Whose hand struck off the fetters from the slave,
And his who sought out woe in dungeons deep,
Did he not fight for Toil's sad sons and daughters?
Was not his voice loud for the worker's right?
Was he not potent to arrest the slaughters
Of Capital and Labour's desperate fight?
Eventually a tombstone was erected, bearing the words: "He sang the Song of the Shirt," but the pension continued to his widow lapsed on her death a year later. A sum of £800, collected by public subscription, was all that was available for the children, Lord John Russell, then Premier, having found himself unable to extend the pension for their benefit, at a time when, as Punch reminded him, the Duchess of Inverness, widow of the Duke of Sussex, was drawing a pension of £1,000 a year. "The Song of the Shirt" rang through the land, but it did not end the hardships of the sweated sempstress. Within a year Punch was moved to indignation by the story of Esther Pierce, paid 6d. for embroidering eighty blossoms on a silk shawl, and charged with pawning the goods of her employer. In 1848, under the heading "The Cheap Shirt Market," we read of a woman prosecuted on a similar charge, who was paid 2s. 6d. a dozen for making up shirts, or 2½d. apiece, and on these earnings supported herself, two children and a husband out of work. As late as 1859 the sweated shirt makers were still receiving only 4s. 6d. a dozen. No wonder is it that when the movement in favour of cottage gardens was frowned upon in some quarters on the ground that flowers here were "out of place," Punch retorted with the bitter jibe: "What has the labourer to do with stocks but sit in them?"
The Duke of Norfolk's Panacea
No wonder again that a legal pillory of harsh sentences was a constant feature of his pages in the 'forties and 'fifties. A humane magistrate who refused in 1845 to hear a charge of wood-stealing from a hedge brought against a man earning 7s. a week—the common rate at the time for agricultural labourers—stated from the Bench that he knew of good hands in Warwickshire who were earning only 3s. and 3s. 10d. a week. Meat was a luxury: only the elders got bacon: the children potatoes and salt: bread was 10d. a loaf. Yet this was the time when the Duke of Norfolk seriously proposed that the poor should eke out their meagre fare by the use of curry powder,[1] a suggestion that recalls the historic comment of the French lady, shortly before the Revolution, on hearing that the peasantry had no bread, "Then why don't they eat cake?" Punch dealt faithfully with this ducal gaffe under the heading, "A Real Blessing to Landlords":—
The genuine Anti-Appetitive Curry Powder, strongly recommended by the Duke of Norfolk, is the labourer's only true substitute for bread and meat. It possesses the singular property of deluding the empty stomach into a sense of fullness, and is calculated to relieve those distressing symptoms of vacuity which result from living on seven shillings a week. It may be warranted to supersede potatoes and bacon; containing in fact, in itself, the essence of gammon; and one pinch dissolved in a tumbler of hot water is equal to a pot of beer. Landed proprietors, not wishing to reduce their rents, will find this preparation admirably calculated to reconcile labourers with their present rate of wages by enabling them almost entirely to dispense with food. Sold in pots, at from one shilling. Agricultural societies supplied.
N.B.—A liberal allowance on taking a quantity.