“When he died, an old man, as had been a soldier, took possession of the crossing. How did he get it? Why, I say, he took it. First come, first sarved, sir; that’s their way. They never sell crossings. Sometimes (for a lark) they shift, and then one stands treat—a gallon of beer, or something of that sort. The perlice interfered with the soldier—you know the sweepers is all forced to go if the perlice interfere; now with us, sir, we are licensed, and they can’t make us move on. They interfered, I say, with the old soldier, because he used to get so drunk. Why, at a public-house close at hand, he would spent seven, eight, and ten shillings on a night, three or four days together. He used to gather so many blackguards round the crossing, they were forced to move him at last. A young man has got it now; he has had it three year. He is not always here, sometimes away for a week at a stretch; but, you see, he knows the best times to come, and then he is sure to be here. The little boys come with their brooms now and then, but the perlice always drive them away.”
3. The Able-bodied Irish Crossing-Sweeper.
The Old Irish Crossing-Sweeper.
This man, a native of “County Corruk,” has been in England only two years and a half. He wears a close-fitting black cloth cap over a shock of reddish hair; round his neck he has a coloured cotton kerchief, of the sort advertised as “Imitation Silk.” His black coat is much torn, and his broom is at present remarkably stumpy. He waits quietly at the post opposite St. ——’s Church, to receive whatever is offered him. He is unassuming enough in his manner, and, as will be seen, not even bearing any malice against his two enemies, “The Swatestuff Man” and “The Switzer.” He says:—
THE IRISH CROSSING-SWEEPER.
[From a Photograph.]
“I’ve been at this crossin’ near upon two year. Whin I first come over to England (about two years and a half ago), I wint a haymakin’, but, you see, I couldn’t get any work; and afther thrampin’ about a good bit, why my eyesight gettin’ very wake, and I not knowin’ what to do, I took this crossin’.
“How did I get it?—Will, sir, I wint walkin’ about and saw it, and nobody on it. So one mornin’ I brought a broom wid me and stood here. Yes, sir, I was intherfered wid. The man with one arm—a Switzer they calls him—he had had the crossin’ on Sundays for a long while gone, and he didn’t like my bein’ here at all, at all. ‘B——y Irish’ he used to call me, and other scandalizin’ names; and he and the swatestuff man opposite, who was a friend of his, tried everythin’ they could to git me off the crossin’. But sure I niver harrumed them at all, at all.