Part 28
The Irish street-sellers who frequent the gin-palaces or public-houses, drink a pot of beer, in a company of three or four, but far more frequently, a quartern of gin (very seldom whisky) oftener than do the English. Indeed, from all I could ascertain, the Irish street-sellers, whether from inferior earnings, their early training, or the restraints of their priests, drink less beer, by one-fourth, than their English brethren, but a larger proportion of gin. “And you must bear this in mind, sir,” I was told by an innkeeper, “I had rather have twenty poor Englishmen drunk in my tap-room than a couple of poor Irishmen. They’ll quarrel with anybody--the Irish will--and sometimes clear the room by swearing they’ll ‘use their knives, by Jasus;’ and if there’s a scuffle they’ll kick like devils, and scratch, and bite, like women or cats, instead of using their fists. I wish all the drunkards were teetotallers, if it were only to be rid of them.”
Whiskey, I was told, would be drunk by the Irish, in preference to gin, were it not that gin was about half the price. One old Irish fruit-seller--who admitted that he was fond of a glass of gin--told me that he had not tasted whiskey for fourteen years, “becase of the price.” The Irish, moreover, as I have shown, live on stronger and coarser food than the English, buying all the rough (bad) fish, for, to use the words of one of my informants, they look to quantity more than quality; this may account for their preferring a stronger and fiercer stimulant by way of drink.
OF THE RESOURCES OF THE STREET-IRISH AS REGARDS “STOCK-MONEY,” SICKNESS, BURIALS, &C.
It is not easy to ascertain from the poor Irish themselves how they raise their stock-money, for their command of money is a subject on which they are not communicative, or, if communicative, not truthful. “My opinion is,” said an Irish gentleman to me, “that some of these poor fellows would declare to God that they hadn’t the value of a halfpenny, even if you heard the silver chink in their pockets.” It is certain that they never, or very rarely, borrow of the usurers like their English brethren.
The more usual custom is, that if a poor Irish street-seller be in want of 5_s._, it is lent to him by the more prosperous people of his court--bricklayers’ labourers, or other working-men--who club 1_s._ a piece. This is always repaid. An Irish bricklayer, when in full work, will trust a needy countryman with some article to pledge, on the understanding that it is to be redeemed and returned when the borrower is able. Sometimes, if a poor Irishwoman need 1_s._ to buy oranges, four others--only less poor than herself, because not utterly penniless--will readily advance 3_d._ each. Money is also advanced to the deserving Irish through the agency of the Roman Catholic priests, who are the medium through whom charitable persons of their own faith exercise good offices. Money, too, there is no doubt, is often advanced out of the priest’s own pocket.
On all the kinds of loans with which the poor Irish are aided by their countrymen no interest is ever charged. “I don’t like the Irish,” said an English costermonger to me; “but they _do_ stick to one another far more than we do.”
The Irish costers hire barrows and shallows like the English, but, if they “get on” at all, they will possess themselves of their own vehicles much sooner than an English costermonger. A quick-witted Irishman will begin to ponder on his paying 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for the hire of a barrow worth 20_s._, and he will save and hoard until a pound is at his command to purchase one for himself; while an obtuse English coster (who will yet buy cheaper than an Irishman) will probably pride himself on his cleverness in having got the charge for his barrow reduced, in the third year of its hire, to 1_s._ a week the twelvemonth round!
In cases of sickness the mode of relief adopted is similar to that of the English. A raffle is got up for the benefit of the Irish sufferer, and, if it be a bad case, the subscribers pay their money without caring what trifle they throw for, or whether they throw at all. If sickness continue and such means as raffles cannot be persevered in, there is one resource from which a poor Irishman never shrinks--the parish. He will apply for and accept parochial relief without the least sense of shame, a sense which rarely deserts an Englishman who has been reared apart from paupers. The English costers appear to have a horror of the Union. If the Irishman be taken into the workhouse, his friends do not lose sight of him. In case of his death, they apply for, and generally receive his body, from the parochial authorities, undertaking the expence of the funeral, when the body is duly “waked.” “I think there’s a family contract among the Irish,” said a costermonger to me; “that’s where it is.”
The Irish street-folk are, generally speaking, a far more provident body of people than the English street-sellers. To save, the Irish will often sacrifice what many Englishmen consider a necessary, and undergo many a hardship.
