Full text of "London labour and the London poor : a cyclopaedia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work"

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James Devon

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LONDON LABOUE

LONDON POOK.

THE LONDON STBEET-FOLK..

ix>vt)On: r::iXTEr by vr. ci>ow;ji and ho.N^, s'A>!Ko:sn stiikr

LONDON LABOUR

AND THE

LONDON POOE;

CTCLOPiEDLl OF THE COXDITIOX MD EARNINGS

THOSE THAT WILL WOEK,
THOSE THAT CANNOT WORK, AND
THOSE THAT WILL NOT WORK.

HENRY MAYHEW.
THE LONDON STREET-FOLK;

COMPRISING.
STREET SELLERS. . STREET PERFORMERS.

STREET BUYERS.
STBEFI FINDERS.

STREET ARTIZANS.
STREET LABOURERS.

WITH NUMKROUS HiLUSTB ATION S PKOM PHOTOQBAPHS.

VOLUME II.

LONDON:
GRIFFIN, BOHN, AND COMPANY,

STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
1861.

CONTENTS

VOLTOIE 11.

THE STKEET-FOLK.

PAcr:
lifTBODUCTION -----------1

Street-Sellebs of Secoxd-haxd Articles __-_-- 5
Street-Sellers op Lite Anijials --------47

Streett-Sellers of Mineral Prodlctions A^T> Natural Curiosities - - 81

The Street-Buyers ---------- 1C3

The Street-Jevs's ---------- 115

Street-Finders or Collecttors --«_---- 13G

The Streets of Lonix)x -_•„----- 181

Chiiixet-Sweepers ---..^----- 338

Cbossino-Sweepers -~^....-... 465

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

A View in PEmcoAT-LAifE _----_-« 35

A View is Rosemaby-Lane --------39

The Street Dog-belleb ---------54

Stbeet-Selleb op Bibds'-Nests _-----__ 72

The Crippled Street Bird-seller ------- qq

Thk Jew Old-clothks Man - -- - - - - - -118

The Bone-Gbubbeb ---------- 133

The Mxhj-Labk _--__-_--_ 155

The London Dustman --------- 172

View of a Dust-yabd --------- 2O8

The London Scavenges --------- 226

Street Obderlies ---------- 253

The Able-Bodied Pauper Street-Sweepeb ------ 262

The Bubbish-Carteb - --------- 289

The London Sweep ---------- 346

One of the few remaining Climbinq-Sweeps ------ 354

The Milkmaid's Garland ---------370

The Sweep's Home -------___ 373

The Seweb-Hunter ---------- 383

Mode of Cleansing Cesspools --_----_ 406

Flushing the Sewebs -------«_ 424

Tms Bat-Catcuebs of the Sewers ------- 43^

LONDOV NiaHTMEN ------,--_ 433

The Bearded Obossino-Sweepeb at the Exchange - - - _ - 471
The Cbossino-Sweepeb that has been a Maid-Servant - - - _ 479
The Ibish OBOflSiNO-SwEEpEB -----.--43X

The Oin»>LiGOKD Cbossing-S weeper at Chanceby-Lanb - - - - 483

The Bot CBOflsrao-SwiKPERS -------.494

LONDON LABOUR

AND

THE LONDON POOR

VOL. II.

THE STREET-FOLK.

BOOK THE SECOND.

INTEODUCTION.

Ih 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 Metropoli-
tan 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 be-
comes of capital importance that we should know
how many are seeking to pick up a livelihood in
the public thoroughfares. This is the more essen-
tial because the Government returns never have
given us, and probably never tvill 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 col-
lected daring the progress of this work, the number
of the London Street-People, so far as the inquiry
has gone, it upwards of 40,000. This sum is made
up of 30,000 Costermongers ; 2000 Street-Sellers
of "Green-Stuff," as Watercresses, Chick weed, and
Groundsell, Turf, &c. ; 4000 Street-Sellers of Eat-
ables and Drinkables; 1000 selling Stationery,
Bonks, Papers, and Engravings in the streets ;
and 4000 other street-sellers vending manufac-
tured articles, either of metal, crockery, textile,
chemical, or miscellaneous substances, making al-
together 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,
*s old meul, glass, linen, clothes, Ac, and mineral
productions, such ns coke, salt, and sand, there are
•bout 46,000 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 — in-
deed, to very nearly 40,000/., or at the rate of
about 1/. 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 5., 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, Avith 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 con-
clusion 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/. per annum. But
vast as this sum may seem, and especially when
considered as only a portion of the annual expen-
diture of the Metropolitan Poor, still, when we come
to spread the gross yearly receipts over 40,000
people, we find that the individual tiikings are but
62/. per annum, which (allowing the rate of profit
to be in all cases even 50 per cent., though 1 am
convinced it is often much less) gives to each street-
trader an annual income of 20/. Vis. id., or within
a fraction of 8.?. 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«. a week — and often
la. a day — for 1/., or 1040/. percent, per annum),
we may with safety assert that the avera;ie gain or
clear income of the Metropolitan Sireet-Sellers is
rather under than over It. iid. a week. Some of
the more expert street-traders may clear lOj. or
even 16«. weekly throughout the year, while the

No. I. Vol n.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

weekly profit of the less expert, the old people,
and the children, may be said to be 35. Qd. 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, ftnd rising
sometimes from nothing in the winter to 1/. a week
in tin; summer, when street commodities are plen-
tiful 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 tempe-

rance 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 indi-
viduals 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 ave-
rage 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 pecu-
niary condition of the various kinds of street-
sellers already treated of. It is here cited, as in-
deed all the statistics in this work are, as an ap-
proximation to the truth rather than a definite
and accurate result.

DKSCRirXIOX OF CLASS.

Number

of
Persons
1 in each
Class.

Gross
amount of
capital, or
stock ill
trade be-
longing to
each class.

Gross amount of trade

annually done by each

class.

Average
yearly

receipts
per
head.

Average
weekly
gains.

CoSTERMONaERS '. ")

Street-Sellers of Wet Fish . .

Dry fish . ,

„ Shell Fish .

„ „ Green Fruit .
„ „ Dry Fruit . . )■
,, „ Vegetables .

Game, Poultry,

Rabbits, &c.

„ „ Flowers, Roots,

&c. ... J

Street-Sellers of Green Stuff.

Watercresses*^

Chickweed, Groundsell, and

Plantain ^

Turf-Cutters and Sellers . . .
Street-Sellers of Eatables and

Drinkables

Street-Sellers of Stationery,
Literature, and the Fine

Arts

Street- Sellers of Manufac-
tured Articles of Metal,
Crockery and Glass, Textile,
Chemical, or Miscellaneous
Substances

30,000 »>

1,000

1,000
40

4,000
1,000

4,000

25,000

9,000
400

2,800

1,177,200
127,000
156,600

1,460,800
332,400

1,000 1-
292,200

625,600
80,000
14,800

2,181,200 j

13,900

14,000
570

203,100
33,400

188,200

£60

14
14

60
30

8*.

3*. U.

5s.
5s. 6d.

10*.
Ss.

10s.

41,040

£37,529

£2,634,370

£60

Ss.

* 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.

^ This number includes Men, Women, and Children.

'^ 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 Faningdon-market, a place which but few
or none of the regular Costermongers attend.

d The Chickweed and Groundsell Sellers and the Turf-Cutters' traffic has but little expense con-
nected with it, and their trade is therefore nearly all profit.

LONDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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/. sterling, and their
clear income at about 1,000,000/. per annum.
Hence, we are enabled to perceive the importance
of the apparently insignificiint 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/., 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 popu-
lation from a state of comparative independence to
absolute pauperism.

However unsatisfactory it may be to the aristo-
cratic 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 shop-
keepers, 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, 6y sufferance alone. They are classed as
unauthorized or illegal and intrusive traders, though
they " turn over " millioiu in a year.

The authorities, it is true, do not sanction any
general arbitrary enforcement of the legal pro-
scription of the Street-Polk, 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 fur licences, and
some of us as well pay fines forgiving 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 1 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 thein 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. I3ut 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 artizau, from going about
and carrying the materials of his business. The
unlicensed itinerant vendors of such things how-
ever 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/., 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 arlizans, 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 obstruct-
ing the highway whenever they attempt to do to.

Now these are surely anomalies which it is
high time, in these free-trude days, should cease.
The endeavour to obtain an Iwnest and inde-
pendent livelihood sliould sidjject no man to fine
or imprisonment; nor should the poor hawker —
the neediest perhaps of all tradesmen — be required
to pay 4/. a year for the liberty to carry on his
business when the wealthy shopkeeper ciin 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 good« in
the streets. It is often said, in justification, that
ns the shopkeepers pay the principal portion of
the rates and taxes, tlicy must be protected in
the exercise of tiieir business. But this, in the

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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/. a year ; the greater part of the spirit
duty, which is 4,350,000^; the tobacco duty,
4,260,000/. ; the sugar duty, 4,500,000/. ; and
the duty on tea, 5,330,000/. ; making altogether
23,430,000/., out of about 50,000,000/. Con-
cerning the rates, however, it is not so easy to
estimate what proportion the poor people con-
tribute 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 in-
justice, 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 rate-
payers of the parish ; for it is a necessary conse-
quence, 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.

Sut 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 con-
venience 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 Kegent-
street possibly crowded like that of the New Cut,
with the hawkers and hucksters that would be
Bure 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 circumstancr'S, 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. Be-
sides, the poor mil 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 like-
wise an Inspector of Weights and Measures,
and that any hawker found using " slangs " of
any kind, or resorting to any imposition what-
ever, 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 repre-
sentatives 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 mar-
kets, 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 prac-
ticability 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 Avith its abomina-
tions. 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 for-
getfulness 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

knew bat 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 revolt-
ing 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 princi-
ples to restrain the exercise of their grossest pas-
sions when once roused, and men who, from our
very neglect of them, are necessarily and essen-
tially the dangerous classes, whose existence we
either rail at or deplore.

The rate of increase among the street-traders it
ii 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 in-
crease in the number of street-traders ; but when
questioned as to the extent of such increase, their
answers are of the vaguest possible kind. Arrang-
ing 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
•treets — those who take to the streets — and
those who are driven to the streets, it is evident
that the main elements of any extraordinary in-
crease of the street-folk must be sought for among
the two latter classes. Among the first the in-
crease will, at the utmost, be at the same rate
M the ordinary increase of the population — viz.,
1^ percent, per annum; for the English coster-
mongers 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
fiither, we could not thus account for any enor-
mous increase among the street-folk. With those,
however, who lake to the streets from the love of
a " roving life," or the desire to " shake a free
1^" — to quote the phrases of the men them-
felves— or are driven to the streets from an ina-
bility to obtain employment at the pursuit to
which they have been accustomed, the case is far
diffiu-ent.

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 remunera-
tion 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 tiie number of mechanics in the
streets must be daily augmenting, for, as I have
before said, street-trading is the last shift of an un-
employed 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 ac-
count the articles of his craft, whilst the underpaid
workman, sooner than coHtinue toiling from morn-
ing 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 apper-
taining to the class of natural vagabonds ; but
where is the man among us that loves labour 1
for work or labour is merely that which is irk-
some 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 re-
quire 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 remu-
neration given by way of inducement to a man to
go through a certain amount of work becomes re-
duced, so does the stimulus to work become wea-
kened, and this, through the decline of wages,
is what is daily taking place among us. Our ope-
ratives 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 inculcaie the
most dangerous of all lessons, and this is what
we are daily doing. Our trading classes are in-
creasing at a most enormous rate, and so giving
rise to that exceeding competition, and conse-
quently, 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 cindidly confess I see no remedy.

OP THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND ARTICLES.

I- HATB already treated of the street-commerce in
Mch 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

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR,

immediate consximption, as in the case of the street
eatables and drinkables ; or else they were the
proceeds of taste (or its substitute) in art or litera-
ture, or of usefulness or ingenuity in manufacture.

All these many objects of street-commerce may
be classified in one well-known word ; tliey 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.

jyir. Babbage, in liis "Economy of Machinery
and Manufactures," says, concerning the employ-
ment 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 worth-
less. We sometimes meet carts loaded with old
tin kettles and worn-out iron coal-skuttles traver-
sing 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-printeis."

Mr. Babbage has here indicated one portion
of the nature of the street-trade in second-
hand articles — the application of worn-out mate-
rials 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, shape-
less, 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
$eU their second-hand goods, the street-trader
oflfers 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 im-
mediately 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. Tlie Street-Sellers of Old Metal A Hides, such
as knives, forks, and butchers' steels ; saws, ham-
mers, 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, fen-
ders, 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. Tlie 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 clothe;
ticking for beds and pillows; sacking for different
purposes, according to its substance and quality;
fringes ; and stocking-legs for the supply of "job-
bing 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 orna-
ments ; pier, convex, and toilet glfisses (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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 ;
iHickgammon, 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
Been now); " tish," or card counters of bone, ivory,
or mother of pearl (an equal rarity) ; microscopes
(occasionally) ; an extensive variety of broken or
£aded things, new or long kept, such as magic-
lanterns, dissected maps or histories, &c., from the
toy warehouses and shops; Dutch clocks; baro-
meters ; 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 Slreet-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 whicij constitute female fashion-
able 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 ;
\tt\U, 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 sub-
ject, I may say a few words concerning what is,
in the estimation of some, a second-hand raHtier. I
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
" affitl " of the animals which are slaughtered for
our use are put It is still more curiously shown
in the us^-s of the offal of the animals which are
killed, not for our use, but for that of our dogs
and caU; and to this part of the subject I shall
more especially confine the remarks 1 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 Sniithtield Market : " The
carcass," he said, "as it hangs clear of everything
else, is the carcass, and all else constitutes the
olfal."

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 125.; but with the
hide are sold the horns, which are worth about
\Qd. to the comb-makers, who use them to make
their " tortoise-shell " articles, and for similar
purposes. The hoofs are worth 2d. to the giue-
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 3t) 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 5s. ^d.
Separately, the value of the liver is Sci., of the
lights, Qd. (both for dogs'-meat), and of the legs
which are worked into tooth-brush handles,
dominoes, &c., \s. The remaining 3a'. id. is the
worth of the other portion. The heart averages
rather more than Is, ; the kidneys the same ; the
head, Is. 9rf. ; the blood (which is " let down the
drain " in all but the larger slauijhtering houses)
li(i. (being Zd. for 9 gallons) ; the tallow (7 stone)
14s.; and the tail, I was told, '• from nothing to
2s.," averaging about GcZ, ; the tongue, 2s. Qd.
Thus the otfal sells, altogether, first hand, for
1/, 18s, 6rf.

I will now show the uses to which what is far
more decidedly pronounced " oUal," 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 phices, 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/. 12s. 6rf. But this is only one of the uses of
the dead animal.

The skin is sold to a tanner for 10s. Qd. The
hoofs to a manufacturer of sal ammonia, or similar
preparations, or of Prussian blue, or to a comb or
toy-maker, for Is. Ad. The old shoes and the
shoe-nails are worth 2.id. The hair of the mane
and tail realizes \^d. The tendons are disposed
of, either fresh or dried, to glue-makers for M. —
a pound of dried tendons (separated from the
muscles) being about the average per horse. The

B 8

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 2s. The intestines
wrought into the different preparations required of
the gut-makers, or for manure, are worth 2c?.

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
Avorth I,?. 9rf. The fat is removed from the car-
cass 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
ha^ 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 slaughter-
houses there are so many lean and sorry jades
that 8 lbs. may be taken as an average of fat, and
at a value of Qd. 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 Is. bd. The total
amount, then, realized on the dead horse, which
may cost lOs. Qd., is as follows : —

£ s. d.
The flesh . . . 1 12 6
The skill . . . 0 10 6
The hoofs . . . 0 14
The shoes and nails . 0 0 2;^

The mane and tail . . 0 0 1^
The tendons . . 0 0 3

The bones . . . 0 2 0
The intestines . . 0 0 2

The blood . . . 0 19
The fat . . . 0 4 0

The maggots . . . 0 15

£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 emolu-
ment. 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, 80 that, taking the average at 3«. of our
money, 16,000 rat-skins would return 2il.

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
inquirj'', witnesses were examined as to whether
horse-flesh was used by the sausage-mnkers.
There was some presumption that such might be
the case, but no direct evidence. I found, how-
ever, among butchers who had the best means of
knowing, a strong conviction that such ^pas 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 pro-
visions a strong, or, at any rate, a strongly-ex-
pressed, 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," ho
said, " is sold for beastesses' ; 'cause you see, sir,
there 's nothing as 'ud be better liked for favour-
ite cats and pet dogs, than a nice piece of 'art, but
yen 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 miglit lead to his being known, as he
said it might be his ruin, even though he never
slaughtered the meat he sold, but was, iu fact, a
dead salesman or a vendor of meat consigned to
him — one tradesman, I say, told me that he fan-
cied there was an unreasonable objection to the
eating of horse-flesh among us. The horse was

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

quite afi dainty in his food as the ox, he was
quite as graminivorous, and shrunk more, from a
nicer sense of smell, from anythinar 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 rea-
soned 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«. as a low average ; the hoofs, for glue, are
worth Id. ; the shoes and nails, l^^d. ; the mane
and tail, \\d. ; the bones, which in London (as
it was described to me) are " cracked up " for
manure, bring 1*. Qd. ; 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 2rf. per lb.,
would realize 1«. lOrf. Of the tendons no use is
made ; of the blood none ; and no maggots are
reared upon putrid horse-Hesh, 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 Moiitfaucon, that we were behind the
French in this respect.

. Thus the English dead horse— the vendor re-
ceiving on an average 1^. 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/. we have the subjoined receipts : —

X, 8 d.
The flesh (averaging 2 cwt.,

sold at 2irf. per lb. . .200
The skin . . . .060
The hoofs . . . .002
The shoes and nails . . 0 0 1^
The bones . . .016

The fat . . . . 0 1 10
The tendons . . .000

The tongue, &c. . , ] ]

The blood . . . .000
The intestines . . .000

X'2 9 74
The French dead horse, then, is made a source
of nearly 5*. higher receipt than the English.
On my inquiring the reason of this difference, and
wh/ 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
staiighter-honses, that the private butchers, fur the
trifling sum to be gained, let tiie blood be wasted.
One bullock lUughterer in Fox and Knot-yard,
who kills 180 cattle in a week, receives only \l.
for the blood of the whole number, which is re-
ceived in a well in the slaughterhouse. The
amount paid for blood a few year's back was more
tbao double \U present rate. Under these circum-

stances, I was told, it would be useless trying to
turn the wasted offal of a horse to any profitiible
purpose. There is, I am told, on an average,
1000 horses slaughtered every week in London,
and tliis, at 21. IO5. each animal, would make the
value of the dead horses of the metropolis amount
to 130,000/. per annum.

Were it not that I might be dwelling too long
on the subject, I might point out how the otfal of
the skins was made to subserve other purposes from
the Bermondsey tiin-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 col-
lecting 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 parlia-
ment, and double sheets of the Times, form portions
of the waste dealer's stock. Tons upon tons are
thus consumed yearly. Books of every descrip-
tion are ingredients of this wjiste, and in every
language; modern poems or pamphlets and old
romances (perfect or imperfect), Shakespeare,
Moliere, Bibles, music, histories, stories, magazines,
tracts to convert the heathen or to prove how
easily and how immensely our national and indivi-
dual 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 1 'm out of luck. Just at this tmie
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 publibh on the subject. I do but allude to it
here as one strongly illustrative of "second-hand"
appliances.

Of the Stbeet-Sbllers of Second-Hand

Metal Articles.

I UAVB in the preceding remarks specified the

wares sold by the vendors of the second-hand

articles of metal manufacture, or (as they are

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

called in the streets) the " old ructal " 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, wiio 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 some-
times a quarter, sometimes a third, and some-
times 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 lie find his stock
increase too rapidly, lie furnishes a barrow, and
sends a man into the streets with it, to sell what
the shopkeeper may find to be excessive. Some-
times if the tradesman can gain only the merest
trifle more than lie 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 busi-
ness 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 under-
stand, however, that this course is not now pur-
sued, 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 sj-^stem 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 ; arid 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 pil-
fered 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 sup-
plied, 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, an-
nounced 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 Com-
mercial-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 callintr is
pursued, but where some special street-trades
seem peculiar to the genius of the place, in Petti-
coat-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, Artil-
lery-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, Hutchinsonstreet, Little Mid-
dlesex-street, Hebrew-place, Boar's-head-yard,
Black-horse-yard, ]\Iiddlesex-street, Stoney-lane,
Meeting-house-yard, Gravel-lane, White-street,
Culler-street, and Borer's-lane, until the wayfarer
emerges into what appears the repose and spa-
ciousness 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, pas-
sages, 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

A VIEW IN ROSEMARY-LANE.

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

ill

dainties, or the " sheepest pargains," is occasion-
ally heard the guttural utterance of the Erse
tongue, for the " native Irish," as they are some-
times called, are iu 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
ffied 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 ; pud-
dings 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
88 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 i
subject, I shall more particularly describe Petticoat- \
lane, as the head-quarters of the second-hand j
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
■trong-built man, known as Jack, or (appropriately
enough) as Iron Jack, had, until his death six or
■even 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
lilted, 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 iiis 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
•triking 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
icrews 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 be was *' turned 50, or somewhere about
that," gave me the following account of his trade,
his customers, &c.

" I 've been in roost street-trades," he said, " and
was bom to it, like, for my mother was a rag-
gatherer — not a bad business once— and I helped
ber. I never saw my father, but he was a soldier,
and it's supposed lust his life in foreign parts.
Mo, I don't remember ever having heard what
foreign part*, and it don't matter. Well, perhaps,
this if about as tidy a trade for a bit of bread as
any that 's going now. Perhaps selling iish may
be better, but that 's to a man what knows fish
well. I can't say I ever did. 1 'm more a dab
at cooking it (with a laugh). I like a bloater best

on what 's .in Irish gridiron. Do you know what
that is, sirl 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 infor-
mant seemed interested in his account of this and
other modes of cookery, which I need not detail.]
" This is really a very trying trade. 0^, 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 lQ\d.
He said he 'd give 6</. * Sixpence ! ' says I; ' why
d'you think I stole 'em V * Well,' says he, 'if
I didn't think you 'd stole 'em, I shouldn't have
come to youJ 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 Is.*
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 \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 Intch-lock and keys goes
off quick. I 've had them from 2d. to Qd. ; but
it's only the lower-priced things as sells now in
any trade. Bolts is a fairish slock, 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 \d. or 2rf. There 's that cheese-
cutter now, it 's getting rustier and there '11 be
very likely a better chance to sell it. This is how
it is, sir, 1 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 'cm 's very fond of
jobbing about their rooms or their houses, and they
come to such as me. Tiien a many has fancies
for pigeons, or rabbits, or poultry, or dogs, and
they mostly make up the places for them their-
selves, and as money's an object, why them sort
ot fancy people buys hinges, and locks, and tcrewi,
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 shoe-
maker that makes beautiful rabbit-hutches and
sells them along with his prize cattle, as I calls
his great big lung-eared rabbits. Perhaps I take
2i. Qd. or Zs. a day, and it 's about half profit.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Yes, this time of the year I make good 10s. 6rf.
a week, but in winter not Is. 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 'vc no family living."

This informant told nie further of the way in
which the old metal stocks sold in tlie 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 door^s.
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 com-
mand not more than 50 appear to be strictly
s<ree^selle^s, unconnected with shop-keeping.
Estimating a weekly receipt, per individual, of
155. (half being protit), the yearly street outlay
among this body alone amounts to 1950/,

Of the Street-Selleks 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 mo-
ther, nor sister. " I was a cow-keeper's man,
j-our honour," he said, " and he sent milk to
Dublin, I thought I might do betthur, and I got
to Liverpool, ai.a walked here. Have I done
betthur, is it ] Sorry a betthur. Would I like
to returren to Dublin ? Well, perhaps, plaze God,
I '11 do betthur here yit. I 've sould a power of
different things in tlie sthreets, but I 'm off for
counthry work now. I have a few thcrrays 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 thcrrays butlers, and the
smhaller, waithers. It's a poor therrade. One
woman '11 say, ' Pooh ! ould-fashioned things.'
' Will, thin, ma'am,' I '11 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 '11 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
tlie bhutiful therrays I 've sould for Qd. I buys
them of a shop which dales in sich things. The
perrofit ! Sorry a perrofit is there in it at all at
ail ; but I thries to make Ad. out of Is. If I
makes Qd. 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
2rf. to 10<^., sometimes \s. The stronger descrip-
tions are sold to street-sellers to display their
goods upon, as much as to any other class. Wo-
men and children occasionally sell them, but it
is one of the callings which seems to be disap-
pearing 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 Avell,", 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*. a week each, on second-hand trays (33 per
cent, being the rate of profit), the street ex-
penditure is 208/, in a year.

In other second-hand metal articles there is
now and then a separate trade. Two or three
sets of sm^W fire-irons may be offered in a street-
market on a Saturday night ; or a small stock of
fiat 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/,
yearly may be taken.

In Petticoat-lane, Rosemary-lane, Wliitecross-
street, Ratcliff-highway, and in the street-markets
generally, are lo be seen men, women, and
children selling dinner knives and forks, razors,
pockel-knivijs, and scissors. Tlie pocket-knives
and scissors are kept well oiled, so that the wea-
ther does not rust them. Tiiese goods have been
mostly repaired, ground, and polished for street-
commerce. The women and children selling these

LOyDO.y LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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-
artiz.ans, under which head they will be more
particularly treated of. It is the fame 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 thb Strekt-Sellers of Second-Hand
Linen, &c.
I KOW come to the second variety of the several
kinds of street-sellers of secondhand 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 Kosemary
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-towel-
ling 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 sheet-
ing 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 id. per
pound, 1 lb. making eight penny towels ; some (in-
ferior) is as low as 2d. The principal demand is
by the working-classes. i

" Why, for one time, sir," said a street-seller
to me, " there wasn't much towelling in tiie
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 'a your cheap mack'rel,' shouts she, ' cheap,
cheap, cheap mac-mac-macnific/trei. Then / be-
gins : ' Here 's your cheap towelling ; cheap, cheap,
cheap, tow tow-tow-<oif-ellingB. Here's towels a
penny a piece, and two for twopence, or a double
family towel for twopence.' I soon had a greater
cro^d 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 bus-
bind, and every htuband for his wife,' I goes on.
' Doinrstic happiness is then secured. If a has-
bind licks his wife, or a wife licks her husband, a
Xn\\>'\ i<t 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
m.irried 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.'
Alwa5's 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 oft" to
Ascot to sell cards, and do a little singing, and
then I '11 perhaps take a round to Bath and Bris-
tol, 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 Satuiday-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 his-
tory of the character of a people,

" Wrappers," or " bale-stuff"," as it is sometimes
styled, are also sold in the streets as secondhand
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 l^d. and 2d. 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.

" JJuiiit" linen or calico is also sold in the
streets as a second-hand article. On the occasion
of a tire 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(/. to \s. Qd. each, or in
yards, frequently at Qd. 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 diffi-
culties. The second-hand linen, *cc., is not a
regular street trafHc. 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 hinuelf to that especial

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 IO5. in a given time, by vend-
ing 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 sack-
ing 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 85. each
weekly, about half of it being profit ; thus the
street expenditure would be 1664^. per annum.

Of the Street-Sellers of Second-hand
Curtains.
Sbookd-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 pur-
chased, and so on to the concluding " decency,"
or, in the estimation of some poor persons, " dig-
nity " of curtains. These persons are customers
of the street-sellers — the secondhand curtains
costing them from %d. to 1*. Qd.

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-cover-
ing of sofas, which had become ragged, the defi-
ciency 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 M. each piece.

Second-hand curtains are moreover cut into por-
tions 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 6rf., the women '11
fight for it."

The second-hand curtains, when sold entire, are
from &d. to 25. Qd. One man had lately sold a
pair of "good moreens, only faded, but dyeing 's
cheap," for Zs. 6d.

Of the Street-Sellers of Second-hand Car-
peting, 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 2d. to
I5. each ; the stair-carpet pieces are from Id. to
id. a. yard. Hearth-rugs are very rarely offered
to street-customers, but when offered are sold from
4:d. to I5. 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 every-
thing— 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 10s. 9tZ. 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 '6s. 6d. on that 10s. 9d.
But to take 4s. or 5s. is good work now, and often
not more than Sd. in the Is. 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

LONDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

they are purchased for flannel petticoats for the
children of the poor, or when not good enough for
such use, for house cloths, at \d. each.

The trade in stocking legs is considerable. In
these legs the feet have been cut ofl-j further darn-
ing being impossible, and the fragment of the
•tocking 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 \d. to Zd. the pair, but very rarely Zd., 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 con-
siderable, but they form a part of the second-hand
apparel of street-commerce, and I shall notice
them under that head.

Op the Stkeet-Skller3 of Second-hakd Bed-

TICKIKQ, SaCKIKQ, FrINQE, &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
BO 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-tick-
ing, " though," said a dealer, " it '11 still wear out
half a dozen of their new slop rigs. I should
like a few of them there slop-masters, that 's
making fortius 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 2d. to id. 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.

Secondhand Sacking is sold without much dif-
ficulty in the street-markets, and usually in pieces
at from 2d. to 6rf. This sacking has been part of
a com 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 bed-
stead 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, sometimei. called
*' quantities," of from Id. to 1*.

Second'/uind 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, thonght 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 " rme " has been
practised by street-folk.

Of the Street-Sellers of Second-Hand
Glass and Crockery.
These sellers are another class who are fast dis-
appearing 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 mackjirel
were high, and that he could make nothing out
of them that week at 2d. 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 ad-
dition to my glass for a crust. Before I dropped
it as a bad consarn, I sold old shoes as well
as old ghiss, 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»., far less than
it were worth, and I swopped my shoes for my
fish-stall, and water-tub, and 3*. in money. I '11
be out of this trade before long. The glass was
good once; I 've made my 16«. and 20«. 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 busi-
ness 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 shop-
keeper 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 aset 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 'era 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 gratui-
tous 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-raau "
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 Id. to Qd.

There are now not above six men (of the ordi-

nary 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«.
weekly, with a profit of C^. or 7s., we find 187Z. 4s.
expended in this department of street-commerce.
The principal place for the trade is in Uigh-street,
Whitechapel.

Of tub Street- Sellers of Second-Hand

mlsokllaneous 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 spe-
cific account of each and several of the " sundries"
to be found in the closets or corners of an old-furni-
ture 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 "miscella-
neous" in their character. A few have known
liberal educations, and have been established in
liberal professions j 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 supe-
rior 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 tliem 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 applica-
tion of strips of bookbinder's gold, is all that is
required. The backgammon-boards are some-
times oifered in the streets by an itinerant; some-
times (and more frequently than otherwise in a
deplorable state, the points of the table being
hardly distinguishable) they are part of the furni-
ture 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
Qd. to 2s. 6d. the set, the best being of box-wood.

Chess-boards and men — for without the men of

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

course a draught, or the top of n backgaramon-
board suffices for chess — are a coiuniodity
now rarely at the disposal of the street-sellers ;
and, as these means of a lei-surely and abstruse
amuaement ore 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.
Occisionally, a second-hand chess appai'atus 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 beauiiful 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 sjile, 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/. Zs. for
them, at once closing with the offer of 3/. ; " for
I foiuid, sir," he said, " I had a gentleman to do
with, for he told me he thought tliey were really
cheap at 3/., 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,
" Ouly twice, sir, and then at 4*-. ajid 5s. 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 any-
thing 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 1 could wait no longer,
and then knocked at his room door, he swore like
a trooper.

Draughtboards are sold at from Zd. to Is.
second-hand. Cribbage- boards, also second-hand,
and sometimes with cards, are only sold, I am in-
formed, when they are very bad, at from \d. to
Zd., or very good, at from 2a-. <od. to 5s. One
street-seller told me that he once sold a " Chinee"
cribbage-board for 18*., which cost him 10s. " 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 backgam-
mon, or for any purpose, are bought of the waiters
at the club houses, generally at 2^. 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(/. to Is. 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
diflfcrent boards, &c., I liave described. There
are two, three, or sometimes four occasional par-
ticipanu in the trade. Of these one held a com-
mission in Her Majesty's service, but was ruined
by gttming, and when unable to live by any other
means, he sells the implements with which he ha i

been but too familiar. " He lost everything in
Jermyn-street," a man wiio 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 '11. , 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 tlian else-
where. 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<:/. a set, and I heard of one superior set
■which were described to me us " brass-pinned,"
being sold in a handsome box for 5s., the shop
price having been los. 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 Is. to Is. 9rf. 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 Zd.

" 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 nirely 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
tlie numbered sockets in a bagatelle-board. I nm
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 cadh 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 onlv one peg
remained in the board, the player won ; iT winning
it could be called when the game could only bo
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 scries 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 \i\ the 8.ale of these
second-hand articles of amusement is 10^. 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/. expended
yearly.

I should have stated that the principal cus-
tomers 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-Sellehs 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 pawn-
brokers 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 #le 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 60 was my father before me. He was a tJiilor
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 ioo
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, 1 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" (con-
cert), 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 with-
out 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 125. due for the child's maintenance.
The landlord clamoured for 15^. 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, resource-
less. After dwelling on the many excellences of
his violin, which he had purchased, " a dead bar-
gain," for 3/. 155., 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 nie going out in tlie morn-
ing, and working the streets with a mate, as I 'd
done before, but then there was little James that

LOJVDOS LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

was sleeping there in his bed. He was very deli-
cate 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 ray 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
teas drunk, and with a deal of trouble persuaded
a landlord I knew to lend me 1^ on my instru-
ment, 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
instalment, broken in parts, for 25. Zd. I was
great part of the day in doing it up, and in the
evening earned Id. 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 \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 instru-
ment. * There 's a beer-shop over the way,' says
the young man, ' step in, and I '11 pay for a pint,
and try my hand at it.' And so it was done, and
I sold him my fiddle for 7*. 6d. No, sir, there
was no tJike 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.T., and sold it
after a while for 6*., 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 en-
gagements 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
unially 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 fiftr 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.

Or THB Musio " DumiRa."
SmcoMD- Hand Guxtaks are vended by the
street-sellers. The price varies from 7*. 6d. to 15*.
Barjti 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 '11 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 30s. each, or an
aggregate yearly amount of 190^. The weekly
profits run from IO5. to 155., and sometimes the
well-known dealers clear 40s. or 60s. a week,
while others do not take 5s. 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 depart-
ment 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 in-
struments, and are sold to the street-folk at 2s. 6rf.
or 3s. 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 roan 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 '11 sell it
for 10«."

Possibly a bargain is struck for 5*. ; for the
duffing violin is perhaps purposely damaged in
some slight way, so as to appear easily reparable,

Ho. xxvm.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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
Buch 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 IO5., 155., and
even 20*., " 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 establish-
ment 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 '11 always be some-
thing 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 com-
plains and blows up about it, and only then,
perhapSjif 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 duffi.ng cornopeans, French horns, and cla-
rionets are vended to the street-folk. One of
these cornopeans maybe bought for 145. ; a French
horn for 10s. ; and a clarionet for 7s. Qd. ; or as a
general rule at one-fourth of the price of a pro-
perly-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 pro-
fessional 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 in-
feriority 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*. on cornopeans, which they could buy new in

Houndsditch for 14s., 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 fortu-
nate 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
pawbroker, dropped tickets of (sham) second-hand
musiciil 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 ia
known that the pawnbrokers do not advance the
value of any article, the finders were gulled into
redeeming the pledge, as an advantageous bar-
gain. " 13ut 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 un-
able 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 " Dvffer " 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.

Op the Stkbet-Sellers of Second-Hand
Weapons,
The sale of second-hand pistols, for to that weapon
the street-sellers' or hawkers' trade in arras seems
confined, is larger than might be cursorily ima-
gined.

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 dis-
charged, 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 bat-
tered, 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 an3'-where, and there 's a pistol
that seems cheap, I '11 buy it as readily as any-
thing I know, and I '11 soon sell it at a public-
house, or I '11 get it rafHed for. Second-hand pis-
tols sell better than new by such as me. If I was
to offer a new one I should be told it was some
]3rummagem 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

people think it 's been made for somebody of con-
sequence that wouldn't be fobbed oflF with an infe-
rior 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 pro-
duced a handsome pistol from his pocket. I in-
quired 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 tra-
velling in the country, and in possession of
money or valuable stock. " I gave only 7«. Qd.
for this pistol," he said, " and have refused lO*. 6rf.
for it, for I shall get a better price, as it 's an ex-
cellent 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 'snot Joaded, 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 secowd-lMiid guns, or other offensive weapons,
there is no street sale. A few " life-presei-vers,"
•ome of gutta percha, are hawked, but they fire
generally new. Bullets and powder are not sold
by the pistol-hawkers, but a moiUd 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, b«it I
beard a similar account from others, " people were
afraid the foreigners coming to the Great Exhibi-
tion had some mischief in their noddles, and so a
pistol was wanted for protection. In my opinion,
a pistol 's just one of the tilings 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 Rat-
cliffe-highway, where the mates and petty officers
of ships are accosted and invited to buy a good
second-band 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 arc at the same time

rrsuing other street-callings, it may be estimated,
am assured, that there are 20 men engaged,
each taking as an average 1/. a week. In some
weeks a man may take 51. ; in the next month he
may sell no weapons at all. From 80 to 50 per
cent, is the usual rate of profit, and the yearly
street outlay on these second-hand offensive or de-
fensive weapons is 1040/.
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 21. a week in the street-
sale and hawking of second-hand hoxing-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 de-
mand whatever among street-buyers, and were ' a
complete drug.' He used to sell them at 3*'. the
set, which is four gloves."

Op the Sxbeet-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 tempt-
ingly (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 slices, 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 Welling-
ton with the date 1811, and the legend of " Vin-
cit amor patriaj." Also " The R. Hon. W. Pitt,
Lord Warden Cinque Ports," looking courtly in a
bag wig, with his hair bruslied 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 half-
penny, but here 's one here, sir, as you seem to
understand coins, as I hope to get 2d. 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 spccinient of a coin
— ' Halfpenny of Lackington, Allen k, 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 en-
graved 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 QO. The oldest
I saw was one of Louis XV. of France and Na-
varre, 1774. There was one alio of the " Re-
publiquc Francaise" when Napoleon was First
Consul. The colon-al coins were more numerous

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 colonics of Essequibo and Dema-
rara ; " the " halfpenny token of the province of
Nova Scotia," &c. &c. There were also counter-
feit 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, Avas simple enough. What was the
size of a halfpenny he asked a penny for; the size
of a penny coin was Id. " It 's a difficult trade
19 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 Id.
to 2g. M.

The old buckles were such as tised 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
155. weekly each man, about two-thirds being
profit, or 234^. 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 Q-lasses.
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 consider-
able street sale in small telescopes at I5. 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 11. IQs. to ^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 25. Qd. 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 shop-
keeper.

Of the Street-Sellers of other Miscel-
laneous 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.

Wnting-desksy tea-caddies, dressing-cases, and
kni/e-boxes used to be a ready sale, I was in-
formed, when "good second-hand;" but they are
"got up" now so cheaply by the poor fancy cabinet-
makers who work for the " slaughterers," or furni-
ture 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 occasion-
ally, j^ 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 9d., Is., and Is. Bd. each, and cleared
25. 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.

Bruslies 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
I5. the set, the cost to the street-seller being ^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,

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

to bruflh 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 Id. 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 9rf., such as not many years
ago cost 7^., 80 what chance of a second-hand
Bade 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 2s. Qd. 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 whole-
sale 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 Eosemary 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
bays 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 Kosemary-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 Id. to Zd. each, or twice
that amount in pairs, "rights and lefts," accord-
ing 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 Um rabjsct.

Seooiidrhand hameu is sold largely, and when
good is sold very readily. There is, I am told,
far less slop-work in harness-making than in shoe-
making 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,
•nd if it's been good leather to begin with — as
it will if it was made for a lady — why the traces
11 stand clouting, and patching, and piecing, and
mending for a long time, and they 'II do to cobble
oUL boots Ust of all, for old leather '11 wear just
in treading, when it might snap at a puIL (iive
me a good quality to begin with, sir, and it 's

serviceable to the end." In my inquiries among
the costerraongers 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 coster-
monger 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 Eosemary lanes, and in the many
off-streets and alleys which may be called the tri-
butaries 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 suffi-
ciently 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. 0, 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 jEarrier." 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 2s. 6d. or 3s.
each, Dutch clocks only been disposed of io this
way. These traders, therefore, come under the
head of SxBKET-FoaKioNKas. " Ay," one street-
seller remarked to me, " it 's only Dutch now as
is second-banded in the streets, but it '11 soon bo
Americans. The swags is some of them hung up

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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) '11 give a printed character of 'cm
(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, Is. a week being the usual payment.

CaHoxiche-hoxes 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 recep-
tacles 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
^d. or 1(^, each, and are bought by jobbing shoe-
makers 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 Majis, with frames, it is
now a nonentity, and so it is with Fishing-rods,
Cricket-bats, <Lc.

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
{facerc — the slang fakement being simply a cor-
ruption of the h&lhi facimentiim) 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 gene-
rality 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 tlie 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 stiitionary 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 pre-
cise information to be had. It should be recol-
lected that the street-sellers do not keep accounts,
or those documents would supply references. " It 'g
all headwork with us," a street-seller said, some-
what boastingly, to me, as if the ignorance of
book-keeping was rather commendable.

Op 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 mis-
cellaneous 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 shop-
keepers 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 coster-
mongers, 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 arti-
cles, 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 0, 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 de-
scription, including armour and cabinets, rags and
bones, fenders and street-door knockers, fire-iron8>
wearing-apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp, and a
room-door. Imagine, in addition to this incon-
gruous 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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-app;irel, 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 stiiring portrait of 'Hx. somebody or other,
of the Eoyal Coburg Theatre, *as he appeared in
the character of Tongo tlie 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 re-
splendent 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, per-
haps, of a lady's pink dress covered with span-
gles; 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 them-
selves of such desirable bargains.

" Let UB 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 : tliieves, oysters, baked potatoes, and
pickled salmon — Katclilf- high way. 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 tor a pair of bodies
instead of a pair of kgs, are the staple commo-
ditie*. Then, there are large bunches of cotton
pocke^bandkercbiefs, in colour and pattern unlike
any one ever saw before, with the exception of
those on the Jwcks of the three young ladies with-
out bonneU who passed just now. The furniture
is much the same a« 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
contamiog nlrer 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 cither case, it is an even chance that he after-
wards unconsciously repurchases the same things
at a higher price than he gave for them at first.

" Agiiin : pay a visit, with a similar object, to a
part of London, as xmlike both of these as they
are to each other. Cross over to the Siirry side,
and look at such shops of this description as are
to be found near the King's Bench prison, and in
' the Kules.' How different, and how strikingly
illustrative of the decay of some of the unfortunate
residents in this part of the metropolis ! Impri-
sonment 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 tlieir 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; liave first
been sold, and the sacrifice has been but slightly
felt. ]3ut 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 tub Strest-sellebs of Second-hand
Apparel.
Thr 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
bo worn, flung aside, and re worn 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 em-
broidered and lappeted waistcoats, have long dis-
appeared from second-hand traffic — the last stage
of fashions — and indeed from all places but court
or fiincy balls and the theatre.

The great mart for second-hand apparel was,
in the last century, in Monmotith-street ; now,
by one of those arbitrary, and iilmost always
inappropriate, changes in the nomcnchtture of
streeU, termed Dudley-street, Seven Dials. " Mon>
mouth-street finery" was a common term to ex-
press tawdrincss and pretence. Now Monmouth-

C 8

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 Mon-
mouth-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 cock-
neys 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 Eosemary lanes, espe-
cially 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 Kag-fair garment, whether a cotton
frock or a ducal coachman's great-coat, by the
touch, more reliably than by the sight ; they in-
spect, 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 me-
tropolis.

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 com-
merce in the reign of Charles II. ; the establish-
ment 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 pre-
mises 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 in-
crease 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 Petti-
coat-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 institu-
tion of the present arrangements Avere 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
cufis, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

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 — shop-
keeper, artisan, clerk, eostermonger, 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
it« 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 pawn-
brokers, or the buyers at the auctions of unre-
deemed 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 neat-
ness. 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 bminet* seems to be disre-
garded. The Old Clothes Exchanges have as-
suredly one recommendation as they are now
seen — their appropriateness. They have a tbread-
bwe, patched, and second-hand look. The dresses
worn by the dealers, and the dresses they deal
io, an all in accordance with the genius of the
plao*. But the eagemeM, crowding, and energy,
are tbe grand features of the scene ; and of ^1
the nuuiy curious sights in London there is none
so pictureeque (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 depart-
ment 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 ex-
cepted, who may occasionally go to early mass,
and attend at the Exchange afterwards. Sunday,
therefore, in " Kag-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.

Op the Wholesale Business at the Old
Clothes Exchanqb.
A considerable quantity of the old clothes dis-
posed of at the Exchange are bought by mer-
chants 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/. to 300/., though seldom 300/., 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 tho old clothes-
man — what besotted debauchery put others in
his possession — with what cool calculation others
v/ere 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 desti-
tution— and lastly through what necessities of
squalid wretchedness and low debauchery.

Every kind of old attire, from tho hiahest to
the very lowest, I was emphatically told, wa«
sent to Ireknd.

Some of the balet are composed of garments

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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, greatcoats, 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 Avas 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
Loudon to Ireland. These nether habiliments
were coveted because, as the Dublin sellers would
say, they *' would Avear for ever, and look illigant
after that," Buckskin 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 ex-
portation 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 fre-
quenters 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 un-
healthy ; 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 col-
lected 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 ap-
proaches 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 decora-
tions of fringes, woollen lace, &c., are in demand
for Holland.

Twelve bales, averaging somewhere about 100^.
each in value, but not fully 100^., 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/. 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 trans-
acted, 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 live," 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 16s. dat you
offer now vill you give for it ? Vill j'ou give me
eighteen? Veil, come, give ush your money, I 've
got ma rent to pay," But the man says, " I only
bid you 12s. Qd., 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 shup-
posh I musht take your money even if I loosh by
it. You 'II 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 Pet-
ticoat-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 Ex-
change I refer the reader to p. 368, vol, i. Sub-
sequent 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 col-
lected 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 com-
mendable, for many of tlie wares could not be
identified by their OAvner, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 insuf-
cient. The young thieves, however, who flock
from the low lodging-houses in the neighbour-
hood, 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 pUfering, they are severely
beaten, especially by the women, who are aided
by the men, if the thief offers any formidable re-
Bistance, or struggles to return the blows.

Of the Uses op Second-hakb 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 de-
voted, 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
hhricB ; 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 'Meft-off" garment has its peculiar after
VMS, according to its material and condition. The
practised eye of the old clothes man at once era-
braces every capability of the apparel, and the
amount which these capabilities will realize ; whe-
ther 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 rebuffed, 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 restora-
tion is a sort of re-dyeing, or rather re-colouring,
by the application of gall and logwood with a
•mall 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 beeomei possMsed of his
Sunday frock-coat, as does many a smarter clerk
or tkvfnmn, impressed with a regard to his per-
sonal appearance.

In Uie last century, I may here obeenre, and
perhaps in the early part of the present, when
woollen cloth was much dearer, mnch more sub-
■tantkl, and therefore much more durable, it was
eoBMoa for eeonomists to hare a good coat " turned."
It WM taken to pieces by the tailor and re-made.

the inner part becoming the outer. This mode
prevailed alike in France and England ; for Mo-
lidre makes his miser, Uarpagon, 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 fermerly
iu 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' " waist-
coats ; 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 coun-
try and town. Do you know, sir, why them
there books is always made so small 1 The leaves
is about four inches square. That 's to prevent
their being any use as waste paper. I '11 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.

JJrets-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 lued for caps. Sometimes
a coat, for which the collector may have given
9d., 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 arc more readily effected than
those to coats, and trousers are freely bought by
the collectors, and as freely re-bought by the
public.

Waittcoata — I still speak of woollen fabrics —
are sometimes used in cap-making, and were used
in guiter-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 booU, either laced or
buttoned, but not n 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

the traders in second-hand apparel, or in the re-
mains 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 tliose 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 Avaste and refuse ma-
terials. To this stuff the name of "shoddy" is
given, but the real and orthodox " shoddy " is a
production of the Avoollen 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 ia different proportions,
according to the quality of the stuff to be manu-
factured, and the mingled material is at length
reworked in the usual way into a little serviceable
cloth.

" There are some shoddy mills in the neighbour-
hood 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. Eags 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 gene-
rally the most unprofitable. The gradations of
value in the world of rags are indeed remarkable.
I was shown rags worth 50i. per ton, and rags
worth only 30^. 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 fer-
tilize 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 en-
tirely women. They sit upon low stools, or half
sunk and half enthroned amid heaps of the filthy
goods, busily employed in arranging them accord-
ing 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 eigh-
teen years of age, and the wages which they are
paid for ten hours' work are 6*\ per week. They
look squalid and dirty enough ; but all of them
chatter and several sing over their noisome la-
bour. 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 work-
women 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 frag-

LOITDON LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR.

ments by the whirling revolutions of its teeth.
The place in which this is done is a large bare
room — the uncovered beams above, the roiigh
stone walls, and the woodwork of the unglazed
windows being as it were furred over Avith cling-
ing 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 ns possible the inhalation
of the dust, and seem loath to remove the protec-
tion 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 7j>-. or %s. a week. The men are
much better paid, none of them making less than
18*. a week, and many earning as much as 22s.
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 con-
fess, especially after tenting the grinding of the
very dusty sorts of stuff — worsted stockings, for
ex.imple. 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 dis-
order, the workmen say, is not faUU, and leaves
no particularly bad eftects.

" In spite of all this, however, it is manifestly
impossible for human lungs to breathe under such
circumstances without suffering. The visitor ex-
posed to the atmosphere for ten minutes expe-
riences 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 par-
ticularly dirty lot of nigs 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, al-
though 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
anmngements consist, in every case, of two tokna-
bly large rooms, one above the other, with a cellar
b«ne»th — a plan of construction called in York-

shire 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 tlio
thread upon the bobbin which goes into the shuttle
— is hardly so much as 10s. 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 follow-
ing 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 lime
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 contami-
nated 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 spectJides 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 ciilled
"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 modem improvements have made suscep-
tible 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 woolh-n look, on which elegantly drawn and
elaborately coloured designs are printed through
the application of aquafortis. Thus the rags
which the befigar 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 vet another use for old woollen clothes.

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

What is not good for shoddy is good for manure,
and more especially for the manure prepared by
the agriculturists in Kent, Sussex, and Hereford-
shire, 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 re-
bound 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 gene-
rally 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 Bennondsej^, 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, pre-
pared 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 ex-

pressed 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 Ca^s 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 Id. 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 fre-
quently, 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 ex-
ception, perhaps, of silk goxvns. 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>f 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 '11 not
give any such money for that piebald thing."

LOXDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Skirts may be sometimes re-lined this way on the
getting np 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 Is. a
day), of children's bonnets, for the lining of
women's bonnets, the re-lining of muflFs and fur-
tippets, the patching of quilts (once a rather
fiajhionable 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' Ex-
change, but must purchase it, of course at an en-
hanced 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 remune-
rative or not is no part of my present inquiry.

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

iStayy, imleM 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*c]othei' people. One man thought.

if there was a family of daughters, the stays
which had became too small for the elder girl we're
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-
j 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 ex-
ported, 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 trades-
men ; they " saved washing. Now, even in Petti-
coat-lane, women's stockings are white, or " mot-
tled," 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 1
The women's stockings are sold darned and
undarned, and at (retail) prices from \d. to Ad. ;
\d. or 2d. being the most frequent prices.

The 2>etticoais 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 pm^oses, and was a part, but never a con-
siderable 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 secondhand sale. Such a means of convey-
ance may still linger in some secluded country
parts, but it is generally speaking obsolete.

Boots and Shoes arc not to be. had, I am told,
in anfficient quantity for the demand from the

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

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 Id., 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 2d. the
bundle. So long as the boot or shoe be not in many
holes, it can be cobblered up in Monraouth-street
or elsewhere. Of the "translating" business
transacted in those localities I had the follow-
ing interesting account from a man who was
lately engaged in it.

" Translation, as I understand it (said my in-
formant), 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 '11 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 / smo-
ther,' which I will describe. There is another
article called a * flyer/ that is, a shoe soled with-
out having been welted. In Monmouth-street a

* horse's head ' is generally retailed at 25. Qd., but
some fetch 45. &d. — that 's the extreme price.
They cost the translator from Is. a dozen pair to
85., but those at 85. 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*. 6cZ. a pair,
and they are made up as new-footed boots, and
sell from IO5. to 155. The average price of feet
(that is, for the ' horse's head,' as we call it) is
4(Z,, and a pair of .backs say 2d. ; the back is
attached loosely by chair stitching, as it is called,
to tiie heel, instead of being stitched to the in-
sole, as in a new boot. The wages for all this is
I5. id. in Monraouth-street (in Union-street, Bo-
rough, Is. 6d.) ; but I was told by a master that
he had got the work done in Gray's-inn-lane at 9d.
Put it, liowever, at I5. id. wages — then, with id.
and 2d. for the feet and back, we have Is. lOd.
outlay (the workman finds his own grindery), and
8d. profit on each pair sold at a rate of '2s. 6d.
Some masters will sell from 70 to 80 pairs per
week : that 'a under the mark ; and that 's in

* horses' heads ' alone. One man employs, or did
latel}' employ, seven men on * horses' heads '
solely. The profit generally, in fair shops, in

'stand-bottoms,' is from I5. 6d. to 25, per pair, as
they sell generally at 85. 6d. One man takes, or
did take, 100/. 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 some-
times 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
untl 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 85. to 45. a day. You
can give the average at 2O5. a week, as the wages
are good. It must be good, for we have 25. for
soling, heeling, and welting a pair of boots ; and
some men don't get more for making them. Mon-
mouth-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 al-
tered for the worse. To show how disgusting these
lodgings must be, I will state this : — I knew a
Komari 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 25. 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 lodg-
ing had to be paid all the same. These men
(myself excepted) were all Irish, and all tee-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

totallers, as waa the master. How often was
the room cleaned out, do you say ] Never, sir,
never. The refuse of the men's labour waa gene-
rally 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 25. 6d. a week.
Five men worked and slept there, and three were
ritters — that is, men who paid Is. a week to sit
there aud work, lodging elsewhere. A little be-
fore that there were six sitters. The furniture
was one table, one chair, and two beds. There
waa no place for purposes of decency : it fell to
bits firom decay, and was never repaired. This
barrack man always stopped the 2s. 6d. for lodg-
ing, 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
tliere was no space for them in the room. In
many houses in Monmouth-street there is a sys-
tem of sub-letling 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
unusnal 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*. a
week, and the two single men paid 2^. a week each,
so the master was rent free ; sind he received from
each man Is. Gd. a week for tea (without sugar),
and no bread and butter, and 2d. a day for pota-
toes— that 's the regular charge."

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

In Drury-lane and ttreds adjacent, about. ... fiO shops.

Seven-dull do. do. .... lUC) do.

Monmouth-itrcet do. do 40 do.

Hanway-court, Oxford-«treet do 4 do.

LiMon-KTove do. do 100 do.

Paddington do. do 30 do.

Petticoat-Une (sbopt, stands. &c.) do 200 do.

Somcnr-town do. do M do.

FleM-lane, SaRYon-hUl do 40 do.

Clerkeowell do 30 do.

Bcthnal-green. Spltalflelda do. 100 do.

~ ir-lane, Ace. do. .... 30 do.

774 thopi ,

employing upwards of 2000 men in making-up
and repairing old boota and shoes ; besides hun-
dred! of poor men and women who strive for a
cmst by buying and selling the old material, pre-
viooflly to translating it, and by mending op what
will mend. Tbey or their children stand in the
•treet and try to sell thera.

Monmouth-street, now the great old shoe dis-
trict, 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 comer, 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 astonish-
ment.

" 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 lenning 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 wiih
brick-dust and whitewash, leaning against posts.
Walk through Seven Dials on Sunday morning :
there they are again, drab or light corduroy
trowsers, 131ucher 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 neigh-
bour, by no means tends to decrease the bewilder-
ment in which the unexperienced wayfarer through
'the Dials' finds himself involved. He traversea
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 en-
trance of a customer, or betray the presence of
some young gentleman in whom a passion for shop
tills haa developed itaelf 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 expoac planta that may have flouriahed
when ' The Diala ' were built, in vessels aa dirty
aa ' The Diala ' themselves ; and shopa for the
purchaae of raga, bonea, old iron, and kitchcn-
atuif, vie in cleanjineaa with the bird-fanciers and
rabbit-dealers, which one might buicy ao many

LOKDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 accom-
paniments.

" If the external appearance of the houses, or
a glance at their inhabitants, present but few at-
tractions, 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 la-
bourer 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, ex-
cept 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 tire-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 any-
thing 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 &mily 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-ofiicer 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 traflic ; and their habitations are
distinguished by that disregard of outward ap-
pearance, and neglect of personal comfort, so
common among people who are constantly im-
mersed in profound speculations, and deeply en-
gaged 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."

^ Op the Streex-Sbliebs op 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 dis-
tant 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 habilments,
has first passed through the channel of the Ex-
change. The men who sell these goods have all
bought them at the Exchange — the exceptions
being insignificant — so that tliis 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.

A cursory observation might lead an inexpe-
rienced person to the conclusion, that these old
clothes traders who are standing by the bundles of
gowns, or lines of coats, hanging trom their door-
posts, or in the place from which the window has
been removed, or at the sides of their houses, or

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 ap-
proving 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 ex-
tended localities, where the inhabitants pursue a
similar calling, they are, as regards their know-
ledge of one another, as the members of one
fiunily. 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,
eren of the casements, that the room is com-
manded 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-
np 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 in-
genuous youth to possess themselves of these con-
fectionaries at the easiest rate, there arc some
mounds of builders* rubbish upon which, if an in-
qaisitire 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
8t«p the thorooghiare is interrupted by a gaudy-
looking gioger-beer, lemonade, nupberryade, and
nectar fountain ; " a halfpenny a glass, a halfpenny
a glass, sparkling lemonade I " 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
th« owner. Close by is a brawny

young Irishman, his red beard unshorn for per-
haps 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 me-
chanically is it ejaculated that one might think
the seller's life was passed in uttering these few
words, even as a rooli'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, carry-
ing 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 ex-
pression of great enjoyment. Heaped-up trays
of fresh-looking sponge-cakes are carried in tempt-
ing pyramids. Youths have stocks of large hard-
looking biscuits, and walk aboutcrying, "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 coster-
monger that these juveniles had a way of drum-
ming with their fingers on the shell so as to
satisfy a " green " customer that the nut offered
was a sound ^ne.

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 day-
light 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 potiito-can and the hot elder-wine appa-
ratus, and smoking pies and puddings, and roasted
apples and chestnuts, and walnuts, and the several
fruits which ripen in the autumn — apples, pearl,
&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

Ka ZZIX.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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. Tou meet one
man who says mysteriously, and rather bluntly,
** Buy a good knife, governor." His tone is re-
markable, and if it attract j^ention, he may hint
that he has smuggled goods which he mmt 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 uncul-
tivated 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 merelj' 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 de-
clares he said " Penny half quire "), " Stockings,
stockings, two pence a pair." " Here 'a 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 accompani-
ments of the main traffic. But as such things
accompany all traffic, not on a small scale, and
may be found in almost every metropolitan tho-
roughfare, 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
Koyal 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 mini-
mized cheapness has no exceptions in this cheap-
trading quarter.

But Petticoat-lane is essentially the old clothes
district. Embracing the streets and alleys adja-
cent 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 tho 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 dingi-
ness, as regards female attire. Dress coats, frock
coats, great coats, livery and game-keepers' coats,
paletots, tunics, trowsers, knee-breeches, waist-
coats, 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 mo-
rocco 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, in-
cessantly threading their way through all this
intricacy, is a mass of people, some of whose

j dresses speak of a recent purchase in the lane.

j I have said little of the shopkeepers of Petti-
coat-lane, nor is it requisite for the full elucida-
tion 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOH.

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 Irisii 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 Ex-
change, 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 crock-
man, 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 tninsactiug 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 carrj-ing 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 occasion-
ally 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 re-
sorting to the Old Clothes Exchange and its con-
comitant 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 sammer'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 lamenUible, for then it appears
actually deserted. Perhaps on a winter's Saturday
night — as the Jewish Sablj^th terminates at sun-
set— 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 mc Le believed it was
their first visit to the district. But, new as the
scene might be to them, they looked on impas-
sively at all they saw. They wore the handsome
and peculiar dresses of their country. A glance
wu cut after tbcm l)y 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.

KOSEMARY-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 Rose-
mary-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.

This lane partakes of some of the characteris-
tics of Petticoat-lane, but without its so strongly
marked peculiarities. Rosemary-lane is wider and
airier, the houses on each side are loftier (in se-
veral 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, Rus-
sell-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 be-
yond these and in the direction of the Minories,
Rosemary-lane becomes Sharp's-buildings and
Sparrow-corner. There arc 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-traf-
fickers, 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-whip-
pers, watermen, lumpers, and others whoso 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 Rose-
mary-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 stredtrade, as
regards things placed on the ground for retail sale,
&c., than in Petticoat-lane ; for though the traffic
in the last-mentioned lano is by far the greatest,
it la more connected with the shopi, and fewer

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

traders wliose 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 Petti-
coat 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 ; diflferent de-
scriptions 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 bar-
rows, 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 morn-
ing 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 parti-
cipate 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 merchan-
dize 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 se-
cond-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 col-
lected, 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 me-
tropolis 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 indus-
trious widow, say, with only 2(Z. or Zd. to spare,
couldn't get a pair of shoes for her child ; whereas
now, for 2d. or 3c?., 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 Rose-
mary-lane, both for my own wear and my family's,
and know something about it — how is a poor crea-
ture to get such a decency as a petticoat for a poor
little girl, if she 'd only a penny, unless there were
such places T

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 in-
dustrious persons, can spare but Id. 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 SO-and 40 years of age. His
face presented something of the Jewish physio-
gnomy, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

of tbem 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 11 I asks no questions,
and they '11 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?' Some-
times 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 coifee-shop). Bob-tailed coats
(dress-coats) is far the cheapest. I 've sold them
as low as \s., but not often ; at 2s. and 3^. often
enough ; and sometimes as high as 5s. Perhaps
a 8^. or Zs. 6d. 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 25. 6d., except one that
stuck by me a long time, and I sold it at last for
20d., which was 2d. 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 7s. 6d., 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 4s. 6d. or 5^. 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 '11
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. 0, 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 'U you give me to wear
that coat for you, and show off your cutV We
don't stand much of their nonsense. I don't
know what such coves are. Perhaps 'torneys'
joumeymen, or pot-boys out for a Sunday morn-
ing's spree." [This was said with a bitterness
that surprised me in so quiet-speaking a man.]
" Id 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 10s. often for
a] greatcoat, and higher and lower, oftener
lower in course ; but lOt. u 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-£uhioned named things often is so— and so
they show when hard worn. Why no, sir, they can
be done up, certably; anything can be touched
np; bat they get thio« you see, and there's no-

thing to work upon as there is in a good cloth
greatcoat. You '11 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 '11 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 '11 undertake that you shall get one
that '11 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 6d. up to 4s. They're cheaper if
they 're not cloth, but very seldom less or so low
as Qd. 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 Is. and Is. 6d., 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 '11 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 any-
thing 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 pro-
nounced it]. "If they're light, or there's any-
thing ' 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 ] 0, 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 wes-
kets from li^c^. to 4s. 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 geU 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. Gaitera is no go either. Liveriei isn't

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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
I 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*. 6d. 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 125. bud
weeks, and I85. good weeks, more and less both
ways, and there's more bad weeks than good. I
have cleared 505. in a good week ; and when it 's
been nothing but fog and wet, I haven't cleared
35. 6d, But mine 's a better business than com-
mon, perhaps. I can't say what others clears ;
more and less than I does."

The profit in this trade, from the best informa-
tion I could obtain, ruus about 50 per cent.

Of the Street-Sellers op 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 Avas 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 " trans-
lator" 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 con-
fined and hot, and we couldn't open the window,
that it was worse than the East Ingees. 0, 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 ho cared nothing about me,
and so I broke my indentures. After a good bit
of knocking about and living as I could, and
starviug 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 in-
formant had deserted, but I questioned him no
further on the subject.

" I had my ups and downs again, sir," he con-
tinued, " 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 '3 others as you must love, what must it be
then 1 1 '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
onlj'- 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 day's
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 '11 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 Avclted, 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Did I give him in charge 1 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 which-
ever it is, and a kick, and lets them go."

" Men's shoes, the regular sort, isn't a very
good sale. I get from lOrf. to is. 6d. a pair ; but
the high priced 'uns is either soled and heeled,
and mudded well, or they 've been real Avell-made
things, and not much worn. I 've had gentle-
men'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 Is. — that's the lowest I ever sold at —
to 2s. 6d, The price is according to what condi-
tion 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 35. 6d. and
4j. but they was really good, and soled and
heeled ; others I sell at Is. 6<l. to 2^. 3rf. or
2a. 6d. Bluchers is from Is. to 3^. 6d. Welling-
tons from 1*. — yes, indeed, I 've had them as low
as 1*., and perhaps they weren't very cheap at
that, them very low-priced things never is, neither
new nor old — from Is. to 5s. ; but Wellingtons is
more for the shops than the street. I do a little
in children's boots and shoes. I sell them from
Zd. to 15d. Yes, you can buy lower than Zd.,
but I 'm not in that way. They sell quite as
qaick, or quicker, than anything, I 've sold
children's boots to poor women that wanted shoe-
ing fur worse than the child ; aye, many a time,
air. 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.
0 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
bandy where anybody can try on anything in the
itreet ; no, sir, no boot-hooks nor shoe-horn ; shoe-
horns is rather going out, I think. If what we
■ell 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 ZOs. to 40». a
week, lis. is about my profit — that 'a as to the
year through.

"I sell little for women's wear, though I do sell
their boots and shoes sometimes."

Or THB Strxst-Sili.kb8 or Old Hats.
Thb two street-sellers of old coats, waistcoats,
and trousers, and of boots and shoes, whose state-
ments precede this account, confined their trade,
generally, to the second-hand merchandize I
nave 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 tho
street-sale of old boots and shoes. Hats, how-
ever, 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 super-
sede 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 '11
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 nie 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 \d. or 2d. 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 tjikes 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 M. to 3*. 6(Z., but very
seldom Zs. 6d. The Zs. 6d. 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

D 8

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

only the regular-shaped hats I can sell. If you
oflfer swells' hats, people '11 say : ' I may as well
buy a new " wide-awake " at once.' I have made
2O5. in a week on hats alone. But if I confined
my trade to them now, I don't suppose I could
clear 55. 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 op Women's Second-
hand Apparel.
This trade, as regards the sale to retail cus-
tomers 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 offer-
ing 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 follow-
ing 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 '& honest. 0, yis,
I know there 'a 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 ^d. to
2s. Zd. 0, yis, and indeed thin, there 's gowns
chaper, id. and 6(/., but there's nothing to be got
out of them, and we don't sell them. From 9ci.
to \%d. is the commonest price. It's poor people
as buys : 0, yis, and indeed thin it is, thim as
has families, and must look about thim. Many '•
the poor woman that 's said to me, ' Well, and
indeed, marm, it isn't ray 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 coun-
trywomen that says it (laughing), it 's yours. * I
wouldn't think,' says she, * of offering you \d. less
than Is., 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 2d. to 8c?. higher than cotton, but
ihey 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. *SV/^- is very little
in my way, but silk gowns sell from 3s. Qd. to 43.
Of satin and velvet gowns I can tell you no-
thing ; they 're never in the streets.

" Second-Iutnd 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
Qd. to 3s. &d., and some of them cost 3^. 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 Qd. to 2s. Qd.
for them. Plaid shawls is as good as any, at
about Is. Qd. ; 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 Is. Qd. as high as 7s. — but only once
7s., 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 2>d. to 15d. ; 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 giil 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Monday nights — from 2d. to Is. 6d. Little pet-
ticoats is Id. to Sd. ; shifts is Id. and 2d., and so
is little shirts. If thej 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 1
0, 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 10s. to 15s. a week, and nearer 15s.
than 10*. 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,
Grod 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
secondhand boots and s/ioes, I need say but little,
a* 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 5d. to Is. 9d. If the " legs"
of a second-hand pair be good, they are worth 5d.,
no matter what the leather portion, including the
soles, may be. Coloured boots sell very in-
differently. Children's boots and shoes are sold
from 2d. to 15<^.

Of THB Stbkbt-Sellebs OF Secojtd-hakd

FUKS.

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 tip-
pet is readily bought when the money is not an
impediment, and to many it if a strong recom-
mendation, that when new, the tippet, most
likely, waa worn by a real lady. So I was
aHured 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
•tie of Mcond'hand furs. She has now a small
•bop in seeond-hand wearing apparel (women's)
Moiamlly, furs being of course included. The
MMUMM carried on in the street (almost always
" the Cut ") by the fur-seller in question, who was
both indDstrions and respectable, was very con-
siderable. On a Monday she has not unfrequently
taken IL, ooe^alf 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 Ftcr 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
Is. Qd. to 4s. 6^., about 28. or 2s. Qd. being a
common charge. Children's tippets " go oflF well,"
from Qd. to Is. Zd. Boas are not vended to half
the extent of tippets, although they are lower-
priced, one of tolerably good gray squirrel being
Is. Qd. The reason of the difference in the demand
is that boas arc 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 child-
ren. 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 some-
times to cut up for other purposes. Viclorines
are disposed of readily enough at from Is. to 2*. dd.,
as are Cuff's, from id. to 8d.

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 2s. 6d. to 6*. at command. He
had so sold them in Clare-market, in Tottenham-
court-road, and the BrilL

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Op the Second-Hand Sellers of Smithpield-

MARKET.

No small part of the second-hand trade of Lon-
don is ciirried on in the market-place of Smithfield,
on the Friday afternoons. Here is a mart for
almost everj-thing which is required for the har-
nessing 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 com-
merce 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-alwa3's-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 sur-
mounted 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 pro-
minent announcement, a " herald painter." The
apparatus was handsome, but with that exaggera-
tion of handsomeness which attracts the high and
low vulgar, who cannot distinguish between gaudi-
ness and beauty. The sale was brisk. The
ginger-beer sold in the market was generally dis-
pensed 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 liis
"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-fyainter'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 ! Peuny-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 ponej', Avell-harnessed. The " whole set
out," I was informed, poney included, cost 60^.
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 raspberrj'-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 after-
noons 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 under-
stood. 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, per-
haps, are the chief things which are sold sepa-
rately, as parts of a whole. The traders have now
no other option but to carry them as they best

THE STREET DOG-SELLER.

LONDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

can, and offer them for sale. You saw men who
reitUy 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, j
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.

Thb live animals sold in the streets include beasts, I
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 ma- 1
jority 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
■porting 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 DOW. 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 Peck-
ham 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 mile* 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 cap-
tives ; 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 mom
boaineat is earriad on fiwtiog.

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 character-
istics 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 aspir-
ing 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 frater-
nity, the trading members of the turf. They love
to sell and to bargain, always with a quiet exulta-
tion 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 outwit-
ting." Perhapt^tbis ezpreMcs the code of honesty

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 par-
rots, parroquets, and cockatoos ; of gold and silver
fish ; of goats, tortoises, rabbits, leverets, hedge-
hogs ; 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 de-
scription under the several heads. The promi-
nently-characterized street-sellers are the traders
in dogs and birds.

Of the former Street-Sellers, " Fikders,"

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 condi-
tion of the trade, if trade it can properly be
called, for the " finders " and " stealers " of dogs
were the more especial subjects of a parlia-
mentary inquiry, from which I derive the official
information on the matter. The Report of the
Committee was ordered by the House of Com-
mons to be printed, July 26, 1844.

In their Report the Committee observe, con-
cerning the value of pet dogs : — " From the evi-
dence of various witnesses it appears, that in one
case a spaniel was sold for 105/., and in another,
under a sheriff's execution, for 95/. at the hammer;
and 50/. or 60/. 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 BelUs Life in London,
said, in his evidence before the Committee, " I
have known as much as 150/. given for a dog."
He said afterwards : " There are certain marks
about the eyes and otherwise, which are con-
sidered * 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 car-
riages. 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 with-
out 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 ex-
tensive and so lucrative, that the legislature inter-
fered, in 1844, for the purpose of checking it.

I cannot better show the extent and lucra-
tiveness of this trade, than by citing a list which
one of the witnesses before Parliament, Mr. W.
Bishop, a gunmaker, delivered in to the Com-
mittee, of *' cases in which money had recently
been extorted from the owners of dogs by dog-
stealers and their confederates." There is no ex-
planation 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, syno-
nymes, 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/. 4s. Qd., or an
average of 6/. IO5. 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 extor-
tion. Mr. Bishop was himself in the habit of
doing business "in obtaining the restitution of
dogs," and had once known 18/. — the dog-stealers
asked 25/. — given for the restitution of a spaniel.
The full amount realized by this dog-stealing was,
according to the above proportion, 9772/. bs. In
1843, 227/. 35. 6c/. was so realized, and
97/. 14s. Qd. 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/. 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 . .800
Hon. W. Ashley (v. t.*) . . 15 0 0
Sir F. Burdett . . .660

Colonel Udney (v. t.) . . 12 0 0
Duke of Cambridge . . 30 0 0 i

Count Kielmansegge . .900

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 Amdassador . . 1 11 6
Sir R. Peel . . . .200
Edw. Morris, Esq. . . . 17 0 0

* "v. t." signifies " various times," of theft and of
" restoration."

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Mr*. Bam (v. t.)

Duchess of Sutherland

Wyndham Bruce, Esq. (v. t.)

Capt, Alexander (v. t)

Sir De Lacy Evans .

Judge Litiledale

Leonino Ippolito, Esq. (v. t.)

Mr. Commissioner Rae

Lord Cholmoudeley (v. t.) .

Earl Stanhope

Countess of Charlemont (v. t. in

1S43)

Lord Alfred Paget .

Count Leodoffe (v. t.)

Mr. Thome (whipmaker) '. •

Mr. White (v. t.) .

Col. Barnard (v. t ) .

Mr. T. Holmes

Earl of Winchelsea .

Lord Whamcliffe (v. t.) .

Hon. Mrs. Dyce Sombre .

M. Ude (v. t.) ...

Count Batthyany

Bishop of Ely

Count D'Orsay

Thus these 36 ladies and gentlemen paid
438/. 5s. 6d. to rescue their dogs from professional
dog-stealers, or an average, per individual, of up-
wards of 12/.

These dog appropriators, as they found that
they could levy contributions not only on roj-alty,
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 exist-
ing 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 plea-
sure— 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
wa« 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
■Mgistrate. " 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
Avith 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 V and di-
rect 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 (mean-
ing 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 bo 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 negotia-
tion 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 re-
storer, 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 tenns. One of the
most successful restorers was a shoemaker, and
mixed little with the actual stealers; tho 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 Bol ton-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 docs not appear, as
far as the evidence shows, that these threats of
torture or death were ever carried into execution;

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

gome 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 gun-
maker 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 gen-
tleman 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 him-
self say that it cost QL; 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 him-
self, who lives in Belgrave-square, said he had no
objection to give il. for the recovery of the dog,
but would not give the Ql. 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^. for the dog, then 21., and at last pur-
chased it for 3^. ; and went and told Capt, Van-
sittart that he had given 4^. 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 wit-
ness 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 \il. 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
121. 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
Talue 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 QL 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 j
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, Rot-
terdam, Hamburgh, and all the French steamers,
readily bought stolen fancy dogs; sometimes twenty
to thirty were taken at a voyage. A ste\^ard,
indeed, has given \2l. for a stolen spaniel as a
private speculation. Dealers, too, came occasion-
ally 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 tliem abroad,"

The following statement, derived from Mr.
Mayne's evidence, shows the extent of the dog-
stealing business, l3ut only as far as came under
the cognizance of the police. It shows the
number of dogs "lost" or " stolen," and of per-
sons " 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
Stolen.

Dogs
Lost.

Persons
Charged.

Con-
victed.

Dis-
charged.

1841

621

1842

561

1843

606

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 con-
nected 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^., as to the said justices shall seem
meet. And if any person so convicted shall

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

afterwards be guilty of the same offence, every
such offender shall be guilty of an indictable mis-
demeanor, and, being convicted thereof, shall be
liable to suffer such punishment, by fine or im-
prisonment, 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-" Fikdbk." — A "Lubker's"
Career.
CoHCERKiNQ 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 wilder-
ness,' memory must bring back the time when
the feet of their childish pilgrimage have trodden
a beautiful grass-plot — now converted into Bel-
grave-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 cha-
racter is always delicate, as to embrace all its par-
ticulars 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 —
fer removed in those days from competition —

' There stood uprear'd, as ensign of the place,
Of blue and red and white, a checquer'a 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
•uipicion 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 ex-
tremity of London to embark in business as a
• mush or mushroom-faker.' Independently of
bis appropriation of nrabrellas, proper to the mush-
&ker's calling, Chelsea George was by no means
•crupulons 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 'ans to sell,' he would ease the pegs in the
pM«age of the incumbrance of a greatcoat, and
telegraph the «une out of tight (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 exer-
cise, he fell through the wheel and breke one of
his legs. He was, of course, pennitted 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 gentle-
man 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 per-
manent 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, espe-
cially with the vast army of trading sturdy men-
dicants, 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 ini-
tiated, 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 ser-
vice, 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 men-
dicant career was tahing 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 teas
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 minis-
tered 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 recog-
nised by commercial laws. With what success he
has practised, the ladies and gentlemen about the
West-end have known, to their loss and disappoint-
ment, for more than fifteen years past.

" Although the police have been and still are
on the alert, George ba«, in erery initance, hitherto

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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, com-
posed of the coarsest pieces of liver, fried, pul-
verised, 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 nibbed 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 pa)'-
ment 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
2001. ; in a bad year but'lOO/., 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/. yearly."

Op 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 in-
formation I have adduced is a condensation of the
evidence given before the Select Committee of the
House of Commons, and the inqxiiry 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 fre-
quently meddled with restoring, than with " find-
ing."

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 some-
times 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 5s. on an honest dog
than 51. 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 gene-
rally 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 tem-
porary attraction of the classes likely to be pur-
chasers— 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 ad-
vantage. 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 alFectionate.
Their colours are black, black and tan, white and
liver-colour, chestnut, black and white, and entirely

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

white, with many shades of these hues, and inter-
blendings of them, one with another, and with
gray.

The small Teitiers 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 in-
formed know a " real Skye " — is sometimes car-
ried 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 gen-
tleman ask, " Will he kill rats'?" the answer is in
the negative ; but this is no disparagement to the
Siile, 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," pro-
vided only the pug was hideous, are now never
cflfered in the streets, or bo rarely, that a well-
known dealer assjired me he had only sold one in
the streets for two years. A Leadenhall trades-
man, 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."

Frenck 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/.

Occasionally also an Italian Greyhound, seem-
ing 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 mur-
muring at the climate.

In such places as the banks of the Serpentine,
or in the Begent's-park, the hawker docs not
carry his dogs in his arms, so much as let them
trot along with him in a body, and they arc sure
to attract attention ; or ho sits down, and they
play or sleep about bim. One dealer told me that
children often took such a fancy for a pretty
spaniel, that it was difficult fur cither mother,
govcniess, or nurse, to drag them away until the
man was requested to call in the evening, bringing
with bim the dog, which was very often bought,
or the hawker recompensed fur his loss of time.
But aometime* the dogdealera, I beard 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 'a 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 excep-
tion of an odd "plum-pudding," or coach-dog (the
white dog with dark spots which runs after car-
riages), or an odd bull-dog, or bull-terrier, or
indeed with the exception ot "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 "blar-
ney." 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 superiorit}', 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 cus-
tomers. " 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 any-
body. / 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| &&, — I do not now

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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
Bummer 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 por-
trait 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
j lately — offered in the streets, and hung up in
I 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 10s. to bl. 5s., but are very rarely so
low as 10s., 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 reckon-
ing, 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 of-
fere'd 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 w.eek 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 50s. 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^.
is yearly expended in this street-trade. The weekly
profit of the hawker is from 25s. to 40s. 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 as-
sisted and then succeeded his father in the busi-
ness; was a pains-taking, temperate, and in-
dustrious 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 recom-
mended 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, in-
clination, liking, caprice, humour, whim, frolick,
idle scheme, vagary."

Of the Street-Sellers op 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 ex-
tinct, 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

LOIfDOir LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

congenial to the spirit of Henry VIII.; and when
his daughter, then Queen Mary, visited her sister
Elixabeth at Hatfield House, now the residence
of the Marquess of Salisbury, there was a bear-
baiting for their delectation— a/^e;- 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, ap-
proach ; 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 an-
other 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 phy-
siognomy. "

The suffering which constituted the great de-
light of the $pori was even worse than this, in
bull-baiting, fur 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
lang^ge. " 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 reBned 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. Marylebonc was
another locality famous for these pastimes, and
for it« breed of mastiflfs, which dogs were most
used for baiting the bears, whilst bull-dogs
were the antagonists of the bull. Gay, who
was a nfficiently close obterver, and a close
ohHtntx 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 in-
serted 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 : Oc-
casionally 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 &t their residences
with some "likely animals." A dog-dealer told
me that he hardly knew what made many gentle-
men so fond of bull-dogs, and they were " tlie
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
bulldog, " 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 his-
self,'' 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/. for the twain. The bull-
dogs now sold by the street-folk, or through their
agency in the way I have described, are from
bl. to 26/. each. The bull-terriers, of the best
blood, are about the same price, or perhaps 10 to
16 per cent, lower, and rarely attaining the tip-
top price.

No. XXX.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

The bull-terriers, as I have stated, are now the
chief fighting-dogs, but the patrons of those com-
bats— 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 advertise-
ments were far more common at the commence-
ment 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 nols." I may observe that " the nobs" is a
common designation for the rich among these sport-
ing people.

There are, however, occasionally dog-fights in a
Bporting-house, and the order of the combat is
thus described to me : " "We '11 say now that it 's a
scratch fight ; two dogs have each their corner of
a pit, and they 're set to fight. They '11 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 pu-
nished, 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 suflferings he inflicts by
the pritle 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 cha-
racter— 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 stuff"ed carcase is all that remains of Bill}- — 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 Avas
that he killed 100 rats in five minutes. I under-
stand, 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 popu-
larity once vouchsafed to cock-fighting. There
are now about seventy regular pits in London,
besides a few that are nm up for temporary pur-
poses. 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 an-
nounced 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 Euening next, May 27.

Mr.

has backed his Ferret against Mr. W. B 's Ferret to

kill 6 Rats each, for lOj, a-side.

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

Two other Matches with Terriers will come qff 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,

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR

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/. to 41.
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 sireet-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/. to 15,000/.
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 ray account of the former condition of the
dog-trade, I had to dwell principally on the steal-
ing 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 gtiilty of a misdemean-
our, and punishable accordingly."

There may now, lam informed, be half a dozen
fellows who make a precarious living by dog-steal-
ing. 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 me-
chanics— was lately seen to attempt the enticing
away of a dog. Any idle good-for-nothing fel-
low, slinking about the streets, would also, I
waa informed, seize any stray dog within his
Teach, 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 bad the following account. My informant was
not at present connected with the dog and rat
basinets, but he seemed to hare what is called a
" hankering aft4>r it." He had been a pot-boy in
bis youth, and had assisted at the bar of public-
houses, and so had acquired a taste for sporting, as
■ome *' fancy coves " were among the frequenters
of the tap-room and skittle-ground. lie had
tpeenlated a little in dogs, which a friend reared,
and be told to the pttblic-hou«e 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 12s.
a-piece for them. 0, 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
sliil'.ings ! a dog what ain't worth more nor 12^.
ain't worth a d n I ' I asked one gent a sove-
reign, but there was a lad near that sung out,
* Why, you only axed 125. a bit since ; ain't you
a-coming itl' After that, I was glad to get away.
I had five dogs when I started, and about 11, 8s. Gd.
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 5s. 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 spit-
toons 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
Is. to me. I sometimes won a pint, or a tanner,
when I could cover it, by betting on a rat-hnnt
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,rdlike 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. Jt '$
dirt cheap at 30*,, just about a year old. Yes, I
generally has a dog, and swops and sella. Most
masters allows that in a quiet respectable way."

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Of the Strbet-Sellkrs of Live Birds.

The hiidi-sellers in the streets are also the bird-
catchers in the fields, plains, heaths, and woods,
which still surround the metropolis ; and in com-
pliance with established precedent it may be
proper that I should give an account of the catch-
ing, 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 sufliiciency 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 loopfd 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/. The call-bird, if he have a good wild
note — goldfinches and linnets being principally bo
used — is worth 10s. at the least.

The bird-cather'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 slill 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 Hollo-
vi^ay, Hampstead, Highgate, Finchley, Battersea,
Blackheath, Putney, Mortlake, Chiswick, Rich-
mond, Hampton, Kingston, Eltham, Carshalton,
Streatham, the Tootmgs, Woodford, Epping,
Snaresbrook, Walthamslow, Tottenham, Edmon-
ton— 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 Pen-
tonville, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

the new broods are caught and caged, is ex-
ccMire; 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
•0 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 8d. and 4rf, each ; the older birds,
which are accustomed to sing in their cages, from
1*. to 2t. 6d. 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 bull-
finches 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
firom four to seven members in each, six being a
frequent number. These classes, when their edu-
cation 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 wake-
ful 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
M a bird-organ, its notes resembling those of the
bnllfinch. 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 fiute 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 bears 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, prais-
ing, or rating his scholars, till they acquire a
tone which they pipe as long as they live. It is
■aid, however, that only five per cent, of the num-
ber taught pipe in perfect harmony. The bull-
finch 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
bulltinches. 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' some-
what 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 Nor-
folk, and sent to London, as are the singing bull-
finches which do not " pipe."

The bullfinches netted near London are caught
more numerously about Hounslow than elsewhere.
In hard winters they are abundant in th'e out-
skirts 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 2s. 6d. and 3^. They are often sold
in the streets for Is. 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 aiford to buy them. A
dealer estimated it at about 400 yearly.

The Goldfinch is also in demand by street cus-
tomers, 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, gene-
rally, 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 6rf.
to 1*. each, and when there is an extra catch, and
they are nearly all caught about London, and the
shops are fully stocked, at Zd. and 4rf. 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 advan-
tage, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

with the same rate of mortality. The prices are
also the same.

Greenfinches (called (jreen hirds, 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 sale-
able, as the bird is regarded as " only a middling
singer." They are sold in the open air, at 2rf. and
Zd. each, but a good " green bird" is worth 2s. 6rf.

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 impaiient 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 in-
cludes sky-laiks, 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 6rf. and %d., but a seasoned bird
is worth Is. 6d. 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 laiks 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 Bed-
fordshire, and are sent direct (killed) to Leaden-
hall-raarket, where about 215,000 are sold yearly,
being nearly two-thirds of the gross London con-
sumption.

It is only within these twelve or fifteen years
that the London dealers have cared to trade to any
extent in Nightingales, but tiiey are now a part
of the stock of every bird-shop of the more flourish-
ing class. Before that they were merely exceptional
as cage-birds. As it is, the " domestication," if
the word be allowable with reference to the night-
ingale, is but partial. Like all migratory birds,
when the season for migration .'ipproaches, the
caged nightingale shows symptoms of great un-
easiness, dashing himself against the wires of his
cage or his aviary, and sometimes dying in a few
days. Many of the nightuigales, however, let the
season pass away without showiiig any conscious-
ness 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 dispi-nsed 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 with-
hold bis notes till the sun has set, and then to be

I the only songster left. This is, however, not
quite true, for he sings in the day, often as sweetly
land 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 alter 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 lar northern climates larks sing all ni^ht.
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 mor-
tality is, I have been assured on good authority,
the case ; besides that, the habits of the nightin-
gale 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 ca tellers
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 2s. each, the street-sale not reaching 100,
but the birds, "caged and singing," are worth 1^.
each, when of the best; and IO5. 12s. and 15s.
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 30U0,
with a mortality of about a third. Even this num-
ber, small as it is, when compared with tlie numbers
of other singing birds sold, is got rid of with diffi-
culty. 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, 'ihe redbreast is sold,
when young, both in the shops and streets for Is.,
when caged and singing, sometimes for \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 Thriish, Throstle, or (in Scottish poetry)
Mavis, is of good sale. It is reared by hand, for
the London market, in manj' of the villages and
small towns at no great distance, the nests being
robbed of the young, wherever tliey can be
found. The nestling food of the infant thrush
is grubs, worms, and snails, with an occasional
moth or butterfly. On tiiis 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

LOXDON LABOUR AND TUE LONDON POOR.

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
artisiin 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
mortiility 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 aristo-
crats 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. Uften enough,
however, the hens are sold cheap in the streets.
Among the catch supplied by netting, there is a
mortality of perhaps m«re than a third. The
whole take is about 35,000. Of the sale the
streets have a tenth proportion. The prices run
from 2i. QU. and 3*. for the " fresh-caught," and
10*., l/.,and as much as 21. 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.

liUukbirdt appear to be less prized in London
than thrushes, fur, though with a melluwer note,
the blackbird is not so free a singer in captivity.
They are "rose" and netted in the same manner
tA 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 wen in the trade, as it
was six or seven years ago, more especially as re-
garded 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
oriiiihologiats) are they indigenous. The canary is
a slow flyer uud soon wearied ; this is one reason
no doubt for its not migrating. This delightful
songster was first brought into England in the
reign of Khaabeth, at the era when so many
foreign luxuries (as they were then considered,
and stigmatised accordingly) were introduced;
of these were potatoes, tobacco, turkeys, necta-
rines, and canaiies. I have seen no account of
what was the cost of a canary-bird when first
importt^-d, but there is nu doubt that they were
very dear, as they were found only in the abodes
of the wealthy. This bird-trade seems, more-
over, to have been so profitable to the Spaniards,
then and now the possessors of the isles, that a
goveniuieiit order fur the killing or setting at
liberty of all ben canaries, caught with the males,

was issued in order that the breed might be con-
fined 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 prin-
cipally 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 Nether-
lands (as Belgium then was) they might be bound
for. The price of a canary of an average quality was
then from 6*. to 8s. (3c/., 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 AYhitechapel and
Bethnal-green. All who are familiar with those
localities may smile to think that the birds chirp-
ing and singing in these especially urban places,
were bred for such street-traffic in the valleys of
the Khajtian Al^^s ! I presume that it was the
greater rapidity of communication, and the conse-
quent diminished cost of carriage, between Eng-
land, Holland, and Germany, that caused the
Tyrolese to abandon the trade as one unremune-
rative — 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 soldi/ a
household thing. Linnets, finches, larks, night-
ingales, 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 stale. " Though not very handy," wrote, in
1848, a very observant naturalist, the late Dr.
Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, "canaries might pos-
sibly 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 pvrson for
yeara kept them in an exposed aviary out of doors,
and where they seemed to suffer no inconvenience
from the severest weather."

The breeaiiig of tan.iries in this country for the
London supply has greatly increased. Tht-y 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 moat 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 Con-
tinent, was about the tame, bUOO to UOOU each,
not including what were sold by the barberc, who
are regarded as " fanciers," not to say interlopers,

B 8

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

by the dealers. No species of birds are ever
bred by the shop-dealers. The price of a brisk
canary is 65. or 65. ; but they are sold in the streets
as low as \s. each, a small cage worth Qd. being
sometimes included. These, however, are hens.
As in the life of a canary there is no transition
from freedom to enthral ment, 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 cer-
tainly 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 labour-
ing 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 contrarj', 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 Id. each, some-
times halfpenny, and sometimes \\d., and for no
purpose of enjoyment (as in the case of the cheap
songbirds), but merely as playthings for children ;
in other words, for creatures wilfully or igno-
rantly 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 sports-
man 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 " hattm." One dealer told me that he
had frequently supplied dozens of sparrows for
these matches, at 2s. the dozen, but they were re-
quired to be fine bold birds ! One dealer thought
that during the summer months there were as
many sparrows caught close to and within Lon-
don 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"^ in-
tervention 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 Id. a sparrow, would 'be
850^. The adult sportsmen may slaughter half
that number yearly in addition. The sporting
sparrows are derived from the shopkeepers, Avho,
when they receive the opder, instruct the catchers
to go to work.

Starlings used to be sold in very great quanti-
ties 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.
Euins, and the roofs of ancient houses and
barns — for they love the old and decaying build-
ings— 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 re-
gards 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 %d. to 2s. 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 Qd. to Is. 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

The Redpoie is rather a favourite bird among
street-buyers, especially where children are al-
lowed to choose birds from a stock. I am told
that they most frequently select a goldfinch or a
redpoie. These birds are supplied for .ibout 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 redpoie.
About a third of the sale of the redpoie is in the
streets.

There are also 150 or 200 Black-caps sold an-
nually in the open air, at from Zd. to bd, 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, how-
ever, 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 6rf,, a frequent price being
1». A thrush's basket-cage cannot be bought,
imless rubbish, under 2^. M. 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 experimen-
talising ornithologists, will consume 90 grains, in
weight, of canary-seed in 24 hours. A green-
finch, 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 bodv, or an equivalent, were a man to
swallow victuals in the same proportion, of 25 Jbs.
in 24 hours. I may remark, moreover, that the
destruction of caterpillar^, insects, worms, &c.,
by the small birds, is enormous, especially during
the infancy of their nestlings. A pair of sparrows
fed their brood 3G times an hour for 14 hours
of a long spring day, and, it was calculated, ad-
ministered 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
•old 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 b« hopeless,
for no one would buy a dull or sick bird. The
captiret 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 espe-
cially offer their birds are — Sraithfield, Clerken-
well-green, Lisson-grove, the City and New roads.
Shepherdess-walk, Old Street-road, Shoreditch'
Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Tower-hill, Ratcliffe-
highway, Commercial-road East, Poplar, Billings-
gate, 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 ; some-
times 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 re-
side in, with perhaps 30 linnets and as many
goldfinches. The dealer selects 24 of each, re-
fusing 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 pre-
vail 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 trades-
men whose means and disposition are of the
same character ns 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 Bngland. These things were

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 tliera has
proceeded not to hwi from the artisans. The opera-
tives 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 fuclisia, was attended, as I have said, with
small cost, still it u-as cost, and the weaver, as
wages grew lower, could not afford either the out-
lay or the loss of time, Q^o cultivate flowers, or
rear doves, so as to make them a means of sub-
sistence, 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 fre-
quently I have had to comment on the always
realized indication of good conduct, and of a
superior taste and generally a superior intelli-
gence, 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-
coniectioner. 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 gold-
finches, 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 ajjartments 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 cus-
tomers, his employers grumbling that tlie work is
so slowly executed, and so custom or work falls
off. The bird-lover, on the other hand, is gene-
rally a more domestic, and, perhaps consequently,
a more prosperous and contented man. It is
curious to mark the refining qualities of parti-
cular 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 Bibd-Catchers who ake Street-
Sellers.
The street-sellers of birds are called by them-
selves "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 si-
lence, watchfulness, and solitude, forms such man-
ners. Perhaps the man most talked of by his fel-
low-labourers, was Old Gilham, who died latel}'.
Gilhara 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 thej'know each other's
surnames. Old Grilham being an exception. It is
Old Tom, or Young Mick, or Jack, or Dick,
among them. I heard of no John or llichard.

For 60 years, almost without intermission, Old
Gilhaiu caught birds. I am assured that to stJite
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
computiition, however, he would have been the
captor, in his lifetime, of three hundred and twelve

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR,

thousand birds ! A bird-catcher who used some-
times 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 gold-
finches 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 '11
drite all the birds to by and bye. I dare say
the hrst time the birds saw a railway with its
smoke, and noisa 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 himdreds 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 '11 come to. It 's hard for a
poor man to have to go to Finchley for birds that
he could have catched at HoUoway 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 oflFering birds oc-
casionally 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 '» 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 '11 re-
member 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 dis-
credit 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 re-
cently. Two thousand miles of houses have been
boilt in London within the last 20 years. But
with the bird-catchers this want of observance is
not so marked. Of necessity thoy must notice
the changes which have added to the fatigues and
difficulties of their calling, by compelling them,
liteimlly, to " go further a-held."

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 walla. 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 connec-
tion 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 liave 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. 0,
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 re-
member 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 dis-
charged with a pension being the luckiest bird-
catcher he knowed. The soldier was a catcher be-
fore 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 cap-
tain" (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 '■
what he called it, but it 's in foreign parU — be saw
flocks of birds; he wished he could be after catch*
ing them, for he was well tired of sogering. I wa«
sent to school twice or thrico, 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,

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

or the 'police' in a newspaper, now and then, but
very seldom. But on a fine day I luxted being at
school. I wanted to be at work, to make some-
thing at bird-catching. If a boy can make money,
why shouldn't he 1 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 tliat 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 be-
tween 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.]

" 1 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 tl)at to a
roperaakcr, 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 subsist-
ence 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 nm-st get to your
place before daylight to be ready for the first
Hight, and have time to lay your net properly.
"VN'hen 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,
nearlj' 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 tiien 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 diflference
when the birds are so young? As easy as light
from dark. You must lift up the wing, quite
tender, and you '11 find that a cock linnet has
black, or nearly black, feathers on his shoulder,
where the hens are a deal lighter. Then tlie cock

has a broader and whiter stripe on tlie 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 blackjround
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 2s. ^d. and 2s. 6d. the doxen.
That was a good day, sir; a very lucky day. I
got about 17s., the best I ever did but once, when
I made 19s. in a day.

" Yes, it 's hard work is mine, because there 'g
such a long walking home when you 've done
catching. 0, Avheu 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 nib-
ble. 0, 1 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 sport-
ing ; 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 12s. a week the lyear through. Some
weeks I 've made between 3^. 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 'era very obstinate. It 's no use, for if a catch-
er'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 cutched."

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 pub-
lic-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 pro-
perty of hawkers or dealers, and must be good
birds, or they will not be admitted.

The number of birds caught, and the propor-
tion 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 8treet-»e//«*.

The poor man's deformity may be best under-
stood 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 tliat 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 him-
self, and to throw up his chin, in order to con-
verse, and then he speaks with difficulty. His
face is sun-burnt and healthy-lookinir. 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-
fluff vendors, root-sellers, and others, have esta-
blished their pitches — souie of them having stalls
with a cover, like a roof — from Whitt-chapel work-
bouse to the Mile End turnpike-gale; near the
gate they are congregated most thickly, and there
they are mixed with persons seated on the forms
belonging to adjacent innkeepers, whicli 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 mis-
nomer, occasiontfd by the change tn the character
and appearance of what xttre the outskirts, are
still called " Pleasant." On seeking him here, I
had S4)nie little diflicnity in finding (he house, and
asking a string nf men, who wtre chopping fire*
wood in an adjoining court, for the man I wanted,
mentioning bis 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
residencf. The room in which we rat 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 pHe sat
a tame jackdaw, with the inquisitive and askant
look peculiar to the bird. Above the pile was a
large cage, containing a jjiy — a bird seldom sold
in the streets now — and a thrush, in different
compartments. A table, three chairs, and a ham-
per or two used in the wood-cutting, completed
the furniture. Outside the house were cages con-
taining larks, goldfinches, and a very fine sUirling,
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 st'itement I obtained from
the poor fellow. The man's sister was present at
his desire, as he was afraid I could not undersutnd
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 burn 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 ni'ght do me good. I 've
heard him say, too, that when I was very young
he took me to almost every ho.«pital 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 u.sed to taunt me by offering to jump uie" (in-
vite him to a jumping match), " and to say, I '11 run
you a race on one leg. They were bad to me then,
and they are now. I 've sometimes tat down and
cried, but not often. No, sir, I can't say that 1 ever
wished I was dead. I hardly know why I cried.
I suppose bec.iu^^e I was miserable. I learned to
read at a Sunday school, where I went a long time.
I like reading. I read the Bil)le and tracts, no-
thing else; never u new.«paper. It don't come in
my way, and if it did I sh.iuldn'i look at it, lor I
can't lead over weL and it's nothing to m> wiio 's
king or who '» queen. It am never have anyiliiiig
to do with nie. It don't take my attention.
There'll be no ciiange for me in this world. When
I was thirteen my father put me into the bird
trade. He knew a good many cauhers. 1 '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 u.ie 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 1 was a
cripple. At first I sold birds in Poplar, and

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Limehouse, and Blackwall, and was a help to my
parents, for I cleared 95. or 10s. every week. But
now, oh dear, I don't know where all the money 's
gone to. I think there 'b 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. 0, 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 nevef 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.
0, I hated it. I 'd rather live on a penny loaf a
day than be in it again. I 'ye 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 some-
times 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 bad driven them away, my informant con-
tinued.] " 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 conver-
sation, told me of "Billy" being sometimes teased
in the way described. Some years ago, he believed
it was at Limehouse, my informant heard a gen-
tlemanly-looking man, tipsy, d — n the street bird-
seller for Mr. Hohbler, and bid him go to the
Mansion House, or to h — 1. 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 forgetful-
ness.]

" I like to sit out in the lunshine selling ray
birds," he said. ♦' If it 'b 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 amuse-
ment in my life. Yes, 1 '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 1
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 work-
house. Other poor men can get married, but not
such as me. But I never was in love in ray 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. 0, no, I never fret about that
now ; but about starving, perhaps, and the work-
house.

" Before father died, the parish allowed us I5. Qd.
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 work-
ing-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*.
at the fire-wood, and then 15s., we can't now
earn 12s. 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 ex-
penses, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 my-
self, 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 d(/., and Ad., and 6(f.
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 anybodj'. 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
•o 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 Zs. 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
■ell 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 As. 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 H. 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 ctutomers are all working people, all of
tb«m. I sell to nobody else ; I make \s. or 5$. ;
I call 5#. a good week at this time of year, when
the weather loiti. I lodge with a married sister;
her hufband 's a wood-chopper, and I pay It. 6(Z.
a week, which is cheap, for I 've no sticks of my
own. If I earn it. there 's only 2t. 6d. left to
live on the week through. In winter, when I can
make next to nothing, and must keep my birds,
it i» terrible — oh yes, eir, if you believe me, ter*
rible r

Op tbb Tuo&fl of thb BiKty-DvtrMBB.
Thi tricks practieed by the bird-tellers are frequent
and ■ystematic. The other day a man connected
with the bird-trade had to visit Hollo way, the
City, aud Berroondser. In Holloway he saw six
men, §em» of whom he recognised u regular bird-

catchers and street-sellers, offering sham birds ; in
the City he found twelve ; and in Bemiondsey
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-" duf-
fers," 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 pur-
pose. 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 re-
semble 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 onetime "a fashionable bird"), or
St. Helena birds, or French or Italian finches.
They sometimes get 5s. for such a " duffing bird;"
one man has been known to boast that he once got
a sovereign. I am told, however, by n 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, with-
out 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 I" When
you've had him a week, ma'am," such a bird-
seller will say, " you '11 find him as lovesome and
tame as can be." One jealous lady, when asked
6t. for a " very fine Italian finch, an excellent
singer," refused to buy, but offered a deposit of
2t. 6d., 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 mnrmuring 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 hare

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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." Black-
birds 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 acknow-
ledged he had duffed a little ; "people liked a gay
bright colour." In the same way the tints of the
goldfinch ore 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 oft' 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 know-
ledge, that 2000 small birds were " duffed" yearly,
at an average of from 2s. Qd. to 3s. 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 him-
self 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 cock-
atoos, &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 1 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^ is necessary, as a cage
is wanted generally. The duffers buy the very
lowest priced birds, and have been known to get
2L 10s. for what cost but 8s., 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 per-
haps vend really smuggled and good cigars or
tobccco. Perhaps 150 parrots, paroquets, or cock-
atoos, are sold in this way annually, at from 15s.
to 1/. 10s. each, but hardly averaging 1/., as the
duffer will sell, or raffle, the bird for a small sum
if he cannot dispose of it otherwise.

Of the Strket-Sbllbrs op Forhign 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 " duf-
fing" about it. The "duffer" in English birds
disguises them so that they shall look like foreign-
ers ; the duffer in what are unquestionably foreign
birds disguises them that they may look m<yre
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—?i 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 quan-
tities ; 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 acknowledg-
ment of the good behaviour of his men, he per-
mitted 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 south-
ward 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 pos-
sessed themselves of in the way of barter.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Before the ship took her final departure, how-
ever, she was reported as utterly uninhabitable
below, from the incessant din arid 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,"
80 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
iu this instance did not kill them for their skins,
as is not uufrequently the case — the commander
did not know. lie could but conjecture ; and he
conjectured that something like a thousand were
released ; and even after that, and after the mor-
tality which tiikes 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
Toyage 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 over-
board. He fell into the error, Captain said,

of having the finest fruit selected for the experi-
ment ; 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 ob-
tained ; 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 fiir greater supply, indeed more
than 90 per cent, of the whole of the birds im-
ported, is from the merchant-service. I have al-
ready stated, on the very best authority, the
motives whicli 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 state-
ment, whith 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
parroU, gray parroU chiefly, of the natives, who
come aboard in their canoes. We sometimes pay
6*. or 7«., 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 Engknd. 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
inuuder, an unwelcome pentioaer. 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 Smith field ; and it is from
him, though not always directly, that the shop-
keepers and street-sellers derive their stock-in-
trade. There is also a further motive for the dis-
posal 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 sea-
men 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, pot rid of,
in any manner, in different regions in the conti-
nents 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 multi-
tude 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 re-
gions teem with bird, as with insect and reptile,
life.

Of parrots, paroquets, and cockatoos, there are
8000 imported to London in the way I have de-
scribed, and in about equal proportions. They
are sold, wholesale, from bt. to 30i. 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». or 10*., and
they are retailed at from \5s. to 30«., 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 nn innkeeper, or indeed to
any one, as they are supplied by the seamen. A
parrot which has been tiught to tilk is worth from
4/. to 10/,, according to its proficiency in speech.
About 500 of these birds are sold yearly by the

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

street-hawkers, at an outlay to the public of from
600^. to QOQl.

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, how-
ever, are sold annually, in London, at Is. 6d. 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 percent, lower.

Of the Street-Sellers op 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 appear-
ance. He wore a dirty-looking smock-frock with
large pockets at the side ; he had no shirt ; and his
long black hair himg in curls about him, contrasting
strongly with his bare white neck and chest, jThe
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 nomade. 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 summertime. 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
Id. 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 Id.
to Zd. apiece for. I never have young birds, t 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 three-
penny ones has six eggs, a half-penny a egg.

The linnets has mostly four eggs, they're 4d.
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
2rf, ; they 're merely for cur 'osi tj' — glass cases
or anything like that. Moor- hens, wot build
on the moors, has from eight to nine eggs, and
is Id. a-piece ; they 're for hatching underneath
a bantam-fowl, the same as partridges. Chaf-
finches has five eggs; they're 'dd., 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 al-
ways 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
Id. The yellow-hammers, with five eggs, is 2d.
The water-wagtails, with four eggs, 2d. Black-
birds, with five eggs, 2d. The golden-crest wren,
with ten eggs — it has a very handsome nest — is
6d, Bulfinches, four eggs, Is. ; they 're for hatch-
ing, and the bulfinch is a very dear bird. Crows,
four eggs. Ad. Magpies, four eggs, Ad. Starlings,
five eggs, Bd. The egg-chats, five eggs, 2d. Grold-
finches, five eggs, 6d., for hatching. Martins, five
eggs, dd. The swallow, four eggs, 6d ; it 's so dear
because the nest is such a cur'osity, they build up
again the house. The butcher-birds — hedge-mur-
derers some calls them, for the number of birds they
kills — five eggs, Zd. 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 Ad., the
egg is such a cur'osity. The greenfinches has
four or five eggs, and is Bd. The sparrer-hawk has
four eggs, and they 're 6d. The reed-sparrow—
they builds in the reeds close where the bul-
rushes grow ; they has four eggs, and is 2d. The
wood-pigeon has two eggs, and they 're Ad. The
horned owl, four eggs ; they 're 6d. The wood-
pecker— I never see no more nor two — they 're
6d. the two; they're a great cur'osity, very
seldom found. The kingfishers has four eggs, and
is 6d. That 's all I know of.

" I gets the eggs mostly from Wftham 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 bul-
rushing, 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 Aveek. 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

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

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 'a nothing in the nest Avhen I
get up, I only fell once ; I got on the end of the
bou^h 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 ^ix
weeks afterwards, and was obliged to have a
■tick 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
hoase-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 spa-
rapet (a parapet) of a house, and either to get
permission, or run the risk of going after it with-
out. 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 live eggs; I sell them for id.
The robin-redbreast has five eggs, too, and is Zd.
The ringdove has two eggs, and is 6(Z. The tit-
lark— that 's five blue eggs, and very rare — I get
id. for them. The jay has five eggs, and a flat
nest, very wiry, indeed ; it 's a ground bird ;
that's 1«. — 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 nestles to sell,
but I bavn'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 lake — the young birds I leaves ;
they 're no good to me. The four squirrels brings
me from 6<. to %$. 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 my-
self—-I can't get over 'em. If I has ao order for
'em, I boys 'em of boys.

" I mostly ttart 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 some-
times 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 gentle-
man 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. Ho has been one of my best cus-
tomers. 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 tiien 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 gen-
tlemen, 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 bs.
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 hedge-
hogs. Some buys 'em for stuffing, and others
for cur'osities. Adders is the same price as
snakes, 6s. a pound after they first comes in,
when they 're 10«. 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
addt-rs — they don't weigh many ounces, adders
don't— and I mostly has 9rf. apiece for each I
geU. I sells them to Mr. Butler as well.

" The hedgehogs is \i. each ; I geU them mostly
in Essex. I've took one hedgehog with thres

No. XXXI.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

young ones, and sold the lot for 25. Qd. 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 '11 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 'era at
borne.

" The eifets I gets orders for in the streets. Gen-
tlemen gives me their cards, and tells me to bring
them one ; they 're 2d. apiece. I get them at
Hampstead and Highgate, from the ponds.
They 're wanted for cur'osity.

" The snails and frogs 1 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 6rf. and Is. 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 2s. Qd.
the pail. There is some hundreds in a pail.
The wet weather is the best times for catching
'em ; the French people eats 'era. 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
Is.'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 2s.'8 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 nestles 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 4s. to 5s.
for the 20 nests, that 's between 2d. and Zd.
apiece. I sell about a couple of snakes every
week, and for some of them I get Is., and
for the big ones 2s. 6d. ; 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 Is. 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 op a Bird's-Nest Seller.
" I am 22 years of age. My father was a dyer,
and I Avas 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 Arun-
del brought him in 300^. a year at least. He had
eight men in his employ, and none under 30s. a
Aveek. 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 him-
self 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^. 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 2000i. 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-ter-
race, Bayswater. I have been in her draw-
ing-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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 sUirving,
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
fiimily for twenty years. The gentleman died
lately and left her half his properly. He was a
foreigner and had no relations here. My grand-
mother used to be very good to me, and when I
first got out of work she always gave me some-
thing when I called, and had me down in her
room. She was housekeeper then. She never
oflFered 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 yester-
day. 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're nerer seen me since I was a child but once,
and that wa« a few year ago. I 've never sent
to thera to say how badly I was off. They 're
younger than I am, and can only just take care of
theirselves. When mother mjirried again, her
husband came to live at the hoiue ; he was a dyer.
He behaved Tery well to me. Mother wouldn'i
tend me down to uncle's, the was too fond of me.
I wat tent to school for about eighteen months,
and after that I used to ntsist in the glazing at
home, and to I went on very comfortable fur tome
time. Nine year ago I went to work at a French
dyer's, in Uathbone- place. My itep-fiither got me
there, and there I ttopped six year. I lived in
the boote after the first eighteen months of my
terrice. Five yew ago mother fell ill ; the bad

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 anytliing 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*. a week where I was, and I paid 2s. 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 alto-
gether 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 1
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 ; 1 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 cater, 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-Gardeu market told me he wat
going into the country to get some roots (it wat
in the winter time and cold indeed ; I wat
dressed about the tame at I am now, only I had
a pair of boots) ; and he taid if I chose to go
with him, he 'd give me half of whatever he
earned. I went to Croydon and got tome prim-
roses; my share came to 9d., and that wat quite a
God-send to me, after getting nothing. Sometimes
before that I'd been two dayt without tattbg

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

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 mnn 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, walk-
ing 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. 1 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 nestles — he didn't mind what
they was, so long as they was small, and of dif-
ferent 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 nestles ; 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 nestles, as it prevents
the young birds from growing up and eating their
corn. The greater part of the holly used in Lon-
don 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 os. 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 nestles — they was a partridge's and a
yellow-hammer's: for one I got hd., and the other
Zd., 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 4c/. by some mash (marsh) mal-
low leaves (that there was to purify the blood of
a poor woman) : that, with Ad. that a gentleman
give to me, was all I got last week ; Is. 9c/. 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 eighteen-
pence, 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 gentle-
man give me a crown-piece in the street, and I
borrowed a barrow at 2d. a day, and did pietty
well for a time. In three weeks I had saved
I85. ; 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 be'fore, 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 id., and
the flock Zd. for a single one, and 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 land-
lord— they call him Greorge — 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 otf to
Clerkenwell, but the magistrates, instead of send-
ing me to prison, gave me 2?. out of the poors'-
box. I feel it very much going about without
shoes or without shirt, and exposed to all wea-
thers, 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 '11 turn you out. I know many such.
Sometimes I go to an artist. I had bs. when I was
d rawed 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, Avith very large pearl but-
tons, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

mostly give me 2s. 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 oflfered me sometliing 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 2s., and a coat I could get
for 2s. 6d. 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 occu-
pation 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 trust-
worthiness, and was found both honest and atten-
tive. He appears a prudent lad, but of course it
is diffictilt, as yet, to speak positively as to his
character. He has, however, been assured that if
he shows a disposition to follow some more re-
putable calling he shall at least be put in the way
of so doing.

Or TBB Stkskt-Sbu.eb8 of Squirrels.

The street squirrel-sellers are generally the same
men as are engaged in the open-air traffic in c.ige-
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
hi« coat, so that the animal's long bushy tail is
■een to advantage. There is usuiilly a red leather
collar round it« neck, to which is attached some
•lender 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
•bow any symptoms of fear.

The chief places in which squirrels are offered
for sale, are Biegent-street and the Royal Bxchange,
but ther are offered also in all the principal
thoroighfow etpeeially at the West Bnd. The

I purchasers are gentlefolk, tradespeople, and a few
I of the Avorking classes who are fond of animals.
I 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
I revolving cage, in which it " thinks it climbs."
I The prices charged are from 2s. to 5s., " or more
if it can be got, " from a third to a half being profit.
i The sellers will oft enough state, if questioned,
j 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 shop-
keepers. 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 60
per cent, profit, and that they average a weekly
sale of six each. The average price is from 2s. to
2s. 6d., 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 Is. 6d. 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/.

Op thk Strebt-Sbllers of LEVBRBts, Wild
Rabbits, etc.

