The seven curses of London

by James Greenwood

“Course I know. It fetched its price, cert’inly, when you could get away to sell it; but what I’m speaking of is the inconwenience of it. We didn’t want no grub, don’t you see; it was the sp’iling of us. S’pose now we was served like what I just told you; got reg’lar loaded-up when we was a couple of miles away. What was we to do? We couldn’t go on a swearin’ as how we was starvin’ with wittles bustin’ out of us all round. We was ’bliged to shoot the load afore we could begin ag’in. Sometimes we had to do the ‘long trot’” (go home) “with it, and so sp’iled a whole arternoon. If we got a chance, we shot it down a gully, or in a dunghole in a mews. Anythink to get rid of it, don’t you see. I should like to have just now the rattlin’ lot of grub we’ve been ’bliged to get rid of in that there way.”

Despite the decline of the trade of “shallowing,” however, as the reader must have observed, it is one that is regarded as worth resorting to in “season.” A more favourite “dodge” at the present is to appear before the public not in rags and tatters and with patches of naked flesh disgustingly visible, but in sound thorough labour-stained attire, and affect the style either of the ashamed unaccustomed beggar or that of the honest working mechanic, who, desperately driven by stress of poverty, shapes his loud-mouthed appeal in tones of indignant remonstrance that rich and prosperous England should permit a man such as he is to be reduced to the uncomfortable plight in which you now behold him. He is a solitary cadger, and gets himself up in a manner so artful, that it is only when you pay attention to his “speech,” and find that he repeats precisely the same words over and over again, that you begin to have a suspicion that he is not exactly what he seems. Like the “shallow cove,” he prefers a very cold or a very wet and miserable day. He does not enter a street walking in the middle of the road, as the common “chanting” or “pattering” beggar does; he walks on the pavement with slow and hesitating gait, and at frequent intervals casts hasty and nervous glances behind him, as though fearful that he is watched or followed. Possibly he is so afraid. At all events, should a policeman by rare chance steal round the corner, his steps will increase in length, and he will pass out of the street just as an ordinary pedestrian might; but should he be free to play his “little game,” he will set about it as follows.

After looking about him several times, he proceeds to make himself remarkable to any person or persons who may happen to be gazing streetward from the window. He will stand suddenly still, and button-up his coat as though determined on some desperate action. With a loud-sounding “hem!” he clears his throat and advances towards the roadway; but, alas, before his feet touch the pavement’s boundary his courage falters, and he dashes his hand across his eyes and shakes his head, in a manner that at once conveys to beholders the impression that, much as he desires it, he is unequal to the performance of what a moment ago he contemplated and thought himself strong enough to perform. At least, if this is not made manifest to the beholder, the actor has missed his object. On he goes again just a few faltering steps—a very few—and then he cries “hem!” again, louder and fiercer than before, and dashes into the middle of the road.

If you had pushed him there, or set your dog at him and he had bounded there to escape its fangs, the injured look he casts up at you could not be surpassed. He says not a word for a full minute; he simply folds his arms sternly and glares at you up at the window, as though he would say not so much “What do you think of me standing here?” as “What do you think of yourself, after having driven me to do a thing so ignominious and shameful?” These necessary preliminaries accomplished, in a loud impassioned voice he opens:

“What!”—(a pause of some seconds’ duration)—“What! will a man not do to drive away from his door the WOLF that assails the wife of his bosom and his innocent horfspring?”

He appears to await an answer to this, as though it were a solemn conundrum; though from the moody contraction of his eyebrows and the momentary scorn that wrinkles the corners of his mouth as he still gazes all round at the windows, he seems to be aware that it is one which on account of your complete ignorance of such matters you will never guess.

“Doubtless, my friends, you are astonished to see me in this humiliating attitude, addressing you like a common beggar. But what else am I? What is the man who implores you to spare him from your plenty—ay, and your luxury—a penny to save from starving those that are dearer to him than his HEART’S blood, but a beggar? But, my friends, a man may be a beggar, and still be not ashamed. I am not ashamed. I might be, if it was for myself that I asked your charity; but I would not do so. I would die sooner than I would stoop to do it; but what is a HUSBAND to do, when he has a wife weak and ill from her confinement; who is dying by HINCHES for that nourishment that I have not to give her?” (Here a violent blowing of his nose on a clean cotton pocket-handkerchief.) “What, my dear friends, is a FATHER to do, when his little ones cry to him for BREAD? Should he feel ashamed to beg for them? Ask yourselves that question, you who have good warm fires and all that the heart can desire. I am not ashamed. It is a desperate man’s last resource; and I ask you again, as my fellow-creatures, will you turn away from me and deny me the small assistance I beg of you?”