From all I could ascertain, the saving of an Irish street-seller does not arise from any wish to establish himself more prosperously in his business, but for the attainment of some cherished project, such as emigration. Some of the objects, however, for which these struggling men hoard money, are of the most praiseworthy character. They will treasure up halfpenny after halfpenny, and continue to do so for years, in order to send money to enable their wives and children, and even their brothers and sisters, when in the depth of distress in Ireland, to take shipping for England. They will save to be able to remit money for the relief of their aged parents in Ireland. They will save to defray the expense of their marriage, an expense the English costermonger so frequently dispenses with--but they will _not_ save to preserve either themselves or their children from the degradation of a workhouse; indeed they often, with the means of independence secreted on their persons, apply for parish relief, and that principally to save the expenditure of their own money. Even when detected in such an attempt at extortion an Irishman betrays no passion, and hardly manifests any emotion--he has speculated and failed. Not one of them but has a positive genius for begging--both the taste and the faculty for alms-seeking developed to an extraordinary extent.
Of the amount “saved” by the patience of the poor Irishmen, I can form no conjecture.
OF THE HISTORY OF SOME IRISH STREET-SELLERS.
In order that the following statements might be as truthful as possible, I obtained permission to use the name of a Roman Catholic clergyman, to whom I am indebted for much valuable information touching this part of my subject.
A young woman, of whose age it was not easy to form a conjecture, her features were so embrowned by exposure to the weather, and perhaps when I saw her a little swollen from cold, gave me the following account as to her living. Her tone and manner betrayed indifference to the future, caused perhaps by ignorance,--for uneducated persons I find are apt to look on the future as if it must needs be but a repetition of the present, while the past in many instances is little more than a blank to them. This young woman said, her brogue being little perceptible, though she spoke thickly:
“I live by keepin’ this fruit stall. It’s a poor livin’ when I see how others live. Yes, in thruth, sir, but it’s thankful I am for to be able to live at all, at all; troth is it, in these sore times. My father and mother are both did. God be gracious to their sowls! They was evicted. The family of us was. The thatch of the bit o’ home was tuk off above our hids, and we were lift to the wide worruld--yis, indeed, sir, and in the open air too. The rint wasn’t paid and it couldn’t be paid, and so we had to face the wither. It was a sorrowful time. But God was good, and so was the neighbours. And when we saw the praste, he was a frind to us. And we came to this counthry, though I’d always heard it called a black counthry. Sure, an’ there’s much in it to indhure. There’s goin’s on it, sir, that the praste, God rewarrud him! wouldn’t like to see. There’s bad ways. I won’t talk about thim, and I’m sure you are too much of a gintlemin to ask me; for if you know Father ----, that shows you are the best of gintlemin, sure. It was the eviction that brought us here. I don’t know about where we was just; not in what county; nor parish. I was so young whin we lift the land. I belave I’m now 19, perhaps only 18” (she certainly looked much older, but I have often noticed that of her class). “I can’t be more, I think, for sure an’ its only 5 or 6 years since we left Watherford and come to Bristol. I’m sure it was Watherford, and a beautiful place it is, and I know it was Bristol we come to. We walked all the long way to London. My parints died of the cholera, and I live with mysilf, but my aunt lodges me and sees to me. She sills in the sthreets too. I don’t make 7_d._ a day. I may make 6_d._ There’s a good many young payple I know is now sillin’ in the streets becase they was evicted in their own counthry. I suppose they had no where ilse to come to. I’m nivir out of a night. I sleep with my aunt, and we keep to oursilves sure. I very sildom taste mate, but perhaps I do oftener than before we was evicted--glory be to God.”
One Irish street-seller I saw informed me that she was a “widdy wid three childer.” Her husband died about four years since. She had then five children, and was near her confinement with another. Since the death of her husband she had lost three of her children; a boy about twelve years died of stoppage on his lungs, brought on, she said, through being in the streets, and shouting so loud “to get sale of the fruit.” She has been in Clare-street, Clare-market, seven years with a fruit stall. In the summer she sells green fruit, which she purchases at Covent-garden. When the nuts, oranges, &c., come in season, she furnishes her stall with that kind of fruit, and continues to sell them until the spring salad comes in. During the spring and summer her weekly average income is about 5_s._, but the remaining portion of the year her income is not more than 3_s._ 6_d._ weekly, so that taking the year through, her average weekly income is about 4_s._ 3_d._; out of this she pays 1_s._ 6_d._ a week rent, leaving only 2_s._ 9_d._ a week to find necessary comforts for herself and family. For fuel the children go to the market and gather up the waste walnuts, bring them home and dry them, and these, with a pennyworth of coal and coke, serve to warm their chilled feet and hands. They have no bedstead, but in one corner of a room is a flock bed upon the floor, with an old sheet, blanket, and quilt to cover them at this inclement season. There is neither chair nor table; a stool serves for the chair, and two pieces of board upon some baskets do duty for a table, and an old penny tea-canister for a candlestick. She had parted with every article of furniture to get food for her family. She received nothing from the parish, but depended upon the sale of her fruit for her living.
