Part 12

“No, I don’t think this world could well go on for ever. There’s a great deal of ground in it, certainly, and it seems very strong at present; but they say there’s to be a flood on the earth, and earthquakes, and that will destroy it. The earthquake ought to have took place some time ago, as people tells me, but I never heerd any more about it. If we cheats in the streets, I know we shan’t go to Heaven; but it’s very hard upon us, for if we didn’t cheat we couldn’t live, profits is so bad. It’s the same with the shops, and I suppose the young men there won’t go to Heaven neither; but if people won’t give the money, both costers and tradesmen must cheat, and that’s very hard. Why, look at apples! customers want them for less than they cost us, and so we are forced to shove in bad ones as well as good ones; and if we’re to suffer for that, it does seem to me dreadful cruel.”

Curious and extravagant as this statement may perhaps appear to the uninitiated, nevertheless it is here given as it was spoken; and it was spoken with an earnestness that proved the poor girl looked upon it as a subject, the solemnity of which forced her to be truthful.

OF COSTERMONGERS AND THIEVES.

Concerning the connection of these two classes I had the following account from a costermonger: “I’ve known the coster trade for twelve years, and never knew thieves go out a costering as a cloak; they may have done so, but I very much doubt it. Thieves go for an idle life, and costermongering don’t suit them. Our chaps don’t care a d--n who they associate with,--if they’re thieves they meet ’em all the same, or anything that way. But costers buy what they call ‘a gift,’--may-be it’s a watch or coat wot’s been stolen--from any that has it to sell. A man will say: ‘If you’ve a few shillings, you may make a good thing of it. Why this identical watch is only twenty shillings, and it’s worth fifty;’ so if the coster has money, he buys. Thieves will get 3_d._ where a mechanic or a coster will earn 1/2_d._, and the most ignorant of our people has a queer sort of respect for thieves, because of the money they make. Poverty’s as much despised among costers as among other people. People that’s badly off among us are called ‘cursed.’ In bad weather it’s common for costers to ‘curse themselves,’ as they call having no trade. ‘Well, I’m cursed,’ they say when they can make no money. It’s a common thing among them to shout after any one they don’t like, that’s reduced, ‘Well, ain’t you cursed?’” The costers, I am credibly informed, gamble a great deal with the wealthier class of thieves, and win of them the greater part of the money they get.

OF THE MORE PROVIDENT COSTERMONGERS.

Concerning this head, I give the statement of a man whose information I found fully confirmed:--“We are not such a degraded set as some believe; sir, but a living doesn’t tumble into a man’s mouth, now a days. A good many of us costers rises into greengrocers and coal-sheds, and still carries on their rounds as costers, all the same. Why, in Lock’s-fields, I could show you twenty such, and you’d find them very decent men, sir--very. There’s one man I know, that’s risen that way, who is worth hundreds of pounds, and keeps his horse and cart like a gentleman. They rises to be voters, and they all vote liberal. Some marry the better kind of servants,--such servant-maids as would’nt marry a rag and bottle shop, but doesn’t object to a coal shed. It’s mostly younger men that manages this. As far as I have observed, these costers, after they has settled and got to be housekeepers, don’t turn their backs on their old mates. They’d have a nice life of it if they did--yes! a very nice life.”

OF THE HOMES OF THE COSTERMONGERS.

The costermongers usually reside in the courts and alleys in the neighbourhood of the different street-markets. They themselves designate the locality where, so to speak, a colony of their people has been established, a “coster district,” and the entire metropolis is thus parcelled out, almost as systematically as if for the purposes of registration. These costermonger districts are as follows, and are here placed in the order of the numerical importance of the residents:

The New Cut (Lambeth). Whitecross-street. Leather-lane. The Brill, Somers’ Town. Whitechapel. Camberwell. Walworth. Peckham. Bermondsey. The Broadway, Westminster. Shoreditch. Paddington and Edgeware Road. Tottenham-court Road. Drury-lane. Old-street Road. Clare Market. Ratcliffe Highway. Lisson-grove. Petticoat and Rosemary-lane. Marylebone-lane. Oxford-street. Rotherhithe. Deptford. Dockhead. Greenwich. Commercial-road (East). Poplar. Limehouse. Bethnal-green. Hackney-road. Kingsland. Camden Town.

The homes of the costermongers in these places, may be divided into three classes; firstly, those who, by having a regular trade or by prudent economy, are enabled to live in comparative ease and plenty; secondly, those who, from having a large family or by imprudent expenditure, are, as it were, struggling with the world; and thirdly, those who for want of stock-money, or ill success in trade are nearly destitute.

The first home I visited was that of an old woman, who with the assistance of her son and girls, contrived to live in a most praiseworthy and comfortable manner. She and all her family were teetotallers, and may be taken as a fair type of the thriving costermonger.

