London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

Statement of a Beggar.

A beggar decently attired, and with a simple and what some would call even a respectable look, gave me the following account:—

“I am now twenty-eight, and have known all connected with the begging trade since I was fourteen. My grandfather (mother’s father) was rich, owning three parts of the accommodation houses in St. Giles’s; he allowed me 2s. a week pocket-money. My grandfather kept the great house, the old Rose and Crown, in Church-lane, opposite Carver-street, best known as the ‘Beggar’s Opera.’ When a child of seven, I have seen the place crowded—crammed with nothing but beggars, first-rates—none else used the house. The money I saw in the hands of the beggars made a great impression upon me. My father took away my mother’s money. I wish my mother had run away instead. He was kind, but she was always nagging. My father was a foreman in a foundry. I got a situation in the same foundry after my father cut. Once I was sent to a bank with a cheque for 38l. to get cashed, in silver, for wages. In coming away, I met a companion of mine, and he persuaded me to bolt with the money, and go to Ashley’s. The money was too much for my head to carry. I fooled all that money away. I wasn’t in bed for more than a fortnight. I bought linnets in cages for the fancy of my persuader. In fact, I didn’t know what use to put the money to. I was among plenty of girls. When the money was out I was destitute. I couldn’t go back to my employers, and I couldn’t face my mother’s temper—that was worse; but for that nagging of hers I shouldn’t have been as I am. She has thrashed me with a hand broom until I was silly; there’s the bumps on my head still; and yet that woman would have given me her heart’s blood to do me a good. As soon as I found myself quite destitute, I went wandering about the City, picking up the skins of gooseberries and orange peel to eat, to live on—things my stomach would turn at now. At last my mother came to hear that I tried to destroy myself. She paid the 38l., and my former employers got me a situation in Paddington. I was there a month, and then I met him as advised me to steal the money before—he’s called the ex-king of the costermongers now. Well he was crying hareskins, and advised me again to bolt, and I went with him. My mind was bent upon costermongering and a roving life. I couldn’t settle to anything. I wanted to be away when I was at work, and when I was away I wanted to be back again. It was difficult for me to stick to anything for five minutes together; it is so now. What I begin I can’t finish at the time—unless it’s a pot of beer. Well, in four days my adviser left me; he had no more use for me. I was a flat. He had me for a “go-along,” to cry his things for him. Then, for the first time in my life, I went into a low lodging-house. There was forty men and women sleeping in one room. I had to sleep with a black man, and I slept on the floor to get away from the fellow. There were plenty of girls there; some playing cards and dominoes. It was very dirty—old Mother ——, in Lawrence-lane—the Queen of Hell she was called. There was one tub among the lot of us. I felt altogether disgusted. Those who lived there were beggars, thieves, smashers, coiners, purchasers of begged and stolen goods, and prostitutes. The youngest prostitute was twelve, and so up to fifty. The beastliest language went on. It’s done to outrival one another. There I met with a man called Tom Shallow (shallow is cant for half-naked), and he took me out ballad-singing, and when we couldn’t get on at that (the songs got dead) he left me. I made him 10s. or 12s. a day in them days, but he only gave me my lodgings and grub (but not half enough), and two pipes of tobacco a day to keep the hunger down, that I mightn’t be expensive. I then ’listed. I was starving, and couldn’t raise a lodging. I took the shilling, but was rejected by the doctor. I ’listed again at Chatham afterwards, but was rejected again. I stayed jobbing among the soldiers for some weeks, and then they gave me an old regimental suit, and with that I came to London. One gave me a jacket, and another a pair of military trowsers, and another a pair of old ammunition boots, and so on. About that time a batch of invalids came from Spain, where they had been under General Evans. On my way up from Chatham, I met at Gravesend with seven chaps out on ‘the Spanish lurk’ as they called it—that is, passing themselves off as wounded men of the Spanish Legion. Two had been out in Spain, and managed the business if questions were asked; the others were regular English beggars, who had never been out of the country. I joined them as a serjeant, as I had a sergeant’s jacket given me at Chatham. On our way to London—‘the school’ (as the lot is called) came all together—we picked up among us 4l. and 5l. a day—no matter where we went. ‘The school’ all slept in lodging houses, and I at last began to feel comfortable in them. We spent our evenings in eating out-and-out suppers. Sometimes we had such things as sucking pigs, hams, mince pies—indeed we lived on the best. No nobleman could live better in them days. So much wine, too! I drank in such excess, my nose was as big as that there letter stamp; so that I got a sickening of it. We gave good victuals away that was given to us—it was a nuisance to carry them. It cost us from 6d. to 1s. a day to have our shoes cleaned by poor tramps, and for clean dickies. The clean dodge is always the best for begging upon. At Woolwich we were all on the fuddle at the Dust Hole, and our two spokesmen were drunk; and I went to beg of Major ——, whose brother was then in Spain—he himself had been out previously. Meeting the major at his own house, I said, ‘I was a sergeant in the 3rd Westminster Grenadiers, you know, and served under your brother.’ ‘Oh! yes, that’s my brother’s regiment,’ says he. ‘Where was you, then, on the 16th of October?’ ‘Why, sir, I was at the taking of the city of Irun,’ says I—(in fact, I was at that time with the costermonger in St. Giles’s, calling cabbages, ‘white heart cabbages, oh!’) Then said the major, ‘What day was Ernani taken on?’ ‘Why,’ said I (I was a little tipsy, and bothered at the question), ‘that was the 16th of October, too.’ ‘Very well, my man,’ says he, tapping his boots with a riding whip he held, ‘I’ll see what I can do for you;’ and the words were no sooner out of his mouth than he stepped up to me and gave me a regular pasting. He horsewhipped me up and down stairs, and all along the passages; my flesh was like sassages. I managed at last, however, to open the door myself, and get away. After that ‘the school’ came to London. In a day we used to make from 8l. to 10l. among us, by walking up Regent-street, Bond-street, Piccadilly, Pall-mall, Oxford-street, the parks—those places were the best beats. All the squares were good too. It was only like a walk out for air, and your 25s. a man for it. At night we used to go to plays, dressed like gentlemen. At first the beaks protected us, but we got found out, and the beaks grew rusty. The thing got so overdone, every beggar went out as a Spanish lurksman. Well, the beaks got up to the dodge, and all the Spanish lurksmen in their turns got to work the universal staircase, under the care of Lieutenant Tracy (Tothill-fields treadmill). The men that had really been out and got disabled were sent to that staircase at last, and I thought I would try a fresh lurk. So I went under the care and tuition of a sailor. He had been a sailor. I became a turnpike sailor, as it’s called, and went out as one of the Shallow Brigade, wearing a Guernsey shirt and drawers, or tattered trowsers. There was a school of four. We only got a tidy living—16s. or 1l. a day among us. We used to call every one that came along—coalheavers and all—sea-fighting captains. ‘Now, my noble sea-fighting captain,’ we used to say, ‘fire an odd shot from your larboard locker to us, Nelson’s bull-dogs;’ but mind we never tried that dodge on at Greenwich, for fear of the old geese, the Collegemen. The Shallow got so grannied (known) in London, that the supplies got queer, and I quitted the land navy. Shipwrecks got so common in the streets, you see, that people didn’t care for them, and I dropped getting cast away. I then took to screeving (writing on the stones). I got my head shaved, and a cloth tied round my jaws, and wrote on the flags—

