London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

From one of this class I had the following account. It may be observed that the lad’s statement contains little of incident, or of novelty, but this is characteristic of many of his class. With many of them, it may indeed be said, “one day certifieth another.” It is often the same tale of labour and of poverty, day after day, so that the mere uniformity makes a youth half oblivious of the past; the months, or perhaps years, seem all alike.

This boy seemed healthy, wore a suit of corduroy, evidently not made for him, and but little patched, although old; he was in good spirits.

“I believe I’m between fifteen and sixteen,” he said, “and mother died more than two year ago, nearer three, perhaps. Father had gone dead a long time afore; I don’t remember him.” [I am inclined to think that this story of the death of the father is often told by the mother of an illegitimate child to her offspring, through a natural repugnance to reveal her shame to her child. I do not know, however, that it was the case in this instance.] “I don’t remember about mother’s funeral, for I was ill myself at the time. She worked with her needle; sometimes for a dressmaker, on “skirts,” and sometimes for a tailor, on flannels. She sometimes worked all night, but we was wery badly off—we was so. She had only me. When mother died there was nothing left for me, but there was a good woman—she was a laundress and kept a mangle—and she said, ‘well, here’s a old basket and a few odd things; give the kid the basket and turn the bits of old traps into money, and let him start on muffins, and then he must shift for hisself.’ So she tuk me to a shop and I was started in the muffin line. I didn’t do so bad, but it’s on’y a winter trade, isn’t muffins. I sold creases next—no, not creases, cherries; yes, it was creases, and then cherries, for I remembers as ’ow ’Ungerford was the first market I ever was at; it was so. Since then, I’ve sold apples, and oranges, and nuts, and chestnuts—but they was dear the last time as I had ’em—and spring garters a penny a pair, and glass pens; yes, and other things. I goes to market, mostly to Common Gard’n, and there’s a man goes there what buys bushels and bushels, and he’ll let me have any little lot reas’nable; he will so. There’s another will, but he ain’t so good to a poor kid. Well, I doesn’t know as ’ow one trade’s better nor another; I think I’ve done as much in one as in another. But I’ve done better lately; I’ve sold more oranges, and I had a few sticks of rhubarb. I think times is mending, but others says that’s on’y my luck. I sleeps with a boy as is younger nor I am, and pays 9d. a week. Tom’s father and mother—he’s a coal-heaver, but he’s sometimes out of work—sleeps in the same room, but we has a good bed to ourselves. Tom’s father knew my mother. There’s on’y us four. Tom’s father says sometimes if his rheumatics continues, he and all on ’em must go into the house. Most likely I should then go to a lodging-house. I don’t know that some on ’em’s bad places. I’ve heer’d they was jolly. I has no amusements. Last year I helped a man one day, and he did so well on fruit, he did so, for he got such a early start, and so cheap, that he gave me 3d. hextra to go to the play with. I didn’t go. I’d rather go to bed at seven every night than anywhere else. I’m fond of sleep. I never wakes all night. I dreams now and then, but I never remembers a dream. I can’t read or write; I wish I could, if it would help me on. I’m making 3s. 6d. a week now, I think. Some weeks in winter I didn’t make 2s.”

This boy, although an orphan at a tender age, was yet assisted to the commencement of a business by a friend. I met with another lad who was left under somewhat similar circumstances. The persons in the house where his mother had died were about to take him to the parish officers, and there seemed to be no other course to be pursued to save the child, then nearly twelve, from starvation. The lad knew this and ran away. It was summer time, about three years ago, and the little runaway slept in the open air whenever he could find a quiet place. Want drove him to beg, and several days he subsisted on one penny which he begged. One day he did not find any one to give him even a halfpenny, and towards the evening of the second he became bold, or even desperate, from hunger. As if by a sudden impulse he went up to an old gentleman, walking slowly in Hyde-park, and said to him, “Sir, I’ve lived three weeks by begging, and I’m hungering now; give me sixpence, or I’ll go and steal.” The gentleman stopped and looked at the boy, in whose tones there must have been truthfulness, and in whose face was no doubt starvation, for without uttering a word he gave the young applicant a shilling. The boy began a street-seller’s life on lucifer-matches. I had to see him for another purpose a little while ago, and in the course of some conversation he told me of his start in the streets. I have no doubt he told the truth, and I should have given a more detailed account of him, but when I inquired for him, I found that he had gone to Epsom races to sell cards, and had not returned, having probably left London on a country tour. But for the old gentleman’s bounty he would have stolen something, he declared, had it been only for the shelter of a prison.

