 Section 91, of London Labour and the London Poor, volume 2, by Henry Mayhew. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Gillian Henry. B. The Afflicted Crossing Sweepers The Wooden Legged Sweeper This man lives up a little court running out of a wide second-rate street. It is a small court consisting of some half-dozen houses. All of them what are called by courtesy, private. I inquired at number three for John Blank. The first floor back, if you please, sir. And to the first floor back I went. Here I was answered by a good-looking and intelligent young woman with a baby who said her husband had not yet come home. But would I walk in and wait? I did so and found myself in a very small, close room with a little furniture which the man called his few sticks. And presently discovered another child, a little girl. The girl was very shy in her manner, being only two years and two months old. And, as her mother said, very ailing from the difficulty of cutting her teeth. Though the true cause seemed to be want of proper nourishment and fresh air. The baby was a boy, a fine, cheerful, good-tempered little fellow, but rather pale and with an unnaturally large forehead. The mantelpiece of the room was filled with little ornaments of various sorts, such as bead baskets. And over them hung a series of black profiles, not portraits of either the crossing sweeper or any of his family, but an odd lot of heads, which had lost their owners many a year and served in company with a little red, green and yellow scripture piece to keep the wall from looking bare. Over the door, inside the room, was nailed a horse shoe which the wife told me had been put there by her husband for luck. A bed, two deal tables, a couple of boxes and three chairs formed the entire furniture of the room and nearly filled it. On the window frame was hung a small shaving-glass and on the two boxes stood a wicker work apology for a perambulator, in which I learned the poor crippled man took out his only daughter at half past four in the morning. If some people was to see that, sir, said the sweeper, when he entered and saw me looking at it, they would, and in fact they do, say, Why, you can't be in want. Ah, little they know how we starved and pinched ourselves before we could get it. There was a fire in the room, notwithstanding the day was very hot, but the window was wide open and the place tolerably ventilated, though oppressive. I have been in many poor people's places, but never remember one so poor in its appointments, and yet so free from a fluvia. The crossing-sweeper himself was a very civil sort of man, and an answer to my inquiries said, I know that I do as I ought to, and so I don't feel hurt at standing at my crossing. I have been there four years, I found the place vacant. My wife, though she looks very well, will never be able to do any hard work, so we sold our mangle, and I took to the crossing. But we're not in debt and nobody can't say nothing to us. I like to go along the streets free of such remarks as is made by people to whom you owe money. I had a mangle in blank yard, but through my wife's weakness I was forced apart with it. I was on the crossing a short time before that, for I knew that if I partied with my mangle and things before I knew whether I could get a living at the crossing, I couldn't get my mangle back again. We sold the mangle only for a sovereign, and we gave £2.10 for it. We sold it to the same man that we bought it off. About six months ago, I managed for to screw and save enough to buy that little wicker chase, for I can't carry the children because of my one leg, and of course the mother can't carry them both out together. There was a man had the crossing I've got. He died three or four years before I took it, but he didn't depend on the crossing. He did things for the tradespeople about, such as carpet-beating, messages and so on. When I first took the crossing, I did very well. It happened to be a very nasty dirty season, and I took a good deal of money. Sweepers are not always civil, sir. I wish I had gone to one of the squares though, but I think after Blank Street is paved with stone I shall do better. I am certain I never taste a bit of meat from one week's end to the other. The best day I ever made was five and six pints, or six shillings. It was the winter before last. If you remember, the snow laid very thick on the ground, and the sudden thaw made walking so uncomfortable that I did very well. I have taken as little as six pints, four pints and even tuppence. Last Thursday I took two havens all day. Take one week with the other, seven or eight shillings is the very outside. I don't know how it is, but some people who used to give me a penny don't know. The boys who come in wet weather earn a great deal more than I do. I once lost a good chance, sir, at the corner of the street leading to Cavendish Square. There's a bank, and they pay a man seven shillings a week to sweep the crossing. A butcher in Oxford Market spoke for me, but when I went up, it unfortunately turned out that I was not fit from the loss of my leg. The last man they had there, they were obliged to turn away. He was so given to drink. I think there are some rich crossing sweepers in the city about the exchange, but you won't find them now during this dry weather, except in bi-places. In wet weather there are two or three boys who sweep near my crossing and take all my earnings away. There's a great able-bodied man besides. A fellow strong enough to follow the plough. I said to the policeman, now ain't this a shame? And the policeman said, well he must get his living as well as you. I'm always civil to the police, and they're always civil to me. In fact, I think sometimes I'm too civil. I'm not rough enough with people. You soon tell whether to have any hopes of people coming across. I can tell a gentleman directly I see him. Where I stand, sir, I could get people in trouble ever lasting. There's all sorts of thieving going on. I saw the other day two or three respectable persons take a purse out of an old lady's pocket before the baker's shop at the corner. But I can't say a word, or they would come and throw me into the road. If a gentleman gives me sixpence, he don't give me any more for three weeks or a month. But I don't think I have more than three or four gentlemen as gives me that. Well, you can scarcely tell the gentleman from the clerk. The clerks are such great swells now. Lawyers themselves stress-buried plain. Those great men who don't come every day, because they have clerks to do their business for them, they give most. People hardly ever stop to speak, unless it is to ask you where places are. You might be occupied at that all day. I managed to pay my rent out of what I take on Sunday, but not lately. This way the religious people go pleasuring. No, I don't go now. The fact is, I'd like to go to church if I could. But when I come home I am tired. But I've got books here, and they do as well, sir. I read a little and write a little. I lost my leg through a swelling. There was no chloroform then. I was in the hospital three years and a half, and was about fifteen or sixteen when I had it off. I always feel the sensation of the foot, and more so at change of weather. I feel my toes moving about and everything. Sometimes it's just as if the calf of my leg was itching. I feel the rain coming. When I see a cloud coming, my leg shoots, and I know we shall have rain. My mother was a laundress. My father has been dead nineteen years my last birthday. My mother was subject to fits, so I was forced to stop at home to take care of the business. I don't want to get on better, but I always think if sickness or anything comes on, I am at my crossing at half past eight, at half past eleven I come home to dinner. I go back at one or two till seven. Sometimes I mind horses and carts, but the boys get all that business. One of these little customers got six pins the other day for only opening the door of a cab. I don't know how it is they let these little boys be about. If I was the police, I wouldn't allow it. I think it's a blessing having children, note referring to his little girl, end note. That child wants the gravy of meat or an egg beaten up, but she can't get it. I take her out every morning round Euston Square and those open places. I get out about half past four. It is early, but if it benefits her, that's no odds. One legged sweeper at Chancery Lane. I don't know what induced me to take that crossing, except it was that no one was there and the traffic was so good. Fact is, the traffic is too good and people won't stop as they cross over. They're very glad to get out of the way of the cabs and the omnibuses. Trade people never give me anything, not even a bit of bread. The only thing I get is a few cuttings, such as crusts of sandwiches and remains of cheese from the public house at the corner of the court. The tradespeople are as distant to me now as they were when I came, but if I should pitch up a tale, I should soon get acquainted with them. We have lived in this lodging two years and a half, and we pay one and nine pence a week, as you may see from the rent book, and that I managed to earn on Sundays. We owe four weeks now and thank God it's no more. I was born, sir, in Blank Street, Berkeley Square, at Lord Blank's house when my mother was minding the house. I've been used to London all my life, but not to this part. I've always been at the West End, which is what I call the best end. I did not like the idea of crossing sweeping at first, till I reasoned with myself, why should I mind? I'm not doing any hurt to anybody. I don't care at all now, I know I'm doing what I ought to do. A man had better be killed out of the way than be disabled. It's not pleasant to know that my wife is suckling that great child, and though she is so weakly, she can't get no meat. I've been knocked down twice, sir, both times by cabs. The last time it was a fortnight before I could get about comfortably again. The fool of a fellow was coming along, not looking at his horse, but talking to somebody on the cab rank. The place was as free as this room, if he had only been looking before him. Nobody hollered till I was down, but plenty hollered then. Ah, I often notice such carelessness. It's really shameful. I don't think those shuffles, note, pansoms and note, should be allowed. The fact is, if the driver is not a tall man, he can't see the horse's head. A nasty place is end of Blank Street. It narrows so suddenly. There's more confusion and more bother about it than any place in London. When two cabs get in at once, one one way and one the other, there's sure to be a row to know which was the first in. The most severely afflicted of all the crossing sweepers. Passing the dreary portico of the Queen's Theatre and turning to the right downtown Muse, we came upon a flight of steps leading up to what is called the gallery, where an old man, gasping from the effects of a lung disease and feebly polishing some old harness, proclaimed himself the father of the sweeper I was in search of, and ushered me into the room where he lay a bed, having had a very bad night. The room itself was large and of a low pitch, stretching over some stables. It was very old and creaky, the sweeper called it an old wilderness, and contained, in addition to two turn-up bedsteads, that curious medley of articles, which in the course of years, an old and poor couple always managed to gather up. There was a large lithograph of a horse, dear to the remembrance of the old man, from an indication of a dog in the corner, the very spit of the one I had for years. It's a real portrait, sir, for Mr. Hanbert the printer met me one day and sketched him. There was an etching of hog-earths in a black frame, a stuffed bird in a wooden case with a glass before it, a piece of painted glass hanging in a place of honour, but for which no name could be remembered, accepting that it was of the old-fashioned sort. There were the odd remnants too of old China ornaments, but very little furniture, and finally a kitten. The father, worn-out and consumptive, had been groomed to Lord Cumbermere. I was with him, sir, when he took Bonaparte's house at Malmusson. I could have had a pension, then, if I'd have liked, but I was young and foolish, and had plenty of money, and we never know what we may come to. The sweeper, although a middle-aged man, had all the appearance of a boy, his raw-looking eyes, which he was always wiping with a piece of linen rag, gave him a forbidding expression. Which his shapeless, short, bridgeless nose tended to increase, but his manners and habits were as simple in their character as those of a child, and he spoke of his father's being angry with him for not getting up before, as if he were a little boy talking of his nurse. He walks with great difficulty by the help of a crutch, and the sight of his weak eyes, his withered limb, and his broken shoulder, his old helpless mother, and his gasping almost inaudible father, form a most painful subject for compassion. The crossing sweeper gave me with no little meekness and some slight intelligence the following statement. I very seldom go out on a crossing of Sundays. I didn't do much good at it. I used to go to church of a Sunday. In fact, I do now when I'm well enough. It's 15 years next January since I left Regent Street. I was there three years, and then I went on Sundays occasionally. Sometimes I used to get a shilling, but I have given it up now. It didn't answer. Besides, a lady who was kind to me found me out, and said she wouldn't do any more for me if I went out on Sundays. She's been dead these three or