In some places a charge of a halfpenny is made for hot water, but that is very rarely the case. Strong drink is admitted at almost any hour in the majority of the houses, and the deputy is generally ready to bring it; but little is consumed in the houses, those addicted to the use or abuse of intoxicating liquors preferring the tap-room or the beer-shop.
In my former and my present inquiries, I received many statements on this subject. Some details, given by coarse men and boys in the grossest language, are too gross to be more than alluded to, but the full truth must be manifested, if not detailed. It was remarked when my prior account appeared, that the records of gross profligacy on the part of some of the most licentious of the rich (such as the late Marquis of Hertford and other worthies of the same depraved habits) were equalled, or nearly equalled, by the account of the orgies of the lowest lodging-houses. Sin, in any rank of life, shows the same features.
And first, as to the want of cleanliness, comfort, and decency: “Why, sir,” said one man, who had filled a commercial situation of no little importance, but had, through intemperance, been reduced to utter want, “I myself have slept in the top room of a house not far from Drury-lane, and you could study the stars, if you were so minded, through the holes left by the slates having been blown off the roof. It was a fine summer’s night, and the openings in the roof were then rather an advantage, for they admitted air, and the room wasn’t so foul as it might have been without them. I never went there again, but you may judge what thoughts went through a man’s mind—a man who had seen prosperous days—as he lay in a place like that, without being able to sleep, watching the sky.”
The same man told me (and I received abundant corroboration of his statement, besides that incidental mention of the subject occurs elsewhere), that he had scraped together a handful of bugs from the bed-clothes, and crushed them under a candlestick, and had done that many a time, when he could only resort to the lowest places. He had slept in rooms so crammed with sleepers—he believed there were 30 where 12 would have been a proper number—that their breaths in the dead of night and in the unventilated chamber, rose (I use his own words) “in one foul, choking steam of stench.” This was the case most frequently a day or two prior to Greenwich Fair or Epsom Races, when the congregation of the wandering classes, who are the supporters of the low lodging-houses, was the thickest. It was not only that two or even three persons jammed themselves into a bed not too large for one full-sized man; but between the beds—and their partition one from another admitted little more than the passage of a lodger—were placed shakes-down, or temporary accommodation for nightly slumber. In the better lodging-houses the shake-downs are small palliasses or mattresses; in the worst, they are bundles of rags of any kind; but loose straw is used only in the country for shake-downs. One informant saw a traveller, who had arrived late, eye his shake-down in one of the worst houses with anything but a pleased expression of countenance; and a surly deputy, observing this, told the customer he had his choice, “which,” the deputy added, “it’s not all men as has, or I shouldn’t have been waiting here on you. But you has your choice, I tell you;—sleep there on that shake-down, or turn out and be d——; that’s fair.” At some of the busiest periods, numbers sleep on the kitchen floor, all huddled together, men and women (when indecencies are common enough), and without bedding or anything but their scanty clothes to soften the hardness of the stone or brick floor. A penny is saved to the lodger by this means. More than 200 have been accommodated in this way in a large house. The Irish, at harvest-time, very often resort to this mode of passing the night.
I heard from several parties, of the surprise, and even fear or horror, with which a decent mechanic—more especially if he were accompanied by his wife—regarded one of these foul dens, when destitution had driven him there for the first time in his life. Sometimes such a man was seen to leave the place abruptly, though perhaps he had pre-paid his last halfpenny for the refreshment of a night’s repose. Sometimes he was seized with sickness. I heard also from some educated persons who had “seen better days,” of the disgust with themselves and with the world, which they felt on first entering such places. “And I have some reason to believe,” said one man, “that a person, once well off, who has sunk into the very depths of poverty, often makes his first appearance in one of the worst of those places. Perhaps it is because he keeps away from them as long as he can, and then, in a sort of desperation fit, goes into the cheapest he meets with; or if he knows it’s a vile place, he very likely says to himself—I did—‘I may as well know the worst at once.’”
Another man who had moved in good society, said, when asked about his resorting to a low lodging-house: “When a man’s lost caste in society, he may as well go the whole hog, bristles and all, and a low lodging-house is the entire pig.”
Notwithstanding many abominations, I am assured that the lodgers, in even the worst of these habitations, for the most part sleep soundly. But they have, in all probability, been out in the open air the whole of the day, and all of them may go to their couches, after having walked, perhaps, many miles, exceedingly fatigued, and some of them half-drunk. “Why, in course, sir,” said a “traveller,” whom I spoke to on this subject, “if you is in a country town or village, where there’s only one lodging-house, perhaps, and that a bad one—an old hand can always suit his-self in London—you must get half-drunk, or your money for your bed is wasted. There’s so much rest owing to you, after a hard day; and bugs and bad air’ll prevent its being paid, if you don’t lay in some stock of beer, or liquor of some sort, to sleep on. It’s a duty you owes yourself; but, if you haven’t the browns, why, then, in course, you can’t pay it.” I have before remarked, and, indeed, have given instances, of the odd and sometimes original manner in which an intelligent patterer, for example, will express himself.
The information I obtained in the course of this inquiry into the condition of low lodging-houses, afforded a most ample corroboration of the truth of a remark I have more than once found it necessary to make before—that persons of the vagrant class will sacrifice almost anything for warmth, not to say heat. Otherwise, to sleep, or even sit, in some of the apartments of these establishments would be intolerable.
From the frequent state of weariness to which I have alluded, there is generally less conversation among the frequenters of the low lodging-houses than might be expected. Some are busy cooking, some (in the better houses) are reading, many are drowsy and nodding, and many are smoking. In perhaps a dozen places of the worst and filthiest class, indeed, smoking is permitted even in the sleeping-rooms; but it is far less common than it was even half-a-dozen years back, and becomes still less common yearly. Notwithstanding so dangerous a practice, fires are and have been very unfrequent in these places. There is always some one awake, which is one reason. The lack of conversation, I ought to add, and the weariness and drowsiness, are less observable in the lodging-houses patronised by thieves and women of abandoned character, whose lives are comparatively idle, and whose labour a mere nothing. In their houses, if the conversation be at all general, it is often of the most unclean character. At other times it is carried on in groups, with abundance of whispers, shrugs, and slang, by the members of the respective schools of thieves or lurkers.
I have now to speak of the habitual violation of all the injunctions of law, of all the obligations of morality, and of all the restraints of decency, seen continually in the vilest of the lodging-houses. I need but cite a few facts, for to detail minutely might be to disgust. In some of these lodging-houses, the proprietor—or, I am told, it might be more correct to say, the proprietress, as there are more women than men engaged in the nefarious traffic carried on in these houses—are “fences,” or receivers of stolen goods in a small way. Their “fencing,” unless as the very exception, does not extend to any plate, or jewellery, or articles of value, but is chiefly confined to provisions, and most of all to those which are of ready sale to the lodgers.
