1. The foreman, whose duty is to “look over the men” (one such over-looker being employed to about every 20 men), and who receives 15s. per week.
2. The barrow-men, or sweepers, consisting of men and boys; the former receiving 12s. and the latter generally 7s. per week.
The tools and implements used, and their cost, are as follows:—wooden scoops, to throw up the slop, 1s. 2d. each (they used to be made of iron, weighing 8 lbs. each, but the men then complained that the weight “broke their arms”); shovel, 2s. 3d.; hoe and scraper, 1s. 3d.; hand-broom, 8d.; scavager’s broom, 1s. 2d.; barrow, 12s.; covered barrow, 24s.
In the amount of his receipts, the street-orderly appears to a disadvantage, as many of the “regular hands” of the contractors receive 16s. weekly, and he but 12s. The reason for this circumscribed payment I have already alluded to—the deficiency of funds to carry out the full purposes of the Association. Contrasted with the remuneration of the great majority of the pauper scavagers, the street-orderly is in a state of comparative comfort, for he receives nearly double as much as the Guardians of the Poor of Chelsea and the Liberty of the Rolls pay their labourers, and full 25 per cent. more than is paid by Bermondsey, Deptford, Marylebone, St. James’s, Westminster, St. George’s, Hanover-square, and St. Andrew’s, Holborn; and, I am assured, it is the intention of the Council to pay the full rate of wages given by the more respectable scavagers, viz., 16s. a week each man. If traders can do this, philanthropists, who require no profit, at least should be equally liberal. The labourer never can be benefited by depreciating the ordinary wages of his trade; and I must in justice confess, that there are scattered throughout the Report repeated regrets that the funds of the Association will not admit of a higher rate of wages being paid.
The street-orderly is not subjected to any fines or drawbacks, and is paid always in money, every Saturday evening at the office of the Association. In this respect, however, he does not differ from other bodies of scavagers.
The usual mode of obtaining employment among the street-orderlies is by personal application at the office of the Association in Leicester-square; but sometimes letters, well-penned and well-worded, are addressed to the president.
The daily number of applicants for employment is far from demonstrative of that unbroken prosperity of the country, of which we hear so much. On my inquiring into the number, I ascertained towards the end of August, that, for the previous fortnight, during fine summer weather, London being still full of the visitors to the Exhibition, on an average 30 men, of nearly all conditions of life, applied personally each day for work at street-sweeping, at 12s. a week. Certainly this labour is not connected with the feeling of pauper degradation, but it does not look well for the country that in twelve days 360 men should apply for such work. On the year’s average, I am assured, there are 30 applications daily, but only ten new applicants, as men call to solicit an engagement again and again. Thus in the year there are nine thousand, three hundred, and ninety applications, and 3130 individual applicants. In the course of one month last winter, there were applications from 300 boys in Spitalfields alone, to be set to work; and I am told, that had they been successful, 3000 lads would have applied the next month.
When an application is made by any one recommended by subscribers, &c., to the Association, or where the case seems worthy of attention, the names and addresses are entered in a book, with a slight sketch of the circumstances of the person wishing to become a street-orderly, so that inquiries may be made. I give a few of the more recent of these entries and descriptions, which are really “histories in little”:—
“Thomas M’G——, aged 50, W— L— street, Chelsea Hospital, single man. Taught a French and English school in Lyons, France. Driven out of France at the Revolution of 1848. Penniless.