And send me to Rome to the Pope.’
“They shod me, sir. Who’s they? Why, the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman. I call my clothes after them I earn money by to buy them with. My shoes I call Pope Pius; my trowsers and braces, Calcraft; my waistcoat and shirt, Jael Denny; and my coat, Love Letters. A man must show a sense of gratitude in the best way he can. But I didn’t start the cardinal’s hat; I thought it might prove disagreeable to Sir Robert Peel’s dress lodgers.” [What my informant said further of the Pope, I give under the head of the Chaunter.] “There was very little doing,” he continued, “for some time after I gave you an account before; hardly a slum worth a crust and a pipe of tobacco to us. A slum’s a paper fake,—make a foot-note of that, sir. I think Adelaide was the first thing I worked after I told you of my tomfooleries. Yes it was,—her helegy. She weren’t of no account whatsomever, and Cambridge was no better nor Adelaide. But there was poor Sir Robert Peel,—he was some good; indeed, I think he was as good as 5s. a day to me for the four or five days when he was freshest. Browns were thrown out of the windows to us, and one copper cartridge was sent flying at us with 13½d. in it, all copper, as if it had been collected. I worked Sir Robert at the West End, and in the quiet streets and squares. Certainly we had a most beautiful helegy. Well, poor gentleman, what we earned on him was some set-off to us for his starting his new regiment of the Blues—the Cook’s Own. Not that they’ve troubled me much. I was once before Alderman Kelly, when he was Lord Mayor, charged with obstructing, or some humbug of that sort. ‘What are you, my man?’ says he quietly, and like a gentleman. ‘In the same line as yourself, my lord,’ says I. ‘How’s that?’ says he. ‘I’m a paper-worker for my living, my lord,’ says I. I was soon discharged; and there was such fun and laughing, that if I’d had a few slums in my pocket, I believe I could have sold them all in the justice-room.
“Haynau was a stunner, and the drayman came their caper just in the critical time for us, as things was growing very taper. But I did best with him in chaunting; and so, as you want to hear about chaunting, I’ll tell you after. We’re forced to change our patter—first running, then chaunting, and then standing—oftener than we used to.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF STREET-ART—No. I.
Horrible and Bar-bari-ous Murder of Poor
JAEL DENNY,
THE ILL-FATED VICTIM OF THOMAS DRORY.
“Then Calcraft was pretty tidy browns. He was up for starving his mother,—and what better can you expect of a hangman? Me and my mate worked him down at Hatfield, in Essex, where his mother lives. It’s his native, I believe. We sold her one. She’s a limping old body. I saw the people look at her, and they told me arterards who she was. ‘How much?’ says she. ‘A penny, marm,’ say I. ‘Sarve him right,’ says she. We worked it, too, in the street in Hoxton where he lives, and he sent out for two, which shows he’s a sensible sort of character in some points, after all. Then we had a ‘Woice from the Gaol! or the Horrors of the Condemned Cell! Being the Life of William Calcraft, the present Hangman.’ It’s written in the high style, and parts of it will have astonished the hangman’s nerves before this. Here’s a bit of the patter, now:
“Let us look at William Calcraft,” says the eminent author, “in his earliest days. He was born about the year 1801, of humble but industrious parents, at a little village in Essex. His infant ears often listened to the children belonging to the Sunday schools of his native place, singing the well-known words of Watt’s beautiful hymn,
‘When e’er I take my walks abroad,