. A good many years
ago, I had some that must have belonged to a West End perfumer, there
was such French items for Lady this, or the Honourable Captain that. I
remember there was an Hon. Capt. G., and almost at every second page
was ‘100 tooth-picks, 3_s._ 6_d._’ I think it was 3_s._ 6_d._; in
arranging this sort of waste one now and then gives a glance to it.
Dictionaries of every sort, I’ve had, but not so commonly. Music books,
lots of them. Manuscripts, but only if they’re rather old; well, 20 or
30 years or so: I call that old. Letters on every possible subject,
but not, in my experience, any very modern ones. An old man dies, you
see, and his papers are sold off, letters and all; that’s the way; get
rid of all the old rubbish, as soon as the old boy’s pointing his toes
to the sky. What’s old letters worth, when the writers are dead and
buried? why, perhaps 1-1/2_d._ a pound, and it’s a rattling big letter
that will weigh half-an-ounce. O, it’s a queer trade, but there’s many
worse.”

The letters which I saw in another waste-dealer’s possession were 45
in number, a small collection, I was told; for the most part they were
very dull and common-place. Among them, however, was the following,
in an elegant, and I presume a female hand, but not in the modern
fashionable style of handwriting. The letter is evidently old, the
address is of West-end gentility, but I leave out name and other
particularities:--

“Mrs. ---- [it is not easy to judge whether the flourished letters
are ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Miss,’ but certainly more like ‘Mrs.’] Mrs. ----
(Zoological Artist) presents her compliments to Mr. ----, and being
commissioned to communicate with a gentleman of the name, recently
arrived at Charing-cross, and presumed by description to be himself,
in a matter of delicacy and confidence, indispensably verbal; begs to
say, that if interested in the ecclaircissement and necessary to the
same, she may be found in attendance, any afternoon of the current
week, from 3 to 6 o’clock, and no other hours.

“---- street, ---- square.

“Monday Morn. for the aftn., at home.”

Among the books destined to a butcher, I found three perfect numbers
of a sixpenny periodical, published a few years back. Three, or rather
two and a half, numbers of a shilling periodical, with “coloured
engravings of the fashions.” Two (imperfect) volumes of French Plays,
an excellent edition; among the plays were Athalie, Iphigénie, Phèdre,
Les Frères Ennemis, Alexandre, Andromaque, Les Plaideurs, and Esther.
A music sheet, headed “A lonely thing I would not be.” A few pages of
what seems to have been a book of tales: “Album d’un Sourd-Muet” (36
pages in the pamphlet form, quite new). All these constituted about
twopennyworth to the butcher. Notwithstanding the variety of sources
from which the supply is derived, I heard from several quarters that
“waste never was so scarce” as at present; it was hardly to be had at
all.

The purchasers of the waste-paper from the collectors are
cheesemongers, buttermen, butchers, fishmongers, poulterers, pork and
sausage-sellers, sweet-stuff-sellers, tobacconists, chandlers--and
indeed all who sell provisions or such luxuries as I have mentioned
in retail. Some of the wholesale provision houses buy very largely
and sell the waste again to their customers, who pay more for it by
such a medium of purchase, but they have it thus on credit. Any retail
trader in provisions at all “in a large way,” will readily buy six or
seven cwt. at a time. The price given by them varies from 1-1/4_d._ to
3-1/2_d._ the pound, but it is very rarely either so low or so high.
The average price may be taken at 18_s._ the cwt., which is not quite
2_d._ a pound, and at this rate I learn from the best-informed parties
there are twelve tons sold weekly, or 1624 tons yearly (1,397,760
lbs.), at the cost of 11,232_l._ One man in the trade was confident the
value of the waste paper sold could not be less than 12,000_l._ in a
year.

There are about 60 men in this trade, nearly 50 of whom live entirely,
as it was described to me, “by their waste,” and bring up their
families upon it. The others unite some other avocation with it. The
earnings of the regular collectors vary from 15_s._ weekly to 35_s._
accordingly as they meet with a supply on favourable terms, or, as they
call it, “a good pull in a lot of waste.” They usually reside in a
private room with a recess, or a second room, in which they sort, pack,
and keep their paper.

One of these traders told me that he was satisfied that stolen
paper seldom found its way, directly, into the collectors’ hands,
“particularly publisher’s paper,” he added. “Why, not long since there
was a lot of sheets stolen from Alderman Kelly’s warehouse, and the
thief didn’t take them to a waste dealer; he knew better. He took them,
sir, to a tradesman in a large respectable way over the water--a man
that uses great lots of waste--and sold them at just what was handed to
him: I suppose no questions asked. The thief was tried and convicted,
but nothing was done to the buyer.”

It must not be supposed that the waste-paper used by the London
tradesmen costs no more than 12,000_l._ in a year. A large quantity is
bought direct by butchers and others from poor persons going to them
with a small quantity of their own accumulating, or with such things as
copy-books.

OF THE STREET-BUYERS OF UMBRELLAS AND PARASOLS.

The street-traders in old umbrellas and parasols are numerous, but the
buying is but one part, and the least skilled part, of the business.
Men, some tolerably well-dressed, some swarthy-looking, like gipsies,
and some with a vagabond aspect, may be seen in all quarters of the
town and suburbs, carrying a few ragged-looking umbrellas, or the
sticks or ribs of umbrellas, under their arms, and crying “Umbrellas
to mend,” or “Any old umbrellas to sell?” The traffickers in umbrellas
are also the crockmen, who are always glad to obtain them in barter,
and who merely dispose of them at the Old Clothes Exchange, or in
Petticoat-lane.

The umbrella-menders are known by an appellation of an appropriateness
not uncommon in street language. They are _mushroom-fakers_. The form
of the expanded umbrella resembles that of a mushroom, and it has
the further characteristic of being rapidly or suddenly raised, the
mushroom itself springing up and attaining its full size in a very
brief space of time. The term, however, like all street or popular
terms or phrases, has become very generally condensed among those who
carry on the trade--they are now _mush-fakers_, a word which, to any
one who has not heard the term in full, is as meaningless as any in the
vocabulary of slang.

The mushroom-fakers will repair any umbrella on the owner’s premises,
and their work is often done adroitly, I am informed, and as often
bunglingly, or, in the trade term, “botched.” So far there is no
traffic in the business, the mushroom-faker simply performing a piece
of handicraft, and being paid for the job. But there is another class
of street-folk who buy the old umbrellas in Petticoat-lane, or of the
street buyer or collector, and “sometimes,” as one of these men said to
me, “we are our own buyers on a round.” They mend the umbrellas--some
of their wives, I am assured, being adepts as well as themselves--and
offer them for sale on the approaches to the bridges, and at the
corners of streets.

The street umbrella trade is really curious. Not so very many years
back the use of an umbrella by a man was regarded as partaking of
effeminacy, but now they are sold in thousands in the streets, and in
the second-hand shops of Monmouth-street and such places. One of these
street-traders told me that he had lately sold, but not to an extent
which might encourage him to proceed, old silk umbrellas in the street
for gentlemen to protect themselves from the rays of the sun.

The purchase of umbrellas is in a great degree mixed up with that
of old clothes, of which I have soon to treat; but from what I have
stated it is evident that the umbrella trade is most connected with
street-artisanship, and under that head I shall describe it.

OF THE STREET-JEWS.

Although my present inquiry relates to London life in London streets,
it is necessary that I should briefly treat of the Jews generally, as
an integral, but distinct and peculiar part of street-life.

That this ancient people were engaged in what may be called
street-traffic in the earlier ages of our history, as well as in the
importation of spices, furs, fine leather, armour, drugs, and general
merchandise, there can be no doubt; nevertheless concerning this part
of the subject there are but the most meagre accounts.

Jews were settled in England as early as 730, and during the sway
of the Saxon kings. They increased in number after the era of the
Conquest; but it was not until the rapacity to which they were exposed
in the reign of Stephen had in a great measure exhausted itself, and
until the measures of Henry II. had given encouragement to commerce,
and some degree of security to property in cities or congregated
communities, that the Jews in England became numerous and wealthy.
They then became active and enterprising attendants at fairs, where
the greater portion of the internal trade of the kingdom was carried
on, and especially the traffic in the more valuable commodities, such
as plate, jewels, armour, cloths, wines, spices, horses, cattle, &c.
The agents of the great prelates and barons, and even of the ruling
princes, purchased what they required at these fairs. St. Giles’s fair,
held at St. Giles’s hill, not far from Winchester, continued sixteen
days. The fair was, as it were, a temporary city. There were streets of
tents in every direction, in which the traders offered and displayed
their wares. During the continuance of the fair, business was strictly
prohibited in Winchester, Southampton, and in every place within seven
miles of St. Giles’s hill. Among the tent-owners at such fairs were the
Jews.

At this period the Jews may be considered as one of the bodies of
“merchant-strangers,” as they were called, settled in England for
purposes of commerce. Among the other bodies of these “strangers” were
the German “merchants of the steel-yard,” the Lombards, the Caursini
of Rome, the “merchants of the staple,” and others. These were all
corporations, and thriving corporations (when unmolested), and the Jews
had also their Jewerie, or Judaisme, not for a “corporation” merely,
but also for the requirements of their faith and worship, and for their
living together. The London Jewerie was established in a place of which
no vestige of its establishment now remains beyond the name--the Old
Jewry. Here was erected the first synagogue of the Jews in England,
which was defaced or demolished, Maitland states, by the citizens,
after they had slain 700 Jews (other accounts represent that number as
greatly exaggerated). This took place in 1263, during one of the many
disturbances in the uneasy reign of Henry III.

All this time the Jews amassed wealth by trade and usury, in spite
of their being plundered and maltreated by the princes and other
potentates--every one has heard of King John’s having a Jew’s teeth
drawn--and in spite of their being reviled by the priests and hated by
the people. The sovereigns generally encouraged “merchant-strangers.”
When the city of London, in 1289, petitioned Edward I. for “the
expulsion of all merchant-strangers,” that monarch answered, with all
a monarch’s peculiar regard for “great” men and “great” men only,
“No! the merchant-strangers are useful and beneficial to the great
men of the kingdom, and I will not expel them.” But though the King
encouraged, the people detested, _all_ foreign traders, though not
with the same intensity as they detested and contemned the Jews, for
in _that_ detestation a strong religious feeling was an element. Of
this dislike to the merchant-strangers, very many instances might be
cited, but I need give only one. In 1379, nearly a century after the
banishment of the Jews, a Genoese merchant, a man of great wealth,
petitioned Richard II. for permission to deposit goods for safe keeping
in Southampton Castle, promising to introduce so large a share of
the commerce of the East into England, that pepper should be 4_d._
a pound. “Yet the Londoners,” writes Walsingham, but in the quaint
monkish Latin of the day, “enemies to the prosperity of their country,
hired assassins, who murdered the merchant in the street. After this,
what stranger will trust his person among a people so faithless and so
cruel? who will not dread our treachery, and abhor our name?”

In 1290, by a decree of Edward I., the Jews were banished out of
England. The causes assigned for this summary act, were “their
extortions, their debasing and diminishing the coin, and for other
crimes.” I need not enter into the merits or demerits of the Jews of
that age, but it is certain that any ridiculous charge, any which it
was impossible could be true, was an excuse for the plundering of
them at the hands of the rich, and the persecution of them at the
hands of the people. At the period of this banishment, their number
is represented by the contemporaneous historians to have been about
16,000, a number most probably exaggerated, as perhaps all statements
of the numbers of a people are when no statistical knowledge has been
acquired. During this period of their abode in England, the Jews
were protected as the villeins or bondsmen of the king, a protection
disregarded by the commonalty, and only giving to the executive
government greater facilities of extortion and oppression.

In 1655 an Amsterdam Jew, Rabbi Manasseh Ben-Israel, whose name is
still highly esteemed among his countrymen, addressed Cromwell on
the behalf of the Jews that they should be re-admitted into England
with the sanction, and under the protection, of the law. Despite the
absence of such sanction, they had resided and of course traded in
this country, but in small numbers, and trading often in indirect
and sometimes in contraband ways. Chaucer, writing in the days of
Richard II., three reigns after their expulsion, speaks of Jews as
living in England. It is reputed that, in the reigns of Elizabeth
and the first James, they supplied, at great profit, the materials
required by the alchymists for their experiments in the transmutation
of metals. In Elizabeth’s reign, too, Jewish physicians were highly
esteemed in England. The Queen at one time confided the care of her
health to Rodrigo Lopez, a Hebrew, who, however, was convicted of an
attempt to poison his royal mistress. Francis I., of France, carried
his opinion of Jewish medical skill to a great height; he refused on
one occasion, during an illness, to be attended by the most eminent of
the Israelitish physicians, because the learned man had just before
been converted to Christianity. The most Christian king, therefore,
applied to his ally, the Turkish sultan, Solyman II., who sent him “a
true hardened Jew,” by whose directions Francis drank asses’ milk and
recovered.

Cromwell’s response to the application of Manasseh Ben Israel was
favourable; but the opposition of the Puritans, and more especially
of Prynne, prevented any public declaration on the subject. In 1656,
however, the Jews began to arrive and establish themselves in England,
but not until after the restoration of Charles II., in 1660, could it
be said that, as a body, they were settled in England. They arrived
from time to time, and without any formal sanction being either granted
or refused. One reason alleged at the time was, that the Jews were well
known to be money-lenders, and Charles and his courtiers were as well
known money-borrowers!

I now come to the character and establishment of the Jews in the
capacity in which I have more especially to describe them--as
street-traders. There appears no reason to doubt that they commenced
their principal street traffic, the collecting of old clothes, soon
after their settlement in London. At any rate the cry and calling of
the Jew old clothesman were so established, 30 or 40 years after their
return, or early in the last century, that one of them is delineated
in Tempest’s “Cries of London,” published about that period. In this
work the street Jew is represented as very different in his appearance
to that which he presents in our day. Instead of merely a dingy bag,
hung empty over his arm, or carried, when partially or wholly filled,
on his shoulder, he is depicted as wearing, or rather carrying, three
cocked hats, one over the other, upon his head; a muff, with a scarf
or large handkerchief over it, is attached to his right hand and arm,
and two dress swords occupy his left hand. The apparel which he himself
wears is of the full-skirted style of the day, and his long hair, or
periwig, descends to his shoulders. This difference in appearance,
however, between the street Jew of 1700 and of a century and a half
later, is simply the effect of circumstances, and indicates no change
in the character of the man. Were it now the fashion for gentlemen to
wear muffs, swords, and cocked hats, the Jew would again have them in
his possession.

During the eighteenth century the popular feeling ran very high against
the Jews, although to the masses they were almost strangers, except
as men employed in the not-very-formidable occupation of collecting
and vending second-hand clothes. The old feeling against them seems to
have lingered among the English people, and their own greed in many
instances engendered other and lawful causes of dislike, by their
resorting to unlawful and debasing pursuits. They were considered--and
with that exaggeration of belief dear to any ignorant community--as an
entire people of misers, usurers, extortioners, receivers of stolen
goods, cheats, brothel-keepers, sheriff’s-officers, clippers and
sweaters of the coin of the realm, gaming-house keepers; in fine, the
charges, or rather the accusations, of carrying on every disreputable
trade, and none else, were “bundled at their doors.” That there was
too much foundation for many of these accusations, and still _is_, no
reasonable Jew can now deny; that the wholesale prejudice against them
was absurd, is equally indisputable.

So strong was this popular feeling against the Israelites, that it
not only influenced, and not only controlled the legislature, but it
coerced the Houses of Parliament to repeal, in 1754, an act which they
had passed the previous session, and that act was merely to enable
foreign Jews to be naturalized without being required to take the
sacrament! It was at that time, and while the popular ferment was at
its height, unsafe for a Hebrew old clothesman, however harmless a man,
and however long and well known on his beat, to ply his street-calling
openly; for he was often beaten and maltreated. Mobs, riots,
pillagings, and attacks upon the houses of the Jews were frequent, and
one of the favourite cries of the mob was certainly among the most
preposterously stupid of any which ever tickled the ear and satisfied
the mind of the ignorant:--

“No Jews!
No wooden shoes!!”

Some mob-leader, with a taste for rhyme, had in this distich cleverly
blended the prejudice against the Jews with the easily excited but
vague fears of a French invasion, which was in some strange way
typified to the apprehensions of the vulgar as connected with slavery,
popery, the compulsory wearing of wooden shoes (_sabots_), and the
eating of frogs! And this sort of feeling was often revenged on the
street-Jew, as a man mixed up with wooden shoes! Cumberland, in the
comedy of “The Jew,” and some time afterwards Miss Edgeworth, in the
tale of “Harrington and Ormond,” and both at the request of Jews, wrote
to moderate this rabid prejudice.

In what estimation the street, and, incidentally, all classes of Jews
are held at the present time, will be seen in the course of my remarks;
and in the narratives to be given. I may here observe, however, that
among some the dominant feeling against the Jews on account of their
faith still flourishes, as is shown by the following statement:--A
gentleman of my acquaintance was one evening, about twilight, walking
down Brydges-street, Covent-garden, when an elderly Jew was preceding
him, apparently on his return from a day’s work, as an old clothesman.
His bag accidentally touched the bonnet of a dashing woman of the town,
who was passing, and she turned round, abused the Jew, and spat at him,
saying with an oath: “You old rags humbug! _You_ can’t do that!”--an
allusion to a vulgar notion that Jews have been unable to do more than
_slobber_, since spitting on the Saviour.

The number of Jews now in England is computed at 35,000. This is
the result at which the Chief Rabbi arrived a few years ago, after
collecting all the statistical information at his command. Of these
35,000, more than one-half, or about 18,000, reside in London. I am
informed that there may now be a small increase to this population, but
only small, for many Jews have emigrated--some to California. A few
years ago--a circumstance mentioned in my account of the Street-Sellers
of Jewellery--there were a number of Jews known as “hawkers,” or
“travellers,” who traverse every part of England selling watches,
gold and silver pencil-cases, eye-glasses, and all the more portable
descriptions of jewellery, as well as thermometers, barometers,
telescopes, and microscopes. This trade is now little pursued, except
by the stationary dealers; and the Jews who carried it on, and who were
chiefly foreign Jews, have emigrated to America. The foreign Jews who,
though a fluctuating body, are always numerous in London, are included
in the computation of 18,000; of this population two-thirds reside in
the city, or the streets adjacent to the eastern boundaries of the city.

OF THE TRADES AND LOCALITIES OF THE STREET-JEWS.

The trades which the Jews most affect, I was told by one of themselves,
are those in which, as they describe it, “there’s a chance;” that
is, they prefer a trade in such commodity as is not subjected to a
fixed price, so that there may be abundant scope for speculation, and
something like a gambler’s chance for profit or loss. In this way, Sir
Walter Scott has said, trade has “all the fascination of gambling,
without the moral guilt;” but the absence of moral guilt in connection
with such trading is certainly dubious.

The wholesale trades in foreign commodities which are now principally
or solely in the hands of the Jews, often as importers and exporters,
are, watches and jewels, sponges--fruits, especially green fruits,
such as oranges, lemons, grapes, walnuts, cocoa-nuts, &c., and dates
among dried fruits--shells, tortoises, parrots and foreign birds,
curiosities, ostrich feathers, snuffs, cigars, and pipes; but cigars
far more extensively at one time.

The localities in which these wholesale and retail traders reside are
mostly at the East-end--indeed the Jews of London, as a congregated
body, have been, from the times when their numbers were sufficient to
institute a “settlement” or “colony,” peculiar to themselves, always
resident in the eastern quarter of the metropolis.

Of course a wealthy Jew millionaire--merchant, stock-jobber, or
stock-broker--resides where he pleases--in a villa near the Marquis
of Hertford’s in the Regent’s-park, a mansion near the Duke of
Wellington’s in Piccadilly, a house and grounds at Clapham or
Stamford-hill; but these are exceptions. The quarters of the Jews
are not difficult to describe. The trading-class in the capacity of
shopkeepers, warehousemen, or manufacturers, are the thickest in
Houndsditch, Aldgate, and the Minories, more especially as regards
the “swag-shops” and the manufacture and sale of wearing apparel.
The wholesale dealers in fruit are in Duke’s-place and Pudding-lane
(Thames-street), but the superior retail Jew fruiterers--some of
whose shops are remarkable for the beauty of their fruit--are in
Cheapside, Oxford-street, Piccadilly, and most of all in Covent-garden
market. The inferior jewellers (some of whom deal with the first
shops) are also at the East-end, about Whitechapel, Bevis-marks,
and Houndsditch; the wealthier goldsmiths and watchmakers having,
like other tradesmen of the class, their shops in the superior
thoroughfares. The great congregation of working watchmakers is
in Clerkenwell, but in that locality there are only a few Jews.
The Hebrew dealers in second-hand garments, and second-hand wares
generally, are located about Petticoat-lane, the peculiarities of which
place I have lately described. The manufacturers of such things as
cigars, pencils, and sealing-wax; the wholesale importers of sponge,
bristles and toys, the dealers in quills and in “looking-glasses,”
reside in large private-looking houses, when display is not needed
for purposes of business, in such parts as Maunsell-street, Great
Prescott-street, Great Ailie-street, Leman-street, and other parts
of the eastern quarter known as Goodman’s-fields. The wholesale
dealers in foreign birds and shells, and in the many foreign things
known as “curiosities,” reside in East Smithfield, Ratcliffe-highway,
High-street (Shadwell), or in some of the parts adjacent to the Thames.
In the long range of river-side streets, stretching from the Tower
to Poplar and Blackwall, are Jews, who fulfil the many capacities
of slop-sellers, &c., called into exercise by the requirements of
seafaring people on their return from or commencement of a voyage. A
few Jews keep boarding-houses for sailors in Shadwell and Wapping. Of
the localities and abodes of the poorest of the Jews I shall speak
hereafter.

Concerning the street-trades pursued by the Jews, I believe there
is not at present a single one of which they can be said to have a
monopoly; nor in any one branch of the street-traffic are there so many
of the Jew traders as there were a few years back.

This remarkable change is thus to be accounted for. Strange as the
fact may appear, the Jew has been undersold in the streets, and he
has been beaten on what might be called his own ground--the buying of
old clothes. The Jew boys, and the feebler and elder Jews, had, until
some twelve or fifteen years back, almost the monopoly of orange and
lemon street-selling, or street-hawking. The costermonger class had
possession of the theatre doors and the approaches to the theatres;
they had, too, occasionally their barrows full of oranges; but the Jews
were the daily, assiduous, and itinerant street-sellers of this most
popular of foreign, and perhaps of all, fruits. In their hopes of sale
they followed any one a mile if encouraged, even by a few approving
glances. The great theatre of this traffic was in the stage-coach
yards in such inns as the Bull and Mouth, (St. Martin’s-le-Grand),
the Belle Sauvage (Ludgate-hill), the Saracen’s Head (Snow-hill), the
Bull (Aldgate), the Swan-with-two-Necks (Lad-lane, City), the George
and Blue Boar (Holborn), the White Horse (Fetter-lane), and other such
places. They were seen too, “with all their eyes about them,” as one
informant expressed it, outside the inns where the coaches stopped
to take up passengers--at the White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly, for
instance, and the Angel and the (now defunct) Peacock in Islington.
A commercial traveller told me that he could never leave town by any
“mail” or “stage,” without being besieged by a small army of Jew boys,
who most pertinaciously offered him oranges, lemons, sponges, combs,
pocket-books, pencils, sealing-wax, paper, many-bladed pen-knives,
razors, pocket-mirrors, and shaving-boxes--as if a man could not
possibly quit the metropolis without requiring a stock of such
commodities. In the whole of these trades, unless in some degree in
sponges and blacklead-pencils, the Jew is now out-numbered or displaced.

I have before alluded to the underselling of the Jew boy by the Irish
boy in the street-orange trade; but the characteristics of the change
are so peculiar, that a further notice is necessary. It is curious to
observe that the most assiduous, and hitherto the most successful of
street-traders, were supplanted, not by a more persevering or more
skilful body of street-sellers, but simply by a more _starving_ body.

Some few years since poor Irish people, and chiefly those connected
with the culture of the land, “came over” to this country in great
numbers, actuated either by vague hopes of “bettering themselves” by
emigration, or working on the railways, or else influenced by the
restlessness common to an impoverished people. These men, when unable
to obtain employment, without scruple became street-sellers. Not
only did the adults resort to street-traffic, generally in its simplest
forms, such as hawking fruit, but the children, by whom they were
accompanied from Ireland, in great numbers, were put into the trade;
and if two or three children earned 2_d._ a day each, and their parents
5_d._ or 6_d._ each, or even 4_d._, the subsistence of the family was
better than they could obtain in the midst of the miseries of the
southern and western part of the Sister Isle. An Irish boy of fourteen,
having to support himself by street-trade, as was often the case, owing
to the death of parents and to divers casualties, would undersell the
Jew boys similarly circumstanced.

The Irish boy could live _harder_ than the Jew--often in his own
country he subsisted on a stolen turnip a day; he could lodge
harder--lodge for 1_d._ a night in any noisome den, or sleep in the
open air, which is seldom done by the Jew boy; he could dispense with
the use of shoes and stockings--a dispensation at which his rival in
trade revolted; he drank only water, or if he took tea or coffee,
it was as a meal, and not merely as a beverage; to crown the whole,
the city-bred Jew boy required some evening recreation, the penny or
twopenny concert, or a game at draughts or dominoes; but this the
Irish boy, country bred, never thought of, for _his_ sole luxury was a
deep sleep, and, being regardless or ignorant of all such recreations,
he worked longer hours, and so sold more oranges, than his Hebrew
competitor. Thus, as the Munster or Connaught lad could live on less
than the young denizen of Petticoat-lane, he could sell at smaller
profit, and did so sell, until gradually the Hebrew youths were
displaced by the Irish in the street orange trade.

It is the same, or the same in a degree, with other street-trades,
which were at one time all but monopolised by the Jew adults. Among
these were the street-sale of spectacles and sponges. The prevalence
of slop-work and slop-wages, and the frequent difficulty of obtaining
properly-remunerated employment--the pinch of want, in short--have
driven many mechanics to street-traffic; so that the numbers of
street-traffickers have been augmented, while no small portion of the
new comers have adopted the more knowing street avocations, formerly
pursued only by the Jews.

Of the other class of street-traders who have interfered largely with
the old-clothes trade, which, at one time, people seemed to consider a
sort of birthright among the Jews, I have already spoken, when treating
of the dealings of the crockmen in bartering glass and crockery-ware
for second-hand apparel. These traders now obtain as many old clothes
as the Jew clothes men themselves; for, with a great number of
“ladies,” the offer of an ornament of glass or spar, or of a beautiful
and fragrant plant, is more attractive than the offer of a small sum of
money, for the purchase of the left-off garments of the family.

The crockmen are usually strong and in the prime of youth or manhood,
and are capable of carrying heavy burdens of glass or china-wares, for
which the Jews are either incompetent or disinclined.

Some of the Jews which have been thus displaced from the street-traffic
have emigrated to America, with the assistance of their brethren.

The principal street-trades of the Jews are now in sponges, spectacles,
combs, pencils, accordions, cakes, sweetmeats, drugs, and fruits of all
kinds; but, in all these trades, unless perhaps in drugs, they are in a
minority compared with the “Christian” street-sellers.

There is not among the Jew street-sellers generally anything of the
concubinage or cohabitation common among the costermongers. Marriage is
the rule.

OF THE JEW OLD-CLOTHES MEN.

Fifty years ago the appearance of the street-Jews, engaged in the
purchase of second-hand clothes, was different to what it is at the
present time. The Jew then had far more of the distinctive garb and
aspect of a foreigner. He not unfrequently wore the gabardine, which is
never seen now in the streets, but some of the long loose frock coats
worn by the Jew clothes’ buyers resemble it. At that period, too, the
Jew’s long beard was far more distinctive than it is in this hirsute
generation.

In other respects the street-Jew is unchanged. Now, as during the
last century, he traverses every street, square, and road, with the
monotonous cry, sometimes like a bleat, of “Clo’! Clo’!” On this head,
however, I have previously remarked, when describing the street Jew of
a hundred years ago.

[Illustration: THE JEW OLD-CLOTHES MAN.

CLO’, CLO’, CLO’.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

In an inquiry into the condition of the old-clothes dealers a year and
a half ago, a Jew gave me the following account. He told me, at the
commencement of his statement, that he was of opinion that his people
were far more speculative than the Gentiles, and therefore the English
liked better to deal with them. “Our people,” he said, “will be out all
day in the wet, and begrudge themselves a bit of anything to eat till
they go home, and then, may be, they’ll gamble away their crown, just
for the love of speculation.” My informant, who could write or speak
several languages, and had been 50 years in the business, then said, “I
am no bigot; indeed I do not care where I buy my meat, so long as I can
get it. I often go into the Minories and buy some, without looking to
how it has been killed, or whether it has a seal on it or not.”

He then gave me some account of the Jewish children, and the number
of men in the trade, which I have embodied under the proper heads.
The itinerant Jew clothes man, he told me, was generally the son of a
former old-clothes man, but some were cigar-makers, or pencil-makers,
taking to the clothes business when those trades were slack; but that
nineteen out of twenty had been born to it. If the parents of the
Jew boy are poor, and the boy a sharp lad, he generally commences
business at ten years of age, by selling lemons, or some trifle in
the streets, and so, as he expressed it, the boy “gets a round,” or
street-connection, by becoming known to the neighbourhoods he visits.
If he sees a servant, he will, when selling his lemons, ask if she
have any old shoes or old clothes, and offer to be a purchaser. If the
clothes should come to more than the Jew boy has in his pocket, he
leaves what silver he has as “an earnest upon them,” and then seeks
some regular Jew clothes man, who will advance the purchase money.
This the old Jew agrees to do upon the understanding that he is to
have “half Rybeck,” that is, a moiety of the profit, and then he will
accompany the boy to the house, to pass his judgment on the goods, and
satisfy himself that the stripling has not made a blind bargain, an
error into which he very rarely falls. After this he goes with the lad
to Petticoat-lane, and there they share whatever money the clothes may
bring over and above what has been paid for them. By such means the
Jew boy gets his knowledge of the old-clothes business; and so quick
are these lads generally, that in the course of two months they will
acquire sufficient experience in connection with the trade to begin
dealing on their own account. There are some, he told me, as sharp at
15 as men of 50.

“It is very seldom,” my informant stated, “very seldom indeed, that
a Jew clothes man takes away any of the property of the house he may
be called into. I expect there’s a good many of ’em,” he continued,
for he sometimes spoke of his co-traders, as if they were not of his
own class, “is fond of cheating--that is, they won’t mind giving only
2_s._ for a thing that’s worth 5_s._ They are fond of money, and will
do almost anything to get it. Jews are perhaps the most money-loving
people in all England. There are certainly some old-clothes men who
will buy articles at such a price that they must know them to have
been stolen. Their rule, however, is to ask no questions, and to get
as cheap an article as possible. A Jew clothes man is seldom or never
seen in liquor. They gamble for money, either at their own homes or at
public-houses. The favourite games are tossing, dominoes, and cards.
I was informed, by one of the people, that he had seen as much as
30_l._ in silver and gold lying upon the ground when two parties had
been playing at throwing three halfpence in the air. On a Saturday,
some gamble away the morning and the greater part of the afternoon.”
[Saturday, I need hardly say, is the Hebrew Sabbath.] “They meet
in some secret back place, about ten, and begin playing for ‘one a
time’--that is, tossing up three halfpence, and staking 1_s._ on the
result. Other Jews, and a few Christians, will gather round and bet.
Sometimes the bets laid by the Jew bystanders are as high as 2_l._
each; and on more than one occasion the old-clothes men have wagered as
much as 50_l._, but only after great gains at gambling. Some, if they
_can_, will cheat, by means of a halfpenny with a head or a tail on
both sides, called a ‘gray.’ The play lasts till the Sabbath is nearly
over, and then they go to business or the theatre. They seldom or never
say a word while they are losing, but merely stamp on the ground; it
is dangerous, though, to interfere when luck runs against them. The
rule is, when a man is losing to let him alone. I have known them play
for three hours together, and nothing be said all that time but ‘head’
or ‘tail.’ They seldom go to synagogue, and on a Sunday evening have
card parties at their own houses. They seldom eat anything on their
rounds. The reason is, not because they object to eat meat killed by
a Christian, but because they are afraid of losing a ‘deal,’ or the
chance of buying a lot of old clothes by delay. They are generally
too lazy to light their own fires before they start of a morning, and
nineteen out of twenty obtain their breakfasts at the coffee-shops
about Houndsditch.

“When they return from their day’s work they have mostly some stew
ready, prepared by their parents or wife. If they are not family men
they go to an eating-house. This is sometimes a Jewish house, but if
no one is looking they creep into a Christian ‘cook-shop,’ not being
particular about eating ‘tryfer’--that is, meat which has been killed
by a Christian. Those that are single generally go to a neighbour and
agree with him to be boarded on the Sabbath; and for this the charge
is generally about 2_s._ 6_d._ On a Saturday there’s cold fish for
breakfast and supper; indeed, a Jew would pawn the shirt off his back
sooner than go without fish then; and in holiday-time he _will_ have
it, if he has to get it out of the stones. It is not reckoned a holiday
unless there’s fish.”

“Forty years ago I have made as much as 5_l._ in a week by the purchase
of old clothes in the streets,” said a Jew informant. “Upon an average
then, I could earn weekly about 2_l._ But now things are different.
People are more wide awake. Every one knows the value of an old coat
now-a-days. The women know more than the men. The general average, I
think, take the good weeks with the bad throughout the year, is about
1_l._ a week; some weeks we get 2_l._, and some scarcely nothing.”

I was told by a Jewish professional gentleman that the account of the
_spirit_ of gambling prevalent among his people was correct, but the
amounts said to be staked, he thought, rare or exaggerated.

The Jew old-clothes men are generally far more cleanly in their habits
than the poorer classes of English people. Their hands they always wash
before their meals, and this is done whether the party be a strict Jew
or “Meshumet,” a convert, or apostate from Judaism. Neither will the
Israelite ever use the same knife to cut his meat that he previously
used to spread his butter, and he will not even put his meat on a plate
that has had butter on it; nor will he use for his soup the spoon that
has had melted butter in it. This objection to mix butter with meat is
carried so far, that, after partaking of the one, Jews will not eat
of the other for the space of two hours. The Jews are generally, when
married, most exemplary family men. There are few fonder fathers than
they are, and they will starve themselves sooner than their wives and
children should want. Whatever their faults may be, they are good
fathers, husbands, and sons. Their principal characteristic is their
extreme love of money; and, though the strict Jew does not trade
himself on the Sabbath, he may not object to employ either one of his
tribe, or a Gentile, to do so for him.

The capital required for commencing in the old-clothes line is
generally about 1_l._ This the Jew frequently borrows, especially after
holiday-time, for then he has generally spent all his earnings, unless
he be a provident man. When his stock-money is exhausted, he goes
either to a neighbour or to a publican in the vicinity, and borrows
1_l._ on the Monday morning, “to strike a light with,” as he calls it,
and agrees to return it on the Friday evening, with 1_s._ interest for
the loan. This he always pays back. If he was to sell the coat off his
back he would do this, I am told, because to fail in so doing would
be to prevent his obtaining any stock-money for the future. With this
capital he starts on his rounds about eight in the morning, and I am
assured he will frequently begin his work without tasting food, rather
than break into the borrowed stock-money. Each man has his particular
walk, and never interferes with that of his neighbour; indeed, while
upon another’s beat he will seldom cry for clothes. Sometimes they go
half “Rybeck” together--that is, they will share the profits of the
day’s business, and when they agree to do this the one will take one
street, and the other another. The lower the neighbourhood the more
old clothes are there for sale. At the east end of the town they like
the neighbourhoods frequented by sailors, and there they purchase
of the girls and the women the sailors’ jackets and trowsers. But
they buy most of the Petticoat-lane, the Old-Clothes Exchange, and
the marine-store dealers; for as the Jew clothes man never travels
the streets by night-time, the parties who then have old clothes to
dispose of usually sell them to the marine-store or second-hand dealers
over-night, and the Jew buys them in the morning. The first thing that
he does on his rounds is to seek out these shops, and see what he can
pick up there. A very great amount of business is done by the Jew
clothes man at the marine-store shops at the west as well as at the
east end of London.

At the West-end the itinerant clothes men prefer the mews at the back
of gentlemen’s houses to all other places, or else the streets where
the little tradesmen and small genteel families reside. My informant
assured me that he had once bought a Bishop’s hat of his lordship’s
servant for 1_s._ 6_d._ on a Sunday morning.

These traders, as I have elsewhere stated, live at the East-end of the
town. The greater number of them reside in Portsoken Ward, Houndsditch;
and their favourite localities in this district are either Cobb’s-yard,
Roper’s-building, or Wentworth-street. They mostly occupy small houses,
about 4_s._ 6_d._ a week rent, and live with their families. They are
generally sober men. It is seldom that a Jew leaves his house and owes
his landlord money; and if his goods should be seized the rest of his
tribe will go round and collect what is owing.

The rooms occupied by the old-clothes men are far from being so
comfortable as those of the English artizans whose earnings are not
superior to the gains of these clothes men. Those which I saw had all
a littered look; the furniture was old and scant, and the apartment
seemed neither shop, parlour, nor bed-room. For domestic and family
men, as some of the Jew old-clothes men are, they seem very indifferent
to the comforts of a home.

I have spoken of “Tryfer,” or meat killed in the Christian fashion.
Now, the meat killed according to the Jewish law is known as “Coshar,”
and a strict Jew will eat none other. In one of my letters in the
_Morning Chronicle_ on the meat markets of London, there appeared the
following statement, respecting the Jew butchers in Whitechapel-market.

“To a portion of the meat here exposed for sale, may be seen attached
the peculiar seal which shows that the animal was killed conformably
to the Jewish rites. According to the injunctions of this religion the
beast must die from its throat being cut, instead of being knocked
on the head. The slaughterer of the cattle for Jewish consumption,
moreover, must be a Jew. Two slaughterers are appointed by the Jewish
authorities of the synagogue, and they can employ others, who must be
likewise Jews, as assistants. The slaughterers I saw were quiet-looking
and quiet-mannered men. When the animal is slaughtered and skinned,
an examiner (also appointed by the synagogue) carefully inspects the
‘inside.’ ‘If the lights be grown to the ribs,’ said my informant, who
had had many years’ experience in this branch of the meat trade, ‘or if
the lungs have any disease, or if there be any disease anywhere, the
meat is pronounced unfit for the food of the Jews, and is sent entire
to a carcase butcher to be sold to the Christians. This, however,
does not happen once in 20 times.’ To the parts exposed for sale,
when the slaughtering has been according to the Jewish law, there is
attached a leaden seal, stamped in Hebrew characters with the name of
the examining party sealing. In this way, as I ascertained from the
slaughterers, are killed weekly from 120 to 140 bullocks, from 400 to
500 sheep and lambs, and about 30 calves. All the parts of the animal
thus slaughtered may be and are eaten by the Jews, but three-fourths
of the purchase of this meat is confined, as regards the Jews, to the
fore-quarters of the respective animals; the hind-quarters, being the
choicer parts, are sent to Newgate or Leadenhall-markets for sale on
commission.” The Hebrew butchers consider that the Christian mode of
slaughter is a far less painful death to the ox than was the Jewish.

I am informed that of the Jew Old-Clothes Men there are now only from
500 to 600 in London; at one time there might have been 1000. Their
average earnings may be something short of 20_s._ a week in second-hand
clothes alone; but the gains are difficult to estimate.

OF A JEW STREET-SELLER.

An elderly man, who, at the time I saw him, was vending spectacles, or
bartering them for old clothes, old books, or any second-hand articles,
gave me an account of his street-life, but it presented little
remarkable beyond the not unusual vicissitudes of the lives of those of
his class.

He had been in every street-trade, and had on four occasions travelled
all over England, selling quills, sealing-wax, pencils, sponges,
braces, cheap or superior jewellery, thermometers, and pictures. He
had sold barometers in the mountainous parts of Cumberland, sometimes
walking for hours without seeing man or woman. “_I liked it then_,”
he said, “_for I was young and strong, and didn’t care to sleep twice
in the same town_. I was afterwards in the old-clothes line. I buy a
few odd hats and light things still, but I’m not able to carry heavy
weights, as my breath is getting rather short.” [I find that the Jews
generally object to the more laborious kinds of street-traffic.] “Yes,
I’ve been twice to Ireland, and sold a good many quills in Dublin,
for I crossed over from Liverpool. Quills and wax were a great trade
with us once; now it’s quite different. I’ve had as much as 60_l._
of my own, and that more than half-a-dozen times, but all of it
went in speculations. Yes, some went in gambling. I had a share in
a gaming-booth at the races, for three years. O, I dare say that’s
more than 20 years back; but we did very little good. There was such
fees to pay for the tent on a race-ground, and often such delays
between the races in the different towns, and bribes to be given to
the town-officers--such as town-sergeants and chief constables, and
I hardly know who--and so many expenses altogether, that the profits
were mostly swamped. Once at Newcastle races there was a fight among
the pitmen, and our tent was in their way, and was demolished almost to
bits. A deal of the money was lost or stolen. I don’t know how much,
but not near so much as my partners wanted to make out. I wasn’t on the
spot just at the time. I got married after that, and took a shop in the
second-hand clothes line in Bristol, but my wife died in child-bed in
less than a year, and the shop didn’t answer; so I got sick of it, and
at last got rid of it. O, I work both the country and London still. I
shall take a turn into Kent in a day or two. I suppose I clear between
10_s._ and 20_s._ a week in anything, and as I’ve only myself, I do
middling, and am ready for another chance if any likely speculation
offers. I lodge with a relation, and sometimes live with his family.
No, I never touch any meat but ‘Coshar.’ I suppose my meat now costs me
6_d._ or 7_d._ a day, but it has cost me ten times that--and 2_d._ for
beer in addition.”

I am informed that there are about 50 adult Jews (besides old-clothes
men) in the streets selling fruit, cakes, pencils, spectacles, sponge,
accordions, drugs, &c.

OF THE JEW-BOY STREET-SELLERS.

I have ascertained, and from sources where no ignorance on the subject
could prevail, that there are now in the streets of London, rather more
than 100 Jew-boys engaged principally in fruit and cake-selling in the
streets. Very few Jewesses are itinerant street-sellers. Most of the
older Jews thus engaged have been street-sellers from their boyhood.
The young Jews who ply in street-callings, however, are all men in
matters of traffic, almost before they cease, in years, to be children.
In addition to the Jew-boy street-sellers above enumerated, there are
from 50 to 100, but usually about 50, who are occasional, or “casual”
street-traders, vending for the most part cocoa-nuts and grapes, and
confining their sales chiefly to the Sundays.

On the subject of the street-Jew boys, a Hebrew gentleman said to
me: “When we speak of street-Jew boys, it should be understood, that
the great majority of them are but little more conversant with or
interested in the religion of their fathers, than are the costermonger
boys of whom you have written. They are Jews by the accident of their
birth, as others in the same way, with equal ignorance of the assumed
faith, are Christians.”

I received from a Jew boy the following account of his trading pursuits
and individual aspirations. There was somewhat of a thickness in his
utterance, otherwise his speech was but little distinguishable from
that of an English street-boy. His physiognomy was decidedly Jewish,
but not of the handsomer type. His hair was light-coloured, but clean,
and apparently well brushed, without being oiled, or, as I heard a
street-boy style it, “greased”; it was long, and he said his aunt told
him it “wanted cutting sadly;” but he “liked it that way;” indeed, he
kept dashing his curls from his eyes, and back from his temples, as
he was conversing, as if he were somewhat vain of doing so. He was
dressed in a corduroy suit, old but not ragged, and wore a tolerably
clean, very coarse, and altogether buttonless shirt, which he said
“was made for one bigger than me, sir.” He had bought it for 9-1/2_d._
in Petticoat-lane, and accounted it a bargain, as its wear would be
durable. He was selling sponges when I saw him, and of the commonest
kind, offering a large piece for 3_d._, which (he admitted) would be
rubbed to bits in no time. This sponge, I should mention, is frequently
“dressed” with sulphuric acid, and an eminent surgeon informed me that
on his servant attempting to clean his black dress coat with a sponge
that he had newly bought in the streets, the colour of the garment, to
his horror, changed to a bright purple. The Jew boy said--

“I believe I’m twelve. I’ve been to school, but it’s long since, and my
mother was very ill then, and I was forced to go out in the streets to
have a chance. I never was kept to school. I can’t read; I’ve forgot
all about it. I’d rather now that I could read, but very likely I could
soon learn if I could only spare time, but if I stay long in the house
I feel sick; it’s not healthy. O, no, sir, inside or out it would be
all the same to me, just to make a living and keep my health. I can’t
say how long it is since I began to sell, it’s a good long time; one
must do something. I could keep myself now, and do sometimes, but my
father--I live with him (my mother’s dead) is often laid up. Would you
like to see him, sir? He knows a deal. No, he can’t write, but he can
read a little. Can I speak Hebrew? Well, I know what you mean. O, no,
I can’t. I don’t go to synagogue; I haven’t time. My father goes, but
only sometimes; so he says, and he tells me to look out, for we must
both go by-and-by.” [I began to ask him what he knew of Joseph, and
others recorded in the Old Testament, but he bristled up, and asked
if I wanted to make a Meshumet (a convert) of him?] “I have sold all
sorts of things,” he continued, “oranges, and lemons, and sponges,
and nuts, and sweets. I should like to have a real good ginger-beer
fountain of my own; but I must wait, and there’s many in the trade.
I only go with boys of my own sort. I sell to all sorts of boys, but
that’s nothing. Very likely they’re Christians, but that’s nothing to
me. I don’t know what’s the difference between a Jew and Christian,
and I don’t want to talk about it. The Meshumets are never any good.
Anybody will tell you that. Yes, I like music and can sing a bit. I
get to a penny and sometimes a two-penny concert. No, I haven’t been
to Sussex Hall--I know where it is--I shouldn’t understand it. You get
in for nothing, that’s one thing. I’ve heard of Baron Rothschild. He
has more money than I could count in shillings in a year. I don’t know
about his wanting to get into parliament, or what it means; but he’s
sure to do it or anything else, with his money. He’s very charitable,
I’ve heard. I don’t know whether he’s a German Jew, or a Portegee,
or what. He’s a cut above me, a precious sight. I only wish he was
my uncle. I can’t say what I should do if I had his money. Perhaps I
should go a travelling, and see everything everywhere. I don’t know
how long the Jews have been in England; always perhaps. Yes, I know
there’s Jews in other countries. This sponge is Greek sponge, but I
don’t know where it’s grown, only it’s in foreign parts. Jerusalem!
Yes, I’ve heard of it. I’m of no tribe that I know of. I buy what I eat
about Petticoat-lane. No, I don’t like fish, but the stews, and the
onions with them is beautiful for two-pence; you may get a pennor’th.
The pickles--cowcumbers is best--are stunning. But they’re plummiest
with a bit of cheese or anything cold--that’s my opinion, but you may
think different. Pork! Ah! No, I never touched it; I’d as soon eat a
cat; so would my father. No, sir, I don’t think pork smells nice in a
cook-shop, but some Jew boys, as I knows, thinks it does. I don’t know
why it shouldn’t be eaten, only that it’s wrong to eat it. No, I never
touched a ham-sandwich, but other Jew boys have, and laughed at it, I
know.

“I don’t know what I make in a week. I think I make as much on one
thing as on another. I’ve sold strawberries, and cherries, and
gooseberries, and nuts and walnuts in the season. O, as to what I
make, that’s nothing to nobody. Sometimes 6_d._ a day, sometimes
1_s._; sometimes a little more, and sometimes nothing. No, I never
sells inferior things if I can help it, but if one hasn’t stock-money
one must do as one can, but it isn’t so easy to try it on. There
was a boy beaten by a woman not long since for selling a big pottle
of strawberries that was rubbish all under the toppers. It was all
strawberry leaves, and crushed strawberries, and such like. She wanted
to take back from him the two-pence she’d paid for it, and got hold
of his pockets and there was a regular fight, but she didn’t get a
farthing back though she tried her very hardest, ’cause he slipped from
her and hooked it. So you see it’s dangerous to try it on.” [This last
remark was made gravely enough, but the lad told of the feat with such
manifest glee, that I’m inclined to believe that he himself was the
culprit in question.] “Yes, it was a Jew boy it happened to, but other
boys in the streets is just the same. Do I like the streets? I can’t
say I do, there’s too little to be made in them. _No, I wouldn’t like
to go to school, nor to be in a shop, nor be anybody’s servant but my
own._ O, I don’t know what I shall be when I’m grown up. I shall take
my chance like others.”

OF THE PURSUITS, DWELLINGS, TRAFFIC, ETC., OF THE JEW-BOY
STREET-SELLERS.

To speak of the street Jew-boys as regards their traffic, manners,
haunts, and associations, is to speak of the same class of boys who
may not be employed regularly in street-sale, but are the comrades of
those who are; a class, who, on any cessation of their employment in
cigar manufactories, or indeed any capacity, will apply themselves
temporarily to street-selling, for it seems to these poor and
uneducated lads a sort of natural vocation.

These youths, _uncontrolled_ or _incontrollable_ by their parents
(who are of the lowest class of the Jews, and who often, I am told,
care little about the matter, so long as the child can earn his own
maintenance), frequently in the evenings, after their day’s work,
resort to coffee-shops, in preference even to a cheap concert-room. In
these places they amuse themselves as men might do in a tavern where
the landlord leaves his guests to their own caprices. Sometimes one of
them reads aloud from some exciting or degrading book, the lads who
are unable to read listening with all the intentness with which many
of the uneducated attend to any one reading. The reading is, however,
not unfrequently interrupted by rude comments from the listeners. If
a newspaper be read, the “police,” or “crimes,” are mostly the parts
preferred. But the most approved way of passing the evening, among the
Jew boys, is to play at draughts, dominoes, or cribbage, and to bet on
the play. Draughts and dominoes are unpractised among the costermonger
boys, but some of the young Jews are adepts in those games.

A gentleman who took an interest in the Jew lads told me that he had
often heard the sort of reading and comments I have described, when
he had called to talk to and perhaps expostulate with, these youths
in a coffee-shop, but he informed me that they seldom regarded any
expostulation, and seemed to be little restrained by the presence
of a stranger, the lads all muttering and laughing in a box among
themselves. I saw seven of them, a little after eight in the evening,
in a coffee-shop in the London-road,--although it is not much of a
Jewish locality,--and two of them were playing at draughts for coffee,
while the others looked on, betting halfpennies or pennies with all the
eagerness of gamblers, unrestrained in their expressions of delight
or disappointment as they thought they were winning or losing, and
commenting on the moves with all the assurance of connoisseurship;
sometimes they squabbled angrily and then suddenly dropped their
voices, as the master of the coffee-shop had once or twice cautioned
them to be quiet.

The dwellings of boys such us these are among the worst in London, as
regards ventilation, comfort, or cleanliness. They reside in the courts
and recesses about Whitechapel and Petticoat-lane, and generally in a
garret. If not orphans they usually dwell with their father. I am told
that the care of a mother is almost indispensable to a poor Jew boy,
and having that care he seldom becomes an outcast. The Jewesses and Jew
girls are rarely itinerant street-sellers--not in the proportion of one
to twelve, compared with the men and boys; in this respect therefore
the street Jews differ widely from the English costermongers and the
street Irish, nor are the Hebrew females even stall-keepers in the same
proportion.

One Jew boy’s lodging which I visited was in a back garret, low and
small. The boy lived with his father (a street-seller of fruit), and
the room was very bare. A few sacks were thrown over an old palliass,
a blanket seemed to be used for a quilt; there were no fire-irons nor
fender; no cooking utensils. Beside the bed was an old chest, serving
for a chair, while a board resting on a trestle did duty for a table
(this was once, I presume, a small street-stall). The one not very
large window was thick with dirt and patched all over. Altogether I
have seldom seen a more wretched apartment. The man, I was told, was
addicted to drinking.

The callings of which the Jew boys have the monopoly are not connected
with the sale of any especial article, but rather with such things as
present a variety from those ordinarily offered in the streets, such
as cakes, sweetmeats, fried fish, and (in the winter) elder wine.
The cakes known as “boolers”--a mixture of egg, flour, and candied
orange or lemon peel, cut very thin, and with a slight colouring from
saffron or something similar--are now sold principally, and used to be
sold exclusively, by the Jew boys. Almond cakes (little round cakes
of crushed almonds) are at present vended by the Jew boys, and their
sponge biscuits are in demand. All these dainties are bought by the
street-lads of the Jew pastry-cooks. The difference in these cakes,
in their sweetmeats, and their elder wine, is that there is a dash
of spice about them not ordinarily met with. It is the same with the
fried fish, a little spice or pepper being blended with the oil. In
the street-sale of pickles the Jews have also the monopoly; these,
however, are seldom hawked, but generally sold from windows and
door-steads. The pickles are cucumbers or gherkins, and onions--a large
cucumber being 2_d._, and the smaller 1_d._ and 1/2_d._

The faults of the Jew lad are an eagerness to make money by any means,
so that he often grows up a cheat, a trickster, a receiver of stolen
goods, though seldom a thief, for he leaves that to others. He is
content to profit by the thief’s work, but seldom _steals_ himself,
however he may cheat. Some of these lads become rich men; others are
vagabonds all their lives. None of the Jew lads confine themselves to
the sale of any one article, nor do they seem to prefer one branch of
street-traffic to another. Even those who cannot read are exceedingly
quick.

I may here observe in connection with the receipt of stolen goods,
that I shall deal with this subject in my account of the LONDON
THIEVES. I shall also show the connection of Jewesses and Jews with the
_prostitution of the metropolis_, in my forthcoming exposition of the
LONDON PROSTITUTES.

OF THE STREET JEWESSES AND STREET JEW-GIRLS.

I have mentioned that the Jewesses and the young Jew girls, compared
with the adult Jews and Jew boys, are not street-traders in anything
like the proportion which the females were found to bear to the males
among the Irish street-folk and the English costermongers. There are,
however, a few Jewish females who are itinerant street-sellers as
well as stall keepers, in the proportion, perhaps, of one female to
seven or eight males. The majority of the street Jew-girls whom I saw
on a round were accompanied by boys who were represented to be their
brothers, and I have little doubt such was the facts, for these young
Jewesses, although often pert and ignorant, are not unchaste. Of this
I was assured by a medical gentleman who could speak with sufficient
positiveness on the subject.

Fruit is generally sold by these boys and girls together, the lad
driving the barrow, and the girl inviting custom and handing the
purchases to the buyers. In tending a little stall or a basket at a
regular pitch, with such things as cherries or strawberries, the little
Jewess differs only from her street-selling sisters in being a brisker
trader. The stalls, with a few old knives or scissors, or odds and ends
of laces, that are tended by the Jew girls in the streets in the Jewish
quarters (I am told there are not above a dozen of them) are generally
near the shops and within sight of their parents or friends. One little
Jewess, with whom I had some conversation, had not even heard the
name of the Chief Rabbi, the Rev. Dr. Adler, and knew nothing of any
distinction between German and Portuguese Jews; she had, I am inclined
to believe, never heard of either. I am told that the whole, or nearly
the whole, of these young female traders reside with parents or
friends, and that there is among them far less than the average number
of runaways. One Jew told me he thought that the young female members
of his tribe did not tramp with the juveniles of the other sex--no,
not in the proportion of one to a hundred in comparison, he said with
a laugh, with “young women of the Christian persuasion.” My informant
had means of knowing this fact, as although still a young man, he had
traversed the greater part of England hawking perfumery, which he had
abandoned as a bad trade. A wire-worker, long familiar with tramping
and going into the country--a man upon whose word I have every reason
to rely--told me that he could not remember a single instance of his
having seen a young Jewess “travelling” with a boy.

There are a few adult Jewesses who are itinerant traders, but very
few. I met with one who carried on her arm a not very large basket,
filled with glass wares; chiefly salt-cellars, cigar-ash plates, blue
glass dessert plates, vinegar-cruets, and such like. The greater part
of her wares appeared to be blue, and she carried nothing but glass.
She was a good-looking and neatly-dressed woman. She peeped in at
each shop-door, and up at the windows of every private house, in the
street in which I met her, crying, “Clo’, old clo’!” She bartered her
glass for old clothes, or bought the garments, dealing principally in
female attire, and almost entirely with women. She declined to say
anything about her family or her circumstances, except that she had
nothing that way to complain about, but--when I had used some names I
had authority to make mention of--she said she would, with pleasure,
tell me all about her trade, which she carried on rather than do
nothing. “When I hawk,” she said with an English accent, her face being
unmistakeably Jewish, “I hawk only good glass, and it can hardly be
called hawking, as I swop it for more than I sell it. I always ask for
the mistress, and if she wants any of my glass we come to a bargain if
we can. O, it’s ridiculous to see what things some ladies--I suppose
they must be called ladies--offer for my glass. Children’s green or
blue gauze veils, torn or faded, and not worth picking up, because no
use whatever; old ribbons, not worth dyeing, and old frocks, not worth
washing. People say, ‘as keen as a Jew,’ but ladies can’t think we’re
very keen when they offer us such rubbish. I do most at the middle kind
of houses, both shops and private. I sometimes give a little money for
such a thing as a shawl, or a fur tippet, as well as my glass--but only
when I can’t help it--to secure a bargain. Sometimes, but not often,
I get the old thing and a trifle for my glass. Occasionally I buy
outright. I don’t do much, there’s so many in the line, and I don’t go
out regularly. I can’t say how many women are in my way--very few; O, I
do middling. I told you I had no complaints to make. I don’t calculate
my profits or what I sell. My family do that and I don’t trouble
myself.”

OF THE SYNAGOGUES AND THE RELIGION OF THE STREET AND OTHER JEWS.

The Jews in this country are classed as “Portuguese” and “German.”
Among them are no distinctions of tribes, but there is of rites and
ceremonies, as is set forth in the following extract (which shows
also the mode of government) from a Jewish writer: “The Spanish and
Portuguese Congregation of Jews, who are also called Sephardin (from
the word Sepharad, which signifies Spain in Hebrew), are distinct from
the German and Polish Jews in their ritual service. The prayers both
daily and for the Sabbath materially differ from each other, and the
festival prayers differ still more. Hence the Portuguese Jews have a
distinct prayer-book, and the German Jews likewise.

“The fundamental laws are equally observed by both sects, but in
the ceremonial worship there exists numerous differences. The
Portuguese Jews eat some food during the Passover, which the German
Jews are prohibited doing by _some_ Rabbis, but their authority
is not acknowledged by the Portuguese Rabbis. Nor are the present
ecclesiastical authorities in London of the two sects the same. The
Portuguese Jews have their own Rabbis, and the German have their own.
The German Jews are much more numerous than the Portuguese; the chief
Rabbi of the German Jews is the Rev. Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler, late
Chief Rabbi of Hanover, who wears no beard, and dresses in the German
costume. The presiding Rabbi of the Portuguese Jews is the Rev. David
Meldola, a native of Leghorn; his father filled the same office in
London. Each chief Rabbi is supported by three other Rabbis, called
Dayamin, which signifies in Hebrew ‘Judges.’ Every Monday and Thursday
the Chief Rabbi of the German Jews, Dr. Adler, supported by his
three colleagues, sits for two hours in the Rabbinical College (Beth
Hamedrash), Smith’s-buildings, Leadenhall-street, to attend to all
applications from the German Jews, which may be brought before him, and
which are decided according to the Jewish law. Many disputes between
Jews in religious matters are settled in this manner; and if the Lord
Mayor or any other magistrate is told that the matter has already been
settled by the Jewish Rabbi he seldom interferes. This applies only
to civil and not to criminal cases. The Portuguese Jews have their
own hospital and their own schools. Both congregations have their
representatives in the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which board
is acknowledged by government, and is triennial. Sir Moses Montefiore,
a Jew of great wealth, who distinguished himself by his mission to
Damascus, during the persecution of the Jews in that place, and also by
his mission to Russia, some years ago, is the President of the Board.
All political matters, calling for communications with government, are
within the province of that useful board.”

The Jews have eight synagogues in London, besides some smaller
places which may perhaps, adopting the language of another church,
be called synagogues of ease. The great synagogue in Duke’s-place
(a locality of which I have often had to speak) is the largest, but
the new synagogue, St. Helen’s, Bishopgate, is the one which most
betokens the wealth of the worshippers. It is rich with ornaments,
marble, and painted glass; the pavement is of painted marble, and
presents a perfect round, while the ceiling is a half dome. There
are besides these the Hamburg Synagogue, in Fenchurch-street;
the Portuguese Synagogue, in Bevis-marks; two smaller places, in
Cutler-street and Gun-yard, Houndsditch, known as Polish Synagogues;
the Maiden-lane (Covent-garden), Synagogue; the Western Synagogue, St.
Alban’s-place, Pall-mall; and the West London Synagogue of British
Jews, Margaret-street, Cavendish-square. The last-mentioned is the
most aristocratic of the synagogues. The service there is curtailed,
the ritual abbreviated, and the days of observance of the Jewish
festival reduced from two to one. This alteration is strongly protested
against by the other Jews, and the practices of this synagogue seem
to show a yielding to the exactions or requirements of the wealthy.
In the old days, and in almost every country in Europe, it was held
to be sinful even for a king--reverenced and privileged as such a
potentate then was--to prosecute any undertaking before he heard mass.
In some states it was said in reproach of a noble or a sovereign, “he
breakfasts before he hears mass,” and, to meet the impatience of the
Great, “hunting masses,” as they were styled, or epitomes of the full
service, were introduced. The Jews, some eight or nine years back in
this country, seem to have followed this example; such was the case, at
least, as regards London and the wealthier of the professors of this
ancient faith.

The synagogues are not well attended, the congregations being smaller
in proportion to the population than those of the Church of England.
Neither, during the observance of the Jewish worship, is there any
especial manifestation of the service being regarded as of a sacred
and divinely-ordained character. There is a buzzing talk among the
attendants during the ceremony, and an absence of seriousness and
attention. Some of the Jews, however, show the greatest devotion, and
the same may be said of the Jewesses, who sit apart in the synagogues,
and are not required to attend so regularly as the men.

I should not have alluded to this absence of the solemnities of
devotion, as regards the congregations of the Hebrews, had I not heard
it regretted by Hebrews themselves. “It is shocking,” one said. Another
remarked, “To attend the synagogue is looked upon too much as a matter
of _business_; but perhaps there is the same spirit in some of the
Christian churches.”

As to the street-Jews, religion is little known among them, or little
cared for. They are indifferent to it--not to such a degree, indeed,
as the costermongers, for they are not so ignorant a class--but yet
contrasting strongly in their neglect with the religious intensity of
the majority of the Roman Catholic Irish of the streets. In common
justice I must give the remark of a Hebrew merchant with whom I had
some conversation on the subject:--“I can’t say much about street-Jews,
for my engagements lead me away from them, and I don’t know much about
street-Christians. But if out of a hundred Jews you find that only ten
of them care for their religion, how many out of a hundred Christians
of any sort will care about theirs? Will ten of them care? If you
answer, but they are only nominal Christians, my reply is, the Jews are
only nominal Jews--Jews by birth, and not by faith.”

Among the Jews I conversed with--and of course only the more
intelligent understood, or were at all interested in, the question--I
heard the most contemptuous denunciation of all converts from Judaism.
One learned informant, who was by no means blind to the short-comings
of his own people, expressed his conviction that no Jew had ever been
really _converted_. He had abandoned his faith from interested motives.
On this subject I am not called upon to express any opinion, and merely
mention it to show a prevalent feeling among the class I am describing.

The street-Jews, including the majority of the more prosperous and most
numerous class among them, the old-clothes men, are far from being
religious in feeling, or well versed in their faith, and are, perhaps,
in that respect on a level with the mass of the members of the Church
of England; I say of the Church of England, because of that church the
many who do not profess religion are usually accounted members.

In the Rabbinical College, I may add, is the finest Jewish library
in the world. It has been collected for several generations under
the care of the Chief Rabbis. The public are admitted, having first
obtained tickets, given gratuitously, at the Chief Rabbi’s residence in
Crosby-square.

OF THE POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND AMUSEMENTS OF THE JEWS.

Perhaps there is no people in the world, possessing the average amount
of intelligence in busy communities, who care so little for politics
as the general body of the Jews. The wealthy classes may take an
interest in the matter, but I am assured, and by those who know their
countrymen well, that even with them such a quality as patriotism is a
mere word. This may be accounted for in a great measure, perhaps, from
an hereditary feeling. The Jew could hardly be expected to love a land,
or to strive for the promotion of its general welfare, where he felt
he was but a sojourner, and where he was at the best but tolerated and
often proscribed. But this feeling becomes highly reprehensible when it
extends--as I am assured it does among many of the rich Jews--to their
own people, for whom, apart from conventionalities, say my informants,
_they care nothing whatever_; for so long as they are undisturbed in
money-getting at home, their brethren may be persecuted all over the
world, while the rich Jew merely shrugs his shoulders. An honourable
exception, however, exists in Sir Moses Montefiore, who has honourably
distinguished himself in the relief of his persecuted brethren on more
than one occasion. The great of the earth no longer spit upon the
gabardine of the Jewish millionaire, nor do they draw his teeth to
get his money, but the great Jew capitalists, with powerful influence
in many a government, do not seek to direct that influence for the
bettering of the lot of their poorer brethren, who, at the same time,
brook the restrictions and indignities which they have to suffer with
a perfect philosophy. In fact, the Jews have often been the props of
the courts who have persecuted them; that is to say, two or three
Jewish firms occasionally have not hesitated to lend millions to the
governments by whom they and their people have been systematically
degraded and oppressed.

I was told by a Hebrew gentleman (a professional man) that so little
did the Jews themselves care for “Jewish emancipation,” that he
questioned if one man in ten, actuated solely by his own feelings,
would trouble himself to walk the length of the street in which he
lived to secure Baron Rothschild’s admission into the House of Commons.
This apathy, my informant urged with perfect truth, in nowise affected
the merits of the question, though he was convinced it formed a great
obstacle to Baron Rothschild’s success; “for governments,” he said,
“won’t give boons to people who don’t care for them; and, though this
is called a boon, I look upon it as only a _right_.”

When such is the feeling of the comparatively wealthier Jews, no one
can wonder that I found among the Jewish street-sellers and old-clothes
men with whom I talked on the subject--and their more influential
brethren gave me every facility to prosecute my inquiry among them--a
perfect indifference to, and nearly as perfect an ignorance of,
politics. Perhaps no men buy so few newspapers, and read them so
little, as the Jews generally. The street-traders, when I alluded to
the subject, said they read little but the “Police Reports.”

Among the body of the Jews there is little love of Literature.
They read far less (let it be remembered I have acquired all this
information from Jews themselves, and from men who could not be
mistaken in the matter), and are far less familiar with English
authorship, either historical or literary, than are the poorer English
artizans. Neither do the wealthiest classes of the Jews care to
foster literature among their own people. One author, a short time
ago, failing to interest the English Jews, to promote the publication
of his work, went to the United States, and his book was issued in
Philadelphia, the city of Quakers!

The Amusements of the Jews--and here I speak more especially of the
street or open-air traders--are the theatres and concert-rooms. The
City of London Theatre, the Standard Theatre, and other playhouses at
the East-end of London, are greatly resorted to by the Jews, and more
especially by the younger members of the body, who sometimes constitute
a rather obstreperous gallery. The cheap concerts which they patronize
are generally of a superior order, for the Jews are fond of music, and
among them have been many eminent composers and performers, so that the
trash and jingle which delights the costermonger class would not please
the street Jew boys; hence their concerts are superior to the general
run of cheap concerts, and are almost always “got up” by their own
people.

Sussex-hall, in Leadenhall-street, is chiefly supported by Israelites;
there the “Jews’ and General Literary and Scientific Institution” is
established, with reading-rooms and a library; and there lectures,
concerts, &c., are given as at similar institutions. Of late, on every
Friday evening, Sussex-hall has been thrown open to the general public,
without any charge for admission, and lectures have been delivered
gratuitously, on literature, science, art, and general subjects, which
have attracted crowded audiences. The lecturers are chiefly Jews, but
the lectures are neither theological nor sectarian. The lecturers
are Mr. M. H. Bresslau, the Rev. B. H. Ascher, Mr. J. L. Levison (of
Brighton), and Mr. Clarke, a merchant in the City, a Christian, whose
lectures are very popular among the Jews. The behaviour of the Jew
attendants, and the others, the Jews being the majority, is decorous.
They seem “to like to receive information,” I was told; and a gentleman
connected with the hall argued that this attention showed a readiness
for proper instruction, when given in an attractive form, which
favoured the opinion that the young Jews, when not thrown in childhood
into the vortex of money-making, were very easily teachable, while
their natural quickness made them both ready and willing to be taught.

My old-clothes buying informant mentioned a Jewish eating-house. I
visited one in the Jew quarter, but saw nothing to distinguish it from
Christian resorts of the same character and cheapness (the “plate” of
good hot meat costing 4_d._, and vegetables 1_d._), except that it was
fuller of Jews than of Christians, by three to two, perhaps, and that
there was no “pork” in the waiter’s specification of the fare.

OF THE CHARITIES, SCHOOLS, AND EDUCATION OF THE JEWS.

The Jewish charities are highly honourable to the body, for they allow
none of their people to live or die in a parish workhouse. It is true
that among the Jews in London there are many individuals of immense
wealth; but there are also many rich Christians who care not one jot
for the need of their brethren. It must be borne in mind also, that not
only do the Jews voluntarily support their own poor and institutions,
but they contribute--compulsorily it is true--their quota to the
support of the English poor and church; and, indeed, pay their due
proportion of all the parliamentary or local imposts. This is the more
honourable and the more remarkable among the Jews, when we recollect
their indisputable greed of money.

If a Jew be worn out in his old age, and unable to maintain himself,
he is either supported by the contributions of his friends, or out of
some local or general fund, or provided for in some asylum, and all
this seems to be done with a less than ordinary fuss and display, so
that the recipient of the charity feels himself more a pensioner than
a pauper.

The Jews’ Hospital, in the Mile-end Road, is an extensive building,
into which feeble old men and destitute children of both sexes are
admitted. Here the boys are taught trades, and the girls qualified
for respectable domestic service. The Widows’ Home, in Duke-street,
Aldgate, is for poor Hebrew widows. The Orphan Asylum, built at the
cost of Mr. A. L. Moses, and supported by subscription, now contains
14 girls and 8 boys; a school is attached to the asylum, which is
in the Tenter Ground, Goodman’s-fields. The Hand-in-Hand Asylum,
for decayed old people, men and women, is in Duke’s-place, Aldgate.
There are likewise alms-houses for the Jews, erected also by Mr. A.
L. Moses, at Mile-end, and other alms-houses, erected by Mr. Joel
Emanuel, in Wellclose-square, near the Tower. There are, further, three
institutions for granting marriage dowers to fatherless children;
an institution in Bevis-marks, for the burial of the poor of the
congregation; “Beth Holim;” a house for the reception of the sick
poor, and of poor lying-in women belonging to the congregation of the
Spanish and Portuguese Jews; “Magasim Zobim,” for lending money to aid
apprenticeships among boys, to fit girls for good domestic service,
and for helping poor children to proceed to foreign parts, when it is
believed that the change will be advantageous to them; and “Noten Lebem
Larcebim;” to distribute bread to the poor of the congregation on the
day preceding the Sabbath.

I am assured that these institutions are well-managed, and that, if
the charities are abused by being dispensed to undeserving objects, it
is usually with the knowledge of the managers, who often let the abuse
pass, as a smaller evil than driving a man to theft or subjecting him
to the chance of starvation. One gentleman, familiar with most of these
establishments, said to me with a laugh, “I believe, if you have had
any conversation with the gentlemen who manage these matters, you will
have concluded that they are not the people to be imposed upon very
easily.”

There are seven Jewish schools in London, four in the city, and three
at the West-end, all supported by voluntary contributions. The Jews’
Free School, in Bell-lane, Spitalfields, is the largest, and is
adapted for the education of no fewer than 1200 boys and girls. The
late Baroness de Rothschild provided clothing, yearly, for all the
pupils in the school. In the Infant School, Houndsditch, are about 400
little scholars. There are also the Orphan Asylum School, previously
mentioned; the Western Jewish schools, for girls, in Dean-street, and,
for boys, in Greek-street, Soho, but considered as one establishment;
and the West Metropolitan School, for girls, in Little Queen-street,
and, for boys, in High Holborn, also considered as one establishment.

Notwithstanding these means of education, the body of the poorer, or
what in other callings might be termed the working-classes, are not
even tolerably well educated; they are indifferent to the matter.
With many, the multiplication table seems to constitute what they
think the acme of all knowledge needful to a man. The great majority
of the Jew boys, in the street, cannot read. A smaller portion can
read, but so imperfectly that their ability to read detracts nothing
from their ignorance. So neglectful or so necessitous (but I heard the
ignorance attributed to neglect far more frequently than necessity)
are the poorer Jews, and so soon do they take their children away from
school, “to learn and do something for themselves,” and so irregular
is their attendance, on the plea that the time cannot be spared, and
the boy must do something for himself, that many children leave the
free-schools not only about as ignorant as when they entered them, but
almost with an incentive to continued ignorance; for they knew nothing
of reading, except that to acquire its rudiments is a pain, a labour,
and a restraint. On some of the Jew boys the vagrant spirit is strong;
they _will_ be itinerants, if not wanderers,--though this is a spirit
in no way confined to the Jew boys.

Although the wealthier Jews may be induced to give money towards the
support of their poor, I heard strong strictures passed upon them
concerning their indifference towards their brethren in all other
respects. Even if they subscribed to a school, they never cared whether
or not it was attended, and that, much as was done, far more was in
the power of so wealthy and distinct a people. “This is all the more
inexcusable,” was said to me by a Jew, “because there are so many rich
Jews in London, and if they exerted and exercised a broader liberality,
as they might in instituting Jewish colleges, for instance, to promote
knowledge among the middle-classes, and if they cared more about
employing their own people, their liberality would be far more fully
felt than similar conduct in a Christian, because they have a smaller
sphere to influence. As to employing their own people, there are
numbers of the rich Jews who will employ any stranger in preference,
if he work a penny a week cheaper. This sort of _clan_ employment,”
continued my Jew informant, “should never be exclusive, but there
might, I think, be a judicious preference.”

I shall now proceed to set forth an account of the sums yearly
subscribed for purposes of education and charity by the Jews.

The Jews’ Free School in Spitalfields is supported by voluntary
contributions to the amount of about 1200_l._ yearly. To this sum a few
Christians contribute, as to some other Hebrew institutions (which I
shall specify), while Jews often are liberal supporters of Christian
public charities--indeed, some of the wealthier Jews are looked upon
by the members of their own faith as inclined to act more generously
where Christian charities, with the prestige of high aristocratic
and fashionable patronage, are in question, than towards their own
institutions. To the Jews’ Free School the Court of Common Council of
the Corporation of London lately granted 100_l._, through the exertions
of Mr. Benjamin S. Phillips, of Newgate-street, a member of the
court. The Baroness Lionel de Rothschild (as I have formerly stated of
the late Baroness) supplies clothing for the scholars. The school is
adapted for the reception of 1200 boys and girls in equal proportion;
about 900 is the average attendance.

The Jews’ Infant School in Houndsditch, with an average attendance
approaching 400, is similarly supported at a cost of from 800_l._ to
1000_l._ yearly.

The Orphan Asylum School, in Goodman’s-fields, receives a somewhat
larger support, but in the expenditure is the cost of an asylum (before
mentioned, and containing 22 inmates). The funds are about 1500_l._
yearly. Christians subscribe to this institution also--Mr. Frederick
Peel, M.P., taking great interest in it. The attendance of pupils is
from 300 to 400.

It might be tedious to enumerate the other schools, after having
described the principal; I will merely add, therefore, that the yearly
contributions to each are from 700_l._ to 1000_l._, and the pupils
taught in each from 200 to 400. Of these further schools there are four
already specified.

The Jews’ Hospital, at Mile End, is maintained at a yearly cost of
about 3000_l._, to which Christians contribute, but not to a twentieth
of the amount collected. The persons benefited are worn-out old men,
and destitute children, while the number of almspeople is from 150 to
200 yearly.

The other two asylums, &c., which I have specified, are maintained at
a cost of about 800_l._ each, as a yearly average, and the Almshouses,
three in number, at about half that sum. The persons relieved by
these last-mentioned institutions number about 250, two-thirds, or
thereabouts, being in the asylums.

The Loan Societies are three: the Jewish Ladies Visiting and Benevolent
Loan Society; the Linusarian Loan Society (why called Linusarian a
learned Hebrew scholar could not inform me, although he had asked
the question of others); and the Magasim Zobim (the Good Deeds), a
Portuguese Jews’ Loan Society.

The business of these three societies is conducted on the same
principle. Money is lent on personal or any security approved by the
managers, and no interest is charged to the borrower. The amount
lent yearly is from 600_l._ to 700_l._ by each society, the whole
being repaid and with sufficient punctuality; a few weeks’ “grace” is
occasionally allowed in the event of illness or any unforeseen event.
The Loan Societies have not yet found it necessary to proceed against
any of their debtors; my informant thought this forbearance extended
over six years.

There is not among the Jewish street-traders, as among the
costermongers and others, a class forming part, or having once formed
part of themselves, and living by usury and loan mongering, where
they have amassed a few pounds. Whatever may be thought of the Jews’
usurious dealings as regards the general public, the poorer classes of
their people are not subjected to the exactions of usury, with all its
clogs to a struggling man’s well-doing. Sometimes the amount required
by an old-clothes man, or other street-trader, is obtained by or for
him at one of these loan societies. Sometimes it is advanced by the
usual buyer of the second-hand garments collected by the street-Jew. No
security in such cases is given beyond--strange as it may sound--the
personal honour of an old-clothes man! An experienced man told me, that
taking all the class of Jew street-sellers, who are a very fluctuating
body, with the exception of the old-clothes men, the sum thus advanced
as stock-money to them might be seldom less in any one year than
300_l._, and seldom more than 500_l._ There is a prevalent notion
that the poorer Jews, when seeking charity, are supplied with goods
for street-sale by their wealthy brethren, and never with money--this
appears to be unfounded.

Now to sum up the above items we find that the yearly cost of the
Jewish schools is about 7000_l._, supplying the means of instruction to
3000 children (out of a population of 18,000 of all ages, one-half of
whom, perhaps, are under 20 years). The yearly outlay in the asylums,
&c., is, it appears, 5800_l._ annually, benefiting or maintaining about
420 individuals (at a cost of nearly 14_l._ per head). If we add no
more than 200_l._ yearly for the minor charities or institutions I
have previously alluded to, we find 14,000_l._ expended annually in
the public schools and charities of the Jews of London, independently
of about 2000_l._, which is the amount of the loans to those requiring
temporary aid.

We have before seen that the number of Jews in London is estimated
by the best informed at about 18,000; hence it would appear that
the charitable donations of the Jews of London amount on an average
to a little less than 1_l._ per head. Let us compare this with the
benevolence of the Christians. At the same ratio the sum devoted to the
charities of England and Wales should be very nearly 16,000,000_l._,
but, according to the most liberal estimates, it does not reach half
that amount; the rent of the land and other fixed property, together
with the interest of the money left for charitable purposes in England
and Wales, is 1,200,000_l._ If, however, we add to the voluntary
contributions the sum raised compulsorily by assessment in aid of
the poor (about 7,000,000_l._ per annum), the ratio of the English
Christian’s contributions to his needy brethren throughout the country
will be very nearly the same as that of the Jew’s. Moreover, if we
turn our attention to the benevolent bequests and donations of the
Christians of London, we shall find that their munificence does not
fall far short of that of the metropolitan Jews. The gross amounts of
the charitable contributions of London are given below, together with
the numbers of institutions; and it will thus be seen that the sum
devoted to such purposes amounts to no less than 1,764,733_l._, or
upwards of a million and three-quarters sterling for a population of
about two millions!

Income Income
derived derived
from voluntary from
contributions. property.
12 General medical hospitals £31,265 £111,641
50 Medical charities for special
purposes 27,974 68,690
35 General dispensaries 11,470 2,954
12 Preservation of life and
public morals 8,730 2,773
18 Reclaiming the fallen and
staying the progress of
crime 16,299 13,737
14 Relief of general destitution
and distress 20,646 3,234
12 Relief of specified distress 19,473 10,408
14 Aiding the resources of
the industrious 4,677 2,569
11 For the blind, deaf, and
dumb 11,965 22,797
103 Colleges, hospitals, and
other asylums for the aged 5,857 77,190
16 Charitable pension societies 15,790 3,199
74 Charitable and provident,
chiefly for specified classes 19,905 83,322
31 Asylums for orphans and
other necessitous children 55,466 25,549
10 Educational foundations 15,000 78,112
4 Charitable modern ditto 4,000 9,300
40 School societies, religious
books, church aiding, and
Christian visitings, &c. 159,853 158,336
35 Bible and missionary 494,494 63,058
------------------------
491 Total 1,022,864 741,869

In connection with the statistical part of this subject I may mention
that the Chief Rabbis each receive 1200_l._ a year; the Readers of the
Synagogues, of whom there are twelve in London, from 300_l._ to 400_l._
a year each; the Secretaries of the Synagogues, of whom there are also
twelve, from 200_l._ to 300_l._ each; the twelve under Secretaries
from 100_l._ to 150_l._; and six Dayanim 100_l._ a year each. These
last-mentioned officers are looked upon by many of the Jews, as the
“poor curates” may be by the members of the Church of England--as being
exceedingly under-paid. The functions of the Dayanim have been already
mentioned, and, I may add, that they must have received expensive
scholarly educations, as for about four hours daily they have to read
the Talmud in the places of worship.

The yearly payment of these sacerdotal officials, then, independent
of other outlay, amounts to about 11,700_l._; this is raised from the
profits of the seats in the synagogues and voluntary contributions,
donations, subscriptions, bequests, &c., among the Jews.

I have before spoken of a Board of Deputies, in connection with the
Jews, and now proceed to describe its constitution. It is not a
parliament among the Jews, I am told nor a governing power, but what
may be called a directing or regulating body. It is authorized by
the body of Jews, and recognised by her Majesty’s Government, as an
established corporation, with powers to treat and determine on matters
of civil and political policy affecting the condition of the Hebrews in
this country, and interferes in no way with religious matters. It is
neither a metropolitan nor a local nor a detached board, but, as far as
the Jews in England may be so described, a national board. This board
is elected triennially. The electors are the “seat-holders” in the
Jewish synagogues; that is to say, they belong to the class of Jews who
promote the support of the synagogues by renting seats, and so paying
towards the cost of those establishments.

There are in England, Ireland, and Scotland, about 1000 of these
seat-holders exercising the franchise, or rather entitled to exercise
it, but many of them are indifferent to the privilege, as is often
testified by the apathy shown on the days of election. Perhaps
three-fourths of the privileged number may vote. The services of the
representatives are gratuitous, and no qualification is required, but
the elected are usually the leading metropolitan Jews. The proportion
of the electors voting is in the ratio of the deputies elected.
London returns 12 deputies; Liverpool, 2; Manchester, 2; Birmingham,
2; Edinburgh, Dublin, (the only places in either Scotland or Ireland
returning deputies), Dover, Portsmouth, Southampton, Plymouth,
Canterbury, Norwich, Swansea, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and two other places
(according to the number of seat-holders), each one deputy, thus making
up the number to 30. On election days the attendance, as I have said,
is often small, but fluctuating according to any cause of excitement,
which, however, is but seldom.

The question which has of late been discussed by this Board, and
which is now under consideration, and negotiation with the Education
Commissioners of her Majesty’s Privy Council, is the obtaining a
grant of money in the same proportion as it has been granted to other
educational establishments. Nothing has as yet been given to the Jewish
schools, and the matter is still undetermined.

With religious or sacerdotal questions the Board of Deputies does not,
or is not required to meddle; it leaves all such matters to the bodies
or tribunals I have mentioned. Indeed the deputies concern themselves
only with what may be called the _public_ interests of the Jews,
both as a part of the community and as a distinct people. The Jewish
institutions, however, are not an exception to the absence of unanimity
among the professors of the same creeds, for the members of the Reform
Synagogue in Margaret-street, Cavendish-square, are not recognised
as entitled to vote, and do not vote, accordingly, in the election
of the Jewish deputies. Indeed, the Reform members, whose synagogue
was established eight years ago, were formally excommunicated by a
declaration of the late Chief Rabbi, but this seems now to be regarded
as a mere matter of form, for the members have lately partaken of all
the rites to which orthodox Jews are entitled.

OF THE FUNERAL CEREMONIES, FASTS, AND CUSTOMS OF THE JEWS.

The funeral ceremonies of the Jews are among the things which tend to
preserve the distinctness and peculiarity of this people. Sometimes,
though now rarely, the nearest relatives of the deceased wear sackcloth
(a coarse crape), and throw ashes and dust on their hair, for the
term during which the corpse remains unburied, this term being the
same as among Christians. When the corpse is carried to the Jews’
burial-ground for interment the coffin is frequently opened, and
the corpse addressed, in a Hebrew formula, by any relative, friend,
or acquaintance who may be present. The words are to the following
purport: “If I have done anything that might be offensive--pardon,
pardon, pardon.” After that the coffin is carried round the
burial-ground in a circuit, children chanting the 90th Psalm in its
original Hebrew, “a prayer of Moses, the man of God.” The passages
which the air causes to be most emphatic are these verses:--

“3. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of
men.

“4. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is
past, and as a watch in the night.

“5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in
the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

“6. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is
cut down, and withereth.

“10. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by
reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength
labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

The coffin is then carried into a tent, and the funeral prayers,
in Hebrew, are read. When it has been lowered into the grave, the
relatives, and indeed all the attendants at the interment, fill up
the grave, shovelling in the earth. In the Jews’ burial-ground are no
distinctions, no vaults or provisions for aristocratic sepulture. The
very rich and the very poor, the outcast woman and the virtuous and
prosperous gentlewoman, “grossly familiar, side by side consume.” A
Jewish funeral is a matter of high solemnity.

The burial fees are 12_s._ for children, and from 2_l._ to 3_l._ for
adults. These fees are not the property of the parties officiating, but
form a portion of the synagogue funds for general purposes, payment of
officers, &c. No fees are charged to the relatives of poor Jews.

Two fasts are rigidly observed by the Jews, and even by those Jews who
are usually indifferent to the observances of their religion. These are
the Black Fast, in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem, and
the White Fast, in commemoration of the atonement. On each of those
occasions the Jews abstain altogether from food for 24 hours, or from
sunset to sunset.

OF THE JEW STREET-SELLERS OF ACCORDIONS, AND OF THEIR STREET MUSICAL
PURSUITS.

I conclude my account of the Street-Jews with an account of the
accordion sellers.

Although the Jews, as a people, are musical, they are little concerned
at present either in the sale of musical instruments in the streets,
or in street-music or singing. Until within a few years, however, the
street-sale of accordions was carried on by itinerant Jews, and had
previously been carried on most extensively in the country, even in the
far north of England. Some years back well-dressed Jews “travelled”
with stocks of accordions. In many country towns and in gentlemen’s
country mansions, in taverns, and schools also, these accordions were
then a novelty. The Jew could play on the instrument, and carried a
book of instructions, which usually formed part of the bargain, and by
the aid of which, he made out, any one, even without previous knowledge
of the practical art of music, could easily teach himself--nothing
but a little practice in fingering being wanted to make a good
accordion-player. At first the accordions sold by the Jew hawkers were
good, two guineas being no unusual price to be paid for one, even to a
street-seller, while ten and twenty shillings were the lower charges.
But the accordions were in a few years “made slop,” cheap instruments
being sent to this country from Germany, and sold at less than half
their former price, until the charge fell as low as 3_s._ 6_d._ or even
2_s._ 6_d._--but only for “rubbish,” I was told. When the fragility
and inferior musical qualities of these instruments came to be known,
it was found almost impossible to sell in the streets even superior
instruments, however reasonable in price, and thus the trade sunk to a
nonentity. So little demand is there now for these instruments that no
pawnbroker, I am assured, will advance money on one, however well made.

The itinerant accordion trade was always much greater in the country
than in London, for in town, I was told, few would be troubled to try,
or even listen, to the tones of an accordion played by a street-seller,
at their own doors, or in their houses. While there were 100 or 120
Jews hawking accordions in the country, there would not be 20 in
London, including even the suburbs, where the sale was the best.

Calculating that, when the trade was at its best, 130 Jews hawked
accordions in town and country, and that each sold three a week, at
an average price of 20_s._ each, or six in a week at an average price
of 10_s._ each, the profit being from 50 to 100 per cent., we find
upwards of 20,000_l._ expended in the course of the year in accordions
of which, however, little more than a sixth part, or about 3000_l._,
was expended in London. This was only when the trade had all the
recommendations of novelty, and in the following year perhaps not half
the amount was realized. One informant thought that the year 1828-9
was the best for the sale of these instruments, but he spoke only from
memory. At the present time I could not find or hear of one street-Jew
selling accordions; I remember, however, having seen one within the
present year. Most of the Jews who travelled with them have emigrated.

It is very rarely indeed that, fond as the Jews are of music, any of
them are to be found in the bands of street-musicians, or of such
street-performers as the Ethiopian serenaders. If there be any, I was
told, they were probably not pure Jews, but of Christian parentage
on one side or the other, and not associating with their own people.
At the cheap concert-rooms, however, Jews are frequently singers,
but rarely the Jewesses, while some of the twopenny concerts at the
East-end are got up and mainly patronized by the poorer class of Jews.
Jews are also to be found occasionally among the supernumeraries of
the theatres; but, when not professionally engaged, these still live
among their own people. I asked one young Jew who occasionally sang
at a cheap concert-room, what description of songs they usually sung,
and he answered “all kinds.” He, it seems, sang comic songs, but his
friend Barney, who had just left him, sang sentimental songs. He earned
1_s._ and sometimes 2_s._, but more frequently 1_s._, three or four
nights in the week, as he had no regular engagement. In the daytime he
worked at cigar-making, but did not like it, it was “_so confining_.”
He had likewise sung, but gratuitously, at concerts got up for the
benefit of any person “bad off.” He knew nothing of the science and
art of music. Of the superior class of Jew vocalists and composers, it
is not of course necessary here to speak, as they do not come within
the scope of my present subject. Of Hebrew youths thus employed in
cheap and desultory concert-singing, there are in the winter season, I
am told, from 100 to 150, few, if any, depending entirely upon their
professional exertions, but being in circumstances similar to those of
my young informant.

OF THE STREET-BUYERS OF HOGS’-WASH.

The trade in hogs’-wash, or in the refuse of the table, is by no means
insignificant. The street-buyers are of the costermonger class, and
some of them have been costermongers, and “when not kept going regular
on wash,” I was told, are “costers still,” but with the advantage of
having donkeys, ponies, or horses and carts, and frequently shops, as
the majority of the wash-buyers have; for they are often greengrocers
as well as costermongers.

The hogs’ food obtained by these street-folk, or, as I most frequently
heard it called, the “wash,” is procured from the eating-houses, the
coffee-houses which are also eating-houses (with “hot joints from 12
to 4”), the hotels, the club-houses, the larger mansions, and the
public institutions. It is composed of the scum and lees of all broths
and soups; of the washings of cooking utensils, and of the dishes and
plates used at dinners and suppers; of small pieces of meat left on the
plates of the diners in taverns, clubs, or cook-shops; of pieces of
potato, or any remains of vegetables; of any viands, such as puddings,
left in the plates in the same manner; of gristle; of pieces of stale
bread, or bread left at table; occasionally of meat kept, whether
cooked or uncooked, until “blown,” and unfit for consumption (one man
told me that he had found whole legs of mutton in the wash he bought
from a great eating-house, but very rarely): of potato-peelings; of
old and bad potatoes; of “stock,” or the remains of meat stewed for
soup, which was not good enough for sale to be re-used by the poor; of
parings of every kind of cheese or meat; and of the many things which
are considered “only fit for pigs.”

It is not always, however, that the unconsumed food of great houses
or of public bodies (where the dinners are a part of the institution)
goes to the wash-tub. At Buckingham-palace, I am told, it is given to
poor people who have tickets for the receipt of it. At Lincoln’s-inn
the refuse or leavings of the bar dinners are sold to men who retail
them, usually small chandlers, and the poor people, who have the means,
buy this broken meat very readily at 4_d._, 6_d._, and 8_d._ the
pound, which is cheap for good cooked meat. Pie-crust, obtained by its
purveyors in the same way, is sold, perhaps with a small portion of
the contents of the pie, in penny and twopenny-worths. A man familiar
with this trade told me that among the best customers for this kind of
second-hand food were women of the town of the poorer class, who were
always ready, whenever they had a few pence at command, to buy what was
tasty, cheap, and ready-cooked, because “they hadn’t no trouble with
it, but only just to eat it.”

One of the principal sources of the “wash” supply is the cook-shops,
or eating-houses, where the “leavings” on the plates are either the
perquisites of the waiters or waitresses, or looked sharply after by
master or mistress. There are also in these places the remains of
soups, and the potato-peelings, &c., of which I have spoken, together
with the keen appropriation to a profitable use of every crumb and
scrap--when it is a portion of the gains of a servant, or when it adds
to the receipts of the proprietor. In calculating the purchase-value of
the good-will of an eating-house, the “wash” is as carefully considered
as is the number of daily guests.

One of the principal street-buyers from the eating-houses, and in
several parts of town, is Jemmy Divine, of Lambeth. He is a pig-dealer,
but also sells his wash to others who keep pigs. He sends round a
cart and horse under the care of a boy, or of a man, whom he may have
employed, or drives it himself, and he often has more carts than one.
In his cart are two or three tubs, well secured, so that they may not
be jostled out, into which the wash is deposited. He contracts by the
week, month, or quarter, with hotel-keepers and others, for their wash,
paying from 10_l._ to as high as 50_l._ a year, about 20_l._ being an
average for well-frequented taverns and “dining-rooms.” The wash-tubs
on the premises of these buyers are often offensive, sometimes sending
forth very sour smells.

In Sharp’s-alley, Smithfield, is another man buying quantities of
wash, and buying fat and grease extensively. There is one also in
Prince’s-street, Lambeth, who makes it his sole business to collect
hogs’-wash; he was formerly a coal-heaver and wretchedly poor, but is
now able to make a decent livelihood in this trade, keeping a pony
and cart. He generally keeps about 30 pigs, but also sells hogs’ food
retail to any pig-keeper, the price being 4_d._ to 6_d._ a pail-full,
according to the quality, as the collectors are always anxious to
have the wash “rich,” and will not buy it if cabbage-leaves or the
parings of green vegetables form a part of it. This man and the others
often employ lads to go round for wash, paying them 2_s._ a week,
and finding them in board. They are the same class of boys as those
I have described as coster-boys, and are often strong young fellows.
These lads--or men hired for the purpose--are sometimes sent round
to the smaller cook-shops and to private houses, where the wash is
given to them for the trouble of carrying it away, in preference to
its being thrown down the drain. Sometimes only 1_d._ a pail is paid
by the street-buyer, provided the stuff be taken away punctually and
regularly. These youths or men carry pails after the fashion of a
milkman.

The supply from the workhouses is very large. It is often that the
paupers do not eat all the rice-pudding allowed, or all the bread,
while soup is frequently left, and potatoes; and these leavings are
worthless, except for pig-meat, as they would soon turn sour. It is the
same, though not to the same extent, in the prisons.

What I have said of some of the larger eating-houses relates also to
the club-houses.

There are a number of wash-buyers in the suburbs, who purchase, or
obtain their stock gratuitously, at gentlemen’s houses, and retail it
either to those who feed pigs as a business, or else to the many, I was
told, who live a little way out of town, and “like to grow their own
bacon.” Many of these men perform the work themselves, without a horse
and cart, and are on their feet every day and all day long, except on
Sundays, carrying hogs’-wash from the seller, or to the buyer. One man,
who had been in this trade at Woolwich, told me that he kept pigs at
one time, but ceased to do so, as his customers often murmured at the
thin quality of the wash, declaring that he gave all the best to his
own animals.

If it be estimated that there are 200 men daily buying hogs’-wash in
London and the suburbs, within 15 miles, and that each collects only
20 pails per day, paying 2_d._ per pail (thus allowing for what is
collected without purchase), we find 10,400_l._ expended annually in
buying hogs’-wash.

OF THE STREET-BUYERS OF TEA-LEAVES.

An extensive trade, but less extensive, I am informed, than it was a
few years ago, is carried on in tea-leaves, or in the leaves of the
herb after their having been subjected, in the usual way, to decoction.
These leaves are, so to speak, re-manufactured, in spite of great risk
and frequent exposure, and in defiance of the law. The 17th Geo. III.,
c. 29, is positive and stringent on the subject:--

“Every person, whether a dealer in or seller of tea, or not, who shall
dye or fabricate any sloe-leaves, liquorice-leaves _or the leaves of
tea that have been used_, or the leaves of the ash, elder or other
tree, shrub or plant, in imitation of tea, or who shall mix or colour
such leaves with terra Japonica, copperas, sugar, molasses, clay,
logwood or other ingredient, or who shall sell or expose to sale, or
have in custody, any such adulterations in imitation of tea, shall for
every pound forfeit, on conviction, by the oath of one witness, before
one justice, 5_l._; or, on non-payment, be committed to the House of
Correction for not more than twelve or less than six months.”

The same act also authorizes a magistrate, on the oath of an excise
officer, or any one, by whom he suspects this illicit trade to be
carried on, to seize the herbs, or spurious teas, and the whole
apparatus that may be found on the premises, the herbs to be burnt and
the other articles sold, the proceeds of such a sale, after the payment
of expenses, going half to the informer and half to the poor of the
parish.

It appears evident, from the words of this act which I have
_italicised_, that the use of tea-leaves for the robbery of the public
and the defrauding of the revenue has been long in practice. The
extract also shows what other cheats were formerly resorted to--the
substitutes most popular with the tea-manufacturers at one time being
sloe-leaves. If, however, one-tenth of the statements touching the
applications of the leaves of the sloe-tree, and of the juice of its
sour, astringent fruit, during the war-time, had any foundation in
truth, the sloe must have been regarded commercially as one of the most
valuable of our native productions, supplying our ladies with their
tea, and our gentlemen with their port-wine.

Women and men, three-fourths of the number being women, go about
buying tea-leaves of the female servants in the larger, and of the
shopkeepers’ wives in the smaller, houses. But the great purveyors
of these things are the charwomen. In the houses where they char the
tea-leaves are often reserved for them to be thrown on the carpets when
swept, as a means of allaying the dust, or else they form a part of
their perquisites, and are often asked for if not offered. The mistress
of a coffee-shop told me that her charwoman, employed in cleaning every
other morning, had the tea-leaves as a part of her remuneration, or
as a matter of course. What the charwoman did with them her employer
never inquired, although she was always anxious to obtain them, and
she referred me to the poor woman in question. I found her in a very
clean apartment on the second floor of a decent house in Somers-town; a
strong hale woman, with what may be called an industrious look. She was
middle-aged, and a widow, with one daughter, then a nursemaid in the
neighbourhood, and had regular employment.

“Yes,” she said, “I get the tea-leaves whenever I can, and the most
at two coffee-shops that I work at, but neither of them have so many
as they used to have. I think it’s because cocoa’s come so much to be
asked for in them, and so they sell less tea. I buy tea-leaves only
at one place. It’s a very large family, and I give the servant 4_d._
and sometimes 3_d._ or 2_d._ a fortnight for them, but I’m nothing in
pocket, for the young girl is a bit of a relation of mine, and it’s
like a trifle of pocket-money for her. She gives a penny every time
she goes to her chapel, and so do I; there’s a box for it fixed near
the door. O yes, her mistress knows I buy them, for her mistress knew
me before she was married, and that’s about 15 or 16 years since.
When I’ve got this basin (producing it) full I sell it, generally
for 4_d._ I don’t know what the leaves in it will weigh, and I have
never sold them by weight, but I believe some have. Perhaps they might
weigh, as damp as some of them are, about a pound. I sell them to a
chandler now. I have sold them to a rag-and-bottle-shop. I’ve had men
and women call upon me and offer to buy them, but not lately, and I
never liked the looks of them, and never sold them any. I don’t know
what they’re wanted for, but I’ve heard that they’re mixed with new
tea. I have nothing to do with that. I get them honestly and sell them
honestly, and that’s all I can say about it. Every little helps, and if
rich people won’t pay poor people properly, then poor people can’t be
expected to be very nice. But I don’t complain, and that’s all I know
about it.”

The chandler in question knew nothing of the trade in tea-leaves, he
said; he bought none, and he did not know that any of the shopkeepers
did, and he could not form a notion what they could be wanted for, if
it wasn’t to sweep carpets!

This mode of buying or collecting is, I am told the commonest mode of
any, and it certainly presents some peculiarities. The leaves which are
to form the spurious tea are collected, in great measure, by a class
who are perhaps more likely than any other to have themselves to buy
and drink the stuff which they have helped to produce! By charwomen and
washer-women a “nice cup of tea” in the afternoon during their work is
generally classed among the comforts of existence, yet they are the
very persons who sell the tea-leaves which are to make their “much
prized beverage.” It is curious to reflect also, that as tea-leaves
are used indiscriminately for being re-made into what is considered
new tea, what must be the strength of our tea in a few years. Now all
housewives complain that twice the quantity of tea is required to make
the infusion of the same strength as formerly, and if the collection
of old tea-leaves continues, and the refuse leaves are to be dried and
re-dried perpetually, surely we must get to use pounds where we now do
ounces.

A man formerly in the tea-leaf business, and very anxious not to be
known--but upon whose information, I am assured from a respectable
source, full reliance may be placed--gave me the following account:--

“My father kept a little shop in the general line, and I helped him; so
I was partly brought up to the small way. But I was adrift by myself
when I was quite young--18 or so perhaps. I can read and write well
enough, but I was rather of too gay a turn to be steady. Besides,
father was very poor at times, and could seldom pay me anything, if
I worked ever so. He was very fond of his belly too, and I’ve known
him, when he’s had a bit of luck, or a run of business, go and stuff
hisself with fat roast pork at a cook-shop till he could hardly waddle,
and then come home and lock hisself upstairs in his bed-room and sleep
three parts of the afternoon. (My mother was dead.) But father was a
kind-hearted man for all that, and for all his roast pork, was as thin
as a whipping-post. I kept myself when I left him, just off and on
like, by collecting grease, and all that; it can’t be done so easy now,
I fancy; so I got into the tea-leaf business, but father had nothing to
do with it. An elderly sort of a woman who I met with in my collecting,
and who seemed to take a sort of fancy to me, put me up to the leaves.
She was an out-and-out hand at anything that way herself. Then I bought
tea-leaves with other things, for I suppose for four or five years. How
long ago is it? O, never mind, sir, a few years. I bought them at many
sorts of houses, and carried a box of needles, and odds and ends, as a
sort of introduction. There wasn’t much of that wanted though, for I
called, when I could, soon in the mornings before the family was up,
and some ladies don’t get up till 10 or 11 you know. The masters wasn’t
much; it was the mistresses I cared about, because they are often such
Tartars to the maids and always a-poking in the way.

“I’ve tried to do business in the great lords’ houses in the squares
and about the parks, but there was mostly somebody about there to
hinder you. Besides, the servants in such places are often on board
wages, and often, when they’re not on board wages, find their own tea
and sugar, and little of the tea-leaves is saved when every one has a
separate pot of tea; so there’s no good to be done there. Large houses
in trade where a number of young men is boarded, drapers or grocers, is
among the best places, as there is often a housekeeper there to deal
with, and no mistress to bother. I always bought by the lot. If you
offered to weigh you would not be able to clear anything, as they’d be
sure to give the leaves a extra wetting. I put handfulls of the leaves
to my nose, and could tell from the smell whether they were hard drawn
or not. When they isn’t hard drawn they answer best, and them I put to
one side. I had a bag like a lawyer’s blue bag, with three divisions in
it, to put my leaves into, and so keep them ’sunder. Yes, I’ve bought
of charwomen, but somehow I think they did’nt much admire selling to
me. I hardly know how I made them out, but one told me of another. They
like the shops better for their leaves, I think; because they can get
a bit of cheese, or snuff, or candles for them there; though I don’t
know much about the shop-work in this line. I’ve often been tried to
be took in by the servants. I’ve found leaves in the lot offered to
me to buy what was all dusty, and had been used for sweeping; and if
I’d sold them with my stock they’d have been stopped out of the next
money. I’ve had tea-leaves given me by servants oft enough, for I used
to sweetheart them a bit, just to get over them; and they’ve laughed,
and asked me whatever I could want with them. As for price, why, I
judged what a lot was worth, and gave accordingly--from 1_d._ to 1_s._
I never gave more than 1_s._ for any one lot at a time, and that had
been put to one side for me in a large concern, for about a fortnight I
suppose. I can’t say how many people had been tea’d on them. If it was
a housekeeper, or anybody that way, that I bought of, there was never
anything said about what they was wanted for. What _did_ I want them
for? Why, to sell again; and though him as I sold them to never said
so, I knew they was to dry over again. I know nothing about who he was,
or where he lived. The woman I told you of sent him to me. I suppose I
cleared about 10_s._ a week on them, and did a little in other things
beside; perhaps I cleared rather more than 10_s._ on leaves some weeks,
and 5_s._ at others. The party as called upon me once a week to buy my
leaves was a very polite man, and seemed quite the gentleman. There was
no weighing. He examined the lot, and said ‘so much.’ He wouldn’t stand
’bating, or be kept haggling; and his money was down, and no nonsense.
What cost me 5_s._ I very likely got three half-crowns for. It was no
great trade, if you consider the trouble. I’ve sometimes carried the
leaves that he’d packed in papers, and put into a carpet-bag, where
there was others, to a coffee-shop; they always had ‘till called for’
marked on a card then. I asked no questions, but just left them.
There was two, and sometimes four boys, as used to bring me leaves on
Saturday nights. I think they was charwomen’s sons, but I don’t know
for a positive, and I don’t know how they made me out. I think I was
one of the tip-tops of the trade at one time; some weeks I’ve laid out
a sov. (sovereign) in leaves. I haven’t a notion how many’s in the
line, or what’s doing now; but much the same I’ve no doubt. I’m glad
_I’ve_ done with it.”

I am told by those who are as well-informed on the subject as is
perhaps possible, when a surreptitious and dishonest traffic is the
subject of inquiry, that although less spurious tea is sold, there are
more makers of it. Two of the principal manufacturers have of late,
however, been prevented carrying on the business by the intervention
of the excise officers. The spurious tea-men are also the buyers of
“wrecked tea,” that is, of tea which has been part of the salvage
of a wrecked vessel, and is damaged or spoiled entirely by the salt
water. This is re-dried and dyed, so as to appear fresh and new. It is
dyed with Prussian blue, which gives it what an extensive tea-dealer
described to me as an “intensely fine green.” It is then mixed with
the commonest Gunpowder teas and with the strongest Young Hysons, and
has always a kind of “metallic” smell, somewhat like that of a copper
vessel after friction in its cleaning. These teas are usually sold at
4_s._ the pound.

Sloe-leaves for spurious tea, as I have before stated, were in
extensive use, but this manufacture ceased to exist about 20 years ago.
Now the spurious material consists only of the old tea-leaves, at least
so far as experienced tradesmen know. The adulteration is, however,
I am assured, more skilfully conducted than it used to be, and its
staple is of far easier procuration. The law, though it makes the use
of old tea-leaves, as components of what is called tea, punishable,
is nevertheless silent as to their sale or purchase; they can be
collected, therefore, with a comparative impunity.

The tea-leaves are dried, dyed (or re-dyed), and shrivelled on plates
of hot metal, carefully tended. The dyes used are those I have
mentioned. These teas, when mixed, are hawked in the country, but not
in town, and are sold to the hawkers at 7 lbs. for 21_s._ The quarters
of pounds are retailed at 1_s._ A tea-dealer told me that he could
recognise this adulterated commodity, but it was only a person skilled
in teas who could do so, by its _coarse_ look. For green tea--the
mixture to which the prepared leaves are mostly devoted--the old tea is
blended with the commonest Gunpowders and Hysons. No dye, I am told, is
required when black tea is thus re-made; but I know that plumbago is
often used to simulate the bloom. The inferior shopkeepers sell this
adulterated tea, especially in neighbourhoods where the poor Irish
congregate, or any of the lowest class of the poor English.

To obtain the statistics of a trade which exists in spite not only
of the vigilance of the excise and police officers but of public
reprobation, and which is essentially a secret trade, is not possible.
I heard some, who were likely to be well-informed, conjecture--for it
cannot honestly be called more than a conjecture--that between 500 and
1000 lbs., perhaps 700 lbs., of old tea-leaves were made up weekly
in London; but of this he thought that about an eighth was spoilt by
burning in the process of drying.

Another gentleman, however, thought that, at the very least, double the
above quantity of old tea-leaves was weekly manufactured into new tea.
According to his estimate, and he was no mean authority, no less than
1500 lbs. weekly, or 78,000 lbs. per annum of this trash are yearly
poured into the London market. The average consumption of tea is about
1-1/4 lb. per annum for each man, woman, or child in the kingdom;
coffee being the _principal_ unfermented beverage of the poor. Those,
however, of the poorest who drink tea consume about two ounces per week
(half an ounce serving them twice), or one pound in the course of every
two months. This makes the annual consumption of the adult tea-drinking
poor amount to 6 lbs., and it is upon this class the spurious tea is
chiefly foisted.

OF THE STREET-FINDERS OR COLLECTORS.

These men, for by far the great majority are men, may be divided,
according to the nature of their occupations, into three classes:--

1. The bone-grubbers and rag-gatherers, who are, indeed, the same
individuals, the pure-finders, and the cigar-end and old wood
collectors.

2. The dredgermen, the mud-larks, and the sewer-hunters.

3. The dustmen and nightmen, the sweeps and the scavengers.

The first class go abroad daily to _find_ in the streets, and carry
away with them such things as bones, rags, “pure” (or dogs’-dung),
which no one appropriates. These they sell, and on that sale support
a wretched life. The second class of people are also as strictly
_finders_; but their industry, or rather their labour, is confined to
the river, or to that subterranean city of sewerage unto which the
Thames supplies the great outlets. These persons may not be immediately
connected with the _streets_ of London, but their pursuits are carried
on in the open air (if the sewer-air may be so included), and are all,
at any rate, out-of-door avocations. The third class is distinct from
either of these, as the labourers comprised in it are not finders, but
_collectors_ or _removers_ of the dirt and filth of our streets and
houses, and of the soot of our chimneys.

The two first classes also differ from the third in the fact that the
sweeps, dustmen, scavengers, &c., are paid (and often large sums) for
the removal of the refuse they collect; whereas the bone-grubbers, and
mud-larks, and pure-finders, and dredgermen, and sewer-hunters, get for
their pains only the value of the articles they gather.

Herein, too, lies a broad distinction between the street-finder, or
collector, and the street-buyer: though both deal principally with
refuse, the buyer _pays_ for what he is permitted to take away; whereas
the finder or collector is either paid (like the sweep), or else he
neither pays nor is paid (like the bone-grubber), for the refuse that
he removes.

The third class of street-collectors also presents another and a
markedly distinctive characteristic. They act in the capacity of
servants, and do not depend upon chance for the result of their day’s
labour, but are put to stated tasks, being employed and paid a fixed
sum for their work. To this description, however, some of the sweeps
present an exception; as when the sweep works on his own account, or,
as it is worded, “is his own master.”

The public health requires the periodical cleaning of the streets, and
the removal of the refuse matter from our dwellings; and the man who
contracts to carry on this work is decidedly a street-collector; for
on what he collects or removes depends the amount of his remuneration.
Thus a wealthy contractor for the public scavengery, is as entirely one
of the street-folk as the unskilled and ignorant labourer he employs.
The master lives, and, in many instances, has become rich, on the
results of his street employment; for, of course, the actual workmen
are but as the agents or sources of his profit. Even the collection of
“pure” (dogs’-dung) in the streets, if conducted by the servants of any
tanner or leather dresser, either for the purposes of his own trade or
for sale to others, might be the occupation of a wealthy man, deriving
a small profit from the labour of each particular collector. The same
may also be said of bone-grubbing, or any similar occupation, however
insignificant, and now abandoned to the outcast.

Were the collection of mud and dust carried on by a number of distinct
individuals--that is to say, were each individual dustman and scavenger
to collect on his own account, there is no doubt that no _one man_
could amass a fortune by such means--while if the collection of bones
and rags and even dogs’-dung were carried on “in the large way,” that
is to say, by a number of individual collectors working for one “head
man,” even the picking up of the most abject refuse of the metropolis
might become the source of great riches.

The bone-grubber and the mud-lark (the searcher for refuse on the
banks of the river) differ little in their pursuits or in their
characteristics, excepting that the mud-larks are generally boys, which
is more an accidental than a definite distinction. The grubbers are
with a few exceptions stupid, unconscious of their degradation, and
with little anxiety to be relieved from it. They are usually taciturn,
but this taciturn habit is common to men whose callings, if they
cannot be called solitary, are pursued with little communication with
others. I was informed by a man who once kept a little beer-shop near
Friar-street, Southwark Bridge-road (where then and still, he thought,
was a bone-grinding establishment), that the bone-grubbers who carried
their sacks of bones thither sometimes had a pint of beer at his house
when they had received their money. They usually sat, he told me,
silently looking at the corners of the floor--for they rarely lifted
their eyes up--as if they were expecting to see some bones or refuse
there available for their bags. Of this inertion, perhaps fatigue and
despair may be a part. I asked some questions of a man of this class
whom I saw pick up in a road in the suburbs something that appeared to
have been a coarse canvas apron, although it was wet after a night’s
rain and half covered with mud. I inquired of him what he thought
about when he trudged along looking on the ground on every side. His
answer was, “Of nothing, sir.” I believe that no better description
could be given of that vacuity of mind or mental inactivity which
seems to form a part of the most degraded callings. The minds of such
men, even without an approach to idiotcy, appear to be a blank. One
characteristic of these poor fellows, bone-grubbers and mud-larks, is
that they are very poor, although I am told some of them, the older
men, have among the poor the reputation of being misers. It is not
unusual for the youths belonging to these callings to live with their
parents and give them the amount of their earnings.

The sewer-hunters are again distinct, and a far more intelligent and
adventurous class; but they work in gangs. They must be familiar with
the course of the tides, or they might be drowned at high water. They
must have quick eyes too, not merely to descry the objects of their
search, but to mark the points and bearings of the subterraneous
roads they traverse; in a word, “to know their way underground.”
There is, moreover, some spirit of daring in venturing into a dark,
solitary sewer, the chart being only in the memory, and in braving
the possibility of noxious vapours, and the by no means insignificant
dangers of the rats infesting these places.

The dredgermen, the finders of the water, are again distinct, as being
watermen, and working in boats. In some foreign parts, in Naples, for
instance, men carrying on similar pursuits are also divers for anything
lost in the bay or its confluent waters. One of these men, known some
years ago as “the Fish,” could remain (at least, so say those whom
there is no reason to doubt) three hours under the water without
rising to the surface to take breath. He was, it is said, web-footed,
naturally, and partially web-fingered. The King of the Two Sicilies
once threw a silver cup into the sea for “the Fish” to bring up and
retain as a reward, but the poor diver was never seen again. It was
believed that he got entangled among the weeds on the rocks, and so
perished. The dredgermen are necessarily well acquainted with the sets
of the tide and the course of the currents in the Thames. Every one of
these men works on his own account, being as it were a “small master,”
which, indeed, is one of the great attractions of open-air pursuits.
The dredgermen also depend for their maintenance upon the sale of what
they find, or the rewards they receive.

It is otherwise, however, as was before observed, with the third class
of the street-finders, or rather collectors. In all the capacities of
dustmen, nightmen, scavengers, and sweeps, the employers of the men are
_paid_ to do the work, the proceeds of the street-collection forming
only a portion of the employer’s remuneration. The sweep has the soot
in addition to his 6_d._ or 1_s._; the master scavenger has a payment
from the parish funds to sweep the streets, though the clearance of
the cesspools, &c., in private houses, may be an individual bargain.
The whole refuse of the streets belongs to the contractor to make the
best of, but it must be cleared away, and so must the contents of a
dust-bin; for if a mass of dirt become offensive, the householder may
be indicted for a nuisance, and municipal by-laws require its removal.
It is thus made a matter of compulsion that the dust be removed from
a private house; but it is otherwise with the soot. Why a man should
be permitted to let soot accumulate in his chimney--perhaps exposing
himself, his family, his lodgers, and his neighbours to the dangers of
fire, it may not be easy to account for, especially when we bear in
mind that the same man may not accumulate cabbage-leaves and fish-tails
in his yard.

The dustmen are of the plodding class of labourers, mere labourers, who
require only bodily power, and possess little or no mental development.
Many of the agricultural labourers are of this order, and the dustman
often seems to be the stolid ploughman, modified by a residence in a
city, and engaged in a peculiar calling. They are generally uninformed,
and no few of them are dustmen because their fathers were. The same
may be said of nightmen and scavengers. At one time it was a popular,
or rather a vulgar notion that many dustmen had become possessed of
large sums, from the plate, coins, and valuables they found in clearing
the dust-bins--a manifest absurdity; but I was told by a marine-store
dealer that he had known a young woman, a dustman’s daughter, sell
silver spoons to a neighbouring marine-store man, who was “not very
particular.”

The circumstances and character of the chimney-sweeps have, since
Parliament “put down” the climbing boys, undergone considerable change.
The sufferings of many of the climbing boys were very great. They
were often ill-lodged, ill-fed, barely-clad, forced to ascend hot and
narrow flues, and subject to diseases--such as the chimney-sweep’s
cancer--peculiar to their calling. The child hated his trade, and was
easily tempted to be a thief, for prison was an asylum; or he grew
up a morose tyrannical fellow as journeyman or master. Some of the
young sweeps became very bold thieves and house-breakers, and the most
remarkable, as far as personal daring is concerned: the boldest feat of
escape from Newgate was performed by a youth who had been brought up
a chimney-sweep. He climbed up the two bare rugged walls of a corner
of the interior of the prison, in the open air, to the height of some
60 feet. He had only the use of his hands, knees, and feet, and a
single slip, from fear or pain, would have been death; he surmounted a
parapet after this climbing, and gained the roof, but was recaptured
before he could get clear away. He was, moreover, a sickly, and reputed
a cowardly, young man, and ended his career in this country by being
transported.

A master sweep, now in middle age, and a man “well to do,” told me that
when a mere child he had been apprenticed out of the workhouse to a
sweep, such being at that time a common occurrence. He had undergone,
he said, great hardships while learning his business, and was long,
from the indifferent character of his class, ashamed of being a sweep,
both as journeyman and master; but the sweeps were so much improved in
character now, that he no longer felt himself disgraced in his calling.

The sweeps are more intelligent than the mere ordinary labourers I have
written of under this head, but they are, of course, far from being an
educated body.

The further and more minute characteristics of the curious class of
street-finders or collectors will be found in the particular details
and statements.

Among the finders there is perhaps the greatest poverty existing,
they being the very lowest class of all the street-people. Many of
the very old live on the hard dirty crusts they pick up out of the
roads in the course of their rounds, washing them and steeping them
in water before they eat them. Probably that vacuity of mind which is
a distinguishing feature of the class is the mere atony or emaciation
of the mental faculties proceeding from--though often producing in the
want of energy that it necessarily begets--the extreme wretchedness
of the class. But even their liberty and a crust--as it frequently
literally is--appears preferable to these people to the restrictions of
the workhouse. Those who are unable to comprehend the inertia of both
body and mind begotten by the despair of long-continued misfortune are
referred to page 357 of the first volume of this work, where it will
be found that a tinman, in speaking of the misery connected with the
early part of his street-career, describes the effect of extreme want
as producing not only an absence of all hope, but even of a desire to
better the condition. Those, however, who have studied the mysterious
connection between body and mind, and observed what different creatures
they themselves are before and after dinner, can well understand that a
long-continued deficiency of food must have the same weakening effect
on the muscles of the mind and energy of the thoughts and will, as it
has on the limbs themselves.

Occasionally it will be found that the utter abjectness of the
bone-grubbers has arisen from the want of energy begotten by
intemperate habits. The workman has nothing but this same energy
to live upon, and the permanent effect of stimulating liquors is
to produce an amount of depression corresponding to the excitement
momentarily caused by them in the frame. The operative, therefore,
who spends his earnings on “drink,” not only squanders them on a
brutalising luxury, but deprives himself of the power, and consequently
of the disposition, to work for more, and hence that idleness,
carelessness, and neglect which are the distinctive qualities of the
drunkard, and sooner or later compass his ruin.

For the poor wretched children who are reared to this the lowest trade
of all, surely even the most insensible and unimaginative must feel
the acutest pity. There is, however, this consolation: I have heard
of none, with the exception of the more prosperous sewer-hunters and
dredgermen, who have remained all their lives at street-finding. Still
there remains much to be done by all those who are impressed with a
sense of the trust that has been confided to them, in the possession of
those endowments which render their lot in this world so much more easy
than that of the less lucky street-finders.

BONE-GRUBBERS AND RAG-GATHERERS.

The habits of the bone-grubbers and rag-gatherers, the “pure,” or
dogs’-dung collectors, and the cigar-end finders, are necessarily
similar. All lead a wandering, unsettled sort of life, being compelled
to be continually on foot, and to travel many miles every day in search
of the articles in which they deal. They seldom have any fixed place of
abode, and are mostly to be found at night in one or other of the low
lodging-houses throughout London. The majority are, moreover, persons
who have been brought up to other employments, but who from some
failing or mishap have been reduced to such a state of distress that
they were obliged to take to their present occupation, and have never
after been able to get away from it.

Of the whole class it is considered that there are from 800 to 1000
resident in London, one-half of whom, at the least, sleep in the
cheap lodging-houses. The Government returns estimate the number of
mendicants’ lodging-houses in London to be upwards of 200. Allowing
two bone-grubbers and pure-finders to frequent each of these
lodging-houses, there will be upwards of 400 availing themselves of
such nightly shelters. As many more, I am told, live in garrets and
ill-furnished rooms in the lowest neighbourhoods. There is no instance
on record of any of the class renting even the smallest house for
himself.

Moreover there are in London during the winter a number of persons
called “trampers,” who employ themselves at that season in
street-finding. These people are in the summer country labourers
of some sort, but as soon as the harvest and potato-getting and
hop-picking are over, and they can find nothing else to do in the
country, they come back to London to avail themselves of the shelter
of the night asylums or refuges for the destitute (usually called
“straw-yards” by the poor), for if they remained in the provinces at
that period of the year they would be forced to have recourse to the
unions, and as they can only stay one night in each place they would
be obliged to travel from ten to fifteen miles per day, to which in
the winter they have a strong objection. They come up to London in the
winter, not to look for any regular work or employment, but because
they know that they can have a nightly shelter, and bread night and
morning for nothing, during that season, and can during the day collect
bones, rags, &c. As soon as the “straw-yards” close, which is generally
about the beginning of April, the “trampers” again start off to the
country in small bands of two or three, and without any fixed residence
keep wandering about all the summer, sometimes begging their way
through the villages and sleeping in the casual wards of the unions,
and sometimes, when hard driven, working at hay-making or any other
light labour.

[Illustration: THE BONE-GRUBBER.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

Those among the bone-grubbers who do not belong to the regular
“trampers” have been either navvies, or men who have not been able
to obtain employment at their own business, and have been driven to
it by necessity as a means of obtaining a little bread for the time
being, and without any intention of pursuing the calling regularly;
but, as I have said, when once in the business they cannot leave it,
for at least they make certain of getting a few halfpence by it, and
their present necessity does not allow them time to look after other
employment. There are many of the street-finders who are old men and
women, and many very young children who have no other means of living.
Since the famine in Ireland vast numbers of that unfortunate people,
particularly boys and girls, have been engaged in gathering bones and
rags in the streets.

The bone-picker and rag-gatherer may be known at once by the greasy
bag which he carries on his back. Usually he has a stick in his hand,
and this is armed with a spike or hook, for the purpose of more easily
turning over the heaps of ashes or dirt that are thrown out of the
houses, and discovering whether they contain anything that is saleable
at the rag-and-bottle or marine-store shop. The bone-grubber generally
seeks out the narrow back streets, where dust and refuse are cast, or
where any dust-bins are accessible. The articles for which he chiefly
searches are rags and bones--rags he prefers--but waste metal, such as
bits of lead, pewter, copper, brass, or old iron, he prizes above all.
Whatever he meets with that he knows to be in any way saleable he puts
into the bag at his back. He often finds large lumps of bread which
have been thrown out as waste by the servants, and occasionally the
housekeepers will give him some bones on which there is a little meat
remaining; these constitute the morning meal of most of the class. One
of my informants had a large rump of beef bone given to him a few days
previous to my seeing him, on which “there was not less than a pound of
meat.”

The bone-pickers and rag-gatherers are all early risers. They have
all their separate beats or districts, and it is most important to
them that they should reach their district before any one else of
the same class can go over the ground. Some of the beats lie as far
as Peckham, Clapham, Hammersmith, Hampstead, Bow, Stratford, and
indeed all parts within about five miles of London. In summer time
they rise at two in the morning, and sometimes earlier. It is not
quite light at this hour--but bones and rags can be discovered before
daybreak. The “grubbers” scour all quarters of London, but abound more
particularly in the suburbs. In the neighbourhood of Petticoat-lane
and Ragfair, however, they are the most numerous on account of the
greater quantity of rags which the Jews have to throw out. It usually
takes the bone-picker from seven to nine hours to go over his rounds,
during which time he travels from 20 to 30 miles with a quarter to a
half hundredweight on his back. In the summer he usually reaches home
about eleven of the day, and in the winter about one or two. On his
return home he proceeds to sort the contents of his bag. He separates
the rags from the bones, and these again from the old metal (if he
be lucky enough to have found any). He divides the rags into various
lots, according as they are white or coloured; and if he have picked up
any pieces of canvas or sacking, he makes these also into a separate
parcel. When he has finished the sorting he takes his several lots
to the rag-shop or the marine-store dealer, and realizes upon them
whatever they may be worth. For the white rags he gets from 2_d._ to
3_d._ per pound, according as they are clean or soiled. The white rags
are very difficult to be found; they are mostly very dirty, and are
therefore sold with the coloured ones at the rate of about 5 lbs. for
2_d._ The bones are usually sold with the coloured rags at one and
the same price. For fragments of canvas or sacking the grubber gets
about three-farthings a pound; and old brass, copper, and pewter about
4_d._ (the marine-store keepers say 5_d._), and old iron one farthing
per pound, or six pounds for 1_d._ The bone-grubber thinks he has
done an excellent day’s work if he can earn 8_d._; and some of them,
especially the very old and the very young, do not earn more than
from 2_d._ to 3_d._ a day. To make 10_d._ a day, at the present price
of rags and bones, a man must be remarkably active and strong,--“ay!
and lucky, too,” adds my informant. The average amount of earnings, I
am told, varies from about 6_d._ to 8_d._ per day, or from 3_s._ to
4_s._ a week; and the highest amount that a man, the most brisk and
persevering at the business, can by any possibility earn in one week is
about 5_s._, but this can only be accomplished by great good fortune
and industry--the usual weekly gains are about half that sum. In bad
weather the bone-grubber cannot do so well, because the rags are wet,
and then they cannot sell them. The majority pick up bones only in wet
weather; those who _do_ gather rags during or after rain are obliged to
wash and dry them before they can sell them. The state of the shoes of
the rag and bone-picker is a very important matter to him; for if he
be well shod he can get quickly over the ground; but he is frequently
lamed, and unable to make any progress from the blisters and gashes on
his feet, occasioned by the want of proper shoes.

Sometimes the bone-grubbers will pick up a stray sixpence or a shilling
that has been dropped in the street. “The handkerchief I have round
my neck,” said one whom I saw, “I picked up with 1_s._ in the corner.
The greatest prize I ever found was the brass cap of the nave of a
coach-wheel; and I _did_ once find a quarter of a pound of tobacco in
Sun-street, Bishopsgate. The best bit of luck of all that I ever had
was finding a cheque for 12_l._ 15_s._ lying in the gateway of the
mourning-coach yard in Titchborne-street, Haymarket. I was going to
light my pipe with it, indeed I picked it up for that purpose, and
then saw it was a cheque. It was on the London and County Bank, 21,
Lombard-street. I took it there, and got 10_s._ for finding it. I went
there in my rags, as I am now, and the cashier stared a bit at me. The
cheque was drawn by a Mr. Knibb, and payable to a Mr. Cox. I _did_
think I should have got the odd 15_s._ though.”

It has been stated that the average amount of the earnings of the
bone-pickers is 6_d._ per day, or 3_s._ per week, being 7_l._ 16_s._
per annum for each person. It has also been shown that the number of
persons engaged in the business may be estimated at about 800; hence
the earnings of the entire number will amount to the sum of 20_l._ per
day, or 120_l._ per week, which gives 6240_l._ as the annual earnings
of the bone-pickers and rag-gatherers of London. It may also be
computed that each of the grubbers gathers on an average 20 lbs. weight
of bone and rags; and reckoning the bones to constitute three-fourths
of the entire weight, we thus find that the gross quantity of these
articles gathered by the street-finders in the course of the year,
amounts to 3,744,000 lbs. of bones, and 1,240,000 lbs. of rags.

Between the London and St. Katherine’s Docks and Rosemary Lane, there
is a large district inter-laced with narrow lanes, courts, and alleys
ramifying into each other in the most intricate and disorderly manner,
insomuch that it would be no easy matter for a stranger to work his
way through the interminable confusion without the aid of a guide,
resident in and well conversant with the locality. The houses are of
the poorest description, and seem as if they tumbled into their places
at random. Foul channels, huge dust-heaps, and a variety of other
unsightly objects, occupy every open space, and dabbling among these
are crowds of ragged dirty children who grub and wallow, as if in their
native element. None reside in these places but the poorest and most
wretched of the population, and, as might almost be expected, this,
the cheapest and filthiest locality of London, is the head-quarters of
the bone-grubbers and other street-finders. I have ascertained on the
best authority, that from the centre of this place, within a circle
of a mile in diameter, there dwell not less than 200 persons of this
class. In this quarter I found a bone-grubber who gave me the following
account of himself:--

“I was born in Liverpool, and when about 14 years of age, my father
died. He used to work about the Docks, and I used to run on errands for
any person who wanted me. I managed to live by this after my father’s
death for three or four years. I had a brother older than myself, who
went to France to work on the railroads, and when I was about 18 he
sent for me, and got me to work with himself on the Paris and Rouen
Railway, under McKenzie and Brassy, who had the contract. I worked on
the railroads in France for four years, till the disturbance broke
out, and then we all got notice to leave the country. I lodged at that
time with a countryman, and had 12_l._, which I had saved out of my
earnings. This sum I gave to my countryman to keep for me till we got
to London, as I did not like to have it about me, for fear I’d lose it.
The French people paid our fare from Rouen to Havre by the railway,
and there put us on board a steamer to Southampton. There was about 50
of us altogether. When we got to Southampton, we all went before the
mayor; we told him about how we had been driven out of France, and he
gave us a shilling a piece; he sent some one with us, too, to get us
a lodging, and told us to come again the next day. In the morning the
mayor gave every one who was able to walk half-a-crown, and for those
who were not able he paid their fare to London on the railroad. I had
a sore leg at the time, and I came up by the train, and when I gave
up my ticket at the station, the gentleman gave me a shilling more. I
couldn’t find the man I had given my money to, because he had walked
up; and I went before the Lord Mayor to ask his advice; he gave me
2_s._ 6_d._ I looked for work everywhere, but could get nothing to do;
and when the 2_s._ 6_d._ was all spent, I heard that the man who had
my money was on the London and York Railway in the country; however, I
couldn’t get that far for want of money then; so I went again before
the Lord Mayor, and he gave me two more, but told me not to trouble him
any further. I told the Lord Mayor about the money, and then he sent an
officer with me, who put me into a carriage on the railway. When I got
down to where the man was at work, he wouldn’t give me a farthing; I
had given him the money without any witness bring present, and he said
I could do nothing, because it was done in another country. I staid
down there more than a week trying to get work on the railroad, but
could not. I had no money and was nearly starved, when two or three
took pity on me, and made up four or five shillings for me, to take
me back again to London. I tried all I could to get something to do,
till the money was nearly gone; and then I took to selling lucifers,
and the fly-papers that they use in the shops, and little things like
that; but I could do no good at this work, there was too many at it
before me, and they knew more about it than I did. At last, I got so
bad off I didn’t know what to do; but seeing a great many about here
gathering bones and rags, I thought I’d do so too--a poor fellow must
do something. I was advised to do so, and I have been at it ever since.
I forgot to tell you that my brother died in France. We had good wages
there, four francs a day, or 3_s._ 4_d._ English; I don’t make more
than 3_d._ or 4_d._ and sometimes 6_d._ a day at bone-picking. I don’t
go out before daylight to gather anything, because the police takes
my bag and throws all I’ve gathered about the street to see if I have
anything stolen in it. I never stole anything in all my life, indeed
I’d do anything before I’d steal. Many a night I’ve slept under an arch
of the railway when I hadn’t a penny to pay for my bed; but whenever
the police find me that way, they make me and the rest get up, and
drive us on, and tell us to keep moving. I don’t go out on wet days,
there’s no use in it, as the things won’t be bought. I can’t wash and
dry them, because I’m in a lodging-house. There’s a great deal more
than a 100 bone-pickers about here, men, women, and children. The Jews
in this lane and up in Petticoat-lane give a good deal of victuals
away on the Saturday. They sometimes call one of us in from the street
to light the fire for them, or take off the kettle, as they must not
do anything themselves on the Sabbath; and then they put some food on
the footpath, and throw rags and bones into the street for us, because
they must not hand anything to us. There are some about here who get a
couple of shillings’ worth of goods, and go on board the ships in the
Docks, and exchange them for bones and bits of old canvas among the
sailors; I’d buy and do so too if I only had the money, but can’t get
it. The summer is the worst time for us, the winter is much better,
for there is more meat used in winter, and then there are more bones.”
(Others say differently.) “I intend to go to the country this season,
and try to get something to do at the hay-making and harvest. I make
about 2_s._ 6_d._ a week, and the way I manage is this: sometimes I
get a piece of bread about 12 o’clock, and I make my breakfast of
that and cold water; very seldom I have any dinner,--unless I earn
6_d._ I can’t get any,--and then I have a basin of nice soup, or a
penn’orth of plum-pudding and a couple of baked ’tatoes. At night I
get 1/4_d._ worth of coffee, 1/2_d._ worth of sugar, and 1-1/4_d._
worth of bread, and then I have 2_d._ a night left for my lodging; I
always try to manage that, for I’d do anything sooner than stop out all
night. I’m always happy the day when I make 4_d._, for then I know I
won’t have to sleep in the street. The winter before last, there was a
straw-yard down in Black Jack’s-alley, where we used to go after six
o’clock in the evening, and get 1/2 lb. of bread, and another 1/2 lb.
in the morning, and then we’d gather what we could in the daytime and
buy victuals with what we got for it. We were well off then, but the
straw-yard wasn’t open at all last winter. There used to be 300 of
us in there of a night, a great many of the dock-labourers and their
families were there, for no work was to be got in the docks; so they
weren’t able to pay rent, and were obliged to go in. I’ve lost my
health since I took to bone-picking, through the wet and cold in the
winter, for I’ve scarcely any clothes, and the wet gets to my feet
through the old shoes; this caused me last winter to be nine weeks in
the hospital of the Whitechapel workhouse.”

The narrator of this tale seemed so dejected and broken in spirit,
that it was with difficulty his story was elicited from him. He was
evidently labouring under incipient consumption. I have every reason
to believe that he made a truthful statement,--indeed, he did not
appear to me to have sufficient intellect to invent a falsehood. It is
a curious fact, indeed, with reference to the London street-finders
generally, that they seem to possess less rational power than any
other class. They appear utterly incapable of trading even in the most
trifling commodities, probably from the fact that buying articles
for the purpose of selling them at a profit, requires an exercise
of the mind to which they feel themselves incapable. Begging, too,
requires some ingenuity or tact, in order to move the sympathies of
the well-to-do, and the street-finders being incompetent for this,
they work on day after day as long as they are able to crawl about in
pursuit of their unprofitable calling. This cannot be fairly said of
the younger members of this class, who are sent into the streets by
their parents, and many of whom are afterwards able to find some more
reputable and more lucrative employment. As a body of people, however,
young and old, they mostly exhibit the same stupid, half-witted
appearance.

To show how bone-grubbers occasionally manage to obtain shelter
during the night, the following incident may not be out of place. A
few mornings past I accidentally encountered one of this class in a
narrow back lane; his ragged coat--the colour of the rubbish among
which he toiled--was greased over, probably with the fat of the bones
he gathered, and being mixed with the dust it seemed as if the man
were covered with bird-lime. His shoes--torn and tied on his feet with
pieces of cord--had doubtlessly been picked out of some dust-bin, while
his greasy bag and stick unmistakably announced his calling. Desirous
of obtaining all the information possible on this subject, I asked him
a few questions, took his address, which he gave without hesitation,
and bade him call on me in the evening. At the time appointed, however,
he did not appear; on the following day therefore I made way to the
address he had given, and on reaching the spot I was astonished to find
the house in which he had said he lived was uninhabited. A padlock was
on the door, the boards of which were parting with age. There was not
a whole pane of glass in any of the windows, and the frames of many of
them were shattered or demolished. Some persons in the neighbourhood,
noticing me eyeing the place, asked whom I wanted. On my telling the
man’s name, which it appeared he had not dreamt of disguising, I
was informed that he had left the day before, saying he had met the
landlord in the morning (for such it turned out he had fancied me to
be), and that the gentleman had wanted him to come to his house, but
he was afraid to go lest he should be sent to prison for breaking into
the place. I found, on inspection, that the premises, though locked
up, could be entered by the rear, one of the window-frames having been
removed, so that admission could be obtained through the aperture.
Availing myself of the same mode of ingress, I proceeded to examine
the premises. Nothing could well be more dismal or dreary than the
interior. The floors were rotting with damp and mildew, especially
near the windows, where the wet found easy entrance. The walls were
even slimy and discoloured, and everything bore the appearance of
desolation. In one corner was strewn a bundle of dirty straw, which
doubtlessly had served the bone-grubber for a bed, while scattered
about the floor were pieces of bones, and small fragments of dirty
rags, sufficient to indicate the calling of the late inmate. He had
had but little difficulty in removing his property, seeing that it
consisted solely of his bag and his stick.

The following paragraph concerning the chiffoniers or rag-gatherers of
Paris appeared in the London journals a few weeks since:--

“The fraternal association of rag-gatherers (chiffoniers) gave a
grand banquet on Saturday last (21st of June). It took place at
a public-house called the _Pot Tricolore_, near the _Barrière de
Fontainbleau_, which is frequented by the rag-gathering fraternity. In
this house there are three rooms, each of which is specially devoted
to the use of different classes of rag-gatherers: one, the least
dirty, is called the ‘Chamber of Peers,’ and is occupied by the first
class--that is, those who possess a basket in a good state, and a crook
ornamented with copper; the second, called the ‘Chamber of Deputies,’
belonging to the second class, is much less comfortable, and those
who attend it have baskets and crooks not of first-rate quality; the
third room is in a dilapidated condition, and is frequented by the
lowest class of rag-gatherers who have no basket or crook, and who
place what they find in the streets in a piece of sackcloth. They call
themselves the ‘_Réunion des Vrais Prolétaires_.’ The name of each room
is written in chalk above the door; and generally such strict etiquette
is observed among the rag-gatherers that no one goes into the apartment
not occupied by his own class. At Saturday’s banquet, however, all
distinctions of rank were laid aside, and delegates of each class
united fraternally. The president was the oldest rag-gatherer in Paris;
his age is 88, and he is called ‘the Emperor.’ The banquet consisted
of a sort of _olla podrida_, which the master of the establishment
pompously called _gibelotte_, though of what animal it was composed it
was impossible to say. It was served up in huge earthen dishes, and
before it was allowed to be touched payment was demanded and obtained;
the other articles were also paid for as soon as they were brought in;
and a deposit was exacted as a security for the plates, knives, and
forks. The wine, or what did duty as such, was contained in an earthen
pot called the _Petit Père Noir_, and was filled from a gigantic vessel
named _Le Moricaud_. The dinner was concluded by each guest taking a
small glass of brandy. Business was then proceeded to. It consisted
in the reading and adoption of the statutes of the association,
followed by the drinking of numerous toasts to the president, to the
prosperity of rag-gathering, to the union of rag-gatherers, &c. A
collection amounting to 6_f._ 75_c._ was raised for sick members of the
fraternity. The guests then dispersed; but several of them remained at
the counter until they had consumed in brandy the amount deposited as
security for the crockery, knives, and forks.”

OF THE “PURE”-FINDERS.

Dogs’-dung is called “Pure,” from its cleansing and purifying
properties.

The name of “Pure-finders,” however, has been applied to the men
engaged in collecting dogs’-dung from the public streets only, within
the last 20 or 30 years. Previous to this period there appears to
have been no men engaged in the business, old women alone gathered
the substance, and they were known by the name of “bunters,” which
signifies properly gatherers of rags; and thus plainly intimates that
the rag-gatherers originally added the collecting of “Pure” to their
original and proper vocation. Hence it appears that the bone-grubbers,
rag-gatherers, and pure-finders, constituted formerly but one
class of people, and even now they have, as I have stated, kindred
characteristics.

The pure-finders meet with a ready market for all the dogs’-dung they
are able to collect, at the numerous tanyards in Bermondsey, where
they sell it by the stable-bucket full, and get from 8_d._ to 10_d._
per bucket, and sometimes 1_s._ and 1_s._ 2_d._ for it, according to
its quality. The “dry limy-looking sort” fetches the highest price
at some yards, as it is found to possess more of the alkaline, or
purifying properties; but others are found to prefer the dark moist
quality. Strange as it may appear, the preference for a particular kind
has suggested to the finders of Pure the idea of adulterating it to a
very considerable extent; this is effected by means of mortar broken
away from old walls, and mixed up with the whole mass, which it closely
resembles; in some cases, however, the mortar is rolled into small
balls similar to those found. Hence it would appear, that there is no
business or trade, however insignificant or contemptible, without its
own peculiar and appropriate tricks.

The pure-finders are in their habits and mode of proceeding nearly
similar to the bone-grubbers. Many of the pure-finders are, however,
better in circumstances, the men especially, as they earn more money.
They are also, to a certain extent, a better educated class. Some of
the regular collectors of this substance have been mechanics, and
others small tradesmen, who have been reduced. Those pure-finders who
have “a good connection,” and have been granted permission to cleanse
some kennels, obtain a very fair living at the business, earning from
10_s._ to 15_s._ a week. These, however, are very few; the majority
have to seek the article in the streets, and by such means they can
obtain only from 6_s._ to 10_s._ a week. The average weekly earnings of
this class are thought to be about 7_s._ 6_d._

From all the inquiries I have made on this subject, I have found that
there cannot be less than from 200 to 300 persons constantly engaged
solely in this business. There are about 30 tanyards large and small
in Bermondsey, and these all have their regular Pure collectors from
whom they obtain the article. Leomont and Roberts’s, Bavingtons’,
Beech’s, Murrell’s, Cheeseman’s, Powell’s, Jones’s, Jourdans’, Kent’s,
Moorcroft’s, and Davis’s, are among the largest establishments, and
some idea of the amount of business done in some of these yards may
be formed from the fact, that the proprietors severally employ from
300 to 500 tanners. At Leomont and Roberts’s there are 23 regular
street-finders, who supply them with pure, but this is a large
establishment, and the number supplying them is considered far beyond
the average quantity; moreover, Messrs. Leomont and Roberts do more
business in the particular branch of tanning in which the article
is principally used, viz., in dressing the leather for book-covers,
kid-gloves, and a variety of other articles. Some of the other
tanyards, especially the smaller ones, take the substance only as
they happen to want it, and others again employ but a limited number
of hands. If, therefore, we strike an average, and reduce the number
supplying each of the several yards to eight, we shall have 240 persons
regularly engaged in the business: besides these, it may be said that
numbers of the starving and destitute Irish have taken to picking up
the material, but not knowing where to sell it, or how to dispose of
it, they part with it for 2_d._ or 3_d._ the pail-full to the regular
purveyors of it to the tanyards, who of course make a considerable
profit by the transaction. The children of the poor Irish are usually
employed in this manner, but they also pick up rags and bones, and
anything else which may fall in their way.

I have stated that some of the pure-finders, especially the men, earn
a considerable sum of money per week; their gains are sometimes as
much as 15_s._; indeed I am assured that seven years ago, when they
got from 3_s._ to 4_s._ per pail for the pure, that many of them would
not exchange their position with that of the best paid mechanic in
London. Now, however, the case is altered, for there are twenty now at
the business for every one who followed it then; hence each collects
so much the less in quantity, and, moreover, from the competition gets
so much less for the article. Some of the collectors at present do not
earn 3_s._ per week, but these are mostly old women who are feeble and
unable to get over the ground quickly; others make 5_s._ and 6_s._ in
the course of the week, while the most active and those who clean out
the kennels of the dog fanciers may occasionally make 9_s._ and 10_s._
and even 15_s._ a week still, but this is of very rare occurrence.
Allowing the finders, one with the other, to earn on an average 5_s._
per week, it would give the annual earnings of each to be 13_l._,
while the income of the whole 200 would amount to 50_l._ a week, or
2600_l._ per annum. The kennel “pure” is not much valued, indeed many
of the tanners will not even buy it, the reason is that the dogs of
the “fanciers” are fed on almost anything, to save expense; the kennel
cleaners consequently take the precaution of mixing it with what is
found in the street, previous to offering it for sale.

The pure-finder may at once be distinguished from the bone-grubber and
rag-gatherer; the latter, as I have before mentioned, carries a bag,
and usually a stick armed with a spike, while he is most frequently
to be met with in back streets, narrow lanes, yards and other places,
where dust and rubbish are likely to be thrown out from the adjacent
houses. The pure-finder, on the contrary, is often found in the open
streets, as dogs wander where they like. The pure-finders always carry
a handle basket, generally with a cover, to hide the contents, and have
their right hand covered with a black leather glove; many of them,
however, dispense with the glove, as they say it is much easier to wash
their hands than to keep the glove fit for use. The women generally
have a large pocket for the reception of such rags as they may chance
to fall in with, but they pick up those only of the very best quality,
and will not go out of their way to search even for them. Thus equipped
they may be seen pursuing their avocation in almost every street in and
about London, excepting such streets as are now cleansed by the “street
orderlies,” of whom the pure-finders grievously complain, as being an
unwarrantable interference with the privileges of their class.

The pure collected is used by leather-dressers and tanners, and more
especially by those engaged in the manufacture of morocco and kid
leather from the skins of old and young goats, of which skins great
numbers are imported, and of the roans and lambskins which are the
sham morocco and kids of the “slop” leather trade, and are used by the
better class of shoemakers, bookbinders, and glovers, for the inferior
requirements of their business. Pure is also used by tanners, as is
pigeon’s dung, for the tanning of the thinner kinds of leather, such as
calf-skins, for which purpose it is placed in pits with an admixture of
lime and bark.

In the manufacture of moroccos and roans the pure is rubbed by the
hands of the workman into the skin he is dressing. This is done to
“purify” the leather, I was told by an intelligent leather-dresser, and
from that term the word “pure” has originated. The dung has astringent
as well as highly alkaline, or, to use the expression of my informant,
“scouring,” qualities. When the pure has been rubbed into the flesh and
grain of the skin (the “flesh” being originally the interior, and the
“grain” the exterior part of the cuticle), and the skin, thus purified,
has been hung up to be dried, the dung removes, as it were, all such
moisture as, if allowed to remain, would tend to make the leather
unsound or imperfectly dressed. This imperfect dressing, moreover,
gives a disagreeable smell to the leather--and leather-buyers often use
both nose and tongue in making their purchases--and would consequently
prevent that agreeable odour being imparted to the skin which is found
in some kinds of morocco and kid. The peculiar odour of the Russia
leather, so agreeable in the libraries of the rich, is derived from the
bark of young birch trees. It is now manufactured in Bermondsey.

Among the morocco manufacturers, especially among the old operatives,
there is often a scarcity of employment, and they then dress a few
roans, which they hawk to the cheap warehouses, or sell to the
wholesale shoemakers on their own account. These men usually reside in
small garrets in the poorer parts of Bermondsey, and carry on their
trade in their own rooms, using and keeping the pure there; hence
the “homes” of these poor men are peculiarly uncomfortable, if not
unhealthy. Some of these poor fellows or their wives collect the pure
themselves, often starting at daylight for the purpose; they more
frequently, however, buy it of a regular finder.

The number of pure-finders I heard estimated, by a man well acquainted
with the tanning and other departments of the leather trade, at from
200 to 250. The finders, I was informed by the same person, collected
about a pail-full a day, clearing 6_s._ a week in the summer--1_s._
and 1_s._ 2_d._ being the charge for a pail-full; in the short days
of winter, however, and in bad weather, they could not collect five
pail-fulls in a week.

In the wretched locality already referred to as lying between the Docks
and Rosemary-lane, redolent of filth and pregnant with pestilential
diseases, and whither all the outcasts of the metropolitan population
seem to be drawn, either in the hope of finding fitting associates and
companions in their wretchedness (for there is doubtlessly something
attractive and agreeable to them in such companionship), or else for
the purpose of hiding themselves and their shifts and struggles for
existence from the world,--in this dismal quarter, and branching from
one of the many narrow lanes which interlace it, there is a little
court with about half-a-dozen houses of the very smallest dimensions,
consisting of merely two rooms, one over the other. Here in one of
the upper rooms (the lower one of the same house being occupied by
another family and apparently _filled_ with little ragged children), I
discerned, after considerable difficulty, an old woman, a Pure-finder.
When I opened the door the little light that struggled through the
small window, the many broken panes of which were stuffed with old
rags, was not sufficient to enable me to perceive who or what was in
the room. After a short time, however, I began to make out an old
chair standing near the fire-place, and then to discover a poor old
woman resembling a bundle of rags and filth stretched on some dirty
straw in the corner of the apartment. The place was bare and almost
naked. There was nothing in it except a couple of old tin kettles and a
basket, and some broken crockeryware in the recess of the window. To my
astonishment I found this wretched creature to be, to a certain extent,
a “superior” woman; she could read and write well, spoke correctly, and
appeared to have been a person of natural good sense, though broken up
with age, want, and infirmity, so that she was characterized by all
that dull and hardened stupidity of manner which I have noticed in the
class. She made the following statement:--

“I am about 60 years of age. My father was a milkman, and very well
off; he had a barn and a great many cows. I was kept at school till I
was thirteen or fourteen years of age; about that time my father died,
and then I was taken home to help my mother in the business. After a
while things went wrong; the cows began to die, and mother, alleging
she could not manage the business herself, married again. I soon found
out the difference. Glad to get away, anywhere out of the house, I
married a sailor, and was very comfortable with him for some years; as
he made short voyages, and was often at home, and always left me half
his pay. At last he was pressed, when at home with me, and sent away;
I forget now where he was sent to, but I never saw him from that day
to this. The only thing I know is that some sailors came to me four
or five years after, and told me that he deserted from the ship in
which he had gone out, and got on board the _Neptune_, East Indiaman,
bound for Bombay, where he acted as boatswain’s mate; some little time
afterwards, he had got intoxicated while the ship was lying in harbour,
and, going down the side to get into a bumboat, and buy more drink,
he had fallen overboard and was drowned. I got some money that was
due to him from the India House, and, after that was all gone, I went
into service, in the Mile-end Road. There I stayed for several years,
till I met my second husband, who was bred to the water, too, but as a
waterman on the river. We did very well together for a long time, till
he lost his health. He became paralyzed like, and was deprived of the
use of all one side, and nearly lost the sight of one of his eyes; this
was not very conspicuous at first, but when we came to get pinched, and
to be badly off, then any one might have seen that there was something
the matter with his eye. Then we parted with everything we had in the
world; and, at last, when we had no other means of living left, we
were advised to take to gathering ‘Pure.’ At first I couldn’t endure
the business; I couldn’t bear to eat a morsel, and I was obliged to
discontinue it for a long time. My husband kept at it though, for he
could do _that_ well enough, only he couldn’t walk as fast as he ought.
He couldn’t lift his hands as high as his head, but he managed to work
under him, and so put the Pure in the basket. When I saw that he, poor
fellow, couldn’t make enough to keep us both, I took heart and went out
again, and used to gather more than he did; that’s fifteen years ago
now; the times were good then, and we used to do very well. If we only
gathered a pail-full in the day, we could live very well; but we could
do much more than that, for there wasn’t near so many at the business
then, and the Pure was easier to be had. For my part I can’t tell where
all the poor creatures have come from of late years; the world seems
growing worse and worse every day. They have pulled down the price of
Pure, that’s certain; but the poor things must do something, they can’t
starve while there’s anything to be got. Why, no later than six or
seven years ago, it was as high as 3_s._ 6_d._ and 4_s._ a pail-full,
and a ready sale for as much of it as you could get; but now you can
only get 1_s._ and in some places 1_s._ 2_d._ a pail-full; and, as
I said before, there are so many at it, that there is not much left
for a poor old creature like me to find. The men that are strong and
smart get the most, of course, and some of them do very well, at least
they manage to live. Six years ago, my husband complained that he was
ill, in the evening, and lay down in the bed--we lived in Whitechapel
then--he took a fit of coughing, and was smothered in his own blood. O
dear” (the poor old soul here ejaculated), “what troubles I have gone
through! I had eight children at one time, and there is not one of them
alive now. My daughter lived to 30 years of age, and then she died in
childbirth, and, since then, I have had nobody in the wide world to
care for me--none but myself, all alone as I am. After my husband’s
death I couldn’t do much, and all my things went away, one by one,
until I’ve nothing but bare walls, and that’s the reason why I was
vexed at first at your coming in, sir. I was yesterday out all day, and
went round Aldgate, Whitechapel, St. George’s East, Stepney, Bow, and
Bromley, and then came home; after that, I went over to Bermondsey,
and there I got only 6_d._ for my pains. To-day I wasn’t out at all;
I wasn’t well; I had a bad headache, and I’m so much afraid of the
fevers that are all about here--though I don’t know why I should be
afraid of them--I was lying down, when you came, to get rid of my
pains. There’s such a dizziness in my head now, I feel as if it didn’t
belong to me. No, I have earned no money to-day. I have had a piece
of dried bread that I steeped in water to eat. I haven’t eat anything
else to-day; but, pray, sir, don’t tell anybody of it. I could never
bear the thought of going into the ‘great house’ [workhouse]; I’m so
used to the air, that I’d sooner die in the street, as many I know have
done. I’ve known several of our people, who have sat down in the street
with their basket alongside them, and died. I knew one not long ago,
who took ill just as she was stooping down to gather up the Pure, and
fell on her face; she was taken to the London Hospital, and died at
three o’clock in the morning. I’d sooner die like them than be deprived
of my liberty, and be prevented from going about where I liked. No,
I’ll never go into the workhouse; my master is kind to me” [the tanner
whom she supplies]. “When I’m ill, he sometimes gives me a sixpence;
but there’s one gentleman has done us great harm, by forcing so many
into the business. He’s a poor-law guardian, and when any poor person
applies for relief, he tells them to go and gather Pure, and that
he’ll buy it of them (for he’s in the line), and so the parish, you
see, don’t have to give anything, and that’s one way that so many have
come into the trade of late, that the likes of me can do little or no
good at it. Almost every one I’ve ever known engaged at Pure-finding
were people who were better off once. I knew a man who went by the
name of Brown, who picked up Pure for years before I went to it; he
was a very quiet man; he used to lodge in Blue Anchor-yard, and seldom
used to speak to anybody. We two used to talk together sometimes,
but never much. One morning he was found dead in his bed; it was of
a Tuesday morning, and he was buried about 12 o’clock on the Friday
following. About 6 o’clock on that afternoon, three or four gentlemen
came searching all through this place, looking for a man named Brown,
and offering a reward to any who would find him out; there was a whole
crowd about them when I came up. One of the gentlemen said that the man
they wanted had lost the first finger of his right hand, and then I
knew that it was the man that had been buried only that morning. Would
you believe it, Mr. Brown was a real gentleman all the time, and had a
large estate, of I don’t know how many thousand pounds, just left him,
and the lawyers had advertised and searched everywhere for him, but
never found him, you may say, till he was dead. We discovered that his
name was not Brown; he had only taken that name to hide his real one,
which, of course, he did not want any one to know. I’ve often thought
of him, poor man, and all the misery he might have been spared, if the
good news had only come a year or two sooner.”

Another informant, a Pure-collector, was originally in the Manchester
cotton trade, and held a lucrative situation in a large country
establishment. His salary one year exceeded 250_l._, and his regular
income was 150_l._ “This,” he says, “I lost through drink and neglect.
My master was exceedingly kind to me, and has even assisted me since I
left his employ. He bore with me patiently for many years, but the love
of drink was so strong upon me that it was impossible for him to keep
me any longer.” He has often been drunk, he tells me, for three months
together; and he is now so reduced that he is ashamed to be seen. When
at his master’s it was his duty to carve and help the other assistants
belonging to the establishment, and his hand used to shake so violently
that he has been ashamed to lift the gravy spoon.

At breakfast he has frequently waited till all the young men had left
the table before he ventured to taste his tea; and immediately, when he
was alone, he has bent his head down to his cup to drink, being utterly
incapable of raising it to his lips. He says he is a living example of
the degrading influence of drink. All his friends have deserted him. He
has suffered enough, he tells me, to make him give it up. He earned the
week before I saw him 5_s._ 2_d._; and the week before that, 6_s._

Before leaving me I prevailed upon the man to “take the pledge.” This
is now eighteen months ago, and I have not seen him since.

OF THE CIGAR-END FINDERS.

There are, strictly speaking, none who make a living by picking up the
ends of cigars thrown away as useless by the smokers in the streets,
but there are very many who employ themselves from time to time in
collecting them. Almost all the street-finders, when they meet with
such things, pick them up, and keep them in a pocket set apart for
that purpose. The men allow the ends to accumulate till they amount to
two or three pounds weight, and then some dispose of them to a person
residing in the neighbourhood of Rosemary-lane, who buys them all
up at from 6_d._ to 10_d._ per pound, according to their length and
quality. The long ends are considered the best, as I am told there is
more sound tobacco in them, uninjured by the moisture of the mouth.
The children of the poor Irish, in particular, scour Ratcliff-highway,
the Commercial-road, Mile-end-road, and all the leading thoroughfares
of the East, and every place where cigar smokers are likely to take an
evening’s promenade. The quantity that each of them collects is very
trifling indeed--perhaps not more than a handful during a morning’s
search. I am informed, by an intelligent man living in the midst of
them, that these children go out in the morning not only to gather
cigar-ends, but to pick up out of dust bins, and from amongst rubbish
in the streets, the smallest scraps and crusts of bread, no matter how
hard or filthy they may be. These they put into a little bag which
they carry for the purpose, and, after they have gone their rounds
and collected whatever they can, they take the cigar-ends to the man
who buys them--sometimes getting not more than a halfpenny or a penny
for their morning’s collection. With this they buy a halfpenny or a
pennyworth of oatmeal, which they mix up with a large quantity of
water, and after washing and steeping the hard and dirty crusts, they
put them into the pot or kettle and boil all together. Of this mass the
whole family partake, and it often constitutes all the food they taste
in the course of the day. I have often seen the bone-grubbers eat the
black and soddened crusts they have picked up out of the gutter.

It would, indeed, be a hopeless task to make any attempt to get at the
number of persons who occasionally or otherwise pick up cigar-ends with
the view of selling them again. For this purpose almost all who ransack
the streets of London for a living may be computed as belonging to
the class; and to these should be added the children of the thousands
of destitute Irish who have inundated the metropolis within the last
few years, and who are to be found huddled together in all the low
neighbourhoods in every suburb of the City. What quantity is collected,
or the amount of money obtained for the ends, there are no means of
ascertaining.

Let us, however, make a conjecture. There are in round numbers
300,000 inhabited houses in the metropolis; and allowing the married
people living in apartments to be equal in number to the unmarried
“housekeepers,” we may compute that the number of families in London
is about the same as the inhabited houses. Assuming one young or old
gentleman in every ten of these families to smoke one cigar per diem in
the public thoroughfares, we have 30,000 cigar-ends daily, or 210,000
weekly cast away in the London streets. Now, reckoning 150 cigars to go
to a pound, we may assume that each end so cast away weighs about the
thousandth part of a pound; consequently the gross weight of the ends
flung into the gutter will, in the course of the week, amount to about
2 cwt.; and calculating that only a sixth part of these are picked up
by the finders, it follows that there is very nearly a ton of refuse
tobacco collected annually in the metropolitan thoroughfares.

The aristocratic quarters of the City and the vicinity of theatres
and casinos are the best for the cigar-end finders. In the Strand,
Regent-street, and the more fashionable thoroughfares, I am told,
there are many ends picked up; but even in these places they do not
exclusively furnish a means of living to any of the finders. All the
collectors sell them to some other person, who acts as middle-man
in the business. How he disposes of the ends is unknown, but it is
supposed that they are resold to some of the large manufacturers of
cigars, and go to form the component part of a new stock of the “best
Havannahs;” or, in other words, they are worked up again to be again
cast away, and again collected by the finders, and so on perhaps, till
the millennium comes. Some suppose them to be cut up and mixed with the
common smoking tobacco, and others that they are used in making snuff.
There are, I am assured, five persons residing in different parts of
London, who are known to purchase the cigar-ends.

In Naples the sale of cigar-ends is a regular street-traffic, the
street-seller carrying them in a small box suspended round the neck.
In Paris, also, _le Remasseur de Cigares_ is a well-known occupation:
the “ends” thus collected are sold as cheap tobacco to the poor. In
the low lodging-houses of London the ends, when dried, are cut up, and
frequently vended by the finders to such of their fellow-lodgers as are
anxious to enjoy their pipe at the cheapest possible rate.

OF THE OLD WOOD GATHERERS.

All that has been said of the cigar-end finders may, in a great
measure, apply to the wood-gatherers. No one can make a living
exclusively by the gathering of wood, and those who _do_ gather it,
gather as well rags, bones, and bits of metal. They gather it, indeed,
as an adjunct to their other findings, on the principle that “every
little helps.” Those, however, who most frequently look for wood are
the very old and feeble, and the very young, who are both unable to
travel far, or to carry a heavy burden, and they may occasionally be
seen crawling about in the neighbourhood of any new buildings in the
course of construction, or old ones in the course of demolition, and
picking up small odds and ends of wood and chips swept out amongst
dirt and shavings; these they deposit in a bag or basket which they
carry for that purpose. Should there happen to be what they call
“pulling-down work,” that is, taking down old houses, or palings, the
place is immediately beset by a number of wood-gatherers, young and
old, and in general all the poor people of the locality join with them,
to obtain their share of the spoil. What the poor get they take home
and burn, but the wood-gatherers sell all they procure for some small
trifle.

Some short time ago a portion of the wood-pavement in the city was
being removed; a large number of the old blocks, which were much worn
and of no further use, were thrown aside, and became the perquisite
of the wood-gatherers. During the repair of the street, the spot was
constantly besieged by a motley mob of men, women, and children, who,
in many instances, struggled and fought for the wood rejected as
worthless. This wood they either sold for a trifle as they got it, or
took home and split, and made into bundles for sale as firewood.

All the mudlarks (of whom I shall treat specially) pick up wood and
chips on the bank of the river; these they sell to poor people in their
own neighbourhood. They sometimes “find” large pieces of a greater
weight than they can carry; in such cases they get some other mudlark
to help them with the load, and the two “go halves” in the produce. The
only parties among the street-finders who do not pick up wood are the
Pure-collectors and the sewer-hunters, or, as they call themselves,
shore-workers, both of whom pass it by as of no value.

It is impossible to estimate the quantity of wood which is thus
gathered, or what the amount may be which the collector realises in the
course of the year.

OF THE DREDGERS, OR RIVER FINDERS.

The dredgermen of the Thames, or river finders, naturally occupy the
same place with reference to the street-finders, as the purlmen or
river beer-sellers do to those who get their living by selling in the
streets. It would be in itself a curious inquiry to trace the origin
of the manifold occupations in which men are found to be engaged in
the present day, and to note how promptly every circumstance and
occurrence was laid hold of, as it happened to arise, which appeared to
have any tendency to open up a new occupation, and to mark the gradual
progress, till it became a regularly-established employment, followed
by a separate class of people, fenced round by rules and customs of
their own, and who at length grew to be both in their habits and
peculiarities plainly distinct from the other classes among whom they
chanced to be located.

There has been no historian among the dredgers of the Thames to record
the commencement of the business, and the utmost that any of the
river-finders can tell is that his father had been a dredger, and so
had his father before him, and that _that’s_ the reason why they are
dredgers also. But no such people as dredgers were known on the Thames
in remote days; and before London had become an important trading
port, where nothing was likely to be got for the searching, it is not
probable that people would have been induced to search. In those days,
the only things searched for in the river were the bodies of persons
drowned, accidentally or otherwise. For this purpose, the Thames
fishermen of all others, appeared to be the best adapted. They were on
the spot at all times, and had various sorts of tackle, such as nets,
lines, hooks, &c. The fishermen well understood everything connected
with the river, such as the various sets of the tide, and the nature
of the bottom, and they were therefore on such occasions invariably
applied to for these purposes.

It is known to all who remember anything of Old London Bridge, that at
certain times of the tide, in consequence of the velocity with which
the water rushed through the narrow apertures which the arches then
afforded for its passage, to bring a boat in safety through the bridge
was a feat to be attempted only by the skilful and experienced. This
feat was known as “shooting” London Bridge; and it was no unusual thing
for accidents to happen even to the most expert. In fact, numerous
accidents occurred at this bridge, and at such times valuable articles
were sometimes lost, for which high rewards were offered to the finder.
Here again the fishermen came into requisition, the small drag-net,
which they used while rowing, offering itself for the purpose; for,
by fixing an iron frame round the mouth of the drag-net, this part
of it, from its specific gravity, sunk first to the bottom, and
consequently scraped along as they pulled forward, collecting into the
net everything that came in its way; when it was nearly filled, which
the rower always knew by the weight, it was hauled up to the surface,
its contents examined, and the object lost generally recovered.

It is thus apparent that the fishermen of the Thames were the men
originally employed as dredgermen; though casually, indeed, at first,
and according as circumstances occurred requiring their services. By
degrees, however, as the commerce of the river increased, and a greater
number of articles fell overboard from the shipping, they came to be
more frequently called into requisition, and so they were naturally led
to adopt the dredging as part and parcel of their business. Thus it
remains to the present day.

The fishermen all serve a regular apprenticeship, as they say
themselves, “duly and truly” for seven years. During the time of their
apprenticeship they are (or rather, in former times they _were_)
obliged to sleep in their master’s boat at night to take care of his
property, and were subject to many other curious regulations, which are
foreign to this subject.

I have said that the fishermen of the Thames to the present day unite
the dredging to their proper calling. By this I mean that they employ
themselves in fishing during the summer and autumn, either from
Barking Creek downwards, or from Chelsea Reach upwards, catching dabs,
flounders, eels, and other sorts of fish for the London markets. But in
winter when the days are short and cold, and the weather stormy, they
prefer stopping at home, and dredging the bed of the river for anything
they may chance to find. There are others, however, who have started
wholly in the dredging line, there being no hindrance or impediment
to any one doing so, nor any licence required for the purpose: these
dredge the river winter and summer alike, and are, in fact, the only
real dredgermen of the present day living solely by that occupation.

There are in all about 100 dredgermen at work on the river, and these
are located as follows:--

Dredgermen.
From Putney to Vauxhall there are 20
From Vauxhall to London-bridge 40
From London-bridge to Deptford 20
And from Deptford to Gravesend 20
---
100

All these reside, in general, on the south side of the Thames, the two
places most frequented by them being Lambeth and Rotherhithe. They do
not, however, confine themselves to the neighbourhoods wherein they
reside, but extend their operations to all parts of the river, where
it is likely that they may pick up anything; and it is perfectly
marvellous with what rapidity the intelligence of any accident
calculated to afford them employment is spread among them; for should
a loaded coal barge be sunk over night, by daylight the next morning
every dredgerman would be sure to be upon the spot, prepared to collect
what he could from the wreck at the bottom of the river.

The boats of the dredgermen are of a peculiar shape. They have no
stern, but are the same fore and aft. They are called Peter boats,
but not one of the men with whom I spoke had the least idea as to the
origin of the name. These boats are to be had at almost all prices,
according to their condition and age--from 30_s._ to 20_l._ The boats
used by the fishermen dredgermen are decidedly the most valuable. One
with the other, perhaps the whole may average 10_l._ each; and this sum
will give 1000_l._ as the value of the entire number. A complete set
of tackle, including drags, will cost 2_l._, which comes to 200_l._
for all hands; and thus we have the sum of 1200_l._ as the amount of
capital invested in the dredging of the Thames.

It is by no means an easy matter to form any estimate of the earnings
of the dredgermen, as they are a matter of mere chance. In former
years, when Indiamen and all the foreign shipping lay in the river,
the river finders were in the habit of doing a good business, not only
in their own line, through the greater quantities of rope, bones,
and other things which then were thrown or fell overboard, but they
also contrived to smuggle ashore great quantities of tobacco, tea,
spirits, and other contraband articles, and thought it a bad day’s work
when they did not earn a pound independent of their dredging. An old
dredger told me he had often in those days made 5_l._ before breakfast
time. After the excavation of the various docks, and after the larger
shipping had departed from the river, the finders were obliged to
content themselves with the chances of mere dredging; and even then, I
am informed, they were in the habit of earning one week with another
throughout the year, about 25_s._ per week, each, or 6500_l._ per annum
among all. Latterly, however, the earnings of these men have greatly
fallen off, especially in the summer, for then they cannot get so good
a price for the coal they find as in the winter--6_d._ per bushel being
the summer price; and, as they consider three bushels a good day’s
work, their earnings at this period of the year amount only to 1_s._
6_d._ per day, excepting when they happen to pick up some bones or
pieces of metal, or to find a dead body for which there is a reward. In
the winter, however, the dredgermen can readily get 1_s._ per bushel
for all the coals they find; and far more coals are to be found then
than in summer, for there are more colliers in the river, and far more
accidents at that season. Coal barges are often sunk in the winter,
and on such occasions they make a good harvest. Moreover there is the
finding of bodies, for which they not only get the reward, but 5_s._,
which they call inquest money; together with many other chances, such
as the finding of money and valuables among the rubbish they bring up
from the bottom; but as the last-mentioned are accidents happening
throughout the year, I am inclined to think that they have understated
the amount which they are in the habit of realizing even in the summer.

The dredgers, as a class, may be said to be altogether uneducated, not
half a dozen out of the whole number being able to read their own name,
and only one or two to write it; this select few are considered by the
rest as perfect prodigies. “Lor’ bless you!” said one, “I on’y wish
you’d ’ear Bill S---- read; I on’y jist wish you’d ’ear him. Why that
ere Bill can read faster nor a dog can trot. And, what’s more, I seed
him write an ole letter hisself, ev’ry word on it! What do you think
o’ that now?” The ignorance of the dredgermen may be accounted for by
the men taking so early to the water; the bustle and excitement of the
river being far more attractive to them than the routine of a school.
Almost as soon as they are able to do anything, the dredgermen’s boys
are taken by their fathers afloat to assist in picking out the coals,
bones, and other things of any use, from the midst of the rubbish
brought up in their drag-nets; or else the lads are sent on board
as assistants to one or other of the fishermen during their fishing
voyages. When once engaged in this way it has been found impossible
afterwards to keep the youths from the water; and if they have learned
anything previously they very soon forget it.

It might be expected that the dredgers, in a manner depending on
chance for their livelihood, and leading a restless sort of life on
the water, would closely resemble the costermongers in their habits;
but it is far otherwise. There can be no two classes more dissimilar,
except in their hatred of restraint. The dredgers are sober and steady;
gambling is unknown amongst them; and they are, to an extraordinary
degree, laborious, persevering, and patient. They are in general men of
short stature, but square built, strong, and capable of enduring great
fatigue, and have a silent and thoughtful look. Being almost always
alone, and studying how they may best succeed in finding what they
seek, marking the various sets of the tide, and the direction in which
things falling into the water at a particular place must necessarily
be carried, they become the very opposite to the other river people,
especially to the watermen, who are brawling and clamorous, and delight
in continually “chaffing” each other. In consequence of the sober and
industrious habits of the dredgermen their homes are, as they say,
“pretty fair” for working men, though there is nothing very luxurious
to be found in them, nor indeed anything beyond what is absolutely
necessary. After their day’s work, especially if they have “done well,”
these men smoke a pipe over a pint or two of beer at the nearest
public-house, get home early to bed, and if the tide answers may be
found on the river patiently dredging away at two or three o’clock in
the morning.

Whenever a loaded coal barge happens to sink, as I have already
intimated, it is surprising how short a time elapses before that part
of the river is alive with the dredgers. They flock thither from all
parts. The river on such occasions presents a very animated appearance.
At first they are all in a group, and apparently in confusion, crossing
and re-crossing each other’s course; some with their oars pulled in
while they examine the contents of their nets, and empty the coals
into the bottom of their boats; others rowing and tugging against the
stream, to obtain an advantageous position for the next cast; and when
they consider they have found this, down go the dredging-nets to the
bottom, and away they row again with the stream, as if pulling for a
wager, till they find by the weight of their net that it is full; then
they at once stop, haul it to the surface, and commence another course.
Others who have been successful in getting their boats loaded may be
seen pushing away from the main body, and making towards the shore.
Here they busily employ themselves, with what help they can get, in
emptying the boat of her cargo--carrying it ashore in old coal baskets,
bushel measures, or anything else which will suit their purpose; and
when this is completed they pull out again to join their comrades, and
commence afresh. They continue working thus till the returning tide
puts an end to their labours, but these are resumed after the tide has
fallen to a certain depth; and so they go on, working night and day
while there is anything to be got.

The dredgerman and his boat may be immediately distinguished from
all others; there is nothing similar to them on the river. The sharp
cutwater fore and aft, and short rounded appearance of the vessel,
marks it out at once from the skiff or wherry of the waterman. There
is, too, always the appearance of labour about the boat, like a ship
returning after a long voyage, daubed and filthy, and looking sadly in
need of a thorough cleansing. The grappling irons are over the bow,
resting on a coil of rope; while the other end of the boat is filled
with coals, bones, and old rope, mixed with the mud of the river. The
ropes of the dredging-net hang over the side. A short stout figure,
with a face soiled and blackened with perspiration, and surmounted by a
tarred sou’-wester, the body habited in a soiled check shirt, with the
sleeves turned up above the elbows, and exhibiting a pair of sunburnt
brawny arms, is pulling at the sculls, not with the ease and lightness
of the waterman, but toiling and tugging away like a galley slave, as
he scours the bed of the river with his dredging-net in search of some
hoped-for prize.

The dredgers, as was before stated, are the men who find almost all
the bodies of persons drowned. If there be a reward offered for the
recovery of a body, numbers of the dredgers will at once endeavour to
obtain it, while if there be no reward, there is at least the inquest
money to be had--beside other chances. What these chances are may
be inferred from the well-known fact, that no body recovered by a
dredgerman ever happens to have any money about it, when brought to
shore. There may, indeed, be a watch in the fob or waistcoat pocket,
for that article would be likely to be traced. There may, too, be a
purse or pocket-book forthcoming, but somehow it is invariably empty.
The dredgers cannot by any reasoning or argument be made to comprehend
that there is anything like dishonesty in emptying the pockets of a
dead man. They consider them as their just perquisites. They say that
any one who finds a body does precisely the same, and that if they
did not do so the police would. After having had all the trouble and
labour, they allege that they have a much better right to whatever
is to be got, than the police who have had nothing whatever to do
with it. There are also people who shrewdly suspect that some of the
coals from the barges lying in the river, very often find their way
into the dredgers’ boats, especially when the dredgers are engaged in
night-work; and there are even some who do not hold them guiltless of,
now and then, when opportunity offers, smuggling things ashore from
many of the steamers coming from foreign parts. But such things, I
repeat, the dredgers consider in the fair way of their business.

One of the most industrious, and I believe one of the most skilful and
successful of this peculiar class, gave me the following epitome of his
history.

“Father was a dredger, and grandfather afore him; grandfather was a
dredger and a fisherman too. A’most as soon as I was able to crawl,
father took me with him in the boat to help him to pick the coals, and
bones, and other things out of the net, and to use me to the water.
When I got bigger and stronger, I was sent to the parish school, but I
didn’t like it half as well as the boat, and couldn’t be got to stay
two days together. At last I went above bridge, and went along with a
fisherman, and used to sleep in the boat every night. I liked to sleep
in the boat; I used to be as comfortable as could be. Lor bless you!
there’s a tilt to them boats, and no rain can’t git at you. I used to
lie awake of a night in them times, and listen to the water shipping
ag’in the boat, and think it fine fun. I might a got bound ’prentice,
but I got aboard a smack, where I stayed three or four year, and if I’d
a stayed there, I’d a liked it much better. But I heerd as how father
was ill, so I com’d home, and took to the dredging, and am at it off
and on ever since. I got no larnin’, how could I? There’s on’y one or
two of us dredgers as knows anything of larnin’, and they’re no better
off than the rest. Larnin’s no use to a dredger, he hasn’t got no time
to read; and if he had, why it wouldn’t tell him where the holes and
furrows is at the bottom of the river, and where things is to be found.
To be sure there’s holes and furrows at the bottom. I know a good many.
I know a furrow off Lime’us Point, no wider nor the dredge, and I can
go there, and when others can’t git anything but stones and mud, I
can git four or five bushel o’ coal. You see they lay there; they get
in with the set of the tide, and can’t git out so easy like. Dredgers
don’t do so well now as they used to do. You know Pelican Stairs?
well, before the Docks was built, when the ships lay there, I could
go under Pelican Pier and pick up four or five shilling of a morning.
What was that tho’ to father? I hear him say he often made 5_l._ afore
breakfast, and nobody ever the wiser. Them were fine times! there was
a good livin’ to be picked up on the water them days. About ten year
ago, the fishermen at Lambeth, them as sarves their time ‘duly and
truly’ thought to put us off the water, and went afore the Lord Mayor,
but they couldn’t do nothink after all. They do better nor us, as they
go fishin’ all the summer, when the dredgin’ is bad, and come back in
winter. Some on us down here” [Rotherhithe] “go a deal-portering in the
summer, or unloading ’tatoes, or anything else we can get; when we have
nothin’ else to do, we go on the river. Father don’t dredge now, he’s
too old for that; it takes a man to be strong to dredge, so father goes
to ship scrapin’. He on’y sits on a plank outside the ship, and scrapes
off the old tar with a scraper. We does very well for all that--why he
can make his half a bull a day [2_s._ 6_d._] when he gits work, but
that’s not always; howsomever I helps the old man at times, when I’m
able. I’ve found a good many bodies. I got a many rewards, and a tidy
bit of inquest money. There’s 5_s._ 6_d._ inquest money at Rotherhithe,
and on’y a shillin’ at Deptford; I can’t make out how that is, but
that’s all they give, I know. I never finds anythink on the bodies. Lor
bless you! people don’t have anythink in their pockets when they gits
drowned, they are not such fools as all that. Do you see them two marks
there on the back of my hand? Well, one day--I was on’y young then--I
was grabblin’ for old rope in Church Hole, when I brings up a body, and
just as I was fixing the rope on his leg to tow him ashore, two swells
comes down in a skiff, and lays hold of the painter of my boat, and
tows me ashore. The hook of the drag went right thro’ the trowsers of
the drowned man and my hand, and I couldn’t let go no how, and tho’ I
roared out like mad, the swells didn’t care, but dragged me into the
stairs. When I got there, my arm, and the corpse’s shoe and trowsers,
was all kivered with my blood. What do you think the gents said?--why,
they told me as how they had done me good, in towin’ the body in, and
ran away up the stairs. Tho’ times ain’t near so good as they was, I
manages purty tidy, and hasn’t got no occasion to hollor much; but
there’s some of the dredgers as would hollor, if they was ever so well
off.”

OF THE SEWER-HUNTERS.

Some few years ago, the main sewers, having their outlets on the river
side, were completely open, so that any person desirous of exploring
their dark and uninviting recesses might enter at the river side, and
wander away, provided he could withstand the combination of villanous
stenches which met him at every step, for many miles, in any direction.
At that time it was a thing of very frequent occurrence, especially
at the spring tides, for the water to rush into the sewers, pouring
through them like a torrent, and then to burst up through the gratings
into the streets, flooding all the low-lying districts in the vicinity
of the river, till the streets of Shadwell and Wapping resembled a
Dutch town, intersected by a series of muddy canals. Of late, however,
to remedy this defect, the Commissioners have had a strong brick wall
built within the entrance to the several sewers. In each of these brick
walls there is an opening covered by a strong iron door, which hangs
from the top and is so arranged that when the tide is low the rush of
the water and other filth on the inner side, forces it back and allows
the contents of the sewer to pass into the river, whilst when the tide
rises the door is forced so close against the wall by the pressure of
the water outside that none can by any possibility enter, and thus the
river neighbourhoods are secured from the deluges which were heretofore
of such frequent occurrence.

Were it not a notorious fact, it might perhaps be thought impossible,
that men could be found who, for the chance of obtaining a living of
some sort or other, would, day after day, and year after year, continue
to travel through these underground channels for the offscouring of
the city; but such is the case even at the present moment. In former
times, however, this custom prevailed much more than now, for in those
days the sewers were entirely open and presented no obstacle to any
one desirous of entering them. Many wondrous tales are still told
among the people of men having lost their way in the sewers, and of
having wandered among the filthy passages--their lights extinguished
by the noisome vapours--till, faint and overpowered, they dropped down
and died on the spot. Other stories are told of sewer-hunters beset
by myriads of enormous rats, and slaying thousands of them in their
struggle for life, till at length the swarms of the savage things
overpowered them, and in a few days afterwards their skeletons were
discovered picked to the very bones. Since the iron doors, however,
have been placed on the main sewers a prohibition has been issued
against entering them, and a reward of 5_l._ offered to any person
giving information so as to lead to the conviction of any offender.
Nevertheless many still travel through these foul labyrinths, in search
of such valuables as may have found their way down the drains.

The persons who are in the habit of searching the sewers, call
themselves “shore-men” or “shore-workers.” They belong, in a certain
degree, to the same class as the “mud-larks,” that is to say,
they travel through the mud along shore in the neighbourhood of
ship-building and ship-breaking yards, for the purpose of picking
up copper nails, bolts, iron, and old rope. The shore-men, however,
do not collect the lumps of coal and wood they meet with on their
way, but leave them as the proper perquisites of the mud-larks. The
sewer-hunters were formerly, and indeed are still, called by the name
of “Toshers,” the articles which they pick up in the course of their
wanderings along shore being known among themselves by the general
term “tosh,” a word more particularly applied by them to anything made
of copper. These “Toshers” may be seen, especially on the Surrey side
of the Thames, habited in long greasy velveteen coats, furnished with
pockets of vast capacity, and their nether limbs encased in dirty
canvas trowsers, and any old slops of shoes, that may be fit only for
wading through the mud. They carry a bag on their back, and in their
hand a pole seven or eight feet long, on one end of which there is
a large iron hoe. The uses of this instrument are various; with it
they try the ground wherever it appears unsafe, before venturing on
it, and, when assured of its safety, walk forward steadying their
footsteps with the staff. Should they, as often happens, even to the
most experienced, sink in some quagmire, they immediately throw out the
long pole armed with the hoe, which is always held uppermost for this
purpose, and with it seizing hold of any object within their reach,
are thereby enabled to draw themselves out; without the pole, however,
their danger would be greater, for the more they struggled to extricate
themselves from such places, the deeper they would sink; and even with
it, they might perish, I am told, in some part, if there were nobody
at hand to render them assistance. Finally, they make use of this
pole to rake about the mud when searching for iron, copper, rope, and
bones. They mostly exhibit great skill in discovering these things in
unlikely places, and have a knowledge of the various sets of the tide,
calculated to carry articles to particular points, almost equal to the
dredgermen themselves. Although they cannot “pick up” as much now as
they formerly did, they are still able to make what they call a fair
living, and can afford to look down with a species of aristocratic
contempt on the puny efforts of their less fortunate brethren the
“mudlarks.”

To enter the sewers and explore them to any considerable distance is
considered, even by those acquainted with what is termed “working
the shores,” an adventure of no small risk. There are a variety of
perils to be encountered in such places. The brick-work in many
parts--especially in the old sewers--has become rotten through the
continual action of the putrefying matter and moisture, and parts have
fallen down and choked up the passage with heaps of rubbish; over these
obstructions, nevertheless, the sewer-hunters have to scramble “in
the best way they can.” In such parts they are careful not to touch
the brick-work over head, for the slightest tap might bring down an
avalanche of old bricks and earth, and severely injure them, if not
bury them in the rubbish. Since the construction of the new sewers, the
old ones are in general abandoned by the “hunters;” but in many places
the former channels cross and re-cross those recently constructed,
and in the old sewers a person is very likely to lose his way. It is
dangerous to venture far into any of the smaller sewers branching
off from the main, for in this the “hunters” have to stoop low down
in order to proceed; and, from the confined space, there are often
accumulated in such places, large quantities of foul air, which, as
one of them stated, will “cause instantious death.” Moreover, far from
there being any romance in the tales told of the rats, these vermin are
really numerous and formidable in the sewers, and have been known, I am
assured, to attack men when alone, and even sometimes when accompanied
by others, with such fury that the people have escaped from them with
difficulty. They are particularly ferocious and dangerous, if they
be driven into some corner whence they cannot escape, when they will
immediately fly at any one that opposes their progress. I received a
similar account to this from one of the London flushermen. There are
moreover, in some quarters, ditches or trenches which are filled as the
water rushes up the sewers with the tide; in these ditches the water is
retained by a sluice, which is shut down at high tide, and lifted again
at low tide, when it rushes down the sewers with all the violence of a
mountain torrent, sweeping everything before it. If the sewer-hunter be
not close to some branch sewer, so that he can run into it, whenever
the opening of these sluices takes place, he must inevitably perish.
The trenches or water reservoirs for the cleansing of the sewers are
chiefly on the south side of the river, and, as a proof of the great
danger to which the sewer-hunters are exposed in such cases, it may
be stated, that not very long ago, a sewer on the south side of the
Thames was opened to be repaired; a long ladder reached to the bottom
of the sewer, down which the bricklayer’s labourer was going with a
hod of bricks, when the rush of water from the sluice, struck the
bottom of the ladder, and instantly swept away ladder, labourer, and
all. The bricklayer fortunately was enjoying his “pint and pipe” at
a neighbouring public-house. The labourer was found by my informant,
a “shore-worker,” near the mouth of the sewer quite dead, battered,
and disfigured in a frightful manner. There was likewise great danger
in former times from the rising of the tide in the sewers, so that it
was necessary for the shore-men to have quitted them before the water
had got any height within the entrance. At present, however, this is
obviated in those sewers where the main is furnished with an iron door
towards the river.

The shore-workers, when about to enter the sewers, provide themselves,
in addition to the long hoe already described, with a canvas apron,
which they tie round them, and a dark lantern similar to a policeman’s;
this they strap before them on their right breast, in such a manner
that on removing the shade, the bull’s-eye throws the light straight
forward when they are in an erect position, and enables them to
see everything in advance of them for some distance; but when they
stoop, it throws the light directly under them, so that they can then
distinctly see any object at their feet. The sewer-hunters usually
go in gangs of three or four for the sake of company, and in order
that they may be the better able to defend themselves from the rats.
The old hands who have been often up (and every gang endeavours to
include at least one experienced person), travel a long distance, not
only through the main sewers, but also through many of the branches.
Whenever the shore-men come near a street grating, they close their
lanterns and watch their opportunity of gliding silently past
unobserved, for otherwise a crowd might collect over head and intimate
to the policeman on duty, that there were persons wandering in the
sewers below. The shore-workers never take dogs with them, lest their
barking when hunting the rats might excite attention. As the men go
along they search the bottom of the sewer, raking away the mud with
their hoe, and pick, from between the crevices of the brick-work,
money, or anything else that may have lodged there. There are in many
parts of the sewers holes where the brick-work has been worn away,
and in these holes clusters of articles are found, which have been
washed into them from time to time, and perhaps been collecting there
for years; such as pieces of iron, nails, various scraps of metal,
coins of every description, all rusted into a mass like a rock, and
weighing from a half hundred to two hundred weight altogether. These
“conglomerates” of metal are too heavy for the men to take out of
the sewers, so that if unable to break them up, they are compelled
to leave them behind; and there are very many such masses, I am
informed, lying in the sewers at this moment, of immense weight, and
growing larger every day by continual additions. The shore-men find
great quantities of money--of copper money especially; sometimes they
dive their arm down to the elbow in the mud and filth and bring up
shillings, sixpences, half-crowns, and occasionally half-sovereigns
and sovereigns. They always find the coins standing edge uppermost
between the bricks in the bottom, where the mortar has been worn away.
The sewer-hunters occasionally find plate, such as spoons, ladles,
silver-handled knives and forks, mugs and drinking cups, and now and
then articles of jewellery; but even while thus “in luck” as they call
it, they do not omit to fill the bags on their backs with the more
cumbrous articles they meet with--such as metals of every description,
rope and bones. There is always a great quantity of these things to be
met with in the sewers, they being continually washed down from the
cesspools and drains of the houses. When the sewer-hunters consider
they have searched long enough, or when they have found as much as they
can conveniently take away, the gang leave the sewers and, adjourning
to the nearest of their homes, count out the money they have picked
up, and proceed to dispose of the old metal, bones, rope, &c.; this
done, they then, as they term it, “whack” the whole lot; that is, they
divide it equally among all hands. At these divisions, I am assured,
it frequently occurs that each member of the gang will realise from
30_s._ to 2_l._--this at least _was_ a frequent occurrence some few
years ago. Of late, however, the shore-men are obliged to use far more
caution, as the police, and especially those connected with the river,
who are more on the alert, as well as many of the coal-merchants in the
neighbourhood of the sewers, would give information if they saw any
suspicious persons approaching them.

The principal localities in which the shore-hunters reside
are in Mint-square, Mint-street, and Kent-street, in the
Borough--Snow’s-fields, Bermondsey--and that never-failing locality
between the London Docks and Rosemary-lane which appears to be a
concentration of all the misery of the kingdom. There were known to be
a few years ago nearly 200 sewer-hunters, or “toshers,” and, incredible
as it may appear, I have satisfied myself that, taking one week with
another, they could not be said to make much short of 2_l._ per week.
Their probable gains, I was told, were about 6_s._ per day all the year
round. At this rate the property recovered from the sewers of London
would have amounted to no less than 20,000_l._ per annum, which would
make the amount of property lost down the drains of each house amount
to 1_s._ 4_d._ a year. The shore-hunters of the present day greatly
complain of the recent restrictions, and inveigh in no measured terms
against the constituted authorities. “They won’t let us in to work the
shores,” say they, “’cause there’s a little danger. They fears as how
we’ll get suffocated, at least they tells us so; but they don’t care if
we get starved! no, they doesn’t mind nothink about that.”

It is, however, more than suspected that these men find plenty of means
to evade the vigilance of the sewer officials, and continue quietly to
reap a considerable harvest, gathered whence it might otherwise have
rotted in obscurity.

The sewer-hunters, strange as it may appear, are certainly smart
fellows, and take decided precedence of all the other “finders” of
London, whether by land or water, both on account of the greater amount
of their earnings, and the skill and courage they manifest in the
pursuit of their dangerous employment. But like all who make a living
as it were by a game of chance, plodding, carefulness, and saving
habits cannot be reckoned among their virtues; they are improvident,
even to a proverb. With their gains, superior even to those of the
better-paid artizans, and far beyond the amount received by many
clerks, who have to maintain a “respectable appearance,” the shore-men
might, with but ordinary prudence, live well, have comfortable homes,
and even be able to save sufficient to provide for themselves in
their old age. Their practice, however, is directly the reverse. They
no sooner make a “haul,” as they say, than they adjourn to some low
public-house in the neighbourhood, and seldom leave till empty pockets
and hungry stomachs drive them forth to procure the means for a fresh
debauch. It is principally on this account that, despite their large
gains, they are to be found located in the most wretched quarter of the
metropolis.

It might be supposed that the sewer-hunters (passing much of their time
in the midst of the noisome vapours generated by the sewers, the odour
of which, escaping upwards from the gratings in the streets, is dreaded
and shunned by all as something pestilential) would exhibit in their
pallid faces the unmistakable evidence of their unhealthy employment.
But this is far from the fact. Strange to say, the sewer-hunters are
strong, robust, and healthy men, generally florid in their complexion,
while many of them know illness only by name. Some of the elder men,
who head the gangs when exploring the sewers, are between 60 and 80
years of age, and have followed the employment during their whole
lives. The men appear to have a fixed belief that the odour of the
sewers contributes in a variety of ways to their general health;
nevertheless, they admit that accidents occasionally occur from the air
in some places being fully impregnated with mephitic gas.

I found one of these men, from whom I derived much information, and
who is really an active intelligent man, in a court off Rosemary-lane.
Access is gained to this court through a dark narrow entrance, scarcely
wider than a doorway, running beneath the first floor of one of the
houses in the adjoining street. The court itself is about 50 yards
long, and not more than three yards wide, surrounded by lofty wooden
houses, with jutting abutments in many of the upper stories that
almost exclude the light, and give them the appearance of being about
to tumble down upon the heads of the intruders. This court is densely
inhabited; every room has its own family, more or less in number; and
in many of them, I am assured, there are two families residing, the
better to enable the one to whom the room is let to pay the rent. At
the time of my visit, which was in the evening, after the inmates had
returned from their various employments, some quarrel had arisen among
them. The court was so thronged with the friends of the contending
individuals and spectators of the fight that I was obliged to stand
at the entrance, unable to force my way through the dense multitude,
while labourers and street-folk with shaggy heads, and women with dirty
caps and fuzzy hair, thronged every window above, and peered down
anxiously at the affray. There must have been some hundreds of people
collected there, and yet all were inhabitants of this very court, for
the noise of the quarrel had not yet reached the street. On wondering
at the number, my informant, when the noise had ceased, explained the
matter as follows: “You see, sir, there’s more than 30 houses in this
here court, and there’s not less than eight rooms in every house; now
there’s nine or ten people in some of the rooms, I knows, but just say
four in every room, and calculate what that there comes to.” I did, and
found it, to my surprise, to be 960. “Well,” continued my informant,
chuckling and rubbing his hands in evident delight at the result, “you
may as well just tack a couple a hundred on to the tail o’ them for
make-weight, as we’re not werry pertikler about a hundred or two one
way or the other in these here places.”

In this court, up three flights of narrow stairs that creaked and
trembled at every footstep, and in an ill-furnished garret, dwelt the
shore-worker--a man who, had he been careful, according to his own
account at least, might have money in the bank and be the proprietor of
the house in which he lived. The sewer-hunters, like the street-people,
are all known by some peculiar nickname, derived chiefly from some
personal characteristic. It would be a waste of time to inquire for
them by their right names, even if you were acquainted with them, for
none else would know them, and no intelligence concerning them could
be obtained; while under the title of Lanky Bill, Long Tom, One-eyed
George, Short-armed Jack, they are known to every one.

My informant, who is also dignified with a title, or as he calls it
a “handle to his name,” gave me the following account of himself: “I
was born in Birmingham, but afore I recollects anythink, we came to
London. The first thing I remembers is being down on the shore at
Cuckold’s P’int, when the tide was out and up to my knees in mud, and a
gitting down deeper and deeper every minute till I was picked up by one
of the shore-workers. I used to git down there every day, to look at
the ships and boats a sailing up and down; I’d niver be tired a looking
at them at that time. At last father ’prenticed me to a blacksmith in
Bermondsey, _and then I couldn’t git down to the river when I liked,
so I got to hate the forge and the fire, and blowing the bellows, and
couldn’t stand the confinement no how,--at last I cuts and runs_. After
some time they gits me back ag’in, but I cuts ag’in. I was determined
not to stand it. I wouldn’t go home for fear I’d be sent back, so I
goes down to Cuckold’s P’int and there I sits near half the day, when
who should I see but the old un as had picked me up out of the mud when
I was a sinking. I tells him all about it, and he takes me home along
with hisself, and gits me a bag and an o, and takes me out next day,
and shows me what to do, and shows me the dangerous places, and the
places what are safe, and how to rake in the mud for rope, and bones,
and iron, and that’s the way I comed to be a shore-worker. Lor’ bless
you, I’ve worked Cuckold’s P’int for more nor twenty year. I know
places where you’d go over head and ears in the mud, and jist alongside
on ’em you may walk as safe as you can on this floor. But it don’t do
for a stranger to try it, he’d wery soon git in, and it’s not so easy
to git out agin, I can tell you. I stay’d with the old un a long time,
and we used to git lots o’ tin, specially when we’d go to work the
sewers. I liked that well enough. I could git into small places where
the old un couldn’t, and when I’d got near the grating in the street,
I’d search about in the bottom of the sewer; I’d put down my arm to my
shoulder in the mud and bring up shillings and half-crowns, and lots
of coppers, and plenty other things. I once found a silver jug as big
as a quart pot, and often found spoons and knives and forks and every
thing you can think of. Bless your heart the smells nothink; it’s a
roughish smell at first, but nothink near so bad as you thinks, ’cause,
you see, there’s sich lots o’ water always a coming down the sewer,
and the air gits in from the gratings, and that helps to sweeten it a
bit. There’s some places, ’specially in the old sewers, where they say
there’s foul air, and they tells me the foul air ’ill cause instantious
death, but I niver met with anythink of the kind, and I think if there
was sich a thing I should know somethink about it, for I’ve worked the
sewers, off and on, for twenty year. When we comes to a narrow-place
as we don’t know, we takes the candle out of the lantern and fastens
it on the hend of the o, and then runs it up the sewer, and if the
light stays in, we knows as there a’n’t no danger. We used to go up
the city sewer at Blackfriars-bridge, but that’s stopped up now; it’s
boarded across inside. The city wouldn’t let us up if they knew it,
’cause of the danger, they say, but they don’t care if we hav’n’t got
nothink to eat nor a place to put our heads in, while there’s plenty
of money lying there and good for nobody. If you was caught up it and
brought afore the Lord Mayor, he’d give you fourteen days on it, as
safe as the bellows, so a good many on us now is afraid to wenture in.
We don’t wenture as we used to, but still it’s done at times. There’s
a many places as I knows on where the bricks has fallen down, and that
there’s dangerous; it’s so delaberated that if you touches it with your
head or with the hend of the o, it ’ill all come down atop o’ you. I’ve
often seed as many as a hundred rats at once, and they’re woppers in
the sewers, I can tell you; them there water rats, too, is far more
ferociouser than any other rats, and they’d think nothink of tackling
a man, if they found they couldn’t get away no how, but if they can
why they runs by and gits out o’ the road. I knows a chap as the rats
tackled in the sewers; they bit him hawfully: you must ha’ heard on it;
it was him as the watermen went in arter when they heard him a shouting
as they was a rowin’ by. Only for the watermen the rats would ha’ done
for him, safe enough. Do you recollect hearing on the man as was found
in the sewers about twelve year ago?--oh you must--the rats eat every
bit of him, and left nothink but his bones. I knowed him well, he was a
rig’lar shore-worker.

“The rats is wery dangerous, that’s sartain, but we always goes three
or four on us together, and the varmint’s too wide awake to tackle us
then, for they know they’d git off second best. You can go a long way
in the sewers if you like; I don’t know how far. I niver was at the
end on them myself, for a cove can’t stop in longer than six or seven
hour, ’cause of the tide; you must be out before that’s up. There’s a
many branches on ivery side, but we don’t go into all; we go where we
know, and where we’re always sure to find somethink. I know a place
now where there’s more than two or three hundred weight of metal all
rusted together, and plenty of money among it too; but it’s too heavy
to carry it out, so it ’ill stop there I s’pose till the world comes
to an end. I often brought out a piece of metal half a hundred in
weight, and took it under the harch of the bridge, and broke it up with
a large stone to pick out the money. I’ve found sovereigns and half
sovereigns over and over ag’in, and three on us has often cleared a
couple of pound apiece in one day out of the sewers. But we no sooner
got the money than the publican had it. I only wish I’d back all the
money I’ve guv to the publican, and I wouldn’t care how the wind blew
for the rest of my life. I never thought about taking a hammer along
with me into the sewer, no; I never thought I’d want it. You can’t go
in every day, the tides don’t answer, and they’re so pertikler now,
far more pertikler than formerly; if you was known to touch the traps,
you’d git hauled up afore the beak. It’s done for all that, and though
there _is_ so many eyes about. The “Johnnys” on the water are always
on the look out, and if they sees any on us about, we has to cut our
lucky. We shore workers sometimes does very well other ways. When we
hears of a fire anywheres, we goes and watches where they shoots the
rubbish, and then we goes and sifts it over, and washes it afterwards,
then all the metal sinks to the bottom. The way we does it is this
here: we takes a barrel cut in half, and fills it with water, and then
we shovels in the siftings, and stirs ’em round and round and round
with a stick; then we throws out that water and puts in some fresh, and
stirs that there round ag’in; arter some time the water gets clear,
and every thing heavy’s fell to the bottom, and then we sees what it
is and picks it out. I’ve made from a pound to thirty shilling a day,
at that there work on lead alone. The time the Parliament Houses was
burnt, the rubbish was shot in Hyde Park, and Long J---- and I goes
to work it, and while we were at it, we didn’t make less nor three
pounds apiece a day; we found sovereigns and half sovereigns, and lots
of silver half melted away, and jewellery, such as rings, and stones,
and brooches; but we never got half paid for them. I found two sets
of bracelets for a lady’s arms, and took ’em to a jeweller, and he
tried them jist where the “great” heat had melted the catch away, and
found they was only metal double plated, or else he said as how he’d
give us thirty pounds for them; howsomever, we takes them down to a
Jew in Petticoat-lane, who used to buy things of us, and he gives us
7_l._ 10_s._ for ’em. We found so many things, that at last Long J----
and I got to quarrel about the “whacking;” there was cheatin’ a goin’
on; it wasn’t all fair and above board as it ought to be, so we gits
to fightin’, and kicks up sich a jolly row, that they wouldn’t let us
work no more, and takes and buries the whole on the rubbish. There’s
plenty o’ things under the ground along with it now, if anybody could
git at them. There was jist two loads o’ rubbish shot at one time in
Bishop Bonner’s-fields, which I worked by myself, and what do you think
I made out of that there?--why I made 3_l._ 5_s._ The rubbish was got
out of a cellar, what hadn’t been stirred for fifty year or more, so I
thinks there ought to be somethink in it, and I keeps my eye on it, and
watches where it’s shot; then I turns to work, and the first thing I
gits hold on is a chain, which I takes to be copper; it was so dirty,
but it turned out to be all solid goold, and I gets 1_l._ 5_s._ for it
from the Jew; arter that I finds lots o’ coppers, and silver money, and
many things besides. _The reason I likes this sort of life is, ’cause
I can sit down when I likes, and nobody can’t order me about. When I’m
hard up, I knows as how I must work, and then I goes at it like sticks
a breaking_; and tho’ the times isn’t as they was, I can go now and
pick up my four or five bob a day, where another wouldn’t know how to
get a brass farden.”

There is a strange tale in existence among the shore-workers, of
a race of wild hogs inhabiting the sewers in the neighbourhood of
Hampstead. The story runs, that a sow in young, by some accident got
down the sewer through an opening, and, wandering away from the spot,
littered and reared her offspring in the drain, feeding on the offal
and garbage washed into it continually. Here, it is alleged, the breed
multiplied exceedingly, and have become almost as ferocious as they
are numerous. This story, apocryphal as it seems, has nevertheless
its believers, and it is ingeniously argued, that the reason why none
of the subterranean animals have been able to make their way to the
light of day is, that they could only do so by reaching the mouth of
the sewer at the river-side, while, in order to arrive at that point,
they must necessarily encounter the Fleet ditch, which runs towards the
river with great rapidity, and as it is the obstinate nature of a pig
to swim _against_ the stream, the wild hogs of the sewers invariably
work their way back to their original quarters, and are thus never to
be seen. What seems strange in the matter is, that the inhabitants
of Hampstead never have been known to see any of these animals pass
beneath the gratings, nor to have been disturbed by their gruntings.
The reader of course can believe as much of the story as he pleases,
and it is right to inform him that the sewer-hunters themselves have
never yet encountered any of the fabulous monsters of the Hampstead
sewers.

OF THE MUD-LARKS.

There is another class who may be termed river-finders, although their
occupation is connected only with the shore; they are commonly known by
the name of “mud-larks,” from being compelled, in order to obtain the
articles they seek, to wade sometimes up to their middle through the
mud left on the shore by the retiring tide. These poor creatures are
certainly about the most deplorable in their appearance of any I have
met with in the course of my inquiries. They may be seen of all ages,
from mere childhood to positive decrepitude, crawling among the barges
at the various wharfs along the river; it cannot be said that they
are clad in rags, for they are scarcely half covered by the tattered
indescribable things that serve them for clothing; their bodies are
grimed with the foul soil of the river, and their torn garments
stiffened up like boards with dirt of every possible description.

Among the mud-larks may be seen many old women, and it is indeed
pitiable to behold them, especially during the winter, bent nearly
double with age and infirmity, paddling and groping among the wet mud
for small pieces of coal, chips of wood, or any sort of refuse washed
up by the tide. These women always have with them an old basket or
an old tin kettle, in which they put whatever they chance to find.
It usually takes them a whole tide to fill this receptacle, but when
filled, it is as much as the feeble old creatures are able to carry
home.

[Illustration: THE MUD-LARK.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

The mud-larks generally live in some court or alley in the
neighbourhood of the river, and, as the tide recedes, crowds of
boys and little girls, some old men, and many old women, may be
observed loitering about the various stairs, watching eagerly for the
opportunity to commence their labours. When the tide is sufficiently
low they scatter themselves along the shore, separating from each
other, and soon disappear among the craft lying about in every
direction. This is the case on both sides of the river, as high up as
there is anything to be found, extending as far as Vauxhall-bridge,
and as low down as Woolwich. The mud-larks themselves, however, know
only those who reside near them, and whom they are accustomed to meet
in their daily pursuits; indeed, with but few exceptions, these people
are dull, and apparently stupid; this is observable particularly among
the boys and girls, who, when engaged in searching the mud, hold but
little converse one with another. The men and women may be passed and
repassed, but they notice no one; they never speak, but with a stolid
look of wretchedness they plash their way through the mire, their
bodies bent down while they peer anxiously about, and occasionally
stoop to pick up some paltry treasure that falls in their way.

The mud-larks collect whatever they happen to find, such as coals,
bits of old-iron, rope, bones, and copper nails that drop from ships
while lying or repairing along shore. Copper nails are the most
valuable of all the articles they find, but these they seldom obtain,
as they are always driven from the neighbourhood of a ship while being
new-sheathed. Sometimes the younger and bolder mud-larks venture on
sweeping some empty coal-barge, and one little fellow with whom I
spoke, having been lately caught in the act of so doing, had to undergo
for the offence seven days’ imprisonment in the House of Correction:
this, he says, he liked much better than mud-larking, for while he
staid there he wore a coat and shoes and stockings, and though he had
not over much to eat, he certainly was never afraid of going to bed
without anything at all--as he often had to do when at liberty. He
thought he would try it on again in the winter, he told me, saying, it
would be so comfortable to have clothes and shoes and stockings then,
and not be obliged to go into the cold wet mud of a morning.

The coals that the mud-larks find, they sell to the poor people of the
neighbourhood at 1_d._ per pot, holding about 14 lbs. The iron and
bones and rope and copper nails which they collect, they sell at the
rag-shops. They dispose of the iron at 5 lbs. for 1_d._, the bones at
3 lbs. a 1_d._, rope a 1/2_d._ per lb. wet, and 3/4_d._ per lb. dry,
and copper nails at the rate of 4_d._ per lb. They occasionally pick up
tools, such as saws and hammers; these they dispose of to the seamen
for biscuit and meat, and sometimes sell them at the rag-shops for a
few halfpence. In this manner they earn from 2-1/2_d._ to 8_d._ per
day, but rarely the latter sum; their average gains may be estimated
at about 3_d._ per day. The boys, after leaving the river, sometimes
scrape their trousers, and frequent the cab-stands, and try to earn a
trifle by opening the cab-doors for those who enter them, or by holding
gentlemen’s horses. Some of them go, in the evening, to a ragged
school, in the neighbourhood of which they live; more, as they say,
because other boys go there, than from any desire to learn.

At one of the stairs in the neighbourhood of the pool, I collected
about a dozen of these unfortunate children; there was not one of
them over twelve years of age, and many of them were but six. It
would be almost impossible to describe the wretched group, so motley
was their appearance, so extraordinary their dress, and so stolid and
inexpressive their countenances. Some carried baskets, filled with the
produce of their morning’s work, and others old tin kettles with iron
handles. Some, for want of these articles, had old hats filled with
the bones and coals they had picked up; and others, more needy still,
had actually taken the caps from their own heads, and filled them with
what they had happened to find. The muddy slush was dripping from their
clothes and utensils, and forming a puddle in which they stood. There
did not appear to be among the whole group as many filthy cotton rags
to their backs as, when stitched together, would have been sufficient
to form the material of one shirt. There were the remnants of one or
two jackets among them, but so begrimed and tattered that it would
have been difficult to have determined either the original material
or make of the garment. On questioning one, he said his father was
a coal-backer; he had been dead eight years; the boy was nine years
old. His mother was alive; she went out charing and washing when she
could get any such work to do. She had 1_s._ a day when she could get
employment, but that was not often; he remembered once to have had
a pair of shoes, but it was a long time since. “It is very cold in
winter,” he said, “to stand in the mud without shoes,” but he did not
mind it in summer. He had been three years mud-larking, and supposed he
should remain a mud-lark all his life. What else could he be? for there
was nothing else that he knew _how_ to do. Some days he earned 1_d._,
and some days 4_d._; he never earned 8_d._ in one day, that would have
been a “jolly lot of money.” He never found a saw or a hammer, he
“only wished” he could, they would be glad to get hold of them at the
dolly’s. He had been one month at school before he went mud-larking.
Some time ago he had gone to the ragged-school; but he no longer went
there, for he forgot it. He could neither read nor write, and did not
think he could learn if he tried “ever so much.” He didn’t know what
religion his father and mother were, nor did know what religion meant.
God was God, he said. He had heard he was good, but didn’t know what
good he was to him. He thought he was a Christian, but he didn’t know
what a Christian was. He had heard of Jesus Christ once, when he went
to a Catholic chapel, but he never heard tell of who or what he was,
and didn’t “particular care” about knowing. His father and mother were
born in Aberdeen, but he didn’t know where Aberdeen was. London was
England, and England, he said, was in London, but he couldn’t tell in
what part. He could not tell where he would go to when he died, and
didn’t believe any one could tell _that_. Prayers, he told me, were
what people said to themselves at night. _He_ never said any, and
didn’t know any; his mother sometimes used to speak to him about them,
but he could never learn any. His mother didn’t go to church or to
chapel, because she had no clothes. All the money he got he gave to
his mother, and she bought bread with it, and when they had no money
they lived the best way they could.

Such was the amount of intelligence manifested by this unfortunate
child.

Another was only seven years old. He stated that his father was a
sailor who had been hurt on board ship, and been unable to go to sea
for the last two years. He had two brothers and a sister, one of them
older than himself; and his elder brother was a mud-lark like himself.
The two had been mud-larking more than a year; they went because they
saw other boys go, and knew that they got money for the things they
found. They were often hungry, and glad to do anything to get something
to eat. Their father was not able to earn anything, and their mother
could get but little to do. They gave all the money they earned to
their mother. They didn’t gamble, and play at pitch and toss when they
had got some money, but some of the big boys did on the Sunday, when
they didn’t go a mud-larking. He couldn’t tell why they did nothing on
a Sunday, “only they didn’t;” though sometimes they looked about to
see where the best place would be on the next day. He didn’t go to the
ragged school; he should like to know how to read a book, though he
couldn’t tell what good it would do him. He didn’t like mud larking,
would be glad of something else, but didn’t know anything else that he
could do.

Another of the boys was the son of a dock labourer,--casually employed.
He was between seven and eight years of age, and his sister, who was
also a mud-lark, formed one of the group. The mother of these two was
dead, and there were three children younger than themselves.

The rest of the histories may easily be imagined, for there was a
painful uniformity in the stories of all the children: they were either
the children of the very poor, who, by their own improvidence or some
overwhelming calamity, had been reduced to the extremity of distress,
or else they were orphans, and compelled from utter destitution to seek
for the means of appeasing their hunger in the mud of the river. That
the majority of this class are ignorant, and without even the rudiments
of education, and that many of them from time to time are committed to
prison for petty thefts, cannot be wondered at. Nor can it even excite
our astonishment that, once within the walls of a prison, and finding
how much more comfortable it is than their previous condition, they
should return to it repeatedly. As for the females growing up under
such circumstances, the worst may be anticipated of them; and in proof
of this I have found, upon inquiry, that very many of the unfortunate
creatures who swell the tide of prostitution in Ratcliff-highway, and
other low neighbourhoods in the East of London, have originally been
mud-larks; and only remained at that occupation till such time as they
were capable of adopting the more easy and more lucrative life of the
prostitute.

As to the numbers and earnings of the mud-larks, the following
calculations fall short of, rather than exceed, the truth. From
Execution Dock to the lower part of Limehouse Hole, there are 14 stairs
or landing-places, by which the mud-larks descend to the shore in order
to pursue their employment. There are about as many on the opposite
side of the water similarly frequented.

At King James’ Stairs, in Wapping Wall, which is nearly a central
position, from 40 to 50 mud-larks go down daily to the river; the
mud-larks “using” the other stairs are not so numerous. If, therefore,
we reckon the number of stairs on both sides of the river at 28,
and the average number of mud-larks frequenting them at 10 each, we
shall have a total of 280. Each mud-lark, it has been shown, earns on
an average 3_d._ a day, or 1_s._ 6_d._ per week; so that the annual
earnings of each will be 3_l._ 18_s._, or say 4_l._, a year, and hence
the gross earnings of the 280 will amount to rather more than 1000_l._
per annum.

But there are, in addition to the mud-larks employed in the
neighbourhood of what may be called the pool, many others who work down
the river at various places as far as Blackwall, on the one side, and
at Deptford, Greenwich, and Woolwich, on the other. These frequent the
neighbourhoods of the various “yards” along shore, where vessels are
being built; and whence, at certain times, chips, small pieces of wood,
bits of iron, and copper nails, are washed out into the river. There
is but little doubt that this portion of the class earn much more than
the mud-larks of the pool, seeing that they are especially convenient
to the places where the iron vessels are constructed; so that the
presumption is, that the number of mud-larks “at work” on the banks
of the Thames (especially if we include those above bridge), and the
value of the property extracted by them from the mud of the river, may
be fairly estimated at double that which is stated above, or say 550
gaining 2000_l._ per annum.

As an illustration of the doctrines I have endeavoured to enforce
throughout this publication, I cite the following history of one of the
above class. It may serve to teach those who are still sceptical as to
the degrading influence of circumstances upon the poor, that many of
the humbler classes, if placed in the same easy position as ourselves,
would become, perhaps, quite as “respectable” members of society.

The lad of whom I speak was discovered by me now nearly two years ago
“mud-larking” on the banks of the river near the docks. He was a quick,
intelligent little fellow, and had been at the business, he told me,
about three years. He had taken to mud-larking, he said, because his
clothes were too bad for him to look for anything better. He worked
every day, with 20 or 30 boys, who might all be seen at daybreak with
their trowsers tucked up, groping about, and picking out the pieces of
coal from the mud on the banks of the Thames. He went into the river
up to his knees, and in searching the mud he often ran pieces of glass
and long nails into his feet. When this was the case, he went home and
dressed the wounds, but returned to the river-side directly, “for
should the tide come up,” he added, “without my having found something,
why I must starve till next low tide.” In the very cold weather he and
his other shoeless companions used to stand in the hot water that ran
down the river side from some of the steam-factories, to warm their
frozen feet.

At first he found it difficult to keep his footing in the mud, and he
had known many beginners fall in. He came to my house, at my request,
the morning after my first meeting with him. It was the depth of
winter, and the poor little fellow was nearly destitute of clothing.
His trousers were worn away up to his knees, he had no shirt, and his
legs and feet (which were bare) were covered with chilblains. On being
questioned by me he gave the following account of his life:--

He was fourteen years old. He had two sisters, one fifteen and the
other twelve years of age. His father had been dead nine years. The man
had been a coal-whipper, and, from getting his work from one of the
publican employers in those days, had become a confirmed drunkard. When
he married he held a situation in a warehouse, where his wife managed
the first year to save 4_l._ 10_s._ out of her husband’s earnings;
but from the day he took to coal-whipping she had never saved one
halfpenny, indeed she and her children were often left to starve. The
man (whilst in a state of intoxication) had fallen between two barges,
and the injuries he received had been so severe that he had lingered in
a helpless state for three years before his death. After her husband’s
decease the poor woman’s neighbours subscribed 1_l._ 5_s._ for her;
with this sum she opened a greengrocer’s shop, and got on very well for
five years.

When the boy was nine years old his mother sent him to the Red Lion
school at Green-bank, near Old Gravel-lane, Ratcliffe-highway; she
paid 1_d._ a week for his learning. He remained there for a year; then
the potato-rot came, and his mother lost upon all she bought. About
the same time two of her customers died 30_s._ in her debt; this loss,
together with the potato-disease, completely ruined her, and the whole
family had been in the greatest poverty from that period. Then she was
obliged to take all her children from their school, that they might
help to keep themselves as best they could. Her eldest girl sold fish
in the streets, and the boy went to the river-side to “pick up” his
living. The change, however, was so great that shortly afterwards the
little fellow lay ill eighteen weeks with the ague. As soon as the boy
recovered his mother and his two sisters were “taken bad” with a fever.
The poor woman went into the “Great House,” and the children were taken
to the Fever Hospital. When the mother returned home she was too weak
to work, and all she had to depend on was what her boy brought from the
river. They had nothing to eat and no money until the little fellow
had been down to the shore and picked up some coals, selling them for
a trifle. “And hard enough he had to work for what he got, poor boy,”
said his mother to me on a future occasion, sobbing; “still he never
complained, but was quite proud when he brought home enough for us to
get a bit of meat with; and when he has sometimes seen me down-hearted,
he has clung round my neck, and assured me that one day God would see
us cared for if I would put my trust in Him.” As soon as his mother was
well enough she sold fruit in the streets, or went out washing when she
could get a day’s work.

The lad suffered much from the pieces of broken glass in the mud. Some
little time before I met with him he had run a copper nail into his
foot. This lamed him for three months, and his mother was obliged to
carry him on her back every morning to the doctor. As soon, however,
as he could “hobble” (to use his mother’s own words) he went back to
the river, and often returned (after many hours’ hard work in the mud)
with only a few pieces of coal, not enough to sell even to get them a
bit of bread. One evening, as he was warming his feet in the water that
ran from a steam factory, he heard some boys talking about the Ragged
School in High-street, Wapping.

“They was saying what they used to learn there,” added the boy. “They
asked me to come along with them for it was great fun. They told me
that all the boys used to be laughing and making game of the master.
They said they used to put out the gas and chuck the slates all about.
They told me, too, that there was a good fire there, so I went to have
a warm and see what it was like. When I got there the master was very
kind to me. They used to give us tea-parties, and to keep us quiet they
used to show us the magic lantern. I soon got to like going there, and
went every night for six months. There was about 40 or 50 boys in the
school. The most of them was thieves, and they used to go thieving
the coals out of barges along shore, and cutting the ropes off ships,
and going and selling it at the rag-shops. They used to get 3/4_d._ a
lb. for the rope when dry, and 1/2_d._ when wet. Some used to steal
pudding out of shops and hand it to those outside, and the last boy
it was handed to would go off with it. They used to steal bacon and
bread sometimes as well. About half of the boys at the school was
thieves. Some had work to do at ironmongers, lead-factories, engineers,
soap-boilers, and so on, and some had no work to do and was good boys
still. After we came out of school at nine o’clock at night, some of
the bad boys would go a thieving, perhaps half-a-dozen and from that
to eight would go out in a gang together. There was one big boy of the
name of C----; he was 18 years old, and is in prison now for stealing
bacon; I think he is in the House of Correction. This C---- used to go
out of school before any of us, and wait outside the door as the other
boys came out. Then he would call the boys he wanted for his gangs on
one side, and tell them where to go and steal. He used to look out in
the daytime for shops where things could be ‘prigged,’ and at night he
would tell the boys to go to them. He was called the captain of the
gangs. He had about three gangs altogether with him, and there were
from six to eight boys in each gang. The boys used to bring what they
stole to C----, and he used to share it with them. I belonged to one of
the gangs. There were six boys altogether in my gang; the biggest lad,
that knowed all about the thieving, was the captain of the gang I was
in, and C---- was captain over him and over all of us.

“There was two brothers of them; you seed them, sir, the night you
first met me. The other boys, as was in my gang, was B---- B----, and
B---- L----, and W---- B----, and a boy we used to call ‘Tim;’ these,
with myself, used to make up one of the gangs, and we all of us used
to go a thieving every night after school-hours. When the tide would
be right up, and we had nothing to do along shore, we used to go
thieving in the daytime as well. It was B---- B----, and B---- L----,
as first put me up to go thieving; they took me with them, one night,
up the lane [New Gravel-lane], and I see them take some bread out of a
baker’s, and they wasn’t found out; and, after that, I used to go with
them regular. Then I joined C----’s gang; and, after that, C---- came
and told us that his gang could do better than ourn, and he asked us
to join our gang to his’n, and we did so. Sometimes we used to make
3_s._ or 4_s._ a day; or about 6_d._ apiece. While waiting outside the
school-doors, before they opened, we used to plan up where we would go
thieving after school was over. I was taken up once for thieving coals
myself, but I was let go again.”

I was so much struck with the boy’s truthfulness of manner, that I
asked him, _would_, he really lead a different life, if he saw a
means of so doing? He assured me he would, and begged me earnestly to
try him. Upon his leaving me, 2_s._ were given him for his trouble.
This small sum (I afterwards learned) kept the family for more than a
fortnight. The girl laid it out in sprats (it being then winter-time);
these she sold in the streets.

I mentioned the fact to a literary friend, who interested himself
in the boy’s welfare; and eventually succeeded in procuring him a
situation at an eminent printer’s. The subjoined letter will show how
the lad conducted himself while there.

“Whitefriars, April 22, 1850.

“Messrs. Bradbury and Evans beg to say that the boy J. C. has
conducted himself in a very satisfactory manner since he has been in
their employment.”

The same literary friend took the girl into his service. She is in a
situation still, though not in the same family.

The boy now holds a good situation at one of the daily newspaper
offices. So well has he behaved himself, that, a few weeks since, his
wages were increased from 6_s._ to 9_s._ per week. His mother (owing to
the boy’s exertions) has now a little shop, and is doing well.

This simple story requires no comments, and is narrated here in the
hope that it may teach many to know how often the poor boys reared
in the gutter are thieves, merely because society forbids them being
honest lads.

OF THE LONDON DUSTMEN, NIGHTMEN, SWEEPS, AND SCAVENGERS.

These men constitute a large body, and are a class who, all things
considered, do their work silently and efficiently. Almost without the
cognisance of the mass of the people, the refuse is removed from our
streets and houses; and London, as if in the care of a tidy housewife,
is _always_ being cleaned. Great as are the faults and absurdities
of many parts of our system of public cleansing, nevertheless, when
compared with the state of things in any continental capital, the
superiority of the metropolis of Great Britain is indisputable.

In all this matter there is little merit to be attributed to the
workmen, except that they may be well drilled; for the majority of them
are as much machines, apart from their animation, as are the cane and
whalebone made to cleanse the chimney, or the clumsy-looking machine
which, in its progress, is a vehicular scavenger, sweeping as it goes.

These public cleansers are to be thus classified:--

1. Dustmen, or those who empty and remove the collection of ashes,
bones, vegetables, &c., deposited in the dust-bins, or other refuse
receptacles throughout the metropolis.

2. Nightmen, or those who remove the contents of the cesspools.

3. Sweeps, or those who remove the soot from the chimneys.

4. Scavengers, or those who remove the dirt from the streets, roads,
and markets.

Let me, however, before proceeding further with the subject, lay
before the reader the following important return as to the extent and
contents of this prodigious city: for this document I am indebted to
the Commissioners of Police, gentlemen from whom I have derived the
most valuable information since the commencement of my inquiries, and
to whose courtesy and consideration I am anxious to acknowledge my many
obligations.

RETURN SHOWING THE EXTENT, POPULATION, AND POLICE FORCE IN THE
METROPOLITAN POLICE DISTRICT AND THE CITY OF LONDON IN SEPTEMBER, 1850.

-----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+------------+-------------
| Metropolitan Police District[6]. | |
+------------+-----------+--------------+ City of | Grand
| Inner | Outer | | London[8]. | Total.
|District[7].| District. | Total. | |
-----------------------------------------+------------+-----------+--------------+------------+-------------
Area (in square miles) | 91 | 609-1/2| 700-1/2 | 1-3/4 | 702-1/4
Parishes | 82 | 136 | 218 | 97 | 315
Streets, Roads, &c. (length of, in miles)| 1,700 | 1,936 | 3,636 | 50 | 3,686
Number of Houses inhabited | 289,912 | 59,995 | 349,907 | 15,613 | 365,520
„ „ uninhabited | 11,868 | 1,437 | 13,305 | 387 | 13,692
„ „ being built | 4,634 | 1,097 | 5,731 | 23 | 5,754
Population | 1,986,629 |350,331 |2,336,960 |125,000 |2,461,960
Police Force | 4,844 | 660 | 5,504 | 568 | 6,072
-----------------------------------------+------------+-----------+--------------+------------+----------

_18th September, 1850._

The total here given can hardly be considered as the dimensions of the
metropolis; though, where the capital begins and ends, it is difficult
to say. If, however, London be regarded as concentring within the
Inner Police District, then, adding the extent and contents of that
district to those of the City, as above detailed, we have the subjoined
statement as to the dimensions and inhabitants of the

_Metropolis Proper._

Area 92-3/4 square miles.
Parishes 179
Length of street, roads, &c. 1750 miles.
Number of inhabited houses 305,525
Ditto uninhabited 12,255
Ditto being built 4657
Population 2,111,629
Police force 5412

But if the extent of even this “inner district” be so vast as almost
to overpower the mind with its magnitude--if its population be greater
than that of the entire kingdom of Hanover, and almost equal to that of
the republic of Switzerland--if its houses be so numerous that placed
side by side they would form one continuous line of dwellings from its
centre to Moscow--if its streets and roads be nearly equal in length to
one quarter of the diameter of the earth itself,--what a task must the
cleansing of such a bricken wilderness be, and yet, assuredly, though
it be by far the greatest, it is at the same time by far the cleanest
city in the world.

The removal of the refuse of a large town is, perhaps, one of the
most important of social operations. Not only is it necessary for the
well-being of a vast aggregation of people that the ordure should be
removed from both within and around their dwellings as soon as it is
generated, but nature, ever working in a circle and reproducing in the
same ratio as she destroys, has made this same ordure not only the
cause of present disease when allowed to remain within the city, but
the means of future health and sustenance when removed to the fields.

In a leading article in the _Morning Chronicle_, written about two
years since, I said--

“That man gets his bones from the rocks and his muscles from the
atmosphere, is beyond all doubt. The iron in his blood and the lime in
his teeth were originally in the soil. But these could not be in his
body unless they had previously formed part of his food. And yet we can
neither live on air nor on stones. We cannot grow fat upon lime, and
iron is positively indigestible in our stomachs. It is by means of the
vegetable creation alone that we are enabled to convert the mineral
into flesh and blood. The only apparent use of herbs and plants is to
change the inorganic earth, air, and water, into organic substances
fitted for the nutrition of animals. The little lichen, which, by means
of the oxalic acid that it secretes, decomposes the rocks to which it
clings, and fits their lime for ‘assimilation’ with higher organisms,
is, as it were, but the primitive bone-maker of the world. By what
subtle transmutation inorganic nature is changed into organic, and dead
inert matter quickened with life, is far beyond us even to conjecture.
Suffice it that an express apparatus is required for the process--a
special mechanism to convert the ‘_crust_ of the earth,’ as it is
called, into food for man and beast.

“Now, in Nature everything moves in a circle--perpetually changing,
and yet ever returning to the point whence it started. Our bodies are
continually decomposing and recomposing--indeed, the very process of
breathing is but one of decomposition. As animals live on vegetables,
even so is the refuse of the animal the vegetable’s food. The carbonic
acid which comes from our lungs, and which is poison for us to inhale,
is not only the vital air of plants, but positively their nutriment.
With the same wondrous economy that marks all creation, it has been
ordained that what is unfitted for the support of the superior
organisms, is of all substances the best adapted to give strength and
vigour to the inferior. That which we excrete as pollution to our
system, they secrete as nourishment to theirs. Plants are not only
Nature’s scavengers but Nature’s purifiers. They remove the filth
from the earth, as well as disinfect the atmosphere, and fit it to be
breathed by a higher order of beings. Without the vegetable creation
the animal could neither have been nor be. Plants not only fitted the
earth originally for the residence of man and the brute, but to this
day they continue to render it habitable to us. For this end their
nature has been made the very antithesis to ours. The process by which
we live is the process by which they are destroyed. That which supports
respiration in us produces putrefaction in them. What our lungs throw
off, their lungs absorb--what our bodies reject, their roots imbibe.

“Hence, in order that the balance of waste and supply should be
maintained--that the principle of universal compensation should be kept
up, and that what is rejected by us should go to the sustenance of
plants, Nature has given us several instinctive motives to remove our
refuse from us. She has not only constituted that which we egest the
most loathsome of all things to our senses and imagination, but she has
rendered its effluvium highly pernicious to our health--sulphuretted
hydrogen being at once the most deleterious and offensive of all gases.
Consequently, as in all other cases where the great law of Nature has
to be enforced by special sanctions, a double motive has been given us
to do that which it is necessary for us to do, and thus it has been
made not only advantageous to us to remove our refuse to the fields,
but positively detrimental to our health, and disgusting to our senses,
to keep it in the neighbourhood of our houses.

“In every well-regulated State, therefore, an effective and rapid
means for carrying off the ordure of the people to a locality where
it may be fruitful instead of destructive, becomes a most important
consideration. Both the health and the wealth of the nation depend upon
it. If to make two blades of wheat grow where one grew before is to
confer a benefit on the world, surely to remove that which will enable
us at once to do this, and to purify the very air which we breathe,
as well as the water which we drink, must be a still greater boon
to society. It is, in fact, to give the community not only a double
amount of food, but a double amount of health to enjoy it. We are now
beginning to understand this. Up to the present time we have only
thought of removing our refuse--the idea of using it never entered our
minds. It was not until science taught us the dependence of one order
of creation upon another, that we began to see that what appeared worse
than worthless to us was Nature’s capital--_wealth set aside for future
production_.”

In connection with this part of the subject, viz., the use of human
refuse, I would here draw attention to those erroneous notions, as
to the multiplication of the people, which teach us to look upon the
increase of the population beyond certain limits as the greatest
possible evil that can befall a community. Population, it is said,
multiplies itself in a geometrical ratio, whereas the produce of the
land is increased only in arithmetical proportion; that is to say,
while the people are augmented after the rate of--

2 4 8 16 32 64

the quantity of food for them can be extended only in the following
degrees:--

2 4 6 8 10 12

The cause of this is said to be that, after a certain stage in the
cultivation of the soil, the increase of the produce from land is not
in proportion to the increase of labour devoted to it; that is to say,
doubling the labour does not double the crop; and hence it is asserted
that the human race increasing at a quicker rate than the food,
insufficient sustenance must be the necessary lot of a portion of the
people in every densely-populated community.

That men of intelligence and education should have been persuaded by
so plausible a doctrine at the time of its first promulgation may be
readily conceived, for then the notions concerning organic chemistry
were vague in the extreme, and the great universal law of Waste
and Supply remained to be fully developed; but that men pretending
to the least scientific knowledge should in these days be found
advocating the Population Theory is only another of the many proofs
of the indisposition of even the strongest minds to abandon their pet
prejudices. Assuredly Malthus and Liebig are incompatible. If the new
notions as to the chemistry of vegetation be true, then must the old
notions as to population be utterly unfounded. If what we excrete
plants secrete--if what we exhale they inspire--if our refuse is their
food--then it follows that to increase the population is to increase
the quantity of manure, while to increase the manure is to augment
the food of plants, and consequently the plants themselves. If the
plants nourish us, we at least nourish them. It seems never to have
occurred to the economists that plants themselves required sustenance,
and consequently they never troubled themselves to inquire whence they
derived the elements of their growth. Had they done this they would
never have even expected that a double quantity of mere labour upon the
soil should have doubled the produce; but they would rather have seen
that it was utterly impossible for the produce to be doubled without
the food in the soil being doubled likewise; that is to say, they would
have perceived that plants could not, whatever the labour exerted upon
their cultivation, extract the elements of their organization from the
earth and air, unless those elements previously existed in the land and
atmosphere in which they grew, and that such elements, moreover, could
not exist there without some organic being to egest them.

This doctrine of the universal Compensation extending throughout the
material world, and more especially through the animal and vegetable
kingdom, is, perhaps, one of the grandest and most consoling that
science has yet revealed to us, making each mutually dependent on the
other, and so contributing each to the other’s support. Moreover it is
the more comforting, as enabling us almost to demonstrate the falsity
of a creed which is opposed to every generous impulse of our nature,
and which is utterly irreconcilable with the attributes of the Creator.

“Thanks to organic chemistry,” I said two years ago in the _Morning
Chronicle_, “we are beginning to wake up. Science has taught us that
the removal of the ordure of towns to the fields is a question that
concerns not only our health, but, what is a far more important
consideration with us, our breeches pockets. What we, in our ignorance,
had mistaken for refuse of the vilest kind, we have now learned to
regard as being, with reference to its fertilizing virtues, ‘a precious
ore, running in rich veins beneath the surface of our streets.’
Whereas, if allowed to reek and seethe in cesspools within scent of
our very hearths, or to pollute the water that we use to quench our
thirst and cook our food, it becomes, like all wealth badly applied,
converted into ‘poison:’ as Romeo says of gold to the apothecary--

‘Doing more murders in this loathsome world
Than those poor compounds which thou mayst not sell.’

“Formerly, in our eagerness to get rid of the pollution, we had
literally not looked beyond our noses: hence our only care was to carry
off the nuisance from the immediate vicinity of our own residences.
It was no matter to us what became of it, so long as it did not taint
the atmosphere around us. This the very instincts of our nature had
made objectionable to us; so we laid down just as many drains and
sewers as would carry our night-soil to the nearest stream; and thus,
instead of poisoning the air that we breathed, we poisoned the water
that we drank. Then, as the town extended--for cities, like mosaic
work, are put together piecemeal--street being dovetailed to street,
like county to county in our children’s geographical puzzles--each new
row of houses tailed on its drains to those of its neighbours, without
any inquiry being made as to whether they were on the same level or
not. The consequence of this is, that the sewers in many parts of our
metropolis are subject to an ebb and flood like their central stream,
so that the pollution which they remove at low-water, they regularly
bring back at high-water to the very doors of the houses whence they
carried it.

“According to the average of the returns, from 1841 to 1846, we
are paying two millions every year for guano, bone-dust, and other
foreign fertilizers of our soil. In 1845, we employed no fewer than
683 ships to bring home 220,000 tons of animal manure from Ichaboe
alone; and yet we are every day emptying into the Thames 115,000 tons
of a substance which has been proved to be possessed of even greater
fertilizing powers. With 200 tons of the sewage that we are wont to
regard as refuse, applied to the irrigation of one acre of meadow
land, seven crops, we are told, have been produced in the year, each
of them worth from 6_l._ to 7_l._; so that, considering the produce to
have been doubled by these means, we have an increase of upwards of
20_l._ per acre per annum effected by the application of that refuse
to the surface of our fields. This return is at the rate of 10_l._
for every 100 tons of sewage; and, since the total amount of refuse
discharged into the Thames from the sewers of the metropolis is, in
round numbers, 40,000,000 tons per annum, it follows that, according to
such estimate, we are positively wasting 4,000,000_l._ of money every
year; or, rather, _it costs us that amount to poison the waters about
us_. Or, granting that the fertilizing power of the metropolitan refuse
is--as it is said to be--as great for arable as for pasture-lands,
then for every 200 tons of manure that we now cast away, we might have
an increase of at least 20 bushels of corn per acre. Consequently
the entire 40,000,000 tons of sewage, if applied to fatten the land
instead of to poison the water, would, at such a rate of increase,
swell our produce to the extent of 4,000,000 bushels of wheat per
annum. Calculating then that each of these bushels would yield 16
quartern loaves, it would follow that we fling into the Thames no less
than 246,000,000 lbs. of bread every year; or, still worse, by pouring
into the river that which, if spread upon our fields, would enable
thousands to live, we convert the elements of life and health into the
germs of disease and death, changing into slow but certain poisons that
which, in the subtle transmutation of organic nature, would become
acres of life-sustaining grain.” I shall have more to say subsequently
on this waste and its consequences.

These considerations show how vastly important it is that in the best
of all possible ways we should _collect_, _remove_, and _use_ the
scavengery and excrementitious matter of our streets and houses.

Now the removal of the refuse of London is no slight task, consisting,
as it does, of the cleansing of 1750 miles of streets and roads; of
collecting the dust from 300,000 dust-bins; of emptying (according to
the returns of the Board of Health) the same number of cesspools, and
sweeping near upon 3,000,000 chimneys.

A task so vast it might naturally be imagined would give employment to
a number of hands, and yet, if we trusted the returns of the Occupation
Abstract of 1841, the whole of these stupendous operations are
performed by a limited number of individuals.

RETURN OF THE NUMBER OF SWEEPS, DUSTMEN, AND NIGHTMEN IN THE
METROPOLIS, ACCORDING TO THE CENSUS OF 1841.

------------------------+------+----------------------+----------------------
| | Males. | Females.
| +------------+---------+------------+---------
|Total.|20 years and| |20 years and|
| | upwards. |Under 20.| upwards. |Under 20.
------------------------+------+------------+---------+------------+---------
Chimney Sweepers | 1033 | 619 | 370 | 44 |
Scavengers and Nightmen | 254 | 227 | 10 | 17 |
------------------------+------+------------+---------+------------+---------

I am informed by persons in the trade that the “females” here
mentioned as chimney-sweepers, and scavengers, and nightmen, must be
such widows or daughters of sweeps and nightmen as have succeeded to
their businesses, for that no women _work_ at such trades; excepting,
perhaps, in the management and care of the soot, in assisting to empty
and fill the bags. Many females, however, are employed in sifting dust,
but the calling of the dustman and dustwoman is not so much as noticed
in the population returns.

According to the occupation abstract of the previous decennial period,
the number of males of 20 years and upwards (for none others were
mentioned) pursuing the same callings in the metropolis in 1831, were
as follows:--

Soot and chimney-sweepers 421
Nightmen and scavengers 130

Hence the increase in the adult male operatives belonging to these
trades, between 1831 and 1841, was, for Chimney-sweeps, 198; and
Scavengers and Nightmen, 97.

But these returns are preposterously incorrect. In the first place
it was not until 1842 that the parliamentary enactment prohibiting
the further employment of climbing-boys for the purpose of sweeping
chimneys came into operation. At that time the number of inhabited
houses in the metropolis was in round numbers 250,000, and calculating
these to have contained only eight rooms each, there would have been at
the least 2,000,000 chimneys to sweep. Now, according to the government
returns above cited--the London climbing-boys (for the masters did not
and could not climb) in 1841 numbered only 370; at which rate there
would have been but one boy to no less than 5400 chimneys! Pursuing
the same mode of testing the validity of the “official” statements, we
find, as the nightmen generally work in gangs of four, that each of
the 63, or say 64, gangs comprised in the census returns, would have
had 4000 cesspools to empty of their contents; while, working both
as scavengers and nightmen (for, according to the census, they were
the _only_ individuals following those occupations in London), they
would after their nocturnal labours have had about 27 miles of streets
and roads to cleanse--a feat which would certainly have thrown the
scavengering prowess of Hercules into the shade.

