 Section 24 of London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 2 by Henry Mayhew. This LibriVolk recording is in the public domain. Recording by Gillian Henry. Of the charities, schools and education of the Jews. The Jewish charities are highly honourable to the body for they allow none of their people to live or die in a parish workhouse. It is true that among the Jews in London, there are many individuals of immense wealth, but there are also many rich Christians who care not one jot for the need of their brethren. It must be borne in mind also that not only do the Jews voluntarily support their own poor and institutions, but they contribute compulsorily, it is true, their quota to the support of the English poor and church, and indeed pay their due proportion of all the parliamentary or local imposts. This is the more honourable and the more remarkable among the Jews when we recollect their indisputable greed of money. If a Jew be worn out in his old age and unable to maintain himself, he is either supported by the contributions of his friends or out of some local or general fund or provided for in some asylum, and all this seems to be done with a less than ordinary fuss and display, so that the recipient of the charity feels himself more a pensioner than a popper. The Jews hospital in the Mile End Road is an extensive building into which feeble old men and destitute children of both sexes are admitted. Here the boys are taught trades and the girls qualified for respectable domestic service. The widow's home in Duke Street, Aldgate is for poor Hebrew widows. The orphan asylum, built at the cost of Mr. A. L. Moses and supported by subscription, now contains 14 girls and eight boys. A school is attached to the asylum, which is in the Tentor Ground, Goodman's Fields. The hand in hand asylum for decayed old people, men and women, is in Duke's Place, Aldgate. There are likewise arms houses for the Jews, erected also by Mr. A. L. Moses at Mile End, and other arms houses, erected by Mr. Joel Emanuel in well-clothed square near the tower. There are further three institutes for granting marriage dowers to fatherless children, an institution in Bevis Marks for the burial of the poor of the congregation, Beth Hollam, a house for the reception of the sick poor, and of poor lying in women belonging to the congregation of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, Magasim Zobim, for lending money to aid apprenticeships among boys to fit girls for good domestic service and for helping poor children to proceed to foreign parts when it is believed that the change will be advantageous to them, and Notan-Leban Larsimim, to distribute bread to the poor of the congregation on the day preceding the Sabbath. I am assured that these institutions are well managed, and that if the charities are abused by being dispensed to undeserving objects, it is usually with the knowledge of the managers who often let the abuse pass as a smaller evil than driving a man to theft or subjecting him to the chance of starvation. One gentleman, familiar with most of these establishments, said to me with a laugh, I believe if you have had any conversation with the gentleman who managed these matters, you will have concluded that they are not the people to be imposed upon very easily. There are seven Jewish schools in London, four in the city and three at the West End, all supported by voluntary contributions. The Jews Free School in Bell Lane's Bittlefields is the largest and is adapted for the education of no fewer than 1,200 boys and girls. The late Baroness de Rothschild provided clothing yearly for all the pupils in the school. In the infant school Hounstich are about 400 little scholars. There are also the Orphan Asylum School, previously mentioned, the Western Jewish schools for girls in Dean Street and for boys in Greek Street Soho, but considered as one establishment, and the West Metropolitan School for Girls in Little Queen Street and for boys in High Hoburn, also considered as one establishment. Notwithstanding these means of education, the body of the poorer or what in other callings might be termed the working classes, are not even tolerably well educated. They are indifferent to the matter. With many the multiplication table seems to constitute what they think the acme of all knowledge needful to a man. The great majority of the Jew boys in the street cannot read. A smaller portion can read, but so imperfectly that their ability to read detracts nothing from their ignorance. So neglectful or so necessitous, but I heard the ignorance attributed to neglect far more frequently than necessity, are the poorer Jews, and so soon do they take their children away from school to learn and do something for themselves. And so irregular is their attendance on the plea that the time cannot be spared, and the boy must do something for himself, that many children leave the free schools not only about as ignorant as when they entered them, but almost with an incentive to continued ignorance, for they knew nothing of reading, except that to acquire its rudiments is a pain, a labour, and a restraint. On some of the Jew boys the vagrant spirit is strong, they will be a tenorance if not wanderers, though this is a spirit in no way confined to the Jew boys. Although the wealthier Jews may be induced to give money towards the support of their poor, I heard strong strictures passed upon them concerning their indifference towards their brethren in all other respects. Even if they subscribed to a school, they never cared whether or not it was attended, and that, much as was done, far more was in the power of so wealthy and distinct a people. This is all the more inexcusable, was said to me by a Jew, because there are so many rich Jews in London, and if they exerted and exercised a broader liberality, as they might, in instituting Jewish colleges for instance, to promote knowledge among the middle classes, and if they cared more about employing their own people, their liberality would be far more fully felt than similar conduct in a Christian because they have a smaller sphere to influence. As to employing their own people there are numbers of the rich Jews who will employ any stranger in preference if he worked a penny a week cheaper. This sort of clan employment, continued my Jew informant, should never be exclusive but there might I think be a judicious preference. I shall now proceed to set forth an account of the sums yearly subscribed for purposes of education and charity by the Jews. The Jews free school in Spitalfields is supported by voluntary contributions to the amount of about £1,200 yearly. To this sum a few Christians contribute, as to some other Hebrew institutions, which I shall specify, while Jews often are liberal supporters of Christian public charities. Indeed some of the wealthier Jews are looked upon by the members of their own faith as inclined to act more generously, where Christian charities, with the prestige of high aristocratic and fashionable patronage, are in question than towards their own institutions. To the Jews free school the Court of Common Council of the Corporation of London lately granted £100 through the exertions of Mr Benjamin S. Phillips of Newgate Street, a member of the Court, the Baroness Lionel de Rothschild, as I have formerly stated of the late Baroness. Supplies clothing for the scholars. The school is adapted for the reception of 1,200 boys and girls in equal proportion, about 900 is the average attendance. The Jews infant school in Houndsditch, with an average attendance approaching 400, is similarly supported at a cost of from £800 to £1,000 yearly. The orphan asylum school in Goodmansfields receives a somewhat larger support, but in the expenditure is the cost of an asylum, before mentioned, and containing 22 inmates. The funds are about £1,500 yearly. Christians subscribe to this institution also, Mr Frederick Peale MP, taking great interest in it. The attendance of pupils is from 300 to 400. It might be tedious to enumerate the other schools after having described the principle. I will merely add therefore that the yearly contributions to each are from £700 to £1,000, and the pupils taught in each from 200 to 400. Of these further schools there are four already specified. The Jews hospital at mile end is maintained at a yearly cost of about £3,000, to which Christians contribute, but not to a 20th of the amount collected. The persons benefitted are worn out old men and destitute children, while the number of Ams people is from 150 to 200 yearly. The other two asylums and so on, which I have specified, are maintained at a cost of about £800 each as a yearly average, and the Ams houses, three in number, at about half that sum. The persons relieved by these last mentioned institutions, number about 250, two thirds or their abouts being in the asylums. The lone societies are three, the Jewish ladies visiting and benevolent lone society, the Linusarian lone society, why called Linusarian a learned Hebrew scholar could not inform me, although he had asked the question of others, and the magazine Zobin the Good Deeds, a Portuguese Jews lone society. The business of these three societies is conducted on the same principle, money is lent on personal or any security approved by the managers, and no interest is charged to the borrower. The amount lent yearly is from £600 to £700 by each society, the whole being repaid and with sufficient punctuality. A few weeks grace is occasionally allowed in the event of illness or any unforeseen event. The lone societies have not yet found it necessary to proceed against any of their debtors. My informant thought this forbearance extended over six years. There is not among the Jewish street traders as among the costar mongers and others, a class forming part or having once formed part of themselves and living by usury and lone mongering, where they have amassed a few pounds. Whatever may be thought of the Jews' usurious dealings as regards the general public, the poorer classes of their people are not subjected to the exactions of usury, with all its clogs to a struggling man's well doing. Sometimes the amount required by an old clothesman or other street trader is obtained by or for him at one of these lone societies. Sometimes it is advanced by the usual buyer of the second hand garments collected by the street Jew. No security in such places is given beyond, strange as it may sound, the personal honour of an old clothesman. An experienced man told me that taking all the class of Jewish street sellers who are a very fluctuating body, with the exception of the old clothesmen, the sum thus advanced as stock money to them might be seldom less in any one year than £300 and seldom more than £500. There is a prevalent notion that the poorer Jews, when seeking charity, are supplied with goods for street sale by their wealthy brethren and never with money. This appears to be unfounded. Now to sum up the above items, we find that the yearly cost of the Jewish schools is about £7,000, supplying