Of very ready sale are “fish got from the gate” (stolen from Billingsgate); “sawney” (thieved bacon), and “flesh found in Leadenhall” (butcher’s-meat stolen from that market). I was told by one of the most respectable tradesmen in Leadenhall-market, that it was infested—but not now to so great an extent as it was—with lads and young men, known there as “finders.” They carry bags round their necks, and pick up bones, or offal, or pieces of string, or bits of papers, or “anything, sir, please, that a poor lad, that has neither father nor mother, and is werry hungry, can make a ha’penny by to get him a bit of bread, please, sir.” This is often but a cover for stealing pieces of meat, and the finders, with their proximate market for disposal of their meat in the lowest lodging-houses in Whitechapel, go boldly about their work, for the butchers, if the “finder” be detected, “won’t,” I was told by a sharp youth who then was at a low lodging-house in Keate-street, “go bothering theirselves to a beak, but gives you a scruff of the neck and a kick and lets you go. But some of them kicks werry hard.” The tone and manner of this boy—and it is a common case enough with the “prigs”—showed that he regarded hard kicking merely as one of the inconveniences to which his business-pursuits were unavoidably subjected; just as a struggling housekeeper might complain of the unwelcome calls of the tax-gatherers. These depredations are more frequent in Leadenhall-market than in any of the others, on account of its vicinity to Whitechapel. Even the Whitechapel meat-market is less the scene of prey, for it is a series of shops, while Leadenhall presents many stalls, and the finders seem loath to enter shops without some plausible pretext.
Groceries, tea especially, stolen from the docks, warehouses, or shops, are things in excellent demand among the customers of a lodging-house fence. Tea, known or believed to have been stolen “genuine” from any dock, is bought and sold very readily; 1s. 6d., however, is a not unfrequent price for what is known as 5s. tea. Sugar, spices, and other descriptions of stolen grocery, are in much smaller request.
Wearing-apparel is rarely bought by the fences I am treating of; but the stealers of it can and do offer their wares to the lodgers, who will often, before buying, depreciate the garment, and say “It’s never been nothing better nor a Moses.”
“Hens and chickens” are a favourite theft, and “go at once to the pot,” but in no culinary sense. The hens and chickens of the roguish low lodging-houses are the publicans’ pewter measures; the bigger vessels are “hens;” the smaller are “chickens.” Facilities are provided for the melting of these stolen vessels, and the metal is sold by the thief—very rarely if ever, by the lodging-house keeper, who prefers dealing with the known customers of the establishment—to marine-store buyers.
A man who at one time was a frequenter of a thieves’ lodging-house, related to me a conversation which he chanced to overhear—he himself being then in what his class would consider a much superior line of business—between a sharp lad, apparently of twelve or thirteen years of age, and a lodging-house (female) fence. But it occurred some three or four years back. The lad had “found” a piece of Christmas beef, which he offered for sale to his landlady, averring that it weighed 6 lbs. The fence said and swore that it wouldn’t weigh 3 lbs., but she would give him 5d. for it. It probably weighed above 4 lbs. “Fip-pence!” exclaimed the lad, indignantly; “you haven’t no fairness. Vy, its sixpun’ and Christmas time. Fip-pence! A tanner and a flag (a sixpence and a four-penny piece) is the werry lowest terms.” There was then a rapid and interrupted colloquy, in which the most frequent words were: “Go to blazes!” with retorts of “You go to blazes!” and after strong and oathful imputations of dishonest endeavours on the part of each contracting party, to over-reach the other, the meat was sold to the woman for 6d.
Some of the “fences” board, lodge, and clothe, two or three boys or girls, and send them out regularly to thieve, the fence usually taking all the proceeds, and if it be the young thief has been successful, he is rewarded with a trifle of pocket-money, and is allowed plenty of beer and tobacco.
One man, who keeps three low lodging-houses (one of which is a beer-shop), not long ago received from a lodger a valuable great-coat, which the man said he had taken from a gig. The fence (who was in a larger way of business than others of his class, and is reputed rich,) gave 10s. for the garment, asking at the same time, “Who was minding the gig?” “A charity kid,” was the answer. “Give him a deuce” (2d.), “and stall him off” (send him an errand), said the fence, “and bring the horse and gig, and I’ll buy it.” It was done, and the property was traced in two hours, but only as regarded the gig, which had already had a new pair of wheels attached to it, and was so metamorphosed, that the owner, a medical gentleman, though he had no moral doubt on the subject, could not swear to his own vehicle. The thief received only 4l. for gig and horse; the horse was never traced.
The licentiousness of the frequenters, and more especially of the juvenile frequenters, of the low lodging-houses, must be even more briefly alluded to. In some of these establishments, men and women, boys and girls,—but perhaps in no case, or in very rare cases, unless they are themselves consenting parties, herd together promiscuously. The information which I have given from a reverend informant indicates the nature of the proceedings, when the sexes are herded indiscriminately, and it is impossible to present to the reader, in full particularity, the records of the vice practised.
Boys have boastfully carried on loud conversations, and from distant parts of the room, of their triumphs over the virtue of girls, and girls have laughed at and encouraged the recital. Three, four, five, six, and even more boys and girls have been packed, head and feet, into one small bed; some of them perhaps never met before. On such occasions any clothing seems often enough to be regarded as merely an incumbrance. Sometimes there are loud quarrels and revilings from the jealousy of boys and girls, and more especially of girls whose “chaps” have deserted or been inveigled from them. At others, there is an amicable interchange of partners, and next day a resumption of their former companionship. One girl, then fifteen or sixteen, who had been leading this vicious kind of life for nearly three years, and had been repeatedly in prison, and twice in hospitals—and who expressed a strong desire to “get out of the life” by emigration—said: “Whatever that’s bad and wicked, that any one can fancy could be done in such places among boys and girls that’s never been taught, or won’t be taught, better, is done, and night after night.” In these haunts of low iniquity, or rather in the room into which the children are put, there are seldom persons above twenty. The younger lodgers in such places live by thieving and pocket-picking, or by prostitution. The charge for a night’s lodging is generally 2d., but smaller children have often been admitted for 1d. If a boy or girl resort to one of these dens at night without the means of defraying the charge for accommodation, the “mot of the ken” (mistress of the house) will pack them off, telling them plainly that it will be no use their returning until they have stolen something worth 2d. If a boy or girl do not return in the evening, and have not been heard to express their intention of going elsewhere, the first conclusion arrived at by their mates is that they have “got into trouble” (prison).
The indiscriminate admixture of the sexes among adults, in many of these places, is another evil. Even in some houses considered of the better sort, men and women, husbands and wives, old and young, strangers and acquaintances, sleep in the same apartment, and if they choose, in the same bed. Any remonstrance at some act of gross depravity, or impropriety on the part of a woman not so utterly hardened as the others, is met with abuse and derision. One man who described these scenes to me, and had long witnessed them, said that almost the only women who ever hid their faces or manifested dislike of the proceedings they could not but notice (as far as he saw), were poor Irishwomen, generally those who live by begging: “But for all that,” the man added, “an Irishman or Irishwoman of that sort will sleep anywhere, in any mess, to save a halfpenny, though they may have often a few shillings, or a good many, hidden about them.”
