“I’ve been knocked down twice, sir—both times by cabs. The last time it was a fortnight before I could get about comfortably again. The fool of a fellow was coming along, not looking at his horse, but talking to somebody on the cab-rank. The place was as free as this room, if he had only been looking before him. Nobody hollered till I was down, but plenty hollered then. Ah, I often notice such carelessness—it’s really shameful. I don’t think those ‘shofuls’ (Hansoms) should be allowed—the fact is, if the driver is not a tall man he can’t see his horse’s head.

“A nasty place is end of —— street: it narrows so suddenly. There’s more confusion and more bother about it than any place in London. When two cabs gets in at once, one one way and one the other, there’s sure to be a row to know which was the first in.”

The Most Severely-Afflicted of all the Crossing-Sweepers.

Passing the dreary portico of the Queen’s Theatre, and turning to the right down Tottenham Mews, we came upon a flight of steps leading up to what is called “The Gallery,” where an old man, gasping from the effects of a lung disease, and feebly polishing some old harness, proclaimed himself the father of the sweeper I was in search of, and ushered me into the room where he lay a-bed, having had a “very bad night.”

The room itself was large and of a low pitch, stretching over some stables; it was very old and creaky (the sweeper called, it “an old wilderness”), and contained, in addition to two turn-up bedsteads, that curious medley of articles which, in the course of years, an old and poor couple always manage to gather up. There was a large lithograph of a horse, dear to the remembrance of the old man from an indication of a dog in the corner. “The very spit of the one I had for years; it’s a real portrait, sir, for Mr. Hanbart, the printer, met me one day and sketched him.” There was an etching of Hogarth’s in a black frame; a stuffed bird in a wooden case, with a glass before it; a piece of painted glass, hanging in a place of honour, but for which no name could be remembered, excepting that it was “of the old-fashioned sort.” There were the odd remnants, too, of old china ornaments, but very little furniture; and, finally, a kitten.

The father, worn out and consumptive, had been groom to Lord Combermere. “I was with him, sir, when he took Bonyparte’s house at Malmasong. I could have had a pension then if I’d a liked, but I was young and foolish, and had plenty of money, and we never know what we may come to.”

The sweeper, although a middle-aged man, had all the appearance of a boy—his raw-looking eyes, which he was always wiping with a piece of linen rag, gave him a forbidding expression, which his shapeless, short, bridgeless nose tended to increase. But his manners and habits were as simple in their character as those of a child; and he spoke of his father’s being angry with him for not getting up before, as if he were a little boy talking of his nurse.

He walks, with great difficulty, by the help of a crutch; and the sight of his weak eyes, his withered limb, and his broken shoulder (his old helpless mother, and his gasping, almost inaudible father,) form a most painful subject for compassion.

The crossing-sweeper gave me, with no little meekness and some slight intelligence, the following statement:—

“I very seldom go out on a crossin’ o’ Sundays. I didn’t do much good at it. I used to go to church of a Sunday—in fact, I do now when I’m well enough.

“It’s fifteen year next January since I left Regent-street. I was there three years, and then I went on Sundays occasionally. Sometimes I used to get a shilling, but I have given it up now—it didn’t answer; besides, a lady who was kind to me found me out, and said she wouldn’t do any more for me if I went out on Sundays. She’s been dead these three or four years now.

“When I was at Regent-street I might have made twelve shillings a-week, or something thereabout.

“I am seven-and-thirty the 26th day of last month, and I have been lame six-and-twenty years. My eyes have been bad ever since my birth. The scrofulous disease it was that lamed me—it come with a swelling on the knee, and the outside wound broke about the size of a crown piece, and a piece of bone come from it; then it gathered in the inside and at the top. I didn’t go into the hospital then, but I was an out-patient, for the doctor said a close confined place wouldn’t do me no good. He said that the seaside would, though; but my parents couldn’t afford to send me, and that’s how it is. I did go to Brighton and Margate nine years after my leg was bad, but it was too late then.

“I have been in Middlesex Hospital, with a broken collar-bone, when I was knocked down by a cab. I was in a fortnight there, and I was in again when I hurt my leg. I was sweeping my crossin’ when the top came off my crutch. I fell back’ards, and my leg doubled under me. They had to carry me there.

“I went into the Middlesex Hospital for my eyes and leg. I was in a month, but they wouldn’t keep me long, there’s no cure for me.

“My leg is very painful, ’specially at change of weather. Sometimes I don’t get an hour’s sleep of a night—it was daylight this morning before I closed my eyes.

“I went on the crossing first because my parents couldn’t keep me, not being able to keep theirselves. I thought it was the best thing I could do, but it’s like all other things, it’s got very bad now. I used to manage to rub along at first—the streets have got shockin’ bad of late.

“To tell the truth, I was turned away from Regent-street by Mr. Cook, the furrier, corner of Argyle Street. I’ll tell you as far as I was told. He called me into his passage one night, and said I must look out for another crossin’, for a lady, who was a very good customer of his, refused to come while I was there; my heavy afflictions was such that she didn’t like the look of me. I said, ‘Very well;’ but because I come there next day and the day after that, he got the policeman to turn me away. Certainly the policeman acted very kindly, but he said the gentleman wanted me removed, and I must find another crossing.

“Then I went down Charlotte-street, opposite Percy Chapel, at the corner of Windmill-street. After that I went to Wells-street, by getting permission of the doctor at the corner. He thought that it would be better for me than Charlotte-street, so he let me come.

“Ah! there ain’t so many crossing-sweepers as there was; I think they’ve done away with a great many of them.

“When I first went to Wells-street, I did pretty well, because there was a dress-maker’s at the corner, and I used to get a good deal from the carriages that stopped before the door. I used to take five or six shillings in a day then, and I don’t take so much in a week now. I tell you what I made this week. I’ve made one-and-fourpence, but it’s been so wet, and people are out of town; but, of course, it’s not always alike—sometimes I get three-and-sixpence or four shillings. Some people gives me a sixpence or a fourpenny-bit; I reckons that all in.

“I am dreadful tired when I comes home of a night. Thank God my other leg’s all right! I wish the t’other was as strong, but it never will be now.

“The police never try to turn me away; they’re very friendly, they’ll pass the time of day with me, or that, from knowing me so long in Oxford-street.

“My broom sometimes serves me a month; of course, they don’t last long now it’s showery weather. I give twopence-halfpenny a piece for ’em, or threepence.

“I don’t know who gives me the most; my eyes are so bad I can’t see. I think, though, upon an average, the gentlemen give most.

“Often I hear the children, as they are going by, ask their mothers for something to give to me; but they only say, ‘Come along—come along!’ It’s very rare that they lets the children have a ha’penny to give me.

“My mother is seventy the week before next Christmas. She can’t do much now; she does though go out on Wednesdays or Saturdays, but that’s to people she’s known for years who is attached to her. She does her work there just as she likes.

“Sometimes she gets a little washing—sometimes not. This week she had a little, and was forced to dry it indoors; but that makes ’em half dirty again.