Of the Life of an Orphan Girl, a Street-Seller.

“Father was a whitesmith,” she said, “and mother used to go out a-washing and a-cleaning, and me and my sister (but she is dead now) did nothing; we was sent to a day school, both of us. We lived very comfortable; we had two rooms and our own furniture; we didn’t want for nothing when father was alive; he was very fond on us both, and was a kind man to everybody. He was took bad first when I was very young—it was consumption he had, and he was ill many years, about five years, I think it was, afore he died. When he was gone mother kept us both; she had plenty of work; she couldn’t a-bear the thought of our going into the streets for a living, and we was both too young to get a place anywhere, so we stayed at home and went to school just as when father was alive. My sister died about two year and a half ago; she had the scarlet-fever dreadful, she lay ill seven weeks. We was both very fond of her, me and mother. I often wish she had been spared, I should not be alone in the world as I am now. We might have gone on together, but it is dreadful to be quite alone, and I often think now how well we could have done if she was alive.

“Mother has been dead just a year this month; she took cold at the washing and it went to her chest; she was only bad a fortnight; she suffered great pain, and, poor thing, she used to fret dreadful, as she lay ill, about me, for she knew she was going to leave me. She used to plan how I was to do when she was gone. She made me promise to try to get a place and keep from the streets if I could, for she seemed to dread them so much. When she was gone I was left in the world without a friend. I am quite alone, I have no relation at all, not a soul belonging to me. For three months I went about looking for a place, as long as my money lasted, for mother told me to sell our furniture to keep me and get me clothes. I could have got a place, but nobody would have me without a character, and I knew nobody to give me one. I tried very hard to get one, indeed I did; for I thought of all mother had said to me about going into the streets. At last, when my money was just gone, I met a young woman in the street, and I asked her to tell me where I could get a lodging. She told me to come with her, she would show me a respectable lodging-house for women and girls. I went, and I have been there ever since. The women in the house advised me to take to flower-selling, as I could get nothing else to do. One of the young women took me to market with her, and showed me how to bargain with the salesman for my flowers. At first, when I went out to sell, I felt so ashamed I could not ask anybody to buy of me; and many times went back at night with all my stock, without selling one bunch. The woman at the lodging-house is very good to me; and when I have a bad day she will let my lodging go until I can pay her. She always gives me my dinner, and a good dinner it is, of a Sunday; and she will often give me a breakfast, when she knows I have no money to buy any. She is very kind, indeed, for she knows I am alone. I feel very thankful to her, I am sure, for all her goodness to me. During the summer months I take 1s. 6d. per day, which is 6d. profit. But I can only sell my flowers five days in the week—Mondays there is no flowers in the market: and of the 6d. a day I pay 3d. for lodging. I get a halfpenny-worth of tea; a halfpenny-worth of sugar; one pound of bread, 1½d.; butter, ½d. I never tastes meat but on Sunday. What I shall do in the winter I don’t know. In the cold weather last year, when I could get no flowers, I was forced to live on my clothes, I have none left now but what I have on. What I shall do I don’t know—I can’t bear to think on it.”

Of Two Runaway Street-Boys.

I endeavoured to find a boy or girl who belonged to the well-educated classes, had run away, and was now a street-seller. I heard of boys of this class—one man thought he knew five, and was sure of four—who now lived by street-selling, my informant believed without having any recourse to theft, but all these boys were absent; they had not returned from Epsom, or had not returned to their usual haunts, or else they had started for their summer’s excursion into the country. Many a street-seller becomes as weary of town after the winter as a member of parliament who sits out a very long session; and the moment the weather is warm, and “seems settled,” they are off into the country. In this change of scene there is the feeling of independence, of freedom; they are not “tied to their work;” and this feeling has perhaps even greater charms for the child than the adult.

The number of lads of a well-educated class, who support themselves by street-selling, is not large. I speak of those whom I have classed as children under fifteen years of age. If a boy run away, scared and terrified by the violence of a parent, or maddened by continuous and sometimes excessive severity, the parent often feels compunction, and I heard of persons being sent to every lodging-house in London, and told to search every dry arch, to bring back a runaway. On these occasions the street-sellers willingly give their aid; I have even heard of women, whose degradation was of the lowest, exerting themselves in the recovery of a runaway child, and that often unsolicited and as often unrecompensed.