There are a few leverets, or young hares, »old 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 in-
formed, and it is usually through their importu-
nity 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. Threy are in constant fear and dan-
ger, 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 ainging-bird sellers. The
animals are nearly all bought, for this traffic, at
Leadenhall, and are retailed at Is. to 2*. each,
one-third to one half being profit. Perhaps 800
are sold this way yearly, producing 221. 10#.

About 400 young wild rabbiu are sold in the
street in a similar way, but at lower suma, from
Sd. to 6d. each, id. being the mott frequent rate.

LOiVDOy LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

The yearly outlay is thns 61. IZs. They thrive,
in confinement, no better than the leverets.

Of the Street-Sellers op Gold and
Silver Fish.
Of these dealers, residents in London, there are
about 70 ; but during my inquiry (at tlie begin-
ning 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 re-
sidences 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 rjibst 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 cand}'-, 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 Billings-
gate— 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
80 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 in-
troduced 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, how-
ever, told me he had recourse to the street-pumps
for a renewal of water, twice, or occasionally
thrice a day, when the weather was sultr\' ; 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
5s. to ISs. 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 5s. apiece, even to a retailer, and
rarely less than 3s. 6d. The most frequent price,
retail from the hawker — for almost all the fish
are hawked, but only there, I presume, for a tem-
porary purpose — is 2s. the pair. The gold fish
are now always hawked in glass globes, con-
taining 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 pi ice being about
2s. Glass globes, for the display of gold fish,
are indeed manufactured at from 6d. to IZ. 10s.
each, but 2s. or 2s. 6cl. 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 con-
sign 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 2s. the dozen. Neat bandies for these
nets, of stained or plain wood, are Is. 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

Loynoy labour and the London poor.

•9

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 foliowiiig account. He was
the son, and grandson, of costennongers, but was
— perhaps, in consequence of his gold-fish selling
lying among a class not usually the costermongera'
customers— of more refined manners than the gene-
rality of the costers' children.

" I 've been in the streets, sir," he said, " help-
ing 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 yoxt, the plain, truth,
for I vasptU by my father to a paperstainei', and
found I couldn't bear to stay tJt doors. It would
have ailed 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 1 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 satis-
fied, alihoiuth 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-d(»ler 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
Knglioh 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 '11 get Lauglit. Gentlemen sometimes ask roe to
•it down, and talk to me about fish, and their his-
tory (natural history), and I 'm often ata 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 'vo 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 shop-
keepers, 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 sometimei just to satisfy children. I 've
sold as many as two doxen 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 Is. 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*. 6d. or 3s. or so, a day, perhaps, on
gold fish, when the weather suits."

A man, to whom I was referred as an expe-
rienced gold fish-seller, had just returned, when I
saw him, from the sale of a stock of new potitoes,
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 siccompanied 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 endeavour-
ing 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 cibterns, or small ponds, in her
garden, and in glass globes in the house. Of these
fish my informant had the care, and was often com-
mended for his good management of them. After
his mistress's death he was very unlucky, he said,
in his places. Hislastmaster having been implicated,
he believed, in some gambling and bill-discount-
ing 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 cliaracter
two years back was of no use," for people said,
" But where have you been living since 1 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 becaiise 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 jylaces 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, f<>r I
might have pined into a consumption if I 'd been

F 8

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

without something to do, and something to eat
much longer."

If we calculate, in order to allow for the cessa-
tion of the trade during the winter, and often in the
summer when costerraongering 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 125. the
dozen, we find 65,620 fish sold, at an outlay of
3276^. 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^. expended.

Of the Strbkt-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 im-
ported 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 pri-
vate 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 tor-
toises, 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 45. to Qs.
the dozen ; they are retailed from Qd. to I5., a
very fine well-grown tortoise being sometimes
worth 2s. M. The mass, however, are sold at
6«?. to 9ci. each, but many fetch I5. 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 Bum-
mer " thaws " him, as I heard it called.

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

Of the Street-Sellers of Snails, Frogs,
Worms, Snakes, Hedgehogs, eto.

I class together these several kinds of live crea-
tures, 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, plain-
tain, 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 re-
gular 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 2d. a quart. The other
eighth is sold on a street round at from Zd. to 6c?.
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 pros-
perous 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 tor 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/. 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. Com-
puting them at 24,000 quarts, and only at 2d. a
quart, the outlay is 200/. 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 hoe-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

pitaL ' They are charged Id. each : — " I 've some-
" said one of the frog-purveyors, " come on
■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 'vegone days with-
out 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."
Oiie 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 abont 600 frogs sold yearly by the street-
people. One year, however, I was told, the supply
was larger, for a Caraberwell 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 j
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 j-ear 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 'ihe shopkeeper, mostly
a herbalist, likes to give." I was told, from \d. to
Qd. 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 Bome few glovhwormt are
collected. 1

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

Thi class of which I have now to treat, includ-
ing as it does the street-sellers of coal, coke, fcin-
turf, salt, and sand, seem to have been called
into existence principally by the necessities of
the poorer classes. As the earnings of thou-
sands of men, in all the slop, " slaughter-house,"
or " scamping " branches of tailoring, shoe-
making, cabinet-making, joining, &c. have be-
come lower and lower, they are compelled to
purchase the indispensable articles of daily con-
sumption in the smallest quantities, and at irregu-
lar 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 pajrment as the
jonmeyman of the slop-tailor. Among these poor
artisans, moreover, the wife must slave with the
husband, and it is often an object with them to
•ave 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 whole-
sale 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
eoke — the chief articles of this branch of the
■treet-sale- are of the eostemonger class, as, in*
deed, is tisaally the case where an exercise of
bodily strength is reqtiisite. Costermonffers, too,
are Wtter versed than any other street-folk in the
nuutagrment of barrows, carts, asses, ponies, or
hortea, so that when these rebicles 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 Strkkt-Sellbbs of Coals.
AocoRDiKO 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 con-
tinuous 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 re-
marked 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, soch as the ballast-man, sitting
crouched around the smouldering embers in the
place where the fire ought to bel The reason of
this is, becawe the system of the sufferer by long

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

want of food has been deprived of the necessary
mteraal 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 work-
people 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 (ac-
cording to the accounts published in the news-
papers) estimate the number of the inhabitants
of London at 2,363,141, and the number of inha-
bited 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 neces-
sary 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 un-
mistakably exhibit not only the wealth of the
few, but the poverty of the many. The inhabit-
ants 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 consump-
tion. But this class is supplied from a very
different quarter from that of the artizans, la-
bourers, 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, per-
sons 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 \ 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 ex-
istence. 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," saya 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 liound of coals. Tlie 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 1 — 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 pla-
cidly 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 ioto, 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 1 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 cus-
tomers, and so add to the already almost unen-
durable 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 ^ 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 con-
siderable 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 gather-
ing in his humble abode in the evening, to which
many distinguished persons resorted. This is
alluded to in the lines, by Hughes, under Tom
Britten'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 CRIPPLED STREET BIRD-SELLER,

[From a Dagu«rrtotn>« by Bbard.]

L0ND02T LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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

Some few years ago an ingenious and enterprising
coitermonger, during a " slack" in his own busi-
ness, 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 m^n, 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 excur-
sions 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 con-
sequently 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 pro-
prietors 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/. or 900/.

The Tan 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 fen-
tail bat 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 i«

most frequently drawn by one horse, but some-
times by two, with bells above their collars jing-
ling as they go, or else the driver at intervals
rings a bell like a dustman's, to announce hia
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 piurpose. 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 pur-
chases in the market a cargo of coals which
turns out to be damaged, very small, or of in-
ferior 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 con-
cerned, there is no outlay of capital whatever.

There are about 30 two-horse vans continimlly
engaged in this trade, the price of each van
being 70/. This gives . . . ^621 00
100 horses at 20/. each . . . 1200
160 carts at 10/. each . . . 1600
160 horses at 10/. each . . 1600

20 donkey or pony carts, value 1 /. each 20

20 donkeys or ponies at 1/. 10«. each 30

Making a total of 210 vehicles conti-
nually employed, which, with the horses, —
&c., may be valued at . . . 6560

This sum, with the price of 210 aetf
of weighu and scales, at 1/. 10«. per set 816

Makes a total of

£tMb

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

This may be fairly set dovm 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 14s. 6d.
per ton amounts to 115,362^. annually, and sold
at the rate of 1*. per cwt., or 1^. per ton, leaves
6s. 6d. per ton profit, or a total profit of 43,758/.,
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 neces-
sary deductions for the keep of the animals and
the repair of vehicles, harness, &c.

The keep of a good horse is 10s. per week ; a
pony 6s. 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, Shore-
ditch, Kingsland, Haggerstone, and Islington. It
is somewhat remarkable that they are almost un-
known 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 higlier price for their com-
modity.

It maybe 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 16s. 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 '11
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 dif-
ferent 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 '11 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 man)'-, 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/. ; I have a van worth 20/. I wouldn't
take 20/. 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 mucti 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 prac-
ticilly 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 '11
never make a fortune at anything; I '11 be
satisfied if I keep moving along, so as to keep
out of the Onion,"

As to the habits of the street-sellers of coals.

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDOX POOR.

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 respectiible 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 Vaux-
hall of the east. I visited the house of one of
those who I was told had originally been a coster-
monger. 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 vege-
tables. 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 shep-
herdesses on the mantel-piece, while, framed and
glazed, all around were highly-coloured prints,
among which, Dick Turpin, in flash red coat,
j gallantly clearing the toll-gate in his celebrated
j ride to York, and Jack Sheppard lowering himself
down from the window of the lock-up house, were
I most conspicuous. In the window lay a few
books, and one or two old copies of BelCs Life.
Among the well-thumbed books, I picked out the
Netcyate Calendar, and the " Calendar of Oi-rers"
at he called it, of which he expressed a very high
opinion. " Lor bless you," he exclaimed, " them
there stories is the vonderfuUest in the vorld ! I 'd
nerer ba 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 hit career he gave me the following ac-
count : — " I To« 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
or a cart ; so vot does I do, but goes and sees von
o' my old pals that gits into the coal-line some-
how. He and I goes to the Bell and Siven
Mackerels in the Alilo End Road, and then he
tells me all he knnwed, and takes me along vith
histelf, and from that time I sticks to the coals.

" I niver cared much about the lush myself, and
Ten I got avay front the old uns, I didn't mind it
no how; bat Jack my pal vot * awful lutby cove,

he couldn't do no good at nothink, votsomever;
he died they say of lirium trumans" [not under-
standing 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."

Op the Strebt-Sbllers of Coke.

Amono 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 chal-
drons of coke, returning to such companies 50
per cent, of their outlay upon the coal. The dis-
tribution 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 '3d. 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
capiUil, or a reputation for capital, to the extent of
400/. or 500/., and in some cases more, and
they usually enter into their contracts with the
companies in the summer, when but small quan-
tities 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 th«
possessors of one-horse carts, who iu many instances
keep small shops for the sale of greens, coals, &c.
These men arc scattered over the whole metro-
polis, but as they do not exclusively obtain tbeir

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

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 Id. per busliel, coke
having, in consequence of the cheapness of coals,
been sold at the gas-works by the single sack
as low as Id., 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 2d., Zd.,
4rf., or more. These men are to be seen going
firom 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 Avhom 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
21. to as high as 8^., 10/., and \2l. The street-
sellers of coke number in all not less than 1500
persons, who maybe thus divided : van proprietors,
100; single horse carts, 300; donkey-cart men,
500 ; trucks, wheelbarrows, and " physical force
men," 650 ; and women about 50, who penetrate to
all the densely-crowded districts about town dis-
tributing 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 6s. per chaldron; but in winter
it generally rises to 10s., so that, taking the ave-
rage, 8*., it will be found, that the gas factories of
the metropolis realize no less a sum than 560,000/.
per annum, by the coke produced in tlie course of
their operations. And 4s. 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/.

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/. 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 tlie amount of capital invested in
the street-sale of coals it may be estimated as
follows : —

If we allow 70/. for each of the 100

vans, it will give £7,000

20/. for each of the horses . . 2,000
300 carts at 10/. each . . . 3,000
300 horses at 10/. each . . . 3,000
500 donkey-carts at 11. each . . 600

500 donkeys at 1/. each ... 500

200 trucks and barrows at 10s. each . 100

making a total of ... . ^£16,000

To this must be added

4800 sacks for the 100 vans at
3s. 6d 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. . . . .

gives a capital of . . .

,865

£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 . . . £323,768
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 cour»e, it takes less hands

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

to make it Wen, 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 erer saw in your life, standing
there before them retorts with a long heavy rake,
puUin 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
\X, 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 crj' 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 l^^t, I took a notion
of puttin BO 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 thim-
selves. 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 mc
breakin my heart mornin, noon, and night, dhrag-
gin 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 Smithfieid, and bought a
•toot stomp of a horse for 12/. \Q$., and thin wint
to a sale and bought an ould cart for little or
nothin, and in less nor a month I had every
fartbin 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
coold 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 thej-- 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."

Op the Street-Sellers op Tan-Turp.

Tanturj 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 in-
tended.

There is only one place in London or its neigh-
bourhood where there are tan-pits — in Bermond-
sey — 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«. or 10«. to pur-
chase a few hundreds of the turf.

There is a tradition extant, even at the present
day, that during the prevalence of the plajgue 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 fur 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 ton-piu, is from Qd. to M, per bun-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

dred cakes. Those at 9rf. per hundred are perfect
and unbroken, while those at 6rf. 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, Avhich may be, on an ave-
rage, about 4^rf. per hundred, as they sell it
at Is.

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 dimen-
sions, not one of them being more than twelve feet
square. Three or four men, in the long waist-
coats and full breeches peculiar to persons en-
gaged 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 donkej'-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
tlie 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 oflF, and, as is not uncom-
mon under such circumstances, she endeavoured
to make her circumstances appear better than
they really were. She made the following state-
ment : —

*• 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 regu-
larly; she bums 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
i — 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 gar-
deners 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. Some-
times 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
Zs. 6d. profit, after keeping the donkey. It
costs 9d. 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 Avell, even if
I go short myself, for what could we do with-
out him 1 I believe there are one or two per-
sons 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 break-
fast 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 filive ; 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 extra-
ordinary place in which she lived, and the con-
fined dimensions of her single apartment (I ascer-
tained that the two sons slept in the stump bed-
stead, 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 un-
fortunate 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, 1 wouldn't want for
anything."

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOH.

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 accom-
panied him home, together with her puppy, and
they all sleep corily 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
j 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 ray visit.

Op the Street-Sbllkrs op 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 155. 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
4d. and 4^d. the pound. A licence to sell it was
also necessary. Street salt-selling is therefore a
trade of some twenty years standing. Consider-
ing 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 shop-
keepers 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 costerraonger, to which
class the street salt-sellers, gene-
rally, belong. The value of the
donkey and cart may be about 21. 5s.
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 lOs. each, which will
amount to

To sell 3 cwt of salt in a day is con-
tidered good work ; and this, if pur-
chased at 2s. per cwt., gives for stock-
money the sum toUl of .

37 10 0

0 0

Thos the amount of capital which
nuiT be reasonably assumed to be
embarked in this bosincss is £251

6 0

The street-sellers pay at the rate of 2#. per cwt.

for the salt, and retail it at 3 lbs. for Id., which
leaves Is. Id. 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^ cwt. per day^
or 18 tons 15 cwt, per day for all hands, which, de^
ducting Sundays, makes 5825 tons in the course
of the year. The profit of Is. Id. per cwt. amounts
to a yearly aggregate profit of 63 10^. 8*. id., or
about 42/. per annum for each person in the trade.

The salt dealers, generally, endeavour to in-
crease 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 id.

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 6d. to 9d.; if we reckon 7^rf. as
the average, it will annually amount to III. Ss. Id.
the year, which will reduce the profit of i2l.
to about 30/., and so leave a balance of 11/. 8^. Id.
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

LONDON LAROUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Bleep 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, stag-
gered about violently quarrelling at the top of
their drunken voices.

The street salt-seller — whom I had great dif-
ficulty 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 clean-
liness, 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 follow-
ing 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 '11 never get on, he may as well
give it up at once, for the money '11 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 any-
thing 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 3cZ. or 2d. 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 shop-
keepers after all ; every one does the best he can
to cheat everj'body else. I go two or three even-
ings 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^ to-day.

but to-morrow (Saturday) I '11 sell 3 or 4 cwt.,
and perhaps more. I pay 2s. the cwt. for it, and
make about \s. a cwt. profit on that. I sold six-
pennyworth of mustard to-day; it might bring me
in 2d. 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 Id. or
8c/. 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 oflT the
other day from the Prince of Wales, after a four
years' voyage, and he came home without a six-
pence in his pocket. He might have done some-
thing for me, but I couldn't expect anything else
frdm him after the example that was set to him.
Even now, bad as I am, I wouldn't want for any-
thing 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.

Op 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 super-
seded 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 5uch 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 3s. Qd.
to 4s. a load, of about 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 HoUoway, Islington, and such parts. Twelve
year ago I would have taken here QL or 11. in a
morning, to-day I have only taken 9s. 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

LOXDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

boy, for 40 yeart. I was at it when I was 12
years old, and am now 62. 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 St. 4rf. and the other 3^. a day.
Now, with beer-money, 2s. a week, to the man at
the heath, and turnpike gates, I reckon every load
of sand to cost me 5s. Add to that 6s. 4d. 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*. a week,
in dear seasons, it will cost 15s.), 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/.
a year. Many years ago we resisted this, and
got Mr. Humphreys to defend us before the magis-
trates at Clerkenwell ; but we were ' cast,' several
hawkers were fined 10/., and I was brought up
bef ire old Sir Richard Bimie, 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 Kings-
land, and at the Kensington Qravel-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 em-
ployed in the trade at the same price as our
Camden-towu informant sets on his stock, we have
20 horses, at 10/. each, and 20 carts, at 3/. each,
with 3 baskets to each, at 2s. apiece, making
a total of 236/. of capital employed in the carry-
ing machinery of the street-selling of sand. Al-
lowing 'is. a day for each man, the wages would
amount for 80 men to 27/. weekly ; and the ex-
penses for horses' keep, at lOs. a head, would
give, for 20 horses, 10/. weekly, making a total
of 38/. weekly, or an annual expenditure for man
and bona of 2496/. Calculating the sale at a load
per day, for each horse and cart, at 21s. a load,
we have 6573/. annually expended in the pur-
diase of house or floor-sand.

Bird-sand, or the fine and dry sand required
ibr the us« of cage-birds, is now obtained al-
together of a market gardener in Hackney. It
ia told at 8ci. the barrow-load ; as much being
■kovdlod on to a coster's barrow <'at it will
cwry." A good««ised barrow holds 8| boaheU;

a smaller size, 8 bushels, and the buyer is also
the shoveller. Three-fourths of the quantity con-
veyed by the street-sellers from Hackney is sold
to the bird-shop keepers at 6rf. 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 supply-
ing 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 sup-
ply of 40 barrow-loads. Calculating these at the
wholesale, or bird-dealer's price — 2s, Zd. a barrow
being an average — we find 234/. yearly expended
in this sand. What is vended at 2s. 3(/. costs but
8rf. 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.

Op tub Stkeet-Sellers of Suells.
The street-trade in shells presents the characteris-
tics I have before had to notice as reganis 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 inhiying 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 im-
portance; 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 pur-
chased 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 Conut
Olory Mary, and had it only been perfect would
have fetched 100 guineas.

Shells, such as conches, cowries, preen 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 8i. per cwt ; cowries and clams from 1 0*.
to \2s. per cwt ; the green snail, used for inlaying,
fetches from 1/. to 1/. 10*. per cwt. ; and the ear
shell, on account of iu superior quality and richer
variety of coloum, at much at 3/. and HI. per cwt.

No. XXZII.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

The conches are found only among the "West India
Islands, and are used principally for garden orna-
ments and grotto-work. The others come prin-
cipally 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 end-
less 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 Austra-
lian 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 10s. to 1^. each. I have
been shown a shell of the snail kind, found in
the woods of New Holland, and purchased by
a dealer for 21., and on Avhich 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 col-
lected 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 some-
times 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 Lon-
don the day before, and had purchased on that
day a collection of shells of a low quality for
which he paid Mr. Jamrach 36Z. ; 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 Eotterdam,

then continue his journey up the Rhine to a cer-
tain 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 back-
wards 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 excur-
sions 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 Smith field, would well repay the
curious observer. The front portion of Mr. Jam-
rach'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 nu-
merous 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 never-
theless 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

in my account of the sale of foreign birds. They
make shells a more frequent mediuna for the in-
troduction 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 jthe name of * duffei's,' 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 caimot 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 con-
trive to introduce the shawls, their real business,
for which they sometimes have realized prices
varying from 51. to 20/. In many instances, the
cheat is soon discovered, when the duffers imme-
diately 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 coun*
try 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 speci-
men of a three-coloured cockatoo, for which he
asked 10/. The shell dealer declined the purchase
at that price, saying, that he sold these birds at il.
a piece, but offered to give 3/. lOj. 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
bearing further, when the duffer made this stitc-
ment : — ** 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
ptircbase 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 abawl, for which I asked twenty-
fire guineas, but offered to take fifteen guineas
and the bird. This was at length agreed to, and
DOW, having sold it for 3/. 10^., it makes 19/. Bs.
I got for the shawl, and not a bad day's work
either."

Of shells there are about a million of the eom>
moner aorU bought by the London ftreet-tellert at

Zs. 'the gross. They are retailed at Id. apiece,
or I2s. 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.

Op tue 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 drink-
ables ; 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
com, 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
naval 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 re-
quired ; under one form or the otlier, therefore,
river-dealers boast of an antiquity as old as the
navel commerce of the country.

The prototype of the river bcer-seller of the
present day is the bumboat-man. Bumboats (or
rather ^auwi-boats, that is to say, the boats of the
harbour, from the German Daum, 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 fornmtion of the various dock*
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 ship*
from the mouth of the river to the dock entrance,
their business died away, and they gradually dji«
appeared ; 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 bum*
boat nuui on the Thamef. The Trinity Com*

LONDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

pany 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 witli 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 inquirj'
took place, which resulted in a regulation that
all the beer-sellers or purl-men should thence-
forward be regularly licensed for the river-sale of
beer and spirits from the \Vaterman's Hall, which
regulation is in force to the present time.

It appears to have been the pr.ictice 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 inirl — why I
know not, but Bailey, the philologist of the
seventeenth centurj'^, so designates it. The drink
originally sold on the river was purl, or this
mixture, whence the title, purl-man. Now, how-
ever, 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 ^jwrZ-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 neces-
sary; 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 thingrequired to becomea purl-man is to
procure a licence from the Waterman's Hall, which
costs 35. Qd. 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 steauiers, or through any other
cause. Thus equipped he then goes to some of the

small breweries, where he getg 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 burn-
ing, and a huge bell, by no means the least im-
portant 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 be-
neath 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 per-
forms another very important office. During the
winter, when dense fogs settle down on the river,
even the regular watermen sometimes lose them-
selves, and flounder about bewildered perhaps for
hours. The direction once lost, their shouting is
unheeded or imheard. The purl-man's bell, how-
ever, reaches the ear through the siirroimding
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 skiif kind — generally old ones,
which they patch up and repair at but little cost.
They purchase these boats at from 3/. to 6/. each.
If we take the average of these two sums, the
items will be — •

£ s.

Boat .

4 10

Pewter measures .

0 5

Warming-pot

0 1

Fire stove .

0 5

Gallon can .

0 2

Two pins of beer .

0 8

Quart of gin

0 2

Sugar and ginger .

0 1

Licence

0 3

Total £5 19

Thus it requires, at the very least, a capital of
61. 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

any longer, bo 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 RatcliflF 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 com, potatoes, &c. ; and 4 are known to fre-
quent 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
Wnpping and Shad well, who ai-e their employers,
large quantities of filthy stuff compounded espe-
cially 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 8 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/.
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*. per pin, and sell it
at id. per pot, which leaves them a profit of As. on
the two pins, and, allowing them 6(/. per day profit
on the gin, it gives 1/. Is. per week profit to each,
or a total to all hands of ill. 5«. per week, and a
gross total of 2457/. 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 818/. 10«., which is
paid to boys, at the rate of Zs. 6(/. per week ; it
being necessary for each purlman to employ a
lad to take care of the boat while he is on board
the ships senring bis customers, or traversing the
tiers. This deduction being made leaves 61/. 2s.
per annum to each purl- man as the profit on his
year's trading.

The present race of porl-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 con-
tinuous labour, have started in the line, and ulti-
mately 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 hun 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*. to 20». " I
should do much better," he Siiid, " if people
would only pay what they owe ; but 'there are
some who never think of paying anything." He
has between 10/. and 20/. 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 fteet 8\ I hereby certify that
inche», 30 years - •' '

of age, dark
half, Milow com-
plexion.

2nd <k 3rd Vic.
csp. 47, sec. 25.

, in the parish of
in the county of Middle*
sex, is this day registered in a
__^ ^ book of the Company of the Mas-
ter,' 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 per-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

sons 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. Banton, Clerh

Beside the regular purl-men, or, as they may be
called, bnmboat-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 per-
son, 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, Avere 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, spec-
tacles 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 sud-
denly 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 sel-
lers 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 tem-

porary character only, as in the case of the ven-
dors 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 num-
ber of street-sellers belonging to this class to be
about 500.

Concerning the mimber 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Then of the street-sellers of mineral productions 1
and natural curiosities, there are 216 vendors of I
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 j
number the sellers of shells must be deducted, ns
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 suras together, we have
the following table as to the numbers of indivi-
duals comprised in the, /iJ-5< 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.) 80,000

2. Street-sellers of "green stuflF,"
including water-cresses, chickweed

and gra'n'sel, turf, &c 2,000

3. Street-sellers of eatables and
drinkables 4,000

4. Street-sellers of stationery, lite-
rature, and fine arts 1,000

5. Street-sellers of manufactured
articles of meul, crockery, glass, tex-
tile, chemical, and miscellaneous sub-
•tances 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, squir-
rels, leverets, tortoises, snails, &c. . 200

8. Street-sellers of mineral produc-
tions 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 mixid 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 w/toUtaU 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 esti-
mate.

The next iJoct to be evolved is the amount of
capital invested in the street-sale of Second-hand
Articles, of Live Animals, and of Mineral Produc-
tions. 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, 5s. each ; 20 barrows, 1^. £ s. d.
each ; stock-money for 50 vendors, at

105. per head 52 10 0

Street- Sellei's of Second-hand Metal Trays.

Stock-money for 20 sellers, at 5s.

each 500

Street-Sellers of othei' Second-hand Metal Articles,
cu Italian and Flat Irons.

Stock-money for 20 vendors, at 5s.
each; 20 stalls, at 35. each. ... 800

Street-Sellers of Second-hand Linen, ike.
Stock-money for 30 vendors, at 5s.
per head 7 10 0

Street-Sellers of Second-hand i^umt) Linen and
Calico.

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

Street- Sellers of Second-hand Curtains.

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

Street-Sellers of Second-hand Carpeting, Flannels,
Stocking-legs, ^c.

Stock-money for 30 sellers, at 6s.
each 900

Street-Sellers of Second-hand Bed-ticking,
Sacking, Fringe, ^c.
Stock-money for 30 sellers, at 4^.

each 600

Street- Sellers of Second-hand Glass and Crockery.

6 barrows, 15*. each ; 6 baskets,
\s. %d. each ; stock-money for 6 ven-
dors, at 55. each 6 9 0

Street-Selleis of Second-hand Miscellaneous
Articles.

Stock-money for 5 vendors, at 155.

each 3 15 0

Street-Sellers and Duffers qf Second-hand Music.

Stock-money for 25 sellers, at 1^

each 25 0 0

Street-Sellers of Secondhand Weapons.

Stock-money for 6 vendors, at 1/.

each 600

Street-Sellers qf Second-hand Curiosities.

6 barrows, 155. each; stock-money
for 6 vendors, at 155. per head . . 9 0 0

Street-Sellers of Second-hand Telescopes and
Pocket- Glasses.

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

Street-Sellers of other Miscellaneous Articles.

80 stalls, 55. each ; stock-money for
80 sellers, at 15*. each 80 0 0

Q 8

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

Street-Sell&rs qf MeiCs Second-hand Clothes.
100 linen bags, at 25. each ; stock- £ s. d.
money for 100 sellers, at 153. each . 85 0 0
Street-Sellers of Second-hand Boots and Shoes.
10 stalls, at 35. each ; 30 baskets, at
2s. 6d. each; stock- money for 30
seUers, at 10*. each 20 5 0

Street-Sellers of Secondhand Hats.

30 irons,two to each man, at 25. each;
60 blocks, at Is. Qd. per block; stock-
money for 15 vendors, at IO5. each . 15 0 0

Street-Sellers of Women's Second-hand Apparel.

Stock-money for 50 sellers, at 10*.
each ; 60 baskets, at 25. 6d. each . 31 5 0

Street-Sellers of Second-hand Bonnets.

10 umbrellas, at 3s. each ; 30 bas-
kets, at 2s. 6d. each ; stock-money
for 30 sellers, at 55. each . . . . 12 15 0

Street-Sellers of Second-hand Furs.

Stock-money for 10 vendors, at
7s. 6d. each. 3 15 0

Street- Sellers of Second-hand Articles in
Synithfield- market.

30 sellers of harness sets and "col-
lars, at an average capital of 155. each ;
6 sellers of saddles and pads, at 155.
each ; 10 sellers of bits, at 35. each ; 6
sellers of wheel-springs and trays, at
155. each ; 6 sellers of boards and
trestles for stalls, at IO5. each ; 20
sellers of barrows, small carts, and
trucks, at 51. each ; 6 sellers of goat
carriages, at 3^. each ; 6 sellers of
shooting galleries and guns for ditto,
and drums for costers, at 155. each ;
10 sellers of measures, weights, and
scales, at 255. each ; 5 sellers of po-
tato cans and roasted-chestnut appa-
ratus, at 5/. each ; 3 sellers of ginger-
beer trucks, at 61. each ; 6 sellers of
pea-soup cans and pickled-eel kettles,
155. each ; 2 sellers of elder-wine
vessels, at 155. 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 aitount of Capital be-

LONGIKO TO StBEET-SELLEES OP

Second-hand Articles ... . 621 14 0

Steebt-Sbllers'of Live Animals.
Street-Sellers of Dogs.

Stock-money for 20 sellers (in-
cluding kennels and keep), at 5^. 155.
each seller . 115 0 0

Slreet-Sellei's and Duffers of Birds {English).

2400 small cages (reckoning 12 to

each seller), at Qd. each ; 1200 long £ s. d.
cages (allowing 6 cages to each seller),
at 25. each ; 1800 large cages (avera-
ging 9 cages to each seller), at 2s. 6d.
each. Stock-money for 200 sellers, at
2O5. each 605 0 0

Street-Sellers of Parrots, d'C.

20 cages, at IO5. each; stock-
money for 10 sellers, at 305. each . 25 0 0

Street-Sellers of Birds'-Nests.

3 hamper baskets, at 6d. each . . 16

Street-Sellers of Squirrels.

Stock-money for 20 vendors, at IO5.
each 10 0 0

Street- Sellers of Leverets, Wild Rabbits, d'c.

6 baskets, at 25. each ; stock-money
for 6 vendors, at 55. each .... 220

Street-Sellers of Gold and Silver Pish.

35 glass globes, at 25. each; 35
small nets, at 6d. each ; stock-money
for 35 vendors, at 155. each ... 30 12 6

Street-Sellers of Tortoises.

Stock-money for 20 vendors, at IO5.
each 25 0 0

Street-Sellers of Snails, Frogs, Worms, Snakes,
Hedgehogs, cf;c.

14 baskets, at I5. each .... 14 0

Total amount of Capital be-
LONGiNO 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 701. each ; 100
horses, at 20^. each ; 100 carts, at 10^.
each ; 160 horses, at 10/. each ; 20
donkey or pony carts, at 1/. each ; 20
donkeys or ponies, at 1^ IO5. each;
210 sets of weights and scales, at
1/. IO5. each; stock-money for 210
vendors, at 21. each 7,485 0 0

Street-Sellers of Coke.

100 vans, at 70/. each ; 100 horses,
at 20/. each ; 300 carts, at 10/. each;
300 horses, at 10/. each; 500 donkey-
carts, at 1/. each ; 500 donkeys, at 1/.
each ; 200 trucks and barrows, at IO5.
each ; 4800 sacks for the 100 vans, at
35. 6d. each ; 3600 sacks for the 300
carts ; 3000 sacks for the 500 don-
key carts ; 1652 sacks for the 550
trucks and barrows ; 300 sacks for
the 50 women; stock-money for 1500
vendors, at 11. per head . . . 19,936 12 0

Street-Sellers of Tan- Turf.

12 donkeys and carts, at 21. each ;

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

2 trucks, at 155. each ; stock-money £ t. d.
for 14 vendors, at lOj. each ... 82 10 0

Strtet-Selleri of Salt.
75 donkeys and carts, at 21. 5s.
each ; 75 barrows, at 10^. each ;
stock-money for 150 vendors, at 6*.
each 251 5 0

Street-Sellers of Sand.
20 horsefl, at 10/. each ; 20 carts,
at 3/. each ; 60 Wskets, at 2s. each ;
wages of 30 men, at Zs. per day for
each ; expenses fur keep of 20 horses,
at 10s. per head ; estimated stock-
money for 30 sellers, at 5s. each ; 40
barrows, at 15s. each ; stock-money
for the barrow-men, at Is. 6d. each . 320 5 0

Street-Sellers of Shells.
Stock-money for 70 vendors, at 5*.
each 17 10 0

Total Capital bblonqiko to

STREET-SELLKItS OF Ml5ERAL PRO-
DUCTIONS, ETC 28,043 2 0

Rivei'-Sellers of Purl.
35 boats, at Al. 10s. each ; 35 sets
of measures, at 5s. the set ; 35 warm-
ing pots, at Is. 6d. each ; 35 fire-stoves,
at 5s. each ; 35 gallon cans, at 2^. 6d.
each ; 70 " pins" of beer, at is. per
" pin ;" 35 quarts of gin, at 2s. 6d.
the quart ; 85 licences, at Zs. 6d. ;
stock-money for spice, 8k., at 1*. 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 manufac-
tured 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-sellen of purl . . . 208 5 0

Total Amouxt of Capital bi-

LOROIHO TO THl LoiDOK StRXKT-

SsLLMf . . . . 67,023 11 0

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

Ixoom, OK " Takihos," of thi Strbbt^bluus

OF SaOOHD-HAJID AkTIOLBS.

We have now to oMiinato the receipts of each of
the above-BMaUonod claMa*.

Street-Sellers of Second-Juind ^fetal Wares.

I was told hy several in this trade £ s. d.
that there were 200 old metal sellers
in the streets, but, from the best in-
formation at my command, not more
than 50 appear to be strictly street-
sellers, unconnected with shopkeep-
ing. Estimating a weekly receipt,
per individual, of 15s. (half being
profit), the yearly street outlay
among this body amounts to , . 1,950 ' 0 0
Street-Sellers of Second-hand Metal- Ti-ays, Ac.

Calculating that 20 persons take in
the one or two nights* sale 45. Ji week
each, on second-ihand trays (33 per
cent, being the rate of profit), the
street expenditure amounts yearly to 208 0 0
Street- Sellers qf otiier Second-luind Metal Articles,
as Italian and Flat Irons, ike.

There are, I am informed, 20 per-
sons selling Italian and fiat irons re-
gularly throughout the year in the
streets of London ; each takes upon
an average 6«. weekly, which gives
an annual expenditure of upwards of 312 0 0
Street-Sellers of Second-hand Linen, dr.

There are at present 30 men and
women who sell towelling and can-
vas wrappers in the streets on Satur-
day and Monday nights, each taking
in the sale of those articles 95. per
week, thus giving an annual outlay

of 702 0 0

Street-Sellers qf Second-hand {burnt) Linen and
Calico.

The most intelligent man whom I
met with in this trade calculated that
there were 80 of these eecpnd-hand
street-folk plying their trade two
nights in the week; and that they
took 8*. 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 en-
gaged in the street-sale of second-
band curtains, and reckoning the
weekly takings of each to be 55., 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, d'c.

lam informed that the same persons
selling curtidns sell also second-hand
carpeting, &c. ; their weekly average
takings appear to be about Ci. each
in the sale of the above articles, thus
we have a yearly outlay of. . . . 468 0 0
Street-SdUrt qf Second-hand Bed-ticking,
Sacking, JfVinge, Ac.

The street-sellers of curtains, car*

100

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR,

£ s. d.

peting, &c., of whom there are 30,
are also the street-sellers of bed-tick-
ing, sacking, fringe, &c. Their weekly-
takings for the sale of these articles
amount to 4s. each. Hence we find
that the sum spent yearly in the
streets upon the purchase of bed-tick-
ing, &c., amounts to ^312 0 0

, Street-Sellers of Second-hand Glass and
Crockery.
Calculating that each of the six
dealers takes 12s. weekly, with a
profit of 6s. or 7s., we find there is
annually expended in this department
of street-commerce . ... . . .187 4 0

Street-Sellers of Second-hand Miscellaneotts
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^. weekly, about half
being profit, thus giving a yearly ex-
penditure 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 30s. each, or an aggregate
yearly amount of 1950^. The weekly
profits run from 10s. to 15s., and
sometimes the well-known dealers
clear 40s. or 50s. a week, while others
do not take 5s 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^.
a week. In some weeks a man may
take 51.; 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 15s. weekly each man,
about two-thirds being profit, or
early 234 0 0

Street-Sellers of Secondhand Telescopies and
Pocket-QUisses.

There are only six men at present
engaged in the sale of telescopes and
pocket-glasses, and their weekly

average takings are 30s. each, giving £ s. d.
a yearly expenditure in the streets of 468 0 0

Street-Sellers qf 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 10s. 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-oif 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 20s. weekly, their trading
being chiefly on the Saturday nights
and Sunday mornings. Their profits
are from 50 to 60 per cent. Esti-
mating the number of sellers at 100,
and their weekly takings at 20s. 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 in-
dividuals engaged in the street-sale
of second-hand boots and shoes of all
kinds; some take as much as 30s.
weekly, while others do not take
more than half that amount; their
profits being about 50 per cent.
Beckoning that the weekly average
takings are 20s. 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 10s., and in
order to clear that sum they must
take 20s. Hence the gross gains of
the class will be 390/. 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, 15s. per
week ; one-half of this is clear gain.
Thus we find the annual outlay in

THE BONE-GRUBBER.

IFtam a Daguartolnm by Bbabd.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

101

the streets upon women's second-hand £ s. d.
apparel is no less than .... 1,950 0 0
Street-Sellers qf 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 um-
brella turned upside down, while
others are spread upon a wrapper on
the stones. The average takings of
this class of street-sellers are about
12s, each per week, and their clear gains
not more than one-half, thus giving a
yearly expenditure of 936 0 0

Slreet-Silleis qf Second-hand Furs.

During fire months of the year there
are as many as 8 or 12 persons who
•ell furs in the street markets on
Saturday nights, Sunday mornings,
and Monday nights. The weekly
average takings of each is about 12«.,
nearly three-fourths of which is clear
profit. Reckoning that 10 individual*
are engaged 20 weeks during the year,
and that each of these takes weekly
12^., we find* the sum annually
expended in the streets on furs

amounts to 120 0 0

Street-Sellers of Second-hand Articles in Smith-
field-market.

I am informed, by those who are in
a position to know, that there are sold
on an average every year in Smith-
field-market about 624 sets of harness,
at lis. per set; 1560 collars, at 2s.
each; 686 pads, at Is. each; 1560
saddles, at 5«. each ; 936 bits, at M.
each; 520 pair of wheels, at IOj. per
pair ; 624 pair of springs, at %s. id.
per pair; 832 pair of trestles, at
2s. 6d. per pair ; 520 boards, at is.
each; 1820 barrows, at 25s. each;
312 trucks, at 60i. each ; 208 trays,
at Is. Zd. each; 1040 small carts, at
63«. each ; 156 goat-carriages, at 20s.
each; 520 shooting-galleries, at lis.
each ; 312 gons for shooting-galleriefl,
at 10«. each ; 1040 dmms for costers,
at Zs. each; 2080 measures, at Zd.
each; 2080 pair of large scales, at
5s. pet pair; 2080 pair of hand-
scales, at 5d. per pair; 80 roasted
chestnut-apparatus, at 20s. each ; 100
ginger-beer trucks, at 80s. each ; 20
eel-kettles, at 6s. each; 100 potato-
cans, at 17s. each ; 10 pea-toap cans,
at 5s. each; 40 elderwine vessels, at
8#. each; giring a yearly expendi-
ture of 10.242 8 8

Total Sum ov MomiT Aitkuallt

TAKBlf BT TBI STmin-SlLUSBfl OF

Saooro-BAKD AasiOLis . . . 83,461 1 4

*TRKET- Sellers ov Livk Animals.

Street-Sellers of Dogs {Fancy PsU).
^ From the best data it appears that £ s. d.
each hawker sells "four or five
occasionally in one week in the sum-
mer, 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 505. each
(many fetch 3^., 4/., and 5^.), and sup-
posing that but 20 men are trad-
ing in this line the year through, we
find that no less a sura is yearly ex-
pended 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 Lon-
don, is computed by the best informed
at about 12,000 0 0

Street-Sellers and Duffers qf 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 3d. each ; 3000 bullfinches,
at 2s. 6d. each; 400 piping bullfinches,
at 63*. each; 7000 goldfinches, at
9rf. each ; 1500 chaffinches, at 2s. 6d.
each ; 700 greenfinches, at 3flf. each ;
6000 larks, at Is. each ; 200 nightin-
gales, at Is. each ; 600 redbreasts, at
Is. each ; 3500 thrushes and thrustles,
at 2s. 6d. each; 1400 blackbirds, at
2s. 6d. each ; 1000 canaries, at Is.
each; 10,000 sparrows, at Id. each;
1500 starlings, at 1^. 6d. each ; 500
magpies and jackdaws, at 9d. each ;
300 redpoles, at9rf. each ; 150 black-
caps, at id. each; 2000 "duffed"
birds, at 2s. 6d. each. Thus making
the sum annimlly expended in the
purchase of birds in the streets,
amount to 8,624 12 2

Street-Sellers of Parrots, tke.

The number of individuals at pre-
sent 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/., we find the annual outlay
upon parrots bought in the streets to
be 500/. ; adding'to this the sale of
110 Java sparrows and St Helena
birds, as Wax-bills and Red-beaks at
Is. 6d. each, we have for the sum
yearly expended in the streets on the
sale of foreign birds 508 5 0

102

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Street-Sellers of Birds'-Nests.

There are at present only three £ s. d.
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^d. each ; 144 snakes, at
I5. 6d. each; 4 hedgehogs, at Is. each;
and about 2s.'a worth of snails. This
makes the weekly income of each
amount to about 8s. 6d. 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
25. to 2s. 6d. 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, <kc.

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 Is. Qd. each ; and 400
young wild-rabbits, at id. 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 12s.
the dozen, we find 65,520 fish sold,
at an outlay of 3,276 0 0

Street-Sellers of Tortoises.

Estimating the number of indivi-
duals selling tortoises to be 20, and
the number of tortoises sold to be
10,000, at an average price ©f Sd.
each, we find there is expended yearly
upon these creatures upwards of . . 333 6 8
Street- Sellers of Snails, Frogs, d: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 2d. a quart, the annual

outlay is 20QI. Besides snails, there £•] s.
are collected annually 500 frogs and 18
toads, at \d. each, giving a yearly
expenditure of 202 3

Total, or Gross " Takings," op the
Street-Sellers of Live Ani-
mals 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^. per ton, and con-
sequently 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 8s. per chaldron.
Reckoning that this is sold at 4s, per
chaldron for profit, we find that the
total gains of the whole class amount
to 280,000^. 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 Is. per
hundred, and realizing a profit of
4^0?. 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 indi-
viduals hawking salt in the several
streets of London; each of these pay
at the rate of 2s. per cwt. for the salt,
and retail it at 3 lbs. for Id., which
leaves Is. Id. profit on every cwt.
One day with another, wet and dry,
each of the street-sellers disposes of
about 2 J cwt., or 18 tons 15 cwt.
per day for all hands, and this, de-
ducting Sundays, makes 5868 tons
15 cwt. in the course of the year.
The profit of Is. Id. per cwt.
amounts to a yearly aggregate profit
of 6357^. 16s. Bd., or about 42^.
per annum for each person in the
trade; while the sum annually ex-
pended upon this article in the streets
amounts to 18,095 6 3

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

103

Stred-SeUtrs of Sand. £ s. d.

Calculating the sale at a load of
nnd j)er day, for each horse and cart,
at 21«. per load, we find the sura
annually expended in house - sand
to be 6573/. ; adding to this the sum
of 234/. 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 \d. each, giving an
annual expenditure of . . . . 4,166 13 4

Total, or Gross Takikgs, of the
Street-Sellers of Mineral Pro-

DUCTIOKS AND NaTCRAL CURI-
OSITIES £1,029,228 19 7

Rivei'-Sellers of Purl.
There are at present 35 men follow-
ing the trade of purl-selling on the
river Thames to colliers. The weekly
profits of this class amount to 117/. 55.
per week, and yearly to 6097/., while
their annual takings is . . . . 8,190 0 0

Now, adding together the above and the other
foregone results, we arrive at the following esti-
mate 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

Shellfish 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

Chick weed, gru'nsel, and turf for birds 14,570

Eatables and drinkables 203,100

Stationery, literature, and fine arts . 83,400

Manufactured articles 188,200

Second-hand articles 29,900

Live animals {including dogs, birds,

and goldfish) 29,300

Mineral productions (<M coals, coke,

salt, sand, <!:c.) 1,022,700

Total Sum bxpended upon thb
VARIOUS Articles vended by the
Streei-Sellbrs £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.

Tbs 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 1 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 sepa-
rately, devoting at the same time some space to
the Strset-Jkws. 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-
leavet, 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, lK>th as to means and intelligence. The only
farther exception, perhaps, which I need notice
here is, that among some umbrella-buyers, there is
considemUe smartness, and sometimes, in the re-
pair or MimwbI of the ribs, &&, a slight degree
of skOL Th« 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 trilling things — such
as are light to carry and require a small outlay —
in advanced age. Old men and women totter about
offering lucifer-raalches, 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 every-
thing 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, ns
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 utteriy valueless, fiut this is common to
all trades.

101

LONDON LABOUR AND TUB LONDON POOR.

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 unpros-
perous 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. 0, yes, I '11 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 every-
thing." These men are little seen in London, for
they "work" the more secluded courts, streets,
and alleys, when in town ; but their most fre-
quented 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 in-
creased 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, drip-
ping, carpeting, &c., " in fact, no rubbish or lumber,
however worthless, will be refused;" and gene-
rally 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 nume-
rous in the places at no great distance from the
Thames. They work their way from their sub-
urban 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 in-
formed, 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 in-
quired for by street-buyers, and then 2>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 in-
creased 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^. to 17/. the ton.
Linen rags, which average nearly 20/. 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 ga-
thered in Hungary). The value of the nigs an-
nually brought to this country is no less than
200,000/. 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 ragg
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/. 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 al-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

105

although the linen in use is coarse and, compared
to the Irish, Scotch, or English, rudely manu-
fnctured, 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 exten-
sively 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 1 have described,
upon presenting iiimself at any house, offers to buy
ngs, 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
\d. a pound, or \d. for three pounds ; for inferior
white rags \d. a pound, and up to \\d. ; for the
best, 2d. 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 2d. or Zd., or even as much
as 6<<., for the best rags, but, somehow or other, the
rags taken for sale to those buyers never are of
the best. To offer 6/i. a pound for rags is ridicu-
lous, but such an offer may be seen at some rag-
shops, the figure Q, 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 " illus-
tration" to their barrows or carts. I saw the
winter placard of one of these men, which he
WM reserving for a country excursion as far as
Rochester, " when the plum-pudding time whs
•-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 I The

best prices given by , of London."

I The woman in like manner exclaimed : " From
I dripping and house fat ! The best prices given

by , of London."

This roan told me that at some timet, both in
town and country, he did not buy a pound of n^s
in a week. He had heard the old hands in the
trade say, that 20 or 30 years back they could
''ffaiber" (the word generally used for buying) twice
ud three ttmei m muxj nga m at prMent. My

formant 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 maidservant to " keep a
rag-bag," in which all refuse linen, &c., was col-
lected 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 com-
mand 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 penny-
worths 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 costemionger 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. 0, 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 oft^ 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 nothink4)ut 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
•t 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

106

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

rather sleep on my barrow." [I have before had
occasion to remark the aversion of the coster-
monger class to sleep in low lodging-houses.
These men, almost always, and from the necessi-
ties of their calling, have rooms of their own in
London ; so that, I presume, they hate to sleep
171 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 countrj- excursions, resort
the least to the lodging-houses.] " The last round
I had in the country, as far as Heading and Pang-
bourne, 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 50s. 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 costennongers ; 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 comer of his vehicle.

Tailors cxUtings, 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.

Dressmakers cuttings are also a portion of the
street-buyer's country traffic, but to no great ex-
tent, 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 cut-
tings are usually sold to the piece-brokers, who
call or send men round to the shops or work-
shops 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, 6d. per lb. ; pewter, 5d. ; brass,
5d.; iron, 6 lbs. for Id., and 8 lbs. for 2d. (a
smaller quantity than 6 lbs. is seldom bought) ;
and Id. and l\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., con-
cerning one of the uses of which I have quoted
Mr. Babbage, in page 6 of the present volume, as
t(j 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 comers 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 sup-
ports 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 pro-
portion, 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 lodg-
ing-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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

107

key* 80 bought are of every size, are gene-
rally 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 of-
fered 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 in-
stance, there were often numbers of odd keys
found about the premises and sold " in a lump ; "
that locks were often spoiled and unsaleable, wear-
ing 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 bis 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-band 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 21. 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." ]
"0, 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 cons<arn of a busi-
ness— 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 Id. 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 '% 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 every-
thing slap. O, I do middling: I live by one thing or
other, and when I die there '11 just be enough to
bory the old man." [This is the first street-trader
I have met with who made such a statement as to
haring provided for his interment, though I have
beard 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 some-
times, but it 's coming to be all up with street
glass-people ; everybody seems to run with their
things to the ragand-bottle-shops."

The same body of traders buy also old sacking,
carpeting, and moreen bed-curtains and mndow-
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 (Id. or l^d. or 2d.), or so much for the lot.

Of Bones I have already spoken. They are
bought by any street-collector with a cart, on
his roimd 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, con-
nected 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 ex-
tensively 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 300,00UZ.
yearl}'. 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 how-
ever, 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.

108

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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
huyinff, as a separate branch of his business. If
100 men expend 15s. each weekly, in the pur-
chase of rags, old metal, &c., and if this trade be
prosecuted for 30 weeks of the year, we find
2250/. so expended. The profits of the buyers
range from 20 to 100 per cent.
Of the " Kag-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 indiffer-
ence 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 win-
dows 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 TS '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;

Old Copper, Brass, Pew-
ter, iic.
Lead, Iron, Zinc, Steel,

&c., &c.
Old Horse Hair, Mat-
tresses, &c.
Old Books, Waste Paper,

<kc.
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.

Wax and Sptrm Pieces
Kitchen Stuff, &c.
Wine & Beer Bottle*
Eau de Cologne, Soda

Water
Doctors' Bottles, <fcc.
White Linen Rags
Bones, Phials, & Broken

Flint Glass

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 pilfer-
ings 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."

Tlie rag-and-hottle 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 prin-
cipal 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
w^ares 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 pur-
chase any of these things to be disposed of as
old metal or waste-paper, but his brother trades-
man buys them to be re-sold and re-used for the
purposes for which they were originally manu-
factured. 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 esta-
blishments I have spoken of. The dolli/ business
is common to both, but most common to the marine-
store dealer, and of it 1 shall speak afterwards.

These shops are exceedingly numerous. Per-
haps 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON FOOE.

109

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 nonde-
script, 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 gliisa 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 re-
building of the city, shops with open casements,
and protected from the weather by overhanging
caves, 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
hone 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 do-
minoes, dice, and backgammon-men ; lock escut-
cheons, keys, and the smaller sort of locks, espe-
cially 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 fold for re-ase 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 bottle* ; heaps of old boots and shoes ; old
decks and work-boxes; pictures (all modem)
with and without frames ; waste-paper, the most
of it of quarto, and lome larger sized, soiled or
torn, and strung closely together in weights of
from 2 to 7 lbs. ; and a fire-proof safe, staffed
with old fringes, tassels, and other upholstery-
goods, worn and dtsooloafed. The miscellaneous

wares were carried out into the street, and ranged
by the door-posts as well aa 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^. for the stock,
and 6/. 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 tiiken 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 'a no help for that. Why, as to ray 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 par-
ticular 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. 0, 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 'fl the case. Perhaps they
comes to sell to me what the pawns won't tike in,
and what they wpuldn't like to be seen selling to
any of the men that goes about buying things in
the street.

" Why, I 'vo bought evcrythink ; at sales by
auction there's often 'lots' made up of differ-
ent things, and they goes for very little. I
buy of people, too, that come to nic, 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 '11 come into my sh^p 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 ray way as
have tamed out stunners, and was sold for a

No. XXZIII.

110

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

hundred pounds or more, and cost, perhaps, half-
a-crown or only a shilling. I never experienced
such a tiling myself. There 's a good deal of gammon
about it. Well, it 'a hardly possible to say anything
about a scale of prices. I give 2d. for an old tfn
or metal teapot, or an old saucepan, and some-
times, two days after I 've bouglit such a thing,
I 've sold it for 3(^. to the man or woman I 've
bought it of. I '11 sell cheaper to them than to any-
body else, because they come to me in two ways —
both as sellers and buyers. For pictures I've given
from Zd. to Is. 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 un-
derstand about books. I take the backs off and
■weighs them, and gives \d., and l^d., and 2tZ.
a pound, and there 's an end. I sell them at
about \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 '11 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 5cZ. or 6\d. for,
I can sell to the merchants from Q\d. to %d. the
pound. It 's no great trade, for they '11 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 2d. a-
piece for 'good stouts' (bottled-porter vessels), but
very seldom indeed 2(Z., 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 mo, and
she said, ' missus is glad to get rid of them, for they
makes her cry.' They often say their raissusses
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 \\d. to Zd. a
dozen for good new bottles. I 'm sure I can't
say what I give for other odds and ends ; iust as
they 're good, bad, or indifferent. It's a queer trade.
Well, I pay ni}-- way, but I don't know what I clear
a week — about 21. 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 fre-
quently 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-s!iops, 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 2d. or Zd., 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 If?, 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 4c?. or Qd. advanced,
the weekly interest is Id.) for dd. it is \\d.;
for Is. it is 2d., and 2d. on each Is. up to 5s.,
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 Qd.,
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
7d. Thus Qd. 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."

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Ill

The invjuities to which the poor are subject are
posiuvely monstrous. A halfpenny a day interest
on a loan of 2d. is at the rate of 7280 2>^ ^^^t-
per annum !

Or TUE BrTERS of KiTcnEN-SicFF, Grease,
AXD Drippikg.
This body of traders cannot be classed as street-
buyers, so that only a brief account is here neces-
sary. 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 wear-
ing 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 trnnsncted 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 tniffic 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 drippinc, butter occasionally added to the
weight ; in the " stock " (the remains of meat
boiled down for the making of soup) were some-
tiroes 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 snialier extent than formerly. The
cook's perquisites are in many cases sold under
the inspection of the mistress, according to agree-
ment ; 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
individiuils, 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 ttrect-buyerfl, and sell it at once to the
tallow-melter or the soap-boiler ; it appears all to
tind itji way to the shops I have described, even
when bought by charwomen ; while the »hop-
keepers tend for it or receive it in the way I
have stated, so that there u bat little of street
traffic in the matter.

One uf these shopkeepers told me that in this
tradiiitr, as far as his own opinion went, there was
as much trickery as ever, and that many gentle-
, folk quietly made up their minds to submit to it,
while others, be said, "kept the house in hot

water " by resisting it. I found, however, the
general opinion to be, that wlien 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 Id. and l\d. the
pound ; for dripping — used by the poor as a sub-
stitute for butter — S^e?. to 5c^

Of the Sxreet-IBuyeus 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 htiyer, but'a seller. Street-selling is the
easier process. It is easy for a man to ascer-
tain that oysters, for example, are sold wholesale
at Billingsgate, and if he buy a bushel (as in
the present summer) for 5s., it is not difficult
to find out how many he can afford fur " 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-manu-
facturers, 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 husbandj 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
uas 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
bom in L')ndon ; 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
bid out a penny, but then it 's been such a day

112

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

for rain. I reckon that if I gets hold of eighteen
bare and rabbit skins in a day, that is my greatest
day's work. I gives Id. for good hares, what 's
not riddled much, and sells them all for 2 Jc?. I sells
what I pick up, by the twelve or the twenty, if
I can afford to keep them by me till that num-
ber's gathered, to a Jew. I don't know what is
done witli 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 35. 6c?. I take
some Aveeks as much as 8s. for what I pick
up, and if I could get that every week I should
think myself a ladj-. The profit left me a clear
half-crown. There's no difference in any per-
ticler 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, mannges
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
25. 6c?. may be cleared every week."

These buyers go regular rounds, carrying the
skins in their hands, and crying, " Any hare-
fikins, 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 De-
cember ; 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 ac-
count. "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. lie 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 mar-
ried, 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 bet-
termost 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 \\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 ser-
vants ; so give me 8<?., and go about your busi-
ness.' Well, I went about my business ; and a
woman called to buy them, and offered id. for
the two, and the lady was so wild, the servant
told me arter; howsomever she only got id. 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 I5. Qd. 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. 0, as to rab-
bit-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 M. a dozen on my hare and
rabbit-skins, and sometimes %d. Yes, I should
say that for about eight months I gathers four
dozen every week, often five dozen. I suppose I
make 55. or 65. 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). 0, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

113

1,000,000; but, as I have shown, very few of
their skins are disposed of to street- buyers.

Of the Sxreet-Bctehs of Waste (Paper).
Betokd all others the street-piirchase 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
onfrequently 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-shi<p 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
Tisited 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 em-
ployed by a relation in the trade to carry out
waste paper sold to, or ordered by cheesemongers,
Ac, 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 V Seeing the landlady look
surprised and not very weU pit ased at what cer-
tainly appeared an impertinent inquiry, he has-
tened 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 countiy when a day or so old), and
having had no dealings with men of my inform-
ant'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 '11 excuse me, sir, but 1 couldn't help thinking
what a lot of misery was caused, perhaps, by the
ewts. of waste I 've bought at such places. If my
Cather hadn't got mixed up with law he wouldn't
hate been rnmed, and bis children wouldn't have
had ittch ft hard fight of it ; so I hate law. All
that happened when I was a child, and I never
understood the right* or the wrongs of it, and
don't like to think of people that 's so foolish. I
gave l^d. a pound for all I bcmght at the lawyers,
and done pretty well with it, but very likely
that's the only good turn such paper ever did
any one— nnless it were the lawyers themselves."

The waste^lealers do not confine their purcbaMS

to the tradesmen I have mentioned. They buy
of any one, and sometimes act as middlemen or
brokers. For instance, many small sUitioners and
newsvendors, sometimes tobacconists in no exten-
sive 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 un-
meaning 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 considera-
tion he added : " Well, perhaps even/ 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 lair 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 — every-
thing, from a needle to an anclior, as the saying
is. Poetry, ay, many a hundred weight ; Latin
and Greek (sometimes), and French, and other
foreign langtuiges. 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
tliiuk of it. I have met with it, but I always take
anything I 've got that way to Mr. , the

114

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 v.-ere religious, more 'a the pity. I 've
heard of a page round a quarter of cheese, though,
touching a ni:in's heart,"

In corroboration of my informant's statement, I
may mention that in the course of my inquiry into
the condition of the fixncy 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 9c?. at that time, but was
not certain), he could afford, and enjoyed, no read-
ing when I saw him last autumn, bej'ond 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 j^ears ago, I had some that must
have belonged to a West End perfumer, there was
such French items for Lady this, or the Honour-
able Captain that. I remember there was an
Hon. Capt. G., and almost at every second page
was *100 tooth-picks, 3s. Qd.' I think it was
35. Qd.) 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 ofd letters
worth, when the writers are dead and buried]
why, perhaps \\d. a pound, and it's a rattling
big letter that will weigh half-an-ounce. 0, 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 parti-
cularities : —

" Mrs. [it is not easy to judge whether the

flourished letters are ' Mrs." or 'Miss,' but certainly

more like ' Mrs.'] Mrs. (Zoological Artist) ^l^csents

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, in-
dispensably 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 G 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 perio-
dical, 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, Iphigenie, Phedre, Les Freres
Ennemis, Alexandre, Andromaque, Les Plai-
deurs, 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. Notwith-
standing 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 whole-
sale 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 l\d. to Z\d. the pound, but it is very
rarely either so low or so high. The average price
may be taken at I85, the cwt., which is not quite
2d, 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^. One man in the trade was
confident the value of the waste paper sold could
not be less than 12,000/. 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 15s. weekly to 35s. 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, pjick, 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 Alder-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

115

man 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 respect-
able 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/. 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.

Op the Street-Buyers o» Umbrellas
AKD 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,
carrj-ing a few ragged-looking umbrellas, or the
sticks or ribs of umbrellas, under their arms, and
crying ** Umbrellas to mend," or " Any old um-
brellas to sell \" The traffickers in umbrellas are
also the crockmen, who are always glad to ob-
tain them in barter, and who merely dispose of
them at the Old Clothes Exchange, or in Petti-
coat-lane.

The umbrella-menders are known by an ap-
pellation of an appropriateness not uncommon in
street language. They are mushroom-faiers.
The form of the expanded umbrella resembles
that of a mushroom, and it has the further charac-
teristic 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 terras or phrases)
has become very generally condensed among those
who carry on the trade — they are now vutsfc-
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-fiikers 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 Petti-
coat-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 \^'as 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 groat 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 1
shall describe it.

OF THE STREET-JEWS.

ALinocoH 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 fctreet-life.

That this ancient people were engaged in what
may be called street-traffic in the earlier ages of
oar history, as well as in the importation of spices,
furs, fine leather, armour, drugs, and general
merchandise, there can be no doubt ; nevertheless
cunurrning 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 Con-
quest ; 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 encourage-
ment to commerce, and some degree of security
to propertr in cities or congregated communities,
that the Jews in England becaune numerous and
wealthy. They then became active and enter-

prising 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, con-
tinued 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 con-
tinuance of the fair, business was strictly prohi-
bited 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-stranger*," as
they were called, settled in England for purposes
of commerce. Among the other bodies of these j

116

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

" strangers " were the Gferman " 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 re-
mains 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 mer-
chant-strangers are useful and beneficial to the
great men of the kingdom, and I will not ex-
pel 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 detes-
tation a strong religious feeling was an ele-
ment. 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 Eichard II. for
permission to deposit goods for safe keeping in
Southampton Castle, promising to introduce so
large a share of the commerce of tlie East into
England, that pepper should be 4rf. a pound.
" Yet the Londoners," writes Walsingham, but in
£he quaint monkish Latin of the day, " enemies
to the prosperity of their country, hired assas-
sins, who murdered the merchant in the street.
After this, what stranger will trust his person
among a people so faithless and so crueU 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 as-
signed for this summary act, were "their ex-
tortions, 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 banish-
ment, their number is represented by the con-
temporaneous 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 ac-
quired. During this period of their abode in
England, the Jews were protected as the villeins
or bondsmen of the king, a protection disre-
garded by the commonalty, and only giving to the
executive government greater facilities of extortion
and oppression.

In 1655 an Amsterdam Jew, Eabbi 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 contniband
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 sup-
plied, at great profit, the materials required by the
alchyraists for their experiments in the transmuta-
tion 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 RodrigoLopez, 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 re-
covered.

Cromwell's response to the application of Man-
asseh Ben Israel was favourable ; but the Appor-
tion 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 Eng-
land. They arrived from time to time, and with-
out 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 com-
menced 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

117

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 muflF, 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 dif-
ference 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 feel-
ing ran very high against the Jews, although to
the masses they were almost strangers, except aa
men employed in the not- very- formidable occupa-
tion of collecting and vending second-hand clothes.
The old feeling against them seems to have lin-
gered among the English people, and their own
greed in many instances engendered other and
lawful causes of dislike, by their resorting to un-
lawful and debasing pursuits. They were consi-
dered— and with that exaggeration of belief dear
to any ignorant community — aa an entire people
of misers, usurers, extortioners, receivers of stolen
goods, cheats, brothel-keepers, aheriff's-officers,
clippers and sweaters of the coin of the realm,
gaming-house keepers ; in fine, the charges, or
rather the accusati,on8, of carrying on every dis-
reputable trade, and none else, were " bundled at
their doors." That there was too much foundation
for many of these accusations, and still is, no rea-
sonable Jew can now deny ; that the wholesale
prejudice against them was absurd, is equally in-
disputable.

So strong was this popular feeling against the
Israelites, that it not only influenced, and not only
controlled the legistlature, 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 natural-
ized 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 clothes-
man, 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 mal-
treated. 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 moet preposterously st'jpid of any which ever
tickled the ear and satitticd the mind of the
ignorant : —

" No Jews !

No wooden shoes I * "

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 invaaion, 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 re-
venged 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 Or-
mond," 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 acci-
dentally 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 ! Foat
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 com-
puted at 35,000. This is the result at which the
Chief Rabbi arrived a few years ago, after collect-
ing 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 popu-
lation, but only small, for many Jews have emi-
j grated — some to California. A few years ago —
I a circumstance mentioned in my account of the
I Street-Sellers of Jewellery— there were a number
of Jews known as " hawkers," or " travellers,"
who traverse every part of Enghuid 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 compu-
tation of 18,000; of this population two-thirds
reside in the city, or the streets adjacent to the
eastern boundaries of the city.

Ojf THE Trades and Locauties of tub
Street-Jews.
The trades which the Jews most affect, I was
told by one of themselves, are those in which, aa
they describe it, "there's a chance;" that is, they
prefer a trade in such commodity as is not sub-
jected to a fixed price, so that there may bo
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
conuection with such trading is certainly dubious.

113

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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, curiosi-
ties, ostrich feathers, Enutfs, cigars, and pipes:
but cigars far more extensively at one time.

The localities in which these wholesale and re-
tail traders reside are mostly at the East-end — in-
deed 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 — mer-
chant, stock-jobber, or stock-broker — resides where
he pleases — in a villa near the Marquis of Hert-
ford'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 dif-
ficult 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 frait — are in Cheapside, Oxford-street, Picca-
dilly, 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 congrega-
tion of working watchmakers is in Clerken-
well, but in that locality there are only a few
Jews. The Hebrew dealers in second-hand gar-
ments, and second-hand wares generally, are
located about Petticoat-lane, the peculiarities of
■which place I have lately described. The manu-
facturers of such things as cigars, pencils, and seal-
ing-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 Prcscott-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 " curio-
sities," 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 ex-
ercise 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-hawk-
ing. 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, as-
siduous, and itinerant street-sellers of this most
popular of foreign, and perhaps of all, fniits. 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 (Lud-
gate-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 infonnant expressed it, out-
side 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 commer-
cial traveller told me that he could never leave
town by any "mail" or "stage," without being
besieged by a small army of Sew 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 dis-
placed.

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 obtiiin em-

- ^•^rf^x^:.

THE JEW OLD-CLOTHES MAN.
Clo', Cr.c', Cio'.

I'tT'-lO'yi f ?i li K > R D. ]

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

119

ployment, without scrapie 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 %hom they were ac-
companied from Ireland, in great numbers, were
put into the trade ; and if two or three children
earned 2d. a day each, and their parents M. or Qd.
each, or even id., 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 Id.
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 stock-
ings— a dispensation at which his rival in trade
revolted ; he drank only water, or if he took tea
or cofifee, 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,
be 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-re-
munerated 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
Jew».

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 cr&ckery-ware
for second-hand apparel. These traders now
obtain aa many old clothes aa the Jew clothes
men themselves; for, with a great number of
"ladiea," the offer of an ornament of glass or
spar, or of a beautiful and fragrant pLint, is more
attractive than the offer of a small sum of money,
for the ptircbaM 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 dis-
inclined.

Some of the Jews which have been thus dis-
placed 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 " Chris-
tian " street-sellers.

There is not among the Jew street-sellers gene-
rally anything of the concubinage or cohabitation
common among the costermongers. Marriage is
the rule.

Op the Jew Old-Clothbs 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 unfre-
quently 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 re-
semble 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 mo-
notonous 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.

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 '11 gamble away their
crown, just for the love of speculation." My in-
formant, who could write or speak several lan-
guages, 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 com-
mences business at ten years of age, by selling
lemons, or some trifle in the streets, and so, as he

ICO

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

expressed it, the boy " gets a round," or street-con-
nection, by becoming known to the neighbour-
hoods 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 him-
self that the stripling has not made a blind bar-
gain, 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 know-
ledge 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 1 5 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 2s. for a thing that 's
worth 5*. They are fond of money, and will do
almost anything to get it. Jews are perhaps the
most money-loving peopla 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/. in silver ai.d gold lying upon
the ground when two parties had been playing at
throwing three halfpence in the air. On a Satur-
day, 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, .ibout ten, and begin
playing for ' one a time ' — that is, tossing up
three halfpence, and stiiking Is. 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 21. each ; and on
more than one occasion the old-clothes men have
wagered as much as 50/., 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
Kiy 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 l^ing 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 2s. Qd. 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/.
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 21. 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 H. a
week ; some weeks we get 21., and some scarcely
nothing."

I was told by a Jewish professional gentleman
that the account of the spirit of gambling preva-
lent 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 haa
had butter on it ; nor will he use for his soup the
spoon that has had melted butter in it. This ob-
jection 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 faulu may be, they are good

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LOXDOX POOR.

121

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 capit;il required for commencing in the
old-clothes line is generally about 1/. This the
Jew frequently borrows, especially after holiday-
time, for then he has generally spent all his earn-
ings, 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 II. on the Monday morning, " to strike a
light with," as he calls it, and agrees to return it
on the Friday evening, with Is, interest for the
loan. This he always pays back. If he was to
sell the coat otT his back he would do this, I am
told, because to fail in so doing would be to pre-
vent 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 in-
terferes 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 busi-
ness, and when they agree to do this the one will
take one street, and the other another. The lov/er
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 trowscrs. But they buy
most of the Petticoat-lane, the Old-Clothes Ex-
change, 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 pre-
fer 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$. 6d.
on a Sunday morning.

These traders, as I have elsewhere stated, live
at the Kast^nd of the town. The greater number
of them reside in Portsoken Ward, Houndsditch ;
and their favourite localities in this district are
either Cobb's-yanI, Roper's-building, or Went-
worth-street They mostly occupy small houses,
about 4s. 6d. a week rent, and live with their
families. They are generally sober men. It is
seldom that a Jew leaves bis bouse and owes his
Undlord money ; and if his goods should be seized
the rest of bi« tribe will go roond and collect what
is owing.

The rooms occupied by the old-clothes men are
far from being so comfortable as those of the Eng-
lish 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 ac-
cording 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 White-
chapel-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 con-
sumption, moreover, must be a Jew. Two
slaughterers are appointed by the Jewish autho-
rities 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 ap-
pointed by the synagogue) carefully inspects the
' inside.' ' If the lights be grown to the ribs,'
said my informant, who had had many years' ex-
perience in this branch of the meat trade, * or if
the lungs have any disease, or if there be any
disease anywhere, the meat is prononnced 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 cha-
racters 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 Leaden-
hallmarkets for sale on commission," The Hebrew
butchers consider that the Christian mode of
slanghter 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 600 to 600 in London ;
at one time there might have been 1000, Their
average earnings may be something short of 20«, a
week in second-hand clothes alone ; but the
gains are difficult to estimate.

122

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Op 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 pre-
sented 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. " / liked it then,"
he said, "/or / was young and strong, and
didn't care to sleep tvnce 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^. 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. 0, 1 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. 0, 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 10s.
and 20a. 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 6d. or 7d. a day,
but it has cost me ten times that — and 2d. for beer
in addition."

I am informed that there are about 60 adult
Jews (besides old-clothes men) in the streets
selling fruit, cakes, pencils, spectacles, sponge,
accordions, drugs, &c.

Of the Jew-Bot Stbeet-Sbllkkj.
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 igno-
rance of the assumed faith, are Christians."

I received from a Jew boy the following ac-
count of his trading pursuits and individual aspi-
rations. There was somewhat of a thickness in his
utterance, otherwise his speech was but little dis-
tinguishable 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, "jgreased"; it was long, and hesaid 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 tem-
ples, as he was conversing, as if he were some-
what vain of doing so. He was dressed in a
corduroy suit, old but not ragged, and wore a
tolerably clean, very coarse, and altogether button-
less shirt, which he said " was made for one bigger
than me, sir." He had bought it for 9^f^. in Petti-
coat-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 Zd., 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. 0, 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 some-

LOA^DON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

123

thing. I could keep myself now, and do some-
times, 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. 0,
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 X\
" I haTe sold all sorts of things," he continued,
" oranges, and lemons, and sponges, and nuts, and
sweets. I should like to have a r^ 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
Kothschild. He has more money than I could
count in shillings in a year. I don't know about
bis 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 per-
haps. 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. Jeru-
salem I 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 ;
yoa may get a pennor'th. The pickles — cowcum-
bers 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 I 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 b« eaten, only that it 's wrong to
eat it No, I never touched a ham-sandwich, but
other Jew boyi 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 goose-
berries, and nuts and walnuts in the season. 0,
as to what I make, that's nothing to nobody.
Sometimes dd. a day, sometimes Is.; 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 80 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 he in a shop, nor he anybody s
servant hut my own. 0, I don't know what I
shall be when I 'ra grown up. I shall take ray
chance like others."

Of the Pursuits, Dwellings, Traffic, etc.,
OP 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 manufac-
tories, or indeed any capacity, will apply them-
selves temporarily to street-selling, for it seems to
these poor and uneducated lads a sort of natural
vocation.

These youths, uncontrolled or incontrollahle by
their parents (who are of the lowest class of the
Jews, and who often, I am told, care little about the
matter, so longas the child can earn his own mainte-
nance), 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 imeducated attend to any
one reading. The reading is, however, not unfre-
quently 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 pky at draughts, do-
minoes, or cribbage, and to bet on tho play.
Draughts and dominoes are unpractised among
the costermonger boys, but some of tho 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 ho
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

124

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 eager-
ness 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 sud-
denly dropped their voices, as the master of the
coffee-shop had once or twice cautioned them to
be quiet.

The dwellings of boys such ns these are among
the worst in London, as regards ventilation, com-
fort, or cleanliness. Tliey 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 pro-
portion of one to twelve, compared with the men
and boj's; in this respect therefore the street Jews
differ widely from the English costemiongers 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 ver}-
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 pre-
sent 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 nowsold principally, and used to be sold exclu-
sively, 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 cu-
cumber being 2d., and the smaller \d. .and ^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 tlieir 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 re-
ceipt of stolen goods, tliat 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 j^^'ostiUUion of the metropolis, in
my forthcoming exposition of the London Pros-
titutes.

Oii" THE Street Jewesses and Street
Jew- Girls.
I hate 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 costemiongers. There are, however, a few
Jewish females who are itinerant street-sellers as
w^ell as stall keepers, in tlie 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 re-
presented 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 straw-
berries, 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 llabbi, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND TUE LONDON POOR.

125

not tramp with the juveniles of the other sex-—
no, not in the proportion of one to a hundred in
comparison, he Sviid with a hiugh, with " young
women of the Christian persuasion." My in-
formant had means of knowing this fact, as although
•till a young man, he had traversed the greater
part of England hawking perfumer}', 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 tiie
windows of every private house, in the street in
which I met hej, 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 comphiin
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
■he 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. 0, it 's ridiculous to
■ee 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 some-
times 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 out-
right 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 ; 0,
I do middling. I told you I had no complaints
to make. I don't calculate my profits or what I
•ell. My family do that and I don't trouble my-
•elt"

Or THB Sthaooooks ard tui Religion ov

THB StEIBT AHD OTHSE JbW8.

Tub Jews in this country are classed as " Por-
and " German." Among them are no
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 Sephar-
din (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
dirtVr from each other, and the festival praj'ers
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 Paosover, which the
German Jews are prohibited doing by some Rab-
bis, but their authority is not acknowledged by
the Portuguese Rahbis. 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 Humedrash),
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 dis-
putes between Jews in religious matters are settled
in this m:inner ; and if the Lord Mayor or any
other magistrate is told that the matter has already
been settled by the Jewish Rabbi he seldom in-
terferes. This applies only to civil and not to
criminal c.ises. The Portuguese Jews have their
own hospitil and their own dchools. Both con-
gregations have their representatives in the Board
of Deputies of British Jews, which board is ac-
knowledged by government, and is triennial. Sir
Moses Monteftore, 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. A if political
matters, calling for communications with govern-
ment, are within the province of that useful
board."

The Jews have eight synagogues in London,
besides some smaller places which may pcrh.-ips,
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

126

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

rich with ornaments, marble, nnd painted glass ;
the parenient 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-gar-
den), Sj'nagogue; the Western Synagogue, St.
Alban's-place, Pall-mall ; and the West Lon-
don 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 abbre-
■^-iated, 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 re-
quirements 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 sove-
reign, " he breakfasts before he hears mass," and,
to meet the impatience of the Great, " hunting
masses," as they w^ere styled, or epitomes of the
full service, Avere 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 thia ancient faith.

The sjTiagogues are not well attended, the con-
gregations being smaller in proportion to the popu-
lation 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 congrega-
tions of the Hebrews, had I not heard it regretted
by Hebrews themselves. " It is shocking," one
said. Another remarked, " To attend the syna-
gogue is looked upon too much as a matter of
bitsiness ; 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 indif-
ferent 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
Boman Catholic Irish of the streets. In common
justice I must give the remark of a Hebrew mer-
chant 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 1 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
b}"- 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 Eng-
land ; I say of the Church of England, because
of that church the many who do not profess re-
ligion 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 Amuse-
ments OF THE Jews:
Perhaps there is no people in the world, possess-
ing 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 ac-
counted for in a great measure, perhaps, from an
hereditary feeling. The Jew could hardly be ex-
pected 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, t/cey care
nothing whatever ; for so long as they are undis-
turbed in money-getting at home, their brethren
may be persecuted all over the world, while the
rich Jew merely shrugs his shoulders. An honour-
able exception, however, exists in Sir Moses Monte-
fiore, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

12i

many a government, do not seek to direct that in-
fluence for the bettering of the lot of their poorer
brethren, who, at the same time, brook the re-
strictions and indignities which tliey have to suffer
with a perfect philosophy. In fact, the Jews have
often been the props of the courts who have per-
secuted them ; that is to say, two or three Jewish
firms occasionally have not hesitated to lend mil-
lions to the governments by whom they and their
people have been systematically degraded and
oppressed.

I was told by a Hebrew gentleman (a pro-
fessional man) that so little did the Jews them-
selves care for " Jewish emancipation," that he
questioned if one man in ten, actuated solely bj'
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 governmeiits," 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

When such is the feeling of the comparatively
wealtliier 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 Ltterattire. They read far less (let it be re-
membered 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
b'terary, than are the poorer English artizans.
Neither do the wealthiest classes of the Jews
cire 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 Statcp, and
his book was issued in Philadelphia, the city of
Qtukers !

The Aroasements of the Jews— and here I
■peak 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
eipecially by the younger members of tho body,
who •ometimee constitute a rather obstreperous
gallery. The cheap concerts which they patronize
are generally of a superior order, for the Jews
arc fond of rauaic, and among them have been
many eminent composers and performers, so that
the trash and jingle which delights the costcrmon-
ger 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 sup-
ported 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 ad-
mission, and lectures have been delivered gra-
tuitously, 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. II. Ascher, Mr. J. L. Levison (of Brighton),
and Mr. Clarke, a merchant in the City, a Chris-
tian, whose lectures are very popular among the
Jews. The behaviour of the Jew attendants, and
the others, the Jews being the majority, is de-
corous. They seem "to like to receive infomia-*
tion," 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
Ad., and vegetables 'id), except that it was fuller
of Jews than of Christians, by three to two, per-
haps, and that there was no " pork" in the" waiter's
specification of the fore.

Of the Charities, Schools, and Education
OP 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 tho Jews voluntarily support
their own poor and institutions, but they con-
tribute— compulsorily it is true — their quota to
the support of the English poor and church ; and,
indeed, pay their duo proportion of all the parlia-
mentary 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 bo done with a
less than ordinary fuss and display, so that the

No. XXXIY.

128

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

recipient of the charity feels himself more ai
pensioner than a pauj)er. I

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 sup-
ported by subscription, now contiiins 14 girls
and 8 boys ; a school is attached to the asylum,
which is in the Tenter Ground, Groodman's-fields.
The Hand -in -Hand Asylum, for decayed old
people, men and women, is in Duke's-place, Aid-
gate. 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 insti-
tution 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 tlie congregation of
the Spanish and Portuguese Jews; " Magasim
Zobim," for lending money to aid apprenticeships
among boys, to fit girls for good domestic ser-
vice, and for helping poor children to proceed to
foreign parts, when it is believed that the change
will be advantageous to them ; and *' Noten Le-
bem Larcebim;" to distribute bread to the poor
of the congregation on the day preceding the Sab-
bath.

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, fa-
miliar 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 sup-
ported 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 Ba-
roness 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 tole-

rably 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 im-
perfectly that their ability to read detracts nothing
from their ignorance. So neglectful or so neces-
sitous (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 some-
thing for themselves," and so irregular is their
attendance, on the plea that the time cannot be
spared, and the boy must do something for him-
self, 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 Avealthier Jews may be induced
to give money towards the support of their poor,
I heard strong strictures passed upon them con-
cerning 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 Jev/, " because there are so many
rich Jews in London, and if they exerted find ex-
ercised a broader liberality, as they might in in-
stituting 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 educa-
tion and charity by the Jews.

The Jews' Free School in Spitalfields is sup-
ported by voluntary contributions to the amount of
about 1200/. 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 fashion-
able 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/., through the exertions
of Mr. Benjamin S. Phillips, of Newgate-street, a

LOSDOy LABOUR AXD THE LONDOX POOR.

129

member of the court. The Baroness Lionel de
Rithschild (as I have formerly stated of the late
Bnroness) supplies clothing for the scholars. The
school ia adapted for the reception of 1200 boys
and girls in equal proportion ; about 900 is the
aveni:.v attendance.

Til.' Jews' Infant School in Houndsditch, with
an average attendance approaching 400, is simi-
larly supported at a cost of from 800/. to 1000/.
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/. yearly. Christians sub-
scribe to this institution also — Mr. Frederick Peel,
M.P., taking great interest in it. The attendance
I of pupils is from 300 to 400.
j 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/. to 1000/., 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/., 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 aUnspeople is from 150 to 200
yearly.

The other two Asylums, &c., which I have
specified, are maintained at a cost of about 800/.
each, as a yearly average, and the Almshouses,
three in number, at about half that sum. The
persons relieved by these last-mentioned institu-
tions number about 250, two-thirds, or there-
abouts, being in the asylums.

The Loan Societies are three : the Jewish
Ladies Visiting and Benevolent Loan Society ;
the Linusarian Loan Society (why called Linusa-
rian a learned Hebrew scholar could not inform
me, although he had asked the question of others) ;
and the Magasim Zobim (the Good Deeds), a Por-
tuguese Jews' Loan Society.

The business of these three societies is con-
ducted 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/. to 700/. by each
society, the whole being repaid and with sufficient
punctuality ; a few weeks' " grace " is occasionally
allowed in the erent 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 costcmiongers and others, a class
forming part, or having once formed part of them-
selves, and living by usury and loan mongering,
where they have amassed a few pounds. What-
ever may be thought of the Jews' usurious dealings
as regards the general public, the poorer classes of
their peopie are not subjected to the exactions of
usur}-, with all its clogs to a struggling man's

well-doing. Sometimes the amount required bv
an old-clothes man, or other street- trader i's
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 bv the
street-Jew. No security in such cases is given beVond
— 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 excep-
tion of the old-clotiies men, the sum thus ad-
vanced as stock-money to them might be seldom
less in any one year than 300/., and seldom more
than 500/. There is a prevalent notion that
the poorer Jews, when seeking charity, are sup-
plied 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/.,
supplying the means of instruction to 3000 chil-
dren (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, i^c, is, it ap-
pears, 5800/. annually, benefiting or maintaining
about 420 individuals (at a cost of nearly 14/.
per head). If we add no more than 200/. yearly
for the minor charities or institutions I have pre-
viously alluded to, we find 14,000/. expended
annually in the public schools .and charities of the
Jews of London, independently of about 2000/.,
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/. per
head. Let us compare this with the benevolence
of the Christians. At the same ratio the sum de-
voted to the charities of England and Wales
should be very nearly 16,000.000/., but, accord-
ing 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 Eng-
land and Wales, is 1,200,000/. If, however, wo
add to the voluntary contributions the sum raised
compulsorily by assessment in aid of the poor
(about 7,000.000/. 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 fiill fiir
short of that of the metropolitan Jews. The
gross amounts of the charitable contributionc of
London are given below, together with the num-
bers of institutions ; and it will thus be seen that
the sum devoted to such purposes amounts to no
less than 1,704,733/., or upwards of a million and
three-qtiarters sterling for a population of about
two millions !

130

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Income Income
citrived dcriveil
from volun- from
tary oontri- property,
butions.

12 General medical hospitals . £31,265 £111,641

60 Medical charities for spe-
cial 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 destitu-
tion and distress . . . 20,646 3,234

12 Relief of specified dis-
tress 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 asylimis 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 visidngs, &c. .159,853 153,336

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^. a year ; the Readers of the Syna-
gogues, of whom there are twelve in London, from
300^. to 400/. a year each ; the Secretaries of the
Synagogues, of whom there are also twelve, from
200/. to 300/. each ; the twelve under Secretaries
from 100/. to 150/. ; and six Dayanim 100/. 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 Eng-
land — as being exceedingly under-paid. The
functions of the Dayanim have been already men-
tioned, and, I may add, that they must have re-
ceived 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 otlier outlay, amounts to
about 11,700/.; this is raised from the profits of
the seats in the synagogues and voluntary con-
tributions, 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 Govern-
ment, 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 metro-
politan 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 Vi^ho promote the support of the syna-
gogues 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 arc 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 re-
presentatives are gratuitous, and no qualifica-
tion 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; Liver-
pool, 2 ; Manchester, 2 ; Birmingham, 2 ; Edin-
burgh, 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 3t\
On election days the attendance, as I have said,
is often small, but fluctuating according to an}'
cause of excitement, which, however, is but sel-
dom.

The question which has of late been discussed
by this Board, and which is now under consider-
ation, and negotiation with the Education Com-
missioners 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 un-
determined.

With religious or sacerdotal questions the Board
of Deputies does not, oris not required to meddle; it
leaves all such matters to the bodies or tribunals I
have mentioned. Indeed the deputies concern them-
selves only with what may be called the public
interests of the Jews, both as a part of the com-
munity 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 Syna-
gogue in Margaret-street, Cavendish-square, are
not recognised as entitled to vote, and do not
vote, accordingly, in the election of the Jewisli
deputies. Indeed, the Reform members, whose
synagogue was established eight years ago, were
formally excommunicated by a declaration of tlic
late Chief Rabbi, but this seems now to be re-
garded as a mere matter of form, for the mem-
bers have lately partaken of all the rites to
which orthodox Jews are entitled.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

131

j Oj thb Fciteral Cebemosies, Fasts, and

-CVSTOMS OF THE JeVTS.

I 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 1
have done anything that might be offensive —
pardon, pardon, pardon." After that the coffin is
carried round the burial-ground in a circuit, chil-
dren 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 earnest 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 grow-
eth up; in the evening it is cut down, and
withereth.

** 10. The days of onr years are threescore
years and ten ; and if by reason of strength they
be fourscore years, yet m 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
fiuniliar, side by side consume." A Jewish funeral
is a matter of fiigh solemnity.

The burial fees are 12*. for children, and from
21. to 3/. for adults. These fees are not the pro-
perty of the parties officating, but form a portion
of the synagogue funds for general purposes, pay-
ment of officers, &c. No fees are charged to the
relatives of poor Jews.

Two fasu are rigidly observed by the Jews,
and even by those Jews who are usually indiffer-
ent 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.

Op the Jew Street- Sellers of Accordions,

AND OF THEIR StREET McSICAL 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 gen-
tlemen'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 3s. Qd. or even
2s. M. — 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 counta-y, 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
averjige price of 20s. each, or six in a week at an
average price of 10s. each, the profit being from
60 to 100 per cent., we find upwards of 20,000/.
expended in the course of the year in accordions
of which, however, little more than a sixth part, or
about 3000/., 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 re-

182

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

member, 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-mnsicians, or of such street-per-
formers 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 patron-
ized by the poorer class of Jews. Jews are also
to be found occasionally among the supernume-
raries 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 Is. and sometimes 2s., but
more frequently Is., 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 thej' do not
come within the scope of my present subject. Of
Hebrew youths thus employed in cheap and de-
sultory concert-singing, there are in the winter
season, I am told, from 100 to 150, few, if any,
depending entirely upon their professional exer-
tions, but being in circumstances similar to those
of my young informant.

Of the STREET-BtJYEES 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 fre-
quently 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
coflFee-houses which are also eating-houses (with
"hot joints from 12 to 4"), the hotels, the club-
houses, the larger mansions, and the public insti-
tutions. 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 ; occa-
sionally of meat kept, whether cooked or un-
cooked, until " blown," and unfit for consump-
tion (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 con-
sidered " 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 id., 6d., and 8d. 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 tastj',
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 per-
quisites 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 profit-
able 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 em-
ployed, 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/. to as
high as 501. a year, about 20/. being an average
for well-frequented taverns and " dining-rooms."
The wash-tubs on the premises of these buyers
are often oflfensive, sometimes sending forth very
sour smells.

In Sharp's-alley, Smithfield, is another man
buying quantities of wash, and buying fat and

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

133

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 id. to 6ci. a pail-full, ac-
cording 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
T^etables form a part of it. This man and the
others often employ lads to go round for wash,
paying them 2». 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 \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
lame extent, in the prisons.

What I have said of some of the larger eating-
hoosea relates also to the club-houses.

There are a number of wash-buyers in the
suburbs, who purchase, or obtain their stock gra-
tuitously, 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, declar-
mg 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 collect3 only 20
pails per day, paying 2d. per pail (thus allowing
for wliat is collected without purchase), we find
10,400^. expended annually in buying hogs'-wash.

Of the Strbbt-Buiebs o» Tea-Leaves.
An extensive trade, but less extensive, I am in-
formed, than it was a few years ago, is carried on
in t«a-ieaves, or in the leaves of the herb after
their baring been subjected, in the usual way, to
decoction. These leares are, so to speak, re-
manufactured, ia spite of great risk and frequent
exposure, and in defiance of the law. The 17th
Geo. III., e. 29, if positiTO 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 imit;ition of tea, shall for every pound forfeit,
on conviction, by the oath of one witness, before
one justice, 5^. ; 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 appa-
ratus 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 ex-
penses, 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 statemeats 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 shop-
keepers' wives in the smaller, houses. But the
great purveyors of these things are the char-
women. 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 mis-
tress 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 tliem, 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 Soraers-town ; a strong
hale woman, with what may be called an indus-
trious look. She was middle-aged, and a widow,
with one daughter, then a nursemaid in the neigh-
bourhood, and had regular employment.

" Yes," she said, •' I get the tea-leaves when-
ever 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 'a
come so much to be asked for in them, and ao

134

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

they sell less tea. I buy tea-leaves only at one
place. It 's a very large family, and I give the
servant ^d. and sometimes Zd. 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. 0
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 id. 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 arc, 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 Avomen 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 Avhich
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 duidng
their work is generally classed among the
comforts of existence, yet they are the very per-
sons 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 indis-
criminately for being re-made into what is con-
sidered 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 perpe-
tualh', 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 my-
self 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,
Avhen 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 iti 0, 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 Avages, 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 handfuUs 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 ser-
vants. 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

135

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 Irf. to \s. I never
gave more than \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 fori Why, to sell again ; and though
hini OS 1 sold them to never said so, I knew they
was to dry over again. I know nothing about
who he waa, or where he lived. The woman I
told you of sent him to me. I suppose I cleared
about 10s. a week on them, and did a little in
other things beside; perhaps I cleared rather
more than \0s. on leaves some weeks, and 5s. 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«. 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 j 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
SOT. (sovereign) in leaves. I haven't a not-ion
how many 'sin the line, or what's doing now;
but much the game 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 surrep-
titious and dishonest traffic is the sul^ject of inquiry,
that although less spurious tea is sold, there are
more makers of it. Two of the principal manu-
facturers have of late, however, been prevented
carrying on the business by the intervention of
tlie excise officers. The spurious tea-men are
als'> til- buyers of "wrecked tea," that is, of tea
which has been part of the salvage of a wrecked
Teste], and is damaged or spoiled entirely by
tl)e salt water. This is re-dried and dyed, so ns
to appear fresh and new. It is dyed with
Fnusian blue, which gives it what an ex-
tensive tea-dealer descrilied to me as an " in-
t«oaely fine green." It it then mixed with the
coonnonest Gunpowder teas and with the strongest
Yoaog Uysons, and has always a kind of "me-
tallic" finell, somewhat like that of a copper

vessel after friction in its cleaning. These teas are
usually sold at 4s. the pound.

Sloe-leaves for spurious tea, as I have before
stated, were in extensive use, but this manufac-
ture 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 as-
sured, more skilfully conducted thfin 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 men-
tioned. These teas, when mixed, are hawked in
the countr}', but not in town, and are sold to the
hawkers at 7 lbs. for 21s. The quarters of
pounds are retailed at Is. A tea-dealer told me
that he could recognise this adulterated commo-
dity, 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 com-
monest 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 simu-
late 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 Knglish.

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-in-
formed, 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 burn-
ing 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 1600 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^ lb. per annum for
each man, woman, or child in the kingdom ;
coffee being the pHncij'al unfermcnted 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.

13(3

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

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-gatherer?, 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 nigbtmen, 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 in-
dustry, or rather their laboiu*, 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 Loudon, 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 diflfer from the third
in the fact that the sweeps, dustmen, scavengers,
&c., are paid (and often large sums) for the re-
moval 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 sura 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 clean-
ing of the streets, and the removal of the refuse
matter from our dwellings ; and the man who con-
tracts 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 st^ee^folk as the unskilled and ig-
norant labourer he employs. Tiie 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 metro-
polis 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 character-
istics, excepting that the mud-larks are generally
boys, which is more an accidental than a definite
distinction. The grubbers are with a few excep-
tions stupid, unconscious of their degradation, and
with little anxiety to be relieved from it. They
are usually tacitiu-n, but this taciturn habit is
common to men whose callings, if they cannot be
called solitary, are pursued with little communi-
cation with others. I was informed by a man
who once kept a little beer-shop near Friar-street,
South wark 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

fits.

- m

jgffWkn^

-~Ts

-■iit^tr^^^

T ii E II U D - L A R K.

iFrom a Daguerrmtyfm hy Okaro.]

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

137

are very poor, although I am told some of them,
the older men, have among the poor the reputa-
tion of being misers. It ia not unusual for the
youths belonging to these callings to live with
their parents and give them the amount of their
earnings.

The sewer-huntera are again distinct, and a far
more intelligent and adventuroua clasa ; but they
vork 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 subterra-
neous 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 in-
stance, 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 imder the water without rising to the sur-
face 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 acqmiinted
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
Boot in addition to his %d. or 1«.; 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 in-
dividual baripdm The whole refuse of the
streets belongs to the contractor to make the best
of, but it must bo cleared away, and so must the
contents of a dust-bin; for if a mass of dirt become
offensiTe, the householder may be indicted for a
nuisance, and municipal by-laws require its re-
aovaL 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 accoimt 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 labour-
ers, mere labourers, who require only bodily
power, and possess little or no mental develop-
ment. 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 neigh-
bouring 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 Kewgate was per-
formed by a youth who had been brought up a
chimney-sweep. lie 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. lie 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 in-
diflferent 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 aji
educated body.

138

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 tlie 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 pro-
ceeding 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 com-
prehend the inertia of both body and mind be-
gotten bj' 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 con-
dition. Those, however, who have studied the
mysterious connection between body and mind,
and observed what different creatures they them-
selves are before and after dinner, can well under-
stand 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 de-
pression corresponding to the excitement momen-
tarily 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 conse-
quently 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-Grubbebs and Rag-Gathebers.
The habits of the bone-grubbers and rag-gather-
ers, 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 em-
ployments, 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 occupa-
tion, 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 esti-
mate 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 em-
ployment, 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 sleep-
ing in the casual wards of the unions, and some-
times, when hard driven, working at hay-making
or any other light labour.

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

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

139

i business they cannot leave it, for at least they
i make certain of getting a few halfpence by it, and
j their present necessity does not allow tliem time
' to look after other employment. There are many
! of the street-tinders 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, particu-
larly boys and girls, have been engaged in gather-
ing 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 pur-
pose 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 Lack 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 tinds large
lumps of bread which have been thrown out as
waste by the servants, and occasionally the house-
keepers 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 sepamte beats or dis-
tricts, 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 Feckham, Clapham, Ham-
mersmith, Hampstcad, Bow, Stratford, and indeed
all parts within about tire 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 particu-
larly in the suburbs. In the neighbourhood of
petticoat-lane and Kagfair, 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 qtmrter
to a half hundredweight on his back. In the
summer he ustudly reaches home about eleven
of the day, and iu the winter about one or tv^.
On his return home be proceeds to sort the con-
tent* of his bag. He separates the rags from the
bones, and these again from the old metal (if he
be lucky enough to hare fuund any). He divides
the rags into various lots, according as they are
white or coloured ; and if he have picked up any
pieces of canvaa 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 ^d. to Zd. 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 2d. 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 bniss, copper, and
pewter about Ad. (the marine-store keepers say
5(^.), and old iron one farthing per pound, or six
pounds for 1(/. The bone-grubber thinks he has
done an excellent day's work if he can earn 8cZ.;
and some of them, especially the very old and the
very young, do not earn more than from 2d. to
Zd. a day. To make IQd. a day, at the present
price of rags and bones, a man must be remark-
ably active and strong, — " ay ! and lucky, too,"
adds my informant. The average amount of earn-
ings, I am told, varies from about Qd. to Srf. per
day, or from 35. to 4*. 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 bs., but this can only be accom-
plished by great good fortune and industry — the
usual weekly gains are about half that sura. 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 import-
ant 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 \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, Bishopsgaie. The
best bit of luck of all that I ever had was finding
a cheque for 12^ 15*. lying in the gateway of the
mourning-coach yard in Titchbome-street, Hay-
market 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«. 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«. though."

It has been stated that the average amount of
the eaniings of the bone-pickers is 6^/. per day, or
Z». per week, being 11. 16«. per annum for each
person. It has also been r.hown that the number

140

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

of persons engaged in the business may be esti-
mated at about 800 ; hence the earnings of the
entire number will amount to the sura of 20^. per
day, or 120/. per week, which gives 6240/. 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 rami-
fying into each other in the most intricate and dis-
orderly 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 popula-
tion, 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 au-
thority, 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-gmbber 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 Avork
with himself on the Paris and Rouen Railway,
under McKenzie and Brassy, who had the con-
tract. 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/.,
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 lie 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 2s. Qd.
I looked for work everywhere, but could get
nothing to do ; and when the 2s. &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 35. 4(/,
English ; I don't make more than 3cZ. or Ad. and
sometimes 6c/. 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 ga-
thered 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 Petti-
coat-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 oflf 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

141

board the ships in the Docks, and exchange them
for bones and bits of old canvas among tlje 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*. 6rf. 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 ;
Tery seldom I have any dinner, — unless I earn M.
I can't get any, — and then I have a basin of nice
Boup, or a penn'orth of plum-pudding and a couple
of baked 'tatoes. At night I get \d. worth of
coffee, \d. worth of sugar, and \\d. «\'orth of
bread, and then I have 2(/. 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 id., 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 ^ lb. of bread,
and another ^ lb. in the morning, and then we 'd
gather what we could in the daytime and buy
Tictuala 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
femilies 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 fcie 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 evi-
dently 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 false-
hood. 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
claM. They appear utterly incapable of trading
eren in the most trifling commodities, probably
from the fiict that buying articles for the purpose
of selling them at a profit, requires an exercise of
the mind to which they feel themselves incapable.
B^[ging, too, requires some ingenuity or tact, in
order to more 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 unprofit-
able calling. This cannot be fairly said of the
younger members of this class, who arc sent into
the street* by their parents, and many of whom
are afterwards able to find some moro reputable
and more lucrative employment. As a body of
r>eople, however, young and old, they mostly ex-
hibit 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 morn-
ings 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 de-
molished. 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 bad 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 phice. I found, on inspec-
tion, 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 my-
self 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, espe-
cially 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 chiffo-
niers 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 (2l8t of June). It took place at a public-
house called the Pot Tricolore, near the Barrihe
de Fontainhlcau, which is frequented by the rag-
gathering fraternity. In this house there are
three rooms, each of which is spcciallv doroted to
the use of different classes of rag-gatherers ; one,
the least dirty, is called the ' Chamber of Peers,'

142

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

nnd 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 condi-
tion, 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 'Reunion
des Vrais Proletaires.' 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 ban-
quet, however, all distinctions of rank were laid
aside, and delegates of each class united frater-
nally. The president was the oldest rag-gatherer
in Paris ; his age is 88, and he is called ' the
Emperor.' The 'oanquet consisted of a sort of
olla i^odnda, which the master of the establish-
ment pompously called giheloite, though of what
animal it was composed it was impossible to say.
It Avas 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. Tiie wine, or what did
■duty as such, was contained in an earthen pot
called the Petit Pere Noir, and was filled from a
gigantic vessel named Le Moricaud. The dinner
was concluded by each guest taking a small glass
of brand}'. Business was then proceeded to.
It consisted in the reading and adoption of the
statutes of the association, followed by the drink-
ing of numerous toasts to the president, to the
prosperity of rag-gathering, to the imion of rag-
gatherers, &c. A collection amounting to 6/. 75c.
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 IDE " Pure "-Fi>'DErvS,
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 ap-
pears to have been no men engaged in the busi-
ness, old women alone g.ithered the substance,
and they were known by the name of " hunters,"
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, aa I have stated, kindred
characteristics.

The pure-finders meet with a ready market forall
the dogs'-dung they are able to collect, at the nume-

rous tanyards in Bermondsey, where they sell it by
the stal)le-bucket full, and get from St/, to lOrf.
per bucket, and sometimes \s. and Is. 2d. 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 purify-
ing 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
mixid 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 col-
lectors of this substance have been mechanics, and
others small tradesmen, Avho 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 IO5. to 15s. a week. These, how-
ever, are very few; the majority have to seek the
article in the streets, .nnd by such means they
can obtiiin only from 6s. to 10s. a week. The
average weekly earnings of this class are thought
to be about 7s. 6c^.

From all the inquiries I have made on this sub-
ject, 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 tlie article. Leomont and Roberts's, Baving-
tons', 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 tan-
ners. At Leomont and Eoberts's there are 23 re-
gular street-finders, who supply them with pure,
but this is a large establishment, and the number
supplying them is considered far be3'ond 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 re-
gularly engaged in the business: besides these, it
may be said that numbers of the starving and
destitute Irish have tiken to picking up the ma-

LONDOJ^ LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR.

143

terial, but not knowing where to sell it, or how to
dispose of it, they part with it for 2d. or Zd. the
pail-full to the reguhir purveyors of it to the tan-
yards, 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
ebe 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*. ; indeed I am assured that seven years
ago, when they got from Zs. to 4*. per pail for the
pure, that many of them would not exchange their j
position with that of the best paid mechanic in
London. Now, however, the cjise is altered, for
there are twenty now at the business for every
one who followed it then ; hence each collects
80 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^. per week, but these are mostly old
women who are feeble and unable to get over the
ground quickly ; others make 5s. and 65. in the
course of the week, while the most active and j
those who clean out the kennels of the dog fanciers !
may occasionally make 9*. and I1I*. and even \5s.
a week still, but this is of very nire occurrence.
Allowing the finders, one with the other, to earn
on an average 5*. per week, it would give the
annual earnings of each to be 13/., while the
income of the whole 200 would amount to 50/. a
week, or 2600/. per annum. The kennel " pure "
is not much valued, indeed many of the tinners
will not even buy it, the reason is that the
dogs of the " £finciers " are fed on almost any-
thing, to save expense ; the kennel cleaners con-
sequently 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 bonegrubber 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, how-
ever, 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 gt-ncnilly have a
large pocket fur 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 avoca-
tion 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 lixrabskins which are the sham morocco
and kids of the " slop " leather trade, and are
used by the better class of shoemakers, book-
binders, 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 .is calf-skins, for which
purpose it is placed in pits with an admixture of
lime and bark.

In the m inufacture 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 dis-
greeable 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 manufac-
tured in 13ormondsey.

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 gar-
rets in the poorer parts of liermondsey, 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, clear-
ing 6<. a week in the summer — \s. and 1j?. 2d.
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, redo-
lent of filth and pregnant with pestilential diseases,
and whither all the outcasts of the metropolitan

144

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOH

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 companion-
ship), 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 r.agged 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 ex-
cept 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 verj"-
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-eud Road. There I

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 con-
spicuous 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 j
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-fuU in the daj-,
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^. Qd. and 45. a pail-full, and a ready sale
for as much of it as you could get ; but now you
can only get Is. and in some places Is. 2d. a
pail-full ; and, as I said before, tliere 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 laj- down in the bed —
we lived in Whitechapel then — he took a fit of
coughing, and was smothered in his own blood.

0 dear " (tlie poor old soul here ejaculated), " what
troubles I have gone through! I had eight chil-
dren 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 Berraondsey, and there I got
only 6d. for my pains. To-day I wasn't out at
all ; I wasn't well ; I had a bad headache, and

1 'm so much afraid of the fevers that are all aboit

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

145

Ijere — 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 diz-
siness in my head now, I feel as if it didn't belong
to me. Ko, I have earned no money today. I
have had a piece of dried bread that I steeped in
water to eat. I haven't eat anything else to-day ;
)[)at, pray, sir, don't tell anybody of ir. 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 pre-
vented from going about where I liked. No, I '11
never go into the workhouse ; my master is kind
to me" [the tanner whom she supplies]. " When
I 'ra 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
nave 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 gentle-
men came searching all through this place, looking
for a man named Brown, and ofiering 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 liad 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 luge estate, of I don't know how man v thousand
|K>unds, just left him, and the lawyers had adver-
tised and searched everywhere for him, but never
found him, you may say, till ho was dead. We
discovered that bis name was not Brown ; he had
only taken that name to bide bis real one, which,
of Goane, he did not want any one to know. I 've
often thought of him, poor man, and all the misery
he micht have been spared, if tlie good news had
01' \ ••ar or two sooner."

tormant, a Purexollector, was ori-
gi Mancbeater cotton '—■*■■ --H ' ''

K nation in a large (

1 . nrv on.- vear ex«

his regular income was 150^ " 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 80 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
80 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 ven-
tured 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 6s. 'M. ; and the week
before that, 6s.

13efore leaving me I prevailed upon the man to
" take the pledge." Tiiis 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 timein 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 Rose-
mary-lane, who buys them all up at from M. to
\0(L per pound, according to their length and
quality. The long ends ai-e 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, Wile-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 intelli-
gent man living in the midst of them, that these
children go out in tiie 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 theirroundsand collected what-
ever they can, they take the cigar-ends to the man
• ' ' tliem — sometimes getting not more than
or a penny for their morning's coUec-
!|ii« thry buy h hairpenny or a penny

146

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

worth 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.

1 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 un-
married "' 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 thorough-
fares, 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 thorough-
fares.

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 castaway, and again collected
by the finders, and so on perhaps, till the millen-
nium 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 Gathereks.
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, en 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 " puU-
ing-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-pave-
ment in the city was being removed ; a large num-
ber 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 be-
sieged by a motley mob of men, women, and chil-
dren, 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 mud-
lark 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 realizes in the course
of the year.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

147

Or THX Drkdoebs, 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 occu-
pations 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 regu-
larly-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-
fiiiderg ciin tell is that his father had been a
dredger, and so had his father before him, and that
that '$ 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 be-
come 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 pyersons 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,
books, &c. The fishermen well understood every-
thing connected with the river, such as the various
%eU 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 certiin times of the
tide, in consequence of the velocity with which
the water nuhed 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 " shoot-
ing" London Bridge; and it was no unusual
thing for accidents to bappt'n even to the most
expert In fact, numeroiu 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
thej u«ed while rowing, offering itself for the
purpose ; for, by fixing an iron frame round the
mouth of the dragnet, this part of it, from its
specific gravity, sunk first to the bottom, and con-
sequently scraped along aa they pulled forward,
collecting into the net everything that came in its
w»y ; 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 com-
merce 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 80 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 apprentice-
ship, as they say themselves, " duly and truly "
for seven years. During the time of their ap-
prenticeship 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, wh» have started
wholly in the dredging line, there being no hin-
drance 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 : —

Dredger-
men.
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 fre-
quented by them being Lambeth and Rother-
hiihe. 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 any-
thing ; 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 drcdgerman
would bo 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

148

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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^. to 20^. The boats
used by the fishermen dredgermen are decidedly
the most valuable. One with the other, perhaps
the whole may average 10^. each ; and this sum
will give lOuO/. as the value of the entire number.
A complete set of tackle, including drags, will
cost 2L, which comes to 200/. for all hands ; and
thus we have the sum of 1200/. 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 over-
board, 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 inde-
pendent of their dredging. An old dredger told
me he had often in those days made 51. before
breakfast time. After the excavation of the va-
rious 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 25s. per week,
each, or 65007. per annum among all. Latterly,
however, the earnings of these men have greatly
fallen oiF, especially in the summer, for then thej"^
cannot get so good a price for the coal they find
as in the winter — Qd. per bushel being the sum-
mer price ; and, as they consider three bushels a
good day's work, their earnings at this period of
the year amount only to \s. 6d per day, except-
ing 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«. 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 65.,
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 se-
l^'ct fpw are considered by \\\it re«t 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 'car him. Why that ere 13111 can read
faster nor a dog can trot. And, what 's more, I
seed hira write an ole letter hisself, ev'ry word on
it ! What do you think 0' that now 1" The igno-
rance 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 voy-
ages. 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 Avater,
would closely resemble the costerraongers 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, perse-
vering, 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 neces-
sarily be carried, the}' become the very opposite
to the other river people, especially to the water-
men, who are brawling and clamorous, and de-
light in continually "chaffing" each other. In
consequence of the sober and industrious habits
of the dredgermen their homes are, as they say,
" pretty fair " foi;^ working men, though there is
nothing very luxurious to be found in them, nor
indeed anything beyond what is absolutely ne-
cessary. 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 pre-
sents 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 advan-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

149

tageons 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
fall ; then they at once stop, haul it to the sur-
face, and commence another course. Others who
hare 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 any-
thing else which will suit their purpose; and when
this is completed they pull out again to join their
comrades, and comnience 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 imme-
diately distingnished from all others; there is
nothing similar to them on the river. The sharp
cutwater fore and aft, and short rounded appear-
ance 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 tho-
rough 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
•hort stoat figure, with a face soiled and blackened
with perspiration, and surmounted by a tarred
•ou'-wester, the bodf habited in a soiled check
•hirt, with the sleeves turned up above the elbows,
and exhibiting a pair of sunburnt brawny arms, is
palling at the sculls, not with the ease and light-
ness 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 en-
deavour to obtain it, while if there be no reward,
there is at least the inquest money to be had —
betide other chances. What these chances are
may be inferred from the well-known fiict, that
no body recovered by a dredgerman ever happens
to have any money about it, when brought to
■hore. There may, indeed, be a watch in the fob
or waistcoat pocke^, for that article would be likely
to bo traced. There may, too, be a purse or
pocket-book forthcoming, bat somehow it is in-
▼ariably empty. The dredgers cannot by any
rcMoning or argument be made to comprehend that
there it 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 sam«», and that if
they did not do to 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 what-
ever 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 oifers, 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 histor}'.

" 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 fish-
erman, and used to sleep in the boat every night.
I liked to sleep in the boat ; I used to be as com-
fortable 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 slapping 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 1 1 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 1 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/. 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 no-
think after all. They do better nor us, at they go

150

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 docs very
well for all that — why he can make his half a bull
a day \2s. Q(l!\ 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 5s. Qd. 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 hira 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, inter-
sected by a series of muddy canals. Of late,
however, to remedy this defect, the Commission-
ers 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 I
were entirely open and presented no obstacle to
an}^ one desirous of entering them. Many won-
drous tales are still told among the people of men
having lost their way in the sewers, and of hav-
ing 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^.
offered to any person giving information so as to
lead to the conviction of any offender. Neverthe-
less many still travel through these foul laby-
rinths, 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 neigh-
bourhood 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 capa-
city, 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 cany
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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

151

assured of its safety, walk forward steadying their
footsteps with the statF. 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 iise of this pole to rake about the mud
when searching for iron, copper, rope, and bones.
They mostly exhibit great skill in discovering
these thmgs in unlikely places, and have a know-
ledge of the various sets of the tide, calculated to
carry articles to particular points, almost equal to
the dredgermen themselves. Although they can-
not " 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 aban-
doned by the "hunters;" but in many places the
formerchannelscrossand re-cross those recently con-
structed, 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" h;ive 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
st.-it«d, will " cause instantious death." Moreover,
iar from there being any romance in the tales told
of the rau, these vermin are really numerous and
formidable in the sewers, and have been known,
I am assured, to attack men when alone, and
eren sometimes when accompanied by others,
with Mch fury that the people have escaped from
them with difficulty. They are particularly
ferocious and dangerous, if they be driven into
■OOM comer whence they cannot escape, when
they will immediately fly at any one that opposes
th<*ir progress. I received a similar account to
this from one of the London flatbennea. There

are moreover, in some quarters, ditches or trenches
which are tilled as the water rushes up the sewers
with the tide ; in these ditches the water is re-
tained 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 brunch
sewer, so that he can run into it, whenever the
opening of these sluices takes place, he must in-
evitably perish. The trenches or water reser-
voirs 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 ex-
posed 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 brick-
layer 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 like-
wise 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 theni on their
right breast, in such a manner that on removing the
shade, the bull's-eye throws the light straight for-
ward 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 tiie bottom of the sewer, raking
away the mud with their hoe, and pick, from be-
tween the crevices of the brick-work, money, or
anything else that may have lodged there. There

K 8

152

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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
metul 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 upper-
most 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 305. to
21. — 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 Borous,'h — Snow*s-fields,
Bermondsey — ^and that never-failing locality be-
tween 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/. per week. Their probable gains, I
was told, were about 6«. per day all the year
round. At this rate the property recovered from

the sewers of London would have amounted to
no less than 20,000i, per annum, which would
make the amount of property lost down the drains
of each house amount to \s. id. a year. The
shore-hunters of the present day greatly com-
plain 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 '11 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 man}'^ 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-huntera
(passing much of their time in the midst of the
noisome vapours generated by the sewers, the
odour of which, escaping upwards from the grat-
ings 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

153

much information, and who is really an active \
intelligent man, in a conrt off Rosemary-iane, j
Access is gained to this court through a dark
narrow entrance, scarcely wider than a doorway, j
running beneath the first floor of one of the j
houses in the adjoining street. The court itself is
about 50 yards long, and not more than three
jrards wide, surrounded by lofty wooden houses,
with jutting abutments in nifiny of the upper 1
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 p:iy 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 witli 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 80 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 re-
mit, " you may as well just tack a couple a
kvndred on to the tail o' them for make-weight,
as we 're not wcrry 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
bis 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 charncteristic. 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 ob-
tained ; while under the title of Lanky Bill,
Long Tom, One-eyed George, Shor^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 bom 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 ray 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 th^i I couldii't git down, to the river when I
liked, so I got to hate the forge and the fire, and
lloicing the bellows, and couldn't stand the con-
finement 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
0, 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 corned 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
0, 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

154

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 pood 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
tnckling a man, if they found they couldn't get
away no how, but if they can why they runs byand
gits out o' the road. I knows a chap as the rats
tackled in the sewers ; they bit him hawfuUy : you
must ha' heard on it ; it was him as the water-
men 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 ye<ar 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 fer. 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 tire 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 bot-
tom, 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 Parlia-
ment 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 11. 10s. for 'em. We
found so many things, that at last Long J — and
I got to quarrel about the " whacking ; " there was
cheatiu' 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 1 — why I made 3/. 5s. 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^. 55. for it from the Jew ; arter that I
finds lots o' coppers, and silver money, and many
things besides. The reason Hikes this sort of life
is, 'caiise I can sit down, wlien I likes, and nobody
can't order me about. Wlmn I 'm hard up, I
knovjs as hoio 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 oflal
and garbage washed into it continually. Here, it
is alleged, the breed multiplied exceedingly, and

THE LONDON DUSTMAN.
Dust Hoi ! Dust Hoi !

