The Sunday Crossing-Sweeper.
“I’m a Sunday crossing-sweeper,” said an oyster-stall keeper, in answer to my inquiries. “I mean by that, I only sweep a crossing on a Sunday. I pitch in the Lorrimore-road, Newington, with a few oysters on week-days, and I does jobs for the people about there, sich as cleaning a few knives and forks, or shoes and boots, and windows. I’ve been in the habit of sweeping a crossing about four or five years.
“I never knowed my father, he died when I was a baby. He was a ’terpreter, and spoke seven different languages. My father used to go with Bonaparte’s army, and used to ’terpret for him. He died in the South of France. I had a brother, but he died quite a child, and my mother supported me and a sister by being cook in a gentleman’s family: we was put out to nurse. My mother couldn’t afford to put me to school, and so I can’t read nor write. I’m forty-one years old.
“The fust work I ever did was being boy at a pork-butcher’s. I used to take out the meat wot was ordered. At last my master got broke up, and I was discharged from my place, and I took to sellin’ a few sprats. I had no thoughts of taking to a crossing then. I was ten year old. I remember I give two shillings for a ‘shallow;’ that’s a flat basket with two handles; they put ’em a top of ‘well-baskets,’ them as can carry a good load. A well-basket’s almost like a coffin; it’s a long un like a shallow, on’y it’s a good deal deeper—about as deep as a washin’ tub. I done very fair with my sprats till they got dear and come up very small, so then I was obliged to get a few plaice, and then I got a few baked ’taters and sold them. I hadn’t money enough to buy a tin—I could a got one for eight shillings—so I put ’em in a cross-handle basket, and carried ’em round the streets, and into public-houses, and cried ‘Baked taters, all hot!’ I used only to do this of a night, and it brought me about four or five shillings a-week. I used to fill up the day by going round to gentlemen’s houses where I was known, to run for errands and clean knives and boots, and that brought me sich a thing as four shillings a-week more altogether.
“I never had no idea then of sweeping a crossing of a Sunday; but at last I was obliged to push to it. I kept on like this for many years, and at last a gentleman named Mr. Jackson promised to buy me a tin, but he died. My mother went blind through a blight; that was the cause of my fust going out to work, and so I had to keep her; but I didn’t mind that: I thought it was my duty so to do.
“About ten years ago I got married; my wife used to go out washing and ironing. I thought two of us would get on better than one, and she didn’t mind helpin’ me to keep my mother, for I was determined my mother shouldn’t go into the workhouse so long as I could help it.
“A year or two after I got married, I found I must do something more to help to keep home, and then I fust thought of sweepin’ a crossing on Sundays; so I bought a heath broom for twopence-ha’penny, and I pitched agin’ the Canterbury Arms, Kennington; it was between a baker’s shop and a public-house and butcher’s; they told me they’d all give me something if I’d sweep the crossing reg’lar.
“The best places is in front of chapels and churches, ’cause you can take more money in front of a church or a chapel than wot you can in a private road, ’cos they look at it more, and a good many thinks when you sweeps in front of a public-house that you go and spend your money inside in waste.
“The first Sunday I went at it, I took eighteenpence. I began at nine o’clock in the morning and stopped till four in the afternoon. The publican give fourpence, and the baker sixpence, and the butcher threepence, so that altogether I got above a half-crown. I stopped at this crossing a year, and I always knocked up about two shillings or a half-crown on the Sunday. I very seldom got anythink from the ladies; it was most all give by the gentlemen. Little children used sometimes to give me ha’pence, but it was when their father give it to ’em; the little children like to do that sort of thing.