From the writer of the above testimonial I received the following account of the poor cripple:—

“He is a man of generous a disposition, and very sensitive for the afflictions of others. One day while passing down the Borough he saw a man afflicted with St. Vitus’s dance shaking from head to foot, and leaning on the arm of a woman who appeared to be his wife.” The cripple told my informant that he should never forget what he felt when he beheld that poor man. “I thought,” he said, “what a blessing it is I am not like him.” Nor is the cripple, I am told, less independent than he is generous. In all his sufferings and privations he never pleads poverty to others; but bears up under the trials of life with the greatest patience and fortitude. When in better circumstances he was more independent than at present, having since, through illness and poverty, been much humbled.

“His privations have been great,” adds my informant. “Only two months back, being in a state of utter destitution and quite worn out with fatigue, he called at the house of a person (where my informant occupied a room) about ten o’clock at night, and begged them to let him rest himself for a short while, but the inhuman landlady and her son laid hold of the wretched man, the one taking him by the arms and the other by the legs, and literally hurled him into the street. The next morning,” my informant continued, “I saw the poor creature leaning against a lamp-post, shivering with the cold, and my heart bled for him; and since that he has been living with me.”

Of the Swag-shops of the Metropolis.

By those who are not connected with the street trade, the proprietors of the swag-shops are often called “warehousemen” or “general dealers,” and even “slaughterers.” These descriptions apply but partially. “Warehousemen” or “general dealers” are vague terms, which I need not further notice. The wretchedly under-paid and over-worked shoe-makers, cabinet-makers and others call these places “slaughter-houses,” when the establishment is in the hands of tradesmen who buy their goods of poor workmen without having given orders for them. On Saturday afternoons pale-looking men may be seen carrying a few chairs, or bending under the weight of a cheffonier or a chest of drawers, in Tottenham-court Road, and thoroughfares of a similar character in all parts. These are “small masters,” who make or (as one man said to me, “No, sir, I don’t make these drawers, I put them together, it can’t be called making; it’s not workmanship”) who “put together” in the hastiest manner, and in any way not positively offensive to the eye, articles of household furniture. The “slaughterers” who supply all the goods required for the furniture of a house, buy at “starvation prices” (the common term), the artificer being often kept waiting for hours, and treated with every indignity. One East-end “slaughterer” (as I ascertained in a former inquiry) used habitually to tell that he prayed for wet Saturday afternoons, because it put 20l. extra into his pocket! This was owing to the damage sustained in the appearance of any painted, varnished, or polished article, by exposure to the weather; or if it had been protected from the weather, by the unwillingness of the small master to carry it to another slaughter-house in the rain. Under such circumstances—and under most of the circumstances of this unhappy trade—the poor workman is at the mercy of the slaughterer.

I describe this matter more fully than I might have deemed necessary, had I not found that both the “small masters” spoken of—for I called upon some of them again—and the street-sellers, very frequently confounded the “swag-shop” and the “slaughter-house.” The distinction I hold to be this:—The slaughterer buys as a rule, with hardly an exception, the furniture, or whatever it may be, made for the express purpose of being offered to him on speculation of sale. The swag shop-keeper orders his goods as a rule, and buys, as an exception, in the manner in which the slaughterer buys ordinarily. The slaughterer sells by retail; the swag-shop keeper only by wholesale.

Most of the articles, of the class of which I now treat, are “Brummagem made.” An experienced tradesman said to me: “All these low-priced metal things, fancy goods and all, which you see about, are made in Birmingham; in nineteen cases out of twenty at the least. They may be marked London, or Sheffield, or Paris, or any place—you can have them marked North Pole if you will—but they’re genuine Birmingham. The carriage is lower from Birmingham than from Sheffield—that’s one thing.”

The majority of the swag-shop proprietors are Jews. The wares which they supply to the cheap shops, the cheap John’s, and the street-sellers, in town and country, consist of every variety of article, apart from what is eatable, drinkable, or wearable, in which the trade class I have specified can deal. As regards what is wearable, indeed, such things as braces, garters, &c., form a portion of the stock of the swag-shop.

In one street (a thoroughfare at the east-end of London) are twenty-three of these establishments. In the windows there is little attempt at display; the design aimed at seems to be rather to crowd the window—as if to show the amplitude of the stores within, “the wonderful resources of this most extensive and universal establishment”—than to tempt purchasers by exhibiting tastefully what may have been tastefully executed by the artificer, or what it is desired should be held to be so executed.

In one of these windows the daylight is almost precluded from the interior by what may be called a perfect wall of “pots.” A street-seller who accompanied me called them merely “pots” (the trade term), but they were all pot ornaments. Among them were great store of shepherdesses, of greyhounds of a gamboge colour, of what I heard called “figures” (allegorical nymphs with and without birds or wreaths in their hands), very tall-looking Shaksperes (I did not see one of these windows without its Shakspere, a sitting figure), and some “pots” which seem to be either shepherds or musicians; from what I could learn, at the pleasure of the seller, the buyer, or the inquirer. The shepherd, or musician is usually seated under a tree; he wears a light blue coat, and yellow breeches, and his limbs, more than his body, are remarkable for their bulk; to call them merely fat does not sufficiently express their character, and in some “pots,” they are as short and stumpy as they are bulky. On my asking if the dogs were intended for Italian greyhounds, I was told, “No, they are German.” I alluded however to the species of the animal represented; my informant to the place of manufacture, for the pots were chiefly German. A number of mugs however, with the Crystal Palace very well depicted upon them, were unmistakably English. In another window of the same establishment was a conglomeration of pincushions, shaving-brushes, letter-stamps (all in bone), cribbage-boards and boxes (including a pack of cards), necklaces, and strings of beads.

The window of a neighbouring swag-shop presented, in the like crowding, and in greater confusion, an array of brooches (some in coloured glass to imitate rubies, topazes, &c., some containing portraits, deeply coloured, in purple attire, and red cheeks, and some being very large cameos), time-pieces (with and without glasses), French toys with moveable figures, telescopes, American clocks, musical boxes, shirt-studs, backgammon-boards, tea-trays (one with a nondescript bird of most gorgeous green plumage forming a sort of centrepiece), razor-strops writing-desks, sailors’ knives, hair-brushes, and tobacco-boxes.

Another window presented even a more “miscellaneous assortment;” dirks (apparently not very formidable weapons), a mess of steel pens, in brown-paper packages and cases, and of black-lead pencils, pipe-heads, cigar-cases, snuff-boxes, razors, shaving-brushes, letter-stamps, metal tea-pots, metal tea-spoons, glass globes with artificial flowers and leaves within the glass (an improvement one man thought on the old ornament of a reel in a bottle), Peel medals, Exhibition medals, roulette-boxes, scent bottles, quill pens with artificial flowers in the feathery part, fans, side-combs, glass pen-holders, and pot figures (caricatures) of Louis Philippe, carrying a very red umbrella, Marshal Haynau, with some instrument of torture in his hand, while over all boomed a huge English seaman, in yellow waistcoat and with a brick-coloured face.

Sometimes the furniture of a swag-shop window is less plentiful, but quite as heterogenous. In one were only American clocks, French toys (large), opera-glasses, knives and forks, and powder-flasks.

