Statement of a “Regular Scavager.”
The following statement of his business, his sentiments, and, indeed, of the subjects which concerned him, or about which he was questioned, was given to me by a street-sweeper, so he called himself, for I have found some of these men not to relish the appellation of “scavager.” He was a short, sturdy, somewhat red-faced man, without anything particular in his appearance to distinguish him from the mass of mere labourers, but with the sodden and sometimes dogged look of a man contented in his ignorance, and—for it is not a very uncommon case—rather proud of it.
“I don’t know how old I am,” he said—I have observed, by the by, that there is not any excessive vulgarity in these men’s tones or accent so much as grossness in some of their expressions—“and I can’t see what that consarns any one, as I’s old enough to have a jolly rough beard, and so can take care of myself. I should think so. My father was a sweeper, and I wanted to be a waterman, but father—he hasn’t been dead long—didn’t like the thoughts on it, as he said they was all drownded one time or ’nother; so I ran away and tried my hand as a Jack-in-the-water, but I was starved back in a week, and got a h—— of a clouting. After that I sifted a bit in a dust-yard, and helped in any way; and I was sent to help at and larn honey-pot and other pot making, at Deptford; but honey-pots was a great thing in the business. Master’s foreman married a relation of mine, some way or other. I never tasted honey, but I’ve heered it’s like sugar and butter mixed. The pots was often wanted to look like foreign pots; I don’t know nothing what was meant by it; some b—— dodge or other. No, the trade didn’t suit me at all, master, so I left. I don’t know why it didn’t suit me; cause it didn’t. Just then, father had hurt his hand and arm, in a jam again’ a cart, and so, as I was a big lad, I got to take his place, and gave every satisfaction to Mr. ——. Yes, he was a contractor and a great man. I can’t say as I knows how contracting’s done; but it’s a bargain atween man and man. So I got on. I’m now looked on as a stunning good workman, I can tell you.
“Well, I can’t say as I thinks sweeping the streets is hard work. I’d rather sweep two hours than shovel one. It tires one’s arms and back so, to go on shovelling. You can’t change, you see, sir, and the same parts keeps getting gripped more and more. Then you must mind your eye, if you’re shovelling slop into a cart, perticler so; or some feller may run off with a complaint that he’s been splashed o’ purpose. Is a man ever splashed o’ purpose? No, sir, not as I knows on, in coorse not. [Laughing.] Why should he?
“The streets must be done as they’re done now. It always was so, and will always be so. Did I ever hear what London streets were like a thousand years ago? It’s nothing to me, but they must have been like what they is now. Yes, there was always streets, or how was people that has tin to get their coals taken to them, and how was the public-houses to get their beer? It’s talking nonsense, talking that way, a-asking sich questions.” [As the scavager seemed likely to lose his temper, I changed the subject of conversation.]
“Yes,” he continued, “I have good health. I never had a doctor but twice; once was for a hurt, and the t’other I won’t tell on. Well, I think nightwork’s healthful enough, but I’ll not say so much for it as you may hear some on ’em say. I don’t like it, but I do it when I’s obligated under a necessity. It pays one as overwork; and werry like more one’s in it, more one may be suited. I reckon no men works harder nor sich as me. O, as to poor journeymen tailors and sich like, I knows they’re stunning badly off, and many of their masters is the hardest of beggars. I have a nephew as works for a Jew slop, but I don’t reckon that work; anybody might do it. You think not, sir? Werry well, it’s all the same. No, I won’t say as I could make a veskit, but I’ve sowed my own buttons on to one afore now.
