London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

The blind people are mostly all of a religious turn of mind. They all make a point of attending divine service; and the majority of them are Catholics. My informant knew only five among his blind neighbours who were Protestants—and two of these were Presbyterians, one a Methodist, and two Churchmen; and on the other hand he numbered up fourteen Catholics, all going to the same chapel, and living within a short distance of himself. They are peculiarly distinguished by a love of music. “It’s a sure bit of bread to the most; besides, it makes them independent, you see, and that’s a great thing to people like us.” There is not one teetotaller, I am told, among the street blind, but they are not distinguished by a love of drink. The blind musicians often, when playing at public-houses, are treated to drink, and, indeed, when performing in the streets, are taken by drunken men to play at taverns, and there supplied with liquor; but they do not any of them make a habit of drinking. There is, however, one now in prison who is repeatedly intoxicated; and this, the blind say, is a great injury to them; for people who see one of them drunk in the streets, believe that they are all alike; and there is one peculiarity among them all—being continually mistaken for one another. However different they may be in features, still, from the circumstance of their being blind, and being mostly accompanied by a dog, or a guide, few persons can distinguish one from another. They are mostly very jealous, they tell me, because they say every one takes advantage of their affliction, even their own children, and their own wives. “Some of the wives dress themselves very gaily, because they know their husbands can’t see their fine clothes, particularly those that have got no children—then there’s none to tell. But, pray mind I only speaking of some of them—don’t blame the whole. People never took no money out of my dog’s basket—two gals of the town once did try to steal a shilling out of it, that some gentleman had dropped in, but the dog barked, and they gave a scream, and run away. Many of the blind men have married blind women—they say that they don’t like seeing women. If seeing men find it a hard job to take care of seeing women, how are blind men to do it?” My informant knows six blind men who have married blind wives—the blind wives, I am told, stick closer to home—and do not want to go to plays, or dances, or shows, and have no love of dress—and they are generally more sober than those who can see. “A blind person,” says one, “has no reason to be as wicked as those that can see—there’s not half the temptation, you know. The women do all their household duties as well as if they had their eyesight. They make puddings and pies, and boil them, or send them to the oven, as well, as quick, and as handy as a woman that can see. They sweep the floor without leaving a speck; and tidy the room, and black-lead the grate, and whiten the hearth, and dress the chimney-piece off quite handsome, I can tell you. They take great pride in their chimney-piece—they like other people to see it—and they take great pride in having their house quite clean and neat. Where I live it’s the remark of all, that they who can’t see have their houses the cleanest. I don’t know of any blind person that has a looking-glass over the mantelpiece, though. I’m sure that many would, if they had the money, just to please their friends. And, what’s more strange, the blind wives will wash their husbands’ shirts quite clean.” “The blind are very fond of their children, you see, sir,” said one; “we owe so much to them, they’re such helps to us, even from their very infancy. You’ll see a little thing that can hardly walk, leading her blind father about, and then, may be, our affliction makes them loves us the more. The blind people are more comfortable at home—they are more together, and more dependent on one another, and don’t like going out into company as others do. With women a love of company is mostly of a love of seeing others, and being seen themselves, so the blind wives is happy and contented at home. No man that could see, unless he was a profligate, would think of marrying a blind woman; and the blind women knows this, and that’s why they love their blind husbands the more—they pity one another, and so can’t help liking each other.” Now, it’s strange, that with so many blind couples living together, no one ever heard of any accident from fire with blind people—the fact is, their blindness makes them so careful, that there’s no chance of it: besides, when there’s two blind people together, they never hardly light a candle at all, except when a stranger comes in, and then they always ask him, before he leaves, to put the light out.