In some windows the predominant character is jewellery. Ear-drops (generally gilt), rings of all kinds, brooches of every size and shade of coloured glass, shawl-pins, shirt-studs, necklaces, bead purses, small paintings of the Crystal-palace, in “burnished ‘gold’ frames,” watch-guards, watch-seals (each with three impressions or mottoes), watch-chains and keys, “silver” tooth-picks, medals, and snuff-boxes. It might be expected that the jewellery shops would present the most imposing display of any; they are, on the contrary, among the dingiest, as if it were not worth the trouble to put clean things in the window, but merely what sufficed to characterise the nature of the trade carried on.

Of the twenty-three swag-shops in question, five were confined to the trade in all the branches of stationery. Of these I saw one, the large window of which was perfectly packed from bottom to top with note-paper, account and copy-books, steel-pens, pencils, sealing-wax, enamelled wafers (in boxes), ink-stands, &c.

Of the other shops, two had cases of watches, with no attempt at display, or even arrangement. “Poor things,” I was told by a person familiar with the trade in them, “fit only to offer to countrymen when they’ve been drinking at a fair, and think themselves clever.”

I have so far described the exterior of these street-dealers’ bazaars, the swag-shops, in what may be called their head-quarters. Upon entering some of these places of business, spacious rooms are seen to extend behind the shop or warehouse which opens to the street. Some are almost blocked up with what appears a litter of packing-cases, packages, and bales—but which are no doubt ordered systematically enough—while the shelves are crammed with goods in brown paper, or in cases or boxes. This uniformity of package, so to speak, has the effect of destroying the true character of these swag store-rooms; for they present the appearance of only three or four different kinds of merchandise being deposited on a range of shelves, when, perhaps, there are a hundred. In some of these swag-shops it appears certain, both from what fell under my own observation, and from what I learned through my inquiries of persons long familiar with such places, that the “litter” I have spoken of is disposed so as to present the appearance of an affluence of goods without the reality of possession.

In no warehouses (properly “swag,” or wholesale traders) is there any arranged display of the wares vended. “Ve don’t vant people here,” one street-seller had often heard a swag-shopkeeper say, “as looks about them, and says, ‘’Ow purty!—Vot nice things!’ Ve vants to sell, and not to show. Ve is all for bisness, and be d——d.” All of these places which I saw were dark, more or less so, in the interior, as if a customer’s inspection were uncared for.

Some of the swag-shop people present cards, or “circulars with prices,” to their street and other customers, calling attention to the variety of their wares. These circulars are not given without inquiry, as if it were felt that one must not be wasted. On one I find the following enumeration:—

It must not be thought that swag-shops are mainly repositories of “fancy” articles, for such is not the case. I have described only the “windows” and outward appearances of these places—the interior being little demonstrative of the business; but the bulkier and more useful articles of swag traffic cannot be exposed in a window. In the miscellaneous (or Birmingham and Sheffield) shops, however, the useful and the “fancy” are mixed together; as is shown by the following extracts from the Circular of one of the principal swag-houses. I give each head, with an occasional statement of prices. The firm describe themselves as “Wholesale, Retail, and Export Furnishing Ironmongers, General Hardwaremen, Manufacturers of Clocks, Watches, and Steel Pens, and Importers of Toys, Beads, and other Foreign Manufactures.”

Patent enamelled saucepans, oval tin boilers, tin saucepans, tea-kettles, coffee-pots. In all these useful articles the prices range in the same way as in the iron stew-pans. Copper goods (kettles, coal-scoops, &c.), tin fish-kettles, dish-covers, rosewood workboxes, glass, brushes, (tooth, hair, clothes, scrubbing, stove, shoe, japanned hearth, banister, plate, carpet, and dandy), tools, plated goods (warranted silver edges), snuffers, beads, musical instruments (accordions from 1s. to 5s., &c.). Then come dials and clocks, combs, optics, spectacles, eye-glasses, telescopes, opera glasses, each 10d. to 10s., China ornaments, lamps, sundries (these I give verbatim, to show the nature of the trade), crimping and goffering-machines, from 14s., looking-glasses, pictures, &c., beads of every kind, watch-guards, shaving-boxes, guns, pistols, powder-flasks, belts, percussion caps, &c., corkscrews, 6d. to 2s., nut-cracks, 6d. to 1s. 6d., folding measures, each 2s. to 4s., silver spoons, haberdashery, skates per pair 2s. to 10s., carpet bags, each 3s. to 10s., egg-boilers, tapers, flat and box irons, Italian irons and heaters, earthenware jugs, metal covers, tea-pots, plaited straw baskets, sieves, wood pails, camera-obscuras, medals, amulets, perfumery and fancy soaps of all kinds, mathematical instruments, steel pens, silver and German silver patent pencil-cases and leads, snuff-boxes “in great variety,” strops, ink, slates, metal eyelet-holes and machines, padlocks, braces, belts, Congreves, lucifers, fuzees, pocket-books, bill-cases, bed-keys, and a great variety of articles too numerous to mention.

Notwithstanding the specific character and arrangement of the “Circulars with prices,” it is common enough for the swag-shop proprietors to intimate to any one likely to purchase that those prices are not altogether to be a guidance, as thirty-five per cent. discount is allowed on the amount of a ready-money purchase. One of the largest “swags” made such an allowance to a street-seller last week.

The swag-shops (of which I state the numbers in a parenthesis) are in Houndsditch (their principal locality) (23), Minories (4), Whitechapel (2), Ratcliffe-highway (20), Shoreditch (1), Long-lane, Smithfield (4), Fleet-lane (2), Holywell-street, Strand (1), Tothill-street (4), Compton-street, Soho (1), Hatton-garden (2), Clerkenwell (10), Kent-street, Borough (8), New-cut (6), Blackman-street (2), Tooley-street (3), London-road (3), Borough-road (1), Waterloo-road (4)—in all 101; but a person who had been upwards of twenty years a frequenter of these places counted up fifty others, many of them in obscure courts and alleys near Houndsditch, Ratcliffe Highway, &c., &c. These “outsiders” are generally of a smaller class than those I have described; “and I can tell you, sir,” the same man said, “some of them—ay, and some of the big ones, too—are real swag-shops still,—partly so, that is; you understand me, sir.” The word “swag,” I should inform my polite readers, means in slang language, “plunder.”

It may be safely calculated, then, that there are 150 swag-shops to which the different classes of street-sellers resort for the purchase of stock. Among these establishments are pot swag, stationery swag, haberdashery swag, jewellery swag, and miscellaneous swag—the latter comprise far more than half of the entire number, and constitute the warehouses which are described by their owners as “Birmingham and Sheffield,” or “English and Foreign,” or “English and German.” It is in these last-mentioned “swags” that the class I now treat of—the street-sellers of metal manufactures—find the commodities of their trade. To this, however, there is one exception. Tins for household use are not sold at the general swag-shops; but “fancy tins,” such as japanned and embellished trays, are vended there extensively. The street-sellers of this order are supplied at the “tin-shops,”—the number of the wholesale tin-men supplying the street-sellers is about fifty. The principle on which the business is conducted is precisely that of the more general swag-shop; but I shall speak of them when I treat of the street-sellers of tins.

