“On the Death of Old Bennet,
the
News Cryer
| “One evening, when the sun was just gone down, And I was walking thro’ the noisy town, A sudden silence through each street was spread, As if the soul of London had been fled. Much I enquired the cause, but could not hear, Till fame, so frightened, that she did not dare To raise her voice, thus whisper’d in my ear:— Bennet, the prince of hawkers, is no more, Bennet, my Herald on the British shore, Bennet, by whom, I own myself outdone, Tho’ I a hundred mouths, he had but one, He, when the list’ning town he would amuse, Made Echo tremble with his ‘Bloody news!’ No more shall Echo, now his voice return, Echo for ever must in silence mourn,— Lament, ye heroes, who frequent the wars, The great proclaimer of your dreadful scars. Thus wept the conqueror who the world o’ercame, Homer was waiting to enlarge his fame, Homer, the first of hawkers that is known, Great News from Troy, cried up and down the town, None like him has there been for ages past, Till our stentorian Bennet came at last, Homer and Bennet were in this agreed, Homer was blind, and Bennet could not read!” |
In our own days there has been legislation for the benefit of tender ears; and there are now penalties, with police constables to enforce them, against “All persons blowing any horn or using any other noisy instrument, for the purpose of calling persons together, or of announcing any show or entertainment, or for the purpose of hawking, selling, distributing, or collecting any article, or of obtaining money or alms.” These are the words of the Police Act of 1839; and they are stringent enough to have nearly banished from our streets all those uncommon noises which did something to relieve the monotony of the one endless roar of the tread of feet and the rush of wheels.
Mr. Henry Mayhew, in his admirable work of “London Labour and London Poor,” writing in 1851, under the head “Of the Sellers of Second Editions,” says:—
“I believe that there is not now in existence—unless it be in a workhouse and unknown to his fellows, or engaged in some other avocation, and lost sight of by them—any one who sold ‘Second Editions’ of the Courier evening paper at the time of the Duke of York’s Walcheren expedition, at the period of the battle of the Nile, during the continuance of the Peninsular war, or even at the battle of Waterloo. There were a few old men—some of whom had been soldiers or sailors, and others who have simulated it—surviving within these five or six years and some later, who ‘worked Waterloo,’ but they were swept off, I was told, by the cholera.”
Clean Your Honour’s Shoes.
| “Temper the foot within this vase of oil, And let the little tripod aid thy toil; On this methinks I see the walking crew, At thy request, support the miry shoe; The foot grows black that was with dirt embrown’d, And in thy pocket jingling halfpence sound.” Gay’s “Trivia.” |