Part 130
“I have been in Middlesex Hospital, with a broken collar-bone, when I was knocked down by a cab. I was in a fortnight there, and I was in again when I hurt my leg. I was sweeping my crossin’ when the top came off my crutch. I fell back’ards, and my leg doubled under me. They had to carry me there.
“I went into the Middlesex Hospital for my eyes and leg. I was in a month, but they wouldn’t keep me long, there’s no cure for me.
“My leg is very painful, ’specially at change of weather. Sometimes I don’t get an hour’s sleep of a night--it was daylight this morning before I closed my eyes.
“I went on the crossing first because my parents couldn’t keep me, not being able to keep theirselves. I thought it was the best thing I could do, but it’s like all other things, it’s got very bad now. I used to manage to rub along at first--the streets have got shockin’ bad of late.
“To tell the truth, I was turned away from Regent-street by Mr. Cook, the furrier, corner of Argyle Street. I’ll tell you as far as I was told. He called me into his passage one night, and said I must look out for another crossin’, for a lady, who was a very good customer of his, refused to come while I was there; my heavy afflictions was such that she didn’t like the look of me. I said, ‘Very well;’ but because I come there next day and the day after that, he got the policeman to turn me away. Certainly the policeman acted very kindly, but he said the gentleman wanted me removed, and I must find another crossing.
“Then I went down Charlotte-street, opposite Percy Chapel, at the corner of Windmill-street. After that I went to Wells-street, by getting permission of the doctor at the corner. He thought that it would be better for me than Charlotte-street, so he let me come.
“Ah! there ain’t so many crossing-sweepers as there was; I think they’ve done away with a great many of them.
“When I first went to Wells-street, I did pretty well, because there was a dress-maker’s at the corner, and I used to get a good deal from the carriages that stopped before the door. I used to take five or six shillings in a day then, and I don’t take so much in a week now. I tell you what I made this week. I’ve made one-and-fourpence, but it’s been so wet, and people are out of town; but, of course, it’s not always alike--sometimes I get three-and-sixpence or four shillings. Some people gives me a sixpence or a fourpenny-bit; I reckons that all in.
“I am dreadful tired when I comes home of a night. Thank God my other leg’s all right! I wish the t’other was as strong, but it never will be now.
“The police never try to turn me away; they’re very friendly, they’ll pass the time of day with me, or that, from knowing me so long in Oxford-street.
“My broom sometimes serves me a month; of course, they don’t last long now it’s showery weather. I give twopence-halfpenny a piece for ’em, or threepence.
“I don’t know who gives me the most; my eyes are so bad I can’t see. I think, though, upon an average, the gentlemen give most.
“Often I hear the children, as they are going by, ask their mothers for something to give to me; but they only say, ‘Come along--come along!’ It’s very rare that they lets the children have a ha’penny to give me.
“My mother is seventy the week before next Christmas. She can’t do much now; she does though go out on Wednesdays or Saturdays, but that’s to people she’s known for years who is attached to her. She does her work there just as she likes.
“Sometimes she gets a little washing--sometimes not. This week she had a little, and was forced to dry it indoors; but that makes ’em half dirty again.
“My father’s breath is so bad that he can’t do anything except little odd jobs for people down here; but they’ve got the knack now, a good many on ’em, of doin’ their own.
“We have lived here fifteen years next September; it’s a long time to live in such an old wilderness, but my old mother is a sort of woman as don’t like movin’ about, and I don’t like it. Some people are everlasting on the move.
“When I’m not on my crossin’ I sit poking at home, or make a job of mending my clothes. I mended these trousers in two or three places.
“It’s all done by feel, sir. My mother says it’s a good thing we’ve got our feeling at least, if we haven’t got our eyesight.”
THE NEGRO CROSSING-SWEEPER, WHO HAD LOST BOTH HIS LEGS.
This man sweeps a crossing in a principal and central thoroughfare when the weather is cold enough to let him walk; the colder the better, he says, as it “numbs his stumps like.” He is unable to follow this occupation in warm weather, as his legs feel “just like corns,” and he cannot walk more than a mile a-day. Under these circumstances he takes to begging, which he thinks he has a perfect right to do, as he has been left destitute in what is to him almost a strange country, and has been denied what he terms “his rights.” He generally sits while begging, dressed in a sailor shirt and trousers, with a black neckerchief round his neck, tied in the usual nautical knot. He places before him the placard which is given beneath, and never moves a muscle for the purpose of soliciting charity. He always appears scrupulously clean.