The blind people generally are persons of great feeling; they are very kind and charitable to persons who are in any way afflicted, or even to poor persons. Many of those who live on charity themselves are, I am assured, very generous to those that want. One told me that “a beggar had come to his house, and he had made him cry with his story; my heart” he said, “was that full I was ashamed.” They’re not particularly proud, though they like to be well-dressed, and they say that no one can get a wife so soon as a blind man. One assured me that he’d go into any lodging-house in the country and get two or three if he wanted—only they’d fight, he said. “You see in the lodging-houses there are many woman whose husbands (but they’re not married, you know) have told them to go on and said they would follow them, which of course they don’t; or there’s many in such places as wants a companion. When a blind man goes into one of these houses, a woman is sure to say to him, ‘Can I fetch you anything, master?’ Half an ounce of tea may be, and when they’ve got it, of course, they’re invited to have a cup, and that does the business. She becomes the blind man’s guide after that. The next morning, after telling one another where to meet—‘I’m going such a road,’ they whisper to each other,—away they starts. I’ve known many a blind man run away with a seeing man’s wife. The women, I think, does it for a living, and that’s all.

“I can’t see the least light in the world—not the brightest sun that ever shone. I have pressed my eye-balls—they are quite decayed, you see; but I have pushed them in, and they have merely hurt me, and the water has run from them faster than ever. I have never seen any colours when I did so.” (This question was asked to discover whether the illusion called “peacock’s feathers” could still be produced by pressure on the nerve). “I have been struck on the eye since I have been blind, and then I have seen a flash of fire like lightning. I know it’s been like that, because I’ve seen the lightning sometimes, when it’s been very vivid, even since I was stone blind. It was terrible pain when I was struck on the eye. A man one day was carrying some chairs along the street, and struck me right in the eye-ball with the end of the leg of one of the chairs; and I fell to the ground with the pain. I thought my heart was coming out of my mouth; then I saw the brightest flash that ever I saw, either before or since I was blind.” (I irritated the ball of the eye with the object of discovering whether the nerve was decayed, but found it impossible to produce any luminous impression—though I suspect this arose principally from the difficulty of getting him to direct his eye in the proper direction). “I know the difference of colours, because I remember them; but I can’t distinguish them by my touch, nor do I think that any blind man in the world ever could. I have heard of blind people playing at cards, but it’s impossible they can do so any other way than by having them marked. I know many that plays cards that way.” He was given two similar substances, but of different colours, to feel, but could not distinguish between them—both were the same to him, he said, “with the exception that one felt stiffer than the other. I know hundreds of people myself—and they know hundreds more—and none of us has ever heard of one that could tell colours by the feel. There’s blind people in the school can tell the colours of their rods; but they do so by putting their tongue to them, and so they can distinguish them that’s been dipped in copperas from them that hasn’t. I know blind people can take a clock to pieces, and put it together again, as well as any person that can see. Blind people gets angry when they hear people talk of persons seeing with their fingers. A man has told me that a blind person in St. James’s workhouse could read the newspaper with his fingers, but that, the blind know, is quite impossible.”

Many blind men can, I am told, distinguish between the several kinds of wood by touch alone. Mahogany, oak, ash, elm, deal, they say, have all a different feel. They declare it is quite ridiculous, the common report, that blind people can discern colours by the touch. One of my informants, who assured me that he was considered to be one of the cleverest of blind people, told me that he had made several experiments on this subject, and never could distinguish the least difference between black or red, or white, or yellow, or blue, or, indeed, any of the mixed colours. “My wife,” said one, “went blind so young, that she doesn’t never remember having seen the light; and I am often sorry for her that she has no idea of what a beautiful thing light or colours is. We often talk about it together, and then she goes a little bit melancholy, because I can’t make her understand what the daylight is like, or the great delight that there is in seeing it. I’ve often asked whether she knows that the daylight and the candlelight is of different colours, and she has told me she thinks they are the same; but then she has no notion of colours at all. Now, it’s such people as these I pities.” I told the blind man of Sanderson’s wonderful