Part 66
3. The unemployed labourers of the district, who are set to scavaging work by the parish, and paid a regular money wage--the employment being constant, and the rate of remuneration ranging from 1_s._ 3_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ a day for each of the six days, or from 7_s._ 6_d._ to 15_s._ a week.
In pp. 246, 247, I give a table of the wages paid by each of the metropolitan parishes. This has been collected at great trouble in order to arrive at the truth on this most important matter, and for which purpose the several parishes have been personally visited. It will be seen on reference to this document, that there is only one parish at present that employs its in-door paupers in the scavaging of the public streets; and 3 parishes employing 48 out-door paupers, who are paid partly in money and partly in bread; the money remuneration ranging from 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ a day (paid by Clerkenwell) to 7_s._ a week (paid by Chelsea), and moreover 31 parishes employing 408 applicants for relief (paupers they cannot be called), and paying them wholly in money, the remuneration ranging from 15_s._ per week to 7_s._ 6_d._ (paid by the Liberty of the Rolls), and the employment from 6 to 3 days weekly. As a general rule it was found that the greatest complaints were made by the authorities as to the idleness of the poor, and by the poor as to the tyranny of the authorities, in those parishes where the remuneration was the least. In St. Luke’s, Chelsea, for instance, where the remuneration is but 7_s._ a week and three loaves, the criminations and recriminations by the parish functionaries and the paupers were almost equally harsh and bitter. I should, however, observe that the men employed in this parish spoke in terms of great commendation of Mr. Pattison the surveyor, saying he always gave them to understand that they were free labourers, and invariably treated them as such. The men at work for Bermondsey parish also spoke very highly of their superintendent, who, it seems, has interested himself to obtain for them a foul-weather coat. Some of the highway boards or trusts take all the pauper labourers sent them by the parish, while others give employment only to such as please them. These boards generally pay good wages, and are in favour with the men.
The mode of working, as regards the use of the implements and the manual labour, is generally the same among the pauper scavagers as I have described in connection with the scavagers generally.
The consideration of what is the rate of parish pay to the poor who are employed as scavagers, is complicated by the different modes in which the employment is carried out, for, as we see, there is--1st, the scavaging labour, by workhouse inmates, without any payment beyond the cost of maintenance and clothing; 2nd, the “short” or three-days-a-week labour, with or without “relief” in the bestowal of bread; and 3rd, the six days’ work weekly, with a money wage and no bread, nor anything in the form of payment in kind or of “relief.”
Let me begin with the first system of labour above mentioned, viz. the employment of the in-door paupers without wages of any kind, their food, lodging, and clothing being considered as equivalents for their work. The principal evil in connection with this form of parish work is its compulsory character, the men regarding it not as so much work given in exchange for such and such comforts, but as something _exacted_ from them; and, to tell the truth, it is precisely the counterpart of slavery, being equally deficient in all inducement to toil, and consequently requiring almost the same system of compulsion and supervision in order to keep the men at their labour. All interest in the work is destroyed, there being no reward connected with it; and consequently the same organized system of setting to work is required as with cattle. There are but two inducements to voluntary action--pain to be avoided or pleasure to be derived--or, in other words, the attractiveness and repulsiveness of objects. Take away the pecuniary attraction of labour, and men become mere beasts of burden, capable of being set to work only by the dread of some punishment; hence the system of parish labour, which has no reward directly connected with it, must necessarily be tyrannical, and so tend to induce idleness and a hatred of work altogether.
Of the different forms of pauper work, street-sweeping is, I am inclined to believe, the most unpopular of all among the poor. The scavaging is generally done in the workhouse dress, and that to all, except the hardened paupers, and sometimes even to them, is highly distasteful. Neither have such labourers, as I have said, the incentive of that hope of the reward which, however diminutive, still tends to sweeten the most repulsive labour. I am informed by an experienced gangsman under a contractor, that it is notorious that the workhouse hands are the least industrious scavagers in the streets. “They don’t sweep as well,” he said, “and don’t go about it like regular men; they take it quite easy.” It is often asserted that this labour of the workhouse men is applied as a _test_; but this opinion seems rather to bear on the past than the present.
