Part 122

Of the female street-sellers residing in houses of ill fame there are not many; perhaps not many more than 100. I was told by a gentleman whose connection with parochial matters enabled him to form an opinion, that about Whitecross-street, and some similar streets near the Cornwall-road, and stretching away to the Blackfriars and Borough-roads--(the locality which of any in London is perhaps the most rank with prostitution and its attendant evils)--there might be 600 of those wretched women and of all ages, from 15 to upwards of 40; and that among them he believed there were barely a score who occupied themselves with street-sale. Of women, and more especially of girl, street-sellers, such as flower-girls, those pursuing immoral courses are far more numerous than 100, but they do not often reside in houses notoriously of ill-fame, but in their own rooms (and too often with their parents) and in low lodging-houses. For women who are street-sellers, without the practice of prostitution, to reside in a house of ill-fame, would be a reckless waste of money; as I am told that in so wretched a street as White-horse-street, the rent of a front kitchen is 4_s._ 6_d._ a week; of a back kitchen, 3_s._ 6_d._; of a front parlour, 6_s._; and of a back parlour, 4_s._ 6_d._; all being meagrely furnished and very small. This is also accounted one of the cheapest of all such streets. The rent of a street-seller’s unfurnished room is generally 1_s._ 6_d._ or even 1_s._ a week; a furnished room is 3_s._ or 2_s._ 6_d._

_The state of education_ among the female street-sellers is very defective. Perhaps it may be said that among the English costers not one female in twenty can read, and not one in forty can write. But they are fond of listening to any one who reads the newspaper or any exciting story. Among the street-selling Irish, also, education is very defective. As regards the adults, who have been of woman’s estate before they left Ireland, a knowledge of reading and writing may be as rare as among the English costerwomen; but with those who have come to this country sufficiently young, or have been born here, education is far more diffused than among the often more prosperous English street children. This is owing to the establishment of late years of many Roman Catholic schools, at charges suited to the poor, or sometimes free, and of the Irish parents having availed themselves (probably on the recommendation of the priest) of such opportunities for the tuition of their daughters, which the English costers have neglected to do with equal chances. Of the other classes whom I have specified as street-sellers, I believe I may say that the education of the females is about the average of that of “servants of all work” who have been brought up amidst struggles and poverty; they can read, but with little appreciation of what they read, and have therefore little taste for books, and often little leisure even if they have taste. As to writing, a woman told me that at one time, when she was “in place,” and kept weekly accounts, she had been complimented by her mistress on her neat hand, but that she and her husband (a man of indifferent character) had been street-sellers for seven or eight years, and during all that time she had only once had a pen in her hand; this was a few weeks back, in signing a petition--something about Sundays, she said--she wrote her name with great pain and difficulty, and feared that she had not even spelled it aright! I may here repeat that I found the uneducated always ready to attribute their want of success in life to their want of education; while the equally poor street-sellers, who were “scholars,” are as apt to say, “It’s been of no manner of use to me.” In all these matters I can but speak generally. The male street-sellers who have seen better days have of course been better educated, but the most intelligent of the street class are the patterers, and of them the females form no portion.

_The diet of the class_ I am describing is, as regards its poorest members, tea and bread or bread and grease; a meal composed of nothing else is their fare twice or thrice a day. Sometimes there is the addition of a herring--or a plaice, when plaice are two a penny--but the consumption of cheap fish, with a few potatoes, is more common among the poor Irish than the poor English female street-sellers. “Indeed, sir,” said an elderly woman, who sold cakes of blacking and small wares, “I could make a meal on fish and potatoes, cheaper than on tea and bread and butter, though I don’t take milk with my tea--I’ve got to like it better without milk than with it--but if you’re a long time on your legs in the streets and get to your bit of a home for a cup of tea, you want a bit of rest over it, and if you have to cook fish it’s such a trouble. O, no, indeed, this time of year there’s no ’casion to light a fire for your tea--and tea ’livens you far more nor a herring--because there’s always some neighbour to give a poor woman a jug of boiling water.” Married women, who may carry on a trade distinct from that of their husbands, live as well as their earnings and the means of the couple will permit: what they consider good living is a dinner daily off “good block ornaments” (small pieces of meat, discoloured and dirty, but not tainted, usually set for sale on the butcher’s block), tripe, cow-heel, beef-sausages, or soup from a cheap cook-shop, “at 2_d._ a pint.” To this there is the usual accompaniment of beer, which, in all populous neighbourhoods, is “3_d._ a pot (quart) in your own jugs.” From what I could learn, it seems to me that an inordinate or extravagant indulgence of the palate, under any circumstances, is far less common among the female than the male street-sellers.