There is no provision for purposes of decency in some of the places I have been describing, into which the sexes are herded indiscriminately; but to this matter I can only allude. A policeman, whose duty sometimes called him to enter one of those houses at night, told me that he never entered it without feeling sick.
There are now fewer of such filthy receptacles than there were. Some have been pulled down—especially for the building of Commercial-street, in Whitechapel, and of New Oxford-street—and some have fallen into fresh and improved management. Of those of the worst class, however, there may now be at least thirty in London; while the low lodgings of all descriptions, good or bad, are more frequented than they were a few years back. A few new lodging-houses, perhaps half a dozen, have been recently opened, in expectation of a great influx of “travellers” and vagrants at the opening of the Great Exhibition.
The informant whose account of patterers and of vagrant life in its other manifestations I have already given, has written from personal knowledge and observation the following account of the children in low lodging-houses:
“Of the mass of the indigent and outcast,” he says, “of whom the busy world know nothing, except from an occasional paragraph in the newspaper, the rising generation, though most important, is perhaps least considered. Every Londoner must have seen numbers of ragged, sickly, and ill-fed children, squatting at the entrances of miserable courts, streets, and alleys, engaged in no occupation that is either creditable to themselves or useful to the community. These are, in many cases, those whose sole homes are in the low lodging-houses; and I will now exhibit a few features of the ‘juvenile performers’ among the ‘London Poor.’
“In many cases these poor children have lost one of their parents; in some, they are without either father or mother; but even when both parents are alive, the case is little mended, for if the parents be of the vagrant or dishonest class, their children are often neglected, and left to provide for the cost of their food and lodging as they best may. The following extract from the chaplain’s report of one of our provincial jails, gives a melancholy insight into the training of many of the families. It is not, I know, without exception; but, much as we could wish it to be otherwise, it is so general an occurrence, varied into its different forms, that it may be safely accounted as the rule of action.
“‘J. G. was born of poor parents. At five years old his father succeeded to a legacy of 500l. He was quiet, indolent, fond of drink, a good scholar, and had twelve children. He never sent any of them to school! “Telling lies,” said the child, “I learned from my mother; she did things unknown to father, and gave me a penny not to tell him!” The father (on leaving home) left, by request of the mother, some money to pay a man; she slipped up stairs, and told the children to say she was out.
“‘From ten to twelve years of age I used to go to the ale-house. I stole the money from my father, and got very drunk. My father never punished me for all this, as he ought to have done. In course of time I was apprenticed to a tanner; he ordered me to chapel, instead of which I used to play in the fields. When out of my time I got married, and still carried on the same way, starving my wife and children. I used to take my little boy, when only five years old, to the public-house, and make him drunk with whatever I drank myself. A younger one could act well a drunken man on the floor. My wife was a sober steady women; but, through coming to fetch me home she learned to drink too. One of our children used to say, “Mam, you are drunk, like daddy.”’
“It may be argued that this awful ‘family portrait’ is not the average character, but I have witnessed too many similar scenes to doubt the general application of the sad rule.
“Of those children of the poor, as has been before observed, the most have either no parents, or have been deserted by them, and have no regular means of living, nor moral superintendance on the part of relatives or neighbours; consequently, they grow up in habits of idleness, ignorance, vagrancy, or crime. In some cases they are countenanced and employed. Here and there may be seen a little urchin holding a few onions in a saucer, or a diminutive sickly girl standing with a few laces or a box or two of lucifers. But even these go with the persons who have ‘set them up’ daily to the public-house (and to the lodging-house at night); and after they have satisfied the cravings of hunger, frequently expend their remaining halfpence (if any) in gingerbread, and as frequently in gin. I have overheard a proposal for ‘half-a-quartern and a two-out’ (glass) between a couple of shoeless boys under nine years old. One little fellow of eleven, on being remonstrated with, said that it was the only pleasure in life that he had, and he weren’t a-going to give that up. Both sexes of this juvenile class frequent, when they can raise the means, the very cheap and ‘flash’ places of amusement, where the precocious delinquent acquires the most abandoned tastes, and are often allured by elder accomplices to commit petty frauds and thefts.
“Efforts have been made to redeem these young recruits in crime from their sad career, with its inevitable results. In some cases, I rejoice to believe that success has crowned the endeavour. There is that, however, in the cunning hardihood of the majority of these immature delinquents, which presents almost insuperable barriers to benevolence, and of this I will adduce an instance.
“A gentleman, living at Islington, who attends one of the city churches, is in the habit of crossing the piece of waste ground close to Saffron-hill. Here he often saw (close to the ragged school) a herd of boys, and as nearly as he could judge always the same boys. One of them always bowed to him as he passed. He thought—and thought right—that they were gambling, and after, on one occasion, talking to them very seriously, he gave each of them twopence and pursued his way. However, he found himself followed by the boy before alluded to, accompanied by a younger lad, who turned out to be his brother. Both in one breath begged to know if ‘his honour’ could please to give them any sort of a job. The gentleman gave them his card, inquired their place of residence (a low lodging-house) and the next morning, at nine o’clock, both youths were at his door. He gave them a substantial breakfast, and then took them into an outhouse where was a truss of straw, and having himself taken off the band, he desired them to convey the whole, one straw at a time, across the garden and deposit it in another out-house. The work was easy and the terms liberal, as each boy was to get dinner and tea, and one shilling per day as long as his services should be required. Their employer had to go to town, and left orders with one of his domestics to see that the youths wanted nothing, and to watch their proceedings; their occupation was certainly not laborious, but then it was work, and although that was the first of their requests, it was also the last of their wishes.
“Taking advantage of an adjoining closet, the servant perceived that the weight even of a straw had been too much for these hopeful boys. They were both seated on the truss, and glibly recounting some exploits of their own, and how they had been imposed upon by others. The eldest—about fourteen—was vowing vengeance upon ‘Taylor Tom’ for attempting to ‘walk the barber’ (seduce his ‘gal’); while the younger—who had scarcely seen eleven summers—averred that it was ‘wery good of the swell to give them summut to eat,’ but ‘precious bad to be shut up in that crib all day without a bit o’ backer’. Before the return of their patron they had transported all the straw to its appointed designation; as it was very discernible, however, that this had been effected by a wholesale process, the boys were admonished, paid, and dismissed. They are now performing more ponderous work in one of the penal settlements. Whether the test adopted by the gentleman in question was the best that might have been resorted to, I need not now inquire.
“It would be grateful to my feelings if in these disclosures I could omit the misdemeanors of the other sex of juveniles; but I am obliged to own, on the evidence of personal observation, that there are girls of ages varying from eleven to fifteen who pass the day with a ‘fakement’ before them (‘Pity a poor orphan’), and as soon as evening sets in, loiter at shop-windows and ogle gentlemen in public walks, making requests which might be expected only from long-hardened prostitution. Their nights are generally passed in a low lodging-house. They frequently introduce themselves with ‘Please, sir, can you tell me what time it is?’ If they get a kindly answer, some other casual observations prepare the way for hints which are as unmistakeable as they are unprincipled.”
