“I live in a room by myself with three others, and we pay 1s. each, and there is two bed. If I go to lodging-house I pay 1s. 6d. the week. In the Italian lodging-house they give you clean shirt on the Sunday for the 1s. 6d. It is my own shirt, but they clean it. This is only in Italian house. In English house it is 1s. 6d. and no shirt. I have breakfast of coffee or what I like, and we club together. We have bread and butter, sometime herring, sometime bacon, what we likes. In the day I buy a pen’orth of bread and a pen’orth of cheese, and some beer, and at night I have supper. I make maccarone—what you call it?—or rice and cabbage, or I make soup or bile some taters; with all four together it come to about 9d. or 10d. a-day for living.
“In the house where I live they are all Italians. They are nearly all Italians that live about Leather-lane and Saffron-hill. There is a good bit of them live there. I should say 200: I dare say there is. The house where I live is my own. I let empty room; they bring their own things, you know. It is my lease, and I pay the rent.
“It is only the people say that the Italian boys are badly used: they are not so, the masters are very kind to them. If he make 1s. he bring it home; if 3s. or 4s. or 6d. he bring it home. He is not commandé to bring home so much; that is what the people say. I was with the magistrate of police in Marlborough-street four days ago, about a little Italian boy that the policemen take for asking money. Some one ask to buy his monkey and talk with him, and then he ask for a penny, and the police take him. A gentleman ask me about the boys. I tell him it is all nonsense what the people say. There is no more boys sent here now. If a boy comes over, and he is bad boys, he goes and play in the street instead of working; then, after paying so much for his coming to England, it is a loss. It does not pay the boys. If I was a master I would not have the boys, if they come here for nothing.
“Suppose I have two organs, then one is in the house doing nothing. Then some one come and say, ‘Lend me the organ for to-day.’ Then I say, ‘Yes,’ and charge him, some 4d., some 6d.; or if somebody ill and he cannot go out, then he’s organ doing nothing, and he lend it out for 4d. or 6d. There is two or three in London who sends out men with organs, but I don’t know who has got the most of us. Then they pay the men 1l. a-month and their keep, or some 15s. Then, some goes half and keep him: then, it’s more profits to the man than the master.
“Christmas-time is nothing like the summer-time. Sometimes they give you a Christmas-box, but it’s not the time for Christmas-box now. Sometimes it’s a glass of beer: ‘Here’s a Christmas-box for you.’ Sometimes it’s a glass of gin, or rum, or a piece of pudding: ‘Here’s a Christmas-box for you.’ I have had 6d., but never 1s. for a Christmas-box. Sometimes on a boxing-day it is 3s., or 2s. 6d. for the day.
“I have never travelled in the country with my organ, only once when I was young, as far as Liverpool, but no further. Many has got his regular time out in the country. When I go out with the organ I should say it make altogether that I walk ten miles. I want two new pairs of boots every year. I start off in the morning, sometimes eight, sometimes nine or ten, whether I have far to go. I never stop out after seven o’clock at night. Some do, but I don’t.
“I don’t know music at all. I am middling fond of it. There is none of the Italians that I know that sings. The French is very fond of singing.
“When first you begins, it tries the wrist, turning the handle of the organ; but you soon gets accustomed to it. At first, the arm was sore with the work all day. When I am playing I turn the handle regularly. Sometimes there are people who say, ‘Go a little quick,’ but not often.
“If the silk in front of the organ is bad, I get new and put it in myself; the rain spoil it very much. It depend upon what sort of organ he is, as to the sort of silk he gets: sometimes 2s. 6d. a-yard, and he take about a yard and a half. Some like to do this once a-year; but some when he see it get a little dirty, like fresh things, you know, and then it is twice a-year.
“The police are very quiet to us. When anybody throw up a window and say, ‘Go on,’ I go. Sometime they say there is sick in the house, when there is none, but I go just the same. If I did not, then the policeman come, and I get into trouble. I have heard of the noise in the papers about the organs in the street, but we never talk of it in our quarter. They pay no attention to the subject, for they know if anybody say, ‘Go,’ then we must depart. That is what we do.”