Part 25
A costermonger, a quiet-looking man, tidily clad, said he was the son of a country auctioneer, now dead; and not having been brought up to any trade, he came to London to try his luck. His means were done before he could obtain employment; and he was in a state of starvation. At last he was obliged to apply to the parish. The guardians took him into the workhouse, and offered to pass him home: but as he could do no good there, he refused to go. Whereupon, giving him a pound of bread, he was turned into the streets, and had nowhere to lay his head. In wandering down the New-cut a costermonger questioned him, and then took him into his house and fed him. This man kept him for a year and a half; he showed him how to get a living in the street trade; and when he left, gave him 20_s._ to start with. With this sum he got a good living directly; and he could do so now, were it not for the police, whose conduct, he stated, was sometimes very tyrannical. He had been dragged to the station-house, for standing to serve customers, though he obstructed nobody; the policeman, however, called it an obstruction, and he (the speaker) was fined 2_s._ 6_d._; whereupon, because he had not the half-crown, his barrow and all it contained were taken from him, and he had heard nothing of them since. This almost broke him down. There was no redress for these things, and he thought they ought to be looked into.
This man spoke with considerable energy; and when he had concluded, many costermongers shouted, at the top of their voices, that they could substantiate every word of what he had said.
A young man, of superior appearance, said he was the son of a gentleman who had held a commission as Lieutenant in the 20th Foot, and as Captain in the 34th Infantry, and afterwards became Sub-director of the Bute Docks; in which situation he died, leaving no property. He (the speaker) was a classical scholar; but having no trade, he was compelled, after his father’s death, to come to London in search of employment, thinking that his pen and his school acquirements would secure it. But in this expectation he was disappointed,--though for a short period he was earning two guineas a week in copying documents for the House of Commons. That time was past; and he was a street-patterer now through sheer necessity. He could say from experience that the earnings of that class were no more than from 8_s._ to 10_s._ a week. He then declaimed at some length against the interference of the police with the patterers, considering it harsh and unnecessary.
After some noisy and not very relevant discussion concerning the true amount of a street-patterer’s earnings, a clergyman of the Established Church, now selling stenographic cards in the street, addressed the meeting. He observed, that in every promiscuous assembly there would always be somebody who might be called unfortunate. Of this number he was one; for when, upon the 5th September, 1831, he preached a funeral sermon before a fashionable congregation, upon Mr. Huskisson’s death by a railway accident, he little thought he should ever be bound over in his own recognizances in 10_l._ for obstructing the metropolitan thoroughfares. He was a native of Hackney, but in early life he went to Scotland, and upon the 24th June, 1832, he obtained the presentation to a small extra-parochial chapel in that country, upon the presentation of the Rev. Dr. Bell. His people embraced Irvingism, and he was obliged to leave; and in January, 1837, he came to the metropolis. His history since that period he need not state. His occupation was well known, and he could confirm what had been stated with regard to the police. The Police Act provided, that all persons selling goods in the streets were to keep five feet off the pavement, the street not being a market. He had always kept with his wares and his cards beyond the prohibited distance of five feet; and for six years and a half he had sold his cards without molesting or being molested. After some severe observations upon the police, he narrated several events in his personal history to account for his present condition, which he attributed to misfortune and the injustice of society. In the course of these explanations he gave an illustration of his classical acquirements, in having detected a grammatical error in a Latin inscription upon the plate of a foundation-stone for a new church in Westminster. He wrote to the incumbent, pointing out the error, and the incumbent asked the beadle who he was. “Oh,” said the beadle, “he is a fellow who gets his living in the streets.” This was enough. He got no answer to his letter, though he knew the incumbent and his four curates, and had attended his church for seven years. After dwelling on the sufferings of those whose living was gained in the streets, he said, that if persons wished really to know anything of the character or habits of life of the very poor, of whom he was one, the knowledge could only be had from a personal survey of their condition in their own homes. He ended, by expressing his hope that by better treatment, and an earnest attention--moral, social, and religious--to their condition, the poor of the streets might be gathered to the church, and to God.
A “wandering musician” in a Highland garb, worn and dirty, complained at some length of the way in which he was treated by the police.
A hale-looking man, a costermonger, of middle age--who said he had a wife and four children dependent upon him--then spoke. It was a positive fact, he said, notwithstanding their poverty, their hardships, and even their degradation in the eyes of some, that the first markets in London were mainly supported by costermongers. What would the Duke of Bedford’s market in Covent-garden be without them? This question elicited loud applause.
Several other persons followed with statements of a similar character, which were listened to with interest; but from their general sameness it is not necessary to repeat them here. After occupying nearly four hours, the proceedings were brought to a close by a vote of thanks, and the “street-sellers, performers, and labourers,” separated in a most orderly manner.