Further to elucidate this subject, full of importance, as I have shown, I give an account of low lodging-houses (or “padding-kens”) at the “stages” (so to speak) observed by a patterer “travelling” from London to Birmingham.
I give the several towns which are the usual sleeping places of the travellers, with the character and extent of the accommodation provided for them, and with a mention of such incidental matters as seemed to me, in the account I received, to be curious or characteristic. Circuitous as is the route, it is the one generally followed. Time is not an object with a travelling patterer. “If I could do better in the way of tin,” said one of the fraternity to me, “in a country village than in London, why I’d stick to the village—if the better tin lasted—for six months; aye, sir, for six years. What’s places to a man like me, between grub and no grub?” It is probable that on a trial, such a man would soon be weary of the monotony of a village life; but into that question I need not now enter.
I give each stage without the repetition of stating that from “here to there” is so many miles; and the charge for a lodging is at such and such a rate. The distance most frequently “travelled” in a day varies from ten to twenty miles, according to the proximity of the towns, and the character and capabilities (for the patterer’s purposes) of the locality. The average charge for a lodging, in the better sort of country lodging-houses, is 4d. a night,—at others, 3d. In a slack time, a traveller, for 4d., has a bed to himself. In a busy time—as at fairs or races—he will account himself fortunate if he obtain any share of a bed for 4d. At some of the places characterised by my informant as “rackety,” “queer,” or “Life in London,” the charge is as often 3d. as 4d.
The first stage, then, most commonly attained on tramp, is—
Romford.—“It’s a good circuit, sir,” said my principal informant, “and if you want to see life between from London to Birmingham, why you can stretch it and see it for 200 miles.” The Romford “house of call” most frequented by the class of whom I treat, is the King’s Arms (a public-house.) There is a back-kitchen for the use of travellers, who pay something extra if they choose to resort, and are decent enough to be admitted, into the tap-room. “Very respectable, sir,” said an informant, “and a proper division of married and single, of men and women. Of course they don’t ask any couple to show their marriage lines; no more than they do any lord and lady, or one that ain’t a lady, if she’s with a lord, at any fash’nable hotel at Brighton. I’ve done tidy well on slums about ‘ladies in a Brighton hotel,’ just by the Steyne; werry tidy.” In this house they make up forty beds; some of them with curtains.
Chelmsford.—The Three Queens (a beer-shop.) “A rackety place, sir,” said the man, “one of the showfuls; a dicky one; a free-and-easy. You can get a pint of beer and a punch of the head, all for 2d. As for sleeping on a Saturday night there, ‘O, no, we never mention it.’ It mayn’t be so bad, indeed it ain’t, as some London lodging-houses, because there ain’t the chance, and there’s more known about it.” Fourteen beds.
Braintree.—The Castle (a beer-shop.) “Takes in all sorts and all sizes; all colours and all nations; similar to what’s expected of the Crystal Palace. I was a muck-snipe when I was there—why, a muck-snipe, sir, is a man regularly done up, coopered, and humped altogether—and it was a busyish time, and when the deputy paired off the single men, I didn’t much like my bed-mate. He was a shabby-genteel, buttoned up to the chin, and in the tract line. I thought of Old Scratch when I looked at him, though he weren’t a Scotchman, I think. I tipped the wink to an acquaintance there, and told him I thought my old complaint was coming on. That was, to kick and bite like a horse, in my sleep, a’cause my mother was terrified by a wicious horse not werry long afore I was born. So I dozed on the bed-side, and began to whinny; and my bed-mate jumped up frightened, and slept on the floor.” Twenty-two beds.
Thaxton.—“A poor place, but I stay two days, it’s so comfortable and so country, at the Rose and Crown. It’s a sort of rest. It’s decent and comfortable too, and it’s about 6d. a night to me for singing and patter in the tap-room. That’s my cokum (advantage).” Ten beds.
Saffron Walden.—The Castle. “Better now—was very queer. Slovenly as could be, and you had to pay for fire, though it was a house of call for curriers and other tradesmen, but they never mix with us. The landlord don’t care much whose admitted, or how they go on.” Twenty-four beds.
Cambridge.—“The grand town of all. London in miniature. It would be better but for the police. I don’t mean the college bull-dogs. They don’t interfere with us, only with women. The last time I was at Cambridge, sir, I hung the Mannings. It was the day, or two days, I’m not sure which, after their trial. We pattered at night, too late for the collegians to come out. We ‘worked’ about where we knew they lodged—I had a mate with me—and some of the windows of their rooms, in the colleges themselves, looks into the street. We pattered about later news of Mr. and Mrs. Manning. Up went the windows, and cords was let down to tie the papers to. But we always had the money first. We weren’t a-going to trust such out-and-out going young coves as them. One young gent. said: ‘I’m a sucking parson; won’t you trust me?’ ‘No,’ says I, ‘we’ll not trust Father Peter.’ So he threw down 6d. and let down his cord, and he says, ‘Send six up.’ We saw it was Victoria’s head all right, so we sends up three. ‘Where’s the others?’ says he. ‘O,’ says I, ‘they’re 1d. a piece, and 1d. a piece extra for hanging Mr. and Mrs. Manning, as we have, to a cord; so it’s all right.’ Some laughed, and some said, ‘D—n you, wait till I see you in the town.’ But they hadn’t that pleasure. Yorkshire Betty’s is the head quarters at Cambridge,—or in Barnwell, of course, there’s no such places in Cambridge. It’s known as ‘W— and Muck Fort.’ It’s the real college touch—the seat of learning, if you’re seeing life. The college lads used to look in there oftener than they do now. They’re getting shyer. Men won’t put up with black eyes for nothing. Old Yorkshire Betty’s a motherly body, but she’s no ways particular in her management. Higgledy-piggledy; men and women; altogether.” Thirty beds.
Newmarket.—“The Woolpack. A lively place; middling other ways. There’s generally money to be had at Newmarket. I don’t stay there so long as some, for I don’t care about racing; and the poorest snob there’s a sporting character.” Six beds.
Bury St. Edmund’s.—“Old Jack Something’s. He was a publican for forty years. But he broke, and I’ve heard him say that if he hadn’t been a player on the fiddle, he should have destroyed his-self. But his fiddle diverted him in his troubles. He has a real Cremona, and can’t he play it? He’s played at dances at the Duke of Norfolk’s. I’ve heard him give the tune he played on his wedding night, years and years back, before I was born. He’s a noble-looking fellow; the fac-simile of Louis Philippe. It’s a clean and comfortable, hard and honest place.” Twelve beds.
Mildenhall.—“A private house; I forget the landlord’s name. The magistrates is queer there, and so very little work can be done in my way. I’ve been there when I was the only lodger.” Seven beds.
Ely.—“The Tom and Jerry. Very queer. No back kitchen or convenience. A regular rough place. Often quarrelling there all night long. Any caper allowed among men and women. The landlord’s easy frightened.” Five beds.
St. Ives.—“Plume of Feathers. Passable.” Eleven beds.