the means of instruction to 3,000 children, out of a population of 18,000 of all ages, one half of whom perhaps are under 20 years. The yearly outlay in the asylums and so on is, it appears, £5,800 annually, benefiting or maintaining about 420 individuals at a cost of nearly £14 per head. If we add no more than £200 yearly for the minor charities or institutions I have previously alluded to, we find £14,000 expended annually in the public schools and charities of the Jews of London, independently of about £2,000, which is the amount of the loans to those requiring temporary aid. We have before seen that the number of Jews in London is estimated by the best informed at about 18,000, hence it would appear that the charitable donations of the Jews of London amount on an average to a little less than £1 per head. Let us compare this with the benevolence of the Christians. At the same ratio, the sum devoted to the charities of England and Wales should be very nearly £16 million, but according to the most liberal estimates it does not reach half that amount. The rent of the land and other fixed property, together with the interest of the money left for charitable purposes in England and Wales, is £1,200,000. If however we add to the voluntary contributions the sum raised compulsorily by assessment in aid of the poor, about £7 million per annum, the ratio of the English Christians contributions to his needy brethren throughout the country will be very nearly the same as that of the Jews. Moreover, if we turn our attention to the benevolent bequests and donations of the Christians of London, we shall find that their munificence does not fall far short of that of the metropolitan Jews. The gross amounts of the charitable contributions of London are given below together with the numbers of institutions, and it will thus be seen that the sum devoted to such purposes amounts to no less than £1,764,733, or upwards of a million and three-quarters sterling for a population of about two millions. Readers note, there follows a table listing income derived from voluntary contributions and income derived from property for various categories. 12 General Medical Hospitals Income derived from voluntary contributions, £31,265. Income derived from property, £111,641. Fifty medical charities for special purposes, from voluntary contributions, £27,974. From property, £68,690. 35 General Dispensaries From voluntary contributions, £11,470. From property, £2,954. Twelve Preservation of Life and Public Morals From voluntary contributions, £8,730. From property, £2,773. Eighteen Reclaiming the Fallen and Staying the Progress of Crime From voluntary contributions, £16,299. From property, £13,737. Fourteen Relief of General Destitution and Distress From voluntary contributions, £20,646. From property, £3,234. Twelve Relief of Specified Distress From voluntary contributions, £19,473. From property, £10,408. Fourteen Aiding the Resources of the Industrious From voluntary contributions, £4,677. From property, £2,569. Eleven For the Blind, Deaf and Dumb From voluntary contributions, £11,965. From property, £22,797. 103 Colleges, Hospitals and Other Asylums for the Aged From voluntary contributions, £5,857. From property, £77,190. Sixteen Charitable Pensions Societies From voluntary contributions, £15,790. From property, £3,199. Seventy-four Charitable and Provident, Chiefly for Specified Classes From voluntary contributions, £19,905. From property, £83,322. Thirty-one Asylums for Orphans and Other Necessitous Children From voluntary contributions, £55,466. From property, £25,549. Ten Educational Foundations From voluntary contributions, £15,000. From property, £78,112. Four Charitable Modern Ditto From voluntary contributions, £4,000. From property, £9,300. Forty School Societies, Religious Books, Church Aiding and Christian Visiting and so on. From voluntary contributions, £159,853. From property, £158,336. Thirty-five Bible and Missionary From voluntary contributions, £494,494. From property, £63,058. £491 Total Income Derived From Voluntary Contributions, £1,022,864. Total Income Derived From Property, £741,869. In connection with the statistical part of this subject, I may mention that the Chief Rabbis each receive £1,200 a year. The readers of the synagogues of whom there are twelve in London, from £300 to £400 a year each. The secretaries of the synagogues, of whom there are also twelve, from £200 to £300 each. The twelve Undersecretaries, from £100 to £150, and six Dianam, £100 a year each. These last mentioned officers are looked upon by many of the Jews as a poor curate, maybe by the members of the Church of England, as being exceedingly underpaid. The functions of the Dianam have been already mentioned, and I may add that they must have received expensive scholarly educations, as for about four hours daily they have to read the Talmud in the Places of Worship. The yearly payment of these sacerdotal officials then, independent of other outplay, amounts to about £11,700. This is raised from the profits of the seats in the synagogues and voluntary contributions, donations, subscriptions, bequests and so on, among the Jews. I have before spoken of a board of deputies, in connection with the Jews, and now proceed to describe its constitution. It is not a parliament among the Jews, I am told, nor a governing power, but what may be called a directing or regulating body. It is authorised by the body of Jews and recognised by Her Majesty's government as an established corporation, with powers to treat and determine on matters of civil and political policy, affecting the condition of the Hebrews in this country, and interferes in no way with religious matters. It is neither a metropolitan, nor a local, nor a detached board, but as far as the Jews in England may be so described, a national board. This board is elected triennially. The electors are the seat holders in the Jewish synagogues, that is to say, they belong to the class of Jews who promote the support of the synagogues by renting seats and so paying towards the cost of those establishments. There are in England, Ireland and Scotland about 1,000 of these seat holders exercising the franchise, or rather entitled to exercise it, but many of them are indifferent to the privilege, as is often testified by the apathy shown on the days of election. Perhaps three fourths of the privilege number may vote. The services of the representatives are gratuitous, and no qualification is required, but the elected are usually the leading metropolitan Jews. The proportion of the electors voting is in the ratio of the deputies elected. London returns 12 deputies, Liverpool 2, Manchester 2, Birmingham 2, Edinburgh Dublin, the only places in either Scotland or Ireland returning deputies, Dover, Portsmouth, Southampton, Plymouth, Canterbury, Norwich, Swansea, Newcastle and Tyne, and two other places, according to the number of seat holders, each one deputy, thus making up the number to 30. On election days, the attendance, as I have said, is often small, but fluctuating according to any cause of excitement, which however is but seldom. The question which has of late been discussed by this board, and which is now under consideration and negotiation with the Education Commissioners of Her Majesty's Privy Council, is the obtaining a grant of money in the same proportion granted to other educational establishments. Nothing has yet been given to the Jewish schools, and the matter is still undetermined. With religious or sacerdotal questions, the Board of Deputies does not, or is not required, to meddle. It leaves all such matters to the bodies or tribunals I have mentioned. Indeed, the deputies concern themselves only with what may be called the public interests of the Jews, both as a part of the community and as a distinct people. The Jewish institutions however are not an exception to the absence of unanimity among the professors of the same creeds, for the members of the Reform Synagogue in Margaret Street, Cavendish Square are not recognised as entitled to vote, and do not vote accordingly in the election of the Jewish deputies. Indeed, the Reform Members, whose synagogue was established eight years ago, were formerly excommunicated by a declaration of the late Chief Rabbi. But this seems now to be regarded as a mere matter of form, for the members have lately partaken of all the rights to which Orthodox Jews are entitled. Of the funeral ceremonies, fasts and customs of the Jews. The funeral ceremonies of the Jews are among the things which tend to preserve the distinctness and peculiarity of this people. Sometimes, though now rarely, the nearest relatives of the deceased wear sackcloth, a coarse crepe, and throw ashes and dust on their hair, for the term during which the corpse remains unburied, this term being the same as among Christians. When the corpse is carried to the Jews burial ground for interment, the coffin is frequently opened, and the corpse addressed in a Hebrew formula by any relative, friend or acquaintance who may be present. The words are to the following purport. Quote, After that, the coffin is carried round the burial ground in a circuit, children chanting the 90th Psalm in its original Hebrew, a prayer of Moses, the man of God. The passages which the air causes to be most emphatic are these verses. 3. Thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Return ye children of men. 4. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. 5. Thou carryest them away as with a flood. They are as a sweep. In the morning they are like grass which grows up. 6. In the morning it flourishes and grows up. In the evening it is cut down and withereth. 