An intelligent man, who had been employed in different capacities in some of the principal swag-shops, told me of one which had been carried on by the same family, from father to son, for more than seventy years. In the largest of the “swags” about 200 “hands” are employed, in the various capacities of salesmen, buyers, clerks, travellers, unpackers, packers, porters, &c., &c. On some mornings twenty-five large packages—some of small articles entirely—are received from the carriers. In one week, when my informant assisted in “making up the books,” the receipts were upwards of 3000l. “In my opinion, sir,” he said, “and it’s from an insight into the business, Mr. ——’s profit on that 3000l. was not less than thirty-five per cent.; for he’s a great capitalist, and pays for everything down upon the nail; that’s more than 1000l. profit in a week. Certainly it was an extra week, and there’s the 200 hands to pay,—but that wouldn’t range higher than 300l., indeed, not so high; and there’s heavy rent and taxes, and rates, no doubt, and he (the proprietor is a Jew) is a fair man to the trade, and not an uncharitable man—but he will drive a good bargain where it’s possible; so considering everything, sir, the profits must be very great, and they are mostly made out of poor buyers, who sell it to poor people in the streets, or in small shops. It’s a wonderful trade.”

From the best information I could obtain I come to the conclusion that, including small and large shops, 3000l. yearly is the average receipt of each—or, as it is most frequently expressed, that sum is “turned over” by the swag-shop keepers yearly. There is great competition in the trade, and much of what is called “cutting,” or one tradesman underselling another. The profit consequently varies from twenty to thirty-five and (rarely) fifty per cent. Sometimes a swag-shop proprietor is “hung-up” with a stock the demand for which has ceased, and he must dispose of it as “a job lot,” to make room for other goods, and thus is necessarily “out of pocket.” The smaller swag-shops do not “turn over” 500l. a year. The calculation I have given shows an outlay, yearly, of 450,000l. at the swag-shops of London; “but,” said a partner in one of these establishments, “what proportion of the goods find their way into the streets, what to the shops, what to the country, and what for shipping, I cannot form even a guess, for we never ask a customer for what purpose he wants the goods, though sometimes he will say, ‘I must have what is best for such or such a trade.’ Say half a million turned over in a year, sir, by the warehousemen who sell to the street-people, among others, and you’re within the mark.”

I found the street-sellers characterize the “swags” as hard and grinding men, taking every advantage “in the way of trade.” There is, too, I was told by a man lately employed in a swag-shop a constant collision of clamour and bargaining, not to say of wits, between the smarter street-sellers—the pattering class especially—and the swag-men with whom they are familiar.

The points in which the “swag-shops” resemble the “slaughter-houses,” are in the traffic in work-boxes, desks, and dressing-cases.

Of the Life of a Cheap-John.

The following narrative, relative to this curious class, who, in many respects, partake of the characteristics which I have pointed out as proper to the mountebank of old, was taken from one of the fraternity. It may be cited as an example of those who are bred to the streets:—“My father and mother,” said he, “both followed a travelling occupation, and were engaged in vending different things, from the old brimstone matches up to clothes lines, clothes props, and clothes pegs. They never got beyond these,—the other articles were thread, tapes, nutmeg graters, shoe-ties, stay-laces, and needles. My father, my mother used to tell me, was a great scholard, and had not always been a travelling vagrant. My mother had never known any other life. I, however, did not reap any benefit from my father’s scholarship. At a very early age, five or six perhaps, I recollect myself a poor little neglected wretch, sent out each day with a roll of matches, with strict injunctions not to come home without selling them, and to bring home a certain sum of money, upon pain of receiving a sound thrashing, which threat was mostly put into execution whenever I failed to perform the task imposed upon me. My father seldom worked, that is, seldom hawked, but my mother, poor thing, had to travel and work very hard to support four of us—my father, myself, and a sister, who is since dead. I was but little assistance, and sometimes when I did not bring home the sum required, she would make it up, and tell my father I had been a good boy. My father was an inveterate drinker, and a very violent temper. My mother, I am sorry to say, used to drink too, but I believe that ill-usage drove her to it. They led a dreadful life; I scarcely felt any attachment for them; home we had none, one place was as good another to us. I left my parents when scarcely eight years old. I had received a thrashing the day before for being a defaulter in my sale, and I determined the following morning to decamp; and accordingly, with my nine-pennyworth of matches (the quantity generally allotted me), I set out to begin the world upon my own account. Although this occurred 25 years ago, I have never met my parents since. My father, I heard, died a few years after my leaving, but my mother I know not whether she be living or dead. I left my parents at Dover, and journeyed on to London. I knew there were lodging-houses for travellers in every town, some of them I had stopped at with my father and mother. I told the people of these houses that my parents would arrive the following day, and paid my 2d. for the share of a third, fourth, fifth, or even sixth part of a bed, according to the number of children who inhabited the lodging-house upon that particular night. My matches I could always sell if I tried, but I used to play my time away, and many times night has arrived before I thought of effecting sales sufficient to pay my expenses at the beggar’s hotel. Broken victuals I got in abundance, indeed more than sufficient for my own consumption. The money I received for the matches, after paying my lodging, and purchasing a pennyworth of brimstone to make more (the wood I begged at the carpenters), I gambled away at cards. Yes, young as I was, I understood Blind Hookey. I invariably lost; of course I was cheated.

“I remained in a lodging house in Mill-lane, Deptford, for two years, discontinued the match-selling, and, having a tidy voice, took to hawking songs through the public-houses. The sailors used to ask me to sing, and there were few days that I did not accumulate 2s. 6d., and from that to 4s., especially when I chose to be industrious; but my love of pitch and toss and blind hookey always kept me poor. I often got into debt with my landlady, and had no difficulty in doing so, for I always felt a pride in paying. From selling the printed songs, I imbibed a wish to learn to read, and, with the assistance of an old soldier, I soon acquired sufficient knowledge to make out the names of each song, and shortly afterwards I could study a song and learn the words without any one helping me. I stopped in Deptford until I was something more than twelve years old. I had then laid the songs aside, and taken to hawking small wares, tapes, thread, &c.; and in the winter season I was a buyer of rabbit and hare skins. I kept at this for about three years, sometimes entirely without a stock. I had run it out, perhaps gambled it away; and at such times I suffered great privations. I never could beg. I have often tried, but never could. I have approached a house with a begging intention, knocked at the door, and when it has been opened I have requested a drink of water. When I was about 16 I joined in partnership with a man who used to make phosphorus boxes. I sold them for him. A piece of phosphorus was stuck in a tin tube, the match was dipped into the phosphorus, and it would ignite by friction. I was hawking these boxes in Norwich, when the constable considered they were dreadful affairs, and calculated to encourage and assist thieves and burglars. He took me before the magistrate, at the beak’s own private house, and he being equally horrified, I was sent to prison for a month. I have often thought since that the proceeding was illegal. What would be said now if a man was to be sent to jail for selling lucifer matches? In Norwich prison I associated with the rest, and if I had been inclined to turn thief I had plenty of opportunities and offers of gratuitous instruction. The separate or silent system was not in vogue then. I worked on the treadmill. Dinner was allowed to be sent in on the Sunday by the prisoner’s friends. My dinner was sent in on the first Sunday by the man I sold the boxes for, as it was on the second, third, and fourth; but I had lost it before I received it. I had always gambled it away, for there were plenty of opportunities of doing so in the prisons then. On leaving the jail I received 1s.; with this I purchased some songs and travelled to Yarmouth. I could do best among sailors. After a few weeks I had accumulated about 8s., and with that sum I purchased some hardware at the swag-shop, commenced hawking, and cut the vocal department altogether; still I gambled and kept myself in poverty. In the course of time, however, I had amassed a basket of goods, worth, perhaps, 3l. I gambled and lost them all in one night. I was so downcast and unhappy from this circumstance, that it caused me to reflect seriously, and I made an oath that I never would gamble again. I have kept it, and have reason to bless the day that I made so good a resolution. After losing my basket of goods, the winner gave me articles amounting to a few shillings, and I began the world once more. Shortly afterwards I commenced rag gatherer, and changed my goods for old rags, of course not refusing cash in payment. My next step was to have some bills printed, whereon I requested all thrifty wives to look out their old rags or old metal, or old bones, &c.; stating at the bottom that the bill would be called for, and that a good price in ready money would be given for all useless lumber, &c. Some months at this business realized me a pretty sum of money. I was in possession of nearly 5l. Then I discontinued the rag-gathering; not that the trade was declining, but I did not like it—I was ambitious. I purchased a neat box, and started to sell a little Birmingham jewellery. I was now respectably dressed, was getting a living, and had entirely left off stopping at common lodging-houses; but I confined my visits to small villages—I was afraid of the law; and as I was pursuing my calling near Wakefield, a constable inquired for my hawker’s licence. I had none to produce. He took me into custody, and introduced me to a magistrate, who committed me to prison for a month, and took away my box of goods. I endured the month’s imprisonment upon the silent system; they cut my hair short; and at the expiration of the term I was thrust out upon the world heart-broken, without a shilling, to beg, to steal, or to starve.

