In the course of a former inquiry into the character and condition of street performers, I received the following account from a blind musician:—
“The street blind tried, some years back, to maintain a burying and sick club of our own; but we were always too poor. We live in rooms. I don’t know one blind musician who lives in a lodging-house. I myself know a dozen blind men now performing in the streets of London. The blind musicians are chiefly married men. I don’t know one who lives with a woman unmarried. The loss of sight changes a man, he doesn’t think of women, and women don’t think of him. We are of a religious turn, too, generally.
“When we agreed to form the blind club there was not more than a dozen members. These consisted of two basket-makers; one mat-maker; four violin players; myself; and my two mates; and this was the number when it dropped for want of funds; that’s now sixteen years ago. We were to pay 1s. a month, and sick members were to have 5s. a week when they had paid two years. Our other rules were the same as other clubs. There’s a good many blind who play at sailors dances, Wapping and Deptford way. We seldom hire children to lead us in the streets; we have plenty of our own generally. I have five. Our wives are generally women that have their eyesight; but some blind men marry blind women.”
My informant was satisfied that there were at least 100 blind men and women getting their living in the streets, and about 500 throughout the country. There are many who stay continually in Brighton, Bristol, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Plymouth, and indeed all large towns. “There are a great many blind people, I am told,” he said, “in Cornwall. It’s such a humane place for them; the people has great feeling for the blind; they’re very religious there, and a many lose their sight in the mines, and that’s what makes them have a feeling for others so.” This man heard a calculation made some time back, that there were 5000 blind people, including those in schools and asylums, within five miles round St. Paul’s. The most of the blind have lost their sight by the small-pox—nine out of every ten of the musicians have done so; since the vaccination has been discovered, I am told the cases of blindness from small-pox have been considerably increased. “Oh, that was a very clever thing—very,” said the blind boot-lace seller to me. Those who have not lost their sight by the small-pox, have gone blind from accidents, such as substances thrown or thrust in the eyes, or inflammation induced from cold and other ailments. My informant was not acquainted with one blind person in the streets who had been born blind. One of his acquaintance who had been blind from birth caught the small-pox, and obtained his sight after recovery at eight years old. “The great majority have lost their sight at an early age—when mere children, indeed; they have consequently been trained to no employment; those few who have” (my informant knew two) “been educated in the blind schools as basket-makers, are unable to obtain employment at this like a seeing person. Why, the time that a blind man’s feeling for the hole to have a rod through, a seeing man will have it through three or four times. The blind people in the streets mostly know one another; they say they have all a feeling of brotherly love for another, owing to their being similarly afflicted. If I was going along the street, and had a guide with me that could see, they would say, ‘Here’s a blind man or blind woman coming;’ I would say, ‘Put me up to them so as I’ll speak to them;’ then I should say, as I laid my hand upon them, ‘Holloa, who’s this?’ they’d say, ‘I’m blind.’ I should answer, ‘So am I.’ ‘What’s your name?’ would be the next question. ‘Oh, I have heard tell of you,’ most like, I should say. ‘Do you know so and so?’ I would say, ‘Yes, he’s coming to see me,’ or perhaps, ‘I’m going to see him on Sunday:’ then we say, ‘Do you belong to any of the Institutions?’ that’s the most particular question of all; and if he’s not a traveller, and we never heard tell of one another, the first thing we should ask would be, ‘How did you lose your sight?’ You see, the way in which the blind people in the streets gets to know one another so well, is by meeting at the houses of gentlemen when we goes for our pensions.”
The boot, shoe, and stay laces, are carried by the blind, I am told “seldom for sale;” for it’s very few they sell of them. “They have,” they say, “to prevent the police or mendicity from interfering with them, though the police do not often show a disposition to obstruct them.” “The officers of the Mendicity Society,” they tell me, “are their worst enemies.” These, however, have desisted from molesting them, because the magistrates object to commit a blind man to prison. The blind never ask anybody for anything, they tell me their cry is simply “Bootlace! Bootlace!” When they do sell, they charge 1½d. per pair for the leather boot-laces, 1d. per pair the silk boot-laces, and ½d. per pair for the cotton boot-laces, and ½d. each for the stay-laces. They generally carry black laces only, because the white ones are so difficult to keep clean. For the stay-laces they pay 2d. a dozen, and for the boot-laces 5d. a dozen, for the leather or for the silk ones; and 1¼d. for the cotton; each of the boot-laces is double, so that a dozen makes a dozen pair. They buy them very frequently at a swag-shop in Compton-street. My informant carried only the black-cotton laces, and doesn’t sell six-penny worth in a week. He did not know of a blind boot lace-seller that sold more than he did.
“Formerly the blind people in the street used to make a great deal of money; up to the beginning of the peace, and during all the war, the blind got money in handfuls. Where there was one blind man travelling then, there’s ten now. If they didn’t take 2l. and 2l. 10s. a day in a large town, it was reckoned a bad day’s work for the musicianers. Almost all the blind people then played music. In war time there was only one traveller (tramp); there are 100 now. There was scarcely a common lodging-house then in one town out of the three; and now there’s not a village hardly in the country but what there’s one, and perhaps two or three. Why the lodging-houses coin money now. Look at a traveller’s house where there’s twenty beds (two in each bed), at 3d. each, and that’s 10s. you know. There was very few blind beggars then, and what there was done well. Certainly, done well; they could get hatfuls of money almost, but then money was of no valley scarcely; you could get nothing for it most; but now if you get a little, you can buy a plenty with it. What is worth 6d. now fetched 2s. then. I wasn’t in the streets then, I wish I had been, I should have made a fortin, I think I should. The blind beggars then could get 2l. a day if they went to look for it.” “I myself,” said one, “when I first began, have gone and sat myself down by the side of the road and got my 1l., all in half-pence. When I went to Braintree, I stood beside a public-house, the ‘Orange Tree,’ just by where the foot-people went on to the fair ground, and I took 15s. a day for two days only, standing there a pattering my lamentation from 1 o’clock till the dusk in the evening. This is what I said:—
‘You feeling Christians look with pity,
Unto my grief relate—
Pity my misfortune,
For my sufferings are great.