effect of imagination in conceiving that the art of seeing was similar to that of a series of threads being drawn from the distant object to the eye; and he was delighted with the explanation, saying, “he could hardly tell how a born blind man could come at such an idea.” On talking with this man, he told me he remembered having seen a looking-glass once—his mother was standing putting her cap on before it, and he thought he never saw anything so pretty as the reflection of the half-mourning gown she had on, and the white feathery pattern upon it (he was five years old then). He also remembered having seen his shadow, and following it across the street; these were the only two objects he can call to mind. He told me that he knew many blind men who could not comprehend how things could be seen, round or square, all at once; they are obliged, they say, to pass their fingers all over them; and how it is that the shape of a thing can be known in an instant, they cannot possibly imagine. I found out that this blind man fancied the looking-glass reflected only one object at once—only the object that was immediately in front of it; and when I told him that, looking in the glass, I could see everything in the room, and even himself, with my back turned towards him, he smiled with agreeable astonishment. He said, “You see how little I have thought about the matter.” There was a blind woman of his acquaintance, he informed me, who could thread the smallest needle with the finest hair in a minute, and never miss once. “She’ll do it in a second. Many blind women thread their needles with their tongues; the woman who stitches by the Polytechnic always does so.” My informant was very fond of music. One of the blind makes his own teeth, he told me; his front ones have all been replaced by one long bit of bone which he has fastened to the stumps of his two eye teeth: he makes them out of any old bit of bone he can pick up. He files them and drills a hole through them to fasten them into his head, and eats his food with them. He is obliged to have teeth because he plays the clarionet in the street. “Music,” he said, “is our only enjoyment, we all like to listen to it and learn it.” It affects them greatly, they tell me, and if a lively tune is played, they can hardly help dancing. “Many a tune I’ve danced to so that I could hardly walk the next day,” said one. Almost all of the blind men are clever at reckoning. It seems to come natural to them after the loss of their sight. By counting they say they spend many a dull hour—it appears to be all mental arithmetic with them, for they never aid their calculations by their fingers or any signs whatever. My informant knew a blind man who could reckon on what day it was new moon for a hundred years back, or when it will be new moon a century to come—he had never had a book read to him on the subject in his life—he was one of the blind wandering musicians. My informant told me he often sits for hours and calculates how many quarters of ounces there are in a ship-load of tea, and such like things. Many of the blind are very partial to the smell of flowers. My informant knew one blind man about the streets who always would have some kind of smelling flowers in his room.

“The blind are very ingenious; oh, very!” said one to me, “they can do anything that they can feel. One blind man who kept a lodging-house at Manchester and had a wife fond of drink, made a little chest of drawers (about two feet high), in which he used to put his money, and so cleverly did he arrange it that neither his wife nor any one else could get at the money without breaking the drawers all to pieces. Once while her blind husband was on his travels, she opened every drawer by means of false keys, and though she took each one out, she could find no means to get at the money, which she could hear jingling inside when she shook it. At last she got so excited over it that she sent for a carpenter, and even he was obliged to confess that he could not get to it without taking the drawers to pieces. The same blind man had a great fancy for white mice, and made a little house for them out of pieces of wood cut into the shape of bricks: there were doors, windows, and all,” said my informant. The blind are remarkable for the quickness of their hearing—one man assured me he could hear the lamp-posts in the streets, and, indeed, any substance (any solid thing he said) that he passed in the street, provided it be as high as his ear; if it were below that he could not hear it so well.