“Yes, I’ve heered on the Board of Health. They’ve put down some night-yards, and if they goes on putting down more, what’s to become of the night-soil? I can’t think what they’re up to; but if they don’t touch wages, it may be all right in the end on it. I don’t know that them there consarns does touch wages, but one’s naterally afeard on ’em. I could read a little when I was a child, but I can’t now for want of practice, or I might know more about it. I yarns my money gallows hard, and requires support to do hard work, and if wages goes down, one’s strength goes down. I’m a man as understands what things belongs. I was once out of work, through a mistake, for a good many weeks, perhaps five or six or more; I larned then what short grub meant. I got a drop of beer and a crust sometimes with men as I knowed, or I might have dropped in the street. What did I do to pass my time when I was out of work? Sartinly the days seemed wery long; but I went about and called at dust-yards, till I didn’t like to go too often; and I met men I know’d at tap-rooms, and spent time that way, and axed if there was any openings for work. I’ve been out of collar odd weeks now and then, but when this happened, I’d been on slack work a goodish bit, and was bad for rent three weeks and more. My rent was 2s. a week then; its 1s. 9d. now, and my own traps.
“No, I can’t say I was sorry when I was forced to be idle that way, that I hadn’t kept up my reading, nor tried to keep it up, because I couldn’t then have settled down my mind to read; I know I couldn’t. I likes to hear the paper read well enough, if I’s resting; but old Bill, as often wolunteers to read, has to spell the hard words so, that one can’t tell what the devil he’s reading about. I never heers anything about books; I never heered of Robinson Crusoe, if it wasn’t once at the Wic. [Victoria Theatre]; I think there was some sich a name there. He lived on a deserted island, did he, sir, all by hisself? Well, I think, now you mentions it, I have heered on him. But one needn’t believe all one hears, whether out of books or not. I don’t know much good that ever anybody as I knows ever got out of books; they’re fittest for idle people. Sartinly I’ve seen working people reading in coffee-shops; but they might as well be resting theirselves to keep up their strength. Do I think so? I’m sure on it, master. I sometimes spends a few browns a-going to the play; mostly about Christmas. It’s werry fine and grand at the Wic., that’s the place I goes to most; both the pantomimers and t’ other things is werry stunning. I can’t say how much I spends a year in plays; I keeps no account; perhaps 5s. or so in a year, including expenses, sich as beer, when one goes out after a stopper on the stage. I don’t keep no accounts of what I gets, or what I spends, it would be no use; money comes and it goes, and it often goes a d——d sight faster than it comes; so it seems to me, though I ain’t in debt just at this time.
“I never goes to any church or chapel. Sometimes I hasn’t clothes as is fit, and I s’pose I couldn’t be admitted into sich fine places in my working dress. I was once in a church, but felt queer, as one does in them strange places, and never went again. They’re fittest for rich people. Yes, I’ve heered about religion and about God Almighty. What religion have I heered on? Why, the regular religion. I’m satisfied with what I knows and feels about it, and that’s enough about it. I came to tell you about trade and work, because Mr. —— told me it might do good; but religion hasn’t nothing to do with it. Yes, Mr. ——’s a good master, and a religious man; but I’ve known masters as didn’t care a d—n for religion, as good as him; and so you see it comes to much the same thing. I cares nothing about politics neither; but I’m a chartist.
“I’m not a married man. I was a-going to be married to a young woman as lived with me a goodish bit as my housekeeper” [this he said very demurely]; “but she went to the hopping to yarn a few shillings for herself, and never came back. I heered that she’d taken up with an Irish hawker, but I can’t say as to the rights on it. Did I fret about her? Perhaps not; but I was wexed.
“I’m sure I can’t say what I spends my wages in. I sometimes makes 12s. 6d. a week, and sometimes better than 21s. with night-work. I suppose grub costs 1s. a day, and beer 6d.; but I keeps no accounts. I buy ready-cooked meat; often cold b’iled beef, and eats it at any tap-room. I have meat every day; mostly more than once a day. Wegetables I don’t care about, only ingans and cabbage, if you can get it smoking hot, with plenty of pepper. The rest of my tin goes for rent and baccy and togs, and a little drop of gin now and then.”
The statement I have given is sufficiently explicit of the general opinions of the “regular scavagers” concerning literature, politics, and religion. On these subjects the great majority of the regular scavagers have no opinions at all, or opinions distorted, even when the facts seem clear and obvious, by ignorance, often united with its nearest of kin, prejudice and suspiciousness. I am inclined to think, however, that the man whose narrative I noted down was more dogged in his ignorance than the body of his fellows. All the intelligent men with whom I conversed, and whose avocations had made them familiar for years with this class, concurred in representing them as grossly ignorant.