During the summer and the fine months of the spring and autumn, there are, I am assured, one-third of the London street-sellers--male and female--“tramping” the country. At Maidstone Fair the other day, I was told by an intelligent itinerant dealer, there were 300 women, all of whose faces he believed he had seen at one time or other in London. The Irish, however, tramp very little into the country for purposes of trade, but they travel in great numbers from one place to another for purposes of mendicancy; or, if they have a desire to emigrate, they will tramp from London to Liverpool, literally begging their way, no matter whether they have or have not any money. The female street-sellers are thus a fluctuating body.

The beggars among the women who profess to be street-traders are chiefly Irishwomen, some of whom, though otherwise well-conducted, sober and chaste, beg shamelessly and with any mendacious representation. It is remarkable enough, too, that of the Irishwomen who will thus beg, many if employed in any agricultural work, or in the rougher household labours, such as scouring or washing, will work exceedingly hard. To any feeling of self-respect or self-dependence, however, they seem dead; their great merit is their chastity, their great shame their lying and mendicancy.

The female street-sellers are again a fluctuating body, as in the summer and autumn months. A large proportion go off to work in market-gardens, in the gathering of peas, beans, and the several fruits; in weeding, in hay-making, in the corn-harvest (when they will endeavour to obtain leave to glean if they are unemployed more profitably), and afterwards in the hopping. The women, however, thus seeking change of employment, are the ruder street-sellers, those who merely buy oranges at 4_d._ to sell at 6_d._, and who do not meddle with any calling mixed up with the necessity of skill in selection, or address in recommending. Of this half-vagrant class, many are not street-sellers usually, but are half prostitutes and half thieves, not unfrequently drinking all their earnings, while of the habitual female street-sellers, I do not think that drunkenness is now a very prevalent vice. Their earnings are small, and if they become habituated to an indulgence in drink, their means are soon dissipated; in which case they are unable to obtain stock-money, and they cease to be street-sellers.

If I may venture upon an estimation, I should say that the women engaged in street sale--wives, widows, and single persons--number from 25,000 to 30,000, and that their average earnings run from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 4_s._ a week.

I shall now proceed to give the histories of individuals belonging to each of the above class of female street-sellers, with the view of illustrating what has been said respecting them generally.

OF A SINGLE WOMAN, AS A STREET-SELLER.

I had some difficulty, for the reasons I have stated, in finding a single woman who, by her unaided industry, supported herself on the sale of street merchandise. There were plenty of single young women so engaged, but they lived, or lodged, with their parents or with one parent, or they had some support, however trifling, from some quarter or other. Among the street Irish I could have obtained statements from many single women who depended on their daily sale for their daily bread, but I have already given instances of their street life. One Irishwoman, a spinster of about 50, for I had some conversation with her in the course of a former inquiry, had supported herself alone, by street sale, for many years. She sat, literally packed in a sort of hamper-basket, at the corner of Charles-street, Leather-lane. She seemed to fit herself cross-legged, like a Turk, or a tailor on his shop-board, into her hamper; her fruit stall was close by her, and there she seemed to doze away life day by day--for she usually appeared to be wrapped in slumber. If any one approached her stall, however, she seemed to be awake, as it were, mechanically. I have missed this poor woman of late, and I believe she only packed herself up in the way described when the weather was cold.

A woman of about 26 or 27--I may again remark that the regular street-sellers rarely know their age--made the following statement. She was spare and sickly looking, but said that her health was tolerably good.