10. The days of our years are three score years and ten, and if by reason of strength they be four score years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. The coffin is then carried into a tent, and the funeral prayers in Hebrew are read, when it has been lowered into the grave, the relatives, and indeed all the attendants at the interment, hill up the grave, shoveling in the earth. In the Jews burial ground are no distinctions, no vaults or provisions for aristocratic sepulcher. The very rich and the very poor, the outcast women, and the virtuous and prosperous gentle women, grossly familiar, side by side consume. A Jewish funeral is a matter of high solemnity. The burial fees are 12 shillings for children, and from £2 to £3 for adults. These fees are not the property of the party's officiating, but form a portion of the synagogue funds for general purposes, payment of officers and so on. No fees are charged to the relatives of poor Jews. Two fasts are rigidly observed by the Jews, and even by those Jews who are usually indifferent to the observances of their religion. These are the black fast, in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the white fast, in commemoration of the atonement. On each of these occasions, the Jews abstain altogether from food for 24 hours, or from sunset to sunset. Of the Jew street sellers of accordions, and of their street musical pursuits. I conclude my account of the street Jews with an account of the accordion sellers. Although the Jews, as a people, are musical, they are little concerned at present, either in the sale of musical instruments in the streets, or in street music or singing. Until within a few years, however, the street sale of accordions was carried on by itinerant Jews, and had previously been carried on most extensively in the country, even in the far north of England. Some years back, well-dressed Jews travelled with stocks of accordions. In many country towns, and in gentlemen's country mansions, in taverns and schools also, these accordions were then a novelty. The Jew could play on the instrument, and carried a book of instructions, which usually formed part of the bargain, and by the aid of which he made out, anyone, even without previous knowledge of the practical art of music, could easily teach himself. Nothing but a little practice in fingering being wanted to make a good accordion player. At first, the accordions sold by the Jew hawkers were good, two guineas being no unusual price to be paid for one, even to a street seller, while ten and twenty shillings were the lower charges. But the accordions were in a few years made slop, cheap instruments being sent to this country from Germany, and sold at less than half their former price, until the charge fell as low as three shelling sixpence, or even two shelling sixpence, but only for rubbish, I was told. When the fragility and inferior musical qualities of these instruments came to be known, it was found almost impossible to sell in the streets, even superior instruments, however reasonable in price, and thus the trade sunk to an unentity. So little demand is there now for these instruments that no pawnbroker, I am assured, will advance money on one, however well made. The itinerant accordion trade was always much greater in the country than in London, for in town, I was told, few would be troubled to try, or even listen, to the tones of an accordion played by a street seller at their own doors or in their houses. While there were a hundred or one hundred and twenty Jews hocking accordions in the country, there would not be twenty in London, including even the suburbs where the sale was the best. Calculating that, when the trade was at its best, one hundred and thirty Jews hocked accordions in town and country, and that each sold three a week at an average price of twenty shillings each, or six in a week at an average price of ten shillings each, the profit being from fifty to one hundred percent, we find upwards of twenty thousand pounds expended in the court of the year in accordions of which however little more than a sixth part, or about three thousand pounds, was expended in London. This was only when the trade had all recommendations of novelty, and in the following year perhaps not half the amount was realised. One informant thought that the year 1828 to 29 was the best for the sale of these instruments, but he spoke only from memory. At the present time I could not find or hear of one street Jew selling accordions. I remember however having seen one within the present year, most of the Jews who travelled with them have emigrated. It is very rarely indeed that fond as the Jews are of music any of them are to be found in the bands of street musicians, or of such street performers as the Ethiopian Serenaders. If there be any, I was told, they were probably not pure Jews, but of Christian parentage on one side or the other, and not associating with their own people. At the cheap concert rooms however, Jews are frequently singers, but rarely the Jewesses, while some of the Turpanie concerts at the East End are got up and mainly patronised by the poorer class of Jews. Jews are also to be found occasionally among the supernumeraries of the theatres, but when not professionally engaged, these still live among their own people. I asked one young Jew who occasionally sang at a cheap concert room what description of songs they usually sung, and he answered all kinds. He it seems sang comic songs, but his friend Barney, who had just left him, sang sentimental songs. He earned one shilling and sometimes two shillings, but more frequently one shilling, three or four nights in the week, as he had no regular engagement. In the daytime he worked at cigar making, but did not like it, it was so confining. He had likewise sung, but gratuitously, at concerts got up for the benefit of any person bad off. He knew nothing of the science and art of music. Of the superior class of Jew vocalists and composers, it is not of course necessary here to speak, as they do not come within the scope of my present subject. Of Hebrew youths thus employed in cheap and desiltery concert singing, there are in the winter season, I am told, from 100 to 150, few if any depending entirely upon their professional exertions, but being in circumstances similar to those of my young informant. End of section 24. Section 25 of London Labour and the London Poor, volume 2 by Henry Mayhew. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Gillian Henry. Of the street buyers of Hogswash. The trade in Hogswash, or in the refuse of the table, is by no means insignificant. The street buyers are of the costar monger class, and some of them have been costar mongers, and when not kept going regular on wash, I was told, are costars still, but with the advantage of having donkeys, ponies, or horses, and carts, and frequently shops, as the majority of the wash buyers have, for they are often greengrocers as well as costar mongers. The hogs food obtained by the street folk, or as I most frequently heard it called, the wash, is procured from the eating houses, the coffee houses, which are also eating houses, with quote, hot joints from 12 to 4, end quote. The hotels, the clubhouses, the larger mansions, and the public institutions. It is composed of the scum and leaves of all broths and soups, of the washings of cooking utensils, and of the dishes and plates used at dinners and suppers, of small pieces of meat left on the plates of the diners in taverns, clubs, or cook shops, of pieces of potato or any remains of vegetables, of any vians such as puddings left in the plates in the same manner, of gristle, of pieces of stale bread, or bread left at table, occasionally of meat kept, whether cooked or uncooked, until blown and unfit for consumption. One man told me that he had found whole legs of mutton in the wash he bought from a great eating house, but very rarely, of potato peelings, of old and bad potatoes, of stock, or the remains of meat stewed for soup, which was not good enough for sale to be reused by the poor, of pairings of every kind of cheese or meat, and of the many things which are considered only fit for pigs. It is not always, however, that the unconsumed food of great houses or of public bodies, where the dinners are a part of the institution, goes to the wash tub. At Buckingham Palace, I am told, it is given to poor people who have tickets for the receipt of it. At Lincoln's Inn, the refuse or leavings of the bar dinners are sold to men who retail them, usually small chandlers, and the poor people who have the means buy this broken meat very readily, at fourpence, sixpence, and eightpence the pound, which is cheap for good cooked meat. Pie crust, obtained by its purveyors in the same way, is sold, perhaps with a small portion of the contents of the pie, in penny and tuppany worths. A man familiar with this trade told me that among the best customers for this kind of secondhand food were women of the town, of the poorer class, who were always ready, whenever they had a few pence at command, to buy what was tasty, cheap, and ready cooked, because, quote, they hadn't no trouble with it, but only just to eat it, end quote. One of the principal sources of the wash supply is the cook shops, or eating houses, where the leavings on the plates are either the perquisites of the waiters or waitresses, or looked sharply after by master or mistress. There are also in these places the remains of soups, and the potato peelings and so on, of which I have spoken, together with the keen appropriation to a profitable use of every crumb and scrap, when it is a portion of the gains of a servant, or when it adds to the receipts of the proprietor. In calculating the purchase value of the goodwill of an eating house, the wash is as carefully considered as is the number of daily guests. One of the principal street buyers from the eating houses, and in several parts of town, is Jemmy Devine of Lambeth. He is a pig dealer, but also sells his wash to others who keep pigs. He sends round a cart and horse under the care of a boy, or of a man whom he may have employed, or drives it himself, and he often has more carts than one. In his cart are two or three tubs, well secured, so that they may not be jostled out, into which the wash is deposited. He contracts by the week, month, or quarter, with hotel keepers and others for their wash, paying from £10 to as high as £50 a year, about £20 being an average for well-frequented taverns and dining rooms. The wash tubs on the premises of these buyers are often offensive, sometimes sending forth very sour smells. In Sharps Alley, Smithfield, is another man buying quantities of wash, and buying fat and greys extensively. There is one also in Princes Street Lambeth, who makes it his sole business to collect hogswash. He was formerly a coal-haver and wretchedly poor, but is now able to make a decent living in this trade, keeping a pony and cart. He generally keeps about 30 pigs, but also sells hogs food retail to any pigkeeper, the price being four pints to six pints a pailful, according to the quality, as the collectors are always anxious to have the wash rich, and will not buy it if cabbage leaves or the pairings of green vegetables form a part of it. This man and the others often employ lads to go round for wash, paying them two shillings a week, and finding them in board. They are the same class of boys as those I have described as costar boys, and are often strong young fellows. These lads, or men, hired for the purpose, are sometimes sent round to the smaller cook shops and to private houses, where the wash is given to them for the trouble of carrying it away, in preference to its being thrown down the drain. Sometimes only a penny a pail is paid by the street buyer, provided the stuff be taken away punctually and regularly. These youths or men carry pails after the fashion of a milkman. The supply from the workhouses is very large. It is often that the poppers do not eat all the rice pudding allowed, or all the bread, while soup is frequently left, and potatoes, and these leavings are worthless except for pig meat, as they would soon turn sour. It is the same, though not to the same extent, in the prisons. What I have said of some of the larger eating houses relates also to the clubhouses. There are a number of wash buyers in the suburbs who purchase or obtain their stock gratuitously at gentlemen's houses, and