four years now. When I was at Regent Street, I might have made 12 shillings a week, or something there about. I'm 7 and 30 the 26th day of last month, and I have been lame six and 20 years. My eyes have been bad ever since my birth. The scruffulous disease, it was, it blamed me. It come with a swelling on the knee, and the outside wound broke about the size of a crown piece, and a piece of bone come from it. Then it gathered in the inside and at the top. I didn't go into the hospital then, but I was an outpatient. For the doctor said a close, confined place wouldn't do me no good. He said that the seaside would though, but my parents couldn't afford to send me. And that's how it is. I did go to Brighton and Margate nine years after my leg was bad, but it was too late then. I have been in Middlesex Hospital with a broken collarbone when I was knocked down by a cab. I was in a fortnight there, and I was in again when I hurt my leg. I was sweeping my crossing when the top came off my crutch. I fell backwards, and my leg doubled under me. They had to carry me there. I went into the Middlesex Hospital for my eyes and leg. I was in a month, but they couldn't keep me long. There's no cure for me. My leg is very painful, especially at change of weather. Sometimes I don't get an hour's sleep of a night. It was daylight this morning before I close my eyes. I went on the crossing first because my parents couldn't keep me, not being able to keep themselves. I thought it was the best thing I could do, but it's like all other things. It's got very bad now. I used to manage to rub along at first. The streets have got shocking bad of late. To tell the truth, I was turned away from Regent Street by Mr Cook, the furrier, corner of our girl street. I'll tell you as far as I was told. He called me into his passage one night, and said I must look out for another crossing, for a lady, who was a very good customer of his, refused to come while I was there. My heavy afflictions was such that she didn't like the look of me. I said, very well. But because I come there next day, and the day after that, he got the policeman to turn me away. Certainly the policeman acted very kindly, but he said the gentleman wanted me removed, and I must find another crossing. Then I went down Charlotte Street, opposite Percy Chapel, at the corner of Windmill Street. After that, I went to Well Street by getting permission off the doctor at the corner. He thought that it would be better for me than Charlotte Street, so he let me come. Ah, there ain't so many crossing sweepers as there was. I think they've done away with a great many of them. When I first went to Well Street, I did pretty well, because there was address makers at the corner, and I used to get a good deal from the carriages that stopped before the door. I used to take five or six shillings in a day then, and I don't take so much in a week now. I tell you what I made this week. I've made one in four pints, but it's been so wet, and people are out of town. But of course it's not always alike. Sometimes I get three in six pints or four shillings. Some people give me a six pints or a fourpiny bit. I reckon that all in. I am dreadful tired when I come home of a night. Thank God my other leg's all right. I wish the tullar was as strong, but it never will be now. The police never try to turn me away. They're very friendly. They'll pass the time of day with me or that, from knowing me so long on Oxford Street. My room sometimes serves me a month. Of course they don't last long. Now it's showery weather. I give Tup and Satania peace for him or thruppens. I don't know who gives me the most. My eyes are so bad I can't see. I think though upon an average, the gentlemen give most. Often I hear the children, as they're going by, ask their mothers for something to give to me. But they only say, come along, come along. It's very rare that they let the children have a hipney to give me. My mother is seventy the week before next Christmas. She can't do much now. She does though go out on Wednesdays or Saturdays, but that's to people she's known for years who is attached to her. She does her work there just as she likes. Sometimes she gets a little washing, sometimes not. This week she had a little and was forced to dry it indoors. But that makes them half dirty again. My father's breath is so bad that he can't do anything except little odd jobs for people down here. But they've got the knack now, a good many of them, of doing their own. We have lived here fifteen years next September. It's a long time to live in such an old wilderness. But my old mother is a sort of woman I don't like moving about, and I don't like it. Some people are everlasting on the move. When I'm not on my crossing, I sit poking at home or make a job of mending my clothes. I mended these trousers in two or three places. It's all done by feel, sir. My mother says it's a good thing we've got our feeling at least, if we haven't got our eyesight. The negro crossing sweeper who had lost both his legs. This man sweeps a crossing in a principal and central thoroughfare when the weather is cold enough to let him walk. The colder the better, he says, as it nuns his stumps like. He is unable to follow this occupation in warm weather, as his legs feel just like corns. And he cannot walk more than a mile a day. Under these circumstances, he takes to begging, which he thinks he has a perfect right to do, as he has been left destitute in what is to him almost a strange country, and has been denied what he terms his rights. He generally sits while begging, dressed in a sailor shirt and trousers, with a black neckerchief round his neck, tied in the usual nautical knot. He places before him the placard, which is given beneath, and never moves a muscle for the purpose of soliciting charity. He always appears scrupulously clean. I went to see him at his home early one morning, in fact at half past eight, but he was not then up. I went again at nine, and found him prepared for my visit in a little parlour in a dirty and rather disreputable alley running out of a court in a street near Brunswick Square. The negro's parlour was scantily furnished with two chairs, a turnip bedstead, and a sea chest. A few odds and ends of crockery stood on the sideboard, and a kettle was singing over a cheerful bit of fire. The little man was seated on a chair, with his stumps of legs sticking straight out. He showed some amount of intelligence in answering my questions. We were quite alone, for he sent his wife and child, the former a pleasant-looking half-caste, and the latter, the cheeriest little crying, smiling, Piccinini I have ever seen. He sent them out into the alley while I conversed with himself. This life is embittered by the idea that he has never yet had his rights, that the owners of the ship in which his legs were burnt off have not paid him his wages, of which indeed he says he never received any but the five pounds which he had in advance before starting, and that he has been robbed of forty-two pounds by a grocer in Glasgow. How true these statements may be, it is almost impossible to say, but from what he says some injustice seems to have been done him by the canny Scotchman who refuses him his pay without which he is determined never to leave the country. I was on that crossing, he said, almost the whole of last winter. It was very cold, and I had nothing at all to do, so as I passed there I asked the gentleman at the becker shop, as well as the gentleman at the office, and I asked at the boot shop too, if they would let me sweep there. The policeman wanted to turn me away, but I went to the gentleman inside the office, and he told the policeman to leave me alone. The policeman said first, you must go away, but I said I couldn't do anything else, and he ought to think it a charity to let me stop. I don't stop in London very long though, at a time. I go to Glasgow in Scotland, where the owners of the ship in which my legs were burnt off live. I served nine years in the merchant service and the navy. I was born in Kingston in Jamaica. It is an English place sir, so I am counted as not a foreigner. I am different from them last cars. I went to sea when I was only nine years old. The owners is in London who had that ship. I was cabin boy, and after I had served my time, I became cook, or when I couldn't get the place of cook, I went before the mast. I went as head cook in 1851 in the Madeira bark. She used to be a West Indie trader, and to trade out when I belonged to her. We got down to 69 south of Cape Horn, and there we got almost froze and perished to death. That is the book would I sell. The book, as he calls it, consists of eight pages printed on paper the size of a sheet of note paper. It is entitled, Brief sketch of the life of Edward Albert, a native of Kingston, Jamaica, showing the hardships he underwent and the sufferings he endured in having both legs amputated. Hull, W. Howe printer. It is embellished with a portrait of a black man which has evidently been in its time a comic nigger of the Jim Crow tobacco paper kind, as is evidenced by the traces of a tobacco pipe which has been unskillfully erased. The book itself is concocted from an affidavit made by Edward Albert before P. McKinley Esquire, one of Her Majesty's justices of the peace for the country. So it is printed of Lanark. I have seen the affidavit and it is almost identical with the statement in the book accepting in the matter of grammar which has rather suffered on its road to Mr. Howe the printer. The following will give an idea of the matter of which it is composed. Quote, In February 1851 I engaged to serve as cook on board the bark Medira of Glasgow, Captain J. Douglas, or her voyage from Glasgow to California, thence to China, and thence home to a port of discharge in the United Kingdom. I signed articles and delivered up my register ticket as a British seaman as required by law. I entered the service on board the said vessel under the said engagement and sailed with that vessel on the 18th of February 1851. I discharged my duty as cook on board the said vessel from the date of its having left the Clyde until June the same year in which month the vessel rounded Cape Horn At that time my legs became frostbitten and I became in consequence unfit for duty. In the course of the next day after my limbs became affected the master of the vessel and mate took me to the ship's oven in order as they said to cure me. The oven was hot at the time a foul that was roasting therein having been removed in order to make room for my feet which was put into the oven. In consequence of the treatment my feet burst through the intense swelling and mortification ensued. The vessel called six weeks after at Valpariso and I was there taken to a hospital where I remained five months and a half. Both my legs were amputated three inches below my knees soon after I went to the hospital at Valpariso. I asked my master for my wages due to me for my service on board the vessel and demanded my register ticket. When the captain told me I should not recover that the vessel could not wait for me and that I was a dead man. And that he could not discharge a dead man. And that he also said that as I had no friends there to get my money he would only put a little money into the hands of the consul which would be applied in burying me. On being discharged from the hospital I called on the consul and was informed by him that master had not left any money. I was afterwards taken on board one of her majesty's ships the driver Captain Charles Johnson and landed at Portsmouth from thence I got a passage to Glasgow where I remained three months. Upon supplication to the register office for semen in London my register ticket has been forwarded to the collector of customs Glasgow and he is ready to deliver it to me upon obtaining the authority of the Justices of the Peace and I recover the same under the 22nd section of the General Merchant Seamans Act. Declares I cannot write signed David McKinley JP End quote Quote The Justices having considered the foregoing information and declaration finds that Edward Albert therein named the last register ticket sought to be covered under circumstances which so far as he was concerned were unavoidable and that no fraud was intended or committed by him in reference there too therefore authorised the collector and controller of customs at the port of Glasgow to deliver to the said Edward Albert the register ticket sought to be recovered by him all in terms of 22nd section of the General Merchant Seamans Act signed David McKinley JP Glasgow October 6th 1852 Register ticket number 512654 age 25 years end quote I could make a large book of my suffering sir if I like he said and I will disgrace the owners of that ship as long as they don't give me what they owe me I will never leave England or Scotland until I get my rights but they says money makes money and if I had money I could get it if they would only give me what they owe me I wouldn't ask anybody for a farthing God knows sir I don't know why the master put my feet in the oven he said to cure me the agony of pain I was in was such he said that it must be done the loss of my limbs is bad enough but it's still worse when you can't get what is your rights nor anything for the sweat that they worked out of me after I went down to Glasgow for my money I opened a little coffee house it was called Uncle Tom's Cabin I did very well the man who sold me tea and coffee said he would get me on and I had better give my money to him to keep safe and he used to put it away in a tin box which I had given foreign sixpence for he advertised my