The Irishmen who are in this trade are also very poor; and I learned that both Irishmen and Irishwomen left the occupation now and then, and took to begging, as a more profitable calling, often going begging this month and fruit-selling the next. This is one of the causes which prompt the London costermongers’ dislike of the Irish. “They’ll beg themselves into a meal, and work us out of one,” said an English coster to me. Some of them are, however, less “poverty-struck” (a word in common use among the costermongers); but these for the most part are men who have been in the trade for some years, and have got regular “pitches.”
The woman who gave me the following statement seemed about twenty-two or twenty-three. She was large-boned, and of heavy figure and deportment. Her complexion and features were both coarse, but her voice had a softness, even in its broadest brogue, which is not very frequent among poor Irishwomen. The first sentence she uttered seems to me tersely to embody a deplorable history of the poverty of a day. It was between six and seven in the evening when I saw the poor creature:--
“Sure, thin, sir, it’s thrippince I’ve taken to-day, and tuppince is to pay for my night’s lodgin’. I shall do no more good to-night, and shall only stay in the cowld, if I stay in it, for nothing. I’m an orphand, sir,” (she three or four times alluded to this circumstance,) “and there’s nobody to care for me but God, glory be to his name! I came to London to join my brother, that had come over and did will, and he sint for me, but whin I got here I couldn’t find him in it anyhow. I don’t know how long that’s ago. It may be five years; it may be tin; but” (she added, with the true eloquence of beggary,) “sure, thin, sir, I had no harrut to keep count, if I knew how. My father and mother wasn’t able to keep me, nor to keep thimsilves in Ireland, and so I was sint over here. They was counthry payple. I don’t know about their landlorrud. They died not long afther I came here. I don’t know what they died of, but sure it was of the will of God, and they hadn’t much to make them love this worruld; no more have I. Would I like to go back to my own counthry? Will, thin, what would be the use? I sleep at a lodging-house, and it’s a dacint place. It’s mostly my own counthrywomen that’s in it; that is, in the women’s part. I pay 1_s._ a week, that’s 2_d._ a night, for I’m not charged for Sundays. I live on brid, and ’taties and salt, and a herrin’ sometimes. I niver taste beer, and not often tay, but I sit here all day, and I feel the hunger this day and that day. It goes off though, if I have nothin’ to ate. I don’t know why, but I won’t deny the goodness of God to bring such a thing about. I have lived for a day on a pinny, sir: a ha’pinny for brid, and a ha’pinny for a herrin’, or two herrin’s for a ha’pinny, and ’taties for the place of brid. I’ve changed apples for a herrin’ with a poor man, God rewarrud him. Sometimes I make on to 6_d._ a day, and sometimes I _have_ made 1_s._ 6_d._, but I think that I don’t make 5_d._ a day--arrah, no, thin, sir! one day with the other, and I don’t worruk on Sunday, not often. If I’ve no mate to ate, I’d rather rist. I never miss mass on a Sunday. A lady gives me a rag sometimes, but the bitther time’s comin’. If I was sick I don’t know what I’d do, but I would sind for the praste, and he’d counsil me. I could read a little oncte, but I can’t now.”
OF THE IRISH “REFUSE”-SELLERS.
There still remains to be described one branch of the Irish street-trade which is peculiar to the class--viz., the sale of “refuse,” or such fruit and vegetables as are damaged, and suited only to the very poorest purchasers.
In assorting his goods, a fruit-salesman in the markets generally throws to one side the shrivelled, dwarfish, or damaged fruit--called by the street-traders the “specks.” If the supply to the markets be large, as in the pride of the season, he will put his several kinds of specks in separate baskets. At other times all kinds are tossed together, and sometimes with an admixture of nuts and walnuts. The Irish women purchase these at a quarter, or within a quarter, of the regular price, paying from 6_d._ to 1_s._ a bushel for apples; 9_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ for pears; 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ for plums. They are then sorted into halfpenny-worths for sale on the stalls. Among the refuse is always a portion of what is called “tidy” fruit, and this occupies the prominent place in the “halfpenny lots”--for they are usually sold at a halfpenny. Sometimes, too, a salesman will throw in among the refuse a little good fruit, if he happen to have it over, either gratuitously or at the refuse price; and this, of course, is always made the most conspicuous on the stalls. Of other fruits, perhaps, only a small portion is damaged, from over-ripeness, or by the aggression of wasps and insects, the remainder being very fine, so that the retail “lots” are generally cheap. The sellers aim at “half profits,” or cent. per cent.
The “refuse” trade in fruit--and the refuse-trade is mainly confined to fruit--is principally in the hands of the Irish. The persons carrying it on are nearly all middle-aged and elderly women. I once or twice saw a delicate and pretty-looking girl sitting with the old “refuse” women; but I found that she was not a “regular hand,” and only now and then “minded the stall” in her mother’s absence. She worked with her needle, I was told.