[From a Dajrutrreottfpt hy BcARO.]

LOynON^ LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

155

have become almost as ferocious as they are
numerous. This story, apocryphal as it seems,
has nevertheless its believers, and it is ingeniously
aigued, that the reason why none of the subterra-
nean 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
toW-ards 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 Hamp-
stead 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 cjin 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

Of thb 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 nay 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
■oil of the river, and their torn garments stiffened
up like boards with dirt of every possible de-
scription.

Among the mud-larks may be seen many old
women, and itis indeed pitiable to behold them, espe-
cially 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.

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 suffi-
ciently low they scatter themselves along the
shore, separating from each other, and soon dis-
appcw among the craft lying about in every direc'

tion. This is the case on both sides of the river,
as high up as there is anything to be found, ex-
tending as far as Vauxhall-bridge, and as low down
as Woolwich. The nmd-larks themselves, how-
ever, 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 ob-
servable 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 fi-om 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 afiraid 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 j
the poor people of the neighbourhood at \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 It/., the bones at 3 lbs, a \d., rope
a irf, per lb, wet, and %d. per lb, dry, and cop-
per nails at the rate of Ad. per lb. They oc-
casionally pick up tools, such as saws and ham-
mers ; 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 man-
ner they earn from 2Jrf, to M. per day, but
rarely the latter sum ; their average gains may
be estimated at about M. 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 uu>
fortunate children : there was not one of them

156

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 appear-
ance, 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 ma-
terial 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 Is. a day when she could get em-
ployment, 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 1 for
there was nothing else that he knew how to do.
Some days he earned \d., and some days 4c?. ; he
never earned %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 CathoFic 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 some-
thing 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 chil-
dren of the very poor, who, by their own im-
providence 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 comfort-
able 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 prosti-
tution in IlatcliflF-highw.iy, and other low neigh-
bourhoods in the East of London, have originally
been mud-larks ; and only remained at that occu-
pation 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-

LOA^DOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

157

larks, the following calculations fall short of, rather
than exceed, the truth. From Execution Dock to
the lower part of Liraehouse 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 01 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 Zd. a day, or
\t. 6d. per week ; so that the annual earnings of
each will be 3/. 18*., or say il., a year, and hence
the gross earnings of the 280 will amount to rather
more than 1000/. per annum.

But there are, in addition to the mud-larks em-
ployed in the neighbourhood of what may be
called the pool, many others who work down the
river at various places as far as Black wall, on the one
side, and at Deptford, Greenwich, jind 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/. per annum.

As an illustration of the doctrines I have en-
deavoured 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 circum-
stances upon the poor, that many of the humbler
cUsses, if placed in the same easy position as our-
selves, would become, perhaps, quite as " respect-
able" 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 any-
thing better. He worked every day, with 20
or 30 boys, who might all he seen at day-
break 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 mod he often ran pieces of gUss and long
nails into his feet. When this was the case, he
went boBw Mid 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 shoe-
less 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 ware-
house, where his wife managed the first year to
save il. 10s. 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 be-
tween 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/. 55. 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, Ratcliflfe-highway; she paid
Id. 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 30s. 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 trifie.
" And hard enough he had to work for what hd
got, poor boy," said his mother to me oo « future

158

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

occasion, sobbing; "still he never complained,
but was quite proud when he broujj:ht 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 morn-
ing 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,
80 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
60 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|(i. a lb. for the rope when dry, and \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 ttie
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 be-
longed to one of the gangs. There were six boys
altogether in my gang ; the biggest lad, that
knovved all about the thieving, was the captain of

the gang I was in, and 0 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 G 's

gang; and, after that, C came and told us

that his gang could do better than oum, and he
asked us to join our gang to his'n, and we did so.
Sometimes we used to make 35. or is. a day;
or about Qd. 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 truth-
fulness of manner, that I asked him, would, he
really lead a different life, if he saw a means
of so doing 1 He assured me he would, and
begged me earnestly to try him. Upon his
leaving me, 2s. 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 even-
tually 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«. to 9s. 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

159

0* THB toHDOir DlSTMBN, NiGHTMKN, SWKEPS,
AND SCAVEKGEKS.

Tbbsb men constitute a large body, and are a
daM who, all things considered, do their work
silently and efficiently. Almost without the cog-
nisance 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 ab-
surdities 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
moch 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
u it goes.

These public cleansers are to be thus classi-
fied :—

1. Dustmen, or those who empty and remove
the collection of ashes, bones, vegetables, &c.,
deposited in the dust-bins, or other refuse recep-
tacles 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 follow-
ing important return as to the extent and contents
of this prodigious city : for this document I am
indebted to the Commissioners of Police, gentle-
men from whom I have derived the most valiialile
information since the commencement of my in-
quiries, and to whose courtesy and consideration
I am anxious to acknowledge my many obliga-
tions.

RETDEN SHOWING THE EXTENT, POPULATION, AND POLICE FORCE IN THE
METKOPOLITAN POLICE DISTRICT AND THE CITY OF LONDON IN SEPTEM-
BER, 1850.

Area (in square miles)

Parishes

Streets, Roads, &c. (length of, in miles)
Number of Houses inhabited .
„ „ uninhabited

„ „ being built

Population

Police Force

Metropolitan Police District*.

Inner
District t.

1,700

289,912

11,868

4.634

1,986,629

4,844

Outer
District.

609i

136

1,936

59.995

1,437

1,097

850,831

660

Total.

TOOi

218

3,636

349,907

13,:i05

5,731

2,836,960

6.604

City of
London %,

1|
97

15,613

3S7

125,000

668

Grand
Total.

702i

315

3.686

865,520

13,692

5,754

2,461,960

6,072

18tA September, 1850.

lies ftom Charing Cross ; the
on the S., Epsom ; on the E.,

♦ The Metropolitan Police District comprises a circle, the radius of which is 13
cstmn* btMindary on ihe N. include* the parish of Chcshunt and South Mimms
DsKPnham and Crayford ; and on the W., Uxbridee and Staines

t 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.

t 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.

The total here given can hardly be considered as
the dimensions of the metropolis ; though, where
the capiul 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 sute-
ment as to the dimensions and inhabitants of the
Metropolis Proper.

Area 92| square miles.

Parishes .179

Length of street, roads, &C. 1750 miles.

Ntmiber of inhabited 1 a^,, roK
bouses . . ; ^^^'^26

Ditto uninhabited . 12,255

!» ' r ' '• . 4657

2.111.629

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 tbe refuse of a large town is,
perhaps, one of the most important of social ope-
rations. Not only is it necessary for the well-
heinjr of « xpoi aggregation of people that th.-

160

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

ordure should be removed from both within and
around their dwellinga as soon as it is generated,
but nature, ever working in a circle and repro-
ducing 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 pre-
viously 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 indi-
gestible 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 trans-
mutation 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 recomposiug — indeed,
the very process of breathing is but one of de-
composition. 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 nutri-
ment. 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 dis-
infect 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 rt-spiration in us produces putrefac-
tion 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 prin-
ciple 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 advan-
tageous to us to remove our refuse to the fields,
but positively detrimental to our health, and dis-
gusting to our senses, to keep it in the neighbour-
hood of our houses.

" In every well-regulated State, therefore, an
effective and rapid means for carrying off the or-
dure of the people to a locality where it may be
fruitful instead of destructive, becomes a most im-
portant 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 Avorld, 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 com-
munity 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 worth-
less to us was Nature's capital — wealth set aside
forfutit,re jprodtictioji."

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 communit}'. Population, it is said, mul-
tiplies itself in a geometrical ratio, whereas the
produce of the land is increased only in arith-
metical 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

161

of a portion of the people in every densely-popu-
lated 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 indispo-
sition 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 un-
founded. 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 in-
crease 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 pro-
duce ; 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 like-
wise ; 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 oor nature, and which is utterly irreconcilable
with the attributes of the Creator.

" Thanks to organic chemistry," I said two
yean ago in the Morning Chronicle, " we are
beginning to wake up. Science has taught us
tliat the remoTal of the ordure of towns to the
fields is a question that concerns not only our
health, but, what is a far more important con-
sideration with us, our breeches pockets. What
we, in our ignorance, had misuken for refuse of
the vilest kind, we have n»w learned to regard as
being, with ref«?rence to iu fertilizing virtues, * u
precious ore, running in rich veins beneath the
snriact of our sueots.' WberMS, 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 geo-
graphical 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 fer-
tilizers 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 irriga-
tion of one acre of meadow land, seven crops, we
are told, have been produced in the year, each of
them worth from 6/. to 7/. ; so that, considering
the produce to have been doubled by these means,
we have an increase of upwards of 20^. 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/. 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, OOOf. of money every year ;
or, rather, it costs us tlcat amount to poison Oie
vxiters about us. Or, granting that the fertiliz-
ing power of the metropolitan refuse is — as it is
said to be — as great for arable as for pasture-
Unds, then for every 200 tons of manure that
we now cast away, we might have an increase of
at least 20 bushels of com per acre. Conse-
I queutly the entire 40,000,000 tons of sewage, if

162

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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, woidd 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 import-

ant it is that in the best of all possible ways
we should collect, remove, and use the scavengerj'
and exi;rementitious matter of our streets and
houses.

Now the removal of the refuse of London ia
no slight task, consisting, as it does, of the cleans-
ing of 1750 miles of streets and roads; of col-;
lecting 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 Occupa-
tion Abstract of 1841, the whole of these stupen-
dous operations are performed by a limited number
of individuals.

RETURN OF THE NUMBER. OF SWEEPS, DUSTMEN, AND NiGHTMEN IN tMe
METROPOLIS, ACCORDINa TO THE CENSUS OP ISil.

Total.

Males.

Females.

20 years and
upwards.

Under 20.

20 years and
upwards.

Under 20.

Chimney Sweepers

Scavengers and Nightmen . . .

1033

254

619

227

370
10

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 suc-
ceeded to their businesses, for that no women work
at such trades ; excepting, perhaps, in the manage-
ment and care of the soot, in assisting to empty and
fill the bags. Many females, however, are em-
ployed in sifting dust, but the calling of the dust-
man 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, accord-
ing 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 lutv yie-'n bm "n^ >kiv td

no less than 5400 chimneys ! Pursuing the same
mode of testing the validity of the " official " state-
ments, 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 gi^-e an
account of the numbers, &c., employed, and a re-
sume of the whole. It will be sufficient here to
mention that my investigations lead to the con-
clusion that, of men working as dustmen (a portion
of whom are employed as nightmen and scaven-
gers) 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 J 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 exist-
ence 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

LOXDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOH.

163

only 1700 in nnmber; I find, however, that there
are no lew 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 in-
superable, and I hare already heard of returns
for thft forthcoming document, made by ignorant
people as to their occupations, which already go
f:ir 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 en-
gaged in 80 cleansing them, let me here append
the last returns of the Registrar General, copied
from the census of 1S51, as to the dimensions
and contents of the metropolis according to that
functionary, ao 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, Lewishani, Woolwich, and Plumstead.
" To each of these points," says Mr. Weale, but
upon iriiat authority he does not inform us, " con-
streets of houses reach ; but the solid
of houses lies within narrow bounds — with
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,inhi8"Xon<;ont;il850-61,"ha8
a passage to the same effect. He says, " The con-
tinned 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 nuiy be taken at six
mOeSy and iU breadth from north to south at
•boot three mUm aad a half. There is, however,
a neaify eontinnoiu line of houses from Blackwall
to Ohebea, a distance of about seven miles, and
ban Walworth to HoUoway, of four and a half
milet. The extent of sur&ce covered by buildings
is eetimated at about sixteen square miles, or
above 10,000 acres, so that H. Say, the cele-
bcated French economist, did not really indulge in
fa^rperbole when he said, ' Londru n'ut plus une
vUu : ^tA une pnmnee eouverU de maitoru I *
(iMtdoo is no longer a town : it is a province
covered wHh hoaies).'*

The Government authorities, however, appear
to have verj' different notions from either of tiie
above gentlemen as to the extent of the metro-
polis.

The limits of London, as at present laid down
by the Registrar General, include 176 parishes,
besides several precincts, liberties, and extra-paro-
chial places, comprising altogether about 115
square miles. According to the old bills of mor-
tality, London formerly included only 148 pa-
rishes, 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 West-
minster 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, Brom-
ley, Camberwell, Deptford, Greenwich, and
Woolwich) 10

Parishes added by the Registrar General
in 1844 (including Claphara, 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 men-
tioned, 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, 1833-43 . . 44,850 70
London, within the limits

adopted by the Registrar

General, 1844-46 . . 55,660 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
kinj?(loms, of the Middle Saxons, East Saxons, tho
South Rick, and the Kentwaras, once ruled over

No. XXXVI.

164

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

its surface. It now embraces the episcopal cities
of London and Westminster, the towns of Wool-
wich, Deptford, and Wandsworth, the watering
places of Harapstead, Highgate, Islington, Acton,
and Kilburn, the fishing town of Barking, tlie
once secluded and ancient villages of Ham, llorn-
sey, Sydenham, Lee, Kensington, Fulham, Lam-
beth, Clapham, Paddington, Hackney, Chelsea,

Stoke Newington, Newington Butts, Plumstead,
and many others.

The 176 parishes now included by the Registrar
General witliin 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 undermen-
tioned : —

TABLE SHOWING THE AREA, NUMBER OF INHABITED HOUSES, AND POPU-
LATION OF THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE METROPOLIS, 1841-51.

Statute

Population.

Inhabited Houses.

Divisions of Metropolis. "

Acres.

1841.

]851.

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

NoKTu 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

129,909

167,198

14,766

18,731

Islington

8,050

55,779

95,154

8,508

13,558

Hackney .

3,950

42,328

58,424

7,192

9,861

Cektral Districts.

St. Giles's .

250

54,378

54,062

4,959

4,778

Strand

163

43,667

44,446

4,327

3,938

Holbom'^ .

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

64,058

6,385

6,421

East London

1 t230

39,718

44,407

4,796

4,785

West London

29,188

28,829

3,010

2,745

London, City of .

J370

66,009

55,908

7,921

7,329

East Districts.

Shoreditch .

620

83,564

109,209

12,642

15,433

Bethnal Green .

760

74,20S

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

■ 5,9S5

6,151

Stepney

2,518

90,831

110,669

14,364

16,346

Poplar

1,250

31,171

47,157

6,066

6,882

South Districts.

St. Saviour's, Southwark

83,027

35,729

4,659

4,613

St. Olave's, Southwark .

19,869

19,367

2,523

2,365

Bermondsey

620

35,002

48,128

5,674

7,095

St. George's, Southwark

*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

60,770

6,459

8,290

Camber well .

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

6,936

Total London Division . .

74,070

1,948,369

2,361,640

262,737

307,722

* The area of the districts of St. Saviour and St. Olave is included in that returned for St. Gcorpje, Southwark.
t The area here sUted is that of the city without the walls, and includes White Friars precinct and Holy

Trinitv. Minories, both beloninng ^o other districts.

X. Thi^ area is that of the city within the walls, and does not include White Fnars, which belongs to the district =

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

165

In order to be aWe to compare the average
density of the population in the various parts of
London, I have made a calculation as to the num-
ber 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 de-
creased 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 DIF-
FERENT PARTS OF THE METROPOLIS IN 1841-51.

Yearly In-

Number of

crease of Po-

crease of In-

Number of

Inhabited

Persons to

pulation per

habited

People to the

Houses to the

each

annum, from

Houses, from

Acre, 1851.

House,

1841-51.

1851.

West Districts.

Kensington ....

4,509-2

6330

15-2

2-2

6-9]

Chelsea .

1,630-0

198-1

72-4

9-7

' 7-4,

St George's, Hanover-square

6550

11-6

67-1

8-0

8-3

Westminster

880-7

20-3

80-4

8-2

9-8

St. Martin's-in-the-Fields

deer. 57-5»

deer. 11-6*

94-3

8-9

10-5

St. James's, Westminster

•103-1*

13-0*

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

5-5

Ckhtral Districts

St. Gilet'i .

deer. 31-6*

<i<cr. 18-1»

216-2

191

11-3

Strand

77-9

deer. 38-9*

272-2

24-1

11-2

Holbom .

203-9

deer. 8-6*

247-7

240

10-3

Clerkenwell

790-6

31-3

202-2

22-6

8-9'

St. Lake's .

415-0

3-6

225-2

26-7

8-4

East and West London

4330

deer. 27-6»

318-4

32-7

9-7

London City

deer. 10-1*

deer. 59-2"

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

deer. -2*

252-3

27-9

St. George'i-in-the-East

696.9

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

6-8

South Districts.

St SsTiour'i, St Olave's, and St

George's, Southwark

730-7

13-8

181-2

23-7

7-6

Bermondsey

1,312-6

1421

77-6

112

6-7

Newington

1,011-2

109-8

102-8

16-6

Lambeth ....

2,316-8

272-9

38-2

Wandsworth

1,085-2

183-1

4-7

•7

6-1

Camberwell

1,473-7

257-4

12-4

2-0

5-3

Rotherhithe

383-8

41-4

25-7

G-2

Greenwich

1,827-9

242-8

21-7

3-1

6-3

Lewisbam ....

1,178-0

197-0

•3

5-Q

Toul for all London

41,827-1

4,498-6

81-8

4-1

7-6

•toceTsJl^**^"**''*" "*** number of inhabited hotues in these dlitricts has decreased annually to this extent

166

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

By the above table we perceive tliat St. Mar-
tin's-in-the-Fiolds, St. James's, Westminster, St.
Giles's, the Strand.and the City have all decreased
both in popnlation 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,
Marj'lebone, St. Pancras, Islington, Hackney,
Shoreditch, Bethnal-green, Stepney-, Poplar, Ber-
mondsey, 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, Whitcchapel, 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, iu which the population is
the most dense of all, the number of people ex-
ceeds 300 to the acre. The least densely popu-
lated districts are Hampstead, Wandsworth, and
Lewisham, where the people are nut 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 2U i
dwellings to each acre of ground, while in East
and W"e3t London, which is the most closely built j
over of all, the number of houses to each acre i
are as many as 32. Hampstead and Lewisham j
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 therearemore than eleven people
to each house, and St. Mariin'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 According

to to Metro -

Registrar politan

General. Police.

Area (in statute acres) . 74,070 68,880

Parisiies 176 179

^Wes "^. '^^^^']'^} 307,722 305,525
Population ! . . . . 2,361,040 2,111,629

Hence it will be seen that both the extent and
contents of theae two returns differ most mate-
rially.

Ist. The superficies of the Registrar General's
metropolig is very nearly 13 square miles, or

15,190 statute acres, greater than the metro-
polis 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 diff(?rent
metropolises, so to speak, aud 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 Genenil has, as we have
seen, one metropolis divided into western, nor-
thern, 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 Ofllce 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 statis-
tical "confusion worse confounded."

Of the Dustmen op 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 frag-
ments of unconsumed coke, giving rise to by far
the greater quantity. Some notion of the vast
amount of this refuse annually produced in Lon-
don may be formed from the fact that the con-
sumption 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 impor-
tant tlioroughfares, filthy and impassable. Upon
the Officers of the various parishes, therefore, has
devolved the duty of seeing that the refuse of the
fuel consumed througliout 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 au

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

167

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 Lon-
don fuel was far more valuable. Not many years
ago it was the practice for the various master dust-
men to send in their tenders to the vestry, on a cer-
tain day appointed for the purpose, offering to pay a
considerable sum yearly to the parish authorities
for lilH^rly 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/. or
600/. per annum ; but then there was an immense
demand for the article, and the contractors were
xuiable 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 15i. to 1/. 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, bo that the
C:>r.tnutor8 have not only declined paying any-
thii;g ior liberty to collect it, but now stipulate
to receive a ceruiin sura for the removal of it. It
need hardly be staUd 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
ha« taken place in this business, from the fact,
that the aforesaid parish of Shadwell, which for-
merly received the sum of 450/. per annum for
liberty to collect the dust, now pays the Contractor
the sura of 240/. per nnnum for its removal.

The Ooart of Sewers of the City of London, in
1846, through the advice of Mr. Cochrane, the
president of the National Philanthropic Associa-
tion, were able to obtain from the contractors
the anm of 5U00/. ior liberty to clear away the
dirt from the streets and the dust from the
bins and houses in that district. The year follow-
ing, however, the contractors entered into a com-
bination, 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/.
By acting on the same principle in the year
after, they not only offered no premium what-
ever fat the contract, but the City Conimis-
rioners of Sewers were obliged to pay them the
sum of 800/. for remoriog the refuse, and at pre-
sent the amount paid by the City is a« much ai
4^00/. I This is divided among four great con-
tracton, and would, if equally apportioned, give
them 1250/. each.

I subjoin a list of the names of the principal
contractors aod the parishes for which they are

DISTRICTS COXTRACTED NAMKS OF

FOa. CONTRACTORS.

/"Redding.

Four divisions of the City, -j j^'^nnott.

(j! Gould. '

Finsbury -square J.Gould.

St. Luke's H. Dodd.

Shoreditch Ditto

Norton Folgate J. Gould.

Bcthnal-green E. Newman.

I lolborn Pratt and Se well.

Hatton-Rarden Ditto.

IsliDRton .Stroud, Brickmaker.

St. Martin's AVm. Sinnott, Junior.

St. Mary-le-Strand J. Gore.

St. Sepulchre Ditto.

Savoy Ditt >.

St. Clement Danes Rook.

St. Janus's, Clerkenwell . . H. Dodd.

St. John's, ditto J.Gould.

St. Maruaret's, Westminster W. Heame.

St. John's, ditto SUpIeton and Holdsworth.

Lambeth W. Heame.

Chelsea. C. Humphries.

St. Marylebone J. Gore.

Blackfriars-bridge Jenkins.

St. Paul's, Covent-garden .. W. Sinnott.

Piccadilly H. Tame.

Regent-street andPall-mall W. Ridding.

St. George's, Hanover-sq. H. Tame.

Paddington C. Humphries.

Camden-town Milton.

St. Paneras, S.W. Division W. Stanleton.

Southampton estate C. Starkey.

Skinner's ditto H. Nortii.

Brewer's ditto C. Starkey.

Cromerditto 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 . . Heame.

Bcnnondsey The parish.

Kensington H. Tame.

St. r.iles's-in-the-Field» and

St. George's, Bloomsbury Redding.

Shadwell Wectley.

St, George's-in-the-East .. Ditto.

Battle-bridge Starkey.

Berkeley-square Clutterbuck.

St. George's, Pimlico Re<iding.

Woods and Forests Ditto.

St. Botolph Westley.

St. John's, Wapping Ditto.

Somcrs-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 infonned 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 ap-
pear to be subdivided and underlet a second time.

The parish of St. Paneras is split into no
less than 21 districts, each district having a
separate and independent "Board," who are
geneniUy at war with each other, and make
sepamte contracts for their several divisions.
This id also the case in other large parishcB,
and these and other considerations confirm
me in the conclusion that of large and small

16S

LOXDOJV LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

dust-contractors, job-master3, 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^. ; from the city the four
contractors receive as much as 5000^. ; 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^. 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 tlie metropolis will
be between 30,000^. and 40,000/. per annum.

The removal of the dust throughout the metro-
polis, 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 diffi-
culty 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 know-
ledge of the trade, he should suppose that at pre-
sent 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 con-
tractors for the cleansing of the streets, except
where that duty is performed by tlve Street-Order-
lies ; they are also the persons who undertake
the emptying of the cesspools in their neighbour-
hood ; the latter operation, however, is effected by
an arrangement between themselves and the land-
lords of the premises, and forms no part of their
parochial contracts. At the office of the Street

Orderlies in Leicester Square, they have know-
ledge of only 30 contractors connected with the
metropolis; but this is evidently defective, and refers
to the '• large masters" alone ; leaving out of all con-
sideration, 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 un-
willing 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 occa-
sions 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 gentle-
man who communicated to me the amount paid
by the parish of Shadwell, and who infomied 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 infor-
mation but such as was calculated to mislead.

I soon discovered, indeed, that it was impossible
to place any reliance on what some of the contrac-
tors said ; and here I may repeat that the indisputa-
ble 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 remu-
neration 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 ho-
nourable 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 in-
vestigations go to prove. I have already, in the
Morning Chronicle, recorded the character of my
interviews with an eminent Jew slop-tailor, an

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

160

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 dust-
men 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 metro-
polis at only 254. But, as I said before, I have
long ceased to place confidence in the government
retums.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 dust bins 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 calcu-
lated that the ashes and cinders alone from each
house average about three loads per annum, so
that each contractor would have, in round num-
bert, 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 1 500 loads in the course of the year,
so that at this rate, there must be between six
and seven carts, and twelve and fourteen col-
lectors 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 Kegent'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 gene-
rally (rom four to eight sifters, and six or seven
carts. There are, therefore, employed in a me-
dium-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 allow-
ing 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 metropoli-
tan 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 num-
ber 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 de-
livery of the coals, the difference is easily ac-
counted for.

We may arrive, approximately, at the quantity
of dust annually produced in London, in the fol-
lowing 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 arc as follows . —

Carbon, Volatile,

per cent. per cent.

^Tafs °' ^'"} 40 to 60 60 to 40
Newcastle or 1

" house " coals. J
Lancashire and
Yorkshire coals.
South Welsh or I o-i . ok

" steam" coals. ^ ^^^''^^
Anthracite or, ^^^^^

67
50 to 60

35 to 40
11 to 15
None

Ashes,
per cent.

10
5
4

3
a little.

" stone " coals.

In the metropolis the Newcastle coal is chiefly

170

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

used, and this, we perceive, yields five per cent,
ashes and about 67 per cent, carbon. But a con-
siderable 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 re-
mains 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 pro-
duced 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 in-
formation 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 pro-
duce, 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 metro-
polis 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 pur-
poses, (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 sepa-
rated 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^. 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 busi-
ness 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, how-
ever, some cargoes of the dust still taken, par-
ticularly 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 2s. Qd. per chaldron, and
sometimes less.

The finer dust is also used to mix with the
clay for making bricks, and barge-loads are con-
tinually 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 pur-
pose ; 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 compo-
nent 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 Inser, to break or crush), that is to
say, the coarser portion of the coal-ash, is like-
wise 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. Fre-
quently 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 35. 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

171

of the briekfl now used in London for the new
buildings come from other quarters. Such dust,
however, as the contractors sell to the brick-
nwkers, they in general undertake, for a certain
tarn, 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
varions purposes.

The bricks, &c., are sold for sinking beneath
foondations, 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
nse 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 dis-
posed 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
•eyerally applied to the following uses : —

1. " Soil," or fine dust, sold to brickmakers
for Bnking bricks, and to farmers for manure, es-
pecially for clover.

2. " Brieze," or cinders, sold to brickmakers,
for burning bricks.

8. Itngs, bones, and old metal, sold to marine-
•tore 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 ronds.

6. Old boots and shoes, sold to Prussian-blue
manidacturers.

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
inbarbs, 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 p«v>r: frcnupntly, however,
they cover a large ext. his,

and there the dost is ; : in

a conical heap, and L:. ...... . ;.... .i^.,,. . ...nice

of a Tolcanie momtain. The reason why the
dost-beap* are confined principally to the suburbs
is, that more space is to be fooad in the out-
skirts than in a thickly-peopled and oeirtml locality.
Moreover, the fear of indictments for nuisance has
bad considerable influence in the matter, for it
was not untuual for the yards in former times, to
be located within the boandariei of the city.

i They are now, however, scattered round London,
and always placed as near as possible to the
I river, or to some canal communicating there-
: with. In St. George's, Shad well, Katcliffe,
I Limehouse, Poplar, and Blackwall, on the north
I 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, Sitting-
bourne, 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 Lime-
house 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 Paddingtou 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/. ; but that
was in the days when 15*. and 1/. 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.

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." Thereis 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 pro-
ceed 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 ofSil 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 .ippearance 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 bbck bonneU crushed anA battered like

172

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

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 excep-
tion of one who Avas 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 contrac-
tors generally agree with the various parishes to
remove both the dust from the houses and th'e
mud from the streets; the men in their em-
ploy 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, accord-
ing to their particular avocation at the moment.
The case is somewhat diiferent, however, with
respect to the nightmen. Tliere 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 pur-
pose. 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 hun-
dreds 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 em-
ployed 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 re-
moving 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 j)er se.

But these labourers not only work indiscri-
minately 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 ; witli
this qualification, however, that few men apply
themselves continuously-to any one branch of the
business. The labourers employed in a dust-j-aid
may be divided into two classes : those paid Ly
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 paib by the Contractors, or,

1. Yard foretnan, or superintendent. Tliis
duty is often perfoimed 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 ship-
ment.

4. Carriers of cinders to the cinder-heap, or
bricks to the brick-heap.

5. Foreman ox 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
2s. 6d. per day, or 15s. 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 en
by themselves, as a sort of premium for good
services.

2nd. The gangers or collectors are generally

"^ '^^i'C

THE LONDON SWEEP

\Vri)m a Dogumrtoli/pe In Dkard.]

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

173

paid M. per load for erery 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
thev receive. There are some yards where the
carters get only ^d. per load, as, for instance, at
Paddington. The Paddingtonmen, however, are not
considered inferior workmen to the rest of their
fellows, but merely to be worse paid. In 1826, or
26 years ago, the carters had Is. M. per load ; but
at that time the contractors were able to get \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 con-
tractors 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 id. 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
lituated in a place called the " ruins " in Lower
Shadwell, the men employed by the Shadwell
contractor can easilygeteightornine loads in a day.
Five loads are about an average day's work, and
this gives them \s. %\d. per day each, or IO5.
per week. In addition to this, the men have
their perquisites " in aid of wages." The collec-
tors 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 wnit<'r8 may l)e taken as the special type),
Aj :. '■'' ■ ■ -119 effects of this mode

Oi ith the London dust-

I ni- , ■ Ij as it were, to extort

fr 'm the public that portion of their fair earnings
of which their master deprives them ; hence, how can

I wc wonder that they make i t a rule when they receive

I n-'ither beer nor money from a house to make as
gr«it a mess a» possible the next time they come,
scattering the dust and cinders about in such a
manner, that, soonfM* than have any trouble with
l" ri, !<-";i!'- t:: '" " " ' '" • look for?

11: : : , !ri I have

: his per-
.: -.;. . : r {:.■■ a t v.. ■ : . , v,/, ; ;.i ■ : Uiy, 5\d. ;
'j :• -'l.-iy. •;./. ; U'r.iii.--,.l,iy, 1 ^/. ; Ti.iir.sdiiy, 7rf, ;

I Friday, SJc/. ; and Saturday, 5t/. 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.^. O^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, 2d. per
chaldron between four persons being the usual
rate, or \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*. 6d. 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 em-
ployed by him at Is. 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 6d., nor have I been able to ascer-
tain 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, .ind one-half of the money, jewellery, or other
valuables that may be found by the sifters.

The hill-man or hill-woman employs the follow-
ing persons, and pays them at the following rates,

Ist. The sifters are paid Is. 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 foster 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 Is. 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 bo 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.

174

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

2nd. ''The fillers-in," or ehovellers of dust
into the sieves of sifters, are in general any poor
fellows who may be straggling about in searcli of
employment. They are sometimes, however, the
grown-up boys of dustmen, not yet permanently
engaged by the contractor. These are paid 2s.
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 en-
gaged by the contractors, and become regular dust-
men 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 Zd. or id.
per day for this work by the hill-man.

The wages of the dustmen have been increased
within the last seven years from Qd. per load to
8c4 among the large contractors — the " small
masters," however, still continue to pay Qd. per
load. This increase in the rate of remuneration
was owing to the men complaining to the com-
missioners that they were not able to live upon
what they earned at Qd. ; an enquiry was made
into the truth of the men's assertion, and the re-
sult was that the coramisioners decided upon letting
the contracts to such parties only as would under-
take to pay a fair price to their workmen. The
contractors, accordingly, increased the remunera-
tion of the labourers; since then the principal mas-
ters have paid M. 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 dis-
charged when their employment is less brisk.

It has been shown that the dustmen who per-
ambulate the streets usually collect five loads in a
day ; this, at %d. per load, leaves them about
Is. M. each, and so makes their weekly earnings
amount to about 10s. 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 mat-
ter from the dust-collecting, &c., and paid for
independent of their regular weekly wages, so
that, from all I can gather, the average wage* of
the men appear to be rather more than 15s.
Some admitted to me, that in busy times they
often earned 25». 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 orfler 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 wJien in full employment. The elder boys
when able to earn Is. a day set up for them-
selves, 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
id. per load . . . .010 0

Perquisites, or beer
money 0 2 9^

Night-work for 2 nights
a week 0 5 0

Woman, or sifter, per
week, at Is. per day . . 0

Perquisites, say Zd. a
day 0

Child, Zd. per day, car-
rying rags, bones, &c. . —

1 6

0 17 9«-

0 7 G

0 1 G

Total . 1 6 9i~

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, 15s. a week, and
11. for the family men all the year round.

Now, when we remember that the wages of
many agricultural labourers are but 8s. a week,
and the earnings of many needlewomen not Qd, 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 " disagreeable-
ness of the employment." " The wages of la-
bour," 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 per-
haps 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 disagreeable-
ness 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.

LONDOX LABOUR AND TUE LONDON POOR.

175

The dustmen are, generally speaking, an he-
reditary 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 bom-and-bred dustmen. The num-
bers 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 id.
per hour. As the operation of emptying a dust-
bin requires only the ability to handle a shovel,
which every labonring man can manage, all work-
men, however unskilled, can at once engage in
the occupation; and it often happens that the
men thus casu^ly 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 fur-
nished 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-placcs, 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
nstial contract — are only casually employed at
other places. Such men are immediately en-
gaged 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 crustof 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 l^pcoacb, but now they merely cry, in a
Immim ■■■MMfa'al voice, " Dust oy-eh ! ' Two men
aoeomimy tka cart, which is fumished 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 im-
mediately alongside the pavement in front of the
hoase where they are at work. The carrier
mounts up the side of the cart by means of the
Udder, 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 deandawmy, 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 dust-
men, on the contrary, are gray with ashes.

In their personal appearance the dustmen are
mostly tall stalwart fellows; there is notliing 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 unaccus-
tomed 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 cho-
lera 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 alto-
gether 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 bom. 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-sido
by those very fellows that write all this trash about
a matter that they don't know just t/cat 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
Cuts on this subject, bo that the longevity and

176

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

health of the dustmen might be compared with
those of other classes.

In ahuost 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 pre-
dilection 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 gam-
bling 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 em-
ployment 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 in-
toxicating 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 txxjecttd 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 im-
punity. 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 amuse-
ment 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«. 6rf. to 2«. 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-
3'ard. 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 eco-
nomy. 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 comitry, 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 in-
telligent 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 '11 have none of that there work —

I 'ra not such a b fool as you takes me to be

— I doesn't understand it, I tells you, and I '11
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 imme-
diately I made my appearance at the door he
took to his heels, again with three others Avho
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 iise 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 pro-
digies 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 stento-
rian 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 se-
cond-class minor theatres, especially if there be
plenty of murdering scenes in them. The Gar-
rick, previous to its being burnt, was a favourite

LOXDOX LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR.

177

resort of the East-end dastmen. 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 know-
ledge of what "the charter" requires. They
certainly have a confused notion that it is some-
thing 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 magis-
trates, and ail connected with the administration
of justice, looking upon them as their natural
enemies. They associate with none but them-
selves ; 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 tiie 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; hut 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
•pecial perversity on their parts, "that's
none of my business; they do my tcork, and
Hint's all I tcant 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 dastmen, and when lads they go into the
yard as sifters, and when tiiey 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 ; hut, as I said
hefwe, (hat '« noTie 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
profewing rach principles — though it should be
itated that the sentiments expressed on this occa-
tion 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 tlie
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
thing*. 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, dis-
covering a cousin of his engaged in adust-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 dninkenness and
dissipation of the dustmen. He says that many
of the new hands that get to dustwork are me-
chanics 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

178

LOJVDON LABOUR AXD THE LONDOX POOR.

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 inva-
riable refuge is the workhouse ; indeed they look
forward (v/henever 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, how-
ever, is, that the men engaged in this trade be-
long 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 hi.m 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 alius 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 tiie 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, vcn I'm
not out wiih the cart, I digs here all day; and
p'raps I 'ra up all night, and digs avay agen the
next day. Vot does I care for reading, or any-
think 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 Sail, and I 'm as happy as here and
there von. That there Sail of mine *s a stunner —
a riglar stunner. There ain't never a voman can
sift a heap quickerer nor my Sail. Sometimes
she yarns as much as I does ; the only thing is,
she 's sitch a beggar for lush, that there Sail 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 Sail; 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 Sail, and Sail 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 alius 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 '11 stick to it as long as
I can. I yarns about half-a-buU [2s. 6f?.] a day,
take one day with another. Sail sometimes yarns
as much, and ven I goes out at night I yams 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 Lon-
don 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 con-
tractors, large and small ; of these upwards of two-
thirds, or ;ibout 35, may be said to be in a con-
siderable way of business, possessing many carta
and horses, as well as employing a large body of
people ; some yards have as many as 150 hands
connected with them. The remaining 65 masters
are composed of " small men," some of whom are

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

179

known as "rnnning dustmen," that is to say, per-
sons who collect the dust without any sanction
from the parish ; but the number belonging to tliis
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 op thk London Dust Trade.

' 600 Carts, at 20/. each ... £12,000

600 Horses, at 25/. each . . . 15,000

600 Sets of harness, at 21. per set. 1,200

600 Ladders, at 5s. each ... 150

1200 Baskets, at 2^. each ... 120

1200 Shovels, at 2*. each . . . 120

Being a total capital of

£28,590

If, therefore, we assert that the capital of this
trade is between 25,000/. and 30,000/. in valm-,
we shall not be far wrong either vrny.

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 conjec-
ture.

Income op the London Dcst Thade.

Sum paid to contractors for the re-
moval of diut from the 176 metropo-
litan parishes, at 200/. each parish . £35,200

Sum obtained for 900,000 loads of
dust, at 2*. 6d. per load . . . 112,500

£147,700

Thu« it would appear that the total income of
the dust trade may be taken at between 145,000/.
and 150,000/. per annum.

Against this we have to set the yearly out-
goings of the business, which may be rouglily
estimated as follows : —

ExPEKDirUKE or THE LOHDON DCST TrADE.

Wages of 1800 labourers, at lOs. a
week each (including sifters and car-
riers) £46,800

Keep of 600 horses, at 10^. a week
each 15,600

Wear and tear of stock in trade . 4000

Rent for 90 yards, at 100/. a year
each (large and small) . . . 9000

£75,400

Tbe above estimates give us the following ag-
gregate results : —

Total yearly incomingt of tbe Lon-
don dust trade .... £147,700

Total yearly out-goings 75,400

. Total yearly profit £72,300

Hence it would appear that the profits of the
dnst^ontractors are very nearly at the rate of
100/. 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 in-
justice 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/. per annum :
of course some derive considerably more than this
amount, and some considerably less.

Op the London Sewerage and Scavkngery.
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 thousjvnds of miles of streets and roads
on the surface, and its thousands of miles of
sewers and drains under the surface of the eartli.
And first let me deal with the subject in a his-
torical point of view.

Public scavengery or street-cleansing, from the
earliest periods of our history, since nmnicipal
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
thaf 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 trades-
man's apprentice swept tlie 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 stite 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
Roseii, 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 omni-
buses 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 inter-
ruptions of civil strife and from want of funds,
but from indifference, owing to the long delay in

180

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

their completion, and were often altogether aban-
doned. 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 prin-
cipal obstacle ; in the inferior parts of " Old
London," however, there were the additional in-
conveniences 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 tlie collec-
tion 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-ma-
nagement is not attributable to any public agita-
tion—to any public, and, far less, national mani-
festation 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, how-
ever, has not been entirely overlooked by Parlia-
ment. 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 re-
move 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 flow-
ings, surges, and course of the river in and upon
the marsh grounds and other low places, hereto-
fore through public wisdom won and made pro-
fitable for the great commonwealth of this realm,
as also by occasion of land waters and other out-
rageous 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 cen-
tury, 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 w^ny
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 neigh-
bourhood 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 1631). 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 " ex-
plained," 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 Parlia-
ment, each having its own board, engineers, clerks,
officers, and workmen. Each commission was con-
fined 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 scaven-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

181

eery and sewerage, therefore, differs in this respect.
The BOiTeogery is committed to the care of the
several parishes, each making its own contract ;
the lewerage is consigned by Parliament to a
body of commissioners. In both instances, how-
ever, the expenses are paid out of local rates.

I shall now proceed to treat of each of these
subjects separately, beginning witli the cleansing
of the streets.

Of the Streets of London.
Therb are now three modes of pavement in the
streets of the metropolis.

1. Th« ttont pavement (commonly composed
of Aberdeen granite).

2. The macadamized jiawmtnt, or rather road.

3. The wood favem^nt.

The stone pnvenent has generally, in the several
towns of England, been composed of whatever
material the quarries or rocks of the neighbour-
hood supplied, limestone being often thus
jised. In some places, where there were no
quarries available, the stones of a river or rivulet-
eide were used, but these were rounded and
slippery, and often formed but a rugged pathway.
For Loudon pavement, the neighbourhood not
being rich in stone quarries, granite has usually
been brought by water from Scotland, and a small
qnantity from (jruernsey 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 foun-
dation of concrete. The concrete now used for
the London street-pavement is Tiiames ballast,
composed of shingles, or small stones, and mixed
with iis^ 9tc.

MMBdMBization was not introduced into the
strettt 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-makingon 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
pvisbe* of Su James and St. George were
thtM paved, and then, bat not without great oppo-
•itioB, PiecadiUy. The opposttioa to the macadom-
ixingof the Utter thmroagh&re assumed aMMtylmM.
Independently of the cooflictmg etateaiente a« to
eztcavagaaee and eeonomy, it was urged by the
oopeaeate, that the daet and dirt of the new style
of paving would cause the street to be deserted by
the arietocracy--4hat the noiseleMaees of the traffic
wonld eatue the deaths of the de«f and inftrm— -
that the aristocracy promoted this new-fasffled
ttieet^nalnng, that they might the better " sleep
o' nights," ragardleM of aU else. One wnter eepe-
cially xegNlted that the Duke of Qaeeaebetry,

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 tiike his bath of
perfumed milk ! In short, there was all the fuss
and absurdity which so often ch<u*acterise 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 centur}', 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 tlie 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-mend-
ing 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 ex-
ternal 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 liis ' Treatise on the Con-
structing and Repairing of Roads,' " to pave
their surface. -The advantages belonging to pave-
ments in such situations over macadamized roads
arc considerable ; where the latter are exposed to
an incessant and heavy traffic, their surface be-
comes rapidly worn, rendering constant repairs
requisite, wUeh are not only attended with very
hetivy eaifniae, hut also render the road very
tm^enfeant 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 wonld 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

No. XZXVII.

182

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

over a pavement is the less noise produced by-
carriages in passing over it ; but this advantnge is
ver\' small when the pavement is properly laid,"

Concerning wood pavements the same gentle-
man says, " Of late years wood has been intro-
duced as a material for paving streets, and has
been rather extensively employed both in Kussia
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 pave-
ment, 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 surfiice 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 com-
municated by Mr. Hope to the Scottish Society of
Arts, it appears that wooden blocks when placed
with the end of the grain exposed, wear lets tlian
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 construct-
ing 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 approxi-
mation 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 com-
putation, I have had the assistance of an expe-
rienced 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 dis-
tricts 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, there-
fore, 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 sur-
face. 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 Hamp-
stead. 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 \l. 5s. per ton, de-
livered, 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

LONDON LABOUR AXD THE LOXDON POOR,

183

feet per yard. The cost, labour included, is,
therefore, from 9*. to 12*. 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, sup-
posing 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 25. ^d. a
yard superficial measure. The repairs and re-
kyings on macadamized roads of regular traffic
range from As. to 6j. Qd. yearly, the square yard.

Tiie wood pavement, which endures, with a
trifling outlay for repairs, for about three years,
costs, on an average, \\s. the square yard.

The concrete used as a foundation in this
street-construction costs 45. Qd. a cube yard, or
27 feet, by which admeasurement it is always
calculated. A cube yard of Thames ballast weighs
about li ton.

Tiie average cost of street-building, new, taking
an average breadth, or about ten yards, from foot-
path to footpath, is then —

Granite built
Macadamized
Wood . .

Per MUe.
f. 8. d.
96 0 0
44 0 0
83 0 0

Or, as a total,

400 miles of granite paved streets
at £96 per mUe .... 33,400 0 0
I 1350 macadamized ditto, at

I £44 per mile 59,400 0 0

j 5 wood ditto, at £88 per mile . 440 0 0
i

I 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 a« an average.

£ 8. d.
400 miles of granite, at 20». per

mile 400 0 0

13j0 macadamised ditto, at

£13 it. per mile . . . 17,820 0 0
5 wood* ditto, at 20*. per mile 5 0 0

Total

. 18,225 0 0
According to a " General Survey of the Metro-
politan Highways," by Mr. Thomas Hughes, the
principal roads leading out of London are : —

1. The Cambridge Road, from Shoreditch
through Kiogsland.

• ThU reUtc* merely to the repmlrs to the wooden
pA\nnrat, bat If a renewal of the blocks be neceuary,
then ihr coat aMRMche* that of a new road; and a re-
nrwal U cootUtnd neccMary about ouce in three years.

2. The Epping and Clidmsford Roads, from
Whitechapel, through Bow and Stratford.

3. The Barking Road, along the Commercial
Eoad 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. T/ie 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 Edge ware
Road through Elstree.

10. The Oxford Road, from Bays water through
Ealing.

11. The Great \

Holyhead Road. f From Islington, by and

12. The Great I through Barnet.
North Road. )

As to the amount of resistance to traction
offered by different kinds of pavement, or the same
pavement under different circumst.inces, the follow-
ing are the general results of the experiments
made by M. Morin, at the expense of the French
Government : —

Ist. 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 2J 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.

6th. 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 in-
strument invented by himself for measuring the
tractive force required on dilferent kinds of road,
obtained the following general results as to the
power requisite to move a ton weight under ordi-
nary circumstances, at a very low Telocity.

184

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Description of Road.

On a well-made pavement . . .

On a road made with six inches of
broken stone of gn^at hardness,
laid either on a foundation of large
stones, set in the form of a pave-
ment, or upon a bottoming of con-
crete

On an old flint road, or a road made
with a thick coating of broken
stone, laid on earth

On a road made with a thick coating
of gravel, laid on earth , . .

Force, In
pounds, re-
quired to
move a ton.

65
147

In the same Avork the relative degrees of resist-
ance 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

Or THE Traffic of London.

I HAVE shown (at p. 159, vol. ii.) that the num-
ber of miles of streets included in the Inner Dis-
trict of the Metropolitan Police is 1750.

Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his excellent "Hand-
book 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 an-
other 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^ „

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, Hol-
bom, Cheapside, Comhill, 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 Ratcliflfe-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 snid to be 1 0,000,
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 can-
not 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 defi-
nitely. 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 tra-
versed by 1500 omnibuses— such Avas the number
of drivers licensed by the Metropolitan Com-
missioners 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
Oflice cited below, represents the number of
licensed cabriolets, in 1849, at 2846 : besides
these public conveyances, there are the private car-
riages 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 treat-
ing 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 perl^orm the journey
only ten times a day, and some, but a minority,
a less number of times. Now, takintr t!ie
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 com-
puting the omnibuses running daily at 1500, we
find *a travel,' as it was worded to me, of up-
Avards of 70,000 miles daily, or a yearly 'travel'
of more than 25.000,000 miles ; an extent
Avhich is upwards of a thousand times more than
the circumference of the earth ; and that this esti-
mate 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^. each * bus '
per month, or collectively to 162,000/. per annum,
and this, at 14<:^. per mile (the rate of duty
charged), gives 25,920,000 miles as the aggregate
distance travelled by the entire number of omni-
buses 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^. 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 lO.t., we may safely
assert that the whole 5000 go over 50,000
miles of ground a <3ay, or, in round numbers,
18,250,000 miles in the course of the year.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

185

According to a return obtained by Mr. Charles
Cochrane from the Stamp and Tax Office, Somerset
Honse, there were in the metropolis, in 1849-50,
the following number of horses : —

Private carriage, job, and cart horses (in

London) 3,633

Ditto ... (in "Westminster) 6,339

Cabriolets licensed 2Si€ (baring two

horses each) 6,692

Omnibuses licensed 1350 (four horses

each) 5,500

Total number of bones in the metropolis 21,214

I am assured, by persons well acquainted with
the omnibus trade, that the number of omnibus
hones here cited is far too low — as many proprie-
tors 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 surround-
ing 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,
thai each piece of pavement would be traversed
no less than 40,000 limes per annum, or upwards
of a hundred times a day, by some horse or
yehicle.

As I baid before, the facts that have been col-
lected concerning the absolute traffic of the seve-
ral parts of London are of the most meagre des-
cription. The only observations of any character
that have been made upon the subject are — as
hx as my knowledge goes — those of M. D'Arcey,
which are contained iu a French report upon the
roads of London, as compared with those of
I Paris,

I This gentleman, speaking of the relative number
I of Tehicles passing and repassing over certain parts
of the two capitals, says :— " The Boulevards of
Paris are the parts where the greatest traffic takes
]dace. On the Boulevard det Vajjucim there pass,
OTOry 24 boon, i*070 horses drawing carriages ;
on the Boulevard det ItalUnt, 10,750 ; Boulevard
Fomoniire, 7720 ; BonUvard St. Denis, 9609 ;
Boulevard dee FUUt du Calvaire, 5856 : general
vrenge of the abore, 8600. Rue du Faubourg
St. AntoiiUt 4300; Avenue det Champs Elyiies,
8959. At London, in Pall Mall, opposite Her
Jl^eftty's Theatre, there pass at least 800 car-
riages every hour. On London-bridge the number
of vehicles pasting and repassing is not less than
18,000 eTery hour. On Westminster bridge the
annual tniffic amounU to 8,000,000 horses at the
least. By this it will be seen that the trafiic in
Paris does not amount to one half of what i( is in
tbo streets of London."

Of the Dust akd Dikt op the Streets
OF London.

We have merely to reflect upon the vast amount
of traffic just shown to be daily going on through-
out London -to think of the' 70,000,000 miles
of journey through the metropolis annually per-
formed by the entire vehicles (which is more
than two-thirds the distance from the earth to
the sun) — to bear in mind tliat each part of Lou-
don 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 enor-
mous 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 Lon-
don ; and thus we may be able to form some men-
tal 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 col-
lected at great trouble, will give us still more accu-
rate notions on the subject. It is not given as per-
fect, but as being the best information, in the ab-
sence of positive returns, that was procurable even
from the best informed.

Here, then, we liav<? an aggregate total of dust
collected from the pnncij^al parts of the metro-
polis amounting to no less than 141,460 loads.
'Ihe value of this refuse is said to be as much as
21,22 W. 85., 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 en-
gaged in the scavenging of the London streets,
tlie amount of work they have to do.

Of the Street-Dust of London, and the
Lobs and Injurt occasioned by it.

The daily and nightly grinding of thou-
sands of wheels, the iron friction of so many
horses' hoofs, the evacuations of horses and cattle,
and the ceaseless motion of pedestrians, all de-
composing the substance of our streets and roads,
give rise to many distinct kinds of street-dirt.
These are severally known as

(1) Dust.

(2) Ilorse-dung and cattle-manure.

(3) ^fud, when mixed with water and with
geneial refuse, such as the remains of fruit and
other things thrown into the street and swept
together.

(4) Surface-unter when mixed with street-
sewage.

These productions I shall treat severally, and
first of the street-dust.

The *' detritus" of the streeU of London
assumes many forms, and is known by many
names, according as it is combined with more or
lest water.

186

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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183

L&NDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

1st. In a perfectly dry state, so that the par-
ticles no longer exist either in a state of cohesion
or aggregation, but are minutely divided and dis-
tinct, it is known by the name of " dust."

2nd. When iu combination with a small quan-
tity 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 macadam-
ized or stone paved road.

3rd. When in combination with a greater qunn-
tity 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
oflf 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. Gra-
nite 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" — cither "mac," or simple mud,
according, as I said before, to the nature of the
paving on ^vhich 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 evapo-
ration. 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 althougli the
dust maj' be allayed by the agency of the water-
carts (by which means it is again cojiverted 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 rt-raains
only to calculate the quantity of it annually pro-
duced, and thus to arrive at the extent of the
mischief.

Street-dust is disintegrated granite, that is, pul-
verized quartz ajid felspar, felspar being princi-
pally composed of alumiua or clay, and qimrtz
silex or sand ; it is the result of tlie attrition, or
in a word it is the detHtus, 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 aiises

from the friction of the wooden pavement even
when kept moist. In the roads of the nearest
suburbs, even around such places as the Rcgent's-
park, at many seasons this dust is produced
largely, so that very often an open window for
the enjoyment of fresh air i.^ 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 in-
fluence 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 bor-
dering such streets or roads it is found that, not-
withstanding the practice of watering, the furni-
ture 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 Avheels of the
coach, have their clothes soon saturated to white-
ness, and their lungs are charged in a correspond-
ing degree, A gentleman who rode only 20
miles in this way had afterwards to cough and ex-
pectorate for ten days to clear his chest ngain."

In order that the deleteriousness to health in-
cident 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 AVilson,
in his admirable work on the Skin, has the fol-
lowing 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 wind-
pipe, or trachea, divides into two branches, called
bronchi, and each bronchus, upon entering its
respective lung, divides into an infinity of small
tube's ; 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 cal-
culation of the nimiber of air-cells, and the extent
of the lining membrane, rests, 1 believe, on the
authority of Dr. Addison of Malvern."

V^hat 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 ac-
cording to the above facts it must be something
fearful to contemplate.

After this brief recital of what is known concern-
ing the sanitary part of the question, I proceed to
consider the damage and loss occasioned by street-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

1S9

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
IB 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 be-
tween 300 and 400 cart-loads daily, or upwards
of 100,000 cart-loads, the greater propoiiion of
which may be termed street-dust.

The damage occasioned by the street-dust
arises from ita 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
retxdn wearing apparel upon the person, on the
bed or the table, without what is termed a
"change;" and this duration of time with thou-
sands of both men and women is often deter-
mined 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 thiags
of course, no matter what may be the state of the
displaced linen.

The Board of Health, in one of their Eeports,
speak very decisively and definitely on this sub-
ject. " 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
deterionition aud imcleanliness is communicated in
the rural districts, will warrant the estimate, that
full one-lioJf die expeiue of xoashing to maintain
a passable degree of cleanliness, is rendered ne-
cessary by the excess of smoke generated in open
fires, and the excess of dust arising from the im-
perfect scavenging qf the roads and streets. Per-
sons 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 nncleanliness would be produced in a
rural district ; but nil 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 sxpense ^ <■ - ■"' • — These expenses and
inconvenience**, : [)ortion of which are

due to local mn ition, occasion an. extra

expenditure <if upnnjud* tf tiro to three millions
per antium — exclusive of the injury done to the
general health and the medical aud other expenses
conseqoent thereon."

Here, then, we find the evil effects of the im-
perfect 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 Wash-
houses, 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 icifes 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 25. 6d
a week, = 5d. 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
i\d. a head.

" The cost of washing to very small tradesmen
could not be safely estimated at much more than
6rf. 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 Qd. 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 aro employed may be considered as
double that of the servants', and, therefore, as
ranging from Is. Qd. to 55. a week a head.

"There is considerable difficulty in ascertaining
with any exacthess the washing expenditure of
private families, but the conclusion is that, taking
the whole populfltion, the washing bills of London
are nearly Is. a week a head, or 5,000,000/. 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 vert/ 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 investiga-
tions 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 starv-
ing 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*. a week in his wasliing, is far beyond
the fact. Still less is expended in the washing
of these people's children. Kven the well-con-
ducted asuaasit with two clean shirts a week

190

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

(costing him Qd.), with the washing of stockings,
&c. (costing \d. or 2d.), does not expend I5. a
week ; so that, though the washing bills of many
ladies and of some gentlemen may average 10s.
weekly, if we consider how few are rich and
how many poor, the extra payment seems insuffi-
cient to make up the average of the weekly
shilling for the washing of all classes.

A prosperous and respectable master green-
grocer, 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 tlie shirts they wore during
the day, and paid only 2>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)

Stockings . . . • •

Night-shirt (worn two weeks ge-
nerally, average per week)

Sheets, blankets, and other house-
hold linens or woollens .

Handkerchiefs ....

Id.
1

01
2

\ld.

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 familj', — for a man, his wife,
and four small children,—" well," at the following
rate : —

1 lb. soap . . . . ^d. or 5c?.
Soda and starch . . 04

^ cwt. coals (extra) . . 3 4

or less than 1 Id. per head.

In this calculation it will be seen the cheapest
soap is reckoned, and that tliere is no aUowance
for the wifes 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 stock-
ings included — cost Iiim, every three weeks, i\d.
or 5d. for 1 lb. of soap, which is less than l.^cZ. 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. BuUar's estimate exceed
the truth as regards the cost of washing among
the poorer classes, but it also errs in the propor-
tion 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 be-
tween 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 Z/e^ow
150?. 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 re-
spectively 800,000 and 1,600,000, and, allowing
the cost of the washing of the former to average
Is. per head (adults and children), and, the wash-
ing of the labouring classes to come to 2d. a head,
young and old (the expense of the materials, when
the work is done at home, average, it has been
shown, about l^d. for each member of the family),
we shall then have the following statement : —

Annual cost of washing for 800,000

people, at Is. per head per week . £2,080,000

Annual cost of washing for 1,600,000

people, at 2d. per head per week . 693,333

Total cost of washing of metropolis £2,773,333

I am convinced, low as the estimate of 2d. a
week may appear for all whose incomes are under
150?. 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 metro-
polis, — " 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 10s. to 30s. per week is 30 lbs. each per
annum, including every member of the familj-.
Dividing the population of the metropolis into
three classes: (1) the wealthy; (2) the shop-
keepers and tradesmen ; (3) labourers and the
poor, and allowing 15 lbs., lOllis., a:id dibs, to

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOH

191

each regpcctirely, the consumption of the metro-
polia will be nearly 200 tons per week," The
cost of each ton of soap Mr. Hawes estimates
at i5l.

Professor Clarke, however, computes the metro-
politan consumption of soap at 250 toiu per
week, and the cost per ton at 50/.

According to the above estimates,
the total quantity of soap used every
year in the metropolis is 12,000 tons,
and this, at 50/. per ton, comes to . £600,000

Professor Clarke reckons the gross
consumption of soda in the metropolis,
at 250 tons per month, costing 10/. a
ton ; hence for the year the con-
sumption will be 3000 tons, cost-
ing 30,000

The cost of water, according to the
tame authority, is os. id. 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 con-
sumed in washing 600,000

There are 21,000 laundresses in

London, and, calculating that the

wages of these average 10^. 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 out*ide at two millions and three quarters
sterling per annum, or about 1/. Zs. id. per head.

And yet, though the data for the calculation
here given, as to tlie cost and quantity of the
principal mate-rials used in cleansing the clothes of
London, arc derived from the same Keportas that
in which the expense of the metropolitan washing
is estimated at 5,000,000/. 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 clius of artizans, we entertain
no doubt whatever. Whatsoever deductions, if
aoy, 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 FBOM DUST AND DIRT IN THE STREETS OP
THE METROPOLIS, OWING TO THE EXTRA
WASHING ENTAILED THEREBY.

According to the Board of Health,
taking the yearly amount of the wash-
ing of the metropolis at 5,000,000/.,
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/., 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/. to 11. per annum for each well-dressed man
and woman, and 1/. 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.

Aly 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 »/hich 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 rela-
tive to town and country customers, my informant
thought it might be easy to substantiate the fol-
lowing estimate as regards the duration and cost
of clothes in town and comitry among the classes
I have specified.

192

TABLE SH(

LONDON
)WING THE

LABOUR AND THE LONDOl

r POOR.

rHES WORN

COMPARATIVE COST OF CLO
AND COUNTRY.

IN TOWN

Garments.

Original cost.

Town.

Country.

DifFerence of

Duration.

Annual cost.

Duration.

Annual cost.

Coat

Waistcoat
Trowsera .

£ s. d.
2 10 0
0 15 0
15 0

Years.
2

£ s. d.
15 0
0 6 0
10 0

Years.
3
3
2

£ s. d.
0 16 8
0 5 0
0 12 6

£ s. d.
0 8 4
0 10
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 '2,1. l\s.; while the annual outlay in the
countrj' for the same garments is 1^. 14s. 2d. ;
the difference of expense being 16«. lOcZ. per
annum. I consulted another tailor on the sub-
ject, and his estimate was a trifle above that of
my informant.

I should remark that the proportion thus adduced
holds, wliatever he the number of garments worn
in the year, or in a series of years, for the calcu-
lation 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«.
to 'tl. per annum. By the above table it will
be seen that the clothes which cost 1^. 14s. 2d.
per annum in the cleanliness of a country abode,
cost 2.1. lis., or, within a fraction, half as much
again, in the uncleanliness of a London atmo-
sphere and roads. If, therefore, any London in-
habitant, of the classes I have specified, expend
four times 2.1. lis. in his clothes yearly, as
many do, or 10^. 4s., he loses 3f. 5s. 4rf., or
5s. id. more than the minimum mentioned in
the Report alluded to.

Now estimating 21. 10s. as the yearly tailor's
bill among the well-to-do (boys and men), and cal-
culating that one-sixth of the metropolitan popula-
tion (that is, half of the one-third who may be
said to belong to the class having incomes above
160^. a year) spend this sum yearly in clothes, we
have the following statement : —

AaaBEaATK Loss upon Cloihes wobn in London.

£ jr. d.

400,000 persons living in
London expend in clothing (at
21. 10s. per annum) .... 1,000,000 0 0

400,000 persons living in bet-
ter atmospheres in rural parts,
and with the same stock of
clothes, expend one-third less,
or 666,666 13 4

Diflfcrenr^ 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 fol-
lowing 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 in-
comes above \bOl. per annum) at 4.1.
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 in-
comes below 1501. per annum), at 1^.
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 w^ashing
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 Parlia-
mentary Report, as to the cost of a working man's
new shirt, comprising four yards of strong calico.
Material. — Cotton at Qd. per lb. d.

\\ lb., with loss thereupon .... 8'25
Manufacture, — d.

Spinning 2'25

Weaving 3'00

Profit -25

5-50

Bleaching about

13-75
1-25

15-00
Grey (calico) \Z*lM.-\-M. (making) «= Is. lOjc^.
Bleached . 15rf. '\-9d. „ =2s.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

193

As regards th« 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 Phi-
lanthropic Institution : — " The loss by goods
and furniture is incalculable : shopkeepers lose
from 10/. to 150/. a-year by the spoiling of their
goods for sale ; dealers in provisions especially,
who cannot expose them without being de-
teriorated in value, from the dust that is in-
cessantly 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 150Z.

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/. ; and that he could not (con-
sidering 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 cur-
tains, 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 unles* 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 dost 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 en-
tailed great expense ; a ladies' shoemaker and a
bookseller expressed this particularly — on the ne-
cessity 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 esti-
mation 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-DiJNa op the Streets op
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 sub-
mitted 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 wefe 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 as-
surance, "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 them-
selves 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 in-
quirj', 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 re-
moved.

" 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 de-
finite 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 Smithfieldmarket, I adduced the fol-
lowing 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

194

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

salesmen " (sellers on commission of live and dead
cattle), whose assistcuice I had the pleasure of
obtaining.

The return is of the stock anntuilly sold in
Smithfield-market, and includes not only English
but foreign beasts, sheep, and calves; the latter ave-
raging weekly in 1848 (the latest return then pub-
lished), 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 sup-
plies from the country to the " dead salesmen."
The preceding return, however, is sufficient for
my present purpose, which is to show the quan-
tity 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 me-
tropolis 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 pri-
vate carriage, job, and cart horses . . . 10,022

Cab horses 6,692

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. 13ut the whole of those 24,214
horses are not at work in the streets every daj'.
Perhaps it might be an approximation to the
truth, if we reckoned five-sixths of the horses as
being worked regularly in the public thorough-
fares ; so that we arrive at the conclusion that
20,000 horses are daily worked in the metro-
polis ; 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 Smith-
field 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 appear-
ing 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 phi-
losophers whose names alone are a sufficient
guarantee for the accuracy of their researches.

The following Table from Boussingault's expe-
riments is copied from the " Annales de Chimie
et de Physique," t. Ixxi.

FOOD CONSUMED

BY AND EXCRETIONS OF A HORSE IN TWENTY-FOUR
HOURS.

Food.

Excretions.

Weight in a

fresh state in

grammes.

Weight in a
fresh state i
in pounds. |

Weight in a

f redi state la

grammes.

Weight in a
ficSx state
in pounds.

Hay . . .
Oats . . .

7,500
2,270

lbs. oz. !
20 0

Excrements .
Urine . . .

14,250
1,3^

lbs. oz.

88 2

3 7

Water . . .

9,770
16,000

26 1
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 Avith 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,

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

195

gentlemen kindly undertook to institute
a feriM of experiments in this department of
equine physiology ; the subject being one which
iotereated themselves, professionally, as well as
the council of the National Philanthropic Asso-
ciation. The experiments were carefiiliy con-
ducted under the superintendence of Professor
Yarnell. The food, driuk, and voidances of
aeveral horses, kept in suble all day long, were
separately weighed and measured ; and the fol-
lowing were the results with an auiraal of medium
size and sound health : —

" ' Boyal Veterinary College,
Sept. 29, 1849.

" * Brown horse of middle size ate in
24 hours, of hay, 16 lbs.; oats, 10 lbs. ;
chaff, 4 lbs. ; in all 301bs.

Drank of water, in 24 hours, 6 gal-
lons, or 48 lbs.

Total
Voided in the form of feces

78 lbs.
49 lbs.

Allowance for nutrition, supply of
waste in system, perspiration, and urine 29 lbs.
(Signed)
" * Georqb Varheli,

" ' Demonstrator of Anatomy.' "

Here we find the excretions to be II 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,
Vkd liie liquid upwards of 7 lbs. extra.

We may then, perhaps, assume, without fear of
erring, that the excrements voided by horses in
the oeorse 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 X 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
eraouUions 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 loo^ « peried at kocses are out at work, it
may be fiur to eeis|Nite that tkeir droppings are
about the same, individually, as those ^ the
horses.

Henee,as there are 224,000 homed cattle yeariy
bro«|ht to London, we have 224,000x45 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, divid-
ing by 4, as before, we find that there are 1125

tons of ordure annually dropped by the " horoed
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 cal-
culate the droppings of each of the 1,617,300
sheep, calves, and pigs yearly coming to the me-
tropolis at about one-fourth of those of the homed
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 num-
ber 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 op the HoRSE-DxjNa 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 thorough-
fares 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 esti-
mate made from the working of the street-sweep-
ing 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 pro-
portionate 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 lets than 200,000 tons a
year."

Hence, although the data are imperfect, the
Board of Health do not hesitate to conclude that

196

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

the gross quantity of horse-dung dropped through-
out 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 esti-
mate, 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 excre-
tions produced by a horse in the course of 24
hours. All this accords with the soundest prin-
ciples of inquiry, and stands out in startling con-
trast 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 st4itistical calculations. Having ascertained
that a horse voids 49 lbs. of dung in the course of
24 hours, be makes the whole of the 24,214 horses
in the metropolis drop 30 lbs, daily in the streets,
80 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 X 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
65. X 118,043 = 35,412?. 19*. U.

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, per-
haps, assert that the annual ordure let fall in the
London streets amounts, at the outside, to some-
where about 1000 tons weekly, or 62,000 tons
per annum.

The next question becomes — what is done with
this vast amount of filth 1

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 Heport 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 con-
veniently obtainable. When these cattle-droppings
can be collected unmixed, in dry weather, they
bear an -acknowledged value by the grazier and
root-grow«r ;' — there being no other kind of manure
which fertilizes the land so bounteously. Mr.
Mamock, Curator of the Royal Botanical Society,
has valued them at from 6^. to IO5. per load; ac-
cording 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 6s, per ton when collected free
from dirt, Ave 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 6s. 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 Qs. 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 dis-
puted, 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 indis-
putable ; most assuredly between 10,000^. and
20,000/. 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

LOXDON LABOUR AXD THE LONDOX POOR.

to " mac," which is both scraped and swept on the
macadamized roads. The mud is usually carted
apart from the " mnc," but some contractors cause
their men to shovel every kind of dirt they meet
with mto 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 dis-
tinct 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 Pro-
gress," a work before alluded to, cites the opinion
of Lord Congleton as to the necessity of con-
tinually 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 Par-
nell) 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
DeoesMury 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 mac-
adamized roads in and around London t * * *
• • • The horse-manure and other filth are
there allowed to accumulate, and to be carried
abojit by the horses and carriage- wheels ; the
road is formed into cavities and mud-hollows,
which, being wetted by the rain and the con-
stantly plying vatertng-cart', 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
lide gutter, by declivity, owing to the mud em-
baniments which surround it, naturally percolates
through the surface qf the road, dissolving and
loofening 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 aKertain this

there are no specific data, though there are what,
under other circumstances, might be called circum-
stantial or inferential evidence.

I have shown both the length -)f the streets
and roads and the proportion which might be
pronounced macadiimized ways in the Metropolis
Proper. But as in the macadamized proportion
many thoroughfares cannot be strictly considered
as yielding " mac," I Avill 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 drop-
pings, 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 consider-
able 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 stijf-
ness 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 th.in 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 ap-
proaches 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 re-
gards 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 metro-
politan " green " markets, the supply of street-re-
fuse 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,

198

LOXDON^ LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

that the macadamized roads aflford daily two
loadg of dirt pfer mile, and reckoning the great
macadamized streets at 100 miles in length, we
have the following results : —
Quantity of Street-Refuse collected from
thb more fkequehxed macadamized tho-
roughfares.

Loads.

100 miles, 2 loads per day . . . 200

„ Weekly amount . . . 1,200

„ Yearly amount . . . 62,400

Proportion of " Mao " 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 Metro-
polis 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 ThO-
ROUQHFARES.

Loads,
1100 miles, \ load per day . . . 275

Weekly 1,650

Yearly 85,800

The proportion of mac to the gross dirt col-
lected 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, ^ 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 me-
tropolis.

100 miles of macadamized

roads

1100 miles ditto ditto

Street
Refuse.

Cart-loads.

62,400
85,800

148.200

'Mac.'

31,200
42,900

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 vms.

" ' Mac,' or Macadam" says one of Mr,
Cochrane's Reports, " ia a grand prize to the
scavenging contractor, who find* ready vend and
a high price for it among the builders and brich-

makers. Those who paid for the road — and
their survey or:", ■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 ' 7nac' loses
its value to the builder and brickmaker by being
mixed with it. Indeed, both are valuable fur
their respective uses if kept separate, not other-
wise."

On my first making inquiries as to tlie uses and
value of "mac," I was frequently told that it was
utterly valueless, and that great trouble and ex-
pense 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 con-
tractor 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 con-
tractor, 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, liowever, I shall
have to speak hereafter.

There is no doubt that it is common for con-
tractors to represent the "mac" they collect as
being utterly valueless, and indeed an incum-
brance. 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 con-
tractors. The south-west district of St. Pancras,
until within the last six years, received from the
contractor for the public scavengery, 100/. for the
year's aggregation of street and house dirt. Since
then, however, they have had to pay him 500/.
for removing it.

Notwithstanding the reluctance of some of the

LONDOX LABOUR AXD THE LONDOX POOR,

199

contractor to give infonnation 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,
bfut this is mostly the mixed kind, is got rid of
in a»y manner; it has even been diluted with
water so as to be driven down the drains. Some
it 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
th« men. Some, however, is sold for the same
porpote, the contractors alleging that the charge
ia merely for cartage. Some, again, is given away
or sold (with the like allegation) for purposes of
leTeUing, of filling up cavities, or repairing un-
eTCBBesses in any groimd where improvements are
being carried on; and, finally, some is sold to
masons, plasterers, and brickmakers, for the pur-
poses 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*. 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 priucipal 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 in-
gredient of the mill in brick -groimds.

The accounts I rsceived of the properties of
"mac" from the vendors of it, were very con-
tradictory. One man, until Litely connected with
its sale, informed me that as far as his own ex-
perience extended, "mac" was most in demand
among scimping 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*. 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 plaster-
ers' work, with bad, low-priced mortar. Another
man, with equal knowledge of the trade, however,
represented " mac " as a most valuable article for
tlie bnikier's ptirpoaes, it was " so binding" and this
he repeated emphatically. A working builder
told me that "moc " was as good as the best sand ;
it made the mortar "bang," and without either
that or sand, the lime would " brittle " away.

" Mac" may be said to be composed of pulverised
granite and rain water. Ghranite is composed of
quarts, felspar, and mica, each in granular crys-
tals. Hence, alumina being clay, and silex a sub-
stance which has a strong tendency tocntcr into com-
bination with the lime of the mortar, the pulverizing
of gnmite teada t» fvodoce a mbstance which hat
nerrisMiily great binding and indnrating 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 mat-
ter."

Increased care in the collection of the material
would, perhaps, remove this cause of complaint.

I heard of one ^Yest-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 hnttle in
the plastering of wiills.

" 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 pre-
cise 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 ■iises of "mac," and we now come to
the question of its value.

The price of the purer "mac" seems, from the
best infonnation I can procure, to have varied con-
siderably. It is now generally cheap. I did not
hear any very sufficing reason advanced to account
for the depreciation, but one of the contractors ex-
pressed 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
Ecavengery have been prevented " shooting " any
valueless street-dirt, or dirt " not worth carriage "
in convenient waste-places, ns 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 unfrcqucntly
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 de-
mands 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

No. XXXTIIL

200

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

lowest rate is only a degree or two Letter ; 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 "mjic," I believe the
answer of a vendor will almost invariably be
found to be " a shilling a load ; " a little further in-
quiry, however, shows that an extra sum may have
to be paid. A builder, who gave me the inform-
ation, asked a parish contractor the price of " mac."
The contractor at once offered to supply him with
500 loads at \s. a load, if the "mac " were ordered
beforehand, and could be shot at once ; but it
would be Qd. 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
2d., Zd., id., or Qd. a load higher. This, it must
be understood, was the price of " wet mac."

Good "cirymac," that is to say, "mac" ready
for use, is sold to the builder or the brick-
maker at from 2s. to 35. the load ; 25. Qd., or
Bometliing 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 some-
times 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 metro-
polis, 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 con-
tracts, 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 I5. Qd. a load, so that
we have for the sum realized the following
result : —

16.500 loads of "mac," at I5. Qd.
per load ^61237 10

It may probably be considered by the con-
tractors that I5. Qd. 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^. per
load £825

Then if we divide the first estimate among the
55 contractors, we find that they receive upwards
of 221. each; the second estimate gives nearly
\5l. each.

I repeat, that in this inquiry I can but approxi-
mate. 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
25. 6fZ. might be considered a regular price for a
load of " mac," while 4s., 5s., or even 6s. have been
paid to one contractor, according to his own ac-
count, 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 con-
tractor'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 pave-
ment.

In the busier thoroughfares of the metropolis —
apart from the City, where there is no macadam-
ization 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, eu-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

201

tering a street pared with blocks of wrought granite
from a macadamized road must convey "mac"
amongst mud ; both "mac" and mud, however, as
I have suted, 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 in-
habitants of one parish are desirous of having
their streets in good order and clean : unless the
adjoining districts concur, a great and unjust ex-
pense 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 inhabit-
ants of Regent-street, for instance, all the riders
in the 5000 vehicles that daily pass through that
great thoroughfare arc 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, /o?- others' benefit as icell 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
inaterial difference — the dung, which spoils good
" mac," makes good mud more valuable.

After having treated so fully of the road-pro-
duce 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 (Sun-
days excepted), take the year through. As a
fanner or market-gardener will give Zs. a load for
common street-mud, and cart it away at his own
cost, we find that were all this mud sold sepa-
rately, at the ordinary rate, the yearly receipt
for one street alone would be 70/. 4*. 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 hare, however, been fortunate enough to
obtain the assistance of gentlemen whose public
employnent has given them the best means of
forming an accurate opinion.

The street mud from the Haymarket, it has
been positively ascertained, is 1 ^ load each wet day
theyear through. Fleet street, Ludgatehill, Cheap-
side, Newgale-street, the '* off" parts of St. Paul's
Church-yard, Comhill, Leadenhall- street, Bishops-
gate-street, the free bridges, with many other
places where locomotion liever ceases, are, in pro-
portion to their width, as productive of street mud
M the Haymarket.

Were the Haymarket a mile in length, it would
■opply, at its present rate of traffic, to the scaren-

ger 6 loads of street mud daily, or 36 loads for the
scavenger's working week. In this yield, how-
ever, I am assured by practical men, the Hay-
market 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 Comhill, 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 \\ load of street mud per mile. Narrow
streets — Thames-street for instance, which is
about three-quarters of a mile long — yield from 2^
to 3.^ loads daily, according to the season ; but a
number of off-streets and open places, such as Long-
alley, Alderman's-walk, America-square, Monu-
ment-yard, Bridge water- square, Austin-friars, and
the like, are either streets without horse- thorough-
fares, 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 quantit}', we
find the following daily sum during the wet sea-
son : —

Loads.

150 miles of paved streets, yielding 1^
load of street mud per mile .... 225

200 miles of paved streets, yielding ^
load of street mud per mile .... 150

Weekly amount of street mud during

the wet season

Total ditto for six months in the year

375

2,250
58,500

63,000 loads of street mud, at 35. per
load £8775

The great sale for this mud, perhaps nine-
teen-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/. to 6/.
Calculating its average weight at 35 tons, and its
average sale at 5/. 10»., the price is rather more
than 3«. a load. "Common street mud," I have
been informed on good authority, " fetches 3«. per
load from the fanner, when he himself carts it
away.''

The price of the barge-load of manure is tolera-
bly uniform, for the quality is generally the same.

202

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Some of the best, because the cleanest, street mud
— as it is mixed only with horse-dung — is ob-
tained from the wood streets, but this mode of
pavement is so circumscribed that tlie 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 tiiey 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 ; notwitlistauding, they are paid to remove
it from the streets. Indeed, I heard of one con-
tractor 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 cul-
tivate might not be more profitable than to sell.

Of the Surface-Waxeh of the Steeets
of loxdon.

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 meteorolo-
gists, is as follows : —

Depth of Rain in
inches.

"sl

pi
111

Months.

Royal Society,
according to
observation.

Howard, ac-
cording to
observation.

111

C.S

January ....
February . .

March

April

afay

June

July

August

September .

October

November .
December .

1-56
1-4.5
1-36
1-55
1-67
1-98
2-44
2-37
2-07
2-46
2-58
1-65

l-0(»7
l-G-)3
1-542
1-719
2-036
1-964
2-592
2-134
1-644
2-872
2-637
2-489

i-4a3

0-746
1-440
1-786
1-85 J
1-830
2-516
1-453
2-193
2-073
2-400
2-426

Winter.
5-868

Summer.
6-682

Autumn.
7-441

14-4
15-8

12-7

14-0
15-8
11-8
16-1
16-3
12-3
16-2
150

17-7

Totals 1 24-04 1 25-179 '. 22-199

24-8(14

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 ns 25'179
inches. Mr. Daniel says that the average annual
fall is 23^j, inches. The mean of the observa-
tions 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 Roj'al
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 ' Sel-
borne,' 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 rain-
fall, 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 Avell 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' observa-
tions 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
Ilain falling
Annually.
Royal Society (average of 20 years) 24-04
Mr. Howard (average of 23 years) . 25*179
Professor DanieU .... 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

203

adopt in my calculations as to the gross volume
of rain fcilling over the entire area of London.
■ I hare shown, by a defciil 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 hnndred and
fourteen millions, four hundred and forty-four
thousand, eight hundred square inches, by 23,
the number of inches of rain felling every year
in London, we have the following result : —

Total quantity of rain falling yearly in the me-
tropolis, 10,686,132,230,400 cubic inches.

Then, as a fraction more than 277} cubic
inches .of water represent a weight of 10 lbs.,
and an admeasurement of a gallon, we have the
following further results : —

Yearly Rain-1
fidl in the
Metropolis J

Weight in pounds
and tons.

385,399,721 ,220 lbs.,

172,053,447 tons.

Admeasurement
in gallons.

38,539,972,122 gals.

The total quantity of water mechanically sup-
plied 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 : —

Dailt Meciiasical Supply op Water to
Metkopolis.

Sources of Supply.
New River .
East London
Chelsea

West MiddleMX
Grand Junction
Lambeth

.\vcrage No. of
Gallons per day.
. 14,149,315
. 8,829,462
. 3,940,730
. 3,334,054
. 3,532,013
3,077,260

Southwark and Vauxhall 6,313,716
Kent .... 1,079,311
Hampstead . . 427,468

Total from Companiet 44,883,829

Artesian Wells . 8,000,000

Land Spring Pumps . 8,000,000

Totd daily . . 56,888,829

TiAmtT MsoBAncii. Supply or Water.

From Companies . . 16,200,000,000 gals.

„ Artesian Wells . 1,920,000,000 „

„ Land Spring Pumps. 1,096,000,000 „

Total yearly . . 19,216,000,000 „

Hence it wonlJ appear that the rain falling in

ndon m tlie oonne of the year is rather more

than double that of the entire quantity of water an-
nually 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 deno-
mination of street surface-water, we must first
deduct firom 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 quan-
tity 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 pub-
lic thoroughfares will be but a tithe of the aggre-
gate 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 sur-
face-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 sufiicient to exhaust a lake covering the
area of St. James's-park, 30 inches in depth.

The qimntity 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, " IIow many loads
of deposit have been reraovsd in any one week in
the Surrey and Kent district ? What is the total

204

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

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-var}'ing
forms assumed by the deposit from the action of
varying volumes of water ; but I have had obser-
vations 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, includ-
ing the Surrey and Kent district, between 4000
and 5000 yards were removed ; but in portions of
the districts these operations were not in pro-
gress,"

It is not here stated of what the deposit con-
sisted, 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 con-
stituents 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 Vie rain of 6lh Mai/, 1860.

" 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) con-
tained in an imperial gallon of each specimen.

"STREET WATERS.

Number

Quality

Residue in an Imperial Gallon.

Name of Street.

of
Paving.

of
Traffic.

Bottle.

Soluble.

Insoluble.

Both.

Grains.

Duke-Street, Manchester-square .

Macadam

Middling

92-80

105-95

198-75

Foley-street (upper part) .

„

Little

9513

116-30

211-43

Gower-street , , , .

Granite

Middling

126-00

168 30

294-30

Norton-street ....

Little

123-87

300

126-87

Hampstead-road (above tLe canal)

Ballasted

Great

9600

84-00

18000

Ferdinand-street

Middling

44-00

48-30

92-30

Ferdinand-place

Little

60-80

34-30

8510

Oxford-street ....

Granite

Great

276-23

637-10

813-33

» «...

Macadam

194-62

390-30

684-92

„ ....

AYood

34-00

5-00

39-00

" The influence of the quality of the paving on
the composition of the drainage water," says Pjo-
fessor 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 mac-
adamized 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 in-
termediate between the macadam and tie 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
jaavement, 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 title 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 alsQ to influence their composi-
tion, for we find no carbonates either in the water
from the granite, or that from the macadam, where

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

205

the traffic i« little ; whereaa, 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 oa the mmeral 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

SUica

•51

2-81

...

Carbonic Acid

15-84

12-23

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 ....

63-84

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
■mall fragments of straw and broken dung.

" The quantity of soluble salts (especially of
falts 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 ma-
nure with the sewer-water with which it is at
present allowed to mix."

With regard to the " ballasted pavement" men-
tioned by Professor Way, I may observe that it
cannot be considered a «<7-ee<-pavement, unless
exceptionally. It is fonned principally of Thames
ballast mixed with gravel, and is used in the
coiutruction of what are usually private or plea-
sure walks, such as the "gravel walks" in the
inclosures of some of the parks, and upon Prim-
ruse- hill, &c

Ov TBI MASm SCATXXOXBS n FORMER TiMES.

DsoRAPKD as the occupation of the scavenger
nuy b« in public estimation ; though " I 'd rather
■weep 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
csublisbed or confirmed, in the early periods of
our history, when municipal regulations were a
■ort 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 schalcn, 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 Raieage (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 rullage (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 scahere.

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 firom the old poets and
dramatists might be adduced, but I will con-
tent myself with one from the " Martial Maid "
of Beiiumont and Fletcher, as bearing immedijitcly
on the topic I have to discuss : —

" Do I not know thee for the alffuaxier.
Whose (iunghil alt the ixirith tcavengcr*
Could never rid."

Johnson define* a scavenger to be "a petty

206

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

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 itlating to the city in
the time of Henry VIII.

" The Oath of Scavagers, or Scavengers, of the
Ward.

" Yeshal 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, Kedosses, 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 Grod."*

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 in-
dicate 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 re-
compense to any person assailed in the manner
intimated, only when he had " hurt thereby."

These laws were for the government of the city,
Avhere a body of scavengers was sometimes called

* " Haunsed " is explained by Strype to signify
"made too higii," and the " Itedosses ^' to be " Rere-
doughs." 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-ofRces with the main chimney. The
term " lene" is the Teutonic Lehn, and signifies "let,
lease," or literally loan.

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 estiiblished 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 de-
fective.

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 40s."

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 them-
selves, 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 ap-
pears to have been paid to this really important mat-
ter, 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 in-
efficient 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 pre-
sent dust-yards, and were sometimes " presented,"
that is, the}'- were reported by a jury of nuisances
(or under other titles), as "places of obscene re-
sort," 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 — appre-
hended such wretches, charged them with destitu-
tion, and had them punished accordingly. Much
of the street refuse thus " delivered," especially the
" dry rubbish, "was thrown into the streets from

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

207

hoiuefl nnder 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 Citrt 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.

Op the Several Modes and Characteristics

OF Street- Cleaksing.
Wh here come to the practical part of this com-
plex subject. We have ascertained the length of
the ttreets of London — we have estimated the
amount of daily, weekly, and yearly traffic — cal-
culated 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 scaveng-
ing,"— and w^e 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
letpiny them clean.

These modes of scavenging may not appear, to
those who have paid but little attention to the
matter, to be vert/ widely different means of
effectinff tlie tailM object The one, however, re-
moTM the refiue from the streets (sooner or later)
after it keu heet^ formed, whereas the other re-
moves it 09 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 for as the more gene-
ral or common method is concerned) the same as
that panued 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
k still swept or scraped to one side of the
public way, then shovelled into a cart and con-
veyed 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
•ugar-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
oocMionally heather, brooms or besoms were used
by the street-sweepers, but they soon became
cloggsd in dirty weather, and then, as one working
MtTMifer explained it to me, " they scattered and

drove the dirt to the sides 'stead of making it go
right ahead 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 con-
siderable strength and elasticity of fibre, and both
" SAveeps " and" scrapes" in the process of scaveng-
ing. The broom itself, too, is differently constructed,
having divisions between the several insertions of
bass in the wooden block of the head, so that clog-
ging 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 sca-
vengers, 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 pro-
cess of manual toil is little altered.

In a work like the present, however, we have
more particularly to deal with the labourers en-
gaged ; 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 par-
ticular 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 ex-
cept that of women and children — viz., manual
labour, mechanical labour, pauper labour, and phi-
lanthropic labour.

By these several varieties of labour the high-
ways and by-ways of the entire metropolis are
cleansed, with one exception — the Mews, con-
cerning 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 Pub-
lic Mews, where stables, coach-houses, and dwell-
ing-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 asso-

208

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

ciate 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
fiUure inquirj'.

Concerning the private scavenging of the metro-
politan 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 through-
out the metropolis, the manure produced from each
stable is packed up in a separate stack, until there
is sufBcient 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 con-
venience, and a gratuity of Is. or Is. 6rf. per load is
usually presented to the stable-man. In some
places there are dung-pits containing the collect-
ings of a fortnight's dung, which, when disturbed
for removal, casts out an offensive effluvium, as
sickening as it is disgusting to the whole neigh-
bourhood. 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 re-
moved sufficiently quick by the farmer. The re-
sult is, that whilst the air is rendered offensive and
insalubrious, manure becomes difficult to be re-
moved or disposed of, and frequently is washed
away into the sewer.

" Of this manure there are always (at a mode-
rate computation) remaining daily, in the mews
and stable-yards of the metropolis, at least 2000
cart-loads.

" To rem'edy these evils, I would suggest that
a brief Act of Parliament should be passed, giving
municipal and parochial authorities the same com-
plete 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 em-
ployed— 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' ma-
nure 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-sweep-
ing ; this is the necessary evil of all unskilled
labour, for since every one can do it (without pre-
vious apprenticeship), it follows that the beaton-
out artisans or discarded trade assistants, beg-
gared tradesmen, or reduced gentlemen, must
necessarily resort to it as their only means of in-
dependent 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 umkilled occupa-
tions being, as it were, the sink for all the refuse
skilled labour and beggared industry of the coun-
try.

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 — ac-
cording as they pay or do not pay what is reputed
" fair wages."

I caimot say that I heard any especial appella-
tion 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. T/te 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, how-
ever, 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. Tlie Pauper, or Parish-employed Scavengers
present characteristics peculiarly their own, as re-
gards open-air labour in London. They are em-
ployed 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 some-
times paid in food as well as in money, while a
difference may be made between the wages of the

L02fD0^ LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

209

married and of the unmarried men, and even be-
tween 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 re-
turn for the fruits of their toil.

Some of these men are feeble, some are un-
skilful (even in tasks in which skill is but little
of an element), and most of them are dissatisfied
workmen. Their ranks comprise, or may com-
prise, men who have filled very diflferent situa-
tions 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-to'wn. " 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
Oldbe newspaper states that, ' among the police
constables on the Great Western lUxilway, 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 &ct, 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 Mcond 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. Tke "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
iziX 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 borthening 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 tba oasociation, where their
naalty -washing, &c» an pcvrided. Among them
are men of maay calUngi, and mom educated and
accomplished persons.

The system of street orderlyism is, moreorer,
distingaished 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 op Strebt-Swbepino Euployers.

(1.) Traders, who undertake contracts for
scavengery as a speculation. Under this de-
nomination 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 particu-
larly, 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 con-
tractors 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.

Op thb Contractors fob SoAyiproERT.
Thb 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 authori-
ties, it is efiFected by contractors, that is to say, by
traders who undertake for a certain sum to re-
move 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 la-
bourers, generally from the workhouse, and usujilly
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 perfommnce
of the task.

Some of the contractors agree with the parochial

210

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 con-
tracts ; and some to perform only one of them.
It is most customary, however, for the same con-
tractor 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 capital-
ists choose to combine, which is legal, or unno-
ticed, but very heinous on the part of the
working men, whose capital is only in their
strength or skill. One contractor, on being ques-
tioned 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 in-
terests, 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 con-
tractors ; 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 lOOZ. |5er annum for the removal and possession
of the street-dirt, &c. ; but the following year the
district authorities had to pay him 500/. for the
same labour and with the same privileges ! Other
changes took place, and in 1848-9 a contractor
again paid the district 95^ I have shown, too,
that in Shadwell the dust-contractor now receives
450Z. per annum, whereas he formerly ^aiV^ 240/.
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-hooJc, 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 £815

„ Gore 318

„ Nicholls .... 312

„ Starkey 285

which was the lowest.

" Your Committee, anxious to prevent any in-
crease in the watering-rate from being levied, and
considering the amount required by the contrac-
tors 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 mea-
sures 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/. 35. has been effected ; the sum of 18/. I85.
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 con-
gratulate 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, con-
sidering 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 con-
tractors 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,* 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 foot-
ways, the air-grates over the sewers, the guUey-

* 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., A:c. ; the word is now unknown
to the tiade, except that it appears on city documents.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

211

grates in the carriage-way of the streets respec-
tively; 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 Con-
tractors 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
inch 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 after-
noon.
** 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 after-
noon.

*' 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

Comhill

Leadcnhall Street

Aldgate Street and Aid-
gate

KingWilliam Street and
London Bridge

Fenchurch Street

Hoi bom

Holbom Bridge

Skinner Street

I 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 bouses (a subject I have already

treated), and specify the fines, varying from \l. to
5/., 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 cf
the Contractors," (of whom there are four, Messrs.
Sinnott, Kooke, Reddin, and Gould), " will be re-
quired to wear a Badge on the arm with these
words thereon, —

" * London Sewers,
NO. —
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 em-
ployer.

" 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 differ-
ence 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 re-
duced to 19 scavenging contractors. Of the
latter number 16 are in a large way of busi-
ness, 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
62 contracts between the several district authori-
ties and master scavengers, and nineteen contrac-
tors, without counting members of the same family,
as distinct individuals ; this gives an average of
nearly three distinct contracts per individual.
The contracts arc 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 Lon-
don, 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

212

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

Scavencrers or Dustmen, but under the head of
" Rubbish Carters," 28 are given, 9 names being
marked as "Dust Contractors" and 10 as "Night-
men."

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 in-
cluded different members of the same family or
firra, who may undertake specific contracts, al-
though in the trade it is looked upon as " one
concern." The smaller contractors were repre-
sented 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, 1 cite only 7 as
being the better known. The others may be con-
sidered as small rubbish-carters and flying-dustmen.

There are yet other transactions in which the
contractors are engaged with the parishes, inde-
pendently 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 con-
tractor, for his own profit, and where he once
paid 50^. 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 601.,
or whatever the terms of the agreement may be.
I heard of one contractor who lately received 2bl.
where he once paid 60^.

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 convey-
ance 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 " Eubbish 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 re-
moval of the dust from the houses, costs in pay-
ments to the contractors, 150/. 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/.
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 ac-
count then stands thus : —

Parish payment on 54 contracts, 150^.
each £8100

Parish payment on 29 contracts, 501.
each 1450

Yearly total sum paid for Scavenging of
the Metropolis £9550

or, apportioned among 19 contractors, upwards of
500/. each; and among 83 contracts, about 115/.
per contract. Even if other contractors are em-
ployed 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/. 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«. per load, which is a very
reasonable average. If the load be dung, or even
chiefly dung, it is worth 5s. or Qs. 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*. 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*. the load, Zs. is certainly a fair
average.

Thus the annual sum of the street-dirt, as re-

LOXDOX LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR.

213

A TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF MEN AND CARTS EM-
PLOYED 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).

Mr.

Dodd

Gould

Redding

(Jore

Rooke

StapIeton&Holdsworth

Tame

Starkey ,

Newman ,

Pratt and Sewell ...
W. Sinnott, Sen. ...

J. Sinnott

Westley

Parsons

Heame

Humphries

Calvert

Number' , .
of Men Number
em- of Carts
ployed. ««^-

Contracton ^mall),

Mr. North

„ Milton

„ Jenkins

„ Stroud

„ Martin

„ Clutterbuck

„ W. Sinnott, Jon. .

Contractors, bat not having

any contract at present,

only carting nibbisb, &c.

Mr. Darke ,

„ Tomkins

„ J. Coopv

„ T. Conper, Sen.

„ AthiU

„ Bamett (lately sold o£f)

M Brown

n Bllii

Bmmerson.

20
20
32
32
16
10
20
10

8
10
28

8
10
10
18
20

278

139

Scavoagery.

Rubbish Carting. Working iu the Yard.

Number|
Number of Carts, Number

of Men

em-
ployed.

262

2
none.

5
none.

6
none,
ditto.

Wag
gons, or

Ma-
chines
used.

1
none.

107

1
none.

3
none,
ditto.

of Men

em-
ployed.

Number

of Carts

used

22
none.

none.

20
none,
ditto,
ditto,
ditto.
20

152

4
none,
ditto,
ditto,
ditto.

22
none.

none.

20
none,
ditto,
ditto,
ditto.

20
6
7

Number
of Men

em-
ployed.

men em-
ployed.

152

4
none,
ditto,
ditto,
ditto.

12
6

4
6

10
6

5
5
4
2

4
4
4
4
2
5
none.
3
2
3

Number Number
of Wo- of Boys

IS-
IS

12
20

none.'

161

work-
ing.

4
4
4
6
3
2
2
3
2
2
5
none.
2
1
3
3
2

214

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

"Woods and Forests ,

Regent-street and Pall-mall
St. Martin's

Parishes.

Kensington*

Chelsea *

St. George's, Hanover-sq.* ,
St. Margaret' 5, Westminster'

Piccadilly*

St. Ann's, Soho*

Paddington *

St.Marylebone* (5 Districts)
St. James's, "Westminster..

Hampstead \

Highgate

Islington*

Hackney

St. Clement Danes *

Commercial-road, East* ..

Poplar

Bermondsey

Newington

Lambeth *

Ditto (Christchurch)

"Wandsworth

Camberwell and "Walworth

Rotherhithe

Greenwich

Deptford

Woolwich

Lewisham

Total for Parishes

Total for large contractors .
Total for small contractors .

Total for machines

Total for street orderlies ...

Gross total

Dust.

Men. Carts.

none,
ditto,
ditto.

No parochial re-
moval of dust,
ditto.

4
6
8

4
none,
ditto.

278
32

366

3
4

2
none,
ditto

139
16

183

Scavengers.

218

262
13
25
60

578

Men. Carts.

2 machines, none.
2 „ ditto.

4 „ ditto.

3 Tv:iggons.

3 cnrts.

50 carts.
3 waggons.

107
5

8 machines.
9

none,
ditto,
ditto.

Employed in Yard.

Men. Women. Children

none,
ditto,
ditto,

179 carts.
3 waggons.

152
15

167

152
15

167

none,
ditto,
ditto.

161
26

none,
ditto,
ditto.

233

Men. Carts.

Totil employed at dust 366 183

„ „ scavenging 578 179

,, „ rubbish c.irting 167 167

„ (men, women, and children), in yard 396

Total employed in the removal of house and street refuse 1507 529

* The parishes marked thus * have their dustmen and dust-carts, as well as the rubbish carting and the indi-
viduals in the dust-yard, reckoned in the numbers employed by the contractors.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

gards the quantity collected by the contracting
«carengers (as sliuwu in the table given at page
1S6), is, in round numbers, 89,000 cart-loads;
that collected by parish labour, with or without
the aid of the street-sweeping machines, at 62,000
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
Street Dirt.

Per
Load.

8*.

Total.

By Contractors .
By Parishes . .

89,000
52,000

£13,850
7,800

Total . . 141,000

£21,150

or a value of rather more than 1113/. as the re-
turn to each individual contractor in the table, or
about 255/. 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/., a sum of 1000/. to
each contractor, or nearly 229/. 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/. ; that is to say,
10,000/. as remuneration for the office, and
20,000/. 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 ap-
pears 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 calcu-
late upon 194 men employed daily, and 66 em-
ployed 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.

Number of Men.

Weekly Wage.

Yearly.

194 (for 12 months)
66 (for 6 months)

16*.*
16/.

£8070 8*.
1372 16*.

Total . .

£9448 4s.

There remains now to show the amonnt of

capital which a large contractor mutt embark in
bis business: I include the amount of rent, and the
expenditure on what must be provided for busi-
ness purposes, and which is sabject to wear and
tear, to decay, and loss.

♦ I have eonputed all the weekly wafcs at 1(U..
though SOTM of ihe men are f>aid only io. By object in
this u toflvetheeomncton the benefit of thedlflerence.

£ *.

3,759 0

96 0

5,750 0

460 0

22 10

15 0

5,000 0

15,102 10

215

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 esti-
mated : —

CAriTAL OF THE MASTER SCAVENGERS.

179 Carts, 21/. each

3 Waggons, 32/. each .
230 Horses, 25/. each
230 Sets of harness, 2/. each
600 Brooms, 9d. each
300 Shovels, Is. each
100 Barges, 50/. each

Total .

I have estimated according to what may be the
present value, not the original cost, of the imple-
ments, vehicles, &c. A broom, when new, costs
Is. 2(/., and is worn out in two or three weeks.
A shovel, when new, costs 2^.

The following appears to be the

Yearly Expenditure of tue 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*.
weekly wage 1,996 0 0

Keep of 300 horses (26/. 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/. each) . . . 2,000 0 0

Interest on 16,000/. 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 pay-
ments from parishes, the accoimt will 8t;iud
thus :—

Yearly Receipts of Master Scavekoers.
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/. to each con-
tractor, if equally apportioned, or a little more
than 41/. on each contract for street-scavenging

216

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR,

alone, and a profit no doubt affected by circum-
stances 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 de-
scribed one of the j-ards devoted to the trade in
house-dust, and I have little to say in addition
regarding the premises of the contracting or em-
ploying 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, how-
ever, 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, how-
ever, are now occupied chiefly by the labourers at
the adjacent stone, coal, lime, timber, dust, and
general wharfs. Some of the cottages still pre-
sented, on my visits, a blooming display of dahlias
and other autumnal flowers ; and in one comer 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-look-
ing 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 keep-
ing with the wharf it washes.

The dust-yards must not be confounded with
the " night-yards," or the places where the con-
tents 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 partingwith such gases imme-
diately 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 de-
serving 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 Laesta,
a load). "We have the same term at the end of
our word bal-^as^

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 dis-
patched 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 51. to 6/.,
making a total of 20,594^. The difference of that
sum, and the total given in the table (21,147^.)
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 Soavenqebs under the
Contractors.
I HAVE now to deal with what throughout the
Avhole course of my inquiry into the state of
London Labour and the London Poor I have con-
sidered the great object of investigation — ^the
condition and characteristics of the working men ;
and what is more immediately the *• labour ques-
tion," 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 em-
ployment, 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

217

mmriagc, Mid concubinage of tlie men and of their
famines. All this will refer, it should be remem-
bered, 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 de-
scribed.

The first part of this multifarious subject apper-
tains to the division of labour. This in the
■cavaging 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 bar-
baric, " 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
▼ast nmnber 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 com 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 rowng 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 thers are distinct kinds of refuse, and these

rar to Iw ibnr. There are (1) the wet and (2)
drjr AoiMS-N6ue (or dust and night-soil),
and (8) tlM w«t and (4) the dry streettei\we (or
mad and nthfassh) ; and in these four different
brandMt of tke «ae feaaral trade the principle
of Comdex co-openUion is found commonly,
though not invariably, to prevail

The diibrenoe «• to the cUus employments of
^ gencfal body of public cleansers— the dust-
Ben, ttiMi-aweepers, uightmen, and rubbish
earten — Memf to be this:— any nightman will
work as a dustman or scavager ; but it is not all
the dustmen and scavagcrs 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 gene-
rally 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 sel-
dom from any other cause.

In a parish where there is a crowded popula-
tion, 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 some-
times extended to fifteen, and ev«n sixteen hours,
in places of great business trafiic; 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 tlie same working men being simulta-
neously dustmen and scavagers. In the more
remote and quiet parishes, however, and under the
management of the smaller contractors, the oppo-
site 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 em-
ployment for them in the yards or wharfs of the
contractors, or they may sometimes avjiil them-
selves 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 fjanysmati
and his gang. The gangsman usually loads the
cart, and occasionally, when a number are em-
ployed in a district, acts as a foreman by superin-
tending them, and giving directions; he is a
working scavager, but has the office of over-
looker confided to him, and receives a higher
amount of wage than the others.

For the completion of the stree^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

^o. XXXIX.

218

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

side of the public way by the gang (some of it
mere slop), and then drive the cart to its desti-
nation, 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 work-
ing scavagers, may be said to be as follows : —

1st. The ganger, whose office it is to superin-
tend 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.

8rd. The carman (one-horse or two-horse, as
the case maj' 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 cart-
ing 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.

Ist. The ganger receives a weekly salary of
I85. when working for an " honourable " master ;
with a " scurf," however, the ganger's pay is but
\Qs. a week.

2nd. The gang receive in a large establishment
each 16*. per week, but in a small one they usually
get from 145. to 155. 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 I65. a week
in a large, and 15*. in a small establishment.

4th. The two-horse carman receives I85. weekly,
but is employed only by the larger masters.
On the opposite page I give a table on this

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
(I5. 4(Z.), 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, " 0, give the poor devils a turn, if it 's
only for a day now and then."

Piece-v:or]c, 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 2s. to 2s. Qd. 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
ehown 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 2s. 3(7. a load, it is 2s. ^\d. for each
of the five men's day's work; if 2s. 2d. a load, it
is 2s. %\d. (the regular wage, and an extra half-
penny) ; if 2s., it is 2s. 6c^. ; and if less (which
has been paid), the day's wage is not lower than
2s. At the lowest rates, however, the men, I
was informed, could not be induced to take the
necessary pains, as they iconld 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, more-
over, is always in money. One contractor told
me that he would like all his men to be tee-
totallers, 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 dif-
ferent (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 par-
ticular individual often no criterion of the general
or average earnings of the trade. Indeed I find
that the several varieties of wages may be classi-
fied as follows : —

1. Nominal Wages. — Those said to be paid in
a trade.

2. Actual Wages. — Those o-eally received, and
which are equal to the nominal wages, jahis
the additions to, or mimes the deductions from,
them.

8. 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 honour-
able 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 par-
tially 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

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDOX POOR.

219

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220

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

amount. The deductions in the honourable trade
are, as usual, inconsiderable.

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 sto;pimges to cover the ex-
pense.

Neither b}'- fiiies nor by way of security are
the men's wages reduced.

The truck si/stem, moreover, is xinknown, and
has never prevailed in the trade. I heard of only
one instance of an approach to it. A yard fore-
man, 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 dis-
missed. 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
coiUd 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 perqui-
sites 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 sca-
vagers, it is expressly covenanted that no men
employed shall accept gratuities from the house-
holders; 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 ex-
perienced butcher, who had at one time a private
slaughter-house in the Borough, that, until^within
these six or seven years, he thought the sca-
vagers, 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 re-
ceives 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*.
to 2.^ a week, but one butcher told me he thought
Is. 6d. might be rather too high an average, for a
pint of beer {2d.) was the customary sum given,
and that was, or ought to be, divided among the
gang. " In my opinion," he said, " there '11 be
no allowances in a year or two." By the amount
of these perquisites, then, the scavagei's' 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 Avages . . . .16s.

Perquisites in the form of allowances
for beer from the public . . . .2s.

Actual weekly wages

. 11

Op the "Casual Hands" among. ina
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, con-
stantly employed at it, and those who have but
recently taken to it as a means of obtaining a
subsistence after their ordinary resoxxrces 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 pre-
vailing 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 employ-
ment 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 1 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

L0ND02f^ LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

221

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, aak 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 incarcera-
tion of the workhouse, can we be astonished —
indeed is it not a natural law — that they should
help themselves to the property of others ]

Concembg the " regular hands " of the con-
tracting scavagers, it may, perhaps, be reasonable
to compute that little short of one-half of them
have been " to the manner bom." 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
at follow* : —

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 a«-
listant.

1 Navvy.

1 Ploughman (nightman occasionally).

2 Unknown, one of them saying, but gaining

no belief, that he had once been a gentle-
man.

In my account of the street orderlies will be
given an interesting and elaborate statement of
the former avocations, the habitt, expenditure,
&c., of a body of strect-tweepers, 67 in number.
This table will be found very curious, as showing
what chuMf of men have been driven to street-
sweeping, but it will not furnish a criterion of
the character of the *' regular handi " employed
bj the contractors.

The "casuals" or the "casual tie*" (alwayscalled
among the men " cazzclties "), may be more pro-
perly described as men whose employment is ac-
cidental, chanceful, or uncertain. The regular
hands of the tcavngers 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 intro-
duced 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 un-
dertake 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 out-
side 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 work-
men 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 there-
fore 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 fol-
lows:—

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 through-
out the metropolis in wet and dry weather {eX'
chmve of the street-orderlies) to be as follows : —

Scavagers employed in wet weather . . 531
Ditto in dry weather .... 368

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, dis-
charged in the dry season arc the casually em-
ployed 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 repre-
sent t^ entire amount of the surplus labour in
the tnme ; but only that portion of it which does
obtain even casual employment. After much
trouble, and taking the average of various state-
ments, 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 in-
formed, so overstocked with labourers now as it

222

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 ofiener. 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, how-
ever been followed by an increase in the wages of
the operatives ; seven years ago the labourers re-
ceived but Is. a day, and the ganger 2s. Qd., but
now the labourers receive 25. 8(^. a day, and the
ganger 3s.

In the city the men have to work very long
hours, sometimes as many as 18 hours a day with-
out 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 80 tired and weary are the men, that when
they rise in the morning to piursue their daily
labour, they feel as fatigued as when they went to
bed. " Fpcquently," 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 in-
fluential cause of surplus labour than " over
population." The mere number of labourers in a
trade is, ^)er 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, thift 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 en-
tirely overlooked.

There are 262 men employed in the Metropo-
litan Scavaging Trade ; one-half of these at the
least may be said to work 16 hours per diem in-
stead 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 sur-
plus labour are —

The many hands thrown out of employment by
the discontinuance of railway works.

A less demand for unskilled labour in agricul-
tural 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 pre-
judices, or express them according to their class
interests, and it is only a few employers of un-
skilled 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 in-
crease in the families of the men. Those who are
married appear to have, on the average, four chil-
dren, 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 sca-
vaging trade as casual hands have been agricul-
tural 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 h-isJc 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 win-
ter, 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 uttennost; 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

LONDON LABOUR AND TUB LONDON POOR,

223

to the London atmosphere, when the men cannot |
tie 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, how-
ever, does not influence the Street-Orderly system,
as under it the men are employed every day, un-
less 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

whicli rain

falls.

December . . i .
July, August, October
February, May, November
January, April
March, September .

June

Hence it would appear that June is the least and
December the most showery month in the course
of the year ; the greatest qxianiily 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 arc required at one period and 7 at
another to execute the work, the question con-
•cquently becomes, how do the 2 casuals who
. . ;■- ' ,vrged out of every 7 obtain their living
wet seaton is over]

V. ..:; .'I sea vager is out of employ, he seldom
or never applies to the parish ; this he does, I am
iuformod, 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 scjivager
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 du«t or
scavaging.

'i' - "•• ---y-'-— -^- ^porative scavager who

is ■< work at that trade

for ■ g the year, and the re-

Duuniug portion of Li« tiine i« 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) nightracn. Few of
the class seem to apply themselves to trading;^ as
in the costermonger Hue. They are the loungers
about the boundaries of trading, but seldom take
any onward steps. The street-sweeper of this
week, a "casual" hand, maybe 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 th;m
what may be called iiasdvehj ; 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, wlicn big enough, work also at
the heap, either in carrying ofl^ 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 ap-
pears, however, to be little of system in the
arrangement. If more hands are wanted, the
gangsman, who receives his orders from the con-
tractor 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 bo desig-
nated a lahour marktt appertaining to the trade.
No " house of cjill," no trade society. If men
seek such employment, they must apply at the
contractor's premises, and I am assured that poor
men nol unfrequently nsk the scavagors 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 wa*, by a mere " round
of the docks," to select 200 new hale men, of all
claMei, and ttrong ones, too, if properly fed, who

224

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 espe-
cially 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 regu-
lars. The constant weekly wages of any work-
man are of course the average of his casual — and
hence we shall find thfe wages of those who are
regularly employed far exceed those of the occa-
sionally employed men : —

£ s. cJ.
Nominal yearly wages at scavaging

for 25 weeks in the year, at 16».

per week 20'l6 0

Perquisites for 26 weeks, at 2s. . 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 125. . . . 12 0 0

Unemployed six weeks in the year . 0 0 0

85 8 0

Gross yearly earnings .

Average casual or constant weekly

wages throughout the year . . 15 4 1

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 em-
plojTnent, there is not only the greatest necessity
for pro\-idence, but unfortunately the greatest ten-
dency 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 rea-
soning, and the accident which assisted the man
out of his difficulties at one period is continu-
ally expected to do the same good turn for him at
another. Hence the casual hand, who passes
the half of the year on ISs., and twenty weeks
on 125., and six weeJcs 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 starv-
ation.

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 recommenda-
tion 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 2s. ^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
105. a week all the year round, than have chance-
work that I could earn 205. a week at. I once
had 155. in relief from the parish, and a doctor to
attend us, when my wife and I was both laid up
sick. 0, 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 manage-
ment, any how."

Statement op a "jReqular SoAVAaEB."

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 ig
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 exces-
sive vulgarity in these men's tones or accent so
much as grossness in some of their expressions—
" and I can't see what that consams 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 water-
man, 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 fore-
man 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

225

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 tliey '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 tem-
per, 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 '11 not
say BO much for it as you may hear some on 'em
say. I don't like it, but I do it when I 's ob-
ligated under a necessity. It pays one as over-
work ; and werry like more one 's in it, more one
may be suited. I reckon no men works harder
nor sich as me. 0, as to poor journeymen tailors
and sich like, I knows they 're stunning badly off,
and many of their masters is the hardest of beg-
gars. 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.
Tkey '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 consams does touch wages, but one 's nate-
rally 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 lamed then what short grub
meant. I got a drop of beer and a crust some-
tiflses with men as I knowed, or I might have
dropped in the street. What did I do to pass my
tone when I was out of work ] Snrtinly 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 're 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$. ft
week then ; its li. \id. now, and my own traps.