place in the papers and I did a good business I had the place open a month when he kept all my savings two and forty pounds and shut up the place and denied me of it and I never got a farthing I declare to you I can't describe the agony I felt when my legs were burst I fainted away over and over again there was four men come I was lying in my hammock and they moved the fowl that was roasting and put my legs in the oven there they held me for 10 minutes they said it would take the cold out but after I came out the cold caught them again and the next day they swole up as big round as a pillar and burst and I liked water come out no man but God knows what I have suffered and went through by the order of the doctor at Valparaiso the sick patients had to come out of the rooms I went into the smell was so bad I couldn't bear it myself it was all mortification they had to use chloridos ink to keep the smell down they tried to save one leg but the mortification was getting up into my body I got better after my legs were off I was three months good before I could turn or able to lift up my hand to my head I was glad to move after that time it was a regular relief to me if it wasn't for good attendance I should not have lived you know they don't allow tobacco in a hospital but I had it it was the only thing I cared for the Reverend Mr Armstrong used to bring me a pound of fortnight he used to bring it regular I never used to smoke before they said I never should recover but after I got the tobacco it seemed to soothe me I was five months and a half in that place Admiral Mosley of the Thetis Frigate sent me home and the reason why he sent me home was that after I came well I called on Mr Rouse to English Consul and he sent me to the boarding house till such time as he could find a ship to send me home in I was there about two months and the boarding master, Jan Pace sent me to the consul I used to get about a little with two small crutches and I also had a little cart before that on three wheels it was made by a man in the hospital I used to lash myself down in it that was the best thing I ever had I could get about best in that well I went to the consul and when I went to him he says I can't pay your board you must beg and pay for it so I went and told Jan Pace and he said if you had stopped here a hundred years I would not turn you out and then I asked Pace to tell me where the admiral lived what do you want with him says he I said I think the admiral must be higher than the consul Pace slapped me on the back says he I'm glad to see you've got the pluck to complain to the admiral I went down at nine o'clock the next morning to see the admiral he said well Prince Albert how are you getting on so I told him I was getting on very bad and then I told him all about the consul and he said as long as he stopped he would see me righted and took me on board his ship the fetus and he wrote to the consul and said to me if the consul sends for you don't you go to him tell him you have no legs to walk and he must walk to you the consul wanted to send me back in a merchant ship but the admiral wouldn't have it so I came in the driver one of her majesties vessels it was the eighth of May 1852 when I got to Portsmouth I stopped a little while about a week in Portsmouth I went to the admiral of the dockyard and he told me I must go to the Lord Mayor of London so I paid my passage to London saw the Lord Mayor who sent me to Mr Yardley the magistrate and he advertised the case for me and I got £4.15 shillings besides my passage to Glasgow after I got there I went to Mr Simey a custom house officer he'd been in the same ship with me to California he said oh gracious Edward how have you lost your limbs and I burst out of crying I told him all about it he advised me to go to the owner I went there but the policeman in London had put my name down as Robert Thorpe which was the man I lodged with so they denied me I went to the shipping office where they recognised me and I went to Mr Simey again and he told me to go before the Lord Mayor a Lord Provost they call him in Scotland and make it Naffid David and so when they found my story was right they sent to London for my Siemens ticket but they couldn't do anything because the captain was not there when I got back to London I commenced sweeping the crossing sir I only sweep it in the winter because I can't stand in the summer oh yes I feel my feet still it's just as if I had them sitting on the floor now I feel my toes moving like as if I had them I could count them the whole 10 whenever I worked my knees I had a corn on one of my toes and I can feel it still particularly at the change of weather sometimes I might get two shillings a day at my crossing sometimes one shilling in sixpence sometimes I don't take above sixpence the most I ever made in one day was three shillings in sixpence but that's very seldom I am a very steady man I don't drink what money I get and if I had the means to get something to do I'd keep off the streets when I offered to go to the parish they told me to go to Scotland despite the men who owed me my wages many people tell me I ought to go to my country but I tell them it's very hard I didn't come here without my legs I lost them as it were in this country but if I had lost them in my own country I should have been better off I should have gone down to the magistrate every Friday and have taken my 10 shillings I went to the merchant seamen's fund and they said that those who got hurted before 1852 have been getting the funds but those who were hurted after 1852 couldn't get nothing it was stopped in 51 and the merchants wouldn't pay anymore and don't pay anymore that's scandalous because whether you're willing or not you must pay two shillings a month one shilling a month for the hospital fees and one shilling a month to the merchant seamen's fund out of your pay I am married my wife is the same colour as me but an English woman I've been married two years I married her from where she belonged in Leeds I couldn't get on to do anything without her sometimes she goes out and sells things fruit and so on but she don't make much with the assistance of my wife if I could get my money I would set up in the same line of business as before in a coffee shop if I had three pounds I could do it it took well in Scotland I am not a common cook either I am a pastry cook I used to make all the sorts of cakes they have in the shops I bought the shapes and tins and things to make them proper I'll tell you how I did there was a kind of apparatus it boils water and coffee and the milk and the tea in different departments but you couldn't see the divisions the pipes all ran into one tap like I've had a sixpence and a shilling for people to look at it it cost me £2.10 even if I had a coffee stall down at Covent Garden I should do and besides I understand the making of eel soup I have one child it is just three months and a week old it is a boy and we call it James Edward Albert James is after my grandfather who was a slave I was a little boy when the slaves in Jamaica got their freedom the people were very glad to be free they do better since I know because some of them have got property and send their children to school there's more Christianity there than there is here the public house is closed shut on Saturday night and not open till Monday morning no fruit is allowed to be sold in the street I am a Protestant I don't know the name of the church but I goes down to a new built church near Kings Cross I never go in because of my legs but I just go inside the door and sometimes when I don't go I read the testament I've got here in all my sickness I took care of that there are a great many Irish in this place I would like to get away from it for it is a very disgraceful place it is an awful awful place altogether I haven't been in it very long and I want to get out of it it is not fit I pay one in six pounds rent if you don't go out and drink and carouse with them they don't like it they make use of bad language they chaff me about my misfortune they call me cripple some says uncle Tom and some says nigger but I never take no notice of him at all the following is a verbatim copy of the placard which the poor fellow places before him when he begs he carries it when not in use in a little calico bag which hangs round his neck kind Christian friends the unfortunate Edward Albert was Cook on board the Burke Madeira of Glasgow Captain J Douglas in February 1851 when after rounding Cape Horn he had his legs and feet frostbitten when in that state his master and mate put my legs and feet into the oven as they said to cure me the oven being hot at the time a fellow was roasting was took away to make room for my feet and legs in consequence of this my feet and legs swelled and burst mortification then ensued after which my legs were amputated three inches below the knees soon after my entering the hospital at Valparaiso as I have no other means to get a livelihood but by appealing to a generous public your kind donations will be most thankfully received the maimed Irish crossing sweeper he stands at the corner of blank street where the yellow omnibuses stop and refers to himself every now and then as the poor lame man he has no special mode of addressing the passersby except that of hobbling a step or two towards them and sweeping away an imaginary accumulation of mud he has lost one leg from the knee by a fall from a scaffold while working as a bricklayer's labourer in Wales some six years ago and speaks bitterly of the hard time he had of it when he first came to London and hobbled about selling matches he says he is 36 but looks more than 50 and his face has the ghastly expression of death he wears the ordinary close cloth street cap and corduroy trousers even during the warm weather he wears an upper coat a rough thick garment fit for the Arctic regions it was very difficult to make him understand my object in getting information from him he thought that he had nothing to tell and laid great stress upon the fact of his never keeping count of anything he accounted for his miserably small income by stating that he was an invalid now and then continually he said I can't say how long I have been on this crossing I think about five years when I came on it there had been no one here before no one interferes with me at all at all I never heard of a crossing being sold but I don't know any other sweepers I make no freedom with no one and I always keeps my own mind I don't know how much I earn a day perhaps I might get a shilling and perhaps sixpence I didn't get much yesterday, Sunday, only sixpence I was not out on Saturday I was ill in bed and I was at home on Friday indeed I did not get much on Thursday only Tutton's Haveny the largest day I don't know why about a shilling well sure I might get as much as two shillings if I got a shilling from a lady some gentlemen are good such a gentleman as you now might give me a shilling well as to whether I likes half dry and half wet of course I wish for the bad weather everyone must be glad of what brings good to him and there's one thing I can't make the weather I can't make a fine day nor a wet one I don't think anybody would interfere with me certainly if I was a black yard I should not be left here no nor if I was a thief but if any other man was to come on to my crossing I can't say whether the police would interfere to protect me perhaps they might what is it I say to shabby people well by Jay Blank they're all shabby I think I don't see any difference but what can I do I can't insult them and I was never insulted myself since here I've been nor for the matter of that ever had an angry word spoken to me well sure I don't know who's the most liberal if I got a four-pinny bit from a mall I'd take it some of the ladies are very liberal a good lady will give me a sixpence I never heard of sweeping the mud back again and as for the boys annoying me I has no colleague in with boys and they wouldn't be allowed to interfere with me the police wouldn't allow it after I came from Wales where I was on one leg selling matches then it was I took to sweeping the crossing a poor devil must put up with anything good or bad well I was a labouring man a bricklayers labourer and I've been away from Ireland 16 years when I came from Ireland I went to Wales I was there a long time and the way I broke my leg was I fell off a scaffold I'm not married a lame man wouldn't get any woman to have him in London at all at all I don't know what age I am I'm not 50 nor 40 I think about 36 no by Jay Blank it's not myself that ever knew a well-off crossing sweeper I don't deal in them at all I got to deal with friends in London assist me but only now and then if I depended on the few havens I get I wouldn't live on them what money I get here wouldn't buy a pound of mate and I wouldn't live only for my friends you see sir I can't be out always I am laid up nows and thens continually oh it's a poor trade to big on the crossing from morning till night and not get sixpence I couldn't do with it at all yes sir I smoke it's a comfort it is I like any kind I'd get to smoke I'd like the best if I got it I am a Roman Catholic and I go to St Patrick's and St Giles's and many people from my neighbourhood go there I go every Sunday and to conversion just once a year that saves me by the Lord's mercy I don't get broken vitals nor broken mate not as much as you might put on the tip of a fork they'd chuck it out in the dustbin before they'd give it to me I suppose they're all alike the devil and odd job I ever got master nor knives to clean if I got their knives to clean perhaps I might clean