“Do you know, I can hear any substance in the street as I pass it by, even the lamp-post or a dead wall—anything that’s the height of my head, let it be ever so small, just as well, and tell what it is as well as you as can see. One night I was coming home—you’ll be surprised to hear this—along Burlington-gardens, between twelve and one o’clock, and a gentleman was following me. I knew he was not a poor man by his walk, but I didn’t consider he was watching me. I just heerd when I got between Sackville-street and Burlington-street. Oh, I knows every inch of the street, and I can go as quick as you can, and walk four mile an hour; know where I am all the while. I can tell the difference of the streets by the sound of my ear—a wide street and a narrow street—I can’t tell a long street till I get to the bottom of it. I can tell when I come to an opening or a turning just by the click on the ear, without either my touching with hand or stick. Well, as I was saying, this gentleman was noticing me, and just as I come to turn up Cork-street, which, you know, is my road to go into Bond-street, on my way home; just as I come into Cork-street, and was going to turn round the corner, the sergeant of police was coming from Bond-street, at the opposite corner of Cork-street, I heerd him, and he just stopped to notice me, but didn’t know the gentleman was noticing me too. I whipped round the corner as quick as any man that had his sight, and said, ‘Good night, policeman.’ I can tell a policeman’s foot anywhere, when he comes straight along in his regular way while on his beat, and they all know it too. I can’t tell it where there’s a noise, but in the stillness of the night nothing would beat me. I can’t hear the lamp-posts when there’s a noise. When I said, ‘Good night, policeman,’ the gentleman whipped across to him, and says, ‘Is that man really blind?’ and by this time I was half way up Cork-street, when the gentleman hallooed to me to stop; and he comes up, and says, says he, ‘Are you really blind?’ The sergeant of police was with him, and he says, ‘Yes, he is really blind, sir;’ and then he says, ‘How is it that you go so cleverly along the street if you’re blind?’ Well, I didn’t want to stop bothering with him, so I merely says, ‘I do far cleverer things than that. I can hear the lamp-post as well as you that can see it.’ He says, ‘Yes, because you know the distance from one to another.’ The sergeant stood there all the time, and he says, ‘No, that can’t be, for they’re not a regular distance one from another.’ Then the gentleman says, ‘Now, could you tell if I was standing in the street when you passed me by?’ I said, ‘Yes; but you mustn’t stand behind the lamp-post to deceive me with the sound of the substance.’ Then he went away to try me, and a fine try we had. He will laugh when he sees that they’re all put down. When he went away I recollected that if he didn’t stand as near to the pavement as the lamp-post is, and remain still, he’d deceive me. Oh, certainly, I couldn’t hear him if he was far off, and I shouldn’t hear him in the same way as I can hear the lamp-posts if he didn’t stand still. The policeman hallooed after him, and told him that he mustn’t deceive me; but he wouldn’t make no answer, for fear I should catch the sound of his voice and know where he was. I had agreed to touch every substance as I went along and round the street to look for him; we always call it looking though we are blind. Well, when he had stood still the sergeant told me to go; he’s the sergeant of St. James’ station-house, and has been often speaking to me since about it; and on I went at the rate of about three mile an hour, and touched every lamp-post without feeling for them, but just struck them with my stick as I went by, without stopping, and cried out, ‘There’s a substance.’ At last I come to him. There’s a mews, you know, just by the hotel in Cork-street, and the gentleman stood between the mews and Clifford-street, in Cork-street; and when I come up to him, I stopped quite suddenly, and cried out ‘There’s a substance.’ As I was offering to touch him with my stick, he drew back very softly, just to deceive me. Then he would have another try, but I picked him out again, but that wouldn’t satisfy him, and he would try me a third time; and then, when I come up to him, he kept drawing back, right into the middle of the road. I could hear the stones scrunch under his feet; so I says, ‘Oh, that’s not fair;’ and he says, ‘Well, I’m bet.’ Then he made me a present, and said that he would like to spend an hour some night with me again. I don’t think he was a doctor, ’cause he never took no notice of my eyes, but he was a real gentleman—the sergeant said so.

“When I dream, it’s just the same as I am now, I dream of hearing and touching. The last dream that I had was about a blind man—that’s in prison just now. I went into his wife’s house, I knew it was her house by the sound of my foot in it. I can tell whether a place is clean or dirty by the sound. Then I heard her say, ‘Well, how do you get on?’ and I said ‘Very well;’ and she said ‘Sit down,’ and after sitting there a little while, I heard a voice at the door, and I said to her, ‘Bless me, wouldn’t you think that was John;’ she said, ‘Yes, I would,’ but she took no farther notice, and I heard his voice repeatedly. I thought he was speaking to a child, and I got up and went to the door, and says, ‘Halloa! is this you;’ I was quite surprised and took him by the arm (laying his hand on his own) and he was in his shirt sleeves. I knew that by the feel. Then I was kind of afeard of him, though I am not afeard of anything. I was rather surprised that he should come out three weeks before his time. Then I dreamt that he tried to frighten and pushed me down on the floor, that way (making the motion sideways), to