This description of the scavagers’ ignorance, &c., it must be remembered, applies only to the “regular hands.” Those who have joined the ranks of the street-sweepers from other callings are more intelligent, and sometimes more temperate.
The system of concubinage, with a great degree of fidelity in the couple living together without the sanction of the law—such as I have described as prevalent among the costermongers and dustmen—is also prevalent among the regular scavagers.
I did not hear of habitual unkindness from the parents to the children born out of wedlock, but there is habitual neglect of all or much which a child should be taught—a neglect growing out of ignorance. I heard of two scavagers with large families, of whom the treatment was sometimes very harsh, and at others mere petting.
Education, or rather the ability to read and write, is not common among the adults in this calling, so that it cannot be expected to be found among their children. Some labouring men, ignorant themselves, but not perhaps constituting a class or a clique like the regular scavagers, try hard to procure for their children the knowledge, the want of which they usually think has barred their own progress in life. Other ignorant men, mixing only with “their own sort,” as is generally the case with the regular scavagers, and in the several branches of the business, often think and say that what they did without their children could do without also. I even heard it said by one scavager that it wasn’t right a child should ever think himself wiser than his father. A man who knew, in the way of his business as a private contractor for night-work, &c., a great many regular scavagers, “ran them over,” and came to the conclusion that about four or five out of twenty could read, ill or tolerably well, and about three out of forty could write. He told me, moreover, that one of the most intelligent fellows generally whom he knew among them, a man whom he had heard read well enough, and always understood to be a tolerable writer, the other day brought a letter from his son, a soldier abroad with his regiment in Lower Canada, and requested my informant to read it to him, as “that kind of writing,” although plain enough, was “beyond him.” The son, in writing, had availed himself of the superior skill of a corporal in his company, so that the letter, on family matters and feelings, was written by deputy and read by deputy. The costermongers, I have shown, when themselves unable to read, have evinced a fondness for listening to exciting stories of courts and aristocracies, and have even bought penny periodicals to have their contents read to them. The scavagers appear to have no taste for this mode of enjoying themselves; but then their leisure is far more circumscribed than that of the costermongers.
It must be borne in mind that I have all along spoken of the regular (many of them hereditary) scavagers employed by the more liberal contractors.
There are yet accounts of habitations, statements of wages, &c., &c., to be given, in connection with men working for the honourable masters, before proceeding to the scurf-traders.
The working scavagers usually reside in the neighbourhood of the dust-yards, occupying “second-floor backs,” kitchens (where the entire house is sublet, a system often fraught with great extortion), or garrets; they usually, and perhaps always, when married, or what they consider “as good,” have their own furniture. The rent runs from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 3d. weekly, an average being 1s. 9d. or 1s. 10d. One room which I was in was but barely furnished,—a sort of dresser, serving also for a table; a chest; three chairs (one almost bottomless); an old turn-up bedstead, a Dutch clock, with the minute-hand broken, or as the scavager very well called it when he saw me looking at it, “a stump;” an old “corner cupboard,” and some pots and domestic utensils in a closet without a door, but retaining a portion of the hinges on which a door had swung. The rent was 1s. 10d., with a frequent intimation that it ought to be 2s. The place was clean enough, and the scavager seemed proud of it, assuring me that his old woman (wife or concubine) was “a good sort,” and kept things as nice as ever she could, washing everything herself, where “other old women lushed.” The only ornaments in the room were three profiles of children, cut in black paper and pasted upon white card, tacked to the wall over the fire-place, for mantel-shelf there was none, while one of the three profiles, that of the eldest child (then dead), was “framed,” with a glass, and a sort of bronze or “cast” frame, costing, I was told, 15d. This was the apartment of a man in regular employ (with but a few exceptions).
Another scavager with whom I had some conversation about his labours as a nightman, for he was both, gave me a full account of his own diet, which I find to be sufficiently specific as to that of his class generally, but only of the regular hands.
THE LONDON SCAVENGER.
