“I was brought up a painter,” he said, “and I am now 27. I served my apprenticeship in Yorkshire, and stayed two years after my term was out with the same master. I then worked in Liverpool, earning but little through illness, and working on and off as my health permitted. I got married in Liverpool, and went with my wife to Londonderry, in Ireland, of which place she was a native. There she died of the cholera in 1847. I was very ill with diarrhœa myself. We lived with her friends, but I got work, though wages are very low there. I never earned more than 2s. 6d. a-day there. I have earned 5s. 6d. a-day in Liverpool, but in Londonderry provisions are very cheap—the best meat at 4d. a-pound. It was an advantage to me being an Englishman. English workmen seem to be preferred in Ireland, so far as I can tell, and I have worked in Belfast and Coleraine, and a short time in Dublin, as well as in Londonderry. I came back to Liverpool early in 1848, and got work, but was again greatly distressed through sickness. I then had to travel the country again, getting a little employment at Hemel Hempstead, and St. Alban’s, and other places about, for I aimed at London, and at last I got to London. That was in November, 1848. When in the country I was forced to part with my clothes. I had a beautiful suit of black among them. I very seldom got even a trifle from the painters in the country towns; sometimes 2d. or 3d. from a master. In London I could get no work, and my shirts and my flannel-shirts went to keep me. I stayed about a month, and having nothing left, was obliged to start for the country. I got a job at Luton, and at a few other places. Wages are very low. I was always a temperate man. Many a time I have never tasted drink for a week together, and this when I had money in my pocket, for I had 30l. when I got married. I have, too, the character of being a good workman. I returned to London again three weeks back, but could find no work. I had again to part with any odd things I had. The last I parted with was my stopping-knife and diamond, for I can work as a glazier and plumber; country painters often can—I mean those apprenticed in the country. I have no clothes but what I have on. For the last ten days, I declare solemnly, I have had nothing but what I picked up in the streets. I picked up crusts that I saw in the streets, put out on the steps by the mistresses of the houses for the poor like myself. I got so weak and ill that I had to go to King’s College Hospital, and they gave me medicine which did me good. I often had to walk the streets all night. I was so perished I could hardly move my limbs. I never asked charity, I can’t; but I could have eaten anything. I longed for the fried fish I saw; yes, I was ravenous for that, and such-like, though I couldn’t have touched it when I had money, and was middling well off. Things are so different in the country that I couldn’t fancy such meat. I was brought to that pitch, I had the greatest mind to steal something to get into prison, where, at any rate, I said to myself, I shall have some food and shelter. I didn’t—I thought better of it. I hoped something might turn up next day; besides, it might have got into the papers, and my friends might have seen it, and I should have felt I disgraced them, or that they would think so, because they couldn’t know my temptations and my sufferings. When out all night, I used to get shelter, if I could, about Hungerford Market, among the straw. The cold made me almost dead with sleep; and when obliged to move, I couldn’t walk at first, I could only crawl along. One night I had a penny given me, all I had gotten in five bitter nights in the streets. For that penny I got half a pint of coffee; it made me sick, my stomach was so weak. On Tuesday I asked a policeman if he couldn’t recommend me to some workhouse, and he told me to come here, and I was admitted, and was very thankful to get under shelter.”