One man thus employed gave me the following account. He was garrulous but not communicative, as is frequently the case with men who love to hear themselves talk, and are not very often able to command listeners. He was healthy looking enough, but he told me he was, or had been “delicate.” He querulously objected to be questioned about his youth, or the reason of his being a pauper, but seemed to be abounding in workhouse stories and workhouse grievances.
“Street-sweeping,” he said, “degrades a man, and if a man’s poor he hasn’t no call to be degraded. Why can’t they set the thieves and pickpockets to sweep? they could be watched easy enough; there’s always idle fellers as reckons theirselves real gents, as can be got for watching and sitch easy jobs, for they gets as much for them, as three men’s paid for hard work in a week. I never was in a prison, but I’ve heerd that people there is better fed and better cared for than in workusses. What’s the meaning of that, sir, I’d like for to know? You can’t tell me, but I can tell you. The workus is made as ugly as it can be, that poor people may be got to leave it, and chance dying in the street rather.” [Here the man indulged in a gabbled detail of a series of pauper grievances which I had a difficulty in diverting or interrupting. On my asking if the other paupers had the same opinion as to street-sweeping as he had, he replied:--] “To be sure they has; all them that has sense to have a ’pinion at all has; there’s not two sides to it any how. No, I don’t want to be kept and do nothink. I want _proper_ work. And by the rights of it I might as well be kept with nothink to do as ---- or ----” [parish officials]. “Have they nothing to do,” I asked? “Nothink, but to make mischief and get what ought to go to the poor. It’s salaries and such like as swallers the rates, and that’s what every poor family knows as knows anythink. Did I ever like my work better? Certainly not. Do I take any pains with it? Well, where would be the good? I can sweep well enough, when I please, but if I could do more than the best man as ever Mr. Darke paid a pound a week to, it wouldn’t be a bit better for me--not a bit, sir, I assure you. We all takes it easy whenever we can, but the work _must_ be done. The only good about it is that you get outside the house. It’s a change that way certainly. But we work like horses and is treated like asses.” [On my reminding him that he had just told me that they all took it easy when they could, and _that_ rather often, he replied:] “Well, don’t horses? But it ain’t much use talking, sir. It’s only them as has been in workusses and in parish work as can understand all the ins and outs of it.”
In giving the above and the following statements I have endeavoured to elicit the _feelings_ of the several paupers whom I conversed with. Poor, ignorant, or prejudiced men may easily be mistaken in their opinions, or in what they may consider their “facts,” but if a clear exposition of their sentiments be obtained, it is a guide to the truth. I have, therefore, given the statement of the in-door pauper’s opinions, querulously as they were delivered, as I believe them to be the sentiments of those of his class who, as he said, had any opinion at all.
It seems indeed, from all I could learn on the subject, that pauper street-work, even at the best, is unwilling and slovenly work, pauper workmen being the worst of all workmen. If the streets be swept clean, it is because a dozen paupers are put to the labour of eight, nine, or ten regular scavagers who are independent labourers, and who may have some “pride of art,” or some desire to show their employers that they are to be depended upon. This feeling does not actuate the pauper workman, who thinks or knows that if he did evince a desire and a perseverance to please, it would avail him little beyond the sneers and ill-will of his mates; so that, even with a disposition to acquire the good opinion of the authorities, there is this obstacle in his way, and to most men who move in a circumscribed sphere it is a serious obstacle.
Of the second mode of pauper scavaging, viz., that performed by out-door paupers, and paid for partly in money and partly in kind, I heard from officials connected with pauper management very strong condemnations, as being full of mischievous and degrading tendencies. The payment to the out-door pauper scavager averages, as I have stated, 9_d._ a day to a single man, with, perhaps, a quartern loaf; and this, in some cases, is for only three days in the week; while to a married man with a family, it varies between 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ and 1_s._ 2_d._ a day, with a quartern, and sometimes two quartern loaves; and this, likewise, is occasionally from three to six days in the week. On this the single or family men must subsist, if they have no other means of earning an addition. The men thus employed are certainly not independent labourers, nor are they, in the full sense of the word as popularly understood, paupers; for their means of subsistence are partly the fruits of their toil; and although they are wretchedly dependent, they seem to feel that they have a sort of right to be set to work, as the law ordains such modicum of relief, in or out of the workhouse, as will only ward off death through hunger. This “three-days-a-week work” is by the poor or pauper labourers looked upon as being, after the in-door pauper work, the worst sort of employment.