retail it either to those who feed pigs as a business, or else to the many, I was told, who live a little way out of town, and, quote, like to grow their own bacon, end quote. Many of these men perform the work themselves without a horse and cart, and are on their feet every day and all day long, except on Sundays, carrying hogswash from the cellar, or to the buyer. One man who had been in this trade at Woolwich told me that he kept pigs at one time, but ceased to do so as his customers often murmured at the thin quality of the wash, declaring that he gave all the best to his own animals. If it be estimated that there are 200 men daily buying hogswash in London and the suburbs within 15 miles, and that each collects only 20 pails per day, paying tuppence per pail, thus allowing for what is collected without purchase, we find 10,400 pounds expended annually in buying hogswash. Of the street buyers of tea leaves, an extensive trade, but less extensive I am informed than it was a few years ago, is carried on in tea leaves, or in the leaves of the herb after they're having been subjected in the usual way to decoction. These leaves are, so to speak, remanufactured in spite of great risk and frequent exposure and in defiance of the law. The 17th George III, C29, is positive and stringent on the subject. Quote, every person whether a dealer in or seller of tea or not, who shall die or fabricate any slow leaves, licorice leaves, or the leaves of tea that have been used, or the leaves of the ash, elder or other tree, shrub or plant, in imitation of tea, or who shall mix or colour such leaves with terra japonica, coperas, sugar, molasses, clay, logwood or other ingredient, or who shall sell or expose to sale or have in custody any such adulterations in imitation of tea, shall for every pound forfeit on conviction by the oath of one witness before one justice. Five pounds, or on non-payment, be committed to the House of Correction for not more than 12 or less than six months. End quote. The same act also authorises a magistrate on the oath of an excise officer, or anyone by whom he suspects this illicit trade to be carried on, to seize the herbs or spurious teas and the whole apparatus that may be found on the premises, the herbs to be burnt and the other articles sold, the proceeds of such a sale after the payment of expenses, going half to the informer and half to the poor of the parish. It appears evident from the words of this act which I have italicised, readers note those words are, quote, or the leaves of tea that have been used, end quote, that the use of tea leaves for the robbery of the public and the defrauding of the revenue has been long in practice. The extract also shows what other cheats were formerly resorted to, the substitutes most popular with the tea manufacturers at one time being slow leaves. If however one tenth of the statements touching the applications of the leaves of the slow tree and of the juice of its sour astringent fruit during the wartime had any foundation in truth, the slow must have been regarded commercially as one of the most valuable of our native productions, supplying our ladies with their tea and our gentlemen with their pot wine. Women and men, three fourths of the number being women, go about buying tea leaves of the female servants in the larger and of the shopkeeper's wives in the smaller houses. But the great purveyors of these things are the char women. In the houses where they char the tea leaves are often reserved for them to be thrown on the carpets when swept as a means of allaying the dust, or else they form a part of their perquisites and are often asked for if not offered. The mistress of a coffee shop told me that her char women employed in cleaning every other morning had the tea leaves as a part of her remuneration or as a matter of course. What the char women did with them her employer never inquired, although she was always anxious to obtain them and she referred me to the poor women in question. I found her in a very clean apartment on the second floor of a decent house in Somerstown, a strong hail woman with what may be called an industrious look. She was middle-aged and a widow with one daughter, then a nursemaid in the neighbourhood, and had regular employment. Yes, she said, I get the tea leaves whenever I can, and the most at two coffee shops that I work at, but neither of them have so many as they used to have. I think it's because cocos come so much to be asked for in them. And so they sell less tea. I buy tea leaves only at one place. It's a very large family, and I give the servant fourpence, and sometimes thruppence or tuppence, a fortnight for them. But I'm nothing in pocket, for the young girl is a bit of a relation of mine, and it's like a trifle of pocket money for her. She gives a penny every time she goes to her chapel, and so do I. There's a box for it fixed near the door. Oh yes, her mistress knows I buy them, for her mistress knew me before she was married, and that's about fifteen or sixteen years since. When I've got this basin, note, producing it, and note, full, I sell it, generally for fourpence. I don't know what the leaves in it will weigh, and I have never sold them by weight, but I believe some have. Perhaps they might weigh as damp as some of them are, about a pound. I sell them to a chandler now. I have sold them to a raggan bottle shop. I've had men and women call upon me and offer to buy them, but not lately, and I never liked the looks of them, and never sold them any. I don't know what they're wanted for, but I've heard that they're mixed with new tea. I have nothing to do with that. I get them honestly, and sell them honestly, and that's all I can say about it. Every little helps, and if rich people won't pay poor people properly, then poor people can't be expected to be very nice. But I don't complain, and that's all I know about it." The chandler in question knew nothing of the trade in tea leaves, he said. He bought none, and he did not know that any of the shopkeepers did, and he could not form a notion what they could be wanted for, if it wasn't to sweep carpets. This mode of buying or collecting is, I am told, the commonest mode of any, and it certainly presents some peculiarities. The leaves, which are to form the spurious tea, are collected in great measure by a class who are perhaps more likely than any other to have themselves to buy and drink the stuff which they have helped to produce. By char women and washer women, a nice cup of tea in the afternoon during their work is generally classed among the comforts of existence, yet they are the very persons who sell the tea leaves which are to make their much prized beverage. It is curious to reflect also that as tea leaves are used indiscriminately for being remade into what is considered new tea, what must be the strength of our tea in a few years? Now, all housewives complain that twice the quantity of tea is required to make the infusion of the same strength as formerly, and if the collection of old tea leaves continues, and the refuse leaves are to be dried and redried perpetually, surely we must get to use pounds where we now do ounces. A man formerly in the tea leaf business, and very anxious not to be known, but upon whose information I am assured from a respectable source full reliance may be placed, gave me the following account. Quote, My father kept a little shop in the general line, and I helped him, so I was partly brought up to the small way, but I was adrift by myself when I was quite young, 18 or so perhaps. I can read and write well enough, but I was rather of too gay a turn to be steady. Besides, father was very poor at times, and could seldom pay me anything if I worked ever so. He was very fond of his belly too, and I've known him when he's had a bit of luck, or a run of business, go and stuff his self with fat roast pork at a cook shop, till he could hardly waddle, and then come home and lock his self upstairs in his bedroom, and sleep three parts of the afternoon. My mother was dead. But father was a kind-hearted man for all that, and for all his roast pork was as thin as a whipping-post. I kept myself when I left him, just off and on like, by collecting greys and all that. It can't be done so easy now, I fancy. So I got into the tea-leaf business, but father had nothing to do with it. An elderly sort of woman who I met with in my collecting, and who seemed to take a sort of fancy to me, put me up to the leaves. She was an out-and-out hand at anything that way herself. Then I bought tea-leaves with other things, for I suppose for four or five years. How long ago is it? Oh, never mind, sir, a few years. I bought them at many sorts of houses, and carried a box of needles and odds and ends, as a sort of introduction. There wasn't much of that wanted though, for I called when I could, soon in the mornings, before the family was up, and some ladies don't get up till 10 or 11, you know. The masters wasn't much, it was the mistresses I cared about, because they are often such tartars to the maids, and always a poking in the way. I've tried to do business in the great lords' houses, in the squares, and about the parks, but there was mostly somebody about there to hinder you. Besides, the servants in such places are often on board wages, and often, when they're not on board wages, find their own tea and sugar, and little of the tea leaves is saved when everyone has a separate pot of tea, so there's no good to be done there. Large houses in trade, where a number of young men is boarded, drapers or grocers, is among the best places, as there is often a housekeeper there to deal with, and no mistress to bother. I always bought by the lot, if you offered to weigh, you would not be able to clear anything, as they'd be sure to give the leaves an extra wetting. I put handfuls of the leaves to my nose, and could tell from the smell whether they were hard drawn or not. When they isn't hard drawn, they answer best, and then I put to one side. I had a bag like a lawyer's blue bag, with three divisions in it to put my leaves into, and so keep them sunder. Yes, I've bought of char women, but somehow I think they didn't much admire selling to me. I hardly know how I made them out, but one told me of another. They like the shops better for their leaves, I think, because they can get a bit of cheese, or stuff, or candles for them there, though I don't know much about the shop work in this line. I've often been tried to be took in by the servants. I've found leaves in the lot offered to me to buy what was all dusty, and had been used for sweeping, and if I'd sold them with my stock, they'd have been stopped out of the next money. I've had tea leaves given me by servants often enough, for I used to sweet-heart them a bit, just to get over them, and they've laughed, and asked me whatever I could want with them. As for price, why, I judged what a lot was worth, and gave accordingly, from a penny to a shilling. I never gave more than a shilling for any one lot at a time, and that had been put to one side