Of the women who confine themselves to this trade there are never less than twenty, and frequently thirty. Sometimes, when the refuse is very cheap and very abundant, as many as 100 fruit-sellers, women and girls, will sell it in halfpenny-worths, along with better articles. These women also sell refuse dry-fruit, purchased in Duke’s-place, but only when they cannot obtain green-fruit, or cannot obtain it sufficiently. All is sold at stalls; as these dealers seem to think that if it were hawked, the police might look too inquisitively at a barrow stocked with refuse. The “refuse-sellers” buy at all the markets. The poorer street-sellers, whose more staple trade is in oranges or nuts, are _occasional_ dealers in it.
Perhaps the regular refuse-buyers are not among the _very_ poorest class, as their sale is tolerably quick and certain, but with the usual drawbacks of wet weather. They make, I was told, from 4_d._ to 1_s._ a day the year round, or perhaps 7_d._ or 8_d._ a day, Sunday included. They are all Roman Catholics, and resort to the street-sale after mass. They are mostly widows, or women who have reached middle-age, unmarried. Some are the wives of street-sellers. Two of their best pitches are on Saffron-hill and in Petticoat-lane. It is somewhat curious to witness these women sitting in a line of five or six, and notwithstanding their natural garrulity, hardly exchanging a word one with another. Some of them derive an evident solace from deliberate puffs at a short black pipe.
A stout, healthy-looking woman of this class said:--“Sure thin, sir, I’ve sat and sould my bit of fruit in this place, or near it, for twinty year and more, as is very well known indeed, is it. I could make twice the money twinty year ago that I can now, for the boys had the ha’pinnies more thin than they has now, more’s the pity. The childer is my custhomers, very few beyant--such as has only a ha’pinny now and thin, God hilp them. They’ll come a mile from any parrut, to spind it with such as me, for they know it’s chape we sill! Yis, indeed, or they’ll come with a fardin either, for it’s a ha’pinny lot we’ll split for them any time. The boys buys most, but they’re dridful tazes. It’s the patience of the divil must be had to dale wid the likes of thim. They was dridful about the Pope, but they’ve tired of it now. O, no, it wasn’t the boys of my counthry that demaned themselves that way. Well, I make 4_d._ some days, and 6_d._ some, and 1_s._ 6_d._ some, and I have made 3_s._ 6_d._, and I have made nothing. Perhaps I make 5_s._ or 6_s._ a week rigular, but I’m established and well-known you see.”
The quantity of refuse at the metropolitan “green” markets varies with the different descriptions of fruit. Of apples it averages one-twentieth, and of plums and greengages one-fifteenth, of the entire supply. With pears, cherries, gooseberries, and currants, however, the damaged amounts to one-twelfth, while of strawberries and mulberries it reaches as high as one-tenth of the aggregate quantity sent to market.
The Irish street-sellers, I am informed, buy full two-thirds of all the refuse, the other third being purchased by the lower class of English costermongers--“the illegitimates,”--as they are called. We must not consider the sale of the damaged fruit so great an evil as it would, at the first blush, appear, for it constitutes perhaps the sole luxury of poor children, as well as of the poor themselves, who, were it not for the halfpenny and farthing lots of the refuse-sellers, would doubtlessly never know the taste of such things.
* * * * *
Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be as well to say a few words concerning the curious revelations made by the returns from Billingsgate, Covent-garden, and the other London markets, as to the diet of the poor. In the first place, then, it appears that in the matter of fish, herrings constitute the chief article of consumption--no less than 210,000,000 lbs. weight of this fish in a “fresh” state, and 60,000,000 lbs. in a “dried” state, being annually eaten by the humbler classes of the metropolis and the suburbs. Of sprats there are 3,000,000 lbs. weight consumed--and these, with the addition of plaice, are the staple comestibles at the dinners and suppers of the ichthyophagous part of the labouring population of London. One of the reasons for this is doubtless the extraordinary cheapness of these kinds of fish. The sprats are sold at a penny per pound; the herrings at the same rate; and the plaice at a fraction less, perhaps; whereas a pound of butcher’s meat, even “pieces,” or the “block ornaments,” as they are sometimes called, cannot be got for less than twopence-halfpenny or threepence. But the relative cheapness of these two kinds of food can only be tested by the proportionate quantity of nutrition in each. According to Liebig, butcher’s meat contains 26 per cent. of solid matter, and 74 per cent. of water; whereas, according to Brande, fish consists of 20 parts of solid matter, and 80 parts water in every 100. Hence it would appear that butcher’s meat is five per cent. more nutritive than fish--or, in other words, that if the two were equally cheap, the prices, according to the quantity of nutrition in each, should be for fish one penny per pound, and butcher’s meat not five farthings; so that even at twopence-halfpenny the pound, meat is more than twice as dear an article of diet as fish.