Under the respective heads of the dustmen, nightmen, sweeps, and
scavengers, I shall give an account of the numbers, &c., employed, and
a resumé of the whole. It will be sufficient here to mention that my
investigations lead to the conclusion that, of men working as dustmen
(a portion of whom are employed as nightmen and scavengers) there are
at present about 1800 in the metropolis. The census of 1841, as I have
pointed out, mentions no dustman whatever!

But I have so often had instances of the defects of this national
numbering of the people that I have long since ceased to place much
faith in its returns connected with the humbler grades of labour. The
costermongers, for example, I estimate at about 10,000, whereas the
government reports, as has been before mentioned, ignore the very
existence of such a class of people, and make the entire hawkers,
hucksters, and pedlars of the metropolis to amount to no more than
2045. Again, the London “coal labourers, heavers, and porters” are
said, in the census of 1841, to be only 1700 in number; I find,
however, that there are no less than 1800 “registered” coal-whippers,
and as many coal porters; so that I am in no way inclined to give great
credence to the “official enumerations.” The difficulties which beset
the perfection of such a document are almost insuperable, and I have
already heard of returns for the forthcoming document, made by ignorant
people as to their occupations, which already go far to nullify the
facts in connection with the employment of the ignorant and profligate
classes of the metropolis.

Before quitting this part of the subject, viz., the extent of surface,
the length of streets, and the number of houses throughout the
metropolis requiring to be continually cleansed of their refuse, as
well as the number of people as continually engaged in so cleansing
them, let me here append the last returns of the Registrar General,
copied from the census of 1851, as to the dimensions and contents of
the metropolis according to that functionary, so that they may be
compared with those of the metropolitan police before given.

In Weale’s “_London Exhibited_,” which is by far the most comprehensive
description of the metropolis that I have seen, it is stated that it
is “only possible to adopt a general idea of the giant city,” as its
precise boundaries and extent cannot be defined. On the north of the
Thames, we are told, London extends to Edmonton and Finchley; on the
west it stretches to Acton and Hammersmith; on the east it reaches
Leyton and Ham; while on the south of the Thames the metropolis is said
to embrace Wandsworth, Streatham, Lewisham, Woolwich, and Plumstead.
“To each of these points,” says Mr. Weale, but upon what authority he
does not inform us, “continuous streets of houses reach; but the solid
mass of houses lies within narrow bounds--with these several long
arms extending from it. The greatest length of street, from east to
west,” he adds, “is about fourteen miles, and from north to south about
thirteen miles. The solid mass is about seven miles by four miles, so
that the ground covered with houses is not less than 20 square miles.”

Mr. McCulloch, in his “_London in 1850-51_,” has a passage to the
same effect. He says, “The continued and rapid increase of buildings
renders it difficult to ascertain the extent of the metropolis at any
particular period. If we include in it those parts only that present
a solid mass of houses, its length from east to west may be taken at
six miles, and its breadth from north to south at about three miles
and a half. There is, however, a nearly continuous line of houses
from Blackwall to Chelsea, a distance of about seven miles, and from
Walworth to Holloway, of four and a half miles. The extent of surface
covered by buildings is estimated at about sixteen square miles, or
above 10,000 acres, so that M. Say, the celebrated French economist,
did not really indulge in hyperbole when he said, ‘_Londres n’est plus
une ville: c’est une province couverte de maisons!_’ (London is no
longer a town: it is a province covered with houses).”

The Government authorities, however, appear to have very different
notions from either of the above gentlemen as to the extent of the
metropolis.

The limits of London, as at present laid down by the Registrar General,
include 176 parishes, besides several precincts, liberties, and
extra-parochial places, comprising altogether about 115 square miles.
According to the old bills of mortality, London formerly included only
148 parishes, which were located as follows:--

Parishes within the walls of the city 97
Parishes without the walls 17
Parishes in the city and liberties of Westminster 10
Out parishes in Middlesex and Surrey 24
---
148

The parishes which have been annexed to the above at different periods
since the commencement of the present century are:--

Parishes added by the late Mr. Rickman
(see Pop. Abstracts, 1801-31) (including
Chelsea, Kensington, Paddington, St.
Marylebone, and St. Pancras) 5

Parishes added by the Registrar General,
1838 (including Hammersmith, Fulham,
Stoke Newington, Stratford-le-Bow, Bromley,
Camberwell, Deptford, Greenwich, and
Woolwich) 10

Parishes added by the Registrar General
in 1844 (including Clapham, Battersea,
Wandsworth, Putney, Lower Tooting, and
Streatham) 6

Parishes added by the Registrar General in
1846 (comprising Hampstead, Charlton,
Plumstead, Eltham, Lee, Kidbroke, and
Lewisham) 7
---
Total number of parishes in the metropolis,
as defined by the Registrar General 176

The extent of London, according to the limits assigned to it at the
several periods above mentioned, was--

Stat. Acres. Sq. miles.
London within the old bills
of mortality, from 1726 21,080 32

London, within the limits
adopted by the late Mr.
Rickman, 1801-31 29,850 46

London, within the limits
adopted by the Registrar
General, 1838-43 44,850 70

London, within the limits
adopted by the Registrar
General, 1844-46 55,650 87

London, within the limits
adopted by the Registrar
General in 1847-51 74,070 115

“London,” observes Mr. Weale, “has now swallowed up many cities, towns,
villages, and separate jurisdictions. The four commonwealths, or
kingdoms, of the Middle Saxons, East Saxons, the South Rick, and the
Kentwaras, once ruled over its surface. It now embraces the episcopal
cities of London and Westminster, the towns of Woolwich, Deptford, and
Wandsworth, the watering places of Hampstead, Highgate, Islington,
Acton, and Kilburn, the fishing town of Barking, the once secluded and
ancient villages of Ham, Hornsey, Sydenham, Lee, Kensington, Fulham,
Lambeth, Clapham, Paddington, Hackney, Chelsea, Stoke Newington,
Newington Butts, Plumstead, and many others.”

The 176 parishes now included by the Registrar General within the
boundaries of the metropolis, are arranged by him into five districts,
of which the areas, population, and number of inhabited houses were on
the 31st of March, 1851, as undermentioned:--

TABLE SHOWING THE AREA, NUMBER OF INHABITED HOUSES, AND POPULATION OF
THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE METROPOLIS, 1841-51.

------------------------------+--------+-----------------------+-------------------
| | Population. | Inhabited Houses.
DIVISIONS OF METROPOLIS. |Statute +-----------+-----------+---------+---------
| Acres. | 1841. | 1851. | 1841. | 1851.
------------------------------+--------+-----------+-----------+---------+---------
WEST DISTRICTS. | | | | |
Kensington | 7,860 | 74,898 | 119,990 | 10,962 | 17,292
Chelsea | 780 | 40,243 | 56,543 | 5,648 | 7,629
St. George’s, Hanover-square | 1,090 | 66,657 | 73,207 | 7,630 | 8,795
Westminster | 840 | 56,802 | 65,609 | 6,439 | 6,647
St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields | 260 | 25,132 | 24,557 | 2,439 | 2,323
St. James’s, Westminster | 165 | 37,457 | 36,426 | 3,590 | 3,460
| | | | |
NORTH DISTRICTS. | | | | |
Marylebone | 1,490 | 138,383 | 157,679 | 14,169 | 15,955
Hampstead (added 1846) | 2,070 | 10,109 | 11,986 | 1,411 | 1,719
Pancras | 2,600 | 129,969 | 167,198 | 14,766 | 18,731
Islington | 3,050 | 55,779 | 95,154 | 8,508 | 13,558
Hackney | 3,950 | 42,328 | 58,424 | 7,192 | 9,861
| | | | |
CENTRAL DISTRICTS. | | | | |
St Giles’s | 250 | 54,378 | 54,062 | 4,959 | 4,778
Strand | 163 | 43,667 | 44,446 | 4,327 | 3,938
Holborn | 188 | 44,532 | 46,571 | 4,603 | 4,517
Clerkenwell | 320 | 56,799 | 64,705 | 6,946 | 7,259
St. Luke’s | 240 | 49,908 | 54,058 | 6,385 | 6,421
East London |}[9]230 | 39,718 | 44,407 | 4,796 | 4,785
West London |} | 29,188 | 28,829 | 3,010 | 2,745
London, City of |[10]370 | 56,009 | 55,908 | 7,921 | 7,329
| | | | |
EAST DISTRICTS. | | | | |
Shoreditch | 620 | 83,564 | 109,209 | 12,642 | 15,433
Bethnal Green | 760 | 74,206 | 90,170 | 11,782 | 13,370
Whitechapel | 316 | 71,879 | 79,756 | 8,834 | 8,832
St George’s in the East | 230 | 41,416 | 48,375 | 5,985 | 6,151
Stepney | 2,518 | 90,831 | 110,669 | 14,364 | 16,346
Poplar | 1,250 | 31,171 | 47,157 | 5,066 | 6,882
| | | | |
SOUTH DISTRICTS. | | | | |
St. Saviour’s, Southwark | [11]| 33,027 | 35,729 | 4,659 | 4,613
St. Olave’s, Southwark | [11]| 19,869 | 19,367 | 2,523 | 2,365
Bermondsey | 620 | 35,002 | 48,128 | 5,674 | 7,095
St. George’s, Southwark |[11]590 | 46,718 | 51,825 | 6,663 | 7,005
Newington | 630 | 54,693 | 64,805 | 9,370 | 10,468
Lambeth | 3,640 | 116,072 | 139,240 | 17,791 | 20,520
Wandsworth (added 1843) | 10,800 | 39,918 | 50,770 | 6,459 | 8,290
Camberwell | 4,570 | 39,931 | 54,668 | 6,843 | 9,417
Rotherhithe | 690 | 13,940 | 17,778 | 2,420 | 2,834
Greenwich | 4,570 | 81,125 | 99,404 | 11,995 | 14,423
Lewisham (added 1846) | 16,350 | 23,051 | 34,831 | 3,966 | 5,936
------------------------------+--------+-----------+-----------+---------+---------
Total London Division | 74,070 | 1,948,369 | 2,361,640 | 262,737 | 307,722
------------------------------+--------+-----------+-----------+---------+---------

In order to be able to compare the average density of the population
in the various parts of London, I have made a calculation as to the
number of persons and houses to the acre, as well as the number of
inhabitants to each house. I have also computed the annual rate of
increase of the population from 1841-51, in the several localities
here mentioned, and append the result. It will be seen that, while
what are popularly known as the suburbs have increased, both in houses
and population, at a considerable rate, some of the more central parts
of London, on the contrary, have decreased not only in the number of
people, but in the number of dwellings as well. This has been the case
in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, St. James’s, Westminster, St. Giles’s,
and the City of London.

TABLE SHOWING THE INCREASE OF THE POPULATION AND INHABITED HOUSES, AS
WELL AS THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE AND HOUSES TO EACH ACRE, AND THE NUMBER
OF PERSONS TO EACH HOUSE IN THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE METROPOLIS IN
1841-51.

--------------------------------+----------------+---------------+---------+---------+---------
|Yearly Increase |Yearly Increase|Number of|Number of|Number of
| of Population | of Inhabited |People to|Inhabited| Persons
|per annum, from | Houses, from |the Acre,|Houses to| to each
| 1841-51. | 1841-51. | 1851. |the Acre,| House,
| | | | 1851. | 1851.
--------------------------------+----------------+---------------+---------+---------+---------
WEST DISTRICTS. | | | | |
Kensington | 4,509·2 | 633·0 | 15·2 | 2·2 | 6·9
Chelsea | 1,630·0 | 198·1 | 72·4 | 9·7 | 7·4
St. George’s, | | | | |
Hanover-square | 655·0 | 11·6 | 67·1 | 8·0 | 8·3
Westminster | 880·7 | 20·8 | 80·4 | 8·2 | 9·8
St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields |_decr._ 57·5[12]|_decr._11·6[12]| 94·3 | 8·9 | 10·5
St. James’s, Westminster | 103·1[12]| 13·0[12]| 220·7 | 20·9 | 10·5
NORTH DISTRICTS. | | | | |
Marylebone | 1,926·6 | 178·6 | 105·8 | 10·3 | 9·8
Hampstead | 187·7 | 30·8 | 5·7 | ·8 | 6·9
St. Pancras | 3,722·9 | 396·5 | 64·3 | 7·2 | 8·9
Islington | 3,937·5 | 505·0 | 31·5 | 4·4 | 7·0
Hackney | 1,609·6 | 719·2 | 14·7 | 2·3 | 5·9
CENTRAL DISTRICTS. | | | | |
St. Giles’s | _decr._31·6[12]|_decr._18·1[12]| 216·2 | 19·1 | 11·3
Strand | 77·9 |_decr._38·9[12]| 272·2 | 24·1 | 11·2
Holborn | 203·9 |_decr._ 8·6[12]| 247·7 | 24·0 | 10·3
Clerkenwell | 790·6 | 31·3 | 202·2 | 22·6 | 8·9
St. Luke’s | 415·0 | 3·6 | 225·2 | 26·7 | 8·4
East and West London | 433·0 |_decr._27·6[12]| 318·4 | 32·7 | 9·7
London City |_decr._ 10·1[12]|_decr._59·2[12]| 151·0 | 19·8 | 7·6
EAST DISTRICTS. | | | | |
Shoreditch | 2,564·5 | 279·1 | 176·1 | 24·8 | 7·0
Bethnal-green | 1,596·4 | 158·8 | 118·6 | 17·5 | 6·7
Whitechapel | 787·7 |_decr._ ·2[12]| 252·3 | 27·9 | 9·0
St. George’s-in-the-East | 695·9 | 16·6 | 210·3 | 26·7 | 7·8
Stepney | 1,983·8 | 198·2 | 43·9 | 6·4 | 6·7
Poplar | 1,598·6 | 181·6 | 37·7 | 5·5 | 6·8
SOUTH DISTRICTS. | | | | |
St. Saviour’s, St. Olave’s, and | | | | |
St. George’s, Southwark | 730·7 | 13·8 | 181·2 | 23·7 | 7·6
Bermondsey | 1,312·6 | 142·1 | 77·6 | 11·2 | 6·7
Newington | 1,011·2 | 109·8 | 102·8 | 16·6 | 6·1
Lambeth | 2,316·8 | 272·9 | 38·2 | 5·6 | 6·7
Wandsworth | 1,085·2 | 183·1 | 4·7 | ·7 | 6·1
Camberwell | 1,473·7 | 257·4 | 12·4 | 2·0 | 5·8
Rotherhithe | 383·8 | 41·4 | 25·7 | 4·1 | 6·2
Greenwich | 1,827·9 | 242·8 | 21·7 | 3·1 | 6·8
Lewisham | 1,178·0 | 197·0 | 2·1 | ·3 | 5·6
--------------------------------+----------------+---------------+---------+---------+---------
Total for all London | 41,327·1 | 4,498·5 | 31·8 | 4·1 | 7·6
--------------------------------+----------------+---------------+---------+---------+---------

By the above table we perceive that St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, St.
James’s, Westminster, St. Giles’s, the Strand, and the City have all
decreased both in population and houses since 1841. The population has
diminished most of all in St. James’s, and the houses the most in the
City. The suburban districts, however, such as Chelsea, Marylebone,
St. Pancras, Islington, Hackney, Shoreditch, Bethnal-green, Stepney,
Poplar, Bermondsey, Newington, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Camberwell,
Greenwich, and Lewisham, have all increased greatly within the last
ten years, both in dwellings and people. The greatest increase of the
population, as well as houses, has been in Kensington, where the yearly
addition has been 4500 people, and 630 houses.

The more densely-populated districts are, St. James’s, Westminster,
St. Giles’s, the Strand, Holborn, Clerkenwell, St. Luke, Whitechapel,
and St. George’s-in-the-East, in all of which places there are upwards
of 200 people to the acre, while in East and West London, in which
the population is the most dense of all, the number of people exceeds
300 to the acre. The least densely populated districts are Hampstead,
Wandsworth, and Lewisham, where the people are not more than six, and
as few as two to the acre.

The districts in which there are the greatest number of houses to
a given space, are St. James’s, Westminster, the Strand, Holborn,
Clerkenwell, St. Luke’s, Shoreditch, and St. George’s-in-the-East, in
all of which localities there are upwards of 20 dwellings to each acre
of ground, while in East and West London, which is the most closely
built over of all, the number of houses to each acre are as many as 32.
Hampstead and Lewisham appear to be the most open districts; for there
the houses are not more than eight and three to every ten acres of
ground.

The localities in which the houses are the most crowded with inmates
are the Strand and St. Giles’s, where there are more than eleven
people to each house, and St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and St. James’s,
Westminster, and Holborn, where each house has on an average ten
inmates, while in Lewisham and Wandsworth the houses are the least
crowded, for there we find only five people to every house.

Now, comparing this return with that of the metropolitan police,
we have the following results as to the extent and contents of the
Metropolis Proper:--

According
to According
Registrar to Metropolitan
General. Police.
Area (in statute acres) 74,070 58,880
Parishes 176 179
Number of inhabited houses 307,722 305,525
Population 2,361,640 2,111,629

Hence it will be seen that both the extent and contents of these two
returns differ most materially.

1st. The superficies of the Registrar General’s metropolis is very
nearly 13 square miles, or 15,190 statute acres, greater than the
metropolis of the police commissioners.

2nd. The number of inhabited houses is 2197 more in the one than in the
other.

3rd. The population of London, according to the Registrar General’s
limits, is 250,011, or a quarter of a million, more than it is
according to the limits of the metropolitan police.

It were much to be desired that some more definite and scientific
mode, not only of limiting, but of dividing the metropolis, were to be
adopted. At present there are, perhaps, as many different metropolises,
so to speak, and as many different modes of apportioning the several
parts of the whole into districts, as there are public bodies whose
operations are specially confined to the capital. The Registrar
General has, as we have seen, one metropolis divided into western,
northern, central, eastern, and southern districts. The metropolitan
police commissioners have another metropolis apportioned into its A
divisions, B divisions, and so forth; and the Post Office has a third
metropolis parcelled out in a totally different manner; while the
London City Mission, the Scripture Readers, the Ragged Schools, and the
many other similar metropolitan institutions, all seem to delight in
creating a distinct metropolis for themselves, thus tending to make the
statistical “confusion worse confounded.”

OF THE DUSTMEN OF LONDON.

Dust and rubbish accumulate in houses from a variety of causes, but
principally from the residuum of fires, the white ash and cinders, or
small fragments of unconsumed coke, giving rise to by far the greater
quantity. Some notion of the vast amount of this refuse annually
produced in London may be formed from the fact that the consumption of
coal in the metropolis is, according to the official returns, 3,500,000
tons per annum, which is at the rate of a little more than 11 tons per
house; the poorer families, it is true, do not burn more than 2 tons
in the course of the year, but then many such families reside in the
same house, and hence the average will appear in no way excessive.
Now the ashes and cinders arising from this enormous consumption of
coal would, it is evident, if allowed to lie scattered about in such a
place as London, render, ere long, not only the back streets, but even
the important thoroughfares, filthy and impassable. Upon the Officers
of the various parishes, therefore, has devolved the duty of seeing
that the refuse of the fuel consumed throughout London is removed
almost as fast as produced; this they do by entering into an agreement
for the clearance of the “dust-bins” of the parishioners as often as
required, with some person who possesses all necessary appliances for
the purpose--such as horses, carts, baskets, and shovels, together with
a plot of waste ground whereon to deposit the refuse. The persons with
whom this agreement is made are called “dust-contractors,” and are
generally men of considerable wealth.

The collection of “dust,” is now, more properly speaking, the removal
of it. The collection of an article implies the voluntary seeking
after it, and this the dustmen can hardly be said to do; for though
they parade the streets shouting for the dust as they go, they do so
rather to fulfil a certain duty they have undertaken to perform than in
any expectation of profit to be derived from the sale of the article.

Formerly the custom was otherwise; but then, as will be seen hereafter,
the residuum of the London fuel was far more valuable. Not many
years ago it was the practice for the various master dustmen to send
in their tenders to the vestry, on a certain day appointed for the
purpose, offering to pay a considerable sum yearly to the parish
authorities for liberty to collect the dust from the several houses.
The sum formerly paid to the parish of Shadwell, for instance, though
not a very extensive one, amounted to between 400_l._ or 500_l._ per
annum; but then there was an immense demand for the article, and the
contractors were unable to furnish a sufficient supply from London;
ships were frequently freighted with it from other parts, especially
from Newcastle and the northern ports, and at that time it formed an
article of considerable international commerce--the price being from
15_s._ to 1_l._ per chaldron. Of late years, however, the demand has
fallen off greatly, while the supply has been progressively increasing,
owing to the extension of the metropolis, so that the Contractors
have not only declined paying anything for liberty to collect it, but
now stipulate to receive a certain sum for the removal of it. It need
hardly be stated that the parishes always employ the man who requires
the least money for the performance of what has now become a matter
of duty rather than an object of desire. Some idea may be formed of
the change which has taken place in this business, from the fact, that
the aforesaid parish of Shadwell, which formerly received the sum
of 450_l._ per annum for liberty to collect the dust, now pays the
Contractor the sum of 240_l._ per annum for its removal.

The Court of Sewers of the City of London, in 1846, through the
advice of Mr. Cochrane, the president of the National Philanthropic
Association, were able to obtain from the contractors the sum of
5000_l._ for liberty to clear away the dirt from the streets and the
dust from the bins and houses in that district. The year following,
however, the contractors entered into a combination, and came to a
resolution not to bid so high for the privilege; the result was, that
they obtained their contracts at an expense of 2200_l._ By acting
on the same principle in the year after, they not only offered no
premium whatever for the contract, but the City Commissioners of Sewers
were obliged to pay them the sum of 300_l._ for removing the refuse,
and at present the amount paid by the City is as much as 4900_l._!
This is divided among four great contractors, and would, if equally
apportioned, give them 1250_l._ each.

I subjoin a list of the names of the principal contractors and the
parishes for which they are engaged:--

DISTRICTS CONTRACTED NAMES OF
FOR. CONTRACTORS.

{ Redding.
Four divisions of the City. { Rook.
{ J. Sinnott.
{ J. Gould.
Finsbury-square J. Gould.
St. Luke’s H. Dodd.
Shoreditch Ditto.
Norton Folgate J. Gould.
Bethnal-green E. Newman.
Holborn Pratt and Sewell.
Hatton-garden Ditto.
Islington Stroud, Brickmaker.
St. Martin’s Wm. Sinnott, Junior.
St. Mary-le-Strand J. Gore.
St. Sepulchre Ditto.
Savoy Ditto.
St. Clement Danes Rook.
St. James’s, Clerkenwell H. Dodd.
St. John’s, ditto J. Gould.
St. Margaret’s, Westminster W. Hearne.
St. John’s, ditto Stapleton and Holdsworth.
Lambeth W. Hearne.
Chelsea C. Humphries.
St. Marylebone J. Gore.
Blackfriars-bridge Jenkins.
St. Paul’s, Covent-garden W. Sinnott.
Piccadilly H. Tame.
Regent-street and Pall-mall W. Ridding.
St. George’s, Hanover-sq. H. Tame.
Paddington C. Humphries.
Camden-town Milton.
St. Pancras, S.W. Division W. Stapleton.
Southampton estate C. Starkey.
Skinner’s ditto H. North.
Brewer’s ditto C. Starkey.
Cromer ditto Ditto.
Calthorpe ditto Ditto.
Bedford ditto Gore.
Doughty ditto Martin.
Union ditto J. Gore.
Foundling ditto Pratt and Sewell.
Harrison ditto Martin.
St. Ann’s, Soho J. Gore.
Whitechapel Parsons.
Goswell-street Redding.
Commercial-road, East J. Sinnott.
Mile-end Newman.
Borough Hearne.
Bermondsey The parish.
Kensington H. Tame.
St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields and
St. George’s, Bloomsbury Redding.
Shadwell Westley.
St. George’s-in-the-East Ditto.
Battle-bridge Starkey.
Berkeley-square Clutterbuck.
St. George’s, Pimlico Redding.
Woods and Forests Ditto.
St. Botolph Westley.
St. John’s, Wapping Ditto.
Somers-town H. North.
Kentish-town J. Gore.
Rolls (Liberty of the) Pratt and Sewell.
Edward-square, Kensington C. Humphries.

All the metropolitan parishes now pay the contractors various amounts
for the removal of the dust, and I am credibly informed that there is
a system of underletting and jobbing in the dust contracts extensively
carried on. The contractor for a certain parish is often a different
person from the master doing the work, who is unknown in the contract.
Occasionally the work would appear to be subdivided and underlet a
second time.

The parish of St. Pancras is split into no less than 21 districts, each
district having a separate and independent “Board,” who are generally
at war with each other, and make separate contracts for their several
divisions. This is also the case in other large parishes, and these
and other considerations confirm me in the conclusion that of large
and small dust-contractors, job-masters, and middle-men, of one kind
or the other, throughout the metropolis, there cannot be less than the
number I have stated--90. With the exception of Bermondsey, there are
no parishes who remove their own dust.

It is difficult to arrive at any absolute statement as to the gross
amount paid by the different parishes for the removal of the entire
dust of the metropolis. From Shadwell the contractor, as we have seen,
receives 250_l._; from the city the four contractors receive as much
as 5000_l._; but there are many small parishes in London which do not
pay above a tithe of the last-mentioned sum. Let us, therefore, assume,
that one with another, the several metropolitan parishes pay 200_l._
a year each to the dust contractor. According to the returns before
given, there are 176 parishes in London. Hence, the gross amount paid
for the removal of the entire dust of the metropolis will be between
30,000_l._ and 40,000_l._ per annum.

The removal of the dust throughout the metropolis, is, therefore,
carried on by a number of persons called Contractors, who undertake,
as has been stated, for a certain sum, to cart away the refuse from
the houses as frequently as the inhabitants desire it. To ascertain
the precise numbers of these contractors is a task of much greater
difficulty than might at first be conceived.

The London Post Office Directory gives the following number of
tradesmen connected with the removal of refuse from the houses and
streets of the metropolis.

Dustmen 9
Scavengers 10
Nightmen 14
Sweeps 32

But these numbers are obviously incomplete, for even a cursory
passenger through London must have noticed a greater number of names
upon the various dust carts to be met with in the streets than are here
set down.

A dust-contractor, who has been in the business upwards of 20 years,
stated that, from his knowledge of the trade, he should suppose that at
present there might be about 80 or 90 contractors in the metropolis.
Now, according to the returns before given, there are within the limits
of the Metropolitan Police District 176 parishes, and comparing this
with my informant’s statement, that many persons contract for more than
one parish (of which, indeed, he himself is an instance), there remains
but little reason to doubt the correctness of his supposition--that
there are, in all, between 80 or 90 dust-contractors, large and small,
connected with the metropolis. Assuming the aggregate number to be 88,
there would be one contractor to every two parishes.

These dust-contractors are likewise the contractors for the
cleansing of the streets, except where that duty is performed by the
Street-Orderlies; they are also the persons who undertake the emptying
of the cesspools in their neighbourhood; the latter operation, however,
is effected by an arrangement between themselves and the landlords
of the premises, and forms no part of their parochial contracts. At
the office of the Street Orderlies in Leicester Square, they have
knowledge of only 30 contractors connected with the metropolis; but
this is evidently defective, and refers to the “large masters” alone;
leaving out of all consideration, as it does, the host of small
contractors scattered up and down the metropolis, who are able to
employ only two or three carts and six or seven men each; many of such
small contractors being merely master sweeps who have managed to “get
on a little in the world,” and who are now able to contract, “in a
small way,” for the removal of dust, street-sweepings, and night-soil.
Moreover, many of even the “great contractors” being unwilling to
venture upon an outlay of capital for carts, horses, &c., when their
contract is only for a year, and may pass at the end of that time into
the hands of any one who may underbid them--many such, I repeat, are
in the habit of underletting a portion of their contract to others
possessing the necessary appliances, or of entering into partnership
with them. The latter is the case in the parish of Shadwell, where a
person having carts and horses shares the profits with the original
contractor. The agreement made on such occasions is, of course, a
secret, though the practice is by no means uncommon; indeed, there is
so much secrecy maintained concerning all matters connected with this
business, that the inquiry is beset with every possible difficulty.
The gentleman who communicated to me the amount paid by the parish
of Shadwell, and who informed me, moreover, that parishes in his
neighbourhood paid twice and three times more than Shadwell did, hinted
to me the difficulties I should experience at the commencement of my
inquiry, and I have certainly found his opinion correct to the letter.
I have ascertained that in one yard intimidation was resorted to, and
the men were threatened with instant dismissal if they gave me any
information but such as was calculated to mislead.

I soon discovered, indeed, that it was impossible to place any reliance
on what some of the contractors said; and here I may repeat that the
indisputable result of my inquiries has been to meet with far more
deception and equivocation from employers generally than from the
employed; working men have little or no motive for mis-stating their
wages; they know well that the ordinary rates of remuneration for their
labour are easily ascertainable from other members of the trade, and
seldom or never object to produce accounts of their earnings, whenever
they have been in the habit of keeping such things. With employers,
however, the case is far different; to seek to ascertain from them
the profits of their trade is to meet with evasion and prevarication
at every turn; they seem to feel that their gains are dishonestly
large, and hence resort to every means to prevent them being made
public. That I have met with many honourable exceptions to this rule,
I most cheerfully acknowledge; but that the _majority_ of tradesmen
are neither so frank, communicative, nor truthful, as the men in their
employ, the whole of my investigations go to prove. I have already, in
the _Morning Chronicle_, recorded the character of my interviews with
an eminent Jew slop-tailor, an army clothier, and an enterprising
free-trade stay-maker (a gentleman who subscribed his 100 guineas to
the League), and I must in candour confess that now, after two years’
experience, I have found the industrious poor a thousand-fold more
veracious than the trading rich.

With respect to the amount of business done by these contractors, or
gross quantity of dust collected by them in the course of the year,
it would appear that each employs, on an average, about 20 men, which
makes the number of men employed as dustmen through the streets of
London amount to 1800. This, as has been previously stated, is grossly
at variance with the number given in the Census of 1841, which computes
the dustmen in the metropolis at only 254. But, as I said before, I
have long ceased to place confidence in the government returns on such
subjects. According to the above estimate of 254, and deducting from
this number the 88 master-dustmen, there would be only 166 labouring
men to empty the 300,000 dustbins of London, and as these men always
work in couples, it follows that every two dustmen would have to remove
the refuse from about 3600 houses; so that assuming each bin to require
emptying once every six weeks they would have to cart away the dust
from 2400 houses every month, or 600 every week, which is at the rate
of 100 a day! and as each dust-bin contains about half a load, it would
follow that at this rate each cart would have to collect 50 loads of
dust daily, whereas 5 loads is the average day’s work.

Computing the London dust-contractors at 90, and the inhabited houses
at 300,000, it follows that each contractor would have 3333 houses to
remove the refuse from. Now it has been calculated that the ashes and
cinders alone from each house average about three loads per annum, so
that each contractor would have, in round numbers, 10,000 loads of
dust to remove in the course of the year. I find, from inquiries, that
every two dustmen carry to the yard about five loads a day, or about
1500 loads in the course of the year, so that at this rate, there must
be between six and seven carts, and twelve and fourteen collectors
employed by each master. But this is exclusive of the men employed
in the yards. In one yard that I visited there were fourteen people
busily employed. Six of these were women, who were occupied in sifting,
and they were attended by three men who shovelled the dust into their
sieves, and the foreman, who was hard at work loosening and dragging
down the dust from the heap, ready for the “fillers-in.” Besides these
there were two carts and four men engaged in conveying the sifted dust
to the barges alongside the wharf. At a larger dust-yard, that formerly
stood on the banks of the Regent’s-canal, I am informed that there were
sometimes as many as 127 people at work. It is but a small yard, which
has not 30 to 40 labourers connected with it; and the lesser dust-yards
have generally from four to eight sifters, and six or seven carts.
There are, therefore, employed in a medium-sized yard twelve collectors
or cartmen, six sifters, and three fillers-in, besides the foreman
or forewoman, making altogether 22 persons; so that, computing the
contractors at 90, and allowing 20 men to be employed by each, there
would be 1800 men thus occupied in the metropolis, which appears to be
very near the truth.

One who has been all his life connected with the business estimated
that there must be about ten dustmen to each metropolitan parish, large
and small. In Marylebone he believed there were eighteen dust-carts,
with two men to each, out every day; in some small parishes, however,
two men are sufficient. There would be more men employed, he said,
but some masters contracted for two or three parishes, and so “kept
the same men going,” working them hard, and enlarging their regular
rounds. Calculating, then, that ten men are employed to each of the 176
metropolitan parishes, we have 1760 dustmen in London. The suburban
parishes, my informant told me, were as well “dustmaned” as any he
knew; for the residents in such parts were more particular about their
dust than in busier places.

It is curious to observe how closely the number of men engaged in
the collection of the “dust” from the coals burnt in London agrees,
according to the above estimate, with the number of men engaged in
delivering the coals to be burnt. The coal-whippers, who “discharge the
colliers,” are about 1800, and the coal-porters, who carry the coals
from the barges to the merchants’ wagons, are about the same in number.
The amount of residuum from coal after burning cannot, of course,
be equal either in bulk or weight to the original substance; but
considering that the collection of the dust is a much slower operation
than the delivery of the coals, the difference is easily accounted for.

We may arrive, approximately, at the quantity of dust annually produced
in London, in the following manner:--

The consumption of coal in London, per annum, is about 3,500,000 tons,
exclusive of what is brought to the metropolis per rail. Coals are made
up of the following component parts, viz. (1) the inorganic and fixed
elements; that is to say, the ashes, or the bones, as it were, of the
fossil trees, which cannot be burnt; (2) coke, or the residuary carbon,
after being deprived of the volatile matter; (3) the volatile matter
itself given off during combustion in the form of flame and smoke.

The relative proportions of these materials in the various kinds of
coals are as follows.--

Carbon, Volatile, Ashes,
per cent. per cent. per cent.
Cannel or gas coals. 40 to 60 60 to 40 10
Newcastle or “house” coals. 57 37 5
Lancashire and Yorkshire coals. 50 to 60 35 to 40 4
South Welsh or “steam” coals. 81 to 85 11 to 15 3
Anthracite or “stone” coals. 80 to 95 None a little.

In the metropolis the Newcastle coal is chiefly used, and this, we
perceive, yields five per cent. ashes and about 57 per cent. carbon.
But a considerable part of the carbon is converted into carbonic acid
during combustion; if, therefore, we assume that two-thirds of the
carbon are thus consumed, and that the remaining third remains behind
in the form of cinder, we shall have about 25 per cent. of “dust” from
every ton of coal. On inquiry of those who have had long experience in
this matter, I find that a ton of coal may be fairly said on an average
to yield about one-fourth its weight in dust; hence the gross amount
of “dust” annually produced in London would be 900,000 tons, or about
three tons per house per annum.

It is impossible to obtain any definite statistics on this part of the
subject. Not one in every ten of the contractors keeps any account of
the amount that comes into the “yard.” An intelligent and communicative
gentleman whom I consulted on this matter, could give me no information
on this subject that was in any way satisfactory. I have, however,
endeavoured to check the preceding estimate in the following manner.
There are in London upwards of 300,000 inhabited houses, and each
house furnishes a certain quota of dust to the general stock. I have
ascertained that an average-sized house will produce, in the course of
a year, about three cart-loads of dust, while each cart holds about
40 bushels (baskets)--what the dustmen call a chaldron. There are, of
course, many houses in the metropolis which furnish three and four
times this amount of dust, but against these may be placed the vast
preponderance of small and poor houses in London and the suburbs, where
there is not one quarter of the quantity produced, owing to the small
amount of fuel consumed. Estimating, then, the average annual quantity
of dust from each house at three loads, or chaldrons, and the houses at
300,000, it follows that the gross quantity collected throughout the
metropolis will be about 900,000 chaldrons per annum.

The next part of the subject is--what becomes of this vast quantity of
dust--to what use it is applied.

The dust thus collected is used for two purposes, (1) as a manure for
land of a peculiar quality; and (2) for making bricks. The fine portion
of the house-dust called “soil,” and separated from the “brieze,” or
coarser portion, by sifting, is found to be peculiarly fitted for what
is called breaking up a marshy heathy soil at its first cultivation,
owing not only to the dry nature of the dust, but to its possessing in
an eminent degree a highly separating quality, almost, if not quite,
equal to sand. In former years the demand for this finer dust was very
great, and barges were continually in the river waiting their turn to
be loaded with it for some distant part of the country. At that time
the contractors were unable to supply the demand, and easily got 1_l._
per chaldron for as much as they could furnish, and then, as I have
stated, many ships were in the habit of bringing cargoes of it from
the North, and of realizing a good profit on the transaction. Of late
years, however--and particularly, I am told, since the repeal of the
corn-laws--this branch of the business has dwindled to nothing. The
contractors say that the farmers do not cultivate their land now as
they used; it will not pay them, and instead, therefore, of bringing
fresh land into tillage, and especially such as requires this sort
of manure, they are laying down that which they previously had in
cultivation, and turning it into pasture grounds. It is principally
on this account, say the contractors, that we cannot sell the dust we
collect so well or so readily as formerly. There are, however, some
cargoes of the dust still taken, particularly to the lowlands in the
neighbourhood of Barking, and such other places in the vicinity of the
metropolis as are enabled to realize a greater profit, by growing for
the London markets. Nevertheless, the contractors are obliged now to
dispose of the dust at 2_s._ 6_d._ per chaldron, and sometimes less.

The finer dust is also used to mix with the clay for making bricks,
and barge-loads are continually shipped off for this purpose. The
fine ashes are added to the clay in the proportion of one-fifth ashes
to four-fifths clay, or 60 chaldrons to 240 cubic yards, which is
sufficient to make 100,000 bricks (where much sand is mixed with the
clay a smaller proportion of ashes may be used). This quantity requires
also the addition of about 15 chaldrons, or, if mild, of about 12
chaldrons of “brieze,” to aid the burning. The ashes are made to mix
with the clay by collecting it into a sort of reservoir fitted up for
the purpose; water in great quantities is let in upon it, and it is
then stirred till it resembles a fine thin paste, in which state the
dust easily mingles with every part of it. In this condition it is left
till the water either soaks into the earth, or goes off by evaporation,
when the bricks are moulded in the usual manner, the dust forming a
component part of them.

The ashes, or cindered matter, which are thus dispersed throughout the
substance of the clay, become, in the process of burning, gradually
ignited and consumed. But the “brieze” (from the French _briser_, to
break or crush), that is to say, the coarser portion of the coal-ash,
is likewise used in the burning of the bricks. The small spaces left
among the lowest courses of the bricks in the kiln, or “clamp,” are
filled with “brieze,” and a thick layer of the same material is spread
on the top of the kilns, when full. Frequently the “brieze” is mixed
with small coals, and after having been burnt the ashes are collected,
and then mixed with the clay to form new bricks. The highest price at
present given for “brieze” is 3_s._ per ton.

The price of the dust used by the brickmakers has likewise been
reduced; this the contractors account for by saying that there are
fewer brick-fields than formerly near London, as they have been nearly
all built over. They assert, that while the amount of dust and cinders
has increased proportionately to the increase of the houses, the demand
for the article has decreased in a like ratio; and that, moreover, the
greater portion of the bricks now used in London for the new buildings
come from other quarters. Such dust, however, as the contractors
sell to the brick-makers, they in general undertake, for a certain
sum, to cart to the brick-fields, though it often happens that the
brick-makers’ carts coming into town with their loads of bricks to new
buildings, call on their return at the dust-yards, and carry thence a
load of dust or cinders back, and so save the price of cartage.

But during the operation of sifting the dust, many things are found
which are useless for either manure or brick-making, such as oyster
shells, old bricks, old boots and shoes, old tin kettles, old rags and
bones, &c. These are used for various purposes.

The bricks, &c., are sold for sinking beneath foundations, where a
thick layer of concrete is spread over them. Many old bricks, too, are
used in making new roads, especially where the land is low and marshy.
The old tin goes to form the japanned fastenings for the corners of
trunks, as well as to other persons, who re-manufacture it into a
variety of articles. The old shoes are sold to the London shoemakers,
who use them as stuffing between the in-sole and the outer one; but by
far the greater quantity is sold to the manufacturers of Prussian blue,
that substance being formed out of refuse animal matter. The rags and
bones are of course disposed of at the usual places--the marine-store
shops.

A dust-heap, therefore, may be briefly said to be composed of the
following things, which are severally applied to the following uses:--

1. “Soil,” or fine dust, sold to brickmakers for making bricks, and to
farmers for manure, especially for clover.

2. “Brieze,” or cinders, sold to brickmakers, for burning bricks.

3. Rags, bones, and old metal, sold to marine-store dealers.

4. Old tin and iron vessels, sold for “clamps” to trunks, &c., and for
making copperas.

5. Old bricks and oyster shells, sold to builders, for sinking
foundations, and forming roads.

6. Old boots and shoes, sold to Prussian-blue manufacturers.

7. Money and jewellery, kept, or sold to Jews.

The dust-yards, or places where the dust is collected and sifted, are
generally situated in the suburbs, and they may be found all round
London, sometimes occupying open spaces adjoining back streets and
lanes, and surrounded by the low mean houses of the poor; frequently,
however, they cover a large extent of ground in the fields, and
there the dust is piled up to a great height in a conical heap, and
having much the appearance of a volcanic mountain. The reason why
the dust-heaps are confined principally to the suburbs is, that more
space is to be found in the outskirts than in a thickly-peopled and
central locality. Moreover, the fear of indictments for nuisance has
had considerable influence in the matter, for it was not unusual for
the yards in former times, to be located within the boundaries of
the city. They are now, however, scattered round London, and always
placed as near as possible to the river, or to some canal communicating
therewith. In St. George’s, Shadwell, Ratcliffe, Limehouse, Poplar,
and Blackwall, on the north side of the Thames, and in Redriffe,
Bermondsey, and Rotherhithe, on the south, they are to be found near
the Thames. The object of this is, that by far the greater quantity of
the soil or ashes is conveyed in sailing-barges, holding from 70 to
100 tons each, to Feversham, Sittingbourne, and other places in Kent,
which are the great brick-making manufactories for London. These barges
come up invariably loaded with bricks, and take home in return a cargo
of soil. Other dust-yards are situated contiguous to the Regent’s
and the Surrey canal; and for the same reason as above stated--for
the convenience of water carriage. Moreover, adjoining the Limehouse
cut, which is a branch of the Lea River, other dust-yards may be
found; and again travelling to the opposite end of the metropolis, we
discover them not only at Paddington on the banks of the canal, but at
Maiden-lane in a similar position. Some time since there was an immense
dust-heap in the neighbourhood of Gray’s-inn-lane, which sold for
20,000_l._; but that was in the days when 15_s._ and 1_l._ per chaldron
could easily be procured for the dust. According to the present rate,
not a tithe of that amount could have been realized upon it.

[Illustration: VIEW OF A DUST YARD.

(_From a Sketch taken on the spot._)]

A visit to any of the large metropolitan dust-yards is far from
uninteresting. Near the centre of the yard rises the highest heap,
composed of what is called the “soil,” or finer portion of the dust
used for manure. Around this heap are numerous lesser heaps, consisting
of the mixed dust and rubbish carted in and shot down previous to
sifting. Among these heaps are many women and old men with sieves
made of iron, all busily engaged in separating the “brieze” from the
“soil.” There is likewise another large heap in some other part of the
yard, composed of the cinders or “brieze” waiting to be shipped off to
the brickfields. The whole yard seems alive, some sifting and others
shovelling the sifted soil on to the heap, while every now and then
the dust-carts return to discharge their loads, and proceed again on
their rounds for a fresh supply. Cocks and hens keep up a continual
scratching and cackling among the heaps, and numerous pigs seem to find
great delight in rooting incessantly about after the garbage and offal
collected from the houses and markets.

In a dust-yard lately visited the sifters formed a curious sight;
they were almost up to their middle in dust, ranged in a semi-circle
in front of that part of the heap which was being “worked;” each had
before her a small mound of soil which had fallen through her sieve and
formed a sort of embankment, behind which she stood. The appearance of
the entire group at their work was most peculiar. Their coarse dirty
cotton gowns were tucked up behind them, their arms were bared above
their elbows, their black bonnets crushed and battered like those
of fish-women; over their gowns they wore a strong leathern apron,
extending from their necks to the extremities of their petticoats,
while over this, again, was another leathern apron, shorter, thickly
padded, and fastened by a stout string or strap round the waist. In the
process of their work they pushed the sieve from them and drew it back
again with apparent violence, striking it against the outer leathern
apron with such force that it produced each time a hollow sound, like
a blow on the tenor drum. All the women present were middle aged,
with the exception of one who was very old--68 years of age she told
me--and had been at the business from a girl. She was the daughter of
a dustman, the wife, or woman of a dustman, and the mother of several
young dustmen--sons and grandsons--all at work at the dust-yards at the
east end of the metropolis.

We now come to speak of the labourers engaged in collecting, sifting,
or shipping off the dust of the metropolis.

The dustmen, scavengers, and nightmen are, to a certain extent, the
same people. The contractors generally agree with the various parishes
to remove both the dust from the houses and the mud from the streets;
the men in their employ are indiscriminately engaged in these two
diverse occupations, collecting the dust to-day, and often cleansing
the streets on the morrow, and are designated either dustmen or
scavengers, according to their particular avocation at the moment. The
case is somewhat different, however, with respect to the nightmen.
There is no such thing as a contract with the parish for removing the
nightsoil. This is done by private agreement with the landlord of the
premises whence the soil has to be removed. When a cesspool requires
emptying, the occupying tenant communicates with the landlord, who
makes an arrangement with a dust-contractor or sweep-nightman for
this purpose. This operation is totally distinct from the regular
or daily labour of the dust-contractor’s men, who receive extra pay
for it; sometimes one set go out at night and sometimes another,
according either to the selection of the master or the inclination of
the men. There are, however, some dustmen who have never been at work
as nightmen, and could not be induced to do so, from an invincible
antipathy to the employment; still, such instances are few, for the men
generally go whenever they can, and occasionally engage in nightwork
for employers unconnected with their masters. It is calculated that
there are some hundreds of men employed nightly in the removal of the
nightsoil of the metropolis during the summer and autumn, and as these
men have often to work at dust-collecting or cleansing the streets on
the following day, it is evident that the same persons cannot be thus
employed every night; accordingly the ordinary practice is for the
dustmen to “take it in turns,” thus allowing each set to be employed
every third night, and to have two nights’ rest in the interim.

The men, therefore, who collect the dust on one day may be cleaning the
streets on the next, especially during wet weather, and engaged at
night, perhaps, twice during the week, in removing nightsoil; so that
it is difficult to arrive at any precise notion as to the number of
persons engaged in any one of these branches _per se_.

But these labourers not only work indiscriminately at the collection of
dust, the cleansing of the streets, or the removal of nightsoil, but
they are employed almost as indiscriminately at the various branches
of the dust business; with this qualification, however, that few men
apply themselves continuously to any one branch of the business. The
labourers employed in a dust-yard may be divided into two classes:
those paid by the contractor; and those paid by the foreman or
forewoman of the dust-heap, commonly called hill-man or hill-woman.

They are as follows:--

I. LABOURERS PAID BY THE CONTRACTORS, OR,

1. _Yard foreman_, or superintendent. This duty is often performed by
the master, especially in small contracts.

2. _Gangers_ or _dust-collectors_. These are called “fillers” and
“carriers,” from the practice of one of the men who go out with the
cart filling the basket, and the other carrying it on his shoulder to
the vehicle.

3. _Loaders_ of carts in the dust-yard for shipment.

4. _Carriers_ of cinders to the cinder-heap, or bricks to the
brick-heap.

5. _Foreman_ or _forewoman_ of the heap.

II. LABOURERS PAID BY THE HILL-MAN OR HILL-WOMAN.

1. _Sifters_, who are generally women, and mostly the wives or
concubines of the dustmen, but sometimes the wives of badly-paid
labourers.

2. _Fillers-in_, or shovellers of dust into the sieves of the sifters
(one man being allowed to every two or three women).

3. _Carriers off_ of bones, rags, metal, and other perquisites to the
various heaps; these are mostly children of the dustmen.

A medium-sized dust-yard will employ about twelve collectors, three
fillers-in, six sifters, and one foreman or forewoman; while a large
yard will afford work to about 150 people.

There are four different modes of payment prevalent among the several
labourers employed at the metropolitan dust-yards:--(1) by the day; (2)
by the piece or load; (3) by the lump; (4) by perquisites.

1st. The foreman of the yard, where the master does not perform this
duty himself, is generally one of the regular dustmen picked out by
the master, for this purpose. He is paid, the sum of 2_s._ 6_d._ per
day, or 15_s._ per week. In large yards there are sometimes two and
even three yard-foremen at the same rate of wages. Their duty is
merely to superintend the work. They do not labour themselves, and
their exemption in this respect is considered, and indeed looked on by
themselves, as a sort of premium for good services.

[Illustration: THE LONDON DUSTMAN.

DUST HOI! DUST HOI!

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

2nd. The gangers or collectors are generally paid 8_d._ per load for
every load they bring into the yard. This is, of course, piece work,
for the more hours the men work the more loads will they be enabled to
bring, and the more pay will they receive. There are some yards where
the carters get only 6_d._ per load, as, for instance, at Paddington.
The Paddington men, however, are not considered inferior workmen to
the rest of their fellows, but merely to be worse paid. In 1826, or
25 years ago, the carters had 1_s._ 6_d._ per load; but at that time
the contractors were able to get 1_l._ per chaldron for the soil and
“brieze” or cinders; then it began to fall in value, and according
to the decrease in the price of these commodities, so have the wages
of the dust-collectors been reduced. It will be at once seen that
the reduction in the wages of the dustmen bears no proportion to the
reduction in the price of soil and cinders, but it must be borne in
mind that whereas the contractors formerly paid large sums for liberty
to collect the dust, they now are paid large sums to remove it. This
in some measure helps to account for the apparent disproportion, and
tends, perhaps, to equalize the matter. The gangers, therefore, have
4_d._ each, per load when best paid. They consider from four to six
loads a good day’s work, for where the contract is large, extending
over several parishes, they often have to travel a long way for a
load. It thus happens that while the men employed by the Whitechapel
contractor can, when doing their utmost, manage to bring only four
loads a day to the yard, which is situated in a place called the
“ruins” in Lower Shadwell, the men employed by the Shadwell contractor
can easily get eight or nine loads in a day. Five loads are about an
average day’s work, and this gives them 1_s._ 8-1/2_d._ per day each,
or 10_s._ per week. In addition to this, the men have their perquisites
“in aid of wages.” The collectors are in the habit of getting beer or
money in lieu thereof, at nearly all the houses from which they remove
the dust, the public being thus in a manner compelled to make up the
rate of wages, which should be paid by the employer, so that what is
given to benefit the men really goes to the master, who invariably
reduces the wages to the precise amount of the perquisites obtained.
This is the main evil of the “perquisite system of payment” (a system
of which the mode of paying waiters may be taken as the special type).
As an instance of the injurious effects of this mode of payment in
connection with the London dustmen, the collectors are forced, as it
were, to extort from the public that portion of their fair earnings of
which their master deprives them; hence, how can we wonder that they
make it a rule when they receive neither beer nor money from a house to
make as great a mess as possible the next time they come, scattering
the dust and cinders about in such a manner, that, sooner than have
any trouble with them, people mostly give them what they look for?
One of the most intelligent men with whom I have spoken, gave me the
following account of his perquisites for the last week, viz.: Monday,
5-1/2_d._; Tuesday, 6_d._; Wednesday, 4-1/2_d._; Thursday, 7_d._;
Friday, 5-1/2_d._; and Saturday, 5_d._ This he received in money, and
was independent of beer. He had on the same week drawn rather more than
five loads each day, to the yard, which made his gross earnings for the
week, wages and perquisites together, to be 14_s._ 0-1/2_d._ which he
considers to be a fair average of his weekly earnings as connected with
dust.

3rd. The loaders of the carts for shipment are the same persons as
those who collect the dust, but thus employed for the time being. The
pay for this work is by the “piece” also, 2_d._ per chaldron between
four persons being the usual rate, or 1/2_d._ per man. The men so
engaged have no perquisites. The barges into which they shoot the soil
or “brieze,” as the case may be, hold from 50 to 70 chaldrons, and they
consider the loading of one of these barges a good day’s work. The
average cargo is about 60 chaldrons, which gives them 2_s._ 6_d._ per
day, or somewhat more than their average earnings when collecting.

4th. The carriers of cinders to the cinder heap. I have mentioned that,
ranged round the sifters in the dust-yard, are a number of baskets,
into which are put the various things found among the dust, some of
these being the property of the master, and others the perquisites of
the hill man or woman, as the case may be. The cinders and old bricks
are the property of the master, and to remove them to their proper
heaps boys are employed by him at 1_s._ per day. These boys are almost
universally the children of dustmen and sifters at work in the yard,
and thus not only help to increase the earnings of the family, but
qualify themselves to become the dustmen of a future day.

5th. The hill-man or hill-woman. The hill-man enters into an agreement
with the contractor to sift _all_ the dust in the yard throughout
the year at so much per load and perquisites. The usual sum per
load is 6_d._, nor have I been able to ascertain that any of these
people undertake to do it at a less price. Such is the amount paid
by the contractor for Whitechapel. The perquisites of the hill-man
or hill-woman, are rags, bones, pieces of old metal, old tin or iron
vessels, old boots and shoes, and one-half of the money, jewellery, or
other valuables that may be found by the sifters.

The hill-man or hill-woman employs the following persons, and pays them
at the following rates.

1st. The sifters are paid 1_s._ per day when employed, but the
employment is not constant. The work cannot be pursued in wet weather,
and the services of the sifters are required only when a large heap
has accumulated, as they can sift much faster than the dust can be
collected. The employment is therefore precarious; the payment has
not, for the last 30 years at least, been more than 1_s._ per day, but
the perquisites were greater. They formerly were allowed one-half of
whatever was found; of late years, however, the hill-man has gradually
reduced the perquisites “first one thing and then another,” until
the only one they have now remaining is half of whatever money or
other valuable article may be found in the process of sifting. These
valuables the sifters often pocket, if able to do so unperceived, but
if discovered in the attempt, they are immediately discharged.

2nd. “The fillers-in,” or shovellers of dust into the sieves of
sifters, are in general any poor fellows who may be straggling about in
search of employment. They are sometimes, however, the grown-up boys
of dustmen, not yet permanently engaged by the contractor. These are
paid 2_s._ per day for their labour, but they are considered more as
casualty men, though it often happens, if “hands” are wanted, that they
are regularly engaged by the contractors, and become regular dustmen
for the remainder of their lives.

3rd. The little fellows, the children of the dustmen, who follow their
mothers to the yard, and help them to pick rags, bones, &c., out of the
sieve and put them into the baskets, as soon as they are able to carry
a basket between two of them to the separate heaps, are paid 3_d._ or
4_d._ per day for this work by the hill-man.

The wages of the dustmen have been increased within the last seven
years from 6_d._ per load to 8_d._ among the large contractors--the
“small masters,” however, still continue to pay 6_d._ per load. This
increase in the rate of remuneration was owing to the men complaining
to the commissioners that they were not able to live upon what they
earned at 6_d._; an enquiry was made into the truth of the men’s
assertion, and the result was that the commissioners decided upon
letting the contracts to such parties only as would undertake to pay a
fair price to their workmen. The contractors, accordingly, increased
the remuneration of the labourers; since then the principal masters
have paid 8_d._ per load to the collectors. It is right I should
add, that I could not hear--though I made special enquiries on the
subject--that the wages had been in any one instance reduced since
Free-trade has come into operation.

The usual hours of labour vary according to the mode of payment. The
“collectors,” or men out with the cart, being paid by the load, work
as long as the light lasts; the “fillers-in” and sifters, on the other
hand, being paid by the day, work the ordinary hours, viz., from six to
six, with the regular intervals for meals.

The summer is the worst time for all hands, for then the dust decreases
in quantity; the collectors, however, make up for the “slackness” at
this period by nightwork, and, being paid by the “piece” or load at the
dust business, are not discharged when their employment is less brisk.

It has been shown that the dustmen who perambulate the streets usually
collect five loads in a day; this, at 8_d._ per load, leaves them
about 1_s._ 8_d._ each, and so makes their weekly earnings amount to
about 10_s._ per week. Moreover, there are the “perquisites” from the
houses whence they remove the dust; and further, the dust-collectors
are frequently employed at the night-work, which is always a distinct
matter from the dust-collecting, &c., and paid for independent of their
regular weekly wages, so that, from all I can gather, the average wages
of the men appear to be rather more than 15_s._ Some admitted to me,
that in busy times they often earned 25_s._ a week.

Then, again, dustwork, as with the weaving of silk, is a kind of
family work. The husband, wife, and children (unfortunately) all work
at it. The consequence is, that the earnings of the whole have to be
added together in order to arrive at a notion of the aggregate gains.

The following may therefore be taken as a fair average of the earnings
of a dustman and his family _when in full employment_. The elder boys
when able to earn 1_s._ a day set up for themselves, and do not allow
their wages to go into the common purse.

£. _s._ _d._ £. _s._ _d._

Man, 5 loads per day,
or 30 loads per week, at
4_d._ per load 0 10 0

Perquisites, or beer
money 0 2 9-1/2

Night-work for 2 nights
a week 0 5 0
------------ 0 17 9-1/2

Woman, or sifter, per
week, at 1_s._ per day 0 6 0

Perquisites, say 3_d._ a
day 0 1 6
------------ 0 7 6

Child, 3_d._ per day,
carrying rags, bones, &c. ------------ 0 1 6
-----------------
Total 1 6 9-1/2

These are the earnings, it should be borne in mind, of a family in full
employment. Perhaps it may be fairly said that the earnings of the
single men are, on an average, 15_s._ a week, and 1_l._ for the family
men all the year round.

Now, when we remember that the wages of many agricultural labourers are
but 8_s._ a week, and the earnings of many needlewomen not 6_d._ a day,
it must be confessed that the remuneration of the dustmen, and even of
the dustwomen, is _comparatively_ high. This certainly is not due to
what Adam Smith, in his chapter on the Difference of Wages, terms the
“disagreeableness of the employment.” “The wages of labour,” he says,
“vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the
honourableness or dishonourableness, of the employment.” It will be
seen--when we come to treat of the nightmen--that the most offensive,
and perhaps the least honourable, of all trades, is far from ranking
among the best paid, as it should, if the above principle held good.
That the disagreeableness of the occupation may in a measure tend to
decrease the competition among the labourers, there cannot be the least
doubt, but that it will consequently induce, as political economy would
have us believe, a larger amount of wages to accrue to each of the
labourers, is certainly another of the many assertions of that science
which must be pronounced “not proven.” For the dustmen are paid, if
anything, less, and certainly not more, than the usual rate of payment
to the London labourers; and if the earnings rank high, as times go, it
is because all the members of the family, from the very earliest age,
are able to work at the business, and so add to the general gains.

The dustmen are, generally speaking, an hereditary race; when
children they are reared in the dust-yard, and are habituated to the
work gradually as they grow up, after which, almost as a natural
consequence, they follow the business for the remainder of their lives.
These may be said to be born-and-bred dustmen. The numbers of the
regular men are, however, from time to time recruited from the ranks
of the many ill-paid labourers with which London abounds. When hands
are wanted for any special occasion an employer has only to go to any
of the dock-gates, to find at all times hundreds of starving wretches
anxiously watching for the chance of getting something to do, even at
the rate of 4_d._ per hour. As the operation of emptying a dust-bin
requires only the ability to handle a shovel, which every labouring man
can manage, all workmen, however unskilled, can at once engage in the
occupation; and it often happens that the men thus casually employed
remain at the calling for the remainder of their lives. There are no
houses of call whence the men are taken on when wanting work. There are
certainly public-houses, which are denominated houses of call, in the
neighbourhood of every dust-yard, but these are merely the drinking
shops of the men, whither they resort of an evening after the labour of
the day is accomplished, and whence they are furnished in the course of
the afternoon with beer; but such houses cannot be said to constitute
the dustman’s “labour-market,” as in the tailoring and other trades,
they being never resorted to as hiring-places, but rather used by the
men only when hired. If a master have not enough “hands” he usually
inquires among his men, who mostly know some who--owing, perhaps, to
the failure of their previous master in getting his usual contract--are
only casually employed at other places. Such men are immediately
engaged in preference to others; but if these cannot be found, the
contractors at once have recourse to the system already stated.

The manner in which the dust is collected is very simple. The “filler”
and the “carrier” perambulate the streets with a heavily-built high
box cart, which is mostly coated with a thick crust of filth, and
drawn by a clumsy-looking horse. These men used, before the passing
of the late Street Act, to ring a dull-sounding bell so as to give
notice to housekeepers of their approach, but now they merely cry, in
a hoarse unmusical voice, “Dust oy-eh!” Two men accompany the cart,
which is furnished with a short ladder and two shovels and baskets.
These baskets one of the men fills from the dust-bin, and then helps
them alternately, as fast as they are filled, upon the shoulder of the
other man, who carries them one by one to the cart, which is placed
immediately alongside the pavement in front of the house where they are
at work. The carrier mounts up the side of the cart by means of the
ladder, discharges into it the contents of the basket on his shoulder,
and then returns below for the other basket which his mate has filled
for him in the interim. This process is pursued till all is cleared
away, and repeated at different houses till the cart is fully loaded;
then the men make the best of their way to the dust-yard, where they
shoot the contents of the cart on to the heap, and again proceed on
their regular rounds.

The dustmen, in their appearance, very much resemble the waggoners
of the coal-merchants. They generally wear knee-breeches, with ancle
boots or gaiters, short dirty smockfrocks or coarse gray jackets, and
fantail hats. In one particular, however, they are at first sight
distinguishable from the coal-merchants’ men, for the latter are
invariably black from coal dust, while the dustmen, on the contrary,
are gray with ashes.

In their personal appearance the dustmen are mostly tall stalwart
fellows; there is nothing sickly-looking about them, and yet a
considerable part of their time is passed in the yards and in the midst
of effluvia most offensive, and, if we believe “zymotic theorists,” as
unhealthy to those unaccustomed to them; nevertheless, the children,
who may be said to be reared in the yard and to have inhaled the stench
of the dust-heap with their first breath, are healthy and strong. It
is said, moreover, that during the plague in London the dustmen were
the persons who carted away the dead, and it remains a tradition among
the class to the present day, that not one of them died of the plague,
even during its greatest ravages. In Paris, too, it is well known,
that, during the cholera of 1849, the quarter of Belleville, where the
night-soil and refuse of the city is deposited, escaped the freest from
the pestilence; and in London the dustmen boast that, during both the
recent visitations of the cholera, they were altogether exempt from the
disease. “Look at that fellow, sir!” said one of the dust-contractors
to me, pointing to his son, who was a stout red-cheeked young man of
about twenty. “Do you see anything ailing about him? Well, he has been
in the yard since he was born. There stands my house just at the gate,
so you see he hadn’t far to travel, and when quite a child he used to
play and root away here among the dust all his time. I don’t think he
ever had a day’s illness in his life. The people about the yard are
all used to the smell and don’t complain about it. It’s all stuff and
nonsense, all this talk about dust-yards being unhealthy. I’ve never
done anything else all my days and I don’t think I look very ill. I
shouldn’t wonder now but what I’d be set down as being fresh from
the sea-side by those very fellows that write all this trash about a
matter that they don’t know just _that_ about;” and he snapped his
fingers contemptuously in the air, and, thrusting both hands into his
breeches pockets, strutted about, apparently satisfied that he had the
best of the argument. He was, in fact, a stout, jolly, red-faced man.
Indeed, the dustmen, as a class, appear to be healthy, strong men, and
extraordinary instances of longevity are common among them. I heard of
one dustman who lived to be 115 years; another, named Wood, died at
100; and the well-known Richard Tyrrell died only a short time back at
the advanced age of 97. The misfortune is, that we have no large series
of facts on this subject, so that the longevity and health of the
dustmen might be compared with those of other classes.

In almost all their habits the Dustmen are similar to the
Costermongers, with the exception that they seem to want their cunning
and natural quickness, and that they have little or no predilection
for gaming. Costermongers, however, are essentially traders, and all
trade is a species of gambling--the risking of a certain sum of money
to obtain more; hence spring, perhaps, the gambling propensities of low
traders, such as costers, and Jew clothes-men; and hence, too, that
natural sharpness which characterizes the same classes. The dustmen, on
the contrary, have regular employment and something like regular wages,
and therefore rest content with what they can earn in their usual way
of business.

Very few of them understand cards, and I could not learn that they ever
play at “pitch and toss.” I remarked, however, a number of parallel
lines such as are used for playing “shove halfpenny,” on a deal table
in the tap-room frequented by them. The great amusement of their
evenings seems to be, to smoke as many pipes of tobacco and drink as
many pots of beer as possible.

I believe it will be found that all persons in the habit of driving
horses, such as cabmen, ’busmen, stage-coach drivers, &c., are
peculiarly partial to intoxicating drinks. The cause of this I
leave others to determine, merely observing that there would seem
to be two reasons for it: the first is, their frequent stopping at
public-houses to water or change their horses, so that the idea of
drinking is repeatedly suggested to their minds even if the practice
be not _expected_ of them; while the second reason is, that being
out continually in the wet, they resort to stimulating liquors as a
preventive to “colds” until at length a habit of drinking is formed.
Moreover, from the mere fact of passing continually through the
air, they are enabled to drink a greater quantity with comparative
impunity. Be the cause, however, what it may, the dustmen spend a
large proportion of their earnings in drink. There is always some
public-house in the neighbourhood of the dust-yard, where they obtain
credit from one week to another, and here they may be found every night
from the moment their work is done, drinking, and smoking their long
pipes--their principal amusement consisting in “chaffing” each other.
This “chaffing” consists of a species of scurrilous jokes supposed to
be given and taken in good part, and the noise and uproar occasioned
thereby increases as the night advances, and as the men get heated
with liquor. Sometimes the joking ends in a general quarrel; the next
morning, however, they are all as good friends as ever, and mutually
agree in laying the blame on the “cussed drink.”

One-half, at least, of the dustmen’s earnings, is, I am assured,
expended in drink, both man and woman assisting in squandering their
money in this way. They usually live in rooms for which they pay
from 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ per week rent, three or four dust-men and
their wives frequently lodging in the same house. These rooms are
cheerless-looking, and almost unfurnished--and are always situate
in some low street or lane not far from the dust-yard. The men have
rarely any clothes but those in which they work. For their breakfast
the dustmen on their rounds mostly go to some cheap coffee-house, where
they get a pint or half-pint of coffee, taking their bread with them as
a matter of economy. Their midday meal is taken in the public-house,
and is almost always bread and cheese and beer, or else a saveloy or a
piece of fat pork or bacon, and at night they mostly “wind up” by deep
potations at their favourite house of call.

There are many dustmen now advanced in years born and reared at the
East-end of London, who have never in the whole course of their
lives been as far west as Temple-bar, who know nothing whatever of
the affairs of the country, and who have never attended a place of
worship. As an instance of the extreme ignorance of these people, I
may mention that I was furnished by one of the contractors with the
address of a dustman whom his master considered to be one of the most
intelligent men in his employ. Being desirous of hearing his statement
from his own lips I sent for the man, and after some conversation
with him was proceeding to note down what he said, when the moment I
opened my note-book and took the pencil in my hand, he started up,
exclaiming,--“No, no! I’ll have none of that there work--I’m not such
a b---- fool as you takes me to be--I doesn’t understand it, I tells
you, and I’ll not have it, now that’s plain;”--and so saying he ran out
of the room, and descended the entire flight of stairs in two jumps. I
followed him to explain, but unfortunately the pencil was still in one
hand and the book in the other, and immediately I made my appearance
at the door he took to his heels, again with three others who seemed
to be waiting for him there. One of the most difficult points in my
labours is to make such men as these comprehend the object or use of my
investigations.

Among 20 men whom I met in one yard, there were only five who could
read, and only two out of that five could write, even imperfectly.
These two are looked up to by their companions as prodigies of learning
and are listened to as oracles, on all occasions, being believed to
understand every subject thoroughly. It need hardly be added, however,
that their acquirements are of the most meagre character.

The dustmen are very partial to a song, and always prefer one of the
doggrel street ballads, with what they call a “jolly chorus” in which,
during their festivities, they all join with stentorian voices. At the
conclusion there is usually a loud stamping of feet and rattling of
quart pots on the table, expressive of their approbation.

The dustmen never frequent the twopenny hops, but sometimes make up
a party for the “theaytre.” They generally go in a body with their
wives, if married, and their “gals,” if single. They are always to
be found in the gallery, and greatly enjoy the melodramas performed
at the second-class minor theatres, especially if there be plenty of
murdering scenes in them. The Garrick, previous to its being burnt, was
a favourite resort of the East-end dustmen. Since that period they
have patronized the Pavilion and the City of London.

The politics of the dustmen are on a par with their literary
attainments--they cannot be said to have any. I cannot say that they
are Chartists, for they have no very clear knowledge of what “the
charter” requires. They certainly have a confused notion that it is
something against the Government, and that the enactment of it would
make them all right; but as to the nature of the benefits which it
would confer upon them, or in what manner it would be likely to operate
upon their interest, they have not, as a body, the slightest idea.
They have a deep-rooted antipathy to the police, the magistrates, and
all connected with the administration of justice, looking upon them as
their natural enemies. They associate with none but themselves; and in
the public-houses where they resort there is a room set apart for the
special use of the “dusties,” as they are called, where no others are
allowed to intrude, except introduced by one of themselves, or at the
special desire of the majority of the party, and on such occasions the
stranger is treated with great respect and consideration.

As to the morals of these people, it may easily be supposed that they
are not of an over-strict character. One of the contractors said to
me, “I’d just trust one of them as far as I could fling a bull by the
tail; _but then_,” he added, with a callousness that proved the laxity
of discipline among the men was due more to his neglect of his duty to
them than from any special perversity on their parts, “_that’s none of
my business; they do my work, and that’s all I want with them, and all
I care about_. You see they’re not like other people, they’re reared to
it. Their fathers before them were dustmen, and when lads they go into
the yard as sifters, and when they grow up they take to the shovel,
and go out with the carts. They learn all they know in the dust-yards,
and you may judge from that what their learning is likely to be. If
they find anything among the dust you may be sure that neither you
nor I will ever hear anything about it; ignorant as they are, they
know a little too much for that. They know, as well as here and there
one, where the dolly-shop is; _but, as I said before, that’s none of
my business. Let every one look out for themselves, as I do, and then
they need not care for any one_.” [With such masters professing such
principles--though it should be stated that the sentiments expressed
on this occasion are but similar to what I hear from the lower class
of traders every day--how can it be expected that these poor fellows
can be above the level of the mere beasts of burden that they use.] “As
to their women,” continued the master, “I don’t trouble my head about
such things. I believe the dustmen are as good to them as other men;
and I’m sure their wives would be as good as other women, if they only
had the chance of the best. But you see they’re all such fellows for
drink that they spend most of their money that way, and then starve the
poor women, and knock them about at a shocking rate, so that they have
the life of dogs, or worse. I don’t wonder at anything they do. Yes,
they’re all married, as far as I know; that is, they live together as
man and wife, though they’re not very particular, certainly, about the
ceremony. The fact is, a regular dustman don’t understand much about
such matters, and, I believe, don’t care much, either.”

From all I could learn on this subject, it would appear that, for one
dustman that is married, 20 live with women, but remain constant to
them; indeed, both men and women abide faithfully by each other, and
for this reason--the woman earns nearly half as much as the man. If the
men and women were careful and prudent, they might, I am assured, live
well and comfortable; but by far the greater portion of the earnings
of both go to the publican, for I am informed, on competent authority,
that a dustman will not think of sitting down for a spree without his
woman. The children, as soon as they are able to go into the yard, help
their mothers in picking out the rags, bones, &c., from the sieve,
and in putting them in the basket. They are never sent to school, and
as soon as they are sufficiently strong are mostly employed in some
capacity or other by the contractor, and in due time become dustmen
themselves. Some of the children, in the neighbourhood of the river,
are mud-larks, and others are bone-grubbers and rag-gatherers, on a
small scale; neglected and thrown on their own resources at an early
age, without any but the most depraved to guide them, it is no wonder
to find that many of them turn thieves. To this state of the case there
are, however, some few exceptions.

Some of the dustmen are prudent well-behaved men and have decent homes;
many of this class have been agricultural labourers, who by distress,
or from some other cause, have found their way to London. This was the
case with one whom I talked with: he had been a labourer in Essex,
employed by a farmer named Izzod, whom he spoke of as being a kind good
man. Mr. Izzod had a large farm on the Earl of Mornington’s estate,
and after he had sunk his capital in the improvement of the land, and
was about to reap the fruits of his labour and his money, the farmer
was ejected at a moment’s notice, beggared and broken-hearted. This
occurred near Roydon, in Essex. The labourer, finding it difficult to
obtain work in the country, came to London, and, discovering a cousin
of his engaged in a dust-yard, got employed through him at the same
place, where he remains to the present day. This man was well clothed,
he had good strong lace boots, gray worsted stockings, a stout pair of
corduroy breeches, a short smockfrock and fantail. He has kept himself
aloof, I am told, from the drunkenness and dissipation of the dustmen.
He says that many of the new hands that get to dustwork are mechanics
or people who have been “better off,” and that these get thinking about
what they have been, till to drown their care they take to drinking,
and often become, in the course of a year or so, worse than the “old
hands” who have been reared to the business and have “nothing at all to
think about.”

Among the dustmen there is no “Society” nor “Benefit Club,” specially
devoted to the class--no provident institution whence they can obtain
“relief” in the event of sickness or accident. The consequence is that,
when ill or injured, they are obliged to obtain letters of admission
to some of the hospitals, and there remain till cured. In cases of
total incapacity for labour, their invariable refuge is the workhouse;
indeed they look forward (whenever they foresee at all) to this asylum
as their resting-place in old age, with the greatest equanimity, and
talk of it as “the house” par excellence, or as “the big house,” “the
great house,” or “the old house.” There are, however, scattered about
in every part of London numerous benefit clubs made up of working-men
of every description, such as Old Friends, Odd Fellows, Foresters, and
Birmingham societies, and with some one or other of these the better
class of dustmen are connected. The general rule, however, is, that
the men engaged in this trade belong to no benefit club whatever, and
that in the season of their adversity they are utterly unprovided for,
and consequently become burdens to the parishes wherein they happen to
reside.

I visited a large dust-yard at the east end of London, for the purpose
of getting a statement from one of the men. My informant was, at the
time of my visit, shovelling the sifted soil from one of the lesser
heaps, and, by a great effort of strength and activity, pitching each
shovel-full to the top of a lofty mound, somewhat resembling a pyramid.
Opposite to him stood a little woman, stoutly made, and with her arms
bare above the elbow; she was his partner in the work, and was pitching
shovel-full for shovel-full with him to the summit of the heap. She
wore an old soiled cotton gown, open in front, and tucked up behind in
the fashion of the last century. She had clouts of old rags tied round
her ancles to prevent the dust from getting into her shoes, a sort of
coarse towel fastened in front for an apron, and a red handkerchief
bound tightly round her head. In this trim she worked away, and not
only kept pace with the man, but often threw two shovels for his one,
although he was a tall, powerful fellow. She smiled when she saw me
noticing her, and seemed to continue her work with greater assiduity. I
learned that she was deaf, and spoke so indistinctly that no stranger
could understand her. She had also a defect in her sight, which latter
circumstance had compelled her to abandon the sifting, as she could not
well distinguish the various articles found in the dust-heap. The poor
creature had therefore taken to the shovel, and now works with it every
day, doing the labour of the strongest men.

From the man above referred to I obtained the following
statement:--“Father vos a dustie;--vos at it all his life, and
grandfather afore him for I can’t tell how long. Father vos allus a rum
’un;--sich a beggar for lush. Vhy I’m blowed if he vouldn’t lush as
much as half-a-dozen on ’em can lush now; somehow the dusties hasn’t
got the stuff in ’em as they used to have. A few year ago the fellers
’u’d think nothink o’ lushin avay for five or six days without niver
going anigh their home. I niver vos at a school in all my life; I don’t
know what it’s good for. It may be wery well for the likes o’ you, but
I doesn’t know it ’u’d do a dustie any good. You see, ven I’m not out
with the cart, I digs here all day; and p’raps I’m up all night, and
digs avay agen the next day. Vot does I care for reading, or anythink
of that there kind, ven I gets home arter my vork? I tell you vot I
likes, though! vhy, I jist likes two or three pipes o’ baccer, and a
pot or two of good heavy and a song, and then I tumbles in with my
Sall, and I’m as happy as here and there von. That there Sall of mine’s
a stunner--a riglar stunner. There ain’t never a voman can sift a heap
quickerer nor my Sall. Sometimes she yarns as much as I does; the only
thing is, she’s sitch a beggar for lush, that there Sall of mine, and
then she kicks up sitch jolly rows, you niver see the like in your
life. That there’s the only fault, as I know on, in Sall; but, barring
that, she’s a hout-and-houter, and worth a half-a-dozen of t’ other
sifters--pick ’em out vare you likes. No, we ain’t married ’zactly,
though it’s all one for all that. I sticks to Sall, and Sall sticks
to I, and there’s an end on’t:--vot is it to any von? I rec’lects
a-picking the rags and things out of mother’s sieve, when I were a
young ’un, and a putting ’em all in the heap jist as it might be there.
I vos allus in a dust-yard. I don’t think I could do no how in no other
place. You see I vouldn’t be ’appy like; I only knows how to vork at
the dust ’cause I’m used to it, and so vos father afore me, and I’ll
stick to it as long as I can. I yarns about half-a-bull [2_s._ 6_d._] a
day, take one day with another. Sall sometimes yarns as much, and ven I
goes out at night I yarns a bob or two more, and so I gits along pretty
tidy; sometimes yarnin more and sometimes yarnin less. I niver vos sick
as I knows on; I’ve been queerish of a morning a good many times, but
I doesn’t call that sickness; it’s only the lush and nothink more. The
smells nothink at all, ven you gits used to it. Lor’ bless you! you’d
think nothink on it in a veek’s time,--no, no more nor I do. There’s
tventy on us vorks here--riglar. I don’t think there’s von on ’em ’cept
Scratchey Jack can read, but he can do it stunning; he’s out vith the
cart now, but he’s the chap as can patter to you as long as he likes.”

Concerning the capital and income of the London dust business, the
following estimate may be given as to the amount of property invested
in and accruing to the trade.

It has been computed that there are 90 contractors, large and small;
of these upwards of two-thirds, or about 35, may be said to be in a
considerable way of business, possessing many carts and horses, as well
as employing a large body of people; some yards have as many as 150
hands connected with them. The remaining 55 masters are composed of
“small men,” some of whom are known as “running dustmen,” that is to
say, persons who collect the dust without any sanction from the parish;
but the number belonging to this class has considerably diminished
since the great deterioration in the price of “brieze.” Assuming, then,
that the great and little master dustmen employ on an average between
six and seven carts each, we have the following statement as to the

CAPITAL OF THE LONDON DUST TRADE.

600 Carts, at 20_l._ each £12,000
600 Horses, at 25_l._ each 15,000
600 Sets of harness, at 2_l._ per set 1,200
600 Ladders, at 5_s._ each 150
1200 Baskets, at 2_s._ each 120
1200 Shovels, at 2_s._ each 120
-------
Being a total capital of £28,590
-------

If, therefore, we assert that the capital of this trade is between
25,000_l._ and 30,000_l._ in value, we shall not be far wrong either
way.

Of the annual income of the same trade, it is almost impossible to
arrive at any positive results; but, in the absence of all authentic
information on the subject, we may make the subjoined conjecture.

INCOME OF THE LONDON DUST TRADE.

Sum paid to contractors for the removal
of dust from the 176 metropolitan
parishes, at 200_l._ each parish £35,200

Sum obtained for 900,000 loads of
dust, at 2_s._ 6_d._ per load 112,500
--------
£147,700
--------

Thus it would appear that the total income of the dust trade may be
taken at between 145,000_l._ and 150,000_l._ per annum.

Against this we have to set the yearly out-goings of the business,
which may be roughly estimated as follows:--

EXPENDITURE OF THE LONDON DUST TRADE.

Wages of 1800 labourers, at 10_s._ a
week each (including sifters and carriers) £46,800
Keep of 600 horses, at 10_s._ a week each 15,600
Wear and tear of stock in trade 4000
Rent for 90 yards, at 100_l._ a year each
(large and small) 9000
-------
£75,400
-------

The above estimates give us the following aggregate results:--

Total yearly incomings of the London dust trade £147,700
Total yearly out-goings 75,400
--------
Total yearly profit £72,300
--------

Hence it would appear that the profits of the dust-contractors are very
nearly at the rate of 100_l._ per cent. on their expenditure. I do
not think I have over estimated the incomings, or under estimated the
out-goings; at least I have striven to avoid doing so, in order that no
injustice might be done to the members of the trade.

This aggregate profit, when divided among the 90 contractors, will make
the clear gains of each master dustman amount to about 800_l._ per
annum: of course some derive considerably more than this amount, and
some considerably less.

OF THE LONDON SEWERAGE AND SCAVENGERY.

The subject I have now to treat--principally as regards street-labour,
but generally in its sanitary, social, and economical bearings--may
really be termed vast. It is of the cleansing of a capital city, with
its thousands of miles of streets and roads _on_ the surface, and its
thousands of miles of sewers and drains _under_ the surface of the
earth. And first let me deal with the subject in a historical point of
view.

Public scavengery or street-cleansing, from the earliest periods of
our history, since municipal authority regulated the internal economy
of our cities, has been an object of some attention. In the records of
all our civic corporations may be found bye-laws, or some equivalent
measure, to enforce the cleansing of the streets. But these regulations
were little enforced. It was ordered that the streets should be swept,
but often enough men were not employed by the authorities to sweep
them; until after the great fire of London, and in many parts for years
after that, the tradesman’s apprentice swept the dirt from the front
of his master’s house, and left it in the street, to be removed at the
leisure of the scavenger. This was in the streets most famous for the
wealth and commercial energy of the inhabitants. The streets inhabited
by the poor, until about the beginning of the present century, were
rarely swept at all. The unevenness of the pavement, the accumulation
of wet and mud in rainy weather, the want of foot-paths, and sometimes
even of grates and kennels, made Cowper, in one of his letters,
describe a perambulation of some of these streets as “going by water.”

Even this state of things was, however, an improvement. In the accounts
of the London street-broils and fights, from the reign of Henry III.,
more especially during the war of the Roses, down to the civil war
which terminated in the beheading of Charles I., mention is more or
less made of the combatants having availed themselves of the shelter
of the rubbish in the streets. These mounds of rubbish were then kinds
of street-barricades, opposing the progress of passengers, like the
piles of overturned omnibuses and other vehicles of the modern French
street-combatants. There is no doubt that in the older times these
mounds were composed, first, of the earth dug out for the foundation of
some building, or the sinking of some well, or (later on) the formation
of some drain; for these works were often long in hand, not only from
the interruptions of civil strife and from want of funds, but from
indifference, owing to the long delay in their completion, and were
often altogether abandoned. After dusk the streets of the capital of
England could not be traversed without lanterns or torches. This was
the case until the last 40 or 50 years in nearly all the smaller towns
of England, but there the darkness was the principal obstacle; in the
inferior parts of “Old London,” however, there were the additional
inconveniences of broken limbs and robbery.

It would be easy to adduce instances from the olden writers in proof of
all the above statements, but it seems idle to cite proofs of what is
known to all.

The care of the streets, however, as regards the removal of the dirt,
or, as the weather might be, the dust and mud, seems never to have
been much of a national consideration. It was left to the corporations
and the parishes. Each of these had its own especial arrangements
for the collection and removal of dirt in its own streets; and as
each parochial or municipal system generally differed in some respect
or other, taken as a whole, there was no one general mode or system
adopted. To all this the street-management of our own days, in the
respect of scavengery, and, as I shall show, of sewerage, presents
a decided improvement. This improvement in street-management is not
attributable to any public agitation--to any public, and, far less,
national manifestation of feeling. It was debated sometimes in courts
of Common Council, in ward and parochial meetings, but the public
generally seem to have taken no express interest in the matter. The
improvement seems to have established itself gradually from the
improved tastes and habits of the people.

Although _generally_ left to the local powers, the subject of
street-cleansing and management, however, has not been _entirely_
overlooked by Parliament. Among parliamentary enactments is the
measure best known as “Michael Angelo Taylor’s Act,” passed early in
the present century, which requires all householders every morning
to remove from the front of their premises any snow which may have
fallen during the night, &c., &c.; the late Police Acts also embrace
subordinately the subject of street-management.

On the other hand the sewers have long been the object of national
care. “The daily great damages and losses which have happened in many
and divers parts of this realm” (I give the spirit of the preamble of
several Acts of Parliament), “as well by the reason of the outrageous
flowings, surges, and course of the river in and upon the marsh
grounds and other low places, heretofore through public wisdom won
and made profitable for the great commonwealth of this realm, as also
by occasion of land waters and other outrageous springs in and upon
meadows, pastures, and other low grounds adjoining to rivers, floods,
and other water-courses,” caused parliamentary attention to be given to
the subject.

Until towards the latter part of the last century, however, the streets
even of the better order were often flooded during heavy and continuous
rains, owing to the sewers and drains having been choked, so that the
sewage forced its way through the gratings into the streets and yards,
flooding all the underground apartments and often the ground floors of
the houses, as well as the public thoroughfares with filth.

It is not many months since the neighbourhood of so modern a locality
as Waterloo-bridge was flooded in this manner, and boats were used
in the Belvidere and York-roads. On the 1st of August, 1846, after a
tremendous storm of thunder, hail, and rain, miles of the capital were
literally under water; hundreds of publicans’ beer-cellars contained
far more water than beer, and the damage done was enormous. These facts
show that though much has been accomplished towards the efficient
sewerage of the metropolis, much remains to be accomplished still.

The first statute on the subject of the public sewerage was as early
as the 9th year of the reign of Henry III. There were enactments,
also, in most of the succeeding reigns, but they were all partial and
conflicting, and related more to local desiderata than to any system
of sewerage for the public benefit, until the reign of Henry VIII.,
when the “Bill of Sewers” was passed (in 1531). This act provided for a
more general system of sewerage in the cities and towns of the kingdom,
requiring the main channels to be of certain depths and dimensions,
according to the localities, situation, &c. In many parts of the
country the sewerage is still carried on according to the provisions in
the act of Henry VIII., but those provisions were modified, altered, or
“explained,” by many subsequent statutes.

Any uniformity which might have arisen from the observance of the
same principles of sewerage was effectually checked by the measures
adopted in London, more especially during the last 100 years. As
the metropolis increased new sewerage became necessary, and new
local bodies were formed for its management. These were known as
the Commissions of Sewers, and the members of those bodies acted
independently one of another, under the authority of their own Acts of
Parliament, each having its own board, engineers, clerks, officers,
and workmen. Each commission was confined to its own district, and
did what was accounted best for its own district with little regard
to any general plan of sewerage, so that London was, and in a great
measure is, sewered upon different principles, as to the size of the
sewers and drains, the rates of inclination, &c. &c. In 1847 there
were eight of these districts and bodies: the City of London, the
Tower Hamlets, Saint Katherine’s, Poplar and Blackwall, Holborn and
Finsbury, Westminster and part of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent, and
Greenwich. In 1848 these several bodies were concentrated by act of
parliament, and entitled the “Metropolitan Commission of Sewers;” but
the City of London, as appears to be the case with every parliamentary
measure affecting the metropolis, presents an exception, as it retains
a separate jurisdiction, and is not under the control of the general
commissioners, to whom parliament has given authority over such matters.

The management of the metropolitan scavengery and sewerage, therefore,
differs in this respect. The scavengery is committed to the care of
the several parishes, each making its own contract; the sewerage is
consigned by Parliament to a body of commissioners. In both instances,
however, the expenses are paid out of local rates.

I shall now proceed to treat of each of these subjects separately,
beginning with the cleansing of the streets.

OF THE STREETS OF LONDON.

There are now three modes of pavement in the streets of the metropolis.

1. _The stone pavement_ (commonly composed of Aberdeen granite).

2. _The macadamized pavement_, or rather _road_.

3. _The wood pavement._

The stone pavement has generally, in the several towns of England,
been composed of whatever material the quarries or rocks of the
neighbourhood supplied, limestone being often thus used. In some
places, where there were no quarries available, the stones of a river
or rivulet-side were used, but these were rounded and slippery,
and often formed but a rugged pathway. For London pavement, the
neighbourhood not being rich in stone quarries, granite has usually
been brought by water from Scotland, and a small quantity from Guernsey
for the pavement of the streets. The stone pavement is made by the
placing of the granite stones, hewn and shaped ready for the purpose,
side by side, with a foundation of concrete. The concrete now used for
the London street-pavement is Thames ballast, composed of shingles, or
small stones, and mixed with lime, &c.

Macadamization was not introduced into the _streets_ of London until
about 25 years ago. Before that, it had been carried to what was
accounted a great degree of perfection on many of the principal mail
and coach roads. Some 50 miles on the Great North Road, or that between
London and Carlisle, were often pointed out as an admirable specimen of
road-making on Mac Adam’s principles. This road was well known in the
old coaching days as Leming-lane, running from Boroughbridge to Greta
Bridge, in Yorkshire.

The first thoroughfare in London which was macadamized, a word adapted
from the name of Sir W. Mac Adam, the originator or great improver of
the system, was St. James’s-square; after that, some of the smaller
streets in the aristocratic parishes of St. James and St. George were
thus paved, and then, but not without great opposition, Piccadilly. The
opposition to the macadamizing of the latter thoroughfare assumed many
forms. Independently of the conflicting statements as to extravagance
and economy, it was urged by the opponents, that the dust and dirt
of the new style of paving would cause the street to be deserted by
the aristocracy--that the noiselessness of the traffic would cause
the deaths of the deaf and infirm--that the aristocracy promoted
this new-fangled street-making, that they might the better “sleep o’
nights,” regardless of all else. One writer especially regretted that
the Duke of Queensberry, popularly known as “Old Q.,” who resided at
the western end of Piccadilly, had not lived to enjoy, undisturbed
by vulgar noises, his bed of down, until it was his hour to rise and
take his bath of perfumed milk! In short, there was all the fuss and
absurdity which so often characterise local contests.

The macadamized street is made by a layer of stones, broken small
and regular in size, and spread evenly over the road, so that the
pressure and friction of the traffic will knead, grind, crush, and
knit them into one compact surface. Until road-making became better
understood, or until the early part of the present century, the
roads even in the suburbs immediately connected with London, such as
Islington, Kingsland, Stoke Newington, and Hackney, were “repaired
when they wanted it.” If there were a “rut,” or a hole, it was filled
up or covered over with stones, and as the drivers usually avoided
such parts, for the sake of their horses’ feet, another rut was
speedily formed alongside of the original one. Under the old system,
road-mending was patch-work; defects were sought to be remedied, but
there was little or no knowledge of constructing or of reconstructing
the surface as a whole.

The wood pavement came last, and was not established, even partially,
until eleven or twelve years ago. One of the earliest places so paved
was the Old Bailey, in order that the noise of the street-traffic might
be deadened in the Criminal Courts. The same plan was adopted alongside
some of the churches, and other public buildings, where external
quietude, or, at any rate, diminished noise, was desired. At the first,
there were great complaints made, and frequent expostulations addressed
to the editors of the newspapers, as to the slipperiness of the wooden
ways. The wood pavement is formed of blocks of wood, generally deal,
fitted to one another by grooves, by joints, or by shape, for close
adjustment. They are placed on the road over a body of concrete, in the
same way as granite.

“In constructing roads, or rather streets, through towns or cities,
where the amount of traffic is considerable, it will be found
desirable,” says Mr. Law, in his ‘Treatise on the Constructing
and Repairing of Roads,’ “to pave their surface. The advantages
belonging to pavements in such situations over macadamized roads are
considerable; where the latter are exposed to an incessant and heavy
traffic, their surface becomes rapidly worn, rendering constant repairs
requisite, which are not only attended with very heavy expense, but
also render the road very unpleasant for being travelled upon while
being done; they also require much more attention in the way of
scraping or sweeping, and in raking in ruts. And some difficulty would
be experienced in towns to find places in which the materials, which
would be constantly wanted for repairing the road, could be deposited.
In dry weather the macadamized road would always be dusty, and in wet
weather it would be covered with mud. The only advantage which such a
road really possesses over a pavement is the less noise produced by
carriages in passing over it; but this advantage is very small when the
pavement is properly laid.”

Concerning wood pavements the same gentleman says, “Of late years
wood has been introduced as a material for paving streets, and has
been rather extensively employed both in Russia and America. It has
been tried in various parts of London, and generally with small
success, the cause of its failure being identical with the cause of
the enormous sums being spent annually in the repairs of the streets
generally, namely, the want of a proper foundation; a want which was
sooner felt with wood than with granite, in consequence of the less
weight and inertia of the wood. The comfort resulting from the use
of wooden pavement, both to those who travelled, and those who lived
in the streets, from the diminished jolting and noise, was so great,
that it is just matter of surprise that so little care was taken in
forming that which a very little consideration would have shown to be
indispensable to its success, namely, a good foundation. Slipperiness
of its surface, in particular states of the weather, was also found
to be a disadvantage belonging to wooden pavement; but means might be
devised which would render its surface at all times safe, and afford
a secure footing for horses. As regards durability, it has scarcely
been used for a sufficient period to allow a comparison being made with
other materials, but from the result of some observations communicated
by Mr. Hope to the Scottish Society of Arts, it appears that wooden
blocks when placed with the end of the grain exposed, wear _less than
granite_. At first sight, this result might appear questionable,
but it is a well-ascertained fact that, where wood and iron move in
contact in machinery, the iron generally wears more rapidly than the
wood, the reason appearing to be, that the surface of the wood soon
becomes covered with particles of dust and grit, which become partially
embedded in it, and, while they serve to protect the wood, convert its
surface into a species of file, which rapidly wears away whatever it
rubs against.”

Such then are the different modes of constructing the London roads
or streets. I shall now endeavour to show the relative length,
and relative cost of the streets thus severally prepared for the
commercial, professional, and pleasurable transit of the metropolis.

The comparative extent of the macadamized, of the stone, and of the
wood pavement of the streets of the metropolis has not as yet been
ascertained, for no general account has appeared condensing the
reports, returns, accounts, &c., of the several specific bodies of
management into one grand total.

It is, however, possible to arrive at an approximation as to
the comparative extent I have spoken of; and in this attempt at
approximation, in the absence of all means of a definite statistical
computation, I have had the assistance of an experienced and practical
surveyor, familiar with the subject.

Macadamization prevails beyond the following boundaries:--

North of the New-road and of its extension, as the City-road, and
westward of the New-road’s junction with Lisson-grove.

Westward of Park-lane and of the West-end parks.

Eastward of Brick-lane (Spitalfields) and of the Whitechapel
High-street.

Southward (on the Surrey side) from the New-cut and Long-lane,
Bermondsey, and both in the eastern and western direction of Southwark,
Lambeth, and the other southern parishes.

Stone pavement, on the other hand, prevails in the district which may
be said to be within this boundary, bearing down upon the Thames in all
directions.

It is, doubtlessly, the fact that in both the districts thus indicated
exceptions to the general rule may prevail--that in one, for instance,
there may be some miles of macadamized way, and in the other some miles
of granite pavements; but such exceptions, I am told by a Commissioner
of Paving, may fairly be dismissed as balancing each other.

The wooden pavement, I am informed on the same authority, does not
now comprise five miles of the London thoroughfares; little notice,
therefore, need be taken of it.

The miles of streets in the City in which stone only affords the street
medium of locomotion are 50. The stone pavement in the localities
outside of this area are six times, or approaching to seven times,
the extent of that in the City. I have no actual admeasurement to
demonstrate this point, for none exists, and no private individual can
offer to measure hundreds of miles of streets in order to ascertain
the composition of their surface. But the calculation has been made
for me by a gentleman thoroughly conversant with the subject, and
well acquainted with the general relative proportion of the defined
districts, parishes, and boroughs of the metropolis.

We have thus the following result, as regards the inner police
district, or Metropolis Proper:--

Miles.
Granite paved streets 400
Macadamized ditto (or roads) 1350
Wood ditto 5
----
Total 1755

This may appear a disproportionate estimate, but when it is remembered
that the inner police district of the metropolis extends as far as
Hampstead, Tooting, Brentford, and Greenwich, it will be readily
perceived that the relative proportions of the macadamized and paved
roads are much about the same as is here stated.

As to the cost of these several roads, I will, before entering upon
that part of the subject, state the prices of the different materials
used in their manufacture.

Aberdeen granite is now 1_l._ 5_s._ per ton, delivered, and prepared
for paving, or, as it is often called, “pitching.” A ton of “seven
inch” granite, that is, granite sunk seven inches in the ground, will
cover from two and three-quarters to three square yards, superficial
measure, or nine feet per yard. The cost, labour included, is,
therefore, from 9_s._ to 12_s._ the square yard. This appears very
costly; but in some of the more quiet streets, such as those in the
immediate neighbourhood of Golden and Fitzroy-squares, a good granite
pavement will endure for 20 years, requiring little repair. In other
streets, such as Cheapside, for instance, it lasts from three to
four years, without repavement being necessary, supposing the best
construction has been originally adopted.

For macadamized streets, where there is a traffic like that of
Tottenham Court-road, three layers of small broken granite a year are
necessary; the cost of this repavement being about 2_s._ 6_d._ a yard
superficial measure. The repairs and relayings on macadamized roads of
regular traffic range from 4_s._ to 6_s._ 6_d._ yearly, the square yard.

The wood pavement, which endures, with a trifling outlay for repairs,
for about three years, costs, on an average, 11_s._ the square yard.

The concrete used as a foundation in this street-construction costs
4_s._ 6_d._ a cube yard, or 27 feet, by which admeasurement it is
always calculated. A cube yard of Thames ballast weighs about 1-1/4 ton.

The average cost of street-building, new, taking an average breadth, or
about ten yards, from footpath to footpath, is then--

Per Mile.
£. _s._ _d._
Granite built 96 0 0
Macadamized 44 0 0
Wood 88 0 0

Or, as a total,

400 miles of granite paved streets
at £96 per mile 38,400 0 0
1350 macadamized ditto, at
£44 per mile 59,400 0 0
5 wood ditto, at £88 per mile 440 0 0
----------------
98,240 0 0

This, then (about £100,000), is the _original cost_ of the roads of the
metropolis.

The cost of repairs, &c., annually, is shown by the amount of the
paving rate, which may be taken as an average.

£ _s._ _d._
400 miles of granite, at 20_s._ per
mile 400 0 0
1350 macadamized ditto, at
£13 4_s._ per mile 17,820 0 0
5 wood[13] ditto, at 20_s._
per mile 5 0 0
----------------
Total 18,225 0 0

According to a “General Survey of the Metropolitan Highways,” by Mr.
Thomas Hughes, the principal roads leading out of London are:--

1. _The Cambridge Road_, from Shoreditch through Kingsland.

2. _The Epping and Chelmsford Roads_, from Whitechapel, through Bow and
Stratford.

3. _The Barking Road_, along the Commercial Road past Limehouse.

4. _The Dover Road_, from the Elephant and Castle, across Blackheath.

5. _The Brighton Roads_, (_a_) through Croydon, (_b_) through Sutton.

6. _The Guildford Road_, along the Westminster Road through Battersea
and Wandsworth.

7. _The Staines, or Great Western Road_, from Knightsbridge through
Brentford.

8. _The Amersham and Aylesbury Road_, along the Harrow Road, and
through Harrow-on-the-Hill.

9. _The St. Alban’s Road_, along the Edgeware Road through Elstree.

10. _The Oxford Road_, from Bayswater through Ealing.

11. _The Great Holyhead Road._
} From Islington, by and through Barnet.
12. _The Great North Road._

As to the amount of resistance to traction offered by different kinds
of pavement, or the same pavement under different circumstances, the
following are the general results of the experiments made by M. Morin,
at the expense of the French Government:--

1st. The traction is directly proportional to the load, and inversely
proportional to the diameter of the wheel.

2nd. Upon a paved, or hard macadamized road, the resistance is
independent of the width of the tire, when it exceeds from three to
four inches.

3rd. At a walking pace the traction is the same, under the same
circumstances, for carriages with springs and without them.

4th. Upon hard macadamized, and upon paved roads, the traction
increases with the velocity: the increments of traction being directly
proportional to the increments of velocity above the velocity 3·28
feet per second, or about 2-1/4 miles per hour. The equal increment of
traction thus due to each equal increment of velocity is less as the
road is more smooth, and the carriage less rigid or better hung.

5th. Upon soft roads of earth, or sand, or turf, or roads fresh and
thickly gravelled, the traction is independent of the velocity.

6th. Upon a well-made and compact pavement of hewn stones, the traction
at a walking pace is not more than three-fourths of that upon the best
macadamized roads under similar circumstances; at a trotting pace it is
equal to it.

7th. The destruction of the road is in all cases greater, as the
diameters of the wheels are less, and it is greater in carriages
without than with springs.

In Sir H. Parnell’s book on roads, p. 73, we are told that Sir John
Macneill, by means of an instrument invented by himself for measuring
the tractive force required on different kinds of road, obtained the
following general results as to the power requisite to move a ton
weight under ordinary circumstances, at a very low velocity.

-------------------------------------------+------------------
| Force, in
Description of Road. | pounds, required
| to move a ton.
-------------------------------------------+------------------
On a well-made pavement | 33
|
On a road made with six inches of } |
broken stone of great hardness, } |
laid either on a foundation of large } | 46
stones, set in the form of a pavement, } |
or upon a bottoming of concrete } |
|
On an old flint road, or a road made } |
with a thick coating of broken } | 65
stone, laid on earth } |
|
On a road made with a thick coating } |
of gravel, laid on earth } | 147
-------------------------------------------+------------------

In the same work the relative degrees of resistance to traction on the
several kinds of roads are thus expressed:--

On a timber surface 2
On a paved road 2
On a well-made broken stone road, in a
dry clean state 5
On a well-made broken stone road,
covered with dust 8
On a well-made broken stone road, wet
and muddy 10
On a gravel or flint road, in a dry
clean state 13
On a gravel or flint road, in a wet
muddy state 32

OF THE TRAFFIC OF LONDON.

I have shown (at p. 159, vol. ii.) that the number of miles of streets
included in the Inner District of the Metropolitan Police is 1750.

Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his excellent “Handbook of Modern London,”
tells us that “the streets of the Metropolis, if put together, would
measure 3000 miles in length;” but he does not inform us what limits
he assigns to the said metropolis; it would seem, however, that he
refers to the Outer Police District: and in another place he cites the
following as the extent of some of the principal thoroughfares:--

New-road 5115 yds. long, or nearly 3 miles.
Oxford-street 2304 „ „ 1-1/2 „
Regent-street 1730 „ „ 1 „
Piccadilly 1690 „
City-road 1690 „
Strand 1396 „

Of the two great lines of streets parallel to the river, the one
extending along Oxford-street, Holborn, Cheapside, Cornhill, and
Whitechapel to the Regent’s-canal, Mile-end, is, says Mr. McCulloch,
“above six miles in length;” while that which stretches from
Knightsbridge along Piccadilly, the Haymarket, Pall-mall East, the
Strand, Fleet-street, Watling-street, Eastcheap, Tower-street, and so
on by Ratcliffe-highway to the West India Docks, is, according to the
same authority, about equal in length to the other. Mr. Weale asserts,
as we have already seen, that the greatest length of street from
east to west is about fourteen miles, and from north to south about
thirteen miles. The number of streets in London is said to be 10,000,
though upon what authority the statement is made, and within what
compass it is meant to be applied, I have not been able to ascertain.
It is calculated, however, that there are 1900 miles of gas “mains”
laid down in London and the suburbs; so that adopting the estimate of
the Commissioners of Police, or 1760 miles of streets, within an area
of about 90 square miles, we cannot go far wrong.

Now, as to the amount of _traffic_ that takes place daily over this
vast extent of paved road, it is almost impossible to predicate
anything definitely. As yet there are only a few crude facts existing
in connection with the subject. All we know is, that the London streets
are daily traversed by 1500 omnibuses--such was the number of drivers
licensed by the Metropolitan Commissioners in 1850--and about 3000
cabs--the number of drivers licensed in 1850 was 5000, but many “cabs”
have a day and night driver as well, and the Return from the Stamp and
Tax Office cited below, represents the number of licensed cabriolets,
in 1849, at 2846: besides these public conveyances, there are the
private carriages and carts, so that the metropolitan vehicles may be
said to employ altogether upwards of 20,000 horses.

In the _Morning Chronicle_ I said, when treating of the London
omnibus-drivers and conductors:--“The average journey, as regards the
distance travelled by each omnibus, is six miles, and that distance is,
in some cases, travelled twelve times a day, or as it is called, ‘six
there and six back.’ Some omnibuses perform the journey only ten times
a day, and some, but a minority, a less number of times. Now, taking
the average distance travelled by each omnibus at between 45 and 50
miles a day--and this, I am assured, on the best authority, is within
the mark, while 60 miles a day might exceed it--and computing the
omnibuses running daily at 1500, we find ‘a travel,’ as it was worded
to me, of upwards of 70,000 miles daily, or a yearly ‘travel’ of more
than 25,000,000 miles; an extent which is upwards of a thousand times
more than the circumference of the earth; and that this estimate in no
way exceeds the truth is proved by the sum annually paid to the Excise
for ‘mileage,’ which amounts on an average to 9_l._ each ’bus’ per
month, or collectively to 162,000_l._ per annum, and this, at 1-1/2_d._
per mile (the rate of duty charged), gives 25,920,000 miles as the
aggregate distance travelled by the entire number of omnibuses every
year through the London streets.”

The distance travelled by the London cabs may be estimated as
follows:--Each driver may be said to receive on an average 10_s._ a
day all the year through. Now, the number of licences prove that there
are 5000 cab-drivers in London, and as each of these must travel at
the least ten miles in order to obtain the daily 10_s._, we may safely
assert that the whole 5000 go over 50,000 miles of ground a day, or, in
round numbers, 18,250,000 miles in the course of the year.

According to a return obtained by Mr. Charles Cochrane from the Stamp
and Tax Office, Somerset House, there were in the metropolis, in
1849-50, the following number of horses:--

Private carriage, job, and cart horses (in
London) 3,683
Ditto (in Westminster) 6,339
Cabriolets licensed 2846 (having two
horses each) 5,692
Omnibuses licensed 1350 (four horses
each) 5,500
------
Total number of horses in the metropolis 21,214
------

I am assured, by persons well acquainted with the omnibus trade,
that the number of omnibus horses here cited is far too low--as many
proprietors employ ten horses to each “bus,” and none less than
six. Hence we may fairly assume that there are at the least 25,000
horses at work every day in the streets of London. Besides the horses
above mentioned, it is estimated that the number daily coming to the
metropolis from the surrounding parts is 3000; and calculating that
each of the 25,000, which may be said to be at work out of the entire
number, travels eight miles a day, the aggregate length of ground gone
over by the whole would amount to 200,000 miles per diem, or about
70,000,000 miles throughout the year. There are, as we have seen,
upwards of 1750 miles of streets in London. It follows, therefore, that
each piece of pavement would be traversed no less than 40,000 times per
annum, or upwards of a hundred times a day, by some horse or vehicle.

As I said before, the facts that have been collected concerning the
absolute traffic of the several parts of London are of the most meagre
description. The only observations of any character that have been made
upon the subject are--as far as my knowledge goes--those of M. D’Arcey,
which are contained in a French report upon the roads of London, as
compared with those of Paris.

This gentleman, speaking of the relative number of vehicles passing
and repassing over certain parts of the two capitals, says:--“The
Boulevards of Paris are the parts where the greatest traffic takes
place. On the _Boulevard des Capucins_ there pass, every 24 hours, 9070
horses drawing carriages; on the _Boulevard des Italiens_, 10,750;
_Boulevard Poissonière_, 7720; _Boulevard St. Denis_, 9609; _Boulevard
des Filles du Calvaire_, 5856: general average of the above, 8600.
_Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine_, 4300; _Avenue des Champs Elysées_,
8959. At London, in Pall Mall, opposite Her Majesty’s Theatre, there
pass at least 800 carriages every hour. On London-bridge the number of
vehicles passing and repassing is not less than 13,000 every hour. On
Westminster-bridge the annual traffic amounts to 8,000,000 horses at
the least. By this it will be seen that the traffic in Paris does not
amount to one-half of what it is in the streets of London.”

OF THE DUST AND DIRT OF THE STREETS OF LONDON.

We have merely to reflect upon the vast amount of traffic just shown to
be daily going on throughout London--to think of the 70,000,000 miles
of journey through the metropolis annually performed by the entire
vehicles (which is more than two-thirds the distance from the earth to
the sun)--to bear in mind that each part of London is on the average
gone over and over again 40,000 times in the course of the year, and
some parts as many as 13,000 times in a day--and that every horse and
vehicle by which the streets are traversed are furnished, the one with
four iron-bound hoofs, and the other with iron-bound wheels--to have
an imperfect idea of the enormous weights and friction continually
operating upon the surface of the streets--as well as the amount of
grinding and pulverising, and wear and tear, that must be perpetually
taking place in the paving-stones and macadamized roads of London; and
thus we may be able to form some mental estimate as to the quantity of
dust and dirt annually produced by these means alone.

But the table in pp. 186-7, which has been collected at great trouble,
will give us still more accurate notions on the subject. It is not
given as perfect, but as being the best information, in the absence of
positive returns, that was procurable even from the best informed.

Here, then, we have an aggregate total of dust collected from the
_principal_ parts of the metropolis amounting to no less than 141,466
loads. The value of this refuse is said to be as much as 21,221_l._
8_s._, but of this and more I shall speak hereafter. At present I
merely seek to give the reader a general notion upon the matter. I wish
to show him, before treating of the labourers engaged in the scavenging
of the London streets, the amount of work they have to do.

A TABLE SHOWING THE SEVERAL DIVISIONS OF THE METROPOLIS CLEANSED BY THE
SCAVENGERS AND PARISH MEN, THE NAMES OF THE CONTRACTORS, THE NUMBER
OF MEN AND CARTS EMPLOYED IN COLLECTING, THE QUANTITY OF DUST AND MUD
COLLECTED DAILY IN THE STREETS IN DRY AND WET WEATHER, WITH THE ANNUAL
VALUE OF THE WHOLE.

---------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+-------------------+-----------------+------------+-----------------+
| | Number of Men | Number of Carts | | Number of | |
| | employed | used daily in | Number of loads | Cart-Loads | Annual value |
| | at scavenging. | scavenging. |collected daily. | annually | of Dirt |
Divisions and Districts. | Names of +--------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+ collected | collected by |
| Contractors. | In dry | In wet | In dry | In wet | In dry |In wet | by the | Scavengers. |
| |weather.|weather.|weather.| weather. |weather.|weather.| Scavengers.| |
---------------------------+-----------------+--------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+------------+-----------------+
| | | | | | | | | £ _s._ _d._|
Kensington |Parish | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
Chelsea |Ditto | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Ditto (Hans’ Town) |Mr. C. Humphries | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
St. George’s, Pimlico |Mr. Redding | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 1878 | 281 14 0 |
Ditto, Hanover Square |Parish | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1-1/2 | 2-1/2 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
St. Margaret’s, Westminster|Ditto | 5 | 7 | 2 | 3 | 8 | 10 | 2817 | 422 11 0 |
St. John’s, ditto |Mr. Hearne | 5 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 10 | 2817 | 422 11 0 |
St. Martin’s |Machine | 6 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Hungerford-market |Mr. J. Gore | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
St. James’s, Westminster |Parish | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 1878 | 281 14 0 |
Piccadilly |Parish and | | | | | | | | |
Machine | 20 | 28 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 12 | 3130 | 469 10 0 |
Regent-street and Pall-mall|Ditto, ditto | 8 | 12 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
St. Ann’s, Soho |Ditto | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Woods and Forests |Machine | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 1878 | 281 14 0 |
Paddington |Parish | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 2191 | 328 13 0 |
Marylebone (Five Districts)|Ditto | 20 | 35 | 3 | 4 | 15 | 25 | 6260 | 939 0 0 |
Portland-market |Mr. Tame | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 939 | 140 17 0 |
Hampstead |Parish | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 939 | 140 17 0 |
Highgate |Ditto | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 939 | 140 17 0 |
St. Pancras, South-west | | | | | | | | | |
Division |Mr. Stapleton | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Somers-town |Mr. Starkey | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 9 | 2504 | 375 12 0 |
Southampton Estate |Mr. C. Starkey | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
Bedford ditto |Mr. J. Gore | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Brewers’ ditto |Mr. C. Starkey | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Calthorpe ditto |Ditto | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Cromer ditto |Ditto | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Doughty ditto |Mr. Martin | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Foundling ditto |Ditto | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Harrison ditto |Ditto | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Skinners’ ditto |Mr. H. North | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Union ditto |Mr. J. Gore | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Islington District |Parish | 6 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
Battle-bridge |Mr. Starkey | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 1878 | 281 14 0 |
Hackney |Parish | 5 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 939 | 140 17 0 |
St. Giles-in-the-Fields and| | | | | | | | | |
St. George, Bloomsbury |Mr. Redding | 7 | 9 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 10 | 2504 | 375 12 0 |
St. Mary-le-Strand |Mr. J. Gore | 2 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Savoy |Ditto | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
St. Clement Danes |Parish | 5 | 7 | 3 |3 waggons.| 2 | 6 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
St. Paul’s, Covent Garden |Ditto | 3 | 5 | 1 |2 carts. | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
Covent Garden-market |Mr. Stapleton | 5 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 3130 | 469 10 0 |
Holborn |Parish | 6 | 9 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
St. Sepulchre’s |Mr. J. Gore | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 939 | 140 17 0 |
Hatton-garden |Messrs. Pratt | | | | | | | | |
| and Sewell | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
St. James’s, Clerkenwell |Mr. Dodd | 5 | 7 | 2 | 3 | 8 | 10 | 2817 | 422 11 0 |
St. John’s, ditto |Mr. J. Gould | 5 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 2191 | 328 13 0 |
St. Luke’s |Mr. Dodd | 7 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 2817 | 422 11 0 |
Goswell-street |Mr. Redding | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Liberty of the Rolls |Messrs. Pratt | | | | | | | | |
| and Sewell | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Blackfriars Bridge |Mr. Jenkins | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
City Division, Eastern, A |Mr. G. Sinnott | 10 | 16 | 4 | 6 | 12 | 16 | 4382 | 657 6 0 |
Ditto, North Middle, B |Mr. T. Rooke | 9 | 13 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 12 | 3130 | 469 10 0 |
Ditto, Western, C |Mr. C. Redding | 12 | 14 | 4 | 6 | 14 | 18 | 5008 | 751 4 0 |
Ditto, South Middle, D |Mr. J. Gould | 10 | 12 | 3 | 4 | 9 | 11 | 3130 | 469 10 0 |
Shoreditch |Mr. Dodd | 6 | 9 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 3130 | 469 10 0 |
Norton Folgate |Mr. J. Gould | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Finsbury Square District |Ditto | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 2191 | 328 13 0 |
St. Botolph |Mr. Westley | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Spitalfields District |Mr. Newman | 3 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
Spitalfields-market |Mr. Parsons | 5 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Bethnal-green |Mr. E. Newman | 4 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 10 | 2817 | 422 11 0 |
Whitechapel |Mr. Parsons | 3 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 2191 | 328 13 0 |
Commercial-road |Parish | 4 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Mile-end |Mr. Newman | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
Ditto, New-town |Mr. Parsons | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
St. John’s, Wapping |Mr. Westley | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 939 | 140 17 0 |
Shadwell |Ditto | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
St. George’s-in-the-East |Ditto | 4 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 2191 | 328 13 0 |
Stepney |Mr. E. Newman | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Poplar |Parish | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 939 | 140 17 0 |
East Borough |Mr. Redding | 4 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
West ditto |Ditto | 3 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 939 | 140 17 0 |
Borough Clink |Mr. W. Sinnott | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 939 | 140 17 0 |
Bermondsey |Parish | 4 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 9 | 15 | 3576 | 563 18 0 |
Newington |Ditto | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
Lambeth |Ditto | 12 | 16 | 2 | 3 | 8 | 10 | 2817 | 422 11 0 |
Ditto (Christchurch) |Ditto | 14 | 20 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 2191 | 328 13 0 |
Wandsworth |Ditto | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
Camberwell and Walworth |Ditto | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 1878 | 281 14 0 |
Rotherhithe |Ditto | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
Greenwich |Ditto | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1565 | 234 15 0 |
Deptford |Ditto | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 2191 | 328 13 0 |
Woolwich |Ditto | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1252 | 187 16 0 |
Lewisham |Ditto | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 626 | 93 18 0 |
+-----------------+--------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+------------+-----------------+
|Scavengers’ Total| 358 | 531 | 130 | 183 |355-1/2 |548-1/2 | 140,983 |21,147 9 0 |
---------------------------+-----------------+--------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+------------+-----------------+
Average total 444-1/2 men. 156-1/2 carts. 452 loads daily. 140,983 loads yearly. £21,147 9 0 |
Orderlies 546 ditto. 9 ditto. 2,817 ditto. 352 2 6 |
--- ------- --- ------- ----------- |
Gross total 990-1/2 men. 156-1/2 461 loads daily. 143,800 loads yearly. £21,499 11 6 |
------- --- ------- -----------|

OF THE STREET-DUST OF LONDON, AND THE LOSS AND INJURY OCCASIONED BY IT.

The daily and nightly grinding of thousands of wheels, the iron
friction of so many horses’ hoofs, the evacuations of horses and
cattle, and the ceaseless motion of pedestrians, all decomposing the
substance of our streets and roads, give rise to many distinct kinds of
street-dirt. These are severally known as

(1) _Dust._

(2) _Horse-dung_ and _cattle-manure_.

(3) _Mud_, when mixed with water and with general refuse, such as the
remains of fruit and other things thrown into the street and swept
together.

(4) _Surface-water_ when mixed with street-sewage.

These productions I shall treat severally, and first of the street-dust.

The “_detritus_” of the streets of London assumes many forms, and is
known by many names, according as it is combined with more or less
water.

1st. In a perfectly dry state, so that the particles no longer exist
either in a state of cohesion or aggregation, but are minutely divided
and distinct, it is known by the name of “dust.”

2nd. When in combination with a small quantity of water, so that it
assumes the consistency of a pap, the particles being neither free to
move nor yet able to resist pressure, the detritus is known by the
name of “mac mud,” or simply “mud,” according as it proceeds from a
macadamized or stone paved road.

3rd. When in combination with a greater quantity of water, so that it
is rendered almost liquid, it is known as “slop-dirt.”

4th. When in combination with a still greater quantity of water, so
that it is capable of running off into the sewers, it is known by the
name of “street surface-water.”

The mud of the streets of London is then merely the dust or detritus
of the granite of which they are composed, agglutinated either with
rain or the water from the watering-carts. Granite consists of silex,
felspar, and mica. Silex is sand, while felspar and mica are also silex
in combination with alumina (clay), and either potash or magnesia.
Hence it would appear to be owing to the affinity of the alumina or
clay for moisture, as well as the property of silex to “gelatinize”
with water under certain conditions, that the particles of dry dust
derive their property of _agglutinating_, when wetted, and so forming
what is termed “mud”--either “mac,” or simple mud, according, as I said
before, to the nature of the paving on which it is formed.

By _dust_ the street-cleansers mean the collection of every kind of
refuse in the dust-bins; but I here speak, of course, of the fine
particles of earthy matter produced by the attrition of our roads when
in a dry state. Street-dust is, more properly speaking, mud deprived of
its moisture by evaporation. Miss Landon (L. E. L.) used to describe
the London dust as “mud in high spirits,” and perhaps no figure of
speech could convey a better notion of its character.

In some parts of the suburbs on windy days London is a perfect
dust-mill, and although the dust may be allayed by the agency of the
water-carts (by which means it is again converted into “mac,” or mud),
it is not often thoroughly allayed, and is a source of considerable
loss, labour, and annoyance. Street-dust is not collected for any
useful purpose, so that as there is no return to be balanced against
its prejudicial effects it remains only to calculate the quantity of it
annually produced, and thus to arrive at the extent of the mischief.

Street-dust is disintegrated granite, that is, pulverized quartz
and felspar, felspar being principally composed of alumina or clay,
and quartz silex or sand; it is the result of the attrition, or in
a word it is the _detritus_, of the stones used in pavements and in
macadamization; it is further composed of the pulverization of all
horse and cattle-dung, and of the almost imperceptible, but still, I
am assured, existent powder which arises from the friction of the
wooden pavement even when kept moist. In the roads of the nearest
suburbs, even around such places as the Regent’s-park, at many seasons
this dust is produced largely, so that very often an open window for
the enjoyment of fresh air is one for the intrusion of fresh dust.
This may be less the case in the busier and more frequently-watered
thoroughfares, but even there the annoyance is great.

I find in the “Reports” in which this subject is mentioned but little
said concerning the influence of dust upon the public health. Dr.
Arnott, however, is very explicit on the subject. “It is,” says
he, “scarcely conceivable that the immense quantities of granite
dust, pounded by one or two hundred thousand pairs of wheels (!)
working on macadamized streets, should not greatly injure the public
health. In houses bordering such streets or roads it is found that,
notwithstanding the practice of watering, the furniture is often
covered with dust, even more than once in the day, so that writing on
it with the finger becomes legible, and the lungs and air tubes of the
inhabitants, with a moist lining to detain the dust, are constantly
pumping in the same atmosphere. The passengers by a stage-coach in dry
weather, when the wind is moving with them so as to keep them enveloped
in the cloud of dust raised by the horses’ feet and the wheels of the
coach, have their clothes soon saturated to whiteness, and their lungs
are charged in a corresponding degree. A gentleman who rode only 20
miles in this way had afterwards to cough and expectorate for ten days
to clear his chest again.”

In order that the deleteriousness to health incident to the inhalation
of these fine and offensive particles may be the better estimated, I
may add, that in every 24 hours an adult breathes 36 hogsheads of air;
and Mr. Erasmus Wilson, in his admirable work on the Skin, has the
following passage concerning the extent of surface presented by the
lungs:--

“The lungs receive the atmospheric air through the windpipe. At the
root of the neck the windpipe, or trachea, divides into two branches,
called bronchi, and each bronchus, upon entering its respective lung,
divides into an infinity of small tubes; the latter terminate in small
pouches, called air-cells, and a number of these little air-cells
communicate together at the extremity of each small tube. The number
of air-cells in the two lungs has been estimated at 1,744,000,000, and
the extent of the skin which lines the cells and tubes together at
1500 square feet. This calculation of the number of air-cells, and the
extent of the lining membrane, rests, I believe, on the authority of
Dr. Addison of Malvern.”

What is the amount of atmospherical granite, dung, and refuse-dust
received in a given period into the human lungs, has never, I am
informed, been ascertained even by approximation; but according to the
above facts it must be something fearful to contemplate.

After this brief recital of what is known concerning the sanitary part
of the question, I proceed to consider the damage and loss occasioned
by street-dust. In no one respect, perhaps, can this be ascertained
with perfect precision, but still even a rough approximation to the
extent of the evil is of value, as giving us more definite ideas on the
subject.

It will be seen, on reference to the preceding table, that the quantity
of street-refuse collected in dry weather throughout the metropolis is
between 300 and 400 cart-loads daily, or upwards of 100,000 cart-loads,
the greater proportion of which may be termed street-dust.

The damage occasioned by the street-dust arises from its penetrating,
before removal, the atmosphere both without and within our houses,
and consists in the soiling of wearing apparel, the injury of the
stock-in-trade of shopkeepers, and of household furniture.

Washing is, of course, dependent upon the duration of time in which
it is proper, in the estimation of the several classes of society,
to retain wearing apparel upon the person, on the bed or the table,
without what is termed a “change;” and this duration of time with
thousands of both men and women is often determined by the presence or
absence of dirt on the garment; and not arbitrarily, as among wealthier
people, with whom a clean shirt every morning, and a clean table-cloth
every one, two, three, or more days, as may happen, are regarded as
things of course, no matter what may be the state of the displaced
linen.

The Board of Health, in one of their Reports, speak very decisively and
definitely on this subject. “Common observation of the rate at which
the skin, linen, and clothes (not to speak of paper, books, prints, and
furniture) become dirty in the metropolis,” say they, “as compared with
the time that elapses before a proportionate amount of deterioration
and uncleanliness is communicated in the rural districts, will warrant
the estimate, that _full one-half the expense of washing to maintain a
passable degree of cleanliness_, is rendered necessary by the excess
of smoke generated in open fires, and the _excess of dust arising from
the imperfect scavenging of the roads and streets_. Persons engaged in
washing linen on a large scale, state that it is dirtied in the crowded
parts of the metropolis in _one-third_ the time in which the like
degree of uncleanliness would be produced in a rural district; but all
attest the fact, that linen is more rapidly destroyed by washing than
by the wear on the person. The expense of the more rapid destruction
of linen must be added to the extra expense of washing. These expenses
and inconveniences, the greater portion of which are due to _local
maladministration, occasion an extra expenditure of upwards of two to
three millions per annum_--exclusive of the injury done to the general
health and the medical and other expenses consequent thereon.”

Here, then, we find the evil effects of the imperfect scavenging of the
metropolis estimated at between two and three millions sterling per
annum, and this in the mere matter of extra washing and its necessary
concomitant extra wear and tear of clothes.

As this estimate, however, appears to me to exaggerate the evil beyond
all due bounds, I will proceed to adduce a few facts, bearing upon the
point: and first as to the expense of washing.

In order to ascertain as accurately as possible, the actual washing
expenses of labouring men and their families whose washing was done at
home, Mr. John Bullar, the Honorary Secretary to the Association for
the Promotion of Baths and Washhouses, tells us in a Report presented
to Parliament, “that inquiries were made of several hundred families
of labouring men, and it was found that, _taking the wife’s labour
as worth 5s. a week!_ the total cost of washing at home, for a man
and wife and four children, averaged very closely on 2_s._ 6_d._ a
week, = 5_d._ a head. The cost of coals, soda, soap, starch, blue, and
sometimes water, was rather less than one-third of the amount. The
time occupied was rarely less than two days, and more often extended
into a third day, so that the value of the labour was rather more than
two-thirds of the amount.

“The cost of washing to single men among the labouring classes, whose
washing expenditure might be expected to be on a very low scale, such
as hod-men and street-sweepers, was found to be 4-1/2_d._ a head.

“The cost of washing to very small tradesmen could not be safely
estimated at much more than 6_d._ a head a week.

“It may, perhaps,” continues the Report, “be safe to reckon the
weekly washing expenses of the poorer half of the inhabitants of the
metropolis at not exceeding 6_d._ a head; but the expenditure for
washing rapidly increases as the inquiry ascends into what are called
the ‘middle classes.’

“The washing expenses of families in which servants are employed may be
considered as double that of the servants’, and, therefore, as ranging
from 1_s._ 6_d._ to 5_s._ a week a head.

“There is considerable difficulty in ascertaining with any exactness
the washing expenditure of private families, but the conclusion is
that, taking the whole population, the washing bills of London are
nearly 1_s._ a week a head, or 5,000,000_l._ a year.

“Of course,” adds Mr. Bullar, “I give this as but a rough estimate, and
many exceptions may easily be taken to it; but I feel pretty confident
that _it is not very far_ from the truth.”

As I before stated, I am in no way disposed to go to the extent of
the calculation here made. It appears to me that in parliamentary
investigations by the agency of select committees, or by gentlemen
appointed to report on any subject, there is an aptitude to deal with
the whole body of the people as if they were earning the wages of well
and regularly-employed labourers, or even mechanics. To suppose that
the starving ballast-heaver, the victim of a vicious truck system,
which condemns him to poverty and drunkenness, or the sweep, or the
dustman, or the street-seller--all very numerous classes--expends 1_s._
a week in his washing, is far beyond the fact. Still less is expended
in the washing of these people’s children. Even the well-conducted
artizan, with two clean shirts a week (costing him 6_d._), with the
washing of stockings, &c. (costing 1_d._ or 2_d._), does not expend
1_s._ a week; so that, though the washing bills of many ladies and of
some gentlemen may average 10_s._ weekly, if we consider how few are
rich and how many poor, the extra payment seems insufficient to make up
the average of the weekly shilling for the washing of all classes.

A prosperous and respectable master greengrocer, who was what may
be called “particular” in his dress, as he had been a gentleman’s
servant, and was now in the habit of waiting upon the wealthy persons
in his neighbourhood, told me that the following was the average of
his washing bill. He was a bachelor; all his washing was put out, and
he considered his expenditure far _above_ the average of his class,
as many used no night-shirt, but slept in the shirts they wore during
the day, and paid only 3_d._, and even less, per shirt to their
washer-woman, and perhaps, and more especially in winter, made one
shirt last the week.

Two shirts (per week) 7_d._
Stockings 1
Night-shirt (worn two weeks generally,
average per week) 0-3/4
Sheets, blankets, and other household
linens or woollens 2
Handkerchiefs 0-1/4
------
11_d._

My informant was satisfied that he had put his expenditure at the
highest. I also ascertained that an industrious wife, who was able
to attend to her household matters, could wash the clothes of a
small tradesman’s family,--for a man, his wife, and four small
children,--“well,” at the following rate:--

1 lb. soap 4-1/2_d._ or 5_d._
Soda and starch 0-1/2
1/4 cwt. coals (extra) 3-1/2
-----
8-1/2_d._

or less than 1-1/2_d._ per head.

In this calculation it will be seen the cheapest soap is reckoned, and
that _there is no allowance for the wife’s labour_. When I pointed out
the latter circumstance, my informant said: “I look on it that the
washing labour is part of the wife’s keep, or what she gives in return
for it; and that as she’d have to be kept if she didn’t do it, why
there shouldn’t be no mention of it. If she was working for others it
would be quite different, but washing is a family matter; that’s my way
of looking at it. Coke, too, is often used instead of coals; besides, a
bit of bacon, or potatoes, or the tea-kettle, will have to be boiled,
and that’s managed along with the hot water for the suds, and would
have to be done anyhow, especially in winter.”

One decent woman, who had five children, “all under eight,” told me she
often sat up half, and sometimes the whole night to wash, when busy
other ways. She was not in poverty, for she earned “a good bit” in
going out to cook, and her husband was employed by a pork-butcher.

I may further add, that a great many single men wash their own clothes.
Many of the street-sellers in particular do this; so do such of the
poor as live in their own rooms, and occasionally the dwellers in the
low lodging-houses. One street-seller of ham sandwiches, whose aprons,
sleeves, and tray-cloth, were remarkably white, told me that he washed
them himself, as well as his shirt, &c., and that it was the common
practice with his class. This washing--his aprons, tray-cloths, shirts,
and stockings included--cost him, every three weeks, 4-1/4_d._ or 5_d._
for 1 lb. of soap, which is less than 1-1/2_d._ a week. Among such
people it is considered that the washing of a shirt is, as they say, “a
penn’orth of soap, and the stockings in,” meaning that a penny outlay
is sufficient to wash for both.

But not only does Mr. Bullar’s estimate exceed the truth as regards
the cost of washing among the poorer classes, but it also errs in
the proportion they are said to bear to the other ranks of society.
That gentleman speaks of “the poorer _half_ of the inhabitants of the
metropolis,” as if the rich and poor were equal in numbers! but with
all deference, it will be found that the ratio between the well-to-do
and the needy is as 1 to 2, that is to say, the property and income-tax
returns teach us there are at least two persons with an income _below_
150_l._ per annum, to every one having an income _above_ it. Hence, the
population of London being, within a fraction, 2,400,000; the numbers
of the metropolitan well-to-do and needy would be respectively 800,000
and 1,600,000, and, allowing the cost of the washing of the former to
average 1_s._ per head (adults and children), and, the washing of the
labouring classes to come to 2_d._ a head, young and old (the expense
of the materials, when the work is done at home, average, it has been
shown, about 1-1/2_d._ for each member of the family), we shall then
have the following statement:--

Annual cost of washing for 800,000
people, at 1_s._ per head per week £2,080,000
Annual cost of washing for 1,600,000
people, at 2_d._ per head per week 693,333
-----------
Total cost of washing of metropolis £2,773,333

I am convinced, low as the estimate of 2_d._ a week may appear for
all whose incomes are under 150_l._ a year, from many considerations,
that the above computation is rather over than under the truth. As,
for instance, Mr. Hawes has said concerning the consumption of soap in
the metropolis,--“Careful inquiry has proved that the quantity used is
much greater than that indicated by the Excise returns; but reducing
the results obtained by inquiry in one uniform proportion, the quantity
used by the labouring classes earning from 10_s._ to 30_s._ per week
is 10 lbs. each per annum, including every member of the family.
Dividing the population of the metropolis into three classes: (1) the
wealthy; (2) the shopkeepers and tradesmen; (3) labourers and the poor,
and allowing 15 lbs., 10 lbs., and 4 lbs. to each respectively, the
consumption of the metropolis will be nearly 200 tons per week.” The
cost of each ton of soap Mr. Hawes estimates at 45_l._

Professor Clarke, however, computes the metropolitan consumption of
soap at 250 tons per week, and the cost per ton at 50_l._

According to the above estimates,
the total quantity of soap used every
year in the metropolis is 12,000 tons,
and this, at 50_l._ per ton, comes to £600,000

Professor Clarke reckons the gross
consumption of soda in the metropolis,
at 250 tons per month, costing 10_l._ a
ton; hence for the year the consumption
will be 3000 tons, costing 30,000

The cost of water, according to the
same authority, is 3_s._ 4_d._ per head
per annum, and this, for the whole
metropolis, amounts to 400,000

Estimating the cost of the coals used
in heating the water to be equal to
that of the soap, we have for the
gross expense of fuel annually consumed
in washing 600,000

There are 21,000 laundresses in
London, and, calculating that the
wages of these average 10_s._ a week
each all the year round, the gross
sum paid to them, would be in
round numbers 550,000

Profit of employers, say 550,000

Add for sundries, as starch, &c. 50,000
----------
Total cost of washing of metropolis £2,780,000

Hence it would appear, that viewed either by the individual expense
of the great bulk of society, or else by the aggregate cost of the
materials and labour used in cleansing the clothes of the people
of London, the total sum annually expended in the washing of the
metropolis may be estimated at the outside at two millions and three
quarters sterling per annum, or about 1_l._ 3_s._ 4_d._ per head.

And yet, though the data for the calculation here given, as to the
cost and quantity of the principal materials used in cleansing the
clothes of London, are derived from the same Report as that in which
the expense of the metropolitan washing is estimated at 5,000,000_l._
per annum, the Board of Health do not hesitate in that document to
say that,--“Of the fairness of the estimate of the expense of washing
to the higher and middle classes, and to the great bulk of the
householders, and the better class of artizans, we entertain no doubt
whatever. Whatsoever deductions, if any, may be made from the above
estimate, it is, nevertheless, an _under-estimate_ for maintaining,
at the present expense of washing, a proper amount of cleanliness in
linen.”

Proceeding, however, with the calculation as to the loss from the
imperfect scavenging of the metropolis, we have the following results:--

LOSS FROM DUST AND DIRT IN THE STREETS OF THE METROPOLIS, OWING TO THE
EXTRA WASHING ENTAILED THEREBY.

According to the Board of Health,
taking the yearly amount of the washing
of the metropolis at 5,000,000_l._,
and assuming the washing to be
doubled by street-dirt, the loss will be £2,500,000

Calculating the washing, however,
for reasons above adduced, to be only
2,750,000_l._, and to be as much again
as it might be under an improved
system of scavenging, the loss will be 1,375,000

Or calculating, _as a minimum_, that
the remediable loss is less than one-half,
the cost is £1,000,000

Hence it would appear that the loss from dust and dirt is _really
enormous_.

In a work entitled “Sanatory Progress,” being the Fifth Report of the
National Philanthropic Association, I find a calculation as to the
losses sustained from dust and dirt upon our clothes. Owing to the
increased wear from daily brushing to remove the dust, and occasional
scraping to remove the mud, the loss is estimated at from 3_l._ to
7_l._ per annum for each well-dressed man and woman, and 1_l._ for
inferiorly-dressed persons, including their Sunday and holiday clothing.

I inquired of a West-end tailor, who previously to his establishment in
business had himself been an operative, and had had experience both in
town and country as to the wear of clothes, and I learned from him the
following particulars.

With regard to the clothes of the wealthy classes, of those who could
always command a carriage in bad weather, there are no means of judging
as to the loss caused by bad scavengery.

My informant, however, obliged me with the following calculations,
the results of his experience. His trade is what I may describe as a
medium business, between the low slop and the high fashionable trades.
The garments of which he spoke were those worn by clerks, shopmen,
students, tradesmen, town-travellers, and others not engaged in menial
or handicraft labour.

Altogether, and after consulting his books relative to town and country
customers, my informant thought it might be easy to substantiate the
following estimate as regards the duration and cost of clothes in town
and country among the classes I have specified.

TABLE SHOWING THE COMPARATIVE COST OF CLOTHES WORN IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.

----------+--------------+----------------------+----------------------+-------------
| | Town. | Country. |
Garments. |Original cost.+---------+------------+---------+------------+Difference of
| |Duration.|Annual cost.|Duration.|Annual cost.| cost.
----------+--------------+---------+------------+---------+------------+-------------
| £ _s._ _d._ | Years. | £ _s._ _d._| Years. | £ _s._ _d._| £ _s._ _d._
Coat | 2 10 0 | 2 | 1 5 0 | 3 | 0 16 8 | 0 8 4
Waistcoat | 0 15 0 | 2-1/2 | 0 6 0 | 3 | 0 5 0 | 0 1 0
Trowsers | 1 5 0 | 1-1/4 | 1 0 0 | 2 | 0 12 6 | 0 7 6
----------+--------------+---------+------------+---------+------------+-------------
Total Suit| 4 10 0 | | 2 11 0 | | 1 14 2 | 0 16 10
----------+--------------+---------+------------+---------+------------+-------------

Here, then, it appears that the annual outlay for clothes in town, by
the classes I have specified, is about 2_l._ 11_s._; while the annual
outlay in the country for the same garments is 1_l._ 14_s._ 2_d._;
the difference of expense being 16_s._ 10_d._ per annum. I consulted
another tailor on the subject, and his estimate was a trifle above that
of my informant.

I should remark that the proportion thus adduced holds, _whatever be
the number of garments_ worn in the year, or in a series of years,
for the calculation was made not as to individual garments, but as
to the general wear, evinced by the average outlay, as shown in the
tradesman’s books, of the same class of persons in town and country.

In the calculation given in the publication of the National
Philanthropic Association, the loss on a well-dressed Londoner’s
clothing, arising from excessive dust and dirt, is estimated at from
3_l._ to 7_l._ per annum. By the above table it will be seen that the
clothes which cost 1_l._ 14_s._ 2_d._ per annum in the cleanliness of
a country abode, cost 2_l._ 11_s._, or, within a fraction, half as
much again, in the uncleanliness of a London atmosphere and roads. If,
therefore, any London inhabitant, of the classes I have specified,
expend four times 2_l._ 11_s._ in his clothes yearly, as many do, or
10_l._ 4_s._, he loses 3_l._ 5_s._ 4_d._, or 5_s._ 4_d._ more than the
minimum mentioned in the Report alluded to.

Now estimating 2_l._ 10_s._ as the yearly tailor’s bill among the
well-to-do (boys and men), and calculating that one-sixth of the
metropolitan population (that is, half of the one-third who may be said
to belong to the class having incomes above 150_l._ a year) spend this
sum yearly in clothes, we have the following statement:--

AGGREGATE LOSS UPON CLOTHES WORN IN LONDON.

£ _s._ _d._

400,000 persons living in
London expend in clothing (at
2_l._ 10_s._ per annum) 1,000,000 0 0

400,000 persons living in better
atmospheres in rural parts,
and with the same stock of
clothes, expend one-third less,
or 666,666 13 4
------------------
Difference 333,333 6 8

It would be pushing the inquiry to exceeding minuteness were I to enter
into calculations as to the comparative expense of boots, hats, and
ladies’ dresses worn in town and country; suffice it, that competent
persons in each of the vestiary trades have been seen, and averages
drawn for the accounts of their town and country customers.

All things, then, being duly considered, the following conclusion would
seem to be warranted by the facts:--

Annual cost of clothes to 800,000 of
the metropolitan population (those
belonging to the class who have incomes
_above_ 150_l._ per annum) at 4_l._
per year each £3,200,000

Annual cost of clothes to 1,600,000
of the metropolitan population (those
belonging to the class who have incomes
_below_ 150_l._ per annum), at 1_l._
per year each 1,600,000
----------
£4,800,000

Annual cost of the same clothes if
worn in the country 3,600,000
----------
Extra expense annually entailed by
dust and dirt of metropolis £1,200,000

In the above estimate I have included the cost of wear and tear of
linen from extra washing when worn in London, and this has been stated
on the authority of the Board of Health to be double that of linen worn
in the country.

In connection with this subject I may cite the following curious
calculation, taken from a Parliamentary Report, as to the cost of a
working man’s new shirt, comprising four yards of strong calico.

_Material._--Cotton at 6_d._ per lb. _d._
1-1/4 lb., with loss thereupon 8·25

_Manufacture_,-- _d._
Spinning 2·25
Weaving 3·00
Profit ·25
-----
5·50
-----
13·75
Bleaching about 1·25
-----
15·00

Grey (calico) 13·75_d._ + 9_d._ (making) = 1_s._ 10-3/4_d._
Bleached 15_d._ + 9_d._ „ = 2_s._

As regards the loss and damage occasioned by the injury to
household furniture and decorations, and to stocks-in-trade, which
is another important consideration connected with this subject, I
find the following statement in the Report of the Philanthropic
Institution:--“The loss by goods and furniture is incalculable:
shopkeepers lose from 10_l._ to 150_l._ a-year by the spoiling of
their goods for sale; dealers in provisions especially, who cannot
expose them without being deteriorated in value, from the dust that is
incessantly settling upon them. Nor is it much better with clothiers of
all kinds:--Mr. Holmes, shawl merchant, in Regent-street, has stated
that his losses from road-dust alone exceed 150_l._ per annum.”...
“In a communication with Mr. Mivart, respecting the expenses of mud
and road-dust to him, that gentleman stated that the rent of the four
houses of which his hotel is composed, was 896_l._; and that he could
not (considering the cost of cleaning and servants) estimate the
expense of repairing the damage done by the dirt and dust, carried and
blown into these houses, at a less annual sum than that of his rent!”

An upholsterer obliged me with the following calculations, but so many
were the materials, and so different the rates of wear or the liability
to injury in different materials in his trade, that he could only
calculate generally.

The same quality, colour, and pattern of curtains, silk damasks, which
he had furnished to a house in town, and to a country house belonging
to the same gentleman, looked far fresher and better after five years’
wear in the country than after three in town. Both windows had a
southern aspect, but the occupant would have his windows partially
open unless the weather was cold, foggy, or rainy. It was the same,
or nearly the same, he thought, with the carpets on the two places,
for London dust was highly injurious to all the better qualities
of carpets. He was satisfied, also, it was the same generally in
upholstery work subjected to town dust.

I inquired at several West-end and city shops, and of different
descriptions of tradesmen, of the injury done to their shop and
shop-window goods by the dust, but I found none who had made any
calculations on the subject. All, however, agreed that the dust was an
excessive annoyance, and entailed great expense; a ladies’ shoemaker
and a bookseller expressed this particularly--on the necessity of
making the window a sort of small glass-house to exclude the dust,
which, after all, was not sufficiently excluded. All thought, or with
but one hesitating exception, that the estimation as to the loss
sustained by the Messrs. Holmes, considering the extent of their
premises, and the richness of the goods displayed in the windows, &c.,
was not in excess.

I can, then, but indicate the injury to household furniture and
stock-in-trade as a corroboration of all that has been advanced
touching the damaging effects of road dirt.

OF THE HORSE-DUNG OF THE STREETS OF LONDON.

“Familiarity with streets of crowded traffic deadens the senses to the
perception of their actual condition. Strangers coming from the country
frequently describe the streets of London as smelling of dung like a
stable-yard.”

Such is one of the statements in a Report submitted to Parliament, and
there is no reason to doubt the fact. Every English visitor to a French
city, for instance, must have detected street-odours of which the
inhabitants were utterly unconscious. In a work which between 20 and
30 years ago was deservedly popular, Mathews’s “Diary of an Invalid,”
it is mentioned that an English lady complaining of the villanous
rankness of the air in the first French town she entered--Calais, if I
remember rightly--received the comfortable assurance, “It is the smell
of the Continent, ma’am.” Even in Cologne itself, the “most stinking
city of Europe,” as it has been termed, the citizens are insensible
to the foul airs of their streets, and yet possess great skill in
manufacturing perfumed and distilled waters for the toilet, pluming
themselves on the delicacy and discrimination of their nasal organs.
What we perceive in other cities, as strangers, those who visit London
detect in our streets--that they smell of dung like stable-yards. It
is idle for London denizens, because they are unconscious of the fact,
to deny the existence of any such effluvia. I have met with nightmen
who have told me that there was “nothing particular” in the smell of
the cesspools they were emptying; they “hardly perceived it.” One man
said, “Why, it’s like the sort of stuff I’ve smelt in them ladies’
smelling-bottles.” An eminent tallow-melter said, in the course of his
evidence before Parliament during a sanitary inquiry, that the smell
from the tallow-melting on his premises was not only healthful and
reviving--for invalids came to inhale it--but agreeable. I mention
these facts to meet the scepticism which the official assertion as
to the stable-like odour of the streets may, perhaps, provoke. When,
however, I state the _quantity_ of horse-dung and “cattle-droppings”
voided in the streets, all incredulity, I doubt not, will be removed.

“It has been ascertained,” says the Report of the National
Philanthropic Association, “that four-fifths of the street-dirt consist
of horse and cattle-droppings.”

Let us, therefore, endeavour to arrive at definite notions as to the
absolute quantity of this element of street-dirt.

And, first, as to the number of cattle and horses traversing the
streets of London.

In the course of an inquiry in November, 1850, into Smithfield-market,
I adduced the following results as to the number of cattle entering the
metropolis, deriving the information from the experience of Mr. Deputy
Hicks, confirmed by returns to Parliament, by the amount of tolls, and
further ratified by the opinion of some of the most experienced “live
salesmen” and “dead salesmen” (sellers on commission of live and dead
cattle), whose assistance I had the pleasure of obtaining.

The return is of the stock _annually_ sold in Smithfield-market, and
includes not only English but foreign beasts, sheep, and calves; the
latter averaging weekly in 1848 (the latest return then published),
beasts, 590; sheep, 2478; and calves, 248.

224,000 horned cattle.
1,550,000 sheep.
27,300 calves.
40,000 pigs.
---------
Total 1,841,300.

I may remark that this is not a criterion of the consumption of animal
food in the metropolis, for there are, besides the above, the daily
supplies from the country to the “dead salesmen.” The preceding return,
however, is sufficient for my present purpose, which is to show the
quantity of cattle manure “dropped” in London.

The number of cattle entering the metropolis, then, are 1,841,300 per
annum.

The number of horses daily traversing the metropolis has been already
set forth. By a return obtained by Mr. Charles Cochrane from the Stamp
and Tax Office, we have seen that there are altogether

In London and Westminster, of private
carriage, job, and cart horses 10,022
Cab horses 5,692
Omnibus horses 5,500
Horses daily coming to metropolis 3,000
------
Total number of horses daily in London 24,214

The total here given includes the returns of horses which were either
taxed or the property of those who employ them in hackney-carriages
in the metropolis. But the whole of these 24,214 horses are not at
work in the streets every day. Perhaps it might be an approximation to
the truth, if we reckoned five-sixths of the horses as being worked
regularly in the public thoroughfares; so that we arrive at the
conclusion that 20,000 horses are daily worked in the metropolis; and
hence we have an aggregate of 7,300,000 horses traversing the streets
of London in the twelvemonth. The beasts, sheep, calves, and pigs
driven and conveyed to and from Smithfield are, we have seen, 1,841,300
in number. These, added together, make up a total of 9,141,300 animals
appearing annually in the London thoroughfares. The circumstance of
Smithfield cattle-market being held but twice a week in no way detracts
from the amount here given; for as the gross number of individual
cattle coming to that market in the course of the year is given, each
animal is estimated as appearing only once in the metropolis.

The next point for consideration is--what is the quantity of dung
dropped by each of the above animals while in the public thoroughfares?

Concerning the quantity of excretions passed by a horse in the
course of 24 hours there have been some valuable experiments made by
philosophers whose names alone are a sufficient guarantee for the
accuracy of their researches.

The following Table from Boussingault’s experiments is copied from the
“Annales de Chimie et de Physique,” t. lxxi.

FOOD CONSUMED BY AND EXCRETIONS OF A HORSE IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.

--------------------------------------++---------------------------------------
FOOD. || EXCRETIONS.
------+--------------+----------------++------------+--------------+-----------
| Weight in a | Weight in a || | Weight in a |Weight in a
|fresh state in| fresh state || |fresh state in|fresh state
| grammes. | in pounds. || | grammes. | in pounds.
------+--------------+----------------++------------+--------------+-----------
| | lbs. oz. || | | lbs. oz.
Hay | 7,500 | 20 0 || Excrements | 14,250 | 38 2
Oats | 2,270 | 6 1 || Urine | 1,330 | 3 7
| ------ | ------ || | |
| 9,770 | 26 1 || | |
Water | 16,000 | 42 10 || | |
------+--------------+----------------++------------+--------------+-----------
Total | 25,770 | 68 11 || Total | 15,580 | 41 9
------+--------------+----------------++------------+--------------+-----------

Here it will be seen that the quantity of solid food given to the
horse in the course of the 24 hours amounted only to 26 lbs.; whereas
it is stated in the Report of the National Philanthropic Association,
on the authority of the veterinary surgeon to the Life Guards, that
the regulation horse rations in all cavalry regiments is 30 lbs. of
solid food; viz., 10 lbs. of oats, 12 lbs. of hay, together with 8 lbs.
of straw, for the horse to lie upon and munch at his leisure. “This
quantity of solid food, with five gallons of water, is considered
sufficient,” we are told, “for all regimental horses, who have but
little work to perform, in comparison with the draught horses of the
metropolis, many of which consume daily 35 lbs. and upwards of solid
food, with at least six gallons of water.

“At a conference held with the secretary and professors of the
Veterinary College in College-street, Camden-town,” continues the
Report, “those gentlemen kindly undertook to institute a series of
experiments in this department of equine physiology; the subject
being one which interested themselves, professionally, as well as the
council of the National Philanthropic Association. The experiments were
carefully conducted under the superintendence of Professor Varnell. The
food, drink, and voidances of several horses, kept in stable all day
long, were separately weighed and measured; and the following were the
results with an animal of medium size and sound health:--

“‘Royal Veterinary College,
Sept. 29, 1849.

“‘Brown horse of middle size ate in
24 hours, of hay, 16lbs.; oats, 10lbs.;
chaff, 4 lbs.; in all 30 lbs.

Drank of water, in 24 hours, 6 gallons,
or 48 lbs.
--------
Total 78 lbs.
Voided in the form of fæces 49 lbs.
--------
Allowance for nutrition, supply of
waste in system, perspiration, and urine 29 lbs.

(Signed)
“‘GEORGE VARNELL,
“‘Demonstrator of Anatomy.’”

Here we find the excretions to be 11 lbs. more than those of the French
horse experimented upon by M. Boussingault; but then the solid food
given to the English horse was 4 lbs. more, and the liquid upwards of 7
lbs. extra.

We may then, perhaps, assume, without fear of erring, that the
excrements voided by horses in the course of 24 hours, weigh, at the
least, 45 lbs.

Hence the gross quantity of dung produced by the 7,300,000 horses which
traverse the London streets in the course of the twelvemonth will be
7,300,000 × 45, or 328,500,000 lbs., which is upwards of 146,651 tons.
But these horses cannot be said to be at work above six hours each day;
we must, therefore, divide the above quantity by four, and thus we
find that there are 36,662 tons of horse-dung annually dropped in the
streets of London.

I am informed, on good authority, that the evacuations of an ox, in
24 hours, will, on the average, exceed those of a horse in weight by
about a fifteenth, while, if the ox be disturbed by being driven, the
excretions will exceed the horse’s by about a twelfth. As the oxen are
not driven in the streets, or detained in the market for so long a
period as horses are out at work, it may be fair to compute that their
droppings are about the same, individually, as those of the horses.

Hence, as there are 224,000 horned cattle yearly brought to London, we
have 224,000 × 45 lbs. = 10,080,000 lbs., or 4500 tons, for the gross
quantity of ordure dropped by this number of animals in the course of
24 hours, so that, dividing by 4, as before, we find that there are
1125 tons of ordure annually dropped by the “horned cattle” in the
streets of London.

Concerning the sheep, I am told that it may be computed that the
ordure of five sheep is about equal in weight to that of two oxen. As
regards the other animals it may be said that their “droppings” are
insignificant, the pigs and calves being very generally carted to and
from the market, as, indeed, are some of the fatter and more valuable
sheep and lambs. All these facts being taken into consideration, I am
told, by a regular frequenter of Smithfield market, that it will be
best to calculate the droppings of each of the 1,617,300 sheep, calves,
and pigs yearly coming to the metropolis at about one-fourth of those
of the horned cattle; so that multiplying 1,617,300 by 10, instead of
45, we have 16,173,000 lbs., or 7220 tons, for the weight of ordure
deposited by the entire number of sheep, calves, and pigs annually
brought to the metropolis, and then dividing this by 4, as usual, we
find that the droppings of the calves, sheep, and pigs in the streets
of London amount to 1805 tons per annum.

Now putting together all the preceding items we obtain the following
results:--

GROSS WEIGHT OF THE HORSE-DUNG AND CATTLE-DROPPINGS ANNUALLY DEPOSITED
IN THE STREETS OF LONDON:--

Tons.
Horse-dung 36,662
Droppings of horned cattle 1,125
Droppings of sheep, calves, and pigs 1,805
------
39,592

Hence we perceive that the gross weight of animal excretions dropped
in the public thoroughfares of the metropolis is about 40,000 tons per
annum, or, in round numbers, 770 tons every week-day--say 100 tons a
day.

This, I am well aware, is a low estimate, but it appears to me that
the facts will not warrant any other conclusion. And yet the Board of
Health, who seem to delight in “large” estimates, represent the amount
of animal manure deposited in the streets of London at no less than
200,000 tons per annum.

“Between the Quadrant in Regent-street and Oxford-street,” says the
first Report on the Supply of Water to the Metropolis, “a distance of
a third of a mile, three loads, on the average, of dirt, almost all
horse-dung, are removed daily. On an estimate made from the working
of the street-sweeping machine, in one quarter of the City of London,
which includes lines of considerable traffic, the quantity of dung
dropped must be upwards of 60 tons, or about 20,000 tons per annum,
and this, on a City district, which comprises about one-twentieth only
of the covered area of the metropolis, though within that area there
is the greatest proportionate amount of traffic. Though the data are
extremely imperfect, it is considered that the horse-dung which falls
in the streets of the whole metropolis _cannot be less than 200,000
tons a year_.”

Hence, although the data are imperfect, the Board of Health do not
hesitate to conclude that the gross quantity of horse-dung dropped
throughout every part of London--back streets and all--is equal to
one-half of that let fall in the greatest London thoroughfares.
According to this estimate, all and every of the 24,000 London horses
must void, in the course of the six hours that they are at work in the
streets, not less than 51 lbs. of excrement, which is at the rate of
very nearly 2 cwt. in the course of the day, or voiding only 49 lbs.
in the twenty-four hours, they must remain out altogether, and never
return to the stable for rest!!!

Mr. Cochrane is far less hazardous than the Board of Health, and
appears to me to arrive at his result in a more scientific and
conclusive manner. He goes first to the Stamp Office to ascertain the
number of horses in the metropolis, and then requests the professors
of the Veterinary College to estimate the average quantity of
excretions produced by a horse in the course of 24 hours. All this
accords with the soundest principles of inquiry, and stands out in
startling contrast with the unphilosophical plan pursued by the Board
of Health, who obtain the result of the most crowded thoroughfare, and
then halving this, frame an exaggerated estimate for the whole of the
metropolis.

But Mr. Cochrane himself appears to me to exceed that just caution
which is so necessary in all statistical calculations. Having
ascertained that a horse voids 49 lbs. of dung in the course of 24
hours, he makes the whole of the 24,214 horses in the metropolis drop
30 lbs. daily in the streets, so that, according to his estimate, not
only must every horse in London be out every day, but he must be at
work in the public thoroughfares for very nearly 15 hours out of the 24!

The following is the estimate made by Mr. Cochrane:--

Daily weight of manure deposited in the streets by 24,214 horses × 30
lbs. = 726,420 lbs., or 324 tons, 5 cwt., 100 lbs.

Weekly weight, 2270 tons, 1 cwt., 28 lbs.

Annual weight, 118,043 tons, 5 cwt.

Tons or cart-loads deposited annually, valued at 6_s._ × 118,043 =
35,412_l._ 19_s._ 6_d._

It has, then, been here shown that, assuming the number of horses
worked daily in the streets of London to be 20,000, and each to be
out six hours _per diem_, which, it appears to me, is all that can be
fairly reckoned, the quantity of horse-dung dropped weekly is about 700
tons, so that, including the horses of the cavalry regiments in London,
which of course are not comprised in the Stamp-Office returns, as well
as the animals taken to Smithfield, we may, perhaps, assert that the
annual ordure let fall in the London streets amounts, at the outside,
to somewhere about 1000 tons weekly, or 52,000 tons per annum.

The next question becomes--what is done with this vast amount of filth?

The Board of Health is a much better guide upon this point than
upon the matter of quantity: “Much of the horse-dung dropped in the
London streets, under ordinary circumstances,” we are told, “dries
and is pulverized, and with the common soil is carried into houses as
dust, and dirties clothes and furniture. The odour arising from the
surface evaporation of the streets when they are wet is chiefly from
horse-dung. Susceptible persons often feel this evaporation, after
partial wetting, to be highly oppressive. The surface-water discharged
into sewers from the streets and roofs of houses is found to contain as
much filth as the soil-water from the house-drains.”

Here, then, we perceive that the whole of the animal manure let fall
in the streets is worse than wasted, and yet we are assured that it is
an article, which, if properly collected, is of considerable value.
“It is,” says the Report of the National Philanthropic Association,
“an article of Agricultural and Horticultural commerce which has
ever maintained a high value with the farmers and market-gardeners,
wherever conveniently obtainable. When these cattle-droppings can be
collected _unmixed_, in dry weather, they bear an acknowledged value
by the grazier and root-grower;--there being no other kind of manure
which fertilizes the land so bounteously. Mr. Marnock, Curator of the
Royal Botanical Society, has valued them at from 5_s._ to 10_s._ per
load; according to the season of the year. The United Paving Board
of St. Giles and St. George, since the introduction of the Street
Orderly System into their parishes, has wisely had it collected in a
state separate from all admixture, and sold it at highly remunerative
prices, rendering it the means of considerably lessening the expense of
cleansing the streets.”

Now, assuming the value of the street-dropped manure to be 6_s._ per
ton when collected free from dirt, we have the following statement as
to the value of the horse and cattle-voidances let fall in the streets
of London:--

52,000 tons of cattle-droppings,
at 6_s._ per ton £15,600 0 0

Mr. Cochrane, who considers the quantity of animal-droppings to be much
greater, attaches of course a greater value to the aggregate quantity.
His computation is as follows:--

118,043 tons of cattle-droppings,
at 6_s._ per ton £35,412 19 6

It seems to me that the calculations of the quantity of horse and
cattle-dung in the streets, are based on such well-authenticated and
scientific foundations, that their accuracy can hardly be disputed,
unless it be that a higher average might fairly be shown.

Whatever estimate be adopted, the worth of street-dropped animal
manure, if properly secured and made properly disposable, is great and
indisputable; most assuredly between 10,000_l._ and 20,000_l._ in value.

OF STREET “MAC” AND OTHER MUD.

First of that kind of mud known by the name of “mac.”

The scavengers call mud all that is _swept_ from the granite or wood
pavements, in contradistinction to “mac,” which is both _scraped_ and
swept on the macadamized roads. The mud is usually carted apart from
the “mac,” but some contractors cause their men to shovel every kind of
dirt they meet with into the same cart.

The introduction of Mac Adam’s system of road-making into the streets
of London called into existence a new element in what is accounted
street refuse. Until of late years little attention was paid to
“Mac,” for it was considered in no way distinct from other kinds
of street-dirt, nor as being likely to possess properties which
might adapt it for any other use than that of a component part of
agricultural manure.

“Mac” is found principally on the roads from which it derives its name,
and is, indeed, the grinding and pounding of the imbedded pieces of
granite, which are the staple of those roads. It is, perhaps, the most
adhesive street-dirt known, as respects the London specimen of it; for
the exceeding traffic works and kneads it into a paste which it is
difficult to remove from the texture of any garment splashed or soiled
with it.

“Mac” is carted away by the scavengers in great quantities, being
shovelled, in a state of more or less fluidity or solidity, according
to the weather, from the road-side into their carts. Quantities are
also swept with the rain into the drains of the streets, and not
unfrequently quantities are found deposited in the sewers.

The following passage from “Sanatory Progress,” a work before
alluded to, cites the opinion of Lord Congleton as to the necessity
of continually removing the mud from roads. I may add that Lord
Congleton’s work on road-making is of high authority, and has
frequently been appealed to in parliamentary discussions, inquiries,
and reports on the subject.

“The late Lord Congleton (Sir Henry Parnell) stated before a Committee
of the House of Commons, in June, 1838, ‘a road should be cleansed
from time to time, so as _never_ to have half an inch of mud upon
it; and this is particularly necessary to be attended to where the
materials are _weak_; for, if the surface be not kept clean, so as
to admit of its becoming dry in the intervals between showers of
rain, it will be rapidly worn away.’ How truly,” adds the Report,
“is his Lordship’s opinion verified every day on the macadamized
roads in and around London! * * * * * * The horse-manure and other
filth are there allowed to accumulate, and to be carried about by
the horses and carriage-wheels; the road is formed into cavities and
mud-hollows, which, being wetted by the rain and the constantly plying
_watering-carts_, retain the same. Thus, not only are vast quantities
of offensive mud formed, but puddles and _pools of water_ also; which
water, not being allowed to run off to the side gutter, by declivity,
owing to the _mud embankments_ which surround it, naturally _percolates
through the surface of the road, dissolving and loosening the soft
earthy matrix_ by which the broken granite is surrounded and fixed.”

The quantity of “mac” produced is the next consideration, and
in endeavouring to ascertain this there are no specific data,
though there are what, under other circumstances, might be called
circumstantial or inferential evidence.

I have shown both the length of the streets and roads and the
proportion which might be pronounced macadamized ways in the Metropolis
Proper. But as in the macadamized proportion many thoroughfares cannot
be strictly considered as yielding “mac,” I will assume that the roads
and streets producing this kind of dirt, more or less fully, are 1200
miles in length.

On the busier macadamized roads in the vicinity of what may be called
the interior of London, it is common, I was told by experienced men, in
average weather, to collect daily two cart-loads of what is called mac,
from every mile of road. The mass of such road-produce, however, is
mixed, though the “mac” unquestionably predominates. It was described
to me as mac, general dirt, and droppings, more than the half being
“mac.” In wet weather there is at least twenty times more “mac” than
dung scavenged; but in dry weather the dung and other street-refuse
constitute, perhaps, somewhat less than three-fourths of each
cart-load. The “mac” in dry weather is derived chiefly from the fluid
from the watering carts mixing with the dust, and so forming a paste
capable of being removed by the scraper of the scavenger.

It may be fair to assume that every mile of the roads in question, some
of them being of considerable width, yields at least one cart-load of
“mac,” as a daily average, Sunday of course excepted. An intelligent
man, who had the management of the “mac” and other street collections
in a contractor’s wharf, told me that in a load of “mac” carted from
the road to any place of deposit, there was (I now use his own words)
“a good deal of water; for there’s great difference,” he added, “in the
_stiffness_ of the “mac” on different roads, that seem very much the
same to look at. But that don’t signify a halfpenny-piece,” he said,
“for if the ‘mac’ is wanted for any purpose, and let be for a little
time, you see, sir, the water will dry up, and leave the proper stuff.
I haven’t any doubt whatever that two loads a mile are collected in
the way you’ve been told, and that a load and a quarter of the two is
‘mac,’ though after the water is dried up out of it there mightn’t be
much more than a load. So if you want to calculate what the quantity of
‘mac’ is by itself, I think you had best say one load a mile.”

But it is only in the more frequented approaches to the City or the
West-end, such as the Knightsbridge-road, the New-road, the Old
Kent-road, and thoroughfares of similar character as regards the
extent of traffic, that two loads of refuse are daily collected. On
the more distant roads, beyond the bounds traversed by the omnibuses
for instance, or beyond the roads resorted to by the market gardeners
on their way to the metropolitan “green” markets, the supply of
street-refuse is hardly a quarter as great; one man thought it was a
third, and another only a sixth of a load a day in quiet places.

Calculating then, in order to be within the mark, that the macadamized
roads afford daily two loads of dirt per mile, and reckoning the great
macadamized streets at 100 miles in length, we have the following
results:--

QUANTITY OF STREET-REFUSE COLLECTED FROM THE MORE FREQUENTED
MACADAMIZED THOROUGHFARES.

Loads.
100 miles, 2 loads per day 200
„ Weekly amount 1,200
„ Yearly amount 62,400

PROPORTION OF “MAC” IN THE ABOVE.

100 miles, 1 load per day 100
„ Weekly 600
„ Yearly 31,200

To this amount must be added the quantity supplied by the more
distant and less frequented roads situate within the precincts of the
Metropolis Proper. These I will estimate at one-eighth less than that
of the roads of greater traffic. Some of the more quiet thoroughfares,
I should add, are not scavenged more than once a week, and some less
frequently; but on some there is considerable traffic.

QUANTITY OF STREET-REFUSE COLLECTED FROM THE LESS FREQUENTED
MACADAMIZED THOROUGHFARES.

Loads.
1100 miles, 1/4 load per day 275
„ Weekly 1,650
„ Yearly 85,800

The proportion of mac to the gross dirt collected is greater in the
more distant roads than what I have already described, but to be safe I
will adopt the same ratio.

PROPORTION OF “MAC.”

Loads.
1100 miles of road, 1/8 load per day 137
„ Weekly 825
„ Yearly 42,900

YEARLY TOTAL OF THE GROSS QUANTITY OF STREET-REFUSE, WITH THE
PROPORTIONATE QUANTITY OF “MAC” COLLECTED FROM THE MACADAMIZED
THOROUGHFARES OF THE METROPOLIS.

---------------------------+-------------+---------
| Street |
| Refuse. | “Mac.”
---------------------------+-------------+---------
| Cart-loads. | Loads.
100 miles of macadamized | |
roads | 62,400 | 31,200
1100 miles ditto ditto | 85,800 | 42,900
| -------- | ------
| 148,200 | 74,100
---------------------------+-------------+---------

Thus upwards of 74,000 cart-loads of “mac” are, at a low computation,
annually scraped and swept from the metropolitan thoroughfares.

* * * * *

So far as to the _quantity_ of “mac” collected, and now as to its
_uses_.

“‘Mac,’ or _Macadam_,” says one of Mr. Cochrane’s Reports, “is a grand
prize to the scavenging contractor, who finds ready vend and a high
price for it among the builders and brick-makers. Those who _paid_ for
the road--and their surveyors, _possibly_--know nothing of its value,
or of their own loss by its removal from the road; they consider it
in the light of _dirt_--_offensive_ dirt--and are glad to _pay_ the
scavenger for carrying it away! When the _broom_ comes, the scavenger’s
men take care to go _deep_ enough; and many of them are, moreover,
instructed to keep the ‘_mac_’ as free from admixture with foreign
substances as possible; for, though cattle-dung be valuable enough in
itself, the ‘_mac_’ loses _its_ value to the builder and brickmaker by
being _mixed with it_. Indeed, both are valuable for their respective
uses if kept separate, not otherwise.”

On my first making inquiries as to the uses and value of “mac,” I was
frequently told that it was utterly valueless, and that great trouble
and expense were incurred in merely getting rid of it. That this is the
case with many contractors is, doubtlessly, the fact; for now, unless
the “mac,” or, rather, the general road-dirt, be ordered, or a market
for it be assured, it must be got rid of without a remuneration. Even
when the contractor can shoot the “mac” in his own yard, and keep it
there for a customer, there is the cost of re-loading and re-carting;
a cost which a customer requiring to use it at any distance may not
choose to incur. Great quantities of “mac,” therefore, are wasted; and
more would be wasted, were there places to waste it in.

Let me, therefore, before speaking of the uses and sale of it,
point out some of the reasons for this wasting of the “mac” with
other street-dirt. In the first place, the weight of a cart-load
of street-refuse of any kind is usually estimated at a ton; but I
am assured that the weight of a cart-load of “stiff mac” is a ton
and a quarter at the least; and this weight becomes so trying to a
scavenger’s horse, as the day’s work advances, that the contractor, to
spare the animal, is often glad to get rid of the “mac” in any manner
and without any remuneration. Thousands of loads of “mac,” or rather of
mixed street-dirt, have for this, and other reasons, been thrown away;
and no small quantity has been thrown down the gulley-holes, to find
its way into that main metropolitan sewer, the Thames. Of this matter,
however, I shall have to speak hereafter.

There is no doubt that it is common for contractors to represent
the “mac” they collect as being utterly valueless, and indeed an
incumbrance. The “mixed mac,” as I have said, may be so. Some
contractors urge, especially in their bargains with the parish
board, that all kinds of street dirt are not only worthless, but
expensive to be got rid of. Five or six years ago, this was urged
very strenuously, for then there was what was accounted a combination
among the contractors. The south-west district of St. Pancras, until
within the last six years, _received_ from the contractor for the
public scavengery, 100_l._ for the year’s aggregation of street and
house dirt. Since then, however, they have had to pay him 500_l._ for
removing it.

Notwithstanding the reluctance of some of the contractors to give
information on this, or indeed any subject connected with their trade,
I have ascertained from indubitable authority, that “mac” is disposed
of in the following manner. Some, but this is mostly the mixed kind,
is got rid of in _any_ manner; it has even been diluted with water so
as to be driven down the drains. Some is mixed with the general street
ordure--about a quarter of “mac,” I was told, to three-quarters of dung
and street mud--and shipped off in barges as manure. Some is given to
builders, when they require it for the foundations of any edifices that
are “handy,” or rather it is carted thither for a nominal price, such
as a trifle as beer-money for the men. Some, however, is _sold_ for the
same purpose, the contractors alleging that the charge is merely for
cartage. Some, again, is given away or sold (with the like allegation)
for purposes of levelling, of filling up cavities, or repairing
unevennesses in any ground where improvements are being carried on;
and, finally, some is sold to masons, plasterers, and brickmakers, for
the purposes of their trade.

Even for such purposes as “filling up,” there must be in the “mixed
mac” supplied, at least a considerable preponderance of the pure
material, or there would not be, as I heard it expressed, a sufficient
“setting” for what was required.

As a set-off to what is sold, however, I may here state that 30_s._ has
been paid for the privilege of depositing a barge-load of mixed street
dirt in Battersea-fields, merely to get rid of it.

The principal use of the unmixed “mac” is as a component part of the
mortar, or lime, of the mason in the exterior, and of the plasterer in
the interior, construction of buildings, and as an ingredient of the
mill in brick-grounds.

The accounts I received of the properties of “mac” from the vendors of
it, were very contradictory. One man, until lately connected with its
sale, informed me that as far as his own experience extended, “mac”
was most in demand among scamping builders, and slop brickmakers, who
looked only to what was cheap. To a notorious “scamper,” he one morning
sent three cart-loads of “mac” at 1_s._ a load, all to be used in the
erection of the skeleton of one not very large house; and he believed
that when it was used instead of sand with lime, it was for inferior
work only, and was mixed, either for masons’ or plasterers’ work, with
bad, low-priced mortar. Another man, with equal knowledge of the trade,
however, represented “mac” as a most valuable article for the builder’s
purposes, it was “so _binding_,” and this he repeated emphatically. A
working builder told me that “mac” was as good as the best sand; it
made the mortar “hang,” and without either that or sand, the lime would
“brittle” away.

“Mac” may be said to be composed of pulverised granite and rain water.
Granite is composed of quartz, felspar, and mica, each in granular
crystals. Hence, alumina being clay, and silex a substance which has a
strong tendency to enter into combination with the lime of the mortar,
the pulverizing of granite tends to produce a substance which has
necessarily great binding and indurating properties.

From this reduction of “mac” to its elements, it is manifest that it
possesses qualities highly valuable in promoting the cohesive property
of mortar, so that, were greater attention paid to its collection by
the scavenger, there would, in all probability, be an improved demand
for the article, for I find that it is already used in the prosecution
of some of the best masons’ work. On this head I can cite the authority
of a gentleman, at once a scientific and practical architect, who said
to me,--

“‘Mac’ is used by many respectable builders for making mortar. The
objection to it is, that it usually contains much extraneous decaying
matter.”

Increased care in the collection of the material would, perhaps, remove
this cause of complaint.

I heard of one West-end builder, employing many hands, however, who had
totally or partially discontinued the use of “mac,” as he had met with
some which he considered showed itself _brittle_ in the plastering of
walls.

“Mac,” is pounded, and sometimes sifted, when required for use, and is
then mixed and “worked up” with the lime for mortar, in the same way as
sand. By the brickmakers it is mixed with the clay, ground, and formed
into bricks in a similar manner.

Of the proportion sold to builders, plasterers, and brickmakers,
severally, I could learn no precise particulars. The general opinion
appears to be, that “mac” is sold most to brickmakers, and that it
would find even a greater sale with them, were not brick-fields
becoming more and more remote. I moreover found it universally
admitted, that “mac” was in less demand--some said by one-half--than it
was five or six years back.

* * * * *

Such are the _uses_ of “mac,” and we now come to the question of its
_value_.

The price of the purer “mac” seems, from the best information I can
procure, to have varied considerably. It is now generally cheap. I
did not hear any very sufficing reason advanced to account for the
depreciation, but one of the contractors expressed an opinion that this
was owing to the “disturbed” state of the trade. Since the passing of
the Sanitary Bill, the contractors for the public scavengery have been
prevented “shooting” any valueless street-dirt, or dirt “not worth
carriage” in convenient waste-places, as they were once in the habit
of doing. Their yards and wharfs are generally full, so that, to avoid
committing a nuisance, the contractor will not unfrequently sell his
“mac” at reduced rates, and be glad thus to get rid of it. To this
cause especially Mr. ---- attributed the deterioration in the price of
“mac,” but if he had convenience, he told me, and any change was made
in the present arrangements, he would not scruple to store 1000 loads
for the demands of next summer, as a speculation. I am of opinion,
moreover, notwithstanding what seemed something very like unanimity
of opinion on the part of the sellers of “mac,” that what is given or
thrown away is usually, if not always, _mixed_ or inferior “mac,” and
that what is sold at the lowest rate is only a degree or two better;
unless, indeed, it be under the immediate pressure of some of the
circumstances I have pointed out, as want of room, &c.

On inquiring the price of “mac,” I believe the answer of a vendor
will almost invariably be found to be “a shilling a load;” a little
further inquiry, however, shows that an extra sum may have to be paid.
A builder, who gave me the information, asked a parish contractor the
price of “mac.” The contractor at once offered to supply him with 500
loads at 1_s._ a load, if the “mac” were ordered beforehand, and could
be shot at once; but it would be 6_d._ a mile extra if delivered a mile
out of the mac-seller’s parish circuit, or more than a mile from his
yard; while, if extra care were to be taken in the collection of the
“mac,” it would be 2_d._, 3_d._, 4_d._, or 6_d._ a load higher. This,
it must be understood, was the price of “_wet_ mac.”

Good “_dry_ mac,” that is to say, “mac” ready for use, is sold to the
builder or the brickmaker at from 2_s._ to 3_s._ the load; 2_s._ 6_d._,
or something very near it, being now about an average price. It is
dried in the contractor’s yard by being exposed to the sun, or it is
sometimes protected from the weather by a shed, while being dried. More
wet “mac” would be shot for the trade, and kept until dry, but for want
of room in the contractors’ yards and wharfs; for “mac” must give way
to the more valuable dung, and the dust and ashes from the bins. The
best “mac” is sometimes described as “country mac,” that is to say, it
is collected from those suburban roads where it is likely to be little
mixed with dung, &c.

A contractor told me that during the last twelve months he had sold 300
loads of “mac;” he had no account of what he had given away, to be rid
of it, or of what he had sold at nominal prices. Another contractor, I
was told by his managing man, sold last year about 400 loads. But both
these parties are “in a large way,” and do not supply the data upon
which to found a calculation as to an average yearly sale; for though
in the metropolis there are, according to the list I have given in p.
167 of the present volume, 63 contracts, for cleansing the metropolis,
without including the more remote suburbs, such as Greenwich, Lewisham,
Tooting, Streatham, Ealing, Brentford, and others--still some of the
districts contracted for yield no “mac” at all.

From what I consider good authority, I may venture upon the following
moderate computation as to the quantity of “mac” sold last year.

Estimating the number of contracts for cleansing the more central
parishes at 35, and adding 20 for all the outlying parishes of the
metropolis--in some of which the supply of road “mac” is very fine, and
by no means scarce--it may be accurate enough to state that, out of
the 55 individual contracts, 300 loads of “mac” were sold by each in
the course of last year. This gives 16,500 loads of “mac” disposed of
per annum. It may, moreover, be a reasonable estimate to consider this
“mac,” wet and dry together, as fetching 1_s._ 6_d._ a load, so that we
have for the sum realized the following result:--

16,500 loads of “mac,” at 1_s._ 6_d._
per load £1237 10

It may probably be considered by the contractors that 1_s._ 6_d._ is
too high an average of price per load: if the price be minimized the
result will be--

16,500 loads of “mac,” at 1_s._ per
load £825

Then if we divide the first estimate among the 55 contractors, we find
that they receive upwards of 22_l._ each; the second estimate gives
nearly 15_l._ each.

I repeat, that in this inquiry I can but approximate. One gentleman
told me he thought the quantity of “mac” thus sold in the year was
twice 1600 loads; another asserted that it was not 1000. I am assured,
however, that my calculation does not exceed the truth.

I have given the full quantity of “mac,” as nearly, I believe, as it
can be computed, to be yielded by the metropolitan thoroughfares; the
surplusage, after deducting the 1600 loads sold, must be regarded as
consisting of mixed, and therefore useless, “mac;” that is to say,
“mac” rendered so _thin_ by continuous wet weather, that it is little
worth; “mac” wasted because it is not storeable in the contractor’s
yard; and “mac” used as a component part of a barge-load of manure.

In the course of my inquiries I heard it very generally stated that
until five or six years ago 2_s._ 6_d._ might be considered a regular
price for a load of “mac,” while 4_s._, 5_s._, or even 6_s._ have been
paid to one contractor, according to his own account, for the better
kind of this commodity.

OF THE MUD OF THE STREETS.

The dirt yielded by a macadamized road, no matter what the composition,
is always termed by the scavengers “_mac_;” what is yielded by a
granite-paved way is always “_mud_.” Mixed mud and “mac” are generally
looked upon as useless.

I inquired of one man, connected with a contractor’s wharf, if he could
readily distinguish the difference between “mac” and other street or
mixed dirts, and he told me that he could do so, more especially when
the stuff was sufficiently dried or set, at a glance. “If mac was
darker,” he said, “it always looked brighter than other street-dirts,
as if all the colour was not ground out of the stone.” He pointed out
the different kinds, and his definition seemed to me not a bad one,
although it may require a practised eye to make the distinction readily.

Street-mud is only partially mud, for mud is earthy particles saturated
with water, and in the composition of the scavenger’s street-mud are
dung, general refuse (such as straw and vegetable remains), and the
many things which in poor neighbourhoods are still thrown upon the
pavement.

In the busier thoroughfares of the metropolis--apart from the City,
where there is no macadamization requiring notice--it is almost
impossible to keep street “mac” and mud distinct, even if the
scavengers cared more to do so than is the case at present; for a
waggon, or any other vehicle, entering a street paved with blocks of
wrought granite from a macadamized road must convey “mac” amongst mud;
both “mac” and mud, however, as I have stated, are the most valuable
separately.

In a Report on the Supply of Water, Appendix No. III., Mr. Holland,
Upper Stamford-street, Waterloo-road, is stated to have said, in reply
to a question on the subject:--“Suppose the inhabitants of one parish
are desirous of having their streets in good order and clean: unless
the adjoining districts concur, a great and unjust expense is imposed
upon the cleaner parish; because every vehicle which passes from a
dirty on to a clean street carries dirt from the former to the latter,
and renders cleanliness more difficult and expensive. The inhabitants
of London have an interest in the condition of other streets besides
those of their own parish. Besides the inhabitants of Regent-street,
for instance, all the riders in the 5000 vehicles that daily pass
through that great thoroughfare are affected by its condition; and the
inhabitants of Regent-street, who have to bear the cost of keeping
that street in good repair and well cleansed, _for others’ benefit
as well as for their own_, may fairly feel aggrieved if they do not
experience the benefits of good and clean streets when they go into
other districts.”

In the admixture of street-dirt there is this material difference--the
dung, which spoils good “mac,” makes good mud more valuable.

After having treated so fully of the road-produce of “mac,” there seems
no necessity to say more about mud than to consider its quantity, its
value, and its uses.

In the Haymarket, which is about an eighth of a mile in length, and
18 yards in width, a load and a half of street-mud is collected
daily (Sundays excepted), take the year through. As a farmer or
market-gardener will give 3_s._ a load for common street-mud, and
cart it away at his own cost, we find that were all this mud sold
separately, at the ordinary rate, the yearly receipt for one street
alone would be 70_l._ 4_s._ This public way, however, furnishes no
criterion of the general mud-produce of the metropolis. We must,
therefore, adopt some other basis for a calculation; and I have
mentioned the Haymarket merely to show the great extent of street-dirt
accruing in a largely-frequented locality.

But to obtain other data is a matter of no small difficulty where
returns are not published nor even kept. I have, however, been
fortunate enough to obtain the assistance of gentlemen whose public
employment has given them the best means of forming an accurate opinion.

The street mud from the Haymarket, it has been positively ascertained,
is 1-1/4 load each wet day the year through. Fleet-street,
Ludgate-hill, Cheapside, Newgate-street, the “off” parts of St. Paul’s
Church-yard, Cornhill, Leadenhall-street, Bishopsgate-street, the free
bridges, with many other places where locomotion never ceases, are, in
proportion to their width, as productive of street mud as the Haymarket.

Were the Haymarket a mile in length, it would supply, at its present
rate of traffic, to the scavenger 6 loads of street mud daily, or
36 loads for the scavenger’s working week. In this yield, however,
I am assured by practical men, the Haymarket is six times in excess
of the average streets; and when compared with even “great business”
thoroughfares, of a narrow character, such as Watling-street, Bow-lane,
Old-change, and other thoroughfares off Cheapside and Cornhill, the
produce of the Haymarket is from 10 to 40 per cent. in excess.

I am assured, however, and especially by a gentleman who had
looked closely into the matter--as he at one time had been engaged
in preparing estimates for a projected company purposing to deal
with street-manures--that the 50 miles of the City may be safely
calculated as yielding daily 1-1/2 load of street mud per mile. Narrow
streets--Thames-street for instance, which is about three-quarters
of a mile long--yield from 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 loads daily, according
to the season; but a number of off-streets and open places, such
as Long-alley, Alderman’s-walk, America-square, Monument-yard,
Bridgewater-square, Austin-friars, and the like, are either streets
without horse-thoroughfares, or are seldom traversed by vehicles. If,
then, we calculate that there are 100 miles of paved streets adjoining
the City, and yielding the same quantity of street mud daily as the
above estimate, and 200 more miles in the less central parts of the
metropolis, yielding only half that quantity, we find the following
daily sum during the wet season:--

Loads.
150 miles of paved streets, yielding 1-1/2
load of street mud per mile 225

200 miles of paved streets, yielding 3/4
load of street mud per mile 150
---
375

Weekly amount of street mud during
the wet season 2,250

Total ditto for six months in the year 58,500
------
63,000 loads of street mud, at 3_s._ per
load £8775

The great sale for this mud, perhaps nineteen-twentieths, is from the
barges. A barge of street-manure, about one-fourth (more or less)
“mac,” or rather “mac” mixed with its street proportion of dung, &c.,
and three-fourths mud, dung, &c., contains from 30 to 40 tons, or as
many loads. These manure barges are often to be seen on the Thames,
but nearly three-fourths of them are found on the canals, especially
the Paddington, the Regent’s, and the Surrey, these being the most
immediately connected with the interior part of the metropolis. A
barge-load of this manure is usually sold at from 5_l._ to 6_l._
Calculating its average weight at 35 tons, and its average sale at
5_l._ 10_s._, the price is rather more than 3_s._ a load. “Common
street mud,” I have been informed on good authority, “fetches 3_s._ per
load from the farmer, when he himself carts it away.”

The price of the barge-load of manure is tolerably uniform, for the
quality is generally the same. Some of the best, because the cleanest,
street mud--as it is mixed only with horse-dung--is obtained from the
wood streets, but this mode of pavement is so circumscribed that the
contractors pay no regard to its manure produce, as a general rule, and
mix it carelessly with the rest. Such, at least, is the account they
themselves give, and they generally represent that the street manure
is, owing to the outlay for cartage and boatage, little remunerative
to them at the prices they obtain; notwithstanding, they are paid to
remove it from the streets. Indeed, I heard of one contractor who was
said to be so dissatisfied with the demand for, and the prices fetched
by, his street-manure, that he has rented a few acres not far from the
Regent’s Canal, to test the efficacy of street dirt as a fertilizer,
and to ascertain if to cultivate might not be more profitable than to
sell.

OF THE SURFACE-WATER OF THE STREETS OF LONDON.

The consideration of what Professor Way has called the “street waters”
of the metropolis, is one of as great moment as any of those I have
previously treated in my details concerning street refuse, whether
“mac,” mud, or dung. Indeed, water enters largely into the composition
of the two former substances, while even the street dung is greatly
affected by the rain.

The _feeders_ of the street, as regards the street surface-water,
are principally the rains. I will first consider the amount of
surface-water supplied by the rain descending upon the area of the
metropolis: upon the roofs of the houses, and the pavement of the
streets and roads.

The depth of rain falling in London in the different months,
according to the observations and calculations of the most eminent
meteorologists, is as follows:--

----------+----------------------------------------+------------+---------
| Depth of Rain in inches. | Quantity of|Number of
+--------------+------------+------------+rain falling| days on
Months. |Royal Society,| Howard, | Daniell, | in the | which
| according to |according to|according to| different | rain
| observation. |observation.|calculation.| seasons. | falls.
----------+--------------+------------+------------+------------+---------
January | 1·56 | 1·907 | 1·483 | | 14·4
February | 1·45 | 1·643 | 0·746 | Winter. | 15·8
March | 1·36 | 1·542 | 1·440 | 5·868 | 12·7
April | 1·55 | 1·719 | 1·786 | | 14·0
May | 1·67 | 2·036 | 1·853 | Spring. | 15·8
June | 1·98 | 1·964 | 1·830 | 4·813 | 11·8
July | 2·44 | 2·592 | 2·516 | | 16·1
August | 2·37 | 2·134 | 1·453 | Summer. | 16·3
September | 2·97 | 1·644 | 2·193 | 6·682 | 12·3
October | 2·46 | 2·872 | 2·073 | | 16·2
November | 2·58 | 2·637 | 2·400 | Autumn. | 15·0
December | 1·65 | 2·489 | 2·426 | 7·441 | 17·7
----------+--------------+------------+------------+------------+---------
Totals | 24·04 | 25·179 | 22·199 | 24·804 | 178·1
-------------------------+------------+------------+------------+---------

The rainfall in London, according to a ten years’ average of the
Royal Society’s observations, amounts to 23 inches; in 1848 it was as
high as 28 inches, and in 1847 as low as 15 inches. The depth of rain
annually falling near London is stated by Mr. Luke Howard to be, on an
average of 23 years (1797-1819), as much as 25·179 inches. Mr. Daniell
says that the average annual fall is 23-1/10 inches. The mean of the
observations made at Greenwich between the years 1838 and 1849 was
24·84 inches.

The following extract from an account of the “Soft Water Springs of the
Surrey Sands,” by the Hon. Wm. Napier, is interesting.

“The amount of rainfall,” says the Author, “is taken from a register
kept at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from the year 1818 to
1846.

“The average fall of the last 15 years, during which time the register
appears to have been correctly kept, is 22·64 inches. I consider
this to be a very low estimate, however, of the average rainfall
over the whole district. The fall on the ranges of the Hindhead must
considerably exceed this amount, for I find in White’s ‘Selborne,’ a
register for ten years at that place; the greatest fall being in 1782,
50·26 inches, the lowest, in 1788, 22·50 inches, and the average of all
37·58 inches. The elevation of the Hindhead is about 800 feet above
mean tide.

“With reference to the measurement of rainfall, it is difficult indeed
to obtain more than a very approximate idea for a given district of not
very great extent; the method of measurement is so uncertain, as liable
to be affected by currents of air and evaporation. It is well known
that elevated regions attract by condensation more rain than low lands,
and yet a rain-gauge placed on the ground will register a greater fall
than one placed immediately, and even at a small height, above it.

“M. Arago has shown from 12 years’ observations at Paris, that the
average depth of rain on the terrace of the Observatory was 19·88
inches, while 30 yards lower it was 22·21 inches. Dr. Heberden has
shown the rainfall on the top of Westminster Cathedral, during a
certain period to be only 12·09 inches, and at a lower level on the top
of a house in the neighbourhood to be 22·608 inches. This fact has been
observed all over the world, and I can only account for it as arising
partly from the greater amount of condensation the nearer the earth’s
surface, but probably also from currents of air depriving a rain-gauge
at a high elevation of its fair share.”

The results of the above observations, as to the yearly quantity of
rain falling in the metropolis, may be summed up as follows:--

Inches of
Rain falling
Annually.
Royal Society (average of 20 years) 24·04
Mr. Howard (average of 23 years) 25·179
Professor Daniell 22·199
Dr. Heberden 22·608
------
Mean 23·506

The “mean mean,” or average of all the averages here given is within a
fraction the average of the Royal Society’s Observations for 10 years,
and this is the quantity that I shall adopt in my calculations as to
the gross volume of rain falling over the entire area of London.

I have shown, by a detail of the respective districts in the Registrar
General’s department, that the metropolis contains 74,070 statute
acres. Every square inch of this extent, as garden, arable, or
pasture ground, or as road or street, or waste place, or house, or
inclosed yard or lawn, of course receives its modicum of rain. Each
acre comprises 6,272,640 square inches, and we thus find the whole
metropolitan area to contain a number of square inches, almost beyond
the terms of popular arithmetic, and best expressible in figures.

Area of metropolis in square inches, 464,614,444,800. Now, multiplying
these four hundred and sixty four thousand, six hundred and fourteen
millions, four hundred and forty-four thousand, eight hundred square
inches, by 23, the number of inches of rain falling every year in
London, we have the following result:--

Total quantity of rain falling yearly in the metropolis,
10,686,132,230,400 cubic inches.

Then, as a fraction more than 277-1/4 cubic inches of water represent
a weight of 10 lbs., and an admeasurement of a gallon, we have the
following further results:--

------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------
| Weight in pounds | Admeasurement
| and tons. | in gallons.
------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------
Yearly Rainfall } | 385,399,721,220 lbs., |
in the } | or | 38,539,972,122 gals.
Metropolis } | 172,053,447 tons. |
------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------

The total quantity of water mechanically supplied every day to the
metropolis is said to be in round numbers 55,000,000 gallons, the
amount being made up in the following manner:--

DAILY MECHANICAL SUPPLY OF WATER TO METROPOLIS.

Sources of Supply. Average No. of
Gallons per day.
New River 14,149,315
East London 8,829,462
Chelsea 3,940,730
West Middlesex 3,334,054
Grand Junction 3,532,013
Lambeth 3,077,260
Southwark and Vauxhall 6,313,716
Kent 1,079,311
Hampstead 427,468
Total from Companies 44,383,329
Artesian Wells 8,000,000
Land Spring Pumps 3,000,000
-----------
Total daily 55,383,329

YEARLY MECHANICAL SUPPLY OF WATER.

From Companies 16,200,000,000 gals.
„ Artesian Wells 1,920,000,000 „
„ Land Spring Pumps 1,095,000,000 „
--------------
Total yearly 19,215,000,000 „

Hence it would appear that the rain falling in London in the course of
the year is _rather more than double that of the entire quantity of
water annually supplied to the metropolis by mechanical means_, the
rain-water being to the other as 2·005 to 1·000.

Now, in order to ascertain what proportion of the entire volume of rain
comes under the denomination of street surface-water, we must first
deduct from the gross quantity falling the amount said to be caught,
and which, in contradistinction to that mechanically _supplied_ to
the houses of the metropolis is termed, “catch.” This is estimated at
1,000,000 gallons per diem, or 365,000,000 gallons yearly.

But we must also subtract from the gross quantity of rain-water that
which falls on the roofs as well as on the “back premises” and yards
of houses, and is carried off directly to the drains without appearing
in the streets. This must be a considerable proportion of the whole,
since the streets themselves, allowing them to be ten yards wide on an
average, would seem to occupy only about one-tenth part of the entire
metropolitan area, so that the rain falling _directly_ upon the public
thoroughfares will be but a tithe of the aggregate quantity. But the
surface-water of the streets is increased largely by tributary shoots
from courts and drainless houses, and hence we may fairly assume
the _natural_ supply to be doubled by such means. At this rate the
volume of rain-water annually poured into and upon the metropolitan
thoroughfares by natural means, will be between five and six thousand
millions of gallons, or one hundred times the quantity that is daily
supplied to the houses of the metropolis by mechanical agency.

Still only a part of this quantity appears in the form of
surface-water, for a considerable portion of it is absorbed by the
ground on which it falls--especially in dry weather--serving either to
“lay the dust,” or to convert it into mud. Due regard, therefore, being
had to all these considerations, we cannot, consistently with that
caution which is necessary in all statistical inquiries, estimate the
surface-water of the London streets at more than one thousand millions
of gallons per annum, or twenty times the daily mechanical supply to
the houses of the entire metropolis, and which it has been asserted is
sufficient to exhaust a lake covering the area of St. James’s-park, 30
inches in depth.

The quantity of water annually poured upon the streets in the process
of what is termed “watering” amounts, according to the returns of the
Board of Health, to 275,000,000 gallons per annum! But as this seldom
or never assumes the form of street surface-water, it need form no part
of the present estimate.

What proportion of the thousand million gallons of “slop dirt” produced
annually in the London streets is carried off down the drains, and
what proportion is ladled up by the scavengers, I have no means of
ascertaining, but that vast quantities run away into the sewers and
there form large deposits of mud, everything tends to prove.

Mr. Lovick, on being asked, “How many loads of deposit have been
removed in any one week in the Surrey and Kent district? What is the
total quantity of deposit removed in any one week in the whole of the
metropolitan district?” replied:

“It is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain correctly the
quantity removed, owing to the variety of forms of sewers and the
ever-varying forms assumed by the deposit from the action of varying
volumes of water; but I have had observations made on the rate of
accumulation, from which I have been enabled roughly to approximate
it. In one week, in the Surrey and Kent district, about 1000 yards
were removed. In one week, in the whole of the metropolitan districts,
including the Surrey and Kent district, between 4000 and 5000 yards
were removed; but in portions of the districts these operations were
not in progress.”

It is not here stated of what the deposit consisted, but there is no
doubt that “mac” from the streets formed a great portion of it. Neither
is it stated what period of time had sufficed for the accumulation; but
it is evident enough that such deposits in the course of a year must
be very great.

The street surface-water has been analyzed by Professor Way, and found
to yield different constituents according to the different pavements
from which it has been discharged. The results are as follows:--

“_Examination of Samples of Water from Street Drainage, taken from the
Gullies in the Sewers during the rain of 6th May, 1850._

“The waters were all more or less turbid, and some of them gave off
very noxious odours, due principally to the escape of sulphuretted
hydrogen gas.

“Some of them were alkaline to test-paper, but the majority were
neutral.

“The following table exhibits the quantity of matter (both in solution
and in solid state) contained in an imperial gallon of each specimen.

“STREET WATERS.

-------+--------------------+----------+---------+--------------------------------
Number | | Quality | Quality | Residue in an Imperial Gallon.
of | NAME OF STREET. | of | of +---------+----------+-----------
Bottle.| | Paving. |Traffic. |Soluble. |Insoluble.| Both.
-------+--------------------+----------+---------+---------+----------+-----------
| | | | Grains. | Grains. | Grains.
1 |Duke-street, | | | | |
| Manchester-square | Macadam |Middling | 92·80 | 105·95 | 198·75
7 |Foley-street | | | | |
| (upper part) | „ | Little | 95·13 | 116·30 | 211·43
5 |Gower-street | Granite |Middling | 126·00 | 168·30 | 294·30
12 |Norton-street | „ | Little | 123·87 | 3·00 | 126·87
3 |Hampstead-road | | | | |
| (above the canal) |Ballasted | Great | 96·00 | 84·00 | 180·00
4 |Ferdinand-street | „ |Middling | 44·00 | 48·30 | 92·30
2 |Ferdinand-place | „ | Little | 50·80 | 34·30 | 85·10
10 |Oxford-street | Granite | Great | 276·23 | 537·10 | 813·33
6 | „ | Macadam | „ | 194·62 | 390·30 | 584·92
11 | „ | Wood | „ | 34·00 | 5·00 | 39·00
-------+--------------------+----------+---------+---------+----------+-----------

“The influence of the quality of the paving on the composition of the
drainage water,” says Professor Way, “is well seen in the specimens
Nos. 10, 6, and 11, all of them from Oxford-street, the traffic being
described as ‘Great.’

“The quantity of soluble salts is here found to be greatest from the
granite matter from the macadamized road, and very inconsiderable from
the wood pavement.

“The same relation between the granite and macadam pavement seems
to hold good in the other instances; the granite for any quality of
traffic affording more soluble salts to the water than the macadam.

“The ballasted pavement holds a position intermediate between the
macadam and the wood, giving more soluble salts than the wood, but
less than the macadam.

“The quantity of solid (insoluble) matter in the different samples of
water, _which is a measure of the mechanical waste of the different
kinds of pavement_, appears also to follow the same relation as that
of the soluble salts; that is to say, granite greatest, next macadam,
then ballasted, and, lastly, wood pavement, which affords a quantity
of solid deposit almost too small to deserve notice.

“The influence of the quality of traffic on the composition of the
different specimens of drainage is well marked in nearly all cases;
the greatest amount of matter both insoluble and soluble being found
in the water obtained from the streets of great traffic.

“The following table shows the composition of the soluble salts of
four specimens, two of them being from the granite, and two from the
macadam pavement.

“It appears from the table that the granite furnishes little or
no magnesia to the water, whilst the quantity from the macadam is
considerable.

“On the other hand, the quantity of potash is far greatest in the
water derived from the granite.

“The traffic, as was before seen, has a very great influence on the
quantity of the soluble salts. It seems also to influence their
composition, for we find no carbonates either in the water from the
granite, or that from the macadam, where the traffic is little;
whereas, when it is great, carbonates of lime and potash are found
in the water in large quantity, a circumstance which is no doubt
attributable to the action of decaying organic matter on the mineral
substances of the pavement.

“ANALYSIS OF THE SOLUBLE MATTER IN DIFFERENT SPECIMENS OF STREET
DRAINAGE WATER.

-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------
| Grains in an Imperial Gallon.
+-----------------+-----------------
| Great Traffic. | Little Traffic.
+--------+--------+--------+--------
|Granite.|Macadam.|Granite.|Macadam.
| No. 10.| No. 6. | No. 12.| No. 7.
-----------------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------
Water of combination and some soluble | | | |
organic matter | 77·56 | 29·07 | 22·72 | 13·73
Silica | ·51 | 2·81 | ... | ...
Carbonic Acid | 15·84 | 12·23 | None | None
Sulphuric Acid | 36·49 | 38·23 | 46·48 | 34·08
Lime | 6·65 | 13·38 | 25·90 | 16·10
Magnesia | None | 23·51 | Trace | 3·50
Oxide of Iron and Alumina, with a little | | | |
Phosphate of Lime | 2·58 | 1·25 | ... | ...
Chloride of Potassium | None | 10·99 | None | 2·79
„ Sodium | 53·84 | 44·88 | 18·44 | 19·70
Potash | 82·76 | 18·27 | 8·75 | 5·23
Soda | ... | ... | 1·58 | ...
-----------------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------
| 276·23 | 194·62 | 123·87 | 95·13
-----------------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------

“The insoluble matter in the waters consists of the comminuted
material of the road itself, with small fragments of straw and broken
dung.

“The quantity of soluble salts (especially of salts of potash) in
many of these samples of water is quite as great, and in some cases
greater, than that found in the samples of sewer-water that have been
examined; and it is open to question and further inquiry, whether the
water obtained from the street-drainage of a crowded city might not
often be of nearly equal value as liquid manure with the sewer-water
with which it is at present allowed to mix.”

With regard to the “ballasted pavement” mentioned by Professor Way, I
may observe that it cannot be considered a _street_-pavement, unless
exceptionally. It is formed principally of Thames ballast mixed with
gravel, and is used in the construction of what are usually private or
pleasure walks, such as the “gravel walks” in the inclosures of some of
the parks, and upon Primrose-hill, &c.

OF THE MASTER SCAVENGERS IN FORMER TIMES.

Degraded as the occupation of the scavenger may be in public
estimation; though “I’d rather sweep the streets” may be a common
remark expressive of the lowest deep of humiliation among those who
never handled a besom in their lives; yet the very existence of a large
body who are public cleansers betokens civilization. Their occupation,
indeed, was defined, or rather was established or confirmed, in the
early periods of our history, when municipal regulations were a sort
of charter of civic protection, of civic liberties, and of general
progress.

The noun _Scavenger_ is said by lexicographers to be derived from the
German _schaben_, to shave or scrape, “applied to those who scrape and
clear away the filth from public streets or other places.” The more
direct derivation, however, is from the Danish verb _skaver_, the Saxon
equivalent of which is _sceafan_, whence the English _shave_. Formerly
the word was written _Scavager_, and meant simply one who was engaged
in removing the _Scrapeage_ or _Rakeage_ (the working men, it will be
seen, were termed also “rakers”) from the surface of the streets. Hence
it would appear that there is no authority for the verb to scavenge,
which has lately come into use. The term from which the personal
substantive is directly made, is _scavage_, a word formed from the verb
in the same manner as _sewage_ and _rubbage_ (now fashionably corrupted
into rubbish), and meaning the refuse which is or should be scraped
away from the roads. The Latin equivalent from the Danish verb _skave_,
is _scabere_.

I believe that the first mention of a scavenger in our earlier
classical literature, is by Bishop Hall, one of the lights of the
Reformation, in one of his “Satires.”

“To see the Pope’s blacke knight, a cloaked frere,
Sweating in the channel _like a scavengere_.”

Many similar passages from the old poets and dramatists might be
adduced, but I will content myself with one from the “Martial Maid” of
Beaumont and Fletcher, as bearing immediately on the topic I have to
discuss:--

“Do I not know thee for the alguazier,
Whose dunghil _all the parish scavengers_
Could never rid.”

Johnson defines a scavenger to be “a petty magistrate, whose province
is to keep the streets clean;” and in the earlier times, certainly the
scavenger was an officer to whom a certain authority was deputed, as to
beadles and others.

One or two of these officials were appointed, according to the
municipal or by-laws of the City of London, not to each parish, but
to each ward. Of course, in the good old days, nothing could be done
unless under “the sanction of an oath,” and the scavengers were sworn
accordingly on the Gospel, the following being the form as given in the
black letter of the laws relating to the city in the time of Henry VIII.

“_The Oath of Scavagers, or Scavengers, of the Ward._

“Ye shal swear, That ye shal wel and diligently oversee that the
pavements in every Ward be wel and rightfully repaired, and not
haunsed to the noyaunce of the neighbours; and that the Ways, Streets,
and Lanes, be kept clean from Donge and other Filth, for the Honesty
of the City. And that all the Chimneys, Redosses, and Furnaces, be
made of Stone for Defence of Fire. And if ye know any such ye shall
shew it to the Alderman, that he may make due Redress therefore. And
this ye shall not lene. So help you God.”[14]

To aid the scavengers in their execution of the duties of the office,
the following among others were the injunctions of the civic law. They
indicate the former state of the streets of London better than any
description. A “Goung (or dung) fermour” appears to be a nightman, a
dung-carrier or bearer, the servant of the master or ward scavenger.

“No Goungfermour shall spill any ordure in the Street, under pain of
Thirteen Shillings and Four Pence.

“No Goungfermour shall carry any ordure till after nine of the clock
in the Night, under pain of Thirteen Shillings and Four Pence. No man
shall cast any urine boles, or ordure boles, into the Streets by Day
or Night, _afore the Hour of nine in the Night_. And also he shall not
cast it out, but bring it down and lay it in the Canel, under Pain
of Three Shillings and Four Pence. And if he do so cast it upon any
Person’s Head, the Person to have a lawful Recompense, _if he have
hurt thereby_.

“No man shall bury any Dung, or Goung, within the Liberties of this
City, under Pain of Forty Shillings.”

I will not dwell on the state of things which caused such enactments
to be necessary, or on the barbarism of the law which ordered a lawful
recompense to any person assailed in the manner intimated, only when he
had “hurt thereby.”

These laws were for the government of the city, where a body of
scavengers was sometimes called a “street-ward.” Until about the reign
of Charles II., however, to legislate concerning such matters for the
city was to legislate for the metropolis, as Southwark was then more
or less under the city jurisdiction, and the houses of the nobility on
the north bank of the Thames (the Strand), would hardly require the
services of a public scavenger.

As new parishes or districts became populous, and established outside
the city boundaries, the authorities seem to have regulated the public
scavengery after the fashion of the city; but the whole, in every
respect of cleanliness, propriety, regularity, or celerity, was most
grievously defective.

Some time about the middle of the last century, the scavengers were
considered and pronounced by the administrators or explainers of
municipal law, to be “two officers chosen yearly in each parish in
London and the suburbs, by the constables, churchwardens, and other
inhabitants,” and their business was declared to be, that they should
“hire persons called ‘rakers,’ with carts to clean the streets, and
carry away the dirt and filth thereof, under a penalty of 40_s._”

The scavengers thus appointed we should now term surveyors. There
is little reason to doubt that in the old times the duly-appointed
scavagers or scavengers, laboured in their vocation themselves, and
employed such a number of additional hands as they accounted necessary;
but how or when the master scavenger ceased to be a labourer, and how
or when the office became merely nominal, I can find no information.
So little attention appears to have been paid to this really important
matter, that there are hardly any records concerning it. The law was
satisfied to lay down provisions for street-cleansing, but to enforce
these provisions was left to chance, or to some idle, corrupt, or
inefficient officer or body.

Neither can I find any precise account of what was formerly done
with the dirt swept and scraped from the streets, which seems always
to have been left to the discretion of the scavenger to deal with
as he pleased, and such is still the case in a great measure. Some
of this dirt I find, however, promoted “the goodly nutriment of the
land” about London, and some was “delivered in waste places apart
from habitations.” These waste places seem to have been the nuclei
of the present dust-yards, and were sometimes “presented,” that is,
they were reported by a jury of nuisances (or under other titles), as
“places of obscene resort,” for lewd and disorderly persons, the lewd
and disorderly persons consisting chiefly of the very poor, who came
to search among the rubbish for anything that might be valuable or
saleable; for there were frequent rumours of treasure or plate being
temporarily hidden in such places by thieves. Some outcast wretches,
moreover, slept within the shelter of these scavengers’ places, and
occasionally a vigilant officer--even down to our own times, or
within these few years--apprehended such wretches, charged them with
destitution, and had them punished accordingly. Much of the street
refuse thus “delivered,” especially the “dry rubbish,” was thrown into
the streets from houses under repair, &c., (I now speak of the past
century,) and no use seems to have been made of any part of it unless
any one requiring a load or two of rubbish chose to cart it away.

I have given this sketch to show what master scavengers were in the
olden times, and I now proceed to point out what is the present
condition of the trade.

OF THE SEVERAL MODES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF STREET-CLEANSING.

We here come to the practical part of this complex subject. We have
ascertained the length of the streets of London--we have estimated the
amount of daily, weekly, and yearly traffic--calculated the quantity of
mud, dung, “mac,” dust, and surface-water formed and collected annually
throughout the metropolis--we have endeavoured to arrive at some notion
as to the injury done by all this vast amount of filth owing to what
the Board of Health has termed “imperfect scavenging,”--and we now come
to treat of the means by which the loads of street refuse--the loads of
dust--loads of “mac” and mud, and the tons of dung, are severally and
collectively removed throughout the year.

There are two distinct, and, in a measure, diametrically opposed,
methods of street-cleansing at present in operation.

1. That which consists in cleaning the streets when dirtied.

2. That which consists in cleaning them and _keeping_ them clean.

These modes of scavenging may not appear, to those who have paid but
little attention to the matter, to be _very_ widely different means of
effecting the same object. The one, however, removes the refuse from
the streets (sooner or later) _after it has been formed_, whereas the
other removes it _as fast as it is formed_. By the latter method the
streets are never allowed to get dirty--by the former they must be
dirty before they are cleansed.

The plan of street-cleansing _before_ dirtied, or the pre-scavenging
system, is of recent introduction, being the mode adopted by the
“street-orderlies;” that of cleansing after having dirtied, or the
post-scavenging system, is (so far as the more _general_ or common
method is concerned) the same as that pursued two centuries ago. I
shall speak of each of these modes in due course, beginning with that
last mentioned.

By the ordinary method of scavenging, the dirt is still swept or
scraped to one side of the public way, then shovelled into a cart and
conveyed to the place of deposit. In wet weather the dirt swept or
scraped to one side is so liquified that it is known as “slop,” and
is “lifted” into the cart in shovels hollowed like sugar-spoons. The
only change of which I have heard in this mode of scavenging was in
one of the tools. Until about nine years ago birch, or occasionally
heather, brooms or besoms were used by the street-sweepers, but
they soon became clogged in dirty weather, and then, as one working
scavenger explained it to me, “they scattered and drove the dirt to
the sides ’stead of making it go right a-head as you wants it.” The
material now used for the street-sweeper’s broom is known as “bass,”
and consists of the stems or branches of a New Zealand plant, a
substance which has considerable strength and elasticity of fibre, and
both “sweeps” and “scrapes” in the process of scavenging. The broom
itself, too, is differently constructed, having divisions between the
several insertions of bass in the wooden block of the head, so that
clogging is less frequent, and cleaning easier, whereas the birch
broom consisted of a close mass of twigs, and thus scattered while it
swept the dirt. There was, of course, some outcry on the part of the
“established-order-of-things” gentry among scavengers, against the
innovation, but it is now general. As all the scavengers, no matter
how they vary in other respects, work with the brooms described, this
one mention of the change will suffice. No doubt the cleansing of
the streets is accomplished with greater efficiency and with greater
celerity than it was, but the mere process of manual toil is little
altered.

In a work like the present, however, we have more particularly to deal
with the labourers engaged; and, viewing the subject in this light,
we may arrange the several modes of street-cleansing into the four
following divisions:--

1. By paid manual-labourers, or men employed by the contractors, and
paid in the ordinary ways of wages.

2. By paid “Machine”-labourers, differing from the first only or mainly
in the means by which they attain their end.

3. By pauper labourers, or men employed by the parishes in which they
are set to work, and either paid in money or in food, or maintained in
the workhouses.

4. By street-orderlies, or men employed by philanthropists--a body
of workmen with particular regulations and more organized than other
scavengers.

By one or other of these modes of scavengery all the public ways of the
metropolis are cleansed; and the subject is most peculiar, as including
within itself all the several varieties of labour, if we except that
of women and children--viz., manual labour, mechanical labour, pauper
labour, and philanthropic labour.

By these several varieties of labour the highways and by-ways of
the entire metropolis are cleansed, with one exception--the Mews,
concerning which a few words here may not be out of place. _All_ these
localities, whether they be what are styled Private or Gentlemen’s
Mews, or Public Mews, where stables, coach-houses, and dwelling-rooms
above them, may be taken by any one (a good many of such places
being, moreover, public or partial thoroughfares); or whether they be
job-masters’ or cab-proprietors’ mews; are scavenged by the occupants,
for the manure is valuable. The mews of London, indeed, constitute
a world of their own. They are tenanted by one class--coachmen and
grooms, with their wives and families--men who are devoted to one
pursuit, the care of horses and carriages; who live and associate
one among another; whose talk is of horses (with something about
masters and mistresses) as if to ride or to drive were the great ends
of human existence, and who thus live as much together as the Jews in
their compulsory quarters in Rome. The mews are also the “chambers” of
unemployed coachmen and grooms, and I am told that the very sicknesses
known in such places have their own peculiarities. These, however, form
matter for _future_ inquiry.

Concerning the private scavenging of the metropolitan mews, the
_Medical Times_, of July 26, 1851, contains a letter from Mr. C.
Cochrane, in which that gentleman says:--

“It will be found, that in all the mews throughout the metropolis,
the manure produced from each stable is packed up in a separate
stack, until there is sufficient for a load for some market-gardener
or farmer to remove. The groom or stable-man makes an arrangement,
or agreement as it is called, with the market-gardener, to remove it
at his convenience, and a gratuity of 1_s._ or 1_s._ 6_d._ per load
is usually presented to the stable-man. In some places there are
dung-pits containing the collectings of a fortnight’s dung, which, when
disturbed for removal, casts out an offensive effluvium, as sickening
as it is disgusting to the whole neighbourhood. In consequence of
the arrangement in question, if a third party wished to buy some of
this manure, he could not get it; and if he wished to get rid of any
by giving it away, the stable-man would not receive it, as it would
not be removed sufficiently quick by the farmer. The result is, that
whilst the air is rendered offensive and insalubrious, manure becomes
difficult to be removed or disposed of, and frequently is washed away
into the sewer.

“Of this manure there are always (at a moderate computation) remaining
daily, in the mews and stable-yards of the metropolis, at least 2000
cart-loads.

“To remedy these evils, I would suggest that a brief Act of Parliament
should be passed, giving municipal and parochial authorities the
same complete control over the manure as they have over the ‘ashes,’
with the provision, that owners should have the right of removing it
themselves for their own use; but if they did not do so daily, then the
control to return to the above authorities, who should have the right
of selling it, and placing the proceeds in the parish funds. By this
simple means immense quantities of valuable manure would be saved for
the purposes of agriculture--food would be rendered cheaper and more
abundant--more people would be employed--whilst the metropolis would be
rendered clean, sweet, and healthy.”

I may dismiss this part of the subject with the remark, that I was
informed that the mews’ manure was in regular demand and of ready sale,
being removed by the market-gardeners with greater facility than can
street-dirt, which the contractors with the parishes prefer to vend by
the barge-load.

Having enumerated the four several modes of street-cleansing, I will
now proceed to point out briefly the characteristics of each class of
cleansing. This will also denote the quality of the employers and the
nature of the employment.

1. _The Paid Manual Labourers_ constitute the bulk of those engaged
in scavenging, and the chief pay-masters are the contractors. Many
of these labourers consider themselves the only “regular hands,”
having been “brought up to the business;” but unemployed or destitute
labourers or mechanics, or reduced tradesmen, will often endeavour to
obtain employment in street-sweeping; this is the necessary evil of all
_unskilled_ labour, for since every one can do it (without previous
apprenticeship), it follows that the beaten-out artisans or discarded
trade assistants, beggared tradesmen, or reduced gentlemen, must
necessarily resort to it as their only means of independent support;
and hence the reason why dock labour and street labour, and indeed all
the several forms of unskilled work, have a tendency to be overstocked
with hands--the _unskilled_ occupations being, as it were, the sink for
all the refuse _skilled_ labour and beggared industry of the country.

The “contractors,” like other employers, are separated by their
men into two classes--such as, in more refined callings, are often
designated the “honourable” and “dishonourable” traders--according as
they pay or do not pay what is reputed “fair wages.”

I cannot say that I heard any especial appellation given by the working
scavengers to the better-paying class of employers, unless it were the
expressive style of “good-’uns.” The inferior paying class, however,
are very generally known among their work-people as “scurfs.”

2. _The Street-sweeping Machine Labourers._--Of the men employed as
“attendant” scavengers, for so they may be termed, in connection with
these mechanical and vehicular street-sweepers, little need here be
said, for they are generally of the class of ordinary scavengers. It
may, however, be necessary to explain that each of those machines must
have the street refuse, for the “lick-in” of the machine, swept into a
straight line wherever there is the slightest slope at the sides of a
street towards the foot-path; the same, too, must sometimes be done, if
the pavement be at all broken, even when the progress of the machine
is, what I heard, not very appropriately, termed “plain sailing.”
Sometimes, also, men follow the course of the street-sweeping machine,
to “sweep up” any dirt missed or scattered, as the vehicle proceeds on
a straightforward course, for at all to diverge would be to make the
labour, where the machine alone is used, almost double.

3. _The Pauper, or Parish-employed Scavengers_ present characteristics
peculiarly their own, as regards open-air labour in London. They are
employed less to cleanse the streets, than to prevent their being
chargeable to the poor’s rate as out-door recipients, or as inmates of
the workhouses. When paid, they receive a lower amount of wages than
any other scavengers, and they are sometimes paid in food as well as
in money, while a difference may be made between the wages of the
married and of the unmarried men, and even between the married men who
have and have not children; some, again, are employed in scavenging
without any money receipt, their maintenance in the workhouse being
considered a sufficient return for the fruits of their toil.

Some of these men are feeble, some are unskilful (even in tasks
in which skill is but little of an element), and most of them are
dissatisfied workmen. Their ranks comprise, or may comprise, men who
have filled very different situations in life. It is mentioned in the
second edition of one of the publications of the National Philanthropic
Association, “Sanatory Progress” (1850), “that the once high-salaried
cashier of a West-end bank died lately in St. Pancras-workhouse;--that
the architect of several of the most fashionable West-end club-houses
is now an inmate of St. James’s-workhouse;--and that the architect of
St. Pancras’ New Church lately died in a back garret in Somers-town.”
“These recent instances (a few out of many)” says the writer,
“prove that ‘wealth has wings,’ and that Genius and Industry have
but leaden feet, when overtaken by Adversity. A late number of the
_Globe_ newspaper states that, ‘among the police constables on the
Great Western Railway, there are at present eight members of the
Royal College of Surgeons, and three solicitors;’--and the _Limerick
Examiner_, a few weeks ago, announced the fact, that ‘a gentlewoman is
now an inmate of the workhouse of that city, whose husband, a few years
ago, filled the office of High Sheriff of the county.’”

I do not know that either the cashier or the architect in the two
workhouses in question was employed as a street-sweeper.

This second class, then, are situated differently to the paid
street-sweepers (or No. 1 of the present division), who may be
considered, more or less, independent or self-supporting labourers,
while the paupers are, of course, dependent.

4. _The “Street Orderlies.”_--These men present another distinct body.
They are not merely in the employment, but many of them are under the
care, of the National Philanthropic Association, which was founded by,
and is now under the presidency of, Mr. Cochrane. The objects of this
society, as far as regards the street orderlies’ existence as a class
of scavengers, are sufficiently indicated in its title, which declares
it to be “For the Promotion of Street Cleanliness and the Employment
of the Poor; so that able-bodied men may be prevented from burthening
the parish rates, and preserved independent of workhouse alms and
degradation. Supported by the contributions of the benevolent.”

The street orderlies, men and boys, are paid a fixed weekly wage, a
certain sum being stopped from those single men who reside in houses
rented for them by the association, where their meals, washing, &c.,
are provided. Among them are men of many callings, and some educated
and accomplished persons.

The system of street orderlyism is, moreover, distinguished by one
attribute unknown to any other mode; it is an effort, persevered in,
despite of many hindrances and difficulties, to amend our street
scavengery, indeed to reform it altogether; so that dust and dirt may
be checked in their very origination.

The corporation, if I may so describe it, of the street orderlies,
presents characteristics, again, varying from the other orders of what
can only be looked upon either as the self-supporting or pauper workers.

These, then, are the several modes or methods of street-scavengery, and
they show the following:--

_CLASSES OF STREET-SWEEPING EMPLOYERS._

(1.) _Traders_, who undertake contracts for scavengery as a
speculation. Under this denomination may be classed the contractors
with parishes, districts, boards, liberties, divisions and subdivisions
of parishes, markets, &c.

(2.) _Parishes_, who employ the men as a matter of parochial policy,
with a view to the reduction of the rates, and with little regard to
the men.

(3.) _Philanthropists_, who seek, more particularly, to benefit the
men whom they employ, while they strive to promote the public good by
increasing public cleanliness and order.

Under the head of “Traders” are the contractors with the parishes,
&c., and the proprietors of the sweeping-machines, who are in the same
capacity as the “regular contractors” respecting their dealings with
labourers, but who substitute mechanical for manual operations.

Of these several classes of masters engaged in the scavengery of the
metropolis I have much to say, and, for the clearer saying of it, I
shall treat each of the several varieties of labour separately.

OF THE CONTRACTORS FOR SCAVENGERY.

The scavenging of the streets of the metropolis is performed _directly_
or _indirectly_ by the authorities of the several parishes “without
the City,” who have the power to levy rates for the cleansing of the
various districts; within the City, however, the office is executed
under the direction of the Court of Sewers.

When the cleansing of the streets is performed indirectly by either the
parochial or civic authorities, it is effected by contractors, that
is to say, by traders who undertake for a certain sum to remove the
street-refuse at stated intervals and under express conditions, and who
employ paid servants to execute the work for them. When it is performed
_directly_, the authorities employ labourers, generally from the
workhouse, and usually enter into an agreement with some contractor for
the use of his carts and appliances, together with the right to deposit
in his wharf or yard the refuse removed from the streets.

I shall treat first of the _indirect_ mode of scavenging--that is
to say, of cleansing the streets by contract--beginning with the
contractors, setting forth, as near as possible, the receipts and
expenditure in connection with the trade, and then proceeding in due
order to treat of the labourers employed by them in the performance of
the task.

Some of the contractors agree with the parochial or district
authorities to remove the dust from the house-bins as well as the
dirt from the streets under one and the same contract; some undertake
to execute these two offices under separate contracts; and some to
perform only one of them. It is most customary, however, for the same
contractor to serve the parish, especially the larger parishes, in both
capacities.

There is no established or legally required _form_ of agreement between
a contractor and his principals; it is a bargain in which each side
strives to get the best of it, but in which the parish representatives
have often to contend against something looking like a monopoly; a very
common occurrence in our day when capitalists choose to combine, which
_is_ legal, or unnoticed, but very heinous on the part of the working
men, whose capital is only in their strength or skill. One contractor,
on being questioned by a gentleman officially connected with a large
district, as to the existence of combination, laughed at such a notion,
but said there might be “a sort of understanding one among another,” as
among people who “must look to their own interests, and see which way
the cat jumped;” concluding with the undeniable assertion that “no man
ought reasonably to be expected to ruin himself for a parish.”

There does not appear, however, to have been any countervailing
qualities on the part of the parishes to this understanding among the
contractors; for some of the authorities have found themselves, when
a new or a renewed contract was in question, suddenly “on the other
side of the hedge.” Thus, in the south-west district of St. Pancras,
the contractor, five or six years ago, paid 100_l._ per annum for the
removal and possession of the street-dirt, &c.; but the following year
the district authorities had to pay him 500_l._ for the same labour
and with the same privileges! Other changes took place, and in 1848-9
a contractor again paid the district 95_l._ I have shown, too, that
in Shadwell the dust-contractor now _receives_ 450_l._ per annum,
whereas he formerly _paid_ 240_l._ To prove, however, that a spirit of
combination does _occasionally_ exist among these contractors, I may
cite the following minute from one of the parish books.

_Extract from Minute-book, Nov. 7, 1839. Letter C, Folio 437._

“Commissioner’s Office,

“30, Howland-street,

“Nov. 7, 1839.

“REPORT of the Paving Committee to the General Board, relating to the
watering the district for the past year.

“Your Committee beg leave to report that for the past three years the
sums paid by contract for watering were respectively:--

“For 1836 £230
„ 1837 220
„ 1838 200

“That in the month of February in the present year the Board advertised
in the usual manner for tenders to water the district, when the
following were received, viz.:--

“Mr. Darke £315
„ Gore 318
„ Nicholls 312
„ Starkey 285

which was the lowest.

“Your Committee, anxious to prevent any increase in the watering-rate
from being levied, and considering the amount required by the
contractors for this service as excessive and exorbitant, and even
evincing a spirit of combination, resolved to make an inroad upon this
system, and after much trouble and attention adopted other measures for
watering the district, the results of which they have great pleasure
in presenting to the Board, by which it will be seen that a saving
over the very lowest of the above tenders of 102_l._ 3_s._ has been
effected; the sum of 18_l._ 18_s._ has been paid for pauper labour
at the same time. Your Committee regret that, notwithstanding the
efforts of themselves and their officers, the state of insubordination
and insult of most of the paupers (in spite of all encouragement to
industry) was such, that the Committee, on the 12th of July last, were
reluctantly compelled to discontinue their services. The Committee
cannot but congratulate the Board upon the result of their experiment,
which will have the effect of breaking up a spirit of combination
highly dangerous to the community at large, at the same time that their
labours have caused a very considerable saving to the ratepayers; and
they trust the work, considering all the numerous disadvantages under
which they have laboured, has been performed in a satisfactory manner.

“P. CUNNINGHAM,

“Surveyor,

“30, Howland-street, Fitzroy-square.”

The following regulations sufficiently show the nature of the
agreements made between the contractors and the authorities as to the
cleansing of the more important thoroughfares especially. It will be
seen that in the regulations I quote every street, court, or alley,
must now be swept _daily_, a practice which has only been adopted
within these few years in the City.

“SEWERS’ OFFICE, GUILDHALL, LONDON, RAKERS’ DUTIES,[15] MIDSUMMER,
1851, TO MIDSUMMER, 1852.

“_CLEANSING._

“_The whole surface_ of every Carriage-way, Court, and Alley shall
be swept _every day_ (Sundays excepted), and all mud, dust, filth,
and rubbish, all frozen or partially frozen matter, and snow, animal
and vegetable matter, and everything offensive or injurious, shall be
properly pecked, scraped, swept up, and carted away therefrom; and
the iron gutters laid across or along the footways, the air-grates
over the sewers, the gulley-grates in the carriage-way of the streets
respectively; and all public urinals are to be daily raked out, swept,
and made clean and clear from all obstructions; and the Contractor or
Contractors shall, in time of frost, continually keep the channels in
the Streets and Places clear for water to run off: and cleanse and cart
away refuse hogan or gravel (when called upon by the Inspector to do
so) from all streets newly paved.

“The Mud and Dirt, &c., is to be carted away immediately that it is
swept up.

“N.B. The Inspector of the District may, at any time he may think it
necessary, order any Street or Place to be cleansed and swept a second
time in any one day, and the Contractor or Contractors are thereupon
bound to do the same.

“The Markets and their approaches are also to be thus cleansed DAILY,
and the approaches thereto respectively are also to be thus cleansed at
such an hour in the night of Saturday in each week as the Inspector of
the District may direct.

“Every Street, Lane, Square, Yard, Court, Alley, Passage, and Place
(except certain main Streets hereinafter enumerated), are to be thus
cleansed within the following hours Daily: namely--

“In the months of April, May, June, July, August, and September. To
be begun not earlier than 4 o’Clock in the morning, and finished not
later than 1 o’Clock in the afternoon.

“In the months of October, November, December, January, February, and
March. To be begun not earlier than 5 o’Clock in the morning, and
finished not later than 2 o’Clock in the afternoon.

“The following main Streets are to be cleansed DAILY throughout the
year (except Sundays), to be begun not earlier than 4 o’Clock in the
morning, and finished not later than 9 o’Clock in the morning.

Fleet Street
Ludgate Hill and Street
St. Paul’s Church Yard
Cheapside
Newgate Street
Poultry
Watling Street, Budge Row, and Cannon St.
Mansion House Street
Cornhill
Leadenhall Street
Aldgate Street and Aldgate
King William Street and London Bridge
Fenchurch Street
Holborn
Holborn Bridge
Skinner Street
Old Bailey
Lombard Street
New Bridge Street
Farringdon Street
Aldersgate Street
St. Martin-le-grand
Prince’s Street
Moorgate Street
The Street called ‘The Pavement’
Finsbury Place, South
Gracechurch Street
Bishopsgate St., within and without
The Minories
Wood Street
Gresham Street
Coleman Street.

“N.B. In times of frost and snow these hours of executing the work may
be extended at the discretion of the Local Commissioners.”

The other conditions relate to the removal of the dust from the houses
(a subject I have already treated), and specify the fines, varying
from 1_l._ to 5_l._, to be paid by the contractors, for the violation
or neglect of any of the provisions of the contract. It is further
required that “Each Foreman, Sweeper, and Dustman, in the employ of
either of the Contractors,” (of whom there are four, Messrs. Sinnott,
Rooke, Reddin, and Gould), “will be required to wear a Badge on the arm
with these words thereon,--

“‘London Sewers,
N^o. --
Guildhall,’

by which means any one having cause of complaint against any of the men
in the performance of their several duties, may, by taking down the
number of the man and applying at the Sewers’ Office, Guildhall, have
reference to his name and employer.

“Any man working without his Badge, for each day he offends, the
Contractor is liable to the penalty of Five Shillings.

“All the sweepings of the Streets, and all the dust and ashes from the
Houses, are to be entirely carted away from the City of London, on a
Penalty of _Ten Pounds_ for each cart-load.”

These terms sufficiently show the general nature of the contracts
in question; the principal difference being that in some parts, the
contractor is not required to sweep the streets more than once, twice,
or thrice a week in ordinary weather.

The number of individuals in London styling themselves Master
Scavengers is 34. Of these, 10 are at present without a contract either
for dust or scavenging, and 5 have a contract for removing the dust
only; so that, deducting these two numbers, the gross number 34 is
reduced to 19 scavenging contractors. Of the latter number 16 are in
a large way of business, having large yards, possessing several carts
and some waggons, and employing a vast number of men daily in sweeping
the streets, carting rubbish, &c. The other 3 masters, however, are
only in a small way of business, being persons of more limited means.
A _large_ master scavenger employs from 3 to 18 carts, and from 18 to
upwards of 40 men at scavengery alone, while a small master employs
only from 1 to 3 carts and from 3 to 6 men. By the table I have given,
p. 186, vol. ii., it is shown that there are 52 _contracts_ between
the several district authorities and master scavengers, and nineteen
_contractors_, without counting members of the same family, as distinct
individuals; this gives an average of nearly three distinct contracts
per individual. The contracts are usually for a twelvemonth.

Although the table above referred to shows but 19 contractors for
public scavenging, there are, as I have said, more, or about 24, in
London, most of them in a “large way,” and next year some of those
who have no contracts at present may enter into agreements with the
parishes. The smallness of this number, when we consider the vast
extent of the metropolis, confirms the notion of the sort of monopoly
and combination to which I have alluded. In the Post-Office Directory
for 1851 there are no names under the heads of Scavengers or Dustmen,
but under the head of “Rubbish Carters,” 28 are given, 9 names being
marked as “Dust Contractors” and 10 as “Nightmen.”

Of large contractors, however, there are, as I have said, about 24,
but they may not all obtain contracts every year, and in this number
are included different members of the same family or firm, who may
undertake specific contracts, although in the trade it is looked upon
as “one concern.” The smaller contractors were represented to me as
rather more numerous than the others, and perhaps numbered 40, but
it is not easy to define what is to be accounted a contractor. In
the table given in pp. 213, 214, I cite only 7 as being the better
known. The others may be considered as small rubbish-carters and
flying-dustmen.

There are yet other transactions in which the contractors are engaged
with the parishes, independently of their undertaking the whole labour
of street and house cleansing. In the parishes where pauper, or “poor”
labour is resorted to--for it is not always that the men employed by
the parishes are positive “paupers,” but rather the unemployed poor of
the parish--in such parishes, I say, an agreement is entered into with
a contractor for the deposit of the collected street dirt at his yard
or wharf. For such deposit the contractor must of course be paid, as it
is really an occupation and renting of a portion of his premises for
a specific purpose. The street dirt, however, is usually left to the
disposal of the contractor, for his own profit, and where he once paid
50_l._ for the possession of the street-collected dirt of a parish,
collected by labour which was no cost to him, he may now _receive_ half
of such 50_l._, or whatever the terms of the agreement may be. I heard
of one contractor who lately received 25_l._ where he once paid 50_l._

In another way, too, contractors are employed by parishes. Where pauper
or poor labour in street cleansing is the practice, a contractor’s
horses, carts, and cart-drivers are hired for the conveyance of the
dirt from the streets. This of course is for a specific payment, and is
in reality the work of the tradesmen who in the Post Office Directory
are described as “Rubbish Carters,” and of whom I shall have to speak
afterwards. Some parishes or paving boards have, however, their own
horses and vehicles, but in the other respects they have dealings with
the contractors.

To come to as correct a conclusion as possible in this complicated
and involved matter, I have obtained the aid of some gentlemen long
familiar with such procedures. One of them said that to procure the
accounts of such transactions for a series of years, with all their
chops and changes, or to obtain a perfectly precise return, for any
three years, affecting the whole metropolis, would be the work of a
parliamentary commission with full powers “to send for papers,” &c.,
&c., and that even _then_ the result might not be satisfactory as a
clear exposition. However, with the aid of the gentlemen alluded to, I
venture upon the following approximation.

As my present inquiry relates only to the Scavenging Contractors in
the metropolis, I will take the number of districts, markets, &c.,
which are specified in the table, p. 186, vol. ii. These are 83 in
number, of which 29 are shown to be scavenged by the “parish.” I will
not involve in this computation any of the more rural places which may
happen to be in the outskirts of the metropolitan area, but I will take
the contracts as 54, where the contractors do the entire work, and as
29 where they are but the rubbish-carters and dirt receivers of the
parishes.

I am assured that it is a fair calculation that the scavengery of the
streets, apart from the removal of the dust from the houses, costs
in payments to the contractors, 150_l._ as an average, to each of
the several 54 districts; and that in the 29 localities in which the
streets are cleansed by parish labour, the sum paid is at the rate of
50_l._ per locality, some of them, as the five districts of Marylebone
for instance, being very large. This is calculated regardless of the
cases where parishes may have their own horses and vehicles, for the
cost to the rate-payers may not be very materially different, between
paying for the hire of carts and horses, and investing capital in their
purchase and incurring the expense of wear and tear. The account then
stands thus:--

Parish payment on 54 contracts, 150_l._ each £8100
Parish payment on 29 contracts, 50_l._ each 1450
-----
Yearly total sum paid for Scavenging of
the Metropolis £9550
-----

or, apportioned among 19 _contractors_, upwards of 500_l._ each; and
among 83 _contracts_, about 115_l._ per _contract_. Even if other
contractors are employed where parish labour is pursued, the cost
to the rate-payers is the same. This calculation is made, as far as
possible, as regards scavengery alone; and is independent of the value
of the refuse collected. It is about the scavengery that the grand
fight takes place between the parishes and contractors; the house dust,
being uninjured by rain or street surface-water, is more available for
trade purposes.

From this it would appear that the cost of cleansing the streets of
London may be estimated in round numbers at 10,000_l._ per annum.

The next point in the inquiry is, What is the value of the street dirt
annually collected?

The price I have adduced for the dirt gained from the streets is 3_s._
per load, which is a very reasonable average. If the load be dung,
or even chiefly dung, it is worth 5_s._ or 6_s._ With the proportion
of dung and street refuse to be found in such a thoroughfare as the
Haymarket, in dry, or comparatively dry weather, a load, weighing about
a ton, is worth about 3_s._ in the purchaser’s own cart. On the other
hand, as I have shown that quantities of mixed or slop “mac” have to be
wasted, that some is sold at a nominal price, and a good deal at 1_s._
the load, 3_s._ is certainly a fair average.

A TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF MEN AND CARTS EMPLOYED IN COLLECTING
DUST, IN SCAVENGERY, AND AT RUBBISH CARTING, AS WELL AS THE NUMBER
OF MEN, WOMEN, AND BOYS WORKING IN THE DUST-YARDS OF THE SEVERAL
METROPOLITAN CONTRACTORS.