" No, I can't lay 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 his-
self ] 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 'in 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 stun-
ning. I can't say how much I spends a year in
plays ; I keeps no account ; perhaps 5s. 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. Some-
times 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, }Yhat 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
goodiah 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 12s. CcZ. a week, and
sometimes better than 21^, with night-work. I
suppose grub costs Is. a day, and beer (!</.; but I
keeps no accounts. I buy ready-cooked meat;
often cold b'iled beef, and cats it at any tap-room.
I have meat every day ; mostly more than once a

223

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

day. Wegetables I don't care about, only ingaiis
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."

Tiie stiteraent I have given is sufficiently ex-
plicit 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,
(X'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 de-
gree of fidelity in the couple living together with-
out 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, 80 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 tlceij 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, more-
over, that one of the most intelligent fellows gene-
rally whom he knew among them, a man whom
he had heard read well enough, and always un-
derstood 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 tiieinselves un-
able 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 them-
selves ; but then their leisure is far more circum-
scribed 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, state-
ments 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 extor-
tion), or garrets ; they usually, and perhaps always,
when married, or what they consider " as good,"
have their own furniture. The rent runs from
Is. Qd. to 25. Zd. weekly, an average being I5. 2d.
or Is. lOd. One room which I was in was but
barely furnished, — a sort of dresser, servmg also
for a table; a chest; three chairs (one almost
bottomU'ss) ; an old turn-up bedstead, a Dutch
clock, with the minute-hand broken, or as tiie
scavnger very well called it when he saw me
looking at it, "a stump;" an old "corner cup-
board,' 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 Is. lOd., 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, Avhere "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, cost-
ing, I was told, IM. This was the apartment of
a man in regular employ (with but a few excep-
tions).

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.

The diet of the regular working scavager (or .
nightman) seems generally to differ from that of i
mechanics, and perhaps of other working men,
in the respect of his being fonder of salt and
itrong-fiavoured food. I have before made tiie same

THE LONDON SCAVENGER.

IFrom a l)agUfrr«!ttype by Oearo.]

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

227

remark concerning the diet of the poor generally.
I do not mean, however, that the scav^ers are
fond of snch 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, some-
times profusely mustarded, is often eaten in the
beershops 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 155., but 1*. of this went to pay off
an advance of 5s. made to him by the keeper of a
beer-ihop, or, as he called it, a " jerry."

Daily. Weekly.
d. s. d.

Bent of an nnfomished room 1 9

Washing (average) .... 3

[The man himself washed

the dress in which he

worked, and generally

washed his own stockinga.]
Sharing (when twice a week) 1

Tobacco 1 7

[Short pipes are given to

these men at the beer«

■hops, or public-houses

which they •*uie."l

Beer 4 24

[He usually spent more than

id. a day in beer, he said,

*' it was only a pot ; " but

this week more beer than

usual had bem given to

him in nigbtwork.]

Gin 2 12

[The Mune with gin.]
Cocoa (pint at a cotfee-shop) . 1^ 10^

Bread (qoartem loaf) (some-

timet5\d.) ... .6 B Q

BoUed nit beef (f lb. or \ lb.
daily, "as ba^ppened," for
two meals, Od. per pound,

average 4 2 4

Pickles or Onions . . . . 0^ 1}

Butter 1

Soap 1

18 2i

Perhaps this informant was excessive in his
drink. I believe he was so ; the others not
drinking so much regularly. The odd 9d.,hc 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 wasa " widdur," having
lost his old 'oman, and ho 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 205. to 225. ; 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 6d.
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 7d. and 8c?.
per lb., with mustird 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 re-
mains of a brisket, and sometimes of a round, for
6d., 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 wag
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 Id. hot —
but it is seldom sold hot except in the evening —
and ^d., or more frequently two for l^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 re-
gretted 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 Id., 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 Id., 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 liis dinner, the same
to his supper, and the other, with an onion for a
relish, to nis beer. He was a great bread eater,
he said ; but sometimes, if he slept in the day-
time, 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 par-
took of the meals he had described daily, "he
answered " no," but that was moftly what he
had ; and if he bought a bit of cold boiled, or

228

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

even roast pork, "what offered cheap," the ex-
pense was about the same. "When he was drink-
ing, 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!"
Kum 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 informa-
tion concerning any rude calling (especially), some
talkative member of the body of these working
men, some pot-house hero who has j)ursuaded
himself and his ignorant mates that he is an
oracle, is put forward. As these men are some-
times, from being trained to, and long known in
their callings, more prosperous than their feUows,
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 tvhole body. The
statement of the working scavager given under
this head is unquestionably typical of the charac-
ter of a portion of his co-workers, and more
especially of what was, and in the sort of here-
ditary scavagers I have spoken of is, the cha-
racter of the regular hands. There are now,
however, many checks to prolonged indulgence
in " lush," as every man of the ruder street-sweep-
ing class u-ill call it. Tlie 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
80 much bread, and that among them the opinion
is almost universal, that beer is necessary to
"keep up their strength;" there are a few teeto-
tallers belonging to the class ; one man thought he
knew five, and had lieard of five others.

I inquired of the landlord of a beer-shop, fre-
quented by these men, as to their potations, but he
wanted to make it appear that they took a half-pint,
now and t/cen, when thirsty ! He was evidently
tender of the character of his customers. The land-
lord of a public house also frequented by them in-
formed 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 Is. 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 posi-
tive 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 in-
quiry, that one-third of their earnings is spent
in drink.

Of the Influence of Free Trace on tub
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, v/ith the exception of such as have sunk
into street-sweeping from better-informed con-
ditions 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 miist get
bread." Cheap food all labouring men pronounce
a blessing, as it unquestionably is, but " some-
how," as a scavager's carman said to me, " the
thing ain't working as it should."

In the course of the present and former in-
quiries 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 num-
bers increased yearly, and the demand for their
commodities did not iixcrease in proportion. Among
the ignorant, I heard the continual answers of, "I
can't say, sir, wliat 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 agiicultural
districts, since the repeal of the Corn Laws, or
whether it be due to the insufficiency of occu-
pation 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 in-
directly ; that is to say, by throwing a mass of
displaced country labour into the towns, and so

LONDOy LABOUR AND TUE LONDON POOR.

229

displacing other labourers from their ordinary
occupation*, 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 Com 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 scavagcrs' trade
wages have in any way declined since the repeal
of the Com Laws; so that were it not for the
difficulty of obtaining employment among the
casaal 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 .issured 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 choppingblock), their
purchases of lirer, and of beasts' heads. In 1845,
the year 1 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 74f/. per lb. (Smithfield prices),
now the same quality of meat is but 5d. 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 \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,
lie did not sell so much meat to the poor and
labonring clastes m be did five or six years ago,
he hdieved not by om-a'gkih, although perhaps
" pricers of his meat " among the poor were more
numerous. For this my informant accounted
by ezprewing 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 suppotiticm, from what I
hare obserrcd in the course of the present inquiry,
is negatived by facts.

Another butcher, also supplying the poor, s»id
they bovgfat 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(^ per lb. higher at the
time specified. Pickled Australian beef was four or
five years ago very low — dd. per lb. — salted and
prepared, .ind " 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 de-
clared it a curse. I suggested to each that cheaper
fish might have something to do withr 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 Id. a quartern loaf
dearer in 1845 than at present.- Perhaps the follow-
ing 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 speak-
ing 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.

Free
Trade.

Rent . . .

1*. ^d.

Is. ed.

Bread(51oaTes)

1». \\d.

2s. 6d.

Butter (Jib.) .

5d.

...

Tea (2 ox.) . .

8d.

...

Sugar (4 lb.) .

Zd.

2d.

Id.

Meat (31b.) .

Is. 6d.

Is. Zd.

Zd.

Bacon (lib.) .

5d.

Fish (a dinner

3d., or 1*. 6d.

2d., or Is.

6d.

a day, 6 days)

weekly.

Potatoes or Ve-

getables {lid.

a day) . .

3.Jrf.

Z\d.

...

Beer (pot) . .

d\d.

Zid.

...

Total saving, per week, since

Pree Trade

U Zd.

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 de-
mand 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.

230

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Thus, Free Trade and cheap proviBions are an
unquestionable benefit, if unaffected by drawbacks,
to the labouring poor.

The above statement refers only to a fully em-
ployed 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
Bcavager. The man, who was formerly a house
painter, said he could bring me 50 men similarly
circumstanced to himself.

In 1845, pel

Week.

In 1851, per

Week.

s. d.

s, d.

Eent

, 1 4

Rent

. 1 8

5 loaves .

. 2 11

4 loaves .

. 2 0

Butter .

. 0 5

Butter .

. 0 5

Tea.

. 0 6

Tea.

. 0 5

Meat (3 lbs.)

. 1 6

Meat (3 lbs.)

. 1 0

Potatoes .

. 0 3

Potatoes .

. 0 2

Beer (a pot)

. 0 4

Beer (a pint)

. 0 2

7 3

5 10

Here, then, we find a positive saving in the ex-
penditure of l5. 5e?. per week in this man's wages,
since the cheapening of food.

His earnings, however, tell a different story.

1845.

1851.

Earnings of 6 days . .
Ditto 3 days . .

*. d.
16 0

s. d.
7 6

Weekly Income . . .
Expenditure ....

Difference . . .

15 0
7 3

7 9

7 6
5 10

1 8

Thus we pereeive that the beneficial effects of
cheapness are defeated by the dearth of employ-
ment 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 im-
posts 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 2d. or Bd. 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 3c?. a week, a non-
resident landlord or agent calling for it weekly.
He was told that the advance was to meet the in-
come 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
letters 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 ques-
tions of Free Trade and the necessity of the in-
come 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 firom 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 45. 3d 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 acknow-
ledge, that to the constant hands among the
scavagers and dustmen of the metropolis, the
repeal of the Com 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 nnmayried operative scavager
regularly employed, working for a large con-
tractor : —

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

231

WKKKLV nfcosrs.

£», d.
Wages.
weekly

.. 0 16 0
..020

Actnal wedLly

TrKKKLY aXPKXDITURE.

£ s. d.

Rent 0 2 0

Washin/; and

mending 0 0 10

Clothes, and re-
pairing ditto. . 0

Butcher's meat. . 0

Bacon 0

0 10
3 6

VegeUbles.
Cheese ...

0
0
0
SplriU 0

Tobacco. . .
Butter....
Sugar .....

Tea

Coffee....

Fish ,

Soap .....

Shaving 0

Fruit 0

Keep of 2 dogs. . 0
Amusements, as
skittles, &c. . . 0

0 10}

0 18 0

The subjoined represents the income of an uii'
man-itd operative scavager casually employed by
a small master scavager six months during the
year, at 15^. a week, and 20 weeks at sand and
rubbish carting, at 12^. a week.

Casual WofK*. £ s. d.
Nominal weekly wages at scavaging, 1G». for

26 weeks during the year 20 16 0

Perqubites, 2*. 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*. for 20 weeks more during the
•anx 12 0 0

Areiage casual or constant weekly wages
throughout the year 0 15 4}

Th« expenditure of this man when in work was
nearly the same as that of the regular hand ; the
main exceptions being that bis rent was Is. instead
of 2s., 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 circum-
stanced 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 prefer-
ence, 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 apeak of the r^;ular scavagers — I could not
meet with one woman " working a slop-needle."
One, iBdted, I MW who was described to me as a
" *'-**»^^ drewer to an oat-and-out negur," but the
woman aMored me she waa neither badly paid nor
badly o£ Perhapa by such labour, as an average
on the part of the wives, 0<2. a day is cleared,
and 1«. '' 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 soch 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 Is. 6<Z. to 25.

The following may be taken as an estimate of
the income and outlay of a letter -paid and fully
employed operative scavager, with his wife and two
children: —

WBCKLY INCOME OF THK
FAMILY.

£ 8. d.
Nominal weekly

wages of man.

Ids.
Perquisites, 2*.
Actual weekly

wages of man. 0 18 0
Nonnnal weekly

wages of wife,

6j.
Perquisites in

coal and wood,

1*. 4(/.
Actual weekly

wages of wife .074
Nominal weekly

wages of boy.. 0 3 0

1 8 4

WKKKLY EXPENDITURE
OF THE FAMILY.

£ 9. d.

Rent 0 3 0

Candle 0 0 3i

Bread 0 2 1

Butter 0 0 10

Sugar 0 0 8

Tea 0 0 10

Coffee 0 0 4

Butcher's meat. . 0 3 6

Bacon 0 1 2

Potetoes 0 0 10

Raw fish 0 0 4

Herrings 0 0 4

Beer (at home) ..020

,, (at work).. 0 16

Spirits 0 10

Cheese 0 0 6

Flour 0 0 3

Suet 0 0 3

Fruit 0 0 3

Rice 0 0 OJ

Soap 0 0 6

Starch 0 0 OJ

Soda and blue ..001

Dubbing 0 0 Oi

Clothes for the

whole family,

and repairing

ditto 0 2 0

Boots and shoes

for ditto, ditto 0 16

Milk 0 0 7

Salt, pepper, and

mustard 0 0 1

Tobacco 0 0 9

Wear and tear of

betiding, crocks,

&c 0 0 3

Schooling for

girl 0 0 3

Baking Sunday's

dinner 0 0 2

Mantjling 0 0 3

Amusements and

sundries 0 10

1 7 6

The subjoined, on the other hand, gives the
income and outlay of a casually employed opera-
tive scavager {better paid) with his wife and
two boys in constant work : —

WUCKLY INCOME OF TUB

WEEKLY EXPKNDITUHB

FAMILY.

or THE FAMILY.

£ t

£ 1. d.

Nominal wages

Rent

0 3 6

of man at sca-

Candle

0 0 6

vaging for SIX

Soap

0 0 4

months, at lti«.

Soda, starch, and

weekly.

blue

0 0 2}

Ditto at rubbish

Bread

0 2 6

0 0 9

months, 12#,

Dripping

0 0 5

weekly.

Sugar."

0 0 8

Average casual

Tea

0 0 8

wagesthrough-

Coffee

0 0 6

out tlu' year . .

0 15

Butcher's meat..

0 3 6

Nominal weekly

Bacon

0 1 0

wages of wife,

6«. (constant).

Perquisites in

Potatoes

0 1 0

Cheese

0 0 6

Raw fish

0 0 4

wood and coal.

Fried £h'.'.*.'.'.'.*

0 0 3

I«4<f.

0 0 3

Actual weekly

Flour

0 0 3

wages of wife.

0 7

Suet

0 0 8

232

LONDOX LABOUR AXD THE LOXDON POOR.

».

rf. 1

Nominal weekly

wafies of

two

boys, 7*.

the

two

Perquisites

for

running

messages,

the two

con-

sunt).

Actual weekly

wages of

the

two boys..

.... 0

Fruit 0 0 (5

Rice 0 0 li

Beer (at home) .020

,, (at work) .019

Spirits 0 10

Tobacco 0 0 9

Pepper, salt, and

mustard 0 0 1

Milk 0 0 7

Clothe* for man,

wife, and fa-
mily 0 2 0

Repairing ditto

for ditto 0 0 G

Boots and shoes

for ditto 0 16

Rq)airing ditto

for ditto 0 0 8

Wear and tear of

bedding, crocks,

&c 0 0 3

Baking Sunday'*

dinner 0 0 2

Mangling 0 0 2

Amusements,

sundries, &c. .010

1 10 4

Of tue Worse Paid Scavagers, or those
WORKING for Scurf* Ejiployers.

There are in tlie scavagers' trade the game dis-
tinct classes of employers as appertain to all other
trades ; these consist of : —

1. The large capitalists.

2. The small capitalists.

As a nile (with some few honourable and dis-
honourable 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 I
usual mode of contention in all trades is by re- I
ducing 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. I
(2) He can buy in large quantities, and so get |
his stock cheaper. (3) He cm purchase what he !
wants in the best markets, and that direcdi/ 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 lie re-
quires for the purposes of his trade long before
it is needed, provided he can obtain it "a bar-
gain." (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

* The Saxon Sreorfa, which is the original of the Eng-
lish Scurf, means a scab, and scab is the term given to
the "cheap men" in the shocmaking tiadc. Scab is
the root of our word Shabby ; hence Scurf and Scab, de-
prived of their offensive associations, both mean shabby
fellows.

design of the work on which he is engaged. (8)
He can institute a more effective system ifor
the surveillance and checking of his workmen.
(9) He can employ a large number of hands, and
so reduce the secondary expenses (of firino:, light-
ing, &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 pro-
duction 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 obUiin customers that he might otherwise
lose.

Tiie .tmall 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 gene-
rally 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 expen-
sive, 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, lastlj-, he pays his men
cither a less sum than usual for the same quantity
of labour, or exacts a greater quantity from them
for the same sum of mono}'. 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 exten-
sive "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 " econo-
mizing 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 rxiU in almost every trade is that the
smaller capitalists pay a lower rate of wages.
To this, however, there are many honourable ex-
ceptions 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

LOXDOy LABOUR AXD THE LOXDOX POOR.

233

1 . " Drirtrs,"^ or those who compel the men in
their employ to do more work fi)r the same wages ;
of this kind there are two distinct varieties : —

a. The long-hour moikrs, or those who make
the men work longer than the usual hours
of labour.

h. The fhapping 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 work-
men (through their necessities) to do the same
amount of work for less than the ot\Iinary
wages.

The reduction of waces thus brought about
may or may not be attended with a corre-
sponding 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. V^hen 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 " graspei:"

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, th^ "nimble ninepence " being con-
sidered " better than the slow shilling." Such
traders, of course, cannot be said to reduce wages
directly — indirectly, l^owever, they have the same
effect, for in reducing prices, other traders, ever
ready to compete with them, but, unwilling, or
perhaps nnable, 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 in-
Tarwbly reduced.

Such are the characteristics of the cheap em-
ployers in all trades. Let me now proceed to
point out the peculiarities of what are called the
•curf employers in the sea vagi ng 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 Ust])ay.

1. Under the first head, if the employment be
at all regular, I heard few complaints, for the men
seemed to bare learned to look upon it as an in-
eTitable thing, that one way or other they mtisi
fubmit, 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 a« follows:— some employers cause their sca-
vagers after their days work in the streeu, to

load the barges wi:h the street and house-col-
lected manure, without any additional payment;
whereas, among the more liberal employers, therd
are bargemen who are employed to attend to this
department of the trade, and if their street sca-
vagers 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 (b\' 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 addi-
tional jiUowance for greater than the ordinary
heictht 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 con-
sidered the work of " a man and a half" in a week,
without the recompense due for the labour of the
" half" man's v/ork; 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 un-
skilled.

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 em-
ploys 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 re-
ceived \H!T
Annum.

Sum they
should
receive.

Differ-
ence.

4 Gangers, at IIU. a)
week, for 5) months >
in the year 1

12 Sweepers, at I6». ai
week, for !» months >
In the year )

£ ».
HO 8

374 0

210 12
409 4

£ ,.
70 4

124 16

Total wages per Ann.

fil4 16

709 10

195 0

Here, then, we find the annual loss to these
men through the system of "driving" to be 195^.
per annum.

But A is not the only driver in the scavagers'
trade; out of the 19 masters having contracts
for Bcavaging, as cited in the table given at pp.
213, 214, there are 4 who are regular drivers;
and, making the same ciilculation as above, we
have the following results : —

234

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

26 Gangers, at ]8«. a)
week, for 9 months >
in the year )

SOSweeners, at 16>. a)
week, for 9 months >
in the year )

Sum re-
ceived per
Annum.

912 12

2496 0

Sum they
should
receive,

£ s.
1216 16

3328 0

Differ-
ence.

£ 8.

304 4

Thus we find that the gross sum of which the
men employed by these drivers are deprived, is
no less than 1136^. per annum.

2. The second or indirect mode of reducing
the wages of the men in the scavaging trade is by
Ch-inding; that is to say, by making the men do
the same amount of work for less pay. It re-
quires 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 *•' Chinder." He pays Is. 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 : —

6 men, at I5s. a week, "1
for 9 months in the
year J

Sum re- iSum they
ceived per should
Annum, receive.

£ s.
175 10

£
187

Differ-
ence.

£ s.
11 14

Here the loss to the men is 111. lis. 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 honoiu-able masters, but by compel-
ling 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

Here the annual loss to the men employed by
this one master is 292^ 19s. 6(f.

Among the 19 master scavagers there are al-
together 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
HKCSIVE.

£ «. d.
28Gangers,atl6«.

a week, em-
ployed for 9

months in the

year 873 12 0

83 Sweepers, at

15*. a week,

employed for

9 months in

the year 2427 15 0

3301 7 0

8tTM THBT SHOULD AN-
NUALLY RECEIVE.

£ ». d.
28 Gangers, at

18». a week

(12 hours a

day), for 9

months in the

year 982 16 0

Over work, 4

hours per day 245 14 0
83 Sw^eepers, at

16*. a week,

12 hours a day 2589 12 0
Over work, 4

hours per day 647 8 0

4465 10 0

Here we perceive the gross loss to the opera-
tives from the system of combined grinding and
driving to be no less than 1164^ 3s. per annum.

Now let us see what is the aggregate loss to
the working men from the several modes of re-
ducing 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 sca-
vagers per annum . . . 2312

1 0

SUMS THE MEN RECEIVE.
£ 8. d.

7 Gangers, at 16».

a week, for 9

months in the

year 218 8 0

21 Sweepers, at

lo«. a week 614 5 0

SUMS THEY SHOULD
RECEIVE.

£ 8. d.
7 Gangers, at ISs.

a week, for 9

months in the

year 245 14 0

Over work, 4

hours per day. 61 8 6
21 Sweepers, at

ICi*. a week, 12

hours a day . . Go5 4 0
Over work, 4

hours a day . . 163 6 0

1125 12

Now this is a large sura 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 6d.
to 8d. per load. This increase in the rate of re-
muneration was owing to complaints made by the
men to the Commissioners of Sewers, that they
were not able to live on their earnings ; an in-
quiry 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 tis 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 those

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

23i

nmstera who will undertake to pay the regular
rate of wages, and employ their men only the re-
gular hours; for by such means, and by such means
alone, can justice be done to the operatives.

Thi« brings me to the cause of the reduction of
va^ til tite scaraging 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 j)<f^lf the
parishes for the house-dust and street-sweepings,
brieze and street manure at that period often sell-
ing for 30». 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 con-
tracts, the employers began gradually to ''grind
down" their men from 17s. 6ii. (the sura paid 20
yean back) to 17«. a week, and eventually to 15.^,
and even 12*. weekly. This is a curious and in-
structive fiict, as showing that even an increase of
prices will, under the contract system, induce a re-
duction of wages. The greed of traders becomes,
it appears, from the very height of the prices, pro-
portionally 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 trans-
action. 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 re-
quired, were continually calling upon the con-
tractors, and offering their services at 2s. and 3*.
less per week than the regular hands were re-
cei\'ing. 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 scava-
gers. This was owing mainly to the operatives
complaining to the Commissioners that they could
not live upon the wages they were then receiving —
1 2s. and 1 is. 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 strecWwaepers " something for beer,"
whereupon the tiadanum inquired if the men
could not find beer out of their wages, and on
being awnred that they were receiving only 12*. a
week, he had the matter brought before the Board.
The result was, that the wages of the operatives
v.fTc increased from 12*. to 15*. and 16*. weekly,
since which time there has been neither an increase
nor a dccreaae in their pay. The cheapness of pro vi-
nonsteemt to harecaiued no redaction 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, con-
sistent 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 Com-
missioners 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 propor-
tional to the price paid to the employers for the
work (a most important fiict 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 -irorking 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 under-
pay. 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 ex-
penses, which they are striving to reduce.

A labourer, in order to be self-supporting and
avoid becoming a "burden" on the parish, re-
quires 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 com-
fortably upon that I " is the exclamation of those
who have seldom thought upon what constitutes
the mininmm of self-support in this country. A
man's wages, to prevent pauperism, shoxild include,
besides present subsistence, what Dr. Chalmers
hiis called " his secondaries; " viz., a sufficiency to
pay for his maintenance : Ist, during the slack
season ; 2nd, when out of employment ; 3rd,
when ill; 4th, when old*. If insufficient to do

* These items wnffes tnxst include to prevent pau-
perism, even with pmvide.nre. But this is only on the
supposition that the labourer is unmarried ; if married,
however, and having a family, then his wnfjcs should
include, moreover, the keep of at least three extra per-
sons, as well as the education of the children. If not,
one of two results is self-evident— cither the wife must

toil, '-■ " ' * r f her young ones, and they bo

alln 1 pick their morals and etltica-

tii)!i I, out of the gutter, or else the

who' ^ : iiisferred to thccarcof thepari^h.

No. XL.

236

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 sliift the burden of
supporting their labourers when unemployed on
to the parish ; thus virtually perpetuating tlie
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 unem.ployed.
But now journey-work, or hiring by the day, pre-
vails, and the labourers being paid — and that mere
subsistence-money — only when wanted, are ne-
cessitated to become either paupers or thieves
when their services are no longer required. It is,
moreover, this cliange from yearly to daily hirings,
and tlie 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 tliree weeks' work (harvesting, hop-
picking, and the like) throughout the year.

That there is, however, a large system oi job-
ling 2>^'''>'sued b>/ 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 combi-
nation existing among the employers, and the ex-
traordinary fluctuations in the prices obtained by
the contractors would lead to the notion that tlie
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 re-
moval 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, esti-
mated 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 .000. 2833 2 0 \ cleansed

( daily.
0 \
0

1846 1354 5

1847 4455 5

1848 1328 15

1849 . 0 0

1850 . 0 0

0 . 7486 11

0 . 6779 16

6034 6
8014 2
7226 1

Streets

cleansed

daily.

" From the above return," qpys Mr. Cochrane,
" it may be inferred that the annual sums paid
for cleansing in each year of 1844 and 1843 did
not exceed 2281^., as this would make up the
eight years' average calculation of 4643^."

Since the streets have been cleansed daily, it
will be seen that the average has been 7188^.
The smallest amount, in 1846, was 6034/.; and

the largest, in 1847, 8014/.; which was a sudden
increase of 1980/.

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, al the expense of the u-ork-
men, is by the insertion of a clause in each parish
contract similar to that introduced by the Com-
missioners 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 in-
terference 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 uiire-
stricted use of ca^ntal, 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 ditfer 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 loorhing 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" -treat-
ment 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 25. 8(/., but 25. 6(Z. or
even 25. 4(/. a day. To the wealth)', this Id. or id.
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 3c/. or 4c/. 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 con-
sideration : " You see, sir, we must have a roof
over our heads."

A scavager, working for a scurf master, gave

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

237

me the following account. He was a middle-aged
man, decently dressed, for when I saw liim, he
was in his " Sunday clothes," and was quiet in his
tones, eren 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. 0 dear ,
yea ! 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 cotfee-sbops. 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 vas so coujinin(/, 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 \
num called and had some talk with the governor, I
and says he, says the governor, says he, * if I
you want a handy lad with his besom, and j
he 's good for nothing else ' — but that was his j
gammon — ' here 's your man ;' so I was engaged i
as a young sweeper at 10s. a week. I worked |
in Hackney, but I heard so much about railways,
that I saved my money up to 10s., and popped
[pledged] a suit of mourning I 'd got after ray
father's death for 22s., 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 iccu reslUss, 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 12s. 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 8s. 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, ho could get plenty such, and I
knew he could. I got on then with a gangsman
I knew, at street-sweeping. I had ]5s. a week,
but not regular work, but when the \vork wer'n't
reguhir, I had 2/. 8'/. a day. I then worked
under another master for 14s. a week, and was
often abused that I wasn't better dressed, for
though that there roaster 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 alter
that, at ]&«., and then 16s. a week, with a con-
tractor 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 t\vo 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 'in 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 '11
be 15s., I expect, and over-work if it 's 16s.

" 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 n
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 nibbish 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 2s, 6d. 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 2s. a week rent, but I 'm Avashed for
and foimd 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.
Tfiere 'd be very little use or pleasure in doing it
when one has so little to count. ^Vhen 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 /
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. 1 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
jit 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, tfiere was sub letting in
street sweeping, I could not hear of any facts to

238

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

prove it. I was told, indeed, bva pentleman who
took great interest in paroch'ml matters, with a
view to "refornis" in them, that such a tiling was
most improbable, for if a contractor sub-let any of
Lis work it would soon become known, and as it
would be evident that the work could be accom-
plished at a lower rate, the contractor would be in
a worse position for his next contract.

Op the Street-Sweeping Machine, and the

Street-Swkepers 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 import-
ance 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 inquisi-
tive pedestrians, so easily attracted together in
the metropolis. In the first instance the machines
were driven through the streets merely to disphiy
their mode and power of work, and the drivers
and attendants not unfrequently came into contact
with the regular scavagers, Avhcn a brisk inter-
change 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 fs
about 5 feet G 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, phiced at equal
distances, and so arranged, that when made to
resolve, 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 mo-
tion, 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 tlie 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 sloji.

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 govern-
ment 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 ilochester, the others
up the river to Fulhani, &c. The average price is
51. 10.9. to 6/. per barge load, but when the freight
has been chiefly dung, as much as %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 appro-
val is not without qualification. "Even that effi-,
cient 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 ima-
gined, 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 suiface ; 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 ma-
chine, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

relaving or repairing of the gas or water pipes.
But' for this arrangement, I was told, the brushes
would pass " clean over" such places, or onlj' dis-
turb without clearing away the dirt. Indeed
irregtilarities of any kind in the pavement are
great obstructions to the efficiency of the street-
sweeping machine.

There are some places, moreover, wholly xm-
sweepable 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 MartinVcourt ; the flagged ways about
the National Ghxllery; and the approach, alongside
the church, to the Lowther Arcade; the pave-
ment 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 indispen-
sable 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 valius of
Vie viechantcal 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,
•ometimes two, sometimes three or four, follow
alongside each other's tracks in sweeping a street,
10 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 computa-
tion, 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 ma-
chine 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 Libour, 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 di-
minished by tlie 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 ACCRU-
ING TO EACH.

Machine Labour.

Manual

Labour.

Difference.

DisTBicn.

Number

of Men

employed to

attend
Machine*.

Annual Wage*

received

by Machine

Men. at Ui$.

a Week.

Number of
men that
would be re-
quired to
sweep the
Streets by Ma-
nual labour.

Annual
Wages that
would be re-
ceived by
Manual La-
bourers, at
15«. a Week.

Number
of
Men displaced
by Machine-
work.

Annual Losa
in Wages to
Manual
Labourers by
Machine-
work.

St Martin's- in -the "I
Fields . . . .|

Reg'^nt-strcet and ]
Pall-mall (see \
table, p. 214) . 1

Other places, con-
nected with Woods -
and Forests . .J

8
12

332 16
400 4

166 8

28
42

£ S.
1092 0

1638 0
£46 0

20
30

£ s.
759 4

1138 16
379 12

Total. . .

998 8

8276 0

2277 12

240

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Hence, we perceive that no less than 60 street-
a weepers are deprived of work by the street-sweep-
ing machine, and that the gross Wage Fund of the
men is diminished by the employment of me-
chanical labour no loss than 2277^. per annum. _

]3ut let us suppose the street-sweeping machine
to come into general use, awd all the men who are
at present employed by the contractors, both large
and small, to sweep the street by hand to be super-
seded 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 1 The following
table will show us : in the first compartment

TABLE SHOWING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF CONTRAC-
TORS' MEN AT PRESENT EMPLOYED TO SWEEP THE STREETS BY HAND,
AND THE NUMBER THAT WOULD BE REQUIRED TO SWEEP THE SAME
DISTRICTS BY MACHINE AYORK, TOGETHER WITH THE AMOUNT OF
WAGES ACCRUING TO EACH.

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* ; 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 tliat would
be received by them at the present rate ; and the
third and last compartment shows the gross ninn-
ber 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.

Manual Labour.

Machine Labour.

Difference.

Number of
Men at pre-
sent employed
by Contractors
to sweep the
streets.

Annual Wages
received by
Contractors'

Men for

sweeping the

Streets, at 15s.

a Week.

Number of
Machine Men
that would be

required to
attend the
Street - sweep-
ing Machines.

Annual Wages
that would be
received by
Machine Men,
at 169. a
Week.

Number of
Men that
would be dis-
placed by
Machine-
work.

Annual Loss
that would
accrue to
Manual
Labourers by
Machine-
work.

Districts at present"
swept by large 1
contractors (see
table, p. 214) .^

Districts swept by \
small contractors .

262
13

£ S.
10,218 0

507 0

75
4

£ S.

3120 0
166 8

187

£ s.

7098 0

340 12

Total . . .

275

10,725 0

3286 8

196

7438 12

Here we find that nearly 200 men would be
pauperized, losing upwards of 7000^. per annum,
if the street-sweeping machine came into general
use throughout London. But, before the intro-
duction 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 re-
gulations, for in parts where the machine has not
been used the same alteration has taken place —
maTcing such allowance, however, it may, per-
haps, 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 ma-

chines 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^. 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 pauperismf .

* I have estimated the whole at 15*. a week the year
through, gangers, " honourable men," regular hands and
all, so as to allow for the diminished receipts of the
casual hands.

t The usual argument in favour of machinerv, 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

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

241

The " laboitr question " as connected with the
sweeping-machine work, requires but a brief de-
tail, 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
upr as a mechanic ; the others have all been la-
bourers, 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 understand-
ing 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 vehi-
cle containing 20*., 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*. weekly are included in the estimate
as to wear and tear given below, for he shoes the
horses and repairs the machines.

The ntt« of wages paid by the machine com-
pany is 16*. a week, so that the full amount of
wages is paid to the men.

But though the company cannot be ranked
»mong the grinders of the scavaging trade, they
mutt be placed among " the drivers."

cfieapcnini;, labour mutt have the ume effect u tnachi-
nerj on prices, and, conacquintly (according to the above

logic), induce a Rreater quantity of cmplriymcnt ! But
nantinft that nuKhlncrv rcslljr doet benefit the labourer
m ouea when the wmrktt, mnd thw^fire the quantity nf

tnthoMra
blbeCMt >
the

it cannot but be an iniury
h" tputUlty qf work U /Lied. Such
: of wood, the reaping of com,
" iwecpinjr of the streets, dec.,
cltsnical labour applied to luch

I am assured, by those who are familiar with
such labour, that the 24 men employed by the ma-
chine 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 lite. In summer
the machine-men sometimes commence this part
of their business at tliree 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 after-
noon ; in winter, from light to light, and after
street there may be yard and barge Avork.

The saving by this scurf system, then, is : —

30 men (honourable trade),
16*. weekly £1248 yearly.

24 men (scurf- trade) doing
same work), 16*. 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 501.
to 60/., with an additional 5/. 55. 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," imtil it became dilncult 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
71. yearly each machine. The capital invested,
then, in twelve street-sweeping machines, in the
horses, and what may bo considered the appur-
tenances of the trade, together with the yearly
expenditure, may be thus calculated : —

Capital op Street-Sweeping Maciiinb .
Trade.

12 machines, 60/. each £720

12 sets of brooms, 6/. 5s. each set , 63

19 horses, 25/. each 475

4 water-carts, 20/. each .... 80

19 sets of harness (new), 71. each set 133

4 barges, 60/. each -200

£1671

242

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Yearly Expenditure.

24 men, 16s. weekly £998

120 sets of brooQU for 12 machines,

4/. per set 480

Wear and tear, &c. (15 per cent.) . 255

Keep of 19 horses, lOs. each weekly 494

Eent (sav) 150

Clerk (sily) 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/. per annum) the probable receipts of
a single year will be : —

Yearly Eeceipts.

£ s. d.
For hire of 12 machines . . 2500 0 0
200 barge-loads of manure,
5^. 155. per barge 1150 10 0

3650 10 0
Yearly expenditure . 2674 0 0

Profit 976 10 0

Of the Cleansing op the Streets by Pauper
Labour.

Under the head of the several modes and cha-
racteristics 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 philo-
sopher 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 v*ing no ordinary or daily trade
of life to get tlieir living hy.

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 propor-
tionate 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 num-
ber 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 Vie paupers of an
over-populated country without making paupers
of the labourers.

Some economists argue that, as paupers are con-
sumers, 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-sup-
porting.

The whole matter seems to hinge upon this
one question —

"Who are to maintain the paupers ? The rate-
paying 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 tlie profits of
the traders, as it should be.

LOXDOy LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

243

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 de-
preciation of labour and their consequent ability
to obtain a greater quantity of commodities for
the same amount of money.

In illustration of this argiiment let us say the
•wages of 600 independent scavagers amount, at
l&s. a week each the year through, to 23,400^. per
annum ; and let us say, moreover, that the keep
of 400 paupers amounts, at 5s. a week each, to,
altogether, 5200/. ; hence the total annual expense
to the several metropolitan parishes for cleansing
the streets and maintaining 400 paupers would
be 23,400/. + 5200/. = 28,600/.

If, however, the 400 paupers be set to scavag-
ing 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/. devoted to the payment of the
operative scavagers, in which case the wages of
each of the regular hands will be reduced from
15s. to 9s. a week ; hence the maintenance
of the paupers will be saddled upon the 600
independent operatives, who will lose no less
than 9360/. per annum, while the ratepayers will
be saved the maintenance of the 400 paupers
and so gain 5200/. 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 1 5,600/.,
■while the ratepayers will gain upwards of 5000/.

The reader is now, I believe, in a position to
comprehend the wrong done to the self-supporting
scaragers 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 con-
cerned, 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 re-
ception 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
bit 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
ttone-breaking, and there was a crowded resort to
them, especially during the prevalence of the
Cunine in Ireland and the immigration of the Irish
peaaanti to England. The favourite resort of the
ragrantt was Marylebone workhouse, and Irish
immigrantt Tery frequently presented slips of
paper on which some tramper whom they had
met with on their way had written " Afarylefjone
itoriAonte" na the best place ut which they could
apply, and these the simple Irish offered as pass-
ports for admission !

Qradnalty, the asylum of these wards, with or
without labour tests, was discontinued, and in one
where the labotir 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 agricul-
tural 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 wag
unpleasant," the vagabond will say to himself
" that working for one's bread, and now I 'ra con-
vinced 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 un-
productive labour is to destroy all the ordinary
motives to toil — to take away the only stimulus to
industry, and remove the very Avill to work which
the labour test was supposed to discover *.

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 ob-
jections 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 in-
dustry 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 willingnes 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 dis-
grace, then it is unjust to turn a man into the
public thoroughfares, wearing the badge of beg-
gary, 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 +. 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 inse 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

• Mr. Sidney Herbert informed me, that when he was
connettcd with the Ordnance Uepartmcnt the severest
punishment they could discover for irih-ucss was the
piling and unpiling of cannon shot; but surely this
was the consummation of ollicial folly ! for iilliness
bfing siinply an aversion to work, it is almost sc-lf-
evidi-nt that it is impfutnble to remove this aversion by
making labour inordinately irksome and repulsive.
Until we understand the means by which work is made
pleasant, aud can discover other modes of employing our
paupers and rriminals, all our workhouse and prison
discipline is idle tyranny.

t 'rhis it done at the Model Prison, Ptnlonville.

244

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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
ladijid 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 oa the back of each man's garb — a
sort of smock-frock — was marked, with sufficient
prominence, " Clerkenwell. Siop it ! " This
public intimation tliat the labourers were not only
paupers, but regarded as thieves, and expected to
purloin the parish dress they wore, attracted public
attention, and was severelj' conmiented upon at a
meeting. The " Stop it ! " therefore was can-
celled, and the frocks are now merely lettered
" Clerkenwell." IJefore the alteration the men
very generally wore the garment inside out.

Tlie present dress of the parish scavagers is
usually a loose smock-frock, costing Is. <6d. to
2s, and a glazed hat of about the same price. In
Bome 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, Avho 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,
2d. and a quartern loaf for each of the three
or more days they were so employed ; {h) the
married men with families, who receive ^s.
and 3 quartern loaves a week to Is. Dxd. 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 Is. Zd. to 2^. 6c^. a day for each of
the six days, or from 7*. (id. to los. a week.

In pp. 246, 247, 1 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#. \\d. a day (paid by Clerkenwell)
to 7*. a week (paid by Ciielsea), and moreover 31
parishes employing 408 applicants for relief (pau-
pers they cannot be called), and paying them wholly
in mone}', the remuneration ranging from 15*.
per week to 7^. M. (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 remunera-
tion was the least. In St. Luke's, Ciielsea, for
instance, where the remimeration is but 7s. a week
and three loaves, the criminations and recrimina-
tions 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 gene-
rail }-.

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 work-
house 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 super-
vision 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 in-
ducements 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 punish*
ment; hence the system of parish labour, which

THE SWEEPS' HOME.

(#Vwn a %ketch taken on the spot.)

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

245

bu 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 dirainutire, still tends to sweeten the
most repulsive Libour. I am informed by an ex-
perienced gangsman under a contractor, that it is
notorions 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 communi-
cative, 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 de-
graded. Why can't they set the thieves and pick-
pockets to sweep] they could be watched easy
enough ; there 's always idle fellers as reckons their-
•elres real gents, as can be got for watching and
Bitch 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.
)!V hat's the meaning of that, sir, I 'd like fur 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 inter-
rupting. 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 1 " Nothink,
bat to make mischief and get what ought to go to
the poor. It '• 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 1 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 thai rather often, he re-
plied :] " 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 state-
ments I have endeavoured to elicit Xh.Q 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
indoor pauper's opinions, querulously as they were
delivered, .is 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 mis-
chievous and degrading tendencies. The payment
to the out-door pauper scavager averages, as I
have stated, 9(/. 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 mar-
ried man with a family, it varies between Is. l\d.
and Is. 2d. a day, with a quartern, and some-
times two quartern loaves; and this, likewise, is oc-
casionally 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 tho
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 tho workhouse, as will only
ward off death through hunger. This " three-

2^6

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

*TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF MEN EMPLOYED BY
SCAVAGING, AS WELL AS THE NUMBER OF HOURS PER DAY

AMOUNT OF WAGES ACCRUING TO EACH,

AND THE TOTAL

No. of mar- Number of|

riedmen single men

Number of

Daily or weekly

employed employed

Superin-

Foremen

wages of the

Parishes.

by parishes by parishes

tendents

or Gangers

married

daily insca-

daily in

employed

employed
by parishes.

parish-men.

vaging the

scavaging

by parishes.

streets.

the streeU.

Paid in Money {by Panshet).

Greenwich

Walworth "1

Newington _f

Lambeth

Poplar

St. Ann's, Soho

Rotherhithe

Wandsworth

Hackney

St. Mary's, Paddington ....

St. Giles's, and St. George's, Bloomsbury .

St. Pancras (South-west Division)

St. Clement Danes

St Paul's, Covent-garden ....

St. James's, Westminster ....

Ditto

Ditto '

St Andrew's, Holbom ....

Marylebone

St. George's, Hanover-square

95. a week.

Liberty of the Rolls . . . .'

75. 6d.

Bermondsey

Is. id. per day.

Paid in Money {by Highway Boards).

St. James's, Clerkenwell (1st Division)

Islington

Commercial Road East ....

Hampstead

Highgate

Kensington

Lewisham

Camberwell

Christchurch, Lambeth ....

Woolwich

Deptford

Paid partly in hind.

St. Luke's, Chelsea

75., and on an ave-
rage 3 loaves each,,
at id. a loaf.

Hans-town „

75., and average 3

loaves per head.

St. James'a, Clerkenwell ....

l5.14<^.aday,and

1 quartern loaf.

Paid wholly in kind.

St. Pancras (Highways)

estimated expense

of food, 25. id.

weekly.

Total

400

* The number of men here given as employed by the parishes in the scavaging of t
from that of the table at page 213 ; but the present table includes all the parish-men

tie streets will be found to diflTer
employed throughout London,

whereas the other referred to only a portion of the localities there mentioned.

LONDON

' LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

I
247

BOARDS IN

THE METROPOLITAN

PARISHES AND HIGHWAY

AND NUMBER OF DAYS PER WEEK, TOGETHER

WITH THE

ANNUAL WAGES OF THE WHOLE.

Number of

Daily or weekly

wages of the

single

Weekly wages
of the

Weekly wages
of Foremen or

Number of
hours per day

days in the week
each parish-man

Total annual wages
of the whole.

Superintendents

Gangers

each parish-man

is employed

including the estimated

parish-men.

employed by
parishes.

emjiloyed by
parislies.

is employed to
sweep the streets.

in sweeping

the

streets.

value of
food and clothes.

£. S. d.

30«. and a house
to live in.

456 16 0

899 12 0

1456 0 0

967 4 0

195 0 0

187 4 0

234 0 0

665 12 0

509 12 0

936 0 0

6 1

. - 93 12 0

.10

267 16 0

234 0 0

187 4 0

166 12 0

304 4 0

^ 2685 16 0

9s. a week.

r 1060 16 0

19 10 0

1*. id. per day.

285. and clothbg.

321 3 4

195 0 0

405 0 0

100/. a year.

295 0 0

202 10 0

228 16 0

265 4 0

171 12 0

358 16 0

226 4 0

202 16 0

140 8 0

834 12 0

161 4 0

70 4 0

2U. and food.

128 5 4

15,919 8 8

243

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

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 eniplojTnent.

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 somewhiit 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 indif-
ferent 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 wean-
ing of their children, as the mother's nutriment is
the cTieapest 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 ttn 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 com-
fortably 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, every-
thing. My wife made a little matter with charing
for femilies 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 work-
house. 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 10s. 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, 10s. 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 125. a week. The 10s, 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 15d. 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 35. 9d. Yes, I lived on it, and paid Is. 6d.
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 Avorth 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 con-
stitution left. But my wife came back again and
got work at charing, and made about 45. a week
at it ; but we were still very badly off. Then I
got to work on the roads every day, and had Is.
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 9d. 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 Is. liid. 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.

L0ND02f^ LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

2id

Yes, indeed, when we had a talk among ourselves,
there ^-as nothing but grumbling heard of.
Some of the tiles 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 pirish 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 disch.irged us, and gave us orders into the
workhouse, and told 'em to see if notliing 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 65.'" [he meant that his ex-
penses, of every kind, exceeded his receipts by 6s.],
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 'g 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*. i}^d. a week and three
loaves, and he have \Gs, I think it is] I don't
drink, my wife knows I don't" [the wil«} assented],
"and it seems as if in a parish a man must be kept
down when he is down, and then bLiraed for it.
I may not understand all about it, but it looks
queer."

From an unman-ud man, looking like a mere
boy in the face, although he assured me he was
nearly 2-1, 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 partikes greatly
in its characteristics of the narratives I gave, to-
ward 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 Am. % week with him, so
that there ought to bare b«en money coming to
him when he grew up. I h»T« Mowtimes heard
abttikr ttatcments from the ignnwl poor, for it is
i^^weable eaoogh to them to fincy that they have
been wronged out of fortune* to which they were
justly entitled, and deprired of the position and
coDsequence in life which they ought to have pos-
MMod " by rights." In the course of my inquiries
amoi^ the poor women who supply the slop
millineni' shops with widows' caps, cap fronts,
women's eoUars, &c., &c., I was told by one niid-

I die-aged cap-maker, a very silly person, that she
would be worth 100,000^, " 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.

T!ie 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^-. a week, perhaps to some neac relative
i 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 ob-
jecting to be relieved of an incumbrance. He
thought he was then about twelve or tliirteen 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 con-
clude that the regular meals of the establishment
were very relishable at first, and that after-
wards their very regularity and their little varia-
tion made the recipient critical.

" When I left, sir," he stated, " they guv me
2s. Gd., 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 1 there vas
such larfuig 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 IQd.,

250

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

but not never I think but twice 1.*. a day at it, and
ofiener 6rf., and in bad weather there was nothink
to be done. If I made Q>d. clear, it was \d. for
cawfee — for I often went out fasting in a morning
-and Irf.for bread and butter, and 1<^ for pudden
for dinner, and another 1(Z. perhaps for beer — half-
pint and a farden out at the public bar — and 2d.
for a night's lodging. I 'vc 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 he.vter ha'penny or penny, for
hintrest, like. Yes, I've made 18(Z. a hevening
at a fair; but there's so many a going it there
that one niins another, and wet weather ruins the
whole biling, the pawiilion, 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 9cZ. a day at first, and reglar
work, and then tliree days and three loaves a
•week, and then three days and no loaves. I
haven't been at it worry 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 carr3'ing a heavy
old leather thing, like a coach box, as seemed to
belong to a family ; and then tlie railway bobbies
made me hold my tongue. I jobbed about in
other places too, but the time's gone by now. 0,
I had a deal to put up with last winter. What is
9f?. a day for three days ? and if poor men had
their rights, tiujes 'ud be different, I'd like to
know where all the monej' 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 \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 1 In course not, nobody
does. Why don't they] Well, how can they 1
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 IJ. — I don't know no other name she
has — wouldn't stind it after ten. 0 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 some-
times a red herring, and I've bought 'em in the
Brill at five and six a penny. Motiier B. charged
\d. for leave to toast 'em on her gridiron.

She i$ a scaly old . / ''ce oft spent all viy

money in a tripe supper at niffht, 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. / '<Z have gone jive miles for anybody for a
2>enn'orih of pudden. No, I never thought of
making away with myself; never. Nor I never
thought of going for a soldier; it icouldnt suit
me to he tied so. What I want is this here —
regular work and no jaw. 0, I'm sometimes as
miserable as hunger '11 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 aa I shall ever marry, though
who knows]''

The third and last system of parish work is
where the labourer is emploj^ed 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 pay-
ment in this wise is usually Is. Qd. 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 depart-
ments I have specified being about equally ap-
portioned 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 9s. in the
stone- yard one week, and the next getting 30s.
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 lodg-
ing-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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

251

not consuine space in presenting it in the narrative
form in which I noted it down. It may suffice
that tlie 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 hira for awhile, and he
left railwTiy work. He went to church, as was
expected of him, and he and his wife liked it
He had forgotten ho w to read, but never was " a dab
at it," and so "didn't know nothing aboutthe litany
or the psalms." He couldn't say as he knew any j
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 h.id he might have saved money,
but he never had. He had no family, and his
wife earned about is. 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 jmid 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 qvuilUits qf the ttreet-tweeping
paupers I do not know that they differ from those
of paupers generally. All men who feel them-
selves 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 1 I believe that
every experienced vestryman will agne to the
truth of the statement that it is very rarely
a confirmed pauper rises from his degradation.
His thoughts and aspirations seem bounded
hj the workhouse and the parish. The reason
appeara to be because the workhouse autho-
rities seek rather to degrade than to elevate
the roan, resorting to erery means of shaming the
paoper, until at last he becomes so utterly callous
to the disgrace of pauperism that he does not
care to alter bis 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 Mon-
day, who when a boy got more kicks than half-
pence, 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 pre-
sent, with regard to their clothing and personal
appearance. One contractor pa3'3 16*'. 6d. per
week; 2 pay IQs. ; 12 (including a Highway
Board) pay I5s. each; 1 pays 14s. 6d. ; 2 pay
14^. ; and 1 pays so low as 12*. On the other
hand, five parish boards of 'guardians of the
poor,' pay only 9c<!. each, to their miserable mud-
larks; one pays 8s.; another 7s. 5d.; a third 7s.;
a fourth compensates its labourers — in :the British
metropolis, where rent and living are necessarily
higher than elsewhere — with 5s. 8d. per week !
whilst a fifth pays 3 men 155. each, 12 men 10s.
each, and 6 men 7s. 6d. each, for exactly the
same kind of work 1 ! ! 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 7s. each, the contractor for another part of
the same parish, pays his 4 men lis. each ; — and
whilst the guardians of a second parish pay only
5s. Sd., the Highway Board pays ISs. to each of
its labourers, for performing exactly the same work
in the same district ! — Mr. Darke, scavenging con-
tractor of Paddington, lately stated that he never
had, and never would, employ any man at less than
16s. or 18s. per week ; — and Mr. Sinnott, of Bel-
videre-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 15s. per week each man* ; but
the economical guardians preferred filth and a full
workhouse, to cleanliness, Christian charity, and
common sense ; — and so the proposal of this con-
siderate 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 un-
successful artist, applies at the parish labour-
market for leave to live by other bbour than that

♦ To the honourable conduct of the above-named
contractors to iheir men, I am >{lad to be able to hear wit-
ness. All the men speak in the highest terms of them.

252

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

which hitherto maintained him in comfort

The usual l.inguage 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 super-
seded by machinery;' or, 'that their late em-
ployer 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
7s. or 8s. a week.' The poor creature, conscious of
his own helplessness, accepts the miserable pittance,
in order to preserve himself and family from imme-
diate starvation

" The council has taken much pains to as-
certain 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 de-
cent 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 emploA^ed by St. James's
parish in 1850, no less than 16," says Mr. Coch-
rane's report, " were married, with from one to
four children each. How the poor creatures who
receive but 7*. Qd. 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. IQs. 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 ren-
dering 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 desiraUt
as possible. To institute a terrible poor law with-
out 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 atro-
cities 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 re-
pulsive. 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 in-
stead 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 125. to 15s. per
week in the market, what moral right have the
giiardians of the 2^007' to pay 5s. 8d. for the same
commodity 'i If the paupers are set to do work
Avhich is fairly worth 15s., 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
10s. 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 16s. each . . . £18,710

450 pauper labourers, 10s. each
weekly 11,700

Lov/er 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

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LOXDOX POOR.

253

more used to ngricultural labour than to last, clog,
or patten making. He considered that he had
not been successful ; .Jtill he returned to London a
richer man by 26.*. Qd. Nearly 20s. of this soon
went for shoes and necessar}' clothing, and to pay
seme arrears of rent, and a chandler's bill
he owed, after which he could be trusted again
where he was knoA\'n. lie applied to the fore-
man of a contractor, whom hf kuew, for work.
" Whnt wage?" said the foreman. "Fifteen
shillings a week," was the reply. " Why, Avhat
did you get from the parish for sweeping ?" " Nine
shillings." ** WcJl," said the foreman, " I know
yon 're a decent man, and you were recommended
before, and so I can give yon four or five days a
week at 2«. Ad. a day, and no nonsense about
hours; for you know yours>Jf I can get 50 men
as hare been parish v^oriers at Is. 9(1. a da>j, and
jump at it, and so you imtstn't be cheeky." The
man closed with the offer, knowing that the fore-
man spoke the tnith.

A contractor told me that he could obtain "plenty
of bands," used to parish scavaging work, at
10*. ^d. to 12«. a week, whereas he paid 16s.

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
donbted 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-
Ciustiluted mart.

It is but right to add, that those parishes which
pay 15». a week are as worthy of commendation
as those which pay 9s., 7s. 6d. and 7*. per week,
and Is. id. and Is. l^d. a day are reprehensible;
and, unfortunately, the latter have a tendency to
regulate i.ll the others.

Of thb Street- Obderlibs.

Tnrs constitntes the last of the four varieties of
labour employed in the cleansing of the public

'.^- r'"-' '■ * London. I have alreadj' treated

itiug manual labour, the stlf-
.!ie labour, and the pauper labour,
and now proceed to tlie cmisideration of thu phi-
lanthropic l;»bour of the street*.

In the first place, let us nndersfcind clearly

what is meant by philiintliropic labour, and how

it is distinguished from pauper labour on the one

hand, and self supporting labour on the other.

Sflf-supportiuff labour I take to be that form of

•. V !i ! til! lis not less, and gcncnilly some-

' is expended upon it. Pauper

i;; ■ 'ther hand, is work to which the

npplicants for pnrish relief ftre " set," not with a

view to the profit to h* derived from it, but partly

as a test of ;' " d partly

as a means : while

T.lnlalilKt, ,.; .. ^;.., ...... ... , i.lcd for

with the fame disregard of
, .;ihc8 pauper labour, but with a

g renter regard for the poor, and- as a means of
alTurding them relief in a less degrading nutoner

than is done under the present Foor Law.
Pauper and philanthropic labour, then, differ
essentially from self-supporting labour in being
non-j^roji table modes of employment; that is to
say, they yield so bare an equivalent for the
sum expended upon the labourers, thnl none, in
the ordinary way of trade, can be found to pro-
vide 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 pro-
vided by law as a matter of social policy, whereas,
in tlie case of pliilanthropic labour, the funds, or a
part of them, are supplied by voluntary contribu-
tions, out of a desire to improve the labourers'
condition. There an', then, two distinguishing
features in all philatithropic labour — the one is,
that it yields no profit (if it did it would become
a matter of tr.ulc), and the other, that it is in-
stituted and maiutuined from a wish to benefit the
labourer.

The Street- Orderly system forms part of the
operations on behalf of the poor adoptetl 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 salutiferons improve-
ments, street cleanliness, and the employment of
the poor, so that able-bodied men may be pre-
vented from burthening the parish-rate, and pre-
served independent of workhouse, alms, and
den;radation." Here a twofold object is ex-
pressed : the Philanthropic Association seeks not
only to benefit the poor by giving them employ-
ment, and "preserving them independent of work-
house, alms, and degradation," but to benefit the
public likewise, by "promoting social and saluii-
ferous improvements and street cleanliness." I
shall deal with each of these objects sepai-atcly;
but first let me declare, so as to remove all sus-
picion 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.

Viaccd economically, philanthropic and p)avpei'
v:ork may be said to ie the regulators (if the
minimum rate of icages — establishing the lowest
point to which competition can possibly drive
down the remuneration for labour ; for it is evi-
dent, that if the self-supporting labourer cannot
obtain greater comforts by the independent exer-
cise 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 sub-
scription for his support. Hence, those who wish
well to the labourer, and who believe that cheap-
ness 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

Ko. XLL

254

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

being ill-remunerated;" and who believe, more-
over, that the labourer is to be benefited solely
by the cultivation of a high standard of com-
fort 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 con-
tinuation of life must be about the greatest
curse that can possibly come upon an over-popu-
lated country, admitting, as it does, of the reduc-
tion of wages to so low a point of mere brutal ex-
istence as to induce that recklessness and
improvidence among the poor which is known to
give 80 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 Associa-
tion 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 12s. instead of 95, or even 7s. 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 depre-
ciation of industry from excessive competition, and
it is in this light that I shall now proceed to con-
sider 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 requi-
sites 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 estahlishment of a standard rate of re-
muneration for labour. This has been pro-
posed 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, {h) 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 em-
ployers, to determine, by the principles of
natural equity, a reasonaUe scale of remu-

neration in the several trades, their deci-
sion being binding in law on both the
employers Jind the employed,

2. By public opinion; this has been generally
proposed by those who are what Mr.
Mill terms "shy of admitting the inter-
ference 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 pay-
ment of a small sum per week out of the
wages of the workmen, towards the form-
ation 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 dediictions
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 em-
ployer is increased without payment of
interest to the workpeople.

C. The institution of ceHain aids or additions
to wages; as —

1. Perquisites or gratuities obtained from the
public; as with waiters, boxkeepers, coach-
men, 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 tJie money value of wages;
by-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

255

1. Cheap food.

2. Cheap lodgings; through building im-
proved dwellings for the poor, and doing
away with the profit of sub-letting.

8. 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 la-
bourer; 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 fiir more complex character. They consist of,
first, the remedies propounded by political econo-
n.ists, 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 popula-
tion, for which the following are the chief
Malthusian proposals : —

a. Preventive checks for the hindrance of

impregnation.
J. Prohibitiou of early marriages among

the poor.

c. Increase of the standard of comfort, or
requirements, among the people; as a
mtans of inducing prudence and re-
straint of the passions.

d. Infanticide ; as among the Chinese.

2. Emigration; as a means of draining off the
surplus labourers.

8. Limitation of apprentices in skilled trades;
as a means of preventing the undue in-
crease of particular occupations. This,
however, is advocated not by economists,
but generally by operatives.

4. Prevention of family work ; or the dis-
couragement of the labour of the wives and
children of operatives. This, again, can-
not be said to be an "economist" remedy.

B. Incrtase qf ike circulating capital, or sum
set aside for tU jpaymeni of the labourers.

1. By govemment imposU. "Governments,"
says Mr. Mill, "can create additional in-
dustry by creating capital. They may lay
on Uxes, and employ the amount pro-
ductively." This was the object of the
original Poor Law (43 Eli*.), which em-
powered the overseers of the poor to
"raise weekly, or otherwise, by taxation
of every inhabitant, <Scc., 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 pro-

position of Mr. Jonathan Duncan is, that
the government should issue notes equiva-
lent 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 cotmtri/;
by the abolition of all restrictions on com-
merce, and the encouragement of the free
interchange of commodities, so that, by in-
creasing 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 excep-
tions, may be termed, more particularly, the " eco-
nomist" 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 over-
work.

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 em-
ployed 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 im-
peding 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 expendi-
ture 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 duii-es
on such foreign commodities as can be 2^'>'o-
duced in this country; with the view of pre-
venting the labour of the comparatively
untaxed and unciviliaed foreigner being
brought into competition with that of the
taxed and civilized producer at home.

F. "Financial r^orm," or reduction of the
taxation of tloe country; as enabling the home
labourer the better to compete with the
foreigner.

The two latter proposals, and that of the exten-
sion of the markets, may be said to seek to
remedy low wages by expanding or circum-
scribing the foreign trade of the country.

G. A different division qf the ^;roce£c/* of
labour. For this object several schemes
have been propounded : —

256

lO^^DOS LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

1. The " tribute sj'stein" of wages ; or payment
of labour according to tlie additional value
which it confers ou the materials ou 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 abolishiiig the
profit of the capitalist employer.

H. A different mode of dhtriliding the pro-
ducts of labour; with the view of abolishing
the profit of the dealer, between the producer
and consumer — as co-operative stores, where
tlie consumers club together for the purchase
of their goods directly of the producers.

I. A more general and equal division of the
-wealth of Uie 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 voluntnr}' sharing of
V-r individual possessions with the less fortu-

* nate or successful members of the com-
munity.
These remedies mav', with a kw excep-
tions (such as the tribute system of wages, and
the abolition of middlemen), be said to constitute
the socialist and communist schemes for the pre-
vention 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 2}^'^'i'ention of the enclosure of com-
mons ; as the means of enabling the poor to
obtain gratuitous pasturage for their cattle.

L. The abolition of 2}i'imoge7iiture ; with the
view of dividing the land among a greater
number of individuals.

M. The holding of the land ly 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 pro-
prietors 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.

0. Cultivation of a higher moral and Chris-
tian character among tfie peopile. 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 state-
ment 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 oppor-
tunity of impartially weighing the merits of etvch,
and adopting that, which in his own mind, seems
best calculated to effect what, after all, we every
one desire — whether protectionist, econornist, free-
trader, philanthropist, socialist, communist, or
chartist — the good of the country in which we
live, and the people by whom we arc 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 pur-
pose, 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 employ-
ment to industry, and this without assignable
limit,"* nevertheless the great difficulty of car-
rying 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 employ-
ment for tlie poor something besides capiUil 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 culti-
vation 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 pro-

* This is Mr. Mills's ?^onA fundamental proposition
respecting capital (see " Principles of Pol. Econ." p. 82,
vol. i.). " What 1 intend to assert is," says that gentleman,
" that the portion (of capital) which is destmed to the
maintenance of the labounrs may— supposiug no in-
crease in anything else— be indefinitely nicreascd, with-
out creating an impossibility of finding them employ-
ment—in other words, if there are human beings cap;i-
ble of work, and food to feed them, they may always be
employed in producing sometliing."

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

poses that their enei^ies should be devoted to the
production of the food which they themselves
cousume ; while the second seeks to create addi-
tional employment iii elFecting that increased
cleanliness which more enlightened physiological
Tiews have not only made more desirable, but
taoght us to be absolutely necessary to the health
and enjoyment of the community.

The great impediment, however, to the profit-
able employment of the poor, has generally been
the unproductive or unavailing character of pauper
labour. This has been niainh' owing to the lact
that the able-bodied who are deprived of employ-
ment are necessarily the lowest grade of opera-
tives ; 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 f)r parish v/oik
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. AU pauper work,
therefore, is generally unproductive or unavail-
ing, because it is either inexpert or luiwilling
work. The labour of the in-door paupers, who re-
ceive only their food for their pains, is necessarily
of the same compulsory character as slavery ;
while that of the out-door paupt-rs, with the re-
muneration often cut down to the lowest subsist'
ing 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 thorough-
fares. Still, from the degrading nature of the
occupation, and the small remuneration for the
toil, pauper labourers have been found to be such
unwiilin;j 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
&pf>e«ct to have been fully aware of the two great
difficnltiM besetting the profitable employment of
the poor, tiz., (1) finding a field for the exercise
of their labours where tliey niijjht be "set on work"
with benefit to the community, and without in-
jury to the independent operatives already en-
gnged in the same occupation; and (2) overcoming
the unwillingness, and consequently the unav.iil-
ingness, of pauper Libour.

The first difficulty Mr. Cochrane has endea-
voured to obviate by taking advantage of that
growing desire for greater public cleanliness which
h.as sriscn from the increased knowledge of the
principles governing the health of towns; and the

second, by giving the m^ n 125. instead of 9^. or
7s. a week, or worse than all. Is. lid. and a
quartern loaf a day for three days in the week,
and 80 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 increas-
ing 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 hesi-
tate to confess, that I look upon Jlr. Charles
Cochrane as one of the illustrious few who, in
these d:iys of unremunerated toil, and their neces-
sary 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 em-
ployment for them, but by rendering that employ-
ment less repulsive.

The means by which Mr. Cochrane has endea-
voured to gain these ends constitutes the system
called Street-Orderlyisni, 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 employ-
ing the poor.

Concerning the first, I must confess tkit the
system of scavagiiig 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 iu demising
the streets, but in keejnng them clean. By the
street-orderly method of scavaging, the thorough-
fares are continually being cleansed, and so never
allowed to become dirty ; whereas, by the ordi-
nary method, they are not cleansed tintil they are
dirty. Hence the two modes of scavaging are
diametrically opposed ; under the one the streets
are cleansed as fast as dirtied, while luider the
other they are dirtied as fast as cleansed ; so that
by the new system of scavaging the public tho-
roughfares are mainUiined 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 proeess — 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 esta-
blished 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 m, at once disgusting and irra-
tional to allow the filth to accumulate in our
streets in front of our houses. If typhus, cholera,
and other pestilences are but divine punishments

253

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 atten-
tion 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 con-
glomerate 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 excre-
tions 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 improve-
ment in the scavaging of the metropolis tends not
only to give the people improved health, but im-
proved 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^. sterling per annum (the Board of
Health estimate it at 2,500,000^.) ; 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,
80 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 dis-
covery 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 thi«ves. The
increase of employment in a nation, however, re-
quires, 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 bene-
fits 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 com-
pensate 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 re-
quired, the dust never being allowed to accumu-
late, 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 cleanli-
ness 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 scavag-
ing ; 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 pre-
judiced 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 unacknow-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

259

ledged by the public, and that society and the
people owe him a heavy debt of gratitude *.

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 Phi-
lanthropic 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 com-
mittee, 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 pre-
vent the accumulation of dirt, by remo\-ing 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/., of which, the Report states, " 200/.
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 cleans-
ing 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,Comhill, 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 pro-
, nounced an improvement, and a public meeting
{ was held in Quildhall (May 4, 1846), at which

• ^- Cochrane U said, in the Reports of the National
: r>pie Aasoeiation, to have expended no leM than
'>ts fortune in the institution of the Street-
. yttemof scavagin;^.

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 en)ployed 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 con-
nected with the established modes of paving,
scavaging, &c.

It is not my intention to write a complete his-
tory 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 20
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. Alartin'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 ob-
served 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 qf great comfort to
the puhiic, and tends to improve the sanitary con-
dition of the ward."

But it is not only in the metropolis that the
street-orderlies seem likely to become the esta-
blished 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 bo
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 inde-
pendence 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 154,625.

The following table shows the route of the street-
orderly operations in the metropolis. A further

260

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

column, in the Report from •which the table has been
extracted, contained the names of thirteen clergy-
men who have *'' weekly read prayers and delivered

discourses to the street-orderlies at their respec-
tive stations, and recorded flattering testimonials of
their conduct and demeanour."

EMPLOYMENT OF STREET-ORDERLIES.

No. of

Wives and

Money
expended.

Localities Cleansed.

Street-

Chihiren

Orderlies.

tWpendent.

£ s. d.

1S43-4

Oxford and Regent Streets ....

256

560 0 0

1845.

Strand ,

—

33 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

306 0 0

1847.

Piccadilly, St. James's, &c

115 0 0

1848.

Strand

35 0 0

1848.

St. Martin's Lane, &c

138

153 0 0

1848.

Piccadillv, St. James's, &c

108

341 3 0

1848-9.

St. Paul's, Covent Garden ....

38 10 0

1849.

Eegent Street, Whitehall, &c

98 0 0

1849.

St. Giles's and St. George's, Bloomsbury .

68 1 0

1849.

St. Pancras, New Road, &c

177 6 0

1849.

St. Andrew's and St. George's, Holborn. .

63 4 9

1849.

Lambeth Parish ......

84 16 0

1851.

St. Martin's-in-the-Fields

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 yearlj' 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^. 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 Asso-
ciation, " 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 tliem ; and to remove with the hand-
brush and dust-pan, from any particular spot,
whatever dirt or rubbish may fall upon it, at the
mojnerd of its dej)oslt. Thus are the streets under
their care kept constantly clean.

" But sweeping and removing dirt," con-
tinues the Report, " is not the only occupation
of the street-orderly, whilst keeping up a careful
inspection of the ground allotted to him. lie
is also the v/atchman of house-property and
shop-goods ; the guardian of reticules, pocket-
books, purses, and watch-pockets; — the expe-
rienced observer and detector of pickpockets ;
the ever ready, though unpaid, auxiliary to the
police constable. Nay, more ; — he is always at
hand, to render tissistauce to both equestrian and

pedestrian : if a horse slip, stumble, or fall, — if
a carriage break down, or vehicles come into col-
lision,— the street-orderly darts forward to raise
and rectify them : if foot-passengers be run over,
or knocked down, or incautiously loiter on a cross-
ing, the street-orderly rescues them from peril or
death ; or warns them of the approaching danger
of carriages driving in opposite directio)is : if other
accidents befall pedestrians, — if they fall on the
pavement, from sudden illness, faintness, or apo-
plexy, 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 destina-
tion, the orderly, in a civil and respectful manner,
directs them on their way. If habitual or pro-
fessional mendicants are importunate or trouble-
some, 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 work-
house or soup-kitchen*.

"Should the system become general {of which
there is note every good jorospect), it will be the

* 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 H<;lborn
saved the lives of the guard and driver of one of Her
Majesty's mail-carts, tne horse having become un-
manageable in consequence of the shafts bein/,' broken.
In St. Mary's Church, Lambeth, a gentleman having;
falkn down in apoplexy, the orderlies who were attend-
ing Divine service, carried him out into the air, and
l)romptlv procured him medical aid, but unhappily life
wa« cxti'iict. Many instances have occurred, however,
in which they have rendered essential service to the pub-
lic and to individuals.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

261

(>f raenmg no less than tek thousand
PBIUOHS and their families from destitution and
distress (in London alone) ; — from the forlorn
and wretched condition which tempts to crimi-
nality and outrage, to that of comfort, independ-
ence, and happiness — produced by their own in-
dustry, aided by the kind consideration of those
who are more the favourites of fortune than
themselves.

*• In conclusion it may be stated, that the
atreet-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
milliong of people, but save a vast annual amount
to shopkeepers, housekeepers, and otliers, with
regard to the spoiling of their goods by dust and
dirt; in the wear and tear of clothes and furni-
ture, by an eternal roiuid of brushing, dusting,
scouring, and scrubbing."

The foregoing extract fully indicates the system
pursued and results of strcet-orderlyism. I will
now deal with what may be considered the lalozir
or trade part of Vie 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
thn- '"'^ --Is can be kept clear of the dirt con-
ti: : deposited by one man; in the

8'. ; •• there is no great traffic, 2000 yards ;

while ill 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 check-
ing any disposition to loiter, or to shirk the work;
to say nothing of the corps of inspectors and super-
intendents.

The division of labour among the street-order-
lies 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 155. per week.

2. The barrow-men, or sweepers, consisting of
men and boys; the former receiving 12*. and the
latter generally 7s. per week.

The tools and implements used, and their cost,
are as follows : — wooden scoops, to throw up the
slop, Is. 2d. each (they used to be made of iron,
w^ghing 8 lbs. each, but the men then complained
that the weight " broke their arms ") ; shovel,
2«. 8A; hoe and scraper. Is. Zd.; hand broom,
8</. ; acarager's broom, U. id.; barrow, I2t.;
covered barrow, 24s.

In the amount of bis receipts, the street-
orderly appears to a disndvantige, as many of
the "regular hands" of the contractors receive
Ids. weekly, and he but 12x. The reason
for this circumscribed payment I have already
alluded to — the deficiency of funds to carry out
the full porposcs 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, Ilolborn ; 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^. a week each man. Jf traders can do
this, 2}liil(^nthropists, who require no profit, at
least should he equoMy liberal. The labourer
never can be benefited by depreciating the ordi-
nary wages of his trade; and I must in justice con-
fess, 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 pros-
perity 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.?. a week. CerUiinly this
labour is not connected with the feeling of pauper
degradation, but it does not look well for the country
that in twelve days SCO 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 r.to
nine thousand, three hundred, and ninoty ap-
plications, 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 ap-
plied the next month.

When an application is made by any one re-
commended 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.

262

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

"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
Eochester, Kent.

"Phil. S ^ 1, R— L— street, High Hol-

born. From Killarne}', co. Kerry. Jired a
gardener. Fifteen years in constabulary force,
for which he has a character from Col. Macgregor,
and received the compensation of 50^., 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.

A^ed 27. Married. Army-pensioner, Qd. a day.
Can read and write. Recommended by Rev. T.
Gibson, rector of Hackney.

"Chas. J , 11, D Street, Chelsea.

Aged 33. Grentleman's servant"

lu ray account of the "rfegular hands" em-
ployed 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 chai-acter 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
ha-cing returned hack to his parish workhouse
or stoneyard." This certainly looks well.

One street-orderly, I may add, is now a re-
putable school-master, and has been so for some
time; another is a clerk under similar circum-
stances. Another is a good theoretical and prac-
tical musician, having officiated as organist in
churches and at conceits ; 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^. 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 Asso-
ciation ; one of them it was ultimately enabled to
establish as a waiter in an hotel resorted to by
foreigners, another as an interpreter, another aa 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," Th^s is very rarely the case with an
ordinary scaviiger.

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^., 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 en-
listed 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 Cal-
cutta, and served under General Nott all through
the Affghan war. I was in the East India Com-
pany'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 dif-
ferent. You must feel queer and serious the first
time you 're in action : it 's not fear — it 's ner-
vousness. 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 no-
thing 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.

" I served during the time when there was the
AfFghanistan retreat ; when the 44th was com-
pletely cut up, before any help could get up to
them. We sufliered a good deal from want of
sufficient food ; but it was nothing like so bad, at
the very worst, as if you 're sufFeiing 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 your-
self—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

i 1

^- — [r _ _ .. . ^

.-■:.\

I--J

iff^'^A^N^

THE ABLE-BODIED TAUPER STEEET-SWEEPER.

{From a Dac^urreoturt hj IJrARD.J

ZOynON LABOUR AND THE LONDOX POOR.

263

veil know braidreds 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 pen-
sion. I believe my illness was caused by the
hardships I went through in the campjiigns, fight-
ing and killing men that I never saw before, and
until I was in India had never heard of, and that
I had no ill-wiil to ; certainly not, why should I]
they never did me any wrong. But when it
comes to war, if you can't kill thera they '11 kill
yon. When I got back to London I applied at
the East India Uoase for a pension, but was
refoced. 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 Avas
new machinery, wonderful machinery, and a many
changM. 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 sca-
venger. 0, I knew nothingabout sweeping before
that. I 'd never swept anything except the snow
in the north of India, which is quite a different
•ort 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*. 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 ia far the best plan for street-clean-
ing. Nothing else can touch it, in my opinion,
and I thotight so before I was one of them, and
I believe most working scavengers tiiink so now,
though they mayn't like to say so, for fear it might
go again their interest

" Ob, 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 w:is
first in London, above 40 years ago.' TTcll, I
sometimes get the price of a pint of beer given to
me by gentlemen making inciuiries, but very
leldooi."

UnUl abont eighteen months ago none but un-
nurried men were employed by the Association,
and these all resided in one locality, and under
one genenl superintendence or system. The
boarding and lodging of the men has, however,
beendtseoBtimMdiiitoat fifteen months ; for I am toM
it was found diAealt to «noo«iage industrial and
•elfxeliant pursuits in connection with public elee-
mosynary aid. Married men are now employed,
and all the street-orderiies reside at their own
homes; the adults, married or single, receiving
12*. a week each ; the boys, fls. ; while to each
man is gntnitouslj supplied a blouse of blue

serge, costing 2s. Qd., and a glazed hat, costing
the same amount.

The system formerly adopted was as fol-
lows ; —

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 Eeport,
"were fixed at 12j. each per w-eek; that is, 95.
were charged for board and lodging, and 35. were
paid in money to each man on Saturday afternoon,
out of which lie 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 ablu-
tion 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 intel-
ligent and active superintendent, the street-order-
lies soon fell into a state of the most exact disci-
pline and order; and when old orderlies wore
drafted off, either to enter the service of parish
boards who adopted the system, or were recom-
mended 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, refresliment, 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 tiian the
conduct of these men, both at home and abroad."

" In their domicile in ilam Yard," cyntiiiues
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 dispo-'^al ; and
it is truly gratifying to the Council to bo 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, fur the
purpose of practice and improvement, as v/ell as
for mutual instruction in this most necessiiry 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

264

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

signatures, distinctly and well written, to a docu-
ment which was submitted to them. Such a fact
will at least prove, that when poor persons are em-
ployed, well fed, and lodged, and cared for in the
way of instruction, the)' do not always mis-spend
their time, nor, from mere preference, run riot in
pot houses and scenes of low debauchery. It is to
l)e borne in mind, however, that one-half of these
men were persons of almost every trade and occu-
pation, 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 emplo^^ment 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 interest-
ing hour, to observe the decorum with which these
poor men demeaned themselves ; and the heartfelt
solemnity with which they joined in the invoca-
tions 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 kind-
ness 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
■RTong. 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 hypocHtes. 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 peojple 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 im-
proving 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 ty-
ranny, 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 independ-
ent labourers.

The residences of the street-orderlies are now in
all quarters where unfurnished rooms are about
Is. 9d. or 2s. a week. The addresses I have cited
show them residing in the outskirts and the heart
of the metropolis. The following returns, how-
ever, will indicate the ages, the previous occupa-
tions, 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 — im-
portant 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 Avhom
a preference was given : — •

The Parish of St. Mary, Paddington. — Ques-
tions asked of Parish Scavagers, applying for
employment as Street-Orderlies, with the an-
swers appended.

Name?— W C .

Age 1 — 35 years.

How long a scavenger ? — Three months.

What occupation previously ? — Grentleman's

footman.

Married or single 1 — Married.

Beading, writing, or other education 1 — Yes.

Any children ? — One.

Their ages % — Three years.

Wages ?— Nine shillings per week.

Any parish relief? — No.

What and how much food tlie applicants have

risually purcluised in a week.
Meat?— 25. 6d.
Bacon ? — None.
Fish ?— None.
Bread?— 2s.
Potatoes? — id.
Butter?— 6rf.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

265

Tea and sugar ? — 1*.

Cocoa?— None.

What rent they pay ?— 2*.

Furnished or unfurnished lodgings 1 — Unfur-
nished.

Any change of dress 1 — No.

Sunday clothing? — No.

How many shirta? — 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 institu-
tions or families ? — No.

When ill ; where do they resort to 1 — 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 firom 20 to 30 15 from 50 to 60
13 „ 30 „ 40 4 „ 60 „ 70.
24 „ 40 „ 50 1 „ 70

The greatest number of any age was 7 persons
of 45 years respectively.

Their previous occupations ImcL been : —

22 labourers. 1 sweep.

3 at ihe business *'all 1 hay binder.

their lives." 1 gasligliter.

3 dustmen. 1 dairyman.

3 ostlers. 1 ploughman.

2 sublemen. 1 gardener.

2 carmen. 1 errand boy.

2 porters. 1 fur dresser.

2 gentlemen's servants. 1 fur dyer.

2 greengrocers. 1 skinner.

1 following dust-cart. 1 leather dresser.

1 excavator. 1 letter-press printer.

1 gravel digging. 1 paper stainer.

1 stone bridling in 1 glass blower.

yards. 1 farrier.

1 at work in the brick- 1 plasterer.

fields. 1 clerk,

1 at work in the lime- 1 vendor of goods,

works. 1 licensed victualler.
1 coal porter.

Therefore, of 67 scavagers
12 had been artisans.
55 ,f ' unskilled workmen.

Henet about five-sixths belong to the unskilled
class of operatiTes.

Time of having been at scavagering.

3 "all their lives "at 4 from 5 to 10 years,
the business. 34 ,. 1 „ 5 „

1 about 27 years. 13 twelve months and

6 from 1 5 to 20 years. less.

6 „ 10 „ 15 „

Hence it would appear, that few have been at
the business a long time. The greater number
have not been acting as scavngers more than five
years.

State of education. — Could they read and write t
45 answered yes. 5 could read onl}-.

4 replied that they 12 could do neither,
could read and write. 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 chv.rch or chapel t
22 answered yes. 1 not often.

9 went to church. 17 never went at all.

4 „ chapel. 1 was ashamed to go.

4 „ the Catholic 1 went out of town to
chapel. enjoy himself.

1 „ both church 2 made no return (1
and chapel. being deaf and

5 went sometimes. 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 chtirch ?
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 i
69 answered no. Thames.

8 replied yes. 2 returned " sometimes."

2 said they did in the 1 was deaf and dumb.

Hence it appeared, that about seven-eighths
never bathe, although following the filthiest occu-
pation.

Were they manned or single t

56 were married. 6 were single.
5 „ widowers.

Thus it would seem, that about ten-elevenths
are or have been married men.

ITovff many children had they t

1 had 16. 6 had 1 each.

1 „ 6. 16 „ none (6 of these

2 „ 5 each. being single men).
11 „ ^ »» 2 returned their family
19 „ 3 „ as grown up without

9 „ 2 „ stating the number.

Consequently 51 out of 61, or five-sixths, are
married, and have families numbering altogether
166 children ; the majority had only 3 children,
and this was about the average family.

2G6

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

What were the ages of their cJiildrea t
11 were grown up. 8 were 1 year and

2 between 30 and 40. under.

9 ,f 20 and 30. 5 were returned at
49 „ 10 and 20. home.

80 „ land 10. 1 returned as dead.

One-half of the scavagers' children, tliercfore, 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 t
13 answered yes. 2 returned no.

13 to the National School 1 replied that his chil-
6 to the llagged School. drcn were " not with

2 to Catholic. him."

2 to Parish. 22 (of whom 16 had no

6 to local schools. children, and 1 was

1 replied that he went deaf and dumb) made

sometimes. 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 tlieir inves work ?
15 returned no. 10 worked "sometimes."

6 said their wives were 12 answered yes.
" unable." 1 sold cresses.

1 had lost the use of 15 made no return (11
her limbs. having no wives and

2 did, but '^ not often." 1 being deaf and
4 did " when they dumb).

could."

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.

WJcat were wives' earnings ?

10 returned them as 1 at 2^. to 4s. per week.

" uncertain." 1 at 3s. or 4s. „

1 " didn't know." 1 at dd. or id. per day.

1 estimated them at 43 gave no returns (hav-

Is. 6d. per week. ing either no wives,

1 at Is. to 2e. „ or their wives not

2 at 2s. „ working).

3 at 2s. or 3s, „ 1 was deaf and dumb.

2 at about 3s. „

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,
v/hile the remainder were stated to gain from Is.
to 45. per week ; about 2s. Qd. perhaps would be
a fair average.

What wages were they themsehse in the halit of
receiving 1

3 had 16s. Qd. per week. 15 had 9s. per week.

2 „ 16s. „ 4 „ 8s.
28 „ 15«. „ 6 „ 7s.

3 „ 14s. U. „ 4 „ Is. l\d. a day

1 „ 14«. „ and 2 loaves.

2 „ 12s. „

Hence it is evident, that one-half receive 15s.
or more a week, and about a fourth 9s.

It was not the parishes, however, but the con-
tractors with the parishes, who paid the higher
rates of wages : Mr. Dodd, for St. Luke's ; Mr.

1 expende

d 5s. Zd.

5s.

•'■ >>

4s. Id.

As. Qd.

As. M.

As.

3s. Qd.

3s.

3 „

2s. Qd.

4 „

2s. M.

2s.

Thus it

would seem,

Westley, for St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate ; Mr.
Parsons, for Whitechapel ; Mr. Newman, for
Bethnal-green, &c.

These \vages the scavagers laid out in the
following manner : —

For rent, per weel.
1 paid As. 1 paid Is. 3ci.

1 „ 3s. Qd. 2 „ Is.

8 „ 3». 1 lived rent free.

14 „ 2s. Qd. 1 paid for board and

33 „ 2s. lodging.

4 „ Is. Qd. 1 lived with mother.

Hence it would appear, that near upon half the
number paid 2s. rent. The usual rent paid seems
to be between 2s. and 3^., 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 2s. Qd.
and the other at 2s.

For Iread, jper weeJc.

4 expended Is. Qd.
1 „ Is. Qd.
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.

that the general sum
expended weekly on bread varies between 2s. and
4s. The average saving from free-trade, therefore,
would be between 4(^. and Sd!., or say 6t?.,per week.
For meat, per week.

1 expended Sd.

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 ex-
pended on meat is between 2s. Qd. and 3s. per
week, about one-third of the entire number ex-
pending that sum. All those who expended Is.
and less per week had 9s. and less for their week's
labour. The average saving from the cheapening
of provisions would here appear to be between
5d. and Qd. per week at the outside.

For tea and sugar, j?er week.

2 paid 2s. Qd. 5 paid Is. M.
1 „ 2s. Ad.

1 „ 2s. dd.
19 „ 2s.

2 „ Is. 9d. 5 no returns : 1 deaf

4 „ Is. 8d. and dumb, 1 bo.ird
12 „ Is. Qd. and lodging, and 3

5 „ Is. Ad. making allowances.
The sum usually expended on tea and sugar

seems to be between Is. Cc^. and 2s. per week.

4 expended 4s.

5 „

3s. Qd.

11 „

3s.

12 ..,

2s. Qd.

2s. Ad.

5 „

2s.

Is. Qd.

r-l

Is. 2d.

9 „

Is.

2 „

lOd.

Qd.

Is. 2d

Is.

8d.

returns

LONDON' LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

267

For jish, 2>er veel:

3 expended 1*. 4 allowed so much per

5 „ 8d. week to wives, or

23 „ 6(1. mother, or landlady.

8 „ 4d. 1 deaf aud dumb.

23 „ Kothing.

Hence one-third spent 6d. weekly in fish, and
one-third nothing.

Foi- lacon, per week.

1 expended 1^. 1 expended id.

2 „ lOd. 43 „ nothing.

1 „ 9d. 4 allowances to wives,

5 „ Sd. &c.

9 ,f 6d. 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 6d. or M.

For luHer, per veel:
1 expended Is. 8c^. 1 expended Zd.

24 „ Is. 2 „ nothing,

11 „ lOf^. 4 made allowances.

12 „ 2>d. 1 deaf and dumb.
11 „ 6rf.

Thai one-third expended 1?., and about one-
sixth spent 10c/. ; another sixth, 8(/. ; and another
sixth, Qd. a week, for butter.

For potatoes, per teed:

1 spent Is. 6 spent id.

2 „ lOd. 28 spent nothing.

6 „ 8rf. 4 made allowances.
1 „ 7d. 1 deaf and dumb.

18 „ 6d.

About one-fourth spent 6rf. ; the greater propor-
tion, however (nearly one-half), expended nothing
upon potatoes weekly.

For clothe, yearly.

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 shil-
lings.

1 said it "all depends."

2 returned " nothing."
1 was deaf and dumb.
(> made no return.

Hence 43 out of 67, or nearly two-thirds, spent
little or nothing upon their clothes.

Had they a cliunge of dress t
28 had a change of dress. 1 was deaf and dumb.
38 had DOt.

AboTe one-half, therefore, had no other clothes
Wt UiMi.4i^ worked in.

Had they amy Sunday cloUiing t
20 had loae. 21 made no return.

45 had noMb 1 deaf and dumb.

Mer» ihaa Wo-itMB, ibm, had no Sunday
dotheg.

How many slnrtt had they t
10 had 3 shirts. 2 had 1 shirt

54 „ 2 „ 1 was deaf and dumb.

The greater ntunber, therefore, bad two shins.

How many shoes had ihei;?

2 expended 2/.

2 „

11. lOa.

2 „

11.5s.

3 „

11.

1 »»

IS*.

* »

17*.

15*.

12*.

■t j>

10*.

\i couldn't

say.

27 had 2 pairs. 1 was deaf and dumb.

89 „ 1 „

Thus the majority had only one pair of shoes.

How much did they s^yend hi drink ?

1 expended 2s. a week. 1 said he " wouldn't

1 „ Is. or 2s. „ say."

2 „ Is. 6d. „ 1 said " that all de-
4 „ 1*. „ pends."

1 „ 6d. „ 2 said they " had none

1 „ dd.OTSd. „ to spend."

7 said they "couldn't 2 expended nothing,
fiiiy." 44 gave no return (1

deaf and dumb).
Hence answers were given by one-ttiird, of
whom the greatest number "couldn't say." (?) Of
the ten who acknowledged spending anything
upon drink, tlie greater number, or 4, said they
spent Is. a week only. But ]

Did (hey save any uioiicy t
36 answered no.
31 gave no reply (1 being deaf and diuab).

What did they in case of illness coming vjwn
themselves or families t
23 went to the dispen- 1 went to the work-
sary house.

8 went to the hospital. 2 said " nothing."

6 „ parish 1 "never troubled any."

doctor. 8 made no reply (1

3 wives Avent to the being deaf and dumb),
lying-in hospital.

The greater number, then, go, when ill, to the
dispensary.

Were thci^i in recti pt of alms ?
56 answered no. 6 made no returns (1

2 „ sometimes. being deaf and

3 „ yes. dumb).

Did the passers-ly give them anything f
49 answered no. 1 answered very sel-

2 „ sometimes dom.

beer. 12 no returns (1 being

1 answered never. deaf and dumb).

2 „ seldom.

Did t/iey receive any rcliif from (In ir jan (.</,es ?
56 replied no. 1 hud 15 lbs. of bread.

4 had 2 loaves and Is. 2 answered "not at
a day as wages. present."

1 had 4 loaves a week. 2 made no returns.

1 „ a 4-lb8, loaf.
Thus the greater proportion (five-sixths), it will
be seen, had no relief; two of those who had re-
lief received 9*. wages a week, and two others
only 7*., while four received part of their wages
from the parish in bread.

These analyses are not merely the characteris-
tics of the applicant or existent streetrorderlies ;
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 1 must call
attention to the circumstance of how rarely it is

268

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

that so large a collection of facta 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 hitjh 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
75. a week each for their work, their yearly outlay,
to " keep the bare life in them," is 1820/. If they
are paid 16s. a week, their outlay is 4160/. ; an ex-
penditure of 2340/. 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 sUiple 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 alFord 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
ujion 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 un-
mixed, 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 re-
quired, 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 elfect a con-
fiiderable saving in the rates.

I now give two estimates, both relating to the
same district: —

Comparative Expense of Cleanino 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 recom-
mended by 779 ratepayers. It is assumed,
from reasonable data, that the superficial con-
tents 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' t
Parish : —
Paid to contractor for carrying away slop,

incluiiing expense of broonjs £800 0 0

Paid to 23 men, average wages, \0s. per
week, 52 weeks 598 0 0

£1398 0 0
" Annual Btpense of Street-Orderly System:—.
30 men (including those with
hand-barrows), at 10a. per week,

52wceks £700 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/. 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 2s. per load ;
it is now 2,^ Qd. 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/. 14s. M., whilst the sum re-
ceived for catlle-manure collected by street-or-
derlies, was 73/. 14s. Od. ; and the slop-expenses
for the four months ending November 29, were
59/. 18s. 6(/., whilst the manure sold for 21/. Qs. Od.
Thus has the slop-expense in these extensive
united parishes been reduced to less than 120/.
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/.,
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 ex-
pense of the street-orderly method with the cost
of employing sweeping-machines : —

"Comparative Expense of CLEANSisa and
Watering tue Streets, &o., 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 recom-
mended by 703 ratepayers. It is assumed,
from reasonable data, that the superficial con-
tents of all the streets, lanes, courts, and alleys
in the parish, amount to about 70,000 square
yards.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

269

•• Espnuea bw Maehinfiy in
St. Martin't Parith.

£ s. d

Annual payment
to street-ma-
chine proprie-
tor UOO 0 0

Watering rate

(1847) 644 16 Bk

Salaries to
clerks 391 0 0

Support of 28
able - bodied
men in work-
house.thrown
out of work,
at 4». 6d. per
man 327 12 0

£2343 8 8i

" Expenditure by the Em-
jJoymetit of Street-Order-
liet. A' *. rf.

Maintenance of
28 street -or-
d«rlies to
keep clean
/O.OOO yards
(presumed
contents), at
aVK) yards
each man, at
12*. per week 768 0 0

Two inspectors
of orderlies,
at lbs. per
week 78 0 0

One superin-
tendent of
ditto, at \l.
per week

Wear and tear
of brooms . .

Interest on out-
lay for bar-
rows, brooms,
and shovels. . 26 19 0

Watering rate
(not required)

Value of ma-
nure pays for
cartage

36 8 0

961 7 0
Annual saving
by street-or-
derlies 1382 1 8i

2343 8 8i

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 Keport set forth that the Committee had
''made a minute investigation into the present
tjttenu of street-cleansing, as adopted under the
raperintendence of Mr. Bird, the parish surveyor,
and under that of the National Philanthropic
Association.

" Prom the 26th of March, •' The street-orderly system
1848. to the 26th of o/cfcan*tng'the said roads
March, 1849, the Direc- in the most eflicicnt
ten €f the Poor expended manner would give the
inpmibtgtmd eleomaing, following expenditure
^.,th0tkrtemdaquar- per annum:—
Ur mae$ under their
dtarge, 3545/. 19*. "</. ; of Thirty-fourmen
this the following items to cleanse 3^
were for cleansing, viz.— miles, at the
£ «. d. rate of 2000 su-

I^bour 249 13 0 perfldal yards

Tools 10 12 0 each man, 12«.

Slop carting.... 496 0 0 per week each 1060 16 0
Proportion of Two iiupecton

foieman's ••• of orderlies, at

lary 30 0 0 15«. per week

7» 6 0

Superintendent
Cost of brooms,
shovels, Ac . .
No allowance for
slop • carting,
the National
Philanthropic
Association
holding that
the manure,
ly col-

78
1U4

83 00

^SS^l

rill

more than pav
for its removal

1325 16 0
Deduct cost of
cleansing by
the old mode 795 5 0

" The apparent extra cost, therefore, would be
530Z. \\s. The vestry, however, would see that
the charge for supporting 34 able-bodied men in
the workhouse is at least 55. per week each, or
442/. per annum. This, therefore, must be de-
ducted from the 530Z. lis., leaving the extra cost
88/. lis. 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 Citi/ hi/
the street- orderly system, Mr. Cochrane says : —

"The number required "Expenses of Cleansing and
for the whole surface (in-
cluding the footways,
courts, ic.)would be about
250 men and boys.

" Upon the present sys-
tem this number would be
formed in three divisions: —

"First division.— 170 to
begin work at 6 a.m., and
end G p.m. Second division,
called relief and aids.— 30
boys bovs 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 Gs. to
12«. per week.
These 250 men and

boys would cost for

wages during the

year about £5100

Twelve foremen, at

4<V. perannum 480

Two superintendents

at.VW.each 100

Brooms, &:c 325

Barrows 100

Two clerks, at 100/.

each 200

Manager 100

Annual expense
under the imper-
fect system of
street-cleansing . £18,025
"Number of men em-
ployed, 58.

" State of the Streets :—
Inhabitants always com-
plaining of their being
muddy in winter and dusty
in summer."

530 11 0

£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 ex-
pense of its removal.

"Some Mop-carts will,
however, l)e occasionallv
required for Smithfiela-
market and similar locali-
ties; making, therefore,
ample allowance for con-
tingencies, it is confidently
considered that the expense
for cleansing the whole of
the city of London by
street-orderlies would not
exceed tKKXi/. per annum."

Two estimates, then, show an expectation of a
yearly saving of no less than 2320/. to the rate-
payers of two parishes alone ; 938/. to St. James's,
and 1382/. 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,

Watering the Streets, Sfc,
of the City of London, on
the old ftystem qf Scava-
ging.from June, 1845, to
June, 1846.

Annual
Expense.

To scavaging con-
tractors ...

Value of ashes and
dust of the city
of London, given
gratis to the
above contrac-
tors in the year
ending 184<;, and
now purchased
by them for the
year ending 1047

Estimated contri-
butions levietl
for watering
streets

Salaries to survey-
ors, inspectors,
beadles, clerks,
&c., of Sewers'
Office, according
to printed ac-
count, March 3,
1846

Expense for clean-
ing out sewers
and gully-holes
(not known)

£6040

5500

4000

2485

270

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

however, to express my opinion that even in
the reasonable prospect of these great savings
being effcofced, it is a paltry, or rather a false,
becattse raiscalled, economy to speculate on the
{lavnrent of 10s. and 12s. a week to street-
labourers in the parishes of St, James and St.
Martin respectively, when so many of the con-
tractors pay their men 16s. weekly. If this
low hire be justifiable in the way o( an experi-
ment, it can never be justifiable as a continuance
of the reicard of labour.

If the street-orderly system is to be the means
oi jpenruinently reducing the wages of the regular
scavagers from 16s. to 12s. 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 felloAvs encourage it as heartilj^ 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 viean
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 2o per
cent., then, indeed, the poor man may cry, ''save
me from ray 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 intro-
duced 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 de-
sultory 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
eeems undeniable, from the concurrent assent of
all parishioners who have turned their attention
to it.

It remains to show the expenses of the Philan-
thropic Association, for I am unable to present an
account of street-orderlyisra 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^. and 7000?. .

"Balance Sheet.

ReceijAs and Ezjoenditure of tite National Phi-
lanthro2nc Association, for tli^ Promotion of
Social and Sanatory Improrements and the
Employment of the Poor, from 29^/4 Septemler,
1846, i^ 29lh September, 1849.

Dr.

To subscrip-
tions an(\ do-
nations from
the2<)thSe]!t-
ember, 1U4(5,
to '29th Sept-
ember, 1849

Balance due
to president,
29th Septem-
ber, 1«49

£ I. d.

1393 16 7
15739 10 9

7133 16 4

Cr. £

By balance duo
to president,
as per Balance
Sheet, Sept.
29, 1846 .... 2935

Secretary's sa-
lary 300

Rent of offices,
&c 2-!8

Salaries to

clerks, mes-
sengers, Arc. 3/1

Do. to collectors 312

Commission to
do 130

Printing and
stationery . . 55G

Hire of rooms
for public
meetings 60

Advertisements
and newspa-
pers 244

Bill posting.... 8

Salaries to per-
sons in charge
of free lavato-
ries in Ham-
yard, Great
Windmill-st.,
St. James's . . 10

Brooms, bar-
rows, and
shovels, for
the use of
street - order-
lies 80

Charges of con-
tractors and
others for
removal of
street slop»
&c 58

Food, lodging,
and wages to
street - brder-
lieS)domicilcd
in Ham-yard,
Great Wind-
mili-strect,St.
James's 980

Clothing for the
street - order-
lies 13

Baths provided
for do 5

Sundry ex-

penses for of-
fices, inchid-
ing postage-
stamjjs, &x;... 92

Law expenses. . 8

Builder's charts
for free lava-
tories in Ham-
yard 95

Amount ad-
vanced to the
late secretary
for improving
the dwellings
of the poor . . 20

Farther ad-
vances made
by president
on various
occasions for
the general
purposes of
the Associa-
tion 592

17 9
0 0

10 0

19 4

18 1

5 G

17 0

10 0

5 3
12 6

3 2
15 10

7 11

1« 10

0 0

7133 IG 4

Audited by us, Oct, I9th, 1849, Charles Shepherd
Lcnton, 3.3, Leicester-square; and Joseph Chikl, 43,
Leicester-square,"

LOSDON LABOUR AXD TEE LONDON POOR.

271

Steket-O&perlies. — City Scrveyoe's 3
Report.
I nATV been fiivoured with a Report "upon street-
cleannng and in reference to the Street-Orderly
Sjstega," by the nnthor, Mr. W. Haywood, the
Smrveyor to the City Commission of Sewera,
who has invited my attention to the matter, in
consequence of the statements which have ap-
peared 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 con-
demns 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, compre-
hends 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. Rartholomew, St.
James's, Duke's-place, Aldgate, and others, have
been added to the jurisdiction of the Sewers Com-
mission 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 323,907, makbg a total of 770,157
sqnare yards.

" I am fully impressed," observes Mr. Haywood,
"with the great importance to a densely-popu-
lated 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 im-
portance to the former, and which is indispen-
sable 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 thoroughferes in a
high degree of cleanliness is exceedingly great."

Mr. Haywood expresses his opinion that streets
"ordure soddened" — smelling like " stable yards,"
— dangerons to the health of the inhabitants—
unpasMble from mod in winter and from dust in
summer — and inflicting constant pecuniary loss,
" can only exist in an appreciable degree in
thoronghfaret swept much less frequently " than
the streets within the jurisdiction of the City
Commissioners of Sewers. In this opinion, bow-
ever, Mr. Haywood comes into direct collision
with the statemeaU put forth by the Board of
Heakh, who hare insisted upon the insanitary
state of the metropolitan streets, more strongly,
perfai^ ia their several Beporti^ than has Mr.
Cochnne.

But Mr. Haywood believes that not only are
of the Board of Health as to the

unwholesome state of the metropolitan thorough-
f.ires 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 poi.rer 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 thorough-
fares, the facilities for eflicient sweeping are as
great, if not greater, than in other portions of
your jurisdiction. For raanj'- 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-dbsorlent 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 pave-
ments, the djiily sweeping is highly essential ; but
in all these courts the surface presents a condition
which renders good clean sweeping a compara-
tively 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 con-
stantly remove the manure and refuse, and, failing
this, if there be only cessation for six hours
out of the twenty-four of the * continuous cleans-
ing,* it becomes at once a periodical cleansing but
a degree in advance of the daily sweeping, which
has been now for years in operation witliin 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

No. XLIL

272

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 prin-
ciples 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 Com-
missioners were so pleased with the appearance of
the streets, when cleansed on the street-orderly
system, which "was certainly much io he ad-
mired" that they introduced a somewhat similar
system, calling their scavagers " daymen," as they
had the care of keeping the streets clean, after a
daily morriing 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
Bcavaging 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 d\em,
was 1298

Ditto during winter, per man per

diem, was ..... 1016

The average of both summer and
winter months was, per man per
diem 1189

The cost of the experiment was for
daymen (including brooms, bar-
rows, shovels, cartage, &c. * . £1450 18

One Foreman at . . . . 78 0

And the total cost of the experiment . £1628 18

" The daily sweeping," Mr. Haywood says,
" which for the previous two years had been esta-
blished throughout the City, gave at that time
very great satisfaction. It was quite true that the
streets which the daymen attended to, looked su-
perior to those cleansed only periodically, but
the practical value of the difference was consi-
dered by many not to be worth the sum of money
paid for it. It was also felt that, if it was conti-
nued, 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
I the whole City only received, from that time to
I the present, the usual daily sweeping."

The "present" time is shown by the date of
Mr. Haywood's Keport, October 13, 1851. The

« Tlie wa^es paid are not stated.

reason assigned for the abandonment of the sys-
tem 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 daj-men 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 wo7i.h 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. Hay wood then invites attention to the sub-
joined 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, &e., 20, Vere Street, Oxford
Street. January 26tli, 1846.

'• Approximation to the total Expenses connectcl 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 6 brooms £. s. d.

for each man 25 18 10

For carting 99 1 9

For advertising 66 0 0

For rent of store-room, 3/. 14*.; Clerks'
salaries, 12^.; Messengers,6/. 5*. ; wooden
clogs for men, 21. 5s. lOrf. ; expenses of

washing wood pavement, 5/ 28 4 10

Expenses of barrows 24 14 0

Christmas dinner to men, foremen, and

superintendents (97) 15 12 6

ai men (averaging at 2s. 6d. per day) for

9 weeks 573 15 0

4 superintendents at 25s. 4d., foreman at
IHs., cart foreman 20s., storekeeper Itts.,
chief superintendents 21., 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 ex-
pense £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 informa-

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

273

TABLE SHOWING THE COST OF STREET CLEANSING AND DUSTING WITHIN
THE JDEISDICTION OF THE CITY COURT OF SEWEllS.

for Scaven-
Dusting, or
nging only
year.

Com-

le of

Con-

scpa-

Ill

Leading or Principal feature

1'!

Date.

"^ui^a

in the Regulations

^^s;s

rj o,S

Mode of
whether
Dusting
ging were
or togeth

for the Dusting and Cleansing.

Sum pai
ging an
for Sea
during t

Sum rec
mission
Dust wl
tracts V
rately.

Total
by the r
Scaveng
ing.

Year ending
Michaelmas,

1841

separately

Main streets of largest
traffic running east and
west cleansed daily,
other principal streets

£ S. d.

4590 6 0

£ *. d.

£ 8. d.

4590 6 0

1842

separately

every other day, the
whole of the remainder
of the public ways tmce
a week ; dust to be re-
moved at least tirice a

3633 17 0

Amounts p
and recei^
are balan

3633 17 0

1843

together

week.

Average

2084 4 6

per Annum for 3 Years .

2084 4 6

3436 2 C

1S44

separately

Main line of streets cleansed
daily, other principal

3826 12 6

paid
ceived
lanced

3826 12 G

streets every other day,

and all other place twice

5 s^

in every week ; dust to

g'S 2

be removed at least tmce

1 e3 a)

>»

1845

separately

a week.

Average per

2033 2 0
Annum of

the 2 Years

28SS 2 0

3329 17 3

>»

1846

separately

6034 6 0

1354 5 0

4680 1 0

1847

separately

Daily cleansing throughout

8014 2 0

4455 5 0

3558 17 0

1848

separately

every public way of
every description ; dust

7226 1 6

1328 15 0

5897 6 6

1849

together

to be removed twice a
week.

7486 11 6

7486 11 G

1850

together

6779 16 0

1851

together

Average per Ann«m

6328 17 0
of the last

6 Years .

6328 17 0

5788 11 6

NoTB. — From 24lh June, 184fl, to 24th June, 1847. the Commission made their own experiment upon the Street-
Ordcrty System— the expenies of such experiment are included in the above amounts. In 1849 the area of the
of the CommiMion wa« increased by the addition of various precincts under the City of London

"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 bo 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 7s. dd. for that period,
or at the rate of about £01 per week.

tion u to the expenses of the system, furnished
by the experiment or demonstration made by the
Association within your jurisdiction.

" The total cost of the experiment was
£987 it. Id., and, deducting the chnrges 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
uso, there is left a balance of £822 7<. Zd. as
the clear cost of the experiment.

274

LOSDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

" Now the total area of the carriage-
way of the City of London waa at
that time

" And the area of the foot-way . .

Squ. Yards

418,000
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 . . 18,690

" Making a total of 49,260

" The total area of foot-way and carriage-way
cleansed was therefore 1-1 5th of the whole of the
carriage-way and foot-way of the City ; or, taken
separately, the carriage-way cleansed was some-
what more than l-14th of the whole of the City
carriage-way.

*' It has been seen also that the total cost of
cleansing this l-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 propor-
tion for the remaining 13-14ths of the whole car-
riage-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,
itisassumed, would not havebeenthe case had they
also been cleansed upon the street-orderly sys-
tem; and moreover, as the majority of the streets
cleansed were those of large traffic, a larger pro-
portion 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 dis-
trict comprehending streets of all sizes and de-
grees of traffic; but if I assume that the l-14th
portion of the Citj- cleansed represents 1-llth of
the whole in the labour needed fur cleansing the
•whole of the City upon the same system, I be-
lieve I shall have made a very fair deduction,
and shall, if anything, err in favour of the expe-
riment.

" Estimating, therefore, the expense of cleans-
ing the whole of the City carriage- v,- ay 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^.

" It will be seen that there is a remarkable
difference between this estimate of 52,052^. per
annum and that of 18,000/. per annum estimated
by the Association, and given in their Report of
the 26th Januar\', 1846 ; and what is more re-
markable is, that my estimate is framed not upon
any assumption of my own, but is a dry calcula-
tion 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 tlie 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, j\s Mr. Haywood says, "remark-
able"— 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 sec
whether the above conclusion is warranted by tlie
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 "day-
men"— that is to say, 47,000 superficial yards of
the principal thoroughfares were kej^t 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 betv/een 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/. 18s. Now if the expense of cleansing
47,000 superficial yards upon the continuous
method was 1529/., then, according to Cocker,
770,157 yards (the total area of the public ways
of the City) would cost 25,054/.; and, adding to
this 6328/. for the sum paid to the contractors
for the daily scavaging, we have only 31,382/.
for the gross expense of cleansing the whole of
the City thoroughfares once a day by the "regular
scavagers," and keepitifj them clean aflencards bj'
a body similar to the street-orderlies — a difference
of upwards of 20,000/. between the facts and
figures of the City Surveysr.

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/. per annum, for, by
his own showing, it actually cost the authorities
for the one year when it was tried there, only
1529/. for 47,000 superficial yards, at which rate
770,000 yards could not cost more than 31,500/.,
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 over-
sight 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, tliat 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 " day-
men" shows, could not possibly exceed 32,000/.,
and might and probably would be much less, when
we tiike 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 sura above cited, but

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

275

lehich' would be no longer needed were the
orderlies employed, such work being performed
by them at the commencement of their day's
lab I :;r«-: so that I am disposed to believe, all things
cc:;>..c;ed, that somewhere about 20,000/. per
ainiu::i might be the gross expense of continuously
deaasing the City. Mr. Cochrane estimates it at
18,000.'. But whether the admitted superior
cleanliness of the streets, and the empiovment 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, howerer, the increased cleanliness
effected by the street-orderlies is to be brought
about by a decrease of the wages of the regular
from 165. to 12*. a week, which is the
ifc upon which Mr. Cochrane forms his
then I do not hesiUite to say the City
aathonttes 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 ex-
ample to ail the metropolitan parishes, in refusing
to grant contracts to any master scavagers but
such as consent to deal fciirly 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 re-
quirement 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 ex-
pense 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«. 1^ and a loaf per day, or even nothing, ex-
cept tiieir bod, 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
wel&re 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«. to 12j. 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 hurUim to the parisL
But is not a reduction of the scavager's wages
to ikm cxtflBt of 25 per cent, a week, more
likdj to ene<mraf/e than to prevent such a result?
This is the weak point of the orderly system, and
one wlucfa gentlemen calling themselves p/dlan-
Aropittt akonld really bliuh to be parties to.

AftwaB, tiM apomi to which I a.-n led is thi<^—
the itreet-ordeilj qratsm it incompacably the best
■oda •£ auwagiug, and the payaaat •£ the men by
" hdMuralW masters the beat mode of employing
the aeaTaganL The evils of the scavaging trade
appear to me to spring chiefly from the parsimony
of tba parish authoritioe srthar eaqdoying their
own paapers without adeanate rimiimiwilMB, or
else paying soeh prices to UMeoiiinatonaa almost
sccessicatca the ander-payment of the men in
their anploy. Were I to till a volume, this is all
that caaU be said on th« matter.

Of the

Jet and Hose'

SCAVAGINa.

SrSTEM OP

TuERE 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 ISiS, 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
j passengers to remove the offal of the butchers and
j poulterers' stalls in the metropolitan markets, and
I in consideration of which services it was forbidden
i to kill them — down to the mechanical sweeping
I of the streets of London, and even to Mr.
: Cochrane's excellent street-orderlies.
I Besides the plan suggested by Mr. Cochrane,
I whose orderlies cleanse the streets without wet-
I ting, and consequently without dirtying, the sur-
j face 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 sicceping the dirt of the
I streets into the sewers, tlirough the momentum
i of the stream of water, dispensing altogether with
j the scavager's broom, shovel, and cart.
I In order to complete this account of the sca-
I vaging of the streets of London, I must, in con-
clusion, say a few words on this method, advocated
as it is by the Board of Health, and sanctioned by
scientific men. By the aj/plication 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 tlie street's surface with force enough
to toash 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 in-
dustry 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 ia
carried by traffic into another. By the subdivibion
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 upi)n
multitudes of private individuals." [The grammar

276

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

is the l?oard of Health's grammar,] " It is a false
pecuniary economy, in the case of the poorest in-
habitants of court or alley, who obtain their liveli-
hood 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 \d. ^Kr \ceek 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 2d. per hour." [This is at the rate of 25.
a day ; did this most innocent Board never hear
of Avork yielding Is. 6cf. a week] But the
sanitary authorities seem to be as fond as teeto-
tallers 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 objec-
tion to the plan, though it certainly admits of a ques-
tion as to the durability of the roads — the macada-
mized 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 Metro-
politan Commissioners of Sewers, conducted his
experiments with such jets as could be obtained
from the water companies* mains in eligible places;
tut the pressure was low and insufficient. Never-
theless, it appeared that, taking the extra quan-
tity of water required at the actual expense of
pumping, the paved surfaces might be washed
clean at one-half the price of the scavngers'
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 clean-
sing 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 tempera-
ture, 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 win-
ter— 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 tlie unhealthiness or depressed con-
dition of districts, its application to close courts
and densely-populated localities, in which a low
sanitary condition must obtain, is of primary im-
portance. 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
sxurface ; 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 condi-
tion of atmosphere of the courts and of the con-
tiguous 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), l\d.

" Lloyd's-court (time, ten minutes), 3^^.

" 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 intolei'alle,"
[sic] " and looked disgusting. Besides an abun-

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

277

dance 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 Rother-
ham, 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 prin-
cipal thoroughfares, was experimentally cleansed
by this process : "The carriage-way is from 20
to 24 feet wide, and about 150 yards long. It
WM 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*. 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 lest 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 con-
stitute 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
83 miles weekly, or 4576 miles yearly. The
qu.-intity 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
!(/. per 1000 gallons (57^. is. per annum), although
the price obtained by the Water- works Company
was 64c/. per 1000 gallons (371/. 16«. per annum).
*' I now proceed/' he says, " to the cost of labour :
4676 miles per annum is equal to 14^ miles for
each working day, or to six sets of two men
cleansing 2^ miles per day each set To these
mutt be added three horses and carts, and three
carters, for the removal of such cUbris as cannot
be washed away and for such part* of the town as

cannot be cleansed by this system, making a total
of fifteen men. Their wages I would fix at 50/.
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 icater supj>ly should le 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/.