[24] TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF MEN EMPLOYED BY THE METROPOLITAN PARISHES AND HIGHWAY BOARDS IN SCAVAGING, AS WELL AS THE NUMBER OF HOURS PER DAY AND NUMBER OF DAYS PER WEEK, TOGETHER WITH THE AMOUNT OF WAGES ACCRUING TO EACH, AND THE TOTAL ANNUAL WAGES OF THE WHOLE.
-----------------------------------------+------------+------------+---------------+------------+-------------------------- | No. of | Number of | | | | married men| single men | Number of | Number of | Daily or weekly | employed | employed |Superintendents| Foremen | wages of the PARISHES. | by parishes| by parishes| employed | or Gangers | married | daily in | daily in | by parishes. | employed | parish-men. | scavaging | scavaging | |by parishes.| |the streets.|the streets.| | | -----------------------------------------+------------+------------+---------------+------------+-------------------------- _Paid in Money (by Parishes)._ | | | | | _s._ Greenwich | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 15 | | | | | Walworth }| 12 | 8 | | 3 | 15 Newington }| | | | | Lambeth | 30 | | 1 | 5 | 15 Poplar | 20 | | | 4 | 15 St. Ann’s, Soho | 4 | 1 | | | 15 Rotherhithe | 4 | | | 1 | 14 Wandsworth | 6 | | | 1 | 12 Hackney | 12 | 4 | | 4 | 12 St. Mary’s, Paddington | 8 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 12 St. Giles’s, and St. George’s, Bloomsbury| 20 | 4 | | 4 | 12 St. Pancras (South-west Division) | 10 | | 2 | | 12 St. Clement Danes | 6 | 2 | | 1 | 11 St. Paul’s, Covent-garden | 2 | 5 | | 1 | 11 St. James’s, Westminster | 6 | | | 1 | 10 Ditto | 6 | | | 1 | 10 Ditto | 6 | | | 1 | 9 St. Andrew’s, Holborn | 10 | | 1 | 1 | 9 Marylebone | 80 | 15 | 1 | 10 | 9 St. George’s, Hanover-square | 30 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 9_s._ a week. Liberty of the Rolls | 1 | | | | 7s. 6d. Bermondsey | 13 | 1 | 1 | | 1_s._ 4_d._ per day. _Paid in Money (by Highway Boards)._ | | | | | St. James’s, Clerkenwell (1st Division) | 5 | | | | 15 Islington | 7 | 1 | | 1 | 15 Commercial Road East | 4 | 1 | 1 | | 15 Hampstead | 4 | | | 1 | 15 Highgate | 3 | 2 | | 1 | 14 Kensington | 6 | 1 | | 1 | 12 Lewisham | 4 | | | 1 | 12 Camberwell | 10 | | | 1 | 12 Christchurch, Lambeth | 6 | | | 1 | 12 Woolwich | 5 | | | 1 | 12 Deptford | 4 | | | 1 | 9 _Paid partly in kind._ | | | | | St. Luke’s, Chelsea | 27 | 9 | | 3 | 7_s._, and on an average | | | | | 3 loaves each, | | | | | at 4d. a loaf. Hans-town „ | 6 | | | 1 | 7_s._, and average 3 | | | | | loaves per head. St. James’s, Clerkenwell | 6 | | | |1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ a day, and | | | | | 1 quartern loaf. _Paid wholly in kind._ | | | | | St. Pancras (Highways) | | 10 | 1 | | estimated expense | | | | | of food, 2_s._ 4_d._ | | | | | weekly. -----------------------------------------+------------+------------+---------------+------------+-------------------------- Total | 400 | 66 | 8 | 62 | -----------------------------------------+------------+------------+---------------+------------+--------------------------