‘Illness and Want,’

though I was never better in my life, and always had a good bellyfull before I started of a morning. I did very well at first: 3s. or 4s. a day—sometimes more—till I got grannied. There is one man who draws Christ’s heads with a crown of thorns, and mackerel, on the pavement, in coloured chalks (there are four or five others at the same business); this one, however, often makes 1l. a day now in three hours; indeed, I have known him come home with 21s., besides what he drank on the way. A gentleman who met him in Regent-street once gave him 5l. and a suit of clothes to do Christ’s heads with a crown of thorns and mackerel on the walls. His son does Napoleon’s heads best, but makes nothing like so much as the father. The father draws cats’ heads and salmon as well—but the others are far the best spec. He will often give thirteen-pence, and indeed fourteen-pence, for a silver shilling, to get rid of the coppers. This man’s pitch is Lloyd-square, not far from Sadler’s Wells. I have seen him commence his pitch there at half-past eleven, to catch the people come from the theatre. He is very clever. In wet weather, and when I couldn’t chalk, as I couldn’t afford to lose time, I used to dress tidy and very clean for the ‘respectable broken-down tradesman or reduced gentleman’ caper. I wore a suit of black, generally, and a clean dickey, and sometimes old black kid gloves, and I used to stand with a paper before my face, as if ashamed—

‘To a Humane Public.
‘I have seen better days.’