OF THE STREET-IRISH.
The Irish street-sellers are both a numerous and peculiar class of people. It therefore behoves me, for the due completeness of this work, to say a few words upon their numbers, earnings, condition, and mode of life.
The number of Irish street-sellers in the metropolis has increased greatly of late years. One gentleman, who had every means of being well-informed, considered that it was not too much to conclude, that, within these five years, the numbers of the poor Irish people who gain a scanty maintenance, or what is rather a substitute for a maintenance, by trading, or begging, or by carrying on the two avocations simultaneously in the streets of London, had been doubled in number.
I found among the English costermongers a general dislike of the Irish. In fact, next to a policeman, a genuine London costermonger hates an Irishman, considering him an intruder. Whether there be any traditional or hereditary ill-feeling between them, originating from a clannish feeling, I cannot ascertain. The costermongers whom I questioned had no knowledge of the feelings or prejudices of their predecessors, but I am inclined to believe that the prejudice is modern, and has originated in the great influx of Irishmen and women, intermixing, more especially during the last five years, with the costermonger’s business. An Irish costermonger, however, is no novelty in the streets of London. “From the mention of the costardmonger,” says Mr. Charles Knight, “in the old dramatists, he appears to have been frequently an Irishman.”
Of the Irish street-sellers, at present, it is computed that there are, including men, women, and children, upwards of 10,000. Assuming the street-sellers attending the London fish and green markets to be, with their families, 30,000 in number, and 7 in every 20 of these to be Irish, we shall have rather more than the total above given. Of this large body three-fourths sell only fruit, and more especially nuts and oranges; indeed, the orange-season is called the “Irishman’s harvest.” The others deal in fish, fruit, and vegetables, but these are principally men. Some of the most wretched of the street-Irish deal in such trifles as lucifer-matches, water-cresses, &c.
I am informed that the great mass of these people have been connected, in some capacity or other, with the culture of the land in Ireland. The mechanics who have sought the metropolis from the sister kingdom have become mixed with their respective handicrafts in England, some of the Irish--though only a few--taking rank with the English skilled labourers. The greater part of the Irish artizans who have arrived within the last five years are to be found among the most degraded of the tailors and shoemakers who work at the East-end for the slop-masters.
A large class of the Irish who were agricultural labourers in their country are to be found among the men working for bricklayers, as well as among the dock-labourers and excavators, &c. Wood chopping is an occupation greatly resorted to by the Irish in London. Many of the Irish, however, who are not regularly employed in their respective callings, resort to the streets when they cannot obtain work otherwise.
The Irish women and girls who sell fruit, &c., in the streets, depend almost entirely on that mode of traffic for their subsistence. They are a class not sufficiently taught to avail themselves of the ordinary resources of women in the humbler walk of life. Unskilled at their needles, working for slop employers, even at the commonest shirt-making, is impossible to them. Their ignorance of household work, moreover (for such description of work is unknown in their wretched cabins in many parts of Ireland), incapacitates them in a great measure for such employments as “charing,” washing, and ironing, as well as from regular domestic employment. Thus there seems to remain to them but one thing to do--as, indeed, was said to me by one of themselves--viz., “to sell for a ha’pinny the three apples which cost a farruthing.”
Very few of these women (nor, indeed, of the men, though rather more of them than the women) can read, and they are mostly all wretchedly poor; but the women present two characteristics which distinguish them from the London costerwomen generally--they are chaste, and, unlike the “coster girls,” very seldom form any connection without the sanction of the marriage ceremony. They are, moreover, attentive to religious observances.
The majority of the Irish street-sellers of both sexes beg, and often very eloquently, as they carry on their trade; and I was further assured, that, but for this begging, some of them might starve outright.
The greater proportion of the Irish street-sellers are from Leinster and Munster, and a considerable number come from Connaught.
OF THE CAUSES WHICH HAVE MADE THE IRISH TURN COSTERMONGERS.
Notwithstanding the prejudices of the English costers, I am of opinion that the Irishmen and women who have become costermongers, belong to a better class than the Irish labourers. The Irishman may readily adapt himself, in a strange place, to labour, though not to trade; but these costers are--or the majority at least are--poor persevering traders enough.
The most intelligent and prosperous of the street-Irish are those who have “risen”--for so I heard it expressed--“into regular costers.” The untaught Irishmen’s capabilities, as I have before remarked, with all his powers of speech and quickness of apprehension, are far less fitted for “buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest” than for mere physical employment. Hence those who take to street-trading for a living seldom prosper in it, and three-fourths of the street-Irish confine their dealings to such articles as are easy of sale, like apples, nuts, or oranges, for they are rarely masters of purchasing to advantage, and seem to know little about tale or measure, beyond the most familiar quantities. Compared with an acute costermonger, the mere apple-seller is but as the labourer to the artizan.