I went to see him at his home early one morning--in fact, at half-past eight, but he was not then up. I went again at nine, and found him prepared for my visit in a little parlour, in a dirty and rather disreputable alley running out of a court in a street near Brunswick-square. The negro’s parlour was scantily furnished with two chairs, a turn-up bedstead, and a sea-chest. A few odds and ends of crockery stood on the sideboard, and a kettle was singing over a cheerful bit of fire. The little man was seated on a chair, with his stumps of legs sticking straight out. He showed some amount of intelligence in answering my questions. We were quite alone, for he sent his wife and child--the former a pleasant-looking “half-caste,” and the latter the cheeriest little crowing, smiling “piccaninny” I have ever seen--he sent them out into the alley, while I conversed with himself.
His life is embittered by the idea that he has never yet had “his rights”--that the owners of the ship in which his legs were burnt off have not paid him his wages (of which, indeed, he says, he never received any but the five pounds which he had in advance before starting), and that he has been robbed of 42_l._ by a grocer in Glasgow. How true these statements may be it is almost impossible to say, but from what he says, some injustice seems to have been done him by the canny Scotchman, who refuses him his “pay,” without which he is determined “never to leave the country.”
“I was on that crossing,” he said, “almost the whole of last winter. It was very cold, and I had nothing at all to do; so, as I passed there, I asked the gentleman at the baccer-shop, as well as the gentleman at the office, and I asked at the boot-shop, too, if they would let me sweep there. The policeman wanted to turn me away, but I went to the gentleman inside the office, and he told the policeman to leave me alone. The policeman said first, ‘You must go away,’ but I said, ‘I couldn’t do anything else, and he ought to think it a charity to let me stop.’
“I don’t stop in London very long, though, at a time; I go to Glasgow, in Scotland, where the owners of the ship in which my legs were burnt off live. I served nine years in the merchant service and the navy. I was born in Kingston, in Jamaica; it is an English place, sir, so I am counted as not a foreigner. I’m different from them Lascars. I went to sea when I was only nine years old. The owners is in London who had that ship. I was cabin-boy; and after I had served my time I became cook, or when I couldn’t get the place of cook I went before the mast. I went as head cook in 1851, in the _Madeira_ barque; she used to be a West Indy trader, and to trade out when I belonged to her. We got down to 69 south of Cape Horn; and there we got almost froze and perished to death. That is the book what I sell.”
The “Book” (as he calls it) consists of eight pages, printed on paper the size of a sheet of note paper; it is entitled--
“BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF
EDWARD ALBERT!
A native of Kingston, Jamaica.
Showing the hardships he underwent and the sufferings he endured in having both legs amputated.
HULL:
W. HOWE, PRINTER.”
It is embellished with a portrait of a black man, which has evidently been in its time a comic “nigger” of the Jim-Crow tobacco-paper kind, as is evidenced by the traces of a tobacco-pipe, which has been unskilfully erased.
The “Book” itself is concocted from an affidavit made by Edward Albert before “P. Mackinlay, Esq., one of Her Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the country (so it is printed) of Lanark.”
I have seen the affidavit, and it is almost identical with the statement in the “book,” excepting in the matter of grammar, which has rather suffered on its road to Mr. Howe, the printer.
The following will give an idea of the matter of which it is composed:--
“In February, 1851, I engaged to serve as cook on board the barque _Madeira_, of Glasgow, Captain J. Douglas, on her voyage from Glasgow to California, thence to China, and thence home to a port of discharge in the United Kingdom. I signed articles, and delivered up my register-ticket as a British seaman, as required by law. I entered the service on board the said vessel, under the said engagement, and sailed with that vessel on the 18th of February, 1851. I discharged my duty as cook on board the said vessel, from the date of its having left the Clyde, until June the same year, in which month the vessel rounded Cape Horne, at that time my legs became frost bitten, and I became in consequence unfit for duty.
“In the course of the next day after my limbs became affected, the master of the vessel, and mate, took me to the ship’s oven, in order, as they said, to cure me; the oven was hot at the time, a fowl that was roasting therein having been removed in order to make room for my feet, which was put into the oven; in consequence of the treatment, my feet burst through the intense swelling, and mortification ensued.