for me in a large concern, for about a fortnight, I suppose. I can't say how many people had been teed on them. If it was a housekeeper, or anybody that way, that I bought off, there was never anything said about what they was wanted for. What did I want them for? Why, to sell again? And though him as I sold them to never said so, I knew they was to dry over again. I know nothing about who he was, or where he lived. The woman I told you of sent him to me. I suppose I cleared about ten shillings a week on them, and did a little in other things beside. Perhaps I cleared rather more than ten shillings on leaves some weeks, and five shillings at others. The party, as called upon me once a week to buy my leaves, was a very polite man, and seemed quite the gentleman. There was no weighing. He examined the lot, and said, so much. He wouldn't stand baiting, or be kept haggling. And his money was down, and no nonsense. What cost me five shillings, I very likely got three half crowns for. It was no great trade, if you consider the trouble. I've sometimes carried the leaves that he'd packed in papers, and put into a carpet bag, where there was others, to a coffee shop. They always had, till called for, marked on a card then. I asked no questions, but just left them. There was two, and sometimes four, boys, as used to bring me leaves on Saturday nights. I think they was char women's sons, but I don't know for a positive, and I don't know how they made me out. I think I was one of the tip tops of the trade at one time. Some weeks I've laid out sob, not sovereign, and not in leaves. I haven't a notion how many's in the line, or what's doing now, but much the same I've no doubt. I'm glad I've done with it. I am told by those who are as well informed on the subject as is perhaps possible, when a surreptitious and dishonest traffic is the subject of inquiry, that the less spurious tea is sold, there are more makers of it. Two of the principal manufacturers have, of late however, been prevented carrying on the business by the intervention of the excise officers. The spurious tea men are also the buyers of wrecked tea, that is, of tea which has been part of the salvage of a wrecked vessel, and is damaged or spoiled entirely by the salt water. This is re-dried and dyed so as to appear fresh and new. It is dyed with Prussian blue, which gives it what an extensive tea dealer described to me as an intensely fine green. It is then mixed with the commonest gunpowder teas, and with the strongest young hyacins, and has always a kind of metallic taste, somewhat like that of a copper vessel after friction in its cleaning. These teas are usually sold at four shillings a pound. Slow leaves for spurious tea, as I have before stated, were in extensive use, but this manufacturer ceased to exist about 20 years ago. Now the spurious material consists only of the old tea leaves, at least so far as experienced tradesmen know. The adulteration is, however, I am assured, more skillfully conducted than it used to be, and its staple is of far easier procuration. The law, though it makes the use of old tea leaves as components of what is called tea punishable, is nevertheless silent as to their sale or purchase. They can be collected therefore with a comparative impunity. The tea leaves are dried, dyed, or re-died, and shriveled on plates of hot metal carefully tended. The dyes used are those I have mentioned. These teas, when mixed, are hawked in the country, but not in town, and are sold to the hawkers at seven pounds of weight for 21 shillings. The quarters of pounds are retailed at a shilling. A tea dealer told me that he could recognise this adulterated commodity, but it was only a person skilled in teas who could do so, by its coarse look. For green tea, the mixture to which the prepared leaves are mostly devoted, the old tea is blended with the commonest gunpowders and hyacins. No dye, I am told, is required when black tea is thus remade. But I know that plum bago is often used to simulate the bloom. The inferior shopkeepers sell this adulterated tea, especially in neighbourhoods where the poor Irish congregate, or any of the lowest class of the poor English. To obtain the statistics of a trade which exists in spite, not only of the vigilance of the excise and police officers, but of public reprobation, and which is essentially a secret trade, is not possible. I heard some, who were likely to be well informed, conjecture, for it cannot honestly be called more than a conjecture, that between £500 and £1000, perhaps £700 of old tea leaves in weight, were made up weekly in London. But of this he thought that about an eighth was spoiled by burning in the process of drying. Another gentleman, however, thought that, at the very least, double the above quantity of old tea leaves was weakly manufactured into new tea. According to his estimate, and he was no mean authority, no less than £1,500 in weight weekly, or £78,000 weekly, per annum of this trash, are yearly poured into the London market. The average consumption of tea is about a pound and a quarter per annum for each man, woman or child in the kingdom, coffee being the principal, unfermented beverage of the poor. Those, however, of the poorest who drink tea consume about two ounces per week, half an ounce serving them twice, or £1 in the course of every two months. This makes the annual consumption of the adult tea drinking poor amount to £6, and it is upon this class, the spurious tea, is chiefly foisted. End of Section 25. Section 26 of London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 2, by Henry Mayhew. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Gillian Henry. These men, for by far the great majority are men, may be divided according to the nature of their occupations into three classes. One, the bone grubbers and rag gatherers, who are indeed the same individuals, the pure finders and the cigar end and old wood collectors. Two, the dredger men, the mudlarks and the sewer hunters. Three, the dustmen and nightmen, the sweeps and the scavengers. The first class go abroad daily to find in the streets and carry away with them such things as bones, rags, pure or dog's dung, which no one appropriates. These they sell and on that sale support a wretched life. The second class of people are also as straightly finders, but their industry, or rather their labour, is confined to the river or to that subterranean city of sewerage, upon which the Thames supplies the great outlets. These persons may not be immediately connected with the streets of London, but their pursuits are carried on in the open air, if the sewer air may be so included, and are all at any rate out of door avocations. The third class is distinct from either of these as the labourers comprised in it are not finders but collectors or removers of the dirt and filth of our streets and houses and of the soot of our chimneys. The two first classes also differ from the third in the fact that the sweeps, dustmen, scavengers and so on are paid and often large sums for the removal of the refuse they collect, whereas the bone grubbers and mudlarks and pure finders and dredger men and sewer hunters get for their pains only the value of the articles they gather. Here in two lies a broad distinction between the street finder or collector and the street buyer. Though both deal principally with refuse, the buyer pays for what he is permitted to take away, whereas the finder or collector is either paid like the sweep, or else he neither pays nor is paid like the bone grubber for the refuse that he removes. The third class of street collectors also presents another and a markedly distinctive characteristic. They act in the capacity of servants and do not depend upon chance for the result of their day's labour but are put to stated tasks being employed and paid a fixed sum for their work. To this description however some of the sweeps present an exception, as when the sweep works on his own account, or as it is worded, is his own master. The public health requires the periodical cleaning of the streets and the removal of the refuse matter from our dwellings, and the man who contracts to carry on this work is decidedly a street collector, for on what he collects or removes depends the amount of his remuneration. Thus a wealthy contractor for the public scavengery is as entirely one of the street folk as the unskilled and ignorant labourer he employs, and in many instances has become rich on the results of his street employment, for of course the actual workmen are but as the agents or sources of his profit. Even the collection of pure dog-stung in the streets, if conducted by the servants of any tanner or leather dresser, either for the purposes of his own trade or for sale to others, might be the occupation of a wealthy man, deriving a small profit from the labour of each particular collector. The same may also be said of bone-grubbing or any similar occupation, however insignificant, and now abandoned to the outcast. Where the collection of mud and dust carried on by a number of distinct individuals, that is to say, where each individual dustman and scavenger to collect on his own account, there is no doubt that no one man could amass a fortune by such means. While if the collection of bones and drags and even dog-stung were carried on in the large way, that is to say by a number of individual collectors working for one head man, even the picking up of the most abject refuse of the metropolis might become the source of great riches. The bone grubber and the mudlark, the searcher for refuse on the banks of the river, differ little in their pursuits or in their characteristics, accepting that the mudlarks are generally boys, which is more an accidental than a definite distinction. The grubbers are, with a few exceptions, stupid, unconscious of their degradation, and with little anxiety to be relieved from it. They are usually taciturn, but this taciturn habit is common to men whose callings, if they cannot be called solitary, are pursued with little communication with others. I was informed by a man who once kept a little beer shop near Friar Street, Southwark Bridge Road, where then and still he thought was a bone grinding establishment, that the bone grubbers who carried their sacks of bones lither sometimes had a pint of beer at his house when they had received their money. They usually sat, he told me, silently looking at the corners of the floor, for they rarely lifted their eyes up, as if they were expecting to see some bones or refuse there available for their banks. Of this inertia perhaps fatigue and despair may be apart. I asked some questions of a man of this class whom I saw pick up in a road in the suburbs, something that appeared to have been a coarse canvas apron, although it was wet after a night's rain and half covered with mud. I inquired of him what he thought about when he trudged along, looking on the ground on every side. His answer was, of nothing, sir! I believe that no better description could be given of that vacuity of mind or mental