“My father’s breath is so bad that he can’t do anything except little odd jobs for people down here; but they’ve got the knack now, a good many on ’em, of doin’ their own.

“We have lived here fifteen years next September; it’s a long time to live in such an old wilderness, but my old mother is a sort of woman as don’t like movin’ about, and I don’t like it. Some people are everlasting on the move.

“When I’m not on my crossin’ I sit poking at home, or make a job of mending my clothes. I mended these trousers in two or three places.

“It’s all done by feel, sir. My mother says it’s a good thing we’ve got our feeling at least, if we haven’t got our eyesight.”

The Negro Crossing-Sweeper, who had lost both his Legs.

This man sweeps a crossing in a principal and central thoroughfare when the weather is cold enough to let him walk; the colder the better, he says, as it “numbs his stumps like.” He is unable to follow this occupation in warm weather, as his legs feel “just like corns,” and he cannot walk more than a mile a-day. Under these circumstances he takes to begging, which he thinks he has a perfect right to do, as he has been left destitute in what is to him almost a strange country, and has been denied what he terms “his rights.” He generally sits while begging, dressed in a sailor shirt and trousers, with a black neckerchief round his neck, tied in the usual nautical knot. He places before him the placard which is given beneath, and never moves a muscle for the purpose of soliciting charity. He always appears scrupulously clean.

I went to see him at his home early one morning—in fact, at half-past eight, but he was not then up. I went again at nine, and found him prepared for my visit in a little parlour, in a dirty and rather disreputable alley running out of a court in a street near Brunswick-square. The negro’s parlour was scantily furnished with two chairs, a turn-up bedstead, and a sea-chest. A few odds and ends of crockery stood on the sideboard, and a kettle was singing over a cheerful bit of fire. The little man was seated on a chair, with his stumps of legs sticking straight out. He showed some amount of intelligence in answering my questions. We were quite alone, for he sent his wife and child—the former a pleasant-looking “half-caste,” and the latter the cheeriest little crowing, smiling “piccaninny” I have ever seen—he sent them out into the alley, while I conversed with himself.

His life is embittered by the idea that he has never yet had “his rights”—that the owners of the ship in which his legs were burnt off have not paid him his wages (of which, indeed, he says, he never received any but the five pounds which he had in advance before starting), and that he has been robbed of 42l. by a grocer in Glasgow. How true these statements may be it is almost impossible to say, but from what he says, some injustice seems to have been done him by the canny Scotchman, who refuses him his “pay,” without which he is determined “never to leave the country.”

“I was on that crossing,” he said, “almost the whole of last winter. It was very cold, and I had nothing at all to do; so, as I passed there, I asked the gentleman at the baccer-shop, as well as the gentleman at the office, and I asked at the boot-shop, too, if they would let me sweep there. The policeman wanted to turn me away, but I went to the gentleman inside the office, and he told the policeman to leave me alone. The policeman said first, ‘You must go away,’ but I said, ‘I couldn’t do anything else, and he ought to think it a charity to let me stop.’

“I don’t stop in London very long, though, at a time; I go to Glasgow, in Scotland, where the owners of the ship in which my legs were burnt off live. I served nine years in the merchant service and the navy. I was born in Kingston, in Jamaica; it is an English place, sir, so I am counted as not a foreigner. I’m different from them Lascars. I went to sea when I was only nine years old. The owners is in London who had that ship. I was cabin-boy; and after I had served my time I became cook, or when I couldn’t get the place of cook I went before the mast. I went as head cook in 1851, in the Madeira barque; she used to be a West Indy trader, and to trade out when I belonged to her. We got down to 69 south of Cape Horn; and there we got almost froze and perished to death. That is the book what I sell.”

The “Book” (as he calls it) consists of eight pages, printed on paper the size of a sheet of note paper; it is entitled—

It is embellished with a portrait of a black man, which has evidently been in its time a comic “nigger” of the Jim-Crow tobacco-paper kind, as is evidenced by the traces of a tobacco-pipe, which has been unskilfully erased.

The “Book” itself is concocted from an affidavit made by Edward Albert before “P. Mackinlay, Esq., one of Her Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the country (so it is printed) of Lanark.”

I have seen the affidavit, and it is almost identical with the statement in the “book,” excepting in the matter of grammar, which has rather suffered on its road to Mr. Howe, the printer.

The following will give an idea of the matter of which it is composed:—

“I could make a large book of my sufferings, sir, if I liked,” he said, “and I will disgrace the owners of that ship as long as they don’t give me what they owe me.

“I will never leave England or Scotland until I get my rights; but they says money makes money, and if I had money I could get it. If they would only give me what they owe me, I wouldn’t ask anybody for a farthing, God knows, sir. I don’t know why the master put my feet in the oven; he said to cure me: the agony of pain I was in was such, he said, that it must be done.

“The loss of my limbs is bad enough, but it’s still worse when you can’t get what is your rights, nor anything for the sweat that they worked out of me.

“After I went down to Glasgow for my money I opened a little coffee-house; it was called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ I did very well. The man who sold me tea and coffee said he would get me on, and I had better give my money to him to keep safe, and he used to put it away in a tin box which I had given four-and-sixpence for. He advertised my place in the papers, and I did a good business. I had the place open a month, when he kept all my savings—two-and-forty pounds—and shut up the place, and denied me of it, and I never got a farthing.

“I declare to you I can’t describe the agony I felt when my legs were burst; I fainted away over and over again. There was four men came; I was lying in my hammock, and they moved the fowl that was roasting, and put my legs in the oven. There they held me for ten minutes. They said, it would take the cold out; but after I came out the cold caught ’em again, and the next day they swole up as big round as a pillar, and burst, and then like water come out. No man but God knows what I have suffered and went through.

“By the order of the doctor at Valparaiso, the sick patients had to come out of the room I went into; the smell was so bad I couldn’t bear it myself—it was all mortification—they had to use chloride o’ zinc to keep the smell down. They tried to save one leg, but the mortification was getting up into my body. I got better after my legs were off.

“I was three months good before I could turn, or able to lift up my hand to my head. I was glad to move after that time, it was a regular relief to me; if it wasn’t for good attendance, I should not have lived. You know they don’t allow tobaccer in a hospital, but I had it; it was the only thing I cared for. The Reverend Mr. Armstrong used to bring me a pound a fortnight; he used to bring it regular. I never used to smoke before; they said I never should recover, but after I got the tobaccer it seemed to soothe me. I was five months and a half in that place.

“Admiral Moseley, of the Thetis frigate, sent me home; and the reason why he sent me home was, that after I came well, I called on Mr. Rouse, the English consul, and he sent me to the boarding-house, till such time as he could find a ship to send me home in. I was there about two months, and the boarding-master, Jan Pace, sent me to the consul.

“I used to get about a little, with two small crutches, and I also had a little cart before that, on three wheels; it was made by a man in the hospital. I used to lash myself down in it. That was the best thing I ever had—I could get about best in that.