--------------------+--------------------+-------------+------------+------------+----------------- | | | Number of | Number of | Total annual Daily or weekly | Weekly wages | Weekly wages| hours per | days in the| wages of wages of the | of the |of Foremen or| day each | week each | the whole, single | Superintendents | Gangers | parish-man | parish-man | including the parish-men. | employed by | employed by | is employed| is employed| estimated | parishes. | parishes. |to sweep the| in sweeping| value of food | | | streets. |the streets.| and clothes. --------------------+--------------------+-------------+------------|------------+----------------- _s._ | _s._ | _s._ | | | £. _s._ _d._ 15 | 30_s._ and a house | 18 | 10 | 6 | 456 16 0 | to live in. | | | | 14 | | 18 | 12 | 6 | 899 12 0 | | | | | | 20 | 18 | 10 | 6 | 1456 0 0 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 967 4 0 15 | | | 12 | 6 | 195 0 0 | | 16 | 10 | 6 | 187 4 0 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 234 0 0 10 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 665 12 0 10 | 20 | 15 | 12 | 6 | 509 12 0 12 | | 18 | 12 | 6 | 936 0 0 | | 18 | 12 | 6 | 93 12 0 11 | | 15 | 10 | 6 | 267 16 0 11 | | 13 | 12 | 6 | 234 0 0 | | 12 | 10 | 6 | 187 4 0 | | 12 | 10 | 6 | 187 4 0 | | 12 | 10 | 6 | 166 12 0 | 15 | 12 | 10 | 6 | 304 4 0 9 | 18 | 16 | 10 | 6 | 2685 16 0 9_s._ a week. | 20 | 16 | 10 | 6 | 1060 16 0 | | | 10 | 6 | 19 10 0 1_s._ 4_d._ per day.|28_s._ and clothing.| | 10 | 5 | 321 3 4 | | | | | | | | 10 | 6 | 195 0 0 15 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 405 0 0 15 | 100_l._ a year. | | 12 | 6 | 295 0 0 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 202 10 0 14 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 228 16 0 12 | | 18 | 12 | 6 | 265 4 0 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 171 12 0 | | 18 | 12 | 6 | 358 16 0 | | 15 | 10 | 6 | 226 4 0 | | 18 | 10 | 6 | 202 16 0 | | 18 | 10 | 3 | 140 8 0 | | | | | 7 | | 14 | 10 | 6 | 834 12 0 | | | | | | | | | | | | 14 | 10 | 6 | 161 4 0 | | | | | | | | 10 | 3 | 70 4 0 | | | | | | | | | | | 21_s._ and food. | | 8 | 4 | 128 5 4 | | | | | | | | | | --------------------+--------------------+-------------+------------+------------+----------------- | | | | |15,919 8 8 --------------------+--------------------+-------------|------------+------------+-----------------
From a married man employed by the parish under this mode, I had the following account.
He was an intelligent-looking man, of about 35, but with nothing very
## particular in his appearance unless it were a head of very curly hair.
He gave me the statement in his own room, which was larger than I have usually found such abodes, and would have been very bare, but that it was somewhat littered with the vessels of his trade as a street-seller of Nectar, Persian Sherbet, Raspberryade, and other decoctions of coloured ginger-beer, with high-sounding names and indifferent flavour: in the summer he said he could live better thereby, with a little costering, than by street-sweeping, but being often a sickly man he could not do so during the uncertainties of a winter street trade. His wife, a decent looking woman, was present occasionally, suckling one child, about two years old--for the poor often protract the weaning of their children, as the mother’s nutriment is the _cheapest_ of all food for the infant, and as the means of postponing the further increase of their family--whilst another of five or six years of age sat on a bench by her side. There was nothing on the walls in the way of an ornament, as I have seen in some of the rooms of the poor, for the couple had once been in the workhouse, and might be driven there again, and with such apprehensions did not care, perhaps, to make a home otherwise than they found it, even if the consumption of only a little spare time were involved.
The husband said:--