Of the Blind Street-sellers of Tailors’ Needles, etc.
It is customary with many trades, for the journeymen to buy such articles as they require in their business of those members of their craft who have become incapacitated for work, either by old age, or by some affliction. The tailors—the shoe-makers—the carpenters—and many others do this. These sellers are, perhaps, the most exemplary instances of men driven to the streets, or to hawking for a means of living; and they, one and all, are distinguished by that horror of the workhouse which I have before spoken of as constituting a peculiar feature in the operative’s character. At present I purpose treating of the street-sellers of needles and “trimmings” to the tailors.
There are, I am informed, two dozen “broken-down” journeymen tailors pursuing this avocation in and around London. “There may be more,” said one who had lost his sight stitching, “but I get my information from the needle warehouse, where we all buy our goods; and the lady there told me she knew as many as twenty-four hawkers who were once tailors. These are all either decayed journeymen, or their widows. Some are incapacitated by age, being between sixty and seventy years old; the greater part of the aged journeymen, however, are inmates of the tailors’ almshouses. I am not aware,” said my informant, “of there being more than one very old man hawking needles to the tailors, though there may be many that I know nothing about. The one I am acquainted with is close upon eighty, and he is a very respectable man, much esteemed in St. James’s and St. George’s; he sells needles, and ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ to the journeymen: he is very feeble indeed, and can scarcely get along.” Of the two dozen needle-sellers above mentioned, there are only six who confine their “rounds” solely to the metropolis. Out of these six my informant knew two who were blind beside himself (one of these sells to the journeymen in the city). There are other blind tailors who were formerly hawkers of needles, but being unable to realize a subsistence thereby, have been obliged to become inmates of the workhouses; others have recently gained admission into the almshouses. Last February, I am assured, there were two blind needle-sellers, and two decrepit, in St. James’s workhouse. There are, moreover, two widows selling tailors’ needles in London. One of these, I am told, is wretchedly poor, being “eat up with the rheumatics, and scarcely able to move”—she is the relict of a blind journeyman, and well known in St. James’s. The other widow is now in St. Pancras Workhouse, having been unable, to use the words of my informant, “to get anything to keep life and soul together at the needle trade;” she, too, I am told, is well known to the journeymen. The tailors’ needle-sellers confining themselves more particularly to London consist of, at present, one old man, three blind, one paralyzed, and one widow; besides these, there are now in the alms-houses, two decrepit and one paralyzed; and one widow in the workhouse, all of whom, till recently, were needle-sellers, and originally connected with the trade.
“That is all that I believe are now in London,” said one to me, “I should, I think, know if there were more; for it is not from one place we get our articles, but many; and there I hear that six is about the number of tailors’ hawkers in town; the rest of the two dozen hawkers that I spoke of go a little way out into the suburbs. The six, however, stick to London altogether.” The needle-sellers who go into the country, I am told, travel as far as Reading, westward, and to Gravesend, in the opposite direction, or Brentwood, in Essex, and they will keep going back’ards and for’ards to the metropolis immediately their stock is exhausted. These persons sell not only tailors’ needles, but women’s needles as well, and staylaces and cottons, and small ware in general, which they get from Shepherd’s, in Compton Street; they have all been tailors, and are incapacitated from labour, either by old age or some affliction. There was one widow of a tailor among the number, but it is believed she is now either too old to continue her journeys, or else that she is deceased. The town-sellers confine their peregrinations mostly to the parishes of St. James’s and St. George’s (my informant was not aware that any went even into Marylebone). One travels the City, while the other five keep to the West End; they all sell thimbles, needles, inch-measures, bodkins, inch sticks, scissars (“when they can get them,” I was told, “and that’s very seldom”), and bees’-wax, basting cotton, and, many of them, publications. The publications vended by these men are principally the cheap periodicals of the day, and two of these street-sellers, I am informed, do much better with the sale of publications than by the “trimmings.” “They get money, sir,” said one man to me, “while we are starving. They have their set customers and have only to go round and leave the paper, and then to get their money on the Monday morning.”