“Well, I went to the consul, and when I went to him, he says, ‘I can’t pay your board; you must beg and pay for it;’ so I went and told Jan Pace, and he said, ‘If you had stopped here a hundred years, I would not turn you out;’ and then I asked Pace to tell me where the Admiral lived. ‘What do you want with him?’ says he. I said, ‘I think the Admiral must be higher than the consul.’ Pace slapped me on the back. Says he, ‘I’m glad to see you’ve got the pluck to complain to the Admiral.’

“I went down at nine o’clock the next morning, to see the Admiral. He said, ‘Well, Prince Albert, how are you getting on?’ So I told him I was getting on very bad; and then I told him all about the consul; and he said, as long as he stopped he would see me righted, and took me on board his ship, the Thetis; and he wrote to the consul, and said to me, ‘If the consul sends for you, don’t you go to him; tell him you have no legs to walk, and he must walk to you.’

“The consul wanted to send me back in a merchant ship, but the Admiral wouldn’t have it, so I came in the Driver, one of Her Majesty’s vessels. It was the 8th of May, 1852, when I got to Portsmouth.

“I stopped a little while—about a week—in Portsmouth. I went to the Admiral of the dockyard, and he told me I must go to the Lord Mayor of London. So I paid my passage to London, saw the Lord Mayor, who sent me to Mr. Yardley, the magistrate, and he advertised the case for me, and I got four pounds fifteen shillings, besides my passage to Glasgow. After I got there, I went to Mr. Symee a Custom-house officer (he’d been in the same ship with me to California); he said, ‘Oh, gracious, Edward, how have you lost your limbs!’ and I burst out a crying. I told him all about it. He advised me to go to the owner. I went there; but the policeman in London had put my name down as Robert Thorpe, which was the man I lodged with; so they denied me.

“I went to the shipping office, where they reckonised me; and I went to Mr. Symee again, and he told me to go before the Lord Mayor (a Lord Provost they call him in Scotland), and make an affidavit; and so, when they found my story was right, they sent to London for my seaman’s ticket; but they couldn’t do anything, because the captain was not there.

“When I got back to London, I commenced sweeping the crossin’, sir. I only sweep it in the winter, because I can’t stand in the summer. Oh, yes, I feel my feet still: it is just as if I had them sitting on the floor, now. I feel my toes moving, like as if I had ’em. I could count them, the whole ten, whenever I work my knees. I had a corn on one of my toes, and I can feel it still, particularly at the change of weather.

“Sometimes I might get two shillings a-day at my crossing, sometimes one shilling and sixpence, sometimes I don’t take above sixpence. The most I ever made in one day was three shillings and sixpence, but that’s very seldom.

“I am a very steady man. I don’t drink what money I get; and if I had the means to get something to do, I’d keep off the streets.

“When I offered to go to the parish, they told me to go to Scotland, to spite the men who owed me my wages.

“Many people tell me I ought to go to my country; but I tell them it’s very hard—I didn’t come here without my legs—I lost them, as it were, in this country; but if I had lost them in my own country, I should have been better off. I should have gone down to the magistrate every Friday, and have taken my ten shillings.

“I went to the Merchant Seaman’s Fund, and they said that those who got hurted before 1852 have been getting the funds, but those who were hurted after 1852 couldn’t get nothing—it was stopped in ’51, and the merchants wouldn’t pay any more, and don’t pay any more.

“That’s scandalous, because, whether you’re willing or not, you must pay two shillings a-month (one shilling a-month for the hospital fees, and one shilling a-month to the Merchant Seaman’s Fund), out of your pay.

“I am married: my wife is the same colour as me, but an Englishwoman. I’ve been married two years. I married her from where she belonged, in Leeds. I couldn’t get on to do anything without her. Sometimes she goes out and sells things—fruit, and so on—but she don’t make much. With the assistance of my wife, if I could get my money, I would set up in the same line of business as before, in a coffee-shop. If I had three pounds I could do it: it took well in Scotland. I am not a common cook, either; I am a pastrycook. I used to make all the sorts of cakes they have in the shops. I bought the shapes, and tins, and things to make them proper.

“I’ll tell you how I did—there was a kind of apparatus; it boils water and coffee, and the milk and the tea, in different departments; but you couldn’t see the divisions—the pipes all ran into one tap, like. I’ve had a sixpence and a shilling for people to look at it: it cost me two pound ten.

“Even if I had a coffee-stall down at Covent-garden, I should do; and, besides, I understand the making of eel-soup. I have one child,—it is just three months and a week old. It is a boy, and we call it James Edward Albert. James is after my grandfather, who was a slave.

“I was a little boy when the slaves in Jamaica got their freedom: the people were very glad to be free; they do better since, I know, because some of them have got property, and send their children to school. There’s more Christianity there than there is here. The public-house is close shut on Saturday night, and not opened till Monday morning. No fruit is allowed to be sold in the street. I am a Protestant. I don’t know the name of the church, but I goes down to a new-built church, near King’s-cross. I never go in, because of my legs; but I just go inside the door; and sometimes when I don’t go, I read the Testament I’ve got here: in all my sickness I took care of that.

“There are a great many Irish in this place. I would like to get away from it, for it is a very disgraceful place,—it is an awful, awful place altogether. I haven’t been in it very long, and I want to get out of it; it is not fit.

“I pay one-and-sixpence rent. If you don’t go out and drink and carouse with them, they don’t like it; they make use of bad language—they chaff me about my misfortune—they call me ‘Cripple;’ some says ‘Uncle Tom,’ and some says ‘Nigger;’ but I never takes no notice of ’em at all.”

The following is a verbatim copy of the placard which the poor fellow places before him when he begs. He carries it, when not in use, in a little calico bag which hangs round his neck:—

The Maimed Irish Crossing-Sweeper.

He stands at the corner of —— street, where the yellow omnibuses stop, and refers to himself every now and then as the “poor lame man.” He has no especial mode of addressing the passers-by, except that of hobbling a step or two towards them and sweeping away an imaginary accumulation of mud. He has lost one leg (from the knee) by a fall from a scaffold, while working as a bricklayer’s labourer in Wales, some six years ago; and speaks bitterly of the hard time he had of it when he first came to London, and hobbled about selling matches. He says he is thirty-six, but looks more than fifty; and his face has the ghastly expression of death. He wears the ordinary close cloth street-cap and corduroy trousers. Even during the warm weather he wears an upper coat—a rough thick garment, fit for the Arctic regions. It was very difficult to make him understand my object in getting information from him: he thought that he had nothing to tell, and laid great stress upon the fact of his never keeping “count” of anything.

He accounted for his miserably small income by stating that he was an invalid—“now and thin continually.” He said—

“I can’t say how long I have been on this crossin’; I think about five year. When I came on it there had been no one here before. No one interferes with me at all, at all. I niver hard of a crossin’ bein’ sould; but I don’t know any other sweepers. I makes no fraydom with no one, and I always keeps my own mind.