This is called standing pad with a fakement. It is a wet-weather dodge, and isn’t so good as screeving, but I did middling, and can’t bear being idle. After this I mixed with the street patterers (men who make speeches in the streets) on the destitute mechanics’ lurk. We went in a school of six at first, all in clean aprons, and spoke every man in his turn. It won’t do unless you’re clean. Each man wanted a particular article of dress. One had no shirt—another no shoes—another no hat—and so on. No two wanted the same. We said:—

“‘Kind and benevolent Christians!—It is with feelings of deep regret, and sorrow and shame, that us unfortunate tradesmen are compelled to appear before you this day, to ask charity from the hands of strangers. We are brought to it from want—I may say, actual starvation.’ (We always had a good breakfast before we started, and some of us, sir, was full up to the brim of liquor.) ‘But what will not hunger and the cries of children compel men to do.’ (We were all single men.) ‘When we left our solitary and humble homes this morning, our children were crying for food, but if a farthing would have saved their lives, we hadn’t it to give them. I assure you, kind friends, me, my wife, and three children, would have been houseless wanderers all last night, but I sold the shirt from off my back as you may see (opening my jacket) to pay for a lodging. We are, kind friends, English mechanics. It is hard that you wont give your own countrymen a penny, when you give so much to foreign hurdy-gurdies and organ-grinders. Owing to the introduction of steam and machinery and foreign manufactures we have been brought to this degraded state. Fellow countrymen, there are at this moment 4000 men like ourselves, able and willing to work, but can’t get it, and forced to wander the streets. I hope and trust some humane Christian within the sound of my voice will stretch out a hand with a small trifle for us, be it ever so small, or a bit of dry bread or cold potato, or anything turned from your table, it would be of the greatest benefit to us and our poor children.’ (Then we would whisper to one another, ‘I hope they won’t bring out any scran—only coppers.’) ‘We have none of us tasted food this blessed day. We have been told to go to our parishes, but that we cannot brook; to be torn from our wives and families is heart-rending to think of—may God save us all from the Bastile!’ (We always pattered hard at the overseers).