them my brooms cost thruppin's hipney they are very good I wear them down to a stump and they last three weeks this fine with her I never got any old clothes not but I want a coat very bad sir I come from Dublin my father and mother died there of cholera and when they died I come to England and that was the cause of my coming by my oath I didn't stand me in more than 18 pints when I took care last week I live in Blank Lane St Giles's church on the second landing and I pay 8 pints a week I have in the room to myself where there's a family lives in it with me when I goes home I just smokes a pipe and goes to bid that's all End of section 91 section 92 of London Labour and the London Poor volume 2 by Henry Mayhew this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Gillian Henry 2. Juvenile Crossing Sweepers A. The Boy Crossing Sweepers Boy Crossing Sweepers and Tumblers A remarkably intelligent lad who on being spoken to at once consented to give all the information in his power told me the following story of his life it will be seen from this boy's account and the one or two following that a kind of partnership exists among some of these young sweepers they have associated themselves together appropriated several crossings to their use and appointed a captain over them they have their forms of trial and jury house for the settlement of disputes laws have been framed which govern their commercial proceedings and a kind of language adopted by the society for its better protection from its arch enemy the policeman I found the lad who first gave me an insight into the proceedings of the associated crossing sweepers crouched on the stone steps of a door in Adelaide Street strand and when I spoke to him he was preparing to settle down in a corner and go to sleep his legs and body being curled round almost as closely as those of a cat on a hearth the moment he heard my voice he was upon his feet asking me to give a hit me to poor little jack he was a good looking lad with a pair of large mild eyes which he took good care to turn up with an expression of supplication as he moaned for his half penny a cap or more properly a stuffed bag covered a crop of hair which had matted itself into the form of so many paint brushes while his face from its roundness of feature and the complexion of dirt had an almost Indian look about it the colour of his hands too was such that you could imagine he had been shelling walnuts he ran before me treading cautiously with his naked feet until I reached a convenient spot to take down his statement which was as follows I've got no mother or father mother has been dead for two years and father's been gone more than that more than five years he died at Ipswich in Suffolk he was a perfumer by trade and used to make hair dye and scent and pomatum and all kinds of scents he didn't keep a shop himself but he used to serve them as did he didn't hawk his goods about neither but had regular customers what used to send him a letter and then he'd take them what they wanted yes he used to serve some good shops there was itches of London Bridge what's a large chemists he used to make a good deal of money but he lost at betting and so his brother my uncle did all his he used to go up to High Park and then go around by the hospital and then turn up a yard where all the men are who play for money note tattersols end note and there he'd lose his money or sometimes win but that wasn't often I remember he used to come home tipsy and say he'd lost on this or that horse naming what one he'd laid on and then mother would coax him to bed and afterwards sit down and begin to cry I was not with father when he died but I was when he was dying but I was sent up along with eldest sister to London with a letter to uncle who was head servant at the doctors in this letter mother asked uncle to pay back some money what he owed and what father lent him and she asked him if he'd like to come down and see father before he died I recollect I went back again to mother by the Orwell steamer I was well dressed then and had good clothes on and I was given to the care of the captain Mr King his name was but when I got back to Ipswich father was dead mother took on dreadful she was ill for three months afterwards confined to her bed she hardly ate anything only beef tea I think they'd call it an eggs all the while she kept on crying mother kept a servant yes sir we always had a servant as long as I can recollect and she and the women as was there Anna they called her an old lady used to take care of me and sister sister was 14 years old she's married to a young man now and they've gone to America she went from a place in the east India docks and I saw her off I used when I was with mother to go to school in the morning and go at nine and come home at 12 to dinner then go again at two and leave off at half past four that is if I behaved myself and did all my lessons right for if I did not I was kept back till I did them so mother used to pay one shilling a week and extra for the copy books and things I can read and write oh yes I mean read and write well read anything even old English and I write pretty fair though I don't get much reading now unless it's penny paper I've got one in my pocket now it's the London Journal there's a tale in it now about two brothers and one of them steals the child away and puts another in his place and then he gets found out and all that and he's just been fallen off a bridge now after mother got better she sold all the furniture and goods and came up to London poor mother she let a man of the name of Hayes have the greater part and he left it switched soon after and never gave mother the money we came up to London and mother took two rooms in Westminster and I and sister lived along with her she used to make hair nets and sister helped her and used to take them to the hairdressers to sell she made these nets for two or three years though she was suffering with a bad breast she died of that poor thing for she had what doctors call cancer perhaps you've heard of him sir and they had to cut all round here note making motions with his hands from the shoulder to the bosom end note sister saw it though I didn't ah she was a very good kind mother and very fond of both of us though father wasn't for he'd always have a noise with mother when he come home when he was seldom with us when he was making his goods after mother died sister still kept on making nets and I lived with her for some time until she told me she couldn't afford to keep me no longer though she seemed to have a pretty good lot to do but she would never let me go with her to the shops though I could crochet which she'd learned me and I used to run and get her all the silts and things what she wanted but she was keeping company with a young man and one day they went out and came back and said they'd been and got married it was him who's got rid of me he was kind to me for the first two or three months while he was keeping her company but before he was married he got a little cross and after he was married he began to get more cross and used to send me to play in the streets and tell me not to come home again till night one day he hit me and I said I wouldn't be hit about by him and then at tea that night sister gave me three shillings and told me I must go and get my own living so I bought a box and brushes they cost me just the money and went cleaning boots and I'd done pretty well with them till my box was stole from me by a boy where I was lodging he's in prison now got six calendar for picking pockets sister kept all my clothes when I asked her for them she said they was disposed of along with all mother's goods but she gave me some shirts and stockings and such like and I had very good clothes only they was all worn out I saw sister after I left her many times I asked her many times to take me back but she used to say it was not her likes but her husbands and she'd have had me back and I think it was true for until he came she was a kind hearted girl but he said he'd enough to do to look after his own living he was a fancy baker by trade I was 15 the 24th of last mason and I've been sweeping crossings now near upon two years there's a party of six of us and we have the crossings from st martin's church as far as pal mal I always go along with them as lodges in the same place as I do in the daytime if it's dry we do anything what we can open cabs or anything but if it's wet we separate and I and another gets a crossing those who gets on it first keeps it and we stand on each side and take our chance we do it in this way if I was to see two gentlemen coming I should cry out two toffs and then they are mine and whether they give me anything or not they are mine and my mate is bound not to follow them for if he did he would get a hiding from the whole lot of us if we both cry out together then we share if it's a lady and gentlemen then we cries a toff and a doll sometimes we are caught out in this way perhaps it is a lady and gentleman and a child and if I was to see them and only say a toff and a doll and leave out the child then my mate can add the child and as he is right and I wrong then it's his party if there's a policeman close at hand we mustn't ask for money but we are always on the lookout for the policeman and if we see one then we calls out Philip for that's our signal one of the policemen at St. Martin's Church Bandy we calls him knows what Philip means for he's up to us so we had to change the word note at the request of the young crossing sweeper the present signal is omitted end note yesterday on the crossing I got thruppin's hitney but when it's dry like today I do nothing for I haven't got a penny yet we never carries no pockets for if the policeman find us we generally pass the money to our mates for if money's found on us we have 14 days in prison if I was to reckon all the year round that is one day with another I think we make four pins every day and if we were to stick to it we should make more for on a very muddy day we do better one day the best I ever had from nine o'clock in the morning till seven o'clock at night I made seven shillings and six pins and got not one bit of silver money among it every shilling I got I went and left at a shop near where my crossing is for fear I might get into any harm the shops kept by a woman we deals with for what we want tea and butter or sugar or brooms anything we want Saturday night week I made two and six pins that's what I took all together up to six o'clock when we see the rain we say together oh there's a jolly good rain we'll have a good day tomorrow if a shower comes on and we are at our room which we generally are about three o'clock to get something to eat besides we generally go there to see how much each other's taken in the day why out we run with our brooms we're always sure to make money if there's mud that's to say if we look for our money and ask of course if we stand still we don't now there's Lord Fritz Harding he's a good gentleman what lives in spring gardens in a large house he's got a lot of servants and carriages every time he crosses the Chiron Cross crossing he always gives the girl half a sovereign note this statement was taken in June 1856 end note he doesn't cross often because hang it he's got such a lot of carriages but when he's on foot he always does if they ask him he doesn't give nothing but if they touch his their caps he does the housekeeper at his house is very kind to us we run errands for her and when she wants any of her own letters taken to the post then she calls and if we are on the crossing we take some for her she's a very nice lady and gives us broken vitals I've got to share in that crossing there are three of us and when he gives the half sovereign he always gives it to the girl and those that are in it shares it she would do us out of it if she could but we all take good care of that for we are all cheats at night time we tumbles that is if the policeman ain't nigh we goes general to Waterloo Place when the opera's on we sends on one of us ahead as a looker out to look for the policeman and then we follows it's no good tumbling to gentlemen going to the opera it's when they're coming back they give us money when they've got a young lady on their arm they laugh at us tumbling some will give us a penny others thruppans sometimes a sixpence or a shilling and sometimes a hate knee we either do the cat and wheel or else we keep before the gentleman and lady turning head over heels putting our broom on the ground and then turning over it I work a good deal fetching cabs after the opera is over we general open the doors of those what draw up at the side of the pavement for people to get into as I've walked a little down the hay market looking for a cab we get some months in prison if we touch the others by the columns I once had half a sovereign given me by a gentleman it was raining awful and I run all about for a cab and at last I got one the gentleman knew it was half a sovereign because he said here my little man here's half a sovereign for your trouble he had three ladies with him beautiful ones with nothing on their heads and only capes on their bare shoulders and he had white kids on and his regular opera togs too I liked him very much and as he was going to give me something the lady says oh give him something extra it was pouring with rain and they couldn't get a cab they were all engaged but I jumped on the box of one as was driving along the line last saturday opera night I made 15 pence by the gentleman coming out of the opera after the opera we go into the hay market where all the women are who walk the streets all