The Sheffield account is divested of all calcula-
tions as to house-dust and ashes, and the dftarge
for watering-carts ; but, taking merely the sum
paid to scavaging contractors, and assigning 1000/.
(out of the 2485/.), 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/., in London, by the ordinary mode, it was
upwards of 140/. 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-coiurt, &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 sys-
tematically ; 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 pos-
sible. 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 sur-
face of the London streets. It is certainly doubtful,
to say the least, whether so much additional mois-
ture might improve the public health, which the
Board are instituted to protect; rain certainly con-
tributes 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

278

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR,

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 legis-
lation and management is unknown, the scavag-
ing of tlie streets — so frequently matters of private
speculation with us — is under the immediate
direction of the municipality, and the Govern-
ment 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/.), when sold by
auction in the mass ; and 3,800,000 francs (equal
to 152,000Z.) 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/.) per annum
in 1831 the value was 166,000 francs (6640/.);
and since 1845 the price has risen to the sum first
named, viz., 500,500 francs (20,020/.); from
whickj however, is to be deducted the expense of
cleansing, &c. I may add, that the receptacles
alluded to are large places provided by Govern-
ment, v/here 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 work-
ing 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/. 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/. 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/. per week*, or, in round numbers,
about 1,000,000/. 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/., that is to say,
1,000,000/. for repairing the old roads, and
1,250,000/. 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 sura annually expended in both labour and
materials, as well for relaying as for repairing
the roads.

The granite-built streets cost, when relaid,

* At p. 133 the sum of Ift,22.'/. is said to be expended
in repairs annually ; it should have been weekly.

about 11,000/. the mile, of ten yards' width,
which is at the rate of 12«. 6c/. the square yard,
materials and labour included, the granite (Aber-
deen) being 1/. 5s. 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/. per street mile
(ten yards wide) — 5s. the superficial j-urd being a
fair price for materials and labour.

"Wood pavement, on the other hand, costs about
9680/. a mile of ten yards' width for materials
and labour, which is at the rate of II5. the super-
ficial yard.

The cost of rejyairs, materials and labour in-
cluded, is, for granite pavement about l.^c/. per
square yard, or 100/. the street mile of ten yards
wide; for "Macadam" it is from 6d. to 35. 6d.,
or an average of Is. Qd. per superficial yard, which
is at the rate of 1320/. 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 : —

Kepairing gnmite-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 100/. per mile . . 40,000

Repairing 1350 miles of macadam-
ized streets, at 1320/. per mile . 1,782,000

Repairing five miles of wood, at

100/. 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/. per mile .

Relaying 1350 miles of macadam-
ized streets, at 4400/. per mile

Relaying five miles of wood-built
streets, at 9680/.

£
4,400,000

5,940,000

48.400

£10,388,400

But the above refers only to the road, and be-
sides 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 pavinff is 8c/. per foot superficial.

L0XD02T LABOUR AND THE LOXDON POOR.

279

when laid — granite curb 1*. 7(?. per foot run, and
granite channel 12*. per square yard.

" Now, presuming that three-fourths of the
roads," says my informant, "have paved foot-
paths 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 there-
fore amount to

£ s.d.
Three-fourths of 1755 miles of

streets paved on each side,

six feet wide, at Zd. per foot

superBcial .... 2,779,392 0 0
One-half of 1 350 miles of maca-
damized roads with one foot

of granite channel on each

side, at I2s. per yard square . 458,587 4 5

One-third of 1 755 miles of road

with granite curb on each

side, at \s. 7d. 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 constmcting 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
mte of 2,500,000/. per annum, which, added to
1,822,500/., gives i,322,500/., 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 conse-
quently 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 Com-
missioncn appointed for the purpose ; and from
dear-bought experience I can say they are a pub-
lie nuisance, aud would earnestly caution specu-
lating builders against taking building ground or
erecting hou«eB in any place where the roads are
under their control. The Commissioners are gene-
rally old retired tradesmen, aud have very little to
occupy their attention, and are often quite ignorant
of their duties; I haTe 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 ; k that as
the bills given for the materials keep running,
the builder, when they fall due, is ruined, for
his creditors will not tike his unlet houses
for their debts, and no one else will pur-
chase them until let, for none will rent them

without proper accesses. I feel certain that ia
those parts where the roads are m.ide by Com-
missioners 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/.
sterling, and require nearly 2,000,000/. 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 improve-
ments effected, out of the Coal Duties receivable
by the Corporation of London in the character of
trustees for administration or otherwise, sinoe the
same were made chargeable by Parliament for
such purposes in the year 1760," the following
items are given relating to the cost of the forma-
tion of new streets and improvements of old

Street Improvements for^ning Nexo
Thoroughfares.

Amount raised
for Public
Works, &c.

Building the bridge across the river £. s. d.

Thames, from Bhitkfiiars, in the city
of Loudon, to Upper Ground-street, in
the county of .Surrey, now cilltnl
Blackfriars Bridge, and forming the
avenues thereto, and embanking the
north abutment of the said bridge —
(Entrusted to the Corporation ot the
city of London) 210,000 0 0

Makmg a new line of streets from Moor-
fields, opposite Chiswell-street, to-
wards the cast into Bishopsgate-street
(now Crown-street and Sun-street),
also from the east end of Chiswell-
street westward into Barbican— (Cor-
poration of the city of London) . . IC,iX)0 0 0

Making a new street from Crispin-street,
near Spitalfields Church, into Bishops-
gate street (now called Union-street),
in the city of London and in the
countyof Middlesex— (Commissioners
nametl in Act 1», George IiL,c. 711) • !>.000 0 0

Opening communications b.-tween Wap-
ningstreet and IlatclHfe-highway, and
between Old Gravcl-lanc and Virginia-
street, all in the county of Middlesex
— (Conunissioners ap|)ointed under
Act 17. Geo. IIL,c. 2i) . . . 1,()00 0 0

Formation of F.-irringdon-strcet, removal
of Fleet-market, and erection of Far-
ringdon-market, in the city of London
—(Cori)oration of the city of London). 2.W,000 0 0

Formation of a new street from the end
of Coventry-street to the junction of
Newport-street and Longiicre (Cran-
Ixmrn-strcet), continuing the line of
.•■trett from Waterloo Bridge, already
completed to Bow-street (Upi>or Wef-
lington-strect»,.and thence northward
into Broad-street, llolboin.nnd tlunce
to Charlotte-street, Blf)omM!)ury, ex-
tending Oxford-street in a direct line
througli St. (JiUs's, so ns to commimi-
cate with iiolbom at or near South-
ampton-street (New Oxford-street);
alto widening the northern and

280

LONDON LABOUR AND TUE LONDON POOR.

436,500

Brought forward
southern extremities of Leman-street,
Goodman's-fields, and formins; a new
street from the northern side of
Wliitechapel to the front of Spital-
lields Church (Commercial-street),
and forming a new street from Rose-
mary-lane to East Smithfield, near to
the entrance of the London -docks ;
also formation of a street from the
neighbourhood of tlie Houses of Par-
liament 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) GTo.OtK) 0 0
Note — The Commissioners of Her
Majesty's Woods have been autho-
rised to raise further moneys on the
credit of the duty of Id. per ton for
further improvements in the neigh-
bourhood of Spitalfields, but the
Chamberlain is not officially cogni-
zant of the amount.
Forming a new street from the northern
end of Victoria-street, Holbom (formed
by the Corporation to Clerkenwell-
green, all in the county of Middlesex)
— (Clerkenwell Improvement Com-
missioners) 25,f'00 0 0

Formation of a new line of streets from
King William-street, London Bridge,
to the south side of St. Paul's Cathe-
dral, 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
Holbom Bridge and Field-lane, and
effecting an improvement in Grace-
church-streeet and Ship Tavern-pas-
sage, all in the city of London— (Cor-
poration of the city of London) . . 500,000 0 0
Finishing the new street left incomplete
by the Clerkenwell Imf)rovement Com-
missioners, from the end of Victoria-
street, Farringdon-street, to Coppice-
row, Clerkenwell, all in the county of
Middlesex— (Corporation of the City
of London) 00,000 0 0

Total cost of forming the above-men-
tioned new thoroughfares . . . 1,764,.500 0

Lnproving existing Thoroughfares.
Improving existing approaches, and
forming new approaches to new Lon-
don Bridge, viz., in High-street,
Tooley-street, Montague-close, Pep-
per-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 Eaat-
cheap. Little Eastcheap, Star-court,
Fish-street-hill, Little Tower-street,
Idol-lane, St. Mary-at-hill, Crooked-
lane. Miles-lane, Three Tun-alleyf
Warren-court, Cannon-street, Grace-
church-street, Bell-yard, Martin's-lane,
Nicholas-lane, Clement's-lane, Ab-
church-lane, Sherbome-lane, Swi-
thin's-lane, Comhill, Lombard-street,
Dove-court, Fox Ordinary<ourt, 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,
Basinghali street, Houndsditch, Lad-
lane, Threadneedle-street, Aldgate
High-street, and Maiden-lane, all in
the City of London— (Corporation of
the City of London) ....

Widening and improving the entrance
into London ne.ir Temple-bar, im-
proving the Strand and Fleet-street,
and formation of Piekett-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)

Wideninjj and improving Dirty-lane and
part of Brick-lane, leading from White-
chapel to Spitalfields, and for pavmg
Dirty-lane, Petticoat-lane, Went-
worth-street. Old Montague-street.
Chapel-street, Princes-row, &c.. all m
the county of Middlesex— (Commis-
sioners appointed by the Act 18, Geo.
IIL.c.SO)

Widening the avenues from the Mmo-
ries, 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 IIL, c. 50) ....

Total cost of improving the above-
mentioned thoroughfares

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) .

Completing the paving of the ^mxi
borough of Southwark and certain
parts adjacent — (Commissioners for
executing Act 6, George III., for pav-
ing town and borough of Southwark)

Total cost of paving the above-men-
tioned thoroughfares ....

1,016,421 18 1

246,300 0 0

1,500 0 0

1,.500 0 0

1,265,721 13 1

5,500 0 0.

4,000 0 0

9.500 0 0

Hence the aggregate expense of the preceding
improvements has been upwards of 3,000,000^.
sterling.

I have now, in order to complete this account
of the cost of paving and cleansing the thorough-
fares of the metropolis, only to add the following
statement as to the traffic of the principal thorough-
fares in the city of London, for which I am in-
debted 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 trafl^c in the City is London-bridge,
where the conveyances passing and repassing
amount to 13,099 in the course of twelve hours*.

« At p. 105 the traffic of London Bridge is stated to be
13,(KX) conveyances per hour, instead of per 12 hours.

THE RUBBISH CARTER.

[From a Daguemotypt by Beard.]

LOyDOy LABOUR A2^D THE LOXDON POOR,

281

Of these it would appear, that 9351 consist of one-
horse vehiclea and equestrians, 3389 of two-
horse conveyances, and only 359 of vehicles
draATn by more than two horses. The one-horse
Tehicles 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-
^tieth 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 wa« any public event occurring on
those days which waa 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 hi 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
observationa 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 durinjr a continuously wet ;is well
as a showery day. The observaiions 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.
0? THB Rubbish Cabtkhs.
Thb public cleansing trade, I have before said,
eoDsists of as many divisions as there are distinct
species of refuse to be removed, and these appear
to be four. There is the Aoiwe-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
itrtet-nhiae, 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 en-
gaged 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
ttricUjf a species. Dirt, according to the under-
standing among the rubbish-carters, would seem
to conust rf 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 ** bard<ore," 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,
kc, which fona part of the contaots of the dust-
man's cart.

Tb« phtas« ''bard-core"* seems strictly to

* The con in this tenn m*y bt a eorruptlon of the
SaxoQ Cbt, « rock, r.itbrr than that which would nt
fintranffcit itaeil « r /..the Latin ear, the

hcwrt. Hanteon "mr, '>e«n hard rock-lil(o

rubbUh. imc*ad of l- »iAh hartiic a hard

nucleus or heart.

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 etymological ly speaking, it
signifies all such dry and hard refuse matter as is
rendered useless by wear and tear*. The term
dirt, on the other hand, is generally applied to
soft refuse matter, and dtist to dry refuse matter
in a state of minute division, while slops is the
generic term for all xott 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 com-
modities, 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.

The commodities whose residuum goes to swell
the annual supply of rulhish, 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 ^he 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 commo-
dities 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 che-
mical 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 tenn ruljhUh is a polite corruntion of the ori-
ginal word ruhbnpe, which is still used by uncducAtcd
l>cople; Uh i< an arijecdiftl termination, a* wliitish,
slavish, I)riitish, tic., and is used only in ronnectiim
.l)stantives as arc di-iived from adjirtives, as
;tiHh, &c. Whereas the atllx niff is strictly
'. .i« sewai^o, (j.'rbnu'e, whnrfifTe. Cic, and

'• ■' •-'■■ • ■ :>■■■•■ '.-■• 1 from 8Ul)-

i')und hi
' I'-n : the

ior mudr)i. There \i Viu such verb as to p>f(< "wheuce
could come the xubstantival participle p»rf</w)^ .■ and tho
French word from which we derive our tenn is poudin
without the/r« likpian/<n, the root of o\xxgiudcn.

282

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

STREET

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF VEHICLES AND HORSES PASSING THROUGH

HOURS OF 8 A.M. AND 8 p.m., UPON CERTAIN

Hour ending

9A.M

•

10 A.M.

11 A.M.

12 A.M.

Vehicles

Situation.

drawn

drawn by

Date.

■n.;

•n«5

•rl«

o si

Oi-

b p

Kg.

b ^

sS-

Xh-

X o

X c

-w

n t

r^W

n t

-txj

«h

..^u

« E

8th July, 1850.

Temple Bar Gate

230

292

192

448

2.^5

505

222

,30

9th „

Holbom Hill, by St. Andrew's Church .

2.50

.380

166

480

181

530

1.54

10th „

Ludgate Hill, by Pilgrim-street

268

ZH)

170

454

261

420

210

11th „

Newgate-street, by Old Bailey .

250

360

Ibh

4^3

184

137

12th „

Aldersgate-street, by Fann-street

140

198

1.50

147

.36

fft

13th „

Cheapside, by Foster-lane . . . .
Poultry, by Mansion House . .
Finsbury Pavement, by South-place .
Comhill, by Royal Exchange .
Threadneedle-street

.345

110

483

301

703

.385

768

.390

15th „ „

2«7

103

437

315

654

.398

690

.373

16th „ „

185

2.52

123

.3.30

1.3«

2.50

1?9

17th „ „

172

177

2.52

210

270

184

18th „ „

162

160

19th „ „

Gracechurch-street, by St. Peter's-alley .
Lombard-street, by Birchin-lane

202

200

.308

113

175

20th „ „

121

140

174

22nd „ „

Bishopsgate Within, by Great St. Helen's

194

253

144

.323

164

13 277

143

23rd ,,

London Bridge

.519

139

744

,^39

9.55

43 820

274

24th „ ..

Bishopsgate-street Witht, by City boundr.

148

197

121

.310

1.34

170

109

25th „

Aldgate High-street, by ditto

3.35

291

111

292

115

287

145

26th „

Leadenhall-st., rear of East India House .

19.3

272

141

.388

1.96

.340

1.50

27th „

Eastcheap, by Philpot-lane

274

293

.340

.3^0

29th „

Tower-street, by Mark-lane

1.32

180

2;o

?9i)

.30

30th „ „

Lower Thames-street, by Botolph-lane .

117

1.53

31st „ „

Blackfriars Bridge

268

280

409

,393

1st Aug. „

Upper Thames-street, rear of Queen-street

172

126

160

49.

2nd „

Smithfield Bars

180

206

180

2.54

3rd „ „

Fenchurch-street

175

198

205

298

•

5017

1256

303

6421

2997

339

8415

3478

315

8230

3159

297

STREET TRAFFIC.

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.

Situation.

Hours Ending

Total

Date.

7 8 """"

A. M.

A.M.

Noon

p. M.

P. M.

P.M.

p. M.

P.M. P.M.

1850.
Julys

Temple Bar Gate .

311

526

704

757

691

GCA

791

737

7.38

671

1 1
537 614 7741

645

,.9

Holbom-hill.bySt.And.Ch.

327

652

670

698

623

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

628

509

5,55

5.37

564

V38

572

5<>3

467 394i 6375J 531

., 12

Aldersgate-st., by Fann-st. .

168

261

208

196

214

2a5

194

219

235

23;j

229 198; 2590 215

„ 13

Cheapside, by Foster-lane .
Poultry, by Mansion House

473

!«)5

1124

1169

1020

1009

1007

1076

1106

964

808 492 11053 921

„ 15

414

762

1080

1043

941

875

910

956

825

802 595; 102741 856

,. 16

Finsbury-pave., by South-pl
Comhill, by Roy. Exchange
Threadneedle-street

262

385

475

387

3(54

345

2!W

347

4tt3

475

400, 244| 44(50

371

„ 17

161

364

47Ji

461

487

441

493

451

468

430

354 327i 491(i

409

„ 18

.98

145

262

214

211

1.54

212

195

205

148 108 2150

179

., 19

Gracech-st., by St. Pet.-alley

258

322

439

607

.392

423

464

516

4(51

4;i6

338 331 4887

407

,. 20

Lombard-st., by Birchin-la

1.37

117

15«

188

169

2.32

2.37

304

243

209

130 106 2228

186

„ 22

Bishopsg.-st., by Gt SL HeL

259

408

6<X)

430

39(i

2;J8

432

541

450

404 345 4842

403

,, 23

London Bridge

680

1128

i:«2

1124

1094

1048

1101

1180

1344

1308

9(52 798 1.3(1.9;)

1091

„ 24

Bishp.-st. out, by Cy. Bound' 203

329

447

286

307

342

3!HI

a35

430

439

323 279 4110

342

„ 25

Aldgate High-street, ditto . 425
Leadenhall-st., E. 1. House \ 251

422

417

442

445

379

40<>

405

4(»1

331 289! 47.54

3«K5

„ 26

42<)

5{)5

49.5

.594

.5(i3

.525

.569

4r;6

437i 4181 69.30

494

„ 57

Eastcheap, bv PhiIpot-lane| 335

346

398

372

.378

.343

.3f!f{

3JJ3

31)8

349

294 128, 41(h2

341

,, 29

Tower-street, by Mark-lane

222

2(i2

271

2f>2

.324

290

262

282

2;w

164 1141 289(1

240

„ 30

L. Thames-st, by Botolph-la

130

175

105

108

118

147

168

121

(59 46 1.3f{0

11.5

„ 31

Blackfriars Bridge

327

618

616

465

3.36

.3a5

416

570

548

463 a37 52(i2

438

Aug.l

U.Thames-st., rearof Qn.-st

140

227

lft5

223

205

160

164

213

253

312

J 76 93 2,3.31

1<)4

,7 2

Smithfield Bars .

203

230

202

277

276

2.55

,%34

2r)7

328

289

288 159 31(18

259

„ 3

Fenchurch-street .

206

2(>2
9757

253

343

293

2«i9
10466

272
11068

327

364
12543

259

249 545 1 3642
975717697 :i25859

303
10488

6576

122(J8

11686

11408

11351

11342

LOXDOy LABOUR AND TUE LONDON POOR.

283

TRAFFIC.

CERTAIN THOROUGHFARES WITHIN THE CITY OF LONDON, BETWEEN THE
DAYS DURING THE YEAR 1850.

Hour ending' Hour ending

Hour ending Hour ending

Hou

r ending

Hour ending

1 P.M

2 P.M

•

J P.M

4 P.M

6r.M

bp.M

;p.M

8 P.M.

Vehicles

drywn by

drawn by

drawn

drawn by

o«

orse and
jestrians.

orses.

0 <u

II s

0
S

-S"

X S

So IS-

S o

X O

So- =

X Q

15-

X 0

ig. X

-UJ

n S

m E

wEi^K

.-Cd

phU{ <M

n h

-w

«fc

-^W (N

CO S

818

415| 230

550

231

10, 4%

237

470

255

435i 219

329

200

406 198

453

Ifill

435i 15fi

373

15(1

12; 270

100

(iX)

251

330, 11)

615

209

21{> 92

5.10

2.V?

330

180

400

221

288

242

375

233

360 220

.^•^0

210

214 202

ayo

156

377

155

390

167

525

201

3!K)

177

415 142

337

126

250 136

J«5

18l»

150

172

l»7

185! 40

175

141 46

taw

334

664^

336

665

338

730

3.»

671

427

645] 303

41:2

31!(

171 1 212

690

358

595

337

648

321

6 675

330

5(a

381

10 5051 310

455

344

292 i 299

»43

115

223

118

184

107

215

128

340

135

.-JOO! 169

242

142

140: 101

275

206

S53

180

305

185

27(i

172

255

20()

2-i2i 180

177

176

186 140

5(1

120

1(U

157

150

157

115

.10

77 31

330

360

375

123

1«

302

135

310

113

253

250 75

I<»

215

227

283

223

IKO

115

94! 12

S6I)

125

164

320

113

6 2«7

140

380

150

320

123

270

127

222! 120

775

21)6

7«i5

255

793

284

24' 84:.

3(»5

3(t

!»75

9701 305

6«0

264

5101 258

191

llii

4 2431 96

285

8 231

I(«

309

113

3051 12(J

2(V)

112

1771 99

30.)

135

249 123

260

112

274

J 22

248

141

2761 110

21-0

KKi

IIK) 96

415

168

3}»

171

353

158

387

172

21)5

3901 m

292

139

260^ 152

340

300

310

2(1

345

340

2H0

230

109, 16

270

252

226

230

3!;

195

137

100

1(K)

13(1

143

2.1

1(M>

365

253

302

3-10

450

1o:j

446

.161

266

160

120

la-}

160

ia5

.52

241

139

JKW

232

305

2(1

260

305

26.5

f(»

2«i9

9I 145

8I»

3W7

8
"l»

7441

39
8815

7941

46
2923

612^7

64
3065

300 57
8727 3543

7
"273

215
8007

36
3019

8
1^

193
6671

3| 516

28
2426

210

•204,

8104

175|5138

133

STREET TRAFFIC.
TABLB SHOWING THE TOTAL NUMBER OF EACH DESCRIPTION OF VEHICLE
PASSING THROUGH CERTAIN STREETS WITHIN THE CITY OF LONDON, BE-
TWEKN THE HOURS OF 8 a.m. AND 8 p.m. (12 Hours.)

Total

Number of

Average Number

Date.

Situation.

Vehicles drawn by

Total of
the

per Hour.

Average
of the

2 .

whole.

X 0
n S

X?r

»U

nti

8th July, 1850.

Temple Bar Gate

5035

2498

208

7741

419

208

(M5

9th ./ ..

Holbom Hill, by .St. .Andrew's Church

4!I74

1797

135

6!)06

414

149

575

loth „

Ludgate Hill, bv Pilf^rim-street .

4259

2483

6829

a54

2(7

56-9

Ilth „ „

Newgate-stret-t, by Uld Ilailey .

4484

1795

(i375

373

149

631

I2lh „ „

Alden(pitc-stri-et, by Kaiin-street

IJKtO

479

121

2590

165

215

Ilth „ „

Chenptldc, by Foitir-Ianc . •

71<7

37!H

152

11053

6!)2

316

921

iJMh „ ..

Poultry, bv Mansion House
Fintbury Pavement, bv .South-place .
Comhilf, by Royal Exchange
Threadneedle-strcct . . . .

(i283

3869

122

l(^274

623

332

}<3«

,i»;th ,,

2!>04

1458

4460

242

121

371

'i7;!i .. ..

2761

2074

4016

2.10

172

409

imh ,. ,,

1636

687

2150

128

179

::<th „

Oraccchurch-st.. by .St. Petcr's-alley .

avw

1223

159

4<«7

2<»2

102

4(7

.'■th ..

Lombard-sueet, by Birchin-Unc

2019

195

2228

168

1K5

.'-'T„l ,.

Bishopagate-sC. by Great St. Helen's .

.1270

1477

4842

272

123

403

LTir.l „

London Bridge

!«351

33>R)

3.59

13099

779

282

.10

1091

'24tti ., ,,

Btahop^tatxt., out, by City Boundr.

27««

1273

4110

230

106

342

i'.:th „

Aldimr tlifth-*iriit. ditto

.1222

1.178

164

4754

2faj

114

.196

-•"iih ,,

Leadenhi t India House .

.1970

1841

119

69.10

.%K)

163

4}W

,i7th ,, „

(Ustchc.i, lane

3481

157

4102

2J)0

341

Mh „

Tower-tt. -lane

2416

369

1(»5

2890

201

.10

240

l*nh „ „

lower TharTKs .t., uy Uotolph-lane .

1187

162

1380

115

Slat M „

Blackfriar* Bridge

4132

935

195

6262

344

11;

4.18

1st Aug. M

UpnerThamc».»t.,rearof Queen-st. .
Smhhfleld Bars

1756

428

147

2311

14/{

.'tt

194

2nd „

2H43

193

310R

2.17

259

ritd ..

Pcoehurch-strrct

3060

518

aM2

2.54

.K)3

88304

34089

8886

126859

7358

2889]

240

10488

234

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON FOOJL

the refuse of the sole remaining materials, viz.,
those of an earthy kind, and out of wliich are
made our bricks, our earthenware and porcelain,
as well as our glass, plaster, and stone com-
modities. 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 ag-ainst 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 pot-
sherds and pansherds*, as the rubbish-carters call
thera — what is done with these ?

But rubbish, as we have seen, consists not only
of refuse earthen commodities, but of refuse eartli
itself: such as the soil removed during excava-
tions 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 thnt is the shells of
oysters, and other shell-fish. Whence go they,
since these shells are of a comparatively indestruct-
ible nature, and thousands of such fish are con-
sumed annually in the metropolis ? What, the
inquirer asks, becomes of the refuse bony cover-
ings 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, begin-
ning with the refuse earthen commodities.

There is no published account of the quantity
of crockeryware annually manufactured in this
country. Mr. McCuUoch tells us, " It is esti-
mated, that the value of the various sorts of
earthenware produced at the potteries may
amount to about 1,700,000^. or 1,800,000^. a
3'ear; and that the earthenware produced at
Worcester, Derby, and other parts of the country,
may amount to about 850,000^. or more, making the
whole value of the manufacture 2,550,000Z. or
2,650,000^. 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 col-
lected, amounts to 900,000 tons or chaldrons
yearly ; and I find, on inquiry at the principal
"yards," that the average quantity of Potsherds

* This is the Saxon sceard, which means a shcard,
remnant, or fragment, and is from tiie vtrb sceran, sig-
nifyng both to shear and to share or divide. The low
Dutch s'-haard is a piece of pot, a fragment.

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 qtiantity 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 quantit)' of refuse hricks, the number
annuallyproduced, 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 Kegistrar-Greneral, that the buildings removed
between 1841 and 1851 have been as follows : —

Decrease in the Number op Houses

TDROUGHOUI LONDON BETWEEN 1841 AND

1851.

Total

Annual

Decrease in

Average

10 Years.

Decrease.

St, Martin's

116

11-6

St. James's, Westminster .

130

St. Giles's

181

18-1

Strand . . . .

389

38-9

Holborn . . . .

8-6

East London

1-1

West London .

265

2G-5

London, City of

692

69-2

Whitechapel

■2

St. Saviour's, Southwark .

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

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR,

235

the metropolis. In Bome 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
mbbish 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
eTery load, we may conclude that the gross quan-
tity of refuse oyster shells annually produced in
London average somewhere about 80,000 loads.
That this is an approximation to the true quantity
there can be little doubt, for, on inquiry at one of
the largest da»t-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, Whitechapcl, and other localities at
the east-end of the metropolis, averages G bushels
to the load of dust ; about the west-end, however,
half a bushel or a bushel to each load is the ave-
rage ratio ; while from the City there is none, the
house "dnst" there being free from oyster-shells.
In taking on« district, however, with another, I
am assured that the average may be safely com-
puted 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
■bells remltiDg 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 be-
tween 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 Numbbb of HorrsEs BuiLX THnouaHOTJT

LOMDOH BETWEEN 1841 Alfl) 1851.

West Districts .
North Districts .
Central Districts
East Districts .
South Districts .

Total

46,901

Average
No. of
Houses

built per
Year.

962-4

1377-8

34-9

834-3

1480-7

4690-1

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 Riclimond 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 : —

Railways.

Length of
Cutting.

width of Cutting.

Depth of
Cutting.

Quantity of

At top.

At bottom.

earth Removed.

Great Korthcn
Camden Town and Bow .
West India Dock* and Bow .
SorthKmt . . . .

Yards.
12
12
15
15

Yards.
10
10
10
10

Yards.
10
10
12
12

Loads.
290,400
290,400
628,000
528,000

Hence, the groM quantity of earth remoTed from
nilway cuttinga within the last ten yean haa

been 1,636,800 loads, or say, in round numbers,
160,000 loads per annum.

286

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

\ 3. The Cutting of Roads and Streets.— Ac-
cording 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 con-
siderable 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. T/i4 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 Worh. — The earth dis-
placed 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 thercourse 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 re-
moved in London, then, stands thus : —

Loads

Refuse Earthen Matei-ials. per Annum.

Potsherds and Pansherds . . 9,000
Old bricks, tiles, slates, mortar, &c. . 160,000
Oyster-shells .... 25,000

800,000

160,000

1.000

Refuse Earth.

Foundations of houses
Railway cuttings .
Pipe and sewer laying

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 1 Whither is it carried 1 How is it
disposed of?

The rubbish from the house building or remov-
ing 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 rub-
bish, of which the following are the principal.

Rubbish shoots.

The rubbish of Kensington and Chelsea is shot
in the Pottery Grounds and Kensington-fields.
Tiie 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, West-
minster, West London, and Southwark, is
shot in Cubitt's fields at Millbank and West-
minster 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-liel d s.
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 Wal worth-common and
Kenniiigton-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 40,0001oad8.
Of the earth removed in forming the founda-
tion 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 dis-
placed in the execution of the "cuttings" of rail-
ways 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, pan-
sherds, 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 foun-
dations 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 re-
quired for certain other purposes.

The principal use to which the " i-ulbish" is put

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

287

is for levelling, when the hollow part of any
newly-made road has to be filled up, or garden or
lawnirround has to be levelled for a new mansion.
Rubbish, at one time, was in demand for the bal-
lasting of small coasting vessels. For such bal-
lasting 2d. a ton has to be paid to the corporation
of the Trinity House. This rubbish has been
nsed, but sometimes surreptitiously, for ballast,
nnmixed with other things. It is, however, light
and inferior ballast, and occupies more space than
the gravel ballast from the bed of the Thames.
gk 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 sup-
plied at \s. a ton ; the rubbish-ballast, however,
was only Zd. to 6cf. 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 con-
siderable quantity of stable manure collected from
the diflferent mews of the metropolis, that com-
paratively 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-Btreet. The rubbish of Rotherhithe,
it will be seen, is mainly " shot " as ballast.

The ** hard-core" is readily got rid of; some-
times 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 Is. 6d. to
34. a load. This is used for the foundations of
houses, the groundwork of roads, and other pur-
poses 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 bard substratum of roads. Eight
or nine yean ago the costermongers could sell
their oyster-sbells for Od. 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 51. 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-fith, and the other for fruit and Tege-

tables, told me that he gave "one of those poor
long-legged fellows who were neither men nor
boys, and who were always starving and hang-
ing 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. 0, 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 in-
quiring 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 '11 walk on \vith
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 in-
differently 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 pan-
sherds, &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 excava-
tions of docks, canals, and sewers-; the digging

2S8

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

of artesian wells, &c. This seems to comprise
what in this carrying or removing trade is ac-
counted " 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 per-
plexes 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 dis-
tinctions 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 re-
moving 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 commo-
dities, 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 8er\-ice of the same employer upwards of
20 years.

The Po3t-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 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 dis-
posal. 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 con-

veyances 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 75. for one horse, to 145.
for two per day. If, however, the job be un-
usually large, the master rubbish-carters often
take it by contract themselves.

Although the operative rullish-carters may be
classed among unskilled labourers, they are, per-
haps, 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 whicli
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 obtain-
able 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 bur-
dened, 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 " car-
man," 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" imless he has attained that preli-
minary 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.

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 por-
ters, coachmen, grooms, and horse-breakers. Of

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

289

the remainder, one-half, I am informed, have
"had a tarn" at such avocations as scavagery,
bricklayers' labourinjf, dock work, railway ex-
cavating, 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 nmy be called
the greater half of the remaining number, is com-
posed 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 me-
tropolis, 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 com 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 fjirmers, 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 informa-
tion, 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 op 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 la-
bour 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
w^ith this trade, it would appear that there are 180
master rubbish-carters in the metropolis, about
140 of whom pay \%*. 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
bonourable masters among the rubbish-carters may
be said to comprise seven-ninths of the whole.

I will first treat of the circumstances, charac-
teristics, and wages of the men employed in the
bonourable trade.

And first, as regards th* division qf labour
among the operatire nibbisb-carters, the work is at
simple as possible.

There are —

1. The Rubfnth-Carifrg proper, or "carmen,"
who are engaged principally in conveying the
refuse brick or earth to the several shoots.

2. T/te RubOisfiUhoveUns, or " gangen/' who

j are engaged principally in filling the cart with the

I rubbish to be removed. Generally speaking, the

j two ojfices are performed by the same individual,

who is both carter and shoveller, and it is onlj' 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 2s. 6d. to 3s. Gd. 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
constniction 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 pick-
ing, 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 in-
variably leave at half-past five, so postponing the
"tea" half-hour imtil 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 em-
ployed 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
bis 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.

The rubbish-carters are paid hy (he iceel, 1 8.y. to
20». being the weekly amount; and by the load,
which is indeed piece-work. The payment to the

Ko. XLIII.

290

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operatives by the load varies from 6rf. to Is, Qd.,
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
da}', 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 Is. Grf. a day, with a horse
not worth 15/. ; while another carter, with a
superior animal worth twice as much, might clear
3s. or 3s. 6(Z. 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 employ-
ment 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 18s. to 20s. a week ; in
the worse-paid trade 15s. is the more general
price; but even as little as 12s. 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 Is. to 2s.
weekly, and of "findings,'* especially to the
carmen, of an amount I could not ascertain, but
perhaps realizing 6rf. 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 48s. Q\d., " money, and what brought
money ; " but this is far from an usual case.

The rate of wages paid to the operative rub-
bish-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 20s.
per week; while at Kensington, Chelsea, and
indeed the whole of the west districts of Lon-
don, they are 18s. weekly; iu St. Martin's
parish, however, 19s. 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 20s., and Islington, where
they are as low as 16s. In the central districts,
too, the wages are generally 18s.; the lower rate
of 17s. and 16s. 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
]5ethnal Green, St. George's in the East, and
Stepney, 16s. and 15s. a week appears to be the
rule; while in Shoreditch and Poplar 18s. 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 15s., and
Woolwich the same weekly sum, with one excep-
tion. Wandsworth, on the other hand, pays
uniformly 17s. ; while in South wark, Bermondsey,
Newington, and Camberwell, the wages paid by
all are 18s. In Lambeth as much as 19s. is
given by two masters out of three; whereas, in
Greenwich one master pays 14s.. and the other
even as low as 12s. 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 20a.

5 „ „ 30 „ „ 19s.
127 „ „ 605 „ „ 18s.

6 „ „ 20 „ „ 17s.
16 „ „ 70 „ „ 16s.
19 ., „ 97 „ „ 15s.

1 „ „ 5 „ „ 14s.

1 „ „ 2 „ „ 12s.

Hence, three-fourths of the operatives may be
said to receive 18s. weekly, and about one-sixth
16s.

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 pre-
mises where they work, and may, in the best
trade, amount, in beer or in money to buy beer, to
from Is. Qd. to 2s. 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. Any-
thing 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'lnian he knowed gave him live good
shillings for, and he found a silver spoon as fetched
Is. 9rf., in one week, and that same week on the
same ground /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 Thread-
needle-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 Is. a day for
beer, to show him or tell him of anything we

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

turned up queer. "We did show him things as
we thought queer, and they looked queer, but he
alius said ' Chi-ish,' or ' da-anm.' From what
I 've heard him say to another old cove as some-
times was with him. they looked for soraetliing
Rnnian Catholic." My informant no doubt niecUit
" 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 Btufjit or Sick-Cluhn, and, indeed, no measures
whatever for the upholding of accustomed wa;ies,
or providing " for a rainy day," unless individu-
ally. If a rubbish-carter be sick, the men in the
same employ, whatever their number, ]0 or 40,
contribute on the Saturday evenings ^d. each,
towards his support, until the patient's conva-
lescence. I'here are no Houses of Call.

The payment is in the master's yaixi on the
Ratiu-day evening, and always in money. There
are no drawbacks, unless ior 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 esfciblishments 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 6d. These fines are spent by the carmen
generally, and most frequently in beer.

The usual vay of applying for icorkhs to call
at the yards or premises, or, more frequently, to
take a round in the districts where it is known
liii: 'i;;i;l(lings or excavations are being carried oji,
: 1 :' lie of the meji if a hand be wanted.
^o;iit;.iucs a foreman may be there who has
authority to "put on" new hands; if not, the
applicant, with the prospect of an engagement in
Tiew, calls upon any party he may l)e 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 nibbish-cart?r, will have
been struck with the stolid indifference with which
these men go alwut their work, however much
the scene of their hibours, from its historical asso-
ciations, may interest the better informed. So it
was when the rubbish carters were omploypd in
removing the ruins of the old Houses of Parlia-
ment, 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
cnmmrnce the demolition and rubbish-cariing of
: :*ter Abbey, the Temple Church, or St.
en in their present iiitcgrity.

. .Mii;iimes the scene of Uie rubbish-carter's
industry present"! what may be call-d a " piteous
aspect." This was not long ago the case in
Cannon -street, City, and the adjacent couru and
alleys ; whea the houses had been cleared of their
furniture, the windows were removed (giving the
house what may l»e styled a " blind " lo«ik) ; most
of the doors had been taken away, as well as Mm*

of the floors. Large cyphers, scrawled in white-
wash 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 fn)m the sides of a room and
which fluttered in the wind.

A scene of exceeding bustle follows the ap-
parent desolateness of the premises. When the
whole has been disposed of to the several pur-
chasers, the further and final work of demolition
begins. Baskets filled with the old bricks are i
rapidly lowered by ropes and pulleys into the carts j
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 j
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-arti-
culate exclamations of the carters choked with
dust, form a curious medley of noises. The atmo-
sphere 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 |>as-
sengers. The work within is confined to the
labourers; " no persons admitted except on busi-
ness " 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 assump-
tion 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
comers 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 fmir-storied house is often
pulled down to its basenu!nt,and the contents of the
walls, floors, A:c., removed, in ten days ora fortnight.

As the work of demolition goes on, the rul)bish-
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 cju-riage 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 rubbi.sh-cartcrs in
the fair trade work in their shirts, a broad woollen
belt being strapped round tiie waist, wliicb, tiiey

294

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

saj', 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 ho-
nourable 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 work-
ing 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 285. to 35s. ; from a good
shop, and of better materials, 405. to 5os. Some
prefer stout corduroy to fustian trowsers ; and
flome work in short smock-frocks.

Having thus shown the nature of the work,
the class of men employed, and the amount of re-
muneration, 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 Alility to Bead 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 com-
puted 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 capa-
bility representing it as a worthless acquirement.

The majority of the Rulhish-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 grow-
ing 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 'rejidy married.'" I inquired if
they were not perhaps married quietly at the

Kegistrar's office ] " 0, that," said Mrs. B ,

"ain't like being married at all, /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 rxiblish-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 '11 take a very great thing indeed to move 'era.
If they was longish out of work and felt a pinch,
very likely they 'd be found ready for anything."

With res'jiect 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 work-
ing 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 employ-
ment, 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 85. a week, the extent of the earn-
ings 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

295

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 diflference 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 Liying out the money. One couple had six
children, and the husband said they cost him
about 17*. a week in food, or about 25. 6rf. 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 22s.
weekly, and the eldest child, a boy, 3s. 6rf. 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 start-
ing, 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 tip-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 '11 give the girl or
the man Irf. a week or so. But we 're glad to get
a good cold dinner. 0, 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 daiLij bill of
fare, as he rarely took any meals at his lodgings :

t. d.
llalf-quart«m loaf . 0 2^

Butter 0 1

Coffee (twice a day) . . . .03
Eleven o'clock beer, sometimes a pint and
sometimes half-a-pint, but often obtained
as a perquisite . . (average) 0 \\

\ lb. of beef steak, or a chop, or four or
five pennyworth of cold meat from a
cook-shop . . . (average) 0 5

Poutoes 0 1

Dinner bcfr 0 2

Bread and cheese and beer for supper 0 4

T~8i

This was the average cost of his daily food,
while on Sundays he generally paid \s. ^d. for
breakfast and tea, and a good dinner off a hot
joint with baked potatoes from the oven, along with
the family ar.d other lodgers. He had a good
walk every Sunday morning, he said, but liked to
sleep awaj- the afternoon. He found his own
Sunday beer, costing 4rf. 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 Avere : —

s. d.
Six working days, at Is. %\d. a day 10 1\
Sunday 1 10

Week's food . . . . 11 Hi

To this, in the way of drink or luxuries, I might
add, the carter said, Id. 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 4rf. 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, Zd. a
week for tobacco. In all Is. ^d., which swells
the weekly cost of eating, drinking, and smoking
to 13s. Q^d. His washing was Ad. a week (he
washed his working jacket and trowsers himself),
his rent 2s. 6rf. for a bed to himself; so that,
16s. i}^d. being spent out of an earning of 18s.,
he had but Is. 5^^. 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 2s. in hand, at least 2s.,
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 attev'lant on puhlic irorship
are Uie IHtk Roman Catliolics, and such Engli.'<hmen
as had been .ngricultural labourers in rural parishes,
and had been reared in the habit of church-going ;
a habit in which, but not without many excep-
tions, they still persevere. Among London-bred
labourers such habits are rarely formed.

Tke abodes of the letter description of rnhhish-
cai-ters are not generally in those localities which
are crowded with the poor. They reside in the
streets off the Edgcware and Harrow-roads, as
building has been carried on to a very great ex-
tent in Westbourne, Maida-hill, &c.; in Portland-
town, Camden-town, Somers-town, about Kings-
cross ; in Islington, Pentonville, and Clerkenwell;
off the Commercial and Milc-end-roads ; in
Walworth, Camberwell, Kennington, and New-
ington ; and, indeed, in all the quarters where
building has been prosecuted on an extensive

296

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

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, how-
ever, was in good earnings, and the wife cleared
about 5s. 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 2s. to 5s., but
rarely the latter, unless the wife take in a little
washing. I heard of some at 25., but very few;
2s. 6d. to 35. 6(7. are common prices.

I heard of no partiality for amusements among
tli.e rulbish-carters, beyond what my informant
spoke of— a visit to the p]ny. 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 honour-
able 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. 0, 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 25s. a week,
and I have had 29s., but that included over- work.
Two hours extra work a day makes an extra day
in the week, you see, sir. 0, yes, I might have
saved money, and I 'm trying to save 25^. 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 ag 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 em

ployer] 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. 0, 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 50s., 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 2s. 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
4s. 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. 0, 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. 0 yes, I live well enough. I have meat
ever\' 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 break-
fast and tea, sometimes a few cresses with it just
I to sweeten the blood, which is the proper use of
j 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. ^Yell, 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 25. 6d. to
Gs. 6d. 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 4s. 9d.
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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

297

work about his houses— he has a block of them —
and [lis own plac«, 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 satistied what it's for, and
he's lent nie as much as 335. 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
dniw, and says it quite solemn like, he 'il take
me by the scruff of the neck and kick me out ;
though [laughing] he cnn't be much alwve 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 anrthing
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.

£ .«. d.

July 18 . In hand ..130
25 . Received ..036

Aug. 9 . ., ..036

23 . „ ..050

SeptlS . „ ..096

20 . „ ..040

27 . „ ..040

£2 12 6

"If I can't sare a little to start myself on when
I 'ra a single man, I can't ever after, I fancy ; so
I 'm a trying.

" No, my expenses, over and aboTe my living
and lodging and washing, and all that, ain't heavy.
Ye?, I 'm very fond of a good play, very. Some
gailerirt is 6^., and some Sd ; but then there 's
rrfreshment and that, so it costs 1«. a time. Per-
haps I go once a week, but only in autumn and
uiitcr. when nights get long, and we leave work
ai I: ^. ; i^t five. The last time I was at the play
u.ii .;: ihe 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 Weils is the place, sir. I
mean to go there t<}-raorrow night. Yes, I 'm
verj- fond of the pantomimes. Concerts I've been
at, but don't care for them. They 're as dear at
2</. as an egg a penny, and an egg 's only a bite.

'• Well, I 've gone to church Bomctimes, but a
carman hasn't tim«», for he has his horses to attend
I'l <>!! .Sii:!ii . and that uses up his morn-

iiv.'. .\". i •w. Work must be done.

II ;:in't n:y :. i ;a sure, if I could have my

wish, I 'd never do anything on a Sunday^

" Yet, there '• far too nuny as undenelii us in
work. I knov that, but I don't like to think
about them or to talk about them." (He seemed
desirous to ignon the renr r- -• - ' the scurf
rnbVjish-carten.] ** They re i .fthcm.

They re often qnarrdeonw ai. ; sty, but

I know nuuij dece«t men MnmiK tiie Irishmen in
oar rKf>fii. Then '• good and bad ainoog them,
as t" i the Engliah. There '• vtry few

"( t Me CKinen; they haven't been

' 1 have done a liule as a nightman when I

worked for Mr. . He was a parish con-
tractor, and undertook such jobs, and liked to put
strong men onto 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 re-
ceived 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 Taihvay-work. These hands suf-
fered gi*eatly for a long time. The tommy-shops
and the middle-man system were enough to
swallow the largest amount of railway wnges, 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
Grreat 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 rub-
bish-carters and excavators, as regards the me-
tropolis, became relieved."

Of Casual Labour in Genkral, and that of

THE HtTBBISH-CaRTERS TS 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 piupose 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 con-
sequent degree fluctuating, casual, and uncertain.

In no country in the world i.s there such an
extent, and at the same time such a diversity,
of casual labour as in Great Britain. This is
attribuUiblc to many causes — commercial and agri-
cultural, 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 Brifk and Slack Seasons, and Fit
Times, or periodical increase and decrease of work
in certain occupations,

II. The Surplus Hands appertaining to the dif-
ferent trades.

First, as to the briskness or slackness of em-
ployment in different occupations. This depends
in different trades on diflwient causes, among which
may be enumerated —

A. The weather.

298

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

B. The seasons of the year.

C. The fashion of the day.

D. Commerce and accidents.

I shall deal with each of these causes senatim.

A. The labour of thousands is influenced by
the breather; 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), coster-
mongers 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 per-
sons, w)io had commenced their work with eager-
ness, 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 im-
poverishing others: these are cabmen (who are
the busiest on slwwery 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 lump-
ers, 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.

i^rosi, 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 labourers 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, brick-
layers, and agricultural labourers, of their ordi-
nary 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 in-
come, 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 remem-
ber that at each of these places the prevalence of
a particular wind must prevent the ordinary arri-
val of shipping, and so require the employment
of fewer hands; we shall have some idea of
the enormous multitude of men in this coun-
try 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 pre-
cariously dependent.

Altogether lam 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, depen-
dent 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 e2:>hemeral 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 depres-
sion 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 conse-
quently 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, plas-
terers, paper-hangers, rubbish-carters, sweeps, and
riggers and lumpers, the latter depending mainly

TTT T' ^' ! I, K M A I D'S GARLAND
TnK UKi'JiNAL OF THE SwEEP's May-Day ExniBITlON.

LOyDOIf LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

239

on the arrival of the timber ahipe to the Thames
(aBd this, owing to the ice in the Baltic Sea and
in the rirer St- Lawrence, &c., takes place only at
certain seasons of the year), coal-whippers and
en! ;• irters |ibe coal trade being much brisker
i!i w ; : r>. market-porters, and those employed
in suuimer in steiim-boat, railway, van, and barge
excursions.

Then there are the casualties attemiing agricul-
tural 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 casnial employ-
ment; 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 metro-
polis. A tall Irishman of about 34 or 35 (whom
I had to see when treating of the religion of the
street IriA) leaves his accustomed crossing-sweep-
ing at ail or most of the seasons I have men-
tioned, 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 over-
stocking the open-air markets.

The autumnal season of hop-picking is the grand
rendezroos for the Tagrancy of England and Ire-
land, the stream of London vagrancy flowing freely
into Kent at that period, and afterwards Howing
back with increased volume. Men, women, and
chilli ren are attracted to the hop hanest. The
season is over in less than a month, and then the
easaal Inh atjed in it (and they are

nearly all irers) must divert their in-

dustry, or ■ ivours for a living, into other

channels, swelling ti>e amount of casualty in un-
skilled work or street-trade.

Xumerically to estimate the influence of the
8<-asMi8 on the labour-market of this country is
alnu.i»t an overwhelming task. Let us try, how-
ever : there are in round numbers one million
agricnUural labourers in this country; saying that
in the summer four labourers are employed for
eviry three in the winter, there would he 250,000
peop!e and their families or *^y 1,000,000 of
ndividuali, deprived of tii'^ir ordinary subsistence
in the winter time; this, of course, does not
include those who come from Ireland to assist
at the barTcst^etting — how many these may be
I bare no neans of ascertaining. Added to these
there are Cks natural vagabonds, whom I have
before estimated at another hundred thousand
(.«•••• !- 4(j8, vol. i.), and who generally help at
thf ij.-i've»t work or the fruit or hop-picking.

Trien there are the carpenters, who are 163.000
in nuiiiixfr; the builders, U200; the brickmakers.
Ift.OOO; the painters, 48,200; the caHl-wbi|.per8,
9200; the coal-miners, 110,000; making altoge-

ther 350,000 people, and estimating that for every
four hands emplo}'ed 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 li^bourers, 1,250,000 people thus de-
prived 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 par-
liamentary 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 penenil fashions, are —

Tailors, Ladies' habit-makers, boot and shoe-
makers, hatters, glovers, milliners, dress-makers,
niantua-makers, drawn and straw bonnet-makers,
artificial flower-makers, pluraassiers, stay-makers,
silk and vi'lvet weavers, saddlers, harness-makers,
coach- builders, cabmen, job-coachmen, farriers,
livery sUible keepers, poulterers, pastry-cooks, con-
fectioners, &c., &c.

The above-mentioned classes may he taken,

according to the Occupation Abstract of the last

I 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

I 25 p>er cent, less hands are required at tiie slack

j 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

I are thrown out of work at a cextain 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 arrange-
ment immediately effects the printers and book-
binders ; there is no change, however, as regards the
newspapers and periodicals. Again, tlie early im-
portation to this country of the new fori'inn fruits
gives activity to the dock and wharf labourers and
portersand 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 piaits of Africa; the orange gather-
ing in Madeira, and in St. Michael's, Terceira,
and other islands of the Azores; the fig harvest
from the Levant; the plum harvest of tiie south
of France; the currant picking of Zante, Ithaca,
and other Ionian Islands; — all these events give an
activity, aa 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 re-
quired— for the time.

I was told by a grocer, with a country conncc-

300

LONDON- LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

tion, and in a large way of bu3ine3s, that for
three weeks or a month before Christmas he re-
quired the aid of four fresh hands, a shopman, an
errand-boy, and two porters (one skilled in pack-
ing), for whom he had nothing to do after Christ-
mas. If in the wide sweep of London trade there
be 1000 persons, including the market salesmen,
the retail butchers, the carriers, &c., so circum-
stanced, then 4000 men are casually employed,
and for a very brief time.

The brief increase of the carrying business gene-
rally 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, pro-
mote 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 dif-
ferent capacities of police, packing, cleaning, por-
terage, 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 un-
certain 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 poli-
tical 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 agita-
tion 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 Ade-
laide; while on the demise of the Princess Charlotte
(in 1817) thousands of operative tailors, through-
out the three kingdoms, worked day and night,
and for double wages, on the general mourning.
Gluts in the markets, an increase of heavy bank-
ruptcies 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 de-
pressing effect.

There are also the consequences of changes of
taste. The abandonment of the fashions of gen-
tlemen'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 abandon-
ing the fashion of wearing powder rather than
pay the tax. There are now city gentlemen, who
can remember that when clerks, they had some-
times 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, more-
over, 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 render-
ing, the labour market uncertain and over-stocked;
to what extent they do and have done this,
it is, of course, almost impossible to say m-ecisely ;
but, eves 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 poli-
tical 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 sujyer-
fluity 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

301

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 ascertiin what are
the circumstances inducing a surplusage of hands
in the several trades of the present day. A sur-
plusage 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 40U0 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
qukkhj, 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 tcork, 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 nsiilt. Hence we see that the alteration of
t!i<- h'.urs, rate, or mode of working may tend as
jji.MtiNciy to overstock a country with labourers
as if the labourers themselves bad unduly in-
creased.

But this, of course, is on the assumption that both
the quantity of work and the number of hands
remain the siime. The next of the three Ciiuses,
above mentioned as inducing a surplusage of hands,
is that which arises from a positive increase in Vie
number of laJtourert, while the quantity of work re-
mains the same or increases at a less rate than the
labourers; and the third cause is, where the sur-
plusage of labourers arises not from any alteration
in the number of hands, but from a positive
' rease in tiie quantity of work.
These are distinctions neceuary 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 in-
duces 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 econo-
mizing 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 tem-
porary 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 wo^^ed 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 ac-
complish 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

302

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

the following accounts, which diflferent operatives \
concurred in giving ; wliile 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 t!ie mt>n 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 nie 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 i&vr 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^ 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 crusL"

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
npon 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 tolcnibly fair wages, and expect
good work, can make six average-sized mantles
in a week, working Jro%n (en to ticelve hours a
day; but the slop- workers, by toiling from thir-
teen 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
Avorkers for the fair trade. Or, to pnt it in
another light, these slop-women, by being com-
pelled, 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 Avords of a chamber-mas-
ter, working for tlie cheap shoe trade : —

" From people being obliged to work twice the
hours they once did work, or that in reason they
ovght 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 re-
spectable appearance they ought." "I" (inter-
posed 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 Sab-
bath," 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 there-
fore 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 em-
ployment.

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 onr attention to the second of
the causes above cited, viz., thi catuinff of men to

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

303

wtrh qutcttr, and so to accomplish more in the
same time. There are sevenl 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; (6) 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 neces-
sity for him to execute a greater quantity of work
in order to obtain the same income ; (d) in-
crea«ing the supervision, and encouraging a spirit
of emulation among the workpeople ; («) by
dividing the labour into a number of simple and
minute processes, and so increasing the expert-
ness of the labourers ; (/) 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 «ma^2ni, showing how they tend to produce
a surplusage of hands in the trades to which they
are severally applied. And first, as to matin g
the workman' X gabit depend directly on the quan-
tity of vrork executed by him.

Of course there are but two direct modes of pay-
ing 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 de-
scribed in the ilorning 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 extra-
ordinary exertion will be sure to be punished
T^i-iih dismissal. Over-work by piece-work, on the |
other hand, is almost a necessary consequence of I
that mode of payment — for where men are paid by I
the quantity theydo,ofcourseitbecomestheinterest j
"t :i u irknian 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 vigiUnt superintendence on the
part of the persons who are interested in the
resuJt, The 'master's eye' is notoriously the
only security to be relied on. But superintend
them as you will, day labourers are so much in-
ferior to those who work b}' the piece, that, as
was before said, the latter system is practised in
nU ipH'itrial occupations where the work admits
: at out in definite portions, without in-
:■ • necessity of too troublesome a surveil-
i:. : guard against inferiority (or scamping)
t • locution." But if the labourer at piece-
worK IS made to produce a greater quantity than
at day-work, and this solely by connecting bis
own interest with that of his employer, how much
more largely must the productiveness of workmen
be increaeed when labouring wholly on their own

account! Accordingly it has been invariably
found that whenever the operative unites in him-
self 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 attiiined even
under the large system of production, where all the
arts and appliances of Avhicli extensive capital can
avail itself are brought into operation-

As regards the increased production hy 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 ascertiiined, 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, work-
ing, 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 Avorkman,
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 lis. 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 fiincy
cabinet, and their occiisional 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 tiikes 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 contra-
distinguished 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«. 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 ma<le 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 ex-
ceed the average, and I have cited them to show
what can be done under the scamping system.

We now come to tlje increased rate of working
induced by a rediiction of Ote ordinary rate of
remuneration of the workman. Not only is it
true that over-work makes under-pay, but the

304

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 produc-
tion, 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 Avas told by
a journeyman tailor working for the Messrs.
Nicoll, "reduces my wages one-third, and the con-
sequence 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 I85. now for my labour, where I used to
get bis. 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 hy stricter supervision of
journeymen, or those paid hy 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 over-

work. 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 hang-
ing 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 com-
mon 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 posi-
tively 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 finislied first. They
are all tearing 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 morn-
ing, 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 cer-
tain 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,
find, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

305

out of the men. Bnt 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 oflF, and
I am sure, after my day's work is over, my feel-
ings must be very much the same as one of the
London cab horses. As for Sunday, it is Hteralli/
a day of rest with us, for the greater part of us
lay a-bed all day, and even that will hardl}' 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 la-
bourers, 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 per-
fect 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 produc-
tive 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
fcuniliar. 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 Btrai);htens 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 were some of
them, consequently, performed two or three dis-
tinct 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 da}'. 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 busi-
ness, 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 im-
portant branch of industry certainly, the manufac-
ture of playing cards. " It is said by those en-
gaged 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 occu-
pation 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 Avere obliged to
perform all the operations himself, even supposing
him a practised hand, he would not, perhaps, com-
plete two cards in a day; and the 30 workmen,
instead of 15,500 cards, wo\ild 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 incre.ase of surplus hands
and casual labour, viz., to the use of macJiinery.

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 com-
merce 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 Liter 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

806

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

universal. It would, of course, be the height of
absurdity to say that threshing macliines could
possibly increase the number of threshers, even as
the reaping machines cannot possibly increase
the number of reapers ; their elfect is rather to
displace the greater number of labourers so en-
gaged, 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 iu some of the
more remote parts of the provinces, the flails of
the threshers maybe 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 dis-
placement 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
ben-ies, and the cutting and splitting of wood for
lucifer matches, an immense amount of nianaal
labour has been minimized, economized, or dis-
placed 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 mould-
ings, and, indeed, performing all the operations
of the carpenter — one such machine doing tlie
work, perhaps, of a hundred men. I asked the
probable influence that such an instrument was
likely to have on the men 1 " 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. Wlieels, also, have been
lately produced by steam. I need, however,
as 1 have so recently touched upon the sub-
ject, do no more than call attention to the in-
formation I have given (p. 240, vol. ii.) con-
cerning 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/., 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 de-
creases it ; when they write unguardedly, how-
ever, 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 me-
chanical power to the same chiss when applied to
certain operations.

" Strikes also lead to the superseding of hand

lalotir 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

I the inventive talents of their partner, Mr. Ro-

I berts, to the construction of a self-acting mule, in

j order to emancipate the trade from galling slavery

I and impending ruin. Under assurances of the

I most liberal encouragement in the adoption of

I his invention, Mr. Roberts suspended his profes-

j sional 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 GO 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 Manufac-
tures,' 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 em-
ployers 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 dic-
tated 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 deliver-
ance 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 fre-
quency of strikes among them, and the irregu-
larities in their hours and times of working,
compelled masters to substitute machinery for
their manual labour. Their trades, in consequence,
have heen 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 exten-
sibility of t/ie market is the one circumstance

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

307

which determinea whether the economy of labour
prodaced 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 Sj^nie amount of
work ichen tU quanlitif of uork to be done is
limittd in, its natnye, as, for instance, the thresliing
of com, 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,
auppose it requires 400 men to produce 4000 com-
modities in a given time, then, if you enable 200
Bien to produce the same quantity in the same time,
you must get rid of SOOO 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 yoor paupers and criminals in
precisely the same ratio. " The division of labour,"
•ays Mr, Mill, following Adam Smith, " is limited
by the extent of the market. If by tlie separa-
tion of pin-making into ten distinct employments
48,000 pins can be made iik a day, this separation
will .only be advisable if the number of accessible
cootumers is such as to require every day some-
thing like 48,000 pins. If there is a* demand for
only •:'■ """ •'■(■ division of labour can be advan-
tag . but to the extent which will

•veij ;ce that sujaller number." Again,

•• regM^* the large system of production, the
tame aiUiienty says, " the possibility of substitu-
tiag the large system of production' for the small
4«|nmmU, of course, on the extent of tlie market.
Tb« large system can only be advantageous when
a large amount of business is to be done; it
implies, therefore, either a populous and flourish-
ing eamraunity, or a great opening for exportation."
Bttl these are mere glimmerings of the broad in-
contretertibie pviuciple, that the ecommization of
labour at a greater rate than the exjKLnsioii of the
markeU, w iuee$sariljf the eatiM of gnrjdus labour
i» a comiMmity.

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 agri-.
cuUtttal labourers ia most depressed, have all one
thing in common. Each of them was formerly
the seat of a flourishing maitufacture carried
on by the cottagers at their own homes, which
has now decayed or ' ' !ra\vn to other

sitaationa. Thus, in .-^l.ire and Bed-

fordshire, the wives n of hibouring

■n had formerly very prohtable occupation in
.kinji Uc«; during the last war a tolerable lace-
-' eight hours a day, could easily
. a week ; the protits of this em-
.. .„;_. _^.., Lean since so much reduced by the

use of machinery, that a pillow lacemaker must
now work twelve hours daily to earn 2s. 6d. a
week."

The last of the conditions above cited, as causing
the same or a greater amount of work to be exe-
cuted with a less quantity of labour, is the large
si/stem of production Mr. Babbage and Mr. Mill
liave so well and fully pointed out " the economy
of labour" effected in this manner, that I can-
not do better than quote from them upon this
subject :—

'' Even when no additional subdivision of the
work," says Mr. Mill, " would follow an enlarge-
ment 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 ovidently 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 em-
ployed 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 tlie 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 cxeciited 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 8Ui)pose 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 sante principles, the manufactory
becomes gradually so enlarged that the expense of
lighting during the night amounts to a consider-
able sum ; and as there are already attached to
the establishment persons who aro up all night,
and can therefore constantly attend to it, and
also engineers to make and keep in repair any

No. XLir.

308

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

machinery, the addition of an apparatus for mak-
ing gas to light the factory leads to a new exten-
sion, 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 ma-
nufacturing.

" 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 manu-
factured 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 ichole 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 esta-
blishment as is now sufficient for the whole.
Since each must arrange for receiving and deliver-
ing 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 neigh-
bourhood, with all subsidiary arrangements for
collecting the letters from the different offices and
redistributing 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, per-
haps, 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 agricul-
ture there is the same saving of labour eflfected.
" 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 ex-
pensive. 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 quan-
tity 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 foimd 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, co7i,-
stantly employed six men a-piece, or, in the aggre-
gate, 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 pro-
perty, 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 i
greater part of them, being small tenants were, j
enabled to find farms on the estates of other pro- I
prietors, who pursued the opposite course of sub-
dividing their estates for the purpose of obtaining

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

309

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
mv 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 popula-
tion, the supply of labour has not much exceeded
the demand, for whenever I removed a family, 1
pulled down tJie house, and the parochial jealousy
respecting settlements is an ample check on the
intlux of strangers."

Simihr 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 esta-
blishments,— 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 plough-
ing was adopted in tliis 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
•how : —

" 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-inter-
minable com 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
lenrants, whom it had been usual to board and
lodge in the manor and farm-houses, were dis-
missed. This wa« 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 leaaes fell in, and were tent to join the daily
inereasing crowd qf cor/ipetitors for work that vxu
■'■••'■■ '"'reasing in quantity.

freeholders were in some instances ejected
r lands. This social revolution bad pro-

bably 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 be-
coming ' more frequent, whereby arable land,
■which could not be manured without 2^eople and
families, was tuiiied 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'*. In 1533 f, An act was passed
strongly condemning the practice of 'accumula-
ting' 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 con-
verted (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 J 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 Eliza-
beth's reign, lamenting the dispersion of families,
the ruin of houses, the breaking' up and destruc-
tion 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.' §

" 'Where have been a great many householders
and inhabitants,' says Bishop Latimer, * there is
now but a shepherd and his dog.'H 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 ia

♦ Lord Bacon's Hist, of King Henry VII., Works,
vol. V. p. 61.
t 25th Henry V 11 1, cap. 1.3.
t 5&6Kdw. V!.,<a|). r..

JK<len'» Hiit. of the Poor, vol. 1. p. 118.
Latimer's Sermons, p. 100.

310

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.'

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.' * While num-
bers of persons were thus continuallj'- driven from
their homes, and deprived of their means of live-
lihood, 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 Scot-
land. "It is only within the last few years," says
the author above quoted, " that the strathes and
gitens of Sutherland have been cleared of their
inhabitants, and that the whole country has been
converted into one immense slieepuull; 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 f • . .
. . . The example of Sutherland is imitated in the
neighbouring counties. During the last four
years soine hurulreds 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 Grlen-
calvie, in Ross-shire, were expelled from the farms
occupied for ages by themselves and their fore-
fathers, 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 cir-
cumstances inducing a surplusage of labourers,
and, consequently, augmenting the amount of
casual labour throughout the kingdom, viz., by
altenng tlie mode of hiring the labourers. At
page 236 of the present volume, I have said, in
connection with this part of the subject, —

'" Formerl)' the mode of hiring farm-labourers
was by the year, so that the employer was boimd
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 bex;orae 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 (har-
vesting, hop'picking, and the lik«) throughout the
year."

Blackstone, in treating of the laws relating
to master and servant (the greater part of the

* Pictorial History of England, vol. ii. p- 900.
t Reports of the ♦' Commissioner" of the Times News-
paper, in June, 1845.

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 mbniai. servants ; so willed
from being interlmienia, or domestic. The contract
between them and their masters arises upon the
hiring. If the hiring bo generally, without any
particular <me 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 mainuin him, throughout all the revo-
lutions of the respective seasons, as well when
there is loork to he 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 espe-
cially in the north — single men and women seek-
ing 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, hoivever, 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 terra of service
had expired, could attend a hiring (generally held
under the authority of the town's cliarter) 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
rfitification of the agreement, without any other
step. In the old times such engagements had
almost always (as shown in the terra " 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

LOyJWy LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR.

311

married coantry 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
fiuiner was bound to lind work for six or twelve
months (for both terms existed) for his hired
labourers. If the land did not supply it. still the
nuui 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 ax.sKa// but this arrangement is now seldom j
entered into, and the hired husbandman's labour
is consequently generally casual and rarely regular.
This principle of hiring labourers only for so long
a« they are wanted, as contradistinguished from
the " principU of natural equity" spoken of by
Blackstone, which requires that '' the servant shall
serve and the master maintain him throtighout all
tAe revolutions of the respective seasons, as veil
wken (here is tcork to be done as when there is not,"
has been the cause, perhaps, of more casual Labour
and more fpauperisra and crime, in this country, I
than, perhaps, any other of the antecedents before i
mentioned. The harvest is now collected solely j
by casual labourers, by a horde of squalid immi- ;
grants, or the tribe of natural and forced vagabonds j
who are continually begging or stealing their way
throughout the country; our hops are picked, our
fruit and vegetables gathered by the same pre-
carious bands — wretches who, perhaps, obtain
some three months' harvest labour in the course of
the year. The ships at our several ports are dis-
charfed by the same "casual luinds," who may be
•eea at oar dock* scrambling like hounds for the
occasional bit of bread that is vouchsafed to them ;
there numbers loiter throughout the day, even on
thecbance of an honr's employment ; for the term
of hiring has been cut down to the hnest 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 bands to do it remained stationary, and
we have seen that by the mere alteration of the
time, rate, and mode of working,^ vast amount of
surplus, and, consequently, casual labour may be
induced in a community. We have now to ascer- ■
uin how, still aauming the quantity of work to '
remain unaltercfl, the same effect may be brought {
about by aa unidae iitereaue of Ike number of ■
UUnmrtn.

TImw m« Many means by which the number |
of labourers may be increased besides that of a >
poflitrre increase of tbe people. These are —

1. By the undue increase of apprentices.

2. By drafting into the ranks of labour those
wbo should be otherwise engaged, as women and
cbildreo.

'S. By the imponation of labooren from abroad.
4. By tbe migration of coimtrj Uboorers 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 them-
selves.

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 appreiiiices.

This is, perhaps, one of the chief aids to the
cheap system. For it is principally by apprentice
labour that the better niasters, as well as workmen,
are undersold, and the skilled labourer conse-
quentl}' depressed to the level of the imskilled.
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 la-
bourers, and so the trade is glutted with work-
men, 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 in-
crease 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 tilings 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 (sup-
plying 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, in-
crease beyond the demand. It is the same with
the general slop cabinet-maker's trade in the same
parts. The small masters supply the " slaughter-
houses," 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 chelfonier and drawer-makers,
Iwdsteads; for they have not been taught. Even
if they knew the method, and conld accomplish
other work, the want of practice would compel
them to do it slowly, and tiie slop mechanic can
never afford to work slowly. Such classes of little
masters, then, to meet the demand for low-priced
furnitiue, rear their sons to the business, and fre-
quently 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 tiiey can only adopt the
course pursued by their parents, or nuuters, before
them. Hence a rapid, although again gradual.

312

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

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. Con-
cerning the apprentice system in the boot and shoe
trade, when making my inquiries into the con-
dition of the London workmen, I received the
following statements: —

" My employer had seven apprentices when I
was with him; of these, two were parish appren-
tices (I was one), and the other five from the
Refuge for the Destitute, at Hoxton. "With each
Refuge boy he got 5^. and three suits of clothes,
and a kit (tools). With the parish boys of Covent-
garden and St. Andrew's, Holborn, he got 5^.
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 Avas 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 195., another
15s., another 125., another 10s., and the rest not
less than 8s. each, for all worked sixteen hours
a day — that 's 4/. 8s. a week for the seven, or
225/. 10s. 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 'a
starvation wages for the same shops."

Akin to the system of using a large number of
apprentices is that of erii2yloying hoys 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 addi-
tional 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,
Avill have their goods from a Avarehouse 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 work-
people, 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 prin-
cipally 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 viahe but to put together, ladies' work-
boxes at 5c?. a piece, the boy receiving 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 ve-
neers."

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

L0ND02i LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

313

•killed »nd grown artizan to compete with the
labour of mere children, who are thus literally
brought into the market to undersell hira !

Concerning this market for boys and girls, in
Bethnal-green, I received, during my inquiries
into the boot and shoe trade, the following state-
ments from shopkeepers on the spot : —

"Mr. H has lived there sixteen years.

The market-days are Monday and Tuesday morn-
ings, 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 de-
cideded nuisance to the inhabitants. A great
many of both sexes congregate together, and most
market days there are three females to one male.
They consiit of sewing boys, shoe-binders, winders
for weavers, and girls for all kinds of slop needle-
work, 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."

Bat family work, or the conjoint labour of a
vwkman't vife and children, is an equally exten-
sire caose 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 lower-
ing of the duty by Sir Robert Teel'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 &mily. 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 th^ women's trade in the boot and shoe
business throughout England is," I said in the
Morning Chronicle, "chamber-mastering. There
are between 800 and 400 chamber- masters. Com-
monly the man has a wife, and three or four chil-
dren, 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 wait-
ing his return. He returns sometimes, having
' sold his work at cost price, or not cleared Is. 6d.
' for the day's labour of himself and fiimily. In
j the winter, by this means, the shopkeepers and
j warehouses can take the advantage of the cham-
ber-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 \s. 9d. per pair ; shoes. Is. 2d.
per pair ; children's, 6d., Sd., and 9rf. 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 eacli trade
into which they are introduced, and thus to
increase the casual labour, and decrease the earn-
ings 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 Avliole family as
soon as his children are able to be put to the
trade — and yet this only increases the very de-
pression that he seeks to avoid. I give the state-
ment 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 Avas 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/, a week ; on the j
same work we could not now earn 125. 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 begjin 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*. a week, and out of that I have
eight to support. Out of that 28.<. I have to pay
for grindery and candles, which cost me Is. a
week the year through. I now make children's
shoes for the wholesale housr's and anybody.
About two years ago I travelled from Thomas-
street, Bethnal-green, to Oxford-street, "on the

314

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

hawk." I then positively had nothing in my in- |
side, and in Hoiborn 1 had to lean against a
house, through weakuess 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 turn-
pike, and the same articles (children's patent
leather shoes) that I received 8s. a dozen for
from the wholesale houses, I was compelled to
sell to the shopkeeper for Gs. Qd. This is a very
frequent case — very frequent — with persons cir-
cumstanced 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 ohliged to begin the very minute
they can me 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 lie can't live at all. I've
worked inore t/ian a month togetlter, and iJie
longest night's rest I 've liad has been an hour and
a quarter ; aye, and I've been up three nights a
xveek besides. I've had my children lying ill,
and been obliged to wait on them into the bar-
gain. 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 ovi in a violent fiood of tears,
saying, "Oh, sir, it is hard to he obliged to hi-
bour from -morning till night as we do, all of us,
little ones and all, and yet not be able to live by
it eit/ter."

"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 thou-

sands 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 upivards of 12,000 children Vuit's been
put to the trade since prices Juts come down.
Twenty years ago I don't think tiiere was a child
at Avork 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 i
to become of the 12,000^ children when they 're
growed up, and come regular into the trade 1
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, con-
cerning 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 saouted. But
since the increase of the puffing and the sweating
system, masters and sweaters have sought every-
where 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
Avith the wife : they all learn the waistcoat busi-
ness, 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 intro-
duced 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 18ii 1 could live com-
fortably, and keep my Avife and children (I had
five in family) by my own labotu*. 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
Avas a bundle of crape and bombazine ready to be

lOXDOiV LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR.

3.15

; I v up into a dr*gs.] " I cHnnot afford now to
'. ■'. l:er 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,
&». per week. She miikes dresses. I never
would teach her to make waistcoats, because 1
knew the introduction of female hands had been
the ruin of tny trade. With the labour of myself
and wife now I can only earn 325. a week, and
six years ago I could make my 365. 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 1S44, I could get
by my own single liands. 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 main-
tain a decent appearance, has so ruined her con-
stitution that she is not the same woman as she
was. In fiact, ill as she is, she has beeti 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 canae of the serious decrease in our
trad*," said another tailor to me, " is the employ-
ment given to workmen at their own homes ; or,
in other words, to the ' sweaters.' The sweater
b the greatest evil to us ; as the sweating system
inereasM the number of hands to an almost in-
citedibie extent — wives, tons, daughters, and
1, all working ' long days '—that is,
from lixteen to eighteen honrs per day,
Suidayf M well. I date the decrease in
the "mign 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 gar-
ment, 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 • nnddlemen,' Hying by the labour of others.
Employers son began to find that they could get
gannente made at a less sum than the regular
price, aad those tradMmen who were anxious to
ibrea their tm*! l-rselling their more

bMOVabk neig ly availed themselros

of Aii naana l: .__„... ..^ cheap labour. The
eeaw^Miee w«^ tkat the sweater sought out
wbcn he Mi^d get the work done the cheapest,
and fo intn4«c«l a fresh stock of hands into the
trade. Female labour, of course, could be had
cheaper tkaa Male, and tba awcatcr readily
aratled hiBMlf of tha Mrricw vf woaien on that
aocooDt. Henoe tba mles wha %mk fumwrly
Wen sasplojrcd upoo tka garments were thrown
out of ««rii by tke feaiales, and obliged to remain
vnemplayed, nnlMt tiiey would redoM the prica

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 Avas 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 sufhcient 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 employ-
ments * 5,350,000

Engaged in non-projuctive em*
ployments . . . . 2,450,000

Of those who were engaged in productive em-
ployments, the proportion (in round numbers)
ran as follows ; —

Men 3,786,000

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 sind 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
oiit 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, con-
sisted principally of the unemployed wives and
children of the eight millions of people before
spedtied, three millions and a half of the namber

* I have here Included those cnffajjcd In Trade and
Corometvc, and emptoyent as well ss t
aoKMg the f>njdmctr$.

the employed

316

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOH

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 preca-
rious on account of this, what will not both work
and pay sink to when the number is again in-
creased, 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 imjtortation
of foreign labourers. In the cheap tailoring this
is made a regular practice. Cheap labour is regu-
larly 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 state-
ment 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^. For this
my employer would receive 12^. 6d. 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 em-
ployed 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 re-
ceived 4s., another 4s. 2d., the other two 5s. 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 revo-
lutions 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. T/iere
is a constant communication among the Jews, and
when their fnends in Poland, and other places,
learn they are safe in England, and in work and
out of trouble, they come over too. I icorked as a
journeyman in Pesth, and got 2s. Qd. 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, how-
ever, 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 Oie
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 ex-
ecuted 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 imskilled 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 else-
where, 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 Lan-
cashire," 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

ONE OF THE FEW REMAINING CLIMBING SWEEPS.

[_Fivm a l)aguetrevtj/pe hy Dkap.u.I

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOH.

317

births was only 160,150 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 nnmber 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 >vas 68,375. The number of emi-
grants (immigrants) into Birmingham, during the
same period, may, in the same way, be estimated
at 40,000 ; into Leeds, at 8000*; into the me-
tropolis, at 130,000. On the other hand, in
Dorset, Somerset, and Devon, the actual addition
to the popuhtion, in the same decennial period,
was only 15,491, 31,802. and 39,253 respectively;
althoagh the excess of births over deaths in the
same counties was aboat 20,000, 38>600, and
48,700."

The unskilled labour market suffers, again, from
the depression of almost any branch of skilled
labour; lor whatever branch of labour be de-
pressed, 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
sa)', *• 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 bj' 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 sur-
plus 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 (he increase of the 2^iople themselves. If, how-
ever, 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 seve-
ral 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.

•1570
1600
1630
1070
17uO
1750
flSOl
1811
1821
1831
1841
_^851

* Theei
here giwu.
by the Rf(;

Population,
England and Wales.

Numerical Increase.

4,038,879

4,811,718

5,601,517

5,773,646

6,045,008

6,517,035

8,892,536

10,164,068

11,999,322

13,896,797

15,914,148

17,922,768

772,839

789,799

172,129

271,362

472,027

2,375,501

1,271,532

1,835,250

1,897,475

1,982,489

1.968,341

Increase

Annual

per

Increase

Ceuu

per cent.

f25S

0-6

Sir

0-5

0-08

*i °^"'

5
8

0-2
0-2

0-7

<b o

1-4

1-8

1-6

« «M

1-4

1-3

§5

> >)raUtion from IA70 to 17^, as
Hickman's tabks, as pul>likhed

t The population at the decennial term, as
is the amended calculation of tlic Registrar -
given in the new census tables.

here given,
General, as

INCREASE IN THB

POPULATION OF SCOTLAND.

Yean.

PopatatkB.

ScoUand.

Numerieal
Jncroase.

Increase
per Cent.

Annual

Incrwwe

per Cent.

ii K

•17M t

1,265^80 .

^6-

tieoi i

1,608,420

- 343,040

0-6

s.g:

1811

1^05,864

197,444

1-3

1821

2,091^12

285,6{»7

1-6

S o ,-1

-sis

1831

2,364,386

272.866

8 _ So 00

C -5 r-< 1^

itiZ

1841

2,620,184

256,798

1-1

1861

2,870,784

246,287

ifaniialMilnrUMckrgy.

t The TMunM here cited are copied from those given
by the llegiitrar-General in the new census.

318

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

INCREASE IN THE POPULATION (

3F IRELAND.

Numerical Increase

Annual rate

Population,

and Decrease.

Increase

of Increase

Ireland.

t denotes Increase.

and Decrease

* „ Decrease.

per Cent.

■^s

1731*

2,010,221

1754"

2,372,634

t 362,413 •

tl9

1767

2,544,276

+ 171,642

P OO

1777

2,690,556

t 146,280

t 6

1785

2,845,932

t 155,376

t 6

a II

o o

1788

4,040,000

11,194,068

t42

o^'^ti

1805^=

5,395,456

tl,355,456

t34

rat
ears,
rCei

1813«i

5,937,858

t 542,402

tio

1821*

6,801,827

+ 863,969

tl5

tl-4

^-^

1^ *

1831

7,767,401

t 965,574

tl4

tl-3

3 OO

is-

1841

8,175,124

t 407,723

+ 5

+ -5

1851

6,515,794

*1,659,330

•20

*l-8

• Returns obtained through an inquiry instituted by
the Irish House of Lords.

b The population from 1754-1788 is estimated from the
•• hearth money " returns.

e Newenham's Inquiry into the Population of Ireland.
d Estimate from incomplete census.
• First complete census.

INCREASE IN THE POPULATION

OF THE 1

[JNITED KINGDOM.

Years.

Population.

Numerical
Increase.

Decennial
Increase
per Cent.

Annual
Increase
per Cent.

Increase in 30
years, from 1821
to 1851 « 81
per Cent.

Annual Rate of In-
crease '9 per Cent.

1821
1831
1841
1851

20,892,670
24,028,584
26,709,456
27,309,346

3,135,914

2,680,872
599,890

1-4
1-1
0-2

Discarding, then, all conjectural results, and ad-
hering 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 in-
crease 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 offi-
cial 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 specu-
lating 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 ex-
hibited 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 in-
crease in the means of labour has been more exten-
sive than has the increase in the number of la-
bourers; in some instances the difference is wide
indeed.

The annual rate of increase among the popula-
tion 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 tlian 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 employ-
ing them 1

Thus, it is evident, that the means of labour

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

319

nil

o
c
»-^

»-<

^-1

£ -

mmmui s i:-

SgS?58Sg?.S 53 S

illiillii

??8f^2i5gxR8 8 5

5 5 5 5 5 i — 5 o •* «

«|ilf : :|I

lllllllll I g

iiiyiiis § s

;:5 .s§ . . -Sir

iiiii 11 i I

i .1 . . M

i§ .1 . . .1

1.1
h

-I

s.s

it ^

•ii.

. E

have increased at a more rapid pace than the
labouring population. But the increase in " pro-
perty" of the country, in that which is sometimes
called the "staple" property, being the assured
possessions of the class of proprietors or capitiilists,
as well as in the profits, prove i 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 op
Great IBritain.

Year.
1815
1842
1844
Increase .

Annual rate of
crease . .

Property assessed
to Property-tax.
£60,000,000
95,250,000

58 per cent.

' ^ 1 7 per cent.

Annual Profits
of Trade.

£37,000,000

60,000,000

62 per cent.
1-7 per cent.

Here, then, we find, that the property assessed
to the property tax has increased 35,250,000^ in
27 years, from 1815 to 1842, or upwards of
1,000,000^. sterling a year; this is at the rate of
1"7 per cent, every year, whereas the population
of GreatBritain has increased atthe rate of only 1*4
per cent, per nnnunU But the amount of assess-
ment 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 ^jroprietors
there is far greater wealth than the returns show.

As regards the annual profits of trade, the in-
crease between the years 1815 and 1844 has been
23^000,000/. 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 finan-
cial tables of the revenue of the country; conse-
quently 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 6

Shipping entering Ports ... 9

Property 1-7

Profits of trade .... 17

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 in-
creasing also in the sad long lists of paupers and
criminals. Has our progress in poverty and crime
been " pari j)assu," or been more than commen-
surate ill the rapidity of its strides ]

320

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF PAUPERS IN ENGLAND AND WALES."

Number of Paupers

Numerical Increase and Decrease.

Annual Increase

Years.

relieved, Quarters ending

t denotes Increase.

and Decrease

Lady-day.

* ,, Decrease.

per Cent.

s «

1840

1,199,529

^^l

,1841

1,299,048

t 99,519

t'8

= II ^

1842

1,427,187

1128,139

flO

^^ 1

1843

1,539,490

tll2,303

t 8

Ol IH

1844

1,477,561

1938,071

+60

S"-J

1845

1,470,970

* 6,591

* 0-4

i-^

1846w

1,332,089

• 38,881

* 3

gsi

1847

1,721,350

1389,261

+29

S Q

1848

1,876,541

tl55,191

+ 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 remem-
bered that the increase of upwards of 650,000 pau-
pers, in nine years, has accrued since the New Poor
Law has been in what may be considered full
woriiing ; a law which many were confident would

result in a diminution of pauperism, and which cer"
tainly cannot be charged with offering the least
encouragement to it. Still in nine years, our poverty
increases while our wealth increases, and our pau-
pers 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.

1805
1811
1821
1831
1841
1850

Annual
Average Num-
ber of Criminals
Committed.

Numerical
Increase.

4,605

5.375

9,783

15,318

22,305

27^14

770
4408
5535
6987
5509

Decennial
Increase
per Cent.

17
82
57
46
25

Annual

Increase

per Cent.

2-8
8-2
•5-7
4-6'
3-6

Increase
per Cent.

in the
43 years.

504

Annual Ave-
rage Increase
per Cent.,
11-7.

Fran 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 ive increase in jyoxerty and crime as vje in-
crease in wealth, and in loth far beyond our

» 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. 48<J (1844),
a table is printed which is said to give the returns from
the earliest period for which aurtientic Parliamentary
documents have been received, and this sets forth the
number of paupers in England and Wales, for the entire
tweh-e months in the years UW3, 1813, 1814, and 1815; then
comes a long interval of " no returns," and after 1839 we
have the numbers for onlv tfn-ee 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 incon-
sistency 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
1813
1814
1815

1849 (Ist Jan.]
„ (IstJuly)

1850 (1st Jan.)
,, (IstJuly)

1851 (IstJan.)

1,040,716 ^
1,426,0<)5 I
1,402^7« [
1,319,851 '
940,851 \
84<>,988

79fi,318
829,440 j

Number of paupers for the
entire twelvemonths.

Number of paupers for two
separate days in each year.

increase in nuinbeis. 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 taldng i[)lace 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 num-
ber 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 in-
ducing a decrease iu the quantity of work ] and,

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

321

consequentlr, what the circumstances inducing an
increase in the amount of surplus and coBual
labour \

In the iirst place M-e may induce a large
amount of casual labour /«, imrlicidaf^ dUtricts,
not by decreasing the gross quantity of work re-
quired by the country, but by merely shifting
the work into new quarters, ^nd so decreasing
the quantity in the ordinary localities. " The
west of England," says Mr. Dodd, in his ac-
count of the textile manufactures of Great Britain,
" was formerly, and continued to be till a
conparatively 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 manufac-
ture; 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 stcam-
eogine, 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 suffi-
cient to account for much of the recent advance in
the north."

Of lat« years the products of many of the west
of Eogiand clothing districts have considerably
declined. Shepton Mallet, Fronje and Trowbridge,
for instance, which were at one time the seats of a
flourishiitg 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.
Thomtou, " most of the cottagers, fifty years ago,
were weavers, whose chief dependence was their
loosas, 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
tJiey hare themselves become dependent upon
agriealtore, in cosMqueace of the removal of the
wooUen maoufacturt from the cottage to the
tuAaxj" {m well as to the north of England],
"tk«M redaeed wa^M have become their own
portian also;" or, in other words, since the
shifting of the wooUen manufacture in these
parts, the qiuntity of casual kbour io 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 maia cause of the misery of the |

straw-plaiters of Buckinghamshire and Bedford-
shire. " 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*-. 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*. Qd.
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
tinie, 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
I the demand of the markets, so that, though there
be no decrease in the requirements of the countr}--,
there ultimately accrues such a surplus of commo-
dities beyond the wants and means of the people,
that the manufacturers are compelled to stop pro-
ducing until such time as the regular demand
carries oif 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 employ-
ment altogether.

Thus far we have proceeded in the assumption
that the actual quantity of work required by the
nation does not decrease in ilie aggregate, hid only
in i^axiicvdar i^laces or at jxirticidar times, owing
to a greater quantity than usual being done in
other places or at other times •. We have still to
consider what are the circumstances which tend to
diminish the gross quantity of u-ork re'/uired 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 regu-
lates the supply of them, is also to know what it ia
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 com-
modities. This decrease of demand may proceed
from one of three causes : —

1. An increase of cost.

2. A change of taste or fashion.
8. 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
oj tasU orfotshion, as n means of decreasing the

• It might at first appear that, when the work is
shifted to the Continent, tlierc would be a proportiojiate
decr«>aH« of the ngTCf^Alc quantity at home, but u little
reflection will teach us that the foreigners must take
something from us In nxrhinif- for their work, and so
increase the (piantity of our work in certain respects as
much as they deprc«» it in otlurt.

322

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 raother-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
circunutances 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 par-
ticular line at Birmingham is necessarily increased,
while the contrary effects, of course, ensue imme-
diately 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 sup-
ply 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 ex-
citement; 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 commo-
dities, may be seen in the failure of the cotton
crops, which, of course, deprive the cotton manu-
facturers 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 opjiorlunity of i

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 quajitity 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 pe-
riodical 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 particu-
lar places, at particular times, or in the ag-
gregate, owing to a decrease either in the
demand or means of supply.

Any one of these causes, it has been demon-
strated, 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 work-
ing, 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 pro-
duction, 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 cir-
cumstances 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 em-
ployed, and the remaining third wholly unem-
ployed; 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 parti-
cular 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 con-
tinually 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 divi-
sion of labour, and to extend the large system
of production beyond the requirements of the

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

323

narkeU, as well as the temporary mode of hiring 1 is an advantage in fine weather in the masonry-
becoming se<; and ftForts 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 em-
ployment of labourers about buildings is 30 per
cent. — one builder estimated it at 50 per cent. —
less in winter than in summer, from the circum-
stance of fewer buildings beirtg 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 em-
ployer 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
j cost in keeping the horses is the same.
i Thus it appears that under the most favourable
i 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 ever}' year for six months out of the twelve.
It will be seen, however, on reference to the Uible
here given, that the average number of weeks
each of the rubbish-carters is employed through-
out 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 ; —

— 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 ex-
traordinary means of economizing labour which
hare been developed of late years, and the dis-
covery as to how to do the work of the nation
with fewer people) barely sufficient work for the
reffitJar employment of half of our labourers, so
that only 1,500,000 are fully and constantly em-
ployed, while 1,500,000 mo?e are employed only
half their time, and the remaining 1,500,000
wholly unemployed, obtaining a day's work occa-
sionallij by the displacement of some of the others.
Adopt what explanation we will of this ap-
palling deficiency of employment, one thing at
least is certain : we cannot consistentbj icith 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 in-
creased during the last fifty years at the rate
of "9 per cent, per annum, the wealth and pro-
ductions of the kingdom have far exceeded that
amount.

Of the Casual Labourers AMOKa the
Kcbbish-Carters.
The casual labour of so large a body of men as
the rubbish-carters is a question of high impor-
tance, 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 rub-
bish-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, sewer-
men, 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
serviccf 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 brUl season for the builders, and
consequently for the rubbish-carters, is, as I heard
•everal of them express it, " when days are long."
Prom about the middle of April to the middle of
October is the f/risk season of the rubbish-carters,
for during those six months more buildings are
erected than in the winter half of the year. There

Employment in the

Men.

Year.

9 had

39 weeks, or

214 „

4 „

10 „

28 „

8 „

353 „

4 „

34 „

29 „

38 „

27 „

45 „

15 „

„

months.

85G

324

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Hence about one-fourth of the trade appear to
have been employed for six months, while up-
wards 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 ca-
sualty over which he can no more exercise con-
trol 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 rub-
bish-carters required to work at the foundations
of 300 houses. Such a cause maybe 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 re-
gular 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 de-
cennial 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 casxial, 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 18s., and his actual wages at
205. 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 posi-
tively receives, there being sometimes additions
in the form of perquisites or allowances ; some-
times deductions in the way of fines and stop-
pages ; the additions in the rubbish-carting trade
appear to average about 2s. a week. But these
actual wages are received only so long as the men
are employed, that is to say, they are the carnal
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 con-
stant earnings or income of the men working at
the better-paid portion of the trade.

£ «. d.

The gross actual wages of ten
rubbish-carters, casually employed
for 39 weeks, at 20s. per week,
amount to 390 0 0

The gross actual wages of 250
rubbish-carters, casually emplox'ed
for 26 weeks, at 20^-. per week . 6500 0 0

The gross actual wage3 of 360
rubbish-carters, casually employed
for 13 weeks, at 20s. 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 era-
ploj'ed for 39 weeks, were 15s. instead of 20s.
per week— that '^is to say, their wages, equally di-
vided throughout the year, Avould have yielded that
constant weekly income. By the same reasoning,
the 20s. per week casual wages of the 250 men
employed for 26 weeks out of the 52, were equal
to only 10s. constant weekly wages; and so the
360 men, who had 20s. per week casually for
only three months in the year, had but 5s. a week
constantly throughout the whole year. Hence
we see the enormous difference there may be be-
tween 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 em-
ploy, 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.

LOXDON LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR.

325

Thb Effects of Casual Labour in General.

Having now pointed out the causes of casual
labour, I proceed to set forth its elfects.

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 irre-
gular,— 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 conceniing it. Had the seasons fol-
lowed each other fitfully, — had the sequences in
the external world been variable instead of inva-
riable, and what are now tenned " 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.
When^ the means of sustenance and comfort
are fixed, the human being becomes conscious of [
what be haa to depend upon ; and if he feel j
ensured that cuch means may fail him in old age
or in sickness, and be fully impressed with the
certatntif of snffering from either, he will im-
mediately proceed to make some provision against
the time of adversity or infinnity. If, however,
his means l>e uucertain — abundant at one time,
and deficient at another — a spirit of speculation or
jr; '!;!.' with the future will be ii^duced, and the
ill iuiaial 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 neces-
sity. 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, be grow too
confident upon iu continuance, and, either from
this or other causes, is led to believe that death
will overtake him before ht« powers of self-support
decay.

The ordinary effects of uncertain labour, then,
are to drive the labourers to improvidence, reck-
letcoeM, and pauperism.

Even in theclaates which we do not rank among
kboniers, as, for instance, authors, artists, musi-
cians, actors, uncertainty or irregularity of employ-
ment and remuneration produces a spirit of waste-
f'llrifr*., and carelessness. The steady and daily
,i«.(! 1 iv gains of trade and of some of the profes-
B.'iiM t. nil a certain and staple income; while in
■tii-r pr-ifessions, where a large sum may be real-

ized 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 en-
joyment; while the present enjoyment renders the
past privation faint as a remembrance and unim-
pressive as a warning. " Want of providence,"
writes Mr. Porter, " on the part of those who live
by the labour of their hands, and whose employ-
ments so often depend upon circumstances beyond
their control, is a theme which is constantly
broui^ht forward by many whose lot in life has
been cast beyond the reach of want. It is, in-
deed, greatly to be wished, for their own sakes,
that tile 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 circum-
stances of ease to eftimate 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 circum-
stances 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 lumf) 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 casual-
ties in a country, the same spirit of improvident
recklessness breaks forth. In London, on the last
visitation of the plague, in the reign of CharW
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 fibrm 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 uncer-
tainty of nature, but from the character of the
times ; and this feeling of the jeopardy of exist-
ence, from the practice of violence and bloodshed,
wrought the effects I have described. Life was
more than naturally casual. When the famine
was at tlie worst in Ireland, it was remarked in ,
the (Jorh 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 conse-
quent casujilty of food. Persons, it should be
remembered, do not insure houses or shops that

No. XLV.

326

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

are " doubly or trebly hazardous ; " they gamble
on the uncertainty.

Mr. Porter, in his " Progress of the Nation,"
cites a fact bearing immediateh' upon the present
subject.

" The fomiation of a canal, which h;is been in
progress during the last live 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,
80 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 com-
fortable sustenance of their families, were wasted
in procuring for themselves a temporary forgetful-
ness 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 Avas offered to them which was constant in its
nature and certain in its duration, and on which
their weekly earnings would be sufficient to pro-
vide 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 distribu-
tion of several hundred pounds weekly in wages,
the whole of which must be considered as so much
additional money placed in their hands, the con-
sumption of whiskey was absolutely and perma-
nerdly diminished in the district. Daring the com-
paratively 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 shil-
lings 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 la-
bour. We have competence and frugality as the
results of one sj'stem; 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 in-
tervals, so as to make the returns lose all appear-
ance 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 extrava-
gance 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 per-
formed 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, Avorking
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 emploj'ed, 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 in-
terval as to appear uncertain, and was conse-
quently 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 daugh-
ter 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, ' 0 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

LONDON LABOUR AND TUB LONDON POOR.

327

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 nhie 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
thecS, 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, prin-
cipally 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 550J and
6000. Such of the publicans as keep small
stocks ^ 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
p.xss 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 neigh-
bourhood of new buildings, or any public open-air
work. Tiie street-sellers, themselves prevented
from plying their trades outside, are busy in such
times in the " publics," otfering for sale braces,
belts, hose, tobacco-boxes, nuts of different kinds,
apples, &c. A bargain may then be struck for
so mach and a half-pint of beer, and so the con-
sumption 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 de-
mands of the ordinary trade in malt liquor of
27,000 gallons, or 216,000 pints. This, at 2d. a
pint, is 1800/. for a day's needless, and often pre-
judicial, 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-pl:ice8 ; and
even tho 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 I
labourer of the warmth, discussion, freedom, and j
excitement of the public-house. |

That the great bulk of the consumers of this I
wlditioncU beer arc of the classes I have men-
tioned is, I think, plain enough, from the increase |
being experienced only in tliat beverage, the con- |
sumption of gin being little affected by the same

iicans. Indeed, the statistics showing the ratio
>f beer and gin -drinking are curiotu 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 spint drinking, that
whilst under the privations of last year (1810)
the poorer classes paid 2,628,286^. tax for spirits;
in 1S36, a year of the greatest prosperity, the tax
on British spirits amounted only to 2,390,188/.
So true is it tlvat 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 land-
lord, 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*.

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
th'j 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 fe,cts 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. Byjmaking them do the samevfork for less pay.
The first of these modes is what is technically

termed " driving" especially when effected by com-
pulsory "overwork;" and it is called the "economy
of hibour" when brought about by more elaborate
and refined processes, such as the division of la-
bour, the large system of production, the invention

* The Great Exhibition, I am informed, produced a very
small effect on the consumption of imrter; and, acconf-
ing to the otlicial retunH, l(;(i,(KK» gallons li-ss spirits were
consumed in the first nine montiis of the present year,
than In the corresponding months of the last : thus snow-
ing that any (xrcupation of mind or body is incompatible
witli intemperate habits, f(»r drunkenness is essentially
the vice of idleness, or want of something better to do.

LONDON LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR.

of machinery, and the temporary, as contradistin-
guished from the permanent, mode of hiring.

Each of these modes of making workmen do
inore work for the same pay, can but have tiie
same depressing effect on the labour market, for
not only is the rate of remuneration (or ratio of
the work to the pay) reduced wlien 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 work-
men must be displaced thereby as the increased
terra 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 in-
creasing their rate of labouring), then if the
markets or means of disposing of the extra pro-
ducts 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 al-
ready 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 propor-
tional 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 "con-
tract work."

4. By the domestic system of work, or giv-
ing 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 aa the small-
master system of work.

Let me begin with the first of the last-men-
tioned modes of cheapening labour, viz., the do-
mestic s)/stem 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 ten-
dency 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-ivork and Sunday -work, as icell as tends to
change journeymen into trading operatives, living
on the -labour of their felloio -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 re-
ferred by the Trades' Societj- 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. Conse-
quently, the sweater being enabled to get the
work done by women and children at a lower
price than the regular workman, obtains the I
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 quan-
tity 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

LOSDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

329

j:iur!u*vman was paid by the day, and conse-
quentlv 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- i
work to piece-work was regularly acknowledged
in the trade. But siill it was niorAlly impossible '
for Svork to be given out and not be paid by the !
piece. Hence I date t/oe decrease in tlie wages of i
the icorkman from the introduction of piece- work , •
and gicinj out jannentt to be made of tlie pre- \
mifts if tlte vuuter. The effect of this was, that j
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 i
help him, and paid them little or nothing for
their l.ibjur. This was the beginning of the
sweating system. The workmen gradually be-
came transformed from journeymen into 'middle-
men,' 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 thftmselves of this
means of obtaining cheap labour."

The niiddleinan 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 wage* 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 husiness with him to hunt out
the lowest grades of working men — that is to say,
those who are either morally or intellectually in-
ferior in the craft — the drunken, the dishonest,
the idle, the vagabond, and the unskilful ; these
are the instruments that he seeks for, because, th^e
being un ible to obtain employment at the regular
wages of the sober, honest, industrious, and skilful
portion of the trad:*, he can obtain their labour at
a lower rate than what is usually paid. Hence
drunkards, tramps, men without character or sta-
tion, apprentices, children — all suit him. Indeed,
the nmrf? degraded the labour<TS, the better they
auawer his purpose, for the cheaper he can get
their work, and coiuequently the more he can
make out of it.

" ' Boy labour or thief labour,' said a middle-
man, on a large scale, to me, ' what do I care, so
long a« lean get my work done cheap!' That this
teeting otU 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 shov/: iiit of the tailors'

trade printed in th«" it the wives of

the sweaters not only j . ... directs of London

j on the look-out for youths raw from the country,
i but that they make periodical trips to the poorest
provinces of Ireland, in order to obtain workmen
I at the lowest possible rate. I have shown, more-
over, that foreigners are annually imported from
I the Continent for the same purpose, and that among
j the chamber-masters in the shoe trade, the child-
i market at Bethnal-green, as well as the work-
; houses, are continually ransacked for the means of
! obtaining a cheaper kind of labour. All my in-
i vestigations go to prove, that it is chiefly by
; means of this middleman system that the wages
I of the working men are reduced. It is this
! contractor — this trading operative — who is in-
i variably the prime mover in the reduction of
1 the wages of his fellow -workmen. He uses the
most degraded of the class as a means of under-
selling the worthy and skilful labourers, and of
ultimately dragging the better down to the abase-
ment 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;
fte can live solely by reducing them still lower,
and so he immechately sets about drafting or im-
porting 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
chiistity ciinnot 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 opera'
live, 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 middle-
man 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 prolit. When
a quantity of work, usually |)aid for by tlie 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 |Kirts 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-build-
ing trade; but it is not essential to the contract or

330

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

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 reduc-
tion of price effected from that cause alone.

It is this contract or lump work which con-
stitutes 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 Avork-
men 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 contract-
ing 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 gene-
rally 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 con-

tractor, 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 him-
self 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 gentle-
man, 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 7nost 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 re-
gular journeymen's wages of 30s. a week, or per-
haps 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 45. a day.
It is the same with the doors, the staircases, the
balustrades, the window-frames, the room-skirt-
ings, the closets ; in short, all parts of the building.

The subletting is accomplished without diffi-
culty. 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 prin-
ciple 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 "esti-
mates" of the building of a church, sends in an
offer to execute the work in the best style for
5000L Another firm may offer to do it for some-
where about 3000/. The first-mentioned firm
would do the work well, paying the "honourable"
rate of wages. The under-working firm must re-
sort 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

LONDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDOX POOR.

331

and suffering to the labouring or handicraftsman,
which, to ray mind, is far more productive of
distress and poor-grinding than any other, or than
all other causes put together : I allude to the con-
tract system, and especially in reference to print-
ing. Depend upon it, sir, the father of wicked-
ness himself could not devise a more malevolent
or dishonest course than that now very generally
ivirsued by those who should be, of all others,
the friends of the poor and working man. The
(jovernment 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
a: the lowest figure ? And this, too, totally irre-
spective 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 yeirs be noted for paj'ing a
fair and remunerating price to his workmen or
sub-tradesmen, and bears the character of a re-
sponsible 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 work-
people, 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 af&ir, the ' Stationery Office' of the Go-
vernment, or the committee of the club, will
congratulate themselves and their auditors on
the fact that a diminution in e-xpenses has been
etfected ; 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 tlie 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
array clothier, gave the following evidence before the
Select Committee on Army and Navy Appointments.

" When the contract for soldier's great coats was
ipened, Mr. Maberly took if at the same price (13.?.)
in December, 1808 ; this shows the effect of wild
competition. In February following, Esdailes'
house, who were accoutrement makers, and not

• \; -rs, got knowledge of what was Mr. Maberly's
and tke>/ tendered at 12*. G^^iL a month
.;: . virds; it was evidently then a struggle for
tae price, and how the quality the least good (if
•xc miy use such a terra) could pass. Mr. Maberly
: i /t like to be outbidden by Esdailes; Esdailes
I sub$tquetUl>/, and Mr. Maberly bid 12^. 6d.
i jic- months after, and Mr. Dixon bid again,
and got the contract for 11*. Zd. in October, and
in December of that year another public tender
took place, and Messrs. A. and D. Cock took it at
11*. 5i</., aiid thttf tuhseqwnthj hmlf. It went
on in this sort of way, — <h.»!. m every

two or every three months, by ' st each

other. Presently, though it ..... „ .lud that

t le great coat was to wear four yean, it was found

i\i7kX those great coats iccrs 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 array clothier, and a gentle-
man 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 sp^ak in terras of the highest admira-
tion 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 Array, Navy, and Ordnance Esti-
mates, 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 ChristiaJis, 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 rcorkpeople is
most distressing — of a mass of people, willing to
work, who cannot obtain it, and of a mass, espe-
cially 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 com-
mittee, to recommend an immediate stop to be 2mt
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 hoio cruelly the
workpeople employed in making up this clothing
are opj^ressed; and some of the vien xcill 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 arii small masters, trades into which it
requires but little capital to embark, there is cer-
tain to be a cheapening of labour. Such a man
works himself, and to get work, to meet the exi-
gences of the rent and the demands of the collec-
tors of the parliamentary and parochial taxes, he
will often underwork the very journeymen whom
he occasionally employs, doing " the job" in such

33'

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

cases with the assistance of his family and appren-
tices, at a less rate of profit than the amount of
journeymen's wages.

Conceminof these garret masters I said, when
treating of the Cabinet trade, in the Chronicle,
" The cause of the extraordinarj' decline of wages
in the Cabinet trade (even though the hands de-
creased and the work increased to an unprece-
dented extent) will be found to consist in the in-
crease 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 maiuifacture 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 con-
sequence is, that he is obliged to convert each arti-
cle into food immediately he manufactures it — no
matter what the stats of the market may be. The
capital of the garret master being generally suffi-
cient to find him in materials for the manufiicture 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 gene-
rally 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 olfer, no matter how slight a remune-
ration it aftbrds 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 1 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, in-
deed, 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 tliere 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 over-
whelming 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 inti-

mately 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 directli/ 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 Avork) 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 mem-
bers of the family, or cheaper labourers, are gene-
rally eraploj'ed 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 in-
struments 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 em-
ploys, and then, finding that he is able to under-
work 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 middle-
man 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 whicli they
are found to prevail. Who, then, are the cheap
labourers ] — who the individuals, by means of

'LOXDON LABOUR AXD THE LOXDON POOR.

333

whose sen-ices the sweater, the smaller master,
the lumper, and others, is enabled to underwork
tiie rest of his- trade ? — what the general character-
istics 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 ?

Th( cheap vorhaen in all trades, I tind, are
divisible into three classes : —

1. The unskilful.

2. The untrustworthy.

3. The inexpensive.
First, as regards the unskilful. Long ago it has

Lcea 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 consi-
dered 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 anti business
which their means or opportunities place within
their reach, even though the lad be altogether un-
siuted to the craft. The consequence is, that these
boys often grow up to be unskilful workmen.
There are technical tenns for them in different
trades, but perhaps the generic appellation is
'•■ muffa." Such workmen, however well conducted,
1 nirely obtain employment in a good shop at
1 wages, and are compelled, therefore, to accept
iid, third, and fourth-rate wages, and are often
en to slop work,
ether causes may be cited as tending to form
unskilful workmen : the neglect of masters or fore-
men, or their incapacity to teach apprentices ; irre-
! gular habits in the learner ; and insuHicient prac-
I tice durin? a master's paucity of emplojTnent I
am assured, moreover, that hundreds of mechanics
yearly come to London from the country parLi,
whose skill is altogether inadecjiunte to the de-
mands of the" honourable trade." Of course, during
the tinishingof their educ:ition they can only work
for inferior shops at inferior wages ; hence another
cause of cheap labour. Of this I will cite an in-
stance: 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. Ix'cause 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 worl:. he " had his business to learn
all over again;" and until he attained the requisite
skill, be worked for " just what he could get :" he
was a cheap, because then an unskilful, labourer.

There is, moreover, the cheaper labour of ap-
prentices, the great prop of many a slop-tmder;

for n* "•" ■ - i; - -xrd all the niceties of

wor the solidity and per-

fect i -Ming it, as k was once

destrjbed t<> ui«, " jubl Ut ilie eye"), a hid is soon
made useful, and his labour remunerative to his

j master, as far as slop remuneration goes, which,
[ though small in a small business, is wealth in a
j " monster business."

I There are, again, the "improvers." These are
' the most frequent in the dress-making and milli-
nery business, as young women tind it impossible
i to form a good connection among a wealthier class
'• of ladies in any country town, unless the " patron-
esses " are satisfied that their skiM and taste have
: been perfected in London. In my inquiry (in the
I course of two letters in the Morning Chronicle)
, into the condition of the workwomen in this call-
j ing, 1 Avas told by a retired dressmaker, who hud
j for upwards of twenty years carried on business
i in the neighbourhood of Grosvenorsquare, that
she had sometimes met with " improvers" so taste-
1 ful and quick, from a good provincial tuition, that
I they Had really little or nothing to learn in Lon-
' don. And yet their services were secured for one,
and oftener for two years, merely for board and
I lodging, while others employed in the same esta-
i blishment had not only board and lodging, but
I handsome salaries. The improver's, then, is gene-
I rally u 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 needie, and he tiien la-
bours, at greatly reduced rates of payment, on the
making of soldiers' clothing — "sane- work," * 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 che;ipened,
also, by the employment of Irishmen (in, perhaps,
all branches of skilled or unskilled labour), and of
foreigners, more especially of Poles, who are infe-
rior 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 work-
man 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 Unlrusiworihy Labour (as a cause of
! cheap labour) I need not say much. It is ob-
j vious that a drunken, idle, or dishonest workman
t or workwoman, when pressed by want, will and
mu.st labour, not for the recompense t)ie labour
; merits, but for wiiatever pittance an employer will
! accord. There is no reliance to be placed in him.
j Such a man cannot " hold out" for terms, for he is
I perhaps starving, and it is known that " he cannot
' be depended upon." In the sweep's trade many
j of those who work at a lower rate than the rest of

I * The tcnn mnc in " &anc-work " i8 the Norman
word for hhxxi (Latin, «»»^iii«; Fnnch, »aiif(\, so that
" sane-work " means, literally, hlocMiy work, this calJcd
either from tlic san^iitiary tra<le of the soldier, or from
the blood-red colour of the cloth.

334

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 Afho 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 be-
come so many means of driving down the price of
labour still lower.

a. Those who, being what is designated hard-
reared that is to sny, 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 pea-
sants from many of the counties, who seek to
amend their condition by obtaining emplojTnent
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, cnce 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 2>otmd a week to a dozen per-
sons, 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 sub-
sisted 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 costerraongers, one of them said of the Irish
in his trade, and without any bitterness, " they '11
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 employ-
ment they can adopt. Accustomed to a wretched
mode of living in their own country, they are con-
tented 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."

I. 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 chil-
dren, 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, un-
married 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 trades-
men, 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 wlio are
in possession of what maj' be called " aids to
wages," are differently circumstanced. Such are
the men who have other employment besides

LONDON NIGHTMEN,

IFrom a Diffuetreotffpe by Bkard.1

LOXDOy LABOUR AXD THE LOXDON POOR.

335

that for which they accept less than the ordinary
pay, as is the case with those who attend at
geiulemen'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 anny and navy pensioners (non-commis-
sioned 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 pen-
sioners 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 conse-
quently a means, to low wages. Such a man has
the advantage of obtaining his potatoes and vege-
tables at the cheapest rate, and so can afford to
work cheaper than other men of his diss. 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 mnst not omit to bring under
yoar Lordship's notice an illustration of the
lUpretsing efect which is produced by the prac-
tice of gt>-ing relief in aid of wages to widows
upon the earnings of females. Colonel A'Court
y'.atos: —

" ' As regards females, the instince to which I
have alluded presents itself in the Portsea Island
Tnion, where, from the insufficiency of workhouse
■ .as well as from benevolent feel-

-.vances of 1*. Gd. or 2s. a week
.... K ■ •' <" Widows with or without small chil-
dren, or to married women deserted by their
hasbands. Having this certain inrome, however
small, they are enabled to work at lower wages
than tkou who do not posteu this advaniage.
The consequence is, & " *ition has enabled

the shirt and stay ni . who abound in

the Union, and who i . „';eat mcmsure the

London ai well as many foreign market* with
these articles of their tr.ule, to get their work

done at the extraordinary low prices of — stays,
complete, 9d. ; shirts, from Is. to I*. Qd. per
dozen.

" ' The women all declare that they cannot
possibly, after working from twelve to fifteen
hours per day, earn more than Is. 6d. per week.
The manufacturers assert that, by steady work,
is. to 6s. a week may be earned under ordinary
circumstances.

" * In'the meantime (he demand for workicomen
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 ante-
cedents, 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 ap-
pears, and indeed is, a strange discrepancy of pay-
ment to the labourers in rubbish-carting. About
three-fourths of the rubbish-carters throughout
Landonreceive 18s. weekly, when in work; in
Hampstead, however, the rate of their wages is
(uniformly) 20s. a week; in Lambeth (but less
uniformly), it is 19s.; in Wandsworth, ITs. ; in
Islington, 16s.; and in Greenwich, 14s. and 12s.
The character of the work, whether executed
for 12s. or 20s. weekly, is the same; why, then,
can a rubbish-carter, who works at Hampstead,
earn 8s. 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 termi-
nated, there is always an influx of unskilled
labourers into Gnivesend, Woolwich, and Green-
wich. 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 ren-
der the harvest precarious and its produce un-
sound, is a matter of paramount necessity, and
the increase of hands employed during this sea-
son is, as a consequence, proportionately great
The chief scene of such labour in the neighbour-
hood of the metropolis, is in the county of Kent ;
and on the cessation of this work, of courso there
is a large amount of labour •' turned adrift," to
seek, the next fe»v days, for any casual employment
that may ** turn up." In this way, I am assured,

33t

'LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 en-
gaged, 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 Lon-
don.

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 propor-
tion of the casual hands are Irish) ; that is, the
extent of work which would occupj' the Irishman
six, would occupy the Englishman but five days,
were it so calculated. The Englishman was, how-
ever, 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 anyi^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 I85. weekly
each are as cheap (only employers cannot always
see it), when they are thorough masters of their
business, as three unready hands at 12s. a week
each. The misfortune, however, is, that the 12s.
a week men have a tendency to reduce the 16s.
to their level.

^Yith regard to the difference between the
wages of Hampstead and Greenwich, I| am in-
formed that stationary working rubbish-carterg are
not too numerous in Hampstead, which is consi-
dered as rather '' out of the way ;" and as that
metropolitan suburb is surrounded in every direc-
tion 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 gene-
rally, 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 aggran-
dise his profits by screwing his labourers. The
hours of scurf-eraployed 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 hy 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 thej' were a few years back. It is rarely
that labouring men can advance any feasible
reason for the changes in their trade.

