Part 111

The following statement respecting the lodging-houses was made, after the others had left, by another lad. He left home when about thirteen, and never thieved before that. His father was dead, and his mother was unable to keep him. He got a situation and held it for three years and nine months, until he picked up with a man from a lodging-house, and through keeping late hours he was obliged to leave his place and sleep in a lodging-house himself. The lodging-house is in Short’s-gardens. This he considered to have been the commencement of his downfall. About forty thieves lived in the house, and they brought in stolen property of every description, and the deputies received it and took it to other people to sell it again, and get the price and pay the thieves. They got double as much as the thieves did, or else they would have nothing to do with it. Several housebreakers lived at the house, and he heard them there plan the robbery of Bull and Wilson, the woollen-drapers in St. Martin’s-lane. One of the men secreted himself in the house in the daytime, and the other two were admitted by him at night. If he had stated this at the meeting the persons present would have killed him. He was sure that more might be done by giving proper encouragement to virtue, and by reforming the criminal, than by rigorous prosecution. He said (with tears in his eyes) that he should be very willing and happy to work for an honest living if he could only get it to do. He showed a letter of recommendation for good conduct to his former master, and a Bible; both of which had been given him by the chaplain of the gaol which he had just left, after undergoing an imprisonment of twelve months. It was useless (he said) for a young man like him to apply to the parish for relief; he might just as well stand in the street and talk to a lamp-post. Then what was a man to do after he left prison? He must go a thieving to live. He was persuaded that if there was an institution to give employment to the homeless, the friendless, and the penniless, after being liberated from prison, it would be the means of rescuing thousands.

The proceedings then terminated. The assemblage, which had become more rational and manageable towards the close, dispersed, quite peaceably it should be added, and the boys were evidently sincerely grateful for the efforts being made to bring their misfortunes before the notice of those in whose power it may be to alleviate them.

Before they were dismissed, as much money was dispensed to each as would defray his night’s lodging.

OF THE COUNTRY LODGING-HOUSES.

Concerning the lodging-houses, more especially in the country, I give the statement of a middle-aged man, familiar with them for twenty years. He was recommended to me as possessed of much humour and a great master of humourous slang:--

