“’Taint in a woman’s natur’, mum, to like smoke,” he said, when I hinted that he need not put out his pipe, and no matter when we met I always received from him this bit of politeness.
Rumour reached me one morning, after a short visit to the country, that a dilapidated tenement or two, in this deplorable neighbourhood had fallen down, and on making my way to the place, the first person I encountered was Uncle Bill, pipe in mouth, and with a half-quartern loaf in one hand, and a rasher of bacon in the other.
Before I could say a word the badly wrapped up rasher was thrust into his coat pocket, the pipe extinguished, and thrust in after it, and a smile and nod of recognition were awarded to me.
“Houses falling, mum? Oh! yes, it’s as fact as fact. Come down without a moment’s warning, afore you know’d where you were, I can tell you. I had a narrow escape.”
“What, were you there?”
“To be sure I was. Where should I be if I warn’t at home. It was at my old house. I’m in here, now,” he continued, pointing.
“There was the house up, as may be, lars night, and then, in the morning, it was a tumble-down heap o’ smash, with broken bedsteads, and chairs, and chesties of drawers, and all sorts, tumbled together into a mash, with bricks and mortar, and laths and plaster, and beams. It’s a mussy as no more wasn’t killed; for there was, counting myself, four-and-twenty people as lived in that house, and many had to run out for their lives. People think that houses will stand for ever; and when a house ain’t fit for nothing else but pulling down, some one buys the lease, puts a little whitewash on, and then lets all the rooms out at four or five shillings a week to poor people, while the old house groans and grumbles, and shakes on its pins awful. To-night, perhaps, Braggs, the cobbler in the back room, will have a row with his wife, and they’ll be tearing about till the place shivers again. Night afore, perhaps it was Dennis Murphy and his missus getting a bit excited over a quartern of gin, and then they must get dancing up in their attic till other people’s heads get plastered with hits o’ whitewash as falls off the ceilings—only ’taint whitewash now, because it’s turned t’other colour. Then the old house begins to show its sore places, and you can see an elbow shoving out here, and a crack there; first-floor winder sill’s down on one side, and Mrs Tibbs out of the second-floor back, when she pays her rent, tells the landlord as her door sticks so that she can’t open and shet it; and then, as soon as Mrs Sykes in the second-floor front knows as her neighbour has spoken, she tells the landlord as her window won’t move. Then the first-floors say as there’s a crack across their ceiling, and black dust falls out inter the bread and butter. And then what d’yer think the landlord does—eh? Get it all seen to, and shored up, and so on—eh? You’d think so, now, wouldn’t you? But he don’t; for I’ll tell you what he does—he swears, that’s what he does, and says as soon as ever people will pay up their rent and make all square, he’ll do the house up.
“That’s a thing as he can promise safe enough, for there’s no fear of that coming to pass; for they’re all more or less behind, bless you, and he holds ’em as tight as wax. ‘Tell you what it is,’ he says, one day, ‘them as don’t like the place had better leave it, and if I have any more complaints I’ll raise the rent.’
“That was a quieter directly, you see; for they were all more or less in his power from being behindhand. Houses and lodgings for poor people are dreadful scarce in London, and landlords and tenants knows it; and folks will put up with anything sooner than have to move. And that’s just how it was in this house—people grumbled and bore it; till one morning down it came with a rush, and three or four were killed dead, and ever so many cut up all sorts of ways. But, there, that ain’t nothing new, bless you. We are used to that sort of thing in these courts.
“It was about seven o’clock in the morning, I should say, and fortunately some had got up and gone to work; but working at home on the piece, I wasn’t so particular to half an hour; but I was lying there thinking of rousing out, when all at once I heard a sharp, loud crack, and then another and another, followed by a curious rushing noise, and by a shriek or two. For a moment or two I thought it was thunder, and I lay quite still; then came a rattling down of rubbish, and I saw the end wall of my room seem to bulge gently out, when there was a fierce rumbling crash, and I was hanging to a broken beam sticking out of the wall, clinging to it with bleeding hands, ready to drop each moment on to the jagged pile of ruins underneath me—a good thirty feet, and from which now came slowly up a thick cloud of dust, and from out of it every now and then a shriek or a groan.