Part 125

“Once a gentleman called me, and says he, ‘My man, how long have you been in this square?’ Says I, ‘I’m Billy, and been here a’most all my life.’ Then he says, ‘Can I trust you to take a cheque to Scott, the banker?’ and I answers, ‘That’s as you like,’ for I wasn’t going to press him. It was a heavy cheque, for Mr. Scott, as knows me well--aye, well, he do--says ‘Billy, I can’t give you all in notes, you must stop a bit.’ It nearly filled the bag I had with me. I took it all safe back, and says he, ‘Ah! I knowed it would be all right,’ and he give me a half-sovereign. I should like you to put these things down, ’cos it’s a fine thing for my charackter, and I can show my face with any man for being honest, that’s one good thing.

“I pays 4_s._ a-week for two rooms, one up and one down, for I couldn’t live in one room. I come to work always near eight o’clock, for you see it takes me some time to clean the knives and boots at Lord B----’s. I get sometimes 1_s._ and sometimes 1_s._ 6_d._ a-week for doing that, and glad I am to have it. It’s only for the servants I does it, not for the quality.

“When I does anythink for the servants, it’s either cleaning boots and knives, or putting letters in the post--that’s it--anythink of that kind. They gives me just what they can, 1_d._ or 2_d._ or half a pint of beer when they ha’n’t got any coppers.

“Sometimes I gets a few left-off clothes, but very seldom. I have two suits a-year give me reg’lar, and I goes to a first-rate tailor for ’em, though they don’t make the prime--of course not, yet they’re very good. Now this coat I liked very well when it was new, it was so clean and tidy. No, the tailor don’t show me the pattern-books and that sort of thing: he knows what’s wanted. I won’t never have none of them washing duck breeches; that’s the only thing as I refuses, and the tailor knows that. I looks very nice after Christmas, I can tell you, and I’ve always got a good tidy suit for Sundays, and God bless them as gives ’em to me.

“Every Sunday I gets a hot dinner at Lord B----’s, whether he’s out of town or in town--that’s summat. I gets bits, too, give me, so that I don’t buy a dinner, no, not once a-week. I pays 4_s._ a-week rent, and I dare say my food, morning and night, costs me a 1_s._ a-day--aye, I’m sure it does, morning and night. At present I don’t make 12_s._ a-week; but take the year round, one week with another, it might come to 13_s._ or 14_s._ a-week I gets. Yes, I’ll own to that.

“Christmas is my best time; then I gets more than 1_l._ a-week: now I don’t take 4_s._ a-week on my crossing. Many’s the time I’ve made my breakfast on a pen’orth of coffee and a halfpenny slice of bread and butter. What do you think of that?

“Wet weather does all the harm to me. People, you see, don’t like to come out. I think I’ve got the best side of the square, and you see my crossing is a long one, and saves people a deal of ground, for it cuts off the corner. It used to be a famous crossing in its time--hah! but that’s gone.

“I always uses what they calls the brush-brooms; that’s them with a flat head like a house-broom. I can’t abide them others; they don’t look well, and they wears out ten times as quick as mine. I general buys the eights, that’s 10_d._ a-piece, and finds my own handles. A broom won’t last me more than a fortnight, it’s such a long crossing; but when it was paved, afore this muckydam (macadamising) was turned up, a broom would last me a full three months. I can’t abide this muckydam--can you, sir? it’s sloppy stuff, and goes so bad in holes. Give me the good solid stones as used to be.

“I does a good business round the square when the snow’s on the ground. I general does each house at so much a-week whilst it snows. Hardwicks give me a shilling. I does only my side, and that next Oxford-street. I don’t go to the others, unless somebody comes and orders me--for fair play _is_ fair play--and they belongs to the other sweepers. I does my part and they does theirs.

“It’s seldom as I has a shop to sweep out, and I don’t do nothink with shutters. I’m getting too old now for to be called in to carry boxes up gentlemen’s houses, but when I was young I found plenty to do that way. There’s a man at the corner of Chandos-street, and he does the most of that kind of work.”

THE BEARDED CROSSING-SWEEPER AT THE EXCHANGE.

Since the destruction by fire of the Royal Exchange in 1838, there has been added to the curiosities of Cornhill a thickset, sturdy, and hirsute crossing-sweeper--a man who is as civil by habit as he is independent by nature. He has a long flowing beard, grey as wood smoke, and a pair of fierce moustaches, giving a patriarchal air of importance to a marked and observant face, which often serves as a painter’s model. After half-an-hour’s conversation, you are forced to admit that his looks do not all belie him, and that the old mariner (for such was his profession formerly) is worthy in some measure of his beard.