------------------------------+------------------+-------------------+------------------+----------------------------
Contractors (Large). | Dust. | Scavengery. | Rubbish Carting. | Working in the Yard.
+---------+--------+---------+----------------------------+---------+---------+--------
| | | | Number | | | | |
| | | |of Carts,| | | | |
| Number | Number | Number | Waggons,| Number | Number | Number | Number | Number
| of Men |of Carts| of Men | or | of Men |of Carts| of Men |of Women |of Boys
|employed.| used. |employed.| Machines|employed.| used. |employed.|employed.|working.
| | | | used. | | | | |
------------------------------+---------+--------+---------+---------+---------+--------+---------+---------+--------
Mr. Dodd | 20 | 10 | 26 | 13 | 20 | 20 | 9 | 12 | 4
„ Gould | 20 | 10 | 28 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 5 | 15 | 4
„ Redding | 32 | 16 | 41 | 18 | 22 | 22 | 5 | 12 | 4
„ Gore | 32 | 16 | 18 | 7 | none. | none. | 4 | 20 | 6
„ Rooke | 16 | 8 | 16 | 6 | 16 | 16 | 2 | 6 | 3
„ Stapleton & Holdsworth | 10 | 5 | 11 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 8 | 2
„ Tame | 20 | 10 | 5 | 1 | 12 | 12 | 4 | 8 | 2
„ Starkey | 10 | 5 | 22 | 8 | none. | none. | 4 | 12 | 3
„ Newman | 8 | 4 | 23 | 10 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 2
„ Pratt and Sewell | 10 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 20 | 20 | 2 | 6 | 2
„ W. Sinnott, Sen. | 28 | 14 | 5 | 2 | none. | none. | 5 | 15 | 5
„ J. Sinnott | 8 | 4 | 16 | 6 | ditto. | ditto. | none. | none. | none.
„ Westley | 10 | 5 | 18 | 9 | ditto. | ditto. | 3 | 9 | 2
„ Parsons | 10 | 5 | 18 | 3 | ditto. | ditto. | 2 | 6 | 1
„ Hearne | 18 | 9 | 7 | 2 | 20 | 20 | 3 | 9 | 3
„ Humphries | 20 | 10 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 3
„ Calvert | 6 | 3 | none. | none. | 7 | 7 | 2 | 6 | 2
+---------+--------+-------------------+---------+--------+---------+---------+--------
| 278 | 139 | 262 | 107 | 152 | 152 | 61 | 161 | 48
| | | | | | | | |
Contractors (Small). | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | |
Mr. North | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1
„ Milton | 6 | 3 | none. | none. | none. | none. | 3 | 6 | 2
„ Jenkins | 2 | 1 | 5 | 1 | ditto. | ditto. | 1 | 2 | 1
„ Stroud | 10 | 5 | none. | none. | ditto. | ditto. | 4 | 9 | 3
„ Martin | 2 | 1 | 6 | 3 | ditto. | ditto. | 1 | 2 | 1
„ Clutterbuck | 4 | 2 | none. | none. | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 1
„ W. Sinnott, Jun. | 4 | 2 | ditto. | ditto. | 6 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 1
+---------+--------+-------------------+---------+--------+---------+---------+--------
| 32 | 16 | 13 | 5 | 15 | 15 | 12 | 26 | 10
| | | | | | | | |
Contractors, but not having | | | | | | | | |
any contract at present, | | | | | | | | |
only carting rubbish, &c. | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | |
Mr. Darke | ... | ... | ... | ... | 36 | 36 | | |
„ Tomkins | ... | ... | ... | ... | 6 | 6 | | |
„ J. Cooper | ... | ... | ... | ... | 8 | 8 | | |
„ T. Cooper, Sen. | ... | ... | ... | ... | 12 | 12 | | |
„ Athill | ... | ... | ... | ... | 6 | 6 | | |
„ Barnett (lately sold off) | | | | | | | | |
„ Brown | ... | ... | ... | ... | 4 | 4 | | |
„ Ellis | ... | ... | ... | ... | 6 | 6 | | |
„ Limpus | ... | ... | ... | ... | 10 | 10 | | |
„ Emmerson | ... | ... | ... | ... | 6 | 6 | | |
| | | | +---------+--------+ | |
| | | | | 94 | 94 | | |

--------------------------------+-------------+-------------------+-------------+-----------------------
| Dust. | Scavengers. | Rubbish. | Employed in Yard.
Machines. +------+------+-----+-------------+------+------+------+------+---------
| Men. |Carts.| Men.| Carts. | Men. |Carts.| Men. |Women.|Children.
--------------------------------+------+------+-----+-------------+------+------+------+------+---------
Woods and Forests | none.| none.| 4 | 2 machines.| none.| none.| none.| none.| none.
Regent-street and Pall-mall |ditto.|ditto.| 12 | 2 „ |ditto.|ditto.|ditto.|ditto.| ditto.
St. Martin’s |ditto.|ditto.| 9 | 4 „ |ditto.|ditto.|ditto.|ditto.| ditto.
+------+------+-----+---- | | | | |
| | | 25 | 8 „ | | | | |
Parishes. | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | |
Kensington[16] | ... | ... | 5 | 2 | | | | |
Chelsea[16] | ... | ... | 5 | 2 | | | | |
St. George’s, Hanover-sq.[16] | ... | ... | 5 | 1 | | | | |
St. Margaret’s, Westminster[16] | ... | ... | 7 | 3 | | | | |
Piccadilly[16] | ... | ... | 28 | 2 | | | | |
St. Ann’s, Soho[16] | ... | ... | 4 | 2 | | | | |
Paddington[16] | ... | ... | 6 | 2 | | | | |
St. Marylebone[16] (5 Districts)| ... | ... | 35 | 4 | | | | |
St. James’s, Westminster | ... | ... | 2 | 1 | | | | |
{|No parochial |} | | | | | |
Hampstead {| removal of |} 4 | 1 | | | | |
{| dust. |} | | | | | |
Highgate | ditto. | 4 | 1 | | | | |
Islington[16] | ... | ... | 8 | 1 | | | | |
Hackney | 8 | 4 | 7 | 1 | ... | ... | 2 | 6 | 2
St. Clement Danes[16] | ... | ... | 7 | 3 waggons. | | | | |
Commercial-road, East[16] | ... | ... | 6 | 3 carts. | | | | |
Poplar | 4 | 2 | 4 | 1 | ... | ... | 2 | 4 | 1
Bermondsey | 6 | 3 | 6 | 3 | ... | ... | 3 | 6 | 2
Newington | 8 | 4 | 6 | 2 | ... | ... | 2 | 6 | 2
Lambeth[16] | ... | ... | 16 | 3 | | | | |
Ditto (Christchurch) | 4 | 2 | 20 | 3 | ... | ... | 1 | 4 | 1
Wandsworth | 4 | 2 | 4 | 1 | ... | ... | 1 | 4 | 1
Camberwell and Walworth | 8 | 4 | 6 | 2 | ... | ... | 2 | 5 | 3
Rotherhithe | 6 | 3 | 5 | 2 | ... | ... | 1 | 5 | 2
Greenwich | 4 | 2 | 5 | 2 | ... | ... | 1 | 3 | 1
Deptford | 4 | 2 | 4 | 2 | ... | ... | 1 | 3 | 1
Woolwich | none.| none.| 5 | 2 | | | | |
Lewisham |ditto.|ditto.| 4 | 1 | | | | |
+------+------+-----+---- | | | | |
Total for Parishes | 56 | 28 ||218 | 50 carts. | | | 16 | 46 | 16
| | | | 3 waggons. | | | | |
| | | | | | | | |
Total for large contractors | 278 | 139 | 262 |107 | 152 | 152 | 61 | 161 | 48
Total for small contractors | 32 | 16 | 13 | 5 | 15 | 15 | 12 | 26 | 10
Total for machines | ... | ... | 25 | 8 machines.| | | | |
Total for street orderlies | ... | ... | 60 | 9 | | | | |
+------+------+-----+---- |------|------|------|------|--------
Gross total | 366 | 183 | 578 |179 carts. | 167 | 167 | 89 | 233 | 74
| | | | 3 waggons. | | | | |
--------------------------------+------+------+-----+-------------+------+------+------+------+--------

Men. Carts.
Total employed at dust 366 183
„ „ scavenging 578 179
„ „ rubbish carting 167 167
„ (men, women, and children), in yard 396
---- ---
Total employed in the removal of house and street refuse 1507 529

Thus the annual sum of the street-dirt, as regards the quantity
collected by the contracting scavengers (as shown in the table given at
page 186), is, in round numbers, 89,000 cart-loads; that collected by
parish labour, with or without the aid of the street-sweeping machines,
at 52,000 cart-loads, or a total (I do not include what is collected by
the orderlies) of 141,000 loads.

This result shows, then, that the contractors yearly collect by
scavenging the streets with their own paid labourers, and receive as
the produce of pauper labour, as follows:--

---------------+--------------+-------+---------
| Loads of | Per |
| Street Dirt. | Load. | Total.
---------------+--------------+-------+---------
By Contractors | 89,000 | 3_s._ | £13,350
By Parishes | 52,000 | 3_s._ | 7,800
---------------+--------------+-------+---------
Total | 141,000 | | £21,150
---------------+--------------+-------+---------

or a value of rather more than 1113_l._ as the return to each
individual contractor in the table, or about 255_l._ as the average on
each contract. As, however, the whole of the parish-collected manure
does not come into the hands of the contractors, it will be fair, I am
assured, to compute the total at 19,000_l._, a sum of 1000_l._ to each
contractor, or nearly 229_l._ on each contract.

It would appear, then, that the total receipts of the contractors for
the scavenging of London amount to very nearly 30,000_l._; that is to
say, 10,000_l._ as remuneration for the office, and 20,000_l._ as the
value of the dirt collected. But against this sum as received, we have
to set the gross expense of wages paid to men, wear and tear of carts
and appliances, rent of wharfs, interest for money, &c.

Concerning the amount paid in wages, it appears by the table at pp.
186, 187, that the men employed by the scavenging contractors in wet
weather, are 260 daily (being nearly half of the whole force of 531
men, the orderlies excepted). In dry weather, however, there are only
194 men employed. I will therefore calculate upon 194 men employed
daily, and 66 employed half the year, making the total of 260. By the
table here given, it will be seen that the total number of scavengers
employed by the large and small contractors, is 275.

There remains now to show the amount of capital which a large
contractor must embark in his business: I include the amount of rent,
and the expenditure on what must be provided for business purposes, and
which is subject to wear and tear, to decay, and loss.

There are not now, I am told, more than twelve scavengers’ wharfs
and 20 yards (the wharf being also a yard) in the possession of the
contractors in regular work. These are the larger contractors, and
their capital, I am assured, may be thus estimated:--

CAPITAL OF THE MASTER SCAVENGERS.

£ _s._ _d._

179 Carts, 21_l._ each 3,759 0 0
3 Waggons, 32_l._ each 96 0 0
230 Horses, 25_l._ each 5,750 0 0
230 Sets of harness, 2_l._ each 460 0 0
600 Brooms, 9_d._ each 22 10 0
300 Shovels, 1_s._ each 15 0 0
100 Barges, 50_l._ each 5,000 0 0
-----------------
Total 15,102 10 0
-----------------

I have estimated according to what may be the _present_ value, not the
original cost, of the implements, vehicles, &c. A broom, when new,
costs 1_s._ 2_d._, and is worn out in two or three weeks. A shovel,
when new, costs 2_s._

The following appears to be the

YEARLY EXPENDITURE OF THE MASTER SCAVENGERS.

£ _s._ _d._
Wages to working scavengers (as
before shown) 9,443 0 0
Wages to 48 bargemen, engaged in
unloading the vessels with street-dirt,
4 men to each of 12 wharfs, at 16_s._
weekly wage 1,996 0 0
Keep of 300 horses (26_l._ each) 7,800 0 0
Wear and tear (say 15 per cent.
on capital) 2,250 0 0
Rent of 20 wharfs and yards
(average 100_l._ each) 2,000 0 0
Interest on 15,000_l._ capital, at 10
per cent. 1,500 0 0
------------------
£24,989 0 0
------------------

I have endeavoured in this estimate to confine myself, as much as
possible, to the separate subject of scavengery, but it must be
borne in mind that as the large contractors are dustmen as well as
scavengers, the great charges for rent and barges cannot be considered
as incurred solely on account of the street-dirt trade. Including,
then, the payments from parishes, the account will stand thus:--

YEARLY RECEIPTS OF MASTER SCAVENGERS.

From Parishes £9,450
From Manure, &c. 19,000
-------
Total Income £28,450
Deduct yearly Expenditure 25,000
-------
Profit £3,450
-------

This gives a profit of nearly 182_l._ to each contractor, if
equally apportioned, or a little more than 41_l._ on each contract
for street-scavenging alone, and a profit no doubt affected by
circumstances which cannot very well be reduced to figures. The profit
may appear small, but it should be remembered that it is _independent_
of the profits on the dust.

OF THE CONTRACTORS’ (OR EMPLOYERS’) PREMISES, &C.

At page 171 of the present volume I have described one of the yards
devoted to the trade in house-dust, and I have little to say in
addition regarding the premises of the contracting or employing
scavengers. They are the same places, and the industrious pursuits
carried on there, and the division and subdivision of labour, relate
far more to the dustmen’s department than to the scavengers’. When the
produce of the sweeping of the streets has been thrown into the cart,
it is so far ready for use that it has not to be sifted or prepared, as
has the house-dust, for the formation of brieze, &c., the “mac” being
sifted by the purchaser.

These yards or wharfs are far less numerous and better conducted now
than they were ten years ago. They are at present fast disappearing
from the banks of the Thames (there is, however, one still at
Whitefriars and one at Milbank). They are chiefly to be found on the
banks of the canals. Some of the principal wharfs near Maiden-lane, St.
Pancras, are to be found among unpaven, or ill-paved, or imperfectly
macadamized roads, along which run rows of what were once evidently
pleasant suburban cottages, with their green porches and their trained
woodbine, clematis, jasmine, or monthly roses; these tenements,
however, are now occupied chiefly by the labourers at the adjacent
stone, coal, lime, timber, dust, and general wharfs. Some of the
cottages still presented, on my visits, a blooming display of dahlias
and other autumnal flowers; and in one corner of a very large and very
black-looking dust-yard, in which rose a huge mound of dirt, was the
cottage residence of the man who remained in charge of the wharf all
night, and whose comfortable-looking abode was embedded in flowers,
blooming luxuriantly. The gay-tinted holly-hocks and dahlias are in
striking contrast with the dinginess of the dust-yards, while the canal
flows along, dark, sluggish, and muddy, as if to be in keeping with the
wharf it washes.

The dust-yards must not be confounded with the “night-yards,” or the
places where the contents of the cess-pools are deposited, places
which, since the passing of the Sanatory Act, are rapidly disappearing.

Upon entering a dust-yard there is generally found a heavy oppressive
sort of atmosphere, more especially in wet or damp weather. This is
owing to the tendency of charcoal to absorb gases, and to part with
them on being saturated with moisture. The cinder-heaps of the several
dust-yards, with their million pores, are so many huge gasometers
retaining all the offensive gases arising from the putrefying organic
matters which usually accompany them, and parting with such gases
immediately on a fall of rain. It would be a curious calculation
to estimate the quantity of deleterious gas thus poured into the
atmosphere after a slight shower.

The question has been raised as to the propriety of devoting some
special locality to the purposes of dust-yards, and it is certainly a
question deserving public attention.

The chief disposal of the street manure is from barges, sent by the
Thames or along the canals, and sold to farmers and gardeners. In the
larger wharfs, and in those considered removed from the imputation of
“scurfdom,” six men, and often but four, are employed to load a barge
which contains from 30 to 40 tons. In such cases the dust-yard and the
wharf are one and the same place. The contents of these barges are
mixed, about one-fourth being “mac,” the rest street-mud and dung.
This admixture, on board the vessel, is called by the bargemen and the
contractors’ servants at the wharfs Leicester (properly Læsta, a load).
We have the same term at the end of our word bal-_last_.

I am assured by a wharfinger, who has every means of forming a correct
judgment, it may be estimated that there are dispatched from the
contractors’ wharfs twelve barges daily, freighted with street-manure.
This is independent of the house-dust barged to the country
brick-fields. The weight of the cargo of a barge of manure is about
40 tons; 36 tons being a low average. This gives 3744 barge-loads, or
132,784 tons, or loads, yearly; for it must be recollected that the
dirt gathered by pauper labour is dispatched from the contractors’
yards or wharfs, as well as that collected by the immediate servants
of the contractors. The price per barge-load at the canal, basin, or
wharf, in the country parts where agriculture flourishes, is from 5_l._
to 6_l._, making a total of 20,594_l._ The difference of that sum, and
the total given in the table (21,147_l._) may be accounted for on the
supposition that the remainder is sold in the yards and carted away
thence. The slop and valueless dirt is not included in this calculation.

OF THE WORKING SCAVENGERS UNDER THE CONTRACTORS.

I have now to deal with what throughout the whole course of my inquiry
into the state of London Labour and the London Poor I have considered
the great object of investigation--the condition and characteristics of
the working men; and what is more immediately the “labour question,”
the relation of the labourer to his employer, as to rates of payment,
modes of payment, hiring of labourers, constancy or inconstancy of
work, supply of hands, the many points concerning wages, perquisites,
family work, and parochial or club relief.

First, I shall give an account of the class employment, together with
the labour season and earnings of the labourers, or “economical” part
of the subject. I shall then pass to the social points, concerning
their homes, general expenditure, &c., and then to the more moral and
intellectual questions of education, literature, politics, religion,
marriage, and concubinage of the men and of their families. All this
will refer, it should be remembered, only to the working scavagers in
the honourable or better-paid trade; the cheaper labourers I shall
treat separately as a distinct class; the details in both cases I shall
illustrate with the statement of men of the class described.

The first part of this multifarious subject appertains to the division
of labour. This in the scavaging trade consists rather of that kind of
“gang-work” which Mr. Wakefield styles “simple co-operation,” or the
working together of a number of people at the same thing, as opposed
to “complex co-operation,” or the working together of a number at
_different branches_ of the same thing. Simple co-operation is of
course the ruder kind; but even this, rude as it appears, is far from
being barbaric. “The savages of New Holland,” we are told, “never help
each other even in the most simple operations; and their condition is
hardly superior--in some respects it is inferior--to that of the wild
animals which they now and then catch.”

As an instance of the advantages of “simple co-operation,” Mr.
Wakefield tells us that “in a vast number of simple operations
performed by human exertion, it is quite obvious that two men working
together will do more than four, or four times four men, each of whom
should work alone. In the lifting of heavy weights, for example, in the
felling of trees, in the gathering of much hay and corn during a short
period of fine weather, in draining a large extent of land during the
short season when such a work may be properly conducted, in the pulling
of ropes on board ship, in the rowing of large boats, in some mining
operations, in the erection of a scaffolding for a building, and in the
breaking of stones for the repair of a road, so that the whole road
shall always be kept in good repair--in all these simple operations,
and thousands more, it is absolutely necessary that many persons should
work together at the same time, in the same place, and in the same way.”

To the above instances of simple co-operation, or gang-working, as it
may be briefly styled in Saxon English, Mr. Wakefield might have added
dock labour and scavaging.

The principle of complex co-operation, however, is not entirely unknown
in the public cleansing trade. This business consists of as many
branches as there are distinct kinds of refuse, and these appear to be
four. There are (1) the wet and (2) the dry _house_-refuse (or dust and
night-soil), and (3) the wet and (4) the dry _street_-refuse (or mud
and rubbish); and in these four different branches of the one general
trade the principle of complex co-operation is found commonly, though
not invariably, to prevail.

The difference as to the class employments of the general body
of public cleansers--the dustmen, street-sweepers, nightmen, and
rubbish-carters--seems to be this:--any nightman will work as a dustman
or scavager; but it is not all the dustmen and scavagers who will work
as nightmen. The reason is almost obvious. The avocations of the
dustman and the nightman are in some degree hereditary. A rude man
provides for the future maintenance of his sons in the way which is
most patent to his notice; he makes the boy share in his own labour,
and grow up unfit for anything else.

The regular working scavagers are then generally a distinct class from
the working dustmen, and are all paid by the week, while the dustmen
are paid by the load. In very wet weather, when there is a great
quantity of “slop” in the streets, a dustman is often called upon to
lend a helping hand, and sometimes when a working scavager is out of
employ, in order to keep himself from want, he goes to a “job of dust
work,” but seldom from any other cause.

In a parish where there is a crowded population, the dustman’s labours
consume, on an average, from six to eight hours a day. In scavagery,
the average hours of daily work are twelve (Sundays of course
excepted), but they sometimes extended to fifteen, and even sixteen
hours, in places of great business traffic; while in very fine dry
weather, the twelve hours may be abridged by two, three, four, or even
more. Thus it is manifest that the consumption of time alone prevents
the same working men being simultaneously dustmen and scavagers. In the
more remote and quiet parishes, however, and under the management of
the smaller contractors, the opposite arrangement frequently exists;
the operative is a scavager one day, and a dustman the next. This is
not the case in the busier districts, and with the large contractors,
unless exceptionally, or on an emergency.

If the scavagers or dustmen have completed their street and house
labours in a shorter time than usual, there is generally some sort
of employment for them in the yards or wharfs of the contractors,
or they may sometimes avail themselves of their leisure to enjoy
themselves in their own way. In many parts, indeed, as I have shown,
the street-sweeping must be finished by noon, or earlier.

Concerning the _division of labour_, it may be said, that the principle
of complex co-operation in the scavaging trade exists only in its
rudest form, for the characteristics distinguishing the labour of the
working scavagers are far from being of that complicated nature common
to many other callings.

As regards the act of sweeping or scraping the streets, the labour is
performed by the _gangsman_ and his _gang_. The gangsman usually loads
the cart, and occasionally, when a number are employed in a district,
acts as a foreman by superintending them, and giving directions; he is
a working scavager, but has the office of overlooker confided to him,
and receives a higher amount of wage than the others.

For the completion of the street-work there are the _one-horse carmen_
and the _two-horse carmen_, who are also working scavagers, and so
called from their having to load the carts drawn by one or two horses.
These are the men who shovel into the cart the dirt swept or scraped
to one side of the public way by the gang (some of it mere slop),
and then drive the cart to its destination, which is generally their
master’s yard. Thus far only does the street-labour extend. The carmen
have the care of the vehicles in cleaning them, greasing the wheels,
and such like, but the horses are usually groomed by stablemen, who are
not employed in the streets.

The division of labour, then, among the working scavagers, may be said
to be as follows:--

1st. The _ganger_, whose office it is to superintend the gang, and
shovel the dirt into the cart.

2nd. The gang, which consists of from three to ten or twelve men, who
sweep in a row and collect the dirt in heaps ready for the ganger to
shovel into the cart.

3rd. The carman (one-horse or two-horse, as the case may be), who
attends to the horse and cart, brushes the dirt into the ganger’s
shovel, and assists the ganger in wet sloppy weather in carting the
dirt, and then takes the mud to the place where it is deposited.

There is only one _mode of payment_ for the above labours pursued among
the master scavagers, and that is by the week.

1st. The ganger receives a weekly salary of 18_s._ when working for an
“honourable” master; with a “scurf,” however, the ganger’s pay is but
16_s._ a week.

2nd. The gang receive in a large establishment each 16_s._ per week,
but in a small one they usually get from 14_s._ to 15_s._ a week. When
working for a small master they have often, by working over hours, to
“make eight days to the week instead of six.”

3rd. The one-horse carman receives 16_s._ a week in a large, and 15_s._
in a small establishment.

4th. The two-horse carman receives 18_s._ weekly, but is employed only
by the larger masters.

On the opposite page I give a table on this point.

Some of these men are paid by the day, some by the week, and some on
Wednesdays and Saturdays, perhaps in about equal proportions, the
“casuals” being mostly paid by the day, and the regular hands (with
some exceptions among the scurfs) once or twice a week. The chance
hands are sometimes engaged for a half day, and, as I was told, “jump
at a bob and a joey (1_s._ 4_d._), or at a bob.” I heard of one
contractor who not unfrequently said to any foreman or gangsman who
mentioned to him the applications for work, “O, give the poor devils a
turn, if it’s only for a day now and then.”

_Piece-work_, or, as the scavagers call it, “by the load,” _did_ at one
time prevail, but not to any great extent. The prices varied, according
to the nature and the state of the road, from 2_s._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ the
load. The system of piece-work was never liked by the men; it seems
to have been resorted to less as a system, or mode of labour, than to
insure assiduity on the part of the working scavagers, when a rapid
street-cleansing was desirable. It was rather in the favour of the
working man’s _individual_ emoluments than otherwise, as may be shown
in the following way. In Battle-bridge, four men collect five loads
in dry, and six men seven loads in wet weather. If the average piece
hire be 2_s._ 3_d._ a load, it is 2_s._ 9-3/4_d._ for each of the five
men’s day’s work; if 2_s._ 2_d._ a load, it is 2_s._ 8-1/2_d._ (the
regular wage, and an extra halfpenny); if 2_s._, it is 2_s._ 6_d._; and
if less (which has been paid), the day’s wage is not lower than 2_s._
At the lowest rates, however, the men, I was informed, could not be
induced to take the necessary pains, as they _would_ struggle to “make
up half-a-crown;” while, if the streets were scavaged in a slovenly
manner, the contractor was sure to hear from his friends of the parish
that he was not acting up to his contract. I could not hear of any men
now set to piece-work within the precincts of the places specified in
the table. This extra work and scamping work are the two great evils of
the piece system.

In their payments to their men the contractors show a superiority to
the practices of some traders, and even of some dock-companies--the
men are never paid at public-houses; the payment, moreover, is always
in money. One contractor told me that he would like all his men to be
teetotallers, if he could get them, though he was not one himself.

But these remarks refer only to the _nominal_ wages of the scavagers;
and I find the nominal wages of operatives in many cases are widely
different (either from some additions by way of perquisites, &c.,
or deductions by way of fines, &c., but oftener the latter) from
the _actual_ wages received by them. Again, the average wages, or
gross yearly income of the casually-employed men, are very different
from those of the constant hands; so are the gains of a particular
individual often no criterion of the general or average earnings of
the trade. Indeed I find that the several varieties of wages may be
classified as follows:--

1. _Nominal Wages._--Those said to be paid in a trade.

2. _Actual Wages._--Those _really_ received, and which are equal to the
nominal wages, _plus_ the additions to, or _minus_ the deductions from,
them.

3. _Casual Wages._--The earnings of the men who are only occasionally
employed.

4. _Average Casual or Constant Wages._--Those obtained throughout the
year by such as are either occasionally or regularly employed.

5. _Individual Wages._--Those of particular hands, whether belonging
to the scurf or honourable trade, whether working long or short hours,
whether partially or fully employed, and the like.

6. _General Wages._--Or the _average_ wages of the whole trade,
constant or casual, fully or partially employed, honourable or scurf,
long and short hour men, &c., &c., all lumped together and the mean
taken of the whole.

Now in the preceding account of the working scavagers’ mode and rate
of payment I have spoken only of the nominal wages; and in order to
arrive at their actual wages we must, as we have seen, ascertain
what additions and what deductions are generally made to and from
this amount. The deductions in the honourable trade are, as usual,
inconsiderable.

TABLE SHOWING THE DIVISION OF LABOUR, MODE AND RATES OF PAYMENT,
NATURE OF WORK PERFORMED, TIME UNEMPLOYED, AND AVERAGE EARNINGS OF THE
OPERATIVE SCAVAGERS OF LONDON.

All the _tools_ used by operative scavagers are supplied to them by
their employers--the tools being only brooms and shovels; and for this
supply there are _no stoppages_ to cover the expense.

Neither by _fines_ nor by way of _security_ are the men’s wages reduced.

The _truck system_, moreover, is unknown, and has never prevailed
in the trade. I heard of only one instance of an approach to it. A
yard foreman, some years ago, who had a great deal of influence with
his employer, had a chandler’s-shop, managed by his wife, and it was
broadly intimated to the men that they must make their purchases there.
Complaints, however, were made to the contractor, and the foreman
dismissed. One man of whom I inquired did not even know what the “truck
system” meant; and when informed, thought they were “pretty safe” from
it, as the contractor had nothing which he _could_ truck with the men,
and if “he polls us hisself,” the man said, “he’s not likely to let
anybody else do it.”

There are, moreover, no trade-payments to which the men are subjected;
there are no trade-societies among the working men, no benefit nor sick
clubs; neither do parochial relief and family labour characterize the
regular hands in the honourable trade, although in sickness they may
have no other resource.

Indeed, the working scavagers employed by the more honourable portion
of the trade, instead of having any deductions made from their nominal
wages, have rather additions to them in the form of perquisites coming
from the public. These perquisites consist of allowances of beer-money,
obtained in the same manner as the dustmen--not through the medium of
their employers (though, to say the least, through their sufferance),
but from the householders of the parish in which their labours are
prosecuted.

The scavagers, it seems, are not required to sweep any places
considered “private,” nor even to sweep the public foot-paths; and when
they _do_ sweep or carry away the refuse of a butcher’s premises, for
instance--for, by law, the butcher is required to do so himself--they
receive a gratuity. In the contract entered into by the city scavagers,
it is expressly covenanted that no men employed shall accept gratuities
from the householders; a condition little or not at all regarded,
though I am told that these gratuities become less every year. I am
informed also by an experienced butcher, who had at one time a private
slaughter-house in the Borough, that, until within these six or seven
years, he thought the scavagers, and even the dustmen, would carry
away entrails, &c., in the carts, from the butcher’s and the knacker’s
premises, for an allowance.

I cannot learn that the contractors, whether of the honourable or scurf
trade, take any advantage of these “allowances.” A working scavager
receives the same wage, when he enjoys what I heard called in another
trade “the height of perquisites,” or is employed in a locality where
there are no such additions to his wages. I believe, however, that the
contracting scavagers let their best and steadiest hands have the best
perquisited work.

These perquisites, I am assured, average from 1_s._ to 2_s._ a week,
but one butcher told me he thought 1_s._ 6_d._ might be rather too high
an average, for a pint of beer (2_d._) was the customary sum given, and
that was, or ought to be, divided among the gang. “In my opinion,” he
said, “there’ll be no allowances in a year or two.” By the amount of
these perquisites, then, the scavagers’ gains are so far enhanced.

The wages, therefore, of an operative scavager in full employ, and
working for the “honourable” portion of the trade, may be thus
expressed:--

_Nominal_ weekly wages 16_s._

Perquisites in the form of allowances
for beer from the public 2_s._
------
_Actual_ weekly wages 18_s._

OF THE “CASUAL HANDS” AMONG THE SCAVAGERS.

Of the scavagers proper there are, as in all classes of unskilled
labour, that is to say, of labour which requires no previous
apprenticeship, and to which any one can “turn his hand” on an
emergency, two distinct orders of workmen, “the _regulars_ and
_casuals_” to adopt the trade terms; that is to say, the labourers
consist of those who have been many years at the trade, constantly
employed at it, and those who have but recently taken to it as a means
of obtaining a subsistence after their ordinary resources have failed.
This mixture of _constant_ and _casual_ hands is, moreover, a necessary
consequence of all trades which depend upon the seasons, and in which
an additional number of labourers are required at different periods.
Such is necessarily the case with dock labour, where an easterly wind
prevailing for several days deprives _thousands of work_, and where the
change from a foul to a fair wind causes an equally inordinate demand
for workmen. The same temporary increase of employment takes place
in the agricultural districts at harvesting time, and the same among
the hop growers in the picking season; and it will be hereafter seen
that there are the same labour fluctuations in the scavaging trade, a
greater or lesser number of hands being required, of course, according
as the season is wet or dry.

This occasional increase of employment, though a benefit in some few
cases (as enabling a man suddenly deprived of his ordinary means of
living to obtain “a job of work” until he can “turn himself round”), is
generally a most alarming evil in a State. What are the casual hands
to do when the extra employment ceases? Those who have paid attention
to the subject of dock labour and the subject of casual labour in
general, may form some notion of the vast mass of misery that must
be generally existing in London. The subject of hop-picking again
belongs to the same question. Here are thousands of the very poorest
employed only for a few days in the year. What, the mind naturally
asks, do they after their short term of honest independence has ceased?
With dock labour the poor man’s bread depends upon the very winds;
in scavaging and in street life generally it depends upon the rain;
and in market-gardening, harvesting, hop-picking, and the like, it
depends upon the sunshine. How many thousands in this huge metropolis
have to look immediately to the very elements for their bread, it
is overwhelming to contemplate; and yet, with all this fitfulness
of employment we wonder that an extended knowledge of reading and
writing does not produce a decrease of crime! We should, however,
ask ourselves whether men can stay their hunger with alphabets or
grow fat on spelling books; and wanting employment, and consequently
food, and objecting to the _incarceration_ of the workhouse, can we
be astonished--indeed is it not a natural law--that they should help
themselves to the property of others?

* * * * *

Concerning the “regular hands” of the contracting scavagers, it may,
perhaps, be reasonable to compute that little short of one-half of them
have been “to the manner born.” The others are, as I have said, what
these regular hands call “casuals,” or “casualties.” As an instance of
the peculiar mixture of the regular and casual hands in the scavaging
trade, I may state that one of my informants told me he had, at one
period, under his immediate direction, fourteen men, of whom the former
occupations had been as follows:--

7 Always Scavagers (or dustmen, and six
of them nightmen when required).
1 Pot-boy at a public-house (but only as a boy).
1 Stable-man (also nightman).
1 Formerly a pugilist, then a showman’s assistant.
1 Navvy.
1 Ploughman (nightman occasionally).
2 Unknown, one of them saying, but gaining
no belief, that he had once been a gentleman.
--
14

In my account of the street orderlies will be given an interesting and
elaborate statement of the former avocations, the habits, expenditure,
&c., of a body of street-sweepers, 67 in number. This table will be
found very curious, as showing what classes of men have been _driven_
to street-sweeping, but it will not furnish a criterion of the
character of the “regular hands” employed by the contractors.

The “casuals” or the “casualties” (always called among the men
“cazzelties”), may be more properly described as men whose employment
is accidental, chanceful, or uncertain. The regular hands of the
scavagers are apt to designate any new comer, even for a permanence,
any sweeper not reared to or versed in the business, a casual
(“cazzel”). I shall, however, here deal with the “casual hands,” not
only as hands newly introduced into the trade, but as men of chanceful
and irregular employment.

These persons are now, I understand, numerous in all branches of
unskilled labour, willing to undertake or attempt any kind of work,
but perhaps there is a greater tendency on the part of the surplus
unskilled to turn to scavaging, from the fact that any broken-down man
seems to account himself competent to sweep the streets.

To ascertain the number of these casual or outside labourers in the
scavaging trade is difficult, for, as I have said, they are willing
in their need to attempt any kind of work, and so may be “casuals” in
divers departments of unskilled labour.

I do not think that I can better approximate the number of casuals than
by quoting the opinion of a contracting scavager familiar with his
workmen and their ways. He considered that there were always nearly
as many hands on the look-out for a job in the streets, as there were
regularly employed at the business by the large contractors; this I
have shown to be 262, let us estimate therefore the number of casuals
at 200.

According to the table I have given at pp. 213, 214, the number of
men regularly or constantly employed at the metropolitan trade is as
follows:--

Scavagers employed by large contractors 262
Ditto small contractors 13
Ditto machines 25
Ditto parishes 218
Ditto street-orderlies 60
---
Total working scavagers in London 578

But the prior table given at pp. 186, 187, shows the number of
scavagers employed throughout the metropolis in wet and dry weather
(_exclusive of the street-orderlies_) to be as follows:--

Scavagers employed in wet weather 531
Ditto in dry weather 358
---
Difference 173

Hence it would appear that about one-third less hands are required
in the dry than in the wet season of the year. The 170 hands, then,
discharged in the dry season are the casually employed men, but the
whole of these 170 are not turned adrift immediately they are no longer
wanted, some being kept on “odd jobs” in the yard, &c.; nor can that
number be said to represent the entire amount of the surplus labour in
the trade; but only that portion of it which _does_ obtain even casual
employment. After much trouble, and taking the average of various
statements, it would appear that the number of casualty or quantity of
occasional surplus labour in the scavaging trade may be represented at
between 200 and 250 hands.

The scavaging trade, however, is not, I am informed, so overstocked
with labourers now as it was formerly. Seven years ago, and from
that to ten, there were usually between 200 and 300 hands out of
work; this was owing to there being a less extent of paved streets,
and comparatively few contractors; the scavaging work, moreover, was
“scamped,” the men, to use their own phrase, “licking the work over any
how,” so that fewer hands were required. Now, however, the inhabitants
are more particular, I am told, “about the crooks and corners,” and
require the streets to be swept oftener. Formerly a gang of operative
scavagers would only collect six loads of dirt a day, but now a gang
will collect nine loads daily. The causes to which the surplus of
labourers at present may be attributed are, I find, as follows:--Each
operative has to do nearly double the work to what he formerly did, the
extra cleansing of the streets having tended not only to employ more
hands, but to make each of those employed do more work. The result has,
however been followed by an increase in the wages of the operatives;
seven years ago the labourers received but 2_s._ a day, and the ganger
2_s._ 6_d._, but now the labourers receive 2_s._ 8_d._ a day, and the
ganger 3_s._

In the city the men have to work very long hours, sometimes as many as
18 hours a day without any extra pay. This practice of overworking is,
I find, carried on to a great extent, even with those master scavagers
who pay the regular wages. One man told me that when he worked for a
certain large master, whom he named, he has many times been out at work
28 hours in the wet (saturated to the skin) without having any rest.
This plan of overworking, again, is generally adopted by the small
masters, whose men, after they have done a regular day’s labour, are
set to work in the yard, sometimes toiling 18 hours a day, and usually
not less than 16 hours daily. Often so tired and weary are the men,
that when they rise in the morning to pursue their daily labour, they
feel as fatigued as when they went to bed. “Frequently,” said one of my
informants, “have I gone to bed so worn out, that I haven’t been able
to sleep. However” (he added), “there is the work to be done, and we
must do it or be off.”

This system of overwork, especially in those trades where the quantity
of work to be done is in a measure fixed, I find to be a far more
influential cause of surplus labour than “over population.” The mere
number of labourers in a trade is, _per se_, no criterion as to the
quantity of labour employed in it; to arrive at this three things are
required:--

(1) The number of hands;
(2) The hours of labour;
(3) The rate of labouring;

for it is a mere point of arithmetic, that if the hands in the
scavaging trade work 18 hours a day, there must be one-third less men
employed than there otherwise would, or in other words one-third of the
men who are in work must be thus deprived of it. This is one of the
crying evils of the day, and which the economists, filled as they are
with their over-population theories, have entirely overlooked.

There are 262 men employed in the Metropolitan Scavaging Trade;
one-half of these at the least may be said to work 16 hours per diem
instead of 12, or one-third longer than they should; so that if the
hours of labour in this trade were restricted to the usual day’s work,
there would be employment for one-sixth more hands, or nearly 50
individuals extra.

The other causes of the present amount of surplus labour are--

The many hands thrown out of employment by the discontinuance of
railway works.

A less demand for unskilled labour in agricultural districts, or a
smaller remuneration for it.

A less demand for some branches of labour (as ostlers, &c.), by the
introduction of machinery (applied to roads), or through the caprices
of fashion.

It should, however, be remembered, that men often found their opinions
of such causes on prejudices, or express them according to their class
interests, and it is only a few employers of unskilled labourers who
care to inquire into the antecedent circumstances of men who ask for
work.

As regards the population part of the question, it cannot be said
that the surplus labour of the scavaging trade is referable to any
inordinate increase in the families of the men. Those who are married
appear to have, on the average, four children, and about one-half of
the men have no family at all. Early marriages are by no means usual.
Of the casual hands, however, full three-fourths are married, and
one-half have families.

There are not more than ten or a dozen Irish labourers who have taken
to the scavaging, though several have “tried it on;” the regular hands
say that the Irish are too lazy to continue at the trade; but surely
the labour of the hodman, in which the Irish seem to delight, is
sufficient to disprove this assertion, be the cause what it may. About
one-fourth of the scavagers entering the scavaging trade as casual
hands have been agricultural labourers, and have come up to London from
the several agricultural districts in quest of work; about the same
proportion appear to have been connected with horses, such as ostlers,
carmen, &c.

The _brisk and slack seasons_ in the scavaging trade depend upon the
state of the weather. In the depth of winter, owing to the shortness
of the days, more hands are usually required for street cleansing; but
a “clear frost” renders the scavager’s labour in little demand. In the
winter, too, his work is generally the hardest, and the hardest of
all when there is snow, which soon becomes mud in London streets; and
though a continued frost is a sort of lull to the scavagers’ labour,
after “a great thaw” his strength is taxed to the uttermost; and then,
indeed, new hands have had to be put on. At the West End, in the height
of the summer, which is usually the height of the fashionable season,
there is again a more than usual requirement of scavaging industry in
wet weather; but perhaps the greatest exercise of such industry is
after a series of the fogs peculiar to the London atmosphere, when the
men cannot _see_ to sweep. The table I have given shows the influence
of the weather, as on wet days 531 men are employed, and on dry days
only 358; this, however, does not influence the Street-Orderly system,
as under it the men are employed every day, unless the weather make it
an actual impossibility.

According to the rain table given at p. 202, there would appear to be,
on an average of 23 years, 178 wet days in London out of the 365, that
is to say, about 100 in every 205 days are “rainy ones.” The months
having the greatest and least number of wet days are as follows:--

No. of days in
the month in
which rain
falls.
December 17
July, August, October 16
February, May, November 15
January, April 14
March, September 12
June 11

Hence it would appear that June is the least and December the most
showery month in the course of the year; the greatest _quantity_ of
rain falling in any month is, however, in October, and the least
quantity in March. The number of wet days, and the quantity of rain
falling in each half of the year, may be expressed as follows:--

Total
Total in depth
No. of of rain
wet falling
days. in inches.
The first six months in the year
ending June there are 84 10
The second six months in the
year ending December there are 93 14

Hence we perceive that the quantity of work for the scavagers would
fluctuate in the first and last half of the year in the proportion of
10 to 14, which is very nearly in the ratio of 358 to 531, which are
the numbers of hands given in table pp. 186, 187, as those employed in
wet and dry weather throughout the metropolis.

If, then, the labour in the scavaging trade varies in the proportion of
5 to 7, that is to say, that 5 hands are required at one period and 7
at another to execute the work, the question consequently becomes, how
do the 2 casuals who are discharged out of every 7 obtain their living
when the wet season is over?

When a scavager is out of employ, he seldom or never applies to the
parish; this he does, I am informed, only when he is fairly “beaten
out” through sickness or old age, for the men “hate the thought
of going to the big house” (the union workhouse). An unemployed
operative scavager will go from yard to yard and offer his services
to do anything in the dust trade or any other kind of employment in
connection with dust or scavaging.

Generally speaking, an operative scavager who is casually employed
obtains work at that trade for six or eight months during the
year, and the remaining portion of his time is occupied either at
rubbish-carting or brick-carting, or else he gets a job for a month or
two in a dust-yard.

Many of these men seem to form a body of street-jobbers or operative
labourers, ready to work at the docks, to be navvies (when strong
enough), bricklayers’ labourers, street-sweepers, carriers of trunks
or parcels, window-cleaners, errand-goers, porters, and (occasionally)
nightmen. Few of the class seem to apply themselves to trading, as in
the costermonger line. They are the loungers about the boundaries of
trading, but seldom take any onward steps. The street-sweeper of this
week, a “casual” hand, may be a rubbish-carter or a labourer about
buildings the next, or he may be a starving man for days together, and
the more he is starving with the less energy will he exert himself to
obtain work: “it’s not in” a starving or ill-fed man to exert himself
otherwise than what may be called _passively_; this is well known to
all who have paid attention to the subject. The want of energy and
carelessness begotten by want of food was well described by the tinman,
at p. 355 in vol. i.

One casual hand told me that last year he was out of work altogether
three months, and the year before not more than six weeks, and during
the six weeks he got a day’s work sometimes at rubbish carting and
sometimes at loading bricks. Their wives are often employed in the
yards as sifters, and their boys, when big enough, work also at the
heap, either in carrying off, or else as fillers-in; if there are any
girls, one is generally left at home to look after the rest and get
the meals ready for the other members of the family. If any of the
children go to school, they are usually sent to a ragged school in the
neighbourhood, though they seldom attend the school more than two or
three times during the week.

The additional hands employed in wet weather are either men who at
other times work in the yards, or such as have their “turns” in
street-sweeping, if not regularly employed. There appears, however,
to be little of system in the arrangement. If more hands are wanted,
the gangsman, who receives his orders from the contractor or the
contractor’s managing man, is told to put on so many new hands, and
over-night he has but to tell any of the men at work that Jack, and
Bob, and Bill will be wanted in the morning, and they, if not employed
in other work, appear accordingly.

There is nothing, however, which can be designated a _labour market_
appertaining to the trade. No “house of call,” no trade society. If men
seek such employment, they must apply at the contractor’s premises,
and I am assured that poor men not unfrequently ask the scavagers
whom they see at work in the streets where to apply “for a job,” and
sometimes receive gruff or abusive replies. But though there is nothing
like a labour market in the scavager’s trade, the employers have not
to “look out” for men, for I was told by one of their foremen, that he
would undertake, if necessary, which it never was, by a mere “round
of the docks,” to select 200 new hale men, of all classes, and strong
ones, too, if properly fed, who in a few days would be tolerable
street-sweepers. It is a calling to which agricultural labourers are
glad to resort, and a calling to which _any_ labourer or any mechanic
may resort, more especially as regards sweeping or scraping, apart from
shovelling, which is regarded as something like the high art of the
business.

We now come to estimate the earnings of the casual hands, whose yearly
incomes must, of course, be very different from those of the regulars.
The _constant_ weekly wages of any workman are of course the average
of his casual--and hence we shall find the wages of those who are
_regularly_ employed far exceed those of the _occasionally_ employed
men:--

£ _s._ _d._
Nominal yearly wages at scavaging
for 25 weeks in the year, at 16_s._
per week 20 16 0
Perquisites for 26 weeks, at 2_s._ 2 12 0
------------------
Actual yearly wages at scavaging 23 8 0
Nominal and actual weekly wages
at rubbish carting for 20 weeks in
the year, at 12_s._ 12 0 0
Unemployed six weeks in the year 0 0 0
-----------------
Gross yearly earnings 35 8 0
-----------------
Average casual or constant weekly
wages throughout the year 15 4-1/2

Hence the difference between the earnings of the casual and the
regular hand would appear to be one-sixth. But the great evil of all
casual labour is the uncertainty of the income--for where there is
the greatest chance connected with an employment, there is not only
the greatest necessity for providence, but unfortunately the greatest
tendency to improvidence. It is only when a man’s income becomes
regular and fixed that he grows thrifty, and lays by for the future;
but where all is chance-work there is but little ground for reasoning,
and the accident which assisted the man out of his difficulties at
one period is continually expected to do the same good turn for him
at another. Hence the casual hand, who passes the half of the year on
18_s._, and twenty weeks on 12_s._, and _six weeks on nothing_, lives
a life of excess both ways--of excess of “guzzling” when in work, and
excess of privation when out of it--oscillating, as it were, between
surfeit and starvation.

A man who had worked in an iron-foundry, but who had “lost his work”
(I believe through some misconduct) and was glad to get employment as
a street-sweeper, as he had a good recommendation to a contractor,
told me that “the misery of the thing” was the want of regular work.
“I’ve worked,” he said, “for a good master for four months an end at
2_s._ 8_d._ a day, and they were prime times. Then I hadn’t a stroke of
work for a fortnight, and very little for two months, and if my wife
hadn’t had middling work with a laundress we might have starved, or I
might have made a hole in the Thames, for it’s no good living to be
miserable and feel you can’t help yourself any how. We was sometimes
half-starved, as it was. I’d rather at this minute have regular work at
10_s._ a week all the year round, than have chance-work that I could
earn 20_s._ a week at. I once had 15_s._ in relief from the parish,
and a doctor to attend us, when my wife and I was both laid up sick.
O, there’s no difference in the way of doing the work, whatever wages
you’re on for; the streets must be swept clean, of course. The plan’s
the same, and there’s the same sort of management, any how.”

STATEMENT OF A “REGULAR SCAVAGER.”

The following statement of his business, his sentiments, and, indeed,
of the subjects which concerned him, or about which he was questioned,
was given to me by a street-sweeper, so he called himself, for I have
found some of these men not to relish the appellation of “scavager.”
He was a short, sturdy, somewhat red-faced man, without anything
particular in his appearance to distinguish him from the mass of
mere labourers, but with the sodden and sometimes dogged look of a
man contented in his ignorance, and--for it is not a very uncommon
case--rather proud of it.

“I don’t know how old I am,” he said--I have observed, by the by, that
there is not any excessive vulgarity in these men’s tones or accent
so much as grossness in some of their expressions--“and I can’t see
what that consarns any one, as I’s old enough to have a jolly rough
beard, and so can take care of myself. I should think so. My father
was a sweeper, and I wanted to be a waterman, but father--he hasn’t
been dead long--didn’t like the thoughts on it, as he said they was
all drownded one time or ’nother; so I ran away and tried my hand as a
Jack-in-the-water, but I was starved back in a week, and got a h---- of
a clouting. After that I sifted a bit in a dust-yard, and helped in any
way; and I was sent to help at and larn honey-pot and other pot making,
at Deptford; but honey-pots was a great thing in the business. Master’s
foreman married a relation of mine, some way or other. I never tasted
honey, but I’ve heered it’s like sugar and butter mixed. The pots was
often wanted to look like foreign pots; I don’t know nothing what was
meant by it; some b---- dodge or other. No, the trade didn’t suit me at
all, master, so I left. I don’t know why it didn’t suit me; cause it
didn’t. Just then, father had hurt his hand and arm, in a jam again’
a cart, and so, as I was a big lad, I got to take his place, and gave
every satisfaction to Mr. ----. Yes, he was a contractor and a great
man. I can’t say as I knows how contracting’s done; but it’s a bargain
atween man and man. So I got on. I’m now looked on as a stunning good
workman, I can tell you.

“Well, I can’t say as I thinks sweeping the streets is hard work. I’d
rather sweep two hours than shovel one. It tires one’s arms and back
so, to go on shovelling. You can’t change, you see, sir, and the same
parts keeps getting gripped more and more. Then you must mind your eye,
if you’re shovelling slop into a cart, perticler so; or some feller
may run off with a complaint that he’s been splashed o’ purpose. _Is_
a man ever splashed o’ purpose? No, sir, not as I knows on, in coorse
not. [Laughing.] Why should he?

“The streets _must_ be done as they’re done now. It always was so, and
will always be so. Did I ever hear what London streets were like a
thousand years ago? It’s nothing to me, but they must have been like
what they is now. Yes, there was always streets, or how was people that
has tin to get their coals taken to them, and how was the public-houses
to get their beer? It’s talking nonsense, talking that way, a-asking
sich questions.” [As the scavager seemed likely to lose his temper, I
changed the subject of conversation.]

“Yes,” he continued, “I have good health. I never had a doctor but
twice; once was for a hurt, and the t’other I won’t tell on. Well, I
think nightwork’s healthful enough, but I’ll not say so much for it as
you may hear some on ’em say. I don’t like it, but I do it when I’s
obligated under a necessity. It pays one as overwork; and werry like
more one’s in it, more one may be suited. I reckon no men works harder
nor sich as me. O, as to poor journeymen tailors and sich like, I knows
they’re stunning badly off, and many of their masters is the hardest of
beggars. I have a nephew as works for a Jew slop, but I don’t reckon
that _work_; anybody might do it. You think not, sir? Werry well, it’s
all the same. No, I won’t say as I could make a veskit, but I’ve sowed
my own buttons on to one afore now.

“Yes, I’ve heered on the Board of Health. They’ve put down some
night-yards, and if they goes on putting down more, what’s to become
of the night-soil? I can’t think what they’re up to; but if they don’t
touch wages, it may be all right in the end on it. I don’t know that
them there consarns does touch wages, but one’s naterally afeard on
’em. I could read a little when I was a child, but I can’t now for want
of practice, or I might know more about it. I yarns my money gallows
hard, and requires support to do hard work, and if wages goes down,
one’s strength goes down. I’m a man as understands what things belongs.
I was once out of work, through a mistake, for a good many weeks,
perhaps five or six or more; I larned then what short grub meant. I got
a drop of beer and a crust sometimes with men as I knowed, or I might
have dropped in the street. What did I do to pass my time when I was
out of work? Sartinly the days seemed wery long; but I went about and
called at dust-yards, till I didn’t like to go too often; and I met men
I know’d at tap-rooms, and spent time that way, and axed if there was
any openings for work. I’ve been out of collar odd weeks now and then,
but when this happened, I’d been on slack work a goodish bit, and was
bad for rent three weeks and more. My rent was 2_s._ a week then; its
1_s._ 9_d._ now, and my own traps.

“No, I can’t say I was sorry when I was forced to be idle that way,
that I hadn’t kept up my reading, nor tried to keep it up, because I
couldn’t then have settled down my mind to read; I know I couldn’t. I
likes to hear the paper read well enough, if I’s resting; but old Bill,
as often wolunteers to read, has to spell the hard words so, that one
can’t tell what the devil he’s reading about. I never heers anything
about books; I never heered of Robinson Crusoe, if it wasn’t once at
the Wic. [Victoria Theatre]; I think there was some sich a name there.
He lived on a deserted island, did he, sir, all by hisself? Well, I
think, now you mentions it, I have heered on him. But one needn’t
believe all one hears, whether out of books or not. I don’t know much
good that ever anybody as I knows ever got out of books; they’re
fittest for idle people. Sartinly I’ve seen working people reading in
coffee-shops; but they might as well be resting theirselves to keep
up their strength. Do I think so? I’m sure on it, master. I sometimes
spends a few browns a-going to the play; mostly about Christmas. It’s
werry fine and grand at the Wic., that’s the place I goes to most; both
the pantomimers and t’ other things is werry stunning. I can’t say how
much I spends a year in plays; I keeps no account; perhaps 5_s._ or so
in a year, including expenses, sich as beer, when one goes out after a
stopper on the stage. I don’t keep no accounts of what I gets, or what
I spends, it would be no use; money comes and it goes, and it often
goes a d----d sight faster than it comes; so it seems to me, though I
ain’t in debt just at this time.

“I never goes to any church or chapel. Sometimes I hasn’t clothes as
is fit, and I s’pose I couldn’t be admitted into sich fine places in
my working dress. I was once in a church, but felt queer, as one does
in them strange places, and never went again. They’re fittest for rich
people. Yes, I’ve heered about religion and about God Almighty. _What_
religion have I heered on? Why, the regular religion. I’m satisfied
with what I knows and feels about it, and that’s enough about it. I
came to tell you about trade and work, because Mr. ---- told me it
might do good; but religion hasn’t nothing to do with it. Yes, Mr.
----’s a good master, and a religious man; but I’ve known masters as
didn’t care a d--n for religion, as good as him; and so you see it
comes to much the same thing. I cares nothing about politics neither;
but I’m a chartist.

“I’m not a married man. I was a-going to be married to a young woman
as lived with me a goodish bit as my housekeeper” [this he said very
demurely]; “but she went to the hopping to yarn a few shillings for
herself, and never came back. I heered that she’d taken up with an
Irish hawker, but I can’t say as to the rights on it. Did I fret about
her? Perhaps not; but I was wexed.

“I’m sure I can’t say what I spends my wages in. I sometimes makes
12_s._ 6_d._ a week, and sometimes better than 21_s._ with night-work.
I suppose grub costs 1_s._ a day, and beer 6_d._; but I keeps no
accounts. I buy ready-cooked meat; often cold b’iled beef, and eats it
at any tap-room. I have meat every day; mostly more than once a day.
Wegetables I don’t care about, only ingans and cabbage, if you can get
it smoking hot, with plenty of pepper. The rest of my tin goes for rent
and baccy and togs, and a little drop of gin now and then.”

The statement I have given is sufficiently explicit of the general
opinions of the “regular scavagers” concerning literature, politics,
and religion. On these subjects the great majority of the regular
scavagers have no opinions at all, or opinions distorted, even when
the facts seem clear and obvious, by ignorance, often united with its
nearest of kin, prejudice and suspiciousness. I am inclined to think,
however, that the man whose narrative I noted down was more dogged in
his ignorance than the body of his fellows. All the intelligent men
with whom I conversed, and whose avocations had made them familiar
for years with this class, concurred in representing them as grossly
ignorant.

This description of the scavagers’ ignorance, &c., it must be
remembered, applies only to the “regular hands.” Those who have
joined the ranks of the street-sweepers from other callings are more
intelligent, and sometimes more temperate.

The system of concubinage, with a great degree of fidelity in the
couple living together without the sanction of the law--such as I have
described as prevalent among the costermongers and dustmen--is also
prevalent among the regular scavagers.

I did not hear of habitual unkindness from the parents to the children
born out of wedlock, but there is habitual neglect of all or much
which a child should be taught--a neglect growing out of ignorance. I
heard of two scavagers with large families, of whom the treatment was
sometimes very harsh, and at others mere petting.

Education, or rather the ability to read and write, is not common
among the adults in this calling, so that it cannot be expected to be
found among their children. Some labouring men, ignorant themselves,
but not perhaps constituting a class or a clique like the regular
scavagers, try hard to procure for their children the knowledge, the
want of which they usually think has barred their own progress in life.
Other ignorant men, mixing only with “their own sort,” as is generally
the case with the regular scavagers, and in the several branches of
the business, often think and say that what _they_ did without their
children could do without also. I even heard it said by one scavager
that it wasn’t right a child should ever think himself wiser than
his father. A man who knew, in the way of his business as a private
contractor for night-work, &c., a great many regular scavagers, “ran
them over,” and came to the conclusion that about four or five out of
twenty could read, ill or tolerably well, and about three out of forty
could write. He told me, moreover, that one of the most intelligent
fellows generally whom he knew among them, a man whom he had heard
read well enough, and always understood to be a tolerable writer, the
other day brought a letter from his son, a soldier abroad with his
regiment in Lower Canada, and requested my informant to read it to
him, as “that kind of writing,” although plain enough, was “beyond
him.” The son, in writing, had availed himself of the superior skill of
a corporal in his company, so that the letter, on family matters and
feelings, was written by deputy and read by deputy. The costermongers,
I have shown, when themselves unable to read, have evinced a fondness
for listening to exciting stories of courts and aristocracies, and have
even bought penny periodicals to have their contents read to them. The
scavagers appear to have no taste for this mode of enjoying themselves;
but then their leisure is far more circumscribed than that of the
costermongers.

It must be borne in mind that I have all along spoken of the regular
(many of them hereditary) scavagers employed by the more liberal
contractors.

There are yet accounts of habitations, statements of wages, &c., &c.,
to be given, in connection with men working for the honourable masters,
before proceeding to the scurf-traders.

The working scavagers usually reside in the neighbourhood of the
dust-yards, occupying “second-floor backs,” kitchens (where the
entire house is sublet, a system often fraught with great extortion),
or garrets; they usually, and perhaps always, when married, or what
they consider “as good,” have their own furniture. The rent runs from
1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ 3_d._ weekly, an average being 1_s._ 9_d._ or
1_s._ 10_d._ One room which I was in was but barely furnished,--a
sort of dresser, serving also for a table; a chest; three chairs (one
almost bottomless); an old turn-up bedstead, a Dutch clock, with the
minute-hand broken, or as the scavager very well called it when he
saw me looking at it, “a stump;” an old “corner cupboard,” and some
pots and domestic utensils in a closet without a door, but retaining
a portion of the hinges on which a door had swung. The rent was 1_s._
10_d._, with a frequent intimation that it ought to be 2_s._ The place
was clean enough, and the scavager seemed proud of it, assuring me that
his old woman (wife or concubine) was “a good sort,” and kept things as
nice as ever she could, washing everything herself, where “other old
women lushed.” The only ornaments in the room were three profiles of
children, cut in black paper and pasted upon white card, tacked to the
wall over the fire-place, for mantel-shelf there was none, while one of
the three profiles, that of the eldest child (then dead), was “framed,”
with a glass, and a sort of bronze or “cast” frame, costing, I was
told, 15_d._ This was the apartment of a man in regular employ (with
but a few exceptions).

Another scavager with whom I had some conversation about his labours
as a nightman, for he was both, gave me a full account of his own
diet, which I find to be sufficiently specific as to that of his class
generally, but only of the regular hands.

[Illustration: THE LONDON SCAVENGER.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

The diet of the regular working scavager (or nightman) seems generally
to differ from that of mechanics, and perhaps of other working men,
in the respect of his being fonder of salt and _strong-flavoured_
food. I have before made the same remark concerning the diet of
the poor generally. I do not mean, however, that the scavagers are
fond of such animal food as is called “high,” for I did not hear that
nightmen or scavagers were more tolerant of what approached putridity
than other labouring men, and, despite their calling, might sicken at
the rankness of some haunches of venison; but they have a great relish
for highly-salted cold boiled beef, bacon, or pork, with a saucer-full
of red pickled cabbage, or dingy-looking pickled onions, or one or
two big, strong, raw onions, of which most of them seem as fond as
Spaniards of garlic. This sort of meat, sometimes profusely mustarded,
is often eaten in the beer-shops with thick “shives” of bread, cut
into big mouthfuls with a clasp pocket-knife, while vegetables, unless
indeed the beer-shop can supply a plate of smoking hot potatoes, are
uncared for. The drink is usually beer. The same style of eating and
the same kind of food characterize the scavager and nightman, when
taking his meal at home with his wife or family; but so irregular, and
often of necessity, are these men’s hours, that they may be said to
have no homes, merely places to sleep or dose in.

A working scavager and nightman calculated for me his expenses in
eating and drinking, and other necessaries, for the previous week. He
had earned 15_s._, but 1_s._ of this went to pay off an advance of
5_s._ made to him by the keeper of a beer-shop, or, as he called it, a
“jerry.”

Daily. Weekly.
_d._ _s._ _d._
Rent of an unfurnished room 1 9
Washing (average) 3
[The man himself washed
the dress in which he
worked, and generally
washed his own stockings.]
Shaving (when twice a week) 1
Tobacco 1 7
[Short pipes are given to
these men at the beer-shops,
or public-houses
which they “use.”]
Beer 4 2 4
[He usually spent more than
4_d._ a day in beer, he said,
“it was only a pot;” but
this week more beer than
usual had been given to
him in nightwork.]
Gin 2 1 2
[The same with gin.]
Cocoa (pint at a coffee-shop). 1-1/2 10-1/2
Bread (quartern loaf) (sometimes
5-1/2_d._) 6 3 6
Boiled salt beef (3/4 lb. or 1/2 lb.
daily, “as happened,” for
two meals, 6_d._ per pound,
average) 4 2 4
Pickles or Onions 0-1/4 1-3/4
Butter 1
Soap 1
--------------------
13 2-1/4

Perhaps this informant was excessive in his drink. I believe he was
so; the others not drinking so much regularly. The odd 9_d._, he told
me, he paid to “a snob,” because he said he was going to send his
half-boots to be mended.

This man informed me he was a “widdur,” having lost his old ’oman, and
he got all his meals at a beer or coffee-shop. Sometimes, when he was
a street-sweeper by day and a nightman by night, he had earned 20_s._
to 22_s._; and then he could have his pound of salt meat a day, for
_three_ meals, with a “baked tatur or so, when they was in.” I inquired
as to the apparently low charge of 6_d._ per pound for cooked meat, but
I found that the man had stated what was correct. In many parts good
boiled “brisket,” fresh cut, is 7_d._ and 8_d._ per lb., with mustard
into the bargain; and the cook-shop keepers (not the eating-house
people) who sell boiled hams, beef, &c., in retail, but not to be eaten
on the premises, vend the hard remains of a brisket, and sometimes of a
round, for 6_d._, or even less (also with mustard), and the scavagers
like this better than any other food. In the brisk times my informant
sometimes had “a hot cut” from a shop on a Sunday, and a more liberal
allowance of beer and gin. If he had any piece of clothing to buy he
always bought it at once, before his money went for other things. These
were his proceedings when business was brisk.

In slacker times his diet was on another footing. He then made his
supper, or second meal, for tea he seldom touched, on “fagots.” This
preparation of baked meats costs 1_d._ hot--but it is seldom sold
hot except in the evening--and 3/4_d._, or more frequently two for
1-1/2_d._, cold. It is a sort of cake, roll, or ball, a number being
baked at a time, and is made of chopped liver and lights, mixed with
gravy, and wrapped in pieces of pig’s caul. It weighs six ounces, so
that it is unquestionably a cheap, and, to the scavager, a savoury
meal; but to other nostrils its odour is not seductive. My informant
regretted the capital fagots he used to get at a shop when he worked
in Lambeth; superior to anything he had been able to meet with on the
Middlesex side of the water. Or he dined off a saveloy, costing 1_d._,
and bread; or bought a pennyworth of strong cheese, and a farthing’s
worth of onions. He would further reduce his daily expenditure on
cocoa (or coffee sometimes) to 1_d._, and his bread to three-quarters
of a loaf. He ate, however, in average times, a quarter of a quartern
loaf to his breakfast (sometimes buying a halfpennyworth of butter), a
quarter or more to his dinner, the same to his supper, and the other,
with an onion for a relish, to his beer. He was a great bread eater,
he said; but sometimes, if he slept in the daytime, half a loaf would
“stand over to next day.” He was always hungriest when at work among
the street-mud, or night-soil, or when he had finished work.

On my asking him if he meant that he partook of the meals he had
described daily, he answered “no,” but that was _mostly_ what he had;
and if he bought a bit of cold boiled, or even roast pork, “what
offered cheap,” the expense was about the same. When he was drinking,
and he did “make a break sometimes,” he ate nothing, and “wasn’t
inclined to,” and he seemed rather to plume himself on this, as a point
of economy. He had tasted fruit pies, but cared nothing for them;
but liked four penn’orth of a hot meat or giblet pie on a Sunday.
Batter-pudding he only liked if smoking hot; and it was “uncommon
improved,” he said, “with an ingan!” Rum he preferred to gin, only it
was dearer, but most of the scavagers, he thought, liked Old Tom (gin)
best; but “they was both good.”

Of the drinking of these men I heard a good deal, and there is no
doubt that some of them tope hard, and by their conduct evince a sort
of belief that the great end of labour is beer. But it must be borne
in mind that if inquiries are made as to the man best adapted to give
information concerning any rude calling (especially), some talkative
member of the body of these working men, some pot-house hero who has
persuaded himself and his ignorant mates that he is an oracle, is put
forward. As these men are sometimes, from being trained to, and long
known in their callings, more prosperous than their fellows, their
opinions seem ratified by their circumstances. But in such cases, or in
the appearance of such cases, it has been my custom to make subsequent
inquiries, or there might be frequent misleadings, were the statements
of these men taken as typical of the feelings and habits of the _whole_
body. The statement of the working scavager given under this head is
unquestionably typical of the character of a portion of his co-workers,
and more especially of what was, and in the sort of hereditary
scavagers I have spoken of _is_, the character of the regular hands.
There are now, however, many checks to prolonged indulgence in “lush,”
as every man of the ruder street-sweeping class _will_ call it. The
contractors must be served regularly; the most indulgent will not
tolerate any unreasonable absence from work, so that the working
scavagers, at the jeopardy of their means of living, must leave their
carouse at an hour which will permit them to rise soon enough in the
morning.

The beer which these men imbibe, it should be also remembered, they
regard as a proper part of their diet, in the same light, indeed, as
they regard so much bread, and that among them the opinion is almost
universal, that beer is necessary to “keep up their strength;” there
are a few teetotallers belonging to the class; one man thought he
_knew_ five, and had _heard_ of five others.

I inquired of the landlord of a beer-shop, frequented by these men,
as to their potations, but he wanted to make it appear that they took
a half-pint, _now and then_, when thirsty! He was evidently tender
of the character of his customers. The landlord of a public house
also frequented by them informed me that he really could not say what
they expended in beer, for labourers of all kinds “used his tap,”
and as all tap-room liquor was paid for on delivery in his and all
similar establishments, he did not know the quantity supplied to any
particular class. He was satisfied these men, as a whole, drank less
than they did at one time; though he had no doubt some (he seemed to
know no distinctions between scavagers, dustmen, and nightmen) spent
1_s._ a day in drink. He knew one scavager who was dozing about not
long since for nearly a week, “sleepy drunk,” and the belief was that
he had “found something.” The absence of all accounts prevents my
coming to anything definite on this head, but it seems positive that
these men drink less than they did. The landlord in question thought
the statement I have given as to diet and drink perfectly correct for a
regular hand in good earnings. I am assured, however, and it is my own
opinion, after long inquiry, that one-third of their earnings is spent
in drink.

OF THE INFLUENCE OF FREE TRADE ON THE EARNINGS OF THE SCAVAGERS.

As regards the influence of Free Trade upon the scavaging business, I
could gain little or no information from the body of street-sweepers,
because they have never noticed its operation, and the men, with
the exception of such as have sunk into street-sweeping from
better-informed conditions of life, know nothing about it. Among _all_,
however, I have heard statements of the blessing of cheap bread; always
cheap _bread_. “There’s nothing like bread,” say the men, “it’s not
all poor people can get meat; but they _must_ get bread.” Cheap food
all labouring men pronounce a blessing, as it unquestionably is, but
“somehow,” as a scavager’s carman said to me, “the thing ain’t working
as it should.”

In the course of the present and former inquiries among unskilled
labourers, street-sellers, and costermongers, I have found the great
majority of the more intelligent declare that Free Trade had not
worked well for them, because there were more labourers and more
street-sellers than were required, for each man to live by his toil and
traffic, and because the numbers increased yearly, and the demand for
their commodities did not increase in proportion. Among the ignorant, I
heard the continual answers of, “I can’t say, sir, what it’s owing to,
that I’m so bad off;” or, “Well, I can’t tell anything about that.”

It is difficult to state, however, without positive inquiry, whether
this extra number of hands be due to diminished employment in the
agricultural districts, since the repeal of the Corn Laws, or
whether it be due to the insufficiency of occupation generally for
the increasing population. One thing at least is evident, that the
increase of the trades alluded to cannot be said to arise directly
from diminished agricultural employment, for but few farm labourers
have entered these businesses since the change from Protection to Free
Trade. If, therefore, Free-Trade principles _have_ operated injuriously
in reducing the work of the unskilled labourers, street-sellers, and
the poorer classes generally, it can have done so only _indirectly_;
that is to say, by throwing a mass of displaced country labour into
the towns, and so displacing other labourers from their ordinary
occupations, as well as by decreasing the wages of working-men
generally. Hence it becomes almost impossible, I repeat, to tell
whether the increasing difficulty that the poor experience in living by
their labour, is a consequence or merely a concomitant of the repeal
of the Corn Laws; if it be a consequence, of course the poor are no
better for the alteration; if, however, it be a coincidence rather
than a necessary result of the measure, the circumstances of the poor
are, of course, as much improved as they would have been impoverished
provided that measure had never become law. I candidly confess I am as
yet without the means of coming to any conclusion on this part of the
subject.

Nor can it be said that in the scavagers’ trade wages have in any way
declined since the repeal of the Corn Laws; so that were it not for the
difficulty of obtaining employment among the _casual_ hands, this class
must be allowed to have been considerable gainers by the reduction in
the price of food, and even as it is, the _constant_ hands must be
acknowledged to be so.

I will now endeavour to reduce to a tabular form such information as I
could obtain as to the expenditure of the labourer in scavaging before
and after the establishment of Free Trade. I inquired, the better
to be assured of the accuracy of the representations and accounts I
received from labourers, the price of meat then and now. A butcher
who for many years has conducted a business in a populous part of
Westminster and in a populous suburb, supplying both private families
with the best joints, and the poor with their “little bits” their
“block ornaments” (meat in small pieces exposed on the chopping-block),
their purchases of liver, and of beasts’ heads. In 1845, the year I
take as sufficiently prior to the Free-Trade era, my informant from
his recollection of the state of his business and from consulting his
books, which of course were a correct guide, found that for a portion
of the year in question, mutton was as much as 7-1/2_d._ per lb.
(Smithfield prices), now the same quality of meat is but 5_d._ This,
however, was but a temporary matter, and from causes which sometimes
are not very ostensible or explicable. Taking the butcher’s trade that
year as a whole, it was found sufficiently conclusive, that meat was
generally 1_d._ per lb. higher then than at present. My informant,
however, was perfectly satisfied that, although situated in the same
way, and with the same class of customers, he did _not_ sell so much
meat to the poor and labouring classes as he did five or six years ago,
_he believed not by one-eighth_, although perhaps “pricers of his meat”
among the poor were more numerous. For this my informant accounted by
expressing his conviction that the labouring men spent their money in
drink more than ever, and were a longer time in recovering from the
effects of tippling. This supposition, from what I have observed in the
course of the present inquiry, is negatived by facts.

Another butcher, also supplying the poor, said they bought less of him;
but he could not say exactly to what extent, perhaps an eighth, and
he attributed it to less work, there being no railways about London,
fewer buildings, and less general employment. About the wages of the
labourers he could not speak as influencing the matter. From this
tradesmen also I received an account that meat generally was 1_d._ per
lb. higher at the time specified. Pickled Australian beef was four
or five years ago very low--3_d._ per lb.--salted and prepared, and
“swelling” in hot water, but the poor “couldn’t eat the stringy stuff,
for it was like pickled ropes.” “It’s better now,” he added, “but it
don’t sell, and there’s no nourishment in such beef.”

But these tradesmen agreed in the information that poor labourers
bought less meat, while one pronounced Free Trade a blessing, the other
declared it a curse. I suggested to each that cheaper fish might have
something to do with a smaller consumption of butcher’s meat, but both
said that cheap fish was the great thing for the Irish and the poor
needle-women and the like, who were never at any time meat eaters.

From respectable bakers I ascertained that bread might be considered
1_d._ a quartern loaf dearer in 1845 than at present. Perhaps the
following table may throw a fuller light on the matter. I give it from
what I learned from several men, who were without accounts to refer to,
but speaking positively from memory; I give the statement per week, as
for a single man, without charge for the support of a wife and family,
and without any help from other resources.

------------------+----------------------+----------------+------------
| | | Saving
| Before Free | After Free | since
| Trade. | Trade. | Free
| | | Trade.
------------------+----------------------+----------------+------------
Rent | 1_s._ 6_d._ | 1_s._ 6_d._ | ...
Bread (5 loaves) | 2_s._ 11_d._ | 2_s._ 6_d._ | 5_d._
Butter (1/2 lb.) | 5_d._ | 5_d._ | ...
Tea (2 oz.) | 8_d._ | 8_d._ | ...
Sugar (1/2 lb.) | 3_d._ | 2_d._ | 1_d._
Meat (3 lb.) | 1_s._ 6_d._ | 1_s._ 3_d._ | 3_d._
Bacon (1 lb.) | 5_d._ | 5_d._ | ...
Fish (a dinner |3_d._, or 1_s._ 6_d._ |2_d._, or 1_s._ |
a day, 6 days) | weekly. | weekly. | 6_d._
Potatoes or | | |
Vegetables | | |
(1/2_d._ a day) | 3-1/2_d._ | 3-1/2_d._ | ...
Beer (pot) | 3-1/2_d._ | 3-1/2_d._ | ...
------------------+----------------------+----------------+------------
Total saving, per week, since Free Trade | 1_s._ 3_d._
----------------------------------------------------------+------------

In butter, bacon, potatoes, &c., and beer, I could hear of no changes,
except that bacon might be a trifle cheaper, but instead of a good
quality selling better, although cheaper, there was a demand for an
inferior sort.

In the foregoing table the weekly consumption of several necessaries is
given, but it is not to be understood that one man consumes them all in
a week; they are what may generally be consumed when such things are in
demand by the poor, one week after another, or one day after another,
forming an aggregate of weeks.

Thus, Free Trade and cheap provisions are an unquestionable benefit, if
unaffected by drawbacks, to the labouring poor.

The above statement refers only to a fully employed hand.

The following table gives the change since Free Trade in the earnings
of casual hands, and relates to the past and the present expenditure of
a scavager. The man, who was formerly a house painter, said he could
bring me 50 men similarly circumstanced to himself.

Here, then, we find a positive saving in the expenditure of 1_s._ 5_d._
per week in this man’s wages, since the cheapening of food.

His earnings, however, tell a different story.

--------------------+------------+-------------
| 1845. | 1851.
--------------------+------------+-------------
| _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._
Earnings of 6 days | 15 0 |
Ditto 3 days | | 7 6
+------------+-------------
Weekly Income | 15 0 | 7 6
Expenditure | 7 3 | 5 10
+------------+-------------
Difference | 7 9 | 1 8
--------------------+------------+------------

Thus we perceive that the beneficial effects of cheapness are defeated
by the dearth of employment among labourers.

It is impossible to come to _precise_ statistics in this matter, but
all concurrent evidence, as regards the unskilled work of which I now
treat, shows that labour is attainable at almost any rate.

Another drawback to the benefits of cheap food I heard of first in my
inquiries (for the Letters on Labour and the Poor, in the _Morning
Chronicle_) among the boot and shoemakers--their rents had been raised
in consequence of their landlords’ property having been subjected to
the income tax. Numbers of large houses are now let out in single
rooms, in the streets off Tottenham-court-road, and near Golden-square,
as well as in many other quarters--to men, who, working for West-end
tradesmen, must live, for economy of time, near the shops from which
they derive their work. Near and in Cunningham-street and other
streets, two men, father and son, rent upwards of 30 houses, the whole
of which they let out in one or two rooms, it is believed at a very
great profit; in fact they live by it.

The rent of these houses, among many others, was raised when the
income tax was imposed, the sub-lettors declaring, with what truth no
one knew, that the rents were raised to them. It is common enough for
capitalists to fling such imposts on the shoulders of the poor, and
I heard scavagers complain, that every time they had to change their
rooms, they had either to pay more rent by 2_d._ or 3_d._ a week, or
put up with a worse place. One man who lived at the time of the passing
of the Income Tax Bill in Shoe-lane, found his rent raised suddenly
3_d._ a week, a non-resident landlord or agent calling for it weekly.
He was told that the advance was to meet the income tax. “I know
nothing about what income tax means,” he said, “but it’s some ----
roguery as is put on the poor.” I heard complaints to the same purport
from several working scavagers, and the lettors of rooms are the most
exacting in places crowded with the poor, and where the poor think or
feel they must reside “to be handy for work.” What connection there may
be between the questions of Free Trade and the necessity of the income
tax, it is not my business now to dilate upon, but it is evident that
the circumstances of the country are not sufficiently prosperous to
enable parliament to repeal this “temporary” impost.

From a better informed class than the scavagers, I might have derived
data on which to form a calculation from account books, &c., but I
could hear of none being kept. I remember that a lady’s shoemaker told
me that the weekly rents of the ten rooms in the house in which he
lived were 4_s._ 3_d._ higher than before the income tax, which “came
to the same thing as an extra penny on over 50 loaves a week.” It is
certain that the great tax-payers of London are the labouring classes.

I have endeavoured to ascertain the facts in connection with this
complex subject in as calm and just a manner as possible, leaning
neither to the Protectionist nor the Free-Trade side of the question,
and I must again in honesty acknowledge, that to the _constant_ hands
among the scavagers and dustmen of the metropolis, the repeal of the
Corn Laws appears to have been an unquestionable benefit.

I shall conclude this exposition of the condition and earnings of the
working scavagers employed by the more honourable masters, with an
account of the average income and expenditure of the better-paid hands
(regular and casual, as well as single and married), and first, of the
unmarried regular hand.

The following is an estimate of the income and expenditure of an
_unmarried_ operative scavager _regularly_ employed, working for a
large contractor:--

WEEKLY INCOME. | WEEKLY EXPENDITURE.
£ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._
_Constant Wages._ | Rent 0 2 0
Nominal weekly wages 0 16 0 | Washing and mending 0 0 10
Perquisites 0 2 0 | Clothes, and repairing
------------ | ditto 0 0 10
Actual weekly wages 0 18 0 | Butcher’s meat 0 3 6
| Bacon 0 0 8
| Vegetables 0 0 4
| Cheese 0 0 4
| Beer 0 3 0
| Spirits 0 1 0
| Tobacco 0 0 10-1/2
| Butter 0 0 7-1/2
| Sugar 0 0 4
| Tea 0 0 3
| Coffee 0 0 3
| Fish 0 0 4
| Soap 0 0 2
| Shaving 0 0 1
| Fruit 0 0 4
| Keep of 2 dogs 0 0 6
| Amusements, as
| skittles, &c. 0 1 9
| -------------
| 0 18 0

The subjoined represents the income of an _unmarried_ operative
scavager _casually_ employed by a small master scavager six months
during the year, at 15_s._ a week, and 20 weeks at sand and rubbish
carting, at 12_s._ a week.

_Casual Wages._ £ _s._ _d._
Nominal weekly wages at scavaging, 16_s._ for
26 weeks during the year 20 16 0
Perquisites, 2_s._ for 26 weeks during the year 2 12 0
----------------
Actual weekly wages for 26 weeks during the
year 0 16 0
Nominal and actual weekly wages at rubbish
carting, 12_s._ for 20 weeks more during the
year 12 0 0
----------------
Average casual or constant weekly wages
throughout the year 0 15 4-1/2

The expenditure of this man when in work was nearly the same as that
of the regular hand; the main exceptions being that his rent was 1_s._
instead of 2_s._, and no dogs were kept. When in work he saved nothing,
and when out of work lived as he could.

The _married_ scavagers are differently circumstanced from the
_unmarried_; their earnings are generally increased by those of their
family.

The labour of the wives and children of the scavagers is not
unfrequently in the capacity of sifters in the dust-yards, where the
wives of the men employed by the contractors have the preference, and
in other but somewhat rude capacities. One of their wives I heard of
as a dresser of sheep’s trotters; two as being among the most skilful
dressers of tripe for a large shop; one as “a cat’s-meat seller” (her
father’s calling); but I still speak of the regular scavagers--I could
not meet with one woman “working a slop-needle.” One, indeed, I saw who
was described to me as a “feather dresser to an out-and-out negur,” but
the woman assured me she was neither badly paid nor badly off. Perhaps
by such labour, as an average on the part of the wives, 9_d._ a day is
cleared, and 1_s._ “on tripe and such like.” Among the “casual’s” wives
there are frequent instances of the working for slop shirt-makers, &c.,
upon the coarser sorts of work, and at “starvation wages,” but on such
matters I have often dwelt. I heard from some of these men that it
was looked upon as a great thing if the wife’s labour could clear the
week’s rent of 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._

The following may be taken as an estimate of the income and outlay of a
_better paid and fully_ employed operative scavager, with his wife and
two children:--

WEEKLY INCOME OF THE FAMILY. | WEEKLY EXPENDITURE OF THE FAMILY.
£ _s._ _d._| £ _s._ _d._
Nominal weekly | Rent 0 3 0
wages of man, | Candle 0 0 3-1/2
16_s._ | Bread 0 2 1
Perquisites, 2_s._ | Butter 0 0 10
Actual weekly | Sugar 0 0 8
wages of man 0 18 0 | Tea 0 0 10
Nominal weekly | Coffee 0 0 4
wages of wife, | Butcher’s meat 0 3 6
6_s._ | Bacon 0 1 2
Perquisites in | Potatoes 0 0 10
coal and wood, | Raw fish 0 0 4
1_s._ 4_d._ | Herrings 0 0 4
Actual weekly | Beer (at home) 0 2 0
wages of wife. 0 7 4 | „ (at work) 0 1 6
Nominal weekly | Spirits 0 1 0
wages of boy. 0 3 0 | Cheese 0 0 6
----------- | Flour 0 0 3
1 8 4 | Suet 0 0 3
| Fruit 0 0 3
| Rice 0 0 0-1/2
| Soap 0 0 6
| Starch 0 0 0-1/2
| Soda and blue 0 0 1
| Dubbing 0 0 0-1/2
| Clothes for the
| whole family,
| and repairing
| ditto 0 2 0
| Boots and shoes
| for ditto, ditto 0 1 6
| Milk 0 0 7
| Salt, pepper, and
| mustard 0 0 1
| Tobacco 0 0 9
| Wear and tear of
| bedding, crocks,
| &c. 0 0 3
| Schooling for
| girl 0 0 3
| Baking Sunday’s
| dinner 0 0 2
| Mangling 0 0 3
| Amusements and
| sundries 0 1 0
| --------------
| 1 7 6

The subjoined, on the other hand, gives the income and outlay of a
_casually employed_ operative scavager (_better paid_) with his wife
and two boys in constant work:--

WEEKLY INCOME OF THE FAMILY. | WEEKLY EXPENDITURE OF THE FAMILY.
£ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._
Nominal wages | Rent 0 3 6
of man at scavaging | Candle 0 0 6
for six | Soap 0 0 4
months, at 16_s._ | Soda, starch, and
weekly. | blue 0 0 2-1/2
Ditto at rubbish | Bread 0 2 6
carting three | Butter 0 0 9
months, 12_s._ | Dripping 0 0 5
weekly. | Sugar 0 0 8
Average casual | Tea 0 0 8
wages throughout | Coffee 0 0 6
the year 0 15 0 | Butcher’s meat 0 3 6
Nominal weekly | Bacon 0 1 0
wages of wife, | Potatoes 0 1 0
6_s._ (constant). | Cheese 0 0 6
Perquisites in | Raw fish 0 0 4
wood and coal, | Herrings 0 0 3
1_s._ 4_d._ | Fried fish 0 0 3
Actual weekly | Flour 0 0 3
wages of wife 0 7 4 | Suet 0 0 2
Nominal weekly | Fruit 0 0 6
wages of two | Rice 0 0 1-1/2
boys, 7_s._ the | Beer (at home) 0 2 0
two. | „ (at work) 0 1 9
Perquisites for | Spirits 0 1 0
running on | Tobacco 0 0 9
messages, 1_s._ | Pepper, salt, and
the two | mustard 0 0 1
(constant). | Milk 0 0 7
Actual weekly | Clothes for man,
wages of the | wife, and family 0 2 0
two boys. 0 8 0 | Repairing ditto
----------- | for ditto 0 0 6
1 10 4 | Boots and shoes
| for ditto 0 1 6
| Repairing ditto
| for ditto 0 0 8
| Wear and tear of
| bedding, crocks,
| &c. 0 0 3
| Baking Sunday’s
| dinner 0 0 2
| Mangling 0 0 2
| Amusements,
| sundries, &c. 0 1 0
| ---------------
| 1 10 4

OF THE WORSE PAID SCAVAGERS, OR THOSE WORKING FOR SCURF[18] EMPLOYERS.

There are in the scavagers’ trade the same distinct classes of
employers as appertain to all other trades; these consist of:--

1. The large capitalists.
2. The small capitalists.

As a rule (with some few honourable and dishonourable exceptions,
it is true) I find that the large capitalists in the several trades
are generally the employers who pay the higher wages, and the small
men those who pay the lower. The reasons for this conduct are almost
obvious. The power of the capital of the “large master” must be
contended against by the small one; and the usual mode of contention
in all trades is by reducing the wages of the working men. The wealthy
master has, of course, many advantages over the poor one. (1) He can
pay ready money, and obtain discounts for immediate payment. (2) He
can buy in large quantities, and so get his stock cheaper. (3) He can
purchase what he wants in the best markets, and that _directly_ of the
producer, without the intervention and profit of the middleman. (4) He
can buy at the best times and seasons; and “lay in” what he requires
for the purposes of his trade long before it is needed, provided
he can obtain it “a bargain.” (5) He can avail himself of the best
tools and mechanical contrivances for increasing the productiveness
or “economizing the labour” of his workmen. (6) He can build and
arrange his places of work upon the most approved plan and in the best
situations for the manufacture and distribution of the commodities.
(7) He can employ the highest talent for the management or design of
the work on which he is engaged. (8) He can institute a more effective
system for the surveillance and checking of his workmen. (9) He can
employ a large number of hands, and so reduce the secondary expenses
(of firing, lighting, &c.) attendant upon the work, as well as the
number of superintendents and others engaged to “look after” the
operatives. (10) He can resort to extensive means of making his trade
known. (11) He can sell cheaper (even if his cost of production be the
same), from employing a larger capital, and being able to “do with” a
less rate of profit. (12) He can afford to give credit, and so obtain
customers that he might otherwise lose.

The small capitalist, therefore, enters the field of competition by no
means equally matched against his more wealthy rival. What the little
master wants in “substance,” however, he generally endeavours to make
up in cunning. If he cannot buy his materials as cheap as a trader of
larger means, he uses an inferior or cheaper article, and seeks by
some trick or other to palm it off as equal to the superior and dearer
kind. If the tools and appliances of the trade are expensive, he either
transfers the cost of providing them to the workmen, or else he charges
them a rent for their use; and so with the places of work, he mulcts
their wages of a certain sum per week for the gas by which they labour,
or he makes them do their work at home, and thus saves the expense of
a workshop; and, lastly, he pays his men either a less sum than usual
for the same quantity of labour, or exacts a greater quantity from them
for the same sum of money. By one or other of these means does the man
of limited capital seek to counterbalance the advantages which his more
wealthy rival obtains by the possession of extensive “resources.” The
large employer is enabled to work cheaper by the sheer force of his
larger capital. He reduces the cost of production, not by employing a
cheaper labour, but by “economizing the labour” that he does employ.
The small employer, on the other hand, seeks to keep pace with his
larger rival, and strives to work cheap, not by “the economy of labour”
(for this is hardly possible in the small way of production), but by
reducing the wages of his labourers. Hence the _rule_ in almost every
trade is that the smaller capitalists pay a lower rate of wages. To
this, however, there are many honourable exceptions among the small
masters, and many as dishonourable among the larger ones in different
trades. Messrs. Moses, Nicoll, and Hyams, for instance, are men who
certainly cannot plead deficiency of means as an excuse for reducing
the ordinary rate of wages among the tailors.

Those employers who seek to reduce the prices of a trade are known
technologically as “_cutting employers_,” in contradistinction to the
standard employers, or those who pay their workpeople and sell their
goods at the ordinary rates.

Of “cutting employers” there are several kinds, differently designated,
according to the different means by which they gain their ends. These
are:--

1. “_Drivers_,” or those who compel the men in their employ to do
more work for the same wages; of this kind there are two distinct
varieties:--

_a._ _The long-hour masters_, or those who make the men work longer
than the usual hours of labour.

_b._ _The strapping masters_, or those who make the men (by extra
supervision) “strap” to their work, so as to do a greater quantity of
labour in the usual time.

2. _Grinders_, or those who compel the workmen (through their
necessities) to do the same amount of work for less than the ordinary
wages.

The reduction of wages thus brought about may or may not be attended
with a corresponding reduction in the price of the goods to the public;
if the price of the goods be reduced in proportion to the reduction
of wages, the consumer, of course, is benefited at the expense of
the producer. When it is not followed by a like diminution in the
selling price of the article, and the wages of which the men are mulct
go to increase the profits of the capitalist, the employer alone is
benefited, and is then known as a “_grasper_.”

Some cutting tradesmen, however, endeavour to undersell their more
wealthy rivals, by reducing the ordinary rate of profit, and extending
their business on the principle of small profits and quick returns,
the “nimble ninepence” being considered “better than the slow
shilling.” Such traders, of course, cannot be said to reduce wages
directly--indirectly, however, they have the same effect, for in
reducing prices, other traders, ever ready to compete with them, but,
unwilling, or perhaps unable, to accept less than the ordinary rate of
profit, seek to attain the same cheapness by diminishing the cost of
production, and for this end the labourers’ wages are almost invariably
reduced.

Such are the characteristics of the cheap employers in all trades. Let
me now proceed to point out the peculiarities of what are called the
scurf employers in the scavaging trade.

The insidious practices of capitalists in other callings, in reducing
the hire of labour, are not unknown to the scavagers. The evils of
which these workmen have to complain under scurf or slop masters are:--

1. _Driving_, or being compelled to do more work for the _same pay_.

2. _Grinding_, or being compelled to do the same or a greater amount of
work for _less pay_.

1. Under the first head, if the employment be at all regular, I heard
few complaints, for the men seemed to have learned to look upon it as
an inevitable thing, that one way or other they _must_ submit, by the
receipt of a reduced wage, or the exercise of a greater toil, to a
deterioration in their means.

The system of driving, or, in other words, the means by which extra
work is got out of the men for the same remuneration, in the scavagers’
trade is as follows:--some employers cause their scavagers after their
day’s work in the streets, to load the barges with the street and
house-collected manure, without any additional payment; whereas, among
the more liberal employers, there are bargemen who are employed to
attend to this department of the trade, and if their street scavagers
_are_ so employed, which is not very often, it is computed as extra
work or “over hours,” and paid for accordingly. This same indirect mode
of reducing wages (by getting more work done for the same pay) is seen
in many piece-work callings. The slop boot and shoe makers pay the same
price as they did six or seven years ago, but they have “knocked off
the extras,” as the additional allowance for greater than the ordinary
height of heel, and the like. So the slop Mayor of Manchester, Sir
Elkanah Armitage, within the last year or two, sought to obtain from
his men a greater length of “cut” to each piece of woven for the same
wages.

Some master scavagers or contractors, moreover, reduce wages by making
their men do what is considered the work of “a man and a half” in a
week, without the recompense due for the labour of the “half” man’s
work; in other words, they require the men to condense eight or nine
days’ labour into six, and to be paid for the six days only; this again
is usual in the strapping shops of the carpenters’ trade.

Thus the class of street-sweepers do not differ materially in the
circumstances of their position from other bodies of workers skilled
and unskilled.

Let me, however, give a practical illustration of the loss accruing to
the working scavagers by the _driving_ method of reducing wages.

A is a large contractor and a driver. He employs 16 men, and pays them
the “regular wages” of the honourable trade; but, instead of limiting
the hours of labour to 12, as is usual among the better class of
employers, he compels each of his men to work at the least 16 hours per
diem, which is one-third more, and for which the men should receive
one-third more wages. Let us see, therefore, how much the men in his
employ lose annually by these means.

---------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------
| Sum received | Sum they |
| per | should |
| Annum. | receive. |Difference.
---------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------
4 Gangers, at 18_s._ a } | £ _s._ | £ _s._ | £ _s._
week, for 9 months } | 140 8 | 210 12 | 70 4
in the year } | | |
12 Sweepers, at 16_s._ a } | | |
week, for 9 months } | 374 8 | 499 4 | 124 16
in the year } | | |
---------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------
Total wages per Ann. | 514 16 | 709 16 | 195 0

Here, then, we find the annual loss to these men through the system of
“driving” to be 195_l._ per annum.

But A is not the only driver in the scavagers’ trade; out of the 19
masters having contracts for scavaging, as cited in the table given at
pp. 213, 214, there are 4 who are regular drivers; and, making the same
calculation as above, we have the following results:--

-------------------------+-------------+-----------+-----------
|Sum received | Sum they |
| per | should |Difference.
| Annum. | receive. |
-------------------------+-------------+-----------+-----------
26 Gangers, at 18_s._ a }| £ _s._ | £ _s._| £ _s._
week, for 9 months }| 912 12 | 1216 16 | 304 4
in the year }| | |
80 Sweepers, at 16_s._ a}| | |
week, for 9 months }| 2496 0 | 3328 0 | 832 0
in the year }| | |
-------------------------+-------------+-----------+-----------
| 3308 12 | 4544 16 | 1136 4
-------------------------+-------------+-----------+-----------

Thus we find that the gross sum of which the men employed by these
drivers are deprived, is no less than 1136_l._ per annum.

2. The second or indirect mode of reducing the wages of the men in the
scavaging trade is by _Grinding_; that is to say, by making the men
do the same amount of work for less pay. It requires nothing but a
practical illustration to render the injury of this particular mode of
reduction apparent to the public.

B is a master scavager (a small contractor, though the instances are
not confined to this class), and a “_Grinder_.” He pays 1_s._ a week
less than the “regular wages” of the honourable trade. He employs six
men; hence the amount that the workmen in his pay are mulct of every
year is as follows:--

Here the loss to the men is 11_l._ 14_s._ per annum, and there is but
one such grinder among the 19 master scavagers who have contracts at
present.

3. The third and last method of reducing the earnings of the men as
above enumerated, is by a combination of both the systems before
explained, viz., by _grinding_ and _driving_ united, that is to say,
by not only paying the men a smaller wage than the more honourable
masters, but by compelling them to work longer hours as well. Let me
cite another illustration from the trade.

C is a large contractor, and both a grinder and driver. He employs
28 men, and not only pays them less wages, but makes them work
longer hours than the better class of employers. The men in his pay,
therefore, are annually mulct of the following sums.

SUMS THE MEN RECEIVE. | SUMS THEY SHOULD RECEIVE.
£ _s._ _d._| £ _s._ _d._
|
7 Gangers, at 16_s._ | 7 Gangers, at 18_s._
a week, for 9 | a week, for 9
months in the | months in the
year 218 8 0 | year 245 14 0
21 Sweepers, at | Over work, 4
15_s._ a week 614 5 0 | hours per day 61 8 6
------------- | 21 Sweepers, at
832 13 0 | 16_s._ a week, 12
| hours a day 655 4 0
| Over work, 4
| hours a day 163 6 0
| --------------
| 1125 12 6

Here the annual loss to the men employed by this one master is 292_l._
19_s._ 6_d._

Among the 19 master scavagers there are altogether 7 employers who
are both grinders and drivers. These employ among them no less than
111 hands; hence, the gross amount of which their workmen are yearly
defrau--no, let me adhere to the principles of political economy, and
say deprived--is as under:--

SUM THE MEN ANNUALLY RECEIVE. | SUM THEY SHOULD ANNUALLY RECEIVE.
£ _s._ _d._| £ _s._ _d._
28 Gangers, at 16_s._ | 28 Gangers, at
a week, employed | 18_s._ a week
for 9 months | (12 hours a
in the year 873 12 0 | day), for 9
| months in the
83 Sweepers, at | year 982 16 0
15_s._ a week, | Over work, 4
employed for | hours per day 245 14 0
9 months in | 83 Sweepers, at
the year 2427 15 0 | 16_s._ a week,
-------------- | 12 hours a day 2589 12 0
3301 7 0 | Over work, 4
| hours per day 647 8 0
| --------------
| 4465 10 0

Here we perceive the gross loss to the operatives from the system of
combined grinding and driving to be no less than 1164_l._ 3_s._ per
annum.

Now let us see what is the aggregate loss to the working men from the
several modes of reducing their wages as above detailed.

£. _s._ _d._
Loss to the working scavagers by the “driving” of employers 1136 4 0
Ditto by the “grinding” 11 14 0
Ditto by the “grinding _and_ driving” of employers 1164 3 0
--------------
Total loss to the working scavagers per annum 2312 1 0

Now this is a large sum of money to be wrested annually out of the
workmen--that it is so wrested is demonstrated by the fact cited at p.
174 in connection with the dust trade.

The wages of the dustmen employed by the large contractors, it is there
stated, have been increased within the last seven years from 6_d._ to
8_d._ per load. This increase in the rate of remuneration was owing to
complaints made by the men to the Commissioners of Sewers, that they
were not able to live on their earnings; an inquiry took place, and the
result was that the Commissioners decided upon letting the contracts
only to such parties as would undertake to pay a fair price to their
workmen. The contractors accordingly increased the remuneration of the
labourers as mentioned.

Now political economy would tell us that the Commissioners _interfered_
with wages in a most reprehensible manner--preventing the natural
operation of the law of Supply and Demand; but both justice and
benevolence assure us that the Commissioners did perfectly right. The
masters in the dust trade were forced to make good to the men what they
had previously taken from them, and the same should be done in the
scavaging trade--the contracts should be let only to these masters who
will undertake to pay the regular rate of wages, and employ their men
only the regular hours; for by such means, and by such means alone, can
_justice_ be done to the operatives.

This brings me to the _cause of the reduction of wages in the scavaging
trade_. The scurf trade, I am informed, has been carried on among
the master scavagers upwards of 20 years, and arose partly from the
contractors having _to pay_ the parishes for the house-dust and
street-sweepings, brieze and street manure at that period often selling
for 30_s._ the chaldron or load. The demand for this kind of manure
20 years ago was so great, that there was a competition carried on
among the contractors themselves, each out-bidding the other, so as to
obtain the right of collecting it; and in order not to lose anything
by the large sums which they were induced to bid for the contracts,
the employers began gradually to “grind down” their men from 17_s._
6_d._ (the sum paid 20 years back) to 17_s._ a week, and eventually
to 15_s._, and even 12_s._ weekly. This is a curious and instructive
fact, as showing that even an increase of prices will, _under the
contract system_, induce a reduction of wages. The greed of traders
becomes, it appears, from the very height of the prices, proportionally
intensified, and from the desire of each to reap the benefit, they are
led to outbid one another to such an extent, and to offer such large
premiums for the right of appropriation, as to necessitate a reduction
of every possible expense in order to make any profit at all upon the
transaction. Owing, moreover, to the surplus labour in the trade, the
contractors were enabled to offer any premiums and reduce wages as they
pleased; for the casually-employed men, when the wet season was over,
and their services no longer required, were continually calling upon
the contractors, and offering their services at 2_s._ and 3_s._ less
per week than the regular hands were receiving. The consequence was,
that five or six of the master scavagers began to reduce the wages of
their labourers, and since that time the number has been gradually
increasing, until now there are no less than 21 scurf masters (8 of
whom have no contracts) out of the 34 contractors; so that nearly
three-fifths of the entire trade belong to the _grinding_ class. Within
the last seven or eight years, however, there has been an increase of
wages in connection with the city operative scavagers. This was owing
mainly to the operatives complaining to the Commissioners that they
could not live upon the wages they were then receiving--12_s._ and
14_s._ a week. The circumstances inducing the change, I am informed,
were as follows:--one of the gangers asked a tradesman in the city to
give the street-sweepers “something for beer,” whereupon the tradesman
inquired if the men could not find beer out of their wages, and on
being assured that they were receiving only 12_s._ a week, he had the
matter brought before the Board. The result was, that the wages of the
operatives were increased from 12_s._ to 15_s._ and 16_s._ weekly,
since which time there has been neither an increase nor a decrease
in their pay. The cheapness of provisions seems to have caused no
reduction with them.

Now there are but two “efficient causes” to account for the reduction
of wages among the scurf employers in the scavagers’ trade:--(1) The
employers may diminish the pay of their men from a disposition to
“_grind_” out of them an inordinate rate of profit. (2) The price paid
for the work may be so reduced that, consistent with the ordinary rate
of profit on capital, and remuneration for superintendence, greater
wages cannot be paid. If the first be the fact, then the employers
are to blame, and the parishes should follow the example of the
Commissioners of Sewers, and let the work to those contractors only who
will undertake to pay the “regular wages” of the honourable trade; but
if the latter be the case, as I strongly suspect it is, though some
of the masters seem to be more “grasping” than the rest--but in the
paucity of returns on this matter, it is difficult to state positively
whether the price paid for the labour of the working scavager is in all
the parishes proportional to the price paid to the employers for the
work (a most important fact to be solved)--if, however, I repeat, the
decrease of the wages be mainly due to the decrease in the sums given
for the performance of the contract, then the parishes are to blame for
seeking to get their work done _at the expense of the working men_.

The contract system of work, I find, necessarily tends to this
diminution of the men’s earnings in a trade. Offer a certain quantity
of work to the lowest bidder, and the competition will assuredly be
maintained at _the operative’s expense_. It is idle to expect that,
as a general rule, traders will take less than the ordinary rate of
profit. Hence, he who underbids will usually be found to underpay.
This, indeed, is almost a necessity of the system, and one which
the parochial functionaries more than all others should be guarded
against--seeing that a decrease of the operative’s wages can but be
attended with an increase of the very paupers, and consequently of the
parochial expenses, which they are striving to reduce.

A labourer, in order to be self-supporting and avoid becoming
a “burden” on the parish, requires something more than bare
subsistence-money in remuneration for his labour, and yet this is
generally the mode by which we test the _sufficiency of wages_. “A man
can live very comfortably upon that!” is the exclamation of those who
have seldom thought upon what constitutes the _minimum_ of self-support
in this country. A man’s wages, to prevent pauperism, should include,
besides present subsistence, what Dr. Chalmers has called “his
secondaries;” viz., a sufficiency to pay for his maintenance: 1st,
during the slack season; 2nd, when out of employment; 3rd, when ill;
4th, when old[19]. If insufficient to do this, it is evident that
the man at such times must seek parochial relief; and it is by the
reduction of wages down to bare subsistence, that the cheap employers
of the present day shift the burden of supporting their labourers when
unemployed on to the parish; thus virtually perpetuating the allowance
system or relief in aid of wages under the old Poor Law. Formerly the
mode of hiring labourers was by the year, so that the employer was
bound to maintain the men when unemployed. But now journey-work, or
hiring by the day, prevails, and the labourers being paid--and that
mere subsistence-money--only when wanted, are necessitated to become
either paupers or thieves when their services are no longer required.
It is, moreover, this change from yearly to daily hirings, and the
consequent discarding of men when no longer required, that has partly
caused the immense mass of surplus labourers, who are continually
vagabondizing through the country begging or stealing as they go--men
for whom there is but some two or three weeks’ work (harvesting,
hop-picking, and the like) throughout the year.

That there is, however, a large system of _jobbing pursued by the
contractors_ for the house-dust and cleansing of the streets, there
cannot be the least doubt. The minute I have cited at page 210 gives
us a slight insight into the system of combination existing among the
employers, and the extraordinary fluctuations in the prices obtained by
the contractors would lead to the notion that the business was more a
system of gambling than trade. The following returns have been procured
by Mr. Cochrane within the last few days:--

“Average yearly cost of cleansing
the whole of the public ways within
the City of London, including the removal
of dust, ashes, &c., from the
houses of the inhabitants, for eight
years, terminating at Michaelmas in
the year 1850 £4,643

Square yards of carriage-way, estimated
at 430,000

Square yards of footway, estimated
at 300,000

A more specific and later return is as follows:--

Received Paid for
for Dust. cleansing, &c.
£ _s._ _d._ £ _s._ _d._ { Streets not
1845 0 0 0 2833 2 0 { cleansed
{ daily.
1846 1354 5 0 6034 6 0 }
1847 4455 5 0 8014 2 0 } Streets
1848 1328 15 0 7226 1 6 } cleansed
1849 0 0 0 7486 11 6 } daily.
1850 0 0 0 6779 16 0 }

“From the above return,” says Mr. Cochrane, “it may be _inferred_ that
the annual sums paid for cleansing in each year of 1844 and 1843 did
not exceed 2281_l._, as this would make up the eight years’ average
calculation of 4643_l._”

Since the streets have been cleansed daily, it will be seen that the
average has been 7188_l._ The smallest amount, in 1846, was 6034_l._;
and the largest, in 1847, 8014_l._; which was a sudden increase of
1980_l._

Here, then, we perceive an immediate increase in the price paid for
scavaging between 1846 and 1847 of nearly 33 per cent., and since the
wages of the workmen were not proportionately increased in the latter
year by the employers, it follows that the profits of the contractors
must have been augmented to that enormous extent. The only effectual
mode of preventing this system of jobbing being persevered in, _at
the expense of the workmen_, is by the insertion of a clause in each
parish contract similar to that introduced by the Commissioners of
Sewers--that at least a fair living rate of wages shall be paid by each
contractor to the men employed by him. This may be an interference with
the freedom of labour, according to the economists’ “cant” language,
but at least it is a restriction of the tyranny of capital, for free
labour means, when literally translated, _the unrestricted use of
capital_, which is (especially when the moral standard of trade is not
of the highest character) perhaps the greatest evil with which a State
can be afflicted.

* * * * *

Let me now speak of the _Scurf labourers_. The moral and social
characteristics of the working scavagers who labour for a lower rate of
hire do not materially differ from those of the better paid and more
regularly employed body, unless, perhaps, in this respect, that there
are among them a greater proportion of the “casuals,” or of men reared
to the pursuit of other callings, and driven by want, misfortune, or
misconduct, to “sweep the streets;” and not only that, but to regard
the “leave to toil” in such a capacity a boon. These constitute, as it
were, the cheap labourers of this trade.

Among the parties concerned in the lower-priced scavaging, are the
usual criminations. The parish authorities will not put up any longer
with the extortions of the contractors. The contractors cannot put
up any longer with the stinginess of the parishes. The _working_
scavagers, upon whose shoulders the burthen falls the heaviest--as
it does in all depreciated tradings--grumble at both. I cannot aver,
however, that I found among the men that bitter hatred of their masters
which I found actuating the mass of operative tailors, shoemakers,
dressmakers, &c., toward the slop capitalists who employed them.

I have pointed out in what the “scurf” treatment of the labourers was
chiefly manifested--in extra work for inferior pay; in doing eight or
nine days’ work in six; and in being paid for only six days’ labour,
and not always at the ordinary rate even for the lighter toil--not
2_s._ 8_d._, but 2_s._ 6_d._ or even 2_s._ 4_d._ a day. To the wealthy,
this 2_d._ or 4_d._ a day may seem but a trifling matter, but I heard a
working scavager (formerly a house-painter) put it in a strong light:
“that 3_d._ or 4_d._ a day, sir, is a poor family’s rent.” The rent, I
may observe, as a result of my inquiries among the more decent classes
of labourers, is often the primary consideration: “You see, sir, we
must have a roof over our heads.”

A scavager, working for a scurf master, gave me the following account.
He was a middle-aged man, decently dressed, for when I saw him, he was
in his “Sunday clothes,” and was quiet in his tones, even when he spoke
bitterly.

“My father,” he said, “was once in business as a butcher, but he
failed, and was afterwards a journeyman butcher, but very much
respected, I know, and I used to job and help him. O dear, yes! I can
read and write, but I have very seldom to write, only I think one
never forgets it, it’s like learning to swim, that way; and I read
sometimes at coffee-shops. My father died rather sudden, and me and a
brother had to look out. My brother was older than me, he was 20 or
21 then, and he went for a soldier, I believe to some of the Ingees,
but I’ve never heard of him since. I got a place in a knacker’s yard,
but I didn’t like it at all, _it was so confining_, and should have
hooked it, only I left it honourable. I can’t call to mind how long
that’s back, perhaps 16 or 18 years, but I know there was some stir
at the time about having the streets and yards cleaner. A man called
and had some talk with the governor, and says he, says the governor,
says he, ‘if you want a handy lad with his besom, and he’s good for
nothing else’--but that was his gammon--‘here’s your man;’ so I was
engaged as a young sweeper at 10_s._ a week. I worked in Hackney, but I
heard so much about railways, that I saved my money up to 10_s._, and
popped [pledged] a suit of mourning I’d got after my father’s death for
22_s._, and got to York, both on foot and with lifts. I soon got work
on a rail; there was great call for rails then, but I don’t know how
long it’s since, and I was a navvy for six or seven years, or better.
Then I came back to London. I don’t know just what made me come back,
_but I was restless_, and I thought I could get work as easy in London
as in the country, but I couldn’t. I brought 21 gold sovereigns with
me to London, twisted in my fob for safeness, in a wash-leather bag.
They didn’t last so long as they ought to. I didn’t care for drinking,
only when I was in company, but I was a little too gay. One night I
spent over 12_s._ in the St. Helena Gardens at Rotherhithe, and that
sort of thing soon makes money show taper. I got some work with a
rubbish carter, a regular scurf. I made only about 8_s._ a week under
him, for he didn’t want me this half day or that whole day, and if I
said anything, he told me I might go and be d----d, he could get plenty
such, and I knew he could. I got on then with a gangsman I knew, at
street-sweeping. I had 15_s._ a week, but not regular work, but when
the work wer’n’t regular, I had 2_s._ 8_d._ a day. I then worked under
another master for 14_s._ a week, and was often abused that I wasn’t
better dressed, for though that there master paid low wages, he was
vexed if his men didn’t look decent in the streets. I’ve heard that
he said he paid the best of wages when asked about it. I had another
job after that, at 15_s._, and then 16_s._ a week, with a contractor
as had a wharf; but a black nigger slave was never slaved as I was.
I’ve worked all night, when it’s been very moonlight, in loading a
barge, and I’ve worked until three and four in the morning that way,
and then me and another man slept an hour or two in a shed as joined
his stables, and then must go at it again. Some of these masters is
ignorant, and treats men like dirt, but this one was always civil, and
made his people be civil. But, Lord, I hadn’t a rag left to my back.
Everything was worn to bits in such hard work, and then I got the sack.
I was on for Mr. ---- next. He’s a jolly good ’un. I was only on for
him temp’ry, but I was told it was for temp’ry when I went, so I can’t
complain. I’m out of work this week, but I’ve had some jobs from a
butcher, and I’m going to work again on Monday. I don’t know at what
wages. The gangsmen said they’d see what I could do. It’ll be 15_s._, I
expect, and over-work if it’s 16_s._

“Yes, I like a pint of beer now and then, and one requires it, but I
don’t get drunk. I dusted for a fortnight once while a man was ill, and
got more beer and twopences give me than I do in a year now; aye, twice
as much. My mate and me was always very civil, and people has said,
‘there’s a good fellow, just sweep together this bit of rubbish in the
yard here, and off with it.’ That was beyond our duty, but we did it. I
have very little night-work, only for one master; he’s a sweep as well.
I get 2_s._ 6_d._ a job for it. Yes, there’s mostly something to drink,
but you can’t demand nothing. Night-work’s nothing, sir; no more ain’t
a knacker’s yard.

“I pay 2_s._ a week rent, but I’m washed for and found soap as well.
My landlady takes in washing, and when her husband, for they’re an old
couple, has the rheumatics, I make a trifle by carrying out the clothes
on a barrow, and Mrs. Smith goes with them and sees to the delivery.
I’ve my own furniture.

“Well, I don’t know what I spend in my living in a week. I have a bit
of meat, or a saveloy or two, or a slice of bacon every day, mostly
when I’m at work. I sometimes make my own meals ready in my room. No,
I keep no accounts. There’d be very little use or pleasure in doing it
when one has so little to count. When I’m past work, I suppose I must
go to the workhouse. I sometimes wish I’d gone for a soldier when I was
young enough. I shouldn’t have minded going abroad. I’d have liked it
better than not, for _I like to be about; yes, I like a change_.

“I go to chapel every Sunday night, and have regularly since Mr. ----
(the butcher) gave me this cast-off suit. I promised him I would when I
got the togs.

“Things would be well enough with me if I’d constant work and fair
pay. I don’t know what makes wages so low. I suppose it’s rich people
trying to get all the money they can, and caring nothing for poor men’s
rights, and poor men’s sometimes forced to undersell one another,
’cause half a loaf you know, sir, is better than no bread at all” (a
proverb, by the way, which has wrought no little mischief).

In conclusion, I may remark, that although I was told, in the first
instance, there was sub-letting in street sweeping, I could not hear
of any facts to prove it. I was told, indeed, by a gentleman who took
great interest in parochial matters, with a view to “reforms” in them,
that such a thing was most improbable, for if a contractor sub-let any
of his work it would soon become known, and as it would be evident that
the work could be accomplished at a lower rate, the contractor would be
in a worse position for his next contract.

OF THE STREET-SWEEPING MACHINE, AND THE STREET-SWEEPERS EMPLOYED WITH
IT.

Until the introduction of the machines now seen in London, I believe
that no mechanical contrivances for sweeping the streets had been
attempted, all such work being executed by manual labour, and employing
throughout the United Kingdom a great number of the poor. The
street-sweeping machine, therefore, assumes an importance as another
instance of the displacement, or attempted displacement, of the labour
of man by the mechanism of an engine.

The street-sweeping machines were introduced into London about five
years ago, after having been previously used, under the management
of a company, in Manchester, the inventor and maker being Mr.
Whitworth, of that place. The novelty and ingenuity of the apparatus
soon attracted public attention, and for the first week or two the
vehicular street-sweeper was accompanied in its progress by a crowd
of admiring and inquisitive pedestrians, so easily attracted together
in the metropolis. In the first instance the machines were driven
through the streets merely to display their mode and power of work,
and the drivers and attendants not unfrequently came into contact
with the regular scavagers, when a brisk interchange of street wit
took place, the populace often enough encouraging both sides. At
present the street-sweeping machine proceeds on its line of operation
as little noticed, except by visitors, and foreigners especially, as
any other vehicle. The body of the sweeping machine, although the
sizes may not all be uniform, is about 5 feet in length, and 2 feet
8 inches or 3 feet in width; the height is about 5 feet 6 inches or
6 feet, and the form that of a covered cart, with a rounded top. The
sides of the exterior are of cast iron, the top being of wood. At the
hinder part of the cart is fixed the sweeping-machine itself, covered
by sloping boards which descend from the top of the cart, projecting
slightly behind the vehicle to the ground; under the sloping boards is
an endless chain of brushes as wide as the cart, 16 in number, placed
at equal distances, and so arranged, that when made to revolve, each
brush in turn passes over the ground, sweeping the mud along with it
to the bottom sloping board, and so carrying it up to the interior of
the cart. The chain of brushes is set in motion, over the surface of
the pavement, by the agency of three cog wheels of cast iron; these are
worked by the rotation of the wheels of the cart, the cogs acting upon
the spindles to which the brooms are attached. The spindles, brushes,
and the sloped boards can be raised or lowered by the winding of an
instrument called the broom winder; or the whole can be locked. The
brooms are raised when any acclivity is to be swept, and lowered at
a declivity. The vehicle must be water-tight, in order to contain the
slop.

When full the machine holds about half a cart load or half a ton of
dirt; this is emptied by letting down the back in the manner of a trap
door. If the contents be solid, they have to be forked out; if more
sloppy, they are “shot” out, as from a cart, the interior generally
being roughly scraped to complete the emptying.

The districts which have as yet been cleansed by the machines are what
may be considered a government domain, being the public thoroughfares
under the control of the Commissioners of the Woods and Forests,
running from Westminster Abbey to the Regent-circus in Piccadilly,
and including Spring-gardens, Carlton-gardens, and a portion of the
West Strand, where they were first employed in London; they have been
used also in parts of the City; and are at present employed by the
parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The company by whom the mechanical
street-sweeping business is carried on employ 12 machines, 4 water
carts, 19 horses, and 24 men. They have also the use, but not the sole
use, of two wharfs and barges at Whitefriars and Millbank. The machines
altogether collect about 30 cart-loads of street-dirt a day, which is
equivalent to four or five barge-loads in a week, if all were boated.
Two barges per week are usually sent to Rochester, the others up the
river to Fulham, &c. The average price is 5_l._ 10_s._ to 6_l._ per
barge load, but when the freight has been chiefly dung, as much as
8_l._ has been paid for it by a farmer.

The street-sweeping machine seems to have commanded the approbation
of the General Board of Health, although the Board’s expression of
approval is not without qualification. “Even that efficient and
economical implement,” says one of the Reports, “the street-sweeping
machine, leaves much filth between the interstices of the stones
and some on the surface.” One might have imagined, however, that an
efficient and economical implement would not have left this “much
filth” in its course; but the Board, I presume, spoke comparatively.

The reason of the circumscribed adoption of the machine--I say it with
some reluctance, but from concurrent testimony--appears to be that it
does _not_ sweep sufficiently clean. It sweeps the surface, but only
the surface; not cleansing what the scavagers call the “nicks” and
“holes,” and the Board of Health the “interstices,” in the pavement.

One man is obliged to go along with each machine, to sweep the ridge
of dirt invariably left at the edge of the track of the vehicle into
the line of the next machine, so that it may be “licked up.” In fine
weather this work is often light enough. It is also the occupation
of the accompanying scavager to sweep the dirt from the sloping
edges of the public ways into the direct course of the machine, for
the brushes are of no service along such slopes; he must also sweep
out the contents of any hole or hollow there may be in the streets,
as is frequently the case when the pavement has been disturbed in
the relaying or repairing of the gas or water pipes. But for this
arrangement, I was told, the brushes would pass “clean over” such
places, or only disturb without clearing away the dirt. Indeed
irregularities of any kind in the pavement are great obstructions to
the efficiency of the street-sweeping machine.

There are some places, moreover, wholly unsweepable by the machine; in
many parts of St. Martin’s parish, for instance, there are localities
where the machine cannot be introduced; such are--St. Martin’s-court;
the flagged ways about the National Gallery; and the approach,
alongside the church, to the Lowther Arcade; the pavement surrounding
the fountains which adorn the “noblest site in Europe;” and a variety
of alleys, passages, yards, and minor streets, which must be cleansed
by manual labour.

In fair weather, again, water carts are indispensable before machine
sweeping, for if the ground be merely dry and dusty, the set of brooms
will not “bite.”

We now come to estimate the _relative values of the mechanical and
manual labour applied to the scavaging of the streets_. The average
progress of the street-sweeping machine, in the execution of the
scavagers’ work, is about two miles an hour. It must not be supposed,
however, that two streets each a mile in length, could be swept in one
hour; for to do this the vehicle would have to travel up and down those
streets as many times as the streets are wider than the machine. The
machines, sometimes two, sometimes three or four, follow alongside each
other’s tracks in sweeping a street, so as to leave no part unswept.
Thus, supposing a street half a mile long and nine yards wide, and
that each machine swept a breadth of a yard, then three such machines,
driven once up, and once again down, and once more up such a street,
would cleanse it in three quarters of an hour. To do this by manual
labour in the same or nearly the same time, would require the exertions
of five men. Each machine has been computed to have mechanical power
equal to the industry of five street-sweepers; and such, from the above
computation, would appear to be the fact. I do not include the drivers
in this enumeration, as of course the horse in the scavagers’ cart, and
in the machine require alike the care of a man, and there is to each
vehicle (whether mechanical or not) one hand (besides the carman) to
sweep after the ordinary work. Hence every two men with the machine do
the work of seven men by hand.

Having, then, ascertained the relative values of the two forces
employed in cleansing the streets, let me now proceed to set forth
what is “the economy of labour” resulting from the use of the sweeping
machine. In the following table are given the number of men at present
engaged by the machine company in the cleansing of those districts
where the machine is in operation, as well as the annual amount of
wages paid to the machine labourers; these facts are then collocated
with the number of manual labourers that would be required to do the
same work under the ordinary contract system (assuming every two
labourers with the machine to do the work of seven labourers by hand),
as well as the amount of wages that would be paid to such manual
labourers; and finally, the number of men and amount of wages under the
one system of street-cleansing is subtracted from the other, in order
to arrive at the number of street-sweepers at present displaced by
machine labour, and the annual loss in wages to the men so displaced;
or, to speak economically, the last column represents the amount
by which the Wage Fund of the street-sweepers is diminished by the
employment of the machine.

TABLE SHOWING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF MEN AT PRESENT
ENGAGED IN STREET-SWEEPING BY MACHINES, AND THE NUMBER THAT WOULD BE
REQUIRED TO SWEEP THE SAME DISTRICTS BY HAND, TOGETHER WITH THE ANNUAL
AMOUNT OF WAGES ACCRUING TO EACH.

+--------------------+----------------------------------+
| Machine Labour. |
+----------------------------------+
| Number | Annual Wages |
DISTRICTS. | of Men | received |
| employed to | by Machine |
| attend | Men, at 16s. |
| Machines. | a Week. |
+--------------------+------------------+---------------+
| | £ _s._ |
St. Martin’s-in-the} | | |
Fields } | 8 | 332 16 |
| | |
Regent-street and } | | |
Pall-mall (see } | 12 | 499 4 |
table, p. 214) } | | |
| | |
Other places, } | | |
connected } | | |
with Woods } | 4 | 166 8 |
and Forests } | | |
+--------------------+------------------+---------------+
Total | 24 | 998 8 |
+--------------------+------------------+---------------+

+--------------------+----------------------------------+
| Manual Labour. |
+----------------------------------+
| Number of | Annual |
| men that | Wages that |
DISTRICTS. | would be | would be |
| required to | received by |
| sweep the | Manual |
| Streets by | Labourers, at |
| Manual labour. | 15s. a Week. |
+--------------------+------------------+---------------+
| | £ _s._ |
St. Martin’s-in-the} | | |
Fields } | 28 | 1092 0 |
| | |
Regent-street and } | | |
Pall-mall (see } | 42 | 1638 0 |
table, p. 214) } | | |
| | |
Other places, } | | |
connected } | | |
with Woods } | 14 | 546 0 |
and Forests } | | |
+--------------------+------------------+---------------+
Total | 84 | 3276 0 |
+--------------------+------------------+---------------+

+--------------------+------------------+---------------+
| Difference. |
+----------------------------------+
| Number | Annual Loss |
DISTRICTS. | of | in Wages to |
| Men displaced | Manual |
| by Machine-work. | Labourers by |
| | Machine-work. |
+------------------+---------------+
| | £ _s._ |
St. Martin’s-in-the} | | |
Fields } | 20 | 759 4 |
| | |
Regent-street and } | | |
Pall-mall (see } | 30 | 1138 16 |
table, p. 214) } | | |
| | |
Other places, } | | |
connected } | | |
with Woods } | 10 | 379 12 |
and Forests } | | |
+--------------------+------------------+---------------+
Total | 60 | 2277 12 |
+--------------------+------------------+---------------+

Hence, we perceive that no less than 60 street-sweepers are deprived of
work by the street-sweeping machine, and that the gross Wage Fund of
the men is diminished by the employment of mechanical labour no less
than 2277_l._ per annum.

But let us suppose the street-sweeping machine to come into general
use, and all the men who are at present employed by the contractors,
both large and small, to sweep the street by hand to be superseded
by it, what would be the result? how much money would the manual
labourers be deprived of per annum, and how many self-supporting
labourers would be pauperized thereby? The following table will show
us: in the first compartment given below we have the number of
manual labourers employed throughout London by the large and small
contractors, and the amount of wages annually received by them[20];
in the second compartment is given the number of men that would be
required to sweep the same districts by the machine, and the amount of
wages that would be received by them at the present rate; and the third
and last compartment shows the gross number of hands that would be
displaced, and the annual loss that would accrue to the operatives by
the substitution of mechanical for manual labour in the sweeping of the
streets.

TABLE SHOWING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF CONTRACTORS’ MEN
AT PRESENT EMPLOYED TO SWEEP THE STREETS BY HAND, AND THE NUMBER THAT
WOULD BE REQUIRED TO SWEEP THE SAME DISTRICTS BY MACHINE WORK, TOGETHER
WITH THE AMOUNT OF WAGES ACCRUING TO EACH.

----------------------+----------------------------------------
| Manual Labour.
+--------------------+-------------------
| Number of | Annual Wages
| Men at present | received by
| employed | Contractors’
| by Contractors | Men for
| to sweep the | sweeping the
| streets. | Streets, at 15_s._
| | a Week.
----------------------+--------------------+-------------------
| | £ _s._
Districts at present} | |
swept by large } | 262 | 10,218 0
contractors (see } | |
table, p. 214) } | |
| |
Districts swept by } | 13 | 507 0
small contractors } | |
----------------------+--------------------+-------------------
Total | 275 | 10,725 0
----------------------+--------------------+-------------------

----------------------+----------------------------------------
| Machine Labour.
+--------------------+-------------------
| Number of | Annual Wages
| Machine Men | that would be
| that would be | received by
| required to | Machine Men,
| attend the | at 16_s._ a
| Street-sweeping | Week.
| Machines. |
----------------------+--------------------+-------------------
| | £ _s._
Districts at present} | |
swept by large } | 75 | 3120 0
contractors (see } | |
table, p. 214) } | |
| |
Districts swept by } | 4 | 166 8
small contractors } | |
----------------------+--------------------+-------------------
Total | 79 | 3286 8
----------------------+--------------------+-------------------

----------------------+----------------------------------------
| Difference.
+--------------------+-------------------
| Number of | Annual Loss
| Men that | that would
| would be displaced | accrue to
| by | Manual
| Machine-work. | Labourers by
| | Machine-work.
----------------------+--------------------+-------------------
| | £ _s._
Districts at present} | |
swept by large } | 187 | 7098 0
contractors (see } | |
table, p. 214) } | |
| |
Districts swept by } | 9 | 340 12
small contractors } | |
----------------------+--------------------+--------------------
Total | 196 | 7438 12
----------------------+--------------------+--------------------

Here we find that nearly 200 men would be pauperized, losing upwards of
7000_l._ per annum, if the street-sweeping machine came into general
use throughout London. But, before the introduction of machines, the
thoroughfares of St. Martin’s parish were swept only once a week in
dry weather, and three times a week in sloppy weather, and since the
introduction of the machines they have been swept daily; allowing,
therefore, the extra cleansing to have arisen from the extra cheapness
of the machine work--though it seems to have been the result of
improved sanatory regulations, for in parts where the machine has not
been used the same alteration has taken place--making such allowance,
however, it may, perhaps, be fair to say, that the same increase of
cleansing would take place throughout London; that is to say, that the
streets would be swept by the machines, were they generally used, twice
as often as they are at present by hand. At this rate 158 machine men,
instead of 79 as above calculated, would be required for the work; so
that, reckoning for the increased employment which might arise from the
increased cheapness of the work, we see that, were the street-sweeping
machines used throughout the metropolis, nearly 120 of the 275 manual
labourers now employed at scavaging by the large and small contractors,
would be thrown out of work, and deprived of no less a sum than
4680_l._ per annum.

This amount, of course, the parishes would pocket, minus the sum that
it would cost them to keep the displaced scavagers as paupers, so that
in this instance, at least, we perceive that, however great a benefit
cheapness may be to the wealthy classes, to the poorer classes it is
far from being of the same advantageous character; for, just as much as
the rate-payers are the gainers in the matter of street-cleansing must
the labourers be the losers--the economy of labour in a trade where
there are too many labourers already, and where the quantity of work
does not admit of indefinite increase, meaning simply the increase of
pauperism[21].

The “_labour question_” as connected with the sweeping-machine work,
requires but a brief detail, as it presents no new features. The
majority of the machine men may be described as having been “general
(unskilled) labourers” before they embarked in their present pursuits:
labourers for builders, brick-makers, rubbish-carters, the docks, &c.

Among them there is but one who was brought up as a mechanic; the
others have all been labourers, brick-makers, and what I heard called
“barrow-workers” on railways, the latter being the most numerous.

Employment is obtained by application at the wharfs. There is nothing
of the character of a trade society among the machine-men; nothing
in the way of benefit or sick clubs, unless the men choose to enrol
themselves in a general benefit society, of which I did not hear one
instance.

The payment is by the week, and without drawback in the guise or
disguise of fines, or similar inflictions for the use of tools, &c.;
the payment, moreover, is always in money.

The only perquisite is in the case of anything being found in the
streets; but the rule as to perquisites seems to be altogether an
understanding among the men. The disposal of what may be picked up in
the streets appears, moreover, to be very much in the discretion of the
picker up. If anything be found in the contents of the vehicle, when
emptied, it is the perquisite of the driver, who is also the unloader;
he, however, is expected to treat the men “on the same beat” out of any
such “treasure trove,” when the said treasure is considerable enough
to justify such bounty. Odd sixpences, shillings, or copper coin, I
was informed, were found almost every week, but I could ascertain no
general average. One man, some time ago, found a purse inside the
vehicle containing 20_s._, and “spent it out and out all on hisself,”
in a carouse of three days. He lost his situation in consequence.

The number of men employed by the company in this trade is 24, and
these perform all the work required in the driving and attendance upon
the machines in the street, in loading the barges, grooming the horses,
&c. There is, indeed, a twenty-fifth man, but he is a blacksmith, and
his wages of 35_s._ weekly are included in the estimate as to wear and
tear given below, for he shoes the horses and repairs the machines.

The rate of wages paid by the machine company is 16_s._ a week, so that
the full amount of wages is paid to the men.

But though the company cannot be ranked among the grinders of the
scavaging trade, they _must_ be placed among “the drivers.”

I am assured, by those who are familiar with such labour, that the 24
men employed by the machine masters do the work of upwards of 30 in the
honourable trade, with a corresponding saving to their employers, from
an adherence to the main point of the scurf system, the overworking of
the men without extra payment.

It has been before stated that, in dry weather, the roads require to be
watered before being swept, so that the brushes may _bite_. In summer
the machine-men sometimes commence this part of their business at three
in the morning; and at the other periods of the year, sometimes at
early morning, when moonlight. In summer the hours of labour in the
streets are from three, four, five, or six in the morning, to half-past
four in the afternoon; in winter, from light to light, and after street
there may be yard and barge work.

The saving by this scurf system, then, is:--

30 men (honourable trade), 16_s._ weekly £1248 yearly.
24 men (scurf-trade) doing same work, 16_s._ weekly 998 „
-----
Saving to capitalist and loss to labourer £250 „

It now but remains to sum up the capital, income, and expenditure of
the machine-scavaging trade.

The cost of a street-sweeping machine is 50_l._ to 60_l._, with an
additional 5_l._ 5_s._ for the set of brooms. The wear and tear of
these machines are very considerable. A man who had the care of one
told me that when there was a heavy stress on it he had known the iron
cogs of the inner wheels “go rattle, rattle, snap, snap,” until it
became difficult to proceed with the work. The brooms, too, in hard
work and “cloggy” weather, are apt to snap short, and in the regular
course of wear have to be renewed every four or five weeks. The sets
of brooms are of bass, worked strongly with copper wire. The whole
apparatus can be unscrewed and taken to pieces, to be cleaned or
repaired. The repairs, independently of the renewal of the brooms, have
been calculated at 7_l._ yearly each machine. The capital invested,
then, in twelve street-sweeping machines, in the horses, and what may
be considered the appurtenances of the trade, together with the yearly
expenditure, may be thus calculated:--

CAPITAL OF STREET-SWEEPING MACHINE TRADE.

12 machines, 60_l._ each £720
12 sets of brooms, 5_l._ 5_s._ each set 63
19 horses, 25_l._ each 475
4 water-carts, 20_l._ each 80
19 sets of harness (new), 7_l._ each set 133
4 barges, 50_l._ each 200
-----
£1671

YEARLY EXPENDITURE.

24 men, 16_s._ weekly £998
120 sets of brooms for 12 machines, 4_l._ per set 480
Wear and tear, &c. (15 per cent.) 255
Keep of 19 horses, 10_s._ each weekly 494
Rent (say) 150
Clerk (say) 100
Interest on capital, at 10 per cent. 170
-----
£2674

In this calculation I have included wear and tear of the whole of the
implements of the stock-in-trade, &c., taking that of the brooms on the
most moderate estimate. According to the scale of payment by the parish
of St. Martin (which is now 1000_l._ per annum) the probable receipts
of a single year will be:--

YEARLY RECEIPTS.

£ _s._ _d._
For hire of 12 machines 2500 0 0
200 barge-loads of manure, 5_l._ 15_s._ per barge 1150 10 0
---------------
3650 10 0
Yearly expenditure 2674 0 0
---------------
Profit 976 10 0

OF THE CLEANSING OF THE STREETS BY PAUPER LABOUR.

Under the head of the several modes and characteristics of
street-cleansing, I stated at p. 207 of the present volume that there
were no less than four distinct kinds of labourers employed in the
scavaging of the public thoroughfares of the metropolis. These were:--

1. The self-supporting manual labourers.
2. The self-supporting machine labourers.
3. The pauper labourers.
4. The “philanthropic” labourers.

I have already set forth the distinguishing features of the first two
of these different orders of workmen in connection with the scavaging
trade, and now proceed in due order to treat of the characteristics of
the third.

The subject of pauper labour generally is one of the most difficult
topics that the social philosopher can deal with. It is not possible,
however, to do more here than draw attention to the salient points of
the question. The more comprehensive consideration of the matter must
be reserved till such time as I come to treat of the poor specially
under the head of those that cannot work.

By the 43 Eliz., which is generally regarded as the basis of the
existing poor laws in this country, it was ordained that in every
parish a fund should be raised by local taxation, not merely for the
relief of the aged and infirm, but _for setting to work all persons
having no means to maintain themselves, and using no ordinary or daily
trade of life to get their living by_.

It was, however, soon discovered that it was one thing to pass an act
for setting able-bodied paupers to work, and another thing to do so.
“In every place,” as Mr. Thornton truly says in his excellent treatise
on “Over Population,” “there is only a certain amount of work to be
done,” (limited by the extent of the market) “and only a certain amount
of capital to pay for it; and, if the number of workmen be more than
proportionate to the work, employment can only be given to those who
want it by taking from those who have.”

Let me illustrate this by the circumstances of the scavaging trade.
There are 1760 miles of streets throughout London, and these would seem
to require about 600 scavagers to cleanse them. It is self-evident,
therefore, that if 400 paupers be “set” to sweep particular districts,
the same number of self-supporting labourers must be deprived of
employment, and if these cannot obtain work elsewhere, they of course
must become paupers too, and, seeking relief, be put upon the same kind
of work as they were originally deprived of, and that only to displace
and pauperize in their turn a similar number of independent operatives.

The work of a country then being limited (by the capital and market for
the produce), there can be but two modes of setting paupers to labour:
(1) by throwing the self-supporting operatives out of employment
altogether, and substituting pauper labourers in their stead; (2) by
giving a portion of the work to the paupers, and so decreasing the
employment, and consequently the wages, of the regular operatives. In
either case, however, the independent labourers must be reduced to a
state of comparative or positive dependence, for _it is impossible to
make labourers of the paupers of an over-populated country without
making paupers of the labourers_.

Some economists argue that, as paupers are consumers, they should,
whenever they are able to work, be made producers also, or otherwise
they exhaust the national wealth, to which they do not contribute. This
might be a sound axiom were there work sufficient for all. But in an
over-populated country there is not work enough, as is proven by the
mere fact of the over-population; and the able-bodied paupers _are_
paupers simply _because they cannot obtain work_, so that to employ
those who are out of work is to throw out those who are in work, and
thus to pauperize the self-supporting.

The whole matter seems to hinge upon this one question--

Who are to maintain the paupers? The ratepaying traders or the
non-ratepaying workmen?

If the paupers be set to work in a country like Great Britain, they
must necessarily be brought into competition with the self-supporting
workmen, and so be made to share the wage fund with them, decreasing
the price of labour in proportion to the extra number of such pauper
labourers among whom the capital of the trade has to be shared. Hence
the burden of maintaining the paupers will be virtually shifted from
the capitalist to the labourer, the poor-rate being thus really paid
out of the wages of the operatives, instead of the profits of the
traders, as it should be.

And here lies the great wrong of pauper labour. It saddles the poor
with the maintenance of their poorer brethren, while the rich not only
contribute nothing to their support, but are made still richer by the
increased cheapness resulting from the depreciation of labour and their
consequent ability to obtain a greater quantity of commodities for the
same amount of money.

In illustration of this argument let us say the wages of 600
independent scavagers amount, at 15_s._ a week each the year through,
to 23,400_l._ per annum; and let us say, moreover, that the keep of
400 paupers amounts, at 5_s._ a week each, to, altogether, 5200_l._;
hence the total annual expense to the several metropolitan parishes for
cleansing the streets and maintaining 400 paupers would be 23,400_l._ +
5200_l._ = 28,600_l._

If, however, the 400 paupers be set to scavaging work, and made to do
something for their keep, one of two things _must_ follow: (1) either
the 400 extra hands will receive their share of the 23,400_l._ devoted
to the payment of the operative scavagers, in which case the wages of
each of the regular hands will be reduced from 15_s._ to 9_s._ a week;
hence the maintenance of the paupers will be saddled upon the 600
independent operatives, who will lose no less than 9360_l._ per annum,
while the ratepayers will be saved the maintenance of the 400 paupers
and so gain 5200_l._ per annum by the change; (2) or else 400 of the
self-supporting operatives must be thrown out of work, in which case
the displaced labourers will lose no less than 15,600_l._, while the
ratepayers will gain upwards of 5000_l._

The reader is now, I believe, in a position to comprehend the wrong
done to the self-supporting scavagers by the employment of pauper
labour in the cleansing of the streets.

The preparation of the material of the roads of a parish seems, as far
as the metropolis is concerned, at one time to have supplied the chief
“test,” to which parishes have resorted, as regards the willingness
to labour on the part of the able-bodied applicants for relief. When
the casual wards of the workhouses were open for the reception of
all vagrants who sought a night’s shelter, each tramper was required
to break so many stones in the morning before receiving a certain
allowance of bread, soup, or what not for his breakfast; and he then
might be received again into the shelter of this casual asylum. In some
parishes the wards were open without the test of stone-breaking, and
there was a crowded resort to them, especially during the prevalence
of the famine in Ireland and the immigration of the Irish peasants to
England. The favourite resort of the vagrants was Marylebone workhouse,
and Irish immigrants very frequently presented slips of paper on
which some tramper whom they had met with on their way had written
“_Marylebone workhouse_,” as the best place at which they could apply,
and these the simple Irish offered as passports for admission!

Gradually, the asylum of these wards, with or without labour tests,
was discontinued, and in one where the labour test used to be strongly
insisted upon--in St. Pancras--a school for pauper children has been
erected on the site of the stone-yard.

This labour test was unequal when applied to all comers; for what
was easy work to an agricultural labourer, a railway excavator, a
quarryman, or to any one used to wield a hammer, was painful and
blistering to a starving tailor. Nor was the test enforced by the
overseers or regarded by the paupers as a proof of willingness to work,
but simply as a punishment for poverty, and as a means of deterring the
needy from applying for relief. To make labour a punishment, however,
is _not_ to destroy, but really to confirm, idle habits; it is to
give a deeper root to the vagrant’s settled aversion to work. “Well,
I always thought it was unpleasant,” the vagabond will say to himself
“_that_ working for one’s bread, and now I’m _convinced_ of it!” Again,
in many of the workhouses the labour to which the paupers were set was
of a manifestly unremunerative character, being work for mere work’s
sake; and to apply people to unproductive labour is to destroy all the
ordinary motives to toil--to take away the only stimulus to industry,
and remove the very will to work which the labour test was supposed to
discover[22].

The labour test, then, or setting the poor to work as a proof of
their willingness to labour, appears to be as foolish as it is
vicious; the objections to it being--(1) the inequality of the test
applied to different kinds of work-people; (2) the tendency of it to
confirm rather than weaken idle habits by making labour inordinately
repulsive; (3) the removal of the ordinary stimulus to industry by the
unproductiveness of the work to which the poor are generally applied.

And now, having dealt with the subject of parish labour as a test of
the willingness to work on the part of the applicants for relief, I
will proceed to deal with that portion of the work itself which is
connected with the cleansing of the streets.

And first as to the employment of paupers at all in the streets. If
pauperism be a disgrace, then it is unjust to turn a man into the
public thoroughfares, wearing the badge of beggary, to be pointed
at and scorned for his poverty, especially when we are growing so
particularly studious of our criminals that we make them wear masks
to prevent even their faces being seen[23]. Nor is it consistent with
the principles of an enlightened national morality that we should
force a body of honest men to labour upon the highways, branded with
a degrading garb, like convicts. Neither is it _wise_ to do so, for
the shame of poverty soon becomes deadened by the repeated exposure to
public scorn; and thus the occasional recipient of parish relief is
ultimately converted into the hardened and habitual pauper. “Once a
pauper always a pauper,” I was assured was the parish rule; and here
lies the _rationale_ of the fact. Not long ago this system of employing
_badged_ paupers to labour in the public thoroughfares was carried to
a much more offensive extent than it is even at present. At one time
the pauper labourers of a certain parish had the attention of every
passer-by attracted to them while at their work, for on the back of
each man’s garb--a sort of smock-frock--was marked, with sufficient
prominence, “CLERKENWELL. STOP IT!” This public intimation that the
labourers were not only paupers, but regarded as thieves, and expected
to purloin the parish dress they wore, attracted public attention, and
was severely commented upon at a meeting. The “STOP IT!” therefore was
cancelled, and the frocks are now _merely_ lettered “CLERKENWELL.”
Before the alteration the men very generally wore the garment inside
out.

The present dress of the parish scavagers is usually a loose
smock-frock, costing 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._, and a glazed hat of about
the same price. In some cases, however, the men may wear these things
or not, at their option.

The pauper scavagers employed by the several metropolitan parishes may
be divided into three classes:--

1. The in-door paupers, who receive no wages whatever (their lodging,
food, and clothing being considered to be sufficient remuneration for
their labour).

2. The out-door paupers, who are paid partly in money and partly in
kind, and employed in some cases three days and in others six days in
the week.

These may be subdivided into--(_a_) the single men, who receive, or
rather used to receive, 9_d._ and a quartern loaf for each of the
three or more days they were so employed; (_b_) the married men with
families, who receive 7_s._ and 3 quartern loaves a week to 1_s._
1-1/2_d._ and 1 quartern loaf for each day’s labour.

3. The unemployed labourers of the district, who are set to scavaging
work by the parish, and paid a regular money wage--the employment
being constant, and the rate of remuneration ranging from 1_s._ 3_d._
to 2_s._ 6_d._ a day for each of the six days, or from 7_s._ 6_d._ to
15_s._ a week.

In pp. 246, 247, I give a table of the wages paid by each of the
metropolitan parishes. This has been collected at great trouble in
order to arrive at the truth on this most important matter, and for
which purpose the several parishes have been personally visited. It
will be seen on reference to this document, that there is only one
parish at present that employs its in-door paupers in the scavaging of
the public streets; and 3 parishes employing 48 out-door paupers, who
are paid partly in money and partly in bread; the money remuneration
ranging from 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ a day (paid by Clerkenwell) to 7_s._
a week (paid by Chelsea), and moreover 31 parishes employing 408
applicants for relief (paupers they cannot be called), and paying them
wholly in money, the remuneration ranging from 15_s._ per week to 7_s._
6_d._ (paid by the Liberty of the Rolls), and the employment from 6
to 3 days weekly. As a general rule it was found that the greatest
complaints were made by the authorities as to the idleness of the poor,
and by the poor as to the tyranny of the authorities, in those parishes
where the remuneration was the least. In St. Luke’s, Chelsea, for
instance, where the remuneration is but 7_s._ a week and three loaves,
the criminations and recriminations by the parish functionaries and
the paupers were almost equally harsh and bitter. I should, however,
observe that the men employed in this parish spoke in terms of great
commendation of Mr. Pattison the surveyor, saying he always gave them
to understand that they were free labourers, and invariably treated
them as such. The men at work for Bermondsey parish also spoke very
highly of their superintendent, who, it seems, has interested himself
to obtain for them a foul-weather coat. Some of the highway boards or
trusts take all the pauper labourers sent them by the parish, while
others give employment only to such as please them. These boards
generally pay good wages, and are in favour with the men.

The mode of working, as regards the use of the implements and the
manual labour, is generally the same among the pauper scavagers as I
have described in connection with the scavagers generally.

The consideration of what is the rate of parish pay to the poor who
are employed as scavagers, is complicated by the different modes in
which the employment is carried out, for, as we see, there is--1st, the
scavaging labour, by workhouse inmates, without any payment beyond the
cost of maintenance and clothing; 2nd, the “short” or three-days-a-week
labour, with or without “relief” in the bestowal of bread; and 3rd, the
six days’ work weekly, with a money wage and no bread, nor anything in
the form of payment in kind or of “relief.”

Let me begin with the first system of labour above mentioned, viz.
the employment of the in-door paupers without wages of any kind,
their food, lodging, and clothing being considered as equivalents for
their work. The principal evil in connection with this form of parish
work is its compulsory character, the men regarding it not as so much
work given in exchange for such and such comforts, but as something
_exacted_ from them; and, to tell the truth, it is precisely the
counterpart of slavery, being equally deficient in all inducement to
toil, and consequently requiring almost the same system of compulsion
and supervision in order to keep the men at their labour. All interest
in the work is destroyed, there being no reward connected with it; and
consequently the same organized system of setting to work is required
as with cattle. There are but two inducements to voluntary action--pain
to be avoided or pleasure to be derived--or, in other words, the
attractiveness and repulsiveness of objects. Take away the pecuniary
attraction of labour, and men become mere beasts of burden, capable
of being set to work only by the dread of some punishment; hence the
system of parish labour, which has no reward directly connected with
it, must necessarily be tyrannical, and so tend to induce idleness and
a hatred of work altogether.

Of the different forms of pauper work, street-sweeping is, I am
inclined to believe, the most unpopular of all among the poor. The
scavaging is generally done in the workhouse dress, and that to all,
except the hardened paupers, and sometimes even to them, is highly
distasteful. Neither have such labourers, as I have said, the incentive
of that hope of the reward which, however diminutive, still tends to
sweeten the most repulsive labour. I am informed by an experienced
gangsman under a contractor, that it is notorious that the workhouse
hands are the least industrious scavagers in the streets. “They don’t
sweep as well,” he said, “and don’t go about it like regular men; they
take it quite easy.” It is often asserted that this labour of the
workhouse men is applied as a _test_; but this opinion seems rather to
bear on the past than the present.

One man thus employed gave me the following account. He was garrulous
but not communicative, as is frequently the case with men who love to
hear themselves talk, and are not very often able to command listeners.
He was healthy looking enough, but he told me he was, or had been
“delicate.” He querulously objected to be questioned about his youth,
or the reason of his being a pauper, but seemed to be abounding in
workhouse stories and workhouse grievances.

“Street-sweeping,” he said, “degrades a man, and if a man’s poor he
hasn’t no call to be degraded. Why can’t they set the thieves and
pickpockets to sweep? they could be watched easy enough; there’s
always idle fellers as reckons theirselves real gents, as can be got
for watching and sitch easy jobs, for they gets as much for them, as
three men’s paid for hard work in a week. I never was in a prison, but
I’ve heerd that people there is better fed and better cared for than
in workusses. What’s the meaning of that, sir, I’d like for to know?
You can’t tell me, but I can tell you. The workus is made as ugly as
it can be, that poor people may be got to leave it, and chance dying
in the street rather.” [Here the man indulged in a gabbled detail of a
series of pauper grievances which I had a difficulty in diverting or
interrupting. On my asking if the other paupers had the same opinion
as to street-sweeping as he had, he replied:--] “To be sure they has;
all them that has sense to have a ’pinion at all has; there’s not two
sides to it any how. No, I don’t want to be kept and do nothink. I want
_proper_ work. And by the rights of it I might as well be kept with
nothink to do as ---- or ----” [parish officials]. “Have they nothing
to do,” I asked? “Nothink, but to make mischief and get what ought to
go to the poor. It’s salaries and such like as swallers the rates, and
that’s what every poor family knows as knows anythink. Did I ever like
my work better? Certainly not. Do I take any pains with it? Well, where
would be the good? I can sweep well enough, when I please, but if I
could do more than the best man as ever Mr. Darke paid a pound a week
to, it wouldn’t be a bit better for me--not a bit, sir, I assure you.
We all takes it easy whenever we can, but the work _must_ be done. The
only good about it is that you get outside the house. It’s a change
that way certainly. But we work like horses and is treated like asses.”
[On my reminding him that he had just told me that they all took it
easy when they could, and _that_ rather often, he replied:] “Well,
don’t horses? But it ain’t much use talking, sir. It’s only them as has
been in workusses and in parish work as can understand all the ins and
outs of it.”

In giving the above and the following statements I have endeavoured to
elicit the _feelings_ of the several paupers whom I conversed with.
Poor, ignorant, or prejudiced men may easily be mistaken in their
opinions, or in what they may consider their “facts,” but if a clear
exposition of their sentiments be obtained, it is a guide to the
truth. I have, therefore, given the statement of the in-door pauper’s
opinions, querulously as they were delivered, as I believe them to be
the sentiments of those of his class who, as he said, had any opinion
at all.

It seems indeed, from all I could learn on the subject, that pauper
street-work, even at the best, is unwilling and slovenly work, pauper
workmen being the worst of all workmen. If the streets be swept clean,
it is because a dozen paupers are put to the labour of eight, nine,
or ten regular scavagers who are independent labourers, and who may
have some “pride of art,” or some desire to show their employers that
they are to be depended upon. This feeling does not actuate the pauper
workman, who thinks or knows that if he did evince a desire and a
perseverance to please, it would avail him little beyond the sneers and
ill-will of his mates; so that, even with a disposition to acquire the
good opinion of the authorities, there is this obstacle in his way, and
to most men who move in a circumscribed sphere it is a serious obstacle.

Of the second mode of pauper scavaging, viz., that performed by
out-door paupers, and paid for partly in money and partly in kind,
I heard from officials connected with pauper management very strong
condemnations, as being full of mischievous and degrading tendencies.
The payment to the out-door pauper scavager averages, as I have
stated, 9_d._ a day to a single man, with, perhaps, a quartern loaf;
and this, in some cases, is for only three days in the week; while
to a married man with a family, it varies between 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._
and 1_s._ 2_d._ a day, with a quartern, and sometimes two quartern
loaves; and this, likewise, is occasionally from three to six days
in the week. On this the single or family men must subsist, if they
have no other means of earning an addition. The men thus employed
are certainly not independent labourers, nor are they, in the full
sense of the word as popularly understood, paupers; for their means
of subsistence are partly the fruits of their toil; and although they
are wretchedly dependent, they seem to feel that they have a sort of
right to be set to work, as the law ordains such modicum of relief, in
or out of the workhouse, as will only ward off death through hunger.
This “three-days-a-week work” is by the poor or pauper labourers
looked upon as being, after the in-door pauper work, the worst sort of
employment.

[24] TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF MEN EMPLOYED BY THE METROPOLITAN
PARISHES AND HIGHWAY BOARDS IN SCAVAGING, AS WELL AS THE NUMBER OF
HOURS PER DAY AND NUMBER OF DAYS PER WEEK, TOGETHER WITH THE AMOUNT OF
WAGES ACCRUING TO EACH, AND THE TOTAL ANNUAL WAGES OF THE WHOLE.

-----------------------------------------+------------+------------+---------------+------------+--------------------------
| No. of | Number of | | |
| married men| single men | Number of | Number of | Daily or weekly
| employed | employed |Superintendents| Foremen | wages of the
PARISHES. | by parishes| by parishes| employed | or Gangers | married
| daily in | daily in | by parishes. | employed | parish-men.
| scavaging | scavaging | |by parishes.|
|the streets.|the streets.| | |
-----------------------------------------+------------+------------+---------------+------------+--------------------------
_Paid in Money (by Parishes)._ | | | | | _s._
Greenwich | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 15
| | | | |
Walworth }| 12 | 8 | | 3 | 15
Newington }| | | | |
Lambeth | 30 | | 1 | 5 | 15
Poplar | 20 | | | 4 | 15
St. Ann’s, Soho | 4 | 1 | | | 15
Rotherhithe | 4 | | | 1 | 14
Wandsworth | 6 | | | 1 | 12
Hackney | 12 | 4 | | 4 | 12
St. Mary’s, Paddington | 8 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 12
St. Giles’s, and St. George’s, Bloomsbury| 20 | 4 | | 4 | 12
St. Pancras (South-west Division) | 10 | | 2 | | 12
St. Clement Danes | 6 | 2 | | 1 | 11
St. Paul’s, Covent-garden | 2 | 5 | | 1 | 11
St. James’s, Westminster | 6 | | | 1 | 10
Ditto | 6 | | | 1 | 10
Ditto | 6 | | | 1 | 9
St. Andrew’s, Holborn | 10 | | 1 | 1 | 9
Marylebone | 80 | 15 | 1 | 10 | 9
St. George’s, Hanover-square | 30 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 9_s._ a week.
Liberty of the Rolls | 1 | | | | 7s. 6d.
Bermondsey | 13 | 1 | 1 | | 1_s._ 4_d._ per day.
_Paid in Money (by Highway Boards)._ | | | | |
St. James’s, Clerkenwell (1st Division) | 5 | | | | 15
Islington | 7 | 1 | | 1 | 15
Commercial Road East | 4 | 1 | 1 | | 15
Hampstead | 4 | | | 1 | 15
Highgate | 3 | 2 | | 1 | 14
Kensington | 6 | 1 | | 1 | 12
Lewisham | 4 | | | 1 | 12
Camberwell | 10 | | | 1 | 12
Christchurch, Lambeth | 6 | | | 1 | 12
Woolwich | 5 | | | 1 | 12
Deptford | 4 | | | 1 | 9
_Paid partly in kind._ | | | | |
St. Luke’s, Chelsea | 27 | 9 | | 3 | 7_s._, and on an average
| | | | | 3 loaves each,
| | | | | at 4d. a loaf.
Hans-town „ | 6 | | | 1 | 7_s._, and average 3
| | | | | loaves per head.
St. James’s, Clerkenwell | 6 | | | |1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ a day, and
| | | | | 1 quartern loaf.
_Paid wholly in kind._ | | | | |
St. Pancras (Highways) | | 10 | 1 | | estimated expense
| | | | | of food, 2_s._ 4_d._
| | | | | weekly.
-----------------------------------------+------------+------------+---------------+------------+--------------------------
Total | 400 | 66 | 8 | 62 |
-----------------------------------------+------------+------------+---------------+------------+--------------------------

--------------------+--------------------+-------------+------------+------------+-----------------
| | | Number of | Number of | Total annual
Daily or weekly | Weekly wages | Weekly wages| hours per | days in the| wages of
wages of the | of the |of Foremen or| day each | week each | the whole,
single | Superintendents | Gangers | parish-man | parish-man | including the
parish-men. | employed by | employed by | is employed| is employed| estimated
| parishes. | parishes. |to sweep the| in sweeping| value of food
| | | streets. |the streets.| and clothes.
--------------------+--------------------+-------------+------------|------------+-----------------
_s._ | _s._ | _s._ | | | £. _s._ _d._
15 | 30_s._ and a house | 18 | 10 | 6 | 456 16 0
| to live in. | | | |
14 | | 18 | 12 | 6 | 899 12 0
| | | | |
| 20 | 18 | 10 | 6 | 1456 0 0
| | 18 | 10 | 6 | 967 4 0
15 | | | 12 | 6 | 195 0 0
| | 16 | 10 | 6 | 187 4 0
| | 18 | 10 | 6 | 234 0 0
10 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 665 12 0
10 | 20 | 15 | 12 | 6 | 509 12 0
12 | | 18 | 12 | 6 | 936 0 0
| | 18 | 12 | 6 | 93 12 0
11 | | 15 | 10 | 6 | 267 16 0
11 | | 13 | 12 | 6 | 234 0 0
| | 12 | 10 | 6 | 187 4 0
| | 12 | 10 | 6 | 187 4 0
| | 12 | 10 | 6 | 166 12 0
| 15 | 12 | 10 | 6 | 304 4 0
9 | 18 | 16 | 10 | 6 | 2685 16 0
9_s._ a week. | 20 | 16 | 10 | 6 | 1060 16 0
| | | 10 | 6 | 19 10 0
1_s._ 4_d._ per day.|28_s._ and clothing.| | 10 | 5 | 321 3 4
| | | | |
| | | 10 | 6 | 195 0 0
15 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 405 0 0
15 | 100_l._ a year. | | 12 | 6 | 295 0 0
| | 18 | 10 | 6 | 202 10 0
14 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 228 16 0
12 | | 18 | 12 | 6 | 265 4 0
| | 18 | 10 | 6 | 171 12 0
| | 18 | 12 | 6 | 358 16 0
| | 15 | 10 | 6 | 226 4 0
| | 18 | 10 | 6 | 202 16 0
| | 18 | 10 | 3 | 140 8 0
| | | | |
7 | | 14 | 10 | 6 | 834 12 0
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | 14 | 10 | 6 | 161 4 0
| | | | |
| | | 10 | 3 | 70 4 0
| | | | |
| | | | |
| 21_s._ and food. | | 8 | 4 | 128 5 4
| | | | |
| | | | |
--------------------+--------------------+-------------+------------+------------+-----------------
| | | | |15,919 8 8
--------------------+--------------------+-------------|------------+------------+-----------------

From a married man employed by the parish under this mode, I had the
following account.

He was an intelligent-looking man, of about 35, but with nothing very
particular in his appearance unless it were a head of very curly hair.
He gave me the statement in his own room, which was larger than I have
usually found such abodes, and would have been very bare, but that it
was somewhat littered with the vessels of his trade as a street-seller
of Nectar, Persian Sherbet, Raspberryade, and other decoctions of
coloured ginger-beer, with high-sounding names and indifferent flavour:
in the summer he said he could live better thereby, with a little
costering, than by street-sweeping, but being often a sickly man he
could not do so during the uncertainties of a winter street trade. His
wife, a decent looking woman, was present occasionally, suckling one
child, about two years old--for the poor often protract the weaning of
their children, as the mother’s nutriment is the _cheapest_ of all food
for the infant, and as the means of postponing the further increase of
their family--whilst another of five or six years of age sat on a bench
by her side. There was nothing on the walls in the way of an ornament,
as I have seen in some of the rooms of the poor, for the couple had
once been in the workhouse, and might be driven there again, and with
such apprehensions did not care, perhaps, to make a home otherwise than
they found it, even if the consumption of only a little spare time were
involved.

The husband said:--

“I was brought up as a type-founder; my father, who was one, learnt me
his trade; but he died when I was quite a young man, or I might have
been better perfected in it. I was comfortably off enough then, and got
married. Very soon after that I was taken ill with an abscess in my
neck, you can see the mark of it still.” [He showed me the mark.] “For
six months I wasn’t able to do a thing, and I was a part of the time,
I don’t recollect how long, in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. I was weak
and ill when I came out, and hardly fit for work; I couldn’t hear of
any work I could get, for there was a great bother in the trade between
master and men. Before I went into the hospital, there was money to pay
to doctors; and when I came out I could earn nothing, so everything
went, yes, sir, everything. My wife made a little matter with charing
for families she’d lived in, but things are in a bad way if a poor
woman has to keep her husband. She was taken ill at last, and then
there was nothing but the parish for us. I suffered a great deal before
it come to that. It was awful. No one can know what it is but them that
suffers it. But I didn’t know what in the world to do. We lived then in
St. Luke’s, and were passed to our own parish, and were three months
in the workhouse. The living was good enough, better then than it is
now, I’ve heard, but I was miserable.” [“And I was _very_ miserable,”
interposed the wife, “for I had been brought up comfortable; my father
was a respectable tradesman in St. George’s-in-the-East, and I had been
in good situations.”] “We made ourselves,” said the husband, “as useful
as we could, but we were parted of course. At the three months’ end,
I had 10_s._ given to me to come out with, and was told I might start
costermongering on it. But to a man not up to the trade, 10_s._ won’t
go very far to keep up costering. I didn’t feel master enough of my
own trade by this time to try for work at it, and work wasn’t at all
regular. There were good hands earning only 12_s._ a week. The 10_s._
soon went, and I had again to apply for relief, and got an order for
the stone-yard to go and break stones. Ten bushels was to be broken for
15_d._ It was dreadful hard work at first. My hands got all blistered
and bloody, and I’ve gone home and cried with pain and wretchedness.
At first it was on to three days before I could break the ten bushels.
I felt shivered to bits all over my arms and shoulders, and my head
was splitting. I then got to do it in two days, and then in one, and
it grew easier. But all this time I had only what was reckoned three
days’ work in a week. That is, you see, sir, I had only three times
ten bushels of stones given to break in the week, and earned only
3_s._ 9_d._ Yes, I lived on it, and paid 1_s._ 6_d._ a week rent, for
the neighbours took care of a few sticks for us, and the parish or
a broker wouldn’t have found them worth carriage. My wife was then
in the country with a sister. I lived upon bread and dripping, went
without fire or candle (or had one only very seldom) though it wasn’t
warm weather. I can safely say that for eight weeks I never tasted one
bite of meat, and hardly a bite of butter. When I couldn’t sleep of
a night, but that wasn’t often, it was terrible, very. I washed what
bits of things I had then myself, and had sometimes to get a ha’porth
of soap as a favour, as the chandler said she ‘didn’t make less than a
penn’orth.’ If I eat too much dripping, it made me feel sick. I hardly
know how much bread and dripping I eat in a week. I spent what money I
had in it and bread, and sometimes went without. I was very weak, you
may be sure, sir; and if I’d had the influenza or anything that way, I
should have gone off like a shot, for I seemed to have no constitution
left. But my wife came back again and got work at charing, and made
about 4_s._ a week at it; but we were still very badly off. Then I got
to work on the roads every day, and had 1_s._ and a quartern loaf a
day, which was a rise. I had only one child then, but men with larger
families got two quartern loaves a day. Single men got 9_d._ a day.
It was far easier work than stone-breaking too. The hours were from
eight to five in winter, and from seven to six in summer. But there’s
always changes going on, and we were put on 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ a day and
a quartern loaf, and only three days a week. All the same as to time
of course. The bread wasn’t good; it was only cheap. I suppose there
was 20 of us working most of the times as I was. The gangsman, as you
call him, but that’s more for the regular hands, was a servant of the
parish, and a great tyrant. Yes, indeed, when we had a talk among
ourselves, there was nothing but grumbling heard of. Some of the tales
I’ve heard were shocking; worse than what I’ve gone through. Everybody
was grumbling, except perhaps two men that had been 20 years in the
streets, and were like born paupers. They didn’t feel it, for there’s
a great difference in men. They knew no better. But anybody might
have been frightened to hear some of the men talk and curse. We’ve
stopped work to abuse the parish officers as might be passing. We’ve
mobbed the overseers, and a number of us, I was one, were taken before
the magistrate for it; but we told him how badly we were off, and he
discharged us, and gave us orders into the workhouse, and told ’em to
see if nothing could be done for us. We were there till next morning,
and then sent away without anything being said.

“It’s a sad life, sir, is a parish worker’s. I wish to God I could
get out of it. But when a man has children he can’t stop and say ‘I
can’t do this,’ and ‘I won’t do that.’ Last week, now, in costering, I
lost 6_s._” [he meant that his expenses, of every kind, exceeded his
receipts by 6_s._], “and though I can distil nectar, or anything that
way” [this was said somewhat laughingly], “it’s only when the weather’s
hot and fine that any good at all can be done with it. I think, too,
that there’s not the money among working men that there once was.
Anything regular in the way of pay must always be looked at by a man
with a family.

“Of course the streets must be properly swept, and if I can sweep
them as well as Mr. Dodd’s men, for I know one of them very well, why
should I have only 3_s._ 4-1/2_d._ a week and three loaves, and he have
16_s._, I think it is? I don’t drink, my wife knows I don’t” [the wife
assented], “and it seems as if in a parish a man must be kept down when
he is down, and then blamed for it. I may not understand all about it,
but it looks queer.”

From an _unmarried_ man, looking like a mere boy in the face, although
he assured me he was nearly 24, as far as he knew, I heard an account
of his labour and its fruits as a parish scavager; also of his former
career, which partakes greatly in its characteristics of the narratives
I gave, toward the close of the first volume, of deserted, neglected,
and runaway children.

He lived from his earliest recollection with an old woman whom he first
called “grandmother,” and was then bid to call “aunt,” and she, some of
the neighbours told him, had “kept him out of his rights,” for she had
4_s._ a week with him, so that there ought to have been money coming to
him when he grew up. I have sometimes heard similar statements from the
ignorant poor, for it is agreeable enough to them to fancy that they
have been wronged out of fortunes to which they were justly entitled,
and deprived of the position and consequence in life which they ought
to have possessed “by rights.” In the course of my inquiries among the
poor women who supply the slop milliners’ shops with widows’ caps,
cap fronts, women’s collars, &c., &c., I was told by one middle-aged
cap-maker, a very silly person, that she would be worth 100,000_l._,
“if she had her rights.” What those “rights” were she could not
explain, only that there was and had been a great deal of money in the
family, and of course she had a right to her share, only she was kept
out of it.

The youth in question never heard of a father, and had been informed
that his mother had died when he was a baby. From what he told me, I
think it most probable that he was an illegitimate child, for whose
maintenance his father possibly paid the 4_s._ a week, perhaps to
some near relative of the deceased mother. The old woman, as well as
I could make the matter out from his narrative, died suddenly, and,
as little was known about her, she was buried by the parish, and the
lad, on the evening of the funeral, was to have been taken by the
landlord of the house where they lodged into the workhouse; but the
boy ran away before this could be accomplished; the parish of course
not objecting to be relieved of an incumbrance. He thought he was then
about twelve or thirteen years of age, and he had before run away from
two schools, one a Ragged-school, to which he had been sent, “_for
it was so confining_,” he said, “and one master, not he as had the
raggeds, leathered him,” to use his own words, “tightly.” He knew his
letters now, he thought, but that was all, “and very few,” he said,
gravely, “would have put up with it so long as I did.” He subsisted as
well as he could by selling matches, penny memorandum books, onions,
&c., after he had run away, sleeping under hedges in the country, or in
lodging-houses in town, and living on a few pence a day, or “starving
on nothink.” He was taken ill, and believed it was of a fever, at or
somewhere about Portsmouth, and when he was sufficiently recovered,
and had given the best account he could of himself, was passed to his
parish in London. The relieving officer, he said, would have given him
a pair of shoes and half-a-crown, and let him “take his chance, but
the doctor wouldn’t sartify any ways.” He meant, I think, that the
medical officer found him too ill to be at large on his own account.
He discharged himself, however, in a few weeks from this parish
workhouse, as he was convalescent. “The grub there, you see, sir,” he
said, “was stunning good when I first went, but it fell off.” As the
probability is that there was no change in the diet, it may not be
unfair to conclude that the regular meals of the establishment were
very relishable at first, and that afterwards their very regularity and
their little variation made the recipient critical.

“When I left, sir,” he stated, “they guv me 2_s._ 6_d._, and a tidy
shirt, and a pair of blucherers, and mended up my togs for me decent.
I tried all sorts of goes then. I went to Chalk-farm and some other
fairs with sticks for throwing, and used to jump among them as throwing
was going on, and to sing out, ‘break my legs and miss my pegs.’ I got
many a knock, and when I did, oh! there _was_ such larfing at the fun
on it. I sold garden sticks too, and garden ropes, and posts sometimes;
but it was all wery poor pay. Sometimes I made 10_d._, but not never
I think but twice 1_s._ a day at it, and oftener 6_d._, and in bad
weather there was nothink to be done. If I made 6_d._ clear, it was
1_d._ for cawfee--for I often went out fasting in a morning--and 1_d._
for bread and butter, and 1_d._ for pudden for dinner, and another
1_d._ perhaps for beer--half-pint and a farden out at the public
bar--and 2_d._ for a night’s lodging. I’ve had sometimes to leave half
my stock in flue with a deputy for a night’s rest. O, I didn’t much
mind the bugs, so I could rest; and next day had to take my things out
if I could, and pay a hexter ha’penny or penny, for hintrest, like.
Yes, I’ve made 18_d._ a hevening at a fair; but there’s so many a
going it there that one ruins another, and wet weather ruins the whole
biling, the pawillion, theaytres and all. I never was a hactor, never;
but I’ve thought sometimes I’d like to try my hand at it. I may some
day, ’cause I’m tall. I was forced to go to the parish again, for I
got ill and dreadful weak, and then they guv me work on the roads. I
can’t just say how long it’s since, two or three year perhaps, but I
had 9_d._ a day at first, and reglar work, and then three days and
three loaves a week, and then three days and no loaves. I haven’t been
at it werry lately. I’ve rayther taken the summer out of myself, but
I must go back soon, for cold weather’s a coming. Vy, I lived a good
deal on carrying trunks from the busses to Euston Railway; a good
many busses stops in the New-road, in the middle of the square. Some
was foreigners, and they was werry scaly. No, I never said nothink
but once, ven I got two French ha’pennies for carrying a heavy old
leather thing, like a coach box, as seemed to belong to a family; and
then the railway bobbies made me hold my tongue. I jobbed about in
other places too, but the time’s gone by now. O, I had a deal to put
up with last winter. What is 9_d._ a day for three days? and if poor
men had their rights, times ’ud be different. I’d like to know where
all the money goes. I never counted how many parish sweepers there
was; too many by arf. I’ve a rights to work, and it’s as little as a
parish can do to find it. I pay 1_s._ a week for half a bed, and not
half enough bed-clothes; but me and Jack Smith sometimes sleeps in our
clothes, and sometimes spreads ’em o’ top. No, poor Jack, he hasn’t no
hold on a parish; he’s a mud-lark and a gatherer [bone-grubber]. Do
I like the overseers and the parish officers? In course not, nobody
does. Why don’t they? Well, how can they? that’s just where it is. Ven
I haven’t been at sweeping, I’ve staid in bed as long as I was let;
but Mother B.--I don’t know no other name she has--wouldn’t stand it
after ten. O no, it wern’t a common lodging-house, a sort of private
lodging-house perhaps, where you took by the week. If I made nothink
but my ninepences, I lived on bread and cawfee, or bread and coker,
and sometimes a red herring, and I’ve bought ’em in the Brill at five
and six a penny. Mother B. charged 1/2_d._ for leave to toast ’em on
her gridiron. She _is_ a scaly old ----. _I’ve oft spent all my money
in a tripe supper at night, and fasted all next day._ I used to walk
about and look in at the cook-shop windows, and try for a job next
day. _I’d have gone five miles for anybody for a penn’orth of pudden._
No, I never thought of making away with myself; never. Nor I never
thought of going for a soldier; _it wouldn’t suit me to be tied so_.
What I want is this here--regular work and no jaw. O, I’m sometimes as
miserable as hunger’ll make a parson, if ever he felt it. Yes, I go to
church sometimes when I’m at work for the parish, if I’m at all togged.
No doubt I shall die in the workus. You see there’s nobody in the world
cares for me. I can’t tell just how I spend my money; just as it comes
into my head. No, I don’t care about drinking; it don’t agree with me;
but there’s some can live on it. I don’t think as I shall ever marry,
though who knows?”

The third and last system of parish work is where the labourer is
employed regularly, and paid a fixed wage, out of the parochial fund
certainly, but not in the same manner as the paupers are paid, nor with
any payment in kind (as in loaves), but all in money. The payment in
this wise is usually 1_s._ 6_d._ a day, and, but for such employment,
the poor so employed, would, in most instances, apply for relief.

In one parish, where the poor are regularly employed in street
sweeping, and paid a regular wage in money, the whole scavaging work is
done by the paupers, as they are usually termed, though they are not
“on the rate.” By them the streets are swept and the houses dusted,
the granite broken for macadamization, and the streets and roads
repaved or repaired. This is done by about 50 men, the labour in the
different departments I have specified being about equally apportioned
as to the number employed in each. The work is executed without any
direct intervention of the parish officers employed in administering
_relief_ to the poor, but through the agency of a board. All the men,
however, are the poor of the parish, and but for this employment would
or might claim relief, or demand admittance with their families into
the workhouse. The system, therefore, is one of indirect pauper labour.
Nearly all the men have been unskilled labourers, the exception being
now and then a few operatives in such handicrafts as were suffering
from the dearth of employment. Some of the artizans, I was informed,
would be earning their 9_s._ in the stone-yard one week, and the next
getting 30_s._ at their business. The men thus labouring for the parish
are about three-fifths Irishmen, a fifth Welchmen, or rather more than
a fifth, and the remainder Englishmen. There is not a single Scotchman
among them.

There is no difference, in the parish I allude to, between the wages
of married and single men, but men with families are usually preferred
among the applicants for such work. They all reside in their own rooms,
or sometimes in lodging-houses, but this rests with themselves.

I had the following account from a heavy and healthy-looking
middle-aged man, dressed in a jacket and trousers of coarse corduroy.
There is so little distinctive about it, however, that I will not
consume space in presenting it in the narrative form in which I noted
it down. It may suffice that the man seemed to have little recollection
as to the past, and less care as to the future. His life, from all
I could learn from him, had been spent in what may be called menial
labour, as the servant, not of an individual, but of a parish; but
there was nothing, he knew of, that he had to thank anybody for--parish
or any one. They wanted _him_ and he wanted _them_. On my asking him if
he had never tried to “better himself,” he said that he _had_ once as a
navvy, but a blow on the head and eye, from a portion of rock shivered
by his pick-axe, disabled him for awhile, and he left railway work.
He went to church, as was expected of him, and he and his wife liked
it. He had forgotten how to read, but never was “a dab at it,” and
so “didn’t know nothing about the litany or the psalms.” He couldn’t
say as he knew any difference between the Church of England and the
Roman Catholic church-goers, “cause the one was a English and the t’
other a Irish religion,” and he “wasn’t to be expected to understand
Irish religion.” He saw no necessity to put by money (this he said
hesitatingly), supposing he could; what was his parish for? and he
would take care he didn’t lose his settlement. If he’d ever had such a
chance as some had he might have saved money, but he never had. He had
no family, and his wife earned about 4_s._ a week, but not every week,
in a wool warehouse, and they did middling.

The above, then, are the modes in which paupers, or imminent paupers,
so to speak, are employed, and in one way or other are _paid_ for their
labour, or what is called paid, and who, although parish menials, still
reside in their own abodes, with the opportunity, such as it is, of
“looking out” for better employment.

As to the _moral qualities of the street-sweeping paupers_ I do not
know that they differ from those of paupers generally. All men who feel
themselves sunk into compulsory labour and a degraded condition are
dissatisfied, and eager to throw the blame of their degradation from
their own shoulders. But it is evident that these men are unwilling
workers, because their work is deprived of its just reward; and
although I did not hear of any difficulty being experienced in getting
them to work, I was assured by many who knew them well, that they do
not go about it with any alertness. Did any one ever hear a pauper
whistle or sing at his street-work? I believe that every experienced
vestryman will agree to the truth of the statement that it is very
rarely a confirmed pauper rises from his degradation. His thoughts
and aspirations seem bounded by the workhouse and the parish. The
reason appears to be because the workhouse authorities seek rather to
degrade than to elevate the man, resorting to every means of shaming
the pauper, until at last he becomes so utterly callous to the disgrace
of pauperism that he does not care to alter his position. The system,
too, adopted by the parish authorities of not paying for work, or
paying less than the ordinary prices of the trade, causes the pauper
labourers to be unwilling workers; and finding that industry brings
no reward, or less than its fair reward, to them, they get to hate
all work, and to grow up habitual burdens on the State. Crabbe, the
poet, who in all questions of borough and parish life is an authority,
makes his workhouse boy, Dick Monday, who when a boy got more kicks
than halfpence, die Sir Richard Monday, of Monday-place; but this is a
flight on the wings of poetical licence; certainly not impossible, and
that is all which can be said for its likelihood.

The following remarks on the payment of the parish street-sweepers are
from one of Mr. Cochrane’s publications:--

“The council considers it a duty to the poor to touch upon the
niggardly manner in which parish scavengers are generally paid, and
the deplorable and emaciated condition which they usually present,
with regard to their clothing and personal appearance. One contractor
pays 16_s._ 6_d._ per week; 2 pay 16_s._; 12 (including a Highway
Board) pay 15_s._ each; 1 pays 14_s._ 6_d._; 2 pay 14_s._; and 1 pays
so low as 12_s._ On the other hand, five parish boards of ‘guardians
of the poor,’ pay only 9_s._ each, to their miserable mud-larks; one
pays 8_s._; another 7_s._ 5_d._; a third 7_s._; a fourth compensates
its labourers--in the British metropolis, where rent and living are
necessarily higher than elsewhere--with 5_s._ 8_d._ per week! whilst
a fifth pays 3 men 15_s._ each, 12 men 10_s._ each, and 6 men 7_s._
6_d._ each, for exactly the same kind of work!!! But what renders this
mean torture of men (because they happen to be poor) absurd as well
as cruel, are the anomalous facts, that whilst the guardians of one
parish pay 5 men 7_s._ each, the contractor for another part of the
same parish, pays his 4 men 14_s._ each;--and whilst the guardians of
a second parish pay only 5_s._ 8_d._, the Highway Board pays 15_s._
to each of its labourers, for performing exactly the same work in the
same district!--Mr. Darke, scavenging contractor of Paddington, lately
stated that he never had, and never would, employ any man at less
than 16_s._ or 18_s._ per week;--and Mr. Sinnott, of Belvidere-road,
Lambeth, about three months since, offered to certain West-End
guardians, to take 40 paupers out of their own workhouse to cleanse
their own parish, on the street-orderly system;--and to pay them
15_s._ per week each man[25]; but the economical guardians preferred
filth and a full workhouse, to cleanliness, Christian charity, and
common sense;--and so the proposal of this considerate contractor
was rejected! It is certainly far from being creditable to boards of
gentlemen and wealthy tradesmen who manage parish affairs, to pay
little more than one-half the wages that an individual does, to poor
labourers who cannot choose their employment or their masters....

“The broken-down tradesman, the journeyman deprived of his usual work
by panic or by poverty of the times, the ingenious mechanic, or the
unsuccessful artist, applies at the parish labour-market for leave
to live by other labour than that which hitherto maintained him in
comfort.... The usual language of such persons, even when applying for
private alms or parochial relief, is, not that they want money, but
‘that they have long been out of work;’ ‘that their particular trade
has been overstocked with apprentices, or superseded by machinery;’ or,
‘that their late employer has become bankrupt, or has discharged the
majority of his hands from the badness of the times.’ To a man of this
class, the guardian of the poor replies, ‘We will test your willingness
to labour, by employing you in the stone-yard, or to sweep the streets;
but the parish being heavily burthened with rates, we cannot afford
more than 7_s._ or 8_s._ a week.’ The poor creature, conscious of his
own helplessness, accepts the miserable pittance, in order to preserve
himself and family from immediate starvation....

“The council has taken much pains to ascertain the wages, and mode of
expenditure of them, by this uncared-for, and almost pariah, class
of labourers throughout the metropolitan parishes; and it possesses
undeniable proofs, that few possess any further garment than the rags
upon their backs; some being even without a change of linen; that they
never enter a place of worship, on account of their want of decent
clothing; that their wives and children are starved and in rags, and
the latter without the least education; that they never by any chance
taste fresh animal food; that one-third of their hard earnings is paid
for rent; and that their only sustenance (unless their wives happen to
go out washing or charing), consists of bread, potatoes, coarse tea
without milk or sugar, a salt herring two or three times a week, and
a slice of rusty bacon on Sunday morning! The meal called dinner they
never know; their only refection being breakfast and ‘tea:’ beer they
do not taste from year’s end to year’s end; and any other luxury, or
even necessary, is out of the question.

“Of the 21 scavengers employed by St. James’s parish in 1850, no less
than 16,” says Mr. Cochrane’s report, “were married, with from one to
four children each. How the poor creatures who receive but 7_s._ 6_d._
a week support their families, is best known to themselves.”

Let me now, in conclusion, endeavour to arrive at a rough estimate
as to the sum of which the pauper labours annually are mulct by the
before-mentioned rates of remuneration, estimating their labour at the
market value or amount paid by the honourable contractors, viz. 16_s._
a week; for if private individuals can afford to pay that wage, and yet
reap a profit out of the transaction, the guardians of the poor surely
could and should pay the same prices, and not avail themselves of
starving men’s necessities to reduce the wages of a trade to the very
quick of subsistence. If it be a sound principle that the condition
of the pauper should be rendered _less_ desirable than that of the
labourer, assuredly the principle is equally sound that the condition
of the labourer should be made _more_ desirable than that of the
pauper; for if to pamper the pauper be to make indolence more agreeable
than industry, certainly to grind down the wages of the labourer is to
render industry as unprofitable as indolence. In either case the same
premium is proffered to pauperism. As yet the Poor-Law Commissioners
have seen but one way of reducing the poor-rates, viz., by rendering
the state of the pauper as _unenviable_ as possible, and they have
wholly lost sight of the other mode of attaining the same end, viz.,
by making the state of the labourer as _desirable_ as possible. To
institute a terrible poor law without maintaining an attractive form of
industry, is to hold out a boon to crime. If the wages of the working
man are to be reduced to bare subsistence, and the condition of the
pauper is to be rendered worse than that of the working man, what
atrocities will not be committed upon the poor. Elevate the condition
of the labourer, and there will be no necessity to depress the pauper.
Make work more attractive by increasing the reward for it, and laziness
will necessarily become more repulsive. As it is, however, the pauper
is not only kept at the very lowest point of subsistence, but his
half-starved labour is brought into competition with that of men living
in a comparative state of comfort; and the result, of course, is, that
instead of decreasing the number of paupers or poor-rates, we make
paupers of our labourers, and fill our workhouses by such means. If
a scavager’s labour be worth from 12_s._ to 15_s._ per week in the
market, what moral right have the _guardians of the poor_ to pay 5_s._
8_d._ for the same commodity? If the paupers are set to do work which
is fairly worth 15_s._, then to pay them little more than one-third of
the regular value is not only to make unwilling workers of the paupers,
but to drag down all the better workmen to the level of the worst.

It may be estimated that the outlay on pauper labour, as a whole, after
deducting the sum paid to superintendents and gangers, does not exceed
10_s._ weekly per individual; consequently the lowering of the price of
labour is in this ratio: There are now, in round numbers, 450 pauper
scavagers in the metropolis, and the account stands thus:--

Yearly.
450 scavagers, at the regular
weekly wages of 16_s._ each £18,710
450 pauper labourers, 10_s._ each
weekly 11,700
-------
Lower price of pauper work £7,020

Hence we see, that the great scurf employers of the scavagers, after
all, are the guardians of the poor, compared with whom the most
grasping contractor is a model of liberality.

That the minimum of remuneration paid by the parishes has tended,
and is tending more and more, to the general depreciation of wages
in the scavaging trade, there is no doubt. It has done so directly
and indirectly. One man, who had been a last-maker, told me that he
left his employment as a London scavager, for he had “come down to
the parish,” and set off at the close of the summer into Kent for the
harvest and hopping, for, when in the country, he had been more
used to agricultural labour than to last, clog, or patten making.
He considered that he had not been successful; still he returned to
London a richer man by 26_s._ 6_d._ Nearly 20_s._ of this soon went for
shoes and necessary clothing, and to pay some arrears of rent, and a
chandler’s bill he owed, after which he could be trusted again where he
was known. He applied to the foreman of a contractor, whom he knew, for
work. “What wage?” said the foreman. “Fifteen shillings a week,” was
the reply. “Why, what did you get from the parish for sweeping?” “Nine
shillings.” “Well,” said the foreman, “I know you’re a decent man, and
you were recommended before, and so I _can_ give you four or five days
a week at 2_s._ 4_d._ a day, and no nonsense about hours; _for you know
yourself I can get 50 men as have been parish workers at 1s. 9d. a day,
and jump at it, and so you mustn’t be cheeky_.” The man closed with the
offer, knowing that the foreman spoke the truth.

A contractor told me that he could obtain “plenty of hands,” used to
parish scavaging work, at 10_s._ 6_d._ to 12_s._ a week, whereas he
paid 16_s._

It is evident, then, that the system of pauper work in scavaging has
created an increasing market for cheap and deteriorated labour, a
market including hundreds of the unemployed at other unskilled labours;
and it is hardly to be doubted that the many who have faith in the
doctrine that it is the best policy to buy in the cheapest and sell in
the dearest market, will avail themselves of the low-priced labour of
this pauper-constituted mart.

It is but right to add, that those parishes which pay 15_s._ a week
are as worthy of commendation as those which pay 9_s._, 7_s._ 6_d._
and 7_s._ per week, and 1_s._ 4_d._ and 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ a day are
reprehensible; and, unfortunately, the latter have a tendency to
regulate all the others.

OF THE STREET-ORDERLIES.

This constitutes the last of the four varieties of labour employed in
the cleansing of the public thoroughfares of London. I have already
treated of the self-supporting manual labour, the self-supporting
machine labour, and the pauper labour, and now proceed to the
consideration of the philanthropic labour of the streets.

In the first place, let us understand clearly what is meant by
philanthropic labour, and how it is distinguished from pauper labour on
the one hand, and self-supporting labour on the other. Self-supporting
labour I take to be that form of work which returns not less, and
generally something more, than is expended upon it. Pauper labour,
on the other hand, is work to which the applicants for parish relief
are “set,” not with a view to the profit to be derived from it, but
partly as a test of their willingness to work, and partly as a means
of employing the unemployed; while philanthropic labour is employment
provided for the unemployed with the same disregard of profit as
distinguishes pauper labour, but with a greater regard for the poor,
and as a means of affording them relief in a less degrading manner
than is done under the present Poor Law. Pauper and philanthropic
labour, then, differ essentially from self-supporting labour in being
_non-profitable_ modes of employment; that is to say, they yield so
bare an equivalent for the sum expended upon the labourers, that
none, in the ordinary way of trade, can be found to provide the means
necessary for putting them into operation: while pauper labour differs
from philanthropic labour, in the fact that the funds requisite for
“setting the poor on work” are provided by law as a matter of social
policy, whereas, in the case of philanthropic labour, the funds,
or a part of them, are supplied by voluntary contributions, out of
a desire to improve the labourers’ condition. There are, then, two
distinguishing features in all philanthropic labour--the one is, that
it yields no profit (if it did it would become a matter of trade), and
the other, that it is instituted and maintained from a wish to benefit
the labourer.

[Illustration: STREET ORDERLIES.]

The Street-Orderly system forms part of the operations on behalf of
the poor adopted by a society, of which Mr. Charles Cochrane is the
president, entitled the “National Philanthropic Association,” which is
said to have for its object “the promotion of social and salutiferous
improvements, street cleanliness, and the employment of the poor, so
that able-bodied men may be prevented from burthening the parish-rate,
and preserved independent of workhouse, alms, and degradation.” Here a
twofold object is expressed: the Philanthropic Association seeks not
only to benefit the poor by giving them employment, and “preserving
them independent of workhouse, alms, and degradation,” but to benefit
the public likewise, by “promoting social and salutiferous improvements
and street cleanliness.” I shall deal with each of these objects
separately; but first let me declare, so as to remove all suspicion
of private feelings tending in any way to bias my judgment in this
most important matter, that I am an utter stranger to the President
and Council of the Philanthropic Association; and that, whatever I may
have to say on the subject of the street-orderlies, I do simply in
conformity with my duty to the public--to state truthfully all that
concerns the labourers and the poor of the metropolis.

_Viewed economically, philanthropic and pauper work may be said to be
the regulators of the minimum rate of wages_--establishing the lowest
point to which competition can possibly drive down the remuneration
for labour; for it is evident, that if the self-supporting labourer
cannot obtain greater comforts by the independent exercise of his
industry than the parish rates or private charity will afford him, he
will at once give over working for the trading employer, and declare
on the funds raised by assessment or voluntary subscription for his
support. Hence, those who wish well to the labourer, and who believe
that cheapness of commodities is desirable “only,” as Mr. Stewart
Mill says (p. 502, vol. ii.), “when the cause of it is, that their
production costs little labour, and not when occasioned by that
labour’s being ill-remunerated;” and who believe, moreover, that
the labourer is to be benefited solely by the cultivation of a high
standard of comfort among the people--to such, I say, it is evident,
that a poor law which reduces the relief to able-bodied labourers
to the smallest modicum of food consistent with the continuation of
life must be about the greatest curse that can possibly come upon
an over-populated country, admitting, as it does, of the reduction
of wages to so low a point of mere brutal existence as to induce
that recklessness and improvidence among the poor which is known to
give so strong an impetus to the increase of the people. A minimized
rate of parish relief is necessarily a minimized rate of wages, and
admits of the labourers’ pay being reduced, by pauper competition, to
little short of starvation; and such, doubtlessly, would have been
the case long ago in the scavaging trade by the employment of parish
labour, had not the Philanthropic Association instituted the system of
street-orderlies, and by the payment of a higher rate of wages than the
more grinding parishes afforded--by giving the men 12_s._ instead of
9_s._ or even 7_s._ a week--prevented the remuneration of the regular
hands being dragged down to an approximation to the parish level.
Hence, rightly viewed, philanthropic labour--and, indeed, pauper labour
too--comes under the head of a remedy for low wages, as preventing, if
properly regulated, the undue depreciation of industry from excessive
competition, and it is in this light that I shall now proceed to
consider it.

The several plans that have been propounded from time to time, as
remedies for an insufficient rate of remuneration for work, are as
multifarious as the circumstances influencing the three requisites
for production--labour, capital, and land. I will here run over as
briefly as possible--abstaining from the expression of all opinion on
the subject--the various schemes which have been proposed with this
object, so that the reader may come as prepared as possible to the
consideration of the matter.

The remedies for low wages may be arranged into two distinct groups,
viz., those which seek to increase the labourer’s rate of pay
_directly_, and those which seek to do so _indirectly_.

The _direct_ remedies for low wages that have been propounded are:--

A. _The establishment of a standard rate of remuneration for labour._
This has been proposed to be brought about by three different means,
viz.:--

1. By law or government authority; either (_a_) fixing the minimum
rate of wages, and leaving the variations above that point to be
adjusted by competition (this, as we have seen, is the effect of the
poor-law); or, (_b_) settling the rate of wages generally by means
of local boards of trade for _conseils de prud’hommes_, consisting
of delegates from the workmen and employers, to determine, by the
principles of natural equity, a _reasonable_ scale of remuneration in
the several trades, their decision being binding in law on both the
employers and the employed.

2. By public opinion; this has been generally proposed by those
who are what Mr. Mill terms “shy of admitting the interference of
authority in contracts for labour,” fearing that if the law intervened
it would do so rashly and ignorantly, and desiring to compass by
_moral_ sanction what they consider useless or dangerous to attempt
to bring about by _legal_ means. “Every employer,” says Mr. Mill,
“they think, _ought_ to give _sufficient wages_,” and if he does not
give such wages willingly, he should be compelled to do so by public
opinion.

3. By trade societies or combination among the workmen; that is to
say, by the payment of a small sum per week out of the wages of the
workmen, towards the formation of a fund for the support of such of
their fellow operatives as may be out of employment, or refuse to work
for those employers who seek to give less than the standard rate of
wages established by the trade.

B. _The prohibition of stoppages or deductions of all kinds from
the nominal wages of workmen._ This is principally the object of
the Anti-Truck Society, which seeks to obtain an Act of Parliament,
enjoining the payment in full of all wages. The stoppages or extortions
from workmen’s wages generally consist of:--

1. Fines for real or pretended misconduct.

2. Rents for tools, frames, gas, and sometimes lodgings.

3. Sale of trade appliances (as trimmings, thread, &c.) at undue
prices.

4. Sale of food, drink, &c., at an exorbitant rate of profit.

5. Payment in public-houses; as the means of inducing the men to spend
a portion of their earnings in drink.

6. Deposit of money as security before taking out work; so that the
capital of the employer is increased without payment of interest to
the workpeople.

C. _The institution of certain aids or additions to wages_; as--

1. Perquisites or gratuities obtained from the public; as with
waiters, boxkeepers, coachmen, dustmen, vergers, and others.

2. Beer money, and other “allowances” to workmen.

3. Family work; or the co-operation of the wife and children as a
means of increasing the workman’s income.

4. Allotments of land, to be cultivated after the regular day’s labour.

5. The parish “allowance system,” or relief in aid of wages, as
practised under the old Poor Law.

D. _The increase of the money value of wages_; by--

1. Cheap food.

2. Cheap lodgings; through building improved dwellings for the poor,
and doing away with the profit of sub-letting.

3. Co-operative stores; or the “club system” of obtaining provisions
at wholesale prices.

4. The abolition of the payment of wages on Sunday morning, or at so
late an hour on the Saturday night as to prevent the labourer availing
himself of the Saturday’s market.

5. Teetotalism; as causing the men to spend nothing in fermented
drinks, and so leaving them more to spend on food.

Such are the _direct_ modes of remedying low wages, viz., either by
preventing the price of labour itself falling below a certain standard;
prohibiting all stoppages from the pay of the labourer; instituting
certain aids or additions to such pay; or increasing the money value of
the ordinary wages by reducing the price of provisions.

The _indirect_ modes of remedying low wages are of a far more complex
character. They consist of, first, the remedies propounded by political
economists, which are--

A. _The decrease of the number of labourers_; for gaining this end
several plans have been proposed, as--

1. Checks against the increase of the population, for which the
following are the chief Malthusian proposals:--

_a._ Preventive checks for the hindrance of impregnation.

_b._ Prohibition of early marriages among the poor.

_c._ Increase of the standard of comfort, or requirements, among the
people; as a means of inducing prudence and restraint of the passions.

_d._ Infanticide; as among the Chinese.

2. Emigration; as a means of draining off the surplus labourers.

3. Limitation of apprentices in skilled trades; as a means of
preventing the undue increase of particular occupations. This, however,
is advocated not by economists, but generally by operatives.

4. Prevention of family work; or the discouragement of the labour of
the wives and children of operatives. This, again, cannot be said to be
an “economist” remedy.

B. _Increase of the circulating capital, or sum set aside for the
payment of the labourers._

1. By government imposts. “Governments,” says Mr. Mill, “can create
additional industry by creating capital. They may lay on taxes, and
employ the amount productively.” This was the object of the original
Poor Law (43 Eliz.), which empowered the overseers of the poor to
“raise weekly, or otherwise, by taxation of every inhabitant, &c.,
such sums of money as they shall require for providing a sufficient
stock of flax, hemp, wool, and other ware or stuff, to set the poor on
work.”

2. By the issue of paper money. The proposition of Mr. Jonathan
Duncan is, that the government should issue notes equivalent to
the taxation of the country, with the view of affording increased
employment to the poor; the people being set to work as it were upon
credit, in the same manner as the labourers were employed to build the
market-house at Guernsey.

C. _The extension of the markets of the country_; by the abolition
of all restrictions on commerce, and the encouragement of the free
interchange of commodities, so that, by increasing the demand for our
products, we may be able to afford employment to an extra number of
producers.

The above constitute what, with a few exceptions, may be termed, more
particularly, the “economist” remedies for low wages.

D. _The regulation of the quantity of work done by each workman, or
the prevention of the undue economizing of labour._ For this end,
several means have been put forward.

1. The shortening the hours of labour, and abolition of Sunday-work.

2. Alteration of the mode of work; as the substitution of day-work for
piece-work, as a means of decreasing the stimulus to overwork.

3. Extension of the term of hiring; by the substitution of annual
engagements for daily or weekly hirings, with a view to the prevention
of “casual labour.”

4. Limitation of the number of hands employed by one capitalist; so as
to prevent the undue extension of “the large system of production.”

5. Taxation of machinery; with the object, not only of making it
contribute its quota to the revenue of the country, but of impeding
its undue increase.

6. The discountenance of every form of work that tends to the making
up of a greater quantity of materials with a less quantity of
labour; and consequently to the expenditure of a greater proportion
of the capital of the country on machinery or materials, and a
correspondingly less proportion on the labourers.

E. _“Protective imposts,” or high import duties on such foreign
commodities as can be produced in this country_; with the view of
preventing the labour of the comparatively untaxed and uncivilized
foreigner being brought into competition with that of the taxed and
civilized producer at home.

F. _“Financial reform,” or reduction of the taxation of the country_;
as enabling the home labourer the better to compete with the foreigner.

The two latter proposals, and that of the extension of the markets, may
be said to seek to remedy low wages by expanding or circumscribing the
foreign trade of the country.

G. _A different division of the proceeds of labour._ For this object
several schemes have been propounded:--

1. The “tribute system” of wages; or payment of labour according to
the additional value which it confers on the materials on which it
operates.

2. The abolition of the middleman; whether “sweater,” “piece-master,”
“lumper,” or what not, coming between the employer and employed.

3. Co-operation; or joint-stock associations of labourers, with the
view of abolishing the profit of the capitalist employer.

H. _A different mode of distributing the products of labour_; with the
view of abolishing the profit of the dealer, between the producer and
consumer--as co-operative stores, where the consumers club together for
the purchase of their goods directly of the producers.

I. _A more general and equal division of the wealth of the country_:
for attaining this end there are but two known means:--

1. Communism; or the abolition of all rights to individual property.

2. Agapism; or the voluntary sharing of individual possessions with
the less fortunate or successful members of the community.

These remedies may, with a few exceptions (such as the tribute system
of wages, and the abolition of middlemen), be said to constitute the
socialist and communist schemes for the prevention of distress.

J. _Creating additional employment for the poor_; and so removing the
surplus labour from the market. Two modes of effecting this have been
proposed:--

1. Home colonization, or the cultivation of waste lands by the poor.

2. Orderlyism, or the employment of the poor in the promotion of
public cleanliness, and the increased sanitary condition of the
country.

K. _The prevention of the enclosure of commons_; as the means of
enabling the poor to obtain gratuitous pasturage for their cattle.

L. _The abolition of primogeniture_; with the view of dividing the land
among a greater number of individuals.

M. _The holding of the land by the State_, and equal apportionment of
it among the poor.

N. _Extension of the suffrage among the people_; and so allowing the
workman, as well as the capitalist and the landlord, to take part in
the formation of the laws of the country. For this purpose there are
two plans:--

1. “The freehold-land movement,” which seeks to enable the people to
become proprietors of as much land as will, under the present law,
give them “a voice” in the country.

2. Chartism, or that which seeks to alter the law concerning the
election of members of Parliament, and to confer the right of voting
on every male of mature age, sound mind, and non-criminal character.

O. _Cultivation of a higher moral and Christian character among the
people._ This form of remedy, which is advocated by many, is based on
the argument, that, without some mitigation of the “selfishness of the
times,” all other schemes for improving the condition of the people
will be either evaded by the cunning of the rich, or defeated by the
servility of the poor.

The above I believe to be a full and fair statement of the several
plans that have been proposed, from time to time, for alleviating
the distress of the people. This enumeration is as comprehensive as
my knowledge will enable me to make it; and I have abstained from
all comment on the several schemes, so that the reader may have an
opportunity of impartially weighing the merits of each, and adopting
that, which in his own mind, seems best calculated to effect what,
after all, we every one desire--whether protectionist, economist,
free-trader, philanthropist, socialist, communist, or chartist--the
good of the country in which we live, and the people by whom we are
surrounded.

* * * * *

Now we have to deal here with that particular remedy for low wages or
distress which consists in creating additional employment for the poor,
and of which the street-orderly system is an example.

The increase of employment for the poor was the main object of the
43 Eliz., for which purpose, as we have seen, the overseers of the
several parishes were empowered to raise a fund by assessments upon the
property of the rich, for providing “a sufficient stock of flax, hemp,
wool, and other ware or stuff, to set the poor on work.” But though
economists, to this day, tell us that “while, on the one hand, industry
is limited by capital, so, on the other, every increase of capital
gives, or is capable of giving, additional employment to industry, and
this without assignable limit,”[26] nevertheless the great difficulty
of carrying out the provisions of the original poor-law has consisted
in finding a market for the products of pauper labour, for the frequent
gluts in our manufactures are sufficient to teach us that it is one
thing to produce and another to dispose of the products; so that to
create additional employment for the poor something besides capital
is requisite: it is necessary either that they shall be engaged in
producing that which they themselves immediately consume, or that for
which the market admits of being extended.

The two plans proposed for the employment of the poor, it will be seen,
consist (1) in the cultivation of waste lands; (2) in promoting public
cleanliness, and so increasing the sanitary condition of the country.
The first, it is evident, removes the objection of a market being
needed for the products of the labour of the poor, since it proposes
that their energies should be devoted to the production of the food
which they themselves consume; while the second seeks to create
additional employment in effecting that increased cleanliness which
more enlightened physiological views have not only made more desirable,
but taught us to be absolutely necessary to the health and enjoyment of
the community.

The great impediment, however, to the profitable employment of the
poor, has generally been the unproductive or unavailing character
of pauper labour. This has been mainly owing to the fact that the
able-bodied who are deprived of employment are necessarily the lowest
grade of operatives; for, in the displacement of workmen, those are the
first discarded whose labour is found to be the least efficient, either
from a deficiency of skill, industry, or sobriety, so that pauper
labour is necessarily of the least productive character.

Another great difficulty with the employment of the poor is, that the
idle, or those to whom work is more than usually irksome, require
a stronger inducement than ordinary to make them labour, and the
remuneration for parish work being necessarily less than for any other,
those who are pauperized through idleness (the most benevolent among
us must allow there are such) are naturally less than ever disposed
to labour when they become paupers. All pauper work, therefore, is
generally unproductive or unavailing, because it is either inexpert or
unwilling work. The labour of the in-door paupers, who receive only
their food for their pains, is necessarily of the same compulsory
character as slavery; while that of the out-door paupers, with the
remuneration often cut down to the lowest subsisting point, is scarcely
of a more willing or more availing kind.

Owing to this general unproductiveness, (as well as the difficulty of
finding a field for the profitable employment of the unemployed poor,)
the labour of paupers has been for a long time past directed mainly to
the cleansing of the public thoroughfares. Still, from the degrading
nature of the occupation, and the small remuneration for the toil,
pauper labourers have been found to be such unwilling workers that many
parishes have long since given over employing their poor even in this
capacity, preferring to entrust the work to a contractor, with his paid
self-supporting operatives, instead.

The founder of the Philanthropic Association appears to have been
fully aware of the two great difficulties besetting the profitable
employment of the poor, viz., (1) finding a field for the exercise of
their labours where they might be “set on work” with benefit to the
community, and without injury to the independent operatives already
engaged in the same occupation; and (2) overcoming the unwillingness,
and consequently the unavailingness, of pauper labour.

The first difficulty Mr. Cochrane has endeavoured to obviate by taking
advantage of that growing desire for greater public cleanliness
which has arisen from the increased knowledge of the principles
governing the health of towns; and the second, by giving the men
12_s._ instead of 9_s._ or 7_s._ a week, or worse than all, 1_s._
1-1/2_d._ and a quartern loaf a day for three days in the week,
and so not only augmenting the stimulus to work (for it should be
remembered that wages are to the human machine what the fire is to the
steam-engine), but preventing the undue depreciation of the labour
of the independent workman. He who discovers the means of increasing
the rewards of labour, is as great a friend to his race as he who
strives to depreciate them is the public enemy; and I do not hesitate
to confess, that I look upon Mr. Charles Cochrane as one of the
illustrious few who, in these days of unremunerated toil, and their
necessary concomitants--beggars and thieves, has come forward to help
the labourers of this country from their daily-increasing degradation.
His benevolence is of that enlightened order which seeks to extend
rather than destroy the self-trust of the poor, not only by creating
additional employment for them, but by rendering that employment less
repulsive.

The means by which Mr. Cochrane has endeavoured to gain these ends
constitutes the system called Street-Orderlyism, which therefore admits
of being viewed in two distinct aspects--first, as a new mode of
improving “the health of towns,” and, secondly, as an improved method
of employing the poor.

Concerning the first, I must confess that the system of scavaging or
cleansing the public thoroughfares pursued by the street-orderlies
assumes, when contemplated in a sanitary point of view, all the
importance and simplicity of a great discovery. It has been before
pointed out that this system consists not only in cleansing the
streets, but in _keeping_ them clean. By the street-orderly method
of scavaging, the thoroughfares are continually being cleansed, and
so never allowed to become dirty; whereas, by the ordinary method,
they are not cleansed _until_ they are dirty. Hence the two modes of
scavaging are diametrically opposed; under the one the streets are
cleansed as fast as dirtied, while under the other they are dirtied as
fast as cleansed; so that by the new system of scavaging the public
thoroughfares are maintained in a perpetual state of cleanliness,
whereas by the old they may be said to be kept in a continual state of
dirt.

The street-orderly system of scavaging, however, is not only worthy of
high commendation as a more efficient means of gaining a particular
end--a simplification of a certain process--but it calls for our
highest praise as well for the end gained as for the means of gaining
it. If it be really a sound physiological principle, that the Creator
has made dirt offensive to every rightly-constituted mind, because it
is injurious to us, and so established in us an instinct, before we
could discover a reason, for removing all refuse from our presence,
it becomes, now that we have detected the cause of the feeling in us,
at once disgusting and irrational to allow the filth to accumulate
in our streets in front of our houses. If typhus, cholera, and other
pestilences are but divine punishments inflicted on us for the
infraction of that most kindly law by which the health of a people has
been made to depend on that which is naturally agreeable--cleanliness,
then our instinct for self-preservation should force us, even if our
sense of enjoyment would not lead us, to remove as fast as it is formed
what is at once as dangerous as it should be repulsive to our natures.
Sanitarily regarded, the cleansing of a town is one of the most
important objects that can engage the attention of its governors; the
removal of its refuse being quite as necessary for the continuance of
the existence of a people as the supply of their food. In the economy
of Nature there is no loss: this the great doctrine of waste and supply
has taught us; the detritus of one rock is the conglomerate of another;
the evaporation of the ocean is the source of the river; the poisonous
exhalations of animals the vital air of plants; and the refuse of man
and beasts the food of their food. The dust and cinders from our fires,
the “slops” from the washing of our houses, the excretions of our
bodies, the detritus and “surface-water” of our streets, have all their
offices to perform in the great scheme of creation; and if left to rot
and fust about us not only injure our health, but diminish the supplies
of our food. The filth of the thoroughfares of the metropolis forms, it
would appear, the staple manure of the market-gardens in the suburbs;
out of the London mud come the London cabbages: so that an improvement
in the scavaging of the metropolis tends not only to give the people
improved health, but improved vegetables; for that which is nothing
but a pestiferous muck-heap in the town becomes a vivifying garden
translated to the country.

Dirt, however, is not only as prejudicial to our health and offensive
to our senses, when allowed to accumulate in our streets, as it is
beneficial to us when removed to our gardens,--but it is a most
expensive commodity to keep in front of our houses. It has been shown,
that the cost to the people of London, in the matter of extra washing
induced by defective scavaging, is at the least 1,000,000_l._ sterling
per annum (the Board of Health estimate it at 2,500,000_l._); and the
loss from extra wear and tear of clothes from brushing and scrubbing,
arising from the like cause, is about the same prodigious sum; while
the injury done to the furniture of private houses, and the goods
exposed for sale in shops, though impossible to be estimated--appears
to be something enormous: so that the loss from the defective scavaging
of the metropolis seems, at the lowest calculation, to amount to
several millions per annum; and hence it becomes of the highest
possible importance, economically as well as physiologically, that the
streets should be cleansed in the most effective manner.

Now, that the street-orderly system is the only rational and
efficacious mode of street cleansing both theory and practice assure
us. To allow the filth to accumulate in the streets before any steps
are taken to remove it, is the same as if we were never to wash our
bodies until they were dirty--it is to be perpetually striving to cure
the disease, when with scarcely any more trouble we might prevent
it entirely. There is, indeed, the same difference between the new
and the old system of scavaging, as there is between a bad and a good
housewife: the one never cleaning her house until it is dirty, and the
other continually cleaning it, so as to prevent it being ever dirty.

Hence it would appear, that the street-orderly system of scavaging
would be a great public benefit, even were there no other object
connected with it than the increased cleanliness of our streets; but
in a country like Great Britain, afflicted as it is with a surplus
population (no matter from what cause), that each day finds the
difficulty of obtaining work growing greater, the opening up of new
fields of employment for the poor is perhaps the greatest benefit that
can be conferred upon the nation. Without the discovery of such new
fields, “the setting the poor on work” is merely, as I have said, to
throw out of employment those who are already employed; it is not to
decrease, but really to increase, the evil of the times--to add to,
rather than diminish, the number of our paupers or our thieves. The
increase of employment in a nation, however, requires, not only a
corresponding increase of capital, but a like increase in the demand
or desire, as well as in the pecuniary means, of the people to avail
themselves of the work on which the poor are set (that is to say, in
the extension of the home market); it requires, also, some mode of
stimulating the energies of the workers, so as to make them labour
more willingly, and consequently more availingly, than usual. These
conditions appear to have been fulfilled by Mr. Cochrane, in the
establishment of the street-orderlies. He has introduced, in connection
with this body, a system of scavaging which, while it employs a greater
number of hands, produces such additional benefits as cannot but be
considered an equivalent for the increased expenditure; though it is
even doubtful whether, by the collection of the street manure unmixed
with the mud, the extra value of that article alone will not go far to
compensate for the additional expense; if, however, there be added to
this the saving to the metropolitan parishes in the cost of watering
the streets--for under the street-orderly system this is not required,
the dust never being allowed to accumulate, and consequently never
requiring to be “laid”--as well as the greater saving of converting the
paupers into self-supporting labourers; together with the diminished
expense of washing and doctors’ bills, consequent on the increased
cleanliness of the streets--there cannot be the least doubt that the
employment of the poor as street-orderlies is no longer a matter of
philanthropy, but of mere commercial prudence.

Such appear to me to be the principal objects of Mr. Cochrane’s
street-orderly system of scavaging; and it is a subject upon which I
have spoken the more freely, because, being unacquainted with that
gentleman, none can suspect me of being prejudiced in his favour, and
because I have felt that the good which he has done and is likely to do
to the poor, has been comparatively unacknowledged by the public, and
that society and the people owe him a heavy debt of gratitude[27].

I shall now proceed to set forth the character of the labour, and the
condition and remuneration of the labourers in connection with the
street-orderly system of scavaging the metropolitan thoroughfares.

The first appearance of the street-orderlies in the metropolis was in
1843. Mr. Charles Cochrane, who had previously formed the National
Philanthropic Association, with its eleemosynary soup-kitchens, &c.,
then introduced the system of street-orderlies, as one enabling many
destitute men to support themselves by their labour; as well as, in
his estimation, a better, and eventually a more economical, mode of
street-cleansing, and partaking also somewhat of the character of a
street police.

The first “demonstration,” or display of the street-orderly
system, took place in Regent-street, between the Quadrant and
the Regent-circus, and in Oxford-street, between Vere-street and
Charles-street. The streets were thoroughly swept in the morning, and
then each man or boy, provided with a hand-broom and dust-pan, removed
any dirt as soon as it was deposited. The demonstration was pronounced
highly successful and the system effective, in the opinion of eighteen
influential inhabitants of the locality who acted as a committee, and
who publicly, and with the authority of their names, testified their
conviction that “the most efficient means of keeping streets clean, and
more especially great thoroughfares, was to prevent the accumulation
of dirt, by removing the manure within a few minutes after it has been
deposited by the passing cattle; the same having, hitherto, remained
during several days.”

The cost of this demonstration amounted to about 400_l._, of which,
the Report states, “200_l._ still remains due from the shop-keepers to
the Association; which,” it is delicately added, “from late commercial
difficulties they have not yet repaid” (in 1850).

Whilst the street-orderlies were engaged in cleansing Regent-street,
&c., the City Commissioners of the sewers of London were invited to
depute some person to observe and report to them concerning the method
pursued; but with that instinctive sort of repugnance which seems to
animate the great bulk of city officials against improvement of any
kind, the reply was, that they “did not consider the same worthy their
attention.” The matter, however, was not allowed to drop, and by the
persevering efforts of Mr. Cochrane, the president, and of the body of
gentlemen who form the Council of the Association, Cheapside, Cornhill,
and the most important parts of the very heart of the city were at
length cleansed according to the new method. The ratepayers then showed
that _they_, at least, _did_ consider “the same worthy of attention,”
for 8000 out of 12,000 within a few days signed memorials recommending
the adoption of what they pronounced an improvement, and a public
meeting was held in Guildhall (May 4, 1846), at which resolutions in
favour of the street-orderly method were passed. The authorities did
not adopt these recommendations, but they ventured so far to depart
from their venerable routine as to order the streets to be “swept every
day!” This employed upwards of 300 men, whereas at the period when the
sages of the city sewers did not consider any proposed improvement in
scavagery worthy their attention, the number of men employed by them in
cleansing the streets did not exceed 30.

The street-orderly system was afterwards tried in the parishes of St.
Paul, Covent-garden, St. James (Westminster), St. Martin-in-the-Fields,
St. Anne, Soho, and others--sometimes calling forth opposition, of
course from the authorities connected with the established modes of
paving, scavaging, &c.

It is not my intention to write a complete history of the
street-orderlies, but merely to sketch their progress, as well as
describe their peculiar characteristics.

Within these few months public meetings have been held in almost every
one of the 26 wards of the City, at which approving resolutions were
either passed unanimously or carried by large majorities; and the
street-orderly system is now about to be introduced into St. Martin’s
parish instead of the street-sweeping machine.

As far as the street-orderly system has been tried, and judging only by
the testimony of public examination and public record of opinion, the
trial has certainly been a success. A memorial to the Court of Sewers,
from the ward of Broad-street, supported by the leading merchants of
that locality, in recommendation of the employment of street-orderlies,
seems to bear more closely on the subject than any I have yet seen.

“Your memorialists,” they state, “have observed that those public
thoroughfares within the city of London which are now cleansed by
street-orderlies, _are so remarkably clean_ as to be _almost free from
mud in wet, and dust in dry weather_--that _such extreme cleanliness
is of great comfort to the public_, and tends to improve the sanitary
condition of the ward.”

But it is not only in the metropolis that the street-orderlies seem
likely to become the established scavagers. The streets of Windsor, I
am informed, are now in the course of being cleansed upon the orderly
plan. In Amsterdam, there are at present 16 orderlies regularly
employed upon scavaging a portion of the city, and in Paris and
Belgium, I am assured, arrangements are being made for the introduction
of the system into both those cities. Were the street-orderly mode of
scavaging to become general throughout this country, it is estimated
that employment would be given to 100,000 labourers, so that, with the
families of these men, not less than half a million of people would be
supported in a state of independence by it. The total number of adult
able-bodied paupers relieved--in-door and out-door--throughout England
and Wales, on January 1, 1850, was 154,525.

The following table shows the route of the street-orderly operations in
the metropolis. A further column, in the Report from which the table
has been extracted, contained the names of thirteen clergymen who have
“weekly read prayers and delivered discourses to the street-orderlies
at their respective stations, and recorded flattering testimonials of
their conduct and demeanour.”

EMPLOYMENT OF STREET-ORDERLIES.

---------------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+-----------------
| No. of | Wives and |
LOCALITIES CLEANSED. | Street- | Children | Money
| Orderlies. | dependent.| expended.
---------------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+-----------------
| | | £ _s._ _d._
1843-4. Oxford and Regent Streets | 50 | 256 | 560 0 0
1845. Strand | 8 | -- | 38 0 0
1845-6. Cheapside, Cornhill, &c., City of London | 100 | 363 | 1540 2 0
1846-7. St. Margaret’s and St. John’s, Westminster | 15 | 65 | 306 0 0
1847. Piccadilly, St. James’s, &c. | 8 | 32 | 115 0 0
1848. Strand | 8 | 31 | 35 0 0
1848. St. Martin’s Lane, &c. | 38 | 138 | 153 0 0
1848. Piccadilly, St. James’s, &c. | 48 | 108 | 341 3 0
1848-9. St. Paul’s, Covent Garden | 13 | 38 | 38 10 0
1849. Regent Street, Whitehall, &c. | 18 | 68 | 98 0 0
1849. St. Giles’s and St. George’s, Bloomsbury | 14 | 71 | 58 1 0
1849. St. Pancras, New Road, &c. | 16 | 46 | 177 6 0
1849. St. Andrew’s and St. George’s, Holborn | 23 | 83 | 63 4 9
1849. Lambeth Parish | 16 | 41 | 84 16 0
1851. St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields | 68 | 179 | 119 3 4
1851. City of London, Central Districts (per | | |
week, during 6 weeks last past) | 103 | 378 | 55 0 0
---------------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+-----------------
Total | 546 | 1897 | 3782 6 1
---------------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+-----------------

The period of nine years comprised in the above statement (1843 and
1851 being both included) gives a yearly average, as to the number of
the poor employed, exceeding 60, with a similar average of 210 wives
and children, and a yearly average outlay of 420_l._ The number of
orderlies now employed by the Association is from 80 to 90.

* * * * *

Such, then, is a brief account of the rise and progress of this new
mode of street-sweeping, and we now come to a description of the work
itself.

“The orderlies,” says the Report of the Association, “keep the streets
free from mud in winter, and dust in summer; and that with the least
possible personal drudgery:--adhering to the principle of operation
laid down, viz., that of ‘_Cleansing and keeping Clean_,’ they have
merely, after each morning’s sweeping and removal of dirt, to keep a
vigilant look-out over the surface of street allotted to them; and to
remove with the hand-brush and dust-pan, from any particular spot,
whatever dirt or rubbish may fall upon it, _at the moment of its
deposit_. Thus are the streets under their care kept constantly clean.

“But sweeping and removing dirt,” continues the Report, “is not the
only occupation of the street-orderly, whilst keeping up a careful
inspection of the ground allotted to him. He is also the watchman
of house-property and shop-goods; the guardian of reticules,
pocket-books, purses, and watch-pockets;--the experienced observer
and detector of pickpockets; the ever ready, though unpaid, auxiliary
to the police constable. Nay, more;--he is always at hand, to render
assistance to both equestrian and pedestrian: if a horse slip,
stumble, or fall,--if a carriage break down, or vehicles come into
collision,--the street-orderly darts forward to raise and rectify
them: if foot-passengers be run over, or knocked down, or incautiously
loiter on a crossing, the street-orderly rescues them from peril or
death; or warns them of the approaching danger of carriages driving in
opposite directions: if other accidents befall pedestrians,--if they
fall on the pavement, from sudden illness, faintness, or apoplexy,
the street-orderly is at hand to render assistance, or convey them
to the nearest surgery or hospital. If strangers are at fault as to
the localities of London, or the place of their destination, the
orderly, in a civil and respectful manner, directs them on their way.
If habitual or professional mendicants are importunate or troublesome,
the street-orderly warns them off; or hands them to the care of
the policeman. And if a _really_ poor or starving fellow-creature
wanders in search of food or alms, he leads him to a workhouse or
soup-kitchen[28].

“_Should the system become general (of which there is now every
good prospect), it will be the means of rescuing no less than_ TEN
THOUSAND PERSONS _and their families from destitution and distress_
(in London alone);--from the forlorn and wretched condition which
tempts to criminality and outrage, to that of comfort, independence,
and happiness--produced by their own industry, aided by the kind
consideration of those who are more the favourites of fortune than
themselves.

“In conclusion it may be stated, that the street-orderly system will
keep the streets and pavements of London and Westminster as clean
as the court-yard and hall of any gentleman’s private dwelling: it
will not only secure the general comfort and health of upwards of two
millions of people, but save a vast annual amount to shopkeepers,
housekeepers, and others, with regard to the spoiling of their goods
by dust and dirt; in the wear and tear of clothes and furniture, by an
eternal round of brushing, dusting, scouring, and scrubbing.”

The foregoing extract fully indicates the system pursued and results
of street-orderlyism. I will now deal with what may be considered _the
labour or trade part of the question_.

By the street-orderly plan a district is duly apportioned. To one
man is assigned the care of a series of courts, a street, or 500,
1000, 1200, 1500, or 2000 yards of a public way, according to its
traffic, after the whole surface has been swept “the first thing in the
morning.” In Oxford-street, for instance, it has been estimated that
500 yards can be kept clear of the dirt continually being deposited by
one man; in the squares, where there is no great traffic, 2000 yards;
while in so busy a part as Cheapside, some nine men will be required to
be hourly on the look-out. These street-orderlies are confined to their
beats as strictly as are policeman, and as they soon become known to
the inhabitants, it is a means of checking any disposition to loiter,
or to shirk the work; to say nothing of the corps of inspectors and
superintendents.

The _division of labour_ among the street-orderlies is as follows:--

1. The _foreman_, whose duty is to “look over the men” (one such
over-looker being employed to about every 20 men), and who receives
15_s._ per week.

2. The _barrow-men_, or sweepers, consisting of men and boys; the
former receiving 12_s._ and the latter generally 7_s._ per week.

The _tools and implements_ used, and their cost, are as
follows:--wooden scoops, to throw up the slop, 1_s._ 2_d._ each (they
used to be made of iron, weighing 8 lbs. each, but the men then
complained that the weight “broke their arms”); shovel, 2_s._ 3_d._;
hoe and scraper, 1_s._ 3_d._; hand-broom, 8_d._; scavager’s broom,
1_s._ 2_d._; barrow, 12_s._; covered barrow, 24_s._

In the amount of his receipts, the street-orderly appears to a
disadvantage, as many of the “regular hands” of the contractors receive
16_s._ weekly, and he but 12_s._ The reason for this circumscribed
payment I have already alluded to--the deficiency of funds to carry out
the full purposes of the Association. Contrasted with the remuneration
of the great majority of the pauper scavagers, the street-orderly is
in a state of comparative comfort, for he receives nearly double as
much as the Guardians of the Poor of Chelsea and the Liberty of the
Rolls pay their labourers, and full 25 per cent. more than is paid
by Bermondsey, Deptford, Marylebone, St. James’s, Westminster, St.
George’s, Hanover-square, and St. Andrew’s, Holborn; and, I am assured,
it is the intention of the Council to pay the full rate of wages given
by the more respectable scavagers, viz., 16_s._ a week each man. _If
traders can do this, philanthropists, who require no profit, at least
should be equally liberal._ The labourer never can be benefited by
depreciating the ordinary wages of his trade; and I must in justice
confess, that there are scattered throughout the Report repeated
regrets that the funds of the Association will not admit of a higher
rate of wages being paid.

The street-orderly is not subjected to any fines or drawbacks, and
is paid always in money, every Saturday evening at the office of the
Association. In this respect, however, he does not differ from other
bodies of scavagers.

The usual mode of obtaining employment among the street-orderlies
is by personal application at the office of the Association in
Leicester-square; but sometimes letters, well-penned and well-worded,
are addressed to the president.

The daily number of applicants for employment is far from demonstrative
of that unbroken prosperity of the country, of which we hear so much.
On my inquiring into the number, I ascertained towards the end of
August, that, for the previous fortnight, during fine summer weather,
London being still full of the visitors to the Exhibition, on an
average 30 men, of nearly all conditions of life, applied personally
each day for work at street-sweeping, at 12_s._ a week. Certainly
this labour is not connected with the feeling of pauper degradation,
but it does not look well for the country that in twelve days 360
men should apply for such work. On the year’s average, I am assured,
there are 30 applications daily, but only ten new applicants, as men
call to solicit an engagement again and again. Thus in the year there
are _nine thousand, three hundred, and ninety_ applications, and 3130
individual applicants. In the course of one month last winter, there
were applications from 300 boys in Spitalfields alone, to be set to
work; and I am told, that had they been successful, 3000 lads would
have applied the next month.

When an application is made by any one recommended by subscribers, &c.,
to the Association, or where the case seems worthy of attention, the
names and addresses are entered in a book, with a slight sketch of the
circumstances of the person wishing to become a street-orderly, so that
inquiries may be made. I give a few of the more recent of these entries
and descriptions, which are really “histories in little”:--

“Thomas M’G----, aged 50, W-- L-- street, Chelsea Hospital, single man.
Taught a French and English school in Lyons, France. Driven out of
France at the Revolution of 1848. Penniless.

“Rich. M----, 13, C---- street, H---- garden, 42 years. Married. Can
read and write. Has been a seaman in the royal service ten years.
Chairmaker by trade. Has jobbed as a porter in Rochester, Kent.

“Phil. S----, 1, R-- L-- street, High Holborn. From Killarney, co.
Kerry. Bred a gardener. Fifteen years in constabulary force, for which
he has a character from Col. Macgregor, and received the compensation
of 50_l._, which he bestowed on his father and mother to keep them at
home. Nine months in England, viz., in Bristol, Bath, and London. Aged
35. Can read and write.

“Edw. C----, 79, M---- street, Hackney. Aged 27. Married.
Army-pensioner, 6_d._ a day. Can read and write. Recommended by Rev. T.
Gibson, rector of Hackney.

“Chas. J----, 11, D---- street, Chelsea. Aged 38. Gentleman’s servant.”

In my account of the “regular hands” employed by the contracting
scavagers, I have stated that the street-orderlies were a more
miscellaneous body, as they had not been reared in the same proportion
to street work. They are also, I may add, a better-conducted and
better-informed class than the general run of unskilled labourers, as
they know, before applying for street-orderly work, that inquiries are
made concerning them, and that men of reprobate character will not be
employed.

Many of those employed as orderlies have since returned to their
original employments; others have procured, and been recommended to,
superior situations in life to that of street-orderlies, by the Council
of the Association, but _no instance has occurred of any street-orderly
having returned back to his parish workhouse or stoneyard_. This
certainly looks well.

One street-orderly, I may add, is now a reputable school-master,
and has been so for some time; another is a clerk under similar
circumstances. Another is a good theoretical and practical musician,
having officiated as organist in churches and at concerts; he is also a
neat music copyist. Another tells of his correspondence with a bishop
on theological topics. Another, with a long and well-cultured beard,
has been a model for artists. One had 150_l._ left to him not long
ago, which was soon spent; his wife spent it, he said, and then he
quietly applied to be permitted to be again a street-orderly. Several
have got engagements as seamen, their original calling--indeed, I am
assured, that a few months of street-orderly labour is looked upon as
an excellent ordeal of character, after which the Association affirms
good behaviour on the part of the employed.

The subscribers to the funds not unfrequently recommend destitute
persons to the good offices of the Association, apart from their
employment as street-orderlies. Thus, it is only a few weeks ago,
that twelve Spanish refugees, none of them speaking English, were
recommended to the Association; one of them it was ultimately enabled
to establish as a waiter in an hotel resorted to by foreigners, another
as an interpreter, another as a gentleman’s servant, and another (with
a little boy, his son) in shoe-blacking in Leicester-square.

Thus among street-orderlies are to be found a great diversity of career
in life, and what may be called adventures.

One great advantage, however, which the orderly possesses over his
better paid brethren is in the greater probability of his “rising out
of the street.” This is very rarely the case with an ordinary scavager.

I now give the following account from one of the street-orderlies, a
tall, soldierly-looking man:--

“I’m 42 now,” he said, “and when I was a boy and a young man I was
employed in the _Times_ machine office, but got into a bit of a row--a
bit of a street quarrel and frolic, and was called on to pay 3_l._,
something about a street-lamp: that was out of the question; and
as I was taking a walk in the park, not just knowing what I’d best
do, I met a recruiting sergeant, and enlisted on a sudden--all on a
sudden--in the 16th Lancers. When I came to the standard, though, I was
found a little bit too short. Well, I was rather frolicsome in those
days, I confess, and perhaps _had rather a turn for a roving life_,
so when the sergeant said he’d take me to the East India Company’s
recruiting sergeant, I consented, and was accepted at once. I was
taken to Calcutta, and served under General Nott all through the
Affghan war. I was in the East India Company’s artillery, 4th company
and 2nd battalion. Why, yes, sir, I saw a little of what you may call
‘service.’ I was at the fighting at Candahar, Bowlinglen, Bowling-pass,
Clatigillsy, Ghuznee, and Caboul. The first real warm work I was in
was at Candahar. I’ve heard young soldiers say that they’ve gone into
action the first time as merry as they would go to a play. Don’t
believe them, sir. Old soldiers will tell you quite different. You
_must_ feel queer and serious the first time you’re in action: it’s
not fear--it’s nervousness. The crack of the muskets at the first fire
you hear in real hard earnest is uncommon startling; you see the flash
of the fire from the enemy’s line, but very little else. Indeed, oft
enough you see nothing but smoke, and hear nothing but balls whistling
every side of you. And then you get excited, just as if you were at
a hunt; but after a little service--I can speak for myself, at any
rate--you go into action as you go to your dinner.

[Illustration: THE ABLE-BODIED PAUPER STREET-SWEEPER.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

“I served during the time when there was the Affghanistan retreat;
when the 44th was completely cut up, before any help could get up to
them. We suffered a good deal from want of sufficient food; but it
was nothing like so bad, at the very worst, as if you’re suffering in
London. In India, in that war time, if you suffered, you were along
with a number in just the same boat as yourself; and there’s always
something to hope for when you’re an army. It’s different if you’re
walking the streets of London by yourself--I felt it, sir, for a little
bit after my return--and if you haven’t a penny, you feel as if there
wasn’t a hope. If you have friends it may be different, but I had none.
It’s no comfort if you know hundreds are suffering as you are, for
you can’t help and cheer one another as soldiers can.

“Well, sir, as I’ve told you, I saw a good deal of service all through
that war. Indeed I served thirteen years and four months, and was then
discharged on account of ill health. If I’d served eight months longer
that would have been fourteen years, and I should have been entitled
to a pension. I believe my illness was caused by the hardships I went
through in the campaigns, fighting and killing men that I never saw
before, and until I was in India had never heard of, and that I had no
ill-will to; certainly not, why should I? they never did me any wrong.
But when it comes to war, if you can’t kill them they’ll kill you. When
I got back to London I applied at the East India House for a pension,
but was refused. I hadn’t served my time, though that wasn’t my fault.

“I then applied for work in the _Times_ machine office, and they
were kind enough to put me on. But I wasn’t master of the work, for
there was new machinery, wonderful machinery, and a many changes. So
I couldn’t be kept on, and was some time out of work, and very badly
off, as I’ve said before, and then I got work as a scavenger. O, I knew
nothing about sweeping before that. I’d never swept anything except
the snow in the north of India, which is quite a different sort of
thing to London dirt. But I very soon got into the way of it. I found
no difficulty about it, though some may pretend there is an art in it.
I had 15_s._ a week, and when I was no longer wanted I got employment
as a street-orderly. I never was married, and have only myself to
provide for. I’m satisfied that the street-orderly is far the best
plan for street-cleaning. Nothing else can touch it, in my opinion,
and I thought so before I was one of them, and I believe most working
scavengers think so now, though they mayn’t like to say so, for fear it
might go again their interest.

“Oh, yes, I’m sometimes questioned by gentlemen that may be passing in
the streets while I’m at work, all about our system. They generally
say, ‘and a very good system, too.’ One said once, ‘It shows that
scavengers can be decent men; they weren’t when I was first in London,
above 40 years ago.’ Well, I sometimes get the price of a pint of beer
given to me by gentlemen making inquiries, but very seldom.”

Until about eighteen months ago none but unmarried men were employed
by the Association, and these all resided in one locality, and under
one general superintendence or system. The boarding and lodging of the
men has, however, been discontinued about fifteen months; for I am
told it was found difficult to encourage industrial and self-reliant
pursuits in connection with public eleemosynary aid. Married men are
now employed, and all the street-orderlies reside at their own homes;
the adults, married or single, receiving 12_s._ a week each; the boys,
6_s._; while to each man is gratuitously supplied a blouse of blue
serge, costing 2_s._ 6_d._, and a glazed hat, costing the same amount.

The system formerly adopted was as follows:--

The men were formed into a distinct body, and established in houses
taken for them in Ham-yard, Great Windmill-street, Haymarket.

“The wages of the men,” states the Report, “were fixed at 12_s._ each
per week; that is, 9_s._ were charged for board and lodging, and 3_s._
were paid in money to each man on Saturday afternoon, out of which he
was expected to pay for his clothing and washing. The men had provided
for them clean wholesome beds and bedding, a common sitting-room, with
every means of ablution and personal cleanliness, including a warm
bath once a week. Their food was abundant and of the best quality,
viz., coffee and bread and butter for breakfast, at eight o’clock;
round of beef, bread, and vegetables, four times a week for dinner, at
one o’clock; nutritious soup and bread, or bread and cheese, forming
the afternoon repast of the other three days. At six in the evening,
when they returned from their labours, they were refreshed with tea or
coffee, and bread and butter; or for supper, at nine, each had a large
basin of soup, with bread. Thus, three-fourths of their wages being
laid out for them to advantage, the men were well lodged and fed; and
they have always declared themselves satisfied, comfortable, and happy,
under the arrangements that were made for them. Under the charge of
their intelligent and active superintendent, the street-orderlies soon
fell into a state of the most exact discipline and order; and when
old orderlies were drafted off, either to enter the service of parish
boards who adopted the system, or were recommended into service, or
some other superior position in life, and when new recruits came to
supply their places, the latter found no difficulty in conforming to
the rules laid down for the performance of their duties, as well as for
their general conduct. ‘Military time’ regulated their hours of labour,
refreshment, and rest; due attention was required from all; and each
man (though a scavenger) was expected to be cleanly in his person, and
respectful in his demeanour; indeed, nothing could be more gratifying
than the conduct of these men, both at home and abroad.”

“In their domicile in Ham Yard,” continues the Report, “the
street-orderlies have invariably been encouraged to follow pursuits
which were useful and improving, after their daily labours were at
an end; for this, a small library of history, voyages, travels, and
instructive and entertaining periodical works, was placed at their
disposal; and it is truly gratifying to the Council to be able to
state, that the men evinced great satisfaction, and even avidity,
in availing themselves of this source of intellectual pleasure and
improvement. Writing materials also were provided for them, for the
purpose of practice and improvement, as well as for mutual instruction
in this most necessary and useful art; and it must be gratifying to
the members of the Association to be informed, that, in April last, 34
out of 40 men appended their signatures, distinctly and well written,
to a document which was submitted to them. Such a fact will at least
prove, that when poor persons are employed, well fed, and lodged, and
cared for in the way of instruction, they do not always mis-spend their
time, nor, from mere preference, run riot in pot-houses and scenes of
low debauchery. It is to be borne in mind, however, that one-half of
these men were persons of almost every trade and occupation, from the
artizan to the shopman and clerk, and therefore previously educated;
the other half consisted of labourers and persons forsaken and indigent
from their birth, and formerly dependent on workhouse charity or chance
employment for their scanty subsistence; consequently in a state of
utter ignorance as to reading and writing.

“Every night, after supper, prayers were read by the superintendent;
and it has frequently been a most edifying as well as gratifying sight
to members of your Council, as well as to other persons of rank and
station in society, who have visited the Hospice in Ham Yard at that
interesting hour, to observe the decorum with which these poor men
demeaned themselves; and the heartfelt solemnity with which they joined
in the invocations and thanks to their Creator and Preserver!

“Each Sunday morning, at 8 o’clock, a portion of the church service
was read, followed by an extemporaneous discourse or exhortation by
the secretary to the Hospice. They were marshalled to church twice on
the Sabbath, headed by the superintendent and foremen; and generally
divided into two or three bodies, each taking a direction to St.
James’s, St. Anne’s, or St. Paul’s, Covent Garden; in all of which
places of worship they had sitting accommodation provided by the
kindness of the clergy and churchwardens. On Tuesday evenings they had
the benefit of receiving pastoral visits and instruction from several
of the worthy clergymen of the surrounding parishes.”

This is all very benevolent, but still very wrong. There is but one
way of benefiting the poor, viz., by developing their powers of
self-reliance, and certainly not in treating them like children.
Philanthropists always seek to do too much, and in this is to be found
the main cause of their repeated failures. The poor are expected to
become angels in an instant, and the consequence is, they are merely
made _hypocrites_. Moreover, no men of any independence of character
will submit to be washed, and dressed, and fed like schoolboys;
hence none but the worst classes come to be experimented upon. It
would seem, too, that this overweening disposition to play the part
of _ped-agogues_ (I use the word in its literal sense) to the poor,
proceeds rather from a love of power than from a sincere regard for the
people. Let the rich become the advisers and assistants of the poor,
giving them the benefit of their superior education and means--but
_leaving the people to act for themselves_--and they will do a great
good, developing in them a higher standard of comfort and moral
excellence, and so, by improving their tastes, inducing a necessary
change in their habits. But such as seek merely to _lord it_ over those
whom distress has placed in their power, and strive to bring about
the _villeinage_ of benevolence, making the people the philanthropic,
instead of the feudal, serfs of our nobles, should be denounced as the
arch-enemies of the country. Such persons may mean well, but assuredly
they achieve the worst towards the poor. The curfew-bell, whether
instituted by benevolence or tyranny, has the same degrading effect on
the people--destroying their principle of self-action, without which we
are all but as the beasts of the field.

Moreover, the laying out of the earnings of the poor is sure, after a
time, to sink into “a job;” and I quote the above passage to show that,
despite the kindest management, eleemosynary help is _not_ a fitting
adjunct to the industrial toil of independent labourers.

_The residences of the street-orderlies_ are now in all quarters where
unfurnished rooms are about 1_s._ 9_d._ or 2_s._ a week. The addresses
I have cited show them residing in the outskirts and the heart of the
metropolis. The following returns, however, will indicate the ages, the
previous occupations, the education, church-going, the personal habits,
diet, rent, &c., of the class constituting the street-orderlies, better
than anything I can say on the matter.

Before any man is employed as a street-orderly, he is called upon
to answer certain questions, and the replies from 67 men to these
questions supply a fund of curious and important information--important
to all but those who account the lot of the poor of _no_ importance. In
presenting these details, I beg to express my obligations to Mr. Colin
Mackenzie, the enlightened and kindly secretary of the Association.

I shall first show what is the order of the questioning, then what were
the answers, and I shall afterwards recapitulate, with a few comments,
the salient characteristics of the whole.

The questions are after this fashion; the one I adduce having been
asked of a scavager to whom a preference was given:--

_The Parish of St. Mary, Paddington.--Questions asked of Parish
Scavagers, applying for employment as Street-Orderlies, with the
answers appended._

Name?--W---- C----.

Age?--35 years.

How long a scavenger?--Three months.

What occupation previously?--Gentleman’s footman.

Married or single?--Married.

Reading, writing, or other education?--Yes.

Any children?--One.

Their ages?--Three years.

Wages?--Nine shillings per week.

Any parish relief?--No.

_What and how much food the applicants have usually purchased in a
week._

Meat?--2_s._ 6_d._

Bacon?--None.

Fish?--None.

Bread?---2_s._

Potatoes?--4_d._

Butter?--6_d._

Tea and sugar?--1_s._

Cocoa?--None.

What rent they pay?--2_s._

Furnished or unfurnished lodgings?--Unfurnished.

Any change of dress?--No.

Sunday clothing?--No.

How many shirts?--Two shirts.

Boots and shoes?--One pair.

How much do they lay out for clothes in a year?--I have nothing but
what I stand upright in.

Do they go to church or chapel?--Sometimes.

If not, why not?--It is from want of clothes.

Do they ever bathe?--No.

Does the wife go out to, or take in work?--Yes.

What are her earnings?--Uncertain.

Do they have anything from charitable institutions or families?--No.

When ill; where do they resort to?--Hospitals, dispensaries, and the
parish doctor.

Do their children go to any school; and what?--Paddington.

Do they ever save any money; how much, and where?--

How much do they spend per week in drink?

Do not passers by, as charitable ladies, &c., give them money; and how
much per week?--No.

Such, are the questions asked, and I now give the answers of 67
individuals.

_Their ages were_:--

10 were from 20 to 30
13 „ 30 „ 40
24 „ 40 „ 50
15 „ 50 to 60
4 „ 60 „ 70.
1 „ 70

The greatest number of any age was 7 persons of 45 years respectively.

_Their previous occupations had been_:--

22 labourers.
3 at the business “all their lives.”
3 dustmen.
3 ostlers.
2 stablemen.
2 carmen.
2 porters.
2 gentlemen’s servants.
2 greengrocers.
1 following dust-cart.
1 excavator.
1 gravel digging.
1 stone breaking in yards.
1 at work in the brick-fields.
1 at work in the lime-works.
1 coal porter.
1 sweep.
1 haybinder.
1 gaslighter.
1 dairyman.
1 ploughman.
1 gardener.
1 errand boy.
1 fur dresser.
1 fur dyer.
1 skinner.
1 leather-dresser.
1 letter-press printer.
1 paper stainer.
1 glass blower.
1 farrier.
1 plasterer.
1 clerk.
1 vendor of goods.
1 licensed victualler.

Therefore, of 67 scavagers

12 had been artizans.
55 „ unskilled workmen.

Hence about five-sixths belong to the unskilled class of operatives.

_Time of having been at scavagering._

3 “all their lives” at the business.
1 about 27 years.
6 from 15 to 20 years.
6 „ 10 „ 15 „
4 „ 5 „ 10 years.
34 „ 1 „ 5 „
13 twelve months and less.

Hence it would appear, that few have been at the business a long time.
The greater number have not been acting as scavagers more than five
years.