One of ike main causes of the deteriorated wages
of the rubbish-carters is the system of contract-
ing 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 cer-
tain sura. 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 15s. weekly. A
contractor, a man possessing a horse, perhaps, and
a couple of carts, and hiring another horse, will
imdertake it on the knowledge of his being able
to engage men at 12s. or 13s. 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^. 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 3'ou 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-eon-
tracting, 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 T * I think not,' he 'd say, ' I 've
only the regular thing and no advantages — 10s. 6(?.
for a day's work, horse and cart, or 4s. a load.'
Those are the regular terms. Then I 'd say,
' We'll, sir, I '11 do it for 8s. 6c^., and be my own
carman;' and so perhaps I'd get the job, and
masters often say : ' I know I shall lose at
10s. M., 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

Loynoy labour and the Lo^Doy poor.

337

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. 0,
yes, and rubbish-carting. I get I85. 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 be-
yond Bow and Stratford. No, I 'm satisfied
there 's not so much of it as there was, but it 's
done 80 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 *8 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 de-
pressing 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 de-
scribed, " chance." In both departments of this
trade, the men out of work look for a job in
•cavagery, and very generally in night-work, or,
indeed, in any labour that offers. The Irish rub-
bish-carters will readily became hawkers of
apples, oranges, walnuts, and even nuts, when out
of employ, so working in concert with their wives.
I beard 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 enjojrment, 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, some-
times tea and bread and butter, and occasionally
some "block ornaments;" the Irish being the
pri;i " ;:ner» of cheap fish.

t the wives of the rubbish-carters
n i-i. ...... ^ ..^.^uently 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 tbe 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 bad been domestic servants ;
what tbe others bad 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 ex-
perience. 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 5s. weekly in superior shirt-making, as
it was described to me, which was evidently
looked upan as a handsome remuneration for
such toil. Another earned 3^. 6d. ; another
2s. 6d. ; and others, with uncertain employ, 25.,
Is. Qd., 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 tliose
of the better-paid. The earnings of a char-
woman in average employ, as regards the wives
of the rubbish-carters, is about 4s. 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 Qd. to 9d. 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 sufferiwgs of many of
them during the famine, 12s. 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 23 : —

" I was brought up on the land, sir," he said,
" not far from Ciiliin, in the county Wexford. I
lived with my lather 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 iu
London, (iod help me, I was glad to do any-
thing to get a male's mate. I 've lived on Gd.
a-day sometimes. I have indeed. There was 2d.
for the lodging, and 4d. for the mate, the tay anl
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

333

LOXDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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, lie was acounthrymanof mine,
but a Cor-rk man — said he 'd made a bad bargain,
for he was bad off, and he only clared id. a load,
and he 'd divide it wid me. We did six loads in
a diiy, and I got Is. every night for a wake.
This was a rise. But one Sund.iy 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

Siiid so, and words came on, and thin there was a
fight, and the pelleece came, and thin the fij;ht
was harder. I was taken to the station, and had
a month. I had tvvo_ black eyes next morning,
but was willin' to forget and forgive. No, I 'm
not fond of tightin'. I 'm a paceable mm, glory
be to Grod, 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, a:id 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 in-
formant, " and it ain't a b;id 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. ' 0 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 ourconduc' was a disgrace to religion, and
to our counthry, and to him. Do I think he was
right, sir? Grod 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^. 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 misther, I suppose. Will, thin,
sir, I don't know who was the raasther ; it was
John Riley as ingaged me, but Jce's no masther.
Yis, thin, and I 've been workin' that way iwer
since. I've sometimes had 14^. a week, and
sometimes 10*., and sometimes 12*. A man like

me must take what he can get, and I will t:ike 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 monej', 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 era-
ployed. The English labourers, working on the
same terms, are of the usual class of men so
working, — broken-down men, unable, oraccounting
themselves unable, to "do better," and so accepting
any oifer affording the means of their daily bread.

Os TUB LOJIDON CHIMNBY-SwEKPEIiS.

Chimxey-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 men-
tion of ckimne.'js 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 1317. 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 Ilolinshed'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 rere-
doses, and our heads did never ache."* He de-
murs, too, to the change in the material of which
the houses were constructed : " Houses were ojice
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."

* " Reredos, dossel (retable, Fr. ; poate.-gnle, 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, &e., especially
behind an altar, and sometimes was enriched with a pro-
fusion 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 f /rmerly, before chimneys
were common in mean houses, ' each man made his flre
against a reredosse in the hall, where lie dined and dressed
his meat.'"

The original word would appear to be rfo«e/ or rere-

ditsel: for Kelham, in his " Norman Dictionary," explains

the word doser or dnsd to signify a hanging or canopy of

silk, silver, or gold work, under which kln.^s or great

] personages sit; also the back of a chair ot state (the

I word being probablv a derivative of the Latin dorsum,

' the back. D/.i, in slang, means a be<l, a " dossing erib"

! being a sleeping-plaee, and has clearly the same origin).

I A rere-dos or rere-dutel would thui appear to have been a

LONDON LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR.

339

In Shakespeare's time, the chimney-sweepers
seera 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'cn thy wages :

Golden lads and girls all must,"
As chimnej/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 employ-
ment was regarded as of the meanest, a repute it
bears to the present day.

But chimneys seem, like the "sweeps" or
" sweepers," to hare been a necessity of a change
of fuel. In the days of " rere-dosses," our an-
cestors 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
12S1 Newcastle is said to have had some slight
trade in this article. Shortly afterwards coal
began to be imported into Loudon for the use of
smiths, brewers, dyers, soap-boilers, <Scc. 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
r.iiiu.-iy b.me coals, 12,267 cargoes imported, or
;.r. :..;iit tons. The London coal trade now
ciiiploys 2700 vessels and 21,600 seamen, and
coiutitutes one-fourth of the whole general trade
of the Thames.

To understand the necessity forchimney-s weepers,
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,
•oot being simply the fine carbonaceous particles
condensed from the smoke of coal fuel, and de-
posited against the sides of the chimneys during
its ascent between the walls to the tops of our

i, that in the old

IIS at the back of

t)c seen, with an

of plates, and tuch

IK-

a ' rrrHrx,' or open

.. .. ;ulc-

• ■i by the

1 , I need

^ placet by

iplac<
bouses in t !

the fire ni 1
aper"

ii.r .
Henry VMI.

houses. These conditions appear to have been
determined somewhat accurately during the inves-
tigations of the Smoke Prevention Committee.

There are two kinds of smoke from the ordinary
materials of combustion — (A) Opaque, or black
smoke ; (B) Traiispareni, or invisible smoke.

A. The Opaque smoke, though the most offen-
sive 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 unconsuraed carbon which have not
been deposited in the form of soot in the tlue or
chimney. This is the black smoke which will be
further described.

B. Traiuparent smoke is composed of gases
which are for the most part invisible, such as car-
bonic 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, shnxbs, and plants*.

* 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 m the Mornine^ Chronicle) into the supply, «kc.,
to the •' green markets" of the metropolis, I was told by
an experienc-ed 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 beanytJiing but a failure if attempted
within " where the fogs went." My informant explained
to me that the fogs, so peculiar to London, aid 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 gar-
dener'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 anv mist pervading the whole country as well
as the neighfx)urhood of the capital), he thought it was
the boundary within which there could be no nroper
growth of fruit or flowers. That the London fog nas its
limiU 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 informa-
tion 1 have cited be correct, may be considered as in-
dicating that portion of the metropolis where the
popubtion, and consequently the smoke, is the thickest,
and within which agricultural and horticultural la-
bour* cannot meet with success. " The nuisance of
a Noveml)er fog in London," Mr. Booth slated to
the .Smoke ("oinmittee, " is most assuredly increased
by the smoke of the town, arising from furnaies and
private fires. It is vapour saturated with particles
of carbon which causes all that uneasiness and i>ain in
the lungs, and the uneasy sensations which we experi-
ence in our heads. I have no doubt of the density of
these fogs arisini; from this carb<maceous matter."

The loss from the impossibility of promoting vegeta-
tion in the district most subjected to the fog is nothing,
as the whole ground is already nccupie<l for tlie 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 owinif, 1st,

340

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 ge-
nerally regarded as something visible. But in the
composition of smoke, it appears, one product ma}--
be visible, and another invisible, and both offen-
sive ; 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. Keid 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. It this smoke be produced at a very high
temperature, the carbon forms a loose and pow-
dery soot, comparatively free from other sub-
stances; 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 : — car-
bon, 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, thay
constitute tar. Soft pitch is produced if the tar
be so far heated that the water is expelled ; and j
hard pitch (resin blackened by carbon) when the I
oils are volatilized. |

In all cases of ordinary combustion, carbonic }
acid is formed by the red-h ;t cinders, or by gases |
or other compounds containing carbon, acting on j
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 car-
bonic oxide gas. The lost oxygen, uniting with

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 upjn 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 h^hter strata over the
town, displace the latter, intermixing with it and con-
densing the moisture. Fogs thus arc often to be ob-
served 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 tlie coal smoke is impeded,
and that it is thus mixed with the condensed moisture
of the atmosphere. As is well known, thay 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 alter their first formation, which
appears to be owing to the dssL-ent of fresh currents
of cold air towards the lighter regions of the atmo-
sphere.

' ' 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 watc-r or the ground.
The peculiar odour which attends the London fogs has
not yet been satisfactorily explained; although the uni-
formity of its recurrence, and its very marked character,
would appear to challenge elaborate examination."

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 tempera-
ture is sufiiciently 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 car-
buretted hydrogen gases. These may be mechani-
cally blended with the oils and resins, but must
be carefully distinguished from them. They
form more essentially, Avhen in a state of com-
bustion, the inflammable matters that constitute
flame.

2. Smoke from Charcoal, Cok'?, and Anthracite,
is always invisible if the material be dry. A
flame may appear, however, if carbonic oxide be
formed.

3. Wood or Puroligneous Smoke is rarely
black. Water and carbonic acid are the products
of the full combustion of wood, omittihg the con-
sideration of the ash that remains.

i. Sidphm-ous 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 oflfensive
matter in a minute state of division, and sus-
panded 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 foetid par-
ticles, when associated with moisture in this
smoke, are entirely decomposed when subjected to
heat.

Dr. Ure says, spsaking of the cause of the
ordinary black smoke above described, " The in-
evitable conversion of atmospheric air into car-
bonic 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 consti-
tute 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 sm )ke. 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

341

believe that this town is as healthy as other
places where there are not these tires.

" 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 ver}' mixed question. When a fresh
charge of coal is put upon the fire, a great quan-
tit}' of evaporable matter, which would be called
impure coal gas according to the language
of the question, is produced ; and as that mat-
ter 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 ciirbon 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 atmo-
sphere 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 foUowing 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 bet-n 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 occisionally 200,000 visible portions of soot
excluded at a single sitting. We count with the
naked eye the number of pieces entangled upon a
»<iuare inch. I have examined the amount de-
posited on different occasions in* different parts of
London at the tops of some houses; and on one
occasion at the Horse Quards the amount of soot
deposited was so great, that it formed a complete
and continuous film, to that when I walked upon
it I saw the impression of my foot left as dis-
tinctly on that occasion a« when snow lies upon
t': -round. The film was exceedingly thin, but
I 1 ■! discover no want of continuity. On other

iii'ins I have noticed in London that the quan-
•i.v that escapes into individuiil houses is so
i.'r> at that in a single night I have observed a
mixture of soot and of hoar frost collecting at the
edse of the door, and forming a stripe three-
,-ir.r:cr? 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. Bootli mentioned, that one of the gar-
deners 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
I 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 par-
ticles 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 aftected 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 con-
ceive," 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,
w-e 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, mechani-
cally ; the solid black carbonaceous matter pro-
duces 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
hsive 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-visiijle black smoke, un-
wholesome, but " not so eminently as the French
imagine."

Many witnesses stated their conviction that
where poor people resided amongst smoke, they

342

L0ND02T LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 uncom-
fortable, 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 i
poor ; it renders them less attentive to their per-
sonal appearance, and, in consequence, to their
social condition."

It was also stated that there were " certain dis-
tricts 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 pecu-
niary 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 con-
sequently 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 " New-
castle coal."

B. The combustion of the smoke, before its
emission into the atmospheric air, by means of
mechanical contrivances founded on scientific prin-
ciples.

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 quan-
tities of gas are produced, coke is very frequently
ihe principal fuel of the poor, and the difficulty of
lighting that coke, and the difficulty of having
heat developed by it in sufficient quantity, neces-
sarily led me to look at the construction of the
fire-places adapted for it. And on a general re-
view 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 u-ith 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 manufactorj', 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 belicA'e 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 exa-
mined 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 pre-
sent state of things, it would be tyrannical to de-
termine that tliat must be done which at present
we do not know can be done. Still, I think there

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

343

is reason to believe that it can be effected in a
very hii;h degree."'

i)r. Urealso thought that to extend any smoke
enactment to prirate dwellings might be tyranni-
cal in the present state of the chimneys, but he
had no donbt that smoke might be consumed in
tires 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 econo-
mising our fuel, we shall be gradually displacing
this branch of labourers — the means of prevent-
ing 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 dou-
blini{ our popuLition in forty j-ears, but we are
likewise learning every year how to do our Avork
with a less number of workers, either by invent-
ing 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 altoge-
ther. 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.

fc^uppose, 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 expect;itions of the sanguine and intense
Committee, who tell us that they have "received
t.U most gratifying assurances of the confident
hope entertained by several of the higJcest fcientific
authorities, that the black smoke proceeding from
rres in private dwellings and all other places may
: e eventually entirebj prevented,"_suppose that
tiiesc expecfcitions, I say, be realized (and there
i.pears to be little doubt of the matter), what is
:. become of the 1000 to 1500 "sweeps" who
ve, as it were, upon this very smoke ? Surely
ic whole community should not suffer for them

'^•■n be said. True; but unfortunately the

Kument is being applied to each particular

.i of the kboaring clas^— and the labourers

..uc up by far the greater part of the community

! t we are daily displacing a thousand labourers by

■le annihilation of this process, and another

lousand by the improvement of that, what is to

" the &te of those we put on one side? and

• iierc shall we find employment for the hundred

.ousand new "hands" that are daily coming

to existence among us? This is the great pro-

•:n 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 ago. And, first, as to the

' quundti/ of snot annually deposited at present in

I the London chimneys.

j The quantity of soot produced in the metro-

j polis every year may be ascertained in the fol-

j lowing manner : —

j The larger houses are swept in some instances

I 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 twelve-
month, and yield about two bushels of soot
annually.

The larger houses — the residences of no-
blemen 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.

Here we see that the number of houses whose
average rental is above 50/. is 53,840 ; while
those whose average rental is above 30/., and
below 50/., are 90,002 in number; and those
whose rental is below 30/. are as many as
163,880; the average rental for all London, 40/.
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/., producing 6 bushels of
soot each per annum . . . 323,040

90,002 houses at a yearly rental
above 30/. and below 50/., producing
6 bushels of soot each per annum . 450,010

163,880 houses at a yearly rental
below 30/., producing 2 bushels of
soot each per annum . . . 327 700

Totil number of bushels of soot an-
nually produced throughout London . 1,100,810

This calculation will be found to be nearly cor-
rect 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
aa follows : —

Cannel or gas coals contain 40 to 60 per cent.
of volatile matter.

No. XLVI.

344

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

TABLE SHOWING THE

NUMBER OF HOUSES, AT DIFFERENT

AVERAGE

RENTALS, THROUGHOUT THE METROPOLIS.

Number of Houses whose

Number op Houses whose

Number or H

OUSES WHOSE

Ateraqb Rektal is above

Average Rental is above

Average Rental is below

£50.

£30 AND below £50.

£30.

1 i

1.1

1^1

> 4>

<tf

;? s

<os

a X

1^ =

Hanover- square,!

Poplar ....

6,882

Chelsea . . .

7,629

Mav Fair .' 150

8,795

Pancras . . .

18,731

Wandsworth . .

8,290

St. James's . .128

3,460

Harapstead . .

1,719

St. Luke's . .

6,421

St. Martin's . .119

2,323

Kensington . .

]17,292

Lambeth . . .

20,520

London City . .i 117

7,329

Clerkenwell . .

7,259

Lewisham . . .

5,936

Marvlebone . .■ 71

15,955

East London . .

4,785

Whitechapel . .

8,832

Strand. . . .1 66

3,938 1

St. Saviour's . .

4,613

Hacknev . . .

9,861

West London .' 65

2,745

Westminster . .

6,647

Camberwell . .

9,417

St. Giles's. . .1 60

4,778

St. Olave's . .

2,365

Rotherhithe . .

2,834

Holbom . . .

4,517

Islington . . .

St. George's - in -

the-East . .

13,558

St. George's, South-
! wark . . .
Newington . . .

22
22

7,005
10,468

53,840

6,151

Greenwich . . .

14,423

i
1

90,002

Shoreditch . . .
Stepney . . .
Bermondsey . .
Bethnal Green . .

15,433

16,346

7,095

13,370

163,880

Newcastle or " house " coals, about 37 per cent.

Lancashire and Yorkshire coals, 35 to 40 per
cent.

South Welsh or *'ster\m" coals, 11 to 15 per
cent.

Anthracite or " stone " coals, none.

The house coals are those chiefly used through-
out 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 prac-
tically acquainted with the subject, that a ton
of ordinary house coals will produce between a
fourth and a half of a bushel of soot*. 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 me-

* The quantity of soot deposited depends greatly on
the lenpth, draught, and irregular surface of the ehim- j
ney. The kitchen flue yields by far the most soot for
an equal quantity of coals burnt, because it is of greater i
length. The quantity above cited is the average yield I

from the several chimneys of a house. It will be seen
hereafter that the quantity collected is only IJ(Xi,(K
bushels ; a great proportion of the chimneys of the poc
being seldom swept, and some cleansed by themselves.

tropolis 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,
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. IS'ow what is done with tliis immense
mass of refuse matter? Of what use is it?

The soot is 2^i'^^'chas€d from the masters, whose

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

3i5

perqitistte it is, by thefarnurs and dealers. It is
1 used by them principally for meadow land, and

I 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
1 , injurious to the crops*. Lincolnshire is one of
I j the great marts for the London soot, whither it
I is transported by railway. In Hertfordshire,
Cambridge, Norfolk, Sutfolk, Essex, and Kent,
however, and many other parts, London soot is
used in large quantities; there are persons who
ha%'e 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 desti-
nation. 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 atten-
tion. 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 5d. to know that such was the

I price of a bushel of soot. This, however, is hardly
the case at present; the price of the quartern loaf
' 1- liing the " seconds," or inferior bread),
■ '.lie end of December, 1851, 5d. to 6c^.
j.c^id-.if^ to quality. The price of soot per bushel
is but bd., and sometimes but i\d., but 5d. may
j be taken as an average.

Now 1,000,000 bushels of soot, at 5d., will be
found to yield 20,833/. 6«. Sd. per annum. But
'h • whole of this quantity is not collected by the
i.iey-sweepers, for many of the poorer persons
- . u jin 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
ll!,500/. per annum.
!

I The next quuUon, is, how many people are em-
ploi/id in collecting this quantity of refiue inattei',
j and how do they collect it, and what do they get,
I individually and collectively, for so doing ?

To begin with the number of master and
journeymen sweepers employed in removing these
■'OOjOuO bushels of soot from our chimneys:
u cording to the Census retums, the number of
I "»weeps" in the metropolis in the years 1841
and 1831 were as follows :—

oil is said, by Dr. L're, in

\tu and Manufactures, tn

tjonate of ammonia along m i

Increase
in ten
Chimney-siceepers. 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 disentimgle 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 metropoli-
tan journeymen sweepers ; these statements, how-
ever, 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 alto-
gether, 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 me-
tropolis 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 liouses 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 Avas 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 con-
cerning 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

346

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

trade has been rendered useless; so that, estimat-
ing the master and journeymen sweepers at 250 in
1816, it would appear that about 600 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, wh\ch will make the sum
total of the individuals employed in this trade to
amount to very nearly 800.

13y 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 lame 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 bovs at all, but does all the work him-
self.

The 198 masters employ among them 12 fore-
men, 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 betvveen 800 and
900 persons employed in cleansing the London
chimnej's of their soot.

The next point that presents itself in due order
to the mind is, as to the mode of uorhing among
the chimney -sv)eeiyers ; that is to sav, how are the
800,000 bushels of soot collected from the 300,000
houses by these 820 workir)g sweepers'? But this
involves a short history of the trade.

Of the Sweepers of Old, and the Climbixg
Boys.

FoRMEKLV 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 tlie 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 un-
known. 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 bays — nothing appears, according
to the representations made to Parliament on
several occasions, to be known ; and little atten-.
tion seems to have been paid to the condition of
these infants — some were but little better— until
about 1780, when the benevolent Jonas Han-
way, who is said, but not uncontradictedly,
to have been the first person who regularlj' used
an umbrella in the streets of London, called public
I attention to the matter. In 1788 Mr. Hanway
I and others brought a bill into Parliament for tlie
j 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
I III., c. 48, was passed in preference. The chief
' alterations sought to be effected by the new Act
j were, that no sweeper should have more than six
j apprentices, and that no boy should be appren-
: ticed at a tenderer age than eight years. Pre-
vioitsly 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 prohi-

i bition to a sweeper's employing his own children at

i 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 continuallj'- 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

j 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.

j The following evidence was adduced before Par-

1 liament 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 ; r*nd 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 be-
tween four and five when articled to an uncle.

Mr. B. M. Forster, a private gentleman, a mem-
ber of the "Committee to promote the Superseding
of Climbing Boys," said, " Sonie are put to the

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

34:

-nt vt-rv yung; one instance of which
to a child in the neiirhbourhood of Shore-
r. : , V. ho was put to the trade at four and a
quarter rears, or therciibouts. The father of a
child in Whitechapel told rae last week, that his
son began climbing when he ^vas four rears and
eight months old. I have heard of some still
yoonger, but only from vague report."

This sufficiently proves at what infantine years
children were exposed to toils of exceeding pain-
fulnes). 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 climb-
ing chimneys. The following is all the informa-
tion 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, Bar-
net. 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 em-
■ il *,, sweeji the cfiimne>/s of the Castle; ano-
-tmce at Uxbridge, and at Brighton, and
Hi V.";.i:, chapel (which was some years ago), and
at Headley near Bamet, and Witham in Essex,
and elsewhere." lie 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 uiider-
itood was, because their parents had not a suffi-
cient number of boys to bring up to the business."
Wr. Foster did not know the ages of these girb.

The inquiry by a C munittee of the House of
Commons, which led more than any other to the
j,rr.i,.(,;t,.,„ of this infant and yet jjainful labour
•y-swfeping, was held in l.sl7, and they
: I .1' n.ied the "preventing the further use of
cliiuliiiig boys in sweeping of chimneys;" a re-
commendation not carried into effect until 1832.
Th«» matter w.vs during the interval frequently
s.'it;it'd 111 rariiaiiioiit, but there were no later
inv» .ligations by Committees.

I will adduce, speciikaliv, the grievances, ac-

cordinj? to the Report of 1817, of the climbing

5 ' • .'. I tirst present the following extract

ic of Mr. W. Tooke, a gentleman

• !th the Hon. Henry Grey

■r», exerted himself on the
'" ' ' : ■ t .: boys. When bo gave his

evidence, Mr. Tt>ok« was tiM secretary to a society
whose objfct was to tupertede the aecesbity of
emj.' ■ ,ys. He sbmI :—

, the Society for Bettering

... -uor took up the subject, but

or nothing appears to have been done upon

occsuion, Except that the meet lespecuble

th,-

litt!.

th.a

mastT chimney-sweepers entered into an

tion 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 iu February,
1803. In consequence of an anonymous adver-
tisement, a large meeting was held at the London
Coffee House, and the Society was established ;
immediate steps were then taken to ascertain the
j state of the trade ; inspectors were appointed
1 to give an account of all the master chimney-
} sweepers within the bills of mortality, their
j general character, their conduct towards their
I apprentices, and the number of those apprentices.
j It was ascertained, that the total number of
master chimney-sweepers, within the bills of
I mortality, might be estimated at 200, who had
j among them 500 apprentices ; that not above 20
j of those masters were reputable tradesmen in easy
I 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 negli-
gent 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, sheJs, and cellars, in the out-
skirts of the town, occasionally wandering into
the villages round, where they slept on soot-bags,
and lived in the grossest filth."

The grievances 1 have spoken of were thus
summed up by the Parlianientary Committee.
After referring to the ill-usage and hardships sus-
tained b}' 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 in-
veigled out of workhouses; (2) that in order to
conquer the natural repugnance of the infanta 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 stmling 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/. 8a. Mr. G.
llevely said : —

" 1 wi»h 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

348

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 toge-
ther 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 lout 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 circum-
stance, 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 per-
fectly. The account he gave of himself was that
he was gathering flowers in his mamma''3 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 Eng-
land. 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 Staf-
fordshire, and there apprenticed to a clnmney-
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 follow-
ing the same wretched employment by a chimney-
sweeper, who gave him a shilling, and made him
believe that by receiving it he became his appren-
tice ; 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 appren-
tices to sweepers, Mr. Tooke Avas able to state that,
although in 1816, the practice had very much
diminished of late, parents in many instances still
sold tlieir children for three, four, or five gidneas.
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 subse-
quently, 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
com23el, tlcese 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 «he character of
the master), with little to do beyond running

LONDOJSr LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

349

errands, and obsenring 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,
immediatel}' 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 some-
what 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
Avhere the fingers or toes could be inserted.
Should the young beginner fall, he was sure to light
onthe 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 ofl^, and frequently breaking out in fright-
ful 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 emploj-ed 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 «ore«." He stated further, that the skin
broke generally, and that the boys could not
ascend chimneys during the sores without very
'-T-at pain. The way that I learn boys is," he
tantinued, "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 1" 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 oiiliged to climb with those sores upon them.
I never bad one of my own apprentices do that."
This system of padding, however, was but little
practised ; but in what proportion it ircw prac-
tised, unless by the respectable roasters, who were
then but few in number, the Parliamentary papers,
the only information on the subject now attain-
able, do° not state. The inference is, that the
majority, out of but 20 of these masters, with

j some 80 or 100 apprentices, did treat them well,
and what was so accounted. The customary way
j of training these boys, then, was such as I have
I described ; some even of the better masters, whose
} boys were in the comparison well lodged and fed,
j and "sent to the Sunday school" (which seems
to have comprised all needful education), con-
sidered "padding and such like" to be "new-
fangled nonsense."

I may add also, that although the boy carried
up a brush with hira, it was used but occasionally,
only when there were " turns " or defects in the
chimney, the soot being brought down by the ac-
tion of the shoulders and limbs. The climber
wore a cap to protect his eyes and mouth from
the soot, and a sort of flannel^nic, 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 per-
suade him as well as we can ; we generally
practise him in one of our own chimneys first ;
one of the hoys who knows the trade goes up
behind hira, and when he has practised it perhaps
ten times, though some will require twenty times,
they generally can manage it. The boj' goes up
with him to keep him from falling; after tiiat, 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 the}' 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 1 — Yes ; they go
through a deal of hardship before they come to
our trade.

" Did you use any more violent means 1 — Some-
times 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 per-
sons 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; 1 have
forced up many a one myself. n

" By what means ? — By threatenings, and by
giving them a kick or a slap."

350

LOXnOiV LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR.

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 th©m strip themselves
naked ; I have been obliged myself to go up a
chimney naked."

As respects the crneltios of driving boys up
chimneys by kindling straw beneath their feet, or
thrusting pins int^the soles of their feet, I find
the following statements given on the authority of
B. M. Forster, Esq., a private gentleman residing
in Waltharastow: —

" A lad ^vas 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 comedown, 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 Waltharastow ; 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,
hums, and diseases, to which chimney-sweepers in
their apprenticeships were not only exposed, but,
as it were, condemned, Mr. R. Wright, a sur-
geon, on being examined before the Committee,
said, " I shall begin with Deformity. I am well per-
suaded 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, lut more
particularly so in that of coming down, when the}-
rest solely on the lower extremities.

" Sore eyes and eyelids, are the next to be con-
sidered. Chimney-sweepers are very subject to
inflammation of the eyelids, and not unfrequently
weakness of sight, in consequence of such inflam-
mation. This I attribute to the circumstance of
the soot lodging on the eyelids, which first pro-
duces irritability of the part, and the constantly
rubbing them with their dirty hands, instead of
alleviating, increases the disease ; for I have ob-
served 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 dis-
ease, which chimney-sweepers in particular are
liable to, especially that of the scrotum ; from
which circumstance, by way of distinction, it is
called tlic '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
apph' 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 Gruy's and
Bartholomew's Hospitals, and on the question
being put to Mr. Wright : " Do the physicians
who are intrusted with the care and manage-
ment of those hospitals think that disease of
such common occurrence, that it is necessary to
make it a part of surgical education 1"— 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 hos-
pital, 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 dis-
ease is rarely seen in any other persons than
chimney-sweepers, and in them cannot be con-
sidered 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

LOXDOX LABOUR AXD THE LOXDON POOR.

351

eyidence of persons engaged in the trade, it appears
to be much more common than Mr. Cline seems to
be airare of.

•' Vouffk and Asthma. — Chimney-sweepers are,
fmm their being nut at all hours and in nil
ireathers, verj liable to cough and inflamniation
of tbeckesL

*• Bumg. — They are very subject to bums, from
their being forced up chimneys while on tire, or
soon after they have been on fire, and while ovei>
heated ; and however they may cry out, their in-
human masters pay not the least attention, but
compel them, too often with horrid imprecations,
to proceed.

"' SluHttd growth, in this unfortunate r.-'ce of the
community, is attributed, in a great measure, to
their being brought into the business at- a very
early age."'

To aceidatU they were frequently liable in the
pursuit of their callings, and sometimes these
:tccidents were the beinjj jammed or fixed, or. as
it was called in the tnide, "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 ex-
haustion, but it does not appear that the number
w.« ever ascertained. There were also many
nrirrow escapes from dreadful deaths. I give in-
stances of each : —

" On Monday morning, the 29th of March,
1S13, a chimney-sweeper of the name of Griggs,
attended to sweep a small chimney in the brew-
house of Messrs. Calvert and Co., in Upper
Tliames-»treet ; ho 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 <iriggs and his little
boy at eight: the fire-p'ace was small, and an
iron pipe jwojected from the grate some little dis-
tance, into tl»e flue ; this the master was ac-
'iiiainted with (having swept the chimneys in the
hrewhouse for some y&irs) and therefore had a tile
f<r two taken from the roof, in order that the
boy might descend the chimney. lie 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
fci.-\t»*, no doubt, of inexpressible agony. The flue
V'..;'. of ti»c narrowest description, and must have
r-.t I.I'd heat sufbcient to have pn-vejited the
( is reiiirn to the top, even supjiosing he had
II : aiproached the pipe belonging to the grate,
V, /i:.ii must have b^t-n nearly red-hot; this, how-
f v.-r, w.>.<* not cleariy ascf-rtained on the inquest,
"f the body would induce
oeen unavoidaljiy pressed
■\ after his descent, the
11 ilie top, wiu apprehen-
i bap[»ened, and therefore
desired him to Lviua up ; the answer of the boy
waj, ' I cannot come up, master ; I must die here.'
A- nlirm was given in tlie brewhouse, imn>e-
V. that he had stuck in the chimney, and a
'■■■:. ..ly- r who was at work near the spot at-

I tended, and after knocking down part of the brick-

i work of the chimney, just above tiie fire-place,

I made a hole sufliciently large to draw him tlirough.

\ A sur;geon attended, but all attempts to restore
life were ineflfectual. 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,

; vis., the elbows and knees, seemed burnt to the

j bone; from which it must be evident that the
unhappy sufferer made some attempts to return as

I soon as the horrors of his situation became ap-

j parent."

I *' In the improvement njade some years since

j by the Bank of England, in L«hbury, a chimney,
belonging to a Mr. Mildrum, a baker, was taken

I 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 boj'
was ordered to descend from t!ie top of the flue
and to meet him half-way ; but this being found
impracticable, they opejied the brickwork in the
lower part of the flue, and found the first-men-
tioned boj' 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

I was unable to extricate himself. Upon this a
bricklayer was employed with the utmost expe-
dition, but he succeeded only in obtaining a life-
less bodj'. 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 at-
tempt 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 ; lie 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 tliis wretched

, being, who had been up ever since three o'clock,
had before been sent by his master to Wanstcad,
which with his walk to Marsh-street made about
five miies."

" 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

352

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 equi-
valent.

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 Hewle}-^, alias
Haseley, a boy about six years of age, in the
month of April fbst, 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' im-
prisonment. 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 vio-
lations 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 theit
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 employ-
ment as a journeyman, his remuneration was
wretched, only 25. a week, with his board and
lodging. There were, however, far fewer com-
plaints of being insufficiently fed than might have
been expected, but the sleeping places were ex-
ecrable : " 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 2s. a week ; he is not clothed, only fed and
lodged in the same manner as the boys. The 2s.
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 l^., he gets &d. of
that, and his master the other M. The boys' pence
are what the boys get after they have been doing
their master's work; they get a \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 be-
comes 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 Is. or
Is. %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 5s. But I think that
the boys get more than that ; I should think they
get as much as 9s. or 10s, apiece. The Christmas-
boxes are generally, I believe, divided among
themselves (among the hojs) ; but I cannot say
rightly. It is spent in buying silk handkerchiefs,
or Sunday shoes, I believe ; but I am not per-
fectly 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 toay, 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 latelj' 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

^ .1

02 M

•^

^
•K

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

353

from the parish; be ciune to me. H« s&id bis
parejits were dead. Tlie efect of tiie roving habit
of the large boys when the}/ lecovie too targe to
climb, it, that they get one with another and learn
had habitifrom oue another ; theg never mil stop
long in any one place. They frequently go into
the country and get various places ; perhaps they
stop a luoQth at each ; some try to get roasters
themselves, and some will get into bad company,
which very often happens. Th(» they turn thieves,
they gel lacy, i/iey won't work^ and people do not
tike to employ tlUm lest they should take anytliing
out of tJieir house*. The generality of t/tem never
settle in any steady business. They generally
turn loose characters, and people will not em-
ploy them leftt they should take anything out of
the house."

The criminal aanals of the kingdom bear out
the foregoing account. Some of these boys, indeed,
when they attained man's estate, became, in n
great measure, through their skill in climbing,
expert and enterprising burglars, breaking into
pkcea where few men Avould have cared to ven-
ture. One of the most daring feats ever at-
tempted 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
comer 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 sweep-
er to the bottom. He was then under sentence of
death for highway robbery.

" His name was Whitehead, and he done a
more wonderfuUer thing nor that," remarked an
infonoant, who had been his master. " We was
swecfking the bilers in a sugar-house, and he went
firon the biler up the flue of the chimney, it was
■Mrly tiM high as the Monument, that chimney; I
shoMid lay it was 30 or 40 feet higher nor' the
wigar-hoHse. 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
■lost wonderfullcst thing I e\-er knowed in my life.
I don't know how he escaped from being killed, but
he wau always an oudocious feller. It was nearly
three months after afore we foand him in the
country. I don't know where they sent him to
after he wa« brought back to Newgate, bnt I hear
they made him a turnkey in a prison somewhere,
and that he 's doing very well now." The feat at
the •tigarhouie could be only to escape from his
iijipr-nticpihip.

1 I tiie course of the wiiole Parliamentary
c'.:dciice the sweepers, reared under the ohl
clinbiag systeai, are spoken of as a " short-lived "
nee, bat no atatittics could be given. Some died
old men in middle age, in the workhouses.
Many itere wiert vagrants at the time of their
death.

I took the statement of a man who had been
what he called a " climbing " in hi* childhood,
bat 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
tl»e sweepers.

Climbing is still occasionally resorted to, espe-
cially when repairs are required, " but the climb-
ing 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 25. or
2a'. 6d. for a single job.

As regards the labour question, during the ex-
istence of the climbing boys, we find in the Report
the following results : —

The nominal wages to the journeymen were
2*. a week, with board and lodging. The appren-
tices 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 Is. a^ 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 employ-
ment, however, seems to have been generally con-
tinuous, running throush 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.<!. a week, and their actual about 2s. Qd. extra
in the form of perquisites. Others resided " on
the premises," having the care of the boys, with
board and lodgings and 5«. a week in money
nominally, and 7s. 6d. actually, the perquisites
being worth 2s. 6d.

Concerning the general or average wages of the
whole trade, I can only'present the following com-
putation.

Mr. Tooke, in his evidence before the House
of Commons, stated that the Committee, of which
he was a menib'jr, had ascertiuned that one boy
on an average swept about four chimneys daily, at
prices varying from 6d. to 1«. (id., or a medium
return of about 10</. per chimney, exclusive of
the soot, then worth Sd. or *Jd. n bushel. " It
appears," he said, " from a datum I have here,
thai those chimney-sweepers who keep six boys
(the greatest number allowed by law) gain, on an
average, nearly 270/. ; five boys, 225?. ; four
boys, 180/. ; three boys, 135/. ; 'two boys, 90/.;
and one boy 45/. (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 ynu mention," he was then
asked, " the master has to maintiiin the boys?" —
" Yes," was the answer, "and when the expenses
of house and cellar rent, and the wages of jour-
neymen, and the maintenance of apprentices, are

Z5i

LONDON- LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

taken into the account, the number of master
chimney-sweepers is not only more than the trade
will support, but exceeds, bj- above one-third,
what the public exigency requires. The Com-
mittee also ascertained that the 200 master
chimney-sweepers in the metropolis were sup-
posed to have in their employment 150 journey-
men 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

UKDER THE ClIMBIKG-BoY SySTEM.

Yearly.

20 journeymen at individual wages,
14s. each weekly .... £780

30 ditto, say 125. weekly . . 936

100 ditto, 105. ditto . . . 2,600

Board, Lodging, and Clothing of
500 boys, 4s. 6d. weekly .

Rent, 20 large traders, 10s. .

Do. 30 others, 7s. .

Do. 150 do., 3s. 6d.

20 horses (keep), 10s.

General wear and tear .

£13,317
It appears that about 180 of the master chim-
ney-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 Cli3ibing-Boy System.

Yearly.
Payment for sweeping 624,000
chimneys (4 daily, according to evi-
dence before Parliament, by each of
500 boys), lOtZ. per chimney, or yearly £26,000

Soot (according to same account),
say 5d. per chimney . . . 13,000

Total
Yearly expenditure

£39,000
13,317

Yearly profit . . £25,683
This yielded, then, according to the informa-
tion submitted to the House of Commons Select
Committee, as the profits of the trade prior to
1817, an individual j'early gain to each master
sweeper of 128/.; but, taking Mr. Tooke's average
yearlj' profit for the six classes of tradesmen,
270/., 225/., 180/., 135/., 90/., and 45/. respec-
tively, the individual profit averages above 157/.

Tiie 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 occasion-
j ally hired at a busy time.

In the foregoing estimates I have not included

any sums for apprentice fees, as I believe there

j would be something like a balance in the matter,

I the masters sometimes paying parents such pre-

miums^ for the use of their children as they re-
ceived from the parishes for the tuition and main-
tenance of others.

Of the morals, education, religion, mamage,
Sec, 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 ave-
rage, 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 tra-
versed 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.

Op 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 ob-
viating 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 sur-
veyor, 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
Vorking the machine upwards and downwards, or
letting down the bullet, which is the most com-
pendious manner, the chimney will be most effect-
ually cleansed; and, by its aperture at bottom
being kept well closed, it would be done with

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

355

the least possible dirt and inconvenience to the
fiunily.'

The society for the supersedence of the labour
of climbing boys promoted the adoption of the
machines by all the means in their power, pre-
senting 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
Castom 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 raechaui-
ciil 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 s.ime 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 con-
-troUed, always preferred the services of the climb-
ing 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 bis 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
hoar in a cold rooming, 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; the 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
bnuqoe as it was honest, is typical of the feelings
of tiM whole cUss of serrants.

The opposition iu Parliament, as I have inti-
mated, 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, whicii 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 fiiiled, to put an end
to; and they therefore recommended that the use
of climbing boys should be prohibited altogether;
and that the age at Avhich the apprenticeship
should commenccshould 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 em-
ployment of climbing boys in any manner in the
interior of chimneys was prohibited under penal-
ties 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 un-
q\iestiouably intluenced 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 com-
plicate 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. Tiiis 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 en-
able 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 effec-
tually superseded these imperfect instruments ; and
there are now none of them to be met with. To

356

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 commu-
nicated by the man workinar 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 ; Avhile the
average price at the machine maker's is 2s. M. a
rod, if bought separately. The head costs \0s.,
on an average, if bought sep;iratel\-. It is seldom
that a machine is required to number beyond
17 rods (extending 68 feet), and tlie 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 30s. to 5/., accord-
ing to the number of rods, duplicate rods, &c.
Mr, Smart stated, in 1817, that the average price
of one of his machines was then 2.1. 3.?.

The sweepers who labour chiefly in the poorer
localities — and several told me how indifferent
many people in those parts were as to their chim-
neys 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 suporicr Avay 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, v/hen new, are Is. 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 at-
tended 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 in-
jured or worn down in about two years; if not
well made at firsty in a year. The diameter of
this head or brush is, on the average, 18 inches.
One of tny informants had himself swept a chim-
ney 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 ma-
chine 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 thoroagh 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 tiie machines, and the chim-
neys were only 9 inches square, as regards the
interior ; the smaller flues are sometimes but 7.
These 9-inch chimneys, he told me, were fre-
quent 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 circum-
scribed space as they are found of insufficient di-
mensions in the old-fashioned chimneys; and so
the " scamped " chimnej', unless by a master hav-
ing 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, " diiviug" 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 gene-
rally 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 spuce 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THB LONDON POOR.

35(

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 boys
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, us
r^arded 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 regu-
larly-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
▼ery "comfortable," and some, comparatively
speaking, rich, were considerably reduced by it.
Thenumberof" leeks "in 1832 I heard stated, with
the exaggeration to which I have been accustomed
when uninformed men, ignorant of the relative
Talue of numbers, have expressed their opinions,
as 1000 !

The several classes in the chimney-sweeping
trade may be arranged as follows : —

The Master Cliimney-Sweepers, called sometimes
' Governors" by the journeymen, are divisible
into three kinds: —

The "large" or "high masters," who employ
from 2 to 1 0 men and 2 boys, and keep sometimes
2 horses and a cart, not particularly for the con-
veyance 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 them-
selves.

Of Umm duee chiites of masters there are two
nbdivUioiu.

The " leeks " or " greea-uia/' that is to say,
thoee who luif« not regularly served their time to
the trade.

The " knnllers" 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 mnster sweeper said, ** and
if I contract to sweep a genelman's house, here
in Pancras, for 25^. a year, or 10#., or anythink,
my nearest neighbour, as has men and machines
fit, is in Marrybon; and it wouldn't pay to send

j his men a mile and a half, or on to two mile, and
I work at what I can — let alone less. No, sir, I 've
i 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, theif 'd
undertake work at any figiu^e, but nobody em-
ploys 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 Chimnoj-Siceepers
there are also three kinds :—

The " foreman" or " first journeyman"' sweeper,
who accompanies the men to their work, super-
intends their labours, and receives the money,
when paid immediately after sweeping.

The "journeyman" sweeper, whose duty it is to
work the m:ichine, and (where no under-journey-
man, or boy, is kept) to carry the machine and
take home the soot.

The " under-journeymau " 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 arc from the earliest
morning till about midday, and sometimes later.

There are no Homes 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 busi-
ness, who, if they know of any one tiiat wants
a journeyman, direct their brother sweeper to call
and see tlie 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 imyment 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 2h. to '6s., and a few As. and 6*.
per week, together with their board and lodging.
It may seem that 3*. per week is a small sum,
but it kwas 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 perquisite* of one sort or

358

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

other, which sometimes bring them in Is., 25., 35.,
45., and occasionally 55. or 65., a week additional
— a sufficient sura to pay for clothes and washing.
The journeymen, when lodged in the house of
the master, are single men, and if constantly em-
ploj'ed might, perhaps, do well, but they are
often iinemployed, 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 '• knuUers ;" 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 journey-
men, 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 shoe-
makers, some unfortunate workmen are boarded
and lodged by their employers, but these em-
ployers are mereh' 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 12s., and some 14s., and not a few 18s.
weekly, besides perquisites, but reside at their
own homes.

Appreiiticeship 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 appren-
ticed 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 j
considered extra work. The payment of this per- ,
quisite seems to be on no fixed scale, some having |
Is. for 50, and some for 100 bushels. When a j
chimney is on fire and a journeyman sweeper is '
employed to extinguish it, he receives from Is. Qd. j
to 5s. according to the extent of time consumed j
and the risk of being injured. " Chance sweep- j
ing," or the sweeping of a chimney not belonging j
to a customer, when a journeyman has completed j
his regular round, ensures him Zd. in some employ- 1
ments, but in fewer than was once the case. The j
beer-money given by any customer to a journey- \
man is also his perquisite. Where a foreman is \
kept, the " brieze," or cinders collected from the j
grate, belong to him, and the ashes belong to the

brieze and ashes belong to the journeyman solely.
These they sell to the poor at the rate of Qd. 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 per-
quisites of Is. Qd., the other half of 25. Qd. a week.

The Nominal Wages to the journeymen, then,
are from 12s. to 18s. weekly, without board and
lodging, or from 2s. to 6s. in money, with board
and lodging, represented as equal to 'ts.

Tlve Actual Wages are 2s. 6d. a week more in
the form of perquisites, and perhaps id. daily in
beer or gin.

The wages to the boys are mostly Is. a week,
but many masters pay Is. 6d. to 2s., 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 18s.
per week, but some receive 14s. and sonfe 20s.
without board and lodging. In one case, where
the foreman is kept by the master, only 2s. 6d. in
money is given to him weeklj'. The perquisites
of these men average from 4s. to 5s. a week.

The work ill the chininey- sweeping trade is more
regular than might at first he supposed. The
sweepers whose circumstances enable them to em-
ploy journeymen send them on regular rounds,
and do not engage "chance" hands. If business
is brisk, the men and the master, when a woiking
man himself, work later than ordinarj', and some-
times another hand is put on and paid the cus-
tomary amount, by the week, until the brisk-
ness ceases ; but this is a rare occurrence. There
are, however, strong lads, or journeymen out of
work, who are occasionaUy employed in "joh-
bing," helping to carry the soot and such like.

The labour of the journeymen, as regards the
payment by their masters, is contimious, 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 climb-
ing-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

journeyman; but where there is no foreman, the I yearly income of the operative sweepers.

LOyDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

359

There are, then, 399 men employed as journey-
men, and of them 147 receive a money wage
weekly from their masters, and reside with their
p:\reuts or at their own places. The remaininir
252 are boarded and lodged. This board and
lodging are generally computed, as under the
old system, to represent S.>t., being Is. a day for
board and Is. a week for lodging. But, on the

average, the board does not cost'the masters 7*'. a
week, but, as I shall afterwards show, barely Qs.
The men and boys may be said to be all fidly
employed for nine months in the yearj; 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.

JounXKYMEN.

Wiikout hoard and lodging.
30 Journeymen employed by 3 masters, at 18*. per week

147

5
3
8
23
3

16s.
15s.
14.-.
12s.
10s.

With hoard and lodging.
3 Journeymen employed by 1 master, at 8s. Od. per week
, 5 „ 6s. Od. „
1

5.S-. Qd.
4s. Od.
3s. 6d.
3s. Od.
2s. 6d.
2s. Od.
Is. 6d.
Is. Od.

123

FORF.MEW.

]Vil/iout hoard and lodging.
2 Foremen employed by 1 master, at 20s. per week
'"' ,. „ 4 „ 18s.

^ ., ,, 1 „ 16s.

J »» „ 2 „ 14s.

11 7

Willi board and lodging.

1 „ « 1 „ 2s. 6d. „

Boys.
Without hoard and lodging.

2 Boy» employed by 1 master, at 10s. per week

"'■" ' 'rd and lodging.

1 ■ 1 „ 3*.0rf. „

1 1 .. 2s.6if. „

9 „ 2s.0rf. „

li ,- \s.M. „

30 ,. \,.0d. „

1 ,. 0.». 9(/. „

4 „ „ - ,. Os. Orf. „

62 M

Total

Total for board, lodging, &c.

ing»

Strand Totil

Money wages for
nine mouths.

£ s.

1053 0
436 16
175 10
737 2

1474 4
136 10

4013 2 0

46 16

198 18

9 15

319 16

20 9
468 0
258 7
171 12
234 0
3 18

Value of board and

lodging for nine
months estimated at
7*. a week.
£ s. d.
40 19
232 1
13 13
559 13
40 19
1092 0

723

600

109

1731 12 0

3439 13 8

78 0

210 12

31 4

54 12

0
0
0
0

374 8

4 17

13 13 0

39 0

5 17

4 17

35 2

40 19
58 10

1 9

0
6
0

Board and lodging

estimated at O'j.

a week.

11 14 0

105 6 0

163 16 0

351 0 0

11 14 0

46 16 0

146 14

702 0 0

6309 14
4165 6

10.46.''» 0

360

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Thus we find that the constant or average casual
wages of the several cLisses of operative chimney-
sweepers may be taken as follows : —

Journeymen without board and lodg- s. d.
ing, and with perquisites averaging ^.s.
a week 12 6

Journeymen with board and lodging
and 25. a week perquisites . . . 9 10^

Foreman, without board and lodging,
at 25. 6rf. a week perquisites . .15 7

Boys, with board and lodging . .53

The general wages of the trade, including fore-
man, journeymen, and boys, and calculating the
perquisites to average Is. weekly, will be IO5. 6rf.
a week, the same as the cotton factory operatives.

But if 10,500/. be the income of the opera-
tives, 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 2s. M. and Zs. 6d.

The chimneys of moderate-sized houses are swept
at Is. to Is. 6d. each, and those of the poorer
classes are charged generally 6d.; some, however,
are swept at Zd. and 4d. ; and when soot realized
a higher price (some of the present master sweepers
have sold it at Is. a bushel), the chimneys of poor
persons were swept by the poorer class of sweeps
merely for the perquisite of the soot. This is some-
times done even now, but to a very small extent,
by a sweeper, "oh 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 2s. 6d. 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 Is. 6d. each time; and the dwell-
ings of the poor and labouring classes to be swept
once a year at 6d. 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(J.

The sum obtained for 800,000 bushels of soot
collected by the master-sweepers from the houses
of London, at 5d. per bushel, is 16,500/.

Thus the total annual income of the master-
sweepers of London is 100,000/.

Out of this 100,000/. per annum, the expenses
of the masters would appear to be as follows : —

Yearly Expenditure of the 3f aster-Sweepers.

Sum paid in wages to 473 journey-
men £10,500 j

Bent, &c., of 350 houses or lodg- j

ings, at 12/. yearly each . . . 4,200

Wear and tear of 1000 machines,
1/. each yearly .... 1,000

JJitto 2000 sacks, at Is. each yearly 100

Keep of 25 horses, 7*'. weekly each
Wear and tear of 25 carts and har-
ness, 1/. each .....
Interest on capital at 10 per cent. .

£455

25
450

Total yearly expenditure of master-
sweepers employing journeymen . £16,736

The rent here given may seem low at 12/.
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 Stepnej', Shadwell,
Wapping, Bethnal-green, Hoxton, Lock's-fields,
Walworth, Newington, Islington, Somers-town,
Paddinpton, &c. The better sort of master-sweep-
ers at the West-end often live in a mews.

The gains, then, of the master sweepers are as
under : —

Annual income for cleansing chim-
neys 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/. per anrhim to each
individual ; it is only by a few, however, that
such a sum is realized, as in the 100,000/. 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 earn-
ings, 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 Is. 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 20s. a week each ; so that, I am as-
sured, the average of their weekly takings may
be estimated at 12s. Gd.

Now, deducting the expenditure from the
receipts of 100,000/. (for sweeping and soot), the
balance, as we have seen, is 80,000/., an amount
of profit which, if equally divided among the
three classes of the trade, -yvill give the following
sums : —

Yearly, each. Yearly, total.

Profits of 150 single- £ s. £'

handed 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

361

am soured, 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 Croeser, 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, 11. \0s. each (pre- £

sent average value) . . . 3000

3000 sacks, 2*. M. each . . 385

25 horses, 20^. each ... 500

25 sets of harness, 11. each . . 50

25 carts, 12/. each ... 300

£4235

masters, and from Id. to Zd. by the single-handed
sweepers in some cases ; indeed, the poorest
class will sweep a flue for the soot only. Bnt
the prices charged for sweeping chimneys differ
in the diiferent 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, West-

It may be thought that the sweepers will I
require the services of more than 25 horses, but I j
am assured that such is not the case as regards the
Boot business, for the soot is carted away from the
sweepers' premises by the farmer or other pur-
chaser.

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 5d. per bushel, is
16,500/.

There are 800 to 900 people employed in the
trade, 200 of whom are masters employing jour-
neymen, 150 single-handed master-men, and 470
journeymen and under journeymen.

The annual income of the entire number of
journeymen is 10,500/. without perquisites, or
13,000/. with, which gives an average weekly
wage to the operatives of 10«. 6d.

The annual income of the masters and leeks is,
for sweeping and soot, 100,000/.

The annual expenditure of the masters for
rent, keep of horses, wear and tear, and wages, is
20,000/.

The gross annual profit of the 350 masters
is 80,000/., which is at the rate of about 35/.
per annum to each of the single-handed men,
200/. to each of the smaller masters employing
journeymen, and 500/. to each of the larger
masters.

The capiul of the trade is about 5000/.

TU price cluirged by the " high master

sweepers " for cleaning the flues of a house rented

at 150/. a year and upwards, is from \s. to 3*. M.

iiigber price being {>aid for sweeping those

: ys which have a hot plate affixed). A

master, on the other hand, will charge from

:< Zt. for the same kind of work, while a

-handed man seldom gets above "a 1$. job,"

;ind that not very often. The charge for sweeping

the flues of a house rented at from 50/. to 150/. a

year, is from 0(^. to 2«. 6<i. by a large roaster, and

fr >in 8'/. to 2$. by a nnall master, while a single-

h;tiiJed man will take the job at from 6i/. to \s. 6c/.

The price charged per flue for a house rented at

from 20/. a year up to 50/. a year, will average

Qd. a flue, charged by large masters. Ad. by small

mmster 3

Marvlebone .... 4

Paddlngton 3

Hampstead .... 3

St. Pancras 4

Islington 3

Hackney and

Homerton 3

St. Giles's and

St. George's,

Bloomsbury . . 3

Strand 4 „ 2

Holborn 4 „ 2

Clerkenwell 3 „ 1

St. Luke's 3 „ 1

East London . . 3 „ 1
West London . . 4 ,, 2

3 0

London City
Shoreditch . .
Bethnal Green . . 3

Whitechapel 4

St. George's in
the East and

Limehouse 3

Stepney 3

Poplar 4

St. George's, St.
Olave's, and
St. Saviour's,

Southwark 3

Bermondsey . . 3
Walworth and
Newington .... 4
Wandsworth .. 4

Lambeth 3

Camberwell 4

Clapham, Brix-
ton, and Toot

ing

Rotherhithe

Greenwich ....

Woolwich

Lewisham

d. s. d.
6 to 2 6
3 „ 1 0

4 „ 2

3 „ 1

3 „ 2

6 „ 3

N.B.— The single-handed and the knuUers 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 pro-
duced 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 tub
Working Ciiimney-Sweepers,

There are many reasons why the chimney-
sweepers have ever been a distinct and pecu-
liar 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 appear-
ance, but an offensive smell, of itself, in a manner,
prohibited them from associating with other work-
ing men; and the natural effect of such proscrip-

No. XLYII.

362 LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

A TABLE SHOWING THE

NUMBER OF MASTER

CHIMNEY SWEEPERS RESIDING

IN THE SEVERAL DISTRICTS OF THE

METROPOLIS, THE NUMBER OF FORE-

MEN, OF JOURNEYMEN, AND UNDER

JOURNEYMEN EMPLOYED IN EACH

DISTRICT DURING THE YEAR, AS WELL AS

THE WEEKLY WAGES OF EACH

CLASS.

■ s

1 T3

§1

5*0.

Districts.

Weekly
Wages
of each

Weekly Wages
of each

Weekly Wages
of each Under j

Foreman,

Journeyman.

o y

•s|

■si

'o'S

•o°

■sS

. 2

. >>

. p»

• c

. •"

o "

6 o

o o

°.2

o S

^.S

^o.

^p.

^■E.

West Districts.

Ke'iisington and Hammei'-\ 11

695

18s.

7 at 16s.

10s.

smith.

6 „ 15s.

10 „ 14s.

1 „ 12s.

Westminster

735

14s.

5 at 18s.
10 „ 12s.

2s. b

3 „ 4s. I

4 „ 3s. U

4 „ 2s.J !

Chelsea

670

1 „ 16s. j 1 at 2s. b
3 „ 12s. i 1 e

4 „ 10s.

3 „ 3s. -j

1 „2s.6d\b

1 „ 2s. J

St. George's, ffanover-sq....

890

4 at 18s.
1 „ 16s.

5 at 18s.
3 „ 16s.
2 „ 15s.
9 „ 14s.

7 „ 12s.
1 „ 6s. b

St. Martin's and St. Anns

415

7 at 6s. ]

2s. b

6 „ 4s. U

2 „ 3s. J

St. James's, Westminster ...

355

14s.

5 at 12s.

1 „ 10s.

1 at 3s. 6d. b

j North Districts.

' Marylehone

18
10

21
17

16
10

775
495

iss.

18s. 1

lat 14s. ;2at 2s. \j
1 „ 10s. I „ls.6dr

Paddington

2 ,, 4s. ^ !

8 „2s.edL 1

1 „2s.6dr \

2 „ Is. J 1

1 Hampstead

...

lat3s.l; lat Is 6d\j 1

i„2s.r ;i. 1^- r 1

i Islington

425

3 at 4s. 1; ls.6d.b

2 „ 3s. r

1 St. Pancras

...

920

2 at 14s. |3at 2s. "1
6 „ 12s. 2 „ls.6dyh

4 „ 10s.

1 „ Is. J

6 „ 4s. ^

3 „ BsQd

11 „ 3s. [b

3 „ 2s6d

1 „ 2s. J

i HacJcney and HomeHon ...

3 1 3 1

290

...

2s. b l.j. 6d. b 1

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

363

Districts.

Ckktral Districts.
St. Oiless and St. Georges,

Bloomshury.
Strand

Holborn

CUrhntBtll

St. Luke's

East London
West London

London City

East Districts.

I Shoreditck ....
BethneU Green .

WhiUchapel

St. Giortjes-in-Oie-East and'
Liuiehouse.

j Stepnei/.
j Poplar.

South Districts.

SotUhvark

Bermondsey

Walworth and Newington
Wandtworih

Lambeth

Cambencell

Clapionf Brixton, and \

Tooting J

RoUurkitU

OrtenwiA

Woolwich

Lewitham..
Ramoneur tomj-aii)/

Total

<0 IS

350

399

•-5 C

■si

313

435
350
435

310

175
455
205

415

380
150

330
660

275
110

385
220
330
240

660

315

410

170
195
516

160
460

15360

Wages i Weekly Wages
of each , of each
Foreman. Journeyman.

205.

8 at 12s.

1 „ 3s. I

is. h

2 at 185.

„ 45. U
„ 35. J

8 at 35.
1 „ 25 6d.

2s. b

35. h

3 at 45.
6 „ 35.

6 at 6s.]^.
6 „ 4s. J

25.6
1 at 5s.
1 „ 25. &

2s. I

3 at 3s. 1

4 „25.6d U
7 „ 25. J

35. J

2s. b

2s. b
2s. b
3 at 3s. K

3 „2s.6dr
3 at 35. 1 ,
6 „25.6rf/^
25. 6d. b

2s. 6d. b

25. b

Is. 6d. b

13 at 25. 6d.

4 „ l5. 6d.

2s. b

185.

Weekly Wages
of each Under
Journeyman.

Is. b

1 at
1 »

Is. b
Is. 6

2s. b

Is. b

3s. e
1 at Is. 6d \ J

2 „ i5. r

Is. 6d. b

is'.'b
Is. b
Is.b

latls.6rfl ,

4 „ i5. r

Is. b
Is. b

Is.b
2 at l5.
1 „ 9d.

Is.b

NoTB.— 6 mean* board and Iodising m well at money, or part money and part kind ; « stands for everything found or
paid all in kind.

T>i>«(' returns have been collected by pertonal visits to each district :— the name of each master thro ughout London,
together with the number of Foremen, Joumevmen, 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.

B6i

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

tion has been to compel them to herd together
apart from others, and to acquire habits and pe-
culiarities of their own widely differing from the
characteristics of the rest of the labouring

Sweepesrs, 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 intances in-
creased 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 con-
tact : 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, intelli-
gent, 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 connec-
tion with the llev. Mr. Cadman's church, made
an attempt to instruct the sweepers of the neigh-
bourhood 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 coster-
mongers. The habit of going about in search
of their employment has, of itself, implanted
in many of them the wandering propensity pecu-
liar 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 lan-
guage 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 drink-
ing, 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. White-
chapel — they spend their time and what money
they may have in tossing for beer, till they are
either drunk or penniless. Such men pre-
sent the appearance of having just come out of
a chimney. There seems never to have been any
attempt made by them ^o wash the soot off their
faces. I am informed that there is scarcely one
of them who has a secojul shirt or any change of
clothes, and that they wear their garments night
and day till they literally rot, and drop in frag-
ments from their backs. Those who are not em-
ployed as journeymen by the masters are fre-
quently 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». or 20a'. 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

LOyDO±y LABOUR AAD THE LONDON POOR.

365

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 dur-
ing their work.

Wailiing among chimney-sweepers seems to
be much more frequent than it was. In the evi-
dence 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 tenoiir of the evi-
dence 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 some-
times twice a week, assured me that, although
many now eat and drink and sleep sooty, wash-
ing 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 dis-
agreeable operation, often, indeed, as a species of
punishment. Some of the climbing-boys used to
be taken by their masters to bathe in the Ser-
pentine many years ago ; but one boy was un-
fortunately 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
tljat 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
Harapstead-road. This establishment was founded
by voluntary contribution in 184(5, and is now
self-supporting.

There are three more public baths : one in
Ghwlston-street, Whitechapel (on the same prin-
ciple as that first established) ; another in 8t.
Martin's, near the National Gallery, which are
parochial ; and the last in Marylebone, near the
Yorkshire Stingo tavern. New-road, also paro-
chial. The charge for a cold bath, each being
secluded from the others, is Irf., with the use of a
towel ; a warm bath is Id. in the third class.
The following is the return of the number of
bathers at the north-wMt district baths, the esta-
blishment most frequented : —

I endeavoured to ascertain the proportion of
sweepers, with other working men, who availed
themselves of these baths ; but there are unfor-
tunately 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
„ Females .

Total bathers .

417,424
47,114

464,538

1M7. 1 IBSa 1 1849. { 18S0.

Mr-th.-rn

Wiuheri, Dryen,
4room,*c.

lodividuals Washed
for

110,940
30^18

iium

OlpflHI
846.780

96,726
6&4»4
183,788

86,597
78.083

The fiiUing oflFin the number of bathers at this
estJiblishment is, I am told, attribuUible to the
opening of new baths, the people, of course, re-
sorting to the nearest.

I have given the return of washers, &c., as I
endeavoured to ascertain the proportion of wash-
ing 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 Ind
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 prejudice?, 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 smnmer 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 26 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
60 sweepers a week constitute about a thirtieth
part of the whole of the third-class batherp. 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

366

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 indi-
viduals. ,

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 in-
crease 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 ajipearance of ike sweepers in the
streets at the^ present time and before the aboli-
tion of the system of climbing there is a marked
diflPerence. 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 peej} peep of a young
sparrow; or liker to the matin lark should I
pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom
anticipating the sunrise 1 "

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 2d., or, if the weather were starving,
"let the demand on thy humanity rise to a
tester" {6d.).

The appearance of the little children-sweepers,
as they trotted along at the master's or the journey-
man's heels, or waited at "rich men's doors" on a
cold morning, was pitiable in the extreme. If it
snowed, there was a straYige 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 appren-
ticeship days he had to wait at the great man-
sions 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 ajid
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 oflf his glass." His
employer, indeed, sometimes said, " 0, he 's better
without it ; it '11 only lam him to drink, like it
did me ; ' but the servant usually answered, " 0,
here, just a thimblefuU 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 re-
membered, 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 Avas 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 Is. 6d.) a day, and
the grub."

The cost of a climbing-boy's dress, I was in-
formed, varied, when new, according to the mate-
rial of which it was made, from 3s. 6d. to 6s. 6d.
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 Is. 6d.
(or less) in money, and the " whip-cat's " meals,
perhaps another Is. 6d., 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

367

thriving master, that when)he was about twelve
rears 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 L<f. Qd. ;
while other things, he said, were " in propor-
tionate," 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 ordinar}' dress of a poor lad.

The street appearance of the present race of
sweepers, alladults, 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 chiraney-scavager
carries the implement of his calling propped on
his shoulder, in the way shown in the daguerreo-
type 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 descrip-
tion 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*. slop, to 40«. slap."
The average, runa, I believe, from 28«. to ZZs., as
regards the better class of the sweepers.

The diet of the journeymen strtepeis and the
apprentices, and sometimes of their working em-
ployer, 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.

Bread and butter and coffee for break-
fast

A saveloy and potatoes, or cabbage ;
or a '• fi^?ot," 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- bouse; average
from 2d. \oZd

Tea, same at breakfast

0 2

0 6i
On Sundays the fare was better. They then
sometimes had a bit of " prime fat mutton " taken
to the oven, with " titurs to bake along with it;"
or a " irj 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
am^'int <>f 5*. or 6«. weekly, which I have given i

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 any-
thing 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 pro-
vided by the high master sweepers. The expense
of keeping a man employed by a large master
sometimes ranges as high as 85. a week, but the
average, I am told, is about Qs. per Aveek ; while
those employed by the low-class sweepers average
about 55. a week. The cost of their lodging may
be taken at from Is. to 2s. 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-lii\d 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, T 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 sirecpers, 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 con-
dition. 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,
<Scc., while on each side of the fire-place, which
was distinctly visible from the street over a hall
door, were two buft'ets, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

wife and daughter ocaipied the other: a iieiuhbour
sat before the fire with liis back to the door, and
altogether it struck nie as a comfortable-looking
evening party. They were resting and chatting
quietly together after the labour of the day, and
everything betokened the comfortable circum-
stances in which the man, by sobriety and in-
dustry, 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 teetotalisra (I have be-
fore spoken of another) ; that, in fact, there
were some more, and one in particular, named
Brown, who Avas 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 gre<it good to himself;
but he also informed nie 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 tlie 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 everj'^ person and every thing which met
the eye, even to the caps and gowns of the wo-
men, seemed as if they had just been steeped in
Indian ink. In one room Avas 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 re-
commended by one of the fraternity as an intel-
ligent 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 '11 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 ac-
count be correct, 1 '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 climlaing-boy, and sarved a rigler
printiceship for seven years. I was out on my
printiceship Avhen 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 prin-
tice. 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 ganiblin', and wished to
have money too. You see they got money Avhere
they swept the chimneys; they used to get 2d. or
2>d. for theirselves in a day, and sometimes 6rf.
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.
Tliere 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 appa-
rently 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 Avere called to sweep a
chimney down at Poplar. When we went in he
looked up the flues, 'Well, Avhat 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 ofl the chimuey-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
Avhat 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

LONDOIf LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

369

^ee what I can do.' So I locks the door, and
buff^ it, and forces niTd«lf up till I could reach
hi;n with my hand, and as soon as he got his
foot on mr hand he begins to prize himself up, and
gets loosened, and comes out at the top again.
I was stack myself, but I was stronger nor he,
a:id I manages to get out again, ^ow I'll be
bound to say if tliere was anoiher master there
as would kick up a row and a-worrited, that ere
bay '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 tbeni, 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 tlu!?s; so after knockin'
about for a year or so, as I could do nothiuk else,
I goes to sea on board a nian-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 nothiuk 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-
mobsiiien, 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.
^Vhen I got b.ick from sea father asked me to
l;irn his business; so I takes to the silk- weaving
and lamed 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; to I takes to tke chimne}- -sweeping again.
A MOM M*^ mamage to live some/u>w at Vie
iieeeping, but the veaving wo* o no me. It
was the furrin silks as beat us all up, that 's the
whole truth. Yet they tells us as how they was
ar4oin' 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 verj' 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 uiinds to get drunk when they caii.
Some on them fellows as you seed in there
niver cleans tbeirselves from one year's end to
the other. They 'II kick up a row soon enoogh,
with ChartiM or anybody die. I thinks them
Chartista are s weak-minded set; they was
too moch a frightened at nothink, — a hundred o'
tkcm would mn away from one blue-coat, and
tlttt wasn't like men. 1 was often at Chartist
meetings, and if they'd only do all they said
there was a plenty to stick to them, for tbare's a
■onethink wants to be done rery bad, for every-
thank is a-geuin' worser and worser every d*y.
I u«ed to do a good trade, but now I don't yam a
shilling a day all through the year <?(. I mty walk
at this time three or £»ur miles and not get a

i chimney to sweep, and then get only a sixpence
I or threepence, and sometimes nothink. it 's a
i starvin", that 's what it is ; there 's so much
j * querying ' a-goin' on. Querying 1 that 's what
! we calls under- working*. If they'd all fix a
j riglar price we might do very well still. I 'm
j 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 beard my
I mother talk about it ; she used to read it out of
j 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 impos-
sible to tell. How could any one tell all the
sweeps as is in London ] I 'ra sure I can't, and
I 'm sure nobody else can."

Some years back the sAveepers' houses were
often indicated by an elaborate sign, highly
coloured. A sweeper, accompanied by a " chum-
my"' (once a common name for the climbing-
boy, being a corruption of chimney), was de-
picted 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 ex-
tinction 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 neigh-
bourhood," has now another way of making his
calling known. He leaves a card whenever he
hear.s 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,
i much patronized by the Humane Society.

" W. H., Chimney Sweeper and Nightman,
1, Mews, in returning thanks to the inha-
bitants of the surrounding neighbourhood for the
patronage he has hitherto received, begs to in-
form 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 ex-
tinguishes chimneys when on fire, with the
greatest care and safety ; and, by giving the
strictest personal attendance to business, performs
what he undertakes with cleiinliness and punc-
tuality, 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 night-
man's cart, with men at work. All the cards I
saw reiieraU'd the address, so that no mistake
might lead the cusurmer to a rival tradesman.
Am to Uieir polilict, the sweepers are somewhat

* Qucryinft means literally inquiring or asking for
work at the difTcrent houses. The " queriers " among
tbe sweeps are a kiad of pedlaf operatives.

370

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 sura 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 con-
tempt 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 con-
sidered as natural enemies. A costermonger who
happened to be present while I was making in-
quiries on this subject, broke in with this remark,
" The costers is the chaps — the government can't
do nothink with them — they alius licks the govern-
ment." 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 thera, 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 them-
selves 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 thera when incapacitated
by sickness, accident, or old age. There are,
however, a few exceptions to the general impro-
vidence 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 con-
tinue 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.

Tlie chimney-svjeepers generally are regardless
of the marriage cereviony, 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,
80 that there is a promiscuous intercourse con-
tinually 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 bom ; but I am not
able to state the proportion as compared with
other classes.

Tliere are some curious customs among tJce
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 Avhen they went to the houses of their cus-
tomers, 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 pyraraidical form,
and carried by two chairmen upon a wooden
horse. The maidens walked before it, and per-
formed 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."

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 deco-

THE RAT-CATCHERS OF THE SEWERS.

IFrom a Dtiffuetrmtype by Draro.1

LOXDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

371

...u^ v.iih gilt paper and other mock fineries; i
they hiive their shovels and brushes in their i
hands, which they rattle one upon the other ; and !
to this rough music they jump about in imitation ,
ot dancing. Some of the larger companies have ;
a tiddler vnth 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 j
occasion requires. The Jack in the Green is a I
piece of pageantry consisting of a hollow frame of j
■wood or wicker-work, made in the form of a •
sugar-loaf, but open at the bottom, and sufficiently i
large and high to receive a man. The frame is
corered 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 en their pageant, substi-
tuting for the fiddle the more noisy and appro-
priate music of the street-showman's drum and
pipes, and adding to their party several diminu-
tive 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 un-
heard 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 iavoorite 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
^ out on May -day ; this custom is generally con- |
fined to the htile masters and their men. The |
time usually spent on these occasions is four
days, during which as much as from 21. to 4/. a
day is collected ; the sums obtained on the three
fifft 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
guns of the several performers on these occasions
•re as follows : —

My lady, who acta as Columbine,
and reeetrea . .2*. perday.

My lord, who is often the master
himself, but usually one of the
journeymen . . Zt. „

Clown 3«. „

Drummer ^*- t,

Jack in the green, who is often an
indiridoal acquaintance, and
docs not belong to the trade . 8s. „

And the boys, who h.ive no term
term applied to them, receive
from . . 1#. to U. dd. „

Tha ahare accruing to the boyt- w 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, 1 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/. over and above all expenses.

For many years, also, the sweepers were in the
habit of partaking of a public dinner on the Ist
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 jiU 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
afterwai-ds 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 sup-
posed 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 circumstiince, 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. Montiigu 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, waa
numerously attended, for since there were no ques-
tion 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 iJEices for this special occasion.
This annual feast coutinue>.l, as I have siiid, as
long as the lady lived. Uer aon contintied it

372

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 iew 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 ven-
tured 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 mani-
fested within him, prompting to the adventure 1
Doubtless, this young nobleman (for such my
mind misgives me he must be) was allured by
some] memory not amounting to full conscious-
ness 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 occur-
rence, but two who had heard of it — both climb-
ing-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 pro-
nounced apocryphal by some) appears to be the

more probable version ; and to the minds of many
is shown to be conclusively authentic, as I under-
stand 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 compensa-
tion was given to the man, and the boy was re-
tained. 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 Parlia-
ment. 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 I 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 contri-
buted something towards the societ)'. 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 busi-
ness travel a long way through the flues, and
reach the lower part of the chimney or funnel
where it communicates with the boilers and re-
ceives 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

373

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
■oot, 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 fur-
naces 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 l^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; aa 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 com-
mences : 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 neces-
sary out of the opening into the large space behind
the furnaces, then resumes bis 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 furnxice ; other persons stand
ready in the stoke-hole armed with long iron rakes,
with which they drag out the soot from the ash-
pits ; and others shovel it into sacks, which they
make fiut 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 man-
ner 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 busi-
ness. The use of anthracite coals, however, and
some modern improvements, by which air at a
certain temperatiure is admitted to certain parts of
the furnace, have in many instances greatly les-
sened, 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 igni-
tion of soot in the flues of chimneys; blacks and
smoke, moreover, would take their departure toge-
ther; and with them the celebrated London fog
might also, in a great measure, disappear.

The funnels of steamers are generally swept at
from 8rf. to \s. 6d. per funnel. The Chelsea
steamers are swept by Mr. AUbrook, of Chelsea ;
the Continental, by Mr. Hawsey, of Rosemary-
lane ; and the Irish and Scotch steamers, by Mr.
Tuflf, who resides in the East London district.

Op 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 ; an-
other 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 pro-
spectus 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

374

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

the men employed have been brought up as
sweepers. The patent machine is thus de-
scribed : —

" The Patent Raraoneur 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 sur-
mounted 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 recommenilation 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 ditference between the cleansing of the
chimney by a climbing-boy and that eflfected 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, 14s., 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 355. to 40s.
This payment is about equivalent to that re-
ceived weekly by the journeymen in the regular
or honourable trade; for although higher in
nominal amount as a weekly remuneration, the
Eamoneur operatives are not allowed any per-
quisites 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*. or 5s. a week, so that the resident's payment
may be put at about 50/. 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 CHiMHsy-

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 atfecting
the sweepers' trade are, however, the natural
seasons of the year, the recurring summer and
winter, while the seasons influencing the employ-
ment of West-end tailors are the arbitrary seasons
of fashion.

The chimney-sweepers' brink season is in the
winter, and especially at what may be in the
respective households the periods of the resump-
tion and discontinuance of sitting-room fires.

The sweepers' seasons of briskness and slack-
ness, indeed, may be said then to be ruled by the
thermometer, for the temperature causes the in-
crease 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 tem-
perature 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 Michael-
mas-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 ther-
mometer 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. Degrees.

January . . 35-1 July . , 63-1

February . . 38-9 August . . 57-1

March . . 42*0 September . 501

April . . 47-5 October . . 42-4

May . . 64-9 November. . 41'9

June . . 59-6 December . . 38-3

London, I may further state, is 2.^ degrees
warmer than the country, especially in winter,
owing to the shelter of buildings and the multi-
plicity of the fires in the houses and factories. In
the summer the metropolis is about 1^ 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

LONDOir LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

375

are 154 degrees colder. The extreme ranges of
tbe 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
I 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
fiTe in July ; through the other months, how-
ever, the extremes are more diflFused, 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 in-
crease 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 hay-
making, 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 aboat ** knuUing,"— getting a job
vfhere they can.

Many of the master sweepers employ in the
tummer 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 im-
provident, and even upon careful working-men.

A youth cnsnally employed as a sweeper gave
tbe following accotmt : — " I jobs for the sweeps
•oroetimes, sir, as I 'd job for anybody else, and if
you have any herrands to go, and will send me,
I '11 be imkimmon 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 ' oat
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 stnnning good one, but I don't like to
talk abottt her, for the might yam a hatful of

browns — 3s. M. 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 shoe-
maker 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 onl/ 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 pre-
tended 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
comer of mother's room, and my rent 's nothing,
and when she 's all right /'?/«. 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 morn-
ings 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. 0, yes, now you ask that, I
think they're masters, I've had M. 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 '11 get only 2d. or Zd. 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 job-
bing. 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."

Op thb

Lbbks" amoho thb Chimnky-
swbepers.

Thb Lnht 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 greerit or inexperiencad, into the

376

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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' shoe-
makers, and others master builders and brick-
layers. Among the lower-class sweepers who
have taken to this trade, there are dustmen,
scavagers, bricklayers' labourers, soldiers, coster-
mongers, tinkers, and various other unskilled
labourers.

The leeks are regarded with considerable dis-
like by the class of mastert who have been regu-
larly 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 pos-
sessed any guild, or any especial trade regulations,
and this opinion of their rights being invaded by
the leeks arises most probably from their know-
ledge 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 j^ll
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 in-
creased considerably. In 1816 there were 200
masters, and now there are 350. Before the ma-
chines were introduced, the higt master sweepers
or " great gentlemen," as they were called, num-
bered 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 Inpbbiob Chimney-Sweepers — the

" KkULUBES " AND " QUERIERS."

The majority of occupations in all civilized com-
munities 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 ap-
propriating 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 culti-
vators of the soil are at once the labourers
and the owners of the land and stock. The cot-
tiers, 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 handi-
crafts 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 occupa-
tions, however, the master-men are found to be es-
pecially 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 com-
petitions 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 in-
terest of the trade, and I have found many which
they have reduced to a state of abject wretched-
ness. 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 dis-
agreement between him and his emploj^er to pass
from the condition of an operative into that of a
trading workmen. 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 manufac-
turer of writing-desks, tea-caddies, ladies' work-
boxes, &c., could begin, and did begin, business on
less than 3s. Qd. A youth had just then bought
materials of him for 2s. Qd. 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

377

all, skilled and unskilled alike. Distress, a de-
sire 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 metro-
polis : —

South wark (17), Chelsea (11), Marylebone,
Shoreditch, and Whitechapel (each 9), Hackney,
Stepney, and Lambeth (each 8), St. George's-in-
the-Eas't ^7), Rotherhithe (6), St. Giles' and
East London (each 5), Bethnal-green, Bermoud-
sey, Camberwell, and Claphara (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 Wool-
wich (each 1) ; in all, 147.

Thus we perceive, that the single-handed
masters abound in the suburbs and poorer dis-
tricts ; 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 in-
formant has kno\vn this to be the practice at the
town of Hungerford in Berkshire. The bell was
in size between that of the mufHn-man and the
dustman.

The knuller is also styled a " quener" a name
derived from his making inquiries at the doors of
the houses as to whether his services arc 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 bis 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,
hare 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 unikillr>d calling, as scavagers,
costerraongers, tinkers, bricklayers' labourers,
soldiers, ic. The knullers or oneriers ar*^ 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 thera. Not only
do they scheme for employment in the way \
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 employ-
ing 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 chim-
ney-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,
Retherhithe and Greenwich (5 each), Paddington,
St. Pancras, Bethnal Green, Berraondsey, 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 /a's-self."

Another knuller (to whom I was referred by a
master who occasionally employed him as a jour-
neyman) 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 be-
lieved he was nnt 4*).

378

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

" I was hard brought up, sir," he said ; " ay,
them as '11 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 [work-
house] 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 gun-
smith 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 meior their fifth of November fireworks. I
never could bear confinement. It's made me
look older than I ought, I^now, but what can a poor
man do 1 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. 0, 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
depot — Southampton I think they called it. Some-
how I began to rue what I 'd done. Well, I
hardly can tell you why, 0, 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 Immbug —
gathered 1\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«. 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^, ^d. down, and 2;i. 6(Z, a
week, if I couldn't pay more, I might have his
machine for 205, I took it at 17s. 6c^., 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
I 'm what you call a Null.^r, 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^. 9^. a week for a little stair-head
place with a bed in it. I think I clear 75. a
week, one week with another, but that 's the out-
side. 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 \ "

Op the Fires op 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 metro-
polis," say the Board of Health, " their extent,
the number of persons who perish by them, the
enormous loss of property they occasion, the pre-
valence of incendiarism, the apparent apathy with
which such calamities are regarded, and the
rapidity with which they are forgotten, will here-
after be referred to as evidence of a very low-
social condition and defective administrative organi-
zation. These fires, it Avas shown nearly a cen-
tury ago, when the subject of insurance was de-
bated in Parliament, were frequently caused from

LOXDOiV LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOB.

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 ita getting into contact with some beam or
wood-work. The recent burning of Limehouse
Church was occasioned by the soot collected in
the tlue 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 metro-
polis in the three years ending in 1849 inclusive,
it appeiirs 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.

Total.

197
404

Houses .
Contents

•

914
609

1111
1013

1523

601

2124

" The proportion per cent, of the uninsured to
the insured, would be —

Insured. Uninsured. 1 Total.

Houses .
Contents

nil

1013
2124

Per Cent.
82-3
60-1

Per Cent.

17-7
39-9

100
100

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. Baddelby.

1833

1834,

1837,1838 1839 184o' 1841 1842 1843' 1844 1845

1847

1849 Total. 'Average

Accidents of va-
rious kind5, for
the most part un-l
avoidable 83

Apparel ignited
on the person ....

Candles, various!
accidents with . .( 46

pah: - 23

Chi!
wit!: ■
dies ..

Drunkenness \ ..

Fire-heat, appli-
cstioo of, to va-
rious hazardous

146

manufacturing

' ire-sparks :

Fire- works j

Fires kindle<l on'
heart
imi':

Flur-
tive, <V( I

Fumigation, in-
cautious

Furnaces, kilns.
Ate, defective or
over-heated

Gas

Gunpowder

Hearths. defec-
live, Ac

Hot cinders pat
•way

Lamps

Lirnc. Oakingof ,

I '•K.air-

ht».

H fading, work
ini?, or smoking

■■ .r ;...i;r,|. Ac.

i i>b.iriT) smoking

Suspicious

Wilful

Unknown

0 6
114 I 91

132 128

12 15
31 49
3

36 31

3 4

7 8

5 a

57 46

15 , 12 23
48 48 52
3

25 I 27
IR 16
13 1 13

103

166 ,205
27 15

10
11
3 0

3
237
15 20

28 14
53 63
2

19 13
1

237 '241
23 24

4 4
78
2

452 27

69 I 4

2876 i 169

309 I 18

120

1273

117

22
339

626
238
125
211

lObO

li
20

No. XLVIII.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 particu-
larly with the causes of these fires, of which the
following table gives the result of many years' va-
luable experience : —

TABULAR EPITOME OF METROPOLITAN FIRES, FROM 1833 to 1849.
Br W. Baddelkt, 29, Alfred Street, Islington.

1833 1834

1835

1836' 1837

1838

1839 184o'l841|1842 1843^1844

1 1 1
1845 1846 1847' 1848

1849 Total.

Average

Slightly damaged | 2921 338

315

397: 357

.383

402

451

438 521

4891 502

431 5761 5361 509

582 6,.574

470

.Seriouslv damaged

135: 116-

325

134; 122

l.Vi

165

204

234 224

231: 237

244 238

273 269

228 2,9.55

211

Totallv destroyed

311 28

.31

33 22

24 1 24

29 23

32 20

27 27

28 365

Total No. of Fires

458 482

471

564; 501

584

(i81

696: 769i 749| 762

707: 834

836 805

8381 9,894

770

False Alarms

59j 63

66i 89

67 611 79 70

81; 119

88 120

76; 1,150

Alarms from

Chimneys on Fire

75, 106

106

126 127

107

101

98! 92 82| 83i 94

87 69 66 86

89 1,307

Total No. of Calls

592 i 651

643

756 717

755

863 8.55 912 911

926

875 1022 990 1011

1003 12,351

882

Insuran. on Build-

ing and Contents
Insurances on

169 173

161

160

237 "^-^ -*'•''

276

263 310

368. 3,718

266

Building only .

73, 47

149 116

124

138

107 137

125' 12c

163 I 508

108

Insurances on

Contents only. .

104 76
218 205

128

115' 104

KO 110

107

73 125

1A71 131

72 1,453
235 3,215

104

Uninsured

220

242 248 152 220 i 242

217

214 270 291' 241

230

Thus we perceive that, out of an average of
665 fires per annum, the information being de-
rived from 17 years' experience, the following
were the number of fires produced by different

causes :— Average

Vo.of

Fires per

Annum.

Candles, various accidents with .

169

Flues, foul, defective, &c. .

Unknown

Gas

Stoves over-heated ....

Linen, drying, airing, &c. .

30 :

Accidents of various kinds, for the most

part unavoidable

Fire heat, application of, to various ha-

zardous manufacturing processes .

Fire sparks

21 .

Shavings, loose, ignited

Carelessness, palpable instances of .

Furnaces, kilns, &c., defective or over-

heated . . . . . ,

Children playing with fire or candles .

Tobacco smoking ....

Spontaneous combustion .

Wilful

Lucifer-matches ....

Ovens ......

Fires, kindled on hearths and other

improper places

Suspicious

Lamps ......

Drunkenness

Lime, slaking of ... .

Apparel, ignited on the person .

Fireworks

Hot cinders put away

Incautious fumigation

Reading, working, or smoking in bed .

1-33

Hearths defective ....

1-25

665

Here, then, we find that while the greatest pro-
portion 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 la-
bourers 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 incen-
diarism in connection with insurance, report : —

" Inquiries connected with measures for the im-
provement of the population have developed the
operation of insurances, in engendering crimes
and calamities ; negatively, by weakening natural
responsibilities and motives to care and fore-
thought ; 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 incen-
diarism for the sake of insurance money exists to
a far greater extent than the public are aware of,"

Mr. Braid wood 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 unin-
sured 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 : —

LOXDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

381

In the first seven
years there were
on an average .

In the second
seven years . .

Fires per j Of which
Annum of | were
Houses and Totally
Properties. Uninsured.

623
790

215
244

Proportion
per Cent,
of Insured
Houses and
Properties
Burnt.

65-15
69-3

During this period there has been a great in-
crease 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 un-
known, including suspicious causes. The propor-
tion 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 un-
insured."

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 com-
pany, the demand would not be complied with,
and that the company would resist any action for
the recover)' of the money. The criminal becomes
alanned, he is afraid of committing himself, and
80 the matter drops, and the insurance companies,
not being required to pay the indemnification, are
satisfied to save their money, and let the incen-
diarism 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 extinc-
tion 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-
Jive times a3 the earliest means of assistance,
when the parochial engines did the same only in
the proportion of tico 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 cir-
cumstances 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, up-
wards 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 assist^mce was needed, and,
under other circumstances, might have been ren-
dered. 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

382

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 con-
stantly on at high pressiire night and day, and the
■whole to be under the charge of a trained bodj-^
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 ar-
rangements, 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 oxir 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 npon 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 heavj''
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 engir.eer, and, as far as Mr.
Lindley could accomplish, on sanitary principles,
such as the abolition of cesspools. The arrange-
ments 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 Ham-
burgh 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 exten-
sive 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 in-
surance 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 ex-
pense of the like arrangement in London, where
it is well known that similar practices prevail ex-
tensively."

The following statement was given by Mr.
Quick, an engineer, on this subject : —

*' After the destruction of the terminus of the
South Western llailway 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 Avhere 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 pro-
j duce a jet of about 50 feet high. The arrange-
ment carried out, at your recommendation, Avith
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 follow-
ing, even under the circumstances, amusing ac-
count of a fire where such a cistern was pro-
vided : —

" 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

383

shown in the following statement by Mr. Braid-
wood, when consulted on the subject of fire-
escapes, which under the present system are not
considered suflSciently effective : —

"Taking Loudon to be six miles long and
three miles broad, to have anything like an
efficient system of fire-escapes, it would be neces-
sary to have one with a man to attend it within a
quarter of a mile of each house, as assistance, to
be of any tise, must generalhj he rendered mlhin
Jive minuUs after tlie 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/. to
100/., and the hose, buckets, and general appa-
ratus, cost nearly the same amount.

Of the Sewermen and Nightmen op

LOSDOK.

"Wb 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 metro-
polis. 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 spe-
cies : —

A. The dry.

B. The we't.

The dry street-refuse consists, as we have seen,
of the refuse earth, bricks, mortar, oyster-shelU,
potsherds, and pansherds.

And the dry house-refuse of the soot andjashes
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-reftse, of what is familiarly
known as the " slops " of our residences, and the
liquid refuse of uur factories and slaughter-
houses.

We hare already collected the facts in connec-
tion with the three first of these subjects. We
have ascertained the total amount of each of these
species of refuse which hare to be annually re-
moTed from the capital We hare set forth the
aggregate nmnber of labourers who are engaged
iu the removal of it, as well as the gross sum that
is paid for so doing, showing the individual earn-
ings 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 la-
bourers 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 cha-
racter is wet refuse. It may be called semi-liquid
when it has become mingled with any solid sub-
stance, though not so fully as to have lost its pro-
perty 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 alt waste
water, whether from the supply of the Avater
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-bouses, &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 slaugh-
terers') 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 t<vn-pits of Ber-
mondsey into the drains and sewers. From the
great hat-manufactories (chiefly also in Ber-
mondsey 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 w.isted 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 ab-
sorbed at once by the soil and its vegetable pro-
ducts; we must also exclude such portion of
water as is applied to the laying of the road and
street dust on dry 8um;ner days, and which forms
a part of the street mud or " mac" of the scava-
ger'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,

384

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 jjfconsumed 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 Parlia-
ment 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

The yearly rain-fall throughout
metropolis is 172,053,477 tons, or
gallons, 2 feet deep of rain falling
inch of London in the course of
yearly total of the water pumped
the metropolis is as follows : —

Yearly mechanical supply
natural ditto

55,383,329

the area of the
33,589,972,120
on every square
the year. The

or falling into

Gallons.
19,215,000,000
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 metropo-
litan 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,
an^the houses (estimating 300,000 as occupying
upon an average 100 square yards each*) another
tithe of the surface. The remaining 92 square
miles out of the 115 now included in the Regis-
trar-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

* In East and West London there are rather more
than 32 houses to the acre, which jjives an average of 151
square yards to each dwelling, so that, allowing the
streets here to occupy one-third (jf 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. Xhe average number of
houses per acre throughout London is 4.

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 ap-
pears 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 per-
fectly 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 1^ 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

385

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 Zd.), 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 homed 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 retxirn ; 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 ^ to J 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
^ lb. daily per head, including men, women, and
children.

It is estimated by Bousingault, and confirmed
by Liebig, that each individual produces { lb. of
solid excrement and 1^ lb. of liquid excrement
per day, making 1^ lb. each, or 150 lbs. per 100
individuals, of semi-liquid refuse from the water-
closet " But," says the Surveyor of the Me-
tropolitan Commission of hewers, " 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 excremen-
titious matter to add to the previous total. This,
then, is \ lb. daily and individually ; or from the
metropolitan population of nearly 2,500,000 ^
daily supply of 600,000 lbs., rather more tluin
267 tons ; and a yearly aggregate for the whole
metropolis of 219,000,000 lbs., or Tery nearly
about 100,000 tons.

From the foregoing account, then, the following
is shown to be

Tlie Gross Quantity of the Wet House-R^use of
[the Metropolis.

Gallons. Lbs.

" Slops " and unab-
sorbed rain-water. . . . 24,000,000,000 = 24a,0OO,0OO,000

Blood of beasts 2,(546,000 = 2(5,460,000

horses.... 26,000= 260,000

Excreta 219,000,000

Dung of slaugh-
tered cattle 17.400,000

Total 24,0<)2,C57,()(H) = 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 anniun ; 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 admea-
surement. I will endeavour, however, to present
an uniform table of the whole great mass of me-
tropolitan 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 &€ 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 roimd 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

Wkt HousE-RKFtJ8E\ =6,603,110,400,000 cubic in., or
OK LoNBON / \ 3,1(20,000,000 cubic feet.

Figures best show the extent of this refuse,
" inexpressible " to common appreciation " by
numbers that have name."

Of the Means op Removing the Wet
House- REFUSE.

Whetuer this mass of filth be, zymotically, the
cause of cholera, or whether it be (as cannot be
be questioned) a means of agricultural fertility,
and therefore of national wealth, it vmst be re-
moved. I need not dilate, in explaining a necessity
which is obvious to every man with uncoriupted
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 instruc-
tions 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 informa-
tion 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

386

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

information as to the real condition and ciTilisation
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 con-
nected moral habits of high social importance. It
would inform him of the real state of police, and
of local administration, and mucli 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 im-
pressions 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 Avet 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 neigh-
bourhood 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 faecal 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 direc-
tion 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
afifected 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 LiflPj', 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 kw 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, 80 to speak, her own manurer, her own re-
storer. The sheep, which are as wild and active
as gojits, 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 conti-
nually 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 loath-
some to man, but demanded by vegetation. Lie-
big, 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 deso-
lation because men understood not the restoration
which all nature demands for the land. He de-
clares 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 Baby-
lon," 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 dig-
ging 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 eva-
cuations 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 eva-
cuations 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 faeces : a
manure which might be made far more valuable
than the foreign guano.

Such are a few of the evils of making a com-
mon 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 periodi-
cally when full.

The house-drainage throughout London has two
characteristics. By one system all excrementitious
and slop refuse generally is carried usually along

LONDOy LABOUR AND' TEE LONDO^i' POOR.

387

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. AH the houses
built or rebuilt since lS-18 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 me-
tropolis.

Of the QxrAKTiTY op 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 re-
moving it from the immediate vicinity of the
house, I will now proceed to set forth the qriantity
of wet house-refiise matter which it has been
ascertained is removed with the contents of Lon-
don sewers.

An experiment was made on the average dis-
charge of sewage from the outlets of Church-
lane and Smith-street, Chelsea, Ranelagh, King's
Scholar's-pond, Grosvenor-wharf, Horse ferry-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
iarestigation 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 snr&ce drained into the ontlets before
enumerated covers, in its total area, about 7000
acres, of which nearly 3500 may be cLissed 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 observa-
tions were made, than by quoting the two follow-
ing resnlts, being those of the fullest and smallest
discbarges of twelve issues into the river. I must
premise that these experiments ^v*re made on
seTen occasions, from May 4 to July 12 inclusive,
and made at diflSsrent times, but generally about
eight hours aiW high water. In the Northumber-
land-street sewer, from which was the largest issue,
tJ,,. ,..:.i.i. „f .1 „ .1. I,.. ....„ fj^.g fggt_

In ■ lischarge,

as . ;th of the

sewer was four fe«t. The width, however, does

not affect the question, as there was a greater

iuue from tbe Norfolk-street sewer of two feet,

than from the King-street Mwer of four feet in
width.

NoRTmjMBERLAND STREET.

Velocity iier

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-

Kino 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

K. 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. Tlie mean discharge
per acre, in the course of 24 hours, wa^ foimd to
be about 256 cubic feet, comprising the urban
and suburbaii 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 assiuned as derived (in a dry season) almost
entirely from artificial sources or house drainage,
as there was no rain-full, or but little. "Sup-
posing, therefore," the Report states, " Vie entire
surface to be urban, we liave 540 cubic feet as
tfie mean daily discharge per acre. If, however,
the average be taken of the first eight outlets,
viz., from Kssex-street to Grosvenor-wharf in-
clusive, which drain a surfjaco wholly urban, the
result is 1260 cubic feet per acre in the 24 hours.
This excess may be attributed to tho number of
manufactories, and tho 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 con-
sideied tbe fairer average."

388

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

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 Suixey 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 mattter has too,
of late years, added to the amount of sewage —
the abolition of cesspoolage in a considerable de-
greee, owing to the late Building and Sanitary
Acts, so that foecal 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. Anfl 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 Begistrar-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 gal-
lon, 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 investiga-
tion 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 scAvage 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 his-
torians 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.

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. An-
other, 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

THE SEWER-HUNTER.

{From a Harjuerreotype hy Beard.]

LOXDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

3S9

Rome marble," it was one of his great works also,
under the direction of Agrippa, to reconstruct, im-
prove, 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^. Of the average
yearly cost we have no information. Some ac-
counts represent these sewers as having been re-
built after the irruption of the Grauls, In Livy's
time they were pronounced not to be accommo-
dated to the plan of Rome. Some portions of
these ancient structures are still extant, but they
seem to have attracted small notice even from pro-
fessed 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 oft' 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 Lon-
don 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 cnmibling stone with some
heraldic, or apparently heraldic, device at its out-
let, 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 sys-
tem of street-lighting, is a modem work; but it is
not, like our gas-lamps, an original English ^vork.
We have but followed, as regards our arched and
sabternmeotts sewerage, in the wake of Rome.

As I have said, the early lam of sewers relate
to watercourses, navigable communications, dams,
ditches, and such like; there is no doubt, how-
ever, that in the heart of the great towns the filth
of the bouses wa«, 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 distin-
guish 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 AcU of Tarliament, it is hardly possible
to distingniah whether the provitioni to be ap-

plied 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 filUi and a
navigable stream at the same time.

That the ditches were not sewers for the con-
veyance 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 excremen-
titious matter was deposited during the night in
the street, and removed by the proper function-
aries 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 othjer
" brooks," drained into the current stream. The
Corporation accounts contain very frequent mention
of the cleansing, purifying, and " thorough" cleans-
ing of the Fleet Ditch, the Old Bourne (Holbom
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 follow-
ing curious account of its origin. It is now open,
but only for a short distance, oflfending the air of
Clerkenwell. At one period it was to aiford 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 bv the Londoners, in the year 1211, and
finished* 121 3, 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 Maldgate, for that the
said Ditch passed through their Ground from the
Tower unto Bishojysgafe.

" The first Occasion of making a Ditch about the
City seems to have been this : William, Bishop
of Eh/, Chancellor of England, in the Reign of
King Richard I., made a great Ditch roinid 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 DunOiorn. 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 Ricluird.

" This Ditch being originally ni.ade for the
Defence of the City, was also a long time together
carefully cleansed and maintained, as Need re-
quired ; but now of late neglected, .ind 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, 1879, John Philpot, Maior of London,

390

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

caused this Ditch to be cleansed, and every
Houshold to pay 5d., which was a Day's Work
toward the Charges thereof.

" Ralph Joseiine, 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 *ld., the Second Ditcher,
%d, the other Ditchers, 5t£. And every Vagabond
(for as they were then termed) \d. the Day, Meat
and Drink, at the Charges of the City, Sura
95/. 3s. U.

" Fleet Ditch was again cleansed in the Year
1549," Stow continues, ^' Henry Ancoates heing
Maior, at the Charges of the Companies. And
again 1569, the 11th of Queen Elizabeth ; for
cleansing the same Ditch between Ealdgaie and
the Postern, and making a new Sewer and Wharf
of Timber, from the Head of the Postern into the
Toiccr-ditch, 814/. 155. 8(/. (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 un-
able 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 Dreiris and Sewers, made to
carry away the water from the Postern-Gate,
between the two Tower-hills to Fleet-bridge with-
out 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 Hun-
gerford Wharf.

The Fleet Ditch seems always to have had a
stwery character. It was described, in 1728, as

" The king of dvkes ! 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 60 years, open sewer-
ditches, into which drains were emptied, and
ordure and refuse thrown, were frequent, espe-
cially in the remoter parts of Lambeth and New-
ington, 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 hare 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 —
Avhen 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 water-
courses," 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 stre-
nuously supported at that time by Nic Leate, " a
worthy and grave citizen," was revived and re-
considered. 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 in-
jection 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 modem,
into which millions of tons of every description of
refuse are swept yearly.

Of the Kinds and Charaoteeistics op
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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

391

in the annexed table from the Eegistrar-General's
returns : —

North

South

side of

London.

the

River.

Elevation of the ground.

in feet, above Trinity

high- water mark

Density, or number of

persons to an acre,

1S49

Deaths from Cholera to

10,000 persons living.

in 60 weeks, ending

Nov. 24, 1849 .

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.

Eleva-

tion.

Lewisham .

. 28

St. Olave . . 2

Wandsworth

. 22

Bermondsey . 0

Greenwich.

. 8

Rotherhithe . 0

Camberwell

. 4

St. George's (South-
wark) . . 0

Lambeth .

. 3

St. Saviour (South-

Newington (below

wark) .

. 2

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 rxin for the
Mwage. In parts of the north of Ent^land it used
to be a general, and still is a partial, saying
among country-people who are figuratively de-
scribing what they account impossible. " Ay,
when ] WKcn water runs up bank." This i« 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 re-
sorted 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.
^. 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 gully-
hole, 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 dimen-
sions, 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 oflices. 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 jthc 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.

392

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

The slop or surface water of the streets is con-
veyed 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 trapdoors 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 hurrj'. These '"kennels" emptied
themselves into ^the gratings, which were not un-
frequently 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 impedi-
men 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 un-
derground 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 dimen-
sions ; 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 sub-
terranean 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. 6, Vl\ inches bv 10.^ ; No. 6, 15 inches by
9 ; No. 7, 12 inches'^by 7^ ; and No. 8, 9 inches
by 6.

These branch sewers may, from their circum-
scribed dimensions, be looked upon as mere
channels of connection with the larger descrip-
tions j 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, how-
ever, 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 ob-
served. 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 remem-
bered that the present engineers have to contend
j with great difficulties, the whole matter being so
j complicated by the blunderings and mismanage-
I ment 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 tlte 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 somev/hat less to a mile and more. Sqpe
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 ascertiiined.
For flushing purposes there are recesses of greater
or less Avidth, according to the capacity of the
sewer, where sluice-gates, &c,, can be fixed, and
water accumulated.

Under the head of "Subterranean Survey of

LOXDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

393

the Sewers," will be found some account of the
different dimensions of the sewers.

The form, of the interior of the severs (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 con-
struction to an "inverted" arch. The lest form
of invert is a matter which has attracted great
engineering attention. It is, indeed, the impor-
tant 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,
^cilitates or retards the transmission of the con-
tents.

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 (espe-
cially) being oviform, as the matter Avas 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 conse-
quently the greater its deposit

"What extent of egg-shaped sewers are now, so
to speak, at w^ork, I could not ascertain. One
informant thought it might be somewhere about
50 miles.

The following interesting account of the velo-
cities 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 suffi-
dcnt velocity to prevent the usual matter dis-
charged into the sewer from depositing. For this
purpose, it is necessarj' that there should be in
each sewer a contant velocity of current equal to
24 feet per second, or IJ 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
Khone," he has said, " were not absorbed by the
operation of some constant retardation in its
coarse, the stream would have shot into the Bay
of Marseilles with the tremendous velocity of
164 mile* oTery hour. Even if the Thames met
with BO system of impediments in its course, the
stream would have rushed into the sea with a
velocity of 80 feet per second, or 54 i miles in an

hour The inclinations of the sewers

of a natural district should be made to diminish
firom their heads to their outfalls in a correspond-
ing ratio of jngnmon, to 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 lewer, which has lately called forth

the most public attention and professional con-
troversy, is that connected with the new Houses of
Parliament, or as they are called in divers reports
and correspondence, the " New Palace at West-
minster."

The worJcmanship in Vie building of the sercers
is of every quality. The material of which some
of the older sewers are constructed is a porous
sort of brick, which is often foimd 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 endur-
ing cement, and generally with concrete on their
exterior, to protect them from the dampness and
decaying qualities of the superincumbent or la-
teral soil.

The depth of the seioers — I mean firom 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
iico feet, some almost level! These, how-
ever, 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 percent-
age on the cost of works. When it was proposed,
in the Westminster Commission, to effect a reduc-
tion of four-fifths in the cost, it was like a propo-
sition to return the ofticers' 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 Com-
mission which published its papers was the West-
minster, of which Mr. L. C. Hertslet had the
charge as clerk ; when the Commissions were con-
solidated in 1847, he printed the Westminster and
Surrey only, the others being of minor import-
ance.

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."

Tl>£ course of the sewers is in no direct or
uniform line, with the exception of one character-
istic— 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
chisses of sewers fill up the great area of London
sewerage with a perfect network of intersection
and connection, and even this network is increased

394

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 drain-
age 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 op tue
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 no-
thing 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 neigh-
bourhood. The deposit has been found to com-
prise all the ingredients from the breweries, the
gas-works, and the several chemical and mineral
manufactories ; dead dogs, cats, kittens, and rats ;
ofial from slaughter-houses, sometimes even in-
cluding the entrails of the animals ; street-pave-
ment 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 rub-
bish of diiferent 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 con-
tents 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 charac-

teristics 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 construc-
tions 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
ot the bottom is very irregular : there are jumps
up at two or three places, and it contains a de-
posit 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
iiMjhes 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. Pro-
ceeding 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 stalac-
tites 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 de-
posit. 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 subter-
ranean 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 dis-
trict on the north bank of the Thames, as ascer-
tained under the Metropolitan Commission. I
now give some extracts concerning a similar

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

395

sorvey 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, 69J miles.

" The surveyors (in the Surrey and Kent
Bewers) find great difficulty in levelling the
Bfiwers 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 jive feet of putrid mat-
ter. The smell is usually of the most horrible
description, the air being so foul that explosion
and choke damp are verj- 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 foetid

deposits) in a stote 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 irre-
gular; even where they are inverted they fre-
quently 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
•mailer and more full of deposit ; and, bad as the
smell is in the sewers in Westminster, it is infi-
nitely 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 fects con-
cerning this branch of the subject.

In my inquiries among the working scavagers
I often heard of their emptying street slop into
sewers, andjthe 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
gnlly-grate in this instance;" and in other in-
stances, too, there is no doubt — especially at
Charing Cross, and the Regent Circus, Piccadilly.

Concerning the sewerage of the most aris-
tocratic paru of the city of Westminster, and of
the fashionable squares, &c., to the north of Ox-
ford street, I glean the following particulars
(reported in 1849). They show, at any rate,
that the patrician quarters have not been unduly
favoored ; that there has been no partiality in the
construction of the sewerage. In the Belgrave
and Eaton-square districts there arc many faulty
places in the sewers which abound with noxious
matter, in many instaocas stopping up t' - i- -r-

drains and " smelling horribly." It is much the
same in the Grosvenor, Hanover, and Berkeley-
square localities (the houses in the squares them-
selves 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
I standing from day to day, and to flush them for
j the removal of their "most loathsome deposit"
might be " to bring some of them down alto-
gether."

One of the accounts of a subterranean survey
1 concludes with the following rather curious state-
ment : — •' Throughout the new Paddington dis-
I trict the neighbourhood of Hyde Park Gardens,
j and the costly squares and streets adjacent, the
sewers abound with the foulest deposit, from
which the most disgusting effluvium arises ; in-
deed, amidst the whole of the Westminster Dis-
trict of Sewers the onbj 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 v/ere the worst, in the
patrician squares of what has been called Bel-
gravia and Tybumia, the cholera was the least
destructive. This, however, is no reason what-
ever why the stench should not be stifled.

Of the House-Drainagb of the Metropolis

AS CONifECTED WITH THE SeWERS.

Evert house built or rebuilt since the passing of
the Metropolitan Sewers Act in 1848, must be
drained, with an exception, which I shall specif}',
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 pre-
mises, 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 Septem-
ber, 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

396

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 ramifica-
tion, of the subterranean metropolis, I am
assured by one of the largest builders in the
western district of the capital that the new regu-
lations (as to the dispensing with cesspools) are
readily complied with, as it is a recommendation
which a house agent, or any one letting new pre-
mises, 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 clear-
ing 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 cess-
poolage, and that old system is still very pre-
valent.

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 gene-
rally, 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 aboli-
tion of the cesspool system, under which filth
must accumulate, and where, from scamped build-
vings 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 modemly-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, ^nd 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," " tubu-

lar," and "pipe" house-drainage, and all with the
object of carrying off all faeces, soil water, cess-
pool matter, &c., before it has had time to accu-
mulate. It is not by brick or other drains of
masonry that the system is carried out or is re-
commended 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 inter-
mittent, supply of water from the several com-
panies would be best. These pipes communicate
with the nearest sewer. The pipes in the
tubular drainage are of red earthenware or stone-
ware (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 Je-
rusalem. " His pool and conduit," said Mr.
Stirrat, "are still to be seen. The c»nduit is
three feet square inside, built of freestone,
strongly cemented; the stone, fifteen inches thick,
evidently intended to sustain a considerable pres-
sure ; 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 re-
servoirs 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 princi-
pally a sejmrate, system of house-drainage; but
the new system is equally available for such
separate drainage.

As regards the success of this system the re-
ports 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 addi-
tional 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 Eeport of the Board of
Health, " was given in the improved drainage of a
block of houses in the cloisters of Westminster,

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

397

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 Col-
lege during the last twelve months has been com-
plete. 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 £su:ility of dispeiising entirely
with cesspools and brick sewers.' Up to this time
they hare acted, and continue to act, perfectly.

" Mr. Morris, a surveyor attached to the Me-
tropolitan 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
eflfect 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 drain^e 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 zags 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. (xotto, 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 esti-
mate of tfie cost, provided the pipes were made
and the work done by contract under the Com-
missioners of Sewers : —

Water-eloset Apparaitis, Jcc

£ s. d.

Emptying, &c., cesspool . .0120

Diggiitg,diu;., fur S-feet pipe drain,
at 4</

Making good to walls and floor of
water<les«t over drain, at Zd.

8 feet run of 4 'inch pipe, at 3d.

Laying ditto, ut2d. .

Extra for juDctiwi

Fixing ditto ....

^yater-clo8et apparatus, with stool
cock .....

Fixing ditto ...

Contimgtnae* (10 per cet

0 2

1 16 0

£ s. d.

Brought forward . . 1 16 0
The yard sink and drain would

cost .' 0 11 2

Kitchen sink and drain . . 0 15 7i

So that the cost of hack draining
one house, including water-closet,
would be 3

The front tubular drainage of a similar bouse
(with fifteen yards of carriage-way to be paved)
would cost %l. 2s. 1\d.; or the drainage would
cost, according to the old system, 111. 13**. \\d.

** The engineering witnesses who have given
their special attention to the subject," state the
Board of Health, in commenting on the infor-
mation I have just cited, " affinn that upon tlie
improved system of combined Avorks the expense
of the apparatus in substitution of cesspools would
not greatly exceed one-half t/ie 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 id. a
week on each householder; and that by the new
system it would be but l^c^. 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 exa-
mination, 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 dniinage, 83/. I2s., or

1/. 18s. per house.
Cost of separate tubular drainage, 467/. 9*. 6d.,

or 10/. 125. 6d. per house.
Cost of separate brick drains, 910/. IO5., or

20/. 14^. Id. 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/. 12a. 6c/.,

or 1/. 19^. Sd. per house.
Of separate tubular drains, 131/. 13s. 6d., or

51. lis. 6d. per house.
Of separate brick drains, 305/.7s., or 13/. 5s. Gd.

per house.

** In another block of 46 houses —

The length of back drainage, 1143 feet.

Ditto by separate ditto, 18y2 icet.

The cost of back tubular drainage, G6l.5s.2d.,

or 1/. 8s. 9^d. per house.
Ditto of separate ditto diUo, 178/. 19*. 8d.,

or 3/. 17». lOd. per house.
Ditto of separate brick ditto, 290/. is., or

&L 9s. Sd. per house.

Ho. XLIX.

A A

398

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

" 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, QQl. 85. 2d.,

or 11. 8s. lQ\d. per house.
Ditto of separate ditto ditto, 262/. lis. Id.,

or 5/. 14><t. 2d. per house.
Ditto of separate brick ditto, 6I4/. 16s. 3c?.,

or 13/. 7s. Z\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, I
&c., for house and gully or street-drainage, more I
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
difficult)' of repairs if the joints or fittings of
pipes require mending; and then the combina-
tion 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.

Op 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 thorough-
lares 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 sur-
face 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 imme-
diate 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 al-
most 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 con-
tinually coursing, to the imminent peril of all
pedestrians, for the wheels of every vehicle dis-
tribute, as it goes, a muddy shower on either side
of the way.

We, however, have not only removed the chan-
nels 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 car-
ried 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 ad-
mitted ; but we must at the same time allow,
when we think of the vast extent of the road-
ways of the metropolis (1760 miles ! — nearly
one-half the radius of the earth itself), the
deluge of water that anuually descends upon
every inch of the ground Avhich wc 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 con-
veyances that traverse Cheapside in the course of
twelve hours, tlie 7700 that go through Temple
Bar, and the 6900 that ascend and descend Hol-
born 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* 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 Gidbj-drain is a drain generally of earthen-
ware 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 foot-
path, 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

* Gully here is a corruption of the word Gullet, or
throat ; the Norman is /quelle (Lat.^M/a), and the French,
goulet; from this the word ^m//v appears to be directly
derived. A ^wWy-drain is literally a A'wWef-drain, that is,
a drain serving the purpo-es of a gullet or channel for
liquids, and a gully-hole the mouth, orifice, or opening
to thsgvUet or gully-drain.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

399

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, vithout
professional attraction to the matter, regards for a
Ic'-.v minutes the peculiarities of the street (apart
from the houses) which he is traversing — an ob-
servant 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 Hoi bom 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 Drurj'-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 prox-
imity 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 fewer 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 re-
gards 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 approxi-
mation 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 17C0 miles of London public ways,
more than two-thirds, "or" remarked one inform-
ant, "say 1200 miles, are grated on each side of
the street or road, at distances of sixty yards."
This would gire 59 gully-boles in every one of the
1200 miles of street said to be so supplied. Hence
the total number throughout the metropolis will
l>e 70,800.