The tailors’ hawkers buy their trimmings mostly at the retail shops. They have not stock-money sufficient, I am assured, to purchase at the wholesale houses, for “such a thing as a paper of needles large tradesmen don’t care about of selling us poor men.” They tell me that if they could buy wholesale they could get their goods one-fourth cheaper, and to be “obligated” to purchase retail is a great drawback on their profits. They call at the principal tailors’ workshops, and solicit custom of the journeymen; they are almost all known to the trade, both masters and men, and, having no other means of living, they are allowed to enter the masters’ shops, though some of the masters, such as Allen, in Bond-street; Curlewis, Jarvis, and Jones, in Conduit-street, and others, refuse the poor fellows even this small privilege. The journeymen treat them very kindly, the needle-sellers tell me, and generally give them part of the provisions they have brought with them to the shop. If it was not for this the needle-sellers, I am assured, could hardly live at all. “There’s that boy there,” said a blind tailor, speaking of the youth who had led him to my house, and who sat on the stool fast asleep by the fire,—“I’m sure he must have starved this winter if it hadn’t been for the goodness of the men to us, for it’s little that me and his mother has to give him; she’s gone almost as blind as myself working at the ‘sank work’ (making up soldiers’ clothing). Oh, ours is a miserable life, sir!—worn out—blind with over work, and scarcely a hole to put one’s head in, or a bit to put in one’s mouth. God Almighty knows that’s the bare truth, sir.” Sometimes the hawkers go on their rounds and take only 2d., but that is not often; sometimes they take 5s. in a day, and “that is the greatest sum,” said my informant, “I ever took; what others might do I can’t say, but that I’m confident is about the highest takings.” In the summer three months the average takings rise to 4s. per day; but in the winter they fall to 1s., or at the outside 1s. 6d. The business lasts only for three hours and a half each day, that is from eight till half-past eleven in the morning; after that no good is to be done. Then the needle-sellers, I am told, go home, and the reason of this is, I am told, if they appear in the public streets selling or soliciting alms, the blind are exempted from becoming recipients of the benefits of many of the charitable institutions. The blind man whom I saw, told me that after he had done work and returned home, he occupied himself with pressing the seams of the soldiers’ clothes when his “missus” had sewed them. The tailors’ needle-sellers are all married, and one of the wives has a mangle; and “perhaps,” said my informant, “the blind husband turns the mangle when he goes home, but I can’t say.” Another wife is a bookfolder, but she has no work. The needles they usually sell five a penny to the journeymen, but the most of the journeymen will take but four; they say “we can’t get a living at all if we sell the needles cheaper. The journeymen are mostly very considerate—very indeed; much more than the masters; for the masters won’t hardly look at us. I don’t know that a master ever gave me a farden—and yet there’s some of them very soothing and kind in speaking.” The profit in the needles, I am told, is rather more than 100 per cent.; “but,” say the sellers, “only think, sir, we must get rid of 150 needles even to take 3s. The most we ever sell in one shop is 6d. worth—and the usual amount is 2d. worth. You can easy tell how many shops we must travel round to, in order to get rid of 3s. worth.” Take one shop with another, the good with the bad, they tell me they make about 1d. profit from each they visit. The profit on the rest of the articles they vend is about 20 per cent., and they calculate that all the year round, summer and winter, they may be said to take 2s. a day, or 12s. a week; out of which they clear from 5s. to 5s. 6d. They sell far more needles than anything else. Some of the blind needle-sellers make their own bees’-wax into “shapes,” (pennyworths) themselves, melting into and pouring into small moulds.