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
The diet of the regular working scavager (or nightman) seems generally to differ from that of mechanics, and perhaps of other working men, in the respect of his being fonder of salt and strong-flavoured food. I have before made the same remark concerning the diet of the poor generally. I do not mean, however, that the scavagers are fond of such animal food as is called “high,” for I did not hear that nightmen or scavagers were more tolerant of what approached putridity than other labouring men, and, despite their calling, might sicken at the rankness of some haunches of venison; but they have a great relish for highly-salted cold boiled beef, bacon, or pork, with a saucer-full of red pickled cabbage, or dingy-looking pickled onions, or one or two big, strong, raw onions, of which most of them seem as fond as Spaniards of garlic. This sort of meat, sometimes profusely mustarded, is often eaten in the beer-shops with thick “shives” of bread, cut into big mouthfuls with a clasp pocket-knife, while vegetables, unless indeed the beer-shop can supply a plate of smoking hot potatoes, are uncared for. The drink is usually beer. The same style of eating and the same kind of food characterize the scavager and nightman, when taking his meal at home with his wife or family; but so irregular, and often of necessity, are these men’s hours, that they may be said to have no homes, merely places to sleep or dose in.
A working scavager and nightman calculated for me his expenses in eating and drinking, and other necessaries, for the previous week. He had earned 15s., but 1s. of this went to pay off an advance of 5s. made to him by the keeper of a beer-shop, or, as he called it, a “jerry.”
| Daily. | Weekly. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| d. | s. | d. | |
| Rent of an unfurnished room | 1 | 9 | |
| Washing (average) | 3 | ||
| [The man himself washed the dress in which he worked, and generally washed his own stockings.] | |||
| Shaving (when twice a week) | 1 | ||
| Tobacco | 1 | 7 | |
| [Short pipes are given to these men at the beer-shops, or public-houses which they “use.”] | |||
| Beer | 4 | 2 | 4 |
| [He usually spent more than 4d. a day in beer, he said, “it was only a pot;” but this week more beer than usual had been given to him in nightwork.] | |||
| Gin | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| [The same with gin.] | |||
| Cocoa (pint at a coffee-shop). | 1½ | 10½ | |
| Bread (quartern loaf) (sometimes 5½d.) | 6 | 3 | 6 |
| Boiled salt beef (¾ lb. or ½ lb. daily, “as happened,” for two meals, 6d. per pound, average) | 4 | 2 | 4 |
| Pickles or Onions | 0¼ | 1¾ | |
| Butter | 1 | ||
| Soap | 1 | ||
| 13 | 2¼ | ||
Perhaps this informant was excessive in his drink. I believe he was so; the others not drinking so much regularly. The odd 9d., he told me, he paid to “a snob,” because he said he was going to send his half-boots to be mended.
This man informed me he was a “widdur,” having lost his old ’oman, and he got all his meals at a beer or coffee-shop. Sometimes, when he was a street-sweeper by day and a nightman by night, he had earned 20s. to 22s.; and then he could have his pound of salt meat a day, for three meals, with a “baked tatur or so, when they was in.” I inquired as to the apparently low charge of 6d. per pound for cooked meat, but I found that the man had stated what was correct. In many parts good boiled “brisket,” fresh cut, is 7d. and 8d. per lb., with mustard into the bargain; and the cook-shop keepers (not the eating-house people) who sell boiled hams, beef, &c., in retail, but not to be eaten on the premises, vend the hard remains of a brisket, and sometimes of a round, for 6d., or even less (also with mustard), and the scavagers like this better than any other food. In the brisk times my informant sometimes had “a hot cut” from a shop on a Sunday, and a more liberal allowance of beer and gin. If he had any piece of clothing to buy he always bought it at once, before his money went for other things. These were his proceedings when business was brisk.
