The old town

by Jacob A. Riis

For a good night

Give God the thanks

And mind ye well the time.

Before his song died away among the old houses, we were hard at work cramming for examination.

This service was set down to his credit when in Christmas week the watchman came to the door to “bid New Years.” It was one of the customs of the Old Town that came down from the earliest days, happily shorn of some of its mediæval aspects. For then he came not alone, but the whole body of watchmen together, a kind of reconnoissance in force, to which the fact that the public executioner came with them lent a suggestion which no one could afford to let go unheeded. That it really was a kind of official blackmail is made apparent by certain ordinances passed in the Sixteenth Century which forbade the practice and fixed a regular schedule of charges for these public servants. The executioner was to have one dollar for chopping off a head or hanging a man, half a dollar for an ear, a dollar and a half for burning a witch at the stake, and so forth. It was not much. When one reads of his using twenty-two loads of wood for burning a single witch, it seems but poor pickings for a hard-worked man; but then he made up for it by having his hands full. He burned thirteen witches between the years 1572 and 1652, and beheaded one. Of ears and such small fry no account seems to have been kept. Besides all this he was street-cleaning commissioner[19] and offal contractor, with the express proviso, however, that he must not himself engage in the latter business as beneath his dignity, but must farm it out to the town chimney-sweep. It will be seen that the executioner was by no means a disreputable man, but a functionary of importance who could not be allowed to go begging from door to door. As for the watchmen, they were ordered to desist not merely from that practice, but from monopolizing the moving business and from bossing weddings held in the Town Hall; likewise they must do no harm to drunken men in the street, but must help them home. One look at the mug they drank from at council meetings and still keep at the Town Hall gives a clew to the wherefore of this last ordinance: the councilmen themselves might have some trouble navigating after a protracted session.

The Chimney-sweep.

The demand of these New Year pirates seems in the olden time to have been for “candles,” perhaps a convenient medium of exchange. In our day it was frankly for cash. Not only the watchman, but every one who had during the year rendered the house any service, or might be expected to in the year to come, knocked, said “Happy New Year,” and received a silver mark or an “eight-skilling,” which was half a mark, as the case might be, with the thanks of the householder. The chimney-sweep was there, washed and cleaned for once,—on other days he made it a point to look “like his trade,”—and the official mourner, who alternately bade the town to weddings and funerals, or gave notice that the stork had been around with a baby. A regular “cinch” had he, since sooner or later every well-regulated family must employ his service. His was a real profession, and he kept a special face for each of his functions. When he was bidding to a funeral his gait was slow and measured, his face grave, and his voice had a mournful droop that matched his rusty black coat and ancient silk hat. If it was a wedding, he was cordial, his step was light and his tile was set at a rakish angle. The man was an artist. And so in their limited sphere were the funeral bearers, who were among our New Year’s callers, too. They were a remnant from the days of the executioner, farther back even, to the time of the Black Death that killed half the people in the town. Their guild was organized then, a sort of mutual insurance concern that made a man sure of getting underground at all events; and, having been established, stayed, as did everything else till it fell to pieces of itself. The aforesaid ordinances bear witness that it took much Dutch courage to carry the dead in the days of pestilence. There is one which forbids giving the “bearers” a barrel of beer at each funeral as wasteful and unseemly. The Old Town did some things after all that are worth considering. We do with less than a barrel in our day, but even when we do without it altogether, there is still waste enough about our funerals that is both unseemly and unfit in a Christian land.

“We saw it on moonlight nights.”