The blind needle-seller whom I saw was a respectable-looking man, with the same delicacy of hand as is peculiar to tailors, and which forms so marked a contrast to the horny palms of other workmen. He was tall and thin, and had that upward look remarkable in all blind men. His eyes gave no signs of blindness (the pupils being full and black), except that they appeared to be directed to no one object, and though fixed, were so without the least expression of observation. His long black surtout, though faded in colour, was far from ragged, having been patched and stitched in many places, while his cloth waistcoat and trowsers were clean and neat—very different from the garments of street-sellers in general. In his hand he carried his stick, which, as he sat, he seemed afraid to part with, for he held it fast between his knees. He came to me accompanied by his son, a good-looking rough-headed lad, habited in a washed-out-blue French kind of pinafore, and whose duty it was to lead his blind father about on his rounds. Though the boy was decently clad, still his clothes, like those of his father, bore many traces of that respectable kind of poverty which seeks by continuous mending to hide its rags from the world. The face of the father, too, was pinched, while there was a plaintiveness about his voice that told of a wretched spirit-broken and afflicted man. Altogether he was one of the better kind of handicraftsmen—one of those fine specimens of the operatives of this country—independent even in their helplessness, scorning to beg, and proud to be able to give some little equivalent for the money bestowed on them. I have already given accounts of the “beaten-out” mechanic from those who certainly cannot be accused of an excess of sympathy for the poor—namely the Poor Law Commissioners and masters of workhouses; and I can only add, that all my experience goes fully to bear out the justice of these statements. As I said before, the class who are driven to the streets to which the beaten-out or incapacitated operative belongs, is, of all others, the most deserving of our sympathy; and the following biography of one of this order is given to teach us to look with a kindly eye upon the many who are forced to become street-sellers as the sole means of saving themselves from the degradation of pauperism or beggary.
“I am 45 years of age next June,” said the blind tailor. “It is upwards of 30 years since I first went to work at the tailoring trade in London. I learnt my business under one of the old hands at Mr. Cook’s, in Poland-street, and after that went to work at Guthrie’s, in Bond-street. I belonged to the Society held at the Old White Hart. I continued working for the honourable trade and belonging to Society for about 15 years. My weekly earnings then averaged 1l. 16s. a week while I was at work, and for several years I was seldom out of work, for when I got into a shop it was a long time before I got out again. I was not married then. I lived in a first floor back room, well-furnished, and could do very comfortably indeed. I saved often my 15s. or 16s. in a week, and was worth a good bit of money up to the time of my first illness. At one period I had nearly 50l. by me, and had it not been for “vacations” and “slack seasons” I should have put by more; but you see to be out of work even a few weeks makes a large hole in a journeyman’s savings. All this time I subscribed regularly to Society, and knew that if I got superannuated I should be comfortably maintained by the trade. I felt quite happy with the consciousness of being provided for in my old age or affliction then, and if it had not been for that perhaps I might have saved more even than I did. I went on in this way, as I said before, for 15 years, and no one could have been happier than I was—not a working man in all England couldn’t. I had my silver watch and chain. I could lay out my trifle every week in a few books, and used to have a trip now and then up and down the river, just to blow the London smoke off, you know. About 15 years ago my eyes began to fail me without any pain at all; they got to have as it were a thick mist, like smoke, before them. I couldn’t see anything clear. Working by gas-light at first weakened and at last destroyed the nerve altogether. I’m now in total darkness. I can only tell when the gas is lighted by the heat of it.
“It is not the black clothes that is trying to the sight—black is the steadiest of all colours to work at; white and all bright colours makes the eyes water after looking at ’em for any long time; but of all colours scarlet, such as is used for regimentals, is the most blinding, it seems to burn the eyeballs, and makes them ache dreadful. After working at red there’s always flying colours before the eyes; there’s no steady colour to be seen in anything for some time. Everything seems all of a twitter, and to keep changing its tint. There’s more military tailors blind than any others. A great number of tailors go blind, but a great many more has lost their sight since gas-light has come up. Candle-light was not half so pernicious to the sight. Gas-light is so very heating, and there’s such a glare with it that it makes the eyes throb, and