“I proceeded to Leeds, the fair was on at this time. I got engaged to assist a person, from whom I had been accustomed occasionally to purchase goods. He was a ‘Cheap-John.’ In the course of the day he suggested that I should have a try at the hand-selling. I mounted the platform, and succeeded beyond my own expectations or that of my master. He offered me a regular engagement, which I accepted. At times I would help him sell, and at other times I hawked with his licence. I had regular wages, besides all I could get above a certain price that he placed upon each of the goods. I remained with this person some fifteen months, at the end of which period I commenced for myself, having saved nearly 25l. I began at once the hand-selling, and purchased a hawker’s licence, which enabled me to sell without danger. Then I always called at the constable’s house, and gave a louder knock at his door than any other person’s, proud of my authority, and assured of my safety. At first I borrowed an empty cart, in which I stood and sold my wares. I could chaff as well as the best, and was as good a salesman as most of them. After that I purchased a second-hand cart from a person who had lately started a waggon. I progressed and improved in circumstances, and at last bought a very handsome waggon for myself. I have now a nice caravan, and good stock of goods, worth at least 500l. Money I have but little. I always invest it in goods. I am married, and have got a family. I always travel in the summer, but remain at home during the winter. My wife never travels. She remains behind, and manages a little swag-shop, which always turns in at least the family expenses.”

The Street-Sellers of Cutlery.

The cutlery sold in the streets of London consists of razors, pen-knives, pocket-knives, table and carving-knives and forks, scissors, shears, nail-filers, and occasionally (if ordered) lancets. The knives are of various kinds—such as sailors’ knives (with a hole through the handle), butchers’ knives, together with choppers and steels (sold principally at Newgate and Billinsgate Markets, and round about the docks), oyster and fish-knives (sold principally at Billinsgate and Hungerford Markets), bread-knives (hawked at the bakers’ shops), ham and beef knives (hawked at the ham and beef shops), cheese-knives with tasters, and ham-triers, shoemakers’ knives, and a variety of others. These articles are usually purchased at the “swag-shops,” and the prices of them vary from 2½d. to 1s. 1½d. each. They are bought either by the dozen, half-dozen, or singly, according to the extent of the street-seller’s stock-money. Hence it would appear that the street-seller of cutlery can begin business with only a few pence; but it is only when the swag-shop keeper has known the street-seller that he will consent to sell one knife alone “to sell again;” to street-sellers with whom he is unacquainted, he will not vend less than half-a-dozen. Even where the street-seller is known, he has, if “cracked-up,” to beg hard, I am told, before he can induce the warehouseman to let him have only one article. “The swag-shops won’t be bothered with it,” say the men—“what are our troubles to them? if the rain starves us out and makes us eat up all our stock-money, what is it to such folks? they wouldn’t let us have even a row of pins without the money for ’em—no, not if we was to drop down dead for want of bread in their shops. They have been deceived by such a many that now they won’t listen to none.” I subjoin a list of the prices paid and received by the street-sellers of cutlery for the principal articles in which they deal:

Their usual rate of profit is 50 per cent., but rather than refuse a ready sale the street cutlery-seller will often take much less. Many of the sellers only pursue the trade for a few weeks in the year. A number of the Irish labourers take to it in the winter-time when they can get no work. Some few of the sellers are countrymen, but these mostly follow the business continuously. “I don’t see as there is hardly one upon the list as has ever been a cutler by trade,” said one street-seller to me, “and certainly none of the cutlery-sellers have ever belonged to Sheffield—they may say so, but its only a dodge.” The cutlery street-sellers are not one-quarter so numerous as they were two years back. “The reason is,” I am told, “that things are got so bad a man can’t live by the trade—mayhap he has to walk three miles now before he can sell for 1s. a knife that has cost him 8½d., and then mayhap he is faint, and what’s 3½d., sir, to keep body and soul together, when a man most likely has had no victuals all the day before.” If they had a good bit of stock they might perhaps get a crust, they say. “Things within the last two or three years,” to quote the words of one of my informants, “have been getting much worse in the streets; ’specially in the cutlery line. I can’t give no account for it, I’m sure, sir; the sellers have not been half as many as they were. What’s become of them that’s gone, I can’t tell; they’re in the workhouse, I dare say.” But, notwithstanding this decrease in the number of sellers, there is a greater difficulty to vend their goods now than formerly. “It’s all owing to the times, that’s all I can say. People, shopkeepers, and all says to me, I can’t tell why things is so bad, and has been so bad in trade; but so they is. We has to walk farther to sell our goods, and people beat us down so terrible hard, that we can’t get a penny out of them when we do sell. Sometimes they offers me 9d., yes, and often 6d. for an 8½d. knife; and often enough 4d. for one that stands you in 3¾d.—a ¼d. profit, think of that, sir. Then they say, ‘Well, my man, will you take my money?’ and so as to make you do so, they’ll flash it before your eyes, as if they knew you was a starving, and would be sure to be took in by the sight of it. Yes, sir, it is a very hard life, and we has to put up with a good deal—a good deal—starvation and hard-dealing, and insults and knockings about, and all. And then you see the swag-shops is almost as hard on us as the buyers. The swag-men will say, if you merely makes a remark, that a knife they’ve sold you is cracked in the handle, ‘Oh, is it; let me see whereabouts;’ and when you hands it to ’em to show it ’em, they’ll put it back where they took it from, and tell you, ‘You’re too particular by half, my man. You’d better go and get your goods somewhere else; here take your money, and go on about your business, for we won’t sarve you at all.’ They’ll do just the same with the scissors too, if you complains about their being a bit rusty. ‘Go somewhere else,’ they’ll say, ‘We won’t sarve you.’ Ah, sir, that’s what it is to be a poor man; to have your poverty flung in your teeth every minute. People says, ‘to be poor and seem poor is the devil;’ but to be poor, and be treated like a dog merely because you are poor, surely is ten thousand times worse. A street-seller now-a-days is looked upon as a ‘cadger,’ and treated as one. To try to get a living for one’s self is to do something shameful in these times.”