“I dunno how much I earn a-day—p’rhaps I may git a shilling, and p’rhaps sixpence. I didn’t git much yesterday (Sunday)—only sixpence. I was not out on Saturday; I was ill in bed, and I was at home on Friday. Indeed, I did not get much on Thursday, only tuppence ha’penny. The largest day? I dunno. Why, about a shilling. Well, sure, I might git as much as two shillings, if I got a shillin’ from a lady. Some gintlemen are good—such a gintleman as you, now, might give me a shilling.

“Well, as to weather, I likes half dry and half wit; of course I wish for the bad wither. Every one must be glad of what brings good to him; and, there’s one thing, I can’t make the wither—I can’t make a fine day nor a wit one. I don’t think anybody would interfere with me; certainly, if I was a blaggya’rd I should not be left here; no, nor if I was a thief; but if any other man was to come on to my crossing, I can’t say whether the police would interfere to protect me—p’rhaps they might.

“What is it I say to shabby people? Well, by J——, they’re all shabby, I think. I don’t see any difference; but what can I do? I can’t insult thim, and I was niver insulted mysilf, since here I’ve been, nor, for the matter of that, ever had an angry worrud spoken to me.

“Well, sure, I dunno who’s the most liberal; if I got a fourpinny bit from a moll I’d take it. Some of the ladies are very liberal; a good lady will give a sixpence. I never hard of sweepin’ the mud back again; and as for the boys annoying me, I has no coleaguein’ with boys, and they wouldn’t be allowed to interfere with me—the police wouldn’t allow it.

“After I came from Wales, where I was on one leg, selling matches, then it was I took to sweep the crossin’. A poor divil must put up with anything, good or bad. Well, I was a laborin’ man, a bricklayer’s labourer, and I’ve been away from Ireland these sixteen year. When I came from Ireland I went to Wales. I was there a long time; and the way I broke my leg was, I fell off a scaffold. I am not married; a lame man wouldn’t get any woman to have him in London at all, at all. I don’t know what age I am. I am not fifty, nor forty; I think about thirty-six. No, by J——, it’s not mysilf that iver knew a well-off crossin’-sweeper. I don’t dale in them at all.

“I got a dale of friends in London assist me (but only now and thin). If I depinded on the few ha’pence I get, I wouldn’t live on ’em; what money I get here wouldn’t buy a pound of mate; and I wouldn’t live, only for my frinds. You see, sir, I can’t be out always. I am laid up nows and thins continually. Oh, it’s a poor trade to big on the crossin’ from morning till night, and not get sixpence. I couldn’t do with it, I know.

“Yes, sir, I smoke; it’s a comfort, it is. I like any kind I’d get to smoke. I’d like the best if I got it.

“I am a Roman Catholic, and I go to St. Patrick’s, in St. Giles’s; a many people from my neighbourhood go there. I go every Sunday, and to Confession just once a-year—that saves me.

“By the Lord’s mercy! I don’t get broken victuals, nor broken mate, not as much as you might put on the tip of a forruk; they’d chuck it out in the dust-bin before they’d give it to me. I suppose they’re all alike.

“The divil an odd job I iver got, master, nor knives to clane. If I got their knives to clane, p’rhaps I might clane them.

“My brooms cost threepence ha’penny; they are very good. I wear them down to a stump, and they last three weeks, this fine wither. I niver got any ould clothes—not but I want a coat very bad, sir.

“I come from Dublin; my father and mother died there of cholera; and when they died, I come to England, and that was the cause of my coming.

“By my oath it didn’t stand me in more than eighteenpence that I took here last week.

“I live in —— lane, St. Giles’s Church, on the second landing, and I pay eightpence a week. I haven’t a room to mysilf, for there’s a family lives in it wid me.

“When I goes home I just smokes a pipe, and goes to bid, that’s all.”

II.—JUVENILE CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

A. The Boy Crossing-Sweepers.

Boy Crossing-Sweepers and Tumblers.

A remarkably intelligent lad, who, on being spoken to, at once consented to give all the information in his power, told me the following story of his life.

It will be seen from this boy’s account, and the one or two following, that a kind of partnership exists among some of these young sweepers. They have associated themselves together, appropriated several crossings to their use, and appointed a captain over them. They have their forms of trial, and “jury-house” for the settlement of disputes; laws have been framed, which govern their commercial proceedings, and a kind of language adopted by the society for its better protection from its arch-enemy, the policeman.

I found the lad who first gave me an insight into the proceedings of the associated crossing-sweepers crouched on the stone steps of a door in Adelaide-street, Strand; and when I spoke to him he was preparing to settle down in a corner and go to sleep—his legs and body being curled round almost as closely as those of a cat on a hearth.

The moment he heard my voice he was upon his feet, asking me to “give a halfpenny to poor little Jack.”

He was a good-looking lad, with a pair of large mild eyes, which he took good care to turn up with an expression of supplication as he moaned for his halfpenny.

A cap, or more properly a stuff bag, covered a crop of hair which had matted itself into the form of so many paint-brushes, while his face, from its roundness of feature and the complexion of dirt, had an almost Indian look about it; the colour of his hands, too, was such that you could imagine he had been shelling walnuts.

He ran before me, treading cautiously with his naked feet, until I reached a convenient spot to take down his statement, which was as follows:—

“I’ve got no mother or father; mother has been dead for two years, and father’s been gone more than that—more nigh five years—he died at Ipswich, in Suffolk. He was a perfumer by trade, and used to make hair-dye, and scent, and pomatum, and all kinds of scents. He didn’t keep a shop himself, but he used to serve them as did; he didn’t hawk his goods about, neether, but had regular customers, what used to send him a letter, and then he’d take them what they wanted. Yes, he used to serve some good shops: there was H——’s, of London Bridge, what’s a large chemist’s. He used to make a good deal of money, but he lost it betting; and so his brother, my uncle, did all his. He used to go up to High Park, and then go round by the Hospital, and then turn up a yard, where all the men are who play for money [Tattersall’s]; and there he’d lose his money, or sometimes win,—but that wasn’t often. I remember he used to come home tipsy, and say he’d lost on this or that horse, naming wot one he’d laid on; and then mother would coax him to bed, and afterwards sit down and begin to cry.

“I was not with father when he died (but I was when he was dying), for I was sent up along with eldest sister to London with a letter to uncle, who was head servant at a doctor’s. In this letter, mother asked uncle to pay back some money wot he owed, and wot father lent him, and she asked him if he’d like to come down and see father before he died. I recollect I went back again to mother by the Orwell steamer. I was well dressed then, and had good clothes on, and I was given to the care of the captain—Mr. King his name was. But when I got back to Ipswich, father was dead.

“Mother took on dreadful; she was ill for three months afterwards, confined to her bed. She hardly eat anything: only beaf-tea—I think they call it—and eggs. All the while she kept on crying.