shoot too, if you work long by it. I’ve often continued working past midnight with no other light than that, and then my eyes used to feel like two bits of burning coals in my head. And you see, sir, the worst of it was, as I found my sight going bad I was obliged to try it more, so as to keep up with my mates in the shop. At last my eyes got so weak that I was compelled to give up work, and go into the country, and there I stopped, living on my savings, and unable to do any work for fear of losing my sight altogether. I was away about three years, and then all my money was gone, and I was obligated, in spite of my eyes, to go back to work again. But then, with my sight defective as it was, I could get no employment at the honourable trade, and so I had to take a seat in a shop at one of the cheap houses in the city, and that was the ruin of me entirely; for working there, of course I got “scratched” from the trade Society, and so lost all hope of being provided for by them in my helplessness. The workshop at this cheap house was both small and badly ventilated. It was about seven foot square, and so low, that as you sot on the floor you could touch the ceiling with the tip of your finger. In this place seven of us worked—three on each side and one in the middle. Two of my shopmates were boys, or else I am sure it would not have held us all. There was no chimney, nor no window that could be opened to let the air in. It was lighted by a skylight, and this would neither open nor shut. The only means for letting out the foul air was one of them working ventilators—like cockades, you know, sir—fixed in one of the panes of glass; but this wouldn’t work, so there we were, often from 5 in the morning till 10 at night, working in this dreadful place. There was no fire in the winter, though we never needed one, for the workshop was over-hot from the suffocation, and in the summer it was like an oven. This is what it was in the daytime, but mortal tongue can’t tell what it was at night, with the two gas-lights burning away, and almost stifling us. Many a time some of the men has been carried out by the others fainting for air. They all fell ill, every one of them, and I lost my eyes and my living entirely by it. We spoke to the master repeatedly, telling him he was killing us, and though when he came up to the workshop hisself, he was nearly blown back by the stench and heat, he would not let us have any other room to work in—and yet he’d plenty of convenience up stairs. He paid little more than half the regular wages, and employed such men as myself—only those who couldn’t get anything better to do. What with illness and all, I don’t think my wages there averaged above 12s. a week: sometimes I could make 1l. in the week, but then, the next week, maybe I’d be ill, and would get but a few shillings. It was impossible to save anything then—even to pay one’s way was a difficulty, and, at last, I was seized with rheumatics on the brain, and obliged to go into St. Thomas’s Hospital. I was there eleven months, and came out stone blind. I am convinced I lost my eyesight by working in that cheap shop; nothing on earth will ever persuade me to the contrary, and what’s more, my master robbed me of a third of my wages and my sight too, and left me helpless in the world, as, God knows, I am now. It is by the ruin of such men as me that these masters are enabled to undersell the better shops; they get hold of the men whose eyes are just beginning to fail them, like mine did, because they know they can get them to work cheap, and then, just at the time when a journeyman requires to be in the best of shops, have the best of air, and to work as little by gas-light as possible, they puts him into a hole of a place that would stifle a rat, and keeps him working there half the night through. That’s the way, sir, the cheap clothes is produced, by making blind beggars of the workmen, like myself, and throwing us on the parish in our old age. You are right, sir, they not only robs the men but the ratepayers too.
“Well, sir, as I said, I come out of the hospital stone blind, and have been in darkness ever since, and that’s near upon ten years ago. I often dream of colours, and see the most delightful pictures in the world; nothing that I ever beheld with my eyes can equal them—they’re so brilliant, and clear and beautiful. I see then the features and figures of all my old friends, and I can’t tell you how pleasureable it is to me. When I have such dreams they so excite me that I am ill all the next day. I often see, too, the fields, with the cows grazing on a beautiful green pasture, and the flowers, just at twilight like, closing up their blossoms as they do. I never dream of rivers; nor do I ever remember seeing a field of corn in my visions; it’s strange I never dreamt in any shape of the corn or the rivers, but maybe I didn’t take so much notice of them as of the others. Sometimes I see the sky, and very often indeed there’s a rainbow in it, with all kinds of beautiful colours. The sun is a thing I often dream about seeing, going down like a ball of fire at the close of the day. I never dreamt of the stars, nor the moon—it’s mostly bright colours that I see.