St. Neot’s.—“Bell and Dicky, and very dicky too. Queer doings in the dos (sleeping) and everything. It’s an out-of-the-way place, or the town’s people might see to it, but they won’t take any notice unless some traveller complains, and they won’t complain. They’re a body of men, sir, that don’t like to run gaping to a beak. The landlord seems to care for nothing but money. He takes in all that offer. Three in a bed often; men, women, and children mixed together. It’s anything but a tidy place.” Thirteen beds.
Bedford.—The Cock. “Life in London, sir; I can’t describe it better. Life in Keate-street, Whitechapel.” Fifteen beds.
Irchester.—“I don’t mind the name. A most particular place. You must go to bed by nine, or be locked out. It’s hard and honest; clean and rough.” Six beds.
Wellingborough.—“A private house. Smith or Jones, I know, or some common name. Ducker, the soldier that was shot in the Park by Annette Meyers, lived there. I worked him there myself, and everybody bought. I did the gun-trick, sir, (had great success.) It’s an inferior lodging place. They’re in no ways particular, not they, who they admit or how they dos. At a fair-time, the goings on is anything but fair.” Ten beds.
Northampton.—“Mrs. Bull’s. Comfortable and decent. She takes in the Dispatch, to oblige her travellers. It’s a nice, quiet, Sunday house.” Twelve beds.
Market Harborough.—“There’s a good lady there gives away tracts and half-a-crown. A private house is the traveller’s house, and some new name. Middling accommodation.” Nine beds.
Lutterworth.—“A private house, and I’ll go there no more. Very queer. Not the least comfort or decency. They’re above their business, I think, and take in too many, and care nothing what the travellers do. Higgledy-piggledy together.” Ten beds.
Leicester.—“The Rookery. Rosemary-lane over again, sir, especially at Black Jack’s. He shakes up the beds with a pitchfork, and brings in straw if there’s more than can possibly be crammed into the beds. He’s a fighting man, and if you say a word, he wants to fight you.” Twelve beds.
Hinckley.—“The Tea-board. Comfortable.” Eight beds.
Nuneaton.—“The same style as Hinckley. A private house.” Eight beds.
Coventry.—“Deserves to be sent further. Bill Cooper’s. A dilapidated place, and no sleep, for there’s armies of bugs,—great black fellows. I call it the Sikh war there, and they’re called Sikhs there, or Sicks there, is the vermin; but I’m sick of all such places. They’re not particular there,—certainly not.” Twenty beds.
Birmingham.—“Mrs. Leach’s. Comfortable and decent, and a good creature. I know there’s plenty of houses in Birmingham bad enough,—London reduced, sir; but I can’t tell you about them from my own observation, ’cause I always go to Mrs. Leach’s.” Thirty beds.
Here, then, in the route most frequented by the pedestrian “travellers,” we find, taking merely the accommodation of one house in each place (and in some of the smaller towns there is but one), a supply of beds which may nightly accommodate, on an average, 489 inmates, reckoning at the rate of 12 sleepers to every 8 beds. At busy times, double the number will be admitted. And to these places resort the beggar, the robber, and the pickpocket; the street-patterer and the street-trader; the musician, the ballad-singer, and the street-performer; the diseased, the blind, the lame, and the half-idiot; the outcast girl and the hardened prostitute; young and old, and of all complexions and all countries.
Nor does the enumeration end here. To these places must often resort the wearied mechanic, travelling in search of employment, and even the broken-down gentleman, or scholar, whose means do not exceed 4d.
A curious history might be written of the frequenters of low lodging-houses. Dr. Johnson relates, that when Dean Swift was a young man, he paid a yearly visit from Sir William Temple’s seat, Moor Park, to his mother at Leicester. “He travelled on foot, unless some violence of weather drove him into a waggon; and at night he would go to a penny lodging, where he purchased clean sheets for sixpence. This practice Lord Orrery imputes to his (Swift’s) innate love of grossness and vulgarity; some may ascribe it to his desire of surveying human life through all its varieties.” Perhaps it might not be very difficult to trace, in Swift’s works, the influence upon his mind of his lodging-house experience.
The same author shows that his friend, Richard Savage, in the bitterness of his poverty, was also a lodger in these squalid dens: “He passed the night sometimes in mean houses, which are set open at night to any casual wanderer; sometimes in cellars, among the riot and filth of the meanest and most profligate of the rabble.” A Richard Savage of to-day might, under similar circumstances, have the same thing said of him, except that “cellars” might now be described as “ground-floors.”
The great, and sometimes the only, luxury of the frequenters of these country lodging-houses is tobacco. A man or women who cannot smoke, I was told, or was not “hardened” to tobacco smoke, in a low lodging-house was half-killed with coughing. Sometimes a couple of men, may be seen through the thick vapour of the tobacco-smoke, peering eagerly over soiled cards, as they play at all-fours. Sometimes there is an utter dulness and drowsiness in the common sitting-room, and hardly a word exchanged for many minutes. I was told by one man of experience in these domiciles, that he had not very unfrequently heard two men who were conversing together in a low tone, and probably agreeing upon some nefarious course, stop suddenly, when there was a pause in the general conversation, and look uneasily about them, as if apprehensive and jealous that they had been listened to. A “stranger” in the lodging-house is regarded with a minute and often a rude scrutiny, and often enough would not be admitted, were not the lodging-house keeper the party concerned, and he of course admits “all what pays.”
One patterer told me of two “inscriptions,” as he called them, which he had noticed in country lodgings he had lately visited; the first was:—
“He who smokes, thinks like a philosopher, and feels like a philanthropist.”—Bulwer’s Night and Morning.
The second was an intimation from the proprietor of the house, which, in spite of its halting explanation, is easily understood:—
“No sickness allowed, unles by order of the Mare.”
I have before mentioned that the street-stationers—the sellers of writing-paper, envelopes, pens, and of the other articles which constitute the stationery in the most general demand—were not to be confounded with the pattering “paper-workers.” They are, indeed, a different class altogether. The majority of them have been mechanics, or in the employ of tradesmen whose callings were not mechanical (as regards handicraft labour), but what is best described perhaps as commercial; or as selling but not producing; as in the instances of the large body of “warehousemen” in the different departments of trade. One street-stationer thought that of his entire body, not more than six had been gentlemen’s servants. He himself knew four who had been in such employment, and one only as a boy—but there might be six.
The card-sellers are, in the instances I shall show, more akin to the class of patterers, and I shall, therefore, give them first. The more especially as I can so preserve the consecutiveness of the accounts, in the present number, by presenting the reader with a sketch of the life of an informant, in whose revelations I find that many have taken a strong interest.
All ladies and gentlemen who “take their walks abroad,” must have seen, and of course heard, a little man in humble attire engaged in selling at one penny each a small card, containing a few sentences of letter-press, and fifteen stenographic characters, with an example, by which, it is asserted, anybody and everybody may “learn to write short-hand in a few hours.” With the merits of the production, self-considered, this is not the place to meddle; suffice it that it is one of the many ways of getting a crust common to the great metropolis, and perhaps the most innocent of all the street performances. A kind of a street lecture is given by the vendor, in which the article is sufficiently puffed off. Of course this lecture is, so to speak, stereotyped, embracing the same ideas in nearly the same words over and over and over again. The exhibitor, however, pleads that the constant exchange and interchange of passengers, and his desire to give each and all a fair amount of information, makes the repetition admissible, and even necessary. It is here given as a specimen of the style of the educated “patterer.”