“Mother kept a servant; yes, sir, we always had a servant, as long as I can recollect; and she and the woman as was there—Anna they called her, an old lady—used to take care of me and sister. Sister was fourteen years old (she’s married to a young man now, and they’ve gone to America; she went from a place in the East India Docks, and I saw her off). I used, when I was with mother, to go to school in the morning, and go at nine and come home at twelve to dinner, then go again at two and leave off at half-past four,—that is, if I behaved myself and did all my lessons right; for if I did not I was kept back till I did them so. Mother used to pay one shilling a-week, and extra for the copy-books and things. I can read and write—oh, yes, I mean read and write well—read anything, even old English; and I write pretty fair,—though I don’t get much reading now, unless it’s a penny paper—I’ve got one in my pocket now—it’s the London Journal—there’s a tale in it now about two brothers, and one of them steals the child away and puts another in his place, and then he gets found out, and all that, and he’s just been falling off a bridge now.

“After mother got better, she sold all the furniture and goods and came up to London;—poor mother! She let a man of the name of Hayes have the greater part, and he left Ipswich soon after, and never gave mother the money. We came up to London, and mother took two rooms in Westminster, and I and sister lived along with her. She used to make hair-nets, and sister helped her, and used to take ’em to the hair-dressers to sell. She made these nets for two or three years, though she was suffering with a bad breast;—she died of that—poor thing!—for she had what doctors calls cancer—perhaps you’ve heard of ’em, sir,—and they had to cut all round here (making motions with his hands from the shoulder to the bosom). Sister saw it, though I didn’t.

“Ah! she was a very good, kind mother, and very fond of both of us; though father wasn’t, for he’d always have a noise with mother when he come home, only he was seldom with us when he was making his goods.

“After mother died, sister still kept on making nets, and I lived with her for some time, until she told me she couldn’t afford to keep me no longer, though she seemed to have a pretty good lot to do; but she would never let me go with her to the shops, though I could crochet, which she’d learned me, and used to run and get her all her silks and things what she wanted. But she was keeping company with a young man, and one day they went out, and came back and said they’d been and got married. It was him as got rid of me.

“He was kind to me for the first two or three months, while he was keeping her company; but before he was married he got a little cross, and after he was married he begun to get more cross, and used to send me to play in the streets, and tell me not to come home again till night. One day he hit me, and I said I wouldn’t be hit about by him, and then at tea that night sister gave me three shillings, and told me I must go and get my own living. So I bought a box and brushes (they cost me just the money) and went cleaning boots, and I done pretty well with them, till my box was stole from me by a boy where I was lodging. He’s in prison now—got six calendar for picking pockets.

“Sister kept all my clothes. When I asked her for ’em, she said they was disposed of along with all mother’s goods; but she gave me some shirts and stockings, and such-like, and I had very good clothes, only they was all worn out. I saw sister after I left her, many times. I asked her many times to take me back, but she used to say, ‘It was not her likes, but her husband’s, or she’d have had me back;’ and I think it was true, for until he came she was a kind-hearted girl; but he said he’d enough to do to look after his own living; he was a fancy-baker by trade.

“I was fifteen the 24th of last May, sir, and I’ve been sweeping crossings now near upon two years. There’s a party of six of us, and we have the crossings from St. Martin’s Church as far as Pall Mall. I always go along with them as lodges in the same place as I do. In the daytime, if it’s dry, we do anythink what we can—open cabs, or anythink; but if it’s wet, we separate, and I and another gets a crossing—those who gets on it first, keeps it,—and we stand on each side and take our chance.

“We do it in this way:—if I was to see two gentlemen coming, I should cry out, ‘Two toffs!’ and then they are mine; and whether they give me anythink or not they are mine, and my mate is bound not to follow them; for if he did he would get a hiding from the whole lot of us. If we both cry out together, then we share. If it’s a lady and gentleman, then we cries, ‘A toff and a doll!’ Sometimes we are caught out in this way. Perhaps it is a lady and gentleman and a child; and if I was to see them, and only say, ‘A toff and a doll,’ and leave out the child, then my mate can add the child; and as he is right and I wrong, then it’s his party.

“If there’s a policeman close at hand we mustn’t ask for money; but we are always on the look-out for the policemen, and if we see one, then we calls out ‘Phillup!’ for that’s our signal. One of the policemen at St. Martin’s Church—Bandy, we calls him—knows what Phillup means, for he’s up to us; so we had to change the word. (At the request of the young crossing-sweeper the present signal is omitted.)

“Yesterday on the crossing I got threepence halfpenny, but when it’s dry like to-day I do nothink, for I haven’t got a penny yet. We never carries no pockets, for if the policemen find us we generally pass the money to our mates, for if money’s found on us we have fourteen days in prison.

“If I was to reckon all the year round, that is, one day with another, I think we make fourpence every day, and if we were to stick to it we should make more, for on a very muddy day we do better. One day, the best I ever had, from nine o’clock in the morning till seven o’clock at night, I made seven shillings and sixpence, and got not one bit of silver money among it. Every shilling I got I went and left at a shop near where my crossing is, for fear I might get into any harm. The shop’s kept by a woman we deals with for what we wants—tea and butter, or sugar, or brooms—anythink we wants. Saturday night week I made two-and-sixpence; that’s what I took altogether up to six o’clock.

“When we see the rain we say together, ‘Oh! there’s a jolly good rain! we’ll have a good day to-morrow.’ If a shower comes on, and we are at our room, which we general are about three o’clock, to get somethink to eat—besides, we general go there to see how much each other’s taken in the day—why, out we run with our brooms.

“We’re always sure to make money if there’s mud—that’s to say, if we look for our money, and ask; of course, if we stand still we don’t. Now, there’s Lord Fitzhardinge, he’s a good gentleman, what lives in Spring-gardens, in a large house. He’s got a lot of servants and carriages. Every time he crosses the Charing-cross crossing he always gives the girl half a sovereign.” (This statement was taken in June 1856.) “He doesn’t cross often, because, hang it, he’s got such a lot of carriages, but when he’s on foot he always does. If they asks him he doesn’t give nothink, but if they touches their caps he does. The housekeeper at his house is very kind to us. We run errands for her, and when she wants any of her own letters taken to the post then she calls, and if we are on the crossing we takes them for her. She’s a very nice lady, and gives us broken victuals. I’ve got a share in that crossing,—there are three of us, and when he gives the half sovereign he always gives it to the girl, and those that are in it shares it. She would do us out of it if she could, but we all takes good care of that, for we are all cheats.

“At night-time we tumbles—that is, if the policemen ain’t nigh. We goes general to Waterloo-place when the Opera’s on. We sends on one of us ahead, as a looker-out, to look for the policeman, and then we follows. It’s no good tumbling to gentlemen going to the Opera; it’s when they’re coming back they gives us money. When they’ve got a young lady on their arm they laugh at us tumbling; some will give us a penny, others threepence, sometimes a sixpence or a shilling, and sometimes a halfpenny. We either do the cat’un-wheel, or else we keep before the gentleman and lady, turning head-over-heels, putting our broom on the ground and then turning over it.