“The vessel called, six weeks after, at Valpariso, and I was there taken to an hospital, where I remained five months and a half. Both my legs were amputated three inches below my knees soon after I went to the hospital at Valpariso. I asked my master for my wages due to me, for my service on board the vessel, and demanded my register-ticket; when the captain told me I should not recover, that the vessel could not wait for me, and that I was a dead man, and that he could not discharge a dead man; and that he also said, that as I had no friends there to get my money, he would only put a little money into the hands of the consul, which would be applied in burying me. On being discharged from the hospital I called on the consul, and was informed by him that master had not left any money.
“I was afterwards taken on board one of her Majesty’s ships, the _Driver_, Captain Charles Johnston, and landed at Portsmouth; from thence I got a passage to Glasgow, ware I remained three months. Upon supplication to the register-office for seamen, in London, my register-ticket has been forwarded to the Collector of Customs, Glasgow; and he is ready to deliver it to me upon obtaining the authority of the Justices of the Peace, and I recovered the same under the 22nd section of the General Merchant Seaman’s Act. Declares I cannot write.
“(Signed) DAVID MACKINLAY, J. P.
“The Justices having considered the foregoing information and declaration, finds that Edward Albert, therein named the last-register ticket, sought to be covered under circumstances which, so far as he was concerned, were unavoidable, and that no fraud was intended or committed by him in reference thereto, therefore authorised the Collector and Comptroller of Customs at the port of Glasgow to deliver to the said Edward Albert the register-ticket, sought to be recovered by him all in terms of 22nd section of the General Merchant Seamen’s Act.
“(Signed) DAVID MACKINLAY, J. P.
“Glasgow, Oct. 6th, 1852.
“Register Ticket, No. 512, 652, age 25 years.”
“I could make a large book of my sufferings, sir, if I liked,” he said, “and I will disgrace the owners of that ship as long as they don’t give me what they owe me.
“I will never leave England or Scotland until I get my rights; but they says money makes money, and if I had money I could get it. If they would only give me what they owe me, I wouldn’t ask anybody for a farthing, God knows, sir. I don’t know why the master put my feet in the oven; he said to cure me: the agony of pain I was in was such, he said, that it must be done.
“The loss of my limbs is bad enough, but it’s still worse when you can’t get what is your rights, nor anything for the sweat that they worked out of me.
“After I went down to Glasgow for my money I opened a little coffee-house; it was called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ I did very well. The man who sold me tea and coffee said he would get me on, and I had better give my money to him to keep safe, and he used to put it away in a tin box which I had given four-and-sixpence for. He advertised my place in the papers, and I did a good business. I had the place open a month, when he kept all my savings--two-and-forty pounds--and shut up the place, and denied me of it, and I never got a farthing.
“I declare to you I can’t describe the agony I felt when my legs were burst; I fainted away over and over again. There was four men came; I was lying in my hammock, and they moved the fowl that was roasting, and put my legs in the oven. There they held me for ten minutes. They said, it would take the cold out; but after I came out the cold caught ’em again, and the next day they swole up as big round as a pillar, and burst, and then like water come out. No man but God knows what I have suffered and went through.
“By the order of the doctor at Valparaiso, the sick patients had to come out of the room I went into; the smell was so bad I couldn’t bear it myself--it was all mortification--they had to use chloride o’ zinc to keep the smell down. They tried to save one leg, but the mortification was getting up into my body. I got better after my legs were off.
“I was three months good before I could turn, or able to lift up my hand to my head. I was glad to move after that time, it was a regular relief to me; if it wasn’t for good attendance, I should not have lived. You know they don’t allow tobaccer in a hospital, but I had it; it was the only thing I cared for. The Reverend Mr. Armstrong used to bring me a pound a fortnight; he used to bring it regular. I never used to smoke before; they said I never should recover, but after I got the tobaccer it seemed to soothe me. I was five months and a half in that place.
“Admiral Moseley, of the _Thetis_ frigate, sent me home; and the reason why he sent me home was, that after I came well, I called on Mr. Rouse, the English consul, and he sent me to the boarding-house, till such time as he could find a ship to send me home in. I was there about two months, and the boarding-master, Jan Pace, sent me to the consul.
“I used to get about a little, with two small crutches, and I also had a little cart before that, on three wheels; it was made by a man in the hospital. I used to lash myself down in it. That was the best thing I ever had--I could get about best in that.