T' /.'^/y-f^mm, which is the street-drain, al-
• Hents now a sloping curve, describing,
!••«», part of a circle. This drain starts.

80 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 in-
dispensable. The new system is, moreover, more
economical. In the City the gully-drains are nearly
all of nine-inch diameter in tubular pipeage. In
I the metropolitan jurisdiction they are the same,
i but not to the same extent, some being only six
j inches.

Fifty, or even thirty years ago, the old street
! channels for gully drainage were costly construc-
tions, 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 sca-
vagers 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

i thus still cause perpetual expense. Indeed, I feel

j convinced that nothing but making public example

I 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 dustbias."

The OuUy-holeg are now Irapped— -with very few
exceptions, one report states, while another report
intimates thatguUy-trapping has no exception at all.
The trap is resorted to so that the effluvium from

400

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

a gully-drain may not infect the air of the public
ways; but among engineers and medical sanitary
inquirers, there is much diir't-rence of oiniiion 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 gnily-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. Kelspy) 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 metro-
politan 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 constniction.

"Now, of the incomp.atible conditions required
of gully-traps, of the difficulty of obtaining such
mechanical appliances so eftective and perfect as
can theoreticalhj 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 introduc-
tion 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 ex-
cluding effluvium from the atmosphere been your
onh-care; but the cleanliness of the sewers, and
the prevention of accumulation of decomposing
refuse, both by regulated cleansings, and by con-
structing 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 oftensiveness 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 debris from new or removed buildings)
not being sufficiently liquified to pass through
them, and partly from the hinges getting rusted,
and so becoming fixed.

Op the Length of tite Lokdon Sewers and
Dkaiss.

There is no official account precisely defining the
length of the London sewerage ; but the informa-
tion 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 i — to
say nothing of the great open sewer, the Tiiames.
The open sewers are found principally in the
Surrey districts, in Biixton, Lewisham, Tooting,
and places at the like distimce 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 in-
closed 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 Bormondsey, or about 20
miles in the interior to 180 miles in the exterior
portion of the capital. These are national dis-
graces.

The 1100 miles above-mentioned, however, in-
clude 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 applica-
tions from the western districts alone to the Com-
missioners, 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 por-
tion 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 rea-
sonable to assume that at least 100,000 houses
within this area are drained into the sewers.

The average length of the house-dniins 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 sewernge) the house drains
may be but from 12 to 20 feet. Both these

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

401

lengths of dminage 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 tlie 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 arerage 60 feet long, is, then,
5,000,000 feet, or about 2S40 miles.

But there are still the street or gully-drains
for the surface-water to be estimated. In the
Holbom and Finsbury division alone, the length
of the " main covered sewers " is said to be 83
miles ; the length of " smaller sewers " to carry
oflF 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 guHy-drains, for where the intersections are,
and consequently the gully-holes frequent, a num-
ber, 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 e.xact length,
and the exact price paid for the formation of that
length, were given, it would suppl}' 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 1 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-draiued, that extent I
might be considered as the length of the gully- |
dnuDs themselves. Bven calculating such drains
to ran from each side of the public way, which is
generally the case, I am told that, considering the
eooBMny of underground space which is now
BMesaary, the length of 1200 miles is as fair an
estimate for guUy-druinage (apart from other
drainage) as fur the length of the streets so
gullied.

Hence we have, for the gross extent of the
whole sewers and drains of the metropolis, tlic
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 metropelis . . 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, there-
fore, 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 op Cokstrttcting 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. Tiiey
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 ex-
tent 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
digijing 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«.
per foot £1,449,360

366 miles, or 1,932,480 feet of
the second class, at II5. per foot . 1,062,864

Same length of third class, at
9«. 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 arc 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 re-
paired with new wood ; the work must be of
stone or brick, if not pipeage. About two-thirds

402

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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^ miles of brick drains, 5s.
per foot, as average of sizes . . ^62,499,200

945^ feet of tubular drains, ave-
rage of sizes 2s. 6f/. . . . 624,800

Total cost of tlie 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
I is about 2>s. (id. a foot ; of the 6-inch, 2s. 6d. Of
I the proportionate lengths of these two classes of
{ street-drains I have not been able to gain any
i account, for, I believe, it has never been ascer-
j tained in any way approaching to a total return.
J Taking 1200 miles, however, as quite within the
I full length of the gully-drains, and calculating at
j the low average of 3.^ the foot for the whole, the
1 total cost of the street-drains of the metropolis
would be 950,400/., or, I am assuted, 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 tlce 3l€troj>olis.

£
1100 miles of main covered sewers 3,500,000
2840 miles of hou.se-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 re-
member to have seen specified in the Metropolitan
Reports.

" The first, and perhaps most important pur-
pose of sewers, as respects health," says the
Report of Messrs, "Walker, Cubitt, and Brunei
(1848), " is, as under-drains to the su7Toiindin(j
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' Eeports we do
not find it once noticed, and the recommenda-
tion 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 con-
siderable 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 sur-
face 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 physi-
cians and engineers in 1838, to inquire into the
state of drainage and smells in and near Buck-
ingham Palace, as to which there had been com-
plaints, 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 pesti-
lential odours from the absence of proper sewer-
age !' "

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
34 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 com-
mendation of the drainage of the Palace in 1838,
as promotive of dryness. Since that time a con-
necting 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 applica-
ble."

Unfortunately, however, for this array of opi-
nions 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 hw
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 forcilde — -"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."

L02^D0N LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

403

Of the City Seweraqe.
As yet I have spoken only of the sewers of Lon-
don* 'Mnthout 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 Com-
missioners, are in a distinct and strictly deBned
jurisdiction, superintended by City Commissioners,
and managed by City officers, and consequently
demand a special notice.

• 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 de-
tailed 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 vears l»Jti<> and \(uO. The coroner having first spoken
of the importance of" Navigation and Drayning" (drain-
ing), 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 (!Seicar» quati 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 liver. Uut as for the derivation of the word Sewar,
from two of our English words, Sea and IVere, or, as
others will have it, SVa and 1%'ard, give me leave, now I
have mentioned it, to— leave it to your judgments.

" However, this word Setvar 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 there-
fore, 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 FItymologv," 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 qimrto first appeared. The following is his

tcc' ' the head " Sewers" —

•^ Minsh's. deriv. of ' olim scriptum
fu; :»-ward, quod versus marc facta; sunt:

loii„- -li a Fr. Gall, eauier ; sentina ; incUe,

suppic. aquuruia : '—then why did not the Dr. trace this
Fr, Gall, eauin-y if he had, he would have found it dis-
torted ab 'T3«;f , aqua .- sewers being a species of aque-
duct.—Lye, in his Add., gives another deriv., viz. ' ab
Iceland, tua, culare ; ut existimo; ad quod referre
xeWermncer ,■ cloaca; per #orde* urbis ejiciuntur: '—the
very word rrrrdfJi give* me a hint that sewer may be
derived a' latget, vcl "Zx^at*, verro: nempe quia *orrfe«,
que everruittur cdomo, in unum locum accumulantur ,-
R. ^tt^sf, cumulus: Vos<.' — a collection of sweepings,
stop, dirt, <5-c."

But these are the follies of learning. Had our lexico-
graphers known that the vulgar were, as Dr. Latham
says, " the conservators of the Saxon language" with us,
they wo'.ild have smi^^ht infonnation from the word
"kh i. consequently, un-
per jf the more polite
" V > teriTic<l by them
" t!. v/K-ri?, in Saxon, is
wriitni . ,r- ui 1 » . / .<\ means not only
a b.ii.;.. ;!.. I.ihl .in: to the sea, but a
trtfrr, i t ■ i . iiilives, made from
the verb . s-uer, y\). .icuren, Kesruren), to
th«rtr,Qu\. ic; and hence they meant, in the
one ra*c, ; : thr- land from the sea; and in
the other. f woo<l, with a view
to count! I' 1 . the same origin ;
as well us , t;ash. The Scan-
dinavian 1.. . , may be cited as

proof* of Hint 1 Tliey are, Icel., «A(/r, a

notch; Sai-.!., i; and Dan., tknar And

tkiii. , .1 : ., rh, v.i)ild seem, therefore,

till' ircr (Dan., ukure ;

■\' meant merely a

i. AdiUsh fcunk with
t'M ■ . ■■; . ;n,; Oil t lie reiiiM--wAtcr, a watercoursc,

.i!ii (• -hM.)!!. liiiy a drain. A sewer is now a covered
'l.t( h. or ( ii.ir.nel for refuse water.

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 distinc-
tions 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 build-
ings, 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, j
for the most part, according to the dates of the
City's rebuilding after the Great Fire, and accord-
ing to the dates of the many alterations, improve-
ments, removal or rebuilding of new streets,
markets, &c., which have been effected since that
period. Before the Great Fire of 1666, all drain-
age seems, with a few exceptions, to have been
fortuitous, unconnected, and superfxial.

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 con-
structed at the instance, it is said, and after the
plans, of Sir Christopher Wren. There is, per-
haps, 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 im-
portiint 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 Mait-
land'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.

Tile 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 tlie country. This sewer
has a Hat 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 H.
directs that sewers shall be so built, but that the
bottom shall have a circular curve.

I am informed by a City gentleman — one dik-
ing an interest in such matters — that this sewer
has troubled the repose of a few civic antiquaries.

404

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 dis-
covered, 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 hy
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 Avar, 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 orna-
ment, as porticoes, galleries, baths, and banquet-
ing-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

1777

1787 . 8,693

1717 „ 1727v. 2,110

1787

7»

1797 . 3,118

1727 „ 1737 . 2,763

1797

»>

1807 . 5,116

1737 „ 1747 . 1,238

1807

1817 . 5,097

1747 „ 1757 . 3,736

1817

1827 . 7,847

1757 „ 1767 . 3,736

1767 „ 1777 . 7,597

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 127,485 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-con-
structions 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 sefiarate
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 semi-
circular or gothic arch. The form of such as have
been built apparently more than 20 j'ears 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 afl^luents of the
Thames, the forms and dimensions vary consider-
ably. 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 Ciiy
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

LOITLON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

405

continaal interaeetion 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 hare shown to be 59 for every mile
of street. I am assured that in the City the
street-drains rm.\ be safely estimated at Q5 to the
mile. Estimating the streets gullied within the
City, then, at an avenige 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 con-
struction, and repairs, and improvements of the
City sewers cannot be cited as a distinct item,
because the Court makes the return of the aggre-
gate 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.

Op the Outlets, Ramipicatioss, etc., op
THE Sewers.

Ik this enumeration I speak only of the
public outlets into the river, controlled and regu-
lated by public officers.

The orifices or mouths of the sewers where
they discharge themselves into the Thames, be-
ginning from their eastern, and following them
seriatim to their western extremity, are as
follows : —

Limehoaie Hole.
Irongatg Wharf.
Ratcliffe Cross.
Fox-Une, ShadweU.
London Dock.
St. Katharines Dock.
The eleven City outlets,

which I shall apecify

hereafter.
Essex-street, Strand.
Norfolk-street, Strand.
Durham Hill (or Adel-

Nomumberland-itreet.
Scotland-yard.

Bridge-Btreet, ^ West

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.

Tower Dock. -
Pool Quay.
Custom House.
New Walbrook.
Dowgate Dock.
Hamburg Wharf.
Puddle Dock.

It might only weary the reader to enumerate
the outlets on the Surrey side of the Thames,
which arc 28 in number, so that the public sewer
outlets of the whole metropolis are (iO in nil.

The public *ewer outlets from the City of Lon-
don into the Thames are, as I have said, eleven
in number, or rather they are usually represented
as eleven, t' re twelve such

^fic«— t^ I'm" Custom-

House 8e\v..._ „ ..... „..i.iitt) being com-
puted as one. These outleu, generally sj^ing
the most ancient in the whole metropolis, are —

London Bridge.
Ancient Walbrook.
Pauls Wharf
The Fleet-street Sewer
at Blackfriars Bridge.
(I mention these four
first, because they are
the largest outlets).
Until recently, there was alsoWhitefriars Docks,
but this is now attached to the Fleet Sewer
outlet.

The Fleet Sewer is the oldest in London. Ko
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 be-
fore intimated, barges and small craft were em-
ployed on the Fleet River, and the City deter-
mined 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 1 re-
plied 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 Cor-
poration 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 con-
tinuation 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 re-
built, 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 Riv>er, 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 ch;innels upon
the shore.

Mr. Haywood (February 12, 1850), in a report
of the City Sewer Transactions and Works, ob-
serves,— " 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 con-
sideration both of this Commission and the Navi-
gation Committee."

406

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR,

Whether the covered culvert is better than
the open run, is a matter disputed among en-
gineers (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 juris-
diction, discharge by culverts in a similar man-
ner."

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 con-
cerned, unless a nuisance be in existence.
. To convc}'' a more definite notion of the ex-
tent and ramified sweep of the sewers, I will now
describe (for the first time in print) some of the
chief Seiver 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 defi^-
nite 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 some-
what obliquely, it crosses below Tudor-street into
Bridge-street, Blackfriars, then occupies the centre
of Farringdon-street, and that street's prolonga-
tion or intended prolongation into the New Vic-
toria-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 Saflfron and
Mutton hills, the junction, so to call it, being
"under the houses"* (a common phrase among flush-

• This outlet is known to the flushermen, &c., as
" below the backs of houses," from its derious course
wider the houses without pursuing any direct line parallel
with the open part of the streets.

ermen). 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, tScc), which are emptied into it from the
second, third, or smaller class sewers, from Lud-
gate-hill and its proximate streets, the St. Paul's
localit}'. Fleet-street and its adjacent communica-
tions 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 Citj' 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 carrj'ing 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 Pan-
cras-road, and thence to the King's-road (a name
now almost extinct), where the St. Pancras Work-
house 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, respective!}', 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 direc-
tion, from place to place, in straight, devious, or
angular course, of this the most remarkable sewer
of the world, considering the extent of the drain-
age 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-gre^ (a
very thickly-built neighbourhood) flows the con-
nected 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 "out-
letted" (as I heard a flusherman call it) into the
Thames. Other districts are drained into the
large City outlets nearing the river. " Many of

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDOX POOR.

iO)

your TTorks," says Mr. Haywood, the City sur-

veyer, in a report addressed to the City Commis-

I sioners, Oct. 23, 1849," have been beneticially

I 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, diains througli

the Fleet sewer; HoUoway and a portion of Isling-

I tun 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 de-
scribed— 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
agaimt 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 aud 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 thorough-
fares, courts, alleys, &c., &c., as in the neighbour-
hoods 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

rction of sewers along small courts, where there
"no thoroughfare" either upon, or hdow the
surface.

The Loudon Bridge sewer runs up King Wil-
liam-street to Moorgate-street, along Finsbury-
square into the City-road, diverging near the
NVharf-road, which it crosses undtr the canal
near the Wenlock basin, and thence along the
Lower-road, Uliogton, by Cock-lane, through
Hijrhbury-vale ; after this, at the extremity of
li \ y, the open ditches, as in the former
I carry on the convevance of sewage from

'lolars'Pond Sewer — which seems

■ ■' Commissioners more trouble than

any other, in its connection with Buckingham

Palace, St. James's Park, and th«» new Houses of

I'.r ; i:i 'lit — runs from Chi-1> istCubitt's

.,!>«, and along the i to Eaton-

(- I ..iif, th" '■•*"■'•• "f wh'' ■ , I into it ;

ilic-u ''til .'.- •:•'• II :f. .' -ribed it, it

approach' - i:n i'ai.Trr^ v,i.;;li, 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 Knights-
bridge-road, rnns 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 metropo-
litan sewers, via., 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 pre-
vented by the cesspoolage system, which supplies
receptacles for a proportion of the refuse that,
were London to be rebuilt according to the provi-
sions 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 f;ecal 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 faxial refuse carried into
the sewerage.

' Ov THE Qualities, etc., op 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 posturage, the refuse of the towns, whether
sewage or cesspoolage (if not washed into a

408

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

current, stream, or river), is purchased by the
farmers, and carted by them to spread upon the
land.

By sacage, I mean the contents of the sewerage,
or of the series of sewers ; which neither at pre-
sent nor, I believe, at any former period, has
been applied to any useful or protitable 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
I never got rid of.

The most eminent of our engineers have agreed
I that it is a very important consideration how
I this sewage should be not only innocuously but
' profitably disposed of; and if not profitably, in
I an immediate money return, to those who may be
i 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,
j Sir George Staunton has pronounced some of

j the tea-growing parts of China to be as blooming
j as an English nobleman's flower-garden. Every
j 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, West-
minster, the result having been laid before a Com-
mittee of the House of Commons, As the con-
tents 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 ana-
lysis 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 icater" 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 por-
tion of the sewage, evaporated to dryness, gave
85"3 grains of solid matter, 74-8 grains of which
was a''ain soluble, and contained —

Ammonia

. 3-29

Sulphuric acid

, 0-62

Phosphate of lime .

. 0-29

Lime

. 6-25

Chlorine .

. 10-00

Phosphate of lime
Carbonate of lime
Silica .

2-32
1-94
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

Sulpliate of lime . . . 1-53

Earthy matter and sand . . 21-65

33-75

"and potass and soda, with a large quantity of
Bolubleand vegetable matter, and 1054 insoluble."
This insoluble portion consisted of

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 in-
evitable 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 *,

It has been ascertained, but the exact propor-
tion 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 ma-
nure 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 in|p
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 mat-
ter in each 100 tons = 1 in 500.

* 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 13H6

Sulphuric acid 7-<'4

Carbonic acid 4-41

Combustible matter, containing ()-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

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

409

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 un-
covered Ranclagh Sewer) for 1 ton of really fer-
tilizing 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 : —

s: " 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 de-
composing 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 en-
countered for the most part being a kind of worm
or analid, and a certain species of animalcule of
the genus nionas.''

" How do you account," the Doctor was asked,
"for the comparative absence of animal life in the
water of most sewers 1" "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 de-
termining 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 ; exa-
mined a few minutes afterwards, the animalculae
were found to be either de.ad or deprived of loco-
motive power and in a dying state. A small
fisb, placed in a wine glass of sewer-water, imme-
diately gave signs of distress, and, after struggling
violently, floated on its side, and would have
perished in a few seconds, had it not been re-
moved 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 strug-
gling 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,
w.i;^ found to be dead. These experiments were
nuuif, in t'l" first instance, with the sewer water
of the Friai-strect newer (near the Blackfriars-
rraii); they were afterwards repeated with the
\v,it>T of six other sewers on the Middlesex side,
ar.d with the 8:ime result, as respects the animal-
cul.i; and fish, but not the bird ; this, although
,.. : .... .!,. ,„ut;h affected by the noxious emanations
■ •T-water, yet survived the experiment."
;. 1 you infer from these experiments that

• r- water, as contained in the Thames near to

I. lion, is prejudicial to health]" "I would,

; 1 i'ledly ; and regard the Thames in the

rhood of the metropolis as nothing less

I " You have just stated that you found sewer-
water to contain much vegetable matter, and but

! few forms of animal life ; the vegeUible matter

I 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
veget;ible cells, the husks of wheat, &c., reach the

! sewers?" "They doubtless proceed from the

foecal 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

I quantities, the food upon which most animalculae
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 Linnaean
Society, and the author of " A History of the
British Fresh-water Algae,"' or water-weeds con-
sidered popularly), in answer to the following
inquiries in connection with this subject, also
said : —

I " What species of infusoria represent the highest
degree of impurity in water?" "The several
species of the genera O.vi/tricha and JParamC'
cium."

" What species is most abundant in the Thames
from Kew Bridge to Woolwich ?" " The Para-
mea'um 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, ob-
tained 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 ap-
proaches the centre of London ?" " Yes."

" You find then, in Thames water, abnut 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 animalculae could live ; the only source of
supply which they have is the organic matter con-
tained in se'rtr-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."

Kespecting the uees of l/ie setra^e, I may add
the followin;^ 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

410

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

bound to say that tlie opinions I heard during !
my inquiry from gentlemen scientifically and, iu i
some instances, practically fumiliar with the sub- |
ject, concurred in the conclusion that the sevage j
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 " jyoudrettc," or dr}' !
manure, manufactured from the more solid ex-
crenientitious matter of the cesspools, not only '
in Paris, but, until lately, even iu London, where
the business was chiefly in the hands of French-
men. The staple of the French " 2wudretle" is
not " sevage," 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 " cess^poolage" 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 Voirees, which are huge reservoirs of night-
soil at Montfaujon, about live 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, with-
out 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 manufec-
tured cesspool manure. I heard, on the other
hand, opinions from scientific and practical gentle-
men, that the sev/er-water of London was so
diluted, it was not profitably serviceable for the
irrigation of land. AH, 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 Applica-
tion of Sewer-water and Town Manures to Agri-
cultural 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 employ-
ing double the numler of hands, at increased
wages, is made to yield fourfold the weight of
crop and 6f better qtiality than was previously
obtained, a lesson is set before us worth
learning."

It then proceeds to cite the following state-
ments, on the authority of the Hon. Dudley For-

tescue, as to the efficiency of sewage- w-ater as a
liquid manure applied to land.

" The first farm we visited was that of Craig-
entinney, 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 con-
sists 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 Devon-
shire ; 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 Avhole 2G0 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, work-
ing day and night, and employing one man at the
engine and another to shift the water. The pro-
duce 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 ^bout 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 201. the acre;
the highest last year havi"ng brought 31^., and the
lowest 91.; these last Avere of very limited ex-
tent, 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
29L, 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 irri-
gation with the sewage-water presented the most
luxm-iant appearance. The crop, from present
indications, was estimated at from 30 to 40 tons
the acre, and was expected to realize 15.^. 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 re-
fuse they consume in addition, at a cost of Is, to
Is. 6d. per head per week. The sea-meadows
present a particularly striking example of the

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDOX POOR.

411

effects of the irrigation ; these, comprising between
20 and 30 acres skirting the shores between
Leith and Musselburgh, were kid down in 182G
at a cost of about 700^. ; the hind consisted
fonoerly of a bare sandy tract, yielding almost
absolutely nothing; it is now covered with luxu-
riant vegetation extending close down to high-
water mark, and lets at an average of 20?. per
acre at least. From the above sUilement it will
be seen how enormously protitable 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 ex-
tent of land might, I believe, be brought into
equally productive cultivation under an improved
system of drainage in the city, and a more abun-
dant 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." *

Such, then, are said to be the results of a prac-
tical appliciition 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 sa^nc Land produced before the
liquid manure was applied ; nor are we informed
as to the peculiar condition and quantity of tlie
land near Craigentinney, and how it differs from
the land near London.

The other returns are of liquid manures, of
wbich 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-gmas at from 80 to 100 tons
an acre, and gets 8 or 10 cuttings, according to
the eea«on ; 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 krge proportion
of England) to pre^-ent the same system being
almost universally adopted, they give some idea of
the degree to which the productiveness of land
may be raised bj a judicious appliance of the
within our reach. When it is considered

* The following note appenm in Mr. Fortescue's
itatemcnt:— •* In >otnc trial works near the metropolu

tewfTttatir W.-ls appliwl tn I.iinl, nii tlic ronditifjn that
th< , |)ay-

nn The

«>ii vasat

til. ■■ ; --

acr

ilr

vonta^'c for whcau"

that; such results maj', in the vicinity of towns
and villages, be most effectually brought about by
the instant removal of all tliose matters which,
when allowed to remain in them, are among the
most fruitful sources of social degnidaliun, 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 superin-
tendence the arnmgements 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 coimtry.

" I have, &c.,

" D. F. F0RT£SCUE.

" General Board of Health."

Or 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 deter-
mined upon for their improvement. It is only
necessary for me, however, to indicate the principal
I 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 —
wbich from its magnitude, and, in all human
probabilitj', from its cost, when completed, would
be national in other countries, but is here only
metropolitan — in tlie 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 con-
structed 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 sub-
stance 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 have 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 covld be api'lifd to the culti-
vation of tite land ai thetnost economical rate.

412

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 pro-
perty, 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.

(J.) 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 in-
fluence and ultimate costliness,

(c.) Similar provisions should be used were it
but to prevent the creation of tlie 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.

{(i.) 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 unques-
tioned 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
b}' 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 con-
structed as to secure the largest amount of effective
drainage without artificial appliances.

In preparing his plan, Mr. Forster had the ad-
vice 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 con-
sidered 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 rain-
fall, to be lifted by steam-power to a proper level
for discharge."

The first district runs from Holsden-green (be-
yond 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 narrow-
ing from Westbourn-green to its Avestern extre-
mity, the country then becoming nual or wood-
land. Its highest reaches to the north are to
Highgate and Stamford-hill. The nearest ap-
proach 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 di-
vision of the northern portion is described as
" the district for natural drainage."

The area of this division is about 25i square
miles.

The second division meets the first at the high-
way separating Kensington-gardens from Bays-
water ; and runs on, bordering the river, all the
way to the West India Dock. Its shape is irre-
gular, but, abating the roundness, presents some-
what 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 ab-
ruptly, taking in Victoria-park, Stratford, and
Bromley.

The area of this division of the northern por-
tion is 16 J square miles.

There are, moreover, two small tracts, com-
prising 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| square mile.

The area to be drained by natural outfall com-
prises, then, 25| 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^ square miles of rainfall,
and 16^ square miles of sewage ; the two united
areas of rainfall and sewage respectively being
394 and 41^ 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

413

On the eastern bank of the Lea the sewage of
both districts is to be concentrated. The high-
lerel 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 Bailway and the Blackwall Extension Rail-
way, beneath the Regent'scanal, 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 dis-
trict up to the watershed line north of London,
including Hackney, Stoke Newington and Hollo-
way, 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
SaflFron-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 ex-
tending thence across Regent-circus to South
Molton-lane (where it will intercept the King's
Scholars' Pond sewer), continuing still along Ox-
ford-street to Bays water-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 no-
tion 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 Pour Mill's distillery, taking
the north-western bank of the Limehouse Cut, at
which point it receives the branch intended to in-
tercept 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-
ftreets, Kaslcheap, 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'shill, along Earl-
street to Blnckfriars-road. From Blackfrinrs
Bridge it u propoMd to constnict the sewer along

the river shore to the junction of the Victoria-
street sewer at Percy-wharf; which sewer be-
tween Percy-wharf and Shaftesbury-terrace, Pim-
lico, becomes thus an integral portion of the in-
tercepting 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-ter-
race 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
helotc 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 helow " 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 ahove the ordnj\nce datum,
while that of the low-level sewer will be 27 feet
helow the same standard. Thus a great body of me-
tropolitan 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 com-
puted at llOO-horse power. To supply this great
mechanical and scientific force, there are to be pro-
vided two engines, each of 550horse 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,

414

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

" 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 retunied, with
the flood-tide, to within the bounds of the metro-
polis."'

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 con-
veyed 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
\ 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^.). This esti-
mate 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 com-
pensation 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 pro-
posed 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 en-
tirely 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 con-
tinued sewer in the reservoir, in Woolwich M;irsli,
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 re-
spective branches. The area to be relieved is
about proportionate to the length of the drain;
but the steam power employed will be propor-
tionally greater upon the southern than upon the
northern side.

There are divers opinions, of course, as to the
practical)ility and ultimate good working of this
plan ; speculations into which it is not necessary
for me to enter. Mr. Forster has, moreover, re-
signed his office, adding another to the many
changes among the engineers, surveyors, .ind other
employees under the Metropolitan Commission ; a
fact little creditable to the management of the
Commissioners, who, with one exception, may be
looked upon as irresponsible.

0? 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 Com-
mittee), and even what maybe called the manage-
ment of the Thames (Navigation Committee). It
is not at all necessary that the members of these
committees sho\dd understand anything about the
matters upon which they have to determine. A
staff of officers, clerks, secretaries, solicitors, and sur-
veyors, save the members the trouble of thought or
inquiry ; they have merely to vote and determine.
It was stated in evidence before a Select Commit-
tee of the House of Commons on the subject of the
Thames steamers, that at that period the Chair-
man 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 pre-
cise date, the Committee became a Court of Sewers,
and so it remains to the present time. Commis-
sions of sewers have been issued by the Crown
since the 25th year of the reign of Henry VIIL,
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 Commis-
sions 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

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

415

and generally uncontrolled plan of management ;
each liad its own officers ; and each had its own
patronage- Each district court — with almost un-
limited 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 promo-
ters and supporters, seems to have been patronage
— has given us a sewerage unconnected and vary-
ing to the present day in almost every district ;
var^'ing in the dimensions, form, and inclination
of the Btnictores. •

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," " east-
ern." 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
unkno^vn, though a sufficient approximation may
Le deduced in the interim.

To show the conflicting character of the sewer-
age, 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 subter-
ranean 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 super-
vision, could hardly have been done with a modem
public sewer, down a thoroughfare of some length
(the Woronzow-road).

But the conflicting and disjointed system of
setverage was not the sole evil of the various Com-
roissionB. The mismanagement and jobbery, not to
say peculation, of the public moneys, appear to have
been enormous. For instance, in the '* Account-
ant's Report" (February, 1848), prepared by Mr.
W.U. Grey, 48, Lincoln's-inn-fields, I find the
following statements relative to the liook-Leeptnff
of the several Commissions : —

" The Walmimier plan is full of unnecessary
repetition. It is deficient in those real general
accounts which concentrate the information most
needed by the Commissioner.^, and it contains
Jictions 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 llolbom and Fintlury books arc still
more defectiTe than those of the Westminster
Commission There ore 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 Toxcer JIamhis books have been kept on
a regular system, though by no means one con-
veying much general int'orniation."

" With respect to the Surrey and Kent ac-
counts," 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 qua 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 con-
tinues, " It cannot be wondered at that debts
should have been incurred, or that they should
have swollen to the amount of 64,000/., carrying
a yearly interest of 2360/., besides annuities
granted to the amount of 1125/. a year.

" The Pojylar and Grcemdch accounts (I quote
the official Report), confined as they are to mere
aish books, offer no subjects for remark

" No books of account have been produced with

respect to the .57. Kathennes Commission."

! On the 16th December, 1847, the new Com-

I missioners ordered all the books to be sent to the

I 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 cf 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 onl)'.

This refers to what may be characterised, with
more or less propriety, as mismanagement or neg-
lect; though in such mismanagement it is hardly
possible to escape one inference. I now come to
what are direct imputations of Johhery, 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, con-
ceniing the parliamentary expenses of obtaining
an Act which it was " found necessary to repeal."
The cost W.18, altogether, upwards of 1800/., which
of course had to be defrayed out of the taxes.

" This Act," says the Report, " authorized an
almost unlimited borrowing of money ; and imme-
diatelyupon its passing, \vl 5 \\\y, 1847,notices were
issued for works estimated to amount to 100,000/. ;
and others, we understand, were projected for

early execution to the amount of 300,000/

Considering the general character of the works
executed, and from them judging of those pro-
jected, it may confidently be averred that the
vkoU sum of 300,000/., the progressive expendi-
ture of which was stayed by the ' supersedeas' of
the old Commission, would have been expended
in watte." [The Italics are not those of the Re-
ports.]

No. L.

B B

416

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

The Report continues, " It is to be observed
that each of the district surveyors •would have
participated in the sum of 15,000/. percentage
on the expenditure for the extension of the Surrey-
works. Thus the surveyors, with their percent-
ages 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 akd Authority op 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 excep-
tion of the City, which seems to supply an excep-
tion in most public matters.

The Act does not fix the number of the Com-
missioners. To the Metropolitan Commissioners,
five City Commissioners are added (the Lord
Ma3'or for the year being one ex officio) ; these
have a right to act as members of the Metro-
politan Board, but their powers in this capacity
are loosely defined by the Act, and they rarely
attend, or perhaps never attend, unless the busi-
ness 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 lOOOZ.
a year. They are appointed for the terra of two
years, revocable at pleasure.

The authority of the City Commission, as dis-
tinct 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, Sep-
tember 5, 1848.

The Metropolitan Commissioners have the con-
trol 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 descrip-
tions, and for the protection of land from floods
or inundation within the limits of the Commis-
sion." 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 inun-
dation," 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 Metropoli-
tan) are empowered to enforce proper house-drain-
age 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 ifllanitary tendencies ;
to erect x>ullic water closets and urinals, free from
any charge to the public ; to order houses and
rooms to be whitewashed ; to erect places for depo-
siting the bodies of poor persons deceased until
interment ; and to regulate the cleanliness, ven-
tilation, and even accommodation of low lodging-
houses.

The jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Commis-
sioners 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.
Patd'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 Commis-
sioners 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-Gene-
ral. This, as we have seen, has an area of 115
square miles, and therefore may be said to com-
prise 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-
Oflice 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 Metro-
polis, or that throughout which the letters are des-
patched 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 Metropo-
litan Commissioners of Police, before the region
of rural police and country and parish constables
is attained; a jurisdiction which covers 96 square
miles,asl haveshown 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.

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

417

There is, moreover, the metropolis, as defined
by the Hackney-Carriage Act, which comprises all
such places as are within jixe viiles 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 ecclesias-
tical and educational districts ; there is a thorough
complication of parochial, extra-parochial, and char-
tered districts ; there is a world of subdivisions
.•md of sub-subdivisions, so ramified here and so
closely blended there, and often with such prepos-
terous 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 Com-
missioners 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 Metropoli-
tan 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 J miles radius, are given as the
extent of the metropolis sewered by the Metropo-
litan Commission. By what calculations this 53
miles are arrived at, whether it has been the arhi-
trium of the authorities to consider the sewers,
&c., as occupying the half of the area of the Regis-
trar-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 ))eptford (irre-
gularly) ; touches the West India Dock ; includes
portions of Limehoose, Stepney, Bromley, Strat-
ford-le-Bow, and about the half of Yictoria-park,
Hackney. It likewise comprises a part of Lower
Clapton, Dalston, and a portion of Stoke New-
ington ; 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 Lewishani, Greenwich,
and a part of Woolwich ; also, wholly or partially,
East Ham, Laytonstone, Walthamstow, Totten-
ham, Hornsey, Highgate, Hanipstead, Kensall-
green. Hammersmith, Fulham, Wandsworth, and
Upper Tooting. The portion without the three-
mile circle, and witliin the six, is the suhurhan
portion or the immediate environs of the metropo-
lis, and still presents rural and woodland beauties
in different localities. This may be termed the
metropolis of the Registrar-General and Commis-
sioners of Metropolitan Police.

The Ticelve-Mile Circle, or the extent of the
jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Commissioners of
Sewers, as well as the " London District Post," in-
clude&(^roydon,Wickham, Paul's Cray, Foot's Craj',
North Cray, and Bexley ; crosses the river at the
Eriih-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 Har-
row-on-the-Hill, Norwood, and Hounslow; em-
braces 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 com-
prised within a circle of about 4 ^ 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 metropolit.in district is still distinguished
by the old divisions of the Tower Hamlets,
Poplar and Blackwall, Holborn and Finsbiiry,
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), Re-
gent-street, and Holborn.

3. Finsbury, Tower Hamlets, Poplar, and
Blackwall.

4. Districts south of the Thames, Eastern and
Western.

6. City.

The practical part or working of the Commis*

4IS

LOXDOy LABOUR AXD THE LONDON POOR,

sion of Sewers is nnidi less complicated at present
than it was in the times of the independent
districts and independent commissions.

The orders for all work to bo 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 responsi-
bility 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 busi-
ness, 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 fre-
quently, and Bonietimes has adjourned from day
to da}'.

Any private individual or any pxiblic 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 gentle-
man for his opinion ; if it be more general, as to
the extension of sewerage to some new under-
taking or meditated undertakiil^ 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 Tviil undertake to execute this
work, or, as it is often called by the labouring
class, to " complete the joh " (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 inter-
vention of any person, officiall}' or otherwise)
and ihey 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 manage-
ment of the Commissioners ; for the contractor at
once becomes responsible for the fulfilment of his
contract, and may and does employ whom he
pleases a/id at xcliat rates he ^^Zea^es, without fear
of any control or interference from the Court.
The work, however, is superintended by the sur-

veyors, 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 emploj-ed
in all parts, and so, if necessary, are the subordi-
nate officers when the work requires an extra
staff.

According to the Returns, the following func-
tionaries appear to be connected with the under-
mentioned districts : —

Finsbtay.

1 Clerk of the Works.

1 Inspector of Flushing.

Tower Hamlets, and Pop-
lar and Blatkwalt.

1 Surveyor, who has also
the Finsbury division in-
cluded 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 follow-
ing functionaries, receiving the following salaries : —

Fulham, Hammersmith,
Center's Creek, and Ra-
nelagh.

] Surveyor.

3 Clerks of the Works.

1 Inspector of Flushing.

Eastern and Western Di-
visivtis of Westminster and
Regent-street.

1 Surveyor, who has also
the Holborn division to
attend to.

2 Clerks of the Works.

G Flap and Sluice keepers.

Holbm-n.

2 Clerks of the Works.

1 Inspector of Flushing.

£
Chairman, with a
yearly salary of 1,000

Secretary, with a
yearly salary of
(besides an allow-
ance of £100, in
lieu of apart-
ments)

Clerk of minutes

Two clerks of do.,
(each with a sa-
lary of i.'l.W) . .

One do., with a
salary of

One do. do.

800
350

300 0

Accountant do.

Accountant's clerk
do

Do do.

Clerk of survey-
ors' and contrac-
tors'accounts ..

Do. do.

Clerk of rates

Another do

Do. do

120
105
95
90

150
80

200
125
110

250
180
110
90

Engineer 1,000

For travelhng ex-
penses 200

Surveyor for Ful-
ham and Ham-
mersmith, Coun-
ter's Creek, and
Uanelagh dis-
tricts 350

Clerk of works
(Hammersmith) 150

Do. (Counter's
Creek)

Do. (Ranelagh) ..

Inspector of
flushing

Surveyor of east-
ern and western
divisions of West-
minster, and of
Regent-st. and
Holborn divi-
sions

Two clerks of
works (eastern
and western and
Regent - street),
with a salary of
£300 each

Two do. (Hol-
born), with a
salary of £150
each

Inspector of
flushing

Surveyor of Fins-
bury, Tower
Hamlets, and
Poplar and
Black wall

Clerk of works
(Finsbury)

Inspector of
flushing

Two clerks of
works (Tower
Hamlets, aqd
Poplar and
Blackwall), with
a salary of £150
each

Two inspectors
of flushings
with a salary of
£80 each

One marsh bailifT

150 0
150 0

300 0

300 0
CO 0

300 0
150 0
80 0

KJO 0
C5 0

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Suncyor of the
western districts
south of the
Thame*

Do., eastern do.

Clerk of works
(eastern portion)

Two inspectors of
flushing. £«0
each

One wallreeve . .

Clerk of works
(western portion)

Do. do.

Two inspectors of
flushing, with a
salary of Jb'80
each

Two engineer's
clerks, with a
salary of £\M
each

One do.

One by-law clerk
Twenty-two flap
and sluice
keepers

300
250

0
0

160

0
8

164
150

0
0

IGO

300
J50
100
80

0
0
0
0

150

892 12

£ >.
Surveyor (of the

6ur%-eying and

drawing staflF ) . . 250 0
Drawing cleik .. 150 0
Two da, with a

salary of £130

each 260 0

Five do., with a

salary of £105

each 625 0

One do 50 0

Six surveyors,

with a salary of

£10(1 each (500 0

Sixchaininen,18«.

a week each 280 0

Oflice-keepcr and
crier (general
service) 120 0

BailiflF, &c 100 0

Strong-room keep-
er.. 80 0

One messenger . . 70 0

Two do.,£-l<» each 80 0

Three errand-
boys, f 32 each.. 96 0

Housekeeper.... 150 0

Yearly total £13,a74 0

Thia is called a "reduced" stafF, and the re-
duction of salaries is certainly very considerable.

If we consider the yearly emoluments of
tradesmen in businesses requiring no great extent
of edtrtation 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: —

£ t. £

1,000

Chairman . . .
Secretary and 7 clerks .
Accountant and 5 clerks .
Clerk of rates and 8

1860
1015

680 0

Engineer and 5 clerks . 1830 0

7 surveyors, of survey-
ing and drawing staff, with
6 chaiiunen and 9 drawing
clerks .... 2125 0

5 district ranreyort .1500 0

12 clerks of works . 2278 0

9 inspectors of flushing 720 0

22 flap and aUuee
keepers . . . 892 12

Bailiff, naMh-bailliff, and
wtXkt^^ . 187 8

3,505

9,533

£ s.

Office keeper, strong-room
keeper, and housekeeper . 350 0

3 messengers and 3 er-
raud-boya . . . 246 0

419

596

^14,634
The cost of rent, taxes, stationery, and office
incidentals, is now 44 40^, which makes the
total yearly outlay amount to upwards of 19,000?.
The annual cost of the staff in the secretary's de-
partment is said to have been reduced from
3962/. 45. to 3605/. ; in the engineers' depart-
ment from 1^,437/. 35. to 8973/. I65. In the
general service there has been an increase from
606/. I65. to 696/.

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/. The cost of manage-
ment in that year was 23,465/. ; this, it will be
seen, is 26 per cent of the gross income.

The annual statement of the receipts and ex-
penditure 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 £ $. d.

was 5,760 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 . . £3,356 11 8

As an instance of the mismanagement of the

sewers work of the metropolis, it is biit 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 2Sth 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, dr., Public Sever.
"With reference to the two orders of the
Commissioners of Her Majesty's Woods, fee, I
have the honour to state that, since the 15th of No-
vember (when I last sent in a memorandum). I have
frequently visited the several Crown buildinfis af-
fected by the building of the main public sewer

420

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

for draining Westminster ; viz., the Earl of Malms-
bury 's, the Exchequer Bill Office, the United
Service Museum, Lord Liverpool's, Mr. Yertue's,
Mr. Alderman Thonipson'a, and Messrs. Dal-
gleish's.

" All these buildings have been more or less
damaged by the construction of the sewer ; the
Exchequer Bill Office, the United Service Mu-
seum, and Mr. Yertue's, in a manner that, in my
opinion, can nei'er be effectually rejmired.

" At Lord Malmsbury's, the party wall next
to the Exchequer Bill Office has moved, as shown
l)y 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 cmcked 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 he reimired to render the build-
ing 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 he advisable to per-
mit the surveyors of the Commissioners of Sewers
to enter and make only a surface repair of 2^lO'Ster
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 Com-
missioners 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 settle-
ments on the side next the sewer appear to me
very serious.

" The house occupied by Lord Liverpool, as
also Mr, Yertue'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. Dalgleishand 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 Commissionors of Sewers that it must here-
after come under consideration.

(Signed) "James Pennethorne.
"10th May, 1851."

"Sewer, Whitehall Yard, Ac.
■ " Under the order of the Commissioners of Her
Majesty's Woods, &c., of yesterday's date, en-
dorsed on a letter from Mr. Tonna, I h;\ve in-
spected the United Service Institution in White-
hall 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 re-
ported 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)
« 16th May, 1851.

" Seymour,

" Chables Gore,

"James Pennethorne.

Commissioners of Her
Majesty's Woods, Fo-
rests, Land Revenues,
Works, and Buildings.

"Office of Woods, &c.
" 5th August, 1851."

Op the Sewers Rate.
Having shown the expenditure of the Com-
mission 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 dis-
tricts, 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

421

Bat the rates of independent districts may be
farther 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 ;
SQch are the highway rate, the lighting and
watching, and the militia rate among the inde-
pendent 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 em-
braces 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 cleans?
ing, 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 pre-
mises, 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
properly — 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
•ewers rate a tenant pays for his landlord, the
more rent he must pay to him.

The sewers rate is levied according to the rate-
able 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 It. 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 \he general system
of sewerage, but which it has been resolved should

be so connected ; also an " improvement rate/' at
a maximum of 1 0 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

23,539i7,

Holborn and Finsbury

123,317

12,331t7j

Tower Hamlets .

82,468

8MK

From East Moulsey,

in Surrey, to Ravens-

bourne, in Kent

175,137

17,5137g

616,319

61,631^?5

The following amounts were returned to Parlia-
ment as that expended in two other of the metro-
politan districts in the year 1833

In the City
Poplar district

Annual average of the four above-
mentioned districts . .

^17,71 8,25
2,746fg

£20,465T'g

61,631^

Yearly totiil £82,097
The two districts excluded from the above total
are the minor ones of St. Katherine and Green-
wich, so that altogether the gross sum levied
within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Com-
missioners must have been between 85,000/. and
90,000/.

The annual amount of the local rates in Eng-
land and Wales is, according to a work on the
subject (" The Local Taxes of the United King-
dom"), published " under the direction of the
Poor Law Commissioners" in 1846, 8,801,838/.*
In this large sum only the average annual outlay
on the six districts of the sewers of the metropolis
is included (82,097/.), and it is stated that not
even an approximate average could be arrived at as
regards the expendit\ire on sewers in the country
districts. Such absence of statistical knowledge,
— and it is a want continually observable — is little
crediUible to the legislative, executive, and admi-
nistrative powers of the State.

I shall now proceed to show, from the best data
at my command, the present outlay on the metro-
politan sewers.

• The following? statement may, according to the
work above alluded to, be presented as an approximate

422

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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
\d. and 2d. in the pound on land, and from Zd.
(Ranelagh and Westminster) to Is. lOd. (Green-
wich) on houses.

The rates made under the combined and consoli-
dated Commissions, from 30th Nov., 1847, to 8th
Oct., 1849, were all 6d., excepting the Western
division of Westminster sewers, which were 3rf.,
and a part of the Surrey and Kent district, 9>d.

The rates under the present Metropolitan Com-
mission, from 8th October, 1849, to Slst July,
1851, are all Qd., with a similar exception in
Surrey and Kent. The following are the only fur-
ther returns bearing immediately on the subject : —

KETURN OF THE PERCENTAGE ON THE TOTAL RATEABLE ANNUAL VALUE
OF THE PROPERTY ASSESSED, to which the Rates collected under the separate Com-
missions, between January, 1845, and November, 1847, amounted; Similar Rbturn 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.

Under the old separate Com-"1
missions of Sewers, between !
January, 1845, and November (
30, 1847

Under the combined and con-
solidated Commissions, from No-
vember 30, 1847, to October 8,
1849 (including first Metropolitan
Commission) ....

Under the pi-esent Metropolitan "|
Commission of Sewers, from Octo- K
ber 8, 1849, to July 21, 1851 . J

Total Rateable
Annual Value of the

Districts on
November 30, 1847,

and

October 8, 1849, and

July 31, 1851,

respectively.

£ s. d.

6,683,896 0 0

7,128,111 0 0

8,135,090* 0 0]

8,820,325t 0 0 J

Average Amount

collected

for One Year.

£ S. d.

81,738 11 0

67,707 16 3

89,341 16 0

Amount of the Percentage of

the Rates collected
on the Rateable Annual Value.

£ S. d.

1 4 5 or 1\d. -72 in the
pound per annum.

0 18 111 or 2if3. -11 in

the pound per
annum.

1 1^ 11 or 2\d. -52 in the

pound per annum.
1 0 3 or 1\d. -72 in the
pound per annum.

* Rental of the districts now rated.

t Rental of the districts within the active jurisdiction in which expenses have been incurred, and which are
about to be rated.

August, 1851. THOMAS COGGIN,

Cleric 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 hasia of the pcxn- 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 567.5C7

Contributions to county and borough

rates (see below).

Jail fees rate \

Constables rate . . . . /

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 metrofwlis

In the rest of the country
Drainage and inclosure rates
Inclosure rate
Regulated pasture rate .

B. Rates of Aggregate Districts.

County rates . ( Contributed
Hundred rate .< from the
Borough rates . (. poor rate.

■;}■

unknown

82,097
unknown

unknown

1,356,457

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
Borough tolls and dues
City of London

Light dues

Port dues

Church dues and fees

Marriage fees .

Registration fees

Justiciary fees —
Clerks of the Peace
Justices' clerks .

£172,911
. 205,100

£\ ,348,085

378.011
257.776
554,645

unknown

£11,057
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, beiiig, however, obviously
below the actual total.

Rates £8,801, a38

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 £I2,()00,OCK) ;" or we may say
that the local taxation of the country is one-fourth of
the amount of the general taxation.

LONDON LABOUR AND TEE LONDON POOR.

423

RETURN OF THE COST OF MANAGEMENT PER ANNUM ON THE TOTAL RATE-
ABLE ANNUAL VALUE OF THE DISTRICTS.

Total

Rate per Cent.

Rateable Annual

Cost of Management per Annum of Cost of

Value of the

per Annum.

Management on the

YEARS.

Districts.

Rateable Annual
Value of the Districts.

£ S. d.

£ s. d.

£ 5. d.

1845

6,320,331 0 0

18,591 4 3

0 5 10^

lSi6

6,423.909 0 0

18,097 5 1

0 5 7|

1847

6,683,896 0 0

24,371 16 9

0 7 33^

1848

6,783,111 0 0

20,008 7 10

0 5 10|

1849

8,077,591 0 0

20,005 7 6

0 4 11^

1850

8,791,967 0 0

23,465 18 7

0 5 4

ATTGtTST 7, 1851.

Op thb Clean-stkq op the Sewers —
Vbxtilation.

Therb are two modes of purifying the sewers ;
the one consists in removing the foul air, the other
in remonng 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 de-
struction to men's jires ; while, if the sewer be ill-
Tentilated, 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-Sur-
veyor, 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, Mill-
bank ; aud in Grosvenor-square and the streets
adjacent. There were difficulties attending the
experiment. From Castle-street to Museum-street
tbere was a drop of 4 feet in the levels, so that
tiM sixaminers had to advance on their hands and
knees, and it was difficult to make observations.
In some places in Westminster also the water and
•ih 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
Um otkcr places its presence was very perceptible,
eapedally in a sewer on the west side of Grosvenor-
sqnare, 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 ronte, in the neighbourhood of Sir
Henry Menx's brewery and of an adjoining distil-
lery in Vina-stwat, a oonsidarable quantity of
•toaas in the sewer, bat it bad no material effect
upon the light

The ezaiainen came to the conclusion that

G. S. HATTON,

Accountant.

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* ventila-
tion and indeed general improvement, to the
sewers on the Surrey side of the metropolis.
Among these a new sewer along Friar-street, run-
ning from the Blackfriars to the Southwark-bridge-
road, is one of the most noticeable.

Fiiar-street is one of the smaller off thorough-
fares, the character of which is, perhaps, little
suspected by those who pass along the open Black-
; friars-road. As you turn out of that road to the
; left hand, advancing from the bridge, almost oppo-
site 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 indus-
trious. 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 afhxed along-
■ side men's trowsers and waistcoats ; coarse-featured
I and brazen-looking women, with necks and faces
j reddened, as if with brick-dust, from exposure to
; the weather, stand at their doors and beckon to
j the passers by. Perhaps in no part of the metro-
I polls is there a more marked manifestation of moral
obsceneness-pn the one hand, and physical obscene-
I ness on the other. With the low prostitution of
; this locality is mixed the low and the bold crime
I of the metropolis. Some of tlie offshoots from
, Friar-street communicate with places of as nefa-
, rious 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 i^ung who were last winter repulsed in- their
burglarious attack on Mr. Holford's villa in the
liegent's-park fiivoured the same locality, and Avere
arrested in their old haunts. Public-houses may

424

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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
frora such resorts they can be readily traced. And
all over this place of moral degradation extends
the stench of offensive manufactures and ill-venti-
lated sewers. Certainly there is now an improve-
ment, 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 pff pestilential and poisonous gases, Avhich
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
60 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 black-
ened by it ; and the smell frora 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^. The fires would be fed almost con-
stantly, 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 ascend-
ing 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
Btreet 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 inPimlico, 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 sew-
ers. The gas, however, which has done the mischief
in the present instance would not explode."

Dr. lire'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 attri-
buted the five deaths to the action of sulphuretted
hydrogen gas, or, according to Dr. Lyon Playfair,
to be chemically correct, hydro-sulphate of ammo-
nia. 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 no-
thing 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 Kenil worth-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 "Plonoing," 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 pro-
portion of the wet refuse of the metropolis is re-
moved from our houses, and we have now to con-
sider 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 pur-
gation of the sewers themselves.

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 xcashing
of it away, or, as it is termed, /jwAiny in the case

ifl

t— I
m
m
O

^1
O

W.
H

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

425

of the covered sewers, and plonging in the case of
the open ones. Under both systems, whether the
Kfnse be carted or flushed awaj-, the hard deposit
has to be first loosened by manual labourers — the
diflference consisting principally in the means of
after-removal.

The first of these systems — viz., the cartage
method — was that which prevailed in the metro-
polis 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 night-
man told me that this mode of work was some-
times 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 1 I wish they was dime aw:iy 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 su-
perintended 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' Fond 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
•ewer was to be cleansed.

" We first used a machine," says Mr. J. Ly-
sander Uale, " in the form of a plough and
harrow combined ; a horse dragged it through the
deposit in the Mwer ; 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 • strong breese up the river, the tide would
not nctd^ suflSdcotly to permit the horse to get
in at all (and it did not appear advisable to incur
tbi axpeMa of 50^. to build a sideway entrance
Uft Um aauMl), so that uiider these circomstances

we were obliged to discontinue the use of the
horse and plough ; which, under other circum-
stances, would have been very effective." From this
time, I understand, the sewers of London have re-
mained unploughed by means of horse labour.

But the plough was not altogether abandoned,
and as horse-power was not found very easily ap-
plicable, 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 ap-
plication of bodies of water in the sewers ; this is
periodically effected, varying in intervals accord-
ing to the necessities of the sewerage or other cir-
cumstances."

The flushing system has a two-fold object, viz.,
to remove old deposits and prevent the accumu-
lation of new. When the deposit is not allowed
to accumulate and harden, "flushing consists,"
says Mr. Haywood, " simply in heading back and
letting oi'f flush at once" (hence the origin of the
term) "that which has been delivered into the
sewers in a certiiin 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 impro'vcd sanitary re-
gulations— it has been practised in some country
parts since the days of Henry VIIL

Flushing was practised also by those able en-
gineers, the ancient Romans. One of the grand
architectural remains of that people, the best
showing their system of flushing, is in the Amphi-
theatre at Nismes, in France. The site of the
ruined amphitheatre presents a hirge elliptical
area, 114,251 superficial feet comprising its ex-
tent. 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 bnt to purge

426

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 arciide, east of the
southern entrance. Man-holes and steps to de-
scend 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 re-
ceives 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 adjust-
ments, the penstocks can be fixed ready for use
when the tide is highest iu the sewer, and the
volume of water the greatest. They then, of course,
are in the nature of dams, the water having accu-
mulated in consequence of the stoppage. The de-
posit having been loosened, the bolts are with-
drawn, 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
80, 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 '■ 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 sewei's 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 acknow-
ledgments of the liberal supplies granted for flush-
ing 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 iu 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 Leaden-
hall-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, hoV-
ever, only four are now kept filled, for this col-
lection of water is found unnecessary, the regular

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

427

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 metro-
politan sewers, only when the inspector pro-
nounces 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 " 2>longinff," or mode of cleansing the open
sewers, as contradistinguished from '^jiushing," 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 Tliames." •' 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 diflerence 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) wa« 7«. the cubic yard ; that is, 7s. 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 Be/. 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 8c/.
per cubic yard £2,649

Same quantity by the old system of
outing and cartage, Tt. 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
conpantiTely inert period of its operation
over the fllthy and clumsy system formerly
practised, of 25,170/., showing the cost of this
fystem to be ten and a half times greater than the
cost of flushing by contract."*

An oflicial Report states : " When the accumu-
lations of years bad to be removed from the
sewers, the rate of cost per lineal mile has varied
from about 40/. to 58/., or from 6c/. to 8</. per
lineal yard. The works in these cases (ex-
cepting those in the City) have not exceeded nine
lineal miles."

" On an avenwe of weeks," says Hr. Lovick,
in bis Report on lashing operations, a few months

after the introduction of the contract system, m
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 21. \0s.

" The nature of the agreements with the con-
tractors 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 West-
minster district there are four, in the Holborn and
Finsbury two, in the Surrey and Kent, seven sub-
divisions.

" 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/. has been effected for the
performance of precisely the same work as that
heretofore performed; the rates of charge stand-
ing thus : —

" Under the day-work system 23/. per week.
„ contract „ 15/. „

" 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 re-
moved.

" 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.

Districts.

Westminster

Iloltiom Sc Finsburyi
Tower Hamleta ....
Surrey and Kent ..{
Poplar 1

Lineal Feet.
485.795
.355,085
223,738
440,(>42
26,W)0

I 1.531.260

Lineal Feet
150,615
11«,000
30,000
40,000
2,(KX)

340,615

Contract
Charge

per
Week.

£ ». d.

40 0 0

23 0 0

15 0 0

75 0 0

6 16 0

16 0

Westmintte'r— Attendance on Flaps. &c

4 0 0

£163

" The weekly cost prior to the contract system
was in the several districts as follows : —

428

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Table No. II.

In the AVesf.Tiinstcr District . . .
,, Holborn and Finsbury do.

„ Tower Hamlets do

„ Surrey and Kent do

„ Poplar do

£ ». d.

78 10 0

24 17 0

23 <) 0

50 8 0

6 13 0

8 0

Hence there would appear to have been a
saving of 25L 125. 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 245. to
27s. a week ; under the present system they are
2I5. to 225. Here is a reduction of 45. 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^., so that, according to the above account, there
would have been about U. left for the contractors
or middlemen. It is unworthy of gentlemen to
make a parade of economy obtained by such igno-
ble means.

The engineers, however, speak of flushing as
what is popularly understood as but " a make-
Bhift " — as a system imperfect in itself, but ad-
vantageously resorted to because obviating the
evils of a worse system still.

*' With respect to these operations," says Mr.
Lovick, in a Report on tlie subject, in February,
1849, " I may be permitted to state that, although
I do not approve of the flushing as an iiltimate
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 in-
compatible with a perfect system of sewerage.
It has, nevertheless, been usefully applied as an
auxiliary to the existing system, though the cost
is frightful."

Op the Workikq Fiushermen.

When the system of sewer cleansing first became
general, as I have detailed, the number of flush-
ermen employed, I am assured, on good autho-
rity, 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 s^io\xi 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 245. to 275. a week ; now
the work is all done ly contract. There are some
six or seven contractors, all builders, who under-
dertake or are responsible for the whole work of
flushing in the metropolitJin districts (I do not
speak of the City), and they pay the working
flushermen 2I5. a week, and the gangers 225.
This wage is always paid in money, without draw-
backs, and without the intervention of iiny 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^ 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 fluslier-
men 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 em-
ploj'ed. 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 evi-
dently the popular man among the flushennen,
or somewhat less than four years ago, the flusher-
men 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 labour-
ing men must necessarily be a secondary conside-
ration to the realization of a profit. Isew 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 3O5. as a low price, and a flusherman wears
out three pairs in two years. Boot stockings cost
2s.Qd. The jacket worn by the men at their work
in the sewers, in the shape of a pilot- jacket, but
fitting less loosely, is 75. 6(i.; a blue smock, of
coarse common cloth (generally), worn over the
dress, costs 2s. 6cZ. ; a shovel is 25. Qd. " Ay, sir,"
said one man, who was greatly dissatisfied with
this change, " they '11 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

429

would work for less than we get, but what of that 1
There always is. There 's hundreds would do
the work for half what the surveyors and in-
q>ector8 gets ; but it 's all right among the nobs."
Nor is the labour of the flushemien at all times
■0 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 firom the brewhouses ; I couldn't see for

steam ; it was a regular London fog, Tou 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 Gatif/ei; 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 Is, a week over and above the
wages of the men.

TABLE SHOWING THE DISTRICTS UNDER THE MANAGEMENT OF THE COM-
MISSIONERS OF SEWERS; ALSO THE NUMBER AND SALARIES OF THE
CLERKS OF THE WORKS, ASSISTANT CLERKS OF THE WORKS, AND INSPEC-
TORS 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,

Paid by Contractors.

Clerks of

.\ssist.Clerks

Inspectors

Flap & Sluice

Gangers.

Flushers.

Districts.

No,

oiks.
Annual
Salary
of the
whole.

of Works *.

of Flushings.

Keepers.

2 .

Rate of
«j„ Annual
^°- Salary.

No.

Annual
Salary
of the
whole.

No.

Yearly
whole.

No.

Weekly

Wage of

each.

No.

Weekly

Wage of

each.

£ s.

FuUMun and Ham-

flwnmith.— CouD-

tei's Crtek and

Ranelagh District*

450

400

120

f>70

824 4

Wcstmirister Sew-

CTf.— Wettcm Di-

▼blon. Eastern

Division, Ref^ent-

•trect I)i»tnct,

HoltHim Division

eoo

300

390

137(

1809 12

Finsbury Division —

Tower Hamlets

Levels, and Poplar

and Blackwall

Districts

450

200

280

100<

1645 16

DtstricU south of

the Thames

450

600

320

374

1744

1315 12

Total

laso

1500

srio

834

5084

5505 4

City

.. i ..

1 80

3 148

2281

9 21 ^

518 12

ToUlco«tof : sewers £12,000 per annum,

♦ TheM olB«er> are paid or ! , 'criod of service, and are chiefly engaged on special works.

Tbe corresponding officer- ire under the City Commissioners.

♦♦♦ Tbertiove dlvi»ion of diitrirt-- i-; me one adopted by the Commissioners of Sewers, but the distiicts of the
\ an more numerous than those above given , being as follows :—

Fatham and ll.i

Hoitx ni I)ivUR>n
FiiMburv Diviaion
Tower HamleU Levels
Poplar and Blackwall .
Ototricts south of the
City

ffsniifh

Ganger,
. employing 1

I Ist District of Commissioners.
2nd District of Commissioners.

3rd District of Commissioners.
4th District of Commissioners.

Holbom and Finsbury districts are under one contractor, and so are the two dividions of Westminster, The same
ntMi who flush llolbom flush the Fin<^l ■ also, 17 being the average number employed ; but the Finsbury

diatrict lequires rather man men th : <m t and the same men who work on the western division of

Wtstminater flush also the CMHrn» tht ilusbers in the western district being more, on account of its being

the larser divbion.

430

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

The inspector receives 80?. per annum.

The table on p. 429 shows the number of clerks
of the works, inspectors of flushing, flap and sluice
keepers, gangers, and flushennen 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 emploj-ed 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 w.ay to turn theirselves ; but pen-
sioners 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,
" Kot one that I know of."

" It is a somewhat sin^gular circumstance," says
Mr. Haywood, the City Surveyor, in his Report,
dated Februaiy, 1850, " that none of the vien
employed in the Ciiy sewers in flv^iing and
cleansing, have been attacked with, or have died
of, cliolera dnring the j^ast 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 flusliingwork disagrees with my
husband," said a flusherman's wife to me, " for he
eats about as much again at that work as lie did at
the other." " The smell underground is some-
times 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
Btomach, '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 wicen the cholera was about many used to
ash lis hoic 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.
AVe were paid oflF in '43 at Portsmouth, and a
friend got me into the shores. It waa 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 workin 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 distiller}'. 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 some-
thing of the same effect, but notliing 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 16s. Qd., and thought that was a haul;
but every bit of it, every coin, shillings and six-
pences and joeys, was bad — all smashers. Yes,
of course it was a disappointment, naturally so.
That happened in Brick-Line shore, Whitechapel.
0, 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 Ist
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 Camaby-market
— tliat '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 abont 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

431

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
heavv as lead wiih 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
a« to the numbers of these creatures — now, as it
were, the population of the sewers — I found impos-
sible, 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 belter-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 Hano-
verian 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
•een 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 ma-
naged 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
wat worded to me, only in prospect of diinger ;
that ia, 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
•ometimes 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 nid, that a few years back (he believed about
eight years) be had in one week found the skele-
tons of two cat* 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 lis ; but in case we comes to a
stunt end where there 's a wall and no place for 'em
Ro 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. Tiiey '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 tjjp City for a few years."

The rats, from the best information at my com-
mand, do not derive much of their sustenance
from the matter in the sewers, or only in par-
ticular localities. These localities arc 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 tiie broods are usually safe from the
molestiition of men, dogs, or cats. These " breeding
grounds" are sometimes in the holes (excavated by

432

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 open-
ings 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, an^
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 em-
ployment.

" Wh}', sir, in the Milford-Iane sewer, a goodish
bit before you get to the river, or to the Strand
— I can't say how far, a few hundred yards per-
haps— I 've seen, and reported, what was a regu-
lar 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 \>y 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 some-
times 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-unf. 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
I James, "to be one of the most fertile causes of
national and universal distress, and their attend-
ants, misery and starvation."

From the autlior's inquiries among practical
men, and from his own study of the natural his-
tory of the rat, he shows that these animals will
have six, seven, or eight nests of young in the
3'ear, 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 ratsi 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 pro-
duced, 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 re-
sult 1 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 : conse-
quently, at ten rats per man, there would be suffi-
cient 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 rata
enough to eat the food of them all I Now, sirs,
is not this a most appalling thing, to think that
there are at the present time in the British Em-
pire thousands — nay, millions — of human beings
in a state of utter starvation, while rats are con-

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

4:J3

suming that which would place them and their
" "^N&imilies in a state of alllueuce and comfort ? I
ask this simple question : Has not Pai-liament,
ere now, beien summoned ui)on 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 remoi-seless destroyer
of rats," the well-bred tenier 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 ai-e valuable for
manure (as was done in the case of wolves in
the old days), and then rats would be extin-
guished for ever ! " Uncle James seems to be a
perfect Malihus among rats. The over-popula-
tion and over-rat theories ai-e about eijual in
reason.

Op lire CESSrOOLAGE AXD NlCHlilEN OF

TILE Metropolis.

I HATE already shown — it may be necessary to
remind the reader — that there are two modes
of remo\-ing the wet refuse of the metropolis :
the one by carrjing it off by means of sewers,
or, as it is designated, setrero^e; and the other
by depositing it in some neighbouring cess-
pool, or what is termed ctsspoolage.

The object of sewerage is " to transport the
wet refuse of a town to a river, or some power-
fully 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 con-
tents are removed to some other part.

The gross quantity of wet refuse annually
produced in the metropolis, and which conse-
quently has to be removed by one or other of
^e above means, is, as we have seen, — liquid,
24,000,000,000 gallons; sohd, 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 sewei-s by street and house-
drainage is, according to the experiments of
the Commissioners of Sewei-s (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 sorface 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 mea-
BPr'^.rl i.v iIk. Commissioners, however, was by
f r moiety of the town, and that

in Ijousesandstreets wcrcas 15 to 1;

so that, oilu wing there). i 'fthe

suburban districts to h umes

V«i sewage than the urb.... i..... <. ....^ iuetro-
1 jlis, the extra yield would have been about

180,500,000 cubic feet. But the greater pro-
portion, if not the whole, of the latter quantity
of wet house-refuse would be drained into open
ditches, where a considerable amoimt of evapora-
tion 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 evapo-
rated at between 10 and 20 per cent of the
whole, we shall not be wide of the trutli, 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
caiTied off by the sowers (covered and open) of
the meti'opolis, and deducted from the gross
quantitv of wet house-refuse, axmxxQMy produced
(3,820,000,000 cubic feet), leaves 20,000,000
cubic feet for the gross quantity canied 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-cess-
pool details are given with a minuteness highly
commendable, as affording statistical data of
great value, Mr. Hey wood gives us the follow-
ing returns : —

" House-Dbainage 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
wJiich may now therefore be said
to be drained is 11,233

" And undrained 5,067

" I am induced," adds Mr. Heywood, " to be-
lieve, fi'om tlie 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 5007 houses as to the
drainage of which you have no information.

" Now, until the inspectors have completed
their sun-ey.of the whole of the houses within
the city," continues the City sm-veyor, " pre-
cise information cannot be given as to the num-
ber of houses yet imdrained ; 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 10,200
houses comprised within the boundaries of the
City, rather loss than one -third are reported io

No. LI.

434

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

have cesspools. Concerning the number of cess-
pools without the City, the Board of Health, in
a Keport on the cholera in 1849, put forward
one of its usual extraordinary statements.

" At the last census in 1841," runs the Re-
port, " there were 270,859 houses in the metro-
polis. It is KNOWN ihat there is scarcely a house
without a cesspool under it, and that a large num-
ber have two, three, four, and MORE under tlwm ;
so that the number of such receptacles in the
metropolis may be taken at 300,000. The ex-
posed surface of each cesspool measures on an
average 9 feet, and the mean depth of the whole
is about 6^ feet; so that each contains 58^ cubic
feet of fermenting filth of the most poisonous,
noisome, and disgusting nature. The exhaling
surface of all the cesspools (800,000x9)
= 2,700,000 feet, or equal to 62 acres nearly ;
and the total quantity of foul matter contained
within them (300,000 x 58^) = 17,550,000

cubic feet ; or equal to one enormous elongated
stagnant cesspool 50 feet in Avidth, 6 feet G
inches in depth, and extending through Lon-
don from the Broadway at Hammersmith ta
Bow-bridge, a length of 10 miles.

" This," say the Metropolitan Sanitary Com-
missioners, 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 corapai-e this, I say, with
the facts which wei-e elicited by the same func-
tionaries 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/., 119/., and 128/.

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.

CONDITION OP THE HOUSES.

From which replies have been received

With supply of Water—

To the house or premises
Near the privy ....
Butts or cisterns, covered
it „ uncovered .

With a sink ......

(Number)

(Per cent)
(Number)
(Percent)

With a Well —

On or near premises

WeU tainted or foul

Houses damp in lower parts

Houses with stagnant water on premises
Houses flooded in times of storm ....

Mouses with Drain —

To premises

Houses with drains emitting offensive smells
Houses Avith drains stopped at times

Houses with dust-bin

Houses receiving offensive smells from adjoining
premises

Houses with privy ......

Houses with cesspool ......

Houses with water-closet

PARISHES.

St George

the

MartjT,

Southwark,

5,713

80-97
48-87
1,879
2,074
48-31

5-32
40-92
52-13
18-54
18-15

87-56
45-11
22-37
42-G9

27-82
97-03
82-12
10-06

St. Anne's,
SoLlo.

1,339

95-56

38-99

776

294

89-29

13-97
3-71

30-90
7-95
5-04

97-12
37-62
28-50
92-34

22-54
70-63
47-27
45-99

2,960

96-48
43-42
1,621
393
86-70

13-85
7-36

26-67
2-95

4-05

96-42
21-41
13-07
89-80

16-74
62-53
36-62
65-b6

In this minute and searching investigation
there is not only an oflBcial guide to an estima-
tion 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, South-
wark, 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

435

parish of St Anne, Soho, the cesspools were
•i7-27 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
p:uts of the houses, of the stagnant water
vn the premises, and of the flooding of the
houses on occasions of storms, are all sig-
nificant incUcations of the difierence in the cir-
cumstances of the inhabitants of these parishes
— of the difiference between the abodes of the
rich and the poor, the capitalists and the la-
bouring 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 05-86 per cent.

These returns are sufficient to show the ex-
travagance 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
OS Jacob's-island, Bermondsey," there were
1317 dwelling-houses and G48 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 cess-
pools 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 cess-
pools abolished, thought from his own experi-
ence, the number of cesspools to be less than
one-half, but others thought it more.

On the otlier 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 ut-
most, only one house in every three undrained.
It will, therefore, be safest to adopt a middle
coxurs^ and assume 50 per cent of the houses
of the metropolis to be still without diainage
into the sewers.

Kow 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
■80 arrive at the gross quantity of wet house-
refuse annnally deposited in cesspools through-
out London.

The average size of the cesspools throughout
the metropolis is said, by the Board of Health,
to be 9 feet by fli, which gives a capacity of
XtH^ cubic feet, and this for 150,000 houses »
8,776,000 cubic feet But according to all ac-
counts these cesspools require on an average
two yean to flU, 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 125,315 tons. This, however,
would appear to be of a piece with the gene-
rality of the statistics of the Board of Health,
and as Aride of the truth as was the statement
that there was scarcely a house in London with-
out 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 squai'e and 6^ deep, so that the or-
dinary capacity would be 5f x 5^ x 6^ = 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 quan-
tity of refuse removed from the Loudon cess-
pools whenever emptied, as well as the average
number emptied yearly.

The contents of a cesspool are never esti-
mated for any puipose of sale or labour by the
weight, but always, as regards the nigh tm en'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 num-
ber of tons by the number of cart-loads obtauied.
The men employed in the cleansing of the cess-
pools 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
tlie 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 avera}j;o contents wei'e five
loads of night-soil, it having been always un-
derstood in the trade tliat a night-cartload was
about a ton.* The total of the cesspool matter
is not aflected by tlie 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, accord-
ing 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

• In one of their Reports the Board of ITcalth has
spoken of the yearly cleansing of the cessnools ; but
a cesspool, I am assured, is rarely emptied by manual
labour, luiless it be full, for as the process is generally
regarded as a nuisance, it is rcsortod to as seldom aa
possible. It may, perhaps, be different with the cess-
pool-emptying by the hydraulic pi-ocess, which is not
a nuisanoo.

436

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

fourteen tons of night-soil from a cesspool or
soil-tank, and a couti'actor's man had once
emptied as many as eighteen tons, hut hoth
agreed as to the average of five tons eveiy two
years from all. Neither knew the period of the
accumulation of the fourteen or the eighteen
tons, hut supposed to be about live or six
years.

According to thismode of estimate, the quan-
tity of wet house-refuse deposited in cesspools
would he equal to 150,000 x 5, or 750,000 tons
every two years. This, by admeasm-ement, at
the rate of 35*9 cubic feet to the ton, gives
20,925,000 cubic feet; and as this is the accu-
mulation of two years, it follows that 13,402,500
cubic feet is the quantity of cesspoolage de-
posited 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 ex-
perimentsofBoussiugault.,confirmedbyLiebig,
this, as I have stated, amounted to ^ lb. of solid
and 1^ lb. of liquid excrement from each indi-
vidual per diem ( = 150 lbs. for every ICO per-
sons), while, including the wet refuse from
culinary operations, tlie average yield, accord-
ing to the surveyor of the Commissioners of
Sewers, was equal to about 250 lbs. for every
100 indiA'iduals daily. I may add that this cal-
culation was made officially, with Engineering
minuteness, with a ^iew 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 cess-
pools.* Now the census of 1841 shows us that
the average number of inhabitants to each
house throughout the metropolis was 7-0, 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 ad-
measurement, at the rate of 35'9 cubic feet to
the ton, it would be equal to 16,070,950 cubic
feet.

A small pi-oportion of this amount of cess-
poolage ultimately m.akes its appearance in the
sewers, being pumped into them directly from
the cesspools when full by means of a special ap-
paratus, and thus tends not only to swell the
bulk of sewage, but to decrease in a like pro-
portion the aggregate quantity of wet house-
refuse, which is removed by cartage ; butthough
the proportion of cesspoolage which finally ap-
pears 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 cesspool-
age, each slightly varj'ing from the other two.

* It w.is ascertained that 3 gallons QisiX? a cxibic
foot) of water would carry off 1 lb. of the more solid
excrementitioiia matter through a 6-inch pipe, with
an inclination of 1 iu 10.

The first, drawn from the Cubic Fe<it.

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 . . . 10,070,950

The mean of these three results is, in roimd
numbers, 15,000,000 cubic feet, so that the
statement would stand thus : —

The quantity of wet house-
refuse annually earned ofi" by
sewers (chiefly covered) from
the urban moiety of the metro-
polis is (in cubic feet) . . 3,050,000,000

The quantity annually car-
ried off by sewers (principally
open) from the suburban moi-
ety of the metropolis . . 150,000,000

3,800,000,000

15,000,000

The total amount of wet
house-refuse annually carried
off by the sewers of the metro-
polis

The gross amount of wet
house-refuse annually depo-
sited in cesspools throughout
the metropolis

The total amomit of sewage
and cesspoolage of the metro-
pohs 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 prorfwe^c?, that we may briefly
conclude the gross sewage of liOndon 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 fads
be adopted, it is absolutely necessary that sta-
tistics not only upon this, but indeed any sub-
ject, be checked by all the different modes there
may be of amving 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
50,092 ; and the quantity of soil removed, 253,400
loads, or tons, and this at the rate of 35.9 cubic
ft. to the ton gives a total of 0,099,214 cubic ft.

It might, perhaps, be expected, that from
the quantity of faecal refuse proceeding from the
inhabitants of the metropolis, a greater qiiantity
would be found in the existent cesspools ; but
there are many reasons for the contrary.

l^ONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOE.

d.3?

One prime cause of the dispersion of cess-
poolage is, that a considerable quantity of the
night-soil does not find its "way into the cess-
pools 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 ex-
tracts from Dr. Hector Gavin's work, published
in 1848, entitled, " Sanitar)' Ramblings ; being
Sketches and Illustrations of Bethnal Green,
&c."

" Dlghy-xcalk, Glohc-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 pennit the otlier
houses to drain into this cesspool, unless the
parish pay to him 1/., a sum which it wiU not
pay." Of course the inhabitants throw their
garbage and filth into tlie streetor the by-places.

" Whiskers-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 re-
finement 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. . . . Some-
times 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 t i.:~i^ «;^c}^ proofs of

night-soil not find) n / > the cesspools,

but the subject need i ; t ; . r pursued, im-

portant 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 ffnind in Paris, and from the same cause.

: n ay be the quantitj* of night-soil which
part of the contents of tlie street
'< >f the nightman's cart, no
"'I', i ken, or perhaps can be

til: 11, h\ ^ - sanitary Dodies to ascer-
tain. Many of the worst of tho 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 thcg are coerced into doing' theu'
duty. The doubt of its " pa}'ing " a capitalist
landlord to improve the unwholesome dwellings
of the poor soems 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 unascer-
tained waste from cesspool evaporation, and
it must be recollected that of the S^lbs. of
cesspool refuse, calculated as the daily produce
of each individual, 2 Jibs, are liquid.

The gross cesspoolage of Paris should amount
to upwards of 000,000 cubic metres, or more
than 21,000,000 cubic feet, at the estimate
of throe pints daily per head. The quantity
actually collected, however, amounts to only
230,000 cubic metres, 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 un-
drained houses should, at the rate of 2^1bs.
to each individual and 15 inhabitants to eveiy
two houses, amount to 10,500,000 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 neaily 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-J 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 en-
gaged in the removal of it.

Of the Cesspool System or Loi^don.

A CESSPOOL, or some equivalent contrivance,
has long existed in connexion with tho struc-
ture of the better class of houses in the
metropolis, and there seems every reason to
believe — though I am assured, on good au-
thority, 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 tho City, consequent upon the great flro
of 1005.

Tho older cesspools were of two kinds—
•* soil-tanks" and •' bog-holes."

♦* Soil-tanks" were the filth receptacles of

438

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

the larger houses, and sometimes works of
solid masonry ; they wei'e almost every size
and depth, but always perhaps much deeper
than the modem cesspools, which present an
average depth of 6 feet to C^ feet.

The " bog-hole" was, and is, a caNaty 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 diliertnce between these old con-
trivances and the jn-esert 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 ptu^oses of cleansing), whereas
the refuse is now more frequently cai'ried into
the modem 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 gai'den 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 lid of was
thrown into it.

I am infoi-med that the average contents of
a bog-hole (such as now exist) are a cubic
yard of matter ; some are romad, 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 ! Noio, 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 intro-
duction 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 di'aiued away from the premises, im-
proved both in wholesomeness and agreeable-
ness, 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, whicli, 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, cha-
racter, &c., but their number is insignificant
when compared -vvith those connected with

private houses. The public cesspools are
cleansed, and, where possible, fiUed up by
order of the Commissioners of Sewers, the
cost being then defrayed out of the rate.

The private cesspools are cleansed at the ex-
pense of the occupiers of the houses.

Of the Cesspool and Sewer Systesi of
Paius.

As the Court of Sewers have recently adopted
some of the French regulations concerning
cesspoolage, I M'ill now give an account of the
cesspool system of France.

When after the ravages of the epidemic cho-
lera of 1848-9, sanitaiy commissioners under
the authority of the legislature pmrsued their
inquiries, it was deemed essential to report
upon the cesspool system of Paris, as that
cfcpital had also been ravaged by the epidemic.
The task was entrusted to Mr. T. W. Rammell,
C.E.

Evei\ in what the French delight to designate
— and in some respects justly — the most i-efined
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 fajcal refuse
also) is deposited in the dark of the night in
the streets, and removed, as soon as the morn-
ing hght permits, by the pubhc 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 r aggers, or rag-
finders). These men nightly traverse the
streets, each provided with a lautem, and
generally with a basket strapped to the back ;
the poorer sort, however — for poverty, Hke
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 di-y 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 ev^
dence (but not much of late) of what they
have found in a certain locaUty, and supplied
a link, sometimes an important one, to the evi- j
dence 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 pvmished.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOB.

439

Before the habits of the Parisians ore 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 penades 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. 105, ante). Persons
who are circumstanced then, as are the Pa-
risians, 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 comfvrts of a }u>me.

•' The greater portion of the liquid refuse,"
writes Mr. Rammell, " including water, which
has been used in culinary or cleansing pro-
cesses, is got rid of by means of open channels
laid across the court-yards and the foot pave-
ments 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, tliis
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. L:on 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 afibrd
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 ac-
celerate its flow."

" With respect to feecal ref\ise," says Mr.
Bammell, '* and much of the house-slops, par-
ticularly those of bed-chambers, the cesspool
is universally adopted in Paris as the imme-
diate receptacle."

By fiu- 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 mat-
ter 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 construc-
tion of cesspools (preventing leakage), and
the increased supply of water in the French
metropolis.

The following figures show both the aggre-

50,151 — 1,770,330

49,515= 1,748,938
40,235 = 1,737,995

49-877 = 1,700,658

gate quantity and the increase that lias taken
place in the cesspoolage of Paris, from 1810
to the present time : —

Cub. Metres. Cub. Feet.

In 1810 the total
quantity of refuse mat-
ter deposited in the
basins at Montfaucon
amounted to ... .

In 1811 the quantity
was

In 1812

Giving an average
for the three yeai's of .

The quantity at pre-
sent conveyed to Mont-
faucon and Bondy
amounts, according to
M. Heloin (a very good
authority), to from 000
to 700 cubic mdtres
daily, giving, in round
numbers, an annual
quantity of ... . 230,000 = 8,119,000

This shows an increase in 30 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 wliich is daily
drawn from the cesspools, Mr. Eaminell states
— and he had every assistance from the au-
thorities in prosecuting his inquiries — at " be-
tween 000 and 700 cubic metres; (21,180 and
24,710 cubic feet), gi^'ing, in round num-
bers, the annual quantity of 230,000 cubic
metres.

" Dividing this annual quantity at 230,000
cubic metres (or 8,000,000 cubic feet) by the
number of tlie population of Paris (94,721 in-
diriduals, 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 clean-
liness) passing from each person into the
cesspool in the better class of houses is stated
to be 1} litre (308 pints), or 038 litres an-
nually. 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 rartjly 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} litre daUy is very
nearly correct, and not above the average
quantity used in houses where a moderate
degree of cleanliness is observed. This pro-
portion 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 If litre from each
individual.

440

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

" The average charge per cubic metre for
extraction and transport of the cesspoolage is
nine francs, givuig a gross annual chai'ge of
2,070,000 francs (82,ti00/. sterhng), Avhich
sum, it Avould appear, is paid every year by
the house-proprietoi-s of Paris for the ex-
traction of the matter from their cesspools, and
its transport to the Voirie."

Mr. Eammell says that, were a tubular
system of liouse-drainage, such as has been
desciibed 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 piincipal place of deposit for the
general refuse of Pans has long been at
Montfaucon. A French writer, M. Jules
Gamier, in a recent work, " A Visit to INIont-
faucon," says : — " For more than nine hun-
dred years Montfaucon has been devoted to
this purpose. There the citizens of Paris de-
posited their filth before the walls of the
capital extended beyond what is now the
central quarter. The distance between Pai'is
and Montfaucon was then more than a mile
and a half." Thus it appears that Mont-
faucon 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
projjerty 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 yeiu's, to the highest bidders.
The amoomt received by the commune has
greatly increased, as the following returns,
which are ofiicial, Avill show : —
A.D. Francs £

1808 the cesspoolage fetched 97,000, abt. 3,880
1817 „ 75,000, „ 3,000

1834 „ 1(55,000, „ 7,000

1843 „ 525,000, „ 21,000

It is here that the " 2)oitdrette," * of which I

* Mr. Rammell supplies tlie following note on the
U3C of " Poudrette."

" In connexion with this subject," he says, "a few
observations upon the application of poudrette in
agi-icultui-al process may not be without interest.

"With regard to the fertilizing properties of this
preparation, M. Maximo Paulot, in his worlc entitled
•Th^orie et Pratique des Eugrais,' gives a table of the
f .rtilizing quaUties of vai-ious descriptions of manure,
the value of each being determined by the quantity of
nitrogen it contains. Taking for a standard good
firm-yard, dung, which contains on an average 4 per
1000 of nitrogen, and assuming that 10,000 kilo-
gi-ammcs ("about 22,000 lbs. English) of this manure
(containing 40 kilogrammes of nitrogen) are Jieces-
sary to manure one liectare (2h acres nearly) of land,
the qiiantities of poudrette and of some other animal
nxunures required to produce a similar effect would
be as follows : —

Kilogi-.

"Good farm-yard dung, the quantity usu-
ally spread upon one hectai-e of laud . . 10,000

Equivalent quantities of human urine, not
having undergone fermentation . . , 5,000

Equivalent quantities of poudrette of Mont-
faucon 2,550

Equivalent quantities of mixed human ex-
crements (this quantity I have calculated
from data given in the same work) . 1,.')33

have spoken elsewhere, is prepared. Besides
this branch of commei'ce, JNIontfaucon 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/).

Montfaucon is on the north side of Paris,
and the place of refuse deposit is known as

Kilogr.
" Equivalent quantities of liquid blood of

the abattoirs 1,333

Equivalent quantities of bones . . . 050

Equivalent quantities of average of guano
(two specimens are given) .... 512

Equivalent quantities of urine of the pubhc
urinalsinfermentation,andincompletely dried 233

" M. Paulett estimates the lots of thb ammoniacal
products contained in the fajcal matters when they
are withdrawn from the ccssjwols, by the time they
have been ultimately x-educed 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 tlie 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 neces.sary to produce the same eflfect upon
one hectare of land as the other manures there men-
tioned. 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 veiy variable, accord-
ing to the style of living of the persons producing it.
'Upon this subject,' M. Paulct says, 'the case of an
agriculturist in the neighboxirhood of P;iris 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 baiTacks. 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 tbe hectolitre
(154 lbs. per 22 gallons), and tlie quantity usually
spread upon one hectare of laud (2^ acres nearly) is
1750 kilogrammes, being at the rate of about 1540 lbs.
per acre English measure. It is cast upon the laud 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.

"Asoriovis accident occurred in 1818, on board a
vessel named the Arthur, wliich sailed from Rouen
with a cai-go of poudrette for Guadaloupo. During
the voyage a disease broke out on board which can-icd
off half the crew, and left the remainder in a deplorable
state of health when they reached their destination.
It attacked also the men \A\o landed the cargo ; they
all suffered in a greater or less degi-eo. The poudrette
was proved to have been shipped dui-ing a wet season,
and to have been exposed before and during sliipment,
in a manner to allow it to absorb a considerable
quantity of moisture. The accident appeal's to havp
been due to the subsequent fermentation of tbe m-ass
in the hold — increased to an intense degree by the
moistui-c it had acquired, and by the heat of a tropical
climate.

" M. Parent du Ch3,telet, to whom the matter was
referred, recommended that to guard against similar
accidents in future, the poudrette intended for expor-
tation, in order to deprive it entirely of humidity,
should be mixed with an absoi-bcnt powder, such as
quicklime, and that it should be packed in casks to
protect it fi:om moisture during the voyage."

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOB.

441

tue Yoirie. Tlie following account of it, and
of the manufactm-e of poudrette, is curious in
many respecl^j —

" The area, which is about 40 acres in ex-
tent, is divided .into three iiregidar compart-
ments : —

*• 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
grradations, 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 anival at the
Voirie ; the four others are receptacles for
the more liquid portion as it gradually flows
oflF from the upper basins.

" There is a great difference in the cha
racter of the soil brought ; that taken from
the upper part of the cesspools., and amount-
ing to a lai-ge proportion of the whole, being
entirely liqvud ; 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
dei>cisited in the upper basins; but in dry
weather, the nearly solid portion is at once
thrown upon the drying-ground." *

• "It is in tho upper basins," adds tho Reports,
" that tho first separation of the liquids and solids
takes place, the latter falling to the bottom, and the
former fjradually flowing oflf through a sluice into the
lower basina This first separation, however, is by no
means complete, a considerable deposit taking place
in tho lower basins. The mass in the upper biwius,
after three or four years, then appears like a thick
mud, half liquid, half solid ; it is of depth varying
from 12 to 16 feet. In order entirely to get rid of tho
liquids, deep channels arc 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 tho drying-grouud, whei*o, to
•Mist the desiccation, it is turned over two or throe
times a-day by means of a harrow drawn by a horse.

"Tho time necessary for the requisite desiccation
Tiuries a good deal, according to the season of the year,
the temperature, nnd the dry or moist stiite of the
atmosplicre. Ere yut it is entirely deprived of hu-
midity, tho matter is collected into heaps, varying in

■ise usually from 8 to 10 yards high, and from CO

ds long, .
heap* or mounds generally remain a twelvemonth

to 80

long, by 26 or 30 yards wido. These

untouched, sometimes even for two or three years ;
bat as last as the material is required, they are
worked from one of the sides by means of pickaxes,
■hovela. and rakes ; the pieces separated aro then
easily brokoa and reduced to powder, foreign sub-
stances being car^ftilly cxclufled. This oi>emtion

undergoes, is performed

henappean like a mould

reaay to the touch, finely

^>articular fiiint and nau-

it^ch is tiM laHt
bywomen. Tb
oragrey-blaekc
fKrainod, and gi<
seous odour.

" The finer paiiialM of matter carried by the liquids
into the lowor basing and ihare more gradually de-
podtod in combination with a predpitato from tho
urine, yield a variety of poudreVte, preCEored, by the
termers, tot ita superior fertUtzinff propartios. In this
flaae the drying proooas is ooadaeted more slowly and
wttb more difnculty than in the other, but more com-
pletaly.

" In general the pondrotte fa dried with groat diffi-
calty; it a{tpoani to have an OKtrame aifiuity for

" The quantity of poudi-ette sold in 1818
as : —

At the Voiiie .... 50,000 sstiere *
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/. sterling.

" The refuse liquids, as fast as they over-
flow the basins, or are passed thi-ough the
chemical works, ai-e conducted into the public
sewers, and through them into the Seine,
neai-ly opposite the Jardin des Tlantcs. They
thus fall into the river at the very commence-
ment of its course through Paris, and pollute its
waters before they have reached the various
7vorks lotvei' 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.

" Eats are found by thousands in the Yoirie,
and theii- voracity is such, that I have often
known them, duiing a single night, convert
into skeletons the carcasses of twenty horses
which had been brought thither the evening
before. The bones ai-e burnt to heit 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 fish-
ing for ^e rotten fish the maiket 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
hovu-s aftei-wards all the fish had disap-
peared.'

" The emanations from the Voirie are, as
may well be supposed, most powerfully of-
fensive. 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 nu-
merous 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 soUd matter is spread
to diy."

Tho late M. Pai'ent du Chatelet, a high
authority on this matter, stated (in 1833)

water ; few substances give out moisture more slowly,
or absorb it more greedily from the air.

"A poofl deal of heat is Rciicnited in the heaps of
deRiatitcd mutter. This is always .sensible to the touch,
and ■,..itui iiM< 'J ri «iiH.; in '^^wntaiieous combustion.

rat is not in proportion to
:vc of the atmosphere. It is
! . i 1 only means of oxtinguish-

1 .i;u it isouco developed is to turn over tho

I 'to bottom, in order to expose it to tho

;i: 1 s mown upon it, unless in veiylargo quau-

titles, wi.iild only increase its activity."

• 4i heaped busholscach, English mi.osuro.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

that the emanations from the Voirie were in-
supportable within a circumference of 2000
metres (about a mile and a quarter, English
measure) ; while the winds can-ied tliem
sometimes, as was shown when an official
inquiry was made as to the ravages and causes
of cholera, 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 emana-
tions from the cesspool matter at the Voirie the
greater part of the cai'casses 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 con-
sists of eight basins, four on each side of the
Canal de lOurcq, arranged like those at Mont-
faucon. The area of these basins is little
short of 96,000 square yards, and their col-
lective capacity upwards of 261,000 cubic
yai'ds. The expectations of the rehef 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 con-
veyed back by the same boats. The basins
are not yet full; for the conveyance by the
Canal de I'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/. '

In the latest Report on this subject (1835)
the Commissioners, of whom M. Parent du
Chatelet was one, recommend that all the
cessj)ool matter at the Voiries should be dis-
infected. M. Salmon, after a course of che-
mical experiments (the Report of the Com-
mission 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 IMontfaucon, who employed one
of ovir 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 then- joint in-
vestigations it resulted that disinfection might
be equally well produced with turf ashes, with
carbonized turf, and with the simple debris
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 en-
virons of Paris, and with many other sub-
stances. A curious experiment has even
shown, that after mixing with a clayey earth
a portion of faecal matter, it was only neces-
sary^ to carbonize this mixture to obtain a

perfect disinfectant powder. Tiieory had al-
ready indicated the result.

This disinfection, however, has not been
carried out in the Voiiies, nor in the manu-
facture of poudrette.

From the account of the general refuse
depositories of Paris we pass to the particular
receptacles or cesspools of the French capitid.

The Parisian cesspools are of two sorts : —

1. Fixed or excavated cesspools.

2. Movable cesspools.

" In early times the excavated cesapools or
pits Avere consti'ucted 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, how-
ever, and as the penneations necessaiily
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 Avas this the
only evil : the basement walls of the houses
became saturated with the offensive permea-
tions, and the atmosphere, more particularly
in the interior of the dwellings, tainted with
their exhalations.

" The movable cesspools, for the most pai't,
consist simply of tanks or barrels, which, when
fuU, 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 nui-
sances from carelessness in overfilling, or in
the process of emptying.''

"The movable cesspools are of two kinds;
the one," says Mr. Rammell, " extremely sim-
ple and primitive in construction, the other
more complicated. The former retains all the
refuse, both liqviid and solid, passed into it ;
the latter retains only the solid matter, the
liquid being separated by a sort of strainer,
and running oflF into another receptacle.

" The advantage of this separating ap-
paratus 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 con-
sists simply of a wooden cask set on end, and
ha\dng its top pierced to admit the soil-pipe.
It is intended to retain both soUd and liquid
matter. When full, it is detached, and the

THE BEAEDED CROSSING-SWEErER AT THE
EXCHANGE.

IFrom a PUotrgrap^.}

Pago 47 J

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON FOOli.

443

•0 in tho top having been closed by a
. . tins lid secured by an iron b;u' lilace J
- • - ■ v^vod, and an empty one iin-
ued for it.
1 cesspool last described is

mucli liiure gciioially usedtliau the other kind;
very few ai-e furnished with the S;?paiating ap-
pai-atus. But the use of either sort, I am told,
is not on the increase. The movable cess-
pools are found, on the whole, to be more
expensive than the fixed, besides entailing
• many inconveniences, one of which is the
fi-equent entrance of workmen upon the pre-
mises for the pm-pose of removing them, which
sometimes has to be done every second or
third day. Moreover, if the cask becomes in
the slightest degree overchai-god, there is an
ovorilow of matter."

Ill Ijod, the movable system of cesspools
(it a;>pears from further accounts) seems to
be now adopted only in tliose places where
fixed cesspools could not be altered in ac-
cordance 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
existiug, shall be altered in accordance with its
provi>ions upon the first subsequent emptying
alter 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 om-
late stringent enactments as to buildings and
sewerage.

The French ordonnance provides also that
tho wails, ai*ches, and bottoms of the cesspools,
shall be constructed of a veiy hard descriptiim
of stone, known as "pierres meuli^es" (mill-
stone); tho mortar used is to be hydraulic
lime and cleim river sand. Each arch is to be
80 to 35 centimetres (12 to 14 inches) in
Uuckness, and the walls 40 to 50 centimetres
(18 to 20 inches) ; the interior height not to
be less than 2 metres (2 yards C inches).
A soil-pipe i.^ always to be placed in the
middie of the cesspool ; its interior diameter
is not to be less than 9| inches in pottery-ware
piping, or 7^ inclies in cast iron. A vent-pipe,
not less than 9^ inches in diameter, is to be
caiTied up to the level of the chimney-tops,
or to tliat of the chimneys of the adjoining
houses. This is, if possible, to divert the
smell from the bouse to which the cesspool
is attached.

" A principal object of the ordonnance;' it is
stated in the iieports, "was to eusme the
oessBOols being thenceforth mode water-tight;
80 that ftuther poUuticm of tlie substratum

an' — '- - - ht be prevented; and the

]!; iittoinment have been very

St \.<w the police. The present

(. , in fact, water-tight coustiuctions,

rr t ,!i ii • whole of tho liquids passed into
! : ui tlie some ore withdrawn by artificial
The adrantage has its attendant in-

conveniences, and, moreover, has been dearly
paid for ; for, independently of the cost of tlie
alterations and the increased cost of making
the cesspools in tho outset — the liquids no
longer djoining away by natural permeation
— the constant expense of emptying them has
enormously increased. In the better class of
houses, where water is moi'e freely used, the
operation has now to be repeated every three,
four, or five mouths, whereas formerly the
cesspool was emptied every eighteen mouths
or two yeai's. An increased water supply has
added to the evil, modei-ate even now as tho
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 thi-ougli tlie
soil-pipe, passing into the cesspool from each
individual, amounts to If litre (308 English
pints). Foreign substances ai'e found in great
abundance in the cesspools ; the lai-ge soil-
pipes permitting their easy introduction; so
that the cesspool becomes tho common re-
ceptacle for a great vaiiety of articles that it is
desu-ed secretly to get rid of. Ailicle 19 of the
Police Kegulations directs that nightmen Imd-
ing any ailicles in tlie cesspools, especially
such as lead to the suspicion of a crime or
misdemeanor, shall make a declai-ation of the
fact the same day to a Commissai-y of Police."

In all such matters the pohce regulations of
France are fai' more stiingent and exacting than
those of England.

"The cesspools vai-y considerably in foul-
ness," continues tho Eeport; "and it is remark-
able that tliose containiiKj the grealest proportion of
water are the most foul and dangerous. This is
accounted for by the increased quantity of sul-
phuretted 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 otlensive
aud dangerous contlition. 2Vtc foulness of the
cesspools, therefore, would appear to be in direct
in-oporlion to the cleanly habits of the inmates
of tlie houses to tvhich they respectively belong.
"VVhere m-ine predominates ammoniacal va-
pours are given ofl" in considerable quantities,
and although these alfect tlie eyes of those ex-
posed to them — and the nightmen sufier much
from inflammation of these organs — ^no danger
to life results. The iniiammation, however, is
often suificioiitly acute to produce temporary
blindness, and from this cause the men are at
times thrown out of work for days together." *
• I did not hoar any of tbe London nightmen or
scwcrmcu complain of inflamuiatiou in tho eyes, aud
no auch effect was visible ; nor that they Knflurcd from
teiiiiwrary blindness, or were, indctd,. thrown out of
work from any such cause; they merely remarked
tlii't thoy wore first dazzled, or "daiai," with tho
soil. But the Labour of Iho rarisian is lUr mure conti-
nuous ami rc^nilar than the f-ondon nii,'htuian, owing
in a (froat degree to tho system of movable ce$8j>ool8
in Puria.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 al-
lowed 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 Sep-
tember 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 sea-
son. These hours, however, only relate to the
cleansing of the fixed cesspools of Paris.

Fixed or excavated cesspools ai-e 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 aiTangements ; 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 emptjing is veiy
simple, though undoubtedly demanding a con-
siderable expenditure of labour. The tank or
barrel, when filled, is disconnected from the
soil-pipe, an empty one being immediately sub-
stituted 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 openinnj a cesspool in Paris, precautions
are always taken to prevent accidents which
might result from the escape or ignition of the

The general, not to say universal, mode of
emptying the fixed or excavated cesspools is to
pump the contents into closed carts for trans-
port.

" This operation is," says Mr. Eammell,
" 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 com-
municating 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 occa-
sioned. 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 per-
mits the use of a pipe of larger diameter.

" The cart employed for the pneumatic sys-
tem 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 Barri6re
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 ex-
hausting five carts at the same time; the vacuum
produced being equal to 28f inches (72 centi-
metres) 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 some-
what more than the weight of the contents of
a London waggon employed in night-soil car-
riage. Three horses are attached to each cart.

When an opening into the cesspool has been
effected, a suction-pipe on the pneumatic prin-
ciple is laid from the cesspool to the cart.
This pipe is 3j| 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 requu'ed. Two
kinds are commonly used; one made of leather,
having iron wire wound spirally inside to pre-
vent collapse, the other of copper. The leather
pipe is used where a certain degree of pliabi-
lity is required; the copper for the straight
parts of the line, and for determined cui-ves ;
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 muscu-
lar powers of two men. This done, the cess-
pool 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 pre-
viously 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 usu-
ally by two, but sometimes by one man. The
air-pump is placed on the ground at a little dis-
tance from the cesspool cart, and communi-
cates 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 com-
municates 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 asceilain when the

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

4Ab

vehicle is full, a short glass tube is inserted iu
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 va-
ries according to the size of the cesspool to be
emptied; but as these contain on the average
about five cart-loads, that is the number usu-
ally sent.*

" 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,
<fec., reqxiired 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 hy-
draulic pimip when it is to be done on the
hydraulic system.

" 2. About 50 metres of suction-pipe of va-
rious 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, ham-
mers, 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 iu
diameter, pierced with small holes, and covered
with a conical cap to prevent the flame spread-
ing. The vent-pipe first communicates under-
neath 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 imscrewing
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 advance-
ment 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 tho operation, when
the quantity of matter remaining in the cess-
pool, although sufficiently fluid, is too shallow

* It must be reooUaeted, to aooooni for the grroator
qunntity of nwttor between the oeeepools of Paris a;id
Londoit. that the French flxod oeaipool, from tho
(ppeater aTenge of inmate* to each hotuc, must ncces-
■artty oontain about three times axkl a half as much as
that oS a London ceeepooL If the dwellers In a
Farialaa botiae^ instead of aventginff twenty- four,
aven^irad between seren and eight, as m London, the
ecaspool contents In Paris would, at the above rate,
be between ftmr and five tons (as it is in London) for
the aTen«e of aaeh house.

for pumping, it is scooped into a lai-ge pail;
and, the end of the suction-pipe being intro-
duced, 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, un-
less 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^ cubic feet. These vessels ore
closed with a lid, and are lil'ted into an opeu
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 tlie 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. BammeU mentions his having twice,
after witnessing two of tliese operations, suf-
fered 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 con-
tract, 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 dep6t for tho reception of the
pumps, carts, &c., when not in use. The
stock-in-trade of a contractor is inspected at
least t^vice a-year, and if found inadequate or
out of repair the license is commonly with-
drawn. The "gangs'" of nightmen employed
by the contractors are fixed by the law at four
men each (the number employed in Loudon),
but without any legal provision on the subject.
The terms of these contracts are not stated,
but they appear to have ceased to be under-
takings by individual capitalists, being all in
the hands of companies, known as compagnies
dc vidanges (filth companies). There are now
eight companies in Paris carrying on these
operations. More than half of tho wliole
work, however, is accomplished by one com-
pany, the *' Compagnie Richer." The capital
invested in their working stock is said to ex-
ceed 4,800,000 francs (200,000/.). 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/. as an average. The houses con-
taining 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/. 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 J htre (308

Ufi

LONDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

pints) of matter to each individual, the annual
expense of the cesspool system in Paris, per
house containing 24 persons, ■will he, —

" For interest, at 0 per cent upon capital
sunlc in works of consti-uction, 1/. 7s.

" For extraction and removal of matter,
5/. lis.

" Total, 01. JSs.

" The annual expense per inhahitant will he
5s. Qd.

" The latter, tlien, may he taken as the
average yeaiiy sum per head actually paid hy
that portion of the inhahitants of Paris who
use the cesspools."

The follomng, among others hefore shown,
are the conclusions aiTived at hy Mr. Eam-
mell: —

1. " That vdih the most perfect regulations,
and the application of machines constructed
upon scientific principles, the operation of
emptying ces5i)oolsis stUl a nuisance, not only
to the inmates of the house to which it belongs,
hut to those of the neighbouring houses, and
to persons passing in the street.

2. " That the cesspool system of Paris pre-
sents an obstacle to the proper extension of
tlie water supply, and consequently represses
the growth of habits of personal and domestic
cleanliness, mth 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 commmiity.

3. '• That, comx)ared with a tubuLir system of
refuse drainage, it is an exceedingly expensive
mode of disposing of the faecal refuse of a town."

Of the Emptying or the London Cesspools
BY Pump xVND Hose.

Having now ascertained the quantity of v/et
house-refuse annually deposited in the cess-
pools 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 con-
dition 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 per-
forming the work. The distinctive feature be-
tween 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 hy means
of carts to some distant night-yard.

According to the French method, therefore,
the cesspoolage ultimately becomes sewage, the
refuse being deposited in a cesspool fora greater
or a less space of time, and finally discharged
into the sewers ; so that it is a kind of inter-
mediate 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 ad-
vantage of the cesspool system, as contra-
distinguished 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
sower system the main evil of the cesspool
system. The French mode of emptying cess-
pools, however, appears to have the peculiar
property of combining the ill eflects 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 sup-
plied with water, and so returned to them di-
luted in the form of aqua pura, for washing,
cooking, or drinldng. The sole benefit accru-
ing from the French mode of nightmauship is,
that it performs a noisome operation in a com-
paratively cleanly manner; but surely this is a
small compensation forthe evils attendant upon
it. The noses of those who prefer stagnant cess-
pools 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
Avater 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 ap-
paratus 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 pro-
portion, 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 veiy tidy," one of the gangers told
me, but they were too expensive, the mateiial
being soon worn out : they were only tried five
or six months. The pipes now employed difier
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 alanned,and
people begin to ask where the fire is. One out-
sideman 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 .b§en

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

447

emptied into a sewer at 300 yards distant.
The pipe is placed within the nearest giillyhole,
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 backache grievously;
indeed, some cesspools have been foimd so long
neglected, and so choked with rags and rub-
bish, 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 cir-
cumstances, in an hour ; while an average dura-
tion of time for the cleansing of a regularly-
sized cesspool is from three to fotu: hours.

A pneumatic pump, with an iron cai't, drawn
by two horses (similar to the French inven-
tion), was tried as an experiment, but discon-
tinued in a fortnight.

For the hydraulic method of emptying cess-
pools, 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 im-
plies, 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 cess"-
pool, along the suiface 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 nnfrequently 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 dis-
trict, that the t '•}} be at work in this or

that place, a : rally given a day in

.advance, and ti' -applied gratuitously,

from a street lue-plug, and used at discretion,
some cesspool contents requiring tliree times
more water than others to liquefy them suf-
ficient for pumping.

The cesspool-pumping gangs are six in num-
ber, each consisting of five men, although the
** ontsideman" is sometimes a srti-ong youth of
seventeen or eighteen. 'V ' 'work is
done by a contractor, v! n agree-

ment with the Court of S finds the

neoewary apparatus, appointing his own la-
bourera. All tho prefs^nt labourers, however,
harebevMi long

the flnsl ' in

the recoi:.— .- . iks,

or the inspector. The cesspool-sewermen work
in six districts. Two divisions ( east and west)
of Westminster; Finsbury and Holbora;
Surrey and Kent; Tower Hamlets (now in-
cluding 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 distinct (as among the
tiushermen) is sent to expedite any pressing
wo:.k. All the men are paid by the job, tiie
payment being 2s. each per job, to the pump-
men and holeman, and 35. to the ganger;
but in addition to the 2s. per job, the holeman
has Orf. a-day extra ; and the outsideman has
6rf. a-day deducted from the 4s. 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-lialf days' work (or eight or nine jobs) every
week; but such was the case more pailicu-
larly when the householders were less cog-
nizant of the work, and did not think of
resorting to it ; now, I am assured, the men's
average emploj-ment may be put at five days
a week, or ten jobs.

The perquisites of these workmen are none,
except the householder sends them some re-
freshment on his own accord. There may be
a perquisite, but very rarely, occurring to the
holeman, should he find anytliing in the soil ;
but the finding is far less common than among
the nightmen, with whom the process goes
through difterent stages. I did not hear among
cesspool-sewemaen of anything being found
by them or by their comrades ; of com'se, 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 in-
formant 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, (fcc, 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 flushcrmcn ; also
their own "picks" and shovels, costing re-
spectively 2s. 6rf. and 2s. Zd. each.

One ccsspool-sewerman told mo, that when
he was first a member of one of those gangs he
was "awful abused" by the "regular night-
men," if he came across any of them " as was
beery, poor fellows ; " but that had all passed
over now.

The total sum paid to tlie six gangs of la^-
bourers in the course of the year would, at tho
rate often cesspools emptied per week, amount
to the following : —

Yearly Total.

12 pumpmen, 10 jobs a- week each,
20». per week, or 52/. per year, each . iln24

0 holemen, ditto, ditto, with 25. Crf.
a-week extra 351

0 outsidemen, 20s. a-week, less by
(\d. a-day, or 2s. 6rf. a-week, 45/. 10s.

a-year 290

Carried forward . . i;i271

448

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Ycarlv Total.
Brought forward . . . jgl^Tl
C gangers, 30s. a-week each, or "^8/.
per year 4C8

£1739
Any householder, <S:e., who applies to the
Court of Sewers, or to any officer of the court
whom he may know, has his cesspool cleansed
hy the hydi-aulic method, in the same way as
lie might employ any tradesman to do any
description of work proper to his calHng. The
charge (by the Court of Sewers) is 5s, or Cs.
per squai'e yard, according to pipeage, &c.
required ; a cesspool emptied by this system
costs from 20s. to 30s. The charges of the
uightmen, who have to employ horses, &c., ai-e
necessarily higher.

Estimating that throughout London
60 cesspools are emptied hy the hy-
draulic method every week, or 3120
every year, and the charge for each to
be on an average 25s., we have for the
gross receipts . . 3120 x 25s. =£3900

And deducting from this the sum
paid for laboiu: 1739

It shows a profit of . . . . jg2161

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 in-
formed that as many as 3000 sewers were
emptied by the hydraulic process ; and calcu-
lating each to have contained the average
quantity of refuse, viz. five tons or load?, or
about 180 cubic feet, we have an aggregate of
540,000 cubic feet of cesspoolage ultimately
carried off hy the sewers. This, however, is
only a twenty-seventh of the entire quantity.

The sura paid in wages to the men engaged
in emptying these 3000 cesspools hy the hy-
draulic process woiild, at the rate of 2s. per
man to the four members of the gang, and
3s. to the ganger, or 11*. in all for each cess-
pool, amount to 16501., which is 139/. and 250
cesspools less than the amount above given.

Statement of a Cesspool-Seweeman.

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-looldng man, who
had rarely known illness. Ail these sort of
labom-ers (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 2(> years
ago, until steam pulled working men down from
being weU paid and well off, it was a capital
trade. Why, my father could sometimes earn
3/. at his work as a working weaver; there was

money for ever then ; now 12s. a-week is, I bet
lieve, 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 fre-
quently called Norwich); I call ground- work
such as digging drains and the like. Then
I 'listed into the Marines. Oh, I hardly know
wlmt 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/. 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 Dar-
danelles ; why, there was mortars there as
would throw a ton weight. No, I never heard
of their having been fired. Yes, we some-
times 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. 0 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, laugh-
ing 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 taJking 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 1 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, coach-
man, 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 'U disappear ; in
course they miist, there's so many new dodges
comes up, always some one of the working
classes is a being ruined. If it ain't steam,

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

449

it's sometLing 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 cal-
culations, that of the l.'^,000,000 cubic feet of
house-refuse annually deposited in the cess-
pools of the raetropohs, 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 tlian by being discharged
into the sewers, is ultimately got rid of.

Until about twenty months ago, wlien the
new sanitary regulations concerning the dis-
posal 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 contractoi-s, 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 cess-
pool 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 cess-
pool 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 work-
house, 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
tliat purpose. The odour which was given oflf
v.hen 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 manu-
factor)'. To the right in this yard was a large
acctunnlation of dung, &o., 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 con-
centration of putrescent odours it has ever
been my lot to be the victim of. The whole
place presented a most foul and filtliy aspect,
and an example of the enormous outrages

which are perpetrated in London against
society. ,

" It is a cmious fact, that the parties who
had charge of these two premises were each
dead to the foulness of their own most pesti-
lential nuisances. The nightmans servant
accused the premises of the manure nianu-
factui-er as the source of perpetual foul smells,
but thought his yard free from any particular
cause of complaint; while the servant of the
patent manm*e 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 ma-
nure manufactory is the estabUshment of a
bottle merchant. He complained to me in
the strongest terms of tlie expenses and
aimoyances 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 fre-
quently 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 mea-
sures 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 brew-
houses, which were said to absorb the liquid
portions, when stin*ed 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 bai'ge. It was also mixed
with httered 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, (fcc), 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 ascer-
tained that as many as 50 loads, half of them
waggon-loads, have been shot from the pro-
prietor'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
smalhM- 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<. to 55. the cart-load, although 45., I was in.

450

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

formed, might have been the general average.
The cesspool matter, considered i^er se, was
not worth, of late years, I am told, above ^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
5s. a ton. Tliis cesspool filth was shot on the
premises of the manufacturer gratuitously, as
it was in any of tlie 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
vapoui*s would have been absorbed and retained
by the leaves of the fruit-trees.

This night-soil manui'e was devoted to two
purposes — to tlie manufacture of deodorized
and portable manure for exportation (chiefly
to cm- sugar-gi-owing 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 trans-
formed into the brown sugar casks of the home-
ward-bound vessels. I was told by a seaman
who some years ago sailed to tlie West Indies,
that these manure casks in damp weather
gave out an unpleasant odour.

It was only to the home cultivators who re-
sided at no great distance from a night-yard,
from live 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 Avith his own horses,
which had perhaps come up to town laden with
cabbages to Covent Garden, or hay to Cum-
berland-market, the cart being made water-
tight for the purpose. The " legal hoiirs " to
be observed in the cleansing of cessx)ools, 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 ascer-
tain the precise quantities disposed of com-
mercially, 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 lae has access,
merely for the pri\dlege 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 i>resent, 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.

Op the Working Nightmen and the
Mode of Woiik.

NiGHTWORKy by the provisions of the Police
Act, is not to be commenced before twelve at
night, nor continued beyond five in tlie morn-
ing, winter and summer alike. This regulation
is known among the nightnien as the " legcl
houi's," 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 weU as
the working hours of the day, to toil. A rub-
bish-carter, a very powerfully-buUt 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 em-
plojTnent ; and, ten years and more since, it
was often an available and remvmerative re-
soui'ce.