He wears an old felt hat--very battered and discoloured; around his neck, which is bared in accordance with sailor custom, he has a thick blue cotton neckerchief tied in a sailor’s knot; his long iron-grey beard is accompanied by a healthy and almost ruddy face. He stands against the post all day, saying nothing, and taking what he can get without solicitation.

[Illustration: THE BEARDED CROSSING-SWEEPER AT THE EXCHANGE.

[_From a Photograph._]]

When I first spoke to him, he wanted to know to what purpose I intended applying the information that he was prepared to afford, and it was not until I agreed to walk with him as far as St. Mary-Axe that I was enabled to obtain his statement, as follows:--

“I’ve had this crossing ever since ’38. The Exchange was burnt down in that year. Why, sir, I was wandering about trying to get a crust, and it was very sloppy, so I took and got a broom; and while I kept a clean crossing, I used to get ha’pence and pence. I got a dockman’s wages--that’s half-a-crown a-day; sometimes only a shilling, and sometimes more. I have taken a crown--but that’s very rare. The best customers I had is dead. I used to make a good Christmas, but I don’t now. I have taken a pound or thirty shillings then in the old times.

“I smoke, sir; I _will_ have tobacco, if I can’t get grub. My old woman takes cares that I have tobacco.

“I have been a sailor, and the first ship as ever I was in was the Old Colossus, 74, but we was only cruising about the Channel then, and took two prizes. I went aboard the Old Remewa guardship--we were turned over to her--and from her I was drafted over to the Escramander frigate. We went out chasing Boney, but he gived himself up to the Old Impregnable. I was at the taking of Algiers, in 1816, in the Superb. I was in the Rochfort, 74, up the Mediterranean (they call it up the Mediterranean, but it was the Malta station) three years, ten months, and twenty days, until the ship was paid off.

“Then I went to work at the Dockyard. I had a misfortune soon after that. I fell out of a garret window, three stories high, and that kept me from going to the Docks again. I lost all my top teeth by that fall. I’ve got a scar here, one on my chin; but I warn’t in the hospital more than two weeks.

“I was afeard of being taken up solicitin’ charity, and I knew that sweeping was a safe game; they couldn’t take me up for sweeping a crossing.

“Sometimes I get insulted, only in words; sometimes I get chaffed by sober people. Drunken men I don’t care for; I never listen to ’em, unless they handle me, and then, although I am sixty-three this very day, sir, I think I could show them something. I _do_ carry my age well; and if you could ha’ seen how I have lived this last winter through, sometimes one pound of bread between two of us, you’d say I was a strong man to be as I am.

“Those who think that sweepin’ a crossing is idle work, make a great mistake. In wet weather, the traffic that makes it gets sloppy as soon as it’s cleaned. Cabs, and ’busses, and carriages continually going over the crossing must scatter the mud on it, and you must look precious sharp to keep it clean; but when I once get in the road, I never jump out of it. I keeps my eye both ways, and if I gets in too close quarters, I slips round the wheels. I’ve had them almost touch me.

“No, sir, I never got knocked down. In foggy weather, of course, it’s no use sweeping at all.

“Parcels! it’s very few parcels I get to carry now; I don’t think I get a parcel to carry once in a month: there’s ’busses and railways so cheap. A man would charge as much for a distance as a cab would take them.

“I don’t come to the same crossing on Sundays; I go to the corner of Finch-lane. As to regular customers, I’ve none--to say regular; some give me sixpence now and then. All those who used to give me regular are dead.

“I was a-bed when the Exchange was burnt down.

“I have had this beard five years. I grew it to sit to artists when I got the chance; but it don’t pay expenses--for I have to walk four or five miles, and only get a shilling an hour: besides, I’m often kept nearly two hours, and I get nothing for going and nothing for coming, but just for the time I am there.

“Afore I wore it, I had a pair of large whiskers. I went to a gentleman then, an artist, and he _did_ pay me well. He advised me to grow mustarshers and the beard, but he hasn’t employed me since.

“They call me ‘Old Jack’ on the crossing, that’s all they call me. I get more chaff from the boys than any one else. They only say, ‘Why don’t you get shaved?’ but I take no notice on ’em.

“Old Bill, in Lombard Street! I knows him; he used to make a good thing of it, but I don’t think he makes much now.

“My wife--I am married, sir--doesn’t do anything. I live in a lodging-house, and I pay three shillings a-week.

“I tell you what we has, now, when I go home. We has a pound of bread, a quarter of an ounce of tea, and perhaps a red herring.

