Concerning the ordinary street ballad-singers, I received the following account from one of the class:—
“I am what may be termed a regular street ballad-singer—either sentimental or comic, sir, for I can take both branches. I have been, as near as I can guess, about five-and-twenty years at the business. My mother died when I was thirteen years old, and in consequence of a step-mother home became too hot to hold me, and I turned into the streets in consequence of the harsh treatment I met with. My father had given me no education, and all I know now I have picked up in the streets. Well, at thirteen years, I turned into the streets, houseless, friendless. My father was a picture-frame gilder. I was never taught any business by him—neither his own nor any other. I never received any benefit from him that I know. Well then, sir, there was I, a boy of thirteen, friendless, houseless, untaught, and without any means of getting a living—loose in the streets of London. At first I slept anywhere: sometimes I passed the night in the old Covent-garden-market; at others, in shutter-boxes; and at others, on door-steps near my father’s house. I lived at this time upon the refuse that I picked up in the streets—cabbage-stumps out of the market, orange-peel, and the like. Well, sir, I was green then, and one of the Stamp-office spies got me to sell some of the Poor Man’s Guardians, (an unstamped paper of that time), so that his fellow-spy might take me up. This he did, and I had a month at Coldbath-fields for the business. After I had been in prison, I got in a measure hardened to the frowns of the world, and didn’t care what company I kept, or what I did for a living. I wouldn’t have you to fancy, though, that I did anything dishonest. I mean, I wasn’t particular as to what I turned my hand to for a living, or where I lodged. I went to live in Church-lane, St. Giles’s, at a threepenny house; and having a tidy voice of my own, I was there taught to go out ballad-singing, and I have stuck to the business ever since. I was going on for fifteen when I first took to it. The first thing I did was to lead at glee-singing; I took the air, and two others, old hands, did the second and the bass. We used to sing the ‘Red Cross Knight,’ ‘Hail, smiling Morn,’ and harmonize ‘The Wolf,’ and other popular songs. Excepting when we needed money, we rarely went out till the evening. Then our pitches were in quiet streets or squares, where we saw, by the light at the windows, that some party was going on. Wedding-parties was very good, in general quite a harvest. Public-houses we did little at, and then it was always with the parlour company; the tap-room people have no taste for glee-singing. At times we took from 9s. to 10s. of an evening, the three of us. I am speaking of the business as it was about two or three-and-twenty years ago. Now, glee-singing is seldom practised in the streets of London: it is chiefly confined to the provinces, at present. In London, concerts are so cheap now-a-days, that no one will stop to listen to the street glee-singers; so most of the ‘schools,’ or sets, have gone to sing at the cheap concerts held at the public-houses. Many of the glee-singers have given up the business, and taken to the street Ethiopians instead. The street glee-singers had been some of them brought up to a trade, though some had not. Few were so unfortunate as me—to have none at all. The two that I was with had been a ladies’ shoemaker and a paper-hanger. Others that I knew had been blacksmiths, carpenters, linendrapers’ shopmen, bakers, French-polishers, pastrycooks, and such-like. They mostly left their business and took to glee-singing when they were young. The most that I knew were from nineteen to twenty-two years old; that had in general been a little rackety, and had got stage-struck or concert-struck at public-houses: they had got praised for their voices, and so their vanity led them to take to it for a living, when they got hard up. Twenty years ago there must have been at the east and west ends at least fourteen different sets, good and bad; and in each set there was, on an average, three singers: now I don’t think there is one set at work in London streets. After I had been three years glee-singing in the streets, I took up with the ballad business, and found it more lucrative than the glee line. Sometimes I could take 5s. in the day, and not work heavily for it either; but at other times I couldn’t take enough to pay my lodging. When any popular song came up, that was our harvest. ‘Alice Gray,’ ‘The Sea,’ ‘Bridal Ring,’ ‘We met,’ ‘The Tartar Drum,’ (in which I was well known,) ‘The Banks of the Blue Moselle,’ and such-like, not forgetting ‘The Mistletoe Bough;’ these were all great things to the ballad-singers. We looked at the bill of fare for the different concert-rooms, and then went round the neighbourhood where these songs were being sung, because the airs being well known, you see it eased the way for us. The very best sentimental song that ever I had in my life, and which lasted me off and on for two years, was Byron’s ‘Isle of Beauty.’ I could get a meal quicker with that than with any other. ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ got me many a Christmas dinner. We always works at that time. It would puzzle any man, even the most exactest, to tell what they could make by ballad-singing in the street. Some nights it would be wet, and I should be hoarse, and then I’d take nothing. I should think that, take one week with another, my earnings were barely more than 10s. a-week: 12s. a-week on the average, I should think, would be the very outside. Street ballad-singers never go out in costume. It is generally supposed that some who appear without shoes and wretchedly clad are made up for the purpose of exciting charity; but this the regular street ballad-singer never does.