The next of the school that spoke would change the story somehow, and try to make it more heart-rending still. We did well at first, making about 5s. a day each, working four hours, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. We got a good deal of clothing too. The man who went without a shirt never went to a door to ask for one; he had to show himself in the middle of the road. The man that did go to the door would say, ‘Do bestow a shirt on my poor shopmate, who hasn’t had one for some days.’ It’s been said of me, when I had my shirt tied round my waist all the time out of sight. The man who goes without his shirt has his pick of those given; the rest are sold and shared. Whatever trade we represented we always had one or two really of the trade in the school. These were always to be met at the lodging-houses. They were out of work, and had to go to low lodging-houses to sleep. There they met with beggars who kiddied them on to the lurk. The lodging-houses is good schools for that sort of thing, and when a mechanic once gets out on the lurk he never cares to go to work again. I never knew one return. I have been out oft and oft with weavers with a loom, and have woven a piece of ribbon in a gentleman’s parlour—that was when we was Coventry ribbon weavers. I have been a stocking weaver from Leicester, and a lacemaker too from Nottingham. Distressed mechanics on their way to London get initiated into beggar’s tricks in the low lodging-houses and the unions. This is the way, you see, sir. A school may be at work from the lodging-house where the mechanic goes to, and some of the school finds out what he is, and says, ‘Come and work with us in a school: you’ll do better than you can at your business, and you can answer any questions; we’ll lurk on your trade.’ I have been out with a woman and children. It’s been said in the papers that children can be hired for that lurk at 4d. or 6d. a day—that’s all fudge, all stuff, every bit of it—there’s no children to be hired. There’s many a labouring man out of work, who has a wife and three or more children, who is glad to let them go out with any patterer he knows. The woman is entitled to all the clothes and grub given, and her share of the tin—that’s the way it’s done; and she’s treated to a drink after her day’s work, into the bargain. I’ve been out on the respectable family man lurk. I was out with a woman and three kids the other day; her husband was on the pad in the country, as London was too hot to hold him. The kids draws, the younger the better, for if you vex them, and they’re oldish, they’ll blow you. Liverpool Joe’s boy did so at Bury St. Edmund’s to a patterer that he was out with, and who spoke cross to him. The lad shouted out so as the people about might hear, ‘Don’t you jaw me, you’re not my father; my father’s at home playing cards.’ They had to crack the pitch (discontinue) through that. The respectable family dodge did pretty well. I’ve been on the clean family lurk too, with a woman and children. We dressed to give the notion that, however humble, at least we were clean in all our poverty. On this lurk we stand by the side of the pavement in silence, the wife in a perticler clean cap, and a milk-white apron. The kids have long clean pinafores, white as the driven snow; they’re only used in clean lurk, and taken off directly they come home. The husband and father is in a white flannel jacket, an apron worn and clean, and polished shoes. To succeed in this caper there must be no rags, but plenty of darns. A pack of pawn-tickets is carried in the waistcoat pocket. (One man that I know stuck them in his hat like a carman’s.) That’s to show that they’ve parted with their little all before they came to that. They are real pawn-tickets. I have known a man pay 2s. 6d. for the loan of a marriage certificate to go out on the clean lurk. If a question is asked, I say—‘We’ve parted with everything, and can get no employment; to be sure, we have had a loaf from the parish, but what’s that among my family?’ That takes the start out of the people, because they say, why not go to the parish? Some persons say, ‘Oh, poor folks, they’re brought to this, and how clean they are—a darn is better than a patch any time.’ The clean lurk is a bare living now—it was good—lots of togs came in, and often the whole family were taken into a house and supplied with flannel enough to make under clothing for them all; all this was pledged soon afterwards, and the tickets shown to prove what was parted with, through want. Those are some of the leading lurks. There’s others. ‘Fits,’ are now bad, and ‘paralytics’ are no better. The lucifer lurk seems getting up though. I don’t mean the selling, but the dropping them in the street as if by accident. It’s a great thing with the children; but no go with the old ’uns. I’ll tell you of another lurk: a woman I knows sends out her child with ¼ oz. of tea and half a quarter of sugar, and the child sits on a door step crying, and saying, if questioned, that she was sent out for tea and sugar, and a boy snatched the change from her, and threw the tea and sugar in the gutter. The mother is there, like a stranger, and says to the child:—‘And was that your poor mother’s last shilling, and daren’t you go home, poor thing?’ Then there is a gathering—sometimes 18d. in a morning; but it’s almost getting stale, that is. I’ve done the shivering dodge too—gone out in the cold weather half naked. One man has practised it so much that he can’t get off shivering now. Shaking Jemmy went on with his shivering so long that he couldn’t help it at last. He shivered like a jelly—like a calf’s foot with the ague—on the hottest day in summer. It’s a good dodge in tidy inclement seasons. It’s not so good a lurk, by two bob a day, as it once was. This is a single-handed job; for if one man shivers less than another he shows that it isn’t so cold as the good shiverer makes it out—then it’s no go. Of the maimed beggars, some are really deserving objects, as without begging they must starve to death; that’s a fact, sir. What’s a labouring man to do if he’s lost any of his limbs? But some of these even are impostors. I know several blind men who have pensions; and I know two who have not only pensions, but keep lodging-houses, and are worth money, and still go out a begging—though not near where they live. There’s the man with the very big leg, who sits on the pavement, and tells a long yarn about the tram carriage having gone over him in the mine. He does very well—remarkable well. He goes tatting and billy-hunting in the country (gathering rags and buying old metal), and comes only to London when he has that sort of thing to dispose of. There’s Paddy in the truck too; he makes a good thing, and sends money home to Ireland; he has a decrepit old mother, and it’s to his credit. He never drinks. There’s Jerry, the collier, he has lost both arms, and does a tidy living, and deserves it; it’s a bad misfortune. There’s Jack Tiptoe, he can’t put one heel to the ground—no gammon; but Mr. Horsford and he can’t agree, so Jack takes to the provinces now. He did very well indeed here. There used to be a society among us called the Cadger’s Club; if one got into a prison there was a gathering for him when he came out, and 6s. a week for a sick member, and when he got out again two collections for him, the two amounting perhaps to 1l. We paid 3d. a week each—no women were members—for thirteen weeks, and then shared what was in hand, and began for the next thirteen, receiving new members and transacting the usual business of a club. This has been discontinued these five years; the landlord cut away with the funds. We get up raffles, and help one another in the best way we can now. At one time we had forty-five members, besides the secretary, the conductor, and under-conductor. The rules were read over on meeting nights—every Wednesday evening. They were very strict; no swearing, obscene or profane language was permitted. For the first offence a fine of 1d. was inflicted, for the second 2d., and for the third the offender was ejected the room. There was very good order, and few fines had to be inflicted. Several respectable tradesmen used to pay a trifle to be admitted, out of curiosity, to see the proceedings, and used to be surprised at their regularity. Among the other rules were these: a fine of 1d. for any member refusing to sing when called on; visitors the same. All the fines went to the fund. If a member didn’t pay for five meeting nights he was scratched. Very few were scratched. The secretary was a windmill cove (sold children’s windmills in the streets), and was excused contributing to the funds. He had 1d. from each member every sharing night, once a quarter, for his labour; he was a very good scholar, and had been brought up well. The landlord generally gave a bob on a sharing night. The conductor managed the room, and the under-conductor kept the door, not admitting those who had no right to be there, and putting out those who behaved improperly. It was held in the Coachmakers’ Arms, Rose-street, Longrave-street; tip-top swells used to come among us, and no mistake; real noblemen, sir. One was the nephew of the Duke of ——, and was well-known to all of us by the nick-name, Facer.