_State of education.--Could they read and write?_

45 answered yes.
4 replied that they could read and write.
5 could read only.
12 could do neither.
1 was deaf and dumb.

Hence it would appear, that rather more than two-thirds of the
scavagers have received _some little_ education.

_Did they go to church or chapel?_

22 answered yes.
9 went to church.
4 „ chapel.
4 „ the Catholic chapel.
1 „ both church and chapel.
5 went sometimes.
1 not often.
17 never went at all.
1 was ashamed to go.
1 went out of town to enjoy himself.
2 made no return (1 being deaf and dumb).

Thus it would seem, that not quite two-thirds regularly attend some
place of worship; that about one-eleventh go occasionally; and that
about one-fourth never go at all.

_Why did they not go to church?_

12 had no clothes.
55 returned no answer (1 being deaf and dumb).

Hence of those who never go (19 out of 67), very nearly two-thirds (say
12 in 19) have no clothes to appear in.

_Did they bathe?_

59 answered no.
3 replied yes.
2 said they did in the Thames.
2 returned “sometimes.”
1 was deaf and dumb.

Hence it appeared, that about seven-eighths never bathe, although
following the filthiest occupation.

_Were they married or single?_

56 were married.
5 „ widowers.
6 „ single.

Thus it would seem, that about ten-elevenths are or have been married
men.

_How many children had they?_

1 had 15.
1 „ 6.
2 „ 5 each.
11 „ 4 „
19 „ 3 „
9 „ 2 „
6 „ 1 each.
16 „ none (6 of these being single men).
2 returned their family as grown up without stating the number.

Consequently 51 out of 61, or five-sixths, are married, and have
families numbering altogether 165 children; the majority had only 3
children, and this was about the average family.

_What were the ages of their children?_

11 were grown up.
2 between 30 and 40.
9 „ 20 and 30.
49 „ 10 and 20.
80 „ 1 and 10.
8 were 1 year and under.
5 were returned at home.
1 returned as dead.

One-half of the scavagers’ children, therefore, are between 1 and 10
years of age; the majority would appear to be 8 years old.

Some were said to be grown up, but no number was given.

_Did their children go to school?_

13 answered yes.
13 to the National School.
5 to the Ragged School.
2 to Catholic.
2 to Parish.
6 to local schools.
1 replied that he went sometimes.
2 returned no.
1 replied that his children were “not with him.”
22 (of whom 16 had no children, and 1 was deaf and dumb) made no reply.

From this it would seem, that a large majority--41 out of 51, or
four-fifths--of the parents who have children send them to school.

_Did their wives work?_

15 returned no.
6 said their wives were “unable.”
1 had lost the use of her limbs.
2 did, but “not often.”
4 did “when they could.”
10 worked “sometimes.”
12 answered yes.
1 sold cresses.
15 made no return (11 having no wives and 1 being deaf and dumb).

Hence two-fifths of the wives (22 out of 56) do no work, 16 do so
occasionally, and 13, or one-fourth, are in the habit of working.

_What were wives’ earnings?_

10 returned them as “uncertain.”
1 “didn’t know.”
1 estimated them at 1_s._ 6_d._ per week.
1 at 1_s._ to 2_s._ „
2 at 2_s._ „
3 at 2_s._ or 3_s._ „
2 at about 3_s._ „
1 at 2_s._ to 4_s._ „
1 at 3_s._ or 4_s._ „
1 at 3_d._ or 4_d._ per day.
43 gave no returns (having either no wives, or their wives not working).
1 was deaf and dumb.

So that, out of 29 wives who were said to work, 16 occasionally and 13
regularly, there were returns for 23. Nearly half of their earnings
were given as uncertain from their seldom doing work, while the
remainder were stated to gain from 1_s._ to 4_s._ per week; about 2_s._
6_d._ perhaps would be a fair average.

_What wages were they themselves in the habit of receiving?_

3 had 16_s._ 6_d._ per week.
2 „ 16_s._ „
28 „ 15_s._ „
3 „ 14_s._ 6_d._ „
1 „ 14_s._ „
2 „ 12_s._ „
15 „ 9_s._ „
4 „ 8_s._ „
5 „ 7_s._ „
4 „ 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ a day and 2 loaves.

Hence it is evident, that one-half receive 15_s._ or more a week, and
about a fourth 9_s._

It was not the parishes, however, but the contractors with the
parishes, who paid the higher rates of wages: Mr. Dodd, for St.
Luke’s; Mr. Westley, for St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate; Mr. Parsons, for
Whitechapel; Mr. Newman, for Bethnal-green, &c.

These wages the scavagers laid out in the following manner:--

_For rent, per week._

1 paid 4_s._
1 „ 3_s._ 6_d._
8 „ 3_s._
14 „ 2_s._ 6_d._
33 „ 2_s._
4 „ 1_s._ 6_d._
1 „ 1_s._ 3_d._
2 „ 1_s._
1 lived rent free.
1 paid for board and lodging.
1 lived with mother.

Hence it would appear, that near upon half the number paid 2_s._ rent.
The usual rent paid seems to be between 2_s._ and 3_s._, five-sixths
of the entire number paying one or other of those amounts. Only three
lived in furnished lodgings, and the rents of these were, respectively,
two at 2_s._ 6_d._ and the other at 2_s._

_For bread, per week._

1 expended 5_s._ 3_d._
1 „ 5_s._
1 „ 4_s._ 7_d._
1 „ 4_s._ 6_d._
1 „ 4_s._ 3_d._
7 „ 4_s._
13 „ 3_s._ 6_d._
8 „ 3_s._
3 „ 2_s._ 6_d._
4 „ 2_s._ 3_d._
13 „ 2_s._
4 „ 1_s._ 6_d._
1 „ 1_s._ 9_d._
4 two loaves a day from parish.
3 gave a certain sum per week to their wives or mothers to
lay out for them, and 1 boarded and lodged.
1 was deaf and dumb.

Thus it would seem, that the general sum expended weekly on bread
varies between 2_s._ and 4_s._ The average saving from free-trade,
therefore, would be between 4_d._ and 8_d._, or say 6_d._, per week.

_For meat, per week._

4 expended 4_s._
5 „ 3_s._ 6_d._
11 „ 3_s._
12 „ 2_s._ 6_d._
1 „ 2_s._ 4_d._
5 „ 2_s._
4 „ 1_s._ 6_d._
1 „ 1_s._ 2_d._
9 „ 1_s._
2 „ 10_d._
2 „ 6_d._
1 „ 8_d._
1 once a week.
4 had none.
5 no returns (3 of this number gave a weekly allowance to
wives or mothers, 1 was deaf and dumb, and 1 paid for
board and lodging).

By the above we see, that the sum usually expended on meat is between
2_s._ 6_d._ and 3_s._ per week, about one-third of the entire number
expending that sum. All those who expended 1_s._ and less per week had
9_s._ and less for their week’s labour. The average saving from the
cheapening of provisions would here appear to be between 5_d._ and
6_d._ per week at the outside.

_For tea and sugar, per week._

2 paid 2_s._ 6_d._
1 „ 2_s._ 4_d._
1 „ 2_s._ 3_d._
19 „ 2_s._
2 „ 1_s._ 9_d._
4 „ 1_s._ 8_d._
12 „ 1_s._ 6_d._
5 „ 1_s._ 4_d._
5 „ 1_s._ 3_d._
5 „ 1_s._ 2_d._
13 „ 1_s._
2 „ 8_d._
5 no returns: 1 deaf and dumb, 1 board and lodging, and 3
making allowances.

The sum usually expended on tea and sugar seems to be between 1_s._
6_d._ and 2_s._ per week.

_For fish, per week._

3 expended 1_s._
5 „ 8_d._
23 „ 6_d._
8 „ 4_d._
23 „ nothing.
4 allowed so much per week to wives, or mother, or landlady.
1 deaf and dumb.

Hence one-third spent 6_d._ weekly in fish, and one-third nothing.

_For bacon, per week._

1 expended 1_s._
2 „ 10_d._
1 „ 9_d._
5 „ 8_d._
9 „ 6_d._
1 „ 4_d._
43 „ nothing.
4 allowances to wives, &c.
1 deaf and dumb.

The majority (two-thirds), therefore, do not have bacon. Of those that
do eat bacon, the usual sum spent weekly is 6_d._ or 8_d._

_For butter, per week._

1 expended 1_s._ 8_d._
24 „ 1_s._
11 „ 10_d._
12 „ 8_d._
11 „ 6_d._
1 „ 3_d._
2 „ nothing.
4 made allowances.
1 deaf and dumb.

Thus one-third expended 1_s._, and about one-sixth spent 10_d._;
another sixth, 8_d._; and another sixth, 6_d._ a week, for butter.

_For potatoes, per week._

1 spent 1_s._
2 „ 10_d._
6 „ 8_d._
1 „ 7_d._
18 „ 6_d._
6 „ 4_d._
28 spent nothing.
4 made allowances.
1 deaf and dumb.

About one-fourth spent 6_d._; the greater proportion, however (nearly
one-half), expended nothing upon potatoes weekly.

_For clothes, yearly._

2 expended 2_l._
2 „ 1_l._ 10_s._
2 „ 1_l._ 5_s._
3 „ 1_l._
1 „ 18_s._
1 „ 17_s._
1 „ 15_s._
4 „ 12_s._
1 „ 10_s._
34 couldn’t say.
1 had 2 pairs of boots a year, but no clothes.
2 expended “not much.”
2 got them as they could.
1 expended a few shillings.
1 said it “all depends.”
2 returned “nothing.”
1 was deaf and dumb.
6 made no return.

Hence 43 out of 67, or nearly two-thirds, spent little or nothing upon
their clothes.

_Had they a change of dress?_

28 had a change of dress.
38 had not.
1 was deaf and dumb.

Above one-half, therefore, had no other clothes but those they worked
in.

_Had they any Sunday clothing?_

20 had some.
45 had none.
21 made no return.
1 deaf and dumb.

More than two-thirds, then, had no Sunday clothes.

_How many shirts had they?_

10 had 3 shirts.
54 „ 2 „
2 „ 1 shirt.
1 was deaf and dumb.

The greater number, therefore, had two shirts.

_How many shoes had they?_

27 had 2 pairs.
39 „ 1 „
1 was deaf and dumb.

Thus the majority had only one pair of shoes.

_How much did then spend in drink?_

1 expended 2_s._ a week.
1 „ 1_s._ or 2_s._ „
2 „ 1_s._ 6_d._ „
4 „ 1_s._ „
1 „ 6_d._ „
1 „ 3_d._ or 5_d._ „
7 said they “couldn’t say.”
1 said he “wouldn’t say.”
1 said “that all depends.”
2 said they “had none to spend.”
2 expended nothing.
44 gave no return (1 deaf and dumb).

Hence answers were given by one-third, of whom the greatest number
“couldn’t say.” (?) Of the ten who acknowledged spending anything upon
drink, the greater number, or 4, said they spent 1_s._ a week only. But?

_Did they save any money?_

36 answered no.
31 gave no reply (1 being deaf and dumb).

_What did they in case of illness coming upon themselves or families?_

28 went to the dispensary.
8 went to the hospital.
6 „ parish doctor.
3 wives went to the lying-in hospital.
1 went to the workhouse.
2 said “nothing.”
1 “never troubled any.”
8 made no reply (1 being deaf and dumb).

The greater number, then, go, when ill, to the dispensary.

_Were they in receipt of alms?_

56 answered no.
2 „ sometimes.
3 „ yes.
6 made no returns (1 being deaf and dumb).

_Did the passers-by give them anything?_

49 answered no.
2 „ sometimes beer.
1 „ never.
2 „ seldom.
1 „ very seldom.
12 no returns (1 being deaf and dumb).

_Did they receive any relief from their parishes?_

56 replied no.
4 had 2 loaves and 1_s._ a day as wages.
1 had 4 loaves a week.
1 „ a 4-lbs. loaf.
1 „ 15 lbs. of bread.
2 answered “not at present.”
2 made no returns.

Thus the greater proportion (five-sixths), it will be seen, had no
relief; two of those who had relief received 9_s._ wages a week, and
two others only 7_s._, while four received part of their wages from the
parish in bread.

These analyses are not merely the characteristics of the applicant or
existent street-orderlies; they are really the annals of the poor in
all that relates to their domestic management in regard to meat and
clothes, the care of their children, their church-going, education,
previous callings, and parish relief. The inquiry is not discouraging
as to the character of the poor, and I must call attention to the
circumstance of how rarely it is that so large a collection of facts
is placed at the command of a public writer. In many of the public
offices the simplest information is as jealously withheld as if
statistical knowledge were the first and last steps to high treason.
I trust that Mr. Cochrane’s example in the skilful arrangement of the
returns connected with the Association over which he presides, and his
courteous readiness to supply the information, gained at no small care
and cost, will be more freely followed, as such a course unquestionably
tends to the public benefit.

It will be seen from these statements, how hard the struggle often
is to obtain work in unskilled labour, and, when obtained, how bare
the living. Every farthing earned by such workpeople is necessarily
expended in the support of a family; and in the foregoing details
we have another proof as to the diminution of the purchasing fund
of the country, being in direct proportion to the diminution of the
wages. If 100 men receive but 7_s._ a week each for their work, their
yearly outlay, to “keep the bare life in them,” is 1820_l._ If they
are paid 16_s._ a week, their outlay is 4160_l._; an expenditure of
2340_l._ more in the productions of our manufactures, in all textile,
metal, or wooden fabrics; in bread, meat, fruit, or vegetables; and
in the now necessaries, the grand staple of our foreign and colonial
trade--tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar, rice, and tobacco. _Increase your
wages, therefore, and you increase your markets._ For manufacturers to
underpay their workmen is to cripple the demand for manufactures. To
talk of the over-production of our cotton, linen, and woollen goods is
idle, when thousands of men engaged in such productions are in rags. It
is not that there are too many makers, but too few who, owing to the
decrease of wages, are able to be buyers. Let it be remembered that,
out of 67 labouring men, three-fourths could not afford to buy proper
clothing, expending thereupon “little” or “nothing,” and, I may add,
_because_ earning little or nothing, and so having scarcely anything to
expend.

I now come to _the cost of cleansing the streets upon the
street-orderly system_, as compared with that of the ordinary modes
of payment to contractors, &c. It will have been observed, from what
has been previously stated, that the Council of the Association
contend that far higher amounts may be realized for street manure when
collected clean, according to the street-orderly plan. If, by a better
mode of collecting the street dirt, it be kept unmixed, its increase in
value and in price may be most positively affirmed.

Before presenting estimates and calculations of cost, I may remind the
reader that, under the street-orderly system, no watering carts are
required, and none are used where the system is carried out in its
integrity. To be able to dispense with the watering of the streets is
not merely to get rid of a great nuisance, but to effect a considerable
saving in the rates.

I now give two estimates, both relating to the same district:--

COMPARATIVE EXPENSE OF CLEANING AND WATERING THE STREETS, &C., OF
ST. JAMES’S PARISH; under the system now in operation by the Paving
Board, and under the sanitary system of employing street-orderlies, as
recommended by 779 ratepayers. It is assumed, from reasonable data,
that the superficial contents of all the streets, lanes, courts, and
alleys in the parish, do not amount to more than 80,000 square yards.

“_Present Annual Expense of Cleansing St. James’s Parish_:--

Paid to contractor for carrying away slop,
including expense of brooms £800 0 0
Paid to 23 men, average wages, 10_s._ per
week, 52 weeks 598 0 0
-----------
£1398 0 0

“_Annual Expense of Street-Orderly System_:--

30 men (including those with
hand-barrows), at 10_s._ per week,
52 weeks £780 0 0
Expense of brooms 30 0 0
Cartage of slop 100 0 0
----------- £910 0 0
-----------
£488 0 0
Saving by diminished expense of street-watering
throughout the parish 450 0 0
-----------
Annual prospective saving £938 0 0

“Obs.--The sum of 800_l._ per annum was paid to the contractor on
account of expenses incurred for the removal of slop. During the three
years previous to 1849, the contractor paid money to the parish for
permission to remove the house-ashes, the value of which was then
2_s._ per load; it is now 2_s._ 6_d._ In St. Giles’s and St. George’s
parishes, whose surface is more than twice the extent of St. James’s,
the expense of slop-cartage, in 1850, was 304_l._ 14_s._ 0_d._, whilst
the sum received for cattle-manure collected by street-orderlies,
was 73_l._ 14_s._ 0_d._; and the slop-expenses for the four months
ending November 29, were 59_l._ 18_s._ 6_d._, whilst the manure sold
for 21_l._ 6_s._ 0_d._ Thus has the slop-expense in these extensive
united parishes been reduced to less than 120_l._ per annum. Since the
preceding estimate was submitted to the Commissioners of Paving, the
street-orderly system has been introduced into St. James’s parish; and
it is confidently expected that the ‘Annual Prospective saving’ of
938_l._, will be fully realised.”

A similar estimate has just been sent into the authorities of the great
parish of St. Marylebone, but its results do not differ from the one I
have just cited.

I next present an estimate contrasting the expense of the
street-orderly method with the cost of employing sweeping-machines:--

“COMPARATIVE EXPENSE OF CLEANSING AND WATERING THE STREETS, &C., OF
ST. MARTIN’S PARISH, under the system now in operation by the Paving
Board, and under the sanatory system of employing street-orderlies, as
recommended by 703 ratepayers. It is assumed, from reasonable data,
that the superficial contents of all the streets, lanes, courts, and
alleys in the parish, amount to about 70,000 square yards.

“_Expenses by Machinery in St. Martin’s Parish._

£ _s._ _d._
Annual payment to street-machine proprietor 980 0 0
Watering rate (1847) 644 16 8-1/2
Salaries to clerks 391 0 0
Support of 28 able-bodied men in workhouse,
thrown out of work, at 4_s._ 6_d._ per man 327 12 0
-------------------
£2343 8 8-1/2

“_Expenditure by the Employment of Street-Orderlies._

£ _s._ _d._
Maintenance of 28 street-orderlies to keep clean
70,000 yards (presumed contents), at 2500 yards
each man, at 12_s._ per week 768 0 0
Two inspectors of orderlies, at 15_s._ per week 78 0 0
One superintendent of ditto, at 1_l._ per week 52 0 0
Wear and tear of brooms 36 8 0
Interest on outlay for barrows, brooms, and shovels 26 19 0
Watering rate (not required) .. .. ..
Value of manure pays for cartage .. .. ..
-----------------
961 7 0
Annual saving by street-orderlies 1382 1 8-1/2
------------------
2343 8 8-1/2

I now give an estimate concerning a smaller district, _one of the
divisions of St. Pancras parish_. It was embodied in a Report read
at a meeting in Camden-town, on the desirableness of introducing the
street-orderly system:--

The Report set forth that the Committee had “made a minute
investigation into the present systems of street-cleansing, as adopted
under the superintendence of Mr. Bird, the parish surveyor, and under
that of the National Philanthropic Association.

“From the 26th of March, 1848, to the 26th of March, 1849, the
_Directors of the Poor expended in paving and cleansing, &c., the
three and a quarter miles under their charge_, 3545_l._ 19_s._ 7_d._;
of this the following items were for cleansing, viz.--

£ _s._ _d._
Labour 249 13 0
Tools 10 12 0
Slop carting 496 0 0
Proportion of foreman’s salary 39 0 0
---------------
795 5 0

“_The street-orderly system of cleansing_ the said roads in the most
efficient manner would give the following expenditure per annum:--

£ _s._ _d._
Thirty-four men to cleanse 3-1/4 miles, at the
rate of 2000 superficial yards each man, 12_s._
per week each 1060 16 0
Two inspectors of orderlies, at 15_s._ per week
each 78 0 0
Superintendent 104 0 0
Cost of brooms, shovels, &c. 83 0 0
No allowance for slop-carting, the National
Philanthropic Association holding that the
manure, properly collected, will more than
pay for its removal .. .. ..
----------------
1325 16 0
Deduct cost of cleansing by the old mode 795 5 0
----------------
530 11 0

“The apparent extra cost, therefore, would be 530_l._ 11_s._ The
vestry, however, would see that the charge for supporting 34
able-bodied men in the workhouse is at least 5_s._ per week each, or
442_l._ per annum. This, therefore, must be deducted from the 530_l._
11_s._, leaving the extra cost 88_l._ 11_s._ per annum. This sum, the
committee were assured, will be not only repaid by the reduced outlay
for repairs, which the new system will effect; but a very great saving
will be the result of the thorough cleansed state in which the roads
will be constantly maintained. Under the late system, to find the
roads in a cleansed state was the exception, not the rule; and when
all the advantages likely to result from the new system were taken
into consideration, the committee did not hesitate to recommend it for
adoption in its most efficient form.”

Concerning the _expense of cleansing the City by the street-orderly
system_, Mr. Cochrane says:--

“The number required for the whole surface (including the footways,
courts, &c.) would be about 250 men and boys.

“Upon the present system this number would be formed in three
divisions:--

“First division.--170 to begin work at 6 a.m., and end 6 p.m. Second
division, called relief and aids.--30 boys from 12 at noon to 10.
Third division--50 men from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Total, 250.

“The men and boys are now working at from 6_s._ to 12_s._ per week.

These 250 men and boys would cost for wages during the
year about £5100
Twelve foremen, at 40_l._ per annum 480
Two superintendents at 50_l._ each 100
Brooms, &c. 325
Barrows 100
Two clerks, at 100_l._ each 200
Manager 100
-----
£6405

“No items are given for slopping or cartage, as, if the streets are
properly attended to, there ought to be no slop, whilst the value of
the manure may be more than equivalent for the expense of its removal.

“Some slop-carts will, however, be occasionally required for
Smithfield-market and similar localities; making, therefore,
ample allowance for contingencies, it is confidently considered
that the expense for cleansing the whole of the city of London by
street-orderlies would not exceed 8000_l._ per annum.”

“_Expenses of Cleansing and Watering the Streets, &c., of the City
of London, on the old system of Scavaging, from June, 1845, to June,
1846._

Annual
Expense.
To scavaging contractors £6040
Value of ashes and dust of the city of London, given
gratis to the above contractors in the year ending
1846, and now purchased by them for the year ending
1847 5500
Estimated contributions levied for watering streets 4000
Salaries to surveyors, inspectors, beadles, clerks,
&c., of Sewers’ Office, according to printed account,
March 3, 1846 2485
Expense for cleaning out sewers and gully-holes
(not known)
-------
Annual expense under the imperfect system of
street-cleansing £18,025

“Number of men employed, 58.

“State of the Streets:--Inhabitants always complaining of their being
muddy in winter and dusty in summer.”

Two estimates, then, show an expectation of a yearly saving of no less
than 2320_l._ to the rate-payers of two parishes alone; 938_l._ to St.
James’s, and 1382_l._ to St. Martin’s. And this, too, if all that be
augured of this system be realized, with a freedom from street dust
and dirt unknown under other methods of scavagery. I think it right,
however, to express my opinion that even in the reasonable prospect
of these great savings being effected, it is a paltry, or rather a
false, because miscalled, economy to speculate on the payment of
10_s._ and 12_s._ a week to street-labourers in the parishes of St.
James and St. Martin respectively, when so many of the contractors pay
their men 16_s._ weekly. If this low hire be justifiable in the way
of an experiment, it can never be justifiable as a continuance of the
_reward_ of labour.

If the street-orderly system is to be the means of _permanently_
reducing the wages of the regular scavagers from 16_s._ to 12_s._ a
week, then we had better remain afflicted with the physical dirt of our
streets, than the moral filth which is sure to proceed from the poverty
of our people--but if it is to be a means of elevating the pauper
to the dignity of the independent labour, rather than dragging the
independent labourer down to the debasement of the pauper, then let all
who wish well to their fellows encourage it as heartily and strenuously
as they can--otherwise the sooner it is denounced as an insidious mode
of defrauding the poor of one-fourth of their earnings the better; and
it is merely in the belief that Mr. Cochrane and the Council of the
Association _mean_ to keep faith with the public and increase the men’s
wages to those of the regular trade, that the street-orderly system
is advocated here. If our philanthropists are to reduce wages 25 per
cent., then, indeed, the poor man may cry, “_save me from my friends_.”

As to the positive and definite working of the street-orderly system
as an _economical_ system, no information can be given beyond
the estimates I have cited, as it has never been duly tested on
a sufficiently large scale. Its working has been, of necessity,
desultory. It has, however, been introduced into St. George’s,
Bloomsbury; St. James’s, Westminster; and is about to be established in
St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields; and in the course of a year or two it seems
that it will be sufficiently tested. That its working has hitherto
been desultory is a necessity in London, where “vested interests” look
grimly on any change or even any inquiry. That it deserves a full and
liberal testing seems undeniable, from the concurrent assent of all
parishioners who have turned their attention to it.

It remains to show the expenses of the Philanthropic Association, for
I am unable to present an account of street-orderlyism separately. The
two following tables fully indicate to what an extent the association
is indebted to the private purse of Mr. Cochrane, who by this time has
advanced between 6000_l._ and 7000_l._

“BALANCE SHEET.

_Receipts and Expenditure of the National Philanthropic Association,
for the Promotion of Social and Sanatory Improvements and the
Employment of the Poor, from 29th September, 1846, to 29th September,
1849._

DR. £ _s._ _d._
To subscriptions and donations from the 29th
September, 1846, to 29th September, 1849 1393 16 7
Balance due to president, 29th September,
1849 5739 19 9
-------------
7133 16 4

CR. £ _s._ _d._
By balance due to president, as per Balance
Sheet, Sept. 29, 1846 2935 17 9
Secretary’s salary 300 0 0
Rent of offices, &c. 248 10 0
Salaries to clerks, messengers, &c. 371 19 4
Do. to collectors 312 18 1
Commission to do. 130 5 6
Printing and stationery 556 17 0
Hire of rooms for public meetings 60 10 0
Advertisements and newspapers 244 5 3
Bill posting 8 12 6
Salaries to persons in charge of free
lavatories in Ham-yard, Great Windmill-st.,
St. James’s 10 18 2
Brooms, barrows, and shovels, for the use of
street-orderlies 86 8 0
Charges of contractors and others for removal
of street slop, &c. 58 9 6
Food, lodging, and wages to street-orderlies,
domiciled in Ham-yard, Great Windmill-street,
St. James’s 980 11 4
Clothing for the street-orderlies 13 3 2
Baths provided for do. 5 15 10
Sundry expenses for offices, including
postage-stamps, &c. 92 7 11
Law expenses 8 10 10
Builder’s charges for free lavatories in
Ham-yard 95 13 10
Amount advanced to the late secretary for
improving the dwellings of the poor 20 0 0
Farther advances made by president on various
occasions for the general purposes of the
Association 592 2 4
--------------
7133 16 4

Audited by us, Oct. 19th, 1849, Charles Shepherd Lenton, 33,
Leicester-square; and Joseph Child, 43, Leicester-square.”

STREET-ORDERLIES.--CITY SURVEYOR’S REPORT.

I have been favoured with a Report “upon street-cleansing and in
reference to the Street-Orderly System,” by the author, Mr. W. Haywood,
the Surveyor to the City Commission of Sewers, who has invited my
attention to the matter, in consequence of the statements which have
appeared on the subject in “London Labour and the London Poor.”

Mr. Haywood, whose tone of argument is courteous and moderate, and who
does not scruple to do justice to what he accounts the good points of
the street-orderly system, although he condemns it as a whole, gives
an account of the earlier scavaging of the city, not differing in any
material respect from that which I have already printed. He represents
the public ways of the City, which I have stated to be about 50 miles,
as “about 51 miles lineal, about 770,157 superficial yards in area.”
This area, it appears, comprehends 1000 different places.

In 1845 the area of the carriage-way of the City was estimated at
418,000 square yards, and the footway at 316,000, making a total of
734,000; but since that period new streets have been made and others
extensively widened. The precincts of Bridewell, St. Bartholomew, St.
James’s, Duke’s-place, Aldgate, and others, have been added to the
jurisdiction of the Sewers Commission by Act of Parliament, so that
the Surveyor now estimates the area of the carriage-way of the City of
London at 441,250 square yards, and the footway at 328,907, making a
total of 770,157 square yards.

“I am fully impressed,” observes Mr. Haywood, “with the great
importance to a densely-populated city of an efficient cleansing of the
public ways. Probably after a perfect system of sewage and drainage
(which implies an adequate water supply), and a well-paved surface
(which I have always considered to be little inferior in its importance
to the former, and which is indispensable to obtaining clean sweeping),
good surface cleansing ranks next in its beneficial sanitary influence;
and most certainly the comfort gained by all through having public
thoroughfares in a high degree of cleanliness is exceedingly great.”

Mr. Haywood expresses his opinion that streets “ordure
soddened”--smelling like “stable yards,”--dangerous to the health
of the inhabitants--impassable from mud in winter and from dust in
summer--and inflicting constant pecuniary loss, “can only exist in
an appreciable degree in thoroughfares swept much less frequently”
than the streets within the jurisdiction of the City Commissioners
of Sewers. In this opinion, however, Mr. Haywood comes into direct
collision with the statements put forth by the Board of Health, who
have insisted upon the insanitary state of the metropolitan streets,
more strongly, perhaps, in their several Reports, than has Mr. Cochrane.

But Mr. Haywood believes that not only are the assertions of the
Board of Health as to the unwholesome state of the metropolitan
thoroughfares unfounded as regards the city of London, but he asserts
that from the daily street-sweeping, “the surface there is maintained
in as high an average condition of cleanliness, as the means hitherto
adopted will enable to be attained.”

“Nor does this apply,” says Mr. Haywood, “to the main thoroughfares
only. In the poorer courts and alleys within the city, where a high
degree of cleanliness is, at least, as needful, in a sanitary point
of view, as in the larger and wider thoroughfares, the facilities for
efficient sweeping are as great, if not greater, than in other portions
of your jurisdiction. For many years past the whole of the courts and
alleys which carts do not enter, have been paved with flagstone, laid
at a good inclination, and presenting an uniform smooth _non-absorbent_
surface: in many of these courts where the habits of the people are
cleanly, the scavenger’s broom is almost unneeded for weeks together;
in others, where the habit prevails of throwing the refuse of the
houses upon the pavements, the daily sweeping is highly essential; but
in all these courts the surface presents a condition which renders good
clean sweeping a comparatively easy operation, that which is swept away
being mostly dry, or nearly so.”

After alluding to the street-orderly principle of scavaging, “to clean
and keep clean,” Mr. Haywood observes, “between the ‘_street-orderly
system_’ and the periodical or intermittent sweeping there is this
difference, that upon the former system there should be (if it fulfils
what it professes) no deposit of any description allowed to remain much
longer than a few minutes upon the surface, and that there should be
neither mud in the wet weather, nor dust in the dry weather, upon the
public ways; whilst, upon the latter system, the deposit necessarily
accumulates between the periods of sweeping, commencing as soon as one
sweeping has terminated, gradually increasing, and being at its point
of extreme accumulation at the period when the next sweeping takes
place; the former, then, is, or should be, a system of prevention; the
latter, confessedly, but a system of palliation or cure.

“The more frequent the periodical sweeping, therefore, the nearer it
approximates in its results to the ‘_street-orderly system_,’ inasmuch
as the accumulations, being frequently removed, must be smaller, and
the evils of mud, dust, effluvia, &c., less in proportion.

“Now to fulfil its promise: upon the ‘street-orderly system,’ there
should be men both day and night within the streets, who should
constantly remove the manure and refuse, and, failing this, if there be
only cessation for six hours out of the twenty-four of the ‘continuous
cleansing,’ it becomes at once a periodical cleansing but a degree
in advance of the daily sweeping, which has been now for years in
operation within the city of London.”

This appears to me to be an extreme conclusion:--because the labours
of the street-orderly system cease when the great traffic ceases, and
when, of course, there is comparatively little or no dirt deposited
in the thoroughfares, therefore, says Mr. Haywood, “the City system of
cleansing once per day is _only a degree_ behind that system of which
the principle is incessant cleansing at such time as the dirtying
is incessant.” The two principles are surely as different as light
and darkness:--in the one the cleansing is intermittent and the dirt
constant; in the other the dirt is intermittent and the cleanliness
constant--constant, at least, so long as the causes of impurity are so.

Mr. Haywood, however, states that the Commissioners were so pleased
with the appearance of the streets, when cleansed on the street-orderly
system, which “was _certainly much to be admired_,” that they
introduced a somewhat similar system, calling their scavagers “daymen,”
as they had the care of _keeping_ the streets clean, _after_ a daily
morning sweeping by the contractor’s men. They commenced their work
at 9 A.M. and ceased at 6 P.M. in the summer months, and at half-past
4 P.M. in the winter. In the summer months 36 daymen were employed on
the average; in the winter months, 46. The highest number of scavaging
daymen employed on any one day was 63; the lowest was 34. The area
cleansed was about 47,000 yards (superficial measure), and with the
following results, and the following cost, from June 24, 1846, to the
same date, 1847:--

Yards
Superficial.
The average area cleansed during the summer
months, per man per diem, was 1298
Ditto during winter, per man per diem, was 1016
The average of both summer and winter months
was, per man per diem 1139
------
The cost of the experiment was for daymen
(including brooms, barrows, shovels,
cartage, &c.)[29] £1450 18
One Foreman at 78 0
--------
And the total cost of the experiment £1528 18

“The daily sweeping,” Mr. Haywood says, “which for the previous
two years had been established throughout the City, gave at that
time _very great satisfaction_. It was quite true that the streets
which the daymen attended to, _looked superior_ to those cleansed
only _periodically_, but the practical value of the difference was
considered by many not to be worth the sum of money paid for it. It
was also felt that, if it was continued, it should upon principle be
extended at least to all streets of similar traffic to those upon which
it had been tried; and as, after due consideration, the Commission
thought that one daily sweeping was sufficient, both for health and
comfort, the day or continuous sweeping was abandoned, and the whole
City only received, from that time to the present, the usual daily
sweeping.”

The “present” time is shown by the date of Mr. Haywood’s Report,
October 13, 1851. The reason assigned for the abandonment of the
system of the daymen is peculiar and characteristic. The system of
continuous cleansing gave very great satisfaction, although it was but
a degree in advance of the once-a-day cleansing. The streets which
the daymen attended to “looked,” and of course were, “superior” in
cleanliness to those scavaged periodically. It was also felt that
the principle should “be extended at least to all streets of similar
traffic;” and why was it not so extended? Because, in a word, “it was
not worth the money;” though by what standard the value of public
cleanliness was calculated, is not mentioned.

The main question, therefore, is, what is the difference in the cost of
the two systems, and _is_ the admitted “superior cleanliness” produced
by the continuous mode of scavaging, in comparison with that obtained
by the intermittent mode, of sufficient public value to warrant the
increased expense (if any)--in a word, as the City people say--is it
_worth the money_?

First, as to the comparative cost of the two systems: after a
statement of the contracts for the dusting and cleansing of the City
(matters I have before treated of) Mr. Haywood, for the purpose of
making a comparison of the present City system of scavaging with the
street-orderly system, gives the table in the opposite page to show the
cost of street cleansing and dusting within the jurisdiction of the
City Court of Sewers.

Mr. Haywood then invites attention to the subjoined statement of
the National Philanthropic Association, on the occurrence of a
demonstration as to the efficiency and economy of the street-orderly
system.

“Association for the Promotion of Street Paving, Cleansing, Draining,
&c., 20, Vere Street, Oxford Street, January 26th, 1846.

“Approximation to the total Expenses connected with cleansing, as an
experiment, certain parts of the City of London, commencing December,
1845, for the period of two months.

“350 brooms, being an average of 5 brooms £. _s._ _d._
for each man 23 18 10
For carting 99 1 9
For advertising 65 0 0
For rent of store-room, 3_l._ 14_s._; Clerks’
salaries, 12_l._; Messengers, 5_l._ 5_s._; wooden
clogs for men, 2_l._ 5_s._ 10_d._; expenses of
washing wood pavement, 5_l._ 28 4 10
Expenses of barrows 24 14 0
Christmas dinner to men, foremen, and
superintendents (97) 15 12 6
83 men (averaging at 2_s._ 6_d._ per day) for
9 weeks 573 15 0
4 superintendents at 25_s._ 4_d._, foreman at
18_s._, cart foreman 20_s._, storekeeper 18_s._,
chief superintendents 2_l._, for 9 weeks 112 10 0
For various small articles, brushes, rakes,
&c. 36 7 8
Petty expenses of the office, postages, &c.,
and stationery 6 0 0
---------------
Approximation to the total cost of the expense £987 4 7
---------------

Signed, M. DAVIES, Secretary.”

“I will now,” says Mr. Haywood, “without further present reference
to the Report of the Association, proceed to form an estimate of
the expenses of the system as they would have been if it had been
extended to the whole City, and which estimate will be based upon
the information as to the expenses of the system, furnished by
the experiment or demonstration made by the Association within your
jurisdiction.

TABLE SHOWING THE COST OF STREET CLEANSING AND DUSTING WITHIN THE
JURISDICTION OF THE CITY COURT OF SEWERS.

------------------------+--------------------------+-----------------------
| | |
|Sum paid for Scavenging|Sum received by Commission| Total Disbursements
| and Dusting, or | for the Sale of | by the Commission for
| for Scavenging only | Dust when the Contracts |Scavenging and Dusting.
| during the year. | were let separately. |
+-----------------------+--------------------------+-----------------------
| £ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._
| 4590 6 0 | | 4590 6 0
| | |
| | |
| | Amounts paid |
| | and received |
| 3633 7 0 | are balanced | 3633 17 0
| | |
| | |
| | |
| 2084 4 6 | | 2084 4 6
| | +-----------------------
| Average per Annum for 3 Years.| 3436 2 6
| | +-----------------------
| | +-----------------------
| 3826 12 6 | | 3826 12 6
| | |
| | Amounts paid |
| | and received |
| | are balanced |
| | |
| 2033 2 0 | | 2833 2 0
| | +-----------------------
| Average per Annum of the 2 Years.| 3329 17 3
| | +-----------------------
| | +-----------------------
| 6034 6 0 | 1354 5 0 | 4680 1 0
| | |
| 8014 2 0 | 4455 5 0 | 3558 17 0
| | |
| 7226 1 6 | 1328 15 0 | 5897 6 6
| | |
| 7486 11 6 | 7486 11 6 |
| | |
| 6779 16 0 | 6779 16 0 |
| | |
| 6328 17 0 | 6328 17 0 |
| | |
| Average per Annum of the last 6 Years.| 5788 11 6
+--------------------------------------------------+-----------------------

NOTE.--From 24th June, 1846, to 24th June, 1847, the Commission made
their own experiment upon the Street-Orderly System--the expenses of
such experiment are included in the above amounts. In 1849 the area of
the jurisdiction of the Commission was increased by the addition of
various precincts under the City of London Sewers’ Act.

“The total cost of the experiment was £987 4_s._ 7_d._, and, deducting
the charges under the head of advertising, Christmas dinner, and petty
cash expenses, and also that for office-rent, clerks, messengers, &c.,
and assigning £50 as the value of the implements at that time for
future use, there is left a balance of £822 7_s._ 3_d._ as the clear
cost of the experiment.

“The experiment was tried for a period of eight weeks exactly,
according to the return made to the Commission by the Superintendent of
the Association, but as in the statement of expenses the wages appear
to be included for a period of nine weeks, I have assumed nine weeks as
the correct figure, and the experiment must therefore have cost a sum
of £822 7_s._ 3_d._ for that period, or at the rate of about £91 per
week.

Squ. Yards
“Now the total area of the carriage-way
of the City of London was at that time 418,000
“And the area of the foot-way 316,000
-------
“Making a total of 734,000

“And the area of the carriage-way
cleaned by the street-orderlies was 30,670
“And the area of the foot-way 18,590
-------
“Making a total of 49,260

“The total area of foot-way and carriage-way cleansed was therefore
1-15th of the whole of the carriage-way and foot-way of the City; or,
taken separately, the carriage-way cleansed was somewhat more than
1-14th of the whole of the City carriage-way.

“It has been seen also that the total cost of
cleansing this 1-14th portion of the carriage-way,
after deducting all extraneous expenses, was at
the rate per week of £91
Or at the rate, per annum, of £4732

“To assign an expenditure in the same proportion for the remaining
13-14ths of the whole carriage-way area of the City would not be just,
for, in the first place, allowance must be made, owing to the dirt
brought off from the adjacent streets, which, it is assumed, would not
have been the case had they also been cleansed upon the street-orderly
system; and moreover, as the majority of the streets cleansed were
those of large traffic, a larger proportion of labour was needed to
them than would have been the case had the experiment been upon any
equal area of carriage-way, taken from a district comprehending streets
of all sizes and degrees of traffic; but if I assume that the 1-14th
portion of the City cleansed represents 1-11th of the whole in the
labour needed for cleansing the whole of the City upon the same system,
I believe I shall have made a very fair deduction, and shall, if
anything, err in favour of the experiment.

“Estimating, therefore, the expense of cleansing the whole of the City
carriage-way upon the street-orderly system according to the expenses
of the experiment made in 1845-6, and from the data then furnished, it
appears that cleansing upon such system would have come to an annual
sum of 52,052_l._

“It will be seen that there is a remarkable difference between this
estimate of 52,052_l._ per annum and that of 18,000_l._ per annum
estimated by the Association, and given in their Report of the 26th
January, 1846; and what is more remarkable is, that my estimate is
framed not upon any assumption of my own, but is a dry calculation
based upon the very figures of expense furnished by the Association
itself, and herein-before recited.”

A second demonstration, carried on in the City by the street-orderlies,
is detailed by Mr. Haywood, but as he draws the same conclusions from
it, there is no necessity to do other than allude to it here.

According to the above estimate, it certainly must be admitted that
the difference between the two accounts is, as Mr. Haywood says,
“remarkable”--the one being nearly three times more than the other.
But let us, for fairness’ sake, test the cost of cleansing the City
thoroughfares upon the continuous plan of scavaging by the figures
given in Mr. Haywood’s own report, and see whether the above conclusion
is warranted by the facts there stated. From June, 1846, to June, 1847,
we have seen that several of the main streets in the City were cleansed
continuously throughout the day by what were called “daymen”--that is
to say, 47,000 superficial yards of the principal thoroughfares were
_kept_ clean (_after_ the daily cleansing of them by the contractor’s
men) by a body of men similar in their mode of operation to the
street-orderlies, and who removed all the dirt as soon as deposited
between the hours of the principal traffic. The cost of this experiment
(for such it seems to have been) was, for the twelve months, as we
have seen, 1528_l._ 18_s._ Now if the expense of cleansing 47,000
superficial yards upon the continuous method was 1529_l._, then,
according to Cocker, 770,157 yards (the total area of the public ways
of the City) would cost 25,054_l._; and, adding to this 6328_l._ for
the sum paid to the contractors for the daily scavaging, we have only
31,382_l._ for the gross expense of cleansing the whole of the City
thoroughfares once a day by the “regular scavagers,” and _keeping_
them clean _afterwards_ by a body similar to the street-orderlies--a
difference of upwards of 20,000_l._ between the facts and figures of
the City Surveyor.

It would appear to me, therefore, that Mr. Haywood has erred, in
estimating the probable expense of the street-orderly system of
scavaging applied to the City at 52,000_l._ per annum, for, by his own
showing, it actually cost the authorities for the one year when it
was tried there, only 1529_l._ for 47,000 superficial yards, at which
rate 770,000 yards could not cost more than 31,500_l._, and this, even
allowing that the same amount of labour would be required for the
continuous cleansing of the minor thoroughfares as was needed for the
principal ones. That the error is an oversight on the part of the City
Surveyor, the whole tone of his Report is sufficient to assure us, for
it is at once moderate and candid.

It must, on the other hand, be admitted, that Mr. Haywood is perfectly
correct as to the difference between the cost of the “demonstration”
of the street-orderly system of cleansing in the City, and the
estimated cost of that mode of scavaging when brought into regular
operation there; this, however, the year’s experience of the City
“daymen” shows, could not possibly exceed 32,000_l._, and might and
probably would be much less, when we take into account the smaller
quantity of labour required for the minor thoroughfares--the extra
value of the street manure when collected free from mud--the saving
in the expense of watering the streets (this not being required under
the orderly system)--and the abolition of the daily scavaging, which
is included in the sum above cited, but which would be no longer
needed were the orderlies employed, such work being performed by them
at the commencement of their day’s labours; so that I am disposed to
believe, all things considered, that somewhere about 20,000_l._ per
annum might be the gross expense of continuously cleansing the City.
Mr. Cochrane estimates it at 18,000_l._ But whether the admitted
superior cleanliness of the streets, and the employment of an extra
number of people, will be held by the citizens to be worth the extra
money, it is not for me to say. If, however, the increased cleanliness
effected by the street-orderlies is to be brought about by a decrease
of the wages of the regular scavagers from 16_s._ to 12_s._ a week,
which is the amount upon which Mr. Cochrane forms his estimate, then
I do not hesitate to say the City authorities will be gainers, in the
matter of poor-rates at least, by an adherence to the present method
of scavaging, paying as they do the best wages, and indeed affording
an illustrious example to all the metropolitan parishes, in refusing
to grant contracts to any master scavagers but such as consent to deal
fairly with the men in their employ. And I do hope and trust, for the
sake of the working-men, the City Commissioners of Sewers will, should
they decide upon having the City cleansed _continuously_, make the same
requirement of Mr. Cochrane, before they allow his street-orderlies to
displace the regular scavagers at present employed there.

Benefits to the community, gained at the expense of “the people,”
are really great evils. The street-orderly system is a good one when
applied to parishes employing paupers and paying them 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._
and a loaf per day, or even nothing, except their food, for their
labour. Here it elevates paupers into independent labourers; but,
applied to those localities where the highest wages are paid, and there
is the greatest regard shown for the welfare of the workmen, it is
merely a scurf-system of degrading the independent labourers to the
level of paupers, by reducing the wages of the regular scavagers from
16_s._ to 12_s._ per week. The avowed object of the street-orderly
system is to provide employment for able-bodied men, and so to
_prevent_ them becoming a _burthen to the parish_. But is not a
reduction of the scavager’s wages to the extent of 25 per cent. a week,
more likely to _encourage_ than to _prevent_ such a result? This is
the weak point of the orderly system, and one which gentlemen calling
themselves _philanthropists_ should really blush to be parties to.

After all, the opinion to which I am led is this--the street-orderly
system is incomparably the best mode of scavaging, and the payment
of the men by “_honourable_” masters the best mode of employing the
scavagers. The evils of the scavaging trade appear to me to spring
chiefly from the parsimony of the parish authorities--either employing
their own paupers without adequate remuneration, or else paying such
prices to the contractors as almost necessitates the under-payment of
the men in their employ. Were I to fill a volume, this is all that
could be said on the matter.

OF THE “JET AND HOSE” SYSTEM OF SCAVAGING.

There appears at the present time a bent in the public mind for an
improved system of scavagery. Until the ravages of the cholera in
1832, and again in 1848, roused the attention of Government and of
the country, men seemed satisfied to dwell in dirty streets, and to
congratulate themselves that the public ways were dirtier in the days
of their fathers; a feeling or a spirit which has no doubt existed in
all cities, from the days of those original scavagers, the vultures
and hyenas of Africa and the East, the adjutants of Calcutta, and the
hawks--the common glades or kites of this country--and which, we are
told, in the days of Henry VIII. used to fly down among the passengers
to remove the offal of the butchers and poulterers’ stalls in the
metropolitan markets, and in consideration of which services it was
forbidden to kill them--down to the mechanical sweeping of the streets
of London, and even to Mr. Cochrane’s excellent street-orderlies.

Besides the plan suggested by Mr. Cochrane, whose orderlies cleanse
the streets without wetting, and consequently without dirtying, the
surface by the use of the watering-cart, there is the opposite method
proposed by Mr. Lee, of Sheffield, and other gentlemen, who recommend
street-cleansing by the hose and jet, that is to say, by flushing
the streets with water at a high pressure, as the sewers are now
flushed; and so, by _washing_ rather than _sweeping_ the dirt of the
streets into the sewers, through the momentum of the stream of water,
dispensing altogether with the scavager’s broom, shovel, and cart.

In order to complete this account of the scavaging of the streets
of London, I must, in conclusion, say a few words on this method,
advocated as it is by the Board of Health, and sanctioned by scientific
men. By the application of a hose, with a jet or water pipe attached
to a fire-plug, the water being at high pressure, a stream of fluid is
projected along the street’s surface with force enough to _wash_ away
all before it into the sewers, while by the same apparatus it can be
thrown over the fronts of the houses. This mode of street-cleansing
prevails in some American cities, especially in Philadelphia, where
the principal thoroughfares are said to be kept admirably clean by it;
while the fronts of the houses are as bright as those in the towns
of Holland, where they are washed, not by mechanical appliances, but
by water thrown over them out of scoops by hand labour--one of the
instances of the minute and indefatigable industry of the Dutch.

It is stated in one of the Reports of the Board of Health, that
“unless cleansing be general and simultaneous, much of the dirt of one
district is carried by traffic into another. By the subdivision of the
metropolis into small districts, the duty of cleansing the _public_
carriage-way is thrown upon a number of obscure and irresponsible
authorities; while the duty of cleansing the _public_ footways, which
are no less important, _are_ charged upon multitudes of private
individuals.” [The grammar is the Board of Health’s grammar.] “It is
a false pecuniary economy, in the case of the poorest inhabitants of
court or alley, who obtain their livelihood by any regular occupation,
to charge upon each family the duty of cleansing the footway before
their doors. The performance of this service daily, at a rate of 1_d._
_per week_ per house or per family, would be an economy in soap and
clothes to persons the average value of whose time is never less than
2_d._ per hour.” [This is at the rate of 2_s._ a day; did this most
innocent Board _never_ hear of work yielding 1_s._ 6_d._ a week? But
the sanitary authorities seem to be as fond as teetotallers of “going
to extremes.”]

In another part of the same Report the process and results are
described. It is also stated that for the success of this method of
street purification the pavement must be good; for “a powerful jet,
applied by the hose, would scoop out hollows in unpaved places, and
also loosen and remove the stones in those that are badly paved.”
As every public place ought to be well-paved, this necessity of new
and good pavement is no reasonable objection to the plan, though it
certainly admits of a question as to the durability of the roads--the
macadamized especially--under this continual soaking. Sir Henry
Parnell, the great road authority, speaks of wet as the main destroyer
of the highways.

It is stated in the Report, after the mention of experiments having
been made by Mr. Lovick, Mr. Hale, and Mr. Lee (Mr. Lee being one of
the engineering inspectors of the Board), that

“Mr. Lovick, at the instance of the Metropolitan Commissioners of
Sewers, conducted his experiments with such jets as could be obtained
from the water companies’ mains in eligible places; but the pressure
was low and insufficient. Nevertheless, it appeared that, taking the
extra quantity of water required at the actual expense of pumping,
the paved surfaces might be washed clean at one-half the price of the
scavagers’ manual labour in sweeping. Mr. Lee’s trials were made at
Sheffield, with the aid of a more powerful and suitable pressure, and
he found that with such pressure as he obtained the cleansing might be
effected in one-third the time, and at one-third the usual expense,
of the scavagers’ labour of sweeping the surface with the broom.”
[This expense varies, and the Board nowhere states at what rate it is
computed; the scavagers’ wages varying 100 per cent.]

“The effect of this mode of cleansing in close courts and streets,” it
is further stated, “was found to be peculiarly grateful in hot weather.
The water was first thrown up and diffused in a thin sheet, it was
then applied rapidly to cleansing the surface and the side walls, as
well as the pavements.” Mr. Lovick states that the immediate effect of
this operation was to lower the temperature, and to produce a sense of
freshness, similar to that experienced after a heavy thunder-shower
in hot weather. But there is nothing said as to the probable effect
of this state of things in winter--a hard frost for instance. The
same expedient was resorted to for cooling the yards and outer courts
of hospitals, and the shower thrown on the windows of the wards
afforded great relief. Mr. Lovick, in his Report on the trial works for
cleansing courts, states:--

“The importance of water as an agent in the improvement and
preservation of health being in proportion to the unhealthiness or
depressed condition of districts, its application to close courts and
densely-populated localities, in which a low sanitary condition must
obtain, is of primary importance. Having shown the practicability
of applying this system (cleansing by jets of water) to the general
cleansing of the streets, my further labours have been, and are now,
directed to this end.

“For the purpose of ascertaining the effect produced by operations
of this nature upon the atmosphere, two courts were selected:
Church-passage, New Compton-street, open at both ends, with
a carriage-way in the centre, and footway on each side; and
Lloyd’s-court, Crown-street, St. Giles’s, a close court, with, at one
entrance, a covered passage about 40 feet in length: both courts were
in a very filthy condition; in Church-passage there were dead decaying
cats and fish, with offal, straw, and refuse scattered over the
surface; at one end an entrance to a private yard was used as a urinal;
in every part there were most offensive smells.

“Lloyd’s-court was in a somewhat similar condition, the covered
entrance being used as a general urinal, presenting a disgusting
appearance; the whole atmosphere of the court was loaded with
highly-offensive effluvia; in the covered entrance this was more
particularly discernible.

“The property of water, as an absorbent, was rendered strikingly
apparent in the immediate and marked effects of its application, a
purity and freshness remarkably contrasted to the former close and
foul condition prevailing throughout. A test of this, striking and
unexpected, was the change at different periods in the relative
condition of atmosphere of the courts and of the contiguous streets. In
their ordinary condition, as might have been expected, the atmosphere
was purer in the streets than in the courts; it was to be inferred that
the cleansing would have more nearly assimilated these conditions. This
was not only the case, but it was found to have effected a complete
change; the atmosphere of the courts at the close of the operations
being far fresher and purer than the atmosphere of the streets. The
effect produced was in every respect satisfactory and complete; and was
the theme of conversation with the lookers-on, and with the men who
conducted the operations.

“The expense of these operations, including water, would be, for--

“Church-passage (time, five minutes), 1-1/2_d._

“Lloyd’s-court (time, ten minutes), 3-1/4_d._

“Mr. Hale, another officer, gave a similar statement.”

Other experiments are thus detailed:--

“Lascelles-court, Broad-street, St. Giles’s. This court was pointed
out to me as one of the worst in London. Before cleansing it smelt
_intolerable_,” [_sic_] “and looked disgusting. Besides an abundance
of ordinary filth arising from the exposure of refuse, the surface
of the court contained heaps of human excrement, there being only
one privy to the whole court, and that not in a state to be publicly
used.... The cleansing operations were commenced by sprinkling the
court with deodorising fluid, mixed with 20 times its volume of water;
a great change, from a very pungent odour to an imperceptible smell,
was immediately effected; after which the refuse of the court was
washed away, and the pavement thoroughly cleansed by the hose and jet;
and now this place, which before was in a state almost indescribable,
presented an appearance of comparative comfort and respectability.”

It is stated as the result of another experiment in “an ordinary wide
street with plenty of traffic,” that “water-carts and ordinary rains
only create the mud which the jet entirely removes, giving to the
pavement the appearance of having been as thoroughly cleansed as the
private stone steps in front of the houses.”

With respect to Mr. Lee’s experiments in Sheffield, I find that Messrs.
Guest, of Rotherham, are patentees of a tap for the discharge of water
at high pressures, and that they had adapted their invention to the
purpose of a fire-plug and stand pipe suitable for street-cleansing by
the hose and jet. Church-street, one of the principal thoroughfares,
was experimentally cleansed by this process: “The carriage-way is from
20 to 24 feet wide, and about 150 yards long. It was washed almost
as clean as a house-floor in five minutes.” Mr. Lee expresses his
conviction that, by the agency of the hose and jet, every street in
that populous borough might be cleansed at about 1_s._ per annum for
each house. “The principal thoroughfares,” he states, “could be thus
made perfectly clean, three times every week, before business hours,
and the minor streets and lanes twice, or once per week, at later hours
in the day, by the agency of an abundant supply of water, at _less than
half the sum necessary for the cartage alone_ of an equal quantity of
refuse in a solid or semi-fluid condition.”

The highways most frequented in Sheffield constitute about one-half of
the whole extent of the streets and roads in the borough, measuring 47
miles. This length, Mr. Lee computes, might be effectually cleansed
with the hose and jet, ten miles of it three times a week, 21 miles
twice a week, and 16 miles once a week, a total of 88 miles weekly, or
4576 miles yearly. The quantity of Water required would be 3000 gallons
a mile, or a yearly total of 13,728,000 gallons. This water might be
supplied, Mr. Lee opines, at 1_d._ per 1000 gallons (57_l._ 4_s._ per
annum), although the price obtained by the Water-works Company was
6-1/2_d._ per 1000 gallons (371_l._ 16_s._ per annum). “I now proceed,”
he says, “to the cost of labour: 4576 miles per annum is equal to
14-2/3 miles for each working day, or to six sets of two men cleansing
2-1/2 miles per day each set. To these must be added three horses and
carts, and three carters, for the removal of such _débris_ as cannot be
washed away and for such parts of the town as cannot be cleansed by
this system, making a total of fifteen men. Their wages I would fix at
50_l._ per annum each. The estimate is as follows:--

“Annual interest upon the first cost
of hose and pipes, three horses and £
carts 30
Fifteen men’s wages 750
Three horses’ provender 150
Wear, tear, and depreciation of hose, &c. 250
Management and incidentals, say 120
------
£1300.”

The estimate, it will be seen, is based on the supposition that _the
water supply should be at the public cost_, and not a specific charge
for the purposes of street-cleansing.

The 47 miles of highway of Sheffield is but three miles less than those
of the city of London, the cost of cleansing which is, according to the
estimate before given, no less than 18,000_l._

The Sheffield account is divested of all calculations as to house-dust
and ashes, and the charge for watering-carts; but, taking merely the
sum paid to scavaging contractors, and assigning 1000_l._ (out of the
2485_l._), as the proportion of salaries, &c., under the department of
scavagery in the management of the City Commissioners, we find that
while the expense of street-cleansing by the Sheffield hose and jet
was little more than 34_l._, in London, by the ordinary mode, it was
upwards of 140_l._ per mile, or more than four times as much. The hose
and jet system is said to have washed the streets of Sheffield as clean
as a house-floor, which could not be said of it in London. The streets
of the City, it should also be borne in mind, are now swept daily; Mr.
Lee proposes only a periodical cleaning for Sheffield, or once, twice,
and thrice a week. Of the cost of the experiments made in London with
the hose and jet, in Lascelles-court, &c., nothing is said.

Street-cleansing by the hose and jet is, then, as yet but an
experiment. It has not, like the street-orderly mode, been tested
continuously or systematically; but the experiments are so curious
and sometimes so startling in their results that it was necessary to
give a brief account of them here, in order to render this account of
the cleansing of the streets of the metropolis as comprehensive as
possible. For my own part, I must confess the street-orderly system
appears to excel all other modes of scavagery, producing at once the
greatest cleanliness with the greatest employment to the poor. Nor am
I so convinced as the theoretic and crotchety Board of Health as to
the healthfulness of dampness, or the daily evaporation of a sheet of
even clean water equal in extent to the entire surface of the London
streets. It is certainly _doubtful_, to say the least, whether so much
additional moisture might _improve_ the public health, which the Board
are instituted to protect; rain certainly contributes to cleanliness,
and yet no one would advocate continued wet weather as a source of
general convalescence.

I shall conclude this account of the scavaging of London, with the
following brief statement as to the mode in which these matters are
conducted abroad.

In Paris, where our system of parochial legislation and management
is unknown, the scavaging of the streets--so frequently matters of
private speculation with us--is under the immediate direction of the
municipality, and the Government publish the returns, as they do of the
revenue of their capital from the abattoirs, the interments, and other
sources.

In the _Moniteur_ for December 10, 1848, it is stated that the refuse
of the streets of Paris sells for 500,500 francs (20,020_l._),
when sold by auction in the mass; and 3,800,000 francs (equal to
152,000_l._) when, after having lain in the proper receptacles, until
fit for manure, it is sold by the cubic foot. In 1823, the streets
of Paris were leased for 75,000 francs (3000_l._) per annum; in 1831
the value was 166,000 francs (6640_l._); and since 1845 the price
has risen to the sum first named, viz., 500,500 francs (20,020_l._);
from which, however, is to be deducted the expense of cleansing, &c.
I may add, that the receptacles alluded to are large places provided
by Government, where the manure is deposited and left to ferment for
twelve or eighteen months.

OF THE COST AND TRAFFIC OF THE STREETS OF LONDON.

I have, at page 183 of the present volume, given a brief statement of
the annual cost attending the keeping of the streets of the metropolis
in working order.

The formation of the streets of a capital like London, the busiest in
the world--streets traversed daily by what Cowper, even in his day,
described as “the ten thousand wheels” of commerce--is an elaborate and
costly work.

In my former account I gave an estimate which referred to the amount
dispensed weekly in wages for the labour of the workmen engaged in
laying down the paved roads of the metropolis. This was at the rate
of 100,000_l._ per week; that is to say, calculating the operation of
relaying the streets to occupy one year in every five, there is no
less than 5,200,000_l._ expended in that time among the workpeople
so engaged. The sum expended in labour for the continued repairs of
the roads, after being so relaid, appears to be about 20,000_l._
per week[30], or, in round numbers, about 1,000,000_l._ a year;
so that the gross sum annually disbursed to the labourers engaged
in the construction of the roads of London would seem to be about
2,250,000_l._, that is to say, 1,000,000_l._ for repairing the old
roads, and 1,250,000_l._ per annum for laying down new ones in their
place.

It now remains for me to set forth the gross cost of the metropolitan
highways, that is to say, the sum annually expended in both labour and
materials, as well for relaying as for repairing the roads.

The granite-built streets cost, when relaid, about 11,000_l._ the
mile, of ten yards’ width, which is at the rate of 12_s._ 6_d._ the
square yard, materials and labour included, the granite (Aberdeen)
being 1_l._ 5_s._ per ton, and one ton of “seven-inch” being sufficient
to cover about three square yards.

The average cost of a macadamized road, materials and labour included,
if constructed from the foundation, is about 4400_l._ per street mile
(ten yards wide)--5_s._ the superficial yard being a fair price for
materials and labour.

Wood pavement, on the other hand, costs about 9680_l._ a mile of ten
yards’ width for materials and labour, which is at the rate of 11_s._
the superficial yard.

The cost of _repairs_, materials and labour included, is, for granite
pavement about 1-1/2_d._ per square yard, or 100_l._ the street mile of
ten yards wide; for “Macadam” it is from 6_d._ to 3_s._ 6_d._, or an
average of 1_s._ 6_d._ per superficial yard, which is at the rate of
1320_l._ the street mile; while the wood pavement costs about the same
for repairs as the granite.

The total cost of repairing the streets of London, then, may be taken
as follows:--

Repairing granite-built streets, per £
mile of ten yards wide 100
Repairing macadamized roads, per
street mile 1320
Repairing wood pavement, per street
mile 100

Or, as a total for all London,--

Repairing 400 miles of granite-built
streets, at 100l. per mile 40,000
Repairing 1350 miles of macadamized
streets, at 1320l. per mile 1,782,000
Repairing five miles of wood, at
100_l._ per mile 500
----------
£1,822,500

The following, on the other hand, may be taken as the total cost of
_reconstructing_ the London streets:--

£
Granite-built streets, per mile ten yards wide 11,000
Macadamized streets, per street mile 4,400
Wood „ „ 9,680

Or, as a total for the entire streets and roads of London,--

Relaying 400 miles of granite-built £
streets, at 11,000_l._ per mile 4,400,000
Relaying 1350 miles of macadamized
streets, at 4400_l._ per mile 5,940,000
Relaying five miles of wood-built
streets, at 9680_l._ 48,400
-----------
£10,388,400

But the above refers only to the road, and besides this, there is, as
a gentleman to whom I am much indebted for valuable information on
the subject, reminds me, the foot paving, granite curb, and granite
channel not included. The usual price for _paving_ is 8_d._ per foot
superficial, when laid--granite curb 1_s._ 7_d._ per foot run, and
granite channel 12_s._ per square yard.

“Now, presuming that three-fourths of the roads,” says my informant,
“have paved footpaths on each side at an average width of six feet
exclusive of curb, and that one-half of the macadamized roads have
granite channels on each side, and that one-third of all the roads
have granite curb on each side; these items for 400 miles of granite
road, 1350 macadamized, and 5 miles of wood--together 1755 miles--will
therefore amount to

£ _s._ _d._
Three-fourths of 1755 miles of
streets paved on each side,
six feet wide, at 8_d._ per foot
superficial 2,779,392 0 0
One-half of 1350 miles of macadamized
roads with one foot
of granite channel on each
side, at 12_s._ per yard square 458,537 4 5
One-third of 1755 miles of road
with granite curb on each
side, at 1_s._ 7_d._ per foot run 489,060 0 0
---------------------
3,726,989 4 5
Cost of constructing 1755 miles
of roadway 10,388,400 0 0
----------------------
Total cost of constructing the
streets of London £14,115,389 4 5

“Accordingly the original cost of the metropolitan pavements exceeds
fourteen millions sterling, and, calculating that this requires
renewal every five years, the gross annual expenditure will be at the
rate of 2,500,000_l._ per annum, which, added to 1,822,500_l._, gives
4,322,500_l._, or upwards of four millions and a quarter sterling for
the entire annual cost of the London roadways.

“From rather extensive experience,” adds my informant, “in building
operations, and consequently in making and paying for roads, I am of
opinion that the amount I have shown is under rather than above the
actual cost.

“In a great many parts of the metropolis the roads are made by the
servants of a body of Commissioners appointed for the purpose; and
from dear-bought experience I can say they are a public nuisance, and
would earnestly caution speculating builders against taking building
ground or erecting houses in any place where the roads are under
their control. The Commissioners are generally old retired tradesmen,
and have very little to occupy their attention, and are often quite
ignorant of their duties; I have reason to believe, too, that some of
them even use their little authority to gratify their dislike to some
poor builder in their district, by meddling and quibbling, and while
that is going on the houses which have been erected can neither be let
nor sold; so that as the bills given for the materials keep running,
the builder, when they fall due, is ruined, for his creditors will not
take his unlet houses for their debts, and no one else will purchase
them until let, for none will rent them without proper accesses.
I feel certain that in those parts where the roads are made by
Commissioners three times more builders, in proportion to their number,
get into difficulties than in the districts where they are permitted to
make the roads themselves.”

The paved ways and roads of London, then, it appears, cost in round
numbers 10,000,000_l._ sterling, and require nearly 2,000,000_l._ to be
expended upon them annually for repairs.

But this is not the sole expense attendant upon the construction of
the streets of the metropolis. Frequently, in the formation of new
lines of thoroughfare, large masses of property have to be bought up,
removed, and new buildings erected at considerable cost. In a return
made pursuant to an order of the Court of Common Council, dated 23rd
October, 1851, for “An account of all moneys which have been raised
for public works executed, buildings erected, or street improvements
effected, out of the Coal Duties receivable by the Corporation of
London in the character of trustees for administration or otherwise,
since the same were made chargeable by Parliament for such purposes in
the year 1766,” the following items are given relating to the cost of
the formation of new streets and improvements of old ones:--

_Street Improvements forming New Thoroughfares._

Amount raised
for Public
Works, &c.
Building the bridge across the river £. _s._ _d._
Thames, from Blackfriars, in the city
of London, to Upper Ground-street, in
the county of Surrey, now called
Blackfriars Bridge, and forming the
avenues thereto, and embanking the
north abutment of the said bridge--(Entrusted
to the Corporation of the
city of London) 210,000 0 0

Making a new line of streets from Moorfields,
opposite Chiswell-street, towards
the east into Bishopsgate-street
(now Crown-street and Sun-street),
also from the east end of Chiswell-street
westward into Barbican--(Corporation
of the city of London) 16,500 0 0

Making a new street from Crispin-street,
near Spitalfields Church, into Bishopsgate-street
(now called Union-street),
in the city of London and in the
county of Middlesex--(Commissioners
named in Act 18, George III., c. 78) 9,000 0 0

Opening communications between Wapping-street
and Ratcliffe-highway, and
between Old Gravel-lane and Virginia-street,
all in the county of Middlesex--(Commissioners
appointed under Act 17, Geo. III., c. 22) 1,000 0 0

Formation of Farringdon-street, removal
of Fleet-market, and erection of Farringdon-market,
in the city of London--(Corporation
of the city of London) 250,000 0 0

Formation of a new street from the end
of Coventry-street to the junction of
Newport-street and Long-acre (Cranbourn-street),
continuing the line of street from Waterloo
Bridge, already completed to Bow-street (Upper
Wellington-street), and thence northward into
Broad-street, Holborn, and thence
to Charlotte-street, Bloomsbury, extending
Oxford-street in a direct line
through St. Giles’s, so as to communicate
with Holborn at or near Southampton-street
(New Oxford-street); also widening the northern
and southern extremities of Leman-street,
Goodman’s-fields, and forming a new
street from the northern side of
Whitechapel to the front of Spitalfields
Church (Commercial-street),
and forming a new street from Rosemary-lane
to East Smithfield, near to
the entrance of the London-docks;
also formation of a street from the
neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament
towards Buckingham Palace,
in the city of Westminster (Victoria-street),
all in the county of Middlesex;
also formation of a line of new street
between Southwark and Westminster
Bridges, in the county of Surrey--(Her
Majesty’s Commissioners of
Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues) 665,000 0 0
NOTE.--The Commissioners of Her
Majesty’s Woods have been authorised
to raise further moneys on the
credit of the duty of 1_d._ per ton for
further improvements in the neighbourhood
of Spitalfields, but the
Chamberlain is not officially cognizant
of the amount.
Forming a new street from the northern
end of Victoria-street, Holborn (formed
by the Corporation to Clerkenwell-green,
all in the county of Middlesex)--(Clerkenwell
Improvement Commissioners) 25,000 0 0
Formation of a new line of streets from
King William-street, London Bridge,
to the south side of St. Paul’s Cathedral,
by widening and improving
Cannon-street, making a new street
from Cannon-street, near Bridge-row,
to Queen-street, and another street
from the west side of Queen-street, in
a direct line to St. Paul’s-churchyard,
and widening Queen-street, from the
junction of the said new street to
Southwark Bridge; also improving
Holborn Bridge and Field-lane, and
effecting an improvement in Gracechurch-street
and Ship Tavern-passage,
all in the city of London--(Corporation
of the city of London) 500,000 0 0
Finishing the new street left incomplete
by the Clerkenwell Improvement Commissioners,
from the end of Victoria-street,
Farringdon-street, to Coppice-row,
Clerkenwell, all in the county of
Middlesex--(Corporation of the City
of London) 88,000 0 0
-------------------
Total cost of forming the above-mentioned
new thoroughfares 1,764,500 0 0

_Improving existing Thoroughfares._

Improving existing approaches, and
forming new approaches to new London
Bridge, viz., in High-street,
Tooley-street, Montague-close, Pepper-alley,
Whitehorse-court, Chequer-court,
Chaingate, Churchyard-passage,
St. Saviour’s churchyard, Carter-lane,
Boar’s-head-place, Fryingpan-alley,
Green Dragon-court, Joyner-street,
Red Lion-street, Counter-street, Three
Crown-court, and the east front of
the Town Hall, all in the Borough of
Southwark; also ground and premises
at the north-west foot of London
Bridge, Upper Thames-street, Red-cross-wharf,
Mault’s-wharf, High
Timber-street and Broken-wharf,
Swan-passage, Churchyard-alley, site
of Fishmonger’s Hall, Great Eastcheap,
Little Eastcheap, Star-court,
Fish-street-hill, Little Tower-street,
Idol-lane, St. Mary-at-hill, Crooked-lane,
Miles-lane, Three Tun-alley,
Warren-court, Cannon-street, Gracechurch-street,
Bell-yard, Martin’s-lane,
Nicholas-lane, Clement’s-lane, Abchurch-lane,
Sherborne-lane, Swithin’s-lane,
Cornhill, Lombard-street,
Dove-court, Fox Ordinary-court, Old
Post Office Chambers, Mansion-house-street,
Princes-street, Coleman-street,
Coleman-street-buildings, Moorgate-street,
London Wall, Lothbury,
Tokenhouse-yard, King’s Arms-yard,
Great Bell-alley, Packer’s-court,
White’s-alley, Great Swan-alley,
Crown-court, George-yard, Red Lion-court,
Cateaton-street, Gresham-street,
Milk-street, Wood-street, King-street,
Basinghall-street, Houndsditch, Lad-lane,
Threadneedle-street, Aldgate
High-street, and Maiden-lane, all in
the City of London--(Corporation of
the City of London) 1,016,421 18 1
Widening and improving the entrance
into London near Temple-bar, improving
the Strand and Fleet-street,
and formation of Pickett-street, and
for making a new street from the
east end of Snow-hill to the bottom of
Holborn-hill, now called Skinner-street--(Corporation
of the City of London) 246,300 0 0
Widening and improving Dirty-lane and
part of Brick-lane, leading from Whitechapel
to Spitalfields, and for paving
Dirty-lane, Petticoat-lane, Wentworth-street,
Old Montague-street,
Chapel-street, Princes-row, &c., all in
the county of Middlesex--(Commissioners
appointed by the Act 18, Geo.
III., c. 80) 1,500 0 0
Widening the avenues from the Minories,
through Goodman’s-yard into
Prescott-street, and through Swan-street
and Swan-alley into Mansell-street,
and from Whitechapel through
Somerset-street into Great Mansell-street,
all in the county of Middlesex--(Commissioners
named in Act 18,
George III., c. 50) 1,500 0 0
-------------------
Total cost of improving the above-mentioned
thoroughfares 1,265,721 13 1

_Paving._

Paving the road from Aldersgate Bars to
turnpike in Goswell-street, in the
county of Middlesex--(Commissioners
Sewers, &c., of the City of London) 5,500 0 0
Completing the paving of the town
borough of Southwark and certain
parts adjacent--(Commissioners for
executing Act 6, George III., for paving
town and borough of Southwark) 4,000 0 0
---------------
Total cost of paving the above-mentioned
thoroughfares 9,500 0 0

Hence the aggregate expense of the preceding improvements has been
upwards of 3,000,000_l._ sterling.

I have now, in order to complete this account of the cost of paving
and cleansing the thoroughfares of the metropolis, only to add the
following statement as to the traffic of the principal thoroughfares in
the city of London, for which I am indebted to Mr. Haywood, the City
Surveyor.

By the subjoined Return it will be seen that there are two tides as
it were in the daily current of locomotion in the City--the one being
at its flood at 11 o’clock A.M., after which it falls gradually till
2 o’clock, when it is at its lowest ebb, and then begins to rise,
gradually till 5 o’clock, when it reaches its second flood, and then
begins to decline once more. The point of greatest traffic in the
City is London-bridge, where the conveyances passing and repassing
amount to 13,099 in the course of twelve hours[31]. Of these it would
appear, that 9351 consist of one-horse vehicles and equestrians, 3389
of two-horse conveyances, and only 359 of vehicles drawn by more than
two horses. The one-horse vehicles would seem to be between two and
three times as many as the two-horse, which form about one-fourth of
the whole, while those drawn by more than two horses constitute about
one-sixtieth of the entire number.

The Return does not mention the state of the weather on the several
days and hours at which the observations were made, nor does it
tell us whether there was any public event occurring on those days
which was likely to swell or diminish the traffic beyond its usual
proportions. The table, moreover, it should be remembered, is confined
to the observations of only one day in each locality, so that we must
be guarded in receiving that which records a mere accidental set of
circumstances as an example of the general course of events. It would
have been curious to have extended the observations throughout the
night, and so have ascertained the difference in the traffic; and also
to have noted the decrease in the number of vehicles passing during a
continuously wet as well as a showery day. The observations should be
further carried out to different seasons, in order to be rendered of
the highest value. Mr. Haywood and the City authorities would really be
conferring a great boon on the public by so doing.

OF THE RUBBISH CARTERS.

The public cleansing trade, I have before said, consists of as many
divisions as there are distinct species of refuse to be removed, and
these appear to be four. There is the _house_-refuse, consisting of
two different kinds, as (1) the wet house-refuse or “slops,” and
“night-soil,” and (2) the dry house-refuse, or dust and soot; and there
is the _street_-refuse, also consisting of two distinct kinds, as (3)
the wet street-refuse, or mud and dirt; and (4) the dry street-refuse
or “rubbish.”

I now purpose dealing with the labourers engaged in the collection and
removal of the last-mentioned kind of refuse.

Technologically there are several varieties of “rubbish,” or rather
“_dirt_,” for such appears to be the generic term, of which “rubbish”
is _strictly_ a species. Dirt, according to the understanding among
the rubbish-carters, would seem to consist of any solid earthy matter,
which is of an useless or refuse character. This dirt the trade divides
into two distinct kinds, viz.:--

1. “Soft dirt,” or refuse clay (of which “dry dirt,” or refuse soil or
mould, is a variety).

2. “Hard-dirt,” or “hard-core,” consisting of the refuse bricks,
chimney-pots, slates, &c., when a house is pulled down, as well as the
broken bottles, pans, pots, or crocks, and oyster-shells, &c., which
form part of the contents of the dustman’s cart.

The phrase “hard-core”[32] seems strictly to mean all such refuse
matter as will admit of being used as the foundation of roads,
buildings, &c. “Rubbish,” on the other hand, appears to be limited, by
the trade, to “dry dirt;” out of the trade, however, and etymologically
speaking, it signifies all such _dry_ and _hard_ refuse matter as is
rendered useless by wear and tear[33]. The term _dirt_, on the other
hand, is generally applied to _soft_ refuse matter, and _dust_ to
_dry_ refuse matter in a state of minute division, while _slops_ is
the generic term for all _wet_ or _liquid_ refuse matter. I shall here
restrict the term rubbish to all that dry and hard refuse matter which
is the residuum of certain worn-out or “used-up” earthen commodities,
as well as the surplus earth which is removed whenever excavations are
made, either for the building of houses, the cutting of railways, the
levelling of roads, the laying down of pipes or drains, and the sinking
of wells.

STREET TRAFFIC.

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF VEHICLES AND HORSES PASSING THROUGH CERTAIN
THOROUGHFARES WITHIN THE CITY OF LONDON, BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 8 A.M.
AND 8 P.M., UPON CERTAIN DAYS DURING THE YEAR 1850.

+---------------+----------------------+-------------------+
| | Hour ending |
| | 9 A.M. |
| +-------------------+
| | Vehicles |
| | drawn by |
| +-------------------+
Date. | Situation. |1 Horse and |
| | Equestrians. |
| | |2 Horses. |
| | | |3 Horses |
| | | |or more. |
+---------------+----------------------+----+----+---------+
8th July, 1850.|Temple Bar Gate | 230| 61| 20 |A
9th „ „ |Holborn Hill, | | | |
| by St. Andrew’s | | | |
| Church | 250| 65| 12 |B
10th „ „ |Ludgate Hill, | | | |
| by Pilgrim-street | 268| 76| 17 |C
11th „ „ |Newgate-street, | | | |
| by Old Bailey | 250| 59| 11 |D
12th „ „ |Aldersgate-street, | | | |
| by Fann-street | 140| 20| 8 |E
13th „ „ |Cheapside, | | | |
| by Foster-lane | 345| 110| 18 |F
15th „ „ |Poultry, | | | |
| by Mansion House | 287| 103| 24 |G
16th „ „ |Finsbury Pavement, | | | |
| by South-place | 185| 63| 14 |H
17th „ „ |Cornhill, | | | |
| by Royal Exchange | 98| 56| 7 |I
| | | | |
18th „ „ |Threadneedle-street | 47| 47| 4 |J
19th „ „ |Gracechurch-street, | | | |
| by St. Peter’s-alley| 202| 50| 6 |K
20th „ „ |Lombard-street, | | | |
| by Birchin-lane | 121| 15| 1 |L
22nd „ „ |Bishopsgate Within, | | | |
| by Great St. Helen’s| 194| 58| 7 |M
| | | | |
23rd „ „ |London Bridge | 519| 139| 22 |N
24th „ „ |Bishopsgate-street | | | |
| With^t, | | | |
| by City bound^y | 148| 51| 4 |O
25th „ „ |Aldgate High-street, | | | |
| by ditto | 335| 68| 22 |P
26th „ „ |Leadenhall-st., | | | |
| rear of East India | | | |
| House | 193| 45| 13 |Q
27th „ „ |Eastcheap, | | | |
| by Philpot-lane | 274| 35| 26 |R
29th „ „ |Tower-street, | | | |
| by Mark-lane | 132| 22| 15 |S
30th „ „ |Lower Thames-street, | | | |
| by Botolph-lane | 79| 7| 2 |T
| | | | |
31st „ „ |Blackfriars Bridge | 268| 42| 17 |U
1st Aug. „ |Upper Thames-street, | | | |
| rear of Queen-street| 97| 28| 15 |V
| | | | |
2nd „ „ |Smithfield Bars | 180| 16| 7 |W
| | | | |
3rd „ „ |Fenchurch-street | 175| 20| 11 |X
| +----+----+---------+
| |5017|1256|6421 |
+---------------+----------------------+----+----+---------+
+---------------+----------------------+-------------------+
| | Hour ending |
| | 10 A.M. |
| +-------------------+
| | Vehicles |
| | drawn by |
| +-------------------+
Date. | Situation. |1 Horse and |
| | Equestrians. |
| | |2 Horses. |
| | | |3 Horses |
| | | |or more. |
+---------------+----------------------+----+----+---------+
8th July, 1850.|Temple Bar Gate | 292| 192| 42 |A
9th „ „ |Holborn Hill, | | | |
| by St. Andrew’s | | | |
| Church | 380| 166| 6 |B
10th „ „ |Ludgate Hill, | | | |
| by Pilgrim-street | 290| 170| 16 |C
11th „ „ |Newgate-street, | | | |
| by Old Bailey | 360| 155| 13 |D
12th „ „ |Aldersgate-street, | | | |
| by Fann-street | 198| 52| 11 |E
13th „ „ |Cheapside, | | | |
| by Foster-lane | 483| 301| 21 |F
15th „ „ |Poultry, | | | |
| by Mansion House | 437| 315| 10 |G
16th „ „ |Finsbury Pavement, | | | |
| by South-place | 252| 123| 10 |H
17th „ „ |Cornhill, | | | |
| by Royal Exchange | 172| 177| 15 |I
| | | | |
18th „ „ |Threadneedle-street | 67| 77| 1 |J
19th „ „ |Gracechurch-street, | | | |
| by St. Peter’s-alley| 200| 99| 23 |K
20th „ „ |Lombard-street, | | | |
| by Birchin-lane | 87| 28| 2 |L
22nd „ „ |Bishopsgate Within, | | | |
| by Great St. Helen’s| 253| 144| 11 |M
| | | | |
23rd „ „ |London Bridge | 744| 339| 45 |N
24th „ „ |Bishopsgate-street | | | |
| With^t, | | | |
| by City bound^y | 197| 121| 11 |O
25th „ „ |Aldgate High-street, | | | |
| by ditto | 291| 111| 20 |P
26th „ „ |Leadenhall-st., | | | |
| rear of East India | | | |
House | 272| 141| 16 |Q
27th „ „ |Eastcheap, | | | |
| by Philpot-lane | 293| 40| 13 |R
29th „ „ |Tower-street, | | | |
| by Mark-lane | 180| 37| 5 |S
30th „ „ |Lower Thames-street, | | | |
| by Botolph-lane | 117| 10| 3 |T
| | | | |
31st „ „ |Blackfriars Bridge | 280| 78| 23 |U
1st Aug. „ |Upper Thames-street, | | | |
| rear of Queen-street| 172| 43| 12 |V
| | | | |
2nd „ „ |Smithfield Bars | 206| 18| 6 |W
| | | | |
3rd „ „ |Fenchurch-street | 198| 60| 4 |X
+---------------+----------------------+----+--------------+
| |6421|2997| 339 |
+---------------+----------------------+----+----+---------+
+---------------+----------------------+-------------------+
| | Hour ending |
| | 11 A.M. |
| +-------------------+
| | Vehicles |
| | drawn by |
| +-------------------+
Date. | Situation. |1 Horse and |
| | Equestrians. |
| | |2 Horses. |
| | | |3 Horses |
| | | |or more. |
+---------------+----------------------+----+----+---------+
8th July, 1850.|Temple Bar Gate | 448| 235| 21 |A
9th „ „ |Holborn Hill, | | | |
| by St. Andrew’s | | | |
| Church | 480| 181| 9 |B
10th „ „ |Ludgate Hill, | | | |
| by Pilgrim-street | 454| 261| 13 |C
11th „ „ |Newgate-street, | | | |
| by Old Bailey | 433| 184| 11 |D
12th „ „ |Aldersgate-street, | | | |
| by Fann-street | 150| 44| 14 |E
13th „ „ |Cheapside, | | | |
| by Foster-lane | 703| 385| 36 |F
15th „ „ |Poultry, | | | |
| by Mansion House | 654| 398| 19 |G
16th „ „ |Finsbury Pavement, | | | |
| by South-place | 330| 138| 7 |H
17th „ „ |Cornhill, | | | |
| by Royal Exchange | 252| 210| 17 |I
| | | | |
18th „ „ |Threadneedle-street | 162| 97| 3 |J
19th „ „ |Gracechurch-street, | | | |
| by St. Peter’s-alley| 308| 113| 18 |K
20th „ „ |Lombard-street, | | | |
| by Birchin-lane | 140| 12| 4 |L
22nd „ „ |Bishopsgate Within, | | | |
| by Great St. Helen’s| 323| 164| 13 |M
| | | | |
23rd „ „ |London Bridge | 955| 334| 43 |N
24th „ „ |Bishopsgate-street | | | |
| With^t, | | | |
| by City bound^y | 310| 134| 3 |O
25th „ „ |Aldgate High-street, | | | |
| by ditto | 292| 115| 10 |P
26th „ „ |Leadenhall-st., | | | |
| rear of East India | | | |
| House | 388| 196| 11 |Q
27th „ „ |Eastcheap, | | | |
| by Philpot-lane | 340| 46| 12 |R
29th „ „ |Tower-street, | | | |
| by Mark-lane | 220| 32| 10 |S
30th „ „ |Lower Thames-street, | | | |
| by Botolph-lane | 153| 15| 7 |T
| | | | |
31st „ „ |Blackfriars Bridge | 409| 99| 10 |U
1st Aug. „ |Upper Thames-street, | | | |
| rear of Queen-street| 126| 28| 11 |V
| | | | |
2nd „ „ |Smithfield Bars | 180| 16| 6 |W
| | | | |
3rd „ „ |Fenchurch-street | 205| 41| 7 |X
+---------------+----------------------+----+----+---------+
| |8415|3478| 315 |
+---------------+----------------------+----+----+---------+
+---------------+----------------------+-------------------+
| | Hour ending |
| | 12 A.M. |
| +-------------------+
| | Vehicles |
| | drawn by |
| +-------------------+
Date. | Situation. |1 Horse and |
| | Equestrians. |
| | |2 Horses. |
| | | |3 Horses |
| | | |or more. |
+---------------+----------------------+----+----+---------+
8th July, 1850.|Temple Bar Gate | 505| 222| 30 |A
9th „ „ |Holborn Hill, | | | |
| by St. Andrew’s | | | |
| Church | 530| 154| 14 |B
10th „ „ |Ludgate Hill, | | | |
| by Pilgrim-street | 420| 210| 6 |C
11th „ „ |Newgate-street, | | | |
| by Old Bailey | 367| 137| 5 |D
12th „ „ |Aldersgate-street, | | | |
| by Fann-street | 147| 36| 13 |E
13th „ „ |Cheapside, | | | |
| by Foster-lane | 768| 390| 11 |F
15th „ „ |Poultry, | | | |
| by Mansion House | 690| 373| 17 |G
16th „ „ |Finsbury Pavement, | | | |
| by South-place | 250| 129| 8 |H
17th „ „ |Cornhill, | | | |
| by Royal Exchange | 270| 184| 7 |I
| | | | |
18th „ „ |Threadneedle-street | 160| 50 | 4 |J
19th „ „ |Gracechurch-street, | | | |
| by St. Peter’s-alley| 320| 175| 12 |K
20th „ „ |Lombard-street, | | | |
| by Birchin-lane | 174| 14| .. |L
22nd „ „ |Bishopsgate Within, | | | |
| by Great St. Helen’s| 277| 143| 10 |M
| | | | |
23rd „ „ |London Bridge | 820| 274| 30 |N
24th „ „ |Bishopsgate-street | | | |
| With^t, | | | |
| by City bound^y | 170| 109| 7 |O
25th „ „ |Aldgate High-street, | | | |
| by ditto | 287| 145| 10 |P
26th „ „ |Leadenhall-st., | | | |
| rear of East India | | | |
| House | 340| 150| 5 |Q
27th „ „ |Eastcheap, | | | |
| by Philpot-lane | 320| 34| 18 |R
29th „ „ |Tower-street, | | | |
| by Mark-lane | 220| 39| 12 |S
30th „ „ |Lower Thames-street, | | | |
| by Botolph-lane | 90| 7| 8 |T
| | | | |
31st „ „ |Blackfriars Bridge | 393| 89| 34 |U
1st Aug. „ |Upper Thames-street, | | | |
| rear of Queen-street| 160| 42| 21 |V
| | | | |
2nd „ „ |Smithfield Bars | 254| 14| 9 |W
| | | | |
3rd „ „ |Fenchurch-street | 298| 39| 6 |X
+---------------+----------------------+----+----+---------+
| |8230|3159| 297 |
+---------------+----------------------+----+----+---------+

+------------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+
| Hour | Hour | Hour | Hour |
| ending | ending | ending | ending |
| 1 P.M. | 2 P.M. | 3 P.M. | 4 P.M. |
+------------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+
| Vehicles | Vehicles | Vehicles | Vehicles |
| drawn by | drawn by | drawn by | drawn by |
+------------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+
|Horses and |Horses and |Horses and |Horses and |
| Equestrians. | Equestrians. | Equestrians. | Equestrians. |
| |2 Horses. | |2 Horses. | |2 Horses. | |2 Horses. |
| | |3 Horses| | |3 Horses| | |3 Horses| | |3 Horses|
| | |or more.| | |or more.| | |or more.| | |or more.|
+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+
A| 460| 218| 13 | 415| 230| 19 | 550| 231| 10 | 496| 237| 4 |
B| 453| 160| 10 | 435| 158| 13 | 373| 50| 12 | 270| 100| 7 |
C| 530| 256| 3 | 330| 180| 4 | 400| 221| 7 | 288| 242| 1 |
D| 390| 156| 9 | 377| 155| 5 | 390| 167| 7 | 525| 201| 12 |
E| 165| 40| 9 | 180| 49| 6 | 150| 32| 12 | 172| 40| 7 |
F| 680| 334| 6 | 664| 336| 9 | 665| 338| 4 | 730| 339| 7 |
G| 680| 358| 5 | 595| 337| 9 | 548| 321| 6 | 575| 330| 5 |
H| 243| 115| 6 | 223| 118| 4 | 184| 107| 2 | 215| 128| 4 |
I| 275| 208| 4 | 253| 180| 8 | 305| 185| 3 | 276| 172| 3 |
J| 160| 50| 1 | 120| 32| 2 | 164| 46| 2 | 157| 37| 1 |
K| 295| 87| 10 | 330| 81| 12 | 360| 93| 11 | 375| 123| 18 |
L| 160| 9| .. | 215| 15| 2 | 227| 9| 1 | 283| 20| 1 |
M| 260| 125| 11 | 164| 70| 4 | 320| 113| 6 | 287| 140| 5 |
N| 775| 296| 23 | 765| 255| 28 | 793| 284| 24 | 845| 305| 30 |
O| 191| 112| 4 | 243| 96| 3 | 285| 97| 8 | 231| 103| 1 |
P| 300| 135| 10 | 249| 123| 7 | 260| 112| 17 | 274| 122| 13 |
Q| 415| 168| 11 | 385| 171| 7 | 353| 158| 14 | 387| 172| 10 |
R| 340| 27| 11 | 300| 28| 15 | 310| 38| 20 | 345| 40| 8 |
S| 260| 26| 6 | 270| 39| 15 | 252| 34| 4 | 226| 26| 10 |
T| 83| 21| 1 | 100| 8| .. | 100| 15| 3 | 130| 13| 4 |
U |365| 78| 22 | 253| 65| 18 | 302| 73| 10 | 340| 66| 10 |
V| 160| 35| 10 | 120| 31| 9 | 125| 33| 6 | 160| 44| 9 |
W| 252| 18| 6 | 232| 19| 4 | 305| 20| 9 | 250| 11| 6 |
X| 240| 45| 8 | 223| 39| 7 | 220| 46| 6 | 267| 54| 6 |
+----+----+--------+-----+---+--------+----+---+---------+----+----+--------+
|8132|3077| 199 |7441|2815| 210 |7941|2923| 204 |8104|3065| 182 |
+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+

+------------------+------------------+------------------+------------------
| Hour | Hour | Hour | Hour
| ending | ending | ending | ending
| 5 P.M. | 6 P.M. | 7 P.M. | 8 P.M.
+------------------+------------------+------------------+------------------
| Vehicles | Vehicles | Vehicles | Vehicles
| drawn by | drawn by | drawn by | drawn by
+------------------+------------------+------------------+------------------
|Horses and |Horses and |Horses and |Horses and
| Equestrians. | Equestrians. | Equestrians. | Equestrians.
| |2 Horses. | |2 Horses. | |2 Horses. | |2 Horses.
| | |3 Horses| | |3 Horses| | |3 Horse | | |3 Horse
| | |or more.| | |or more.| | |or more.| | |or more.
+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+----+----+--------
A| 470| 255| 13 | 435| 219| 17 | 329| 200| 8 | 405| 198| 11
B| 639| 251| 25 | 330| 111| 4 | 615| 209| 17 | 219| 92| 6
C| 375| 235| 9 | 360| 220| 4 | 330| 210| 3 | 214| 202| 4
D| 390| 177| 5 | 415| 142| 6 | 337| 126| 4 | 250| 136| 8
E| 187| 36| 12 | 185| 40| 8 | 175| 44| 10 | 141| 46| 11
F| 671| 427| 8 | 645| 303| 16 | 482| 319| 7 | 271| 212| 9
G| 565| 381| 10 | 505| 310| 10 | 455| 344| 3 | 292| 299| 4
H| 340| 135| 8 | 300| 159| 16 | 242| 142| 16 | 140| 101| 3
I| 255| 206| 7 | 242| 180| 8 | 177| 176| 1 | 186| 140| 1
J| 150| 45| 3 | 157| 45| 3 | 115| 30| 3 | 77| 31| ..
K| 302| 135| 24 | 310| 113| 13 | 253| 79| 6 | 250| 75| 6
L| 223| 20| .. | 180| 26| 3 | 115| 15| .. | 94| 12| ..
M| 380| 150| 11 | 320| 123| 7 | 270| 127| 7 | 222| 120| 3
N| 975| 336| 33 | 970| 305| 33 | 680| 264| 18 | 510| 258| 30
O| 309| 113| 8 | 305| 126| 8 | 203| 112| 8 | 177| 99| 3
P| 248| 141| 16 | 276| 110| 15 | 220| 100| 11 | 190| 96| 3
Q| 295| 166| 5 | 390| 183| 15 | 292| 139| 6 | 260| 152| 6
R| 340| 43| 15 | 280| 58| 11 | 230| 59| 5 | 109| 16| 3
S| 230| 39| 13 | 195| 34| 9 | 137| 25| 2 | 94| 16| 4
T| 143| 23| 2 | 100| 15| 6 | 52| 14| 3 | 40| 4| 2
U| 450| 103| 17 | 446| 87| 15 | 361| 89| 13 | 265| 66| 6
V| 185| 52| 16 | 241| 54| 17 | 139| 25| 12 | 71| 13| 9
W| 305| 17| 6 | 265| 20| 4 | 269| 10| 9 | 145| 14| ..
X| 300| 57| 7 |215| 36| 8 | 193| 53| 3 | 516| 28| 1
+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+----+----+--------
|8727|3543| 273 |8067|3019| 256 |6671|2911| 175 |5138|2426| 133
+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+----+----+--------+----+----+--------

TABLE SHOWING TOTALS OF EVERY DESCRIPTION OF VEHICLE PASSING PER HOUR
AND PER DAY OF 12 HOURS THROUGH CERTAIN STREETS WITHIN THE CITY OF
LONDON.

-------+--------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+------+-------+
| | HOURS ENDING |Total |Average|
| +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+ of 12| per |
Date. | Situation. | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Hours| Hour. |
| |A. M.|A. M.|A. M.| Noon|P. M.|P. M.|P. M.|P. M.|P. M.|P. M.|P. M.|P. M.| | |
-------+--------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+-------+
1850. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
July 8 |Temple Bar Gate | 311| 526| 704| 757| 691| 664| 791| 737| 738| 671| 537| 614| 7741| 645 |
„ 9 | Holborn-hill, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by St. And. Ch. | 327| 552| 670| 698| 623| 606| 535| 377| 915| 445| 841| 317| 6906| 575 |
„ 10 |Ludgate-hill, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Pilgrim-st. | 361| 476| 728| 636| 789| 514| 628| 531| 619| 584| 543| 420| 6829| 569 |
„ 11 |Newgate-st., | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Old Bailey | 320| 528| 628| 509| 555| 537| 564| 738| 572| 563| 467| 394| 6375| 531 |
„ 12 |Aldersgate-st., | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Fann-st. | 168| 261| 208| 196| 214| 235| 194| 219| 235| 233| 229| 198| 2590| 215 |
„ 13 |Cheapside, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Foster-lane | 473| 805| 1124| 1169| 1020| 1009| 1007| 1076| 1106| 964| 808| 492| 11053| 921 |
„ 15 |Poultry, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Mansion House | 414| 762| 1071| 1080| 1043| 941| 875| 910| 956| 825| 802| 595| 10274| 856 |
„ 16 |Finsbury-pave., | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by South-pl | 262| 385| 475| 387| 364| 345| 293| 347| 483| 475| 400| 244| 4460| 371 |
„ 17 |Cornhill, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Roy. Exchange | 161| 364| 479| 461| 487| 441| 493| 451| 468| 430| 354| 327| 4916| 409 |
„ 18 |Threadneedle-street | 98| 145| 262| 214| 211| 154| 212| 195| 198| 205| 148| 108| 2150| 179 |
„ 19 |Gracech-st., | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by St. Pet.-alley | 258| 322| 439| 507| 392| 423| 464| 516| 461| 436| 338| 331| 4887| 407 |
„ 20 |Lombard-st., | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Birchin-la | 137| 117| 156| 188| 169| 232| 237| 304| 243| 209| 130| 106| 2228| 185 |
„ 22 |Bishopsg.-st., | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Gt St. Hel. | 259| 408| 500| 430| 396| 238| 439| 432| 541| 450| 404| 345| 4842| 403 |
„ 23 |London Bridge | 680| 1128| 1332| 1124| 1094| 1048| 1101| 1180| 1344| 1308| 962| 798| 13099| 1091 |
„ 24 |Bishp.-st. out, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Cy. Bound | 203| 329| 447| 286| 307| 342| 390| 335| 430| 439| 323| 279| 4110| 342 |
„ 25 |Aldgate High-street,| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Cy. Bound | 425| 422| 417| 442| 445| 379| 389| 409| 405| 401| 331| 289| 4754| 396 |
„ 26 |Leadenhall-st., | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| E. I. House | 251| 429| 595| 495| 594| 563| 525| 569| 466| 588| 437| 418| 5930| 494 |
„ 27 |Eastcheap, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Philpot-lane | 335| 346| 398| 372| 378| 343| 368| 393| 398| 349| 294| 128| 4102| 341 |
„ 29 |Tower-street, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Mark-lane | 169| 222| 262| 271| 292| 324| 290| 262| 282| 238| 164| 114| 2890| 240 |
„ 30 |L. Thames-st, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| by Botolph-la | 88| 130| 175| 105| 105| 108| 118| 147| 168| 121| 69| 46| 1380| 115 |
„ 31 |Blackfriars Bridge | 327| 381| 518| 516| 465| 336| 385| 416| 570| 548| 463| 337| 5262| 438 |
Aug. 1 |U. Thames-st., | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| rear of Qn.-st | 140| 227| 165| 223| 205| 160| 164| 213| 253| 312| 176| 93| 2331| 194 |
„ 2 | Smithfield Bars | 203| 230| 202| 277| 276| 255| 334| 267| 328| 289| 288| 159| 3108| 259 |
„ 3 | Fenchurch-street | 206| 262| 253| 343| 293| 269| 272| 327| 364| 259| 249| 545| 3642| 303 |
| +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+-------+
| 6576| 9757|12208|11686|11408|10466|11068|11351|12543|11342| 9757| 7697|125859| 10488 |

TABLE SHOWING THE TOTAL NUMBER OF EACH DESCRIPTION OF VEHICLE PASSING
THROUGH CERTAIN STREETS WITHIN THE CITY OF LONDON, BETWEEN THE HOURS OF
8 A.M. AND 8 P.M. (12 HOURS.)

---------+----------------------+--------------------+------+------------------+-------
| | Total Number | | |
| | of Vehicles | | Average Number |
| | drawn by | | per Hour. |
| +-----+-----+--------+ Total+------------------+
Date. | Situation. |1 Horse and | of |1 Horse and |Average
| | Equestrians. | the | Equestrians. |of the
| | |2 Horses. |whole.| |2 Horses. |whole.
| | | |3 Horses| | | |3 Horses|
| | | |or more.| | | |or more.|
---------+----------------------------+-----+--------+------+----+----+--------+-------
8th July,| | | | | | | | |
1850. |Temple Bar Gate | 5035| 2498| 208 | 7741| 419| 206| 17 | 645
9th „ |Holborn Hill, | | | | | | | |
| by St. Andrew’s | | | | | | | |
| Church | 4974| 1797| 135 | 6906| 414| 149| 11 | 575
10th „ |Ludgate Hill, | | | | | | | |
| by Pilgrim-street | 4259| 2483| 87 | 6829| 354| 207| 7 | 569
11th „ |Newgate-street, | | | | | | | |
| by Old Bailey | 4484| 1795| 96 | 6375| 373| 149| 8 | 531
12th „ |Aldersgate-street, | | | | | | | |
| by Fann-street | 1990| 479| 121 | 2590| 165| 40| 10 | 215
13th „ |Cheapside, | | | | | | | |
| by Foster-lane | 7107| 3794| 152 | 11053| 592| 316| 12 | 921
15th „ |Poultry, | | | | | | | |
| by Mansion House | 6283| 3869| 122 | 10274| 523| 332| 10 | 856
16th „ |Finsbury Pavement, | | | | | | | |
| by South-place | 2904| 1458| 98 | 4460| 242| 121| 8 | 371
17th „ |Cornhill, | | | | | | | |
| by Royal Exchange | 2761| 2074| 81 | 4916| 230| 172| 7 | 409
18th „ |Threadneedle-street | 1536| 587| 27 | 2150| 128| 49| 2 | 179
19th „ |Gracechurch-st., | | | | | | | |
| by St. Peter’s-alley| 3505| 1223| 159 | 4887| 292| 102| 13 | 407
20th „ |Lombard-street, | | | | | | | |
| by Birchin-lane | 2019| 195| 14 | 2228| 168| 16| 1 | 185
22nd „ |Bishopsgate-st., | | | | | | | |
| by Great St. Helen’s| 3270| 1477| 95 | 4842| 272| 123| 8 | 403
23rd „ |London Bridge | 9351| 3389| 359 | 13099| 779| 282| 30 | 1091
24th „ |Bishopsgate-st., out, | | | | | | | |
| by City Boundy | 2769| 1273| 68 | 4110| 30| 106| 5 | 342
25th „ |Aldgate High-street, | | | | | | | |
| by City Boundy | 3222| 1378| 154 | 4754| 268| 114| 12 | 396
26th „ |Leadenhall-street, | | | | | | | |
| East India House | 3970| 1841| 119 | 5930| 330| 153| 10 | 494
27th „ |Eastcheap, | | | | | | | |
| by Philpot-lane | 3481| 464| 157 | 4102| 290| 38| 13 | 341
29th „ |Tower-street, | | | | | | | |
| by Mark-lane | 2416| 369| 105 | 2890| 201| 30| 8 | 240
30th „ |Lower Thames-st., | | | | | | | |
| by Botolph-lane | 1187| 152| 41 | 1380| 98| 12| 3 | 115
31st „ |Blackfriars Bridge | 4132| 935| 195 | 5262| 344| 78| 16 | 438
1st Aug.|Upper Thames-st., | | | | | | | |
| rear of Queen-st. | 1756| 428| 147 | 2331| 146| 35| 12 | 194
2nd „ |Smithfield Bars | 2843| 193| 72 | 3108| 237| 16| 6 | 259
3rd „ |Fenchurch-street | 3050| 518| 74 | 3642| 254| 43| 6 | 303
| +-----------+--------+------+----+-------------+-------
| |88304|34669| 2886 |125859|7358|2889| 240 |10488

The commodities whose residuum goes to swell the annual supply of
_rubbish_, are generally of an earthy nature. Such commodities as
are made of _fibrous_ or _textile_ materials, go, when “used up,”
chiefly to form manure if of an animal nature, and to be converted
into paper if of a vegetable origin. The refuse materials of our
woollen clothes, our old coats and trousers, are either torn to pieces
and re-manufactured into shoddy, or become the invigorators of our
hop and other plants; whereas those of our linen or cotton garments,
our old shirts and petticoats, form the materials of our books and
letters; while our old ropes, &c., are converted into either brown
paper or oakum. Those commodities, on the other hand, which are made
of _leathern_ materials, become, when worn out, the ingredients of the
prussiate of potash and other nitrogenised products manufactured by our
chemists. Our old _wooden_ commodities, again, are used principally to
kindle our fires; while the refuse of our fires themselves, whether the
soot which is deposited in the chimney above, or the ashes which fall
below, are employed mainly to increase the fertility of our land. Our
worn-out _metal_ commodities, on the other hand, are newly melted, and
go to form fresh commodities when the metals are of the scarcer kind,
as gold, silver, copper, brass, lead, and even iron; and when of the
more common kind, as is the case with old tin, and occasionally iron
vessels, they either become the ingredients in some of our chemical
manufactures, or else when formed of tin are cut up into smaller and
inferior commodities. Even the detritus of our _streets_ is used as
the soil of our market gardens. All this we have already seen, and
we have now to deal more particularly with the refuse of the
sole remaining materials, viz., those of an _earthy_ kind, and out
of which are made our bricks, our earthenware and porcelain, as well
as our glass, plaster, and stone commodities. What becomes of all
these materials when the articles made of them are no longer fit for
use? The old glass is, like the old metal, re-melted and made into
new commodities; some broken bottles are used for the tops of walls
as a protection against trespassers; and the old bricks, when sound,
are employed again for inferior brick-work; but what becomes of the
rest of the earthen materials--the unsound bricks or “bats,” the old
plaster and mortar, the refuse slates and tiles and chimney-pots, the
broken pans, and dishes, and other crocks--in a word, the potsherds
and pansherds[34], as the rubbish-carters call them--what is done with
these?

But rubbish, as we have seen, consists not only of refuse earthen
commodities, but of refuse earth itself: such as the soil removed
during excavations for the foundations of houses, for the cuttings of
railways, the levelling of roads, the formation of parks, the laying
down of pipes or drains, and the sinking of wells. For each and all
of these operations there is necessarily a certain quantity of soil
removed, and the question that naturally occurs to the mind is, what is
done with it?

There is, moreover, a third kind of rubbish, which, though having an
animal origin, consists chiefly of earthy matter, and that is the
shells of oysters, and other shell-fish. Whence go they, since these
shells are of a comparatively indestructible nature, and thousands of
such fish are consumed annually in the metropolis? What, the inquirer
asks, becomes of the refuse bony coverings of such fish?

Let us first, however, endeavour to estimate what quantity of each of
these three kinds of rubbish is annually produced in London, beginning
with the refuse earthen commodities.

There is no published account of the quantity of _crockeryware_
annually manufactured in this country. Mr. McCulloch tells us, “It
is estimated, that the _value_ of the various sorts of earthenware
produced at the potteries may amount to about 1,700,000_l._ or
1,800,000_l._ a year; and that the earthenware produced at Worcester,
Derby, and other parts of the country, may amount to about 850,000_l._
or more, making the whole value of the manufacture 2,550,000_l._ or
2,650,000_l._ a year.” What proportion of this quantity may fall to
the share of the metropolis, and what proportion of the whole may be
annually destroyed, I know of no means of judging. We must therefore go
some other way to work in order to arrive at the required information.
Now, it has been before shown, that the quantity of “dust,” or dry
refuse from houses, annually collected, amounts to 900,000 tons or
chaldrons yearly; and I find, on inquiry at the principal “yards,” that
the average quantity of Potsherds and broken crockery is at the rate
of about half a bushel to every load of dust, or say 1 per cent. out of
the entire quantity collected. At other yards, I find the proportion
of sherds to be about the same, so that we may fairly assume that the
gross quantity of broken earthenware produced in London is in round
numbers 9000 loads or tons per annum. The sherds run about 250 pieces
to the bushel, and assuming every five of such pieces to be the remains
of an entire article, there would be in each bushel the fragments of
fifty earthenware vessels; and thus the total quantity of crockeryware
destroyed yearly in the metropolis will amount to 18,000,000 vessels.

As to the quantity of _refuse bricks_, the number annually produced,
which is between 1,500,000,000 and 2,000,000,000, will give us no
knowledge of the quantity yearly converted into rubbish. In order to
arrive at this, we must ascertain the number of houses pulled down
in the course of the twelvemonth; and I find, by the Returns of the
Registrar-General, that the buildings removed between 1841 and 1851
have been as follows:--

DECREASE IN THE NUMBER OF HOUSES THROUGHOUT LONDON BETWEEN 1841 AND
1851.

----------------------------+-----------+---------
| Total | Annual
|Decrease in| Average
| 10 Years. |Decrease.
----------------------------+-----------+---------
St. Martin’s | 116 | 11·6
St. James’s, Westminster | 130 | 13·0
St. Giles’s | 181 | 18·1
Strand | 389 | 38·9
Holborn | 86 | 8·6
East London | 11 | 1·1
West London | 265 | 26·5
London, City of | 592 | 59·2
Whitechapel | 2 | ·2
St. Saviour’s, Southwark | 46 | 4·6
St. Olave’s | 158 | 15·8
----------------------------+-----------+---------
Total | 1976 | 197·6
----------------------------+-----------+---------

Thus, then, we perceive that there have been, upon an average, very
nearly 200 houses annually pulled down in London within the last ten
years, and I find, on inquiry among those who are likely to be the
best-informed on such matters, that each house so pulled down will
yield from 40 to 50 loads of rubbish; so that, altogether, the quantity
of refuse bricks, slates, tiles, chimney-pots, &c., annually produced
in London must be no less than 8000 loads.

But the above estimate refers only to those houses which have been
pulled down and never rebuilt; so that, in order to arrive at the gross
quantity of this kind of rubbish yearly produced in the metropolis,
we must add to the preceding amount the quantity accruing from such
houses as are pulled down and built up again, or newly fronted and
repaired, which are by far the greater number. These, I find, may be
estimated at between 5 and 10 per cent. of the gross number of houses
in the metropolis. In some quarters (the older parts of London, for
instance,) the proportion is much higher, while in the suburbs, or
newer districts, it is scarcely half per cent. Each of the houses so
new-fronted or repaired may be said to yield, on an average, 10 loads
of rubbish, and, at this rate, the yearly quantity of refuse bricks,
mortar, &c., proceeding from such a source, will be 150,000 loads per
annum; so that the total amount of rubbish produced in London by the
demolition and reparation of houses would appear to be about 160,000
loads yearly.

The quantity of refuse _oyster shells_ may easily be found by the
number of oysters annually sold in Billingsgate-market. These, from
the returns which I obtained from the market salesmen, and printed
at p. 63 of the first volume of this work, appear to be, in round
numbers, 500,000,000; and, calculating that one-third of this quantity
is sent into the country, the total number of shells remaining in the
metropolis may be estimated at about 650,000,000. Reckoning, then, that
500 shells go to the bushel (the actual number was found experimentally
to be between 525 and 550), and consequently that 20,000 are contained
in every load, we may conclude that the gross quantity of refuse oyster
shells annually produced in London average somewhere about 30,000
loads. That this is an approximation to the true quantity there can be
little doubt, for, on inquiry at one of the largest dust-yards, I was
informed by the hill-man that the quantity of oyster-shells collected
with the refuse dust from houses in the vicinity of Shoreditch,
Whitechapel, and other localities at the east-end of the metropolis,
averages 6 bushels to the load of dust; about the west-end, however,
half a bushel or a bushel to each load is the average ratio; while
from the City there is none, the house “dust” there being free from
oyster-shells. In taking one district, however, with another, I am
assured that the average may be safely computed at 2 bushels of
oyster-shells to every 3 loads of dust; hence, as the gross amount of
house-dust is equal to 900,000 tons or loads per annum, the quantity of
refuse oyster-shells collected yearly by the dustmen may be taken at
15,000 loads. But, besides these, there is the quantity got rid of by
the costermongers, which seldom or never appear in the dust-bins. The
costers sell about 124,000,000 oysters per annum, and thus the extra
quantity of shells resulting from these means would be about 12,400
loads; so that the gross quantity of refuse oyster-shells actually
produced in London may be said to average between 25,000 and 30,000
loads per annum.

There still remains the quantity of _refuse earth_ to be calculated;
this may be estimated as follows:--

1. _Foundations of Houses._--Each house that is built requires the
ground to be excavated from two to three yards deep, the average area
of each being about nine yards square. This gives between 160 and 200
cubic yards of earth removed from the foundation of each house. A cubic
yard of earth is a load, so that there are between 160 and 200 loads of
earth displaced in the building of every new house.

The following statement shows--

THE NUMBER OF HOUSES BUILT THROUGHOUT LONDON BETWEEN 1841 AND 1851.

Hence, estimating the number of new houses built yearly in the
metropolis at 4500, the total quantity of earth removed for the
foundations of the buildings throughout London would be 800,000 loads
per annum.

2. _The Cuttings of Railways._--The railways formed within the area of
the metropolis during the last ten years have been--the Great Northern;
the Camden Town, and Bow; the West India Docks and Bow; and the North
Kent Lines. The extension of the Southampton Railway from Vauxhall to
Waterloo-bridge, as well as the Richmond Line, has also been formed
within the same period, but for these no cuttings have been made.

The Railway Cuttings made within the area of the Metropolis Proper
during the last ten years have been to the following extent:--

------------------------+--------+-----------------+--------+---------
| Length |Width of Cutting.| Depth |Quantity
RAILWAYS. | of +---------+-------+ of |of earth
|Cutting.| At | At |Cutting.|Removed.
| | top. | bottom.| |
------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+---------
| Miles. | Yards. | Yards. | Yards. | Loads.
Great Northern | 1-1/2 | 12 | 10 | 10 | 290,400
Camden Town and Bow | 1-1/2 | 12 | 10 | 10 | 290,400
West India Docks and Bow| 2 | 15 | 10 | 12 | 528,000
North Kent | 2 | 15 | 10 | 12 | 528,000
------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+---------

Hence, the gross quantity of earth removed from railway cuttings within
the last ten years has been 1,636,800 loads, or say, in round numbers,
160,000 loads per annum.

3. _The Cutting of Roads and Streets._--According to a Return presented
to Parliament, there were 200 miles of new streets formed within the
metropolitan police district between the years 1839-49; but in the
formation of these no earth has been taken away; on the contrary a
considerable quantity has been required for their construction. In the
case of the lowering of Holborn-hill, that which was removed from the
top was used to fill up the hollow.

4. _The Formation of Parks._--The only park that has been constructed
during the last ten years in the metropolis is Victoria Park, at the
east end of the town; but I am informed that, in the course of the
works there, no earth was carted away, the soil which was removed from
one part being used for the levelling of another.

5. _Pipe and Sewer Works._--The earth displaced in the course of these
operations is usually put back into the ground whence it was taken,
excepting in the formation of some new sewer, and then a certain
proportion has to be carted away. Upon inquiry among those who are
likely to be best informed, I am assured that 1000 loads may be taken
as the quantity carted away in the course of the last year.

6. _Well-sinking._--In this there has been but little done. Those who
are best informed assure me that within the last ten years no such
works of any magnitude have been executed.

The account as to the quantity of rubbish removed in London, then,
stands thus:--

Loads
_Refuse Earthen Materials._ per Annum.
Potsherds and Pansherds 9,000
Old bricks, tiles, slates, mortar, &c. 160,000
Oyster-shells 25,000

_Refuse Earth._
Foundations of houses 800,000
Railway cuttings 160,000
Pipe and sewer laying 1,000
---------
1,155,000

Thus, then, we perceive that the gross quantity of rubbish that has to
be annually removed throughout the metropolis is upwards of 1,000,000
loads per annum.

Now what is done with the vast amount of refuse matter? Whither is it
carried? How is it disposed of?

_The rubbish from the house building or removing_ is of no value to the
master carter, and is shot gratuitously wherever there is the privilege
of shooting it; this privilege, however, is very often usurped. Great
quantities used to be shot in what were, until these last eight years,
Bishop Bonner’s Fields, but now Victoria Park. At the present time this
sort of rubbish is often slily deposited in localities generally known
as “the ruins,” being places from which houses, and indeed streets,
have been removed, and the sites left bare and vacant.

But the main localities for the deposition of this kind of refuse are
in the fields round about the metropolis. Each particular district
appears to have its own special “shoot,” as it is called, for rubbish,
of which the following are the principal.

_Rubbish shoots._

The rubbish of Kensington and Chelsea is shot in the Pottery Grounds
and Kensington-fields.

The rubbish of St. George’s Hanover-square, Marylebone, and
Paddington, is shot in the fields about Notting-hill and Kilburn.

The rubbish of Westminster, Strand, Holborn, St. Martin’s, St.
Giles’s, St. James’s, Westminster, West London, and Southwark, is shot
in Cubitt’s fields at Millbank and Westminster improvements.

The rubbish of Hampstead is shot in the fields at back of
Haverstock-hill.

The rubbish of Saint Pancras is shot in the Copenhagen-fields.

The rubbish of Islington, Clerkenwell, and St. Luke’s, is shot in the
Eagle Wharf-road and Shepherdess-fields.

The rubbish of East London and City is shot in the Haggerstone-fields.

The rubbish of Whitechapel, St. George’s in the East, and Stepney, is
shot in Stepney fields.

The rubbish of Hackney, Bethnal-green, and Shoreditch, is shot in the
Bonkers-pond, Hackney-road.

The rubbish of Poplar is shot in the fields at back of New Town,
Poplar.

The rubbish of Bermondsey is shot in the Bermondsey fields.

The rubbish of Newington, Camberwell, and Lambeth, is shot in
Walworth-common and Kennington-fields.

The rubbish of Wandsworth is shot in Potters-hole, Wandsworth-common.

The rubbish of Greenwich and Lewisham is shot in Russia-common, near
Lewisham.

The rubbish of Rotherhithe is used for ballast.

The quantity of rubbish annually shot in each of the above-mentioned
localities appears to range from 5000 up to as high as 30,000 and
40,000 loads.

Of the earth removed in forming the foundation of new houses, between
one-fourth and one-sixth of the whole is used to make the gardens at
the back, and the bed of the roads in front of them, while the entire
quantity of the soil displaced in the execution of the “cuttings”
of railways is carted away in the trucks of the company to form
embankments in other places. Hence there would appear to be about from
160,000 to 200,000 loads of refuse bricks, potsherds, pansherds, and
oyster-shells, and about 600,000 loads of refuse earth deposited every
year in the fields or “shoots” in the vicinity of the metropolis.

The refuse earth displaced in forming the foundations of houses is
generally carted away by the builders’ men, so that it is principally
the refuse bricks, &c., that the rubbish-carters are engaged in
removing; these they usually carry to the shoots already indicated, or
to such other localities where the hard core may be needed for forming
the foundation of roads, or the rubbish be required for certain other
purposes.

The principal _use to which the “rubbish” is put_ is for levelling,
when the hollow part of any newly-made road has to be filled up, or
garden or lawn ground has to be levelled for a new mansion. Rubbish, at
one time, was in demand for the ballasting of small coasting vessels.
For such ballasting 2_d._ a ton has to be paid to the corporation
of the Trinity House. This rubbish has been used, but sometimes
surreptitiously, for ballast, unmixed with other things. It is,
however, light and inferior ballast, and occupies more space than the
gravel ballast from the bed of the Thames.

Suppose that a collier requires ballast to the extent of 60 tons; if
house rubbish be used it will occupy the hold to a greater height
by about 10 inches than would the ballast derived from the bed of
the Thames. The Thames ballast is supplied at 1_s._ a ton; the
rubbish-ballast, however, was only 3_d._ to 6_d._ a ton, but now it
is seldom used unless to mix with manure, which might be considered
too wet and soft, and likely to ferment on the voyage to a degree
unpleasant even to the mariners used to such freights. The rubbish, I
am told, checks the fermentation, and gives consistency to the manure.

I am assured by a tradesman, who ships a considerable quantity of
stable manure collected from the different mews of the metropolis,
that comparatively little rubbish is now used for ballast (unless in
the way I have stated); even for mixing, but a few tons a week are
required up and down the river, and perhaps a small quantity from the
wharfs on the several canals. Nothing was ever paid for the use of
this rubbish as ballast, the carters being well satisfied to have the
privilege of shooting it. Two of the principal shoots by the river side
were at Bell-wharf, Shadwell, and off Wapping-street. The rubbish of
Rotherhithe, it will be seen, is mainly “shot” as ballast.

The “_hard-core_” is readily got rid of; sometimes it is shot
gratuitously (or merely with a small gratuity for beer to the men);
but if it have to be carted three or four miles, it is from 2_s._
6_d._ to 3_s._ a load. This is used for the foundations of houses,
the groundwork of roads, and other purposes where a hard substratum
is required. The hard-core on a new road is usually about nine inches
deep. There are on an average 20 miles of streets, 15 yards wide,
formed annually in London. Hence there would be upwards of 100,000
loads of hard-core required for this purpose alone. Where the soil is
of a gravelly nature, but little hard rubbish is needed. Oyster-shells
_did_ form a much greater portion than they do now of the hard
substratum of roads. Eight or nine years ago the costermongers could
sell their oyster-shells for 6_d._ a bushel. Now they cannot, or do
not, sell them at all; and the law not only forbids their deposit in
any place whatever, but forbids their being scattered in the streets,
under a penalty of 5_l._ But as the same law provides no place where
these shells may be deposited, the costermongers are in what one of
them described to me as “a quandary.” One man, who with his wife kept
two stalls in Tottenham Court-road, one for fish (fresh and dried) and
for shell-fish, and the other for fruit and vegetables, told me that
he gave “one of those poor long-legged fellows who were neither men nor
boys, and who were always starving and hanging about for a two-penny
job, two-pence to carry away a hamper-full of shells and get rid of
them as he best could. O, where he put them, sir,” said the man, “I
don’t know, I wouldn’t know; and I shouldn’t have mentioned it to you,
only I saw you last winter and know you’re inquiring for an honest
purpose.”

Another costermonger who has a large barrow of oysters and mussels,
and sometimes of “wet fish” near King’s-cross, and at the junction of
Leather-lane with Back-hill, Hatton-garden, was more communicative: “If
you’ll walk on with me, sir,” he said, “_I’ll_ show you where they’re
shot. You may mention my name if you like, sir; I don’t care a d----
for the crushers; not a blessed d----.” He accordingly conducted me
to a place which seemed adapted for the special purpose. At the foot
of Saffron-hill and the adjacent streets runs the Fleet-ditch, now
a branch of the common sewers; not covered over as in other parts,
but open, noisome, and, as the dark water flows on, throwing up a
sickening stench. The ditch is indifferently fenced, so that any one
with a little precaution may throw what he pleases into it. “There,
sir,” said my companion, “there’s the place where more oyster-shells
is thrown than anywhere in London. They’re thrown in in the dark.”
Assuredly the great share of blame is not to those who avail themselves
of such places for illegal purposes, but to those who leave such
filthy receptacles available. The scattered oyster-shells along all
the approaches, on both sides, to this part of the open Fleet-ditch,
evince the use that is made of it in violation of the law. Many of the
costers, however, keep the shells by them till they amount to several
bushels, and then give the rubbish-carters a few pence to dispose of
them for them.

Some of the costermongers, again, obtain leave to deposit their
oyster-shells in the dustmen’s yards, where quantities may be seen
whitening the dingy dust-heaps, and a large quantity are collected with
the house-dust and ashes, together with the broken crockery from the
dust-bins of the several houses. The oyster-shells are carted away with
the pansherds, &c., for the purposes I have mentioned.

* * * * *

I now come to deal with the rubbish-carters, that is to say, with the
labourers engaged in the removal of the “hard” species of refuse;
of which we have seen there are between 160,000 and 200,000 loads
annually carted away; the refuse earth, or “soft dirt,” being generally
removed by the builders’ men, and the refuse, crockeryware, &c., by the
dustmen, when collecting the dust from the “bins” of the several houses.

The master _Rubbish-Carters_ are those who keep carts and horses to
be hired for carting away the old materials when houses or walls are
pulled down. They are also occasionally engaged in carrying away the
soil or rubbish thrown up from the foundations of buildings; the
excavations of docks, canals, and sewers; the digging of artesian
wells, &c. This seems to comprise what in this carrying or removing
trade is accounted “rubbish.”

Perhaps not one of these tradesmen is solely a rubbish-carter, for they
are likewise the carters of new materials for the use of builders,
such as lime, bricks, stone, gravel, slates, timber, iron-work,
chimney-pieces, &c. Some of them are public carmen; licensed carmen
if they work, or ply, in the City; but beyond the City boundaries no
licence is necessary. This complication perplexes the inquiry, but I
purpose to confine it, as much as possible, to the rubbish-carters
proper, having defined what may be understood by “rubbish.” These
carters are also employed in digging, pick-axing, &c., at the
buildings, the rubbish of which they are engaged to remove.

Among the conveyors of rubbish are no distinctions as to the kind.
Any of them will one week cart old bricks from a house which has been
pulled down, and the next week be busy in removing the soil excavated
where the foundations and cellars of a new mansion have been dug.

From inquiries made in each of the different districts of the
metropolis, there appear to be from 140 to 150 tradesmen who, with the
carting of bricks, lime, and other building commodities, add also that
of rubbish-carting. These “masters” among them find employment for 840
labouring men, some of whom I find to have been in the service of the
same employer upwards of 20 years.

The Post-Office Directory, under the head of rubbish-carters, gives
the names of only 35 of the principal masters, of whom several are
marked as scavagers, dust-contractors, nightmen, and road-contractors.
The occupation abstract of the census, on the other hand, totally
ignores the existence of any such class of workmen, masters as well
as operatives. I find, however, by actual visitation and inquiry in
each of the metropolitan districts, and thus learning the names of the
several masters as well as the number of men in their employment, that
there may be said to be, in round numbers, 150 master rubbish-carters,
employing among them 840 operatives throughout London.

A large proportion of this number of labouring men, however, are
casual hands, who have been taken on when the trade was busy during
the summer (which is the “brisk season” of rubbish-cartage), and who
are discharged in the slack time; during which period they obtain jobs
at dust-carting or scavaging, or some such out-door employment. Among
the employers there are scarcely any who are purely rubbish-carters,
the large majority consisting of dust and road-contractors, carmen,
dairymen, and persons who have two or three horses and carts at their
disposal. When a master builder or bricklayer obtains a contract, he
hires horses and carts to take away any rubbish which may previously
have been deposited. The contract of the King’s Cross Terminus of
the Great Northern Railway, for instance, has been undertaken by Mr.
W. Jay, the builder; and, not having sufficient conveyances to cart
the rubbish away, he has hired horses and carts of others to assist
in the removal of it. The same mode is adopted in other parts of the
metropolis, where any improvements are going on. The owners of horses
and carts let them out to hire at from 7_s._ for one horse, to 14_s._
for two per day. If, however, the job be unusually large, the master
rubbish-carters often take it by contract themselves.

Although the _operative rubbish-carters_ may be classed among unskilled
labourers, they are, perhaps, less miscellaneous, as a body, than
other classes of open-air workers. Before they can obtain work of the
best description it is necessary that they should have some knowledge
of the management of a horse in the drawing of a loaded carriage, or
of the way in which the animal should be groomed and tended in the
stable. I was told by an experienced carman, that he, or any one with
far less than his experience, could in a moment detect, merely by the
mode in which a man would put the harness on a horse and yoke him to
the cart, whether he was likely to prove a master of his craft in that
line or not. My informant had noticed, more especially many years ago,
when labour was not so abundantly obtainable as it was last year,
that men out of work would offer him their services as carmen even if
they had never handled a whip in their lives, as if little more were
wanted than to walk by the horse’s side. An experienced carter knows
how to ease and direct the animal when heavily burdened, or when the
road is rugged; and I am assured by the same informant, that he had
known one of his horses more fatigued after traversing a dozen miles
with a “yokel” (as he called him), or an incompetent man, than the
animal had been after a fifteen miles’ journey with the same load
under the care of a careful and judicious driver. This knowledge of
the management of a horse is most essential when men are employed to
work “single-handed,” or have confided to them singly a horse and cart;
when they work in gangs it is not insisted upon, except as regards the
“carman,” or the man having charge of the horse or the team.

The master rubbish-carters generally are more particular than they used
to be as to the men to whom they commit the care of their horses. It
may be easy enough to learn to drive a horse and cart, but a casual
labourer will now hardly get employment in rubbish-carting of a “good
sort” unless he has attained that preliminary knowledge. The foreman of
one of the principal contractors said to me, “It would never do to let
a man learn his business by practising on our horses.” I mention this
to show, that although rubbish-carting is to be classed among unskilled
labours, _some_ training is necessary.

[Illustration: THE RUBBISH CARTER.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

I am informed that one-third of the working rubbish-carters have been
rubbish-carters from their youth, or cart, car, or waggon-drivers, for
they all seem to have known changes; or they have been used to the care
of horses in the capacity of ostlers, stable-men, helpers, coaching-inn
porters, coachmen, grooms, and horse-breakers. Of the remainder,
one-half, I am informed, have “had a turn” at such avocations as
scavagery, bricklayers’ labouring, dock work, railway excavating, night
work, and the many toils to which such men resort in their struggles
to obtain bread, whatever may have been their original occupation,
which is rarely that of an artizan. The other, and what may be called
the greater half of the remaining number, is composed of agricultural
labourers who were rubbish-carters in the country, and of the many men
who have had the care of horses and vehicles in the provinces, and who
have sought the metropolis, depending upon their thews and sinews for a
livelihood, as porters, or carmen, or labourers in almost any capacity.
The most of these men at the plough, the harrow, the manure-cart, the
hay and corn harvests, have been practised carters and horse drivers
before they sought the expected gold in the streets of London. Full a
third of the whole body of rubbish-carters are Irishmen, who in Ireland
were small farmers, or cottiers, or agricultural labourers, or belonged
to some of the classes I have described.

The mechanics among rubbish-carters I heard estimated, by men with
equal means of information, as one in twenty and one in fifteen. Among
these _quondam_ mechanics were more farriers, cart and wheel wrights,
than of other classes.

It seems to be regarded as an indispensable thing that working
rubbish-carters should have one quality--bodily strength. I am told
that one employer, who died a few weeks ago, used to say to any
applicant for work, “It’s no use asking for it, if you wish to keep it,
unless you can lift a horse up when he’s down.”

As I have shown of the scavagers, &c., the employers in rubbish-carting
may be classed as “honourable” and “scurfs.” The men do not use the
word “honourable,” nor any equivalent term, but speak of their masters,
though with no great distinctiveness, as being either “good,” or
“scurfs.” As in other branches of unskilled labour where there are no
trade societies or general trade regulations among the operatives,
there are few distinctive appellations.

From the facts I have collected in connection with this trade, it would
appear that there are 180 master rubbish-carters in the metropolis,
about 140 of whom pay 18_s._ or more per week as wages, while the
remaining 40 pay less than that amount. The latter constitute what the
men term the scurf portion of the trade; so that the honourable masters
among the rubbish-carters may be said to comprise seven-ninths of the
whole.

I will first treat of the circumstances, characteristics, and wages of
the men employed in the honourable trade.

And first, as regards the _division of labour_ among the operative
rubbish-carters, the work is as simple as possible.

There are--

1. _The Rubbish-Carters_ proper, or “carmen,” who are engaged
principally in conveying the refuse brick or earth to the several
shoots.

2. _The Rubbish-Shovellers_, or “gangers,” who are engaged principally
in filling the cart with the rubbish to be removed. Generally speaking,
the two offices are performed by the same individual, who is both
carter and shoveller, and it is only in large works that the gangers
are employed.

Master builders and others who require the aid of rubbish-carters for
the removal of earth or any other kind of rubbish from ground about to
be built upon, or from old buildings about to be repaired or pulled
down, either hire horses, carts, and carmen, by the day, of the master
rubbish-carters, or pay a certain price per load for the removal of the
rubbish. If the job be likely to last some length of time, the builders
pay the masters so much per load for carting away the rubbish; but
if the job be only for a short period, the horses, carts, and carmen
are hired of the masters for the time. The price paid to the master
rubbish-carter ranges from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 3_s._ 6_d._ per load for the
removal of rubbish and bringing back such bricks, lime, or sand as may
be required for the building. The master rubbish-carter, in all cases,
pays the men engaged in the removal of the rubbish.

The operative rubbish-carters (except in a very few instances) never
work in gangs, either in the construction of new buildings or in
old buildings about to be pulled down or repaired. In digging the
foundations of new houses, the master builders, or speculators,
building upon their own ground employ their own excavators, and engage
rubbish-carters to remove the refuse earth, the latter being merely
occupied in carting it away.

The principle of simple co-operation or gang-work occasionally
prevails; and, when this is the case, the gang is employed in
shovelling and picking, while the carman, as the shovellers throw out
the rubbish, fills or shovels the rubbish into the cart.

Each rubbish-carter will, on an average, convey away from two to five
loads a day, according to the distance he has to take it. Calculating
850 men to remove four loads per diem for five months in a year, the
gross quantity of rubbish annually removed would be very nearly 326,000
loads.

In the regular trade _the hours of daily labour_ are twelve, or from
six to six; but the men are allowed half an hour for breakfast, an
hour for dinner, and half an hour for tea, and almost invariably leave
at half-past five, so postponing the “tea” half-hour until after the
termination of their work. In winter the hours are generally “between
the lights,” but on very short, dark, or foggy days, lanterns are used.
The men employed by one firm “often made up,” I was told by one of
them, “for lost time, by shovelling by moonlight.” The carman, however,
has to get to his stable in the summer at four o’clock in the morning,
and to tend his horse after he has done work at night; so that the
usual hours of labour with him are fifteen and sixteen per day, as well
as Sunday-work.

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF OPERATIVE RUBBISH-CARTERS EMPLOYED
THROUGHOUT LONDON, THE WAGES RECEIVED BY THEM, THE NUMBER OF WEEKS THEY
ARE EMPLOYED, AS WELL AS THE QUANTITY OF RUBBISH REMOVED BY THEM IN THE
COURSE OF THE YEAR.

---------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
|No. of Operative
|Rubbish-Carting.
|
| |No. of Shovellers
| |working in Gangs.
| |
| | |Quantity of Rubbish
| | |carted Daily.
| | |
| | | |Quantity of Rubbish
| | | |carted Annually.
| | | |
| | | | |No. of days in the
| | | | |week each Operative
Master Rubbish | | | | |is employed at
Carters. | | | | |Rubbish-Carting.
| | | | |
| | | | | |No. of weeks during
| | | | | |the year each Operative
| | | | | |is engaged in
| | | | | |Removing Rubbish.
| | | | | |
| | | | | | |Weekly Wages of
| | | | | | |Rubbish-Carters.
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |Weekly Wages of
| | | | | | | |the Operatives
| | | | | | | |working in Gangs
| | | | | | | |at Rubbish-Carting.
---------------------------------+---+--+----+------+--+---+----+-------------------
| | |lds.|loads.| | |_s._|_s._
{ Mr. J. Bird | 5 |..| 15 | 2340 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Hough | 3 |..| 9 | 1404 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
_Kensington._ { -- Dubbins | 3 |..| 9 | 1404 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Taylor | 3 |..| 12 | 1872 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Gale | 3 |..| 12 | 1872 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- G. Bird |10 |..| 20 | 3120 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Nicholls |10 |..| 20 | 3120 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Emmerson | 5 |..| 15 | 2340 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
_Chelsea._ { -- Freeman | 5 |..| 15 | 2340 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Pattison | 2 |..| 6 | 936 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Porter | 6 |..| 18 | 2808 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Rawlins | 4 |..| 16 | 1248 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
_St. George’s, { -- Wells | 2 |..| 8 | 624 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
Hanover-sq._ { -- Watkins | 5 |..| 15 | 1170 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Liddiard | 5 |..| 15 | 1170 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Farmer | 4 |..| 16 | 1920 | 6| 20| 18 | ..
_Westminster._ { -- Bugbee | 6 | 4| 30 | 2340 | 6| 13| 18 | 18
{ -- Reddin | 6 | 4| 30 | 2340 | 6| 13| 18 | 18
{ -- Francis | 5 |..| 20 | 3120 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Chadwick | 3 |..| 15 | 2340 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
_Westminster { -- Francis | 5 |..| 20 | 3120 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
Improvements._ { -- Farmer | 5 |..| 20 | 3120 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Duggan | 8 |..| 40 | 6240 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- T. Cooper | 3 | 3| 24 | 1872 | 6| 13| 18 | 20
_St. Martin’s._ { -- Wall | 2 | 2| 16 | 1248 | 6| 13| 18 | 20
{ -- Duggan | 4 |..| 16 | 1248 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
_St. James’s, { -- Nicolls | 5 |..| 20 | 1560 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
Westminster._ { -- Wells | 2 |..| 8 | 624 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Watkins | 5 |..| 15 | 810 | 6| 9| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Freeman | 3 |..| 12 | 2808 | 6| 39| 18 | ..
{ -- Curmock | 4 |..| 16 | 2496 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
_Mary-le-bone._{ -- Nicolls | 8 |..| 24 | 1872 | 3| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Watkins |10 |..| 40 | 4160 | 4| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Perkins | 5 |..| 20 | 3120 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Culverwell | 5 |..| 20 | 3120 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Rutty | 3 |..| 12 | 360 | 5| 6| 18 | ..
_West London._ { -- Kitchener | 3 |..| 15 | 360 | 6| 4| 18 | ..
{ -- Wickham | 3 |..| 12 | 240 | 5| 4| 18 | ..
{ -- Porter | 4 |..| 16 | 864 | 6| 9| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Crook | 3 |..| 6 | 468 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- M’Carthy | 6 |..| 30 | 4680 | 6| 26| 20 | ..
_West London { -- Reddin | 5 |..| 25 | 3900 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
Improvements._ { -- Rooke | 6 |..| 30 | 4680 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Bugbee | 5 |..| 25 | 3900 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Chadwick | 5 |..| 25 | 3900 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Bateman | 3 |..| 12 | 288 | 6| 4| 18 | ..
_London { -- Tame | 4 |..| 12 | 216 | 6| 3| 18 | ..
City._ { -- Walker | 2 |..| 8 | 144 | 6| 3| 18 | ..
{ -- Harmadu | 3 |..| 9 | 216 | 6| 4| 18 | ..
{ -- Bindy | 2 |..| 6 | 72 | 3| 4| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
_London City { -- Duggan |10 |..| 50 | 7800 | 6| 26| 16 | ..
Improvements._ { -- Bugbee |20 |..|100 |15600 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Gould |10 |..| 50 | 7800 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Booth | 5 |..| 20 | 360 | 3| 6| 18 | ..
_Shoreditch._ { -- Styles | 2 |..| 8 | 96 | 3| 4| 18 | ..
{ -- Wood | 5 |..| 20 | 780 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Gould | 5 |..| 20 | 1560 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Calvert | 2 |..| 8 | 240 | 3| 10| 15 | ..
_Bethnal { -- Newman | 2 |..| 6 | 234 | 3| 13| 16 | ..
Green._ { -- Rooke | 4 |..| 16 | 624 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Tilley | 3 |..| 12 | 936 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Newman | 3 |..| 9 | 216 | 3| 8| 16 | ..
_Whitechapel._ { -- Tomkins | 2 |..| 6 | 234 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Abbott | 2 |..| 6 | 90 | 3| 5| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Clarke | 6 |..| 18 | 360 | 4| 5| 16 | ..
_St. George’s { -- Calvert | 4 |..| 16 | 192 | 3| 4| 15 | ..
in the East._ { -- Newman | 3 |..| 12 | 216 | 3| 6| 16 | ..
{ -- Tomkins | 2 |..| 6 | 108 | 3| 6| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Abbott | 6 |..| 18 | 432 | 3| 8| 18 | ..
_Stepney._ { -- Newman | 4 |..| 16 | 288 | 3| 6| 16 | ..
{ -- Potter | 3 |..| 12 | 180 | 3| 5| 16 | ..
{ -- Church | 3 |..| 12 | 216 | 3| 6| 15 | ..

{ -- Curmock | 3 |..| 12 | 936 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
_Paddington._ { -- Tame | 6 |..| 18 | 432 | 3| 8| 18 | ..
{ -- Humphries | 6 |..| 18 | 702 | 3| 13| 16 | ..
{ -- Nicolls | 3 |..| 12 | 268 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Seal & | | | | | | | |
{ Jackson | 2 |..| 6 | 936 | 6| 26| 20 | ..
_Hampstead._ { -- Kirtland | 1 |..| 3 | 468 | 6| 26| 20 | ..
{ -- Hingston | 1 |..| 3 | 117 | 3| 13| 20 | ..
{ -- Batterbury | 1 |..| 3 | 117 | 3| 13| 20 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Smith | 2 |..| 8 | 384 | 4| 12| 18 | ..
{ -- Perkins | 8 |..| 24 | 1872 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
_St. Pancras._ { -- Reddin | 6 |..| 24 | 2304 | 6| 16| 18 | ..
{ -- Jay | 6 |..| 24 | 2304 | 6| 16| 18 | ..
{ -- M. Rose | 3 |..| 12 | 468 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Eldred | 4 |..| 20 | 1920 | 6| 16| 16 | ..
_Islington._ { -- Croot | 3 |..| 12 | 936 | 6| 13| 16 | ..
{ -- Speller | 2 |..| 8 | 288 | 6| 6| 16 | ..
{ -- J. Rose | 5 |..| 20 | 1560 | 6| 13| 16 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Piper | 3 |..| 9 | 702 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
_Hackney._ { -- Rumball | 6 |..| 18 | 2808 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Booth | 5 |..| 15 | 1170 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Duggan | 3 |..| 12 | 936 | 6| 13| 16 | ..
{ -- Freeman | 4 |..| 16 | 624 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
_St. Giles’s._ { -- Bugbee | 2 |..| 8 | 768 | 6| 16| 18 | ..
{ -- Wall | 2 |..| 8 | 288 | 6| 6| 19 | ..
{ -- Mildwater | 2 |..| 6 | 180 | 6| 5| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Reddin |10 |..| 50 | 3900 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
_St. Giles’s { -- Bugbee |10 |..| 50 | 3900 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
Improvements._ { -- North | 3 |..| 12 | 432 | 6| 6| 18 | ..
{ -- Nicolls | 5 |..| 20 | 1560 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Piper | 4 |..| 16 | 384 | 6| 4 | 18 | ..
_Strand._ { -- Reddin | 5 |..| 20 | 480 | 6| 4 | 18 | ..
{ -- Ellis | 3 |..| 12 | 180 | 3| 5 | 18 | ..
{ -- Cooper | 3 |..| 12 | 108 | 3| 3 | 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Lovell | 2 |..| 8 | 312 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
_Holborn._ { -- M’Carthy | 6 |..| 24 | 1872 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Wells | 3 |..| 12 | 468 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Ellis | 3 |..| 12 | 324 | 3| 9| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
_Holborn { -- Reddin |20 |..| 80 | 6240 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
and New { -- Bugbee |10 |..| 40 | 3120 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
Oxford-street { -- Nicolls | 5 |..| 20 | 480 | 3| 8| 18 | ..
Improvements._ { -- Ellis | 6 |..| 24 | 936 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- T. Brown | 3 |..| 12 | 624 | 4| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Wood | 4 |..| 16 | 576 | 6| 6| 18 | ..
{ -- Johnstone | 3 |..| 15 | 360 | 6| 4| 17 | ..
_Clerkenwell._ { -- Clarkson | 6 |..| 24 | 432 | 6| 3| 16 | ..
{ -- North | 3 |..| 12 | 144 | 3| 4| 18 | ..
{ -- J. Brown | 2 |..| 6 | 180 | 6| 5| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Rhodes | 5 |..| 20 | 500 | 5| 5| 18 | ..
_St. Luke’s._ { -- Wood | 5 |..| 20 | 360 | 3| 6| 18 | ..
{ -- Dodd | 5 |..| 20 | 1200 | 6| 10| 16 | ..
{ -- Gould |10 |..| 30 | 2340 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Pratt & | | | | | | | |
{ Sewell | 3 |..| 9 | 351 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
_East London._ { -- Tomkins | 2 |..| 6 | 234 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Crook | 2 |..| 6 | 234 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Abbott | 2 |..| 8 | 384 | 6| 8| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Pine | 3 |..| 12 | 324 | 3| 9| 18 | ..
{ -- Monk | 3 |..| 12 | 780 | 5| 13| 18 | ..
_Poplar._ { -- Tingey | 2 |..| 8 | 240 | 3| 10| 18 | ..
{ -- Gabriel | 4 |..| 16 | 624 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Jones | 3 |..| 12 | 192 | 4| 4| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
_St. George’s,_{ -- Reddin |10 |..| 40 | 3120 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- G. Whitten | 2 |..| 10 | 780 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
_St. Olave’s,_ { -- Webbon | 3 |..| 12 | 936 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Reddin |10 |..| 40 | 3120 | 6| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
_St. { -- Bugbee | 2 |..| 6 | 72 | 3| 4| 18 | ..
Saviour’s, { -- Ryder | 2 |..| 6 | 72 | 3| 4| 18 | ..
Southwark._ { -- Wright | 1 |..| 3 | 36 | 3| 4| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Peake | 5 |..| 20 | 3120 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Duckett |12 |..| 36 | 5616 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
_Bermondsey._ { -- Elworthy | 8 |..| 24 | 3744 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Slee | 5 |..| 20 | 3120 | 6| 26| 18 | ..
{ -- Adams | 4 | 2| 20 | 4680 | 6| 39| 18 | 18
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Gutteris | 3 |..| 9 | 270 | 6| 5| 18 | ..
_Newington._ { -- Crawley | 2 |..| 8 | 256 | 4| 8| 18 | ..
{ -- Martainbody| 6 |..| 24 | 960 | 4| 10| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Nicholson | 5 |..| 15 | 1170 | 6| 13| 17 | ..
_Wandsworth._ { -- Mears | 3 |..| 6 | 468 | 6| 13| 17 | ..
{ -- Parsons | 4 |..| 16 | 864 | 6| 9| 17 | ..
{ -- Easton | 3 |..| 15 | 720 | 6| 8| 17 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- J. Whitton |10 |..| 40 | 2080 | 4| 13| 19 | ..
_Lambeth._ { -- G. Whitton | 8 |..| 24 | 1248 | 4| 13| 19 | ..
{ -- Kenning | 2 |..| 10 | 390 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Hook | 6 |..| 18 | 540 | 3| 10| 18 | ..
{ -- Michel | 2 |..| 8 | 384 | 6| 8| 18 | ..
_Camberwell._ { -- Marsland | 2 |..| 8 | 128 | 4| 4| 18 | ..
{ -- Walton | 2 |..| 6 | 144 | 4| 6| 18 | ..
{ -- Evans | 1 |..| 3 | 90 | 6| 5| 18 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Walker |10 |..| 30 | 3240 | 6| 18| 15 | ..
{ -- Brown | 8 |..| 24 | 936 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
_Rotherhithe._ { -- Hobman | 2 |..| 36 | 1404 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- East | 6 |..| 18 | 702 | 3| 13| 18 | ..
{ -- Stevens | 5 |..| 20 | 1560 | 6| 13| 15 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Jeffry | 2 |..| 10 | 600 | 6| 10| 15 | ..
_Greenwich._ { -- Turtle | 5 |..| 15 | 720 | 6| 8| 14 | ..
{ -- Hiscock | 2 |..| 6 | 432 | 6| 12| 17 | ..
{ -- Allen | 2 |..| 10 | 780 | 6| 13| 12 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Connall | 5 |..| 10 | 1560 | 6| 26| 16 | ..
{ -- Waller | 3 |..| 6 | 468 | 6| 13| 15 | ..
{ -- Miller | 6 |..| 12 | 936 | 6| 13| 15 | ..
{ -- Fuller | 8 |..| 16 | 960 | 6| 10| 15 | ..
_Woolwich._ { -- Barnes | 4 |..| 12 | 648 | 6| 9| 15 | ..
{ -- Sharpe |12 |..| 36 | 1404 | 3| 13| 15 | ..
{ -- Taylor | 8 |..| 24 | 2016 | 6| 14| 15 | ..
{ -- Ginno | 5 |..| 20 | 780 | 3| 13| 15 | ..
{ -- Millard | 4 |..| 10 | 390 | 3| 13| 15 | ..
{ -- Graham | 3 |..| 9 | 270 | 3| 10| 15 | ..
| | | | | | | |
{ -- Peakes | 5 |..| 15 | 810 | 6| 9| 15 | ..
_Lewisham._ { -- Wellard | 3 |..| 12 | 936 | 6| 13| 15 | ..
{ -- Fleckell | 6 |..| 18 | 1404 | 6| 13| 15 | ..
{ -- Hollis | 4 |..| 12 | 288 | 3| 8| 15 | ..
----------------+---+--+----+------+--+---+----+----
Total |840|15|3134|259831| | | |

The rubbish-carters are _paid by week_, 18_s._ to 20_s._ being the
weekly amount; and by _the load_, which is indeed piece-work. The
payment to the operatives by the load varies from 6_d._ to 1_s._
6_d._, for it is necessarily regulated by the distance to be traversed.
If the rubbish have to be carted a mile to its destination--or, as
the men call it, to “the shoot”--of course it is to be so conveyed at
a proportionally lower rate than if it had to be driven two or three
miles. The employment of men by the load, however, becomes less every
year, and the reason, I am assured, is this:--The great stress of the
labour falls upon the horse. If the animal be strong and manageable,
a man, for the sake of conveying an extra load a day, might overtax
its powers, injure it gradually, and deteriorate its strength and its
value. The operative carters, on their part, have complained that
sometimes even “good” employers have set them to work by the load with
“hard old horses,” which no management could get out of their slow,
long-accustomed pace. Thus a man might clear by the piece-work but
1_s._ 6_d._ a day, with a horse not worth 15_l._; while another carter,
with a superior animal worth twice as much, might clear 3_s._ or 3_s._
6_d._ Some “hard” masters, I was informed, liked these old horses,
because they were bought cheap, and though they brought in less than
superior animals they were easier kept; while if less were earned by
the piece-work with such horses, less was paid in wages; and if the
horse broke its leg, or was killed, or injured, it was more easily
replaced. This mode of employment is, as I have said, less and less
carried into effect; but it is still one of the ways in which a working
carter may be made a sufferer, because a principal accessary of his
work--the horse--may not be capable of the requisite exertion.

_The nominal wages_ of the rubbish-carters in the best employ are from
18_s._ to 20_s._ a week; in the worse-paid trade 15_s._ is the more
general price; but even as little as 12_s._ is given by some masters.

_The actual wages_ are the same as the nominal in the honourable trade,
with the addition of perquisites in beer to the men of from 1_s._
to 2_s._ weekly, and of “findings,” especially to the carmen, of an
amount I could not ascertain, but perhaps realizing 6_d._ a week. One
carman put all he found on one side to buy new year’s clothes for his
children, and on new year’s eve last year he had 48_s._ 0-1/2_d._,
“money, and what brought money;” but this is far from an usual case.

The rate of wages paid to the operative rubbish-carters throughout the
different districts of London, I find, by inquiries in each locality,
to be by no means uniform. For instance, at Hampstead the wages are
unexceptionally 20_s._ per week; while at Kensington, Chelsea, and
indeed the whole of the west districts of London, they are 18_s._
weekly; in St. Martin’s parish, however, 19_s._ a week is paid by two
masters. In the north districts again, 18s. a week is generally paid;
with the exception of Hampstead, where the weekly wages for the same
labour are as high as 20_s._, and Islington, where they are as low as
16_s._ In the central districts, too, the wages are generally 18_s._;
the lower rate of 17_s._ and 16_s._ per week being paid in certain
places by “cutting” and “grasping” individuals, who form isolated
exceptions to the rule. In a certain portion of the eastern districts,
such as Bethnal Green, St. George’s in the East, and Stepney, 16_s._
and 15_s._ a week appears to be the rule; while in Shoreditch and
Poplar 18_s._ is paid by all the masters. The southern districts of
the metropolis are equally irregular in their rates of wages. Lewisham
pays as low as 15_s._, and Woolwich the same weekly sum, with one
exception. Wandsworth, on the other hand, pays uniformly 17_s._; while
in Southwark, Bermondsey, Newington, and Camberwell, the wages paid by
all are 18_s._ In Lambeth as much as 19_s._ is given by two masters out
of three; whereas, in Greenwich one master pays 14_s._, and the other
even as low as 12_s._ a week. When I come to treat of the lower-paid
trade, I shall explain the causes of the above difference as regards
wages.

The analysis of the facts I have collected on this subject is as
follows:--Out of 180 masters, employing among them 840 men, there are--

Wages
per
Week.
5 masters employing 11 men, and paying 20_s._
5 „ „ 30 „ „ 19_s._
127 „ „ 605 „ „ 18_s._
6 „ „ 20 „ „ 17_s._
16 „ „ 70 „ „ 16_s._
19 „ „ 97 „ „ 15_s._
1 „ „ 5 „ „ 14_s._
1 „ „ 2 „ „ 12_s._

Hence, three-fourths of the operatives may be said to receive 18_s._
weekly, and about one-sixth 16_s._

_The perquisites_ in this trade are more in beer than in money, nor are
they derived from the employers, unless exceptionally. They are given
to the rubbish-carters by the owners of the premises where they work,
and may, in the best trade, amount, in beer or in money to buy beer,
to from 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ weekly per man. The other perquisites are
what is found in the digging of the rubbish for the carts, and in the
shooting of it. As in other trades of a not dissimilar character, there
appears to be no fixed rule as to “treasure trove.” One man told me
that in digging or shovelling each man kept what he found; another said
the men drank it. Anything found, however, when the cart is emptied is
the perquisite of the carman. “It’s luck as is everything;” said one
carman. “There was a mate of mine as hadn’t not no better work nor me,
once found an old silver coin, like a bad half-crown, as a gen’lman
he knowed gave him five good shillings for, and he found a silver
spoon as fetched 1_s._ 9_d._, in one week, and that same week on the
same ground _I_ got nothing but five bad ha’pennies. I once worked in
the City where the Sun office now is, just by the Hall of Commerce in
Threadneedle-street, and something was found in the Hall as now is; it
was a French church once; and an old gent gave us on the sly 1_s._ a
day for beer, to show him or tell him of anything we turned up queer.
We did show him things as we thought queer, and they looked queer, but
he all’us said ‘Chi-ish,’ or ‘da-amn.’ From what I’ve heard him say to
another old cove as sometimes was with him, they looked for something
Roman Catholic.” My informant no doubt meant “Roman,” as in digging the
foundations of the Hall of Commerce a tesselated Roman pavement was
found at a great depth.

Among these workmen are _no Trade Societies, no Benefit or Sick-Clubs_,
and, indeed, no measures whatever for the upholding of accustomed
wages, or providing “for a rainy day,” unless individually. If a
rubbish-carter be sick, the men in the same employ, whatever their
number, 10 or 40, contribute on the Saturday evenings 6_d._ each,
towards his support, until the patient’s convalescence. There are no
Houses of Call.

The _payment is in the master’s yard_ on the Saturday evening, and
always in money. There are no drawbacks, unless for any period during
the hours of regular labour, when a man may have been absent from his
work. Fines there are none, except in large establishments among the
carmen where many horses are kept, and then, if a man do not keep his
regular stable-hours in the mornings, especially the Sunday mornings,
he is fined 6_d._ These fines are spent by the carmen generally, and
most frequently in beer.

The _usual way of applying for work_ is to call at the yards or
premises, or, more frequently, to take a round in the districts where
it is known that buildings or excavations are being carried on, to
inquire of the men if a hand be wanted. Sometimes a foreman may be
there who has authority to “put on” new hands; if not, the applicant,
with the prospect of an engagement in view, calls upon any party he may
be directed to. Several men told me that when they were engaged nothing
was said about character. The employers seem to be much influenced by
the applicant’s appearance.

I must now give a brief description of the rubbish-carter, and the
scene of his labours.

Any one who observes, and does not merely see, the labour of the
rubbish-carter, will have been struck with the stolid indifference with
which these men go about their work, however much the scene of their
labours, from its historical associations, may interest the better
informed. So it was when the rubbish carters were employed in removing
the ruins of the old Houses of Parliament, and of that portion of the
Tower which suffered from the ravages of the fire; and so it would
be if they were directed to-morrow to commence the demolition and
rubbish-carting of Westminster Abbey, the Temple Church, or St. Paul’s,
even in their present integrity.

Sometimes the scene of the rubbish-carter’s industry presents what
may be called a “piteous aspect.” This was not long ago the case in
Cannon-street, City, and the adjacent courts and alleys; when the
houses had been cleared of their furniture, the windows were removed
(giving the house what may be styled a “blind” look); most of the
doors had been taken away, as well as some of the floors. Large
cyphers, scrawled in whitewash on the walls and woodwork, intimated the
different “lots,” and all spoke of desertion; the only moving thing to
be seen, perhaps, was some flapping paper, torn from the sides of a
room and which fluttered in the wind.

A scene of exceeding bustle follows the apparent desolateness of
the premises. When the whole has been disposed of to the several
purchasers, the further and final work of demolition begins. Baskets
filled with the old bricks are rapidly lowered by ropes and pulleys
into the carts below, it being the carter’s business to empty them,
and then up the empty baskets are drawn, as if by a single jerk. The
sound of the hammer used in removing and separating the old bricks of
the building, the less frequent sound of the pick-axe, the rumble of
the stones and bricks into the cart, the noise of the pulleys, the
shouts of the men aloft, crying “be-low there!” the half-articulate
exclamations of the carters choked with dust, form a curious medley
of noises. The atmosphere is usually a cloud of dust, which sticks to
the men’s hair like powder. The premises are boarded round, and if
adjoining a thoroughfare the boards are closely fitted, to prevent the
curious and the loiterers obstructing the current of passengers. The
work within is confined to the labourers; “no persons admitted except
on business” seems a rule rigidly enforced. The only men inside who
appear idle are the over-lookers, or surveyors. They stand with their
hands in their breeches’ pockets; and a stranger to the business might
account them uninterested spectators, but for the directions they
occasionally give, now quietly, and now snappishly; while the Irishmen
show an excessive degree of activity, the assumption of which never
deceives an overlooker.

From twelve to one is the customary dinner-hour, and then all is quiet.
On visiting some new buildings at Maida-hill, I found seven men, out
of about 30, all fast asleep in the nooks and corners of the piles of
bricks and rubbish, the day being fine. The others were eating their
dinners at the public-houses or at their own homes.

In the progress of pulling down, the work of removal goes on very
rapidly where a strong force is employed--the number varying from about
twelve to 30 men. A four-storied house is often pulled down to its
basement, and the contents of the walls, floors, &c., removed, in ten
days or a fortnight.

As the work of demolition goes on, the rubbish-carter loads the cart
with the old bricks, mortar, and refuse which the labourers have
displaced. In some places, where a number of buildings is being
removed at the same time, an inclined plane or road is formed by the
rubbish-carters, up and down which the horses and vehicles can proceed.
Until such means of carriage have been employed, the rubbish from the
interior foundation is often shot in a mound within the premises, and
carried off when the way has been formed, excepting such portion as may
be retained for any purpose.

In hot weather, many of the rubbish-carters in the fair trade work in
their shirts, a broad woollen belt being strapped round the waist,
which, they say, supports “the small of the back” in their frequent
bending and stooping. Some wear woollen night-caps at this work when
there is much dust; and nearly all the men in the honourable trade
wear the “strong men’s” half-boots, laced up in the front, as the best
protectors of the feet from the intrusion of rubbish.

In the cold weather, the rubbish-carter’s working dress is usually a
suit of strong drab-white fustian. The suit comprises a jacket with
two large pockets. The cost of such a suit, new, at a slop-tailor’s,
is from 28_s._ to 35_s._; from a good shop, and of better materials,
40_s._ to 55_s._ Some prefer stout corduroy to fustian trowsers; and
some work in short smock-frocks.

Having thus shown the nature of the work, the class of men
employed, and the amount of remuneration, I proceed to describe the
characteristics of the rubbish-carters employed by the honourable
masters; I will then describe the state of the labourers who are
_casually_ rather than _constantly_ employed; and finally speak of the
condition and habits of the lower-paid workers under the cheap masters.

_The Ability to Read and Write._--I think I heard of fewer instances of
defective education among the rubbish-carters than among other classes
of unskilled labourers. The number of men who could read and not write,
I found computed at about one-half. It appears that the children of
these men are very generally sent to school, which is certainly a
healthful sign as to the desire of the parents to do justice to their
offspring. As among other classes, I met with uneducated men who had
exaggerated notions of the advantages of the capability of reading and
writing, and men who possessed such capability representing it as a
worthless acquirement.

The _majority of the Rubbish-Carters_ in the honourable trade are, I
am informed, _really married men_, and have families “born in lawful
wedlock.” One decent and intelligent man, to whom I was referred,
said (his wife being present and confirming his statement): “I don’t
know how it is, sir, but they say one scabbed sheep will affect a
flock.” “Oh! it’s dreadful,” said the wife; “but some way it seems
to run in places. Now, we’ve lived among people much in our own way
of life in Clerkenwell, and Pentonville, and Paddington. Well, we’ve
reason to believe, that there wasn’t much living together unmarried in
Clerkenwell or Pentonville, but a goodish deal in Paddington. I don’t
know why, for they seemed to live one with another, just as men do
with their wives. But if there’s daughters, sir, as is growing up and
gets to know it, as they’re like enough to do, ain’t it a bad example?
Yes, indeed,” said the wife, “and I’m told they call going together in
that bad way--they ought all to be punished--without ever entering a
church or chapel, getting ‘ready married.’” I inquired if they were not
perhaps married quietly at the Registrar’s office? “O, that,” said Mrs.
B----, “ain’t like being married at all. _I_ would never have consented
to such a way, but I’m pretty certain they don’t as much as do that.
No, sir,” (in answer to another inquiry), “I hope, and think, it ain’t
so bad among young couples as it was, but its bad enough as it is,
God he knows.” The proportions of Wedlock and Concubinage I could not
learn, for the woman, I was assured, always took the man’s name; and
both man and woman, unless in their cups or their quarrels, declared
they were man and wife, only there was no good in wasting money to get
their “marriage lines” all for no use.

_The Politics of the rubbish-carters_ are, I am assured by some of the
best informed among them, of no fixity, or principle, or inclination
whatever, as regards one-half of the entire body; and that the other
half, whether ignorant or not, are Chartists, the Irish generally
excepted; and they, I understood, as I had learned on previous
occasions, had no political opinions, unless such as were entertained
by their priests. Strong, rude, and ignorant as many of these carters
are, I am told that few of them took part in any public manifestation
of opinion, or in any disturbance, unless they were out of work. “I
think I know them well,” one of their body said to me, “and as long as
they have pretty middling of work, it’ll take a very great thing indeed
to move ’em. If they was longish out of work and felt a pinch, very
likely they’d be found ready for anything.”

_With respect to Free Trade_, I am told that these men sometimes
discuss it, and formerly discussed it far more frequently among
themselves, but that it was not above one in a dozen, and of the better
sort only, who cared to talk about it either now or then. There seems
no doubt that the majority, whether they understand its principles
and working or not, are favourable to it; I may say, from all I could
learn, that the _great_ majority are. I heard of one rubbish-carter,
formerly a small farmer, who left London for some other employment, in
the spring, contending, and taking pains to enforce his conviction,
that Free Trade would ruin the best interests of rubbish-carters, as
year by year there would be more agricultural labourers resorting to
the great towns to look for such work as rubbish-carting, for every
farmer would employ more Irish labourers at his own terms, and even the
8_s._ a week, the extent of the earnings of the agricultural labourers
in some parishes, would be undersold by the Irish. Last winter, he
said, very many countrymen came to London, and would do so the next,
and more and more every year, and so make labour cheaper.

As far as I could extend my inquiries and observations, this man’s
arguments--although I cannot say I heard any one offer to controvert
them--were not considered sound, nor his facts fully established. There
were certainly great numbers of good hands out of employment last
winter, and many new applicants for work; “but buildings,” I was told
by a carman, “are of course always slacker carried on in the winter.
Now, this year, so far (beginning of October), things seem to promise
pretty well in our business, and so if it’s good this winter and was
bad the last, why, as there’s the same Free Trade, it seems as if it
had nothing to do with it. There’s not so much building going on now
as there was a few years ago, but trade’s steadier, I think.”

Other rubbish-carters, in the best trade, said that they had found
little difference for six or eight years, only as bread was cheaper or
dearer; and, if Free Trade made bread cheap, no man ought to say a word
against it, “no matter about anything else.” Of course I give these
opinions as they came to me.

_As to Food_, these labourers, when in full work, generally live what
they consider _well_; that is, they eat meat and have beer to their
meals every day. Three of them told me that they could not say what
their living cost separately, as they took all their meals at home
with their families, their wives laying out the money. One couple had
six children, and the husband said they cost him about 17_s._ a week
in food, or about 2_s._ 6_d._ per head, reckoning a pint of beer a
day for himself, and not including the youngest, which was an infant
at the breast. The father earned 22_s._ weekly, and the eldest child,
a boy, 3_s._ 6_d._ a week for carrying out and collecting the papers
for a news’-agent. The wife could earn nothing, although an excellent
washerwoman, the cares of her family occupying her whole time. She
always had “the cold shivers,” she said, “if ever she thought of
John’s being out of work, but he was a steady man, and had been pretty
fortunate.” If these men were engaged on a job at any distance, they
sometimes breakfasted before starting, or carried bread and butter with
them, and eat it to a pint of coffee if near enough to a coffee-shop,
but in some places they were not near enough. Their dinners they
carried with them, generally cold meat and bread, in a basin covered
with a plate, a handkerchief being tied round it so as to keep the
plate firm and afford a hold to the bearer. “It’s not always, you see,
sir,” said a rubbish-carter, “that there’s a butcher’s shop near enough
to run to and buy a bit of steak and get it dressed at a tap-room
fire, just for buying a pint of beer, and have a knife and fork, and
a plate, and salt found you into the bargain, and pepper and mustard
too, if you’ll give the girl or the man 1_d._ a week or so. But we’re
glad to get a good cold dinner. O, as to beer, it would be a queer
out-of-the-way place indeed where a landlord didn’t send out a man to
a building with beer.” One single man, who told me he was only a small
eater, gave me the following as his _daily_ bill of fare, as he rarely
took any meals at his lodgings:

_s._ _d._
Half-quartern loaf 0 2-3/4
Butter 0 1
Coffee (twice a day) 0 3
Eleven o’clock beer, sometimes a pint and
sometimes half-a-pint, but often obtained
as a perquisite (average) 0 1-1/2
1/2 lb. of beef steak, or a chop, or four or
five pennyworth of cold meat from a
cook-shop (average) 0 5
Potatoes 0 1
Dinner beer 0 2
Bread and cheese and beer for supper 0 4
------------
1 8-1/4

This was the average cost of his daily food, while on Sundays he
generally paid 1_s._ 6_d._ for breakfast and tea, and a good dinner off
a hot joint with baked potatoes from the oven, along with the family
and other lodgers. He had a good walk every Sunday morning, he said,
but liked to sleep away the afternoon. He found his own Sunday beer,
costing 4_d._ dinner and supper, but he didn’t eat anything at supper,
as he wasn’t inclined after resting all day, and so his weekly expenses
in food were:--

_s._ _d._
Six working days, at 1_s._ 8-1/4_d._ a day 10 1-1/2
Sunday 1 10
------------
Week’s food 11 11-1/2

To this, in the way of drink or luxuries, I might add, the carter said,
2_d._ a day for gin (although he wasn’t a drinker and was very seldom
tipsy), “for I treat a friend to a quartern one day and may-be he
stands treat the next.” Also 4_d._ for Sunday gin, as he and the other
men took a glass just before dinner for an appetite, and he took one
after dinner to send him asleep. Add, too, 3_d._ a week for tobacco.
In all 1_s._ 7_d._, which swells the weekly cost of eating, drinking,
and smoking to 13_s._ 6-1/2_d._ His washing was 4_d._ a week (he washed
his working jacket and trowsers himself), his rent 2_s._ 6_d._ for a
bed to himself; so that, 16_s._ 4-1/2_d._ being spent out of an earning
of 18_s._, he had but 1_s._ 5-1/2_d._ a week left for his clothes,
shoes, &c. If he wanted a shilling or two for anything, he said, he
knocked off his supper, and then nothing was allowed in his reckoning
for perquisites, so he might be 2_s._ in hand, at least 2_s._, every
week in a regular way of living. This man expressed his conviction
that no man, who had to work hard, could live at smaller cost than he
did. That numbers of men did so, he admitted, but he “couldn’t make it
out.” The two ways of living which I have described may be taken as
the modes prevalent among this class of labourers, who seek to live
“comfortably.” Others who “rough it” live at less cost, dining, for
instance, off a pennyworth of pudding and half a pint of beer.

I ascertained that among the rubbish-carters, _those most frequently
attendant on public worship are the Irish Roman Catholics_, and such
Englishmen as had been agricultural labourers in rural parishes, and
had been reared in the habit of church-going; a habit in which, but
not without many exceptions, they still persevere. Among London-bred
labourers such habits are rarely formed.

_The abodes of the better description of rubbish-carters_ are not
generally in those localities which are crowded with the poor. They
reside in the streets off the Edgeware and Harrow-roads, as building
has been carried on to a very great extent in Westbourne, Maida-hill,
&c.; in Portland-town, Camden-town, Somers-town, about King’s-cross;
in Islington, Pentonville, and Clerkenwell; off the Commercial and
Mile-end-roads; in Walworth, Camberwell, Kennington, and Newington;
and, indeed, in all the quarters where building has been prosecuted on
an extensive scale. I was in some of their apartments, and found them
tidy and comfortable-looking: one was especially so. Some stone-fruit
on the mantel-shelf shone as if newly painted, and the fender and
fire-irons glittered from their brightness to the fire of the small
grate. The husband, however, was in good earnings, and the wife cleared
about 5_s._ weekly on superior needlework. There was one thing painful
to observe--the contrast between the robust and sun-burnt look of the
husband, and the delicate and pallid, not to say sickly, appearance
of the wife. The rents for unfurnished apartments vary from 2_s._ to
5_s._, but rarely the latter, unless the wife take in a little washing.
I heard of some at 2_s._, but very few; 2_s._ 6_d._ to 3_s._ 6_d._ are
common prices.

_I heard of no partiality for amusements among the rubbish-carters_,
beyond what my informant spoke of--a visit to the play. Some, I was
told, but principally the younger men, never missed going to a fair,
which was not too far off. I think not quite one-half of those I spoke
to, with the best earnings, had been to the Exhibition. Of the worst
paid, I am told, not one in 50 went; one man told me that he had no
amusements but his pipe and his beer. Some of them, I was assured,
drank half a gallon of beer in a day, but at intervals, so as not to
be intoxicated. “A hand at cribbage” is a favourite public-house game
among a few of these men; but not above one in half-a-dozen, I was
assured, “knew the cards,” and not one in two dozen played them.

These, then, are the characteristics of the labouring rubbish-carters
employed in the honourable trade.

A fine-looking man, upwards of six feet in stature and of proportionate
bulk, with so smart a set to his bushy whiskers, and a look of such
general tidiness (after he had left off work in the evening), that
he might have been taken for a life-guardsman had it not been for a
slight slouch of the shoulders, and a very unmilitary gait, gave me the
following account:--

“I’m a London man,” he said, “and though I’m not yet 25, I’ve kept
myself for the last five years. I’ve worked at rubbish-carting and
general ground-work (digging for pipe-laying, &c.,) as we nearly all
do, but mainly at rubbish-carting, and I’m at that now. My friends are
in the same line, so I helped them: I was big enough, and was brought
up that way. O, yes, I can read and write, but I haven’t time, or very
seldom, to read anything but a newspaper now and again. I’m a carman
now, and have a very good master. I’ve served him, more or less, for
three years. I have had 25_s._ a week, and I have had 29_s._, but
that included over-work. Two hours extra work a day makes an extra
day in the week, you see, sir. O, yes, I might have saved money, and
I’m trying to save 25_l._ now to see if I can’t raise a horse and
cart, and begin for myself in a small way, general jobbing. I’ve been
used to cart mould, and gravel, and turf for gentlemen’s gardens, or
when gardens have been laid out in new buildings, as well as rubbish,
for the same master. Last year I set to work in hard earnest in the
same way, and this is where it is that always stops me. Mr. ---- [his
employer] is very busy now, and things look pretty well about here
[Camden-town], but I don’t know how it is in other parts. It was the
same last year, but trade fell off in the winter, and I was three
months out of work. O, that’s a common case, especial with young men,
for of course the old hands has the preference. That’s where it is,
you see, sir; it’s a _uncertain_ trade. It’s always that new shoes is
wanted, but it ain’t always new houses. My money all went, and then all
my things went to the pawn, and when I got fairly to work again, I had
a shirt and a shilling left, and owed some little matters. I’d saved
well on to 50_s._, and could have gone on saving, but for being thrown
out. Then, when you get into regular wages again, there’s your uncle
to meet, and there’s always something wanted--a pair of half-boots, or
a new shirt, or a new tool, or something; so one loses heart about it,
and I can’t abear not to appear respectable.

“I pay 2_s._ a week for my lodging, but it’s only for half a bed. The
house is let out that way to single men like me, so each bed brings
in 4_s._ a week. There’s two beds in the room where I sleep; I don’t
know how many in all. Why, yes, it’s a respectable sort of a place, but
I don’t much like it. There’s plenty such places; some’s decent and
some’s not. Oh, certainly, a place of your own’s best, if it’s ever
so humble, but it wouldn’t suit a man like me. I may work one week
at Paddington, and the next at Bow, and if I had a furnished room at
Paddington, what good would it be if I went to work at Bow? Only the
bother and expense of removing my sticks again and again. O, people
that find lodgings for such as me, know that well enough, and makes a
prey of us, of course.

“I take my meals at a public-house or a coffee-shop. O yes, I live
well enough. I have meat every day to dinner; a man like me must keep
up his strength, and you can’t do that without good meat. It’s all
nonsense about vegetables and all that, as if men’s stomachs were like
cows’. I have bread and butter and tea or coffee for breakfast and tea,
sometimes a few cresses with it just to sweeten the blood, which is
the proper use of vegetables. A pint of beer or so for supper, but I
don’t care about supper, though now and then I take a bit of bread and
cheese with a nice fresh onion to it. Well, I’m sure I can’t say what
I lay out in my living in a week; sometimes more and sometimes less.
I keep no account; I pay my way as I go on. Some weeks when I get my
Saturday night’s wage, I have from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 6_s._ 6_d._ left from
last Saturday night’s money, but that’s only when I’ve had nothing to
lay out beyond common. Now, last week I was 4_s._ 9_d._ to the good,
and this week I shall be about the ditto; but then I want a waistcoat
and a silk handkerchief for my neck for Sunday wear; so I must draw on
my Saturday night. There’s a gentleman takes care of my money for me,
and I carry him what I have over in a week, and he takes care of it
for me. I did a good deal of work about his houses--he has a block of
them--and his own place, and I’ve gardened for him; and from what I’ve
heard, my money’s safer with him than with a Savings’ Bank. When I want
to draw he likes to be satisfied what it’s for, and he’s lent me as
much as 33_s._ in different sums, when I was hard up. He’s what I call
a real gentleman. He says if I ever go to him tipsy to draw, and says
it quite solemn like, he’ll take me by the scruff of the neck and kick
me out; though [laughing] he can’t be much above five foot, and has
gray hairs, and seems a feeble sort of a man, I mean of a gentleman. He
enters all I pay in a book. Here it is, sir, for this year, if you’d
like to see it. I wasn’t able to put anything by for a goodish bit. I
lost my book once, but I knew how much, and so did Mr. ----, and he put
it down in a lump.

£ _s._ _d._
July 18 In hand 1 3 0
25 Received 0 3 6
Aug. 9 „ 0 3 6
23 „ 0 5 0
Sept. 13 „ 0 9 6
20 „ 0 4 0
27 „ 0 4 0
-------------
£2 12 6

“If I can’t save a little to start myself on when I’m a single man, I
can’t ever after, I fancy; so I’m a trying.

“No, my expenses, over and above my living and lodging and washing, and
all that, ain’t heavy. Yes, I’m very fond of a good play, very. Some
galleries is 6_d._, and some 3_d._; but then there’s refreshment and
that, so it costs 1_s._ a time. Perhaps I go once a week, but only in
autumn and winter, when nights get long, and we leave work at half-past
five. The last time I was at the play was at the Marylebone, but there
was some opera pieces that don’t suit me; such stuff and nonsense. I
like something very lively, or else a deep tragedy. Sadler’s Wells is
the place, sir. I mean to go there to-morrow night. Yes, I’m very fond
of the pantomimes. Concerts I’ve been at, but don’t care for them.
They’re as dear at 2_d._ as an egg a penny, and an egg’s only a bite.

“Well, I’ve gone to church sometimes, but a carman hasn’t time, for he
has his horses to attend to on Sunday mornings, and that uses up his
morning. No, I never go now. Work must be done. It ain’t my fault. I’m
sure, if I could have my wish, I’d never do anything on a Sunday.

“Yes, there’s far too many as undersells us in work. I know that, but
I don’t like to think about them or to talk about them.” [He seemed
desirous to ignore the very existence of the scurf rubbish-carters.]
“They’re Irish many of them. They’re often quarrelsome and
blood-thirsty, but I know many decent men among the Irishmen in our
gangs. There’s good and bad among them, as there is among the English.
There’s very few of the Irish that are carmen; they haven’t been much
used to horses.

“I have done a little as a nightman when I worked for Mr. ----. He was
a parish contractor, and undertook such jobs, and liked to put strong
men on to them. I didn’t like it. I can’t think it’s a healthy trade. I
can’t say, but I heard it represented, that in this particular calling
there was a great deal of under-contracting going on when the railway
undertakings generally received a severe check, and when a great
number of hands were thrown out of employment, and sought employment
in rubbish-carting generally, and apart from railway-work. These hands
suffered greatly for a long time. The tommy-shops and the middle-man
system were enough to swallow the largest amount of railway wages, so
that very few had saved money, and they were willing to work for very
low wages. A good many of these people went to endeavour to find work
at the large new docks being erected at Great Grimsby, near Boston, in
Lincolnshire. Some of the more prudent were able to raise the means of
emigrating, and from one cause or other the pressure of this surplus
labour among rubbish-carters and excavators, as regards the metropolis,
became relieved.”

OF CASUAL LABOUR IN GENERAL, AND THAT OF THE RUBBISH-CARTERS IN
PARTICULAR.

The subject of casual labour is one of such vast importance in
connection with the welfare of a nation and its people, and one of
which the causes as well as consequences seem to be so utterly ignored
by economical writers and unheeded by the public, that I purpose
here saying a few words upon the matter in general, with the view of
enabling the reader the better to understand the difficulties that
almost all unskilled and many skilled labourers have to contend with in
this country.

By _casual_ labour I mean such labour as can obtain only _occasional_
as contradistinguished from _constant_ employment. In this definition
I include all classes of workers, literate and illiterate, skilled and
unskilled, whose professions, trades, or callings expose them to be
employed temporarily rather than continuously, and whose incomes are in
a consequent degree fluctuating, casual, and uncertain.

In no country in the world is there such an extent, and at the same
time such a diversity, of casual labour as in Great Britain. This is
attributable to many causes--commercial and agricultural, natural and
artificial, controllable and uncontrollable.

I will first show what are the causes of casual labour, and then point
out its effects.

The causes of casual labour may be grouped under two heads:--

I. _The Brisk and Slack Seasons, and Fit Times_, or periodical increase
and decrease of work in certain occupations.

II. _The Surplus Hands_ appertaining to the different trades.

First, as to the briskness or slackness of employment in different
occupations. This depends in different trades on different causes,
among which may be enumerated--

A. The weather.

B. The seasons of the year.

C. The fashion of the day.

D. Commerce and accidents.

I shall deal with each of these causes _seriatim_.

A. The labour of thousands is influenced by the _weather_; it is
suspended or prevented in many instances by stormy or rainy weather;
and in some few instances it is promoted by such a state of things.

Among those whose labour cannot be executed on _wet days_, or
executed but imperfectly, and who are consequently deprived of their
ordinary means of living on such days, are--paviours, pipe-layers,
bricklayers, painters of the exteriors of houses, slaters, fishermen,
watermen (plying with their boats for hire), the crews of the river
steamers, a large body of agricultural labourers (such as hedgers,
ditchers, mowers, reapers, ploughmen, thatchers, and gardeners),
costermongers and all classes of street-sellers (to a great degree),
street-performers, and showmen.

With regard to the degree in which agricultural (or indeed in this
instance woodland) labour may be influenced by the weather, I may
state that a few years back there had been a fall of oaks on an estate
belonging to Col. Cradock, near Greta-bridge, and the poor people,
old men and women, in the neighbourhood, were selected to strip off
the bark for the tanners, under the direction of a person appointed
by the proprietor: for this work they were paid by the basket-load.
The trees lay in an open and exposed situation, and the rain was so
incessant that the “barkers” could scarcely do any work for the whole
of the first week, but kept waiting under the nearest shelter in the
hopes that it would “clear up.” In the first week of this employment
nearly one-third of the poor persons, who had commenced their work with
eagerness, had to apply for some temporary parochial relief. A rather
curious instance this, of a parish suffering from the casualty of a
very humble labour, and actually from the attempt of the poor to earn
money, and do work prepared for them.

On the other hand, some few classes may be said to be benefited by
the rain which is impoverishing others: these are cabmen (who are
the busiest on _showery_ days), scavagers, umbrella-makers, clog and
patten-makers. I was told by the omnibus people that their vehicles
filled better in hot than in wet weather.

But the labour of thousands is influenced also by the _wind_; an
easterly wind prevailing for a few days will throw out of employment
20,000 dock labourers and others who are dependent on the shipping
for their employment; such as lumpers, corn-porters, timber-porters,
ship-builders, sail-makers, lightermen, watermen, and, indeed, almost
all those who are known as ’long-shoremen. The same state of things
prevails at Hull, Bristol, Liverpool, and all our large ports.

_Frost_, again, is equally inimical to some labourers’ interests;
the frozen-out market-gardeners are familiar to almost every one,
and indeed all those who are engaged upon the land may be said to be
deprived of work by severely cold weather.

In the weather alone, then, we find a means of starving thousands
of our people. Rain, wind, and frost are many a labourer’s natural
enemies, and to those who are fully aware of the influence of
“the elements” upon the living and comforts of hundreds of their
fellow-creatures, the changes of weather are frequently watched with a
terrible interest. I am convinced that, altogether, a wet day deprives
not less than 100,000, and probably nearer 200,000 people, including
builders, bricklayers, and agricultural labourers, of their ordinary
means of subsistence, and drives the same number to the public-houses
and beer-shops (on this part of the subject I have collected some
curious facts); thus not only decreasing their income, but positively
increasing their expenditure, and that, perhaps, in the worst of ways.

Nor can there be fewer dependent on the winds for their bread. If we
think of the vast number employed either directly or indirectly at the
various ports of this country, and then remember that at each of these
places the prevalence of a particular wind must prevent the ordinary
arrival of shipping, and so require the employment of fewer hands; we
shall have some idea of the enormous multitude of men in this country
who can be starved by “a nipping and an eager air.” If in London
alone there are 20,000 people deprived of food by the prevalence of
an easterly wind (and I had the calculation from one of the principal
officers of the St. Katherine Dock Company), surely it will not be too
much to say that throughout the country there are not less than 50,000
people whose living is thus precariously dependent.

Altogether I am inclined to believe, that we shall not be over the
truth if we assert there are between 100,000 and 200,000 individuals
and their families, or half a million of people, dependent on the
elements for their support in this country.

* * * * *

But this calculation refers to those classes only who are deprived of a
certain number of _days’_ work by an alteration of the weather, a cause
that is essentially _ephemeral_ in its character. The other series of
natural events influencing the demand for labour in this country are of
a more _continuous_ nature--the stimulus and the depression enduring
for weeks rather than days. I allude to the _second_ of the four
circumstances above-mentioned as inducing briskness or slackness of
employment in different occupations, viz.:--

B. The seasons.

These are the seasons of the year, and not the arbitrary seasons of
fashion, of which I shall speak next.

The following classes are among those exposed to the uncertainty of
employment, and consequently of income, from the above cause, since it
is only in particular seasons that particular works, such as buildings,
will be undertaken, or that open-air pleasure excursions will be
attempted: carpenters, builders, brickmakers, painters, plasterers,
paper-hangers, rubbish-carters, sweeps, and riggers and lumpers, the
latter depending mainly on the arrival of the timber ships to the
Thames (and this, owing to the ice in the Baltic Sea and in the river
St. Lawrence, &c., takes place only at certain seasons of the year),
coal-whippers and coal-porters (the coal trade being much brisker in
winter), market-porters, and those employed in summer in steam-boat,
railway, van, and barge excursions.

Then there are the casualties attending agricultural labour, for,
although the operations of nature are regular “even as the seed time
follows the harvest,” there is, almost invariably, a smaller employment
of labour after the completion of the haymaking, the sheep-shearing,
and the grain-reaping labours.

For the hay and corn harvests it is well known that there is a
periodical immigration of Irishmen and women, who clamour for the
_casual_ employment; others, again, leave the towns for the same
purpose; the same result takes place also in the fruit and pea-picking
season for the London green-markets; while in the winter such people
return some to their own country, and some to form a large proportion
of the casual class in the metropolis. A tall Irishman of about 34
or 35 (whom I had to see when treating of the religion of the street
Irish) leaves his accustomed crossing-sweeping at all or most of the
seasons I have mentioned, and returns to it for the winter at the end
of October; while his wife and children are then so many units to add
to the casualties of the street sale of apples, nuts, and onions, by
overstocking the open-air markets.

The autumnal season of hop-picking is the grand rendezvous for the
vagrancy of England and Ireland, the stream of London vagrancy flowing
freely into Kent at that period, and afterwards flowing back with
increased volume. Men, women, and children are attracted to the hop
harvest. The season is over in less than a month, and then the casual
labourers engaged in it (and they are nearly all casual labourers)
must divert their industry, or their endeavours for a living, into
other channels, swelling the amount of casualty in unskilled work or
street-trade.

Numerically to estimate the influence of the seasons on the
labour-market of this country is almost an overwhelming task. Let us
try, however: there are in round numbers one million agricultural
labourers in this country; saying that in the summer four labourers
are employed for every three in the winter, there would be 250,000
people and their families, or say 1,000,000 of individuals, deprived
of their ordinary subsistence in the winter time; this, of course,
does not include those who come from Ireland to assist at the
harvest-getting--how many these may be I have no means of ascertaining.
Added to these there are the natural vagabonds, whom I have before
estimated at another hundred thousand (see p. 408, vol. i.), and who
generally help at the harvest work or the fruit or hop-picking.

Then there are the carpenters, who are 163,000 in number; the builders,
9200; the brickmakers, 18,000; the painters, 48,200; the coal-whippers,
9200; the coal-miners, 110,000; making altogether 350,000 people, and
estimating that for every four hands employed in the brisk season,
there are only three required in the slack, we have 80,000 more
families, or 300,000 people, deprived of their living by the casualty
of labour; so that if we assert that there are, at the least, including
agricultural labourers, 1,250,000 people thus deprived of their usual
means of living, we shall not be very wide of the truth.

The next cause of the briskness or slackness of different employments
is--

C. Fashion.

The London fashionable season is also the parliamentary season, and is
the “briskest” from about the end of February to the middle of July.

The workmen most affected by the aristocratic, popular, or general
fashions, are--

Tailors, ladies’ habit-makers, boot and shoe-makers, hatters,
glovers, milliners, dress-makers, mantua-makers, drawn and straw
bonnet-makers, artificial flower-makers, plumassiers, stay-makers,
silk and velvet weavers, saddlers, harness-makers, coach-builders,
cabmen, job-coachmen, farriers, livery stable keepers, poulterers,
pastry-cooks, confectioners, &c., &c.

The above-mentioned classes may be taken, according to the Occupation
Abstract of the last Census, at between 500,000 and 600,000; and,
assuming the same ratio as to the difference of employment between the
brisk and the slack seasons of the trades, or, in other words, that
25 per cent. less hands are required at the slack than at the brisk
time of these trades, we have another 150,000 people, who, with their
families, may be estimated altogether at say 500,000, who are thrown
out of work at a certain season, and have to starve on as best they can
for at least three months in the year.

The last-mentioned of the causes inducing briskness or slackness of
employment are--

D. Commerce and Accidents.

_Commerce_ has its periodical fits and starts. The publishers, for
instance, have their season, generally from October to March, as people
read more in winter than in summer; and this arrangement immediately
effects the printers and bookbinders; there is no change, however, as
regards the newspapers and periodicals. Again, the early importation
to this country of the new foreign fruits gives activity to the dock
and wharf labourers and porters and carmen. Thus the arrival here,
generally in autumn, of the nut, chestnut, and grape (raisin) produce
of Spain; of the almond crops in Portugal, Spain, and Barbary; the date
harvest in Morocco, and different parts of Africa; the orange gathering
in Madeira, and in St. Michael’s, Terceira, and other islands of the
Azores; the fig harvest from the Levant; the plum harvest of the south
of France; the currant picking of Zante, Ithaca, and other Ionian
Islands;--all these events give an activity, as new fruit is always
most saleable, to the traders in these southern productions; and more
shopmen, shop-porters, wharf labourers, and assistant lightermen are
required--casually required--for the time.

I was told by a grocer, with a country connection, and in a large
way of business, that for three weeks or a month before Christmas he
required the aid of four fresh hands, a shopman, an errand-boy, and two
porters (one skilled in packing), for whom he had nothing to do after
Christmas. If in the wide sweep of London trade there be 1000 persons,
including the market salesmen, the retail butchers, the carriers, &c.,
so circumstanced, then 4000 men are _casually_ employed, and for a very
brief time.

The brief increase of the carrying business generally about Christmas,
by road, water, or railway, is sufficiently indicated by the foregoing
account.

The employment, again, in the cotton and woollen manufacturing
districts may be said to depend for its briskness on commerce rather
than on the seasons.

_Accidents_, or extraordinary social events, promote casual labour and
then depress it. Often they depress without having promoted it.

During the display of the Great Exhibition, there were some thousands
employed in the different capacities of police, packing, cleaning,
porterage, watching, interpreting, door-keeping and money-taking,
cab-regulating, &c.; and after the close of the Exhibition how
many were retained? Thus the Great Exhibition fostered casual, or
uncertain labour. Foreign revolutions, moreover, affect the trade of
England: speculators become timid and will not embark in trade or in
any proposed undertaking; the foreign import and export trades are
paralysed; and fewer clerks and fewer labourers are employed. Home
political agitations, also, have the same effect; as was seen in
London during the corn-law riots, about 35 years ago (when only eight
members of the House of Commons supported a change in those laws); the
Spafields riots in 1817; the affair in St. Peter’s-field, Manchester,
in 1819; the disturbances and excitement during the trial of Queen
Caroline, in 1820-1, and the loss of life on the occasion of her
funeral in 1821; the agitation previously to the passing of the Reform
Bill had a like effect; the meeting on Kennington Common on the 10th
of April;--in all these periods, indeed, employment decreased. Labour
is affected also by the death of a member of the royal family, and
the hurried demand for general mourning, but in a very small degree
to what was once the case. A West-End tailor employing a great number
of hands did not receive a single order for mourning on the death of
Queen Adelaide; while on the demise of the Princess Charlotte (in 1817)
thousands of operative tailors, throughout the three kingdoms, worked
day and night, and for double wages, on the general mourning. Gluts
in the markets, an increase of heavy bankruptcies and “panics,” such
as were experienced in the money market in 1825-6, and again in 1846,
with the failure of banks and merchants, likewise have the effect of
augmenting the mass of casual labour; for capitalists and employers,
under such circumstances, expend as little as possible in wages or
employment until the storm blows over. Bad harvests have a similar
depressing effect.

There are also the consequences of changes of taste. The abandonment
of the fashions of gentlemen’s wearing swords, as well as embroidered
garments, flowing periwigs, large shoe-buckles, all reduced able
artizans to poverty by depriving them of work. So it was, when, to
carry on the war with France, Mr. Pitt introduced a tax on hair powder.
Hundreds of hair-dressers were thrown out of employment, many persons
abandoning the fashion of wearing powder rather than pay the tax. There
are now city gentlemen, who can remember that when clerks, they had
sometimes to wait two or three hours for “their turn” at a barber’s
shop on a Sunday morning; for they could not go abroad until their
hair was dressed and powdered, and their queues trimmed to the due
standard of fashion. So it has been, moreover, in modern times in the
substitution of silk for metal buttons, silk hats for stuff, and in the
supersedence of one material of dress by another.

These several causes, then, which could only exist in a community of
great wealth and great poverty have rendered, and are continually
rendering, the labour market uncertain and over-stocked; to what extent
they do and have done this, it is, of course, almost impossible to
say _precisely_; but, even with the strongest disposition to avoid
exaggeration, we may assert that there are in this country no less
than 125,000 families, or 500,000 people, who depend on the weather
for their food; 300,000 families, or 1,250,000 people, who can
obtain employment only at particular seasons; 150,000 more families,
or 500,000 people, whose trade depends upon the fashionable rather
than the natural seasons, are thrown out of work at the cessation of
the brisk time of their business; and, perhaps, another 150,000 of
families, or 500,000 people, dependent on the periodical increase and
decrease of commerce, and certain social and political accidents which
tend to cause a greater or less demand for labour. Altogether we may
assert, with safety, that there are at the least 725,000 families, or
three millions of men, women, and children, whose means of living, far
from being certain and constant, are of a precarious kind, depending
either upon the rain, the wind, the sunshine, the caprice of fashion,
or the ebbings and flowings of commerce.

* * * * *

But there is a still more potent cause at work to increase the amount
of _casual_ labour in this country. Thus far we have proceeded on
the assumption that at the brisk season of each trade there is full
employment for all; but this is far from being the case in the great
majority, if not the whole, of the instances above cited. In almost all
occupations there is in this country a _superfluity of labourers_, and
this alone would tend to render the employment of a vast number of the
hands of a casual rather than a regular character. In the generality
of trades the calculation is that one-third of the hands are fully
employed, one-third partially, and one-third unemployed throughout the
year. This, of course, would be the case if there were twice too many
work-people; for suppose the number of work-people in a given trade
to be 6000, and the work sufficient to employ (fully) only half the
quantity, then, of course, 2000 might be occupied their whole time,
2000 more might have work sufficient to occupy them half their time,
and the remaining 2000 have no work at all; or the whole 4000 might,
on the average, obtain three months’ employment out of the twelve;
and this is frequently the case. Hence we see that a surplusage of
hands in a trade tends to change the employment of the great majority
from a state of constancy and regularity into one of casualty and
precariousness.

Consequently it becomes of the highest importance that we should
endeavour to ascertain what are the circumstances inducing a surplusage
of hands in the several trades of the present day. A _surplusage of
hands_ in a trade may proceed from three different causes, viz.:--

1. The alteration of the hours, rate, or mode of working, or else the
term of hiring.

2. The increase of the hands themselves.

3. The decrease of the work.

Each of these causes is essentially distinct; in the first case there
is neither an increase in the number of hands nor a decrease in the
quantity of work, and yet a surplusage of labourers is the consequence,
for it is self-evident that if there be work enough in a given trade
to occupy 6000 men all the year round, labouring twelve hours per
day for six days in the week, the same quantity of work will afford
occupation to only 4000 men, or one-third less, labouring between
fifteen and sixteen hours per diem for seven days in the week. The
same result would, of course, take place, if the workman were made to
labour one-third more _quickly_, and so to get through one-third more
work in the same time (either by increasing their interest in their
work, by the invention of a new tool, by extra supervision, or by the
subdivision of labour, &c., &c.), the same result would, of course,
ensue as if they laboured one-third longer hours, viz., one-third of
the hands must be thrown out of employment. So, again, by altering the
_mode or form of work_, as by producing on the large scale, instead
of the small, a smaller number of labourers are required to execute
the same amount of work; and thus (if the market for such work be
necessarily limited) a surplusage of labourers is the result. Hence we
see that the alteration of the hours, rate, or mode of working may tend
as positively to overstock a country with labourers as if the labourers
themselves had unduly increased.

But this, of course, is on the assumption that both the quantity of
work and the number of hands remain the same. The next of the three
causes, above mentioned as inducing a surplusage of hands, is that
which arises from a positive _increase in the number of labourers_,
while the quantity of work remains the same or increases at a less rate
than the labourers; and the third cause is, where the surplusage of
labourers arises not from any alteration in the number of hands, but
from a positive _decrease in the quantity of work_.

These are distinctions necessary to be borne clearly in mind for the
proper understanding of this branch of the subject.

In the first case both the number of hands and the quantity of work
remain the same, but the term, rate, or mode of working is changed.

In the second, hours, rate, or mode of working remain the same, as well
as the quantity of work, but the number of hands is increased.

And in the third case, neither the number of hands nor the hours, rate,
or mode of working is supposed to have been altered, but the work only
to have decreased.

The surplusage of hands will, of course, be the same in each of these
cases.

I will begin with the first, viz., that which induces a surplusage
of labourers in a trade by enabling fewer hands to get through the
ordinary amount of work. This is what is called the “economy of labour.”

There are, of course, only three modes of economizing labour, or
causing the same quantity of work to be done by a smaller number of
hands.

1st. By causing the men to work _longer_.

2nd. By causing the men to work _quicker_, and so get through more work
in the same time.

3rd. By _altering the mode_ of work, or hiring, as in the “large
system of production,” where fewer hands are required; or the custom
of temporary hirings, where the men are retained only so long as their
services are needed, and discharged immediately afterwards.

First, of that mode of economizing labour which depends on an _increase
of either the ordinary hours or days for work_. This is what is usually
termed over-work and Sunday-work, both of which are largely creative
of surplus hands. The hours of labour in mechanical callings are
usually twelve, two of them devoted to meals, or 72 hours (less by the
permitted intervals) in a week. In the course of my inquiries for the
_Chronicle_, I met with slop cabinet-makers, tailors, and milliners who
worked sixteen hours and more daily, their toil being only interrupted
by the necessity of going out, if small masters, to purchase materials,
and offer the goods for sale; or, if journeymen in the slop trade, to
obtain more work and carry what was completed to the master’s shop.
They worked on Sundays also; one tailor told me that the coat he worked
at on the previous Sunday was for the Rev. Mr. ----, who “little
thought it,” and these slop-workers rarely give above a few minutes to
a meal. Thus they toil 40 hours beyond the hours usual in an honourable
trade (112 hours instead of 72), in the course of a week, or between
three and four days of the regular hours of work of the six working
days. In other words, two such men will in less than a week accomplish
work which should occupy three men a full week; or 1000 men will
execute labour fairly calculated to employ 1500 at the least. A paucity
of employment is thus caused among the general body, by this system
of over-labour decreasing the share of work accruing to the several
operatives, and so adding to surplus hands.

Of over-work, as regards excessive labour, both in the general and
fancy cabinet trade, I heard the following accounts, which different
operatives concurred in giving; while some represented the labour as of
longer duration by at least an hour, and some by two hours, a day, than
I have stated.

The labour of the men who depend entirely on “the slaughter-houses”
for the purchase of their articles is usually seven days a week
the year through. That is, seven days--for Sunday work is all but
universal--each of 13 hours, or 91 hours in all; while the established
hours of labour in the “honourable trade” are six days of the week,
each of 10 hours, or 60 hours in all. Thus 50 per cent. is added to
the extent of the production of low-priced cabinet-work, merely from
“over-hours;” but in some cases I heard of 15 hours for seven days in
the week, or 105 hours in all.

Concerning the hours of labour in this trade, I had the following
minute particulars from a garret-master who was a chair-maker:--

“I work from six every morning to nine at night; some work till ten.
My breakfast at eight stops me for ten minutes. I can breakfast in
less time, but it’s a rest; my dinner takes me say twenty minutes at
the outside; and my tea, eight minutes. All the rest of the time I’m
slaving at my bench. How many minutes’ rest is that, sir? Thirty-eight;
well, say three-quarters of an hour, and that allows a few sucks at a
pipe when I rest; but I can smoke and work too. I have only one room
to work and eat in, or I should lose more time. Altogether I labour
14-1/4 hours every day, and I must work on Sundays--at least 40 Sundays
in the year. One may as well work as sit fretting. But on Sundays I
only work till it’s dusk, or till five or six in summer. When it’s
dusk I take a walk. I’m not well-dressed enough for a Sunday walk when
it’s light, and I can’t wear my apron on that day very well to hide
patches. But there’s eight hours that I reckon I take up every week one
with another, in dancing about to the slaughterers. I’m satisfied that
I work very nearly 100 hours a week the year through; deducting the
time taken up by the slaughterers, and buying stuff--say eight hours
a week--it gives more than 90 hours a week for my work, and there’s
hundreds labour as hard as I do, just for a crust.”

The East-end turners generally, I was informed, when inquiring into
the state of that trade, labour at the lathe from six o’clock in the
morning till eleven and twelve at night, being 18 hours’ work per day,
or 108 hours per week. They allow themselves two hours for their meals.
It takes them, upon an average, two hours more every day fetching and
carrying their work home. Some of the East-end men work on Sundays, and
not a few either, said my informant. “Sometimes I have worked hard,”
said one man, “from six one morning till four the next, and scarcely
had any time to take my meals in the bargain. I have been almost
suffocated with the dust flying down my throat after working so many
hours upon such heavy work too, and sweating so much. It makes a man
drink where he would not.”

This system of over-work exists in the “slop” part of almost every
business--indeed, it is the principal means by which the cheap trade is
maintained. Let me cite from my letters in the _Chronicle_ some more of
my experience on this subject. As regards the London mantua-makers, I
said:--“The workwomen for good shops that give fair, or tolerably fair
wages, and expect good work, can make six average-sized mantles in a
week, _working from ten to twelve hours a day_; but the slop-workers,
by toiling from thirteen to sixteen hours a day, will make _nine_ such
sized mantles in a week. In a season of twelve weeks 1000 workers
for the slop-houses and warehouses would at this rate make 108,000
mantles, or 36,000 more than workers for the fair trade. Or, to put it
in another light, these slop-women, by being compelled, in order to
live, to work such over-hours as inflict lasting injury on the health,
supplant, by their over-work and over-hours, the labour of 500 hands,
working the regular hours.”

The following are the words of a chamber-master, working for the cheap
shoe trade:--

“From people being obliged to work twice the hours they once _did_
work, or that in reason they _ought_ to work, a glut of hands is the
consequence, and the masters are led to make reductions in the wages.
They take advantage of our poverty and lower the wages, so as to
undersell each other, and command business. My daughters have to work
fifteen hours a day that we may make a bare living. They seem to have
no spirit and no animation in them; in fact, such very hard work takes
the youth out of them. They have no time to enjoy their youth, and,
with all their work, they can’t present the respectable appearance they
ought.” “I” (interposed my informant’s wife) “often feel a faintness
and oppression from my hard work, as if my blood did not circulate.”

The better class of artizans denounce the system of Sunday working as
the most iniquitous of all the impositions. They object to it, not
only on moral and religious grounds, but economically also. “Every
600 men employed on the Sabbath,” say they, “deprive 100 individuals
of a week’s work. Every six men who labour seven days in the week
must necessarily throw one other man out of employ for a whole week.
The seventh man is thus deprived of his fair share of work by the
overtoiling of the other six.” This Sunday working is a necessary
consequence of the cheap slop-trade. The workmen cannot keep their
families by their six days’ labour, and therefore they not only, under
that system, get less wages and do more work, but by their extra labour
throw so many more hands out of employment.

Here then, in the over-work of many of the trade, we find a vast cause
of surplus hands, and, consequently, of casual labour; and that the
work in these trades has not proportionately increased is proven by the
fact of the existence of a superfluity of workmen.

Let us now turn our attention to the second of the causes above cited,
viz., _the causing of men to work quicker_, and so to accomplish
more in the same time. There are several means of attaining this end;
it may be brought about either (_a_) by making the workman’s gains
depend directly on the quantity of work executed by him, as by the
substitution of piece-work for day-work; (_b_) by the omission of
certain details or parts necessary for the perfection of the work;
(_c_) by decreasing the workman’s pay, and so increasing the necessity
for him to execute a greater quantity of work in order to obtain the
same income; (_d_) increasing the supervision, and encouraging a spirit
of emulation among the workpeople; (_e_) by dividing the labour into a
number of simple and minute processes, and so increasing the expertness
of the labourers; (_f_) by the invention of some new tool or machine
for expediting the operations of the workman.

I shall give a brief illustration of each of these causes _seriatim_,
showing how they tend to produce a surplusage of hands in the trades
to which they are severally applied. And first, as to _making the
workman’s gains depend directly on the quantity of work executed by
him_.

Of course there are but two direct modes of paying for labour--either
by the day or by the piece. Over-work by day-work is effected by means
of what is called the “strapping system” (as described in the _Morning
Chronicle_ in my letter upon the carpenters and joiners), where a whole
shop are set to race over their work in silence one with another, each
striving to outdo the rest, from the knowledge that anything short of
extraordinary exertion will be sure to be punished with dismissal.
Over-work by piece-work, on the other hand, is almost a necessary
consequence of that mode of payment--for where men are paid by the
quantity they do, of course it becomes the interest of a workman to do
more than he otherwise would.

“Almost all who work by the day, or for a fixed salary, that is to
say, those who labour for the gain of others, not for their own,
have,” it has been well remarked, “no interest in doing more than the
smallest quantity of work that will pass as a fulfilment of the mere
terms of their engagement. Owing to the insufficient interest which
day labourers have in the result of their labour, there is a natural
tendency in such labour to be extremely inefficient--a tendency
only to be overcome by vigilant superintendence on the part of the
persons who _are_ interested in the result. The ‘master’s eye’ is
notoriously the only security to be relied on. But superintend them
as you will, day labourers are so much inferior to those who work by
the piece, that, as was before said, the latter system is practised in
all industrial occupations where the work admits of being put out in
definite portions, without involving the necessity of too troublesome
a surveillance to guard against inferiority (or scamping) in the
execution.” But if the labourer at piece-work is made to produce a
greater quantity than at day-work, and this solely by connecting his
own interest with that of his employer, how much more largely must the
productiveness of workmen be increased when labouring wholly on their
own account! Accordingly it has been invariably found that whenever
the operative unites in himself the double function of capitalist
and labourer, as the “garret-master” in the cabinet trade, and the
“chamber-master” in the shoe trade, making up his own materials or
working on his own property, his productiveness, single-handed, is
considerably greater than can be attained even under the large system
of production, where all the arts and appliances of which extensive
capital can avail itself are brought into operation.

As regards the increased production by _omitting certain details
necessary for the due perfection of the work_, it may be said that
“scamping” adds at least 200 per cent. to the productions of the
cabinet-maker’s trade. I ascertained, in the course of my previous
inquiries, several cases of this over-work from scamping, and adduce
two. A very quick hand, a little master, working, as he called it, “at
a slaughtering pace,” for a warehouse, made 60 plain writing-desks in a
week of 90 hours; while a first-rate workman, also a quick hand, made
18 in a week of 70 hours. The scamping hand said he must work at the
rate he did to make 14_s._ a week from a slaughter-house; and so used
to such style of work had he become, that, though a few years back he
did West-end work in the best style, he could not now make eighteen
desks in a week, if compelled to finish them in the style of excellence
displayed in the work of the journeyman employed for the honourable
trade. Perhaps, he added, he couldn’t make them in that style at all.
The frequent use of rosewood veneers in the fancy cabinet, and their
occasional use in the general cabinet trade gives, I was told, great
facilities for scamping. If in his haste the scamping hand injure the
veneer, or if it have been originally faulty, he takes a mixture of
gum shellac and “colour” (colour being a composition of Venetian red
and lamp black), which he has ready by him, rubs it over the damaged
part, smooths it with a slightly-heated iron, and so blends it with
the colour of the rosewood that the warehouseman does not detect the
flaw. In the general, as contradistinguished from the fancy, cabinet
trade I found the same ratio of “scamping.” A good workman in the
better-paid trade made a four-foot mahogany chest of drawers in five
days, working the regular hours, and receiving, at piece-work price,
35_s._ A scamping hand made five of the same size in a week, and had
time to carry them for sale to the warehouses, wait for their purchase
or refusal, and buy material. But for the necessity of doing this the
scamping hand could have made seven in the 91 hours of his week, though
of course in a very inferior manner. “They would hold together for a
time,” I was assured, “and that was all; but the slaughterer cared only
to have them viewly and cheap.” These two cases exceed the average, and
I have cited them to show what _can_ be done under the scamping system.

We now come to the _increased rate of working induced by a reduction of
the ordinary rate of remuneration of the workman_. Not only is it true
that over-work makes under-pay, but the converse of the proposition
is equally true, that under-pay makes over-work--that is to say,
it is true of those trades where the system of piece-work or small
mastership admits of the operative doing the utmost amount of work
that he is able to accomplish; for the workman in such cases seldom
or never thinks of reducing his expenditure to his income, but rather
of increasing his labour, so as still to bring his income, by extra
production, up to his expenditure. Hence we find that, as the wages
of a trade descend, so do the labourers extend their hours of work
to the utmost possible limits--they not only toil earlier and later
than before, but the Sunday becomes a work-day like the rest (amongst
the “sweaters” of the tailoring trade Sunday labour, as I have shown,
is almost universal); and when the hours of work are carried to the
extreme of human industry, then more is sought to be done in a given
space of time, either by the employment of the members of their own
family, or apprentices, upon the inferior portion of the work, or else
by “scamping it.” “My employer,” I was told by a journeyman tailor
working for the Messrs. Nicoll, “reduces my wages one-third, and the
consequence is, I put in two stitches where I used to give three.” “I
must work from six to eight, and later,” said a pembroke-table-maker
to me, “to get 18_s._ now for my labour, where I used to get 54_s._ a
week--that’s just a third. I could in the old times give my children
good schooling and good meals. Now children have to be put to work
very young. I have four sons working for me at present.” Not only,
therefore, does any stimulus to extra production make over-work, and
over-work make under-pay; but under-pay, by becoming an additional
provocative to increased industry, again gives rise in its turn to
over-work. Hence we arrive at a plain unerring law--_over-work makes
under-pay and under-pay makes over-work_.

But the above means of increasing the rate of working refer solely
to those cases where the extra labour is induced by making it the
_interest_ of the workman so to do. The other means of extra production
is _by stricter supervision of journeymen, or those paid by the day_.
The shops where this system is enforced are termed “strapping-shops,”
as indicative of establishments where an undue quantity of work is
expected from a journeyman in the course of the day. Such shops, though
not directly making use of cheap labour (for the wages paid in them
are generally of the higher rate), still, by exacting more work, may
of course be said, in strictness, to encourage the system now becoming
general, of less pay and inferior skill. These strapping establishments
sometimes go by the name of “scamping shops,” on account of the time
allowed for the manufacture of the different articles not being
sufficient to admit of good workmanship.

Concerning this “_strapping_” system I received the following
extraordinary account from a man after his heavy day’s labour. Never in
all my experience had I seen so sad an instance of overwork. The poor
fellow was so fatigued that he could hardly rest in his seat. As he
spoke he sighed deeply and heavily, and appeared almost spirit-broken
with excessive labour:--

“I work at what is called a strapping shop,” he said, “and have worked
at nothing else for these many years past in London. I call ‘strapping’
doing as much work as a human being or a horse possibly can in a day,
and that without any hanging upon the collar, but with the foreman’s
eyes constantly fixed upon you, from six o’clock in the morning to six
o’clock at night. The shop in which I work is for all the world like
a prison; the silent system is as strictly carried out there as in a
model gaol. If a man was to ask any common question of his neighbour,
except it was connected with his trade, he would be discharged there
and then. If a journeyman makes the least mistake, he is packed off
just the same. A man working at such places is almost always in fear;
for the most trifling things he’s thrown out of work in an instant.
And then the quantity of work that one is forced to get through is
positively awful; if he can’t do a plenty of it, he don’t stop long
where I am. No one would think it was possible to get so much out of
blood and bones. No slaves work like we do. At some of the strapping
shops the foreman keeps continually walking about with his eyes on all
the men at once. At others the foreman is perched high up, so that he
can have the whole of the men under his eye together. I suppose since
I knew the trade that a _man does four times the work that he did
formerly_. I know a man that’s done four pairs of sashes in a day, and
one is considered to be a good day’s labour. What’s worse than all, the
men are every one striving one against the other. Each is trying to
get through the work quicker than his neighbours. Four or five men are
set the same job, so that they may be all pitted against one another,
and then away they go every one striving his hardest for fear that the
others should get finished first. They are all bearing along from the
first thing in the morning to the last at night, as hard as they can
go, and when the time comes to knock off they are ready to drop. I was
hours after I got home last night before I could get a wink of sleep;
the soles of my feet were on fire, and my arms ached to that degree
that I could hardly lift my hand to my head. Often, too, when we get
up of a morning, we are more tired than when we went to bed, for we
can’t sleep many a night; but we mustn’t let our employers know it, or
else they’d be certain we couldn’t do enough for them, and we’d get the
sack. So, tired as we may be, we are obliged to look lively, somehow
or other, at the shop of a morning. If we’re not beside our bench the
very moment the bell’s done ringing, our time’s docked--they wont
give us a single minute out of the hour. If I was working for a fair
master, I should do nearly one-third, and sometimes a half, less work
than I am now forced to get through, and, even to manage that much, I
shouldn’t be idle a second of my time. It’s quite a mystery to me how
they _do_ contrive to get so much work out of the men. But they are
very clever people. They know how to have the most out of a man, better
than any one in the world. They are all picked men in the shop--regular
‘strappers,’ and no mistake. The most of them are five foot ten, and
fine broad-shouldered, strong-backed fellows too--if they weren’t they
wouldn’t have them. Bless you, they make no words with the men, they
sack them if they’re not strong enough to do all they want; and they
can pretty soon tell, the very first shaving a man strikes in the shop,
what a chap is made of. Some men are done up at such work--quite old
men and gray with spectacles on, by the time they are forty. I have
seen fine strong men, of 36, come in there and be bent double in two or
three years. They are most all countrymen at the strapping shops. If
they see a great strapping fellow, who they think has got some stuff
about him that will come out, they will give him a job directly. We are
used for all the world like cab or omnibus horses. Directly they’ve
had all the work out of us, we are turned off, and I am sure, after my
day’s work is over, my feelings must be very much the same as one of
the London cab horses. As for Sunday, it is _literally_ a day of rest
with us, for the greater part of us lay a-bed all day, and even that
will hardly take the aches and pains out of our bones and muscles. When
I’m done and flung by, of course I must starve.”

The next means of inducing a quicker rate of working, and so
economizing the number of labourers, is by the _division_ and
_subdivision of labour_. In perhaps all the skilled work of London, of
the better sort, this is more or less the case; it is the case in a
much smaller degree in the country.

The nice subdivision makes the operatives perfect adepts in their
respective branches, working at them with a greater and a more assured
facility than if their care had to be given to the whole work, and in
this manner the work is completed in less time, and consequently by
fewer hands.

In illustration of the extraordinary increased productiveness induced
by the division of labour, I need only cite the well-known cases:--

“It is found,” says Mr. Mill, “that the productive power of labour is
increased by carrying the separation further and further; by breaking
down more and more every process of industry into parts, so that each
labourer shall confine himself to an even smaller number of simple
operations. And thus, in time, arise those remarkable cases of what is
called the division of labour, with which all readers on subjects of
this nature are familiar. Adam Smith’s illustration from pin-making,
though so well-known, is so much to the point, that I will venture
once more to transcribe it. ‘The business of making a pin is divided
into eighteen distinct operations. One man draws out the wire, another
straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, and a fifth grinds
it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two
or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business;
to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put
them into the paper. I have seen a small manufactory where ten men
only were employed, and where some of them, consequently, performed
two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and
therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery,
they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve
pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of 4000 pins of a
middling size.

“‘Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of 48,000
pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of 48,000
pins, might be considered as making 4800 pins in a day. But if they
had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them
having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could
not each of them have made 20, perhaps not one pin in a day.’”

M. Say furnishes a still stronger example of the effects of division
of labour, from a not very important branch of industry certainly,
the manufacture of playing cards. “It is said by those engaged in the
business, that each card, that is, a piece of pasteboard of the size of
the hand, before being ready for sale, does not undergo fewer than 70
operations, every one of which might be the occupation of a distinct
class of workmen. And if there are not 70 classes of work-people in
each card manufactory, it is because the division of labour is not
carried so far as it might be; because the same workman is charged
with two, three, or four distinct operations. The influence of this
distribution of employment is immense. I have seen a card manufactory
where thirty workmen produced daily 15,500 cards, being above 500 cards
for each labourer; and it may be presumed that if each of these workmen
were obliged to perform all the operations himself, even supposing him
a practised hand, he would not, perhaps, complete two cards in a day;
and the 30 workmen, instead of 15,500 cards, would make only 60.”

One great promoter of the decrease of manual labour is to be found in
the economy of labour from a very different cause to any I have pointed
out as tending to the increase of surplus hands and casual labour,
viz., to _the use of machinery_.

In this country the use of machinery has economised the labour both
of man and horse to a greater extent than is known in any other land,
and that in nearly all departments of commerce or traffic. The total
estimated machine power in the kingdom is 600,000,000 of human beings,
and this has been all produced within the last century. In agriculture,
for example, the threshing of the corn was the peasant’s work of the
later autumn and of a great part of the winter, until towards the
latter part of the last century. The harvest was hardly considered
complete until the corn was threshed by the peasants. On the first
introduction of the threshing machines, they were demolished in many
places by the country labourers, whose rage was excited to find that
their winter’s work, instead of being regular, had become _casual_.

But the use of these machines is now almost universal. It would, of
course, be the height of absurdity to say that threshing machines
could possibly increase the number of threshers, even as the reaping
machines cannot possibly increase the number of reapers; their effect
is rather to displace the greater number of labourers so engaged, and
hence indeed the “economy” of them. It is not known what number of
men were, at any time, employed in threshing corn. Their displacement
was gradual, and in some of the more remote parts of the provinces,
the flails of the threshers may be heard still, but if a threshing
machine--for they are of different power--do the work, as has been
stated, of six labourers, the economization or displacement of manual
labour is at once shown to be the economization and displacement of the
whole labour (for a season) of a country side; thus increasing surplus
hands.

In other matters--in the unloading vessels by cranes, in _all_ branches
of manufactures, and even in such minor matters as the grinding of
coffee berries, and the cutting and splitting of wood for lucifer
matches, an immense amount of manual labour has been minimized,
economized, or displaced by steam machinery. On my inquiry into the
condition of the London sawyers, I found that the labour of 2000 men
had been displaced by the steam saw-mills of the metropolis alone.
At one of the largest builder’s I saw machines for making mortises
and tenons, for sticking mouldings, and, indeed, performing all
the operations of the carpenter--one such machine doing the work,
perhaps, of a hundred men. I asked the probable influence that such
an instrument was likely to have on the men? “Ruin them all,” was
the laconic reply of the superintendent of the business! Within the
last year casks have been made by machinery--a feat that the coopers
declared impossible. Wheels, also, have been lately produced by steam.
I need, however, as I have so recently touched upon the subject, do
no more than call attention to the information I have given (p. 240,
vol. ii.) concerning the use of machinery in lieu of human labour.
It is there shown that if the public street-sweeping were effected,
throughout the metropolis, by the machines, nearly 196 of the 275
manual labourers, now scavaging for the parish contractors, would
be thrown out of work, and deprived of 7438_l._, out of their joint
earnings, in the year.

It is the fashion of political economists to insist on the general
proposition that machinery increases the demand for labour, rather than
decreases it; when they write unguardedly, however, they invariably
betray a consciousness that the benefits of machinery to manual
labourers are not quite so invariable as they would otherwise make out.
Here, for instance, is a confession from the pamphlet on “the Employer
and Employed,” published by the Messrs. Chambers, gentlemen who surely
cannot be accused of being averse to economical doctrines. It is true
the pamphlet is intended to show the evils of strikes to working men,
but it likewise points out the evils of mechanical power to the same
class when applied to certain operations.

“Strikes also lead to _the superseding of hand labour by machines_,”
says this little work. “In 1831, on the occasion of a strike at
Manchester, several of the capitalists, afraid of their business being
driven to other countries, had recourse to the celebrated machinists,
Messrs. Sharp and Co. of Manchester, requesting them to direct the
inventive talents of their partner, Mr. Roberts, to the construction
of a self-acting mule, in order to emancipate the trade from galling
slavery and impending ruin. Under assurances of the most liberal
encouragement in the adoption of his invention, Mr. Roberts suspended
his professional pursuits as an engineer, and set his fertile genius
to construct a spinning automaton. In the course of a few months he
produced a machine, called the ‘Self-acting Mule,’ which, in 1834, was
in operation in upwards of 60 factories; _doing the work of the head
spinners so much better than they could do it themselves, as to leave
them no chance against it_.

“In his work on the ‘Philosophy of Manufactures,’ Dr. Ure observes on
the same subject--‘The elegant art of calico-printing, which embodies
in its operations the most elegant problems of chemistry, as well as
mechanics, had been for a long period the sport of foolish journeymen,
who turned the liberal means of comfort it furnished them into weapons
of warfare against their employers and the trade itself. They were,
in fact, by their delirious combinations, plotting to kill the goose
which laid the golden eggs of their industry, or to force it to fly
off to a foreign land, where it might live without molestation. In
the spirit of Egyptian task-masters, the operative printers dictated
to the manufacturers the number and quality of the apprentices to be
admitted into the trade, the hours of their own labour, and the wages
to be paid them. At length capitalists sought deliverance from this
intolerable bondage in the resources of science, and were speedily
reinstated in their legitimate dominion of the head over the inferior
members. The four-colour and five-colour machines, which now render
calico-printing an unerring and expeditious process, are mounted in
all great establishments. It was under the high-pressure of the same
despotic confederacies, that self-acting apparatus for executing the
dyeing and rinsing operations has been devised.’

“The croppers of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the hecklers or
flax-dressers, can unfold ‘a tale of wo’ on this subject. Their
earnings exceeded those of most mechanics; but the frequency of
strikes among them, and the irregularities in their hours and times of
working, compelled masters to substitute machinery for their manual
labour. _Their trades, in consequence, have been in a great measure
superseded._”

It must, then, be admitted that machinery, _in some cases at least_,
does displace manual labour, and so tend to produce a surplusage
of labourers, even as over-work, Sunday-work, scamping-work,
strapping-work, piece-work, minutely-divided work, &c., have the same
effect so long as the quantity of work to be done remains unaltered.
_The extensibility of the market_ is the one circumstance which
determines whether the economy of labour produced by these means is
a blessing or a curse to the nation. To apply mechanical power, the
division of labour, the large system of production, or indeed any
other means of enabling a less number of labourers to do the same
amount of work _when the quantity of work to be done is limited in
its nature_, as, for instance, the threshing of corn, the sawing of
wood, &c., is necessarily to make either paupers or criminals of those
who were previously honest independent men, living by the exercise of
their industry in that particular direction. Economize your labour
one-half, in connection with a particular article, and you must sell
twice the quantity of that article or displace a certain number of
the labourers; that is to say, suppose it requires 400 men to produce
4000 commodities in a given time, then, if you enable 200 men to
produce the same quantity in the same time, you must get rid of 8000
commodities, or deprive a certain number of labourers of their ordinary
means of living. Indeed, the proposition is almost self-evident, though
generally ignored by social philosophers: economize your labour at a
greater rate than you expand your markets, and you must necessarily
increase your paupers and criminals in precisely the same ratio. “The
division of labour,” says Mr. Mill, following Adam Smith, “is limited
by the extent of the market. If by the separation of pin-making into
ten distinct employments 48,000 pins can be made in a day, this
separation will only be advisable if the number of accessible consumers
is such as to require every day something like 48,000 pins. If there is
a demand for only 25,000, the division of labour can be advantageously
carried but to the extent which will every day produce that smaller
number.” Again, as regards the large system of production, the same
authority says, “the possibility of substituting the large system of
production for the small depends, of course, on the extent of the
market. The large system can only be advantageous when a large amount
of business is to be done; it implies, therefore, either a populous and
flourishing community, or a great opening for exportation.” But these
are mere glimmerings of the broad incontrovertible principle, that _the
economization of labour at a greater rate than the expansion of the
markets, is necessarily the cause of surplus labour in a community_.

The effect of machinery in depriving the families of agricultural
labourers of their ordinary sources of income is well established.
“Those countries,” writes Mr. Thornton, “in which the class of
agricultural labourers is most depressed, have all one thing in common.
Each of them was formerly the seat of a flourishing manufacture
carried on by the cottagers at their own homes, which has now decayed
or been withdrawn to other situations. Thus, in Buckinghamshire and
Bedfordshire, the wives and children of labouring men had formerly very
profitable occupation in making lace; during the last war a tolerable
lacemaker, working eight hours a day, could easily earn 10_s._ or
12_s._ a week; the profits of this employment have been since so much
reduced by the use of machinery, that a pillow lacemaker must now work
twelve hours daily to earn 2_s._ 6_d._ a week.”

* * * * *

The last of the conditions above cited, as causing the same or a
greater amount of work to be executed with a less quantity of labour,
is _the large system of production_. Mr. Babbage and Mr. Mill have
so well and fully pointed out “the economy of labour” effected in
this manner, that I cannot do better than quote from them upon this
subject:--

“Even when no additional subdivision of the work,” says Mr. Mill,
“would follow an enlargement of the operations, there will be good
economy in enlarging them to the point at which every person to
whom it is convenient to assign a special occupation will have full
employment in that occupation.” This point is well illustrated by Mr.
Babbage:--“If machines be kept working through the 24 hours” [which is
evidently the only economical mode of employing them], “it is necessary
that some person shall attend to admit the workmen at the time they
relieve each other; and whether the porter or other servant so employed
admit one person or twenty, his rest will be equally disturbed. It will
also be necessary occasionally to adjust or repair the machine; and
this can be done much better by a workman accustomed to machine-making
than by the person who uses it. Now, since the good performance and the
duration of machines depend, to a very great extent, upon correcting
every shake or imperfection in their parts as soon as they appear, the
prompt attention of a workman resident on the spot will considerably
reduce the expenditure arising from the wear and tear of the machinery.
But in the case of a single lace-frame, or a single loom, this would
be too expensive a plan. Here, then, arises another circumstance,
which tends to enlarge the extent of the factory. It ought to consist
of such a number of machines as shall occupy the whole time of one
workman in keeping them in order. If extended beyond that number the
same principle of economy would point out the necessity of doubling or
tripling the number of machines, in order to employ the whole time of
two or three skilful workmen. Where one portion of the workman’s labour
consists in the exertion of mere physical force, as in weaving, and in
many similar arts, it will soon occur to the manufacturer that, if that
part were executed by a steam-engine, the same man might, in the case
of weaving, attend to two or more looms at once; and, since we already
suppose that one or more operative engineers have been employed, the
number of looms may be so arranged that their time shall be fully
occupied in keeping the steam-engine and the looms in order.

“Pursuing the same principles, the manufactory becomes gradually
so enlarged that the expense of lighting during the night amounts
to a considerable sum; and as there are already attached to the
establishment persons who are up all night, and can therefore
constantly attend to it, and also engineers to make and keep in
repair any machinery, the addition of an apparatus for making gas to
light the factory leads to a new extension, at the same time that it
contributes, by diminishing the expense of lighting and the risk of
accidents from fire, to reduce the cost of manufacturing.

“Long before a factory has reached this extent it will have been found
necessary to establish an accountant’s department, with clerks to pay
the workmen, and to see that they arrive at their stated times; and
this department must be in communication with the agents who purchase
the raw produce, and with those who sell the manufactured article. It
will cost these clerks and accountants little more time and trouble
to pay a large number of workmen than a small number, to check the
accounts of large transactions than of small. If the business doubled
itself it would probably be necessary to increase, but certainly not
to double, the number either of accountants or of buying and selling
agents. _Every increase of business would enable the whole to be
carried on with a proportionally smaller amount of labour._ As a
general rule, the expenses of a business do not increase by any means
proportionally to the quantity of business. Let us take as an example
a set of operations which we are accustomed to see carried on by one
great establishment--that of the Post Office.

“Suppose that the business, let us say only of the London letter-post,
instead of being centralised in a single concern, were divided among
five or six competing companies. Each of these would be obliged to
maintain almost as large an establishment as is now sufficient for the
whole. Since each must arrange for receiving and delivering letters
in all parts of the town, each must send letter-carriers into every
street, and almost every alley, and this, too, as many times in the
day as is now done by the Post Office, if the service is to be as
well performed. Each must have an office for receiving letters in
every neighbourhood, with all subsidiary arrangements for collecting
the letters from the different offices and re-distributing them. I
say nothing of the much greater number of superior officers who would
be required to check and control the subordinates, implying not only
a greater cost in salaries for such responsible officers, but the
necessity, perhaps, of being satisfied in many instances with an
inferior standard of qualification, and so failing in the object.”

But this refers solely to the “large system of business” as applied
to purposes of manufacture and distribution. In connection with
agriculture there is the same saving of labour effected. “The large
farmer,” says Mr. Mill, “has some advantage in the article of
buildings. It does not cost so much to house a great number of cattle
in one building, as to lodge them equally well in several buildings.
There is also some advantage in implements. A small farmer is not so
likely to possess expensive instruments. But the principal agricultural
implements, even when of the best construction, are not expensive. It
may not answer to a small farmer to own a threshing machine for the
small quantity of corn he has to thresh; but there is no reason why
such a machine should not in every neighbourhood be owned in common, or
provided by some person to whom the others pay a consideration for its
use. The large farmer can make some saving in cost of carriage. There
is nearly as much trouble in carrying a small portion of produce to
market, as a much greater produce; in bringing home a small, as a much
larger quantity of manure, and articles of daily consumption. There is
also the greater cheapness of buying things in large quantities.”

A short time ago I went into Buckinghamshire to look into the allotment
system. And, in one parish of 1800 acres, I found that some years ago
there were seventeen farmers who occupied, upon the average, 100 acres
each, and who, previous to the immigration of the Irish harvest-men,
_constantly_ employed six men a-piece, or, in the aggregate, upwards
of 100 hands. Now, however, the farmers in the same parish occupy to
the extent of 300 acres each, and respectively employ only six men _and
a few extra hands at harvest time_. Thus the number of hands employed
by this system has been decreased one-half. I learned, moreover, from
a clergyman there, who had resided in Wiltshire, that the same thing
was going on in that county also; that small farms were giving way to
large farms, and that at least half the labourers had been displaced.
The agricultural labourers, at the time of taking the last census,
were 1,500,000 in number; so that, if this system be generally carried
out, there must be 750,000 labourers and their families, or 3,000,000
people, deprived of their living by it.

Sir James Graham, in his evidence before the Committee on Criminal
Commitments, has given us some curious particulars as to the decrease
of the number of hands required for agricultural purposes, where the
large system of production is pursued in place of the small: he has
told us how many hands he was enabled to get rid of by these means, the
proportion of labour displaced, it will be seen, amounted to about 10
per cent. of the labouring population. In answer to a question relative
to the increase of population in his district, he replied:--

“I have myself taken _very strong means to prevent it_, for it so
happens that my whole estate came out of lease in the year 1822, after
the currency of a lease of fourteen years; and by _consolidation of
farms, and the destruction of cottages, I have diminished, upon my own
property, the population to the extent of from 300 to 400 souls_.”

“On how many acres?--On about 30,000 acres.” [This is at the rate of
one in every 100 acres].

“What was the whole extent of population?--It was under 4000 before I
reduced it.

“What became of those 300 or 400?--The greater part of them, being
small tenants, were enabled to find farms on the estates of other
proprietors, who pursued the opposite course of subdividing their
estates for the purpose of obtaining higher nominal rents; _others
have become day labourers_, and as day labourers, I have reason to
know, they are more thriving than they were on my estate as small
farmers, subject to a high rent, which their want of capital seldom
enabled them to pay; two or three of these families went to America.

“Have you any out of work?--None entirely out of work, some only
partially employed; but since the _dispersion of this large mass of
population_, the supply of labour has not much exceeded the demand,
for _whenever I removed a family, I pulled down the house_, and the
parochial jealousy respecting settlements is an ample check on the
influx of strangers.”

Similar to the influence of the large system of production in its
displacement of labourers, as enabling a larger quantity of work to be
executed by one establishment with a smaller number of hands than would
be required were the amount of work to be divided into a number of
smaller establishments,--similar to this mode of economizing labour, is
that mode of work which, by altering the produce rather than the mode
of production, and by substituting an article that requires less labour
for one that required more, gets rid of a large quantity of labour,
and, consequently, adds to the surplusage of labourers. An instance of
this is in the substitution of pasturage for tillage. “_Plough less and
graze more_,” says Sir J. Graham, the great economist of labour, simply
because fewer people will be required to attend to the land. But this
plan of grazing instead of ploughing was adopted in this country some
centuries back, and with what effect to the labourers and the people
at large, the following extract from the work of Mr. Thornton, on
over-population, will show:--

“The extension of the woollen manufacture was raising the price of
wool; and the little attendance which sheep require was an additional
motive for causing sheep farming to be preferred to tillage. Arable
land, therefore, began to be converted into pasture; and the
seemingly-interminable corn fields, which, like those of Germany at
this day, probably extended for miles without having their even surface
broken by fences or any other visible boundaries, disappeared. After
being sown with grass they were surrounded and divided by inclosures,
to prevent the sheep from straying, and to do away with the necessity
of having shepherds always on the watch. By these changes the quantity
of work to be done upon a farm was exceedingly diminished, and most
of the servants, whom it had been usual to board and lodge in the
manor and farm-houses, were dismissed. This was not all. The married
farm-servants were ousted from their cottages, which were pulled down,
and their gardens and fields were annexed to the adjoining meadows. The
small farmers were treated in the same way, as their leases fell in,
_and were sent to join the daily increasing crowd of competitors for
work that was daily increasing in quantity_.

“Even freeholders were in some instances ejected from their lands. This
social revolution had probably commenced even before the prosperity
of the peasantry had reached its climax; but in 1487 it attracted the
notice of Parliament, and an Act was passed to restrain its progress;
for already it was observed that inclosures were becoming ‘more
frequent, whereby arable land, _which could not be manured without
people and families, was turned into pasture, which was easily rid by
a few herdsmen_;’ and that ‘tenancies for years, lives, and at will,
whereupon most of the yeomanry lived, were turned into demesnes’[35].
In 1533[36], an Act was passed strongly condemning the practice of
‘accumulating’ farms, which it was declared had reduced ‘a marvellous
multitude’ of the people to poverty and misery, and left them no
alternative but to steal, or to die ‘pitifully’ of cold and hunger. In
this Act it was stated that single farms might be found with flocks of
from 10,000 to 20,000 sheep upon them; and it was ordained that no man
should keep more than 2000 sheep, except upon his own land, or rent
more than two farms.

“Two years later it was enacted that the king should have a moiety of
the profits of land converted (subsequently to a date specified) from
tillage to pastures, until a suitable house was erected, and the land
was restored to tillage. In 1552, a law[37] was made which required
that on all estates as large a quantity of land as had been kept in
tillage for four years together at any time since the accession of
Henry VIII., should be so continued in tillage. But these, and many
subsequent enactments of the same kind, had not the smallest effect in
checking the consolidation of farms. We find Roger Ascham, in Queen
Elizabeth’s reign, lamenting the dispersion of families, the ruin of
houses, the breaking up and destruction of ‘the noble yeomanry, the
honour and strength of England.’ Harrison also speaks of towns pulled
down for sheep-walks; ‘and of the tenements that had fallen either down
or into the lord’s hands;’ or had been ‘brought and united together by
other men, so that in some one manor, seventeen, eighteen, or twenty
houses were shrunk.’[38]

“‘Where have been a great many householders and inhabitants,’ says
Bishop Latimer, ‘there is now but a shepherd and his dog.’[39] And in a
curious tract, published in 1581, by one William Stafford, a husbandman
is made to exclaim, ‘Marry, these inclosures do and undo us all, for
they make us pay dearer for our land that we occupy, and causeth that
we can have no land to put to tillage; all is taken up for pasture,
either for sheep or for grazing of cattle, insomuch that I have known
of late a dozen ploughs, within less compass than six miles about me,
laid down within this seven years; and where threescore persons or
upwards had their livings, now one man, with his cattle, hath all.
Those sheep is the cause of all our mischief, for they have driven
husbandry out of the country, by which was increased before all kinds
of victuals, and now altogether sheep, sheep, sheep.’[40] While numbers
of persons were thus continually driven from their homes, and deprived
of their means of livelihood, we need not be at a loss to account for
the increase of vagrancy, without ascribing it to the increase of
population.”

As an instance, within our time, of the same mode of causing a
surplusage of labourers, and so adding to the quantity of casual labour
in the kingdom, viz., by the extension of pasturage and consequent
diminution of tillage, we may cite the “clearances,” as they were
called, which took place, some few years back, in the Highlands of
Scotland. “It is only within the last few years,” says the author
above quoted, “that the strathes and glens of Sutherland have been
_cleared of their inhabitants, and that the whole country has been
converted into one immense sheepwalk_, over which the traveller may
proceed for 40 miles together without seeing a tree or a stone wall, or
anything, but a heath dotted with sheep and lambs[41].... The example
of Sutherland is imitated in the neighbouring counties. During the
last four years _some hundreds of families_ have been ‘weeded’ out of
Ross-shire, and nearly 400 more have received notice to quit next year.
Similar notice has been given to 34 families in Cromarty, and only the
other day eighteen families, who were living in peace and comfort, in
Glencalvie, in Ross-shire, were expelled from the farms occupied for
ages by themselves and their forefathers, to make room for sheep.” And
still we are told to “_plough less and graze more!_”

* * * * *

We now come to the last-mentioned of the circumstances inducing a
surplusage of labourers, and, consequently, augmenting the amount of
casual labour throughout the kingdom, viz., by _altering the mode of
hiring the labourers_. At page 236 of the present volume, I have said,
in connection with this part of the subject,--

“Formerly the mode of hiring farm-labourers was by the year, so that
the employer was bound to maintain the men when unemployed. But now
weekly hirelings and even journey-work, or hiring by the day, prevail,
and the labourers being paid mere subsistence-money only when wanted
are necessitated to become either paupers or thieves when their
services are no longer required. It is, moreover, this change from
yearly to weekly and daily hirings, and the consequent discarding of
men when no longer wanted, that has partly caused the immense mass
of surplus labourers, who are continually vagabondizing through the
country, begging or stealing as they go--men for whom there is but
some two or three weeks’ work (harvesting, hop-picking, and the like)
throughout the year.”

Blackstone, in treating of the laws relating to master and servant (the
greater part of the farm labourers or farm servants, as they were then
called, being included under the latter head), tells us at page 425 of
his first volume--

“The first sort of servants, acknowledged by the laws of England, are
MENIAL SERVANTS; so called from being _inter mœnia_ or domestic. The
contract between them and their masters arises upon the hiring. If
the hiring be generally, without any particular _time limited_, the
law construes it to be a _hiring for a year_ (Co. Lit. 42); upon a
principle of natural equity, that the servant shall serve, and the
master maintain him, throughout all the revolutions of the respective
seasons, as well when _there is work to be_ done, as _when there is
not_.”

