The Clothing of the street-children, however it may vary in texture, fashion, and colour, has one pervading characteristic—it is never made for the wearers. The exceptions to this rule seem to be those, when a child has run away and retains, through good fortune or natural acuteness, the superior attire he wore before he made the choice—if choice he had—of a street life; and where the pride of a mother whose costermonger husband is “getting on,” clothes little Jack or Bill in a new Sunday suit. Even then the suit is more likely to be bought ready-made than “made to measure,” nor is it worn in business hours until the gloss of novelty has departed.
The boys and girls wear every variety of clothing; it is often begged, but if bought is bought from the fusty stocks of old clothes in Petticoat and Rosemary-lanes. These rags are worn by the children as long as they will hold, or can be tied or pinned together, and when they drop off from continued wear, from dirt, and from the ravages of vermin, the child sets his wits to work to procure more. One mode of obtaining a fresh supply is far less available than it was three or four years back. This was for the lads to denude themselves of their rags, and tearing them up in the casual-ward of a workhouse, as it were compel the parish-officers to provide them with fresh apparel.
This mode may be successful in parts of the country still, but it is not so, or to a very limited extent, in town. The largest, and what was accounted by the vagrants the most liberal, of all the casual wards of the metropolitan workhouses, that of Marylebone, has been closed above two years. So numerous were the applicants for admission, and so popular among the vagrants was Marylebone workhouse, that a fever resulted, and attacked that large establishment. It was not uncommon for the Irish who trudged up from Liverpool, to be advised by some London vagrant whom they met, to go at once, when they reached the capital, to Marylebone workhouse, and that the Irishman might not forget a name that was new to him, his friendly adviser would write it down for him, and a troop of poor wretched Irish children, with parents as wretched, would go to Marylebone workhouse, and in their ignorance or simplicity, present the address which had been given to them, as if it were a regular order for admission! Boys have sometimes committed offences that they might get into prison, and as they contrived that their apparel should be unfit for purposes of decency, or perhaps their rags had become unfit to wear, they could not be sent naked into the streets again, and so had clothing given to them. A shirt will be worn by one of those wretched urchins, without washing, until it falls asunder, and many have no shirts. The girls are on the whole less ragged than the boys, the most disgusting parts of their persons or apparel—I speak here more of the vagrant or the mixed vagrant trading and selling girl (often a child prostitute) than of the regular street-seller—the worst particular of these girls’ appearance, I repeat, is in their foul and matted hair, which looks as if it would defy sponge, comb, and brush to purify it, and in the broken and filthy boots and stockings, which they seem never to button or to garter.
The Propensities of the street-children are the last division of my inquiry, and an ample field is presented, alike for wonder, disgust, pity, hope, and regret.
Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of these wretched children is their extraordinary licentiousness. Nothing can well exceed the extreme animal fondness for the opposite sex which prevails amongst them; some rather singular circumstances connected with this subject have come to my knowledge, and from these facts it would appear that the age of puberty, or something closely resembling it, may be attained at a much less numerical amount of years than that at which most writers upon the human species have hitherto fixed it. Probably such circumstances as the promiscuous sleeping together of both sexes, the example of the older persons indulging in the grossest immorality in the presence of the young, and the use of obscene expressions, may tend to produce or force an unnatural precocity, a precocity sure to undermine health and shorten life. Jealousy is another characteristic of these children, and perhaps less among the girls than the boys. Upon the most trivial offence in this respect, or on the suspicion of an offence, the “gals” are sure to be beaten cruelly and savagely by their “chaps.” This appears to be a very common case.
The details of filthiness and of all uncleanness which I gave in a recent number as things of course in certain lodging-houses, render it unnecessary to dwell longer upon the subject, and it is one from which I willingly turn to other matters.
In addition to the licentious, the vagabond propensities of this class are very striking. As soon as the warm weather commences, boys and girls, but more especially boys, leave the town in shoals, traversing the country in every direction; some furnished with trifling articles (such as I have already enumerated) to sell, and others to begging, lurking, or thieving. It is not the street-sellers who so much resort to the tramp, as those who are devoid of the commonest notions of honesty; a quality these young vagrants sometimes respect when in fear of a gaol, and the hard work with which such a place is identified in their minds—and to which, with the peculiar idiosyncrasy of a roving race, they have an insuperable objection.
I have met with boys and girls, however, to whom a gaol had no terrors, and to whom, when in prison, there was only one dread, and that a common one among the ignorant, whether with or without any sense of religion—superstition. “I lay in prison of a night, sir,” said a boy who was generally among the briskest of his class, “and think I shall see things.” The “things” represent the vague fears which many, not naturally stupid, but untaught or ill-taught persons, entertain in the dark. A girl, a perfect termagant in the breaking of windows and such like offences, told me something of the same kind. She spoke well of the treatment she experienced in prison, and seemed to have a liking for the matron and officials; her conduct there was quiet and respectful. I believe she was not addicted to drink.