I used to smoke a very short and very black pipe, and the honourable gent has often snatched it from my mouth, and has given me a dozen cigars for it. My face has been washed in the gin by a noble lord after he’d made me drunk, and I felt as if it was vitriol about my eyes. The beggars are now dispersed and broken up. They live together now only in twos and threes, and, in plain truth, have no money to spend; they can’t get it. Upon an average, in former days a cadger could make his two or three guineas per week without working overtime; but now he can hardly get a meal, not even at the present winter, though it’s been a slap up inclement season, to be sure. The Mendicity Society has ruined us—them men took me and gave me a month, and I can say from my conscience, that I was no more guilty of begging at that time than an unborn baby. The beggars generally live in the low lodging-houses, and there of a night they tell their tales of the day, and inform each other of the good and bad places throughout London, and what ‘lurks’ do the best. They will also say what beats they intend to take the next day, so that those who are on the same lurk may not go over the same ground as their pals. It is no use telling a lie, but the low lodging-houses throughout London and the country are nests for beggars and thieves. I know some houses that are wholly supported by beggars. In almost every one of the padding kens, or low lodging-houses in the country, there is a list of walks written on a piece of paper, and pasted up over the kitchen mantel-piece. Now at St. Alban’s, for instance, at the ——, and at other places, there is a paper stuck up in each of the kitchens. This paper is headed ‘Walks out of this town,’ and underneath it is set down the names of the villages in the neighbourhood at which a beggar may call when out on his walk, and they are so arranged as to allow the cadger to make a round of about six miles, each day, and return the same night. In many of those papers there are sometimes twenty walks set down. No villages that are in any way ‘gammy’ are ever mentioned in these papers, and the cadger, if he feels inclined to stop for a few days in the town, will be told by the lodging-house keeper, or the other cadgers that he may meet there, what gentleman’s seats or private houses are of any account on the walk that he means to take. The names of the good houses are not set down in the paper, for fear of the police. Most of the lodging-house keepers buy the ‘scran’ (broken victuals) of the cadgers; the good food they either eat themselves or sell to the other travellers, and the bad they sell to parties to feed their dogs or pigs upon. The cadgers’ talk is quite different now to what it was in the days of Billy. You see the flats got awake to it, so in course we had to alter the patter. The new style of cadgers’ cant is nothing like the thieves’ cant, and is done all on the rhyming principle. This way’s the caper. Suppose I want to ask a pal to come and have a glass of rum and smoke a pipe of tobacco, and have a game at cards with some blokes at home with me, I should say, if there were any flats present, ‘Splodger, will you have a Jack-surpass of finger-and-thumb, and blow your yard of tripe of nosey me knacker, and have a touch of the broads with me and the other heaps of coke at my drum. [In this it will be observed that every one of the ‘cant’ words rhymes with the words ordinarily used to express the same idea.] I can assure you what little we cadgers do get we earn uncommon hard. Why, from standing shaking—that is, being out nearly naked in the hardest frosts—I lost the use of my left side for nearly three years, and wasn’t able to stir outside the door. I got my living by card-playing in the low lodging-houses all that time. I worked the oracle—they were not up to it. I put the first and seconds on and the bridge also. I’d play at cards with any one. You see, sir, I was afeard to come to you at first because I had been ‘a starving’ on the pavement only a few days ago, not a hundred yards from your very door, and I thought you might know me.”