The man then gave me the following history of himself. He was a kindly-looking and hearty old man. He had on a ragged fustian jacket, over which he wore a black greasy-looking and tattered oilskin coat—the collar of this was torn away, and the green baize lining alone visible. His waistcoat was patched in every direction, while his trousers appeared to be of corduroy; but the grease and mud was so thick upon them, that it was difficult to tell of what material they were made. His shoes—or rather what remained of them—were tied on his feet with pieces of string. His appearance altogether denoted great poverty.

“My father was a farmer, sir. He had two farms, about 800 acres in all. I was one of eleven (ten sons and one daughter). Seven years before my father’s death he left his farm, and went to live on his money. He had made a good bit at farming; but when he died it was all gone, and we was left to shift as we could. I had little or no education. My brothers could read and write, but I didn’t take to it; I went a bird’s-nesting, boy-like, instead, so that what little I did larn I have forgot. I am very sorry for that now. I used to drive the plough, and go a harrowing for father. I was brought up to nothing else. When father died, I thought as I should like to see London. I was a mere lad—about 20—and so I strolled up to town. I had 10s. with me, and that, with a bundle, was all that I possessed in the world. When I got to London I went to lodge at a public-house—the Red Lion—in Great Wild-street; and while I was there I sought about for work, but could not get any; when all was gone, I was turned out into the streets, and walked about for two days and two nights, without a bed, or a bit to eat, unless what I picked out of the gutter, and eat like a dog—orange-peel and old cabbage-stumps, indeed anything I could find. When I was very hard put to it, I was coming down Drury-lane, and I looked in, quite casual like, to ask for a job of work at the shop of Mr. Bolton, the needle-maker from Redditch. I told him as how I was nigh starving, and would do anything to get a crust; I didn’t mind what I put my hand to. He said he would try me, and gave me two packets of needles to sell—they was the goolden-eyed ones of that time of day—and he said when I had got rid of them I was to come back to him, and I should have two packets more. He told me the price to ask—sixpence a paper—and away I went like a sand-boy, and got rid of the two in an hour and a half. Then I went back, and when I told him what I’d done, he shook hands with me, and said, as he burst out laughing, “Now, you see I’ve made a man of you.” Oh, he was an uncommon nice gentleman! Then he told me to keep the shilling I had taken, and said he would trust me with two more packets. I sold them, and two others besides, that day. Then, he says, ‘I shall give you something else,’ and he let me have two packets of tailors’ needles and half a dozen of tailors’ thimbles. He told me how to sell them, and where to go, and on them I did better. I went round to the tailors’ shops and sold a good lot, but at last they stopped me, because I was taking the bread out of the mouths of the poor blind needle-sellers what supplies the journeymen tailors at the West-end. Then Mr. Bolton sent me down to one of his relations, a Mr. Crooks, in Fetter Lane, who was a Sheffield man, and sold cutlery to the hawkers; and Mr. Crooks and Mr. Bolton sot me up between them, and so I’ve followed the line ever since. I dare say I shall continue in it to my dying day. After I got fairly set agoing, I used to make—take good and bad, wet and dry days together—18s. a week; three shillings a day was what I calculated on at the least, and to do that I was obligated to take between 2l. and 3l. a week, or about eight or nine shillings each day. I went on doing this for upwards of thirty year. I have been nearly forty years, altogether, in the streets, selling cutlery. I did very tidy till about 4 years back—I generally made from 18s. to 1l. a week up to that time. I used to go round the country—to Margate, Brighton, Portsmouth—I mostly travelled by the coast, calling at all the sea-port towns, for I always did best among the sailors. I went away every Spring time, and came to London again at the fall of the year. Sixteen year ago, I married the widow of a printer—a pressman—she had no money, but you see I had no home, and I thought I should be more comfortable, and so I have been—a great deal more comfortable—and so I should be now, if things hadn’t got so bad. Four year ago, as I was a telling you, it was just after the railways had knocked off work, things began to get uncommon bad—before then, I had as good as 30s. or 40s. stock, and when things got slack, it went away, little by little. I couldn’t make profit enough to support me and my old woman—she has got the rheumatics and can’t earn me a halfpenny or a farden in the world; she hasn’t done so for years. When I didn’t make enough to live upon, of course I was obligated to break into my stock; so there it kept going shilling by shilling, and sixpence by sixpence, until I had got nothing left to work upon—not a halfpenny. You see, four or five months ago, I was took very bad with the rheumatic fever and gout. I got wet through in the streets, and my clothes dried on me, and the next day I was taken bad with pains in my limbs, and then everything that would fetch me a penny went to the pawn-shop; all my own and my old woman’s clothes went to get us food—blankets, sheets and all. I never would go nigh the parish; I couldn’t bring myself to have the talk about it. When I got well and out into the streets again, I borrowed 2s. or 3s. of my landlady—I have lived with her these three years—to get my stock again, but you see that got me so few things, that I couldn’t fetch myself up. I lost the greater portion of my time in going backards and forrards to the shop to get fresh goods as fast as I sold them, and so what I took wasn’t enough to earn the commonest living for me and my missus. Since December we have been nearly starving, and that’s as true as you have got the pen in your very hand. Sunday after Sunday we have been without a bit of dinner, and I have laid a-bed all day because we have had no coal, and then been obligated to go out on Monday morning without a bit of victuals between my lips. I’ve been so faint I couldn’t hardly walk. I’ve picked the crusts off the tables of the tap-rooms where I have been to hawk my goods, and put them in my pocket to eat them on the sly. Wet and dry I’m obligated to be out; let it come down ever so hard I must be in it, with scarcely a bit of shoe, and turned 60 years old, as I am. Look here, sir,” he said, holding up his foot; “look at these shoes, the soles is all loose, you see, and let water. On wet days I hawk my goods to respectable shops; tap-rooms is no good, decent people merely get insulted there. But in most of the shops as I goes to people tells me, ‘My good man it is as much as we can do to keep ourselves and our family in these cutting times.’ Now, just to show you what I done last week. Sunday, I laid a-bed all day and had no dinner. Monday, I went out in the morning without a morsel between my lips, and with only 8½d. for stock-money; with that I bought a knife and sold it for a shilling, and then I got another and another after that, and that was my day’s work—three times 3½d. or 10½d. in all, to keep the two of us. Tuesday, I sold a pair of small scissors and two little pearl-handled knives, at 6d. each article, and cleared 10½d. on the whole, and that is all I did. Wednesday, I sold a razor-strop for 6d., a four-bladed knife for a shilling, and a small hone for 6d.; by these I cleared 10d. altogether. Thursday, I sold a pair of razors for a shilling, clearing by the whole 11½d. Friday, I got rid of a pair of razors for 1s. 9d., and got 9d. clear.” I added up the week’s profits and found they amounted to 4s. 3½d. “That’s about right,” said the man, “out of that I shall have to pay 1s. for my week’s rent; we’ve got a kitchen, so that I leave you to judge how we two can live out of what’s remaining.” I told him it would’nt average quite 6d. a day. “That’s about it,” he replied, “we have half a loaf of bread a day, and that thank God is only five farthings now. This lasts us the day, with two-penny-worth of bits of meat that my old woman buys at a ham-shop, where they pare the hams and puts the parings by on plates to sell to poor people; and when she can’t get that, she buys half a sheep’s head, one that’s three or four days old, for then they sells ’em to the poor for 1½d. the half; and these with ¾d. worth of tea, and ½d. worth of sugar, ¼d. for a candle, 1d. of coal—that’s seven pounds—and ¾d. worth of coke—that’s half a peck—makes up all we gets.” These items amount to 6½d. in all. “That’s how we do when we can get it, and when we can’t, why we lays in bed and goes without altogether.”