“I’ve had a weakness in my legs for two year; the veins comes down, but I keep a bandage in my pocket, and when I feels ’em coming down, I puts the bandage on ’till the veins goes up again--it’s through being on my legs so long (because I had very strong legs when young) and want of good food. When you only have a bit of bread and a cup of tea--no meat, no vegetables--you find it out; but I’m as upright as a dart, and as lissom as ever I was.

“I gives threepence for my brooms. I wears out three in a week in the wet weather. I always lean very hard on my broom, ’specially when the mud is sticky--as it is after the roads is watered. I am very

## particular about my brooms; I gives ’em away to be burned when many

another would use them.”

THE SWEEPER IN PORTMAN SQUARE, WHO GOT PERMISSION FROM THE POLICE.

A wild-looking man, with long straggling grey hair, which stood out from his head as if he brushed it the wrong way; and whiskers so thick and curling that they reminded one of the wool round a sheep’s face, gave me the accompanying history.

He was very fond of making use of the term “honest crust,” and each time he did so, he, Irish-like, pronounced it “currust.” He seemed a kind-hearted, innocent creature, half scared by want and old age.

“I’m blest if I can tell which is the best crossing in London; but mine ain’t no great shakes, for I don’t take three shilling a-week not with persons going across, take one week with another, but I thought I could get a honest currust (crust) at it, for I’ve got a crippled hand, which comed of its own accord, and I was in St. George’s Hospital seven weeks. When I comed out it was a cripple with me, and I thought the crossing was better than going into the workhouse--for I likes my liberty.

“I’ve been on this crossing since last Christmas was a twelvemonth. Before that I was a bricklayer and plasterer. I’ve been thirty-two years in London. I can get as good a character as any one anywhere, please God; for as to drunkards, and all that, I was none of them. I was earning eighteen shilling a-week, and sometimes with my overtime I’ve had twenty shilling, or even twenty-three shilling. Bricklayers is paid according to all the hours they works beyond ten, for that’s the bricklayer’s day.

“I was among the lime, and the sand, and the bricks, and then my hand come like this (he held out a hand with all the fingers drawn up towards the middle, like the claw of a dead bird). All the sinews have gone, as you see yourself, sir, so that I can’t bend it or straighten it, for the fingers are like bits of stick, and you can’t bend ’em without breaking them.

“When I couldn’t lay hold of anything, nor lift it up, I showed it to master, and he sent me to his doctor, who gived me something to rub over it, for it was swelled up like, and then I went to St. George’s Hospital, and they cut it over, and asked me if I could come in doors as in-door patient? and I said Yes, for I wanted to get it over sooner, and go back to my work, and earn an honest currust. Then they scarred it again, cut it seven times, and I was there many long weeks; and when I comed out I could not hold any tool, so I was forced to keep on pawning and pledging to keep an honest currust in my mouth, and sometimes I’d only just be with a morsel to eat, and sometimes I’d be hungry, and that’s the truth.

“What put me up to crossing-sweeping was this--I had no other thing open to me but the workhouse; but of course I’d sooner be out on my liberty, though I was entitled to go into the house, of course, but I’d sooner keep out of it if I could earn an honest currust.

“One of my neighbours persuaded me that I should pick up a good currust at a crossing. The man who had been on my crossing was gone dead, and as it was empty, I went down to the police-office, in Marylebone Lane, and they told me I might take it, and give me liberty to stop. I was told the man who had been there before me had been on it fourteen years, and them was good times for gentle and simple and all--and it was reported that this man had made a good bit of money, at least so it was said.

“I thought I could make a living out of it, or an honest currust, but it’s a very poor living, I can assure you. When I went to it first, I done pretty fair for a currust; but it’s only three shillings to me now. My missus has such bad health, or she used to help me with her needle. I can assure you, sir, it’s only one day a week as I have a bit of dinner, and I often go without breakfast and supper, too.

“I haven’t got any regular customers that allow me anything. When the families is in town sometimes they give me half-a-crown, or sixpence, now and then, perhaps once a fortnight, or a month. They’ve got footmen and servant-maids, so they never wants no parcels taken--they make _them_ do it; but sometimes I get a penny for posting a letter from one of the maids, or something like that.

“The best day for us is Sunday. Sometimes I get a shilling, and when the families is in town eighteen pence. But when the families is away, and the weather so fine there’s no mud, and only working-people going to the chapels, they never looks at me, and then I’ll only get a shilling.”

ANOTHER WHO GOT PERMISSION TO SWEEP.

An old Irishman, who comes from Cork, was spoken of to us as a crossing-sweeper who had formally obtained permission before exercising his calling; but I found, upon questioning him, that it was but little more than a true Hibernian piece of conciliation on his part; and, indeed, that out of fear of competition, he had asked leave of the servants and policeman in the neighbourhood.

