“When I got back to London, I commenced sweeping the crossin’, sir. I only sweep it in the winter, because I can’t stand in the summer. Oh, yes, I feel my feet still: it is just as if I had them sitting on the floor, now. I feel my toes moving, like as if I had ’em. I could count them, the whole ten, whenever I work my knees. I had a corn on one of my toes, and I can feel it still, particularly at the change of weather.
“Sometimes I might get two shillings a-day at my crossing, sometimes one shilling and sixpence, sometimes I don’t take above sixpence. The most I ever made in one day was three shillings and sixpence, but that’s very seldom.
“I am a very steady man. I don’t drink what money I get; and if I had the means to get something to do, I’d keep off the streets.
“When I offered to go to the parish, they told me to go to Scotland, to spite the men who owed me my wages.
“Many people tell me I ought to go to my country; but I tell them it’s very hard—I didn’t come here without my legs—I lost them, as it were, in this country; but if I had lost them in my own country, I should have been better off. I should have gone down to the magistrate every Friday, and have taken my ten shillings.
“I went to the Merchant Seaman’s Fund, and they said that those who got hurted before 1852 have been getting the funds, but those who were hurted after 1852 couldn’t get nothing—it was stopped in ’51, and the merchants wouldn’t pay any more, and don’t pay any more.
“That’s scandalous, because, whether you’re willing or not, you must pay two shillings a-month (one shilling a-month for the hospital fees, and one shilling a-month to the Merchant Seaman’s Fund), out of your pay.
“I am married: my wife is the same colour as me, but an Englishwoman. I’ve been married two years. I married her from where she belonged, in Leeds. I couldn’t get on to do anything without her. Sometimes she goes out and sells things—fruit, and so on—but she don’t make much. With the assistance of my wife, if I could get my money, I would set up in the same line of business as before, in a coffee-shop. If I had three pounds I could do it: it took well in Scotland. I am not a common cook, either; I am a pastrycook. I used to make all the sorts of cakes they have in the shops. I bought the shapes, and tins, and things to make them proper.
“I’ll tell you how I did—there was a kind of apparatus; it boils water and coffee, and the milk and the tea, in different departments; but you couldn’t see the divisions—the pipes all ran into one tap, like. I’ve had a sixpence and a shilling for people to look at it: it cost me two pound ten.