“He is too independent to rank himself with the beggars. He earns his money, he fancies, and does not ask charity. Some of the ballad-singers may perhaps be called beggars, or rather pensioners—that is the term we give them; but these are of the worst description of singers, and have money given to them neither for their singing nor songs, but in pity for their age and infirmities. Of these there are about six in London. Of the regular ballad-singers, sentimental and comic, there are not less than 250 in and about London. Occasionally the number is greatly increased by an influx from the country. I should say that throughout England, Wales, and Scotland, there is not less than 700 who live solely by ballad-singing, and selling ballads and song-books. In London the ballad-singers generally work in couples—especially the comic singers. The sentimental generally go alone; but there are very few in London who are merely sentimental ballad-singers—not more than a dozen at the very outside. The rest sing whatever comes up. The tunes are mostly picked up from the street bands, and sometimes from the cheap concerts, or from the gallery of the theatre, where the street ballad-singers very often go, for the express purpose of learning the airs. They are mostly utterly ignorant of music, and some of them get their money by the noise they make, by being paid to move on. There is a house in the Blackfriars’-road where the people has been ill for the last 16 years, and where the street ballad-singer always goes, because he is sure of getting 2d. there to move on. Some, too, make a point of beginning their songs outside of those houses where the straw is laid down in front; where the knockers are done up in an old glove the ballad-singer is sure to strike up. The comic songs that are popular in the street are never indecent, but are very often political. They are generally sung by two persons, one repeating the two first lines of the verse, and the other the two last. The street-ballads are printed and published chiefly in the Seven Dials. There are four ballad-publishers in that quarter, and three at the East-end. Many ballads are written expressly for the Seven-Dials press, especially the Newgate and the political ones, as well as those upon any topic of the day. There are five known authors for the Dials press, and they are all street ballad-singers. I am one of these myself. The little knowledge I have I picked up bit by bit, so that I hardly know how I have come by it. I certainly knew my letters before I left home, and I have got the rest off the dead walls and out of the ballads and papers I have been selling. I write most of the Newgate ballads now for the printers in the Dials, and, indeed, anything that turns up. I get a shilling for a ‘copy of verses written by the wretched culprit the night previous to his execution.’ I wrote Courvoisier’s sorrowful lamentation. I called it, ‘A Woice from the Gaol.’ I wrote a pathetic ballad on the respite of Annette Meyers. I did the helegy, too, on Rush’s execution. It was supposed, like the rest, to be written by the culprit himself, and was particular penitent. I didn’t write that to order—I knew they would want a copy of verses from the culprit. The publisher read it over, and said, ‘That’s the thing for the street public.’ I only got a shilling for Rush. Indeed, they are all the same price, no matter how popular they may be. I wrote the life of Manning in verse. Besides these, I have written the lament of Calcraft the hangman on the decline of his trade, and many political songs. But song and Newgate ballad-writing for the Dials is very poor work. I’ve got five times as much for writing a squib for a rag-shop as for a ballad that has taken me double the time.”
The Whistling Man.
It sometimes happens that a lad or a man, before being thrown for a living on the streets, has often sung a song to amuse his companions, or that he has been reckoned “a good whistler,” so he resolves to start out and see if he cannot turn to pecuniary profits that which until now he had only regarded in the light of an amusement.
The young man from whom I elicited the annexed statement was one of this class. His appearance was rather ungainly, and when he walked across the room he moved in so slovenly a manner that one leg appeared to drag itself after the other with the greatest reluctance.
When telling me that he had never been guilty of stealing, nor imprisoned, all his life, he did so in such a manner, and with such a tone of voice, as left little doubt on my mind that he had been kept honest more by the fear of the gaol than by his own moral principle.
His face was long and thin, and his cheeks so hollowed by long whistling, that they appeared almost to have had a round piece of flesh scooped out of the centre of each of them. His large thick lips were generally kept half-an-inch apart, so that they gave the man a half-idiotic look; and when he rounded them for whistling, they reminded me somewhat of a lamb’s kidney.