One of the principal causes why the Irish costermongers have increased so extensively of late years, is to be found in the fact that the labouring classes, (and of them chiefly the class employed in the culture of land,) have been driven over from “the sister Isle” more thickly for the last four or five years than formerly. Several circumstances have conspired to effect this.--First, they were driven over by the famine, when they could not procure, or began to fear that soon they could not procure, food to eat. Secondly, they were forced to take refuge in this country by the evictions, when their landlords had left them no roof to shelter them in their own. (The shifts, the devices, the plans, to which numbers of these poor creatures had recourse, to raise the means of quitting Ireland for England--or for anywhere--will present a very remarkable chapter at some future period.) Thirdly, though the better class of small farmers who have emigrated from Ireland, in hopes of “bettering themselves,” have mostly sought the shores of North America, still some who have reached this country have at last settled into street-sellers. And, fourthly, many who have come over here only for the harvest have been either induced or compelled to stay.
Another main cause is, that the Irish, as labourers, can seldom obtain work all the year through, and thus the ranks of the Irish street-sellers are recruited every winter by the slackness of certain periodic trades in which they are largely employed--such as hodmen, dock-work, excavating, and the like. They are, therefore, driven by want of employment to the winter sale of oranges and nuts. These circumstances have a doubly malefic effect, as the increase of costers accrues in the winter months, and there are consequently the most sellers when there are the fewest buyers.
Moreover, the cessation of work in the construction of railways, compared with the abundance of employment which attracted so many to this country during the railway mania, has been another fertile cause of there being so many Irish in the London streets.
The prevalence of Irish women and children among street-sellers is easily accounted for--they are, as I said before, unable to do anything else to eke out the means of their husbands or parents. A needle is as useless in their fingers as a pen.
Bitterly as many of these people suffer in this country, grievous and often eloquent as are their statements, I met with _none_ who did not manifest repugnance at the suggestion of a return to Ireland. If asked why they objected to return, the response was usually in the form of a question: “Shure thin, sir, and what good could I do there?” Neither can I say that I heard any of these people express any love for their country, though they often spoke with great affection of their friends.
From an Irish costermonger, a middle-aged man, with a physiognomy best known as “Irish,” and dressed in corduroy trousers, with a loose great-coat, far too big for him, buttoned about him, I had the following statement:
“I had a bit o’ land, yer honor, in County Limerick. Well, it wasn’t just a farrum, nor what ye would call a garden here, but my father lived and died on it--glory be to God!--and brought up me and my sister on it. It was about an acre, and the taties was well known to be good. But the sore times came, and the taties was afflicted, and the wife and me--I have no childer--hadn’t a bite nor a sup, but wather to live on, and an igg or two. I filt the famine a-comin’. I saw people a-feedin’ on the wild green things, and as I had not such a bad take, I got Mr. ---- (he was the head master’s agent) to give me 28_s._ for possission in quietness, and I sould some poulthry I had--their iggs was a blessin’ to keep the life in us--I sould them in Limerick for 3_s._ 3_d._--the poor things--four of them. The furnithur’ I sould to the nabors, for somehow about 6_s._ Its the thruth I’m ay-tellin’ of you, sir, and there’s 2_s._ owin’ of it still, and will be a perpitual loss. The wife and me walked to Dublin, though we had betther have gone by the ‘long say,’ but I didn’t understand it thin, and we got to Liverpool. Then sorrow’s the taste of worruk could I git, beyant oncte 3_s._ for two days harrud porthering, that broke my back half in two. I was tould I’d do betther in London, and so, glory be to God! I have--perhaps I have. I knew Mr. ----, he porthers at Covent-garden, and I made him out, and hilped him in any long distance of a job. As I’d been used to farrumin’ I thought it good raison I should be a costermonger, as they call it here. I can read and write too. And some good Christian--the heavens light him to glory when he’s gone!--I don’t know who he was--advanced me 10_s._--or he gave it me, so to spake, through Father ----,” (a Roman Catholic priest.) “We earrun what keeps the life in us. I don’t go to markit, but buy of a fair dealin’ man--so I count him--though he’s harrud sometimes. I can’t till how many Irishmen is in the thrade. There’s many has been brought down to it by the famin’ and the changes. I don’t go much among the English street-dalers. They talk like haythens. I never miss mass on a Sunday, and they don’t know what the blissed mass manes. I’m almost glad I have no childer, to see how they’re raired here. Indeed, sir, they’re not raired at all--they run wild. They haven’t the fear of God or the saints. They’d hang a praste--glory be to God! they would.”