Of the Blind Street-sellers of Tailors’ Needles, etc.

It is customary with many trades, for the journeymen to buy such articles as they require in their business of those members of their craft who have become incapacitated for work, either by old age, or by some affliction. The tailors—the shoe-makers—the carpenters—and many others do this. These sellers are, perhaps, the most exemplary instances of men driven to the streets, or to hawking for a means of living; and they, one and all, are distinguished by that horror of the workhouse which I have before spoken of as constituting a peculiar feature in the operative’s character. At present I purpose treating of the street-sellers of needles and “trimmings” to the tailors.

There are, I am informed, two dozen “broken-down” journeymen tailors pursuing this avocation in and around London. “There may be more,” said one who had lost his sight stitching, “but I get my information from the needle warehouse, where we all buy our goods; and the lady there told me she knew as many as twenty-four hawkers who were once tailors. These are all either decayed journeymen, or their widows. Some are incapacitated by age, being between sixty and seventy years old; the greater part of the aged journeymen, however, are inmates of the tailors’ almshouses. I am not aware,” said my informant, “of there being more than one very old man hawking needles to the tailors, though there may be many that I know nothing about. The one I am acquainted with is close upon eighty, and he is a very respectable man, much esteemed in St. James’s and St. George’s; he sells needles, and ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ to the journeymen: he is very feeble indeed, and can scarcely get along.” Of the two dozen needle-sellers above mentioned, there are only six who confine their “rounds” solely to the metropolis. Out of these six my informant knew two who were blind beside himself (one of these sells to the journeymen in the city). There are other blind tailors who were formerly hawkers of needles, but being unable to realize a subsistence thereby, have been obliged to become inmates of the workhouses; others have recently gained admission into the almshouses. Last February, I am assured, there were two blind needle-sellers, and two decrepit, in St. James’s workhouse. There are, moreover, two widows selling tailors’ needles in London. One of these, I am told, is wretchedly poor, being “eat up with the rheumatics, and scarcely able to move”—she is the relict of a blind journeyman, and well known in St. James’s. The other widow is now in St. Pancras Workhouse, having been unable, to use the words of my informant, “to get anything to keep life and soul together at the needle trade;” she, too, I am told, is well known to the journeymen. The tailors’ needle-sellers confining themselves more particularly to London consist of, at present, one old man, three blind, one paralyzed, and one widow; besides these, there are now in the alms-houses, two decrepit and one paralyzed; and one widow in the workhouse, all of whom, till recently, were needle-sellers, and originally connected with the trade.

“That is all that I believe are now in London,” said one to me, “I should, I think, know if there were more; for it is not from one place we get our articles, but many; and there I hear that six is about the number of tailors’ hawkers in town; the rest of the two dozen hawkers that I spoke of go a little way out into the suburbs. The six, however, stick to London altogether.” The needle-sellers who go into the country, I am told, travel as far as Reading, westward, and to Gravesend, in the opposite direction, or Brentwood, in Essex, and they will keep going back’ards and for’ards to the metropolis immediately their stock is exhausted. These persons sell not only tailors’ needles, but women’s needles as well, and staylaces and cottons, and small ware in general, which they get from Shepherd’s, in Compton Street; they have all been tailors, and are incapacitated from labour, either by old age or some affliction. There was one widow of a tailor among the number, but it is believed she is now either too old to continue her journeys, or else that she is deceased. The town-sellers confine their peregrinations mostly to the parishes of St. James’s and St. George’s (my informant was not aware that any went even into Marylebone). One travels the City, while the other five keep to the West End; they all sell thimbles, needles, inch-measures, bodkins, inch sticks, scissars (“when they can get them,” I was told, “and that’s very seldom”), and bees’-wax, basting cotton, and, many of them, publications. The publications vended by these men are principally the cheap periodicals of the day, and two of these street-sellers, I am informed, do much better with the sale of publications than by the “trimmings.” “They get money, sir,” said one man to me, “while we are starving. They have their set customers and have only to go round and leave the paper, and then to get their money on the Monday morning.”

The tailors’ hawkers buy their trimmings mostly at the retail shops. They have not stock-money sufficient, I am assured, to purchase at the wholesale houses, for “such a thing as a paper of needles large tradesmen don’t care about of selling us poor men.” They tell me that if they could buy wholesale they could get their goods one-fourth cheaper, and to be “obligated” to purchase retail is a great drawback on their profits. They call at the principal tailors’ workshops, and solicit custom of the journeymen; they are almost all known to the trade, both masters and men, and, having no other means of living, they are allowed to enter the masters’ shops, though some of the masters, such as Allen, in Bond-street; Curlewis, Jarvis, and Jones, in Conduit-street, and others, refuse the poor fellows even this small privilege. The journeymen treat them very kindly, the needle-sellers tell me, and generally give them part of the provisions they have brought with them to the shop. If it was not for this the needle-sellers, I am assured, could hardly live at all. “There’s that boy there,” said a blind tailor, speaking of the youth who had led him to my house, and who sat on the stool fast asleep by the fire,—“I’m sure he must have starved this winter if it hadn’t been for the goodness of the men to us, for it’s little that me and his mother has to give him; she’s gone almost as blind as myself working at the ‘sank work’ (making up soldiers’ clothing). Oh, ours is a miserable life, sir!—worn out—blind with over work, and scarcely a hole to put one’s head in, or a bit to put in one’s mouth. God Almighty knows that’s the bare truth, sir.” Sometimes the hawkers go on their rounds and take only 2d., but that is not often; sometimes they take 5s. in a day, and “that is the greatest sum,” said my informant, “I ever took; what others might do I can’t say, but that I’m confident is about the highest takings.” In the summer three months the average takings rise to 4s. per day; but in the winter they fall to 1s., or at the outside 1s. 6d. The business lasts only for three hours and a half each day, that is from eight till half-past eleven in the morning; after that no good is to be done. Then the needle-sellers, I am told, go home, and the reason of this is, I am told, if they appear in the public streets selling or soliciting alms, the blind are exempted from becoming recipients of the benefits of many of the charitable institutions. The blind man whom I saw, told me that after he had done work and returned home, he occupied himself with pressing the seams of the soldiers’ clothes when his “missus” had sewed them. The tailors’ needle-sellers are all married, and one of the wives has a mangle; and “perhaps,” said my informant, “the blind husband turns the mangle when he goes home, but I can’t say.” Another wife is a bookfolder, but she has no work. The needles they usually sell five a penny to the journeymen, but the most of the journeymen will take but four; they say “we can’t get a living at all if we sell the needles cheaper. The journeymen are mostly very considerate—very indeed; much more than the masters; for the masters won’t hardly look at us. I don’t know that a master ever gave me a farden—and yet there’s some of them very soothing and kind in speaking.” The profit in the needles, I am told, is rather more than 100 per cent.; “but,” say the sellers, “only think, sir, we must get rid of 150 needles even to take 3s. The most we ever sell in one shop is 6d. worth—and the usual amount is 2d. worth. You can easy tell how many shops we must travel round to, in order to get rid of 3s. worth.” Take one shop with another, the good with the bad, they tell me they make about 1d. profit from each they visit. The profit on the rest of the articles they vend is about 20 per cent., and they calculate that all the year round, summer and winter, they may be said to take 2s. a day, or 12s. a week; out of which they clear from 5s. to 5s. 6d. They sell far more needles than anything else. Some of the blind needle-sellers make their own bees’-wax into “shapes,” (pennyworths) themselves, melting into and pouring into small moulds.