night they don't give us no money but they tell the gentleman too sometimes when they are talking to the gentleman they say go away you young rascal and if they are saucy then we say to them we're not talking to you my doxy we're talking to the gentleman but that's only if they're rude for if they speak civil we always goes they know what doxy means what is it? why that they are no better than us if we are on the crossing and we says to them as they go by good luck to you they always give us something either that night or the next there are two with blimmer bonnets who always give us something if we says good luck sometimes a gentleman will tell us to go and get them a young lady and then we goes and the general gives us sixpence for that if the gents is dressed finally we get them a handsome girl if they're dressed middling then we get them a middling dressed one but we usual prefers giving a turn to girls that have been kind to us and they are sure to give us something the next night if we don't find any girls walking we know where to get them in the houses in the streets round about we always meet at st martin steps the jury house we call them at three o'clock in the morning that's always our our we reckon up what we've taken but we don't divide sometimes if we owe anything where we lodge the women of the house will be waiting on the steps for us then if we've got it we pay them if we haven't why it can't be helped and it goes on we get into debt because sometimes the women where we live gets lushy then we don't give them anything because they'd forget it so we spend it ourselves we can't lodge at what's called model lodging houses as our hours don't suit them folks we pay thruppin's a night for lodging food if we get plenty of money we buys for ourselves we buy the pound of bread that's thruppin's farthing best seconds and our farthing's worth of dripping that's enough for a pound of bread and we get a heap worth of tea and a heap worth of sugar or if we're hard up we get only a pen earth of bread we make our own tea at home they lends us a kittle teapot and cups and saucers and all that once or twice a week we get to meet we all club together and go into newgate market and get some pieces cheap and buy us them at home we tosses up who shall have the biggest bit and we divide the broth a cup full in each basin until it's lasted out if any of us has been unlucky we each give the unlucky one one or two halfpence some of us is obliged at times to sleep out all night and sometimes if any of us gets nothing then the other gives him a penny or two and he does the same for us when we are out of luck besides there's our clothes I'm paying for a pair of boots now I paid a shilling off saturday night when we get home at half past three in the morning whoever cries out first wash has it first of all we washes our feet and we all use the same water then we washes our faces and hands and necks and whoever fetches the fresh water up has first wash and if the second don't like to go and get fresh why he uses the dirty whenever we come in the landlady makes us wash our feet very often the stones cuts our feet and makes them bleed then we bind a bit of rag around them we like to put on boots and shoes in the daytime but at night time we can't because it stops the tumbling on the sunday we all have a clean shirt put on before we go out and then we go and tumble after the omni buses sometimes we do very well on a fine sunday when there's plenty of people out on the roofs of the buses we never do anything on a wet day but only when it's been raining and then dried up I have run after a crew mourn bus when they've thrown us money as far as from charring cross right up to Piccadilly but if they don't throw us nothing we don't run very far I should think we get at that work taking one sunday with another eight pins all the year round when there's snow on the ground we put our money together and goes and buys an old shovel and then about seven o'clock in the morning we goes to the shops and asks them if we shall scrape the snow away we generally get tuffins every house but some give six pins for it's very hard to clean the snow away particular when it's been on the ground sometime it's awful cold and gives us chillblains on our feet but we don't mind it when we're working for we soon get hot then before winter comes we generally save up our money and buys a pair of shoes sometimes we makes a very big snowball and rolls it up to the hotels and then the gentleman laughs and throws us money or else we pelt each other with snowballs and then they scrambles money between us we always go to Morley's hotel at Charring Cross the police in winter times is kinder to us than in summer and they only laugh at us perhaps it is because there is not so many of us about them only them as is obligated to find a living for themselves for many of the boys has fathers and mothers as sends them out in summer but keeps them at home in winter when it's piercing cold I have been to the station house because the police always takes us up if we are out at night but we're only locked up till morning that is if we behaves ourselves when we're taken before the gentleman Mr. Hall at Bow Street only says poor boy let him go but it's only when we've done nothing but stop out that he says that he's a kind old gentleman but mind it's only when you have been before him two or three times he says so because if it's a many times he'll send you for 14 days but we don't mind the police much at night time because we jumps over the walls around the place at Trafalgar Square and they don't like to follow us at that game and only stands looking at you over the parapet there was one tried to jump the wall but he split his trousers all to bits and now they're afraid that was old Bandy as bust his breeches and we all hate him as well as another we call Black Diamond what's general along with the red liners as we call the mendicity officers who goes about in disguise as gentlemen to take up poor boy's caught begging when we are talking together we always talk in a kind of slang each policeman we gives a regular name there's Bull's Head Bandy Shanks and Old Cherry Legs and Dot and Carrie One they all knows their names as well as us we never talks of crossings but fakes we don't make no slang of our own but use is the regular one a broom doesn't last us more than a week in wet weather and they cost us tuppence hypney each but in dry weather they are good for a fortnight young Mike's statement the next lad I examined was called Mike he was a short stout set youth with a face like an old man's where the features were hard and defined and the hollows had got filled up with dirt till his countenance was brown as an old wood carving I have seldom seen so dirty a face for the boy had been in a perspiration and then wiped his cheeks with his muddy hands until they were marbled like the covering to a copy book the old lady of the house in which the boy lived seemed to be hurt by the unwashed appearance of her lodger you ought to be ashamed of yourself and that's God's truth not to go and slush yourself a forespake into the gentleman she cried looking alternately at me and the lad as if asking me to witness her indignation Mike wore no shoes but his feet were as black as if cased in gloves with short fingers his coat had been a man's and the tails reached to his ankles one of the sleeves was wanting and a dirty rag had been wound around the arm in its stead his hair spread about like a tuft of grass where a rabbit has been squatting he said I haven't got neither no father nor no mother never had sir for father's been dead these two years and mother's getting on for eight there was both Irish people pleaser and father was a bricklayer when father was at work in the country mother used to get work carrying loads at Covent Garden Market I lived with father till he died and that was from a complaint in his chest after that I lived along with my big brother what's listed in the marines now he used to sweep a crossing in Camden Town opposite the south Hamptonghams near the tall gate he did pretty well up there sometimes such as on Christmas day where he has took as much as six shillings sometimes and never less than one in sixpence all the gentlemen's knowed him there abouts and one or two used to give him a shilling a week regular it was he as first of all put me up to sweep a crossing and I used to take my stand at St Martin's church I didn't see anybody working there so I planted myself on it after a time some other boys come up they come up and wanted to turn me off and began hitting me with their brooms they hit me regular hard with the old stumps there was five or six of them so I couldn't defend myself but told the policeman and he turned them all away except me because he saw me on first sir now we are all friends and work together and all that we earned ourselves we has on a good day when it's poor to reign and then leave off sudden and made it nice and muddy I've took as much as ninepence but it's too dry now and we don't do more than fourpence at night I go along with the others tumbling I does the carton wheel note probably a contraction of Catherine wheel end note I throws myself over sideways on my hands with my legs in the air I can't do it more than four times running because it makes the blood to my head and then all the things seems to turn round sometimes a chap will give me a lick with a stick just as I'm going over sometimes a regular good hard whack but it ain't often I would generally gets a hit me or a penny by it the boys as runs after the buses was the first to do these here carton wheels I know the boy as was the very first to do it his name is gander so we call him the goose there's about nine or ten of us in our gang and as is regular we lodges at different places and we have our regular hours for meeting but we all comes and goes when we likes only we keeps together so as not to let any others come on the crossings but ourselves if another boy tries to come on we cries out here's a russian and then if he won't go away we all sits on him and gives him a drumming and if he still comes down the next day we pays him out twice as much and harder there's never been one down there yet as can lick us all together if we see one of our pals being pitched into by other boys we goes up and helps him ganders the leader of our gang because he can tumble backwards no that ain't the carton wheel that's tumbling so he gets more tin give him and that's why we makes him cappin after twelve at night we goes to the regent circus and we tumbles there to the gentlemen and ladies the most I ever got was six pints at a time the french ladies never give us nothing but they all says chit chit chit like hissing at us for they can't understand us and we are as bad off with them if it's a wet night we leaves off work about 12 o'clock and don't bother with the hay market the first that gets to the crossing does the sweeping away of the mud then they has in return all the halfpence they can take when it's been wet every day a broom gets down to stump in about four days we either burns the old brooms or if we can we sells them for a hipney to some other boy if he's flat enough to buy them gander the captain of the boy crossing sweepers gander the captain of the gang of boy crossing sweepers was a big lad of 16 with a face devoid of all expression until he laughed when the cheeks mouth and forehead instantly became crumpled up with a wonderful quantity of lines and dimples his hair was cut short and stood up in all directions like the bristles of a hearth broom and was a light dust tint matching with the hue of his complexion which also from an absence of washing had turned to a decided drab or what house painters term a stone colour he spoke with a lisp occasioned by the loss of two of his large front teeth which allowed the tongue as he talked to appear through the opening in a round knob like a raspberry the boy's clothing was in a shocking condition he had no coat and his blue striped shirt was as dirty as a french polisher's rags and so tattered that the shoulder was completely bare while the sleeve hung down over the hand like a big bag from the fish scales on the sleeve of his coat it had evidently once belonged to some coaster in the herring line the nap was all worn off so that the lines of the web were showing like a course carpet and instead of buttons string had been passed through holes pierced at the side of course he had no shoes on and his black trousers which with the grease on them were gradually assuming a terpollen look were fastened over one shoulder by means of a brace and bits of string during his statement he illustrated his account of the tumbling backwards the caten wheeling with different specimens of the art throwing himself about on the floor with an ease and almost grace and taking up so small a space off the ground for the performance that his limbs seemed to bend as though his bones were flexible like cane to tell you the best of truth I can't say the last shilling I handled don't you go a-believing on him whispered another lad in my ear while gander's head was turned he took 13 pence last night he did it was perfectly impossible to obtain from this lad any account of his average earnings the other boys in the gang told me that he made more than any of them but gander who is a thorough street beggar and speaks with a particular whine and who directly you look at him puts on an expression of deep distress seemed to have made up his mind that if he made himself out to be in great want I should most likely relieve him so he would not budge an inch from his tuppence