inactivity which seems to form a part of the most degraded callings. The minds of such men, even without an approach to idiocy, appear to be a blank. One characteristic of these poor fellows, bone grubbers and mudlarks, is that they are very poor, although I am told some of them, the older men, have among the poor the reputation of being misers. It is not unusual for the youths belonging to these callings to live with their parents and give them the amount of their earnings. The sewer hunters are again distinct and a far more intelligent and adventurous class, but they work in gangs. They must be familiar with the course of the tides or they might be drowned at high water. They must have quick eyes too, not merely to describe the objects of their search, but to mark the points and bearings of the subterranean roads they traverse, in a word, to know their way underground. There is moreover some spirit of daring in venturing into a dark solitary sewer, the chart being only in the memory, and in braving the possibility of noxious vapours, and the by no means insignificant dangers of the rats infesting these places. The dredgermen, the finders of the water, are again distinct as being watermen and working in boats. In some foreign parts, in Naples for instance, men carrying on similar pursuits are also divers for anything lost in the bay or its confluent waters. One of these men, known some years ago as The Fish, could remain, at least, so say those whom there is no reason to doubt, three hours under the water without rising to the surface to take breath. He was, it is said, web-footed naturally and partially web-fingered. The king of the two Sicilies once threw a silver cup into the sea for The Fish to bring up and retain as a reward, but the poor diver was never seen again. It was believed that he got entangled among the weeds on the rocks and so perished. The dredgermen are necessarily well acquainted with the sets of the tide and the course of the currents in the Thames. Every one of these men works on his own account, being as it were a small master, which indeed is one of the great attractions of open-air pursuits. The dredgermen also depend for their maintenance upon the sale of what they find or the rewards they receive. It is otherwise, however, as was before observed, with the third class of the street finders, or rather collectors. In all the capacities of dustmen, nightmen, scavengers and sweeps, the employers of the men are paid to do the work, the proceeds of the street collection forming only a portion of the employer's remuneration. The sweep has the suit, in addition to his sixpence or shilling. The master scavenger has a payment from the parish funds to sweep the streets, though the clearance of the cesspools and so on in private houses may be an individual bargain. The whole refuse of the streets belongs to the contractor to make the best off, but it must be cleared away, and so must the contents of a dustbin, for if a mass of dirt becomes offensive, the householder may be indicted for a nuisance, and municipal bylaws require its removal. It is thus made a matter of compulsion that the dust be removed from a private house, but it is otherwise with the suit, why a man should be permitted to let suit accumulate in his chimney, perhaps exposing himself, his family, his lodgers and his neighbours to the dangers of fire. It may not be easy to account for, especially when we bear in mind that the same man may not accumulate cabbage leaves and fish tails in his yard. The dustmen are off the plodding class of labourers, mere labourers who require only bodily power and possess little or no mental development. Many of the agricultural labourers are off this order, and the dustmen often seems to be the stolid plowman, modified by a residence in the city, and engaged in a peculiar calling. They are generally uninformed, and no few of them are dustmen because their fathers were. The same may be said of nightmen and scavengers. At one time it was a popular, or rather a vulgar, notion that many dustmen had become possessed of large sums, from the plate, coins and valuables they found in clearing the dustmen's, a manifest absurdity. But I was told by a marine store dealer that he had known a young woman, a dustmen's daughter, sell silver spoons to a neighbouring marine store man who was not very particular. The circumstances and character of the chimney sweeps have, since Parliament put down the climbing boys, undergone considerable change. The sufferings of many of the climbing boys were very great. They were often ill- lodged, ill-fed, barely clad, forced to ascend hot and narrow flows, and subject to diseases such as the chimney sweep's cancer, peculiar to their calling. The child hated his trade and was easily tempted to be a thief, for prison was an asylum, or he grew up a morose tyrannical fellow as journeyman or master. Some of the young sweeps became very bold thieves and housebreakers, and the most remarkable, as far as personal daring is concerned, the boldest feat of escape from Newgate was performed by a youth who had been brought up a chimney sweep. He climbed up the two bare rummet walls of a corner of the interior of the prison in the open air to the height of some sixty feet. He had only the use of his hands, knees and feet, and a single slip, from fear or pain, would have been death. He surmounted a parapet after this climbing and gained the roof, but was recaptured before he could get clear away. He was moreover a sickly and reputed a cowardly young man, and ended his career in this country by being transported. A master sweep now in middle age, and a man well to do, told me that when a mere child he had been a princess out of the workhouse to a sweep, such being at that time a common occurrence. He had undergone, he said, great hardships while learning his business, and was long from the indifferent character of his class ashamed of being a sweep, both as journeyman and master. But the sweeps were so much improved in character now that he no longer felt himself disgraced in his calling. The sweeps are more intelligent than the mere ordinary labourers I have written off under this head, but they are of course far from being an educated body. The further and more minute characteristics of the curious class of streetfinders or collectors will be found in the particular details and statements. Among the finders there is perhaps the greatest poverty existing, they being the very lowest class of all the street people. Many of the very old live on the hard, dirty crusts they pick up out of the roads in the course of their rounds, washing them and steeping them in water before they eat them. Probably that vacuity of mind which is a distinguishing feature of the class is the mere atony, or emaciation of the mental faculties proceeding from, though often producing in the want of energy that it necessarily begets, the extreme wretchedness of the class. But even their liberty and a crust, as it frequently literally is, appears preferable to these people to the restrictions of the workhouse, those who are unable to comprehend the inertia of both body and mind. Begotten by the despair of long-continued misfortune are referred to page 357 of the first volume of this work, where it will be found that a tin man, in speaking of the misery connected with the early part of his street career, describes the effect of extreme want, as producing not only an absence of all hope, but even of a desire to better the condition. Those, however, who have studied the mysterious connection between body and mind, and observed what different creatures they themselves are before and after dinner, can well understand that a long-continued deficiency of food must have the same weakening effect on the muscles of the mind and energy of the thoughts and will, as it has on the limbs themselves. Occasionally, it will be found that the utter abjectness of the bone grubbers has arisen from the want of energy begotten by intemperate habits. The workman has nothing but this same energy to live upon, and the apparent effect of stimulating liquors is to produce an amount of depression corresponding to the excitement momentarily caused by them in the frame. The operative, therefore, who spends his earnings on drink not only squanders them on a brutalising luxury, but deprives himself of the power and consequently of the disposition to work for more, and hence that idleness, carelessness and neglect, which are the distinctive qualities of the drunkard, and sooner or later compass his ruin. For the poor wretched children who are reared to this the lowest trade of all, surely even the most insensible and unimaginative must feel the acutist pity. There is, however, this consolation. I have heard of none, with the exception of the more prosperous sewer hunters and dredgermen, who have remained all their lives at street finding. Still there remains much to be done by all those who are impressed with a sense of the trust that has been confided to them in the possession of those endowments, which render their lot in this world so much more easy than that of the less lucky streetfinders. Bone Grubbers and Raggatherers The habits of the Bone Grubbers and Raggatherers, the pure or dogs-dung collectors, and the cigar-end-finders are necessarily similar. All lead a wandering, unsettled sort of life, being compelled to be continually on foot and to travel many miles every day in search of the articles in which they deal. They seldom have any fixed place of a boat and are mostly to be found at night in one or other of the low lodging houses throughout London. The majority are, moreover, persons who have been brought up to other employments, but who from some failing or mishap have been reduced to such a state of distress that they were obliged to take to their present occupation and have never after been able to get away from it. Of the whole class, it is considered that there are from 800 to 1,000 resident in London, one half of whom, at the least, sleep in the cheap lodging houses. The government returns estimate the number of mendicants' lodging houses in London to be upwards of 200. Allowing two Bone Grubbers and pure-finders to frequent each of these lodging houses, there will be upwards of 400 availing themselves of such nightly shelters. As many more, I am told, live in garrets and ill furnished rooms in the lowest neighbourhoods. There is no instance on record of any of the class renting even the smallest house for himself. Moreover, there are in London during the winter a number of persons called Trampers, who employ themselves at that season in street finding. These people are in the summer country labourers of some sort, but as soon as the harvest and potato-getting and hot-picking are over, and they can find nothing else to do in the country, they come back to London to avail themselves of the shelter of the night asylums or refugees for the destitute, usually called straw-yards by the poor. For if they remained in the provinces at that period of the year, they would be forced