“The crossing ain’t much of a living for any body—that is, what I takes on it. But then I’ve got regular customers as gives me money. There’s Mr. G——, he gives a shilling a-week; and there’s Captain R——, of the Adm’ralty, he gives me sixpence a fortnight; and another captain, of the name of R——, he gives me fourpence every Sunday. Ah! I’d forgot Mr. O——, the Secretary at the Adm’ralty; he gives me sixpence now and then. Besides, I do a lot of odd jobs for different people; they knows where to come and find me when they wants me. They gets me to carry letters, or a parcel, or a box, or anythink of that there. I has a bit of vittals, too, give me every now and then; but as for money, it’s very little as I get on the crossings—perhaps seven or eight shilling a-week, reg’lar customers and all.
“I never heard of anybody as was leaving a crossing selling it; no, never. My crossing ain’t a reg’lar one as anybody could have. If I was to leave, it depends upon whether Mr. G—— would like to have the party, as to who gets it. There’s no such thing as turning a reg’lar sweeper out, the police stops that. I’ve been known to them for years, and they are very kind to me. As they come’s by they says, ‘Jimmy, how are you?’ You see, my crossing comes handy for them, for it’s agin Scotland-yard; and when they turns out in their clean boots it saves their blacking.
“Lord G—— used to be at the Adm’ralty, but he ain’t there now; I don’t know why he left, but he’s gone. He used to give me sixpence every now and then when he come over. I was near to my crossing when Mr. Drummond was shot, but I wasn’t near enough to hear the pistol; but I didn’t see nothink. I know’d the late Sir Robert Peel, oh, certantly, but he seldom crossed over my crossing, though whenever he did, he’d give me somethink. The present Sir Robert goes over to the chapel in Spring-gardens when he’s in town, but he keeps on the other side of the way; so I never had anythink from him. He’s the very picture of his father, and I knows him from that, only his father were rather stouter than he is. I don’t know none of the members of parliament, they most on ’em keeps on shifting so, that I hasn’t no time to recognise ’em.
“The watering-carts ain’t no friends of our’n. They makes dirt and no pay for cleaning it. There’s so much traffic with coaches and carts going right over my crossing that a fine or wet day don’t make much difference to me, for people are afraid to cross for fear of being run over. I’m forced to have my eyes about me and dodge the wehicles. I never heerd, as I can tell on, of a crossing-sweeper being run over.”
2. The Able-bodied Female Crossing-Sweepers.
The Old Woman “over the Water.”
She is the widow of a sweep—“as respectable and ’dustrious a man,” I was told, “as any in the neighbourhood of the ‘Borough;’ he was a short man, sir,—very short,” said my informant, “and had a weakness for top-boots, white hats, and leather breeches,” and in that unsweeplike costume he would parade himself up and down the Dover and New Kent-roads. He had a capital connexion (or, as his widow terms it, “seat of business”), and left behind him a good name and reputation that would have kept the “seat of business” together, if it had not been for the misconduct of the children, two of whom (sons) have been transported, while a daughter “went wrong,” though she, wretched creature, paid a fearful penalty, I learnt, for her frailties, having been burnt to death in the middle of the night, through a careless habit of smoking in bed.
The old sweeper herself, eighty years of age, and almost beyond labour, very deaf, and rather feeble to all appearance, yet manages to get out every morning between four and five, so as to catch the workmen and “time-keepers” on their way to the factories. She has the true obsequious curtsey, but is said to be very strong in her “likes and dislikes.”
She bears a good character, though sometimes inclining, I was informed, towards “the other half-pint,” but never guilty of any excess. She is somewhat profuse in her scriptural ejaculations and professions of gratitude. Her statement was as follows:—
“Fifteen years I’ve been on the crossing, come next Christmas. My husband died in Guy’s Hospital, of the cholera, three days after he got in, and I took to the crossing some time after. I had nothing to do. I am eighty years of age, and I couldn’t do hard work. I have nothing but what the great God above pleases to give me. The poor woman who had the crossing before me was killed, and so I took it. The gentleman who was the foreman of the road, gave me the grant to take it. I didn’t ask him, for poor people as wants a bit of bread they goes on the crossings as they likes, but he never interfered with me. The first day I took sixpence; but them good times is all gone, they’ll never come back again. The best times I used to take a shilling a-day, and now I don’t take but a few pence. The winter is as bad as the summer, for poor people haven’t got it to give, and gentlefolks get very near now. People are not so liberal as they used to be, and they never will be again.