a day declaring it to be the maximum of his daily earnings ah he continued with a persecuted tone of voice if I had only got a little money I'd be a bright youth the first chances I get of earning a few half pence I'll buy myself a coat and be off to the country and I'll lay something I'd soon be a gentleman then and come home with a couple of pounds in my pocket instead of never having near a farthing as now one of the other lads ear exclaimed don't go on like that there goose you're making us out all liars to the gentleman the old woman also interfered she lost all patience with gander and reproached him for making a false return of his income she tried to shame him into truthfulness by saying look at my johnny my grandson sir he's not a quarter of goose's size and yet he'll bring me home his shilling or perhaps 18 pence or two shillings for shame on you gander now did you make six shillings last week now speak god's truth hot six shillings cried the goose and he began to look up at the ceiling and shake his hands why I never heard of such a sum I did once see it half crown but I don't know as I ever touched ever one then added the old woman indignantly it is because you idle gander and you don't study when you're on the crossing but let the gentlefolk go by without ever a word that's what it is sir the goose seemed to feel the truth of this reproach for he said with a sigh I know as I am fickle minded he then continued his statement I can't tell how many brooms I use or as fast as I get one it is took from me God help me they watch me put it away and then up they comes and takes it what kinds of brooms is the best why as far as I am concerned I would sooner have a stump on a dry day it's lighter and handier to carry but on a wet day give me a new one I'm 16 year honour and my name's George Gandia and the boys call me the goose in consequence for it's a nickname that gives me though my name ain't spelt with a ha at the end but with a hey so that I ain't Gandair at all but Gandia which is a cell for him God knows what I am whether I'm Irish or Italian or what but I was christened here in London and that's all about it father was a bookbinder I'm 16 now and father turned me away when I was 9 year old for mother had been dead before that I was told my right name by my brother-in-law who had my register he's a sweepster by trade and I wanted to know about my real name when I was going down to the Waterloo that's the ship as I wanted to get aboard as a cabin boy I remember the first night I slept out after father got rid of me I slept on a gentleman's doorstep in the winter on the 15th January I packed my shirt and coat which was a pretty good one right over my ears and then scrunched myself into a doorway and the policeman passed by four or five times without saying on me I had the mother-in-law at the time but father used to drink or else I should never have been as I am and he came home one night and he says go out and get me a few havens for breakfast and I said I had never been in the streets in my life and couldn't and says he go out and never let me see you no more and I took him to his word and I've never been near him since father lived in Barbican at the time and after leaving him I used to go to the Royal Exchange and there I met a boy of the name of Michael and he first led me to beg and made me run after people saying poor boy sir please give us a hipney to get a muscle of bread but as far as I got anything he used to take it away and knock me about shameful so I left him and then I picked up with a chap who's taught me tumbling I soon learned how to do it and then I used to go tumbling after buses that was my notion all along and I hadn't picked up the way of doing it half an hour before I was after that game I took to crossings about eight years ago and the very first person as I asked I had a four-pinny piece given to me I said to him poor little Jack your honour and first of all says he I haven't got no coppers and then he turns back and gives me a four-pinny bit I thought I was made for life when I got that I wasn't working in a gang then but all by myself and I used to do well making about a shilling or nine pins a day I lodged in church lane at that time it was at the time of the Shibishan year note 1851 end note as these gangs come up there was lots of boys that came out sweeping and that's how they picked up the tumbling off me seeing me do it up in the park going along to the Shibishan the crossing at St Martin's church was mined first of all and when the other lads come to it I didn't take no heed of them only for that I'd have been a bright boy by now but they carried me over like for when I tried to turn them off they'd say in a canning way oh let us stay on so I never took no heed of them there was about 13 of them in my gang at that time they made me captain over the lot I suppose because they thought I was the best tumbler of them they obeyed me a little if I told them not to go to any gentleman they wouldn't and leave him to me there was only one fella as used to give me a share of his money and that was for learning him to tumble he'd give me a penny or tuppence just as he earned a little or a lot I taught him all to tumble and we used to do it near the crossing and at night along the streets we used to be sometimes together of a day some are running after one gentleman and some after another but we seldom kept together more than three or four at a time I was the first to introduce tumbling backwards and I'm proud of it yes sir I'm proud of it there's another little chap as I'm learning to do it but he ain't got strength enough in his arms like ah exclaimed Alar in the room he is a one to tumble as Johnny go along the streets like anything he is the king of the tumblers continued gander king and I'm capping the old grandmother here joined in he was taught by a foreign gentleman sir whose wife rowed at a circus he used to come here twice a day and give him lessons in this here very room sir that's how he got it sir ah I did another lad in an admiring tone see him and the goose have a race away he goes but Jackie will leave him a mile behind the history then continued people liked the tumbling backers and forwards and it got a good bit of money at first but they is getting tired with it and I'm growing too old I fancy it hurt me awful at first I tried it first under a railway arch of the Blackwell railway and when it goes backward I thought it had cut my head open it hurts me if I've got a thin cap on the man has taught me tumbling has gone on this stage first he went about with swords fencing in public houses and then he got engaged me and him once tumbled all around the circus at the rotunda one night what was a benefit and got one in eight pence a piece and all for only five hours and a half from six to half past eleven and we acting and tumbling and all that we had plenty of beer too we was very much applauded when we did it I was the first boy as ever did ornamental work in the mud of my crossings I used to be at the crossing at my corner of regent circus and that's the very place where I first did it the very first thing as I did was a hanker note anchor end note a regular one with turn upsides and a rope down the centre and all I swept it away clean in the mud in the shape of the drawing I'd seen it paid well for I took one in nine pence on it the next thing I tried was writing God save the queen and that too paid capital for I think I got two bob after that I tried we har note v r end note and a star and that was a sweep too I never did no flowers but I've done imitations of florals and put them all round the crossing and very pretty at loop two at night I'd buy a farthing candle and stick it over it and make it nice and comfortable so that the people could look at it easy whenever I see a carriage coming I used to douse the glim and run away with it but the wheels would regularly spoil the drawings and then we'd have all the trouble to put it to rights again and that we used to do with our hands I first let him drawing in the mud from a man in adelaide street strand he kept a crossing but he only used to draw him close to the curb stone he used to keep some soft mud there and when a carriage come up to the louther arcade after he'd opened the door and let the lady out he would set to work and by the time she'd come back he'd have some flowers or a wee har or whatever he liked done in the mud and underneath he'd write please don't remember honest industry I used to stand by and see him do it until I'd learnt and when I knowed I went off and did it at my crossing I was the first to light up at night though and now I wish I'd never done it but it was that which got me turned off my crossing and a capital one it was I thought the gentleman coming from the play would like it for it looked very pretty the policeman said I was destructing note obstructing end note the thoroughfare and making too much row there for the people used to stop in the crossing to look it were so pretty he took me in charge three times on one night because I wouldn't go away but he let me go again till at last I thought he would lock me up for the night so I hooked it it was after this as I went to St Martin's church and I haven't done half as well there last night I took three havens but I was lurking or I might have had more as a proof of the very small expense which is required for the toilette of a crossing sweeper I may mention that within a few minutes after master gander had finished his statement he was in possession of a coat for which he had paid the sum of five pence when he brought it into the room all the boys and the women crowded round to see the purchase it's a very goodon said the goose it only wants just taking up here and there and this cuff putting to rights and as he spoke he pointed to tears large enough for a head to be thrust through I've seen that coat of four summers said one of the women where did you get it at the chandelier shop answered the goose end of section 92 section 93 of London Labour and the London Poor volume 2 by Henry Mayhew this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Gillian Henry the king of the tumbling boy crossing sweepers the young sweeper who had been styled by his companions the king was a pretty looking boy only tall enough to rest his chin comfortably on the mantelpiece as he talked to me and with a pair of gray eyes that were as bright and clear as drops of seawater he was clad in a style in no way agreeing with his royal title for he had on a kind of dirt colored shooting coat of tweed which was fraying into a kind of cobweb at the edges and elbows his trousers too were rather faulty for there was a pink wrinkled dot of flesh at one of the knees while their length was too great for his majesty's short legs so that they had to be rolled up at the end like a washer women's sleeves his royal highness was off a restless disposition and whilst talking lifted up one after another the different ornaments on the mantelpiece frowning and looking at them sideways as he pondered over the replies he should make to my questions when i arrived at the grandmother's apartment the king was absent his majesty having been sent with a picture to fetch some spring water the king also was kind enough to favor me with samples of his wondrous tumbling powers he could bend his little legs round till they curved like the long german sausages we see in ham and beef shops and when he turned head over heels he curled up his tiny body as closely as a woodlouse and then rolled along wobbling like an egg the boys call me johnny he said and i'm getting on for a living and i goes along with the goose and harry i'm sweeping at st martin's church and about there i used two to go to the crossing where the statue is sir at the bottom of the hay market i went along with the others sometimes there were three or four of us or sometimes one sir i never used to sweep unless it was wet i don't go out not before 12 or one in the day it ain't no use going before that and beside i couldn't get up before that i'm too sleepy i don't stop out so late as the other boys they sometimes stop all night but i don't like that the goose was out all night along with martin they went all along up piccarilli and there they climbed over the park railings and went to birding all by themselves and then they went to sleep for an hour on the grass so they says i like better to come home to my bed it kills me for the next day when i do stop out all night the goose is always out all night he likes it neither father nor mother's alive sir but i lives along with grandmother and aunt as owns this room and i always give them all i gets sometimes i make a shilling sometimes sixpence and sometimes less i can never take nothing of a day only off a night because i can't tumble off a day and i can off a night the gander taught me tumbling and he was the first as did it along the crossings i can tumble quite as well as the goose i can turn a cat and whale and he can't and i can go further on forwards in him but i can't tumble backwards as he can i can't do a handspring though why a handspring's pitching yourself forwards on both hands turning over in front and lighting on your feet that's very difficult and very few can do it there's one little chap but he's very clever and can tie himself up in a knot almost i'm best at cat and wheels i can do 12 or 14 times running keep on at it it just does tire you that's all when i gets up i feels quite giddy i can tumble about 40 times over head and heels i does the most of that and i think it's the most difficult but i can't say which gentleman likes best you see they