to have recourse to the unions, and as they can only stay one night in each place, they would be obliged to travel from 10 to 15 miles per day, to which in the winter they have a strong objection. They come up to London in the winter not to look for any regular work or employment, but because they know that they can have a nightly shelter and bread night and morning for nothing during that season, and can during the day collect bones, rags and so on. As soon as the straw-yards close, which is generally about the beginning of April, the trampers again start off to the country in small bands of two or three, and without any fixed residence, keep wondering about all the summer, sometimes begging their way through the villages and sleeping in the casual wards of the unions, and sometimes, when hard driven, working at hay-making or any other light labour. Those among the bone-grubbers who do not belong to the regular trampers have been either navies or men who have not been able to obtain employment at their own business, and have been driven to it by necessity, as a means of obtaining a little bread for the time being, and without any intention of pursuing the calling regularly. But as I have said, when once in the business, they cannot leave it, for at least they make certain of getting a few hate-pins by it, and their present necessity does not allow them time to look after other employment. There are many of the street-finders who are old men and women, and many very young children who have no other means of living. Since the famine in Ireland, vast numbers of that unfortunate people, particularly boys and girls, have been engaged in gathering bones and rags in the streets. The bone-picker and rag-gatherer may be known at once by the greasy bag which he carries on his back. Usually he has a stick in his hand, and this is armed with a spike, or hook, for the purpose of more easily turning over the heaps of ashes or dirt that are thrown out of the houses, and discovering whether they contain anything that is saleable at the rag and bottle or marine store shop. The bone-grubber generally seeks out the narrow back streets, where dust and refuse are cast, or where any dustbins are accessible. The articles for which he chiefly searches are rags and bones, rags he prefers. But waste metal, such as bits of lead, pewter, copper, brass, or old iron, he prizes above all. Whatever he meets with that he knows to be in any way saleable, he puts into the bag at his back. He often finds large lumps of bread which have been thrown out as waste by the servants, and occasionally the housekeepers will give him some bones on which there is a little meat remaining. These constitute the morning meal of most of the class. One of my informants had a large rump of beef bone given to him a few days previous to my seeing him, on which there was not less than a pound of meat. The bone pickers and drag gatherers are all early risers. They have all their separate beets or districts, and it is most important to them that they should reach their district before anyone else of the same class can go over the ground. Some of the beets lie as far as Peckham, Clapham, Hammersmith, Hampstead, Bow, Stratford, and indeed all parts within about five miles of London. In summertime they rise at two in the morning, and sometimes earlier. It is not quite light at this hour, but bones and rags can be discovered before daybreak. The grubbers scour all quarters of London, but abound more particularly in the suburbs. In the neighbourhood of Petticoat Lane and Dragfair, however, they are the most numerous, on account of the greater quantity of rags which the Jews have to throw out. It usually takes the bone picker from seven to nine hours to go over his rounds, during which time he travels from twenty to thirty miles with a quarter to a half hundred weight on his back. In the summer he usually reaches home about eleven of the day and in the winter about one or two. On his return home he proceeds to sort the contents of his bag. He separates the rags from the bones, and these again from the old metal, if he be lucky enough to have found any. He divides the rags into various lots, according as they are white or coloured. And if he has picked up any pieces of canvas or sacking, he makes these also into a separate parcel. When he has finished the sorting, he takes his several lots to the rag shop, or the marine store dealer, and realises upon them whatever they may be worth. For the white rags he gets from tuppence to thruppence per pound, according as they are clean or soiled. The white rags are very difficult to be found, they are mostly very dirty, and are therefore sold with the coloured ones at the rate of about five pounds for tuppence. The bones are usually sold with the coloured rags at one and the same price. For fragments of canvas or sacking, the grubber gets about three farthings a pound, and old brass, copper and pewter about four pence, the marine storekeepers say five pence, and old iron one farthing per pound, or six pounds for a penny. The bone grubber thinks he has done an excellent day's work if he can earn eight pence, and some of them, especially the very old and the very young, do not earn more than from tuppence to thruppence a day. To make ten pence a day, at the present price of rags and bones, a man must be remarkably active and strong. I, and lucky too, adds my informant. The average amount of earnings, I am told, varies from about six pence to eight pence per day, or from three shillings to four shillings a week, and the highest amount that a man, the most brisk and persevering at the business, can by any possibility earn in one week, is about five shillings, but this can only be accomplished by great good fortune and industry. The usual weekly gains are about half that sum. In bad weather, the bone grubber cannot do so well, because the rags are wet, and then they cannot sell them. The majority pick up bones only in wet weather. Those who do gather rags during or after rain are obliged to wash and dry them before they can sell them. The state of the shoes of the rag and bone picker is a very important matter to him, for if he be well shod, he can get quickly over the ground, but he is frequently lame, and unable to make any progress from the blisters and gashes on his feet, occasioned by the want of proper shoes. Sometimes the bone grubbers will pick up a stray six pence or a shilling that has been dropped in the street. Quote, the handkerchief I have round my neck, said one whom I saw, I picked up with a shilling in the corner. The greatest prize I ever found was the brass cap of the nave of a coach wheel, and I did once find a quarter of a pound of tobacco in Sun Street, Bishop's Gate. The best bit of luck of all that I ever had was finding a check for £12.15 shillings lying in the gateway of the morning coach yard in Titchbourne Street, Haymarket. I was going to light my pipe with it, indeed I picked it up for that purpose, and then saw it was a check. It was on the London and County Bank, 21 Lombard Street. I took it there and got 10 shillings for finding it. I went there in my rags as I am now, and the cashier stared a bit at me. The check was drawn by a Mr Nibb and payable to a Mr Cox. I did think I should have got the odd 15 shillings though. End quote. It has been stated that the average amount of the earnings of the bone pickers is £6 per day or 3 shillings per week, being £7.16 shillings per annum for each person. It has also been shown that the number of persons engaged in the business may be estimated at about £800. Hence the earnings of the entire number will amount to the sum of £20 per day or £120 per week, which gives £6,240 as the annual earnings of the bone pickers and raggatherers of London. It may also be computed that each of the grubbers gathers on an average £20 weight of bone and rags, and reckoning the bones to constitute three fourths of the entire weight, we thus find that the gross quantity of these articles gathered by the street finders in the course of the year amounts to £3,744,000 of bones and £1,240,000 of rags. Between the London and St Catherine's Docks and Rosemary Lane, there is a large district interlaced with narrow lanes, courts and alleys, ramifying into each other in the most intricate and disorderly manner, in so much that it would be no easy matter for a stranger to work his way through the interminable confusion without the aid of a guide, resident in and well conversant with the locality. The houses are off the poorest description and seem as if they tumbled into their places at random. Foul channels, huge dust heaps and a variety of other unsightly objects occupy every open space, and dabbling among these are crowds of ragged dirty children who grub and wallow as if in their native element. None reside in these places but the poorest and most wretched of the population, and as might almost be expected, this, the cheapest and filthiest locality of London, is the headquarters of the bone grubbers and other streetfinders. I have ascertained on the best authority that from the centre of this place, within a circle of a mile in diameter, there dwell not less than 200 persons of this class. In this quarter, I found a bone grubber who gave me the following account of himself. Quote, I was born in Liverpool and well about 14 years of age my father died. He used to work about the docks and I used to run on errands for any person who wanted me. I managed to live by this after my father's death for three or four years. I had a brother older than myself who went to France to work on the railroads and when I was about 18 he sent for me and got me to work with himself on the Paris and Rowan railway under Mackenzie and Brassie who had the contract. I worked on the railroads in France for four years till the disturbance broke out and then we all got noticed to leave the country. I lodged at that time with a countryman and had 12 pounds which I had saved out of my earnings. This sum I gave to my countryman to keep for me till we got to London as I did not like to have it about me for fear I'd lose it. The French people paid our fare from Rowan to Havre by the railway and there put us on board a steamer to Southampton. There was about 50 of us all together. When we got to Southampton we all went before the mayor. We told him about how we had been driven out of France and he gave us a shilling apiece. He sent someone with us too to get us a lodging and told us to come again the next day. In the morning the mayor gave everyone who was able to walk half a crown and for those who were not able he paid their fare to London on the railroad. I had a sore leg at the time and I came up by the train and when I gave up my ticket at the station the gentleman gave me a shilling moor. I couldn't find the man I had given my money to because he had walked up and I went before the Lord Mayor to ask his advice. He gave me two shilling sixpence. I looked for work everywhere but could get nothing to do and when the two shilling sixpence was all spent I