As I ascended a dark flight of stairs, a savory smell of stew grew stronger at each step I mounted. The woman lived in a large airy room on the first floor (“the drawing-room” as she told me laughing at her own joke), well lighted by a clean window, and I found her laying out the savory smelling dinner looking most temptingly clean. The floor was as white as if it had been newly planed, the coke fire was bright and warm, making the lid of the tin saucepan on it rattle up and down as the steam rushed out. The wall over the fire-place was patched up to the ceiling with little square pictures of saints, and on the mantel-piece, between a row of bright tumblers and wine glasses filled with odds and ends, stood glazed crockeryware images of Prince Albert and M. Jullien. Against the walls, which were papered with “hangings” of four different patterns and colours, were hung several warm shawls, and in the band-box, which stood on the stained chest of drawers, you could tell that the Sunday bonnet was stowed safely away from the dust. A turn-up bedstead thrown back, and covered with a many-coloured patch-work quilt, stood opposite to a long dresser with its mugs and cups dangling from the hooks, and the clean blue plates and dishes ranged in order at the back. There were a few bushel baskets piled up in one corner, “but the apples smelt so,” she said, “they left them in a stable at night.”

By the fire sat the woman’s daughter, a pretty meek-faced gray-eyed girl of sixteen, who “was home nursing” for a cold. “Steve” (her boy) I was informed, was out working. With his help, the woman assured me, she could live very comfortably--“God be praised!” and when he got the barrow he was promised, she gave me to understand, that their riches were to increase past reckoning. Her girl too was to be off at work as soon as sprats came in. “Its on Lord Mayor’s-day they comes in,” said a neighbour who had rushed up to see the strange gentleman, “they says he has ’em on his table, but I never seed ’em. They never gives us the pieces, no not even the heads,” and every one laughed to their utmost. The good old dame was in high spirits, her dark eyes sparkling as she spoke about her “Steve.” The daughter in a little time lost her bashfulness, and informed me “that one of the Polish refugees was a-courting Mrs. M----, who had given him a pair of black eyes.”

On taking my leave I was told by the mother that their silver gilt Dutch clock--with its glass face and blackleaded weights--“was the best one in London, and might be relied on with the greatest safety.”

As a specimen of the dwellings of the struggling costers, the following may be cited:

The man, a tall, thick-built, almost good-looking fellow, with a large fur cap on his head, lived with his family in a front kitchen, and as there were, with his mother-in-law, five persons, and only one bed, I was somewhat puzzled to know where they could _all_ sleep. The barrow standing on the railings over the window, half shut out the light, and when any one passed there was a momentary shadow thrown over the room, and a loud rattling of the iron gratings above that completely prevented all conversation. When I entered, the mother-in-law was reading aloud one of the threepenny papers to her son, who lolled on the bed, that with its curtains nearly filled the room. There was the usual attempt to make the fireside comfortable. The stone sides had been well whitened, and the mantel-piece decorated with its small tin trays, tumblers, and a piece of looking-glass. A cat with a kitten were seated on the hearth-rug in front. “They keeps the varmint away,” said the woman, stroking the “puss,” “and gives a look of home.” By the drawers were piled up four bushel baskets, and in a dark corner near the bed stood a tall measure full of apples that scented the room. Over the head, on a string that stretched from wall to wall, dangled a couple of newly-washed shirts, and by the window were two stone barrels, for lemonade, when the coster visited the fairs and races.

Whilst we were talking, the man’s little girl came home. For a poor man’s child she was dressed to perfection; her pinafore was clean, her face shone with soap, and her tidy cotton print gown had clearly been newly put on that morning. She brought news that “Janey” was coming home from auntey’s, and instantly a pink cotton dress was placed by the mother-in-law before the fire to air. (It appeared that Janey was out at service, and came home once a week to see her parents and take back a clean frock.) Although these people were living, so to speak, in a cellar, still every endeavour had been made to give the home a look of comfort. The window, with its paper-patched panes, had a clean calico blind. The side-table was dressed up with yellow jugs and cups and saucers, and the band-boxes had been stowed away on the flat top of the bedstead. All the chairs, which were old fashioned mahogany ones, had sound backs and bottoms.

Of the third class, or the very poor, I chose the following “type” out of the many others that presented themselves. The family here lived in a small slanting-roofed house, partly stripped of its tiles. More than one half of the small leaden squares of the first-floor window were covered with brown paper, puffing out and crackling in the wind, while through the greater part of the others were thrust out ball-shaped bundles of rags, to keep out the breeze. The panes that did remain were of all shapes and sizes, and at a distance had the appearance of yellow glass, they were so stained with dirt. I opened a door with a number chalked on it, and groped my way up a broken tottering staircase.