make me believe he was a ghost. I felt it as plain as I should if you were to do the same to me now. I says to him ‘Don’t be so foolish, sit down’, and I pushed him away and got up. When I got up, his wife says to him, ‘Sit down, John, and don’t be so foolish; sit down, and behave yourself;’ and then we set down the two of us, just on the edge of the bed (here he moved his hand along the edge of the table). I thought it was turned down. He’s a very resolute man and a wicked one, this blind man is, so I would like to have been out from him, but I was afeard to go, for he’d got a hold of me; after that I waked and I heerd no more. But it’s my real opinion that he’s dead now, it is indeed, through having such dreams of him I think so; and the same night his wife dreamt that I was killed and all knocked into about a hundred pieces; and those two dreams convince me something’s come to him. Oh, I do firmly believe in dreams, that I do; they’re sent for people to foresee things, I’m certain of it, if people will only take notice of ’em. I have been many times in prison myself, while I’ve been travelling the country. You know in many towns they comes and takes you up without given you never no warning if they catches you begging. I was took up once in Liverpool, once in Hull, once in Exeter, and once in Biddeford, in Devonshire. Most of the times I had a month, and one of them only seven days. I think that’s very unjust—never to say you mustn’t do it; but to drag you off without never no warning. Every time before I was put in quod I had always dreamt that my father was starving to death for want of victuals, and at last I got to know whenever I dreamt that, I was sure of going to prison. I never dreamt about my mother; she died, you see, when I was very young, and I never remember hearing her speak but once or twice. My father never did the thing that was right to me, and I didn’t care much about him. When I was at home I was very fond of pigeons, and my mind went so much upon them, that I used to dream of it the night before, always when they had eggs, and when my rabbits had young ones too. I know when I wake in the morning that I am awake by my thoughts. Sometimes I dream I’ve got a lot of money in my hand, and when I wake and put my hand to feel it, it’s gone, there’s none there, and so I know it’s been only a dream. I’m much surprised at my disappointment though.”

Many of the blind are very fond of keeping birds and animals; some of them keep pigeons in one of their rooms, others have cocks and hens, and others white mice and rabbits, and almost all have dogs, though all are not led about by them. Some blind men take delight in having nothing but bull-dogs, not to lead them, but solely for fancy. Nobody likes a dog so much as a blind man, I am told—“they can’t—the blind man is so much beholden to his dog, he does him such favours and sarvices.” “With my dog I can go to any part of London as independent as any one who has got his sight. Yesterday afternoon when I left your house, sir, I was ashamed of going through the street. People was a saying, ‘Look’ee there, that’s the man as says he’s blind.’ I was going so quick, it was so late you know, they couldn’t make it out, but without my dog I must have crawled along, and always be in great fear. The name of my present dog is ‘Keeper;’ he is a mongrel breed; I have had him nine years, and he is with me night and day, goes to church with me and all. If I go out without him, he misses me, and then he scampers all through the streets where I am in the habit of going, crying and howling after me, just as if he was fairly out of his mind. It’s astonishing. Often, before my first blind wife died (for I’ve been married twice to blind women, and once to a seeing woman), I used to say I’d sooner lose my wife than my dog; but when I did lose her I was sorry that ever I did say so. I didn’t know what it was. I’m sorry for it yet, and ever will be sorry for it; she was a very good woman, and had fine principles. I shall never get another that I liked so much as the first. My dog knows every word I say to him. Tell him to turn right or left, or cross over, and whip! round he goes in a moment. Where I go for my tobacco, at the shop in Piccadilly, close to the Arcade—it’s down six or seven steps, straight down—and when I tells Keeper to go to the baccy shop, off he is, and drags me down the steps, with the people after me, thinking he’s going to break my neck down the place, and the people stands on top the steps making all kinds of remarks, while I’m below. If he was to lose me to-night or to-morrow, he’d come back here and rise the whole neighbourhood. He knows any public-house, no matter whether he was there before or not; just whisper to him, go to the public-house, and away he scampers and drags me right into the first he comes to. Directly I whisper to him, go to the public-house, he begins playing away with the basket he has in his mouth, throwing it up and laying it down—throwing it and laying it down for pleasure; he gets his rest there, and that’s why he’s so pleased. It’s the only place I can go to in my rounds to sit down. Oh, he’s a dear clever fellow. Now, only