are a nice sick of the head and heels tumbling and then very few of the boys can do cat and wheels on the crossings only two or three besides me when i see anybody coming i says please sir give me a hate knee and touches my hair and then i throws a cat and wheel and has a look at him and if i see they are laughing then i goes on and throws more of them perhaps one in ten will give a chap something some of them will give you a thruptney bit or perhaps sixpence and others only give you a kick well sir i should say they likes tumbling over head and heels if you can keep it up 20 times then they begins laughing but if you only does it once some of them will say oh i can do that myself and then they don't give nothing i know they call me the king of tumblers and i think i can tumble the best of them none of them is so good as me only the goose at tumbling backwards we don't crab one another when we are sweeping if we was to crab one another we'd get to fighting and giving slaps of the jaw to one another so when we sees anybody coming we cries my gentleman and lady coming here my lady my two gentlemen's and if any other chap gets the money then we says i named them now i'll have halfs and if he won't give it then we'll smug his broom or his cap i'm the littlest chap among our lot but if a fellow like the goose was to take my naming then i'd smug something i shouldn't mind his licking me i'd smug his money and get his halfpence or something if a chap as can't tumble sees a sporting gen coming and names him he says to one of us tumblers now then who'll give us halfs and then we goes and tumbles and shares the sporting gentlemen's likes tumbling they kicks up more row laughing than a dozen others sometimes at night we goes down to Covent Garden to our heavenses is but not till all the place is over because heavenses don't shut a four two or three when the people comes out we gets tumbling for them some of the drunken gentleman is shocking spiteful and runs after a chap and gives us a cut with the cane some of the others will give us money and some will buy our broom off us for six pence me and jemmy sold the two of our brooms for a shilling to two drunken gentlemen's and they began kicking up a row and going before other gentlemen's and pretending to sweep and taking off their hats begging like a mocking of us they danced about with their brooms flourishing them in the air and knocking off people's hats and at last they got into a cab and chucked the brooms away the drunken gentleman's is always either jolly or spiteful but i goes only to the hay market and about pal mal now i used to be going up to heavenses every night but i can't take my money up there now i stands at the top of the hay market by windmill street and when i sees a lady and gentleman coming out of the argyle then i begs of them as they comes across i says can't you give me a hate me sir poor little jack i'll stand on my nose for a penny and then they laugh at that goose can stand on his nose as well as me we put the face flat down on the ground instead of standing on our heads there's ducky dinovin and the stuttering baboon too and two others as well as can do it but the stuttering baboon's getting too big and fat to do it well he's a very awkward tumbler it don't hurt only at learning because you bears more on your hands than your nose sometimes he says well let us see you do it and then perhaps they'll search in their pockets and say oh i haven't got any coppers so then we'll force them and perhaps they'll pull out their purse and gives us a little bit of silver ah we works hard for what we gets and then there's the policeman birching us some of them is so spiteful they take up their belt what they use is round their waist to keep their coat typed and they'll hit us with the buckle but we generally gives them the lucky dodge and gets out of their way one night two gentlemen officers they was was standing in the hay market and a drunken man passed by there was snow on the ground and we'd been begging of them and says one of them i'll give you a shilling if you'll knock that drunken man over we was three of us so we set on him and soon had him down after he got up he went and told the policeman but we all cut round different ways and got off and then met again we didn't get the shilling though because a boy crabbed us he went up to the gentleman and says he give it me sir i'm the boy and then we says no sir it's us so says the officer i shan't give it to none of you and puts it back again in his pockets we broke a broom over the boy as crabbed us and then we cut down Waterloo Place and afterwards we come up to the hay market again and then we met the officers again i did a cat and wheel and then says i then what you give me on now and he says go and sweep some mud on that woman so i went and did it and then they takes me in a pastry shop at the corner and they tells me to tumble on the tables in the shop and nearly broke one of them they were so delicate they give me a fourpony meat pie and two penny sponge cakes which i puts in my pocket because there was another sharing with me the lady of the shop kept on screaming go and fetch me a police take the dirty boy out because i was standing on the tables in my muddy feet and the officers was a bursting their sides with laughing and says they no he shan't stir i was frightened because if the police had come they'd been safe and sure to have took me they made me tumble from the door to the end of the shop and back again and then i turned on my cat and wheel and was new knocking down all the things as was on the counter they didn't give me no money only pies but i got a shilling another time for tumbling to some french ladies and gentlemen in a pastry cook shop under the colonnade i often goes into a shop like that i've done it a good many times there was a gentleman once as belonged to a circus note circus and note as wanted to take me with him abroad and teach me tumbling he had a little moustache and used to belong to dreary lane playhouse riding on horses i went to his place and stopped there some time he taught me to put my leg round my neck and i was just getting along nicely with the splits note going down on the ground with both legs extended and note when i left him they note the splits and note used to hurt worst of all very bad for the thighs i used to to hang with my leg round his neck when i did anything he liked he used to be clapping me on the back he wasn't so very stunning well off for he never had what i calls a good dinner grandmother used to have a better dinner than he perhaps only a bit of scrag of mutton between three of us i don't like meat nor butter but i like stripping and they never had none there the wife used to drink i very much on the sly she used when he was out to send me round with a bottle and six spoons to get a quarter enough gin for her and she'd take it with three or four oysters grandmother didn't like the notion of my going away so she went down one day and says she i want my child and the wife says that's according to the master's likings and then grandmother says what not my own child and then grandmother began talking and at last when the master come home he says to me which will you do stop here or go home with your grandmother so i come along with her i've been sweeping the crossings getting on for two years before that i used to go cat and wheeling after the buses i don't like the sweeping and i don't think there's air on one of us what likes it in the winter we has to be out in the cold and then in summer we have to sleep out all night or go asleep on the church steps regular tired out one of us will say at night oh i'm sleepy now who's game for a dose i'm for a dose and then we go eight or ten of us into a doorway of the church where they keep the dead in a kind of airy like underneath and there we go to sleep the most of the boys has got no homes perhaps they've got the price of a lodging but they're hungry and they eat the money and then they must lay out their cellophane will stop out in the wet for perhaps the sake of a hipney and get themselves sopping wet i think all our chaps would like to get out of the work if they could i'm sure goose would and so would i all the boys call me the king because i tumble so well and some calls me pluck and some judy i'm called pluck because i'm so plucked at going at the gentleman tomy donovan tippity tight we call him because his trousers is so tight he can hardly move in them sometimes he was the first as called me judy donovan once swallowed a pill for a shilling a gentleman in the hay market says if you swallow this here pill i'll give you a shilling and jimmy says all right sir and he puts it in his mouth and went to the water pails near the cab stand and swallowed it all the chaps in our gang likes me and we all likes one another we always shows what we gets given to us to eat sometimes we gets one another up wild and then that fetches up a fight but that isn't often when two of us fight the others stand round and sees fair play there was a fight last night between Broca's bones as we call Anthony Hones and Neddie Hall the sparrow or spider we call him something about the root of a pineapple as we was aiming with at one another and that called up a fight we all stood round and saw them at it but neither of them licked for they give den for today and they're to finish it tonight we make some fight fair we all of us likes to see a fight but not to fight ourselves Hones is sure to beat a spider is as thin as a wafer and all bones I can like the spider though he's twice my size the street where the boy sweepers lodged I was anxious to see the room in which the gang of boy crossing sweepers lived so that I might judge of their peculiar style of housekeeping and form some notion of their principles of domestic economy I asked young Harry and the goose to conduct me to their lodgings and they at once consented the goose prefacing his compliance with the remark that it weren't such as gentlemen has been accustomed to but then I must take him as they was the boys led me in the direction of Drury Lane and before entering one of the narrow streets which branch off like the side bones of a fish's spine from that long thoroughfare they thought fit to caution me that I was not to be frightened as nobody would touch me for all was very civil the locality consisted of one of those narrow streets which were not for the paved cartway in the centre would be called a court seated on the pavement at each side of the entrance was a costa woman with her basket before her and her legs tucked up mysteriously under her gown into a round ball so that her figure resembled in shape the plaster tumblers sold by the Italians these women remained as inanimate as if they had been carved images and it was only when a passenger went by that they gave signs of life by calling out in a low voice like talking to themselves two for three arpins herons fine higgins the street itself is like the description given of thoroughfares in the east opposite neighbours could not exactly shake hands out of the window but they could talk together very comfortably and indeed as I passed along I observed several women with their arms folded up like a cat's paws on the sill and chatting with their friends over the way nearly all the inhabitants were costamongers and indeed the narrow cartway seemed to have been made just wide enough for a truck to wheel down it a beer shop and a general store together with a couple of sweeps whose residences were distinguished by a broom over the door formed the only exceptions to the street selling class of inhabitants as I entered the place it gave me the notion that it belonged to a distinct costa colony and formed one large hawker's home where everybody seemed to be doing just as he liked and I was stared at as if considered an intruder women were seated on the pavement knitting and repairing their linen the doorways were filled up with bonnetless girls who wore their shawls over their head as the Spanish women do their mantillas and the youths in corduroy and brass buttons who were chatting with them lent against the walls as they smoked their pipes and blocked up the pavement as if they were the proprietors of the place little children formed a convenient bench out of the curb stone and a party of four men were seated on the footway playing with cards which had turned to the colour of brown paper from long usage and marking the points with chalk upon the flags the parallel windows of the houses had all of them wooden shutters as thick and clumsy looking as a kitchen flap table the paint of which had turned to the dull dirt colour of an old slate some of these shutters were evidently never used as a security for the dwelling but served only as tables on which to chalk the accounts of the day's sales before most of the doors were costar mongers trucks some standing ready to be wheeled off and others stained and muddy with the day's work a few of the costars were dressing up their barrels arranging the sieves of waxy looking potatoes and others taking the stiff herrings browned like a mare sham with the smoke they had been dried in from the barrels beside them and spacing them out in penny worths on their trays you might guess what each costar monger had taken out that day by the heap of refuse swept into the street before the doors one house had a blue mound of mussel shells in front of it another a pile of the outside leaves of broccoli and cabbage turning yellow and slimy with bruises and moisture hanging up beside some of the doors were bundles of old strawberry bottles stained red with the fruit over the trap doors