It seems somewhat curious, as illustrative of the rights of property among crossing-sweepers, that three or four “intending” sweepers, when they found themselves forestalled by the old man in question, had no idea of supplanting the Irishman, and merely remarked,--

“Well, you’re lucky to get it so soon, for we meant to take it.”

In reply to our questions, the man said,--

“I came here in January last: I knew the old man was did who used to keep the crossin’, and I thought I would like the kind of worruk, for I am getting blind, and hard of hearing likewise. I’ve got no parish; since the passing of the last Act, I’ve niver lived long enough in any one parish for that. I applied to Marabone, and they offered to sind me back to Ireland, but I’d got no one to go to, no friends or relations, or if I have, they’re as poor there as I am mysilf, sir.

“There was an ould man here before me. He used to have a stool to rest himsilf on, and whin he died, last Christmas, a man as knew him and me asked me whither I would take it or no, and I said I would. His broom and stool were in the coal-cellar at this corner house, Mr. ----’s, where he used to leave them at night times, and they gave them up to me; but I didn’t use the stool, sir, it might be an obsthruction to the passers-by; and, sir, it looks as if it was infirrumity. But, plaise the Lord, I’ll git and make a stool for myself against the hard winter, I will, bein’ a carpenter by thrade.

“I didn’t ask the gintlefolks’ permission to come here, but I asked the police and the servants, and such as that. I asked the servants at the corner-house. I don’t know whither they could have kept me away if I had not asked. Soon after I came here the gintlefolks--some of them--stopped and spoke to me. ‘So,’ says they, ‘you’ve taken the place of the old man that’s did?’ ‘Yes, I have,’ says I. ‘Very will,’ says they, and they give me a ha’penny. That was all that occurred upon my takin’ to the crossin’.

“But there were some others who would have taken it if I had not; they tould me I was lucky in gettin’ it so soon, or they would have had it, but I don’t know who they are.

“I am seventy-three years ould the 2d of June last. My wife is about the same age, and very much afflicted with the rheumatis, and she injured hersilf, too, years ago, by fallin’ off a chair while she was takin’ some clothes off the line.

“Not to desave you, sir, I get a shillin’ a-week from one of my childer and ninepence from another, and a little hilp from some of the others. I have siven childer livin’, and have had tin. They are very much scattered: two are abroad; one is in the tinth Hussars--he is kind to me. The one who allows me ninepence is a basket-maker at Reading; and the shillin’ I get from my daughter, a servant, sir. One of my sons died in the Crimmy; he was in the 13th Light Dragoons, and died at Scutari, on the 25th of May. They could not hilp me more than they thry to do, sir.

“I only make about two shilling a-week here, sir; and sometimes I don’t take three ha’pence a day. On Sundays I take about sivenpence, ninepence, or tinpence, ’cordin’ as I see the people who give rigular.

“Weather makes no difference to me--for, though the sum is small, I am a rigular pinsioner like of theirs. I go to Somer’s-town Chapel, being a Catholic, for I’m not ashamed to own my religion before any man. When I go, it is at siven in the evening. Sometimes I go to St. Pathrick’s Chapel, Soho-square. I have not been to confission for two or three years--the last time was to Mr. Stanton, at St. Pathrick’s.

“There’s a poor woman, sir, who goes past here every Friday to get her pay from the parish, and, as sure as she comes back again, she gives me a ha’penny--she does, indeed. Sometimes the baker or the greengrocer gives me a ha’penny for minding their baskets.

“I’m perfectly satisfied; it’s no use to grumble, and I might be worrus off, sir. Yes, I go of arrinds some times; fitch water now and then, and post letters; but I do no odd jobs, such as hilping the servants to clean the knives, or such-like. No: they wouldn’t let me behint the shadow of their doors.”

A THIRD WHO ASKED LEAVE.

This one was a mild and rather intelligent man, in a well worn black dress-coat and waistcoat, a pair of “moleskin” trousers, and a blue-and-white cotton neckerchief. I found him sweeping the crossing at the end of ---- place, opposite the church.

He every now and then regaled himself with a pinch of snuff, which seemed to light up his careworn face. He seemed very willing to afford me information. He said:--

“I have been on this crossing four years. I am a bricklayer by trade; but you see how my fingers have gone: it’s all rheumatics, sir. I took a great many colds. I had a great deal of underground work, and that tries a man very much.

“How did I get the crossing? Well, I took it--I came as a cas’alty. No one ever interfered with me. If one man leaves a crossing, well, another takes it.