From one of this class I learned the following particulars. He seemed a man of 26 or 28:—
“I was brought up on the land, sir,” he said, “not far from Cullin, in the county Wexford. I lived with my father and mother, and shure we were badly off. Shure, thin, we were. Father and mother—the Heavens be their bed—died one soon after another, and some friends raised me the manes to come to this country. Well, thin, indeed, sir, and I can’t say how they raised them, God reward them. I got to Liverpool, and walked to London, where I had some relations. I sold oranges in the strates the first day I was in London. God help me, I was glad to do anything to get a male’s mate. I’ve lived on 6d. a-day sometimes. I have indeed. There was 2d. for the lodging, and 4d. for the mate, the tay and bread and butter. Did I live harder than that in Ireland, your honour? Well, thin, I have. I’ve lived on a dish of potatoes that might cost a penny there, where things is bhutiful and chape. Not like this country. No, no. I wouldn’t care to go back. I have no friends there now. Thin I got ingaged by a man—yis, he was a rubbish-carter—to help him to fill his cart, and then we shot it on some new garden grounds, and had to shovel it about to make the grounds livil, afore the top soil was put on, for the bhutiful flowers and the gravel walks. Tim—yis, he was a counthryman of mine, but a Cor-rk man—said he’d made a bad bargain, for he was bad off, and he only clared 4d. a load, and he’d divide it wid me. We did six loads in a day, and I got 1s. every night for a wake. This was a rise. But one Sunday evening I was standing talking with people as lived in the same coort, and I tould how I was helping Tim. And two Englishmen came to find four men as they wanted for work, and ould Ragin (Regan) tould them what I was working for. And one of ’em said, I was ‘a b—— Irish fool,’ and ould Ragin said so, and words came on, and thin there was a fight, and the pelleece came, and thin the fight was harder. I was taken to the station, and had a month. I had two black eyes next morning, but was willin’ to forget and forgive. No, I’m not fond of fightin’. I’m a paceable man, glory be to God, and I think I was put on. Oh, yis, and indeed thin, your honour, it was a fair fight.”
I inquired of an English rubbish-carter as to these fair fights. He knew nothing of the one in question, but had seen such fights. They were usually among the Irish themselves, but sometimes Englishmen were “drawn into them.” “Fair fights! sir,” he said, “why the Irishes don’t stand up to you like men. They don’t fight like Christians, sir; not a bit of it. They kick, and scratch, and bite, and tear, like devils, or cats, or women. They’re soon settled if you can get an honest knock at them, but it isn’t easy.”
“I sarved my month,” continued my Irish informant, “and it ain’t a bad place at all, the prison. I tould the gintleman that had charge of us, that I was a Roman Catholic, God be praised, and couldn’t go to his prayers. ‘O very well, Pat,’ says he. And next day the praste came, and we were shown in to him, and very angry he was, and said our conduc’ was a disgrace to religion, and to our counthry, and to him. Do I think he was right, sir? God knows he was, or he wouldn’t have said so.
“I hadn’t been out of prison two hours before I was hired for a job, at 10s. a week. It was in the city, and I carried old bricks and rubbish along planks, from the inside of a place as was pulled down; but the outside, all but the roof, was standin’ until the windor frames, and the door posts, and what other timbers there was, was sould. It was dreadful hard work, carrying the basket of rubbish on your back to the cart. The dust came through, and stuck to my neck, for I was wet all over wid sweatin’ so. Every man was allowed a pint of beer a day, and I thought nivver anything was so sweet. I don’t know who gave it. The masther, I suppose. Will, thin, sir, I don’t know who was the masther; it was John Riley as ingaged me, but he’s no masther. Yis, thin, and I’ve been workin’ that way ivver since. I’ve sometimes had 14s. a week, and sometimes 10s., and sometimes 12s. A man like me must take what he can get, and I will take it. I’ve been out of work sometimes, but not so much as some, for I’m young and strong. No, I can’t save no money, and I have nothing just now to save it for. When I’m out of work, I sell fruit in the streets.”
This statement, then, as regards the Irish labourers, shows the quality of the class employed. The English labourers, working on the same terms, are of the usual class of men so working,—broken-down men, unable, or accounting themselves unable, to “do better,” and so accepting any offer affording the means of their daily bread.
Of the London Chimney-Sweepers.
Chimney-Sweepers are a consequence of two things—chimneys and the use of coals as fuel; and these are both commodities of comparatively recent introduction.
It is generally admitted that the earliest mention of chimneys is in an Italian MS., preserved in Venice, in which it is recorded that chimneys were thrown down in that city from the shock of an earthquake in 1347. In England, down even to the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth, the greater part of the houses in our towns had no chimneys; the fire was kindled on a hearth-stone on the floor, or on a raised grate against the wall or in the centre of the apartment, and the smoke found its way out of the doors, windows, or casements.
During the long, and—as regards civil strife—generally peaceful, reign of Elizabeth, the use of chimneys increased. In a Discourse prefixed to an edition of Holinshed’s “Chronicles,” in 1577, Harrison, the writer, complains, among other things, “marvellously altered for the worse in England,” of the multitude of chimneys erected of late. “Now we have many chimneys,” he says, “and our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses. Then we had none but reredoses, and our heads did never ache.”[57] He demurs, too, to the change in the material of which the houses were constructed: “Houses were once builded of willow, then we had oaken men; but now houses are made of oak, and our men not only become willow, but a great many altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration.”