Mr. Thornton says, “until recently it had been common for farm
servants, even when married and living in their own cottages, to take
their meals with their master; and, what was of more consequence, in
every farm-house, many unmarried servants, of both sexes, were lodged,
as well as boarded. The latter, therefore, even if ill paid, might
be tolerably housed and fed, and many of them fared, no doubt, much
better than they could have done if they had been left to provide for
themselves, with treble their actual wages.”

Formerly throughout the kingdom--and it is a custom _still_ prevalent
in some parts, more especially in the north--single men and women
seeking engagements as farm-servants, congregated at what were called
the “Hirings,” held usually on the three successive market days,
which were nearest to May-day and Martinmas-day. The hiring was
thus at two periods of the year, but the engagement was usually for
the twelvemonth. By the concurrent consent, however, of master and
servant, when the hiring took place, either side might terminate it at
the expiration of the six months, by giving due notice; or a further
hiring for a second twelvemonth could be legally effected without the
necessity of again going to the hirings. The servants, even before
their term of service had expired, could attend a hiring (generally
held under the authority of the town’s charter) as a matter of right;
the master and mistress having no authority to prevent them. The Market
Cross was the central point for the holding of the hirings, and the
men and women, the latter usually the most numerous, stood in rows
around the cross. The terms being settled, the master or mistress gave
the servant “a piece of money,” known as a “god’s penny” (the “handsel
penny”), the offer and acceptance of this god’s penny being a legal
ratification of the agreement, without any other step. In the old times
such engagements had almost always (as shown in the term “God’s penny”)
a character of religious obligation. At the earliest period, the
hirings were held in the church-yards; afterwards by the Market Cross.

I have spoken of this matter more in the past than the present tense,
for the system is greatly changed as regards the male farm-servant,
though little as regards the female. Now the male farm-labourers,
instead of being hired for a specific term, are more generally hired
by week, by job, or by day; indeed, even “half-a-day’s” work is known.
At one period it was merely the married country labourers, residing
in their own cottages, who were temporarily engaged, but it is now
the general body, married and unmarried, old and young, with a few
exceptions. Formerly the farmer was bound to find work for six or
twelve months (for both terms existed) for his hired labourers. If
the land did not supply it, still the man must be maintained, and be
paid his full wages when due. By such a provision, the labour and wage
of the hired husbandman were regular and rarely _casual_; but this
arrangement is now seldom entered into, and the hired husbandman’s
labour is consequently generally casual and rarely regular. This
principle of hiring labourers only for so long as they are wanted, as
contradistinguished from the “_principle of natural equity_,” spoken
of by Blackstone, which requires that “the servant shall serve and the
master maintain him _throughout all the revolutions of the respective
seasons, as well when there is work to be done as when there is not_,”
has been the cause, perhaps, of more casual labour and more pauperism
and crime, in this country, than, perhaps, any other of the antecedents
before mentioned. The harvest is now collected solely by casual
labourers, by a horde of squalid immigrants, or the tribe of natural
and forced vagabonds who are continually begging or stealing their way
throughout the country; our hops are picked, our fruit and vegetables
gathered by the same precarious bands--wretches who, perhaps, obtain
some three months’ harvest labour in the course of the year. The ships
at our several ports are discharged by the same “_casual hands_,” who
may be seen at our docks scrambling like hounds for the occasional bit
of bread that is vouchsafed to them; there numbers loiter throughout
the day, even on the chance of _an hour’s employment_; for the term of
hiring has been cut down to the finest possible limits, so that the
labourer may not be paid for even a second longer than he is wanted.
And since he gets only bare subsistence money when employed, “What,” we
should ask ourselves, “_must_ be his lot when unemployed?”

* * * * *

I now come to consider the circumstances causing an undue increase
of the labourers in a country. Thus far we have proceeded on the
assumption that both the quantity of work to be done and the number
of hands to do it remained stationary, and we have seen that by the
mere alteration of the time, rate, and mode of working, a vast amount
of surplus, and, consequently, casual labour may be induced in a
community. We have now to ascertain how, still assuming the quantity of
work to remain unaltered, the same effect may be brought about by an
undue _increase of the number of labourers_.

There are many means by which the number of labourers may be increased
besides that of a positive increase of the people. These are--

1. By the undue increase of apprentices.

2. By drafting into the ranks of labour those who should be otherwise
engaged, as women and children.

3. By the importation of labourers from abroad.

4. By the migration of country labourers to towns, and so overcrowding
the market in the cities.

5. By the depression of other trades.

6. By the undue increase of the people themselves.

Each and every of the first-mentioned causes are as effective a
circumstance for the promotion of surplus labour, as even the positive
extension of the population of the country.

Let me begin with the undue increase of a trade by means of
_apprentices_.

This is, perhaps, one of the chief aids to the cheap system. For it
is principally by apprentice labour that the better masters, as well
as workmen, are undersold, and the skilled labourer consequently
depressed to the level of the unskilled. But the great evil is, that
the cheapening of goods by this means causes an undue increase in the
trade. The apprentices grow up and become labourers, and so the trade
is glutted with workmen, and casual labour is the consequence.

This apprentice system is the great bane of the printer’s trade.
Country printers take an undue number of boys to help them cheap;
these lads grow up, and then, finding wages in the provinces depressed
through this system of apprentice labour, they flock to the towns, and
so tend to glut the labour market, and consequently to increase the
number of casual hands.

One cause of the increased surplus and casual labour in such trades
as dressing-case, work-box, writing-desk-making and other things in
the fancy cabinet trade (among the worst trades even in Spitalfields
and Bethnal Green), shoemaking, and especially of women and children’s
shoes, is the taking of many apprentices by small masters (supplying
the great warehouses). As journey-work is all but unknown in the slop
fancy cabinet trade, an apprentice, when he has “served his time,”
must start on his own account in the same wretched way of business, or
become a casual labourer in some unskilled avocation, and this is one
way in which the hands surely, although gradually, increase beyond the
demand. It is the same with the general slop cabinet-maker’s trade in
the same parts. The small masters supply the “slaughterhouses,” the
linen-drapers, &c., who sell cheap furniture; they work in the quickest
and most scamping manner, and do more work (which is nearly all done
on the chance of sale), as they must confine themselves to one branch.
The slop chair-makers cannot make tables, nor the slop table-makers,
chairs; nor the cheffonier and drawer-makers, bedsteads; for they have
not been taught. Even if they knew the method, and _could_ accomplish
other work, the want of practice would compel them to do it slowly,
and the slop mechanic can never afford to work slowly. Such classes
of little masters, then, to meet the demand for low-priced furniture,
rear their sons to the business, and frequently take apprentices, to
whom they pay small amounts. The hands so trained (as in the former
instances) are not skilled enough to work for the honourable trade,
so that they can only adopt the course pursued by their parents, or
masters, before them. Hence a rapid, although again gradual, increase
of surplus hands; or hence a resort to some unskilled labour, to be
wrought casually. This happens too, but in a smaller degree, in trades
which are not slop, from the same cause. Concerning the _apprentice
system_ in the boot and shoe trade, when making my inquiries into the
condition of the London workmen, I received the following statements:--

“My employer had seven apprentices when I was with him; of these, two
were parish apprentices (I was one), and the other five from the Refuge
for the Destitute, at Hoxton. With each Refuge boy he got 5_l._ and
three suits of clothes, and a kit (tools). With the parish boys of
Covent-garden and St. Andrew’s, Holborn, he got 5_l._ and two suits
of clothes, reckoning what the boy wore as one. My employer was a
journeyman, and by having all us boys he was able to get up work very
cheap, though he received good wages for it. We boys had no allowance
in money, only board, lodging, and clothing. The board was middling,
the lodging was too, and there was nothing to complain about in the
clothing. He was severe in the way of flogging. I ran away six times
myself, but was forced to go back again, as I had no money and no
friend in the world. When I first ran away I complained to Mr. ---- the
magistrate, and he was going to give me six weeks. He said it would do
me good; but Mr. ---- interfered, and I was let go. I don’t know what
he was going to give me six weeks for, unless it was for having a black
eye that my master had given me with the stirrup. Of the seven only
one served his time out. He let me off two years before my time was
up, as we couldn’t agree. The mischief of taking so many apprentices
is this:--The master gets money with them from the parish, and can
feed them much as he likes as to quality and quantity; and if they run
away soon, the master’s none the worse, for he’s got the money; and so
boys are sent out to turn vagrants when they run away, as such boys
have no friends. Of us seven boys (at the wages our employer got) one
could earn 19_s._, another 15_s._, another 12_s._, another 10_s._,
and the rest not less than 8_s._ each, for all worked sixteen hours
a day--that’s 4_l._ 8_s._ a week for the seven, or 225_l._ 10_s._ a
year. You must recollect I reckon this on nearly the best wages in
the women’s trade. My employer you may call a sweater, and he made
money fast, though he drank a good deal. We seldom saw him when he was
drunk; but he _did_ pitch into us when he was getting sober. Look how
easily such a man with apprentices can undersell others when he wants
to work as cheap as possible for the great slop warehouses. They serve
haberdashers so cheap that oft enough it’s starvation wages for the
same shops.”

Akin to the system of using a large number of apprentices is that of
_employing boys and girls_ to displace the work of men, at the less
laborious parts of the trade.

“It is probable,” said a working shoemaker to me, “that, independent
of apprentices, 200 additional hands are added to our already
over-burdened trade yearly. Sewing boys soon learn the use of the
knife. Plenty of poor men will offer to finish them for a pound and a
month’s work; and men, for a few shillings and a few weeks’ work, will
teach other boys to sew. There are many of the wives of chamber-masters
teach girls entirely to make children’s work for a pound and a few
months’ work, and there are many in Bethnal-green who have learnt the
business in this way. These teach some other members of their families,
and then actually set up in business in opposition to those who taught
them, and in cutting offer their work for sale at a much lower rate of
profit; and shopkeepers in town and country, having circulars sent to
solicit custom, will have their goods from a warehouse that will serve
them cheapest; then the warehouseman will have them cheap from the
manufacturer; and he in his turn cuts down the wages of the workpeople,
who fear to refuse offers at the warehouse price, knowing the low rate
at which chamber-masters will serve the warehouse.”

As in all trades where lowness of wages is the rule, the boy system of
labour prevails among the cheap cabinet-workers. It prevails, however,
among the garret-masters, by very many of them having one, two, three
or four youths to help them, and so the number of boys thus employed
through the whole trade is considerable. This refers principally to
the general cabinet trade. In the fancy trade the number is greater,
as the boys’ labour is more readily available; but in this trade the
greatest number of apprentices is employed by such warehousemen as
are manufacturers, as some at the East end are, or rather by the men
that they constantly keep at work. Of these men, one has now eight and
another fourteen boys in his service, some apprenticed, some merely
“engaged” and dischargeable at pleasure. A sharp boy, in six or eight
months, becomes “handy;” but four out of five of the workmen thus
brought up can do nothing well but their own particular branch, and
that only well as far as celerity in production is considered.

It is these boys who are put to make, or as a master of the better
class distinguished to me, not to _make_ but to put together, ladies’
work-boxes at 5_d._ a piece, the boy receiving 2-1/2_d._ a box.
‘Such boxes,’ said another workman, ‘are nailed together; there’s no
dove-tailing, nothing of what I call _work_, or workmanship, as you
say, about them, but the deal’s nailed together, and the veneer’s
dabbed on, and if the deal’s covered, why the thing passes. The worst
of it is, that people don’t understand either good work or good wood.
Polish them up and they look well. Besides--and that’s another bad
thing, for it encourages bad work--there’s no stress on a lady’s
work-box, as on a chair or a sofa, and so bad work lasts far too long,
though not half so long as good; in solids especially, if not in
veneers.’

To such a pitch is this demand for children’s labour carried, that
there is a market in Bethnal-green, where boys and girls stand twice
a week to be hired as binders and sewers. Hence it will be easily
understood that it is impossible for the skilled and grown artizan
to compete with the labour of mere children, who are thus literally
brought into the market to undersell him!

Concerning this market for boys and girls, in Bethnal-green, I
received, during my inquiries into the boot and shoe trade, the
following statements from shopkeepers on the spot:--

“Mr. H---- has lived there sixteen years. The market-days are Monday
and Tuesday mornings, from seven to nine. The ages of persons who
assemble there vary from ten to twenty, and they are often of the worst
character, and a decided nuisance to the inhabitants. A great many of
both sexes congregate together, and most market days there are three
females to one male. They consist of sewing boys, shoe-binders, winders
for weavers, and girls for all kinds of slop needlework, girls for
domestic work, nursing children, &c. No one can testify, for a fact,
that they (the females) are prostitutes; but, by their general conduct,
they are fit for anything. The market, some years since, was held
at the top of Abbey-street; but, on account of the nuisance, it was
removed to the other end of Abbey-street. When the schools were built,
the nuisance became so intolerable that it was removed to a railway
arch in White-street, Bethnal-green. There are two policemen on market
mornings to keep order, but my informant says they require four to
maintain anything like subjection.”

* * * * *

But _family work, or the conjoint labour of a workman’s wife and
children_, is an equally extensive cause of surplus and casual labour.

A small master, working, perhaps, upon goods to be supplied at the
lowest rates to wholesale warehousemen, will often contribute to this
result by the way in which he brings up his children. It is less
expensive to him to teach them his own business, and he may even reap
a profit from their labour, than to have them brought up to some
other calling. I met with an instance of this in an inquiry among the
toy-makers. A maker of common toys brought up five children to his own
trade, for boys and girls can be made useful in such labour at an early
age. His business fell off rapidly, which he attributed to the great
and numerous packages of cheap toys imported from Germany, Holland, and
France, after the lowering of the duty by Sir Robert Peel’s tariff.
The chief profit to the toy-maker was derived from the labour, as the
material was of trifling cost. He found, on the change in his trade,
that he could not employ all his family. His fellow tradesmen, he said,
were in the same predicament; and thus surplus hands were created, so
leading to casualty in labour.

“The system which has, I believe, the worst effect on the women’s trade
in the boot and shoe business throughout England is,” I said in the
_Morning Chronicle_, “chamber-mastering. There are between 300 and
400 chamber-masters. Commonly the man has a wife, and three or four
children, ten years old or upwards. The wife cuts out the work for
the binders, the husband does the knife-work, the children sew with
uncommon rapidity. The husband, when the work is finished at night,
goes out with it, though wet and cold, and perhaps hungry--his wife
and children waiting his return. He returns sometimes, having sold his
work at cost price, or not cleared 1_s._ 6_d._ for the day’s labour of
himself and family. In the winter, by this means, the shopkeepers and
warehouses can take the advantage of the chamber-master, buying the
work at their own price. By this means haberdashers’ shops are supplied
with boots, shoes, and slippers; they can sell women’s boots at 1_s._
9_d._ per pair; shoes, 1_s._ 3_d._ per pair; children’s, 6_d._, 8_d._,
and 9_d._ per pair, getting a good profit, having bought them of the
poor chamber-master for almost nothing, and he glad to sell them at any
price, late at night, his children wanting bread, and he having walked
about for hours, in vain trying to get a fair price for them; thus,
women and children labour as well as husbands and fathers, and, with
their combined labours, they only obtain a miserable living.”

The labour of the wife, and indeed the whole family--family work, as
it is called--is attended with the same evil to a trade, introducing
a large supply of fresh hands to the labour market, and so tending to
glut with workpeople each trade into which they are introduced, and
thus to increase the casual labour, and decrease the earnings of the
whole.

“The only means of escape from the inevitable poverty,” I said in the
same letters, “which sooner or later overwhelms those in connection
with the cheap shoe trade, seems to the workmen to be by the employment
of his whole family as soon as his children are able to be put to the
trade--and yet this only increases the very depression that he seeks to
avoid. I give the statement of such a man residing in the suburbs of
London, and working with three girls to help him:--

“‘I have known the business,’ he said, ‘many years, but was not brought
up to it. I took it up because my wife’s father was in the trade, and
taught me. I was a weaver originally, but it is a bad business, and I
have been in this trade seventeen years. Then I had only my wife and
myself able to work. At that time my wife and I, by hard work, could
earn 1_l._ a week; on the same work we could not now earn 12_s._ a
week. As soon as the children grew old enough the falling off in the
wages compelled us to put them to work one by one--as soon as a child
could make threads. One began to do that between eight and nine. I have
had a large family, and with very hard work too. We have had to lie
on straw oft enough. Now, three daughters, my wife, and myself work
together, in chamber-mastering; the whole of us may earn, one week with
another, 28_s._ a week, and out of that I have eight to support. Out of
that 28_s._ I have to pay for grindery and candles, which cost me 1_s._
a week the year through. I now make children’s shoes for the wholesale
houses and anybody. About two years ago I travelled from Thomas-street,
Bethnal-green, to Oxford-street, “on the hawk.” I then positively had
nothing in my inside, and in Holborn I had to lean against a house,
through weakness from hunger. I was compelled, as I could sell nothing
at that end of the town, to walk down to Whitechapel at ten at night.
I went into a shop near Mile-end turnpike, and the same articles
(children’s patent leather shoes) that I received 8_s._ a dozen for
from the wholesale houses, I was compelled to sell to the shopkeeper
for 6_s._ 6_d._ This is a very frequent case--very frequent--with
persons circumstanced as I am, and so trade is injured and only some
hard man gains by it.’”

Here is the statement of a worker at “fancy cabinet” work on the same
subject:--

“The most on us has got large families. We put the children to work as
soon as we can. My little girl began about six, but about eight or nine
is the usual age.” _“Oh, poor little things,” said the wife, “they are
obliged to begin the very minute they can use their fingers at all.”_
“The most of the cabinet-makers of the East end have from five to six
in family, and they are generally all at work for them. The small
masters mostly marry when they are turned of 20. You see our trade’s
coming to such a pass, that unless a man has children to help him he
can’t live at all. _I’ve worked more than a month together, and the
longest night’s rest I’ve had has been an hour and a quarter; aye, and
I’ve been up three nights a week besides._ I’ve had my children lying
ill, and been obliged to wait on them into the bargain. You see, we
couldn’t live if it wasn’t for the labour of our children, though it
makes ’em--poor little things!--old people long afore they are growed
up.”

“Why, I stood at this bench,” said the wife, “with my child, only ten
years of age, from four o’clock on Friday morning till ten minutes
past seven in the evening, without a bit to eat or drink. I never sat
down a minute from the time I began till I finished my work, and then
I went out to sell what I had done. I walked all the way from here
[Shoreditch] down to the Lowther Arcade, to get rid of the articles.”
_Here she burst out in a violent flood of tears, saying, “Oh, sir, it
is hard to be obliged to labour from morning till night as we do, all
of us, little ones and all, and yet not be able to live by it either.”_

“And you see the worst of it is, this here children’s labour is of such
value now in our trade, that there’s more brought into the business
every year, so that it’s really for all the world _like breeding
slaves_. Without my children I don’t know how we should be able to get
along.” “There’s that little thing,” said the man, pointing to the girl
ten years of age before alluded to, as she sat at the edge of the bed,
“why she works regularly every day from six in the morning till ten at
night. She never goes to school. We can’t spare her. There’s schools
enough about here for a penny a week, but we could not afford to keep
her without working. If I’d ten more children I should be obliged to
employ them all the same way, and there’s hundreds and thousands of
children now slaving at this business. There’s the M----’s; they have
a family of eight, and the youngest to the oldest of all works at the
bench; and the oldest ain’t fourteen. I’m sure, of the 2500 small
masters in the cabinet line, you may safely say that 2000 of them, at
the very least, has from five to six in family, _and that’s upwards of_
12,000 _children that’s been put to the trade since prices has come
down_. Twenty years ago I don’t think there was a child at work in our
business; and I am sure there is not a small master now whose whole
family doesn’t assist him. But what I want to know is, what’s to become
of the 12,000 children when they’re growed up, and come regular into
the trade? Here are all my young ones growing up without being taught
anything but a business that I know they must starve at.”

In answer to my inquiry as to what dependence he had in case of
sickness, “Oh, bless you,” he said, “there’s nothing but the parish
for us. I _did_ belong to a Benefit Society about four years ago, but
I couldn’t keep up my payments any longer. I was in the society above
five-and-twenty year, and then was obliged to leave it after all. I
don’t know of one as belongs to any Friendly Society, and I don’t think
there is a man as can afford it in our trade now. They must all go to
the workhouse when they’re sick or old.”

The following is from a journeyman tailor, concerning the employment of
women in his trade:--

“When I first began working at this branch, there were but very few
females employed in it: a few white waistcoats were given out to
them, under the idea that women would make them cleaner than men--and
so indeed they can. But since the last five years the sweaters have
employed females upon cloth, silk, and satin waistcoats as well, and
before that time the idea of a woman making a cloth waistcoat would
have been scouted. But since the increase of the puffing and the
sweating system, masters and sweaters have sought everywhere for such
hands as would do the work below the regular ones. Hence the wife has
been made to compete with the husband, and the daughter with the wife:
they all learn the waistcoat business, and must all get a living. If
the man will not reduce the price of his labour to that of the female,
why he must remain unemployed; and if the full-grown woman will not
take the work at the same price as the young girl, why she must remain
without any. The female hands, I can confidently state, have been
sought out and introduced to the business by the sweaters, from a
desire on their part continually to ferret out hands who will do the
work cheaper than others. The effect that this continual reduction has
had upon me is this: Before the year 1844 I could live comfortably,
and keep my wife and children (I had five in family) by my own labour.
My wife then attended to her domestic and family duties; but since
that time, owing to the reduction in prices, she has been compelled
to resort to her needle, as well as myself, for her living.” [On the
table was a bundle of crape and bombazine ready to be made up into
a dress.] “I cannot afford now to let her remain idle--that is, if I
wish to live, and keep my children out of the streets, and pay my way.
My wife’s earnings are, upon an average, 8_s._ per week. She makes
dresses. I never would teach her to make waistcoats, because I knew
the introduction of female hands had been the ruin of my trade. With
the labour of myself and wife now I can only earn 32_s._ a week, and
six years ago I could make my 36_s._ If I had a daughter I should be
obliged to make her work as well, and then probably, with the labour
of the three of us, we could make up at the week’s end as much money,
as, up to 1844, I could get by my own single hands. My wife, since she
took to dressmaking, has become sickly from over-exertion. Her work,
and her domestic and family duties altogether, are too much for her.
Last night I was up all night with her, and was compelled to call in a
female to attend her as well. The over-exertion now necessary for us to
maintain a decent appearance, has so ruined her constitution that she
is not the same woman as she was. In fact, ill as she is, she has been
compelled to rise from her bed to finish a mourning-dress against time,
and I myself have been obliged to give her a helping-hand, and turn to
at women’s work in the same manner as the women are turning to at men’s
work.”

“The cause of the serious decrease in our trade,” said another tailor
to me, “is the employment given to workmen at their own homes; or, in
other words, to the ‘sweaters.’ The sweater is the greatest evil to
us; as the sweating system increases the number of hands to an almost
incredible extent--wives, sons, daughters, and extra women, all working
‘long days’--that is, labouring from sixteen to eighteen hours per day,
and Sundays as well. I date the decrease in the wages of the workman
from the introduction of piece-work and giving out garments to be made
off the premises of the master; for the effect of this was, that the
workman making the garment, knowing that the master could not tell
whom he got to do his work for him, employed women and children to
help him, and paid them little or nothing for their labour. This was
the beginning of the sweating system. The workmen gradually became
transformed from journeymen into ‘middlemen,’ living by the labour of
others. Employers soon began to find that they could get garments made
at a less sum than the regular price, and those tradesmen who were
anxious to force their trade, by underselling their more honourable
neighbours, readily availed themselves of this means of obtaining cheap
labour. The consequence was, that the sweater sought out where he could
get the work done the cheapest, and so introduced a fresh stock of
hands into the trade. Female labour, of course, could be had cheaper
than male, and the sweater readily availed himself of the services of
women on that account. Hence the males who had formerly been employed
upon the garments were thrown out of work by the females, and obliged
to remain unemployed, unless they would reduce the price of their work
to that of the women. It cannot, therefore, be said that the reduction
of prices originally arose from there having been more workmen than
there was work for them to do. There was no superabundance of hands
until female labour was generally introduced--and even if the workmen
had increased 25 per cent. more than what they were twenty years back,
still that extra number of hands would be required now to make the
same number of garments, owing to the work put into each article being
at least one-fourth more than formerly. So far from the trade being
over-stocked with male hands, if the work were confined to the men or
the masters’ premises, there would not be sufficient hands to do the
whole.”

According to the last Census (1841, G.B.), out of a population of
18,720,000 the proportions of the people occupied and unoccupied were
as follows:--

Occupied 7,800,000
Unoccupied (including women and children) 10,920,000

Of those who were occupied the following were the proportions:--

Engaged in productive employments[42] 5,350,000
Engaged in non-productive employments 2,450,000

Of those who were engaged in productive employments, the proportion (in
round numbers) ran as follows:--

Men 3,785,000
Women 660,000
Boys and girls 905,000

Here, then, we find nearly one-fifth, or 20 per cent., of our producers
to be boys and girls, and upwards of 10 per cent. to be women. Such
was the state of things in 1841. In order to judge of the possible
and probable condition of the labour market of the country, if this
introduction of women and children into the ranks of the labourers be
persisted in, let us see what were the proportions of the 10,920,000
men, women, and children who ten years ago still remained unoccupied
among us. The ratio was as follows:--

Men 275,000
Women 3,570,000
Boys and girls 7,075,000

Here the unoccupied men are about 5 per cent. of the whole, the
children nearly two-thirds, and the wives about one-third. Now it
appears that out of say 19,000,000 people, 8,000,000 were, in 1841,
occupied, and by far the greater number, 11,000,000, unoccupied.

Who were the remaining eleven millions, and what were they doing? They,
of course, consisted principally of the unemployed wives and children
of the eight millions of people before specified, three millions and a
half of the number being females of twenty years of age and upwards,
and seven millions being children of both sexes under twenty. Of these
children, four millions, according to the “age abstract,” were under
ten years, so that we may fairly assume that, at the time of taking
the last census, _there were very nearly seven millions of wives and
children of a workable age still unoccupied_. Let us suppose, then,
that these seven millions of people are brought in competition with the
five million producers. What is to be the consequence? If the labour
market be overstocked at present with only five millions of people
working for the support of nineteen millions (I speak according to the
Census of 1841), what would it be if another seven millions were to be
dragged into it? And if wages are low now, and employment is precarious
on account of this, what will not both work and pay sink to when the
number is again increased, and the people clamouring for employment are
at least treble what they are at present? When the wife has been taught
to compete for work with the husband, and son and daughter to undersell
their own father, what will be the state of our labour market then?

* * * * *

But the labour of wives, and children, and apprentices, is not the
only means of glutting a particular trade with hands. There is another
system becoming every day more popular with our enterprising tradesmen,
and this is the _importation of foreign labourers_. In the cheap
tailoring this is made a regular practice. Cheap labour is regularly
imported, not only from Ireland (the wives of sweaters making visits
to the Emerald Isle for the express purpose), but small armies of
working tailors, ready to receive the lowest pittance, are continually
being shipped into this country. That this is no exaggeration let the
following statement prove:--

“I am a native of Pesth, having left Hungary about eight years ago.
By the custom of the country I was compelled to travel three years in
foreign parts, before I could settle in my native place. I went to
Paris, after travelling about in the different countries of Germany.
I stayed in Paris about two years. My father’s wish was that I should
visit England, and I came to London in June, 1847. I first worked for
a West end show shop--not _directly_ for them--but through the person
who is their middleman getting work done at what rates he could for the
firm, and obtaining the prices they allowed for making the garments.
I once worked four days and a half for him, finding my own trimmings,
&c., for 9_s._ For this my employer would receive 12_s._ 6_d._ He then
employed 190 hands; he _has_ employed 300. Many of those so employed
set their wives, children, and others to work, some employing as many
as five hands this way. The middleman keeps his carriage, and will give
fifty guineas for a horse. I became unable to work from a pain in my
back, from long sitting at my occupation. The doctor told me not to sit
much, and so, as a countryman of mine was doing the same, I employed
hands, making the best I could of their labour. I have now four young
women (all Irish girls) so employed. Last week one of them received
4_s._, another 4_s._ 2_d._, the other two 5_s._ each. They find their
board and lodging, but I find them a place to work in, a small room,
the rent of which I share with another tailor, who works on his own
account. There are not so many Jews come over from Hungary or Germany
as from Poland. The law of travelling three years brings over many,
but not more than it did. The revolutions have brought numbers this
year and last. They are Jew tailors flying from Russian and Prussian
Poland to avoid the conscription. I never knew any of these Jews go
back again. _There is a constant communication among the Jews, and
when their friends in Poland, and other places, learn they are safe in
England, and in work and out of trouble, they come over too. I worked
as a journeyman in Pesth, and got_ 2_s._ 6_d. a week, my board and
washing, and lodging, for my labour._ We lived well, everything being
so cheap. The Jews come in the greatest number about Easter. They try
to work their way here, most of them. Some save money here, but they
never go back; if they leave England it is to go to America.”

* * * * *

The labour market of a particular place, however, comes to be
overstocked with hands, not only from the introduction of an inordinate
number of apprentices and women and children into the trade, as well
as the importation of workmen from abroad, but the same effect is
produced by _the migration of country labourers to towns_. This,
as I have before said, is specially the case in the printer’s and
carpenter’s trades, where the cheap provincial work is executed chiefly
by apprentices, who, when their time is up, flock to the principal
towns, in the hopes of getting better wages than can be obtained in
the country, owing to the prevalence of the apprentice system of work
in those parts. The London carpenters suffer greatly from what are
called “improvers,” who come up to town to get perfected in their art,
and work for little or no wages. The work of some of the large houses
is executed mainly in this way; that of Mr. Myers was, for instance,
against whom the men lately struck.

But the unskilled labour of towns suffers far more than the skilled
from the above cause.

The employment of unskilled labourers in towns is being constantly
rendered more casual by the migrations from the country parts.
The peasants, owing to the insufficiency of their wages, and the
wretchedness of their dwellings and diet, in Wilts, Somerset, Dorset,
and elsewhere, leave their native places without regret, and swell
the sum of unskilled labour in towns. This is shown by the increase
of population far beyond the excess of births over deaths in those
counties where there are large manufacturing or commercial towns;
whilst in purely agricultural counties the increase of population
does not keep pace with the excess of births. “Thus in Lancashire,”
writes Mr. Thornton, in his work on Over-Population, “the increase of
the population in the ten years ending in 1841, was 330,210, and in
Cheshire, 60,919; whilst the excess of births was only 150,150 in the
former, and 28,000 in the latter. In particular towns the contrast
is still more striking. In Liverpool and Bristol the annual deaths
actually exceed the births, so that these towns are only saved from
depopulation by their rural recruits, yet the first increased the
number of its inhabitants in ten years by more than one-third, and
the other by more than one-sixth. In Manchester, the annual excess of
births could only have added 19,390 to the population between 1831
and 1841; the actual increase was 68,375. The number of emigrants
(immigrants) into Birmingham, during the same period, may, in the same
way, be estimated at 40,000; into Leeds, at 8000; into the metropolis,
at 130,000. On the other hand, in Dorset, Somerset, and Devon, the
actual addition to the population, in the same decennial period, was
only 15,491, 31,802, and 39,253 respectively; although the excess of
births over deaths in the same counties was about 20,000, 38,600, and
48,700.”

The unskilled labour market suffers, again, from the depression of
almost any branch of skilled labour; for whatever branch of labour be
depressed, and men so be deprived of a sufficiency of employment, one
especial result ensues--the unskilled labour market is glutted. The
skilled labourer, a tailor, for instance, may be driven to work for the
wretched pittance of an East end slop-tailor, but he cannot “turn his
hand” to any other description of skilled labour. He cannot say, “I
will make billiard-tables, or book-cases, or boots, or razors;” so that
there is no resource for him but in unskilled labour. The Spitalfields
weavers have often sought dock labour; the turners of the same
locality, whose bobbins were once in great demand by the silk-winders,
and for the fringes of upholsterers, have done the same; and in this
way the increase of casual labour increases the poverty of the poor,
and so tends directly to the increase of pauperism.

* * * * *

We have now seen what a vast number of surplus labourers may be
produced by an extension of time, rate, or mode of working, as well as
by the increase of the hands, by other means than by _the increase of
the people themselves_. If, however, we are increasing our workers at
a greater rate than we are increasing the means of work, the excess of
workmen must, of course, remain unemployed. But are we doing this?

Let us test the matter on the surest data. In the first instance let us
estimate the increase of population, both according to the calculations
of the late Mr. Rickman and the returns of the several censuses. The
first census, I may observe, was taken in 1801, and has been regularly
continued at intervals of ten years. The table first given refers to
the population of England and Wales:--

INCREASE IN THE POPULATION OF ENGLAND AND WALES.

-------+-----------+---------+--------+---------+--------------------------
|Population,| |Increase| Annual |
Years. |England and|Numerical| per |Increase |
| Wales. |Increase.| Cent. |per cent.|
-------+---------------------+--------+---------+
[43]1570| 4,038,879 | | | |
1600| 4,811,718 | 772,839| 19 | 0·6 |
1630| 5,601,517 | 789,799| 16 | 0·5 |
1670| 5,773,646 | 172,129| 3 | 0·08 |Increase per Cent.
1700| 6,045,008 | 271,362| 5 | 0·2 | in 50 Years,
1750| 6,517,035 | 472,027| 8 | 0·2 | from 1801 to 1851 = 101.
[44]1801| 8,892,536 |2,375,501| 37 | 0·7 |
1811|10,164,068 |1,271,532| 14 | 1·4 |Annual average increase
1821|11,999,322 |1,835,250| 18 | 1·8 | per Cent., 1·41.
1831|13,896,797 |1,897,475| 16 | 1·6 |
1841|15,914,148 |1,982,489| 14 | 1·4 |
1851|17,922,768 |1,968,341| 13 | 1·3 |
-------+-----------+---------+------------------+--------------------------

INCREASE IN THE POPULATION OF SCOTLAND.

-------+-----------+---------+---------+--------+-----------------------
| | |Increase| Annual |
Years.|Population,|Numerical| per |Increase |
| Scotland. |Increase.| Cent. |per Cent.|
-------+-----------+---------+--------+---------+
[45]1755| 1,265,380 | | | |Increase per Cent.
[46]1801| 1,608,420 | 343,040 | 27 | 0·6 | in 50 years, from
1811| 1,805,864 | 197,444 | 12 | 1·3 | 1801 to 1851 = 78.
1821| 2,091,512 | 285,657 | 16 | 1·6 |
1831| 2,364,386 | 272,865 | 13 | 1·3 |Annual rate of Increase
1841| 2,620,184 | 255,798 | 11 | 1·1 | per Cent., 1·16.
1851| 2,870,784 | 245,237 | 10 | 1·0 |
-------+-----------+---------+--------+---------+-----------------------

INCREASE IN THE POPULATION OF IRELAND.

--------+-----------+------------+---------+------------+-------------------
| | Numerical |Increase |Annual rate |
| | Increase | and |of Increase |
| | and |Decrease |and Decrease|
Years. |Population,| Decrease. |per Cent.| per Cent. |
| Ireland. +------------+---------+------------+
| | † denotes Increase. |
| | * „ Decrease. |
--------+-----------+------------+---------+------------+
1731[47]| 2,010,221 | | | |
1754[48]| 2,372,634 | †362,413 | †19 | |Total Decrease
1767 | 2,544,276 | †171,642 | †7 | | in 30 Years, from
1777 | 2,690,556 | †146,280 | †6 | | 1821 to 1851 =
1785 | 2,845,932 | †155,376 | †6 | | 4 per Cent.
1788 | 4,040,000 |†1,194,068 | †42 | |
1805[49]| 5,395,456 |†1,355,456 | †34 | |Annual rate of
1813[50]| 5,937,858 | †542,402 | †10 | | Decrease for
1821[51]| 6,801,827 | †863,969 | †15 | †1·4 | 30 Years, from
1831 | 7,767,401 | †965,574 | †14 | †1·3 | 1821 to 1851,
1841 | 8,175,124 | †407,723 | †5 | †·5 | ·1 per Cent.
1851 | 6,515,794 |*1,659,330 | *20 | *1·8 |
--------+-----------+------------+---------+------------+-------------------

INCREASE IN THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.

------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+------------------
| | |Decennial| Annual |Increase in 30
| |Numerical|Increase |Increase | years, from 1821
Years.|Population.|Increase.|per Cent.|per Cent.| to 1851 = 31
------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+ per Cent.
1821 |20,892,670 | | | |
1831 |24,028,584 |3,135,914| 15 | 1·4 |Annual Rate of
1841 |26,709,456 |2,680,872| 11 | 1·1 | Increase ·9
1851 |27,309,346 | 599,890| 2 | 0·2 | per Cent.
------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+------------------

Discarding, then, all conjectural results, and adhering solely to
the returns of the censuses, we find that, according to the official
numberings of the people _throughout the kingdom_, the increased rate
of population is, in round numbers, 10 per cent. every ten years; that
is to say, where 100 persons were living in the United Kingdom in 1821,
there are 130 living in the present year of 1851. The average increase
in England and Wales for the last 50 years may, however, be said to be
1·5 per cent. per annum, the population having doubled itself during
that period.

How, then, does this rate of increase among the people, and
consequently the labourers and artizans of the country, correspond with
the rate of increase in the production of commodities, or, in plain
English, the means of employment? _This_ is the main inquiry.

The only means of determining the total amount of commodities produced,
and consequently the quantity of work done in the country, is from
official returns, submitted to the Parliament and the public as part
of the “revenue” of the kingdom. These afford a broad and accurate
basis for the necessary statistics; and to get rid of any speculating
or calculating on the subject, I will confine my notice to such
commodities; giving, however, further information bearing on the
subject, but still derived from official sources, so that there may be
no doubt on the matter. The facts in connection with this part of the
subject are exhibited in the table given in the next page.

The majority of the articles there specified supply the elements of
trade and manufacture in furnishing the materials of our clothing, in
all its appliances of decency, comfort, and luxury. The table relates,
moreover, to our commerce with other countries--to the ships which find
profitable employment, and give such employment to our people, in the
aggregate commerce of the nation. Under almost every head, it will be
seen, the increase in the means of labour has been more extensive than
has the increase in the number of labourers; in some instances the
difference is wide indeed.

The annual rate of increase among the population has been ·9 per
cent. From 1801 to 1841 the population of the kingdom at the outside
cannot be said to have doubled itself. Yet the productions in cotton
goods _were not less than ten times greater in 1851 than in 1801_. The
increase in the use of wool from 1821 to 1851 was more than sixfold;
that of the population, I may repeat, _not_ twofold. In _twenty_ years
(1831 to 1851) the hides were more than doubled in amount as a means of
production; in _fifty_ years the population has not increased to the
same amount. Can any one, then, contend that the labouring population
has extended itself at a greater rate than the means of labour, or
that the vast mass of surplus labour throughout the country is owing
to the working classes having increased more rapidly than the means of
employing them?

TABLE SHOWING THE INCREASE IN THE PRODUCTIONS AND COMMERCE OF THE
UNITED KINGDOM, FROM 1801-1850.

----------------------------------+----------+----------+-------------+-----------+----------+
| | | Increase | | |
| | |and Decrease | |Increase |
+ denotes increase. | | |per Cent. | |per Cent. |
* „ decrease. | 1801. | 1811. | from 1801 | 1821. |from 1811 |
| | | to 1811. | |to 1821. |
----------------------------------+----------+----------+-------------+-----------+----------+
Soap in lbs. |55,500,000|80,000,000| + 44 | 97,000,000| + 21 |
Cotton „ |56,000,000|92,000,000| + 64 |137,000,000| + 49 |
Wool „ | | | | 10,000,000| |
Silk „ | 1,000,000| 1,500,000| + 50 | 2,250,000| + 50 |
Flax „ | | | | 55,000,000| |
Hemp „ | | | | | |
Hides „ | | | | | |
Official Value of Exports[52] in £|24,500,000|21,750,000| * 11 | 40,250,000| + 85 |
Official Value of Imports „| |25,500,000| | 29,750,000| + 17 |
Tonnage of Vessels belonging | | | | | |
to British Empire | | | | 2,560,203| |
Tonnage of Vessels entering | | | | | |
Ports | | | | 1,895,000| |
----------------------------------+----------+----------+-------------+-----------+----------+

+-----------+------------+------------+---------+------------+---------+---------+-----------
| | Increase | | | | | |
| |and Decrease| |Increase | |Increase | Total | Average
| | per Cent. | |per Cent.| |per Cent.|Increase | Annual
| 1831. | from 1812 | 1841. |from 1831| 1850. |from 1841|per Cent.| Increase
| | to 1831. | |to 1841. | |to 1850. | | per Cent.
+-----------+------------+------------+---------+-----------+----------+---------+-----------
|127,500,000| + 31 |170,500,000 | + 34 |205,000,000 | 20 | 269 | 5·3
|273,000,009| + 99 |437,000,000 | + 60 |664,700,000 | 52 | 1087 | 21·7
| 30,000,000| + 200 | 53,000,000 | + 77 | 72,675,000 | 37 | 627 | 20·9
| 4,250,000| + 89 | 5,000,000 | + 18 | 7,159,000 | 43 | 616 | 12·3
|104,000,000| + 89 |151,000,000 | + 45 |204,000,000 | 35 | 271 | 9·0
| 56,500,000| | 73,000,000 | + 29 |117,447,000 | 61 | 108 | 5·4
| 26,000,000| | 51,000,000 | + 96 | 66,300,000 | 30 | 155 | 7·7
| 60,000,000| + 49 |101,750,000 | + 70 |197,309,000 | 94 | 705 | 14·1
| 48,250,000| + 62 | 62,750,000 | + 30 |100,460,000 | 60 | 294 | 7·3
| | | | | | | |
| 2,581,964| + 1 | 3,512,480 | + 36 | 4,232,962 | 21 | 65 | 2·2
| | | | | | | |
| 3,241,927| + 71 | 4,652,376 | + 44 | 7,110,476 | 53 | 274 | 9·1
+-----------+------------+------------+---------+------------+---------+---------+-----------

Thus, it is evident, that the means of labour have increased at
a more rapid pace than the labouring population. But the increase
in “property” of the country, in that which is sometimes called the
“staple” property, being the assured possessions of the class of
proprietors or capitalists, as well as in the profits, prove that,
if the labourers of the country have been hungering for want of
employment, at least the wealth of the nation has kept pace with the
increase of the people, while the profits of trade have exceeded it.

AMOUNT OF THE PROPERTY AND INCOME OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Property assessed Annual Profits
Year. to Property-tax. of Trade.
1815 £60,000,000 £37,000,000
1842 95,250,000
1844 ... 60,000,000
Increase 58 per cent.
„ ... 62 per cent.
Annual rate of increase 1·7 per cent. 1·7 per cent.

Here, then, we find, that the property assessed to the property tax has
increased 35,250,000_l._ in 27 years, from 1815 to 1842, or upwards of
1,000,000_l._ sterling a year; this is at the rate of 1·7 per cent.
every year, whereas the population of Great Britain has increased at
the rate of only 1·4 per cent. per annum. But the amount of assessment
under the property tax, it should be borne in mind, does not represent
the full value of the possessions, so that among this class of
proprietors there is far greater wealth than the returns show.

As regards the annual profits of trade, the increase between the years
1815 and 1844 has been 23,000,000_l._ in 29 years. This is at the rate
of 1·7 per cent. per annum, and the annual increase in the population
of Great Britain is only 1·4 per cent. But the amount of the profits of
trade is unquestionably greater than appears in the financial tables of
the revenue of the country; consequently there is a greater increase of
wealth over population than the figures indicate.

The above returns show the following results:--

Increase
per Cent.
per Ann.
Population of the United Kingdom ·9
Productions from 21 to 5
Exports 14
Imports 5
Shipping entering Ports 9
Property 1·7
Profits of trade 1·7

Far, very far indeed then, beyond the increase of the population, has
been the increase of the wealth and work of the country.

And now, after this imposing array of wealth, let us contemplate
the reverse of the picture: let us inquire if, while we have been
increasing in riches and productions far more rapidly than we have been
increasing in people and producers--let us inquire, I say, if we have
been numerically increasing also in the sad long lists of paupers and
criminals. Has our progress in poverty and crime been “_pari passu_,”
or been more than commensurate in the rapidity of its strides?

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF PAUPERS IN ENGLAND AND WALES.[53]

------+-----------------+-------------------+---------------+-------------
|Number of |Numerical Increase | |
|Paupers relieved,| and Decrease. |Annual Increase|Increase per
Years.| Quarters |+ denotes Increase.| and Decrease |Cent. from
| ending Lady-day.|* „ Decrease.| per Cent. |1840 to 1848
------+-----------------+-------------------+---------------+ = 56.
1840 | 1,199,529 | | | Annual
1841 | 1,299,048 | + 99,519 | + 8 | Increase,
1842 | 1,427,187 | + 128,139 | + 10 | 7 per Cent.
1843 | 1,539,490 | + 112,303 | + 8 |
1844 | 1,477,561 | + 938,071 | + 60 |
1845 | 1,470,970 | * 6,591 | * 0·4 |
1846 | 1,332,089 | * 38,881 | * 3 |
1847 | 1,721,350 | + 389,261 | + 29 |
1848 | 1,876,541 | + 155,191 | + 9 |
------+-----------------+-------------------+---------------+-----------

Here, then, we have an increase of 56 per cent. in less than ten years,
though the increase of the population of England and Wales, in the same
time, was but 13 per cent.; and let it be remembered that the increase
of upwards of 650,000 paupers, in nine years, has accrued since the New
Poor Law has been in what may be considered full working; a law which
many were confident would result in a diminution of pauperism, and
which certainly cannot be charged with offering the least encouragement
to it. Still in _nine_ years, our poverty increases while our wealth
increases, and our paupers grow nearly four times as quick as our
people, while the profits on trade nearly double themselves in little
more than a quarter of a century.

We now come to the records of criminality:--

TABLE SHOWING THE INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF CRIMINALS IN ENGLAND AND
WALES FROM 1805-1850.

----+--------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------------
| Annual | | | |Increase |
|Average Number| |Decennial| Annual |per Cent.|
| of Criminals |Numerical|Increase |Increase | in the |
| Committed. |Increase.|per Cent.|per Cent.|43 years.|
----+--------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------------
1805| 4,605 | | | | |Annual Average
1811| 5,375 | 770 | 17 | 2·8 | | Increase
1821| 9,783 | 4408 | 82 | 8·2 | | per Cent.,
1831| 15,318 | 5535 | 57 | 5·7 | 504 | 11·7.
1841| 22,305 | 6987 | 46 | 4·6 | |
1850| 27,814 | 5509 | 25 | 3·6 | |
----+--------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------------

From these results--and such figures are facts, and therefore stubborn
things--the people cannot be said to have increased beyond the wealth
or the means of employing them, for it is evident that _we increase in
poverty and crime as we increase in wealth, and in both far beyond our
increase in numbers_. The above are the bare facts of the country--it
is for the reader to explain them as he pleases.

* * * * *

As yet we have dealt with those causes of casual labour only which may
induce a surplusage of labourers without any _decrease taking place
in the quantity of work_. We have seen, first, how the number of the
unemployed may be increased either by altering the hours, rate, or mode
of working, or else by changing the term of hiring, and this while the
number of labourers remains the same; and, secondly, we have seen how
the same results may ensue from increasing the number of labourers,
while the conditions of working and hiring are unaltered. Under both
these circumstances, however, the actual quantity of work to be done
in the country has been supposed to undergo no change whatever; and
at present we have to point out not only how the amount of surplus,
and, consequently, of casual labour, in the kingdom, may be increased
by _a decrease of the work_, but also how the work itself may be made
to decrease. To know the causes of the one we must ascertain the
antecedents of the other. What, then, are the circumstances inducing
a decrease in the quantity of work? and, consequently, what the
circumstances inducing an increase in the amount of surplus and casual
labour?

In the first place we may induce a large amount of casual labour _in
particular districts_, not by decreasing the gross quantity of work
required by the country, but by merely shifting the work into new
quarters, and so decreasing the quantity in the ordinary localities.
“The west of England,” says Mr. Dodd, in his account of the textile
manufactures of Great Britain, “was formerly, and continued to be till
a comparatively recent period, the most important clothing district in
England. The changes which the woollen manufacture, as respects both
localization and mode of management, has been and is now undergoing,
are very remarkable. Some years ago the ‘west of England cloths’ were
the test of excellence in this manufacture; while the productions of
Yorkshire were deemed of a coarser and cheaper character. At present,
although the western counties have not deteriorated in their product,
the West Riding of Yorkshire has made giant strides, by which equal
skill in every department has been attained; while the commercial
advantages resulting from coal-mines, from water-power, from canals
and railroads, and from vicinage to the eastern port of Hull and the
western port of Liverpool, give to the West Riding a power which
Gloucestershire and Somersetshire cannot equal. The steam-engine,
too, and various machines for facilitating some of the manufacturing
processes, have been more readily introduced into the former than into
the latter; a circumstance which, even without reference to other
points of comparison, is sufficient to account for much of the recent
advance in the north.”

Of late years the products of many of the west of England clothing
districts have considerably declined. Shepton Mallet, Frome and
Trowbridge, for instance, which were at one time the seats of a
flourishing manufacture for cloth, have now but little employment for
the workmen in those parts; and so with other towns. “At several places
in Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Gloucestershire, and others of the
western counties,” says Mr. Thornton, “most of the cottagers, fifty
years ago, were weavers, whose chief dependence was their looms, though
they worked in the field at harvest time and other busy seasons. By so
doing they kept down the wages of agricultural labourers, who had no
other employment; and now that they have themselves become dependent
upon agriculture, in consequence of the removal of the woollen
manufacture from the cottage to the factory” [as well as to the north
of England], “these reduced wages have become their own portion also;”
or, in other words, since the shifting of the woollen manufacture in
these parts, the quantity of casual labour in the cultivation of the
land has been augmented.

The same effect takes place, of course, if the work be shifted to
the Continent, instead of merely to another part of our own country.
This has been the main cause of the misery of the straw-plaiters of
Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. “During the last war,” says the
author before quoted, “there were examples of women (the wives and
children of labouring men) earning as much as 22_s._ a week. The
profits of this employment have been so much reduced by the competition
of Leghorn hats and bonnets, that a straw-plaiter cannot earn much more
than 2_s._ 6_d._ in the week.”

But the work of particular localities may not only decrease, and the
casual labour, in those parts, increase in the same proportion, by
shifting it to other localities (either at home or abroad), even while
the gross quantity of work required by the nation remains the same,
but the quantity of work may be less than ordinary at _a particular
time_, even while the same gross quantity annually required undergoes
no change. This is the case in those periodical gluts which arise from
over-production, in the cotton and other trades. The manufacturers, in
such cases, have been increasing the supplies at a too rapid rate in
proportion to the demand of the markets, so that, though there be no
decrease in the requirements of the country, there ultimately accrues
such a surplus of commodities beyond the wants and means of the people,
that the manufacturers are compelled to stop producing until such time
as the regular demand carries off the extra supply. And during all this
time either the labourers have to work half-time at half-pay, or else
they are thrown out of employment altogether.

Thus far we have proceeded in the assumption that the actual quantity
of work required by the nation _does not decrease in the aggregate, but
only in particular places or at particular times_, owing to a greater
quantity than usual being done in other places or at other times[54].
We have still to consider what are the circumstances which tend to
_diminish the gross quantity of work required by the country_. To
understand these we must know the conditions on which all work depends;
these are simply the conditions of demand and supply, and hence to
know what it is that regulates the demand for commodities, and what it
is that regulates the supply of them, is also to know what it is that
regulates the quantity of work required by the nation.

Let me begin with the decrease of work arising from a _decrease of the
demand_ for certain commodities. This decrease of demand may proceed
from one of three causes:--

1. An increase of cost.
2. A change of taste or fashion.
3. A change of circumstances.

The _increase of cost_ may be brought about either by an increase in
the expense of production or by a tax laid upon the article, as in
the case of hair-powder, before quoted. Of the _change of taste or
fashion_, as a means of decreasing the demand for a certain article
of manufacture, and, consequently, of a particular form of labour,
many instances have already been given; to these the following may
be added:--“In Dorsetshire,” says Mr. Thornton, “the making of wire
shirt-buttons (now in a great measure superseded by the use of
mother-o’-pearl) once employed great numbers of women and children.” So
it has been with the manufacture of metal coat-buttons; the change to
silk has impoverished hundreds.

The decrease of work arising from a _change of circumstances_ may be
seen in the fluctuations of the iron trade; in the railway excitement
the demand for labour in the iron districts was at least tenfold as
great as it is at present, and so again with the demand for arms during
war time; at such periods the quantity of work in that particular line
at Birmingham is necessarily increased, while the contrary effects,
of course, ensue immediately the requirements cease, and a large
mass of surplus and casual hands is the result. It is the same with
the soldiers themselves, as with the gun and sword makers; on the
disbanding of certain portions of the army at the conclusion of a
war, a vast amount of surplus labourers are poured into the country
to compete with those already in work, and either to drag down their
weekly earnings, or else, by obtaining _casual_ employment in their
stead, to reduce the gross quantity of work accruing to each, and so
to render their incomes not only less in amount but less constant and
regular. Within the last few weeks no less than 1000 policemen employed
during the Exhibition have been discharged, of course with a like
result to the labour market.

The circumstances tending to _diminish the supply_ of certain
commodities, are--

1. Want of capital.
2. Want of materials.
3. Want of labourers.
4. Want of opportunity.

The _decrease of the quantity of capital_ in a trade may be brought
about by several means: it may be produced by a want of security felt
among the moneyed classes, as at the time of revolutions, political
agitations, commercial depressions, or panics; or it may be produced
by a deficiency of enterprise after the bursting of certain commercial
“bubbles,” or the decline of particular manias for speculation, as on
the cessation of the railway excitement; so, again, it may be brought
about by a failure of the ordinary produce of the year, as with bad
harvests.

The _decrease of the quantity of materials_, as tending to diminish the
supply of certain commodities, may be seen in the failure of the cotton
crops, which, of course, deprive the cotton manufacturers of their
ordinary quantity of work. The same diminution in the ordinary supply
of particular articles ensues when the men engaged in the production
of them “strike” either for an advance of wages, or more generally to
resist the attempt of some cutting employer to reduce their ordinary
earnings; and lastly, a like decrease of work necessarily ensues when
the _opportunity of working is changed_. Some kinds of work, as we
have already seen, depend on the weather--on either the wind, rain, or
temperature; while other kinds can only be pursued at certain seasons
of the year, as brick-making, building, and the like; hence, on the
cessation of the opportunities for working in these trades, there is
necessarily a great decrease in the quantity of work, and consequently
a large increase in the amount of surplus and therefore casual labour.

* * * * *

We have now, I believe, exhausted the several causes of that vast
national evil--casual labour. We have seen that it depends,

First, upon certain times and seasons, fashions and accidents, which
tend to cause a periodical briskness or slackness in different
employments;

And secondly, upon the number of surplus labourers in the country.

The circumstances inducing surplus labour we have likewise ascertained
to be three.

1. An alteration in the hours, rate, or mode of working, as well as in
the mode of hiring.

2. An increase of the hands.

3. A decrease of the work, either in particular places, at particular
times, or in the aggregate, owing to a decrease either in the demand
or means of supply.

Any one of these causes, it has been demonstrated, must necessarily
tend to induce an over supply of labourers and consequently a casualty
of labour, for it has been pointed out that an over supply of labourers
does not depend _solely_ on an increase of the workers beyond the means
of working, but that a decrease of the ordinary quantity of work, or a
general increase of the hours or rate of working, or an extension of
the system of production, or even a diminution of the term of hiring,
will also be attended with the same result--facts which should be borne
steadily in mind by all those who would understand the difficulties of
the times, and which the “economists” invariably ignore.

On a careful revision of the whole of the circumstances before
detailed, I am led to believe that there is considerable truth in
the statement lately put forward by the working classes, that only
one-third of the operatives of this country are fully employed, while
another third are partially employed, and the remaining third wholly
unemployed; that is to say, estimating the working classes as being
between four and five millions in number, I think we may safely
assert--considering how many depend for their employment on particular
times, seasons, fashions, and accidents, and the vast quantity of
over-work and scamp-work in nearly all the cheap trades of the present
day, the number of women and children who are being continually
drafted into the different handicrafts with the view of reducing the
earnings of the men, the displacement of human labour in some cases by
machinery, and the tendency to increase the division of labour, and to
extend the large system of production beyond the requirements of the
markets, as well as the temporary mode of hiring--all these things
being considered, I say I believe we may safely conclude that, out of
the four million five hundred thousand people who have to depend on
their industry for the livelihood of themselves and families, there is
(owing to the extraordinary means of economizing labour which have been
developed of late years, and the discovery as to how to do the work of
the nation with fewer people) barely sufficient work for the _regular_
employment of half of our labourers, so that only 1,500,000 are fully
and constantly employed, while 1,500,000 more are employed only half
their time, and the remaining 1,500,000 wholly unemployed, obtaining a
day’s work _occasionally_ by the displacement of some of the others.

Adopt what explanation we will of this appalling deficiency of
employment, one thing at least is certain: we cannot _consistently with
the facts of the country_, ascribe it to an increase of the population
beyond the means of labour; for we have seen that, while the people
have increased during the last fifty years at the rate of ·9 per cent.
per annum, the wealth and productions of the kingdom have far exceeded
that amount.

OF THE CASUAL LABOURERS AMONG THE RUBBISH-CARTERS.

The casual labour of so large a body of men as the rubbish-carters is a
question of high importance, for it affects the whole unskilled labour
market. And this is one of the circumstances distinguishing unskilled
from skilled labour. Unemployed cabinet-makers, for instance, do not
apply for work to a tailor; so that, with skilled labourers, only one
trade is affected in the slack season by the scarcity of employment
among its operatives. With unskilled labourers it is otherwise. If in
the course of next week 100 rubbish-carters were from any cause to be
thrown out of employment, and found an impossibility to obtain work at
rubbish-carting, there would be 100 fresh applicants for employment
among the bricklayer’s-labourers, scavagers, nightmen, sewermen,
dock-workers, lumpers, &c. Many of the 100 thus unemployed would, of
course, be willing to work at reduced wages merely that they might
subsist; and thus the hands employed by the regular and “honourable”
part of those trades are exposed to the risk of being underworked,
as regards wages, from the surplusage of labour in other unskilled
occupations.

The employment of the rubbish-carters depends, in the first
instance, upon the _season_. The services of the men are called into
requisition when houses are being built or removed. In the one case,
the rubbish-carters cart away the refuse earth; in the other they
remove the old materials. The _brisk season_ for the builders, and
consequently for the rubbish-carters, is, as I heard several of them
express it, “when days are long.” From about the middle of April to the
middle of October is the _brisk_ season of the rubbish-carters, for
during those six months more buildings are erected than in the winter
half of the year. There is an advantage in fine weather in the masonry
becoming _set_; and efforts are generally made to complete at least the
carcase of a house before the end of October, at the latest.

I am informed that the difference in the employment of labourers
about buildings is 30 per cent.--one builder estimated it at 50 per
cent.--less in winter than in summer, from the circumstance of fewer
buildings being then in the course of erection. It may be thought
that, as rubbish-carters are employed frequently on the foundation of
buildings, their business would not be greatly affected by the season
or the weather. But the work is often more difficult in wet weather,
the ground being heavier, so that a smaller extent of work only can
be accomplished, compared to what can be done in fine weather; and an
employer may decline to pay six days’ wages for work in winter, which
he might get done in five days in summer. If the men work by the piece
or the load the result is the same; the rubbish-carter’s employer has a
smaller return, for there is less work to be charged to the customer,
while the cost in keeping the horses is the same.

Thus it appears that under the most favourable circumstances about
_one-fourth_ of the rubbish-carters, even in the honourable trade, may
be exposed to the evils of non-employment merely from the state of the
weather influencing, more or less, the custom of the trade, and this
even during _the_ six months’ employment out of the year; after which
the men must find some other means of earning a livelihood.

There are, in round numbers, 850 operative rubbish-carters employed
in the brisk season throughout the metropolis; hence 212 men, at this
calculation, would be regularly deprived of work every year for six
months out of the twelve. It will be seen, however, on reference to
the table here given, that the average number of weeks each of the
rubbish-carters is employed throughout the twelve months is far below
26; indeed many have but three and four weeks work out of the 52.

By an analysis of the returns I have collected on this subject I find
the following to have been the actual term of employment for the
several rubbish-carters in the course of last year:--

Employment in the
Men. Year.

9 had 39 weeks, or 9 months.
214 „ 26 „ 6 „
4 „ 20 „ 5 „
10 „ 18 „
28 „ 16 „ 4 „
8 „ 14 „
353 „ 13 „ 3 „
4 „ 12 „
34 „ 10 „
29 „ 9 „
38 „ 8 „ 2 „
38 „ 6 „
27 „ 5 „
45 „ 4 „ 1 „
15 „ 3 „
---
856

Hence about one-fourth of the trade appear to have been employed for
six months, while upwards of one-half had work for only three months
or less throughout the year--many being at work only three days in the
week during that time.

The rubbish-carter is exposed to another casualty over which he can no
more exercise control than he can over the weather; I mean to what is
generally called _speculation_, or a rage for building. This is evoked
by the state of the money market, and other causes upon which I need
not dilate; but the effect of it upon the labourers I am describing is
this: capitalists may in one year embark sufficient means in building
speculations to erect, say 500 new houses, in any particular district.
In the following year they may not erect more than 200 (if any), and
thus, as there is the same extent of unskilled labour in the market,
the number of hands required is, if the trade be generally less
speculative, less in one year than in its predecessor by the number of
rubbish-carters required to work at the foundations of 300 houses. Such
a cause may be exceptional; but during the last ten years the inhabited
houses in the five districts of the Registrar-General have increased
to the extent of 45,000, or from 262,737 in 1841, to 307,722 in 1851.
It appears, then, that the annual increase of our metropolitan houses,
concluding that they increase in a regular yearly ratio, is 4500. Last
year, however, as I am informed by an experienced builder, there were
rather fewer buildings erected (he spoke only from his own observations
and personal knowledge of the business) than the yearly average of the
decennial term.

The casual and constant wages of the rubbish-carters may be thus
detailed. The whole system of the labour, I may again state, must be
regarded as _casual_, or--as the word imports in its derivation from
the Latin _casus_, a chance--the labour of men who are occasionally
employed. Some of the most respectable and industrious rubbish-carters
with whom I met, told me they generally might make up their minds,
though they might have excellent masters, to be six months of the year
unemployed at rubbish-carting; this, too, is less than the average of
this chance employment.

Calculating, then, the rubbish-carter’s receipt of _nominal wages_ at
18_s._, and his _actual wages_ at 20_s._ in the honourable trade, I
find the following amount to be paid.

By nominal wages, I have before explained, I mean what a man is _said_
to receive, or has been _promised_ that he shall be paid weekly. Actual
wages, on the other hand, are what a man positively _receives_, there
being sometimes additions in the form of perquisites or allowances;
sometimes deductions in the way of fines and stoppages; the additions
in the rubbish-carting trade appear to average about 2_s._ a week.
But these _actual wages_ are received only so long as the men are
employed, that is to say, they are the _casual_ rather than the
_constant_ earnings of the men working at a trade, which is essentially
of an occasional or temporary character; the average employment at
rubbish-carting being only three months in the year.

Let us see, therefore, what would be the constant earnings or income of
the men working at the better-paid portion of the trade.

£ _s._ _d._
The gross actual wages of ten
rubbish-carters, casually employed
for 39 weeks, at 20_s._ per week,
amount to 390 0 0

The gross actual wages of 250
rubbish-carters, casually employed
for 26 weeks, at 20_s._ per week 6500 0 0

The gross actual wages of 360
rubbish-carters, casually employed
for 13 weeks, at 20_s._ per week 4600 0 0
------------
Total gross actual wages of 620
of the better-paid rubbish-carters 11,490 0 0

But this, as I said before, represents only the _casual_ wages of the
better-paid operatives--that is to say, it shows the amount of money
or money’s worth that is positively received by the men while they are
in employment. To understand what are the _constant_ wages of these
men, we must divide their gross casual earnings by 52, the number of
weeks in the year: thus we find that the constant wages of the ten
men who were employed for 39 weeks, were 15_s._ instead of 20_s._ per
week--that is to say, their wages, equally divided throughout the year,
would have yielded that constant weekly income. By the same reasoning,
the 20_s._ per week casual wages of the 250 men employed for 26 weeks
out of the 52, were equal to only 10_s._ constant weekly wages; and so
the 360 men, who had 20_s._ per week casually for only three months
in the year, had but 5_s._ a week _constantly_ throughout the whole
year. Hence we see the enormous difference there may be between a man’s
casual and his constant earnings at a given trade.

The next question that forces itself on the mind is, how do the
rubbish-carters live when no longer employed at this kind of work?

When the slack season among rubbish-carters commences, nearly one-fifth
of the operatives are discharged. These take to scavaging or dustman’s
work, as well as that of navigators, or, indeed, any form of unskilled
labour, some obtaining full employ, but the greater part being able
to “get a job only now and then.” Those masters who keep their men
on throughout the year are some of them large dust contractors, some
carmen, some dairymen, and (in one or two instances in the suburbs, as
at Hackney) small farmers. The dust-contractors and carmen, who are by
far the more numerous, find employment for the men employed by them
as rubbish-carters in the season, either at the dust-yard or carrying
sand, or, indeed, carting any materials they may have to move--the
wages to the men remaining the same; indeed such is the transient
character of the rubbish-carting trade, that there are no masters or
operatives who devote themselves solely to the business.

THE EFFECTS OF CASUAL LABOUR IN GENERAL.

Having now pointed out the causes of casual labour, I proceed to set
forth its effects.

All casual labour, as I have said, is necessarily _uncertain_
labour; and wherever uncertainty exists, there can be no foresight
or pro-vidence. Had the succession of events in nature been
irregular,--had it been ordained by the Creator that similar causes
under similar circumstances should _not_ be attended with similar
effects,--it would have been impossible for us to have had any
knowledge of the future, or to have made any preparations concerning
it. Had the seasons followed each other fitfully,--had the sequences
in the external world been variable instead of invariable, and what
are now termed “constants” from the regularity of their succession
been changed into inconstants,--what provision could even the most
prudent of us have made? Where all was dark and unstable, we could
only have guessed instead of reasoned as to what was to come; and who
would have deprived himself of present enjoyments to avoid future
privations, which could appear neither probable nor even possible
to him? Pro-vidence, therefore, is simply the result of certainty,
and whatever tends to increase our faith in the uniform sequences
of outward events, as well as our reliance on the means we have of
avoiding the evils connected with them, necessarily tends to make us
more prudent. Where the means of sustenance and comfort are fixed, the
human being becomes conscious of what he has to depend upon; and if he
feel _assured_ that such means may fail him in old age or in sickness,
and be fully impressed with the _certainty_ of suffering from either,
he will immediately proceed to make some provision against the time of
adversity or infirmity. If, however, his means be _uncertain_--abundant
at one time, and deficient at another--a spirit of speculation or
gambling with the future will be induced, and the individual get to
believe in “luck” and “fate” as the arbiters of his happiness rather
than to look upon himself as “the architect of his fortunes”--trusting
to “chance” rather than his own powers and foresight to relieve him
at the hour of necessity. The same result will necessarily ensue if,
from defective reasoning powers, the ordinary course of nature be not
sufficiently apparent to him, or if, being in good health, he grow too
confident upon its continuance, and, either from this or other causes,
is led to believe that death will overtake him before his powers of
self-support decay.

The ordinary effects of uncertain labour, then, are to drive the
labourers to improvidence, recklessness, and pauperism.

Even in the classes which we do not rank among labourers, as, for
instance, authors, artists, musicians, actors, uncertainty or
irregularity of employment and remuneration produces a spirit of
wastefulness and carelessness. The steady and daily accruing gains of
trade and of some of the professions form a certain and staple income;
while in other professions, where a large sum may be realized at one
time, and then no money be earned until after an interval, incomings
are rapidly spent, and the interval is one of suffering. This is part
of the very nature, the very essence, of the casualty of employment
and the delay of remuneration. The past privation gives a zest to
the present enjoyment; while the present enjoyment renders the past
privation faint as a remembrance and unimpressive as a warning. “Want
of providence,” writes Mr. Porter, “on the part of those who live by
the labour of their hands, and whose employments so often depend upon
circumstances beyond their control, is a theme which is constantly
brought forward by many whose lot in life has been cast beyond the
reach of want. It is, indeed, greatly to be wished, for their own
sakes, that the habit were general among the labouring classes of
saving some part of their wages when fully employed, against less
prosperous times; but it is difficult for those who are placed in
circumstances of ease to _estimate the amount of virtue that is implied
in this self-denial_. It must be a hard trial for one who has recently,
perhaps, seen his family enduring want, to deny them the small amount
of indulgences, which are, at the best of times, placed within their
reach.”

It is easy enough for men in smooth circumstances to say, “the
privation is a man’s own fault, since, to avoid it, he has but to
apportion the sum he may receive in a lump over the interval of
non-recompense which he knows will follow.” Such a course as this,
experience and human nature have shown not to be easy--perhaps, with
a few exceptions, not to be possible. It is the starving and not the
well-fed man that is in danger of surfeiting himself. When pestilence
or revolution are rendering life and property _casualties_ in a
country, the same spirit of improvident recklessness breaks forth. In
London, on the last visitation of the plague, in the reign of Charles
II., a sort of Plague Club indulged in the wildest excesses in the
very heart of the pestilence. To these orgies no one was admitted who
had not been bereft of some relative by the pest. In Paris, during the
reign of terror in the first revolution, the famous Guillotine Club
was composed of none but those who had lost some near relative by the
guillotine. When they met for their half-frantic revels every one wore
some symbol of death: breast pins in the form of guillotines, rings
with death’s-heads, and such like. The duration of their own lives
these Guillotine Clubbists knew to be uncertain, not merely in the
ordinary uncertainty of nature, but from the character of the times;
and this feeling of the jeopardy of existence, from the practice of
violence and bloodshed, wrought the effects I have described. Life
was more than naturally casual. When the famine was at the worst in
Ireland, it was remarked in the _Cork Examiner_, that in that city
there never had been seen more street “larking” or street gambling
among the poor lads and young men who were really starving. This was a
natural result of the casualty of labour and the consequent casualty of
food. Persons, it should be remembered, do not insure houses or shops
that are “doubly or trebly hazardous;” they gamble on the uncertainty.

Mr. Porter, in his “Progress of the Nation,” cites a fact bearing
immediately upon the present subject.

“The formation of a canal, which has been in progress during the last
five years, in the north of Ireland (this was written in 1847), has
afforded steady employment to a portion of the peasantry, who before
that time were suffering all the evils, so common in that country,
which result from the precariousness of employment. Such work as they
could previously get came at uncertain intervals, and was sought
by so many competitors, that the remuneration was of the scantiest
amount. In this condition of things the men were improvident, to
recklessness; their wages, insufficient for the comfortable sustenance
of their families, were wasted in procuring for themselves a temporary
forgetfulness of their misery at the whiskey-shop, and the men
appeared to be sunk into a state of hopeless degradation. From the
moment, however, that work was offered to them which was _constant in
its nature and certain in its duration_, and on which their weekly
earnings would be sufficient to provide for their comfortable support,
_men who had been idle and dissolute were converted into sober
hard-working labourers, and proved themselves kind and careful husbands
and fathers_; and it is stated as a fact, that, notwithstanding the
distribution of several hundred pounds weekly in wages, the whole of
which must be considered as so much additional money placed in their
hands, the consumption of whiskey was absolutely and _permanently_
diminished in the district. During the comparatively short period in
which the construction of this canal was in progress, some of the most
careful labourers--men who most probably before then never knew what it
was to possess five shillings at any one time--saved sufficient money
to enable them to emigrate to Canada.”

There can hardly be a stronger illustration of the blessing of constant
and the curse of casual labour. We have competence and frugality as the
results of one system; poverty and extravagance as the results of the
other; and among the very same individuals.

In the evidence given by Mr. Galloway, the engineer, before a
parliamentary committee, he remarks, that “when employers are competent
to show their men that their business is _steady and certain_, and when
men find that they are likely to have _permanent_ employment, they have
always _better habits and more settled notions_, which will make them
_better men_ and _better workmen_, and will produce great benefits to
all who are interested in their employment.”

Moreover, even if payment be assured to a working man regularly, _but
deferred for long intervals_, so as to make the returns lose all
appearance of regularity, he will rarely be found able to resist the
temptation of a tavern, and, perhaps, a long-continued carouse, or of
some other extravagance to his taste, when he receives a month’s dues
at once. I give an instance of this in the following statement:--

For some years after the peace of 1815 the staffs of the militias were
kept up, but not in any active service. During the war the militias
performed what are now the functions of the regular troops in the three
kingdoms, their stations being changed more frequently than those of
any of the regular regiments at the present day. Indeed, they only
differed from the “regulars” in name. There was the same military
discipline, and the sole difference was, that the militia-men--who
were balloted for periodically--could not, by the laws regulating
their embodiment, be sent out of the United Kingdom for purposes of
warfare. The militias were embodied for twenty-eight days’ training,
once in four years (seldom less) after the peace, and the staff acted
as the drill sergeants. They were usually steady, orderly men, working
at their respective crafts when not on duty after the militia’s
disembodiment, and some who had not been brought up to any handicraft
turned out--perhaps from their military habits of early rising and
orderliness--very good gardeners, both on their own account and as
assistants in gentlemen’s grounds. No few of them saved money. Yet
these men, with very few exceptions, when they received a month’s pay,
fooled away a part of it in tippling and idleness, to which they were
not at all addicted when attending regularly to their work with its
regular returns. If they got into any trouble in consequence of their
carousing, it was looked upon as a sort of legitimate excuse, “Why you
see, sir, it was the 24th” (the 24th of each month being the pension
day).

The thoughtless extravagance of sailors when, on their return to port,
they receive in one sum the wages they have earned by severe toil
amidst storms and dangers during a long voyage, I need not speak of; it
is a thing well known.

These soldiers and seamen cannot be said to have been _casually_
employed, but the results were the same as if they had been so
employed; the money came to them in a lump at so long an interval as to
appear uncertain, and was consequently squandered.

I may cite the following example as to the effects of uncertain
earnings upon the household outlay of labourers who suffer from the
casualties of employment induced by the season of the year. “In the
long fine days of summer, the little daughter of a working brickmaker,”
I was told, “used to order chops and other choice dainties of a
butcher, saying, ‘Please, sir, father don’t care for the price just
a-now; but he must have his chops good; line-chops, sir, and tender,
please--’cause he’s a brickmaker.’ In the winter, it was, ‘O please,
sir, here’s a fourpenny bit, and you must send father something cheap.
He don’t care what it is, so long as it’s cheap. It’s winter, and he
hasn’t no work, sir--’cause he’s a brickmaker.’”

I have spoken of the tendency of casual labour to induce intemperate
habits. In confirmation of this I am enabled to give the following
account as to the increase of the sale of malt liquor in the metropolis
_consequent upon wet weather_. The account is derived from the personal
observations of a gentleman long familiar with the brewing trade, in
connection with one of the largest houses. In short, I may state that
the account is given on the very best authority.

There are _nine_ large brewers in London; of these the two firms
transacting the greatest extent of business supply, daily, 1000 barrels
each firm to their customers; the seven others, among them, dispose,
altogether, of 3000 barrels daily. All these 5000 barrels a day are
solely for town consumption; and this may be said to be the _average_
supply the year through, but the public-house sale is far from regular.

After a wet day the sale of malt liquor, principally beer (porter), to
the metropolitan retailers is from 500 to 1000 barrels more than when
a wet day has not occurred; that is to say, the supply increases from
5000 barrels to 5500 and 6000. Such of the publicans as keep small
stocks go the next day to their brewers to order a further supply;
those who have better-furnished cellars may not go for two or three
days after, but the result is the same.

The reason for this increased consumption is obvious; when the weather
prevents workmen from prosecuting their respective callings in the
open air, they have recourse to drinking, to pass away the idle time.
Any one who has made himself familiar with the habits of the working
classes has often found them crowding a public-house during a hard
rain, especially in the neighbourhood of new buildings, or any public
open-air work. The street-sellers, themselves prevented from plying
their trades outside, are busy in such times in the “publics,” offering
for sale braces, belts, hose, tobacco-boxes, nuts of different kinds,
apples, &c. A bargain may then be struck for so much and a half-pint of
beer, and so the consumption is augmented by the trade in other matters.

Now, taking 750 barrels as the average of the extra sale of beer in
consequence of wet weather, we have a consumption beyond the demands
of the ordinary trade in malt liquor of 27,000 gallons, or 216,000
pints. This, at 2_d._ a pint, is 3000_l._ for a day’s needless, and
often prejudicial, outlay caused by the casualty of the weather and
the consequent casualty of labour. A censor of morals might say that
these men should go home under such circumstances; but their homes may
be at a distance, and may present no great attractions; the single men
among them may have no homes, merely sleeping-places; and even the more
prudent may think it advisable to wait awhile under shelter in hopes
of the weather improving, so that they could resume their labour, and
only an hour or so be deducted from their wages. Besides, there is the
attraction to the labourer of the warmth, discussion, freedom, and
excitement of the public-house.

That the great bulk of the consumers of this _additional_ beer are
of the classes I have mentioned is, I think, plain enough, from the
increase being experienced only in that beverage, the consumption of
gin being little affected by the same means. Indeed, the statistics
showing the ratio of beer and gin-drinking are curious enough (were
this the place to enter into them), the most gin, as a general rule,
being consumed in the most depressed years.

“It is a fact worth notice,” said a statistical journal, entitled
“Facts and Figures,” published in 1841, “as illustrative of the
_tendency of the times of pressure to increase spirit drinking_, that
whilst under the privations of last year (1840) the poorer classes
paid 2,628,286_l._ tax for spirits; in 1836, a year of the greatest
prosperity, the tax on British spirits amounted only to 2,390,188_l._
_So true is it that to impoverish is to demoralise._”

The numbers who imbibe, in the course of a wet day, these 750 barrels,
cannot, of course, be ascertained, but the following calculations may
be presented. The class of men I have described rarely have spare
money, but if known to a landlord, they probably may obtain credit
until the Saturday night. Now, putting their _extra_ beer-drinking on
wet days--for on fine days there is generally a pint or more consumed
daily per working man--putting, I say, the _extra_ potations at a pot
(quart) each man, we find _one hundred and eight thousand_ consumers
(out of 2,000,000 people, or, discarding the women and children, not
1,000,000)! A number doubling, and trebling, and quadrupling the male
adult population of many a splendid continental city.

Of the data I have given, I may repeat, no doubt can be entertained;
nor, as it seems to me, can any doubt be entertained that the increased
consumption is directly attributable to the casualty of labour[55].

OF THE SCURF TRADE AMONG THE RUBBISH-CARTERS.

Before proceeding to treat of the cheap or “scurf” labourers among
the rubbish-carters, I shall do as I have done in connection with
the casual labourers of the same trade, say a few words on that kind
of labour in general, both as to the means by which it is usually
obtained and as to the distinctive qualities of the scurf or low-priced
labourers; for experience teaches me that the mode by which labour is
cheapened is more or less similar in all trades, and it will therefore
save much time and space if I here--as with the casual labourers--give
the general facts in connection with this part of my subject.

In the first place, then, there are but two direct modes of cheapening
labour, viz.:--

1. By making the workmen do _more_ work for the _same_ pay.

2. By making them do the _same_ work for _less_ pay.

The first of these modes is what is technically termed “_driving_,”
especially when effected by compulsory “overwork;” and it is called
the “economy of labour” when brought about by more elaborate and
refined processes, such as the division of labour, the large system
of production, the invention of machinery, and the _temporary_, as
contradistinguished from the _permanent_, mode of hiring.

Each of these modes of making workmen do _more_ work for the _same_
pay, can but have the same depressing effect on the labour market, for
not only is the _rate_ of remuneration (or ratio of the work to the
pay) reduced when the operative is made to do a greater quantity of
work for the same amount of money, but, unless the means of disposing
of the extra products be proportionately increased, it is evident that
just as many workmen must be displaced thereby as the increased term or
rate of working exceeds the extension of the markets; that is to say,
if 4000 workpeople be made to produce each twice as much as formerly
(either by extending the hours of labour or increasing their rate of
labouring), then if the markets or means of disposing of the extra
products be increased only one-half, 1000 hands must, according to
Cocker, be deprived of their ordinary employment; and these competing
with those who are in work will immediately tend to reduce the wages
of the trade generally, so that not only will the _rate_ of wages
be decreased, since each will have more work to do, but the actual
earnings of the workmen will be diminished likewise.

Of the economy of labour itself, as a means of cheapening work,
there is no necessity for me to speak here. It is, indeed, generally
admitted, that to economize labour without proportionally extending
the markets for the products of such labour, is to deprive a certain
number of workmen of their ordinary means of living; and under the head
of casual labour so many instances have been given of this principle
that it would be wearisome to the reader were I to do other than allude
to the matter at present. There are, however, several other means of
causing a workman to do more than his ordinary quantity of work. These
are:--

1. By extra supervision when the workmen are paid by the day. Of this
mode of increased production an instance has already been cited in the
account of the strapping-shops given at p. 304, vol. ii.

2. By increasing the workman’s interest in his work; as in piece-work,
where the payment of the operative is made proportional to the
quantity of work done by him. Of this mode examples have already been
given at p. 303, vol. ii.

3. By large quantities of work given out at one time; as in
“lump-work” and “contract work.”

4. By the domestic system of work, or giving out materials to be made
up at the homes of the workpeople.

5. By the middleman system of labour.

6. By the prevalence of small masters.

7. By a reduced rate of pay, as forcing operatives to labour both
longer and quicker, in order to make up the same amount of income.

Of several of these modes of work I have already spoken, citing
facts as to their pernicious influence upon the greater portion of
those trades where they are found to prevail. I have already shown
how, by extra supervision--by increased interest in the work--as
well as by decreased pay, operatives can be made to do more work
than they otherwise would, and so be the cause, unless the market be
proportionately extended, of depriving some of their fellow-labourers
of their fair share of employment. It now only remains for me to set
forth the effect of those modes of employment which have not yet been
described, viz., the domestic system, the middleman system, and the
contract and lump system, as well as the small-master system of work.

Let me begin with the first of the last-mentioned modes of cheapening
labour, viz., _the domestic system of work_.

I find, by investigation, that in trades where the system of working on
the master’s premises has been departed from, and a man is allowed to
take his work home, there is invariably a tendency to cheapen labour.
These home workers, whenever opportunity offers, will use other men’s
ill-paid labour, or else employ the members of their family to enhance
their own profits.

The domestic system, moreover, naturally induces _over-work and
Sunday-work, as well as tends to change journeymen into trading
operatives, living on the labour of their fellow-workmen_. When the
work is executed off the master’s premises, of course there are
neither definite hours nor days for labour; and the consequence is,
the generality of home workers labour early and late, Sundays as well
as week-days, availing themselves at the same time of the co-operation
of their wives and children; thus the trade becomes overstocked with
workpeople by the introduction of a vast number of new hands into
it, as well as by the overwork of the men themselves who thus obtain
employment. When I was among the tailors, I received from a journeyman
to whom I was referred by the Trades’ Society as the one best able to
explain the causes of the decline of that trade, the following lucid
account of the evils of this system of labour:--

“The principal cause of the decline of our trade is the employment
given to workmen at their own homes, or, in other words, to the
‘sweaters.’ The sweater is the greatest evil in the trade; as the
sweating system increases the number of hands to an almost incredible
extent--wives, sons, daughters, and extra women, all working ‘long
days’--that is, labouring from sixteen to eighteen hours per day, and
Sundays as well. By this system two men obtain as much work as would
give employment to three or four men working regular hours in the shop.
Consequently, the sweater being enabled to get the work done by women
and children at a lower price than the regular workman, obtains the
greater part of the garments to be made, while men who depend upon
the shop for their living are obliged to walk about idle. A greater
quantity of work is done under the sweating system at a lower price. I
consider that the decline of my trade dates from the change of day-work
into piece-work. According to the old system, the journeyman was paid
by the day, and consequently must have done his work under the eye of
his employer. It is true that work was given out by the master before
the change from day-work to piece-work was regularly acknowledged in
the trade. But still it was morally impossible for work to be given
out and not be paid by the piece. _Hence I date the decrease in the
wages of the workman from the introduction of piece-work, and giving
out garments to be made off the premises of the master._ The effect of
this was, that the workman making the garment, knowing that the master
could not tell whom he got to do his work for him, employed women
and children to help him, and paid them little or nothing for their
labour. This was the beginning of the sweating system. The workmen
gradually became transformed from journeymen into ‘middlemen,’ living
by the labour of others. Employers soon began to find that they could
get garments made at a less sum than the regular price, and those
tradesmen who were anxious to force their trade, by underselling their
more honourable neighbours, readily availed themselves of this means of
obtaining cheap labour.”

* * * * *

The _middleman system of work_ is so much akin to the domestic system,
of which, indeed, it is but a necessary result, that it forms a natural
addendum to the above. Of this indirect mode of employing workmen, I
said, in the _Chronicle_, when treating of the timber-porters at the
docks:--

“The middleman system is the one crying evil of the day. Whether
he goes by the name of ‘sweater,’ ‘chamber-master,’ ‘lumper,’ or
contractor, it is this _trading operative_ who is the great means of
reducing the wages of his fellow working-men. To make a profit out of
the employment of his brother operatives he must, of course, obtain
a lower class and, consequently, cheaper labour. Hence it becomes a
_business_ with him to hunt out the lowest grades of working men--that
is to say, those who are either morally or intellectually inferior in
the craft--the drunken, the dishonest, the idle, the vagabond, and
the unskilful; these are the instruments that he seeks for, because,
these being unable to obtain employment at the regular wages of the
sober, honest, industrious, and skilful portion of the trade, he can
obtain their labour at a lower rate than what is usually paid. Hence
drunkards, tramps, men without character or station, apprentices,
children--all suit him. Indeed, the more degraded the labourers, the
better they answer his purpose, for the cheaper he can get their work,
and consequently the more he can make out of it.

“‘Boy labour or thief labour,’ said a middleman, on a large scale,
to me, ‘what do I care, so long as I can get my work done cheap?’
That this _seeking out_ of cheap and inferior labour really takes
place, and is a necessary consequence of the middleman system, we have
merely to look into the condition of any trade where it is extensively
pursued. I have shown, in my account of the tailors’ trade printed in
the _Chronicle_, that the wives of the sweaters not only parade the
streets of London on the look-out for youths raw from the country, but
that they make periodical trips to the poorest provinces of Ireland,
in order to obtain workmen at the lowest possible rate. I have shown,
moreover, that foreigners are annually imported from the Continent
for the same purpose, and that among the chamber-masters in the shoe
trade, the child-market at Bethnal-green, as well as the workhouses,
are continually ransacked for the means of obtaining a cheaper kind of
labour. All my investigations go to prove, that it is chiefly by means
of this middleman system that the wages of the working men are reduced.
It is this contractor--this trading operative--who is invariably the
prime mover in the reduction of the wages of his fellow-workmen. He
uses the most degraded of the class as a means of underselling the
worthy and skilful labourers, and of ultimately dragging the better
down to the abasement of the worst. He cares not whether the trade to
which he belongs is already overstocked with hands, for, be those hands
as many as they may, and the ordinary wages of his craft down to bare
subsistence point, it matters not a jot to him; _he_ can live solely by
reducing them still lower, and so he immediately sets about drafting
or importing a fresh and cheaper stock into the trade. If _men_ cannot
subsist on lower prices, then he takes apprentices, or hires children;
if women of chastity cannot afford to labour at the price he gives,
then he has recourse to prostitutes; or if workmen of character and
worth refuse to work at less than the ordinary rate, then he seeks out
the moral refuse of the trade--those whom none else will employ; or
else he flies, to find labour meet for his purpose, to the workhouse
and the gaol. Backed by this cheap and refuse labour, he offers his
work at lower prices, and so keeps on reducing and reducing the wages
of his brethren, until all sink in poverty, wretchedness, and vice. Go
where we will, look into whatever poorly-paid craft we please, we shall
find this _trading operative_, this _middleman_ or contractor, at the
bottom of the degradation.”

The “contract system” or “lump work,” as it is called, is but a
corollary, as it were, of the foregoing; for it is an essential part of
the middleman system, that the work should be obtained by the trading
operative in large quantities, so that those upon whose labour he
lives should be kept continually occupied, and the more, of course,
that he can obtain work for, the greater his profit. When a quantity
of work, usually paid for by the piece, is given out at one time, the
natural tendency is for the piece-work to pass into lump-work; that
is to say, if there be in a trade a number of distinct parts, each
requiring, perhaps, from the division of labour, a distinct hand for
the execution of it, or if each of these parts bear a different price,
it is frequently the case that the master will contract with some one
workman for the execution of the whole, agreeing to give a certain
price for the job “in the lump,” and allowing the workman to get whom
he pleases to execute it. This is the case with the piece-working
masters in the coach-building trade; but it is not essential to the
contract or lump system of work, that other hands should be employed;
the main distinction between it and piece-work being that the work is
given out in large quantities, and a certain allowance or reduction of
price effected from that cause alone.

It is this contract or lump work which constitutes the great evil of
the carpenter’s, as well as of many other trades; and as in those
crafts, so in this, we find that the lower the wages are reduced the
greater becomes the number of trading operatives or middlemen. For it
is when workmen find the difficulty of living by their labour increased
that they take to scheming and trading upon the labour of their
fellows. In the slop trade, where the pay is the worst, these creatures
abound the most; and so in the carpenter’s trade, where the wages are
the lowest--as among the speculative builders--there the system of
contracting and sub-contracting is found in full force.

Of this contract or lump work, I received the following account from
the foreman to a large speculating builder, when I was inquiring into
the condition of the London carpenters:--

“The way in which the work is done is mostly by letting and subletting.
The masters usually prefer to let work, because it takes all the
trouble off their hands. They know what they are to get for the job,
and of course they let it as much under that figure as they possibly
can, all of which is clear gain without the least trouble. How the
work is done, or by whom, it’s no matter to them, so long as they can
make what they want out of the job, and have no bother about it. Some
of our largest builders are taking to this plan, and a party who used
to have one of the largest shops in London has within the last three
years discharged all the men in his employ (he had 200 at least),
and has now merely an office, and none but clerks and accountants in
his pay. He has taken to letting his work out instead of doing it at
home. The parties to whom the work is let by the speculating builders
are generally working men, and these men in their turn look out for
other working men, who will take the job cheaper than they will; and
so I leave you, sir, and the public to judge what the party who really
executes the work gets for his labour, and what is the quality of work
that he is likely to put into it. The speculating builder generally
employs an overlooker to see that the work is done sufficiently well
to pass the surveyor. That’s all he cares about. Whether it’s done by
thieves, or drunkards, or boys, it’s no matter to him. The overlooker,
of course, sees after the first party to whom the work is let, and this
party in his turn looks after the several hands that he has sublet it
to. The first man who agrees to the job takes it in the lump, and he
again lets it to others in the piece. I have known instances of its
having been let again a third time, but this is not usual. The party
who takes the job in the lump from the speculator usually employs a
foreman, whose duty it is to give out the materials and to make working
drawings. The men to whom it is sublet only find labour, while the
‘lumper,’ or first contractor, agrees for both labour and materials.
It is usual in contract work, for the first party who takes the job
to be bound in a large sum for the due and faithful performance of
his contract. He then, in his turn, finds out a sub-contractor, who
is mostly a small builder, who will also bind himself that the work
shall be properly executed, and there the binding ceases--those parties
to whom the job is afterwards let, or sublet, employing foremen or
overlookers to see that their contract is carried out. The first
contractor has scarcely any trouble whatsoever; he merely engages a
gentleman, who rides about in a gig, to see that what is done is likely
to pass muster. The sub-contractor has a little more trouble; and so it
goes on as it gets down and down. Of course I need not tell you that
the first contractor, who does the _least_ of all, gets the _most_ of
all; while the poor wretch of a working man, who positively executes
the job, is obliged to slave away every hour, night after night, to get
a bare living out of it; and this is the contract system.”

A tradesman, or a speculator, will contract, for a certain sum, to
complete the skeleton of a house, and render it fit for habitation.
He will sublet the flooring to some working joiner, who will, in very
many cases, take it on such terms as to allow himself, by working early
and late, the regular journeymen’s wages of 30_s._ a week, or perhaps
rather more. Now this sub-contractor cannot complete the work within
the requisite time by his own unaided industry, and he employs men to
assist him, often subletting again, and such assistant men will earn
perhaps but 4_s._ a day. It is the same with the doors, the staircases,
the balustrades, the window-frames, the room-skirtings, the closets; in
short, all parts of the building.

The subletting is accomplished without difficulty. Old men are
sometimes employed in such work, and will be glad of any remuneration
to escape the workhouse; while stronger workmen are usually sanguine
that by extra exertion, “though the figure is low, they may make a tidy
thing out of it after all.” In this way labour is cheapened. “Lump”
work, “piece” work, work by “the job,” are all portions of the contract
system. The principle is the same. “Here is this work to be done, what
will you undertake to do it for?”

In number after number of the _Builder_ will be found statements
headed “Blind Builders.” One firm, responding to an advertisement for
“estimates” of the building of a church, sends in an offer to execute
the work in the best style for 5000_l._ Another firm may offer to do
it for somewhere about 3000_l._ The first-mentioned firm would do the
work well, paying the “honourable” rate of wages. The under-working
firm _must_ resort to the scamping and subletting system I have
alluded to. It appears that the building of churches and chapels, of
all denominations, is one of the greatest encouragement to slop, or
scamp, or under-paid work. The same system prevails in many trades with
equally pernicious effects.

* * * * *

“If you will allow me,” says a correspondent, “I would state that
there is one cause of hardship and suffering to the labouring
or handicraftsman, which, to my mind, is far more productive of
distress and poor-grinding than any other, or than all other causes
put together: I allude to the _contract_ system, and especially in
reference to printing. Depend upon it, sir, the father of wickedness
himself could not devise a more malevolent or dishonest course than
that now very generally pursued by those who should be, of all others,
the friends of the poor and working man. The Government and the great
West-end clubs have reduced their transactions to such a low level
in this respect that it seems to be the only question with them, Who
will work lowest or supply goods at the lowest figure? And this, too,
totally irrespective of the circumstance whether it may not reduce
wages or bankrupt the contractor. No matter whether a party who has
executed the work required for years be noted for paying a fair and
remunerating price to his workmen or sub-tradesmen, and bears the
character of a responsible and trustworthy man--all this is as nothing;
for somebody, who may be, for aught that is cared, deficient in all
these points, will do what is needful at _so much_ less; and then,
unless willing to reduce the wage of his workpeople, the long-employed
tradesman has but the alternative of losing his business or cheating
his creditors. And then, to give a smack to the whole affair, the
‘Stationery Office’ of the Government, or the committee of the club,
will congratulate themselves and their auditors on the fact that a
diminution in expenses has been effected; a result commemorated perhaps
by an addition of salary to the officials in the former case, and of a
‘cordial vote of thanks’ in the latter. I do not write ‘without book,’
I can assure you, on these matters; for I have long and earnestly
watched the subject, and could fill many a page with the details.”

* * * * *

Of the ruinous effects of the contract system in connection with the
army clothing, Mr. Pearse, the army clothier, gave the following
evidence before the Select Committee on Army and Navy Appointments.

“When the contract for soldier’s great coats was opened, Mr. Maberly
took it at the same price (13_s._) in December, 1808; this shows the
effect of wild competition. In February following, Esdailes’ house,
who were accoutrement makers, and not clothiers, got knowledge of
what was Mr. Maberly’s price, and _they_ tendered at 12_s._ 6-1/2_d._
a month afterwards; it was evidently then a struggle for the price,
and how the quality the least good (if we may use such a term) could
pass. Mr. Maberly did not like to be outbidden by Esdailes; _Esdailes
stopped subsequently_, and Mr. Maberly bid 12_s._ 6_d._ three months
after, and Mr. Dixon bid again, and got the contract for 11_s._ 3_d._
in October, and in December of that year another public tender took
place, and Messrs. A. and D. Cock took it at 11_s._ 5-1/2_d._, _and
they subsequently broke_. It went on in this sort of way,--changing
hands every two or every three months, by bidding against each other.
Presently, though it was calculated that the great coat was to wear
four years, it was found that _those great coats were so inferior
in quality, that they wore only two years_, and representations were
accordingly made to the Commander-in-Chief, when it was found necessary
that great care should be taken to go back to the original good quality
that had been established by the Duke of York.”

Mr. Shaw, another army clothier, and a gentleman with whose friendship,
I am proud to say, I have been honoured since the commencement of
my inquiries--a gentleman actuated by the most kindly and Christian
impulses, and of whom the workpeople speak in terms of the highest
admiration and regard; this gentleman, impressed with a deep sense of
the evils of the contract system to the under-paid and over-worked
operatives of his trade, addressed a letter to the Chairman of the
Committee on Army, Navy, and Ordnance Estimates, from which the
following are extracts:--

“My Lord, my object more particularly is, to request your lordship will
submit to the committee, _as an evidence of the evils of contracts_,
the great coat sent herewith, made similar to those supplied to the
army, and I would respectfully appeal to them as men, gentlemen, _as
Christians_, whether _fivepence_, the price now being given to poor
females for making up those coats, is a fair and just price for six,
seven, and eight hours’ work.... My Lord, _the misery amongst the
workpeople is most distressing_--of a mass of people, _willing to
work_, who cannot obtain it, and of a mass, especially women, most
iniquitously paid for their labour, who are in a state of oppression
disgraceful to the Legislature, the Government, the Church, and the
consuming public.... I would, therefore, most humbly and earnestly
call upon your lordship, and the other members of the committee, to
recommend an _immediate stop to be put to the system of contracting_
now pursued by the different government departments, as being one of
false economy, as a system most _oppressive to the poor_, and _being
most injurious_, in every way, to the best _interests of the country_.”

In another place the same excellent gentleman says:--

“I could refer to the screwing down of other things by the government
authorities, but the above will be sufficient to show _how cruelly the
workpeople employed in making up this clothing are oppressed; and some
of the men will tell you they are tired of life. Last week I found one
man making a country police coat, who said his wife and child were out
begging_.”

* * * * *

The last mentioned of the several modes of cheapening labour is the
“_small-master system_” of work, that is to say, the operatives taking
to make up materials on their own account rather than for capitalist
employers. In every trade where there are _small_ masters, trades into
which it requires but little capital to embark, there is certain to be
a cheapening of labour. Such a man works himself, and to get work, to
meet the exigences of the rent and the demands of the collectors of the
parliamentary and parochial taxes, he will often underwork the very
journeymen whom he occasionally employs, doing “the job” in such cases
with the assistance of his family and apprentices, at a less rate of
profit than the amount of journeymen’s wages.

Concerning these garret masters I said, when treating of the Cabinet
trade, in the _Chronicle_, “The cause of the extraordinary decline of
wages in the Cabinet trade (even though the hands decreased and the
work increased to an unprecedented extent) will be found to consist
in the increase that has taken place within the last 20 years of what
are called ‘garret masters’ in the cabinet trade. These garret masters
are a class of small ‘trade-working masters,’ the same as the ‘chamber
masters’ in the shoe trade, supplying both capital and labour. They are
in manufacture what ‘the peasant proprietors’ are in agriculture--their
own employers and their own workmen. There is, however, this one marked
distinction between the two classes--the garret master cannot, like
the peasant proprietor, _eat_ what he produces; the consequence is,
that he is obliged to convert each article into food immediately he
manufactures it--no matter what the state of the market may be. The
capital of the garret master being generally sufficient to find him in
materials for the manufacture of only one article at a time, and his
savings being but barely enough for his subsistence while he is engaged
in putting those materials together, he is compelled, the moment the
work is completed, to part with it for whatever he can get. He cannot
afford to keep it even a day, for to do so is generally to remain a
day unfed. Hence, if the market be at all slack, he has to force a
sale by offering his goods at the lowest possible price. What wonder,
then, that the necessities of such a class of individuals should have
created a special race of employers, known by the significant name of
‘slaughter-house men’--or that these, being aware of the inability
of the ‘garret masters’ to hold out against any offer, no matter how
slight a remuneration it affords for their labour, should continually
lower and lower their prices, until the entire body of the competitive
portion of the cabinet trade is sunk in utter destitution and misery?
Moreover, it is well known how strong is the stimulus among peasant
proprietors, or, indeed, any class working for themselves, to extra
production. So it is, indeed, with the garret masters; their industry
is almost incessant, and hence a greater quantity of work is turned
out by them, and continually forced into the market, than there would
otherwise be. What though there be a brisk and a slack season in the
cabinet-maker’s trade as in the majority of others?--slack or brisk,
the garret masters must produce the same excessive quantity of goods.
In the hope of extricating himself from his overwhelming poverty, he
toils on, producing more and more--and yet the more he produces the
more hopeless does his position become; for the greater the stock that
he thrusts into the market, the lower does the price of his labour
fall, until at last, he and his whole family work for less than half
what he himself could earn a few years back by his own unaided labour.”

The small-master system of work leads, like the domestic system, with
which, indeed, it is intimately connected, to the employment of
wives, children, and apprentices, as a means of assistance and extra
production--for as the prices decline so do the small masters strive by
further labour to compensate for their loss of income.

* * * * *

Such, then, are the several modes of work by which labour is cheapened.
There are, as we have seen, but two ways of _directly_ effecting this,
viz., first by making men do more work for the same pay, and secondly,
by making them do the same work for less pay. The way in which men are
made to do more, it has been pointed out, is, by causing them either to
work longer or quicker, or else by employing fewer hands in proportion
to the work; or engaging them only for such time as their services are
required, and discharging them immediately afterwards. These constitute
the several modes of economizing labour, which lowers the rate of
remuneration (the ratio of the pay to the work) rather than the pay
itself. The several means by which this result is attained are termed
“systems of work, production, or engagement,” and such are those above
detailed.

Now it is a necessity of these several systems, though the actual
amount of remuneration is not directly reduced by them, that a cheaper
labour should be obtained for carrying them out. Thus, in contract
or lump work, perhaps, the price may not be immediately lowered; the
saving to the employer consisting chiefly in supervision, he having in
such a case only one man to look to instead of perhaps a hundred. The
contractor, or lumper, however, is differently situated; he, in order
to reap any benefit from the contract, must, since he cannot do the
whole work himself, employ others to help him, and to reap any benefit
from the contract, this of course must be done at a lower price than he
himself receives; so it is with the middleman system, where a profit
is derived from the labour of other operatives; so, again, with the
domestic system of work, where the several members of the family, or
cheaper labourers, are generally employed as assistants; and even so is
it with the small-master system, where the labour of apprentices and
wives and children is the principal means of help. Hence the operatives
adopting these several systems of work are rather the instruments by
which cheap labour is obtained than the cheap labourers themselves. It
is true that a sweater, a chamber master, or garret master, a lumper or
contractor, or a home worker, generally works cheaper than the ordinary
operatives, but this he does chiefly by the cheap labourers he employs,
and then, finding that he is able to underwork the rest of the trade,
and that the more hands he employs the greater becomes his profit, he
offers to do work at less than the usual rate. It is not a necessity
of the system that the middleman operative, the domestic worker, the
lumper, or garret master should be himself underpaid, but simply
that he should employ others who are so, and it is thus that such
systems of work tend to cheapen the labour of those trades in which
they are found to prevail. Who, then, are the cheap labourers?--who
the individuals, by means of whose services the sweater, the smaller
master, the lumper, and others, is enabled to underwork the rest of his
trade?--what the general characteristics of those who, in the majority
of handicrafts, are found ready to do the same work for less pay, and
how are these usually distinguished from such as obtain the higher rate
of remuneration?

_The cheap workmen_ in all trades, I find, are divisible into three
classes:--

1. The unskilful.
2. The untrustworthy.
3. The inexpensive.

First, as regards the _unskilful_. Long ago it has been noticed
how frequently boys were put to trades to which their tastes and
temperaments were antagonistic. Gay, who in his quiet, unpretending
style often elicited a truth, tells how a century and a half ago the
generality of parents never considered for what business a boy was best
adapted--

“But ev’n in infancy decree
What this or t’ other son shall be.”

A boy thus brought up to a craft for which he entertains a dislike
can hardly become a proficient in it. At the present time thousands
of parents are glad to have their sons reared to _any_ business which
their means or opportunities place within their reach, even though
the lad be altogether unsuited to the craft. The consequence is, that
these boys often grow up to be unskilful workmen. There are technical
terms for them in different trades, but perhaps the generic appellation
is “muffs.” Such workmen, however well conducted, can rarely obtain
employment in a good shop at good wages, and are compelled, therefore,
to accept second, third, and fourth-rate wages, and are often driven to
slop work.

Other causes may be cited as tending to form unskilful workmen:
the neglect of masters or foremen, or their incapacity to teach
apprentices; irregular habits in the learner; and insufficient practice
during a master’s paucity of employment. I am assured, moreover, that
hundreds of mechanics yearly come to London _from the country parts_,
whose skill is altogether inadequate to the demands of the “honourable
trade.” Of course, during the finishing of their education they can
only work for inferior shops at inferior wages; hence another cause of
cheap labour. Of this I will cite an instance: a bootmaker, who for
years had worked for first-rate West-end shops, told me that when he
came to London from a country town he was sanguine of success, because
he knew that he was a _ready_ man (a quick workman.) He very soon
found out, however, he said, that as he aspired to do the best work,
he “had his business to learn all over again;” and until he attained
the requisite skill, he worked for “just what he could get:” he was a
cheap, because then an unskilful, labourer.

There is, moreover, the cheaper labour of _apprentices_, the great prop
of many a slop-trader; for as such traders disregard all the niceties
of work, as they disregard also the solidity and perfect finish of any
work (finishing it, as it was once described to me, “just to the eye”),
a lad is soon made useful, and his labour remunerative to his master,
as far as slop remuneration goes, which, though small in a small
business, is wealth in a “monster business.”

There are, again, the “_improvers_.” These are the most frequent in the
dress-making and millinery business, as young women find it impossible
to form a good connection among a wealthier class of ladies in any
country town, unless the “patronesses” are satisfied that their skill
and taste have been perfected in London. In my inquiry (in the course
of two letters in the _Morning Chronicle_) into the condition of the
workwomen in this calling, I was told by a retired dressmaker, who had
for upwards of twenty years carried on business in the neighbourhood
of Grosvenor-square, that she had sometimes met with “improvers” so
tasteful and quick, from a good provincial tuition, that they had
really little or nothing to learn in London. And yet their services
were secured for one, and oftener for two years, merely for board and
lodging, while others employed in the same establishment had not only
board and lodging, but handsome salaries. The improver’s, then, is
generally a cheap labour, and often a very cheap labour too. The same
form of cheap labour prevails in the carpenter’s trade.

There is, moreover, the labour of _old men_. A tailor, for instance,
who may have executed the most skilled work of his craft, in his
old age, or before the period of old age, finds his eyesight fail
him,--finds his tremulous fingers have not a full and rapid mastery
of the needle, and he then labours, at greatly reduced rates of
payment, on the making of soldiers’ clothing--“sanc-work,”[56] as it is
called--or on any ill-paid and therefore ill-wrought labour.

The inferior, as regards the quality of the work, and under-paid class
of _women_, in tailoring, for example, again, cheapen labour. It is
cheapened, also, by the employment of _Irishmen_ (in, perhaps, all
branches of skilled or unskilled labour), and of _foreigners_, more
especially of Poles, who are inferior workmen to the English, and who
will work _very_ cheap, thus supplying a low-price labour to those who
seek it.

I may remark further, that if a first-rate workman be driven to slop
work, he soon loses his skill; he can only work slop; this has been
shown over and over again, and so _his_ labour becomes cheap in the
mart.

* * * * *

2. Of _Untrustworthy Labour_ (as a cause of cheap labour) I need not
say much. It is obvious that a drunken, idle, or dishonest workman or
workwoman, when pressed by want, will and must labour, not for the
recompense the labour merits, but for whatever pittance an employer
will accord. There is no reliance to be placed in him. Such a man
cannot “hold out” for terms, for he is perhaps starving, and it is
known that “he cannot be depended upon.” In the sweep’s trade many of
those who work at a lower rate than the rest of the trade are men who
have lost their regular work by dishonesty.

* * * * *

3. The _Inexpensive class_ of workpeople are very numerous. They
consist of three sub-divisions:--

(_a._) Those who have been accustomed to a coarser kind of diet, and
who, consequently, requiring less, can afford to work for less.

(_b._) Those who derive their subsistence from other sources, and who,
consequently, do not live by their labour.

(_c._) Those who are in receipt of certain “aids to their wages,” or
who have other means of living beside their work.

Of course these causes can alone have influence where the wages are
_minimized_ or reduced to the lowest ebb of subsistence, in which case
they become so many means of driving down the price of labour still
lower.

_a._ Those who, being what is designated hard-reared that is to say,
accustomed to a scantier or coarser diet, and who, therefore, “can do”
with a less quantity or less expensive quality of food than the average
run of labourers, can of course live at a lower cost, and so _afford_
to work at a lower rate. Among such (unskilled) labourers are the
peasants from many of the counties, who seek to amend their condition
by obtaining employment in the towns. I will instance the agricultural
labourers of Dorsetshire.

“Bread and potatoes,” writes Mr. Thornton, in his work on
Over-Population and its Remedy, p. 21, “do really form the staple of
their food. As for meat, most of them would not know its taste, if,
once or twice _in the course of their lives_,--on the squire’s having
a son and heir born to him, or on the young gentleman’s coming of
age,--they were not regaled with a dinner of what the newspapers call
‘old English fare.’ Some of them contrive to have a little bacon, in
the proportion, it seems, of _half a pound a week to a dozen persons_,
but they more commonly use fat to give the potatoes a relish; and, as
one of them said to Mr. Austin (a commissioner), ‘they don’t _always_
go without cheese.’”

With many poor Irishmen the rearing has been still harder. I had some
conversation with an Irish rubbish-carter, who had been thrown out
of work (and was entitled to no allowance from any trade society) in
consequence of a strike by Mr. Myers’s men. On my asking him how he
subsisted in Ireland, “Will, thin, sir,” he said, “and it’s God’s
truth, I once lived for days on green things I picked up by the road
side, and the turnips, and that sort of mate I stole from the fields.
It was called staling, but it was the hunger, ’deed was it. That was in
the county Limerick, sir, in the famine and ’viction times; and, glory
be to God, I ’scaped when others didn’t.”

I may observe that the chief local paper, the _Limerick and Clare
Examiner_, published twice a week, gave, twice a week, at the period of
“the famine and evictions,” statements similar to that of my informant.

Now, would not a poor man, reared as the Limerick peasant I
have spoken of, who was actually driven to eat the grass, which
biblical history shows was once a signal punishment to a great
offender--would not such a man work for the veriest dole, rather than
again be subjected to the pangs of hunger? In my inquiries among the
costermongers, one of them said of the Irish in his trade, and without
any bitterness, “they’ll work for nothing, and live on less.” The
meaning is obvious enough, although the assertion is, of course, a
contradiction in itself.

“This department of labour,” says Mr. Baines, in his History of the
Hand-Loom Weavers, is “greatly overstocked, and the price necessarily
falls. The evil is aggravated by the multitudes of Irish who have
flocked into Lancashire, some of whom, having been linen weavers,
naturally resort to the loom, and others learn to weave as the easiest
employment they can adopt. Accustomed to a wretched mode of living in
their own country, they are contented with wages that would starve an
English labourer. They have, in fact, so lowered the _rate_ of wages as
to drive many of the English out of the employment, and to drag down
those who remain in it to their own level.”

_b._ Those who derive their subsistence from other sources can, of
course, afford to work cheaper than those who have to live by their
labour. To this class belongs the labour of wives and children, who,
being supposed to be maintained by the toil of the husband, are never
paid “living wages” for what they do; and hence the misery of the
great mass of needlewomen, widows, unmarried and friendless females,
and the like, who, having none to assist them, are forced to starve
upon the pittance they receive for their work. The labour of those who
are in prisons, workhouses, and asylums, and who consequently have
their subsistence found them in such places, as well as the work of
prostitutes, who obtain their living by other means than work, all come
under the category of those who can afford to labour at a lower rate
than such as are condemned to toil for an honest living. It is the same
with apprentices and “improvers,” for whose labour the instruction
received is generally considered to be either a sufficient or partial
recompense, and who consequently look to other means for their support.
Under the same head, too, may be cited the labour of amateurs, that
is to say, of persons who either are not, or who are too proud to
acknowledge themselves, regular members of the trade at which they
work. Such is the case with very many of the daughters of tradesmen,
and of many who are considered _genteel_ people. These young women,
residing with their parents, and often in comfortable homes, at no cost
to themselves, will, and do, undersell the regular needlewomen; the one
works merely for pocket-money (often to possess herself of some article
of finery), while the other works for what is called “the bare life.”

_c._ The last-mentioned class, or those who are in possession of what
may be called “aids to wages,” are differently circumstanced. Such are
the men who have other employment besides that for which they accept
less than the ordinary pay, as is the case with those who attend at
gentlemen’s houses for one or two hours every morning, cleaning boots,
brushing clothes, &c., and who, having the remainder of the day at
their own disposal, can afford to work at any calling cheaper than
others, because not solely dependent upon it for their living.

The army and navy pensioners (non-commissioned officers and privates)
were, at one period, on the disbanding of the militia and other forces,
a very numerous body, but it was chiefly the military pensioners
whose position had an effect upon the labour of the country. The
naval pensioners found employment as fishermen, or in some avocation
connected with the sea. The military pensioners, however, were men
who, after a career of soldiership, were not generally disposed to
settle down into the drudgery of regular work, even if it were in
their power to do so; and so, as they always had their pensions
to depend upon, they were a sort of universal jobbers, and jobbed
cheaply. At the present time, however, this means of cheap labour is
greatly restricted, compared with what was the case, the number of the
pensioners being considerably diminished. Many of the army pensioners
turn the wheels for turners at present.

The allotment of gardens, which yield a partial support to the
allottee, are another means of cheap labour. The allotment demands a
certain portion of time, but is by no means a thorough employment,
but merely an “aid,” and consequently a _means_, to low wages. Such a
man has the advantage of obtaining his potatoes and vegetables at the
cheapest rate, and so can afford to work cheaper than other men of his
class. It was the same formerly with those who received “relief” under
the old Poor-Law.

And even under the present system it has been found that the same
practice is attended with the same result. In the Sixth Annual Report
of the Poor-Law Commissioners, 1840, at p. 31, there are the following
remarks on the subject:--

“Whilst upon the subject of relief to widows in aid of wages, we must
not omit to bring under your Lordship’s notice an illustration of the
_depressing effect_ which is produced by the practice of giving relief
in aid of wages to widows upon the earnings of females. Colonel A’Court
states:--

“‘As regards females, the instance to which I have alluded presents
itself in the Portsea Island Union, where, from the insufficiency of
workhouse accommodation, as well as from benevolent feelings, small
allowances of 1_s._ 6_d._ or 2_s._ a week are given to widows with
or without small children, or to married women deserted by their
husbands. _Having this certain income, however small, they are enabled
to work at lower wages than those who do not possess this advantage._
The consequence is, that competition has enabled the shirt and stay
manufacturers, who abound in the Union, and who furnish in great
measure the London as well as many foreign markets with these articles
of their trade, to get their work done at the extraordinary low prices
of--stays, complete, 9_d._; shirts, from 1_s._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ per dozen.

“‘The women all declare that they cannot possibly, after working from
twelve to fifteen hours per day, earn more than 1_s._ 6_d._ per week.
The manufacturers assert that, by steady work, 4_s._ to 6_s._ a week
may be earned under ordinary circumstances.

“‘In the meantime _the demand for workwomen increases_, and it is by no
means unusual to see hand-bills posted over the town requiring from 500
to 1000 additional stitchers.’”

Such, then, is the character of the cheap workers in all trades; go
where we will, we shall find the low-priced labour of the trade to
consist of either one or other of the three classes above-mentioned;
while the _means_ by which this labour is brought into operation will
be generally by one of the “systems of work” before specified.

* * * * *

The cheap labour of the rubbish-carters’ trade appears to be a
consequence of two distinct antecedents, viz., casual labour and
the prevalence of the contract system among builder’s work. The
small-master system also appears to have some influence upon it.

First as regards the influence of casual labour in reducing the
ordinary rate of wages.

The tables given at p. 290, vol. ii., showing the wages paid to the
rubbish-carters, present what appears, and indeed is, a strange
discrepancy of payment to the labourers in rubbish-carting. About
three-fourths of the rubbish-carters throughout London receive 18_s._
weekly, when in work; in Hampstead, however, the rate of their wages
is (uniformly) 20_s._ a week; in Lambeth (but less uniformly), it is
19_s._; in Wandsworth, 17_s._; in Islington, 16_s._; and in Greenwich,
14_s._ and 12_s._ The character of the work, whether executed for
12_s._ or 20_s._ weekly, is the same; why, then, can a rubbish-carter,
who works at Hampstead, earn 8_s._ a week more than one who works at
Greenwich? An employer of rubbish-carters, and of similar labourers,
on a large scale, a gentleman thoroughly conversant with the subject
in all its industrial bearings, accounts for the discrepancy in this
manner:--

After the corn and the hop-harvests have terminated, there is always an
influx of unskilled labourers into Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich.
These are the men who, from the natural bent of their dispositions, or
from the necessity of their circumstances, resort to the casual labour
afforded by the revolution of the seasons, when to gather the crops
before the weather may render the harvest precarious and its produce
unsound, is a matter of paramount necessity, and the increase of hands
employed during this season is, as a consequence, proportionately
great. The chief scene of such labour in the neighbourhood of the
metropolis, is in the county of Kent; and on the cessation of this
work, of course there is a large amount of labour “turned adrift,”
to seek, the next few days, for any casual employment that may “turn
up.” In this way, I am assured, a large amount of cheap and unskilled
labour is being constantly placed at the command of those masters who,
so to speak, occupy the line of march to London, and are, therefore,
first applied to for employment by casual labourers; who, when engaged,
are employed as inferior, or unskilful, workmen, at an inferior rate of
remuneration. Greenwich may be looked upon as the first stage or halt
for casual labourers, on their way to London.

My informant assured me, as the result of his own observations, that
an English labourer would, as a general rule, execute more work by
one-sixth, in a week, than an Irish labourer (a large proportion of
the casual hands are Irish); that is, the extent of work which would
occupy the Irishman six, would occupy the Englishman but five days,
were it so calculated. The Englishman was, however, usually more
skilled and persevering, and far more to be depended upon. So different
was the amount of work, even in rubbish-carting, between an able and
experienced hand and one unused to the toil, or one inadequate from
want of alertness or bodily strength, or any other cause, to its full
and quick execution, that two “good” men in a week have done as much
work as three indifferent hands. Thus two men at 18_s._ weekly each are
as cheap (only employers cannot always see it), when they are thorough
masters of their business, as three unready hands at 12_s._ a week
each. The misfortune, however, is, that the 12_s._ a week men have a
tendency to reduce the 16_s._ to their level.

With regard to the difference between the wages of Hampstead and
Greenwich, I am informed that stationary working rubbish-carters
are not too numerous in Hampstead, which is considered as rather
“out of the way;” and as that metropolitan suburb is surrounded in
every direction by pasture-land and wood-land, it is not in the
line of resort of the class of men who seek the casual labour in
harvesting, &c., of which I have spoken; it is rarely visited by them,
and consequently, the regular hands are less interfered with than
elsewhere, and wages have not been deteriorated.

The mode of work among the scurf labourers differs somewhat from
that of the honourable part of the trade; the work executed by the
scurf masters being for the most part on a more limited scale than
that of the others. To meet the demands of builders or of employers
generally, when “time” is an object, demands the use of relays of men,
and of strong horses. This demand the smaller or scurf master cannot
always meet. He may find men, but not always horses and carts, and
he will often enough undertake work beyond his means and endeavour
to aggrandise his profits by screwing his labourers. The _hours of
scurf-employed labour_ are nominally the same as the regular trade, but
as an Irish carter said, “it’s ralely the hours the masther plases, and
they’re often as long as it’s light.” The _scurf labourer is often paid
by the day_, with “a day’s hire, and no notice beyond.” I am informed
that scurf labourers generally work an hour a day, without extra
remuneration, longer than those in the honourable trade.

The rubbish-carters employed by the scurf masters are not, as a body, I
am assured, so badly paid as they were a few years back. It is rarely
that labouring men can advance any feasible reason for the changes in
their trade.

_One of the main causes of the deteriorated wages_ of the
rubbish-carters is the system of contracting and subletting. This,
however, is but a branch of the ramified system of subletting in the
construction of the “scamped” houses of the speculative builders. The
building of such houses is sublet, literally from cellar to chimney.
The rubbish-carting may be contracted for at a certain sum. The
contractor may sublet it to men who will do it for one-fourth less
perhaps, and who may sublet the labour in their turn. For instance,
the calculation may be founded on the working men’s receiving 15_s._
weekly. A contractor, a man possessing a horse, perhaps, and a couple
of carts, and hiring another horse, will undertake it on the knowledge
of his being able to engage men at 12_s._ or 13_s._ weekly, and so
obtain a profit; indeed the reduction of price in such cases must all
come out of the labour.

This subletting, I say, is but a small part of a gigantic system,
and it is an unquestionable cause of the grinding down of the
rubbish-carters’ wages, and that by a class who have generally been
working men themselves, and risen to be the owners of one or two carts
and horses.

From one of these men, now a working carter, I had the following
account, which further illustrates the mode of labour as well as of
employment.

“I got a little a-head,” he stated, “from railway jobbing and such
like, and my father-in-law, as soon as I got married, made me a present
of 20_l._ unexpected. I started for myself, thinking to get on by
degrees, and get a fresh horse and cart every year. But it couldn’t be
done, sir. If I offered to take a contract to cart the rubbish and dig
it, a builder would say,--‘I can’t wait; you haven’t carts and horses
enough from your own account, and I can’t wait. If you have to hire
them I can do that myself.’ I was too honest, sir, in telling the plain
truth, or I might have got more jobs. It’s not a good trade in a small
way, for if your horses aren’t at work, they’re eating their heads off,
and you’re fretting your heart out. Then I got to do sub-contracting,
as you call it. No, it weren’t that, it was under-working. I’d go to
Mr. V---- as I knew, and say, ‘You’re on such a place, sir, have you
room for me?’ ‘I think not,’ he’d say, ‘I’ve only the regular thing
and no advantages--10_s._ 6_d._ for a day’s work, horse and cart, or
4_s._ a load.’ Those are the regular terms. Then I’d say, ‘Well, sir,
I’ll do it for 8_s._ 6_d._, and be my own carman;’ and so perhaps I’d
get the job, and masters often say: ‘I know I shall lose at 10_s._
6_d._, but if I don’t, you shall have something over.’ Get anything
over! Of course not, sir. I could have lived if I had constant work
for two horses and carts, for I would have got a cheap man; such as me
must get cheap men to drive the second cart, and under my own eye,
whenever I could; but one of my poor horses broke his leg, and had to
be sent to the knacker’s, and I sold the other and my carts, and have
worked ever since as a labouring man; mainly at pipe-work. O, yes, and
rubbish-carting. I get 18_s._ a week now, but not regular.

“Well, sir, I’m sure I can’t say, and I think no man could say, how
much there’s doing in sub-contracting. If I’m at work in Cannon-street,
I don’t know what’s doing at Notting-hill, or beyond Bow and Stratford.
No, I’m satisfied there’s not so much of it as there was, but it’s done
so on the sly; who knows how much is done still, or how little? It’s a
system as may be carried on a long time, and is carried on, as far as
men’s labour goes, but it’s different where there’s horses, and stable
rent. They can’t be screwed, or under-fed, beyond a certain pitch, or
they couldn’t work at all, and so there’s not as much under-work about
horse-labour.”

These small men are among the scurf and petty rubbish-carters, and are
often the means of depressing the class to which they have belonged.

The employment in the honourable trade at rubbish-carting would be
one of the best among unskilled labourers, were it continuous. But it
is not continuous, and three-fourths of those engaged in it have only
six months’ work at it in the year. In the scurf-masters’ employ, the
work is really “casual,” or, as I heard it quite as often described,
“chance.” In both departments of this trade, the men out of work look
for a job in scavagery, and very generally in night-work, or, indeed,
in any labour that offers. The Irish rubbish-carters will readily
become hawkers of apples, oranges, walnuts, and even nuts, when out of
employ, so working in concert with their wives. I heard of only four
instances of a similar resource by the English rubbish-carters.

What I have said of the education, religion, politics, concubinage,
&c., &c., of the better-paid rubbish-carters would have but to be
repeated, if I described those of the under-paid. The latter may be
more reckless when they have the means of enjoyment, but their diet,
amusements, and expenditure would be the same, were their means
commensurate. As it is, they sometimes live very barely and have hardly
any amusements at their command. Their dinners, when single men, are
often bread and a saveloy; when married, sometimes tea and bread and
butter, and occasionally some “block ornaments;” the Irish being the
principal consumers of cheap fish.

The labour of the wives of the rubbish-carters is far more frequently
that of char-women than of needle-women, for the great majority
of these women before their marriage were servant-maids. All the
information I received was concurrent in that respect. The wife of a
carman who keeps a chandler’s shop near the Edgeware-road, greatly
resorted to by the class to which her husband belonged, told me that
out of somewhere about 25 wives of rubbish-carters or similar workmen,
whom she knew, 20 had been domestic servants; what the others had been
she did not know.

“I can tell you, sir,” said the woman, “charing is far better than
needle-work; far. If a young woman has conducted herself well in
service, she can get charing, and then if she conducts herself well
again, she makes good friends. That’s, of course, if they’re honest,
sir. I know it from experience. My husband--before we were able to open
this shop--was in the hospital a long time, and I went out charing,
and did far better than a sister I have, who is a capital shirt-maker.
There’s broken victuals, sometimes, for your children. It’s a hard
world, sir, but there’s a many good people in it.”

One woman (before mentioned) earned not less than 5_s._ weekly in
superior shirt-making, as it was described to me, which was evidently
looked upon as a handsome remuneration for such toil. Another earned
3_s._ 6_d._; another 2_s._ 6_d._; and others, with uncertain employ,
2_s._, 1_s._ 6_d._, and in some weeks nothing. Needle-work, however,
is, I am informed, not the work of one-tenth of the rubbish-carters’
wives, whatever the earnings of the husband. From all I could learn,
too, the wives of the under-paid rubbish-carters earned more, by
from 10 to 20 per cent., than those of the better-paid. The earnings
of a charwoman in average employ, as regards the wives of the
rubbish-carters, is about 4_s._ weekly, without the exhausting toil of
the needle-woman, and with the advantage of sometimes receiving broken
meat, dripping, fat, &c., &c. The wives of the Irish labourers in this
trade are often all the year street-sellers, some of wash-leathers,
some of cabbage-nets, and some of fruit, clearing perhaps from 6_d._ to
9_d._ a day, if used to street-trading, as the majority of them are.

The under-paid labourers in this trade are chiefly poor Irishmen. The
Irish workmen in this branch of the trade have generally been brought
up “on the land,” as they call it, in their own country, and after the
sufferings of many of them during the famine, 12_s._ a week is regarded
as “a rise in the world.”

From one of this class I learned the following particulars. He seemed a
man of 26 or 28:--

“I was brought up on the land, sir,” he said, “not far from Cullin, in
the county Wexford. I lived with my father and mother, and shure we
were badly off. Shure, thin, we were. Father and mother--the Heavens be
their bed--died one soon after another, and some friends raised me the
manes to come to this country. Well, thin, indeed, sir, and I can’t say
how they raised them, God reward them. I got to Liverpool, and walked
to London, where I had some relations. I sold oranges in the strates
the first day I was in London. God help me, I was glad to do anything
to get a male’s mate. I’ve lived on 6_d._ a-day sometimes. I have
indeed. There was 2_d._ for the lodging, and 4_d._ for the mate, the
tay and bread and butter. Did I live harder than that in Ireland, your
honour? Well, thin, I have. I’ve lived on a dish of potatoes that might
cost a penny there, where things is bhutiful and chape. Not like this
country. No, no. I wouldn’t care to go back. I have no friends there
now. Thin I got ingaged by a man--yis, he was a rubbish-carter--to
help him to fill his cart, and then we shot it on some new garden
grounds, and had to shovel it about to make the grounds livil, afore
the top soil was put on, for the bhutiful flowers and the gravel walks.
Tim--yis, he was a counthryman of mine, but a Cor-rk man--said he’d
made a bad bargain, for he was bad off, and he only clared 4_d._ a
load, and he’d divide it wid me. We did six loads in a day, and I got
1_s._ every night for a wake. This was a rise. But one Sunday evening
I was standing talking with people as lived in the same coort, and
I tould how I was helping Tim. And two Englishmen came to find four
men as they wanted for work, and ould Ragin (Regan) tould them what I
was working for. And one of ’em said, I was ‘a b---- Irish fool,’ and
ould Ragin said so, and words came on, and thin there was a fight, and
the pelleece came, and thin the fight was harder. I was taken to the
station, and had a month. I had two black eyes next morning, but was
willin’ to forget and forgive. No, I’m not fond of fightin’. I’m a
paceable man, glory be to God, and I think I was put on. Oh, yis, and
indeed thin, your honour, it was a fair fight.”

I inquired of an English rubbish-carter as to these fair fights. He
knew nothing of the one in question, but had seen such fights. They
were usually among the Irish themselves, but sometimes Englishmen were
“drawn into them.” “Fair fights! sir,” he said, “why the Irishes don’t
stand up to you like men. They don’t fight like Christians, sir; not a
bit of it. They kick, and scratch, and bite, and tear, like devils, or
cats, or women. They’re soon settled if you can get an honest knock at
them, but it isn’t easy.”

“I sarved my month,” continued my Irish informant, “and it ain’t a bad
place at all, the prison. I tould the gintleman that had charge of us,
that I was a Roman Catholic, God be praised, and couldn’t go to his
prayers. ‘O very well, Pat,’ says he. And next day the praste came, and
we were shown in to him, and very angry he was, and said our conduc’
was a disgrace to religion, and to our counthry, and to him. Do I think
he was right, sir? God knows he was, or he wouldn’t have said so.

“I hadn’t been out of prison two hours before I was hired for a job, at
10_s._ a week. It was in the city, and I carried old bricks and rubbish
along planks, from the inside of a place as was pulled down; but the
outside, all but the roof, was standin’ until the windor frames, and
the door posts, and what other timbers there was, was sould. It was
dreadful hard work, carrying the basket of rubbish on your back to the
cart. The dust came through, and stuck to my neck, for I was wet all
over wid sweatin’ so. Every man was allowed a pint of beer a day, and
I thought nivver anything was so sweet. I don’t know who gave it. The
masther, I suppose. Will, thin, sir, I don’t know who was the masther;
it was John Riley as ingaged me, but _he’s_ no masther. Yis, thin,
and I’ve been workin’ that way ivver since. I’ve sometimes had 14_s._
a week, and sometimes 10_s._, and sometimes 12_s._ A man like me
must take what he can get, and I will take it. I’ve been out of work
sometimes, but not so much as some, for I’m young and strong. No, I
can’t save no money, and I have nothing just now to save it for. When
I’m out of work, I sell fruit in the streets.”

This statement, then, as regards the Irish labourers, shows the
quality of the class employed. The English labourers, working on the
same terms, are of the usual class of men so working,--broken-down
men, unable, or accounting themselves unable, to “do better,” and so
accepting any offer affording the means of their daily bread.

OF THE LONDON CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

Chimney-Sweepers are a consequence of two things--chimneys and the
use of coals as fuel; and these are both commodities of comparatively
recent introduction.

It is generally admitted that the earliest mention of _chimneys_ is
in an Italian MS., preserved in Venice, in which it is recorded that
chimneys were thrown down in that city from the shock of an earthquake
in 1347. In England, down even to the commencement of the reign of
Elizabeth, the greater part of the houses in our towns had no chimneys;
the fire was kindled on a hearth-stone on the floor, or on a raised
grate against the wall or in the centre of the apartment, and the smoke
found its way out of the doors, windows, or casements.

During the long, and--as regards civil strife--generally peaceful,
reign of Elizabeth, the use of chimneys increased. In a Discourse
prefixed to an edition of Holinshed’s “Chronicles,” in 1577, Harrison,
the writer, complains, among other things, “marvellously altered for
the worse in England,” of the multitude of chimneys erected of late.
“Now we have many chimneys,” he says, “and our tenderlings complain
of rheums, catarrhs, and poses. Then we had none but _reredoses_,
and our heads did never ache.”[57] He demurs, too, to the change in
the material of which the houses were constructed: “Houses were once
builded of willow, then we had oaken men; but now houses are made of
oak, and our men not only become willow, but a great many altogether of
straw, which is a sore alteration.”

In Shakespeare’s time, the chimney-sweepers seem to have become a
recognised class of public cleansers, for in “Cymbeline” the poet says--

“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
_As chimney-sweepers_ come to dust.”

In this beautiful passage there is an intimation, by the
“chimney-sweepers” being contrasted with the “golden lads and girls,”
that their employment was regarded as of the meanest, a repute it bears
to the present day.

But chimneys seem, like the “sweeps” or “sweepers,” to have been a
necessity of a change of fuel. In the days of “rere-dosses,” our
ancestors burnt only wood, so that they were not subjected to so
great an inconvenience as we should be were our fires kindled without
the vent of the chimney. Our fuel is coal, which produces a greater
quantity of soot, and of black smoke, which is the result of imperfect
combustion, than any other fuel, the smoke from wood being thin and
pure in comparison.

The first mention of the use of coal as fuel occurs in a charter of
Henry III., granting licence to the burgesses of Newcastle to dig for
coal. In 1281 Newcastle is said to have had some slight trade in this
article. Shortly afterwards coal began to be imported into London for
the use of smiths, brewers, dyers, soap-boilers, &c. In 1316, during
the reign of Edward I., its use in London was prohibited because of the
supposed injurious influence of the smoke. In 1600 the use of coal in
the metropolis became universal; about 200 vessels were employed in the
London trade, and about 200,000 chaldrons annually imported.

In 1848, however, there were, besides the railway-borne coals, 12,267
cargoes imported, or 3,418,340 tons. The London coal trade now employs
2700 vessels and 21,600 seamen, and constitutes one-fourth of the whole
general trade of the Thames.

To understand the _necessity_ for chimney-sweepers, and the extent
of the work for them to do, that is to say, the quantity of soot
deposited in our chimneys during the combustion of the three and a half
millions of tons of coals that are now annually consumed in London,
we must first comprehend the conditions upon which the evolution
of soot depends, soot being simply the fine carbonaceous particles
condensed from the smoke of coal fuel, and deposited against the sides
of the chimneys during its ascent between the walls to the tops of
our houses. These conditions appear to have been determined somewhat
accurately during the investigations of the Smoke Prevention Committee.

There are two kinds of smoke from the ordinary materials of
combustion--(A) _Opaque_, or black smoke; (B) _Transparent_, or
invisible smoke.

A. The _Opaque_ smoke, though the most offensive and annoying from
its dirtying properties, is, like the muddiest water, the least
injurious to animal or vegetable health. It consists of the particles
of unconsumed carbon which have not been deposited in the form of soot
in the flue or chimney. This is the black smoke which will be further
described.

B. _Transparent_ smoke is composed of gases which are for the most
part invisible, such as carbonic acid and carbonic oxide; also of
sulphurous acid, but smokes with that component are both visible and
invisible. The sulphurous acid is said by Professor Brande to destroy
vegetation, for it has long been a cause of wonder why vegetation
in towns did not flourish, since carbonic acid (which is so largely
produced from the action of our fires) is the vital air of trees,
shrubs, and plants[58].

I may here observe, that several of the scientific men who gave
the results of years of observation and study in their evidence
to the Committee of the House of Commons, remarked on the popular
misunderstanding of what smoke was, it being generally regarded as
something _visible_. But in the composition of smoke, it appears, one
product may be visible, and another invisible, and both offensive;
while “occasionally you may have from the same materials varieties of
products, all invisible, according to the manner to which they are
supplied with air.”

The Committee requested Dr. Reid to prepare a definition of “smoke,”
and more especially of “black smoke.” The following is the substance of
the doctor’s definition, or rather description:--

1. _Black Smoke_ consists essentially of carbon separated by heat
from coal or other combustible bodies. If this smoke be produced
at a very high temperature, the carbon forms a loose and powdery
soot, comparatively free from other substances; while the lower the
temperature at which black soot is formed, the larger is the amount
of other substances with which it is mingled, among which are the
following:--carbon, water, resin, oily and other inflammable products
of various volatilities, ammonia, and carbonate of ammonia.

When the carbon, oils, resin, and water are associated together in
certain proportions, they constitute _tar_. _Soft pitch_ is produced if
the tar be so far heated that the water is expelled; and _hard pitch_
(resin blackened by carbon) when the oils are volatilized.

In all cases of ordinary combustion, carbonic acid is formed by the
red-hot cinders, or by gases or other compounds containing carbon,
acting on the oxygen of the air. This carbonic acid is discharged
in general as an _invisible_ gas. If the carbonic acid pass through
red-hot cinders, or any carbonaceous smoke at a high temperature, it
loses one particle of oxygen, and becomes carbonic oxide gas. The lost
oxygen, uniting with carbon, forms an additional amount of carbonic
oxide gas, which passes to the external atmosphere as an invisible gas,
unless kindled in its progress, or at the top of the chimney, when its
temperature is sufficiently elevated by the action of air. Carbonic
oxide gas burns with a blue flame, and produces carbonic acid gas.

Black smoke is always associated with carburetted hydrogen gases. These
may be mechanically blended with the oils and resins, but must be
carefully distinguished from them. They form more essentially, when in
a state of combustion, the inflammable matters that constitute flame.

2. _Smoke from Charcoal, Coke, and Anthracite_, is always invisible if
the material be dry. A flame may appear, however, if carbonic oxide be
formed.

3. _Wood or Pyroligneous Smoke_ is rarely black. Water and carbonic
acid are the products of the full combustion of wood, omitting the
consideration of the ash that remains.

4. _Sulphurous Smokes._ Tons of sulphur are annually evolved in various
conditions from copper-works. Offensive sulphurous smokes are often
evolved from various chemical works, as gas-works, acid-works, &c.

5. _Hydrochloric Acid Smoke_ is evolved in general in large quantities
from alkali works.

6. _Metallic Smokes_--when ores of lead, copper, arsenic, &c., are
used--often contain offensive matter in a minute state of division, and
suspended in the smoke evolved from the furnaces.

7. _Putrescent Smokes_, loaded with the products of decayed animal and
vegetable matter, are evolved at times from drains in visible vapours,
more especially in damp weather. The fœtid particles, when associated
with moisture in this smoke, are entirely decomposed when subjected to
heat.

Dr. Ure says, speaking of the cause of the ordinary black smoke above
described, “The inevitable conversion of atmospheric air into carbonic
acid has been hitherto the radical defect of almost all furnaces. The
consequence is, that this gaseous matter is mixed with an atmosphere
containing far too little oxygen, and instead of burning the carbon
and hydrogen, which constitute the coal gases, the carbon is deposited
partly in a pulverized form, constituting smoke or soot, and a great
deal of the carbon gets half-burnt, and forms what is well known under
the name of carbonic oxide, which is half-burnt charcoal.”

“The ordinary smoke,” Professor Faraday said, in his examination before
the Committee, “is the visible black part of the products, the unburnt
portions of the carbon. If you prevent the production of carbonic oxide
or carbonic acid, you increase the production of smoke. You must with
coal fuel either have carbonic acid or oxide, or else black smoke.

“Which is the least noxious?” he was asked, and answered, “As far as
regards health, carbonic acid and carbonic oxide are most noxious to
health; but it is not so much a question of health as of cleanliness
and comfort, because I believe that this town is as healthy as other
places where there are not these fires.

“It is partly the impure coal gas evolved after the fresh charge of
coal which originates the smokes, when not properly supplied with air;
but it is a very mixed question. When a fresh charge of coal is put
upon the fire, a great quantity of evaporable matter, which would be
called impure coal gas according to the language of the question, is
produced; and as that matter travels on in the heated place, if there
be a sufficient supply of air, both the hydrogen and the carbon are
entirely burnt. But if there be an insufficient supply of air, the
hydrogen is taken possession of first, and the carbon is set free in
its black and solid form; and if that goes into the cool part of the
chimney before fresh air gets to it, that carbon is so carried out
into the atmosphere and is the smoke in question. Generally speaking,
the great rush of smoke is when coal is first put on the fire; and
that from the want of a sufficient supply of oxygen at the right time,
because the carbon is cooled so low as not to take fire.”

This eminent chemist stated also that there was no difference in the
ultimate chemical effect upon the air between a wood fire and a coal
fire, but with wood there was not so much smoke set free in the heated
place, which caused a difference in the gaseous products of wood
combustion and of coal combustion. He thought that perhaps wood was
the fuel which would be most favourable to health as affecting the
atmosphere, inasmuch as it produced more water, and less carbonic acid,
as the product of combustion.

What may be called the _peculiarities_ of a smoky and sooty atmosphere
are of course more strongly developed in London than elsewhere, as the
following curious statements show:--

Dr. Reid, in describing metropolitan smoke, spoke of “those black
portions of soot that every one is familiar with, which annoy us, for
instance, at the Houses of Parliament to such an extent that I have
been under the necessity of putting up a veil, about 40 feet long and
12 feet deep, on which, on a single evening, taking the worst kind of
weather for the production of soot, we can count occasionally 200,000
visible portions of soot excluded at a single sitting. We count with
the naked eye the number of pieces entangled upon a square inch. I
have examined the amount deposited on different occasions in different
parts of London at the tops of some houses; and on one occasion at the
Horse Guards the amount of soot deposited was so great, that it formed
a complete and continuous film, so that when I walked upon it I saw
the impression of my foot left as distinctly on that occasion as when
snow lies upon the ground. The film was exceedingly thin, but I could
discover no want of continuity. On other occasions I have noticed in
London that the quantity that escapes into individual houses is so
great that in a single night I have observed a mixture of soot and of
hoar frost collecting at the edge of the door, and forming a stripe
three-quarters of an inch in breadth, and bearing an exact resemblance
to a pepper and salt grey cloth. Those that I refer to are extreme
occasions.”

Mr. Booth mentioned, that one of the gardeners of the Botanic Garden in
the Regent’s-park, could tell the number of days sheep had been in the
park from the blackness of their wool, its oleaginous power retaining
the black.

Dr. Ure informed the Committee that a column of smoke might be seen
extending in different directions round London, according to the way of
the wind, for a distance of from 20 to 30 miles; and that Sir William
Herschel had told him that when the wind blew from London he could not
use his great telescope at Slough.

It was stated, moreover, that when a respirator is washed, the water is
rendered dirty by the particles of soot adhering to the wire gauze, and
which, but for this, would have entered the mouth.

Professor Brande said, on the subject of the public health being
affected by smoke, “I cannot say that my opinion is that smoke produces
any unhealthiness in London; it is a great nuisance certainly; but I
do not think we have any good evidence that it produces disease of any
kind.”

“This Committee,” said Mr. Beckett, “have been told that, by the
mechanical effects of smoke upon the chest and lungs, disease
takes place; that is, by swallowing a certain quantity of smoke
the respiratory organs are injured; can you give any opinion upon
that?”--“One would conceive,” replied the Professor, “that that is the
case; but when we compare the health of London with that of any other
town or place where they are comparatively free or quite free from
smoke, we do not find that difference which we should expect in regard
to health.”

Mr. E. Solly, lecturer on chemistry at the Royal Institution, expressed
his opinion of the effect of smoke upon the health of towns:--

“My impression is,” he said, “that it produces decided evil in two or
three ways: first, mechanically; the solid black carbonaceous matter
produces a great deal of disease; it occasions dirt amongst the lower
orders, and, if they will not take pains to remove it, it engenders
disease. If we could do away the smoke nuisance, I believe a great deal
of that disease would be put an end to. But there is another point, and
that is, the bad effects produced by the gases, sulphurous acid and
other compounds of that nature, which are given out. If we do away with
smoke, we shall still have those gases; and I have no doubt that those
gases produce a great part of the disease that is produced by smoke.”

On the other hand Dr. Reid thought that smoke was more injurious from
the dirt it created than from causing impurity in the atmosphere,
although “it was obvious enough that the inspiration of a sooty
atmosphere must be injurious to persons of a delicate constitution.”
Dr. Ure pronounced smoke, in the common sense of visible black smoke,
unwholesome, but “not so eminently as the French imagine.”

Many witnesses stated their conviction that where poor people resided
amongst smoke, they felt it impossible to preserve cleanliness in
their persons or their dwellings, and that made them careless of
their homes and indifferent to a decency of appearance, so that the
public-house, and places where cleanliness and propriety were in no
great estimation, became places of frequent resort, on the plain
principle that if a man’s home were uncomfortable, he was not likely to
stay in it.

“I think,” said Mr. Booth, “one great effect of the evil of smoke is
upon the dwellings of the poor; it renders them less attentive to their
personal appearance, and, in consequence, to their social condition.”

It was also stated that there were “certain districts inhabited by
the poor, where they will not hang out their clothes to be cleansed;
they say it is of no use to do it, they will become dirty as before,
and consequently they do not have their clothes washed.” The districts
specified as presenting this characteristic are St. George’s-in-the
East and the neighbourhood of Old-street, St. Luke’s.

It must not be lost sight of, that whatever evils, moral or physical,
without regarding merely pecuniary losses, are inflicted by the excess
of smoke, they fall upon the poor, and almost solely on the poor. It is
the poor who must reside, as was said, and with a literality not often
applicable to popular phrases, “in the thick of it,” and consequently
there must either be increased washing or increased dirt.

To effect the mitigation of the nuisance of smoke, two points were
considered:--

A. The substitution of some other material, containing less bituminous
matter, for the “Newcastle coal.”

B. The combustion of the smoke, before its emission into the
atmospheric air, by means of mechanical contrivances founded on
scientific principles.

As regards the first consideration (A) it was recommended that
anthracite, or stone Welsh coal, which is a smokeless fuel, should be
used instead of the Newcastle coal. This coal is almost the sole fuel
in Philadelphia, a city of Quaker neatness beyond any in the United
States of North America, and sometimes represented as the cleanest in
the world. The anthracite coal is somewhat dearer than Newcastle coal
in London, but only in a small degree.

_Coke_ was also recommended as a substitute for coal in private
dwellings.

“Are you of opinion,” Dr. Reid was asked, “that smoke may be in a great
measure prevented by extending the use of gas and coke?” He answered,
“In numerous cities, where large quantities of gas are produced, coke
is very frequently the principal fuel of the poor, and the difficulty
of lighting that coke, and the difficulty of having heat developed
by it in sufficient quantity, necessarily led me to look at the
construction of the fire-places adapted for it. And on a general review
of the question, I do entertain the opinion, that if education were
more extended amongst the humblest classes with respect to the economy
of their own fireside (I mean, literally, the fire-place, at present),
and if gas were greatly extended, so that they did not drain the coal
of the gas-works of the last dregs of gaseous matter, which are of very
little use as gas, and more to be considered as adding to the bulk for
sale than as valuable gas, that a coke might be left which would be
easily accendible, which would be economical, and which, if introduced
into fire-places where an open fire is desired, would _entirely remove
the necessity of sweeping chimneys even with machines_, and would at
the same time give as economical a fire as any ordinary fire-place can
produce, for an ordinary coal fire rarely is powerful in its calorific
emanations till the mass of gas has been expelled, and we see the
cherry-red fire. The amount of gas that has escaped previously to the
production or coking of the fire, is the gas that is valuable in a
manufactory, and if therefore the individual consumer could have, not
the hard-burnt stony coke, but the soft coke, in the condition that
would give at once a cherry-red fire, we should attain the two great
objects--of economising gas, and at the same time of having a lively
cheerful fire. Then this led me to look particularly at the price of a
gas lamp for a poor man. In a poor man’s family, where the breakfast,
the tea and dinner, require the principal attention, and he has some
plain cooking utensils, in the heat of summer I believe that he will
produce as much heat as he wants for those purposes from a single
burner, which can be turned on and left all day, which shall not risk
any boiling over, and by having this pure heat directed to the object
to be warmed, instead of having a heavy iron grate, this plan would, if
gas were generally introduced even into the humblest apartments, prove
a great source of economy in summer.”

Dr. Reid also told the Committee that there was a great prejudice
against the use of coke, many persons considering that it produced a
sulphurous smell; but as all ordinary coal coked itself, or became coke
in an open fire, and was never powerfully calorific till it became
coke, the prejudice would die away.

Very little is said in the Report about the smoke of private houses; an
allusion, however, is made to that portion of the investigation:--“Your
Committee have received the most gratifying assurances of the confident
hope entertained by several of the highest scientific authorities
examined by them, that the black smoke proceeding from fires in private
dwellings, and all other places, may eventually be entirely prevented,
either by the adoption of stoves and grates formed for a perfect
combustion of the common bituminous coal, or by the use of coke, or of
anthracite; but they are of opinion that the present knowledge on that
subject is not such as to justify any legislative interference with
these smaller fires.”

“I should, in prospect,” Professor Faraday said to the Committee, “look
forward to the possibility of a great reduction of the smoke from coal
fires in houses; but my impression is, that, in the present state of
things, it would be tyrannical to determine that that must be done
which at present we do not know can be done. Still, I think there is
reason to believe that it can be effected in a very high degree.”

Dr. Ure also thought that to extend any smoke enactment to private
dwellings might be tyrannical in the present state of the chimneys,
but he had no doubt that smoke might be consumed in fires in private
dwellings.

* * * * *

Such, then, are the causes and remedies for smoke, and consequently of
soot, for smoke, or rather opaque smoke, consists, as we have seen, of
merely the gases of combustion with minute particles of carbon diffused
throughout them; and as smoke is the result of the imperfect burning of
our coals, it follows that chimney-sweepers are but a consequence of
our ignorance, and that, as we grow wiser in the art of economising our
fuel, we shall be gradually displacing this branch of labourers--the
means of preventing smoke being simply the mode of displacing the
chimney-sweepers--and this is another of the many facts to teach us
that not only are we doubling our population in forty years, but we are
likewise learning every year how to do our work with a less number of
workers, either by inventing some piece of mechanism that will enable
one “hand” to do as much as one hundred, or else doing away with some
branch of labour altogether. Here lies the great difficulty of the
time. A new element--science, with its offspring, steam--has been
introduced into our society within the last century, decreasing labour
at a time when the number of our labourers has been increasing at a
rate unexampled in history; and the problem is, how to reconcile the
new social element with the old social institutions, doing as little
injury as possible to the community.

Suppose, for instance, the “smoke nuisance” entirely prevented,
and that Professor Faraday’s prophecy as to the great reduction of
the smoke from coal fires in houses were fulfilled, and that the
expectations of the sanguine and intense Committee, who tell us that
they have “received _the most gratifying_ assurances of the _confident_
hope entertained by several of _the highest scientific_ authorities,
that the black smoke proceeding from fires in private dwellings and all
other places may be eventually _entirely_ prevented,”--suppose that
these expectations, I say, be realized (and there appears to be little
doubt of the matter), what is to become of the 1000 to 1500 “sweeps”
who live, as it were, upon this very smoke? Surely the whole community
should not suffer for them, it will be said. True; but unfortunately
the same argument is being applied to each particular section of the
labouring class,--and the labourers make up by far the greater part of
the community. If we are daily displacing a thousand labourers by the
annihilation of this process, and another thousand by the improvement
of that, what is to be the fate of those we put on one side? and where
shall we find employment for the hundred thousand new “hands” that are
daily coming into existence among us? This is the great problem for
earnest thoughtful men to work out!

* * * * *

But we have to deal here with the chimney-sweepers as they are, and
not as they may be in a more scientific age. And, first, as to _the
quantity of soot_ annually deposited at present in the London chimneys.

The quantity of soot produced in the metropolis every year may be
ascertained in the following manner:--

The larger houses are swept in some instances once a month, but
generally once in three months, and yield on an average six bushels of
soot per year. A moderate-sized house, belonging to the “middle class,”
is usually swept four times a year, and gives about five bushels of
soot per annum; while houses occupied by the working and poorer classes
are seldom swept more than twice, and sometimes only once, in the
twelvemonth, and yield about two bushels of soot annually.

The larger houses--the residences of noblemen and the more wealthy
gentry--may, then, be said to produce an average of six bushels of
soot annually; the houses of the more prosperous tradesmen, about five
bushels; while those of the humbler classes appear to yield only two
bushels of soot per annum. There are, according to the last returns, in
round numbers, 300,000 inhabited houses at present in the metropolis,
and these, from the “reports” of the income and property tax, may be
said to consist, as regards the average rentals, of the proportions
given in the next page.

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF HOUSES, AT DIFFERENT AVERAGE RENTALS,
THROUGHOUT THE METROPOLIS.

-------------------------------+-----------------------------+------------------------------
Number of Houses whose | Number of Houses whose |Number of Houses whose
Average Rental is above | Average Rental is above | Average Rental is below
£50. | £30 and below £50. | £30.
---------------+-------+-------+-------------+-------+-------+-------------+--------+-------
|Average|Number | |Average|Number | |Average |Number
|Rental.| of | |Rental.| of | |Rental. | of
| |Houses.| | |Houses.| | |Houses.
---------------+-------+-------+-------------+-------+-------+-------------+--------+-------
| £ | | | £ | | | £ |
Hanover-square,| | |Poplar | 44 | 6,882 |Chelsea | 29 | 7,629
May Fair | 150 | 8,795 |Pancras | 41 |18,731 |Wandsworth | 29 | 8,290
St. James’s | 128 | 3,460 |Hampstead | 40 | 1,719 |St. Luke’s | 28 | 6,421
St. Martin’s | 119 | 2,323 |Kensington | 40 |17,292 |Lambeth | 28 | 20,520
London City | 117 | 7,329 |Clerkenwell | 38 | 7,259 |Lewisham | 27 | 5,936
Marylebone | 71 |15,955 |East London | 38 | 4,785 |Whitechapel | 26 | 8,832
Strand | 66 | 3,938 |St. Saviour’s| 36 | 4,613 |Hackney | 25 | 9,861
West London | 65 | 2,745 |Westminster | 36 | 6,647 |Camberwell | 25 | 9,417
St. Giles’s | 60 | 4,778 |St. Olave’s | 35 | 2,365 |Rotherhithe | 23 | 2,834
Holborn | 52 | 4,517 |Islington | 35 |13,558 |St. George’s,| |
| +-------+St. George’s-| | | Southwark | 22 | 7,005
| |53,840 | in-the-East| 32 | 6,151 |Newington | 22 | 10,468
| | | | + ------+Greenwich | 22 | 14,423
| | | | |90,002 |Shoreditch | 20 | 15,433
| | | | | |Stepney | 20 | 16,346
| | | | | |Bermondsey | 18 | 7,095
| | | | | |Bethnal Green| 9 | 13,370
| | | | | | | +-------
| | | | | | | |163,880
---------------+-------+-------+-------------+-------+-------+-------------+--------+-------

Here we see that the number of houses whose average rental is above
50_l._ is 53,840; while those whose average rental is above 30_l._, and
below 50_l._, are 90,002 in number; and those whose rental is below
30_l._ are as many as 163,880; the average rental for all London,
40_l._ Now, adopting the estimate before given as to the proportionate
yield of soot from each of these three classes of houses, we have the
following items:--

Bushels
of Soot per
Annum.
53,840 houses at a yearly rental
above 50_l._, producing 6 bushels of
soot each per annum 323,040

90,002 houses at a yearly rental
above 30_l._ and below 50_l._, producing
5 bushels of soot each per annum 450,010

163,880 houses at a yearly rental
below 30_l._, producing 2 bushels of
soot each per annum 327,760
---------
Total number of bushels of soot annually
produced throughout London 1,100,810

This calculation will be found to be nearly correct if tried by another
mode. The quantity of soot depends greatly upon the amount of volatile
or bituminous matter in the coals used. By a table given at p. 169 of
the second volume of this work it will be seen that the proportion of
volatile matter contained in the several kinds of coal are as follows:--

Cannel or gas coals contain 40 to 60 per cent. of volatile matter.

Newcastle or “house” coals, about 37 per cent.

Lancashire and Yorkshire coals, 35 to 40 per cent.

South Welsh or “steam” coals, 11 to 15 per cent.

Anthracite or “stone” coals, none.

The house coals are those chiefly used throughout London, so that
every ton of such coals contains about 800 lbs. of volatile matter, a
considerable proportion of which appears in the form of smoke; but what
proportion and what is the weight of the carbonaceous particles or soot
evolved in a given quantity of smoke, I know of no means of judging. I
am informed, however, by those practically acquainted with the subject,
that a ton of ordinary house coals will produce between a fourth and
a half of a bushel of soot[59]. Now there are, say, 3,500,000 tons
of coal consumed annually in London; but a large proportion of this
quantity is used for the purposes of gas, for factories, breweries,
chemical works, and steam-boats. The consumption of coal for the making
of gas in London, in 1849, was 380,000 tons; so that, including the
quantity used in factories, breweries, &c., we may, perhaps, estimate
the domestic consumption of the metropolis at 2,500,000 tons yearly,
which, for 300,000 houses, would give eight tons per house. And when we
remember the amount used in large houses and in hotels, as well as by
the smaller houses, where each room often contains a different family,
this does not appear to be too high an average. Mr. M’Culloch estimates
the domestic consumption at one ton per head, men, women, and children;
and since the number of persons to each house in London is 7·5, this
would give nearly the same result. Estimating the yield of soot to be
three-eighths of a bushel per ton, we have, in round numbers, 1,000,000
bushels of soot as the gross quantity deposited in the metropolitan
chimneys every year.

Or, to check the estimate another way, there are 350 master sweepers
throughout London. A master sweeper in a “large way of business”
collects, I am informed, one day with another, from 30 to 40 bushels
of soot; on the other hand, a small master, or “single-handed”
chimney-sweeper is able to gather only about 5 bushels, and scarcely
that. One master sweeper said that about 10 bushels a day would, he
thought, be a fair average quantity for all the masters, reckoning
one day with another; so that at this rate we should have 1,095,500
bushels for the gross quantity of soot annually collected throughout
the metropolis.

We may therefore assume the aggregate yield of soot throughout London
to be 1,000,000 bushels per annum. Now what is done with this immense
mass of refuse matter? Of what use is it?

_The soot is purchased from the masters, whose perquisite it is, by
the farmers and dealers._ It is used by them principally for meadow
land, and frequently for land where wheat is grown; not so much, I
understand, as a manure, as for some quality in it which destroys
slugs and other insects injurious to the crops[60]. Lincolnshire is
one of the great marts for the London soot, whither it is transported
by railway. In Hertfordshire, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and
Kent, however, and many other parts, London soot is used in large
quantities; there are persons who have large stores for its reception,
who purchase it from the master sweepers, and afterwards sell it to
the farmers and send it as per order, to its destination. These are
generally the manure-merchants, of whom the Post-Office Directory
gives 26 names, eight being marked as dealers in guano. I was told by
a sweeper in a large way of business that he thought these men bought
from a half to three-quarters of the soot; the remainder being bought
by the land-cultivators in the neighbourhood of London. Soot is often
used by gardeners to keep down the insects which infest their gardens.

* * * * *

_The value of the Soot_ collected throughout London is the next subject
to engage our attention. Many sweepers have represented it as a very
curious fact, and one for which they could advance no sufficient
reason, that the price of a bushel of soot was regulated by the price
of the quartern loaf, so that you had only to know that the quartern
loaf was 5_d._ to know that such was the price of a bushel of soot.
This, however, is hardly the case at present; the price of the quartern
loaf (not regarding the “seconds,” or inferior bread), is now, at the
end of December, 1851, 5_d._ to 6_d._ according to quality. The price
of soot per bushel is but 5_d._, and sometimes but 4-1/2_d._, but 5_d._
may be taken as an average.

Now 1,000,000 bushels of soot, at 5_d._, will be found to yield
20,833_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._ per annum. But the whole of this quantity is
not collected by the chimney-sweepers, for many of the poorer persons
seldom have their chimneys swept; and by the table given in another
place, it will be seen that not more than 800,000 bushels are obtained
in the course of the year by the London “sweeps.” Hence we may say,
that there are 800,000 bushels of soot annually collected from the
London chimneys, and that this is worth not less than 16,500_l._ per
annum.

* * * * *

_The next question is, how many people are employed in collecting this
quantity of refuse matter_, and how do they collect it, and what do
they get, individually and collectively, for so doing?

To begin with the number of master and journeymen sweepers employed in
removing these 800,000 bushels of soot from our chimneys: according to
the Census returns, the number of “sweeps” in the metropolis in the
years 1841 and 1831 were as follows:--

Increase
in ten
_Chimney-sweepers._ 1841. 1831. years.
Males, 20 years and upwards 619 421 198
„ under 20 years 370 no returns.
Females, 20 years & upwards 44 „
-----
1033

But these returns, such as they are, include both employers and
employed, in one confused mass. To disentangle the economical knot,
we must endeavour to separate the number of master sweepers from the
journeymen. According to the Post-Office Directory the master sweepers
amount to no more than 32, and thus there would be one more than
1000 for the number of the metropolitan journeymen sweepers; these
statements, however, appear to be very wide of the truth.

In 1816 it was represented to the House of Commons, that there were
within the bills of mortality, 200 masters, all--except the “great
gentlemen,” as one witness described them, who were about 20 in
number--themselves working at the business, and that they had 150
journeymen and upwards of 500 apprentices, so that there must then have
been 850 working sweepers altogether, young and old.

These numbers, it must be borne in mind, were comprised in the limits
of the bills of mortality 34 years ago. The parishes in the old bills
of mortality were 148; there are now in the metropolis proper 176, and,
as a whole, the area is much more densely covered with dwelling-houses.
Taking but the last ten years, 1841 to 1851, the inhabited houses have
increased from 262,737 to 307,722, or, in round numbers, 45,000.

Now in 1811 the number of inhabited houses in the metropolis was
146,019, and in 1821 it was 164,948; hence in 1816 we may assume the
inhabited houses to have been about 155,000; and since this number
required 850 working sweepers to cleanse the London chimneys, it is
but a rule of three sum to find how many would have been required for
the same purpose in 1841, when the inhabited houses had increased to
262,737; this, according to Cocker, is about 1400; so that we must
come to the conclusion either that the number of working sweepers had
not kept pace with the increase of houses, or that the returns of
the census were as defective in this respect as we have found them
to be concerning the street-sellers, dustmen, and scavagers. Were we
to pursue the same mode of calculation, we should find that if 850
sweepers were required to cleanse the chimneys of 155,000 houses, there
should be 1687 such labourers in London now that the houses are 307,722
in number.

But it will be seen that in 1816 more than one-half (or 500 out of
850) of the working chimney-sweepers were apprentices, and in 1841
the chimney-sweepers under 20 years of age, if we are to believe the
census, constituted more than one-third of the whole body (or 370 out
of 1033). Now as the use of climbing boys was prohibited in 1842, of
course this large proportion of the trade has been rendered useless;
so that, estimating the master and journeymen sweepers at 250 in 1816,
it would appear that about 500 would be required to sweep the chimneys
of the metropolis at present. To these, of course, must be added the
extra number of journeymen necessary for managing the machines. And
considering the journeymen to have increased threefold since the
abolition of the climbing boys, we must add 300 to the above number,
which will make the sum total of the individuals employed in this trade
to amount to very nearly 800.

By inquiries throughout the several districts of the metropolis, I
find that there are altogether 350 master sweepers at present in
London; 106 of these are large masters, who seldom go out on a round,
but work to order, having a regular custom among the more wealthy
classes; while the other 244 consist of 92 small masters and 152
“single-handed” masters, who travel on various rounds, both in London
and the suburbs, seeking custom. Of the whole number, 19 reside within
the City boundaries; from 90 to 100 live on the Surrey side, and 235 on
the Middlesex side of the Thames (without the City boundaries). A large
master employs from 2 to 10 men, and 2 boys; and a small one only 2 men
or sometimes 1 man and a boy, while a single-handed master employs no
men nor boys at all, but does all the work himself.

The 198 masters employ among them 12 foremen, 399 journeymen, and 62
boys, or 473 hands, and adding to them the single-handed master-men who
work at the business themselves, we have 823 working men in all; so
that, on the whole, there are not less than between 800 and 900 persons
employed in cleansing the London chimneys of their soot.

The next point that presents itself in due order to the mind is, as to
the _mode of working among the chimney-sweepers_; that is to say, how
are the 800,000 bushels of soot collected from the 300,000 houses by
these 820 working sweepers? But this involves a short history of the
trade.

OF THE SWEEPERS OF OLD, AND THE CLIMBING BOYS.

Formerly the chimneys used to be cleansed by the house servants,
for a person could easily stand erect in the huge old-fashioned
constructions, and thrust up a broom as far as his strength would
permit. Sometimes, however, straw was kindled at the mouth of the
chimney, and in that way the soot was consumed or brought down to the
ground by the action of the fire. But that there were also regular
chimney-sweepers in the latter part of the sixteenth century is
unquestionable; for in the days of the First James and Charles, poor
Piedmontese, and more especially Savoyards, resorted to England for the
express purpose. How long they laboured in this vocation is unknown.
The Savoyards, indeed, were then the general showmen and sweeps of
Europe, and so they are still in some of the cities of Italy and
France.

As regards the first introduction of English children into
chimneys--the establishment of the use of climbing boys--nothing
appears, according to the representations made to Parliament on several
occasions, to be known; and little attention seems to have been paid
to the condition of these infants--some were but little better--until
about 1780, when the benevolent Jonas Hanway, who is said, but not
uncontradictedly, to have been the first person who regularly used
an umbrella in the streets of London, called public attention to the
matter. In 1788 Mr. Hanway and others brought a bill into Parliament
for the better protection of the climbing boys, requiring, among other
provisions, all master sweepers to be licensed, and the names and ages
of all their apprentices registered. The House of Lords, however,
rejected this bill, and the 28th George III., c. 48, was passed in
preference. The chief alterations sought to be effected by the new
Act were, that no sweeper should have more than six apprentices, and
that no boy should be apprenticed at a tenderer age than eight years.
Previously there were no restrictions in either of those respects.

These provisions were, however, very generally violated. By one of
those “flaws” or omissions, so very common and so little creditable
to our legislation, it was found that there was no prohibition to
a sweeper’s employing his own children at what age he pleased; and
“some,” or “several,” for I find both words used, employed their sons,
and occasionally their daughters, in chimney climbing at the ages
of six, five, and even between four and five years! The children of
others, too, were continually being apprenticed at illegal ages, for
no inquiry was made into the lad’s age beyond the statement of his
parents, or, in the case of parish apprentices, beyond the (in those
days) not more trustworthy word of the overseers. Thus boys of six were
apprenticed--for apprenticeship was almost universal--as boys of eight,
by their parents; while parish officers and magistrates consigned the
workhouse orphans, as a thing of course, to the starvation and tyranny
which they must have known were very often in store for them when
apprenticed to sweepers.

The following evidence was adduced before Parliament on the subject of
infant labour in this trade:--

Mr. John Cook, a master sweeper, then of Great Windmill-street and
Kentish-town, the first who persevered in the use of the machine years
before its use was compulsory, stated that it was common for parents in
the business to employ their own children, under the age of seven, in
climbing; and that as far as he knew, he himself was only between six
and seven when he “came to it;” and that almost all master sweepers had
got it in their bills that they kept “small boys for register-stoves,
and such like as that.”

Mr. T. Allen, another master sweeper, was between four and five when
articled to an uncle.

[Illustration: THE LONDON SWEEP

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

Mr. B. M. Forster, a private gentleman, a member of the “Committee
to promote the Superseding of Climbing Boys,” said, “Some are put to
the employment very young; one instance of which occurred to a
child in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch, who was put to the trade at
four and a quarter years, or thereabouts. The father of a child in
Whitechapel told me last week, that his son began climbing when he was
four years and eight months old. I have heard of some still younger,
but only from vague report.”

This sufficiently proves at what infantine years children were exposed
to toils of exceeding painfulness. The smaller and the more slenderly
formed the child, the more valuable was he for the sweeping of flues,
the interior of some of them, to be ascended and swept, being but seven
inches square.

I have mentioned the employment of female children in the very
unsuitable labour of climbing chimneys. The following is all the
information given on the subject.

Mr. Tooke was asked, “Have you ever heard of female children being
so employed?” and replied, “I have heard of cases at Hadley, Barnet,
Windsor, and Uxbridge; and I know a case at Witham, near Colchester, of
that sort.”

Mr. B. M. Foster said, “Another circumstance, which has not been
mentioned to the Committee, is, that there are several little girls
employed; there are two of the name of Morgan at Windsor, daughters
of the chimney-sweeper _who is employed to sweep the chimneys of
the Castle_; another instance at Uxbridge, and at Brighton, and at
Whitechapel (which was some years ago), and at Headley near Barnet, and
Witham in Essex, and elsewhere.” He then stated, on being asked, “Do
you not think that girls were employed from their physical form being
smaller and thinner than boys, and therefore could get up narrower
flues?” “The reason that I have understood was, because their parents
had not a sufficient number of boys to bring up to the business.” Mr.
Foster did not know the ages of these girls.

The inquiry by a Committee of the House of Commons, which led more
than any other to the prohibition of this infant and yet painful
labour in chimney-sweeping, was held in 1817, and they recommended the
“preventing the further use of climbing boys in sweeping of chimneys;”
a recommendation not carried into effect until 1832. The matter was
during the interval frequently agitated in Parliament, but there were
no later investigations by Committees.

I will adduce, specifically, the grievances, according to the Report
of 1817, of the climbing boys; but will first present the following
extract from the evidence of Mr. W. Tooke, a gentleman who, in
accordance with the Hon. Henry Grey Bennet, M.P., and others, exerted
himself on the behoof of the climbing boys. When he gave his evidence,
Mr. Tooke was the secretary to a society whose object was to supersede
the necessity of employing climbing boys. He said:--

“In the year 1800, the Society for Bettering the Condition of the
Poor took up the subject, but little or nothing appears to have been
done upon that occasion, except that the most respectable master
chimney-sweepers entered into an association and subscription for
promoting the cleanliness and health of the boys in their respective
services. The Institution of which I am treasurer, and which is now
existing, was formed in February, 1803. In consequence of an anonymous
advertisement, a large meeting was held at the London Coffee House,
and the Society was established; immediate steps were then taken
to ascertain the state of the trade; inspectors were appointed to
give an account of all the master chimney-sweepers within the bills
of mortality, their general character, their conduct towards their
apprentices, and the number of those apprentices. It was ascertained,
that the total number of master chimney-sweepers, within the bills
of mortality, might be estimated at 200, who had among them 500
apprentices; that not above 20 of those masters were reputable
tradesmen in easy circumstances, who appeared generally to conform to
the provisions of the Act; and which 20 had, upon an average, from
four to five apprentices each. We found about 90 of an inferior class
of master chimney-sweepers who averaged three apprentices each, and
who were extremely negligent both of the health, morals, and education
of those apprentices; and about 90, the remainder of the 200 masters,
were a class of chimney-sweepers recently journeymen, who took up the
trade because they had no other resource; they picked up boys as they
could, who lodged with themselves in huts, sheds, and cellars, in the
outskirts of the town, occasionally wandering into the villages round,
where they slept on soot-bags, and lived in the grossest filth.”

The grievances I have spoken of were thus summed up by the
Parliamentary Committee. After referring to the ill-usage and hardships
sustained by the climbing boys (the figures being now introduced for
the sake of distinctness) it is stated:--

“It is in evidence that (1) they are stolen from” [and sold by]
“their parents, and inveigled out of workhouses; (2) that in order to
conquer the natural repugnance of the infants to ascend the narrow and
dangerous chimneys to clean which their labour is required, blows are
used; that pins are forced into their feet by the boy that follows them
up the chimney, in order to compel them to ascend it, and that lighted
straw has been applied for that purpose; (3) that the children are
subject to sores and bruises, and wounds and burns on their thighs,
knees, and elbows; and that it will require many months before the
extremities of the elbows and knees become sufficiently hard to resist
the excoriations to which they are at first subject.”

1. With regard to the _stealing or kidnapping of children_--for there
was often a difficulty in procuring climbing boys--I find mention
in the evidence, as of a matter, but not a very frequent matter, of
notoriety. One stolen child was sold to a master sweeper for 8_l._
8_s._ Mr. G. Revely said:--

“I wish to state to the Committee that case in particular, because it
comes home to the better sort of persons in higher life. It seems that
the child, upon being asked various questions, had been taken away:
the child was questioned how he came into that situation; he said all
that he could recollect was (as I heard it told at that time) that he
and his sister, with another brother, were together somewhere, but he
could not tell where; but not being able to run so well as the other
two, he was caught by a woman and carried away and was sold, and came
afterwards into the hands of a chimney-sweeper. He was not afterwards
restored to his family, and the mystery was never unravelled; but he
was advertised, and a lady took charge of him.

“This child, in 1804, was forced up a chimney at Bridlington in
Yorkshire, by a big boy, the younger boy being apparently but four
years old. He fell and bruised his legs terribly against the grate.
The Misses Auckland of Boynton, who had heard of the child, and went
to see him, became interested by his manners, and they took him home
with them; the chimney-sweeper, who perhaps got alarmed, being glad to
part with him. Soon after he got to Boynton, the seat of Sir George
Strickland, a plate with something to eat was brought him; on seeing a
silver fork he was quite delighted, and said, ‘Papa had such forks as
those.’ He also said the carpet in the drawing-room was like papa’s;
the housekeeper showed him a silver watch, he asked what sort it
was--‘Papa’s was a gold watch;’ he then pressed the handle and said,
‘Papa’s watch rings, why does not yours?’ Sir George Strickland, on
being told this circumstance, showed him a gold repeater, the little
boy pressed the spring, and when it struck, he jumped about the room,
saying, ‘Papa’s watch rings so.’ At night, when he was going to bed,
he said he could not go to bed until he had said his prayers; he then
repeated the Lord’s Prayer, almost perfectly. The account he gave of
himself was that he was gathering flowers in his mamma’s garden, and
that the woman who sold him to the sweeper, came in and asked him if
he liked riding? He said, ‘Yes,’ and she told him he should ride with
her. She put him on a horse, after which they got into a vessel, and
the sails were put up, ‘and away we went.’ He had no recollection of
his name, or where he lived, and was too young to think his father
could have any other name than that of papa. He started whenever he
heard a servant in the family at Boynton called George, and looked as
if he expected to see somebody he knew; on inquiry, he said he had an
uncle George, whom he loved dearly. He says his mamma is dead, and
it is thought his father may be abroad. From many things he says, he
seems to have lived chiefly with an uncle and aunt, whom he invariably
says were called Mr. and Mrs. Flembrough. From various circumstances,
it is thought impossible he should be the child of the woman who sold
him, his manners being ‘very civilized,’ quite those of a child well
educated; his dialect is good, and that of the south of England.
This little boy, when first discovered, was conjectured to be about
four years old, and is described as having beautiful black eyes and
eye-lashes, a high nose, and a delicate soft skin.”

Mr. J. Harding, a master sweeper, had a fellow apprentice who had been
enticed away from his parents. “It is a case of common occurrence,”
he said, “for children stolen, to be employed in this way. Yes, and
children in particular are enticed out of workhouses: there are a great
many who come out of workhouses.”

The following cases were also submitted to the Committee:--

“A poor woman had been obliged by sickness to go into an hospital,
and while she was there her child was stolen from her house, taken
into Staffordshire, and there apprenticed to a chimney-sweeper. By
some happy circumstance she learned his fate; she followed him, and
succeeded in rescuing him from his forlorn situation. Another child,
who was an orphan, was tricked into following the same wretched
employment by a chimney-sweeper, who gave him a shilling, and made him
believe that by receiving it he became his apprentice; the poor boy,
either discovering or suspecting that he had been deceived, anxiously
endeavoured to speak to a magistrate who happened to come to the house
in which he was sweeping chimneys, but his master watched him so
closely that he could not succeed. He at last contrived to tell his
story to a blind soldier, who determined to right the poor boy, and by
_great exertions_ succeeded in procuring him his liberty.”

It was in country places, however, that the stealing and kidnapping
of children was the most frequent, and the threat of “the sweeps will
get you” was often held out, to deter children from wandering. These
stolen infants, it is stated, were usually conveyed to some distance
by the vagrants who had secured them, and sold to some master sweeper,
being apprenticed as the child of the vendors, for it was difficult for
sweepers in thinly-peopled places to get a supply of climbing boys. It
was shown about the time of the Parliamentary inquiry, in the course of
a trial at the Lancaster assizes, that a boy had been apprenticed to a
sweeper by two travelling tinkers, man and woman, who informed him that
the child was stolen from another “traveller,” 80 miles away, who was
“too fond of it to make it a sweep.” The _price_ of the child was not
mentioned.

Respecting the sale of children to be apprentices to sweepers, Mr.
Tooke was able to state that, although in 1816, the practice had very
much diminished of late, parents in many instances still _sold their
children for three, four, or five guineas_. This sum was generally paid
under the guise of an apprentice fee, but it was known to be and was
called a “sale,” for the parents, real or nominal, never interfered
with the master subsequently, but left the infant to its fate.

2. I find the following account of the _means resorted to, in order to
induce, or more frequently compel, these wretched infants to work_.

The boy in the first instance went for a month, or any term agreed
upon, “on trial,” or “to see how he would suit for the business.”
During this period of probation he was usually well treated and well
fed (whatever the character of the master), with little to do beyond
running errands, and observing the mode of work of the experienced
climbers. When, however, he was “bound” as an apprentice, he was put
with another lad who had been for some time at the business. The new
boy was sent first up the chimney, and immediately followed by the
other, who instructed him how to ascend. This was accomplished by the
pressure of the knees and the elbows against the sides of the flue. By
pressing the knees tightly the child managed to raise his arms somewhat
higher, and then by pressing his elbows in like manner he contrived
to draw up his legs, and so on. The inside of the flue presented a
smooth surface, and there were no inequalities where the fingers or
toes could be inserted. Should the young beginner fall, he was sure to
light on the shoulders of the boy beneath him, who always kept himself
firmly fixed in expectation of such a mishap, and then the novice had
to commence anew; in this manner the twain reached the top by degrees,
sweeping down the soot, and descended by the same method. This practice
was very severe, especially on new boys, whose knees and elbows were
torn by the pressure and the slipping down continually--the skin being
stripped off, and frequently breaking out in frightful sores, from the
constant abrasions, and from the soot and dirt getting into them.

In his evidence before Parliament in 1817 (for there had been previous
inquiries), Mr. Cook gave an account of the training of these boys, and
on being asked:--“Do the elbows and knees of the boys, when they first
begin the business, become very sore, and afterwards get callous, and
are those boys employed in sweeping chimneys during the soreness of
those parts?” answered, “It depends upon the sort of master they have
got; some are obliged to put them to work sooner than others; you must
keep them a little at it, or they will never learn their business, even
during the sores.” He stated further, that the skin broke generally,
and that the boys could not ascend chimneys during the sores without
_very_ great pain. “The way that I learn boys is,” he continued, “to
put some cloths over their elbows and over their knees till they get
the nature of the chimney--till they get a little used to it: we call
it _padding_ them, and then we take them off, and they get very little
grazed indeed after they have got the art; but very few will take that
trouble. Some boys’ flesh is far worse than others, and it takes more
time to harden them.” He was then asked:--“Do those persons still
continue to employ them to climb chimneys?” and the answer was: “Some
do; it depends upon the character of the master. None of them of that
class keep them till they get well; none. They are obliged to climb
with those sores upon them. I never had one of my own apprentices do
that.” This system of padding, however, was but little practised;
but in what proportion it _was_ practised, unless by the respectable
masters, who were then but few in number, the Parliamentary papers,
the only information on the subject now attainable, do not state.
The inference is, that the majority, out of but 20 of these masters,
with some 80 or 100 apprentices, did treat them well, and what was so
accounted. The customary way of training these boys, then, was such as
I have described; some even of the better masters, whose boys were in
the comparison well lodged and fed, and “sent to the Sunday school”
(which seems to have comprised all needful education), considered
“padding and such like” to be “new-fangled nonsense.”

I may add also, that although the boy carried up a brush with him, it
was used but occasionally, only when there were “turns” or defects in
the chimney, the soot being brought down by the action of the shoulders
and limbs. The climber wore a cap to protect his eyes and mouth from
the soot, and a sort of flannel tunic, his feet, legs, and arms being
bare. Some of these lads were surprisingly quick. One man told me
that, when in his prime as a climbing boy, he could reach the top of a
chimney about as quickly as a person could go up stairs to the attics.

The following is from the evidence of Mr. Cook, frequently cited as an
excellent master:--

“What mode do you adopt to get the boy to go up the chimney in the
first instance?--We persuade him as well as we can; we generally
practise him in one of our own chimneys first; one of the boys
who knows the trade goes up behind him, and when he has practised
it perhaps ten times, though some will require twenty times, they
generally can manage it. The boy goes up with him to keep him from
falling; after that, the boy will manage to go up with himself, after
going up and down several times with one under him: we do this, because
if he happens to make a slip he will be caught by the other.

“Do you find many boys show repugnance to go up at first?--Yes, most of
them.

“And if they resist and reject, in what way do you force them up?--By
telling them we must take them back again to their father and mother,
and give them up again; and their parents are generally people who
cannot maintain them.

“So that they are afraid of going back to their parents for fear of
being starved?--Yes; they go through a deal of hardship before they
come to our trade.

“Did you use any more violent means?--Sometimes a rod.

“Did you ever hear of straw being lighted under them?--Never.

“You never heard of any means being made use of, except being beat and
being sent home?--No; no other.

“You are aware, of course, that those means being gentle or harsh must
depend very much upon the character of the individual master?--It does.

“Of course you must know that there are persons of harsh and cruel
disposition; have you not often heard of masters treating their
apprentices with great cruelty, particularly the little boys, in
forcing them to go up those small flues, which the boys were unwilling
to ascend?--Yes; I have forced up many a one myself.

“By what means?--By threatenings, and by giving them a kick or a slap.”

It was also stated that the journeymen used the boys with greater
cruelty than did the masters--indeed a delegated tyranny is often
the worst--that for very little faults they kicked and slapped the
children, and sometimes flogged them with a cat, “made of rope, hard at
each end, and as thick as your thumb.”

Mr. John Fisher, a master chimney-sweeper, said:--“Many masters, are
very severe with their children. To make them go up the chimneys I have
seen them make them strip themselves naked; I have been obliged myself
to go up a chimney naked.”

As respects the cruelties of driving boys up chimneys by kindling straw
beneath their feet, or thrusting pins into the soles of their feet, I
find the following statements given on the authority of B. M. Forster,
Esq., a private gentleman residing in Walthamstow:--

“A lad was ordered to sweep a chimney at Wandsworth; he came down
after endeavouring to ascend, and this occurred several times before
he gave up the point; at last the journeyman took some straw or hay,
and lighted it under him to drive him up: when he endeavoured to get
up the last time, he found there was a bar across the chimney, which
he could not pass; he was obliged in consequence to come down, and the
journeyman beat him so cruelly, to use his own expression, that he
could not stand for a fortnight.

“In the whole city of Norwich I could find only nine climbing boys,
two of whom I questioned on many particulars; one was with respect to
the manner in which they are taught to climb; they both agreed in that
particular, that a larger boy was sent up behind them to prick their
feet, if they did not climb properly. I purposely avoided mentioning
about pricking them with pins, but asked them how they did it; they
said that they thrust the pins into the soles of their feet. A third
instance occurred at Walthamstow; a man told me that some he knew had
been taught in the same way; I believe it to be common, but I cannot
state any more instances from authority.”

3. On the subject of the _sores, bruises, wounds, burns, and diseases_,
to which chimney-sweepers in their apprenticeships were not only
exposed, but, as it were, condemned, Mr. R. Wright, a surgeon, on being
examined before the Committee, said, “I shall begin with _Deformity_.
I am well persuaded that the deformity of the spine, legs, arms, &c.,
of chimney-sweepers, generally, if not wholly, proceeds from the
circumstance of their being obliged not only to go up chimneys at an
age when their bones are in a soft and growing state, but likewise from
their being compelled by their too merciless masters and mistresses
to carry bags of soot (and those very frequently for a great length
of distance and time) by far too heavy for their tender years and
limbs. The knees and ancle joints mostly become deformed, in the first
instance, from the position they are obliged to put them in, in order
to support themselves, not only while climbing up the chimney, but more
particularly so in that of coming down, when they rest solely on the
lower extremities.

“_Sore eyes and eyelids_, are the next to be considered.
Chimney-sweepers are very subject to inflammation of the eyelids,
and not unfrequently weakness of sight, in consequence of such
inflammation. This I attribute to the circumstance of the soot lodging
on the eyelids, which first produces irritability of the part, and the
constantly rubbing them with their dirty hands, instead of alleviating,
increases the disease; for I have observed in a number of cases, when
the patient has ceased for a time to follow the business, and of course
the original cause has been removed, that with washing and keeping
clean they were soon got well.

“_Sores_, for the same reasons, are generally a long time in healing.

“_Cancer_ is another and a most formidable disease, which
chimney-sweepers in particular are liable to, especially that of
the scrotum; from which circumstance, by way of distinction, it is
called the ‘chimney-sweeper’s cancer.’ Of this sort of cancer I have
seen several instances, some of which have been operated on; but,
in general, they are apt to let them go too far before they apply
for relief. Cancers of the lips are not so general as cancers of the
scrotum. I never saw but two instances of the former, and several of
the latter.”

The “chimney-sweep’s cancer” was always lectured upon as a separate
disease at Guy’s and Bartholomew’s Hospitals, and on the question
being put to Mr. Wright: “Do the physicians who are intrusted with
the care and management of those hospitals think that disease of such
common occurrence, that it is necessary to make it a part of surgical
education?”--he replied: “Most assuredly; I remember Mr. Cline and Mr.
Cooper were particular on that subject; and having one or two cases
of the kind in the hospital, it struck my mind very forcibly. With
the permission of the Committee I will relate a case that occurred
lately, which I had from one of the pupils of St. Thomas’s Hospital;
he informed me that they recently had a case of a chimney-sweeper’s
cancer, which was to have been operated on that week, but the man
‘brushed’ (to use their expression) or rather walked off; he would
not submit to the operation: similar instances of which I have known
myself. They dread so much the knife, in consequence of foolish persons
telling them it is so formidable an operation, and that they will die
under it. I conceive without the operation it is death; for cancers are
of that nature that unless you extricate them entirely they will never
be cured.”

Of the chimney-sweeper’s cancer, the following statement is given in
the Report: “Mr. Cline informed your Committee by letter, that this
disease is rarely seen in any other persons than chimney-sweepers,
and in them cannot be considered as frequent; for during his practice
in St. Thomas’s hospital, for more than 40 years, the number of those
could not exceed 20. But your Committee have been informed that the
dread of the operation which it is necessary to perform, deters many
from submitting to it; and from the evidence of persons engaged in the
trade, it appears to be much more common than Mr. Cline seems to be
aware of.

“_Cough and Asthma._--Chimney-sweepers are, from their being out at all
hours and in all weathers, very liable to cough and inflammation of the
chest.

“_Burns._--They are very subject to burns, from their being forced
up chimneys while on fire, or soon after they have been on fire, and
while over-heated; and however they may cry out, their inhuman masters
pay not the least attention, but compel them, too often with horrid
imprecations, to proceed.

“_Stunted growth_, in this unfortunate race of the community, is
attributed, in a great measure, to their being brought into the
business at a very early age.”

* * * * *

To _accidents_ they were frequently liable in the pursuit of their
callings, and sometimes these accidents were the being jammed or fixed,
or, as it was called in the trade, “stuck,” in narrow and heated flues,
sometimes for hours, and until death.

Among these hapless lads were indeed many deaths from accidents,
cruelty, privation, and exhaustion, but it does not appear that the
number was ever ascertained. There were also many narrow escapes from
dreadful deaths. I give instances of each:--

“On Monday morning, the 29th of March, 1813, a chimney-sweeper of the
name of Griggs, attended to sweep a small chimney in the brewhouse of
Messrs. Calvert and Co., in Upper Thames-street; he was accompanied
by one of his boys, a lad of about eight years of age, of the name of
Thomas Pitt. The fire had been lighted as early as two o’clock the
same morning, and was burning on the arrival of Griggs and his little
boy at eight; the fire-place was small, and an iron pipe projected
from the grate some little distance, into the flue; this the master
was acquainted with (having swept the chimneys in the brewhouse for
some years) and therefore had a tile or two taken from the roof,
in order that the boy might descend the chimney. He had no sooner
extinguished the fire than he suffered the lad to go down; and the
consequence, as might be expected, was his almost immediate death,
in a state, no doubt, of inexpressible agony. The flue was of the
narrowest description, and must have retained heat sufficient to have
prevented the child’s return to the top, even supposing he had not
approached the pipe belonging to the grate, which must have been nearly
red-hot; this, however, was not clearly ascertained on the inquest,
though the appearance of the body would induce an opinion that he had
been unavoidably pressed against the pipe. Soon after his descent, the
master, who remained on the top, was apprehensive that something had
happened, and therefore desired him to come up; the answer of the boy
was, ‘I cannot come up, master; I must die here.’ An alarm was given
in the brewhouse, immediately, that he had stuck in the chimney, and a
bricklayer who was at work near the spot attended, and after knocking
down part of the brickwork of the chimney, just above the fire-place,
made a hole sufficiently large to draw him through. A surgeon attended,
but all attempts to restore life were ineffectual. On inspecting the
body, various burns appeared; the fleshy part of the legs, and a great
part of the feet more particularly, were injured; those parts, too, by
which climbing boys most effectually ascend or descend chimneys, viz.,
the elbows and knees, seemed burnt to the bone; from which it must be
evident that the unhappy sufferer made some attempts to return as soon
as the horrors of his situation became apparent.”

“In the improvement made some years since by the Bank of England, in
Lothbury, a chimney, belonging to a Mr. Mildrum, a baker, was taken
down, but before he began to bake, in order to see that the rest of
the flue was clear, a boy was sent up, and after remaining some time,
and not answering to the call of his master, another boy was ordered
to descend from the top of the flue and to meet him half-way; but this
being found impracticable, they opened the brickwork in the lower
part of the flue, and found the first-mentioned boy dead. In the mean
time the boy in the upper part of the flue called out for relief,
saying, he was completely jammed in the rubbish and was unable to
extricate himself. Upon this a bricklayer was employed with the utmost
expedition, but he succeeded only in obtaining a lifeless body. The
bodies were sent to St. Margaret’s Church, Lothbury, and a coroner’s
inquest, which sat upon them, returned the verdict--Accidental Death.”

“In the beginning of the year 1808, a chimney-sweeper’s boy being
employed to sweep a chimney in Marsh-street, Walthamstow, in the house
of Mr. Jeffery, carpenter, unfortunately, in his attempt to get down,
stuck in the flue and was unable to extricate himself. Mr. Jeffery,
being within hearing of the boy, immediately procured assistance.
As the chimney was low, and the top of it easily accessible from
without, the boy was taken out in about ten minutes, the chimney-pot
and several rows of bricks having been previously removed; if he had
remained in that dreadful situation many minutes longer, he must have
died. His master was sent for, and he arrived soon after the boy had
been released; he abused him for the accident, and, after striking
him, sent him with a bag of soot to sweep another chimney. The child
appeared so very weak when taken out that he could scarcely stand, and
yet this wretched being, who had been up ever since three o’clock, had
before been sent by his master to Wanstead, which with his walk to
Marsh-street made about five miles.”

“In May, 1817, a boy employed in sweeping a chimney in Sheffield
got wedged fast in one of the flues, and remained in that situation
near two hours before he could be extricated, which was at length
accomplished by pulling down part of the chimney.”

On one occasion a child remained above two hours in some danger in a
chimney, rather than venture down and encounter his master’s anger.
The man was held to bail, which he could not procure.

As in the cases I have described (at Messrs. Calvert’s, and in
Lothbury), the verdict was usually “Accidental Death,” or something
equivalent.

It was otherwise, however, where wilful cruelty was proven.

The following case was a subject of frequent comment at the time:--

“On Friday, 31st May, 1816, William Moles and Sarah his wife, were
tried at the Old Bailey for the wilful murder of John Hewley, alias
Haseley, a boy about six years of age, in the month of April last, by
cruelly beating him. Under the direction of the learned judge, they
were acquitted of the crime of murder, but the husband was detained to
take his trial as for a misdemeanor, of which he was convicted upon
the fullest evidence, and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The
facts, as proved in this case, are too shocking in detail to relate:
the substance of them is, that he was forced up the chimney on the
shoulder of a bigger boy, and afterwards violently pulled down again by
the leg and dashed upon a marble hearth; his leg was thus broken, and
death ensued in a few hours, and on his body and knees were found scars
arising from wounds of a much older date.”

* * * * *

This long-continued system of cruelties, of violations of public and
private duties, bore and ripened its natural fruits. The climbing boys
grew up to be unhealthy, vicious, ignorant, and idle men, for during
their apprenticeships their labour was over early in the day, and
they often passed away their leisure in gambling in the streets with
one another and other children of their stamp, as they frequently had
halfpence given to them. They played also at “chuck and toss” with
the journeymen, and of course were stripped of every farthing. Thus
they became indolent and fond of excitement. When a lad ceased to be
an apprentice, although he might be but 16, he was too big to climb,
and even if he got employment as a journeyman, his remuneration was
wretched, only 2_s._ a week, with his board and lodging. There were,
however, far fewer complaints of being insufficiently fed than might
have been expected, but the sleeping places were execrable: “They sleep
in different places,” it was stated, “sometimes in sheds, and sometimes
in places which we call barracks (large rooms), or in the cellar (where
the soot was kept); some never sleep upon anything that can be called a
bed; some do.”

Mr. T. Allen, a master sweep for 22 years, gave the Committee the
following account of _the men’s earnings and_ (what may be called) _the
General Perquisites of the trade_ under the exploded system:--

“If a man be 25 years of age, he has no more than 2_s._ a week; he
is not clothed, only fed and lodged in the same manner as the boys.
The 2_s._ a week is not sufficient to find him clothes and other
necessaries, certainly not; it is hardly enough to find him with
shoe-leather, for they walk over a deal of ground in going about the
streets. The journeyman is able to live upon those wages, for he gets
halfpence given him: supposing he is 16 or 20 years of age, he gets
the boys’ pence from them and keeps it; and if he happens to get a job
for which he receives a 1_s._, he gets 6_d._ of that, and his master
the other 6_d._ The boys’ pence are what the boys get after they
have been doing their master’s work; they get a 1_d._ or so, and the
journeyman takes it from them, and ‘licks’ them if they do not give it
up.” [These “jobs,” after the master’s work had been done, were chance
jobs, as when a journeyman on his round was called on by a stranger,
and unexpectedly, to sweep a chimney. Sometimes, by arrangement of
the journeyman and the lad, the proceeds never reached the master’s
pocket. Sometimes, but rarely, such jobs were the journeyman’s rightful
perquisite.] “Men,” proceeds Mr. Allen, “who are 22 and 23 years of
age will play with the young boys and win their money. That is, they
get half the money from them by force, and the rest by fraud. They are
driven to this course from the low wages which the masters give them,
because they have no other means to get anything for themselves, not
even the few necessaries which they may want; for even what they want
to wash with they must get themselves. As to what becomes of the money
the boys get on May-day, when they are in want of clothes, the master
will buy them, as check shirts or handkerchiefs. These masters get a
share of the money which the boys collect on May-day. The boys have
about 1_s._ or 1_s._ 6_d._; the journeyman has also his share; then the
master takes the remainder, which is to buy the boys’ clothes and other
necessaries, as they say. I cannot exactly tell what the average amount
is that a boy will get on the May-day; the most that my boy ever got
was 5_s._ But I think that the boys get more than that; I should think
they get as much as 9_s._ or 10_s._ apiece. The Christmas-boxes are
generally, I believe, divided among themselves (among the boys); but I
cannot say rightly. It is spent in buying silk handkerchiefs, or Sunday
shoes, I believe; but I am not perfectly sure.”

Of the condition and lot of the operatives who were too big to go
up chimneys, Mr. J. Fisher, a master-sweeper, gave the following
account:--“_They get into a roving way, and go about from one master to
another, and they often come to no good end at last_. They sometimes
go into the country, and after staying there some time, they come
back again; I took a boy of that sort very lately and kept him like
my own, and let him go to school; he asked me one Sunday to let him
go to school, and I was glad to let him go, and I gave him leave; he
accordingly went, and I have seen nothing of him since; before he went
he asked me if I would let him come home to see my child buried; I
told him to ask his school-master, but he did not come back again. I
cannot tell what has become of him; he was to have served me for twelve
months. I did not take him from the parish; he came to me. He said his
parents were dead. _The effect of the roving habit of the large boys
when they become too large to climb, is, that they get one with another
and learn bad habits from one another; they never will stop long in any
one place._ They frequently go into the country and get various places;
perhaps they stop a month at each; some try to get masters themselves,
and some will get into bad company, which very often happens. _Then
they turn thieves, they get lazy, they won’t work, and people do not
like to employ them lest they should take anything out of their houses.
The generality of them never settle in any steady business._ They
generally turn loose characters, and people will not employ them lest
they should take anything out of the house.”

The criminal annals of the kingdom bear out the foregoing account. Some
of these boys, indeed, when they attained man’s estate, became, in a
great measure, through their skill in climbing, expert and enterprising
burglars, breaking into places where few men would have cared to
venture. One of the most daring feats ever attempted and accomplished
was the escape from Newgate by a sweeper about 15 years ago. He climbed
by the aid of his knees and elbows a height of nearly 80 feet, though
the walls, in the corner of the prison-yard, where this was done, were
nearly of an even surface; the slightest slip could not have failed to
have precipitated the sweeper to the bottom. He was then under sentence
of death for highway robbery.

“His name was Whitehead, and he done a more wonderfuller thing nor
that,” remarked an informant, who had been his master. “We was sweeping
the bilers in a sugar-house, and he went from the biler up the flue of
the chimney, it was nearly as high as the Monument, that chimney; I
should say it was 30 or 40 feet higher nor the sugar-house. He got out
at the top, and slid down the bare brickwork on the outside, on to the
roof of the house, got through an attic window in the roof, and managed
to get off without any one knowing what became of him. That was the
most wonderfullest thing I ever knowed in my life. I don’t know how
he escaped from being killed, but he was always an oudacious feller.
It was nearly three months after afore we found him in the country. I
don’t know where they sent him to after he was brought back to Newgate,
but I hear they made him a turnkey in a prison somewhere, and that he’s
doing very well now.” The feat at the sugar-house could be only to
escape from his apprenticeship.

In the course of the whole Parliamentary evidence the sweepers, reared
under the old climbing system, are spoken of as a “short-lived” race,
but no statistics could be given. Some died old men in middle age, in
the workhouses. _Many were mere vagrants at the time of their death._

I took the statement of a man who had been what he called a “climbing”
in his childhood, but as he is now a master-sweeper, and has indeed
gone through all grades of the business, I shall give it in my account
of the present condition of the sweepers.

Climbing is still occasionally resorted to, especially when repairs are
required, “but the climbing boys,” I was told, “are now men.” These are
slight dwarfish men, whose services are often in considerable request,
and cannot at all times be commanded, as there are only about twenty
of them in London, so effectually has climbing been suppressed. These
little men, I was told, did pretty well, not unfrequently getting 2_s._
or 2_s._ 6_d._ for a single job.

As regards the _labour question_, during the existence of the climbing
boys, we find in the Report the following results:--

The _nominal_ wages to the journeymen were 2_s._ a week, with board and
lodging. The apprentices received no wages, their masters being only
required to feed, lodge, and clothe them.

The _actual_ wages were the same as the nominal, with the addition of
1_s._ as perquisites in money. There were other perquisites in liquor
or broken meat.

In the Reports are no accounts of the duration of labour throughout the
year, nor can I obtain from master-sweepers, who were in the business
during the old mode, any sufficient data upon which to found any
calculations. The employment, however, seems to have been generally
_continuous_, running through the year, though in the course of the
twelvemonth one master would have four and another six different
journeymen, but only one at a time. The vagrant propensities of the
class is a means of accounting for this.

The _nominal_ wages of those journeymen who resided in their own
apartments were generally 14_s._ a week, and their _actual_ about
2_s._ 6_d._ extra in the form of perquisites. Others resided “on the
premises,” having the care of the boys, with board and lodgings and
5_s._ a week in money _nominally_, and 7_s._ 6_d._ _actually_, the
perquisites being worth 2_s._ 6_d._

Concerning the _general_ or average wages of the whole trade, I can
only present the following computation.

Mr. Tooke, in his evidence before the House of Commons, stated
that the Committee, of which he was a member, had ascertained that
one boy on an average swept about four chimneys daily, at prices
varying from 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._, or a medium return of about 10_d._
per chimney, exclusive of the soot, then worth 8_d._ or 9_d._ a
bushel. “It appears,” he said, “from a datum I have here, that those
chimney-sweepers who keep six boys (the greatest number allowed by law)
gain, on an average, nearly 270_l._; five boys, 225_l._; four boys,
180_l._; three boys, 135_l._; two boys, 90_l._; and one boy 45_l._
(yearly), exclusive of the soot, which is, I should suppose, upon an
average, from half a bushel to a bushel every time the chimney is
swept.”

“Out of the profits you mention,” he was then asked, “the master has to
maintain the boys?”--“Yes,” was the answer, “and when the expenses of
house and cellar rent, and the wages of journeymen, and the maintenance
of apprentices, are taken into the account, the number of master
chimney-sweepers is not only more than the trade will support, but
exceeds, by above one-third, what the public exigency requires. The
Committee also ascertained that the 200 master chimney-sweepers in the
metropolis were supposed to have in their employment 150 journeymen and
500 boys.”

The matter may be reduced to a tabular form, expressing the amount in
money--for it is not asserted that the masters generally gained on the
charge for their journeymen’s board and lodging--as follows:--

EXPENDITURE OF MASTER CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS UNDER THE CLIMBING-BOY SYSTEM.

Yearly.
20 journeymen at individual wages,
14_s._ each weekly £780
30 ditto, say 12_s._ weekly 936
100 ditto, 10_s._ ditto 2,600
Board, Lodging, and Clothing of
500 boys, 4_s._ 6_d._ weekly 5,850
Rent, 20 large traders, 10_s._ 520
Do. 30 others, 7_s._ 546
Do. 150 do., 3_s._ 6_d._ 1,365
20 horses (keep), 10_s._ 520
General wear and tear 200
-------
£13,317

It appears that about 180 of the master chimney-sweepers were
themselves working men, in the same way as their journeymen.

The following, then, may be taken as the--

YEARLY RECEIPTS OF THE MASTER SWEEPERS UNDER THE CLIMBING-BOY SYSTEM.

Yearly.
Payment for sweeping 624,000
chimneys (4 daily, according to evidence
before Parliament, by each of
500 boys), 10_d._ per chimney, or yearly £26,000

Soot (according to same account),
say 5_d._ per chimney 13,000
------
Total £39,000
Yearly expenditure 13,317
-------
Yearly profit £25,683

This yielded, then, according to the information submitted to the
House of Commons Select Committee, as the profits of the trade prior
to 1817, an individual yearly gain to each master sweeper of 128_l._;
but, taking Mr. Tooke’s average yearly profit for the six classes of
tradesmen, 270_l._, 225_l._, 180_l._, 135_l._, 90_l._, and 45_l._
respectively, the individual profit averages above 157_l._

The capital, I am informed, would not average above two guineas per
master sweeper, nothing being wanted beyond a few common sacks, made by
the sweepers’ wives, and a few brushes. Only about 20 had horses, but
barrows were occasionally hired at a busy time.

In the foregoing estimates I have not included any sums for apprentice
fees, as I believe there would be something like a balance in the
matter, the masters sometimes paying parents such premiums for the use
of their children as they received from the parishes for the _tuition_
and maintenance of others.

Of the _morals_, _education_, _religion_, _marriage_, &c., of sweepers,
under the two systems, I shall speak in another place.

It may be somewhat curious to conclude with a word of the extent of
chimneys swept by a climbing boy. One respectable master-sweeper told
me that for eleven years he had climbed five or six days weekly. During
this period he thought he had swept fifteen chimneys as a week’s
average, each chimney being at least 40 feet in height; so traversing,
in ascending and descending, 686,400 feet, or 130 miles of a world of
soot. This, however, is little to what has been done by a climber of
30 years’ standing, one of the little men of whom I have spoken. My
informant entertained no doubt that this man had, for the first 22
years of his career, climbed half as much again as he himself had; or
had traversed 2,059,200 feet of the interior of chimneys, or 390 miles.
Since the new Act this man had of course climbed less, but had still
been a good deal employed; so that, adding his progresses for the last
9 years to the 22 preceding, he must have swept about 456 miles of
chimney interiors.

OF THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS OF THE PRESENT DAY.

The chimney-sweepers of the present day are distinguished from those of
old by the use of machines instead of climbing boys, for the purpose of
removing the soot from the flues of houses.

The chimney-sweeping machines were first used in this country in the
year 1803. They were the invention of Mr. Smart, a carpenter, residing
at the foot of Westminster-bridge, Surrey. On the earlier trials of the
machine (which was similar to that used at present, and which I shall
shortly describe), it was pronounced successful in 99 cases out of 100,
according to some accounts, but failing where sharp angles occurred in
the flue, which arrested its progress.

“Means have been suggested,” said Mr. Tooke, formerly mentioned, in his
evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons, “for obviating
that difficulty by fixed apparatus at the top of the flue with a
jack-chain and pulley, by which a brush could be worked up and down,
or it could be done as is customary abroad, as I have repeatedly seen
it at Petersburgh, and heard of its being done universally on the
Continent, by letting down a bullet with a brush attached to it from
the top; but to obviate the inconvenience, which is considerable,
from persons going upon the roof of a house, Mr. John White, junior,
an eminent surveyor, has suggested the expediency of putting iron
shutters or registers to each flue, in the roof or cockloft of each
house; by opening which, and working the machine upwards and downwards,
or letting down the bullet, which is the most compendious manner,
the chimney will be most effectually cleansed; and, by its aperture
at bottom being kept well closed, it would be done with the least
possible dirt and inconvenience to the family.”

[Illustration: ONE OF THE FEW REMAINING CLIMBING SWEEPS.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

The society for the supersedence of the labour of climbing boys
promoted the adoption of the machines by all the means in their
power, presenting the new instrument gratuitously to several master
sweepers who were too poor to purchase it. Experiments were made
and duly published as to the effectual manner in which the chimneys
at Guildhall, the Mansion House, the then new Custom House, Dulwich
College, and in other public edifices, had been cleansed by the
machine. But these statements seem to have produced little effect.
People thought, perhaps, that the mechanical means which might very
well cleanse the chimneys of large public buildings--and it was said
that the chimneys of the Custom House were built with a view to the
use of the machine--might not be so serviceable for the same purposes
in small private dwellings. Experiments continued to be made, often in
the presence of architects, of the more respectable sweepers, and of
ladies and gentlemen who took a philanthropic interest in the question,
between the years 1803 and 1817, but with little influence upon the
general public, for in 1817 Mr. Smart supposed that there were but 50
or 60 machines in general use in the metropolis, and those, it appeared
from the evidence of several master sweepers, were used chiefly in
gentlemen’s houses, many of those gentlemen having to be authoritative
with their servants, who, if not controlled, always preferred the
services of the climbing boys. Most servants had perquisites from the
master sweepers, in the largest and most profitable ways of business,
and they seemed to fear the loss of those perquisites if any change
took place.

The opposition in Parliament, and in the general indifference of
the people, to the efforts of “the friends of the climbing boy” to
supersede his painful labours by the use of machinery, was formidable
enough, but that of the servants appears to have been more formidable
still. Mr. Smart showed this in his explanations to the Committee.
The whole result of his experience was that servants set their faces
against the introduction of the machine, grumbling if there were not
even the appearance of dirt on the furniture after its use. “The first
winter I went out with this machine,” said Mr. Smart, “I went to Mr.
Burke’s in Token-house Yard, who was a friend of mine, with a man to
sweep the chimneys, and after waiting above an hour in a cold morning,
the housekeeper came down quite in a rage, that we should presume to
ring the bell or knock at the door; and when we got admittance, she
swore she wished the machine and the inventor at the devil; she did
not know me. We swept all the chimneys, and when we had done I asked
her what objection she had to it now; she said, a very serious one,
that if there was a thing by which a servant could get any emolument,
some d----d invention was sure to take it away from them, for that she
received perquisites.”

This avowal of Mr. Burke’s housekeeper, as brusque as it was honest, is
typical of the feelings of the whole class of servants.

The opposition in Parliament, as I have intimated, continued. One noble
lord informed the House of Peers that he had been indisposed of late
and had sought the aid of calomel, the curative influence of which had
pervaded every portion of his frame; and that it as far surpassed the
less searching powers of other medicines, as the brush of the climbing
boy in cleansing every nook and corner of the chimney, surpassed all
the power of the machinery, which left the soot unpurged from those
nooks and corners.

The House of Commons, however, had expressed its conviction that as
long as master chimney-sweepers were permitted to employ climbing
boys, the natural result of that permission would be the continuance
of those miseries which the Legislature had sought, but which it had
failed, to put an end to; and they therefore recommended that the use
of climbing boys should be prohibited altogether; and that the age at
which the apprenticeship should commence should be extended from eight
to fourteen, putting this trade upon the same footing as others which
took apprentices at that age.

This resolution became law in 1829. The employment of climbing boys in
any manner in the interior of chimneys was prohibited under penalties
of fine and imprisonment; and it was enacted that the new measure
should be carried into effect in three years, so giving the master
sweepers that period of time to complete their arrangements. During the
course of the experiments and inquiry, the sweepers, as a body, seem to
have thrown no obstacles, or very few and slight obstacles, in the way
of the “Committee to promote the Superseding of the Labour of Climbing
Boys;” while the most respectable of the class, or the majority of the
respectable, aided the efforts of the Committee.

This manifestation of public feeling probably modified the opposition
of the sweepers, and unquestionably influenced the votes of members
of Parliament. The change in the operations of the chimney-sweeping
business took place in 1832, as quietly and unnoticedly as if it were
no change at all.

The machine now in use differs little from that invented by Mr. Smart,
the first introduced, but lighter materials are now used in its
manufacture. It has not been found necessary, however, to complicate
its use with the jack-chain and pulley, and bullet with a brush
attached, and the iron shutters or registers in the roof or cockloft,
of which Mr. Tooke spoke.

The machine is formed of a series of hollow rods, made of a supple
cane, bending and not breaking in any sinuosity of the flues. This
cane is made of the same material as gentlemen’s walking-sticks. The
first machines were made of wood, and were liable to be broken; and
to enable the sweeps on such occasions to recover the broken part, a
strong line ran from bottom to top through the centre of the sticks,
which were bored for the purpose, and strung on this cord. The cane
machine, however, speedily and effectually superseded these imperfect
instruments; and there are now none of them to be met with. To the
top tube of the machine is attached the “brush,” called technically
“the head,” of elastic whalebone spikes, which “give” and bend, in
accordance with the up or down motion communicated by the man working
the machine, so sweeping what was described to me as “both ways,” up
and down.

Some of these rods, which fit into one another by means of brass
screws, are 4 feet 6 inches long, and diminish in diameter to suit
their adjustment. Some rods are but 3 feet 6 inches long, and 4 feet is
the full average length; while the average price at the machine maker’s
is 2_s._ 6_d._ a rod, if bought separately. The head costs 10_s._,
on an average, if bought separately. It is seldom that a machine is
required to number beyond 17 rods (extending 68 feet), and the better
class of sweepers are generally provided with 17 rods. The cost of the
entire machine, for every kind of chimney-work, when purchased new, as
a whole, is, when of good quality, from 30_s._ to 5_l._, according to
the number of rods, duplicate rods, &c. Mr. Smart stated, in 1817, that
the average price of one of his machines was then 2_l._ 3_s._

The sweepers who labour chiefly in the poorer localities--and several
told me how indifferent many people in those parts were as to their
chimneys being swept at all--rarely use a machine to extend beyond 40
feet, or one composed of 10 or 11 rods; but some of the inferior class
of sweepers buy of those in a superior way of trade worn machines, at
from a third to a half of the prime cost. These machines they trim up
themselves. One portion of the work, however, they cannot repair or
renew--the broken or worn-out brass screws of the rods, which they call
the “ferules.” These, when new, are 1_s._ each. There were, when the
machine-work was novel, I was informed, street-artizans who went about
repairing these screws or ferules; but their work did not please the
chimney-sweepers, and this street-trade did not last above a year or
two.

The rods of the machine, when carefully attended to, last a long time.
One man told me that he was still working some rods which he had worked
since 1842 (nine years), with occasional renewal of the ferules. The
head is either injured or worn down in about two years; if not well
made at first, in a year. The diameter of this head or brush is, on the
average, 18 inches. One of my informants had himself swept a chimney
of 80 feet, and one of his fellow-workers had said that he once swept
a chimney of 120 feet high; in both cases by means of the machine.
My informant, however, thought such a feat as the 120-feet sweep was
hardly possible, as only one man’s strength can be applied to the
machine; and he was of opinion that no man’s muscular powers would be
sufficient to work a machine at a height of 120 feet. The labour is
sometimes very severe; “enough,” one strongly-built man told me, “to
make your arms, head, and heart ache.”

The old-fashioned chimneys are generally 12 by 14 inches in their
dimensions in the interior; and for the thorough sweeping of such
chimneys--the opinion of all the sweepers I saw according on the
subject--a head (it is rarely called brush in the trade) of 18 inches
diameter is insufficient, yet they are seldom used larger. One
intelligent master sweeper, speaking from his own knowledge, told
me that in the neighbourhood where he worked numbers of houses had
been built since the introduction of the machines, and the chimneys
were only 9 inches square, as regards the interior; the smaller
flues are sometimes but 7. These 9-inch chimneys, he told me, were
frequent in “scamped” houses, houses got up at the lowest possible
rate by speculating builders. This was done because the brickwork
of the chimneys costs more than the other portions of the masonry,
and so the smaller the dimensions of the chimneys the less the cost
of the edifice. The machines are sometimes as much crippled in this
circumscribed space as they are found of insufficient dimensions in
the old-fashioned chimneys; and so the “scamped” chimney, unless by a
master having many “heads,” is not so cleanly swept as it might be.
Chimneys not built in this manner are now usually 9 inches by 14.

In cleansing a chimney with the machine the sweep stands by, or rather
in, the fire-place, having first attached a sort of curtain to the
mantle to confine the soot to one spot, the operator standing inside
this curtain. He first introduces the “head,” attached to its proper
rod, into the chimney, “driving” it forward, then screws on the next
rod, and so on, until the head has been driven to the top of the
chimney. The soot which has fallen upon the hearth, within the curtain,
is collected into a sack or sacks, and is carried away on the men’s
backs, and occasionally in carts. The whalebone spikes of the head are
made to extend in every direction, so that when it is moved no part
of the chimney, if the surface be even, escapes contact with these
spikes, if the work be carefully done, as indeed it generally is; for
the cleaner the chimney is swept of course the greater amount of soot
adds to the profit of the sweeper. One man told me that he thought
he had seen in some old big chimneys, a long time unswept, more soot
brought down by the machine than, under similar circumstances as to the
time the chimney had remained uncleansed, would have been done by the
climbing boy.

All the master sweepers I saw concurred in the opinion that the
machine was _not_ in all respects so effective a sweeper as the
climbing boy, as it does not reach the recesses, nooks, crannies, or
holes in the chimney, where the soot remains little disturbed by the
present process. This want is felt the most in the cleansing of the
old-fashioned chimneys, especially in the country.

Mr. Cook, in 1817, stated to the Committee that the cleansing of a
chimney by a boy or by a machine occupied the same space of time; but I
find the general opinion of the sweepers now to be that it is only the
small and straight chimneys which can be swept with as great celerity
by a machine as by a climber; in all others the lad was quicker by
about 5 minutes in 30, or in that proportion.

I heard sweepers represent that the passing of the Act of Parliament
not only deprived them in many instances of the unexpired term of a
boy’s apprenticeship in his services as a climber, but “threw open
the business to any one.” The business, however, it seems, was always
“open to any one.” There was no art nor mystery in it, as regarded
the functions of the master; any one could send a boy up a chimney,
and collect and carry away the soot he brought down, quite as readily
and far more easily than he can work a machine. Nevertheless, men
under the old system could hardly (and some say they were forbidden
to) embark in this trade unless they had been apprenticed to it; for
they were at a loss how to possess themselves of climbing boys, and
how to make a connection. When the machines were introduced, however,
a good many persons who were able to “raise the price” of one started
in the line on their own account. These men have been called by the
old hands “leeks” or “green ’uns,” to distinguish them from the
regularly-trained men, who pride themselves not a little on the fact
of their having served seven or eight years, “duly and truly,” as they
never fail to express it. This increase of fresh hands tended to lower
the earnings of the class; and some masters, who were described to
me as formerly very “comfortable,” and some, comparatively speaking,
rich, were considerably reduced by it. The number of “leeks” in 1832
I heard stated, with the exaggeration to which I have been accustomed
when uninformed men, ignorant of the relative value of numbers, have
expressed their opinions, as 1000!

The several classes in the chimney-sweeping trade may be arranged as
follows:--

The _Master Chimney-Sweepers_, called sometimes “Governors” by the
journeymen, are divisible into three kinds:--

The “large” or “high masters,” who employ from 2 to 10 men and 2 boys,
and keep sometimes 2 horses and a cart, not particularly for the
conveyance of the soot, but to go into the country to a gentleman’s
house to fulfil orders.

The “small” or “low masters,” who employ, on an average, two men, and
sometimes but one man and a boy, without either horse or cart.

The “single-handed master-men,” who employ neither men nor boys, but do
all the work themselves.

Of these three classes of masters there are two subdivisions.

The “leeks” or “green-uns,” that is to say, those who have not
regularly served their time to the trade.

The “knullers” or “queriers,” that is to say, those who solicit custom
in an irregular manner, by knocking at the doors of houses and such
like.

Of the competition of capitalists in this trade there are, I am told,
no instances. “We have our own stations,” one master sweeper said, “and
if I contract to sweep a genelman’s house, here in Pancras, for 25_s._
a year, or 10_s._, or anythink, my nearest neighbour, as has men and
machines fit, is in Marrybun; and it wouldn’t pay to send his men a
mile and a half, or on to two mile, and work at what I can--let alone
less. No, sir, I’ve known bisness nigh 20 year, and there’s nothink in
the way of that underworking. The poor creeturs as keeps theirselves
with a machine, and nothing to give them a lift beyond it, _they’d_
undertake work at any figure, but nobody employs or can trust to them,
but on chance.” The contracts, I am told, for a year’s chimney-sweeping
in any mansion are on the same terms with one master as with another.

As regards the _Journeymen Chimney-Sweepers_ there are also three
kinds:--

The “foreman” or “first journeyman” sweeper, who accompanies the men to
their work, superintends their labours, and receives the money, when
paid immediately after sweeping.

The “journeyman” sweeper, whose duty it is to work the machine, and
(where no under-journeyman, or boy, is kept) to carry the machine and
take home the soot.

The “under-journeyman” or “boy,” who has to carry the machine, take
home the soot, and work the machine up the lower-class flues.

There are, besides these, some 20 climbing men, who ascend such flues
as the machines cannot cleanse effectually, and, it must, I regret to
say, be added, some 20 to 30 climbing boys, mostly under eleven years
of age, who are still used for the same purpose “on the sly.” Many of
the masters, indeed, lament the change to machine-sweeping, saying that
their children, who are now useless, would, in “the good old times,”
have been worth a pound a week to them. It is in the suburbs that these
climbing children are mostly employed.

The _hours of labour_ are from the earliest morning till about midday,
and sometimes later.

There are _no Houses of Call_, trade societies, or regulations among
these operatives, but there are low public-houses to which they resort,
and where they can always be heard of.

When a chimney-sweeper is out of work he merely inquires of others in
the same line of business, who, if they know of any one that wants a
journeyman, direct their brother sweeper to call and see the master;
but though the chimney-sweepers have no trade societies, some of the
better class belong to sick, and others to burial, funds. The lower
class of sweepers, however, seem to have no resource in sickness, or in
their utmost need, but the parish. There are sweepers, I am told, in
every workhouse in London.

There are three _modes of payment common_ among the sweepers:--

1, in money;
2, partly in money and partly in kind; and
3, by perquisites.

The great majority of the masters pay the men they employ from 2_s._ to
3_s._, and a few 4_s._ and 6_s._ per week, together with their board
and lodging. It may seem that 3_s._ per week is a small sum, but it was
remarked to me that there are few working men who, after supporting
themselves, are able to save that sum weekly, while the sweepers
have many perquisites of one sort or other, which sometimes bring
them in 1_s._, 2_s._, 3_s._, 4_s._, and occasionally 5_s._ or 6_s._,
a week additional--a sufficient sum to pay for clothes and washing.
The journeymen, when lodged in the house of the master, are single
men, and if constantly employed might, perhaps, do well, but they are
often unemployed, especially in the summer, when there are not so many
fires kept burning. As soon as one of them gets married, or what among
them is synonymous, “takes up with a woman,” which they commonly do
when they are able to purchase some sort of a machine, they set up
for themselves, and thus a great number of the men get to be masters
on their own account, without being able to employ any extra hands.
These are generally reckoned among the “knullers;” they do but little
business at first, for the masters long established in a neighbourhood,
who are known to the people, and have some standing, are almost always
preferred to those who are strangers or mere beginners.

It was very common, but perhaps more common in country towns than in
London, for the journeymen, as well as apprentices, in this and many
other trades to live at the master’s table. But the board and lodging
supplied, in lieu of money-wages, to the journeymen sweepers, seems
to be one of the few existing instances of such a practice in London.
Among slop-working tailors and shoemakers, some unfortunate workmen are
boarded and lodged by their employers, but these employers are merely
middlemen, who gain their living by serving such masters as “do not
like to drive their negroes themselves.” But among the sweepers there
are no middlemen.

It is not all the journeymen sweepers, however, who are remunerated
after this manner, for many receive 12_s._, and some 14_s._, and not a
few 18_s._ weekly, besides perquisites, but reside at their own homes.

_Apprenticeship_ is now not at all common among the sweepers, as no
training to the business is needed. Lord Shaftesbury, however, in
July last, gave notice of his intention to bring in a bill to prevent
persons who had not been duly apprenticed to the business establishing
themselves as sweepers.

_The Perquisites_ of the journeymen sweepers are for measuring,
arranging, and putting the soot sold into the purchasers’ sacks,
or carts; for this is considered extra work. The payment of this
perquisite seems to be on no fixed scale, some having 1_s._ for 50,
and some for 100 bushels. When a chimney is on fire and a journeyman
sweeper is employed to extinguish it, he receives from 1_s._ 6_d._
to 5_s._ according to the extent of time consumed and the risk of
being injured. “Chance sweeping,” or the sweeping of a chimney not
belonging to a customer, when a journeyman has completed his regular
round, ensures him 3_d._ in some employments, but in fewer than was
once the case. The beer-money given by any customer to a journeyman is
also his perquisite. Where a foreman is kept, the “brieze,” or cinders
collected from the grate, belong to him, and the ashes belong to the
journeyman; but where there is no foreman, the brieze and ashes belong
to the journeyman solely. These they sell to the poor at the rate of
6_d._ a bushel. I am told by experienced men that, all these matters
considered, it may be stated that one-half of the journeymen in London
have perquisites of 1_s._ 6_d._, the other half of 2_s._ 6_d._ a week.

_The Nominal Wages_ to the journeymen, then, are from 12_s._ to 18_s._
weekly, without board and lodging, or from 2_s._ to 6_s._ in money,
with board and lodging, represented as equal to 7_s._

_The Actual Wages_ are 2_s._ 6_d._ a week more in the form of
perquisites, and perhaps 4_d._ daily in beer or gin.

The wages to the boys are mostly 1_s._ a week, but many masters pay
1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._, with board and lodging. These boys have no
perquisites, except such bits of broken victuals as are given to them
at houses where they go to sweep.

The wages of the foreman are generally 18_s._ per week, but some
receive 14_s._ and some 20_s._ without board and lodging. In one case,
where the foreman is kept by the master, only 2_s._ 6_d._ in money is
given to him weekly. The perquisites of these men average from 4_s._ to
5_s._ a week.

_The work in the chimney-sweeping trade is more regular than might
at first be supposed._ The sweepers whose circumstances enable them
to employ journeymen send them on regular rounds, and do not engage
“chance” hands. If business is brisk, the men and the master, when a
working man himself, work later than ordinary, and sometimes another
hand is put on and paid the customary amount, by the week, until the
briskness ceases; but this is a rare occurrence. There are, however,
strong lads, or journeymen out of work, who are _occasionally_ employed
in “_jobbing_,” helping to carry the soot and such like.

The labour of the journeymen, as regards the payment by their masters,
is _continuous_, but the men are often discharged for drunkenness,
or for endeavouring to “form a connection of their own” among their
employers’ customers, and new hands are then put on. “Chimneys won’t
wait, you know, sir,” was said to me, “and if I quit a hand this week,
there’s another in his place next. If I discharge a hand for three
months in a slack time, I have two on when it’s a busy time.” Perhaps
the average employment of the whole body of operatives may be taken
at nine months’ work in the year. When out of employment the chief
resource of these men is in night-work; some turn street-sellers and
bricklayers’ labourers.

I am told that a considerable sum of money was left for the purpose
of supplying every climbing-boy who called on the first of May at
a certain place, with a shilling and some refreshment, but I have
not been able to ascertain by whom it was left, or where it was
distributed; none of the sweepers with whom I conversed knew anything
about it. I also heard, that since the passing of the Act, the money
has been invested in some securities or other, and is now accumulating,
but to what purpose it is intended to be applied I have no means of
learning.

Let us now endeavour to estimate the gross yearly income of the
operative sweepers.

There are, then, 399 men employed as journeymen, and of them 147
receive a money wage weekly from their masters, and reside with their
parents or at their own places. The remaining 252 are boarded and
lodged. This board and lodging are generally computed, as under the
old system, to represent 8_s._, being 1_s._ a day for board and 1_s._
a week for lodging. But, on the average, the board does not cost the
masters 7_s._ a week, but, as I shall afterwards show, barely 6_s._

The men and boys may be said to be all fully employed for nine months
in the year; some, of course, are at work all the year through, but
others get only six months’ employment in the twelve months; so that
taking nine months as the average, we have the following table of

WAGES PAID TO THE OPERATIVE SWEEPERS OF LONDON.

------------------------------------------------+-------------+------------
| Money |
| wages |
JOURNEYMEN. | for nine |
| months. |
_Without board and lodging._ | £ _s._ _d._|
Journeymen per | |
30 employed by 3 masters, at 18_s._ week |1053 0 0 |
14 „ 5 „ 16_s._ „ | 436 16 0 |
6 „ 3 „ 15_s._ „ | 175 10 0 |
27 „ 8 „ 14_s._ „ | 737 2 0 |
63 „ 23 „ 12_s._ „ | 474 4 0 | Value of
7 „ 3 „ 10_s._ „ | 136 10 0 | board and
--- -- +-------------+ lodging
147 45 |4013 2 0 | for nine
| | months
| | estimated
| | at 7_s._
_With board and lodging._ | | a week.
Journeymen per | | £ _s._ _d._
3 employed by 1 master, at 8_s._ 0_d._ week| 46 16 0 | 40 19 0
17 „ 5 „ 6_s._ 0_d._ „ | 198 18 0 | 232 1 0
1 „ 1 „ 5_s._ 0_d._ „ | 9 15 0 | 13 13 0
41 „ 14 „ 4_s._ 0_d._ „ | 319 16 0 | 559 13 0
3 „ 1 „ 3_s._ 6_d._ „ | 20 9 6 | 40 19 0
80 „ 39 „ 3_s._ 0_d._ „ | 468 0 0 |1092 0 0
53 „ 26 „ 2_s._ 6_d._ „ | 258 7 6 | 723 9 0
44 „ 31 „ 2_s._ 0_d._ „ | 171 12 0 | 600 9 8
8 „ 4 „ 1_s._ 6_d._ „ | 234 0 0 | 09 4 0
2 „ 1 „ 1_s._ 0_d._ „ | 3 18 0 | 27 6 0
--- --- +-------------+-----------
252 123 |1731 12 0 |3439 13 8
| |
FOREMEN. | |
_Without board and lodging._ | |
Foremen per | |
2 employed by 1 master, at 20_s._ week | 78 0 0 |
6 „ 4 „ 18_s._ „ | 210 12 0 |
1 „ 1 „ 16_s._ „ | 31 4 0 |
2 „ 2 „ 14_s._ „ | 54 12 0 |
-- -- +-------------+
11 8 | 374 8 0 |
| |
_With board and lodging._ | |
1 „ 1 „ 2_s._ 6_d._ „ | 4 17 6 | 13 13 0
| |
BOYS. | |
_Without board and lodging._ | |Board and
Boys per | | lodging
2 employed by 1 master, at 10_s._ week | 39 0 0 |estimated
| | at 6_s._
_With board and lodging._ | | a week.
1 „ 1 „ 3_s._ 0_d._ „ | 5 17 0 | 11 14 0
1 „ 1 „ 2_s._ 6_d._ „ | 4 17 6 | 11 14 0
9 „ 8 „ 2_s._ 0_d._ „ | 35 2 0 | 105 6 0
14 „ 14 „ 1_s._ 6_d._ „ | 40 19 0 | 163 16 0
30 „ 28 „ 1_s._ 0_d._ „ | 58 10 0 | 351 0 0
1 „ 1 „ 0_s._ 9_d._ „ | 1 9 3 | 11 14 0
4 „ 2 „ 0_s._ 0_d._ „ | | 46 16 0
-- -- +-------------+-----------
62 54 | 146 14 9 | 702 0 0
+-------------+-----------

Total earnings 6309 14 3
Total for board, lodging, &c. 4155 6 8
------------
Grand Total 10,465 0 11

Thus we find that the _constant_ or _average casual_ wages of the
several classes of operative chimney-sweepers may be taken as follows:--

Journeymen without board and lodging, _s._ _d._
and with perquisites averaging 2_s._
a week 12 6
Journeymen with board and lodging
and 2_s._ a week perquisites 9 10-1/2
Foreman, without board and lodging,
at 2_s._ 6_d._ a week perquisites 15 7
Boys, with board and lodging 5 3

The _general_ wages of the trade, including foreman, journeymen, and
boys, and calculating the perquisites to average 2_s._ weekly, will be
10_s._ 6_d._ a week, the same as the cotton factory operatives.

But if 10,500_l._ be the income of the operatives, what do the
employers receive who have to pay this sum?

The charge for sweeping one of the lofty chimneys in the public and
official edifices, and in the great houses in the aristocratic streets
and squares, is 2_s._ 6_d._ and 3_s._ 6_d._

The chimneys of moderate-sized houses are swept at 1_s._ to 1_s._ 6_d._
each, and those of the poorer classes are charged generally 6_d._;
some, however, are swept at 3_d._ and 4_d._; and when soot realized
a higher price (some of the present master sweepers _have_ sold it
at 1_s._ a bushel), the chimneys of poor persons were swept by the
poorer class of sweeps merely for the perquisite of the soot. This is
sometimes done even now, but to a very small extent, by a sweeper, “on
his own hook,” and in want of a job, but generally with an injunction
to the person whose chimney has been cleansed on such easy terms, not
to mention it, as it “couldn’t be made a practice on.”

Estimating the number of houses belonging to the wealthy classes of
society to be 54,000, and these to be swept eight times a year, and
the charge for sweeping to be 2_s._ 6_d._ each time; and the number of
houses belonging to the middle classes to be 90,000, and each to be
swept four times a year, at 1_s._ 6_d._ each time; and the dwellings of
the poor and labouring classes to be swept once a year at 6_d._ each
time, and the number of such dwellings to be 165,000, we find that the
total sum paid to the master chimney-sweepers of London is, in round
numbers, 85,000_l._

The sum obtained for 800,000 bushels of soot collected by the
master-sweepers from the houses of London, at 5_d._ per bushel, is
16,500_l._

Thus the total annual income of the master-sweepers of London is
100,000_l._

Out of this 100,000_l._ per annum, the expenses of the masters would
appear to be as follows:--

_Yearly Expenditure of the Master-Sweepers._

Sum paid in wages to 473 journeymen £10,500
Rent, &c., of 350 houses or lodgings,
at 12_l._ yearly each 4,200
Wear and tear of 1000 machines,
1_l._ each yearly 1,000
Ditto 2000 sacks, at 1_s._ each yearly 100
Keep of 25 horses, 7_s._ weekly each 455
Wear and tear of 25 carts and harness,
1_l._ each 25
Interest on capital at 10 per cent. 450
------
Total yearly expenditure of
master-sweepers employing journeymen £16,736

The rent here given may seem low at 12_l._ a year, but many of
the chimney-sweepers live in parlours, with cellars below, in old
out-of-the-way places, at a low rental, in Stepney, Shadwell, Wapping,
Bethnal-green, Hoxton, Lock’s-fields, Walworth, Newington, Islington,
Somers-town, Paddington, &c. The better sort of master-sweepers at the
West-end often live in a mews.

The gains, then, of the master sweepers are as under:--

Annual income for cleansing chimneys
and soot £100,000
Expenditure for wages, rent, wear,
and tear, keep of horses, &c., say 20,000
-------
Annual profit of master chimney-sweepers
of London £80,000

This amount of profit, divided among 350 masters, gives about 230_l._
per annum to each individual; it is only by a few, however, that such
a sum is realized, as in the 100,000_l._ paid by the London public
to the sweepers’ trade, is included the sum received by the men who
work single-handed, “on their own hook,” as they say, employing
no journeymen. Of these men’s earnings, the accounts I heard from
themselves and the other master sweepers were all accordant, that they
barely made journeymen’s wages. They have the very worst-paid portion
of the trade, receiving neither for their sweeping nor their soot the
prices obtained by the better masters; indeed they very frequently sell
their soot to their more prosperous brethren. Their general statement
is, that they make “eighteen pence a day, and all told.” Their receipts
then, and they have no perquisites as have the journeymen, are, in a
slack time, about 1_s._ a day (and some days they do not get a job);
but in the winter they are busier, as it is then that sweepers are
employed by the poor; and at that period the “master-men” may make from
15_s._ to 20_s._ a week each; so that, I am assured, the average of
their weekly takings may be estimated at 12_s._ 6_d._

Now, deducting the expenditure from the receipts of 100,000_l._ (for
sweeping and soot), the balance, as we have seen, is 80,000_l._, an
amount of profit which, if equally divided among the three classes of
the trade, will give the following sums:--

Yearly, each. Yearly, total.

Profits of 150 single-handed £ _s._ £
master-men 32 10 4,940
Do. 92 small masters 200 0 18,400
Do. 106 large masters 500 0 53,000
------
£76,340

Nor is this estimate of the masters’ profits, I am assured,
extravagant. One of the smaller sweepers, but a prosperous man in his
way, told me that he knew a master sweeper who was “as rich as Crœser,
had bought houses, and could not write his own name.”

We have now but to estimate the amount of capital invested in the
chimney-sweepers’ trade, and then to proceed to the characteristics of
the men.

1200 machines, 2_l._ 10_s._ each (present £
average value) 3000
3000 sacks, 2_s._ 6_d._ each 385
25 horses, 20_l._ each 500
25 sets of harness, 2_l._ each 50
25 carts, 12_l._ each 300
-----
£4235

It may be thought that the sweepers will require the services of more
than 25 horses, but I am assured that such is not the case as regards
the soot business, for the soot is carted away from the sweepers’
premises by the farmer or other purchaser.

It would appear, then, that the facts of the chimney-sweepers’ trade
are briefly as under:--

The gross quantity of soot collected yearly throughout London is
800,000 bushels. The value of this, sold as manure, at 5_d._ per
bushel, is 16,500_l._

There are 800 to 900 people employed in the trade, 200 of whom are
masters employing journeymen, 150 single-handed master-men, and 470
journeymen and under journeymen.

The annual income of the entire number of journeymen is 10,500_l._
without perquisites, or 13,000_l._ with, which gives an average weekly
wage to the operatives of 10_s._ 6_d._

The annual income of the masters and leeks is, for sweeping and soot,
100,000_l._

The annual expenditure of the masters for rent, keep of horses, wear
and tear, and wages, is 20,000_l._

The gross annual profit of the 350 masters is 80,000_l._, which is
at the rate of about 35_l._ per annum to each of the single-handed
men, 200_l._ to each of the smaller masters employing journeymen, and
500_l._ to each of the larger masters.

The capital of the trade is about 5000_l._

_The price charged_ by the “high master sweepers” for cleaning the
flues of a house rented at 150_l._ a year and upwards, is from 1_s._ to
3_s._ 6_d._ (the higher price being paid for sweeping those chimneys
which have a hot plate affixed). A small master, on the other hand,
will charge from 1_s._ to 3_s._ for the same kind of work, while
a single-handed man seldom gets above “a 2_s._ job,” and that not
very often. The charge for sweeping the flues of a house rented at
from 50_l._ to 150_l._ a year, is from 9_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ by a
large master, and from 8_d._ to 2_s._ by a small master, while a
single-handed man will take the job at from 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ The
price charged per flue for a house rented at from 20_l._ a year up to
50_l._ a year, will average 6_d._ a flue, charged by large masters,
4_d._ by small masters, and from 2_d._ to 3_d._ by the single-handed
sweepers in some cases; indeed, the poorest class will sweep a flue for
the soot only. But the prices charged for sweeping chimneys differ in
the different parts of the metropolis. I subjoin a list of the maximum
and minimum charge for the several districts.

_d._ _s._ _d._
Kensington and Hammersmith 4 to 3 0
Westminster 3 „ 2 0
Chelsea 4 „ 2 6
St. George’s, Hanover-sq. 6 „ 3 6
St. Martin’s and St. Ann’s 4 „ 2 6
St. James’s, Westminster 3 „ 2 6
Marylebone 4 „ 2 6
Paddington 3 „ 2 0
Hampstead 3 „ 1 6
St. Pancras 4 „ 3 0
Islington 3 „ 1 6
Hackney and Homerton 3 „ 2 0
St. Giles’s and St. George’s, Bloomsbury 3 „ 3 0
Strand 4 „ 2 6
Holborn 4 „ 2 6
Clerkenwell 3 „ 1 6
St. Luke’s 3 „ 1 0
East London 3 „ 1 6
West London 4 „ 2 6
London City 6 „ 2 6
Shoreditch 3 „ 1 0
Bethnal Green 3 „ 1 0
Whitechapel 4 „ 1 6
St. George’s in the East and Limehouse 3 „ 1 0
Stepney 3 „ 1 6
Poplar 4 „ 2 0
St. George’s, St. Olave’s, and St.
Saviour’s, Southwark 3 „ 1 6
Bermondsey 3 „ 0 9
Walworth and Newington 4 „ 1 6
Wandsworth 4 „ 1 6
Lambeth 3 „ 1 0
Camberwell 4 „ 2 0
Clapham, Brixton, and Tooting 4 „ 2 6
Rotherhithe 3 „ 1 6
Greenwich 3 „ 1 6
Woolwich 3 „ 2 6
Lewisham 6 „ 3 0

N.B.--The single-handed and the knullers generally
charge a penny less than the prices above given.

_There are three different kinds of soot_:--the best is produced purely
from coal; the next in value is that which proceeds from the combustion
of vegetable refuse along with the coal, as in cases where potato
peelings, cabbage leaves, and the like, are burnt in the fires of the
poorer classes; while the soot produced from wood fires is, I am told,
scarcely worth carriage. Wood-soot, however, is generally mixed with
that from coal, and sold as the superior kind.