“Here is an opportunity which has seldom if ever been offered to the public before, whereby any person of common intellect may learn to write short-hand in a few hours, without any aid from a teacher. The system is entirely my own. It contains no vowels, no arbitrary characters, no double consonants, and no terminations; it may therefore properly be called ‘stenography,’ an expression which conveys its own meaning; it is derived from two Greek words; stenos, short, and grapho, I write, or graphi, the verb to write, and embraces all that is necessary in fifteen characters. I know that a prejudice obtains to a great extent against anything and everything said or done in the street, but I have nothing to do with either the majority or minority of street pretenders. I am an educated man, and not a mere pretender, and if the justice or genuineness of a man’s pretensions would always lead him to success I had not been here to-day. But against the tide of human disappointment, the worthy and the undeserving are so equally compelled to struggle, and so equally liable to be overturned by competition, that till you can prove that wealth is the gauge of character, it may be difficult to determine the ability or morality of a man from his position. I was lately reading an account of the closing life of that leviathan in literature, Dr. Johnson, and an anecdote occurred, which I relate, conceiving that it applies to one of the points at issue—I mean the ridicule with which my little publication has sometimes been treated by passers-by, who have found it easier to speculate on the texture of my coat, than on the character of my language. The Doctor had a niece who had embraced the peculiarities of Quakerism; after he had scolded her some time, and in rather unmeasured terms, her mother interfered and said, ‘Doctor, don’t scold the girl—you’ll meet her in heaven, I hope.’—‘I hope not,’ said the Doctor, ‘for I hate to meet fools anywhere.’ I apply the same observation to persons who bandy about the expressions ‘gift of the gab,’ ‘catch-penny,’ &c., &c., which in my case it is somewhat easier to circulate than to support. At any rate they ought to be addressed to me and not to the atmosphere. The man who meets a foe to the face, gives him an equal chance of defence, and the sword openly suspended from the belt is a less dangerous, because a less cowardly weapon than the one which, like that of Harmodius, is concealed under the wreaths of a myrtle.
“If you imagine that professional disappointment is confined to people out of doors, you are very much mistaken. Look into some of the middle-class streets around where we are standing: you will find here and there, painted or engraved on a door, the words ‘Mr. So-and-so, surgeon.’ The man I am pre-supposing shall be qualified,—qualified in the technical sense of the expression, a Member of the College of Surgeons, a Licentiate of Apothecaries’ Hall, and a Graduate of some University. He may possess the talent of Galen or Hippocrates; or, to come to more recent date, of Sir Astley Cooper himself, but he never becomes popular, and dies unrewarded because unknown: before he dies, he may crawl out of his concealed starvation into such a thoroughfare as this, and see Professor Morrison, or Professor Holloway, or the Proprietor of Parr’s Life Pills, or some other quack, ride by in their carriage; wealth being brought them by the same waves that have wafted misfortune to himself; though that wealth has been procured by one undeviating system of Hypocrisy and Humbug, of Jesuitism and Pantomime, such as affords no parallel since the disgusting period of Oliverian ascendancy. Believe me, my friends, a man may form his plans for success with profound sagacity, and guard with caution against every approach to extravagance, but neither the boldness of enterprise nor the dexterity of stratagem will always secure the distinction they deserve. Else that policeman would have been an inspector!
“I have sometimes been told, that if I possessed the facilities I professedly exhibit, I might turn them to greater personal advantage: in coarse, unfettered, Saxon English, ‘That’s a LIE;’ for on the authority of a distinguished writer, there are 2,000 educated men in London and its suburbs, who rise every morning totally ignorant where to find a breakfast. Now I am not quite so bad as that, so that it appears I am an exception to the rule, and not the rule open to exception. However, it is beyond all controversy, that the best way to keep the fleas from biting you in bed is to ‘get out of bed;’ and by a parity of reasoning, the best way for you to sympathize with me for being on the street is to take me off, as an evidence of your sympathy. I remember that, some twenty years ago, a poor man of foreign name, but a native of this metropolis, made his appearance in Edinburgh, and advertised that he would lecture on mnemonics, or the art of memory. As he was poor, he had recourse to an humble lecture-room, situated up a dirty court. Its eligibility may be determined by the fact that sweeps’ concerts were held in it, at ½d. per head, and the handbill mostly ended with the memorable words: ‘N.B.—No gentleman admitted without shoes and stockings.’ At the close of his first lecture (the admission to which was 2d.), he was addressed by a scientific man, who gave him 5s.—(it will relieve the monotony of the present address if some of you follow his example)—and advised him to print and issue some cards about his design, which he did. I saw one of them—the ink on it scarcely dry—as he had got it back at the house of a physician, and on it was inscribed: ‘Old birds are not caught with chaff. From Dr. M——, an old bird.’ The suspicious doctor, however, was advised to hear the poor man’s twopenny lecture, and was able, at the end of it, to display a great feat of memory himself. What was the result? The poor man no longer lectured for 2d. But it is tedious to follow him through a series of years. He was gradually patronised throughout the kingdom, and a few months ago he was lecturing in the Hanover-square Rooms, with the Earl of Harrowby in the chair. Was he not as clever a man when he lectured in the sweeps’ concert-room? Yes; but he had not been brought under the shadow of a great name. Sometimes that ‘great name’ comes too late. You are familiar with the case of Chatterton. He had existed, rather than lived, three days on a penny loaf; then he committed suicide, and was charitably buried by strangers. Fifty years or more had elapsed, when people found out how clever he had been, and collected money for the erection of that monument which now stands to his memory by St. Mary Redcliff Church, in Bristol. Now, if you have any idea of doing that for me, please to collect some of it while I am alive!”
On occasions when the audience is not very liberal, the lecturer treats them to the following hint:
“When in my golden days—or at the least they were silver ones compared to these—I was in the habit of lecturing on scientific subjects, I always gave the introductory lecture free. I suppose this is an ‘introductory lecture,’ for it yields very little money at present. I have often thought, that if everybody a little richer than myself was half as conscientious, I should either make a rapid fortune, or have nobody to listen to me at all; for I never sanction long with my company anything I don’t believe. Now, if what I say is untrue or grossly improbable, it does not deserve the sanction of an audience; if otherwise, it must be meritorious, and deserve more efficient sanction. As to any insults I receive, Christianity has taught me to forgive, and philosophy to despise them.”