“I work a good deal fetching cabs after the Opera is over; we general open the doors of those what draw up at the side of the pavement for people to get into as have walked a little down the Haymarket looking for a cab. We gets a month in prison if we touch the others by the columns. I once had half a sovereign give me by a gentleman; it was raining awful, and I run all about for a cab, and at last I got one. The gentleman knew it was half a sovereign, because he said—‘Here, my little man, here’s half a sovereign for your trouble.’ He had three ladies with him, beautiful ones, with nothink on their heads, and only capes on their bare shoulders; and he had white kids on, and his regular Opera togs, too. I liked him very much, and as he was going to give me somethink the ladies says—‘Oh, give him somethink extra!’ It was pouring with rain, and they couldn’t get a cab; they were all engaged, but I jumped on the box of one as was driving along the line. Last Saturday Opera night I made fifteen pence by the gentlemen coming from the Opera.

“After the Opera we go into the Haymarket, where all the women are who walk the streets all night. They don’t give us no money, but they tell the gentlemen to. Sometimes, when they are talking to the gentlemen, they say, ‘Go away, you young rascal!’ and if they are saucy, then we say to them, ‘We’re not talking to you, my doxy, we’re talking to the gentleman,’—but that’s only if they’re rude, for if they speak civil we always goes. They knows what ‘doxy’ means. What is it? Why that they are no better than us! If we are on the crossing, and we says to them as they go by, ‘Good luck to you!’ they always give us somethink either that night or the next. There are two with bloomer bonnets, who always give us somethink if we says ‘Good luck.’ Sometimes a gentleman will tell us to go and get them a young lady, and then we goes, and they general gives us sixpence for that. If the gents is dressed finely we gets them a handsome girl; if they’re dressed middling, then we gets them a middling-dressed one; but we usual prefers giving a turn to girls that have been kind to us, and they are sure to give us somethink the next night. If we don’t find any girls walking, we knows where to get them in the houses in the streets round about.

“We always meet at St. Martin’s steps—the ‘jury house,’ we calls ’em—at three o’clock in the morning, that’s always our hour. We reckons up what we’ve taken, but we don’t divide. Sometimes, if we owe anythink where we lodge, the women of the house will be waiting on the steps for us: then, if we’ve got it, we pay them; if we haven’t, why it can’t be helped, and it goes on. We gets into debt, because sometimes the women where we live gets lushy; then we don’t give them anythink, because they’d forget it, so we spends it ourselves. We can’t lodge at what’s called model lodging-houses, as our hours don’t suit them folks. We pays threepence a-night for lodging. Food, if we get plenty of money, we buys for ourselves. We buys a pound of bread, that’s twopence farthing—best seconds, and a farthing’s worth of dripping—that’s enough for a pound of bread—and we gets a ha’porth of tea and a ha’porth of sugar; or if we’re hard up, we gets only a penn’orth of bread. We make our own tea at home; they lends us a kittle, teapot, and cups and saucers, and all that.

“Once or twice a-week we gets meat. We all club together, and go into Newgate Market and gets some pieces cheap, and biles them at home. We tosses up who shall have the biggest bit, and we divide the broth, a cupful in each basin, until it’s lasted out. If any of us has been unlucky we each gives the unlucky one one or two halfpence. Some of us is obliged at times to sleep out all night; and sometimes, if any of us gets nothink, then the others gives him a penny or two, and he does the same for us when we are out of luck.

“Besides, there’s our clothes: I’m paying for a pair of boots now. I paid a shilling off Saturday night.

“When we gets home at half-past three in the morning, whoever cries out ‘first wash’ has it. First of all we washes our feet, and we all uses the same water. Then we washes our faces and hands, and necks, and whoever fetches the fresh water up has first wash; and if the second don’t like to go and get fresh, why he uses the dirty. Whenever we come in the landlady makes us wash our feet. Very often the stones cuts our feet and makes them bleed; then we bind a bit of rag round them. We like to put on boots and shoes in the daytime, but at night-time we can’t, because it stops the tumbling.

“On the Sunday we all have a clean shirt put on before we go out, and then we go and tumble after the omnibuses. Sometimes we do very well on a fine Sunday, when there’s plenty of people out on the roofs of the busses. We never do anythink on a wet day, but only when it’s been raining and then dried up. I have run after a Cremorne bus, when they’ve thrown us money, as far as from Charing-cross right up to Piccadilly, but if they don’t throw us nothink we don’t run very far. I should think we gets at that work, taking one Sunday with another, eightpence all the year round.

“When there’s snow on the ground we puts our money together, and goes and buys an old shovel, and then, about seven o’clock in the morning, we goes to the shops and asks them if we shall scrape the snow away. We general gets twopence every house, but some gives sixpence, for it’s very hard to clean the snow away, particular when it’s been on the ground some time. It’s awful cold, and gives us chilblains on our feet; but we don’t mind it when we’re working, for we soon gets hot then.

“Before winter comes, we general save up our money and buys a pair of shoes. Sometimes we makes a very big snowball and rolls it up to the hotels, and then the gentlemen laughs and throws us money; or else we pelt each other with snowballs, and then they scrambles money between us. We always go to Morley’s Hotel, at Charing-cross. The police in winter times is kinder to us than in summer, and they only laughs at us;—p’rhaps it is because there is not so many of us about then,—only them as is obligated to find a living for themselves; for many of the boys has fathers and mothers as sends them out in summer, but keeps them at home in winter when it’s piercing cold.

“I have been to the station-house, because the police always takes us up if we are out at night; but we’re only locked up till morning,—that is, if we behaves ourselves when we’re taken before the gentleman. Mr. Hall, at Bow-street, only says, ‘Poor boy, let him go.’ But it’s only when we’ve done nothink but stop out that he says that. He’s a kind old gentleman; but mind, it’s only when you have been before him two or three times he says so, because if it’s a many times, he’ll send you for fourteen days.

“But we don’t mind the police much at night-time, because we jumps over the walls round the place at Trafalgar-square, and they don’t like to follow us at that game, and only stands looking at you over the parrypit. There was one tried to jump the wall, but he split his trousers all to bits, and now they’re afraid. That was Old Bandy as bust his breeches; and we all hate him, as well as another we calls Black Diamond, what’s general along with the Red Liners, as we calls the Mendicity officers, who goes about in disguise as gentlemen, to take up poor boys caught begging.

“When we are talking together we always talk in a kind of slang. Each policeman we gives a regular name—there’s ‘Bull’s Head,’ ‘Bandy Shanks,’ and ‘Old Cherry Legs,’ and ‘Dot-and-carry-one;’ they all knows their names as well as us. We never talks of crossings, but ‘fakes.’ We don’t make no slang of our own, but uses the regular one.

“A broom doesn’t last us more than a week in wet weather, and they costs us twopence halfpenny each; but in dry weather they are good for a fortnight.”