“I can tell you all about it, sir; but one lodging-house is so like another that I can’t draw much distinction. In small country towns, especially agricultural towns, they are decent places enough, regular in their hours, and tidy enough. At these places they have what they call ‘their own travellers,’ persons that they know, and who are always accommodated in preference. As to the characters that frequent these places, let us begin with _the Crocusses_. They carry about a lot of worms in bottles, what they never took out of anybody, though they’ll tell you different, or long pieces of tape in bottles, made to look like worms, and on that they’ll _patter_ in a market place as if on a real cure, and they’ve got the cheek to tell the people that that very worm was taken from Lady ----, near the town, and referring them to her to prove it. The one I knew best would commence with a piece of sponge in a bottle, which he styled the stomach wolf. That was his leading slum, and pretty well he sponged them too. When he’d pattered on about the wolf, he had another bottle with what he called a worm 200 inches long, he bounced it was, which the day before yesterday he had from Mrs. ----’s girl (some well-known person), and referred them to her. While he’s going on, a brother Crocus will step up, a stranger to the people, and say, ‘Ah, Doctor ----, you’re right. I had the pleasure of dining with Mr. ---- when the worm was extracted, and never saw a child so altered in my life.’ That’s what the Crocus’s call giving a jolly; and after that don’t the first Crocus’s old woman serve out the six-pennyworths? The stuff is to cure every mortal thing a man can ail--ay, or a woman either. They’d actually have the cheek to put a blister on a cork leg. Well, when they’re done pattering on the worm racket, then come the wonderful pills. Them are the things. These pills, from eight to a dozen in a box, are charged 4_d._ to 6_d._ according to the flat’s appearance--as the Crocus call his customers. The pills meet with a ready sale, and they’re like chip in porridge, neither good nor harm. It’s chiefly the bounciful patter, the cheek they have, that gets them Crocusses on. It’s amazing. They’ll stare a fellow in the face, and make him believe he’s ill whether he is or no. The man I speak of is a first-rate cove; he trains it and coaches it from market to market like any gentleman. He wears a stunning fawny (ring) on his finger, an out-and-out watch and guard, and not a duffer neither--no gammon; and a slap-up suit of black togs. I’ve seen the swell bosmen (farmers) buy the pills to give the people standing about, just to hear the Crocus patter. Why they’ve got the cheek to pitch their stall with their worms opposite a regular medical man’s shop, and say, ‘Go over the way and see what he’ll do--he’ll drive up in a horse and gig to your door, and make you pay for it too; but I don’t--I’ve walked here to do you good, and I _will_ do you good before I leave you. One trial is all I ask’--and quite enough too (said my informant). I’ll warrant they won’t come a second time; if they do, it’s with a stick in their hands. If he does much business in the worm-powder way (some have it in cakes for children), the Crocus never gives them a chance to catch him. But if it’s only pills, he’ll show next market day, or a month after, and won’t he crack about it then? He says, ‘One trial is all I ask,’ and one of them got it and was transported. I knew one of these Crocusses who was once so hard up from lushing and boozing about that he went into a field and collected sheep dung and floured it over, and made his pills of it, and made the people swallow it at Lutterworth market, in Leicestershire; because there they’ll swallow anything. If the Crocus I have mentioned see this in the paper--as he will, for he’s a reading-man--won’t he come out bouncefull? He’ll say, ‘Why am I thus attacked--why don’t the proprietor and the editor of this paper come forward--if he’s among you? Who made this report? let him come forward, and I’ll refute him face to face.’ And no doubt (my informant remarked), he’d give him a tidy dose, too, the Crocus would. For myself, I’d far rather meet him face to face than his medicine, either his blue or his pink water. There’s another sort who carry on the crocussing business, but on a small scale; they’re on the penny and twopenny racket, and are called hedge crocusses--men who sell corn salve, or ‘four pills a penny,’ to cure anything, and go from house to house in the country. But as the hedge crocus is shickery togged, he makes poorly out. Respectable people won’t listen to him, and it’s generally the lower order that he gulls. These hedge fellows are slow and dull; they go mouching along as if they were croaking themselves. I’ve seen the head crocus I’ve mentioned at four markets in one week, and a town on a Saturday night, clear from 5_l._ to 7_l._--all clear profit, for his fakement costs him little or nothing. For such a man’s pound, the hedge fellow may make 1_s._ The next I’ll tell you about is durynacking, or duryking. The gipsies (and they’re called Romanies) are the leading mob at this racket, but they’re well known, and I needn’t say anything about those ladies. But there’re plenty of travelling women who go about with a basket and a bit of driss (lace) in it, gammy lace, for a stall-off (a blind), in case they meet the master, who would order them off. Up at a bosken (farm-house) they’ll get among the servant girls, being pretty well acquainted with the neighbourhood by inquiries on the road, as to the number of daughters and female servants. The first inquiry is for the missus or a daughter, and if they can’t be got at they’re on to the slaveys. Suppose they do get hold of one of the daughters, they commence by offering the driss, which, as it is queer stuff, wouldn’t be picked up by an agricultural young lady, as the durynacker very well knows. Then she begins, ‘Ah! my sweet young lady, my blessed looking angel’--if she’s as ugly as sin, and forty; they say that, and that’s the time you get them to rights, when they’re old and ugly, just by sweetening them, and then they don’t mind tipping the loaver (money)--‘I know you dont want this stuff (she’ll continue), there’s something on your mind. I see you’re in love; but the dear handsome gentleman--he’ll not slight you, but loves you as hard as a hammer.’ This is thrown out as a feeler, and the young lady is sure to be confused; then the durrynacker has hold of her mauly (hand) in a minute. It’s all up with the girl, once the woman gets a grip. She’s asked in directly, and of course the sisters (if she has any) and the slavey are let into the secret, and all have their fortunes told. The fortune-teller may make a week’s job of it, according as the loaver comes out. She’ll come away with her basket full of eggs, bacon, butter, tea and sugar, and all sorts of things. I _have_ seen them bring the scran in! Every one is sure to have handsome husbands, thumping luck, and pretty children. The durrynacker, too, is not particular, if there’s a couple of silver spoons--she doesn’t like odd ones; and mind you, she alway carries a basket--big enough too. I know a man on this lurk, but he works the article with a small glass globe filled full of water, and in that he shows girls their future husbands, and kids them on to believe they do see them--ay, and the church they’re to be married in--and they fancy they do see it as they twist the globe this way and that, while he twists the tin out of them, and no flies. He actually had the cheek, though he knew I was fly to every fake, to try to make me believe that I could see the place where Smith O’Brien had the fight in Ireland! ‘Don’t you see them cabbages, and a tall man in a green velvet cap among them, holloring out, “I’m the King of Munster?”’ I don’t know any other male durrynacker worth noticing; the women have all the call. Young women won’t ask their fortunes of men. The way the globe man does is to go among the old women and fiddle (humbug) them, and, upon my word, three-parts of them are worse than the young ones. Now I’ll tell you about the tat (rag) gatherers; buying rags they call it, but I call it bouncing people. Two men I lodged with once, one morning hadn’t a farthing, regularly smashed up, not a feather to fly with, they’d knocked down all their tin lushing. Well, they didn’t know what to be up to, till one hit upon a scheme. ‘I’ve got it, Joe,’ says he. He borrows two blue plates from the lodging-house keeper, a washing jug and basin. Off they goes, one with the crockery, and the other with a bag. They goes into the by-courts in Windsor, because this bouncing caper wouldn’t do in the main drag. Up goes the fellow with a bag, and hollas out, ‘Now, women, bring out your copper, brass, white rags, old flannel, bed-sacking, old ropes, empty bottles, umbrellas--any mortal thing--the best price is given;’ and the word’s hardly out, when up comes his pal, hollaring, ‘Sam, holloa! stop that horse,’ as if he’d a horse and cart passing the court, and then the women bring out their umbrellas and things, and they’re all to be exchanged for crockery such as he shows, and all goes into the bag, and the bagman goes off with the things, leaving the other to do the bounce, and he keeps singing out for the horse and cart with the load of crockery, gammoning there is one, that the ladies may have their choice, and he then hurries down to quicken his cart-driver’s movements, and hooks it, leaving the flats completely stunned. Oh! it does give them a ferry-cadouzer. Two other men go about on this lurk, one with an old cracked plate under his waistcoat, and the other with a bag. And one sings out, ‘Now, women, fourpence a pound for your white rags. None of your truck system, your needles and thread for it. I don’t do it that way; ready money, women, is the order of the day with me.’ Well, one old mollesher (woman), though she must have known her rags would only bring 2_d._ a lb. at a fair dealer’s, if there be one, brought out 8 lbs. of white rags. He weighs them with his steelyards, and in they went to the bag. The man with the bag steps it immediately, and the other whips out his flute quite carelessly, and says--‘Which will you have marm, Jem Crow, or the Bunch of Roses?’ The old woman says directly, ‘What do you mean, 8 times 4 is 32, and 32 pence is 2_s._ 8_d._; never mind, I won’t be hard, give me half-a-crown.’ Well, when she finds there’s no money, out she hollars, and he plays his distracted flute to drown her voice, and backs himself manfully out of the court. I have known these men get on so that I have seen them with a good horse and cart. There’s another class of rag bloaks, who have bills printed with the Queen’s Arms at the top, if you please, ‘By royal authority’--that’s their own authority, and they assume plenty of it. Well, this bill specifies the best prices for rags, left-off clothes, &c. One fellow goes and drops these bills at the kens (houses), the other comes after him, and as the man who drops marks every house where a bill has been taken, the second man knows where to call. Any house where he gets a call commences the caper. Well, anything to be disposed of is brought out, often in the back yard. The party of the house produces the bill, which promises a stunning tip for the old lumber. The man keeps sorting the things out, and running them down as not so good as he expected; but at the same time he kids them on by promising three times more than the things are worth. This is a grand racket--the way he fakes them, and then he says, ‘Marm (or sir, as it may be), I shall give you 15_s._ for the lot,’ which stuns the party, for they never expected to get anything like that--and their expectations is not disappointed, for they don’t. Then he turns round directly, and commences sorting more particularly than before, putting the best and the easiest to carry altogether. He starts up then, and whips a couple of bob, or half a bull (2_s._ 6_d._) into the woman’s hand, saying, ‘I always like to bind a bargain, marm--one of the fairest dealing men travelling. Do save all your old lumber for me.’ Of a sudden he begins searching his pockets, and exclaims, ‘Dear me, I haven’t enough change in my pocket, but I’ll soon settle that--my mate has it outside. I’ll just take a load out to the cart, and come back for the others with the money;’ and so he hooks it, and I’ve no occasion to tell you he never comes back; and that’s what he calls having them on the knock.”