“I am a whistler—that is, I whistle merely with my lips, without the aid of anything besides. I have been at it about seven years. I am twenty next birthday. My father was, and is, a coach-painter. He is, I think, at the present time, working in Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s-inn-fields. I had three sisters and one brother. I was the youngest but two. When I got to be about seven years old my mother died, and then I used to get into the streets and stop out all day playing with other boys, most of them older than myself; and they often persuaded me to ‘hop the wag,’ that is, play truant from school, and spend the money which my father gave me to take to the master. Sometimes they took me to Covent-garden or Farringdon Market, where they used to prig a lot of apples and pears, not with the idea of selling them, but to eat. They used to want me to do the same, but I never would nor never did, or else I dare say I should have been better off, for they say ‘the biggest rogues get on best.’ I was always afraid of being sent to prison, a place I was never in in all my life. At last I was persuaded by two young companions to stop out all night, so we all three went to Mrs. Reding’s, Church-lane, and had a fourpenny lodging a-piece. My pals paid for me, because I’d got no money. I left them the next morning, but was afraid to go home; I had got nothing to eat, so I thought I’d see if I gould get a few ha’pence by singing a song. I knew two or three, and began with the ‘Mariner’s Grave,’ and then ‘Lucy Neal.’ I walked about all day, singing nearly the whole of the time, but didn’t get a penny till about six o’clock. By nine o’clock I mustered 10d., and then I left off, and went to a lodging-house in Whitechapel, where I got something to eat, and paid my lodging for the night. It’s a custom always to pay before-hand. The next morning I felt very down-hearted, and was half a mind to go home, but was afraid I should get a hiding. However, I at last plucked up my spirits, and went out again. I didn’t get anything given me till about dinner-time, when a gentleman came up to me and asked me how so young a boy as me come to be in the streets? I told him I couldn’t earn my living any other way. He asked my name, and where I lived. I gave him both a false name and address, for I was afraid lest he should go to my father. He said I had better go home with him, so he took me to his house in Grosvenor-square, which was a very fine un—for he was a very rich man, where he gave me plenty to eat, and made me wash myself, and put on a suit of his little boy’s left-off clothes. I stayed here three months, being employed to clean knives and boots, and run of errands. He used to send me twice a-week to the Bank of England with a cheque, which he used to write upon and tear out of a book, and I used to bring back the money. They always tied it up safely for me in a bag, and I put it into my pocket, and never took my hand off it till I got safe back again. At the end of three months he called me one day, and told me he was going with his wife and family into the country, where, he was sorry to say, there’d be no room for me. He then gave me 3l., and told me to go and seek for my friends, and go and live with them if I could.
“I went home to my father, who was greatly pleased at seeing me again; and he asked what I had been doing all the time, and where I had got my clothes and money from. I told him all, and promised I would never run away again,—so he forgave me. However, for a long time he would not let me go out. At last, after a good deal of persuasion, he let me out to look after a place, and I soon got one at Mr. Cooper’s, Surgeon, in Seven Dials, where I had 4s. a week. I used to be there from seven o’clock in the morning till nine at night, but I went home to my meals. After I’d been at my place four months, I by accident set fire to some naphtha, which I was stirring up in the back-yard, and it burnt off all my eyelashes, and so I ‘got the sack.’ When he paid me my wages,—as I was afraid to tell my father what had happened,—I started off to my old quarters in Whitechapel. I stopped there all day on Sunday, and the next three days I wandered about seeking work, but couldn’t get none. I then give it up as a bad job, and picked up with a man named Jack Williams, who had no legs. He was an old sailor, who had got frost-bitten in the Arctic regions. I used to lead him about with a big painted board afore him. It was a picture of the place where he was froze in. We used to go all about Ratcliffe Highway, and sometimes work up as far as Notting Hill. On the average, we got from 8s. to 10s. a-day. My share was about a third. I was with him for fifteen months, till one night I said something to him when he was a-bed that didn’t please him, and he got his knife out and stabbed my leg in two places,—here are the marks. I bled a good deal. The other lodgers didn’t like to hit him for it, on account of his having no legs, but they kicked him out of the house, and would not let him back any more. They all wanted me to lock him up, but I wouldn’t, as he was an old pal. Two or three silk handkerchiefs was tied round my leg, and the next day I was took to St. Thomas’s Hospital, where I remained for about nine days. When I left the head-nurse gave me ten shillings on account of being so destitute—for I was without a ha’penny to call my own. As soon as I got out of the hospital I went down to Billingsgate, and bought some bread and pickled whelks at a stall, but when I pulled out my money to pay for ’em some costermongering chaps knocked me down, and robbed me of 5s. I was completely stunned by the blow. The police came up to see what was the matter, and took me to the station-house, where I stopped till the next morning, when the inspector made me tell where my father lived, and I was taken home to him. For about a month my father kept me under lock and key, and after I had been with him about three months more I ‘stept it’ again, and as I could always whistle very well, I thought I’d try it for a living; so I made a ‘pitch’ in New-street, Covent Garden, and began by whistling ‘Will you love me then as now?’ but there wasn’t many in the world as loved me. I did very well though that day, for I got about 3s. 6d. or 4s., so I thought I’d practise it and stick to it. I worked all about town till I got well known. I used, sometimes, to go into public-houses and whistle upon a piece of ’bacco pipe, blowing into the bowl, and moving my fingers as if I was playing a flute, and nobody could tell the difference if they had not seen me. Sometimes I used to be asked to stand outside hotels, taverns, and even club-houses, and give ’em a tune: I often had sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns thrown me. I only wish I had sich luck now, for the world’s topsy-turvy, and I can’t get hardly anything. I used then to earn 3s. or 4s. a-day, and now it don’t amount to more than 1s. 6d.