Generally he is successful. Women—young mothers and old mothers alike—find it hard to resist the artless allusion to the wife, “weak and ill from her confinement,” and the amazingly well-acted sudden outburst of emotion that the actor is so anxious to conceal under cover of blowing his nose. To be sure he is not a prepossessing person, and his style of appeal is somewhat coarse and violent; but that stamps it, in the eyes of the unwary, as genuine. If he “knew the trade,” he would know that he should be meek and insinuating, not loud-mouthed and peremptory. In short, his behaviour is exactly that of a man—a hard-working fellow when he has it to do—driven to desperation, and with a determination to raise enough to buy a loaf somehow. It would be a monstrous thing to refuse such a poor fellow because of his blunt inapt way of asking; and so the halfpence come showering down. It is several months ago since I last saw this worthy; but I have no doubt that his wife has not yet recovered from her confinement, that his children are yet crying for bread, and that he is still not ashamed to solicit public charity to save them from starving.

There are other types of the shy, blunt-spoken beggar, who affect almost to resent the charity they solicit. These abound, as indeed do all street-beggars, chiefly in the severest months of winter. As long as one can remember, gangs of men have perambulated the highways in the frosty months, but until recently they were invariably “chanters,” with a legend of coming “all the way from Manchester.” But song is eschewed in modern times. It is found better to avoid old-fashioned forms, and appear as men destitute and down-trodden perhaps, but still with self-respect remaining in them. There is no occasion for them to give you a song for your money; they are not called on to give a lengthy and humiliating explanation as to how they came there; you know all about it. You must have read in the newspapers, “that, owing to the many stoppages of public and private works, there are at the present time hundreds of able-bodied and deserving labouring men wandering the streets of London, driven to the hard necessity of begging their bread.” Well, these are of the number. Observe the unmistakable token of their having laboured on a “public work,” to wit, a railway-cutting, in the clay baked on their “ankle-jacks” and fustian trousers. Regard that able-bodied individual, the leader of the gang, with his grimy great fists and the smut still on his face, and for a moment doubt that he is a deserving labouring man. He is an engineer, out of work since last Christmas, and ever since so hard-up that he has been unable to spare a penny to buy soap with. If you don’t believe it, ask him. But to this or any other detail himself or his mates will not condescend in a general way. All that they do, is to spread across the street, and saunter along with their hands in their pockets, ejaculating only, “Out of work!” “Willin’ to work, and got no work to do!” If you followed them all day, you would find no change in their method of operation, excepting the interval of an hour or so at midday spent in the tap-room of a public-house. If you followed them after that, your steps in all probability would be directed towards Keate-street, Spitalfields, or Mint-street in the Borough, in both of which delightful localities common lodging-houses abound; and if you were bold enough to cross the threshold and descend into the kitchen, there you would discover the jolly crew sitting round a table, and dividing the handsome spoil of the day, while they drank “long lasting to the frost” in glasses of neat rum.

At the same time, I should be very sorry for the reader to misunderstand me, as wishing to convey to him the impression that in every instance the gangs of men to be met with in the streets in winter-time are vagrants and impostors. It is not difficult to imagine a company of hard-up poor fellows genuinely destitute; mates, perhaps, on the same kind of work, resorting to this method of raising a shilling rather than apply at the workhouse for it. An out-o’-work navvy or a bricklayer would never think of going out to beg alone, whereas he would see no great amount of degradation in joining a “gang.” He thus sinks his individuality, and becomes merely a representative item of a depressed branch of industry. There can be no doubt that a sixpence given to such a man is well bestowed for the time being; but it would be much better, even though it cost many sixpences, if the labourer were never permitted to adopt this method of supplying his needs. In the majority of cases, it may be, the out-o’-work man who resorted to the streets to beg for money would, when trade improved, hurry back to work, and be heartily glad to forget to what misfortune had driven him; but there are a very large number of labourers who, at the best of times, can live but from hand to mouth as the saying is, and from whom it is desirable to keep secret how much easier money may be got by begging than working. To a man who has to drudge at the docks, for instance, for threepence an hour—and there are thousands in London who do so—it is a dangerous experience for him to discover that as much may be made on an average by sauntering the ordinary length of a street, occasionally raising his hand to his cap. Or he may know beforehand, by rumour, what a capital day’s work may be done at “cadging,” and in bitter sweat of underpaid labour complain that he is worse off than a cadger. It is as well to provide against giving such a man an excuse for breaking the ice.