The next was a carpenter, a tall, fine-built man, with a pleasing expression of countenance. He was dressed in a flannel jacket and fustian trousers, with the peculiar little side-pocket for his foot-rule, that told you of his calling. He was about 40 years of age, and had the appearance, even in his destitution, of a most respectable mechanic. It is astonishing to mark the difference between the poor artisan and the labourer. The one seems alive to his poverty, and to feel it more acutely than the other. The labourer is more accustomed to “rough it,” as it is called; but the artisan, earning better wages, and used to better ways, appears among the houseless poor as a really pitiable character. Carpenters are among the classes of mechanics in which there appears to be the greatest amount of destitution, and I selected this man as a fair average specimen of the body. He said,—
“I have been out of work nearly three months. I have had some little work in the mean time, an odd job or two at intervals, but nothing regular. When I am in full work, on day work, I can make 5s. a-day in London; but the masters very generally wishes the men to take piece-work, and that is the cause of men’s work being cut down as it is, because men is obliged to take the work as they offers. I could get about 30s. a-week when I had good employment. I had no one but myself to keep out of my earnings. I have saved something when I have been on day-work; but then it went again as soon as I got to piece-work. This is generally the case with the carpenters. The last job I had was at Cobham, in Surrey, doing joiners’ work, and business with my master got slack, and I was discharged. Then I made my way to London, and have been about from place to place since then, endeavouring to get work from every one that I knew or could get recommended to. But I have not met with any success. Well, sir, I have been obliged to part with all I had, even to my tools; though they’re not left for much. My tools are pawned for 12s., and my clothes are all gone. The last I had to part with was my rule and chalk-line, and them I left for a night’s lodging. I have no other clothes but what you see me in at present. There are a vast many carpenters out of work, and like me. It is now three weeks since the last of my things went, and after that I have been about the streets, and gone into bakers’ shops, and asked for a crust. Sometimes I have got a penny out of the tap-room of a public-house. It’s now more than a fortnight since I quitted my lodgings. I have been in the Asylum eight nights. Before that, I was out in the streets for five nights together. They were very cold nights; yes, very.” [The man shivered at the recollection.] “I walked up one street, and down another. I sometimes got under a doorway, but it was impossible to stand still long, it was so cruel cold. The sleet was coming down one night, and freezed on my clothes as it fell. The cold made me stiff more than sleepy. It was next day that I felt tired; and then, if I came to sit down at a fireside, I should drop asleep in a minute. I tried, when I was dead-beat, to get into St. Giles’s union, but they wouldn’t admit me. Then the police sent me up to another union: I forget the name, but they refused me. I tried at Lambeth, and there I was refused. I don’t think I went a day without some small bit of bread. I begged for it. But when I walked from St. Alban’s to London, I was two days without a bit to put in my mouth. I never stole, not a particle, from any person, in all my trials. I was brought up honest, and, thank God, I have kept so all my life. I would work willingly, and am quite capable: yes, and I would do my work with all my heart, but it’s not to be got at.”
This the poor fellow said with deep emotion; and, indeed, his whole statement appeared in every way worthy of credit. I heard afterwards that he had offered to “put up the stairs of two houses” at some man’s own terms, rather than remain unemployed. He had told the master that his tools were in pawn, and promised, if they were taken out of pledge for him, to work for his bare food. He was a native of Somerset, and his father and mother were both dead.
I then took the statement of a seaman, but one who, from destitution, had lost all the distinguishing characteristics of a sailor’s dress of the better description. He wore a jacket, such as seamen sometimes work in, too little for him, and very thin and worn; a waistcoat, once black; a cotton shirt; and a pair of canvas trousers. He had an intelligent look enough, and spoke in a straightforward manner. He stated:—“I am now thirty-five, and have been a seaman all my life. I first went to sea, as a cabin-boy, at Portsmouth. I was left an orphan at fourteen months, and don’t know that I have a single relation but myself. I don’t know what my father was. I was brought up at the Portsea workhouse. I was taught to read and write. I went to sea in 1827. I have continued a seaman ever since—sometimes doing pretty well. The largest sum I ever had in my possession was 38l. when I was in the Portuguese service, under Admiral Sartorius, in the ‘Donna Maria’ frigate. He hadn’t his flag aboard, but he commanded the fleet, such as it was; but don’t call it a fleet, say a squadron. Captain Henry was my last captain there; and after him I served under Admiral Napier; he was admiral out there, with his flag in the ‘Real,’ until Don Miguel’s ships were taken. The frigate I was in, (the ‘Donna Maria,’) took the ‘Princessa Real;’ she was a 44-gun ship, and ours was a 36. It was a stiffish thing while it lasted, was the fight; but we boarded and carried the ‘Princessa.’ I never got all my prize-money. I stopped in Lisbon some time after the fight; and then, as I couldn’t meet with a passage to England, I took service on board the ‘Donegal,’ 74 guns, Captain Fanshawe. I liked Lisbon pretty well; they’re not a very tidy people—treacherous, too, but not all of them. I picked up a very little Portuguese. Most of my thirty-eight pounds went in Lisbon. The ‘Donegal’ brought Don Carlos over, and we were paid off in Plymouth; that was in 1834. Since then I have been in the merchant service. I like that best. My last voyage was in the ‘Richard Cobden,’ a barque of 380 tons, belonging to Dundee; but she sailed from Gloucester for Archangel, and back from Archangel to Dundee, with a cargo of hemp and codilla. We were paid off in Dundee, and I received 4l. 8s. on the 13th of October.” [He showed me his discharge from the ‘Richard Cobden,’ and his register ticket.] “I went to Glasgow and got a vessel there, an American, the ‘Union;’ and before that I stayed at a lodging-house in Dundee that sailors frequent. There was a shipmate of mine there, a carpenter, and I left my things in his charge, and I went on board the ‘Union’ at Glasgow, and stayed working on board eighteen days; she was short of men. The agreement between me and my old shipmate was, that he should send my things when I required them. My clothes were worth to me more than 5l. The ship was to sail on Friday, the 15th of November. Sailors don’t mind getting under weigh on a Friday now; and I got 10s. from the skipper to take me to Dundee on Thursday, the 14th; but when I got to Dundee for my clothes, I found that the carpenter had left a fortnight before, taking all my things with him. I couldn’t learn anything as to where he had gone. One man told me he thought he had gone to Derry, where some said he had a wife. The skipper paid me for what days I had been employed, and offered to let me work a passage to New York, but not on wages; because I had no clothes, he couldn’t take me. I tried every ship in the Broomilaw, but couldn’t get a job, nor a passage to London; so me and two other seamen set off to walk to London. I started with 3s. One seaman left us at Carlisle. We didn’t live on the way—we starved. It took us a month to get to London. We slept sometimes at the unions; some wouldn’t admit us. I was very lame at last. We reached London a month ago. I got three days’ work as a rigger, at 2s. 6d. a-day, and a week’s shelter in the Sailors’ Asylum. I had five days’ work also on stevedore’s work in the ‘Margaret West,’ gone to Batavia. That brought me 12s. those five days’ work. Since that I’ve done nothing, and was so beat out that I had to pass two days and nights in the streets. One of those days I had a bit of bread and meat from an old mate. I had far rather be out in a gale of wind at sea, or face the worst storm, than be out two such nights again in such weather, and with an empty belly. My mate and I kept on trying to get a ship, but my old jacket was all against me. They look at a man’s clothes now. I passed these two nights walking about Tower-hill, and to London-bridge and back, half dead, and half asleep, with cold and hunger. I thought of doing something to get locked up, but I then thought that would be no use, and a disgrace to a man, so I determined to bear it like a man, and try to get a ship. The man who left us at Carlisle did no better than me, for he’s here too, beat out like me, and he told me of this Asylum. The other man got a ship. I’m not a drinking man, though I may have had a spree or two, but that’s all over. I could soon get a ship if I had some decent clothes. I bought these trousers out of what I earned in London. I spun out my money as fine as any man could.”
The poor fellow who gave me the following narrative was a coloured man, with the regular negro physiognomy, but with nothing of the lighthearted look they sometimes present. His only attire was a sadly soiled shirt of coarse striped cotton, an old handkerchief round his neck, old canvas trousers, and shoes. “I am twenty,” he said, in good English, “and was born in New York. My father was a very dark negro, but my mother was white. I was sent to school, and can read a little, but can’t write. My father was coachman to a gentleman. My mother spoke Dutch chiefly; she taught it to my father. She could speak English, and always did to me. I worked in a gentleman’s house in New York, cleaning knives and going errands. I was always well treated in New York, and by all sorts of people. Some of the ‘rough-uns’ in the streets would shout after me as I was going to church on a Sunday night. At church I couldn’t sit with the white people. I didn’t think that any hardship. I saved seven dollars by the time I was sixteen, and then I went to sea as a cabin-boy on board the ‘Elizabeth,’ a brigantine. My first voyage was to St. John’s, New Brunswick, with a cargo of corn and provisions. My second voyage was to Boston. After that I was raised to be cook. I had a notion I could cook well. I had cooked on shore before, in a gentleman’s house, where I was shown cooking. Pretty many of the cooks in New York are coloured people—the men more than the women. The women are chiefly chambermaids. There was a vacancy, I was still in the ‘Elizabeth,’ when the cook ran away. He was in a bother with the captain about wasting tea and sugar. We went some more voyages, and I then got engaged as cook on board a new British ship, just off the stocks, at St. John’s, New Brunswick, the ‘Jessica.’ About four months ago I came in her to Liverpool, where we were all paid off. We were only engaged for the run. I received 5l. I paid 2l. 10s. to my boarding mistress for two months’ board. It was 5s. and extras a-week. I laid out the rest in clothes. I had a job in Liverpool, in loading hay. I was told I had a better chance for a ship in London. I tramped it all the way, selling some of my clothes to start me. I had 6s. to start with, and got to London with hardly any clothes, and no money. That’s two months back, or nearly so. I couldn’t find a ship. I never begged, but I stood on the highways, and some persons gave me twopences and pennies. I was often out all night, perishing. Sometimes I slept under the butchers’ stalls in Whitechapel. I felt the cold very bitter, as I was used to a hot climate chiefly. Sometimes I couldn’t feel my feet. A policeman told me to come here, and I was admitted. I want to get a ship. I have a good character as a cook; my dishes were always relished; my pea-soup was capital, and so was my dough and pudding. I often wished for them when I was starving.” [He showed his white teeth, smiling as he spoke.] “Often under the Whitechapel stalls I was so frozen up I could hardly stir in the morning. I was out all the night before Christmas that it snowed. That was my worst night, I think, and it was my first. I couldn’t walk, and hardly stand, when the morning came. I have no home to go to.”
The next was a brickmaker, a man scarce thirty, a stout, big-boned man, but a little pale, evidently from cold and exhaustion. His dress was a short smockfrock, yellow with dry clay, and fustian trousers of the same colour, from the same cause. His statement was as follows:—
“I have been out of work now about seven weeks. Last work I done was on the Middle Level Drainage, in Cambridgeshire. Brickmaking generally begins (if the weather’s fine) about February, or the beginning of March, and it ends about September, and sometimes the latter end of November. If the weather’s frosty, they can’t keep on so long. I was at work up to about the middle of November last, making bricks at Northfleet, in Kent. I was with the same party for three years before. After that, brickmaking was done for the season, and I was discharged with ‘five stools’ of us beside. Each stool would require about six people to work it; so that altogether thirty hands were thrown out of work. After that I went to look for work among the ‘slop’ brickmakers. They makes bricks ‘slop-way’ right through the winter, for they’re dried by flues. I am by rights a sand-stock brickmaker. Howsomever, I couldn’t get a job at brickmaking slop-way, so I went down on the Middle Level, and there I got a job at river-cutting; but the wet weather came, and the water was so strong upon us that we got drownded out. That’s the last job I’ve had. At brickmaking I had 3s. 10d. a thousand, this last summer. I have had my 4s. 6d. for the very same work. Two years ago I had that. Six of us could make about 35,000 in a-week, if it was fine. On an average, we should make, I dare say, each of us about 1l. a-week, and not more, because if it was a showery day we couldn’t do nothing at all. We used to join one among another in the yard to keep our own sick. We mostly made the money up to 14s. a-week when any mate was bad. I did save a few shillings, but it was soon gone when I was out of work. Not many of the brickmakers save. They work from seventeen to eighteen hours every day when it’s fine, and that requires a good bit to eat and drink. The brickmakers most of them drink hard. After I got out of work last November, I went away to Peterborough to look for employment. I thought I might get a job on the London and York Railway, but I couldn’t find none. From there I tramped it to Grimsby: ‘perhaps,’ I said, ‘I may get a job at the docks;’ but I could get nothing to do there, so I came away to Grantham, and from there back to Peterborough again, and after that to Northampton, and then I made my way to London. All this time I had laid either in barns at nighttimes, or slept in the casual wards of the unions—that is, where they would have me. Often I didn’t get nothing to eat for two or three days together, and often I have had to beg a bit to keep body and soul together. I had no other means of living since November last but begging. When I came to town I applied at a large builder’s office for work. I heard he had something to do at the Isle of Dogs, but it was the old story—they were full, and had plenty of hands till the days got out longer. Then I made away to Portsmouth. I knew a man there who had some work, but when