Not only is there a difference in value in the various kinds of soot,
but there is also a vast difference in the weight. A bushel of pure
coal soot will not weigh above four pounds; that produced from the
combustion of coal and vegetable refuse will weigh nearly thrice as
much; while that from wood fires is, I am assured, nearly ten times
heavier than from coal.

I have not heard that the introduction of free trade has had any
influence on the value of soot, or in reducing the wages of the
operatives. The same wages are paid to the operatives whether soot
sells at a high or low price.

OF THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WORKING CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

There are many reasons why the chimney-sweepers have ever been a
distinct and peculiar class. They have long been looked down upon
as the lowest order of workers, and treated with contumely by those
who were but little better than themselves. The peculiar nature of
their work giving them not only a filthy appearance, but an offensive
smell, of itself, in a manner, prohibited them from associating with
other working men; and the natural effect of such proscription
has been to compel them to herd together apart from others, and to
acquire habits and peculiarities of their own widely differing from the
characteristics of the rest of the labouring classes.

A TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF MASTER CHIMNEY SWEEPERS RESIDING IN
THE SEVERAL DISTRICTS OF THE METROPOLIS, THE NUMBER OF FOREMEN, OF
JOURNEYMEN, AND UNDER JOURNEYMEN EMPLOYED IN EACH DISTRICT DURING THE
YEAR, AS WELL AS THE WEEKLY WAGES OF EACH CLASS.

----------------+---------+---------+----------+----------+-------------+
| | | No. of | No. of | |
| No. of | |Journeymen|Journeymen| |
| Master | | employed | employed |No. of Under |
DISTRICTS. |Sweepers | No. of | in the | in the | Journeymen, |
| in each | Foremen | brisk | slack |men, or boys,|
|District.|employed.| season. | season. | employed. |
----------------+---------+---------+----------+----------+-------------+
WEST DISTRICTS. | | | | | |
_Kensington and | | | | | |
Hammersmith_ | 11 | 2 | 25 | 16 | 2 |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
_Westminster_ | 13 | 1 | 26 | 18 | 1 |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
_Chelsea_ | 22 | -- | 13 | 11 | 2 |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
_St. George’s, | | | | | |
Hanover-sq._ | 10 | 5 | 27 | 25 | -- |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
_St. Martin’s | | | | | |
and St. | | | | | |
Ann’s_ | 9 | -- | 16 | 15 | 1 |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
_St. James’s, | | | | | |
Westminster_ | 7 | 1 | 9 | 6 | -- |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
NORTH DISTRICTS.| | | | | |
_Marylebone_ | 18 | -- | 21 | 16 | -- |
_Paddington_ | 10 | 1 | 17 | 10 | 3 |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
_Hampstead_ | 2 | -- | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| | | | | |
_Islington_ | 9 | -- | 13 | 12 | 3 |
| | | | | |
_St. Pancras_ | 18 | -- | 33 | 21 | 6 |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
_Hackney and | | | | | |
Homerton_ | 13 | -- | 3 | 3 | 4 |

+---------+-----------+----------------------+---------------
| | | |
| No. of | | |
| Bushels | Weekly | Weekly | Weekly
| of Soot | Wages | Wages | Wages of
|collected| of each | of each | each Under
| Weekly. | Foreman. | Journeyman. | Journeyman.
+---------+-----------+----------------------+---------------
| | | |
| | | |
| 695 | 18_s._ | 7 at 16_s._ | 10_s._
| | | 6 „ 15_s._ |
| | |10 „ 14_s._ |
| | | 1 „ 12_s._ |
| 735 | 14_s._ | 5 at 18_s._ | 3_s._ _b_
| | |10 „ 12_s._ |
| | | 3 „ 4_s._} |
| | | 4 „ 3_s._}_b_ |
| | | 4 „ 2_s._} |
| 670 | -- | 1 „ 16_s._ |1 at 2_s._ _b_
| | | 3 „ 12_s._ |1 _e_
| | | 4 „ 10_s._ |
| | | 3 „ 3_s._ } |
| | | 1 „ 2_s._ 6_d._}_b_|
| | | 1 „ 2_s._ } |
| | | |
| 890 |4 at 18_s._| 5 at 18_s._ | --
| |1 „ 16_s._| 3 „ 16_s._ |
| | | 2 „ 15_s._ |
| | | 9 „ 14_s._ |
| | | 7 „ 12_s._ |
| | | 1 „ 6_s._ _b_ |
| | | |
| | | |
| 415 | -- | 7 at 6_s._} | 2_s._ _b_
| | | 6 „ 4_s._}_b_ |
| | | 2 „ 3_s._} |
| | | |
| 355 | 14_s._ | 5 at 12_s._ | --
| | | 1 „ 10_s._ |
| | | 1 at 3_s._ 6_d._ _b_|
| | | |
| 775 | -- | 18_s._ | --
| 495 | 18_s._ | 1 at 14_s._ |2 at 2_s._ }
| | | 1 „ 10_s._ |1 „ 1_s._ 6_d._}_b_
| | | 2 „ 4_s._ } |
| | | 8 „ 3_s._ 6_d._}_b_|
| | | 1 „ 2_s._ 6_d._} |
| | | 2 „ 1_s._} |
| 60 | -- | 1 at 3_s._}_b_ |1 at 1_s._ 6_d._}_b_
| | | 1 „ 2_s._} |1 „ 1_s._ }
| 425 | -- | 3 at 4_s._ }_b_ | 1_s._ 6_d._ _b_
| | | 2 „ 3_s._ } |
| 920 | -- | 2 at 14_s._ |3 at 2_s._ }
| | | 6 „ 12_s._ |2 „ 1_s._ 6_d._}_b_
| | | 4 „ 10_s._ |1 „ 1_s._ }
| | | 6 „ 4_s._ } |
| | | 3 „ 3_s._ 6_d._} |
| | |11 „ 3_s._ }_b_|
| | | 3 „ 2_s._ 6_d._} |
| | | 1 „ 2_s._ } |
| | | |
| 290 | -- | 2_s._ _b_ |1_s._ 6_d._ _b_

----------------+---------+---------+----------+----------+-------------+
| | | No. of | No. of | |
| No. of | |Journeymen|Journeymen| |
| Master | | employed | employed |No. of Under |
Districts. |Sweepers | No. of | in the | in the | Journeymen, |
| in each | Foremen | brisk | slack |men, or boys,|
|District.|employed.| season. | season. | employed. |
----------------+---------+---------+----------+----------+-------------+
CENTRAL | | | | | |
DISTRICTS. | | | | | |
_St. Giles’s and| 12 | -- | 9 | 7 | 5 |
St. George’s, | | | | | |
Bloomsbury._ | | | | | |
_Strand_ | 5 | -- | 11 | 8 | 2 |
| | | | | |
_Holborn_ | 6 | 2 | 11 | 10 | -- |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
_Clerkenwell_ | 6 | -- | 9 | 9 | 1 |
| | | | | |
_St. Luke’s_ | 6 | -- | 4 | 3 | 2 |
_East London_ | 8 | -- | 10 | 8 | -- |
_West London_ | 5 | -- | 9 | 6 | -- |
| | | | | |
_London City_ | 6 | -- | 12 | 10 | 2 |
| | | | | |
EAST DISTRICTS. | | | | | |
_Shoreditch_ | 13 | -- | 6 | 5 | 1 |
_Bethnal Green_ | 6 | -- | 2 | 2 | -- |
| | | | | |
_Whitechapel_ | 11 | -- | 1 | 1 | 3 |
_St. George’s-in| 14 | -- | 14 | 10 | 3 |
-the-East and | | | | | |
Limehouse._ | | | | | |
_Stepney_ | 9 | -- | 3 | 2 | -- |
_Poplar_ | 4 | -- | 1 | -- | 1 |
| | | | | |
SOUTH DISTRICTS.| | | | | |
_Southwark_ | 17 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
_Bermondsey_ | 8 | -- | 4 | 4 | 1 |
_Walworth and | 9 | -- | 6 | 4 | 4 |
Newington_ | | | | | |
_Wandsworth_ | 6 | -- | 6 | 5 | 1 |
| | | | | |
_Lambeth_ | 16 | -- | 9 | 9 | 5 |
| | | | | |
_Camberwell_ | 8 | -- | 8 | 7 | 1 |
_Clapton, } | 11 | -- | 13 | 7 | 1 |
Brixton, } | | | | | |
and Tooting_} | | | | | |
_Rotherhithe_ | 7 | -- | 2 | 2 | -- |
_Greenwich_ | 6 | -- | 4 | 4 | 1 |
| | | | | |
_Woolwich_ | 7 | -- | 17 | 12 | 3 |
| | | | | |
_Lewisham_ | 2 | -- | 5 | 5 | 1 |
_Ramoneur | | | | | |
Company_ | -- | -- | 18 | 18 | 18 |
----------------+---------+---------+----------+----------+-------------+
TOTAL | 350 | 12 | 399 | 62 | 62 |
----------------+---------+---------+----------+----------+-------------+

+---------+-----------+----------------------+---------------
| | | |
| No. of | | |
| Bushels | Weekly | Weekly | Weekly
| of Soot | Wages | Wages | Wages of
|collected| of each | of each | each Under
| Weekly. | Foreman. | Journeyman. | Journeyman.
+---------+-----------+----------------------+---------------
| | | |
| | | |
| 435 | -- |8 at 12_s._ | 1_s._ _b_
| | |1 „ 3_s._ _b_ |
| | | |
| 350 | -- | 4_s._ _b_ |1 at 2_s._}
| | | |1 „ 1_s._} _b_
| 435 | 20_s._ |2 at 18_s._ | --
| | |3 „ 8_s._} |
| | |4 „ 4_s._} _b_ |
| | |2 „ 3_s._} |
| 310 | -- |8 at 3_s._ } _b_| 1_s._ _b_
| | |1 „ 2_s._ 6_d._} |
| 175 | -- | 2_s._ _b_ | 1_s._ _b_
| 455 | -- | 3_s._ _b_ | --
| 205 | -- |3 at 4_s._} | --
| | |6 „ 3_s._}_b_ |
| 415 | -- |6 at 6_s._ } | 2_s._ _b_
| | |6 „ 4_s._ }_b_ |
| | | |
| 380 | -- | 2_s._ _b_ | 1_s._ _b_
| 150 | -- |1 at 5_s._ | --
| | |1 „ 2_s._ _b_ |
| 330 | -- | 2_s._ _b_ | 3_s._ _e_
| 650 | -- |3 at 3_s._ } |1 at 1_s._ 6_d._}_b_
| | |4 „ 2_s._ 6_d._}_b_ |2 „ 1_s._ }
| | |7 „ 2_s._ } |
| 275 | -- | 3_s._ _b_ | --
| 110 | -- | 2_s._ _b_ | 1_s._ 6_d._ _b_
| | | |
| | | |
| 385 | -- | -- | --
| 220 | -- | 2_s._ _b_ | 1_s._ _b_
| 330 | -- | 2_s._ _b_ | 1_s._ _b_
| | | |
| 240 | -- | 3 at 3_s._ } | 1_s._ _b_
| | | 3 „ 2_s._ 6_d._}_b_ |
| 560 | -- | 3 at 3_s._ { |1 at 1_s._ 6_d._}
| | | 6 „ 2_s._ 6_d._{_b_ |4 „ 1_s._ } _b_
| 315 | -- | 2_s._ 6_d._{_b_ | 1_s._ _b_
| 410 | -- | 2_s._ 6_d._ _b_ | 1_s._ _b_
| | | |
| | | |
| 170 | -- | 2_s._ _b_ | --
| 195 | -- | 1_s._ 6_d._ _b_ | 1_s._ _b_
| | | |
| 515 | -- |13 at 2_s._ 6_d._ |2 at 1_s._}
| | | 4 „ 1_s._ 6_d._ |1 „ 9_d._} _b_
| 160 | -- | 2_s._ _b_ | 1_s._ _b_
| | | |
| 450 | -- | 18_s._ | --
+---------+-----------+----------------------+------------------
| 15350 | | |
+---------+-----------+----------------------+------------------

NOTE.--_b_ means board and lodging as well as money, or part money and
part kind; _e_ stands for everything found or paid all in kind.

These returns have been collected by personal visits to each
district:--the name of each master throughout London, together with
the number of Foremen, Journeymen, and Under Journeymen employed, and
the Wages received by each, as well as the quantity of soot collected,
have been likewise obtained; but the names of the masters are here
omitted for want of space, and the results alone are given.

Sweepers, however, have not from this cause generally been an
hereditary race--that is, they have not become sweepers from father
to son for many generations. Their numbers were, in the days of the
climbing boys, in most instances increased by parish apprentices, the
parishes usually adopting that mode as the cheapest and easiest of
freeing themselves from a part of the burden of juvenile pauperism. The
climbing boys, but more especially the unfortunate parish apprentices,
were almost always cruelly used, starved, beaten, and over-worked by
their masters, and treated as outcasts by all with whom they came in
contact: there can be no wonder, then, that, driven in this manner from
all other society, they gladly availed themselves of the companionship
of their fellow-sufferers; quickly imbibed all their habits and
peculiarities; and, perhaps, ended by becoming themselves the most
tyrannical masters to those who might happen to be placed under their
charge.

Notwithstanding the disrepute in which sweepers have ever been held,
there are many classes of workers beneath them in intelligence. All the
tribe of finders and collectors (with the exception of the dredgermen,
who are an observant race, and the sewer-hunters, who, from the danger
of their employment, are compelled to exercise their intellects) are
far inferior to them in this respect; and they are clever fellows
compared to many of the dustmen and scavagers. The great mass of the
agricultural labourers are known to be almost as ignorant as the beasts
they drive; but the sweepers, from whatever cause it may arise, are
known, in many instances, to be shrewd, intelligent, and active.

But there is much room for improvement among the operative
chimney-sweepers. Speaking of the men generally, I am assured that
there is scarcely one out of ten who can either read or write. One man
in Chelsea informed me that some ladies, in connection with the Rev.
Mr. Cadman’s church, made an attempt to instruct the sweepers of the
neighbourhood in reading and writing; but the master sweepers grew
jealous, and became afraid lest their men should get too knowing for
them. When the time came, therefore, for the men to prepare for the
school, the masters always managed to find out some job which prevented
them from attending at the appointed time, and the consequence was that
the benevolent designs of the ladies were frustrated.

The sweepers, as a class, in almost all their habits, bear a
strong resemblance to the costermongers. The habit of going about
in search of their employment has, of itself, implanted in many
of them the wandering propensity peculiar to street people. Many
of the better-class costermongers have risen into coal-shed men
and greengrocers, and become settled in life; in like manner the
better-class sweepers have risen to be masters, and, becoming
settled in a locality, have gradually obtained the trade of the
neighbourhood; then, as their circumstances improved, they have been
able to get horses and carts, and become nightmen; and there are many
of them at this moment men of wealth, comparatively speaking. The
great body of them, however, retain in all their force their original
characteristics; the masters themselves, although shrewd and sensible
men, often betray their want of education, and are in no way particular
as to their expressions, their language being made up, in a great
measure, of the terms peculiar to the costermongers, especially the
denominations of the various sorts of money. I met with some sweepers,
however, whose language was that in ordinary use, and their manners
not vulgar. I might specify one, who, although a workhouse orphan
and apprentice, a harshly-treated climbing-boy, is now prospering as
a sweeper and nightman, is a regular attendant at all meetings to
promote the good of the poor, and a zealous ragged-school teacher, and
teetotaller.

When such men are met with, perhaps the class cannot be looked upon
as utterly cast away, although the need of reformation in the habits
of the working sweepers is extreme, and especially in respect of
drinking, gambling, and dirt. The journeymen (who have often a good
deal of leisure) and the single-handed men are--in the great majority
of cases at least--addicted to drinking, beer being their favourite
beverage, either because it is the cheapest or that they fancy it the
most suitable for washing away the sooty particles which find their way
to their throats. These men gamble also, but with this proviso--they
seldom play for money; but when they meet in their usual houses of
resort--two famous ones are in Back C---- lane and S---- street,
Whitechapel--they spend their time and what money they may have in
tossing for beer, till they are either drunk or penniless. Such men
present the appearance of having just come out of a chimney. There
seems never to have been any attempt made by them to wash the soot
off their faces. I am informed that there is scarcely one of them who
has a second shirt or any change of clothes, and that they wear their
garments night and day till they literally rot, and drop in fragments
from their backs. Those who are not employed as journeymen by the
masters are frequently whole days without food, especially in summer,
when the work is slack; and it usually happens that those who are
what is called “knocking about on their own account” seldom or never
have a farthing in their pockets in the morning, and may, perhaps,
have to travel till evening before they get a threepenny or sixpenny
chimney to sweep. When night comes, and they meet their companions, the
tossing and drinking again commences; they again get drunk; roll home
to wherever it may be, to go through the same routine on the morrow;
and this is the usual tenour of their lives, whether earning 5_s._ or
20_s._ a week.

The chimney-sweepers generally are fond of drink; indeed their calling,
like that of dustmen, is one of those which naturally lead to it. The
men declare they are ordered to drink gin and smoke as much as they
can, in order to rid the stomach of the soot they may have swallowed
during their work.

_Washing_ among chimney-sweepers seems to be much more frequent than it
was. In the evidence before Parliament it was stated that some of the
climbing-boys were washed once in six months, some once a week, some
once in two or three months. I do not find it anywhere stated that any
of these children were never washed at all; but from the tenour of the
evidence it may be reasonably concluded that such was the case.

A master sweeper, who was in the habit of bathing at the Marylebone
baths once and sometimes twice a week, assured me that, although many
now eat and drink and sleep sooty, washing is more common among his
class than when he himself was a climbing-boy. He used then to be
stripped, and compelled to step into a tub, and into water sometimes
too hot and sometimes too cold, while his mistress, to use his own
word, _scoured_ him. Judging from what he had seen and heard, my
informant was satisfied that, from 30 to 40 years ago, climbing-boys,
with a very few exceptions, were but seldom washed; and then it was
looked upon by them as a most disagreeable operation, often, indeed, as
a species of punishment. Some of the climbing-boys used to be taken by
their masters to bathe in the Serpentine many years ago; but one boy
was unfortunately drowned, so that the children could hardly be coerced
to go into the water afterwards.

The washing among the chimney-sweepers of the present day, when there
are scarcely any climbing-boys, is so much an individual matter that
it is not possible to speak with any great degree of certainty on the
subject, but that it increases may be concluded from the fact that the
number of sweeps who resort to the public baths increases.

The first public baths and washhouses opened in London were in the
“north-west district,” and situated in George-street, Euston-square,
near the Hampstead-road. This establishment was founded by voluntary
contribution in 1846, and is now self-supporting.

There are three more public baths: one in Goulston-street, Whitechapel
(on the same principle as that first established); another in St.
Martin’s, near the National Gallery, which are parochial; and the
last in Marylebone, near the Yorkshire Stingo tavern, New-road, also
parochial. The charge for a cold bath, each being secluded from the
others, is 1_d._, with the use of a towel; a warm bath is 2_d._ in the
third class. The following is the return of the number of bathers at
the north-west district baths, the establishment most frequented:--

------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------
| 1847. | 1848. | 1849. | 1850.
+-------+-------+-------+-------
Bathers |110,940|111,788| 96,726| 86,597
Washers, Dryers, Ironers, &c. | 39,418| 61,690| 65,934| 73,023
Individuals Washed for |137,672|246,760|263,736|292,092

I endeavoured to ascertain the proportion of sweepers, with other
working men, who availed themselves of these baths; but there are
unfortunately no data for instituting a comparison as to the relative
cleanliness of the several trades. When the baths were first opened
an endeavour was made to obtain such a return; but it was found to be
distasteful to the bathers, and so was discontinued. We find, then,
that in four years there have been 406,051 bathers. The following gives
the proportion between the sexes, a portion of 1846 being included:--

Bathers--Males 417,424
„ Females 47,114
-------
Total bathers 464,538

The falling off in the number of bathers at this establishment is, I am
told, attributable to the opening of new baths, the people, of course,
resorting to the nearest.

I have given the return of washers, &c., as I endeavoured to ascertain
the proportion of washing by the chimney-sweeper’s wives; but there is
no specification of the trades of the persons using this branch of the
establishment any more than there is of those frequenting the baths,
and for the same reason as prevented its being done among the bathers.
One of the attendants at these washhouses told me that he had no doubt
the sweepers’ wives did wash there, for he had more than once seen a
sweeper waiting to carry home the clothes his wife had cleansed. As
no questions concerning their situation in life are asked of the poor
women who resort to these very excellent institutions (for such they
appear to be on a cursory glance) of course no data can be supplied.
This is to be somewhat regretted; but a regard to the feelings, and in
some respects to the small prejudices, of the industrious poor is to
be commended rather than otherwise, and the managers of these baths
certainly seem to have manifested such a regard.

I am informed, however, by the secretary of the north-west district
institution, that in some weeks of the summer 80 chimney-sweepers
bathed there; always having, he believed, warm baths, which are more
effective in removing soot or dirt from the skin than cold. Summer, it
must be remembered, is the sweep’s “brisk” season. In a winter week as
few as 25 or 20 have bathed, but the weekly average of sweeper-bathers,
the year through, is about 50; and the number of sweeper-bathers, he
thought, had increased since the opening of the baths about 10 per
cent. yearly. As in 1850 the average number of bathers of all classes
did not exceed 1646 per week, the proportion of sweepers, 50, is high.
The number of female bathers is about one-ninth, so that the males
would be about 1480; and the 50 sweepers a week constitute about a
thirtieth part of the whole of the third-class bathers. The number of
sweep-bathers was known because a sweep is known by his appearance.

I was told by the secretary that the sweepers, the majority bathing on
Saturday nights, usually carried a bundle to the bath; this contained
their “clean things.” After bathing they assumed their “Sunday
clothes;” and from the change in their appearance between ingress and
egress, they were hardly recognisable as the same individuals.

In the other baths, where also there is no specification of the
bathers, I am told, that of sweepers bathing the number (on
computation) is 30 at Marylebone, 25 at Goulston-street, and 15 (at the
least) at St. Martin’s, as a weekly average. In all, 120 sweepers bathe
weekly, or about a seventh of the entire working body. The increase at
the three baths last mentioned, in sweepers bathing, is from 5 to 10
per cent.

Among the lower-class sweepers there are but few who wash themselves
even once throughout the year. They eat, drink, and sleep in the same
state of filth and dirt as when engaged in their daily avocation.
Others, however, among the better class are more cleanly in their
habits, and wash themselves every night.

* * * * *

Between _the appearance of the sweepers_ in the streets at the present
time and before the abolition of the system of climbing there is a
marked difference. Charles Lamb said (in 1823):--

“I like to meet a sweep--understand me, not a grown sweeper--old
chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive--but one of those tender
novices blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal washings
not quite effaced from the cheek--such as come forth with the dawn, or
somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like
the _peep peep_ of a young sparrow; or liker to the matin lark should
I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the
sunrise?”

Throughout his essay, Elia throws the halo of poetry over the
child-sweepers, calling them “dim specks,” “poor blots,” “innocent
blacknesses,” “young Africans of our own growth;” the natural
kindliness of the writer shines out through all. He counsels his reader
to give the young innocent 2_d._, or, if the weather were starving,
“let the demand on thy humanity rise to a tester” (6_d._).

The appearance of the little children-sweepers, as they trotted along
at the master’s or the journeyman’s heels, or waited at “rich men’s
doors” on a cold morning, was pitiable in the extreme. If it snowed,
there was a strange contrast between the black sootiness of the
sweeper’s dress and the white flakes of snow which adhered to it. The
boy-sweeper trotted listlessly along; a sack to contain the soot thrown
over his shoulder, or disposed round his neck, like a cape or shawl.
One master sweeper tells me that in his apprenticeship days he had
to wait at the great mansions in and about Grosvenor-square, on some
bitter wintry mornings, until he felt as if his feet, although he had
both stockings and shoes--and many young climbers were barefoot--felt
as if frozen to the pavement. When the door was opened, he told me, the
matter was not really mended. The rooms were often large and cold, and
being lighted only with a candle or two, no doubt looked very dreary,
while there was not a fire in the whole house, and no one up but a
yawning servant or two, often very cross at having been disturbed.
The servants, however, in noblemen’s houses, he also told me, were
frequently kind to him, giving him bread and butter, and sometimes
bread and jam; and as his master generally had a glass of raw spirit
handed to him, the boy usually had a sip when his employer had “knocked
off his glass.” His employer, indeed, sometimes said, “O, _he’s_ better
without it; it’ll only larn him to drink, like it did me;” but the
servant usually answered, “O, here, just a thimblefull for him.”

The usual dress of the climbing-boy--as I have learned from those who
had worn it themselves, and, when masters, had provided it for their
boys--was made of a sort of strong flannel, which many years ago was
called chimney-sweepers’ cloth; but my informant was not certain
whether this was a common name for it or not, he only remembered having
heard it called so. He remembered, also, accompanying his master to
do something to the flues in a church, then (1817) hung with black
cloth, as a part of the national mourning for the Princess Charlotte of
Wales, and he thought it seemed very like the chimney-sweepers’ cloth,
which was dark coloured when new. The child-sweep wore a pair of cloth
trowsers, and over that a sort of tunic, or tight fitting shirt with
sleeves; sometimes a little waistcoat and jacket. This, it must be
borne in mind, was only the practice among the best masters (who always
had to find their apprentices in clothes); and was the practice among
them more and more in the later period of the climbing process, for
householders began to inquire as to what sort of trim the boys employed
on their premises appeared in. The poorer or the less well-disposed
masters clad the urchins who climbed for them in any old rags which
their wives could piece together, or in any low-priced garment “picked
up” in such places as Rosemary-lane. The fit was no object at all.
These ill-clad lads were, moreover, at one time the great majority.
The clothes were usually made “at home” by the women, and in the same
style, as regarded the seams, &c., as the sacks for soot; but sometimes
the work was beyond the art of the sweeper’s wife, and then the aid
of some poor neighbour better skilled in the use of her scissors and
needle, or of some poor tailor, was called in, on the well-known terms
of “a shilling (or 1_s._ 6_d._) a day, and the grub.”

The cost of a climbing-boy’s dress, I was informed, varied, when new,
according to the material of which it was made, from 3_s._ 6_d._ to
6_s._ 6_d._ independently of the cost of making, which, in the hands of
a tailor who “whipped the cat” (or went out to work at his customer’s
houses), would occupy a day, at easy labour, at a cost of 1_s._ 6_d._
(or less) in money, and the “whip-cat’s” meals, perhaps another 1_s._
6_d._, beer included. As to the cost of a sweeper’s second-hand
clothing it is useless to inquire; but I was informed by a now
thriving master, that when he was about twelve years old his mistress
bought him a “werry tidy jacket, as seemed made for a gen’leman’s
son,” in Petticoat-lane, one Sunday morning, for 1_s._ 6_d._; while
other things, he said, were “in proportionate.” Shoes and stockings
are not included in the cost of the little sweeper’s apparel; and they
were, perhaps, always bought second-hand. A few of the best masters
(or of those wishing to stand best in their customers’ regards), who
sent their boys to church or to Sunday schools, had then a non-working
attire for them; either a sweeper’s dress of jacket and trowsers,
unsoiled by soot, or the ordinary dress of a poor lad.

The street appearance of the present race of sweepers, all adults,
may every here and there bear out Charles Lamb’s dictum, that grown
sweepers are by no means attractive. Some of them are broad-shouldered
and strongly-built men, who, as they traverse the streets, sometimes
look as grim as they are dingy. The chimney-scavager carries the
implement of his calling propped on his shoulder, in the way shown in
the daguerreotype which I have given. His dress is usually a jacket,
waistcoat, and trowsers of dark-coloured corduroy; or instead of a
jacket a waistcoat with sleeves. Over this when at work the sweeper
often wears a sort of blouse or short smock-frock of coarse strong
calico or canvas, which protects the corduroy suit from the soot.
In this description of the sweeper’s garb I can but speak of those
whose means enable them to attain the comfort of warm apparel in the
winter; the poorer part of the trade often shiver shirtless under a
blouse which half covers a pair of threadbare trowsers. The cost of the
corduroy suit I have mentioned varies, I was told by a sweeper, who put
it tersely enough, “from 20_s._ _slop_, to 40_s._ _slap_.” The average
runs, I believe, from 28_s._ to 33_s._, as regards the better class of
the sweepers.

The _diet of the journeymen sweepers and the apprentices_, and
sometimes of their working employer, was described to me as generally
after the following fashion. My informant, a journeyman, calculated
what his food “stood his master,” as he had once “kept hisself.”

Daily.
_s._ _d._
Bread and butter and coffee for breakfast 0 2

A saveloy and potatoes, or cabbage;
or a “fagot,” with the same vegetables; or
fried fish (but not often); or pudding,
from a pudding-shop; or soup (a twopenny
plate) from a cheap eating-house; average
from 2_d._ to 3_d._ 0 2-1/2

Tea, same as breakfast 0 2
----------
0 6-1/2

On Sundays the fare was better. They then sometimes had a bit of “prime
fat mutton” taken to the oven, with “taturs to bake along with it;” or
a “fry of liver, if the old ’oman was in a good humour,” and always a
pint of beer apiece. Hence, as some give their men beer, the average
amount of 5_s._ or 6_s._ weekly, which I have given as the cost of
the “board” to the masters, is made up. The drunken single-handed
master-men, I am told, live on beer and “a bite of anything they can
get.” I believe there are few complaints of inefficient food.

The food provided by the large or high master sweepers is generally of
the same kind as the master and his family partake of; among this class
the journeymen are tolerably well provided for.

In the lower-class sweepers, however, the food is not so plentiful
nor so good in kind as that provided by the high master sweepers. The
expense of keeping a man employed by a large master sometimes ranges
as high as 8_s._ a week, but the average, I am told, is about 6_s._
per week; while those employed by the low-class sweepers average about
5_s._ a week. The cost of their lodging may be taken at from 1_s._ to
2_s._ a week extra.

The sweepers in general are, I am assured, fond of oleaginous food; fat
broth, fagots, and what is often called “greasy” meat.

They are considered _a short-lived people_, and among the journeymen,
the masters “on their own hook,” &c., few old men are to be met with.
In one of the reports of the Board of Health, out of 4312 deaths
among males, of the age of 15 and upwards, the mortality among the
sweepers, masters and men, was 9, or one in 109 of the whole trade. As
the calculation was formed, however, from data supplied by the census
of 1841, and on the Post Office Directory, it supplies no reliable
information, as I shall show when I come to treat of the nightmen.
Many of these men still suffer, I am told, from the chimney-sweeper’s
cancer, which is said to arise mainly from uncleanly habits. Some
sweepers assure me that they have vomited balls of soot.

_As to the abodes of the master sweepers_, I can supply the following
account of two. The soot, I should observe, is seldom kept long, rarely
a month, on the premises of a sweeper, and is in the best “concerns”
kept in cellars.

The localities in which many of the sweepers reside are the “lowest”
places in the district. Many of the houses in which I found the
lower class of sweepers were in a ruinous and filthy condition.
The “high-class” sweepers, on the other hand, live in respectable
localities, often having back premises sufficiently large to stow away
their soot.

I had occasion to visit the house of one of the persons from whom I
obtained much information. He is a master in a small way, a sensible
man, and was one of the few who are teetotallers. His habitation,
though small--being a low house only one story high--was substantially
furnished with massive mahogany chairs, table, chests of drawers, &c.,
while on each side of the fire-place, which was distinctly visible from
the street over a hall door, were two buffets, with glass doors, well
filled with glass and china vessels. It was a wet night, and a fire
burned brightly in the stove, by the light of which might be seen the
master of the establishment sitting on one side, while his wife and
daughter occupied the other; a neighbour sat before the fire with his
back to the door, and altogether it struck me as a comfortable-looking
evening party. They were resting and chatting quietly together after
the labour of the day, and everything betokened the comfortable
circumstances in which the man, by sobriety and industry, had been able
to place himself. Yet this man had been a climbing-boy, and one of the
unfortunates who had lost his parents when a child, and was apprenticed
by the parish to this business. From him I learned that his was not a
solitary instance of teetotalism (I have before spoken of another);
that, in fact, there were some more, and one in particular, named
Brown, who was a good speaker, and devoted himself during his leisure
hours at night in advocating the principles which by experience he had
found to effect such great good to himself; but he also informed me
that the majority of the others were a drunken and dissipated crew,
sunk to the lowest degree of misery, yet recklessly spending every
farthing they could earn in the public-house.

Different in every respect was another house which I visited in
the course of my inquiries, in the neighbourhood of H-----street,
Bethnal-green. The house was rented by a sweeper, a master on his own
account, and every room in the place was let to sweepers and their
wives or women, which, with these men, often signify one and the same
thing. The inside of the house looked as dark as a coal-pit; there was
an insufferable smell of soot, always offensive to those unaccustomed
to it; and every person and every thing which met the eye, even to the
caps and gowns of the women, seemed as if they had just been steeped
in Indian ink. In one room was a sweep and his woman quarrelling. As
I opened the door I caught the words, “I’m d----d if I has it any
longer. I’d see you b----y well d----d first, and you knows it.” The
savage was intoxicated, for his red eyes flashed through his sooty
mask with drunken excitement, and his matted hair, which looked as if
it had never known a comb, stood out from his head like the whalebone
ribs of his own machine. “B----y Bet,” as he called her, did not
seem a whit more sober than her man; and the shrill treble of her
voice was distinctly audible till I turned the corner of the street,
whither I was accompanied by the master of the house, to whom I had
been recommended by one of the fraternity as an intelligent man, and
one who knew “a thing or two.” “You see,” he said, as we turned the
corner, “there isn’t no use a talkin’ to them ere fellows--they’re all
tosticated now, and they doesn’t care nothink for nobody; but they’ll
be quiet enough to-morrow, ’cept they yarns somethink, and if they
do then they’ll be just as bad to-morrow night. They’re a awful lot,
and nobody ill niver do anythink with them.” This man was not by any
means in such easy circumstances as the master first mentioned. He was
merely a man working for himself, and unable to employ any one else in
the business; as is customary with some of these people, he had taken
the house he had shown me to let to lodgers of his own class, making
something by so doing; though, if his own account be correct, I’m at
a loss to imagine how he contrived even to get his rent. From him I
obtained the following statement:--

“Yes, I was a climbing-boy, and sarved a rigler printiceship for seven
years. I was out on my printiceship when I was fourteen. Father was a
silk-weaver, and did all he knew to keep me from being a sweep, but I
would be a sweep, and nothink else.” [This is not so very uncommon a
predilection, strange as it may seem.] “So father, when he saw it was
no use, got me bound printice. Father’s alive now, and near 90 years of
age. I don’t know why I wished to be a sweep, ’cept it was this--there
was sweeps always lived about here, and I used to see the boys with
lots of money a tossin’ and gamblin’, and wished to have money too.
You see they got money where they swept the chimneys; they used to
get 2_d._ or 3_d._ for theirselves in a day, and sometimes 6_d._ from
the people of the house, and that’s the way they always had plenty of
money. I niver thought anythink of the climbing; it wasn’t so bad at
all as some people would make you believe. There are two or three ways
of climbing. In wide flues you climb with your elbows and your legs
spread out, your feet pressing against the sides of the flue; but in
narrow flues, such as nine-inch ones, you must slant it; you must have
your sides in the angles, it’s wider there, and go up just that way.”
[Here he threw himself into position--placing one arm close to his
side, with the palm of the hand turned outwards, as if pressing the
side of the flue, and extending the other arm high above his head, the
hand apparently pressing in the same manner.] “There,” he continued,
“that’s slantin’. You just put yourself in that way, and see how small
you make yourself. I niver got to say stuck myself, but a many of them
did; yes, and were taken out dead. They were smothered for want of
air, and the fright, and a stayin’ so long in the flue; you see the
waistband of their trowsers sometimes got turned down in the climbing,
and in narrow flues, when not able to get it up, then they stuck. I
had a boy once--we were called to sweep a chimney down at Poplar. When
we went in he looked up the flues, ‘Well, what is it like?’ I said.
‘Very narrow,’ says he, ‘don’t think I can get up there;’ so after some
time we gets on top of the house, and takes off the chimney-pot, and
has a look down--it was wider a’ top, and I thought as how he could
go down. ‘You had better buff it, Jim,’ says I. I suppose you know
what that means; but Jim wouldn’t do it, and kept his trowsers on. So
down he goes, and gets on very well till he comes to the shoulder of
the flue, and then he couldn’t stir. He shouts down, ‘I’m stuck.’ I
shouts up and tells him what to do. ‘Can’t move,’ says he, ‘I’m stuck
hard and fast.’ Well, the people of the house got fretted like, but I
says to them, ‘Now my boy’s stuck, but for Heaven’s sake don’t make
a word of noise; don’t say a word, good or bad, and I’ll see what I
can do.’ So I locks the door, and buffs it, and forces myself up till
I could reach him with my hand, and as soon as he got his foot on my
hand he begins to prize himself up, and gets loosened, and comes out
at the top again. I was stuck myself, but I was stronger nor he, and
I manages to get out again. Now I’ll be bound to say if there was
another master there as would kick up a row and a-worrited, that ere
boy ’ud a niver come out o’ that ere flue alive. There was a many o’
them lost their lives in that way. Most all the printices used to come
from the ‘House’ (workhouse.) There was nobody to care for them, and
some masters used them very bad. I was out of my time at fourteen, and
began to get too stout to go up the flues; so after knockin’ about
for a year or so, as I could do nothink else, I goes to sea on board
a man-o’-war, and was away four year. Many of the boys, when they got
too big and useless, used to go to sea in them days--they couldn’t do
nothink else. Yes, many of them went for sodgers; and I know some who
went for Gipsies, and others who went for play-actors, and a many who
got on to be swell-mobsmen, and thieves, and housebreakers, and the
like o’ that ere. There ain’t nothink o’ that sort a-goin’ on now since
the Ack of Parliament. When I got back from sea father asked me to larn
his business; so I takes to the silk-weaving and larned it, and then
married a weaveress, and worked with father for a long time. Father was
very well off--well off and comfortable for a poor man--but trade was
good then. But it got bad afterwards, and none on us was able to live
at it; so I takes to the chimney-sweeping again. _A man might manage to
live somehow at the sweeping, but the weaving was o’ no use._ It was
the furrin silks as beat us all up, that’s the whole truth. Yet they
tells us as how they was a-doin’ the country good; but they may tell
that to the marines--the sailors won’t believe it--not a word on it.
I’ve stuck to the sweeping ever since, and sometimes done very fair at
it; but since the Ack there’s so many leeks come to it that I don’t
know how they live--they must be eatin’ one another up.

“Well, since you ask then, I can tell you that our people don’t care
much about law; they don’t understand anythink about politics much;
they don’t mind things o’ that ere kind. They only minds to get drunk
when they can. Some on them fellows as you seed in there niver cleans
theirselves from one year’s end to the other. They’ll kick up a row
soon enough, with Chartists or anybody else. I thinks them Chartists
are a weak-minded set; they was too much a frightened at nothink,--a
hundred o’ them would run away from one blue-coat, and that wasn’t like
men. I was often at Chartist meetings, and if they’d only do all they
said there was a plenty to stick to them, for there’s a somethink wants
to be done very bad, for everythink is a-gettin’ worser and worser
every day. I used to do a good trade, but now I don’t yarn a shilling
a day all through the year (?). I may walk at this time three or four
miles and not get a chimney to sweep, and then get only a sixpence or
threepence, and sometimes nothink. It’s a starvin’, that’s what it is;
there’s so much ‘querying’ a-goin’ on. Querying? that’s what we calls
under-working[61]. If they’d all fix a riglar price we might do very
well still. I’m 50 years of age, or thereabouts. I don’t know much
about the story of Mrs. Montague; it was afore my time. I heard of it
though. I heard my mother talk about it; she used to read it out of
books; she was a great reader--none on ’em could stand afore her for
that. I was often at the dinner--the masters’ dinner--that was for the
boys; but that’s all done away long ago, since the Ack of Parliament.
I can’t tell how many there was at it, but there’s such a lot it’s
impossible to tell. How could any one tell all the sweeps as is in
London? I’m sure I can’t, and I’m sure nobody else can.”

Some years back the sweepers’ houses were often indicated by an
elaborate sign, highly coloured. A sweeper, accompanied by a “chummy”
(once a common name for the climbing-boy, being a corruption of
chimney), was depicted on his way to a red brick house, from the
chimneys of which bright yellow flames were streaming. Below was the
detail of the things undertaken by the sweep, such as the extinction of
fires in chimneys, the cleaning of smoke-jacks, &c., &c. A few of these
signs, greatly faded, may be seen still. A sweeper, who is settled in
what is accounted a “genteel neighbourhood,” has now another way of
making his calling known. He leaves a card whenever he hears of a new
comer, a tape being attached, so that it can be hung up in the kitchen,
and thus the servants are always in possession of his address. The
following is a customary style:--

“Chimneys swept by the improved machine, much patronized by the Humane
Society.

“W. H., Chimney Sweeper and Nightman, 1, ---- Mews, in returning thanks
to the inhabitants of the surrounding neighbourhood for the patronage
he has hitherto received, begs to inform them that he sweeps all kinds
of chimneys and flues in the best manner.

“W. H., attending to the business himself, cleans smoke-jacks,
cures smoky coppers, and extinguishes chimneys when on fire, with
the greatest care and safety; and, by giving the strictest personal
attendance to business, performs what he undertakes with cleanliness
and punctuality, whereby he hopes to ensure a continuance of their
favours and recommendations.

“Clean cloths for upper apartments. Soot-doors to any size fixed.
Observe the address, 1, ---- Mews, near ----.”

At the top of this card is an engraving of the machine; at the foot a
rude sketch of a nightman’s cart, with men at work. All the cards I saw
reiterated the address, so that no mistake might lead the customer to a
rival tradesman.

_As to their politics_, the sweepers are somewhat similar to the
dustmen and costermongers. A fixed hatred to all constituted authority,
which they appear to regard as the police and the “beaks,” seems to
be the sum total of their principles. Indeed, it almost assumes the
character of a fixed law, that persons and classes of persons who are
themselves disorderly, and to a certain extent lawless, always manifest
the most supreme contempt for the conservators of law and order in
every degree. The police are therefore hated heartily, magistrates
are feared and abominated, and Queen, Lords, and Commons, and every
one in authority, if known anything about, are considered as natural
enemies. A costermonger who happened to be present while I was making
inquiries on this subject, broke in with this remark, “The costers is
the chaps--the government can’t do nothink with them--they allus licks
the government.” The sweepers have a sovereign contempt for all Acts of
Parliament, because the only Act that had any reference to themselves
“threw open,” as they call it, their business to all who were needy
enough and who had the capability of availing themselves of it. Like
the “dusties” they are, I am informed, in their proper element in times
of riot and confusion; but, unlike them, they are, to a man, Chartists,
understanding it too, and approving of it, not because it would be
calculated to establish a new order of things, but in the hope that, in
the transition from one system to the other, there might be plenty of
noise and riot, and in the vague idea that in some indefinable manner
good must necessarily accrue to themselves from any change that might
take place. This I believe to be in perfect keeping with the sentiments
of similar classes of people in every country in the world.

The journeymen lay by no money when in work, as a fund to keep them
when incapacitated by sickness, accident, or old age. There are,
however, a few exceptions to the general improvidence of the class;
some few belong to sick and benefit societies, others are members of
burial clubs. Where, however, this is not the case, and a sweeper
becomes unable, through illness, to continue his work, the mode usually
adopted is to make a raffle for the benefit of the sufferer; the same
means are resorted to at the death of a member of the trade. When a
chimney-sweeper becomes infirm through age, he has mostly, if not
invariably, no refuge but the workhouse.

_The chimney-sweepers generally are regardless of the marriage
ceremony_, and when they do live with a woman it is in a state
of concubinage. These women are always among the lowest of the
street-girls--such as lucifer-match and orange girls, some of the very
poorest of the coster girls, and girls brought up among the sweepers.
They are treated badly by them, and often enough left without any
remorse. The women are equally as careless in these matters as the men,
and exchange one paramour for another with the same levity, so that
there is a promiscuous intercourse continually going on among them. I
am informed that, among the worst class of sweepers living with women,
not one in 50 is married. To these couples very few children are
born; but I am not able to state the proportion as compared with other
classes.

_There are some curious customs among the London sweepers_ which
deserve notice. Their May-day festival is among the best known. The
most intelligent of the masters tell me that they have taken this
“from the milkmen’s garland” (of which an engraving has been given).
Formerly, say they, on the first of May the milkmen of London went
through the streets, performing a sort of dance, for which they
received gratuities from their customers. The music to which they
danced was simply brass plates mounted on poles, from the circumference
of which plates depended numerous bells of different tones, according
to size; these poles were adorned with leaves and flowers, indicative
of the season, and may have been a relic of one of the ancient pageants
or mummeries.

The sweepers, however, by adapting themselves more to the rude taste
of the people, appear to have completely supplanted the milkmen, who
are now never seen in pageantry. In Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes of
the People of England,” I find the following with reference to the
milk-people:--

“It is at this time,” that is in May, says the author of one of the
papers in the _Spectator_, “we see brisk young wenches in the country
parishes dancing round the Maypole. It is likewise on the first day of
this month that we see the ruddy milkmaid exerting herself in a most
sprightly manner under a pyramid of silver tankards, and, like the
Virgin Tarpeia, oppressed by the costly ornaments which her benefactors
lay upon her. These decorations of silver cups, tankards, and salvers,
were borrowed for the purpose, and hung round the milk-pails, with the
addition of flowers and ribands, which the maidens carried upon their
heads when they went to the houses of their customers, and danced in
order to obtain a small gratuity from each of them. In a set of prints,
called ‘Tempest’s Cries of London,’ there is one called the ‘Merry
Milkmaid,’ whose proper name was Kate Smith. She is dancing with the
milk-pail, decorated as above mentioned, upon her head. Of late years
the plate, with the other decorations, were placed in a pyramidical
form, and carried by two chairmen upon a wooden horse. The maidens
walked before it, and performed the dance without any incumbrance. I
really cannot discover what analogy the silver tankards and salvers can
have to the business of the milkmaids. I have seen them act with much
more propriety upon this occasion, when, in place of these superfluous
ornaments, they substituted a cow. The animal had her horns gilt, and
was nearly covered with ribands of various colours formed into bows and
roses, and interspersed with green oaken leaves and bunches of flowers.”

[Illustration: THE MILKMAID’S GARLAND.

THE ORIGINAL OF THE SWEEP’S MAY-DAY EXHIBITION.]

With reference to the May-day festival of the sweepers the same author
says:--“The chimney-sweepers of London have also singled out the first
of May for their festival, at which time they parade the streets in
companies, disguised in various manners. Their dresses are usually
decorated with gilt paper and other mock fineries; they have their
shovels and brushes in their hands, which they rattle one upon the
other; and to this rough music they jump about in imitation of dancing.
Some of the larger companies have a fiddler with them, and a Jack
in the Green, as well as a Lord and Lady of the May, who follow the
minstrel with great stateliness, and dance as occasion requires. The
Jack in the Green is a piece of pageantry consisting of a hollow frame
of wood or wicker-work, made in the form of a sugar-loaf, but open at
the bottom, and sufficiently large and high to receive a man. The frame
is covered with green leaves and bunches of flowers, interwoven with
each other, so that the man within may be completely concealed, who
dances with his companions; and the populace are mightily pleased with
the oddity of the moving pyramid.”

Since the date of the above, the sweepers have greatly improved
on their pageant, substituting for the fiddle the more noisy and
appropriate music of the street-showman’s drum and pipes, and adding to
their party several diminutive imps, no doubt as representatives of the
climbing-boys, clothed in caps, jackets, and trowsers, thickly covered
with party-coloured shreds. These still make a show of rattling their
shovels and brushes, but the clatter is unheard alongside the thunders
of the drum. In this manner they go through the various streets for
three days, obtaining money at various places, and on the third night
hold a feast at one of their favourite public-houses, where all the
sooty tribes resort, and, in company with their wives or girls, keep
up their festivity till the next morning. I find that this festival is
beginning to disappear in many parts of London, but it still holds its
ground, and is as highly enjoyed as ever, in all the eastern localities
of the metropolis.

It is but seldom that any of the large masters go out on May-day; this
custom is generally confined to the little masters and their men. The
time usually spent on these occasions is four days, during which as
much as from 2_l._ to 4_l._ a day is collected; the sums obtained on
the three first days are divided according to the several kinds of work
performed. But the proceeds of the fourth day are devoted to a supper.
The average gains of the several performers on these occasions are as
follows:--

My lady, who acts as Columbine,
and receives 2_s._ per day.

My lord, who is often the master
himself, but usually one of the
journeymen 3_s._ „

Clown 3_s._ „

Drummer 4_s._ „

Jack in the green, who is often an
individual acquaintance, and
does not belong to the trade 3_s._ „

And the boys, who have no term
term applied to them, receive
from 1_s._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ „

The share accruing to the boys is often spent in purchasing some
article of clothing for them, but the money got by the other
individuals is mostly spent in drink.

The sweepers, however, not only go out on May-day, but likewise on
the 5th of November. On the last Guy-Fawkes day, I am informed, some
of them received not only pence from the public, but silver and gold.
“It was quite a harvest,” they say. One of this class, who got up a
gigantic Guy Fawkes and figure of the Pope on the 5th of November,
1850, cleared, I am informed, 10_l._ over and above all expenses.

For many years, also, the sweepers were in the habit of partaking of a
public dinner on the 1st of May, provided for every climbing-boy who
thought proper to attend, at the expense of the Hon. Mrs. Montagu. The
romantic origin of this custom, from all I could learn on the subject,
is this:--The lady referred to, at the time a widow, lost her son,
then a boy of tender years. Inquiries were set on foot, and all London
heard of the mysterious disappearance of the child, but no clue could
be found to trace him out. It was supposed that he was kidnapped, and
the search at length was given up in despair. A long time afterwards a
sweeper was employed to cleanse the chimneys of Mrs. Montagu’s house,
by Portman-square, and for this purpose, as was usual at the time,
sent a climbing-boy up the chimney, who from that moment was lost to
him. The child did not return the way he went up, but it is supposed
that in his descent he got into a wrong flue, and found himself, on
getting out of the chimney, in one of the bedrooms. Wearied with his
labour, it is said that he mechanically crept between the sheets, all
black and sooty as he was. In this state he was found fast asleep by
the housekeeper. The delicacy of his features and the soft tones of his
voice interested the woman. She acquainted the family with the strange
circumstance, and, when introduced to them with a clean face, his voice
and appearance reminded them of their lost child. It may have been that
the hardships he endured at so early an age had impaired his memory,
for he could give no account of himself; but it was evident, from his
manners and from the ease which he exhibited, that he was no stranger
to such places, and at length, it is said, the Hon. Mrs. Montagu
recognised in him her long-lost son. The identity, it was understood,
was proved beyond doubt. He was restored to his rank in society, and
in order the better to commemorate this singular restoration, and the
fact of his having been a climbing-boy, his mother annually provided
an entertainment on the 1st of May, at White Conduit House, for all
the climbing-boys of London who thought proper to partake of it. This
annual feast was kept up during the lifetime of the lady, and, as
might be expected, was numerously attended, for since there were no
question asked and no document required to prove any of the guests to
be climbing-boys, very many of the precocious urchins of the metropolis
used to blacken their faces for this special occasion. This annual
feast continued, as I have said, as long as the lady lived. Her son
continued it only for three or four years afterwards, and then, I am
told, left the country, and paid no further attention to the matter.

Of the story of the young Montagu, Charles Lamb has given the following
account:--

“In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years since--under
a ducal canopy (that seat of the Howards is an object of curiosity to
visitors, chiefly for its beds, in which the late duke was especially
a connoisseur)--encircled with curtains of delicatest crimson, with
starry coronets interwoven--folded between a pair of sheets whiter
and softer than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius--was discovered
by chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon-day, fast
asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little creature having somehow
confounded his passage among the intricacies of those lordly chimneys,
by some unknown aperture had alighted upon this magnificent chamber,
and, tired with his tedious explorations, was unable to resist the
delicious invitement to repose, which he there saw exhibited; so,
creeping between the sheets very quietly, he laid his black head on
the pillow and slept like a young Howard.”.... “A high instinct,”
adds Lamb, “was at work in the case, or I am greatly mistaken. Is it
probable that a poor child of that description, with whatever weariness
he might be visited, would have ventured under such a penalty as he
would be taught to expect, to uncover the sheets of a duke’s bed, and
deliberately to lay himself down between them, when the rug or the
carpet presented an obvious couch still far above his pretensions?--is
this probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which I
contend for, had not been manifested within him, prompting to the
adventure? Doubtless, this young nobleman (for such my mind misgives
me he must be) was allured by some memory not amounting to full
consciousness of his condition in infancy, when he was used to be lapt
by his mother or his nurse in just such sheets as he there found,
into which he was now but creeping back as into his proper incubation
(_incunabula_) and resting place. By no other theory than by his
sentiment of a pre-existent state (as I may call it) can I explain a
deed so venturous.”

There is a strong strain of romance throughout the stories of the lost
and found young Montagu. I conversed with some sweepers on the subject.
The majority had not so much as heard of the occurrence, but two who
had heard of it--both climbing-boys in their childhood--had heard
that the little fellow was found in his mother’s house. In a small
work, the “Chimney-Sweepers’ Friend,” got up in aid of the Society for
the Supersedence of Climbing Boys, by some benevolent Quaker ladies
and others (the Quakers having been among the warmest supporters of
the suppression of climbers), and “arranged” (the word “edited” not
being used) by J. Montgomery, the case of the little Montagu is not
mentioned, excepting in two or three vague poetical allusions.

The account given by Lamb (although pronounced apocryphal by some)
appears to be the more probable version; and to the minds of many is
shown to be conclusively authentic, as I understand that, when Arundel
Castle is shown to visitors, the bed in which the child was found is
pointed out; nor is it likely that in such a place the story of the
ducal bed and the little climbing-boy would be _invented_.

The following account was given by the wife of a respectable man (now
a middle-aged woman) and she had often heard it from her mother, who
passed a long life in the neighbourhood of Mrs. Montagu’s residence:--

“Lady M. had a son of tender years, who was supposed to have been
stolen for the sake of his clothes. Some time after, there was an
occasion when the sweeps were necessary at Montagu House. A servant
noticed one of the boys, being at first attracted by his superior
manner, and her curiosity being excited fancied a resemblance in him
to the lost child. She questioned his master respecting him, who
represented that he had found him crying and without a home, and
thereupon took him in, and brought him up to his trade. The boy was
questioned apart from his master, as to the treatment he received; his
answers were favourable; and the consequence was, a compensation was
given to the man, and the boy was retained. All doubt was removed as to
his identity.”

The annual feast at “White Condick,” so agreeable to the black
fraternity, was afterwards continued in another form, and was the
origin of a well-known society among the master sweepers, which
continued in existence till the abolition of the climbing-boys by Act
of Parliament. The masters and the better class of men paid a certain
sum yearly, for the purpose of binding the children of the contributors
to other trades. In order to increase the funds of this institution, as
the dinner to the boys at White Conduit House was an established thing,
the masters continued it, and the boys of every master who belonged to
the society went in a sort of state to the usual place of entertainment
every 1st of May, where they were regaled as formerly. Many persons
were in the habit of flocking on this day to White Conduit House to
witness the festivities of the sweepers on this occasion, and usually
contributed something towards the society. As soon, however, as the Act
passed, this also was discontinued, and it is now one of the legends
connected with the class.

SWEEPING OF THE CHIMNEYS OF STEAM-VESSELS.

The sweeping of the flues in the boilers of steam-boats, in the Port
of London, and also of land boilers in manufactories, is altogether
a distinct process, as the machine cannot be used until such time
as the parties who are engaged in this business travel a long way
through the flues, and reach the lower part of the chimney or funnel
where it communicates with the boilers and receives the smoke in its
passage to the upper air. The boilers in the large sea-going steamers
are of curious construction; in some large steamers there are four
separate boilers with three furnaces in each, the flues of each boiler
uniting in one beneath the funnel; immediately beyond the end of the
furnace, which is marked by a little wall constructed of firebrick to
prevent the coals and fire from running off the firebars, there is a
large open space very high and wide, and which space after a month’s
steaming is generally filled up with soot, somewhat resembling a snow
drift collected in a hollow, were it not for its colour and the fact
that it is sometimes in a state of ignition; it is, at times, so
deep, that a man sinks to his middle in it the moment he steps across
the firebridge. Above his head, and immediately over the end of the
furnace, he may perceive an opening in what otherwise would appear to
be a solid mass of iron; up to this opening, which resembles a doorway,
the sweeper must clamber the best way he can, and when he succeeds in
this he finds himself in a narrow passage completely dark, but with so
strong a current of air rushing through it from the furnaces beneath
towards the funnel overhead that it is with difficulty the wick lamp
which he carries in his hand can be kept burning. This passage, between
the iron walls on either side, is lofty enough for a tall man to stand
upright in, but does not seem at first of any great extent; as he
goes on, however, to what appears the end, he finds out his mistake,
by coming to a sharp turn which conducts him back again towards the
open space in the centre of the boiler, but which is now hid from him
by the hollow iron walls which on every side surround him, and within
which the waters boil and seethe as the living flames issuing from the
furnaces rush and roar through these winding passages; another sharp
turn leads back to the front of the boilers, and so on for seven or
eight turns, backwards and forwards, like the windings in a maze, till
at the last turn a light suddenly breaks upon him, and, looking up,
he perceives the hollow tube of the funnel, black and ragged with the
adhering soot.

Here, then, the labour of the sweeper commences: he is armed with a
brush and shovel, and laying down his lamp in a space from which he
has previously shovelled away the soot, which in many parts of the
passage is knee deep, he brushes down the soot from the sides and roof
of the passage, which being done he shovels it before him into the
next winding; this process he repeats till he reaches, by degrees, the
opening where he ascended. Whenever the accumulation of soot is so
great that it is likely to block up the passage in the progress of his
work, he wades through and shovels as much as he thinks necessary out
of the opening into the large space behind the furnaces, then resumes
his work, brushing and shovelling by turns, till the flues are cleared;
when this is accomplished, he descends, and the fire bars being
previously removed, he shovels the soot, now all collected together,
over the firebridge and into the ashpit of the furnace; other persons
stand ready in the stoke-hole armed with long iron rakes, with which
they drag out the soot from the ashpits; and others shovel it into
sacks, which they make fast to tackle secured to the upper deck, by
which they “bowse” it up out of the engine-room, and either discharge
it overboard or put it into boats preparatory to being taken ashore. In
this manner an immense quantity of soot is removed from the boilers of
a large foreign-going steamer when she gets into port, after a month or
six weeks’ steaming, having burned in that time perhaps 700 or 800 tons
of coal: this work is always performed by the stokers and coal-trimmers
in the foreign ports, who seldom, if ever, get anything extra for it,
although it is no uncommon thing for some of them to be ill for a week
after it.

In the port of London, however, the sweeper comes into requisition,
who, besides going through the process already described, brings his
machine with him, and is thus enabled to cleanse the funnel, and
to increase the quantity of soot. Some of the master sweepers, who
have the cleansing of the steam-boats in the river, and the sweeping
of boiler flues are obliged to employ a good many men, and make a
great deal of money by their business. The use of anthracite coals,
however, and some modern improvements, by which air at a certain
temperature is admitted to certain parts of the furnace, have in many
instances greatly lessened, if they have not altogether prevented,
the accumulation of soot, by the prevention of smoke; and it seems
quite possible, from the statements made by many eminent scientific
and practical men who were examined before a select committee of the
House of Commons, presided over by Mr. Mackinnon, in 1843, that by
having properly-constructed stoves, and a sufficient quantity of pure
air properly admitted, not only less fuel might be burned, and produce
a greater amount of heat, but soot would cease to accumulate, so that
the necessity for sweepers would be no longer felt, and there would be
no fear of fires from the ignition of soot in the flues of chimneys;
blacks and smoke, moreover, would take their departure together; and
with them the celebrated London fog might also, in a great measure,
disappear.

The funnels of steamers are generally swept at from 8_d._ to 1_s._
6_d._ per funnel. The Chelsea steamers are swept by Mr. Allbrook, of
Chelsea; the Continental, by Mr. Hawsey, of Rosemary-lane; and the
Irish and Scotch steamers, by Mr. Tuff, who resides in the East London
district.

OF THE “RAMONEUR” COMPANY.

The Patent Ramoneur Company demands, perhaps, a special notice. It was
formed between four and five years ago, and has now four stations: one
in Little Harcourt-street, Bryanstone-square; another in New-road,
Sloane-street; a third in Charles-place, Euston-square; and the fourth
in William-street, Portland-town.

“This Company has been formed,” the prospectus stated, “for the purpose
of cleansing chimneys with the Patent Ramoneur Machine, and introducing
various other improvements in the business of chimney sweeping.
Chimneys are daily swept with this machine where others have failed.”

The Company charge the usual prices, and all the men employed have
been brought up as sweepers. The patent machine is thus described:--

“The Patent Ramoneur Machine consists of four brushes, forming a
square head, which, by means of elastic springs, contracts or expands,
according to the space it moves in; the rods attached to this head or
brush are supplied at intervals with a universal spring-joint, capable
of turning even a right angle, and the whole is surmounted with a
double revolving ball, having also a universal spring-joint, which
leads the brush with certainty into every corner, cleansing its route
most perfectly.”

The recommendation held out to the public is, that the patented
chimney-machine sweeps cleaner than that in general use, and for the
reasons assigned; and that, being constructed with more and better
springs, it is capable of “turning even a right angle,” which the
common machine often leaves unswept. This was and is commonly said of
the difference between the cleansing of the chimney by a climbing-boy
and that effected by the present mechanical appliances in general
use--the boy was “better round a corner.”

The patent machines now worked in London are fifteen in number, and
fifteen men are thus employed. Each man receives as a weekly wage,
always in money, 14_s._, besides a suit of clothes yearly. The suit
consists of a jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, of dark-coloured
corduroy; also a “frock” or blouse, to wear when at work, and a cap;
the whole being worth from 35_s._ to 40_s._ This payment is about
equivalent to that received weekly by the journeymen in the regular or
honourable trade; for although higher in nominal amount as a weekly
remuneration, the Ramoneur operatives are not allowed any perquisites
whatever. The resident or manager at each station is also a working
chimney-sweeper for the Company, and at the same rate as the others,
his advantage being that he lives rent-free. At one station which I
visited, the resident had two comfortable-looking up-stairs’-rooms (the
stations being all in small streets), where he and his wife lived;
while the “cellar,” which was indeed but the ground floor, although
somewhat lower than the doorstep, was devoted to business purposes, the
soot being stored there. It was boarded off into separate compartments,
one being at the time quite full of soot. All seemed as clean and
orderly as possible. The rent of those two rooms, unfurnished, would
not be less than 4_s._ or 5_s._ a week, so that the resident’s payment
may be put at about 50_l._ a year. The patent-machine operatives
sweep, on an average, the same number of chimneys each, as a master
chimney-sweeper’s men in a good way of business in the ordinary trade.

OF THE BRISK AND SLACK SEASONS, AND THE CASUAL TRADE AMONG THE
CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

As among the rubbish-carters in the unskilled, and the tailors and
shoemakers of the skilled trades, the sweepers’ trade also has its
slackness and its briskness, and from the same cause--the difference in
the _seasons_. The seasons affecting the sweepers’ trade are, however,
the _natural_ seasons of the year, the recurring summer and winter,
while the seasons influencing the employment of West-end tailors are
the _arbitrary_ seasons of fashion.

The chimney-sweepers’ _brisk_ season is in the winter, and especially
at what may be in the respective households the periods of the
resumption and discontinuance of sitting-room fires.

The sweepers’ seasons of briskness and slackness, indeed, may be said
then to be ruled by the thermometer, for the temperature causes the
increase or diminution of the number of fires, and consequently of the
production of soot. The thermometrical period for fires appears to be
from October to the following April, both inclusive (seven months), for
during that season the temperature is below 50°. I have seen it stated,
and I believe it is merely a statement of a fact, that at one time, and
even now in some houses, it was customary enough for what were called
“great families” to have a fixed day (generally Michaelmas-day, Sept.
29) on which to commence fires in the sitting-rooms, and another stated
day (often May-day, May 1) on which to discontinue them, no matter what
might be the mean temperature, whether too warm for the enjoyment of a
fire, or too cold comfortably to dispense with it. Some wealthy persons
now, I am told--such as call themselves “economists,” while their
servants and dependants apply the epithet “mean”--defer fires until the
temperature descends to 42°, or from November to March, both inclusive,
a season of only five months.

As this question of the range of the thermometer evidently influences
the seasons, and therefore, the casual labour of the sweepers, I will
give the following interesting account of the changing temperature of
the metropolis, month by month, the information being derived from
the observations of 25 years (1805 to 1830), by Mr. Luke Howard. The
average temperature appears to be:--

Degrees.
January 35·1
February 38·9
March 42·0
April 47·5
May 54·9
June 59·6
July 63·1
August 57·1
September 50·1
October 42·4
November 41·9
December 38·3

London, I may further state, is 2-1/2 degrees warmer than the country,
especially in winter, owing to the shelter of buildings and the
multiplicity of the fires in the houses and factories. In the summer
the metropolis is about 1-1/4 degree hotter than the country, owing to
want of free air in London, and to a cause little thought about--the
reverberations from narrow streets. In spring and autumn, however, the
temperature of both town and country is nearly equal.

In London, moreover, the nights are 11·3 degrees colder than the days;
in the country they are 15·4 degrees colder. The extreme ranges of
the temperature in the day, in the capital, are from 20° to 90°.
The thermometer _has_ fallen below zero in the night time, but not
frequently.

In London the hottest months are 28 degrees warmer than the coldest;
the temperature of July, which is the hottest month, being 63·1; and
that of January, the coldest month, 35·1 degrees.

The month in which there are the greatest number of extremes of heat
and cold is January. In February and December there are (generally
speaking) only two such extreme variations, and five in July; through
the other months, however, the extremes are more diffused, and there
are only two spring and two autumn months (April and June--September
and November), which are not exposed to great differences of
temperature.

The mean temperature assumes a rate of increase in the different
months, which may be represented by a curve nearly equal and parallel
with one representing the progress of the sun in declination.

Hoar-frosts occur when the thermometer is about 39°, and the dense
yellow fogs, so peculiar to London, are the most frequent in the months
of November, December, and January, whilst the temperature ranges below
40°.

The busy season in the chimney-sweepers’ trade commences at the
beginning of November, and continues up to the month of May; during
the remainder of the year the trade is “slack.” When the slack season
has set in nearly 100 men are thrown out of employment. These, as
well as many of the single-handed masters, resort to other kinds of
employment. Some turn costermongers, others tinkers, knife-grinders,
&c., and others migrate to the country and get a job at haymaking,
or any other kind of unskilled labour. Even during the brisk season
there are upwards of 50 men out of employment; some of these
occasionally contrive to get a machine of their own, and go about
“knulling,”--getting a job where they can.

Many of the master sweepers employ in the summer months only two
journeymen, whereas they require three in the winter months; but this,
I am informed, is not the general average, and that it will be more
correct to compute it for the whole trade, in the proportion of two and
a half to two. We may, then, calculate that one-fourth of the entire
trade is displaced during the slack season.

This, then, may be taken as the extent of casual labour, with all
the sufferings it entails upon improvident, and even upon careful
working-men.

A youth casually employed as a sweeper gave the following account:--“I
jobs for the sweeps sometimes, sir, as I’d job for anybody else, and
if you have any herrands to go, and will send me, I’ll be unkimmon
thankful. I haven’t no father and don’t remember one, and mother might
do well but for the ruin (gin). I calls it ‘ruin’ out of spite. No, I
don’t care for it myself. I like beer ten to a farthing to it. She’s a
ironer, sir, a stunning good one, but I don’t like to talk about her,
for she might yarn a hatful of browns--3_s._ 6_d._ a day; and when she
has pulled up for a month or more it’s stunning is the difference. I’d
rather not be asked more about that. Her great fault against me is as I
won’t settle. I was one time put to a woman’s shoemaker as worked for
a ware’us. He was a relation, and I was to go prentice if it suited.
But I couldn’t stand his confining ways, and I’m sartain sure that he
only wanted me for some tin mother said she’d spring if all was square.
He was bad off, and we lived bad, but he always pretended he was going
to be stunning busy. So I hooked it. I’d other places--a pot-boy’s was
one, but no go. None suited.

“Well, I can keep myself now by jobbing, leastways I can partly, for I
have a crib in a corner of mother’s room, and my rent’s nothing, and
when she’s all right _I’m_ all right, and she gets better as I grows
bigger, I think. Well, I don’t know what I’d like to be; something
like a lamp-lighter, I think. Well, I look out for sweep jobs among
others, and get them sometimes. I don’t know how often. Sometimes three
mornings a week for one week; then none for a month. Can any one live
by jobbing that way for the sweeps? No, sir, nor get a quarter of a
living; but it’s a help. I know some very tidy sweeps now. I’m sure I
don’t know what they are in the way of trade. O, yes, now you ask that,
I think they’re masters. I’ve had 6_d._ and half-a-pint of beer for a
morning’s work, jobbing like. I carry soot for them, and I’m lent a
sort of jacket, or a wrap about me, to keep it off my clothes--though
a Jew wouldn’t sometimes look at ’em--and there’s worser people nor
sweeps. Sometimes I’ll get only 2_d._ or 3_d._ a day for helping that
way, a carrying soot. I don’t know nothing about weights or bushels,
but I know I’ve found it ---- heavy.

“The way, you see, sir, is this here: I meets a sweep as knows me by
sight, and he says, ‘Come along, Tom’s not at work, and I want you. I
have to go it harder, so you carry the soot to our place to save my
time, and join me again at No. 39.’ That’s just the ticket of it. Well,
no; I wouldn’t mind being a sweep for myself with my own machine; but
I’d rather be a lamp-lighter. How many help sweeps as I do? I can’t at
all say. No, I don’t know whether it’s 10, or 20, or 100, or 1000. I’m
no scholard, sir, that’s one thing. But it’s very seldom such as me’s
wanted by them. I can’t tell what I get for jobbing for sweeps in a
year. I can’t guess at it, but it’s not so much, I think, as from other
kinds of jobbing. Yes, sir, I haven’t no doubt that the t’others as
jobs for sweeps is in the same way as me. I think I may do as much as
any of ’em that way, quite as much.”

OF THE “LEEKS” AMONG THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

The _Leeks_ are men who have not been brought up to the trade of
chimney sweeping, but have adopted it as a speculation, and are so
called from their entering _green_, or inexperienced, into the
business. There are I find as many as 200 leeks altogether among the
master chimney-sweepers of the metropolis. Of the “high masters” the
greater portion are leeks--no less than 92 out of 106. I was informed
that one of this class was formerly a solicitor, others had been
ladies’ shoemakers, and others master builders and bricklayers. Among
the lower-class sweepers who have taken to this trade, there are
dustmen, scavagers, bricklayers’ labourers, soldiers, costermongers,
tinkers, and various other unskilled labourers.

The leeks are regarded with considerable dislike by the class of
masters who have been regularly brought up to the business, and served
their apprenticeships as climbing-boys. These look upon the leeks
as men who intrude upon, or interfere with, their natural and, as
they account it, legal rights--declaring that only such as have been
brought up to the business should be allowed to establish themselves
in it as masters. The chimney-sweepers, as far as I can learn, have
never possessed any guild, or any especial trade regulations, and this
opinion of their rights being invaded by the leeks arises most probably
from their knowledge that during the climbing-boy system every lad so
employed, unless the son of his employer, was obliged to be apprenticed.

This jealousy towards the leeks does not at all affect the operative
sweepers, as some of these leeks are good masters, and among them,
perhaps, is to be found the majority of the capitalists of the
chimney-sweeping trade, paying the best wages, and finding their
journeymen proper food and lodging. Into whatever district I travelled
I heard the operative chimney-sweepers speak highly in favour of some
of the leeks.

Many of the small masters, however, said “it were a shame” for persons
who had never known the horrors of climbing to come into the trade
and take the bread out of the mouths of those who had undergone the
drudgery of the climbing system; and there appears to be some little
justice in their remarks.

Since the introduction of machines into the chimney-sweeping trade
the masters have increased considerably. In 1816 there were 200
masters, and now there are 350. Before the machines were introduced,
the high master sweepers or “great gentlemen,” as they were called,
numbered only about 20; their present number is 106. The lower-class
and master-men sweepers, on the other hand, were, under the climbing
system, from 150 to 180 in number; but at present there are as many as
240 odd. The majority of these fresh hands are “leeks,” not having been
bred to the business.

OF THE INFERIOR CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS--THE “KNULLERS” AND “QUERIERS.”

The majority of occupations in all civilized communities are divisible
into two distinct classes, the employers and the employed. The
employers are necessarily capitalists to a greater or less extent,
providing generally the materials and implements necessary for the
work, as well as the subsistence of the workmen, in the form of wages
and appropriating the proceeds of the labour, while the employed are
those who, for the sake of the present subsistence supplied to them,
undertake to do the requisite work for the employer. In some few trades
these two functions are found to be united in the same individuals.
The class known as peasant proprietors among the cultivators of the
soil are at once the labourers and the owners of the land and stock.
The cottiers, on the other hand, though renting the land of the
proprietor, are, so to speak, peasant farmers, tilling the land for
themselves rather than doing so at wages for some capitalist tenant.
In handicrafts and manufactures the same combination of functions is
found to prevail. In the clothing districts the domestic workers are
generally their own masters, and so again in many other branches of
production. These trading operatives are known by different names
in different trades. In the shoe trade, for instance, they are
called “chamber-masters,” in the “cabinet trade” they are termed
“garret-masters,” and in “the cooper’s trade” the name for them is
“small trading-masters.” Some style them “master-men,” and others,
“single-handed masters.” In all occupations, however, the master-men
are found to be especially injurious to the interests of the entire
body of both capitalists and operatives, for, owing to the limited
extent of their resources, they are obliged to find a market for their
work, no matter at what the sacrifice, and hence by their excessive
competitions they serve to lower the prices of the trade to a most
unprecedented extent. I have as yet met with no occupation in which the
existence of a class of master-men has worked well for the interest of
the trade, and I have found many which they have reduced to a state
of abject wretchedness. It is a peculiar circumstance in connection
with the master-men that they abound only in those callings which
require a small amount of capital, and which, consequently, render it
easy for the operative immediately on the least disagreement between
him and his employer to pass from the condition of an operative into
that of a trading workman. When among the fancy cabinet-makers I had
a statement from a gentleman, in Aldersgate-street, who supplied the
materials to these men, that a fancy cabinet-maker, the manufacturer
of writing-desks, tea-caddies, ladies’ work-boxes, &c., could begin,
and did begin, business on less than 3_s._ 6_d._ A youth had just
then bought materials of him for 2_s._ 6_d._ to “begin on a small
desk,” stepping at once out of the trammels of apprenticeship into the
character of a master-man. Now this facility to commence business on a
man’s own account is far greater in the chimney-sweepers’ trade than
even in the desk-makers’, for the one needs no previous training, while
the other does.

Thus when other trades, skilled or unskilled, are depressed, when
casual labour is with a mass of workpeople more general than constant
labour, they naturally inquire if they “cannot do better at something
else,” and often resort to such trades as the chimney-sweepers’. It
is open to all, skilled and unskilled alike. Distress, a desire of
change, a vagabond spirit, a hope to “better themselves,” all tend to
swell the ranks of the single-handed master chimney-sweepers; even
though these men, from the casualties of the trade in the way of
“seasons,” &c., are often exposed to great privations.

There are in all 147 single-handed masters, who are thus distributed
throughout the metropolis:--

Southwark (17), Chelsea (11), Marylebone, Shoreditch, and
Whitechapel (each 9), Hackney, Stepney, and Lambeth (each 8), St.
George’s-in-the-East (7), Rotherhithe (6), St. Giles’ and East London
(each 5), Bethnal-green, Bermondsey, Camberwell, and Clapham (each 4),
St. Pancras, Islington, Walworth, and Greenwich (each 3), St. James’s
(Westminster), Holborn, Clerkenwell, St. Luke’s, Poplar, Westminster,
West London, City, Wandsworth, and Woolwich (each 1); in all, 147.

Thus we perceive, that the single-handed masters abound in the suburbs
and poorer districts; and it is generally in those parts where the
lower rate of wages is paid that these men are found to prevail. Their
existence appears to be at once the cause and the consequence of the
depreciation of the labour.

Of the single-handed masters there is a sub-class known by the name of
“knullers” or “queriers.”

The _knullers_ were formerly, it is probable, known as knellers. The
Saxon word _Cnyllan_ is to knell (to knull properly), or sound a bell,
and the name “knuller” accordingly implies the sounder of a bell, which
has been done, there can be no doubt, by the London chimney-sweepers as
well as the dustmen, to announce their presence, and as still done in
some country parts. One informant has known this to be the practice at
the town of Hungerford in Berkshire. The bell was in size between that
of the muffin-man and the dustman.

The knuller is also styled a “_querier_,” a name derived from his
making _inquiries_ at the doors of the houses as to whether his
services are required or are likely to be soon required, calling even
where they know that a regular resident chimney-sweeper is employed.
The men go along calling “sweep,” more especially in the suburbs, and
if asked “Are you Mr. So-and-So’s man?” answer in the affirmative, and
may then be called in to sweep the chimneys, or instructed to come
in the morning. Thus they receive the full charge of an established
master, who, for the sake of his character and the continuance of his
custom, must do his work properly; while if such work be done by the
knuller, it will be hurriedly and therefore badly done, as all work is,
in a general way, when done under false pretences.

Some of the sharpest of these men, I am told, have been reared up
as sweepers; but it appears, although it is a matter difficult to
ascertain with precision, the majority have been brought up to some
generally unskilled calling, as scavagers, costermongers, tinkers,
bricklayers’ labourers, soldiers, &c. The knullers or queriers are
almost all to be found among the lower class chimney-sweepers. There
are, from the best information to be obtained, from 150 to 200 of them.
Not only do they scheme for employment in the way I have described,
but some of them call at the houses of both rich and poor, boldly
stating that they had been _sent_ by Mr. ---- to sweep the flues. I
was informed by several of the master sweepers, that many of the fires
which happen in the metropolis are owing to persons employing these
“knullers,” “for,” say the high masters, “they scamp the work, and
leave a quantity of soot lodged in the chimney, which, in the event
of a large fire being kept in the range or grate, ignites.” This
opinion as to the fires in the chimneys being caused by the scamped
work of the knullers must be taken with some allowance. Tradesmen,
whose established business is thus, as they account it, usurped, are
naturally angry with the usurpers.

There is another evil, so say the regular masters, resulting from the
employment of the knullers--the losses accruing to persons employing
them, as “they take anything they can lay their hands upon.”

This, also, is a charge easy to make, but not easy to refute, or even
to sift. One master chimney-sweeper told me that when chimneys are
swept in rich men’s houses there is almost always some servant in
attendance to watch the sweepers. If the rich, I am told, be watchful
under these circumstances, the poor are more vigilant.

The distribution of the knullers or queriers is as follows:--Southwark
(17), Chelsea and St. Giles’ (11 each), Shoreditch and Whitechapel
(10 each), Lambeth (9), Marylebone, Stepney and Walworth (8 each),
St. George’s in the East and Woolwich (7 each), Islington and
Hackney (6 each), East London, Rotherhithe, and Greenwich (5 each),
Paddington, St. Pancras, East London, Rotherhithe and Greenwich
(5 each), Paddington, St. Pancras, Bethnal Green, Bermondsey, and
Clapham (4 each), Westminster, St. Martin’s, Holborn, St. Luke’s, West
London, Poplar, and Camberwell (3 each); St. James’s (Westminster),
Clerkenwell, City of London, and Wandsworth (2 each), Kensington (1);
in all, 183.

Like the single-handed men the knullers abound in the suburbs. I
endeavoured to find a knuller who had been a skilled labourer, and
was referred to one who, I was told, had been a working plumber, and
a “good hand at spouts.” I found him a doggedly ignorant man; he saw
no good, he said, in books or newspapers, and “wouldn’t say nothing to
me, as I’d told him it would be printed. He wasn’t a going to make a
holy-show [so I understood him] of _his_-self.”

Another knuller (to whom I was referred by a master who occasionally
employed him as a journeyman) gave me the following account. He was
“doing just middling” when I saw him, he said, but his look was that of
a man who had known privations, and the soot actually seemed to bring
out his wrinkles more fully, although he told me he was only between 40
and 50 years old; he believed he was not 46.

“I was hard brought up, sir,” he said; “ay, them as’ll read your
book--I mean them readers as is well to do--cannot fancy how hard.
Mother was a widow; father was nobody knew where; and, poor woman, she
was sometimes distracted that a daughter she had before her marriage,
went all wrong. She was a washerwoman, and slaved herself to death. She
died in the house [workhouse] in Birmingham. I can read and write a
little. I was sent to a charity school, and when I was big enough I was
put ’prentice to a gunsmith at Birmingham. I’m master of the business
generally, but my perticler part is a gun lock-filer. No, sir, I can’t
say as ever I liked it; nothing but file file all day. I used to wish I
was like the free bits o’ boys that used to beg steel filings of me for
their fifth of November fireworks. I never could bear confinement. It’s
made me look older than I ought, I know, but what can a poor man do?
No, I never cared much about drinking. I worked in an iron-foundry when
I was out of my time. I had a relation that was foreman there. Perhaps
it might be that, among all the dust and heat and smoke and stuff, that
made me a sweep at last, for I was then almost or quite as black as a
sweep.

“Then I come up to London; ay, that must be more nor 20 years back.
O, I came up to better myself, but I couldn’t get work either at the
gun-makers--and I fancy the London masters don’t like Birmingham
hands--nor at the iron-foundries, and the iron-foundries is nothing in
London to what they is in Staffordshire and Warwickshire; nothing at
all, they may say what they like. Well, sir, I soon got very bad off.
My togs was hardly to call togs. One night--and it was a coldish night,
too--I slept in the park, and was all stiff and shivery next morning.
As I was wandering about near the park, I walked up a street near the
Abbey--King-street, I think it is--and there was a picture outside a
public-house, and a writing of men wanted for the East India Company’s
Service. I went there again in the evening, and there was soldiers
smoking and drinking up and down, and I ’listed at once. I was to have
my full bounty when I got to the depôt--Southampton I think they called
it. Somehow I began to rue what I’d done. Well, I hardly can tell you
why. O, no; I don’t say I was badly used; not at all. But I had heard
of snakes and things in the parts I was going to, and I gently hooked
it. I was a navvy on different rails after that, but I never was strong
enough for that there work, and at last I couldn’t get any more work
to do. I came back to London; well, sir, I can’t say, as you ask, why
I came to London ’stead of Birmingham. I seemed to go natural like. I
could get nothing to do, and Lord! what I suffered! I once fell down in
the Cut from hunger, and I was lifted into Watchorn’s, and he said to
his men, ‘Give the poor fellow a little drop of brandy, and after that
a biscuit; the best things he can have.’ He saved my life, sir. The
people at the bar--they see’d it was no humbug--gathered 7-1/2_d._ for
me. A penny a-piece from some of Maudslay’s men, and a halfpenny from
a gent that hadn’t no other change, and a poor woman as I was going
away slipt a couple of trotters into my hand.

“I slept at a lodging-house, then, in Baldwin’s-gardens when I had
money, and one day in Gray’s inn-lane I picked up an old gent that fell
in the middle of the street, and might have been run over. After he’d
felt in all his pockets, and found he was all right, he gave me 5_s._ I
knew a sweep, for I sometimes slept in the same house, in King-street,
Drury-lane; and he was sick, and was going to the big house. And he
told me all about his machines, that’s six or seven years back, and
said if I’d pay 2_s._ 6_d._ down, and 2_s._ 6_d._ a week, if I couldn’t
pay more, I might have his machine for 20_s._ I took it at 17_s._
6_d._, and paid him every farthing. That just kept him out of the
house, but he died soon after.

“Yes, I’ve been a sweep ever since. I’ve had to shift as well as I
could. I don’t know that I’m what you call a Nuller, or a Querier.
Well, if I’m asked if I’m anybody’s man, I don’t like to say ‘no,’
and I don’t like to say ‘yes;’ so I says nothing if I can help it.
Yes, I call at houses to ask if anything’s wanted. I’ve got a job that
way sometimes. If they took me for anybody’s man, I can’t help that.
I lodge with another sweep which is better off nor I am, and pay him
2_s._ 9_d._ a week for a little stair-head place with a bed in it.
I think I clear 7_s._ a week, one week with another, but that’s the
outside. I never go to church or chapel. I’ve never got into the way
of it. Besides, I wouldn’t be let in, I s’pose, in my togs. I’ve only
myself. I can’t say I much like what I’m doing, but what can a poor man
do?”

[Illustration: THE SWEEPS’ HOME.

(_From a sketch taken on the spot._)]

OF THE FIRES OF LONDON.

Connected with the subject of chimney sweeping is one which attracts
far less of the attention of the legislature and the public than its
importance would seem to demand: I mean the fires in the metropolis,
with their long train of calamities, such as the loss of life and
of property. These calamities, too, especially as regards the loss
of property, are almost all endured by the poor, the destruction of
whose furniture is often the destruction of their whole property, as
insurances are rarely effected by them; while the wealthier classes, in
the case of fires, are not exposed to the evils of houselessness, and
may be actually gainers by the conflagration, through the sum for which
the property was insured.

“The daily occurrence of fires in the metropolis,” say the Board
of Health, “their extent, the number of persons who perish by
them, the enormous loss of property they occasion, the prevalence
of incendiarism, the apparent apathy with which such calamities
are regarded, and the rapidity with which they are forgotten, will
hereafter be referred to as evidence of a very low social condition
and defective administrative organization. These fires, it was shown
nearly a century ago, when the subject of insurance was debated in
Parliament, were frequently caused from not having chimneys swept
in proper time.” I am informed that a chimney may be on fire for many
days, unknown to the inmates of the house, and finally break out in
the body of the building by its getting into contact with some beam or
wood-work. The recent burning of Limehouse Church was occasioned by the
soot collected in the flue taking fire, and becoming red hot, when it
ignited the wood-work in the roof. The flue, or pipe, was of iron.

From a return made by Mr. Braidwood of the houses and properties
destroyed in the metropolis in the three years ending in 1849
inclusive, it appears that the total number was 1111: of contents
destroyed (which, being generally insured separately, should be kept
distinct) there were 1013. The subjoined table gives the particulars as
to the proportion insured and uninsured:--

-------------+---------+----------+------
-- | Insured.|Uninsured.|Total.
-------------+---------+----------+------
Houses | 914 | 197 | 1111
Contents | 609 | 404 | 1013
-------------+---------+----------+------
| 1523 | 601 | 2124
-------------+---------+----------+------

“The proportion per cent. of the uninsured to the insured, would be--

--------+----+---------+----------+------
-- | | Insured.|Uninsured.|Total.
--------+----+---------+----------+------
| |Per Cent.| Per Cent.|
Houses |1111| 82·3 | 17·7 | 100
Contents|1013| 60·1 | 39·9 | 100
--------+----+---------+----------+------
|2124| 71·7 | 28·3 | 100
--------+----+---------+----------+------

The following table gives the total number of fires in the metropolis
during a series of years:

ABSTRACT OF CAUSES OF FIRE IN THE METROPOLIS, FROM 1833 to 1849,
INCLUSIVE.

COMPILED BY W. BADDELEY.

|1833|1834|1835|1836|1837|1838|1839
----------------------|----|----|----|----|----|----|----
Accidents of various | | | | | | |
kinds, for the most | | | | | | |
part unavoidable | 83| 40| 14| 13| 17| 36| 25
Apparel ignited | | | | | | |
on the person | .. | .. | .. | 7| 7| 5| 3
Candles, various | | | | | | |
accidents with | 56| 146| 110| 157| 125| 132| 128
Carelessness, palpable| | | | | | |
instances of | 28| .. | 19| 18| 7| 17| 14
Children playing | | | | | | |
with fire or candles| .. | .. | 5| 6| 18| 5| 12
Drunkenness | .. | 2| 3| .. | 2| 4| 6
Fire-heat, application| | | | | | |
of, to various | | | | | | |
hazardous | | | | | | |
manufacturing | | | | | | |
processes | 31| 24| 39| 34| 22| 40| 26
Fire-sparks | .. | .. | .. | 7| 10| 12| 9
Fire-works | .. | .. | 3| .. | 5| 3| 5
Fires kindled on | | | | | | |
hearths and other | | | | | | |
improper places | 7| .. | 9| 5| 5| 15| 8
Flues, foul, | | | | | | |
defective, &c. | 71| 65| 69| 72| 53| 58| 58
Fumigation, incautious| .. | 3| 7| 5| 2| 1| 5
Furnaces, kilns, | | | | | | |
&c., defective or | | | | | | |
over-heated | .. | 11| 2| 9| 12| 15| 20
Gas | 20| 25| 39| 38| 31| 42| 72
Gunpowder | 3| 3| .. | 1| 3| 1| 2
Hearths, defective, | | | | | | |
&c. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | ..
Hot cinders put | | | | | | |
away | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | ..
Lamps | .. | .. | .. | 2| 3| 9| 4
Lime, slaking of | .. | 3| 4| 3| .. | 4| 2
Linen, drying, | | | | | | |
airing, &c. | .. | .. | 22| 31| 48| 32| 26
Lucifer-matches | .. | .. | .. | .. | 8| 9| 17
Ovens | 6| .. | .. | 6| 3| 11| 4
Reading, working, | | | | | | |
or smoking | | | | | | |
in bed | .. | 3| .. | .. | .. | 1| 2
Shavings, loose, | | | | | | |
ignited | .. | 6| 9| 13| 8| 17| 8
Spontaneous combustion| 7| 2| 5| 4| 4| 5| 13
Stoves, defective, | | | | | | |
over-heated, &c. | 18| 20| 11| 28| 36| 31| 24
Tobacco smoking | .. | 6| 4| 1| 3| 4| 11
Suspicious | .. | .. | .. | .. | 7| 8| 6
Wilful | 3| 9| 6| 8| 5| 6| 7
Unknown | 125| 114| 91| 96| 57| 45| 67

|1840|1841|1842|1843|1844|1845|1846
----------------------|----|----|----|----|----|----|----
Accidents of various | | | | | | |
kinds, for the most | | | | | | |
part unavoidable | 26| 26| 44| 19| 11| 17| 29
Apparel ignited | | | | | | |
on the person | 12| 5| 9| 5| 4| 3| 3
Candles, various | | | | | | |
accidents with | 169| 184| 189| 166| 205| 165| 229
Carelessness, palpable| | | | | | |
instances of | 24| 25| 19| 27| 15| 14| 15
Children playing | | | | | | |
with fire or candles| 21| 18| 16| 20| 23| 19| 25
Drunkenness | 5| 5| 11| 6| 9| 7| 9
Fire-heat, application| | | | | | |
of, to various | | | | | | |
hazardous | | | | | | |
manufacturing | | | | | | |
processes | 29| 16| 36| 14| 21| 22| 25
Fire-sparks | 17| 13| 23| 17| 27| 24| 32
Fire-works | 1| 4| 7| 5| 3| 10| 9
Fires kindled on | | | | | | |
hearths and other | | | | | | |
improper places | 7| 8| 9| 9| 8| 12| 7
Flues, foul, | | | | | | |
defective, &c. | 89| 83| 90| 105| 84| 78| 86
Fumigation, incautious| 3| 2| 2| 1| 1| 3| 4
Furnaces, kilns, | | | | | | |
&c., defective or | | | | | | |
over-heated | 15| 12| 23| 19| 17| 29| 28
Gas | 48| 48| 52| 40| 33| 54| 53
Gunpowder | .. | .. | 3| 1| .. | 1| ..
Hearths, defective, | | | | | | |
&c. | .. | .. | 3| 5| 2| .. | 4
Hot cinders put | | | | | | |
away | .. | .. | 3| 3| 7| 10| 8
Lamps | 3| 5| 2| 2| 6| 11| 7
Lime, slaking of | 2| 5| 4| 2| 3| 9| 7
Linen, drying, | | | | | | |
airing, &c. | 25| 27| 41| 33| 45| 30| 39
Lucifer-matches | 18| 16| 17| 14| 19| 12| 14
Ovens | 13| 13| 13| 10| 10| 8| 8
Reading, working, | | | | | | |
or smoking | | | | | | |
in bed | .. | 5| 2| 3| .. | .. | 3
Shavings, loose, | | | | | | |
ignited | 27| 35| 22| 31| 18| 25| 35
Spontaneous combustion| 11| 22| 20| 23| 34| 19| 18
Stoves, defective, | | | | | | |
over-heated, &c. | 48| 54| 32| 58| 44| 51| 43
Tobacco smoking | 9| 22| 17| 14| 21| 19| 29
Suspicious | 11| 7| 9| 16| 7| 9| 7
Wilful | 9| 13| 19| 21| 11| 14| 19
Unknown | 39| 23| 32| 60| 74| 32| 39

|1847|1848|1849|Total.|Average
----------------------|----|----|----|------|-------
Accidents of various | | | | |
kinds, for the most | | | | |
part unavoidable | 20| 19| 13| 452 | 27
Apparel ignited | | | | |
on the person | 3| 1| 2| 69 | 4
Candles, various | | | | |
accidents with | 237| 237| 241| 2876 |169
Carelessness, palpable| | | | |
instances of | 20| 23| 24| 309 | 18
Children playing | | | | |
with fire or candles| 16| 19| 15| 238 | 14
Drunkenness | 5| 3| 7| 84 | 5
Fire-heat, application| | | | |
of, to various | | | | |
hazardous | | | | |
manufacturing | | | | |
processes | 16| 22| 23| 440 | 26
Fire-sparks | 65| 63| 40| 359 | 21
Fire-works | 6| 1| 8| 70 | 4
Fires kindled on | | | | |
hearths and other | | | | |
improper places | 3| 4| 4| 120 | 7
Flues, foul, | | | | |
defective, &c. | 78| 56| 78| 1273 | 75
Fumigation, incautious| 4| 4| 2| 49 | 3
Furnaces, kilns, | | | | |
&c., defective or | | | | |
over-heated | 14| 16| 21| 263 | 16
Gas | 63| 65| 57| 780 | 46
Gunpowder | 2| .. | 2| 22 | 1-1/5
Hearths, defective, | | | | |
&c. | 3| 4| 3| 24 | 1-1/2
Hot cinders put | | | | |
away | 9| 5| 11| 56 | 3
Lamps | 2| 3| 17| 76 | 5
Lime, slaking of | 5| 5| 3| 61 | 4
Linen, drying, | | | | |
airing, &c. | 34| 36| 40| 509 | 30
Lucifer-matches | 9| 23| 12| 188 | 11
Ovens | 8| 2| 2| 117 | 7
Reading, working, | | | | |
or smoking | | | | |
in bed | 1| 1| 1| 22 | 1-1/3
Shavings, loose, | | | | |
ignited | 37| 27| 21| 339 | 20
Spontaneous combustion| 15| 7| 19| 228 | 13
Stoves, defective, | | | | |
over-heated, &c. | 37| 48| 43| 626 | 37
Tobacco smoking | 18| 37| 24| 239 | 14
Suspicious | 17| 11| 10| 125 | 7
Wilful | 17| 25| 19| 211 | 12
Unknown | 72| 38| 76| 1080 | 63

Here, then, we perceive that there are, upon an average of 17 years,
no less than 770 “fires” per annum, that is to say, 29 houses in every
10,000 are discovered to be on fire every year; and about one-fourth
of these are uninsured. In the year 1833 the total number of fires was
only 458, or 20 in every 10,000 inhabited houses, whilst, in 1849, the
number had gradually progressed to 838, or 28 in every 10,000 houses.

We have here, however, to deal more particularly with the causes of
these fires, of which the following table gives the result of many
years’ valuable experience:--

TABULAR EPITOME OF METROPOLITAN FIRES, FROM 1833 to 1849.

BY W. BADDELEY, 29, ALFRED STREET, ISLINGTON.

--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
|1833|1834|1835|1836|1837|1838|1839|1840|1841|1842|1843
--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
Slightly damaged | 292| 338| 315| 397| 357| 383| 402| 451| 438| 521| 489
Seriously damaged | 135| 116| 125| 134| 122| 152| 165| 204| 34| 224| 231
Totally destroyed | 31| 28| 31| 33| 22| 33| 17| 26| 24| 24| 29
Total No. of Fires | 458| 482| 471| 564| 501| 568| 584| 681| 696| 769| 749
False Alarms | 59| 63| 66| 66| 89| 80| 70| 84| 67| 61| 79
Alarms from | | | | | | | | | | |
Chimneys on Fire | 75| 106| 106| 126| 127| 107| 101| 98| 92| 82| 83
Total No. of Calls | 592| 651| 643| 756| 717| 755| 755| 863| 855| 912| 911
Insuran. on Building| | | | | | | | | | |
and Contents | .. | .. | .. | 169| 173| 161| 169| 237| 343| 321| 276
Insurances on | | | | | | | | | | |
Building only | .. | .. | .. | 73| 47| 59| 58| 92| 149| 116| 124
Insurances on | | | | | | | | | | |
Contents only | .. | .. | .. | 104| 76| 128| 115| 104| 52| 112| 107
Uninsured | .. | .. | .. | 218| 205| 220| 242| 248| 152| 220| 242
--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----

--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+------+-------
|1844|1845|1846|1847|1848|1849|Total.|Average
--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+------+-------
Slightly damaged | 502| 431| 576| 536| 509| 582| 6,574| 470
Seriously damaged | 237| 244| 238| 273| 269| 228| 2,955| 211
Totally destroyed | 23| 32| 20| 27| 27| 28| 365| 26
Total No. of Fires | 762| 707| 834| 836| 805| 838| 9,894| 770
False Alarms | 70| 81| 119| 88| 120| 76| 1,150| 82
Alarms from | | | | | | | |
Chimneys on Fire | 94| 87| 69| 66| 86| 89| 1,307| 94
Total No. of Calls | 926| 875|1022| 990|1011|1003|12,351| 882
Insuran. on Building| | | | | | | |
and Contents | 313| 313| 302| 263| 310| 368| 3,718| 266
Insurances on | | | | | | | |
Building only | 138| 107| 137| 125| 120| 163| 1,508| 108
Insurances on | | | | | | | |
Contents only | 94| 73| 125| 157| 134| 72| 1,453| 104
Uninsured | 217| 214| 270| 291| 241| 235| 3,215| 230
--------------------+----+----+----+-----+---+----+------+-------

Thus we perceive that, out of an average of 665 fires per annum, the
information being derived from 17 years’ experience, the following were
the number of fires produced by different causes:--

Average No. of Fires per Annum.
Candles, various accidents with 169
Flues, foul, defective, &c. 75
Unknown 63
Gas 46
Stoves over-heated 37
Linen, drying, airing, &c. 30
Accidents of various kinds, for the most part unavoidable 27
Fire heat, application of, to various hazardous manufacturing processes 26
Fire sparks 21
Shavings, loose, ignited 20
Carelessness, palpable instances of 18
Furnaces, kilns, &c., defective or over-heated 16
Children playing with fire or candles 14
Tobacco smoking 14
Spontaneous combustion 13
Wilful 12
Lucifer-matches 11
Ovens 7
Fires, kindled on hearths and other improper places 7
Suspicious 7
Lamps 5
Drunkenness 5
Lime, slaking of 4
Apparel, ignited on the person 4
Fireworks 4
Hot cinders put away 3
Incautious fumigation 3
Reading, working, or smoking in bed 1·33
Hearths defective 1·25
------
665

Here, then, we find that while the greatest proportion of fires are
caused by accidents with candles, about one-ninth of the fires above
mentioned arise from foul flues, or 75 out of 665, a circumstance which
teaches us the usefulness of the class of labourers of whom we have
been lately treating.

It would seem that a much larger proportion of the fires are wilfully
produced than appear in the above table.

The Board of Health, in speaking of incendiarism in connection with
insurance, report:--

“Inquiries connected with measures for the improvement of the
population have developed the operation of insurances, in
engendering crimes and calamities; negatively, by weakening natural
responsibilities and motives to care and forethought; positively, by
temptations held out to the commission of crime in the facility with
which insurance money is usually obtainable.

“The _steady increase_ in the number of fires in the metropolis, whilst
our advance in the arts gives means for their diminution, is ascribable
mainly to the operation of these two causes, and to the division and
weakening of administrative authority. From information on which we
can rely, we feel assured that the crime of incendiarism for the sake
of insurance money exists to a far greater extent than the public are
aware of.”

Mr. Braidwood has expressed his opinion that only one-half of the
property in the metropolis is insured, not as to numbers of property,
but as to value; but the proportion of insured and uninsured houses
could not be ascertained.

Mr. Baddeley, the inspector to the Society for the Protection of Life
from Fire, who had given attention to the subject for the last 30
years, gave the Board the following account of the increase of fires:--

During this period there has been a great increase in the number of
dwellings, but this has been chiefly in suburban places, where fires
rarely occur.

“The frequency of fires,” it is further stated, “led Mr. Payne, the
coroner of the City of London, to revive the exercise of the coroner’s
function of inquiring into the causes of fires; most usefully. Out
of 58 inquests held by him (in the City of London and the borough of
Southwark, which comprise only one-eighteenth of the houses of the
metropolis) since 1845, it appears that, 8 were proved to be wilful; 27
apparently accidental; and 23 from causes unknown, including suspicious
causes. The proportion of ascertained wilful fires was, therefore, 23
per cent.; which gives strong confirmation to the indications presented
by the statistical returns as to the excess of insured property burnt
above uninsured.”

The at once mean and reckless criminality of arson, by which a man
exposes his neighbours to the risk of a dreadful death, which he
himself takes measures to avoid, has long, and on many occasions, gone
unpunished in London. The insurance companies, when a demand is made
upon them for a loss through fire, institute an inquiry, carried on
quietly by their own people. The claimant is informed, if sufficient
reasons for such a step appear, that from suspicious circumstances,
which had come to the knowledge of the company, the demand would not
be complied with, and that the company would resist any action for
the recovery of the money. The criminal becomes alarmed, he is afraid
of committing himself, and so the matter drops, and the insurance
companies, not being required to pay the indemnification, are satisfied
to save their money, and let the incendiarism remain unnoticed or
unpunished. Mr. Payne, the coroner, has on some occasions strongly
commented on this practice as one which showed the want of a public
prosecutor.

* * * * *

A few words as regards the means of extinction and help at fires.

Upwards of two years ago the Commissioners of Police instructed their
officers to note the time which elapsed between the earliest alarm
of fire and the arrival of the first engine. Seventeen fires were
noted, and the average duration of time before the fire-brigade or any
parochial or local fire-engine, reached the spot, was 36 minutes. Two
or three of these fires were in the suburbs; so that in this crowded
city, so densely packed with houses and people, fifteen fires raged
unchecked for more than half-an-hour.

There are in the metropolis, not including the more distant suburbs,
150 public fire stations, with engines provided under the management of
the parochial authorities. The fire-brigade has but seventeen stations
on land, and two on the river, which are, indeed, floating engines, one
being usually moored near Southwark-bridge, the other having no stated
place, being changed in its locality, as may be considered best. In the
course of three years, the term of the official inquiry, the engines
of the fire-brigade reached on the average the place where a fire was
raging _thirty-five_ times as the earliest means of assistance, when
the parochial engines did the same only in the proportion of _two_ to
the thirty-five.

Mr. Braidwood, the director of the fire-brigade, stated, when
questioned on the subject with a view to a report to be laid before
Parliament, that “the average time of an engine turning out with horses
was from three to seven minutes.” The engines are driven at the rate of
ten miles an hour along the streets, which, in the old coaching days,
was considered the “best royal mail pace.” Indeed, there have been
frequent complaints of the rapidity with which the fire-engines are
driven, and if the drivers were not skilful and alert, it would really
amount to recklessness.

“Information of the breaking out of a fire,” it is stated in the
report, “will be conveyed to the station of the brigade at the rate of
about five miles an hour: thus in the case of the occurrence of a fire
within a mile of the station, the intelligence may be conveyed to the
station in about twelve minutes; the horses will be put to, and the
engine got out into the street in about five minutes on the average; it
traverses the mile in about six minutes; and the water has to be got
into the engine, which will occupy about five minutes, making, under
the most favourable circumstances for such a distance, 28 minutes, or
for a half-mile distance, an average of not less than 20 minutes.”

The average distance of the occurring fires from a brigade station
were, however, during a period of three years, terminating in 1850,
upwards of a mile. One was five miles, several four miles, more were
two miles, and a mile and a half, while the most destructive fires
were at an average distance of a mile and three quarters. Thus it was
impossible for a fire-brigade to give assistance as soon as assistance
was needed, and, under other circumstances, might have been rendered.
And all this damage may and does very often result from what seems so
trifling a neglect as the non-sweeping of a chimney.

Mr. W. Baddeley, an engineer, and a high authority on this subject, has
stated that he had attended fires for 30 years in London, and that, of
838 fires which took place in 1849, two-thirds might have been easily
extinguished had there been an immediate application of water. In some
places, he said, delay originated from the turn-cocks being at wide
intervals, and some of the companies objecting to let any but their
own servants have the command of the main-cocks.

The Board of Health have recommended the formation of a series of
street-water plugs within short distances of each other, the water to
be constantly on at high pressure night and day, and the whole to be
under the charge of a trained body of men such as compose the present
fire-brigade, provided at appointed stations with every necessary
appliance in the way of hose, pipes, ladders, &c. “The hose should be
within the reach,” it is urged in the report, “fixed, and applied on
an average of not more than five minutes from the time of the alarm
being given; that is to say, in less than one-fourth of the time within
which fire-engines are brought to bear under existing arrangements,
and with a still greater proportionate diminution of risks and serious
accidents.”

Nor is this mode of extinguishing fires a mere experiment. It is
successfully practised in some of the American cities, Philadelphia
among the number, and in some of our own manufacturing towns. Mr.
Emmott, the engineer and manager of the Oldham Water-works, has
described the practice in that town on the occurrence of fires:--

“In five cases out of six, the hose is pushed into a water-plug, and
the water thrown upon a building on fire, for the average pressure of
water in this town is 146 feet; by this means our fires are generally
extinguished even before the heavy engine arrives at the spot. The hose
is much preferred to the engine, on account of the speed with which it
is applied, and the readiness with which it is used, for one man can
manage a hose, and throw as much water on the building on fire as an
engine worked by many men. On this account we very rarely indeed use
the engines, as they possess no advantage whatever over the hose.”

When the city of Hamburgh was rebuilt two or three years back, after
its destruction by fire, it was rebuilt chiefly under the direction
of Mr. W. Lindley, the engineer, and, as far as Mr. Lindley could
accomplish, on sanitary principles, such as the abolition of cesspools.
The arrangements for the surface cleansing of the streets by means
of the hose and jet and the water-plugs, are made available for the
extinction of fires, and with the following results, as communicated by
Mr. Lindley:--

“Have there been fires in buildings in Hamburgh in the portion of the
town rebuilt?--Yes, repeatedly. They have all, however, been put out
at once. If they had had to wait the usual time for engines and water,
say 20 minutes or half an hour, these might all have led to extensive
conflagrations.

“What has been the effect on insurance?--The effect of the rapid
extinction of fires has brought to light to the citizens of Hamburgh,
the fact that the greater proportion of their fires are the work of
incendiaries, for the sake of the insurance money. A person is absent;
smoke is seen to exude; the alarm of fire is given, and the door is
forced open, the jet applied, and the fire extinguished immediately.
Case after case has occurred, where, upon the fire being extinguished,
the arrangements for the spread of the fire are found and made
manifest. Several of this class of incendiaries for the insurance
money are now in prison. The saving of money alone, by the prevention
of fires, would be worth the whole expense of the like arrangement
in London, where it is well known that similar practices prevail
extensively.”

The following statement was given by Mr. Quick, an engineer, on this
subject:--

“After the destruction of the terminus of the South Western Railway by
fire, I recommended them to have a 9-inch main, with 3-inch outlets
leading to six stand-pipes, with joining screws for hose-pipes to
be attached, and that they should carry a 3-inch pipe of the same
description up into each floor, so that a hose might be attached in any
room where the fire commenced.

“In how many minutes may the hose be attached?--There is only the time
of attaching the hose, which need be nothing like a minute. I have
indeed recommended that a short length of hose with a short nozzle or
branch should be kept attached to the cock, so that the cock has only
to be turned, which is done in an instant.

“It appears that fire-engines require 26 men to work each engine of two
7 inch barrels, to produce a jet of about 50 feet high. The arrangement
carried out, at your recommendation, with six jets, is equivalent to
keeping six such engines, and the power of 156 men, in readiness to
act at all times, night and day, at about a minute’s notice, for the
extinction of fires?--It will give a power more than equal to that
number of men; for the jets given off from a 20-inch main will be much
more regular and powerful, and will deliver more water than could be
delivered by any engine. The jets at that place would be 70 feet high.”

The system of roof-cisterns, which was at one time popular as a means
of extinction, has been found, it appears, on account of their leakage
and diffusion of damp, to be but sorry contrivances, and have very
generally been discontinued. Mr. Holme, a builder in Liverpool, gives
the following, even under the circumstances, amusing account of a fire
where such a cistern was provided:--

“The owner of a cotton kiln, which had been repeatedly burnt, took it
into his head to erect a large tank in the roof. His idea was, that
when a fire occurred, they should have water at hand; and when the
fire ascended, it would burn the wooden tank, and the whole of the
contents being discharged on the fire like a cataract, it would at
once extinguish it. Well, the kiln again took fire; the smoke was so
suffocating, that nobody could get at the internal pipe, and the whole
building was again destroyed. But what became of the tank? It could not
burn, because it was filled with water; consequently, it boiled most
admirably. No hole was singed in its side or bottom; it looked very
picturesque, but it was utterly useless.”

The necessity of almost immediate help is shown in the following
statement by Mr. Braidwood, when consulted on the subject of
fire-escapes, which under the present system are not considered
sufficiently effective:--

“Taking London to be six miles long and three miles broad, to have
anything like an efficient system of fire-escapes, it would be
necessary to have one with a man to attend it within a quarter of a
mile of each house, as assistance, to be _of any use, must generally
be rendered within five minutes after the alarm is given_. To do this
the stations must be within a quarter of a mile of each other (as the
escapes must be taken round the angles of the streets): 253 stations
would thus be required and as many men.

“At present scaling ladders are kept at all the engine stations, and
canvas sheets also at some of them; several lives have been saved by
them; but the distance of the stations from each other renders them
applicable only in a limited number of instances.”

The engines of the fire-brigade throw up about 90 gallons a minute.
Their number is about 100. The cost of a fire-engine is from 60_l._ to
100_l._, and the hose, buckets, and general apparatus, cost nearly the
same amount.

OF THE SEWERMEN AND NIGHTMEN OF LONDON.

We now come to the consideration of the last of the several classes
of labourers engaged in the removal of the species of refuse from
the metropolis. I have before said that the public refuse of a town
consists of two kinds:--

I. The street-refuse.
II. The house-refuse.

Of each of these kinds there are two species:--

A. The dry.
B. The wet.

The dry street-refuse consists, as we have seen, of the refuse earth,
bricks, mortar, oyster-shells, potsherds, and pansherds.

And the dry house-refuse of the soot and ashes of our fires.

The wet street-refuse consists, on the other hand, of the mud, slop,
and surface water of our public thoroughfares.

And the wet house-refuse, of what is familiarly known as the “slops”
of our residences, and the liquid refuse of our factories and
slaughterhouses.

We have already collected the facts in connection with the three first
of these subjects. We have ascertained the total amount of each of
these species of refuse which have to be annually removed from the
capital. We have set forth the aggregate number of labourers who are
engaged in the removal of it, as well as the gross sum that is paid
for so doing, showing the individual earnings of each of the workmen,
and arriving, as near as possible, at the profits of their employers,
as well as the condition of the employed. This has been done, it is
believed, for the first time in this country; and if the subject has
led us into longer discussions than usual, the importance of the
matter, considered in a sanitary point of view, is such that a moment’s
reflection will convince us of the value of the inquiry--especially
in connection with a work which aspires to embrace the whole of the
offices performed by the labourers of the capital of the British Empire.

It now but remains for us to complete this novel and vast inquiry by
settling the condition and earnings of the men engaged in the removal
of the last species of public refuse. I shall consider, first, the
aggregate quantity of wet house-refuse that has to be annually removed;
secondly, the means adopted for the removal of it; thirdly, the cost of
so doing; and lastly, the number of men engaged in this kind of work,
as well as the wages paid to them, and the physical, intellectual, and
moral condition in which they exist, or, more properly speaking, are
allowed to remain.

OF THE WET HOUSE-REFUSE OF LONDON.

All house-refuse of a liquid or semi-liquid character is _wet_ refuse.
It may be called semi-liquid when it has become mingled with any
solid substance, though not so fully as to have lost its property of
fluidity, its natural power to flow along a suitable inclination.

Wet house-refuse consists of the “slops” of a household. It consists,
indeed, of _all_ waste water, whether from the supply of the water
companies, or from the rain-fall collected on the roofs or yards of the
houses; of the “suds” of the washerwomen, and the water used in every
department of scouring, cleansing, or cooking. It consists, moreover,
of the refuse proceeds from the several factories, dye-houses, &c.; of
the blood and other refuse (not devoted to Prussian blue manufacture or
sugar refining) from the butchers’ slaughter-houses and the knackers’
(horse slaughterers’) yards; as well as the refuse fluid from all
chemical processes, quantities of chemically impregnated water, for
example, being pumped, as soon as exhausted, from the tan-pits of
Bermondsey into the drains and sewers. From the great hat-manufactories
(chiefly also in Bermondsey and other parts of the Borough) there is a
constant flow of water mixed with dyes and other substances, to add to
the wet refuse of London.

It is evident, then, that _all_ the water consumed or wasted in the
metropolis must form a portion of the total sum of the wet refuse.

There is, however, the exception of what is used for the watering
of gardens, which is absorbed at once by the soil and its vegetable
products; we must also exclude such portion of water as is applied to
the laying of the road and street dust on dry summer days, and which
forms a part of the street mud or “mac” of the scavager’s cart, rather
than of the sewerage; and we must further deduct the water derived from
the street plugs for the supply of the fire-engines, which is consumed
or absorbed in the extinction of the flames; as well as the water
required for the victualling of ships on the eve of a voyage, when
such supply is not derived immediately from the Thames.

The quantity of water required for the diet, or beverage, or general
use of the population; the quantity consumed by the maltsters,
distillers, brewers, ginger-beer and soda-water makers, and
manufacturing chemists; for the making of tea, coffee, or cocoa; and
for drinking at meals (which is often derived from pumps, and not
from the supplies of the water companies);--the water which is thus
consumed, in a prepared or in a simple state, passes into the wet
refuse of the metropolis in another form.

Now, according to reports submitted to Parliament when an improved
system of water-supply was under consideration, the daily supply of
water to the metropolis is as follows:--

Gallons.
From the Water Companies 44,383,329
„ „ Artesian Wells 8,000,000
„ „ land spring pumps 3,000,000
----------
55,383,329

The yearly rain-fall throughout the area of the metropolis is
172,053,477 tons, or 33,589,972,120 gallons, 2 feet deep of rain
falling on every square inch of London in the course of the year. The
yearly total of the water pumped or falling into the metropolis is as
follows:--

Gallons.
Yearly mechanical supply 19,215,000,000
„ natural ditto 38,539,972,122
--------------
57,754,972,122

The reader will find the details of this subject at p. 203 of the
present volume. I recapitulate the results here to save the trouble of
reference, and briefly to present the question under one head.

Of course the rain which ultimately forms a portion of the gross
wet refuse of London, can be only such as falls on that part of the
metropolitan area which is occupied by buildings or streets. What falls
upon fields, gardens, and all open ground, is absorbed by the soil.
But a large proportion of the rain falling upon the streets, is either
absorbed by the dry dust, or retained in the form of mud; hence that
only which falls on the house-tops and yards can be said to contribute
largely to the gross quantity of wet refuse poured into the sewers. The
streets of London appear to occupy one-tenth of the entire metropolitan
area, and the houses (estimating 300,000 as occupying upon an average
100 square yards each[62]) another tithe of the surface. The remaining
92 square miles out of the 115 now included in the Registrar-General’s
limits (which extend, it should be remembered, to Wandsworth, Lewisham,
Bow, and Hampstead), may be said to be made up of suburban gardens,
fields, parks, &c., where the rain-water would soak into the earth. We
have, then, only two-tenths of the gross rain-fall, or 7,700,000,000
gallons, that could possibly appear in the sewers, and calculating
one-third of this to be absorbed by the mud and dust of the streets, we
come to the conclusion that the total quantity of rain-water entering
the sewers is, in round numbers, 5,000,000,000 gallons per annum.

Reckoning, therefore, 5,000,000,000 gallons to be derived from the
annual rain-fall, it appears that the yearly supply of water, from all
sources, to be accounted for among the wet house-refuse is, in round
numbers, 24,000,000,000 gallons.

The refuse water from the factories need not be calculated separately,
as its supply is included in the water mechanically supplied, and the
loss from evaporation in boiling, &c., would be perfectly insignificant
if deducted from the vast annual supply, but 350,000,000 gallons have
been allowed for this and other losses.

There is still another source of the supply of wet house-refuse
unconnected either with the rain-fall or the mechanical supply of
water--I mean such proportion of the blood or other refuse from the
butchers’ and knackers’ premises as is washed into the sewers.

Official returns show that the yearly quantity of animals sold in
Smithfield is--

Horned cattle 224,000
Sheep 1,550,000
Calves 27,300
Pigs 40,000
---------
1,841,300

The blood flowing from a slaughtered bullock, whether killed according
to the Christian or the Jewish fashion, amounts, on an average, to
20 quarts; from a sheep, to 6 or 7 quarts; from a pig, 5 quarts; and
the same quantity from a calf. The blood from a horse slaughtered in
a knackers’ yard is about the same as that from a bullock. This blood
used to bring far higher prices to the butcher than can be now realized.

In the evidence taken by a Select Committee of the House of Commons
in 1849, concerning Smithfield-market, Mr. Wyld, of the Fox and
Knot-yard, Smithfield, stated that he slaughtered about 180 cattle
weekly. “We have a sort of well made in the slaughterhouse,” he said,
“which receives the blood. I receive about 1l. a week for it; it goes
twice a day to Mr. Ton’s, at Bow Common. We used to receive a good
deal more for it.” Even the market for blood at Mr. Ton’s, is, I am
informed, now done away with. He was a manufacturer of artificial
manure, a preparation of night-soil, blood, &c., baked in what may be
called “cakes,” and exported chiefly to our sugar-growing colonies, for
manure. His manure yard has been suppressed.

I am assured, on the authority of experienced butchers, that at
the present time fully three-fourths of the blood from the animals
slaughtered in London becomes a component part of the wet refuse
I treat of, being washed into the sewers. The more wholesale
slaughterers, now that blood is of little value (9 gallons in
Whitechapel-market, the blood of two beasts--less by a gallon--can be
bought for 3_d._), send this animal refuse down the drains of their
premises in far greater quantities than was formerly their custom.

Now, reckoning only three-fourths of the blood from the cattle
slaughtered in the metropolis, to find its way into the sewers, we
have, according to the numbers above given, the following yearly
supply:--

Gallons.
From horned cattle 840,000
„ sheep 1,743,000
„ pigs 37,500
„ calves 25,590
---------
2,646,090

This is merely the blood from the animals sold in Smithfield-market,
the lambs not being included in the return; while a great many pigs and
calves are slaughtered by the London tradesmen, without their having
been shown in Smithfield.

The ordure from a slaughtered bullock is, on an average, from 1/2 to
3/4 cwt. Many beasts yield one cwt.; and cows “killed full of grass,”
as much as two cwt. Of this excrementitious matter, I am informed,
about a fourth part is washed into the sewers. In sheep, calves, and
pigs, however, there is very little ordure when slaughtered, only 3 or
4 lbs. in each as an average.

Of the number of horses killed there is no official or published
account. One man familiar with the subject calculated it at 100 weekly.
_All_ the blood from the knackers’ yards is, I am told, washed into the
sewers; consequently its yearly amount will be 26,000 gallons.

But even this is not the whole of the wet house-refuse of London.

There are, in addition, the excreta of the inhabitants of the houses.
These are said to average 1/4 lb. daily per head, including men, women,
and children.

It is estimated by Bousingault, and confirmed by Liebig, that each
individual produces 1/4 lb. of solid excrement and 1-1/4 lb. of
liquid excrement per day, making 1-1/2 lb. each, or 150 lbs. per 100
individuals, of semi-liquid refuse from the water-closet. “But,” says
the Surveyor of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, “there is other
refuse resulting from culinary operations, to be conveyed through the
drains, and the whole may be about 250 lbs. for 100 persons.”

The more fluid part of this refuse, however, is included in the
quantity of water before given, so that there remains only the more
solid excrementitious matter to add to the previous total. This,
then, is 1/4 lb. daily and individually; or from the metropolitan
population of nearly 2,500,000 a daily supply of 600,000 lbs., rather
more than 267 tons; and a yearly aggregate for the whole metropolis of
219,000,000 lbs., or very nearly about 100,000 tons.

From the foregoing account, then, the following is shown to be

_The Gross Quantity of the Wet House-Refuse of the Metropolis._

Gallons. Lbs.
“Slops” and unabsorbed rain-water 24,000,000,000 = 240,000,000,000
Blood of beasts 2,646,000 = 26,460,000
„ horses 26,000 = 260,000
Excreta 219,000,000
Dung of slaughtered cattle 17,400,000
-------------- ---------------
Total 24,002,657,000 = 240,263,120,000

Hence we may conclude that the more fluid portion of the wet
house-refuse of London amounts to 24,000,000,000 gallons per annum;
and that altogether it weighs, in round numbers, about 240,000,000,000
lbs., or 100,000,000 tons.

As these refuse products are not so much matters of trade or sale as
other commodities, of course less attention has been given to them,
in the commercial attributes of weight and admeasurement. I will
endeavour, however, to present an uniform table of the whole great mass
of metropolitan wet house-refuse in cubic inches.

The imperial standard gallon is of the capacity of 277·274 cubic
inches; and estimating the solid excrement spoken of as the ordinary
weight of earth, or of the soil of the land, at 18 cubic feet the ton,
we have the following result, calculating in round numbers:--

_Wet House-Refuse of the Metropolis._

Liquid 24,000,000,000 gal. = 6,600,000,000,000 cub. in.
Solid 100,000 tons = 3,110,400,000 „

Thus, by this process of admeasurement, we find the

WET HOUSE-REFUSE } = 6,603,110,400,000 cubic in., or
OF LONDON } 3,820,000,000 cubic feet.

Figures best show the extent of this refuse, “inexpressible” to common
appreciation “by numbers that have name.”

OF THE MEANS OF REMOVING THE WET HOUSE-REFUSE.

Whether this mass of filth be, zymotically, the cause of cholera,
or whether it be (as cannot be questioned) a means of agricultural
fertility, and therefore of national wealth, it _must_ be removed. I
need not dilate, in explaining a necessity which is obvious to every
man with uncorrupted physical senses, and with the common moral sense
of decency.

“Dr. Paley,” it is said, in a recent Report to the Metropolitan
Commission of Sewers, “gave to Burckhardt and other travellers a set of
instructions as to points of observation of the manners and conditions
of the populations amongst whom they travelled. One of the leading
instructions was to observe how they disposed of their excreta, for
what they did with that showed him what men were; he also inquired what
structure they had to answer the purpose of a privy, and what were
their habits in respect to it. This information Dr. Paley desired,
not for popular use, but for himself, for he was accustomed to say,
that the facts connected with that topic gave him more information
as to the real condition and civilisation of a population than most
persons would be aware of. It would inform him of their real habits of
cleanliness, of real decency, self-respect, and connected moral habits
of high social importance. It would inform him of the real state of
police, and of local administration, and much of the general government.

“The human ordure which defiles the churches, the bases of public
edifices and works of art in Rome and Naples, and the Italian cities,
gives more sure indications of the real moral and social position of
the Italian population than any impressions derived from the edifices
and works of art themselves.

“The subject, in relation to which the Jewish lawgiver gave most
particular directions, is one on which the serious attention and labour
of public administrators may be claimed.”

The next question, is--_How_ is the wet house-refuse to be removed?

There are two ways:--

1. One is, to transport it to a river, or some powerfully current
stream by a series of ducts.

2. The other is, to dig a hole in the neighbourhood of the house,
there collect the wet refuse of the household, and when the hole or
pit becomes full, remove the contents to some other part.

In London the most obvious means of getting rid of a nuisance is to
convey it into the Thames. Nor has this been done in London only. In
Paris the Seine is the receptacle of the sewage, but, comparatively, to
a much smaller extent than in London. The fæcal deposits accumulated
in the houses of the French capital are drained into “fixed” and
“moveable” cesspools. The contents of both these descriptions of
cesspools (of which I shall give an account when I treat of the
cesspool system) are removed periodically, under the direction of the
government, to large receptacles, called _voiries_, at Montfaucon, and
the Forest of Bondy, where such refuse is made into portable manure.
The evils of this system are not a few; but the river is spared the
greater pollution of the Thames. Neither is the Seine swayed by the
tide as is the Thames, for in London the very sewers are affected by
the tidal influence, and are not to be entered until some time before
or after high-water. I need not do more, for my present inquiry, than
allude to the Liffy, the Clyde, the Humber, and others of the rivers of
the United Kingdom, being used for purposes of sewerage, as channels to
carry off that of which the law prohibits the retention.

Of the folly, not to say wickedness, of this principle, there can be
no doubt. The vegetation which gives, demands food. The grass will
wither without its fitting nutriment of manure, as the sheep would
perish without the pasturage of the grass. Nature, in temperate and
moist climates, is, so to speak, her own manurer, her own restorer. The
sheep, which are as wild and active as goats, manure the Cumberland
fells in which they feed. In the more cultivated sheep-walks (or,
indeed, in the general pasturage) of the northern and some of the
midland counties, women, with a wooden implement, may be continually
seen in the later autumn, or earlier and milder winter, distributing
the “stercoraceous treasure,” as Cowper calls it, which the animals, to
use the North Yorkshire word, have “dropped,” as well as any extraneous
manure which may have been spread for the purpose. As population and
the demand for bread increase, the need of extraneous manures also
increases; and Nature in her beneficence has provided that the greater
the consumption of food, the greater shall be the promoters of its
reproduction by what is loathsome to man, but demanded by vegetation.
Liebig, as I shall afterwards show more fully, contends that many an
arid and desolate region in the East, brown and burnt with barrenness,
became a desolation because men understood not the restoration which
all nature demands for the land. He declares that the now desolate
regions of the East had been made desolate, because “the inhabitants
did not understand the art of restoring exhausted soil.” It would be
hopeless now to form, or attempt to form, the “hanging gardens,” or to
display the rich florescence “round about Babylon,” to be seen when
Alexander the Great died in that city. The Tigris and Euphrates, before
and after their junction, Liebig maintains, have carried, and, to a
circumscribed degree, still carry, into the sea “a sufficient amount
of manure for the reproduction of food for millions of human beings.”
It is said that, “could that matter only be arrested in its progress,
and converted into bread and wine, fruit and beef, mutton and wool,
linen and cotton, then cities might flourish once more in the desert,
where men are now digging for the relics of primitive civilization, and
discovering the symbols of luxury and ease beneath the barren sand and
the sunburnt clay.”

This is one great evil; but in our metropolis there is a greater, a far
greater, beyond all in degree, even if the same abuse exist elsewhere.
What society with one consent pronounces filth--the evacuations of
the human body--is not only washed into the Thames, and the land so
deprived of a vast amount of nutriment, but the tide washes these
evacuations back again, with other abominations. The water we use is
derived almost entirely from the Thames, and therefore the water in
which we boil our vegetables and our meat, the water for our coffee and
tea, the water brewed for our consumption, comes to us, and is imbibed
by us, impregnated over and over again with our own animal offal. We
import guano, and drink a solution of our own fæces: a manure which
might be made far more valuable than the foreign guano.

Such are a few of the evils of making a common sewer of the
neighbouring river.

The other mode of removal is, to convey the wet house-refuse, by
drains, to a hole near the house where it is produced, and empty it
periodically when full.

The house-drainage throughout London has two characteristics. By
one system all excrementitious and slop refuse generally is carried
usually along brick drains from the water-closets, privies, sinks,
lavatories, &c., of the houses into the cesspools, where it accumulates
until its removal (by manual labour) becomes necessary, which is not,
as an average, more than once in two years. By the other, and the
newer system, all the house-refuse is drained into the public sewer,
the cesspool system being thereby abolished. All the houses built or
rebuilt since 1848 are constructed on the last-mentioned principle of
drainage.

The first of these modes is cesspoolage.

The second is sewerage.

I shall first deal with the sewerage of the metropolis.

OF THE QUANTITY OF METROPOLITAN SEWAGE.

Having estimated the gross quantity of wet house-refuse produced
throughout London in the course of the year, and explained the two
modes of removing it from the immediate vicinity of the house, I will
now proceed to set forth the _quantity_ of wet house-refuse matter
which it has been _ascertained_ is removed with the contents of London
sewers.

An experiment was made on the average discharge of sewage from the
outlets of Church-lane and Smith-street, Chelsea, Ranelagh, King’s
Scholar’s-pond, Grosvenor-wharf, Horseferry-road, Wood-street,
King-street, Northumberland-street, Durham-yard, Norfolk-street,
and Essex-street (the four last-mentioned places running from the
Strand). The experiments were made “under ordinary and extraordinary
circumstances,” in the months of May, June, and July, 1844, but the
system is still the same, so that the result in the investigation as
to the sewage of the year 1844 may be taken as a near criterion of the
present, as regards the localities specified and the general quantity.

The surface drained into the outlets before enumerated covers, in its
total area, about 7000 acres, of which nearly 3500 may be classed as
urban. The observations, moreover, were made generally during fine
weather.

I cannot do better by way of showing the reader the minuteness with
which these observations were made, than by quoting the two following
results, being those of the fullest and smallest discharges of twelve
issues into the river. I must premise that these experiments were
made on seven occasions, from May 4 to July 12 inclusive, and made at
different times, but generally about eight hours after high water. In
the Northumberland-street sewer, from which was the largest issue, the
width of the sewer at the outlet was five feet. In the King-street
sewer (the smallest discharge, as given in the second table) the width
of the sewer was four feet. The width, however, does not affect the
question, as there was a greater issue from the Norfolk-street sewer of
two feet, than from the King-street sewer of four feet in width.

+------------------------------------------------
| NORTHUMBERLAND STREET.
+---------+-----------------+--------------------
| | Velocity per | Quantity discharged
| Date. | second. | per second.
+---------+-----------------+--------------------
| | Feet. | Cubic Feet.
| +-----------------+--------------------
| May 4 | 4·600 | 10·511000
| „ 9 | 4·000 | 6·800000
| June 5 | 4·000 | 6·800000
| „ 10 | 4·600 | 10·350000
| „ 11 | 4·920 | 12·300000
| „ 16 | 3·600 | 5·940000
| July 12 | 2·760 | 3·394800
+---------+-----------------+--------------------
| | | 56·095800
+---------+-----------------+--------------------
| Being Mean Discharge |
| per second | 8·013685
| Ditto per 24 hours | 692382·
+---------------------------+--------------------
| KING STREET.
+---------+-----------------+--------------------
| May 4 | ·147 | ·021756
| „ 9 | ·333 | ·079920
| June 5 | ·170 | ·020400
| „ 10 | ·311 | ·064688
| „ 11 | ·300 | ·048000
| „ 16 | ·101 | ·004040
| July 12 | ·103 | ·008240
+---------+-----------------+--------------------
| | | ·247044
+---------+-----------------+--------------------
|Mean Discharge per second | ·035292
| Ditto per 24 hours| 3049·
+---------------------------+--------------------

Here we find that the mean discharge per second was, from the
Northumberland-street sewer, 692,382· cubic feet per 24 hours, and from
the King-street sewer, 3049 cubic feet per 24 hours.

The discharge from the principal outlets in the Westminster district
“being the mean of seven observations taken during the summer,” was
1,798,094 cubic feet in 24 hours; the number of acres drained was 7006.
_The mean discharge per acre, in the course of 24 hours, was found to
be about 256 cubic feet, comprising the urban and suburban parts._

The sewage, from the discharge of which this calculation was
derived--and the dryness of the weather must not be lost sight of--may
be fairly assumed as derived (in a dry season) almost entirely from
artificial sources or house drainage, as there was no rain-fall,
or but little. “_Supposing, therefore_,” the Report states, “_the
entire surface to be urban, we have 540 cubic feet as the mean daily
discharge per acre_. If, however, the average be taken of the first
eight outlets, viz., from Essex-street to Grosvenor-wharf inclusive,
which drain a surface wholly urban, the result is 1260 cubic feet per
acre in the 24 hours. This excess may be attributed to the number
of manufactories, and the densely-populated nature of the locality
drained; but, as indicative of the general amount of sewage due to
ordinary urban districts, the former ought perhaps to be considered the
fairer average.”

It is then assumed--I may say officially--that the average discharge
of the urban and suburban sewage from the several districts included
within an area of 58 square miles, is equal to 256 cubic feet per acre.

Sq. Miles.
The extent of the jurisdiction included
within this area is, on the north side of
the Thames 43
And on the Surrey and Kent side 15

Cubic Feet.
The ordinary _daily_ amount of
sewage discharged into the river on
the north side is, therefore 7,045,120
And on the south side 2,457,600
---------
Making a total of 9,502,720

Or a quantity equivalent to a surface of more than 36 acres in extent,
and 6 feet in depth.

This mass of sewage, it must be borne in mind, is but the _daily_
product of the sewage of the more populous part of the districts
included within the jurisdiction of the two commissions of sewers.

The foregoing observations, calculations, and deductions have supplied
the basis of many scientific and commercial speculations, but it must
be remembered that they were taken between seven and eight years ago.
The observations were made, moreover, during fine summer weather,
generally, while the greatest discharge is during rainy weather. There
has been, also, an increase of sewers in the metropolis, because an
increase of streets and inhabited houses. The approximate proportion
of the increase of sewers (and there is no precise account of it) is
pretty nearly that of the streets, lineally. Another matter has too, of
late years, added to the amount of sewage--the abolition of cesspoolage
in a considerable degree, owing to the late Building and Sanitary
Acts, so that fæcal and culinary matters, which were drained into the
cesspool (to be removed by the nightmen), are now drained into the
sewer. Altogether, I am assured, on good authority, the daily discharge
of the sewers extending over 58 square miles of the metropolis may be
now put at 10,000,000 cubic feet, instead of rather more than nine and
a half millions. And this gives, as

Cubic Feet.
The annual amount of discharge
from the sewers 3,650,000,000
The total amount of wet house-refuse,
according to the calculation
before given, is 3,820,000,000
-------------
Hence there remains 170,000,000

Sq. Miles.
Now it will be seen that the total area
from which this amount of sewage is said
to be drained is 58
But the area of London, according to
the Registrar-General’s limits, is 115

So that the 3,650,000,000 cubic feet of sewage annually removed from
58 square miles of the metropolis refer to only one-half of the entire
area of the _true_ metropolis; but it refers, at the same time, to
that part of London which is the most crowded with houses, and since,
in the suburbs, the buildings average about 2 to the acre, and, in
the densest parts of London, about 30, it is but fair to assume that
the refuse would be, at least, in the same proportion, and this is
very nearly the fact; for if we suppose the 58 miles of the suburban
districts to yield twenty times less sewage than the 58 miles of the
urban districts, we shall have 182,500,000 cubic feet to add to the
3,650,000,000 cubic feet before given, or 3,832,500,000 for the sewage
of the entire metropolis.

It does not appear that the sewage has ever been weighed so as to
give any definite result, but calculating from the weight of water (a
gallon, or 10 lbs. of water, comprising 277·274 cubic inches, and 1 ton
of liquid comprising 36 cubic feet) the total, from the returns of the
investigation in 1844, would be

Tons.
Quantity of sewage _daily_ emptied into the Thames 278,000
Ditto Annually 101,390,000

In September, 1849, Mr. Banfield, at one time a Commissioner of Sewers,
put the yearly quantity of sewage discharged into the Thames at
45,000,000 tons; but this is widely at variance with the returns as to
quantity.

OF ANCIENT SEWERS.

The traverser of the London streets rarely thinks, perhaps, of the far
extended subterranean architecture below his feet; yet such is indeed
the case, for the sewers of London, with all their imperfections,
irregularities, and even absurdities, are still a great work; certainly
not equal, in all respects, to what once must have existed in Rome, but
second, perhaps, only to the giant works of sewerage in the eternal
city.

The origin of these Roman sewers seems to be wrapped in as great a
mystery as the foundation of the city itself. The statement of the
Roman historians is that these sewers were the works of the elder
Tarquin, the fifth (apocryphal) king of Rome. Tarquin’s dominions,
from the same accounts, did not in any direction extend above sixteen
miles, and his subjects could be but banditti, foragers, and shepherds.
One conjecture is, that Rome stands on the site of a more ancient
city, and that to its earlier possessors may be attributed the work
of the sewers. To attribute them to the rudeness and small population
of Tarquin’s day, it is contended, is as feasible as it would be to
attribute the ruins of ancient Jerusalem, or any others in Asia Minor,
to the Turks, or the ruins of Palmyra to the Arabs, because these
people enjoy the privilege of possession.

[Illustration: THE SEWER-HUNTER.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

The main sewer of Rome, the Cloaca Maxima, is said to have been
lofty and wide enough for a waggon load of hay to pass clear along
it. Another, and more probable account, however, states that it was
proposed to _enlarge_ the great sewer to these dimensions, but it does
not appear to have been so enlarged. Indeed, when Augustus “made
Rome marble,” it was one of his great works also, under the direction
of Agrippa, to reconstruct, improve, and enlarge the sewers. It was a
project in the days of Rome’s greatness to turn seven navigable rivers
into vast subterraneous passages, larger sewers, along which barges
might pass, carrying on the traffic of Imperial Rome. In one year
the cost of cleansing, renewing, and repairing the sewers is stated
to have been 1000 talents of gold, or upwards of 192,000_l._ Of the
_average_ yearly cost we have no information. Some accounts represent
these sewers as having been rebuilt after the irruption of the Gauls.
In Livy’s time they were pronounced not to be accommodated to the plan
of Rome. Some portions of these ancient structures are still extant,
but they seem to have attracted small notice even from professed
antiquarians; their subterranean character, however, renders such
notice little possible. In two places they are still kept in repair,
and for their original purpose, to carry off the filth of the city, but
only to a small extent.

Our legislative enactments on the subject of sewers are ancient and
numerous. The oldest is that of 9 Henry III., and the principal is that
of 23 Henry VIII., commonly called the “Statute of Sewers.” These and
many subsequent statutes, however, relate only to watercourses, and are
silent as regards my present topic--the Refuse of London.

It is remarkable how little is said in the London historians of
the _sewers_. In the two folio volumes of the most searching and
indefatigable of all the antiquarians who have described the old
metropolis, John Stow, the tailor, there is no account of what we now
consider sewers, inclosed and subterranean channels for the conveyance
of the refuse filth of the metropolis to its destination--the Thames.
Had covered sewers been known, or at any rate been at all common, in
Stow’s day, and he died full of years in 1604, and had one of them
presented but a crumbling stone with some heraldic, or apparently
heraldic, device at its outlet, Stow’s industry would certainly have
ferreted out some details. Such, however, is not the case.

This absence of information I hold to be owing to the fact that no such
sewers then existed. Our present system of sewerage, like our present
system of street-lighting, is a modern work; but it is not, like our
gas-lamps, an _original_ English work. We have but followed, as regards
our arched and subterraneous sewerage, in the wake of Rome.

As I have said, the early _laws_ of sewers relate to watercourses,
navigable communications, dams, ditches, and such like; there is no
doubt, however, that in the heart of the great towns the filth of the
houses was, by rude contrivances in the way of drainage, or natural
fall, emptied into such places. Even in the accounts of the sewers of
ancient Rome, historians have stated that it is not easy, and sometimes
not possible, to distinguish between the _sewers_ and the _aqueducts_,
and Dr. Lemon, in his English Etymology, speaks of sewers as a species
of aqueducts. So, in some of our earlier Acts of Parliament, it is
hardly possible to distinguish whether the provisions to be applied
to the management of a sewer relate to a ditch to which house-filth
was carried--to a channel of water for general purposes--or to an open
channel being a receptacle of filth and a navigable stream at the same
time.

That the ditches were not sewers for the conveyance of the filth from
the houses to any very great, or rather any very general extent, may
very well be concluded, because (as I have shown in my account of the
early scavagers) the excrementitious matter was deposited during the
night in the street, and removed by the proper functionaries in the
morning, or as soon as suited their convenience. Though this was the
case generally, it is evident that the filth, or a portion of it,
from the houses which were built on the banks of the Fleet River (as
it was then called, as well as the Fleet Ditch), and on the banks of
the other “brooks,” drained into the current stream. The Corporation
accounts contain very frequent mention of the cleansing, purifying,
and “thorough” cleansing of the Fleet Ditch, the Old Bourne (Holborn
Brook), the Wall Brook, &c.

Of all these streams the most remarkable was Fleet Ditch, which was
perhaps the first main sewer of London. I give from Stow the following
curious account of its origin. It is now open, but only for a short
distance, offending the air of Clerkenwell. At one period it was to
afford a defence to the City! as the Tower-moat was a defence to the
Tower, and fortress.

“The Ditch, which partly now remaineth and compassed the Wall of the
City, was begun to be made by the _Londoners_, in the year 1211, and
finished 1213, the 15th of K. _John_. This Ditch being then made of
200 foot broad, caused no small hindrance to the Canons of the Holy
_Trinity_, whose Church stood near _Ealdgate_, for that the said Ditch
passed through their Ground from the _Tower_ unto _Bishopsgate_.

“The first Occasion of making a Ditch about the City seems to have
been this: _William_, Bishop of _Ely_, Chancellor of _England_, in the
Reign of King _Richard_ I., made a great Ditch round about the _Tower_,
for the better Defence of it against _John_ the King’s Brother, the
King being then out of the Realm. Then did the City also begin a Ditch
to encompass and strengthen their Walls [which happened between the
Years 1190 and 1193.] So the Book _Dunthorn_. Yet the Register of
_Bermondsey_ writes that the Ditch was begun, Oct. 15, 1213, which was
in the Reign of King _John_ that succeeded to _Richard_.

“This Ditch being originally made for the Defence of the City, was
also a long time together carefully cleansed and maintained, as Need
required; but now of late neglected, and forced either to a very
narrow, and the same a filthy Channel.

“In the Year of _Christ_, 1354, 28 _Ed._ 3, the Ditch of this City
flowing over the Bank into the _Tower-ditch_, the King commanded
the said Ditch of the City to be cleansed, and so ordered, that the
overflowing thereof should not force any Filth into the _Tower-ditch_.

“_Anno_, 1379, John Philpot, Maior of _London_, caused this Ditch to
be cleansed, and every Houshold to pay 5_d._, which was a Day’s Work
toward the Charges thereof.

“_Ralph Joseline_, Maior, 1477, caused the whole Ditch to be cast
and cleansed.... In 1519, the 10th of Henry 8, for cleansing and
scouring the common Ditch, between _Aldgate_, and the Postern next
the _Tower-ditch_; the chief Ditcher had by the day 7_d._, the Second
Ditcher, 6_d._, the other Ditchers, 5_d._ And every Vagabond (for as
they were then termed) 1_d._ the Day, Meat and Drink, at the Charges of
the City. Sum 95_l._ 3_s._ 4_d._

“Fleet Ditch was again cleansed in the Year 1549,” Stow continues,
“_Henry Ancoates_ being Maior, at the Charges of the Companies. And
again 1569, the 11th of Queen _Elizabeth_; for cleansing the same Ditch
between _Ealdgate_ and the _Postern_, and making a new Sewer and Wharf
of Timber, from the Head of the _Postern_ into the _Tower-ditch_,
814_l._ 15_s._ 8_d._ (was disbursed). Before the which Time the said
Ditch lay open, without either Wall or Pall, having therein great Store
of very good Fish, of divers Sorts, as many men yet living, who have
taken and tasted them, can well witness. But now no such matter, the
Charge of Cleansing is spared, and great Profit made by letting out the
Banks, with the Spoil of the whole Ditch.”

The above information appeared, but I am unable to specify the year
(for Stow’s works went through several editions, though it is to be
feared he died very poor) between 1582 and 1590. So did the following:--

“At this Day there be no Ditches or Boggs in the City except the said
_Fleet-ditch_, but instead thereof large common _Dreins_ and _Sewers_,
made to carry away the water from the _Postern-Gate_, between the two
_Tower-hills_ to _Fleet-bridge_ without _Ludgate_.”

Great, indeed, is the change in the character of the capital of
England, from the times when the Fleet Ditch was a defence to the city
(which was then the entire capital); and from the later era, when
“great store of very good fish of divers sorts,” rewarded the skill or
the patience of the anglers or netters; but this, it is evident, was in
the parts near the river (the Tower postern, &c.), and at that time, or
about that time, there was salmon-fishing in the Thames, at least as
far up as Hungerford Wharf.

The Fleet Ditch seems always to have had a _sewery_ character. It was
described, in 1728, as

“The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood--”

the _silver_ flood being, in Queen Anne’s and the First George’s days,
the London Thames. This silver has been much alloyed since that time.

Until within these 40 or 50 years, open sewer-ditches, into which
drains were emptied, and ordure and refuse thrown, were frequent,
especially in the remoter parts of Lambeth and Newington, and some
exist to this day; one especially, open for a considerable distance,
flowing along the back of the houses in the Westminster-road, on the
right-hand side towards the bridge, into which the neighbouring houses
are drained. The “Black Ditch,” a filthy sewer, until lately was open
near the Broadwall, and other vicinities of the Blackfriars-road. The
open ditch-sewers of Norwood and Wandsworth have often been spoken of
in Sanitary Reports. Indeed, some of our present sewers, in addition to
Fleet River and Wall Brook, are merely ditches rudely arched over.

The first covered and continuous street sewer was erected in London--I
think, without doubt--when Wren rebuilt the capital, after the great
fire of 1666. Perhaps there is no direct evidence of the fact, for,
although the statutes and Privy Council and municipal enactments,
consequent on the rebuilding of the capital, required, more or less
peremptorily, “fair sewers, and drains, and watercourses,” it is not
defined in these enactments what was meant by a “sewer;” nor were they
carried out.

I may mention, as a further proof that open ditches, often enough
stagnant ditches also, were the first London sewers, that, after 1666,
a plan, originally projected, it appears, by Sir Leonard Halliday,
Maior, 60 years previously, and strenuously supported at that time by
Nic Leate, “a worthy and grave citizen,” was revived and reconsidered.
This project, for which Sir Leonard and Nic Leate “laboured much,” was
“for a river to be brought on the north of the city into it, for the
cleansing the sewers and ditches, and for the better keeping London
wholesome, sweet, and clean.” An admirable _intention_; and it is not
impossible nor improbable that in less than two centuries hence, we, of
the present sanitary era, may be accounted, for our sanitary measures,
as senseless as we now account good Sir Leonard Halliday and the worthy
and grave Nic Leate. These gentlemen cared not to brook filth in
their houses, nor to be annoyed by it in the nightly pollution of the
streets, but they advocated its injection into running water, and into
water often running slowly and difficultly, and continually under the
eyes and noses of the citizens. _We_, I apprehend, go a little further.
We drink, and use for the preparation of our meals, the befouled water,
which they did not; for, more than seven-eighths of our water-supply
from the companies is drawn from the Thames, the main sewer of the
greatest city in the world, ancient or modern, into which millions of
tons of every description of refuse are swept yearly.

OF THE KINDS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF SEWERS.

The sewers of London may be arranged into two distinct
groups--according to the side of the Thames on which they are situate.

Now the essential difference between these two classes of sewers lies
in the elevation of the several localities whence the sewers carry the
refuse to the Thames.

The chief differences in the circumstances of the people north
and south of the river are shown in the annexed table from the
Registrar-General’s returns:--

-------------------------+-------+-------+-------
| | North | South
| |side of|side of
|London.| the | the
| | River.| River.
-------------------------+-------+-------+--------
Elevation of the ground, | | |
in feet, above Trinity | | |
high-water mark | 39 | 51 | 5
| | |
Density, or number of | | |
persons to an acre, | | |
1849 | 30 | 52 | 14
| | |
Deaths from Cholera to | | |
10,000 persons living, | | |
in 60 weeks, ending | | |
Nov. 24, 1849 | 66 | 44 | 127
| | |
Deaths from all causes | | |
annually to 10,000 | | |
persons (5000 males, | | |
5000 females) living, | | |
during the 7 years, | | |
1838-44 | 252 | 251 | 257
-------------------------+-------+-------+--------

Here, it will be seen, that while the houses on the north side of the
river stand, on an average, 51 feet above the high-water mark of the
Thames, those on the south side are only 5 feet above it. The effect
of this is shown most particularly in the deaths from cholera in 1849,
which were nearly three times as many on the south as on the north side
of the Thames. It is said, officially, that “of the 15 square miles of
the Urban district on the south side of the river Thames, _three_ miles
are from six to seven feet below high-water mark, so that the locality
may be said to be drained only for four hours out of the twelve, and
during these four hours very imperfectly.... When the tide rises above
the orifices of the sewers, the whole drainage of the district is
stopped until the tide recedes again, rendering the whole system of
sewers in Kent and Surrey only an _articulation of cesspools_.”

That this is but the fact, the following table of the elevation in feet
above the Trinity high-water mark, as regards the several districts on
the Surrey side of the Thames, may be cited as evidence.

Elevation.
Lewisham 28
Wandsworth 22
Greenwich 8
Camberwell 4
Lambeth 3
St. Saviour (Southwark) 2
St. Olave 2
Bermondsey 0
Rotherhithe 0
St. George’s (Southwark) 0
Newington (below high water) 2

From these returns, made by Capt. Dawson, R.E., the difficulty, to use
no stronger word, attending the sewerage of the Surrey district is
shown at once. There is no flow to be had, or--the word more generally
used, no _run_ for the sewage. In parts of the north of England it used
to be a general, and still is a partial, saying among country-people
who are figuratively describing what they account impossible. “Ay,
when? _When_ water runs up bank.” This is a homely expression of the
difficulties attending the Surrey sewerage.

There is, as regards these Surrey, more than the Kent, sewers, another
evil which promotes the “articulation of cesspools.” Some of these
sewers have “dead-ends,” like places which in the streets (a parallel
case enough) are known as “no thoroughfare,” and in these sewers it is
seldom, in any state of the tide, that flushing can be resorted to;
consequently these cesspool-like sewers remain uncleansed, or have to
be cleansed by manual labour, the matter being drawn up into the street
or road.

The refuse conduits of the metropolis are of two kinds:--

1. Sewers.
2. Drains.

These two classes of refuse-charts are often confounded, even in some
official papers, the sewer being there designated the “main drain.” All
sewerage is undoubtedly drainage, but there is a manifest distinction
between a sewer and a drain.

The First-Class Sewers, which are generally termed “main sewers,” and
run along the centres of the first-class streets (first-class alike
from the extent or populousness of such streets), may be looked upon
as underground rivers of refuse, to which the drains are tributary
rivulets. No sewer exists unconnected with the drains from the streets
and houses; but many house-drains are constructed apart from the
sewers, communicating only with the cesspools. Even where houses are
built in close contiguity to a public sewer, and built after the new
mode without cesspools, there is always a drain to the sewer; no house
so situated can get rid of its refuse except by means of a drain;
unless, indeed, the house be not drained at all, and its filth be flung
down a gullyhole, or got rid of in some other way.

These drains, all with a like determination, differ only in their
forms. They are barrel-shaped, made of rounded bricks, or earthenware
pipeage, and of an interior between a round and an oval, with a
diameter of from 2 to 6 inches, although only a few private houses,
comparatively, are so drained. The barrel drain of larger dimensions,
is used in the newer public buildings and larger public mansions, when
it represents a sort of house or interior sewer as well as a house
main drain, for smaller drains find their issue into the barrel-drain.
There is the barrel-drain in the new Houses of Parliament, and in large
places which cover the site of, and are required for the purposes of
several houses or offices. The tubular drain is simply piping, of which
I have spoken fully in my account of the present compulsory mode of
house drainage. The third drain, one more used to carry refuse to the
cesspool than the sewer, but still carrying such refuse to the sewers,
is the old-fashioned brick drain, generally 9 inches square.

I shall first deal with the sewerage, and then with the house and
street drainage.

The sewer is a twofold receptacle of refuse; into it are conveyed the
wet refuse not only of many of the houses, but of all the streets.

The slop or surface water of the streets is conveyed to the sewer by
means of smaller sewers or street-drains running from the “kennel” or
channel to the larger sewers.

In the streets, at such uncertain distances as the traffic and
circumstances of the locality may require, are gully-holes. These are
openings into the sewer, and were formerly called, as they were, simply
gratings, a sort of iron trap-doors of grated bars, clumsily made, and
placed almost at random. On each side of the street was, even into
the present century, a very formidable channel, or kennel, as it was
formerly written, into which, in heavy rains, the badly-scavaged street
dirt was swept, often demanding a good leap from one who wished to
cross in a hurry. These “kennels” emptied themselves into the gratings,
which were not unfrequently choked up, and the kennel was then an utter
nuisance. At the present time the channel is simply a series of stone
work at the edge of the footpaths, blocks of granite being sloped to
meet more or less at right angles, and the flow from the inclination
from the centre of the street to the channel is carried along without
impedimen or nuisance into the gully-hole.

The gully-hole opens into a drain, running, with a rapid slope, into
the sewer, and so the wet refuse of the streets find its vent.

In many courts, alleys, lanes, &c., inhabited by the poor, where there
is imperfect or no drainage to the houses, all the slops from the
houses are thrown down the gully-holes, and frequently enough blood and
offal are poured from butchers’ premises, which might choke the house
drain. There have, indeed, been instances of worthless street dirt
(slop) collected into a scavager’s vehicle being shot down a gully-hole.

The sewers, as distinct from the drains, are to be divided principally
into three classes, all devoted to the same purpose--the conveyance
of the underground filth of the capital to the Thames--and all
connected by a series of drains, afterwards to be described, with the
dwelling-houses.

The _first-class sewers_ are found in the main streets, and flow at
their outlets into the river.

The _second-class sewers_ run along the second-class streets,
discharging their contents into a first-class sewer; and

The _third-class sewers_ are for the reception of the sewage from the
smaller streets, and always communicate, for the voidance of their
contents, with a sewer of the second or first description.

As regards the destination of the sewers, there is no difference
between the Middlesex and Surrey portions of the metropolis. The sewage
is _all_ floated into the river.

The first-class sewers of the modern build rarely exceed 50 inches
by 30 in internal dimensions; the second class, 40 inches by 24; the
third, 30 inches by 18.

Smaller class or branch sewers, from No. 4 to No. 8 inclusive, also
form part of the great subterranean filth-channels of the metropolis.
It is only, however, the three first-mentioned classes which can be
described as in any way principal _sewers_; the others are in the
capacity of branch sewers, the ramifications being in many places very
extensive, while pipes are often used. The dimensions of these smaller
sewers, when pipes are not used, are--No. 4, 20 inches by 12; No. 5,
17-1/2 inches by 10-1/2; No. 6, 15 inches by 9; No. 7, 12 inches by
7-1/2; and No. 8, 9 inches by 6.

These branch sewers may, from their circumscribed dimensions, be looked
upon as mere channels of connection with the larger descriptions; but
they present, as I have intimated, an important part of the general
system. This may be shown by the fact, that in the estimates for
building sewers for the improvement of the drainage of the city of
Westminster (a plan, however, not carried out), the estimated, or
indeed surveyed, run of the first class was to be 8118 feet; of the
second class, 4524 feet; of the third, but 2086 feet; while of the No.
5 and No. 6 description, it was, respectively, 18,709 and 53,284 feet.
The branch sewers may, perhaps, be represented in many instances as
public drains connecting the sewer of the street with the issue from
the houses, but I give the appellation I find in the reports.

The dimensions I have cited are not to be taken as an average size of
the existing sewers of the metropolis on either side of the Thames, for
no average size and no uniformity of shape can be adduced, as there has
been no uniformity observed. The sewers are of all sizes and shapes,
and of all depths from the surface of the streets. I was informed by
an engineering authority that he had often seen it asserted that the
naval authorities of the kingdom could not build a war-steamer, and it
might very well be said that the sanitary authorities of the metropolis
could not build a sewer, as none of the present sewers could be cited
as in all respects properly fulfilling all the functions required.
But it must be remembered that the present engineers have to contend
with great difficulties, the whole matter being so complicated by the
blunderings and mismanagement of the past.

The dimensions I have cited (because they appear officially) exceed the
medium size of the _newer_ sewerage, the average height of the first
class being in such sewers about 3 feet 9 inches.

_Of the width of the sewers_, as of the height, no precise average can
be drawn. Perhaps that of the New Palace main, or first-class sewer, 3
feet 6 inches, may be nearest the average, while the smaller classes
diminish in their width in the proportions I have shown. The sewers of
the older constructions nearly all widen and deepen as they near the
outlet, and this at no definite distance from the river, but from a
quarter of a mile or somewhat less to a mile and more. Some such sewers
are then 14 feet in width; some 20 feet, and no doubt of proportionate
height, but I do not find that the height has been ascertained.
For flushing purposes there are recesses of greater or less width,
according to the capacity of the sewer, where sluice-gates, &c., can be
fixed, and water accumulated.

Under the head of “Subterranean Survey of the Sewers,” will be found
some account of the different dimensions of the sewers.

_The form of the interior of the sewers_ (as shown in the illustrations
I have given) is irregularly elliptical. They are arched at the
summits, and more or less hollowed or curved, internally, at the
bottom. The bottom of the sewer is called the “invert,” from a general
resemblance in the construction to an “inverted” arch. The _best_ form
of invert is a matter which has attracted great engineering attention.
It is, indeed, the important part of the sewer, as the part along which
there is the flow of sewage; and the superior or inferior formation of
the invert, of course, facilitates or retards the transmission of the
contents.

A few years back, the building of egg-shaped, or “oviform” sewers, was
strongly advocated. It was urged that the flow of the sewage and the
sewer-water was accelerated by the invert (especially) being oviform,
as the matter was more condensed when such was the shape adopted, while
the more the matter was diffused, as in some of the inverts of the more
usual form of sewers, the less rapid was its flow, and consequently the
greater its deposit.

What extent of egg-shaped sewers are now, so to speak, at work, I could
not ascertain. One informant thought it might be somewhere about 50
miles.

The following interesting account of the velocities of streams, with
a relativeness to sewers, is extracted from the evidence of Mr.
Phillips:--

“The area of surface that a sewer will drain, and the quantity of water
that it will discharge in a given time, will be greater or less in
proportion as the channel is inclined from a horizontal to a vertical
position. The ordinary or common run of water in each sewer, due from
house drainage alone, and irrespective of rain, should have sufficient
velocity to prevent the usual matter discharged into the sewer from
depositing. For this purpose, it is necessary that there should be
in each sewer a constant velocity of current equal to 2-1/2 feet per
second, or 1-3/4 mile per hour.” Mr. Phillips then states that the
inclinations of all rivulets, &c., diminish as they progress to their
outfalls. “If the force of the waters of the river Rhone,” he has said,
“were not absorbed by the operation of some constant retardation in
its course, the stream would have shot into the Bay of Marseilles with
the tremendous velocity of 164 miles every hour. Even if the Thames
met with no system of impediments in its course, the stream would have
rushed into the sea with a velocity of 80 feet per second, or 54-1/2
miles in an hour.... The inclinations of the sewers of a natural
district should be made to diminish from their heads to their outfalls
in a corresponding ratio of progression, so that as the body of water
is increased at each confluence, one and the same velocity and force of
current may be kept up throughout the whole of them.”

Mr. Phillips advocates a tubular system of sewerage and drainage.

The main sewer, which has lately called forth the most public
attention and professional controversy, is that connected with the
new Houses of Parliament, or as they are called in divers reports and
correspondence, the “New Palace at Westminster.”

_The workmanship in the building of the sewers_ is of every quality.
The material of which some of the older sewers are constructed is a
porous sort of brick, which is often found crumbling and broken, and
saturated with damp and rottenness, from the exhalations and contact
of their contents. The sewers erected, however, within the last
twenty, and more especially within the last ten years, are sometimes
of granite, but generally of the best brick, with an interior coating
of enduring cement, and generally with concrete on their exterior,
to protect them from the dampness and decaying qualities of the
superincumbent or lateral soil.

_The depth of the sewers_--I mean from the top of the sewer to the
surface of the street--seems to vary as everything else varies about
them. Some are found forty feet below the street, some _two_ feet, some
almost level! These, however, are exceptions; and the average depth of
the sewers on the Middlesex side is from twelve to fourteen feet; on
the Surrey side, from six to eight feet. The reason is that the north
shores of the metropolis are above the tide level, the south shores are
below it.

An authority on the subject has said, “The Surrey sewers are bad,
owing principally to the land being below tide level. They were the
most expensively constructed, because, _perhaps_, in that Commission
the surveyors were paid by percentage on the cost of works. When it
was proposed, in the Westminster Commission, to effect a reduction
of four-fifths in the cost, it was like a proposition to return the
officers’ salaries to that extent, if they had been paid in that way.”

The reader may have observed that the official intelligence I have
given all, or nearly all, refers to the “Westminster and part of
Middlesex” Commission, and to that of the “Surrey and Kent.” This is
easily accounted for. In the metropolitan districts, up to 1847, the
only Commission which published its papers was the Westminster, of
which Mr. L. C. Hertslet had the charge as clerk; when the Commissions
were consolidated in 1847, he printed the Westminster and Surrey only,
the others being of minor importance.

I may observe that one of the engineers, in showing the difficulty or
impossibility of giving any description of a _system_ of sewerage, as
to points of agreement or difference, represents the whole mass as but
a “detached parcel of sewers.”

_The course of the sewers_ is in no direct or uniform line, with the
exception of one characteristic--all their bearings are towards the
river as regards the main sewers (first-class), and all the bearings
of the second-class sewers are towards the main sewers in the main
streets. The smaller classes of sewers fill up the great area of London
sewerage with a perfect network of intersection and connection, and
even this network is increased manyfold by its connection with the
house-drains.

There is no map of the general sewerage of the metropolis, merely
“sections” and “plans” of improvements making or suggested, in the
reports of the surveyors, &c., to the Commissioners; but did a map of
subterranean London exist, with its lines of every class of sewerage
and of the drainage which feeds the sewers; with its course, moreover,
of gas-pipes and water-pipes, with their connection with the houses,
the streets, the courts, &c., it would be the most curious and
skeleton-like map in the world.

OF THE SUBTERRANEAN CHARACTER OF THE SEWERS.

In my inquiries among that curious body of men, the “Sewer Hunters,”
I found them make light of any danger, their principal fear being
from the attacks of rats in case they became isolated from the gang
with whom they searched in common, while they represented the odour
as a mere nothing in the way of unpleasantness. But these men pursued
only known and (by them) beaten tracks at low water, avoiding any
deviation, and so becoming but partially acquainted with the character
and direction of the sewers. And had it been otherwise, they are not
a class competent to describe what they saw, however keen-eyed after
silver spoons.

The following account is derived chiefly from official sources. I
may premise that where the deposit is found the greatest, the sewer
is in the worst state. This deposit, I find it repeatedly stated,
is of a most miscellaneous character. Some of the sewers, indeed,
are represented as the dust-bins and dung-hills of the immediate
neighbourhood. The deposit has been found to comprise all the
ingredients from the breweries, the gas-works, and the several chemical
and mineral manufactories; dead dogs, cats, kittens, and rats; offal
from slaughter-houses, sometimes even including the entrails of the
animals; street-pavement dirt of every variety; vegetable refuse;
stable-dung; the refuse of pig-styes; night-soil; ashes; tin kettles
and pans (pansherds); broken stoneware, as jars, pitchers, flower-pots,
&c.; bricks; pieces of wood; rotten mortar and rubbish of different
kinds; and even rags. Our criminal annals of the previous century show
that often enough the bodies of murdered men were thrown into the Fleet
and other ditches, then the open sewers of the metropolis, and if found
washed into the Thames, they were so stained and disfigured by the
foulness of the contents of these ditches, that recognition was often
impossible, so that there could be but one verdict returned--“Found
drowned.” Clothes stripped from a murdered person have been, it was
authenticated on several occasions in Old Bailey evidence, thrown into
the open sewer ditches, when torn and defaced, so that they might
not supply evidence of identity. So close is the connection between
physical filthiness in public matters and moral wickedness.

The following particulars show the characteristics of the underground
London of the sewers. The subterranean surveys were made after the
commissions were consolidated.

“An old sewer, running between Great Smith-street and St. Ann-street
(Westminster), is a curiosity among sewers, although it is probably
only one instance out of many similar constructions that will be
discovered in the course of the subterranean survey. The bottom is
formed of planks laid upon transverse timbers, 6 inches by 6 inches,
about 3 feet apart. The size of the sewer varies in width from 2 to 6
feet, and from 4 to 5 feet in height. The inclination of the bottom
is very irregular: there are jumps up at two or three places, and it
contains a deposit of filth averaging 9 inches in depth, the sickening
smell from which escapes into the houses and yards that drain into it.
In many places the side walls have given way for lengths of 10 and 15
feet. Across this sewer timbers have been laid, upon which the external
wall of a workshop has been built; the timbers are in a decaying state,
and should they give way, the wall will fall into the sewer.”

From the further accounts of this survey, I find that a sewer from
the Westminster Workhouse, which was of all shapes and sizes, was in
so wretched a condition that the leveller could scarcely work for
the thick scum that covered the glasses of the spirit-level in a few
minutes after being wiped. “At the outfall into the Dean-street sewer,
it is 3 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 8 inches for a short length. From the
end of this, a wide sewer branches in each direction at right angles,
5 feet 8 inches by 5 feet 5 inches. Proceeding to the eastward about
30 feet, a chamber is reached about 30 feet in length, from the roof
of which hangings of putrid matter _like stalactites_ descend _three
feet in length_. At the end of this chamber, the sewer passes under the
public privies, the ceilings of which can be seen from it. Beyond this
it is not possible to go.”

“In the Lucas-street sewer, where a portion of new work begins and the
old terminates, a space of about 10 feet has been covered with boards,
which, having broken, a dangerous chasm has been caused immediately
under the road.”

“The West-street sewer had one foot of deposit. It was flushed while
the levelling party was at work there, and the stream was so rapid that
it nearly washed them away, instrument and all.”

There are further accounts of “deposit,” or of “stagnant filth,” in
other sewers, varying from 6 to 14 inches, but that is insignificant
compared to what follows.

The foregoing, then, is the pith of the first authentic account which
has appeared in print of the actually surveyed condition of the
subterranean ways, over which the super-terranean tides of traffic are
daily flowing.

The account I have just given relates to the (former) Westminster
and part of Middlesex district on the north bank of the Thames, as
ascertained under the Metropolitan Commission. I now give some extracts
concerning a similar survey on the south bank, in different and
distant directions in the district, once the “Surrey and Kent.” The
Westminster, &c., survey took place in 1848; the Kent and Surrey in
1849. In the one case, 72 miles of sewers were surveyed; in the other,
69-1/8 miles.

“The surveyors (in the Surrey and Kent sewers) find great difficulty
in levelling the sewers of this district (I give the words of the
Report); for, in the first place, the deposit is _usually_ about two
feet in depth, and in some cases it amounts to nearly _five feet_ of
putrid matter. The smell is usually of the most horrible description,
the air being so foul that explosion and choke damp are very frequent.
On the 12th January we were very nearly losing a whole party by choke
damp, the last man being dragged out on his back (through two feet of
black fœtid deposits) in a state of insensibility.... Two men of one
party had also a narrow escape from drowning in the Alscot-road sewer,
Rotherhithe.

“The sewers on the Surrey side are very irregular; even where they are
inverted they frequently have a number of steps and inclinations the
reverse way, causing the deposit to accumulate in _elongated cesspools_.

“It must be considered very fortunate that the subterranean parties
did not first commence on the Surrey side, for if such had been the
case, we should most undoubtedly have broken down. When compared with
Westminster, the sewers are smaller and more full of deposit; and, bad
as the smell is in the sewers in Westminster, it is infinitely worse on
the Surrey side.”

Several details are then given, but they are only particulars of the
general facts I have stated.

The following, however, are distinct facts concerning this branch of
the subject.

In my inquiries among the working scavagers I often heard of their
emptying street slop into sewers, and the following extract shows that
I was not misinformed:--

“The detritus from the macadamized roads frequently forms a kind of
grouting in the sewers so hard that it cannot be removed without hand
labour.

“One of the sewers in Whitehall and another in Spring-gardens have from
three to four feet of this sort of deposit; and another in Eaton-square
was found filled up within a few inches of the ‘soffit,’ but it is
supposed that the scavengers (scavagers) emptied the road-sweepings
down the gully-grate in this instance;” and in other instances, too,
there is no doubt--especially at Charing Cross, and the Regent Circus,
Piccadilly.

Concerning the sewerage of the most aristocratic parts of the city
of Westminster, and of the fashionable squares, &c., to the north of
Oxford-street, I glean the following particulars (reported in 1849).
They show, at any rate, that the patrician quarters have not been
unduly favoured; that there has been no partiality in the construction
of the sewerage. In the Belgrave and Eaton-square districts there are
many faulty places in the sewers which abound with noxious matter, in
many instances stopping up the house drains and “smelling horribly.”
It is much the same in the Grosvenor, Hanover, and Berkeley-square
localities (the houses in the squares themselves included). Also in the
neighbourhood of Covent-garden, Clare-market, Soho and Fitzroy-squares;
while north of Oxford-street, in and about Cavendish, Bryanstone,
Manchester, and Portman-squares, there is so much rottenness and decay
that there is no security for the sewers standing from day to day, and
to flush them for the removal of their “most loathsome deposit” might
be “to bring some of them down altogether.”

One of the accounts of a subterranean survey concludes with the
following rather curious statement:--“Throughout the new Paddington
district the neighbourhood of Hyde Park Gardens, and the costly squares
and streets adjacent, the sewers abound with the foulest deposit, from
which the most disgusting effluvium arises; indeed, amidst the whole of
the Westminster District of Sewers the _only_ little spot which can be
mentioned as being in at all a satisfactory state is the Seven Dials.”

I may point out also that these very curious and authenticated accounts
by no means bear out the zymotic doctrine of the Board of Health as
to the cause of cholera; for where the zymotic influences from the
sewers were the worst, in the patrician squares of what has been called
Belgravia and Tyburnia, the cholera was the least destructive. This,
however, is no reason whatever why the stench should not be stifled.

OF THE HOUSE-DRAINAGE OF THE METROPOLIS AS CONNECTED WITH THE SEWERS.

Every house built or rebuilt since the passing of the Metropolitan
Sewers Act in 1848, must be drained, with an exception, which I shall
specify, into a sewer. The law, indeed, divested of its technicalities
is this: the owner of a newly-erected house must drain it to a sewer,
without the intervention of a cesspool, if there be a sewer within
100 feet of the site of the house; and, if necessary, in places but
partially built over, such owner must continue the sewer along the
premises, and make the necessary drain into it; all being done under
the approval of the proper officer under the Commissioners. If there
be, however, an established sewer, along the side, front, or back of
any house, a covered drain must be made into that at the cost of the
owner of the premises to be drained. “Where a sewer,” says the 46th
section of the Act, “shall already be made, and a drain only shall
be required, the party is to pay a contribution towards the original
expense of the sewer, if it shall have been made within thirty-five
years before the 4th of September, 1848, the contribution to be paid
to the builder of the sewer.”... “In cases where there shall be no
sewer into which a drain could be made, the party must make a covered
drain to lead into a cesspool or other place (not under a house) as
the Commissioners may direct. If the parties infringe this rule, the
Commissioners may do the work and throw the cost on them in the nature
of an improvement rate, or as charges for default, and levy the amount
by distress.”

I mention these circumstances more particularly to show the extent, and
the far-continued ramification, of the subterranean metropolis. I am
assured by one of the largest builders in the western district of the
capital that the new regulations (as to the dispensing with cesspools)
are readily complied with, as it is a recommendation which a house
agent, or any one letting new premises, is never slow to advance (“and
when it’s the truth,” he said, “they do it with a better grace”), that
there will be in the course of occupancy no annoyance and no expense
incurred in the clearing away of cesspoolage.

I shall at present describe only the house-drainage, which is connected
with the public sewerage. The old mode of draining a house separately
into the cesspool of the premises will, of course, be described under
the head of cesspoolage, and that old system is still very prevalent.

At the times of passing both general and local Acts concerning
buildings, town improvements and extensions, the erection of new
streets and the removal of old, much has been said and written
concerning better systems of ventilating, warming, and draining
dwelling-houses; but until after the first outbreak of cholera in
England, in 1832, little public attention was given to the great
drainage of all the sewers. However, on the passing of the Building and
Sanitary Acts generally, the authorities made many experiments, not so
much to improve the system of sewerage as of house-drainage, so as to
make the dwelling-houses more wholesome and sweet.

To effect this, the great object was the abolition of the cesspool
system, under which filth must accumulate, and where, from scamped
buildings or other causes, evaporation took place, the effects of the
system were found to be vile and offensive, and have been pronounced
miasmatic. Having just alluded to these matters, I proceed to describe
the modernly-adopted connection of house-drainage and street-sewerage.

Experiments, as I have said, were set on foot under the auspices of
public bodies, and the opinions of eminent engineers, architects,
and surveyors were also taken. Their opinions seem really to be
concentrated in the advocacy of _one_ remedy--improved house-drainage;
and they appear to have agreed that the system which is at present
adopted is, under the circumstances, the best that can be adopted.

I was told also by an eminent practical builder, perfectly unconnected
with any official or public body, and, indeed, often at issue with
surveyors, &c., that the new system was unquestionably a great
improvement in every respect, and that some years before its adoption
as at present he had abetted such a system, and had carried it into
effect when he could properly do so.

I will first show the mode and then the cost of the new system.

I find it designated “back,” “front,” “tubular,” and “pipe”
house-drainage, and all with the object of carrying off all fæces, soil
water, cesspool matter, &c., before it has had time to accumulate.
It is not by brick or other drains of masonry that the system is
carried out or is recommended to be carried out, but by means of
tubular earthenware pipes; and for any efficient carrying out of the
projected improvement a system of _constant_, and not as at present
_intermittent_, supply of water from the several companies would be
best. These pipes communicate with the nearest sewer. The pipes in the
tubular drainage are of red earthenware or stoneware (pot).

The use of earthenware, clay, or pot pipes for the conveyance of
liquids is very ancient. Mr. Stirrat, a bleacher in Paisley, in a
statement to the Board of Health, mentioned that clay pipes were used
in ancient times. King Hezekiah (2nd Book of Kings, chap. 20, and 2nd
Book of Chronicles, chap. 32) brought in water from Jerusalem. “His
pool and conduit,” said Mr. Stirrat, “are still to be seen. The conduit
is three feet square inside, built of freestone, strongly cemented;
the stone, fifteen inches thick, evidently intended to sustain a
considerable pressure; and I have seen pipes of clay, taken by a friend
from a house in the ruins of the ancient city, of one inch bore,
and about seven inches in diameter, proving evidently, to my mind,
that ancient Jerusalem was supplied with water on the principle of
gravitation. The pools or reservoirs are also at this day in tolerably
good order, one of them still filled with water; the other broken down
in the centre, no doubt by some besieging enemy, to cut off the supply
to the city.”

The new system to supply the place of the cesspools is a _combined_,
while the old is principally a _separate_, system of house-drainage;
but the new system is equally available for such separate drainage.

As regards the success of this system the reports say experiments have
been tried in so large a number of houses, under such varied and, in
many cases, disadvantageous circumstances, that no doubts whatsoever
can remain in the minds of competent and disinterested persons as to
the efficient self-cleansing action of well-adjusted tubular drains and
sewers, even without any additional supplies of water.

Mr. Lovick said:--

“A great number of small 4-inch tubular drains have been laid down
in the several districts, some for considerable periods. They have
been found to keep themselves clear by the ordinary soil and drainage
waters of the houses. I have no doubt that pipes of this kind will keep
themselves clear by the ordinary discharge of house-drainage; assuming,
of course, a supply of water, pipes of good form, and materials
properly laid, and with fair usage.”

“One of the earliest illustrations of the tubular system,” it is stated
in a Report of the Board of Health, “was given in the improved drainage
of a block of houses in the cloisters of Westminster, which had been
the seat of a severe epidemic fever. The cesspools and the old drains
were filled up, and an entire system of tubular drainage and sewerage
substituted for the service of that block of houses.

“The Dean of Westminster, in a letter on the state of this drainage,
says, ‘I beg to report to the Commissioners that the success of the
entire new pipe-drainage laid down in St. Peter’s College during the
last twelve months has been complete. I consider this experiment on
drainage and sewage of about fifteen houses to afford a triumphant
proof of the efficacy of draining by pipes, and of the facility of
_dispensing entirely with cesspools and brick sewers_.’ Up to this time
they have acted, and continue to act, perfectly.

“Mr. Morris, a surveyor attached to the Metropolitan Sewers Commission,
gives the following account of the action of trial works of improved
house-drainage:--

“‘I have introduced the new 4-inch tubular house-drains into some
houses for the trustees of the parish of Poplar, with water-closets,
and have received no just cause of complaint. In every instance where
I have applied it, I found the system answer extremely well, if a
sufficient quantity of water has been used.

“‘The answer of the householders as to the effect of the new drainage
has invariably been that they and their families have been better in
health; that they were formerly annoyed with smells and effluvia, from
which they are now quite free.

“‘Since the new drainage has been laid down there has been only
occasion to go on the ground to examine it once for the whole year, and
that was from the inefficiency of the water service. It was found that
rags had been thrown down and had got into the pipe; and further, that
very little water had been used, so that the stoppage was the fault of
the tenant, not of the system.’”

Mr. Gotto, the engineer, having stated that in a plan for the
improvement of Goulston-street, Whitechapel, not only was the
removal of all cesspools contemplated, but also the substitution of
water-closet apparatus, gave the following estimate of _the cost_,
provided the pipes were made and the work done by contract under the
Commissioners of Sewers:--

_Water-closet Apparatus, &c._

£ _s._ _d._
Emptying, &c., cesspool 0 12 0
Digging, &c., for 8-feet pipe drain,
at 4_d._ 0 2 8
Making good to walls and floor of
water-closet over drain, at 3_d._ 0 2 0
8 feet run of 4-inch pipe, at 3_d._ 0 2 0
Laying ditto, at 2_d._ 0 1 4
Extra for junction 0 0 4
Fixing ditto 0 0 2
Water-closet apparatus, with stool
cock 0 10 0
Fixing ditto 0 2 0
Contingencies (10 per cent.) 0 3 6
The yard sink and drain would
cost 0 11 2
Kitchen sink and drain 0 15 7-1/2
---------------

So that the cost of _back_ draining
one house, including water-closet,
would be 3 2 9-1/2

The _front_ tubular drainage of a similar house (with fifteen yards
of carriage-way to be paved) would cost 6_l._ 2_s._ 7-1/2_d._; or the
drainage would cost, according to the old system, 11_l._ 13_s._ 11_d._

“The engineering witnesses who have given their special attention
to the subject,” state the Board of Health, in commenting on the
information I have just cited, “affirm that upon the improved system
of combined works the expense of the apparatus in substitution of
cesspools would _not greatly exceed one-half the expense_ of cleaning
the cesspools.”

The engineers have calculated--stating the difficulty of coming to a
nice calculation--that the present system of cesspools entailed an
average expenditure, for cleansing and repairs, of 4_d._ a week on each
householder; and that by the new system it would be but 1-3/4_d._ The
Board of Health’s calculations, however, are, I regret to say, always
dubious.

The subjoined scale of the difference in cost was prepared at the
instance of the Board.

Mr. Grant took four blocks of houses for examination, and the results
are given as a guide to what would be the general expenditure if the
change took place:--

“In one block of 44 houses--

The length of drains by back drainage was 1544 feet.

Cost (exclusive of pans, traps, and water in both cases) of back
drainage, 83_l._ 12_s._, or 1_l._ 18_s._ per house.

Cost of separate tubular drainage, 467_l._ 9_s._ 6_d._, or 10_l._
12_s._ 6_d._ per house.

Cost of separate brick drains, 910_l._ 19_s._, or 20_l._ 14_s._ 1_d._
per house.

* * * * *

“In another block of 23 houses--

The length of back drains was 783 feet.

Of separate drains, 1437 feet.

The cost of back tubular drains, 45_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._, or 1_l._ 19_s._
8_d._ per house.

Of separate tubular drains, 131_l._ 13_s._ 6_d._, or 5_l._ 14_s._
6_d._ per house.

Of separate brick drains, 305_l._ 7_s._, or 13_l._ 5_s._ 6_d._ per
house.

* * * * *

“In another block of 46 houses--

The length of back drainage, 1143 feet.

Ditto by separate ditto, 1892 feet.

The cost of back tubular drainage, 66_l._ 5_s._ 2_d._, or 1_l._ 8_s._
9-3/4_d._ per house.

Ditto of separate ditto ditto, 178_l._ 19_s._ 8_d._, or 3_l._ 17_s._
10_d._ per house.

Ditto of separate brick ditto, 390_l._ 4_s._, or 8_l._ 9_s._ 8_d._ per
house.

* * * * *

“In a fourth block of 46 houses--

The length of back drains, 985 feet.

Ditto of separate ditto, 2913 feet.

Cost of back tubular drainage, 66_l._ 8_s._ 2_d._, or 1_l._ 8_s._
10-1/2_d._ per house.

Ditto of separate ditto ditto, 262_l._ 11_s._ 7_d._, or 5_l._ 14_s._
2_d._ per house.

Ditto of separate brick ditto, 614_l._ 16_s._ 3_d._, or 13_l._ 7_s._
3-3/4_d._ per house.”

I have mentioned the diversity of opinion as to the best form, and
even material, for a sewer; and there is the same diversity as to
the material, &c., for house and gully or street-drainage, more
especially in the _pipes_ of the larger volume. The pipe-drainage of
any description is far less in favour than it was. One reason is that
it does not promote _subsoil drainage_; another is the difficulty
of repairs if the joints or fittings of pipes require mending; and
then the combination of the noxious gases is most offensive in its
exhalations, and difficult to overcome.

I was informed by a nightman, used to the cleansing of drains and to
night-work generally, that when there was any escape from one of the
tubular pipes the stench was more intense than any he had ever before
experienced from any drains on the old system.

OF THE LONDON STREET-DRAINS.

We have as yet dealt only with the means of removing the liquid
refuse from the houses of the metropolis. This, as was pointed out
at the commencement of the present subject, consists principally of
the 19,000,000,000 gallons of water that are annually supplied to the
London residences by mechanical means. But there still remain the
5,000,000,000 gallons of surface or rain-water to be carried off from
the 1760 miles of streets, and the roofs and yards of the 300,000
houses which now form the British metropolis. If this immense volume of
liquid were not immediately removed from our thoroughfares as fast as
it fell, many of our streets would not only be transformed into canals
at certain periods of the year, but perhaps at all times (except during
drought) they would be, if not impassable, at least unpleasant and
unhealthy, from the puddles or small pools of stagnant water that would
be continually rotting them. Were such the case, the roads and streets
that we now pride ourselves so highly upon would have their foundations
soddened. “If the surface of a road be not kept clean so as to admit
of its becoming dry between showers of rain,” said Lord Congleton,
the great road authority, “it will be rapidly worn away.” Indeed the
immediate removal of rain-water, so as to prevent its percolating
through the surface of the road, and thereby impairing the foundation,
appears to be one of the main essentials of road-making.

The means of removing this surface water, especially from the streets
of a city where the rain falls at least every other day throughout the
year, and reaches an aggregate depth of 24 feet in the course of the
twelvemonth, is a matter of considerable moment. In Paris, and indeed
almost all of the French towns, a channel is formed in the middle of
each thoroughfare, and down this the water from the streets and houses
is continually coursing, to the imminent peril of all pedestrians, for
the wheels of every vehicle distribute, as it goes, a muddy shower on
either side of the way.

_We_, however, have not only removed the channels from the middle to
the sides of our streets, but instituted a distinct system of drainage
for the conveyance of the wet refuse of our houses to the sewers--so
that there are no longer (excepting in a very small portion of the
suburbs) open sewers, meandering through our highways; the consequence
is, the surface-water being carried off from our thoroughfares almost
as fast as it falls, our streets are generally dry and clean. That
there are exceptions to this rule, which are a glaring disgrace to us,
it must be candidly admitted; but we must at the same time allow, when
we think of the vast extent of the roadways of the metropolis (1760
miles!--nearly one-half the radius of the earth itself), the deluge
of water that annually descends upon every inch of the ground which
we call London (38,000,000,000 gallons!--a quantity which is almost
sufficient for the formation of an American lake), and the vast amount
of traffic, over the greater part of the capital--the 13,000 vehicles
that daily cross London Bridge, the 11,000 conveyances that traverse
Cheapside in the course of twelve hours, the 7700 that go through
Temple Bar, and the 6900 that ascend and descend Holborn Hill between
nine in the morning and nine at night, the 1500 omnibuses and the 3000
cabriolets that are continually hurrying from one part of the town to
another, and the 10,000 private carriage, job, and cart horses that
incessantly _perviate_ the metropolis--when we reflect, I say, on this
vast amount of traffic--this deluge of rain--and the wilderness of
streets, it cannot but be allowed that the cleansing and draining of
the London thoroughfares is most admirably conducted.

The mode of street drainage is by means of what is called a gully-hole
and a gully-drain.

_The Gully-hole_[63] is the opening from the surface of the street (and
is seen generally on each side of the way), into which all the fluid
refuse of the public thoroughfares runs on its course to the sewer.

_The Gully-drain_ is a drain generally of earthenware piping, curving
from the side of the street to an opening in the top or side of the
sewer, and is the means of communication between the sewer and the
gully-hole.

The gully-hole is indicated by an iron grate being fitted into the
surface of the side of a footpath, where the road slopes gradually
from its centre to the edge of the footpath, and down this grate the
water runs into the channel contrived for it in the construction of
the streets. These gully-grates, the observant pedestrian--if there
be a man in this hive of London who, without professional attraction
to the matter, regards for a few minutes the peculiarities of the
street (apart from the houses) which he is traversing--an observant
pedestrian, I say, would be struck at the constantly-recurring grates
in a given space in some streets, and their paucity in others. In
Drury-lane there is no gully-grate, as you walk down from Holborn to
where Drury-lane becomes Wych-street; whilst in some streets, not a
tenth of the length of Drury-lane, there may be three, four, five,
or six grates. The reason is this:--There is no sewer running down
Drury-lane; a contiguous sewer, however, runs down Great Wyld-street,
draining, where there are drains, the hundred courts and nooks of the
poor, between Drury-lane and Lincoln’s-inn-fields, as well as the more
open places leading down towards the proximity of Temple Bar. This
Great Wyld-street sewer, moreover, in its course to Fleet Bridge, is
made available for the drainage (very grievously deficient, according
to some of the reports of the Board of Health) of Clare-market. Grates
would of course be required in such a place as Drury-lane, only the
street is thought to be sufficiently on the descent to convey the
surface-water to the grate in Wych-street.

The parts in which the gully-grates will be found the most numerous are
where the main streets are most intersected by other main streets, or
by smaller off-streets, and indeed wherever the streets, of whatever
size, continually intersect each other, as they do off nearly all
the great street-thoroughfares in the City. Although the sewers may
not be according to the plan of the streets, the gully-grates must
nevertheless be found at the street intersections, whether the nearest
point to the sewer or not, or else the water would not be quickly
carried off, and would form a nuisance.

I am informed, on good authority, both as regards the City and
Metropolitan Commissions, that the average distance of the gully-grates
is thirty yards one from another, including both sides of the way.
Their number does not depend upon population, but simply on the local
characteristics of the highways; for of course the rain falls into all
the streets in proportion to their size, whether populous or half-empty
localities. As, however, the more distant roads have not such an
approximation of grates, and the law which requires their formation
is by no means--and perhaps, without unnecessary interference, cannot
be--very definite, I am informed that it may fairly be represented,
that, of the 1760 miles of London public ways, more than two-thirds,
“or” remarked one informant, “say 1200 miles, are grated on _each_ side
of the street or road, at distances of sixty yards.” This would give
59 gully-holes in every one of the 1200 miles of street said to be so
supplied. Hence the total number throughout the metropolis will be
70,800.

_The gully-drain_, which is the street-drain, always presents now
a sloping curve, describing, more or less, part of a circle. This
drain starts, so to speak, from the side of the street, while its
course to the sewer, in order to economize space, is made by any most
appropriate curve, to include the reception of as great a quantity of
wet street-refuse as possible; for if the gully-drains were formed in
a direct, or even a not-very-indirect line, from the street sides to
the sewers, they would not only be more costly, more numerous, but
would, in fact, as I was told, “choke the under-ground” of London,
for now the subterranean capital is so complicated with gas, water,
and drain-pipes, that such a system as will allow room for each is
indispensable. The new system is, moreover, more economical. In the
City the gully-drains are nearly all of nine-inch diameter in tubular
pipeage. In the metropolitan jurisdiction they are the same, but not to
the same extent, some being only six inches.

Fifty, or even thirty years ago, the old street channels for gully
drainage were costly constructions, for they were made so as to suit
sewers which were cleansed by the street being taken “up,” and the
offensive deposit, thick and even indurated as it often was in those
days, drawn to the surface. Some few were three and even four feet
square; some two feet six inches wide, and three or four feet high;
all of brick. I am assured that of the extent or cost of these old
contrivances no accounts have been preserved, but that they were more
than twice as costly as the present method.

In all the reports I have seen, metropolitan or city--the statements
of the flushermen being to the same purport--there are complaints as
to the uses to which the gully-holes are put in many parts, every kind
of refuse admissible through the bars of the grate being stealthily
emptied down them. The paviours, if they have an opportunity, sweep
their surplus grout into the gullies, and so do the scavagers with
their refuse occasionally, though this is generally done in the
less-frequented parts, to get rid of the “slop,” which is valueless.

In a report, published in 1851, Mr. Haywood points out the prevalence
of the practice of using the gully-gratings as dustbins! A sewer under
Billingsgate accumulated in a few months many cart-loads, composed
almost wholly of fish-shells; and 114 cart-loads of fish-shells,
cinders, and rubbish were removed from the sewers in the vicinity
of Middlesex-street (Petticoat-lane); these had accumulated in
about twelve months. “Reconstructing the gullies,” he says, “so as
to intercept improper substances (which has been recently done at
Billingsgate), might prevent this material reaching the sewers, but
it would still have to be removed from the gullies, and would thus
still cause perpetual expense. Indeed, I feel convinced that nothing
but making public example by convicting and punishing some offenders,
under clause 69 of ‘The City of London Sewers’ Act,’ will stop the
practice, so universal in the poorer localities, of using the gullies
as dustbins.”

_The Gully-holes are now trapped_--with very few exceptions, one report
states, while another report intimates that gully-trapping has no
exception at all. The trap is resorted to so that the effluvium from
a gully-drain may not infect the air of the public ways; but among
engineers and medical sanitary inquirers, there is much difference
of opinion as to whether the system of trapping is desirable or not.
The general opinion seems to be, however, that all gullies should be
trapped.

Of the City gully-traps, Mr. Haywood, in a report for the year 1851,
says, as regards the period of their introduction:--

“About seventeen years ago your then surveyor (Mr. Kelsey) applied the
first traps to sewer gullies, and from that date to the present the
trapping of gullies has been adopted as a principle, and the city of
London is still, I believe, the only metropolitan area in which the
gullies are all trapped. The traps first constructed have since been
(as all first inventions or adaptations ever have or will be) improved
upon, and are rapidly being displaced by those of more improved
construction.

“Now, of the incompatible conditions required of gully-traps, of the
difficulty of obtaining such mechanical appliances so effective and
perfect as can _theoretically_ be devised, but yet of the extreme
desirability of obtaining them as perfect as modern science could
produce, your honourable court has, at least, for as long as I have
had the honour of holding office under you, been fully alive to; no
prejudice has opposed impediment to the introduction of novelties; your
court has been always open to inventors, and, at the present time,
there are sixteen different traps or modes of trapping gullies under
trial within your jurisdiction.

“Nor has the provision of the means of excluding effluvium from the
atmosphere been your only care; but the cleanliness of the sewers, and
the prevention of accumulation of decomposing refuse, both by regulated
cleansings, and by constructing the sewage upon the most improved
principles, have also been your aim and that of your officers; and I
do not hesitate to assert, that the offensiveness of the escape from
the gullies has been of late years much diminished by the care bestowed
upon the condition of the sewers.

“374 gullies have been retrapped in the City upon improved principles
during the last year.”

The gully-traps are on the principle of self-acting valves, but it is
stated in several reports, that these valves often remain permanently
open, partly from the street refuse (especially if mixed with the
débris from new or removed buildings) not being sufficiently liquified
to pass through them, and partly from the hinges getting rusted, and so
becoming fixed.

OF THE LENGTH OF THE LONDON SEWERS AND DRAINS.

There is no official account precisely defining the length of the
London sewerage; but the information acquired on the subject leaves no
doubt as to the accuracy of the following facts.

About 900 miles of sewers of the metropolis may be said to have been
surveyed; and it is known that from 100 to 150 miles more constitute a
portion of the metropolitan sewerage; this, too, independently of that
of the City, which is 50 miles. Altogether I am assured that the sewers
of the urban part of London, included within the 58 square miles before
mentioned, measure 1100 miles.

The classes of sewers comprised in this long extent are pretty equally
apportioned, each a third, or 366 miles, of the first, second, and
third classes respectively. Of this extent about 200 miles are
still, in the year 1852, _open_ sewers!--to say nothing of the great
open sewer, the Thames. The open sewers are found principally in
the Surrey districts, in Brixton, Lewisham, Tooting, and places at
the like distance from the more central parts of the Commissioners’
jurisdiction. These open sewers, however, are disappearing, and it is
intended that in time no such places shall exist; as it is, some miles
of them are inclosed yearly. The open sewers in what may be considered
more of the heart of the metropolis are a portion of the Fleet-ditch in
Clerkenwell, and places in Lambeth and Bermondsey, or about 20 miles in
the interior to 180 miles in the exterior portion of the capital. These
are national disgraces.

The 1100 miles above-mentioned, however, include only the sewers,
comprising neither the house nor gully-drains. According to the present
laws, all newly-built houses must be drained into the sewers; and in
1850 there were 5000 applications from the western districts alone to
the Commissioners, for the promotion of the drainage of that number
of old and new houses into the sewers, the old houses having been
previously drained into cesspools.

I am assured, on good authority, that fully one-half of the houses in
the metropolis are at the present time drained into the sewers. In
one street, about a century old, containing in the portion surveyed
for an official purpose, on the two sides of the way, 76 houses, the
number was found to be equally divided--half the drainage being into
sewers and half into cesspools. The number of houses in the metropolis
proper, of 115 square miles area, is 307,722. The majority, as far
as is officially known, are now drained into the public sewers, or
into private or branch sewers communicating with the larger public
receptacles, so that--allowing 200,000 houses to be included in the 58
square miles of the urban sewerage, and admitting that some wretched
dwelling-places are not drained at all--it is reasonable to assume that
at least 100,000 houses within this area are drained into the sewers.

The average length of the house-drains is, I learn from the best
sources, 50 feet per house. The builder of a new house is now required
by law to drain it, at the proprietor’s cost, 100 feet, if necessary,
to a sewer. In some instances, in detached houses, where the owners
object to the cesspool system, a house drain has been carried 230 feet
to a sewer, and sometimes even farther; but in narrow or moderately
wide streets, from 18 to 26 feet across, and in alleys and narrow
places (in case there is sewerage) the house drains may be but from 12
to 20 feet. Both these lengths of drainage are exceptions, and there
is no question that the average length may be put at 50 feet. In some
squares, for example, the sewer runs along the centre, so that the
house-drains here are in excess of the 50 feet average.

The length of the house-drainage of the more central part of London,
assuming 100,000 houses to be drained into the sewers, and each of such
drains to be on the average 50 feet long, is, then, 5,000,000 feet, or
about 2840 miles.

But there are still the street or gully-drains for the surface-water to
be estimated. In the Holborn and Finsbury division alone, the length
of the “main covered sewers” is said to be 83 miles; the length of
“smaller sewers” to carry off the surface-water from the streets 16
miles; the length of drains leading from houses to the main sewers, 264.

Now, if there be 16 miles of gully-drains to 83 miles of main covered
sewers, and the same proportion hold good throughout the 58 square
miles over which the sewers extend, it follows that there would be
about 200 miles of gully-drains to the gross 1100 miles of sewers.

But this is only an approximate result. The length and character of the
gully-drains I find to vary very considerably. If the streets where the
gully-grates are found have no sewer in a line with the thoroughfare,
still the water must be drained off and conveyed to the nearest sewer,
of any class, large or small, and consequently at much greater length
than if there were a sewer running down the street. Neither is the
number of the gully-holes any sure criterion of the measurement of the
gully-drains, for where the intersections are, and consequently the
gully-holes frequent, a number, sometimes amounting to ten, are made to
empty their contents into the same gully-drain. Neither do the returns
of yearly expenditure, presented to Parliament by the Metropolitan
Court of Sewers, supply information. But even if the exact length, and
the exact price paid for the formation of that length, were given,
it would supply but _the year’s_ outlay as regards the additions or
repairs that had been made to the gully-drains, and certainly not
furnish us with the original cost of the whole.

One experienced informant told me--but let me premise that I heard
from all the gentlemen whom I consulted, a statement that they could
only compute by analogy with other facts bearing upon the subject--was
confident, that taking only 1200 miles of public way as gully-drained,
that extent might be considered as the length of the gully-drains
themselves. Even calculating such drains to run from each side of the
public way, which is generally the case, I am told that, considering
the economy of underground space which is now necessary, the length of
1200 miles is as fair an estimate for gully-drainage (apart from other
drainage) as for the length of the streets so gullied.

Hence we have, for the gross extent of the whole sewers and drains of
the metropolis, the following result,--

Miles.
Main covered sewers 1100
House-drains 2840
Gully-drains for surface-water of
streets 1200
----
Total length of the sewers and
drains of the metropolis 5140

The island of Great Britain, I may observe, is, at its extreme
points, 550 miles from north to south, and 290 from east to west. It
would, therefore, appear that the main sewers of the capital are just
double the length of the whole island, from the English Channel to
John-o’-Groats, and nearly three times longer than the greatest width
of the country. But this is the extent of the sewerage alone. The
drainage of London is about equal in length to the diameter of the
earth itself!

OF THE COST OF CONSTRUCTING THE SEWERS AND DRAINS OF THE METROPOLIS.

The money actually expended in constructing the 1100 miles of sewers
and 4000 miles of drains, even if we were only to date from Jan. 1,
1800, is not and never can be known. They have been built at intervals,
as the metropolis, so to speak, _grew_. They were built also in many
sizes and forms, and at many variations of price, according to the
depth from the surface, the good or bad management, or the greater or
lesser extent of jobbery or “patronage” in the several independent
commissions. Accounts were either not presented in “the good old
times,” or not preserved.

Had the 1100 miles of sewers to be constructed anew, they would
be, according to the present prices paid by the Commissioners--not
including digging or such extraneous labour, but the cost of the sewer
only--as follows:--

366 miles of sewers of the first
class, or 1,932,480 feet, at 15_s._
per foot £1,449,360
366 miles, or 1,932,480 feet of
the second class, at 11_s._ per foot 1,062,864
Same length of third class, at
9_s._ per foot 869,616
----------
Total cost of the sewers of the
metropolis £3,381,840

As this is a lower charge than was paid for the construction of more
than three-fourths of the sewers, we may fairly assume that their cost
amounted to from three millions and a half to four millions of pounds
sterling.

The majority of the house-drains running into the sewers are brick, and
seldom less than 9 inches square; sometimes, in the old brick drains,
they are some inches larger, and in the very old drains, and in some
100 years old, wooden planks were often used instead of a brick or
stone construction, for the sake of reducing cost, and replaced when
rotted. The wood, in many cases, soon decayed, and since 1847 no wooden
sewers have been allowed to be formed, nor any old ones to be repaired
with new wood; the work must be of stone or brick, if not pipeage.
About two-thirds of the drains running from the houses to the sewers
are brick; the remaining third tubular, or earthenware pipes. The cost,
if now to be formed, would be somewhat as follows:--

1893-1/3 miles of brick drains, 5_s._
per foot, as average of sizes £2,499,200
945-2/3 feet of tubular drains, average
of sizes 2_s._ 6_d._ 624,800
-----------
Total cost of the house-drains of
London £3,124,000

The cost of the street or gully drains have still to be estimated.

The present cost of the 9-inch gully-pipe drains is about 3_s._ 6_d._ a
foot; of the 6-inch, 2_s._ 6_d._ Of the proportionate lengths of these
two classes of street-drains I have not been able to gain any account,
for, I believe, it has never been ascertained in any way approaching
to a total return. Taking 1200 miles, however, as quite within the
full length of the gully-drains, and calculating at the low average of
3_s._ the foot for the whole, the total cost of the street-drains of
the metropolis would be 950,400_l._, or, I am assured, one might say a
million sterling, and this, even if all were done at the present low
prices; the original cost would, of course, have been much greater.

Hence, according to the above calculations, we have the following

_Gross Estimate of the Cost of the Sewers and Drains of the Metropolis._

£
1100 miles of main covered sewers 3,500,000
2840 miles of house-drains 3,000,000
1200 miles of gully or street drains 1,000,000
---- ---------
5140 miles of sewers and drainage = 7,500,000

OF THE USES OF SEWERS AS A MEANS OF SUBSOIL DRAINAGE.

There is one other purpose toward which a sewer is available--a
purpose, too, which I do not remember to have seen specified in the
Metropolitan Reports.

“The first, and perhaps most important purpose of sewers, as respects
health,” says the Report of Messrs. Walker, Cubitt, and Brunel
(1848), “is, _as under-drains to the surrounding earth_. They answer
this purpose so effectually and quietly, and have done it so long,
that their importance in this respect is overlooked. In the Sanitary
Commissioners’ Reports we do not find it once noticed, and the
recommendation of the substitution of stone or earthenware pipes for
the larger brick sewers, seems to show, that any provision for the
_under-drainage_ was thought unnecessary, although such a provision is
in our opinion most important.

“Under the artificial ground, the collection of ages, which in the
City of London, as in most ancient towns, forms the upper surface, is
a considerable thickness of clean gravel, and under the gravel is the
London clay. The present houses are founded chiefly on the artificial
or ‘made ground,’ while the sewers are made through the gravel; and
it is known practically, that however charged with water the gravel
of a district may be, the springs for a considerable distance round
are drawn down by making a sewer, and the wells that had water within
a few feet of the surface have again to be sunk below the bottom of
the sewer to reach the water. Every interstice between the stones of
the gravel acts as an under-drain to conduct the water to the sewer,
through the sides of which it finds its way, even if mortar be used in
the construction.

“Hence the salubrity of a gravel foundation, if the water be drawn
out of it by sewers or other means, as is the case with the City and
with Westminster. A proof of this principle was afforded by the result
of a reference to physicians and engineers in 1838, to inquire into
the state of drainage and smells in and near Buckingham Palace, as to
which there had been complaints, though none so heavy as Mr. Phillips
now makes, when he says, ‘that the drainage of Buckingham Palace is
extremely defective, and that its precincts are reeking with filth and
pestilential odours from the absence of proper sewerage!’”

The Report then shows the pains that were taken to ensure dryness in
the Palace. Pits were dug in the garden 14 feet below the surface, and
3-1/2 feet below high-water mark in the river, and they were found dry
to the bottom. The kitchens and yard of the palace are, however, only
18 inches above Trinity high-water mark in the Thames, and therefore
18 inches below a very high tide. The physician, Sir James Clarke, and
the engineers, Messrs. Simpson and Walker, in a separate Report, spoke
in terms of commendation of the drainage of the Palace in 1838, as
promotive of dryness. Since that time a connecting chain has been made
from the Palace drains into the canal in St. James’s-park, to prevent
the wet from rising as formerly during heavy rains. “The Palace,” it
is stated in the Report of the three engineers, “should not be classed
with the low part of Pimlico, where the drainage is, we believe, very
defective, and to which, for anything we know to the contrary, the
character given by Mr. Phillips may be applicable.”

Unfortunately, however, for this array of opinions of high authority,
and despite the advantages of a gravel bed for the substratum of the
palatial sewerage, the drainage and sewerage about Buckingham Palace
is more frequently than that of any other public place under repair,
and is always requiring attention. It was only a few days ago, before
the court left Windsor Castle for London, that men were employed night
and day, on the drains and cesspoolage channels, to make, as one of
them described it to me--and such working-men’s descriptions are often
forcible--“the place _decent_. I was hardly ever,” he added, “in such a
set of stinks as I’ve been in the sewers and underground parts of the
palace.”

OF THE CITY SEWERAGE.

As yet I have spoken only of the sewers of London[64] “without the
City;” but the sewers within the City, though connected, for the
general public drainage and sewerage of the capital, with the works
under the control of the Metropolitan Commissioners, are in a distinct
and strictly defined jurisdiction, superintended by City Commissioners,
and managed by City officers, and consequently demand a special notice.

The account of the City sewers, however, may be given with a
comparative brevity, for the modes of their construction, as well as
their general management, do not differ from what I have described as
pertaining to the extra-civic metropolis. There are, nevertheless, a
few distinctions which it is proper to point out.

The City sewers are the oldest in the capital, for the very plain
reason that the City itself, in its site, if not now in its public and
private buildings, is the oldest part of London, as regards the abode
of a congregated body of people.

The ages (so to speak) of these sewers, vary, for the most part,
according to the dates of the City’s rebuilding after the Great Fire,
and according to the dates of the many alterations, improvements,
removal or rebuilding of new streets, markets, &c., which have been
effected since that period. Before the Great Fire of 1666, all drainage
seems, with a few exceptions, to have been fortuitous, unconnected, and
superficial.

The _first_ public sewer built after this important epoch in the
history of London was in Ludgate-street and hill. This was the laudable
work of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, and was constructed at the
instance, it is said, and after the plans, of Sir Christopher Wren.
There is, perhaps, no official or documentary proof of this, for the
proclamations from the King in council, the Acts of Parliament, and the
resolutions of the Corporation of the City of London at that important
period, are so vague and so contradictory, and were so frequently
altered or abrogated, and so frequently disregarded, that it is more
impossible than difficult to get at the truth. Of the fact which I have
just mentioned, however, there need be no doubt; nor that the _second_
public City sewer was in Fleet-street, commenced in 1668, the second
year after the fire.

There are, nevertheless, older sewers than this, but the dates of their
construction are not known; we have proof merely that they existed in
old London, or as it was described by an anonymous writer (quoted, if
I remember rightly, in Maitland’s “History of London”), London “_ante
ignem_”--London before the fire. These sewers, or rather portions of
sewers, are severally near Newgate, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital sewer,
and that of the Irongate by the Tower.

The sewer, however, which may be pointed out as the most remarkable is
that of Little Moorgate, London-wall. It is formed of red tiles; and
from such being its materials, and from the circumstance of some Roman
coins having been found near it, it is supposed by some to be of Roman
construction, and of course coeval with that people’s possession of the
country. This sewer has a flat bottom, upright sides, and a circular
arch at its top; it is about 5 feet by 3 feet. The other older sewers
present much about the same form; and an Act in the reign of Charles
II. directs that sewers shall be so built, but that the bottom shall
have a circular curve.

I am informed by a City gentleman--one taking an interest in such
matters--that this sewer has troubled the repose of a few civic
antiquaries, some thinking that it was a Roman sewer, while others
scouted such a notion, arguing that the Romans were not in the habit
of doing their work by halves; and that if they had sewered London,
great and enduring remains would have been discovered, for their main
sewer would have been a solid construction, and directed to the Thames,
as was and is the Cloaca Maxima, in the Eternal City, to the Tiber.
Others have said that the sewer in question was merely built of Roman
materials, perhaps first discovered about the time, having originally
formed a reservoir, tank, or even a bath, and were keenly appropriated
by some economical or scheming builder or City official.

“That the Britons,” says Tacitus in his “Life of Agricola,” “who led
a roaming life, and were easily incited to war, might contract a love
for peace, by being accustomed to a pleasanter mode of life, Agricola
assisted them to build houses, temples, and market-places. By praising
the diligent and upbraiding the idle, he excited such emulation among
the Britons, that, after they had erected all those necessary buildings
in their towns, they built others for pleasure and ornament, as
porticoes, galleries, _baths_, and banqueting-houses.”

The sewers of the city of London are, then, a comparatively modern
work. Indeed, three-fourths of them may be called modern. The earlier
sewers were--as I have described under the general head--ditches, which
in time were arched over, but only gradually and partially, as suited
the convenience or the profit of the owners of property alongside
those open channels, some of which thus presented the appearance of
a series of small uncouth-looking bridges. When these bridges had to
be connected so as to form the summit of a continuous sewer, they
presented every variety of arch, both at their outer and under sides;
those too near the surface had to be lowered. Some of these sewers,
however, were in the first instances connected, despite difference
of size and irregularity of form. The result may be judged from the
account I have given of the strange construction of some of the
Westminster sewers, under the head of “subterranean survey.”

How modern the City sewers are may best be estimated from the following
table of what may be called the dates of their construction. The
periods are given decennially as to the progress of the formation of
_new_ sewers:--

Feet.
1707 to 1717 2,805
1717 „ 1727 2,110
1727 „ 1737 2,763
1737 „ 1747 1,238
1747 „ 1757 3,736
1757 „ 1767 3,736
1767 „ 1777 7,597
1777 „ 1787 8,693
1787 „ 1797 3,118
1797 „ 1807 5,116
1807 „ 1817 5,097
1817 „ 1827 7,847
-------
52,810

1827 to 1837 39,072 feet.
1837 to 1847 88,363 „
-------
127,435

Thus the length made in the 20 years previous to 1847 was more than
double all that was made during the preceding 120 years; while in the
ten years from 1837 to 1847, the addition to the lineal extent of
sewerage was very nearly equal to all that had been made in 130 years
previously.

This addition of 127,435 feet, or rather more than 24 miles, seems but
a small matter when “London” is thought of; but the reader must be
reminded that only a small portion (comparatively) of the metropolis
is here spoken of, and the entire length of the City sewerage, at the
close of 1847, was but 44 miles; so that the additions I have specified
as having been made since 1837, were more than one-half of the whole.
The _re_-constructions are not included in the metage I have given,
for, as the new sewers generally occupied the same site as the old,
they did not add to the length of the whole.

The total length of the City sewerage was, on the 31st December, 1851,
no less than 49 miles; while the entire public way was at the same
recent period, 51 miles (containing about 1000 separate and distinct
streets, lanes, courts, alleys, &c., &c.); and I am assured that in
another year or so, not a furlong of the whole City will be unsewered.

The more ancient sewers usually have upright walls, a flat or
slightly-curved invert, and a semicircular or gothic arch. The form of
such as have been built apparently more than 20 years ago, is that of
two semicircles, of which the upper has a greater radius, connected by
sloping side walls; those of recent construction are egg-shaped. The
main lines are not unfrequently elliptic; in the case of the Fleet,
and other ancient affluents of the Thames, the forms and dimensions
vary considerably. Instances occur of sewers built entirely of stone;
but the material is almost invariably brick, most commonly 9 inches in
substance; the larger sewers 14, and sometimes 18 inches.

The falls or inclinations in the course of the City sewerage vary
greatly, as much as from 1 in 240 to 1 in 24, or, in the first case,
from a fall of 22 feet, in the latter, of course, to ten times such
fall, or 220 feet per mile. There are, moreover, a few cases in which
the inclination is as small as 1 in 960; others where it is as high as
1 in 14. This irregularity is to be accounted for, partly by the want
of system in the old times, and partly from the natural levels of the
ground. The want of system and the indifference shown to providing a
proper fall, even where it was not difficult, was more excusable a few
years back than it would be at the present time, for when some of these
sewers were built, the drainage of the house-refuse into them was not
contemplated.

The number of houses drained into the City sewers is, as precisely
as such a matter can be ascertained, 11,209; the number drained into
the cesspools is 5030. This shows a preponderance of drainage into
the sewers of 6179. The length of the house-drains in the City, at an
average of 50 feet to each house, may be estimated at upwards of 106
miles. These City drains are included in the general computation of the
metropolis.

The gully-drains in the City are more frequent than in other parts
of the metropolis, owing to the continual intersection of streets,
&c., and perhaps from a closer care of the sewerage and all matters
connected with it. The general average of the gully-drains I have
shown to be 59 for every mile of street. I am assured that in the
City the street-drains may be safely estimated at 65 to the mile.
Estimating the streets gullied within the City, then, at an average
of 50 miles, or about a mile more than the sewers, the number of
gully-drains is 3250, and the length of them about 50 miles; but these,
like the house-drains, have been already included in the metropolitan
enumeration.

The actual sum expended yearly upon the construction, and repairs,
and improvements of the City sewers cannot be cited as a distinct
item, because the Court makes the return of the aggregate annual
expenditure, as regards pavement, cleansing, and the matters specified
as the general expenditure under the Court of Commissioners of the City
Sewers. The cost, however, of the construction of sewers comprised
within the civic boundaries is included in the general metropolitan
estimate before given.

OF THE OUTLETS, RAMIFICATIONS, ETC., OF THE SEWERS.

In this enumeration I speak only of the _public_ outlets into the
river, controlled and regulated by public officers.

The orifices or mouths of the sewers where they discharge themselves
into the Thames, beginning from their eastern, and following them
seriatim to their western extremity, are as follows:--

Limehouse Hole.
Irongate Wharf.
Ratcliffe Cross.
Fox-lane, Shadwell.
London Dock.
St. Katharine’s Dock.
The eleven City outlets, which I shall specify hereafter.
Essex-street, Strand.
Norfolk-street, Strand.
Durham Hill (or Adelphi).
Northumberland-street.
Scotland-yard.
Bridge-street, Westminster.
Pimlico.
Cubitt’s (also in Pimlico).
Chelsea Bridge.
Fulham Bridge.
Hammersmith Bridge.
Sandford Bridge (into a sort of creek of the Thames), or near the four bridges.
Twickenham.
Hampton.
In all, 32.

It might only weary the reader to enumerate the outlets on the Surrey
side of the Thames, which are 28 in number, so that the public sewer
outlets of the whole metropolis are 60 in all.

The public sewer outlets from the City of London into the Thames
are, as I have said, eleven in number, or rather they are usually
represented as eleven, though in reality there are twelve such
orifices--the “Upper” and “Eastern” Custom-House Sewers (which are
distinct) being computed as one. These outlets, generally speaking the
most ancient in the whole metropolis, are--

London Bridge.
Ancient Walbrook.
Paul’s Wharf.
The Fleet-street Sewer at Blackfriars Bridge.
(I mention these four first, because they are the largest outlets).
Tower Dock.
Pool Quay.
Custom House.
New Walbrook.
Dowgate Dock.
Hamburg Wharf.
Puddle Dock.

Until recently, there was also Whitefriars Docks, but this is now
attached to the Fleet Sewer outlet.

The Fleet Sewer is the oldest in London. No portion of the ditch or
river composing it is now uncovered within the jurisdiction of the
City; but until a little more than eleven years ago a portion of it,
north of Holborn, was uncovered, and had been uncovered for years.
Indeed, as I have before intimated, barges and small craft were
employed on the Fleet River, and the City determined to “encourage its
navigation.” Even the “polite” Earl of Chesterfield, a century ago
(for his lordship was born in 1694, and died in 1773), when asked by a
Frenchman in Paris, if there was in London a river to compare to the
Seine? replied that there certainly was, and it was called Fleet Ditch!
This is now the sewer; but it was not a covered sewer until 1765, when
the Corporation ordered it to be built over.

The next oldest sewer outlet is that at London Bridge, and London
antiquaries are not agreed as to whether it or the Fleet is the oldest.

The Fleet Sewer at Blackfriars Bridge is 18 feet high; between
Tudor-street and Fleet Bridge (about the foot of Ludgate-hill), 14 feet
3 inches high; at Holborn Bridge, 13 feet; and in its continuation in
the long-unfinished Victoria-street, 12 feet 3 inches. In all these
localities it is 12 feet wide.

The New London Bridge Sewer, built or rebuilt, wholly or partly, in
1830, is 10 feet by 8 at its outlet; decreasing to the south end of
King William-street, where it is 9 feet by 7; while it is 8 feet by 7
in Moorgate-street.

Paul’s Wharf sewer is 7 feet 6 inches by 5 feet 6 inches near the
outlet.

With the one exception of the Fleet River, none of the City sewer
outlets are covered, the Fleet outlet being covered even at low water.
The issue from the others runs in open channels upon the shore.

Mr. Haywood (February 12, 1850), in a report of the City Sewer
Transactions and Works, observes,--“During the year (1849) the outlet
sewers at Billingsgate and Whitefriars, two of the outlets of main
sewers which discharged at the line of the River Wall, have been
diverted (times of storm excepted); there remain, therefore, but
eleven main outlets within the jurisdiction of this commission, which
discharge their waters at the line of the River Wall.

“As a temporary measure, it is expedient to convey the sewage of
the whole of the outlets within the City by covered culverts, below
low-water mark; this subject has been under the consideration both of
this Commission and the Navigation Committee.”

Whether the covered culvert is better than the open run, is a matter
disputed among engineers (as are very many other matters connected with
sewerage), and one into which I need not enter.

Mr. Haywood says further:--“The Fleet sewer already discharges its
average flow, by a culvert, below low-water mark; with one exception
only, I believe, none of the numerous outlets, which, for a length of
many miles, discharge at intervals into the Thames at the line of the
River Wall, both within and without your jurisdiction, discharge by
culverts in a similar manner.”

These eleven outlets are far from being the whole number which give
their contents into “the silver bosom of the Thames,” along the
bank-line of the City jurisdiction. There are (including the 11) 182
outlets; but these are not under the control (unless in cases of
alteration, nuisance, &c.) of the Court of Sewers. They are the outlets
from the drainage of the wharfs, public buildings, or manufactories
(such as gas-works, &c.) on the banks of the river; and the right to
form such outlets having been obtained from the Navigation Committee,
who, under the Lord Mayor, are conservators of the Thames, the care of
them is regarded as a private matter, and therefore does not require
further notice in this work. The officers of the City Court of Sewers
observe these outlets in their rounds of inspection, but interfere
only on application from any party concerned, unless a nuisance be in
existence.

To convey a more definite notion of the extent and ramified sweep of
the sewers, I will now describe (for the first time in print) some
of the chief _Sewer Ramifications_, and then show the proportionate
or average number of public ways, of inhabited houses, and of the
population to each great main sewer, distinguishing, in this instance,
those as _great main sewers_ which have an outlet into the Thames.

The reader should peruse the following accounts with the assistance
of a map of the environs, for, thus aided, he will be better able to
form a definite notion of the curiously-mixed and blended extent of the
sewerage already spoken of.

First, then, as to the ramifications of the great and ancient Fleet
outlet. From its mouth, so to speak, near Blackfriars Bridge, its
course is not parallel with any public way, but, running somewhat
obliquely, it crosses below Tudor-street into Bridge-street,
Blackfriars, then occupies the centre of Farringdon-street, and
that street’s prolongation or intended prolongation into the New
Victoria-street (the houses in this locality having been pulled down
long ago, and the spot being now popularly known as “the ruins”),
and continues until the City portion of the Fleet Sewer meets the
Metropolitan jurisdiction between Saffron and Mutton hills, the
junction, so to call it, being “under the houses”[65] (a common phrase
among flushermen). A little farther on it connects itself with an
open part of the Fleet Ditch, running at the back of Turnmill-street,
Clerkenwell. In its City course, the sewer receives the issue from 150
public ways (including streets, alleys, courts, lanes, &c.), which
are emptied into it from the second, third, or smaller class sewers,
from Ludgate-hill and its proximate streets, the St. Paul’s locality,
Fleet-street and its adjacent communications in public ways, with
a series of sewers running down from parts of Smithfield, &c. The
_greatest_ accession of sewage, however, which the Fleet receives from
_one_ issue, is a few yards beyond where the City has merged into the
Metropolitan jurisdiction; this accession is from a first-class sewer,
known as “the Whitecross-street sewer,” because running from that
street, and carrying into the Fleet the contributions of 60 crowded
streets.

After the junction of the covered City sewer with the uncovered ditch
in Clerkenwell, the Fleet-river sewer (again covered) skirts round Cold
Bath Fields Prison (the Middlesex House of Correction), runs through
Clerkenwell-green into the Bagnigge Wells-road, so on to Battle-bridge
and King’s-cross; then along the Old Saint Pancras-road, and thence
to the King’s-road (a name now almost extinct), where the St. Pancras
Workhouse stands close by the turnpike-gate. Along Upper College-street
(Camden-town) is then the direction of this great sewer, and running
_under_ the canal at the higher part of Camden-town, near the bridge
by the terminus of the Great North Western Railway, it branches into
the highways and thoroughfares of Kentish-town, of Highgate, and of
Hampstead, respectively, and then, at what one informant described as
“the outside” of those places, receives the open ditches, which form
the further sewerage, under the control of the Commissioners, who cause
them to be cleansed regularly.

In order to show more consecutively the direction, from place to place,
in straight, devious, or angular course, of this the most remarkable
sewer of the world, considering the extent of the drainage into it, I
have refrained from giving beyond the Whitecross-street connection with
the Fleet, an account of the number of streets sewered into this old
civic stream. I now proceed to supply the deficiency.

From a large outlet at Clerkenwell-green (a very thickly-built
neighbourhood) flows the connected sewage of 100 streets. At
Maiden-lane, beyond King’s-cross, a district which is now being built
upon for the purposes of the Great Northern Railway, the sewage of
10 streets is poured into it. In the course of this sewer along
Camden-town, it receives the issue of some 20 branches, or 40 streets,
&c. About 15 other issues are received before the open ditches of
Kentish-town, Highgate, and Hampstead are encountered.

It is not, however, merely the sewage collected in the precincts of
the City proper, which is “outletted” (as I heard a flusherman call
it) into the Thames. Other districts are drained into the large City
outlets nearing the river. “Many of your works,” says Mr. Haywood,
the City surveyor, in a report addressed to the City Commissioners,
Oct. 23, 1849, “have been beneficially felt by districts some miles
distant from the City. Twenty-nine outlets have been provided by you
for the sewage of the County of Middlesex; the high land of and about
Hampstead, drains through the Fleet sewer; Holloway and a portion of
Islington can now be drained by the London Bridge sewer; Norton Folgate
and the densely-populated districts adjacent are also relieved by it.”

On the other hand, the Irongate sewer (one of the most important),
which has its outlet in the Tower Hamlets, drains a portion of the City.

The reader must bear in mind, also, that were he to traverse the Fleet
sewer in the direction described--for all the men I conversed with on
the subject, if asked to show the course of sewerage with which they
were familiar, began _from_ the outlet into the Thames--the reader, I
say, must remember that he would be advancing all the way _against_ the
stream, in a direction in which he would find the sewage flowing onward
to its mouth, while his course would be towards its sources.

On the left-hand side (for the account before given refers only to the
right-hand side) proceeding in the same direction, after passing the
underground precincts of the City proper, there is another addition
near Saffron-hill, of the sewage of 30 streets; then at Gray’s-inn-road
is added the sewage of 100 streets; New-road (at King’s-cross), 20
more streets; from the whole of Somers-town, a populous locality,
the sewerage concentrating all the busy and crowded places round
about “the Brill,” &c., the sewage of 120 streets is received; and at
Pratt-street, Camden-town, 12 other streets.

Thus into this sewage-current, directed to one final outlet, are
drained the refuse of 517 streets, including, of course, a variety of
minor thoroughfares, courts, alleys, &c., &c., as in the neighbourhoods
of Gray’s-inn-road, in Clerkenwell, Somers-town, &c. Some of these
tributaries to the efflux of the sewage are “barrel-drains,” but
perform the function of sewers along small courts, where there is “no
thoroughfare” either _upon_, or _below_ the surface.

The London Bridge sewer runs up King William-street to Moorgate-street,
along Finsbury-square into the City-road, diverging near the
Wharf-road, which it crosses _under_ the canal near the Wenlock basin,
and thence along the Lower-road, Islington, by Cock-lane, through
Highbury-vale; after this, at the extremity of Holloway, the open
ditches, as in the former instance, carry on the conveyance of sewage
from the outer suburbs.

The King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer--which seems to have given the
Commissioners more trouble than any other, in its connection
with Buckingham Palace, St. James’s Park, and the new Houses of
Parliament--runs from Chelsea-bridge past Cubitt’s workshops, and along
the King’s-road to Eaton-square, the whole of which is drained into it;
then “turning round,” as one man described it, it approaches Buckingham
Palace, which, with its grounds, as well as a portion of St. James’s
and the Green parks, is drained into this sewer; then branching away
for the reception of the sewage from the houses and gardens of Chelsea,
it drains Sloane-street, and, crossing the Knightsbridge-road, runs
through or across Hyde-park to the Swan at Bayswater, whence its course
is by the Westbourne District and under the canal, along Paddington,
until it attains the open country, or rather the grounds, in that
quarter, which have been very extensively and are now still being built
over, and where new sewers are constructed simultaneously with new
streets.

Thus in the “reach,” as I heard it happily enough designated, of each
of these great sewers, the reader will see from a map the extent of the
subterranean metropolis traversed, alike along crowded streets ringing
with the sounds of traffic, among palatial and aristocratic domains,
and along the parks which adorn London, as well as winding their
ramifying course among the courts, alleys, and teeming streets, the
resorts of misery, poverty, and vice.

Estimating, then, the number of sewers from the number of their river
outlets, and regarding all the rest as the branches, or tributaries,
to each of these superior streams, we have, adopting the area before
specified as being drained by the metropolitan sewers, viz., 58 square
miles, the following results:--

Each of the 60 sewers having an outlet into the Thames drains 618
statute acres.

And assuming the number of houses included within these 58 square
miles to be 200,000, and the population to amount to 1,500,000, or
two-thirds of the houses and people included in the Registrar-General’s
Metropolis, we may say that each of the 60 sewers would carry into the
Thames the refuse from 25,000 individuals and 3333 inhabited houses.
This, however, is partly prevented by the cesspoolage system, which
supplies receptacles for a proportion of the refuse that, were London
to be rebuilt according to the provisions of the present Building and
Sanitary Acts, would _all_ be carried, without any interception, into
the river Thames by the media of the sewers.

In my account of cesspoolage I shall endeavour to show the extent of
fæcal refuse, &c., contained in places not communicating with the
sewers, and to be removed by the labour of men and horses, as well as
the amount of fæcal refuse carried into the sewerage.

OF THE QUALITIES, ETC., OF THE SEWAGE.

The question of the value, the uses, and the best means of collecting
for use, the great mass of the sewage of the metropolis, seems to have
become complicated by the statements which have been of late years put
forth by rival projectors and rival companies. In our smaller country
towns, the neighbourhood of many being remarkable for fertility and for
a green beauty of meadow-land and pasturage, the refuse of the towns,
whether sewage or cesspoolage (if not washed into a current, stream,
or river), is purchased by the farmers, and carted by them to spread
upon the land.

By _sewage_, I mean the contents of the _sewerage_, or of the series
of sewers; which neither at present nor, I believe, at any former
period, has been applied to any useful or profitable purpose by the
metropolitan authorities. The readiest mode to get rid of it, without
any care about ultimate consequences, has always been resorted to, and
that mode has been to convey it into the Thames, and leave the rest to
the current of the stream. But the Thames has its ebbs as well as its
flow, and the consequence is the sewage is _never_ got rid of.

The most eminent of our engineers have agreed that it is a very
important consideration how this sewage should be not only innocuously
but profitably disposed of; and if not profitably, in an immediate
money return, to those who may be considered its owners (the municipal
authorities of the kingdom), at least profitably in a national point of
view, by its use in the restoration or enrichment of the fertility of
the soil, and the consequent increase of the food of man and beast.

Sir George Staunton has pronounced some of the tea-growing parts of
China to be as blooming as an English nobleman’s flower-garden. Every
jot of manure, human ordure, and all else, is minutely collected, even
by the poorest.

I have already given a popular account of the composition of the
metropolitan sewage, &c. (under the head of Wet Refuse), and I now give
its scientific analysis.

In some districts the sewage is more or less liquid--in what proportion
has not been ascertained--and I give, in the first place, an analysis
of the sewage of the King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer, Westminster, the
result having been laid before a Committee of the House of Commons.
As the contents of the great majority of sewers _must_ be the same,
because resulting from the same natural or universally domestic
causes (as in the refuse of cookery, washing, surface-water, &c.),
the analysis of the sewage of the King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer may be
accepted as one of sewer-matter generally.

Evidence was given before the committee as to the proportion of
“land-drainage _water_” to what was really _manure_, in the matter
derived from the sewer in question. A produce of 140 grains of manure
was derived from a gallon of sewer-water. Messrs. Brande and Cooper,
the analyzers, also state that one gallon (10 lbs.?) of the liquid
portion of the sewage, evaporated to dryness, gave 85·3 grains of solid
matter, 74·8 grains of which was again soluble, and contained--

Ammonia 3·29
Sulphuric acid 0·62
Phosphate of lime 0·29
Lime 6·25
Chlorine 10·00

“and potass and soda, with a large quantity of soluble and vegetable
matter, and 10·54 insoluble.”

This insoluble portion consisted of

Phosphate of lime 2·32
Carbonate of lime 1·94
Silica 6·28
-----
10·54

The deposit from another gallon weighed 55 grains, of which 21·22 were
combustible, being composed of animal matter “rich in nitrogen,” some
vegetable matter, and a quantity of fat. Of this matter 33·75 grains
consisted of

Phosphate of lime 6·81
Oxide of iron 2·01
Carbonate of lime 1·75
Sulphate of lime 1·53
Earthy matter and sand 21·65
-----
33·75

Other Reports and other evidence show that what is described as “earthy
matter and sand” is the mac, mud, and the mortar or concrete used
in pavement, washed from the surface of the streets into the sewers
by heavy rains; otherwise for the most part the proper load of the
scavager’s cart.

Further analyses might be adduced, but with merely such variation in
the result as is inevitable from the state of the weather when the
sewage is drawn forth for examination; whether the day on which this is
done happens to be dry or wet[66].

It has been ascertained, but the exact proportion is not, and perhaps
cannot be, given, that the extent of covered to uncovered surface in
the district drained by the King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer was as 3 to 1,
while that of the Ranelagh Sewer, not far distant, was as 1 to 3, at
the time of the inquiry (1848).

“It could not be expected, therefore,” says the Report, “that the
Ranelagh Sewer (which, moreover, is open to the admission of the tide
at its mouth), in the quantity or quality of the manure produced, could
bear any proportion to the King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer.”

Mr. Smith, of Deanston, stated in evidence, that the average quantity
of rain falling into King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer was 139,934,586 cubic
feet in a year, and he assumes 6,000,000 tons as the amount of average
minimum quantity of drainage (yearly), yielding 4 cwt. of solid matter
in each 100 tons = 1 in 500.

Dr. Granville said, on the same inquiry, that he should be sorry to
receive on his land 500 tons of diluted sewer water (such as that from
the uncovered Ranelagh Sewer) for 1 ton of really fertilizing sewage,
such as that to be derived from the King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer.

I could easily multiply these analyses, and give further parliamentary
or official statements, but, as the results are the same, I will merely
give some extracts from the evidence of Dr. Arthur Hassall, as to the
microscopic constituents of sewage-water:--

“I have examined,” he said, “the sewer-water of several of the
principal sewers of London. I found in it, amongst many other things,
much decomposing vegetable matter, portions of the husks and the hairs
of the down of wheat, the cells of the potato, cabbage, and other
vegetables, while I detected but few forms of animal life, those
encountered for the most part being a kind of worm or anælid, and a
certain species of animalcule of the genus monas.”

“How do you account,” the Doctor was asked, “for the comparative
absence of animal life in the water of most sewers?” “It is, doubtless,
to be attributed,” he replied, “in a great measure, to the large
quantity of sulphuretted hydrogen contained in sewer-water, and which
is continually being evolved by the decomposing substances included in
it.”

“Have you any evidence to show that sewer-water does contain
sulphuretted hydrogen in such large quantity as to be prejudicial and
even fatal to animal life?” “With a view of determining this question,
I made the following experiments:--A given quantity of Thames water,
known to contain living infusoria, was added to an equal quantity of
sewer-water; examined a few minutes afterwards, the animalculæ were
found to be either dead or deprived of locomotive power and in a dying
state. A small fish, placed in a wine glass of sewer-water, immediately
gave signs of distress, and, after struggling violently, floated on its
side, and would have perished in a few seconds, had it not been removed
and placed in fresh water. A bird placed in a glass bell-jar, into
which the gas evolved by the sewer-water was allowed to pass, after
struggling a good deal, and showing other symptoms of the action of the
gas, suddenly fell on its side, and, although immediately removed into
fresh air, was found to be dead. These experiments were made, in the
first instance, with the sewer water of the Friar-street sewer (near
the Blackfriars-road); they were afterwards repeated with the water
of six other sewers on the Middlesex side, and with the same result,
as respects the animalculæ and fish, but not the bird; this, although
evidently much affected by the noxious emanations of the sewer-water,
yet survived the experiment.”

“Would you infer from these experiments that sewer-water, as contained
in the Thames near to London, is prejudicial to health?” “I would, most
decidedly; and regard the Thames in the neighbourhood of the metropolis
as nothing less than diluted sewer-water.”

“You have just stated that you found sewer-water to contain much
vegetable matter, and but few forms of animal life; the vegetable
matter you recognised, I presume, by the character of the cells
composing the several vegetable tissues?” “Yes, as also by the action
of iodine on the starch of the vegetable matter.”

“In what way do you suppose these various vegetable cells, the husks of
wheat, &c., reach the sewers?” “They doubtless proceed from the fæcal
matter contained in sewage, and not in general from the ordinary refuse
of the kitchen, which usually finds its way into the dust-bin.”

“Sewer-water, then, although containing but few forms of animal life,
yet contains, in large quantities, the food upon which most animalculæ
feed?” “Yes; and it is this circumstance which explains the vast
abundance of infusorial life in the water of the Thames within a few
miles of London.”

The same gentleman (a fellow of the Linnæan Society, and the author of
“A History of the British Fresh-water Algæ,” or water-weeds considered
popularly), in answer to the following inquiries in connection with
this subject, also said:--

“What species of infusoria represent the _highest_ degree of impurity
in water?” “The several species of the genera _Oxytricha_ and
_Paramecium_.”

“What species is most abundant in the Thames from Kew Bridge to
Woolwich?” “The _Paramecium Chrysalis_ of Ehrenberg; this occurs in
all seasons of the year, and in all conditions of the river, in vast
and incalculable numbers; so much so, that a quart bottle of Thames
water, obtained in any condition of the tide, is sure to be found, on
examination with the microscope, to contain these creatures in great
quantity.”

“Do you find that the infusorium of which you have spoken varies in
number in the different parts of the river between Kew Bridge and
Woolwich?” “I find that it is most abundant in the neighbourhood of the
bridges.” [Where the outlet of the sewers is common.]

“Then the order of impurity of Thames water, in your view, would be the
order in which it approaches the centre of London?” “Yes.”

“You find then, in Thames water, about the bridges, things decidedly
connected with the _sewer water_, as vegetable and animal matter
in a state of decomposition?” “I do; about the bridges, and in the
neighbourhood of London, there is very little living vegetable matter
on which animalculæ could live; the only source of supply which they
have is _the organic matter contained in sewer-water_, and which is to
be regarded as the food of these creatures. Where infusoria abound,
under circumstances _not_ connected with sewage, vegetable matter in a
living condition is certain to be met with.”

Respecting the _uses of the sewage_, I may add the following brief
observations. Without wishing in any way to prejudice the question
(indeed the reader will bear in mind that I have all along spoken
reprovingly of the waste of sewage), I am bound to say that the
opinions I heard during my inquiry from gentlemen scientifically and,
in some instances, practically familiar with the subject, concurred in
the conclusion that the _sewage_ of the metropolis cannot, with all
the applications of scientific skill and apparatus, be made either
sufficiently portable or efficacious for the purposes of manure to
assure a proper pecuniary return. In this matter, perhaps, speculators
have not traced a sufficient distinction between the liquid manure of
the sewers and the “_poudrette_,” or dry manure, manufactured from the
more solid excrementitious matter of the cesspools, not only in Paris,
but, until lately, even in London, where the business was chiefly in
the hands of Frenchmen. The staple of the French “_poudrette_” is
_not_ “_sewage_,” that is, the outpourings of the sewers--for this is
carried into the Seine, and washed away with little inconvenience,
as the tide hardly affects that river in Paris; but it is altogether
“_cesspoolage_,” that is, the deposit of the cesspools, collected in
fixed and moveable utensils, regulated by the “universal” police of
Paris, and conveyed by Government labourers to the Voirées, which are
huge reservoirs of nightsoil at Montfauçon, about five miles, and
in the Forest of Bondy, about ten miles, from the centre of Paris.
The London-made manure also was all of cesspoolage; the contents of
the nightman’s cart being “shot” in the manufacturer’s yard; and
when so manufactured was, I believe, without exception, sent to the
sugar-growing colonies, the farmers in the provinces pronouncing it
“too hot” for the ground. The same complaint, I may observe, has been
made of the French manufactured cesspool manure. I heard, on the other
hand, opinions from scientific and practical gentlemen, that the
sewer-water of London was so diluted, it was not profitably serviceable
for the irrigation of land. All, however, agreed that the sewage of the
metropolis ought not to be wasted, as it was certain that perseverance
in experiment (and perhaps a large outlay) were certain to make sewage
of value.

The following results, which the Board of Health have just issued in a
Report, containing “Minutes of Information attested on the Application
of Sewer-water and Town Manures to Agricultural Production,” supply
the latest information on this subject. The Report says first, that
“to be told that the average yield of a county is 30 bushels of wheat
per acre, or that the average weight of the turnip crop is 15 tons
per acre, means very little, and there is little to be learned from
such intelligence; but if it is shown that a certain farm under the
usual mode of culture yielded certain weights per acre, and that the
same land, by improved applications of the same manure, by the use of
machinery, and by _employing double the number of hands, at increased
wages_, is made to yield _four fold_ the weight of crop and of _better
quality_ than was previously obtained, a lesson is set before us worth
learning.”

It then proceeds to cite the following statements, on the authority of
the Hon. Dudley Fortescue, as to the efficiency of sewage-water as a
liquid manure applied to land.