to the cellars were piles of market gardener's selves ruddled like a sheep's back with big red letters in fact everything that met the eye seemed to be in some way connected with the costar's trade from the windows poles stretched out on which blankets petticoats and linen were drying and so numerous worthy that they reminded me of the flags hung out at a Paris vet some of the sheets had patches as big as trap doors let into their centres and the blankets were many of them as full of holes as a pigeonhouse as I entered the court a row was going on and from a first floor window a lady whose hair sadly wanted brushing was haranguing a crowd beneath throwing her arms about like a drowning man and in her excitement thrusting her body half out of her temporary rostrum as energetically as I have seen punch lean over his theatre the villain dragged her she shouted by the hair of her head at least three yards into the court the villain and then he kicked her and the blood was on his boot it was a sweep who had been behaving in this currently manner but still he had his defenders in the women around him one with very shiny hair and an indian kerchief around her neck answered the lady in the window by calling her a D blank D old cat whilst the sweep's wife rushed about clapping her hands together as quickly as if she was applauding at a theatre and styled some day or other an old wager bones as she wouldn't dirty her hands to fight with this row had the effect of drawing all the lodgers to the windows their heads popping out as suddenly as dogs from their kennels in a fancier's yard the boy sweeper's room the room where the boys lodged was scarcely bigger than a coach house and so low was the ceiling that a flypaper suspended from a clothesline was on a level with my head and had to be carefully avoided when I moved about one corner of the apartment was completely filled up by a big four-post bedstead which fitted into a kind of recess as perfectly as if it had been built to order the old women who kept this lodging had endeavoured to give it a homely look of comfort by hanging little black framed pictures scarcely bigger than pocketbooks on the walls most of these were sacred subjects with large yellow glories around their heads though between the drawing representing the bleeding heart of christ and the saviour bearing the cross was an illustration of a red waistcoated sailor smoking his pipe the adoration of the shepherds again was matched on the other side of the fireplace by a portrait of daniel o'Connell a chest of drawers was covered over with a green beige cloth on which books shelves and clean glasses were tidily set out where so many persons for there were about eight of them including the landlady her daughter and grandson could all sleep puzzled me extremely the landlady wore a frilled nightcap which fitted so closely to the skull that it was evident she had lost her hair one of her eyes was slowly recovering from a blow which to use her own words a black gayard gave her her lip too had suffered in the encounter for it was swollen and cut i have a nice flop bid for the boys she said when i inquired into the accommodation of her lodging house where three of them can sleep easy and comfortable it's a large bed sir said one of the boys and a warm covering over us and you see it's better than a regular lodging house for if you want a knife or a cup you don't have to leave something on it till it's returned the old women spoke up for her lodgers telling me that they were good boys and very honest for she added they pays me regular every night which is thripence the only youth as to whose morals she seemed to be at all doubtful was the goose for he kept late hours and sometimes came home without a penny in his pocket b the girl crossing sweepers the girl crossing sweepers sent out by her father a little girl who worked by herself at her own crossing gave me some curious information on the subject this child had a peculiarly flat face with a button off a nose while her mouth was scarcely larger than a buttonhole when she spoke there was not the slightest expression visible in her features indeed one might have fancied she wore a mask and was talking behind it but her eyes were shining the while as brightly as those of a person in a fever and kept moving about restless with her timidity the green frock she wore was fastened close to the neck and was turning into a kind of moldy tint she also wore a black stuffed apron stained with big patches of gruel from feeding baby at home as she said her hair was tidally dressed being drawn tightly back from the forehead like the biobroom girls and as she stood with her hands thrust up her sleeves she curtsied each time before answering bobbing down like a float as though the floor under her had suddenly given way i'm 12 years old pleaser and my name is margaret r and i sweep a crossing in new oxford street by dunes passage just facing moses and sun sir by the catholic school sir mother's been dead these two years sir and father's a working coupler sir and i lives with him but he don't get much to do and so i'm obligated to help him doing what i can sir since mother's been dead i've had to mind my little brother and sister so that i haven't been to school but when i goes acrossing sweeping i take them along with me and they sit on the steps close by sir if it's wet i has to stop at home and take care of them for father depends upon me for looking after them sister's three and a half year old and brother's five year so he's just beginning to help me sir i hope he'll get something better than a crossing when he grows up first of all i used to go singing songs in the streets sir it was when father had no work so he stopped at home and looked after the children i used to sing the red white and blue and mother is the battle over and the gypsy girl and sometimes i'd get four pins or five pins and sometimes i'd have a chance of making nine pins sir sometimes though i take a shilling of a saturday night in the markets at last the songs grew so stale people wouldn't listen to them and as i can't read i couldn't learn any more sir my big brother and father used to learn me some but i never could get enough out of them for the streets besides father was out of work still and we couldn't get money enough to buy ballads with and it's no good singing without having them to sell we live over there sir note pointing to a window on the other side of the narrow street end note the notion come into my head all of itself to sweep crossing sir as i used to go up regent street i used to see men and women and girls and boys sweeping and the people giving them money so i thought i'd do the same thing that's how it come about just now the weather is so dry i don't go to my crossing but goes out singing i've learned some new songs such as the queen of the navy forever and the widow's last prayer which is about the wars i only go sweeping in wet weather because then's the best time when i am there there's some ladies and gentlemen as gives to me regular i nose them by sight and there's a beer shop where they give me some bread and cheese whenever i go i generally takes about six pins or seven pins or eight pins on the crossing from about nine o'clock in the morning till four in the evening when i come home i don't stop out at night because father won't let me and i'm got to be home to see to baby my broom costs me tuppin's hipney and in wet weather it lasts a week but in dry weather we seldom uses it when i seize the buses and carriages coming i stands on the side for i'm a feared of being run over in winter it goes out and cleans ladies doors general about lincoln's in for the housekeepers i gets tuppin's a door but it takes a long time when the ice is hardened so that i can't do only about two or three i can't tell whether i shall always stop at sweeping but i've no clothes and so i can't get a situation for though i'm small and young yet i could do housework such as cleaning no sir there's no gang on my crossing i'm all alone if another girl or a boy was to come and take it when i'm not there i should stop on it as well as him or her and go share with him girl crossing sweeper i was told that a little girl formed one of the association of young sweepers and at my request one of the boys went to fetch her she was a clean washed little thing with a pretty expressive countenance and each time she was asked a question she frowned like a baby in its sleep while thinking of the answer in her ears she wore instead of rings loops of string which the doctor had put there because her sight was wrong a cotton velvet bonnet scarcely larger than the sunshades worn at the seaside hung on her shoulders leaving exposed her head with the hair as rough as tau her green stuff gown was hanging in tatters with long three-cornered rents as large as penny counts showing the gray lining underneath and her mantle was separated into so many pieces that it was only held together by the braiding at the edge as she conversed with me she played with the strings of her bonnet rolling them up as if curling them on her singularly small and also singularly dirty fingers lb 14 sir a fortnight before next christmas i was born in liquor pond street graze in lane father come over from ireland and was a bricklayer he had pains in his limbs and wasn't strong enough so he give it over he's dead now being dead a long time sir i was a littler girl then than i am now for i wasn't above 11 at that time i lived with mother after father died she used to sell things in the streets yes sir she was a coaster about a 12 month after father's death mother was taken bad with the cholera and died i then went along with both grandmother and grandfather who was a porter in newgate market i stopped there until i got a place as servant of all work i was only turned just turned 11 then i worked along with a french lady and gentleman in hatton garden who used to give me a shilling a week and my tea i used to go home to grandmothers to dinner every day i hadn't to do any work only just to clean the room and nust the child it was a nice little thing i couldn't understand what the french people used to say but there was a boy working there and he used to explain to me what they meant i left them because they was a going to a place called italy perhaps you may have heard tell of it sir well i suppose they must have been italians but we call everybody whose talk we don't understand french i went back to grandmothers but after grandfather died she couldn't keep me and so i went out begging she sent me i carried lucifer matches and stale laces first i used to carry about a dozen laces and perhaps i'd sell six out of them i suppose i used to make about six pins a day and i used to take it home to grandmother who kept and fed me at last finding i didn't get much at begging i thought i'd go crossing sweeping i saw other children doing it i says to myself i'll go and buy a broom and i spoke to another little girl who was sweeping up hoburn who told me what i was to do but says she don't come and cut up me i went first to hoburn near to home at the end of red lion street then i was frightened of the calves and carriages but i'd get there early about eight o'clock and sweep the crossing clean and i'd stand at the side on the pavement and speak to the gentlemen and ladies before they crossed there was a couple of boys sweepers at the same crossing before i went there i went to them and asked if i might come and sweep there too and they said yes if i would give them some of the haypens i got these was boys about as old as i was and they said if i earned six pins i was to give them tuppence apiece but they never give me nothing of theirs i never took more than six pins and out of that i had to give four pins so that i did not do so well as with the laces the crossings made my hands sore with the sweeping and as i got so little i thought i'd try somewhere else then i got right down to the fountains in trafalgar square by the crossing at the statie on oars back there was a good many boys and girls on that crossing at the time five of them so i went along with them when i first went they said here's another freshen they come up to me and says are you going to sweep here and i says yes and they says you mustn't come here there's too many and i says there are different ones every day or they're not regular there but shift about sometimes one lot of boys and girls on the next day another they didn't say another word to me and so i stopped it's a capital crossing but there's so many of us it spills it i seldom gets more than seven pins a day which i always takes home to grandmother i've been on that crossing about three months they always calls me ellen my regular name and behaves very well to me if i see anybody coming i call them out as the boys does and then they are mine there's a boy and myself and another strange girl works on our side of the statie and another lot of boys and girls on the other i like saturday's the best day of the week because that's the time as gentlemen has has been at work has their money and then they are more generous i get more than perhaps nine pins but not quite a shilling on the saturday i've had a thruppany bit give to me but never six pins it was a gentleman and i should know him again ladies gives me less than gentlemen i follow i'm saying if you please sir give a poor girl a hipney but if the police are looking i stop still i never goes out on sunday but stops at home with grandmother i don't stop out at nights like the boys but i get home by 10 at latest end of section 93 end of london labour and the london poor volume two by henry mayhew