“I used to mind my mother’s stall,” she stated, “when I was a girl, when mother wasn’t well or had a little work at pea-shelling or such like. She sold sweet-stuff. No, she didn’t make it, but bought it. I never cared for it, and when I was quite young I’ve sold sweet-stuffs as I never tasted. I never had a father. I can’t read or write, but I like to hear people read. I go to Zion Chapel sometimes of a Sunday night, the singing’s so nice. I don’t know what religion you may call it of, but it’s a Zion Chapel. Mother’s been dead these--well I don’t know how long, but it’s a long time. I’ve lived by myself ever since, and kept myself, and I have half a room with another young woman who lives by making little boxes. I don’t know what sort of boxes. Pill-boxes? Very likely, sir, but I can’t say I ever saw any. She goes out to work on another box-maker’s premises. She’s no better off nor me. We pays 1_s._ 6_d._ a-week between us; it’s my bed, and the other sticks is her’n. We ’gree well enough. I haven’t sold sweet stuff for a great bit. I’ve sold small wares in the streets, and artificials (artificial flowers), and lace, and penny dolls, and penny boxes (of toys). No, I never hear anything improper from young men. Boys has sometimes said, when I’ve been selling sweets, ‘Don’t look so hard at ’em, or they’ll turn sour.’ I never minded such nonsense. I has very few amusements. I goes once or twice a month, or so, to the gallery at the Wick (Victoria Theatre), for I live near. It’s beautiful there. O, it’s really grand. I don’t know what they call what’s played, because I can’t read the bills.

“I hear what they’re called, but I forgets. I knows Miss Vincent and John Herbert when they come on. I likes them the best. I’m a going to leave the streets. I have an aunt a laundress, because she was mother’s sister, and I always helped her, and she taught me laundressing. I work for her three and sometimes four days a-week now, because she’s lost her daughter Ann, and I’m known as a good ironer. Another laundress will employ me next week, so I’m dropping the streets, as I can do far better. I’m not likely to be married and I don’t want to.”

OF A MECHANIC’S WIFE, AS A STREET-SELLER.

A middle-aged woman, presenting what may be best understood as a decency of appearance, for there was nothing remarkable in her face or dress, gave me the following account of her experience as a street-seller, and of her feelings when she first became one:--

“I went into service very young in the country,” she said, “but mistress brought me up to London with her, where master had got a situation: the children was so fond of me. I saved a little money in that and other places as girls often does, and they seems not to save it so much for themselves as for others. Father got the first bit of money I saved, or he would have been seized for rent--he was only a working man (agricultural labourer)--and all the rest I scraped went before I’d been married a fortnight, for I got married when I was 24. O no, indeed, I don’t mean that my money was wasted by my husband. It was every farthing laid out in the house, besides what he had, for we took a small house in a little street near the Commercial-road, and let out furnished rooms. We did very well at first with lodgings, but the lodgers were mates of vessels, or people about the river and the docks, and they were always coming and going, and the rooms was often empty, and some went away in debt. My husband is a smith, and was in middling work for a good while. Then he got a job to go with some horses to France, for he can groom a horse as well as shoe it, and he was a long time away, three or four months, for he was sent into another country when he got to France, but I don’t understand the particulars of it. The rooms was empty and the last lodger went away without paying, and I had nothing to meet the quarter’s rent, and the landlord, all of a sudden almost, put in the brokers, for he said my husband would never come back, and perhaps I should be selling the furniture and be off to join him, for he told me it was all a planned thing he knew. And so the furniture was sold for next to nothing, and 1_l._ 6_s._ was given to me after the sale; I suppose that was over when all was paid, but I’d been forced to part with some linen and things to live upon and pay the rates, that came very heavy. My husband came back to an empty house three days after, and he’d been unlucky, for he brought home only 4_l._ instead of 10_l._ at least, as he expected, but he’d been cheated by the man he went into the other country with. Yes, the man that cheated him was an Englishman, and my poor John was put to great trouble and expense, and was in a strange place without knowing a word of the language. But the foreigners was very kind to him, he said, and didn’t laugh at him when he tried to make hisself understood, as I’ve seen people do here many a time. The landlord gave us 1_l._ to give up the house, as he had a good offer for it, and so we had to start again in the world like.

