London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

Of the Snakes and Hedgehogs I have already spoken, when treating of the collection of birds’-nests. I am told that some few glow-worms are collected.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MINERAL PRODUCTIONS AND NATURAL CURIOSITIES.

The class of which I have now to treat, including as it does the street-sellers of coal, coke, tan-turf, salt, and sand, seem to have been called into existence principally by the necessities of the poorer classes. As the earnings of thousands of men, in all the slop, “slaughter-house,” or “scamping” branches of tailoring, shoe-making, cabinet-making, joining, &c. have become lower and lower, they are compelled to purchase the indispensable articles of daily consumption in the smallest quantities, and at irregular times, just as the money is in their possession. This is more especially the case as regards chamber-masters and garret-masters (among the shoemakers) and cabinet-makers, who, as they are small masters, and working on their own account, have not even such a regularity of payment as the journeyman of the slop-tailor. Among these poor artizans, moreover, the wife must slave with the husband, and it is often an object with them to save the time lost in going out to the chandler’s-shop or the coal-shed, to have such things as coal, and coke brought to their very doors, and vended in the smallest quantities. It is the same with the women who work for the slop-shirt merchants, &c., or make cap-fronts, &c., on their own account, for the supply of the shopkeepers, or the wholesale swag-men, who sell low-priced millinery. The street-sellers of the class I have now to notice are, then, the principal purveyors of the very poor.

The men engaged in the street-sale of coal and coke—the chief articles of this branch of the street-sale—are of the costermonger class, as, indeed, is usually the case where an exercise of bodily strength is requisite. Costermongers, too, are better versed than any other street-folk in the management of barrows, carts, asses, ponies, or horses, so that when these vehicles and these animals are a necessary part of any open-air business, it will generally be found in the hands of the coster class.

Nor is this branch of the street-traffic confined solely to articles of necessity. Under my present enumeration will be found the street-sale of shells, an ornament of the mantel-piece above the fire-grate to which coal is a necessity.

The present division will complete the subject of Street Sale in the metropolis.

Of the Street-Sellers of Coals.

According to the returns of the coal market for the last few years, there has been imported into London, on an average, 3,500,000 tons of sea-borne coal annually. Besides this immense supply, the various railways have lately poured in a continuous stream of the same commodity from the inland districts, which has found a ready sale without sensibly affecting the accustomed vend of the north country coals, long established on the Coal Exchange.

To the very poor the importance of coal can be scarcely estimated. Physiological and medical writers tell us that carbonaceous food is that which produces heat in the body, and is therefore the fuel of the system. Experience tells us that this is true; for who that has had an opportunity of visiting the habitations of the poor—the dwellers in ill-furnished rooms and garrets—has not remarked the more than half-starved slop needle-woman, the wretched half-naked children of the casually employed labourer, as the dock-man, or those whose earnings are extorted from them by their employers, such as the ballast-man, sitting crouched around the smouldering embers in the place where the fire ought to be? The reason of this is, because the system of the sufferer by long want of food has been deprived of the necessary internal heat, and so seeks instinctively to supply the deficiency by imbibing it from some outward source. It is on this account chiefly, I believe, that I have found the ill-paid and ill-fed workpeople prize warmth almost more than food. Among the poorest Irish, I have invariably found them crowding round the wretched fire when they had nothing to eat.

The census returns of the present year (according to the accounts published in the newspapers) estimate the number of the inhabitants of London at 2,363,141, and the number of inhabited houses as 307,722. Now if we take into consideration that in the immense suburbs of the metropolis, there are branching off from almost every street, labyrinths of courts and alleys, teeming with human beings, and that almost every room has its separate family—for it takes a multitude of poor to make one rich man—we may be able to arrive at the conclusion that by far the greater proportion of coals brought into London are consumed by the poorer classes. It is on this account of the highest importance, that honesty should be the characteristic of those engaged in the vend and distribution of an article so necessary not only to the comfort but to the very existence of the great masses of the population.