I got there he had none to give me at the present time. From there I went along the coast, begging my way still, to Hastings, in hope of getting work at the railway; but all to no good. They had none, too, till the days got longer. After that I came round to London again, and I have been here a fortnight come next Monday. I have done no work. I have wandered about the streets any way. I went to the London Docks to see for a job, and there I met with a man as I knowed, and he paid for my lodging for one or two nights. I walked the streets for two whole nights before I came here. It was bitter cold, freezing sharp, indeed, and I had nothing to eat all the time. I didn’t know there was such a place as this till a policeman told me. A gentleman gave me 6d., and that’s all I’ve had since I’ve been in this town. I have been for the last three nights at the Asylum. I don’t suppose they’ll take my ticket away till after to-morrow night, and then I thought of making my way down home till my work starts again. I have sought for work all over the country, and can’t get any. All the brickmakers are in the same state as myself. They none of them save, and must either starve or beg in the winter. Most times we can get a job in the cold weather, but this year, I don’t know what it is, but I can’t get a job at all. Former years I got railway work to do, but now there’s nothing doing, and we’re all starving. When I get down home I shall be obliged to go into the union, and that’s hard for a young man like me, able to work, and willing; but it ain’t to be had, it ain’t to be had.”
Then came a tailor, a young man only twenty-one years old, habited in a black frock-coat, with a plaid shawl twisted round his neck. His eyes were full and expressive, and he had a look of intelligence superior to any that I had yet seen. He told a story which my inquiries into the “slop trade” taught me was “ower true.”
“I have been knocking about for near upon six weeks,” he replied, in answer to my inquiries. “I was working at the slop-trade at the West-end. I am a native of Scotland. I was living with a sweater. I used to board and lodge with him entirely. At the week’s end I was almost always in debt with him—at least he made it out so. I had very often to work all night, but let me slave as hard as I might I never could get out of debt with the sweater. There were often as many as six of us there, and we slept two together in each bed. The work had been slack for some time, and he gave me employment till I worked myself out of his debt, and then he turned me into the streets. I had a few clothes remaining, and these soon were sold to get food and lodging. I lived on my other coat and shirts for a week or two, and at last all was gone, and I was left entirely destitute. Then I had to pace the streets all day and night. The two nights before I came here I never tasted food nor lay down to rest. I had been in a fourpenny lodging before then, but I couldn’t raise even that; and I knew it was no good going there without the money. You must pay before you go to bed at those places. Several times I got into a doorway, to shelter from the wind and cold, and twice I was roused by the policeman, for I was so tired that I fell asleep standing against a shop near the Bank. What with hunger and cold, I was in a half-stupid state. I didn’t know what to do: I was far from home and my mother. I have not liked to let her know how badly I was off.” [The poor lad’s eyes flooded with tears at the recollection of his parent.] “I thought I had better steal something, and then at least I should have a roof over my head. Then I thought I’d make away with myself. I can’t say how; it was a sort of desperation; and I was so stupid with cold and want, that I can hardly remember what I thought. All I wanted was to be allowed to sit down on some doorstep and die; but the police did not allow this. In the daytime I went up and lay about the parks most part of the day, but I couldn’t sleep then; I hardly know why, but I’d been so long without food, that I couldn’t rest. I have purposely kept from writing to my mother. It would break her heart to know my sufferings. She has been a widow this ten years past. She keeps a lodging-house in Leith, and has two children to support. I have been away eight months from her. I came to London from a desire to see the place, and thinking I could better my situation. In Edinburgh, I had made my 1l. a-week regularly; often more, and seldom less. When I came to London, a woman met me in the street, and asked me if I wasn’t a tailor? On my replying in the affirmative, she informed me if I would come and work for her husband, I should have good wages, and live with her and her husband, and they would make me quite comfortable. I didn’t know she was the wife of a sweater at that time. It was a thing I had never heard of in Edinburgh. After that time, I kept getting worse and worse off, working day and night, and all Sunday, and still always being in debt to them I worked for. Indeed, I wish I had never left home. If I could get back, I’d go in a moment. I have worked early and late, in the hope of accumulating money enough to take me home again, but I could not even get out of debt, much more save, work as hard as I would.”