Young Mike’s Statement.

The next lad I examined was called Mike. He was a short, stout-set youth, with a face like an old man’s, for the features were hard and defined, and the hollows had got filled up with dirt till his countenance was brown as an old wood carving. I have seldom seen so dirty a face, for the boy had been in a perspiration, and then wiped his cheeks with his muddy hands, until they were marbled, like the covering to a copy-book.

The old lady of the house in which the boy lived seemed to be hurt by the unwashed appearance of her lodger. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself—and that’s God’s truth—not to go and sluice yourself afore spaking to the jintlemin,” she cried, looking alternately at me and the lad, as if asking me to witness her indignation.

Mike wore no shoes, but his feet were as black as if cased in gloves with short fingers. His coat had been a man’s, and the tails reached to his ankles; one of the sleeves was wanting, and a dirty rag had been wound round the arm in its stead. His hair spread about like a tuft of grass where a rabbit has been squatting.

He said, “I haven’t got neither no father nor no mother,—never had, sir; for father’s been dead these two year, and mother getting on for eight. They was both Irish people, please sir, and father was a bricklayer. When father was at work in the country, mother used to get work carrying loads at Covent-garden Market. I lived with father till he died, and that was from a complaint in his chest. After that I lived along with my big brother, what’s ’listed in the Marines now. He used to sweep a crossing in Camden-town, opposite the Southampting Harms, near the toll-gate.

“He did pretty well up there sometimes, such as on Christmas-day, where he has took as much as six shillings sometimes, and never less than one and sixpence. All the gentlements knowed him thereabouts, and one or two used to give him a shilling a-week regular.

“It was he as first of all put me up to sweep a crossing, and I used to take my stand at St. Martin’s Church.

“I didn’t see anybody working there, so I planted myself on it. After a time some other boys come up. They come up and wanted to turn me off, and began hitting me with their brooms,—they hit me regular hard with the old stumps; there was five or six of them; so I couldn’t defend myself, but told the policeman, and he turned them all away except me, because he saw me on first, sir. Now we are all friends, and work together, and all that we earns ourself we has.

“On a good day, when it’s poured o’ rain and then leave off sudden, and made it nice and muddy, I’ve took as much as ninepence; but it’s too dry now, and we don’t do more than fourpence.

“At night, I go along with the others tumbling. I does the cat’en-wheel [probably a contraction of Catherine-wheel]; I throws myself over sideways on my hands with my legs in the air. I can’t do it more than four times running, because it makes the blood to the head, and then all the things seems to turn round. Sometimes a chap will give me a lick with a stick just as I’m going over—sometimes a reg’lar good hard whack; but it ain’t often, and we general gets a halfpenny or a penny by it.

“The boys as runs after the busses was the first to do these here cat’en-wheels. I know the boy as was the very first to do it. His name is Gander, so we calls him the Goose.

“There’s about nine or ten of us in our gang, and as is reg’lar; we lodges at different places, and we has our reg’lar hours for meeting, but we all comes and goes when we likes, only we keeps together, so as not to let any others come on the crossings but ourselves.

“If another boy tries to come on we cries out, ‘Here’s a Rooshian,’ and then if he won’t go away, we all sets on him and gives him a drubbing; and if he still comes down the next day, we pays him out twice as much, and harder.

“There’s never been one down there yet as can lick us all together.

“If we sees one of our pals being pitched into by other boys, we goes up and helps him. Gander’s the leader of our gang, ’cause he can tumble back’ards (no, that ain’t the cat’en-wheel, that’s tumbling); so he gets more tin give him, and that’s why we makes him cap’an.

“After twelve at night we goes to the Regent’s Circus, and we tumbles there to the gentlemen and ladies. The most I ever got was sixpence at a time. The French ladies never give us nothink, but they all says, ‘Chit, chit, chit,’ like hissing at us, for they can’t understand us, and we’re as bad off with them.

“If it’s a wet night we leaves off work about twelve o’clock, and don’t bother with the Haymarket.

“The first as gets to the crossing does the sweeping away of the mud. Then they has in return all the halfpence they can take. When it’s been wet every day, a broom gets down to stump in about four days. We either burns the old brooms, or, if we can, we sells ’em for a ha’penny to some other boy, if he’s flat enough to buy ’em.”

Gander—The “Captain” of the Boy Crossing-Sweepers.

Gander, the captain of the gang of boy crossing-sweepers, was a big lad of sixteen, with a face devoid of all expression, until he laughed, when the cheeks, mouth, and forehead instantly became crumpled up with a wonderful quantity of lines and dimples. His hair was cut short, and stood up in all directions, like the bristles of a hearth-broom, and was a light dust tint, matching with the hue of his complexion, which also, from an absence of washing, had turned to a decided drab, or what house-painters term a stone-colour.

He spoke with a lisp, occasioned by the loss of two of his large front teeth, which allowed the tongue as he talked to appear through the opening in a round nob like a raspberry.

The boy’s clothing was in a shocking condition. He had no coat, and his blue-striped shirt was as dirty as a French-polisher’s rags, and so tattered, that the shoulder was completely bare, while the sleeve hung down over the hand like a big bag.

From the fish-scales on the sleeves of his coat, it had evidently once belonged to some coster in the herring line. The nap was all worn off, so that the lines of the web were showing like a coarse carpet; and instead of buttons, string had been passed through holes pierced at the side.

Of course he had no shoes on, and his black trousers, which, with the grease on them, were gradually assuming a tarpaulin look, were fastened over one shoulder by means of a brace and bits of string.

During his statement, he illustrated his account of the tumbling backwards—the “caten-wheeling”—with different specimens of the art, throwing himself about on the floor with an ease and almost grace, and taking up so small a space of the ground for the performance, that his limbs seemed to bend as though his bones were flexible like cane.

“To tell you the blessed truth, I can’t say the last shilling I handled.”

“Don’t you go a-believing on him,” whispered another lad in my ear, whilst Gander’s head was turned: “he took thirteenpence last night, he did.”

It was perfectly impossible to obtain from this lad any account of his average earnings. The other boys in the gang told me that he made more than any of them. But Gander, who is a thorough street-beggar, and speaks with a peculiar whine, and who, directly you look at him, puts on an expression of deep distress, seemed to have made up his mind, that if he made himself out to be in great want I should most likely relieve him—so he would not budge an inch from his twopence a-day, declaring it to be the maximum of his daily earnings.

“Ah,” he continued, with a persecuted tone of voice, “if I had only got a little money, I’d be a bright youth! The first chance as I get of earning a few halfpence, I’ll buy myself a coat, and be off to the country, and I’ll lay something I’d soon be a gentleman then, and come home with a couple of pounds in my pocket, instead of never having ne’er a farthing, as now.”

One of the other lads here exclaimed, “Don’t go on like that there, Goose; you’re making us out all liars to the gentleman.”