The blind needle-seller whom I saw was a respectable-looking man, with the same delicacy of hand as is peculiar to tailors, and which forms so marked a contrast to the horny palms of other workmen. He was tall and thin, and had that upward look remarkable in all blind men. His eyes gave no signs of blindness (the pupils being full and black), except that they appeared to be directed to no one object, and though fixed, were so without the least expression of observation. His long black surtout, though faded in colour, was far from ragged, having been patched and stitched in many places, while his cloth waistcoat and trowsers were clean and neat—very different from the garments of street-sellers in general. In his hand he carried his stick, which, as he sat, he seemed afraid to part with, for he held it fast between his knees. He came to me accompanied by his son, a good-looking rough-headed lad, habited in a washed-out-blue French kind of pinafore, and whose duty it was to lead his blind father about on his rounds. Though the boy was decently clad, still his clothes, like those of his father, bore many traces of that respectable kind of poverty which seeks by continuous mending to hide its rags from the world. The face of the father, too, was pinched, while there was a plaintiveness about his voice that told of a wretched spirit-broken and afflicted man. Altogether he was one of the better kind of handicraftsmen—one of those fine specimens of the operatives of this country—independent even in their helplessness, scorning to beg, and proud to be able to give some little equivalent for the money bestowed on them. I have already given accounts of the “beaten-out” mechanic from those who certainly cannot be accused of an excess of sympathy for the poor—namely the Poor Law Commissioners and masters of workhouses; and I can only add, that all my experience goes fully to bear out the justice of these statements. As I said before, the class who are driven to the streets to which the beaten-out or incapacitated operative belongs, is, of all others, the most deserving of our sympathy; and the following biography of one of this order is given to teach us to look with a kindly eye upon the many who are forced to become street-sellers as the sole means of saving themselves from the degradation of pauperism or beggary.

“I am 45 years of age next June,” said the blind tailor. “It is upwards of 30 years since I first went to work at the tailoring trade in London. I learnt my business under one of the old hands at Mr. Cook’s, in Poland-street, and after that went to work at Guthrie’s, in Bond-street. I belonged to the Society held at the Old White Hart. I continued working for the honourable trade and belonging to Society for about 15 years. My weekly earnings then averaged 1l. 16s. a week while I was at work, and for several years I was seldom out of work, for when I got into a shop it was a long time before I got out again. I was not married then. I lived in a first floor back room, well-furnished, and could do very comfortably indeed. I saved often my 15s. or 16s. in a week, and was worth a good bit of money up to the time of my first illness. At one period I had nearly 50l. by me, and had it not been for “vacations” and “slack seasons” I should have put by more; but you see to be out of work even a few weeks makes a large hole in a journeyman’s savings. All this time I subscribed regularly to Society, and knew that if I got superannuated I should be comfortably maintained by the trade. I felt quite happy with the consciousness of being provided for in my old age or affliction then, and if it had not been for that perhaps I might have saved more even than I did. I went on in this way, as I said before, for 15 years, and no one could have been happier than I was—not a working man in all England couldn’t. I had my silver watch and chain. I could lay out my trifle every week in a few books, and used to have a trip now and then up and down the river, just to blow the London smoke off, you know. About 15 years ago my eyes began to fail me without any pain at all; they got to have as it were a thick mist, like smoke, before them. I couldn’t see anything clear. Working by gas-light at first weakened and at last destroyed the nerve altogether. I’m now in total darkness. I can only tell when the gas is lighted by the heat of it.

“It is not the black clothes that is trying to the sight—black is the steadiest of all colours to work at; white and all bright colours makes the eyes water after looking at ’em for any long time; but of all colours scarlet, such as is used for regimentals, is the most blinding, it seems to burn the eyeballs, and makes them ache dreadful. After working at red there’s always flying colours before the eyes; there’s no steady colour to be seen in anything for some time. Everything seems all of a twitter, and to keep changing its tint. There’s more military tailors blind than any others. A great number of tailors go blind, but a great many more has lost their sight since gas-light has come up. Candle-light was not half so pernicious to the sight. Gas-light is so very heating, and there’s such a glare with it that it makes the eyes throb, and shoot too, if you work long by it. I’ve often continued working past midnight with no other light than that, and then my eyes used to feel like two bits of burning coals in my head. And you see, sir, the worst of it was, as I found my sight going bad I was obliged to try it more, so as to keep up with my mates in the shop. At last my eyes got so weak that I was compelled to give up work, and go into the country, and there I stopped, living on my savings, and unable to do any work for fear of losing my sight altogether. I was away about three years, and then all my money was gone, and I was obligated, in spite of my eyes, to go back to work again. But then, with my sight defective as it was, I could get no employment at the honourable trade, and so I had to take a seat in a shop at one of the cheap houses in the city, and that was the ruin of me entirely; for working there, of course I got “scratched” from the trade Society, and so lost all hope of being provided for by them in my helplessness. The workshop at this cheap house was both small and badly ventilated. It was about seven foot square, and so low, that as you sot on the floor you could touch the ceiling with the tip of your finger. In this place seven of us worked—three on each side and one in the middle. Two of my shopmates were boys, or else I am sure it would not have held us all. There was no chimney, nor no window that could be opened to let the air in. It was lighted by a skylight, and this would neither open nor shut. The only means for letting out the foul air was one of them working ventilators—like cockades, you know, sir—fixed in one of the panes of glass; but this wouldn’t work, so there we were, often from 5 in the morning till 10 at night, working in this dreadful place. There was no fire in the winter, though we never needed one, for the workshop was over-hot from the suffocation, and in the summer it was like an oven. This is what it was in the daytime, but mortal tongue can’t tell what it was at night, with the two gas-lights burning away, and almost stifling us. Many a time some of the men has been carried out by the others fainting for air. They all fell ill, every one of them, and I lost my eyes and my living entirely by it. We spoke to the master repeatedly, telling him he was killing us, and though when he came up to the workshop hisself, he was nearly blown back by the stench and heat, he would not let us have any other room to work in—and yet he’d plenty of convenience up stairs. He paid little more than half the regular wages, and employed such men as myself—only those who couldn’t get anything better to do. What with illness and all, I don’t think my wages there averaged above 12s. a week: sometimes I could make 1l. in the week, but then, the next week, maybe I’d be ill, and would get but a few shillings. It was impossible to save anything then—even to pay one’s way was a difficulty, and, at last, I was seized with rheumatics on the brain, and obliged to go into St. Thomas’s Hospital. I was there eleven months, and came out stone blind. I am convinced I lost my eyesight by working in that cheap shop; nothing on earth will ever persuade me to the contrary, and what’s more, my master robbed me of a third of my wages and my sight too, and left me helpless in the world, as, God knows, I am now. It is by the ruin of such men as me that these masters are enabled to undersell the better shops; they get hold of the men whose eyes are just beginning to fail them, like mine did, because they know they can get them to work cheap, and then, just at the time when a journeyman requires to be in the best of shops, have the best of air, and to work as little by gas-light as possible, they puts him into a hole of a place that would stifle a rat, and keeps him working there half the night through. That’s the way, sir, the cheap clothes is produced, by making blind beggars of the workmen, like myself, and throwing us on the parish in our old age. You are right, sir, they not only robs the men but the ratepayers too.