“I have been under all the oculists I could hear of—Mr. Turnbull, in Russell-square, but he did me no good; then I went to Charing-cross, under Mr. Guthrie, and he gave me a blind certificate, and made me a present of half-a-sovereign; he told me not to have my eyes tampered with again, as the optic nerve was totally decayed. Oh, yes; if I had all the riches in the world I’d give them every one to get my sight back, for it’s the greatest pressure to me to be in darkness. God help me! I know I am a sinner, and believe I’m so afflicted on account of my sins. No, sir, it’s nothing like when you shut your eyes; when I had my sight, and closed mine, I remember I could still see the light through the lids, the very same as when you hold your hand up before the candle; but mine’s far darker than that—pitch black. I see a dark mass like before me, and never any change—everlasting darkness, and no chance of a light or shade in this world. But I feel consolated some how, now it is settled; although it’s a very poor comfort after all. I go along the streets in great fear. If a baby have hold of me, I am firm, but by myself, I reel about like a drunken man. I feel very timid unless I have hold of something—not to support me, but to assure me I shall not fall. If I was going down your staircase, sir, I should be all right so long as I touched the bannister, but if I missed that, I’m sure I should grow so giddy and nervous I should fall from the top to the bottom. After losing my sight, I found a great difficulty in putting my food into my mouth, for a long time—six months or better—and I was obliged to have some one to guide my hand, for I used often to put the fork up to my forehead instead of my mouth. Shortly after my becoming quite blind, I found all my other senses much quickened—my hearing—feeling—and reckoning. I got to like music very much indeed; it seemed to elevate me—to animate and cheer me much more than it did before, and so much so now, that when it ceases, I feel duller than ever. It sounds as if it was in a wilderness to me—I can’t tell why, but that’s all I can compare it to; as if I was quite alone with it. My smell and taste is very acute” (he was given some violets to smell)—“Oh, that’s beautiful,” he cried, “very reviving indeed. Often of an evening, I can see things in my imagination, and that’s why I like to sit alone then; for of all the beautiful thoughts that ever a man possessed, there’s none to equal a blind man’s, when he’s by hisself.
“I don’t see my early home, but occurrences that has recently took place. I see them all plain before me, in colours as vivid as if I had my sight again, and the people all dressed in the fashion of my time; the clothes seem to make a great impression on me, and I often sit and see in my mind master tailors trying a coat on a gentleman, and pulling it here and there. The figures keep passing before me like soldiers, and often I’m so took by them that I forget I’m blind, and turn my head round to look after them as they pass by me. But that sort of thinking would throw me into a melancholly—it’s too exciting while it lasts, and then leaves me dreadful dull afterwards. I have got much more melancholy since my blindness; before then, I was not seriously given, but now I find great consolation in religion. I think my blindness is sent to try my patience and resignation, and I pray to the Almighty to give me strength to bear with my affliction. I was quick and hot-tempered before I was blind, but since then, I have got less hasty like; all other troubles appears nothing to me. Sometimes I revile against my affliction—too frequently—but that is at my thoughtless moments, for when I’m calm and serious, I feel thankful that the Almighty has touched me with his correcting rod, and then I’m happy and at peace with all the world. If I had run my race, and not been stopped, I might never have believed there was a God. My wife works at the ‘sank work.’ She makes soldiers’ coats; she gets 1s. 1d. for making one, and that’s nearly a day and a half’s work; then she has to find her own trimmings, and they’re 1d. It takes her 16 hours to finish one garment, and the over-work at that is beginning to make her like as I was myself. If she takes up a book to read to me now, it’s all like a dirty mass before her, and that’s just as my sight was before I lost it altogether. She slaves hard to help me; she’s anxious and willing—indeed too much so. If she could get constant work, she might perhaps make about 7s. a week; but as it is, her earnings are, take one week with another, not more than 3s. Last week she earned 5s.; but that was the first job of work she’d had to do for two months. I think the two of us make on an average about 8s.; and out of that there is three people to keep—our two selves and our boy. Our rent is 2s. 6d., so that after paying that, we has about 5s. 6d. left for food, firing, and clothing for the whole of us. How we do it I can’t tell; but I know we live very, very hard: mostly on pieces of bread that the men gives to me and my boy, as we go round to the workshops. If we was any of us to fall ill, we must all go to the parish; if my boy was to go sick, I should be left without any one to lead me about, and that would be as bad as if I was laid-up myself; and if anything was to happen to my wife, I’d be done clean altogether. But yet the Lord is very good, and we’d get out of that, I dare say. If anything was to drive me to the parish, I should lose all hopes of getting some help from the blind institutions; and so I dread the workhouse worse than all. I’d sooner die on the step of a door, any time, than go there and be what they call well kept. I don’t know why I should have a dislike to going there, but yet I do possess it. I do believe, that any one that is willing to work for their bread, hates a workhouse; for the workhouse coat is a slothful, degrading badge. After a man has had one on his back, he’s never the same. I would’nt go for an order for relief so long as I could get a halfpenny loaf in twenty-four hours. If I could only get some friend to give me a letter of recommendation to Mr. Day’s Charity for the Blind, I should be happy for the rest of my days. I could give the best of references to any one who would take pity on me in my affliction.”