“The first farm we visited was that of Craigentinney, situated about
one mile and a half south-east of Edinburgh, of which 260 Scotch acres”
(a Scotch acre is one-fourth more than any English acre) “receive a
considerable proportion of such sewerage as, under an imperfect system
of house-drainage, is at present derived from half the city. The
meadows of which it chiefly consists have been put under irrigation
at various times, the most recent addition being nearly 50 acres laid
out in the course of last year and the year previous, which, lying
above the level of the rest, are irrigated by means of a steam-engine.
The meadows first laid out are watered by contour channels following
the inequalities of the ground, after the fashion commonly adopted
in Devonshire; but in the more recent parts the ground is disposed
in ‘panes’ of half an acre, served by their respective feeders, a
plan which, though somewhat more expensive at the outset, is found
preferable in practice. The whole 260 acres take about 44 days to
irrigate; the men charged with the duty of shifting the water from
one pane to another give to each plot about two hours’ irrigation
at a time; and the engine serves its 50 acres in ten days, working
day and night, and employing one man at the engine and another to
shift the water. The produce of the meadows is sold by auction on the
ground, ‘rouped,’ as it is termed, to the cow-feeders of Edinburgh,
the purchaser cutting and carrying off all he can during the course of
the letting, which extends from about the middle of April to October,
when the meadows are shut up, but the irrigation is continued through
the winter. The lettings average somewhat over 20_l._ the acre; the
highest last year having brought 31_l._, and the lowest 9_l._; these
last were of very limited extent, on land recently denuded in laying
out the ground, and consequently much below its natural level of
productiveness. There are four cuttings in the year, and the collective
weight of grass cut in parts was stated at the extraordinary amount of
80 tons the imperial acre. The only cost of maintaining these meadows,
except those to which the water is pumped by the engine, consists in
the employment of two hands to turn on and off the water, and in the
expense of clearing out the channels, which was contracted for last
year at 29_l._, and the value of the refuse obtained was considered
fully equal to that sum, being applied in manuring parts of the land
for a crop of turnips, which with only this dressing in addition
to irrigation with the sewage-water presented the most luxuriant
appearance. The crop, from present indications, was estimated at from
30 to 40 tons the acre, and was expected to realize 15_s._ the ton
sold on the land. From calculations made on the spot we estimated the
produce of the meadows during the eight months of cutting at the keep
of ten cows per acre, exclusive of the distillery refuse they consume
in addition, at a cost of 1_s._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ per head per week. The
sea-meadows present a particularly striking example of the effects of
the irrigation; these, comprising between 20 and 30 acres skirting the
shores between Leith and Musselburgh, were laid down in 1826 at a cost
of about 700_l._; the land consisted formerly of a bare sandy tract,
yielding almost absolutely nothing; it is now covered with luxuriant
vegetation extending close down to high-water mark, and lets at an
average of 20_l._ per acre at least. From the above statement it will
be seen how enormously profitable has been the application in this case
of town refuse in the liquid form; and I have no hesitation in stating
that, great as its advantages have been, they might be extended four
or five fold by greater dilution of the fluid. Four or five times the
extent of land might, I believe, be brought into equally productive
cultivation under an improved system of drainage in the city, and a
more abundant use of water. Besides these Craigentinney meadows, there
are others on this and on the west side of Edinburgh, which we did
not visit, similarly laid out, and I believe realizing still larger
profits, from their closer proximity to the town, and their lying
within the toll-gates.”[67]

Such, then, are said to be the results of a practical application of
sewer-water. The preliminary remark of the Board of Health, however,
applies somewhat to the statement above given; for we are not told what
the _same land_ produced before the liquid manure was applied; nor are
we informed as to the peculiar condition and quantity of the land near
Craigentinney, and how it differs from the land near London.

The other returns are of liquid manures, of which sewer-water formed no
part, and, therefore, require no special notice of them. The following
observations are, however, worthy of attention:--

“The cases above detailed furnish some measure of the possible
results attainable in cultivation, especially corroborated as they
are by others which did not on this occasion come under our personal
observation, but one of which I may mention, having recently examined
into it, that of Mr. Dickinson, at Willesden, who estimates his yield
of Italian rye-grass at from 80 to 100 tons an acre, and gets 8 or
10 cuttings, according to the season; and as there is no peculiar
advantage of soil or climate (the former ranging from almost pure sands
to cold and tenacious clays, and the latter being inferior to that of
a large proportion of England) to prevent the same system being almost
universally adopted, they give some idea of the degree to which the
productiveness of land may be raised by a judicious appliance of the
means within our reach. When it is considered that such results may,
in the vicinity of towns and villages, be most effectually brought
about by the instant removal of all those matters which, when allowed
to remain in them, are among the most fruitful sources of social
degradation, disease, and death, one cannot but earnestly desire
the furtherance of such measures as will ensure this double result
of purifying the town and enriching the country; and as the facts I
have stated came at the same time under the notice of the gentleman I
mentioned above, under whose able superintendence the arrangements for
the water-supply and drainage of several towns are now in course of
execution, I trust it will not be long before this most advantageous
mode of disposing of the refuse of towns may be brought into practical
operation in various parts of the country.

“I have, &c.,

“D. F. FORTESCUE.

“General Board of Health.”

OF THE NEW PLAN OF SEWERAGE.

This branch of the subject hardly forms part of my present inquiry,
but, having pointed out the defects of the sewers, it seems but
reasonable and right to say a few words on the measures determined
upon for their improvement. It is only necessary for me, however, to
indicate the principal characteristics of the new, or rather intended,
mode of sewerage, as the work may be said to have been but commenced,
or hardly commenced in earnest, the Report of Mr. Frank Forster (the
engineer) bearing the date of Jan. 30, 1851.

In the carrying out of the engineer’s plan--which from its magnitude,
and, in all human probability, from its cost, when completed, would
be _national_ in other countries, but is here only _metropolitan_--in
the carrying out of this scheme, I say, two remarkable changes will be
found. The one is the employment of the power of steam in sewerage; the
other is the diversion of the sewage from the current of the Thames.
The ultimate uses of this sewage, agriculturally or otherwise, form no
part of the present consideration.

I should, however, first enumerate the general principles on which
the best authorities have agreed that the London sewers should be
constructed so as to ensure a proper disposal of the sewage, for these
principles are said to be at the basis of Mr. Forster’s plan.

I condense under the following heads the substance of a mass of
Reports, Committee Meetings, Suggestions, Plans, &c.:--

1. The channels, or pipeage, or other means of conveying away
house-refuse, should be so made that the removal will be _immediate_,
more especially of any refuse or filth capable of suspension in water,
since its immediate carrying off, it is said, would leave no time for
the generation of miasma.

2. Means should be provided for such disposal of sewage as would
prevent its tainting any stream, well, or pool, or, by its stagnation
or obstruction, in any way poisoning the atmosphere. And, as a natural
and legitimate result, it should be _so collected that it could be
applied to the cultivation of the land_ at the most economical rate.

3. In the providing works of deposit or storage in low districts, or
“of discharge where the natural outlets are free,” such works should
be provided as would not subject any place, or any man’s property, to
the risk of inundation, or any other evil consequence; while in the
construction of the drainage of the substratum, the works should be
at such a depth below the foundation of all buildings that tenements
should not be exposed to that continued damage from exhalation and
dampness which leads to the dry rot in timber, and to an immature decay
of materials and a general unhealthiness.

There are other points insisted upon in many Reports to which I need
but allude, such as

(_a._) The channels containing sewage should be of enduring and
impermeable material, so as to prevent all soakage.

(_b._) There should be throughout the channels of the subterranean
metropolis a fall or inclination which would suffice to prevent the
accumulation of any sewage deposit, with its deleterious influence and
ultimate costliness.

(_c._) Similar provisions should be used were it but to prevent
the creation of the noxious gases which now permeate many houses
(especially in the quarters inhabited by the poor) and escape into
many streets, courts, and alleys, for until improvements are effected
the pent-up sewage and the saturated brickwork of the sewers and older
drains must generate such gases.

(_d._) No tidal stream should ever receive a flow of sewage, because
then the cause of evil is never absent, for the filth comes back
with the tide; and as the Thames water constitutes the grand fount
of metropolitan consumption, the water companies, with very trifling
exceptions, give us back much of our own excrement, mixed with every
conceivable, and sometimes noxious, nastiness, with which we may brew,
cook, and wash--and drink, if we can. Filtering remedies but a portion
of the evil.

Now it would appear that not one of these requirements, the necessity
of which is unquestioned and unquestionable, is fully carried out by
the present system of sewerage, and hence the need of some new plan in
which the defects may be remedied, and the proper principles carried
out.

The instructions given by the Court were to the following effect:--

A. The Thames should be kept free from sewage whatever the state of the
tide.

B. There should be intercepting drains to carry off the sewage (so
keeping the Thames unsoiled by it) wherever practicable.

C. The sewage should be raised by artificial means into a main channel
for removal.

D. The intercepting sewers should be so constructed as to secure the
largest amount of effective drainage without artificial appliances.

In preparing his plan, Mr. Forster had the advice and assistance of Mr.
Haywood, of the City Court of Sewers.

The metropolis is divided into two portions--“the northern portion of
the metropolis,” or rather that portion of the metropolis which is on
the north or Middlesex bank of the Thames; and the southern portion, or
that which is on the south or Surrey side of the river.

The northern portion is in the new plan considered to “divide itself
into two separate areas,” and to these two areas different modes of
sewerage are to be applied:

“1. The interception of the drainage of that district, which, from
its elevation above the level of the outlet, is capable of having its
sewage and rainfall carried off by gravitation.

“2. The interception of the drainage of that district, which, from its
low lying position, will require its sewage, and in most localities its
rainfall, to be lifted by steam-power to a proper level for discharge.”

The first district runs from Holsden-green (beyond the better-known
Kensall-green) in the west, to the Tower Hamlets in the east. Its
form is irregular, but not very much so, merely narrowing from
Westbourn-green to its western extremity, the country then becoming
rural or woodland. Its highest reaches to the north are to Highgate and
Stamford-hill. The nearest approach to the south is to a portion of
the Strand, between Charing-cross and Drury-lane. Care has evidently
been taken to skirt this district, so to speak, by the canals and the
railroads. This division of the northern portion is described as “the
district for natural drainage.”

The area of this division is about 25-1/6 square miles.

The second division meets the first at the highway separating
Kensington-gardens from Bayswater; and runs on, bordering the river,
all the way to the West India Dock. Its shape is irregular, but,
abating the roundness, presents somewhat of that sort of figure seen
in the instrument known as a dumb-bell, the narrowest or hand-part
being that between Charing-cross and Drury-lane, skirting the river
as its southern bound. At its eastern end this second district widens
abruptly, taking in Victoria-park, Stratford, and Bromley.

The area of this division of the northern portion is 16-1/8 square
miles.

There are, moreover, two small tracts, comprising the southern part of
the Isle of Dogs, and a narrow slip on the west side of the river Lea,
which are intended to allow the rainfall to run into the Thames and the
Lea respectively.

The area of the two is 1-3/4 square mile.

The area to be drained by natural outfall comprises, then, 25-1/6
square miles as regards rainfall, and the same extent as regards
sewage; while the area to the drainage of which steam power is to
be applied comprises 14-1/3 square miles of rainfall, and 16-1/6
square miles of sewage; the two united areas of rainfall and sewage
respectively being 39-1/2 and 41-1/3 square miles.

The length of the great “high-level sewerage” will be, as regards the
main sewer, 19 miles and 106 yards; that of the “low-level sewerage,”
14 miles and 1501 yards.

I will now describe the course of each of these constructions.

On the eastern bank of the Lea the sewage of both districts is to
be concentrated. The high-level sewer will commence and _cross_ the
Lea near the “Four Mills.” It is then to proceed “in a westerly
direction under the East and West India Dock Railway and the Blackwall
Extension Railway, beneath the Regent’s-canal, to the east end of the
Bethnal-green-road, at the crossing of the Cambridge-heath-road, at
which point it will be joined by the proposed northern division of the
Hackney-brook, which drains an extensive district up to the watershed
line north of London, including Hackney, Stoke Newington and Holloway,
and part of Highgate and Hampstead; from thence the main sewer proceeds
along the Bethnal-green-road, Church-street, Old-street, Wilderness-row
(where a short branch from Coppice-row will join) to Brook-street-hill;
from thence to Little Saffron-hill, where a distance of about 100 yards
is proposed to be carried by an aqueduct over the Fleet-valley; thence
along Liquorpond-street, at the end of which it will receive a branch
from Piccadilly, on the south side, and a diversion of the Fleet-river,
on the north side; thence along Theobald’s-road, Bloomsbury-square,
Hart-street, New Oxford-street, to Rathbone-place (where it will
receive a diversion of the Regent-street sewer from Park-crescent),
along Oxford-street, and extending thence across Regent-circus to
South Molton-lane (where it will intercept the King’s Scholars’ Pond
sewer), continuing still along Oxford-street to Bayswater-place, Grand
Junction-road, Uxbridge-road, where it is joined by the Ranelagh sewer,
the sewage of which it is capable of receiving, and at this point it
terminates.”

It is difficult to convey to a reader, especially to a reader who
may not be familiar with the localities of London generally, any
adequate notion of the largeness, speaking merely of extent, of this
undertaking. Even a map conveys no sufficient idea of it.

Perhaps I may best be able to suggest to a reader’s mind a knowledge
of this largeness, when I state that in the district I have just
described, which is but _one_ portion (although the greatest) of the
sewerage of but _one_ side of the Thames, more than half a million of
persons, and nearly 100,000 houses are, so to speak, to be sewered.

The low-level tract sewerage, also, concentrates on the Lea, “near to
Four Mill’s distillery, taking the north-western bank of the Limehouse
Cut, at which point it receives the branch intended to intercept
the sewage of the Isle of Dogs; thence continuing along the bank of
Limehouse Cut, through a portion of the Commercial-road, Brook-street,
and beneath the Sun Tavern Fields, into High-street, or Upper
Shadwell; thence along Ratcliffe-highway and Upper East Smithfield,
across Tower-hill, through Little and Great Tower-streets, Eastcheap,
Cannon-street, Little and Great St. Thomas Apostle, Trinity-lane, Old
Fish-street, and Little Knight Rider-street; thence beneath houses in
Wardrobe-terrace, and on the eastern side of St. Andrew’s-hill, along
Earl-street to Blackfriars-road. From Blackfriars Bridge it is proposed
to construct the sewer along the river shore to the junction of the
Victoria-street sewer at Percy-wharf; which sewer between Percy-wharf
and Shaftesbury-terrace, Pimlico, becomes thus an integral portion of
the intercepting line; at Bridge-street, Westminster, a branch from
the Victoria-street sewer is intended to proceed along Abingdon and
Millbank-streets, as far as and for the purpose of taking up the King’s
Scholars’ Pond and other sewers at their outlets into the Thames.
From Shaftesbury-terrace the Victoria-street sewer is proposed to be
extended through Eaton-square and along the King’s-road, Chelsea, to
Park-walk, intercepting all the sewers along its line, and terminating
at a point where the drainage of Kensington may be brought into it
without pumping.”

The lines of sewerage thus described are, then, all to the _west_ of
the Lea, and all, whether from the shore of the Thames, or the northern
reaches in Highgate and Hampstead, converging to a pumping station
or sewage-concentration, on the _east_ bank of the Lea, in West Ham.
By this new plan, then, the high-level sewer is to _cross_ the Lea,
but that arrangement is impossible as respects the second district
described, which is _below_ the level of the Lea, so that its course
is to be _beneath_ that river, a little below where it is crossed by
the high-level line. To dispose of the sewage, therefore, conveyed from
the low-level tract, there will be a sewer of a “depth of _forty-seven_
feet _below_” the invert of the high-level sewer. This sewer, then, at
the depth of 47 feet, will run to the point of concentration containing
the low-level sewage.

At this point of the works, in order that the sewage may be collected,
so as to be disposed of ultimately in one mass, it has to be _lifted_
from the low to the high-level sewer. The invert of the high-level
sewer will at the lifting or pumping station be 20 feet _above_ the
ordnance datum, while that of the low-level sewer will be 27 feet
_below_ the same standard. Thus a great body of metropolitan sewage,
comprising among other districts the refuse of the whole City of
London, must be lifted no less than 47 feet, in order to be got rid of
along with what has been carried to the same focus by its natural flow.

The lifting is to be effected by means of steam, and the pumping power
required has been computed at 1100-horse power. To supply this great
mechanical and scientific force, there are to be provided two engines,
each of 550-horse power, with a third engine of equal capacity, to be
available in case of accident, or while either of the other engines
might require repairs of some duration.

The northern sewage of London (or that of the Middlesex bank of the
Thames, covered by that division of the capital) having been thus
brought to a sort of central reservoir, or meeting point, will be
conveyed in two parallel lines of sewerage to the bank of the river
Roding, being the eastern extremity of Gallion’s Reach (which is below
Woolwich Reach), in the Thames. The Roding flows into the Thames at
Barking Creek mouth. The length of this line will be four miles.

“At this point,” it is stated in the Report, “the level of the inverts
of the parallel sewers will be eight feet below high-water mark, and
here it is intended to collect the sewage into a reservoir during
the flood-tide, and discharge the same with the ebb-tide immediately
after high-water; and, as it is estimated that the reservoir will be
completely emptied during the first three hours of the ebb, it may be
safely anticipated that no portion of the sewage will be returned, with
the flood-tide, to within the bounds of the metropolis.”

The whole of the sewage and rainfall, then, will be thus diverted to
_one_ destination, instead of being issued into the river through a
multiplicity of outlets in every part of the northern shore where the
population is dense, and will be carried into the Thames at Barking
Creek, unless, as I have intimated, a market be found for the sewage;
when it may be disposed of as is most advantageous. The only exceptions
to this carrying off will be upon the occurrence of long-continued and
heavy rains or violent storms, when the surplus water will be carried
off by some of the present outlets into the river; but even on such
occasions, the _first scour_ or cleansings of the sewerage will be
conveyed to the main outlet at the river Roding.

The inclination which has been assigned to the whole of the lines
of sewers I have described, is, with some unimportant exceptions, 4
feet per mile, or 1 in 1320. These new sewers are, or rather will be,
calculated to carry off a fall of rain, equal to 1/4 inch in 24 hours,
in addition to the average daily flow of sewage.

Mr. Forster concludes his Report:--“I am only able to submit
approximately that I estimate the cost of the whole of the lines
of sewers, the pumping engines, and station, the reservoir, tidal
gates, and other apparatus, at one million and eighty thousand pounds
(1,080,000_l._). This estimate does not include the sums required for
the purchase of land and houses, which may be needed for the site of
the pumping engine-house, or compensation for certain portions of the
lines of sewers.”

As regards the improvements in the sewerage on the south side of the
Thames (the great fever district of the metropolis, and consequently
the most important of all, and where the drainage is of the worst
kind), I can be very brief, as nothing has been positively determined.

A somewhat similar system will be adopted on the south side of the
Thames, where it is proposed to form one main intercepting sewer; but,
owing to the physical configuration of this part of the town, none
of the water will flow away entirely by gravitation. There will be a
pumping station on the banks of the Ravensbourne, to raise the water
about 25 feet; and a second pumping station to raise the water from
the continued sewer in the reservoir, in Woolwich Marsh, which is to
receive it during the intervals of the tides. The waters are to be
discharged into the river at the last-named point. The main sewer on
the south side will be of nearly equally colossal proportions; for its
total length is proposed to be about 13 miles 3 furlongs, including the
main trunk drain of about 2 miles long, and the respective branches.
The area to be relieved is about proportionate to the length of the
drain; but the steam power employed will be proportionally greater upon
the southern than upon the northern side.

There are divers opinions, of course, as to the practicability and
ultimate good working of this plan; speculations into which it is
not necessary for me to enter. Mr. Forster has, moreover, resigned
his office, adding another to the many changes among the engineers,
surveyors, and other employés under the Metropolitan Commission; a fact
little creditable to the management of the Commissioners, who, with one
exception, may be looked upon as irresponsible.

OF THE MANAGEMENT OF THE SEWERS AND THE LATE COMMISSIONS.

The Corporation of the City of London may be regarded as the first
Commission of Sewers in the exercise of authority over such places as
regards the removal of the filth of towns. In time, but at what time
there is no account, the business was consigned to the management of
a committee, as are now the markets of the City (Markets Committee),
and even what may be called the management of the Thames (Navigation
Committee). It is not at all necessary that the members of these
committees should understand anything about the matters upon which
they have to determine. A staff of officers, clerks, secretaries,
solicitors, and surveyors, save the members the trouble of thought
or inquiry; they have merely to vote and determine. It was stated in
evidence before a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the
subject of the Thames steamers, that at that period the Chairman of
the _Navigation_ Committee was a bread and biscuit baker, but “a
very-firm-minded man.” In time, but again I can find no note of the
precise date, the _Committee_ became a _Court_ of Sewers, and so it
remains to the present time. Commissions of sewers have been issued
by the Crown since the 25th year of the reign of Henry VIII., except
during the era of the Commonwealth, when there seems to have been no
attention paid to the matter.

As the metropolis increased rapidly in size since the close of the
last century, the public sewers of course increased in proportion,
and so did Commissions of Sewers in the newly-built districts. Up to
1847 these Commissions or Court of Sewers were _eight_ in number, the
metropolis being divided into that number of districts.

The districts were as follows:--

1. The City.
2. The Tower Hamlets.
3. St. Katherine.
4. Poplar and Blackwall.
5. Holborn and Finsbury.
6. Westminster and part of Middlesex.
7. Surrey and Kent.
8. Greenwich.

Each of these eight Commissions had its own Act of Parliament; its
own distinct, often irregular and generally uncontrolled plan of
management; each had its own officers; and each had its own patronage.
Each district court--with almost unlimited powers of taxation--pursued
its own plans of sewerage, little regardful of the plans of its
neighbour Commission. This wretched system--the great recommendation
of which, to its promoters and supporters, seems to have been
patronage--has given us a sewerage unconnected and varying to the
present day in almost every district; varying in the dimensions, form,
and inclination of the structures.

The eight commission districts, I may observe, had each their
sub-districts, though the general control was in the hands of the
particular Court or Board of Commissioners for the entire locality.
These subdivisions were chiefly for the facilities of rate-collecting,
and were usually “western,” “eastern,” and “central.”

The consequence of this immethodical system has been that, until the
surveys and works now in progress are completed, the precise character,
and even the precise length, of the sewers must be unknown, though a
sufficient approximation may be deduced in the interim.

To show the conflicting character of the sewerage, I may here observe
that in some of the old sewers have been found walls and arches
crumbling to pieces. Some old sewers were found to be not only of ample
proportions, but to contain subterranean chambers, not to say halls,
filled with filth, into which no man could venture. While in a sewer in
the newly-built district of St. John’s-wood, Mr. Morton, the Clerk of
Works, could only advance stooping half double, could not turn round
when he had completed his examination, but had most painfully--for a
long time feeling the effects--to back out along the sewer, stooping,
or doubled up, as he entered it. Why the sewer was constructed in this
manner is not stated, but the work appears, inferentially, to have been
_scamped_, which, had there been a proper supervision, could hardly
have been done with a modern public sewer, down a thoroughfare of some
length (the Woronzow-road).

But the conflicting and disjointed system of sewerage was not the sole
evil of the various Commissions. The mismanagement and jobbery, not to
say peculation, of the public moneys, appear to have been enormous.
For instance, in the “Accountant’s Report” (February, 1848), prepared
by Mr. W. H. Grey, 48, Lincoln’s-inn-fields, I find the following
statements relative to the _Book-keeping_ of the several Commissions:--

“The _Westminster_ plan is full of unnecessary repetition. It is
deficient in those real general accounts which concentrate the
information most needed by the Commissioners, and it contains
_fictions_ which are very inconsistent with any sound system of
book-keeping.

“The ledger of the Westminster Commission does not give a true account
of the actual receipt and expenditure of each district.

“The _Holborn and Finsbury_ books are still more defective than
those of the Westminster Commission.... There are the same kind of
_fictions_.... But the extraordinary defect in these books consists in
the utter want of system throughout them, by keeping one-sided accounts
only in the ledger, with respect to the different sewers in each
district, showing only the amount _expended_ on each.

“The _Tower Hamlets_ books have been kept on a regular system, though
by no means one conveying much general information.”

“With respect to the _Surrey and Kent_ accounts,” says Mr. Grey,
“the books produced are the most incomplete and unsatisfactory that
ever came under my observation. The ledger is always thought to be a
_sine quâ non_ in book-keeping; but here it has been dispensed with
altogether, for that which is so marked is no ledger at all.”

Under these circumstances, the Report continues, “It cannot be wondered
at that debts should have been incurred, or that they should have
swollen to the amount of 54,000_l._, carrying a yearly interest of
2360_l._, besides annuities granted to the amount of 1125_l._ a year.

“The _Poplar and Greenwich_ accounts (I quote the official Report),
confined as they are to mere cash books, offer no subjects for
remark....

“No books of account have been produced with respect to the _St.
Katherine’s_ Commission.”

On the 16th December, 1847, the new Commissioners ordered all the books
to be sent to the office in Greek-street; but it was not until the 21st
February, 1848, that all the minute-books were produced. There were no
indexes for many years even to the proceedings of the Courts; and the
account-books of one of the local Courts, if they might be so called,
were in such a state that the book called “ledger” had for several
years been cast up in pencil only.

This refers to what may be characterised, with more or less propriety,
as _mismanagement_ or _neglect_; though in such mismanagement it is
hardly possible to escape _one_ inference. I now come to what are
direct imputations of _Jobbery_, and where _that_ is flourishing or
easy, no system can be other than vicious.

In a paper “printed for use of Commissioners” (Sept. 7, 1848),
entitled “Draft Report on the Surrey Accounts,” emanating from a
“General Purposes’ Committee,” I find the following, concerning
the parliamentary expenses of obtaining an Act which it was “found
necessary to repeal.” The cost was, altogether, upwards of 1800_l._,
which of course had to be defrayed out of the taxes.

“This Act,” says the Report, “authorized an almost unlimited borrowing
of money; and _immediately upon its passing_, in July, 1847, notices
were issued for works estimated to amount to 100,000_l._; and others,
we understand, were projected for early execution to the amount of
300,000_l._... Considering the general character of the works executed,
and from them judging of those projected, it may confidently be averred
that the _whole sum_ of 300,000_l._, the progressive expenditure of
which was stayed by the ‘supersedeas’ of the old Commission, would
have been _expended in waste_.” [The _Italics_ are not those of the
Reports.]

The Report continues, “It is to be observed that each of the district
surveyors would have participated in the sum of 15,000_l._ percentage
on the expenditure for the extension of the Surrey works. Thus the
surveyors, with their percentages on the works executed, and the clerk,
by the fees on contracts, &c., had _a direct interest in a large
expenditure_.”

Instances of the same dishonest kind might be multiplied to almost any
extent.

After the above evidences of the incompetency and dishonesty of
the several district Commissions--and the Reports from which they
are copied contain many more examples of a similar and even worse
description--it is not to be wondered at that in the year 1847 the
district courts were, with the exception of the City, superseded by
the authority of the Crown, and formed into one body, the present
Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, of the constitution and powers of
which I shall now proceed to speak.

OF THE POWERS AND AUTHORITY OF THE PRESENT COMMISSIONS OF SEWERS.

In 1847 the eight separate Commissions of Sewers were abolished, and
the whole condensed, by the Government, into _one_ Commission, with
the exception of the City, which seems to supply an exception in most
public matters.

The Act does not fix the number of the Commissioners. To the
Metropolitan Commissioners, five City Commissioners are added (the Lord
Mayor for the year being one _ex officio_); these have a right to act
as members of the Metropolitan Board, but their powers in this capacity
are loosely defined by the Act, and they rarely attend, or perhaps
never attend, unless the business in some way or other affects their
distinct jurisdiction.

The Commissioners (of whom twelve form a quorum) are unpaid, with the
exception of the chairman, Mr. E. Lawes, a barrister, who has 1000_l._
a year. They are appointed for the term of two years, revocable at
pleasure.

The authority of the City Commission, as distinct from the
Metropolitan, for there are two separate Acts, seems to be more
strongly defined than that of the others, but the principle is the same
throughout. The Metropolitan Act bears date September 4, 1848; and the
City Act, September 5, 1848.

The Metropolitan Commissioners have the control over “the sewers,
drains, watercourses, weirs, dams, banks, defences, gratings, pipes,
conduits, culverts, sinks, vaults, cesspools, rivers, reservoirs,
engines, sluices, penstocks, and other works and apparatus for the
collection and discharge of rain-water, surplus land or spring-water,
waste water, or filth, or fluid, or semi-fluid refuse of all
descriptions, and for the protection of land from floods or inundation
within the limits of the Commission.” Ample as these powers seem to be,
the Commissioners’ authority does not extend over the Thames, which is
in the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City of
London; and it appears childish to give men control over “rivers,”
and to empower them to take measures “for the protection of land from
floods or inundation,” while over the great metropolitan stream itself,
from Yantlet Creek, below Gravesend, to Oxford, they have no power
whatever.

The Commissioners (City as well as Metropolitan) are empowered to
enforce proper house-drainage wherever needed; to regulate the
building of new houses, in respect of water-closets, cesspools, &c.;
to order any street, staircase, or passage not effectually cleansed
to be effectually cleansed; to remedy all nuisances having insanitary
tendencies; to erect _public_ water-closets and urinals, free from any
charge to the public; to order houses and rooms to be whitewashed; to
erect places for depositing the bodies of poor persons deceased until
interment; and to regulate the cleanliness, ventilation, and even
accommodation of low lodging-houses.

The jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers extends
over “all such places or parts in the counties of Middlesex, Surrey,
Essex, and Kent, or any of them _not more than twelve miles distant in
a straight line from St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the City of London_, but
not being within the City of London or the liberties thereof.”

This, it must be confessed, is an exceedingly broad definition of the
extent of the jurisdiction of the _Metropolitan_ Commission, giving the
Commissioners an extraordinary amount of _latitude_.

In our days there are many Londons. There is the London (or the
metropolitan apportionment of the capital) as defined by the
Registrar-General. This, as we have seen, has an area of 115 square
miles, and therefore may be said to comprise as nearly as possible all
those places which are rather more than _five miles_ distant from the
Post Office.

There is the _Metropolis_ as defined by the Post-Office functionaries,
or the limits assigned to what is termed the “_London_ District Post.”
This London District Post seems, however, to have three different
metropolises:--First, there is the Central Metropolis, throughout
which there is an hourly delivery of letters after mid-day, and which
deliveries are said to be confined to “_London._” Then there is the
six-delivery _Metropolis_, or that throughout which the letters are
despatched and received six times per day; this is said to extend to
such of the “environs” as are included within a circle of _three miles_
from the General Post Office. Then there is the _six-mile Metropolis_
with special privileges. And lastly, the _twelve-mile Metropolis_,
which, being the extreme range of the _London_ District Post, may be
said to constitute the metropolis of the General Post Office.

There is, again, the metropolis of the Metropolitan Commissioners
of Police, before the region of rural police and country and parish
constables is attained; a jurisdiction which covers 96 square
miles, as I have shown at pp. 163-166 of the present volume, and
reaches--generally speaking--to such places as are included within a
circle of _five miles and a half_ from the General Post Office.

There is, moreover, the metropolis, as defined by the Hackney-Carriage
Act, which comprises all such places as are within _five miles_ of the
General Post Office.

And further, there is the Metropolis of the London City Mission, which
extends to _eight miles_ from the Post Office, and the Metropolis,
again, of the London Ragged Schools, which reaches to about _three
miles_ from the Post Office.

This, however, is not all, for there are divers districts for the
registration and exercise of votes, parliamentary, or municipal; there
are ecclesiastical and educational districts; there is a thorough
complication of parochial, extra-parochial, and chartered districts;
there is a world of subdivisions and of sub-subdivisions, so ramified
here and so closely blended there, and often with such preposterous and
arbitrary distinctions, that to describe them would occupy more than a
whole Number.

My present business, however, is the extent of the jurisdiction of
the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers, or rather to ascertain
the boundaries of that _metropolis_ over which the Metropolitan
Commissioners are allowed to have sway.

The many discrepancies and differences I have explained make it
difficult to _define_ any district for the London sewerage; and in
the Reports, &c., which are presented to Parliament, or prepared by
public bodies, little or no care seems to be taken to observe any
distinctiveness in this respect.

For instance: The jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Commission of
Sewers, which is said to extend to all such places as are not more than
12 miles distant in a straight line from St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the
City of London, comprises an area of 452 square miles; the metropolis,
that of the Registrar-General, presenting a radius of 6 miles (with
a fractional addition), contains 115 square miles; yet in official
documents 58 square miles, or a circle of about 4-1/2 miles radius, are
given as the extent of the _metropolis_ sewered by the Metropolitan
Commission. By what calculations this 58 miles are arrived at, whether
it has been the _arbitrium_ of the authorities to consider the sewers,
&c., as occupying _the half_ of the area of the Registrar-General’s
metropolis, or what other reason has induced the computation, I am
unable to say.

The boundaries of the several metropolises may be indicated as
follows:--

The _Three-Mile Circle_ includes Camberwell; skirts Peckham; seems to
divide Deptford (irregularly); touches the West India Dock; includes
portions of Limehouse, Stepney, Bromley, Stratford-le-Bow, and about
the half of Victoria-park, Hackney. It likewise comprises a part of
Lower Clapton, Dalston, and a portion of Stoke Newington; and closely
touching upon or containing small portions of Lower Holloway, and
Kentish-town, sweeps through the Regent’s and Hyde parks, includes a
moiety of Chelsea, and crossing the river at the Red-house, Battersea,
completes the circle. This is the six-delivery district of the General
Post Office.

In this three-mile district are chiefly condensed the population,
commerce, and wealth of the greatest and richest city in the world.

The _Six-Mile Circle_ runs from Streatham (on the south); just excludes
Sydenham; contains within its exterior line Lewisham, Greenwich, and
a part of Woolwich; also, wholly or partially, East Ham, Laytonstone,
Walthamstow, Tottenham, Hornsey, Highgate, Hampstead, Kensall-green,
Hammersmith, Fulham, Wandsworth, and Upper Tooting. The portion without
the three-mile circle, and within the six, is the _suburban_ portion
or the immediate environs of the metropolis, and still presents rural
and woodland beauties in different localities. This may be termed the
metropolis of the Registrar-General and Commissioners of Metropolitan
Police.

The _Twelve-Mile Circle_, or the extent of the jurisdiction of the
_Metropolitan_ Commissioners of Sewers, as well as the “_London_
District Post,” includes Croydon, Wickham, Paul’s Cray, Foot’s
Cray, North Cray, and Bexley; crosses the river at the Erith-reach;
proceeds across the Rainham-marshes; comprises Dagenham; skirts
Romford; includes Henhault-forest and the greater portion of
Epping-forest; touches Waltham-abbey and Cheshunt; comprehends Enfield
and Chipping-Barnet; runs through Elstre and Stanmore; comprehends
Harrow-on-the-Hill, Norwood, and Hounslow; embraces Twickenham and
Teddington; seems to divide somewhat equally the domains of Bushey-park
and of Hampton-court Palace; then, crossing the river about midway
between Thames Ditton and Kingston, the boundary line passes between
Cheam and Ewell, and completes the circuit.

Over this large district, then, the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan
Commissioners of Sewers is said to extend, and one of the outlets of
the _London_ sewers has already been spoken of as being situate at
Hampton. The district yielding the amount of sewage which is assumed as
being the gross wet house-refuse of the metropolis is, as we have seen,
taken at 58 square miles, and is comprised within a circle of about
4-1/2 miles radius; this reaches only to Brixton, Dulwich, Greenwich,
East India Docks, Layton, Highgate, Hampstead, Bayswater, Kensington,
Brompton, and Battersea. The actual jurisdiction of the Commissioners
is, then, nearly eight times larger than the portion to which the
estimated amount of the sewage of the metropolis refers.

The metropolitan district is still distinguished by the old divisions
of the Tower Hamlets, Poplar and Blackwall, Holborn and Finsbury,
Westminster, &c.; but many of these divisions are now incorporated into
one district; of which there would appear to be but four at present; or
five, inclusive of the City.

These are as follows:--

1. Fulham and Hammersmith, Counter’s Creek and Ranelagh districts.

2. Westminster (Eastern and Western), Regent-street, and Holborn.

3. Finsbury, Tower Hamlets, Poplar, and Blackwall.

4. Districts south of the Thames, Eastern and Western.

5. City.

The practical part or working of the Commission of Sewers is much less
complicated at present than it was in the times of the independent
districts and independent commissions.

The orders for all work to be done emanate from the court in
Greek-street, but the several surveyors, &c. (whose salaries, numbers,
&c., are given below), can and do order on their responsibility any
repair of a temporary character which is evidently pressing, and
report it at the next court day. The Court meets weekly and monthly,
and what may be styled the heavier portion of the business, as regards
expenditure on great works, is more usually transacted at the monthly
meetings, when the attendance is generally fuller; but the Court can,
and sometimes does, meet much more frequently, and sometimes has
adjourned from day to day.

Any private individual or any public body may make a communication
or suggestion to the Court of Sewers, which, if it be in accordance
with their functions, is taken into consideration at the next accruing
court day, or as soon after as convenient. The Court in these cases
either comes to a decision of adoption or rejection of any proposition,
or refers it to one of their engineers or surveyors for a report, or
to a committee of the Commissioners, appointed by the Court; if the
proposition be professional, as to defects, or alleged and recommended
improvements in the local sewers, &c., it is referred to a professional
gentleman for his opinion; if it be more general, as to the extension
of sewerage to some new undertaking or meditated undertaking in the way
of building new markets, streets, or any places, large and public; or
in applications for the use and appropriation by enterprising men of
sewage manure, it is referred to a committee.

On receiving such reports the Court makes an order according to its
discretion. If the work to be done be extensive, it is entrusted to
the chief engineer, and perhaps to a principal surveyor acting in
accordance with him; if the work be more local, it is consigned to
a surveyor. One or other of these officers provides, or causes to
be prepared, a plan and a description of the work to be done, and
instructs the clerk of the works to procure estimates of the cost at
which a contractor will undertake to execute this work, or, as it is
often called by the labouring class, to “complete the _job_” (a word
at one time singularly applicable). The estimates are sent by the
competing builders, architects, general speculators, or by any one
wishing to contract, to the court house (without the intervention of
any person, officially or otherwise) and they are submitted to the
Board by their clerk. The lowest contract, as the sum total of the
work, is most generally adopted, and when a contract has been accepted,
the matter seems settled and done with, as regards the management of
the Commissioners; for the contractor at once becomes responsible
for the fulfilment of his contract, and may and does employ whom he
pleases _and at what rates he pleases_, without fear of any control or
interference from the Court. The work, however, is superintended by the
surveyors, to ensure its execution according to the provisions of the
agreement. The contractor is paid by direct order of the Court.

The surveyors and clerks of works are mostly limited as to their
labours to the several districts; but the superior officers are
employed in all parts, and so, if necessary, are the subordinate
officers when the work requires an extra staff.

According to the Returns, the following functionaries appear to be
connected with the undermentioned districts:--

_Fulham, Hammersmith, Counter’s Creek, and Ranelagh._
1 Surveyor.
3 Clerks of the Works.
1 Inspector of Flushing.

_Eastern and Western Divisions of Westminster and Regent-street._
1 Surveyor, who has also the Holborn division to attend to.
2 Clerks of the Works.
6 Flap and Sluice keepers.

_Holborn._
2 Clerks of the Works.
1 Inspector of Flushing.

_Finsbury._
1 Clerk of the Works.
1 Inspector of Flushing.

_Tower Hamlets, and Poplar and Blackwall._
1 Surveyor, who has also the Finsbury division included in his district.
2 Clerks of the Works.
2 Inspectors of Flushing.

_South of the Thames. Western Districts._
1 Surveyor.
2 Clerks of the Works.
2 Inspectors of Flushing.

_Eastern Districts._
1 Surveyor.
2 Clerks of the Works.
2 Inspectors of Flushing.

What may be called the working staff of the Metropolitan Commissioners
consists of the following functionaries, receiving the following
salaries:--

£ _s._
Chairman, with a
yearly salary of 1,000 0

Secretary, with a
yearly salary of
(besides an allowance
of £100, in
lieu of apartments) 800 0
Clerk of minutes 350 0
Two clerks of do.,
(each with a salary
of £150) 300 0
One do., with a
salary of 120 0
One do. do. 105 0
One do. do. 95 0
One do. do. 90 0

Accountant do. 350 0
Accountant’s clerk
do. 150 0
Do do. 80 0
Clerk of surveyors’
and contractors’
accounts 200 0
Do. do. 125 0
Do. do. 110 0

Clerk of rates 250 0
Another do. 180 0
Do. do. 110 0
Do. do. 90 0

Engineer 1,000 0
For travelling expenses 200 0
Surveyor for Fulham
and Hammersmith, Counter’s
Creek, and
Ranelagh districts 350 0
Clerk of works
(Hammersmith) 150 0
Do. (Counter’s
Creek) 150 0
Do. (Ranelagh) 150 0
Inspector of
flushing 80 0

Surveyor of eastern
and western
divisions of Westminster,
and of
Regent-st. and
Holborn divisions 300 0
Two clerks of
works (eastern
and western and
Regent-street),
with a salary of
£300 each 600 0
Two do. (Holborn),
with a
salary of £150
each 300 0
Inspector of
flushing 80 0
Surveyor of Finsbury,
Tower
Hamlets, and
Poplar and
Blackwall 300 0
Clerk of works
(Finsbury) 150 0
Inspector of
flushing 80 0
Two clerks of
works (Tower
Hamlets, and
Poplar and
Blackwall), with
a salary of £150
each 300 0
Two inspectors
of flushings
with a salary of
£80 each 160 0
One marsh bailiff 65 0
Surveyor of the
western districts
south of the
Thames 300 0
Do., eastern do. 250 0
Clerk of works
(eastern portion) 164 0
Two inspectors of
flushing, £80
each 160 0
One wallreeve 22 8
Clerk of works
(western portion) 164 0
Do. do. 150 0
Two inspectors of
flushing, with a
salary of £80
each 160 0

Two engineer’s
clerks, with a
salary of £150
each 300 0
One do. 150 0
One do. 100 0
One do. 80 0

One by-law clerk 150 0
Twenty-two flap
and sluice
keepers 892 12

Surveyor (of the
surveying and
drawing staff) 250 0
Drawing clerk 150 0
Two do., with a
salary of £130
each 260 0
Five do., with a
salary of £105
each 525 0
One do. 50 0
Six surveyors,
with a salary of
£100 each 600 0
Six chainmen, 18_s._
a week each 280 0

Office-keeper and
crier (general
service) 120 0
Bailiff, &c. 100 0
Strong-room keeper 80 0
One messenger 70 0
Two do., £40 each 80 0
Three errand-boys,
£32 each 96 0
Housekeeper 150 0
---------
Yearly total £13,874 0

This is called a “reduced” staff, and the reduction of salaries is
certainly very considerable.

If we consider the yearly emoluments of tradesmen in businesses
requiring no great extent of education or general intelligence, the
salaries of the surveyors, clerk of the works, &c., must appear very
far from extravagant; and when we consider their responsibility and
what may be called their removability, some of the salaries may be
pronounced mean; for I think it must be generally admitted by all,
except the narrow-minded, who look merely at the immediate outlay as
the be-all and the end-all of every expenditure, that if the surveyors,
clerks of works, inspectors of flushing, &c., be the best men who could
be procured (as they ought to be), or at any rate be thorough masters
of their craft, they are rather underpaid than overpaid.

The above statement may be analysed in the following manner:--

_£ s._ _£_

Chairman 1,000
Secretary and 7 clerks 1860 0
Accountant and 5 clerks 1015 0
Clerk of rates and 3
clerks 630 0
-------
3,505
Engineer and 5 clerks 1830 0
7 surveyors, of surveying
and drawing staff, with
6 chainmen and 9 drawing
clerks 2125 0
5 district surveyors 1500 0
12 clerks of works 2278 0
9 inspectors of flushing 720 0
22 flap and sluice
keepers 892 12
Bailiff, marsh-bailiff, and
wallreeve 187 8
-------
9,533
Office keeper, strong-room
keeper, and housekeeper 350 0
3 messengers and 3 errand-boys 246 0
------
596
------
£14,634

The cost of rent, taxes, stationery, and office incidentals, is now
4440_l._, which makes the total yearly outlay amount to upwards of
19,000_l._ The annual cost of the staff in the secretary’s department
is said to have been reduced from 3962_l._ 4_s._ to 3605_l._; in the
engineers’ department from 16,437_l._ 3_s._ to 8973_l._ 16_s._ In the
general service there has been an increase from 606_l._ 16_s._ to
696_l._

A deputation who waited lately upon Lord John Russell is said to have
declared the expenses of the Commissioners’ office to be at the rate
of from 25 to 30 per cent. on the amount of rate collected. The sum
collected in the year 1850 averaged 89,341_l._ The cost of management
in that year was 23,465_l._; this, it will be seen, is 26 per cent of
the gross income.

The annual statement of the receipts and expenditure under the
Commission for the year 1851 has just been published, but not
_officially_; from this it appears that in February, 1851--

The balance of cash in hand _£ s. d._
was 5,750 9 11
The total receipts during the
year have amounted to 129,000 0 9
-------------
Making together 134,750 10 8

The expenditure, as returned under the general head, is--

For work £95,539 19 3
(This item includes the cost
of supervision and compensation
for damages.)
The cost of surveys has been 6,332 19 9
Management 16,430 9 2
Loans 10,442 10 2
Contingencies 2,749 1 1
-------------
Total payments 131,494 19 5
Balance in hand £3,355 11 3

As an instance of the mismanagement of the sewers work of the
metropolis, it is but right that the subjoined document should be
published.

I need not offer any comment on the following “Return to an Address of
the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 28th July, 1851,” except
that I was told early in January, on good authority, that the matter
was now worse than it was when reported as follows:--

“_Privy Gardens, Whitehall Yard, Scotland Yard, &c., Public Sewer._

“With reference to the two orders of the Commissioners of Her
Majesty’s Woods, &c., I have the honour to state that, since the 15th
of November (when I last sent in a memorandum), I have frequently
visited the several Crown buildings affected by the building of
the main public sewer for draining Westminster; viz., the Earl of
Malmsbury’s, the Exchequer Bill Office, the United Service Museum,
Lord Liverpool’s, Mr. Vertue’s, Mr. Alderman Thompson’s, and Messrs.
Dalgleish’s.

“All these buildings have been more or less damaged by the
construction of the sewer; the Exchequer Bill Office, the United
Service Museum, and Mr. Vertue’s, in a manner that, in my opinion, can
_never be effectually repaired_.

“At Lord Malmsbury’s, the party wall next to the Exchequer Bill Office
has _moved_, as shown by some cracks in the staircase; but for this
house it may not be necessary to require more to be done than stopping
and painting.

“At the Exchequer Bill Office, the old Gothic groins have been cracked
in several places, and several settlements have taken place in the
walls over and near to where the sewer passes under the building.
The shores are still standing against this building, but it would
now be better to remove them; the cracks in the groins and walls
_can never be repaired_ to render the building so substantial as it
was before. The cracks in the basement still from month to month
show a very slight movement; those in the staircase and roof also
appear to increase. As respects this building, I would submit to the
Commissioners of Woods that it _would not be advisable to permit
the surveyors of the Commissioners of Sewers to enter and make only
a surface repair of plaster and paint_; but I would suggest that a
careful survey be made by surveyors appointed respectively by the
Board of Woods and the Commissioners of Sewers, and that a thorough
repair of the building be made (so far as it is susceptible of
repair), under the Board of Woods; the Commissioners of Sewers paying
such proportion of the cost thereof as may fairly be deemed to have
been occasioned by their proceedings.

“At the United Service Museum, the settlements on the side next the
sewer appear to me very serious.

“The house occupied by Lord Liverpool, as also Mr. Vertue’s house, of
which his Lordship is Crown lessee, were both affected, the former to
some extent, but not seriously; of the latter, the west front sunk,
and pulled over the whole house with it; but as respects these two
houses the interference of the Board is, I believe, unnecessary, Mr.
Hardwicke (one of the Sewer Commissioners) having, as architect for
Lord Liverpool, caused both to be repaired.

“A like repair has also been made in the kitchen offices of Mr.
Alderman Thompson’s house, where alone any cracks appeared.

“At Messrs. Dalgleish and Taylor’s, very serious injury has been done
to both their buildings and their trade. The Commissioners of Sewers
have a steam-engine still at work on those premises, and have not yet
concluded their operations there. Some of the sheds which entirely
fell down they have rebuilt; and others, which appear in a very
defective if not dangerous state, it is understood they propose to
repair or rebuild; but as eventually Messrs. Dalgleish and Taylor will
have a very heavy claim against them for interference with business,
and as the extent of damage to the buildings which has been done, or
may hereafter arise, cannot at present be fully ascertained, it would
probably be advisable to postpone this part of the subject, giving
notice, however, to the Commissioners of Sewers that it must hereafter
come under consideration.

(Signed) “JAMES PENNETHORNE.

“10th May, 1851.”

“_Sewer, Whitehall Yard, &c._

“Under the order of the Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Woods, &c.,
of yesterday’s date, endorsed on a letter from Mr. Tonna, I have
inspected the United Service Institution in Whitehall Yard, and find
most of the cracks have moved.

“The movement, though slight, and not showing immediate danger, is
more than I had anticipated would occur within so short a period
when I reported on the 10th instant. It tends to confirm the opinion
therein given, and shows the necessity for immediate precaution, and
for a thorough repair.

(Signed) “JAMES PENNETHORNE.

“16th May, 1851.

{Commissioners of Her
“SEYMOUR, {Majesty’s Woods, Forests,
“CHARLES GORE, {Land Revenues,
{Works, and Buildings.

“Office of Woods, &c.

“5th August, 1851.”

OF THE SEWERS RATE.

Having shown the expenditure of the Commission of Sewers, we now come
to consider its income.

The funds available for the sewerage and drainage of the several towns
throughout the kingdom, are raised by means of a particular property
tax, termed the Sewers Rate. This forms part of what are designated the
_Local_ Taxes of England and Wales.

Local taxes are of two classes:--

I. Rates raised upon property in _defined_ districts, as parishes,
jurisdictions, counties, &c.

II. Tolls, dues, and fees charged for particular services on particular
occasions, as turnpike tolls, harbour dues, &c., &c.

The rates or sums raised upon the property lying within a certain
circumscribed locality, admit of being subdivided into two orders--

1. The rates of _independent_ districts, or those which, being required
for a particular district (as the parish or some equivalent territorial
limit), are not only levied within the bounds of that district, but
expended for the purposes of it alone; as is the case with the poor
rate.

2. The rates of _aggregate_ districts, or those which, though required
to be expended for the purposes of a given district (such as the
county), are raised in detail in the several inferior districts (such
as the various parishes) which compose the larger one, and which
contribute the sums thus levied to one common fund; such is the case
with the county rate.

But the rates of independent districts may be further distinguished
into two orders, viz.--

i. Those which are levied on the same classes of persons, the same
kinds of property, and the same principles of valuation as the poor
rate; such are the highway rate, the lighting and watching, and the
militia rate among the independent rates; and the police, borough, and
county rates among the aggregate rates.

ii. Those which are _not_ levied on the same basis as the poor rate.
The church and sewers rates are familiar instances of this peculiarity.

The sewers rate, then, is a local tax required for an _independent_
rather than an _aggregate_ district, and is _not_ levied upon the basis
of the poor law.

The assessment of the poor rate, for instance, includes tithes of every
kind, that of the sewers rate extends to such tithes only as are in
the hands of laymen. Again, the sewers rate embraces some incorporeal
hereditaments to which the poor rate does not extend; but stock in
trade, which of late years has been specially exempted from the poor
rate, was never subject to the sewers rate.

A sewers rate, however, was known as early as the sixth year of Henry
VI. (1427), though “commissions” were not instituted till the time of
Henry VIII. The Act which now regulates the collection of the funds
required for the cleansing, building, repairs, and improvements of the
sewers, is 4 and 5 Vict. (1841). This statute gives the “Courts” or
“Commissions” of Sewers, power “to tax in the gross” in each parish,
&c., all lands, &c., within the jurisdiction of such courts, for the
requirements of the public sewerage. This impost is not periodically
levied, nor at any stated or even regularly recurring term, but “as
occasion requires:” perhaps once in two or three years. It is (with
some exceptions, which require no notice) what is commonly called “a
landlord’s tax” in the metropolis, that is, the sewers-rate collector
must be paid by the occupier of the premises, who, on the production of
the collector’s receipt, can deduct the amount from his rent. If this
arrangement were meant to convey a notion to the public that the sewers
tax was a tax on property--on the capitalist who owns, and not on the
tenant who merely occupies--it is a shallow device, for every one must
know that the more sewers rate a tenant pays _for_ his landlord, the
more rent he must pay _to_ him.

The sewers rate is levied according to the rateable value put upon
property by the surveyors and assessors appointed by the Commissioners,
who may make the rate “by such ways and means, and in such manner and
form, as to them may seem most convenient.” It seems a question yet to
be determined whether or not there is a right of appeal against the
sewers rate, but the general opinion is that there is _no appeal_.
The rate can be mortgaged by the Commissioners if an advance of money
is considered desirable. The maximum of 1_s._ in the pound on the net
annual value of the property was fixed by the Act. The Commissioners
have also the power to levy a “special rate” on any district not
connected with the general system of sewerage, but which it has been
resolved should be so connected; also an “improvement rate,” at a
maximum of 10 per cent. on the rack rent, “in respect of works they may
judge to be of private benefit,” a provision which has called forth
some comments.

The metropolitan sewers rate is now collected in nine districts.

There are at present 42 Commissions or Courts of Sewers throughout
England and Wales.

The only return which has yet been prepared of the annual amount
assessed and collected under the authority of the Metropolitan
Commission of Sewers, is one presented to the House of Commons in 1843.
It includes the sum assessed in four of the eight districts within
the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Commissioners from 1831 to 1840
inclusive.

------------------------+------------+------------
|Total in the| Annual
Districts. | 10 years. | Average.
------------------------+------------+------------
| £ | £
Westminster | 235,397 | 23,539-7/10
Holborn and Finsbury | 123,317 | 12,331-7/10
Tower Hamlets | 82,468 | 8,246-8/10
From East Moulsey, | |
in Surrey, to | |
Ravensbourne, in Kent | 175,137 | 17,513-7/10
------------------------+------------+------------
| 616,319 | 61,631-9/10
------------------------+------------+------------

The following amounts were returned to Parliament as that expended in
two other of the metropolitan districts in the year 1833:--

In the City £17,718-2/10
Poplar district 2,746-9/10
------------
£20,465-1/10

Annual average of the four above-mentioned
districts 61,631-9/10
--------------------------------------------------
Yearly total £82,097

The two districts excluded from the above total are the minor ones of
St. Katherine and Greenwich, so that altogether the gross sum levied
within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Commissioners must have
been between 85,000_l._ and 90,000_l._

The annual amount of the local rates in England and Wales is, according
to a work on the subject (“The Local Taxes of the United Kingdom”),
published “under the direction of the Poor Law Commissioners” in 1846,
8,801,838_l._[68] In this large sum only the average annual outlay
on the six districts of the sewers of the metropolis is included
(82,097_l._), and it is stated that not even an approximate average
could be arrived at as regards the expenditure on sewers in the country
districts. Such absence of statistical knowledge,--and it is a want
continually observable--is little creditable to the legislative,
executive, and administrative powers of the State.

I shall now proceed to show, from the best data at my command, the
present outlay on the metropolitan sewers.

According to the present law, the Commissioners are required to submit
to Parliament yearly returns of the money collected on account of, and
expended in, the sewerage of the metropolis.

I need only state, that in the latest and, indeed, the sole returns
upon the subject, the rates in 1845-6-7, under the former separate
commissions, were 1_d._ and 2_d._ in the pound on land, and from 3_d._
(Ranelagh and Westminster) to 1_s._ 10_d._ (Greenwich) on houses.

The rates made under the combined and consolidated Commissions, from
30th Nov., 1847, to 8th Oct., 1849, were all 6_d._, excepting the
Western division of Westminster sewers, which were 3_d._, and a part of
the Surrey and Kent district, 8_d._

The rates under the present Metropolitan Commission, from 8th October,
1849, to 31st July, 1851, are all 6_d._, with a similar exception in
Surrey and Kent. The following are the only further returns bearing
immediately on the subject:--

RETURN OF THE PERCENTAGE ON THE TOTAL RATEABLE ANNUAL VALUE OF THE
PROPERTY ASSESSED, to which the Rates collected under the separate
COMMISSIONS, between January, 1845, and November, 1847, amounted;
SIMILAR RETURN as to the combined and consolidated COMMISSIONS, from
November, 1847, to October, 1849; and as to the present COMMISSION,
from October, 1849, to July 31, 1851.

------------------------------------+---------------------+----------------+----------------------------------+
| Total Rateable | |
| Annual Value of the | | Amount of the
| Districts on | Average Amount | Percentage of
| November 30, 1847, | collected | the Rates collected
| and October 8, 1849,| for One Year. | on the Rateable
| and July 31, 1851, | | Annual Value.
| respectively. | |
------------------------------------+---------------------+----------------+----------------------------------+
| £ _s._ _d._| _£ s. d._| _£ s. d._
Under the old separate Commissions }| | |
of Sewers, between }| 6,683,896 0 0 | 81,738 11 0 |{ 1 4 5 or 2-3/4_d._ ·72 in the
January, 1845, and November }| | |{ pound per annum.
30, 1847 }| | |
| | |
Under the combined and consolidated}| | |
Commissions, from November }| | |{ 0 18 11-3/4 or 2-1/4_d._ ·11 in
30, 1847, to October 8, }| 7,128,111 0 0 | 67,707 16 3 |{ the pound per
1849 (including first Metropolitan }| | |{ annum.
Commission) }| | |
| | |
Under the present Metropolitan }| 8,135,090[69] 0 0 |{ |{ 1 1 11 or 2-1/2_d._ ·52 in the
Commission of Sewers, from October }| |{ 89,341 16 0 |{ pound per annum.
8, 1849, to July 21, 1851 }| 8,820,325[70] 0 0 |{ |{ 1 0 3 or 2-1/4_d._ ·72 in the
| | |{ pound per annum.
------------------------------------+---------------------+----------------+----------------------------------+

AUGUST, 1851.

THOMAS COGGIN,
_Clerk of Rates and Collections._

return of the present annual amount of the local rates in England and
Wales.

I. RATES.

A. RATES OF INDEPENDENT DISTRICTS.

1. _On the basis of the poor rate._

The poor rate, including the purposes
of--
The workhouse building rate }
The survey and valuation rate }
Relief of the poor £4,976,093
Other objects 567,567
Contributions to county and borough
rates (see below).
Jail fees rate }
Constables rate } unknown
Highway rates 1,312,812
Lighting and watching rate unknown
Militia rate not needed

2. _Not on the basis of the poor rate._

Church rates 506,812
Sewers rate--
General sewers tax--
In the metropolis 82,097
In the rest of the country unknown
Drainage and inclosure rates }
Inclosure rate } unknown
Regulated pasture rate }

B. RATES OF AGGREGATE DISTRICTS.

County rates { Contributed }
Hundred rate { from the } 1,356,457
Borough rates { poor rate. }
----------
Total rates of England and Wales £8,801,834

The amount of the taxation in the shape of tolls, dues, and fees is as
follows:--

II. TOLLS, DUES, AND FEES.

Turnpike tolls £1,348,085
Borough tolls and dues £172,911
City of London 205,100
-------- 378,011
Light dues 257,776
Port dues 554,645
Church dues and fees }
Marriage fees } unknown
Registration fees }
Justiciary fees--
Clerks of the Peace £11,057
Justices’ clerks 57,668
------- 68,725
----------

Total tolls, dues, and fees of
England and Wales £2,607,241

The subjoined, then adds the same work, founded on the preceding
details, may be regarded as exhibiting an approximate estimate of
the present amount of the local taxes in England and Wales, _being,
however, obviously below the actual total_.

Rates £8,801,838
Tolls, dues, and fees 2,607,241
---------- £11,409,079

“The annual amount of the local taxation of England and Wales may
at the present time be stated, in round numbers, at not less than
£12,000,000;” or we may say that the local taxation of the country is
one-fourth of the amount of the general taxation.

RETURN OF THE COST OF MANAGEMENT PER ANNUM ON THE TOTAL RATEABLE ANNUAL
VALUE OF THE DISTRICTS.

--------+------------------+----------------+-----------------------------
| Total | | Rate per Cent.
|Rateable Annual | Cost of | per Annum of Cost of
YEARS. | Value of the | Management | Management on the
| Districts. | per Annum. | Rateable Annual
| | | Value of the Districts.
--------+------------------+----------------+-------------------------+
| £ _s._ _d._| £ _s._ _d._| £ _s._ _d._
1845 | 6,320,331 0 0 | 18,591 4 3 | 0 5 10-1/2
1846 | 6,423,909 0 0 | 18,097 5 1 | 0 5 7-1/2
1847 | 6,683,896 0 0 | 24,371 16 9 | 0 7 3-1/2
1848 | 6,783,111 0 0 | 20,008 7 10 | 0 5 10-3/4
1849 | 8,077,591 0 0 | 20,005 7 6 | 0 4 11-1/4
1850 | 8,791,967 0 0 | 23,465 18 7 | 0 5 4
--------+------------------+----------------+-------------------------+

AUGUST 7, 1851.

G. S. HATTON,
_Accountant._

OF THE CLEANSING OF THE SEWERS--VENTILATION.

There are two modes of purifying the sewers; the one consists in
removing the foul air, the other in removing the solid deposits. I
shall deal first with that mode of purification which consists in the
mechanical removal or chemical decomposition of the noxious gases
engendered within the sewers.

This is what is termed the Ventilation of the Sewers, and forms a
very important branch of the inquiry into the character and working
of the underground refuse-channels, for it relates to the risk of
explosions and the consequent risk of destruction to men’s lives;
while, if the sewer be ill-ventilated, the surrounding atmosphere is
often prejudicially affected by the escape of impure air from the
subterranean channels.

A survey as to the ventilation, &c., of the sewers was made by Mr.
Hawkins, Assistant-Surveyor, and Mr. Jenkins, Clerk of the Works.
Four examinations took place of sewers; of those in Bloomsbury;
those from Tottenham-court-road to Norfolk-street, Strand; from the
Guard-room in Buckingham Palace to the Horseferry-road, Millbank; and
in Grosvenor-square and the streets adjacent. There were difficulties
attending the experiment. From Castle-street to Museum-street there was
a drop of 4 feet in the levels, so that the examiners had to advance on
their hands and knees, and it was difficult to make observations. In
some places in Westminster also the water and silt were knee deep, and
the lamps (three were used) splashed all over. In Bloomsbury the sewers
gave no token of the presence of any gas, but in the other places its
presence was very perceptible, especially in a sewer on the west side
of Grosvenor-square, a very low one, in which the gas was ignited
within the wire shade of one of the lamps, but without producing any
effect beyond that of immediately extinguishing the light. There was
also during the route, in the neighbourhood of Sir Henry Meux’s brewery
and of an adjoining distillery in Vine-street, a considerable quantity
of steam in the sewer, but it had no material effect upon the light.

The examiners came to the conclusion that where there was any
liability to an explosion from the presence of carburetted hydrogen,
or other causes, the Improved Davy Lamp afforded an almost certain
protection.

The attention of the Commissioners seems to have been chiefly given
of late, as regards ventilation and indeed general improvement,
to the sewers on the Surrey side of the metropolis. Among these a
new sewer along Friar-street, running from the Blackfriars to the
Southwark-bridge-road, is one of the most noticeable.

Friar-street is one of the smaller off thoroughfares, the character
of which is, perhaps, little suspected by those who pass along the
open Blackfriars-road. As you turn out of that road to the left hand,
advancing from the bridge, almost opposite the Magdalen Hospital, is
Friar-street. On its left hand, as you proceed along it, are gas-works,
and the factories, or work places, of tradesmen in the soap-boiling,
tallow-melting, cat and other gut manufacturing, bone-boiling, and
other noisome callings. On the right hand are a series of short and
often neatly-built streets, but the majority of them have the look of
unmistakable squalor or poverty, though _not_ of the poverty of the
industrious. Across Flint-street, Green-street, and other ways, few of
them horse thoroughfares, hang, on a fair day, lines of washed clothes
to dry. Yellow-looking chemises and petticoats are affixed alongside
men’s trowsers and waistcoats; coarse-featured and brazen-looking
women, with necks and faces reddened, as if with brick-dust, from
exposure to the weather, stand at their doors and beckon to the passers
by. Perhaps in no part of the metropolis is there a more marked
manifestation of moral obsceneness on the one hand, and physical
obsceneness on the other. With the low prostitution of this locality
is mixed the low and the bold crime of the metropolis. Some of the
off-shoots from Friar-street communicate with places of as nefarious a
character. Hackett, whom his newspaper admirers seem to wish to elevate
into the fame of a second Jack Sheppard, resided in this quarter. The
gang who were last winter repulsed in their burglarious attack on Mr.
Holford’s villa in the Regent’s-park favoured the same locality, and
were arrested in their old haunts. Public-houses may be seen here and
there--houses, perhaps, not greatly discouraged by the police--which
are at once the rendezvous and the trap of offenders, for to and from
such resorts they can be readily traced. And all over this place of
moral degradation extends the stench of offensive manufactures and
ill-ventilated sewers. Certainly there is now an improvement, but it is
still bad enough.

A Report of the 21st September, 1848, shows that a new sewer,
1500 feet in length, had been “put in along Friar-street, with a
fall of 15 inches from the level of the sewer in Blackfriars-road
to Suffolk-street. The sewer,” states the Report, “with which it
communicates at its upper end in the Blackfriars-road contains nearly
2 feet in depth of soil; it in consequence has silted up to that
level with semi-fluid black filth, principally from the factories, of
the most poisonous and sickening description, forming an _elongated
cesspool_ 1500 feet in length, the filth at its lower end being upwards
of 3 feet in depth. Since the building of this sewer, the foul matter
so discharged into it has been in a state of decomposition, constantly
giving off pestilential and poisonous gases, which have spread into
and filled the adjoining sewers; thence they are being drawn into the
houses by the house-drains, and into the streets by the street-drains,
to such a fearful extent as to infect the whole atmosphere of the
neighbourhood, and so to cause the very offensive odour so generally
complained of there. Sulphuretted hydrogen is present in these sewers
in large quantities, as metals, silver and copper, are attacked and
blackened by it; and the smell from it is so sickening as to be almost
unbearable.”

On the question of how best to deal with sewers such as the
Friar-street, Messrs. John Roe and John Phillips (surveyors) and
Mr. Henry Austin (consulting engineer) have agreed in the following
opinion:--

“The most simple and convenient method would be by placing large strong
fires in shafts directly over the crown of the sewers. The expense of
each furnace, with the inclosure around it, will be about 20_l._ The
fires would be fed almost constantly, by which little smoke would be
generated. The heat to be produced from these fires would rarefy the
air so much as to create rapidly ascending currents in the shafts, and
strong draughts through the sewers, the foul air in which would then be
drawn to the fires and there consumed; and as it was being destroyed
fresh air would be drawn in at all the existing inlets of house and
street drains, pushing forward and supplying the place of the foul air.”

Concerning the explosions of, or deaths in, the sewers from the impure
gases, there is, I believe, no statistical account. The most remarkable
catastrophe of this kind was the death of five persons in a sewer in
Pimlico, in October, 1849; of these, three were regular sewer-men, and
the others were a policeman and Mr. Wells, a surgeon, who went into the
sewer in the hopes of giving assistance. Mr. Phillips, the then chief
surveyor of the Commission of Sewers, stated that the cause of these
deaths in the sewers was entirely an exceptional case, and the gas
which had caused the accident inquired into was not a sewer gas. “There
is often,” he said, “a great escape of gas from the mains, which found
its way into the sewers. The gas, however, which has done the mischief
in the present instance would not explode.”

Dr. Ure’s opinion was, that the deceased men died from asphixia, caused
by inhaling sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid gas in mixture with
prussic vapour, and that these noxious emanations were derived from the
refuse lime of gas-works thrown in with other rubbish to make up the
road above the sewer. Other scientific gentlemen attributed the five
deaths to the action of sulphuretted hydrogen gas, or, according to Dr.
Lyon Playfair, to be chemically correct, hydro-sulphate of ammonia. The
coroner (Mr. Bedford), in summing up, said that Mr. Phillips wished it
to be supposed that gas lime was the cause of the foul gas; and Dr.
Ure said that gas lime had to do with the calamity. But Dr. Miller,
Mr. Richard Phillips, Mr. Campbell, and Dr. Playfair, more especially
the latter, were perfectly sure that lime had nothing to do with it.
The verdict was the following:--“We find that Daniel Pert, Thomas Gee,
and John Attwood died from the inhalation of noxious gas generated in
a neglected and unventilated sewer in Kenilworth-street. And we find
that Henry Wells and John Walsh met their deaths from the same cause,
in their laudable endeavours to save the lives of the first three
sufferers. The jury unanimously consider the commissioners and officers
of the Metropolitan Sewers are much to blame for having neglected to
avail themselves of the unusual advantages offered, from the local
situation of the Grosvenor-canal, for the purpose of flushing the
sewers in this district.”

OF “FLUSHING” AND “PLONGING,” AND OTHER MODES OF WASHING THE SEWERS.

The next step in our inquiry--and that which at present concerns us
more than any other--is the mode of removing the solid deposits from
the sewers, as well as the condition of the workmen connected with
that particular branch of labour. The sewers are the means by which
a larger proportion of the wet refuse of the metropolis is removed
from our houses, and we have now to consider the means by which the
more solid part of this refuse is removed from the sewers themselves.
The latter operation is quite as essential to health and cleanliness
as the former; for to allow the filth to collect in the channels
which are intended to remove it, and there to remain decomposing and
vitiating the atmosphere of the metropolis, is manifestly as bad as not
to remove it at all; and since the more solid portions of the sewage
_will_ collect and form hard deposits at the bottom of each duct, it
becomes necessary that some means should be devised for the periodical
purgation of the sewers themselves.

[Illustration: FLUSHING THE SEWERS.

(_Partly from a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD, _and partly from a Sketch
kindly lent by_ MR. WHITING.)]

There have been two modes of effecting this object. The one has
been the _carting_ away of the more solid refuse, and the other the
_washing_ of it away, or, as it is termed, _flushing_ in the case of
the _covered_ sewers, and _plonging_ in the case of the _open_ ones.
Under both systems, whether the refuse be carted or flushed away,
the hard deposit has to be first loosened by manual labourers--the
difference consisting principally in the means of after-removal.

The first of these systems--viz., the cartage method--was that which
prevailed in the metropolis till the year 1847. I shall therefore
give a brief description of this mode of cleansing the sewers before
proceeding to treat of the now more general mode of “flushing.”

Under the old system, the clearing away of the deposit was a
“nightman’s” work, differing little, except in being more toilsome,
offensive to the public, and difficult. A hole was made from the street
down into the sewer where the deposit was thickest, and the deposit was
raised by means of a tub, filled below, drawn up to the street, and
emptied into a cart, or spread in mounds in the road to be shovelled
into some vehicle. A nightman told me that this mode of work was
sometimes a great injury to his trade, because “when it was begun on a
night many of the householders sleeping in the neighbourhood used to
say to themselves, or to their missusses, as they turned in their beds,
‘It’s them ere cussed cesspools again! I wish they was done away with.’
An’ all the time, sir, the cesspools was as hinnocent and as sweet as a
hangel.”

This clumsy and filthy process is now but occasionally resorted to. A
man who had superintended a labour of this kind in a narrow, but busy
thoroughfare in Southwark, told me that these sewer labourers were the
worst abused men in London. No one had a good word for them.

But there have been other modes of removing the indurated sewage,
besides that of cartage; and which, though not exactly flushing,
certainly consisted in allowing the deposit to be washed away. Some of
these contrivances were curious enough.

I learn from a Report printed in 1849, that the King’s Scholars’ Pond
Sewer, in the city of Westminster, running near the Abbey, contained
a continuous bed of deposit, of soil, sand, and filth, from 10 to 30
inches in depth, and this for a mile and a half next the river--the
first mile yielding more than 6000 loads of matter. This sewer was to
be cleansed.

“We first used a machine,” says Mr. J. Lysander Hale, “in the form of a
plough and harrow combined; a horse dragged it through the deposit in
the sewer; one man attended the horse, and another guided the plough.
The work done by this machine, in cutting a channel through the soil
and causing the water to move through it quickly, was effectual to
remove the deposit; but as the sewer is a tidal sewer, and its sole
entrance for a horse being its outlet, the machine could only be used
for a small part of any day. Sometimes with a strong breeze up the
river, the tide would not recede sufficiently to permit the horse to
get in at all (and it did not appear advisable to incur the expense of
50_l._ to build a sideway entrance for the animal), so that under these
circumstances we were obliged to discontinue the use of the horse
and plough; which, under other circumstances, would have been very
effective.” From this time, I understand, the sewers of London have
remained unploughed by means of horse labour.

But the plough was not altogether abandoned, and as horse-power was
not found very easily applicable, water-power was resorted to. The
plough and harrow were attached to a barge, which was introduced into
the sewer. The sluice gates were kept shut until the ebb of the tide
made the difference of level between the contents of the sewer and the
surface of the Thames equal to some eight feet. “The gates were then
suddenly opened, and the rapid and deep current of water following, was
then sufficient to bring the barge and plough down the sewer with a
force equal to five or six horse-power.”

This last-mentioned method was also soon abandoned. We now come to the
more approved plan of “flushing.”

“The term ‘_flushing_ sewers’ implies,” says Mr. Haywood, in his
Report, “cleansing by the application of _bodies_ of water in the
sewers; this is periodically effected, varying in intervals according
to the necessities of the sewerage or other circumstances.”

The flushing system has a two-fold object, viz., to remove old deposits
and prevent the accumulation of new. When the deposit is not allowed to
accumulate and harden, “flushing consists,” says Mr. Haywood, “simply
in heading back and letting off _flush at once_” (hence the origin of
the term) “that which has been delivered into the sewers in a certain
number of hours by the various houses draining into them, diluted with
large quantities of water specially employed for the purpose.”

Though the operation of “flushing” is one of modern introduction,
as regards the metropolis--one, indeed, which may be said to have
originated in the modern demand for improved sanitary regulations--it
has been practised in some country parts since the days of Henry VIII.

Flushing was practised also by those able engineers, the ancient
Romans. One of the grand architectural remains of that people, the best
showing their system of flushing, is in the Amphitheatre at Nismes, in
France. The site of the ruined amphitheatre presents a large elliptical
area, 114,251 superficial feet comprising its extent. Around the arena
ran a large sewer 3 feet 6 inches in width, and 4 feet 9 inches in
height. With this sewer, elliptical in shape, 348 pipes communicated,
carrying into it the rain-fall and the refuse caused by the resort of
23,000 persons, for the seats alone contained that number. “The system
of flushing, practised here,” says Mr. Cresy, “with such advantage,
deserves to be noticed, there being means of driving through this
elliptical sewer a volume of water at pleasure, with such force that no
solid matter could by any possibility remain within any of the drains
or sewers. An aqueduct, 2 feet 8 inches in width, and 6 feet in height,
brought this water from the reservoirs of Nismes, not only to fill but
to purge the whole of these sewers; after traversing the arena, it
deviated a little to the south-west, where it was carried out at the
sixth arcade, east of the southern entrance. Man-holes and steps to
descend into this capacious vaulted aqueduct were introduced in several
places; and there can be no doubt that by directing for some hours such
a stream of water through it, the greatest cleanliness was preserved
throughout all the sewers of the building.”

The flushing of sewers appears to have been introduced into the
metropolis by Mr. John Roe in the year 1847, but did not come into
general use till some years later. There used to be a partial flushing
of the London sewers twelve years ago. The mode of flushing as at
present practised is as follows:--

In the first instance the inspector examines and reports the condition
of the sewer, and receives and issues his orders accordingly. When
the sewer is ordered to be flushed--and there is no periodical or
regular observance of time in the operation--the men enter the sewers
and rake up the deposit, loosening it everywhere, so as to render the
whole easy to be swept along by the power of the volume of water. The
sewers generally are, in their widest part, provided with grooves, or,
as the men style them, “framings.” Into these framings are fitted, or
permanently attached, what I heard described as “penstocks,” but which
are spoken of in some of the reports as “traps,” “gates,” or “sluice
gates.” They are made both of wood and iron. By a series of bolts and
adjustments, the penstocks can be fixed ready for use when the tide is
highest in the sewer, and the volume of water the greatest. They then,
of course, are in the nature of dams, the water having accumulated
in consequence of the stoppage. The deposit having been loosened,
the bolts are withdrawn, when the gates suddenly fly back, and the
accumulated water and stirred-up sewage sweeps along impetuously, while
the men retreat into some side recesses adapted for the purpose. The
same is done with each penstock until the matter is swept through the
outlet. The men always follow the course of this sewage-current when
the sewer is of sufficient capacity to enable them to do so, throwing
or pushing forward any more solid matter with their shovels.

“To flush we generally go and draw a slide up and let a flush of water
down,” said one man to me, “and then we have iron rakers to loosen the
stuff. We have got another way that we do it as well; one man stands
here, when the flush of water’s coming down, with a large board; then
he lets the water rise to the top of this board, and then there’s
two or three of us on ahead, with shovels, loosening the stuff--then
he ups with this board and lets a good heavy flush of water come
down. Precious hard work it is, I can assure you. I’ve had many a wet
shirt. We stand up to our fork in the water, right to the top of our
jack-boots, and sometimes over them.” “Ah, I should think you often
get over the top of yours, for you come home with your stockings
wet enough, goodness knows,” exclaimed his wife, who was present.
“When there’s a good flush of water coming down,” he resumed, “we’re
obligated to put our heads fast up against the crown of the sewer, and
bear upon our shovels, so that we may not be carried away, and taken
bang into the Thames. You see there’s nothing for us to lay hold on.
Why, there was one chap went and lifted a slide right up, when he ought
to have had it up only 9 or 10 inches at the furthest, and he nearly
swamped three of us. If we should be taken off our legs there’s a heavy
fall--about 3 feet--just before you comes to the mouth of the sewer,
and if we was to get there, the water is so rapid nothing could save
us. When we goes to work we nails our lanterns up to the crown of the
sewer. When the slide is lifted up the rush is very great, and takes
all before it. It roars away like a wild beast. We’re always obliged
to work according to tide, both above and below ground. When we have
got no water in the sewer we shovels the dirt up into a bank on both
sides, so that when the flush of water comes down the loosened dirt is
all carried away by it. After flushing, the bottom of the sewer is as
clean as this floor, but in a couple of months the soil is a foot to 15
inches deep, and middling hard.”

“Flushing-gates,” an engineer has reported, “are chiefly of use in
sewers badly constructed and without falls, but containing plenty of
water; and they are of very little use where the gate has to be shut
24 hours and longer, before a head of water has accumulated; but where
intermittent flushing is practised, strong smells are often caused
_solely_ by the stagnation of the water or sewage while accumulating
behind the gate.”

The most general mode of flushing at present adopted is not to keep in
the water, &c., which has flowed into the sewer from the streets and
houses, as well as the tide of the river, but to convey the flushing
water from the plugs of the water companies into the kennels, and so
into the sewers. I find in one of the Reports acknowledgments of the
liberal supplies granted for flushing by the several companies. The
water of the Surrey Canal has been placed, for the same object, at the
disposal of the Sewer Commissioners.

It is impossible to “flush” at all where a sewer has a “dead-end;” that
is, where there is a “block,” as in the case of the Kenilworth-street
sewer, Pimlico, in which five persons lost their lives in 1848.

There is no difference in the system of flushing in the Metropolitan
and City jurisdictions, except that for the greater facilities of
the process, the City provides water-tanks in Newgate-market, where
the heads of three sewers meet, and where the accumulation of animal
garbage, and the fierceness and numbers of the rats attracted thereby,
were at one time frightful; at Leadenhall-market, and elsewhere, such
tanks were also provided to the number of ten, the largest being
the Newgate-market tank, which is a brick cistern of 8000 gallons
capacity. Of these tanks, however, only four are now kept filled, for
this collection of water is found unnecessary, the regular system of
flushing answering the purpose without them; and I understand that in
a little time there will be no tanks at all. The tank is filled, when
required, by a water company, and the penstocks being opened, the water
rushes into the sewers with great force. There is also another point
peculiar to the City--in it all the sewers are flushed regularly twice
a week; in the metropolitan sewers, only when the inspector pronounces
flushing to be required. The City plan appears the best to prevent the
accumulation of deposit.

There still remains to be described the system of “_plonging_,” or mode
of cleansing the open sewers, as contradistinguished from “_flushing_,”
or the cleansing of the covered sewers.

“When we go plonging,” one man said, “we has long poles with a piece
of wood at the end of them, and we stirs up the mud at the bottom of
the ditches while the tide’s a going down. We has got slides at the end
of the ditches, and we pulls these up and lets out the water, mud, and
all, into the Thames.” “Yes, for the people to drink,” said a companion
drily. “We’re in the water a great deal,” continued the man. “We can’t
walk along the sides of all of ’em.”

The difference of cost between the old method of removal and the new,
that is to say, between carting and flushing, is very extraordinary.

This cartage work was done chiefly by contract and according to a
Report of the surveyors to the Commissioners (Aug. 31, 1848), the usual
cost for such work (almost always done during the night) was 7_s._ the
cubic yard; that is, 7_s._ for the removal of a cubic yard of sewage
by manual labour and horse and cart. In February, 1849 (the date of
another Report on the subject), the cost of removing a cubic yard by
the operation of flushing, was but 8_d._ This gives the following
result, but in what particular time, instance, or locality, is not
mentioned:--

79,483 cubic yards of deposit removed
by the contract flushing system, at 8_d._
per cubic yard £2,649

Same quantity by the old system of
casting and cartage, 7_s._ per cubic yard 27,819
-------
Difference £25,170
-------

“It appears, therefore,” says Mr. Lovick, “that by the adoption of
the contract flushing system, a saving has been effected within the
comparatively short period of its operation over the filthy and clumsy
system formerly practised, of 25,170_l._, showing the cost of this
system to be ten and a half times greater than the cost of flushing by
contract.”

An official Report states: “When the accumulations of years had to
be removed from the sewers, the rate of cost per lineal mile has
varied from about 40_l._ to 58_l._, or from 6_d._ to 8_d._ per lineal
yard. The works in these cases (excepting those in the City) have not
exceeded nine lineal miles.”

“On an average of weeks,” says Mr. Lovick, in his Report on flushing
operations, a few months after the introduction of the contract
system, in Sept., 1848, “under present arrangements, about 62 miles
of sewers are passed through each week, and deposit prevented from
accumulating in them by periodic (weekly) flushing. The average cost
per lineal mile per week is about 2_l._ 10_s._

“The nature of the agreements with the contractors or gangers are now
for the prevention of accumulations of deposit in a district. For this
purpose the large districts are subdivided, each subdivision being let
to one man. In the Westminster district there are four, in the Holborn
and Finsbury two, in the Surrey and Kent, seven subdivisions.

“The Tower Hamlets and Poplar districts are each let to one man.

“In the Tower Hamlets it will be perceived that a reduction of 8_l._
has been effected for the performance of precisely the same work as
that heretofore performed; the rates of charge standing thus:--

“Under the day-work system 23_l._ per week.
„ contract „ 15_l._ „

“In those portions specially contracted for, the work has been let by
the lineal measure of the sewer, in preference to the amount of deposit
removed.

“In the Surrey and Kent districts the open ditches have been cleansed
thrice as often as formerly.

“A large proportion of the deposit removed is from the open ditches;
in these the accumulations are rapid and continuous, caused chiefly by
their being the receptacles for the ashes and refuse of the houses, the
refuse of manufactories, and the sweepings of the roads.

“In the covered sewers one of the chief sources of accumulation is the
detritus and mud from the streets, swept into the sewers.

“The accumulations from these sources will not, I think, be
over-estimated at two-thirds of the whole amount of deposit removed.

“The contracts in operation, February, 1849, with the districts which
they embrace, are as follows:--

“TABLE NO. I.

------------------+--------------+-------------+-------------
| | Average Rate|
|Sewers let for| of Work | Contract
| Prevention of| performed in| Charge
Districts. | Accumulations|Sewers passed| per
| of Deposit. | through each| Week.
| | Week. |
------------------+--------------+-------------+-------------
| Lineal Feet. | Lineal Feet.| £ _s._ _d._
Westminster | 485,795 | 150,615 | 40 0 0
Holborn & Finsbury| 355,085 | 118,000 | 23 0 0
Tower Hamlets | 223,738 | 30,000 | 15 0 0
Surrey and Kent | 440,642 | 40,000 | 75 0 0
Poplar | 26,000 | 2,000 | 6 16 0
------------------+--------------+-------------+-------------
| 1,531,260 | 340,615 |159 16 0
------------------+--------------+-------------+
Westminster--Attendance on Flaps, &c. 4 0 0
--------------
£163 16 0
-------------------------------------------------------------

“The weekly cost prior to the contract system was in the several
districts as follows:--

“TABLE NO. II.

Hence there would appear to have been a saving of 25_l._ 12_s._
effected. But by what means was this brought about? It is the old
story, I regret to say--a reduction of the wages of the labouring men.
But this, indeed, is the invariable effect of the contract system. The
wages of the flushermen previous to Sept., 1848, were 24_s._ to 27_s._
a week; under the present system they are 21_s._ to 22_s._ Here is a
reduction of 4_s._ per week per man, at the least; and as there were
about 150 hands employed at this period, it follows that the gross
weekly saving must have been equal to 30_l._, so that, according to
the above account, there would have been about 5_l._ left for the
contractors or middlemen. It is unworthy of _gentlemen_ to make a
parade of economy obtained by such ignoble means.

The engineers, however, speak of flushing as what is popularly
understood as but “a make-shift”--as a system imperfect in itself,
but advantageously resorted to because obviating the evils of a worse
system still.

“With respect to these operations,” says Mr. Lovick, in a Report on
the subject, in February, 1849, “I may be permitted to state that,
although I do not approve of the flushing as an ultimate system, or as
a system to be adopted in the future permanent works of sewerage, or
that its use should be contemplated with regulated sizes of sewers,
regulated supplies of water, and proper falls, it appears to be the
most efficacious and economical for the purpose to which it is adapted
of any yet introduced.”

A gentleman who was at one time connected professionally with the
management of the public sewerage, said to me,--

“Mr. John Roe commenced the general system of flushing sewers in London
in 1847. It is, however, but a clumsy expedient, and quite incompatible
with a perfect system of sewerage. It has, nevertheless, been usefully
applied as an auxiliary to the existing system, though the cost is
frightful.”

OF THE WORKING FLUSHERMEN.

When the system of sewer cleansing first became general, as I have
detailed, the number of flushermen employed, I am assured, on good
authority, was about 500. The sewers were, when this process was first
resorted to, full of deposit, often what might be called “coagulated”
deposit, which could not be affected except by constantly repeated
efforts. There are now only about 100 flushermen, for the more
regularly flushing is repeated, the easier becomes the operation.

Until about 18 months ago, the flushermen were employed directly by the
Court of Sewers, and were paid (“in Mr. Roe’s time,” one man said,
with a sigh) from 24_s._ to 27_s._ a week; now the work is _all done
by contract_. There are some six or seven contractors, all builders,
who undertake or are responsible for the whole work of flushing in the
metropolitan districts (I do not speak of the City), and they pay the
working flushermen 21_s._ a week, and the gangers 22_s._ This wage is
always paid in money, without drawbacks, and without the intervention
of any other middleman than the contractor middleman. The flushermen
have no perquisites except what they may chance to find in a sewer.
Their time of labour is 6-1/2 hours daily.

The state of the tide, however, sometimes, as a matter of course,
compels the flushermen to work at every hour of the day and night. At
all times they carry lights, common oil lamps, with cotton wicks; only
the inspectors carry Davy’s safety-lamp. I met no man who could assign
any reason for this distinction, except that “the Davy” gave “such a
bad light.”

The flushermen wear, when at work, strong blue overcoats, waterproofed
(but not so much as used to be the case, the men then complaining of
the perspiration induced by them), buttoned close over the chest, and
descending almost to the knees, where it is met by huge leather boots,
covering a part of the thigh, such as are worn by the fishermen on
many of our coasts. Their hats are fan-tailed, like the dustmen’s. The
flushermen are well-conducted men generally, and, for the most part,
fine stalwart good-looking specimens of the English labourer; were they
not known or believed to be temperate, they would not be employed.
They have, as a body, no benefit or sick clubs, but a third of them, I
was told, or perhaps nearly a third, were members of general benefit
societies. I found several intelligent men among them. They are engaged
by the contractors, upon whom they call to solicit work.

“Since Mr. Roe’s time,” and Mr. Roe is evidently the popular man among
the flushermen, or somewhat less than four years ago, the flushermen
have had to provide their own dresses, and even their own shovels to
stir up the deposit. To contractors, the comforts or health of the
labouring men must necessarily be a secondary consideration to the
realization of a profit. New men can always be found; safe investments
cannot.

The wages of the flushermen therefore have been not only decreased, but
their expenses increased. A pair of flushing-boots, covering a part of
the thigh, similar to those worn by sea-side fishermen, costs 30_s._ as
a low price, and a flusherman wears out three pairs in two years. Boot
stockings cost 2_s._ 6_d._ The jacket worn by the men at their work in
the sewers, in the shape of a pilot-jacket, but fitting less loosely,
is 7_s._ 6_d._; a blue smock, of coarse common cloth (generally), worn
over the dress, costs 2_s._ 6_d._; a shovel is 2_s._ 6_d._ “Ay, sir,”
said one man, who was greatly dissatisfied with this change, “they’ll
make soldiers find their own regimentals next; and, may be, their
own guns, a’cause they can always get rucks of men for soldiers or
labourers. I know there’s plenty would work for less than we get, but
what of that? There always is. There’s hundreds would do the work for
half what the surveyors and inspectors gets; but it’s all right among
the nobs.”

Nor is the labour of the flushermen at all times so easy or of such
circumscribed hours as I have stated it to be in the regular way of
flushing. When small branch-sewers have to be flushed, the deposit must
first be loosened, or the water, instead of sweeping it away, would
flow over it, and in many of these sewers (most frequent in the Tower
Hamlets) the height is not more than 3 feet. Some of the flushermen are
tall, bulky, strong fellows, and cannot stand upright in less than from
5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet, and in loosening the deposit in low narrow
sewers, “we go to work,” said one of them, “on our bellies, like frogs,
with a rake between our legs. I’ve been blinded by steam in such sewers
near Whitechapel Church from the brewhouses; I couldn’t see for steam;
it was a regular London fog. You must get out again into a main sewer
on your belly; that’s what makes it harder about the togs, they get
worn so.”

The division of labour among the flushermen appears to be as follows:--

The _Inspector_, whose duty it is to go round the several sewers and
see which require to be flushed.

The _Ganger_, or head of the working gang, who receives his orders from
the inspector, and directs the men accordingly.

The _Lock-keeper_, or man who goes round to the sewers which are about
to be flushed, and fixes the “penstocks” for retaining the water.

The _Gang_, which consists of from three to four men, who loosen the
deposit from the bottom of the sewer. Among these there is generally a
“for’ard man,” whose duty it is to remove the penstocks.

The ganger gets 1_s._ a week over and above the wages of the men.

TABLE SHOWING THE DISTRICTS UNDER THE MANAGEMENT OF THE COMMISSIONERS
OF SEWERS; ALSO THE NUMBER AND SALARIES OF THE CLERKS OF THE WORKS,
ASSISTANT CLERKS OF THE WORKS, AND INSPECTORS OF FLUSHING, PAID BY THE
COMMISSIONERS, AND THE NUMBER AND WAGES PAID TO THE FLUSHERMEN BY THE
GENERAL CONTRACTORS.

--------------------+------------------------------------------------------
| Paid by the Commissioners of Sewers.
+----------------------+----------+----------+---------
| | Assist. |Inspectors| Flap & |
|Clerks of | Clerks of | of | Sluice |
DISTRICTS. |Works. | Works[71].|Flushings.| Keepers. |
| | | | |Aggregate
--------------------+---+------+---+-------+---+------+---+------+ Total.
| |Annual| | | |Annual| |Yearly|
| |Salary| |Rate of| |Salary| |Wages |
|No.|of the|No.| Annual|No.|of the|No.|of the|
| |whole.| |Salary.| |whole.| |whole.|
--------------------+---+------+---+-------+---+-----------------+---------
| | £ | | £ | | £ | | £ | £
Fulham and | | | | | | | | |
Hammersmith.-- | | | | | | | | |
Counter’s | | | | | | | | |
Creek and | | | | | | | | |
Ranelagh | | | | | | | | |
Districts | 3| 450 | 4| 400 | 1| 120 | ..| .. | 970
Westminster | | | | | | | | |
Sewers.-- | | | | | | | | |
Western Division, | | | | | | | | |
Eastern Division, | | | | | | | | |
Regent-street | | | | | | | | |
District, | | | | | | | | |
Holborn Division | 4| 600 | 3| 300 | 1| 80 | 6| 390 | 1370
Finsbury Division.--| | | | | | | | |
Tower Hamlets | | | | | | | | |
Levels, and | | | | | | | | |
Poplar and | | | | | | | | |
Blackwall | | | | | | | | |
Districts | 3| 450 | 2| 200 | 3| 280 | 1| 70 | 1000
Districts south of | | | | | | | | |
the Thames | 3| 450 | 6| 600 | 4| 320 | 12| 374 | 1744
--------------------+---+------+---|-------+---+------+---+------+---------
Total | 13| 1950 | 15| 1500 | 9| 800 | 19| 834 | 5084
CITY | ..| .. | ..| .. | 1| 80 | 3| 148 | 228
--------------------+---+------+---+-------+---+------+---+------+---------

--------------------+---------------------------------
| Paid by Contractors.
+-----------+-----------+---------
| Gangers. | Flushers. |
DISTRICTS. +---+-------+---+-------+
| | Weekly| | Weekly|Aggregate
|No.|Wage of|No.|Wage of|Total.
| | each. | | each. |
--------------------+---+-------+---+-------+---------
| | _s._ | | | £ _s._
Fulham and | | | | |
Hammersmith.-- | | | | |
Counter’s | | | | |
Creek and | | | | |
Ranelagh | | | | |
Districts | 2| 22 | 13| 21 | 824 4
Westminster | | | | |
Sewers.-- | | | | |
Western Division, | | | | |
Eastern Division, | | | | |
Regent-street | | | | |
District, | | | | |
Holborn Division | 3| 22 | 30| 21 |1809 12
Finsbury Division.--| | | | |
Tower Hamlets | | | | |
Levels, and | | | | |
Poplar and | | | | |
Blackwall | | | | |
Districts | 3| 22 | 27| 21 |1645 16
Districts south of | | | | |
the Thames | 2| 22 | 22| 21 |1315 12
--------------------+---+-------+---|-------+---------
Total | 10| .. | 92| .. |5595 4
CITY | 1| 22 | 9| 21 | 548 12
--------------------+---+-------+---+-------+---------

Total cost of flushing the sewers £12,000 per annum.

⁂ The above division of districts is the one adopted by the
Commissioners of Sewers, but the districts of the Flushermen are more
numerous than those above given, being as follows:--

Ganger. Flushermen.
Fulham and Hammersmith employing 1 and 6 }
Counter’s Creek and Ranelagh }1st District of
Districts. „ 1 „ 7 } Commissioners.

Westminster (Western Division) „ 1 „ 10 }
Ditto (Eastern Division) „ 1 „ 12 }2nd District of
Holborn Division „ 1 „ 8 } Commissioners.

Finsbury Division „ 1 „ 9 }
Tower Hamlets Levels „ 1 „ 10 }3rd District of
Poplar and Blackwall „ 1 „ 8 } Commissioners.

Districts south of the Thames „ 2 „ 22 4th District of
Commissioners.

City „ 1 „ 9

Holborn and Finsbury districts are under one contractor, and so are the
two divisions of Westminster. The same men who flush Holborn flush the
Finsbury district also, 17 being the average number employed; but the
Finsbury district requires rather more men than the Holborn; and the
same men who work on the western division of Westminster flush also the
eastern, the number of flushers in the western district being more, on
account of its being the larger division.

The inspector receives 80_l._ per annum.

The table on p. 429 shows the number of clerks of the works, inspectors
of flushing, flap and sluice keepers, gangers, and flushermen employed
in the several districts throughout the metropolis, as well as the
salaries and wages of each and the whole.

None of the flushermen can be said to have been “brought up to the
business,” for boys are never employed in the sewers. Neither had
the labourers been confined in their youth to any branch of trade in
particular, which would appear to be consonant to such employment.
There are now among the flushermen men who have been accustomed to
“all sorts of ground work:” tailors, pot-boys, painters, one jeweller
(some time ago there was also one gentleman), and shoemakers. “You see,
sir,” said one informant, “many of such like mechanics can’t live above
ground, so they tries to get their bread underneath it. There used to
be a great many pensioners flushermen, which weren’t right,” said one
man, “when so many honest working men haven’t a penny, and don’t know
which way to turn theirselves; but pensioners have often good friends
and good interest. I don’t hear any complaints that way now.”

Among the flushermen are some ten or twelve men who have been engaged
in sewer-work of one kind or another between 20 and 30 years. The
cholera, I heard from several quarters, did not (in 1848) attack any of
the flushermen. The answer to an inquiry on the subject generally was,
“Not one that I know of.”

“It is a somewhat singular circumstance,” says Mr. Haywood, the City
Surveyor, in his Report, dated February, 1850, “_that none of the
men employed in the City sewers in flushing and cleansing, have been
attacked with, or have died of, cholera during the past year; this
was also the case in 1832-3_. I do not state this to prove that the
atmosphere of the sewers is not unhealthy--I by no means believe an
impure atmosphere is healthy--but I state the naked fact, as it appears
to me a somewhat singular circumstance, and leave it to pathologists to
argue upon.”

“I don’t think flushing work disagrees with my husband,” said a
flusherman’s wife to me, “for he eats about as much again at that work
as he did at the other.” “The smell underground is sometimes very bad,”
said the man, “but then we generally take a drop of rum first, and
something to eat. It wouldn’t do to go into it on an empty stomach,
’cause it would get into our inside. But in some sewers there’s
scarcely any smell at all. _Most of the men are healthy who are engaged
in it; and when the cholera was about many used to ask us how it was we
escaped._”

* * * * *

The following statement contains the history of an individual
flusherman:--

“I was brought up to the sea,” he said, “and served on board a
man-of-war, the _Racer_, a 16-gun brig, laying off Cuba, in the West
Indies, and there-away, watching the slavers. I served seven years.
We were paid off in ’43 at Portsmouth, and a friend got me into
the _shores_. It was a great change from the open sea to a close
_shore_--great; and I didn’t like it at all at first. But it suits
a married man, as I am now, with a family, much better than being a
seaman, for a man aboard a ship can hardly do his children justice in
their schooling and such like. Well, I didn’t much admire going down
the man-hole at first--the ‘man-hole’ is a sort of iron trap-door that
you unlock and pull up; it leads to a lot of steps, and so you get into
the _shore_--but one soon gets accustomed to anything. I’ve been at
flushing and _shore_ work now since ’43, all but eleven weeks, which
was before I got engaged.

“We work in gangs from three to five men.” [Here I had an account of
the process of flushing, such as I have given.] “I’ve been carried
off my feet sometimes in the flush of a _shore_. Why, to-day,” (a
very rainy and windy day, Feb. 4,) “it came down Baker-street, when
we flushed it, 4 foot plomb. It would have done for a mill-dam. One
couldn’t smoke or do anything. Oh, yes, we can have a pipe and a chat
now and then in the _shore_. The tobacco checks the smell. No, I can’t
say I felt the smell very bad when I first was in a _shore_. I’ve
felt it worse since. I’ve been made innocent drunk like in a _shore_
by a drain from a distiller’s. That happened me first in Vine-street
_shore_, St. Giles’s, from Mr. Rickett’s distillery. It came into
the _shore_ like steam. No, I can’t say it tasted like gin when you
breathed it--only intoxicating like. It was the same in Whitechapel
from Smith’s distillery. One night I was forced to leave off there,
the steam had such an effect. I was falling on my back, when a mate
caught me. The breweries have something of the same effect, but nothing
like so strong as the distilleries. It comes into the _shore_ from the
brewers’ places in steam. I’ve known such a steam followed by bushels
of grains; ay, sir, cart-loads washed into the _shore_.

“Well, I never found anything in a _shore_ worth picking up but once
a half-crown. That was in the Buckingham Palace sewer. Another time I
found 16_s._ 6_d._, and thought that _was_ a haul; but every bit of it,
every coin, shillings and sixpences and joeys, was bad--all smashers.
Yes, of course it was a disappointment, naturally so. That happened
in Brick-lane _shore_, Whitechapel. O, somebody or other had got
frightened, I suppose, and had shied the coins down into the drains. I
found them just by the chapel there.”

A second man gave me the following account of his experience in
flushing:--

“You remember, sir, that great storm on the 1st August, 1848. I was
in three _shores_ that fell in--Conduit-street and Foubert’s-passage,
Regent-street. There was then a risk of being drowned in the _shores_,
but no lives were lost. All the house-drains were blocked about
Carnaby-market--that’s the Foubert’s-passage _shore_--and the poor
people was what you might call houseless. We got in up to the neck in
water in some places, ’cause we had to stoop, and knocked about the
rubbish as well as we could, to give a way to the water. The police put
up barriers to prevent any carts or carriages going that way along the
streets. No, there was no lives lost in the _shores_. One man was so
overcome that he was falling off into a sort of sleep in Milford-lane
_shore_, but was pulled out. I helped to pull him. He was as heavy as
lead with one thing or other--wet, and all that. Another time, six or
seven year ago, Whitechapel High-street _shore_ was almost choked with
butchers’ offal, and we had a great deal of trouble with it.”

OF THE RATS IN THE SEWERS.

I will now state what I have learned from long-experienced men, as
to the characteristics of the rats in the sewers. To arrive even at
a conjecture as to the numbers of these creatures--now, as it were,
the population of the sewers--I found impossible, for no statistical
observations have been made on the subject; but all my informants
agreed that the number of the animals had been greatly diminished
within these four or five years.

In the better-constructed sewers there are no rats. In the old sewers
they abound. The sewer rat is the ordinary house or brown rat,
excepting at the outlets near the river, and here the water-rat is seen.

The sewer-rat is the common brown or Hanoverian rat, said by the
Jacobites to have come in with the first George, and established
itself after the fashion of his royal family; and undoubtedly such
was about the era of their appearance. One man, who had worked twelve
years in the sewers before flushing was general, told me he had never
seen but _two_ black (or old English) rats; another man, of ten years’
experience, had seen but one; others had noted no difference in the
rats. I may observe that in my inquiries as to the sale of rats (as
a part of the live animals dealt in by a class in the metropolis), I
ascertained that in the older granaries, where there were series of
floors, there were black as well as brown rats. “Great black fellows,”
said one man who managed a Bermondsey granary, “as would frighten a
lady into asterisks to see of a sudden.”

The rat is the only animal found in the sewers. I met with no
flusherman or other sewer-worker who had ever seen a lizard, toad,
or frog there, although the existence of these creatures, in such
circumstances, has been presumed. A few live cats find their way
into the subterranean channels when a house-drain is being built,
or is opened for repairs, or for any purpose, and have been seen by
the flushermen, &c., wandering about, looking lost, mewing as if in
misery, and avoiding any contact with the sewage. The rats also--for
they are not of the water-rat breed--are exceedingly averse to wetting
their feet, and “take to the sewage,” as it was worded to me, only
in prospect of danger; that is, they then swim across or along the
current to escape with their lives. It is said that when a luckless
cat has ventured into the sewers, she is sometimes literally worried
by the rats. I could not hear of such an attack having been witnessed
by any one; but one intelligent and trustworthy man said, that a few
years back (he believed about eight years) he had in one week found the
skeletons of two cats in a particular part of an old sewer, 21 feet
wide, and in the drains opening into it were perfect colonies of rats,
raging with hunger, he had no doubt, because a system of trapping,
newly resorted to, had prevented their usual ingress into the houses
up the drains. A portion of their fur adhered to the two cats, but the
flesh had been eaten from their bones. About that time a troop of rats
flew at the feet of another of my informants, and would no doubt have
maimed him seriously, “but my boots,” said he, “stopped the devils.”
“The sewers generally swarms with rats,” said another man. “I runs away
from ’em; I don’t like ’em. They in general gets away from us; but in
case we comes to a stunt end where there’s a wall and no place for ’em
to get away, and we goes to touch ’em, they fly at us. They’re some of
’em as big as good-sized kittens. One of our men caught hold of one the
other day by the tail, and he found it trying to release itself, and
the tail slipping through his fingers; so he put up his left hand to
stop it, and the rat caught hold of his finger, and the man’s got an
arm now as big as his thigh.” I heard from several that there had been
occasionally battles among the rats, one with another.

“Why, sir,” said one flusherman, “as to the number of rats, it ain’t
possible to say. There hasn’t been a census (laughing) taken of
them. But I can tell you this--I was one of the first flushermen
when flushing came in general--I think it was before Christmas,
1847, under Mr. Roe--and there was cart-loads and cart-loads of
drowned rats carried into the Thames. It was in a West Strand _shore_
that I saw the most. I don’t exactly remember which, but I think
Northumberland-street. By a block or a hitch of some sort, there was,
I should say, just a bushel of drowned rats stopped at the corner of
one of the gates, which I swept into the next stream. I see far fewer
drowned rats now than before the _shores_ was flushed. They’re not so
plenty, that’s one thing. Perhaps, too, they may have got to understand
about flushing, they’re that ’cute, and manage to keep out of the way.
About Newgate-market was at one time the worst for rats. Men couldn’t
venture into the sewers then, on account of the varmint. It’s bad
enough still, I hear, but I haven’t worked in the City for a few years.”

The rats, from the best information at my command, do not derive
much of their sustenance from the matter in the sewers, or only in
particular localities. These localities are the sewers neighbouring
a connected series of slaughter-houses, as in Newgate-market,
Whitechapel, Clare-market, parts adjoining Smithfield-market, &c.
There, animal offal being (and having been to a much greater extent
five or six years ago) swept into the drains and sewers, the rats
find their food. In the sewers, generally, there is little food for
them, and none at all in the best-constructed sewers, where there is a
regular and sometimes rapid flow, and little or no deposit.

The sewers are these animals’ breeding grounds. In them the broods
are usually safe from the molestation of men, dogs, or cats. These
“breeding grounds” are sometimes in the holes (excavated by the
industry of the rats into caves) which have been formed in the old
sewers by a crumbled brick having fallen out. Their nests, however,
are in some parts even more frequent in places where old rotting large
house-drains or smaller sewers, empty themselves into a first-class
sewer. Here, then, the rats breed, and, in spite of precautions, find
their way up the drains or pipes, even through the openings into
water-closets, into the houses for their food, and almost always at
night. Of this fact, builders, and those best informed, are confident,
and it is proved indirectly by what I have stated as to the deficiency
of food for a voracious creature in all the sewers except a few.
One man, long in the service of the Commissioners of Sewers, and in
different capacities, gave me the following account of what may be
called a rat settlement. The statement I found confirmed by other
working men, and by superior officers under the same employment.

“Why, sir, in the Milford-lane sewer, a goodish bit before you get to
the river, or to the Strand--I can’t say how far, a few hundred yards
perhaps--I’ve seen, and reported, what was a regular chamber of rats.
If a brick didn’t fall out from being rotted, the rats would get it
out, and send it among other rubbish into the sewer, for this place was
just the corner of a big drain. I couldn’t get into the rat-hole, of
course not, but I’ve brought my lamp to the opening, and--as well as
others--have seen it plain. It was an open place like a lot of tunnels,
one over another. Like a lot of rabbit burrows in the country--as I’ve
known to be--or like the partitions in the pigeon-houses: one here and
another there. The rat-holes, as far as I could tell, were worked one
after another. I should say, in moderation, that it was the size of a
small room; well, say about 6 yards by 4. I can’t say about the height
from the lowest tunnel to the highest. I don’t see that any one could.
Bless you, sir, I’ve sometimes heerd the rats fighting and squeaking
there, like a parcel of drunken Irishmen--I have indeed. Some of them
were rare big fellows. If you threw the light of your lamp on them
sudden, they’d be off like a shot. Well, I should say, there was 100
pair of rats there--there might be more, besides all their young-uns.
If a poor cat strayed into that sewer, she dursn’t tackle the rats, not
she. There’s lots of such places, sir, here, and there, and everywhere.”

“I believe rats,” says a late enthusiastic writer on the subject, under
the cognomen of Uncle James, “to be one of the most fertile causes
of national and universal distress, and their attendants, misery and
starvation.”

From the author’s inquiries among practical men, and from his own study
of the natural history of the rat, he shows that these animals will
have six, seven, or eight nests of young in the year, for three or four
years together; that they have from twelve to twenty-three at a litter,
and breed at three months old; and that there are more female than male
rats, by ten to six.

The author seems somewhat of an enthusiast about rats, and as
the sewerage is often the head-quarters of these animals--their
“breeding-ground” indeed--I extract the following curious matter. He
says:--

“Now, I propose to lay down my calculations at something less than
one-half. In the first place, I say four litters in the year, beginning
and ending with a litter, so making thirteen litters in three years;
secondly to have eight young ones at a birth, half male and half
female; thirdly, the young ones to have a litter at six months old.

“At this calculation, I will take one pair of rats; and at the
expiration of three years what do you suppose will be the amount of
living rats? Why no less a number than 646,808.

“Mr. Shaw’s little dog ‘Tiny,’ under six pounds weight, has destroyed
2525 pairs of rats, which, had they been permitted to live, would, at
the same calculation and in the same time, have produced 1,633,190,200
living rats!

“And the rats destroyed by Messrs. Shaw and Sabin in one year,
amounting to 17,000 pairs, would, had they been permitted to live, have
produced, at the above calculation and in the same time, no less a
number than 10,995,736,000 living rats!

“Now, let us calculate the amount of human food that these rats would
destroy. In the first place, my informants tell me that six rats will
consume day by day as much food as a man; secondly, that the thing has
been tested, and that the estimate given was, that eight rats would
consume more than an ordinary man.

“Now, I--to place the thing beyond the smallest shadow of a doubt--will
set down ten rats to eat as much as a man, not a child; nor will I
say anything about what rats waste. And what shall we find to be the
alarming result? Why, that the first pair of rats, with their three
years’ progeny, would consume in the night more food than 64,680 men
the year round, and leaving eight rats to spare!”

The author then puts forth the following curious statement:--

“And now for the vermin destroyed by Messrs. Shaw and Sabin--34,000
yearly! Taken at the same calculation, with their three years’
progeny--can you believe it?--they would consume more food than the
whole population of the earth? Yes, if Omnipotence would raise up
29,573,600 more people, these rats would consume as much food as them
all! You may wonder, but I will prove it to you:--The population of
the earth, including men, women, and children, is estimated to be
970,000,000 souls; and the 17,000 rats in three years would produce
10,995,736,000: consequently, at ten rats per man, there would be
sufficient rats to eat as much food as all the people on the earth,
and leaving 1,295,736,000. So that if the human family were increased
to 1,099,573,600, instead of 970,000,000, there would be rats enough
to eat the food of them all! Now, sirs, is not this a most appalling
thing, to think that there are at the present time in the British
Empire thousands--nay, millions--of human beings in a state of utter
starvation, while rats are consuming that which would place them and
their families in a state of affluence and comfort? I ask this simple
question: Has not Parliament, ere now, been summoned upon matters of
far less importance to the empire? I think it has.”

The author then advocates the repeal of the “rat-tax,” that is, the
tax on what he calls the “true friend of man and remorseless destroyer
of rats,” the well-bred terrier dog. “Take the tax off rat-killing
dogs” he says, “and give a legality to rat-killing, and let there be in
each parish a man who will pay a reward per head for dead rats, which
are valuable for manure (as was done in the case of wolves in the old
days), and then rats would be extinguished for ever!” Uncle James seems
to be a perfect Malthus among rats. The over-population and over-rat
theories are about equal in reason.

[Illustration: THE RAT-CATCHERS OF THE SEWERS.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

OF THE CESSPOOLAGE AND NIGHTMEN OF THE METROPOLIS.

I have already shown--it may be necessary to remind the reader--that
there are two modes of removing the wet refuse of the metropolis: the
one by carrying it off by means of sewers, or, as it is designated,
_sewerage_; and the other by depositing it in some neighbouring
cesspool, or what is termed _cesspoolage_.

The object of sewerage is “to transport the wet refuse of a town to a
river, or some powerfully current stream, by a series of ducts.” By the
system of cesspoolage, the wet refuse of the household is collected
in an adjacent tank, and when the reservoir is full, the contents are
removed to some other part.

[Illustration: LONDON NIGHTMEN.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

The gross quantity of wet refuse annually produced in the metropolis,
and which consequently has to be removed by one or other of the above
means, is, as we have seen,--liquid, 24,000,000,000 gallons; solid,
100,000 tons; or altogether, by admeasurement, 3,820,000,000 cubic feet.

The quantity of this wet refuse which finds its way into the sewers
by street and house-drainage is, according to the experiments of the
Commissioners of Sewers (as detailed at p. 388), 10,000,000 cubic feet
per day, or 3,650,000,000 cubic feet per annum, so that there remain
about 170,000,000 cubic feet to be accounted for. But, as we have
before seen, the extent of surface from which the amount of so-called
_Metropolitan_ sewage was _removed_ was only 58 square miles, whereas
that from which the calculation was made concerning the gross quantity
of wet refuse _produced_ throughout the metropolis was 115 square
miles, or double the size. The 58 miles measured by the Commissioners,
however, was by far the denser moiety of the town, and that in which
the houses and streets were as 15 to 1; so that, allowing the remaining
58 miles of the suburban districts to have produced 20 times less
sewage than the urban half of the metropolis, the extra yield would
have been about 180,500,000 cubic feet. But the greater proportion,
if not the whole, of the latter quantity of wet house-refuse would be
drained into open ditches, where a considerable amount of evaporation
and absorption is continually going on, so that a large allowance must
be made for loss by these means. Perhaps, if we estimate the quantity
of sewage thus absorbed and evaporated at between 10 and 20 per cent of
the whole, we shall not be wide of the truth, so that we shall have to
reduce the 182,000,000 cubic feet of suburban sewage to somewhere about
150,000,000 cubic feet.

This gives us the quantity of wet refuse carried off by the sewers
(covered and open) of the metropolis, and deducted from the gross
quantity of wet house-refuse, annually _produced_ (3,820,000,000 cubic
feet), leaves 20,000,000 cubic feet for the gross quantity carried
off by other means than the sewers; that is to say, the 20,000,000
cubic feet, if the calculation be right, should be about the quantity
deposited every year in the London cesspools. Let us see whether this
approximates to anything like the real quantity.

To ascertain the absolute quantity of wet refuse annually conveyed into
the metropolitan cesspools, we must first ascertain the number and
capacity of the cesspools themselves.

Of the city of London, where the sewer-cesspool details are given with
a minuteness highly commendable, as affording statistical data of great
value, Mr. Heywood gives us the following returns:--

“HOUSE-DRAINAGE OF THE CITY.

“The total number of premises
drained during the year was 310

“The approximate number of
premises drained at the expiration
of the year 1850 was 10,923

“The total number of premises
which may now therefore be said
to be drained is 11,233

“And undrained 5,067

“I am induced,” adds Mr. Heywood, “to believe, from the reports of
the district inspectors, that a very far larger number of houses are
already drained than are herein given. Indeed my impression is, that as
many as 3000 might be deducted from the 5067 houses as to the drainage
of which you have no information.

“Now, until the inspectors have completed their survey of the whole
of the houses within the city,” continues the City surveyor, “precise
information cannot be given as to the number of houses yet undrained;
such information appears to me very important to obtain speedily, and
I beg to recommend that instructions be given to the inspectors to
proceed with their survey as rapidly as possible.”

Hence it appears, that out of the 16,299 houses comprised within the
boundaries of the City, rather less than one-third are _reported_ to
have cesspools. Concerning the number of cesspools without the City,
the Board of Health, in a Report on the cholera in 1849, put forward
one of its usual _extraordinary_ statements.

“At the last census in 1841,” runs the Report, “there were 270,859
houses in the metropolis. _It is_ KNOWN _that there is scarcely a house
without a cesspool under it, and that a large number have two, three,
four, and_ MORE _under them_; so that the number of such receptacles
in the metropolis may be taken at 300,000. The exposed surface of each
cesspool measures on an average 9 feet, and the mean depth of the
whole is about 6-1/2 feet; so that each contains 58-1/2 cubic feet of
fermenting filth of the most poisonous, noisome, and disgusting nature.
The exhaling surface of all the cesspools (300,000 × 9) = 2,700,000
feet, or equal to 62 acres nearly; and the total quantity of foul
matter contained within them (300,000 × 58-1/2) = 17,550,000 cubic
feet; or equal to one enormous elongated stagnant cesspool 50 feet in
width, 6 feet 6 inches in depth, and extending through London from the
Broadway at Hammersmith to Bow-bridge, a length of 10 miles.

“This,” say the Metropolitan Sanitary Commissioners, a body of
functionaries so intimately connected with the Board, that the one is
ever ready to swear to what the other asserts, “there is reason to
believe is an _under estimate!_”

Let us now compare this statement, which declares it to be _known_ that
there is scarcely a house in London without a cesspool, and that many
have two, three, four, and even more under them--let us compare this,
I say, with the facts which were elicited by the same functionaries
by means of a house-to-house inquiry in three different parishes--a
poor, a middle-class, and a rich one--the average rental of each being
22_l._, 119_l._, and 128_l._

RESULTS OF A HOUSE-TO-HOUSE INQUIRY IN THE PARISHES OF ST. GEORGE THE
MARTYR, SOUTHWARK, ST. ANNE’S, SOHO, AND ST. JAMES’S, AS TO THE STATE
OF THE WORKS OF WATER SUPPLY AND DRAINAGE.

----------------------------------------------+---------------------------
| PARISHES.
+----------+-------+--------
CONDITION OF THE HOUSES. | St George| |
| the | St. | St.
| Martyr, |Anne’s,|James’s.
|Southwark.| Soho. |
----------------------------------------------+----------+-------+--------
From which replies have been | | |
received (Number) | 5,713 | 1,339 | 2,960
| | |
_With supply of Water_-- | | |
To the house or premises (Per cent)| 80·97 | 95·56 | 96·48
Near the privy „ | 48·87 | 38·99 | 43·42
Butts or cisterns, covered (Number) | 1,879 | 776 | 1,621
„ „ uncovered „ | 2,074 | 294 | 393
With a sink (Per cent)| 48·31 | 89·29 | 86·70
| | |
_With a Well_-- | | |
On or near premises „ | 5·32 | 13·97 | 13·85
Well tainted or foul „ | 46·92 | 3·71 | 7·36
Houses damp in lower parts „ | 52·13 | 30·90 | 26·67
Houses with stagnant water on | | |
premises „ | 18·54 | 7·95 | 2·95
Houses flooded in times of storm „ | 18·15 | 5·04 | 4·05
| | |
_Houses with Drain_-- | | |
To premises „ | 87·56 | 97·12 | 96·42
Houses with drains emitting | | |
offensive smells „ | 45·11 | 37·62 | 21·41
Houses with drains stopped at times „ | 22·37 | 28·50 | 13·97
Houses with dust-bin „ | 42·69 | 92·34 | 89·80
Houses receiving offensive smells from | | |
adjoining premises „ | 27·82 | 22·54 | 16·74
Houses with privy „ | 97·03 | 70·63 | 62·53
_Houses with cesspool_ „ | 82·12 | 47·27 | 36·62
Houses with water-closet „ | 10·06 | 45·99 | 65·86
----------------------------------------------+----------+-------+--------

In this minute and searching investigation there is not only an
official guide to an estimation of the number of cesspools in London,
but a curious indication of the character of the houses in the
respective parishes. In the poorer parish of St. George the Martyr,
Southwark, the cesspools were to every 100 houses as 82·12; in the
aristocratic parish of St. James, Westminster, as only 36·62; while in
what may be represented, perhaps, as the middle-class parish of St.
Anne, Soho, the cesspools were 47·27 per cent. The number of wells on
or near the premises, and the proportion of those tainted; the ratio of
the dampness of the lower parts of the houses, of the stagnant water on
the premises, and of the flooding of the houses on occasions of storms,
are all significant indications of the difference in the circumstances
of the inhabitants of these parishes--of the difference between the
abodes of the rich and the poor, the capitalists and the labouring
classes. But more significant still, perhaps, of the domestic wants or
comforts of these dwellings, is the proportion of water-closets to the
houses in the poor parish and the rich; in the one they were but 10·06
per cent; in the other 65·86 per cent.

These returns are sufficient to show the extravagance of the Board’s
previous statement, that there is “scarcely a house in London without
a cesspool under it,” while “a large number have two, three, four, and
more,” for we find that even in the poorer parishes there are only 82
cesspools to 100 houses. Moreover, the engineers, after an official
examination and inquiry, reported that in the “fever-nest, known as
Jacob’s-island, Bermondsey,” there were 1317 dwelling-houses and 648
cesspools, or not quite 50 cesspools to 100 houses.

In rich, middle-class, and poor parishes, the proportion of cesspools,
then, it appears from the _inquiries_ of the Board of Health (their
_guesses_ are of no earthly value), gives us an average of something
between 50 or 60 cesspools to every 100 houses. A subordinate officer
whom I saw, and who was engaged in the cleansing and the filling-up
of cesspools when condemned, or when the houses are to be drained
anew into the sewers and the cesspools abolished, thought from his
own experience, the number of cesspools to be less than one-half, but
others thought it more.

On the other hand, a nightman told me he was confident that every two
houses in three throughout London had cesspools; in the City, however,
we perceive that there is, at the utmost, only one house in every three
undrained. It will, therefore, be safest to adopt a middle course, and
assume 50 per cent of the houses of the metropolis to be still without
drainage into the sewers.

Now the number of houses being 300,000, it follows that the number
of cesspools within the area of the metropolis are about 150,000;
consequently the next step in the investigation is to ascertain the
average capacity of each, and so arrive at the gross quantity of wet
house-refuse annually deposited in cesspools throughout London.

The average size of the cesspools throughout the metropolis is said, by
the Board of Health, to be 9 feet by 6-1/2, which gives a capacity of
58-1/2 cubic feet, and this for 150,000 houses = 8,775,000 cubic feet.
But according to all accounts these cesspools require on an average
two years to fill, so that the gross quantity of wet refuse annually
deposited in such places can be taken at only half the above quantity,
viz. in round numbers, 4,500,000 cubic feet. This by weight, at the
rate of 35·9 cubic feet to the ton, gives 125,345 tons. This, however,
would appear to be of a piece with the generality of the statistics of
the Board of Health, and as wide of the truth as was the statement that
there was scarcely a house in London without a cesspool, while many
had _three, four, and even more_. But I am credibly informed that the
average size of a cesspool is rather more than 5 feet square and 6-1/2
deep, so that the ordinary capacity would be 5-3/4 × 5-1/4 × 6-1/2
= 197 cubic feet, and this multiplied by 150,000 gives an aggregate
capacity of 29,550,000 cubit feet. But as the cesspools, according
to all accounts, become full only once in two years, it follows that
the gross quantity of cesspoolage annually deposited throughout the
metropolis must be only one-half that quantity, or about 14,775,000
cubic feet.

The calculation may be made another way, viz. by the experience of the
nightmen and the sewer-cesspoolmen as to the average quantity of refuse
removed from the London cesspools whenever emptied, as well as the
average number emptied yearly.

The contents of a cesspool are never estimated for any purpose of sale
or labour by the weight, but always, as regards the nightmen’s work, by
the load. Each night-cart load of soil is considered, on an average, a
ton in weight, so that the nightmen readily estimate the number of tons
by the number of cart-loads obtained. The men employed in the cleansing
of the cesspools by the new system of pumping agree with the nightmen
as to the average contents of a cesspool.

As a general rule, a cesspool is filled every two years, and holds,
when full, about five tons. One man, who had been upwards of 30 years
in the nightman’s business, who had worked at it more or less all
that time himself, and who is now foreman to a parish contractor and
master-nightman in a large way, spoke positively on the subject. The
cesspools, he declared, were emptied, as an average, by nightmen, once
in two years, and their average contents were five loads of night-soil,
it having been always understood in the trade that a night-cartload
was about a ton.[72] The total of the cesspool matter is not affected
by the frequency or paucity of the cleansing away of the filth, for if
one cesspool be emptied yearly, another is emptied every second, third,
fourth, or fifth year, and, according to the size, the fair average
is five tons of cesspoolage emptied from each every other year. One
master-nightman had emptied as much as fourteen tons of night-soil
from a cesspool or soil-tank, and a contractor’s man had once emptied
as many as eighteen tons, but both agreed as to the average of
five tons every two years from all. Neither knew the period of the
accumulation of the fourteen or the eighteen tons, but supposed to be
about five or six years.

According to this mode of estimate, the quantity of wet house-refuse
deposited in cesspools would be equal to 150,000 × 5, or 750,000 tons
every two years. This, by admeasurement, at the rate of 35·9 cubic
feet to the ton, gives 26,925,000 cubic feet; and as this is the
accumulation of two years, it follows that 13,462,500 cubic feet is the
quantity of cesspoolage deposited yearly.

There is still another mode of checking this estimate.

I have already given (see p. 385, _ante_) the average production of
each individual to the wet refuse of the metropolis. According to the
experiments of Boussingault, confirmed by Liebig, this, as I have
stated, amounted to 1/4 lb. of solid and 1-1/4 lb. of liquid excrement
from each individual per diem (= 150 lbs. for every 100 persons),
while, including the wet refuse from culinary operations, the average
yield, according to the surveyor of the Commissioners of Sewers, was
equal to about 250 lbs. for every 100 individuals daily. I may add that
this calculation was made officially, with engineering minuteness, with
a view to ascertain what quantity of water, and what inclination in
its flow, would be required for the effective working of a system of
drainage to supersede the cesspools.[73] Now the census of 1841 shows
us that the average number of inhabitants to each house throughout the
metropolis was 7·6, and this for 150,000 houses would give 1,140,000
people; consequently the gross quantity of wet refuse proceeding from
this number of persons, at the rate of 250 lbs. to every 100 people
daily, would be 464,400 tons per annum; or, by admeasurement, at the
rate of 35·9 cubic feet to the ton, it would be equal to 16,670,950
cubic feet.

A small proportion of this amount of cesspoolage ultimately makes its
appearance in the sewers, being pumped into them directly from the
cesspools when full by means of a special apparatus, and thus tends not
only to swell the bulk of sewage, but to decrease in a like proportion
the aggregate quantity of wet house-refuse, which is removed by
cartage; but though the proportion of cesspoolage which finally appears
as sewage is daily increasing, still it is but trifling compared with
the quantity removed by cartage.

Here, then, we have three different estimates as to the gross quantity
of the London cesspoolage, each slightly varying from the other two.

The first, drawn from the Cubic Feet.
average capacity of the London
cesspools, makes the gross
annual amount of cesspoolage 14,775,000

The second, deduced from
the average quantity removed
from each cesspool 13,462,500

And the third, calculated
from the individual production
of wet refuse 16,670,950

The mean of these three results is, in round numbers, 15,000,000 cubic
feet, so that the statement would stand thus:--

The quantity of wet house-refuse
annually carried off by
sewers (chiefly covered) from
the urban moiety of the metropolis
is (in cubic feet) 3,650,000,000

The quantity annually carried
off by sewers (principally
open) from the suburban moiety
of the metropolis 150,000,000
-------------
The total amount of wet
house-refuse annually carried
off by the sewers of the metropolis
3,800,000,000

The gross amount of wet
house-refuse annually deposited
in cesspools throughout
the metropolis 15,000,000
-------------
The total amount of sewage
and cesspoolage of the metropolis
3,815,000,000

Thus we perceive that the total quantity of wet house-refuse annually
_removed_, corresponds so closely with the gross quantity of wet
house-refuse annually _produced_, that we may briefly conclude the
gross sewage of London to be equal to 3,800,000,000 cubic feet, and the
gross cesspoolage to be equal to 15,000,000 cubic feet.

The accuracy of the above conclusion may be tested by another process;
for, unless the Board of Health’s conjectural mode of getting at
_facts_ be adopted, it is absolutely necessary that statistics not only
upon this, but indeed any subject, be checked by all the different
modes there may be of arriving at the same conclusion. False facts are
worse than no facts at all.

The number of nightmen may be summed up as follows:--

Masters 521
Labourers 200,000

The number of cesspools emptied during the past year by these men may
be estimated at 50,692; and the quantity of soil removed, 253,460
loads, or tons, and this at the rate of 35·9 cubic ft. to the ton gives
a total of 6,099,214 cubic ft.

It might, perhaps, be expected, that from the quantity of fæcal refuse
proceeding from the inhabitants of the metropolis, a greater quantity
would be found in the existent cesspools; but there are many reasons
for the contrary.

One prime cause of the dispersion of cesspoolage is, that a
considerable quantity of the night-soil does not find its way into the
cesspools at all, but is, when the inhabitants have no privies to their
dwellings, thrown into streets, and courts, and waste places.

I cannot show this better than by a few extracts from Dr. Hector
Gavin’s work, published in 1848, entitled, “Sanitary Ramblings; being
Sketches and Illustrations of Bethnal Green, &c.”

“_Digby-walk, Globe-road._--Part of this place is private property,
and the landlord of the new houses has built a cesspool, into which to
drain his houses, but he will not permit the other houses to drain into
this cesspool, unless the parish pay to him 1_l._, a sum which it will
not pay.” Of course the inhabitants throw their garbage and filth into
the street or the by-places.

“_Whisker’s-gardens._--This is a very extensive piece of ground,
which is laid out in neat plots, as gardens. The choicest flowers are
frequently raised here, and great taste and considerable refinement
are evidently possessed by those who cultivate them. Now, among the
cultivators are the poor, even the very poor, of Bethnal-green....
Attached to all these little plots of ground are summer-houses. In the
generality of cases they are mere wooden sheds, cabins, or huts. It
is very greatly to be regretted that the proprietors of these gardens
should permit the slight and fragile sheds in them to be converted into
abodes for human beings.... Sometimes they are divided into rooms; they
are planted on the damp undrained ground. The privies are sheds erected
over holes in the ground; the _soil itself_ is removed from these holes
and is _dug into the ground_ to promote its fertility.

“_Three Colt-lane._--A deep ditch has been dug on either side of the
Eastern Counties Railway by the Company. These ditches were dug by the
Company to prevent the foundations of the arches being endangered,
and are in no way to be considered as having been dug to promote the
health of the neighbourhood. The double privies attached to the new
houses (22 in number) are immediately contiguous to this ditch, and
are constructed so that the night-soil shall drain into it. For this
purpose the cesspools are small, and the bottoms are above the level of
the ditch.”

It would be easy to multiply such proofs of night-soil not finding its
way into the cesspools, but the subject need not be further pursued,
important as in many respects it may be. I need but say, that in the
several reports of the Board of Health are similar accounts of other
localities. The same deficiency of cesspoolage is found in Paris, and
from the same cause.

What may be the quantity of night-soil which becomes part of the
contents of the street scavenger’s instead of the nightman’s cart,
no steps have been taken, or perhaps can be taken, by the public
sanitary bodies to ascertain. Many of the worst of the nuisances
(such as that in Digby-street) have been abolished, but they are still
too characteristic of the very poor districts. The fault, however,
appears to be with the owners of property, and it is seldom _they_ are
coerced into doing their duty. The doubt of its “paying” a capitalist
landlord to improve the unwholesome dwellings of the poor seems to be
regarded as a far more sacred right, than the right of the people to be
delivered from the foul air and vile stenches to which their poverty
may condemn them.

There is, moreover, the great but unascertained waste from cesspool
evaporation, and it must be recollected that of the 2-1/2 lbs. of
cesspool refuse, calculated as the daily produce of each individual,
2-1/4 lbs. are liquid.

The gross cesspoolage of Paris should amount to upwards of 600,000
cubic mètres, or more than 21,000,000 cubic feet, at the estimate of
three pints daily per head. The quantity actually collected, however,
amounts to only 230,000 cubic mètres, or rather more than 8,000,000
cubic feet, which is 13,000,000 cubic feet less than the amount
produced.

In London, the cesspoolage of 150,000 _undrained_ houses should, at
the rate of 2-1/2 lbs. to each individual and 15 inhabitants to every
two houses, amount to 16,500,000 cubic feet, or about 460,000 loads,
whereas the quantity collected amounts to but little more than 250,000
loads, or about 9,000,000 cubic feet. Hence, the deficiency is 210,000
loads, or 7,500,000 cubic feet, which is nearly half of the entire
quantity.

In Paris, then, it would appear that only 38 per cent of the refuse
which is not removed by sewers is collected in the cesspools, whereas
in London about 54-1/2 per cent is so collected. The remainder in both
cases is part deposited in by-places and removed by the scavenger’s
cart, part lost in evaporation, whereas a large proportion of the
deficiency arises from a less quantity of water than the amount stated
being used by the very poor.

We have now to see the means by which this 15,000,000 cubic feet of
cesspoolage is annually removed, as well as to ascertain the condition
and incomes of the labourers engaged in the removal of it.

OF THE CESSPOOL SYSTEM OF LONDON.

A cesspool, or some equivalent contrivance, has long existed in
connexion with the structure of the better class of houses in the
metropolis, and there seems every reason to believe--though I am
assured, on good authority, that there is no public or official record
of the matter known to exist--that their use became more and more
general, as in the case of the sewers, after the rebuilding of the
City, consequent upon the great fire of 1666.

The older cesspools were of two kinds--“soil-tanks” and “bog-holes.”

“Soil-tanks” were the filth receptacles of the larger houses, and
sometimes works of solid masonry; they were almost every size and
depth, but always perhaps much deeper than the modern cesspools, which
present an average depth of 6 feet to 6-1/2 feet.

The “bog-hole” was, and is, a cavity dug into the earth, having less
masonry than the soil-tank, and sometimes no masonry at all, being in
like manner the receptacle for the wet refuse from the house.

The difference between these old contrivances and the present mode
is principally in the following respect: the soil-tank or bog-hole
formed a receptacle immediately under the privy (the floor of which has
usually to be removed for purposes of cleansing), whereas the refuse
is now more frequently carried into the modern cesspool by a system of
drainage. Sometimes the soil-tank was, when the nature of the situation
of the premises permitted, in some outer place, such as an obscure
part of the garden or court-yard; and perhaps two or more bog-holes
were drained into it, while often enough, by means of a grate or a
trap-door, any kind of refuse to be got rid of was thrown into it.

I am informed that the average contents of a bog-hole (such as now
exist) are a cubic yard of matter; some are round, some oblong, for
there is, or was, great variation.

Of the few remaining soil-tanks the varying sizes prevent any average
being computable.

What the old system of cesspoolage _was_ may be judged from the fact,
that until somewhere about 1830 no cesspool matter could, without an
indictable offence being committed, be drained into a sewer! _Now_,
no new house can be erected, but it is an indictable offence if the
cesspool (or rather water-closet) matter be drained anywhere else
than into the sewer! The law, at the period specified, required most
strangely, so that “the drains and sewers might not be choked,” that
cesspools should “be not only periodically emptied, but _made_ by
nightmen.”

The principal means of effecting the change from cesspoolage to
sewerage was the introduction of Bramah’s water-closets, patented in
1808, but not brought into general use for some twenty years or more
after that date. The houses of the rich, owing to the refuse being
drained away from the premises, improved both in wholesomeness and
agreeableness, and so the law was relaxed.

There are two kinds of cesspools, viz. _public_ and _private_.

The _public cesspools_ are those situated in courts, alleys, and
places, which, though often packed thickly with inhabitants, are not
horse-thoroughfares, or thoroughfares at all; and in such places one,
two, or more cesspools receive the refuse from all the houses. I do not
know that any official account of public cesspools has been published
as to their number, character, &c., but their number is insignificant
when compared with those connected with private houses. The public
cesspools are cleansed, and, where possible, filled up by order of the
Commissioners of Sewers, the cost being then defrayed out of the rate.

The _private cesspools_ are cleansed at the expense of the occupiers of
the houses.

OF THE CESSPOOL AND SEWER SYSTEM OF PARIS.

As the Court of Sewers have recently adopted some of the French
regulations concerning cesspoolage, I will now give an account of the
cesspool system of France.

When after the ravages of the epidemic cholera of 1848-9, sanitary
commissioners under the authority of the legislature pursued their
inquiries, it was deemed essential to report upon the cesspool system
of Paris, as that capital had also been ravaged by the epidemic. The
task was entrusted to Mr. T. W. Rammell, C.E.

Even in what the French delight to designate--and in some respects
justly--the most refined city in the world, a filthy and indolent
custom, once common, as I have shown, in England, still prevails.
In Paris, the kitchen and _dry_ house-refuse (and formerly it was
the fæcal refuse also) is deposited in the dark of the night in the
streets, and removed, as soon as the morning light permits, by the
public scavengers. But the refuse is not removed unexamined before
being thrown into the cart of the proper functionary. There is in Paris
a large and peculiar class, the chiffonniers (literally, in Anglo-Saxon
rendering, the _raggers_, or rag-finders). These men nightly traverse
the streets, each provided with a lantern, and generally with a basket
strapped to the back; the poorer sort, however--for poverty, like rank,
has its gradations--make a bag answer the purpose; they have also a
pole with an iron hook to its end; and a small shovel. The dirt-heaps
or mounds of dry house-refuse are carefully turned over by these men;
for their morrow’s bread, as in the case of our own street-finders,
depends upon _something_ saleable being acquired. Their prizes are
bones (which sometimes they are seen to gnaw); bits of bread; wasted
potatoes; broken pots, bottles, and glass; old pans and odd pieces of
old metal; cigar-ends; waste-paper, and rags. Although these people are
known as rag-pickers, rags are, perhaps, the very thing of which they
pick the least, because the Parisians are least apt to throw them away.
In some of the criminal trials in the French capital, the chiffonniers
have given evidence (but not much of late) of what they have found
in a certain locality, and supplied a link, sometimes an important
one, to the evidence against a criminal. With these refuse heaps is
still sometimes mixed matter which should have found its way into the
cesspools, although this is an offence punishable, and occasionally
punished.

Before the habits of the Parisians are too freely condemned, let it be
borne in mind that the houses of the French capital are much larger
than in London, and that each floor is often the dwelling-place of a
family. Such is generally the case in London in the poorer districts,
but in Paris it pervades almost all districts. There, some of the
houses contain 70, not fugitive but permanent, inmates. The average
number of inhabitants to each house, according to the last census,
was upwards of _twenty-four_ (in London the average is 7·6), the
extremes being eleven to each house in St. Giles’s and between five
and six in the immediate suburbs (see p. 165, _ante_). Persons who are
circumstanced then, as are the Parisians, can hardly have at their
command the proper means and appliances for a sufficient cleanliness,
and for the promotion of what we consider--but the two words are
unknown to the French language--the _comforts_ of a _home_.

“The greater portion of the liquid refuse,” writes Mr. Rammell,
“including water, which has been used in culinary or cleansing
processes, is got rid of by means of open channels laid across the
court-yards and the foot pavements to the street gutters, along which
it flows until it falls through the nearest gully into the sewers, and
ultimately into the Seine. If produced in the upper part of a house,
this description of refuse is first poured into an external shoot
branching out of the rainwater pipe, with one of which every floor is
usually provided. Iron pipes have been lately much introduced in place
of the open channels across the foot pavements; these are laid level
with the surface, and are cast with an open slit, about one inch in
width, at the top, to afford facility for cleansing. During the busy
parts of the day there are constant streams of such fluids running
through most of the streets of Paris, the smell arising from which is
by no means agreeable. In hot weather it is the practice to turn on
the public stand pipes for an hour or two, to dilute the matter and
accelerate its flow.”

“With respect to fæcal refuse,” says Mr. Rammell, “and much of the
house-slops, particularly those of bed-chambers, the _cesspool_ is
universally adopted in Paris as the immediate receptacle.”

By far the greater proportion of the wet house-refuse of Paris,
therefore, is deposited in cesspools.

I shall, then, immediately proceed to show the quantity of matter thus
collected yearly, as well as the means by which it is removed.

The aggregate _quantity_ of the cesspool matter of Paris has greatly
increased in quantity within the present century, though this might
have been expected, as well from the increase of population as from
the improved construction of cesspools (preventing leakage), and the
increased supply of water in the French metropolis.

The following figures show both the aggregate quantity and the
increase that has taken place in the cesspoolage of Paris, from 1810 to
the present time:--

Cub. Mètres. Cub. Feet.
In 1810 the total
quantity of refuse matter
deposited in the
basins at Montfaucon
amounted to 50,151 = 1,770,330
In 1811 the quantity
was 49,545 = 1,748,938
In 1812 49,235 = 1,737,995
------ ---------
Giving an average
for the three years of 49,877 = 1,760,658
The quantity at present
conveyed to Montfaucon
and Bondy
amounts, according to
M. Héloin (a very good
authority), to from 600
to 700 cubic mètres
daily, giving, in round
numbers, an annual
quantity of 230,000 = 8,119,000

This shows an increase in 36 years of very nearly 400 per cent, but
still it constitutes little more than one-half the cesspoolage of
London.

The quantity of refuse matter which is daily drawn from the cesspools,
Mr. Rammell states--and he had every assistance from the authorities
in prosecuting his inquiries--at “between 600 and 700 cubic mètres;
(21,180 and 24,710 cubic feet), giving, in round numbers, the annual
quantity of 230,000 cubic mètres.

“Dividing this annual quantity at 230,000 cubic mètres (or 8,000,000
cubic feet) by the number of the population of Paris (94,721
individuals, according to the last census), we have 243 litres only as
the annual produce from each individual. The daily quantity of matter
(including water necessary for cleanliness) passing from each person
into the cesspool in the better class of houses is stated to be 1-3/4
litre (3·08 pints), or 638 litres annually. The discrepancy between
these two quantities, wide as it is, must be accounted for by the fact
of a large proportion of the lower orders in Paris rarely or ever using
any privy at all, and by allowing for the small quantity of water made
use of in the inferior class of houses. There can be no doubt that
this latter quantity of 1-3/4 litre daily is very nearly correct, and
not above the average quantity used in houses where a moderate degree
of cleanliness is observed. This proportion was ascertained to hold
good in the case of some barracks in Paris, where the contents of the
cesspools were accurately measured, the total quantity divided by the
number of men occupying the barracks, and the quotient by the number of
days since the cesspools had been last emptied; the result showing a
daily quantity of 1-3/4 litre from each individual.

“The average charge per cubic mètre for extraction and transport of the
cesspoolage is nine francs, giving a gross annual charge of 2,070,000
francs (82,800_l._ sterling), which sum, it would appear, is paid every
year by the house-proprietors of Paris for the extraction of the matter
from their cesspools, and its transport to the Voirie.”

Mr. Rammell says that, were a tubular system of house-drainage, such as
has been described under the proper head, adopted in Paris, in lieu of
the present mode, it would cost less than one-tenth of the expense now
incurred.

The principal place of deposit for the general refuse of Paris has long
been at Montfaucon. A French writer, M. Jules Garnier, in a recent
work, “A Visit to Montfaucon,” says:--“For more than nine hundred years
Montfaucon has been devoted to this purpose. There the citizens of
Paris deposited their filth before the walls of the capital extended
beyond what is now the central quarter. The distance between Paris and
Montfaucon was then more than a mile and a half.” Thus it appears that
Montfaucon was devoted to its present purposes, of course in a much
more limited degree, as early as the reign of King Charles the Simple.

This deposit of cesspool matter is the property of the commune (as in
the city of London it would be said to belong to the “corporation”),
and it is farmed out, for terms of nine years, to the highest bidders.
The amount received by the commune has greatly increased, as the
following returns, which are official, will show:--

A.D. Francs £
1808 the cesspoolage fetched 97,000, abt. 3,880
1817 „ 75,000, „ 3,000
1834 „ 165,000, „ 7,000
1843 „ 525,000, „ 21,000

It is here that the “_poudrette_,”[74] of which I have spoken
elsewhere, is prepared. Besides this branch of commerce, Montfaucon has
establishments for the extracting of ammonia from the cesspool matter,
and the right of doing so is now farmed out for 80,000 francs a-year
(3200_l_).

Montfaucon is on the north side of Paris, and the place of refuse
deposit is known as the Voirie. The following account of it, and of
the manufacture of poudrette, is curious in many respects:--

“The area, which is about 40 acres in extent, is divided into three
irregular compartments:--

“1. The system of basins.

“2. The ground used for spreading and drying the matter.

“3. The place where the matter is heaped up after having been dried.

“The basins, standing for the most part in gradations, one above
another, by reason of the slope of the ground, are six in number. The
two upper ones, which are upon a level, first receive the soil upon its
arrival at the Voirie; the four others are receptacles for the more
liquid portion as it gradually flows off from the upper basins.

“There is a great difference in the character of the soil brought; that
taken from the upper part of the cesspools, and amounting to a large
proportion of the whole, being entirely liquid; while the remainder is
more or less solid, according to the depth at which it is taken. The
whole, however, during winter or rainy weather, is indiscriminately
deposited in the upper basins; but in dry weather, the nearly solid
portion is at once thrown upon the drying-ground.”[75]

“The quantity of poudrette sold in 1818 was:--

At the Voirie 50,000 setiers[76]
Sent into the departments 20,000 „
------
Total sale 70,000 „

at prices of 7, 8, and 9 francs the setier.

“This is equal, at the average price of 8 francs, to 22,400_l._
sterling.

“The refuse liquids, as fast as they overflow the basins, or are passed
through the chemical works, are conducted into the public sewers, and
through them into the Seine, nearly opposite the Jardin des Plantes.
_They thus fall into the river at the very commencement of its course
through Paris, and pollute its waters before they have reached the
various works lower down and near the centre of the city, where they
are raised and distributed for household purposes, for the supply of
baths, and for the public fountains._

“Rats are found by thousands in the Voirie, and their voracity is such,
that I have often known them, during a single night, convert into
skeletons the carcasses of twenty horses which had been brought thither
the evening before. The bones are burnt to heat the coppers, or to get
rid of them.

“Speaking of the disgusting practices at the Voirie, Mr. Gisquet
says, ‘I have seen men stark naked, passing entire days in the midst
of the basins, seeking for any objects of value they might contain.
I have seen others fishing for the rotten fish the market inspectors
had caused to be thrown into the basins. Two cartloads of spoilt and
stinking mackerel were thrown into the largest of the basins; two hours
afterwards all the fish had disappeared.’

“The emanations from the Voirie are, as may well be supposed, most
powerfully offensive. To a stranger unaccustomed to the atmosphere
surrounding them it would be almost impossible to make the tour of
the basins without being more or less affected with a disposition to
nausea. Large and numerous bubbles of gas are seen constantly rising
from a lake of urine and water, while evaporation of the most foul
description is going on from many acres of surrounding ground, upon
which the solid matter is spread to dry.”

The late M. Parent du Châtelet, a high authority on this matter, stated
(in 1833) that the emanations from the Voirie were insupportable
within a circumference of 2000 mètres (about a mile and a quarter,
English measure); while the winds carried them sometimes, as was shown
when an official inquiry was made as to the ravages and causes of
cholera, 2-1/2 miles; and in certain states of the atmosphere, 8 French
miles (not quite 5 English miles). The same high authority has also
stated, that in addition to the emanations from the cesspool matter at
the Voirie the greater part of the carcasses of about 12,000 horses,
and between 25,000 and 30,000 smaller animals, were allowed to rot upon
the ground there.

To abate this nuisance a new Voirie was, more than 20 years since,
formed in the forest of Bondy, 8 miles from Paris. It consists of
eight basins, four on each side of the Canal de l’Ourcq, arranged
like those at Montfaucon. The area of these basins is little short of
96,000 square yards, and their collective capacity upwards of 261,000
cubic yards. The expectations of the relief that would be experienced
from the establishment of the new Voirie in the forest have not been
realized. The movable cesspools only have been conveyed there, by boats
on the canal, to be emptied; the empty casks being conveyed back by
the same boats. The basins are not yet full; for the conveyance by the
Canal de l’Ourcq is costly, and in winter its traffic is sometimes
suspended by its being frozen. In one year the cost of conveying these
movable cesspools to Bondy was little short of 1500_l._

In the latest Report on this subject (1835) the Commissioners, of whom
M. Parent du Châtelet was one, recommend that all the cesspool matter
at the Voiries should be disinfected. M. Salmon, after a course of
chemical experiments (the Report of the Commission states), disinfected
and carbonized a mass of mud and filth, containing much organic matter,
deposited (from a sewer) on the banks of the Seine.

The Commissioners say, “The discovery of M. Salmon awakened the
attention of the contractors of Montfaucon, who employed one of our
most skilful chemists to find for them a means of disinfection other
than that for which M. Salmon had taken out a patent. M. Sanson and
some other persons made similar researches, and from their joint
investigations it resulted that disinfection might be equally well
produced with turf ashes, with carbonized turf, and with the simple
_débris_ of this very abundant substance; and that the same success
might be obtained with saw-dust, with the refuse matter of the
tan-yards, with garden mould, so abundant in the environs of Paris, and
with many other substances. A curious experiment has even shown, that
after mixing with a clayey earth a portion of fæcal matter, it was only
necessary to carbonize this mixture to obtain a perfect disinfectant
powder. Theory had already indicated the result.”

This disinfection, however, has not been carried out in the Voiries,
nor in the manufacture of poudrette.

From the account of the general refuse depositories of Paris we pass to
the particular receptacles or cesspools of the French capital.

The Parisian cesspools are of two sorts:--

1. Fixed or excavated cesspools.

2. Movable cesspools.

“In early times the _excavated cesspools_ or pits were constructed in
the rudest manner, and cleaned out more or less frequently, or utterly
neglected, at the discretion of their owners. As the city increased in
size, however, and as the permeations necessarily taking place into
the soil accumulated in the lapse of centuries, the evil resulting
was found to be of grave magnitude, calling for prompt and vigorous
interference on the part of the authorities. It appears certain that
prior to the year 1819 (when a strict _ordonnance_ was issued on the
subject) the cesspools were very carelessly constructed. For the
most part they were far from water-tight, and very probably were not
intended to be otherwise. Consequently, nearly the whole of the fluid
matter within them drained into the springs beneath the substratum, or
became absorbed by the surrounding soil. Nor was this the only evil:
the basement walls of the houses became saturated with the offensive
permeations, and the atmosphere, more particularly in the interior of
the dwellings, tainted with their exhalations.

“The _movable cesspools_, for the most part, consist simply of tanks
or barrels, which, when full, are removed to some convenient spot for
the purpose of their contents being discharged. This form of cesspool,
though not leading to that contamination of the substratum which is
naturally induced by the fixed or excavated cesspool, may occasion many
offensive nuisances from carelessness in overfilling, or in the process
of emptying.”

“The movable cesspools are of two kinds; the one,” says Mr. Rammell,
“extremely simple and primitive in construction, the other more
complicated. The former retains all the refuse, both liquid and solid,
passed into it; the latter retains only the solid matter, the liquid
being separated by a sort of strainer, and running off into another
receptacle.

“The advantage of this separating apparatus is, that those cesspools
provided with it require to be emptied less frequently than the others;
the solid matter being alone retained in the movable part. The liquid
portion is withdrawn from the tank into which it is received by pumping.

“The other kind of movable cesspool consists simply of a wooden cask
set on end, and having its top pierced to admit the soil-pipe. It
is intended to retain both solid and liquid matter. When full, it
is detached, and the aperture in the top having been closed by a
tight-fitting lid secured by an iron bar placed across, it is removed,
and an empty one immediately substituted for it.

“The movable cesspool last described is much more generally used than
the other kind; very few are furnished with the separating apparatus.
But the use of either sort, I am told, is not on the increase. The
movable cesspools are found, on the whole, to be more expensive than
the fixed, besides entailing many inconveniences, one of which is the
frequent entrance of workmen upon the premises for the purpose of
removing them, which sometimes has to be done every second or third
day. Moreover, if the cask becomes in the slightest degree overcharged,
there is an overflow of matter.”

Indeed, the movable system of cesspools (it appears from further
accounts) seems to be now adopted only in those places where fixed
cesspools could not be altered in accordance with the ordonnance, or
where it is desired to avoid the first cost of a fixed cesspool.

An ordonnance of 1819 enacts peremptorily that _all_ cesspools, fixed
or excavated, then existing, shall be altered in accordance with its
provisions upon the first subsequent emptying after the date of the
enactment, “or if that be found impracticable, they shall be filled
up.” This full delegation of power to a centralised authority was the
example prompting our late stringent enactments as to buildings and
sewerage.

The French ordonnance provides also that the walls, arches, and bottoms
of the cesspools, shall be constructed of a very hard description of
stone, known as “pierres meulières” (mill-stone); the mortar used is
to be hydraulic lime and clean river sand. Each arch is to be 30 to
35 centimètres (12 to 14 inches) in thickness, and the walls 45 to 50
centimètres (18 to 20 inches); the interior height not to be less than
2 mètres (2 yards 6 inches). A soil-pipe is always to be placed in the
middle of the cesspool; its interior diameter is not to be less than
9-7/8 inches in pottery-ware piping, or 7-7/8 inches in cast iron. A
vent-pipe, not less than 9-7/8 inches in diameter, is to be carried up
to the level of the chimney-tops, or to that of the chimneys of the
adjoining houses. This is, if possible, to divert the smell from the
house to which the cesspool is attached.

“A principal object of the _ordonnance_,” it is stated in the Reports,
“was to ensure the cesspools being thenceforth made water-tight;
so that further pollution of the substratum and springs might be
prevented; and the provisions for its attainment have been very
strictly enforced by the police. The present cesspools are, in fact,
water-tight constructions, retaining the whole of the liquids passed
into them until the same are withdrawn by artificial means. The
advantage has its attendant inconveniences, and, moreover, has been
dearly paid for; for, independently of the cost of the alterations and
the increased cost of making the cesspools in the outset--the liquids
no longer draining away by natural permeation--the constant expense of
emptying them has enormously increased. In the better class of houses,
where water is more freely used, the operation has now to be repeated
every three, four, or five months, whereas formerly the cesspool was
emptied every eighteen months or two years. An increased water supply
has added to the evil, moderate even now as the extent of that supply
is.”

“It is estimated that, in the better class of houses, the daily
quantity of matter, including the water necessary for cleanliness and
to ensure the passage of the solids through the soil-pipe, passing
into the cesspool from each individual, amounts to 1-3/4 litre (3·08
English pints). Foreign substances are found in great abundance in the
cesspools; the large soil-pipes permitting their easy introduction; so
that the cesspool becomes the common receptacle for a great variety
of articles that it is desired secretly to get rid of. Article 19 of
the Police Regulations directs that nightmen finding any articles in
the cesspools, especially such as lead to the suspicion of a crime or
misdemeanor, shall make a declaration of the fact the same day to a
Commissary of Police.”

In all such matters the police regulations of France are far more
stringent and exacting than those of England.

“The cesspools vary considerably in foulness,” continues the Report;
“and _it is remarkable that those containing the greatest proportion of
water are the most foul and dangerous_. This is accounted for by the
increased quantity of sulphuretted hydrogen gas evolved: and is more
particularly the case where, from their large size, or from the small
number of people using them, much time is allowed for the matter to
stagnate and decompose in them. Soap-suds are said to add materially
to their offensive and dangerous condition. _The_ FOULNESS _of the
cesspools, therefore, would appear to be in direct proportion to the_
CLEANLY _habits of the inmates of the houses to which they respectively
belong._ Where urine predominates ammoniacal vapours are given off in
considerable quantities, and although these affect the eyes of those
exposed to them--and the nightmen suffer much from inflammation of
these organs--no danger to life results. The inflammation, however, is
often sufficiently acute to produce temporary blindness, and from this
cause the men are at times thrown out of work for days together.”[77]

The _emptying of the cesspools_ is the next point to be considered.

No cesspool is allowed to be emptied in Paris, and no nightman’s cart,
containing soil, is allowed to be in the streets from 8 A.M. to 10
P.M. from October 1st to March 31st, nor from 6 A.M. to 11 P.M. from
April 1st to September 30th. In the winter season the hours of labour
permitted by law are ten, and in the summer season seven, out of the
twenty-four; while in London the hours of night-work are limited to
five, without any distinction of season. These hours, however, only
relate to the cleansing of the fixed cesspools of Paris.

Fixed or excavated cesspools are emptied into carts, which are driven
to the receptacles. As far as regards the removal of night-soil along
the streets, there are far more frequent complaints of stench and
annoyance in Paris than in London. None of these cesspools can be
emptied without authority from the police, and the police exercise
a vigilant supervision over the whole arrangements; neither can any
cesspool, after being emptied, be closed without a written authority,
after inspection, by the Director of Health; nor can a cesspool, if
found defective when emptied, be repaired without such authority.

“With regard to the movable cesspool,” it is reported, “the process of
emptying is very simple, though undoubtedly demanding a considerable
expenditure of labour. The tank or barrel, when filled, is disconnected
from the soil-pipe, an empty one being immediately substituted in its
place, and the bung-hole being securely closed, it is conveyed away
on a vehicle, somewhat resembling a brewer’s dray (which holds about
eight or ten of them), to the spot appointed as the depository of its
discharged contents. The removal of movable cesspools is allowed to
take place during the day.”

In opening a cesspool in Paris, precautions are always taken to prevent
accidents which might result from the escape or ignition of the gases.

The general, not to say universal, mode of emptying the fixed or
excavated cesspools is to pump the contents into closed carts for
transport.

“This operation is,” says Mr. Rammell, “performed with two descriptions
of pumps, one working on what may be called the _hydraulic_ principle,
the other on the _pneumatic_. In the former, the valves are placed
in the pipe communicating between the cesspool and the cart, and the
matter itself is pumped. In the latter, the valves are placed beyond
the cart, and the air being pumped out of the cart, the matter flows
into it to fill up the vacuum so occasioned. The real principle is
of course the same in both cases, the matter being forced up by
atmospheric pressure. One advantage of the pneumatic system is, that
there are no valves to impede the free passage of matter through the
suction-pipe; another, that it permits the use of a pipe of larger
diameter.

“The cart employed for the pneumatic system consists of an iron
cylinder, mounted sometimes upon four, but generally upon two wheels,
the latter arrangement being found to be the more convenient. Previous
to use at the cesspool, the carts are drawn to a branch establishment,
situate just within the Barrière du Combat, where they are exhausted of
air with an air-pump, worked by steam power. A 12-horse engine erected
there is capable of exhausting five carts at the same time; the vacuum
produced being equal to 28-3/8 inches (72 centimètres) of mercury. A
cart (in good repair, and upon two wheels) will preserve a practical
vacuum for 48 hours after exhaustion.”

The total weight of one of these carts when full is about 3 tons and 8
cwt. This is somewhat more than the weight of the contents of a London
waggon employed in night-soil carriage. Three horses are attached to
each cart.

When an opening into the cesspool has been effected, a suction-pipe on
the pneumatic principle is laid from the cesspool to the cart. This
pipe is 3-15/16 inches in diameter, and is in separate pieces of about
10 feet each, with others shorter (down even to 1 foot), to make up
any exact length required. Two kinds are commonly used; one made of
leather, having iron wire wound spirally inside to prevent collapse,
the other of copper. The leather pipe is used where a certain degree of
pliability is required; the copper for the straight parts of the line,
and for determined curves; pieces struck from various radii being made
for the purpose.

Gutta-percha has been tried as a substitute for leather in the piping,
but was pronounced liable to split, and its use was abandoned. So with
India-rubber in London.

The communication between the suction-pipe and the vehicle used by
the nightmen is opened by withdrawing a plug by means of a forked rod
into the “recess” (hollow) of the machine, an operation tasking the
muscular powers of two men. This done, the cesspool contents rush into
the cart, being forced up by the weight of the atmosphere to occupy the
existing vacuum; this occupies about three minutes. The cart, however,
is then but three-fourths filled with matter, the remaining fourth
being occupied by the rarefied air previously in the cart, and by the
air contained in the suction-pipe. This air is next withdrawn by the
action of a small air-pump, worked usually by two, but sometimes by one
man. The air-pump is placed on the ground at a little distance from
the cesspool cart, and communicates with it by a flexible India-rubber
tube, an inch in diameter. The air, as fast as it is pumped out, is
forced through another India-rubber tube of similar dimensions, which
communicates with a furnace, also placed on the ground at a little
distance from the air-pump, the pump occupying the middle space between
the cart and the furnace, the furnace and the pump being portable. To
ascertain when the vehicle is full, a short glass tube is inserted in
the end of the air-pipe (the end being of brass), and through this,
with the help of a small lantern, the matter is seen to rise.

“The number of carts required for each operation,” states Mr. Rammell,
“of course varies according to the size of the cesspool to be emptied;
but as these contain on the average about five cartloads, that is the
number usually sent.[78]

“In addition to the carts for the transport of the night-soil, a
light-covered spring van drawn by one horse is used to carry the tools,
&c., required in the process.

“These tools consist of--

“1. An air-pump when the work is to be done on the pneumatic system,
and of an hydraulic pump when it is to be done on the hydraulic system.

“2. About 50 mètres of suction-pipe of various forms and lengths.

“3. A furnace for the purpose of burning the gases.

“4. Wooden hods for the removal of the solid night-soil.

“5. Pails, a ladder, pincers, levers, hammers, and other articles.”

I have hitherto spoken of the _Pneumatic_ System of emptying the
Parisian cesspools. The results of the _Hydraulic_ System are so
similar, as regards time, &c., that only a brief notice is required.
The hydraulic pump is worked by four men; it is placed on the ground in
the place most convenient for the operation, and the cart is filled in
the space of from three to five minutes.

A furnace is used.

“The furnace,” says the Report, “consists of a sheet-iron cylinder,
about nine inches in diameter, pierced with small holes, and covered
with a conical cap to prevent the flame spreading. The vent-pipe first
communicates underneath with a small reservoir, intended to contain
the matter in case the operation should be carried too far. A piece is
inserted in the bottom of this reservoir, by unscrewing which it may be
emptied. The furnace is sometimes fixed upon a plank, which rests upon
two projecting pieces behind the cart.”

An indicator is also used to show the advancement of the filling of
the cart; a glass tube and a cork float are the chief portions of the
apparatus of the indicator.

“Towards the end of the operation, when the quantity of matter
remaining in the cesspool, although sufficiently fluid, is too shallow
for pumping, it is scooped into a large pail; and, the end of the
suction-pipe being introduced, drawn up into the cart. When the matter
is in too solid a state to pass through the pipe, it is carried to the
cart in hods, unless it is in considerable quantity. In that case it is
removed in vessels called _tinettes_, in the shape of a truncated cone,
holding each about 3-1/2 cubic feet. These vessels are closed with a
lid, and are lifted into an open waggon for transport.”

Of these two systems the pneumatic is the more costly, and is likely to
be supplanted by the hydraulic. Each system, according to Mr. Rammell,
is still a nuisance, as, in spite of every precaution, the gases
escape the moment the cesspool emptying is commenced, and vitiate the
atmosphere. They force their way very often through the joints of the
pipes, and are insufficiently consumed in the furnaces. Mr. Rammell
mentions his having twice, after witnessing two of these operations,
suffered from attacks of illness. On the first occasion, the men
omitted to burn the foul air, and the atmosphere being heavy with
moisture, the odour was so intense that it was smelt from the Rue du
Port Mahon to the Rue Menars, more than 400 yards distant.

The emptying of the cesspools is let by contract, the commune acting
in the light of a proprietor. To obtain a contract, a man must have
license or permission from the prefect of police, and such license
is only granted after proof that the applicant is provided with the
necessary apparatus, carts, &c., and also with a suitable dépôt for the
reception of the pumps, carts, &c., when not in use. The stock-in-trade
of a contractor is inspected at least twice a-year, and if found
inadequate or out of repair the license is commonly withdrawn. The
“gangs” of nightmen employed by the contractors are fixed by the law
at four men each (the number employed in London), but without any
legal provision on the subject. The terms of these contracts are not
stated, but they appear to have ceased to be undertakings by individual
capitalists, being all in the hands of companies, known as _compagnies
de vidanges_ (filth companies). There are now eight companies in
Paris carrying on these operations. More than half of the whole work,
however, is accomplished by one company, the “_Compagnie Richer_.” The
capital invested in their working stock is said to exceed 4,800,000
francs (200,000_l._). They now require the labour of 350 horses, and
the use of 120 vehicles of different descriptions.

The construction of a cesspool in Paris costs about 18_l._ as an
average. The houses containing from 30 to 70 inmates may have two, and
occasionally more, cesspools. Taking the average at one and a half, the
capital sunk in a cesspool is 27_l._ Mr. Rammell says:--

“Adopting these calculations of the number of cesspools to each house,
and their cost, and allowing only the small quantity of 1-3/4 litre
(3·08 pints) of matter to each individual, the annual expense of the
cesspool system in Paris, per house containing 24 persons, will be,--

“For interest, at 5 per cent upon capital sunk in works of
construction, 1_l._ 7_s._

“For extraction and removal of matter, 5_l._ 11_s._

“Total, 6_l._ 18_s._

“The annual expense per inhabitant will be 5_s._ 9_d._

“The latter, then, may be taken as the average yearly sum per head
actually paid by that portion of the inhabitants of Paris who use the
cesspools.”

The following, among others before shown, are the conclusions arrived
at by Mr. Rammell:--

1. “That with the most perfect regulations, and the application of
machines constructed upon scientific principles, the operation of
emptying cesspools is still a nuisance, not only to the inmates of the
house to which it belongs, but to those of the neighbouring houses, and
to persons passing in the street.

2. “That the cesspool system of Paris presents an obstacle to the
proper extension of the water supply, and consequently represses the
growth of habits of personal and domestic cleanliness, with their
immense moral results; and that in this respect it may be said to be
inconsistent with a high degree of civilization of the masses of any
community.

3. “That, compared with a tubular system of refuse drainage, it is an
exceedingly expensive mode of disposing of the fæcal refuse of a town.”

OF THE EMPTYING OF THE LONDON CESSPOOLS BY PUMP AND HOSE.

Having now ascertained the quantity of wet house-refuse annually
deposited in the cesspools of the metropolis, the next step is to show
the means by which these 15,000,000 cubic feet of cesspoolage are
removed, and whence they are conveyed, as well as the condition of the
labourers engaged in the business.

There are two methods of removing the soil from the tanks:--

1. By pump and hose, or the hydraulic method;

2. By shovel and tube, or manual labour.

The first of these is the new French mode, and the other the old
English method of performing the work. The distinctive feature between
the two is, that in the one case the refuse is discharged by means of
pipes into the sewers, and in the other that it is conveyed by means of
carts to some distant night-yard.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF THE

MODE OF CLEANSING CESSPOOLS BY PUMP AND HOSE.]

According to the French method, therefore, the cesspoolage ultimately
becomes sewage, the refuse being deposited in a cesspool for a greater
or a less space of time, and finally discharged into the sewers; so
that it is a kind of intermediate process between the cesspool system
and the sewer system of defecating a town, being, as it were, a
compound of the two.

The great advantage of the sewer system, as contradistinguished from
the cesspool system of defecation, is, that it admits of the wet
refuse being removed from the neighbourhood of the house as soon
as it is produced; while the advantage of the cesspool system, as
contradistinguished from the sewer system, is, that it prevents the
contamination of the river whence the town draws its principal supply
of water. The cesspool system of defecation remedies the main evil of
the sewer system, and the sewer system the main evil of the cesspool
system. The French mode of emptying cesspools, however, appears to
have the peculiar property of combining the ill effects of both
systems without the advantages of either. The refuse of the house not
only remains rotting and seething for months under the noses of the
household, but it is ultimately--that is, after more than a year’s
decomposition--washed into the stream from which the inhabitants are
supplied with water, and so returned to them diluted in the form of
_aqua pura_, for washing, cooking, or drinking. The sole benefit
accruing from the French mode of nightmanship is, that it performs a
noisome operation in a comparatively cleanly manner; but surely this
is a small compensation for the evils attendant upon it. The noses
of those who prefer stagnant cesspools to rapid sewers cannot be so
particularly sensitive, that for the sake of avoiding the smell of
the nightman’s cart they would rather that its contents should be
discharged into the water that they use for household purposes.

The hydraulic or pump-and-hose method of emptying the cesspools is
now practised by the Court of Sewers, who introduced the process into
London in the winter of 1847. The apparatus used in this country
consists of an hydraulic pump, which is generally placed six or eight
feet distant from, but sometimes close to, the cesspool--indeed, on
its edge. It is worked by two men, “just up and down,” as one of the
labourers described it to me, “like a fire-engine.” A suction-pipe,
with an iron nozzle, is placed in the cesspool, into which is first
introduced a deodorising fluid, in the proportion, as well as can be
estimated, of a pint to a square yard of matter, and diluted with water
from the fire-plugs.

The pipes are of leather, the suction-pipes being wrapped with
spring-iron wire at the joints. India-rubber pipes were used, and
“answered very tidy,” one of the gangers told me, but they were too
expensive, the material being soon worn out: they were only tried
five or six months. The pipes now employed differ in no respect of
size or appearance from the leathern fire-engine pipes; and as the
work is always done in the daytime, and no smell arises from it, the
neighbourhood is often alarmed, and people begin to ask where the
fire is. One outsideman said, “Why, that’s always asked. I’ve been
asked--ay, I dare say a hundred times in a day--‘Where’s the fire?
where’s the fire?’” A cesspool, by this process, has been emptied into
a sewer at 300 yards distant. The pipe is placed within the nearest
gullyhole, down which the matter is washed into the sewer. When the
cesspool is emptied, it is well sluiced with water; the water is pumped
into the sewer, and then the work is complete.

The pumping is occasionally very hard work, making the shoulders and
back ache grievously; indeed, some cesspools have been found so long
neglected, and so choked with rags and rubbish, that manual labour had
to be resorted to, and the matter dug and tubbed out, after the old
mode of the nightmen. A square yard of cesspoolage is cleared out,
under ordinary circumstances, in an hour; while an average duration of
time for the cleansing of a regularly-sized cesspool is from three to
four hours.

A pneumatic pump, with an iron cart, drawn by two horses (similar to
the French invention), was tried as an experiment, but discontinued in
a fortnight.

For the hydraulic method of emptying cesspools, a gang of four men,
under the direction of a ganger, who makes a fifth, is required.

The _division of labour_ is as follows:--

1. The pumpmen, who, as their name implies, work the engine or pumps.

2. The holeman, who goes into the cesspool and stirs up the matter, so
as to make it as fluid as possible.

3. The outsideman, whose business it is to attend to the pipe, which
reaches from the cesspool, along the surface of the street, or other
place, to the gullyhole.

4. The ganger, who is the superintendent of the whole, and is only
sometimes present at the operation; he is not unfrequently engaged,
while one cesspool is being emptied, in making an examination or any
necessary arrangement for the opening of another. He also gives notice
(acting under the instruction of the clerk of the works) to the water
company of the district, that the pumps will be at work in this or that
place, a notice generally given a day in advance, and the water is
supplied gratuitously, from a street fire-plug, and used at discretion,
some cesspool contents requiring three times more water than others to
liquefy them sufficient for pumping.

The cesspool-pumping gangs are six in number, each consisting of five
men, although the “outsideman” is sometimes a strong youth of seventeen
or eighteen. The whole work is done by a contractor, who makes an
agreement with the Court of Sewers, and finds the necessary apparatus,
appointing his own labourers. All the present labourers, however, have
been selected as trusty men from among the flushermen, the contractor
concurring in the recommendation of the clerk of the works, or the
inspector. The cesspool-sewermen work in six districts. Two divisions
(east and west) of Westminster; Finsbury and Holborn; Surrey and Kent;
Tower Hamlets (now including Poplar); and the City. The districts
vary in size, but there is usually a gang devoted to each: in case
of emergency, however, a gang from another district (as among the
flushermen) is sent to expedite any pressing work. All the men are
paid by the job, the payment being 2_s._ each per job, to the pumpmen
and holeman, and 3_s._ to the ganger; but in addition to the 2_s._ per
job, the holeman has 6_d._ a-day extra; and the outsideman has 6_d._
a-day _deducted_ from the 4_s._ he would earn in two jobs, which is a
frequent day’s work. The men told me that they had four or four and
a-half days’ work (or eight or nine jobs) every week; but such was the
case more particularly when the householders were less cognizant of
the work, and did not think of resorting to it; now, I am assured, the
men’s average employment may be put at five days a week, or ten jobs.

The perquisites of these workmen are none, except the householder sends
them some refreshment on his own accord. There may be a perquisite, but
very rarely, occurring to the holeman, should he find anything in the
soil; but the finding is far less common than among the nightmen, with
whom the process goes through different stages. I did not hear among
cesspool-sewermen of anything being found by them or by their comrades;
of course, when the soil is once absorbed into the pipe, it is unseen
on its course of deposit down the gullyhole.

The men have no trade societies, and no arrangements of any equivalent
nature; no benefit clubs or sick clubs, for which their number, indeed,
is too small; or, as my informant sometimes wound up in a climax, “No,
nothing that way, sir.” They are sober and industrious men, chiefly
married, and with families. Into further statistics, however, of diet,
rent, &c., I need not enter, concerning so small a body; they are the
same as among other well-conducted labourers.

The men find their own dresses, which are of the same cost, form, and
material as I have described to pertain to the flushermen; also their
own “picks” and shovels, costing respectively 2_s._ 6_d._ and 2_s._
3_d._ each.

One cesspool-sewerman told me, that when he was first a member of one
of those gangs he was “awful abused” by the “regular nightmen,” if he
came across any of them “as was beery, poor fellows;” but that had all
passed over now.

The total sum paid to the six gangs of labourers in the course of the
year would, at the rate of ten cesspools emptied per week, amount to
the following:--

Yearly Total.
12 pumpmen, 10 jobs a-week each,
20_s._ per week, or 52_l._ per year, each £624

6 holemen, ditto, ditto, with 2_s._ 6_d._
a-week extra 351

6 outsidemen, 20_s._ a-week, less by
6_d._ a-day, or 2_s._ 6_d._ a-week, 45_l._
10_s._ a-year 296
6 gangers, 30_s._ a-week each, or 78_l._
per year 468
-----
£1739

Any householder, &c., who applies to the Court of Sewers, or to any
officer of the court whom he may know, has his cesspool cleansed by
the hydraulic method, in the same way as he might employ any tradesman
to do any description of work proper to his calling. The charge (by
the Court of Sewers) is 5_s._ or 6_s._ per square yard, according to
pipeage, &c. required; a cesspool emptied by this system costs from
20_s._ to 30_s._ The charges of the nightmen, who have to employ
horses, &c., are necessarily higher.

Estimating that throughout London
60 cesspools are emptied by the hydraulic
method every week, or 3120
every year, and the charge for each to
be on an average 25_s._, we have for the
gross receipts 3120 × 25_s._ = £3900

And deducting from this the sum
paid for labour 1739
-----
It shows a profit of £2161

This is upwards of 123 per cent; but out of this, interest on capital
and wear and tear of machinery have to be paid.

During the year 1851, I am credibly informed that as many as 3000
sewers were emptied by the hydraulic process; and calculating each to
have contained the average quantity of refuse, viz. five tons or loads,
or about 180 cubic feet, we have an aggregate of 540,000 cubic feet of
cesspoolage ultimately carried off by the sewers. This, however, is
only a twenty-seventh of the entire quantity.

The sum paid in wages to the men engaged in emptying these 3000
cesspools by the hydraulic process would, at the rate of 2_s._ per man
to the four members of the gang, and 3_s._ to the ganger, or 11_s._ in
all for each cesspool, amount to 1650_l._, which is 139_l._ and 250
cesspools less than the amount above given.

STATEMENT OF A CESSPOOL-SEWERMAN.

I give the following brief and characteristic statement, which is
peculiar in showing the habitual _restlessness_ of the mere labourer.
My informant was a stout, hale-looking man, who had rarely known
illness. All these sort of labourers (nightmen included) scout the
notion of the cholera attacking _them!_

“Work, sir? Well, I think I _do_ know what work is, and has known it
since I was a child; and then I was set to help at the weaving. My
friends were weavers at Norwich, and 26 years ago, until steam pulled
working men down from being well paid and well off, it was a capital
trade. Why, my father could sometimes earn 3_l._ at his work as a
working weaver; there was money for ever then; now 12_s._ a-week
is, I believe, the tip-top earnings of his trade. But _I didn’t like
the confinement or the close air in the factories_, and so, when I
grew big enough, I went to ground-work in the city (so he frequently
called Norwich); I call ground-work such as digging drains and the
like. Then I ’listed into the Marines. _Oh, I hardly know what made
me_; men does foolish things and don’t know why; it’s human natur.
I’m sure it wasn’t the bounty of 3_l._ that tempted me, for I was
doing middling, and sometimes had night-work as well as ground-work
to do. I was then sent to Sheerness and put on board the _Thunderer_
man-of-war, carrying 84 guns, as a marine. She sailed through the
Straits (of Gibraltar), and was three years and three months blockading
the Dardanelles, and cruising among the islands. I never saw anything
like such fortifications as at the Dardanelles; why, there was mortars
there as would throw a ton weight. No, I never heard of their having
been fired. Yes, we sometimes got leave for a party to go ashore on
one of the islands. They called them Greek islands, but I fancy as
how it was Turks near the Dardanelles. O yes, the men on the islands
was civil enough to us; they never spoke to us, and we never spoke
to them. The sailors sometimes, and indeed the lot of us, would have
bits of larks with them, laughing at ’em and taking sights at ’em and
such like. Why, I’ve seen a fine-dressed Turk, one of their grand
gentlemen there, when a couple of sailors has each been taking a sight
at him, and dancing the shuffle along with it, make each on ’em a low
bow, as solemn as could be. Perhaps he thought it was a way of being
civil in our country! I’ve seen some of the head ones stuck over with
so many knives, and cutlasses, and belts, and pistols, and things,
that he looked like a cutler’s shop-window. We were ordered home at
last, and after being some months in barracks, which I didn’t relish
at all, were paid off at Plymouth. Oh, a barrack life’s anything but
pleasant, but I’ve done with it. After that I was eight years and a
quarter a gentleman’s servant, coachman, or anything (in Norwich),
and then got tired of that and came to London, and got to ground and
new sewer-work, and have been on the sewers above five years. Yes, I
prefer the sewers to the Greek islands. I was one of the first set as
worked a pump. There was a great many spectators; I dare say as there
was 40 skientific gentlemen. I’ve been on the sewers, flushing and
pumping, ever since. The houses we clean out, all says it’s far the
best plan, ours is. ‘Never no more nightmen,’ they say. You see, sir,
our plan’s far less trouble to the people in the house, and there’s no
smell--least I never found no smell, and it’s cheap, too. In time the
nightmen’ll disappear; in course they must, there’s so many new dodges
comes up, always some one of the working classes is a being ruined. If
it ain’t steam, it’s something else as knocks the bread out of their
mouths quite as quick.”

OF THE PRESENT DISPOSAL OF THE NIGHT-SOIL.

It would appear, according to the previous calculations, that of
the 15,000,000 cubic feet of house-refuse annually deposited in the
cesspools of the metropolis, about 500,000 cubic feet are pumped by the
French process into the sewers; consequently there still remains about
14,500,000 cubic feet, or about 404,000 loads, to be disposed of by
other means. I shall now proceed to explain how the cesspoolage proper,
that is to say, that which is removed by cartage rather than by being
discharged into the sewers, is ultimately got rid of.

Until about twenty months ago, when the new sanitary regulations
concerning the disposal of night-soil came into operation, the cesspool
matter was “shot” in a night-yard, generally also a dust-yard.
These were the yards of the parish contractors, and were situate
in Maiden-lane, Paddington, &c., &c. Any sweeper-nightman, or any
nightman, was permitted by the proprietor of one of these places to
deposit his night-soil there. For this the depositor received no
payment, the privilege of having “a shoot” being accounted sufficient.

There were, till within these six or eight years, I was informed,
60 places where cesspool manure could be shot. These included the
nightmen’s yards and the wharves of manure dealers (some of the small
coasting vessels taking it as ballast); but as regards the cesspool
filth, there are now none of these places of deposit, though some
little, I was told, might be done by stealth.

Of one of these night-yard factories Dr. Gavin gave, in 1848, the
following account:--

“On the western side of Spitalfields workhouse, and entering from a
street called Queen-street, is a nightman’s yard. A heap of dung and
refuse of every description, about the size of a tolerably large house,
lies piled to the left of the yard; to the right is an artificial pond,
into which the contents of cesspools are thrown. The contents are
allowed to desiccate in the open air; and they are frequently stirred
for that purpose. The odour which was given off when the contents were
raked up, to give me an assurance that there was nothing so very bad in
the alleged nuisance, drove me from the place with the utmost speed.

“On two sides of this horrid collection of excremental matter was
a patent manure manufactory. To the right in this yard was a large
accumulation of dung, &c., but to the left there was an extensive layer
of a compost of blood, ashes, and nitric acid, which gave out the most
horrid, offensive, and disgusting concentration of putrescent odours it
has ever been my lot to be the victim of. The whole place presented a
most foul and filthy aspect, and an example of the enormous outrages
which are perpetrated in London against society.

“It is a curious fact, that the parties who had charge of these two
premises were each dead to the foulness of their own most pestilential
nuisances. The nightman’s servant accused the premises of the manure
manufacturer as the source of perpetual foul smells, but thought his
yard free from any particular cause of complaint; while the servant
of the patent manure manufacturer diligently and earnestly asserted
the perfect freedom of his master’s yard from foul exhalations; but
considered that the raking up of the drying night-soil on the other
side of the wall was ‘quite awful, and enough to kill anybody.’

“Immediately adjoining the patent manure manufactory is the
establishment of a bottle merchant. He complained to me in the
strongest terms of the expenses and annoyances he had been put to
through the emanations which floated in the atmosphere having caused
his bottles to spoil the wine which was placed in such as had not been
_very_ recently washed. He was compelled frequently to change his
straw, and frequently to wash his bottles, and considered that unless
the nuisance could be suppressed, he would be compelled to leave his
present premises.”

This and similar places were suppressed soon after the passing of the
sanitary measures of September, 1848.

The cesspool refuse, which was disposed of for manure, was at that time
first shot into recesses in the night-yard, where it was mixed with
exhausted hops procured from the brewhouses, which were said to absorb
the liquid portions, when stirred up with the matter, and to add not
only to the consistency of the mass, but to its readier portability for
land manure or for stowage in a barge. It was also mixed with littered
straw from the mews, and with stable manure generally. An old man who
had worked many years--he did not know how many--in one of these yards,
told me that when this night-soil was “fresh shot and first mixed”
(with the hops, &c.), the stench was often dreadful. “How we stood it,”
he said, “I don’t know; but we did stand it.”

In one of the night-and-dust-yards, I ascertained that as many as 50
loads, half of them waggon-loads, have been shot from the proprietor’s
own carts, and from the carts of the nightmen “using” the yard, in one
morning, but the average “shoot” was about ten loads (half a waggon)
a-day for six days in the week.

Of the mode of manufacture of this manure, a full account has been
given in the details of the cesspool system of Paris, for the process
was the same in London, although on a much smaller scale; and indeed
the manufacture here was chiefly in the hands of Frenchmen.

The manure was, after it had been deposited for periods varying from
one month to five or six, sold to farmers and gardeners at from 4_s._
to 5_s._ the cart-load, although 4_s._, I was informed, might have
been the general average. The cesspool matter, considered _per se_,
was not worth, of late years, I am told, above 2_s._ a ton (or a load,
which is sometimes rather more and sometimes less than a ton). It was
when mixed that the price was 4_s._ to 5_s._ a ton. This cesspool filth
was shot on the premises of the manufacturer gratuitously, as it was in
any of the night-yards. It was not until it had been kept some time,
and had been mixed (generally) with other manures, and sometimes with
road-sweepings, that this manure was used in gardens; for it was said
that if this had not been done, its ammoniacal vapours would have been
absorbed and retained by the leaves of the fruit-trees.

This night-soil manure was devoted to two purposes--to the manufacture
of deodorized and portable manure for exportation (chiefly to our
sugar-growing colonies), and to the fertilization of the land around
London.

When manufactured into manure it was shipped--in new casks generally,
the manure casks of the outward voyage being transformed into the brown
sugar casks of the homeward-bound vessels. I was told by a seaman who
some years ago sailed to the West Indies, that these manure casks in
damp weather gave out an unpleasant odour.

It was only to the home cultivators who resided at no great distance
from a night-yard, from five to six miles or a little more, that this
manure was sold to be carted away; their attendance at the markets
with carts, waggons, and horses, giving them facilities of conveying
the manure at a cheap rate. But upwards of three-fourths of the whole
was sent in barges into the more distant country parts, having a ready
water communication either by the Thames or by canal.

The purchaser nearer home conveyed it away in his own cart, and with
his own horses, which had perhaps come up to town laden with cabbages
to Covent Garden, or hay to Cumberland-market, the cart being made
water-tight for the purpose. The “legal hours” to be observed in the
cleansing of cesspools, and the transport of the contents upon such
cleansing, not being required to be observed in this second transport
of the cesspool manure, it was carted away at any hour, as stable dung
now is.

It is not possible at the present time, when night-yards are no longer
permitted to exist in London, and the manufacture of the night-soil
manure is consequently suppressed, to ascertain the precise quantities
disposed of commercially, in a former state of things.

The money returns to the master-nightman for the manure he now collects
need no figures. The law requires him to refrain from shooting this
soil in his own yard, or in _any_ inhabited part of the metropolis, and
it is shot on the nearest farm to which he has access, merely for the
privilege of shooting it, the farmer paying nothing for the deposit,
with which he does what he pleases. It is mixed with other refuse, I
was told, at present, and kept as compost, or used on the land, but the
change is too recent for the establishment of any systematic traffic in
the article.

OF THE WORKING NIGHTMEN AND THE MODE OF WORK.

Nightwork, by the provisions of the Police Act, is not to be commenced
before twelve at night, nor continued beyond five in the morning,
winter and summer alike. This regulation is known among the nightmen
as the “legal hours,” and tends, in a measure, to account for the
heterogeneous class of labourers who still seek nightwork; for
strong men think little of devoting a part of the night, as well
as the working hours of the day, to toil. A rubbish-carter, a very
powerfully-built man, told me he was partial to nightwork, and always
looked out for it, even when in daily employ, as “it was sometimes like
found money.” The scavengers, sweeps, dustmen, and labourers known as
ground-workers, are anxious to obtain night-work when out of regular
employment; and, ten years and more since, it was often an available
and remunerative resource.

Night-work is, then, essentially, and perhaps necessarily,
extra-work, rather than a distinct calling followed by a separate
class of workers. The generality of nightmen are scavengers, or
dustmen, or chimney-sweepers, or rubbish-carters, or pipe-layers,
or ground-workers, or coal-porters, carmen or stablemen, or men
working for the market-gardeners round London--all either in or out
of employment. Perhaps there is not at the present time in the whole
metropolis a working nightman who is _solely_ a working nightman.

It is almost the same with the master-nightmen. They are generally
master-chimney-sweepers, scavengers, rubbish-carters, and builders.
Some of the contractors for the public street scavengery, and the
house-dust-bin emptying, are (or have been) among the largest employers
of nightmen, but only in their individual trading capacity, for
they have no contracts with the parishes concerning the emptying
of cesspools; indeed the parish or district corporations have
nothing to do with the matter. I have already shown, that among the
best-patronised master-nightmen are now the Commissioners of the Court
of Sewers.

For how long a period the master and working chimney-sweepers and
scavengers have been the master and labouring nightmen I am unable to
discover, but it may be reasonable to assume that this connexion, as a
matter of trade, existed in the metropolis at the commencement of the
eighteenth century.

The police of Paris, as I have shown, have full control over cesspool
cleansing, but the police of London are instructed merely to prevent
night-work being carried on at a later or earlier period than “the
legal hours;” still a few minutes either way are not regarded, and the
legal hours, I am told, are almost always adhered to.

Nightwork is carried on--and has been so carried on, within the memory
of the oldest men in the trade, who had never heard their predecessors
speak of any other system--after this method:--A gang of four men
(exclusive of those who have the care of the horses, and who drive
the night-carts to and from the scenes of the men’s labours at the
cesspools) are set to work. The labour of the gang is divided, though
not with any individual or especial strictness, as follows:--

1. The _holeman_, who goes into the cesspool and fills the tub.

2. The _ropeman_, who raises the tub when filled.

3. The _tubmen_ (of whom there are two), who carry away the tub when
raised, and empty it into the cart.

The mode of work may be thus briefly described:--Within a foot, or
even less sometimes, though often as much as three feet, below the
surface of the ground (when the cesspool is away from the house) is
what is called the “main hole.” This is the opening of the cesspool,
and is covered with flag stones, removable, wholly or partially, by
means of the pickaxe. If the cesspool be immediately under the privy,
the flooring, &c., is displaced. Should the soil be near enough to the
surface, the tub is dipped into it, drawn out, the filth scraped from
its exterior with a shovel, or swept off with a besom, or washed off
by water flung against it with sufficient force. This done, the tubmen
insert the pole through the handles of the tub, and bear it on their
shoulders to the cart. The mode of carriage and the form of the tub
have been already shown in an illustration, which I was assured by a
nightman who had seen it in a shopwindow (for he could not read), was
“as nat’ral as life, tub and all.”

Thus far, the ropeman and the holeman generally aid in filling the tub,
but as the soil becomes lower, the vessel is let down and drawn up full
by the ropeman. When the soil becomes lower still, a ladder is usually
planted inside the cesspool; the “holeman,” who is generally the
strongest person in the gang, descends, shovels the tub full, having
stirred up the refuse to loosen it, and the contents, being drawn up by
the ropeman, are carried away as before described.

The labour is sometimes severe. The tub when filled, though it is never
quite filled, weighs rarely less than eight stone, and sometimes more;
“but that, you see, sir,” a nightman said to me, “depends on the nature
of the sile.”

Beer, and bread and cheese, are given to the nightmen, and frequently
gin, while at their work; but as the bestowal of the spirit is
voluntary, some householders from motives of economy, or from being
real or pretended members or admirers of the total-abstinence
principles, refuse to give any strong liquor, and in that case--if
such a determination to withhold the drink be known beforehand--the
employers sometimes supply the men with a glass or two; and the men,
when “nothing better can be done,” club their own money, and send to
some night-house, often at a distance, to purchase a small quantity
on their own account. One master-nightman said, he thought his men
worked best, indeed he was sure of it, “with a drop to keep them up;”
another thought it did them neither good nor harm, “in a moderate way
of taking it.” Both these informants were themselves temperate men,
one rarely tasting spirits. It is commonly enough said, that if the
nightmen have no “allowance,” they will work neither as quickly nor
as carefully as if accorded the customary gin “perquisite.” One man,
certainly a very strong active person, whose services where quickness
in the work was indispensable might be valuable (and he had work as a
rubbish-carter also), told me that he for one would not work for any
man at nightwork if there was not a fair allowance of drink, “to keep
up his strength,” and he knew others of the same mind. On my asking
him what he considered a “fair” allowance, he told me that at least a
bottle of gin among the gang of four was “looked for, and mostly had,
over a gentleman’s cesspool. And little enough, too,” the man said,
“among four of us; what it holds if it’s public-house gin is uncertain:
for you must know, sir, that some bottles has great ‘kicks’ at their
bottoms. But I should say that there’s been a bottle of gin drunk at
the clearing of every two, ay, and more than every two, out of three
cesspools emptied in London; and now that I come to think on it, I
should say that’s been the case with three out of every four.”

Some master-nightmen, and more especially the sweeper-nightmen, work
at the cesspools themselves, although many of them are men “well to
do in the world.” One master I met with, who had the reputation of
being “warm,” spoke of his own manual labour in shovelling filth in
the same self-complacent tone that we may imagine might be used by a
grocer, worth his “plum,” who quietly intimates that he will serve a
washerwoman with her half ounce of tea, and weigh it for her himself,
as politely as he would serve a duchess; for _he_ wasn’t above his
business: neither was the nightman.

On one occasion I went to see a gang of nightmen at work. Large horn
lanterns (for the night was dark, though at intervals the stars shone
brilliantly) were placed at the edges of the cesspool. Two poles also
were temporarily fixed in the ground, to which lanterns were hung, but
this is not always the case. The work went rapidly on, with little
noise and no confusion.

The scene was peculiar enough. The artificial light, shining into the
dark filthy-looking cavern or cesspool, threw the adjacent houses into
a deep shade. All around was perfectly still, and there was not an
incident to interrupt the labour, except that at one time the window of
a neighbouring house was thrown up, a night-capped head was protruded,
and then down was banged the sash with an impatient curse. It appeared
as if a gentleman’s slumbers had been disturbed, though the nightmen
laughed and declared it was a lady’s voice! The smell, although the air
was frosty, was for some little time, perhaps ten minutes, literally
sickening; after that period the chief sensation experienced was a
slight headache; the unpleasantness of the odour still continuing,
though without any sickening effect. The nightmen, however, pronounced
the stench “nothing at all;” and one even declared it was refreshing!

The cesspool in this case was so situated that the cart or rather
waggon could be placed about three yards from its edge; sometimes,
however, the soil has to be carried through a garden and through the
house, to the excessive annoyance of the inmates. The nightmen whom I
saw evidently enjoyed a bottle of gin, which had been provided for them
by the master of the house, as well as some bread and cheese, and two
pots of beer. When the waggon was full, two horses were brought from a
stable on the premises (an arrangement which can only be occasionally
carried out) and yoked to the vehicle, which was at once driven away; a
smaller cart and one horse being used to carry off the residue.

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF MASTER-SWEEPS, DUST, AND OTHER CONTRACTORS,
AND MASTER-BRICKLAYERS, THROUGHOUT THE METROPOLIS, ENGAGED IN
NIGHT-WORK, AS WELL AS THE NUMBER OF CESSPOOLS EMPTIED, AND QUANTITY OF
SOIL COLLECTED YEARLY. ALSO THE PRICE PAID TO EACH OPERATIVE PER LOAD,
OR PER NIGHT, AND THE TOTAL AMOUNT ANNUALLY PAID TO THE MASTER-NIGHTMEN.

--------------+------------------------------------------------------------
|Number of Cesspools
|emptied during the year.
| |
| |Quantity of Night-soil
| |collected annually.
| | |
| | |Number of operative
| | |Nightmen employed to
| | |empty each Cesspool.
| | | |
| | | |Total number of times
| | | |the working Nightmen are
| | | |employed during the year.
| | | | |
SWEEPS | | | | |Sum paid to each operative
EMPLOYED | | | | |Nightman engaged in removing
AS | | | | |soil from Cesspools.
NIGHTMEN | | | | | |
| | | | | |Total Amount
| | | | | |paid to the operative
| | | | | |Nightmen during
| | | | | |the year.
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |Total Amount
| | | | | | |paid to
| | | | | | |Master-Nightmen
| | | | | | |during the year
| | | | | | |for emptying
| | | | | | |Cesspools, at
| | | | | | |10_s._ per load.
--------------+----+------+----+------+------+--------------+----------------
| |Loads.| | |Pence.| £ _s._ _d._ | £.
KENSINGTON. | | | | | | |
Hurd | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Francis | 12| 72 | 4 | 48| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Russell | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Hough | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 10 0 | 60
CHELSEA. | | | | | | |
Burns | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Clements | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Groves | 18| 108 | 3 | 54| 6 | 2 14 0 | 54
Clayton | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Sheppard | 14| 84 | 4 | 56| 6 | 2 2 0 | 32
Nie | 16| 96 | 3 | 48| 6 | 2 8 0 | 48
Haddox | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Albrook | 30| 180 | 4 | 120| 7 | 5 5 0 | 90
WESTMINSTER. | | | | | | |
Peacock | 60| 360 | 4 | 240| 7 | 10 10 0 | 180
Reiley | 40| 240 | 4 | 160| 7 | 6 13 4 | 120
White | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Ramsbottom | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Ness | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Porter | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 4 | 30
Edwards | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Andrews | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Foreman | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 4 | 30
ST. MARTIN’S. | | | | | | |
Wakefield | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Whateley | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
Templeton | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Pearce | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
MARYLEBONE. | | | | | | |
Effery | 2| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Brigham | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Ballard | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Pottle | 25| 150 | 4 | 100| 7 | 3 15 0 | 75
Shadwick | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Wilson | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Lewis | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Cuss | 30| 180 | 4 | 120| 7 | 4 10 0 | 90
Wood | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
PADDINGTON. | | | | | | |
Prichard | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Randall | 25| 150 | 3 | 75| 6 | 3 15 0 | 75
Brown | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Lamb | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Bolton | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Davis | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Rickwood | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 4
Elkins | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
HAMPSTEAD. | | | | | | |
Kippin | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Bowden | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
ISLINGTON. | | | | | | |
Hughes | 25| 150 | 3 | 75| 6 | 3 15 0 | 75
Boven | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Chilcott | 25| 150 | 3 | 75| 6 | 3 15 0 | 75
Baker | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Burrows | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
ST. PANCRAS. | | | | | | |
Justo | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Neill | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Robinson | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Marriage | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Rose | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Hall | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Jenkins | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Steel | 4| 24 | 3 | 12| 6 | 0 12 0 | 12
Lake | 60| 360 | 4 | 240| 7 | 10 10 0 | 180
Hewlett | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Snell | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
McDonald | 30| 180 | 4 | 120| 7 | 5 5 0 | 90
HACKNEY. | | | | | | |
Mason | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Clark | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Starkey | 25| 150 | 4 | 100| 6 | 3 15 0 | 75
Attewell | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 10 0 | 60
Brown | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
ST. GILES | | | | | | |
AND ST. | | | | | | |
GEORGE’S, | | | | | | |
BLOOMSBURY. | | | | | | |
Store | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Richards | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Norris | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 3 16 0 | 36
Eldridge | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Davis | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Francis | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Tiney | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Johnson | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Tinsey | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Randall | 4| 24 | 3 | 12| 6 | 0 12 0 | 12
Day | 60| 360 | 4 | 240| 7 | 10 10 0 | 180
STRAND. | | | | | | |
Catlin | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Richards | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Hutchins | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Barker | 4| 24 | 3 | 12| 6 | 0 12 0 | 12
HOLBORN. | | | | | | |
Duck | 30| 180 | 4 | 120| 7 | 5 5 0 | 90
Eagle | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 10 0 | 60
Froome | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Smith | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
CLERKENWELL. | | | | | | |
Davis | 30| 180 | 3 | 90| 6 | 4 10 0 | 90
Brown | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 10 0 | 60
Day | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Hawkins | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Grant | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
ST. LUKE’S. | | | | | | |
Brown | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 0 0 | 60
Mawley | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 0 0 | 60
Stevens | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Badger | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Lewis | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
EAST LONDON. | | | | | | |
Crozier | 30| 180 | 4 | 120| 7 | 5 5 0 | 90
James | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 10 0 | 60
Dawson | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Newell | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 10 0 | 60
Lumley | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Harvey | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
WEST LONDON. | | | | | | |
Rayment | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Clarke | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 0 0 | 60
Watson | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Desater | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
LONDON, CITY. | | | | | | |
Tyler and | | | | | | |
Tyso | 30| 180 | 4 | 120| 7 | 5 5 0 | 90
Burgess | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 10 0 | 60
Wilson | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 7 | 3 10 0 | 60
Potter | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Wright | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
SHOREDITCH. | | | | | | |
Wells | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Whittle | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Collins | 15| 90 | 3 | 45| 6 | 2 5 0 | 45
Crew | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Atwood | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Conroy | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Pusey | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
Pedrick | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
BETHNAL GREEN.| | | | | | |
Crosby | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Mull | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Darby | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Hall | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Collins | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
WHITECHAPEL. | | | | | | |
Brazier | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Harrison | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Harris | 16| 96 | 3 | 48| 6 | 2 8 0 | 48
Mantz | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Whitehead | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
ST. GEORGE-IN-| | | | | | |
THE-EAST. | | | | | | |
Rawton | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Wrotham | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Harewood | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Rawthorn | 25| 150 | 4 | 100| 6 | 3 15 0 | 75
Darling | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Jones | 15| 90 | 3 | 45| 6 | 2 5 0 | 45
Johnson | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Simpson | 15| 90 | 3 | 45| 6 | 2 5 0 | 45
BERMONDSEY. | | | | | | |
Wilkinson | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Goring | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 36
Lively | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 2 4 0 | 30
Stone | 9| 54 | 3 | 27| 6 | 1 7 0 | 24
Ward | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 24
WALWORTH AND | | | | | | |
NEWINGTON. | | | | | | |
Kingsbury | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 27
Goodge | 4| 24 | 3 | 12| 6 | 0 12 0 | 18
Wells | 15| 90 | 3 | 45| 6 | 2 5 0 | 18
Wilks | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 12
James | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 45
Morgan | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 36
Croney | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 30
Holmes | 8| 48 | 3 | 4| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
STEPNEY. | | | | | | |
Newell | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Fleming | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Tuff | 20| 120 | 3 | 60| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Hillings- | | | | | | |
worth | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Smith | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Field | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
POPLAR. | | | | | | |
Weaver | 18| 108 | 3 | 54| 6 | 2 14 0 | 54
Strawson | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Culloder | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Ward | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
ST. OLAVE’S, | | | | | | |
ST. | | | | | | |
SAVIOUR’S, | | | | | | |
AND ST. | | | | | | |
GEORGE’S, | | | | | | |
SOUTHWARK. | | | | | | |
Vines | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Humfry | 15| 90 | 3 | 45| 6 | 2 5 0 | 45
Young | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
James | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Penn | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Holliday | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Muggeridge | 15| 90 | 3 | 45| 6 | 2 5 0 | 45
Alcorn | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Fisher | 12| 72 | 3 | 26| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Goode | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Smith | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Roberts | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Pilkington | 9| 54 | 3 | 27| 6 | 1 7 0 | 27
Lindsey | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
Daycock | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
Moulton | 4| 24 | 3 | 12| 6 | 0 12 0 | 12
LAMBETH. | | | | | | |
Roberts | 25| 150 | 4 | 100| 7 | 4 7 6 | 75
Holland | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Ballard | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Brown | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Mills | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Giles | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
Spooner | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
Green | 4| 24 | 3 | 12| 6 | 0 12 0 | 12
Barnham | 4| 24 | 3 | 12| 6 | 0 12 0 | 12
Price | 4| 24 | 3 | 12| 6 | 0 12 0 | 12
CHRISTCHURCH, | | | | | | |
LAMBETH. | | | | | | |
Plummer | 18| 108 | 3 | 54| 6 | 2 14 0 | 54
Steers | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Clare | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Garlick | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Hudson | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
Jones | 4| 24 | 3 | 12| 6 | 0 12 0 | 12
WANDSWORTH & | | | | | | |
BATTERSEA. | | | | | | |
Foreman | 15| 90 | 3 | 45| 6 | 2 5 0 | 45
Smith | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
Giles | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Davis | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
Flushman | 4| 24 | 3 | 12| 6 | 0 12 0 | 12
ROTHERHITHE. | | | | | | |
Shelley | 6| 36 | 3 | 18| 6 | 0 18 0 | 18
Richardson | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Norris | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
Smith | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Dyer | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
GREENWICH & | | | | | | |
DEPTFORD. | | | | | | |
Manning | 30| 180 | 4 | 120| 6 | 4 10 0 | 90
Vines | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Roseworthy | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Tyler | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Munshin | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
WOOLWICH. | | | | | | |
Pearce | 30| 180 | 4 | 120| 6 | 4 10 0 | 90
Fiddeman | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Sims | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Smithers | 12| 72 | 3 | 36| 6 | 1 16 0 | 36
Rooke | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
James | 8| 48 | 3 | 24| 6 | 1 4 0 | 24
LEWISHAM. | | | | | | |
Ridgeway | 20| 120 | 4 | 80| 6 | 3 0 0 | 60
Binney | 10| 60 | 3 | 30| 6 | 1 10 0 | 30
+----+------+----+------+------+------------- +-----
Total for |2992| 14960|3&4 |10,062|6&7d. |455 15 0 |£7480
Sweep-nightmen

DUST AND OTHER CONTRACTORS ENGAGED AS NIGHTMEN.

--------------+------+-------+----+-------+------+----------+----------
| | Loads.| | |Pence.| £ _s. d._| £ _s._
Darke | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Cooper | 300| 1800 | 4 | 1200 | 8 |60 0 0| 945 0
Dodd | 300| 1800 | 4 | 1200 | 8 |60 0 0| 945 0
Starkey | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000 | 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Williams | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Boyer | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Gore | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Limpus | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Emmerson | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Duggins | 360| 2160 | 4 | 1440 | 8 |72 0 0| 1134 0
Bugbee | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000 | 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Gould | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Reddin | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Newman | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Tame | 300| 1800 | 4 | 1200 | 8 |60 0 0| 945 0
Sinnot | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Tomkins | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Cordroy | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Samuels | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Robinson | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Bird | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Clarke | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Brown | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Bonner | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Guess | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Jeffries | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Ryan | 60| 360 | 4 | 240 | 8 |12 0 0| 189 0
Hewitt | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Leimming | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Ellis | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Monk | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Phillips | 250| 1000 | 4 | 1000 | 8 |33 6 8| 525 0
Porter | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Dubbins | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Taylor | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Nicholls | 250| 1000 | 4 | 1000 | 8 |33 6 8| 525 0
Freeman | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Pattison | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Rawlins | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Watkins | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Liddiard | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Farmer | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000 | 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Francis | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Chadwick | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Perkins | 80| 480 | 4 | 320 | 8 |16 0 0| 252 0
Culverwell | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Rutty | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Crook | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
M’Carthy | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Bateman | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Boothe | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000 | 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Wood | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Calvert | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Tilley | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Abbott | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Potter | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000 | 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Church | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Humphries | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Jackson | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Batterbury | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Smith | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Perkins | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Rose | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Croot | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Speller | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Piper | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
North | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Crooker | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Tingey | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Jones | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Whitten | 300| 1800 | 4 | 1200 | 8 |60 0 0| 945 0
Webbon | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Ryder | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |30 0 0| 315 0
Wright | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Duckett | 300| 1800 | 4 | 1200 | 8 |60 0 0| 945 0
Elworthy | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Slee | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Adams | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Gutteris | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Martainbody | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Nicholson | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Mears | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Parsons | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Kenning | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Hooke | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000 | 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Michell | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Walton | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Evans | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Walker | 90| 540 | 4 | 360 | 8 |18 0 0| 283 10
Hobman | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Stevens | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000 | 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Jeffry | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Hiscock | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Allen | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Connall | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Waller | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Mullard | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Miller | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Barnes | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Sharpe | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Graham | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Wellard | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Hollis | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Fletcher | 150| 900 | 4 | 600 | 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Hearne | 100| 600 | 4 | 400 | 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Stapleton | 50| 300 | 4 | 200 | 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Martin | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800 | 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Prett and | | | | | | |
Sewell | 300| 1800 | 4 | 1200| 8 |60 0 0| 945 0
Jenkins | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Westley | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Bird | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Gale | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Porter | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Wells | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Hall | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000| 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Kitchener | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Wickham | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Walker | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Bindy | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Styles | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000| 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Kirtland | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Kingston | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Eldred | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Rumball | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000| 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Mildwater | 60| 360 | 4 | 240| 8 |12 0 0| 189 0
Lovell | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Clarkson | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Rhodes | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Pine | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Monk | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000| 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Gabriel | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Packer | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Crawley | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000| 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Easton | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Marsland | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
East | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Turtle | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Fuller | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Taylor | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Ginnow | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Peakes | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Fleckell | 50| 300 | 4 | 200| 8 |60 0 0| 157 10
Cook | 50| 300 | 4 | 200| 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Stewart | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Cooper | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Bentley | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Harford | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Litten | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Mills | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Voy | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Cortman | 50| 300 | 4 | 200| 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Forster | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Davison | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Williams | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000| 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Draper | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Claxton | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Robertson | 50| 300 | 4 | 200| 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Cornwall | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Price | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Milligan | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
West | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000| 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Wilson | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Lawn | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Oakes | 50| 300 | 4 | 200| 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Joliffe | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Liley | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 313 0
Treagle | 120| 720 | 4 | 480| 8 |24 0 0| 378 0
Coleman | 50| 300 | 4 | 200| 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Brooker | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Dignam | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Hillier | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Simmonds | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Penrose | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Jordan | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Macey | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Williams | 150| 900 | 4 | 600| 8 |30 0 0| 472 10
Palmer | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 650 0
Anderson | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
George | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Hasleton | 50| 300 | 4 | 200| 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Willis | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000| 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Farringdon | 50| 300 | 4 | 200| 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Doyle | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Lamb | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Bolton | 200| 1200 | 4 | 800| 8 |40 0 0| 630 0
Lovelock | 250| 1500 | 4 | 1000| 8 |50 0 0| 787 10
Ashfield | 50| 300 | 4 | 200| 8 |10 0 0| 157 10
Braithwaite | 100| 600 | 4 | 400| 8 |20 0 0| 315 0
Total for Dust+------+-------+----+-------+------+----------+----------
and other |
Contractors |
engaged as |
Nightmen |27,820|139,100| 4 |101,240| 8_d._|£5596 13 4|£73,027 10

MASTER-BRICKLAYERS ENGAGED AS NIGHTMEN.

-----------+-----+--------+---+------+---------+----------+--------
| | | | |Average 2| |
| | | | |Cesspools| |
| | | | | a Night.| |
| | Loads. | | | |£. _s. d._| £. _s._
Albon | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 |5_s._ ea.| 12 10 0 | 315 0
Danver | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Buck | 90 | 540 | 4 | 360 | „ | 11 5 0 | 283 10
Aldred | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Bowler | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Deacon | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000 | „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Barrett | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Elmes | 90 | 540 | 4 | 360 | „ | 11 5 0 | 283 10
Gray | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Emmerton | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Coleman | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Belchier | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000 | „ | 31 5 0 | 787 0
Wade | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Turner | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Sutton | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Cutmore | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Plowman | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Brockwell | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Bellamy | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Janes | 50 | 300 | 4 | 200 | „ | 6 5 0 | 157 10
Higgs | 50 | 300 | 4 | 200 | „ | 6 5 0 | 157 10
Avery | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Bailey | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Pitman | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Hosier | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Chambers | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Turner | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Sutton | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Phenix | 80 | 480 | 4 | 320 | „ | 10 0 0 | 252 0
Elsden | 50 | 300 | 4 | 200 | „ | 6 5 0 | 157 10
Fuller | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Heath | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Beach | 80 | 480 | 4 | 320 | „ | 10 0 0 | 252 0
Jones | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Gilbert | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000 | „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Green | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
King | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000 | „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Parker | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Kelsey | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Palmer | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000 | „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Sinclair | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Peck | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Young | 50 | 300 | 4 | 200 | „ | 6 5 0 | 157 10
Winter | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Wolfe | 90 | 540 | 4 | 360 | „ | 11 5 0 | 283 10
Taber | 50 | 300 | 4 | 200 | „ | 6 5 0 | 157 10
Kellow | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Mercer | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Oswell | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000 | „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Mallett | 90 | 540 | 4 | 360 | „ | 11 5 0 | 283 10
Handley | 180 | 1080 | 4 | 720 | „ | 22 10 0 | 567 0
Bull | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Atkinson | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800 | „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Dennis | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000 | „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Fordham | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400 | „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Wigmore | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600 | „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Ricketts | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Linnegar | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Price | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
James | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Wills | 180 | 1080 | 4 | 720| „ | 22 10 0 | 567 0
Templar | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Tolley | 50 | 300 | 4 | 200| „ | 6 5 0 | 157 10
Smallman | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Macey | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Livermore | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Oakham | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Rudd | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Kerridge | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Perrin | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Thomas | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Moore | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Reeves | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800| „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Pearson | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Stollery | 50 | 300 | 4 | 200| „ | 6 5 0 | 157 10
Connew | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Floyd | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Girling | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Gilbert | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 742 10
Carter | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Clayden | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800| „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Bibbing | 50 | 300 | 4 | 200| „ | 6 5 0 | 157 10
Dunn | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Howell | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Fursey | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Archer | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Hart | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Cole | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Essex | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Hinton | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Wiseman | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Tepner | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800| „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Unwin | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Treharne | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Havenny | 50 | 300 | 4 | 200| „ | 6 5 0 | 157 10
Williams | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Plant | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800| „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Linfield | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Morris | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Jenkins | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Buck | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800| „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Hadnutt | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Cuming | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800| „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Douglas | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Hogden | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
M’Currey | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Warne | 50 | 300 | 4 | 200| „ | 6 5 0 | 157 10
Whitechurch| 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800| „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Stevenson | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Izard | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Jones | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Rutley | 100 | 600 | 4 | 400| „ | 12 10 0 | 315 0
Prichard | 200 | 1200 | 4 | 800| „ | 25 0 0 | 630 0
Watts | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Woodcock | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Osborn | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Morland | 250 | 1500 | 4 | 1000| „ | 31 5 0 | 787 10
Brown | 300 | 1800 | 4 | 1200| „ | 37 10 0 | 945 0
Hughes | 150 | 900 | 4 | 600| „ | 18 15 0 | 472 10
Total for +-------+------+---+------+---------+----------+--------
Master- |
Bricklayers|
engaged as |
Nightmen |19,880|99,400 | 4 |59,520| 5_s._ |£2,485 0 |£52,185 0

SUMMARY OF THE ABOVE TABLE.

------------------------+-----+--------------------------------------------------------------
|Number of Masters employed as Nightmen.
| |-------+------------------------------------------------------
| | Number of Cesspools emptied during the year.
| | +------------------------------------------------------
| | |Quantity of Night soil collected annually.
| | | +---------------------------------------------
| | | |Number of working Nightmen employed to
| | | |each Cesspool.
| | | | +-------------------------------------
MASTER-SWEEPS EMPLOYED | | | | |Sum per load paid to each operative
AS NIGHTMEN IN | | | | | Nightman engaged in removing soil
| | | | |from Cesspools.
| | | | | +-----------------------
| | | | | |Total amount
| | | | | |paid to Master-Nightmen
| | | | | |during the Year for
| | | | | |emptying Cesspools.
------------------------+-----+-------+--------+-------+-------------+-----------------------
| | | Loads. | | Pence. | £ _s._ _d._
Kensington | 4 | 48 | 240 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 120 0 0
Chelsea | 8 | 140 | 700 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 350 0 0
Westminster | 9 | 180 | 900 | 3 | 6 | 450 0 0
St. Martin’s | 4 | 34 | 170 | 3 | 6 | 85 0 0
Marylebone | 9 | 155 | 775 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 387 10 0
Paddington | 8 | 107 | 535 | 3 | 6 | 267 10 0
Hampstead | 2 | 16 | 80 | 3 | 6 | 40 0 0
Islington | 4 | 82 | 410 | 3 | 6 | 205 0 0
St. Pancras | 13 | 226 | 1,130 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 565 0 0
Hackney | 5 | 89 | 445 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 222 10 0
St. Giles’s and St. | | | | | |
George’s, Bloomsbury | 11 | 172 | 860 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 430 0 0
Strand | 4 | 30 | 150 | 3 | 6 | 75 0 0
Holborn | 4 | 74 | 370 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 185 0 0
Clerkenwell | 5 | 78 | 390 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 195 0 0
St. Luke’s | 5 | 68 | 340 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 170 0 0
East London | 6 | 92 | 460 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 230 0 0
West London | 4 | 64 | 320 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 160 0 0
London, City | 5 | 88 | 440 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 220 0 0
Shoreditch | 7 | 95 | 475 | 3 & 4 | 6 | 237 10 0
Bethnal-green | 5 | 68 | 340 | 3 & 4 | 6 | 170 0 0
Whitechapel | 5 | 66 | 330 | 3 | 6 | 165 0 0
St. George’s-in-the-East| 8 | 152 | 760 | 3 & 4 | 6 | 380 0 0
Stepney | 6 | 80 | 400 | 3 | 6 | 200 0 0
Poplar | 4 | 48 | 240 | 3 | 6 | 120 0 0
St. Olave’s, St. | | | | | |
Saviour’s, and St. | | | | | |
George’s, Southwark | 16 | 157 | 785 | 3 | 6 | 392 10 0
Bermondsey | 6 | 60 | 300 | 3 | 6 | 150 0 0
Walworth and Newington | 8 | 71 | 355 | 3 | 6 | 177 10 0
Lambeth | 10 | 91 | 455 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 227 10 0
Christchurch, Lambeth | 6 | 58 | 290 | 3 | 6 | 145 0 0
Wandsworth and Battersea| 5 | 43 | 215 | 3 | 6 | 107 10 0
Rotherhithe | 5 | 54 | 270 | 3 & 4 | 6 | 135 0 0
Greenwich and Deptford | 5 | 94 | 470 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 235 0 0
Woolwich | 6 | 82 | 410 | 3 & 4 | 6 | 205 0 0
Lewisham | 2 | 30 | 150 | 3 & 4 | 6 | 75 0 0
Total for Sweeps |-----+-------+--------+-------+-------------+-----------------------
employed as Nightmen | 214 | 2,992 | 14,960 | 3 & 4 | 6 & 7 | 7,480 0 0
Total for Dust and other| | | | | |
Contractors employed | | | | | |
as Nightmen | 188 |27,820 |139,600 | 4 | 8 | 72,027 0 0
Total for Bricklayers | | | | | |
employed as Nightmen | 119 |19,880 | 99,400 | 4 |5_s._ a night| 52,185 0 0
|-----+-------+--------+-------+-------------+-----------------------
Gross Total | 521 |50,692 |253,960 | 3 & 4 |6_d._ 7_d._ &|131,692 10 0
| | | | |8_d._ per 1d.|
| | | | |& 5_s._ per |
| | | | |night. |

A TABLE SHOWING THE QUANTITY OF REFUSE BOUGHT, COLLECTED, OR FOUND, IN
THE STREETS OF LONDON.

-----------+---------------+------------+------------------------
Obtained of| Price per | Average | Parties
the Street| pound | Yearly | to
Buyers. | weight, &c. |Money Value.| whom sold.
-----------+---------------+------------+------------------------
| | £ _s. d._|
1-500th | 6_d._ per lb. | 7,290 0 0 |Sold to brass-founders
| | | and pewterers.
„ | 4_d._ „ | 4,860 6 8 | Do. do.
1-200th |1/4_d._ „ | 2,246 13 4 |Do. to iron-founders
| | | and manufacturers.
none | 1_d._ „ | 260 0 0 |Do. to manufacturers.
1-500th |1-1/2_d._ „ | 7,280 0 0 |Do. to brass-founders
| | | and pewterers.
„ | 5_d._ „ | 6,075 13 4 | Do. do.
| |----------- |
| |28,182 13 4 |
| |=========== |
none | 11l. each | 1,320 0 0 |Sold to Jew dealers.
„ | 25s. a set | 750 0 0 |Do. to costers and
| | | small tradesmen.
„ | 7s. a pair | 210 0 0 | Do. do.
„ | 6s. per pair | 234 0 0 |Do. to costers
| | | and others.
„ | 1_d._ per lb. | 5 12 0 |Do. to cab-masters
| | | and to Jews.
„ |1/2_d._ „ | 5 12 0 |Do. to Jews.
„ | 25s. each | 195 0 0 |Do. to cab-masters.
„ | 3l. per pair | 180 0 0 |Do. to omnibus
| | | proprietors.
„ | 30s. per set | 216 0 0 |Do. to cab-masters.
harness- | 4s. a set | 8,320 0 0 |Do. to little master
makers | | | harness-makers.
none | 4s. „ | 203 0 0 | Do. do.
„ | 9_d._ „ | 78 0 0 | Do. do. and
| | | marine stores.
„ | 9_d._ „ | 138 13 4 | Do. do. do.
„ | 6_d._ „ | 52 0 0 | Do. do.
„ | 2_d._ „ | 34 13 4 | Do. do. do.
„ | 4_d._ „ | 985 12 0 |Do. to Jews and also
| | | to gunsmiths.
„ |1s. 6_d._ „ | 72 0 0 |Do. to tailors’
| | | trimming-sellers.
„ |2-1/2_d._ „ | 560 0 0 |Do. to Jews.
| |----------- |
| |13,560 2 8 |
| |=========== |
1-1000th |1/2_d._ per lb.| 9,706 13 4 |Sold for manure and to
| | | nail up fruit-trees.
1-500th |1/2_d._ „ | 6,066 13 4 |Do. to paper-makers
| | | and for quilts.
1-1000th | 2_d._ „ | 9,706 13 4 |Do. to paper-makers.
none | 1_d._ „ | 186 13 4 |Do. to chance customers.
1-500th |1/2_d._ „ | 606 13 4 |Do. for oakum and sacking
| | | to mend old sacks.
| |----------- |
| |36,898 13 4 |
| |=========== |
all | 18s. per cwt. |11,232 0 0 |Do. to shopkeepers.
1-100th | 2_d._ per doz.| 520 0 0 |Do. to doctors
| | | and chemists.
1-200th | 6_d._ „ | 780 0 0 |Do. to Brit. wine
| | | merchants & ale stores.
none | 6_d._ „ | 120 0 0 |Do. to ale and
| | | porter stores.
1-1000th |1/4_d._ per lb.| 16 5 0 |Do. to glass
| | | manufacturers.
none |3/4_d._ each | 22 10 0 |Do. to Italian
| | | warehouses, &c.
„ | 2_d._ per doz.| 173 6 8 | Do. do.
| |----------- |
| | 1,632 1 8 |
| |=========== |

bt. of old clo’men|6_s._ each | 187,200 0 0|Sold to old clo’men
| | | and wholesale dealers.
„ |3_s._ 3_d._ per| |
| pr. | 50,700 0 0| Do. do.
„ |7_d._ each | 9,100 0 0| Do. do.
„ |2_d._ „ | 390 0 0|Do. to wholesale and
| | | wardrobe dealers.
| | |
„ |2_s._ per pair | 1,560 0 0|Do. to old clo’men
| | | and wholesale dealers.
„ |4_s._ 2_d._ | 625 0 0|Do. to wholesale
| each | | and wardrobe dealers.
„ |10_s._ „ | 500 0 0|Do. to wholesale dealers.
„ |7_d._ per pair | 45,500 0 0|Do. to wardrobe dealers
| | | and second-hand
| | | boot and shoe makers.
| | |
| | |
none |1_s._ per dz. | 32,400 0 0|Do. to Jews and gunsmiths
| pr. | | to temper gun-barrels.
„ |5_s._ „ | 130,000 0 0|Do. to translators.
bt. of old clo’men|4_d._ each | 31,200 0 0|Do. to dealers and
| | | master hatters.
„ |3_s._ a suit | 540 0 0|Do. Jew dealers.
| | |
„ |4_d._ each | 10,400 0 0|Do. to old clo’men
| | | and wholesale dealers.
| | |
„ |1_d._ per pair | 3,272 10 0|Do. to wholesale
| | | and wardrobe dealers.
| | |
„ |3_d._ „ | 1,170 0 0| Do. do.
| | |
„ |1_s._ 9_d._ | |
| each | 41,107 10 0| Do. do.
„ |7_d._ „ | 27,405 0 0| Do. do.
„ |5_d._ per pair | 5,437 10 0| Do. do.
| | |
„ |3_d._ a doz. | 195 15 0| Do. do.
„ |1-1/2_d._ each | 1,639 11 8| Do. do.
„ |4_d._ „ | 8,700 0 0| Do. do.
| | |
| | |
| | |
„ |4_s._ „ | 1,040 0 0|Do. to wholesale dealers.
„ |6_d._ „ | 35,235 0 0| Do. do.
| | |
„ |1_s._ 2_d._ „ | 27,405 0 0|Do. to wholesale
| | | and wardrobe dealers.
| | |
„ |1_s._ 2_d._ „ | 15,220 0 0| Do. do.
| | |
„ |1_s._ 2_d._ „ | 7,612 10 0| Do. do.
| | |
all |5_d._ „ | 10,300 0 0|Do. to Jews and old
| | | umbrella menders.
| +--------------+
| | 675,555 6 8|
| +==============+
| | |
| | |
„ |2-1/2_d._ per | 812 10 0|Do. to merchants to
| lb. | | re-make into tea.
costers and |1_d._ „ | |Do. to brewers to fine
| | | their ale.
fishmongers | | 16 5 0|
all |1_s._ a doz. | 333 6 8|Do. to Jews, hatters,
| | | and furriers.
none |1-1/2_d._ per | |
| lb. | 390 0 0|Do. at marine stores.
„ |3_d._ „ | 650 0 0| Do. do.
1-1000th |1/4_d._ „ | 105,625 0 0|Do. for manure,
| | | knife-handles, &c.
all |1_d._ per | |
| gallon | 10,433 6 8|Do. to pig-dealers.
| | |
none |2_s._ 6_d._ per| 112,500 0 0|Do. for manure and
| ld. | | to brickmakers.
„ |5_d._ per | 16,666 13 4|Do. to farmers,
| bushel | | graziers, and
| | | gardeners.
| | |
„ |10_s._ per load| 375,000 0 0|Do. for manure.
| +--------------+
| | 622,427 1 8|
| +==============+
| | |
| | |
„ |3_s._ „ | 21,147 9 0| Do. do.
| | |
„ |2_s._ 6_d._ „ | 2,352 2 6| Do. do.
| | |
„ |8_d._ per cwt. | 2,151 17 4|Do. to the poor.
„ |1_s._ per pail | 2,600 0 0|Do. to tanners and
| | | leather-dressers.
street-finders |8_d._ per lb. | 74 13 4|Do. to Jews in
| | | Rosemary-lane.
| +==============+
| | 28,326 2 2|
| +--------------+
|Gross Total |1,406,592 1 6|

Curious and ample as this Table of Refuse is--one, moreover, perfectly
original--it is not sufficient, by the mere range of figures, to
convey to the mind of the reader a full comprehension of the ramified
vastness of the Second-Hand trade of the metropolis. Indeed tables are
for reference more than for the current information to be yielded by a
history or a narrative.

I will, therefore, offer a few explanations in elucidation, as it were,
of the tabular return.

I must, as indeed I have done in the accompanying remarks, depart
from the order of the details of the table to point out, in the
first instance, the particulars of the greatest of the Second-Hand
trades--that in Clothing. In this table the reader will find included
every indispensable article of man’s, woman’s, and child’s apparel,
as well as those articles which add to the ornament or comfort of the
person of the wearer; such as boas and victorines for the use of one
sex, and dressing-gowns for the use of the other. The articles used to
protect us from the rain, or the too-powerful rays of the sun, are also
included--umbrellas and parasols. The whole of these articles exceed,
when taken in round numbers, twelve millions and a quarter, and that
reckoning the “pairs,” as in boots and shoes, &c., as but one article.
This, still pursuing the round-number system, would supply nearly
_five_ articles of refuse apparel to every man, woman, and child in
this, the greatest metropolis of the world.

I will put this matter in another light. There are about 35,000 Jews in
England, nearly half of whom reside in the metropolis. 12,000, it is
further stated on good authority, reside within the City of London. Now
at one time the trade in old clothes was almost entirely in the hands
of the City Jews, the others prosecuting the same calling in different
parts of London having been “Wardrobe Dealers,” chiefly women, (who
had not unfrequently been the servants of the aristocracy); and even
these wardrobe dealers sold much that was worn, and (as one old
clothes-dealer told me) much that was “not, for their fine customers,
because the fashion had gone by,” to the “Old Clo” Jews, or to those
to whom the street-buyers carried their stock, and who were able to
purchase on a larger scale than the general itinerants. Now, supposing
that even one twelfth of these 12,000 Israelites were engaged in the
old-clothes trade (which is far beyond the mark), each man would have
_twelve hundred and twenty-five_ articles to dispose of yearly, all
second-hand!

Perhaps the most curious trade is that in waste paper, or as it
is called by the street collectors, in “waste,” comprising every
kind of used or useless periodical, and books in all tongues. I may
call the attention of my readers, by way of illustrating the extent
of this business in what is proverbially refuse “waste paper,” to
their experience of the penny postage. Three or four sheets of note
paper, according to the stouter or thinner texture, and an envelope
with a seal or a glutinous and stamped fastening, will not exceed
half-an-ounce, and is conveyed to the Orkneys and the further isles of
Shetland, the Hebrides, the Scilly and Channel Islands, the isles of
Achill and Cape Clear, off the western and southern coasts of Ireland,
or indeed to and from the most extreme points of the United Kingdom,
and no matter what distance, provided the letter be posted within
the United Kingdom, for a penny. The weight of waste or refuse paper
annually disposed of to the street collectors, or rather buyers, is
1,397,760 lbs. Were this tonnage, as I may call it, for it comprises
12,480 tons yearly, to be distributed in half-ounce letters, it would
supply material, as respects weight, for _forty-four millions, seven
hundred and twenty-eight thousand, four hundred and thirty_ letters on
business, love, or friendship.

I will next direct attention to what may be, by perhaps not
over-straining a figure of speech, called “the crumbs which fall from
the rich man’s table;” or, according to the quality of the commodity of
refuse, of the tables of the _comparatively_ rich, and that down to a
low degree of the scale. These are not, however, unappropriated crumbs,
to be swept away uncared for; but are objects of keen traffic and
bargains between the possessors or their servants and the indefatigable
street-folk. Among them are such things as champagne and other wine
bottles, porter and ale bottles, and, including the establishments
of all the rich and the comparative rich, kitchen-stuff, dripping,
hog-wash, hare-skins, and tea-leaves. Lastly come the very lowest
grades of the street-folk--the _finders_; men who will quarrel, and
have been seen to quarrel, with a hungry cur for a street-found bone;
not to pick or gnaw, although Eugène Sue has seen that done in Paris;
and I once, very early on a summer’s morning, saw some apparently
houseless Irish children contend with a dog and with each other for
bones thrown out of a house in King William-street, City--as if after
a very late supper--not to pick or gnaw, I was saying, but to _sell_
for manure. Some of these finders have “seen better days;” others,
in intellect, are little elevated above the animals whose bones they
gather, or whose ordure (“pure”), they scrape into their baskets.

I do not know that the other articles in the arrangement of the table
of street refuse, &c., require any further comment. Broken metal,
&c., can only be disposed of according to its quality or weight,
and I have lately shown the extent of the trade in such refuse as
street-sweepings, soot and night-soil.

The gross total, or average yearly money value, is 1,406,592_l._ for
the second-hand commodities I have described in the foregoing pages;
or as something like a minimum is given, both as to the number of the
goods and the price, we may fairly put this total at a million and a
half of pounds sterling!

CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

That portion of the London street-folk who earn a scanty living by
sweeping crossings constitute a large class of the Metropolitan poor.
We can scarcely walk along a street of any extent, or pass through a
square of the least pretensions to “gentility,” without meeting one or
more of these private scavengers. Crossing-sweeping seems to be one of
those occupations which are resorted to as an excuse for begging; and,
indeed, as many expressed it to me, “it was the last chance left of
obtaining an honest crust.”

The advantages of crossing-sweeping as a means of livelihood seem to be:

1st, the smallness of the capital required in order to commence the
business;

2ndly, the excuse the apparent occupation it affords for soliciting
gratuities without being considered in the light of a street-beggar;

And 3rdly, the benefits arising from being constantly seen in the same
place, and thus exciting the sympathy of the neighbouring householders,
till small weekly allowances or “pensions” are obtained.

The first curious point in connexion with this subject is what
constitutes the “_property_,” so to speak, in a crossing, or the
_right_ to sweep a pathway across a certain thoroughfare. A nobleman,
who has been one of her Majesty’s Ministers, whilst conversing with me
on the subject of crossing-sweepers, expressed to me the curiosity he
felt on the subject, saying that he had noticed some of the sweepers in
the same place for years. “What were the rights of property,” he asked,
“in such cases, and what constituted the title that such a man had to
a particular crossing? Why did not the stronger sweeper supplant the
weaker? Could a man bequeath a crossing to a son, or present it to a
friend? How did he first obtain the spot?”

The answer is, that crossing-sweepers are, in a measure, under the
protection of the police. If the accommodation afforded by a well-swept
pathway is evident, the policeman on that district will protect the
original sweeper of the crossing from the intrusion of a rival. I have,
indeed, met with instances of men who, before taking to a crossing,
have asked for and obtained permission of the police; and one sweeper,
who gave me his statement, had even solicited the authority of the
inhabitants before he applied to the inspector at the station-house.

If a crossing have been vacant for some time, another sweeper may take
to it; but should the original proprietor again make his appearance,
the officer on duty will generally re-establish him. One man to whom I
spoke, had fixed himself on a crossing which for years another sweeper
had kept clean on the Sunday morning only. A dispute ensued; the one
claimant pleading his long Sabbath possession, and the other his
continuous every-day service. The quarrel was referred to the police,
who decided that he who was oftener on the ground was the rightful
owner; and the option was given to the former possessor, that if he
would sweep there every day the crossing should be his.

I believe there is only one crossing in London which is in the gift
of a householder, and this proprietorship originated in a tradesman
having, at his own expense, caused a paved footway to be laid down over
the Macadamized road in front of his shop, so that his customers might
run less chance of dirtying their boots when they crossed over to give
their orders.

Some bankers, however, keep a crossing-sweeper, not only to sweep a
clean path for the “clients” visiting their house, but to open and shut
the doors of the carriages calling at the house.

Concerning the _causes which lead or drive_ people to this occupation,
they are various. People take to crossing-sweeping either on account
of their bodily afflictions, depriving them of the power of performing
ruder work, or because the occupation is the last resource left open
to them of earning a living, and they considered even the scanty
subsistence it yields preferable to that of the workhouse. The greater
proportion of crossing-sweepers are those who, from some bodily
infirmity or injury, are prevented from a more laborious mode of
obtaining their living. Among the bodily infirmities the chief are old
age, asthma, and rheumatism; and the injuries mostly consist of loss of
limbs. Many of the rheumatic sweepers have been bricklayers’ labourers.

The classification of crossing-sweepers is not very complex. They may
be divided into the _casual_ and the _regular_.

By the casual I mean such as pursue the occupation only on certain days
in the week, as, for instance, those who make their appearance on the
Sunday morning, as well as the boys who, broom in hand, travel about
the streets, sweeping before the foot-passengers or stopping an hour at
one place, and then, if not fortunate, moving on to another.

The regular crossing-sweepers are those who have taken up their posts
at the corners of streets or squares; and I have met with some who
have kept to the same spot for more than forty years.

The crossing-sweepers in the squares may be reckoned among the most
fortunate of the class. With them the crossing is a kind of stand,
where any one requiring their services knows they may be found.
These sweepers are often employed by the butlers and servants in
the neighbouring mansions for running errands, posting letters, and
occasionally helping in the packing-up and removal of furniture or
boxes when the family goes out of town. I have met with other sweepers
who, from being known for years to the inhabitants, have at last got
to be regularly employed at some of the houses to clean knives, boots,
windows, &c.

It is not at all an unfrequent circumstance, however, for a sweeper
to be in receipt of a weekly sum from some of the inhabitants in the
district. The crossing itself is in these cases but of little value
for chance customers, for were it not for the regular charity of the
householders, it would be deserted. Broken victuals and old clothes
also form part of a sweeper’s means of living; nor are the clothes
always old ones, for one or two of this class have for years been in
the habit of having new suits presented to them by the neighbours at
Christmas.

The irregular sweepers mostly consist of boys and girls who have
formed themselves into a kind of company, and come to an agreement to
work together on the same crossings. The principal resort of these is
about Trafalgar-square, where they have seized upon some three or four
crossings, which they visit from time to time in the course of the day.

One of these gangs I found had appointed its king and captain, though
the titles were more honorary than privileged. They had framed their
own laws respecting each one’s right to the money he took, and the
obedience to these laws was enforced by the strength of the little
fraternity.

One or two girls whom I questioned, told me that they mixed up
ballad-singing or lace-selling with crossing-sweeping, taking to the
broom only when the streets were wet and muddy. These children are
usually sent out by their parents, and have to carry home at night
their earnings. A few of them are orphans with a lodging-house for a
home.

Taken as a class, crossing-sweepers are among the most honest of the
London poor. They all tell you that, without a good character and “the
respect of the neighbourhood,” there is not a living to be got out of
the broom. Indeed, those whom I found best-to-do in the world were
those who had been longest at their posts.

Among them are many who have been servants until sickness or accident
deprived them of their situations, and nearly all of them have had
their minds so subdued by affliction, that they have been tamed so as
to be incapable of mischief.

The _earnings_, or rather “_takings_,” of crossing-sweepers are
difficult to estimate--generally speaking--that is, to strike the
average for the entire class. An erroneous idea prevails that
crossing-sweeping is a lucrative employment. All whom I have spoken
with agree in saying, that some thirty years back it was a good living;
but they bewail piteously the spirit of the present generation. I
have met with some who, in former days, took their 3_l._ weekly; and
there are but few I have spoken to who would not, at one period, have
considered fifteen shillings a bad week’s work. But now “the takings”
are very much reduced. The man who was known to this class as having
been the most prosperous of all--for from one nobleman alone he
received an allowance of seven shillings and sixpence weekly--assured
me that twelve shillings a-week was the average of his present gains,
taking the year round; whilst the majority of the sweepers agree that a
shilling is a good day’s earnings.

A shilling a-day is the very limit of the average incomes of the
London sweepers, and this is rather an over than an under calculation;
for, although a few of the more fortunate, who are to be found in the
squares or main thoroughfares or opposite the public buildings, may
earn their twelve or fifteen shillings a-week, yet there are hundreds
who are daily to be found in the by-streets of the metropolis who
assert that eightpence a-day is their average taking; and, indeed, in
proof of their poverty, they refer you to the workhouse authorities,
who allow them certain quartern-loaves weekly. The old stories of
delicate suppers and stockings full of money have in the present day no
foundation of truth.

The black crossing-sweeper, who bequeathed 500_l._ to Miss Waithman,
would almost seem to be the last of the class whose earnings were above
his positive necessities.

Lastly, concerning the _numbers_ belonging to this large class, we may
add that it is difficult to reckon up the number of crossing-sweepers
in London. There are few squares without a couple of these pathway
scavengers; and in the more respectable squares, such as Cavendish or
Portman, every corner has been seized upon. Again, in the principal
thoroughfares, nearly every street has its crossing and attendant.

I.--OF THE ADULT CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

_A. The Able-Bodied Sweepers._

The elder portion of the London crossing-sweepers admit, as we have
before said, of being arranged, for the sake of perspicuity, into
several classes. I shall begin with the _Able-bodied Males_; then
proceed to the _Females_ of the same class; and afterwards deal with
the _Able-bodied Irish_ (male and female), who take to the London
causeways for a living. This done, I shall then, in due order, take
up the _Afflicted_ or _Crippled_ class; and finally treat of the
_Juveniles_ belonging to the same calling.

1. THE ABLE-BODIED MALE CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

THE “ARISTOCRATIC” CROSSING-SWEEPER.

“Billy” is the popular name of the man who for many years has swept the
long crossing that cuts off one corner of Cavendish-square, making a
“short cut” from Old Cavendish-street to the Duke of Portland’s mansion.

Billy is a merry, good-tempered kind of man, with a face as red as a
love-apple, and cheeks streaked with little veins.

His hair is white, and his eyes are as black and bright as a terrier’s.
He can hardly speak a sentence without finishing it off with a moist
chuckle.

His clothes have that peculiar look which arises from being often
wet through, but still they are decent, and far above what his class
usually wear. The hat is limp in the brim, from being continually
touched.

The day when I saw Billy was a wet one, and he had taken refuge from a
shower under the Duke of Portland’s stone gateway. His tweed coat, torn
and darned, was black about the shoulders with the rain-drops, and his
boots grey with mud, but, he told me, “It was no good trying to keep
clean shoes such a day as that, ’cause the blacking come off in the
puddles.”

Billy is “well up” in the _Court Guide_. He continually stopped in his
statement to tell whom my Lord B. married, or where my Lady C. had gone
to spend the summer, or what was the title of the Marquis So-and-So’s
eldest boy.

He was very grateful, moreover, to all who had assisted him, and
_would_ stop looking up at the ceiling, and God-blessing them all with
a species of religious fervour.

His regret that the good old times had passed, when he made “hats full
of money,” was unmistakably sincere; and when he had occasion to allude
to them, he always delivered his opinion upon the late war, calling it
“a-cut-and run affair,” and saying that it was “nothing at all put
alongside with the old war, when the halfpence and silver coin were
twice as big and twenty times more plentiful” than during the late
campaign.

Without the least hesitation he furnished me with the following
particulars of his life and calling:--

“I was born in London, in Cavendish-square, and (he added, laughing) I
ought to have a title, for I first came into the world at No. 3, which
was Lord Bessborough’s then. My mother went there to do her work, for
she chaired there, and she was took sudden and couldn’t go no further.
She couldn’t have chosen a better place, could she? You see I was born
in Cavendish-square, and I’ve _worked_ in Cavendish-square--sweeping a
crossing--for now near upon fifty year.