It took me some time after I had entered the apartment before I could get accustomed to the smoke, that came pouring into the room from the chimney. The place was filled with it, curling in the light, and making every thing so indistinct that I could with difficulty see the white mugs ranged in the corner-cupboard, not three yards from me. When the wind was in the north, or when it rained, it was always that way, I was told, “but otherwise,” said an old dame about sixty, with long grisly hair spreading over her black shawl, “it is pretty good for that.”

On a mattrass, on the floor, lay a pale-faced girl--“eighteen years old last twelfth-cake day”--her drawn-up form showing in the patch-work counterpane that covered her. She had just been confined, and the child had died! A little straw, stuffed into an old tick, was all she had to lie upon, and even that had been given up to her by the mother until she was well enough to work again. To shield her from the light of the window, a cloak had been fastened up slantingly across the panes; and on a string that ran along the wall was tied, amongst the bonnets, a clean nightcap--“against the doctor came,” as the mother, curtsying, informed me. By the side of the bed, almost hidden in the dark shade, was a pile of sieve baskets, crowned by the flat shallow that the mother “worked” with.

The room was about nine feet square, and furnished a home for three women. The ceiling slanted like that of a garret, and was the colour of old leather, excepting a few rough white patches, where the tenants had rudely mended it. The white light was easily seen through the laths, and in one corner a large patch of the paper looped down from the wall. One night the family had been startled from their sleep by a large mass of mortar--just where the roof bulged in--falling into the room. “We never want rain water,” the woman told me, “for we can catch plenty just over the chimney-place.”

They had made a carpet out of three or four old mats. They were “obligated to it, for fear of dropping anything through the boards into the donkey stables in the parlour underneath. But we only pay ninepence a week rent,” said the old woman, “and mustn’t grumble.”

The only ornament in the place was on the mantel-piece--an old earthenware sugar-basin, well silvered over, that had been given by the eldest girl when she died, as a remembrance to her mother. Two cracked tea-cups, on their inverted saucers, stood on each side, and dressed up the fire-side into something like tidiness. The chair I sat on was by far the best out of the three in the room, and that had no back, and only half its quantity of straw.

The parish, the old woman told me, allowed her 1_s._ a week and two loaves. But the doctor ordered her girl to take sago and milk, and she was many a time sorely puzzled to get it. The neighbours helped her a good deal, and often sent her part of their unsold greens;--even if it was only the outer leaves of the cabbages, she was thankful for them. Her other girl--a big-boned wench, with a red shawl crossed over her bosom, and her black hair parted on one side--did all she could, and so they lived on. “As long as they kept out of the ‘big house’ (the workhouse) she would not complain.”

[Illustration: THE OYSTER STALL.

“Penny a lot, Oysters! Penny a lot!”

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

I never yet beheld so much destitution borne with so much content. Verily the acted philosophy of the poor is a thing to make those who write and preach about it hide their heads.

OF THE DRESS OF THE COSTERMONGERS.

From the homes of the costermongers we pass to a consideration of their dress.

The costermonger’s ordinary costume partakes of the durability of the warehouseman’s, with the quaintness of that of the stable-boy. A well-to-do “coster,” when dressed for the day’s work, usually wears a small cloth cap, a little on one side. A close-fitting worsted tie-up skull-cap, is very fashionable, just now, among the class, and ringlets at the temples are looked up to as the height of elegance. Hats they never wear--excepting on Sunday--on account of their baskets being frequently carried on their heads. Coats are seldom indulged in; their waistcoats, which are of a broad-ribbed corduroy, with fustian back and sleeves, being made as long as a groom’s, and buttoned up nearly to the throat. If the corduroy be of a light sandy colour, then plain brass, or sporting buttons, with raised fox’s or stag’s heads upon them--or else black bone-buttons, with a flower-pattern--ornament the front; but if the cord be of a dark rat-skin hue, then mother-of-pearl buttons are preferred. Two large pockets--sometimes four--with huge flaps or lappels, like those in a shooting-coat, are commonly worn. If the costermonger be driving a good trade and have his set of regular customers, he will sport a blue cloth jacket, similar in cut to the cord ones above described; but this is looked upon as an extravagance of the highest order, for the slime and scales of the fish stick to the sleeves and shoulders of the garment, so as to spoil the appearance of it in a short time. The fashionable stuff for trousers, at the present, is a dark-coloured “cable cord,” and they are made to fit tightly at the knee and swell gradually until they reach the boot, which they nearly cover. Velveteen is now seldom worn, and knee-breeches are quite out of date. Those who deal wholly in fish wear a blue serge apron, either hanging down or tucked up round their waist. The costermonger, however, prides himself most of all upon his neckerchief and boots. Men, women, boys and girls, all have a passion for these articles. The man who does not wear his silk neckerchief--his “King’s-man” as it is called--is known to be in desperate circumstances; the inference being that it has gone to supply the morning’s stock-money. A yellow flower on a green ground, or a red and blue pattern, is at present greatly in vogue. The women wear their kerchiefs tucked-in under their gowns, and the men have theirs wrapped loosely round the neck, with the ends hanging over their waistcoats. Even if a costermonger has two or three silk handkerchiefs by him already, he seldom hesitates to buy another, when tempted with a bright showy pattern hanging from a Field-lane door-post.