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, caiTQen or stablemen, or men
working for the market-gardeners round Lon-
don— all either in or out of emplo j-ment. P er-
haps 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- night-
men. They are generally master- chimney-
sweepers, scavengers, rubbish - carters, and
builders. Some of the contractors for the puhhc
street scavengery, and the house - dust - bin
emptying, are (or have been) among the largest
employers of nightmen, but only in their indivi-
dual trading capacity, for they have no contracts
with the parishes concerning the emptying of
cesspools; indeed the parish or district corpo-
rations have nothing to do with the matter. I
have akeady 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 work-
ing 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 com-
mencement of the eighteenth century.

The poHce of Paiis, as I have shown, have full
control over cesspool cleansing, but the police
of London are instructed merely to prevent
night- work being canied on at a later or eai'Uer

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

451

period than " the legal hours ;" still a few mi-
nutes either wny we not regarded, and the legal
bonrs. 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 prede-
cessore speak of any other system — after this
method: — A gang of four men (exclnsive of
those who have the care of the horses, and who
drive the night-caits to and from the scenes of
the men's labours at the cesspools) are set to
work. The labour of the gang is diA-ided,
though not with any individual or especial
sirictness, aa follows: —

1. The lioleman, who goes into the cesspool
and fills the tub.

2. The ropemauj 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 he thus briefly de-
scribed:— Within a foot, or even less sometimes,
though often as much as thi-ee 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 cess-
pool be immediately under tlie privj', the floor-
ing, &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 suffi-
cient 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
shopmndow (for he could not read), was "as
nafral as life, tub and all."

Thus far,the ropeman and theholeman gene-
rally 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 cess-
pool ; the " holeman," who is generally the
strongest person in the gang, descends, shovels
tlie tail full, having stirred up the refuse to
loosen it, and the contents, being drawn up by
the ropeman, are carried away as before de-
scribed.

The labour is sometimes severe. Tlie tub
when HHodjthoughitisneverquite filled, weighs
rarely less than eight stone, and sometimes
more; ** but that, you see, sir," a nightman said
to me, " depend8 on the nature of the sile."

Beer, and bread and cheese, are given to tlie
nightmen, and frequently gin, while at their
work ; bnt as the bestowal of the spirit is volun-
tary, fome householders firom motives of econ-
omy, orftom being real or pretended members
(.1 ulinircrs of the total-abstinence principles,
rcluso 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. Itis commonly enough said, that if the
nightmen have no " allowance,'' they will work
neither as quickly nor as carefully as if accorded
the customarj' gin "perquisite." One man, cer-
tainly a very strong active person, whose services
where quickness in the work was indispensable
might be valuable (and he had work as a rub-
bish-carter also), told me that he for one would
not work for any man at nightwork if there was
not a fair alloAvance of drink, " to keep up his
sti'cngth," 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 knoAV, sir, that soroo
bottles has gi-eat * kicks ' at their bottoms. But
I should say that there's been a bottle of gin
drunk at the dealing 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, altbough 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 agrocer, Avorth
his "plum," who quietly intimates that ho 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 tasee a gang of night-
men at work. Large horn lanterns (for the night
was dark, though at inter\'«lg the stars shone
brilliantly) were placed at the edges of the cess-
pool. Two poles also were temporarily fix-ed in
the ground, to which lanterns were liung, but
this is not always the case. Th-o work went
rapidly on, with little noise and no confusion.

The scene was peculiar enough. The arti-
ficial light, shining into the dark filthy-looking
cavern or cesspool, threw tho adjacent houses
into a deep shade. All around was perfectly
still, and there was not an incipient to interrupt
the labour, except that at one time tho window
of a neighbouring house was thrown up, a night-

No. Lir.

452

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

capped head was protruded, and then down was
bauged the sash with an impatient cnrse. 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, al-
though 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, pro-
nounced 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 T saw
evidently enjoyed a bottleof 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 SHO^VINa THE NUMBER OF MASTER-SWEEPS, DUST, AND OTHER
CONTRACTORS, AND MASTER-BRICKLAYERS, THROUGHOUT THE METRO-
POLIS, ENGAGED IN NIGHT-WORK, AS WELL AS THE NUMBER OF CESS-
POOLS 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.

SWEEPS EMPLOYED

NIGHTMEN.

1^."

Hurd *.

Francis ....

Russell ....

Hough . . . . .

Burns ....

Clements . .

Groves ....

Clayton ....

Sheppard ..

Nie

Haddox ....
„Albrook ....
^Peacock ....

Reiley ....

White

Ramsbottom

Ness

Porter ....

Edwards . .

Andrews . .
^Foreman . .

Wakefield . .

Wliateley ..

Templeton

Pearce . . . .

bog

Loads.

120

108

120

180

300

240

120

S2 jj

a>>8

"s^-^

O O Qj

11?

c3 tog

S bc^

J=l

3 a"^

ill

Pence.

120

240

100

Total Amount
paid to the ope-
rative Night-
men during the
year.

10 10

Total Amount
paid to Mastcr-
Nightmen dur-
ing the year for
emptying Cess-
pools, at lOs. per
load.

0 18

1 10
1 10

£.
24
36
24
60
36
30
54
60
32
48
60^
90
180
120
60
36
36
30
24
24
30
34
18
30
30

XONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

453

S5
< a

1^1

Effery . .

Brighara

Ballard . . .

Pottle . .

Shad wick

Wilson , .

Lewis

Cuss

^Wood ....

Prichard

Randall

Brown . .

Lamb . . ,

Bolton . .

Davis . . . . ,

Rickwood
^Elkins ..
"Kippin . .
I Bowden . .
^Hughes . .
J Boven . . ,
< Chilcott . . ,
1 Baker . .
, Burrows

Justo ....

Noill ....

Robinson

Marriage

Rose ....

Hall ....

Jenkins . .

Steel

littke ....

Hewlett . .

Snell ....
^McDonald
/Mason . .

Clark ....
J Starkey . .

Attewell ,
V Brown . .
/'Store ....

Richarda

Norris . .

Eldridge

Davis

Francis . . ,

Tiney . .

Johnson

Tinsey . .

Ptandall . . ,

\l)ay

/Catlin ..,

Richards .

Hutching .

Barker , . .

Duck

Eagle . . ,

Froorae , . ,
^ Smith ,.,
/Dans . . , . ,
I Brown . . ,

Day

Hawkins
^Grant ...

6rf.

150

100

120

180

120

150

120

150

120

150

120

•24

3C0

240

180

120

150

100

120

• 12

120

. 6

()

300

240

180

120

180

120

JEl
1
1
3
3
3
1
4
3
3
3
1
3
1
1
1
0
1
1
3
3
3
1
3
1
1
1
3
1
3
1
0

10
1
1
5
3
1
3
3
1
3
3
3
1
1
1
1
1
1
0

I
1

0
5

1
1
4
3
1
1
1

10 0

4 0

15 0

0 0

10 0

0 0

10 0

4 0

18 0

0 0

15 0

16 0
0 0

10 0

0 0

16 0

0 0

10 0

5 0

0 0

10 0

15 0

10 0

0 0
16 0

10 0

10 0
10 0

12 0

6 0

10 0

16 0

10 0

16 0

4 0

^36
30
24
75
00
CO
30
90
60
60
75
30
CO
30
24
4
18
24
24
75
fiO
75
36
CO
24
24
30
CO
30
60
36
12
180
30
30
00
CO
30
75
60
36
CO
CO
30
24
30
30
30
24
24
12
180
30
24
24
12
90
CO
30
30
00
CO
30
24
24

454

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

/Brown ,.......,

I Mawley

J Stevens

I Badger

(^ Lewis

/Crozior

James

Dawson

Newell

Lnmloy ,

^Harvey . . , .

Rayment , . . . .

Clarke

Watson ,

.Desater

^Tyler and Tyso

Burgess ,

"Wilson

Potter ,

Wright ,

rWells

Whittle

Collins ,

Crew ,

Atwood ,

Conroy

Pusey

xPedrick

^^- (Crosby

giJMull

£«|Darby

« (Hall

^Collins

Brazier . ,
Harrison

> w 1 Harris

iMantz ...
^Whitehead
Rawlon . . .
Wrotham .
Harev>-ood .
- Rawthorn ,
Darling . . .

Jones

Johnson .
•Simpson ,
§ Wilkinson .
a J Goring . . .

1 i Lively . . .

2 Stone

a I

P3 \.Ward

'Kingsbury . . ,

Goodge

Wells

Wilks

James ^ . . . .

Morgan

Croney . . , . .

iHolmes

^Newell

Fleming . . . ,

Tuff ,

Hillingsworth

Smith

Field

120

Id.

120

180

120

180

120

150

100

0 •

120

■ 24

120

1 ''

1
1
1

5
3
1
3
1
0
3
3
1
1
5
3
3
1
1
3
3
2
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
3
3
1
1
3
2
1
3
3
3

3
3
2
i
2
1
1
o

0
0
0
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
3
8
1
1
1

0 0

10 t)

4 0

5 0
10 0

4 0

10 0

5 0

10 0

0
0
0
0
0

10 0
10 0
10 0
18 0

0 0

1-5 0

0 0

1<J 0
10 0

18 O
18 0

16 0
10 0

0 0
0 0

CO
36
24
24
90
CO
24
CO
24
IB
CO
CO
8(5
36
90
CO
00
80
24
CO
CO
45
36
36
30
18
24
24
36
00
CO
36
30
CO
48
24
CO
.60
CO
CO
75
CO
45
36
45
36
30
30
24
24
27
18
18
12
45
36
30
24
30
CO
CO
30
30
24

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

455

108
72
4S
60
72
90
00
72
60
48
90
72
72
60
48
48
54
SO
30
24

150
72
72
48
GO
80
30
24
24
24

103
72
60
48
86
24
90
60
48
36
24
30

120
48
72
48

180

120

120
72
72

180
72
72
72
48
48

120

. eo

3 .

12
100 '

24
120

80
120

Gd.

6
6
G
6
6
6
6

£2 14
1 10
1 4
1 10

1 10

2 5
1 10
1 10
1 10

1 4

2 5
1 10
1 10
1 10
1 4
1 4
1 7
0 18
0 18

0 12
4 7

1 10
1 10
1 4

1 10
'O 18
0 18
0 12
0 12

0 12

2 14

1 10

1 10
14
0 18

0 12

2 5

1 10
1 4
0 18
0 12

0 18

3 0

1 4
1 10
1 4

4 10
3 0

3 0
1 10
1 10

4 10
1 10
1 10
1 10
1 4
1 4
3 0
1 10

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
6
0
0
0
0
0

0 '

•0

()

StTftwsnn ........

t ^
&

CuUoder ,

Ward

rvines

Humfry

Young

<ti

Penn

o a

Holliday

Muggeridge

af 2

Fislier

Goode

« i

Smith

'Uo

Roberts

O H

Pilkington ....

Lindsey

Davcock

^Moulton

^Roberts

Holland

Ballard

Brown

Mills

§ 1

Giles

Spooner

Green

Bamham

^ Price

§2

s u
6

^Plummer

Steers

Clare

Garlick

Hudson

^ Jones

(■F<^<*Tnftn

§3

Smith

^^1

GUes

Davis

<S5

.Flushman

Shelley

ip^

Richaidson

Norris .....

fiS

Smith

Dyer

^'MftTininjf . . .

lines ...

Roflcworthy

Tyler

o<j

^Munsliin

fPearce

Fiddcman

Sims

Smithers

Rooko

k James

ls«

Ridgeway

Binncv

Tntal fnr <^uroAit

niijbtmen ....

2002

14900

d&4

10,002

0&7d.

455 15

^54

27
•18

•<)4

■ 86

£^7480

4Si6

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

DUST AND OTHER CONTRACTORS ENGAGED AS NIQHTMEN.

Darke

Cooper . . •

Dodd

Starkey . . .
Williams. , .

Beyer

Gore

Limpus . . .
Emmerson.
Duggins . . .
Bugbee . . .

Gould

Reddin . . .
Newman . . .

Tame

Sinnot

Tomkins . . .
Cordroy . . .
Samuels . . .
Eobinson .

Bird

Clarke

Brown

Bonner . . .

Guess

Jefines . . .
Ryan . . . . .

Hewitt

Leimming .

ElUs

Monk

Phillips ...

Porter

Dubbins . . .

Taylor

NichoUs . . ,
Freeman. . .
Pattison . . .
Rawlins . . .
Watkins . . ,
Liddiard . . .
Farmer . . ,
Francis . . ,
Chadwick ,
Perkins . .
Culverwell ,

Rutty

Crook . . . . ,
M'Carthy
Bateman..
Boothe . .

Wood

Calvert . .
Tilley ....
Abbott . . ,

Potter

Church . . ,
Humphries
Jackson . .
Batterbury

Loads.

Pence

300

200

300

1800

1200

300

1800

1200

250

1500

1000

200

1200

800

150

900

600

200

1200

800

200

1200

800

150

900

600

360

2160

1440

250

1500

1000

200

1200

800

200

1200

800

200

1200

800

300

1800

1200

200

1200

800

200

1200

800

150

900

600

150

900

600

100

COO

400

100

600

400

100

600

400

100

600

400

150

900

600

100

600

400

200

1200

800

360

240

100

600

400

300

200

100

600

400

150

900

600

250

1000

200

1200

800

150

900

600

100

600

400

250

1000

100

600

400

200

1200

«00

150

900

COO

200

1200

800

100

600

400

250

1500

1000

150

900

COO

200

1200

800

480

320

100

600

400

150

900

600

100

600

400

300

200

100

600

400

250

1500

1000

100

600

400

150

900

600

200

1200

800

100

600

400

250

1500

1000

100

600

400

200

1200

800

100

600

400

300

200

£ s. d.

10 0 0

CO 0 0

50 0 0

40 0 0

30 0 0

40 0

40
30
72
50
40
40

20
20

20
40
12

20
33
20

40
20
50
30

20
30
20

30
40

50
20
40
20
10

40 0
CO 0

20 0
20 0

30 0

20 0

10 0

20 0

30 0

40 0
30 0

40 0
16 0

40 0

40 0 0

30 0 0

30 e 0

30 0 0

10 0

20 0

50 0

20 0 0

£ «.
157 10
945 0
945 0
787 10
030 0
472 10
630 0
030 0
472 10
1134 0
787 10
C30
C30
630
945
630
C30
472

472 10

315 0
315 0
315 0
315 0
472 10
315 0
C30 0
189 0
315 0
157 10
315 0
472 10
625 0
630 0
472 10
315 0
525 0
315 0
630 0
472 10
630 0
315 0
787 10
472 10
630 0
252 0
315 0
472 10
315 0
357 10
315 0
787 10
315 0
472 10
630 0
315 0
787 10

315 0
630 0

316 0
157 10

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

457

Smith

Perkins

Rose

Croot

Speller

Piper

North

Crocker

Tingey

Jones

Whitten

Webbon

Ryder

Wright

Dnckett

Elworthy

Slee

Adams

Gutteris

Martainbody . . .

Nicholson

Menrs

Parsons

Kenning

Hooke

Michell

Walton

Evans

Walker

Hobman

Stevens

Jefl&7

Hiscock

Allen

Connall

Waller

Mallard

Miller

Barnes

Sharpe

Graham

Wellard

HolUs

Fletcher

Heame

Stapleton

Martin

Prett and Sewell

Jenkins

Westley

Bird

Gale

Porter

Wells

Hall

Kitchener

Wickham

Walker

Bindy

Styles

Kirtland

Kingston

Eldred

RambfOl

Mildwtter ,.,,%
Lorell

300

200

^10

Jei57 10

200

1200

800

630 0

300

200

157 10

150

900

COO

472 10

300

200

157 10

300

200

157 10

100

600

400

315 0

150

900

600

472 10

100

• 600

400

315 0

200

1200

800

030 0

300

1800

1200

945 0

150

900

000

472 10

100

600

400

315 0

150

900

COO

472 10

300

1800

1200

945 0

200

1200

800

030 0

200

1200

800

030 0

150

900

GOO

472 10

300

200

157 10

200

1200

800

030 0

100

000

400

315 0

100

600

400

315 0

150

900

COO

472 10

200

1200

800

030 0

250

1500

1000

787 10

100

600

400

315 0

200

1200

800

030 0

300

200

157 10

540

3eo

283 10

200

1200

800

630 0

250

1500

1000

787 10

150

900

COO

' 472 10

200

1200

800

630 0

100

000

400

315 0

100

COO

400

315 0

300

200

157 10

300

200

157 10

100

600

400

315 0

150

900

COO

472 10

100

600

400

315 0

150

900

COO

472 10

100

600

400

315 0

300

200

157 10

150

900

600

472 10

100

600

400

315 0

300

200

■ 157 10

200

1200

800

630 0

300

1800

1200

945 0

200

1200

800

630 0

150

900

600

472 10

100

600

400

315 0

200

1200

800

630 0

100

600

400

815 0

200

1200

800

630 0

250

1500

1000

787 10

150

900

COO

472 10

100

600

400

815 0

200

1200

800

630 0

100

600

400

815 0

250

1500

1000

787 10

100

600

400

815 0

100

600

400

815 0

150

900

600

472 10

250

1500

1000

787 10

860

240

180 0

100

600

400

815 0

458

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

Clarkson ,

Rhodes ,

Pine

Monk

Gabriel ,

Packer

Crawley

Easton

Marsland

East

Turtle

Fuller

Taylor

Ginnow

Peakes ,

FleckeU

Cook

Stewart

Cooper

Bentley

Harford

Litten

Mills

Voy ,

Cortman ,

Forster ,

Davison

Williams

Draper

Claxton ,

Robertson

Cornwall

Price

Milligan

West

Wilson

Lawn

Oakes

Joliffe

Liley

Treagle

Coleman

Brooker ,

Dignam

Hillier ,

Simmonds

Penrose ,

Jordan

Macey

Williams

Palmer

Anderson ,

George ,

Hasleton

Willis

Farringdon

Doyle

Lamb

Bolton

Lovelock.

Ashfield

Braithwaite

Total for Dust and other

Contractors engaged as

Niglitmen

lOO

900

600

100

COO

400

200

1200

800

250

1500

1000

100

COO

400

200

1200

800

250

1500

1000

150

900

GOO

150

900

GOO

100

600

400

200

1200

800

200

1200

800

100

.COO

400

150

900

GOO

150

9U0

GOO

300

200

800

200

100

GOO

400

100

GOO

400

200

1200

800

200

1200

800

100

COO

400

150

000

GOO

100

GOO

400

800

200

100

GOO

400

150

900

GOO

250

1500

1000

200

1200

800

100

GOO

400

300

200

100

GOO

400

150

900

GOO

200

1200

800

250

1500

1000

100

GOO

400

100

COO

400

300

200

150

900

GOO

100

GOO

400

120

720

480

. 50

300

200

1200

800

200

1200

800

150

900

GOO

150

900

GOO

100

GOO

400

200

1200

800

100

000

400

150

900

GOO

200

1200

800

100

COO

400

200

1200

800

300

200

250

1500

1000

300

200

100

GOO

400

100

GOO

400

200

1200

800

250

1500

1000

300

200

100

GOO

400

27,820

139,100

101,240

Srf.

^30

^472 10

315 0

030 0

787 10

315 0

G30 0

787 10

472 10

315 0

G30 0

315 0

472 10

157 10

315 0

030 0

315 0

472 10

315 0

157 10

. 20

315 0

472 10

787 10

030 0

315 0

157 10

315 0

472 10

C30 0

787 10

315 0

316 0

157 10

472 10

313 0

378 0

157 10

G30 0

472 10

315 0

630 0

315 0

472 10

C50 0

315 0

030 0

157 10

787 10

157 10

315 0

31>3 0

030 0

787 10

157 10

315 0

£5590 13 4

£73,027 10

LOXDOy LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

MASTER-BRICKLAYERS ENGAGED AS NIGHTMEN.

459

Albon ....
Danver . .

Buck

Aldred. . . .
Bowler . .
Deacon . .
Barrett . .
Elmes . . . .
Gray . . . .
Emmerton
Coleman . .
Belchier . .
Wade ....
Turner ..
Sutton . . . .
Cutmore . .
Plowman. .
Brockwell
Bellamy . .
Janes . . . .
Higg8 ....
Avery , . . .
Bailey . . . .
Pitman . .
Hosier. . . .
Chambers
Turner ,.
Sutton.. ..
Phenix . .
Elsden . ,
Fuller . . . .
Heath....

Beach

Jones . . . .
Gilbert ..
Green . . . .
King ....
Parker. . . .
Kelsey....
Palmer . .
Sinclair ..
Peck ....
Young. . . ,
Winter , ,
Wolfe ....
Taber . . . .
KeUow ..
Mercer •,
OsweU....
MaUett .
Handley .
Ban ....
Atldnsoa..
Dennis ,.
FonUuun. <
>Yigmore.,

111

^i5«

Loads.

<'S^-

100

GOO

400

bs. en.

150

900

000

540

3G0

>»

150

900

COO

))

150

900

COO

250

1500

1000

»»

200

1200

800

* «

540

360

»>

100

000

400

150

900

600

100

600

400

250

1500

lOOO

200

1200

800

>»

100

GOO

400

150

900

COO

200

1200

800

150

900

COO

200

1200

800

j»

200

1200

800

300

200

300

200

100

600

400

150

900

COO

200

1200

800

150

900

600

150

900

COO

100

COO

400

150

000

COO

480

320

300

200

1200

800

200

1200

800

480

320

100

GOO

400

250

1500

1000

100

GOO

400

250

1500

1000

150

900

000

200

1200

800

250

1500

1000

100

GOO

400

2(K)

1200

800

300

200

100

600

400

540

3(iO

300

200

100

000

400

150

900

000

250

1500

looo

540

300

180

1080

720

150

ooe

coo

200

1200

soo

250

1500

looo

100

COO

400

150

000

600

£ ;«,

12 10

18 15

11 Ty

16 15

M li>

ai 5

•^5 0

11 5

12 10
18 15
12 10
31 5
25 0
12 10
18 15
25 0

l•^ 10

18 15
2) 0
18 15
18 15
1^ 10

18 15

19 0
6 5

25 e
25 e

10 0
12 10
31 5
12 10
31 5
18 15
25 0
31 5
12 10
25 0

6 5
12 10

11 5
6 5

12 10
18 15
81 5

11 5
22 10
18 15
25 0
31 3

12 10
18 15

£ t.

315 0
472 10
283 10
472 10
472 10
787 10
C30 0
283 10
815 Q
472
315
787
630
815
472
G30
472
<J30

Gno

157
IW 10
ai-5 0
472 10
«30 0
472 10
472 10

0
10

10
0
0
0
0

10
0

10
0
0

^15
472
252
137 10

€30 0
630
1252
•315

78:
315

787

0
0
0

10
0

10
472 10
C30 0
787 10
315 0
630 fl
157 10
315 0
283 10
157 10
313 0
472 10
787 10
1283 10

3trr 0

•472 10
630 0
787 10
315 0
472 10

400 LONl
Eicketts

WN LABOUR AND THE LONDON

POOR.

Je37 10
81 5
12 10
37 10
22 10
12 10

6 5
12 10
18 15
31 5
31 5
12 10
18 15
IH 15
37 10
18 i5
25 0
12 10

0 5
31 5
12 10
37 10
18 15
31 5
25 0

0 5
12 10
12 10
12 10
31 5
37 10
12 10
31 5
12 10
18 15
25 0
31 5
37 10

0 5
12 10
25 0
31 5
18 15
37 10
25 0
18 35
25 0
12 10
37 10
37 10

0 5
25 0
18 15
37 10
31 5
12 10
25 0
31 5
18 15
37 10
31 5
37 10
18 15

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0
0

b
b
0 '
0
0

b
b
b
b
b

b
b

0
0
0
0
0
0-

0
0
0
0
0
0

JE945 0

787 10

315 0

945 0

507 0

815 0

157 10

815 0

472 10

787 10

315 0

472 10

945 0

472 10

630 0

315 0

157 10

787 10

315 0 ..

945 0
'742 10
'787 10

630 0

157 10

315 0

815 0

787 10

945 0

3i5 0

787 10

315 0

472 10

630 0
■ 787 10

945 0

157 10

315 0

630 0

VSV 10

472 10

945 0

630 0

472 10

63b 0

315 0

945 0

157 10

630 0

472 10

945 0 *

V87 10

315 0

630 0

"787 10

472 10

945 0

787 10
■ "945 0

472 10

300
250
100
800
180
100
50
100
150
250
250
100
150
]50
300
150
200
100
50
250
100
300
150
250
200
50
100
100
100
250
300
100
250
100
150
200
250
300
50
100
200
250
150
300
200
150
200
100
800
300
50
200
150
300
250
100
200
250
150
300
250
300
150

1800
1500
600
1800
1080

6oo

300

600

900

15(X:)

1500

600

900

1800

900

1200

600

300

1500

600

1800

900

1500

1200

3(K)

600

000

1500

3800

600

1500

600

900

1200

1500

1800

300

600

1200

1500

900

1800

1200

900

1200

000

1800

300

1200

900

1800

1500

000

1200

1500

900

1800

1500

1800

900

4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4

4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4

1200

1000
400

1200
720
400
200
400
600

1000

1000
400
000
COO

1200
000
800
400
200

1000
400

1200
GOO

1000
800
200
400
400
400

lOOO

1200
400

1000
400
COO
800

1000

1200
200
400
800

1000
000

1200
800
COO
800
400

1200

1200
200
800
000

1200

1000

400

800

1000

000

]200

1000

1200

600

5s. ea.
»>

»»
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»»
»
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5s.

Linnegar

Price

James

WiUs

Templar

ToUey

Smallman

Macey

Li\Tnnore

Oakham

Rudd

Kenidge

Perrin

Thomas

INIoore

Reeves

Pearson

Stolleiy

Connew

Floyd

Gilbert

Carter ,

Clayden

Bibbinor

Dunn

Howell

Fursey

Archer

Hart

Cole

Essex

Hinton

Wiseman

Unwin

Treharne

Havenny

"Williams

Plant

Linfield

Morris

Buck

Hadnutt

Douglas

Hogden

M'Currey

Wame

Whitechurch

Stevenson

Izard

Jones

Rutley

Prichard

Watts

Woodcock

Morland

Brown

Hughes

Total for Master-Brick-
layers engaged as
ib^ightmen ,

19,880

1 99,400

59,520

je2,485

Je52,185 0

THE ONE-LEGGED SWEEPER AT CHANCERY-LANE.

[From a Photograph.]

Page 488.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

SUMMARY OF THE ABO^^E TABLE.

IGl

MASTER-SWEEPS EMPLOYED
AS NIGHTMEN IN

*.sf

S55

"SS

>- ^

^ >,

as
I?

9 3 S

§28

Total Amount
pnid to IMastii--
Nightmcii during
the Year for cnip-
tyiug Cesspools.

Kensmgton

Chelsea

Westminster

St. Martin's

Marjlebone

Paddington

Hampstead

Islington

St. Pancras

Hackney , .^

St. Giles's and St. George's,
Bloomsbnry ^

Strand

Holbom

Clerkenwell

St. Lake's ^^

East London

West London

London, City

Shoreditch

Bethnal-grecn

Whitechapel

St. George's-in-Uie-East

Stepney

Poplar

St. Olave's, St. Saviour's, and
St. George's, Southwark . .

Bermondsey

Walworth and Newington . .

Lambeth

Christclmreh, Lambeth ....

Wandsworth and Battcrsea . .

Eotherhithe

Greenwich and Deptford ....

Woolwich

Lewishara

Total for Sweeps employed as
Nightmen

Totalfor Dost and other Con.
tractors employed as Night-
men

Total for Bricklayers employed
SLA Nightman

Gross Total

140

180

155

107

l:j

226

172

152

157

r>4

214

2,992

188

27,820

119

10,880

521

50,692

Loads
240
700
900
170
775
535
80
410

1,130
445

800
150
370
390
340
460
320
440
475
310
330
760
400
240

785
300
355
455
290
215
270
470
410
150

14,960

139,000
09,400

253,960

3<fc4

3&4

8cfe4

3 &4

3&4

3ct4
3

3 & 4

3 &4

3 it 4

3 &4

8 &4
3&4

8 &4
3

3 &4
3

3dj4

3&4

3 «fc4

3 &4

3«fe4

3&4

4
4

3&4

Pence.
G & 7
6ife7
0

0 &7
U
0
0

0 k 7
6 &7

6 &7

6 j;; 7

6 &7

{) &7

0 &7

6 1-7

55. a night

6</. Id. &

Brf. per Id.

& 5.*. per

night.

£ s.

120 0

350 0

450 0

85 0

387 10 0

207 10 0

40 0 0

205 0 0

75 0
185 0

220 0
237 10
170 0
165 0

505 0 0
222 JO 0

430 0 0

195 0 0

170 0 0

230 0 0

100 0 0

380 0 0
200 0 0
120 0 0

392 10 0

150 0 0

177 10 0

227 10 0

145 0 0

107 10 0

135 0 0

235 0 0

205 0 0

75 0 0

7,480 0 0

72,027 0 0
52,185 0 0

131,092 10 0

402

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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464

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Curious and ample as this Table of Refuse is
— one, moreover, perfectly original — it is not
suflicieut, by the mere range of figures, to
convey to the mind of the reader a full com-
prehension of the ramified vastness of the
Second-Ilaud trade of the metropolis. Indeed
tables are for reference more than for the
cuiTcnt information to be yielded by a his-
tory or a narrative.

I will, therefore, ofier a few explanations in
elucidation, as it were, of the tabular return.

I must, as indeed I have done in the accom-
panying remarks, depart from the order of the
details of the table to point out, in the first
instance, the paiticulars 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, ami
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. TJae articles used to pi-o-
tect us from the rain, or the too-powerful rays
of the sun, ore 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, stiU pursuing the round-number system.
would supply nearly Jive articles of refuse
apparel to every man, woman, and child in this,
the greatest metropolis of the world.

I -svill 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
ti'ade in old clothes was almost entirely in the
bauds of the City Jews, the others prosecut-
ing the same calling in difierent parts of
London having been " Wardrobe Dealers,"
chiefly women, (who had not unfrequently
been the servants of the ai'istocracy) ; and
even these wardrobe dealers sold much that was
woi-n, 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 canied tlieir stock, and who were able
to pm'chase on a larger scale than the general
itinerants. Now, supposing that even one
twelfth of these 12,000 Israelites wei'e en-
gaged in the old-clothes trade (which is far
beyond the mark), each man would have
twelve hundred and twenty-five articles to dis-
pose of yearly, all second-hand !

Perhaps the most curious trade is that in
waste paper, or as it is called by the street col-
lectors, in " waste," comprising eveiy kind of
used or useless periotlical, and books in all
tongues. I may call the attention of my read-
ers, byway of illustrating the extent of this busi-
ness in what is proverbially refu'^e "waste pa-
per," 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 fasten-
ing, will not exceed half-an-ounce, and is con-
veyed to the Oi-kneys and tlie further isles of
Shetland, the Hebi'ides, the Scilly and Chwi-
nel Islands, the isles of Achill and Cape Clear,
off the western and southern coasts of Ire-
land, or indeed to and from the most extreme
points of the United Kingdom, and no matter
what distance, provided the letter be posted
withizi the United Kingdom, for a jicnuy.
The weight of waste or refuse paper annually
disposed of to the street collectors, or rather
buyers, is 1,:J97,7C0 lbs. Were this toiuiage,
as I may call it, for it comprises 12,4:80 tons
yearly, to be distributed in half-ounce letters,
it would supply material, as respects weight,
for fori ij -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 figiure 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 imcared 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 — ihe 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 Eugfene Sue has seen that
done in Paris; and I once, very early on a
summer's morning, saw some apparently house-
less 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 tho
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 l,4O0,r)92/. for the second-hand com- I
modities I have described in the foregoing
pages; or as something like a minimum is
given, both as to the number of the goods
and tlie price, we may fairly put this total at a
million and a half of pounds sterling 1

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

465

CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

Thai portion of the London street-folk who ;
earn a scanty living by sweeping crossings j
constitute a lai-ge 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," witliout meet-
ing 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 adrantages 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 sohciting gi-atuities 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 ^ith
this subject is what constitutes the ^^ property y"
so to speak, in a crossing, or the riglU to sweep a
pathway across a certain thorouglifare. A no-
bleman, whohas been one of herMajesty'sMin-
isters, whilst conversing \^-ith me on the sub-
ject of crossing-sweepers, expressed to me the
curiosity he felt on the subject, saving 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-sweepei*s arc,
in a measure, imder the protection of the
police. If the accommodation aflbrded 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 civaL 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 roe his
statement, had even solicited the authority of
the inhabitants before ho applied to the in-
spector at the station-house.

If a erossmg have been vacant for some
time, another sweeper may take to it; but
should the original proprietor again make his
appearanee, the ofiBcer on duty will generally

re-establish him. One man to whom I spoke,
had fixed himself on a crossing wliich for
years another sweeper had kept clean on tho
Sunday morning only. A dispute ensued ; tho
one claimant pleading his long Sabbath pos-
session, and the other his continuous every-
day service. The quarrel was referred to tho
police, who decided that he who was oftener
on the ground was the rightful OAvner; and
the option was ^ven to the foi-mor 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 trades-
man having, at his own expense, caused a
paved footway to be laid down over the Maca-
damized 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
tho "clients" visiting their house, but to open
and shut the doors of the caniages calling at
the house.

Concerning the causes tchich lead or drive
people to this occupation, they aro 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 resoui'ce
left open to them of earning a hring, and
they considered even the scanty subsistence
it yields preferable to that of the work-
house. The greater proportion of crossing-
sweepers are tliose who, from some bodily in-
firmity or injury, aro prevented from a nioro
laborious mode of obtaining tbeir living.
Among the bodily infirmities the chief ore old
age, asthma, and rheumatism ; and the in-
juries mostly consist of loss of limbs. Many
of tlio rheumatic sweepers have been brick-
layers' labourers.

Tho classification of crossing-sweepers is
not very complex. They may be divided into
the casual and the regular.

By tho casual I mean such as pursue the
occupation only on certain days in the week, as,
for instance, those who make tlielr appearance
on the Sunday morning, as woll as the boys
who, broom in hand, travel about the streets,
sweeping before the foot-passengers or stop.
ping 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 comers of

466

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

streets or squares ; and I have met with some
■nho 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 help-
ing in the packmg-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 Icnives, boots, windows,
&c.

It is not at all an unfrequeAt 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 valae for chance customers,
for were it not for the regular charity of the
householders, it would be deserted. Broken
victuals and old clothes also foi*m part of a
sweeper's means of li\-ing; nor ai-e the clothes
always old ones, for one or two of this class
have for years been in the habit of ha\ing new
suits presented to them by the neighbours at
Christmas.

The irregular sweepers mostly consist of
boys and guis who have formed themselves
into a kind of company, and come to an agree-
ment to work together on the same crossings.
The principal resort of these is about Trafal-
gar-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 pri\ileged. 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 cany homo 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 ser-
vants 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 cross-
ing-sweepers are difficult to estimate — gener-
ally speaking — that is, to sti-ike the average
for the entire class. An erroneous idea pre-
vails that crossing-sweeping is a lucrative em-
ployment. 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 tlie present generation. I have met
with some who, in fonner days, took their 3/.
weekly ; and there are but few I have spoken
to who would not, at one period, have con-
sidered fifteen shillings a bad week's work.
But now " the takings'' ai*e very much reduced.
The man who was known to this class as hav-
ing been the most prosperous of all — for fi-om
one nobleman alone he received an allowance
of seven shillings and sixpence weeldy — as-
sured me that twelve shillings a-week was the
average of his present gains, taking the year
round; wliilst 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 ratlier an over than an under calcula-
tion ; 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 aver-
age taking; and, indeed, in proof of their
poverty, they refer you to the workhouse autho-
rities, who allow them certain quartern-loaves
weekly. The old stories of delicate suppers
and stockings full of money have in the pre-
sent day no foundation of truth.

The black crossing-sweeper, who bequeathed
500/, to jMiss Waithman, would almost seem
to be the last of the class whose earnings Avere
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 Caven-
dish or Portman, every comer has been seized
upon. Again, in the principal thoroughfares,
nearly every street has its crossing and at-
tendant.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

L07

I.— OF THE ADULT CROSSING-
SWEEPERS.

A, The Abie-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 Ftmalcs
of the same class ; and afterwards deal with
the Able-bodied Irish (male and female), who
take to the London causeways for a li%'ing.
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
caUing.

1. The AjBLE-BoniED Male Crossikq-
sweepers.

The " Abistocratic " Crossing-Sweeper.

"Belly" is the popular name of the man
who for many years has swept the long
crossing that cuts off one comer of Caven-
dish-square, making a •* short cut" from Old
Cavendish-street to the Duke of Portland's
mansion.

BiUy 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 ofi'with a moist
chuckle.

His clothes have that peculiar look which
arises from being often wet tlirough, 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 trj-ing 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 ray 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 Go<l-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 un-
mistakably sincere ; and when he had occasion
to allude to them, he always delivered his
opinion upon the late war^caliing it '^ a-cut-and

nm alfau', ' and saj-ing that it was " nothing at
all put alongside with the old wai', when the
hallpence 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 bom 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. IVIy
mother went thcrG 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 bom in Caveudish-square, and I've worked
in Caveudish-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. Botli mother and
myself sold water-creases after my Lord Bess-
borough died ; for whilst he lived she wouldn't
leave him not for notliing.

" W^e 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
goto.

" The reason why I took to a crossing was, 1
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 noble-
man in the land, and that's a fine thing, ain't
it? So as water-creases had fell off till they
wasn't a hving 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 my-
self /'// do that, and I fixed upon Cavendish-
square, because, I said to myself, I'm knoAvn
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
eigh teen-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 half-
pence I was give that afternoon. I had such a

408

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

]ot, upon my word, tliey broke my pocket. I
didn't know the money was altered, but a fish-
monger saya to me, ' Have you got any old
silver ?' I said ' Yes, I've got a hat full ; ' and
then saj^s 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 tlie horses out of
her caniage and pulled her along. She kept
a chucking money out of the cai'riage, 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 soiTy after I did. She was a good woman,
she was. The Yallers, tliat is, the king's partj^
was agin her, and pulled up the paving-stones
when her fimeral 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 Minders 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 Harcomi; 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 78. Crf. a-week, which
was Is. a-day and Is. Qd. for Sundays. He was
a little short man, and a very good man he was
too, for it wam'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
gi\ing me something. He was at the comer
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.

*' Di'. C and his lady, they, likewise, was

very Icind 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. Tlie

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 luiow 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 fiiends 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
beautifid 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 eveiy 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 ci'own,

and I goes to the butler for it. Pretty near
all my friends gives me a box, them as knows

LONDOX LABOUR ASJ) THE LONDON POOR.

4C9

me, and tliey say, ' Here's a Christmas box,
JJilly.'

" Last Christmas -day I took 3Cs., and that
^yas 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/. in
old times, all in old silver and halfpence ;
that was in the old war, and not this run-
away shabby affair.

" Every Sunday I have sixpence regular

ft'om Lord H , whether he's in to^vn or

not, I goes and fetches it. Mrs. D , of

H^rley-sti-eet, she gives me a shilling every
Sunday when she's in town ; and the parents
as knows me give halfpence to their little gu-ls
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 2s. or 2s. Crf. on the Sunday. Last
Sunday I only took Is. 3rf., 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 5s. safe
on a Sunday, or perhaps Cs. — for you see it's
all like a lottery.

" I should like you to mention Lady Mild-
may in Grosvenor-square, sir. "Whenever I
goes to see her — but you know I don't go
often — I'm safe for 5s., 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. "Wlien 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 licr
whatsumever — and she never sacks her ser-
vants.

" 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/. 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 couldnt guess the name of, they was so
Frenchified. When the fam'Ues is in town I
get« a good lot of food given me, but you
know when the nobility and gentlemen are
away tho servants is on board wages, and cuss
tliom 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
ill. y. sir? I liiill never live to be that. They
an- I:ill^' iti St. Jdin's Wood cemetery along
with many of uiy 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#. 6</. a-year for keeping up the graves

of each of my parents, and Is. 'ij. for my
brothers.

" Thero was the Earl of Gainsborough as I
should like you to mention as well, please sir.
He lived in Chandos-stroet, and was a pai*-
ticular nice man and very roligious. He al-
ways gave me a shilling and a ti-act. Well,
you see, I c/irf often read tlie tract; they was
all religious, and about where your souls was
to go to — very good, you know, what there
was, very good ; and ho used to buy 'em whole-
sale at a little shop, comer of High -street,
Marrabun. Ho was a very good, kind gentle-
man, and gave away such a deal of money
tliat he got reg'lar known, and tho 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 sold out — and it was a
kind soul, too — to be follered about by a mob.

" When all the fam'lics is in town I has lis.
a-week reg'lar as clock-work from my friends
as lives round the square, and when they're
away I don't get Grf. a-day, and sometimes I
don't get Id. a- day, and that's less. You

see some of 'em, like my Lord B , is out

eight months in tho year; and some of 'em,

such as my Lord H , is only thi-ee. Then

Mrs. D , she's away three months, and she

always gives Is. a-weck reg'lar when she's up
in London.

" I don't talce 4s. a-week on tho crossing.
Ah ! I wish you'd giro me 4s. for what I take.
No, I make up by going of eirands. I runs
for the fam'lics, 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 83L to caiTy for
the Duke of Portland.

" Aye, that was a go — that was! You sec
the hall-porter had had it give to hira to cai'ry
to tho bank, and ho gets me to do it for him ;
but the vallct 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
Holbom, 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/. reward for me, and sends the police ; but
Mr. Freebrothcr, Lord George's wallet, he
says, ' I'll make it all right, ]3illy.' They sent
up to my poor old people, and says father,
' Billy wouldn't rob anybody of a nightcap,
much more 60/.' 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 lie, ' 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 ho.
Then I pulls it out ; and says the porter, ' It's
a lark of Ercebrother's.' So he gave me 21.

No. LIIL

E E

470

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 every-
body earned 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 Dur-
ham'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 stop into the pan-
try?' ' Oh, yes,' says I, and shows him in.
Bless you I 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 doAvu, 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 21. 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 lilce,' 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 ' BUly, 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 45. a-week for two rooms, one np
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 I*, and sometimes Is. 6rf. 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 tlie post — that's it — anythink of that
kind. They gives mo just what they can, Id.
or 2rf. 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 4s. a-week rent, and I dare say
my food, morning and night, costs me a Is.
a-day — aye, I'm sure it does, morning and
night. At present I don't make 12s. a-week ;
but take the year round, one week with an-
other, it might come to 13s. or 14s. a-week I
gets. Yes, I'll own to that.

" Christmas ismy best time ; then I gets more
than 1/. a-week : now I don't take 4s. 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
comer. 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 lOrf. 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 mucky-
dam (macadamising) was tm-ned 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 shiUing.
I does only my side, and that next Ox-
ford-street. I don't go to the others, un-
less somebody comes and orders me — for
fair play is fair play — and they belongs to

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

471

the other sweepers. I does my part and tliey
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 carrj'
boxes up gentlemen's houses, but when I
was young I found plenty to do that way.
There's a man at the comer of Chandos-
fitreet, and he does the most of that kind of
work."

The Bearded Crossing-Sw-eepee at the
Exchange.

Since the destruction by fire of the Royal
Exchange in 1638, there has been added to the
curiosities of Comhill 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. Aft«r half-an-hour's conver-
sation, 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 measiure 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
Jcnot; his long iron-grey beard is accompa-
nied by a healthy and almost ruddy face. He
stands against the post all day, saying no-
thing, and taking what he can get ^vithout
fiolicitation.

When I first spoke to him, he wanted to
Jcnow to what purpose I intended applying
■the information that he was prepared to af-
ford, and it was not \uitil I agreed to walk
with him as far as St Mary-Axe that I
was enabled to obtain his statement, as fol-
lows : —

" I've had this crossing ever since '38. The
Exchange was burnt down in that year. Why,
fiir, I was wandering about trying to get a
4mist, and it was very sloppy, so I took and
got a broom ; and while I kept a clean cross.
ing, I used to get ha'pence and pence. I got
a dockman's wages — that's half-a-crown a-day ;
sometimes only a shilUng, 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 jpood Christmas, but I dont
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 Ujbacco.

** I have been a sailor, and tlie 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 gnardship — 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 181G, in the Superb. I was in the Koch-
fort, 74, up the Mediterranean (they call it up
the Mediterranean, but it was the Malta sta-
tion) three yeai-s, ten months, and twenty
days, until the ship was paid ofl'.

" 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 chafi'ed by sober people.
Drunken men I don't care for; I never listen
to 'em, unless they handle me, and then, al-
though I am sixty-three this very day, sir, I
think I could show them something. I do
cai-ry 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 crossmg
is idle work, make a great mistake. In wet
weather, the traflSc that makes it gets sloppy
as soon as it's cleaned. Cabs, and 'busses,
and carnages continually going over the cross-
ing 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.

" 1 don't come to the same crossing on
Sundays; I go to the comer 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 whis-

472

LO^'DON LABOUR AKD THE LONDON POOR.

kers. I went to n gentleman then, an artist,
and he did pay nie ^\ell. He advised me to
grow mustarshers and tlie beai'd, 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. AVe has a jiound of bread, a quarter of
an ounce of tea, and perhaps a I'ed hen*ing.

" I've had a weakness in my legs for two
year ; the veins comes do^vai, 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. Wlien
you only have a bit of bread and a cup of tea
— no meat, no vegetables — you lind it oat;
but I'm as upright as a dait, 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, 'speci-
ally 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 bui'ned
when many another would use them."

The Sweepee in Porthan Square, who got
Permission from the Police.

A wild-looking man, w^th long straggling
grey hair, which stood out from his head as if
he brushed it the wrong way; and whiskers
so thick and ciu-ling that they reminded one
of the wool round a sheep's face, gave me the
accompanying history.

He was very fond of making xise 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 ho-
nest cvuTUst (crust) at it, for I've got a crip-
pled 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 — fori
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 Londun. 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 v/ith my overtime I've
had twenty shilling, or even twenty-three shil-
ling. Bricklayers is paid according to all the
hours they works beyond ten, for that's the
bricklayer's day.

" I was among the hrae, 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 lingers are like bits of
stick, and you can't bend 'em without breaking
them.

" When I couldn't lay hold of anj-thing, 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 cuiTUst. 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 neighboiars persuaded me that
I should pick up a good currust at a crossing.
The man who had been on my crossing Avas
gone dead, and as it was empty, I went down
to the police-office, in Marylebone Lane, and
they told me I miglit 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 liv-
ing, I can assure you. When I went to it first,
I done pretty fair for a currust ; but it's only
three shilhngs 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

allow me anything. When the families is in
town sometimes tliey give me half-a- crown, or
sixpence, now and then, perhaps once a fort-
night, or a month. They've got footmen and
senant-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. Some-
times I get a shilling, and when the families
is in town eighteen pence. But when tlie
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."

AnOTHEK WHO OOT PERMISSION TO S\VEEP.

An old Irishman, who comes from Cork, was
spoken of to us as a ci-ossing-sweeper who had
formally obtained permission before exercising
his calUng ; but I found, upon questioning
him, that it was but little more thpai a ti'ue
Hibemiaii piece of conciliation on his part ;
and, indeed, that out of fear of competition,
lie had asked leave of the servants and police-
man in the neighbom'hood.

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, foi we
meant to take it"

In reply to our questions, the man said, —

" I came here in Januaiy 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 paiish for that I
applied to Marabone, and tliey ofTered to sind
lue 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 himsili 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
stocl were in the coal-cellar at this comer

boose, Mr. 's, where he used to leave

them at night times, and they gave them up
to me; bat I didn't use the stool, sir, it might
be on obsthrnrtion to the passers-by ; and,
sir, it ! t was infinnunity. But, plaise

the L and make a stool for myself

agaiu»i iiM jiuid winter, I will, bein' a car-
penter by thrade.

" I didn't ask the gintIofolk«' permission to
eoBie hae, but I asked the police and the
8ef<v«DlB, and saoh tm that. I asked the ser-
voots at the comer-house. I don't know whi-
thar thQT ^ould have kept me away if I had

not asked. Soon after I came here tlie gin-
tlefolks — some of them — stopped and spoke
to me. ' So,' says they, ' you've taken the
place of the old man tliat's did ? ' ' Yes ,
I have,' says I. 'Very wUl,' says tliey, and
they give me a ha'penny. That was all that
occurred upon my takin' to the crossin'.

" But there were some otliei"s who would
have taken it if I had not ; they tould me I
was lucky in gottla' 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' oft' 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 niuepence
from another, and a little hilp from some of
the oLliei*s. I have siveu childer liviu', and
have had tin. They are very much scattered :
two are abroad ; one is in tlie tinth Hussars —
he is kind to me. The one who allows me
ninepence is a ba.sket-iuaker at Heading ; and
the shillin' I get from my duugliier, a sen'ant,
sir. One of my sous died iu the Crimmy;
he was in the 18tU Light Dragoons, and
died at Scutaii, 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 tiupence, '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 pin-
sioner like of theirs. I go to Somer's-town Cha-
pel, 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
palish, and, as sure as she comes back again,
she gives me a ha'penny — she does, indeed.
Sometimes tlie baker or the greengrocer gives
me a ha'penny for minding their baskets.

'I I'm perfectly satisfied ; it's no use to
grumble, and I might be worms oft", 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 tlie shadow of their doors."

A Third who asked Leave.

This one was a mild and rather intelligent
man, iu a well-worn black dress-coat and waist-
coat, a pair of "moleskin" trousers, and a

474

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

blue-and-white cotton neckerchief. I found i
him sweeping the crossing at the end of |
place, opposite the church. i

He eveiy now and then rogaled himself
with a pinch of snutT, which seemed to light
up his careworn face. He seemed veiy will-
ing to afford me information. He said : —

" I have been on this crossing four yeai-s.
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 inter-
fered 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 Hegent-stxeet,
at the comer 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 \ eiy
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?
Vvhy, sir, I had saved a little money, and
managed to get on somehow. Yes, I have
had my troubles, but I never had Avhat I call
great ones, excepting my wife's blindness.
She was blind, sir, for eleven year, and so I
had to tight for everything : she has been dead
two year, come September.

" I have seven children, five hoys and two
girls; they are all grown up and got families.
Yes, they ought, amongst them, to do some-
thing 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
fjood 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 rheu-
matic 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
leanng 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 ; ii:.people
were liberal I should make a good deal of
money.

" Sometimes, after I get home, I read a
book, if I can bori'ow one. Wliat do I read ?
Well, novels, when I can get them. What did
I read last night? Well, Rei/Holds's Miscel-
lany ; before that I read the Pilgrim's Progress.
I have read it three times over ; but there's
always something new in it.

" AVell, 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. Y'es, sir, I take snuff, Scotch and Rap-
pee, mixed. If I go without a meal of vic-
tuals, 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 i)i the morning ;
once a-day is quite enough for me. In the
afternoon, I generally take a wallc 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 Eegent-street Crossing-S^'eeper.

A MAN who had stationed himself at the end
of Eegent-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 sen^ant. His
costume was of that peculiar miscellaneous
description which showed that it had from
time to time been given to him in cliarity. A
dress - coat so marvellously tiglit that the
stitches were stretching open, a waistcoat with
a remnant of embroidery, and a pair of trou-
sers wliich wrinkled like a groom's top-boot,

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

-175

had all e\ndently been part of the wai-di-obe i
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 poition unoccupied by
the foot had gone flat and turned up like a
Turkish slipper.

He spoke with a tone and manner wliich
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 wrist-
band of his coat-sleeve a row of pius, an-anged
as neatly as in the papers sold at the mercei-s'.

"Since the Iiish have come so much — the
boys, I mean — my crossing has been com-
pletely cut up," he said ; " and yet it is in as
good a spot as coxild well be, from the Coimty
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.

'* 1 should think, ns 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 cross-
ing ; 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, jou 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 cha-
racter 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 sweep-
ers. The good times was thirty year back.
In the regular season, when tliey (the gentry)
are in town, I have taken from one and six-
pence to two shilHngs a-dny ; 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 liigh 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 pat down fourpence it would be nearer
the marie. 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
jmjUiiing in the portering line, or if I'm called

to do boots and shoes, or clean knives and
forks, then I does that. But tliat's only when
people's busy ; for I've only got one regular
place I goes to, and that's in A street, Pic-
cadilly. I goes messages, parcels, letters,
and anything that's requii'cd, 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 tlien they reckons me as safe as the Bank,
— there, that's just it.

" I got to the hotel only lately. Y''ou see,
when the peace was on and the soldiers was
coming home from the Crimmy, then the go-
vernor 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
v.hat I makes, it don't turn out reg'lai- ; Sun-
days a shilling or one - and - sixpence, other
days nothing qit 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 rai-
ment 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 Cajie Town, and the
English mans-of-war comes in at Simons'
ToTivii. I was a gentleman's servant over
there, and a veiy good place it was ; and if
anybody was to have told me years back tliat
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 {b England thinking to better
myself, if so be it was the opportunity ; be-
sides, I was tired of Africy, and anxious to see
my native land.

"I was vei-y hard up — ay, very hartt 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 Ist mo
work before the shop, and they give mfe 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

476

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 liko 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 tliat; it isn't a
broom as can keep a man now. They'r^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 Ckossixg-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 iu 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 remind-
ed 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 coloiu', and had turned
into a sort of duty green-grey hue. It con-
sisted of a waistcoat of tweed, fastened to-
gether 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 Avaistcoat, and on
the thighs of the pantaloons, the layers of
grease were so tlxick that the fibre of the cloth
was choked up, and it looked as if it had been
pieced with bits of leather.

Eubbing 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 thu-ty year. Ay, I'm as well known as
the statty itself, all about them parts at
Charing-cross. Afore I took to ci'ossing-
sweeping I was at coal-work. The coal-work I
did was backing and filling, and any think 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 — oyex-exaction

they called it. It left me so weak I wasn't
able to do nothink in the yards.

"I know ]^Ir. G , the fishmonger, and

iMi'. J , the publican. I should think INlr.

J has knowed me this eight-and-thiity-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 neigh-
bourhood. If there was anythink as Mr.

G 's men coiildn't do — such as can-ying

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-Avork, when I first come
out of the comitry. My own head first put me
up to the notion, and that's more than fifty
yeai' 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 cough-
ing). 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 cus-
tomers. 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 morn-
ing, 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 cross-
ing.

"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 shil-
ling a-week; and there's Captain E •, of

the Adm'ralty, he gives me sixpence a fort-
night; and another captain, of the name of

B, , he gives me fourpence every Sunday.

Ah ! I'd forgot Mr. 0 , the Secretary at the

Adm'ralty; he gives me sixpence now and
then. Besides, I do a lot of odd jobs for dif-
ferent 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 any-
think of that there. I has a bit of vittals, too,

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

477

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
aint a reg'lar one as anybody coxild 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 mo six-
pence every now and then when he come over.
I was near to my crossing when Mr. Drum-
mond 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 some-
think. The present Sir Eobert 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 any think 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 mem-
bers 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 clean-
ing 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 diflerence to
me, for people are afraid to cross for fear of
being run over. I'm forced to have my eyes
aboat me and dodge the wehicles. I never
heerd, as I can tell on, of a crossing-sweeper
being run over."

The Old Womak " ovbti the WATEn."

She is the widow of a sweep — " ns respectable
and 'dostrioos a man,' I was told, " as any in
the neighbourhood of the ' Borough ; ' he was
a sliort man, sir, — very short," said my in-
formant, " and had a weakness for top-boots,
white h«t«, and leather breeches," and in that
unsweeplike costume he would parade him-
self up and doi»-n the Dover and New Kent-
roods." He had a capital connexion (or, as
hi^ wido)W 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 cvirtsey, but is said to
be very strong in her " likes and dislikes."

She beax-s a good character, though some-
times 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 grati-
tude. Her statement was as follows : —

" Fifteen years I've been on the crossing,
come next Christmas. My husband died in
Guy's Hospital, of tlae cholera, three days
after he got in, and I took to the crossing somo
time after. I had nothing to do. I am eighty
years of age, and I couldii'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 &
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 gen-
tlefolks get very near now. People are not so
hberal 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 wash-
ing when I had my sti-ength, 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 mo tlio most, I'm sure ;
the ladies don't give me nothing.

" At Christmas I get a few things — a gentle-
man 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-swecp. 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

-178

LOXDOX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

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 dis-
tress '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 four-
pence, 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
di'op over my broom ■\\ith tiredness. Yes, sir,
I go to chiu-ch at St. George's in the Borough.
I go there every Sunday morning, after I leave
my roads. They've taken the organ and
chai-ity children away that used to be there
when I was a girl, so it's not a church now, its
a chapel. There's nothing but the preacher
and the gentlefolks, and they sings their own
psalms. There are gatherings at that church,
« but -^vh^thev }t'§ t)X th? }:9or or not I don't
kiioW. / don't get any of if:
■'■:■ " It ^^{is a gi-etit lt)^>3 tt) Ifcd wllen my husb.^Dd
died; 1 Avent all to ruin then. My father be-
longed to Scotland, at Edinboro'. My mother
came from Yorkshire. I don't know v/here
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 turn-
ing 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, ray husband
was a clever man; he had a good seat of busi-
ness. I lost my right hand when he died. I
couldn't carry it on. There v\'as 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 childi-en.
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 par-
don, 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 calls and coaches.

" Some days I goes to my crossing, and earns
nothink at all : other days it's sometimes four-
pence, sometimes sixpence. I earned four-
pence to-day, and I had a bit of snufi'out of it.
Why, I beheve I did j^earn fiveiDcnce yesterday
— I won't tell no story. I got ninepence on
Suudnj' — 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 mis-
lested 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.

" TT I Was to go into the House, 1 shouldn't
live three days. It's not that I eat much — a
very little is enough for me ; but it's the air 1
should miss: to be shut up like a thief, I
couldn't live long, I know.''

The Old Womak CpvOssing-Sweeper avho
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 cross-
ing-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 cai-neying tone, and con-
stant 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 oD-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

THE CEOSSING-SWEEPER THAT HAS BEEN A MAID-SERVANT.

[From a Photograph.]

rag« 479.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

47!)

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 comer of
my room for charity's sake. We must look
to one another : she's as poor as a chmch
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
fall 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 tlie
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
ninepeuce a-day. All my family are dead,
except my grandson, what's in New Orleans.
I expect him back tliis 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, hell be a gieat help to me. He's all
I've got left. I never had but two childi-en in
all my life.

" I Avorked in noblemen's houses before I
was married to my husband, who is dead;
but he came to be pool-, 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 six-
pence; 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 metke a do of it
somehow, but I've no mora strength left in
me tlum tJiig ould broom."

The CttossiNo-SwEEPEB who had been
A Sehvaht-Maid.

Shb is to be fotmd any day bebveen eight in
the morning and seven in the evening, sweep-
ing 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, fiEuled, almost colourless ribbon.
She has weak eyes, and weeu:^ 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
cheeked apron, and a tidy printed gown.

She is rather shy at first, but willing and
obliging enough withal; and she lives down

Liule Yard, in Great street. The

"yard" that is made like a mousetrap — small
at the entrance, but amazingly large inside,
and dil^^ated though extensive.

Heas ere stablea aad a oonple of blind
aUagr8,.Bani«laM, or bearing the same name as

the yai'd itself, and wherein are huddled more
people than one could count in a quai'ter of
an hotu', and more children than one likes to
remember, — diity childi-en, listlessly trailing
an old tin baking-dish, or a worn-out shoe, tied
to a piece of string ; sullen childi-en, who tui-n
away in a fit of sleepy anger if spoken to;
screaming children, setting all the parents in
the " yai-d " at defiance ; and quiet children,
who are arranging banquets of dirt in the
reeking gutters.

The " yaid " is devoted principally to coster-
mongers.

The crossing-sweeper lives in the top-room
of a two-storied house, in the very depth of
the bhnd alley at tlie end of the yard. She
has not even a room to herself, but pays one
sliilling a-week for the priN-ilege of sleeping
vvith 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 i-oom in which these people live has a
sloping roof, and a small-paned windoAV on
each side. For fmiiiture, 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 comer of the room lay the last
lump remaining of the seven pounds of coals.
In another comer there were herbs in pans,
and two water-bottles without then- noses. The
most stiiking 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 — fonning an almost equi-
lateral 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 ttible 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 fiowers 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

480

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

him. After we were married, he got Jiis hving
by selling memorandvma-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 li\'ing.
He did not make much, and over-exertion,
witla want of nourishment, brought on a para-
lytic 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 li\ing. One of them is manned
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 joumejTnan shoemaker.
He was killed ; but I cannot remember how — I
was too young. I eau't recollect my mother.
I was brought up by an uncle and aunt till I
was able to go to ser\'ice. I went out to service
at five, to mind children under a nurse, and I
was in service till I got man-ied. I had a gi-eat
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. Senice 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 yoimg. At Christmas, I think I took
about eleven shillings, but certainly not more.
The most I ever made at that season was four-
teen 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 no-
thing. 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 re-
member; but Sunday I recollect — it was fip-
pence 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 hei'e
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 pur-
chasing, 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 answei-ed heartily —

" I should like to see such another day to-
morrow, sir.

" Yes, winter is veiy much better than sum-
mer, 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 no-
thing 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 mo than the nobleman who rides in
his carnage.

" 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 Avas better, I used to be
very partial to reading; but I can't see the
print, sii', 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 teU 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 Hosintal for sixteen
weeks ynth. my legs. My eyes have been weak
from a child. I have got a gathering in my
head from catching cold standing on the cross-
ing. 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 diar-
rhoea after that, and was six weeks under the

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

481

doctor's hands. I used to do odd jobs, but my
liealth 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 vic-
tuals 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 livith
n>e."

Statement of " Old John," the Waterman

AT THE FaRRINGDON-STREET CaB-STAND, CON-
CERNING THE Old BiJkCK Crossing-Sweeper
WHO LEFT j£800 to Miss Waithman.

" Ybs, sir, I knew him for many year, though
I never spoke to him in all my life. He was
a stoutish, tliickset man, about my build, and
used to walk with his broom up and down —

80."

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
^ive one sixpence now, they used to give ten.
It's just the same by oiu: calling. Lived
humbly ? Yes, I think he did ; at all events,
lie seemed to do so when he was on his cross-
ing. He got plenty of odds-and-ends from
the comer there — Aldennan Waithman's, I
mean ; he was a very sober, quiet sort of man.
No, sir, nothing peculiar in his dress. Some
})lacks 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 cus-
tomers ; 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 Hol-
bom, and I havent been away from this neigh-
bourhood 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 (its the
Sunday Timet 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
rome, first sarved, sir ; that's their way. They
never sell crossings. Sometimes (for a lark)

they shift, and then one stands treat — a gal-
lon of beer, or something of that sort. The
perlice interfered with the soldier — you know
the sweepers is aU forced to go if tlie perlice
interfere; now with us, sir, we are licensed,
and they can't make us move on. They inter-
fered, 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 knoAvs 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 " Coimty CoiTuk," has
been in England only two years and a half.
He wears a close-fitting black cloth cap over
a shock of reddish hau-; 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 pre-
sent remarkably stumpy. He waits quietly
at the post opposite St. 's Church, to re-
ceive whatever is ofiered him. He is imas-
suming 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 : —

" I've been at tliis 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
aflher 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 walldn'
about and saw it, and nobody on it. So one
momin' 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 rte, 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

48i2

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

to the Eye Hospital, in Goulden Square, be-
cause of the wakeness of my eyesight; but
they'll nivei' 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 ofi" 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. Yesther-
day I took sixpence, by chance, for takin' some
luggage for a lady. The day before yesther-
day I took tliree ha'pence ; but I think I got
■sometliin' else for a bit of worruk thin.

" Yes, winther is better than summer. I
don't know v.hich people is tlie most liberal.
Sure, sir, I don't think there's much difler-
ence. Oh yes, sir, young men are very hberal
sometimes, and so ai-e 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 an}-thing else for a
long time.

" The boy-sweepers annoy me very much,
indeed; they use such scandalizin' worruds
to me, and throw din'ut, they do. They
know whin the police is out of the way, so I
git no purtiction.

" Sm'e, sir, and I think it right that ivery
person should attind the worruship to which
he belongs. I am a Cathohc, 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 iverj'thing. 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 gu-1 — Julia,
they call her — sleep ; in the other bid,\here's
a man and his -wife and child. Yes, I am
single, and have tlie third bid to myself. I
come from County CoiTuk; 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
lie brings it himself, he does. He has jjone

to Scotland now, but he ^N^ill be bai-k in a
week. He brings me some broad 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 Switrer man, sir, took out boaixls 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, sii', afther mass, there's no luin'um in a
little sweepin' between whiles.

" No, sir, there's not a crossin'-sweeper in
Ould Ireland. Well, sir, I niver v.as in Dub-
lin ; 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 tii'ed ; but I always offer up my devotions
before sleepin'. Ah, sir, I should niver have
swijit crossin's if a friend of mine hadn't died;
he was collector of tolls in Claruyldlts, and I
used to be witli him. He lost his situation,
and so I came to England.

" The Sv/itzer 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 coun-
tbry,' says he — a fmriner himsilf, too.

" Will, yes sir, I do wish for bad weather ;
a good wit day, and a dry day afther, is the
best.

" Siu-e 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 anytliin' of them for this last twelve-
month. Ah ! it's in the bejther neighbour-
hoods that people give rigularly. I niver get
any broken victuals. Three- and-sixpence is
the outside of my earnings, taking one week
with the otlier.

" 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 four-
teen pence altogether; the best week I iver
had' was the winter before last — that harrud
winter, sir, I remember takin' seven shillhigs
thin ; but the man at Portmau-square makes
the most.

"Well, sir, I belave there's some of every
nation in the world as sweeps crossin's in
London."

The Fejiale Irish CnossiXG-SwEErER.

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 sit-
ting on the stone ledge of the iron raiUngs at
the comer of the street, huddled up in the
way seemingly natural to old Irishwomen, her
broom hidden as much as possible under her

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOH.

■IS'-i

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 cross-
ing, her ha'porth of snufE^ and her '* drop of
biled wather," by which name she indicated
her " tay."

She was very civil and intelligent, and an-
swered my inquiiies veiy 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 to-
wards the injured pail, and took a spai*ing
pinch "of snutf from a little black snuflf-box,
inlaid with mother-of-pearl, for which she
said she had given a penny. She proceeded
thus : — "I'm an Lishwoman, sir, and it's from
Kinsale I come, twelve miles beyond Comik,
to the left-hand side, a seaport town, and a
great place for fish. It's fifty years the six-
teenth of last June since I came in St. Giles's
parish, and tliere 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
chm-chyarruds. That girl was forty-one year
of age the seventeenth of last Febniary,
bom 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.
Ue 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 aimt
brought me over. My uncle was three year
here before my aunt, and he died at White-
chapel. I was bechuxt sixteen and seventeen
when I come over, and I reckon meself at
sixty-eeven come next Christmas, as well as I
ean guess. I never had a mother, sir; she
died idien I was only six months old. My
ikther, sir, was maltster to Mr. Walker the dis-
tiller, in Comik. 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 conui,
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 wotddn't. I was
married thin, and bad buried some of my
ehilder in St Pancras ; and for what should
I lave England f

" Oh t sir, I buried three in eight months,
— two mtna and their father. My husband was
two year and tin months keeping his bed; he

I has been did fifteen years to the eighth of last
March ; but I've been man-ied again.

" Siven ehilder I've had, and ounly two
alive, and thej^'ve got enough to do to manage
for thimsilves. The boy, he foUers the mar-
ket, and my daughter, she is along with her
husband ; siu'O he sills in the sti-eets, sir. I
see very httle 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 tlio 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 tum-
blers of it from tlie house at the corrunner.
I intind to go home and take two hirriags,
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 Svmday I mustered a
shilling ; on Satui'day — 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 Simday, or a ha'penny,
and some tuppence. Of a Sunday in the good
time I may take eighteenpence or sixteen-
pence.

" 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 fractui'ed, and my grine (groin) bone
injured. Oh ! the pains that I feel even now,
su*. I lived then in Philhp's-gai'dens, up tliere
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 rail-
ings 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 coiurut (close by

the beer-shop) away from Mr. 's house,

when crossing to the green-grocer's to git two
pounS 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 hos-
pital-doctor and to the poUceman it was heavily
loaded. The boy gave me a shilling, and that
was all the money I received. For a twelve-
month I couldn't hardly walk.

" On that Cbristmas-day I took fovu:-and-tin-

484

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

pence, 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 to\\'n —
Sir George He\\'itt — niver passes without
givin' me a shillin'.

" I have taken one-and-ninepence on a Sun-
day, and I've taken two shillm'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 woiTukliouse ; he lost the sight of
one of his eyes when he came back again. I
Imew 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 foui-pence or fippence
difference sometimes.

" Indeed, I have heard of crossin'- sweepers
TO akin' 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 Pan'uks, 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, thia 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 Avas formssed 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 li;ive a pincli — this is
ray 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 tliese three
months. I used to git two penn'orth of bones
and mat2 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 bothcrin' thim so
often. I frequintly liavo 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 de-
clare I don't know which people give the most;
the gintlemeu give me more in Avit 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 Maidstdne. 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 acci-
dent. We make about eighteenpence, two
shilUn'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 stlirawbirries 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
tlie 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 ; lUen, two years and six
months, named after her mother; and Mar-
garet, the baby, six months ould — and she is
called afther my daughter, who is did."

4. The Occasional Crossing-Sweepeus.

The Suxday Crossing-Sweepee.

"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 Lorrim ore- road, New-
ington, 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 fire
years.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

485

" I never knowed my father, he died when
I was a baby. He was a 'terpreter, aiid
spoke seven diflferent 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 selliu' a few
sprats. I had no thoughts of taking to a
crossing then. I was ten year old. I re-
member 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-baskets almost
like a coffin ; it's a long im 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 shil-
lings— 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 sliillings a-week more altogether.

"I never had no idea then of sweeping a
crossing of a Simday ; but at last I was obUged
to push to it I kept on like this for many
years, and at last a gentleman named ]\Ir.
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
ont 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
shouldnt go into the workhouse so long as
I coold help it

"A year or two after I got married, I
fotuid I must do something more to help to
keep home, and then I fust thought of
sweepin' a crossing on Stindays; so I bought
a heath broom for twopence-ha'penny, and I
pitched agin' the Canterbury Arms, Kenning-
ton ; it was between a baker's shop and a
pnbiic-hotise 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 chm-ch or a chapel
than wot you can in a private road, 'cos
they look at it more, and a good many thinks
Avhen 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 after-
noon. 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 Sundaj^ 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 sweep-
ing this crossing, a gentleman comes up to me,
and he axes me if I ever goes to chapel or
chm-ch; 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. Michsiel's
Church, Brixton, and I'll 'courage you, and
you'll do better if you come up and sweep
in front there of a Svmday instead of where
you are; you'll be siu-e to get more money,
and get better 'coiu-aged. It don't matter
what you do,' he says, ' as long as it brings
you in a honest crust ; anythink's better than
tliieving.' And then the gent gives me six-
pence 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
chxurchyard. When I got inside the church,
I could see him a-sitten jest agin the com-
munion 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 six-
pence ; so I got about two-and-sixpence altoge-
ther, and I thought that was a good beginning.

486

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

"The next Sunday the gen'ehnaii was ill,
but he didn't forget me. He sent me six-
pence by his sei-vant, hikI I got from the other
people about two shillings more. I never see
that gentleman, after for he died on the Sa-
turday. His wife sent for me on the Sunday ;
she was ill a-bed, and I see one of the daugh-
ters, and she gave me sixpence, and said I
was to be there on Monday morning. I went
on tlie 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
I)eople wouldn't live in 'em.

" So then I come up into Lon-imore-road,
and there I've been ever since. I don't get
on wonderful well there. Sometimes I dont
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 cross-
ing of a Sunday.

"I don't get any more money in the winter
(though it's muddier) than I do in the sum-
mer ; the reason is, 'cause there isn't so many
people Stirling about in the winter as there is
in the summer.

" One broom will cany me over three Sun-
days, 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 ether cross-
ing-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 "svith
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 ^vrite 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 cross-
ing, and sweeps on one side till you gets over
the road ; then you tm-ns round and comes back
doing the other lialf. Some people holds the
broom before 'em, and keeps swaying it back-
'ards and foi-'ai-ds 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 tlie 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 vrasn'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
gid die ; if she'd lived she'd a been eight
year old now,) I found I must do a some-
thin', and so I took to the broom."

B. The Afflicted Crossmg-Siceejjers.

Tke 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

fii'st-floor back, if you please, sii- ; " 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,
^•ith a little furniture, which the man called
" his few sticks," and presently discovered
another child — a little girl. The girl was ver}'
siiy 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 un-
naturally large forehead. The mantelpiece
of the room was filled with little ornaments of
various soi'ts, 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 ov/ners many a year, and
served, in company with a little red, green,
and yeUow scripture-piece, to keep the wall
from looking bare. Over the door (inside thi

LOXDOIf LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

487

room) was nailed a horse-shoe, wliich, the
wife told me, had been put there by her hus-
band, for luck.

A bed, two deal tables, a couple of boxes, and
three chairs, formed the entire fumitme of the
room, and nearly filled it. On the window-
frame was hung a smiill sh aving- glass ; and
an 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 ctu-t be in want.' Ah ! little
they know how we starved and pinched our-
selves before we could get it."

There was a fire in the room, notwithstand-
ing the day was very hot; but the window was
wide open, and the place tolerably ventilated,
tliough 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 in-
quiries said : —

" I know tliat 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 >\-ife, though she looks very well,
will never be able to do any hai'd 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 1

was forced to part with it. I was on the cross-
ing a short time before that, for I knew tliat
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 can^
them both out together. There was a man
hail Uie crossing I've got; he died three or
f(>ar years before I took it ; but ho didn't de-
pend oa the crossing — ho did things for the
tradespeople aboat, such as carpet-beating,
messages, and so on.

" When I flrbt took the crossing I did very
woll. Tt happened to be a very nasty, dirty
' r took a good deal of money,
not always civil, sir.

. lid gone to one of tlio squares,

u: 1 ! . l;i:r I I'tiiiik after street is paved

\siiii :,i..ii.; 1 li ili do bettor. lam certain I
never taste a bit of meat fh)m one week's end
tQ the other. The bcrt day I ever made was
fiYe-and-sixj)enco or six shillings ; it was tho

winter before last. If you remembor, the snow
laid veiy thick on the ground, and the sudden
thaw made walking so uncomfortable, that I
did very well. I have taken as little as six-
pence, fourpence, and even twopence. Last
Thursday 1 took two ha'pence all day. Take
one week with the other, seven or eight shil-
lings 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 gi-eat deal
more than I do. I once lost a good chance,
sir, at the comer of the street leading to Caven-
dish-square. There's a bonk, 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 itp, it unfoi-tunately
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 yon won't find them now during this diy
weather, except in by -places. In wet weather,
there are tAvo or three boys who sweep near
my crossing, and take nil my earnings away.
There's a great able-bodied mnn besides — a
fellow strong enough to follow tlie plough. I
said to the policeman, 'Now, ain't this a shame?
and the policeman said, ' Well, he must get
his liAnng as well as you.' I'm always q\\t1 to
the police, and they're always cinl 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 gentle-
man direjctly 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
respectabl* persons take a purse out of an old
lady's pocket before the baker's shop at the
comer ; but I can't say a Mord, or they would
come and throw me into the road- If a gen-
tleman 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 gen-
tlemen as gives mo that. Well, you can
scarcely tell the gentleman from the clerk, the
clerks ai"e such great swells now.

*• Lawyers themselves dress veiy plain; tlioso
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 wliere 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 religi-
ous 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 como
home I am tiled; 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

No. LIV.

!• F

488

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOE.

■was no chloroform then. I -was in the hospital
three years and a half, and was about fifteen
or sixteen ■when I had it otf. 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 1 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 birth-
day. My mother was subject to fits, so I was
forced to stop at home to take cai-e 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 httle 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 gra\y of meat, or an egg beaten uj), but
she can't get it. I take her out every morn-
ing 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."

OSE-LEGGED SwEEPEIl AT ChANCERY-IANE.

"I DON'T know what induced me to take
that crossing, except it Avas 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 comer 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 eai-n on Simdays. We
owe four weeks now, and, thank God, it's no
more,

" I was bom, 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-sweep-
ing at first, till I reasoned ■with myself, Why
should I mind? I'm not doing any hurt to any-
body. 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.

"I've been knocked down twice, sir — both
times by cabs. The last time it was a fort-
night before I could get about comfortably
again. The fool of a fellow was coming along,
not looking at his horse, but talking to some-
body 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 — tlie fact is, if the driver is not a tall
anan 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
Cbossing-Sweepees.

Passino the dreary portico of the Queen's
Theatre, and turning to the right down Tot-
tenham Mews, we came upon a flight of steps
leading up to what is caUed " 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
SM'eeper 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 wil-
derness"), and contained, in addition to two
turn-up bedsteads, that curious medley of ar-
ticles which, in the course of years, an old
and jpoor 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 verj'
spit of the one I had for years; it's a real
portrait, sir, for INIr. Hanbart, the printer, met
me one day and sketched him." There was
an etching of Hogarth's in a black frame ; a
stufied 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." Tliere were the
odd remnants, too, of old china ornaments, but
very little fui'niture ; and, finally, a kitten.

The father, woi'U 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,

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

489

had all the appearance of a boy — bis raw-look-
ing eyes, which he was always wiping with a
piece of linen rag, gave him a forbidding ex-
pression, 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 liis father's
being angiy with him for not getting up
before, as if he were a little boy talking of his
nui-se.

He walks, with great diflficulty, by the help
of a crutch ; and the sight of his weak eyes,
liis withered limb, and his broken shoulder
(his old helpless mother, and his gasping,
almost inaudible father,) foim a most painful
subject for compassion.

The ci-ossing-sweeper gave me, with no little
meekness and some slight intelligence, the
following statement: —

" I very seldom go out on a crossui' o' Sun-
days. I didn't do much good at it. I used to
go to church of a Sunday — in fact, 1 do now
when I'm well enough.

" It's fifteen yeai- next January since 1 left
Eegent-street. I was there thxee years, and
then I went on Sundays occasionally. Some-
times I used to get a sliilling, 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 2Cth day of last
month, and I have been lame six-and-twenty
jears. My eyes have been bad ever since my
birth. The scrofulous disease it was that
lamed me — it come with a swelling on the
luiee, 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 t^jp. I didn't go into the hospital then,
but I was an out-patient, for the doctor said a
xilose confined place wouldn't do me no good.
He said that the seaside would, though ; but
xcj parents coiddn'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 Xa)0 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.

" 1 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 painfull, '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 mj 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 aU 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
Eegent-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 ver}^ good cus-
tomer 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, 'Yery 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 Chai'lotte-street, oppo-
site Percy Chapel, at the corner of Windmill-
street. After that I went to Wells-street, by
getting permission of the doctor at the comer.
He thought that it would be better for me
than Chai-lotte-street, so he let me come.

" Ah ! there ain't so many crossing-sweepers
as there was ; I tliink they've done away with
a great many of them.

"When 1 first went to Wells-street, I did
pretty well, because there was a dress-maker's
at the comer, 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-fourpeuce, but it's been so wet, and
people are out of town ; but, of com-se, it's not
always alike — sometimes I get thrce-and-six-
pence or four shillings. Some people gives
me a sixpence or a fourpenny-bit ; 1 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 — como
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,

490

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR,

but that's to people she's known for years who
is attached to her. She does her work there
just as she hkes.

" Sometimes she gets a httle wAshing —
sometimes not. This week she had a little,
and was forced to dry it indoors; but that
makes 'em lialf 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 Sep-
tember ; it's a long time to live in such an old
Avilderncss, but my old mother is a sort of
woman as don't Uke movin' about, and I don't
like it. Some people are everlasting on the
move.

" Vrhen 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 feelmg at least,
if we haven't got our ej-esight."

The Negbo 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 liim walk ; the colder the better,
he says, as it " numbs his stumps Hke." He
is unable to follow this occupation in warm
weather, as his legs feel "just lilce corns,"
and he cannot walk more than a mile a-daj^
Under these circumstances he takes to beg-
ging, which he thinks he has a perfect right
to do, as he has been left destitute in what
is to Mm almost a strange country, and has
been denied what he terms " his rights." lie
generally sits while begging, dressed in a
sailor shirt and trousers, with a black necker-
chief round his neck, tied in the usual nauti-
cal knot. He places before him tlie 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 par-
lour, in a dirty and rather disreputable alley
running out of a court in a street near Bruns-
wick-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 an-
swering my questions. We were quite alone,
for he sent his Avife and child — the former a
pleasant-looking " half-caste," and the latter
the cheeriest little crowing, smiling "picca-
ninny" I have ever seen — lie sent them out
into the alley, while I conversed with himself.

His life is embittered by tlie idea that he
has never yet had "his rights" — tliat tho
owners of tlie ship in which his legs were
burnt off have not paid liim his wages (of
which, indeed, he says, ho never received any
but the five pounds which he had in advance
before starting), and that he has been robbed of
42/. 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," AA^ith-
out whicli 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 i)assed
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 Avanted
to turn me away, but I went to the gentleman
inside the office, and he told the policeman to
leave me alone. Tho 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 hve. I served nine years in the mer-
chant 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 be-
came cook, or when I couldn't get the place of
cook I went before the mast. I went as head
cook in 1H51, 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 ALBEET !

A native of Kingston, Jamaica.

Showing the hardships ho underwent and the
suSforiugs he endured ia 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-
jjipe, -which has been unskilfully erased.
The "Book" itself is concocted from an

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

49]

affidavit made by Edward jVlbert 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 siiffered on its road to Mr. Howe,
the printer.

The following will give an idea of the
matter of which it is composed : —

'" In February, 1S51, I engaged to serve ns cook, on
bofird the barque Madeim, of Glasgow, Captain J.
Douglas, on her voyage from Glasgow to California,
theuoe to China, aiid theuce home to a port of dis-
charge in the United Kingdom. I signed ;ui;icle8, and
delivered up my registor-tickot as a British seaman,
as required by law. 1 entered the service on board
the said vessel, under the said engagement, and
sailed with that vessel on the 18th of February, 1S51.
I discharged my duty as cook on board the said
vessel, &om the date of its having left the Clyde,
until June the same year, iu which mouth the
vessed rounded Cape Home, at that time my legs
became frost bitten, and 1 became iu consequence
tmfit for duty.

"In the course of the next day after my limbs
became afl'ected, the master of the vessul, and mate,
took me to the ship's oven, in oi-dcr, as they said, to
core 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,
smd I was there taken to an hospital, where I re-
mained five months and a half. Both my legs wei-e
amputated three inches below my knees soon after
I went to the hospital at Valpariso. I asked my
masto: for my wages due to me, for my service on
board the venel, and demanded my register-ticket ;
when the obtain 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 hud no fiiends
there to got my money, he wouUl only put a little
money into the hands of the consul, which would be

a plied in burying me. On being discharged from
e hospital I called on the consul, and wus informed
by him that master had not left any money.

"I was afterwards taken on board one of her
Mi^iesty's diipe, the Driver, Captiin Charles Johnston,
and lauded at Portsmouth ; from thence I got a pas-
sage to Gl;iij„'0u-, ware I remained three months.
Upon sui 1 :ho icgi-Jter-ofiice for sc.nmcn, in

London, • -kct Las been forwanled to the

OoUector . (Glasgow ; and he his ready to

deliver it u> nic u\K>n obtaining Uio 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.

"(Signad) David IIackiklat. J. P.

"TbeJoatioeshaTinff conaiderod the foregoing in-
formation and declaration, finds that Edward Albert,
therein named the last-register ticket, noiirrht to be

eoverad under drctunatances ■.-■'--> '- 'r was

oouoemad, ware onaToklabl : %vas

intended or committed In- li i uto,

therefore authorised the CoUov V. i .>.,.. ^....,,,u.,„er of
Customs at the port of Olas^w to deliver tu the said
Idward Albert the ragiite^tidcot. sought to be r«-
eovcrod by him all in terms of S2nd section of the
General Merchant Seamen's Act.

"(Signed) David Macxjuuly, J. P.
"GkagOfW, Oct «th, 1853.
" Beglfltar Ticket^ No. 512, 052. age S6 years."

" I could make a large book of my sufler-
ings,sir,if I liked," he said, "and I will dis-
grace the o^vners 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 fai'thing,
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 coftee-house ; it was
called ' Uncle Tom's Cabin.' I did veiy weU.
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 ho xised to put
it away in a tin box which I had given four-
and-sixpence for. Ho advertised my place in
the papers, and I did a good business. I had
the place open a montli, when lie kept all my
savings — two-and-forty pounds — and shut up
the place, and denied me of it, and I never got
a faithiiig.

" I declare to you I can't desciibe the agony
I felt when my legs were burst ; I fainted away
over and over again. Thei-e was four^meu
came ; I was Ipng in my hammock, and they
moved the fo-ft'l 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
tiun, or able to hft 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 cai-ed for.
The Reverend Mr. Armstrong used to biing
me a pound a fortnight ; he used to bring it
regular. I never used to smoko 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 Thetit frigate,
sent me home; and the reason why ho sent
me liome was, that after I tame well, I called

49^

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON FOOE.

on Mr. Rouse, the English consul, and he
sent me to the boarding-house, till such time
as he could tind a ship to send me home in,
I was there about two months, and the board-
ing-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 i)ay yotir 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 yeai-s, I would not turn you
out ;' and then I asked Pace to tell me where
tlie Admiral lived. ' What do you want Avith
him ? ' says he. I said, ' I think the Admiral
must be higher than the consul.' Pace slapped
me on the back. Saj's he, 'I'm glad to see
you've got the pluck to complaiu to the
Admiral.'

" I went down at nine o'clock the next morn-
ing, to see the Admh-al. He said, ' Well,
Prince Albert, how are you getting on ? ' Sol
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 wi-ote 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 w^anted 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,
1S5-2, Avhen 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 Loudon. So I paid my passage
to London, saw the Lord Mayor, who sent me
to Mr. Yardley, the magistrate, and he adver-
tised the case for me, and I got four pounds
fifteen shillings, besides my passage to Glas-
gow. After I got there, I went to Mr. Symee
a Custom-house officer (he'd been in the same
sliip mth me to Cahfornia) ; he said, ' Oh, gra-
cious, Edward, how have you lost your limbs ! '
and I bm-st out a crying. I told Imn 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
INlayor (a Lord Provost they call him in Scot-
land), 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 coi-n 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 shiUing and
sixpence, sometimes I don't take above six-
pence. 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 olf 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 countiy; but if I had lost
them in my own country, I should have been
better off. I should have gone down to the
magistrate everj^ Friday, and have taken my
ten shillings.

"I went to the Merchant Seaman's Fund,
and they said that those who got hurted before
18-52 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 colom*
as me, but an Englishwoman. I've been
man-ied 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 assist-
ance 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.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

403

" Even if I had a coffee-stall down at Covent-
garden, I should do; and, besides, I under-
stand the making of eel-soup. I have one
child, — it is just Uiree 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 pro-
perty, and send theii- 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 firuit 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 Iiish in this place.
I would like to get away from it, for it is a very
disgraceful place, — it is an awful, awfui 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 rerbatira 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
GLA800W CAPTAIN J. DOUGLAS IN FEBRUARY 1851
WHEN AFTER ROUNDING CAPE IIORNE 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
Oren 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 En-
sued after which my legs were amputated
Three Inches below the knees soon after my
entering the Hospital at Valpariso.

AS I HATZ XO OTBXB XXAXS TO OKT A LIVELT-
HOOD BUT BY ▲FPXALDfO TO

j A GENEROUS PUBLIC

I TOUB KIIID DOXATIOXSWnX DE MOST THANKFULLY
RZCKXVKD.

The Maimed Irish Crossing-Sweeper.

He stands at the corner of street, where

the yellow omnibuses stop, and refers to him-
self eveiy 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
im^nary accumulation of mud. He has lost
one leg (from the knee) by a fall from a scaf-
fold, while working as a bricklayer's labourer
in Wales, some six years ago ; and speaks bit-
terly of the hard time he had of it when he
first came to London, and hobbled about sell-
ing 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 dming 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 gi-eat stress upon
the fact of his never keeping " count" of any-
thing.

He accounted for his miserably small in-
come 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 fraydorc
with no one, and I always keeps my own mind.

" I dunno how much I earn a-day — p'rhaps
I may git a shiUing, 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. In-
deed, I did not get much on Thursday, only
tuppence ha'penny. The largest day ? I
dunno. Why, about a shilling. WeU, 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.

" WeU, 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.

494

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

" Well, sure, I dunno who's the most liberal ;
if I got a fourpinny bit Jtom 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' -ndth
boys, and they wouldn't be allowed to interfere
with me — tlie 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 Ii-eland these sixteen year.
When I came from Ireland I wont to Wales.
I was tbere a long time ; and the way I broke
my leg was, I fell off a scatFold. I am not
married ; a lame man wouldn't get any woman
to have him in Loudon at all, at all. I don't
know Avhat age I am. I am not fifty, nor

fox-ty ; 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,
lam laid up nows and tliins 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 Eoman 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
\ictuads, nor broken mate, not as much as you
might put on the tip of a foiTuk ; they'd chuck
it out in the dust-bin before tliey'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 fi-om Dublin ; my father and mo-
ther 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 amokea a pipe,
and goes to bid, that's all."

n.-^UVENILE CROSSING-SWEEPERS

A. The Boy Crossing-Sweepers.

Boy Cbossing-Sweepeks akd Tuhblees.

A REMABKABLY intelligent lad, who, on being
spoken to, at once consented to give all the
information in his poAver, told me the follow-
ing story of his life.

It wiU. 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 them-
selves together, approi^riated several cross-
ings to their use, and appointed a captain
over them. They have their forms of trial,
and "jury-house" for the settlement of dis-
putes ; 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 police-
man.

I found the lad who first gave me an insight
into the proceedings of the associated cross-
ing-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 comer 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 Kttle Jack."

He was a good-looking lad, Tvith 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 com-
plexion 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.

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 pomatmn, and all kinds of
scents. He didn't keep a shop himself, but
he used to sen-e them as did ; he didn't hawk
his goods about, neether, but had regular cus-
tomers, 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

LOXDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

■ii)o

brotlier, 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 [Tatters ail'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 capttdn — jMr. 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. AU 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, on 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 oflT). I
used, when I wjis 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 be-
haved myself and did nil my lessons right; for
if 1 did not I was kept baok 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;
wid 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 brofhpr«», and one of them steals the child
vwvf m " • >ther in his place, and then

he get and all that, and he's just

been fii....._ . ;. .. bridge now.

•• After mother got l>ettcr, she sold all the
furniture and go«><ls and come up to London ;
— poor mother ! She let a man of the name
r>f Hayes have the greater part, and ho left
IfMnrich soon after, and never gave mother the
money. We rume up tr) Tendon, and mother
took two rooms in VVestminster, and I and
riater lived along with her. She used to
niAke hair-nets, and sister helped her, and
iBSd t^ take 'era to the hair- dressers to sell.
fflie iMade 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, xmtil 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 com-
pany 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 com-
pany ; but before he was married he got a
little cross, and after he was manied 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 liit 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, slie said they was disposed of along
with all mother's goods ; but she gave me somo
shirts and stocldngs, 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 mo back ;' and I
think it was true, for untU ho came she was a
kind-hearted girl ; but ho said he'd enough
to do to look after his own living ; ho 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. iMardn'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, wo separate, and I and another gets a
crossing — those who gets on it first, keeps it,
— and wo stand on each side and take our
chance.

LOG

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

" 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 anythiuk 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 tlie child, then my mate can add
the child ; and as he is right and I wrong,
then it's liis pai*ty.

"If there's a policeman close at hand we
mustn't ask for money ; but we are always on
the look-out for the poKcemen, and if we see
one, then we calls out ' Phillup ! ' for that's
our signal. One of the policemen at St. Mar-
tin'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 four-
pence every day, and if we Avere 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,
*0h! 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 Ave 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, be-

cause, 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 house-
keeper at his house is very kind to us. We
run errands for her, and when she wants
any of lier 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 ho always
gives it to the gu'l, and those that are in it
shares it. She would do us out of it if she
could, but we aU 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 tumbhng ;
some will give us a penny, others threepence,
sometimes a sixpence or a shilling, and some-
times a halfpenny. We either do the cat'un-
whcel, or else we keep before the gentleman
and lady, turaing head- over-heels, putting our
broom on the ground and then turning over it.

" 1 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 httle
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 aU 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 exti-a ! ' 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 gen-
tlemen 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 ore
saucy, then we say to them, ' We're not talking
to you, my doxy, we're talking to the gentle-
man,'— 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

THE IRISH CROSSING-SWEEPER.

[Prom a Pholograpli.1

Pnse 481.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOB.

497

they are no better than us ! If we are on the
wossing, and we says to them as they go by,
* Good luck to you ! ' they always give us some-
think 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
younf lady, and then we goes, and they genei-al
gives us sixpence for that. If the gents is
dressed finely we gets tliem a handsome girl ;
if they're dressed middling, then we gets them
a middling-di-essed one ; but we usual prefers
giving a turn to girls that have been kind to
us, and they ai*e 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 roimd 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 avlU 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, audit goes on. We gets into debt,
because sometimes the women where we live
gets lushy ; then we don't give them anjiJiink,
because they'd forget it, so we spends it our-
selve*. 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 two-
pence 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 were hard up, we
gets only a penn'orth of bread. We make our
own tea at home ; they lends us a kittle, tea-
pot, and cups and saucers, and all that.

" Once or twice a- week we gets meat. We
aU 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
aometinies, if any of us gets nothink, then the
oth«n gives him a penny or two, and he does
the Mune for us when toe are out of luck.

•• Beaides, there's our clothes : I'm paying
for a pair of boots now. I paid a shilling otf
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
£mm and hands, and necks, and whoever
latehea the fresh water op has first wash ; and
a the second dont like to go and get fi-esh,
why he uses the dirty. Whenever we come in
the landlady makes us wash our feet. Very
the ttoiMS c«ti oar ftet and makes them

bleed ; then we biod a bit of rag round them.
We like to put ou boots and shoes in the day-
time, 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. 1
have run after a Cremorae bus, when they've
thrown us money, as fax as from Charing-cross
right up to Piccadilly, but if they don't throAv
us nothink we don't nm very far. I should
think we gets at that work, talcing one Sunday
with another, eightpence all the year round.

" When there's snow on tlie ground we puts
our money together, and goes and buys au 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
sixi)ence, 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 chU-
blains on our feet ; but wo 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. Some-
times 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 Morle/s Hotel, at Chariug-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 obhgated 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
niglit-time, because wo jumps over the walls
round the place at Trafalgar-square, and they
dont 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 trousei-s all to bits, and now they're
afraid. That was Old Bandy as bust his
breeches; and wo all hate him, as well as
another we ciUls Black Diamond, what's general

498

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

along •vrith the Eed Liners, as we calls the
Mendicity oflBcers, who goes about in disguise
as gentlemen, to take up poor boys caught

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 cross-
ings, but 'fakes.' We dont make no slang
of our own, but uses the regvilar 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 perspir-
ation, 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 ap-
pearance 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 gentle-
ments knowed him thereabouts, and one or
two used to give him a shilling a -week re-
gular.

" It was he as fii'st 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 >vith the
old stumps ; there was five or six of them ; so
I couldn't defend myself, but told the police-
man, 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 loinning, because it makes the blood to
the head, and then all the things seems to
turn round. Sometimes a chap -ndll 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
tlie 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 meet-
ing, 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 Eooshian,' and then if he wont
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 hck 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 Re-
gent'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 Hay-
market.

" The first as gets to the crossing does the

LONDON LAROUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

499

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."

Gandes — The "CArxAiN" of the Boy
Ckossing-Sweepebs.

Gander, the captain of the gang of boy cross-
ing-sweex)€rs, was a big lad of sixteen, with a
face devoid of all expression, until he laughed,
when the cheeks, mouth, and forehead in-
stantly became crumpled up with a wonderful
quantity of lines and dimples. His hair was
cut short, and stood up in all directions, Hke
the bristles of a hearth-broom, and was a light
dust tint, matching with the hue of his com-
plexion, which also, from an absence of wash-
ing, 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 Uirough the
opening in a round nob like a raspberry.

The boy's clothing was in a shocking con-
dition. He had no coat, and his blue-striped
shirt was as diity as a French-polisher's rags,
and so tattered, that the slioulder was com-
pletely 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 e\idently 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 assiuning a tarpaulin look, were
fastened over one shoulder by means of a
brace and bits of string.

During his statement, he illustrated his ac-
count of the tumbling backwards — the " caten-
wheeUng " — with different specimens of the
art, throwing himself about on tlie floor with
an ease and almost grace, and taking up so
small a space of the ground for the perform-
ance, 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."

" Dontyou go a- believing on him," whispered
another lad in my car, whilst Gander's head
was tamed : ** he took thirteenpence last night,
he did.-

It was perfectly impossible to obtain from
this lad any accoant of his averag<> 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 pectUiar whine, and who, directly yon
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 countiy, and I'll
lay something I'd soon be a gentleman then,
and come home \n.\h 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 I'eproached him
for making a false return of liis income. She
tried to shame him iato trutlifulness, by say-
ing,—

" Look at my Johnny — my grandson, sir,
he's not a quarther the Goose's size, and yet
he'll bring me home liis shilling, or perhaps
eighteenpence or two shilhngs — for shame on
j'ou, 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'i-e 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 tnith 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 con-
cerned, 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 givesme, though my name ain't speltwith
a har at the end, but with a h'ay, so that I ain't
Gand«?r after all, but Gandea, which is a sell
for 'em.

♦*God knows what I am — whether I'm
h'lrish or h'/talian, or what ; l»ut I was christ-
ened here in London, and that's all about it

" Father was a bookbinder. I'm sixteen
now, and fallier 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-

500

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOH.

in-law, who hsid my register. He's a sweep,
sir, by trade, and I wanted to know about ray
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 gen-
tleman's door-step, in the winter, on the
15th Januaiy. I packed my shirt and coat,
which was a pretty good one, right over my
ears, and then scruntched myself into a door-
way, and the policeman passed by four or five
times without seeing on me.

" I had a mother-iu-law at the time ; but
father used to di-ink, 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 IMichael, and he first learnt me to beg, and
made me run after people, sajdng, ' 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 Icnock me about
shameful ; so I left him, and then I picked up
with a chap as taught me tumbhng. I soon
lamt 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 Chtirch-
lane at that time.

" It was at the time of the Shibition year
(18.51) 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 SC 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,
hut they camied me over like; for when I
tried to turn 'em off they'd say, in a camying
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 mo a httle. 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 yeamt a little or a lot. I taught 'em all
to tumble, and we used to do it near tlio
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 toge-
ther more than three or four at a time.

" I was the fust to introduce tumbling back-
ards, and I'm proud of it — yes, sir, I'm proud
of it. There's another httle chap as I'm lam-
ing to do it ; but he ain't got strength enough
in his arms like. (' ^ih ! ' exclaimed a lad in
the room, ' he is a one to tumble, is Johnny —
go along the streets hke 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
^yiSe 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 admirinc,'
tone, " see him and the Goose have a race !
Away they goes, but Jacky will leave him a
mOe 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 tiled 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 pubKc-houses, and then he got en-
gaged. 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 w^as wery much applauded
when we did it.

" I was the fust hoy as ever did ornamental
work in the mud of my crossings. I used to
be at the crossing at the comer of Begent-
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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOB.

001

laurels, and put them all roond 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, "\^^lenever I see
a carriage coming I used to douse the glim
and nm 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 ^vith our hands.

" I fust learut drawing in the mud fi'om a
man in Adelaide-stieet, 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, imd imderneath
he'd Avrite, ' Please to remember honnest hin-
dustry.'

*' I used to stand by and see him do it, until
rd 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 de-
structing (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
minates after Master Gander had finished his
statement, he was in possession of a coat, for
which he had paid the sum of fivepeuce.

When he brought it into the room, all the
boys and the women crowded round to sec tlie
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 cost before, sum 'arcs," said
one of the women ; •• where did you get it ? "

*' At the ohandly-shop," answered the Goose.

Tus

EiKO" QW THE TUMBLIKO-BOY

Cfiossmo- SwxjEfjus.

Tbb yoimg sweeper who had been styled
by bis ocmipanions the ** King" was a pretty-
looJdng boy, oi^y tall enough to rest his

chin comfortably on the mantel-piece as he
tjilked i<i me, and with a pair of grey eyes that
were as bright and clear as drops of seii^ water.
He was clad in a st} le in no way agreeing with
his royal title ; for he had on a kind of dii't-
coloured shooting-coat of tweed, which was
frajing 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 washer-
woman's sleeves.

His royal highness was of a restless dispo-
sition, and, whilst talking, lifted up, one after
another, the different oi-uameuts on the man-
tel-piece, frowning and looking at them side-
ways, as he pondered over the replies he should
make to my questions.

"When I an-ived at the grandmother's apart-
ment the "king" was absent, his mjyesty
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 hke 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 egQ.

" The boys call me Johnny," he said ; " and
I'm getting on for eleven, and I goes along
with the Goose and Harry, a-sweepiug 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
^ith the others ; sometimes there were three
or four of us, or sometimes one, sii*. I never
used to sweep unless it was wet. I don't go
out not before tv/elve 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 Mai'-
tin ; they went all along up Ticcirilly, and
there they climbed over the l*ai'k raUiugs and
went a birding all by themselves, and then
thoy went to sleep for an hour on the grass —
so they says. I likes better to come homo to
my bed. It kills me for the next day when I
do stop out all night. Tho 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 eaten- wheel, and be can't, and I can go

502

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

further on forards than him, but I can't tumble
hackards as he can. I can't do a handspring,
though. "Why, a handspring's pitcliing yourself
forards on both hands, turning over in front,
and lighting on yovu' feet ; that's veiy difficult,
and very few can do it. There's one little
chap, but he's veiy clover, and can tie himself
Tip in a knot a'most. I'm best at oaten-wheels ;
I can do 'em twelve or fourteen times running
—keep on at it. Itjustrfoes 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 ban-, and then I throws a eaten- wheel, and
has a look at 'em, and if I sees they are laugh-
ing, 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 tum-
bling 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 Tum-
blers, 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 ai-e
.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 com-
ing, we crie?, ' My gentleman and lady conaing
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,
hut 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 sport-
ing 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
tUl 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 spite-
ful, 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 gen-
tlemens, 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, floiuishing 'em in the aii', and
knocking off people's hats ; and at last they
got into a cab, and chucked the brooms away.
The drimken gentlemens is always either jolly
or spiteful.

" But I goes only to the Haymarket, and
about Pall Mall, now. I used to bo going up
to Hevans's eveiy 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 Avell; he's a very awkward tumbler.
It don't hvu-t, only at laming ; 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 — ' 0, I haven't got any
coppers:' so then we'll force 'em, and p'raps
they'll pidl out their purse and gives us a little
bit of silver.

"All, we works hard for what we gets, and
then there's the policemen bu'ching us. Some
of 'em is so spiteful, they takes up their belt
what they uses round the waist to keep their
coat tight, and '11 hit us -nith 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 after-
wards 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

503

pastry-shop at the comer, 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 mo. 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 ■nitli
laughing ; and says they, * No, he sham'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 tinned '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 imder 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, — per-
haps 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 drmk — ay, veiy much,
on the sly. She used when ho 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
grandmotlier says — * What, not my own child ? '
And then grandmother began talking, and at
last^ when Uie master come home, he says to
me — 'Which will you do, stop here, or go
home with your graudmother?' So I come
along with her.

** I'T^ been sweeping the crossings getting
on for two years. Before that I used to go
caten-wbeeling 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 '11 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 cluu-ch, 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 aU 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 piU 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. '\\Tien 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, — some-
thing 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 Stbeet 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 theii* prin-
ciples 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 wem't
such as genilmen had been accustomed to, but
then I must take 'em as they was."

iXH

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

The l)05'3 led me in the direction of Drnry-
lane; and before enterinf» one of the narrow
streets which branch olf 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 jmved cart-
way in the centre would be call-Ml a court.
Seated on the pavement at each side of the
entrance was a costei'woman with her basket
before her, and her legs tucked up myste-
riously 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 — her-
rens," — " Fine hinguns."

The street itself is like the description given
of thoroughfares in the East. Opposite neigh-
bours coiild not exactly shake hands out of
window, but they could taUc together very
comfortably ; and, indeed, as I passed along,
I observed several women with their ai-ms
folded up like a cat's paws on the sill, and
chatting with their friends over the way.

Nearly all the inhabitants were costemion-
gers, and, indeed, the naiTow 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 sweejys, —
whose residences were distinguished by a
broom over the door, — foraied the only
exceptions to the street-selling class of in-
habitants.

As I entered the place, it gave me the no-
tion 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 con-
dered an intruder. Women were seated on
the pavement, knitting, and repairing their
linen ; the doonvays were filled up with bon-
netless 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 v alls as they smoked their
pipes, and blocked up the pavement, as if they
were the proprietors of the place. Little child-
ren formed a convenient bench out of the kerb-
stone ; and a party of four men were seated on
the footway, plajing 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 bad 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 tjibles on which
to chalk the accounts of the day's sales. \

Before most of the doors were costermongers* i
trucks — some standing reiwly to be wheeled
oflF, and otliers stained and muddy with the
day's work. A few of the costei-s were dress-
ing up their ban-ows, arninging the sieves of
waxy-looking potatoes — and others taking the
stift' heiTings, browned like a meerschaum with
the smoke they liad been dried in, from the
barrels beside them, and spacing them out in
pennyworths on their trays.

You might guess what each cos term ongerhad
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 let-
ters. 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 dry-
ing ; and so numerous were they, that they
reminded me of the flags hung out at a Paris
fete. 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 bnishing, was haranguing a
crowd beneath, throwing her arms about like
a drowning man, and in her excitement thrust-
ing 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 pop-
ping out as suddenly as dogs from their ken-
nels 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

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

505

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 comer 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 com-
fort, by hanging little black-framed pictures,
scarcely bigger than pocket-books, on the
walls. Most of these were sacred subjects,
with large yellow glories roimd 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 gmoking 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 vfith. 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, wliich
fitted so closely to tlie skidl, 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 encotinter,
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
xig'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
borne without a penny in his pocket."

B. The Girl Crossing -Sweepers.

ThZ OiBL CBOBSntO-SwEErEB SENT OUT BT
HCB FaTHEB.

A UTTLE girl, who worked by herself at her own
crossing, gave me some ctuious information on
the subject.

This child had a peculiarly flat face, with a
batUm of a nose, while her mouth was scarcely
larger than a bntton-hole. When she spoke,
there was not the slightest expression visible
in her features; indeed, one might have fan-
cied she wore a mask and was talking

behind it; but her eyes were shining the
while as brightly as tliose of a person in a
fever, and kept moving about, restless with her
timidity. The green frock she wore was fas-
tened 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 liair was tidily dressed, being drawn
tightly back from the forehead, like the buy-a-
broora 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 sud-
denly given way.

" I'm twelve years old, please sir, and my
name is Margaret R , and I sweep a cross-
ing in New Oxford-street, by Dunn's-passage,
just facing Moses and Sons', sir ; by the Ca-
tholic 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 tJian 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 tlie ' Red, White,
and Blue," and ' ^Mother, is the Battle over V
and * The Gipsy Girl,' and sometimes I'd get
fourpence or fivepence, and sometimes I'd have
a chance of making ninepence, sir. Some-
times, though, I'd take a shilling of a Saturday
night in the marketij.

" 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 tliem 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
streetV

" 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
ray 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

C, O

50G

LOKDGX LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Prayer,' Avhich 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 seven-
pence, 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 Avcek, 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
thi-ee.

" 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
yoimg, 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
widi 'em."

GiKL Crossikg-Sweepee.

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 httle 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
stiing, " which the doctor liad put there be-
cause 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 goAvn was hang-
ing in tatters, with long three-cornered rents
as large as penny kites, showing the grey lin-
ing underneath ; and her mantle was separ-
ated 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 curUng them, on her singularly small and
also singularly dirty fingers,

" I'll be fourteen, sir, a fortnight before next
Christmas. I was bom in Liquorpond-street,
Gray's Inn-lane. Father come over from Ire-
land, 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, sii". I was a littler girl then tlian 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, slie
was a coster. About a twelvemonth after
father's death, mother was taken bad with the
cholera, and died. I then went along mth both
grandmother and grandfather, who was a
porter in Newgate Market ; I stopped there
until I got a place as sen-ant of all-woi"k. I
was only turned, just turned, eleven then. I
worked along with a French lady and gentle-
man 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 eveiy day.
I hadn't to do any work, only just to clean the
room and nuss the child. It was a nice httle
thing. I couldn't understand what the French
people used to say, but there was a boy Avork-
ing 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 ha^-e
heerd tell of it, sir. Well, I suppose they must
have been Itahans, but we calls eveiybody,
whose talk we don't tmderstand, French. I
went back to grandmother's, but, after grand-
father 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 beg-
ging, 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 an-
other little girl, who was svreeping up Holbom,
who told me what I was to do. < But,' says
she, ' don't come and cut up me.'

" I went fust to Holbom, near to home, at
the end of Eed 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 ladles 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 cross-
ing at the time — five of them; so I went along

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

507

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, per-
haps 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 giii 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."

END OP VOL. n.

INDEX.

Articles for amusement, second-hand
sellers of ------ 16

r-baiting - - - - -
Bedding, &c., second-hand sellers of
Bird-catchers who are street sellers

duffers, tricks of - - -

street-seller, the crippled

Birds'-nests, sellers of - - -

life of a -

Birds, stuffed, sellers of -

• live, sellers of - - -

foreign, sellers of -

Bone-grubbers- - - - -

narrative of a -

Boots and shoes, second-hand, sellers
Boy crossing-sweepers' room -
Brisk and slack seasons - - -
Brushes, second-hand, sellers of -
Burnt linen or calico - - -

54
15
64
69
66
72
74
23
58
70
139
141
42

- 504

- 297

- 22

- 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 hoso - 447

437
438
448
433
339

Cesspool system of London -
— — — of Paris - - _
Cenpool-sewerman, statement of a -
Cesspoolage and nightmen - - -
Chimuey-sweepen, the London -

of old, and climbing-

boys

stealing children -
sores and diseases -
accidents - - -
cmolties towards -
of the present day

346
347
850
351
352
3M

FAOX

Chimney-sweepers, work and wages - 357
general character-
istics 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- ----- gl

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 Eegent-Street - 474

a tradesman's - - 476

" old woman over the

water" ------- 477

old woman who had

been a pensioner ----- 473
— — one who had been a

servant-maid ----- 479

■ the female Irish - 482

tho Sunday - - 484

the wooden-logged - 486

• the one-legged - - 488
the most severely

afflicted ------ 488

the negro who lost

both his legs ----- 490
the maimed Irish - 498

510

INDEX.

PACK

Crossing-sweeper, Mike's statement - 498

Gander the captain - 499

— the king of the tum-
bling-boy crossing-sweepers - - 501

' the girl sweeper sent

out by her father - - _ - _ 505
Crossing-sweepers ----- 465

• able-bodied male - 467

— who have got per-
mission from the police, narratives of 472

■ ■' able-bodied Irish - 481

the occasional - 484

the aiSicted - - 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, sel-
lers of -------15

PAOB

- 78

- Ill

- 23

- 173

- 132

Gold and silver fish, sellers of

Hare and rabbit-skins, buyers of

Harness, second-hand, sellers of

Hill men and women

Hogs'-wash, buyers of - -

Home work ------ 313

Horse, food consumed by, and excre-
tions 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 -------H

Jew old clothes-men - - - -119

street-seller, life of a - - - 1 22

boy street-sellers - - - - 122

their pursuits, trafiic, &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 cus-
toms -------- 131

Jewesses, street, the - - - - 124

Kitchen-stuf^ grease, and dripping,
buyers of ----- - 111

KnuUers 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 - - - - 393

extent of - - 400

' order of - - 401

outlets, ramifica-
tions, &c., of- - - - - - 405

Low wages, remedies for - _ _ 254

•* Lurker's," a, career - - - - 51

Marine-store shops - - - - - 108
May-day ------- 370

IXDEX.

oil

PAGE

May-day, sweeps' festival - - - 371
Men's second-hand clothes, sellers of - 40
Motal trays, second-hand, sellers of - 12
Metropolitan police district, the - - 159

inhabited houses - - 164

population - - - - 1G5

*' lliliddleman " system of work - - 329
Monmouth-street, Dickens's description

of- 36

Mud-larks- ------ 155

story of a reclaimed - - 158

Mineral productions and natural cu-
riosities, sellers of - - - - 81
Music •• duffers " - - - - - 19
ISIosical instruments, second-hand, sel-
lers 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 busi-
ness at the ------ 27

Old clothes-men - - - - -119

Old hats, sellers of - - _ - - 43
Old John, the waterman, statement of 480
Old woman " over the water," tlie - 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 ------- 820

Petticoat-lane, street-sellers of - - 36

"Pare "finders ----- 143

narrative of a female - 144

Purl-men, the - - - - - - 93

*' Bag and bottle " shops - - - 108
Bag-gatherers ------ 139

Bags, broken metal, bottles, glass, and

bone, buyers of - - - - - 106

** Bamonenr Ck)mpany," tlic - - - 373
Bat-killing ------ 56

Biver beer-aeUers - - - - - 93

Birer finders ..---- 147

Boeemary-lane, street sellers of - - 39
Bubbish-oorteis, the - - - 281,289
■I wages and perquisites

of 292

Rubbish-carters, 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 earning^ _____ 228

worse paid, the - - - 232

Scaveugery, contractors for - - - 210

regulations of - 211

premises of - 21G

Scavenging, jet and hose system of - 275

Scurf-labourers ----- 236

Second-liand apparel, sellers of - - 25

articles, sellers of - - 5

experience of a

dealer in -__-__ n
articles, live animals, pro-
ductions, &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, his-
tory 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 plimging - - 424

rats in tho - - - - - 431

— — management of tlu-, and tho late

Commission ------ 414

Commissioners, powers of - 416

rato ------ 420

Sewer-hunters - - - - - - 150

numbers of - - - 152

strange tale of - - 154

512

INDEX.

PAGE

Sewermen and niglitmen of London - 383
Shells, sellers of- - - - -91
Shoddy nulls ------ 30

fever ------ 31

Smithfield market, second-hand sellers
at -------- 4G

Smoke, evils of - - - - - 339

scientific opinions upon 340

Squirrels, sellers of - - - - - 77

"Strapping" system, the, illustration
of -------- 304

Street-huyers, the, varieties of - - 103
Street-cleansing, modes and charac-
teristics of ----- - 207

men and carts em-
ployed in ------ 213

— pauper labour em-
ployed 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

PAGE

209
208
238
181
184
185

Street-sweeping, philanthropists -
Street-sweeping machines - - -

hands employed -

Streets of London, how paved

traffic of - - -

' dust and dirt of

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 df- - - -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

493

U)i-DON: PBISTED BT WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, 6TAUF01U) STUKl-T.

Uo/'^

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Full text of "London labour and the London poor : a cyclopaedia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work"

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