“Until I was nineteen--I’m sixty-nine now--I used to sell
water-creases, but they felled off and then I dropped it. Both mother
and myself sold water-creases after my Lord Bessborough died; for
whilst he lived she wouldn’t leave him not for nothing.

“We used to do uncommon well at one time; there wasn’t nobody about
then as there is now. I’ve sold flowers, too; they was very good then;
they was mostly show carnations and moss roses, and such-like, but no
common flowers--it wouldn’t have done for me to sell common things at
the houses I used to go to.

“The reason why I took to a crossing was, I had an old father and I
didn’t want him to go to the workus. I didn’t wish too to do anything
bad myself, and I never would--no, sir, for I’ve got as good a
charackter as the first nobleman in the land, and that’s a fine thing,
ain’t it? So as water-creases had fell off till they wasn’t a living to
me, I had to do summat else to help me to live.

“I saw the crossing-sweepers in Westminster making a deal of money, so
I thought to myself _I’ll_ do that, and I fixed upon Cavendish-square,
because, I said to myself, I’m known there; it’s where I was born, and
there I set to work.

“The very first day I was at work I took ten shillings. I never asked
nobody; I only bowed my head and put my hand to my hat, and they knowed
what it meant.

“By jingo, when I took that there I thought to myself, What a fool I’ve
been to stop at water-creases!

“For the first ten year I did uncommon well. Give me the old-fashioned
way; they were good times then; I like the old-fashioned way. Give
me the old penny pieces, and then the eighteen-penny pieces, and the
three-shilling pieces, and the seven-shilling pieces--give me them, I
says. The day the old halfpence and silver was cried down, that is, the
old coin was called in to change the currency, my hat wouldn’t hold the
old silver and halfpence I was give that afternoon. I had _such_ a
lot, upon my word, they broke my pocket. I didn’t know the money was
altered, but a fishmonger says to me, ‘Have you got any old silver?’ I
said ‘Yes, I’ve got a hat full;’ and then says he, ‘Take ’em down to
Couttseses and change ’em.’ I went, and I was nearly squeeged to death.

“That was the first time I was like to be killed, but I was nigh killed
again when Queen Caroline passed through Cavendish-square after her
trial. They took the horses out of her carriage and pulled her along.
She kept a chucking money out of the carriage, and I went and scrambled
for it, and I got five-and-twenty shillin, but my hand was a nigh
smashed through it; and, says a friend of mine, before I went, ‘Billy,’
says he, ‘don’t you go;’ and I was sorry after I did. She was a good
woman, _she_ was. The Yallers, that is, the king’s party, was agin her,
and pulled up the paving-stones when her funeral passed; but the Blues
was for her.

“I can remember, too, the mob at the time of the Lord Castlereagh
riots. They went to Portman-square and broke all the winders in the
house. They pulled up all the rails to purtect theirselves with. I went
to the Bishop of Durham’s, and hid myself in the coal-cellar then.
My mother chaired there, too. The Bishop of Durham and Lord Harcourt
opened their gates and hurrah’d the mob, so they had nothing of their’s
touched; but whether they did it through fear or not I can’t say. The
mob was carrying a quartern loaf dipped in bullock’s blood, and when I
saw it I thought it was a man’s head; so that frightened me, and I run
off.

“I remember, too, when Lady Pembroke’s house was burnt to the ground.
That’s about eighteen year ago. It was very lucky the family wasn’t in
town. The housekeeper was a nigh killed, and they had to get her out
over the stables; and when her ladyship heard she was all right, she
said she didn’t care for the fire since the old dame was saved, for she
had lived along with the family for many years. No, bless you, sir! I
didn’t help at the fire; I’m too much of a coward to do that.

“All the time the Duke of Portland was alive he used to allow me 7_s._
6_d._ a-week, which was 1_s._ a-day and 1_s._ 6_d._ for Sundays. He was
a little short man, and a very good man he was too, for it warn’t only
me as he gave money to, but to plenty others. He was the best man in
England for that.

“Lord George Bentinck, too, was a good friend to me. He was a great
racer, he was, and then he turned to be member of parliament, and
then he made a good man they tell me; but he never comed over my
crossing without giving me something. He was at the corner of Holly
Street, he was, and he never put foot on my crossing without giving
me a sovereign. Perhaps he wouldn’t cross more than once or twice a
month, but when he comed my way _that_ was his money. Ah! he was a nice
feller, he was. When he give it he always put it in my hand and never
let nobody see it, and that’s the way I like to have _my_ fee give me.

“There’s Mrs. D----, too, as lived at No. 6; she was a good friend of
mine, and always allowed me a suit of clothes a-year; but she’s dead,
good lady, now.

“Dr. C---- and his lady, they, likewise, was very kind friends of mine,
and gave me every year clothes, and new shoes, and blankets, aye, and
a bed, too, if I had wanted it; but now they are all dead, down to the
coachman. The doctor’s old butler, Mr. K----, he gave me twenty-five
shillings the day of the funeral, and, says he, ‘Bill, I’m afraid this
will be the last.’ Poor good friends they was all of them, and I did
feel cut up when I see the hearse going off.

“There was another gentleman, Mr. W. T----, who lives in Harley-street;
he never come by me without giving me half-a-crown. He was a real good
gentleman; but I haven’t seen him for a long time now, and perhaps he’s
dead too.

“All my friends is dropping off. I’m fifty-five, and they was men when
I was a boy. All the good gentlemen’s gone, only the bad ones stop.

“Another friend of mine is Lord B----. He always drops me a shilling
when he come by; and, says he, ‘You don’t know me, but I knows you,
Billy.’ But I _do_ know him, for my mother worked for the family many a
year, and, considering I was born in the house, I think to myself, ‘If
I don’t know you, why I ought.’ He’s a handsome, stout young chap, and
as nice a gentleman as any in the land.

“One of the best friends I had was Prince E----, as lived there in
Chandos-street, the bottom house yonder. I had five sovereigns give me
the day as he was married to his beautiful wife. Don’t you remember
what a talk there was about her diamonds, sir? They say she was kivered
in ’em. He used to put his hand in his pocket and give me two or three
shillings every time he crossed. He was a gentleman as was uncommon
fond of the gals, sir. He’d go and talk to all the maid-servants round
about, if they was only good-looking. I used to go and ring the hairy
bells for him, and tell the gals to go and meet him in Chapel-street.
God bless him! I says, he was a pleasant gentleman, and a regular good
’un for a bit of fun, and always looking lively and smiling. I see he’s
got his old coachman yet, though the Prince don’t live in England at
present, but his son does, and he always gives me a half-crown when he
comes by too.

“I gets a pretty fine lot of Christmas boxes, but nothing like what I
had in the old times. Prince E---- always gives me half a crown, and I
goes to the butler for it. Pretty near all my friends gives me a box,
them as knows me, and they say, ‘Here’s a Christmas box, Billy.’

“Last Christmas-day I took 36_s._, and that was pretty fair; but, bless
you, in the old times I’ve had my hat full of money. I tells you again
I’ve have had as much as 5_l._ in old times, all in old silver and
halfpence; that was in the old war, and not this runaway shabby affair.

“Every Sunday I have sixpence regular from Lord H----, whether he’s in
town or not. I goes and fetches it. Mrs. D----, of Harley-street, she
gives me a shilling every Sunday when she’s in town; and the parents
as knows me give halfpence to their little girls to give me. Some
of the little ladies says, ‘Here, that will do you good.’ No, it’s
only pennies (for sixpences is out of fashion); and thank God for the
coppers, though they are little.

“I generally, when the people’s out of town, take about 2_s._ or 2_s._
6_d._ on the Sunday. Last Sunday I only took 1_s._ 3_d._, but then, you
see, it come on to rain and I didn’t stop. When the town’s full three
people alone gives me more than that. In the season I take 5_s._ safe
on a Sunday, or perhaps 6_s._--for you see it’s all like a lottery.

“I should like you to mention Lady Mildmay in Grosvenor-square, sir.
Whenever I goes to see her--but you know I don’t go often--I’m safe for
5_s._, and at Christmas I have my regular salary, a guinea. She’s a
very old lady, and I’ve knowed her for many and many years. When I goes
to my lady she always comes out to speak to me at the door, and says
she, ‘Oh, ’tis Willy! and how do you do, Willy?’ and she always shakes
hands with me and laughs away. Ah! she’s a good kind creetur’; there’s
no pride in her whatsumever--and she never sacks her servants.

“My crossing has been a good living to me and mine. It’s kept the whole
of us. Ah! in the old time I dare say I’ve made as much as 3_l._ a
week reg’lar by it. Besides, I used to have lots of broken vittals,
and I can tell you I know’d where to take ’em to. Ah! I’ve had as much
food as I could carry away, and reg’lar good stuff--chicken, and some
things I couldn’t guess the name of, they was so Frenchified. When
the fam’lies is in town I gets a good lot of food given me, but you
know when the nobility and gentlemen are away the servants is on board
wages, and cuss them board wages, I says.

“I buried my father and mother as a son ought to. Mother was
seventy-three and father was sixty-five,--good round ages, ain’t they,
sir? I shall never live to be that. They are lying in St. John’s Wood
cemetery along with many of my brothers and sisters, which I have
buried as well. I’ve only two brothers living now; and, poor fellows,
they’re not very well to do. It cost me a good bit of money. I pay
2_s._ 6_d._ a-year for keeping up the graves of each of my parents,
and 1_s._ 2_d._ for my brothers.

“There was the Earl of Gainsborough as I should like you to mention as
well, please sir. He lived in Chandos-street, and was a particular nice
man and very religious. He always gave me a shilling and a tract. Well,
you see, I _did_ often read the tract; they was all religious, and
about where your souls was to go to--very good, you know, what there
was, very good; and he used to buy ’em wholesale at a little shop,
corner of High-street, Marrabun. He was a very good, kind gentleman,
and gave away such a deal of money that he got reg’lar known, and the
little beggar girls follered him at such a rate that he was at last
forced to ride about in a cab to get away from ’em. He’s many a time
said to me, when he’s stopped to give me my shilling, ‘Billy, is any of
’em a follering me?’ He was safe to give to every body as asked him,
but you see it worried his soul out--and it was a kind soul, too--to be
follered about by a mob.

“When all the fam’lies is in town I has 14_s._ a-week reg’lar as
clock-work from my friends as lives round the square, and when they’re
away I don’t get 6_d._ a-day, and sometimes I don’t get 1_d._ a-day,
and that’s less. You see some of ’em, like my Lord B----, is out eight
months in the year; and some of ’em, such as my Lord H----, is only
three. Then Mrs. D----, she’s away three months, and she always gives
1_s._ a-week reg’lar when she’s up in London.

“I don’t take 4_s._ a-week on the crossing. Ah! I wish you’d give me
4_s._ for what I take. No, I make up by going of errands. I runs for
the fam’lies, and the servants, and any of ’em. Sometimes they sends me
to a banker’s with a cheque. Bless you! they’d trust me with anythink,
if it was a hat full. I’ve had a lot of money trusted to me at times.
At one time I had as much as 83_l._ to carry for the Duke of Portland.

“Aye, that was a go--_that_ was! You see the hall-porter had had it
give to him to carry to the bank, and he gets me to do it for him;
but the vallet heerd of it, so he wanted to have a bit of fun, and he
wanted to put the hall-porter in a funk. I met the vallet in Holborn,
and says he, ‘Bill, I want to have a lark,’ so he kept me back, and
I did not get back till one o’clock. The hall-porter offered 5_l._
reward for me, and sends the police; but Mr. Freebrother, Lord George’s
wallet, he says, ‘I’ll make it all right, Billy.’ They sent up to my
poor old people, and says father, ‘Billy wouldn’t rob anybody of a
nightcap, much more 80_l._’ I met the policeman in Holborn, and says
he, ‘I want you, Billy,’ and says I, ‘All right, here I am.’ When I
got home the hall-porter, says he, ‘Oh, I am a dead man; where’s the
money?’ and says I, ‘It’s lost.’ ‘Oh! it’s the Duke’s, not mine,’
says he. Then I pulls it out; and says the porter, ‘It’s a lark of
Freebrother’s.’ So he gave me 2_l._ to make it all right. That _was_
a game, and the hall-porter, says he, ‘I really thought you was gone,
Billy;’ but, says I, ‘If everybody carried as good a face as I do,
everybody would be as honest as any in Cavendish-square.’

“I had another lark at the Bishop of Durham’s. I was a cleaning the
knives, and a swellmobsman, with a green-baize bag, come down the
steps, and says he to me, ‘Is Mr. Lewis, the butler, in?’--he’d got
the name off quite pat. ‘No,’ says I, ‘he’s up-stairs;’ then says he,
‘Can I step into the pantry?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ says I, and shows him in.
Bless you! he was so well-dressed, I thought he was a master-shoemaker
or something; but as all the plate was there, thinks I, I’ll just lock
the door to make safe. So I fastens him in tight, and keeps him there
till Mr. Lewis comes. No, he didn’t take none of the plate, for Mr.
Lewis come down, and then, as he didn’t know nothink about him, we had
in a policeman, when we finds his bag was stuffed with silver tea-pots
and all sorts of things from my Lord Musgrave’s. Says Mr. Lewis, ‘You
did quite right, Billy.’ It wasn’t a likely thing I was going to let
anybody into a pantry crammed with silver.

“There was another chap who had prigged a lot of plate. He was an
old man, and had a bag crammed with silver, and was a cutting away,
with lots of people after him. So I puts my broom across his legs and
tumbles him, and when he got up he cut away and left the bag. Ah! I’ve
seen a good many games in my time--that I have. The butler of the house
the plate had been stole from give me 2_l._ for doing him that turn.

“Once a gentleman called me, and says he, ‘My man, how long have you
been in this square?’ Says I, ‘I’m Billy, and been here a’most all my
life.’ Then he says, ‘Can I trust you to take a cheque to Scott, the
banker?’ and I answers, ‘That’s as you like,’ for I wasn’t going to
press him. It was a heavy cheque, for Mr. Scott, as knows me well--aye,
well, he do--says ‘Billy, I can’t give you all in notes, you must stop
a bit.’ It nearly filled the bag I had with me. I took it all safe
back, and says he, ‘Ah! I knowed it would be all right,’ and he give me
a half-sovereign. I should like you to put these things down, ’cos it’s
a fine thing for my charackter, and I can show my face with any man for
being honest, that’s one good thing.

“I pays 4_s._ a-week for two rooms, one up and one down, for I couldn’t
live in one room. I come to work always near eight o’clock, for you see
it takes me some time to clean the knives and boots at Lord B----’s. I
get sometimes 1_s._ and sometimes 1_s._ 6_d._ a-week for doing that,
and glad I am to have it. It’s only for the servants I does it, not for
the quality.

“When I does anythink for the servants, it’s either cleaning boots and
knives, or putting letters in the post--that’s it--anythink of that
kind. They gives me just what they can, 1_d._ or 2_d._ or half a pint
of beer when they ha’n’t got any coppers.

“Sometimes I gets a few left-off clothes, but very seldom. I have two
suits a-year give me reg’lar, and I goes to a first-rate tailor for
’em, though they don’t make the prime--of course not, yet they’re very
good. Now this coat I liked very well when it was new, it was so clean
and tidy. No, the tailor don’t show me the pattern-books and that sort
of thing: he knows what’s wanted. I won’t never have none of them
washing duck breeches; that’s the only thing as I refuses, and the
tailor knows that. I looks very nice after Christmas, I can tell you,
and I’ve always got a good tidy suit for Sundays, and God bless them as
gives ’em to me.

“Every Sunday I gets a hot dinner at Lord B----’s, whether he’s out of
town or in town--that’s summat. I gets bits, too, give me, so that I
don’t buy a dinner, no, not once a-week. I pays 4_s._ a-week rent, and
I dare say my food, morning and night, costs me a 1_s._ a-day--aye, I’m
sure it does, morning and night. At present I don’t make 12_s._ a-week;
but take the year round, one week with another, it might come to 13_s._
or 14_s._ a-week I gets. Yes, I’ll own to that.

“Christmas is my best time; then I gets more than 1_l._ a-week: now I
don’t take 4_s._ a-week on my crossing. Many’s the time I’ve made my
breakfast on a pen’orth of coffee and a halfpenny slice of bread and
butter. What do you think of that?

“Wet weather does all the harm to me. People, you see, don’t like to
come out. I think I’ve got the best side of the square, and you see my
crossing is a long one, and saves people a deal of ground, for it cuts
off the corner. It used to be a famous crossing in its time--hah! but
that’s gone.

“I always uses what they calls the brush-brooms; that’s them with a
flat head like a house-broom. I can’t abide them others; they don’t
look well, and they wears out ten times as quick as mine. I general
buys the eights, that’s 10_d._ a-piece, and finds my own handles. A
broom won’t last me more than a fortnight, it’s such a long crossing;
but when it was paved, afore this muckydam (macadamising) was turned
up, a broom would last me a full three months. I can’t abide this
muckydam--can you, sir? it’s sloppy stuff, and goes so bad in holes.
Give me the good solid stones as used to be.

“I does a good business round the square when the snow’s on the ground.
I general does each house at so much a-week whilst it snows. Hardwicks
give me a shilling. I does only my side, and that next Oxford-street. I
don’t go to the others, unless somebody comes and orders me--for fair
play _is_ fair play--and they belongs to the other sweepers. I does
my part and they does theirs.

“It’s seldom as I has a shop to sweep out, and I don’t do nothink with
shutters. I’m getting too old now for to be called in to carry boxes up
gentlemen’s houses, but when I was young I found plenty to do that way.
There’s a man at the corner of Chandos-street, and he does the most of
that kind of work.”

THE BEARDED CROSSING-SWEEPER AT THE EXCHANGE.

Since the destruction by fire of the Royal Exchange in 1838, there
has been added to the curiosities of Cornhill a thickset, sturdy, and
hirsute crossing-sweeper--a man who is as civil by habit as he is
independent by nature. He has a long flowing beard, grey as wood smoke,
and a pair of fierce moustaches, giving a patriarchal air of importance
to a marked and observant face, which often serves as a painter’s
model. After half-an-hour’s conversation, you are forced to admit that
his looks do not all belie him, and that the old mariner (for such was
his profession formerly) is worthy in some measure of his beard.

He wears an old felt hat--very battered and discoloured; around his
neck, which is bared in accordance with sailor custom, he has a thick
blue cotton neckerchief tied in a sailor’s knot; his long iron-grey
beard is accompanied by a healthy and almost ruddy face. He stands
against the post all day, saying nothing, and taking what he can get
without solicitation.

[Illustration: THE BEARDED CROSSING-SWEEPER AT THE EXCHANGE.

[_From a Photograph._]]

When I first spoke to him, he wanted to know to what purpose I intended
applying the information that he was prepared to afford, and it was
not until I agreed to walk with him as far as St. Mary-Axe that I was
enabled to obtain his statement, as follows:--

“I’ve had this crossing ever since ’38. The Exchange was burnt down
in that year. Why, sir, I was wandering about trying to get a crust,
and it was very sloppy, so I took and got a broom; and while I kept a
clean crossing, I used to get ha’pence and pence. I got a dockman’s
wages--that’s half-a-crown a-day; sometimes only a shilling, and
sometimes more. I have taken a crown--but that’s very rare. The best
customers I had is dead. I used to make a good Christmas, but I don’t
now. I have taken a pound or thirty shillings then in the old times.

“I smoke, sir; I _will_ have tobacco, if I can’t get grub. My old woman
takes cares that I have tobacco.

“I have been a sailor, and the first ship as ever I was in was the Old
Colossus, 74, but we was only cruising about the Channel then, and took
two prizes. I went aboard the Old Remewa guardship--we were turned over
to her--and from her I was drafted over to the Escramander frigate. We
went out chasing Boney, but he gived himself up to the Old Impregnable.
I was at the taking of Algiers, in 1816, in the Superb. I was in the
Rochfort, 74, up the Mediterranean (they call it up the Mediterranean,
but it was the Malta station) three years, ten months, and twenty days,
until the ship was paid off.

“Then I went to work at the Dockyard. I had a misfortune soon after
that. I fell out of a garret window, three stories high, and that kept
me from going to the Docks again. I lost all my top teeth by that fall.
I’ve got a scar here, one on my chin; but I warn’t in the hospital more
than two weeks.

“I was afeard of being taken up solicitin’ charity, and I knew that
sweeping was a safe game; they couldn’t take me up for sweeping a
crossing.

“Sometimes I get insulted, only in words; sometimes I get chaffed by
sober people. Drunken men I don’t care for; I never listen to ’em,
unless they handle me, and then, although I am sixty-three this very
day, sir, I think I could show them something. I _do_ carry my age
well; and if you could ha’ seen how I have lived this last winter
through, sometimes one pound of bread between two of us, you’d say I
was a strong man to be as I am.

“Those who think that sweepin’ a crossing is idle work, make a great
mistake. In wet weather, the traffic that makes it gets sloppy as
soon as it’s cleaned. Cabs, and ’busses, and carriages continually
going over the crossing must scatter the mud on it, and you must look
precious sharp to keep it clean; but when I once get in the road, I
never jump out of it. I keeps my eye both ways, and if I gets in too
close quarters, I slips round the wheels. I’ve had them almost touch me.

“No, sir, I never got knocked down. In foggy weather, of course, it’s
no use sweeping at all.

“Parcels! it’s very few parcels I get to carry now; I don’t think I
get a parcel to carry once in a month: there’s ’busses and railways so
cheap. A man would charge as much for a distance as a cab would take
them.

“I don’t come to the same crossing on Sundays; I go to the corner of
Finch-lane. As to regular customers, I’ve none--to say regular; some
give me sixpence now and then. All those who used to give me regular
are dead.

“I was a-bed when the Exchange was burnt down.

“I have had this beard five years. I grew it to sit to artists when I
got the chance; but it don’t pay expenses--for I have to walk four or
five miles, and only get a shilling an hour: besides, I’m often kept
nearly two hours, and I get nothing for going and nothing for coming,
but just for the time I am there.

“Afore I wore it, I had a pair of large whiskers. I went to a
gentleman then, an artist, and he _did_ pay me well. He advised me to
grow mustarshers and the beard, but he hasn’t employed me since.

“They call me ‘Old Jack’ on the crossing, that’s all they call me. I
get more chaff from the boys than any one else. They only say, ‘Why
don’t you get shaved?’ but I take no notice on ’em.

“Old Bill, in Lombard Street! I knows him; he used to make a good thing
of it, but I don’t think he makes much now.

“My wife--I am married, sir--doesn’t do anything. I live in a
lodging-house, and I pay three shillings a-week.

“I tell you what we has, now, when I go home. We has a pound of bread,
a quarter of an ounce of tea, and perhaps a red herring.

“I’ve had a weakness in my legs for two year; the veins comes down, but
I keep a bandage in my pocket, and when I feels ’em coming down, I puts
the bandage on ’till the veins goes up again--it’s through being on my
legs so long (because I had very strong legs when young) and want of
good food. When you only have a bit of bread and a cup of tea--no meat,
no vegetables--you find it out; but I’m as upright as a dart, and as
lissom as ever I was.

“I gives threepence for my brooms. I wears out three in a week in the
wet weather. I always lean very hard on my broom, ’specially when
the mud is sticky--as it is after the roads is watered. I am very
particular about my brooms; I gives ’em away to be burned when many
another would use them.”

THE SWEEPER IN PORTMAN SQUARE, WHO GOT PERMISSION FROM THE POLICE.

A wild-looking man, with long straggling grey hair, which stood out
from his head as if he brushed it the wrong way; and whiskers so thick
and curling that they reminded one of the wool round a sheep’s face,
gave me the accompanying history.

He was very fond of making use of the term “honest crust,” and each
time he did so, he, Irish-like, pronounced it “currust.” He seemed a
kind-hearted, innocent creature, half scared by want and old age.

“I’m blest if I can tell which is the best crossing in London; but
mine ain’t no great shakes, for I don’t take three shilling a-week not
with persons going across, take one week with another, but I thought
I could get a honest currust (crust) at it, for I’ve got a crippled
hand, which comed of its own accord, and I was in St. George’s Hospital
seven weeks. When I comed out it was a cripple with me, and I thought
the crossing was better than going into the workhouse--for I likes my
liberty.

“I’ve been on this crossing since last Christmas was a twelvemonth.
Before that I was a bricklayer and plasterer. I’ve been thirty-two
years in London. I can get as good a character as any one anywhere,
please God; for as to drunkards, and all that, I was none of them. I
was earning eighteen shilling a-week, and sometimes with my overtime
I’ve had twenty shilling, or even twenty-three shilling. Bricklayers is
paid according to all the hours they works beyond ten, for that’s the
bricklayer’s day.

“I was among the lime, and the sand, and the bricks, and then my hand
come like this (he held out a hand with all the fingers drawn up
towards the middle, like the claw of a dead bird). All the sinews have
gone, as you see yourself, sir, so that I can’t bend it or straighten
it, for the fingers are like bits of stick, and you can’t bend ’em
without breaking them.

“When I couldn’t lay hold of anything, nor lift it up, I showed it to
master, and he sent me to his doctor, who gived me something to rub
over it, for it was swelled up like, and then I went to St. George’s
Hospital, and they cut it over, and asked me if I could come in doors
as in-door patient? and I said Yes, for I wanted to get it over sooner,
and go back to my work, and earn an honest currust. Then they scarred
it again, cut it seven times, and I was there many long weeks; and
when I comed out I could not hold any tool, so I was forced to keep
on pawning and pledging to keep an honest currust in my mouth, and
sometimes I’d only just be with a morsel to eat, and sometimes I’d be
hungry, and that’s the truth.

“What put me up to crossing-sweeping was this--I had no other thing
open to me but the workhouse; but of course I’d sooner be out on my
liberty, though I was entitled to go into the house, of course, but I’d
sooner keep out of it if I could earn an honest currust.

“One of my neighbours persuaded me that I should pick up a good currust
at a crossing. The man who had been on my crossing was gone dead, and
as it was empty, I went down to the police-office, in Marylebone Lane,
and they told me I might take it, and give me liberty to stop. I was
told the man who had been there before me had been on it fourteen
years, and them was good times for gentle and simple and all--and it
was reported that this man had made a good bit of money, at least so it
was said.

“I thought I could make a living out of it, or an honest currust, but
it’s a very poor living, I can assure you. When I went to it first, I
done pretty fair for a currust; but it’s only three shillings to me
now. My missus has such bad health, or she used to help me with her
needle. I can assure you, sir, it’s only one day a week as I have a bit
of dinner, and I often go without breakfast and supper, too.

“I haven’t got any regular customers that allow me anything. When the
families is in town sometimes they give me half-a-crown, or sixpence,
now and then, perhaps once a fortnight, or a month. They’ve got footmen
and servant-maids, so they never wants no parcels taken--they make
_them_ do it; but sometimes I get a penny for posting a letter from one
of the maids, or something like that.

“The best day for us is Sunday. Sometimes I get a shilling, and when
the families is in town eighteen pence. But when the families is away,
and the weather so fine there’s no mud, and only working-people going
to the chapels, they never looks at me, and then I’ll only get a
shilling.”

ANOTHER WHO GOT PERMISSION TO SWEEP.

An old Irishman, who comes from Cork, was spoken of to us as a
crossing-sweeper who had formally obtained permission before exercising
his calling; but I found, upon questioning him, that it was but little
more than a true Hibernian piece of conciliation on his part; and,
indeed, that out of fear of competition, he had asked leave of the
servants and policeman in the neighbourhood.

It seems somewhat curious, as illustrative of the rights of property
among crossing-sweepers, that three or four “intending” sweepers, when
they found themselves forestalled by the old man in question, had no
idea of supplanting the Irishman, and merely remarked,--

“Well, you’re lucky to get it so soon, for we meant to take it.”

In reply to our questions, the man said,--

“I came here in January last: I knew the old man was did who used to
keep the crossin’, and I thought I would like the kind of worruk, for
I am getting blind, and hard of hearing likewise. I’ve got no parish;
since the passing of the last Act, I’ve niver lived long enough in any
one parish for that. I applied to Marabone, and they offered to sind me
back to Ireland, but I’d got no one to go to, no friends or relations,
or if I have, they’re as poor there as I am mysilf, sir.

“There was an ould man here before me. He used to have a stool to rest
himsilf on, and whin he died, last Christmas, a man as knew him and me
asked me whither I would take it or no, and I said I would. His broom
and stool were in the coal-cellar at this corner house, Mr. ----’s,
where he used to leave them at night times, and they gave them up to
me; but I didn’t use the stool, sir, it might be an obsthruction to the
passers-by; and, sir, it looks as if it was infirrumity. But, plaise
the Lord, I’ll git and make a stool for myself against the hard winter,
I will, bein’ a carpenter by thrade.

“I didn’t ask the gintlefolks’ permission to come here, but I asked
the police and the servants, and such as that. I asked the servants at
the corner-house. I don’t know whither they could have kept me away
if I had not asked. Soon after I came here the gintlefolks--some of
them--stopped and spoke to me. ‘So,’ says they, ‘you’ve taken the place
of the old man that’s did?’ ‘Yes, I have,’ says I. ‘Very will,’ says
they, and they give me a ha’penny. That was all that occurred upon my
takin’ to the crossin’.

“But there were some others who would have taken it if I had not; they
tould me I was lucky in gettin’ it so soon, or they would have had it,
but I don’t know who they are.

“I am seventy-three years ould the 2d of June last. My wife is about
the same age, and very much afflicted with the rheumatis, and she
injured hersilf, too, years ago, by fallin’ off a chair while she was
takin’ some clothes off the line.

“Not to desave you, sir, I get a shillin’ a-week from one of my childer
and ninepence from another, and a little hilp from some of the others.
I have siven childer livin’, and have had tin. They are very much
scattered: two are abroad; one is in the tinth Hussars--he is kind to
me. The one who allows me ninepence is a basket-maker at Reading; and
the shillin’ I get from my daughter, a servant, sir. One of my sons
died in the Crimmy; he was in the 13th Light Dragoons, and died at
Scutari, on the 25th of May. They could not hilp me more than they thry
to do, sir.

“I only make about two shilling a-week here, sir; and sometimes I
don’t take three ha’pence a day. On Sundays I take about sivenpence,
ninepence, or tinpence, ’cordin’ as I see the people who give rigular.

“Weather makes no difference to me--for, though the sum is small, I am
a rigular pinsioner like of theirs. I go to Somer’s-town Chapel, being
a Catholic, for I’m not ashamed to own my religion before any man. When
I go, it is at siven in the evening. Sometimes I go to St. Pathrick’s
Chapel, Soho-square. I have not been to confission for two or three
years--the last time was to Mr. Stanton, at St. Pathrick’s.

“There’s a poor woman, sir, who goes past here every Friday to get her
pay from the parish, and, as sure as she comes back again, she gives me
a ha’penny--she does, indeed. Sometimes the baker or the greengrocer
gives me a ha’penny for minding their baskets.

“I’m perfectly satisfied; it’s no use to grumble, and I might be worrus
off, sir. Yes, I go of arrinds some times; fitch water now and then,
and post letters; but I do no odd jobs, such as hilping the servants
to clean the knives, or such-like. No: they wouldn’t let me behint the
shadow of their doors.”

A THIRD WHO ASKED LEAVE.

This one was a mild and rather intelligent man, in a well worn black
dress-coat and waistcoat, a pair of “moleskin” trousers, and a
blue-and-white cotton neckerchief. I found him sweeping the crossing at
the end of ---- place, opposite the church.

He every now and then regaled himself with a pinch of snuff, which
seemed to light up his careworn face. He seemed very willing to afford
me information. He said:--

“I have been on this crossing four years. I am a bricklayer by trade;
but you see how my fingers have gone: it’s all rheumatics, sir. I took
a great many colds. I had a great deal of underground work, and that
tries a man very much.

“How did I get the crossing? Well, I took it--I came as a cas’alty.
No one ever interfered with me. If one man leaves a crossing, well,
another takes it.

“Yes, some crossings is worth a good deal of money. There was a black
in Regent-street, at the corner of Conduit-street, I think, who had two
or three houses--at least, I’ve heard so; and I know for a certainty
that the man in Cavendish-square used to get so much a week from
the Duke of Portland--he got a shilling a-day, and eighteenpence on
Sundays. I don’t know why he got more on Sundays. I don’t know whether
he gets it since the old Duke’s death.

“The boys worry me. I mean the little boys with brooms; they are an
abusive set, and give me a good deal of annoyance; they are so very
cheeky; they watch the police away; but if they see the police coming,
they bolt like a shot. There are a great many Irish lads among them.
There were not nearly so many boys about a few years ago.

“I once made eighteenpence in one day, that was the best day I ever
made: it was very bad weather: but, take the year through, I don’t make
more than sixpence a-day.

“I haven’t worked at bricklaying for a matter of six year. What did I
do for the two years before I took to crossing-sweeping? Why, sir, I
had saved a little money, and managed to get on somehow. Yes, I have
had my troubles, but I never had what I call great ones, excepting my
wife’s blindness. She was blind, sir, for eleven year, and so I had to
fight for everything: she has been dead two year, come September.

“I have seven children, five boys and two girls; they are all grown up
and got families. Yes, they ought, amongst them, to do something for
me; but if you have to trust to children, you will soon find out what
_that_ is. If they want anything of you, they know where to find you;
but if you want anything of them, it’s no go.

“I think I made more money when first I swept this crossing than I do
now; it’s not a _good_ crossing, sir. Oh, no; but it’s handy home, you
see. When a shower of rain comes on, I can run home, and needn’t go
into a public-house; but it’s a poor neighbourhood.

“Oh yes, indeed sir, I am always here. Certainly; I am laid up
sometimes for a day with my feet. I am subject to the rheumatic gout,
you see. Well, I don’t know whether so much standing has anything to do
with it.

“Yes, sir, I _have_ heard of what you call ‘shutting-up shop.’ I
never heard it called by that name before, though; but there’s lots
of sweepers as sweep back the dirt before leaving at night. I know
they do, some of them. I never did it myself--I don’t care about it; I
always think there’s the trouble of sweeping it back in the morning.

“People liberal? No, sir, I don’t think there are many liberal people
about; if people were liberal I should make a good deal of money.

“Sometimes, after I get home, I read a book, if I can borrow one. What
do I read? Well, novels, when I can get them. What did I read last
night? Well, _Reynolds’s Miscellany_; before that I read the _Pilgrim’s
Progress_. I have read it three times over; but there’s always
something new in it.

“Well, weather makes very little difference in this neighbourhood.
My rent is two-and-sixpence a-week. I have a little relief from the
parish. How much? Two-and-sixpence. How much does my living cost? Well,
I am forced to live on what I can get. I manage as well as I can; if I
have a good week, I spend it--I get more nourishment then, that’s all.

“I used to smoke, sir, a great deal, but I haven’t touched a pipe for a
matter of forty year. Yes, sir, I take snuff, Scotch and Rappee, mixed.
If I go without a meal of victuals, I must have my snuff. I take an
ounce a-week, sir; it costs fourpence--that there is the only luxury I
get, unless somebody gives me a half pint of beer.

“I very rarely get an odd job, this is not the neighbourhood for them
things.

“Yes, sir, I go to church on Sunday; I go to All Souls’, in
Langham-place, the church with the sharp spire. I go in the morning;
once a day is quite enough for me. In the afternoon, I generally take a
walk in the Park, or I go to see one of my young ones; they won’t come
to the old crossing-sweeper, so I go to them.”

A REGENT-STREET CROSSING-SWEEPER.

A man who had stationed himself at the end of Regent-street, near the
County Fire Office, gave me the following particulars.

He was a man far superior to the ordinary run of sweepers, and, as will
be seen, had formerly been a gentleman’s servant. His costume was of
that peculiar miscellaneous description which showed that it had from
time to time been given to him in charity. A dress-coat so marvellously
tight that the stitches were stretching open, a waistcoat with a
remnant of embroidery, and a pair of trousers which wrinkled like a
groom’s top-boot, had all evidently been part of the wardrobe of the
gentlemen whose errands he had run. His boots were the most curious
portion of his toilette, for they were large enough for a fisherman,
and the portion unoccupied by the foot had gone flat and turned up like
a Turkish slipper.

He spoke with a tone and manner which showed some education. Once or
twice whilst I was listening to his statement he insisted upon removing
some dirt from my shoulder, and, on leaving, he by force seized my hat
and brushed it--all which habits of attention he had contracted whilst
in service.

I was surprised to see stuck in the wristband of his coat-sleeve a row
of pins, arranged as neatly as in the papers sold at the mercers’.

“Since the Irish have come so much--the boys, I mean--my crossing has
been completely cut up,” he said; “and yet it is in as good a spot as
could well be, from the County Fire Office (Mr. Beaumont as owns it)
to Swan and Edgar’s. It ought to be one of the fust crossings in the
kingdom, but these Irish have spiled it.

“I should think, as far as I can guess, I’ve been on it eight year,
if not better; but it was some time before I got known. You see, it
does a feller good to be some time on a crossing; but it all depends,
of course, whether you are honest or not, for it’s according to
your honesty as you gets rewarded. By rewarded, I means, you gets a
character given to you by word of mouth. For instance, a party wants me
to do a job for ’em, and they says, ‘Can you get any lady or gentleman
to speak for you?’ And I says, ‘Yes;’ and I gets my character by word
of mouth--that’s what I calls being rewarded.

“Before ever I took a broom in hand, the good times had gone for
crossings and sweepers. The good times was thirty year back. In
the regular season, when _they_ (the gentry) are in town, I _have_
taken from one and sixpence to two shillings a-day; but every day’s
not alike, for people stop at home in wet days. But, you see, in
winter-time the crossings ain’t no good, and then we turn off to
shovelling snow; so that, you see, a shilling a-day is even too high
for us to take regular all the year round. Now, I ain’t taken a
shilling, no, nor a blessed bit of silver, for these three days. All
the quality’s out of town.

“It ain’t what a man gets on a crossing as keeps him; _that_ ain’t
worth mentioning. I don’t think I takes sixpence a-day regular--all the
year round, mind--on the crossing. No, I’d take my solemn oath I don’t!
If you was to put down fourpence it would be nearer the mark. I’ll tell
you the use of a crossing to such as me and my likes. It’s our shop,
and it ain’t what we gets a-sweeping, but it’s a place like for us to
stand, and then people as wants us, comes and fetches us.

“In the summer I do a good deal in jobs. I do anything in the portering
line, or if I’m called to do boots and shoes, or clean knives and
forks, then I does that. But that’s only when people’s busy; for I’ve
only got one regular place I goes to, and that’s in A---- street,
Piccadilly. I goes messages, parcels, letters, and anything that’s
required, either for the master of the hotel or the gents that uses
there. Now, there’s one party at Swan and Edgar’s, and I goes to take
parcels for him sometimes; and he won’t trust anybody but me, for you
see I’m know’d to be trustworthy, and then they reckons me as safe as
the Bank,--there, that’s just it.

“I got to the hotel only lately. You see, when the peace was on and
the soldiers was coming home from the Crimmy, then the governor he
was exceeding busy, so he give me two shillings a-day and my board;
but that wasn’t reg’lar, for as he wants me he comes and fetches me.
It’s a-nigh impossible to say what I makes, it don’t turn out reg’lar;
Sunday’s a shilling or one-and-sixpence, other days nothing at all--not
salt to my porridge. You see, when I helps the party at the hotel, I
gets my food, and that’s a lift. I’ve never put down what I made in the
course of the year, but I’ve got enough to find food and raiment for
myself and family. Sir, I think I may say I gets about six shillings
a-week, but it ain’t more.

“I’ve been abroad a good deal. I was in Cape Town, Table Bay,
one-and-twenty miles from Simons’ Town--for you see the French
mans-of-war comes in at Cape Town, and the English mans-of-war comes
in at Simons’ Town. I was a gentleman’s servant over there, and a very
good place it was; and if anybody was to have told me years back that I
was to have come to what I am now, I could never have credited it; but
misfortunes has brought me to what I am.

“I come to England thinking to better myself, if so be it was the
opportunity; besides, I was tired of Africy, and anxious to see my
native land.

“I was very hard up--ay, very hard up indeed--before I took to the
cross, and, in preference to turning out dishonest, I says, I’ll buy a
broom and go and sweep and get a honest livelihood.

“There was a Jewish lady and her husband used to live in the Suckus,
and I knowed them and the family--very fine sons they was--and I went
into the shop to ask them to let me work before the shop, and they give
me their permission so to do, and, says she, ‘I’ll allow you threepence
a-week.’ They’ve been good friends to me, and send me a messages; and
wherever they be, may they do well, I says.

“I sometimes gets clothes give to me, but it’s only at Christmas times,
or after its over; and that helps me along--it does so, indeed.

“Whenever I sees a pin or a needle, I picks it up; sometimes I finds
as many as a dozen a-day, and I always sticks them either in my cuff
or in my waistcoat. Very often a lady sees ’em, and then they comes
to me and says, ‘Can you oblige me with a pin?’ and I says, ‘Oh yes,
marm; a couple, or three, if you requires them;’ but it turns out very
rare that I gets a trifle for anything like that. I only does it to be
obliging--besides, it makes you friends, like.

“I can’t tell who’s got the best crossing in London. I’m no judge of
that; it isn’t a broom as can keep a man now. They’re going out of town
so fast, all the harristocracy; though it’s middling classes--such as
is in a middling way like--as is the best friends to me.”

A TRADESMAN’S CROSSING-SWEEPER.

A man who had worked at crossing-sweeping as a boy when he first came
to London, and again when he grew too old to do his work as a labourer
in a coal-yard, gave me a statement of the kind of life he led, and the
earnings he made. He was an old man, with a forehead so wrinkled that
the dark, waved lines reminded me of the grain of oak. His thick hair
was, despite his great age--which was nearly seventy--still dark; and
as he conversed with me, he was continually taking off his hat, and
wiping his face with what appeared to be a piece of flannel, about a
foot square.

His costume was of what might be called “the all-sorts” kind, and, from
constant wear, it had lost its original colour, and had turned into a
sort of dirty green-grey hue. It consisted of a waistcoat of tweed,
fastened together with buttons of glass, metal, and bone; a tail-coat,
turned brown with weather, a pair of trousers repaired here and there
with big stitches, like the teeth of a comb, and these formed the
extent of his wardrobe. Around the collar of the coat and waistcoat,
and on the thighs of the pantaloons, the layers of grease were so thick
that the fibre of the cloth was choked up, and it looked as if it had
been pieced with bits of leather.

Rubbing his unshorn chin, whereon the bristles stood up like the
pegs in the barrel of a musical-box--until it made a noise like a
hair-brush, he began his story:--

“I’m known all about in Parliament-street--ay, every bit about them
parts,--for more than thirty year. Ay, I’m as well known as the
statty itself, all about them parts at Charing-cross. Afore I took to
crossing-sweeping I was at coal-work. The coal-work I did was backing
and filling, and anythink in that way. I worked at Wood’s, and Penny’s,
and Douglas’s. They were good masters, Mr. Wood ’specially; but the
work was too much for me as I got old. There was plenty of coal work
in them times; indeed, I’ve yearned as much as nine shillings of a
day. That was the time as the meters was on. Now men can hardly earn a
living at coal-work. I left the coal-work because I was took ill with a
fever, as was brought on by sweating--over-_exaction_ they called it.
It left me so weak I wasn’t able to do nothink in the yards.

“I know Mr. G----, the fishmonger, and Mr. J----, the publican. I
should think Mr. J---- has knowed me this eight-and-thirty-year, and
they put me on to the crossing. You see, when I was odd man at a coal
job, I’d go and do whatever there was to be done in the neighbourhood.
If there was anythink as Mr. G----’s men couldn’t do--such as carrying
fish home to a customer, when the other men were busy--I was sent for.
Or Mr. J---- would send me with sperrits--a gallon, or half a gallon,
or anythink of that sort--a long journey. In fact, I’d get anythink as
come handy.

“I had done crossing-sweeping as a boy, before I took to coal-work,
when I first come out of the country. My own head first put me up to
the notion, and that’s more than fifty year ago--ay, more than that;
but I can’t call to mind exactly, for I’ve had no parents ever since I
was eight year old, and now I’m nigh seventy; but it’s as close as I
can remember. I was about thirteen at that time. There was no police on
then, and I saw a good bit of road as was dirty, and says I, ‘That’s a
good spot to keep clean,’ and I took it. I used to go up to the tops of
the houses to throw over the snow, and I’ve often been obliged to get
men to help me. I suppose I was about the first person as ever swept
a crossing in Charing-cross; (here, as if proud of the fact, he gave
a kind of moist chuckle, which ended in a fit of coughing). I used to
make a good bit of money then; but it ain’t worth nothink, now.

“After I left coal-backing, I went back to the old crossing opposite
the Adm’ralty gates, and I stopped there until Mr. G---- give me
the one I’m on now, and thank him for it, I says. Mr. G---- had the
crossing paved, as leads to his shop, to accommodate the customers.
He had a German there to sweep it afore me. He used to sweep in the
day--come about ten or eleven o’clock in the morning, and then at night
he turned watchman; for when there was any wenson, as Mr. G---- deals
in, hanging out, he was put to watch it. This German worked there, I
reckon, about seven year, and when he died I took the crossing.

“The crossing ain’t much of a living for any body--that is, what I
takes on it. But then I’ve got regular customers as gives me money.
There’s Mr. G----, he gives a shilling a-week; and there’s Captain
R----, of the Adm’ralty, he gives me sixpence a fortnight; and another
captain, of the name of R----, he gives me fourpence every Sunday.
Ah! I’d forgot Mr. O----, the Secretary at the Adm’ralty; he gives me
sixpence now and then. Besides, I do a lot of odd jobs for different
people; they knows where to come and find me when they wants me. They
gets me to carry letters, or a parcel, or a box, or anythink of that
there. I has a bit of vittals, too, give me every now and then; but as
for money, it’s very little as I get on the crossings--perhaps seven or
eight shilling a-week, reg’lar customers and all.

“I never heard of anybody as was leaving a crossing selling it; no,
never. My crossing ain’t a reg’lar one as anybody could have. If I was
to leave, it depends upon whether Mr. G---- would like to have the
party, as to who gets it. There’s no such thing as turning a reg’lar
sweeper out, the police stops that. I’ve been known to them for years,
and they are very kind to me. As they come’s by they says, ‘Jimmy, how
are you?’ You see, my crossing comes handy for them, for it’s agin
Scotland-yard; and when they turns out in their clean boots it saves
their blacking.

“Lord G---- used to be at the Adm’ralty, but he ain’t there now; I
don’t know why he left, but he’s gone. He used to give me sixpence
every now and then when he come over. I was near to my crossing when
Mr. Drummond was shot, but I wasn’t near enough to hear the pistol; but
I didn’t see nothink. I know’d the late Sir Robert Peel, oh, certantly,
but he seldom crossed over my crossing, though whenever he did, he’d
give me somethink. The present Sir Robert goes over to the chapel in
Spring-gardens when he’s in town, but he keeps on the other side of the
way; so I never had anythink from him. He’s the very picture of his
father, and I knows him from that, only his father were rather stouter
than he is. I don’t know none of the members of parliament, they most
on ’em keeps on shifting so, that I hasn’t no time to recognise ’em.

“The watering-carts ain’t no friends of our’n. They makes dirt and no
pay for cleaning it. There’s so much traffic with coaches and carts
going right over my crossing that a fine or wet day don’t make much
difference to me, for people are afraid to cross for fear of being run
over. I’m forced to have my eyes about me and dodge the wehicles. I
never heerd, as I can tell on, of a crossing-sweeper being run over.”

2. THE ABLE-BODIED FEMALE CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

THE OLD WOMAN “OVER THE WATER.”

She is the widow of a sweep--“as respectable and ’dustrious a man,”
I was told, “as any in the neighbourhood of the ‘Borough;’ he was a
short man, sir,--very short,” said my informant, “and had a weakness
for top-boots, white hats, and leather breeches,” and in that
unsweeplike costume he would parade himself up and down the Dover and
New Kent-roads. He had a capital connexion (or, as his widow terms it,
“seat of business”), and left behind him a good name and reputation
that would have kept the “seat of business” together, if it had not
been for the misconduct of the children, two of whom (sons) have been
transported, while a daughter “went wrong,” though she, wretched
creature, paid a fearful penalty, I learnt, for her frailties, having
been burnt to death in the middle of the night, through a careless
habit of smoking in bed.

The old sweeper herself, eighty years of age, and almost beyond labour,
very deaf, and rather feeble to all appearance, yet manages to get
out every morning between four and five, so as to catch the workmen
and “time-keepers” on their way to the factories. She has the true
obsequious curtsey, but is said to be very strong in her “likes and
dislikes.”

She bears a good character, though sometimes inclining, I was informed,
towards “the other half-pint,” but never guilty of any excess. She is
somewhat profuse in her scriptural ejaculations and professions of
gratitude. Her statement was as follows:--

“Fifteen years I’ve been on the crossing, come next Christmas. My
husband died in Guy’s Hospital, of the cholera, three days after he got
in, and I took to the crossing some time after. I had nothing to do.
I am eighty years of age, and I couldn’t do hard work. I have nothing
but what the great God above pleases to give me. The poor woman who had
the crossing before me was killed, and so I took it. The gentleman who
was the foreman of the road, gave me the grant to take it. I didn’t
ask him, for poor people as wants a bit of bread they goes on the
crossings as they likes, but he never interfered with me. The first day
I took sixpence; but them good times is all gone, they’ll never come
back again. The best times I used to take a shilling a-day, and now I
don’t take but a few pence. The winter is as bad as the summer, for
poor people haven’t got it to give, and gentlefolks get very near now.
People are not so liberal as they used to be, and they never will be
again.

“To do a hard day’s washing, I couldn’t. I used to go to a lady’s house
to do a bit of washing when I had my strength, but I can’t do it now.

“People going to their offices at six or seven in the morning gives me
a ha’penny or a penny; if they don’t, I must go without it. I go at
five, and stand there till eleven or twelve, till I find it is no use
being there any longer. Oh, the gentlemen give me the most, I’m sure;
the ladies don’t give me nothing.

“At Christmas I get a few things--a gentleman gave me these boots I’ve
got on, and a ticket for a half-quartern loaf and a hundred of coals. I
have got as much as five shillings at Christmas--but those times will
never come back again. I get no more than two shillings and sixpence at
Christmas now.

“My husband, Thomas ---- was his name, was a chimley-sweep. He did a
very good business--it was all done by his sons. We had a boy with
us, too, just as a friendly boy. I was a mother and a mistress to
him. I’ve had eleven children. I’m grandmother to fifteen, and a
great-grandmother, too. They won’t give me a bite of bread, though, any
of ’em, I’ve got four children living, as far as I know, two abroad
and two home here with families. I never go among ’em. It is not in my
power to assist ’em, so I never go to distress ’em.

“I get two shilling a-week from the parish, and I have to pay out of
that for a quartern loaf, a quartern of sugar, and an ounce of tea. The
parish forces it on me, so I must take it, and that only leaves me one
shilling and fourpence. A shilling of it goes for my lodging. I lodge
with people who knew my family and me, and took a liking to me; they
let me come there instead of wandering about the streets.

“I stand on my crossing till I’m like to drop over my broom with
tiredness. Yes, sir, I go to church at St. George’s in the Borough. I
go there every Sunday morning, after I leave my roads. They’ve taken
the organ and charity children away that used to be there when I was a
girl, so it’s not a church now, it’s a chapel. There’s nothing but the
preacher and the gentlefolks, and they sings their own psalms. There
are gatherings at that church, but whether it’s for the poor or not I
don’t know. _I_ don’t get any of it.

“It was a great loss to me when my husband died; I went all to ruin
then. My father belonged to Scotland, at Edinboro’. My mother came from
Yorkshire. I don’t know where Scotland is no more than the dead. My
father was a gentleman’s gardener and watchman. My mother used to go
out a-chairing, and she was drowned just by Horsemonger Lane. She was
coming through the Halfpenny Hatch, that used to be just facing the
Crown and Anchor, in the New Kent-road; there was an open ditch there,
sir. She took the left-hand turning instead of the right, and was
drownded. My father died in St. Martin’s Workhouse. He died of apoplexy
fit.

“I used to mind my father’s place till mother died. His housekeeper
I was--God help me! a fine one too. Thank the Lord, my husband was a
clever man; he had a good seat of business. I lost my right hand when
he died. I couldn’t carry it on. There was my two sons went for sogers,
and the others were above their business. He left a seat of business
worth a hundred pound; he served all up the New Kent-road. He was
beloved by all his people. He used to climb himself when I first had
him, but he left it off when he got children. I had my husband when I
was fifteen, and kept him forty years. Ah! he was well-beloved by all
around, except his children, and they behaved shameful. I said to his
eldest son, when he lay in the hospital, (asking your pardon, sir,
for mentioning it)--I says to his eldest son, ‘Billy,’ says I, ‘your
father’s very bad--why don’t you go to see him?’ ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘he’s
all right, he’s gettin’ better;’ and he was never the one to go and see
him once; and he never come to the funeral.

“Billy thought I should come upon him after his death, but I never
troubled him for as much as a crumb of bread.

“I never get spoken to on my roads, only some people say, ‘Good
morning,’ ‘There you are, old lady.’ They never asks me no questions
whatsomever. I never get run over, though I am very hard of hearing;
but I am forced to have my eyes here, there, and everywhere, to keep
out of the way of the carts and coaches.

“Some days I goes to my crossing, and earns nothink at all: other
days it’s sometimes fourpence, sometimes sixpence. I earned fourpence
to-day, and I had a bit of snuff out of it. Why, I believe I did
yearn fivepence yesterday--I won’t tell no story. I got ninepence on
Sunday--that was a good day; but, God knows, that didn’t go far. I
yearned so much I couldn’t bring it home on Saturday--it almost makes
me laugh,--I yearned sixpence.

“I goes every morning, winter or summer, frost or snow; and at the same
hour (five o’clock); people certainly don’t think of giving so much in
fine weather. Nobody ever mislested me, and I never mislested nobody.
If they gives me a penny, I thanks ’em; and if they gives me nothing, I
thanks ’em all the same.

“If I was to go into the House, I shouldn’t live three days. It’s not
that I eat much--a very little is enough for me; but it’s the air I
should miss: to be shut up like a thief, I couldn’t live long, I know.”

THE OLD WOMAN CROSSING-SWEEPER WHO HAD A PENSIONER.

This old dame is remarkable from the fact of being the chief support of
a poor deaf cripple, who is as much poorer than the crossing-sweeper as
she is poorer than Mrs. ----, in ---- street, who allows the sweeper
sixpence a-week. The crossing-sweeper is a rather stout old woman, with
a carneying tone, and constant curtsey. She complains, in common with
most of her class, of the present hard times, and reverts longingly to
the good old days when people were more liberal than they are now, and
had more to give. She says:--

“I was on my crossing before the police was made, for I am not able to
work, and only get helped by the people who knows me. Mr. ----, in the
square, gives me a shilling a-week; Mrs. ----, in ---- street, gives
me sixpence; (she has gone in the country now, but she has left it at
the oil-shop for me); that’s what I depinds upon, darlin’, to help pay
my rent, which is half-a-crown. My rent was three shillings, till the
landlord didn’t wish me to go, ’cause I was so punctual with my money.
I give a corner of my room to a poor cretur, who’s deaf as a beadle;
she works at the soldiers’ coats, and is a very good hand at it, and
would earn a good deal of money if she had constant work. She owed as
good as twelve shillings and sixpence for rent, poor thing, where
she was last, and the landlord took all her goods except her bed; she’s
got that, so I give her a corner of my room for charity’s sake. We must
look to one another: she’s as poor as a church mouse. I thought she
would be company for me, still a deaf person is but poor company to
one. She had that heavy sickness they call the cholera about five years
ago, and it fell in her side and in the side of her head too--that made
her deaf. Oh! she’s a poor object. She has been with me since the month
of February. I’ve lent her money out of my own pocket. I give her a
cup of tea or a slice of bread when I see she hasn’t got any. Then the
people up-stairs are kind to her, and give her a bite and a sup.

“My husband was a soldier; he fought at the battle of Waterloo.
His pension was ninepence a-day. All my family are dead, except my
grandson, what’s in New Orleans. I expect him back this very month that
now we have: he gave me four pounds before he went, to carry me over
the last winter.

“If the Almighty God pleases to send him back, he’ll be a great help to
me. He’s all I’ve got left. I never had but two children in all my life.

“I worked in noblemen’s houses before I was married to my husband, who
is dead; but he came to be poor, and I had to leave my houses where I
used to work.

“I took twopence-halfpenny yesterday, and threepence to-day; the day
before yesterday I didn’t take a penny. I never come out on Sunday; I
goes to Rosomon-street Chapel. Last Saturday I made one shilling and
sixpence; on Friday, sixpence. I dare say I make three shillings and
sixpence a-week, besides the one shilling and sixpence I gets allowed
me. I am forced to make a do of it somehow, but I’ve no more strength
left in me than this ould broom.”

THE CROSSING-SWEEPER WHO HAD BEEN A SERVANT-MAID.

She is to be found any day between eight in the morning and seven in
the evening, sweeping away in a convulsive, jerky sort of manner, close
to ---- square, near the Foundling. She may be known by her pinched-up
straw bonnet, with a broad, faded, almost colourless ribbon. She has
weak eyes, and wears over them a brownish shade. Her face is tied up,
because of a gathering which she has on her head. She wears a small,
old plaid cloak, a clean checked apron, and a tidy printed gown.

[Illustration: THE CROSSING-SWEEPER THAT HAS BEEN A MAID-SERVANT.

[_From a Photograph._]]

She is rather shy at first, but willing and obliging enough withal; and
she lives down Little ---- Yard, in Great ---- street. The “yard” that
is made like a mousetrap--small at the entrance, but amazingly large
inside, and dilapidated though extensive.

Here are stables and a couple of blind alleys, nameless, or bearing
the same name as the yard itself, and wherein are huddled more people
than one could count in a quarter of an hour, and more children
than one likes to remember,--dirty children, listlessly trailing an
old tin baking-dish, or a worn-out shoe, tied to a piece of string;
sullen children, who turn away in a fit of sleepy anger if spoken to;
screaming children, setting all the parents in the “yard” at defiance;
and quiet children, who are arranging banquets of dirt in the reeking
gutters.

The “yard” is devoted principally to costermongers.

The crossing-sweeper lives in the top-room of a two-storied house, in
the very depth of the blind alley at the end of the yard. She has not
even a room to herself, but pays one shilling a-week for the privilege
of sleeping with a woman who gets her living by selling tapes in the
streets.

“Ah!” says the sweeper, “poor woman, she _has_ a hard time of it; her
husband is in the hospital with a bad leg--in fact, he’s scarcely
ever out. If you could hear that woman cough, you’d never forget it.
She would have had to starve to-day if it hadn’t been for a person
who actually lent her a gown to pledge to raise her stock-money, poor
thing.”

The room in which these people live has a sloping roof, and a
small-paned window on each side. For furniture, there were two chairs
and a shaky, three-legged stool, a deal table, and a bed rolled up
against the wall--nothing else. In one corner of the room lay the last
lump remaining of the seven pounds of coals. In another corner there
were herbs in pans, and two water-bottles without their noses. The most
striking thing in that little room was some crockery, the woman had
managed to save from the wreck of her things; among this, curiously
enough, was a soup-tureen, with its lid not even cracked.

There _was_ a piece of looking-glass--a small three-cornered
piece--forming an almost equilateral triangle,--and the oldest, and
most rubbed and worn-out piece of a mirror that ever escaped the
dust-bin.

The fireplace was a very small one, and on the table were two or
three potatoes and about one-fifth of a red herring, which the poor
street-seller had saved out of her breakfast to serve for her supper.
“Take my solemn word for it, sir,” said the sweeper, “and I wouldn’t
deceive you, that is all she will get besides a cup of weak tea when
she comes home tired at night.”

The statement of this old sweeper is as follows:--

“My name is Mary ----. I live in ---- yard. I live with a person of the
name of ----, in the back attic; she gets her living by selling flowers
in pots in the street, but she is now doing badly. I pay her a shilling
a-week.

“My parents were Welsh. I was in service, or maid-of-all-work, till I
got married. My husband was a seafaring man when I married him. After
we were married, he got his living by selling memorandum-almanack
books, and the like, about the streets. He was driven to that because
he had no trade in his hand, and he was obliged to do something for
a living. He did not make much, and over-exertion, with want of
nourishment, brought on a paralytic stroke. He had the first fit about
two years before he had the second; the third fit, which was the last,
he had on the Monday, and died on the Wednesday week. I have two
children still living. One of them is married to a poor man, who gets
his living in the streets; but as far as lays in his power he makes a
good husband and father. My other daughter is living with a niece of
mine, for I can’t keep her, sir; she minds the children.

“My father was a journeyman shoemaker. He was killed; but I cannot
remember how--I was too young. I can’t recollect my mother. I was
brought up by an uncle and aunt till I was able to go to service. I
went out to service at five, to mind children under a nurse, and I was
in service till I got married. I had a great many situations; you see,
sir, I was forced to keep in place, because I had nowhere to go to, my
uncle and aunt not being able to keep me. I was never in noblemen’s
families, only trades-people’s. Service was very hard, sir, and so I
believe it continues.

“I am fifty-five years of age, and I have been on the crossing fourteen
years; but just now it is very poor work indeed. Well, if I wishes for
bad weather, I’m only like other people, I suppose. I have no regular
customers at all; the only one I had left has lost his senses, sir.
Mr. H----, he used to allow us sixpence a-week; but he went mad, and
we don’t get it now. By us, I mean the three crossing-sweepers in the
square where I work.

“Indeed, I like the winter-time, for the families is in. Though the
weather is more severe, yet you _do_ get a few more ha’pence. I take
more from the staid elderly people than from the young. At Christmas, I
think I took about eleven shillings, but certainly not more. The most
I ever made at that season was fourteen shillings. The worst about
Christmas is, that those who give much then generally hold their hand
for a week or two.

“A shilling a-day would be as much as I want, sir. I have stood in the
square all day for a ha’penny, and I have stood here for nothing. One
week with another, I make two shillings in the seven days, after paying
for my broom. I have taken threppence ha’penny to-day. Yesterday--let
me see--well, it was threppence ha’penny, too; Monday I don’t remember;
but Sunday I recollect--it was fippence ha’penny. Years ago I made a
great deal more--nearly three times as much.

“I come about eight o’clock in the morning, and go away about six or
seven; I am here every day. The boys used to come at one time with
their brooms, but they’re not allowed here now by the police.

“I should not think crossings worth purchasing, unless people made a
better living on them than I do.”

I gave the poor creature a small piece of silver for her trouble, and
asked her if that, with the threepence halfpenny, made a good day. She
answered heartily--

“I should like to see such another day to-morrow, sir.

“Yes, winter is very much better than summer, only for the trial of
standing in the frost and snow, but we certainly _do_ get more then.
The families won’t be in town for three months to come yet. Ah! this
neighbourhood is nothing to what it was. By God’s removal, and by their
own removal, the good families are all gone. The present families are
not so liberal nor so wealthy. It is not the richest people that give
the most. Tradespeople, and ’specially gentlefolks who have situations,
are better to me than the nobleman who rides in his carriage.

“I always go to Trinity Church, Gray’s-inn-road, about two doors from
the Welsh School--the Rev. Dr. Witherington preaches there. I always go
on Sunday afternoon and evening, for I can’t go in the morning; I can’t
get away from my crossing in time. I never omit a day in coming here,
unless I’m ill, or the snow is too heavy, or the weather too bad, and
then I’m obligated to resign.

“I have no friends, sir, only my children; my uncle and aunt have been
dead a long time. I go to see my children on Sunday, or in the evening,
when I leave here.

“After I leave I have a cup of tea, and after that I go to bed; very
frequently I’m in bed at nine o’clock. I have my cup of tea if I can
anyway get it; but I’m forced to go without _that_ sometimes.

“When my sight was better, I used to be very partial to reading; but
I can’t see the print, sir, now. I used to read the Bible, and the
newspaper. Story-books I have read, too, but not many novels. Yes,
_Robinson Crusoe_ I know, but not the _Pilgrim’s Progress_. I’ve heard
of it; they tell me it is a very interesting book to read, but I never
had it. We never have any ladies or Scripture-readers come to our
lodgings; you see, we’re so out, they might come a dozen times and not
find us at home.

“I wear out three brooms in a-week; but in the summer one will
last a fortnight. I give threepence ha’penny for them; there are
twopenny-ha’penny brooms, but they are not so good, they are liable
to have their handles come out. It is very fatiguing standing so many
hours; my legs aches with pain, and swells. I was once in Middlesex
Hospital for sixteen weeks with my legs. My eyes have been weak from a
child. I have got a gathering in my head from catching cold standing on
the crossing. I had the fever this time twelvemonth. I laid a fortnight
and four days at home, and seven weeks in the hospital. I took the
diarrhœa after that, and was six weeks under the doctor’s hands. I
used to do odd jobs, but my health won’t permit me now. I used to make
two or three shillings a-week by ’em, and get scraps and things. But I
get no broken victuals now.

“I never get anything from servants; they don’t get more than they know
what to do with.

“I don’t get a drop of beer once in a month.

“I don’t know but what this being out may be the best thing, after all;
for if I was at home all my time, it would not agree with me.”

STATEMENT OF “OLD JOHN,” THE WATERMAN AT THE FARRINGDON-STREET
CAB-STAND, CONCERNING THE OLD BLACK CROSSING-SWEEPER WHO LEFT £800 TO
MISS WAITHMAN.

“Yes, sir, I knew him for many year, though I never spoke to him in all
my life. He was a stoutish, thickset man, about my build, and used to
walk with his broom up and down--so.”

Here “Old John” imitated the halt and stoop of an old man.

“He used to touch his hat continually,” he went on. “‘Please remember
the poor black man,’ was his cry, never anything else. Oh yes, he
made a great deal of money. People gave more then than they do now.
Where they give one sixpence now, they _used_ to give ten. It’s just
the same by our calling. Lived humbly? Yes, I think he did; at all
events, he seemed to do so when he was on his crossing. He got plenty
of odds-and-ends from the corner _there_--Alderman Waithman’s, I mean;
he was a very sober, quiet sort of man. No, sir, nothing peculiar in
his dress. Some blacks are peculiar in their dress; but he would wear
anything he could get give him. They used to call him Romeo, I think.
Cur’ous name, sir; but the best man I ever knew was called Romeo, and
he was a black.

“The crossing-sweeper had his regular customers; he knew their times,
and was there to the moment. Oh yes, he was always. Hail, rain, or
snow, he never missed. I don’t know how long he had the crossing.
I remember him ever since I was a postboy in Doctors’ Commons; I
knew him when I lived in Holborn, and I haven’t been away from this
neighbourhood since 1809.

“No, sir, there’s no doubt about his leaving the money to Miss
Waithman. Everybody round about here knows it; just ask them, sir. Miss
Waithman (an old maid she were, sir) used to be very kind to him. He
used to sweep from Alderman Waithman’s (it’s the _Sunday Times_ now)
across to the opposite side of the way.

“When he died, an old man, as had been a soldier, took possession
of the crossing. How did he get it? Why, I say, he _took it_. First
come, first sarved, sir; that’s their way. They never sell crossings.
Sometimes (for a lark) they shift, and then one stands treat--a gallon
of beer, or something of that sort. The perlice interfered with the
soldier--you know the sweepers is all forced to go if the perlice
interfere; now with us, sir, we are licensed, and they can’t make us
move on. They interfered, I say, with the old soldier, because he
used to get so drunk. Why, at a public-house close at hand, he would
spent seven, eight, and ten shillings on a night, three or four days
together. He used to gather so many blackguards round the crossing,
they were forced to move him at last. A young man has got it now; he
has had it three year. He is not always here, sometimes away for a week
at a stretch; but, you see, he knows the best times to come, and then
he is _sure_ to be here. The little boys come with their brooms now and
then, but the perlice always drive them away.”

3. THE ABLE-BODIED IRISH CROSSING-SWEEPER.

THE OLD IRISH CROSSING-SWEEPER.

This man, a native of “County Corruk,” has been in England only two
years and a half. He wears a close-fitting black cloth cap over a shock
of reddish hair; round his neck he has a coloured cotton kerchief, of
the sort advertised as “Imitation Silk.” His black coat is much torn,
and his broom is at present remarkably stumpy. He waits quietly at the
post opposite St. ----’s Church, to receive whatever is offered him.
He is unassuming enough in his manner, and, as will be seen, not even
bearing any malice against his two enemies, “The Swatestuff Man” and
“The Switzer.” He says:--

[Illustration: THE IRISH CROSSING-SWEEPER.

[_From a Photograph._]]

“I’ve been at this crossin’ near upon two year. Whin I first come over
to England (about two years and a half ago), I wint a haymakin’, but,
you see, I couldn’t get any work; and afther thrampin’ about a good
bit, why my eyesight gettin’ very wake, and I not knowin’ what to do, I
took this crossin’.

“How did I get it?--Will, sir, I wint walkin’ about and saw it, and
nobody on it. So one mornin’ I brought a broom wid me and stood here.
Yes, sir, I _was_ intherfered wid. The man with one arm--a Switzer they
calls him--he had had the crossin’ on Sundays for a long while gone,
and he didn’t like my bein’ here at all, at all. ‘B----y Irish’ he used
to call me, and other scandalizin’ names; and he and the swatestuff man
opposite, who was a friend of his, tried everythin’ they could to git
me off the crossin’. But sure I niver harrumed them at all, at all.

“Yis, sir, I have my rigular custhomers: there’s Mr. ----, he’s gone
to Sydenham; he’s very kind, sir. He gives me a shilling a-month. He
left worrud with the sarvint while he’s away to give me a shilling on
the first day in every month. He gave me a letter to the Eye Hospital,
in Goulden Square, because of the wakeness of my eyesight; but they’ll
niver cure it at all, at all, sir, for wake eyes runs in my family. My
sister, sir, has wake eyes; she is working at Croydon.

“Oh no, indeed, and it isn’t the gintlefolks that thry to get me off
the crossin’; they’d rather shupport me, sir. But the poor payple it is
that don’t like me.

“Eighteenpince I’ve made in a day, and more: niver more than two
shillings, and sometimes not sixpence. Will, sir, I am not like the
others; I don’t run afther the ladies and gintlemen--I don’t persevere.
Yestherday I took sixpence, by chance, for takin’ some luggage for a
lady. The day before yestherday I took three ha’pence; but I think I
got somethin’ else for a bit of worruk thin.

“Yes, winther is better than summer. I don’t know which people is the
most liberal. Sure, sir, I don’t think there’s much difference. Oh yes,
sir, young men are very liberal sometimes, and so are young ladies.
Perhaps old ladies or old gintlemen give the most at a time,--sometimes
sixpence,--perhaps more; but thin, sir, you don’t git anything else for
a long time.

“The boy-sweepers annoy me very much, indeed; they use such
scandalizin’ worruds to me, and throw dirrut, they do. They know whin
the police is out of the way, so I git no purtiction.

“Sure, sir, and I think it right that ivery person should attind the
worruship to which he belongs. I am a Catholic, sir, and attind mass
at St. Pathrick’s, near St. Giles’s, ivery Sunday, and I thry to be at
confission wonst a month.

“Whin first I took to the crossin’, I was rather irrigular; but that
was because of the Switzer man--that’s the man with the one arm; he
used to say he would lock me up, and iverything. But I have been
rigular since.

“I come in the morruning just before eight, in time to catch the
gintlefolks going into prayers; and I leave at half-past seven to eight
at night. I wait so late because I have to bring a gintleman wather for
his flowers, and that I do the last thing.

“I live, sir, in ---- lane, behind St. Giles’s Church, in the
first-flure front, sir; and I pay one-and-threepence a-week. There
are three bids in the room. In one bid, a man, his wife, his mother,
and their little girl--Julia, they call her--sleep; in the other bid,
there’s a man and his wife and child. Yes, I am single, and have the
third bid to myself. I come from County Corruk; the others in the room
are all Irish, and come from County Corruk too. They sill fruit in the
sthreet; in the winther they sill onions, and sometimes oranges.

“There a Scotch gintleman as brings me my breakfast every morning;
indeed, yes, and he brings it himself, he does. He has gone to
Scotland now, but he will be back in a week. He brings me some bread
and mate, and a pinny for a half pint of beer, sir. He has done it
almost all the time I have been here.

“The Switzer man, sir, took out boards for the _Polytickner_, or some
place like that. He got fifteen shillings a-week, and used to come here
on Sundays. Yes, sir, _I_ come here on Sundays; but it is not better
than other days. Some people says to me, they would rather I went to
church; but I tells ’em I do; and sure, sir, afther mass, there’s no
harrum in a little sweepin’ between whiles.

“No, sir, there’s not a crossin’-sweeper in Ould Ireland. Well, sir, I
niver was in Dublin; but I’ve been in Corruk, sir, and they don’t have
any crossin’ sweepers there.

“Whin I git home of a night, sir, I am very tired; but I always offer
up my devotions before sleepin’. Ah, sir, I should niver have swipt
crossin’s if a friend of mine hadn’t died; he was collector of tolls in
Clarnykilts, and I used to be with him. He lost his situation, and so I
came to England.

“The Switzer man, I think he used to sweep at eight o’clock,
just as the people were goin’ to prayers. Oh, sir, he was always
black-geyardin’ me. ‘Go back to your own counthry,’ says he--a furriner
himsilf, too.

“Will, yes sir, I do wish for bad weather; a good wit day, and a dry
day afther, is the best.

“Sure and they can’t turn me off my crossin’ only for my bad conduct,
and I thry to be quiet and take no notice.

“Yis, sir, I have always been a church-goer, and I am seventy-five. I
used to have some good rigular customers, but somehow I haven’t seen
anythin’ of them for this last twelvemonth. Ah! it’s in the betther
neighbourhoods that people give rigularly. I niver get any broken
victuals. Three-and-sixpence is the outside of my earnings, taking one
week with the other.

“What is the laste I ever took? Will, sir, for three days I haven’t
taken a farthin’. The worust week I iver had was thirteen or fourteen
pence altogether; the best week I iver had was the winter before
last--that harrud winter, sir, I remember takin’ seven shillings thin;
but the man at Portman-square makes the most.

“Well, sir, I belave there’s some of every nation in the world as
sweeps crossin’s in London.”

THE FEMALE IRISH CROSSING-SWEEPER.

In a street not far from Gordon-square and the New-road, I found this
poor old woman resting from her daily labour. She was sitting on the
stone ledge of the iron railings at the corner of the street, huddled
up in the way seemingly natural to old Irishwomen, her broom hidden
as much as possible under her petticoats. Her shawl was as tidy as
possible for its age. She was sixty-seven years, and had buried two
husbands and five children, fractured her ribs, and injured her groin,
and had nothing left to comfort her but her crossing, her ha’porth of
snuff, and her “drop of biled wather,” by which name she indicated her
“tay.”

She was very civil and intelligent, and answered my inquiries very
readily, and with rather less circumlocution than the Irish generally
display. She seemed much hurt at the closing of the Old St. Pancras
churchyard. “They buried my child where they’ll never bury me, sir,”
she cried.

She told the story of her accident with many involuntary movements
of her hand towards the injured part, and took a sparing pinch of
snuff from a little black snuff-box, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, for
which she said she had given a penny. She proceeded thus:--“I’m an
Irishwoman, sir, and it’s from Kinsale I come, twelve miles beyond
Corruk, to the left-hand side, a seaport town, and a great place for
fish. It’s fifty years the sixteenth of last June since I came in
St. Giles’s parish, and there my ildest child wint did. Buried she
is in Ould St. Pancras churchyarrud, where they’ll never bury me,
sir, for they’ve done away with burying in churchyarruds. That girl
was forty-one year of age the seventeenth of last February, born in
Stratford, below Bow, in Essex. Ah! I was comfortable there; I lived
there three year and abouts. I was in sarvice at Mr. ----’s, a Frinch
gintleman he was, and kept a school, where they taught Frinch and
English both; but I dare say they are all gone did years ago. He was a
very ould gintleman, and so was his lady; she was a North-of-England
lady, but very stout, and had no children but a son and daughter. I was
quite young when my aunt brought me over. My uncle was three year here
before my aunt, and he died at Whitechapel. I was bechuxt sixteen and
seventeen when I come over, and I reckon meself at sixty-seven come
next Christmas, as well as I can guess. I never had a mother, sir; she
died when I was only six months old. My father, sir, was maltster to
Mr. Walker the distiller, in Corruk. Ah! indeed, and my father was well
to do wonst. Early or late, wit or dry, he had a guinea a-week, but he
worruked day and night; he was to attind to the corun, and he would
have four min, or five or six, undther him, according as busy they
might be. My father has been did four-and-twinty year, and I wouldn’t
know a crature if I wint home. Father come over, sir, and wanted me to
go back very bad, but I wouldn’t. I was married thin, and had buried
some of my childer in St. Pancras; and for what should I lave England?

“Oh! sir, I buried three in eight months,--two sons and their father.
My husband was two year and tin months keeping his bed; he has been
did fifteen years to the eighth of last March; but I’ve been married
again.

“Siven childer I’ve had, and ounly two alive, and they’ve got enough
to do to manage for thimsilves. The boy, he follers the market, and my
daughter, she is along with her husband; sure he sills in the streets,
sir. I see very little of her,--she lives over in the Borough.

“I think I’ll be afther going down to Kent, beyant Maidstone, a
hop-picking, if I can git as much as to take me down the road.

“My daughter’s husband and me don’t agree, so I’m bitter not to see
them.

“Ivery day, sir--ivery day in the week I am here. This morunning I was
here at eight--that was earlier than usual, but I came out because I
had not broke my fast with anything but a drop of wather, and that I
had two tumblers of it from the house at the corrunner. I intind to go
home and take two hirrings, and have a drop of biled wather--tay, I
mane, sir.

“I come here at about half-past nine to half-past ten, but I’m gitting
a very bad leg. I goes home about five or six.

“I have taken two ha’pennies this morning; thruppence I took yisterday;
the day before I took, I think, fourpence ha’penny; that was my taking
on Monday; on Sunday I mustered a shilling; on Saturday--I declare,
sir, I forgit--fourpence or thruppence, I suppose, but my frinds is
out of town very much. They gives me a penny rigular every Sunday, or
a ha’penny, and some tuppence. Of a Sunday in the good time I may take
eighteenpence or sixteenpence.

“Oh, yes, of Christmas it’s better, it is--four or five shillings on a
Christmas-day.

“On the Monday fortnight, before last Christmas twelvemonth, I had two
ribs broke, and one fractured, and my grine (groin) bone injured. Oh!
the pains that I feel even now, sir. I lived then in Phillip’s-gardens,
up there in the New-road. The policeman took me to the hospital. It
was eighteen days I niver got off my bid. I came out in the morunning
of the Christmas-eve. I hild on by the railings as I wint along, and I
thought I niver should git home. How I was knocked down was by a cart;
I had my eye bad thin, the lift one, and had a cloth over it. I was
just comin’ out of the archway of the courrut (close by the beer-shop)
away from Mr. ----’s house, when crossing to the green-grocer’s to git
two pound of praties for my supper, I didn’t see the cart comin’. I
was knocked down by the shaft. They called, and they called, and he
wouldn’t stop, and it wint over me, it did. It was loaded with cloth;
I don’t know if it wasn’t a Shoolbred’s cart, but the boy said to
the hospital-doctor and to the policeman it was heavily loaded. The
boy gave me a shilling, and that was all the money I received. For a
twelvemonth I couldn’t hardly walk.

“On that Christmas-day I took four-and-tinpence, but I owed it all for
rint and things; and I’m sure it’s a good man that let me run it the
score.

“Is it a shillin’ I iver git? Well, thin, sir, there’s one gintleman,
but he’s out of town--Sir George Hewitt--niver passes without givin’ me
a shillin’.

“I have taken one-and-ninepence on a Sunday, and I’ve taken two
shillin’s. Upon my sowl, I’ve often gone home with three ha’pence and
tuppence. For this month past, put ivery day together, I haven’t taken
three shilling a-week.

“I wear two brooms out in a week in bad wither, and thin p’rhaps I take
four to five shillin’, Sunday included; but for the three year since
here I’ve been on this crossin’, I niver took tin shillin’, sir, niver.

“Yes, there was a man here before me: he had bad eyes, and he was
obligated to lave and go into the worrukhouse; he lost the sight of
one of his eyes when he came back again. I knew him sweepin’ here a
long time. When he come back, I said, ‘Father,’ says I, ‘I wint on
your crossin’.’ ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘you’ve got a bad crossin’, poor woman;
I wouldn’t go on it again, I wouldn’t;’ and I niver seen him since. I
don’t know whether he is living or not.

“A wit day makes fourpence or fippence difference sometimes.

“Indeed, I have heard of crossin’-sweepers makin’ so much and so much.
I hear people talkin’ about it, but, for my parrut, I wouldn’t give
heed to what they say. In Oxford-street, towards the Parruks, there was
a man, years ago, they say, by all accounts left a dale of money.

“I am niver annoyed by boys. I don’t spake to none of them. I was in
sarvice till I got married, thin I used to sill fruit through Kentish
Town, Highgate, and Hampstead; but I niver sould in the streets,
sir, and had my rigular customers like any greengrocer. I had a good
connixion, I had; but, by gitting old and feeble, and sick, and not
being able to go about, I was forrussed to give it up, I was. I
couldn’t carry twelve pound upon my hid--no, not if I was to get a
sov’rin a-day for it, now.

“I niver lave the crossin’. I haven’t got a frind; nor a day’s pleasure
I niver take.

“Oh, yes, sir, I must have a pinch--this is my snuff-box. I take a
ha’porth a-day, and that’s the only comforrut I’ve got--that and a cup
of tay; for I can’t dthrink cocoa or coffee-tay.

“My feeding is a bit of brid and butther. I haven’t bought a bit of
mate these three months. I used to git two penn’orth of bones and mate
at Mrs. Baker’s, down there; but mate is so dear, that they don’t have
’em now, and it’s ashamed I am of botherin’ thim so often. I frequintly
have a hirrin’. Oh dear! no sir. Wather is my dthrink. I can’t afforrud
no beer. Sometimes I have a penn’orth of gin and could water, and I
find it do me a worruld of good. Sometimes I git enough to eat, but
lately, indeed, I can’t git that. I declare I don’t know which people
give the most; the gintlemen give me more in wit wither, for then the
ladies, you see, can’t let their dresses out of their hands.

“I am a Catholic, sir. I go to St. Pathrick’s sometimes, or I go to
Gordon-street Churruch. I don’t care which I go to--it’s all the same
to me; but I haven’t been to churruch for months. I’ve nothing to
charge mysilf wid; and, indeed, I haven’t been to confission for some
year.

“Tradespeople are very kind, indeed they are.

“Yes, I think I’ll go to Kint a hop-pickin’; and as for my crossin’,
I lave it, sir, just as it is. I go five miles beyant Maidstone. I
worruked fifteen years at Mr. ----; he was a pole-puller and binsman in
the hop-ground.

“I’ve not been down there since the year before last. I was too poorly
after that accident. We make about eighteenpence, two shillin’s, or one
shillin’, ’cording as the hops is good. No lodging nor fire to pay; and
we git plinty of good milk chape there. I manage thin to save a little
money to hilp us in the winther.

“I live in ---- street, Siven Dials; but I’m going to lave my son--we
can’t agree. We live in the two-pair back. I pay nothing a-week, only
bring home ivery ha’penny to hilp thim. Sometimes I spind a pinny or
tuppence out on mysilf.

“My son is doin’ very badly. He sills fruit in the sthreets; but he’s
niver been used to it before; and he has pains in his limbs with so
much walking. He has no connixion, and with the sthrawbirries now he’s
forrused to walk about of a night as will as a day, for they won’t keep
till the morrunning; they all go mouldy and bad. My son has been used
to the bricklaying, sir: he can lit in a stove or a copper, or do a bit
of plasther or lath, or the like. His wife is a very just, clane, sober
woman, and he has got three good childer; there is Catherine, who is
named afther me, she is nearly five; Illen, two years and six months,
named after her mother; and Margaret, the baby, six months ould--and
she is called afther my daughter, who is did.”

4. THE OCCASIONAL CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

THE SUNDAY CROSSING-SWEEPER.

“I’m a Sunday crossing-sweeper,” said an oyster-stall keeper, in
answer to my inquiries. “I mean by that, I only sweep a crossing on a
Sunday. I pitch in the Lorrimore-road, Newington, with a few oysters on
week-days, and I does jobs for the people about there, sich as cleaning
a few knives and forks, or shoes and boots, and windows. I’ve been in
the habit of sweeping a crossing about four or five years.

“I never knowed my father, he died when I was a baby. He was a
’terpreter, and spoke seven different languages. My father used to go
with Bonaparte’s army, and used to ’terpret for him. He died in the
South of France. I had a brother, but he died quite a child, and my
mother supported me and a sister by being cook in a gentleman’s family:
we was put out to nurse. My mother couldn’t afford to put me to school,
and so I can’t read nor write. I’m forty-one years old.

“The fust work I ever did was being boy at a pork-butcher’s. I used to
take out the meat wot was ordered. At last my master got broke up, and
I was discharged from my place, and I took to sellin’ a few sprats. I
had no thoughts of taking to a crossing then. I was ten year old. I
remember I give two shillings for a ‘shallow;’ that’s a flat basket
with two handles; they put ’em a top of ‘well-baskets,’ them as can
carry a good load. A well-basket’s almost like a coffin; it’s a long
un like a shallow, on’y it’s a good deal deeper--about as deep as a
washin’ tub. I done very fair with my sprats till they got dear and
come up very small, so then I was obliged to get a few plaice, and
then I got a few baked ’taters and sold them. I hadn’t money enough
to buy a tin--I could a got one for eight shillings--so I put ’em in
a cross-handle basket, and carried ’em round the streets, and into
public-houses, and cried ‘Baked taters, all hot!’ I used only to do
this of a night, and it brought me about four or five shillings a-week.
I used to fill up the day by going round to gentlemen’s houses where
I was known, to run for errands and clean knives and boots, and that
brought me sich a thing as four shillings a-week more altogether.

“I never had no idea then of sweeping a crossing of a Sunday; but at
last I was obliged to push to it. I kept on like this for many years,
and at last a gentleman named Mr. Jackson promised to buy me a tin, but
he died. My mother went blind through a blight; that was the cause of
my fust going out to work, and so I had to keep her; but I didn’t mind
that: I thought it was my duty so to do.

“About ten years ago I got married; my wife used to go out washing
and ironing. I thought two of us would get on better than one, and
she didn’t mind helpin’ me to keep my mother, for I was determined my
mother shouldn’t go into the workhouse so long as I could help it.

“A year or two after I got married, I found I must do something more to
help to keep home, and then I fust thought of sweepin’ a crossing on
Sundays; so I bought a heath broom for twopence-ha’penny, and I pitched
agin’ the Canterbury Arms, Kennington; it was between a baker’s shop
and a public-house and butcher’s; they told me they’d all give me
something if I’d sweep the crossing reg’lar.

“The best places is in front of chapels and churches, ’cause you can
take more money in front of a church or a chapel than wot you can in a
private road, ’cos they look at it more, and a good many thinks when
you sweeps in front of a public-house that you go and spend your money
inside in waste.

“The first Sunday I went at it, I took eighteenpence. I began at
nine o’clock in the morning and stopped till four in the afternoon.
The publican give fourpence, and the baker sixpence, and the butcher
threepence, so that altogether I got above a half-crown. I stopped at
this crossing a year, and I always knocked up about two shillings or a
half-crown on the Sunday. I very seldom got anythink from the ladies;
it was most all give by the gentlemen. Little children used sometimes
to give me ha’pence, but it was when their father give it to ’em; the
little children like to do that sort of thing.

“The way I come to leave this crossing was this here: the road was
being repaired, and they shot down a lot of stones, so then I couldn’t
sweep no crossing. I looked out for another place, and I went opposite
the Duke of Sutherland public-house in the Lorrimore-road. I swept
there one Sunday, and I got about one-and-sixpence. While I was
sweeping this crossing, a gentleman comes up to me, and he axes me if
I ever goes to chapel or church; and I tells him, ‘Yes;’ I goes to
church, wot I’d been brought up to; and then he says, ‘You let me see
you at St. Michael’s Church, Brixton, and I’ll ’courage you, and you’ll
do better if you come up and sweep in front there of a Sunday instead
of where you are; you’ll be sure to get more money, and get better
’couraged. It don’t matter what you do,’ he says, ‘as long as it brings
you in a honest crust; anythink’s better than thieving.’ And then the
gent gives me sixpence and goes away.

“As soon as he’d gone I started off to his church, and got there just
after the people was all in. I left my broom in the churchyard. When I
got inside the church, I could see him a-sitten jest agin the communion
table, so I walks to the free seats and sets down right close again
the communion table myself, for his pew was on my right, and he saw
me directly and looked and smiled at me. As he was coming out of the
church he says, says he, ‘As long as I live, if you comes here on a
Sunday reg’lar I shall always ’courage you.’

“The next Sunday I went up to the church and swept the crossing, and he
see me there, but he didn’t give me nothink till the church was over,
and then he gave me a shilling, and the other people give me about
one-and-sixpence; so I got about two-and-sixpence altogether, and I
thought that was a good beginning.

“The next Sunday the gen’elman was ill, but he didn’t forget me. He
sent me sixpence by his servant, and I got from the other people about
two shillings more. I never see that gentleman after, for he died on
the Saturday. His wife sent for me on the Sunday; she was ill a-bed,
and I see one of the daughters, and she gave me sixpence, and said I
was to be there on Monday morning. I went on the Monday, and the lady
was much worse, and I see the daughter again. She gave me a couple of
shirts, and told me to come on the Friday, and when I went on that
day I found the old lady was dead. The daughter gave me a coat, and
trousers, and waistcoat.

“After the daughters had buried the father and mother they moved. I
kept on sweeping at the church, till at last things got so bad that I
come away, for nobody give me nothink. The houses about there was so
damp that people wouldn’t live in ’em.

“So then I come up into Lorrimore-road, and there I’ve been ever since.
I don’t get on wonderful well there. Sometimes I don’t get above
sixpence all day, but it’s mostly a shilling or so. The most I’ve took
is about one-and-sixpence. The reason why I stop there is, because I’m
known there, you see. I stands there all the week selling highsters,
and the people about there give me a good many jobs. Besides, the road
is rather bad there, and they like to have a clean crossing of a Sunday.

“I don’t get any more money in the winter (though it’s muddier) than
I do in the summer; the reason is, ’cause there isn’t so many people
stirring about in the winter as there is in the summer.

“One broom will carry me over three Sundays, and I gives
twopence-ha’penny a-piece for ’em. Sometimes the people bring me
out at my crossing--’specially in cold weather--a mug of hot tea
and some bread and butter, or a bit of meat. I don’t know any other
crossing-sweeper; I never ’sociates with nobody. I always keeps my own
counsel, and likes my own company the best.

“My wife’s been dead five months, and my mother six months; but I’ve
got a little boy seven year old; he stops at school all day till I go
home at night, and then I fetches him home. I mean to do something
better with him than give him a broom: a good many people would set him
on a crossing; but I mean to keep him at school. I want to see him read
and write well, because he’ll suit for a place then.

“There’s some art in sweeping a crossing even. That is, you mustn’t
sweep too hard, ’cos if you do, you wears a hole right in the road, and
then the water hangs in it. It’s the same as sweeping a path; if you
sweeps too hard you wears up the stones.

“To do it properly, you must put the end of the broom-handle in the
palm of your right hand, and lay hold of it with your left, about
halfway down; then you takes half your crossing, and sweeps on one
side till you gets over the road; then you turns round and comes back
doing the other half. Some people holds the broom before ’em, and keeps
swaying it back’ards and for’ards to sweep the width of the crossing
all in one stroke, but that ain’t sich a good plan, ’cause you’re apt
to splash people that’s coming by; and besides, it wears the road in
holes and wears out the broom so quick. I always use my broom steady. I
never splash nobody.

“I never tried myself, but I’ve seen some crossin’-sweepers as could
do all manner of things in mud, sich as diamonds, and stars, and the
moon, and letters of the alphabet; and once in Oxford-street I see our
Saviour on his cross in mud, and it was done well, too. The figure
wasn’t done with the broom, it was done with a pointed piece of stick;
it was a boy as I see doin’ it, about fifteen. He didn’t seem to take
much money while I was a-looking at him.

“I don’t think I should a took to crossin’ sweeping if I hadn’t got
married; but when I’d got a couple of children (for I’ve had a girl
die; if she’d lived she’d a been eight year old now,) I found I must do
a somethin’, and so I took to the broom.”

_B. The Afflicted Crossing-Sweepers._

THE WOODEN-LEGGED SWEEPER.

This man lives up a little court running out of a wide, second-rate
street. It is a small court, consisting of some half-dozen houses, all
of them what are called by courtesy “private.”

I inquired at No. 3 for John ----; “The first-floor back, if you
please, sir;” and to the first-floor back I went.

Here I was answered by a good-looking and intelligent young woman, with
a baby, who said her husband had not yet come home, but would I walk
in and wait? I did so; and found myself in a very small, close room,
with a little furniture, which the man called “his few sticks,” and
presently discovered another child--a little girl. The girl was very
shy in her manner, being only two years and two months old, and as her
mother said, very ailing from the difficulty of cutting her teeth,
though the true cause seemed to be want of proper nourishment and
fresh air. The baby was a boy--a fine, cheerful, good-tempered little
fellow, but rather pale, and with an unnaturally large forehead. The
mantelpiece of the room was filled with little ornaments of various
sorts, such as bead-baskets, and over them hung a series of black
profiles--not portraits of either the crossing-sweeper or any of his
family, but an odd lot of heads, which had lost their owners many a
year, and served, in company with a little red, green, and yellow
scripture-piece, to keep the wall from looking bare. Over the door
(inside the room) was nailed a horse-shoe, which, the wife told me,
had been put there by her husband, for luck.

A bed, two deal tables, a couple of boxes, and three chairs, formed
the entire furniture of the room, and nearly filled it. On the
window-frame was hung a small shaving-glass; and on the two boxes
stood a wicker-work apology for a perambulator, in which I learnt the
poor crippled man took out his only daughter at half-past four in the
morning.

“If some people was to see that, sir,” said the sweeper, when he
entered and saw me looking at it, “they would, and in fact they _do_
say, ‘Why, you can’t be in want.’ Ah! little they know how we starved
and pinched ourselves before we could get it.”

There was a fire in the room, notwithstanding the day was very hot;
but the window was wide open, and the place tolerably ventilated,
though oppressive. I have been in many poor people’s “places,” but
never remember one so poor in its appointments and yet so _free_ from
effluvia.

The crossing-sweeper himself was a very civil sort of man, and in
answer to my inquiries said:--

“I know that I do as I ought to, and so I don’t feel hurt at standing
at my crossing. I have been there four years. I found the place vacant.
My wife, though she looks very well, will never be able to do any hard
work; so we sold our mangle, and I took to the crossing: but we’re not
in debt, and nobody can’t say nothing to us. I like to go along the
streets free of such remarks as is made by people to whom you owes
money. I had a mangle in ---- Yard, but through my wife’s weakness I
was forced to part with it. I was on the crossing a short time before
that, for I knew that if I parted with my mangle and things before I
knew whether I could get a living at the crossing I couldn’t get my
mangle back again.

“We sold the mangle only for a sovereign, and we gave two-pound-ten
for it; we sold it to the same man that we bought it of. About six
months ago I managed for to screw and save enough to buy that little
wicker chaise, for I can’t carry the children because of my one leg,
and of course the mother can’t carry them both out together. There was
a man had the crossing I’ve got; he died three or four years before I
took it; but he didn’t depend on the crossing--he did things for the
tradespeople about, such as carpet-beating, messages, and so on.

“When I first took the crossing I did very well. It happened to be a
very nasty, dirty season, and I took a good deal of money. Sweepers are
not always civil, sir.

“I wish I had gone to one of the squares, though. But I think after
---- street is paved with stone I shall do better. I am certain I never
taste a bit of meat from one week’s end to the other. The best day I
ever made was five-and-sixpence or six shillings; it was the winter
before last. If you remember, the snow laid very thick on the ground,
and the sudden thaw made walking so uncomfortable, that I did very
well. I have taken as little as sixpence, fourpence, and even twopence.
Last Thursday I took two ha’pence all day. Take one week with the
other, seven or eight shillings is the very outside.

“I don’t know how it is, but some people who used to give me a penny,
don’t now. The boys who come in wet weather earn a great deal more
than I do. I once lost a good chance, sir, at the corner of the street
leading to Cavendish-square. There’s a bank, and they pay a man seven
shillings a-week to sweep the crossing: a butcher in Oxford Market
spoke for me; but when I went up, it unfortunately turned out that I
was not fit, from the loss of my leg. The last man they had there they
were obliged to turn away--he was so given to drink.

“I think there are some rich crossing-sweepers in the city, about
the Exchange; but you won’t find them now during this dry weather,
except in by-places. In wet weather, there are two or three boys who
sweep near my crossing, and take all my earnings away. There’s a great
able-bodied man besides--a fellow strong enough to follow the plough.
I said to the policeman, ‘Now, ain’t this a shame?’ and the policeman
said, ‘Well, _he_ must get his living as well as you.’ I’m always
civil to the police, and they’re always civil to me--in fact, I think
sometimes I’m too civil--I’m not rough enough with people.

“You soon tell whether to have any hopes of people coming across. I can
tell a gentleman directly I see him.

“Where I stand, sir, I could get people in trouble everlasting; there’s
all sorts of thieving going on. I saw the other day two or three
respectable persons take a purse out of an old lady’s pocket before
the baker’s shop at the corner; but I can’t say a word, or they would
come and throw me into the road. If a gentleman gives me sixpence, he
don’t give me any more for three weeks or a month; but I don’t think
I’ve more than three or four gentlemen as gives me that. Well, you can
scarcely tell the gentleman from the clerk, the clerks are such great
swells now.

“Lawyers themselves dress very plain; those great men who don’t come
every day, because they’ve clerks to do their business for them, they
give most. People hardly ever stop to speak unless it is to ask you
where places are--you might be occupied at that all day. I manage to
pay my rent out of what I take on Sunday, but not lately--this weather
religious people go pleasuring.

“No, I don’t go now--the fact is, I’d like to go to church, if I could,
but when I come home I am tired; but I’ve got books here, and they do
as well, sir. I read a little and write a little.

“I lost my leg through a swelling--there was no chloroform then. I
was in the hospital three years and a half, and was about fifteen or
sixteen when I had it off. I always feel the sensation of the foot,
and more so at change of weather. I feel my toes moving about, and
everything; sometimes, it’s just as if the calf of my leg was itching.
I _feel_ the rain coming; when I see a cloud coming my leg shoots, and
I know we shall have rain.

“My mother was a laundress--my father has been dead nineteen years my
last birthday. My mother was subject to fits, so I was forced to stop
at home to take care of the business.

“I don’t want to get on better, but I always think, if sickness or
anything comes on----

“I am at my crossing at half-past eight; at half-past eleven I come
home to dinner. I go back at one or two till seven.

“Sometimes I mind horses and carts, but the boys get all that business.
One of these little customers got sixpence the other day for only
opening the door of a cab. I don’t know how it is they let these little
boys be about; if I was the police, I wouldn’t allow it.

“I think it’s a blessing, having children--(referring to his little
girl)--that child wants the gravy of meat, or an egg beaten up, but
she can’t get it. I take her out every morning round Euston-square and
those open places. I get out about half-past four. It is early, but if
it benefits her, that’s no odds.”

ONE-LEGGED SWEEPER AT CHANCERY-LANE.

“I don’t know what induced me to take that crossing, except it was that
no one was there, and the traffic was so good--fact is, the traffic is
too good, and people won’t stop as they cross over, they’re very glad
to get out of the way of the cabs and the omnibuses.

“Tradespeople never give me anything--not even a bit of bread. The
only thing I get is a few cuttings, such as crusts of sandwiches and
remains of cheese, from the public-house at the corner of the court.
The tradespeople are as distant to me now as they were when I came, but
if I should pitch up a tale I should soon get acquainted with them.

“We have lived in this lodging two years and a half, and we pay
one-and-ninepence a-week, as you may see from the rent-book, and that I
manage to earn on Sundays. We owe four weeks now, and, thank God, it’s
no more.

“I was born, sir, in ---- street, Berkeley-square, at Lord ----’s
house, when my mother was minding the house. I have been used to London
all my life, but not to this part; I have always been at the west-end,
which is what I call the best end.

“I did not like the idea of crossing-sweeping at first, till I reasoned
with myself, Why should I mind? I’m not doing any hurt to anybody. I
don’t care at all now--I know I’m doing what I ought to do.

“A man had better be killed out of the way than be disabled. It’s not
pleasant to know that my wife is suckling that great child, and, though
she is so weakly, she can’t get no meat.

[Illustration: THE ONE-LEGGED SWEEPER AT CHANCERY-LANE.

[_From a Photograph._]]

“I’ve been knocked down twice, sir--both times by cabs. The last time
it was a fortnight before I could get about comfortably again. The fool
of a fellow was coming along, not looking at his horse, but talking
to somebody on the cab-rank. The place was as free as this room, if
he had only been looking before him. Nobody hollered till I was down,
but plenty hollered then. Ah, I often notice such carelessness--it’s
really shameful. I don’t think those ‘shofuls’ (Hansoms) should be
allowed--the fact is, if the driver is not a tall man he can’t see his
horse’s head.

“A nasty place is end of ---- street: it narrows so suddenly. There’s
more confusion and more bother about it than any place in London. When
two cabs gets in at once, one one way and one the other, there’s sure
to be a row to know which was the first in.”

THE MOST SEVERELY-AFFLICTED OF ALL THE CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

Passing the dreary portico of the Queen’s Theatre, and turning to the
right down Tottenham Mews, we came upon a flight of steps leading up
to what is called “The Gallery,” where an old man, gasping from the
effects of a lung disease, and feebly polishing some old harness,
proclaimed himself the father of the sweeper I was in search of, and
ushered me into the room where he lay a-bed, having had a “very bad
night.”

The room itself was large and of a low pitch, stretching over some
stables; it was very old and creaky (the sweeper called, it “an old
wilderness”), and contained, in addition to two turn-up bedsteads, that
curious medley of articles which, in the course of years, an old and
poor couple always manage to gather up. There was a large lithograph
of a horse, dear to the remembrance of the old man from an indication
of a dog in the corner. “The very spit of the one I had for years;
it’s a real portrait, sir, for Mr. Hanbart, the printer, met me one
day and sketched him.” There was an etching of Hogarth’s in a black
frame; a stuffed bird in a wooden case, with a glass before it; a piece
of painted glass, hanging in a place of honour, but for which no name
could be remembered, excepting that it was “of the old-fashioned sort.”
There were the odd remnants, too, of old china ornaments, but very
little furniture; and, finally, a kitten.

The father, worn out and consumptive, had been groom to Lord
Combermere. “I was with him, sir, when he took Bonyparte’s house at
Malmasong. I could have had a pension then if I’d a liked, but I was
young and foolish, and had plenty of money, and we never know what we
may come to.”

The sweeper, although a middle-aged man, had all the appearance of
a boy--his raw-looking eyes, which he was always wiping with a piece
of linen rag, gave him a forbidding expression, which his shapeless,
short, bridgeless nose tended to increase. But his manners and habits
were as simple in their character as those of a child; and he spoke of
his father’s being angry with him for not getting up before, as if he
were a little boy talking of his nurse.

He walks, with great difficulty, by the help of a crutch; and the sight
of his weak eyes, his withered limb, and his broken shoulder (his old
helpless mother, and his gasping, almost inaudible father,) form a most
painful subject for compassion.

The crossing-sweeper gave me, with no little meekness and some slight
intelligence, the following statement:--

“I very seldom go out on a crossin’ o’ Sundays. I didn’t do much good
at it. I used to go to church of a Sunday--in fact, I do now when I’m
well enough.

“It’s fifteen year next January since I left Regent-street. I was there
three years, and then I went on Sundays occasionally. Sometimes I
used to get a shilling, but I have given it up now--it didn’t answer;
besides, a lady who was kind to me found me out, and said she wouldn’t
do any more for me if I went out on Sundays. She’s been dead these
three or four years now.

“When I was at Regent-street I might have made twelve shillings a-week,
or something thereabout.

“I am seven-and-thirty the 26th day of last month, and I have been lame
six-and-twenty years. My eyes have been bad ever since my birth. The
scrofulous disease it was that lamed me--it come with a swelling on the
knee, and the outside wound broke about the size of a crown piece, and
a piece of bone come from it; then it gathered in the inside and at the
top. I didn’t go into the hospital then, but I was an out-patient, for
the doctor said a close confined place wouldn’t do me no good. He said
that the seaside would, though; but my parents couldn’t afford to send
me, and that’s how it is. I _did_ go to Brighton and Margate nine years
after my leg was bad, but it was too late then.

“I have been in Middlesex Hospital, with a broken collar-bone, when I
was knocked down by a cab. I was in a fortnight there, and I was in
again when I hurt my leg. I was sweeping my crossin’ when the top came
off my crutch. I fell back’ards, and my leg doubled under me. They had
to carry me there.

“I went into the Middlesex Hospital for my eyes and leg. I was in a
month, but they wouldn’t keep me long, there’s no cure for me.

“My leg is very painful, ’specially at change of weather. Sometimes
I don’t get an hour’s sleep of a night--it was daylight this morning
before I closed my eyes.

“I went on the crossing first because my parents couldn’t keep me, not
being able to keep theirselves. I thought it was the best thing I could
do, but it’s like all other things, it’s got very bad now. I used to
manage to rub along at first--the streets have got shockin’ bad of late.

“To tell the truth, I was turned away from Regent-street by Mr. Cook,
the furrier, corner of Argyle Street. I’ll tell you as far as I was
told. He called me into his passage one night, and said I must look out
for another crossin’, for a lady, who was a very good customer of his,
refused to come while I was there; my heavy afflictions was such that
she didn’t like the look of me. I said, ‘Very well;’ but because I come
there next day and the day after that, he got the policeman to turn
me away. Certainly the policeman acted very kindly, but he said the
gentleman wanted me removed, and I must find another crossing.

“Then I went down Charlotte-street, opposite Percy Chapel, at the
corner of Windmill-street. After that I went to Wells-street, by
getting permission of the doctor at the corner. He thought that it
would be better for me than Charlotte-street, so he let me come.

“Ah! there ain’t so many crossing-sweepers as there was; I think
they’ve done away with a great many of them.

“When I first went to Wells-street, I did pretty well, because there
was a dress-maker’s at the corner, and I used to get a good deal from
the carriages that stopped before the door. I used to take five or six
shillings in a day then, and I don’t take so much in a week now. I tell
you what I made this week. I’ve made one-and-fourpence, but it’s been
so wet, and people are out of town; but, of course, it’s not always
alike--sometimes I get three-and-sixpence or four shillings. Some
people gives me a sixpence or a fourpenny-bit; I reckons that all in.

“I am dreadful tired when I comes home of a night. Thank God my other
leg’s all right! I wish the t’other was as strong, but it never will be
now.

“The police never try to turn me away; they’re very friendly, they’ll
pass the time of day with me, or that, from knowing me so long in
Oxford-street.

“My broom sometimes serves me a month; of course, they don’t last long
now it’s showery weather. I give twopence-halfpenny a piece for ’em, or
threepence.

“I don’t know who gives me the most; my eyes are so bad I can’t see. I
think, though, upon an average, the gentlemen give most.

“Often I hear the children, as they are going by, ask their mothers for
something to give to me; but they only say, ‘Come along--come along!’
It’s very rare that they lets the children have a ha’penny to give me.

“My mother is seventy the week before next Christmas. She can’t do much
now; she does though go out on Wednesdays or Saturdays, but that’s to
people she’s known for years who is attached to her. She does her work
there just as she likes.

“Sometimes she gets a little washing--sometimes not. This week she had
a little, and was forced to dry it indoors; but that makes ’em half
dirty again.

“My father’s breath is so bad that he can’t do anything except little
odd jobs for people down here; but they’ve got the knack now, a good
many on ’em, of doin’ their own.

“We have lived here fifteen years next September; it’s a long time to
live in such an old wilderness, but my old mother is a sort of woman
as don’t like movin’ about, and I don’t like it. Some people are
everlasting on the move.

“When I’m not on my crossin’ I sit poking at home, or make a job of
mending my clothes. I mended these trousers in two or three places.

“It’s all done by feel, sir. My mother says it’s a good thing we’ve got
our feeling at least, if we haven’t got our eyesight.”

THE NEGRO CROSSING-SWEEPER, WHO HAD LOST BOTH HIS LEGS.

This man sweeps a crossing in a principal and central thoroughfare when
the weather is cold enough to let him walk; the colder the better,
he says, as it “numbs his stumps like.” He is unable to follow this
occupation in warm weather, as his legs feel “just like corns,” and
he cannot walk more than a mile a-day. Under these circumstances he
takes to begging, which he thinks he has a perfect right to do, as he
has been left destitute in what is to him almost a strange country,
and has been denied what he terms “his rights.” He generally sits
while begging, dressed in a sailor shirt and trousers, with a black
neckerchief round his neck, tied in the usual nautical knot. He places
before him the placard which is given beneath, and never moves a muscle
for the purpose of soliciting charity. He always appears scrupulously
clean.

I went to see him at his home early one morning--in fact, at
half-past eight, but he was not then up. I went again at nine, and
found him prepared for my visit in a little parlour, in a dirty and
rather disreputable alley running out of a court in a street near
Brunswick-square. The negro’s parlour was scantily furnished with
two chairs, a turn-up bedstead, and a sea-chest. A few odds and ends
of crockery stood on the sideboard, and a kettle was singing over
a cheerful bit of fire. The little man was seated on a chair, with
his stumps of legs sticking straight out. He showed some amount of
intelligence in answering my questions. We were quite alone, for he
sent his wife and child--the former a pleasant-looking “half-caste,”
and the latter the cheeriest little crowing, smiling “piccaninny” I
have ever seen--he sent them out into the alley, while I conversed with
himself.

His life is embittered by the idea that he has never yet had “his
rights”--that the owners of the ship in which his legs were burnt
off have not paid him his wages (of which, indeed, he says, he never
received any but the five pounds which he had in advance before
starting), and that he has been robbed of 42_l._ by a grocer in
Glasgow. How true these statements may be it is almost impossible to
say, but from what he says, some injustice seems to have been done him
by the canny Scotchman, who refuses him his “pay,” without which he is
determined “never to leave the country.”

“I was on that crossing,” he said, “almost the whole of last winter. It
was very cold, and I had nothing at all to do; so, as I passed there,
I asked the gentleman at the baccer-shop, as well as the gentleman at
the office, and I asked at the boot-shop, too, if they would let me
sweep there. The policeman wanted to turn me away, but I went to the
gentleman inside the office, and he told the policeman to leave me
alone. The policeman said first, ‘You must go away,’ but I said, ‘I
couldn’t do anything else, and he ought to think it a charity to let me
stop.’

“I don’t stop in London very long, though, at a time; I go to Glasgow,
in Scotland, where the owners of the ship in which my legs were burnt
off live. I served nine years in the merchant service and the navy. I
was born in Kingston, in Jamaica; it is an English place, sir, so I am
counted as not a foreigner. I’m different from them Lascars. I went to
sea when I was only nine years old. The owners is in London who had
that ship. I was cabin-boy; and after I had served my time I became
cook, or when I couldn’t get the place of cook I went before the mast.
I went as head cook in 1851, in the _Madeira_ barque; she used to be a
West Indy trader, and to trade out when I belonged to her. We got down
to 69 south of Cape Horn; and there we got almost froze and perished to
death. That is the book what I sell.”

The “Book” (as he calls it) consists of eight pages, printed on paper
the size of a sheet of note paper; it is entitled--

“BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF

EDWARD ALBERT!

A native of Kingston, Jamaica.

Showing the hardships he underwent and the sufferings he endured in
having both legs amputated.

HULL:

W. HOWE, PRINTER.”

It is embellished with a portrait of a black man, which has evidently
been in its time a comic “nigger” of the Jim-Crow tobacco-paper kind,
as is evidenced by the traces of a tobacco-pipe, which has been
unskilfully erased.

The “Book” itself is concocted from an affidavit made by Edward Albert
before “P. Mackinlay, Esq., one of Her Majesty’s Justices of the Peace
for the country (so it is printed) of Lanark.”

I have seen the affidavit, and it is almost identical with the
statement in the “book,” excepting in the matter of grammar, which has
rather suffered on its road to Mr. Howe, the printer.

The following will give an idea of the matter of which it is composed:--

“In February, 1851, I engaged to serve as cook on board the barque
_Madeira_, of Glasgow, Captain J. Douglas, on her voyage from
Glasgow to California, thence to China, and thence home to a port of
discharge in the United Kingdom. I signed articles, and delivered up
my register-ticket as a British seaman, as required by law. I entered
the service on board the said vessel, under the said engagement, and
sailed with that vessel on the 18th of February, 1851. I discharged
my duty as cook on board the said vessel, from the date of its having
left the Clyde, until June the same year, in which month the vessel
rounded Cape Horne, at that time my legs became frost bitten, and I
became in consequence unfit for duty.

“In the course of the next day after my limbs became affected, the
master of the vessel, and mate, took me to the ship’s oven, in order,
as they said, to cure me; the oven was hot at the time, a fowl that
was roasting therein having been removed in order to make room for my
feet, which was put into the oven; in consequence of the treatment, my
feet burst through the intense swelling, and mortification ensued.

“The vessel called, six weeks after, at Valpariso, and I was there
taken to an hospital, where I remained five months and a half. Both my
legs were amputated three inches below my knees soon after I went to
the hospital at Valpariso. I asked my master for my wages due to me,
for my service on board the vessel, and demanded my register-ticket;
when the captain told me I should not recover, that the vessel could
not wait for me, and that I was a dead man, and that he could not
discharge a dead man; and that he also said, that as I had no friends
there to get my money, he would only put a little money into the
hands of the consul, which would be applied in burying me. On being
discharged from the hospital I called on the consul, and was informed
by him that master had not left any money.

“I was afterwards taken on board one of her Majesty’s ships, the
_Driver_, Captain Charles Johnston, and landed at Portsmouth; from
thence I got a passage to Glasgow, ware I remained three months.
Upon supplication to the register-office for seamen, in London, my
register-ticket has been forwarded to the Collector of Customs,
Glasgow; and he is ready to deliver it to me upon obtaining the
authority of the Justices of the Peace, and I recovered the same under
the 22nd section of the General Merchant Seaman’s Act. Declares I
cannot write.

“(Signed) DAVID MACKINLAY, J. P.

“The Justices having considered the foregoing information and
declaration, finds that Edward Albert, therein named the last-register
ticket, sought to be covered under circumstances which, so far as
he was concerned, were unavoidable, and that no fraud was intended
or committed by him in reference thereto, therefore authorised the
Collector and Comptroller of Customs at the port of Glasgow to deliver
to the said Edward Albert the register-ticket, sought to be recovered
by him all in terms of 22nd section of the General Merchant Seamen’s
Act.

“(Signed) DAVID MACKINLAY, J. P.

“Glasgow, Oct. 6th, 1852.

“Register Ticket, No. 512, 652, age 25 years.”

“I could make a large book of my sufferings, sir, if I liked,” he said,
“and I will disgrace the owners of that ship as long as they don’t give
me what they owe me.

“I will never leave England or Scotland until I get my rights; but
they says money makes money, and if I had money I could get it. If
they would only give me what they owe me, I wouldn’t ask anybody for a
farthing, God knows, sir. I don’t know why the master put my feet in
the oven; he said to cure me: the agony of pain I was in was such, he
said, that it must be done.

“The loss of my limbs is bad enough, but it’s still worse when you
can’t get what is your rights, nor anything for the sweat that they
worked out of me.

“After I went down to Glasgow for my money I opened a little
coffee-house; it was called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ I did very well. The
man who sold me tea and coffee said he would get me on, and I had
better give my money to him to keep safe, and he used to put it away
in a tin box which I had given four-and-sixpence for. He advertised my
place in the papers, and I did a good business. I had the place open a
month, when he kept all my savings--two-and-forty pounds--and shut up
the place, and denied me of it, and I never got a farthing.

“I declare to you I can’t describe the agony I felt when my legs were
burst; I fainted away over and over again. There was four men came; I
was lying in my hammock, and they moved the fowl that was roasting,
and put my legs in the oven. There they held me for ten minutes. They
said, it would take the cold out; but after I came out the cold caught
’em again, and the next day they swole up as big round as a pillar, and
burst, and then like water come out. No man but God knows what I have
suffered and went through.

“By the order of the doctor at Valparaiso, the sick patients had to
come out of the room I went into; the smell was so bad I couldn’t
bear it myself--it was all mortification--they had to use chloride
o’ zinc to keep the smell down. They tried to save one leg, but the
mortification was getting up into my body. I got better after my legs
were off.

“I was three months good before I could turn, or able to lift up my
hand to my head. I was glad to move after that time, it was a regular
relief to me; if it wasn’t for good attendance, I should not have
lived. You know they don’t allow tobaccer in a hospital, but I had it;
it was the only thing I cared for. The Reverend Mr. Armstrong used to
bring me a pound a fortnight; he used to bring it regular. I never used
to smoke before; they said I never should recover, but after I got the
tobaccer it seemed to soothe me. I was five months and a half in that
place.

“Admiral Moseley, of the _Thetis_ frigate, sent me home; and the reason
why he sent me home was, that after I came well, I called on Mr.
Rouse, the English consul, and he sent me to the boarding-house, till
such time as he could find a ship to send me home in. I was there about
two months, and the boarding-master, Jan Pace, sent me to the consul.

“I used to get about a little, with two small crutches, and I also had
a little cart before that, on three wheels; it was made by a man in the
hospital. I used to lash myself down in it. That was the best thing I
ever had--I could get about best in that.

“Well, I went to the consul, and when I went to him, he says, ‘I can’t
pay your board; you must beg and pay for it;’ so I went and told Jan
Pace, and he said, ‘If you had stopped here a hundred years, I would
not turn you out;’ and then I asked Pace to tell me where the Admiral
lived. ‘What do you want with him?’ says he. I said, ‘I think the
Admiral must be higher than the consul.’ Pace slapped me on the back.
Says he, ‘I’m glad to see you’ve got the pluck to complain to the
Admiral.’

“I went down at nine o’clock the next morning, to see the Admiral. He
said, ‘Well, Prince Albert, how are you getting on?’ So I told him I
was getting on very bad; and then I told him all about the consul; and
he said, as long as he stopped he would see me righted, and took me on
board his ship, the _Thetis_; and he wrote to the consul, and said to
me, ‘If the consul sends for you, don’t you go to him; tell him you
have no legs to walk, and he must walk to you.’

“The consul wanted to send me back in a merchant ship, but the Admiral
wouldn’t have it, so I came in the _Driver_, one of Her Majesty’s
vessels. It was the 8th of May, 1852, when I got to Portsmouth.

“I stopped a little while--about a week--in Portsmouth. I went to the
Admiral of the dockyard, and he told me I must go to the Lord Mayor of
London. So I paid my passage to London, saw the Lord Mayor, who sent
me to Mr. Yardley, the magistrate, and he advertised the case for me,
and I got four pounds fifteen shillings, besides my passage to Glasgow.
After I got there, I went to Mr. Symee a Custom-house officer (he’d
been in the same ship with me to California); he said, ‘Oh, gracious,
Edward, how have you lost your limbs!’ and I burst out a crying. I told
him all about it. He advised me to go to the owner. I went there; but
the policeman in London had put my name down as Robert Thorpe, which
was the man I lodged with; so they denied me.

“I went to the shipping office, where they reckonised me; and I went
to Mr. Symee again, and he told me to go before the Lord Mayor (a Lord
Provost they call him in Scotland), and make an affidavit; and so, when
they found my story was right, they sent to London for my seaman’s
ticket; but they couldn’t do anything, because the captain was not
there.

“When I got back to London, I commenced sweeping the crossin’, sir. I
only sweep it in the winter, because I can’t stand in the summer. Oh,
yes, I feel my feet still: it is just as if I had them sitting on the
floor, now. I feel my toes moving, like as if I had ’em. I could count
them, the whole ten, whenever I work my knees. I had a corn on one of
my toes, and I can feel it still, particularly at the change of weather.

“Sometimes I might get two shillings a-day at my crossing, sometimes
one shilling and sixpence, sometimes I don’t take above sixpence. The
most I ever made in one day was three shillings and sixpence, but
that’s very seldom.

“I am a very steady man. I don’t drink what money I get; and if I had
the means to get something to do, I’d keep off the streets.

“When I offered to go to the parish, they told me to go to Scotland, to
spite the men who owed me my wages.

“Many people tell me I ought to go to my country; but I tell them it’s
very hard--I didn’t come here without my legs--I lost them, as it were,
in this country; but if I had lost them in my own country, I should
have been better off. I should have gone down to the magistrate every
Friday, and have taken my ten shillings.

“I went to the Merchant Seaman’s Fund, and they said that those who
got hurted before 1852 have been getting the funds, but those who were
hurted after 1852 couldn’t get nothing--it was stopped in ’51, and the
merchants wouldn’t pay any more, and don’t pay any more.

“That’s scandalous, because, whether you’re willing or not, you must
pay two shillings a-month (one shilling a-month for the hospital fees,
and one shilling a-month to the Merchant Seaman’s Fund), out of your
pay.

“I am married: my wife is the same colour as me, but an Englishwoman.
I’ve been married two years. I married her from where she belonged, in
Leeds. I couldn’t get on to do anything without her. Sometimes she goes
out and sells things--fruit, and so on--but she don’t make much. With
the assistance of my wife, if I could get my money, I would set up in
the same line of business as before, in a coffee-shop. If I had three
pounds I could do it: it took well in Scotland. I am not a common cook,
either; I am a pastrycook. I used to make all the sorts of cakes they
have in the shops. I bought the shapes, and tins, and things to make
them proper.

“I’ll tell you how I did--there was a kind of apparatus; it boils water
and coffee, and the milk and the tea, in different departments; but you
couldn’t see the divisions--the pipes all ran into one tap, like. I’ve
had a sixpence and a shilling for people to look at it: it cost me two
pound ten.

“Even if I had a coffee-stall down at Covent-garden, I should do; and,
besides, I understand the making of eel-soup. I have one child,--it is
just three months and a week old. It is a boy, and we call it James
Edward Albert. James is after my grandfather, who was a slave.

“I was a little boy when the slaves in Jamaica got their freedom: the
people were very glad to be free; they do better since, I know, because
some of them have got property, and send their children to school.
There’s more Christianity there than there is here. The public-house is
close shut on Saturday night, and not opened till Monday morning. No
fruit is allowed to be sold in the street. I am a Protestant. I don’t
know the name of the church, but I goes down to a new-built church,
near King’s-cross. I never go in, because of my legs; but I just go
inside the door; and sometimes when I don’t go, I read the Testament
I’ve got here: in all my sickness I took care of that.

“There are a great many Irish in this place. I would like to get away
from it, for it is a very disgraceful place,--it is an awful, awful
place altogether. I haven’t been in it very long, and I want to get out
of it; it is not fit.

“I pay one-and-sixpence rent. If you don’t go out and drink and carouse
with them, they don’t like it; they make use of bad language--they
chaff me about my misfortune--they call me ‘Cripple;’ some says ‘Uncle
Tom,’ and some says ‘Nigger;’ but I never takes no notice of ’em at
all.”

* * * * *

The following is a verbatim copy of the placard which the poor fellow
places before him when he begs. He carries it, when not in use, in a
little calico bag which hangs round his neck:--

KIND CHRISTIAN FRIENDS

THE UNFORTUNATE

EDWARD ALBERT

WAS COOK ON BOARD THE BARQUE MADEIRA OF GLASGOW CAPTAIN J. DOUGLAS
IN FEBRUARY 1851 WHEN AFTER ROUNDING CAPE HORNE HE HAD HIS LEGS AND
FEET FROST BITTEN WHEN in that state the master and mate put my Legs
and Feet into the Oven as they said to cure me the Oven being hot
at the time a fowl was roasting was took away to make room for my
feet and legs in consequence of this my feet and legs swelled and
burst----Mortification then Ensued after which my legs were amputated
Three Inches below the knees soon after my entering the Hospital at
Valpariso.

AS I HAVE NO OTHER MEANS TO GET A LIVELYHOOD BUT BY APPEALING TO

A GENEROUS PUBLIC

YOUR KIND DONATIONS WILL BE MOST THANKFULLY RECEIVED.

THE MAIMED IRISH CROSSING-SWEEPER.

He stands at the corner of ---- street, where the yellow omnibuses
stop, and refers to himself every now and then as the “poor lame man.”
He has no especial mode of addressing the passers-by, except that of
hobbling a step or two towards them and sweeping away an imaginary
accumulation of mud. He has lost one leg (from the knee) by a fall from
a scaffold, while working as a bricklayer’s labourer in Wales, some
six years ago; and speaks bitterly of the hard time he had of it when
he first came to London, and hobbled about selling matches. He says he
is thirty-six, but looks more than fifty; and his face has the ghastly
expression of death. He wears the ordinary close cloth street-cap and
corduroy trousers. Even during the warm weather he wears an upper
coat--a rough thick garment, fit for the Arctic regions. It was very
difficult to make him understand my object in getting information from
him: he thought that he had nothing to tell, and laid great stress upon
the fact of his never keeping “count” of anything.

He accounted for his miserably small income by stating that he was an
invalid--“now and thin continually.” He said--

“I can’t say how long I have been on this crossin’; I think about five
year. When I came on it there had been no one here before. No one
interferes with me at all, at all. I niver hard of a crossin’ bein’
sould; but I don’t know any other sweepers. I makes no fraydom with no
one, and I always keeps my own mind.

“I dunno how much I earn a-day--p’rhaps I may git a shilling, and
p’rhaps sixpence. I didn’t git much yesterday (Sunday)--only sixpence.
I was not out on Saturday; I was ill in bed, and I was at home on
Friday. Indeed, I did not get much on Thursday, only tuppence ha’penny.
The largest day? I dunno. Why, about a shilling. Well, sure, I might
git as much as two shillings, if I got a shillin’ from a lady. Some
gintlemen are good--such a gintleman as you, now, might give me a
shilling.

“Well, as to weather, I likes half dry and half wit; of course I wish
for the bad wither. Every one must be glad of what brings good to him;
and, there’s one thing, I can’t make the wither--I can’t make a fine
day nor a wit one. I don’t think anybody would interfere with me;
certainly, if I was a blaggya’rd I should not be left here; no, nor if
I was a thief; but if any other man was to come on to my crossing, I
can’t say whether the police _would_ interfere to protect me--p’rhaps
they might.

“What is it I say to shabby people? Well, by J----, they’re all shabby,
I think. I don’t see any difference; but what can I do? I can’t insult
thim, and I was niver insulted mysilf, since here I’ve been, nor, for
the matter of that, ever had an angry worrud spoken to me.

“Well, sure, I dunno who’s the most liberal; if I got a fourpinny bit
from a moll I’d take it. Some of the ladies are very liberal; a good
lady will give a sixpence. I never hard of sweepin’ the mud back again;
and as for the boys annoying me, I has no coleaguein’ with boys, and
they wouldn’t be allowed to interfere with me--the police wouldn’t
allow it.

“After I came from Wales, where I was on one leg, selling matches,
then it was I took to sweep the crossin’. A poor divil must put up
with anything, good or bad. Well, I was a laborin’ man, a bricklayer’s
labourer, and I’ve been away from Ireland these sixteen year. When I
came from Ireland I went to Wales. I was there a long time; and the
way I broke my leg was, I fell off a scaffold. I am not married; a
lame man wouldn’t get any woman to have him in London at all, at all.
I don’t know what age I am. I am not fifty, nor forty; I think about
thirty-six. No, by J----, it’s not mysilf that iver knew a well-off
crossin’-sweeper. I don’t dale in them at all.

“I got a dale of friends in London assist me (but only now and thin).
If I depinded on the few ha’pence I get, I wouldn’t live on ’em; what
money I get here wouldn’t buy a pound of mate; and I wouldn’t live,
only for my frinds. You see, sir, I can’t be out always. I am laid
up nows and thins continually. Oh, it’s a poor trade to big on the
crossin’ from morning till night, and not get sixpence. I couldn’t do
with it, I know.

“Yes, sir, I smoke; it’s a comfort, it is. I like any kind I’d get to
smoke. I’d like the best if I got it.

“I am a Roman Catholic, and I go to St. Patrick’s, in St. Giles’s; a
many people from my neighbourhood go there. I go every Sunday, and to
Confession just once a-year--that saves me.

“By the Lord’s mercy! I don’t get broken victuals, nor broken mate, not
as much as you might put on the tip of a forruk; they’d chuck it out in
the dust-bin before they’d give it to me. I suppose they’re all alike.

“The divil an odd job I iver got, master, nor knives to clane. If I got
their knives to clane, p’rhaps I might clane them.

“My brooms cost threepence ha’penny; they are very good. I wear them
down to a stump, and they last three weeks, this fine wither. I niver
got any ould clothes--not but I want a coat very bad, sir.

“I come from Dublin; my father and mother died there of cholera; and
when they died, I come to England, and that was the cause of my coming.

“By my oath it didn’t stand me in more than eighteenpence that I took
here last week.

“I live in ---- lane, St. Giles’s Church, on the second landing, and I
pay eightpence a week. I haven’t a room to mysilf, for there’s a family
lives in it wid me.

“When I goes home I just smokes a pipe, and goes to bid, that’s all.”

II.--JUVENILE CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

_A. The Boy Crossing-Sweepers._

BOY CROSSING-SWEEPERS AND TUMBLERS.

A remarkably intelligent lad, who, on being spoken to, at once
consented to give all the information in his power, told me the
following story of his life.

It will be seen from this boy’s account, and the one or two following,
that a kind of partnership exists among some of these young sweepers.
They have associated themselves together, appropriated several
crossings to their use, and appointed a captain over them. They have
their forms of trial, and “jury-house” for the settlement of disputes;
laws have been framed, which govern their commercial proceedings, and a
kind of language adopted by the society for its better protection from
its arch-enemy, the policeman.

I found the lad who first gave me an insight into the proceedings of
the associated crossing-sweepers crouched on the stone steps of a door
in Adelaide-street, Strand; and when I spoke to him he was preparing to
settle down in a corner and go to sleep--his legs and body being curled
round almost as closely as those of a cat on a hearth.

The moment he heard my voice he was upon his feet, asking me to “give a
halfpenny to poor little Jack.”

He was a good-looking lad, with a pair of large mild eyes, which he
took good care to turn up with an expression of supplication as he
moaned for his halfpenny.

A cap, or more properly a stuff bag, covered a crop of hair which had
matted itself into the form of so many paint-brushes, while his face,
from its roundness of feature and the complexion of dirt, had an almost
Indian look about it; the colour of his hands, too, was such that you
could imagine he had been shelling walnuts.

[Illustration: THE BOY CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

He ran before me, treading cautiously with his naked feet, until I
reached a convenient spot to take down his statement, which was as
follows:--

“I’ve got no mother or father; mother has been dead for two years,
and father’s been gone more than that--more nigh five years--he died
at Ipswich, in Suffolk. He was a perfumer by trade, and used to make
hair-dye, and scent, and pomatum, and all kinds of scents. He didn’t
keep a shop himself, but he used to serve them as did; he didn’t hawk
his goods about, neether, but had regular customers, what used to send
him a letter, and then he’d take them what they wanted. Yes, he used to
serve some good shops: there was H----’s, of London Bridge, what’s a
large chemist’s. He used to make a good deal of money, but he lost it
betting; and so his brother, my uncle, did all his. He used to go
up to High Park, and then go round by the Hospital, and then turn up
a yard, where all the men are who play for money [Tattersall’s]; and
there he’d lose his money, or sometimes win,--but that wasn’t often. I
remember he used to come home tipsy, and say he’d lost on this or that
horse, naming wot one he’d laid on; and then mother would coax him to
bed, and afterwards sit down and begin to cry.

“I was not with father when he died (but I was when he was dying),
for I was sent up along with eldest sister to London with a letter to
uncle, who was head servant at a doctor’s. In this letter, mother asked
uncle to pay back some money wot he owed, and wot father lent him, and
she asked him if he’d like to come down and see father before he died.
I recollect I went back again to mother by the Orwell steamer. I was
well dressed then, and had good clothes on, and I was given to the care
of the captain--Mr. King his name was. But when I got back to Ipswich,
father was dead.

“Mother took on dreadful; she was ill for three months afterwards,
confined to her bed. She hardly eat anything: only beaf-tea--I think
they call it--and eggs. All the while she kept on crying.

“Mother kept a servant; yes, sir, we always had a servant, as long
as I can recollect; and she and the woman as was there--Anna they
called her, an old lady--used to take care of me and sister. Sister
was fourteen years old (she’s married to a young man now, and they’ve
gone to America; she went from a place in the East India Docks, and I
saw her off). I used, when I was with mother, to go to school in the
morning, and go at nine and come home at twelve to dinner, then go
again at two and leave off at half-past four,--that is, if I behaved
myself and did all my lessons right; for if I did not I was kept
back till I _did_ them so. Mother used to pay one shilling a-week,
and extra for the copy-books and things. I can read and write--oh,
yes, I mean read and write well--read anything, even old English; and
I write pretty fair,--though I don’t get much reading now, unless
it’s a penny paper--I’ve got one in my pocket now--it’s the _London
Journal_--there’s a tale in it now about two brothers, and one of them
steals the child away and puts another in his place, and then he gets
found out, and all that, and he’s just been falling off a bridge now.

“After mother got better, she sold all the furniture and goods and came
up to London;--poor mother! She let a man of the name of Hayes have the
greater part, and he left Ipswich soon after, and never gave mother the
money. We came up to London, and mother took two rooms in Westminster,
and I and sister lived along with her. She used to make hair-nets, and
sister helped her, and used to take ’em to the hair-dressers to sell.
She made these nets for two or three years, though she was suffering
with a bad breast;--she died of that--poor thing!--for she had what
doctors calls cancer--perhaps you’ve heard of ’em, sir,--and they had
to cut all round here (making motions with his hands from the shoulder
to the bosom). Sister saw it, though I didn’t.

“Ah! she was a very good, kind mother, and very fond of both of us;
though father wasn’t, for he’d always have a noise with mother when he
come home, only he was seldom with us when he was making his goods.

“After mother died, sister still kept on making nets, and I lived with
her for some time, until she told me she couldn’t afford to keep me
no longer, though she seemed to have a pretty good lot to do; but she
would never let me go with her to the shops, though I could crochet,
which she’d learned me, and used to run and get her all her silks and
things what she wanted. But she was keeping company with a young man,
and one day they went out, and came back and said they’d been and got
married. It was him as got rid of me.

“He was kind to me for the first two or three months, while he was
keeping her company; but before he was married he got a little cross,
and after he was married he begun to get more cross, and used to send
me to play in the streets, and tell me not to come home again till
night. One day he hit me, and I said I wouldn’t be hit about by him,
and then at tea that night sister gave me three shillings, and told me
I must go and get my own living. So I bought a box and brushes (they
cost me just the money) and went cleaning boots, and I done pretty well
with them, till my box was stole from me by a boy where I was lodging.
He’s in prison now--got six calendar for picking pockets.

“Sister kept all my clothes. When I asked her for ’em, she said they
was disposed of along with all mother’s goods; but she gave me some
shirts and stockings, and such-like, and I had very good clothes, only
they was all worn out. I saw sister after I left her, many times. I
asked her many times to take me back, but she used to say, ‘It was not
her likes, but her husband’s, or she’d have had me back;’ and I think
it was true, for until he came she was a kind-hearted girl; but he said
he’d enough to do to look after his own living; he was a fancy-baker by
trade.

“I was fifteen the 24th of last May, sir, and I’ve been sweeping
crossings now near upon two years. There’s a party of six of us, and
we have the crossings from St. Martin’s Church as far as Pall Mall.
I always go along with them as lodges in the same place as I do. In
the daytime, if it’s dry, we do anythink what we can--open cabs, or
anythink; but if it’s wet, we separate, and I and another gets a
crossing--those who gets on it first, keeps it,--and we stand on each
side and take our chance.

“We do it in this way:--if I was to see two gentlemen coming, I should
cry out, ‘Two toffs!’ and then they are mine; and whether they give
me anythink or not they are mine, and my mate is bound not to follow
them; for if he did he would get a hiding from the whole lot of us. If
we both cry out together, then we share. If it’s a lady and gentleman,
then we cries, ‘A toff and a doll!’ Sometimes we are caught out in this
way. Perhaps it is a lady and gentleman and a child; and if I was to
see them, and only say, ‘A toff and a doll,’ and leave out the child,
then my mate can add the child; and as he is right and I wrong, then
it’s his party.

“If there’s a policeman close at hand we mustn’t ask for money; but we
are always on the look-out for the policemen, and if we see one, then
we calls out ‘Phillup!’ for that’s our signal. One of the policemen at
St. Martin’s Church--Bandy, we calls him--knows what Phillup means, for
he’s up to us; so we had to change the word. (At the request of the
young crossing-sweeper the present signal is omitted.)

“Yesterday on the crossing I got threepence halfpenny, but when it’s
dry like to-day I do nothink, for I haven’t got a penny yet. We never
carries no pockets, for if the policemen find us we generally pass the
money to our mates, for if money’s found on us we have fourteen days in
prison.

“If I was to reckon all the year round, that is, one day with another,
I think we make fourpence every day, and if we were to stick to it we
should make more, for on a very muddy day we do better. One day, the
best I ever had, from nine o’clock in the morning till seven o’clock
at night, I made seven shillings and sixpence, and got not one bit of
silver money among it. Every shilling I got I went and left at a shop
near where my crossing is, for fear I might get into any harm. The
shop’s kept by a woman we deals with for what we wants--tea and butter,
or sugar, or brooms--anythink we wants. Saturday night week I made
two-and-sixpence; that’s what I took altogether up to six o’clock.

“When we see the rain we say together, ‘Oh! there’s a jolly good rain!
we’ll have a good day to-morrow.’ If a shower comes on, and we are at
our room, which we general are about three o’clock, to get somethink to
eat--besides, we general go there to see how much each other’s taken in
the day--why, out we run with our brooms.

“We’re always sure to make money if there’s mud--that’s to say, if we
look for our money, and ask; of course, if we stand still we don’t.
Now, there’s Lord Fitzhardinge, he’s a good gentleman, what lives
in Spring-gardens, in a large house. He’s got a lot of servants and
carriages. Every time he crosses the Charing-cross crossing he always
gives the girl half a sovereign.” (This statement was taken in June
1856.) “He doesn’t cross often, because, hang it, he’s got such a lot
of carriages, but when he’s on foot he always does. If they asks him
he doesn’t give nothink, but if they touches their caps he does. The
housekeeper at his house is very kind to us. We run errands for her,
and when she wants any of her own letters taken to the post then she
calls, and if we are on the crossing we takes them for her. She’s a
very nice lady, and gives us broken victuals. I’ve got a share in that
crossing,--there are three of us, and when he gives the half sovereign
he always gives it to the girl, and those that are in it shares it. She
would do us out of it if she could, but we all takes good care of that,
for we are all cheats.

“At night-time we tumbles--that is, if the policemen ain’t nigh. We
goes general to Waterloo-place when the Opera’s on. We sends on one
of us ahead, as a looker-out, to look for the policeman, and then we
follows. It’s no good tumbling to gentlemen _going_ to the Opera; it’s
when they’re coming back they gives us money. When they’ve got a young
lady on their arm they laugh at us tumbling; some will give us a penny,
others threepence, sometimes a sixpence or a shilling, and sometimes a
halfpenny. We either do the cat’un-wheel, or else we keep before the
gentleman and lady, turning head-over-heels, putting our broom on the
ground and then turning over it.

“I work a good deal fetching cabs after the Opera is over; we general
open the doors of those what draw up at the side of the pavement for
people to get into as have walked a little down the Haymarket looking
for a cab. We gets a month in prison if we touch the others by the
columns. I once had half a sovereign give me by a gentleman; it was
raining awful, and I run all about for a cab, and at last I got one.
The gentleman knew it was half a sovereign, because he said--‘Here, my
little man, here’s half a sovereign for your trouble.’ He had three
ladies with him, beautiful ones, with nothink on their heads, and
only capes on their bare shoulders; and he had white kids on, and his
regular Opera togs, too. I liked him very much, and as he was going
to give me somethink the ladies says--‘Oh, give him somethink extra!’
It was pouring with rain, and they couldn’t get a cab; they were all
engaged, but I jumped on the box of one as was driving along the line.
Last Saturday Opera night I made fifteen pence by the gentlemen coming
from the Opera.

“After the Opera we go into the Haymarket, where all the women are who
walk the streets all night. They don’t give us no money, but they tell
the gentlemen to. Sometimes, when they are talking to the gentlemen,
they say, ‘Go away, you young rascal!’ and if they are saucy, then we
say to them, ‘We’re not talking to you, my doxy, we’re talking to the
gentleman,’--but that’s only if they’re rude, for if they speak civil
we always goes. They knows what ‘doxy’ means. What is it? Why that
they are no better than us! If we are on the crossing, and we says to
them as they go by, ‘Good luck to you!’ they always give us somethink
either that night or the next. There are two with bloomer bonnets, who
always give us somethink if we says ‘Good luck.’ Sometimes a gentleman
will tell us to go and get them a young lady, and then we goes, and
they general gives us sixpence for that. If the gents is dressed finely
we gets them a handsome girl; if they’re dressed middling, then we gets
them a middling-dressed one; but we usual prefers giving a turn to
girls that have been kind to us, and they are sure to give us somethink
the next night. If we don’t find any girls walking, we knows where to
get them in the houses in the streets round about.

“We always meet at St. Martin’s steps--the ‘jury house,’ we calls
’em--at three o’clock in the morning, that’s always our hour. We
reckons up what we’ve taken, but we don’t divide. Sometimes, if we owe
anythink where we lodge, the women of the house will be waiting on the
steps for us: then, if we’ve got it, we pay them; if we haven’t, why it
can’t be helped, and it goes on. We gets into debt, because sometimes
the women where we live gets lushy; then we don’t give them anythink,
because they’d forget it, so we spends it ourselves. We can’t lodge at
what’s called model lodging-houses, as our hours don’t suit them folks.
We pays threepence a-night for lodging. Food, if we get plenty of
money, we buys for ourselves. We buys a pound of bread, that’s twopence
farthing--best seconds, and a farthing’s worth of dripping--that’s
enough for a pound of bread--and we gets a ha’porth of tea and a
ha’porth of sugar; or if we’re hard up, we gets only a penn’orth of
bread. We make our own tea at home; they lends us a kittle, teapot, and
cups and saucers, and all that.

“Once or twice a-week we gets meat. We all club together, and go into
Newgate Market and gets some pieces cheap, and biles them at home. We
tosses up who shall have the biggest bit, and we divide the broth, a
cupful in each basin, until it’s lasted out. If any of us has been
unlucky we each gives the unlucky one one or two halfpence. Some of us
is obliged at times to sleep out all night; and sometimes, if any of us
gets nothink, then the others gives him a penny or two, and _he_ does
the same for us when _we_ are out of luck.

“Besides, there’s our clothes: I’m paying for a pair of boots now. I
paid a shilling off Saturday night.

“When we gets home at half-past three in the morning, whoever cries
out ‘first wash’ has it. First of all we washes our feet, and we all
uses the same water. Then we washes our faces and hands, and necks, and
whoever fetches the fresh water up has first wash; and if the second
don’t like to go and get fresh, why he uses the dirty. Whenever we come
in the landlady makes us wash our feet. Very often the stones cuts our
feet and makes them bleed; then we bind a bit of rag round them. We
like to put on boots and shoes in the daytime, but at night-time we
can’t, because it stops the tumbling.

“On the Sunday we all have a clean shirt put on before we go out, and
then we go and tumble after the omnibuses. Sometimes we do very well
on a fine Sunday, when there’s plenty of people out on the roofs of
the busses. We never do anythink on a wet day, but only when it’s
been raining and then dried up. I have run after a Cremorne bus, when
they’ve thrown us money, as far as from Charing-cross right up to
Piccadilly, but if they don’t throw us nothink we don’t run very far.
I should think we gets at that work, taking one Sunday with another,
eightpence all the year round.

“When there’s snow on the ground we puts our money together, and goes
and buys an old shovel, and then, about seven o’clock in the morning,
we goes to the shops and asks them if we shall scrape the snow away. We
general gets twopence every house, but some gives sixpence, for it’s
very hard to clean the snow away, particular when it’s been on the
ground some time. It’s awful cold, and gives us chilblains on our feet;
but we don’t mind it when we’re working, for we soon gets hot then.

“Before winter comes, we general save up our money and buys a pair of
shoes. Sometimes we makes a very big snowball and rolls it up to the
hotels, and then the gentlemen laughs and throws us money; or else we
pelt each other with snowballs, and then they scrambles money between
us. We always go to Morley’s Hotel, at Charing-cross. The police in
winter times is kinder to us than in summer, and they only laughs at
us;--p’rhaps it is because there is not so many of us about then,--only
them as is obligated to find a living for themselves; for many of the
boys has fathers and mothers as sends them out in summer, but keeps
them at home in winter when it’s piercing cold.

“I have been to the station-house, because the police always takes us
up if we are out at night; but we’re only locked up till morning,--that
is, if we behaves ourselves when we’re taken before the gentleman. Mr.
Hall, at Bow-street, only says, ‘Poor boy, let him go.’ But it’s only
when we’ve done nothink but stop out that he says that. He’s a kind old
gentleman; but mind, it’s only when you have been before him two or
three times he says so, because if it’s a many times, he’ll send you
for fourteen days.

“But we don’t mind the police much at night-time, because we jumps
over the walls round the place at Trafalgar-square, and they don’t
like to follow us at that game, and only stands looking at you over
the parrypit. There was one tried to jump the wall, but he split his
trousers all to bits, and now they’re afraid. That was Old Bandy as
bust his breeches; and we all hate him, as well as another we calls
Black Diamond, what’s general along with the Red Liners, as we calls
the Mendicity officers, who goes about in disguise as gentlemen, to
take up poor boys caught begging.

“When we are talking together we always talk in a kind of slang. Each
policeman we gives a regular name--there’s ‘Bull’s Head,’ ‘Bandy
Shanks,’ and ‘Old Cherry Legs,’ and ‘Dot-and-carry-one;’ they all knows
their names as well as us. We never talks of crossings, but ‘fakes.’ We
don’t make no slang of our own, but uses the regular one.

“A broom doesn’t last us more than a week in wet weather, and they
costs us twopence halfpenny each; but in dry weather they are good for
a fortnight.”

YOUNG MIKE’S STATEMENT.

The next lad I examined was called Mike. He was a short, stout-set
youth, with a face like an old man’s, for the features were hard
and defined, and the hollows had got filled up with dirt till his
countenance was brown as an old wood carving. I have seldom seen so
dirty a face, for the boy had been in a perspiration, and then wiped
his cheeks with his muddy hands, until they were marbled, like the
covering to a copy-book.

The old lady of the house in which the boy lived seemed to be hurt by
the unwashed appearance of her lodger. “You ought to be ashamed of
yourself--and that’s God’s truth--not to go and sluice yourself afore
spaking to the jintlemin,” she cried, looking alternately at me and the
lad, as if asking me to witness her indignation.

Mike wore no shoes, but his feet were as black as if cased in gloves
with short fingers. His coat had been a man’s, and the tails reached to
his ankles; one of the sleeves was wanting, and a dirty rag had been
wound round the arm in its stead. His hair spread about like a tuft of
grass where a rabbit has been squatting.

He said, “I haven’t got neither no father nor no mother,--never had,
sir; for father’s been dead these two year, and mother getting on
for eight. They was both Irish people, please sir, and father was a
bricklayer. When father was at work in the country, mother used to get
work carrying loads at Covent-garden Market. I lived with father till
he died, and that was from a complaint in his chest. After that I lived
along with my big brother, what’s ’listed in the Marines now. He used
to sweep a crossing in Camden-town, opposite the Southampting Harms,
near the toll-gate.

“He did pretty well up there sometimes, such as on Christmas-day, where
he has took as much as six shillings sometimes, and never less than one
and sixpence. All the gentlements knowed him thereabouts, and one or
two used to give him a shilling a-week regular.

“It was he as first of all put me up to sweep a crossing, and I used to
take my stand at St. Martin’s Church.

“I didn’t see anybody working there, so I planted myself on it. After a
time some other boys come up. They come up and wanted to turn me off,
and began hitting me with their brooms,--they hit me regular hard with
the old stumps; there was five or six of them; so I couldn’t defend
myself, but told the policeman, and he turned them all away except
me, because he saw me on first, sir. Now we are all friends, and work
together, and all that we earns ourself we has.

“On a good day, when it’s poured o’ rain and then leave off sudden, and
made it nice and muddy, I’ve took as much as ninepence; but it’s too
dry now, and we don’t do more than fourpence.

“At night, I go along with the others tumbling. I does the cat’en-wheel
[probably a contraction of Catherine-wheel]; I throws myself over
sideways on my hands with my legs in the air. I can’t do it more than
four times running, because it makes the blood to the head, and then
all the things seems to turn round. Sometimes a chap will give me a
lick with a stick just as I’m going over--sometimes a reg’lar good hard
whack; but it ain’t often, and we general gets a halfpenny or a penny
by it.

“The boys as runs after the busses was the first to do these here
cat’en-wheels. I know the boy as was the very first to do it. His name
is Gander, so we calls him the Goose.

“There’s about nine or ten of us in our gang, and as is reg’lar; we
lodges at different places, and we has our reg’lar hours for meeting,
but we all comes and goes when we likes, only we keeps together, so as
not to let any others come on the crossings but ourselves.

“If another boy tries to come on we cries out, ‘Here’s a Rooshian,’ and
then if he won’t go away, we all sets on him and gives him a drubbing;
and if he still comes down the next day, we pays him out twice as much,
and harder.

“There’s never been one down there yet as can lick us all together.

“If we sees one of our pals being pitched into by other boys, we goes
up and helps him. Gander’s the leader of our gang, ’cause he can tumble
back’ards (no, that ain’t the cat’en-wheel, that’s tumbling); so he
gets more tin give him, and that’s why we makes him cap’an.

“After twelve at night we goes to the Regent’s Circus, and we tumbles
there to the gentlemen and ladies. The most I ever got was sixpence at
a time. The French ladies never give us nothink, but they all says,
‘Chit, chit, chit,’ like hissing at us, for they can’t understand us,
and we’re as bad off with them.

“If it’s a wet night we leaves off work about twelve o’clock, and don’t
bother with the Haymarket.

“The first as gets to the crossing does the sweeping away of the mud.
Then they has in return all the halfpence they can take. When it’s been
wet every day, a broom gets down to stump in about four days. We either
burns the old brooms, or, if we can, we sells ’em for a ha’penny to
some other boy, if he’s flat enough to buy ’em.”

GANDER--THE “CAPTAIN” OF THE BOY CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

Gander, the captain of the gang of boy crossing-sweepers, was a big lad
of sixteen, with a face devoid of all expression, until he laughed,
when the cheeks, mouth, and forehead instantly became crumpled up with
a wonderful quantity of lines and dimples. His hair was cut short, and
stood up in all directions, like the bristles of a hearth-broom, and
was a light dust tint, matching with the hue of his complexion, which
also, from an absence of washing, had turned to a decided drab, or what
house-painters term a stone-colour.

He spoke with a lisp, occasioned by the loss of two of his large front
teeth, which allowed the tongue as he talked to appear through the
opening in a round nob like a raspberry.

The boy’s clothing was in a shocking condition. He had no coat, and his
blue-striped shirt was as dirty as a French-polisher’s rags, and so
tattered, that the shoulder was completely bare, while the sleeve hung
down over the hand like a big bag.

From the fish-scales on the sleeves of his coat, it had evidently once
belonged to some coster in the herring line. The nap was all worn off,
so that the lines of the web were showing like a coarse carpet; and
instead of buttons, string had been passed through holes pierced at the
side.

Of course he had no shoes on, and his black trousers, which, with the
grease on them, were gradually assuming a tarpaulin look, were fastened
over one shoulder by means of a brace and bits of string.

During his statement, he illustrated his account of the tumbling
backwards--the “caten-wheeling”--with different specimens of the art,
throwing himself about on the floor with an ease and almost grace, and
taking up so small a space of the ground for the performance, that his
limbs seemed to bend as though his bones were flexible like cane.

“To tell you the blessed truth, I can’t say the last shilling I
handled.”

“Don’t you go a-believing on him,” whispered another lad in my ear,
whilst Gander’s head was turned: “he took thirteenpence last night, he
did.”

It was perfectly impossible to obtain from this lad any account of his
average earnings. The other boys in the gang told me that he made more
than any of them. But Gander, who is a thorough street-beggar, and
speaks with a peculiar whine, and who, directly you look at him, puts
on an expression of deep distress, seemed to have made up his mind,
that if he made himself out to be in great want I should most likely
relieve him--so he would not budge an inch from his twopence a-day,
declaring it to be the maximum of his daily earnings.

“Ah,” he continued, with a persecuted tone of voice, “if I had only
got a little money, I’d be a bright youth! The first chance as I get
of earning a few halfpence, I’ll buy myself a coat, and be off to the
country, and I’ll lay something I’d soon be a gentleman then, and come
home with a couple of pounds in my pocket, instead of never having
ne’er a farthing, as now.”

One of the other lads here exclaimed, “Don’t go on like that there,
Goose; you’re making us out all liars to the gentleman.”

The old woman also interfered. She lost all patience with Gander, and
reproached him for making a false return of his income. She tried to
shame him into truthfulness, by saying,--

“Look at my Johnny--my grandson, sir, he’s not a quarther the
Goose’s size, and yet he’ll bring me home his shilling, or perhaps
eighteenpence or two shillings--for shame on you, Gander! Now, did you
make six shillings last week?--now, speak God’s truth!”

“What! six shillings?” cried the Goose--“six shillings!” and he began
to look up at the ceiling, and shake his hands. “Why, I never heard of
sich a sum. I did once _see_ a half-crown; but I don’t know as I ever
touched e’er a one.”

“Thin,” added the old woman, indignantly, “it’s because you’re idle,
Gander, and you don’t study when you’re on the crossing; but lets the
gintlefolk go by without ever a word. That’s what it is, sir.”

The Goose seemed to feel the truth of this reproach, for he said with a
sigh, “I knows I am fickle-minded.”

He then continued his statement,--

“I can’t tell how many brooms I use; for as fast as I gets one, it is
took from me. God help me! They watch me put it away, and then up they
comes and takes it. What kinds of brooms is the best? Why, as far as I
am concerned, I would sooner have a stump on a dry day--it’s lighter
and handier to carry; but on a wet day, give me a new un.

“I’m sixteen, your honour, and my name’s George Gandea, and the boys
calls me ‘the Goose’ in consequence; for it’s a nickname they gives me,
though my name ain’t spelt with a _har_ at the end, but with a _h’ay_,
so that I ain’t Gand_er_ after all, but Gand_ea_, which is a sell for
’em.

“God knows what I am--whether I’m h’Irish or h’_I_talian, or what; but
I was christened here in London, and that’s all about it.

“Father was a bookbinder. I’m sixteen now, and father turned me away
when I was nine year old, for mother had been dead before that. I was
told my right name by my brother-in-law, who had my register. He’s
a sweep, sir, by trade, and I wanted to know about my real name when
I was going down to the _Waterloo_--that’s a ship as I wanted to get
aboard as a cabin-boy.

“I remember the fust night I slept out after father got rid of me. I
slept on a gentleman’s door-step, in the winter, on the 15th January.
I packed my shirt and coat, which was a pretty good one, right over
my ears, and then scruntched myself into a doorway, and the policeman
passed by four or five times without seeing on me.

“I had a mother-in-law at the time; but father used to drink, or else
I should never have been as I am; and he came home one night, and says
he, ‘Go out and get me a few ha’pence for breakfast,’ and I said I had
never been in the streets in my life, and couldn’t; and, says he, ‘Go
out, and never let me see you no more,’ and I took him to his word, and
have never been near him since.

“Father lived in Barbican at that time, and after leaving him, I used
to go to the Royal Exchange, and there I met a boy of the name of
Michael, and he first learnt me to beg, and made me run after people,
saying, ‘Poor boy, sir--please give us a ha’penny to get a mossel of
bread.’ But as fast as I got anythink, he used to take it away, and
knock me about shameful; so I left him, and then I picked up with a
chap as taught me tumbling. I soon larnt how to do it, and then I used
to go tumbling after busses. That was my notion all along, and I hadn’t
picked up the way of doing it half an hour before I was after that game.

“I took to crossings about eight year ago, and the very fust person
as I asked, I had a fourpenny-piece give to me. I said to him, ‘Poor
little Jack, yer honour,’ and, fust of all, says he, ‘I haven’t got no
coppers,’ and then he turns back and give me a fourpenny-bit. I thought
I was made for life when I got that.

“I wasn’t working in a gang then, but all by myself, and I used to
do well, making about a shilling or ninepence a-day. I lodged in
Church-lane at that time.

“It was at the time of the Shibition year (1851) as these gangs come
up. There was lots of boys that came out sweeping, and that’s how they
picked up the tumbling off me, seeing me do it up in the Park, going
along to the Shibition.

“The crossing at St. Martin’s Church was mine fust of all; and when the
other lads come to it I didn’t take no heed of ’em--only for that I’d
have been a bright boy by now, but they carnied me over like; for when
I tried to turn ’em off they’d say, in a carnying way, ‘Oh, let us stay
on,’ so I never took no heed of ’em.

“There was about thirteen of ’em in my gang at that time.

“They made me cap’an over the lot--I suppose because they thought I was
the best tumbler of ’em. They obeyed me a little. If I told ’em not to
go to any gentleman, they wouldn’t, and leave him to me. There was only
one feller as used to give me a share of his money, and that was for
larning him to tumble--he’d give a penny or twopence, just as he yearnt
a little or a lot. I taught ’em all to tumble, and we used to do it
near the crossing, and at night along the streets.

“We used to be sometimes together of a day, some a-running after one
gentleman, and some after another; but we seldom kept together more
than three or four at a time.

“I was the fust to introduce tumbling backards, and I’m proud of
it--yes, sir, I’m proud of it. There’s another little chap as I’m
larning to do it; but he ain’t got strength enough in his arms like.
(‘Ah!’ exclaimed a lad in the room, ‘he _is_ a one to tumble, is
Johnny--go along the streets like anythink.’)

“He is the King of the Tumblers,” continued Gander--“King, and I’m
Cap’an.”

The old grandmother here joined in. “He was taught by a furreign
gintleman, sir, whose wife rode at a circus. He used to come here twice
a-day and give him lessons in this here very room, sir. That’s how he
got it, sir.”

“Ah,” added another lad, in an admiring tone, “see him and the Goose
have a race! Away they goes, but Jacky will leave him a mile behind.”

The history then continued:--“People liked the tumbling backards and
forards, and it got a good bit of money at fust, but they is getting
tired with it, and I’m growing too hold, I fancy. It hurt me awful at
fust. I tried it fust under a railway arch of the Blackwall Railway;
and when I goes backards, I thought it’d cut my head open. It hurts me
if I’ve got a thin cap on.

“The man as taught me tumbling has gone on the stage. Fust he went
about with swords, fencing, in public-houses, and then he got engaged.
Me and him once tumbled all round the circus at the Rotunda one night
wot was a benefit, and got one-and-eightpence a-piece, and all for only
five hours and a half--from six to half-past eleven, and we acting and
tumbling, and all that. We had plenty of beer, too. We was wery much
applauded when we did it.

“I was the fust boy as ever did ornamental work in the mud of my
crossings. I used to be at the crossing at the corner of Regent-suckus;
and that’s the wery place where I fust did it. The wery fust thing
as I did was a hanker (anchor)--a regular one, with turn-up sides
and a rope down the centre, and all. I sweeped it away clean in the
mud in the shape of the drawing I’d seen. It paid well, for I took
one-and-ninepence on it. The next thing I tried was writing ‘God save
the Queen;’ and that, too, paid capital, for I think I got two bob.
After that I tried We Har (V. R.) and a star, and that was a sweep too.
I never did no flowers, but I’ve done imitations of laurels, and put
them all round the crossing, and very pretty it looked, too, at night.
I’d buy a farthing candle and stick it over it, and make it nice and
comfortable, so that the people could look at it easy. Whenever I see
a carriage coming I used to douse the glim and run away with it, but
the wheels would regularly spile the drawings, and then we’d have all
the trouble to put it to rights again, and that we used to do with our
hands.

“I fust learnt drawing in the mud from a man in Adelaide-street,
Strand; he kept a crossing, but he only used to draw ’em close to the
kerb-stone. He used to keep some soft mud there, and when a carriage
come up to the Lowther Arcade, after he’d opened the door and let the
lady out, he would set to work, and by the time she come back he’d have
some flowers, or a We Har, or whatever he liked, done in the mud, and
underneath he’d write, ‘Please to remember honnest hindustry.’

“I used to stand by and see him do it, until I’d learnt, and when I
knowed, I went off and did it at my crossing.

“I was the fust to light up at night though, and now I wish I’d never
done it, for it was that which got me turned off my crossing, and
a capital one it was. I thought the gentlemen coming from the play
would like it, for it looked very pretty. The policeman said I was
destructing (obstructing) the thoroughfare, and making too much row
there, for the people used to stop in the crossing to look, it were so
pretty. He took me in charge three times on one night, cause I wouldn’t
go away; but he let me go again, till at last I thought he would lock
me up for the night, so I hooked it.

“It was after this as I went to St. Martin’s Church, and I haven’t
done half as well there. Last night I took three-ha’pence; but I was
larking, or I might have had more.”

As a proof of the very small expense which is required for the toilette
of a crossing-sweeper, I may mention, that within a few minutes after
Master Gander had finished his statement, he was in possession of a
coat, for which he had paid the sum of fivepence.

When he brought it into the room, all the boys and the women crowded
round to see the purchase.

“It’s a very good un,” said the Goose. “It only wants just taking up
here and there; and this cuff putting to rights.” And as he spoke he
pointed to tears large enough for a head to be thrust through.

“I’ve seen that coat before, sum’ares,” said one of the women; “where
did you get it?”

“At the chandly-shop,” answered the Goose.

THE “KING” OF THE TUMBLING-BOY CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

The young sweeper who had been styled by his companions the “King” was
a pretty-looking boy, only tall enough to rest his chin comfortably
on the mantel-piece as he talked to me, and with a pair of grey eyes
that were as bright and clear as drops of sea-water. He was clad in a
style in no way agreeing with his royal title; for he had on a kind of
dirt-coloured shooting-coat of tweed, which was fraying into a kind of
cobweb at the edges and elbows. His trousers too, were rather faulty,
for there was a pink-wrinkled dot of flesh at one of the knees; while
their length was too great for his majesty’s short legs, so that they
had to be rolled up at the end like a washerwoman’s sleeves.

His royal highness was of a restless disposition, and, whilst
talking, lifted up, one after another, the different ornaments on the
mantel-piece, frowning and looking at them sideways, as he pondered
over the replies he should make to my questions.

When I arrived at the grandmother’s apartment the “king” was absent,
his majesty having been sent with a pitcher to fetch some spring-water.

The “king” also was kind enough to favour me with samples of his
wondrous tumbling powers. He could bend his little legs round till they
curved like the long German sausages we see in the ham-and-beef shops;
and when he turned head over heels, he curled up his tiny body as
closely as a wood-louse, and then rolled along, wabbling like an egg.

“The boys call me Johnny,” he said; “and I’m getting on for eleven,
and I goes along with the Goose and Harry, a-sweeping at St. Martin’s
Church, and about there. I used, too, to go to the crossing where the
statute is, sir, at the bottom of the Haymarket. I went along with
the others; sometimes there were three or four of us, or sometimes
one, sir. I never used to sweep unless it was wet. I don’t go out not
before twelve or one in the day; it ain’t no use going before that; and
beside, I couldn’t get up before that, I’m too sleepy. I don’t stop out
so late as the other boys; they sometimes stop all night, but I don’t
like that. The Goose was out all night along with Martin; they went all
along up Piccirilly, and there they climbed over the Park railings and
went a birding all by themselves, and then they went to sleep for an
hour on the grass--so they says. I likes better to come home to my bed.
It kills me for the next day when I do stop out all night. The Goose is
always out all night; he likes it.

“Neither father nor mother’s alive, sir, but I lives along with
grandmother and aunt, as owns this room, and I always gives them all I
gets.

“Sometimes I makes a shilling, sometimes sixpence, and sometimes less.
I can never take nothink of a day, only of a night, because I can’t
tumble of a day, and I can of a night.

“The Gander taught me tumbling, and he was the first as did it along
the crossings. I can tumble quite as well as the Goose; I can turn a
caten-wheel, and he can’t, and I can go further on forards than him,
but I can’t tumble backards as he can. I can’t do a handspring, though.
Why, a handspring’s pitching yourself forards on both hands, turning
over in front, and lighting on your feet; that’s very difficult, and
very few can do it. There’s one little chap, but he’s very clever, and
can tie himself up in a knot a’most. I’m best at caten-wheels; I can
do ’em twelve or fourteen times running--keep on at it. It just _does_
tire you, that’s all. When I gets up I feels quite giddy. I can tumble
about forty times over head and heels. I does the most of that, and I
thinks it’s the most difficult, but I can’t say which gentlemen likes
best. You see they are anigh sick of the head-and-heels tumbling, and
then werry few of the boys can do caten-wheels on the crossings--only
two or three besides me.

“When I see anybody coming, I says, ‘Please, sir, give me a halfpenny,’
and touches my hair, and then I throws a caten-wheel, and has a look at
’em, and if I sees they are laughing, then I goes on and throws more of
’em. Perhaps one in ten will give a chap something. Some of ’em will
give you a threepenny-bit or p’rhaps sixpence, and others only give
you a kick. Well, sir, I should say they likes tumbling over head and
heels; if you can keep it up twenty times then they begins laughing,
but if you only does it once, some of ’em will say, ‘Oh, I could do
that myself,’ and then they don’t give nothink.

“I know they calls me the King of Tumblers, and I think I can tumble
the best of them; none of them is so good as me, only the Goose at
tumbling backards.

“We don’t crab one another when we are sweeping; if we was to crab
one another, we’d get to fighting and giving slaps of the jaw to one
another. So when we sees anybody coming, we cries, ‘My gentleman and
lady coming here;’ ‘My lady;’ ‘My two gentlemens;’ and if any other
chap gets the money, then we says, ‘I named them, now I’ll have
halves.’ And if he won’t give it, then we’ll smug his broom or his cap.
I’m the littlest chap among our lot, but if a fellow like the Goose was
to take my naming then I’d smug somethink. I shouldn’t mind his licking
me, I’d smug his money and get his halfpence or somethink. If a chap as
can’t tumble sees a sporting gent coming and names him, he says to one
of us tumblers, ‘Now, then, who’ll give us halves?’ and then we goes
and tumbles and shares. The sporting gentlemens likes tumbling; they
kicks up more row laughing than a dozen others.

“Sometimes at night we goes down to Covent Garden, to where Hevans’s
is, but not till all the plays is over, cause Hevans’s don’t shut afore
two or three. When the people comes out we gets tumbling afore them.
Some of the drunken gentlemens is shocking spiteful, and runs after a
chap and gives us a cut with the cane; some of the others will give us
money, and some will buy our broom off us for sixpence. Me and Jemmy
sold the two of our brooms for a shilling to two drunken gentlemens,
and they began kicking up a row, and going before other gentlemens and
pretending to sweep, and taking off their hats begging, like a mocking
of us. They danced about with the brooms, flourishing ’em in the air,
and knocking off people’s hats; and at last they got into a cab, and
chucked the brooms away. The drunken gentlemens is always either jolly
or spiteful.

“But I goes only to the Haymarket, and about Pall Mall, now. I used to
be going up to Hevans’s every night, but I can’t take my money up there
now. I stands at the top of the Haymarket by Windmill-street, and when
I sees a lady and gentleman coming out of the Argyle, then I begs of
them as they comes across. I says--‘Can’t you give me a ha’penny, sir,
poor little Jack? I’ll stand on my nose for a penny;’--and then they
laughs at that.

“Goose can stand on his nose as well as me; we puts the face flat
down on the ground, instead of standing on our heads. There’s Duckey
Dunnovan, and the Stuttering Baboon, too, and two others as well, as
can do it; but the Stuttering Baboon’s getting too big and fat to do it
well; he’s a very awkward tumbler. It don’t hurt, only at larning; cos
you bears more on your hands than your nose.

“Sometimes they says--‘Well, let us see you do it,’ and then p’raps
they’ll search in their pockets, and say--‘O, I haven’t got any
coppers:’ so then we’ll force ’em, and p’raps they’ll pull out their
purse and gives us a little bit of silver.

“Ah, we works hard for what we gets, and then there’s the policemen
birching us. Some of ’em is so spiteful, they takes up their belt what
they uses round the waist to keep their coat tight, and’ll hit us with
the buckle; but we generally gives ’em the lucky dodge and gets out of
their way.

“One night, two gentlemen, officers they was, was standing in the
Haymarket, and a drunken man passed by. There was snow on the ground,
and we’d been begging of ’em, and says one of them--‘I’ll give you a
shilling if you’ll knock that drunken man over.’ We was three of us; so
we set on him, and soon had him down. After he got up he went and told
the policemen, but we all cut round different ways and got off, and
then met again. We didn’t get the shilling, though, cos a boy crabbed
us. He went up to the gentleman, and says he--‘Give it me, sir, I’m the
boy;’ and then we says--‘No, sir, it’s us.’ So, says the officer--‘I
sharn’t give it to none of you,’ and puts it back again in his pockets.
We broke a broom over the boy as crabbed us, and then we cut down
Waterloo-place, and afterwards we come up to the Haymarket again, and
there we met the officers again. I did a caten-wheel, and then says
I--‘Then won’t you give me un now?’ and they says--‘Go and sweep some
mud on that woman.’ So I went and did it, and then they takes me in a
pastry-shop at the corner, and they tells me to tumble on the tables in
the shop. I nearly broke one of ’em, they were so delicate. They gived
me a fourpenny meat-pie and two penny sponge-cakes, which I puts in my
pocket, cos there was another sharing with me. The lady of the shop
kept on screaming--‘Go and fetch me a police--take the dirty boy out,’
cos I was standing on the tables in my muddy feet, and the officers was
a bursting their sides with laughing; and says they, ‘No, he sharn’t
stir.’

“I was frightened, cos if the police had come they’d been safe and sure
to have took me. They made me tumble from the door to the end of the
shop, and back again, and then I turned ’em a caten-wheel, and was near
knocking down all the things as was on the counter.

“They didn’t give me no money, only pies; but I got a shilling
another time for tumbling to some French ladies and gentlemen in a
pastry-cook’s shop under the Colonnade. I often goes into a shop like
that; I’ve done it a good many times.

“There was a gentleman once as belonged to a ‘suckus,’ (circus) as
wanted to take me with him abroad, and teach me tumbling. He had a
little mustache, and used to belong to Drury-lane play-house, riding
on horses. I went to his place, and stopped there some time. He taught
me to put my leg round my neck, and I was just getting along nicely
with the splits (going down on the ground with both legs extended),
when I left him. They (the splits) used to hurt worst of all; very bad
for the thighs. I used, too, to hang with my leg round his neck. When
I did anythink he liked, he used to be clapping me on the back. He
wasn’t so very stunning well off, for he never had what I calls a good
dinner--grandmother used to have a better dinner than he,--perhaps only
a bit of scrag of mutton between three of us. I don’t like meat nor
butter, but I likes dripping, and they never had none there. The wife
used to drink--ay, very much, on the sly. She used when he was out to
send me round with a bottle and sixpence to get a quartern of gin for
her, and she’d take it with three or four oysters. Grandmother didn’t
like the notion of my going away, so she went down one day, and says
she--‘I wants my child;’ and the wife says--‘That’s according to the
master’s likings;’ and then grandmother says--‘What, not my own child?’
And then grandmother began talking, and at last, when the master come
home, he says to me--‘Which will you do, stop here, or go home with
your grandmother?’ So I come along with her.

“I’ve been sweeping the crossings getting on for two years. Before
that I used to go caten-wheeling after the busses. I don’t like the
sweeping, and I don’t think there’s e’er a one of us wot likes it. In
the winter we has to be out in the cold, and then in summer we have to
sleep out all night, or go asleep on the church-steps, reg’lar tired
out.

“One of us’ll say at night--‘Oh, I’m sleepy now, who’s game for a doss?
I’m for a doss;’--and then we go eight or ten of us into a doorway of
the church, where they keep the dead in a kind of airy-like underneath,
and there we go to sleep. The most of the boys has got no homes.
Perhaps they’ve got the price of a lodging, but they’re hungry, and
they eats the money, and then they must lay out. There’s some of ’em
will stop out in the wet for perhaps the sake of a halfpenny, and get
themselves sopping wet. I think all our chaps would like to get out of
the work if they could; I’m sure Goose would, and so would I.

“All the boys call me the King, because I tumbles so well, and some
calls me ‘Pluck,’ and some ‘Judy.’ I’m called ‘Pluck,’ cause I’m so
plucked a going at the gentlemen! Tommy Dunnovan--‘Tipperty Tight’--we
calls him, cos his trousers is so tight he can hardly move in them
sometimes,--he was the first as called me ‘Judy.’ Dunnovan once
swallowed a pill for a shilling. A gentleman in the Haymarket says--‘If
you’ll swallow this here pill I’ll give you a shilling;’ and Jimmy
says, ‘All right, sir;’ and he puts it in his mouth, and went to the
water-pails near the cab-stand and swallowed it.

“All the chaps in our gang likes me, and we all likes one another. We
always shows what we gets given to us to eat.

“Sometimes we gets one another up wild, and then that fetches up a
fight, but that isn’t often. When two of us fights, the others stands
round and sees fair play. There was a fight last night between ‘Broke
his Bones’--as we calls Antony Hones--and Neddy Hall--the ‘Sparrow,’
or ‘Spider,’ we calls him,--something about the root of a pineapple,
as we was aiming with at one another, and that called up a fight. We
all stood round and saw them at it, but neither of ’em licked, for
they gived in for to-day, and they’re to finish it to-night. We makes
’em fight fair. We all of us likes to see a fight, but not to fight
ourselves. Hones is sure to beat, as Spider is as thin as a wafer, and
all bones. I can lick the Spider, though he’s twice my size.”

THE STREET WHERE THE BOY-SWEEPERS LODGED.

I was anxious to see the room in which the gang of boy
crossing-sweepers lived, so that I might judge of their peculiar style
of house-keeping, and form some notion of their principles of domestic
economy.

I asked young Harry and “the Goose” to conduct me to their lodgings,
and they at once consented, “the Goose” prefacing his compliance with
the remark, that “it wern’t such as genilmen had been accustomed to,
but then I must take ’em as they was.”

The boys led me in the direction of Drury-lane; and before entering one
of the narrow streets which branch off like the side-bones of a fish’s
spine from that long thoroughfare, they thought fit to caution me that
I was not to be frightened, as nobody would touch me, for all was very
civil.

The locality consisted of one of those narrow streets which, were it
not for the paved cartway in the centre would be called a court. Seated
on the pavement at each side of the entrance was a costerwoman with her
basket before her, and her legs tucked up mysteriously under her gown
into a round ball, so that her figure resembled in shape the plaster
tumblers sold by the Italians. These women remained as inanimate as
if they had been carved images, and it was only when a passenger went
by that they gave signs of life, by calling out in a low voice, like
talking to themselves, “Two for three haarpence--herrens,”--“Fine
hinguns.”

The street itself is like the description given of thoroughfares in the
East. Opposite neighbours could not exactly shake hands out of window,
but they could talk together very comfortably; and, indeed, as I passed
along, I observed several women with their arms folded up like a cat’s
paws on the sill, and chatting with their friends over the way.

Nearly all the inhabitants were costermongers, and, indeed, the narrow
cartway seemed to have been made just wide enough for a truck to
wheel down it. A beershop and a general store, together with a couple
of sweeps,--whose residences were distinguished by a broom over the
door,--formed the only exceptions to the street-selling class of
inhabitants.

As I entered the place, it gave me the notion that it belonged to
a distinct coster colony, and formed one large hawkers’ home; for
everybody seemed to be doing just as he liked, and I was stared at as
if considered an intruder. Women were seated on the pavement, knitting,
and repairing their linen; the doorways were filled up with bonnetless
girls, who wore their shawls over their head, as the Spanish women do
their mantillas; and the youths in corduroy and brass buttons, who were
chatting with them, leant against the walls as they smoked their pipes,
and blocked up the pavement, as if they were the proprietors of the
place. Little children formed a convenient bench out of the kerb-stone;
and a party of four men were seated on the footway, playing with cards
which had turned to the colour of brown paper from long usage, and
marking the points with chalk upon the flags.

The parlour-windows of the houses had all of them wooden shutters, as
thick and clumsy-looking as a kitchen flap-table, the paint of which
had turned to the dull dirt-colour of an old slate. Some of these
shutters were evidently never used as a security for the dwelling, but
served only as tables on which to chalk the accounts of the day’s sales.

Before most of the doors were costermongers’ trucks--some standing
ready to be wheeled off, and others stained and muddy with the day’s
work. A few of the costers were dressing up their barrows, arranging
the sieves of waxy-looking potatoes--and others taking the stiff
herrings, browned like a meerschaum with the smoke they had been dried
in, from the barrels beside them, and spacing them out in pennyworths
on their trays.

You might guess what each costermonger had taken out that day by the
heap of refuse swept into the street before the doors. One house had
a blue mound of mussel-shells in front of it--another, a pile of the
outside leaves of broccoli and cabbages, turning yellow and slimy with
bruises and moisture.

Hanging up beside some of the doors were bundles of old strawberry
pottles, stained red with the fruit. Over the trap-doors to the cellars
were piles of market-gardeners’ sieves, ruddled like a sheep’s back
with big red letters. In fact, everything that met the eye seemed to be
in some way connected with the coster’s trade.

From the windows poles stretched out, on which blankets, petticoats,
and linen were drying; and so numerous were they, that they reminded
me of the flags hung out at a Paris fête. Some of the sheets had
patches as big as trap-doors let into their centres; and the blankets
were--many of them--as full of holes as a pigeon-house.

As I entered the court, a “row” was going on; and from a first-floor
window a lady, whose hair sadly wanted brushing, was haranguing a
crowd beneath, throwing her arms about like a drowning man, and in her
excitement thrusting her body half out of her temporary rostrum as
energetically as I have seen Punch lean over his theatre.

“The willin dragged her,” she shouted, “by the hair of her head, at
least three yards into the court--the willin! and then he kicked her,
and the blood was on his boot.”

It was a sweep who had been behaving in this cowardly manner; but still
he had his defenders in the women around him. One with very shiny hair,
and an Indian kerchief round her neck, answered the lady in the window,
by calling her a “d----d old cat;” whilst the sweep’s wife rushed
about, clapping her hands together as quickly as if she was applauding
at a theatre, and styled somebody or other “an old wagabones as she
wouldn’t dirty her hands to fight with.”

This “row” had the effect of drawing all the lodgers to the
windows--their heads popping out as suddenly as dogs from their kennels
in a fancier’s yard.

THE BOY-SWEEPERS’ ROOM.

The room where the boys lodged was scarcely bigger than a coach-house;
and so low was the ceiling, that a fly-paper suspended from a
clothes-line was on a level with my head, and had to be carefully
avoided when I moved about.

One corner of the apartment was completely filled up by a big four-post
bedstead, which fitted into a kind of recess as perfectly as if it had
been built to order.

The old woman who kept this lodging had endeavoured to give it a homely
look of comfort, by hanging little black-framed pictures, scarcely
bigger than pocket-books, on the walls. Most of these were sacred
subjects, with large yellow glories round the heads; though between
the drawing representing the bleeding heart of Christ, and the Saviour
bearing the Cross, was an illustration of a red-waistcoated sailor
smoking his pipe. The Adoration of the Shepherds, again, was matched on
the other side of the fireplace by a portrait of Daniel O’Connell.

A chest of drawers was covered over with a green baize cloth, on which
books, shelves, and clean glasses were tidily set out.

Where so many persons (for there were about eight of them, including
the landlady, her daughter, and grandson) could all sleep, puzzled me
extremely.

The landlady wore a frilled nightcap, which fitted so closely to the
skull, that it was evident she had lost her hair. One of her eyes
was slowly recovering from a blow, which, to use her own words, “a
blackgeyard gave her.” Her lip, too, had suffered in the encounter, for
it was swollen and cut.

“I’ve a nice flock-bid for the boys,” she said, when I inquired into
the accommodation of her lodging-house, “where three of them can slape
aisy and comfortable.”

“It’s a large bed, sir,” said one of the boys, “and a warm covering
over us; and you see it’s better than a regular lodging-house; for, if
you want a knife or a cup, you don’t have to leave something on it till
it’s returned.”

The old woman spoke up for her lodgers, telling me that they were good
boys, and very honest; “for,” she added, “they pays me rig’lar ivery
night, which is threepence.”

The only youth as to whose morals she seemed to be at all doubtful was
“the Goose,” “for he kept late hours, and sometimes came home without a
penny in his pocket.”

_B. The Girl Crossing-Sweepers._

THE GIRL CROSSING-SWEEPER SENT OUT BY HER FATHER.

A little girl, who worked by herself at her own crossing, gave me some
curious information on the subject.

This child had a peculiarly flat face, with a button of a nose, while
her mouth was scarcely larger than a button-hole. When she spoke, there
was not the slightest expression visible in her features; indeed, one
might have fancied she wore a mask and was talking behind it; but
her eyes were shining the while as brightly as those of a person in a
fever, and kept moving about, restless with her timidity. The green
frock she wore was fastened close to the neck, and was turning into a
kind of mouldy tint; she also wore a black stuff apron, stained with
big patches of gruel, “from feeding baby at home,” as she said. Her
hair was tidily dressed, being drawn tightly back from the forehead,
like the buy-a-broom girls; and as she stood with her hands thrust up
her sleeves, she curtseyed each time before answering, bobbing down
like a float, as though the floor under her had suddenly given way.

“I’m twelve years old, please sir, and my name is Margaret R----, and I
sweep a crossing in New Oxford-street, by Dunn’s-passage, just facing
Moses and Sons’, sir; by the Catholic school, sir. Mother’s been dead
these two year, sir, and father’s a working cutler, sir; and I lives
with him, but he don’t get much to do, and so I’m obligated to help
him, doing what I can, sir. Since mother’s been dead, I’ve had to mind
my little brother and sister, so that I haven’t been to school; but
when I goes a crossing-sweeping I takes them along with me, and they
sits on the steps close by, sir. If it’s wet I has to stop at home and
take care of them, for father depends upon me for looking after them.
Sister’s three and a-half year old, and brother’s five year, so he’s
just beginning to help me, sir. I hope he’ll get something better than
a crossing when he grows up.

“First of all I used to go singing songs in the streets, sir. It was
when father had no work, so he stopped at home and looked after the
children. I used to sing the ‘Red, White, and Blue,’ and ‘Mother, is
the Battle over?’ and ‘The Gipsy Girl,’ and sometimes I’d get fourpence
or fivepence, and sometimes I’d have a chance of making ninepence,
sir. Sometimes, though, I’d take a shilling of a Saturday night in the
markets.

“At last the songs grew so stale people wouldn’t listen to them, and,
as I carn’t read, I couldn’t learn any more, sir. My big brother and
father used to learn me some, but I never could get enough out of them
for the streets; besides, father was out of work still, and we couldn’t
get money enough to buy ballads with, and it’s no good singing without
having them to sell. We live over there, sir, (pointing to a window on
the other side of the narrow street).

“The notion come into my head all of itself to sweep crossings, sir. As
I used to go up Regent-street I used to see men and women, and girls
and boys, sweeping, and the people giving them money, so I thought I’d
do the same thing. That’s how it come about. Just now the weather is so
dry, I don’t go to my crossing, but goes out singing. I’ve learnt some
new songs, such as ‘The Queen of the Navy for ever,’ and ‘The Widow’s
Last Prayer,’ which is about the wars. I only go sweeping in wet
weather, because then’s the best time. When I am there, there’s some
ladies and gentlemen as gives to me regular. I knows them by sight; and
there’s a beer-shop where they give me some bread and cheese whenever I
go.

“I generally takes about sixpence, or sevenpence, or eightpence on
the crossing, from about nine o’clock in the morning till four in the
evening, when I come home. I don’t stop out at nights because father
won’t let me, and I’m got to be home to see to baby.

“My broom costs me twopence ha’penny, and in wet weather it lasts a
week, but in dry weather we seldom uses it.

“When I sees the busses and carriages coming I stands on the side,
for I’m afeard of being runned over. In winter I goes out and cleans
ladies’ doors, general about Lincoln’s-inn, for the housekeepers.
I gets twopence a door, but it takes a long time when the ice is
hardened, so that I carn’t do only about two or three.

“I carn’t tell whether I shall always stop at sweeping, but I’ve no
clothes, and so I carn’t get a situation; for, though I’m small and
young, yet I could do housework, such as cleaning.

“No, sir, there’s no gang on my crossing--I’m all alone. If another
girl or a boy was to come and take it when I’m not there, I should stop
on it as well as him or her, and go shares with ’em.”

GIRL CROSSING-SWEEPER.

I was told that a little girl formed one of the association of young
sweepers, and at my request one of the boys went to fetch her.

She was a clean-washed little thing, with a pretty, expressive
countenance, and each time she was asked a question she frowned, like
a baby in its sleep, while thinking of the answer. In her ears she
wore instead of rings loops of string, “which the doctor had put there
because her sight was wrong.” A cotton velvet bonnet, scarcely larger
than the sun-shades worn at the sea-side, hung on her shoulders,
leaving exposed her head, with the hair as rough as tow. Her green
stuff gown was hanging in tatters, with long three-cornered rents
as large as penny kites, showing the grey lining underneath; and
her mantle was separated into so many pieces, that it was only held
together by the braiding at the edge.

As she conversed with me, she played with the strings of her bonnet,
rolling them up as if curling them, on her singularly small and also
singularly dirty fingers.

“I’ll be fourteen, sir, a fortnight before next Christmas. I was born
in Liquorpond-street, Gray’s Inn-lane. Father come over from Ireland,
and was a bricklayer. He had pains in his limbs and wasn’t strong
enough, so he give it over. He’s dead now--been dead a long time, sir.
I was a littler girl then than I am now, for I wasn’t above eleven at
that time. I lived with mother after father died. She used to sell
things in the streets--yes, sir, she was a coster. About a twelvemonth
after father’s death, mother was taken bad with the cholera, and
died. I then went along with both grandmother and grandfather, who
was a porter in Newgate Market; I stopped there until I got a place
as servant of all-work. I was only turned, just turned, eleven then.
I worked along with a French lady and gentleman in Hatton Garden, who
used to give me a shilling a-week and my tea. I used to go home to
grandmother’s to dinner every day. I hadn’t to do any work, only just
to clean the room and nuss the child. It was a nice little thing. I
couldn’t understand what the French people used to say, but there was a
boy working there, and he used to explain to me what they meant.

“I left them because they was going to a place called Italy--perhaps
you may have heerd tell of it, sir. Well, I suppose they must have
been Italians, but we calls everybody, whose talk we don’t understand,
French. I went back to grandmother’s, but, after grandfather died, she
couldn’t keep me, and so I went out begging--she sent me. I carried
lucifer-matches and stay-laces fust. I used to carry about a dozen
laces, and perhaps I’d sell six out of them. I suppose I used to make
about sixpence a-day, and I used to take it home to grandmother, who
kept and fed me.

“At last, finding I didn’t get much at begging, I thought I’d go
crossing-sweeping. I saw other children doing it. I says to myself,
‘I’ll go and buy a broom,’ and I spoke to another little girl, who was
sweeping up Holborn, who told me what I was to do. ‘But,’ says she,
‘don’t come and cut up me.’

“I went fust to Holborn, near to home, at the end of Red Lion-street.
Then I was frightened of the cabs and carriages, but I’d get there
early, about eight o’clock, and sweep the crossing clean, and I’d stand
at the side on the pavement, and speak to the gentlemen and ladies
before they crossed.

“There was a couple of boys, sweepers at the same crossing before I
went there. I went to them and asked if I might come and sweep there
too, and they said Yes, if I would give them some of the halfpence I
got. These was boys about as old as I was, and they said, if I earned
sixpence, I was to give them twopence a-piece; but they never give me
nothink of theirs. I never took more than sixpence, and out of that I
had to give fourpence, so that I did not do so well as with the laces.

“The crossings made my hands sore with the sweeping, and, as I got so
little, I thought I’d try somewhere else. Then I got right down to
the Fountings in Trafalgar-square, by the crossing at the statey on
’orseback. There were a good many boys and girls on that crossing at
the time--five of them; so I went along with them. When I fust went
they said, ‘Here’s another fresh ’un.’ They come up to me and says,
‘Are you going to sweep here?’ and I says, ‘Yes;’ and they says, ‘You
mustn’t come here, there’s too many;’ and I says, ‘They’re different
ones every day,’--for they’re not regular there, but shift about,
sometimes one lot of boys and girls, and the next day another. They
didn’t say another word to me, and so I stopped.

“It’s a capital crossing, but there’s so many of us, it spiles it. I
seldom gets more than sevenpence a-day, which I always takes home to
grandmother.

“I’ve been on that crossing about three months. They always calls me
Ellen, my regular name, and behaves very well to me. If I see anybody
coming, I call them out as the boys does, and then they are mine.

“There’s a boy and myself, and another strange girl, works on our side
of the statey, and another lot of boys and girls on the other.

“I like Saturdays the best day of the week, because that’s the time
as gentlemen as has been at work has their money, and then they are
more generous. I gets more then, perhaps ninepence, but not quite a
shilling, on the Saturday.

“I’ve had a threepenny-bit give to me, but never sixpence. It was a
gentleman, and I should know him again. Ladies gives me less than
gentlemen. I foller ’em, saying, ‘If you please, sir, give a poor girl
a halfpenny;’ but if the police are looking, I stop still.

“I never goes out on Sunday, but stops at home with grandmother. I
don’t stop out at nights like the boys, but I gets home by ten at
latest.”

INDEX.

Articles for amusement, second-hand sellers of, 16

Bear-baiting, 54

Bedding, &c., second-hand sellers of, 15

Bird-catchers who are street sellers, 64

---- duffers, tricks of, 69

---- street-seller, the crippled, 66

Birds’-nests, sellers of, 72

---- ---- ---- life of a, 74

Birds, stuffed, sellers of, 23

---- live, sellers of, 58

---- foreign, sellers of, 70

Bone-grubbers, 139

---- ---- narrative of a, 141

Boots and shoes, second-hand, sellers of, 42

Boy crossing-sweepers’ room, 504

Brisk and slack seasons, 297

Brushes, second-hand, sellers of, 22

Burnt linen or calico, 13

Cabinet-ware, second-hand, sellers of, 22

Casual labour in general, 297

---- ---- brisk and slack seasons, 297

---- ---- among the chimney-sweeps, 374

Carpeting, &c., second-hand, sellers of, 14

Cesspool emptying by trunk and hose, 447

Cesspool system of London, 437

---- ---- of Paris, 438

Cesspool-sewerman, statement of a, 448

Cesspoolage and nightmen, 433

Chimney-sweepers, the London, 339

---- ---- of old, and climbing-boys, 346

---- ---- stealing children, 347

---- ---- sores and diseases, 350

---- ---- accidents, 351

---- ---- cruelties towards, 352

---- ---- of the present day, 354

---- ---- work and wages, 357

---- ---- general characteristics of, 365

---- ---- dress and diet, 366

---- ---- abodes, 367

---- ---- festival at May-day, 371

---- ---- “leeks”, 375

---- ---- knullers and queriers, 376

Cigar-end finders, 145

Clocks, second-hand, sellers of, 23

Clothes worn in town and country, table showing comparative
cost of, 192

Coal, consumption of, 169

---- sellers of, 81

Coke, sellers of, 85

Commissioners of Sewers, powers of, 416

“Coshar” meat killed for the Jews, 121

Criminals, number of, in England and Wales, 320

Crossing-sweeper, the aristocratic, 467

---- ---- the bearded, 471

---- ---- a Regent-Street, 474

---- ---- a tradesman’s, 476

---- ---- “old woman over the water”, 477

---- ---- old woman who had been a pensioner, 478

---- ---- one who had been a servant-maid, 479

---- ---- the female Irish, 482

---- ---- the Sunday, 484

---- ---- the wooden-legged, 486

---- ---- the one-legged, 488

---- ---- the most severely afflicted, 488

---- ---- the negro who lost both his legs, 490

---- ---- the maimed Irish, 493

---- ---- Mike’s statement, 498

---- ---- Gander the captain, 499

---- ---- the king of the tumbling-boy crossing-sweepers, 501

---- ---- the girl sweeper sent out by her father, 505

Crossing-sweepers, 465

---- ---- able-bodied male, 467

---- ---- who have got permission from the police, narratives of, 472

---- ---- able-bodied Irish, 481

---- ---- the occasional, 484

---- ---- the afflicted, 486

---- ---- boy, and tumblers, 494

---- ---- where they lodge, 503

---- ---- their room, 504

---- ---- girl, 505

Curiosities, second-hand, sellers of, 21

Curtains, second-hand, sellers of, 14

Dog “finder’s” career, a, 51

Dog-finders, stealers, and restorers, the former, 48

---- ---- extent of their trade, 49

Dogs, sellers of, 52

---- sporting, sellers of, 54

“Dolly” business, the, 108

Dredgers, the, or river-finders, 147

Dust-contractors, 168

Dust-heap, composition of a, 171

---- ---- separation of, 172

Dustmen, the, 166

---- “filler” and “carrier”, 175

---- their general character, 177

Dustmen, sweeps, and nightmen, 159

---- number of, 162

Employers, “cutting,” varieties of, 232

---- “drivers”, 233

---- “grinders”, 233

Fires of London, 378

---- abstract of causes of, 379

---- extinction of, 381

Flushermen, the working, 428

---- history of an individual, 430

Furs, second-hand, sellers of, 45

Gander, the “captain” of the boy sweepers, 499

Garret workmen, labour of, 302

Glass and crockery, second-hand, sellers of, 15

Gold and silver fish, sellers of, 78

Hare and rabbit-skins, buyers of, 111

Harness, second-hand, sellers of, 23

Hill men and women, 173

Hogs’-wash, buyers of, 132

Home work, 313

Horse, food consumed by, and excretions in twenty-four hours, 194

Horse-dung of the streets of London, 193

---- ---- gross annual weight of, 195

House-drainage, as connected with the sewers, 395

Iron Jack, 11

Jew old clothes-men, 119

---- street-seller, life of a, 122

---- boy street-sellers, 122

---- their pursuits, traffic, &c., 123

---- girl street-sellers, 124

---- sellers of accordions, &c., 131

Jews, the street, 115

---- history of, 117

---- trades and localities, 117

---- habits and diet, 121

---- synagogues and religion, 125

---- politics, literature, and amusements, 126

---- charities, schools, and education, 127

---- funeral ceremonies, fasts, and customs, 131

Jewesses, street, the, 124

Kitchen-stuff, grease, and dripping, buyers of, 111

Knullers and queriers, 376

Labour, economy of, 307

Lasts, second-hand, sellers of, 23

“Leeks,” the, 375

Leverets, wild rabbits, &c., sellers of, 77

Linen, second-hand, sellers of, 13

Live animals, sellers of, 47

London street drains, 398

---- ---- ---- extent of, 400

---- ---- ---- order of, 401

---- ---- ---- outlets, ramifications, &c., of, 405

Low wages, remedies for, 254

“Lurker’s,” a, career, 51

Marine-store shops, 108

May-day, 370

May-day, sweeps’ festival, 371

Men’s second-hand clothes, sellers of, 40

Metal trays, second-hand, sellers of, 12

Metropolitan police district, the, 159

---- inhabited houses, 164

---- population, 165

“Middleman” system of work, 329

Monmouth-street, Dickens’s description of, 36

Mud-larks, 155

---- ---- story of a reclaimed, 158

Mineral productions and natural curiosities, sellers of, 81

Music “duffers”, 19

Musical instruments, second-hand, sellers of, 18

Night-soil, present disposal of, 448

Nightmen, the, working and mode of work, 450

Offal, how disposed of, 7

Old Clothes Exchange, the, 26

---- ---- ---- wholesale business at the, 27

Old clothes-men, 119

Old hats, sellers of, 43

Old John, the waterman, statement of, 480

Old woman “over the water,” the, 477

Old wood gatherers, 146

Paris, cesspool and sewer system of, 439

---- rag-gatherers of, 141

Paupers, street-sweeping, narratives of, 245

----, number of, in England and Wales, 320

Petticoat-lane, street-sellers of, 36

“Pure” finders, 143

---- ---- narrative of a female, 144

Purl-men, the, 93

“Rag and bottle” shops, 108

Rag-gatherers, 139

Rags, broken metal, bottles, glass, and bone, buyers of, 106

“Ramoneur Company,” the, 373

Rat-killing, 56

River beer-sellers, 93

River finders, 147

Rosemary-lane, street sellers of, 39

Rubbish-carters, the, 281, 289

---- ---- wages and perquisites of, 292

---- ---- social characteristics of, 295

---- ---- casual labourers among, 323

---- ---- scurf trade among, 327

Salt, sellers of, 89

Sand, sellers of, 90

Scavenger, statement of a “regular”, 224

Scavengers, master, of former times, 205

---- ---- oath of, 206

---- working, 216

---- labour and rates of payment, 219

---- “casual hands”, 220

---- habits and diet, 226

---- influence of free trade on their earnings, 228

---- worse paid, the, 232

Scavengery, contractors for, 210

---- contractors, regulations of, 211

---- contractors, premises of, 216

Scavenging, jet and hose system of, 275

Scurf-labourers, 236

Second-hand apparel, sellers of, 25

---- ---- articles, sellers of, 5

---- ---- ---- experience of a dealer in, 11

---- ---- live animals, productions, &c., street-sellers of,
their numbers, capital, and income, 97

---- ---- garments, uses of, 29

---- ---- varieties of, 32

---- ---- store-shops, 24

Seven-dials, Dickens’s description of, 35

Sewage, metropolitan, quantity of, 387

---- qualities and uses of, 407

Sewerage, the City, 403

---- new plan of, 411

Sewerage and scavengery, London, history of, 179

Sewers, ancient, 388

---- kinds and characteristics of, 390

---- subterranean character of, 394

---- house-drainage in connection with, 395

---- ventilation of, 423

---- flushing and plunging, 424

---- rats in the, 431

---- management of the, and the late Commission, 414

---- Commissioners, powers of, 416

---- rate, 420

Sewer-hunters, 150

---- ---- numbers of, 152

---- ---- strange tale of, 154

Sewermen and nightmen of London, 383

Shells, sellers of, 91

Shoddy mills, 30

---- fever, 31

Smithfield market, second-hand sellers at, 46

Smoke, evils of, 339

---- ---- scientific opinions upon, 340

Squirrels, sellers of, 77

“Strapping” system, the, illustration of, 304

Street-buyers, the, varieties of, 103

Street-cleansing, modes and characteristics of, 207

---- ---- men and carts employed in, 213

---- ---- pauper labour employed in, 243

---- ---- narratives of individuals, 245

Street-finders or collectors, varieties of, 136

Street-folk, census of, 1

---- ---- capital and trade, 2

---- ---- proscription of, 3

---- ---- rate of increase, 5

Street-muck, or “mac”, 198

---- ---- uses of, 198

---- ---- value of, 199

Street Jews, the, 115

Street-orderlies, the, 253

---- ---- condition of, 261

---- ---- expenditure of, 265

---- ---- earnings of, 266

---- ---- City surveyor’s report of, 271

Street-sweeping, employers, 209

---- ---- parishes, 209

---- ---- philanthropists, 209

Street-sweeping machines, 208

---- ---- hands employed, 238

Streets of London, how paved, 181

---- ---- traffic of, 184

---- ---- dust and dirt of, 185

---- ---- ---- loss and injury from, 185

---- ---- mud of the, 200

---- ---- cost and traffic of, 278

Sweeping chimneys of steam-vessels, 372

Surface-water of the streets of London, 202

---- ---- ---- ---- analysis of, 205

Tan-turf, sellers of, 87

Tea-leaves, buyers of, 133

Telescopes and pocket-glasses, second-hand, sellers of, 22

“Translators” of old shoes, 34

---- extent of the trade, 35

Tumbling boy-sweepers, king of the, 501

Umbrellas and parasols, buyers of, 115

Washing expenses in London, 190

Waste-paper, buyers of, 113

Water, daily supply of the metropolis, 203

Watermen’s Company, form of license, 95

Weapons, second-hand, sellers of, 21

Wet house-refuse, 383

---- ---- ---- means of removing, 385

Women’s second-hand apparel, sellers of, 44

Wrappers or “bale-stuff”, 13

Young Mike the crossing-sweeper, 498

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The definition of a Costermonger strictly includes only such
individuals as confine themselves to the sale of the produce of
the Green and Fruit Markets: the term is here restricted to that
signification.

[2] This number includes Men, Women, and Children.

[3] The Watercress trade is carried on in the streets, principally by
old people and children. The chief mart to which the street-sellers of
cresses resort is Farringdon-market, a place which but few or none of
the regular Costermongers attend.

[4] The Chickweed and Groundsell Sellers and the Turf-Cutters’ traffic
has but little expense connected with it, and their trade is therefore
nearly all profit.

[5] “v. t.” signifies “various times,” of theft and of “restoration.”

[6] The Metropolitan Police District comprises a circle, the radius of
which is 15 miles from Charing Cross; the extreme boundary on the N.
includes the parish of Cheshunt and South Mimms; on the S., Epsom; on
the E., Dagenham and Crayford; and on the W., Uxbridge and Staines.

[7] The inner district includes the parish of St. John, Hampstead, on
the N.; Tooting and Streatham on the S.; Ealing and Brentford on the
W.; and Greenwich on the E.

The Registrar General’s District is equal, or nearly so, to the inner
Metropolitan Police District.

[8] The City of London is bounded on the S. by the River, on the E. by
Whitechapel, on the W. by Chancery Lane, and N. by Finsbury.

[9] The area here stated is that of the city without the walls,
and includes White Friars precinct and Holy Trinity, Minories, both
belonging to other districts.

[10] This area is that of the city within the walls, and does not
include White Friars, which belongs to the district.

[11] The area of the districts of St. Saviour and St. Olave is included
in that returned for St. George, Southwark.

[12] The population and number of inhabited houses in these districts
has decreased annually to this extent since 1841.

[13] This relates merely to the repairs to the wooden pavement, but if
a renewal of the blocks be necessary, then the cost approaches that of
a new road; and a renewal is considered necessary about once in three
years.

[14] “Haunsed” is explained by Strype to signify “made too high,” and
the “Redosses” to be “Reredoughs.” A mason informed me that he believed
these Redosses were what were known in some old country-houses as
“Back-Flues,” or flues connecting any fire-grate in the out-offices
with the main chimney. The term “lene” is the Teutonic _Lehn_, and
signifies “let, lease,” or literally _loan_.

[15] The reader will remember that in the historical sketch given
of the progress of public scavengery, the word “Rakers” occurred in
connection with the sworn master scavengers, &c., &c.; the word is now
unknown to the trade, except that it appears on city documents.

[16] The parishes marked thus [16] have their dustmen and dust-carts,
as well as the rubbish carting and the individuals in the dust-yard,
reckoned in the numbers employed by the contractors.

[17] I have computed all the weekly wages at 16_s._, though some of the
men are paid only 14_s._ My object in this is to give the contractors
the benefit of the difference.

[18] The Saxon _Sceorfa_, which is the original of the English Scurf,
means a scab, and scab is the term given to the “cheap men” in the
shoemaking trade. Scab is the root of our word _Shabby_; hence Scurf
and Scab, deprived of their offensive associations, both mean shabby
fellows.

[19] These items wages _must_ include to prevent pauperism, _even with
providence_. But this is only on the supposition that the labourer is
unmarried; if married, however, and having a family, then his wages
should include, moreover, the keep of at least three extra persons,
as well as the education of the children. If not, one of two results
is self-evident--either the wife must toil, to the neglect of her
young ones, and they be allowed to run about and pick their morals and
education, as I have before said, out of the gutter, or else the whole
family must be transferred to the care of the parish.

[20] I have estimated the whole at 15_s._ a week the year through,
gangers, “honourable men,” regular hands and all, so as to allow for
the diminished receipts of the casual hands.

[21] The usual argument in favour of machinery, viz., that “by reducing
prices it extends the market, and so, causing a greater demand for
the commodities, induces a greater quantity of employment,” would
also be an argument in favour of over population, since this, by
cheapening labour, must have the same effect as machinery on prices,
and, consequently (according to the above logic), induce a greater
quantity of employment! But granting that machinery really does benefit
the labourer in cases _where the market, and therefore the quantity
of work, is largely extensible_, surely it cannot but be an injury in
those callings where _the quantity of work is fixed_. Such is the fact
with the sawing of wood, the reaping of corn, the threshing of corn,
the sweeping of the streets, &c., and hence the evil of mechanical
labour applied to such trades.

[22] Mr. Sidney Herbert informed me, that when he was connected with
the Ordnance Department the severest punishment they could discover for
idleness was the piling and unpiling of cannon shot; but surely this
was the consummation of official folly! for idleness being simply an
aversion to work, it is almost self-evident that it is _impossible_
to remove this aversion by making labour inordinately irksome and
repulsive. Until we understand the means by which work is made
pleasant, and can discover other modes of employing our paupers and
criminals, all our workhouse and prison discipline is idle tyranny.

[23] This is done at the Model Prison, Pentonville.

[24] The number of men here given as employed by the parishes in the
scavaging of the streets will be found to differ from that of the table
at page 213; but the present table includes all the parish-men employed
throughout London, whereas the other referred to only a portion of the
localities there mentioned.

[25] To the honourable conduct of the above-named contractors to their
men, I am glad to be able to bear witness. All the men speak in the
highest terms of them.

[26] This is Mr. Mills’s second _fundamental_ proposition respecting
capital (see “Principles of Pol. Econ.” p. 82, vol. i.). “What I intend
to assert is,” says that gentleman, “that the portion (of capital)
which is destined to the maintenance of the labourers may--supposing no
increase in anything else--be indefinitely increased, without creating
an impossibility of finding them employment--in other words, if there
are human beings capable of work, and food to feed them, they may
always be employed in producing something.”

[27] Mr. Cochrane is said, in the Reports of the National Philanthropic
Association, to have expended no less than 6000_l._ of his fortune in
the institution of the Street-Orderly system of scavaging.

[28] A street-orderly in St. Martin’s-lane recovered a piece of
broad-cloth from a man who had just stolen it from a warehouse;
others in Drury-lane detected several thefts from provision-shops.
Two orderlies in Holborn saved the lives of the guard and driver of
one of Her Majesty’s mail-carts, the horse having become unmanageable
in consequence of the shafts being broken. In St. Mary’s Church,
Lambeth, a gentleman having fallen down in apoplexy, the orderlies
who were attending Divine service, carried him out into the air, and
promptly procured him medical aid, but unhappily life was extinct. Many
instances have occurred, however, in which they have rendered essential
service to the public and to individuals.

[29] The wages paid are not stated.

[30] At p. 183 the sum of 18,225_l._ is said to be expended in repairs
_annually_; it should have been _weekly_.

[31] At p. 185 the traffic of London Bridge is stated to be 13,000
conveyances per hour, instead of per 12 hours.

[32] The _core_ in this term may be a corruption of the Saxon _Carr_,
a rock, rather than that which would at first suggest itself as its
origin, viz., the Latin _cor_, the heart. _Hard-core_ would therefore
mean hard rock-like rubbish, instead of lumps of rubbish having a hard
nucleus or heart.

[33] The term _rubbish_ is a polite corruption of the original word
_rubbage_, which is still used by uneducated people; _ish_ is an
_adjectival_ termination, as whitish, slavish, brutish, &c., and
is used only in connection with such substantives as are derived
from adjectives, as English, Scottish, &c. Whereas the affix age is
strictly substantival, as sewage, garbage, wharfage, &c., and is found
applied only to adjectives derived from substantives, as _savage_. A
like polite corruption is found in the word _pudding_, which should
be strictly _pudden_; the addition of the g is as gross a mistake
as saying _garding_ for _garden_. There is no such verb as to _pud_
whence could come the substantival participle _pudding_; and the French
word from which we derive our term is _poudin_ without the _g_, like
_jardin_, the root of our _garden_.

[34] This is the Saxon _sceard_, which means a sheard, remnant, or
fragment, and is from the verb _sceran_, signifying both to shear
and to share or divide. The low Dutch _schaard_ is a piece of pot, a
fragment.

[35] Lord Bacon’s Hist. of King Henry VII., Works, vol. v. p. 61.

[36] 25th Henry VIII. cap. 13.

[37] 5 & 6 Edw. VI., cap. 5.

[38] Eden’s Hist. of the Poor, vol. i. p. 118.

[39] Latimer’s Sermons, p. 100.

[40] Pictorial History of England, vol. ii. p. 900.

[41] Reports of the “Commissioner” of the _Times_ Newspaper, in June,
1845.

[42] I have here included those engaged in Trade and Commerce, and
employers as well as the employed among the _producers_.

[43] The amount of the population from 1570 to 1750, as here given, is
copied from Rickman’s tables, as published by the Registrar-General.

[44] The population at the decennial term, as here given, is the
amended calculation of the Registrar-General, as given in the new
census tables.

[45] From returns furnished by the clergy.

[46] The returns here cited are copied from those given by the
Registrar-General in the new census.

[47] Returns obtained through an inquiry instituted by the Irish House
of Lords.

[48] The population from 1754-1788 is estimated from the “hearth money”
returns.

[49] Newenham’s Inquiry into the Population of Ireland.

[50] Estimate from incomplete census.

[51] First complete census.

[52] The _official_ value was established long ago; it represents a
price put upon merchandise or commodities; it is in reality a fixed
value, and serves to indicate the relative extent of imports and
exports in different years. The _declared_ value is simply the market
price.

[53] The official returns as to the number of paupers are most
incomplete and unsatisfactory. In the 10th annual Report of the Poor
Law Commissioners, p. 480 (1844), a table is printed which is said
to give the returns from the earliest period for which authentic
Parliamentary documents have been received, and this sets forth the
number of paupers in England and Wales, for the _entire twelve months_
in the years 1803, 1813, 1814, and 1815; then comes a long interval
of “no returns,” and after 1839 we have the numbers for only _three
months_ in each year, from 1840 up to 1843; in the first annual Report
(1848) these returns for one quarter in each year are continued up to
1848; and then we get the returns for only two days in each year, the
1st of July and the 1st of January, so that to come to any conclusion
amid so much inconsistency is utterly impossible. The numbers above
given would have been continued to the present period, could any
comparison have been instituted. The numbers for the periods (not above
given) are--

1803 1,040,716}
1813 1,426,065} Number of paupers for the
1814 1,402,576} entire twelve months.
1815 1,319,851}
1849 (1st Jan.) 940,851 }
„ (1st July) 846,988 }
1850 (1st Jan.) 889,830 } Number of paupers for two
„ (1st July) 796,318 } separate days in each year.
1851 (1st Jan.) 829,440 }

[54] It might at first appear that, when the work is shifted to the
Continent, there would be a proportionate decrease of the aggregate
quantity at home, but a little reflection will teach us that the
foreigners must take something from us in _exchange_ for their work,
and so increase the quantity of our work in certain respects as much as
they depress it in others.

[55] The Great Exhibition, I am informed, produced a very small effect
on the consumption of porter; and, according to the official returns,
160,000 gallons less spirits were consumed in the first nine months
of the present year, than in the corresponding months of the last:
thus showing that any occupation of mind or body is incompatible
with intemperate habits, for drunkenness is essentially the vice of
idleness, or want of something better to do.

[56] The term _sanc_ in “sanc-work” is the Norman word for blood
(Latin, _sanguis_; French, _sang_), so that “sanc-work” means,
literally, bloody work, this called either from the sanguinary trade of
the soldier, or from the blood-red colour of the cloth.

[57] “Reredos, dossel (_retable_, Fr.; _postergule_, Ital.),” according
to Parker’s Glossary of Architecture, was “the wall or screen at the
back of an altar, seat, &c.; it was usually ornamented with panelling,
&c., especially behind an altar, and sometimes was enriched with
a profusion of niches, buttresses, pinnacles, statues, and other
decorations, which were often painted with brilliant colours.

“The open fire-hearth, frequently used in ancient domestic halls, was
likewise called a reredos.

“In the description of Britain prefixed to Holinshed’s ‘Chronicles,’
we are told that formerly, before chimneys were common in mean houses,
‘each man made his fire against a reredosse in the hall, where he dined
and dressed his meat.’”

The original word would appear to be _dosel_ or _rere-dosel_; for
Kelham, in his “Norman Dictionary,” explains the word _doser_ or
_dosel_ to signify a hanging or canopy of silk, silver, or gold work,
under which kings or great personages sit; also the back of a chair
of state (the word being probably a derivative of the Latin _dorsum_,
the back. _Dos_, in slang, means a _bed_, a “dossing crib” being a
sleeping-place, and has clearly the same origin). A _rere-dos_ or
_rere-dosel_ would thus appear to have been a _screen_ placed _behind_
anything. I am told, that in the old houses in the north of England,
erections at the back of the fire may, to this day, occasionally be
seen, with an aperture behind for the insertion of plates, and such
other things as may require warming.

A correspondent says there is “a ‘reredos,’ or open fire-hearth, now
to be seen in the extensive and beautiful ruins of the Abbey of St.
Agatha, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. The ivy now hangs over and
partially conceals this reredos; but its form is tolerably perfect,
and the stones are still coloured by the action of the fire, which
was extinguished, I need hardly say, by the cold water thrown on such
places by Henry VIII.”

[58] It has been notorious for many years, that flowers will not bloom
in any natural luxuriance, and that fruit will not properly ripen,
in the heart of the city. Whilst this is an unquestionable fact, it
is also a fact, that greatly as suburban dwellings have increased,
and truly as London may be said to have “gone into the country,”
the greater quantity of the large, excellent, unfailing, and cheap
supply of the fruits and vegetables in the London “green” markets are
grown within a circle of from ten to twelve miles from St. Paul’s.
In the course of my inquiries (in the series of letters on Labour
and the Poor in the _Morning Chronicle_) into the supply, &c., to
the “green markets” of the metropolis, I was told by an experienced
market-gardener, who had friends and connections in several of the
suburbs, that he fancied, and others in the trade were of the same
opinion, that no gardening could be anything but a failure if attempted
within “where the fogs went.” My informant explained to me that the
fogs, so peculiar to London, did not usually extend beyond three or
four miles from the heart of the city. He was satisfied, he said, that
within half a mile or so of this reach of fog the gardener’s labours
might be crowned with success. He knew nothing of any scientific
reason for his opinion, but as far as a purely London fog extended
(without regard to any mist pervading the whole country as well as
the neighbourhood of the capital), he thought it was the boundary
within which there could be no proper growth of fruit or flowers. That
the London fog has its _limits_ as regards the manifestation of its
greatest density, there can be no doubt. My informant was frequently
asked, when on his way home, by omnibus drivers and others whom he
knew, and met on their way to town a few miles from it: “How’s the fog,
sir? _How far?_”

The extent of the London fog, then, if the information I have cited be
correct, may be considered as indicating that portion of the metropolis
where the population, and consequently the smoke, is the thickest, and
within which agricultural and horticultural labours cannot meet with
success. “The nuisance of a November fog in London,” Mr. Booth stated
to the Smoke Committee, “is most assuredly increased by the smoke
of the town, arising from furnaces and private fires. It is vapour
saturated with particles of carbon which causes all that uneasiness and
pain in the lungs, and the uneasy sensations which we experience in our
heads. I have no doubt of the density of these fogs arising from this
carbonaceous matter.”

The loss from the impossibility of promoting vegetation in the district
most subjected to the fog is nothing, as the whole ground is already
occupied for the thousand purposes of a great commercial city. The
matter is, however, highly curious, as a result of the London smoke.

Concerning the frequency of fogs in the district of the immediate
neighbourhood of the metropolis, it is stated in Weale’s “London,”
that fogs “appear to be owing, 1st, to the presence of the river; and,
2ndly, to the fact that the superior temperature of the town produces
results precisely similar to those we find to occur upon rivers and
lakes. The cold damp currents of the atmosphere, which cannot act
upon the air of the country districts, owing to the equality of their
specific gravity, when they encounter the warmer and lighter strata
over the town, displace the latter, intermixing with it and condensing
the moisture. Fogs thus are often to be observed in London, whilst the
surrounding country is entirely free from them. The peculiar colour
of the London fogs appears to be owing to the fact that, during their
prevalence, the ascent of the coal smoke is impeded, and that it is
thus mixed with the condensed moisture of the atmosphere. As is well
known, they are often so dense as to require the gas to be lighted in
midday, and they cover the town with a most dingy and depressing pall.
They also frequently exhibit the peculiarity of increasing density
after their first formation, which appears to be owing to the descent
of fresh currents of cold air towards the lighter regions of the
atmosphere.

“They do not occur when the wind is in a dry quarter, as for instance
when it is in the east; notwithstanding that there may be very
considerable difference in the temperature of the air and of the water
or the ground. The peculiar odour which attends the London fogs has
not yet been satisfactorily explained; although the uniformity of its
recurrence, and its very marked character, would appear to challenge
elaborate examination.”

[59] The quantity of soot deposited depends greatly on the length,
draught, and irregular surface of the chimney. The kitchen flue yields
by far the most soot for an equal quantity of coals burnt, because it
is of greater length. The quantity above cited is the average yield
from the several chimneys of a house. It will be seen hereafter that
the quantity collected is only 800,000 bushels; a great proportion
of the chimneys of the poor being seldom swept, and some cleansed by
themselves.

[60] Soot of coal is said, by Dr. Ure, in his admirable Dictionary of
Arts and Manufactures, to contain “sulphate and carbonate of ammonia
along with bituminous matter.”

[61] Querying means literally inquiring or asking for work at the
different houses. The “queriers” among the sweeps are a kind of pedlar
operatives.

[62] In East and West London there are rather more than 32 houses to
the acre, which gives an average of 151 square yards to each dwelling,
so that, allowing the streets here to occupy one-third of the area, we
have 100 square yards for the space covered by each house. In Lewisham,
Hampstead, and Wandsworth, there is not one house to the acre. The
average number of houses per acre throughout London is 4.

[63] _Gully_ here is a corruption of the word _Gullet_, or throat; the
Norman is _guelle_ (Lat. _gula_), and the French, _goulet_; from this
the word _gully_ appears to be directly derived. A _gully_-drain is
literally a _gullet_-drain, that is, a drain serving the purposes of a
gullet or channel for liquids, and a gully-hole the mouth, orifice, or
opening to the _gullet_ or gully-drain.

[64] Of the derivation of the word _Sewer_ there have been many
conjectures, but no approximation to the truth. One of the earliest
instances I have met with of any detailed mention of sewers, is in
an address delivered by a “Coroner,” whose name does not appear, to
“a jury of sewers.” This address was delivered somewhere between the
years 1660 and 1670. The coroner having first spoken of the importance
of “Navigation and Drayning” (draining), then came to the question of
sewers.

“Sewars,” he said, “are to be accounted your grand Issuers of Water,
from whence I conceive they carry their name (_Sewars quasi Issuers_).
I shall take his opinion who delivers them to be Currents of Water,
kept in on both sides with banks, and, in some sense, they may be
called a certain kind of a little or small river. But as for the
derivation of the word Sewar, from two of our English words, _Sea_ and
_Were_, or, as others will have it, _Sea_ and _Ward_, give me leave,
now I have mentioned it, to--leave it to your judgments.

“However, this word _Sewar_ is very famous amongst us, both for giving
the title of the Commission of Sewars itself, and for being the
ordinary name of most of your common water-courses, for Drayning, and
therefore, I presume, there are none of you of these juries but both
know--

“1. What Sewars signify, and also, in particular,

“2. What they are; and of a thing so generally known, and of such
general use.”

The Rev. Dr. Lemon, who gave the world a work on “English Etymology,”
from the Greek and Latin, and from the Saxon and Norman, was regarded
as a high authority during the latter part of the last century, when
his quarto first appeared. The following is his account, under the head
“Sewers”--

“Skinn. rejects Minsh’s. deriv. of ‘olim scriptum fuisse _seward_
à sea-ward, quod versus mare factæ sunt: longè verisimilius à Fr.
Gall. _eauier_; sentina; _incile_, supple. aquarum:’--then why did
not the Dr. trace this Fr. Gall. _eauier_? if he had, he would have
found it distorted ab Ὑδωρ, _aqua_; _sewers_ being a species of
_aqueduct_:--Lye, in his Add., gives another deriv., viz. ‘ab Iceland.
_sua_, _colare_; ut existimo; ad quod referre vellem _sewer_; _cloaca_;
per _sordes_ urbis ejiciuntur:’--the very word _sordes_ gives me a hint
that _sewer_ may be derived à ‘Σαιρω, _vel_ Σαροω, _verro_: nempe quia
_sordes_, quæ _everruntur_ è domo, in unum locum _accumulantur_; R.
Σωρος, _cumulus_: Voss.’--_a collection of sweepings, slop, dirt, &c._”

But these are the follies of learning. Had our lexicographers known
that the vulgar were, as Dr. Latham says, “the conservators of the
Saxon language” with us, they would have sought information from the
word “shore,” which the uneducated, and, consequently, unperverted,
invariably use in the place of the more polite “sewer”--the common
_sewer_ is always termed by them “the common _shore_.” Now the word
_shore_, in Saxon, is written _score_ and _scor_ (for _c_ = _h_), and
means not only a bank, the land immediately next to the sea, but a
_score_, a tally--for they are both substantives, made from the verb
_sceran_ (p. _scear_, _scær_, pp. _scoren_, _gescoren_), to _shear_,
cut off, _share_, divide; and hence they meant, in the one case, the
division of the land from the sea; and in the other, a division cut
in a piece of wood, with a view to counting. The substantive _scar_
has the same origin; as well as the verb to _score_, to cut, to gash.
The Scandinavian cognates for the Saxon _scor_ may be cited as proofs
of what is here asserted. They are, Icel., _skor_, a notch; Swed.,
_skâra_, a notch; and Dan., _skaar_ and _skure_, a notch, an incision.
It would seem, therefore, that the word _shore_, in the sense of
_sewer_ (Dan., _skure_; Anglice, _shure_, for _k_ = _h_), originally
meant merely a _score_ or incision made in the ground, a _ditch_ sunk
with the view of carrying off the refuse-water, a watercourse, and
consequently a drain. A sewer is now a covered ditch, or channel for
refuse water.

[65] This outlet is known to the flushermen, &c., as “below the backs
of houses,” from its devious course _under the houses_ without pursuing
any direct line parallel with the open part of the streets.

[66] The following is the analysis of a gallon of sewage, also dried to
evaporation, by Professor Miller:--

Ammonia 3·26
Phosphoric acid 0·44
Potash 1·02
Silica 0·54
Lime 7·54
Magnesia 1·87
Common salt 13·66
Sulphuric acid 7·04
Carbonic acid 4·41
Combustible matter, containing
0·34 nitrogen 5·80
Traces of oxide of iron.
-----
Making in solution 45·58
-----
Matters in suspension, consisting of
combustible matters, sand, lime,
and oxide of iron 44·50

[67] The following note appears in Mr. Fortescue’s statement:--“In
some trial works near the metropolis sewer water was applied to land,
on the condition that the value of half the extra crop should be taken
as payment. The dressings were only single dressings. The officer
making the valuation reported, that there was at the least one sack of
wheat and one load of straw per acre extra from its application on one
breadth of land; in another, full one quarter of wheat more, and one
load of straw extra per acre. The reports of the effects of sewer-water
in increasing the yield of oats as well as of wheat were equally good.
It is stated by Captain Vetch that in South America irrigation is used
with great advantage for wheat.”

[68] The following statement may, according to the work above alluded
to, be presented as an approximate.

[69] Rental of the districts now rated.

[70] Rental of the districts within the active jurisdiction in which
expenses have been incurred, and which are about to be rated.

[71] These officers are paid only during the period of service, and are
chiefly engaged on special works.

The corresponding officers for London are under the City Commissioners.

[72] In one of their Reports the Board of Health has spoken of the
yearly cleansing of the cesspools; but a cesspool, I am assured, is
rarely emptied by manual labour, unless it be full, for as the process
is generally regarded as a nuisance, it is resorted to as seldom as
possible. It may, perhaps, be different with the cesspool-emptying by
the hydraulic process, which is _not_ a nuisance.

[73] It was ascertained that 3 gallons (half a cubic foot) of water
would carry off 1 lb. of the more solid excrementitious matter through
a 6-inch pipe, with an inclination of 1 in 10.

[74] Mr. Rammell supplies the following note on the use of “Poudrette.”

“In connexion with this subject,” he says, “a few observations upon the
application of poudrette in agricultural process may not be without
interest.

“With regard to the fertilizing properties of this preparation, M.
Maxime Paulet, in his work entitled ‘Théorie et Pratique des Engrais,’
gives a table of the fertilizing qualities of various descriptions
of manure, the value of each being determined by the quantity of
nitrogen it contains. Taking for a standard good farm-yard dung, which
contains on an average 4 per 1000 of nitrogen, and assuming that 10,000
kilogrammes (about 22,000 lbs. English) of this manure (containing 40
kilogrammes of nitrogen) are necessary to manure one hectare (2-1/2
acres nearly) of land, the quantities of poudrette and of some other
animal manures required to produce a similar effect would be as
follows:--

Kilogr.
“Good farm-yard dung, the quantity usually
spread upon one hectare of land 10,000
Equivalent quantities of human urine, not
having undergone fermentation 5,600
Equivalent quantities of poudrette of Montfaucon 2,550
Equivalent quantities of mixed human excrements
(this quantity I have calculated from data given
in the same work) 1,333
Equivalent quantities of liquid blood of
the abattoirs 1,333
Equivalent quantities of bones 650
Equivalent quantities of average of guano
(two specimens are given) 512
Equivalent quantities of urine of the public
urinals in fermentation, and incompletely dried 233

“M. Paulet estimates the loss of the ammoniacal products contained in
the fæcal matters when they are withdrawn from the cesspools, by the
time they have been ultimately reduced into poudrette, at from 80 to 90
per cent.

“I have not been able to meet with an analysis of the matters found
in the fixed and movable cesspools of Paris, but in the ‘Cours
d’Agriculture,’ of M. le Comte de Gasparin, I find an analysis by MM.
Payen and Boussingault of some matter taken from the cesspools of
Lille, and in the state in which it is ordinarily used in the suburbs
of that city as manure. This matter was found to contain on the average
0·205 per cent of nitrogen, and thus by the rule observed in drawing up
the above table, 19,512 kilogrammes of it would be necessary to produce
the same effect upon one hectare of land as the other manures there
mentioned. The wide difference between this quantity and that (1333
kilogrammes) stated for the mixed human excrements in their undiluted
state, would lead to the conclusion that a very large proportion of
water was present in the matter sent from Lille, unless we are to
attribute a portion of the difference to the accidental circumstance
of the bad quality of this matter. It appears that this is very
variable, according to the style of living of the persons producing
it. ‘Upon this subject,’ M. Paulet says, ‘the case of an agriculturist
in the neighbourhood of Paris is cited, who bought the contents of the
cesspools of one of the fashionable restaurants of the Palais Royal.
Making a profitable speculation of it, he purchased the matter of the
cesspools of several barracks. This bargain, however, resulted in a
loss, for the produce from this last matter came very short of that
given by the first.’

“Poudrette weighs 70 kilogrammes the hectolitre (154 lbs. per 22
gallons), and the quantity usually spread upon one hectare of land
(2-1/2 acres nearly) is 1750 kilogrammes, being at the rate of about
1540 lbs. per acre English measure. It is cast upon the land by the
hand, in the manner that corn is sown.

“Poudrette packed in sacks very soon destroys them. This is always the
case, whether it is whole or has been newly prepared.

“A serious accident occurred in 1818, on board a vessel named the
_Arthur_, which sailed from Rouen with a cargo of poudrette for
Guadaloupe. During the voyage a disease broke out on board which
carried off half the crew, and left the remainder in a deplorable state
of health when they reached their destination. It attacked also the men
who landed the cargo; they all suffered in a greater or less degree.
The poudrette was proved to have been shipped during a wet season, and
to have been exposed before and during shipment, in a manner to allow
it to absorb a considerable quantity of moisture. The accident appears
to have been due to the subsequent fermentation of the mass in the
hold--increased to an intense degree by the moisture it had acquired,
and by the heat of a tropical climate.

“M. Parent du Châtelet, to whom the matter was referred, recommended
that to guard against similar accidents in future, the poudrette
intended for exportation, in order to deprive it entirely of humidity,
should be mixed with an absorbent powder, such as quicklime, and that
it should be packed in casks to protect it from moisture during the
voyage.”

[75] “It is in the upper basins,” adds the Reports, “that the first
separation of the liquids and solids takes place, the latter falling
to the bottom, and the former gradually flowing off through a sluice
into the lower basins. This first separation, however, is by no means
complete, a considerable deposit taking place in the lower basins. The
mass in the upper basins, after three or four years, then appears like
a thick mud, half liquid, half solid; it is of depth varying from 12
to 15 feet. In order entirely to get rid of the liquids, deep channels
are then cut across the mass, by which they are drained off, when the
deposit soon becomes sufficiently stiff to permit of its being dug out
and spread upon the drying-ground, where, to assist the desiccation, it
is turned over two or three times a-day by means of a harrow drawn by a
horse.

“The time necessary for the requisite desiccation varies a good deal,
according to the season of the year, the temperature, and the dry or
moist state of the atmosphere. Ere yet it is entirely deprived of
humidity, the matter is collected into heaps, varying in size usually
from 8 to 10 yards high, and from 60 to 80 yards long, by 25 or 30
yards wide. These heaps or mounds generally remain a twelvemonth
untouched, sometimes even for two or three years; but as fast as the
material is required, they are worked from one of the sides by means
of pickaxes, shovels, and rakes; the pieces separated are then easily
broken and reduced to powder, foreign substances being carefully
excluded. This operation, which is the last the matter undergoes,
is performed by women. The poudrette then appears like a mould of a
grey-black colour, light, greasy to the touch, finely grained, and
giving out a particular faint and nauseous odour.

“The finer particles of matter carried by the liquids into the lower
basins, and there more gradually deposited in combination with a
precipitate from the urine, yield a variety of poudrette, preferred, by
the farmers, for its superior fertilizing properties. In this case the
drying process is conducted more slowly and with more difficulty than
in the other, but more completely.

“In general the poudrette is dried with great difficulty; it appears to
have an extreme affinity for water; few substances give out moisture
more slowly, or absorb it more greedily from the air.

“A good deal of heat is generated in the heaps of desiccated matter.
This is always sensible to the touch, and sometimes results in
spontaneous combustion.

“The intensity of this heat is not in proportion to the elevation of
temperature of the atmosphere. It is promoted by moisture. The only
means of extinguishing the fire when it is once developed is to turn
over the mass from top to bottom, in order to expose it to the air.
Water thrown upon it, unless in very large quantities, would only
increase its activity.”

[76] 4-1/4 heaped bushels each, English measure.

[77] I did not hear any of the London nightmen or sewermen complain of
inflammation in the eyes, and no such effect was visible; nor that they
suffered from temporary blindness, or were, indeed, thrown out of work
from any such cause; they merely remarked that they were first dazzled,
or “_dazed_,” with the soil. But the labour of the Parisian is far
more continuous and regular than the London nightman, owing in a great
degree to the system of _movable cesspools_ in Paris.

[78] It must be recollected, to account for the greater quantity of
matter between the cesspools of Paris and London, that the French
fixed cesspool, from the greater average of inmates to each house,
must necessarily contain about three times and a half as much as that
of a London cesspool. If the dwellers in a Parisian house, instead of
averaging twenty-four, averaged between seven and eight, as in London,
the cesspool contents in Paris would, at the above rate, be between
four and five tons (as it is in London) for the average of each house.

Transcriber's Note

Transcribed from the 1967 reprinting of the 1865 edition.

Larger tables have been refactored to improve readability on smaller
screens.

Images and tables have been moved to avoid breaking paragraphs.

The following apparent errors have been corrected:

p. 8 "arts" changed to "‘arts"

p. 9 "_s_" changed to "_s._"

p. 9 "per lb." changed to "per lb.)"

p. 9 "year’s" changed to "years"

p. 14 "streets." changed to "streets,"

p. 14 "the second hand" changed to "the second-hand"

p. 14 "“slaughter-houses.”" changed to "“slaughter-houses")."

p. 15 "&c.," changed to "&c.),"

p. 16 "trooper." changed to "trooper.”"

p. 20 "pawbroker" changed to "pawnbroker"

p. 23 "been" changed to "being"

p. 24 "Second hand" changed to "Second-hand"

p. 29 "insufcient" changed to "insufficient"

p. 29 "fermerly" changed to "formerly"

p. 30 "In the upper" changed to "“In the upper"

p. 36 "habilments" changed to "habiliments"

p. 42 "day’s" changed to "days"

p. 43 "them go.”" changed to "them go."

p. 48 "Amdassador" changed to "Ambassador"

p. 49 "Barnard (v. t)" changed to "Barnard (v. t.)"

p. 58 " bird-cather’s" changed to " bird-catcher’s"

p. 64 "‘Why" changed to "“‘Why"

p. 69 "When" changed to "“When"

p. 72 "6_d_;" changed to "6_d._;"

p. 72 "fern." changed to "fern)."

p. 73 "gentlemen" changed to "gentleman"

p. 75 "After father" changed to "“After father"

p. 91 "cwt;" changed to "cwt.;" (two instances)

p. 93 "naval stimulate" changed to "stimulate"

p. 93 "navel" changed to "naval"

p. 100 "early" changed to "yearly"

pp. 104-5 "alalthough" changed to "although"

p. 105 "formant" changed to "informant"

p. 111 "wife," changed to "wife,”"

(illustration) "_by_ BKARD" changed to "_by_ BEARD"

p. 131 "officating" changed to "officiating"

(illustration) "BEARD." changed to "BEARD.]"

p. 143 "disgreeable" changed to "disagreeable"

p. 160 "to-enjoy" changed to "to enjoy"

p. 164 "many others." changed to "many others.”"

p. 167 "Ditto" changed to "Ditto."

p. 174 "commisioners" changed to "commissioners"

p. 191 "250 ton" changed to "250 tons"

p. 202 "Daniel" changed to "Daniell"

p. 209 "Somers-town." changed to "Somers-town.”"

p. 227 "daily, “he" changed to "daily, he"

p. 227 "average" changed to "average)"

p. 228 "pursuaded" changed to "persuaded"

p. 232 "two" changed to "two."

p. 241 (note) "cheapening, labour" changed to "cheapening labour,"

p. 241 "work)," changed to "work,"

p. 243 "willingnes" changed to "willingness"

p. 244 "2_s_,"ct "2_s._,"

p. 249 "16_s_," changed to "16_s._,"

p. 249 "100,000_l_," changed to "100,000_l._,"

p. 249 "lost 6_s._’”" changed to "lost 6_s._”"

p. 249 "and though" changed to "“and though"

p. 249 "and very few" changed to "“and very few"

p. 262 "_stoneyard_.”" changed to "_stoneyard_."

p. 266 "National School" changed to "National School."

p. 267 "dispensary" changed to "dispensary."

p. 269 "boys boys" changed to "boys"

p. 272 "cartage, &c." changed to "cartage, &c.)"

p. 273 "2 Years" changed to "2 Years."

p. 278 "(3000_l._) per annum" changed to "(3000_l._) per annum;"

p. 280 "Gracechurch-streeet" changed to "Gracechurch-street"

p. 284 "St, Martin’s" changed to "St. Martin’s"

p. 288 "which is the the" changed to "which is the"

p. 291 "Wandsworth" changed to "Wandsworth."

p. 297 "some 3_d_" changed to "some 3_d._"

p. 304 "at present." changed to "at present.”"

p. 305 "were some" changed to "where some"

p. 307 "_production_" changed to "_production_."

p. 308 "tenants were," changed to "tenants, were"

p. 309 "An act was passed" changed to "an Act was passed"

p. 312 "veneers.”" changed to "veneers.’"

p. 313 "decideded" changed to "decided"

p. 334 "they don’t" changed to "‘they don’t"

p. 335 "Londonreceive" changed to "London receive"

p. 337 "became" changed to "become"

p. 344 "small master" changed to "a small master"

p. 348 "“Soon after" changed to "Soon after"

p. 349 "The way" changed to "“The way"

p. 361 "St.James’s" changed to "St. James’s"

p. 362 "Hammersmith." changed to "Hammersmith"

p. 362 "_d_" changed to "_d._" (eleven instances)

p. 363 "_s_" changed to "_s._"

p. 363 "_d_" changed to "_d._" (six instances)

p. 364 "intances" changed to "instances"

p. 369 "don t care" changed to "don’t care"

p. 371 "term term" changed to "term"

p. 375 "“She’s a ironer" changed to "She’s a ironer"

p. 376 "trading workmen" changed to "trading workman"

p. 376 "desk-makers,’" changed to "desk-makers’,"

p. 377 "deseribed" changed to "described"

p. 377 "Retherhithe" changed to "Rotherhithe"

p. 378 "I could" changed to "I could."

p. 378 "know that I" changed to "know that"

p. 385 "as cannot be be" changed to "as cannot be"

p. 385 "Dr Paley" changed to "Dr. Paley"

p. 388 "mattter" changed to "matter"

p. 388 "degreee" changed to "degree"

p. 388 "fœcal" changed to "fæcal"

p. 393 "contant" changed to "constant"

p. 404 "“The more ancient" changed to "The more ancient"

p. 407 "surveyer" changed to "surveyor"

p. 407 "1849,” have" changed to "1849, “have"

p. 419 "marsh-bailliff" changed to "marsh-bailiff"

p. 420 "Commissionors" changed to "Commissioners"

p. 421 "an approximate" changed to "an approximate."

p. 437 "of 1665" changed to "of 1666"

p. 440 (note) "Paulett" changed to "Paulet"

p. 440 (note) "19 512" changed to "19,512"

p. 442 "the result." changed to "the result.”"

p. 446 "pump-and hose" changed to "pump-and-hose"

p. 463 "300 colls each." changed to "300 colls. each"

p. 463 "visites, &c" changed to "visites, &c."

p. 467 "“His hair" changed to "His hair"

p. 470 "butler, in?" changed to "butler, in?’"

p. 472 "“They only" changed to "They only"

p. 477 "New Kent-roads.”" changed to "New Kent-roads."

p. 485 "“Baked taters" changed to "‘Baked taters"

p. 486 "gentleman, after for" changed to "gentleman after, for"

p. 487 "a shame?" changed to "a shame?’"

p. 487 "respectabl" changed to "respectable"

p. 489 "they re" changed to "they’re"

p. 491 "vessed rounded" changed to "vessel rounded"

p. 491 "he his ready" changed to "he is ready"

p. 494 "I am laid" changed to "Iam laid"

p. 494 "CROSSING-SWEEPERS" changed to "CROSSING-SWEEPERS."

p. 504 "as if condered" changed to "as if considered"

p. 505 "home, as she said.”" changed to "home,” as she said."

p. 510 "wild rabbits, &c," changed to "wild rabbits, &c.,"

p. 511 "Dickens s" changed to "Dickens’s"

In the List of Illustrations, "The Crippled Street Bird-seller" and
"Street-Seller of Birds’-Nests" were printed in reverse order and have
been moved.

Inconsistent or archaic spelling, capitalisation and punctuation have
otherwise been kept as printed.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "London Labour and the London Poor (Vol. 2 of 4)" ***

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