These very curious, and perhaps unique, specimens of street elocution are of course interrupted by the occasional sale of a card, and perhaps some conversation with the purchaser. The stenographic card-seller states that he has sometimes been advised to use more commonplace language. His reply is germane to the matter. He says that a street audience, like some other audiences, is best pleased with what they least understand, and that the way to appear sublime is to be incomprehensible. He can occasionally be a little sarcastic. A gentleman informed me that he passed him at Bagnigge-wells on one occasion, when he was interrupted by a “gent.” fearfully disfigured by the small-pox, who exclaimed: “It’s a complete humbug.” “No, sir,” retorted Mr. Shorthand, “but if any of the ladies present were to call you handsome, that would be a humbug.” On another occasion a man (half-drunk) had been annoying him some time, and getting tired of the joke, said: “Well—I see you are a learned man, you must pity my ignorance.” “No,” was the reply, “but I pity your father.” “Pity my father!—why?” was the response. “Because Solomon says, ‘He that begetteth a fool shall have sorrow of him.’” This little jeu-d’ésprit, I was told, brought forth loud acclamations from the crowd, and a crown-piece from a lady who had been some minutes a listener. These statements are among the most curious revelations of the history of the streets.
The short-hand card-seller, as has partly appeared in a report I gave of a meeting of street-folk, makes no secret of having been fined for obstructing a thoroughfare,—having been bound down to keep the peace, and several times imprisoned as a defaulter. He tells me that he once “got a month” in one of the metropolitan jails. It was the custom of the chaplain of the prison in which he was confined, to question the prisoners every Wednesday, from box to box (as they were arranged before him) on some portion of Holy Writ, and they were expected, if able, to answer. On one occasion, the subject being the Excellence of Prayer, the chaplain, remarked that, “even among the heathen, every author, without exception, had commended prayer to a real or supposed Deity.” The card-seller, I am told, cried out “Question!” “Who is that?” said the chaplain. The turnkey pointed out the questioner. “Yes,” said the card-seller, “you know what Seneca says:—‘Quid opus votis? Fac teipsum felicem, vel bonum.’ ‘What need of prayer? Make thou thyself happy and virtuous.’ Does that recommend prayer?” The prisoners laughed, and to prevent a mutiny, the classical querist was locked up, and the chaplain closed the proceedings. It is but justice, however, to the worthy minister to state, his querist came out of durance vile better clothed than he went in.
The stenographic trade, of which the informant in question is the sole pursuer, was commenced eleven years ago. At that time 300 cards were sold in a day; but the average is now 24, and about 50 on a Saturday night. The card-seller tells me that he is more frequently than ever interrupted by the police, and his health being delicate, wet days are “nuisances” to him. He makes an annual visit to the country, he tells me, to see his children, who have been provided for by some kind friends. About two years ago he was returning to London and passed through Oxford. He was “hard up,” he says, having left his coat for his previous night’s lodging. He attended prayers (without a coat) at St. Mary’s church, and when he came out, seated himself on the pavement beside the church, and wrote with chalk inside an oval border.
“Δε λίμῳ απολλυμαί.”—Lucam xv. 17.
“I perish with hunger.”
He was not long unnoticed, he tells me, by the scholars; some of whom “rigged him out,” and he left Oxford with 6l. 10s. in his pocket.
“Let us indulge the hope,” writes one who knows this man well, “that whatever indiscretions may have brought a scholar, whom few behold without pity, or converse with without respect for his acquirements, to be a street-seller, nevertheless his last days will be his best days, and that, as his talents are beyond dispute and his habits strictly temperate, he may yet arise out of his degradation.”
Of this gentleman’s history I give an account derived from the only authentic source. It is, indeed, given in the words of the writer from whom it was received.—
“The Reverend Mr. Shorthand” [his real name is of no consequence—indeed, it would be contrary to the rule of this work to print it] “was born at Hackney, in the county of Middlesex, on Good Friday, the 15th of April, 1808; he is, therefore, now in his 43rd year. Of his parents very little is known; he was brought up by guardians, who were ‘well to do,’ and who gave him every indulgence and every good instruction and example. From the earliest dawn of reason he manifested a strong predilection for the church; and, before he was seven years old, he had preached to an infant audience, read prayers over a dead animal, and performed certain mimic ceremonies of the church among his schoolfellows.
“The directors of his youthful mind were strong Dissenters, of Antinomian sentiments. With half-a-dozen of the same denomination he went, before he was thirteen, to the anniversary meeting of the Countess of Huntingdon’s College, at Cheshunt. Here, with a congregation of about forty persons, composed of the students and a few strangers, he adjourned, while the parsons were dining at the ‘Green Dragon,’ to the College Chapel, where, with closed doors, the future proprietor of the ‘penny short-hand’ delivered his first public sermon.
“Before he was quite fourteen, the stenographic card-seller was apprenticed to a draper in or near Smithfield. In this position he remained only a few months, when the indentures were cancelled by mutual consent, and he resumed his studies, first at his native place, and afterwards as a day-scholar at the Charterhouse. He was now sixteen, and it was deemed high time for him to settle to some useful calling. He became a junior clerk in the office of a stock-broker, and afterwards amanuensis to an ‘M.D.,’ who encouraged his thirst for learning, and gave him much leisure and many opportunities for improvement. While in this position he obtained two small prizes in the state lottery, gave up his situation, and went to Cambridge with a private tutor. As economy was never any part of his character, he there ‘overrun the constable,’ and to prevent,” he says, “any constable running after him. He decamped in the middle of the night, and came to London by a waggon—all his property consisting of a Greek Prayer-book, Dodd’s Beauties of Shakspere, two shirts, and two half-crowns.
“At this crisis a famous and worthy clergyman, forty years resident in Hackney (the Rev. H. H. N——, lately deceased), had issued from the press certain strictures against the Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews. The short-hand seller wrote an appendix to this work, under the title of the ‘Church in Danger.’ He took it to Mr. N——, who praised the performance and submitted to the publication. The impression cast off was limited, and the result unprofitable. It had, however, one favourable issue; it led to the engagement of its author as private and travelling tutor to the children of the celebrated Lady S——, who, though (for adultery) separated from her husband, retained the exclusive custody of her offspring. While in this employment, my informant resided chiefly at Clifton, sometimes in Bath, and sometimes on her ladyship’s family property in Derbyshire. While here, he took deacon’s orders, and became a popular preacher. In whatever virtues he might be deficient, his charities, at least, were unbounded. This profusion ill suited a limited income, and a forgery was the first step to suspension, disgrace, and poverty. In 1832 he married; the union was not felicitous.
“About this date my informant relates, that under disguise and change of name he supplied the pulpits of several episcopal chapels in Scotland with that which was most acceptable to them. Unable to maintain a locus standi in connexion with the Protestant church, he made a virtue of necessity, and avowed himself a seceder. In this new disguise he travelled and lectured, proving to a demonstration (always pecuniary) that ‘the Church of England was the hospital of Incurables.’