heard that the man who had my money was on the London and York railway in the country. However I couldn't get that far for want of money then so I went again before the Lord Mayor and he gave me two moor but told me not to trouble him any further. I told the Lord Mayor about the money and then he sent an officer with me who put me into a carriage on the railway. When I got down to where the man was at work he wouldn't give me a farthing. I had given him the money without any witness being present and he said I could do nothing because it was done in another country. I stayed down there more than a week trying to get work on the railroad but could not. I had no money and was nearly starved when two or three took pity on me and made up four or five shillings for me to take me back again to London. I tried all I could to get something to do till the money was nearly gone and then I took to selling Lucifers and the fly papers that they use in the shops and little things like that but I could do no good at this work. There was too many at it before me and they knew more about it than I did. At last I got so bad off I didn't know what to do but seeing a great many about here gathering bones and rags I thought I'd do so too. A poor fellow must do something. I was advised to do so and I have been at it ever since. I forgot to tell you that my brother died in France. We had good wages there four francs a day or three shillings fourpence English. I don't make more than thruppence or fourpence and sometimes sixpence a day at bone picking. I don't go out before daylight to gather anything because the police takes my bag and throws all I've gathered about the street to see if I have anything stolen in it. I never stole anything in all my life. Indeed I'd do anything before I'd steal. Many a night I've slept under an arch of the railway when I hadn't a penny to pay for my bed but whenever the police find me that way they make me and the rest get up and drive us on and tell us to keep moving. I don't go out on wet days there's no use in it as the things won't be bought. I can't wash and dry them because I'm in a lodging house. There's a great deal more than a hundred bone pickers about here men women and children. The Jews in this lane and up in Petticoat lane gave a good deal of victuals away on the Saturday. They sometimes call one of us in from the street to light the fire for them or take off the kettle as they must not do anything themselves on the Sabbath and then they put some food on the footpath or throw rags and bones into the street for us because they must not hand anything to us. There are some about here who get a couple of shillings worth of goods and go on board the ships and the docks and exchange them for boards and bits of old canvas among the sailors. I'd buy and do so too if I only had the money but can't get it. The summer is the worst time for us. The winter is much better for there is more meat used in winter and then there are more bones. Not others say differently and not. I intend to go to the country this season and try to get something to do at the hay-making and harvest. I make about two shilling sixpence a week and the way I manage is this. Sometimes I get a piece of bread about 12 o'clock and I make my breakfast of that and cold water. Very seldom I have any dinner unless I earn sixpence I can't get any and then I have a basin of nice soup or a pen worth of plum pudding and a couple of baked potatoes. At night I get a farthing worth of coffee a hipney worth of sugar and a penny farthing worth of bread and then I have tuppence a night left for my lodging. I always try to manage that for I do anything sooner than stop out all night. I'm always happy the day when I make fourpence for then I know I won't have to sleep in the street. The winter before last there was a straw yard down in Black Jacks Alley where we used to go after six o'clock in the evening and get a half pound of bread and another half pound in the morning and then we'd gather what we could in the daytime and buy vitals with what we got for it. We were well off then but the straw yard wasn't open at all last winter. There used to be 300 of us in there of a night a great many of the dock labourers and their families were there for no work was to be got in the docks so they weren't able to pay rent and were obliged to go in. I've lost my health since I took to bone picking through the wet and cold in the winter for I scarcely any clothes and the wet gets to my feet through the old shoes. This caused me last winter to be nine weeks in the hospital of the White Chapel Workhouse end quote. The narrator of this tale seemed so dejected and broken in spirit that it was with difficulty his story was elicited from him. He was evidently labouring under incipient consumption. I have every reason to believe that he made a truthful statement. Indeed he did not appear to me to have sufficient intellect to invent a falsehood. It is a curious fact indeed with reference to the London Streetfinders generally that they seem to possess less rational power than any other class. They appear utterly incapable of trading even in the most trifling commodities probably from the fact that buying articles for the purpose of selling them at a profit requires an exercise of the mind to which they feel themselves incapable. Begging too requires some ingenuity or tact in order to move the sympathies of the well to do and the Streetfinders being incompetent for this they work on day after day as long as they are able to crawl about in pursuit of their unprofitable calling. This cannot be fairly said of the younger members of this class who are sent into the streets by their parents and many of whom are afterwards able to find some more reputable and more lucrative employment. As a body of people however young and old they mostly exhibit the same stupid half witted appearance. To show how bone grubbers occasionally manage to obtain shelter during the night the following incident may not be out of place. A few mornings past I accidentally encountered one of his class in a narrow back lane. His ragged coat the colour of the rubbish among which he toiled was greased over probably with the fat of the bones he gathered and being mixed with the dust it seemed as if the man were covered with bird lime. His shoes torn and tied on his feet with pieces of cord had doubtlessly been picked out of some dustbin while his greasy bag and stick unmistakably announced his calling. Desirous of obtaining all the information possible on this subject I asked him a few questions took his address which he gave without hesitation and bat him calling me in the evening at the time appointed however he did not appear. On the following day therefore I made way to the address he had given and on reaching the spot I was astonished to find the house in which he had said he lived was uninhabited. A padlock was on the door the boards of which were parting with age. There was not a whole pane of glass in any of the windows and the frames of many of them were shattered or demolished. Some persons in the neighbourhood noticing me eyeing the place asked whom I wanted on my telling the man's name which it appeared he had not dreamt of disguising I was informed that he had left the day before saying he had met the landlord in the morning for such it turned out he had fancied me to be and that the gentleman had wanted him to come to his house but he was afraid to go lest he should be sent to prison for breaking into the place. I found on inspection that the premises though locked up could be entered by the rear one of the window frames having been removed so that admission could be obtained through the aperture availing myself of the same mode of ingress I proceeded to examine the premises nothing could well be more dismal or dreary than the interior the floors were rotting with damp and mildew especially near the windows where the wet found easy entrance the walls were even slimy and discoloured and everything bore the appearance of desolation in one corner was strewn a bundle of dirty straw which doubtlessly had served the bone grubber for a bed while scattered about the floor were pieces of bones and small fragments of dirty racks sufficient to indicate the calling of the late inmate he had had but little difficulty in removing his property saying that it consisted solely of his bag and his stick the following paragraph concerning the chiffon years or rag gatherers of paris appeared in the london journals a few weeks since quote the fraternal association of rag gatherers chiffon year gave a grand banquet on saturday last 21st of june it took place at a public house called the pole tricolor near the barrier de fontain bleu which is frequented by the rag gathering fraternity in this house there are three rooms each of which is specially devoted to the use of different classes of rag gatherers one the least dirty is called the chamber of piersh and is occupied by the first class that is those who possess a basket in a good state and a crook ornamented with copper the second called the chamber of deputies belonging to the second class is much less comfortable and those who attend it have baskets and crooks not of first rate quality the third room is in a dilapidated condition and is frequented by the lowest class of rag gatherers who have no basket or crook and who place what they find in the streets in a piece of sat cloth they call themselves the réunion des vraies prolétaires the name of each room is written in chalk above the door and generally such strict etiquette is observed among the rag gatherers that no one goes into the apartment not occupied by his own class at saturday's banquet however all distinctions of rank were laid aside and delegates of each class united fraternally the president was the oldest rag gatherer in paris his age is 88 and he is called the emperor the banquet consisted of a sort of a la podrida which the master of the establishment pompously called jibbalot though of what animal it was composed it was impossible to say it was served up in huge earthen dishes and before it was allowed to be touched payment was demanded and obtained the other articles were also paid for as soon as they were brought in and a deposit was exacted as a security for the plates knives and forks the wine or what did duty as such was contained in an earthen pot called the petit pernoir and was filled from a gigantic vessel named lamarico the dinner was concluded by each guest taking a small glass of brandy business was then preceded to it consisted in the reading and adoption of the statutes of the association followed by the drinking of numerous toasts to the president to the prosperity of rag gathering to the union of rag gatherers and so on a collection amounting to six francs 75 some teams was raised for sick members of the fraternity the guests then dispersed but several of them remained at the counter until they had consumed in brandy the amount deposited as security for the crockery knives and forks end quote end of section 26