“Well, I went to the consul, and when I went to him, he says, ‘I can’t pay your board; you must beg and pay for it;’ so I went and told Jan Pace, and he said, ‘If you had stopped here a hundred years, I would not turn you out;’ and then I asked Pace to tell me where the Admiral lived. ‘What do you want with him?’ says he. I said, ‘I think the Admiral must be higher than the consul.’ Pace slapped me on the back. Says he, ‘I’m glad to see you’ve got the pluck to complain to the Admiral.’
“I went down at nine o’clock the next morning, to see the Admiral. He said, ‘Well, Prince Albert, how are you getting on?’ So I told him I was getting on very bad; and then I told him all about the consul; and he said, as long as he stopped he would see me righted, and took me on board his ship, the _Thetis_; and he wrote to the consul, and said to me, ‘If the consul sends for you, don’t you go to him; tell him you have no legs to walk, and he must walk to you.’
“The consul wanted to send me back in a merchant ship, but the Admiral wouldn’t have it, so I came in the _Driver_, one of Her Majesty’s vessels. It was the 8th of May, 1852, when I got to Portsmouth.
“I stopped a little while--about a week--in Portsmouth. I went to the Admiral of the dockyard, and he told me I must go to the Lord Mayor of London. So I paid my passage to London, saw the Lord Mayor, who sent me to Mr. Yardley, the magistrate, and he advertised the case for me, and I got four pounds fifteen shillings, besides my passage to Glasgow. After I got there, I went to Mr. Symee a Custom-house officer (he’d been in the same ship with me to California); he said, ‘Oh, gracious, Edward, how have you lost your limbs!’ and I burst out a crying. I told him all about it. He advised me to go to the owner. I went there; but the policeman in London had put my name down as Robert Thorpe, which was the man I lodged with; so they denied me.
“I went to the shipping office, where they reckonised me; and I went to Mr. Symee again, and he told me to go before the Lord Mayor (a Lord Provost they call him in Scotland), and make an affidavit; and so, when they found my story was right, they sent to London for my seaman’s ticket; but they couldn’t do anything, because the captain was not there.
“When I got back to London, I commenced sweeping the crossin’, sir. I only sweep it in the winter, because I can’t stand in the summer. Oh, yes, I feel my feet still: it is just as if I had them sitting on the floor, now. I feel my toes moving, like as if I had ’em. I could count them, the whole ten, whenever I work my knees. I had a corn on one of my toes, and I can feel it still, particularly at the change of weather.
“Sometimes I might get two shillings a-day at my crossing, sometimes one shilling and sixpence, sometimes I don’t take above sixpence. The most I ever made in one day was three shillings and sixpence, but that’s very seldom.
“I am a very steady man. I don’t drink what money I get; and if I had the means to get something to do, I’d keep off the streets.
“When I offered to go to the parish, they told me to go to Scotland, to spite the men who owed me my wages.
“Many people tell me I ought to go to my country; but I tell them it’s very hard--I didn’t come here without my legs--I lost them, as it were, in this country; but if I had lost them in my own country, I should have been better off. I should have gone down to the magistrate every Friday, and have taken my ten shillings.
“I went to the Merchant Seaman’s Fund, and they said that those who got hurted before 1852 have been getting the funds, but those who were hurted after 1852 couldn’t get nothing--it was stopped in ’51, and the merchants wouldn’t pay any more, and don’t pay any more.
“That’s scandalous, because, whether you’re willing or not, you must pay two shillings a-month (one shilling a-month for the hospital fees, and one shilling a-month to the Merchant Seaman’s Fund), out of your pay.
“I am married: my wife is the same colour as me, but an Englishwoman. I’ve been married two years. I married her from where she belonged, in Leeds. I couldn’t get on to do anything without her. Sometimes she goes out and sells things--fruit, and so on--but she don’t make much. With the assistance of my wife, if I could get my money, I would set up in the same line of business as before, in a coffee-shop. If I had three pounds I could do it: it took well in Scotland. I am not a common cook, either; I am a pastrycook. I used to make all the sorts of cakes they have in the shops. I bought the shapes, and tins, and things to make them proper.
“I’ll tell you how I did--there was a kind of apparatus; it boils water and coffee, and the milk and the tea, in different departments; but you couldn’t see the divisions--the pipes all ran into one tap, like. I’ve had a sixpence and a shilling for people to look at it: it cost me two pound ten.
“Even if I had a coffee-stall down at Covent-garden, I should do; and, besides, I understand the making of eel-soup. I have one child,--it is just three months and a week old. It is a boy, and we call it James Edward Albert. James is after my grandfather, who was a slave.