“Well, sir, as I said, I come out of the hospital stone blind, and have been in darkness ever since, and that’s near upon ten years ago. I often dream of colours, and see the most delightful pictures in the world; nothing that I ever beheld with my eyes can equal them—they’re so brilliant, and clear and beautiful. I see then the features and figures of all my old friends, and I can’t tell you how pleasureable it is to me. When I have such dreams they so excite me that I am ill all the next day. I often see, too, the fields, with the cows grazing on a beautiful green pasture, and the flowers, just at twilight like, closing up their blossoms as they do. I never dream of rivers; nor do I ever remember seeing a field of corn in my visions; it’s strange I never dreamt in any shape of the corn or the rivers, but maybe I didn’t take so much notice of them as of the others. Sometimes I see the sky, and very often indeed there’s a rainbow in it, with all kinds of beautiful colours. The sun is a thing I often dream about seeing, going down like a ball of fire at the close of the day. I never dreamt of the stars, nor the moon—it’s mostly bright colours that I see.

“I have been under all the oculists I could hear of—Mr. Turnbull, in Russell-square, but he did me no good; then I went to Charing-cross, under Mr. Guthrie, and he gave me a blind certificate, and made me a present of half-a-sovereign; he told me not to have my eyes tampered with again, as the optic nerve was totally decayed. Oh, yes; if I had all the riches in the world I’d give them every one to get my sight back, for it’s the greatest pressure to me to be in darkness. God help me! I know I am a sinner, and believe I’m so afflicted on account of my sins. No, sir, it’s nothing like when you shut your eyes; when I had my sight, and closed mine, I remember I could still see the light through the lids, the very same as when you hold your hand up before the candle; but mine’s far darker than that—pitch black. I see a dark mass like before me, and never any change—everlasting darkness, and no chance of a light or shade in this world. But I feel consolated some how, now it is settled; although it’s a very poor comfort after all. I go along the streets in great fear. If a baby have hold of me, I am firm, but by myself, I reel about like a drunken man. I feel very timid unless I have hold of something—not to support me, but to assure me I shall not fall. If I was going down your staircase, sir, I should be all right so long as I touched the bannister, but if I missed that, I’m sure I should grow so giddy and nervous I should fall from the top to the bottom. After losing my sight, I found a great difficulty in putting my food into my mouth, for a long time—six months or better—and I was obliged to have some one to guide my hand, for I used often to put the fork up to my forehead instead of my mouth. Shortly after my becoming quite blind, I found all my other senses much quickened—my hearing—feeling—and reckoning. I got to like music very much indeed; it seemed to elevate me—to animate and cheer me much more than it did before, and so much so now, that when it ceases, I feel duller than ever. It sounds as if it was in a wilderness to me—I can’t tell why, but that’s all I can compare it to; as if I was quite alone with it. My smell and taste is very acute” (he was given some violets to smell)—“Oh, that’s beautiful,” he cried, “very reviving indeed. Often of an evening, I can see things in my imagination, and that’s why I like to sit alone then; for of all the beautiful thoughts that ever a man possessed, there’s none to equal a blind man’s, when he’s by hisself.

“I don’t see my early home, but occurrences that has recently took place. I see them all plain before me, in colours as vivid as if I had my sight again, and the people all dressed in the fashion of my time; the clothes seem to make a great impression on me, and I often sit and see in my mind master tailors trying a coat on a gentleman, and pulling it here and there. The figures keep passing before me like soldiers, and often I’m so took by them that I forget I’m blind, and turn my head round to look after them as they pass by me. But that sort of thinking would throw me into a melancholly—it’s too exciting while it lasts, and then leaves me dreadful dull afterwards. I have got much more melancholy since my blindness; before then, I was not seriously given, but now I find great consolation in religion. I think my blindness is sent to try my patience and resignation, and I pray to the Almighty to give me strength to bear with my affliction. I was quick and hot-tempered before I was blind, but since then, I have got less hasty like; all other troubles appears nothing to me. Sometimes I revile against my affliction—too frequently—but that is at my thoughtless moments, for when I’m calm and serious, I feel thankful that the Almighty has touched me with his correcting rod, and then I’m happy and at peace with all the world. If I had run my race, and not been stopped, I might never have believed there was a God. My wife works at the ‘sank work.’ She makes soldiers’ coats; she gets 1s. 1d. for making one, and that’s nearly a day and a half’s work; then she has to find her own trimmings, and they’re 1d. It takes her 16 hours to finish one garment, and the over-work at that is beginning to make her like as I was myself. If she takes up a book to read to me now, it’s all like a dirty mass before her, and that’s just as my sight was before I lost it altogether. She slaves hard to help me; she’s anxious and willing—indeed too much so. If she could get constant work, she might perhaps make about 7s. a week; but as it is, her earnings are, take one week with another, not more than 3s. Last week she earned 5s.; but that was the first job of work she’d had to do for two months. I think the two of us make on an average about 8s.; and out of that there is three people to keep—our two selves and our boy. Our rent is 2s. 6d., so that after paying that, we has about 5s. 6d. left for food, firing, and clothing for the whole of us. How we do it I can’t tell; but I know we live very, very hard: mostly on pieces of bread that the men gives to me and my boy, as we go round to the workshops. If we was any of us to fall ill, we must all go to the parish; if my boy was to go sick, I should be left without any one to lead me about, and that would be as bad as if I was laid-up myself; and if anything was to happen to my wife, I’d be done clean altogether. But yet the Lord is very good, and we’d get out of that, I dare say. If anything was to drive me to the parish, I should lose all hopes of getting some help from the blind institutions; and so I dread the workhouse worse than all. I’d sooner die on the step of a door, any time, than go there and be what they call well kept. I don’t know why I should have a dislike to going there, but yet I do possess it. I do believe, that any one that is willing to work for their bread, hates a workhouse; for the workhouse coat is a slothful, degrading badge. After a man has had one on his back, he’s never the same. I would’nt go for an order for relief so long as I could get a halfpenny loaf in twenty-four hours. If I could only get some friend to give me a letter of recommendation to Mr. Day’s Charity for the Blind, I should be happy for the rest of my days. I could give the best of references to any one who would take pity on me in my affliction.”