“Our money was almost all gone before John got regular work, tho’ he had some odd jobs, and then he had for a good many months the care of a horse and cart for a tradesman in the City. Shortly after that he was laid up a week with a crushed leg, but his master wouldn’t wait a week for him, so he hired another: ‘I have nothing to say against John,’ says he, when I told his master of the accident, ‘and I’m sorry, very sorry, but my business can’t be hindered by waiting for people getting better of accidents.’ John got work at his own business next, but there was always some stopper. He was ill, or I was ill, and if there was 10_s._ in the house, then it went and wasn’t enough. And so we went on for a good many years, I don’t know how many. John kept working among horses and carts, or at his own business, but what with travelling abroad, I suppose, and such like, he got to like best to be in the streets, and he has his health best that way.” (The husband, it is evident, was afflicted with the restlessness of the tribe.) “About seven years ago we were very badly off--no work, and no money, and neither of us well. Then I used to make a few women’s plain night-caps and plain morning caps for servants, and sell them to a shopkeeper, but latterly I couldn’t sell them at all, or get no more than the stuff cost me, without any profit for labour. So at last--and it was on a Friday evening of all unlucky times--my gold wedding-ring that cost 8_s._ 6_d._, and that I’d stuck to all along, had to be pawned for 4_s._ 6_d._ for rent and bread. That _was_ a shocking time, sir. We’ve sat in the dark of an evening, for we could get neither coals nor a candle as we was a little in debt, and John said, it was a blessing after all perhaps that we hadn’t no family, for he often, both joking and serious, wished for children, but it wasn’t God’s will you see that we should have any. One morning when I woke very early I found my husband just going out, and when I asked him what sent him out so soon, he says: ‘It’s for nothing bad, so don’t fret yourself, old gal.’ That day he walked all over London and called on all the masters as had employed him, or knowed him, and told them how he was situated, and said that if he could borrow 20_s._ up and down, he could do a little, he knew--the thought of it came into his mind all of a sudden--in going about with a horse and cart, that he could hire, and sell coals to poor people. He raised 8_s._ 6_d._, I think it was, and started with a quarter of a ton of coals, and then another quarter when the first was sold, and he carried it on for three or four weeks. But the hire of the horse and cart took all the profit, and the poor people wanted credit, besides people must cheat to thrive as sells coals in the street. All this time I could do nothing--though I tried for washing and charing, but I’m slow at washing--but starve at home, and be afraid every knock was the landlord. After that John was employed to carry a very heavy board over his shoulder, and so as to have it read on both sides. It was about an eating-house, and I went with him to give little bills about it to all we met, for it was as much as a man could do to carry the board. He had 1_s._ a day, and I had 6_d._ That was my first time in the streets and I felt so ’shamed to come to that. I thought if I met any people I knew in Essex, or any of my old mistresses, what would they think. Then we had all sorts of jokes to stand. We both looked pinched, and young gents used to say, ‘Do you dine there yourselves?’ and the boys--O, of all the torments!--they’ve shouted out, ‘Excellent Dining-rooms’ that was on the board, sir, ‘and two jolly speciments of the style of grub!’ I could have knocked their saucy heads together. We was resting in the shade one day--and we were anxious to do our best, for 1_s._ 6_d._ a day was a great thing then--and an old gentleman came up and said he was glad to get out of the sun. He looked like a parson, but was a joky man, and he’d been having some wine, I think, he smelled of it so. He began to talk to us and ask us questions, such as you have, sir, and we told him how we was situated. ‘God bless you,’ says he, ‘for I think you’re honest folks. People that lie don’t talk like you; here’s some loose silver I have,’ and he gave John 5_s._ 6_d._ and went away. We could hardly think it was real; it seemed such a lot of money just then, to be got clear all at once. I’ve never seen him since, and never saw him, as I knows of, before, but may God Almighty bless him wherever he is, for I think that 5_s._ 6_d._ put new life into us, and brought a blessing. A relation of John’s came to London not long after and gave him a sovereign and sent him some old clothes, and very good ones, when he went back. Then John hired a barrow--it’s his own now--and started as a costermonger. A neighbour of ourn told him how to do it, and he’s done very well at it since.