HOW THE STREET-IRISH DISPLANTED THE STREET-JEWS IN THE ORANGE TRADE.
The Jews, in the streets, while acting as costermongers, never “worked a barrow,” nor dealt in the more ponderous and least profitable articles of the trade, such as turnips and cabbages. They however, had, at one period, the chief possession of a portion of the trade which the “regular hands” do not consider proper costermongering, and which is now chiefly confined to the Irish--viz.: orange selling.
The trade was, not many years ago, confined almost entirely to the Jew boys, who kept aloof from the vagrant lads of the streets, or mixed with them only in the cheap theatres and concert-rooms. A person who had had great experience at what was, till recently, one of the greatest “coaching inns,” told me that, speaking within his own recollection and from his own observation, he thought the sale of oranges was not so much in the hands of the Jew lads until about forty years back. The orange monopoly, so to speak, was established by the street-Jews, about 1810, or three or four years previous to that date, when recruiting and local soldiering were at their height, and when a great number of the vagabond or “roving” population, who in one capacity or other now throng the streets, were induced to enlist. The young Jews never entered the ranks of the army. The streets were thus in a measure cleared for them, and the itinerant orange-trade fell almost entirely into their hands. Some of the young Jews gained, I am assured, at least 100_l._ a year in this traffic. The numbers of country people who hastened to London on the occasion of the Allied Sovereigns’ visit in 1814--many wealthy persons then seeing the capital for the first time--afforded an excellent market to these dealers.
Moreover, the perseverance of the Jew orange boys was not to be overcome; they would follow a man who even looked encouragingly at their wares for a mile or two. The great resort of these Jew dealers--who eschewed night-work generally, and left the theatre-doors to old men and women of all ages--was at the coaching inns; for year by year, after the peace of 1815, the improvement of the roads and the consequent increase of travellers to London, progressed.
About 1825, as nearly as my informant could recollect, these keen young traders began to add the sale of other goods to their oranges, pressing them upon the notice of those who were leaving or visiting London by the different coaches. So much was this the case, that it was a common remark at that time, that no one could reach or leave the metropolis, even for the shortest journey, without being expected to be in urgent want of oranges and lemons, black-lead pencils, sticks of sealing-wax, many-bladed pen-knives, pocket-combs, razors, strops, braces, and sponges. To pursue the sale of the last-mentioned articles--they being found, I presume, to be more profitable--some of the street-Jews began to abandon the sale of oranges and lemons; and it was upon this, that the trade was “taken up” by the wives and children of the Irish bricklayers’ labourers, and of other Irish work-people then resident in London. The numbers of Irish in the metropolis at that time began to increase rapidly; for twenty years ago, they resorted numerously to England to gather in the harvest, and those who had been employed in contiguous counties during the autumn, made for London in the winter. “I can’t say they were well off, sir,” said one man to me, “but they liked bread and herrings, or bread and tea--better than potatoes without bread at home.” From 1836 to 1840, I was informed, the Irish gradually superseded the Jews in the fruit traffic about the coaching-houses. One reason for this was, that they were far more eloquent, begging pathetically, and with many benedictions on their listeners. The Jews never begged, I was told; “they were merely traders.” Another reason was, that the Irish, men or lads, who had entered into the fruit trade in the coach-yards, would not only sell and beg, but were ready to “lend a hand” to any over-burthened coach-porter. This the Jews never did, and in that way the people of the yard came to encourage the Irish to the prejudice of the Jews. At present, I understand that, with the exception of one or two in the city, no Jews vend oranges in the streets, and that the trade is almost entirely in the hands of the Irish.
Another reason why the Irish could supersede and even undersell the Jews and regular costermongers was this, as I am informed on excellent authority:--Father Mathew, a dozen years back, made temperance societies popular in Ireland. Many of the itinerant Irish, especially the younger classes, were “temperance men.” Thus the Irish could live as sparely as the Jew, but they did not, like him, squander any money for the evening’s amusement, at the concert or the theatre.
I inquired what might be the number of the Jews plying, so to speak, at the coaching inns, and was assured that it was less numerous than was generally imagined. One man computed it at 300 individuals, all under 21; another at only 200; perhaps the mean, or 250, might be about the mark. The number was naturally considered greater, I was told, because the same set of street traders were seen over and over again. The Jews knew when the coaches were to arrive and when they started, and they would hurry, after availing themselves of a departure, from one inn--the Belle Sauvage, Ludgate-hill, for instance--to take advantage of an arrival at another--say the Saracen’s Head, Snow-hill. Thus they appeared everywhere, but were the same individuals.