The old woman also interfered. She lost all patience with Gander, and reproached him for making a false return of his income. She tried to shame him into truthfulness, by saying,—

“Look at my Johnny—my grandson, sir, he’s not a quarther the Goose’s size, and yet he’ll bring me home his shilling, or perhaps eighteenpence or two shillings—for shame on you, Gander! Now, did you make six shillings last week?—now, speak God’s truth!”

“What! six shillings?” cried the Goose—“six shillings!” and he began to look up at the ceiling, and shake his hands. “Why, I never heard of sich a sum. I did once see a half-crown; but I don’t know as I ever touched e’er a one.”

“Thin,” added the old woman, indignantly, “it’s because you’re idle, Gander, and you don’t study when you’re on the crossing; but lets the gintlefolk go by without ever a word. That’s what it is, sir.”

The Goose seemed to feel the truth of this reproach, for he said with a sigh, “I knows I am fickle-minded.”

He then continued his statement,—

“I can’t tell how many brooms I use; for as fast as I gets one, it is took from me. God help me! They watch me put it away, and then up they comes and takes it. What kinds of brooms is the best? Why, as far as I am concerned, I would sooner have a stump on a dry day—it’s lighter and handier to carry; but on a wet day, give me a new un.

“I’m sixteen, your honour, and my name’s George Gandea, and the boys calls me ‘the Goose’ in consequence; for it’s a nickname they gives me, though my name ain’t spelt with a har at the end, but with a h’ay, so that I ain’t Gander after all, but Gandea, which is a sell for ’em.

“God knows what I am—whether I’m h’Irish or h’Italian, or what; but I was christened here in London, and that’s all about it.

“Father was a bookbinder. I’m sixteen now, and father turned me away when I was nine year old, for mother had been dead before that. I was told my right name by my brother-in-law, who had my register. He’s a sweep, sir, by trade, and I wanted to know about my real name when I was going down to the Waterloo—that’s a ship as I wanted to get aboard as a cabin-boy.

“I remember the fust night I slept out after father got rid of me. I slept on a gentleman’s door-step, in the winter, on the 15th January. I packed my shirt and coat, which was a pretty good one, right over my ears, and then scruntched myself into a doorway, and the policeman passed by four or five times without seeing on me.

“I had a mother-in-law at the time; but father used to drink, or else I should never have been as I am; and he came home one night, and says he, ‘Go out and get me a few ha’pence for breakfast,’ and I said I had never been in the streets in my life, and couldn’t; and, says he, ‘Go out, and never let me see you no more,’ and I took him to his word, and have never been near him since.

“Father lived in Barbican at that time, and after leaving him, I used to go to the Royal Exchange, and there I met a boy of the name of Michael, and he first learnt me to beg, and made me run after people, saying, ‘Poor boy, sir—please give us a ha’penny to get a mossel of bread.’ But as fast as I got anythink, he used to take it away, and knock me about shameful; so I left him, and then I picked up with a chap as taught me tumbling. I soon larnt how to do it, and then I used to go tumbling after busses. That was my notion all along, and I hadn’t picked up the way of doing it half an hour before I was after that game.

“I took to crossings about eight year ago, and the very fust person as I asked, I had a fourpenny-piece give to me. I said to him, ‘Poor little Jack, yer honour,’ and, fust of all, says he, ‘I haven’t got no coppers,’ and then he turns back and give me a fourpenny-bit. I thought I was made for life when I got that.

“I wasn’t working in a gang then, but all by myself, and I used to do well, making about a shilling or ninepence a-day. I lodged in Church-lane at that time.

“It was at the time of the Shibition year (1851) as these gangs come up. There was lots of boys that came out sweeping, and that’s how they picked up the tumbling off me, seeing me do it up in the Park, going along to the Shibition.

“The crossing at St. Martin’s Church was mine fust of all; and when the other lads come to it I didn’t take no heed of ’em—only for that I’d have been a bright boy by now, but they carnied me over like; for when I tried to turn ’em off they’d say, in a carnying way, ‘Oh, let us stay on,’ so I never took no heed of ’em.

“There was about thirteen of ’em in my gang at that time.

“They made me cap’an over the lot—I suppose because they thought I was the best tumbler of ’em. They obeyed me a little. If I told ’em not to go to any gentleman, they wouldn’t, and leave him to me. There was only one feller as used to give me a share of his money, and that was for larning him to tumble—he’d give a penny or twopence, just as he yearnt a little or a lot. I taught ’em all to tumble, and we used to do it near the crossing, and at night along the streets.

“We used to be sometimes together of a day, some a-running after one gentleman, and some after another; but we seldom kept together more than three or four at a time.

“I was the fust to introduce tumbling backards, and I’m proud of it—yes, sir, I’m proud of it. There’s another little chap as I’m larning to do it; but he ain’t got strength enough in his arms like. (‘Ah!’ exclaimed a lad in the room, ‘he is a one to tumble, is Johnny—go along the streets like anythink.’)

“He is the King of the Tumblers,” continued Gander—“King, and I’m Cap’an.”

The old grandmother here joined in. “He was taught by a furreign gintleman, sir, whose wife rode at a circus. He used to come here twice a-day and give him lessons in this here very room, sir. That’s how he got it, sir.”

“Ah,” added another lad, in an admiring tone, “see him and the Goose have a race! Away they goes, but Jacky will leave him a mile behind.”

The history then continued:—“People liked the tumbling backards and forards, and it got a good bit of money at fust, but they is getting tired with it, and I’m growing too hold, I fancy. It hurt me awful at fust. I tried it fust under a railway arch of the Blackwall Railway; and when I goes backards, I thought it’d cut my head open. It hurts me if I’ve got a thin cap on.

“The man as taught me tumbling has gone on the stage. Fust he went about with swords, fencing, in public-houses, and then he got engaged. Me and him once tumbled all round the circus at the Rotunda one night wot was a benefit, and got one-and-eightpence a-piece, and all for only five hours and a half—from six to half-past eleven, and we acting and tumbling, and all that. We had plenty of beer, too. We was wery much applauded when we did it.

“I was the fust boy as ever did ornamental work in the mud of my crossings. I used to be at the crossing at the corner of Regent-suckus; and that’s the wery place where I fust did it. The wery fust thing as I did was a hanker (anchor)—a regular one, with turn-up sides and a rope down the centre, and all. I sweeped it away clean in the mud in the shape of the drawing I’d seen. It paid well, for I took one-and-ninepence on it. The next thing I tried was writing ‘God save the Queen;’ and that, too, paid capital, for I think I got two bob. After that I tried We Har (V. R.) and a star, and that was a sweep too. I never did no flowers, but I’ve done imitations of laurels, and put them all round the crossing, and very pretty it looked, too, at night. I’d buy a farthing candle and stick it over it, and make it nice and comfortable, so that the people could look at it easy. Whenever I see a carriage coming I used to douse the glim and run away with it, but the wheels would regularly spile the drawings, and then we’d have all the trouble to put it to rights again, and that we used to do with our hands.