The other inmates at the lodging-houses which my informant described are of the class concerning whom full information is or will be given in other portions of this or the following letters. His description of the lodging-houses, too, was a corroboration of the statement I give to-day. All the classes described meet and mix at the lodging-houses.

I shall reserve what I have to say concerning the influence of the low lodging-houses of London and the country till the conclusion of the present volume.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF CHEMICAL ARTICLES OF MANUFACTURE.

The street purveyors of blacking, of the different preparations of black lead, of plating-balls, of corn-salves, of grease-removing compositions, of china and glass cements, of rat poisons, of fly-papers, of beetle-wafers, of gutta-percha heads, of lucifer-matches, and of cigar-lights, may be classed generally under two heads. They are either very old or very young persons, or else they are men who recommend their wares by patter.

Among the first-mentioned class are the vendors of cakes of blacking, papers of black-lead, and lucifer matches. Of blacking and black-lead the street-sellers are more frequently old women; of lucifer matches they are usually women and children, and of all ages. It is not uncommon, in the quieter roads of the suburbs especially, to see a young woman extend her bare red arm from beneath a scanty ragged shawl, and with an imploring look, a low curtsey, and a piteous tone, proffer a box of matches for sale; while a child in her arms, perhaps of two or three years old, extends in its little hand another box. There are also in the street sale of lucifer matches very many girls and boys, parentless or uncared for, and many old or infirm women and men.

The street-sellers of chemically-manufactured articles, who feel it necessary to recommend their wares by a little street oratory, or patter, (the paper-worker, whose humorous remarks I have before quoted, once described it to me as “advertising by word of mouth,”) are the vendors of the articles which are to cure, to repair, to renovate, or to kill. Any other itinerant vendors of chemical articles are of the ordinary class of street traders.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF BLACKING, BLACK LEAD, ETC.

I specify these two commodities jointly, because they are frequently sold by the same individual. In Whitechapel and Spitalfields are eight establishments, where the street-sellers of blacking are principally supplied with their stock. It is sold in cakes, which are wrapped in a kind of oil paper, generally printed on the back, so as to catch the eye, with the address of some well-known blacking manufacturer. Thus some which a street-seller of blacking showed me were printed, in large type, as a sort of border, “Lewis’s India Rubber Blacking,” while in the middle was a very black and very predominant 30, and beneath it, in small and hardly distinguishable type, “Princess-st., Portman-market.” Any shopkeeper, who “supplies the trade,” if he be a regular customer of the manufacturer, can have his name and address printed on the cover of the blacking-cakes. The 30 is meant to catch the eye with the well-known flourish of “30, Strand.”

The quality of these cakes of blacking, the street-sellers whom I questioned told me was highly approved by their customers, and, as blacking is purchased by the classes who aim at a smartness and cleanliness above that of the purchasers of many street commodities, there is no reason to doubt the assertion. The sale of this blacking, indeed, is chiefly on a round, and it would be hopeless as to future custom to call a second time at any house where bad blacking had been sold on a previous visit. The article is vended wholesale, in “gross boxes,” and “half-gross boxes.” The half-gross boxes are 1_s._ 9_d._, and capital, even in this trifling trade, has its customary advantages, for the “gross boxes” are but 3_s._ It should be remembered, however, that to the buyer of two “half-gross” a couple of the plain wooden boxes, in which the blacking is sold, and often hawked, must be supplied; but to the buyer of a “gross box” only one of these cases is furnished. I may mention, to the credit of the vendors, that of the wholesale blacking makers, two have themselves been street-sellers, and one still, but only at intervals, goes “on a blacking-round” among his old customers. There are other blacking-makers, but those I have specified, as to number, are more particularly the providers for the street trade. The poor people who sell blacking at a distance from the manufacturer’s premises--as in the case of the “30, Princess-st., Portman-market”--are supplied by oilmen, chandlers, and other shopkeepers, who buy largely of the manufacturers, and can consequently supply the purchasers by the dozen, for street sale or hawking, as cheaply as they would be supplied by the manufacturer himself. A dozen is generally charged 3-1/2_d._, and as the cakes are sold at 1/2_d._ each (occasionally 1_d._, both by the street people and more frequently the small shopkeepers) the profit is moderate enough. The cakes, however, which are regularly retailed at 1_d._, are larger, and cost nearly twice the amount of the others wholesale.

This trade presents the peculiarity of being almost entirely a street “door-to-door” trade, as I heard it described. Blacking is not presented for purposes of begging, as are lucifer-matches, tracts, memorandum-books, boot-laces, &c.; for the half-trading, half-begging, is carried on in the quieter parts of town, and more extensively in the suburbs, ladies being principally accosted, and to them blacking is not offered.

There are now, I learn from good authority, never fewer than 200 persons selling cake blacking, “from door to door.” More than half of them are elderly women, and more than three-fourths women of all ages and girls. The other sellers are old men and boys. None of the blacking-sellers make the article they vend. To sell eight dozen cakes a week is a full average, and of these the “pennies” and the “half-pennies” are about equally divided. This gives a weekly outlay of 6_s._ to each individual seller, with an average profit of about 2_s._ 6_d._, and shows a yearly street-expenditure by the public of 3120_l._ The profit, however, is not in equal apportionment among the traders in blacking, for the “old hands” on a regular round will do double the business of the others.