In slacker times his diet was on another footing. He then made his supper, or second meal, for tea he seldom touched, on “fagots.” This preparation of baked meats costs 1d. hot—but it is seldom sold hot except in the evening—and ¾d., or more frequently two for 1½d., cold. It is a sort of cake, roll, or ball, a number being baked at a time, and is made of chopped liver and lights, mixed with gravy, and wrapped in pieces of pig’s caul. It weighs six ounces, so that it is unquestionably a cheap, and, to the scavager, a savoury meal; but to other nostrils its odour is not seductive. My informant regretted the capital fagots he used to get at a shop when he worked in Lambeth; superior to anything he had been able to meet with on the Middlesex side of the water. Or he dined off a saveloy, costing 1d., and bread; or bought a pennyworth of strong cheese, and a farthing’s worth of onions. He would further reduce his daily expenditure on cocoa (or coffee sometimes) to 1d., and his bread to three-quarters of a loaf. He ate, however, in average times, a quarter of a quartern loaf to his breakfast (sometimes buying a halfpennyworth of butter), a quarter or more to his dinner, the same to his supper, and the other, with an onion for a relish, to his beer. He was a great bread eater, he said; but sometimes, if he slept in the daytime, half a loaf would “stand over to next day.” He was always hungriest when at work among the street-mud, or night-soil, or when he had finished work.
On my asking him if he meant that he partook of the meals he had described daily, he answered “no,” but that was mostly what he had; and if he bought a bit of cold boiled, or even roast pork, “what offered cheap,” the expense was about the same. When he was drinking, and he did “make a break sometimes,” he ate nothing, and “wasn’t inclined to,” and he seemed rather to plume himself on this, as a point of economy. He had tasted fruit pies, but cared nothing for them; but liked four penn’orth of a hot meat or giblet pie on a Sunday. Batter-pudding he only liked if smoking hot; and it was “uncommon improved,” he said, “with an ingan!” Rum he preferred to gin, only it was dearer, but most of the scavagers, he thought, liked Old Tom (gin) best; but “they was both good.”
Of the drinking of these men I heard a good deal, and there is no doubt that some of them tope hard, and by their conduct evince a sort of belief that the great end of labour is beer. But it must be borne in mind that if inquiries are made as to the man best adapted to give information concerning any rude calling (especially), some talkative member of the body of these working men, some pot-house hero who has persuaded himself and his ignorant mates that he is an oracle, is put forward. As these men are sometimes, from being trained to, and long known in their callings, more prosperous than their fellows, their opinions seem ratified by their circumstances. But in such cases, or in the appearance of such cases, it has been my custom to make subsequent inquiries, or there might be frequent misleadings, were the statements of these men taken as typical of the feelings and habits of the whole body. The statement of the working scavager given under this head is unquestionably typical of the character of a portion of his co-workers, and more especially of what was, and in the sort of hereditary scavagers I have spoken of is, the character of the regular hands. There are now, however, many checks to prolonged indulgence in “lush,” as every man of the ruder street-sweeping class will call it. The contractors must be served regularly; the most indulgent will not tolerate any unreasonable absence from work, so that the working scavagers, at the jeopardy of their means of living, must leave their carouse at an hour which will permit them to rise soon enough in the morning.
The beer which these men imbibe, it should be also remembered, they regard as a proper part of their diet, in the same light, indeed, as they regard so much bread, and that among them the opinion is almost universal, that beer is necessary to “keep up their strength;” there are a few teetotallers belonging to the class; one man thought he knew five, and had heard of five others.
I inquired of the landlord of a beer-shop, frequented by these men, as to their potations, but he wanted to make it appear that they took a half-pint, now and then, when thirsty! He was evidently tender of the character of his customers. The landlord of a public house also frequented by them informed me that he really could not say what they expended in beer, for labourers of all kinds “used his tap,” and as all tap-room liquor was paid for on delivery in his and all similar establishments, he did not know the quantity supplied to any particular class. He was satisfied these men, as a whole, drank less than they did at one time; though he had no doubt some (he seemed to know no distinctions between scavagers, dustmen, and nightmen) spent 1s. a day in drink. He knew one scavager who was dozing about not long since for nearly a week, “sleepy drunk,” and the belief was that he had “found something.” The absence of all accounts prevents my coming to anything definite on this head, but it seems positive that these men drink less than they did. The landlord in question thought the statement I have given as to diet and drink perfectly correct for a regular hand in good earnings. I am assured, however, and it is my own opinion, after long inquiry, that one-third of their earnings is spent in drink.