“Always in delicate health, he found continued journeys inconvenient. The oversight of a home missionary station, comprising five or six villages, was advertised; the card-seller was the successful candidate, and for several years performed Divine service four times every Sunday, and opened and taught gratuitously a school for the children of the poor. Here report says he was much beloved, and here he ought to have remained; but with that restlessness of spirit which is so marked a characteristic of the class to which he now belongs, he thought otherwise, and removed to a similar sphere of labour near Edinburgh. The town, containing a population of 14,000, was visited to a dreadful extent with the pestilence of cholera. The future street-seller (to his honour be it spoken) was the only one among eight or ten ministers who was not afraid of the contagion. He visited many hundreds of cases, and, it is credibly asserted, added medicine, food, and nursing to his spiritual consolations. The people of his charge here embraced the Irving heresy; and unable, as he says, to determine the sense of ‘the unknown tongues,’ he resigned his charge, and returned to London in 1837. After living some time upon his money, books, and clothes, till all was expended, he tried his hand at the ‘begging-letter trade.’ About this time, the card-seller declares that a man, also from Scotland, and of similar history and personal appearance, lodged with him at a house in the Mint, and stole his coat, and with it his official and other papers. This person had been either a city missionary or scripture-reader, having been dismissed for intemperance. The street card-seller states that he has ‘suffered much persecution from the officers of the Mendicity Society, and in the opinion of the public, by the blending of his own history with that of the man who robbed him.’ Be the truth as it may, or let his past faults have been ever so glaring, still it furnishes no present reason why he should be maltreated in the streets, where he is now striving for an honest living. Since the card-seller’s return to London, he has been five times elected and re-elected to a temporary engagement in the Hebrew School, Goodman’s-fields; so that, at the worst, his habits of life cannot be very outrageous.”
The “pomps and vanities of this wicked world,” have, according to his own account, had very little share in the experience of the short-hand parson. He states, and there is no reason for doubting him, that he never witnessed any sort of public amusement in his life; that he was a hard student when he was young, and now keeps no company, living much in retirement. He “attends the ministry,” he says, “of the Rev. Robert Montgomery,—reads the daily lessons at home, and receives the communion twice every month at the early service in Westminster Abbey.”
Of course these are matters that appear utterly inconsistent with his present mode of life. One well-known peculiarity of this extraordinary character is his almost idolatrous love of children, to whom, if he “makes a good Saturday night,” he is very liberal on his way home. This is, perhaps, his “ruling passion” (an acquaintance of his, without knowing why I inquired, fully confirmed this account); and it displays itself sometimes in strong emotion, of which the following anecdote may be cited as an instance:—One of his favourite spots for stenographic demonstration is the corner of Playhouse-yard, close to the Times office. Directly opposite lives a tobacconist, who has a young family. One of his little girls used to stand and listen to him; to her he was so strongly attached, that when he heard of her death (he had missed her several weeks), he went home much affected, and did not return to the spot for many months. At the death of the notorious Dr. Dillon, the card-seller offered himself to the congregation as a successor; they, however, declined the overture.
This trade is not carried on in town; but at the neighbouring races of Epsom and Ascot Heath, and, though less numerously, at Goodwood, it is pursued by persons concerned in the street paper-trade of London.
At Epsom I may state that the race-card sale is in the hands of two classes (the paper or sheet-lists sale being carried on by the same parties)—viz. those who confine themselves to “working” the races, and those who only resort to such work occasionally. The first-mentioned sellers usually live in the country, and the second in town.
Between these two classes, there is rather a strong distinction. The country race-card sellers are not unfrequently “sporting characters.” The town professor of the same calling feels little interest in the intrigues or great “events” of the turf. Of the country traders in this line some act also as touters, or touts; they are for the most part men, who having been in some capacity or other, connected with racing or with race-horses, and having fallen from their position or lost their employment, resort to the selling of race-cards as one means of a livelihood, and to touting, or watching race-horses, and reporting anything concerning them to those interested, as another means. These men, I am assured, usually “make a book” (a record and calculation of their bets) with grooms, or such gentlemen’s servants, as will bet with them, and sometimes one with another.
The most notorious of the race-card selling fraternity is known as Captain Carrot. He is the successor, I am told, of Gentleman Jerry, who was killed some time back at Goodwood races—having been run over. Gentleman Jerry’s attire, twenty-five to thirty-five years ago, was an exaggeration of what was then accounted a gentleman’s style. He wore a light snuff-coloured coat, a “washing” waistcoat of any colour, cloth trowsers, usually the same colour as his coat, and a white, or yellow white, and ample cravat of many folds. His successor wears a military uniform, always with a scarlet coat, Hessian boots, an old umbrella, and a tin eye-glass. Upon the card-sellers, however, who confine their traffic to races, I need not dwell, but proceed to the metropolitan dealers, who are often patterers when in town.
It is common, for the smarter traders in these cards to be liberal of titles, especially to those whom they address on the race-ground. “This is the sort of style, sir,” said one race-card-seller to me, “and it tells best with cockneys from their shops. ‘Ah, my lord. I hope your lordship’s well. I’ve backed your horse, my lord. He’ll win, he’ll win. Card, my lord, correct card, only 6d. I’ll drink your lordship’s health after the race.’ Perhaps this here ‘my lord,’ may be a barber, you see, sir, and never had so much as a donkey in his life, and he forks out a bob; but before he can get his change, there always is somebody or other to call for a man like me from a little distance, so I’m forced to run off and cry, ‘Coming, sir, coming. Coming, your honour, coming.’”
The mass of these sellers, however, content themselves with the customary cry: “Here’s Dorling’s Correct Card of the Races.—Names, weights, and colours of the Riders.—Length of Bridle, and Weight of Saddle.”
One intelligent man computed that there were 500 men, women, and children, of all descriptions of street-callings, who on a “Derby day” left London for Epsom. Another considered that there could not be fewer than 600, at the very lowest calculation. Of these, I am informed, the female sellers may number something short of a twentieth part from London, while a twelfth of the whole number of regular street-sellers attending the races vend at the races cards. But card-selling is often a cloak, for the females—and especially those connected with men who depend solely on the races—vend improper publications (usually at 6d.), making the sale of cards or lists a pretext for the more profitable traffic.
If a man sell from ten to twelve dozen cards on the “Derby day,” it is accounted “a good day;” and so is the sale of three-fourths of that quantity on the Oaks day. On the other, or “off” days, 2s. is an average earning.
The cards are all bought of Mr. Dorling, the printer, at 2s. 6d. a dozen. The price asked is always 6d. each. “But those fourpenny bits,” said one card-seller, “is the ruination of every thing. And now that they say that the threepenny bits is coming in more, things will be wuss and wuss.” The lists vary from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. the dozen, according to size. To clear 10s. and 8s. on the two great days is accounted “tidy doings,” but that is earned only by those who devote themselves to the sale of the race-cards, which all the sellers do not. Some, for instance, are ballad-singers, who sell cards immediately before a race comes off, as at that time they could obtain no auditory for their melodies. Ascot-heath races, I am told, are rather better for the card seller than Epsom, as “there’s more of the nobs there,” and fewer of the London vendors of cards. The sale of the “lists” is less than one-eighth that of the sale of cards. They are chiefly “return lists,” (lists with a specification of the winning horses, &c., “returned” as they acquitted themselves in each race), and are sold in the evening, or immediately after the conclusion of the “sport,” for the purpose of being posted or kept.