The costermonger’s love of a good strong boot is a singular prejudice that runs throughout the whole class. From the father to the youngest child, all will be found well shod. So strong is their predilection in this respect, that a costermonger may be immediately known by a glance at his feet. He will part with everything rather than his boots, and to wear a pair of second-hand ones, or “translators” (as they are called), is felt as a bitter degradation by them all. Among the men, this pride has risen to such a pitch, that many will have their upper-leathers tastily ornamented, and it is not uncommon to see the younger men of this class with a heart or a thistle, surrounded by a wreath of roses, worked below the instep, on their boots. The general costume of the women or girls is a black velveteen or straw bonnet, with a few ribbons or flowers, and almost always a net cap fitting closely to the cheek. The silk “King’s-man” covering their shoulders, is sometimes tucked into the neck of the printed cotton-gown, and sometimes the ends are brought down outside to the apron-strings. Silk dresses are never worn by them--they rather despise such articles. The petticoats are worn short, ending at the ankles, just high enough to show the whole of the much-admired boots. Coloured, or “illustrated shirts,” as they are called, are especially objected to by the men.

On the Sunday no costermonger will, if he can possibly avoid it, wheel a barrow. If a shilling be an especial object to him, he may, perhaps, take his shallow and head-basket as far as Chalk-farm, or some neighbouring resort; but even then he objects strongly to the Sunday-trading. They leave this to the Jews and Irish, who are always willing to earn a penny--as they say.

The prosperous coster _will_ have his holiday on the Sunday, and, if possible, his Sunday suit as well--which usually consists of a rough beaver hat, brown Petersham, with velvet facings of the same colour, and cloth trousers, with stripes down the side. The women, generally, manage to keep by them a cotton gown of a bright showy pattern, and a new shawl. As one of the craft said to me--“Costers likes to see their gals and wives look lady-like when they takes them out.” Such of the costers as are not in a flourishing way of business, seldom make any alteration in their dress on the Sunday.

There are but five tailors in London who make the garb proper to costermongers; one of these is considered somewhat “slop,” or as a coster called him, a “springer-up.”

This springer-up is blamed by some of the costermongers, who condemn him for employing women at reduced wages. A whole court of costermongers, I was assured, would withdraw their custom from a tradesman, if one of their body, who had influence among them, showed that the tradesman was unjust to his workpeople. The tailor in question issues bills after the following fashion. I give one verbatim, merely withholding the address for obvious reasons:

“ONCE TRY YOU’LL COME AGAIN.

_Slap-up Tog and out-and-out Kicksies Builder._

Mr. ---- nabs the chance of putting his customers awake, that he has just made his escape from Russia, not forgetting to clap his mawleys upon some of the right sort of Ducks, to make single and double backed Slops for gentlemen in black, when on his return home he was stunned to find one of the top manufacturers of Manchester had cut his lucky and stepped off to the Swan Stream, leaving behind him a valuable stock of Moleskins, Cords, Velveteens, Plushes, Swandowns, &c., and I having some ready in my kick, grabbed the chance, and stepped home with my swag, and am now safe landed at my crib. I can turn out toggery of every description very slap up, at the following low prices for

_Ready Gilt--Tick being no go._

Upper Benjamins, built on a downey plan, a monarch to half a finnuff. Slap up Velveteen Togs, lined with the same, 1 pound 1 quarter and a peg. Moleskin ditto, any colour, lined with the same, 1 couter. A pair of Kerseymere Kicksies, any colour, built very slap up, with the artful dodge, a canary. Pair of stout Cord ditto, built in the ‘Melton Mowbray’ style, half a sov. Pair of very good broad Cord ditto, made very saucy, 9 bob and a kick. Pair of long sleeve Moleskin, all colours, built hanky-spanky, with a double fakement down the side and artful buttons at bottom, half a monarch. Pair of stout ditto, built very serious, 9 times. Pair of out-and-out fancy sleeve Kicksies, cut to drop down on the trotters, 2 bulls. Waist Togs, cut long, with moleskin back and sleeves, 10 peg. Blue Cloth ditto, cut slap, with pearl buttons, 14 peg. Mud Pipes, Knee Caps, and Trotter Cases, built very low.

“A decent allowance made to Seedy Swells, Tea Kettle Purgers, Head Robbers, and Flunkeys out of Collar.

“N.B. Gentlemen finding their own Broady can be accommodated.”

OF THE DIET AND DRINK OF COSTERMONGERS.