to show you how faithful he is, one night last week I was coming along Burlington-gardens, and I stopped to light my pipe as I was coming home, and I let him loose to play a bit and get a drink; and after I had lit my pipe I walked on, for I knew the street very well without any guide. I didn’t take notice of the dog, for I thought he was following me. I was just turning into Clifford-street when I heard the cries of him in Burlington-gardens. I know his cry, let him be ever so far away; the screech that he set up was really quite dreadful; it would grieve anybody to hear him. So I puts my fingers in my mouth and gives a loud whistle; and at last he heard me, and then up he comes tearing along and panting away as if his heart was in his mouth; and when he gets up to me he jumped up to me right upon my back, and screams like—as if really he wanted to speak—you can’t call it panting, because it’s louder than that, and he does pant when he a’n’t tired at all; all I can say is, it’s for all the world like his speaking, and I understands it as such. If I say a cross word to him after he’s lost—such as, ah, you rascal, you—he’ll just stand of one side, and give a cry just like a Christian. I’ve known him break the windows up two story high when I’ve left him behind, and down he would have been after me only he durstn’t jump out. I’ve had Keeper nine year. The dog I had before him was Blucher; he was a mongrel too; he had a tail like a wolf, an ear like a fox, and a face black like a monkey. I had him thirteen year. He was as clever as Keeper, but not so much loved as he is. At last he went blind; he was about two year losing his sight. When I found his eyes was getting bad I got Keeper. The way I first noticed him going blind was when I would come to cross a street on my way home; at nightfall the shade of the house on the opposite side, as we was crossing, would frighten him and drive him in the middle of the road; and he wouldn’t draw to the pavement till he found he was wrong; and then after that he began to run again the lamp-posts in the dark; when he did this he’d cry out just like a Christian. I was sorry for him, and he knowed that, for I used to fret. I was sorry for him on account of my own affliction. At last I was obligated to take to Keeper. I got him of another blind man, but he had no larning in him when he come to me. I was a long time teaching him, for I didn’t do it all at once. I could have teached him in a week, but I used to let the old dog have a run, while I put Keeper into the collar for a bit” (here the blind man was some time before he could proceed for his tears), “and so he larnt all he knows, little by little. Now Keeper and Blucher used to agree pretty well; but I’ve got another dog now, named Dash, and Keeper’s as jealous of him as a woman is of a man. If I say, ‘Come Keeper, come and have the collar on,’ I may call twenty times before he’ll come; but if I say, ‘Dash, come and have the collar on,’ Keeper’s there the first word, jumping up agin me, and doing anything but speak. At last my old Blucher went stone blind, as bad as his master; it was, poor thing; and then he used to fret so when I went out without him that I couldn’t bear it, and so got at length to take him always with me, and then he used to follow the knock of my stick. He done so for about six months, and then I was one night going along Piccadilly and I stops speaking to a policeman, and Blucher misses me; he couldn’t hear where I was for the noise of the carriages. He didn’t catch the sound of my stick, and couldn’t hear my voice for the carriages, so he went seeking me into the middle of the road, and there a buss run over him, poor thing. I heerd him scream out and I whistled to him, and he came howling dreadful on to the pavement again. I didn’t think he was so much hurt then, for I puts the collar on him to take him safe back, and he led me home blind as he was. The next morning he couldn’t rise up at all, his hind parts was useless to him. I took him in my arms and found he couldn’t move. Well, he never eat nor drink nothing for a week, and got to be in such dreadful pain that I was forced to have him killed. I got a man to drown him in a bag. I could’nt have done it myself for all the world. It would have been as bad to me as killing a Christian. I used to grieve terribly after I’d lost him. I couldn’t get him off my mind. I had had him so many years, and he had been with me night and day, my constant companion, and the most faithful friend I ever had, except Keeper: there’s nothing in the world can beat Keeper for faithfulness—nothing.”

Of the Life of a Blind boot-lace Seller.

The blind boot lace-seller who gave me the following history of his life was the original of the portrait given in No. 17. He was a tall, strongly-built man. In face he was ghastly, his cheek bones were sharp and high, his nose flat to his face, and his eyes were so deeply sunk in that he had more the appearance of a death’s head than of a living man. His shirt was scrupulously clean. He wore a bright red cotton neckerchief and a plaid waistcoat of many colours. His dog accompanied him and never left his master’s side one moment.